Hogs #2: Hog Down by DeFelice Jim

Author:DeFelice, Jim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Coyote, Inc.
Published: 2012-10-21T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 27

On the ground in Iraq

21 January 1991

2203

Mongoose aimed the small strobe unit in the direction of the sound. He had already fired a pencil flare to get their attention, and now hoped the strobe would direct whoever was up there to his location.

The strobe’s light was hooded, making it difficult to see on the ground. In theory, anyway. He couldn’t worry about any of that now; he kept strobing, hoping to hear the engine again. The radio was pumping out its own emergency beacon.

But the plane was no longer nearby. He made a voice broadcast; when there was no answer he fired another mini-flare. As the rocket arced upwards, he tried the radio again. Mongoose swung the dial back and forth, from beacon to voice, radioing his distress call.

“I’ll take a pizza with anchovies to go,” he added at the end.

Whatever he’d heard was gone. He settled back against the stones he’d lined up as a small shelter. He’d dug out some of the ground with his boot, like a small fox-hole. It had been something to do, to take his mind off how stinking cold he was.

The radio was probably busted. That wasn’t particularly lucky.

Might’ve broken somehow when he landed. Or it was just one of those dumb, stupid things.

There was another one back in the seat pack.

But where the hell was that now? Could he trace his way back in the dark and the slowly lifting fog?

He heard a noise in the distance, this time on the ground.

Was it really there? His ears buzzed with something, but it didn’t seem real. Slowly, as deliberately as possible, he slid the strobe light back into a vest pocket and removed his pistol from its holster.

He stayed like that, gun just in front of his chest, for a long time. The noise grew louder, then faded. It was definitely a truck, and far off. His eyes ached, filtering the darkness for the head beams or taillights, but they didn’t appear. The moon, a dull crescent, drifted through some clouds, cold and distant.

When he was in Boy Scouts, they used to tell ghost stories about kids so lost in the wilderness they turned into walking skeletons, haunting the woods for centuries. He thought of those stories now as he crouched back into his small, safe place and holstered his pistol.

The stories had scared the piss out of him. He remembered being so afraid that he wouldn’t get out of his sleeping bag to take a leak. Instead, he’d lie awake all night, waiting for dawn.

That was as a second-class scout, still pretty green, his first full year as a scout. The next summer, at the wilderness camp in the Adirondacks, now Star rank, he laughed at the stories, told a lot of them himself, and took a leak whenever he damn well pleased.

He was still a little scared, actually, but no way would he let on, even to himself.

His days as a scout were all flooding back. He remembered one of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.