A New World 10 - Storm (16 page)

We have three bridges to take out, all within a one-mile radius. One is a wooden railroad trestle; another, a two-lane concrete structure. Those shouldn’t present too much of a challenge. It’s the six-lane dual bridge of the interstate that could present some problems. The steel girders will prevent us from putting 105mm shots directly into the roadway. Even then, we may not do much more than reduce it to a footbridge over the river.

As we go through the checks in the gunship, the rain becomes more incessant, each drop splashing harder on the windscreen. With the propellers spinning in a blur, we wait out the shower at the end of the runway. It’s not that we won’t be able to takeoff and conduct our mission in the rain; we have the ability to see through the showers and still hit our targets. It’s getting back down that will present a problem. Our instruments will allow us to shoot an approach down low, but if the visibility drops too much, we won’t be able to identify the runway.

The rain lessens and I push the throttles up. Small puddles have formed on the hard dirt surface, and as we accelerate down the runway, our props throw back a misty stream of water. We are soon airborne, and level off quickly. In most places, the ceiling is still high enough for us to operate, with pockets of rain showers slowly moving across the landscape. Most of Puget Sound is hidden beneath one of the larger downpours slowly making its way across. Luckily, it’s not one of the steady downpour systems, at least not yet, so we’re able to dodge around the few showers in the area. Getting aloft again tonight may be iffy, but we need to see firsthand what’s going on.

As the river bridges are nearby, we are over them almost immediately. I set up an orbit around the first one, the wooden railroad trestle, and clear Robert to fire. A slight shudder runs through the Spooky as the first round is sent downward. The river erupts near where the support posts meet, sending a geyser of mud and water shooting skyward and out to the sides. The fountain rises, slows, and then falls back in on itself, gaining speed as it descends. With a huge splash, waves generated by the explosion ride up and down the river, and wash ashore in a rush of water. In the aftermath, the bridge still spans the waterway, although it leans dramatically to one side.

With the cannon reloaded, Robert and the crew fire on the bridge again. Whatever minor adjustment he made works this time, as the center of the trestle vanishes under another explosion. Timbers, mixed with smoke and more water, blast outward and tumble into the air, causing big splashes as they fall in the water.

When the air clears, the trestle spanning the river is gone. The railway and supporting structure just ends, with large timbers and rails angling down the embankments. Several broken-topped pilings jut out of the water but the current carries the rest downstream, with some washing up on small strips of the banks to peek out from overhung limbs.

The next bridge is close, so I only have to alter our flight path a touch to set us up at the next firing position. The large shower heading across the nearby expanse of water is closing, but we should have enough time to finish this one. The two-lane concrete bridge is part of the old highway connecting Olympia and Tacoma and isn’t as long as the railroad trestle. It will be interesting to see what effect the 105mm has on it.

The first shot hits dead center. A mass of smoke rolls upward, with tongues of flame visible within. In a similar manner to the trestle, chunks of concrete fly outward and up, splashing into the water. Upon clearing, a section of the bridge, most of the two lanes on one side, have vanished into the depths of the river. The roadway still extends out into the river and is connected by a thin strip of pavement and concrete.

A second round explodes closer to the northern side, followed by a third on the southern shore. The three blasts succeed in dumping the bridge into the river. Unlike with the trestle, there isn’t anything for the current to carry. Large masses of concrete can be seen below the surface, with ripples in the stream showing where many have come to rest. On either end, the concrete supports terminate with twisted rebar jutting out. Chunks of pavement droop downward at the edges, some gradually sagging farther until they fall into the current below.

“Hit the rubble in the water again,” I direct.

I don’t want to give the night runners any possibility of crossing. It would be just my luck to come back tomorrow and find that they were able to rebuild the bridge. Large geysers appear from the large caliber rounds hitting the water and exploding. When the river settles, I don’t see anything that would allow anyone to ford the channel.

By the time we finish, the rain has engulfed the interstate bridge. Although we have the capability to target and fire in inclement weather, I opt to wait for the weather to clear. So, we loiter as the shower slowly passes through. The grayness of the day has deepened as the sun, hidden by clouds, heads toward the horizon.

Come on, come on, come on
, I chant internally, trying to will the shower farther east.

It doesn’t listen and moves along at its own pace, shattering my dreams of being able to control the weather. I remember the days when I’d be driving down the highway and do the same thing with the cars in front of me. It’s probably a good thing that I wasn’t at the controls of a Spooky in those moments. I’m pretty sure I would have been easy to track by the litter of smoldering vehicles along the sides of the roads.

I guess that’s the only good thing to come about from this mess. There’s no more traffic
, I think, waiting for the gray mass falling from the clouds to move on.

It seems like forever, but before long, the bridges over the interstate reappear. Their surfaces are slick with rainwater, which washed some of the debris to the sides where it formed into small piles. The interstate isn’t nearly as dusty as the roads near Mountain Home. For one, we don’t have that much bare dirt around; and two, we are using the highway more than they are.

Banking the aircraft around, we set up for the last bridge. I’ll be interested to see what happens with the superstructure, but I don’t have high hopes that we’ll be able to drop it entirely. It may be that we expend our entire supply on board in order to not leave a footbridge across.

A vibration lets me know that the first shell is away and I look downward in time to see it hit. Like the highway bridge, the spans vanish behind smoke from the blast. The roiling, dark cloud is pushed off to the side quickly by a breeze. Left behind, twisted girders near one end of the bridge are angled mostly outward from the explosion. The road itself appears to have been left mostly intact although it seems to be canted. That could be my imagination. A second round hits from a different angle, tearing a hole all the way through the middle of the superstructure. We now have access for a shot directly to the paved surface.

