He was right. Unless the woman had sprouted wings when he looked away there was nowhere out there to hide. Besides their rocks, there was nothing but rising and falling slopes of sand.
“We better wake up Turner and Evans,” Douglas said.
He had a bad feeling. The sort he knew to listen to when it said it was time to go. Whatever was going on in this desert tonight, he didn’t believe an old woman went for a stroll and just happened to cross paths with four heavily armed soldiers.
“Uh . . . you sure you saw what you think you saw?” Evans asked groggily. “I mean, hot girl in a trench coat magically appears out of nowhere and is heading my way. Sounds an awful lot like the dream I was hoping to have—”
“We both saw her,” Douglas interrupted. “And she was old enough to be your grandmother, Evans.”
“If you’re telling me an old lady ghosted both of you,” Evans said, a smirk crawling up his lip, “yeah, that tracks.”
“Get up and get ready to move,” Douglas said. “No more noise.”
The next few moments were efficient as they put their gear away in silence. The wind had weakened, and no one heard anything outside the ruffling of items being shoved back into packs. That was why the distinct sound of a pebble jarred loose to tumble down the rocks behind them was loud enough to get every man’s attention.
Douglas made a few hand gestures. Quick and quiet, Holloway returned to the scope resting on the rocks and turned it behind them to a make a quick scan over the horseshoe. He shook his head. Douglas didn’t hesitate. With two hand signals, Turner and Evans dropped their packs, readied their firearms, and got low. Two more signals and each set out around opposite sides of the rock.
Douglas lowered onto his stomach and began snaking his way forward on elbows and hips to head up the center of the rocks. Every few seconds he spared a glance back at Holloway who would signal to him if he had seen anything in the dark.
She isn’t alone out here, Douglas thought.
He didn’t know how she’d managed to disappear the way she had, but to get behind them and up this rock that fast without making a sound just wasn’t possible. He feared her entire reason for being out there had been to draw their attention while the rest of her people crept up on them from behind. This was but one of many troubling possibilities cluttering his mind as he made his slow progress up the rocks. Then, when he glanced back to Holloway, his mind went blank.
The man jutted hand signals into the air. Frantically trying to tell him he’d lost sight of both Turner and Evans. Though, this was not why his mind went so blank; Douglas stilled—stopped breathing altogether.
The woman was looking right back at him from over Holloway’s shoulder. He would not have frozen, but she hadn’t stalked up behind his friend. She hadn’t been there one moment and then, while Holloway signaled to him, in a blink, her pale white face was suddenly there. This time, he was certain when that light, an eerie blue spark, flashed in her eyes.
Holloway had either sensed her presence behind him or saw it on Douglas’s face, but the bare instant of warning it bought him didn’t change the outcome. He’d only just begun to turn before the woman had hold of him. One hand had clamped down on his mouth, as though to keep him from screaming, while the other drove a syringe into his neck.
He had no shot. If he fired, he might get lucky and hit her, but he’d definitely hit Holloway first. Nevertheless, he flipped onto his back and swept his rifle toward them.
He had little time to do more. Holloway’s struggles gave the woman about as much trouble as a buzzing insect. Douglas had barely formed the notion that he might get to his feet and race to his friend’s aid before he was left with his mouth gaping.
They were gone.
Holloway and the woman had vanished just as quickly as she’d appeared behind him a few seconds earlier. The only sign he hadn’t lost his mind were the footprints of their struggle in the sand.
Come on . . . Show your face, dammit . . . Show me those eyes.
He searched the night, his thoughts growing more and more impatient in what could only be a false quiet.
What kind of person was capable of this? She hadn’t only eluded three Rangers, but disabled them in a matter of seconds. On some level he hadn’t ruled it all out as a nightmare. A consideration that had never come to him in a fight before, but how else was this possible?
Some kind of new stealth camouflage? A cloaking device? Where did that even begin to explain how fast she’d moved? How did she even know they were here? What was her interest in his team or their mission?
He didn’t dare take his back from the rock; it was the only way to make her come at him head on. She would know it as well. So, was she waiting him out? Maybe not as quick as he’d thought? Maybe she didn’t like the odds that she could reach him faster than he could get a shot off.
Time and silence—nothing happened. Nothing but the wind sweeping away Holloway’s footprints and Douglas holding his rifle at the night.
Eventually, Douglas slowly took one hand from the rifle and reached for his radio. Command had been clear. His team wasn’t supposed to be in that desert. They didn’t want to risk any American aircraft being spotted in the area should his team need extraction. Still, three men down and firsthand intelligence of superior weapons tech would justify breaking radio silence. At least, it would have, but Douglas found an empty spot on his belt where his radio should have been.
With a long breath and a whispered curse, he saw the thing right where he’d left it—resting on his bag—in the middle of the horseshoe. Fifteen feet maybe, but the way this woman moved it might as well not exist at all.
Of all the nights to be making mistakes.
He pushed the self-chastising thoughts into the recesses of his mind and began to inch down the rock on his back. The slope favored him, but he made slow progress with both hands on his weapon.
