Apex

by Ryan W. Aslesen

  The land vehicles concerned him more, especially when Flint did not check in after the next hour. Max didn’t dare try to contact him for fear of exposing his scout’s position. He’d heard no gunfire at least and liked to think that was a good sign. Though Flint was a bit rusty, Max doubted he’d be taken off the board without an ugly scrap.

  Something scraped stone just outside the cave mouth.

  Max took a good ten seconds to stand, gaining his feet without a sound. He waited just to the side of the entrance. Someone began sidestepping through the fissure and soon appeared directly in front of him—one of the combat troops in battle dress.

  The man paused to turn on the NVGs over his eyes so he could scan the cave.

  The instant the man powered on his goggles, Max swung his rifle butt low and knocked the submachine gun from his right hand, sending it flying toward the cave mouth. He struck again with the same maneuver, a solid blow that caught the soldier in the jaw and propelled him into the wall. Upon slamming into the stone, the soldier reached up and ripped off his NVGs, only to find himself staring down the barrel of Max’s rifle. He raised his hands in surrender and jabbered in French.

  “Shut up,” Max said.

  Apparently the man understood either English or the universal language of brutality, for he closed his mouth and awaited his fate.

  “What do we have here?” asked Swift as he arrived on the scene, deftly picking the soldier’s 9mm pistol from his holster.

  “Get him inside for questioning,” Max ordered.

  “Yes, sir! Inquiring minds wanna know.” He grabbed the soldier by his wrist, turned, and flung him stumbling into the cave to crash down a few feet from Leseur, startling their guide from his fidgety reverie. “Customer for ya, Frenchy.”

  The soldier lay like an injured animal on the ground, dazed and reeling. Max and Swift flanked him, gave him a few seconds to recover before pulling him up to begin the interrogation.

  “English?” Max asked.

  “No,” said the soldier, a wiry black man who didn’t appear particularly fierce. Certainly walked in here with his pants down. He began speaking in fearful, rapid French. Leseur translated: “He beg you not to kill him, monsieur... He is following orders.”

  “So fucking what?” Swift asked. “That’s what soldiers do. Tell him he picked the wrong side.”

  After relaying Swift’s message, Leseur responded, “He is a local man... His brother is a sergeant... Or he would not have joined.”

  Swift said, “Yeah, well too fucking—”

  “Shut up,” said Max, cutting him off. “I’ll handle this. Where is the rest of his patrol?”

  “He was sent to... check the caves... for the other intruders.”

  “Wait a minute, other intruders?”

  After some back and forth with the man, Leseur said, “They capture one intruder... near the base of the hill.”

  “Fucking Harvard, I knew he wasn’t worth shit.”

  Ignoring Swift, Max said, “Describe the prisoner.”

  “He say he does not know... His squad was in the jungle... when the orders came over the radio. They send him to the caves.”

  “The current whereabouts of the prisoner?”

  “At the headquarters bunker... by the airstrip.” Even the act of translation seemed to be draining Leseur’s strength.

  “Where in the building?”

  “He does not know.”

  Max doubted very highly that this common soldier would know anything about Gideon Wilde, so he asked instead about enemy troop strengths.

  “There are six squads... eight men each... searching the board.”

  “And how many guards at headquarters?”

  “Roughly the same amount.”

  “Great, a whole damn company,” Swift said.

  “The security at headquarters, other than the troops?”

  “It is... fenced off... security cameras with motion sensors.”

  That should about do it. “Thank him for his generous aid.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Swift said.

  When Leseur translated Max’s words, the look on the soldier’s face morphed from terrified anxiety to relief at his deliverance. He began speaking again.

  “He thanks you for sparing—”

  Max drew his silenced pistol and shot the soldier in the face.

  “Ruthless!” Swift said. “Thanks for finally doing something right.”

  Max knelt next to the soldier and removed the radio receiver from his belt, then tossed it to Otto. “Disable it or destroy it, whatever works.”

