Karl's Last Flight, Part 2

Karl's Last Flight, Part 2
©2006, Basil Sands

The lizard looked up from the shade of the wreckage.  It's eye's, which seemed too big for it's head, stared up at Karl as if to say, "Hey pal, thanks for this cool shade. So what brought you here?"

Karl glanced back at the lizard and said aloud, "This is a wonderful place you have here, thanks for inviting me, I don't plan to stay long though." 

The lizard  unflinchingly stared back. Its tongue flicked quickly across its face, then it resumed staring like a stone.

Karl looked at his watch.  It had been about an hour, and there was no sign of movement anywhere in this vast dessert.  He had been trying to figure out where on the globe he might be, but since his navigation computer had gone out,  he couldn't be sure.  He did have a  pocket sized GPS, but the LCD display cracked when he fell out of the ship after the crash landing, rendering it useless.

As he went over in his head all the details he could remember about his flight trajectory, altitude and speed at reentry he figured he was somewhere in the Middle East or Central Asia, most likely between eastern Turkey and western Afghanistan, but exactly where he couldn't tell.

His distress beacon, under the main console in the craft, should be sounding a clear signal to the passing Stratacorp tracking satellite as it passed by every hour or so.  They would get the signal and should have a rescue flight to him within a short while.

Just in case though, he went into the craft and got out the survival bags.  There were three survival bags in each Stratacorp space craft, one for the pilot and up to two passengers.  Karl brought all three out and sat them in the shade of the ship to take inventory.  Each bag contained 1 gallon of water, 3 MRE food packs, a silver survival blanket, a pack of salt tablets, matches, a first aid kit, sewing kit, and a signal mirror.  In addition to those items, Karl had been in the habit since his days as a Marine Aviator, of keeping a side arm, a K-bar and a Gerber pocket tool with him on any flight he took.  You never knew when you would have to hunt for your food, or in the worst case scenario, have to defend yourself in hostile territory.  Having served nearly his entire 8 years in the Marine Corps flying throughout Central and Southeast Asia during the later part of the Cold War, he knew that one should never assume safety in any unfamiliar place. 

Collecting his inventory and arranging it into a back pack in case he had to move from the area he saw dust rising on the horizon.  It looked like the dust from a vehicle crossing the sand, a long thin column of yellow haze rising quickly from the ground as it approached him. 

"What's this?" he muttered. "Stratacorp would send a helicopter, not a ground vehicle."

He checked his weapon, took off the safety and held it behind his back.
 
Three men emerged from a dust covered Land Rover.  The driver looked Middle Eastern while the others were both white, European by their demeanor.  One of the white men was tall and lean while the other was average height but very stocky.  All seemed to be in their mid-thirties and physically fit.

"Good morning!" declared the driver , "It seems you are having some airplane trouble?"

His accent surprised Karl.  It was mid-western American, Indiana or Ohio maybe.

"Yeah. I am, although this isn't exactly an airplane." Karl replied.

The tall European looked at the side of the craft.

"StrataCorp?" He asked with a French accent,  "The private space flight company?  It seems you have had a very steep fall, my friend."

The stocky one leaned into the craft only to back up with a contorted look of disgust on his face.

"Indeed, I have, my passenger got the worst of it though.  I'm afraid he's in pretty bad shape." 

Karl eyed the three men cautiously, his hand was holding the pistol behind his back.

"May I ask, where on the planet I happen to be?"

"You are in a very bad place." The stocky man had a deeper voice than  Karl expected.  It resonated like a professional baritone, crystal clear with surprisingly clean intonations.  His accent was mildly Irish, a well educated Irishman.

"Welcome to Korosahn province, Caliphate of Iran. I am Kharzai."  The middle eastern man reached out his hand to shake, but Karl moved back, his hand clenching the pistol behind his back.
 
"Who are you guys, then?"

"Don't worry," said the Frenchman, "we are on your side, at least, that is we are not Iranians or Chinese.  We saw your craft fall and came to check it out.  My name is Gilles, this is my friend Liam."

The Irishman bowed slightly, "At your service.  And your name sir?"

"I'm Karl." He responded, eyeing them directly, "What are you, spies?  Mercenaries?  Smugglers?"

"Yes" answered Liam.  "all of the above.  But most importantly to you, we need to get you out of here or you will soon be a dead infidel astronaut.  The Jihad is on the way by now as well, their radar certainly would have tracked your ship."

Karl looked at them suspiciously , "My company, should be sending a pick up any time, I'll wait."

The burly Irishman's face turned impatient, "Look my friend, your country is, as of just more than an hour ago, at war with Iran, thanks in great part to your unexpected descent in these friendly skies.  I have a significantly strong feeling your ride will not be coming any time in the next few years.  So unless you want to bake in the sun with your deceased passenger, or enjoy the comfort of some Mullah's sword coming down on your neck, you had better get in the Land Rover.  We are leaving now."

 "What do you mean at war with Iran, who attacked whom? Was it another 9-11?"

