by Jeff Carlson
Drew collapsed behind a broad fin of rock, nearly throwing Emily against it when his knee twinged. He’d left the road for the mountainside. Running on the asphalt would have been faster, but he couldn’t afford to get caught in the open.
“Drew!” Bugle screamed. “Drew, come back!”
What were they arguing about? If they should let him go? Their uncertainty was a small advantage. It sounded like they hadn’t moved from the bunker entrance. Drew thought he knew why. Bugle had rushed two or three men outside in their M-string caps, hoping to catch Drew while the rest of the team threw on their Kevlar vests, jackets, and helmets. When those men emerged, Bugle would duck back inside for his own jacket and other equipment.
Drew shoved himself up beneath Emily’s weight and began to jog again, sliding in the mud. As soon as the men inside had their gear, they would run him down without Bugle in command.
He felt a creepy shiver in his brain, a sixth sense like someone was watching him. He looked back.
No one was standing on the roadside. Bugle might follow its bend to the north while Drew continued southwest. There shouldn’t be any boot prints where he’d left the road. He’d hurried out onto a cracked slab of granite until it broke away with the mountainside—but they must know where he was going even if he had no intention of stealing the Osprey.
The irony was it would be useful to have Bugle’s men outside. Drew couldn’t let them catch him, because if they marched him back inside, they would be paralyzed by accusations and arrests—yet on his own, he probably couldn’t cover enough ground to find Marcus. He needed their help.
If Marcus joins the Neanderthals…
Breathing hard, his neck hurting beneath Emily’s waist, Drew ran another four hundred yards before his knee crumpled and he spilled her headfirst into the rocks and brush.
He lay dazed. He’d ripped open his chin and his left palm. Nearby, Emily moaned and stood up, swooning.
Her face was matted with mud and hair. One sleeve had torn, revealing an ugly scrape.
Drew jammed his bloody hand against the ground and groped for her with his good arm. But she moved no farther except to lower herself into a submissive crouch, staring past him with a quiet wail. Drew thought she was looking at soldiers and airmen from the bunker.
They caught us.
He couldn’t locate his pistol. It had bounced into the weeds and rock. “I give up!” he said, spreading his arms. Then he turned, prepared to lunge at Emily if she ran.
Standing in the rain behind him were eighteen Neanderthal hunters.
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Each man was a heavy, dripping shadow elongated by a club or a spear. In front stood a blond child with a bad arm. It was P.J. The darkest shape was Roell.
Drew staggered back. They came for Marcus, he thought before he realized, No, that’s impossible.
If they’d heard Marcus yell, they were looking for him now—but Drew didn’t believe the Neanderthals were telepathic. P.J. must have led his best hunters into the area, tracking Drew’s team. Then the gunfire in the tunnel had brought them right on top of Bunker Seven Four.
P.J. gestured silently, deliberately. It startled Drew, who’d heard too many battle cries.
The gesture caused P.J.’s hunters to spread out in an enveloping half circle. The eighteen of them could certainly kill Drew, but they must have recognized that he was also a warrior. They wanted as few injuries to themselves as possible.
Their caution allowed Drew another instant. Sidling closer, they took the high ground above him, pacing up the slope. In hand-to-hand combat, the taller man often won, but Drew had spotted his pistol in the weeds. The black muzzle protruded from a clump of yellow grass on the far side of Emily’s slim, trembling body.
Roell was among the nearest hunters. If they attacked as soon as Drew jumped, Roell would surely reach him before he grabbed his weapon, so he tried to distract them.
“Nim!” Drew yelled.
Roell’s dark eyes never changed. If Drew’s cadence or his pronunciation were wrong, there was no time to try again. His shout brought different voices through the wind.
“Nnnmh!” Marcus screamed in the distance as another man called, “This way!”
The men from the bunker were almost on top of them. All of the Neanderthals turned slightly. “Bugle!” Drew shouted as he lunged for his pistol.
Roell spun back to confront him, swinging a wooden baseball bat in a crushing overhand. At the same time, behind the Neanderthals, the drizzle erupted with yelling soldiers and rifle shots.
