“They have advanced body armor!” Mikhailov added to the lie. It was far more palatable than the truth.
That seemed to calm the men somewhat as the inferno grew in front of them. The heat was becoming too much to bear, but Mikhailov had them hold fast.
Two more shapes burst from the corn down the walkway on Rudenko’s side. One of them was a spinning pyre, its form masked by the flames.
The other was that of a young woman. Naked, with claw marks on her flesh, she stumbled toward Rudenko and his men, holding an arm up to her face to ward off the heat and flames.
“Fire!”
For once, the men hesitated.
“Fire, damn you to hell!” Rudenko pulled the trigger on his shotgun, sending a torrent of Dragon’s Breath that enveloped the girl.
Her nude body exploded into flame. The flesh oozed and melted, falling in burning gobbets to the walkway. An insectoid head emerged as the face dissolved, the chitinous jaws opening to let loose a shriek.
The two soldiers with Rudenko fired. The girl-thing disappeared behind a wall of fireworks from the Dragon’s Breath shells. The screeching stopped, and the twitching corpse fell to the hot concrete, the soft flesh still burning, popping and spattering like grease in a pan.
“Pull back!”
Rudenko felt a hand on his shoulder. Mikhailov.
“Pull back now!”
Grabbing the two soldiers with him, Rudenko pushed them back toward the connector, covering them as they withdrew. His hands and face were blistering from the heat now, and he would not be surprised if he suffered second degree burns.
Before him, the flames from the corn rose all the way to the ceiling of the building, and the place was rapidly filling with thick smoke.
The screeching, at least, had stopped. Any of the things that had been in here were now dead.
Now all that remained was to clear the animal husbandry building and then manage to leave the facility alive.
* * *
Mikhailov led the platoon down the connector to the entrance to the last of the large buildings, where the livestock had been kept. The connector was filled with smoke, and most of the men, including himself, were coughing.
Taking up position right behind the four soldiers who stood at the doors, Mikhailov ordered, “Go!”
Just as they had before, the men flung the doors open and charged inside, the rest of the platoon moving in right behind them. A pair of men pulled the connector door closed behind them, both to shut out as much of the smoke as they could, and to protect the platoon from being surprised by anything that might have survived the inferno in the building behind them.
Unlike the other buildings, there was some light in this one, shining through the smashed wall panels at the rear. Mikhailov could see animal pens, food and water bins, tools, and a variety of other things as he quickly took in his surroundings.
As the damage on the exterior suggested, this building, too, was a shambles. Everything firmly attached to the walls or sunk into the concrete floor had been dislodged, mangled, or otherwise destroyed. Some of the animal pens, where he assumed cows had been kept, had been knocked over, the metal rails bent outward. He could hardly imagine the panic such placid animals must have experienced to cause them to do such damage.
“Rudenko!”
“Sir!”
“Once we are finished, we will level this place.” Mikhailov prodded a crushed metal bucket that, in the beam of his weapon’s flashlight, sparkled in the light, as if it had been newly made. “I don’t want anything bigger than my thumb to remain intact. Take the men with RPOs and have them stand guard outside until we are finished. I’ll contact the helicopter and let them know we’re almost ready for extraction.”
“Understood, sir.” Turning, he bellowed, “Ryzhik! Alexandrov! Lesokhin! Sleptsev! Take up positions outside and cover our asses until we blow this place to hell!”
* * *
Mladshiy Serzhant Isaak Moseevich Ryzhik had never been so relieved as when he stepped out into the sunlight through the hole in the back of the animal husbandry building. He had never seen combat, but had been in enough serious fights in sleazy bars in Moscow to not be easily frightened. But in that accursed building full of corn, he had been terrified. Whatever those things were that had come out of the flames at them, they had not been terrorists. Ryzhik did not consider himself a genius, but he knew that much.
He waved at the Mi-17, which was in the process of setting down about a hundred meters away. The crew chief, who was standing in the open side door, tossed him a salute.