  “No problem.”

  “Drag this idiot over there someplace,” Max said to Swift, pointing vaguely toward the rear of the cave. “He can feed the Bow-throps aye-trox or whatever the fuck those snakes are called.”

  Otto rose with a grunt and removed a flat plastic box the size of a paperback novel from a leather case attached to his belt. The box contained an assortment of tiny precision tools for working on electronics.

  As Otto dismantled the radio, Max said, “Looks like they got Flint. We’re gonna go infiltrate that compound and rescue him.”

  “That ought to be a blast,” Otto said.

  “You’re not going, Otto. You need to rest up a bit more.”

  “I concur,” Swift said. “We’ll leave Frenchy here to keep him company. The two of them can follow our trail once Otto is up and moving.”

  “Great plan; that’s exactly what I was thinking—only you’ll be staying behind with Otto. Leseur, you’re with me. We move out in ten minutes.”

  “Monsieur, this is... not wise.”

  “It’s not up to you.” He then pointed at Swift. “Or you.” Especially not you.

  Swift shook his head. “You should listen to Frenchy, Ahlgren. He knows what the fuck he’s talking about for once.”

  Max pretended to think about it for a moment. “You might have just changed my mind, Carter. How’s your French these days?”

  “French? I don’t speak that faggot language.”

  “Then you’re not going. I might need an interpreter to read signs or if I capture somebody else. Sorry, but you’ve been found wanting.” Max flashed Swift the most obnoxious grin he could summon.

  “Oh, that’s fine by me, Ahlgren. Frenchy’ll fit real nice in a body bag. They’re so hard to find in my size.” Swift’s words terrified Leseur.

  Max didn’t give a shit. You’re obviously on drugs, so consider this an intervention by fire. “Don’t listen to that wind storm. You want your revenge, right?”

  “Oui, monsieur.”

  “Then get off your ass and take it. Those guards who treated you like a slave aren’t gonna kill themselves. Get some camo on your face and grow a backbone—we’ve got scores to settle.”

  15

  Leseur could barely see Ahlgren moving stealthily through the trees and ferns ahead, keeping low, ever on the alert. Then Ahlgren stopped in the shadow of a mahogany tree some ten feet in diameter. Leseur trudged on to join him, knowing full well he was in for a tongue lashing.

  Leaning in close, Ahlgren scowled behind tiger-stripe camo and growled in his ear, “Keep up, goddammit. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you, but you better shake it off and get in the game.”

  Leseur—exhausted, brain thumping in rhythmic agony to his racing heartbeat—nodded. Damn you! I told you this is unwise. But he had to follow, knew that he was a dead man if Ahlgren left him behind. The soldiers would collar him at some point, but he figured the dinosaurs would sniff him out first.

  Ahlgren moved out.

  Leseur followed and tried to pick up his pride, for no other reason than to show Ahlgren that he was still a fighting man who could be relied upon in combat. Yet he knew as he shuffled along, ever losing ground, that the notion was only wishful thinking.
Once he wouldn’t have been able to keep up with me.

  The state of withdrawal didn’t normally allow for much thought past procuring more cocaine. Until that time Leseur would endure the wrath of the scarab, as he’d come to call the migraine headaches that assaulted his brain and rooted about in his skull, growing smaller by the hour but never truly going to sleep until his next bump. Yet even over the scarab’s aggravating scuttling came memories he’d tried to forget long ago.

  A young Legionnaire twenty years before, he’d been lean, hard, tough. A warrior, a man’s man. A slight smile raised his lips. And the girls... how they loved my eyes. The only bright spots in his otherwise plain face, they had been enough to get him laid wherever the Legion sent him.

  That had all changed off the coast of Somalia, when his squad was tasked with liberating a French ship from pirates. All had gone well until some of the men became separated from the squad. And then, down in the dark below decks, Sergent Antoine Leseur shot a pirate through the neck—only the pirate turned out to be one of his own men trying to return to the squad.