The moment his feet touched sand, he darted forward, hoping she’d expect him to pause. He ran, grabbing the entire pack one handed and pulling it back with him until he felt the safety of stone behind him again. He breathed, both hands on the rifle again as he scanned the night for those blue eyes.
He noticed he could feel those words chiseled into the stone behind him.
‘Please, shit somewhere else’.
No guarantees, he thought. Given how tonight was playing out, he’d happily crap his pants in exchange for getting his team out of here.
He picked up the radio and thumbed the transmitter. Despite the adrenaline, his words were clear and his hands steady. He gave his designation and requested immediate assistance. Seconds ticked by with no reply. He repeated the communication. Then again, and again.
Seconds became minutes.
Nervousness grew.
He’d noticed something off, had since the first attempt to make contact. An underlying whine or thrumming beneath the usual radio static. He’d been party to enough poor radio connections to know that sound was not normal.
Was she jamming his equipment?
He pushed the thought away as paranoia but failing to get a reply multiple times forced him to reconsider. After what he’d seen—was jamming a signal that much of a stretch?
He gave up on the radio. More time ticked by as he watched the darkness.
Why isn’t she finishing the job?
Why take out three and leave the last?
. . . had she already done whatever she’d been here to do?
He forced himself to stop wasting time on questions he couldn’t answer. He needed to find his team. He hadn’t seen for himself what happened to Turner or Evans, but if they hadn’t shown up by now, he had to assume they’d been pulled into the night the same way as Holloway. Still, that didn’t mean they weren’t in the area. He had to be sure, look for a trace, but one man searching the desert in the dark can’t cover much ground.
If he didn’t find them soon and close, then his best chance to help them was to run all night to the rendezvous and get help
.
His team wasn’t supposed to be here, he reminded himself. Would Command send troops into the area?
The radio was down, someone had to make it out. Someone had to tell Command what they had faced out here. He hoped he’d find a trail or their assailant first. Understanding his best choice was to leave his men behind didn’t mean he could live with it.
Luckily, it was a decision he never had to face. Less than a minute later, he’d retraced Turner’s steps and found a trail that ended abruptly in the sand, footprints indicating he’d been taken by surprise. Douglas had barely begun to study them before the night was suddenly brighter than it had any business being.
He slowly turned to the horizon as red light washed over the landscape.
The direction of the source was plain enough, the glow stronger in the distance. Not far, maybe half a mile out, but not in the direction of the rendezvous either. He had recovered Holloway’s night vision scope, but it didn’t help him discern what was out there. From this distance the light might as well have been coming from a small sun resting near the desert floor.
It had to be the woman. The only place he might find his team.
As he began to move, his gut wouldn’t stop reminding him what happened to a bug drawn to a strange light in the night, but he wasn’t leaving this desert if there was any chance of finding his team.
Douglas moved fast until he knew he was close. He’d started smelling ozone faintly on the wind and now the scent was strong. He could feel a growing static in the air pulling at the hair on his skin.
He dropped into a slow crouch as he neared what was unmistakably the last rise. Whatever was bathing the entire local area with red light was on the other side. The closer he came, the stranger the phenomenon seemed. It wasn’t a vehicle or a spotlight; the light neither focused nor directional. This glow cast itself equally in every direction, such that it was like approaching a giant red lantern whose light was only blocked by the rise and fall of the sands.
The terrain was changing somewhat, mostly still sand, but he could tell he was approaching a small valley trough. There were some exposed rock surfaces. Though it was as dry as everything else, there were signs that the area might have held water at some point more recently than the rest. He took to his stomach before he crested the last rise and peered over.
For a while he didn’t move, fell into a trance as he gazed upon a sphere. Floating a few feet above the desert floor, it contained a turbulence of black clouds storming across a glowing red core. He didn’t even blink at the flashes of light—electricity arcing off the perfect curves of its surface to leave scorched marks in the sand.
For some time now, Douglas had suspected whatever he’d gotten into tonight was outside his depths. The moment he glimpsed that sphere hovering over the desert, suspicion became certainty.
He could get his head around the woman, rationalize her as a hostile foreign operator in possession of superior equipment. But that sphere demanded a larger explanation. The thought that he may not be dealing with a human—but something closer to ET—was no longer easy to dismiss.
Once he’d stopped witlessly staring, he noticed something twenty paces east of the sphere. An opening in the sand. At first glance he might have thought it was a tunnel, but in the red glow he could see it wasn’t a natural cave or strange rock formation half buried in the sand.
He was looking at the remains of a plane’s fuselage. Far from whole, it may have been from a plane that had made an emergency landing and never been recovered. Douglas wasn’t a military aircraft expert, but it didn’t look like it was from around here. That, and it definitely wasn’t built by Boeing. He’d have guessed he was looking at about half of a cargo plane that had been there for thirty or forty years.
The plane certainly had a story, but he lost interest in imagining what it might be when he noticed Holloway alone, unconscious, and left propped up with his back to the fuselage. He wasn’t far from the opening, and he wasn’t moving. His shirt was torn open in the front. From where he was, Douglas could see an open cut on the left side of his chest. The wound didn’t look life threatening, but it was open and bleeding. Unfortunately, what he couldn’t tell from here, was whether Holloway was breathing.
