"What is…this shit?" Storch managed.
"Just a favor for a brother Beret," the commando answered. "You'd do the same for us, if you could."
Storch looked around now, saw the other two phantom soldiers holding two men each by the throats, but he knew they weren't choking them. They were sucking the poison out of them.
The men who saved them were giants, plain and simple, and not like the fragile, acromegalic freaks in the Guinness Book, either. The one who held Storch stood seven feet and change, every inch of it rawboned angles and knobby muscle, with a weatherbeaten, scar-torn hide stretched so taut over it that it creaked like the rigging of a ship when he moved. He smiled broadly, his jaw was a beartrap, each of his teeth the size of a big toe, and set down his load, a Barrett sniping rifle and a cylindrical steel case that looked like something you'd carry bubonic plague in, if you had to. Storch studied the forearm that held him. In the dim starlight, he could barely make out the tattoo on that corded, knurly limb: Don't Mess With Texas.
The man next to him could be charitably described as morbidly obese, but he looked like he ate morbidly obese people for breakfast. No military in the world would have such a man; indeed, Storch had never seen such a fat man standing up. Yet this man was standing, and not even breathing hard while holding Preston and Wachowiak over his head. His belly lolled halfway to his knees like a gigantic tongue, greasy and gray in the stark moonlight. He carried a weird-looking flamethrower with corrugated metal hoses running back to a humming sprayer on his back. His face, too, split in a monstrous grin that made Tue's look like a fawning puppy's.
The third man was as slim as the last was fat, but whipcord muscles rippled in his arms like elevator cables as he held Chappelle and Gagliardo. Slung over his shoulders were some kind of pressurized oildrum and a battered old M-16 with a mounted grenade launcher. Every muscle in his body gave off an almost audible hum of galvanic tension. Veins like gardenhoses pulsated and writhed in his temples and throat as he surveyed his two…rescuees? Captives? Victims? He did not smile.
All three wore ancient flak jackets that were black with old stains and scrawled obscenities, ragged fatigue pants and steel-toed boots. Storch was reminded of the gear his father had brought home from Vietnam and kept in his closet, forever damp and pungent with jungle-rot—even ten years later, wherever they lay for more than a week, black mold began to grow. The men they held in their grips—Storch's men, now—twisted on the commandos' arms like hanged suicides who could not die, their eyes half-lidded and streaming foamy tears, their mouths gobbling and bubbling discolored drool. How conscious they were remained a mystery.
"You don't know how glad we are to see you boys still here," the soldier said, sounding so warm and boisterous Storch could close his eyes and imagine he was at a GI bar back home. "Sorry 'bout the natives. Got some snacks from a little Shiite village a few klicks back. They were none too anxious to part with 'em, I'll tell you that."
"Who—what the fuck are you?" Storch gasped.
"Pardon me all to hell, Sergeant. Lieutenant Dyson, Spike Team Texas. This unstoppable sex machine here is Sergeant Holroyd," nodding towards the stupendously fat man, "but we just call him 'Royd. And this here is Sergeant Avery, but you can't call him anything."
"Nobody else was supposed to be here. What's your mission?"
"Why, that's funny, we knew y'all'd be here, didn't we, 'Royd?"
"First to go, last to know," 'Royd gurgled.
"Fuckin' reg'lar Army bullshit," Avery grated, the words striking bloody sparks.
"Are we in the same Army, Dyson? I don't know who the fuck you are or how you got here—" With a start, Storch realized suddenly that he could breathe easily again. Now it was his mind that was choking up.
"That should tell you all you need to know, right there. Let's mount up, boys. Our ride's comin' fast." The three dropped the survivors like infants and picked up their gear, tromped back to the rocky peak. Storch dimly heard rotor blades chopping the air, ripping away the last threads of green death that swirled around them. A chopper—Storch tried to get to his feet, tried to find his voice again to order the men—his men—to get ready to exfil out of this place, but a gentle, firm hand pressed against his chest, forced him back to the ground.
