by Paul Monette
As Dillon digested Mac’s fury, the burly soldier stood up and grabbed his gun. “I got the first watch,” he declared as he walked away. For all the inexplicable horror he had seen, he was a soldier first. Even in the face of an enemy which seemed unconquerable, the night watch must be kept. Perhaps for Blain’s sake as much as anyone’s.
As Mac departed Dillon turned to Anna. “What’d you see?” he demanded in Spanish. “What happened to the man with the radio?”
The rebel woman replied slowly in broken, halting English. “It was . . . it was the jungle,” she stuttered. The hard edge, the aggressive tension were gone from her now as she retreated passively in fear. She wanted these men’s protection, enemy or not. Politics didn’t matter anymore. Life did. The American Satan was nothing to the devil she had seen.
“Christ, what the hell . . . ?” Dillon sputtered with exasperation. “Talkin’ to you two is like tryin’ to sell a freezer to a fuckin’ Eskimo! Why can’t you give me a straight answer?”
But Anna had closed again like a bruised orchid. Her eyelids drooped, and the old convent prayers came murmuring out of her mouth, lulling her into a peaceful stupor. Dillon wasn’t going to get anything more from her. As Ramirez stood nervously by he spotted Billy off to the side of the group by himself. The Sioux was meditating on the night-curtained jungle around him—aware, catlike, absorbing every sound, his nerves live like cinders in a fire. Ramirez approached the wiry Indian. “You know somethin’, don’t you, Billy boy?” he asked. “What is it? Tell your pointman.”
Billy turned to look at Ramirez, his face frozen, eyes black and wide as the onyx orbs of a Mayan idol. “I’m scared,” he said, and the simple hush of the remark was more horrible than a blood-curdling scream.
To Ramirez’s knowledge Billy Sole had never been scared in his life—or at least he’d never admitted it. For this stoic soldier to yield to fear made Ramirez suddenly feel like he was standing naked and weaponless in a lion’s den. The spunky barrio tough was chilled to the marrow. Almost in desperation Ramirez tried to coax the Indian out of his terror as if it would still his own. “Bullshit, man! You ain’t afraid of nothin’!” It sounded strangely like a threat.
Billy stood firm, his feet spread in an animal crouch. He looked Ramirez straight in the eyes. Although Billy had seen no more of the actual creature than anyone else—less, in fact, than Mac and Anna—he’d looked deeper than all the rest in his trance.
“There’s something waiting for us out there,” he whispered, inches from Ramirez’s face. “And it’s not guerrillas, my friend. It’s not about war, and it’s not about weapons, and nobody’s gonna win.”
Dillon, who’d caught fragments of the interaction, thought Billy must be spooked. “He’s just losin’ his cool,” Dillon explained archly to the speechless Ramirez as the Indian wandered off. “There’s nothing out there but a couple of shitass pinko guerrillas we’re gonna take down,” he insisted stubbornly, as sure of their superior power as his CIA brethren had been during the bombing of North Vietnam. But despite the force of his words there was a razor’s edge of doubt in his voice, and both men knew it.
Schaefer strode back over as the conversation petered out, leaving Dillon alone with no one to order around. The major was holding his hand up, gripping the clutch of dogtags taken from Davis’s slaughtered men. He shoved them in Dillon’s face.
“Still don’t get it, do you, Dillon?” he growled, his voice a mix of grief and fury and helplessness. “He took Davis, and now he wants us.”
The jungle lay in a hot, inert, and inky darkness, though a crisp three-quarter moon drifted in and out of the canyon mist, now and then breaking clear and shedding a cool glow over the trees. Mac was hunched in his foxhole staring into the night, his weapon set on a tripod before him. His eyes kept catching phantoms as he gazed at the dense forest. Leaves became hands, vines snakes. The brutal events of the day were sufficient to unbalance even this most battle-scarred vet’s hard-edged attitude. He kept thinking of another time years ago south of Khe San when he and Blain had survived another nightmare trap. He began to whisper aloud to himself as if he were back in the mud and smoke, crawling overland to Penong Bay, Blain at his side.
“Same kinda jungle,” he murmured. “Same winkin’ moon and everything, bro’. A real number ten night, remember? Just you and me, mud up our fuckin’ noses, the only guys in the whole platoon who made it out in one piece.”
