“Last I heard you just needed balls, Flynn,” Johnson immediately shot back.
The banter was good-natured and when Flynn gave Johnson the finger, the bigger man chuckled.
Then Johnson shook his head, getting serious again. “Those guys, though. Best idea is to keep away from ’em.”
“Yeah?” said Scott. “Why?”
“Because they’re assholes. Even think you’re close to looking at their shit and they’ll come at you. Seriously.”
Scott said, “They sound like people with something to hide.”
Johnson shrugged. “Yeah, well. Whatever it is, I ain’t interested.”
As the black guy with the diamond ear stud now stepped in front of him, mostly blocking Scott’s view of the strong box, Scott thought: You were wrong, Spider. The MIBs are not into cybernetics, they’re into medieval weaponry.
He couldn’t even begin to think why before the black guy, his eyes flat as stones, said, “What the fuck you doing here?”
Scott smiled, refusing to be intimidated. “And a Happy New Year to you too.”
One of the wax-jacketed guys, who had a shaved head and silver-framed spectacles, snarled, “Just answer the question, asshole.”
Scott turned his head languidly, locking eyes with the man and keeping them locked, no expression on his face whatsoever. “I’m heading to my quarters,” he said quietly. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Not this way you’re not.” The man stepped forward and made as if to shove him back, but Scott stepped to the side, out of his reach.
“Look fellers,” Scott said mildly, “I didn’t mean to interrupt your little party here, but you can’t—”
“I don’t care what you meant,” Shaved Head interrupted. “Now get the fuck out of this corridor.”
Two of the guys in suits stepped forward, flanking Shaved Head and Linen Suit, doing their best to look menacing. Scott saw one of them sliding his hand beneath his jacket at chest height, and thought: Really? You really want to do this? And how would you explain gunning down an unarmed US soldier with an impeccable service record who had every right to be here?
He looked pointedly at the guy reaching for his gun, who froze, had the good grace to look momentarily embarrassed, and then slowly lowered his hand. Prepared to be conciliatory, Scott said, “Listen, guys, I didn’t know you were unloading cargo here or whatever it is you’re doing. If I did, I wouldn’t have come this way. Now, if you let me pass, I’ll go to my bed and forget this ever happened.”
The sensible thing for all concerned, in Scott’s opinion, would simply have been for the MIBs to move aside and let him go on his merry way, but Shaved Head was clearly determined to be belligerent.
“You don’t tell us what to do,” he barked, “you follow fucking orders. You get me, soldier?”
He stared hard into Scott’s eyes, doing his best to look intimidating, and Scott stared back, becoming irritated. He just wanted his bed now – though first he thought he might jot down in his little red book what he had seen tonight. Already, despite the immediate situation, thoughts were churning in the back of his mind, connections being made. Medieval-style weapons. Interesting. And the gauntlet on that severed arm back in LA. That had been kind of medieval looking too, hadn’t it?
Scott’s failure to respond to Shaved Head, or to back off, clearly riled the man. All of a sudden he lunged at Scott, hands outstretched, with the clear intention of physically spinning him round as if he were a child and pushing him back the way he had come.
Since Scott’s “shaming” in LA, he had been working hard on his physical fitness and mental alertness, determined that he would never again be caught out like he had been that night. And so as Shaved Head lunged for him, he instinctively moved to his left, whilst simultaneously shooting out his own hand and catching the man’s wrist. Before anyone could react, he had slid round behind the man, twisting his wrist up his back as he did so. Shaved Head bellowed in pain, though Scott knew that whilst it hurt, the wristlock was mostly harmless, and there would be no lasting damage.
Mostly harmless, but not entirely. Because as soon as Scott sensed Shaved Head flexing his shoulders in an attempt to wrench himself free, he gave the man’s wrist another small twist, which forced him, howling, to his knees.
Incensed by the treatment meted out to their colleague, the other six guys jerked forward as one, the trigger-happy guy in the suit again going for his gun.
