One of the plank bridges was pushed across the first set of doors and the second and third carried across and then the second pushed to span the second trap and in the same manner the third was spanned. The troops in the first assault team then had crossed and continued on. The members of the support team stayed near the gates so that it was difficult for the drones outside to determine what was going on in the tunnel. By the time the decision was made to open the trap doors, the bridges were across, and the troops had already practiced how to get them across an open gap.
A conference with Issaack, Symon Scheetz, Declercq and Gerallt was held and it was Gerallt that came up with what seemed to be the most feasible solution. Half of the drones used to herd the predators were sent up and over the crater’s rim and they combined with the ten other drones already in the crater to form the Vulcan Forge Air Force. They didn’t have time to adapt lightweight weapons to the bigger drones. However, Waldo and Phil had received permission to make an adaptation to a couple of drones to try to make them bombers. Symon Scheetz and Declercq assumed defensive positions behind sandbags piled on both sides of the crater tunnel entrance. Gerallt and Hansel took up positions on top of Vulcan’s Roost, Hansel on the southeast corner and Gerallt closer to the middle of the east side.
Symon Scheetz and Declercq were wearing night vision goggles as were the two members of the invasion force which preceded the eight men led by Comandante Lopez. That force was divided in half trailing fifty feet behind the advance guard with Comandante Lopez. Three on the right side of the tunnel and four on the left. When Symon Scheetz and Declercq could see the two advance men, they opened fire. Because of the open nature of the tunnel, they were able to kill one of the two (Soldado 26) and mortally wound the other (Soldado 27). The two trailing fire teams returned heavy fire designed to drive the defenders away from their positions, but they had already fled after their initial fusillade as intended.
The invaders then advanced quickly to the end of the tunnel. Having no opposition and seeing no one in the crater, the force emerged from the tunnel and that’s when the Vulcan Air Force struck. They had been hovering one hundred feet over the tunnel’s entrance and Horus brought half of them down to a height of thirty feet and turned on the bright lights used to herd the predators. The other half came down almost to ground level with blinking red lights hoping they might mistake the lighters for weapon flares. The bright lights blinded the men who had been wearing night vision googles and they were forced to remove them. As they removed the goggles, Symon Scheetz stepped out of the east door and Declercq stepped out of south door and opened fire together with Gerallt and Hansel. Comandante Lopez had anticipated such an attack and half of his men had not been wearing the night vision goggles and were able to return fire with more effectiveness. Simultaneously, half the reserve force led by The General emerged from the tunnel providing fire support for the forward group, the other half firing from within the tunnel effectively eliminated over half of the light providing drones. During the firefight, Soldado 19 and Soldado 23 were killed.
In the fire fight, Symon Scheetz and Hansel were killed, Stefaan Declercq wounded in his left shoulder, and Gerallt was forced to evacuate his position. As he had explained before this battle, “If it goes badly, I will attempt to return to my tunnel so that I might be helpful at a future time.” As he ran across the roof top, he told Horus that was his plan.
“Understood, be careful and take care...” was Horus’s reply.
Whatever else Horus said was lost because Gerallt had jumped from the roof and was running for the hillside. He was halfway up to the lava tube when a bullet ricocheted from the rocks three feet to his left. Comandante Lopez had sent two men around either side of Vulcan’s Roost searching for anyone who was outside. One of the two men coming down the south side had just reached the southwest corner and seeing Gerallt climbing the hill had opened fire. Gerallt was struggling to get a foot hold to return fire when a burst of automatic fire from above Gerallt’s position took the man (Soldado 7) out of action.
With enemy fire eliminated, Gerallt returned to his climbing. He had just reached the bushes covering the entrance to the lava tube when the second man coming down the south side peered around the corner and was forced back by another round of automatic fire from the mouth of the tube. Gerallt entered the tube and crawled by the person who was lying there shooting at the soldiers.
Once inside the tube, Gerallt turned and when he saw that person who saved his life was Monica said in surprise, “What in the hell are you doing here?”
“Saving your Welsh arse,” she answered. The entire time her attention had not wavered from the building from which the soldiers were firing.
What much of the media didn’t know and Monica wasn’t about to let be known because it would destroy her sassy bad girl image, was that her father Charles Bartlett had been a weapons instructor in the British army for twenty years, retiring when she was five years old. As she grew, he saw that she had martial arts and firearms training. She had maintained her training in privacy. When she had learned of the defense plan she had left the theater and – with Horus’s help – had taken an AK-47 and a cartridge belt and had climbed the hill to the lava tube to be ready just for the occurring eventuality.
Chapter 35
At that most inopportune moment, there was another burst of fire that centered just above the opening and one lucky shot actually made it into the opening and glanced off the wall five feet into the tube and ricocheted down the tube.
“It’s going to get bad in here now that they know about this tunnel and it’s not a very defensible position,” Gerallt said, “Come on, we’ve got to run.”
