Night Strike by Rodney Mountain
It was at that point when the pistons in my brain finally started firing correctly again and I pulled off the gas cap and had a look inside the tank. Yep, I’d let the tank run dry. Oh to be back in the good old USA where you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a gas pump.
I took a look around the area and saw a house through the trees. I chuckled and walked through the snow to take a closer look. I had hoped that my luck would hold out again and I’d find another empty house, but that wasn’t to be the case. There were farm animals all around and damn did they make some noise.
I considered going in another direction, but knew that the vehicles around here would have the fuel that I needed to get the damned snowmobile running again. I crept slowly around the barn looking for something with gas in it to siphon. I hoped that the animal noise would cover me. I was wrong.
I heard someone yell something in French. I turned around to see an old man running out of the house with a shotgun in hand. Great, it seems that France had rednecks just like the US. I tried to run back around the barn, but I hit a patch of ice and felt my feet fly right out from under me.
I landed in the snow hard and had the wind knocked right out of me. Before long the old French guy was standing over me with the shotgun aimed right at my head. I raised my hands and looked up at him.
"Ja me rends," I said to him.
It was one of the few French phrases I knew. It meant ‘I Surrender’, and I’d used it a couple times in Africa, usually as bait to get the enemy to come closer. He took a step back and motioned for me to get up, all the while aiming that damned shotgun at my head. If he had been aiming it anywhere but there I’d have probably taken the shot and then shoved the gun up his ass.
He said something else in French that I didn’t understand. I stood there blankly and waited. He finally realized that I didn’t understand a word he was saying and motioned me towards the house. Not wanting to lose my head over a little bit of gasoline I complied.
The house was sparse and drab. He handed the shotgun to his wife and said something to her, probably instructions to cover me. He picked up the telephone and punched a few numbers and started talking in rapid fire French. The only word I understood out of the whole mess was ‘voleur’ which meant thief.
I knew that if I stayed there until the police got there I was screwed for sure. I decided to try one of the oldest routines in the book. It wouldn’t have worked on a seasoned professional, but this was a pair of old farmers so I figured it had a reasonable chance of success.
I started slow, just averting my eyes towards an empty corner. As time went on I started looking over there more and more. Before long the woman noticed and started glancing over in that corner herself. By the time I was glancing over there almost full time she was taking more looks at that corner than she was at me.
The final time I faked a glance and when the old woman did the same I reached over and pulled the weapon out of her hand. Unfortunately, as her hand came out of the trigger guard she accidentally pulled the trigger. The loud shot ripped through my left arm, tearing it all but off.
The old couple screamed and the shotgun clattered to the floor. I hit the floor along with it and groaned at the extreme pain coming out of my arm. I ignored the steady stream of blood that was flowing out of where my left arm used to attach to my shoulder and pulled myself off the floor with my one good arm.
The French couple was amazed that I was moving as much as I was considering how injured I was. The buckshot had done a little more than just take off my arm. Quite a bit of the buckshot went into my left side and into my face too. I was quite worried by the fact that I couldn’t see out of my left eye at all.
I looked into the breadbox that was truthfully the only shiny thing in the room to see just how bad it was. My face was torn apart badly and the eye was barely in the socket. I had just come very close to losing my head, and with it my entire personality.
I ignored the pain entirely and used my right arm to grab the shotgun off the floor. I briefly considered in my pain shooting them, but common sense came through. I was the bad guy in this case. I had come in with the intention of taking something from their farm. I couldn’t blame them for this, especially since I’d forced the shot.
"I need… I need…" I said in English until I managed to find the words in French, "J'ai besoin d'essence."
I then popped out the shells from the shotgun and put it on the table. I must have been one hell of a sight as I pulled out my wallet one handed and managed to get a hundred Euro note. I put it down on the table and put the wallet back in my pocket. I stressed to the guy that I really needed the gasoline and he made a motion to follow him.
I think they just wanted me to leave at this point. He gave me two cans of gas, a cruel thing to do when you only have one working arm. I made do with an old hoe, which I think I earned and used to carry both cans one handed to the snowmobile on the other side of the woods.
The bleeding had stopped already and my arm was trying to regenerate. I still couldn’t see, meaning that I probably had a bit of shrapnel in my eye that I’d have to get Jim to remove if he was awake. I strapped one can onto the snowmobile and clumsily filled the gas tank with the other one, finally putting it into the rack along with the other can.
I was thankful that the snowmobile had an electric starter, because I just plain didn’t have the strength anymore to do it. I managed to keep control of the snowmobile, despite the fact that my body didn’t want to stay awake. I had lost a lot of blood before everything finally stopped bleeding. My body healed quickly, but it couldn’t replace blood as quickly as I lost it.
It took me another thirty minutes to find the house where I’d left Karen and Jim, and when I did it was like a load off my back. I gunned the engine and did a sloppy parking job next to the house.
