Predator

by Paul Monette

  “Remind me to pledge allegiance next time we pass a flag.”

  “You got a right to be pissed. I’m not sayin’ you don’t.”

  “That’s real sportin’ of you, pal. And one other thing—what kinda story did you tell Jack Davis?”

  Dillon winced, recalling the three horribly mutilated men they’d found earlier. “Dutch, you’ve got to understand, we been trying to find this place for months. Davis was sent in to pull the CIA guys once they had a fix on the camp. He volunteered for the job. But he must’ve gotten careless. Flew too close, and they shot him down. When he disappeared I had to clean up and stop these bastards. We were so close we couldn’t quit.” Dillon’s tone had softened. It was more like plea bargaining than righteous indignation. “We couldn’t sleep through this one, Dutch. You were the only guy I could trust.”

  “To invade a foreign country. Illegally.” Schaefer spoke cold as a prosecutor, savoring the affront to international law. “You lied, pal—that’s all it comes down to. You stacked the odds and set us up. You could’ve gotten every one of us killed. We could be rottin’ our asses off in tiger cages for the duration of the fuckin’ conflict, and nobody would even know except the White House. Gee, you think maybe him and Nancy’d remember us in their prayers—like when they’re sayin’ grace at dinner, and maybe there’s a picture of Lincoln on the wall?”

  He paused a moment, breathing heavy from the rage and feeling a dryness in his throat like he’d give his right thumb for a Carta Blanca. With huge contempt he spat out the next words.

  “You used to be one of us, Dillon. I think maybe we were drinkin’ buddies too, but I must’ve been really in the bag, ’cause I mixed you up with this guy who saved my ass once. I don’t know who the fuck you are.”

  No one was going to win this tennis match. The ball had been smashed to smithereens.

  “We’ve been through a lot together, Dutch,” Dillon replied quietly, still groping for a way to unplug Schaefer’s rage. “We were the best. But hey, things changed. We’re fighting these Marxist wackos in a dozen fuckin’ countries, and they’re gettin’ closer. This isn’t the rice paddies anymore. We’re three hours from Texas. We lose this fight, Dutch, and they start playin’ the game with buttons. We’re all expendable assets, Major. Can’t you see that?”

  Schaefer snapped the document out of Dillon’s hand. “That’s your problem. Dillon,” he said. “And I’ll tell you somethin’ else—your last stand for democracy and a quarter wouldn’t buy me a fuckin’ Hershey bar. What it’s always about for you is gettin’ ahead, isn’t it? You gotta be the first black president or else. Who cares about a bunch of off-the-wall commandos? They gotta die sometime, right? Well, listen good, dude—my men are not expendable. We don’t do this kind of work.”

  Schaefer crumpled the paper in his fist. “This is your dirty little war, not mine!” Then he stuffed the wad into Dillon’s shirt pocket and walked away.

  Dillon didn’t move for a moment. He let the wad of paper sit in his breast pocket. He knew where he stood with Schaefer now, but in any case there was no more time to waste. He bent to sift again through the papers.

  S E V E N

  Schaefer came up behind Hawkins and watched him tap at the radio dials. He was angry more for his men than for himself. Schaefer was a loyalist, the kind of leader who would defend his last man if it meant his own life, no matter what. There were disadvantages to such loyalty, of course, and getting hooked into deals like this was where it sometimes got you. Schaefer knew he couldn’t just walk, not with five men depending on him, and not in the middle of nowhere. He had to get all of them out somehow. For he didn’t trust anybody else to do it for him now—not the company, not the White House, especially not Dillon.

  As for the problem of Dillon, the major knew that, though he himself had a keen sense of other men’s limits and loyalties, he had one glaring flaw: he believed that combat experience made everyone as tough as he was, and he expected as much integrity as he delivered. And that kind of standards sometimes led to bitter disappointment, or worse. Dillon had treaded on a territory that bordered on the double-cross, offending Schaefer irreversibly. Rank was academic at this point. If Dillon had tried to give him an order just then, he would have responded with a contemptuous laugh.