As his eyes darted about anxiously, he recalled that earlier night so vividly he could no longer distinguish it from now. “We crawled out right under their noses, didn’t we?” he continued with a dry laugh. “Not a scratch. No fuckin’ chili-choker’d ever get to you, bro’,” he drawled with pride. “You was just too good. Hell, if you don’t stay in one piece, then neither do I. That’s a deal, okay?”
Then Mac shook himself back to the present, and a rush of anger took over.
“I promise you this, bro’,” he swore with murderous intensity, the blood oath ringing in the jungle dark. “Whoever he is, I hope he’s plannin’ to hit us again . . . ’cause he’s got my name on him, like a fuckin’ tattoo on his forehead!”
An electron force field surrounded the alien’s ship as the creature, now on the prowl again full-scale, came gliding down the laser-suspended ramp and out into the humid night. As it stepped from the beam of light to the rugged ground its humanoid form merged with the night’s moonless shadows. But its masquerade went much further than the coincidence of shadow play. For the remarkable being had set another of its defensive techniques into motion. Now its very cells began to swirl and integrate with the night air until there was no sign of the creature at all.
It was as if it had realized from observing the commandos the importance of absolute camouflage, especially under cover of darkness.
Thus, unlike the earlier incident of the cloning of the hawk, this time it didn’t require a host animal to receive. It simply vanished, its whole substance, tissue, skin, organs, coasting on the jungle breezes, dispersed and invisible. The tracks in the soft dirt stopped a few yards from the ship at the edge of the clearing, so that a tracker like Billy might have supposed the creature had flown off into the sky. But no—it was as disparate now as a virus. And it was on the hunt again, foraging toward the remaining commandos.
Now that it had satisfied itself with a thorough examination of Hawkins’s body it was impatient for a new specimen, perhaps something even more advanced.
As the alien disappeared into the darkness, the lasers silently retracted and the ramp withdrew, becoming flush with the spacecraft’s glimmering surface, not a hint of a seam joint. The craft became an impenetrable shell, pure and pregnant as an egg. Then its glossy copper-colored exterior began to fade and cloud. It too was becoming one with the night, just as its captain had moments before. Soon it held its place invisible as a god.
T H I R T E E N
At the commando camp the mountain mist had thickened, and the canyon night was alive with the crackle and hoot and screech of the prowler beasts. A few of the team managed to nod off for a few restless moments at a time, but the men were so wired and on edge that true rest was mostly impossible. The spent commandos were operating on sheer raw nerve—headachy, cranky, and exhausted, yet forced to a state of alertness by the consuming fear of an enemy they still couldn’t name.
Ramirez squatted a few feet from Mac and turned to the brawny vet. “You got any more smoke, buddy?”
“Shit. no. Toked the last one while the boss was givin’ that spick whore the third degree. No offense, ya’ lousy wetback.” Mac coughed and chuckled comfortably at his own good-natured racial slurs.
“Eat shit and die, asshole,” Ramirez shot back. Then he laughed heartily too. and they winked at each other.
Yet even as they played this game Mac noticed a sudden change in the background noise. He crossed his lips with a forefinger to silence Ramirez because he’d noticed an odd lull in one quadrant of the jungle darkness. The normal scurrying r
odents frantic for a safe harbor from hungry predators, the calls of baboons teasing and warning each other of a stalking cheetah—all had turned dead quiet in the north/northeast. Mac instantly gripped the trigger of his gun barrel, his jaw clenched.
Then somewhere off in the trees a barely negligible metallic click signaled the sound of a warning flare rocketing over the area. A moment later a brilliant flash exploded as the flare burst into flame, momentarily illuminating the camp as if a shooting star had hurtled by.
Then an echoing scream filled the night as a startled intruder ran roughshod through the undergrowth toward the men, branches cracking, the dull thump of heavy feet growing louder. Yet the commotion was so fast, and the misty shadows and canyon night so full of richocheted sound, no one could tell what was charging into the camp.
But the attacking creature was making a beeline straight toward Mac, who stood aiming his M-202 at the unidentified enemy. It broke through a last gnarled bramble and leaped with a roar for the throat of the tough soldier, knocking him into his foxhole.
