“It seems ...” Maddox gazed down as he lightly touched a photo of red flesh on snow, “to understand ... things.”
Tipler waited. “Things?”
“Yes, it seems to understand our, uh, tactics.” The colonel didn’t look up as he continued. “It seems to know how to penetrate a security screen, such as the timing of patrols, the formation of flanking. Apparently it does some kind of circular surveillance of an area before it attacks. And it appears to kill listening posts before it does anything else. It doesn’t sneak past them, it kills them. Only then does it move into a compound.”
There were so many questions floating in Hunters mind that he wasn’t even tempted to ask the first one. Obviously, whatever had done this was nothing he’d ever seen. And if he hadn’t seen it, it was a safe bet that nobody had.
He knew the only way to find any answers would be at the site. Only by learning to think like this thing could he harbor any hope of tracking it. He stared at the colonel, trying to determine whether something vital was being hidden behind that military mask.
Rising, he turned to Tipler.
“Try to get some rest tonight, Professor,” he said. “Tomorrow’s gonna be a hard day.”
“Ah, my boy, most certainly.” Tipler rose beside him. “Thank you, Colonel. We shall leave at ...?”
“0500 hours.” Maddox nodded curtly. “We’ll be on site by 0600.”
“Very good. I shall retire now, so that I can prepare.”
“Everything you need is in your quarters, Professor.”
“Thank you,” Tipler waved. “Good night.”
With Ghost at his side, Hunter saw the professor to his room. Then he slipped silently into the night and, hidden in shadow, searched through a mound of discarded construction materials. It was a long while before he found what he needed: a long, pliable shoestring-thin wire of titanium alloy and a peg-sized section of solid steel. The steel fit perfectly in his hand, comfortable and cold.
Then he returned to his own room and made preparations through the long night, working till sunrise. When he was finished he carefully placed the improvised weapon inside his wide leather belt with a frown.
He thought that if this thing went as he feared, it might give him a last desperate chance.
Chapter 4
Thundering out of low dark clouds, the Blackhawk descended into a charred glade. Twenty-four hours after the carnage, the snow was still widely stained with red—trampled by military boots.
He quickly scanned the surrounding terrain for a quick orientation and in a breath memorized ravines and hills, what would be the natural approach, the most calculated line of an attack. It took him ten seconds to read the scene, proceeding more by instinct than by intense scrutiny.
The Blackhawk settled gently in the square and Hunter was out first, turning back to help Professor Tipler from the bay. Then, after the old man dusted himself off, they walked out a hundred yards or so and stared silently at the fire-scarred facility. Clearly, the unfortunate team trapped inside it when the creature attacked didn’t stand a chance.
Entire portals constructed from fire-resistant steel had been ripped from the hinges as if by a hurricane.
Shaking his head at the devastation, Hunter turned and saw them; the support team. A group of five, they wore specialized forest-camouflaged BDUs. They also wore load-bearing vests packed with weapons and clips. Ignoring Hunter and Tipler, they were unloading equipment from a second Blackhawk.
Hunter observed that they moved with a certain cold economy; no emotion, no questions. They spoke little and each seemed to recognize his responsibility without instruction. Then he saw something else that attracted his attention.
It was a woman dressed in forest BDUs like the rest, but also wearing some kind of high-tech, obviously lightweight armor. She knelt on one knee beside the chopper, bent over a rifle of formidable size. Hunter had never seen one like it, but noticed how adeptly she managed it. When she had finished loading four oversized rounds in a clip and tapping it on her knee to seat the cartridges, she inserted it into the rifle and loudly chambered a round. When she was finished, she lifted it to her shoulder as if it were weightless and aimed across the scorched square, moving left, right, hesitating ...before centering on him.
For a moment, she held aim.
Hunter didn’t move, gazing stonily into the glare of the sniper’s scope. Then, expressionless, she lowered the massive rifle to her side and turned back to her work. Hunter ignored her and studied the devastated, windswept station.
An air of utter defeat was the first impression, then a lingering sense of horror: shattered steel doors, scars of explosions and fire, broken windows and red snow told the story.
Everywhere the ground was stained crimson, and Ghost was pacing busily across the compound, checking scents. Hunter knew he was attempting to separate the human from the inhuman.
Studying the tracks, Hunter determined easily that many of the men and women present here had fled wildly into the freezing night, heedless of the consequences. Obviously, facing what had been inside that facility had been infinitely worse than the grim fate of freezing to death in the dark.
Hunter moved toward the facility. He glanced at Maddox. “Tell everyone to stay where they’re at until I get back.”
The colonel turned. “What?”
“Tell everyone to stay where they’re at.” Hunter approached the shattered door. He knew that the discovery team, or sanitation team or whatever they had used, had already marred whatever evidence he could gain from the facility, but he would give it a try.
His best hope of picking up a track, he presumed, would be in the woods, in finding its mind through its approach. But if there were tracks inside the facility he might learn something of its habits. As he neared the door he saw a portal of solid steel blasted from the hinges by some incredible velocity of force. It was split widely at the top, as if struck by a foot-wide ax.
