"Uh, we have company headed this way, Major."
"Which direction?" Collins asked, bringing his XM8 rifle up into firing position.
"Shit, sir, now in every direction." Mendenhall took his eyes off the VDF and raised his own weapon. He glanced down at the signal once he was prepared to defend himself. "Shit, the needle first points to the south, then jumps to the east, then west." Mendenhall kept his eyes on the device. "The only place they're not coming is from behind us."
"You men, bunch up, four-man teams. I want weapons coverage in all directions. Keep fire discipline, you are now weapons-free."
He watched as the team broke up into the four-man groups they had rehearsed before coming down. It was a tactic Jack and Sarah had devised to protect against sudden attacks.
The machine was no longer emitting a chirp or a beep, but a solid buzz. The blinking lights were now a steady red glow, casting those around it in an eerie shade.
"Shut that off, everyone use your regular lighting, no ambient devices, they'll blind you if there's shooting."
Suddenly the wall exploded right behind Mendenhall. The shattered wall threw him to the ground. Lights immediately illuminated the animal as it shook itself free of the clinging dirt and sand, slinging outward its armor neck plates. The plates dug into both walls of the tunnel creating deep gouges in the rock and dirt. The beast roared, then leapt for the fallen Mendenhall, who screamed and rolled just as the creature swiped with its claws. Collins and Everett opened fire at the same time the group to Mendenhall's rear did. Over one hundred armor-piercing rounds hit the animal simultaneously. All but a few glanced off its purplish armor and embedded in the walls. As the tracer rounds struck, it stumbled forward and leapt onto the sergeant. At that moment, another animal burrowed into the tunnel somewhere in front of Collins. He heard the loud pops of automatic fire as well as screams of terror and pain. Jack saw the bright flashes as the Delta and Ranger teams opened up.
Everett used the muzzle of his short-barreled XM8 and lifted one of the plates of armor just below the Talkhan's skull and fired a twenty-round burst of 5.56 mm rounds into the back of the animal's head. It roared and shook its massive head, then collapsed heavily onto the sergeant and firmly pinned him to the tunnel floor. They could barely hear Mendenhall screaming below the heavy carcass of the dead creature over the screams and bursts of gunfire in the enclosed tunnel. Collins and Everett both reached down and quickly pulled him out from under the animal.
"Goddammit, sirs," the sergeant said loudly and breathlessly, "just a little fucking faster next time." Mendenhall started checking himself, making sure he was all right. The new armored vest had paid major dividends for the sergeant because when he turned, the officers saw three large gashes almost through the back of the abalone-shell protection. One of the animal's teeth was still lodged in the collar of the new armor vest.
They didn't have time to answer Mendenhall or comment on the armor as more shots rang out down the entire length of the tunnel, each weapon sparking a myriad of bright colors on the crystalline walls. Screams and yells could be heard, along with cries of horror and injury. Suddenly, the firing stopped. Then started again as another animal broke through the wall. They heard Ryan's shouts as he directed fire down the tunnel. Collins reached for a flare, popped it, and threw it into the darkness. It settled and revealed a nightmarish scene as the Delta front guard was battling for their lives against three of the animals. One of the lead animals struck out with its tail and caught a Delta sergeant in the throat, impaling him and yanking him away from the others and into the midst of the flailing claws of the attackers.
Suddenly a clawed hand burst through the wall and creased the air in front of one of the men just before the entire bulk of the animal crashed into the tunnel. The claws had slashed a specialist from Delta almost in two, catching him between the neck and shoulder. The beast had blindly ripped down, severing flesh, bone, and cartilage as easy as a knife slices through paper. A corporal was too close to use his XM8, so he pulled his combat knife from its scabbard and leaped onto die creature's back when it became fully exposed. He thrust the knife between and under its flapping neck armor and into its neck three times in rapid succession before the beast reached behind and grabbed the soldier with its long claws. The stinger swiped and nicked the corporal, but the claws were already doing the necessary damage. The sharpened points pierced the soldier and he screamed in agony as the beast brought the struggling Ranger toward its face and roared in anger and pain.
"Yeah," the soldier screamed back into the gaping, teeth-filled maw, "fuck you!" He then quickly plunged the knife into the animal's left eye. The Talkhan screamed in pain, slamming the soldier again and again into the hardened wall of the tunnel. It pummeled the lifeless body until the corporal simply came apart.
"Move!" Collins's shout filled the tunnel as others rushed up from behind the wounded and enraged beast. Collins, Everett, and Ryan opened fire at the same moment, taking the animal first to its knees and then to its side. The rounds followed it down and kept striking it as it lay prone on the blood-slick floor, the tail and stinger still twitching. Then abruptly, the animal at their feet roared and staggered to its feet. It swung outward with its claws, seeking out anything it could kill. Collins quickly removed a grenade and pulled the pin. He waited until the beast had swung and missed, then while it roared, Jack quickly jammed the grenade into its large mouth, scraping his arm and hand on its teeth as he did so. He threw himself at the creature's feet as the grenade went off with a muffled explosion, and Jack saw the head come apart, spraying him, Everett, and Mendenhall with gore.
