by Chuck Dixon
He wedged the two bricks of Semtex into a gap in the complex wicker of branches at the center of the face of the dam. There was a pocket there that allowed his arm in up to the elbow. When the bricks were firmly seated, he removed the mercury fuses from his cargo pocket after poking a starter hole in the plastic wrap about the bricks with a clasp knife. With even pressure, he poked each of the fuses into the gritty clay of the plastic explosives.
Using one hand to secure the fuse in place, he pulled the detonation ring from the housing to allow the binary mix within the chemical fuse to start its reaction. The stick fuse had a one hundred and eighty-second delay. That’s what the literature said. All Lee knew was that he wanted to be as far away and above the dam as his tired-ass legs could carry him in three minutes.
He threw aside the pull rings and turned to push out from the lake of muddy water and haul ass.
From somewhere above, a chittering sound reached him. Lee turned to see a beaver the size of a grizzly bear sliding on its belly down the muddy bank. It was all spiky fur and slashing teeth as it plunged into the pool toward him at an astonishing speed.
He brought the big revolver up and sent a plea to Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson that the barrel wasn’t clogged with river mud.
Chaz rushed uphill with howling pursuit close on his boot heels. So close that a flung stone hammer crashed through the branches above him. Twigs and leaves rained down.
The blue guys and the bushy guys and the whiter-than-white guys were coming over the river bed in force. A few forded above Chaz and came down on his flank. They’d have had him if one of them didn’t let out a whoop upon sighting him. Chaz took the whooper with a double-tap. The rest came out of the foliage, wailing and throwing hammers from all directions at once. The Ranger broke through with a few well-placed bursts and was rushing away uphill in an attempt to get above them, leading them away from the others.
“Come on, motherfuckers! Follow my black ass if you have the balls!” he called back to them.
Bat plugged the last of her grenades into the launcher and tossed the empty bandolier aside. She had a magazine in the M4 and one spare in a pouch on her Molle vest. The reports from Chaz’s rifle were getting farther away. It was time to fall back toward the thorn refuge. That would be the last stand. She wasn’t about to let these animals get at N’itha and the wounded Rangers without a fight. She trotted, rifle up and sights transiting along a path that would bring her above the thorn circle.
A figure burst from the brambles blow her. This one was painted bright red. She laid the tang of the M4’s front sight center mass. She was moving her finger from the trigger guard to the trigger when she recognized the panting figure sprinting toward her.
“Bruce, you’re alive,” she breathed.
“Fucking A,” he gasped. His toothy smile was hideous in the gory mess covering his face. The wolf’s head he wore was matted with blood. He still had the tomahawk in one hand and a stone hammer in the other. Both were clotted with blood and matter.
She raised her sights toward whoever was following noisily behind him.
A trio of the lime-daubed warriors scrambled out of the hedge of bushes, clawing after Byrus. Bat dropped them with a long, expensive burst of rounds. She and the Macedonian took off running without looking back. The tortured screams rose behind them; the sounds of dying men.
N’itha crouched between Rick and Jimbo. She had a tomahawk in her fists. The sounds of explosions and the shrieks of their enemies filled the air beyond the barrier of thorn branches. They were coming closer. They would come here and find them.
She had been game for any fate on the night she slipped from the house of her father. Her spurning of Koto and defiance of the Earth Mother’s wishes had been done at great risk. She’d understood from the start that her rebellious rejection of the great honor of being the annual sacrifice to the sky gods might end in her death. Each day following her exodus was a gift. She had no regrets.
If it ended today, she considered herself fortunate. She’d spent many days and nights with a man she truly wanted to be with. She’d seen many wonders she would never have been a part of had she meekly surrendered to the destiny chosen for her. And should it end today, it would end with them together. With Rick Renzi. She would stand and defend her mate just as he had saved her. With the last beat of her heart, she would strike at their enemy. They would not take her man easily. And they would need to kill her as well. She would not go back to that wicked place with them. She would not die as her people had. Like rabbits in a trap, too frightened to try and save themselves.
