Pulling The Dragon's Tail (46 page)

“Yes, I’ll listen,” conceded Nate. “But I
thought my role is primarily to disable any bombs we find.”

“Of course, but you would be foolish to not
anticipate being caught in the heat of battle. As I have always
said, it is not the first choice to kill but sometimes it is the
best choice. If you do decide to use a weapon, it is better that
you’ve received instruction.”

“All right,” he assented.

Es showed him a black gun about the length of
his hand. “I have other weapons, but this compact one is good for
you. It fires a steady beam of laser particles. Here is the on
button. Here is the button to take it off-line. Here is the lethal
setting, here is the non-lethal setting. Here’s the sight. It’s
fairly easy to aim and shoot.” She handed it to him.

Nate grasped it in his hand. It was incredibly
lightweight. Without thinking, he found himself holding it up. He
easily sighted in a target at the back of the plane.

“Skip, you’ve been holding out on me,” said a
surprised Es. “You obviously know how to hold a gun
and
fire
it.”

“I hunted all the time growing up, and I loved
going to the shooting range” he acknowledged. He handed it back to
her. “But not since I joined the Church of Abraham. I’m not
supposed to even touch one.”

“I respect your faith and do not wish to be
presumptuous,” she said, “but Sister Mariah is not here. I will
concede that pacifism has made huge differences across the globe as
a result of CHOFA’s work. But while there is a benefit in utilizing
assertive, peaceful protest between warring factions, I
respectfully submit that its use with terrorism is ineffective at
best, and may be damaging. You need to decide if your refusal to
fight is the very essence of your faith or from Sister Mariah’s
overly rigid interpretation of what she thinks Father Abraham
wants.” Without waiting for Nate to respond, she strapped the
weapon in its holster to his waist.

Opening another pack, she produced special
clothing. “You may resist the notion of looking like a soldier, but
this clothing will camouflage you. Nano-sensors blend you in to
your surroundings.”

“I’ll look like you?” he teased.

“First you have to shave your head and darken
your skin. Then you will look like me. In addition to my clothing
camouflage, my blood has adjustments in it that highlight color
change as well.”

“Just promise to not disappear on me, okay?”

“I will not leave you or Dugan.”

Dugan’s legs were packed against his body and he
fit compactly into a backpack. Nate easily slung the CCR onto his
back.

Dugan kept right on working. “Seven years ago
the eastern half of La Palma was purchased by The Order of The
Mystical Word. Little is known about this sect. Three years ago the
majority of land was purchased from this Order by The Joseph’s
Warbler Foundation.”

“Dugan, cross-check any overlap between that
foundation and Red Dawn or any of its sham corporations.”

“In 2057, a local reporter investigated
allegations that a company controlled by Sheridan North runs the
foundation.”

“Aha!” said Nate, “we’re unraveling it. And what
about that mysterious Order of the Mystical Word? Any association
with North, Red Dawn or the foundation?”

“Several months ago, a Canary Island journalist
disappeared under mysterious circumstances. She was looking into
allegations that the Order had bribed Canary Island officials in
order to by-pass certain regulations. A follow-up report uncovered
evidence that the Order is not connected to any known religious or
spiritual tradition. Three weeks ago the newspaper did a feature
story pinpointing alleged ties to RoseCorp, a company that Interpol
has long believed had ties to organized crime around the world and
serves as a money laundering operation for Red Dawn.”

“I knew it!” shouted Nate. “Sheridan created a
religious order out of thin air! Then he sold the land to another
controlling interest of his. Slick!”

“So,” said Es, “we must assume the worst case
scenario. That is, Sheridan has long been on this island planning
to detonate bombs of some sort. Dugan, did you get any coordinates
of the encampments from the soldiers on the ground?”

“Yes.”

“Good, Can you plot those and calculate the
locations of the known fault lines?”

A moment later, Dugan responded. “In each case,
all five encampments lie directly on the fault line.”

Nate asked, “Do we attempt to give any of this
information to the authorities?”

“So far my UN Security contacts have been
unwilling to act on this information. It’s bureaucracy at its
worst,” lamented Es. “I’ll try one more time but I’m afraid it’s
only you, me, and Dugan.”

