Heart pounding, he set the craft down on the little field by the signal. He was on a grassy flat next to some manner of drainage canal. Foundations of cleared houses lay under a carpet of weeds, and young pines shielded him from a road. A man left two companions, one with a rifle, the other with a big sporting bow, and ran up to the craft.
Valentine popped the canopy.
"Stop", the man called, crouching.
"Light", Valentine responded.
The stranger hurried up, face concealed behind a scarf and a hat pulled down to his ears. Valentine reached around and took out the duffel bag. Whatever was inside didn't weigh much more than plastic. It rattled vaguely as he handed the sealed case over.
"There you go".
"Tell 'em not to worry, plenty of heroes on this side of the sound". He offered his hand.
They exchanged grips. "I'm sure there are".
He handed over a heavier case that probably contained radio equipment or explosives and the man hurried off.
Valentine checked his map again. His next waypoint was the old Sea-Tac Airport, but he was to keep well south of it; they had searchlights that could blind him and guns that could bring him down.
He shut the canopy and gunned the engine. As he bounced away across the field, the men were already picking up bicycles and hurrying to meet over the bag. He marked a little flag and some piled-up dirt at one end of the field, and rose in the air. A target on a post flapped in the sea breeze.
They'd met him on a rifle range.
* * *
The flashes of gunfire looked like sparks from the air. They left little ghosts on his retinas for a split second.
Valentine had never seen a battle from the air. The sporadic gunfire seemed to be coming from spots along a long, ragged line stretching over perhaps a mile and a half of ground. They were fighting in what looked like a residential zone, long lines of what he guessed to be post-'22 housing - from what he'd heard, a good deal of the southern areas of the city had suffered badly from earthquake and volcano damage.
He passed over a street filled with bodies, tightly packed, around a pair of buses. The Bears must have caught reinforcements arriving in a deadly ambush to have the corpses laid in windrows like that...
No wonder the Seattle Guard didn't care to take on an Action Group.
Valentine's orders were to check in at the Action Group's field headquarters for the operation. He could evacuate up to two wounded on the stretcher fittings added onto either side of the PAAT. It would be a hard load to fly, because carrying one meant carrying two, or the unbalanced autogyro would crash on takeoff. He hoped that if he had to carry two, they'd be of similar weight, preferably both light.
The Action Group lit the road he was to land on with headlights
from the reserve Armed Truck force. Two smaller dune-buggy-like craft, one with a recoilless rifle and the other a heavy machine gun, crouched at the intersection with the command Hummer pulled into a half-collapsed brick storefront. An observer and a temporary aerial had a precarious perch at the steeple.
Remember to refuel if you've got wounded. Remember to refuel if you've got wounded.
Of course the high-octane gasoline they were supposed to be carrying with the medical inflammables was probably misplaced.
He puttered the autogyro up to the command vehicle. At the other side of the half-collapsed building, the white medical bus idled, the men sheltering in a doorway.
Valentine popped the canopy and got out, the sweat on the back of his uniform turning cold in the night.
He did see a wounded man, his arm dressed and in a sling, waiting by the command vehicle. Valentine wondered if they'd demand that he be flown out, just to test the system. From the other direction soldiers herded a group of civilians into a dark recreation center, judging from the basketball courts and running track outside. They kept them jogging, despite the age of some of the men, several of whom were gasping for air and supporting themselves on the runner in front.
A sudden burst of gunfire sounded in the distance.
Valentine extracted his carbine and approached the command vehicle. He was waved in by the man with the long, night-sighted sniper rifle keeping watch on the road. He found Thunderbird there with some of his subofficers, talking intently to Rafferty with a noncom behind carrying two rifles. Rafferty had his helmet off, showing his ringlets bound up like a hairy handle sticking out of the back of his head.
Behind Thunderbird they'd set up an easel with a carefully drawn map. The radio reports were translated into visual form by putting red slashes over depictions of buildings. Some of the slashes had been turned into an X.
Two corporals relayed information over radio to the officers.
"Bravo block cleared, eighty-one".