In response, Scott pulled Shaved Head round in front of him, eliciting another howl of pain from the man, and held up a warning hand. “Seriously. Don’t. I’m leaving now, but if any of you try to touch me again, I will defend myself. So short of shooting me in cold blood, which I really don’t think you want to do unless you want to bring a whole ton of shit down on your heads, I suggest we call this quits. Am I speaking clearly enough?”
For a moment the MIBs faced him without speaking, a tight knot of tension and belligerence. Then Scott saw Linen Suit’s shoulders slump a little and knew he was going to concede. Before he could, however, Trigger Happy decided to have one last go at becoming a hero. He leaped at Scott, clearly aiming to take him by surprise, but his lack of combat training was all too evident, and to Scott the attack was both slow and clumsy. Jerking on Shaved Head’s wrist once again, which brought the man momentarily up off his knees with a pig-like squeal, he shot his free hand out with deadly accuracy, jabbing Trigger Happy full in the throat.
Trigger Happy crumpled like a felled deer, face purple, hands clawing at his collar as he coughed and coughed.
“I am not kidding. Back the fuck off!” Scott said.
Linen Suit sighed and stepped back. He glanced down at Trigger Happy, who was still writhing on the floor, with something like disdain, then he turned to one of the other guys and snapped, “Seal that fucking case, damn it!”
Two of the guys scuttled forward to do Linen Suit’s bidding. Scott watched them pick up the strong box and carry it into the storage area behind them, ducking beneath the half-open shutter.
“You must have quite a collection in there,” Scott said.
Linen Suit scowled at him. “I would advise you to forget what you’ve seen here tonight, soldier. Otherwise you might just find yourself on a charge for assaulting two of my men.”
Scott laughed. “Really? That the best you got?” He nodded up at the nearest security camera, mounted in the apex of wall and ceiling, which was focused unflinchingly on the corridor. “That will prove I was only defending myself. And if the footage should mysteriously go missing, you can be sure I’ll be demanding why at the top of my voice.”
He released the wristlock on Shaved Head, at the same time giving the man a small shove so that he tumbled forward onto his belly. Instantly, Shaved Head rolled over and sat up, rubbing his wrist and glaring balefully at Scott. Linen Suit patted the air beside him, as if Shaved Head was an attack dog that he was ordering to stay and sit. Trigger Happy now sat up too. He was done coughing, but he still had a hand clamped to his throat. He glared at Scott, dull fury in his eyes.
“Goodnight, gentlemen.” Scott held up his hands and sidled past the standing MIBs, who stared at him with hostility but did nothing. “And a Happy New Year to you all.”
Linen Suit grinned, but there was not a trace of humor or warmth in it. “Think you’re real clever, don’t you, soldier? But you ain’t heard the last of this. Not by a long shot.”
Scott turned and walked away, giving a nonchalant wave as he did so.
Inside, however, he wasn’t so calm. Inside he was thinking he might just have made himself a real and dangerous enemy.
CHAPTER FOUR
2000
Dutch Schaefer was on the run.
It wasn’t the first time that Dutch and his team had been forced to go on the defensive, and he suspected it wouldn’t be the last. Even so, he didn’t like it. He preferred he and his men to adopt the role of hunters rather than prey. Because the aliens were natural hunters, they didn
’t like the tables being turned on them, and so when Dutch and his team entered an active hunting ground they came in fast and decisive, a well-drilled plan already in place, and they hit that fucker hard, and they kept hitting it, before it had time to rethink its strategy.
Sometimes, though, things didn’t go according to plan. That was not because Dutch made mistakes. He tried to consider all eventualities, but simply because of ill luck, or bad conditions, or – despite the thoroughness of their planning – unforeseen circumstances.
On this occasion it had been a combination of things. First had been the unprecedented rain in the Malaysian cloud forest, which messed with their ultraviolet goggles, severely reducing visibility; and second had been the fact that they were up against the smallest, fastest Predator that Dutch had ever encountered.
They had only seen it in glimpses and flashes, but Dutch estimated that it was no taller than he was, and as lithe as a monkey. It darted around at incredible speeds, and had already injured two of his men in their initial encounter with it, which had taken place in a decimated mercenary camp they’d found in a jungle clearing. The camp had contained nothing but leftovers: skinned bodies, men blasted into piles of meat, on which insects and birds were already feasting, and the fallen weapons of the mercs that had tried to fight the thing off.