  At Leseur’s court-martial, his commanding officer praised the courage and zeal he had shown during his eight years in the Legion. But the outcome of his trial was never in doubt. He returned to Guiana in disgrace, took odd jobs when he could find them, and became a burden to his family and friends, most of whom eventually disowned him. And he took up cocaine when he could afford it, stole money for it when he couldn’t. When he couldn’t find it, he suffered—tremors, aching joints, nightmares, the scarab. During withdrawal, he would normally lie on his filthy mattress staring at the walls of his squalid shack for a day or two, and he’d lost several jobs because of it.

  Now he could only hope that all the movement would drive the drug from his body faster, hopefully speeding recovery. With vivid clarity, he conjured the vision of himself as a young Legionnaire. The image vanished, pixels scattering and reforming into a portrait of an old and incorrigible addict, a shadow man, mind and body wasted from drink, drugs, and fifteen years of backbreaking labor.

  I shouldn’t have come. The Legionnaire was a different man. And it showed as he continued to lag behind Ahlgren, the big man gradually leaving him behind. You are prey. Keep going! Faster! That was the way of the wild—the weakest animals, the stragglers, were always picked off and ruthlessly culled from the herd.

  If only he hadn’t lost the rest of the cocaine he’d brought along. He could think of nothing but his next fix by the time they reached the cave; alas, somewhere between clearing and cave he’d lost the vial through a hole torn in his cargo pocket, probably during his escape through the thorns. Now his craving was so powerful that he considered abandoning Ahlgren and retracing his steps to search for the lost drugs. Suicide... but so is this. At least I might die in peaceful bliss.

  He hadn’t given up completely, however. Ahlgren had the qualities of a true military leader, the sort he’d respected in the Legion. Trust still meant something to Leseur—it had returned to him when he’d met the journalist, Mademoiselle Keller. He trusted Ahlgren as well and wished to be trusted in return. If only—

  Leseur dropped to the prone position when he saw Ahlgren lying flat in some ferns about thirty feet ahead. He crawled forward, knees and elbows erupting in shooting pains that slowed his progress even more.

  “Thought you’d never get here,” Ahlgren said upon his arrival. He pointed ahead. “I’m pretty sure this is the overlook Flint scouted from. We’ll crawl to the edge for a look.”

  Leseur nodded. A slight prick of interest pierced his brain. He wanted to see what the operation looked like from this lofty vantage point, what sort of enterprise he had served.

  Scrub and trees lined the edge of the incline overlooking the saddle in the center of the island. Though not a sheer cliff, the hill descended for some twenty meters at an angle sharp enough to require a cautious descent. The air hung hot, still and overcast. And it was quiet—too quiet—the chatterings and squawks of the jungle faint and distant.

  “Hear anything strange on the way here?” Ahlgren asked.

  “No.”

  Ahlgren turned his attention to the expanse of jungle in the saddle. He reached down to a pouch on his belt and produced a small set of binoculars.

  With the naked eye, Leseur could see the cut in the trees about three kilometers distant for the airstrip. A thinner line in the trees marked the passage of a road running perhaps half a kilometer from the airstrip to a fenced-off, bunker-like building to the left. He made out the hips and valleys of a roof peeking through the trees near the top of the island’s other, lower hill. The chateau. Alas, foliage obscured the grounds and most of the house.

  Ahlgren handed him the binoculars. Leseur took a good look at the bunker, a thick concrete rectangle with a flat roof that he recognized as the command center, where he’d been brought upon his first arrival on the island. As he watched, a truck with a canvas hood covering the bed emerged from the jungle and drove through the open gate of the fence surrounding the bunker.

  “A truck,” Leseur said, handing the binoculars back to Ahlgren.

  Ahlgren watched the truck with the same intense concentration a voyeur might show while spying on a naked girl. “Shit,” he muttered, then watched some more.

  “What is—?” Leseur cut off his question at the sound of thrashing from the brush behind them, which ceased as quickly as it had begun.