“Over here.” He led the three other men to a position about forty meters from the building. “This should be a good spot for the fireworks.” He unslung the RPO-M rocket from his back, and the other men followed suit. It was a camouflaged tube about a meter long with a rounded black front cap, a removable trigger grip near the front, and a stepladder sight. Ryzhik flipped up the sight, then set the tube on his right shoulder, holding the trigger grip with his right hand and the foregrip with his left.
Sleptsev imitated what Ryzhik had done, pointing the weapon in the same direction, at the facility.
“Right.” Ryzhik set down his rocket. “Now keep your eyes on the building and wait for the captain’s orders. Sleptsev! Sleptsev!”
Beside him, Sleptsev had smoothly pivoted, pointing the RPO-M behind them before squeezing the trigger.
With a boom and a cloud of smoke, the rocket shot from the tube, the back-blast knocking Ryzhik to the ground. The projectile didn’t stream flame or smoke as it flew toward its target, but it was clearly visible as it sailed right through the side passenger door of the Mi-17 and into the rear of the helicopter.
The crew chief had seen it coming and had leaped clear, but that didn’t save him. The helicopter vanished in a huge fireball, sending chunks of the still-spinning rotor blades, metal from the fuselage, and other bits and pieces flying to a radius of more than a hundred meters.
Ryzhik had recovered his wits enough to grab his assault rifle. A curse on his lips, he aimed at Sleptsev, who was turning back toward him, and fired.
The bullets slammed into Sleptsev, but they had no effect. Ryzhik’s eyes widened as he saw some flying out the other soldier’s back.
But there was no blood, no sign of pain on Sleptsev’s face as he raised his own weapon and fired a dozen rounds into Ryzhik before turning on the other two men, who were still standing there, staring in shock.
After gunning them down, he tossed his rifle to the ground and retrieved Ryzhik’s RPO. Taking a knee, he flipped up the sight and took aim at the hole in the wall of the animal husbandry building through which he had escaped to freedom.
* * *
“Chyort voz'mi!” Mikhailov’s curse at the sound of gunfire outside was drowned out by the roar of an explosion. The comforting whump-whump-whump of the Mi-17’s spinning rotors had disappeared. “The helicopter’s down!”
There was more gunfire outside.
“Kapitan!” Rudenko took him by the shoulder. “If whoever’s out there gets the RPOs, we’re in trouble.”
Mikhailov had a sudden sensation of déjà vu, recalling the airport terminal on Spitsbergen as it exploded, destroyed by the harvesters masquerading as Spetsnaz, killing most of his men. Behind them was the inferno of the greenhouse building containing the corn. The walls to either side were intact, with no doors to the outside. The ceiling was too high to reach. And beyond the rear wall lay an unknown threat that had destroyed their helicopter, and probably killed the men he had sent out there.
Rudenko reacted first. Pulling Mikhailov along, he shouted at the top of his lungs, “Follow me!”
Dashing toward the right side of the building, which happened to be the closest to where they’d been standing, Rudenko yanked two high explosive grenades from his combat harness. “Grenades to the wall!”
Snapping back to reality, Mikhailov snatched a pair of grenades from his own vest and pulled the pins. Two other men did the same.
“Now!” Mikhailov rolled them toward the base of the wall, and the other men followed suit.
They dropped to the ground, and a few seconds later eight grenades went off, blowing a gaping hole to the outside.
“Go, go, go!” Mikhailov was on his feet, shoving the other men toward the breach. He had no idea how much time they had, if they had any at all. “Come on! Move!”
He heard a familiar bang outside, and his gaze locked with Rudenko’s. Both men had heard it often enough to recognize it as the sound of an RPO being fired.
Mikhailov turned toward the rear wall, his mouth open, screaming for his men to take cover. Then he felt himself being lifted off his feet, Rudenko’s bulk propelling him backward. His back slammed into the bottom of a big freestanding livestock watering trough. Flipping it on its side, Rudenko dived in beside him. The sergeant just had time to flip it upside down over the top of them before the building was torn by fire and thunder.
CHAPTER NINE
“I hate the thought of you leaving so soon.”