An eerie silence then filled the smoke-shrouded tunnel as the flare sputtered and died, leaving them in total darkness. Seven men were left standing. Two were only slightly wounded with gashes and cuts from the sharpened claws. Seven men had been lost during the brief two-minute encounter with the four Talkhan.
"Okay, let's get ourselves together and start moving. I don't like just standing here like ducks on a pond. You have anything on the VDF, Sergeant?" Collins asked while reaching for his oxygen.
Mendenhall was shaking badly. He wiped some of the animals' blood from the OD-green face of the small device and examined the gauge. "No... uh, no, sir, needles are flat and steady."
Collins lit another flare and examined what was left of his team. The mangled bodies of the dead littered the floor.
"Pull these men back against the wall. If we can, we come back and retrieve them." Jack focused on one of the Rangers who couldn't be more than nineteen.
As they started forward, the first Delta man to the branch in the tunnel called back behind him using his radio, "Major, you better have a look at this."
Collins squeezed past the others and knelt beside the highly trained commando from Fort Bragg.
"What have you got?" Collins asked.
"It looks like we're not the only ones to come this way." With his flashlight the Delta man pointed at the footprints clearly evident in the soft floor of the tunnel.
"This looks like it may be one of our teams, number's about right. Maybe fourteen to eighteen men, give or take a couple," Jack said.
"Normally I would say you're right, sir, but look at this." The flashlight fell on a set of prints that were too small to be that of a soldier. And they were obviously made by tennis shoes. "And this set here, they're not military boots, they're probably cowboy boots." Then the beam swung forward about a foot and illuminated another set. "These are small and are like nurse's shoes, maybe a waitress; my wife wears something like these."
Collins straightened and cast his light down the tunnel. The beam seemed to trail off to nothing as it tried to push its way through the blackness and smoke ahead.
"Whatever unit is down here, they've taken along at least three civilians. A man, a boy, and possibly a woman, Major."
At the same time Collins had started worrying about possible civilians in the tunnels, Carl Hastings, one of the Event Group's most experienced
tunnel engineers from the Colorado School of Mines, was in a frightened, headlong flight from the hole his team had entered. The Delta teams led the way as the Rangers brought up the rear as they carried what wounded they were able to snatch away from the attacking animals. Their team was down to only seven men, not counting the four wounded. Bobby Jenks, a friend of Sarah's, had been pulled screaming into a hole that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, crashing into him and knocking him off-balance just long enough for the beast to grab him.
The sheer numbers of the attackers had caught them off guard. They thought that maybe they had killed at least one of the animals, but could honestly account for no more. The Delta teams in the front took the brunt of the attack while those in the rear tried to help, but it had been hopeless from the beginning, and by the time the attacks were on in force, the Delta teams were using their nine-millimeter handguns at close range. Some even had to use knives in the closed spaces. The animals had knocked several of the soldiers down easily by collapsing walls of dirt and sand upon them, then struck at them while they were in the worst possible position to fight. Now they only prayed to make it to the surface and not die in this underground hell, but to do it fighting in the light of day.
Hastings pressed his earpiece into his ear. "We have a break in the tunnel up here, there's sunlight. Let's move and get the wounded up front and out."
"Oh, thank you, God, thank you," Hastings said aloud.
As they moved into the sun that was cast down into the tunnel from a hole, they saw the shadows and heard the distinctive thumping of rotors. The breach in the ground was being circled by at least three AH-64D Apache Longbow gunships. The dispirited group of soldiers and Event members could never have imagined a more welcome sound.
Two Delta men used one of the XM8 weapons as a step as they thrust first the wounded and then the rest through the opening. Once up and out, they helped pull their comrades to safety. As the final Delta sergeant cleared the hole, they collapsed down on the hardpan as the Apaches continued to circle.
The pilot of the lead Apache, a veteran of the Event Group for eight years with his team, Chief Warrant Officer Brett Jacobson, watched as the tunnel unit emerged from the hole. He quickly counted the men on the ground and shook his head, knowing the number they had started with.
"Those guys were mauled," he said into his mike.
"Yeah, and it may not be over. Look, Chief," his weapons man in the front nose of the Apache calmly called.
As the pilot turned, he saw with horror the speeding animals as they parted the sands in their rush toward the grounded troops, two from the north, a third from the east. He estimated a closing speed of close to sixty miles an hour as one of the creatures breached the surface as a dolphin would, most likely to spy its quarry, only to disappear again into the soil as quickly as it had breached a moment before.
"Jesus! Predator flight, we have men on the deck and three, I repeat, three targets closing on their position. Let's move!" he called to his attacking wolf pack. "Break, break, break!"
