by Ronald Kelly
"Stay alert and be careful," he told his men, but figured that there was really no longer any danger from the threat that had brought so many casualties during the course of the operation. The creature had seemed nearly invincible during the aerial battle, but nothing could survive a fall from such a height, even a monster with armor plating
Red Team spread out and emerged from the dark forest. A large clearing of spring clover and wildflowers separated the woodland from the rocky slope of the mountain peak. In the center of the clearing was a massive crater some thirty feet in diameter. Wisps of oily smoke drifted from the open hole, stinking of burnt fuel and fire-burnished steel.
Before the team could approach the chasm, Hendrix called one of the commandos aside. "Jacobi, I want you to take four men and continue up the slope for the planned rendezvous point at the top of the peak. Whatever this thing was, it looks like its dead now, but that doesn't mean there aren't more of them. That's why we have to finish the job right. When you get to the cave entrance, wire it with C-4 and seal it shut. The rest of us will be checking out this crater, but we should join you in time for the festivities." Hendrix remembered Jackson Dellhart's condition about wanting to call the shots about the final play, but Dellhart wasn't there to argue the point with him now. Hendrix didn't even know where the executive and his crony were at that moment. Hollinger had reported that Dellhart and Russ had disappeared into the forest right after Blue Team had set out. Maybe they had ended up getting slaughtered like Jamal and his men.
Hendrix watched as Jacobi and the four commandos steered clear of the crater and moved up the craggy face of the rocky peak. Then he waved his own soldiers forward. They spread out, forming a circle around the open pit. Hendrix peered down into the hole, but it was too dark and smoky to see anything lying at the bottom. He took a pair of infrared night goggles from his pack and slipped them on. Still, he could see nothing definite within the dense shadows.
"Lob a grenade down there and see if we get any response," he called to a brawny Arabian named Akbar.
The bearded soldier primed a fragmentation grenade and tossed it into the crater. The five mercenaries stepped back and waited for the explosion. A moment later the detonation sounded from the bottom. After the thunderous report had subsided, they listened and watched for a sign of movement, but there was only dark immobility.
"Whatever it was that wasted poor Skeeter is stone-cold dead now," said Mason, a black commando with a patch over his left eye. "There's no two ways about it."
"I'm still not satisfied," said Hendrix. He knew he was acting overly cautious, but he couldn't help but remember how the black creature had shrugged off missile fire and fifty-caliber rounds effortlessly. "Can I have a volunteer to rappel down there and check it out?"
"I'll go," said Caldwell, a wiry fellow with a maroon beret and a goatee beard. He unshouldered a camouflaged pack and produced a coil of nylon rope, tying it to a large oak at the edge of the clearing. Then he returned to the edge of the crater and fastened a rappelling harness around his chest and waist. He threaded the rope through the steel carabiner rings of the harness, then, with a quick salute to Hendrix, dropped into the open pit, propelling himself downward with his feet against the sloping side of the crater. The man was soon swallowed by the swirling, steaming darkness below.
"Caldwell," the scar-faced commander called down into the pit. "Caldwell, have you reached the bottom yet?"
"I'm here," answered the soldier. "What a mess! I can see what's left of Skeeter's chopper and…wait a second…there's something else down here, too."
"What is it, Caldwell?"
The soldier didn't answer for a moment. Then called out in sudden excitement. "Cripes, whatever it is, it's still alive! I can hear it moving!"
Hendrix felt the potential for disaster brewing within the obscurity of the pit. "Leave it alone, Caldwell. Get out of there right now."
Caldwell seemed to ignore him. "That noise," he muttered from the shadowy depths. "Colonel, do you hear that freaking noise?"
Yes, Frag Hendrix could hear the sound echoing up from the bottom of the crater. It was a brittle sound, a loud and inexplicable crackling. A disturbing image nagged at the commander's mind—an image of the legendary phoenix which was consumed by flames, yet rose from the warm ashes, transformed. "Get back up here this instant, Caldwell! That's an order!"
The staccato of Caldwell's Uzi sounded from below, as well as his frantic cries for help. "Somebody pull me up! Somebody get me the hell out of here!"