Carefully Hunter bent close to the ground, studying, but all the footsteps led away from the door. His jaw hardened.
Yeah, those who had fled the facility had obliterated whatever he might have discovered. Rising, he moved inside, turning back and raising a hand to indicate that no one should follow. Then he entered the shrouded darkness alone.
The scent of blood was everywhere, permeating the atmosphere, seeming to replace the air. Hunter bent, staring into the gloom. He sniffed, releasing a bit of the animal instinct within him. His eyes narrowed into the distant dark, but he sensed nothing. Only a cold scent of rusty copper hovered in the dead blackness.
Red lights flickered in the distance, and the scent of smoke was stronger there. And for a long time Hunter stood, staring at nothing, at everything, feeling the atmosphere, letting it speak to him.
Then he tried to imagine what he himself would have done if he were attacking, killing, slaughtering—something not completely alien from the wild animal side he had been born with and had cultivated through the years, yet kept in check.
Though he never fully released the animal within, he never forgot it was there, so much stronger in him than in most. And sometimes, in a long track, with the wind in his face and the cold and the wild surrounding him as he was running free, he felt it rise up, more alive than he was himself. But it was the part of him that he would never let go.
His enormous success in business, his wealth, his skills were a valued part of his life, but they were not his heart. No, the heart of his life would always be here, and free, where he was hunting and hunted ... at home.
Scowling, he turned his mind to the task.
He saw a wide corridor—the most obvious line of attack—and bent, searching the floor. Removing a flashlight from his side pack, he shone it over dry bloody footsteps, all heading toward the door. Then he moved farther into the corridor, trying not to step on anything, always searching. He was twenty feet inside
when he found the first blood-dry print of the beast. It was moving hard to the left, as if with purpose.
It took only a moment for Hunter to read the pressure release marks that indicated its speed and lack of hesitation, and he followed it slowly. With the obscuring redness of the floor, it was difficult work, but he followed it deeper into the facility. Despite the frigid air, hot sweat beaded his forehead and chest, and he moved as silently as if he were close to a kill. He knew the beast had fled, but he could not help the instinctive fear that made him breathe deeper, oxygenating as if for a fight.
It was a jagged thin tendril of black that attracted his attention, high and to the right, and Hunter paused. He stared up and angled the flashlight, not rushing anything. And what he saw took a moment, his brow hardening degree by degree in concentration. He straightened. Then, carefully, he walked forward and stared at four long claw marks.
They were torn through steel in a movement of rage and nothing less—claw marks that had shorn metal like paper, as if it had not exhausted enough of its enormous energy by now, slaying the dozens that lay behind it. No, it was compelled to strike at anything living or dead—a vicious engine of unquenchable savagery.
Gently, Hunter lifted the flashlight higher and shone it into the smooth cuts. He saw that the steel was split by something far harder than itself, an edge that had torn through it with incredible velocity. All the cuts were the same, smooth in and out.
Except for one.
Hunter’s eyes narrowed as he studied the ragged, stunted end of the gash, and he moved closer, shining the light into the crack.
And saw it.
It was obscure at first, but as he tilted the light just so, he knew what it was. He removed his pocket knife and gently pried it from the steel. Then he stared down at what he held, carefully raising it before his face to study the long curving sharpness. The edge was serrated, like a steak knife. Glancing over his shoulder, ensuring he was alone, he placed it in his pocket.
Step by step he found a silent path deeper into the facility until he arrived at what appeared to be a laboratory. He gazed about the dimly illuminated chamber and saw that it was demolished like the rest. Then a yawning steel door, framed by light within, drew his attention. Walking slowly, amazed at the dented steel doors and smashed machinery, he approached it and stared inside.
It took a moment, staring silently at the interior, for him to identify what was wrong. And then it was there, so obvious that he felt ashamed for missing it: The room was a storage vault with refrigerated sections neatly lining a wall. But the strangeness was that this room, and this room alone, hadn’t been damaged by the creature’s attack.
None of the glass doors had been shattered. None of the heavy doors had been torn from their hinges. The stainless-steel autopsy-like table in the center of the room was undamaged. So Hunter bent, staring at the floor, shining the flashlight at an angle.
Why did it destroy every other room and not this one?
He saw no bloodied tracks on the gray tile, no indication that it had even entered. But that wasn’t right. This thing had purposefully moved through this entire facility releasing a rage that couldn’t be quenched.
Something was wrong here.
Stepping carefully to the side to avoid marring near-invisible tracks, Hunter examined everything. He searched along the walls for scratches, smears, anything. And all the while, concentrated to the task, he kept alert to the slightest whisper of sound behind him. For, though his mind was engaged in pinpoint concentration, his reflexive survival mode prevented anything from approaching him without his knowledge.
It was a while before he found a thin line on the floor, a ghostly tendril of white powder as thin as a razor. And Hunter spent a long time examining it, studying it, reconstructing how it came to be. And then he knew. Nodding, he stood and opened a refrigerated door and examined the serums within. Despite the carnage, the unit was still functional.
