The Creator

by Neil Carstairs

  The Creator

  By

  Neil Carstairs

  Copyright © 2017 by Neil Carstairs

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Art by Ace Book Covers.

  AceBookCovers.com

  Acknowledgements

  Once again, special thanks to Emma Jaye without whose guidance and helps this novel could not have reached this stage

  Also by Neil Carstairs

  Scarrett & Kramer Novels

  #1 The Creator

  #2 The Anomaly

  #3 The Tomb

  Creator

  Translated in Anglo Saxon as

  Scieppend

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Prologue

  A dirty blue stained the dawn sky as two MH-60M Blackhawk helicopters flew low over the desert landscape of Mauritania. The aircraft hugged the terrain thirty feet below as they raced towards the lightening sky. Up front, in the lead Blackhawk, Colonel Frank Jeavons of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment checked his GPS display and said, ‘Two minutes from landing zone.’

  He didn’t take his eyes from the horizon as the night vision goggles he wore fought to compensate for the approaching daylight. Now wasn’t the time for an accident. Beside him, his co-pilot reported the second Blackhawk still on station. Jeavons didn’t reply. He began to hunt for the LZ, a patch of bare ground in the scrubland of the East Sahara. In the rear of the Blackhawk he knew the twelve infantry soldiers would be readying themselves. The landing zone should be cold. This was an insertion only operation for now. The troops would hike a few miles to take a look at a town for a reason that Jeavons wasn’t cleared to know. The two Blackhawks would wait for the troops and use the internal fuel tanks that the second ‘copter carried in its cargo bay to refuel for the flight out. With a bit of luck, they’d be back on board the U.S. Navy helicopter carrier they had flown from in time for dinner.

  An icon popped up in Jeavons’ vision, indicating the LZ.

  ‘One minute.’

  ***

  Major Tim Connor saw the Blackhawk loadmaster hold up one finger and felt his tension ratchet up another notch. A dim red night light bathed his squad with ghostly shadows. They’d already checked their weapons and packs as the time ticked down. Now they just waited. Connor glanced across the bay to the officer opposite him. If he harboured a doubt about any member of his team then it came down to Captain Joanne Kramer.

  She sat with her eyes closed, helmet resting back against the skin of the cargo bay. The team Connor commanded had been built from scratch by a selection panel back in the States. Most of his guys came from Infantry regiments and he’d already seen them in action so he trusted them. Kramer was different. Connor’s previous second-in-command had broken his leg in a dumbass accident back at their base in Nebraska. Kramer came in with a lot of plaudits from her previous C.O.s but until he saw her in action Connor couldn’t trust her. Kramer’s eyes opened and she saw him watching her. She didn’t smile, just made one last visual check of her weapon like the others and took a breath to calm her nerves.

  The Blackhawk pitched and Connor leant into the movement as the aircraft slowed, flaring for a fast landing. The loadmaster had the doors open and the squad piled out into the chill morning air. Connor’s feet hit the dry bed of the waterhole as the spinning rotor blades blew up a storm of sand and dust. The Major followed the dim shape of Sergeant Jason Buhl with narrowed eyes and his mouth clamped shut until they broke out into clear air. Buhl dropped to the ground and covered Connor as he knelt and made a quick scan of the area.

  Both Blackhawks were on the ground, rotors spooling down and the sandstorm they had raised already abating. This gave Connor a better view of the landing zone. The old waterhole lay in a stone littered depression, surrounded by high banks of sand and rock. It provided a decent hiding place for the helicopters. At least for the few hours his squad would need. Connor checked the time. 04:30 local. He patted Buhl on the shoulder and stood, calling the team in.

  ‘You know the brief. The village is three miles north. We’ll move up to a quarter mile out and then assess the situation. Questions?’ There were none. He gave them a smile. ‘Move out, Rettig on point.’

  ***

  Joanne Kramer kept her eyes down as they moved across the dark terrain. She didn’t want to stumble. There would be nothing worse than making a pratfall on an op like this, especially if she got hurt. All the same, she took quick peeks up to make sure she still followed the man in front of her. She did. His bulky silhouette showed up more now the sun began to edge above the horizon. Kramer eased the straps of her pack on her shoulders as she settled back into the ground-eating pace that Rettig set.

  Connor had walked beside her for the first mile. He didn’t say much. It made Kramer smile because she knew he didn’t want to show how little he trusted her but with every yard his doubts became more apparent. He dropped back when the ground levelled out and Kramer’s monosyllabic replies made it obvious his presence wasn’t wanted. Kramer checked her GPS. Less than a mile now. She gripped the stock of her rifle a little harder.

  The order to mobilise had come fifteen hours earlier. Kramer had been with the unit for two months now and she’d spent most of that time running through training routines and coming up to speed on the members of her squad and the other personnel around the operation. She still couldn’t quite believe most of what she’d learned in the days after transferring into the unit.

  A ghost of a smile crossed her face. A top secret unit operating in the shadows and ostensibly not even connected to the army. Who’d have thought it? At least she should get to see some proper action. The intelligence they operated on; now that was a different matter. She still couldn’t find it in her heart to trust the rag-tag band of civilians and scientists who came up with what the unit commander referred to as HUMINT – human intelligence. But with each day that passed she got to know the people and began to trust them a little more. She still wasn’t sure she’d call it human intelligence, but the information they generated led to the mad scramble from Nebraska to somewhere in the sand and dust of Mauritania.