Drew’s feet tangled with Emily’s legs as he slapped his fingers onto the pistol. He rolled away with it, knocking her downhill. His palm found the weapon’s textured metal grip.
Roell smashed his club into Drew’s elbow. Impact snapped the joint and sent a wave of agony through his chest. His numb hand released the Glock. Then another hunter loomed above him, a larger adult carrying a broken flagpole.
This is it, Drew thought, rising a few inches. The feeble movement toward the larger man was the last thing he could do to protect Emily. She might escape while they killed him.
A bullet punched through the man’s head, shoving his body into Roell. The cold rain turned hot. Drew’s eyes were seared by the man’s blood. He couldn’t spare a hand to wipe his face. He wrenched himself onto his knees, lifting the Glock with his good hand.
The Neanderthal tribe had divided. Most of them charged the soldiers on the road above, but there was a third hunter who’d rushed Drew along with Roell and the larger man.
There were always three. Drew was already looking for him. He slowed the man with a wild shot, opening a superficial wound on the man’s hip. The man swung a pipe at Drew’s skull, but he was off balance. Drew dropped the man with two rounds in the belly. The pipe clanked into the ground.
On the hillside, P.J.’s hunters ducked through the brush and rock, sifting toward Bugle. Drew spotted his friend’s tall figure among the gunmen. Several hunters lay dead. Bugle’s squad had secured the high ground that the Neanderthals had wanted for themselves. Half a dozen M4s blazed from the roadside as Bugle’s squad leaned into the slope, shooting down at the tribe.
Some of the hunters were very close. Drew saw them where Bugle’s squad could not, hiding against every scrap of rock. The Neanderthals’ grasp of timing and patterns had led them through the soldiers’ few blind spots.
Drew couldn’t help. On one side of him was Roell. Behind him was Emily. The three of them were momentarily forgotten in the larger fight.
Roell stood up, but it was an awkward motion. He’d been wounded in the burst of rifle fire that killed his companion. Coursing with rainwater, his face had a gruesome white tinge. An exit wound gaped in the middle of his chest.
Drew retreated to Emily. His right arm throbbed uselessly. If he was going to grab her, he needed to holster his weapon—
Roell lurched as he attempted to lift his club, then fell. Even the Neanderthal super endurance had failed him.
Drew tucked his pistol into his belt and caught Emily.
Seconds later, more Neanderthal hunters ambushed Bugle’s squad from behind. Drew saw a small horde collide with the soldiers on the edge of the road, led by a familiar shape.
Marcus.
“Contact left!” a man shouted as the regular volleys of gunfire quit. There was a larger fusillade as Bugle’s squad let go with everything they had, and yet some of the M4s never rejoined the rest. Marcus’s attack eliminated a few soldiers. Then the rest were overrun.
Bugle’s squad disappeared from the roadside, falling back.
It was the opening P.J. needed. His hunters leapt up the slope, sprinting to reinforce Marcus’s group.
How many of Bugle’s squad were left? Eight of them? Less?
In desperation, Drew yanked viciously on Emily’s arm, needing to control her. “Run!” he shouted, driving her with his fury and his pain.
The fence surrounding the base was twelve feet high and topped w
ith barbed wire. Drew might have been able to climb it with one hand, but not without letting her go.
He jogged four hundred yards to the nearest gate, wrestling Emily with each step. She didn’t like the wire or the buildings inside. She knew the base was man-made, and even without her intelligence she was a stubborn little sparkplug.
He worried about Bugle. He wondered if P.J. was alive. Minutes ago, the battle on the mountain had ended. Drew didn’t think Bugle’s squad had been wiped out. They’d fought their way back into the tunnel. The gunfire had petered out, but someone continued to take sporadic shots. Shouldn’t there have been more weapons in play?
Drew wondered if some of the Neanderthals had abandoned the fight at the tunnel entrance and were roving for survivors like himself. Their instincts were fantastic. Marcus had swiftly found his kin, perhaps meeting a trio of scouts from P.J.’s tribe. Then he’d guided them like a spear into Bugle’s flank.
