by Chuck Dixon
A whisper of sound ahead. Rock on rock. A tree bough moved out of sync with the others brushed by the wind coming down off the mesa. He took to a knee and fisted his raised left hand, then realized that Caroline might not be hip to Ranger sign language. He held his hand splayed behind him in the more universal gesture for ‘stop’ without turning to look back. Through the ring sight of his rifle, he scanned the ground above them. He wasn’t sure what made him stop at first, but the hair on his arms stood up. Listening hard, he picked up a click of stone on stone. Something was disturbing the rock scree above them.
It could have been an animal. These woods were full of them. Even the super-sized herbivores here were dangerous. Critters that would be skittish at home were aggressive and territorial here. Dwayne recalled thinking what a shitty way it would be to go; gnawed to death by beavers. He glanced back to see Caroline down on her knees six paces back. Jimbo was on all fours by her with head hanging low. Caroline held the Browning like she knew what she was doing.
His ears picked up a new sound, a nattering of voices. They were speaking low from just over a hummock of land where the gully curved up and out of sight. The sounds of movement stopped. Did they know Dwayne and his group were here or did they pick this as the most likely trail up the slope? Either way, Dwayne could try and move around the ambush and risk getting lost or wait on Chaz and Hammond and try to bushwhack the bushwhackers by flanking them.
Waiting for the other Rangers risked letting the skinnies add to their number and holding the high ground by sheer force of numbers. These skinnies must have swung away out of range and sight of the automatic weapons. They probably came east along the beach and climbed up here by the same route in reverse used by Dwayne and the others on their first night here.
More automatic fire from below. Controlled three round bursts from Chaz’s rifle and longer volleys from the heavy gun. The sounds of gunfire were getting closer. They were being herded into a killing box like deer. The group above was getting bolder, no effort to hide their hoots and calls to one another, working themselves up for the kill. But they were sticking to their position rather than moving down to close up the encirclement.
If Dwayne was going to break through, it had to be now before the noose closed on them and while the area of operations was still fluid. He either had to break the ambush or, at the very least, draw the skinnies away from Caroline and Jimbo.
Dwayne was up on his feet with a grunt and moved forward with his rifle butt tight to his shoulder. Dark shapes appeared atop the hummock of ground above, silhouetted against the scant moonlight. Rocks began falling through the pine boughs around Dwayne. They knew he was here. He pumped rounds at them and saw a shadow spin away with a yip. More rocks rained down all around, but they were throwing blind from shelter, just lobbing stones in their primitive version of suppression fire.
He peered around the shelter of a stout tree bole and let loose some suppression of his own. The rock throwing died away. There were barks and hoots in response as they torqued up their courage again. He moved to a better position on the other side of the trail just as a knot of howling skinnies piled into the trail and rushed down the slope swinging clubs.
A long burst sent three of them tumbling and another sat back on his ass with no head. More stumbled over the fresh corpses as Dwayne dashed for fresh cover. Thrown clubs whizzed past him into the brush. He fired as he moved and dropped another one. The rest turned from the trail to follow him. He moved along the slope to the north, luring the shrieking mob away from the trail and Caroline and Jimbo’s position.
Dwayne halted to send bursts of snap shots behind him then returned to race for new cover over the rough ground. The rock scree and pine needles made for uncertain footing, and he slid as much as ran in a crooked course across the face of the slope. Turning back to sweep fire at his closing pursuers, he ran into the trunk of a tree and fell hard to tumble downhill. He came to rest in a tangle of brush. He groped for the rifle, finding the smooth Rynite stock and pulling it to him. Skinnies crashed through the foliage all around him, and he rose to his knees and blazed at the nearest one. The little man was lifted off his feet, and his torso opened up and steaming entrails spilled out. Dwayne ducked a club that streaked by him and raised the rifle only to hear the hammer fall with a click on an empty chamber.
He was bowled off his feet by one skinny and then another. They clawed at him, and he held the rifle stock across his chest to hold them away. Their jaws snapped closed as they nipped at his bare arms. A third skinny joined them and scratched at Dwayne’s eyes in an effort to blind him. The weight of the three held him pinned, and he released his grip on the rifle to drive two fast punches into the face of one of his attackers. Blood jetted down his arm, and the skinny dropped away. Another sank teeth into the flesh of his leg above the knee, and the pain was nearly unbearable. Dwayne could hear more feet pounding down the slope to join the fight.
Dwayne felt a warm shower cover him. Two skinnies fell convulsing away from him, their heads spraying blood and gobbets of brain matter. Double tap head shots. Dwayne kicked the leg-biter in the face, driving the skinny’s jaw out of place. He rolled to his rifle as the night filled with thunder and light.
Hammond was standing over him pumping round after round uphill with the calm assuredness of a day at the range. Targets left. Targets right. He gave them all hell.
“Am I gonna have to do all the ass-saving or are you gonna help?” he called out, and Dwayne slapped a fresh mag home in the M4 and fired into the dark.
“Good to see you too, asshole,” Dwayne shouted back.
“Where’s the woman?”
“Back on the trail.”