One of the shiny metal objects that Rikki and his kind used to slay their enemies lay by the other fallen man; the one-eyed man with hair as black as hers. That weapon might be of more lethal use than the tomahawk. She tried to understand how it worked. To her, it seemed like all Rikki, and the others did was point it, and it spat flame and death by a kind of magic.
She knew that was wrong. Rikki had tried to show her how his weapon worked, even encouraging her to learn how to use it herself. She’d been frightened and ran away. He’d laughed at her, and she grew angry and flung a rock that struck him in the face. He only laughed harder, seated on the ground holding a bloody hand to his nose. But he’d never tried to show her how the fire weapon worked again, and now she was regretting it.
Fingers trembling, she reached for the smooth metal of the .44 magnum revolver. A hand clamped on her wrist.
“I can take it from here, girl,” Jimbo said, sitting up.
It was like a bad, bad dream.
Lee once heard a range instructor call it ballistic performance anxiety.
It was all happening in slow motion. He was backing out of the water, boots fighting for traction on rocks slippery with algae. The black shape rocketed toward him across the murky lake at the foot of the dam face.
Lee’s arm was out with the big .500 in his fist as he backed off. It was trained at the looming beast gliding at him behind a swollen bow wave. If the muddy water obstructed the big bore barrel, he wouldn’t have to worry about being gnawed to death by a beaver. The trapped gases within the revolver would blow his arm off. He’d bleed out before the monster rodent could get to him. Then they’d both ride two bricks of high explosives into whatever came next.
So there was an upside.
He pulled the trigger again and again in rapid succession. The revolver kicked and bucked back. The high caliber blasts created waves of their own in the water. Thick gouts of blood leaped from the slick fur on the beaver’s back. Lee’s foot went out from under him. The bulk of the animal struck him. He brought down the butt of the revolver on the monster’s skull before becoming submerged beneath the weight of it.
Lee fought back to sunlight with a snort. He reached and pulled, reached and pulled until he out in the shallows. One look back at the massive beaver floating still on its back in a spreading stain of red and he was off running. Knees up, arms pumping. Twenty seconds lost splashing around with the buck-toothed beast. Maybe more. He had a minute to get clear.
His pace took him fifty yards downstream before he hooked hard right to climb up the bank on all fours. He reached a collection of boulders and dove behind the cover of them. The ground came up to meet him—the two packs of Semtex went up as one. The sky clouded over in a rush. Chunks of wood and clots of mud rained down as well as a drenching mist of water.
Aching over every inch of his body, Lee pulled himself up to peer over the edge of his rocky shelter. The sight was underwhelming. The smoke cleared to show him a smoking vertical crater in the tangled wall of the dam face. But the dam appeared to hold.
“Son of a bitch.” Lee slammed a fist down on the rock.
The gambit didn’t pay off. He had run off from Bat and his buddies to save the day. Now they’d die without him being there. He pushed himself off the rocks, surprised to see the .500 revolver still in his hand. The jumble of shells still rattled in his pocket. He could get back in time to be with the Rangers
— to be with Bat. Lee started to run along the bank.
A cracking, splintering sound grew louder and louder.
Lee turned.
The dam face was collapsing in on itself, the whole structure sagging in toward the weak spot created by the blast. Water burst from the gaps the explosives had made. Muddy water streamed from the weak places in the dam like the spray from a fire hose. With a sudden, violent motion the entire span collapsed, followed by a churning wall of water sweeping logs and debris before it in a racing, frothing mass. Lee scrambled higher and higher up the bank as the flood climbed to reach him, the river swollen and roiling. Those miles and miles of flooded land were free to find a new course for the billions of gallons held contained behind the dam. That much water would go wherever gravity and the lay of the land took it. And the bulk of it was racing downstream like some kind of tidal memory had taken hold of the waters to take them home.