“Get down,” Drew said, bending Emily’s wrist until she fell to her knees. His fingers had squeezed bruises into her skin.
Left-handed, it took him three shots to break the lock on the gate. Even if the Neanderthals had stayed by the bunker, the noise would be all they needed to locate him.
He couldn’t hold Emily and close the gate again, much less tie the chain into a knot.
“Move,” he said.
Maybe the two of them could come back with a new lock once she was wearing M-string. But then what?
They crossed the field where he’d buried Julie. Neither the bunker nor the mountainside had any soft ground, so they’d used this corner of the base. Six graves lay beside her. A lot of good people had given their lives delivering the civilian experts and supplies to the bunker, and Drew guessed at least twenty more had died today.
“We’re almost there,” he said gently.
Emily seemed to notice his change in tone. Her blue eyes flickered, almost meeting his gaze.
Hangar Twelve was secured like the gate. Drew spent two more rounds destroying the lock. His pistol was almost empty. Inside, the Osprey was a welcome sight. In some ways, the aircraft felt like home, but there was no way they could hide in it until the fight was over.
Pain stitched through Emily’s head. “Oooh,” she said, squinting at the interior of the plane. She was sitting down. Drew held her, cradling her in his lap as she suffered through vertigo and nausea. She hated for him to see her retching, but she was glad for his hand on her hip. The gesture wasn’t brotherly. It was intimate and possessive.
“Try to breathe,” he said.
“How long were we outside?”
“Thirty minutes. Longer.”
A neat mesh cap covered her head. Drew had placed his own armor on her, using a flight helmet to secure a roughly cut sheet of M-string on himself. Tasers and a submachine gun sat beside them on the flight deck.
He told her about Bugle, P.J., and Marcus. “I don’t know if any of them are alive,” he said.
Emily closed her eyes, searching for every last reserve of strength. “Let me put some kind of a brace on your arm before we go back outside,” she said, and Drew smiled sadly.
“I love you,” he said.
“Don’t joke about it.”
“I’m not joking. I love you.”
Emily seized his good hand. She was filthy, hurt, and utterly wrung out, and yet the fire curling through her heart was worth it. She glanced at the paired rings on her finger. Maybe it was time to remove them at last.
“I love you, too,” she said.
They strode back through the gate like a pair of killers, jangling with equipment and weaponry. Emily wore an Army jacket that was too big for her. Inside it, she shivered with cold and adrenaline. She carried the M249 submachine gun. Drew had an M4 slung from his shoulder with his good hand steadying its grip. Both of them wore sidearms and Tasers. Her backpack and his belt held extra stun guns.
Emily also carried a walkie-talkie. “Seven Four, this is Romeo One,” she said. “Seven Four, do you copy?”
Her transmissions were almost certainly futile. Drew had tried to contact the bunker from inside the Osprey, using the aircraft’s much stronger radio. Even at a distance of a mile, the pulse was too strong, but they might catch a break if the interference let up for a few seconds.
“Seven Four, this is Romeo One,” she said.
Drew had told her they’d run into Beale AFB through the same gate, which was why the lock was shot out. It was a secondary entrance to the base. The road was only a lane-and-a-half wide, and there was less open space on either side of the asphalt than they would have liked. A brown swamp covered the earth. Dead brown trees and dead brown brush rose from the water, partly concealing their view of the mountain.
The wind and the rain rushed at their backs as they edged forward together. All around them, branches rubbed and scratched. Raindrops whispered in the swamp.
“Stop here,” Drew said.
Emily nodded. She’d walked through the gate for P.J. Drew’s motives were different, and she accepted that he was right. If the two of them had any expectation of not being jailed or banished, they needed to bring Marcus to justice. But she’d walked through the gate for P.J.
“Seven Four, Seven Four,” she said.
She nearly dropped the ’talkie when it answered: “Who is this?”
“Bugle?” Her feelings for him were especially confused, but she let him hear her joy. “You’re okay!”