Robert waits until we circle around before delivering another round. That way, he can hit the highway from nearly the same angle and try to sneak one through the twisted mass of girders. Two more rounds go out in quick succession. When the smoke clears, I see that the middle of one of the two bridges has collapsed. Each end is sloped downward toward the water, held just above the surface by the remains of the superstructure.

“Tenacious, aren’t they?” I call over the intercom.

“They’re going down if I have to jump out and kick them,” Robert replies.

Circling, we continue hammering shells into the bridges, eventually sending both of them crashing into the river. The channel is deeper in this location but I can still see quite a few of the twisted green girders sticking out of the river, more so toward each of the shorelines where the water is shallower. Robert sends a couple of rounds directly into the water in an attempt to further destroy the bridge. It works to an extent, but mostly we only manage to displace water for seconds at a time. Looking at the wreckage we leave behind, I don’t see how anyone could cross it. However, I’ll want to take a better look at it from the ground tomorrow.

Turning back toward the compound, which is immediately off our nose, I quickly set us up for a landing. Puget Sound, off to the side, is a gray not unlike the clouds overhead. The wind has started blowing harder, causing whitecaps on the waves rolling across the steel-colored surface. I leave the throttles up, trying to beat a rain shower that is streaking directly for the runway.

Of course, now they move quickly
, I think, lowering the gear.

We land just ahead of the shower, which begins pelting the aircraft with large drops of water as we taxi in and shut down. Four Humvees bounce across the muddy road leading to the airfield to pick us up, water splashing from the tires as they plow through puddles. Leaving the aircraft, gusts of wind drive the downpour into a sheet of rain, immediately soaking all of us.

Now, I’m not made of sugar, not even by the slimmest of definitions. And I live in the northwest. But that doesn’t mean that I enjoy getting wet, nor have I become used to it. I would have waited out the shower if time wasn’t pressing and nightfall further off. I’d like to be airborne over Tacoma when darkness falls in order to get a picture of where the night runners are coming from, and in what numbers. The Spooky has to be reloaded and refueled, and there are still other things that need to be done before we can leave again. Frank meets us at the door as we pull up and enter the building.

“What the hell? Did you take out one of the bridges by crashing into it?” he asks, eyeing my dripping wet form.

“I’m not sure I could get this wet by swimming,” I reply, trying to shake off the moisture.

Outside, the hissing of the downpour carries through the doors. A long, hot shower followed by a dry set of clothing sounds like the best thing in the world. We weren’t in it for long, only having to run from the aircraft to the vehicles parked close by, but in that short period of time, we all managed to get soaked to the skin. And with it comes the kind of chill that even a hot shower can’t get rid of.

“The bridges are down. You can look at the tapes and I’ll brief you later,” I tell Frank, almost chattering as I walk toward the showers.

The rest of the crew are all in the same condition and we leave a wide swath of water behind. I’m so soaked that I feel that stepping into a shower will actually dry me off some. The only thing I wish for at that very moment is a hot water tank the size of the state. Even then, I’m not sure it would be large enough.

Later, drier and a little warmer, but still feeling a chill in my bones, I brief Frank and the others.

“I’m pretty confident about the railroad and highway bridges, but I want to take a closer look at the interstate ones tomorrow,” I state, finishing.

“Oh, Harold radioed while you were showering. He said it wasn’t important but asked that you call him back when you were able,” Frank comments.

In the control room, I look at the time and see I still have a little before I have to contact Leonard, according to our arranged schedule. It doesn’t take long to get Harold on the other end of our satellite link.

“Nice work on the bridges,” Harold says, beginning the conversation.

“You know about that already?” I ask, knowing that he had the satellite overhead but unaware that it was feeding information.

“Yeah. I watched the whole thing live while validating our feed,” he answers.

“I guess it’s working, then,” I state.

“It is. I’ll send you some preliminary data, but it’s not really that useful as we only have imagery from the past couple of hours. I’ll be able to pass the live feed to one of your monitors here in just a few minutes. Just have one of the techs set the monitor you want to use to feed number three. Is the recording equipment in place?” Harold asks.

I look to Frank, who nods affirmative.

“Frank says yes,” I answer.

I can almost see Frank drooling at the prospect of the first chance to get live feeds from the night runners up north. Well, maybe not quite drooling, but he’s obviously eager to have that available.

“Okay, give me a few minutes and I’ll forward it to you,” Harold says.

“You know, with this, we’ll hopefully be able to piece together a trend. And watching them retire near dawn, we’ll be able to locate night runner lairs to hit. We may actually have better luck hitting those locations during the day rather than hunting them down in smaller packs during the night,” Franks muses.

My thoughts center on using the Spooky during the day and night. We’d need two of them, along with two trained crews. Having a single gunship operating day and night would be a mechanical disaster. The maintenance issues would more than double and we could find ourselves without the capabilities of the Spooky altogether. I’ll have to think about that one. However, it will be nice not having to go aloft at night for our only source of intel. Instead, we could just begin hitting them where they sleep during the day.

“Okay, you should have it now. Can you verify?” Harold radios.

“Standby,” I reply, watching Frank leave the control room to check out the monitoring equipment.

He returns a short time later and states that the monitors and recording equipment are working as advertised. I relay the information to Harold.

“Okay. Oh, and Jack, I may have those images you requested on the group in northern Canada tomorrow. There’s no promise on that, though,” Harold says.

“Copy that. I’ll look forward to getting them, whenever you are able,” I respond. “Have you had any luck contacting them?”