Karen must have heard the engine and came out for a closer look because within seconds of my getting there she was outside. She took one look at me and my injuries and came running. She helped me off the snowmobile and helped me hobble towards the house. I was barely conscious by then. I remember going inside with her and her asking me rapid-fire questions. I highly doubt I was able to answer any of them before I collapsed on the floor and lost consciousness.
Chapter 9
I woke up looking at Karen’s bleary eyes. She looked like she hadn’t slept for a while. I moved my left arm a little to see if it was back. It was, so I’d been out long enough to regenerate again. I still couldn’t see out of my left eye, however.
"Welcome back," she said with a smile, "I’ve been worried about you."
"I bet I looked like hell," I chuckled, "I probably still do."
"The clothes you were wearing are a mess," she said, "I guess that you raised some sort of hell over in Bergeron."
"How do you know that?" I asked her, "I don’t think I told you anything before I collapsed."
"I went through the contents of the snowmobile and turned on the radio," she said with a grin, "The radio station is reporting a veritable crime spree in that town. A German national is wanted in connection with a double assault. Several people report losing their wallets to a pickpocket, and a ski shop went up in a very mysterious blaze."
"Gee," I said, "Sounds like they had one hell of a run of bad luck."
"How much of it did you do?" Karen asked me seriously.
"Do you really want to know?" I asked.
"Not really," she sighed, "But you’d better tell me anyway."
"All of it," I admitted, "But some of it was necessary."
"How so?" she wondered.
"The two punks I assaulted left out part of the story," I said, "They assaulted me in front of a night club minutes after I entered the town. They grabbed my wallet and left me bleeding on the ground."
"Lovely," she said, "I guess they didn’t know who they were dealing with."
"Guess not," I grinned, "Me and my trusty little crowb
"I bet it did," she said while shaking her head, "Do I even want an explanation about the ski shop?"
"The guy was an asshole," I said, "Kicked me out of his shop, literally, for just being a suspected American."
"So you torched his place?" she asked me incredulously.
"Sure," I said with a mischievous smile, "After I stole the fifteen thousand Euros in his safe. I set the fire to cover the theft."
"Ok," she said, "That I can understand. Is that how you were injured?"
"No," I groaned, "That was over a friggen can of gasoline. I ran out in the snowmobile and tried to siphon some. The old guy who owned the farm caught me. They brought me inside and were about to call the cops."
"You didn’t…" She said.
"Hell no," I said, "All I tried to do was take the gun away. It was an accident, one that took my arm and half my face off."
"Your face has healed," Karen said, "Your arm is mostly there, but your left eye isn’t focusing. I’m a mite worried about that one."
"Shrapnel," I grunted, "Jim will have to operate when he wakes up. Speaking of him, has there been any change?"
"Outwardly he’s healed," Karen said, "He has been in REM sleep for nearly seven hours now."
"That doesn’t bode well for his head," I suggested, "Last time he was out this long was when you blew his head off. You remember what happened then?"
"I know," she sighed, "New personality and no memory. Hopefully that won’t happen this time. His brains may have been shaken, but not destroyed."
"We’ll give him another day," I said, "After that we’ll rig a sled and drag him northeast. I want to get out of France and into Germany as soon as possible."
"At least you speak the language there," she agreed, "Traveling will be easier."
We sat there for a few more minutes until we heard some groaning from Jim. We were both over there in a heartbeat to see what kind of condition he was in. He stirred and opened his eyes to look at us.
"Mason," he said slowly, "If you ever push me out of a plane again, I am going to make sure that you’re the one without a goddamn parachute."
Karen and I both went into hysterics. Jim was back and he was the same guy we’d been traveling with for years now. He sat up and just stared at us as if he was wondering why we were concerned. I leaned against the wall and smiled. We were back again. Now it was time to leave France for good.
"Welcome back, Jim," I said, "Next time I’ll make sure the damned parachute is good."
"Ok," he said with a grimace, "Next question. Where are we?"
"France," Karen said with a shrug, "Near some little town called Bergeron."
"Huh?" Jim asked.
"We’re about six hundred kilos south of Paris," I told him, "Lyon is 150 kilos east. Germany is probably about seven hundred kilometers northeast."
"Great," Jim said despondently, "And the last of our cash went into those plane tickets to Copenhagen."
"I took care of that while you were unconscious," I informed him, "I’ve got about fifteen thousand francs Euros."
"So why are we still here?" he asked.
"Cause you were a corpse," I said, "And so was I. I need you to fix my left eye as well."
"You hit the ground too?" he asked me.
"Shotgun," I muttered, "Let’s just say you had it easy while you were sleeping and your pain was short lived."
"True," Jim chuckled, "I hit the ground and out I went. Let me look at that eye."
Jim, in his previous life, was actually a doctor and he retained enough of the skill to be useful once in a while. Moreover he’d had enough experience with our condition that he knew how to fix minor things that wouldn’t heal themselves.