  While Dillon went on rifling through the papers, the woman on the ground beside him groaned as she began to regain consciousness. A thin trickle of blood from the head wound matted her hair and ran down the side of her cheek. She began mumbling incoherently in Spanish. It sounded like a prayer. Dillon knelt down next to her and began rummaging through her pockets. He retrieved a thin nylon billfold and pulled out an identification card. Beneath a list of serial numbers was her name: “Anna Gonsalves.” No rank noted.

  Hawkins had set up the field radio on a crate just outside the palapa door. Though he had reattached the wires three times he was getting very garbled reception. He listened carefully, every few moments tapping his talk button and saying loudly: “Again. Say it again.” Finally he looked up at Schaefer.

  “Major, we just stepped in some real shit here. I got a hookup with aerial surv.” His voice was strained, and the sweat was pouring down his face from concentration.

  “Any movement?” asked Schaefer impatiently.

  “Everywhere, The whole fuckin’ country seems to be bustin’ ass to get here. Rebels must’ve got word out they were bein’ attacked.”

  “How much time?” Schaefer pressed.

  “Half an hour, tops. Then this place is gonna be crawling with them apes.”

  The major tapped Hawkins lightly on the shoulder in a gesture that managed to be equal parts reassurance and appreciation. “Good work, Hawk. Go find Mac and tell him we move in five.”

  Schaefer knew he had to deal again with Dillon, and as he walked across the wreckage toward the black man he could see that the girl was sitting up. She held the side of her head in one cupped hand. Her eyes were open, but she was clearly still in a daze. Dillon was bending over her asking a question she didn’t seem to hear.

  The black man looked up as Schaefer reached them. The major’s eyes were glazed with suspicion and disdain, but Dillon seemed to have put the disagreement behind him, “She goes with us,” he stated flatly.

  “Hey, she doesn’t need us to save her.” Schaefer’s voice was dry. “She’s gonna have about a thousand friends here in half an hour,”

  “Sorry, Dutch, she’s too valuable. She’s gotta know their whole network.” Dillon couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice. “What she knows could mean the lives of thousands of people. We take her with us,” he repeated precisely. This time it sounded like an order.

  Schaefer held out a massive fist, thumb pointing to the ground. His lower lip curled with suppressed fury. “We take her and she’ll give away our position,” he countered tightly. “Every chance she gets. No prisoners.”

  They were sparring with something here that was bigger than logistics. There was a deep rift between them now with the details of the mission revealed. They both knew how far down two opposite roads they’d traveled since they last saw each other. The sparks flying between them couldn’t hide what seemed like an underlying sense of pity they felt for each other. Dillon simply couldn’t understand why Schaefer still held to an old code that a new kind of war had left far behind. For his part Schaefer was feeling as if he had enemy troops coming at him from both sides—or was it two different kinds of enemy, one inside and one outside, and Dillon was some kind of go-between?

  Dillon walked past Schaefer and strode to the radio hookup and grabbed the handset. He held it out to Schaefer and spoke across the ruins. “You’re still under orders, Dutch,” he said coldly, pulling rank at last. “You want to make the call or should I?”

  Schaefer stared at him, then down at the dazed girl. He knew Dillon had this round won. There was nothing Dutch could do about it while he still had responsibility for the commando team. But he wouldn’t give Dillon the satisfaction o
f a verbal response. He simply turned and walked away.

  “I’m getting my men outa this fuckin’ pit, Dillon,” he growled. “That’s the mission now. The broad’s your baggage. You fall behind, you’re on your own!”

  It was a precarious and potentially dangerous standoff. Dillon was in nominal charge of the evacuation, but he knew his life depended on the major’s cooperation. At this point Dillon’s seniority counted for little more than the couple of extra stripes on his shoulder, and the shoulder was liable to get very bloody at any moment. So he simply let the challenge slide and assumed all further responsibility for the prisoner.

  Perhaps it seemed like a fair enough trade to the black man since he was going to get all the glory once she had been debriefed. Meanwhile, he could handle Schaefer’s anger. He had no doubt the major would bring them safely out of here, and after that he and Schaefer would be off again on those opposite roads. To each his own.

  Still, the mission had radically changed focus for all of them. Now they had one overriding goal: get everyone out of the jungle, safe and soon.