Hendrix and the other three ran to the nylon rope and began to pull, hand over hand. At first, they made good progress, but then there was a tug of incredible resistance from below as Caldwell's voice shrilled into a panicked scream. "Pull, dammit, pull!" At Hendrix's command, they put their muscles into it, but something began to pull back from the bottom of the pit. It was like four men engaged in a game of tug-of-war with an eighteen-wheeler. Their feet began to slip on the grass of the clearing and, slowly, their combined weight was drawn toward the edge. "Don't let it pull you over the side," Hendrix told them. "Let go if you have to."
But before they had to resort to such abandonment, the pulling force stopped and they found themselves in control again. They began to pull the bodily weight of Caldwell to the top of the vast crater. "He's almost here," said Mason, who was at the end of the rope nearest the chasm.
Suddenly, Caldwell's face appeared over the lip of the crater. It was a horrifying sight to behold. The muscles of the pale face were contorted into a gaping rictus of terror and agony. The members of Red Team gave the rope a final tug and brought Caldwell out of the pit and onto the grass. Or rather, what was left of Caldwell. Only the soldier's upper torso remained in the rappelling harness. Something had made away with his lower body, biting it in half at the waist.
The mercenaries recoiled at the sight of their mutilated comrade. They grabbed for their weapons and watched the deep gash in the center of the clearing. A low grumbling growl echoed from within and they could hear the sound of something huge digging its way out of the pit. The rattle and roll of dislodged dirt and stone heralded the appearance of the underground creature, causing the team to mentally steel themselves for the horror that was to come.
But no amount of preparation could ready them for the thing that slowly emerged from the depths of the earth.
It appeared to be some hellish mating of subterranean mole and military juggernaut. The armored body was glossy black and resembled the sturdy structure of an M-60 tank. It even sported an oval gun turret and the jutting barrel of a howitzer. The only difference between it and a real tank—and it was certainly an unsettling difference—was the lack of rotating treads on the sides. In their place were great, gnarled paws like those of a common garden mole. The grasping fingers were tipped with sharp gray claws, digging deeply into the earth and pulling the weight of the monstrosity farther into the open clearing.
"Forget the rifles!" ordered Hendrix. "Frag the confounded thing!" He pulled a couple of pineapple grenades from his flak vest, jerked the pins, and tossed them in front of the lumbering beast. The other soldiers did likewise. The dark tank pulled itself over the grenades just as they exploded. It was instantly engulfed in a cataclysmic chain reaction of fire and shrapnel. But the thing didn't even slow down. It kept right on coming.
They watched as the cannon barrel weaved back and forth like the probing trunk of an elephant. Its open snout slammed into the earth, burrowing deeply, then emerging bloated with soil and rock. With a forceful gust of air, the tank expelled the contents at one of the soldiers, pelting him with a deadly hail of grit and gravel. A hunk of stone the size of a football hit him in the chest, leaving a gaping hole. It burst from his back and then flew onward, striking the trunk of a sour gum tree behind him and splintering it like a stick of rotten firewood.
"Let me take it, Frag!" called Akbar. He reached to his backpack and withdrew a portable LAWS rocket launcher.
"Give it your best shot," agr
eed Hendrix.
The tubular trunk of the great creature dipped beneath the surface of the grassy clearing again, then withdrew, packed with flinty soil. It fired with an exhalation of beastly breath, this time decapitating Mason with a sharp, flat sliver of gray shale. Akbar quickly primed the bazooka; popping the end caps, sliding the launch tube to full length, and raising the top sight. Akbar then knelt, shouldered the bazooka, and took careful aim before firing. A 66mm rocket left the LAWS launcher and struck the rampaging tank squarely in the front of its bulbous turret. A blinding explosion engulfed the creature, as well as a heavy pall of powder smoke.