“And your brave TH colleagues,” added Nate.

The island, with its imposing volcano, rose
precipitously in front of them. Dugan showed them three-dimensional
graphic projections of what would happen if the island slid down
into the sea. Nate shuddered in horror at the prospect of not
stopping the attack. This massive piece of Earth would crash into
the sea at hundreds of kilometers per hour, sending the
repercussions speeding across the Atlantic.

What kind of man invests much of his own
wealth to save the endangered Joseph’s Warbler only to decide years
later to blow up the island and destroy the species’ habitat?
wondered Nate, gazing pensively at the island they were
approaching.

Es took the plane around the southern tip of the
island and descended for a landing on the eastern beach. As Nate
slipped his camouflage fatigues on, he rehearsed what Es had said
about firing the gun. He simply couldn’t fathom that it was Father
Abraham’s will to idly stand by and allow a greater loss of life to
occur at the hands of Sheridan North—if killing this one man could
prevent a greater tragedy. Yet, he also could hear Sister Mariah:
“Killing one person inevitably leads to killing one more. And one
more.
And one more
.”

After disembarking from the plane, a contingent
of Es’ transhuman friends met them at the beach. They were then
transported up the mountainside in a small rotor-less helicopter.
Several kilometers up they disembarked, parking the ‘copter in a
small clearing.

While Es carried supplies in a backpack, Nate
transported the tightly-strapped Dugan. They continued up the
mountain, traversing the tough jungle terrain with robotic legs.
The boot-like apparatus fit snugly up to Nate’s thighs and provided
incredible leverage and strength. Quietly and efficiently Es and
Nate moved upward toward the only encampment not yet captured.
Ground foliage had thinned out a bit, but was still largely covered
by palmettos and their exquisitely sharp fronds. As they reached
higher elevation, stands of tall pines began to dominate the
forest.

“Take cover, Skip!” said Dugan.

Nate lunged behind a large tree, hitting the
ground hard. A sharp spike of a palmetto plant cut into his face.
He yelled out in pain. He looked around. Es was no longer in
sight.

Nate shed the robotic legs and wiped the blood
off his cheek. “What do you see, Dugan?”

The CCR, strapped to Nate’s back, monitored the
locations of Es and the other transhuman soldiers, as well as
receiving downloads of security bots which had been dropped from
aircraft.

“Skip! Look up the mountain at two o’clock!”
urged Dugan.

Nate peered around the tree. Coming at full
stride down the mountainside, about fifty meters away, was a
soldier. He wore fatigues and the red crescent of Red Dawn on his
shoulder. He headed straight for Nate.

Panic set in for Nate. The soldier kept closing
the distance, hopping behind larger pine trees, looking out, then
sprinting for the next tree. Forty meters.

Nate froze as the soldier kept on closing..
“Where are you, Es?”

“You must fight or you will be killed,” warned
Es in his dataport ear mike.

Bullets whizzed over Nate’s head.

Dugan reported, “The Red Dawn soldier is thirty
meters away.”

“I’m not a killer!” he spit out. “Es! Where are
you?”

The staccato rhythm of machine gun fire arched
over his head, growing steadily louder. Then suddenly there was an
ominous silence

“He is reloading,” Dugan informed him.

Father Abraham, I did not ask for this.
Please protect me
.

“He has a grenade,” said Dugan, monitoring the
security bot cameras stationed around the mountainside.

It’s like Es said, sometimes it’s kill or be
killed. Father
, I’m
not ready to die!

“Nate, I am approaching your position,” said Es,
urgency in her voice. “I suggest you shoot now. He pulled the pin
out!”

Nate pulled the gun out of his holster and
whirled around. Then he saw Es on his left. Twenty meters up the
incline, the Red Dawn soldier cocked his arm back, preparing to
hurl the grenade.

In one swift motion Es aimed and fired at the
soldier. The throwing motion of the soldier was interrupted as he
was felled by the bullet. The unexploded grenade landed next to the
soldier.

“Take cover!” yelled Es. She dove to the ground
while Nate slammed his face into the ground behind another
tree.

Several seconds later, a deafening explosion
reverberated in Nate’s eardrums.

