Apache Dawn, - [little bear else holmelund minarik txt] 📗

Salmon Falls, Idaho

The Ridge

Denny crouched low behind the bush and smoothly pulled his bow to full draw. He held it there for a moment. He felt his heartbeat, the gentle breeze through the pines, and savored the slight warmth on his cheek from the afternoon sun as it filtered through the forest canopy. His eyes focused on the deer some fifteen yards away, blissfully cropping the stunted vegetation on the forest floor. She raised a graceful neck and casually looked around, delicately sniffing the air. The doe presented Denny with a near-perfect broadside profile. The animal chewed placidly, her ears swiveling in an attempt to identify any possible danger. The doe blinked and bent back down to take another bite.

Denny let his fingers straighten and held his left arm stiff, almost pushing the hickory bow forward, as if he could add a little extra speed to the arrow. In a heartbeat, the arrow cruised across the fifteen yards of open space between hunter and prey.

His mind’s eye was already picturing the perfect heart-lung shot, guaranteed to put his quarry down. A fraction of a second before the arrow hit flesh and fur, those sensitive ears stopped swiveling and seemed to detect a sound that Denny’s hearing could not hope to register. The doe flinched in response to the unknown sound, and in that moment of panic, the arrow notched a harmless groove through the fur across the top of her shoulder, impaling itself in the pine tree just behind the lucky deer.

Denny stood and sighed as he watched the white rump and tail bounce away through the undergrowth and vanish into the forest to the sounds of broken branches and rustling leaves. He was about to utter some colorful commentary on the day’s hunt when he also perceived a barely audible sound off in the distance. Denny cocked his head and listened, trying to determine the direction of the muffled noise. It was a very low rumbling, somewhat like a continuously undulating thunderclap, but still not very loud.

He looked farther upslope toward the thinning tree line and could see clear blue sky in the far distance. Denny was below U.P. Lake, halfway between the burned-out husk of his recent home and a Forest Ranger’s manmade “lodge” higher up on the mountain slope. The “lodge” was really just a cave that had been commandeered by the Forest Service to serve as a dependable lookout post for fires during the dry months of summer. The cave had formed in the side of a curved wall of granite at the crest of The Ridge, overlooking U.P. Lake. It faced east and had a nice view of the Salmon River Valley and Salmon Falls two miles below.

Denny had successfully moved his meager possessions into the Forest Ranger facility after his home had been destroyed. In the austere lodge, he found a little fuel and a good quantity of potable water—even survival rations left over from the previous season. He thought he might even prepare himself for winter there, provided he could bring in enough meat.

Denny sighed. He worked his way toward the arrow embedded in the pine tree and ripped it free, angry at himself for missing such a beautiful shot. That doe would’ve kept him in jerky for months. He then continued eastward for a few minutes until the trees thinned and he stood on the edge of the mountain itself. The precipice he stood upon offered an unparalleled view of the valley, but what he saw sent a chill down his spine and explained the noise that had spooked his doe.

Circling over the still-smoking remains of City Hall was an alien-looking helicopter. It reminded him of the famed Apache that the Army flew, but it looked bigger, uglier, and more insect-like, to Denny’s eye.

Other helicopters, their sides swollen as if pregnant, dropped lines to the ground. Overhead, he saw three large transport planes, wings glinting in the afternoon sun. The transports looked to have been circling the town; now, they were beginning their descent.

With slightly trembling hands, he pulled his small binoculars from a leg pouch and focused on the hovering helicopters. Clumps of something began sliding down the lines hanging under the…

Soldiers. Those are soldiers rappelling out of helicopters onto City Hall.

Denny took a knee, leaning against a tilted pine tree to make sure he didn’t tumble down the mountain as he watched the activity below. He could see some residents moving toward City Hall from down the street in small groups. As he swept over the town, he could see others standing in their yards, holding children or leaning on fences, watching the air show.

He sensed a growing roar similar to the sound when approaching a waterfall. He swung the binoculars up and quickly spotted one of the huge transport planes exposing its belly to him as it banked to the north, and dropped quickly out of the sky. Denny watched transfixed, because he knew there was no airport in Salmon Falls. Wondering where the big beast was going to try and land, he spotted a few symbols on the slanted tail fin. Whatever they were, the letters were not English. The blue, white, and red flag symbol was wrong, too. Try as he might, he could not spot the expected USAF emblem, nor a star, or an American flag on the dull-gray plane.

He quickly lowered the binoculars when the first shot rang out. The transport forgotten, he listened as more and more gunfire commenced, sounding like a lot of puny firecrackers from this distance. When he again glassed the area around City Hall, he felt a heavy, sinking feeling in his gut. There were bodies in the street. The soldiers were charging confidently forward, running into the remains of City Hall and the adjoining buildings. There were people running in all directions to get away—stumbling, falling, crashing headlong into parked cars and bystanders too shocked move.

A change in pitch from the airplane’s engines tore his attention away from the horror unfolding on Main Street. The giant airplane left dozens of parachutes in its wake. Dangling under each one was a man with a rifle.

Denny tried to calm his racing heart. He racked his brain in an effort to understand the mysterious symbols on the aircraft. They just didn't make sense. Then, all of a sudden, it came to him—they were letters—just not English letters. It was Cyrillic. He was dead sure of it now.

“Russians!” he hissed.

As he watched, the helicopters disgorged more and more soldiers. The plane, finally finished with its deposit of armed men, closed its doors and angled higher into the sky, heading east. The second plane roared overhead, the rear door already starting to open. He didn’t need binoculars to see this one. But it didn’t drop off men. Big crates with three parachutes slipped out the back. Two large vehicles came next, and many, many smaller boxes—all with the same white parachutes.

The third plane dropped off more men. Denny shook his head. In a matter of only ten minutes or so, he had counted at least twenty men from the helicopters, another sixty or seventy from the planes, two big vehicles, and two dozen crates of all sizes. There was no contest. The town belonged to the Russians in a matter of minutes. They hastily set up barriers across all the roads surrounding City Hall. As time progressed, there were less bystanders and more bodies in the streets.

He watched as the paratroopers dropped by the planes landed and gathered their gear. The vehicles were starting to move—lumbering towards the center of town. One had landed on the high school baseball field. He watched in horror as it rolled right through the high fence surrounding the field as if