There was no sign of Turner and Evans. They might be inside the fuselage, but he hadn’t seen the woman yet. Dammit . . .
What were the chances they were any better off than Holloway? Even if he was lucky and they were inside—he couldn’t carry all three out. If the woman was in the fuselage, he had to get the drop on her, hope for a clean shot before she knew he was there. If he gave her the opportunity to start the same disappearing act she’d pulled before, there was no reason to think he’d come out of it any better than the rest of his team.
Douglas crept back from the edge and began to move lateral to the sphere, using the tip of the crest to stay hidden and work his way around toward the fuselage. He wasn’t just trying to stay out of sight. He didn’t want to get any closer to the sphere than he needed to. The scorch marks left in the sand by the currents arcing off that thing were fair indication he wouldn’t fare well if he came into contact with one.
When he was as close as he was going to get without being exposed, he stopped. He laid back on the ground and took a long breath as he looked up at the red tinted night sky. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the picture he always kept close to his heart.
His wife—Evelyn.
She told him it was corny once. She was right of course but he didn’t believe she minded much. They hadn’t been married long, had just started talking about kids. He promised once that he’d always make it home to her. She glared at him. Not because it was corny. But because they both knew that if he broke it then he’d never have to face the consequences.
He’d told her a promise was a promise.
When she was still unconvinced, he’d smiled and said, “You married a Tibbs. We don’t consider dying as an excuse to break our promises.”
He closed his eyes and pressed his lips to the photo before tucking it back into his pocket.
One deep breath later and he was over the hill. Loose sand flowed past his boots and ran down the slope with each step as he descended, closing the distance between him and Holloway.
The sphere chose that moment to glow brighter. The arcs growing angrier in their frequency, such that he felt like the damn thing was growling at him like a territorial dog. Ominously, he came to realize the sphere wasn’t reacting to him at all. It was simply accelerating, building up to something. What, he had no idea, but he knew he didn’t want to be there to find out.
There was still no sign of the woman when he reached Holloway. He wasn’t sure if it was nerves playing tricks, but he froze when he thought he heard movement inside the fuselage. Afraid to breathe, he slowly trained his rifle on the opening. Unable and unwilling to take his eyes off that hole in the sand, he reached down to press his fingers to Holloway’s neck.
Finding a pulse was a small relief. For the moment, his friend may have been no use whatsoever, but it was still comforting to know he was not truly alone out here in the dark.
He took one more step toward the fuselage opening, but the sphere’s growing agitation sucked away his nerve. It almost seemed to be screaming a warning at him, you’re out of time!
Douglas saw his choices clearly: get out, maybe save Holloway and himself; stay, and any chance of anyone walking out of here shrinks by the second. If he tried to go into that fuselage and bring out Turner and Evans—he wouldn’t be able to carry them and get clear. He felt it, like a horrible fact that wouldn’t become false despite how much it sucked.
He grimaced—hoped he was wrong—but went back to Holloway and pushed the man sideways onto his back. He had to pull the man one handed by the forearm—otherwise he couldn’t keep his rifle on the opening.
Holloway was a tall bastard, and far heavier than his thin limbs made him look. Pulling him backward up that slope was no easy task, but Dou
glas moved as fast as he could while trying not to make any noise.
He didn’t believe he could move any faster, until he chanced a glance at the sphere. There was a shape inside. The silhouette of something from a nightmare.
It kept him moving.
“This is no place for you.”
He startled, whirling toward the voice to find the woman standing no more than five paces up the slope from him. He should have fired, but there was no aggression on her features. She wasn’t standing as though she were set to pounce, her arms hung at her side. That, and she didn’t so much as flinch at the muzzle when it trained on her.
He held his finger over that trigger, but the woman only glanced at him for a moment. Then her eyes moved down to Holloway, and finally rested on the sphere. “I’m sorry, none of this should be happening.”
The turbulence inside the sphere had become a whirlwind, and that shape was more real—the nightmare solidifying.
“Go. Now,” the woman said. “Get as far away as you—”
White light erupted from the sphere. Douglas slammed his eyes shut but was still left with one large spot in his vision. The moment it ended, when they were plunged back into darkness, he stared back at the woman once more. She hadn’t moved, was only a dark shadow watching him on the slope—except her eyes. They shone that eerie blue again.
Then he heard something else, coming from where the sphere had been a moment earlier. It breathed, like something with lungs the size of a rhino.
Shivering, Douglas looked away from the blue eyes and down the slope to a massive shape crouching in the darkness. There was little he could make out for certain, except that it had eyes. Empty, and white, and staring straight back at him.
Guttural growls came out of the thing, but as its mouth moved the sound was not nearly as chilling as the way the moonlight reflected off its teeth. Douglas had taken his gun off the woman and hardly realized he was doing it—a part of him had already decided he was far more worried about white eyes than blue. He let loose a blast of automatic fire, sending flames from the muzzle that momentarily illuminated the beast. Even as he began pulling Holloway all the more desperately back up the slope, sparks pinged off the creature’s torso as it launched itself toward him.
The Never Army Page 2