"This isn't your ride, little Sergeant," Dyson said. "You just forget about everything you saw tonight, you'll be one happy prick. Have patience. This, too, will pass." And Storch settled back down on the ground as the wind whipped sand and stinging gravel over him and carried the three commandos away. And the silence closed over them, broken only by the sounds of his fellow soldiers' steady breathing, like the distant sound of a sleepy ocean. Storch sank into that sound, into the tidal rush of his own breathing, let it wash him away, let himself forget.
And finally, the chopper came for them, the chopper that had been grounded in Bedrock for one hundred and ten minutes because of sand in its rotors.
28
Stella was sound asleep and wrapped in nourishing, shapeless dreams that she would not remember when she awakened, but which were the glue without which her mind would have choked on its own bile months ago. Cold, dry hands reached into her dreams and dragged her out into fluorescent lights and the round, cheerless Mrs. Claus mask of Mrachek. "I need your help. There's a wounded man." Mrachek scurried out of her cell, into the thick of the commotion across the corridor, leaving Stella to pull herself together.
It was yet another strange awakening in a string of them that was fast making her incapable of imagining waking up to a normal day. She had no desire to make Mrachek's life any easier, but curiosity got the better of her. She'd never heard so many people in one place in the complex before, let alone heard them shouting as they were now. She slipped on one of the one-piece surgical scrub suits she'd been issued, slipped a net over her hair, and went to sickbay.
Stella stopped at the door, unable to get any further into the room and unwilling to make her self noticed just yet. If she'd been hoping for trouble, she wasn't disappointed. No less than eight soldiers crowded the main room, squared off against five nerdish types who radiated civilian harmlessness and braininess though they wore the same unmarked military fatigues. Between them, strapped onto a gurney and under deep sedation, lay the apparent bone of contention. It was the soldier they'd caught at the truck stop, the one they'd made such a fuss about grabbing, the one who'd escaped. And he was much the worse for wear since she'd seen him last. One arm lay across his chest in a makeshift sling, and one of his legs looked as if it'd been dragged here from Las Vegas. His stubbled skull was dinged up, but not critically, and the brutally economical bone structure of his face was marred by bruises across one cheek and around one eye. Stella recognized road rash, having seen more than her share of superbike crash injuries, and wondered that the soldier wasn't much more badly beaten up. He must've had something soft to land on. She wondered for a moment if he hadn't suffered these injuries at the hands of his captors. No one had tried to harm her, but he'd gotten away from them once, and they seemed pretty inflamed about what to do with him. Stella knew she'd probably begin to hate him the moment he woke up and opened his mouth, but for the moment, she began to like him very much.
One of the soldiers, the older black man the others called the Major, shouted in the face of the senior egghead. "It's my operation, my men to risk. I have too damned few of them as it is."
The scientist looked to be in his early sixties, with skin so pale and unlined it looked as if he'd never used his face for anything but reading. His oiled black hair was clipped short like the others', but still managed to look untidy, as if he'd done it himself. A profound detachment informed all his gestures; his gaze focused on the wounded soldier as the officer raged at him, his head shaking in minute arcs that totally negated the officer's argument.
"It's no good, Bangs, for a number of reasons I thought we were clear on already. Even discounting the unresolved issue of his loyalties, he's unstable. He's unmotivated. He's probably incapabl
e of grasping the significance of the Mission even if there was sufficient time, and, in case you haven't noticed, he's critically injured. If you'd simply followed your instructions—"
Major Bangs leaned across the body and into the scientist's face, as if he fully intended to bite off the smaller man's nose. "To execute him? Fuck you! He's right here, he's strapped down, and your stand on the value of human life is legendary around here, so why don't you do it?" The officer unholstered a huge automatic pistol and handed it grip-first to the scientist. His men went crazy at the exposed weapon, grabbing at his arms and shouting at him to stand down. When he made no move to take the gun, Bangs waved at Mrachek. "Maybe that's too messy for you. Delores, get a hypo full of air for Dr. Wittrock to execute Sergeant Storch, here."