Dutch and his men had become experts at finding clues and homing in on their target, and they had enough guile and firepower to know that any Hunter that launched a direct attack on them in the open would be leaving itself extremely vulnerable, irrespective of its cloaking technology.
While half of Dutch’s team searched the camp, the other half scanned the dripping mass of trees that surrounded it. Cloud cover had obliterated the moon and stars, and the rain, falling with a battering intensity that was highly unusual for the time of year, created constant movement as it bounced off leaves, dripped off branches and poured in rivulets down the tightly packed, moss-furred trunks.
Despite all of this, Dutch was confident that if an attack came, he and his team would be equal to it. What they didn’t foresee was the sheer swiftness and agility of their opponent.
It was Pablo who spotted the thing first, barking out a one-word warning, swinging up his Heckler and Koch MP5 and releasing a barrage of gunfire into the trees all in one fluid movement. Instantly the rest of the team scattered, aiming for cover they’d already earmarked, slipping naturally into a formation that allowed them to attack the location of the Hunter from all angles.
This they did, blasting away into the trees, turning the leaves and branches overhead into a cascade of mulch and splinters. The Hunters were fast, but not so fast that this tactic didn’t often yield results, most commonly by wounding the alien and thus slowing it down and forcing it to retreat.
On this occasion, though, it was clear that no sooner had the Hunter been spotted than it was gone, disappearing among the trees like a phantom. After ten seconds of strafing gunfire, Dutch called a halt. The sudden silence after the cacophonous blizzard of bullets was so shocking that even the clatter of rain now seemed muted to the gentlest of whispers. Every member of the team paused, watching, listening, alert for the slightest shimmer of movement, the barest deviation in the rain’s downward trajectory.
Dutch trusted his men implicitly. He knew they didn’t cry wolf, knew they would only raise the alarm if they were one hundred percent sure of what they’d seen. Even so, he felt compelled to ask the question.
“Tell me what you saw, Pablo.”
Pablo was short and compact, with heavy features on a small, almost dainty skull, a dark smear of facial hair descending from beneath the center of his fleshy lips and extending out along his jawline.
“A branch bent as something landed on it. Then a water spark. Unmistakable.”
The cloaking mechanism that the Hunters used to make themselves invisible was some sort of electrical field, and occasionally, when water hit it at a certain angle, it sparked like a tiny short circuit – Dutch had no idea why.
“Okay,” Dutch said. He had no reason to doubt Pablo’s words.
“Think we hit it?” asked Angus, his second-in-command.
Though he was a good ten, fifteen meters away, Dutch scanned the area with his ultraviolet goggles. “No blood traces.”
“Could’ve been diluted by rain, or buried by debris,” suggested Carter, another of his guys.
“It could,” Dutch conceded. “But let’s not assume. Let’s head for deeper cover.”
Heading for deeper cover wasn’t exactly conceding defeat, but it was an admission that, rather than pushing forward for the kill, the team were going to have to be more patient and cautious than usual. The Hunter, it seemed, had evaded their clutches for now, and they no longer had the element of surprise. With one final glance around, Dutch gave the signal and they began to move.
The attack came from nowhere. No sooner had they broken cover than a lightning bolt shot down from the trees on their left and hit an abandoned jeep between Pablo and another of Dutch’s team, a guy called Jameson. The jeep erupted, spewing fire and sending lethal shards of spinning metal in all directions.
One of those shards, about the size of a dinner plate, hit Pablo with enough force not only to knock him off his feet, but to slice through his body armor and the flesh of his shoulder, opening up a gash deep enough to chip the bone. Pablo flew through the air like a kid hit by a car, and landed on his head with enough force that his skull would have shattered if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet. As it was, he was knocked cold and came to rest on his front, his nose smashed up, minus several teeth, and his shoulder wound gushing blood.