"I got it!" laughed the Arabian. "I wasted the ugly son of a bitch!" He took a few steps forward and realized that he had made a terrible mistake. He found the dark tank barreling out of the black cloud, roaring like an angry lion. Akbar tried to leap out of the way, but the monstrosity was already upon him. He was caught by one of the flailing claws and crushed beneath its weight like a fragile bug beneath the sole of a shoe. His broken body was ground under the paw, then immediately buried beneath the churned earth it left in its destructive wake.
Frag Hendrix, who had survived three tours of duty in Vietnam and countless battles in troubled countries throughout the world, suddenly found himself facing a menace that he was totally unprepared for—one that was impervious to both gunfire and explosives. The M-16 he held in his hands seemed like an absurd toy compared to the unbridled fury of the horrible beast that scrambled across the earth toward him. Regretfully, he knew that he must do something that he had never done before—retreat from the threat of his enemy.
But as he turned to escape into the dense cover of the forest, the length of the living howitzer snaked out, wrapping around his body, and clenching tightly. Hendrix choked back a cry of agony as he felt his ribcage collapse beneath the steely tendril of the monster. I won't scream, he vowed to himself. No matter how bad it gets…I won't give it the satisfaction.
The commander struggled as the hollow snout pulled him from his feet and lifted him into the air. Slowly, it rolled him in its grasp and Hendrix found himself staring down at the armored front of the juggernaut. The flawless plating of ebony hardness abruptly split and a gruesome maw appeared. Rows of spiky gray teeth lined the wet black gums of the inner mouth. Beyond that was a dark tongue lolling hungrily within the slimy pit of its gullet.
I won't scream! The proclamation reaffirmed itself again and again in Frag Hendrix's mind, but somehow the message didn't quite reach his throat, which opened up and shrieked with the abandon of a horrified child. The snout angled inward, depositing him into the damp cave of the dark mouth. The mercenary thrashed and screamed for a frantic moment, but no amount of struggling could liberate him from that hellish imprisonment. Then the gray incisors flashed downward with gnashing fury, ending his horror and slicing his body into bite-sized morsels, which then slid into the fetid darkness of the beast's ravenous belly.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Thirty minutes after leaving the golden cavern in the center of PaleDoveMountain, Jackson Dellhart, Jenny Brice, and Vincent Russ emerged from the opening at the top of the rocky peak. They stepped from the darkness and shielded their eyes against the brilliance of the afternoon sun. Soon, their vision grew accustomed to the sunshine. The two men searched the sky for the Huey Cobras that had patrolled the air before the operation began, but the helicopters were nowhere to be seen. There was smoke billowing up from several points on the mountain's northern side, giving them the impression that the choppers might have encountered some unforeseen threat and, unable to defend themselves properly, had crashed and burned.
Russ held the struggling woman, while Dellhart unclipped his walkie-talkie and tried to call up Frag Hendrix. He received no answer from the scar-faced commander. He also tried to raise each of the team leaders, but Khiem, Jatual, and Lopez were also silent. When he tried to contact the surviving pilots, the only one who responded was Hollinger, who had left the clearing on the southern side moments before and was already heading toward the northern face of the mountain.
"Hollinger, this is Jackson Dellhart speaking," he told the pilot. "I'm on the top of PaleDoveMountain. We need some quick taxi service up here…pronto."
The mercenary pilot sounded a little shaken over the radio. "I'm on my way. But watch yourselves up there or you might end up like everyone else on this crazy suicide mission."
After the pilot had signed off, Russ eyed his boss uneasily. "What do you suppose he meant by that?"
"What do you think he meant?" snapped Jenny. "He was talking about the Dark'Un. It seems like your little army-for-hire found out that this wasn't the easy assignment they thought it would be. And it looks like you made the same mistake. You should have given some thought to those warnings before coming up here."
A flash of uncertainty shone in Jackson Dellhart's eyes for a fleeting instant, then was quickly conquered by his customary confidence. "We'll just see about that. Now move your pretty butt up to the top of that peak. The chopper won't be able to land up here, so we'll have to board it while it's still in the air."