It took him about an hour to figure out what happened. Sure enough, my left eye had to be removed. He did it with my combat knife because it was the only thing we had sharp enough to do the job. Karen had to hold me down while Jim did his work on my eye.
For anyone who is not immortal to watch this it would seem barbaric, with Jim cutting out much more than a normal surgeon would. This was necessary because if he used small incisions the flesh would heal up around the blade, making it impossible to get anything done. Larger wounds take longer to heal, so you have to cut out a lot to get a little done.
The job was quick and Jim did a fairly good job under the circumstances. He removed two pieces of buckshot from my eye and then cleaned out the wound that he made. He then knew to leave it alone and let me rest. Within an hour the flesh had regenerated completely, along with the damaged eye. The buckshot had indeed been blocking the nerve, because this time my eyes went right back to 20/20.
"Much better," I said approvingly, "How’s my ugly mug doing?"
"You should be in movies, Mason," Karen said with a grin, "So what’s the next step?"
"Let’s blow this pop stand," I suggested, "We’ll make it as far as we can on the snowmobile and then find alternate transportation."
"How are we going to get into Germany?" Jim asked, "I know my passport is still on the plane."
"Besides," Karen put in, "Those identities are moot."
"My guess is that we’ll probably slide in on foot," I said, though I didn’t know, "Depends on what we find when we get near the border. If we can’t get across, we’ll backtrack to Paris and try to buy passports."
"Do we have enough to do that?" Karen asked me.
"Probably," I said, "But I’d prefer not to have to go to a populated area, especially one that I can’t blend into."
"Nickel and dime our way into Denmark?" Karen asked me, "Could be interesting."
"Yeah," Jim put in, "Sounds like fun. If nothing else, at least Mason speaks the language in Germany and can find a place to get identification."
After we debated options a little while longer we decided to just start running northeast as best we could to get to the German border. The three of us loaded up the snowmobile as best we could and then decided to make a trailer for the stuff we were going to carry.
It wasn’t a time consuming process as we just used an old sled to carry the backpacks. I drove the snowmobile with Karen holding on tightly behind me. Jim took some blankets from the old house and sat backwards on the end of the snowmobile’s rack. He served double duty, riding along and making sure the sled didn’t go anywhere.
We went along for the next four days, riding the snowmobile across the French countryside. We managed to avoid the towns and either got fuel from little stores or siphoned it out of parked cars at farms. Surprisingly, we managed to avoid the larger cities and still made good time.
We crossed the border at Lauterbourg–Wörth, abandoning the snowmobile and crossing the border on foot. It being winter, most everyone except for some French and German patrols deserted the area. We made it through quickly and were finally on German soil.
The next day or so was much easier than the previous week had been. I was able to speak German like a native, so traversing the countryside was much easier. We rode the trains up near Denmark and slid across the nearly unprotected border.
After we took the ferries to Copenhagen we hit the bank that held our identities. I gave them the number of the account and the passwords required to access the contents of our box. Finding this type of bank was a godsend because it relieved us of the need to carry a key with us. We removed one of the sets of identification the box contained and walked out into the streets of Copenhagen as free people.
"We did it," I said to Karen and Jim as I handed them their new identification, "Now it’s time to relax."
The identification we were using had been set up just before our African adventure to disappear with after it was over. We had no idea where we were going, just one single idea that we all shared at that point in time. We looked for a cruise ship to go back to the US with, as none of us wanted to go anywhere near an airplane again anytime soon.
Kara’s Last Day
Kara Malloy was Durell’s first love after leaving the violent life he had led in Czechoslovakia and Ireland. After recovering from injuries received while going after a rather nasty set of Irish terrorists he started working for the BBC, where he met Kara. After about a year together Durell’s father becomes ill and he was called back to the United States, his first time setting foot in his home country since he’d left in 1984.
This piece takes place a few months after Durell’s return to the United States, while he was running the security arm of his dying father’s company.
This story was another one that shows just how screwed up my head was a lot of the time. I seem to like destroying the relationships of my characters with death at times. I don't even fully remember writing this story, but I did build it into the back story. Sometimes I think I did better with the back story on Durell than I did with his adventure in Finland.
I also wanted to show the entirely screwed up family he had that caused him to want to leave the United States to become a freedom fighter in the communist bloc. The story is so simple in some ways, but I still have a soft place for A.J. Durell and I keep thinking I will come back to him someday and better integrate him into the timeline.
-Rodney Mountain 7/29/11
Chapter 1
"You have got to be kidding me," A.J. Durell said as Kara walked out of the dressing room, "What is that getup all about?"
"You don’t like it?" Kara asked him, pouting a little, "I thought it was cute."
"You know me," A.J. said, "I prefer simple. That just doesn’t look like you."
Kara chuckled and looked at herself in the mirror. She liked the way the outfit accented her slim figure, but A.J. was right, it was not her. She kissed him on the forehead and went back into the changing room to try something else on.