No wonder he hadn’t seen a single deer or owl yet.
Tre and the other heavily armed soldiers were on high alert. As the train rolled toward a lonely mountain pass, the nerve-jangling din of battle could be heard up ahead, just beyond the next ridge. Tracer fire lit up the night sky. Ford glimpsed brilliant laser dazzlers and felt the thrum of high-tech sonic weapons. Judging from the distant lights and racket, the train was approaching the “front line” of the conflict, which was still going strong. Even with everything the armed forces were dishing out, the MUTO was obviously not down for the count.
What was it going to take to stop these things?
A loud whoosh startled Ford as a fiery red explosion flared above the pass. Air brakes squealed and the train came to a halt right before the entrance to a narrow railway tunnel bored into the granite face of the mountain. The sudden stop threw Ford and other soldiers off-balance, and even the multi-ton missiles shifted unnervingly, if only for a moment.
A little warning would have been nice, Ford thought, although he couldn’t blame the locomotive engineer for hitting the brakes. That explosion had looked way too big, too close. Who knew what was waiting for the train on the other side of that tunnel? Were there even any tracks left?
Master Sergeant Waltz hopped down from the locomotive onto the gravel beside the train. He called out to Tre, who was stationed on the missile car directly behind the locomotive.
“Sergeant, I need you down here… now.”
Tre gulped and looked to Ford for sympathy. Aw, shit was written all over his face.
The soldier did his duty, however, and quickly joined Waltz down on the ground. A light fog blanketed the earth. Thick groves of pines and sequoias hemmed in the tracks on both sides, while the tunnel entrance ahead was as black as outer space. Ford looked on as Tre donned a large backpack-mounted radio, which Waltz attempted to employ.
“Snake Eyes, this is Bravo,” the master sergeant said into the radio. He fiddled impatiently with the knobs. “What’s the status at phase line red? Are the tracks clear, over?”
Static growled from the other end of the transmission, along with background noise from a heated battle. Nonstop explosions and shouting crackled from the radio.
“Say again?” a voice answered, barely audible through the interference. “You’re breaking up.”
More soldiers disembarked from the train. They gathered around the radio, frowning. This was not sounding good, for themselves or their mission. Had they reached the end of the line?
Ford was feeling an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. Hopping down from the missile car, he found himself drawn to the pitch-black tunnel entrance ahead. A flashlight was attached to the barrel of his M4 automatic rifle. For a second, he felt as though he was back on that monorail train in Honolulu, with the original MUTO waiting just around the bend.
The voice from the radio grew louder and more agitated, punctuated by bursts of static:
“… not… time… peat… now! Go, GO NOW!”
An agonized scream came over the radio, followed by a brutal crunching noise. The voice went silent; only static issued from the radio. Waltz and the others stiffened, fearing that they had just heard a comrade die in battle. Tre crossed himself.
Slightly further up the track, Ford peered warily into the mouth of the tunnel. Was it just his imagination or could he faintly make out some sort of the movement inside the tunnel? From what he’d gathered, the second MUTO couldn’t possibly fit inside the narrow passage, but something appeared to be heading toward them, surging out of the blackness.
He quickly raised his rife and aimed it at the tunnel. The flashlight beam failed to penetrate the darkness. He started to shout a warning, just as a blast of dust and leaves and forest litter exploded from the tunnel, propelled by a luminous electric pulse. The flying dirt and twigs buffeted Ford, driving him backward. His flashlight instantly shorted out and so did all the lights on the train, car after car. The radio on Tre’s back went dead, too, killing the static. Startled troops shouted in the dark:
“What the hell was that?”
“What happened?”
“Hey, where are the lights?”
But Ford understood. Instinctively, like a child in a lightning storm, he had started counting to himself under his breath.
“…three-one-thousand, four-one-thousand, five-one-thousand…”
A triumphant howl, echoing from the other side of the mountain, cut him off. The din of the nearby battle ceased, so that only the unsettling screeching of the female MUTO could be heard. There were no more bombs or explosions, no tracers or lasers visible beyond the ridge. Brushing the leaves and twigs from his face, Ford realized what the sudden cessation of hostilities meant.
The battle was over — and the MUTO had won.
That same realization was shared by Waltz and the rest of the troops. The frantic shouts trailed off, replaced by a stunned hush that was finally broken by the master sergeant.
“Corporal,” he ordered a nearby communications expert, “get Snake Eyes on the line again. I need to know how close that thing is.”
Ford had already counted that out. “Five miles.”
Waltz turned toward Ford and squinted at him through the dark. It was hard to make out the master sergeant’s features, but Waltz nodded as though impressed. Ford refrained from bragging that this was hardly his first run-in with a MUTO’s electromagnetic pulse. He was practically becoming an old hand at this.
Lucky me, he thought.
“Lieutenant,” Waltz addressed Ford, sizing him up. He gestured at the deep black cavity of the tunnel entrance. “Wanna join us. We’re going in to check that tunnel.”
While the train remained parked outside, Ford, Waltz, Tre and another rifleman, Brubaker, cautiously advanced into the stygian blackness of the tunnel. Fallen leaves and gravel crunched beneath their boots. Spare bulbs, screwed into the flashlights on their rifles, restored a degree of visibility. Incandescent beams penetrated the darkness before them. Ford and Tre took point, leading the way.
The men stop short as they suddenly spied two glowing eyes staring back at them. Ford tightened his grip on his rifle and almost fired until the flashlight beams revealed a lone deer, frozen in terror at what lay beyond the tunnel. In a clatter of hooves, the deer dashed past the soldiers, who jumped out of its way.
How about that? Ford thought, gasping in relief. It took a moment for his heart to stop racing. Guess that fella didn’t get the memo to clear out.
The men moved on until they reached other end of the tunnel. Waltz signaled for alert as he warily stepped out into the open. Ford and the others followed after him, guns at the ready. Ford suspected that the deer had had the right idea, running in the opposite direction.
A long trestle bridge stretched before them, high above a deep gorge carved out by a raging mountain river. Rushing water could be heard, but night and mist hid the bottom of the gorge, as well as the far end of the bridge. The fog made it impossible to tell at a glance if the bridge was still intact all the way across. They would have to check that out and inspect the bridge’s supports as well. They needed to know whether the bridge had been damaged by the recent battle and whether it would still support the missile train.
“Master Sergeant,” Ford said, taking the initiative. “Why don’t you and Brubaker check below?” He nodded at Tre. “Sergeant Morales, you’re with me.”