Kenslir fired again and then took off running toward Josie.
>>>GO!<<<
Josie turned and ran outside. She hesitated in the bright light as the tactical visor immediately tinted in response to the sunlight. Kenslir slammed into her from behind, then picked her up by her upper arms and carried her to the left.
Only a few seconds later, the dragon emerged from the cave entrance. Outside the tunnel system, the creature flexed its wings, spreading them out briefly before retracting them. It looked right, then left. It saw Josie and Kenslir.
The dragon roared in anger. Then in pain.
From their positions across the wide ravine, Keegan’s six men began firing at the dragon with their MP-5 submachine guns. The 9mm pistol rounds from the weapons tore into the dragon’s flesh, fragmenting inside it. But the flesh reformed, swelling back together as tissue rebuilt itself thanks to the shapeshifter’s powers.
The dragon was a wretched mess at this point. Its body was riddled with small holes, dozens of them, from all the white phosphorous bullets Kenslir had fired into it. Oozing burn marks peppered the creature’s head, neck and chest—wounds that still burned inside it so intensely the shapeshifter couldn’t heal the wounds.
The dragon charged forward across the ravine, toward the first trio of FBI men, a scream of pain and rage swelling from its neck.
Kenslir took off after the creature, making a superhuman leap that carried him twenty feet through the air and directly onto the dragon’s back. There he slammed his twin Bowie knives down, punching through scales and flesh. He clung to the knives like handles on the dragon’s back.
The dragon bucked and rolled over onto one side, its feet collapsing under it. Kenslir kicked clear as the dragon rolled over.
Kenslir regained his footing and quick drew his OA-93 once more. At point blank range, he fired the machine pistol one more time into the dragon.
Ketzkahtel roared in pain and rolled onto his back, his legs up in the air. The dragon kicked at the air, then began twitching and convulsing. Its movements changed from frenetic to feeble, then finally died out. Its head rolled to one side and its tongue sprawled out.
Kenslir dropped his empty magazine and quickly reloaded. He then aimed carefully down the barrel of the machine pistol and prepared to fire again.
From the cave entrance, an orange-brown streak leapt out. Moving so fast it was nearly a blur, the buffalo-sized creature slammed into Kenslir, sending him flying. The beast landed firmly on its four clawed feet, then turned its head slowly toward the trio of FBI men to its right.
The beast was a cat of some kind. It had a short tail, like a bobcat, and legs as thick as the average man’s torso. Josie guessed its claws were over six inches in length. It had short ears, laid back as it readied to pounce. Its mouth opened wide, its twin foot-long fangs dripping saliva.
The huge sabertooth sprang to the side, toppling the three FBI agents. They screamed in unison as it began to rend them with claws and fangs.
>>>BACK IN THE TUNNEL<<< Kenslir transmitted to Josie from his own tactical visor. He was back on his feet now, drawing his last weapon, his semi automatic pistol, from its shoulder holster.
Josie now realized that Keegan and Victor were just a few steps away from her, hiding behind a boulder against the ravine wall. She dashed around the boulder and grabbed Victor’s sleeve.
“C’mon! Back in the cave!” Josie yelled.
Victor followed along, running behind Josie, with Keegan behind him as Kenslir began to fire his pistol slowly, methodically, at the sabertooth devouring three of Keegan’s men.
The semi automatic magnum sounded louder than even the auto shotgun Kenslir had been using. Each boom from its firing echoed off the walls of the ravine like thunder. Its .50 caliber, armor piercing rounds easily punched through the hide of the sabertooth, then through its bones—tunneling vicious holes clean through the monster. Unfortunately, the shapeshifter’s flesh easily reformed, sealing the tunnels left by the bullets. The armor piercing rounds were proving painful, but ineffective.
Josie hesitated at the entrance to the cave. She had noticed the dragon moving. Shrinking actually. As she watched, it was changing its shape into that of a man.
