There were fifty or sixty yards of separation between Grump and the native fighters, and Ahmad determined it was the best he was going to get. He had kept the chopper screened by the mountain’s edge and a stand of trees that he’d had to peer through to see his people. He popped up when he thought he could do the most good, and as soon as the wheels cleared the tallest of the trees he fired the contents of a rocket pod attached to the chopper’s right side. A dozen unguided rockets almost as slender as arrows streaked just a few feet over the men’s heads and hit in a solid wall just in front of the tangos. The concussion knocked the three Americans to the ground, but the wall of fire and blooming vortices of dirt and smoke consumed half the shooters chasing after them.
Unseen behind the curtain of destruction, the remaining natives broke ranks and fled, not knowing the helicopter had fired its one and only weapon and was now defenseless.
Sleep, Sneeze, and Grump hauled themselves to their feet and ran while Ahmad came thundering in, the big Mi-2 kicking up a maelstrom of dust that rivaled the rocket explosions. Sykes all but carried Mercer the last twenty yards and tossed him bodily into the chopper before turning and motioning his men to push it even harder. Sneeze dumped the injured Sleep into the chopper and Book was yelling at the pilot to take off even as Grump, the last man, was still being dragged through the door.
In all it took just seconds. Ahmad threw the helo into the air and as soon as the wheels cleared the ridge, he dropped it down into the next valley, using gravity to build up speed in order to get as far away from the scene as possible.
Sykes grabbed a supplemental oxygen bottle from stores kept in a bin behind the pilot seat, fitted the mouthpiece over Mercer’s face, and turned the tap on full. Within just a few seconds, Mercer started feeling the effects. His chest still heaved and his head felt like it had split open, but nowhere near as badly. After a minute he was back from death’s door…and just felt like he had the worst hangover of his life.
Sykes had turned his attention to his wounded man. Sleep had taken a round to the thigh that hadn’t hit the femoral artery, but it would require surgery to remove. The men had it bandaged and pumped him with morphine over his protests. Only when Book was satisfied they were all okay did he look back at Mercer and finally ask, “What was all that voodoo with the lightning?”
“Hell if I know.” Mercer pulled the oxygen mask from his mouth. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life, but I think that phenomenon is what this whole thing’s all about.”
15
Roland d’Avejan took to the podium accompanied by a rousing round of applause. This was a sympathetic audience, so d’Avejan wasn’t surprised, but knowing a crowd was energized made giving speeches a much less odious task.
“Merci, merci,” he called into the microphone, trying to quiet the two hundred or so. “Thank you very much. I am honored to be here today, even if it cost me five million euros just to say a few words.” The crowd filling the auditorium laughed at his joke, knowing it was true. On an easel next to the lectern was the oversize mock check he had just presented to the Earth Action League’s president.
“I must say that it is I who should be applauding all of you. You are on the front lines of the climate war, fighting the apathy of people who don’t recognize the peril that our planet faces. And more importantly, you fight the deniers funded by fossil fuel interests who put short-term profit above the long-term health of the environment.”
This remark elicited a few catcalls and hisses, as though this was some silent film and the mustache-twirling villain had just appeared on-screen. They were like good-hearted children in their naïveté.
D’Avejan continued, “Despite efforts by you and other like-minded campaigners, carbon continues to increase in our atmosphere.” He preferred the more evocative sobriquet “carbon pollution,” but marketing studies were showing that informed listeners realized it was a bit overwrought and inaccurate, although leaving out the dioxide part of the gas continued to make people think it was something filthy. “The alarm was sounded as far back as the 1980s, but as we know, nothing was done to curb greenhouse gases. Where once the threats were in the far distant future, we now realize to our horror that the future is here. There can be very few in this audience who did not know someone who perished in the terrible heat wave of 2003. France alone lost nearly fifteen thousand people, mostly our elderly. Or what about the terrible summer in 2010 that claimed fifteen thousand Russians. These were some of the first victims of global warming, but they won’t be the last when such extreme events become the new normal.
“Sea levels continue to rise, the pace has accelerated, and soon entire Pacific island nations will disappear beneath the waves, adding millions of climate refugees. Hurricanes and tropical cyclones have become stronger and will only get worse. If the United States, the richest nation in the world, could not stop Katrina or Superstorm Sandy from destroying so much property and life, what chance did the Philippines have when Typhoon Haiyan struck and washed thousands of people out to sea? Death tolls are already climbing, ladies and gentlemen, not in fifty or a hundred years, but now. Polar ice is vanishing. Ancient glaciers around the world are in record retreat, and scientists are speculating a catastrophic collapse of some of Antarctica’s pristine ice shelves. As thermometers around the globe inexorably rise, it may trigger massive releases of even more potent greenhouse gases trapped in frozen tundra across Russia, Alaska, and far northern Canada.”
Roland paused. He had given them the litany of doom and gloom peddled repeatedly by some United Nations scientists and the compliant media. It was well worn and familiar, and for the most part his examples were all either outright lies or localized weather events, or unverifiable computer projections that were little more accurate than darts flung at a board. And yet it had all been touted as evidence of anthropogenic global warming for long enough that people no longer questioned it.
“I need not remind you of the consequences we are experiencing now that Mother Nature has decided to fight back against humanity’s wanton disregard for the environment. People who join the Earth Action League understand the crisis we face and have common cause to see it solved. That is why I have pledged such a large amount of money today. I am tasking you with the job of informing the rest of the world of the urgent need for action. We have an ever-diminishing window to save our planet, to stop burning fossil fuels and switch to renewable sources of power. Wind and solar can light our future but only if we start now.
“Many here in Europe have called for a greater reliance on bountiful, naturally produced power”—that was a new marketing term, “naturally produced,” and it trended well with the antifracking element of the environmental movement—“but there are still many who don’t realize our time is limited. You need to go out and educate them so that they see a wind farm in their town as an asset and not a liability. We must change attitudes from ‘Not in my backyard’ to ‘Please in our backyard.’
“We need the political will to make the hard choices. But that is what you here understand and those out there do not. There are no longer any choices, only inevitabilities. We must stop burning fossil fuels. We must turn to renewable energy or we will simply fail as a sustainable society, and I see by the bright eyes out there and eager anticipation that you will not let that happen. Not on your watch. Not when the EAL has something to say about it. Not now. Not ever!”
That’s what this was about, d’Avejan thought as he listened to their thunderous approbation. He needed to get the great unwashed majority off their collective fat asses so they would elect politicians ready to listen to the UN and others and tackle the problem head-on. For the cameras, he shook hands once again with the president of the Earth Action League, a man untroubled by his own body odor, though he had at least put on pressed slacks for the event. Seconds after getting offstage, d’Avejan had his hands slathered in waterless purifying gel as a stopgap until he could properly wash them.