“Shit, man… your joke,” Baxley explained. “I just got it. A guy might actually look for a golf ball.”
“Come on,” Casey murmured, “come on.”
It had only been twenty seconds, maybe less, since Baxley and Coyle had entered the arena, but in this situation twenty seconds seemed like a loooong time. The jungle was full of night sounds—rustles and birdcalls and the ripple of leaves in the wind. Casey could feel her heart thumping at the base of her throat, could smell Traeger’s sweat, and feel the sharp edge of something in the CIA agent’s duffel bag—possibly the Predator mask—pressing against her leg. She glanced up, hoping the Upgrade hadn’t outmaneuvered them, that it wasn’t even now up there in the blackness of the trees above their heads, lowering itself down to snatch its prey, silent as a spider on a thread of silk…
She heard someone gasp, and her eyes immediately seemed to refocus, to sharpen. There. A suggestion of movement at the entrance to the clearing. A shimmer. She held her breath, sensed Traeger tense beside her.
And then, just like that, the Upgrade stepped into the clearing, ducking under the archway of branches, rising to its full height.
Even now, its cloaked form a rippling, shimmering mass of forest come alive, Casey found the alien both impressively beautiful and utterly terrifying. It was like something from folklore. A demon warrior. A perfect killing machine. Relentless and unstoppable. When it moved into the kill zone and got itself blown into chunks of unrecognizable meat, she knew she’d feel a pang of genuine sorrow and regret. And yet right now she wanted that to happen more than anything else in the world.
Two more steps, she thought. Two more steps and all this will be over. But the Upgrade wasn’t moving. Shit. Clearly it could sense something. Suspected a trap. Although it was cloaked, she could discern its movements—its head jerking bird-like as it surveyed its surroundings. Could it see the string of claymore mines in the dirt? The pack of explosives attached to tree branches above its head, wired to blow the instant it walked underneath? It was dark, but what if the alien had night vision? What if—
Abruptly, the Upgrade decloaked.
Now it stood there at the entrance to the clearing in all its glory. A defiant gesture. A mocking gesture. It cocked its head at them, and although its expression was impossible to read, Casey guessed it was chiding them, expressing a kind of mock-disappointment at how pathetic they were, how unworthy they were as opponents.
“No… no… no…” murmured Traeger beside her, weariness and despair in his voice.
She glanced at Nebraska. He was clutching his gun in both hands, half-raising it, and she wondered how much longer it would be before this turned into a straight-out firefight. Maybe if Traeger took the initiative, fired his shoulder cannon, caught the Upgrade by surprise—
But it was the Upgrade who took the initiative. Almost before she realized that the alien had moved, it raised a hand, fired something from its wrist gauntlet, something that flashed in the meager light. A blade.
She didn’t realize what had happened until she heard a grisly sound, followed by an almost regretful sigh to her right. Turning, she saw another of Traeger’s mercs fold and crumple to the ground, blood pouring from a hole in his chest. Immediately, she guessed that the Upgrade’s blade had passed clean through the tree and then through the soldier, like a bullet through soft putty. The Upgrade was showing them their defenses were worthless, that there was nowhere to hide.
“He didn’t buy it!” McKenna yelled. “Open fire!”
Weapons blazed from all around the clearing, and suddenly the darkness was lit up by staccato flashes of gunfire. Bullets tore up trees and bushes, the air filling with the confetti of splinters and shredded foliage. Through it all, Casey tried to keep track of the Upgrade, which had moved even before McKenna had finished giving his order. She saw it dart to its left, weave in and out between the tree trunks so swiftly she couldn’t even tell whether it had reengaged its cloaking mechanism or not. Big as it was, the alien was a fleeting shadow, gone before the bullets could reach it.
Although she wasn’t a soldier, it was obvious to Casey what McKenna and his guys were doing wrong. They were all concentrating their gunfire on one place, which invariably was always the place the Upgrade had just vacated, instead of strafing the entire area, which would effectively have created a barrier of bullets in front of them and given the Upgrade nowhere to hide. She moved out of hiding and waved her arms, trying to snag either Nebraska’s or McKenna’s attention. But they were in the zone, fully focused, and so instead she simply tried yelling at the men to spread the barrage over a wider area, but she couldn’t make herself heard above the noise. She glanced back at Traeger, hoping for some help, but despite toting the only weapon that might prove useful against their enemy, he was cowering behind his tree, keeping his head down. She wondered briefly whether to risk breaking cover entirely and rush across the short stretch of open ground between her and Nebraska—but then the decision was taken out of her hands.
She was vaguely aware of something flashing past on her left-hand side and instinctively ducked, whilst at the same time following its trajectory with her eyes. She only realized it was the Upgrade’s throwing blade returning when she saw the Upgrade’s arm snake out from behind a tree and the blade snap neatly back into place on its wrist gauntlet. She was surprised to see the Upgrade way over to her left. Last time she’d been aware of it, it had been darting between the trees to the right of the entrance to the clearing—and indeed, that was where McKenna and his men were still concentrating their fire.
“Over there!” she yelled, pointing at the Upgrade as it moved forward, keeping to the shadows, striding with one massive step over the string of claymore mines—but no one saw her or heard her.
No one, that is, except the Upgrade itself.
Casey felt herself go cold all over as the Upgrade’s head suddenly snapped round, its eyes boring into her. She saw it reach for its throwing blade again, and dived back behind her tree, but having already witnessed how easily the blade could slice through thick bark she knew she might as well have been standing out in the open. Desperately, she lunged for Traeger’s duffel bag and grabbed the first thing that came to hand—the Predator mask. As the Upgrade flung out its arm, releasing the blade, she dived to one side and swung the mask out wildly in front of her, using it as a tiny makeshift shield.
She was only aware the blade had hit the mask and deflected away when she felt the mask jerked from her hand. She yelped, her fingers stinging, the force of the blow causing the mask to fly one way and she the other. She came down in a heap, which knocked the breath from her, and heard the mask land several meters away with a clanging thump. What happened next happened suddenly and without warning.
The mask came alive.
Casey heard a whirr and a click, and sitting up she saw something extending from an aperture at the side of the mask that was parallel to the eye sockets—a tube of some kind. All at once she remembered Rory telling them how the mask had instinctively responded when it or its wearer had been under attack—how it had reduced one of his neighbors to ash and obliterated the front porch of the guy’s house.
Locking onto its target, the mask now fired a bolt of pure concentrated energy at its attacker. So swift and accurate was the streak of light that not even the Upgrade was quick enough to dodge out of its way. The energy bolt hit it in the center of its chest, knocking it off its feet. The creature flew backward, smoke coiling up from its body, and crashed down right in the middle of the makeshift minefield they had created.