He searched randomly, and then began to sense what had happened here. Then, after checking the manifest of inventoried fluids, he felt more certain, and left the door open as he exited.
Already he knew things were not as they seemed. But it would be dangerous to mention anything until he was certain of who, and why. He left with the same measure of alertness he had when he entered—a habit he had perfected from years of surviving in environments that were safe one day, lethal the next.
The undamaged chamber was not all that he would have to hold secret for a time. He knew it would also be unwise to tell them he’d found a broken claw.
***
Finding nothing more on the grounds, Hunter exited the facility and approached the colonel. He knew now that nothing else would be gained by a concentrated search. Only trampled tracks and blood remained of the holocaust that had consumed the building.
“You people can finish whatever they’re doing in the building,” Hunter said as he turned his head to the support team.
They were standing silently, and at his glance they stared back, implacable. There was a moment of testing, measuring. But one member of the team gave Hunter particular attention.
A large soldier, with a barrel chest and stout, muscular arms—he could have a heavyweight boxer—concentrated on Hunter the longest. His face beneath short white hair was viciously scarred on one side by fire, and a white eye gazed at Hunter from the ravaged section like a lifeless marble. His other eye was calculating, cold, and it glinted with an unconcealed wildness.
Expressionless, Hunter turned to Maddox. “From here, it’s my call. I suppose they understand how things are going to work.”
“They do.”
“All right.” Hunter looked at the surrounding landscape. “Well, let’s get started. I’m going into the hills to see if I can pick up this thing’s scent. Keep everyone inside the compound.”
Silently, Ghost appeared at his side.
“Yes, of course,” said Maddox. “And good luck. We’ll back you up as soon as you find it.”
Moving away, Hunter paused beside Tipler, who stood near the chopper. The old professor seemed to know from Hunter’s expression that whatever needed to be said couldn’t be communicated at the moment. Hunter wordlessly picked up the Marlin and strapped it across his back.
He was descending into his tracking mode, allowing a deeper concentration to command all his energy and mind, as he moved slowly for the open gate. Ghost, needing no instruction, paced head-down at his side. At the gate, Hunter paused, taking his time to study the terrain.
He saw patches of scattered snow and, between them, soggy ground. He lifted a handful of snow and squeezed a fist to see how it compressed, measuring its dryness. He watched the spruce as they swayed in a whispering wind, noting the direction of the breeze. For a long time he stood perfectly still, listening, watching.
Then he sensed a presence and heard the hard crunch of gravel beneath boots, but didn’t turn even when the intruder was close. A gruff voice spoke down to him.
“We can get a move on any time, tracker.”
Hunter gave no indication that he had heard.
“Jesus,” the man said, “I hope this ain’t gonna be one of them Indian things. This is a hunt, not a vision quest.” Hunter felt the man turn his attention to Ghost. He laughed without any hint of humor. “Nice dog you got there.”
Vaguely Hunter bent his head and saw the big man, the one with the fire-scarred face, raise a single hand at Ghost, holding two fingers as a pistol. “Click,” he said. Then, after smiling with clear malice at Hunter, he walked away.
Hunter turned back to the ground, raising his eyes to the hills, letting every slight bend of leaf, each sway of bush or angle of slope, compose a mosaic of the terrain. He determined which ways were most easily negotiable in the dark; he knew too well that any animal, even a big cat, would select the path of least resistance—a natural path, if it was there.
/> A moment later he heard more steps, but different. These contained the softness of respect, of patience, as if the intruder did not want to disturb him. They halted about fifteen feet away to be followed by silence.
At last, sensing a general direction of its approach, Hunter rose and turned to see who had come up behind. Whoever it was—it didn’t matter—had demonstrated a measure of respect; Hunter would do the same.
Standing less than ten feet behind him—surprisingly less than Hunter had estimated—was a large Japanese. The man was dark-haired with a chiseled, severe face, and there was no emotion whatsoever present in the coal-black eyes. He was big for a Japanese and dressed in BDUs. He carried a camouflaged MP-5 and a cut-down pump-action Remington shotgun. Then Hunter saw the leather hilt of a katana extending over his powerful right shoulder. After a moment the Japanese nodded curtly. Hunter returned the nod.
“I am Takakura,” he rumbled.
His voice indicated a disciplined inner strength, both patient and tempered. Overall, he had the presence of a feudal samurai displaced to the twentieth century.
“I am the designated commander of this team,” Takakura added. “I only wished to say that I am familiar with your skills and your instructions. We will wait here until you contact us.” He handed Hunter a small radio, barely the size of his hand. “With that you can communicate, even in these mountains, for a distance often kilometers. I believe you will find it indispensable.”
“Thank you.” Hunter placed it in his hip pack, casting another glance at the team. “I’ll call you as soon as I pick up a track.”
“I understand,” Takakura nodded.
Moving at a slow trot through the gate, Ghost ranging at his side, Hunter loped across a ridge and angled right, following a tree-line. He had a feeling that it had approached from somewhere along the northern slope where the spruce were thick. The lack of undergrowth would make stalking easier, and the spruce trees would still provide deep shadow to conceal it from electronic and human listening posts.
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