Keegan’s last three FBI capture team agents had meanwhile stepped out from behind their rocks, and were also firing at the sabertooth. Their 9mm submachine gun fire was not anywhere as effective as Kenslir’s, but the combined barrage was taking its toll on the sabertooth. The cat was roaring in pain and its hind legs had collapsed. It struggled to remain upright, its strength fading as it had to keep healing itself.
Ketzkahtel finished his transformation, assuming the form of Detachment 1039's own former telepath, Echo, the brown-haired, average-looking man. Or Billy Dyer, as Josie had since learned was his real name.
Echo had been murdered more than a month ago by Ketzkahtel in the desert. If the shapeshifter was taking this form, Josie knew what was coming next. Or at least she thought she did.
Ketzkahtel suddenly screamed and held his hands to the sides of his head. He dropped to his knees, then onto his side, howling in pain.
The scream gave the sabertooth new strength. It spun around and charged at the last of the three capture team agents, ignoring Kenslir—who was reloading his devastating auto magnum.
Like bowling pins, the three FBI agents were sent flying, chests caved in, deep slashes through their body armor from the sabertooth’s claws.
Then the beast turned to face Kenslir once more.
>>>GET BACK TO THE SARCOPHAGUS!<<< Kenslir texted Josie. It was then that she heard something new. A thumping in the air, not unlike a helicopter.
A stream of white streaks suddenly rained down, from a point well above the rim of the ravine. The sound of the heavy gun fire came a second later. A cannon. More specifically, the automatic cannon of an AH-64D Apache gunship.
The 30mm rounds from the chin gun of the helicopter were finding their mark, streaking into the ravine, then the sabertooth, from over a mile away.
Kenslir dashed toward the cave opening as the anti-vehicular rounds proceeded to shred the sabertooth. He dove forward, into the cave opening, tucking and rolling, then climbing to his feet. He grabbed the brief case from Josie, and threw it on the ground beside the cave entrance.
“Go!”
Josie took off running, once more through the breach in the cubit-block wall. Behind her she could hear the approaching attack helicopter louder and louder, its cannon firing in quick, short bursts. The sabertooth had stopped shrieking in pain.
Then there was a sudden pressure wave against Josie’s back and the sound of a roaring blast that knocked her off her feet. She lost consciousness as she fell.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Captain Curtis Andrews, his gunner and his wingman, Lee Ericson and his gunner, sat in the briefing room, dumbfounded by what they were being told.
Major Donahue was briefing them on their mission. Their very classified mission. Their very classified mission to use their attack helicopters on a civilian target, inside the United States. Arizona to be specific.
They were briefed that a very dangerous parahuman was on the loose in the desert, being tracked by another military unit. Air support had been ordered. Apache attack helicopter support.
Captain Andrews felt it was a bit of overkill—two attack helicopters to take out one human being? Even if he was a parahuman, it sounded excessive. But orders were orders. And these orders came from very high up.
Captains Andrews and Ericson had conferred with their gunners, then scrambled to the airfield, where their Apaches were already being loaded with a full armament of cannon rounds and Hellfire missiles. In less than an hour after their briefing, the two crews had their gunships up, headed for Arizona.
Shortly before noon, they had set down at Luke Air Force Base and been refueled. They weren’t allowed to do anything more than refuel, take a turn at some portable toilets and accept some old sandwiches in white cardboard boxes
from the ground crew.
Then they waited. In their cockpits.
About ten minutes after a single UH-60 Blackhawk took off from the base, headed northwest, the tower gave the Apaches their clearance to take off and flank the UH-60. At a distance of five miles.
When the Blackhawk radioed in some time later it had found its target and was dropping a team, the Apaches went into a holding pattern, circling the drop point at a distance of five miles.
They quickly depleted the extended range fuel tanks they carried and jettisoned them over the desert.
Then, after what seemed like an eternity, they received new orders. Head to the ravine and attack anything that wasn’t human.
Andrews and Ericson had radioed back for a repeat of the order. But both men had heard it right. Attack anything that wasn’t human or parahuman.