Es and Nate were uninjured. Es warily approached
the soldier, carefully scanning around for other enemies. When she
was a few meters away she visually searched for other explosives
and booby traps. She waved Nate over, and he left the safety of the
tree and scrambled up the slope to Es’s position. The grenade’s
impact had demolished a five-meter wide swath of palmettos.

Nate tripped over an object on the ground as he
approached Es. One of the soldier’s legs lie before him in a
mangled, bloody mess several feet from his torso. Nate staggered
over to Es who was examining the soldier. Crimson blood covered the
soldier’s face, matching the hues of the arm band.

Fighting back nausea was a losing proposition.
Nate leaned over a nearby bush and vomited. As his lips and mouth
burned, Nate was helped to his feet by Es.

“We need to keep moving!” whispered Es, who by
now had also removed her robotic legs. “Quickly! Quietly!”

Struggling to his feet he took one last look at
the soldier. “A woman!” he cried out. “This soldier was a woman!”
Father, take her into your keeping.

Es ran impatiently ahead of him. “Keep moving!
There are still a few more we must flush out before they become
dangerous snipers.”

She returned to Nate, seeing the paralysis in
his face. Pushing him low to the ground, she spoke with a firmness
he had come to expect and admire. “We are a team. If we don’t work
together, we may perish together. Please remember you have a
non-lethal setting on your gun.”

His camouflage fatigues were bulletproof and
lightweight. Even the helmet was barely noticeable on his head. But
the weight of the moment was oppressively heavy. Hair stood up on
the back of his neck.

Es suddenly leaped nimbly away.

Searching for her up ahead, Nate tried to tell
her to stop. His communications port for some reason stopped
working.

He saw her hiding behind a tree, reloading a
semi-automatic weapon. On her holster was another smaller weapon, a
similar laser to his. Her backpack, filled with equipment and
ammunition, did not noticeably slow her down.

Es’s voice, instructing him with the rules of
warfare, still filled his mind: “Kill or be killed. Or think of it
this way; if you had a choice to stay alive to live out your
calling or die from respecting the life of the enemy who has no
respect for yours, which would you choose?”

“Soldier approaching—nine o’clock—eighty
meters,” barked Dugan.

Then he saw the Red Dawn soldier, heading toward
Es’s position, approaching her from her blind side.

He cursed the fact that he couldn’t warn Es via
the headset. Pulling himself around the tree, Nate yelled at the
soldier.

The soldier stopped, turned, and fired at Nate.
He ducked back behind the tree. Bullets pummeled into the tree and
sprayed the ground around him.

Es heard the commotion and turned around
quickly. But as she did so, she slipped and fell. Her gun flew out
of reach.

The Red Dawn soldier spied her predicament out
of the corner of his eye. He had a perfect sight line for Es.

Es rolled her body over and over in a desperate
attempt to escape from the open clearing.

The soldier knelt down on one knee, training his
gun on Es.

He was done thinking. He sprang from behind the
tree. His finger squeezed the trigger as round after round leaped
across the jungle terrain. His marksmanship was true.

The soldier fell over, unmoving. As with the
first soldier, Es approached while keeping a wary eye out for
others. Nate soon joined her.

The male soldier was sprawled on the ground,
blood splattered on the rock next to him. With a sense of shock,
Nate realized that in his haste he had set the gun to the lethal
setting.

Es grabbed him by the shoulder. “Thanks for
saving my life.”

He stared at the soldier who had tried to end
Es’ life. Anger rose within him. He was angry at the gun that did
the killing, angry at his hand for pulling the trigger, angry at
how he violated the most sacred precept of the Church of Abraham,
angry at how the rules of life dictated that he must either kill or
be killed.

A wave of nausea swept over him. His anger
quickly turned into self-loathing. Wobbly legs gave way as he fell
against a tree. The gun fell limply out of his hand. “I’ve killed
someone.” He looked at Es and then up at the sky. He tried to make
the sign of CHOFA but his hands wouldn’t obey him.

He leaned against the tree and closed his eyes.
“I took a
life.
” Tears streamed down his face as he grappled
with reality. “How could I?”