Jack kissed Naomi’s hair and ran his fingers along her spine. They’d spent most of the time in bed since he’d arrived from San Antonio. While their original plan had been for him to hop into his SUV and drive out to LA with the two cats, Vijay’s untimely accident and the troubling news Renee had uncovered had put him on a much tighter schedule. He had arrived at work that morning, the essentials already packed up in the car, and rushed through the final signing off process that was the end of the short-lived SEAL project. He had brought Alexander and Koshka along, and they waited impatiently in their crates in his office while he performed his final duties as a servant of the people of the United States.
Then he was off to the airport, where he caught a flight to LAX. Naomi had bought two tickets for him in first class, and Jack had talked the flight attendants into letting him board the plane with both cats. Koshka had accepted everything with quiet dignity, staring up at Jack from her spot on the seat beside him, while Alexander had voiced his indignation loudly and repeatedly from his spot on the floor. Jack had felt like the parent of a howling baby until one of the flight attendants had bribed the big cat to silence with a full serving of salmon.
Once in LA, Naomi had met him in a chauffeured car, courtesy of Howard Morgan, and the two of them quickly caught up on recent events as they headed to their new condo. Jack had the brief impression of the walls being made out of money before he turned the cats loose.
Then Naomi led him to the bedroom so they could get caught up on other things, because they didn’t have much time. While Jack was in flight from San Antonio, Naomi had booked a flight that evening that would take him from LA to Hyderabad.
“Yeah,” he told her, “I don’t exactly want to go, either. But we’ve got to get to the bottom of this, and Vijay may be our only solid lead.”
“I still think I should go with you.” Naomi brushed a hand across his face, her fingers lingering on the scars left by shrapnel when Jack had been wounded in Afghanistan.
Jack smiled. “We’ve been over that already, and you lost, fair and square. Listen, your place is here, doing the genius things that only you can do. I know you want to be there for Vijay, but this is a job for a hired gun, as Renee likes to say. Hired guns can be replaced. Brilliant geneticists can’t.”
She propped herself up on an elbow, fixing him with her blue and brown eyes. “You may be a hired gun, but you’re not replaceable, Jack. Not to me.” She kissed him softly. “Don’t you ever forget that.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As he leaned forward to kiss her, the bed suddenly bounced as Alexander’s twenty pounds landed near their feet. Like a chaperone who had caught his charges about to do something naughty, he wriggled his way between them and flopped over on his side. Wrapping his forepaws, half the size of Jack’s palms, around Naomi’s arm, he began to purr.
“You turd.” Jack rubbed the big cat’s head while Naomi giggled. “I see he missed you, too.”
There was another bounce, and Koshka, still bearing the scar of where a harvester had nearly killed her, joined them. Unlike Alexander, she was content to sit near their feet, watching her feline companion’s display with obvious disdain.
“I hate to say this, but I wish I could take you with me, you big lug.” Jack shifted his scratching to under Alexander’s chin, and the big cat’s purr grew even deeper. While the scars weren’t as obvious as the one Koshka bore, Alexander, too, had been savaged by a harvester. Alexander had saved Jack’s life twice, and Jack felt acutely vulnerable any time the big cat wasn’t with him. Even though all the harvesters had supposedly been accounted for, there were still only three ways to tell if the person next to you might be one: look at them with a thermal imager, try to set them on fire, or have a cat. Of the three, Jack trusted feline instinct the most. “But you need to stay here and help Koshka watch over Naomi.” He frowned. “Speaking of which, did you happen to ask Morgan about feline security services?”
“Yes, but he wasn’t exactly wild about the idea.” Naomi sat up so she could reach Koshka, who deigned to accept her human’s attention. “Cat hair and clean rooms don’t exactly mix, and he just stared at me when I suggested they keep cats at the security checkpoints. But I did get him to agree to let me take them to my office.” She shrugged. “He just has no idea of what we’ve been through. None of them do.” She was silent for a moment. “Maybe we’re just being paranoid.”
“Paranoid’s a good thing in my book, at least until we’ve sorted out what’s going on. If it’s nothing, fine. I just need to know you’re safe.”