Captain Andrews immediately chalked this up to some kind of black ops training exercise, and followed along. Captain Ericson, trusting his wingman, played along as well. The two Apaches swung around and headed for the drop zone.
Both Andrews and his gunner were shocked when the Apache’s sophisticated sensors spied a dragon, laying on its back in a ravine. Being fired on by multiple persons.
Andrews had been even more surprised when a large, buffalo-sized something had sprang from a hole in the side of the ravine and toppled three of the humans shooting at the dragon.
Captain Andrews may have been dumbfounded to see a dragon and a whatever-it-was, but he knew how to follow orders. He immediately opened fire on the buffalo-sized creature.
Seconds later, a huge explosion erupted from the side of the ravine, sending dust everywhere.
Andrews brought his Apache into a hover, about a quarter mile away from the target, and directed Ericson to swing around, circling the target site so they could unleash a crossfire on whatever was down there.
***
Josie slowly came to, and found herself laying down on the floor of the underground tunnel. Her head was in Victor’s lap.
Josie sat up quickly. Her ears were ringing slightly. A distant rumble shook the passageway.
Agent Keegan was now sitting on the ground beside Victor. They were at the first bend in the corridor, by the broken wall spikes.
Colonel Kenslir was standing, looking back down the tunnel toward the ravine.
Josie realized that she was no longer wearing her tactical visor. It was pulled up, on her head. She reached up and pulled the visor back down.
The head-up display showed distant green shapes. She recognized them as attack helicopters. One to the west, and one to the east, covering the ravine.
“Captain, I don’t care what you think. You are to expend all your ordinance,” Kenslir was saying. “Dig me a hole to China.”
Josie looked back in the direction of the ravine, in time to see indicators for rockets firing from the two helicopters. Multiple rockets. They streaked into the ravine, exploding and triggering more rumbles in the corridor.
In under a minute, both helicopters had fired all of their missiles.
“Thank you, Captains,” Kenslir said, “You may return to base.”
On the head-up display, the helicopters turned and flew away.
“Who are you talking to?” Keegan asked. “There is no way you can get a signal down here.”
Kenslir ignored Keegan and walked over to Josie. He extended a hand and helped her to her feet. “Feeling better?”
“What was that?”
“The briefcase you were carrying was a telepathic jammer,” Kenslir explained. “It puts out a brain-splitting amount of what could best be described as psionic noise—to render any telepath in its general vicinity disabled.”
“No, I mean the explosion. That knocked me out.”
“It also had an explosive charge in it.”
“What?! That briefcase was a bomb?”
“It was a back-up plan,” Kenslir explained. “In the event the shapeshifter went after what was jamming his telepathic powers.”
“Then you’d have blown him up?”
“Right. But instead I used it to collapse the tunnel entrance—sealing them outside and us safely in here.”
“Hold on,” Keegan said. “The shapeshifter is a telepath, who can turn into a dragon, and has a giant sabertooth as a pet?”
“When he eats the hearts of his victims,” Kenslir explained, “He takes their memories and special abilities as well as their form. He killed a telepath a while back.”
“So he killed a dragon, too?” Victor asked, shocked. He didn’t even know dragons were real.
“That was probably a long time ago.”
“You’re military, right?” Keegan asked.
“Hold on,” Josie said, crossing her arms. “I’ve been carrying a bomb around all day—and you didn’t tell me?”
Victor stood up slowly. “How do you create telepathic noise? I thought only living tissue could generate psionic waves.”
“That’s right,” Kenslir said, impressed with the postcog. “We use a bit of brain tissue, lab-grown of course, and stimulate it with electrical impulses. That forces it to emit the psi energy.”
“Lab grown?” Victor asked. “Doesn’t that mean you’d need an original sample first?”
“This is all very science fictiony,” Keegan said, standing up and brushing herself off. “But what do we do now? How do we get out of here?”
“We wait to be dug out,” Kenslir said. “There’s a recovery team and some drilling equipment on the way.”
“And you know this because...?”