Monica wormed her way back from the entrance as firing continued and several more shots made their way into the tube narrowly missing them. Once Monica was able to stand up, Gerallt grabbed her free hand and led her down the tube. Far enough from the entrance he turned his flashlight on and they started moving faster. After about ten steps they heard a metallic sound of something bouncing back toward the entrance.
“Grenade,” Gerallt said and they doubled their pace. When the grenade exploded, instinctively they both hit the floor. Shrapnel hit above and behind them but nothing hit them. Gerallt motioned not to make any noise and the two of them got up and stealthily but swiftly headed further down the tube. They could hear noise behind them and knew that they were being followed. Gerallt knew the pursuers, not knowing the tube, would be moving slower. Not in the dark slow but moving carefully. The tube wasn’t straight but it wasn’t curved either and Gerallt had it memorized. At one point he gave Monica the flashlight and whispered, “Go on, hugging the left wall. Watch the floor because there is a big hole across. When you find the hole, cross the ladder like a bridge. Wait there. Point the light behind you and set up facing me. When I get close, the password is ‘The Slag is a Lady.’ Now move your arse.”
Monica did as he directed. After a few minutes she heard a burst of automatic rifle fire, and an answering burst. Then silence. In another five minutes she reached the hole, crossed the ladder bridge, walked another ten feet and set the light on the floor. The light’s beam pointing the way farther down the tunnel. Then Monica lay down facing back up the tube, rifle pointed into the darkness where Gerallt – or someone not welcome – would come. Because there was no ambient light in the tunnel other than the flashlight pointing the wrong way, her night vision goggles showed her the hole and ten to twenty feet past it but then everything became iffy. Gerallt would have to be right at the ladder bridge to be identified. In about five minutes, she could see a form coming, hugging the wall on its left. When it came into focus on the other side of the wall, she heard “The Slag’s a Lady” and breathed a sigh of relief.
Gerallt crossed the bridge and she got up. He handed her his weapon and then pulled the ladder bridge across the hole and motioned further down the tube, he had just picked up the light when a noise filled the tunnel low but audible. “Right on time,” Gerallt
said. “Come on, we need to run for it.”
Monica didn’t ask why and followed him. As they ran the noise grew louder, swelling and decreasing in rapidity and intensity. In a few minutes, Gerald stopped and pointed to the left. “Climb as far as you can and be quick,” he said, pointing to the rope ladder. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and started up. The roar became constant just as soon as she was out of sight up the ladder. Gerallt started up knowing water was on its way down the tube.
It was a good ten feet up to the base hole of the strangler fig and he had just gotten his right hand there when a wave of water hit his feet. It surged up past him flowing hard and threatening to push him from his handhold and he knew that could be deadly. All he could do was hang on and just as quickly as the water had come it started back, trying to pull him down and he clung tenaciously to the ladder. When the water had receded, he continued his climb and exited the strangler fig through the hole.
“You up there?” he asked.
“Yes,” Monica replied “but I’ve got wet pants.”
Gerallt chuckled and she said, “Not that kind. The water came all the way up.” As she was talking, she climbed down and emerged from the hole.
“What was that?”
Gerallt explained and then added, “Horus has been keeping track of the occurrences and thought that one would happen. He told me that as I was nearing the hole.”
“What was the firing after I left.”
“I could sense them coming, hearing more than seeing and let go just to keep them cautious, but I might have hit someone.”
“Could you tell how many?”
“Two or three. That’s Horus’ guess too. He doesn’t know without the cards or having a drone around.”
“What’s happening in Vulcan’s Roost?”
“He hasn’t been talking to you?”
“No, I didn’t have my earbud in when I decided to help. I just grabbed the rife, goggles and an ammo belt and ran.”
“Thanks, I’m glad you did. Issaack has had to surrender again. With Esteves’ forces not carrying their cards, they were shooting in the dark as to where they were and how many. He’d already lost two men and two wounded so he had to capitulate. Esteves is furious.”
“We have to do something to help.”
“We will but first we have to be certain that the tube is clear. I’ll go down first.” And with that, Gerallt started down the ladder. That was the dangerous part, but he knew that anyone this side of the tube would have been hit and carried away just as he had been so he risked it. Throwing an explosive down was risking because it could bring the tunnel down. Using his night vision goggles, he saw the tube was empty and he called to Monica to come down.
“Watch up the tube,” he said pointing the way they had come earlier. “I’m going down to the entrance to clear it.
Gerallt’s assessment of what would have happened to anyone who had gotten as far as the hole was correct. The two men had reached the hole just as the water was ready to burst. Dylan Del Cid (Soldado 24) had tried to make the jump and had succeeded. He was just getting up when the water erupted into the tunnel and carried him down the tube, well past the strangler fig ladder. The other man, Bruno Suarez (Soldado 28) had tried to run when the water erupted, but the water had inundated him and the ebbing force had been more than he could handle and it had pulled him down into the hole to his death. His body would show up in the pool at the base of Prometheus’s Aerie in five days.