  Schaefer knelt in the kicked-up turf by the trailhead, studying a map of the border terrain that Blain had retrieved from the palapa. Billy, who crouched beside him, had reconnoitered about a mile upstream, and now he pointed to several features on the coded map and fleshed out details of the terrain to the north and west. The rest of the commandos were ranged behind them, covering all entrances to the camp—eyes darting, weapons cocked.

  “This place is too hot for a pickup,” Schaefer grumbled. “That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

  Billy nodded. The major had already talked to a couple of U.S. choppers standing by just over the border. They’d radioed to Hawkins that they were less than ten miles away—miles that under these conditions might as well have been in Siberia.

  “They won’t touch us till we’re over the border.” declared Schaefer. “They made that real clear. They don’t want to be tracked in Conta Mana airspace. Fastidious buggers, aren’t they?”

  “Major, look,” said Billy, “we can lift at LZ 49, right here.” The Indian pointed to a pale green clearing on the contour map just over the border. “But it’ll be awful tough going,” he added grimly, moving his finger along a stretch of heavily shaded concentric circles that indicated steep terrain. “It’s all box canyons except for this valley.” And he traced lightly along a narrow passage above the head of the stream where the shading of the map was slightly paler.

  Dutch whistled Ramirez over and sketched out the route. Though he trusted Billy’s instincts over any map he needed to get the navigator’s view, for Ramirez would set the pace while Billy scouted ahead, and they weren’t going to get anywhere if the two men weren’t in synch. Billy and Ramirez had to gauge each other by an inner radar or else they were lost.

  Shaking his head, Ramirez spat out the butt of his cigar. “Well, it ain’t the prettiest trip I ever took, Major. In fact it’s gonna be a real bitch.” He eyed the jungle valley as Schaefer’s finger traced it. “But if we can get above the river and then go down this gradient here—yeah, we might find our way out.” He rapped the spot with his forefinger, then looked over at Billy with a crooked grin and said: “I suppose this is your idea, Tonto.”

  Schaefer, absorbing Billy’s and Ramirez’s agreement, gritted his teeth and inhaled deeply. “Not much choice, Pancho, right? Take the lead. Double time it,” he ordered, anxious now, as if they’d wasted too much time on maps. He waved an arm, signaling the men to join ranks.

  As the commandos hustled to the trailhead Dillon came walking up with Anna, her head wrapped in a strip of cloth torn from a dead guerrilla’s shirt. Dillon had secured her hands in front. As Schaefer watched them approach he was struck more forcefully than ever by her raw, reckless beauty now that she was walking upright for the first time. She was tall and svelte, with a taut sleek body like a panther—more like an Amazon warrior than the squat, thick women of her country.

  For ventilation in the sweltering heat, she’d unbuttoned the lower snaps on her fatigue shirt and tied the ends together, exposing her flat brown stomach and emphasizing her breasts. Her eyes were bright and alert, and her upper lip quivered with contempt and hatred at the men who had captured her and killed her comrades.

  Schaefer took it all in, registered trouble, then turned back to the others as he organized their retreat. “Lock ’n’ load,” he instructed gruffly. “Watch your ass.”

  Immediately Blain moved out, swinging the machine gun in front of him to throw his weight forward up the hill. Then Hawkins with the radio on his back. Everybody wanted out, sensing the impending arrival of the rebel forces, knowing from their own rage how insanely angry the guerrillas would be.

  Dillon gently prodded the woman forward onto the trail. The moment he touched her she spun around, hurling a stream of insults at him in Spanish.

  “Yankee scum!” she snarled. “You touch me again, you pig, and I’ll cut off your balls!”

  Dillon was in for it, all right, but he was determined to take it in stride. “It’s a long walk back, honey,” he replied evenly. “Make it easy on yourself.”

  She hissed like a cat and spat at his feet, then turned to the trail with a violent twist of her head, Her long black hair, twined in a thick braid which had come loose from under her cap, slapped him across the face.

  Dillon silently counted ten, bent over, and slipped his pack over his shoulder and headed out, ignoring her further outbursts. As they followed the others a voice called out in a loud whisper from behind and to the right.