He stood on a flat promontory and watched the torrent rushing east. It found its own track, engulfing what were once turns and bends in the river in a pitching tsunami of dirty brown wash that rose in colossal hummocks and fell back level when the land beneath had been battered flat or slashed away under the weight of the deluge. The water found its own path. Trees fell in its wake, torn loose to become a part of the onslaught. The water climbed up the banks, ripping away earth, creating a rising mist before it as water turned to vapor upon impact with anything in its path.
Shaking his head in awe at the power of what he’d unleashed, Lee sank to his knees, spent.
53
Götterdämmerung
Chaz tapped his last magazine on a rock before reloading his rifle.
Thirty rounds.
Through the trees, he could see at least a hundred men crossing the stream toward the bank below. No idea how many were behind them. He had no count on the number already in the woods and brush around him. By necessity, he slacked off on suppression fire. He was picking targets with more discretion. One shot, one kill. He couldn’t stop them, but he could make them pay.
A yipping sound reached him. It sounded like one of those purse pooches with its paw stuck in a trap. Chaz sighted along the river bed to find six men carrying the twisted freak on his bier. Napoleon riding out to show the troops support. The little fucker was bouncing up and down on the platform and screeching like this was a field trip to Disney. Probably never been this far from home.
Chaz drew a bead on him. If their god died, maybe these assholes would all go home. He let out his breath and pressed the trigger home.
The angle was tricky. The bullet dropped to take one of the carriers in the head. The guy pitched to the mud with the top of his skull missing. The freak nearly tumbled off his seat as the bier tilted. He let out a howl of fury or fear or both. He wiped greasy brain matter from his face. A new guy took the place of the fallen, and the bier moved on.
Chaz stood for a better angle. He brought the rifle down and set the front tang on the pathetic creature’s chest. Rising from cover exposed him to a war band rushing from below. Stone hammers whistled past overhead.
A growing sound came from upstream. A thunderous roar gaining in volume with every passing second. A fine white mist climbed through the trees in a sudden rush. A fast-moving fog flowed to fill the valley like smoke. Chaz could see the waters of the stream widen below. Within seconds even the dry portions of the river bed were ankle and then knee deep. The advance of warriors across the bed broke up. Some headed to the near shore while others turned to run back the way they’d come. The little freak on his perch waggled his hand and shouted in a dumb show. His commands drowned out by the all-consuming noise. Confused, his bearers could only manage to stumble around in circles in the swirling water. Out of the west, the constant roar became deafening, wiping away even thought.
The war band below Chaz turned from him to look at the river below. Chaz took the opportunity to nail a few of them. His eyes were also drawn to the rushing current rising to a torrent as the river bed filled from bank to bank dragging, blue-dyed and white-painted warriors along with it. The bier carriers were ripped off their feet, and the wooden platform splashed into the swell. The little freak screamed soundlessly as he bobbed along for a few seconds before the bier capsized and vanished, sucked below the surface in an instant.
The thick white mist raced downstream before the tide to cover all in an obscuring haze. It was followed by a filthy wall of water that rose up the slopes on either bank, clawing away at the earth to find a new course to lower ground. Trees fell into the churning waters as the ground beneath them was dashed away by millions of tons of liquid force. The bank eroded, collapsing under the force tearing away at the foundations of the river valley. Great spouts of spray exploded upward when the flood struck obstacles and finally battered them down with the relentless power of the surge’s momentum.
Chaz was up and running for the thorn hide. His path carried him close past bands of blue warriors. They were either too busy climbing the slope to escape the killing current or standing in stupefied shock at the immensity of it all to pay attention to him. The waters of the earth had risen up to swallow their god. They were lost.
He came across a sad procession climbing the slope away from the white-water rapids roaring by below.
Bat and Byrus were struggling to support an unconscious Rick Renzi in a two-man carry. Jimbo was ambulatory with N’itha’s help, but the Pima was pale from blood loss. He moved as if each step was an Olympic event.