Kenslir touched the goggles he wore. “These use a variant of the psi-jammer technology. They transmit and receive using sympathetic telepathic resonance.”
“Can you dumb that down?”
“Take some lab-grown brain tissue, cut it in half, and shock one half. The other half feels the jolt as well.”
“Like the twin effect!” Victor said. He’d read about that before—twins feeling what each other felt, despite separations of hundreds, even thousands of miles.
“Again,” Keegan interrupted. “What do we do? Sit here? With no food, and no water?”
Josie was looking at the ground, shaking her head. “I was carrying a bomb around...”
Kenslir reached in a pouch on his combat vest and pulled something out. He pitched it to Keegan. It was an energy bar.
“Great. We’ll just split this three ways. Maybe wash it down with some sand.”
Josie looked up, at Keegan holding the energy bar, then over at the Colonel. They’d talk about this bomb thing later. “She’s got a point. I’m kinda thirsty myself.”
“There’s a tunnel back there—by the sarcophagus. Probably leads to a natural underground cavern,” Kenslir said.
He saw the blank looks on the faces of Keegan, Josie and Victor. “And caves are formed by water erosion. There could be drinkable water there.”
***
Twenty minutes later, armed with some of the electric lanterns left behind by Ketzkahtel’s dead workers, Josie, Kenslir, Keegan and Victor were exploring the cavern beyond the sarcophagus chamber.
“So, you think there are any more of them?” Josie asked.
“Any more of what?” Kenslir asked. He was in the lead, moving though the damp cavern. It had once been filled with water, but was drained for some reason.
“Giants.”
“Giants?” Victor asked.
“The shapeshifter is a giant,” Josie explained. “And the sabertooth was too, right?”
Kenslir nodded. “Right.”
“Giants?” Keegan said, skeptical. She had her heels back on now, but was considering taking them off. They were not doing so good on the wet, uneven floor of the cavern. “Shapeshifting giants? That can turn into dragons and tigers and read minds?”
“We’ve got something here,” Kenslir announced. He was standing at a small opening in the side of the cavern wall. It was a narrow, five-foot-high slit in the rock. He stepped back so the oth
ers could see.
Keegan pushed past Josie and shoved her lantern through the opening. Beyond the cut in the rock, she could see wooden timbers in a man-made tunnel.
“It’s a mine!” Keegan said.
“I want water, not gold,” Josie said.
“It could lead to the surface,” Keegan said. She tried to squeeze through the opening in the rock. It was too narrow even for her. “I can’t quite get through.”
Keegan stepped back and dug in the pockets of her jacket. She finally found what she was looking for, a tube of sunblock. She held it in her teeth, then kicked off her shoes. Then she took off her jacket and handed it to Josie.
“Victor, take this,” Keegan said, handing the sunblock to her ward. She began to unbutton her blouse.
“If you rub that on me, I should be able to squeeze through,” Keegan explained.
“Yeah, what are the rest of us supposed to do?” Josie asked. She nodded toward Kenslir. “All the oil in the world wouldn’t let him squeeze through there.”
Keegan took off her blouse and handed it to Josie. Victor looked away, embarrassed at the site of his handler barely contained in her lacy bra. Josie glanced at Kenslir to see if he was staring at the large-chested FBI woman. With his tactical goggles on she couldn’t tell. Josie knew it was more of Keegan than she had wanted to see.
Keegan was undoing her belt now. “I’ll get help, lead them to the mine. They can dig through here quicker than they could in the ravine.“
“Hold on there,” Kenslir said as Keegan dropped her slacks, revealing thong underwear. “Instead of you getting all oiled up and squeezing through, why don’t we just make the opening bigger?”
Keegan paused as she stepped out of her slacks. “How do you propose to do that?”
Kenslir motioned for Keegan, Josie and Victor to step back. Then he turned back to the opening of the wall. Rearing back his right fist, he hesitated, then punched the rock. Chips of limestone shattered under the blow and flew outwards.
Brothers in Stone (Stone Soldiers #2) Page 9