She leaned over and kissed him. “I can take care of myself, you know.”
“I know. That’s one of the many things I love about you.” He happened to catch sight of the clock. “Crap. I’m going to have to get going.”
“Not quite yet.” Naomi gently shooed Koshka from the bed, then did the same to Alexander, who gave her a hurt look. “We’ve still got a little time left.”
Then she pulled Jack back into her arms.
* * *
In the thatched hut that was the home of his family near Koratikal, Naveen Reddy shivered with fever. And yet, strangely, he did not feel ill. Not exactly. He felt more like he had smoked ganja after a very hard day in the fields. He was placid, lethargic. Tired.
His wife chittered at him, berating him as she always did for being a lazy scoundrel. He looked at her, and smiled to himself. He saw her mouth still moving, but the sound of her voice, an angry buzz that followed him everywhere but to the fields, had faded away to blissful silence. There was no one else in the hut, for their three children had already left for school. Their education was the one thing that he had insisted on, despite his wife’s endless objections.
Naveen also noticed, as if he were a separate being within himself, that the aches and pains that never left him were gone. Like his wife’s voice, they had faded away into the pleasant numbness that had crept over his body with the onset of the fever.
A glint of white caught his eye. It was the business card the government man had given him, there on the floor next to the mat on which he lay. When the fever had come, he had been tempted to call the man.
But going to Koratikal where there was a phone was a long walk, and he was sure it would be for nothing. Naveen had been sick before, and he would no doubt be sick again. It happened sometimes. It was simply the way of things, and this would be no different. His body would recover, and he would again have to listen to the incessant nattering of his wife.
No, there was no need to call the government man, not that Naveen could have done so now. He was too tired.
Still marveling at the miracle of seeing his wife jabbering but not having to hear her, he closed his eyes and fell into a sleep filled with strange dreams.
* * *
Jack looked out the window of the car, feeling a keen sense of disorientation at the British convention of the driver being on the right and the passenger on the left. Behind the wheel
was Surya Chidambaram, another of Vijay’s cousins who had insisted on picking Jack up from Rajiv Gandhi International Airport and taking care of him while he was in India. Surya’s black Mahindra Scorpio SUV sped down Pathergatti Road toward the hospital where Vijay remained in critical condition.
“Are you sure you don’t want to get some rest first?” Surya was a handsome man, about five years younger than Jack. He had studied engineering at Caltech, and had been extremely successful at one of the many high technology companies that called Hyderabad home.
Jack had taken a liking to him instantly.
“I’d love to, but I’ve got to talk to Vijay as soon as possible. I just hope I can get something intelligible out of him.” Jack felt like he’d been run over by a bus in forward and reverse after the grueling trip halfway across the world, but he knew the clock was ticking. As exhausted as he was, he couldn’t delay talking to Vijay.
Surya glanced at him. “I hope you won’t be disappointed. I saw him yesterday, but he wasn’t very lucid. He’s still in terrible shape.”
“Yeah.” Jack felt a sense of grim foreboding settle over him as they drove on in silence.
At the hospital, they were taken to the intensive care unit. Unable to help himself, Jack stopped in his tracks as he entered Vijay’s room. The only part of the man’s body not wrapped in bandages or a cast was his face, which bore several sets of stitches and was horribly bruised. His bed was surrounded by equipment that beeped, hissed, and whirred in a mechanical rhythm.
“Just a few minutes.” Vijay’s attending physician had been reluctant to admit Jack at first, but Surya had managed to persuade him.
“We won’t be long,” Jack promised, wondering if Vijay would even be able to respond to any questions.
With a curt nod, the doctor left the room and closed the door.
Approaching the bed, Jack looked down at “the worm guy’s” battered face. “Vijay, can you hear me?”
Surprisingly, Vijay’s eyelids fluttered open instantly. It took his eyes a moment to focus. “Jack.” He paused, his eyes shifting in small jerks to Surya, who nodded gravely. Then he looked back at Jack and whispered, “I was hoping Naomi would come. She’s much better looking than you.”
Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) Page 9
