The Conclusion, Part Two
It wasn't long before I turned off onto another road, and then another. The old prison work camp was indeed deep in the forest. Thanks to logging operations, the dirt roads were plowed, well kept, and panked down enough (that's
packed down to you non-Yoopers) for big logging trucks to pass, so I had little trouble getting the big semi in there (except for, of course, some grinding of the transmission).
Before long, though, I arrived at the camp. French remained strangely quiet, and seemed to almost be in a state of shock. I guess I would've been too, had I been in his shoes. It helped, too, that I had replaced his gag. Heh.
As I turned off the road onto the trail that led into the heart of the camp, lights came on. I counted at least four cars waiting for me amidst the cluster of barracks-like buildings, and I couldn't tell how many people there were. I pulled the truck right up to the line of headlights, not ten feet away, and cut the engine. Leaving the lights on, I grabbed my rifle, opened the door, and slung it as I got out. The LAW was still slung across my back.
"You're most punctual, Mr. Nightcrawler," a voice said, in heavily accented english. In the headlights of the truck, over the glare of the headlights facing me, I could see at least fifteen guys, almost all armed, though they didn't seem to have their weapons at the ready. Fortunately for me, what used to be a guard tower had fallen down from lack of maintenance; good, I thought.
"I try to be. I have French and the truck, as promised."
"Why are you so heavily armed, Mr. Nightcrawler?" The speaker finally stepped forward. He was an incredibly well dressed, lean and mean looking Chinese fellow with a big scar across his left cheek. He had a cocky half smile on his scarred face, and an evil eye.
"Why are you here with so many men?" I retorted. "I'm just being careful. I think you'll agree that you can't be too careful these days. There a lot of weirdos out there." He actually laughed at this comment. My heart was racing, but I did my best to keep my cool.
I carefully surveyed the territory around me. The trail that led to the camp was lined on both sides with snowbanks and pine forest. The camp was a plowed-out area in the midst of the forest. My best bet for escape was to make it into the woods and crash through the snow. Or, I could run down the road and leave a less easy to follow trail. I'd be able to move faster that way, but would have no cover until I rounded the corner, a good hundred yards away. A hundred yards is a long way when people are shooting at you.
"Very well, then," my well spoken friend said. "Please get Agent French." Okay, I thought to myself, this is it. My heart rate felt like it broke three hundred beats per minute as I slowly walked around the front of the truck. I opened the passenger's side door, and helped French down. With him in front of me, I turned back towards the row of cars. Many eyes were on me. As I walked French forward slowly, I undid the binds that held his hands behind my back.
"Get ready to hit the dirt," I whispered into his ear. I could scaracely believe I was helping this asshat stay alive, but what the hell. Using some sleight of hand, I removed on of my frag grenades from its pouch, and pulled the pin. Holding the grenade in a death grip, I slowly marched French forward, with my right hand on his right shoulder, my left hand concealing the grenade behind his back, until we were lined up with the front of the truck. Many headlights were on us, so they could see him clearly and were convinced that he was who he was. It was time.
I noticed a few of the goons had clustered around the scar-faced honcho. They were standing in between two of the black sedans, about fifteen feet in front of us. That was the best place to throw the grenade. Now, as I've said, I can't throw a ball worth a damn, but I'm an absolute bastard with hand greandes. Still, I was scared, shaky, and I only had one shot at this. I made my move.
I tossed the frag grenade over French's head, right towards the cluster of Triad guys. It was dark, so many of them had only seen me throw something. They didn't see what or wear it went. As soon as it had landed, I turned and ran in the opposite direction. French flopped to the ground as I had told him too, sort of taking cover behind the front right tire of the truck.
A couple seconds later, the grenade detonated. I didn't see if I had gotten anybody, I just heard a loud
whumpf come from behind me as I ran along side of the truck, unslinging my FAL as I did so. Once I was behind the trailer, I crouched down, and leaned around the other corner, so my weapon was aiming up the left side of the truck. I could see guys running around, and a few shots had been fired. I wondered if they had gotten French. I fired five or six shots into the crowd, and ducked behind the truck once again.
Then all hell broke loose. Gunfire errupted from both sides of the truck, and puffs of snow appeared all around my only avenues of escape. They basically had me pinned down, and were probably advancing on both sides of the truck. Aw, hell, I thought.
I peeked around the right corner of the trailer. I spotted French low-crawling towards the camp, around the edge of the plowed area, and the Triad guys were apparently ignoring him. Good, I thought, he was away from the truck. Before I ducked behind cover again, though, I saw two Triad assassins come running towards me,
Uzi submachine guns in hand. I fired another five or six shots at them both, rapidly, and they both dropped. I ducked back behind the rear of the trailer. I turned around just in time to see another Luminous Path assassin round the left-hand corner, and he was
right there, folks. We almost crashed into each other. He tried to bring his weapon up, but I swiftly butt-stroked him across the face with the stock of my FAL. He recoiled from this, and slammed into the back of the trailer. I then smashed him right in the nose. He fell on his rear. I shot him three times right through the chest while he was down; with the third round, the bolt locked back on my FAL. I had expended an entire 20 round magazine, it would seem. I guessed that I had fired more rounds than I had thought.
I realized I HAD to get away from the truck and into the woods. The gunfire had more or less ceased, but I could hear a lot of yelling coming from the front of the truck. I had just killed three of their guys; they were undoubtedly going to try to flank me on both sides now, instead of just bum-rushing me. I didn't have but a few seconds.
I slung my FAL rifle over my left shoulder, and unslung the LAW launcher. I extended the tube, and the sights popped up. Leaning around the left corner of the trailer again, I fired the rocket at a pair of headlights. The car errupted into a ball of flames, and I saw a guy go flying through the air. Now was my chance to escape. I dropped the launcher and bolted down the road.