His voice was rigid. “Are you alone?”
“No.” Emily held the ’talkie to Drew, who said, “Not so loud.” He never took his eyes off the swamp. She lowered the volume. He said, “This is ROMEO Agent Andrew J. Haldane, authorization code Quebec Hotel Four Golf Niner Four.”
“It’s too late for that,” Bugle said as the ’talkie squealed with white noise.
This must be so hard for him, Emily thought. For both of them. She turned to watch the trees and mud.
“I have Priority One targets outside,” Drew said.
No reply.
“Bugle, do you copy? Marcus Wolsinger is outside. I repeat, Marcus Wolsinger is outside and he killed most of our people in the bunker!”
No reply.
Long minutes passed as Emily called again and again. At one point, she was certain she heard a blip of a voice through the static.
The longer they waited, the more her shaking increased. She held her M249 in both hands, steadying the weapon against her ribs, but she couldn’t let go of the ’talkie and it clattered against the weapon’s dark steel. She didn’t think she could have walked more if Drew had wanted to march farther from the gate.
“The Neanderthals will come from two sides,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Keep your eyes moving. Don’t assume it’s safe behind us. They might climb over the fence anywhere in the base.”
“Yes.”
“Remember I love you.”
“Yes.” Even that answer was rote. Her stomach churned, weakening her. The two of them were bait. Standing in the open should bring a trio of hunters for sure.
Drew wanted the entire tribe. “Nim!” he bellowed. “Niiiiim!”
“Someone moved on the hill,” Emily said immediately.
“I see four people,” Drew agreed. “Five. Six.”
Emily slipped the walkie-talkie into her pocket and lifted a pair of binoculars. “There’s Marcus,” she said.
“Good.”
“He looks… more verbal than anyone else I’ve seen. He’s giving orders.” Emily couldn’t make out his face, but his body language was confident. He gestured and the other men moved like puppets, dividing into two groups. Marcus led the smaller bunch to one side.
Emily exchanged her binoculars for the walkie-talkie again. “Bugle, are you there?” she asked. “Bugle!”
It issued only static in her hand.
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
If I say so, run for the plane,” Drew said as six men hurried through trees in front of them.
Emily pointed. “There’s P.J.!”
The boy lingered behind a screen of two hunters, near enough to create a trio, yet far enough behind that his small, ruined body wasn’t a weakness for an enemy to exploit.
“Please try not to kill him,” she said. “Can you shoot his legs?”
He might die anyway, Drew thought. In the movies, people blasted someone in the thigh or the foot to bring them down. In reality, a leg was packed with arteries. The feet were 80 percent bone. If he shot P.J. in the thigh, the boy could die. If he shot him in the ankle or the foot—if P.J. lived—he would have a bad limp to go with his crippled arm.
Three of the Neanderthals were bleeding. One man was wounded seriously in the abdomen. Another looked like he’d lost his teeth. They moved at the front of P.J.’s skirmish line like expendables. They would soak up as many bullets as possible to bring P.J. and the other men to Drew.
“Steady,” he told Emily. He pressed his clumsy right arm against his M4, using the shoulder sling and his forearm to pin the weapon. Firing left-handed from the hip wasn’t ideal, but he needed the carbine’s power and thirty-round magazine.
Beside him, Emily gasped. She dropped her walkie-talkie to embrace her M249.
The first hunters emerged from the trees.
“Fire,” Drew said as she screamed, “Marcus!”
Drew couldn’t look. P.J.’s expendables sloshed through the muck, closing fast. Drew knocked down one man but missed the next two. “Shit, I can’t—”
Emily’s M249 chattered.
Recoil pushed her into Drew’s swollen elbow. Twisting in pain, he let his M4 swing free and pulled his Glock. Four shots stopped the two men.
Then he thrust his Glock at P.J.
P.J. was within thirty feet, running from the water onto the asphalt. It was unlike Drew to think twice, yet he glanced at Emily to see if she needed support. He intended to turn back. Maybe he could wing P.J. or disarm him.