Dylan Del Cid had been deposited about fifty feet from the entrance to the beach. Battered and waterlogged, he was just getting his senses back when he heard sounds farther in the tunnel. He set up ready to send a burst from his AK-47 but, as any good soldier – and he was one – he waited. Knowing his weapon’s capabilities, he was certain that it would fire. He listened to the sounds of sodden cloth rubbing on sodden cloth and sighted up the tunnel. Just as Gerallt came into view and simultaneously spotted him, his finger started to tighten and there was a searing pain in his back. His body jerked just as he fired, and the burst went wild.
Hyma the caracal had run away from the plateau tunnel entrance when the firing started, and the direction of her flight had brought her back to the strangler fig, the last place she had seen Gerallt. There was no fresh scent there and so for whatever reason – the innate curiosity of the feline beast perhaps – she continued her wandering in the same direction taking her as far away from the plateau as she could get almost as quickly as she could. So, she made her way down to the beach where she found the entrance to the lava tube. The same curiosity that had brought her there, caused her to enter the tube and she had wandered up as far as the strangler fig ladder and found the strong scent of Gerallt. She was going to go farther when the water began to well in the hole and the sound, both warning and frightening, caused her to run for her life. She had barely made it out of the entrance and away when the water burst out with such force that if she had been carried with it, she would have been dashed against the rocks and most likely killed. When the water ebbed, her curiosity about the water flow and the scent of Gerallt drew her into the cave once again. With the draft coming from the crater to the entrance, she smelled Gerallt and two other scents, one closer than either of the other two. She knew that Gerallt was proceeding toward her and went to investigate the other scent. She discovered a man lying on the floor pointing a stick up the tunnel in the direction of Gerallt.
She sensed that whatever the man was doing was not good and she attacked the man with an action intended to protect her friend because that was her feeling about Gerallt.
Gerallt and Dylan Del Cid fired simultaneously, and both were wild. Recovering first, Gerallt first sent an accurate burst into the Dylan Del Cid ending his life. Hyma the caracal had leapt away and had ran for the entrance with the sounds of gunfire and she was unlikely to re-enter the lava tube for a while.
Chapter 36
Gerallt returned to the base of the strangler fig carrying a rifle over each shoulder, an extra ammo belt in his right hand and the ladder bridge in his left hand.
“We’re fortunate that we have this,” he said. “I’m thinking that at least one man risked the jump and made it. He was down near the entrance.”
“That was the shooting I heard?”
“Yes. Strangest thing though. The way the guy was positioned, I would have been dead except he was attacked by one of the predator cats.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Don’t know what kind but it had long legs, big ears and was spotted.”
“Hyma,” Monica said.
“What’s a Hyma?”
Monica laughed. “That’s really a caracal. We just named her Hyma.”
“I’ve seen that cat around in the rainforest. Even gotten a feeling at times that someone was following me, and I bet it was that cat.”
“Gerallt...” A voice in his ear.
“Horus?”
“Yes, we have a big problem.”
“What?”
Five men stood at the front of the theater. Four in military gear, two with AK-47’s pointed at the people in the seats. The other man was all in white with greasy black hair.
In the front row in seats two and three respectively were Declercq and Gretel who were secured with flexi-cuffs on hands and ankles. Issaack was also in the first row, in the first seat. In the second row were Waldo, Siegfried and Phil in that order. In the third row were Harvey Gladstone, Carmen, and Gloria, also in that order. Declercq had a makeshift bandage around his left shoulder. Carmen wanted to put a better bandage on it but Esteves wouldn’t allow it. “Why zhould you? He iz going to die zoon.”
Esteves was standing with the four military figures, two of whom were The General and Comandante Lopez. The other two were soldados with AK-47s at the ready.
The General was explaining the situation. “We have fourteen men left not counting Comandante Lopez and myself that we know of. Two went into the lava tube after that man and the other woman. They haven’t
returned so I am not counting them. Is she dangerous?”
“I don’t know,” Esteves said. “I know nothing of her background. I selected her because of her money. I thought she’d be easy. And she was until the shooting began. Then she just grabbed a weapon and disappeared.”
“Killing at least one of my men and letting that man you brought in the cage escape.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” Esteves said. “He had help. Someone gave him that knife and then that computer lied and told us that he was dead.”
“What about the computer?” General asked.
“It’s been taken off line,” Issaack said.
“Are you certain?” Esteves said. “You’ve been known to lie.”
“Ask Siegfried.” answered Issaack.
“Yes,” offered Siegfried. “He has been excised as much as we can without rebooting the system.”
Predator Island Page 34