I make it, though. I was about to round the corner, to safety, when I felt a stiff thump in the center of my back. I heard a loud
clang as a bullet struck the steel plate in my vest. It didn't penetrate, though it hit a lot harder than a 9mm bullet should've. Somebody must've had a rifle back there. I stumbled at the impact and slipped in the snow, falling on my face. Puffs of snow appeared all around me, and then I felt a sharp, burning pain in the back of my right thigh. I was certain I was dead, but a muffled secondary explosion behind me seemed to distract them for a second. I guess the gasoline from another one of the cars had just combusted. Once again, dumb luck saved me. I stumbled to my feet and essentially hopped towards the corner. I fell once again, and great pain shot up my leg.
So I crawled like mad, bleeding like mad as well. I had to get around the corner before I passed out. Finally, I was far enough away from the truck, and more or less out of direct line of sight of the Triad guys. I rolled onto my back and pulled a small garage door opener looking thing out of a pouch on my vest. I flipped up a safety cover, and pushed the one button on the control.
The truck then exploded. The large explosive device I had planted in the trailer ignited. The trailer itself split open in a ball of flame, and fragments of metal went everywhere. Thousands of stainless steel spoons shot all over the place, and rained down from the sky a second later. The explosion was deafening, and I hoped that it'd distract them enough to keep them from pursuing. It was then that I remembered my radio; I was supposed to radio the Feds. I didn't bother, though, as I heard choppers approaching as my hearing returned. I guessed that the series of explosions had tipped them off.
I sat up, leaning against the snow bank, my FAL in my lap. I was just barely around the corner, and the Triad guys could be right there, for all I knew. I still heard a few shots as the choppers got closer. I knew that I should've been crawling away, but my leg was shot clean through; I couldn't walk, and I was bleeing badly. I felt very tired, and things began to sort of get dark. I knew I was about to pass out.
It was then that I heard the crunch of footsteps in the snow. I looked up just in time to see French round the corner. He looked tattered, and was bleeding. I was shocked to see that his left eye was apparently gone; he covered it with his left hand. In his right hand he held a Beretta 92 pistol that I guessed he'd picked up off of a dead Triad guy.
My impulse was, of course, to shoot the SOB once and for all, but my stomach lurched as it hit me; the bolt on my FAL was still locked back. I had forgotten to reload, in the commotion and the trying (unsucessfully) not to get shot.
Well, [EXPLETIVE DELETED], I thought to myself. I looked up at French, breathing heavily and in pain, and he looked down at me. He aimed the Beretta at me, and fired twice.
CLANG CLANG! I cringed as both rounds hit my chest plate. It hurt like hell.
"That's right," he said aloud. "You've got that vest on, don't you. Sorry about that, I'm not seeing so good right now." The hatred just dripped from his voice; I could tell he enjoyed having me at his mercy. He pointed the pistol right between my eyes, and my guts twisted. This is is, I thought.
The helicopters began circling overhead, and a loud voice over a speaker called out French's name. He looked over towards the burning truck, and where the choppers were hovering, before looking back at me. As soon as he looked at me, I shot him.
The .45 caliber bullet entered French's abdomen, and exited out the back. It appeared to be a grazing wound, not a solid hit (I did kind of shoot from the hip; I had just barely gotten the revolver's muzzle clear of the hoslter when he turned towards me again). He looked stunned, and kind of stumbled back a few steps. He took his left hand off of where his left eye had been, and I could see the bloody mess there. I fired again, but missed, and he turned and ran back towards the camp, leaving a blood trail as he went.
I exhaled heavily. I heard footsteps crunching in the snow once again, this time from my right, from down the trail. I tried to ready myself, but everything went dark.
I dreamed. Strange dreams. I felt like I was moving, and could faintly hear someone talking to me. The dreams seemed to go on forever, too.
The next thing I knew, my eyes opened and I didn't know where I was. I was looking at a gray ceiling with a flourescent light. For a moment, I thought I was back in my dorm room, and this whole episode had just been a dream, like that whole season of
Dynasty or
Dallas or whatever it was. But I looked around a bit, and realized I wasn't in my own bed. In fact, I didn't know where the hell I was.
An old man in a white lab coat entered the small room from an adjacent hallway. He had a white mustache and a bald head.
"Welcome back, Mr. Nightcrawler," he said, not quite smiling.
"W...where the hell am I?" I asked, raspily.
"You're in my clinic," he replied. "You were in pretty bad shape when your friend brought you here." A moment later, Corwin entered the room, and stood beside the doctor.
"You didn't really think I was going to let you go by yourself, did you?" he asked, smiling. "Don't worry, you're in an, uh, underground clinic. Nothing reported to the police here."
"What happened?" I asked finally.
"Not sure," he said. "Call your Fed friend when you're mobile again."
"How long?" I asked of the doctor.
"You can leave whenever you're ready," the doctor replied, "provided you've paid the fee."
It wasn't a few hours before I was out of there. It would turn out that most of the Luminous Path guys had been killed in the truck explosion. A couple were found with stainless steel spoons embedded in them.
I was most disconcerted to find that French had escaped somehow, despite being wounded and in the middle of nowhere. My friends had delivered his cronies to the other pick-up point without incident, and they were taken into custody.
And so I had survived. Since the incident had started, I had been shot twice (five times if you count rounds that didn't penetrate my vest), my car had been demolished and repaired, and I had been under more stress than I could ever remember.
But I made it, and that was a good feeling. I'd be on a crutch for a good while, but I was told that I would probably recover fully.
There was only one matter left to attend to, but I wanted to get some rest first.
TO BE CONTINUED (Just the epilogue...)
Although he has a promising career in writing, he must still get his ticket punched, so cut him some slack. Go read EFAD or UI if you need a fix.