Wittrock shook his head and managed a wooden grimace. His voice became increasingly strident as he spoke over the angry soldiers, but it never betrayed a mote of anger. "Major Bangs, your instability is tolerated because of your leadership skills and your dedication to the Mission, but I must caution you that no one is so valuable as to jeopardize it. That holds true for all of us. I urge you to dispose of this…questionable man forthwith, and prepare for the terminal phase."
"I believe Harley Pettigrew," Bangs said, jamming his gun back in its holster. "He gave everything for the Mission, and he said this man was gold."
"I believe he also said that this man was unfit for duty," Wittrock retorted, "which is why he was never brought in, in the first place. What you're asking is beyond the pale of acceptable risk, and, frankly, leaves me with serious doubts as to your sanity."
Bangs made a visible effort to regain control of himself as he explained, "There. Are. Not. Enough. Men. We were spread too thin in the original plan. We can not execute our part of the operation and secure an area for you to work. You, and I, and all of my men, will die. For nothing."
Radiant Dawn 193 "And one broken-down, sociopathic Gulf veteran will tip the balance."
"We'd need at least ten, but I only have the one." He did something then that took Stella's breath away, and would've melted any dissent away in a normal opponent. "Please," he said, "let me use him." He seemed to break open, his schooled battlefield exterior giving way to a deeply wounded, frightened man with too many dead soldiers on his conscience. Stella thought she understood Major Bangs, then.
"Forty-eight hours, Major," Wittrock said. "Don't get too attached to him." The other scientists followed him out.
Stella cracked her knuckles, said, "Okay, now how about the rest of you get the hell out of here? This man is beat up." They left anyway, but it felt good to pretend she was in control of something.
29
Storch hunkered down behind a rusted-out row of file cabinets, willing his eyes and ears to open as wide as they could, and tried to stay calm. Sludge and stagnant water pooled around his ankles, the stink rising up and making his vision double. The rusty copper light from the shielded bulb in the center of the room's buckling concrete ceiling only gave jagged edges to the darkness. His left arm throbbed in its fiberglass cast where the stout, stubby barrel of his assault weapon rested on it, a pain so bright he felt sure they'd see it in the dark.
They were coming for him.
He could hear them in the corridor outside, perhaps three doors down. The smash of a door being kicked in, the whumph and sizzle of a flash grenade, stuttering assault-rifle fire, faint splashing, a single shout. The black rectangle of his doorway flared dimly for a moment in the grenade's glow, and he could see into the corridor, the algae-flecked brown river churned to a froth of bubbles as men ran up and down just out of sight. They'd run one of the others to ground, and regrouped to take him out. If he was going to move, it would have to be now.
Slowly, planting each foot toe-first into the slime to avoid the slightest sound, he edged around the file cabinets and crossed the room to press himself flat just inside the doorway. Another flash grenade went off, this time in the hall, and the bitter tang of teargas billowed out. Sneaking a quick peek round the corner, a staggering form surrounded by three hunters, all of whom trained their rifles on the blinded fugitive and shot him.
Storch leapt across the corridor in two bounds, fire on his tail chasing him through the opposite doorway. He whirled and stuck his gun out into the hall, blind-firing half the clip. "Shit! Shit! I'm hit! I'm hit! Goddamit, get that motherfucker!" Splashing growing louder, it was all he could do to focus on the new room. Little better than the other, but the file cabinets here were stacked against the wall. He backed up beside them and leaned against the outermost cabinet with his broken arm. It squealed in protest, but wrenched free of the scum on the floor and toppled over, crumbled into clods of reddish dust. A flurry of movement outside, Storch's gun bucked in his hand and they fell back. He shoved another file cabinet, which went over easier than the first, slumping against the skeleton of its neighbor. Behind them, what he'd hoped to find, a door, opening on the next room. It'd been painted over, so he had to brace himself against the cabinets and deliver a forceful kick to the door to get it open. The door split neatly in half, but neither half fell out of the frame. Outside, someone passed before the door, firing wild over his head. He responded in kind, but the force of the fire overbalanced him and he toppled into the sludge.
A flash grenade erupted into the room, turning the darkness inside out before he could cover his eyes. He aimed at where he remembered the corridor doorway having been and emptied his clip at it even as he burrowed behind the toppled cabinets and huddled against the broken, jammed door. Silence, punctuated by dripping water and mud sucking at shuffling boots. Out in the corridor, he could hear the rasp of their gasmasks.
Swapping out the unfamiliar clip one-handed would've been difficult, but with his eyes out of commission, it was next to impossible. He'd taped them together head to tail, so, in theory, it was a simple matter of yanking it out, turning it round, and popping it back in. He visualized the mechanism of the small weapon, but he'd had too little time with the gun before he'd had to use it. He jammed the clip again into the slot, but the gun slipped out of its cradle on his broken arm and splashed into the water.
He heard shots in the corridor and in the next room. There was only one other man left out there, so this was his last chance before they'd concentrate entirely on him. He took out his handkerchief and dipped it in the foul water on the floor, took a quick whiff, found it stank of organic, not chemical rot and, sucking in a last great breath, wrapped it tightly around his mouth and nose. He lunged for the jammed door, digging his heels in against the pile of file cabinets and pivoting so his left shoulder struck the heavy wooden door squarely in the center of the crack he'd made with his foot. The door flew apart under his weight, and he stumbled through it into a poison, glowing fog.
His eyes, already feeding him only a purple void after the flash grenade, instantly seemed to melt. He barreled across the small room and came up hard against the far wall, then went limp, ducking as low as he could without laying in the slime. Even with his eyes clamped shut, they burned. Shots popped off in the small room, echoes and rounds rebounding around the cell above Storch's head, but incredibly, none hit him. He must still be invisible because of the gas, or the hunters had blinded themselves with their flash grenades. Instinct screamed at him to cover his head and lie low until the shooting stopped, but he stretched out, feeling for the body he knew he'd find here, the last other fugitive. He was there, only inches from his feet, prone on its back with a rifle still slung loosely across his chest. Storch splashed some of the water into his eyes and blinked it away. Now the room was like a starfield, past and present muzzle flashes dotting the purple emptiness, and before him, the guttering red sun of a dying flare. Everything else was murk and rumors of form, though because of the gas or his temporary blindness, he couldn't tell.
Storch went on his right leg and hauled the limp fugitive up onto his knee. Scooping him up under the armpits, he grunted as he lifted the body up before him and charged th
e corridor.
"Bravo One-two, one-four, he's coming out." A hunter backed down the corridor, peppering his human shield as Storch bore down on him at a dead run. Storch slid into the hunter and dumped the body on him at as high an angle as he could manage, and the two went down in a tangle of limbs. Storch fell on them both and wrenched the hunter's gun from his hand, shot him in the head. Before he could press the advantage, he saw the other two hunters coming up the corridor firing. Storch pivoted to his left and ducked for the door back into his hiding place when three shots stitched up his right side. The air whoofed out of his lungs and his legs went limp under him, and he slumped against the doorframe, his eyes only vaguely perceiving the silhouettes of the masked hunters as they closed around him.
"Nailed 'im!" one of them shouted. "Time?"
"Eighty-five seconds, a new personal best," the other answered. "And only two casualties," he added, looking down at the bodies before them.
"Fucker cheated," complained the third hunter from under the fugitive's body. "If Lonnie was really cold meat, he wouldn't have been jerking around like that, and he wouldn't have got my gun."
"I wouldn't have been jerking, you wouldn't keep shooting, fuckwit," Lonnie answered. "You got done with your own gun, Draper."
The hunters disentangled the pair and propped them up against the wall, then checked on Storch.
He felt as if his whole body, everything below his arms, had simply gone to sleep, as if he'd passed out with a small passenger sedan resting on his chest. He slapped at his legs, but it was like slapping a side of beef. He ripped the shit-stinking handkerchief off his face and dropped it into the slime, then held out his arms to get lifted up.
"Goes away in a few minutes," the first hunter, a mulatto ex-SEAL named Seawood, told him. "We tried using paint, but all these fuckers cheat." They lifted him to his feet and propped him in the doorway, and Storch found he could stand if he locked his knees, which was the extent of his control over his lower body.
Radiant Dawn Page 27