  “Hey, Dillon! Over here!”

  Dillon knew it was Mac and didn’t respond. He didn’t want to hear another insubordinate jibe about the prisoner. So Mac called louder.

  “Dillon, I said over here!”

  This time the black man turned coldly to acknowledge his hulking comrade, still holding the girl by the rope that bound her wrists. Mac crouched at the edge of the underbrush with glittering eyes, a wild astonished grin on his face. He was staring at Dillon’s shoulder, as if he was going to tease the black man about his rank stripes. “Yeah, what is it, Sergeant?” Dillon asked, visibly annoyed.

  Without a word Mac unsheathed his knife, gave Dillon an antic look, and turned him around by his shoulders with an air of condescension. Crawling across the strap of Dillon’s pack was a four-inch scorpion, its tail quivering. With a self-satisfied smile, Mac skewered the lethal insect on the tip of his blade and displayed its writhing death throes in front of Dillon’s wincing face. Anna smirked, nodding at the disemboweled creature.

  “When my people catch you, you’ll wish you were him!” she declared with a triumphant smile that was the match of Mac’s own.

  Dillon murmured his thanks to Mac, embarrassed and vaguely insulted, while still trying to ignore Anna’s badgering.

  “Any time, sir,” Mac responded with casual disinterest. Then, as if to wring every ounce of irony from the incident, he flung the scorpion to the ground and crunched it with his boot. He turned and strode ahead, as if to leave the women and the noncombatants to bring up the rear. Dillon followed with a weary sigh, tugging Anna along behind him.

  As the small troop moved forward, Billy pulled up at the tail, furtively glancing behind him every few seconds. Since the first mile or so was clearly marked, having been used to haul equipment, Hawkins wouldn’t need him to scout ahead till they came to the first rapids. Billy often covered the team’s retreat, so there wasn’t anything unusual about his dropping back with his ears perked. But he seemed strangely agitated, and he was breathing faster than a man in his shape ought to.

  He sensed a peculiar presence more strongly now than when he was in the crevasse, and it made his skin crawl. Something inexplicably familiar yet unknown. Slowly he scanned the treeline, straining his eyes to catch a hint of something different, something off-key. A force was out there among the trees, waiting, watching, Billy was convinced of it; never had his nerves been so rattled, his brain so w
ired. Then, oddly, the jungle began to grow silent. The incessant chirping and clattering of millions of insects and birds—Billy could almost feel the volume turning down, as if it was some thing in his own head that was warning the world to watch out.

  Billy turned and trotted away up the trail, heavy with dread. He seemed to want to put as much distance as possible now between him and the carnage of the rebel camp. Another soldier might have called it just another case of the spooks. Commando or not, a good fighter left death behind as quick as he could, or else maybe he wouldn’t get up to fight tomorrow.

  But it wasn’t the bodies bloating in the heat in the ruined camp. It wasn’t the circling vultures, or the rats and worms and flies gathering to feed. It was worse than all the minions of death.

  Far up in the tallest cottonwood, high above the wreckage of the camp, the alien had taken in every infinitesimal movement the team had made. As the men exited the site and disappeared into the trees it uttered a low trill as it sprang from the tent of leaves into the humid air, sweeping across to a lower branch in a neighboring tree.

  In that horrible moment it was clear at last that the invader had found a form. Etched against the tropical sky it was humanoid and vast, seven feet tall with ice-blue scales from head to foot, and it swung from tree to tree with the brachiating ease of a golden gorilla. It wasn’t man exactly but a vision of a man, tortured and perfected by a mind that longed to advance the species and make it triumph in the jungle habitat. Replication wasn’t good enough. In homage to the warriors it had tracked all day it sought a shape deep in itself. As if to fight them to the death it had to be itself and them all at once.

  Skillfully and silently, with fluidlike grace, the creature descended branch to branch till it reached the jungle floor. As its powerful three-toed feet flexed in the moss it surveyed the destruction, the remains of burning huts, the dead and dying men. With its glassy eyes bright as tungsten it saw the last flicker of life dissipating like guttered candles. It saw glimmering, ghostlike bodies slowly darkening into charcoal. It saw what this queer precarious world would look like when it ended.