The eight Black Hawks and six Apaches started to taxi out from the parking area in front of the National Guard hangar, ground crews watching them, bundled up against the blasts of the rotors and the moderate snow coming in from the west.
Rather than do a straight vertical takeoff, they actually taxied down to the end of the runway, the lead Apache turning to face the wind and with wheels still on the ground built up forward speed before finally nosing up. John looked forward through the windshield of the Black Hawk to watch the show.
Forrest was leaning up out of his seat to watch as well and started to chuckle. “Remember that damn movie, the one with the bugler blowing charge? We actually used to do that in the ’Stan if a bunch of us were lifting off and going in harm’s way. Got your blood up.”
“Shut the hell up,” Lee muttered, already clutching his vomit bag. “If I’d known this involved another flight, John, I’d have told you to screw off.”
Three Apaches lifted off first and then circled high to protect the rest of the formation. The Black Hawks were next. John’s pilot shouted a warning to hang on. He rolled forward at full throttle, shifted the collective, and nosed up high, Lee moaning as they lifted into the swirling snow. Gaining just a few hundred feet, they leveled off and turned to a nearly due north heading.
“It’s going to be nap of the earth most of the way!” Scales shouted. “Might get bumpy at times with this weather. We’re going to follow Interstate 26 over the mountains, angle east once through the pass until we pick up Interstate 81, and then straight on from there. Low and fast. Should take about two and a half hours. We’ve got a hot thermos of coffee for those who want it; otherwise, just settle back, try to get some sleep, and enjoy the ride.”
His words were met by a heavy retching from Lee, and there were a few gags from the others until the slipstream shrieking past the helicopter whipped the stench away.
There had been a barrage of questions from John’s friends as they wearily alighted from the Bradley at eight in the morning and were handed Kevlar vests, helmets, M4s, and combat packs. The situation was not helped when Lee saw that they were being shepherded to a Black Hawk, its engines already running.
Maury started to shout questions at John about what was going on and where they were headed as the chopper leveled off. John pleaded real ignorance as to what was transpiring, and all looked to Bob, who remained mum. The group settled into sullen silence as they raced north, interrupted only by Lee’s pathetic heaves. The medic finally plastered an antinausea patch behind his ear and give him a couple of pills to swallow, and just as they were clearing the top of the I-26 pass at the Tennessee border, Lee finally settled down thanks to the medication and drifted off to sleep.
John sat lost in silent contemplation. He was putting one hell of a lot of trust in Bob at this moment, trusting not just for himself but for the lives of his closest friends on the line as well. The penciled lines on the map, whatever they meant, could have been just an elaborate ruse to lull him into belief and ultimately to lure in his best combat leaders and closest friends, one of them the only man in their whole community who could, in a clumsy way, actually fly a Black Hawk. For Bob to personally deliver them to his leaders in Bluemont, the murderers of their precious Fredericks, would be quite the coup.
He looked over at Bob, who, like any old hand with likely thousands of hours in Black Hawks, had settled into his bucket seat, stretched out his feet, lowered his head, and simply dozed off. There was precious little to see out of the frost-and snow-covered side windows. Up front, the view was just a blur of snow and glimpses of a deadly still interstate highway as the chopper banked to a northeasterly heading with Interstate 81 on their left. John caught a glimpse of what looked like an abandoned airport, its snow-covered runway running parallel to the interstate. John had a flash of memory; it might have been Mountain Empire Airport. He recalled it as a friendly place when several years back he was up with a friend in an Ercoupe, and they landed to get gas and some Coke and crackers. One of the mechanics noted that a cowling flap had cracked loose on the antique plane. It looked to John that the bent-back metal from the cowling would mean they would be stuck for hours. The mechanic simply bolted it back in place and literally charged them just a dollar and a half for the bolt.
He hoped that whoever had helped them had survived and that he was perhaps peering out with envy at the eight Black Hawks and six Apaches racing by, just barely above the pavement.
Time stretched out, John nodding off as well after the tension of the last few days. As he was stirring awake, he saw Grace and Kevin sharing a joke and laughing, leaning in close against each other. The way they looked at each other, he wondered if something was developing between the two. If so, good; they’d make a fine match.
John dozed off again, to be awakened by Bob talking to the pilot and then looking back to John.
“We just lost one of our Apaches. Turbine overheating. They’re landing on the highway, see if they figure it out, but we’re pushing on.”
“Where are we?” John asked.
“Near Winchester, Virginia. It really is nap of the earth now, so you’d all better hang on for this last part.”
Winchester?
If so, John knew that Bluemont was just fifteen or so miles to the east, dug into the slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which too many mistakenly called the Shenandoahs. If they continued on the current heading, it really did mean Bob was not heading there after all.
“How far to wherever it is we are going?” John asked.
“Fifteen minutes by air at most, but if Robert E. Lee was leading us as infantry,” he said, smiling, “it’d be about two days’ forced march.”
It took a minute to decipher that, and John smiled. His last remaining doubts had just been set aside.
The helicopter flared fifteen minutes later as Bob predicted, nose high, coming in to land, snow swirling up around it, nearly blinding the view. John looked out eagerly. He recognized the terrain as if it were darn near his own hometown. The chopper, nose into the wind, thumped down a bit hard, bounced, and then finally settled. Bob, unstrapped from his safety harness, was already up. He hunched over, went to the side door, slid it open, and then leaped out. Typical Bob, John thought. First one in with boots on the ground. John eagerly followed him. Bob shaded his eyes against the rotor blasts as one helicopter after another settled down along the road, doors sliding open, troops leaping out with weapons raised.
John looked over at Bob. “Why land here?” he shouted.
Bob grinned at him. “Because I miss the place.”
John could only shake his head in wonder.