  Both men turned and trained their rifles into the thick woods. They heard no more unusual sounds. Rain began falling in fat, sporadic drops.

  “It could be one of those creatures. Stay sharp,” Ahlgren said.

  “Oui. I keep watch... while you look.”

  Ahlgren turned to view the saddle once more.

  Leseur heard another thrash as a thick patch of ferns about ten meters away began to shake violently. But he hesitated as he went to pull the trigger, saw a young Legionnaire bleeding out through a hole in his neck in the cramped hallway aboard a ship.

  Ahlgren began shooting, his silencer louder with every shot. “Fire goddammit!”

  A dinosaur, its emerald scales agleam with raindrops, burst from the ferns and galloped toward them on its hind legs. Leseur fired twice, perhaps hitting it. He couldn’t be sure. The creature, some three meters tall, danced and plowed through the trees in a zigzagging path.

  Leseur’s few remaining combat instincts told him to stand. They also told him to run, but instead he stood fast and pissed his pants as the beast bounded straight for him.

  Small red holes appeared at random on its substantial body. It inhaled with a snarl and then bellowed a roar to shake the hills.

  Leseur fumbled for the trigger on his rifle but couldn’t seem to find it. Then, with the creature only meters away, he put his finger around the grenade launcher’s trigger.

  The beast lunged at Leseur as he pulled the trigger. He missed; the grenade exploded somewhere in the tree tops.

  It took him in his side, and with one great bite chomped down on his guts as it knocked him to the ground. His bleeding entrails dangled from the monster’s maw when it raised its head. A brief flash of raw, grievous pain; then no feeling at all, as if every nerve in his body had overloaded and short-circuited. He screamed but emitted only a gurgling sound as he choked on his own blood.

  The beast had run on. Leseur heard chaos—gunfire, another roar, then only a keening ring in his ears. With the last of his energy he raised his head and looked at his wound, a mass of blood-spouting guts torn to tatters. His head lolled back to the ground. He looked up at the gray sky, watched it rapidly turn black.

  ***

  The great beast, already leaking blood from several bullet holes, charged toward Max at the cliff’s edge. The rotten stench of its breath heralded its coming as it bore down him. Max put two more shots into its abdomen, but the thing didn’t flinch, didn’t even appear to notice.

 
Then it was upon him, mere feet away, its bloody jaws headed straight for him. Somehow he kept his composure and put three rounds into its head. That at least gave the creature pause; it steered its head aside at the last instant, shying from the bullets as a horse would from a whip.

  The rounds did not stop its forward motion, however. It slammed into Max, ran him over and sent him tumbling down the steep incline. He’d guessed the gradient to be about a sixty-degree angle, and the speed of his rolling descent confirmed it. With no way to stop and no other options, he simply rolled with it, keeping his rifle clutched tight to his chest so as not to lose it. He bounced over stones and scrub as the world tumbled past in a blur of green and gray.

  He tumbled over the edge of a low cliff at the bottom of the incline, freefell for several feet, and landed hard on his shoulder. His rifle disappeared in the thick undergrowth that broke his fall. Immediately he rolled to his knees and then stood... just in time to dive to the side.

  The creature’s jaws snapped shut where he’d stood an instant before. It ran on for a few feet, then began to turn.

  He scanned the undergrowth but found no sign of his rifle. Where the fuck is it! Already the creature bounded toward him again. Max drew his pistol and fired to little effect, hitting the thing perhaps once before he had to dive again to evade.

  He landed atop his rifle in a small patch of thorny scrub.

  The beast halted about thirty feet away. It turned, saw him lying on his back in the scrub, seemingly helpless, and started hopping forward, covering ten feet on its first bound. In two more leaps—perhaps even one—Max would be dino chow.

  To save his life he had to risk losing it, as had often been the case throughout his career. The creature tensed its muscular rear legs for its next jump. His grenade launcher thumped when he pointed it upward in the beast’s general direction and fired.