By the time they reached the rocky point of PaleDoveMountain, they could hear the stuttering roar of a helicopter coming toward them. A moment later, the surviving copter of the mercenary squadron appeared and tediously positioned itself over the tip of the peak, lowering its skids as close to the climbers as possible. Carefully, Russ reached the open bay door of the Bell first and then helped Jenny inside, despite her unwillingness to cooperate. The last one to mount the runners was Jackson Dellhart, brandishing the .44 Magnum. "Okay, let's get the hell out of here," he called to the pilot as he climbed inside and took the bench seat opposite his beautiful hostage.
"Just tell me which way you want to go," said Hollinger. He lifted the transport and let it drift into a lazy spin, waiting for Dellhart's instructions.
"Do you have enough fuel to take us all the way to Memphis?"
"Yes, sir," agreed the pilot. "If I'd been buzzing around with the other choppers, it would've been a different story. But since I was parked down in that clearing, I have more than enough."
"Good. If you get us there without any problem, I'll throw in a ten-thousand-dollar bonus, in addition to the money already owed to you."
"You've got a deal, boss man," agreed Hollinger. He pointed the Bell toward the northwest and pushed the stick forward.
"What about your buddies down there?" Russ asked the pilot. "Are you just going to cut out and leave them behind?"
"As far as I know, most of them are dead. Yellow, Blue, and Green teams were wasted by that damned monster you sent us up here to find, and my fellow pilots ended up the same way. I've been trying to contact Frag, but he doesn't answer, so I've about decided that Red Team has bitten the dust, too." Hollinger smiled grimly. "As to the question of my loyalty, I only stick with a winning team. Some mercenaries fight for honor and glory, while some fight purely for money. I'm a card-carrying member of the latter variety."
They flew on, moving away from the wooded ridge of PaleDoveMountain. Jenny glared at her captor venomously. "So, what's to become of me?" she asked, trying to conceal her fear with bravado. "Are you going to toss me out of the helicopter like you said before?"
Dellhart smiled. "I'm sorry, my dear, but my escape has been guaranteed. My need for insurance is over." He turned his cool blue eyes on his right-hand man. "Besides, I won't be doing the dirty deed…Vincent will. I'll give him the chore of pushing you into the river."
Vincent Russ regarded his superior silently. Suddenly, he knew how Dellhart was planning on disposing of him. When he was forced to throw Jenny from the chopper, Russ would feel Dellhart's palm striking him forcefully between the shoulder blades. He would end up following the girl out the open doorway, and together they would plummet into the watery channel of the Little River.
Abruptly, the transport copter made a sharp dip earthward. "What's going on?" demanded Dellhart.
"We've got an unexpect
ed visitor," said Hollinger. As the Bell made a quick turn and headed back around the western face of the mountain, they peered out the bay door and saw a black and tan police helicopter speeding in from the north. "I don't know if it's actually seen us yet," informed the pilot. But it's a sure bet that it will, if we don't do some fancy maneuvering pretty fast."
"I can't afford to be in this helicopter if it ends up being captured," Dellhart said. There was a thin edge of panic in his voice. "If I'm physically connected to what's happened here today, both Eco-Plenty and I are done for. Do you think you can outrun it?"
"No way. That's a lightweight Hughs Cayuse that the state police are flying and this is a heavy old Bell transport. If they spot us, they'll catch up to us sooner or later."
Russ sat there, letting the prospect of capture and conviction stew in Dellhart's mind for a frightening moment, then spoke up. "I have an idea. Let us drop down to the southern side of the mountain and let you off at the highway there. You and Miss Brice can head out on foot for a while. We'll shake this overgrown mosquito off our tail, then swing back down when the coast is clear and pick you up."
Dellhart mentally debated the idea and decided that it was probably his only chance to escape detection. "Okay, I'll give it a shot. But remember, if you're captured, keep your mouths shut about my involvement. If you remain loyal to me, you're both rich men. But if you screw me over, you're dead meat. Understand?"
Both men indicated that they understood quite clearly.
Hollinger skimmed above the dense treetops of the southern face and leveled off as he reached the valley below. He touched down on the flat surface of Highway 411 and watched the skies as Dellhart and Jenny jumped from the belly of the aircraft.
