Predator
Page 17
“Holy mother o’ Jesus!” Phillips’s pilot exclaimed.
The general was shaken and totally bewildered by the bomb blast, but he had to stay in charge. He knew something extraordinary had just happened and that it was beyond the soldiering techniques of the guerrillas or even his own beloved army. “Orbit right,” he ordered. “Check out ground zero!”
The pilot leveled the craft and headed across the treetops toward the source of the blast, now rolling with smoke as several trees went up like fireballs.
Meanwhile, Schaefer cautiously lifted his head from the ground where he’d flattened himself in the dirt for protection. He stared at the devastation with a curious dispassion. The entire area was deadened—every leaf, every tree, every living thing within fifty feet of the ship was black and charred, stripped down to a pulp of smoldering wood and naked dirt. And everything was coated with a fine sifting of white ash, like fallout after a nuclear blast. At the center site of the ship itself magnesium flares still burned with exotic colors, like some weird carnival at the end of the world. Schaefer rose up from his depression and stared hollow-eyed. Behind him the sound of choppers grew louder as the two craft flared over the trees, but the major didn’t appear to notice.
The crews gaped at the devastation as they approached slowly, their eyes struggling to penetrate the dense white smoke. As one descended the other hovered a hundred feet above. As the first drew closer to the ground its propwash created a whirling storm of while dust. As they hovered about twenty feet over the annihilated landscape and some of the dust blew off, they beheld a figure materialize from the raging smoke and ash, a naked body covered head to toe in mud, blood, and soot. It was Schaefer, but looking for all the world as if he were the alien.
As the chopper hovered over the blast site where the spacecraft once had stood pristine, the visored and helmeted men with weapons poised looked suspiciously at Schaefer. To the lone naked warrior gazing up at the choppers like a caveman the soldiers looked as much like aliens to him as he to them. Which was the truer soldier? Who could say any more? All the rules had changed, though only the naked man knew how much.
The door gunner swung his M-60 into firing position, pointing it directly at Schaefer. He racked the bolt, loading a round. The other three soldiers watched silently, tensed, frightened. Schaefer didn’t look human at all. They didn’t know who he was. But Anna, crouching beside the door gunner, staring transfixed at the strange creature before her, narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. There was something about his gait, about the lift of his broad shoulders, that looked familiar.
As more of the ash settled like snow, Schaefer’s image grew clearer. He looked up dazed and raised a hand, like a lost man in space making contact with members of an alien race for the first time. Men were looking at men, but neither side seemed to know anymore what a man was. It was a hopeless standoff.
The chopper hovered nearer to the ground now but still as if reluctant to land. More helmeted and visored men crowded at the door, more weapons leveled at Schaefer. Suddenly Anna’s eyes went wide with recognition. She held up her own hand, like a mirror image of the waving man below, and shouted: “No! No! Don’t shoot!” And she shoved the gunner’s rifle aside just as he squeezed the trigger, so the weapon shot off harmlessly into the smoking trees.
“What is it?” Phillips demanded, grabbing the woman’s hand as if he feared she was sending signals.
“It’s your man!” Anna said excitedly, pointing down at the major. “It’s him!”
Phillips squinted and looked hard. “Holy shit, so it is. Hold your fire!” he bellowed.
Anna shoved her way through the huddle of men and leaped from the craft, which was hovering about five feet above the ground. She landed on her knees on the ruined ground below, scrambled to her feet, and charged toward Schaefer screaming, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You’re alive!” she hollered, then threw her head up to the sky. “Thank you. Father—he’s alive!”
And she rushed over to the dazed, shocked commando, tottering there in the war-torn clearing and barely able to stand. She threw her arms around him. “Oh, thank God you’re alive,” she sobbed, impulsively covering his bloody chest with kisses.
Schaefer looked down at her through glazed eyes, then his mouth turned up with a faint smile of recognition. He let her take his hand and lead him over to the chopper, which now hugged the ground, its blades slowly whirling. The soldiers all stood back from the door as Anna scrambled in and reached for the major. He gripped her hand and, grunting with his wounds, slung himself up and in. For a moment there as he was in movement he showed a trace of the old football hero victorious at game’s end and ready to be borne from the stadium on the shoulders of his teammates.
Moments later they were airborne, heading at high speed across the trackless jungle, the rotors thumping like heavy machine-gun fire. Schaefer was seated on a bench in the cargo hold beside Anna, who still clutched his hand and wept softly, though she was smiling the whole time. A green army blanket was thrown about the major’s shoulders, mud and blood still streaked all over him. His entire body seemed laced with deep cuts.
The medic, hunched before him with an open field kit, syringe, and bandages, turned to Phillips. “Looks like he’s been through hell. I can’t believe he’s still alive. What the fuck went on down there?”
“If it hadn’t been for her he’d be dead now,” Phillips retorted, glancing down at Anna, confused in his heart because he knew she was a rebel. “That story she told us, I still can’t believe it.”
The general looked directly into Anna’s eyes, as if to check once more about her incredible explanation. She returned a defiant look, even through her tears, that said she had been through hell herself, that all of it was real. Then she looked to Schaefer, as if there was comfort at least in sharing the secret, as if feeling a bond with the commando would prove to herself she wasn’t crazy. And somehow she knew they would also share more, now they were no longer enemies and the nightmare was safely past.
Schaefer looked back at her and smiled wearily. His eyes were a little clearer now, and his breathing had calmed. Then he turned to look out at the bright gold of the rising sun as the two choppers headed off for the far horizon. For a moment he seemed to stare deep into the distant heavens, but what he saw didn’t register in his hooded eyes. He had had his private war, and the winning of it, and whatever peace it left behind, were things he would never speak. It was a kind of homage to the men he’d lost. As he stared at the sky hints of pink and gold splashed across the Conta Mana border, announcing the coming of day.
Table of Contents
Back Cover
Books
Titlepage
Copyright
Dedication
PREDATOR
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN