The animal looked down at her and grunted, raising the club, and then jabbing the blunt end into her ribs.
“Ow!” she cried out before she even realized she did it.
Another grunt, and then the beast looked up and seemed to see or sense something. It rose again to its full height of over ten feet, grunted once again, and then turned and ran for the deep woods off to the right, vanishing among the trees in mere seconds.
Lynn slowly collapsed until her head was resting on the soft carpet of wet pine needles. She shook her head for the reason she didn’t fully understand her miraculous escape from the hands of the killer, Deonovich. She sat back up and looked at the still hanging body of the large Russian. The firelight caught the steady stream of blood as it flowed from his body. Lynn shook her head again and knew she was nearing the state of shock as cold chills overtook her system. She lay back down and closed her eyes.
“Jesus,” was all she could say.
When she heard someone say something to her, she didn’t move. She did, however, open her eyes and look into a set of green eyes. In the firelight she could see that it was a woman who was kneeling beside her and trying to get her attention.
“Who are you?” Lynn croaked through the taste of blood in her mouth.
“My name is Sarah, and I think we’d better get back to the cave before your knight in shining armor returns, don’t you?”
“You bet,” Lynn said as Sarah and the girl Lynn knew from the fishing camp helped her. She was grateful to the two women and was about to thank them, when a realization struck Lynn Simpson. “Hey, you’re Jack’s girlfriend!”
With that and before Sarah had a chance to respond, Lynn passed out and slumped against the two women.
“Yes, I’m Jack’s girlfriend, and you must be his sister Lynn.”
“It really is a small world, isn’t it,” Marla said as she took most of the American woman’s weight on her own.
“Yeah, well, we’d better get back to Jason before we have company other than our animal friend.”
Sarah, Marla, and their newest friend, Lynn, stepped through the fire and then walked fifteen feet to the cave opening.
All three suspected they were in the realm of something they didn’t understand, and little did they realize they had entered the forest home of the fiercest creatures that had ever lived on the North American continent.
The ancient brother of man was no longer a myth.
Alexander and his tech team were just twenty feet behind the advance recon team. Altogether the Russians were heading into the bush with fifteen Spetsnaz, five mercenaries, and seven technicians. Alexander had five of the commandos watching Collins and the three additional captives with strict orders to keep Jack alive.
One of the technicians reached out and stopped Alexander, who was intent on following his point team as quickly as possible through the woods. With the rain lessening somewhat, Punchy turned and saw his main technicians hold up the visual metal detector. As he took in the small LED screen, he could see that they were in the middle of a dense minefield of metal. He quickly looked around his feet and spied one of the objects they were chasing. He bent over and picked it up and smiled. It was a two-foot-by-eleven-inch piece of aircraft aluminum. Punchy tossed it away and they continued through the trees, trying to get to their goal as quickly as possible.
As Jack, Carl, Will, and Farbeaux were pushed and pulled through the dense undergrowth beneath the thick canopy of trees, Everett quickly stepped up to Jack.
“Okay, boss, this little trip of ours has turned into something extraspecial, so it would be helpful if you said your baby sister was great in the field.”
“She couldn’t tell you a walnut from a rock, buddy,” Collins said as he tried to keep Alexander in his sights through the falling rain.
“So, she won’t be bringing any cavalry this time out.”
Jack looked over at Everett and just raised his brows, and Carl took his meaning.
“You, get back in the line,” a voice said and pulled Everett backward by his wire-tie. Carl eyed the mercenary and tried not to let on to the fact that he felt the plastic strap break. He followed orders after being released and fell into line just in front of Henri.
“You seem to have injured your wrist, Captain Everett. I hope you understand the severity of that cut,” Farbeaux said as he saw the snapped plastic around Carl’s bloody wrist.
“Yeah, Henri, it’s not as severe as it looks. I’ll hold off getting attention for it until the colonel says to.”
“A wise decision,” the Frenchman said believing that they might have a shot if Everett moved at just the right time.
Suddenly, they were stopped abruptly. Men were ahead of them and they were brightly silhouetted in the flash of a flare being lit. The red tinted glow made the scene eerie at best as Jack tried to see what was happening as many thoughts swirled through his mind; Deonovich and Lynn, the worst-case scenario was Lynn, of course. Was she lying up ahead where the large Russian had caught her? Or was it their prize that they were examining? As he thought this, they were pushed to the ground by the guards and made to sit still.
“Ow!” Mendenhall said as he sat. He wiggled free of something and then literally bent over backward to see what it was. His fingers curled around a small object and he twisted around to see it, bringing his arms up close to his left hip. As soon as saw it, he dropped it in disgust. “Jesus!” he said out loud.
Jack turned back to see what was wrong with Will when in the red glow of the flare up ahead he saw what it was as Mendenhall leaned away from it. It was a skeletal hand. As Collins squirmed over he saw that something was wrapped around the terminated wrist bone—it was silverfish in color and rusted almost through.
“Lieutenant, pick it up,” Jack whispered.