The other two Apaches broke formation and started their run for the fast-attacking animals. They aligned themselves and targeted two Hellfire missiles each; in moments the laser-guided weapons were streaking toward their intended targets. But they would never make it as two of the animals came to the surface and sprang into the blue sky. The relatively slow-moving Apaches were easy targets as they slammed into the first gunship, jolting the big chopper and breaking the Hellfire's laser hold on the target. The second of the two beasts hit the Apache's tail boom and rebounded to the ground, stunned for a moment before it shook itself, then dove once again into the sand. The Hellfires remembered the last position the laser designator targeted before it was knocked offline, but the speeding creatures were by the point of the missiles' initial impact by twenty yards, as they missed the animals totally. The warheads struck the hardpan, sending surface sand one hundred feet into the air. The pilot regained enough control to bank hard and bring the Apache under control. But he didn't know the first animal was still attached to the Apache's undercarriage until the beast brought its claws up in a swinging arc and punctured the armored belly of the attack bird.
The lead pilot saw what was happening and he brought his stick forward. His Apache shot toward the dangling animal. His gunner aligned his eyepiece and targeted the clinging beast on his wingman's underside, and the thirty-millimeter chain gun erupted. The slow-operating weapon sent large tank-killing rounds forth in a perfectly straight line, catching the animal in the large bulk of its torso, severing it from the remaining parts of its body. What was left fell three hundred feet to the floor of the desert. Only four or five errant rounds hit the Apache.
"Now that was never put in the book by the manufacturer," the weapons officer shouted in triumph.
Jacobson then turned his Apache and the chain gun fired at the distinctive lines of thrown-up soil made by the attacking Talkhan. Another animal had joined the other two on their ground attack. The explosive rounds found the first animal as it breached the surface. The thirty-millimeter shells tore through its armor, stopping it dead in its tracks. Then a Hellfire caught the second, exploding a foot in front of the parting wave of dirt, sending chunks of purple and black skyward.
The pilot pulled back on his stick, but as he did, the third animal suddenly surfaced and shot like a homed-in missile toward the hovering Apache. The pilot watched in horror as everything seemed to slow to a crawl. The animal was traveling so fast that the Apache's computer took it for an incoming missile and started to automatically pop off chaff and flares. The animal hit the cockpit with so much force, the front half of the attack helicopter separated from the back, sending the chain gun, weapons officer, and most of the fire-control system tumbling three hundred feet to the ground. The army warrant officer was inundated with flying glass as he fought for control as the huge machine started a plunge for the desert below. As the men on the ground watched in utter horror, the Apache hit hard, tearing away the wheels and weapons pod on the right side of the gunship. The rotors dug into the ground and sheared off as they struck. Jacobson was pelted with dirt and pieces of flying metal as he fought to hold on. The Apache skid along the sand and dirt, tearing access panels and the left-side weapons pod away as it hit a small rise in the earth and bounced into the air, then it flipped over once and came down on its side, sliding to a stop in two pieces.
Two Delta sergeants broke for the fallen bird to try to free anyone alive. As they approached, they saw Jacobson fighting his harness trying to get out as aviation fuel was pouring all over the two engines. The first Delta man started cutting away the damaged harness with his knife, and the other started pulling and tugging at Jacobson, who was screaming for them to hurry as he spied one of the dirt waves approaching at breakneck speed. As they finally released him and pulled the pilot from the broken Apache, the animal surfaced and jumped, missing the three men by a foot. It struck what was left of the cockpit and became entangled in wiring and broken glass. One of the Delta sergeants stopped and took out his nine millimeter and emptied his clip into the engine compartment of the Longbow. Suddenly all three were knocked flat by the explosion as one of the bullets made the spark the soldier was hoping for. The aviation fuel went up with a loud thrump and the animal was caught inside. It fought free of the remains of the chopper and started toward the prone men. Then fifty rounds tore into it and dropped the flaming beast mere feet from the three men. The remaining tunnel team was there and was now helping the men up. Then they retreated from the remains of the animal and the crash site in case any of the other creatures had the same idea.
The other wounded Apache was coming down also. The remaining arm and claw of the destroyed animal had kept working, its nerve endings continuing to fire. It tore the fuel lines and severed the tail-rotor wiring harness, stopping the thrust the bird needed to counter the main-rotor torque, thus sending the chopper into a spinning hell ride. The whine of the two turbines wound down quickly as it slammed
into the ground. The Apache bounced once, breaking off all three landing gear assemblies. Then it rolled, tilting over onto its side until the rotor blades struck the rocks around it, disintegrating, sending composite metal shards in every direction.
The third Apache was a smoking ruin in the distance.
The remaining troops on the ground had watched the incredible air battle around them as at least twenty of the animals made a run for them. They stared in stunned silence, the wounded pilot, Jacobson, among them, as the creatures swam toward them in a huge dust cloud. Jacobson slowly stood on a broken leg and drew his .45 automatic from his shoulder holster. The others picked up their weapons and waited.
***
From the monitor in the White House, the president and the National Security Council members watched as the animals rose in the last fifty feet, then dust obscured the remaining men of one of the tunnel teams and the pilot who had at first rescued them, and then they him. A moment later when the dust cloud cleared, the men were gone and the only thing that remained was the large hole where they had been making their last stand.
The president lowered his head, and the other members just closed their eyes against the scene.
Event (event group thrillers) Page 38