Jameson, who had half-turned toward the vehicle as it exploded, was hit by a flying tire, which ricocheted off the side of his chest, snapping several of his ribs. Like Pablo, he was thrown backward and hit the ground with enough force that he was instantly knocked cold.
Dutch and the rest of his men scattered like ants whose nest has been attacked. After seeking cover, they instantly turned their weapons on the source of the lightning bolt.
Once again the relative peace of the cloud forest was shattered by a cacophony of gunfire. Once again a hole was blasted in the canopy overhead as branches and leaves were shredded into wood pulp.
This time Dutch did see the Hunter and grunted in surprise. Even as he was firing, he glimpsed branches a good thirty meters to the left of the target zone bending and springing back as the thing leaped from tree to tree. And then, like Pablo, he saw a water spark, which set off a chain reaction, a sort of shiver of light that for a split-second defined the shape of the creature they had come here to hunt and hopefully capture.
He swung his weapon round, strafing the trees and hoping to wing it, but again it was too quick for him. Dutch couldn’t believe how swiftly the thing moved. It was insect-fast, and shooting it would have been the same as trying to shoot a dragonfly or a mosquito. He wondered whether its speed was natural or whether it was using some kind of hitherto unknown technology.
After the injured men had been dragged out of the still-smoldering camp and into the cover of the trees, the next few minutes were spent staunching their bleeding, patching them up and medicating them. Once they were reasonably comfortable, and at least partly sheltered from the rain, Dutch spoke to the rest of the men, keeping his voice low despite the unceasing clatter of rain in the trees.
“Anyone else see that thing?”
The men were glancing constantly up and around, on alert for further attacks, and gave the impression they weren’t listening to him, but each of them shook their heads.
“It was small,” Dutch said. “Six feet tall at most. Thin with long limbs. It moved fast – and I mean fast. Like a blur.”
“You think it’s something else?” Angus said. “Some other species?”
Dutch had already considered that. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s artificially enhanced.”
“Or it could just be young. A teenager,” Angus suggested.
“It
’s possible,” Dutch said. “No reason to think that they’re not like us – growing to maturity, different body types. Whatever that thing is, it’s faster than we’re used to, but it still has weaknesses and we have to take advantage of those. Maybe it’s not as strong as other Hunters we’ve come across. Could be if we draw it into a trap, we could overpower it.”
“We don’t know that, though, right?” said Brand, a black guy built like the biggest, baddest linebacker ever, who had a pattern of swirls shaved into the dark stubble on the side of his head. “I mean, if this thing’s got metal arms and legs, or whatever…”
“An alien fucking cyborg,” Carter hissed, who looked excited at the prospect.
“Focus,” Dutch said. “That thing is just fucking fast. Period.”
“Fast or not, it still fucking bleeds, right?” Cook said. He looked like a bewhiskered pirate.
Dutch nodded abruptly and outlined his plan. When he was satisfied that everyone knew their role, he and the seven remaining members of his team slipped deeper into the jungle. Loath as he was to leave Pablo and Jameson behind, he knew they would understand his reasons once they came round. And he was consoled by his own conviction that the two were safer lying unconscious on their own than they would have been if Dutch had left a couple of guys to stand guard over them, or if he and his men had taken them along for the ride. He had learned enough about the aliens’ code of honor over the years to be certain the Hunter would not kill the two men while they were unconscious and helpless on the ground.
To make themselves as difficult a target as possible, Dutch and his team moved at a brisk pace, zigzagging constantly through the trees, overlapping one another so their formation was fluid and ever-changing. As they did this, their eyes darted everywhere to reduce the risk of ambush. Dutch’s philosophy was that his team was a single organism, a creature with twenty arms, twenty legs and twenty eyes (or sixteen of each in this case), super fit and combat trained to the highest possible standard. Where most victims of the Predators fell down was in the fact that as soon as the aliens began to pick them off, they panicked and stopped thinking and working for each other, becoming scared individuals rather than members of a focused and coherent team. Dutch, though, had chosen men who, like himself, did not know the meaning of the word “fear,” and he had then worked tirelessly to improve their concentration, their focus, their sensory instincts and their tactical awareness.
Predator Page 7
