Cayo Elina 39

“I’ve got them, they headed out further than we thought.” George’s voice came through the headset. Everyone was wearing them except for Alban, who was looking worse for the wear, sweating heavily and moaning loud enough to be heard above the noise of the engine, which was considerable with one door swung open to accommodate the machine gun.

Sidney was manning the gun, he had looked at the old night vision gear in stored on the helicopter and discarded it with hardly a glance. He felt confident he could fire on the ship in the moonlight once the radar picked it up.

“What’s the range on the gun?” Elina asked him. She was belted in next to the open door, at Sidney’s insistence, he had asked for someone with keen vision and hers was better than anyone else’s on board.

“One point eight kilometers. That’s extreme, but we should be able to hit them before they even get a bead on us.”

“Assuming they don’t pick us up on radar and fire another missile at us.” Elina said.

“If they had one, they wouldn’t a have veered off the coast so far.” Sidney said with confidence. “How far out are we, George?”

“You should be able to see them now, I’m not flying straight to them , look five degrees off the nose.” George said.

“I see them.” Elina said.

Sidney picked them up a moment later. “Range?” he asked George again.

“Three clicks and closing. On my mark we will be at one point five kilometers.”

They waited for George to give them the signal, Sidney kept the gun aimed towards the ship with a steady hand. The plan was for the helicopter to turn and fly by the ship, staying low and towards the coast. George was not going to fly closer than one kilometer to limit the possibility of small arms fire hitting the helicopter.

“Mark.”

“Firing once.” Sidney said, letting a short burst out of the gun.

“Short, adjust upwards.” Elina said after seeing the bullets crash into the surf ten meters shy of the ship.

“Firing.” Sidney said. This time he held the trigger down longer and with Elina’s encouragement walked the gun onto and around the ship.

Elina didn’t have any difficulty seeing the commotion onboard, a light briefly went on, then shut off just as quickly. Everyone on the helicopter saw the brief white flare of light, but couldn’t make out the finer details of what was happening, so Elina started a running commentary.  Sidney was reloading the weapon with Justin’s help.

“They have injured and I can see a little smoke from where you landed the last batch of bullets. No fire. Some of them are lowering a lifeboat…wait! It looks like an officer doesn’t like that, he’s. Oh! He just shot one of them and is directing the other away from the edge. Others are dragging wounded up from below. It doesn’t look like it’s sinking yet.”

“I’m reloaded. Firing.” Sidney said by way of warning.

Sidney aimed his next burst towards the end of the ship where Elina had seen smoke. He concentrated his fire there, making small, almost gentle motions with the gun which spread the rounds over a growing portion of the ship below.

“Approaching  one klick, veering off as planned.” George said.

“I’m out.” Sidney said a moment later. “Did we get them, Elina?”

“More smoke. I can’t tell if you did enough damage to sink them or not.” She responded.

From the ship they saw the twinkling lights of gun fire, each microscopic blast was a bullet, none of which seemed to be aimed in their general direction.

“Are we going to circle a time or two to see what happens?” Elina asked.

“George?” Sidney asked, punting the question to the pilot.

“Okay. Sure. I can make a wide loop and get us back here in five minutes to do a fly by.” George said, “But no more, we need to get back. I know Alban said the repairs to the Fiest would take at least a couple of days and then they’ll need another to sail to Miami, by then we could be overwhelmed.”

Gus muttered something about five minutes not making a difference; they were already coming back a solid twelve hours early, even with the delays that afternoon.

George readily agreed with him, “But you never know, that five minutes might make all the difference in the world.”

When they circled back five minutes later the men were all able to see the ship quite clearly; it was on fire. Elina could see men lifting buckets out of the sea trying to extinguish the blaze, but it looked like a futile effort her; the ship was lost.

Sidney led them in a general cheer and George turned the helicopter away from the Cubans back towards Miami. After ninety minutes they were landing on the wide roadway beside the Boone. Corpsmen rushed to take Alban and the Marines were brought into a debriefing with their commanders, leaving Elina standing near the dock with Gus, Hector and Ricardo.

“Sheesh, figures. Well I guess we’ve done our parts, huh?” Ricardo said.

They watched as the ground crew unhooked the load and more men drove forward to manhandle the console into the back of a large truck. Gus walked forward to talk to some that looked to be in charge, “Where they taking that? I thought we had to fly it to the Fiest?”

“No, sir, Alban told us what we need, we’ve got the tools to crack it here and pull out the components we need. No sense hauling the whole damned thing to them if we can help it.”

“When will they leave?”

“I think they’ll give commander Bennet a square meal and send him on his way with it, sir.”

“They won’t use another pilot?”

“No sir. Didn’t you know, sir? They shot down our Cessna and got Commander Sawyer about the same time. This is the only air asset we have left.” The marine said.

“Shit.”

Standing where he was Gus could see the ground crew arming the helicopter, mounting another machine gun opposite of the one they had on it and fitting both with huge drums of ammunition.

“George….I mean commander Bennet, said there weren’t any countermeasures left to help with missiles, is that true?” Gus asked.

“The helicopter wasn’t outfitted for that. It was supposed to be a cargo haul. It will have countermeasure prepped and ready to go by the time he gets back, sir.”

“Who’s going with him?”

The marine shook his head, he looked slightly irritated to Gus, but answered the question, “I don’t know, sir.”

“Thank you for talking to me, I’ll stop interrupting you and let you get back to work.”

“No problem. Have a good night, sir.”

