Totem Lake

"Oscar Charlie! Yankee Blue! We're under attack!"

The sound of Keith Moon pounding drums backed the distress call.

"Yankee Blue. Oscar Charlie," responded Zulu base. "Ten-twenty?" Location?

"Downed tree on the lake road just south of the fork!"

Barking dog.

Blasting guns.

"Get this hound offa me!"

"Yankee Red. Oscar Charlie. Ten-thirty-three. Code five."

Who's called: Red Bison. Who's calling: Op Command. Ten code: Members in trouble. Response level: Use caution.

"Ten-four," replied the leader of the ERT team in the belly of the Red Bison, where he turned to the army grunt driving the armored personnel carrier and added, "Let's rock 'n' roll."

The ERT team prepared their guns for action as the APC rumbled off.

The action actually had begun yesterday, when a random check on the Yellowhead Highway in the new "no-go zone" exposed a cache of arms headed for Totem Lake. Seized were several AK-47 assault rifles, semiautomatic Glock pistols loaded with Black Talon hollow-tip bullets, and a Remington 222 hunting rifle with a variable scope. Also hidden in the truck were twelve steel tomahawks, twenty throwing knives, bear spray, and garottes of piano wire strung between handles.

The rumor picked up by CIS—Criminal Intelligence Section—was more than one shipment was to be smuggled into camp.

Smuggled through the bush.

Overnight, the rebels had felled huge trees across all roads leading to Totem Lake and the woods above and beyond. Until the barriers were cleared, no APCs could patrol near the camp, and without patrols the arms were sure to get through.

So cut the trees.

Not being in the timber business, the Force lacked proper equipment for the job, so Forest Service workers with chainsaws were brought in to help. A while ago, as it began to snow, four trucks of woodsmen had left Zulu base for the roadblocks, each protected by a Bison with a four-man ERT team. While two parties trundled east to the far end of the lake, the Red and Blue cutting teams ventured north to separate at the fork where the route divided. The left road angled up toward the falls under which Jed Vander-kop's headless body was frozen, and the right road hugged the lakeshore in the direction of the rebel camp.

Soon chainsaws roared.

Thick snowflakes drifted lazily down from a somber sky, sifting steadily through the flat gray gloom, now and then parting to let a gust of wind through. The dog handler was the first to spot trouble in the woods when a yellow hound from the rebel camp appeared. No sooner did he shout, "Duck!" through a lull in the chainsawing than a burst of gunfire flared from the trees, spraying splinters from the half-cut log still blocking off the road.

The Mad Dog was with the foresters when the ambush erupted. He unslung the AR-15 from his shoulder and let loose a covering barrage of assault rifle fire. Without being told, the woodsmen ran for the Bison behind their truck, using the pickup for protection as they darted, while blasts from the woods blew the windows to showers of glass and punctured the tires to hiss like snakes at their feet.

The Mad Dog followed, rear guard.

Bison, truck, and log were strung like beads along the line of the road, hemmed in on both sides by trees, woods to the north and a copse to the south between the lake and them. The Bison was last so it could back down the road if need be to Zulu base, this icy road sloping from the log.

Miraculously, no one died escaping to the Bison. A vehicle weighing thirteen tons, the APC was shielded by half-inch-thick steel plates angled to deflect incoming fire. On loan from the army, a soldier at the wheel, it was there as "a highly protective taxi to support police action" and nothing more. To prove the military was in no way involved, the Bison bore livery decals that read POLICE. These police had been assured they were in good hands. A land mine, said the army, could blow off some of the eight bulletproof tires or dent the steel underbody without harming the occupants or slowing them down from fifty mph over hills.

The Mad Dog was barely in and the tailgate up when sustained volleys from the rebels deflated six "bulletproof" tires and killed the hydraulic system.

Sitting ducks.

In a sardine can.

To mix metaphors.

"Oscar Charlie! Yankee Blue! We're under attack!"

The racket inside the vehicle was so loud they had to yell to be heard. It was like being trapped inside a kettle drum with someone hammering on it as fast and as hard as possible. The turret overhead was open and snow tumbled in.

"Sarge!" someone shouted. "I smell gas!"

"Downed tree on the lake road just south of the fork!" advised the radio man.

The gunfire outside was rattling from both flanks. If a slug got into the Bison, it would carom around like a billiard ball, sinking how many Members in the pocket of death? If a burst got in, this would be a sub sunk so deep the rivets popped.

Pingg! pingg! pingg . . .

An orgy of ricochets.

The Mad Dog stood up like a jack-in-the-box in the Bison turret, blazing a clip at the rebels and ducking down fast. Then up to blast the other way and drop from sight again. It was like newsreels from 1970s Vietnam. They'd shoot, he'd shoot, they'd shoot, he'd shoot ... in a furious fusillade.