Chaz took Rick in a fireman’s carry over his shoulder and did a quick sit-rep.
Bat had twenty rounds for her M4. Chaz had about the same. Bat had tossed the Winchester after firing her last rounds from it. Jimbo had the Dan Wesson with a few dozen rounds. The rest were armed with edged weapons of one sort or another.
“Where are the packs?” Chaz asked.
“Lost them. The water came up so fast. There was no time,” Bat said.
“Radio?”
“Gone.”
“Shit. We’re still in deep. The bush is loaded with unfriendlies on this side. Best plan, head west to link with Hammond. Can I get an ‘amen?’” Chaz shooed them along without waiting for a reply.
Lee Hammond was seated atop a shelf of rock well above the swirling chaos he’d created. He was getting over his amazement at what he’d accomplished with a little bit of thought and a whole lot of bang. Every inch of him throbbed with a deep ache. All he asked was for a quiet moment or two to catch his breath.
The dam was gone. The rush of water that carried it away had slowed to a steady stream as the miles of marsh above drained out, its contents seeking lower ground, seeking level. The flow roughly followed the original course of the river. In places, he could see where it swamped turns in the channel. He pictured it filling Cannibal Lake back to the depth it was at when he first saw it. Maybe the surge would flood out the skinnies. He hoped it would do that to the blue fuckers and their cousins. Wash the whole sick horde away like flushing God’s own toilet.
The level of flow dropped down from the banks following the initial flood. Lee could see dark shapes drifting in the churning mud. A mess of the big beavers. Some rode the current, body surfing along downriver. A few climbed out on either shore, shaking the wet from their fur. They prowled the banks, sniffing and snorting and generally trying to figure out what the hell happened.
Not being sure what an Escalade-sized beaver was capable of, Lee retreated from the ledge to move on a trail that led east toward the sounds of intermittent gunfire.
Lee broke into a limping trot, then a run. He hoped, in his attempt to save his friends and the woman he loved, that he hadn’t doomed them all.
54
Jungle Nurse
Lee shrugged. “We’re going to have to live off the land on the way back. Well, the Indian will be happy anyway.”
Jimbo forced a smile. It was meant to be sarcastic. It came off more shark than snark.
The reunion was without drama. They’d had
enough of that. Lee simply saw the ragged troop crawling along a lower trail and called to them.
“We ain’t going nowhere for a few days,” Chaz said.
“You suggest we go camping?” Lee said. “I don’t see a Marriott around here.”
“We’re running on vapors here, Lee. You included. And we have two injured,” Bat said.
“Yeah.” Lee gave in.
“We’ll get to higher ground and find a place we can secure. I think those blue fucks have had enough, but you never know,” Chaz said. He stooped to grab Rick’s arms and lift him into a carry. Rick’s only response was a hollow groan.
They found a rocky knob at the crest of a hill. A long-ago forest fire had leapt over the ridgeline and scorched everything down to the bare soil. Wind and rain had carried away the top layer leaving naked stone behind. It had clear sight lines in every direction down to hedges of berry bushes that had claimed the terrain in the absence of the big trees that had burnt away. The place was a natural fortification. There was even a cold spring nearby splashing out of the hillside to overflow into a natural tank. Lee found it without Jimbo’s help.
The troop could rest and recuperate here in relative safety. No one thought anyone from the skin palace would be after them at this point. Their twisted man-god had been washed away in the deluge. And no one in the company was in any shape to give a damn anymore.
Chaz and Lee split the overnight watch. The rest fell out where they were and slept dusk to dawn.
Lee went for a hunt the following morning. N’itha joined him, unasked. She was wearing Chaz’s boonie hat. Lee didn’t ask about that either.
“Good eye, Neeta,” Lee said when she pointed out a nice fat caribou at the edge of a herd munching leaves and berries in the thicket below their camp.