Gus walked back to the others and Elina asked him what he’d learned, he gave the gist of the news, “So it looks like George is going to be making another flight, this time armed for bear. Should we go see how Alban is?”

“I got nothing else going on and I’d bet they won’t let us out of here.” Ricardo said.

Throughout the conversation Gus had been hearing the sound of gunfire. It wasn’t a prolonged staccato of intense combat, it was the periodic pops and burst he’d come to associate with skirmishing.

“We should find out where the Cubans are, see how the fighting is going.” Elina said as Ricardo led the way to the clinic.

“I’d bet they are just defending their beachhead, and maybe trying to make it a little bigger, if they can.” Ricardo said, “I doubt they are interested in burning off a lot of troops and resources for a quick victory.”

Remembering what she had seen on the boat, Elina nodded, “Morale can’t be too high, not if officers are killing their own men.”

The others agreed and they made their way into the clinic and found an orderly manning the front desk. He looked up and asked, “Here about your friend?”

“Yeah, Alban, is he going to be okay?” Elina asked.

“They took him to get x-rayed. If he crashed in the helicopter I don’t doubt he’ll have several broken bones they will need to set. We’re just happy some of you made it back. I’m sure we’ll need you in the days ahead.”

“Really? I’m kinda feeling left out to dry here, they didn’t ask us to debrief or anything, just left us out there standing around.” Said Elina.

The orderly frowned and shook her head, “That’s strange, I’d have thought they would want all of you there.”

“No one has filled us in on what’s going on here either.  When did the Cuban’s launch their attack?” asked Ricardo.

“An hour after sunrise, you were long gone by then. They didn’t really attack so much as just land troops and broadcast a warning for all citizens to stay inside.”

Ricardo nodded at the others, “See? I know my Cubans.”

“Perry didn’t do anything?” Elina asked.

“Not much he could do, the enemy sit up a couple of their boats at the mouth of the channel, he didn’t send our smaller craft out to chase them off, not right away. Instead the Cessna went up and…you heard about it getting shot down?”

They nodded and the orderly continued, “Well after that Perry was pretty pissed, he ordered the tugs and other boats out and that how we found out the Cubans had mined the mouth exit to the channel. We lost two of the boats, one going out and one coming back in. We don’t even have any mine sweeping technology anymore. I guess we’re working on getting one of the decommissioned helicopters back up and running, but I don’t know what we’re going to do for a pilot.”

“So you had two helicopters and two pilots? I’d have thought there would be more here.” Gus said.

“We had six when we started out, just for the helicopters. Everyone fights when things get busy and we were down to two after Harrison got bit by that zombie down at Max’s. As for the Cessna, well that was Johnson, he learned it as a kid and was a little rusty, when the missile came after him he didn’t stand a chance. Not that anyone would, I mean it was a Cessna! The Cubans sure wasted a lot of money on a light observer plane.” Said the orderly.

“What about the fighting on the land? We heard gunfire after we landed.” Elina said.

“From what I’ve heard Perry let some of the Marines out to harass the enemy and try and keep them pinned up. All I know for sure is Alban is the first injury we’ve seen.”

“I don’t suppose I could see a doctor?” Elina asked.

The orderly rose to his feet, “Are you hurt?”

“No, nothing serious, just some bruises and stuff…”

The orderly spoke into a microphone on his desk and within seconds three people dressed in scrubs were standing by the desk. They had Elina sit down in a wheelchair and rolled her back out of sight away from her three companions.

“I thought she was okay.” Gus confessed, “She hadn’t really complained about it since we lifted off.”

“I saw some swelling.” Ricardo said.

“What happened?” The orderly asked.

“She took a couple of shots to the back, one over each kidney.”

“She was fighting hand to hand?”

“Yeah, until she had killed everyone who got close to her, then one guy plugged her in the back a couple times. I was out of it by then, so I only have her word on it. She was a bloody mess though…”

“She was shot! And you let her stand here…” The orderly’s voice trailed off, “Oh, she’s one of them.” His face went through a series of changes, from confusion, to disgust, to awe and finally to relief. “Well she’ll be okay then. I didn’t know any women who’d been brought over.”

Ricardo shook his head, “No, she’s not a Maxson, she just killed a lot of zombies out there on the island, you know anyone who does that is tougher than steel.”

“All natural? I didn’t think they got that good, but I’ve heard rumors of what can happen.”

“You should see ole Gus here in a scrap! He’s fucking brilliant!” Ricardo told him.

The orderly looked at them all with newfound respect, “I get why you were all on the trip north, I mean I knew you were the ones from the island, but, you know,  it was mostly rumors too. Who knows what’s true anymore?”

Gus cleared his throat and spoke into the silence that followed, “I don’t supposed there is a waiting room where we can, uh, relax while we wait for our friends?”

“Yeah and some food too.” Hector said, “I’m starving.”

“Sure, yeah, there’s a waiting room up the hallway on the left, the door is labeled, ‘lounge’, there might be some coffee and I’ll call down and see if anyone can bring you up some grub from the kitchen.”

“Thanks!” Gus called.

Ricardo lingered behind while the other two found the lounge; he came in a few minutes later shaking his head, “No grub for me. I tried to use my connection with Perry, but apparently the blood they have is for using on the wounded in case they need a transfusion or something.”

“Buck up buttercup, I thought you were beyond orgasming all the time now anyway?” Gus said.

With a pained look Ricardo said, “Is that all you got out of our conversation this afternoon? I’m appalled. Sure I’m healing up okay, but nothing beats a pint of the red stuff to put the edge back on.”