Trained to respond to gunfire, the police dog with them in the Bison barked and tried to take a chomp out of him.

"Get this hound offa me!" It wasn't panic. It was near panic.

For what was sinking into those trapped inside was the source of the smell of gas. Not only had the rebels blown out windows and flattened tires when riddling the truck, but the gas tank had punctured to leak down the icy slope under the Bison. Ignite that and the Mounties could be picked off as they scrambled out of the steel oven.

Snow overhead and snow underneath and snow falling around. A whirlpool of swirling snow, now you see them, now you don't. The Mounties wore white winter cam below army helmets. The rebels wore combat fatigues and scarf masks. Ouster's last stand for the nineties, this was a small war. Visibility poor, all they could see of the rebels were muzzle flares in the bush. As cops answered the AK-47s with the deeper rat-a-tat-tat of the AR-15s, the radio man hollered rescue details to the Red Bison through the cacophony. Two hundred, four hundred, eight hundred shots, then into the thousands, ejected casings flew like a rage of wasps, so hot they burned any flesh they hit.

The Red Bison backed up the road in reverse.

Tailgate to tailgate, the plan was either to hook up a tow bar or transfer men.

During the operation the gap between would be a shooting arcade.

Transfer was better.

Less time in the open.

At two thousand five hundred rounds, the Mad Dog's team ran out of ammo.

"Gimme your weapon," he snapped at the driver.

"Can't," said the grunt. "We're not involved."

"Gimme your fuckin' gun!" The Mad Dog waved a fist at the soldier, and wondered if he'd be court-martialed if they survived.

Probably.

The army these days.

Tailgates dropped, the transfer began. Under cover of a blistering barrage from both Bison turrets, aided by eddies of blinding snow, all but the Mad Dog ran the gantlet to safety in the rescue APC. Clips lashed end to end for rapid reloading, fire one, a quick reverse, and let her rip again, the rebels synchronized a volley that forced the Force inside; then Grizzly stepped from behind a tree with peril in his hand.

Crouched like a sprinter in the rear of the Blue Bison, gazing across the no-man's gap to the sanctuary beyond, the Mad Dog waited for all those clips to empty at once, then he dashed.

Bam!

A bullet hit him.

Slamming his body armor.

His boot slipping on the gas slick to bring him to his knees.

What Grizzly had in his hand was a Flash Bang. For five nights ERT patrols had worked at containing the camp, sneaking surreptitiously through surrounding bush to string trip wires triggering stun grenades across a web of paths, planting electronic sensors in the trees, or flying choppers equipped with FLIR—forward-looking infrared—around Totem Lake. The infrared band of the spectrum registers anything warmer than absolute zero, revealing bodies visually hidden in foxholes and sniper nests, so should it come to an assault, the ERTs would have targets.

Woodsmen themselves, the rebels had uncovered some of the grenades and sensors. What Grizzly was about to toss was an incendiary device hidden by the Mad Dog and now a boomerang, returning to ignite the gas to fry him alive and roast ERTs in the ovens.

Grizzly pulled the pin.

Snow, snow, free-falling snow, whirling, twirling, swirling around the cockpit of the plane, Spann in the copilot's seat and George behind as Dodd maneuvered the Beaver down.

Snow had forced them to abandon trailing Win-terman Snow. From the forest sweat lodge with its grisly totem pole, now stored in back of the plane, they had trudged north to Cy Flint's body to examine the crime scene as best they could before lugging the frozen corpse uphill to fly it out. Left in the woods, it would be stripped to bones.

The radio caught the distress call from the Blue Bison.

The air exclusion zone circling Totem Lake banned flights for five nautical miles. Dodd radioed to report he was coming in, as the eerie whiteout transmogrified into a void, the wind tearing rents through the curtain of snow. Below, they saw the red top of the Red Bison behind the blue top of the Blue APC, and men running the gantlet between.

"Open your window," Ghost Keeper shouted over the buzz of the Wasp.

Spann twisted the knob to unlock the window beside her and slid down the glass.

The Cree wrenched Dodd's rifle from the rack that held it ready just behind her door, worked the bolt to arm it, and aimed it out the opening. Fire forward and he would shoot through the arc of the propeller not a wise move. Fire back and he might hit the strut holding up the wing. The one o'clock to three o'clock position was clear.

To give him a better shot, Dodd put the plane into a sideslip, niching the nose left and banking the right wing a bit.

Though heaven and earth seemed wrapped together in indistinguishable chaos, a damnation alley cleared from here to there, here being the flare and whip crack that blazed from the rifle, there being Grizzly with the pm of the Flash Bang in one hand, the other hand advancing to toss the grenade, when the bullet blew right through his heart.

He was dead before the Flash Bang exploded in his fist.

The Mad Dog was pulled into the Red Bison, and it was off down the road.