THIRTY-ONE
Somers felt as though his left foot had been caught in a bear trap. Only the heavy leather uppers of his combat boots had prevented the vise-like jaws from snapping his ankle.
Jaws — yes, he’d been grabbed by something with jaws and teeth. It was an animal of some kind, impossible to identify, but low to the ground like a crocodile or alligator. The beast was dragging him back, into the thicket where, presumably it would do more than just nip his ankle.
Not today you won’t.
Somers drove the heel of his free right foot into the ground and tried to wrench his trapped left foot loose. He was only partly successful. The creature didn’t let go, but his mighty heave overcame the power of its retreat, and for a moment the beast was lofted into the air, still clinging to his foot. Somers caught just a glimpse of a thick, torpedo-shaped body with stubby legs paddling at the air and a long thrashing tail before his leg and the attached animal crashed back to the ground.
His earlier comparison to an alligator wasn’t far off the mark. He judged it to be some kind of crocodilian reptile, easily twelve feet long from tip to tail.
The impact accomplished what Somers’s initial display of strength could not. He felt the pressure around his ankle vanish; he was free. But he did not scramble back to the relative safety of the ridgetop. Instead, he twisted around and dove down the hill, probing with his hands until his fingers felt the rough, scaly skin of the thing that had attacked him. The creature wasn’t moving, stunned perhaps, but Somers wasn’t going to take any chances. He wrapped his arms around the thick body and wrestled it out into the open.
As soon as he lifted it off the ground, it began thrashing like a live wire, slamming its tail into the ground with such force that Somers nearly toppled over.
Nearly…but not quite.
When he had charged into the fray, he had released the cork on the bottle of his primal anger. There was no turning back. Driven by an inner fire that the ancients had once called berserkergang, Somers just squeezed even harder.
He felt his arms start to burn with the build-up of lactic acid. He was hugging the beast against his chest so tightly that he couldn’t even draw breath. The creature’s thrashing seemed to build to a feverish climax, and then, with a hideous cracking sound, its bones snapped and its torso deflated like an empty balloon. Somers held on through its death throes, but when he was certain of his victory, he heaved the carcass into the bushes from where it had originated.
The reptilian body landed with a crash amid a rustling of broken vegetation, but Somers’s victory was short lived. A cold sliver of doubt insinuated itself into his battle-rage as he saw three more shapes dart out from the thicket to avenge their fallen brother.
Oh, he thought. Shit.
He backpedaled, but the things moved like dark lightning across the open ground. Then, seemingly without reason, the nearest of the things began to jerk spasmodically. Its tail swept out, knocking one of the remaining animals off course, sending it tumbling back down the slope. The third creature seized the advantage and hastened forward, only to suffer the same fate as the first.
Something had killed these two scaly behemoths.
He glanced up the hill and saw the silhouettes of the rest of the team — five in all — including a short man standing next to Zelda, aiming a large rifle into the thicket.
Somers felt the tide of his fury start to wane. “Good shooting,” he said, his voice a low rumble that might not have even been audible from where the team now stood.
“Just returning the favor,” replied the man with the gun. “It was the least—”
The rest of his words were lost as the din of automatic rifle fire erupted in the distance. The Burmese troops had engaged the frankensteins in the compound. Almost simultaneously, several dark shapes appeared on the ridge line and charged the team’s position.
THIRTY-TWO
Zelda wheeled and unleashed a burst from her MP5 that nearly tore the head off the frankenstein leading the charge. Parker also fired into the horde, but his shots were less precise, only wounding the attackers.
Unable to clearly see the abominations, King and Tremblay could do little more than step back and let the others carry the fight, but in an instant, two of the monstrosities broke through and closed with them.
King drew his only remaining weapon, a razor sharp KA-BAR combat knife, and thrust it forward. The frankenstein impaled itself on the blade, but its momentum knocked King back, and both tumbled down the hill. Somers bounded forward, arresting King’s fall and hurling the frankenstein into the underbrush that concealed the reptilian creatures’ nest.
Tremblay faced the remaining foe, but as it reached for him, he deftly stepped aside, grasping its ragged shirt as it passed, and redirected its momentum to send it crashing headlong into a tree trunk.
Just like that, the skirmish was over, but the threat was far from past. King recovered his footing and hastened back up the hill.
“We’re out of here,” he rasped. “Buddy up, everyone. Nighteyes, you know the way. Eastwood, stay with him. Juggernaut, you’re with Legend. Danno, you lead me.”
They moved out without further discussion, running — at least to the extent their various injuries made that possible — where the terrain would allow. For King, Tremblay and Somers, the journey was surreal; a game of blind man’s bluff, requiring absolute trust in their guides, who not only had the ability to see in the near total darkness, but could also talk to each other and to the distant Deep Blue.
The long silence was too much for Tremblay. “What the hell were those things? They looked like alligators.”
He had hoped the mostly rhetorical question would ease the tension with a little soldierly commiseration, and the only soldier within earshot was someone with whom he was particularly interested in commiserating.
“Shin says the locals call them buru.”
Zelda’s answer indicated that she had already asked the same question and received an answer. While informative, it wasn’t quite the banter for which Tremblay had been hoping. “You mean he knew about them? Nice of him to share.”
She didn’t respond, and he decided to let it drop. Being attacked by some kind of weird mountain crocodile wasn’t the craziest thing that had happened tonight. As he mentally ticked off the litany of horrors they had witnessed and the sacrifices that had been made, the fact of Silent Bob’s death finally sank in. The realization led to another: he was now the last surviving member of Alpha team.
Damn.
After that, Tremblay wasn’t much in the mood for bantering, even with the lovely Zelda Baker.
THIRTY-THREE
General Keasling was waiting for them at the safe-house. He stood with his arms folded across his chest, saying nothing as the thoroughly dispirited Delta operators filed into the room and collapsed wearily onto the floor.
Ten had gone out. Only seven had come back.
They had reached the van after a harrowing hour-long cross-country trek. On three different occasions, they had encountered buru—the crocodilian species was evidently a nocturnal predator — waiting in ambush along their chosen route, but in each case, Shin spotted them in time to avoid a repeat of the earlier battle. The frankensteins had dogged their steps relentlessly for the first half-hour, but after that, the noise of pursuit had dwindled. When they finally reached the rented van, they climbed inside with barely a word exchanged among themselves. Zelda had handed her radio over to King, who promptly informed Deep Blue that they had reached the extraction point. He hadn’t added that the mission was a complete failure; that was self-evident.