Will got a sick look on his face, but knowing the colonel, he had a reason for the macabre request. So he once again went through the maneuvering involved to pick the human hand up once again. When he twisted back around, Jack had turned his back to him and then removed the still attached bones from his grasp. Collins twisted in his restraints to look at the hand and what was wrapped around it. He grasped the small object and saw the band momentarily expand and then the years of rust did its job—it snapped. Jack held the wristwatch in his palm and looked it over. It was a simple Timex watch and he could see the small hands through the fog-clouded crystal: they were frozen at 1:58 and ten seconds. He didn’t know if it were A.M. or P.M.
“What have you got there, Jack?” Everett whispered.
“A watch; its hands are frozen at almost the exact same time as right now.”
“That’s interesting, Colonel, but does it have a particular significance to our current situation?” Farbeaux asked as he tried to huddle closer to the others without getting hit with the butt of a weapon or getting shot.
Collins turned the watch over and looked at the back. The inscription etched by a jeweler many years before was hard to make out, but Jack managed to turn the watch toward the bright light from the trail ahead. His eyes betrayed his surprise to the others. He looked up, and when they saw their curious faces, he examined the writing once more and then read the inscription.
“ ‘Commander John C. Phillips, USN, with admiration—your mates (CVN) 62, VF-13, 1960—Best of Luck!’ ”
Collins looked up at Carl who was deep in thought.
“Does that remind you of something, Captain?” Henri asked.
“CVN 62, I think that was the USS Independence. VF -13, I believe, was a fighter squadron.”
“Are you thinking what I am, Colonel?” Farbeaux asked.
“It looks like our long-lost naval aviator there had volunteered for a particularly dangerous mission back in October of 1962.”
“I agree, coincidence in this very strange affair has to end sometime,” Henri said as he spied one of the Spetsnaz coming over from the area where the flare was glowing.
“Jack, we have company,” Everett said. “Just to let
you know, I’m loose.”
Collins just nodded his head as the large commando reached down and pulled him to his feet.
“I’ll keep that in mind, Captain; for now, just take it easy and enjoy your surroundings.”
Jack was pulled along until he was met by Alexander. As the colonel looked around in the light of the flare, he saw Sagli squatting by a large tree and he had a look of sadness on his face as he stared at his hands.
“I’m going to ask you something, Jack, and be straightforward with your answer, because I believe your life, as well as mine and my men, may be at stake.”
Collins didn’t say anything. He looked up through the thick branches of the trees as the rain had almost stopped. He then looked back down into the face of the Canadian.
“I know Lynn has no field prowess to speak of. Is there another of your men that you had along that has yet to be accounted for?”
Collins was almost amused. He gave Alexander a curious look but remained noncommittal.
“That’s what I thought. No, if you had a man that wasn’t accounted for, he would have made some sort of move by now.” He raised his eyebrows at Jack. “You see, I know you train your people to be aggressive.”
Alexander was out of patience with the silent Collins as he grabbed him by the collar and pulled him over into the bright light cast by the dying flare.
“Did one of your people do this?” he shouted as he thrust Jack forward, almost making him lose his balance.
As Collins caught himself, he finally looked around, and then up until his eyes saw the body of Gregory Deonovich impaled on the tree branch. The body was slammed into the tree in a prone position with the limb traveling through his rib cage until it poked out the opposite side. The eyes were wide and staring. Jack could also see that the body had been impaled with such brutal force that the man’s back had been shattered to the point where the entire large frame of the Russian bent far enough to create a an upside-down U shape.
“Either Little Sis has been working out, or I would say you have a problem on your hands, and by the look of it, I would say, a rather large one.”
Collins was suddenly attacked from the rear and tackled. Alexander moved fast, but was slow in pulling Dmitri Sagli off. The man had actually gotten as far as to pull his large knife from its sheath and raise it, ready to bring it down into Jack’s chest before he was kicked off by Alexander.
“Is there something wrong with the English phrase, I need him alive, that you idiots don’t understand?” Punchy yelled angrily. “You know how stupid Deonovich was; he undoubtedly deserved what he got. You yourself watched him be humiliated earlier by a small woman and you would have allowed her to kill him. It’s a little late for sympathies about how you and he fought in Afghanistan together.”
Sagli lay where he had fallen, then he slowly picked himself up out of the wet loam of the forest floor. He sheathed his knife and then looked at Alexander.
“It’s the manner in which my old comrade was killed, not the justification of it.”
“You cannot account for fools, my friend, just grieve for them,” Alexander said, making Jack’s stomach lurch at the falsity of the sentiment.
Sagli just dipped his head once. Yes, he knew his partner was a fool, but one he could always control and order about. He knew he may have regret that Deonovich is gone after dealing with their new partner. He may have had a use for him down the road that Alexander would not have understood.
Jack watched the exchange. As he did, he felt something under him that he had fallen on, just like Mendenhall had only minutes before. He knew what it was immediately as he had handled the same weapon a hundred times in his career: a Glock nine-millimeter automatic. The weapon must have fallen from the hand of Deonovich as he was being killed.
Punchy Alexander strode over and lifted Jack in one strong sweep of his arms. Then he roughly turned him over and removed the handgun from his grasp. He angrily turned and tossed the automatic toward Sagli, who flinched and let it fall to the wet ground.