"Well, according to Iranian government news, the US fired a nuclear missile against Tehran about an hour ago, but Allah deflected it with his holy angels causing it to fall in the dessert.  Everyone for a few hundred miles around Tehran saw the missile coming and saw that it landed in the dessert.  That missile, as we have now verified, was your ship.  The last part of this news will be going unmentioned on Al-Jazeera because the Iranians already retaliated by launching some nuclear armed missiles against the US base at Riyadh, and an attempt at full scale annihilation is pretty much underway as we speak. So if you would kindly load your unlucky carcass into our Land Rover we will keep you alive for a while longer, other wise the Jihad will be here in a few minutes to send you to hell."

As if to punctuate Liam's narrative, the sound of an Iranian Air Force jet roared in the distance.  All four men quickly took cover behind the Stratacorp ship seconds before the MiG-31 screamed past about 100 meters over their heads.

The men rushed into the Land Rover as soon as it passed and laid down in the seats.  The fighter returned for another pass this time slowing down slightly as it passed by. 

"He got photos!"  shouted Gilles.  "Let's get out of here! Now!"

Kharzai sat upright and had the SUV in motion almost instantly.  They zoomed across the desert toward the mountains to the west. 

Surprisingly, no other aircraft approached them during the 30 minutes it took to get to a small village at the foot of the mountains.   As they approached the village an old man in a long robe ran out of a small building pulling a large garage door open.  Karl could see him yanking on a rope that fed into a pulley suspended from the roof of the building.  As he pulled, the floor of the garage yawned open revealing a large hole into which Kharzai drove the Land Rover. 

The vehicle came to a stop in this hidden parking space under the floor of the garage and all four men got out, Karl still carrying the survival gear he had grabbed from the wrecked ship.

The floor of the garage closed over their heads and it became totally dark. 

Suddenly a light shone towards the front of the vehicle.

"Come one." Called Kharzai, "This way, there is a tunnel that leads out of here." 

Karl followed the light, and the sound of the other men's footsteps.  In a few moments they entered a large well lit room.  There was no sign of electricity here, so the light must have been natural, coming in from above somewhere.

They all stopped in the cool room.  Gilles offered Karl a chair next to the table at one side of the room. The other men also sat down.  Liam took a bottle from a small cabinet beside the table and poured what looked like wine into several cups on the table.  Each man grabbed one and drank its contents.

It was a slightly sweet, somewhat figgy, wine that was refreshingly cool.

Karl spoke up first. 

"Alright, I have some questions here."

"Go ahead," answered Liam, "we'll try to help you understand as much as we can."

"First off, who are you guys and what are you doing here?"

"Well," Kharzai spoke up, "We are, as you asked earlier, Smugglers, Mercenaries, and Spies. Sort of.  I am an officer of the CIA, born and raised in the cornfields of  Ohio to Iranian dissidents.  I've been in country here for nearly 3 years trying to help avoid the current situation…looks like I failed. Gilles here is former Foreign Legion, my hired gun.  Liam is MI-6, a major of the Royal Marines.  Together we have been smuggling information and such back to our respective governments in hopes of averting a nuclear holocaust which you, with poetically sublime abandon, seem to have brought on in spite of our years of work."

"Great," Karl quipped, "World War 3 has started, and it's all because of me and my airsick passenger."

"Don't blame yourself too harshly," said Liam, "the Iranians have been looking for an excuse for a couple years, you just were to the lucky one to draw the number.  But now, I am afraid you are here, and it would seem, one of us."

Gilles had left the table and was fiddling with a shortwave radio on the cabinet.  He found a station and turned up the volume.  The voices were in Farsi, which the three other men obviously understood. 

Kharzai noticed Karl's expression, "Oops, I'm so sorry, let me translate.  The newscaster just announced that Tehran has launched missiles against several US installations in Arabia and Iraq, as well as Israeli cities, although he doesn't mention anything about nuclear."  He paused to listen before continuing, " He is now babbling about the cruel American Zionists and Jewish devils who are trying to conquer the Islamic world, yadda yadda yadda, and is not really making any more logical sense."

While Kharzai was talking, Liam had taken a cell phone out of his pocket and dialed.  He spoke a couple quick words into it, listened for a moment, then hung up. 

"It's worse than we thought.  Comms are officially cut as of now, we are on our own for a little while gents.  They will get back to us as soon as possible, but the line has been compromised.  We are to follow the third plan of action."

"How old are you Karl?" Gilles

"Forty seven, why?"

"I hope you are fit enough for the infantry Karl, because that's where you are for now, right in the middle of World War 3, and starting off five hundred miles behind enemy lines."  Gilles replied.

"Don't worry fellas," Liam said in an Irish brogue, "Eire is among you, the luck of Irish will rule the day."  He lifted his cup in a toast, and his face spread in a cold, broad smile.  "Now…on to the nights revenge."

Karl mumbled to himself, "Fiji would certainly have been the better choice."

Click a link below to go to the next chapter or a previous one

1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14   15  16  17  18  19  20   21