“Lead me back and I’ll cover you,” Hammond called and hammered two charging skinnies, dropping them to the ground in a spray of blood and bone. “No more half-ass tactics. It’s shoot and scoot all the way to evac.”
Dwayne raced along the slope of the hill back the way he came. Lee stayed tight on his six. He doubled his pace as the discharge of a pistol boomed again and again ahead of him.
The Browning.
16
Fight Or Flee
The wounded man by Caroline lay still on his back. His breathing came in weak, rattling gasps. She heard him called Jimbo by the other men. He made choking sounds in his throat.
Caroline put down the handgun to push him over on his side, and he breathed a bit easier.
Gunfire exploded to her right. It had to be the one named Dwayne. He rushed off the trail ahead of her a few moments ago and vanished into the woods, with a mob of aborigines close behind him throwing stones and clubs.
She gripped the pistol and sat listening and watching. The weapon was unfamiliar and alien in her hands. Was she holding it right? She was imitating actors she saw on TV. Was that all bullshit? What about safeties. She knew guns had safeties. Was the one on this pistol in the on or off position? She examined the strange black steel object in her hands but could make no sense of the tabs and levers above the handle.
There were shouts and answering calls from unseen aborigines that sounded close all around. She fought down shivers as she trained the gun up the trail where she expected an armed hunter to appear any second rushing down from the crest of the hill.
A thrashing sound came from the brush behind and below her, and she dropped back on her side and twisted around to see two males from the village stumble across the trail below her. They appeared panicked, and one of them had dark streaks of blood running from his shoulder. The larger of the two looked around wildly, and his eyes quickly found her lying prone on the trail just above him. He grinned and stalked forward, a flint ax held tight in his fist.
Her first shot missed, and she was surprised at the weight of the handgun as it jumped back in her fist. The bright muzzle blast took away her night vision. Her next shot went off by accident when she jerked her hand closed to keep a grip on the butt of the handgun. She was scrabbling to her feet, and a body impacted her to drive
her down on her back.
Caroline bucked and kicked as a filthy thumb jabbed at her face to tear at the corner of her mouth while another hand pressed her head to the ground. His weight pinned the handgun between them, and she strained to pull it free.
The heavy body stank of grease and feces. The huffing male made sounds like braying laughter as he panted with the exertion of trying to hold her still and tear at her face. She pulled hard and yanked her gun hand free from between their bodies. The barrel pressed tight to the ribs of her attacker, she squeezed the trigger twice, and the hands released her with a jerk.
The weight of the still body was shoved off her. The man the others called Jimbo had braced himself against a bank along the trail and kicked the male away. He looked dazed but was smiling weakly.
“That was badass, lady,” he said.
Her attacker lay across the trail. The two rounds had torn his back open as they exited. If it was possible, he smelled even worse now. Farther down the trail, the other male lay unmoving from a mortal wound where one of her wild shots struck him. Caroline looked at herself. She was sticky with blood, but at least it was not her own. Her cheek and jaw hurt where the savage tried to rip the skin off her face. She spat again and again to get the taste of that filthy thumb out her mouth.
She held the gun out to Jimbo butt-first. “Naw.” He shook his head with a slow, painful motion. “You’re doin’ fine.”
His head drooped, and he collapsed to his side. Out again.
She whirled, gun up, at fresh footfalls below her. Booted feet.
The black man from back at the cave raised a free hand to her as she stopped on the trail.
“Friend,” the man said. He was gasping for air and streaming with sweat.
Caroline realized that every muscle in her body was painfully tensed. She relaxed a bit and suddenly felt tired, more tired than she’d ever remembered being in her life and felt herself drifting away until strong hands shook her by the shoulders.
“Caroline!” the black man was in her face and shouting. “Time for that later! I need you strong!”
She swallowed hard. She pressed her eyes closed. She opened them again and focused.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m all right. You know my name. What’s yours?’
“Call me Chaz.”
He let the rifle drop in its combat sling and lifted the unmoving Jimbo into a fireman’s carry.
“You’re a Ranger now,” Chaz grunted. “You lead the way.”
17
Back In The Now
The helicopter, a big-ass fourteen-seat Sikorsky, landed in an open area behind the Tesla tower. When the rotors slowed to a stop and the dust had settled, men in windbreakers sprang out ahead of a thin man in his twenties. The thin man wore a summer-weight suit of Italian cut. He gestured to the two windbreakers with an open hand to stay as if they were a pair of guard dogs.
He made his way to the collection of pre-fab buildings beyond the tower to find Dr. Morris Tauber speaking to a man by a car marked Alamo Taxi Service. The car drove away, and Tauber stepped forward to greet the visitor.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” Tauber said. “Gus Martin.” The young man extended a hand and crushed Tauber’s in his tennis grip. “I’m a V.P. at Gallant. Sir Neal wanted me to deliver the news in person.”
“News?” Tauber frowned.
“We’re shutting you down,” Martin said and looked around at the sad metal buildings baking in the late morning sun.
“But we’re in the middle of an exercise,” Tauber said.