Mac hollered in stunned surprise, and the rest of the men rushed to the side of the darkened pit, where it was impossible to distinguish Mac from the enemy he battled. Grunts and inhuman growling rose from the foxhole as the commandos stood by helplessly, reluctant to fire for fear of injuring Mac. It was as if each man were standing defenseless at his own grave.
A few final bursts from the flare briefly illuminated the foxhole, yet still they could not separate the two clenched and thrashing figures. Then for a second a blinding gleam startled the men in the circle as Mac’s machete caught the light like an ancient warrior’s sword.
The sky faded to dark again as the flare burned itself out. Just then a geyser of blood shot up from the hole, splattering on Schaefer’s boot. Following that a high-pitched scream—unmistakably a death cry—reverberated off the canyon walls. But whose? Tortured seconds passed as the men waited anxiously for the dust to settle, for the victor—if there was one—to stand. All guns were aimed at the pit in case Mac had been the loser.
Silence had replaced the sounds of struggle. Then a figure slowly pulled himself up, granting a sigh and propping himself against the crumbling wall of the foxhole. It was Mac, covered in sweat and dirt, gasping for breath, clothes shredded and bloodied, his knife dangling limply at his side. He looked up directly at Schaefer, his chest heaving as he gulped in the humid night air and whispered hoarsely. “Got the motherfucker,” he grinned between gasps.
The major snapped on a flashlight and raked the foxhole. Lying in a pool of blood—Mac’s and its own—stretched a massive wild boar still quivering in the final throes of death.
For the first time Mac had a dear look at his opponent and stared in disbelief at the creature that almost killed him.
“A pig . . .” he muttered with an edge of disappointment, shame almost. “. . . just a fuckin’ pig?”
Schaefer slowly shined his light the full length of the animal. Its deadly sharp tusks gleamed like a weird trophy in the light. Ramirez peered over the edge and looked down in awe.
“Holy shit, Mac!” the Chicano exclaimed. “Shove an apple in the fucker’s mouth, and that oughta feed us for a month!”
Mac snarled up at the Mexican in mock anger. “I ain’t plannin’ on stayin’ around here long enough for dinner. She’s all yours, buddy.”
With the men’s attention focused on the dead animal Anna took advantage of the moment’s distraction. A confused recollection of her cause returned to mind, and she hustled to make a quick escape. She stooped and picked up an MP-5 from the ground with her bound hands. Then she turned, staring into the mist-enshrouded night for a way out.
But even as she moved forward a few yards her fears of what might be waiting in the dark came rushing back, clouding her sense of resolution again. She stopped and looked up at the opaque sky, and the dim round of the moon played above the trees like a magic eye. For a second she imagined she could feel the gaze of the alien’s golden honeycomb eyes piercing the mist. She remembered the spearing of Hawkins with a moan of horror. She abandoned the idea of running and dropped the gun to the ground.
By now the major and Ramirez had dragged the still shaking Mac from the foxhole. A huge gash ripped across the thatch of hair on the victor’s chest, one of the boar’s brute attempts to skewer him on its deadly tusks.
“Get a field dressing on him right away,” Schaefer instructed harshly. This whole scene seemed all wrong. The violence was crude and stupid, and the enemy was dumb. It was almost like a mockery of the real horror that lay in wait in the jungle fog.
Ramirez ran to grab the medic’s bag as Billy, who’d been scouting the perimeter beyond the foxholes, called out. “Major, over here!” he shouted urgently.
Schaefer turned apprehensively, something dire in Billy’s tone warning him that the Indian had discovered something bad and irreversible. Dutch walked with bitter resignation toward the scout, whom he found standing with a flashlight pointed at the canvas bag that had cradled Blain’s body. It was violently slashed open, covered in blood, empty.
The Sioux looked up at the major and spoke the obvious, as if he found some weird comfort in sticking strictly to the facts. “The body’s gone,” he said flatly.
Ramirez came running up. He had patched Mac up, then made a quick tour and checked out the trip wires surrounding the camp. “Came in through the wires,” he reported. “Took him right out from under our noses.”