“Don’t get into the habit of disappointing me,” he said to the Russian. “Now let’s go.”
Alexander pushed Jack back toward the commandos and started walking. Sagli went to his dead friend and reached up, calling for assistance from someone taller to help remove Deonovich from the tree.
“Leave him,” Alexander said as he had stopped and turned around. “Let the men see the price of not being vigilant in this place.” He turned back and headed for the plateau that was rising before them.
Sagli angrily motioned the men away as he reached up and touched the face of his oldest friend. He glared at Jack and then abruptly turned and followed Alexander—his new boss.
“What did we miss?” Everett asked as he and Will, and then finally Farbeaux, were led into the light of the flare.
“I take it we missed this,” Farbeaux said as he nodded toward the tree with Deonovich hanging from it.
“What in the hell did that?” Will asked as he backed away from the gruesome sight.
“Jack, are you starting to consider that either your sister hasn’t told you about her current strength-and-conditioning program, or that we may have more than these assholes to worry about in these woods?”
Collins just looked at Everett and was about to say something when all around them, close and far, the pounding of clubs on trees started, far louder and closer than they had ever heard before. Inside of the light of the flare, Collins saw the Russians as they turned every which way, in anticipation of something unexpected. Jack saw the look of fright on most of the battle-hardened faces and the sheer terror in the eyes of the regularly trained troops. All twenty-seven of the technicians and soldiers had the look that must have crossed the faces of Custer and his men when they realized the jig was up at the Little Bighorn.
“I have a feeling we’re about to find out just who it is we pissed off by being here,” Mendenhall said as he backed into Collins, all the while his eyes never leaving the woods around him.
“I believe I must concur with the lieutenant’s assessment; these sounds are far angrier than before.”
Farbeaux didn’t have the words out of his mouth when the first flash of dark movement took the two men bringing up the rear of their small group. They were gone in an instant without as much as a shout.
Mendenhall just turned to face Collins with his eyes wide as the drumming continued.
“It . . . it . . . it was . . . was big!” he finally said.
The rain had stopped but the clubbing of the trees continued. Suddenly, a shot was fired, and that led to another, then another, and then someone opened up an AK-47 on full automatic.
Collins and the others cringed as bullets started ricocheting off of trees, and tracers lit up the night. He looked around as fast as he could and saw that no one was watching them. The lone guard was terrified and watching the woods to the rear where the two men had vanished.
“Mr. Everett, I think now would be a good time.”
Carl didn’t hesitate once given the order, he simply moved his hands from his back to his front and then as quick as the earlier lightning streaking across the night sky, he reached out and twisted the soldier’s neck, snapping it, and then catching the AK-47 before it fell to the ground. He quickly aimed at one of the men as he turned at the sudden movement behind him. A single shot by Everett brought the man down. The single discharge wasn’t even noticed in the din of gunfire.
“May I suggest egress from this area?” Farbeaux yelled as he ran past the others and then turned suddenly to his left and jumped into thick woods. Jack and the others quickly followed the man who had made a living out of surviving when he should have died.
All around the trail of men and equipment, clubs sang out and the dwellers of the forest primeval attacked in earnest.
_______
As the rain slowed, Jason Ryan was trying with his wounded shoulder pounding in pain to get the ejection seat inside the cave opening. He slipped and fell several t
imes while dragging the heavy piece of safety equipment and attached body to cover. He had decided to do something when Marla and Sarah had abandoned him when they went out after hearing noise in the brush.
After ten minutes of struggle, Ryan fell in backward through the cave’s opening. The ejection seat was now secured inside with him. As he moved his hand to his right shoulder, he felt the stickiness of his own blood. Great, he thought, Sarah’s going to be furious with me for opening my wound again. He lay back and tried to get his breathing under control. When he thought he had achieved a modicum of control after so much exertion, Ryan sat up and looked over the skeletal remains of the pilot as the ejection seat lay on its side. He couldn’t see much in the dark, but he could make out the basic outline of the remains. The left hand was missing and the fibula was sticking out of the rotting flight suit. The crash helmet was still in place but Jason could see that it had done this poor bastard no good at all. From all the evidence he could see from the time outside in the illumination of the lightning storm, this man had died of a high-impact crash.
Ryan reached out, felt around the left shoulder of the decaying flight suit, and lifted a small flap and felt underneath. There should have been a patch indicating this pilot’s flight group, or at least a flag of his country, but the space was empty. He felt around the sickening remains again in the dark. He came upon a rotting piece of leather and allowed his hand to travel down farther. It was a shoulder holster that all military combat pilots carry. As he unsnapped the strap that held the weapon in place, it came off in his hands and then the entire holster fell free. He lifted it to his face and saw that is was a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 Special. He opened the cylinder and felt the rounds there—six.
“Sorry, buddy, but I may have need of this.”
Suddenly, he heard noise from outside the cave and he pointed the .38 into the dark. He didn’t even know if the gun would work as he pulled back the hammer. He swallowed as whatever it was had not one concern for the noise it was making. He hoped the damn weapon would fire and was about to find out when the voice came through the opening.
Primeval: An Event Group Thriller Page 39