“You have forty-eight hours to pack up and leave everything as it is.”
“That’s impossible. I’m not sure what you understand about this facility and our work here, but we still have people in the field. I can’t guarantee they’ll return in two days.”
“Frankly—” Martin removed a pair of sunglasses and placed them on his nose, “—I’m really not up to speed on this. And I don’t need to be. My official title is Vice President of Facilities Management, but what I am is a fixer. Sir Neal wants this shut down, left just as it is, and you and your people gone. I’m to see that gets done.”
“But the Tauber Tube is a creation of my sister’s.” Tauber realized how weak the words sounded as he said them. “You can’t just take over.”
“The ‘Tauber Tube’ or whatever it may be called in the future is the property of Gallant Industries, Dr. Tauber. It was paid for with corporate funds, along with all the recent extras and personnel you’ve requested.”
“But—”
“Look, Tauber. I don’t think you grasp what a total fuckup this little enterprise has been. Your report to Sir Neal was alarming, to put it in the kindest terms. You’ve lost personnel. Two confirmed dead. More missing and their fates unknown. There will be questions. Criminal allegations. The kind of allegations we can’t paper over with ND agreements. We’ll be lucky to limit inquiries to state authorities.”
“But the Tube is a success. It performed precisely as we presented it would.”
“That’s the only thing keeping Sir Neal from throwing you to the wolves. Your device may be of some actual value to the company down the road. You keep your compensation package. But your further participation here is no longer required, necessary or welcome.”
“This deadline is absurd!” Tauber was shouting now. Behind him, Parviz and Quebat exited the reactor building. They looked like kids playing at spacemen in their Tyvek overalls and goggles.
“You make it work however you can, Doctor,” Martin said evenly, and gestured to the two Iranians. “And make sure those two are far away from here, and any connection to Gallant Industries is erased. They’re a walking Homeland Security investigation, and we don’t need that kind of attention. Excuse me, any more of that kind of attention.”
“You’re making an impossible demand,” Tauber said, but Martin had already turned his back and was starting back to the copter.
“It is what it is,” Martin said without turning. “Wrap it up. Pack it up. Get out. Forget you were ever here.”
Parviz and Quebat made their way at a brisk walk toward the residence hut.
Tauber stood, hands fisted, and watched until Martin reached the copter and it rose airborne in a storm of dust and grit to bank south and out of sight.
The Iranians were preparing some of their high power expresso when Tauber banged the door open and confronted them.
“No excuses. No explanations. No bullshit. I need the nuke powered up as soon as you can make it happen.” Tauber was red-faced and breathless.
Parviz and Quebat blinked at him. “They’re shutting us down.”
The expresso machine gurgled.
“And I don’t think they much care if we have personnel on the other side.”
Parviz set down his cup and turned off the burbling expresso machine. He muttered a translated summation to Quebat.
“Doctor Tauber, we will do the very best we can,” Parviz said. “We can create a controlled surge of the required levels within twelve hours.”
Tauber stared open-mouthed at them.
“I’ve been asking you for that kind for performance for months,” Tauber said. “Now, all of a sudden, you can make max levels inside a twelve-hour window?”
“We were concerned with the longevity of the reactor, Doctor,” Parviz said. “If they are ending the project, then our long-term needs are no longer of consideration. We will finish our expresso and perhaps some toast, and then return to the reactor and be bringing it back to the required power levels.”
Parviz blinked. Quebat smiled at Tauber. “Well.” Tauber sighed. “All right, then.”
18
The Margins
Dwayne and Hammond were waiting at the head of the trail as the others climbed the gully to join them. They could hear hunting horns to the north resounding through the woods.
“They’re getting their shit together,” Dwayne said. “This next part is an easier march, but it’s over open ground.
From here we just stay close and make for the field area as fast as we can.”
Dwayne took command naturally, and the others followed his lead. It was habit as much as a sense of loyalty. Their old Top had seen them out of some really bad shit in the past. If it ain’t broke…
“Four of you? There’s only four of you?” Caroline said and looked around. Two men in boxer shorts, one unconscious. Two other men armed to the back teeth, but still, only two of them. “This is what my brother sent back to get me?”
“Four of the best, Celine,” Hammond said. “Let’s wait on the post-game for this, okay?”
Chaz said. “Jimbo ain’t getting any lighter.”
“You’re walking drag, Hammond,” Dwayne said and placed a hand on Caroline’s shoulder. She didn’t seem to notice as she stood returning Hammond’s glare.
“Sun’s coming up,” Chaz said. “Can we move? Now?”
The group climbed over the ridgeline and onto the grassy glacis that led up to the lip of the mesa. There was no cover except for groupings of rocks and patches of low scrubby heather and stunted trees. The sun was rising over the mesa before them, creating the pink dawn light peculiar to desert climes. They humped forward as quickly as they could. Chaz invited Caroline to dig into his backpack as they walked and retrieve a plastic bottle of Gatorade. She sipped at it as Dwayne cautioned her to.
“Take it slow,” he said. “Your stomach is empty, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “There wasn’t really anything on the menu I cared for.”