Anna, once more seeking the security of the men, appeared at their side and stared down into the empty, blood-soaked bag. Then she glanced anxiously into Schaefer’s eyes. The major knew from her stricken look that she sensed, she knew the horror that had driven her mind astray was not just a nightmare. The body bag woke her up for good. She looked as if she would never sleep again.
Hours passed in a grim silence, each of the men turned in on himself and hunkered above his weapon. Slowly the blue-black predawn sky offered a hushed clarity, and the men’s imaginations were calmed by the gathering light. A patchy ground fog still covered the area. Anna, who’d finally been overtaken by sleep, awoke with a start in her foxhole, the rising cacaphony of early morning jungle music reaching its high-pitched tempo. A blue-tail monkey screamed at a cropping mountain goat. A cheetah yawned and turned belly up, fat and sleepy from a night of eating a side of deer.
Directly above Anna’s head a chameleon emerged on a leaf. Carefully the rebel woman extended her arm, allowing the lizard to crawl onto her, watching fascinated as it changed color to match her tawny skin tone. Then she gently placed the creature back on the leaf and watched with a half-smile as it changed once more to a cool green and glided into the jungle.
Schaefer, Billy, and Ramirez were busy examining the area near the empty bag, poring over every inch of trip wire, worrying the ground for signs and hints of what happened.
“Boar set off the trip,” Billy reported to Schaefer finally. “No other tracks.”
Schaefer knelt and examined the thin, well-hidden stretch of wire, with the ash-gray short in the copper where the boar’s hoof had connected. Then the major stood, looking around the makeshift camp. The canyon below was slowly steaming clear of mist.
“How the hell could anything get through this setup and carry Blain out?” observed Ramirez with brooding frustration. “And they did it right under the light of a flare without leaving a fuckin’ trace.” The Chicano kicked a rock in frustration, exploding a nest of centipedes that scurried away in panic.
Schaefer considered the possibilities, his eyes drawing a bead on the tree line as if it were a graph. “He’s using the trees,” he said at last, pointing to the thick-crowned cottonwoods. “The bastard knows our defenses,” he went on bitterly.
Then he caught his own use of the singular noun. Instinctively he’d concluded this was not the work of a team. There was nothing guerrillalike about it. It was the macabre work of a singular enemy, and thus the logic sided more and more with Billy’s story.
/> In his mind Schaefer traced the path the intruder might have traveled through the trees, then down to the ground where it could’ve hopped the trip wire. But what sort of creature could move like that he didn’t have a clue. What he did know was that they were dealing with a remarkable villain, cunning beyond anything Schaefer had witnessed in Thailand, Beirut, or any other blood-hole of the world.
Somehow, it seemed, this enemy flew through the trees with the dexterity of a monkey and across open turf with the speed and agility of a jaguar. On top of that it possessed the strength of ten gorillas and the subtle stealth of all the wildcats of the jungle combined. God knew what else it could do. And so far there’d been no sign of even a knife or a pistol, let alone the kind of high-tech combat gear the commandos carried. So far, Schaefer thought grimly, there wasn’t a sign of anything human.
As the major squinted along the dawn-streaked tree-line, Billy and Ramirez stood rigid and motionless, glaring blankly in among the branches, seeming to share a dread as acute as their mutual feel for the flow of a trail. It was becoming clear to each of the remaining commandos that they were up against terrible odds. Ramirez, normally the tough, abrasive street kid, blunt and not given to asking questions, suddenly revealed a rare twinge of anxiety. “Why didn’t he try to kill one of us last night?” he asked in the meek tones of a child afraid to sleep without a night light.
Schaefer turned abruptly to him. “He came back for the body,” he replied coldly. “He’s killing us one at a time . . .”
“Predator,” Billy stated flatly, his face showing no emotion.
Schaefer was sick and tired of vague explanations. He turned to Anna, their only concrete witness. He reached down, his eyes blazing and his jaw tensed, and yanked her firmly to her feet.
“Yesterday, what’d you see?”
She stared back at the major vacantly. But Schaefer’s insisting expression seemed to shake her out of her trance. She struggled to keep reality clear. The major was determined to drag the information out of her if he had to cut out her tongue, but he saw at least she was struggling to respond. She began to speak slowly.