  A stone turned beneath her foot and Kramer stumbled, biting back a curse as her Molle pack shifted on her back and almost pulled her over. She straightened and got back into rhythm. The guy in front hadn’t noticed her stumble but she knew the one behind would have. With a sigh at her lack of concentration Kramer settled into the steady tramp-tramp of the march. The sun rose a couple of degrees higher and the landscape became more defined around them. Despite the chill night air Kramer began to sweat; some of it came from heat, the rest a growing nervousness as the village came closer.

  ***

  A hand rose and the squad came to a halt. Connor trotted past Kramer and she interpreted his brief grunt as an order to follow him up to the point of the line. When she caught up with the Major, Kramer found him kneeling beside Sergeant Buhl and examining the village through his binoculars.

  ‘Looks deserted,’ Connor said.

  ‘Still early.’ Buhl took a sip from a bottle of water.
<
br />   ‘You’d think there’d be some sign of life.’ Connor sighed, put the binoculars away. ‘Three minutes. Tell the guys to take on water and energy bars. We split into two groups. Captain Kramer, you take Sergeant Buhl, along with Rettig, Mack and Pruitt around the east side of the village. My group will come in from the west. The centre of the village has the well in it. We rendezvous there. Questions?’

  ‘Do we have any updates from Kenyon?’ Kramer asked, referring to their base back in Nebraska.

  ‘None. The situation is the same as when we left. A definite threat to this village. I’m hoping we’re here in time.’

  Kramer knelt and broke out a drink and bar. She ate quickly and washed it down with three mouthfuls of tepid water. They were a quarter mile short of the village. Now she had enough daylight, Kramer took the chance to pick out the route she would take to come in from the east. There seemed to be some kind of dry river bed her team could use for cover for some of the route. She pointed it out to Buhl who nodded in agreement. When Connor gave the word they moved out. Rettig led this time. He set a quick pace, keeping low as they scooted across open, rocky ground before they dropped into the shallow channel of the old river channel. The soft sand in the bed made it hard to run. It reminded Kramer of days when she was a kid, chasing her dad through the sand dunes of Cape Cod. But this wasn’t Cape Cod because right then the stench hit them.

  Kramer slid to a halt, mouth open as she fought to breathe. The air seemed to burn the tissue of her nose and throat. Behind her she heard one of the guys puke and she had to fight to stop her stomach flipping and bringing back up the bar and water she’d just consumed.

  ‘Jesus.’ Buhl had his hand over his mouth.

  Breathing through her mouth, Kramer scrambled up to the lip of the river bank. The nearest buildings were maybe thirty yards away. Single storey stone and mud structures that held a pink glow in the early morning sunlight. The smell hung on the air and Kramer could have sworn she could see it float like some kind of spooky mist.

  ‘Move out,’ she ordered and pulled herself up onto level ground. With a firmer footing she led the men in a quick sprint to the rear wall of one building. An alley lay to her left. She pointed at Rettig and followed him into the tight space. A build-up of trash hampered their progress. Discarded bottles and cans, a litter of plastic shreds and half a dozen gas canisters. They stepped over them until Rettig reached the end of the alley. Kramer thought the smell had lessened here. Or maybe she’d grown used to it in the last couple of minutes. Kneeling beside Rettig she looked out into a narrow lane. She saw a dog with its muzzle buried into the stomach of a dead body. It tugged and chewed at the meat it had found. Kramer looked away.

  ‘I think we’re too late,’ Rettig whispered.

  Kramer just nodded, not trusting herself to speak right then. She wiped sweat from her top lip. Buhl came up to her shoulder.

  ‘From the satellite imagery we go right here then take the second left. That’ll lead us towards the village square.’

  ‘Lead on,’ Kramer said.

  They walked down the centre of the lane, in single file with about ten yards between each of them. With every step Kramer saw something new. Dark splashes on the wall of a house that could only be blood. A torn limb. A severed head. After the next turn she blanked it all out, staring ahead as she tried to work out what had happened here. Their intelligence said the attack should take place in the next forty-eight hours. No suggestion of how the attack would be undertaken, just that it would happen and it would be brutal. They got that bit right.

  Another dog appeared. It snarled at them before retreating into a shadowed doorway. Kramer realised that Major Connor would expect them to sweep the whole village for survivors or evidence of how the attack took place. If there were bodies in the street there would be more in the houses. She shook her head, praying they didn’t have to go that far.

  Kramer saw Buhl hold up a hand. The column halted and Kramer jogged up to the front. The street opened up into the village square. A low, circular stone wall stood at its centre surrounding a well. There were half a dozen bodies in view that Kramer could see. Movement drew her eyes and she saw Connor’s team appear across the square. The Major signalled to them. Join up, but don’t cross the square, go around the edge.

  Buhl led out again. Kramer closer to him this time, feeling more assured now they were linking up with the other team. She even managed to look at one of the nearest bodies. The man, at least she guessed it was a man, had been disembowelled. And that was before his chest had been opened up and his head half torn off. Kramer had no idea what kind of sicko and what kind of weapon could do that. That thought got cut off as a roar echoed around the square and froze her blood. It stopped her feet as well. Kramer thumbed the safety off her rifle. She waited.

  A shape came out of a side street. Dark. Bigger than a man. Faster than a man. It hit the lead soldier in Connor’s team like an express train and bowled him over in an instant. Then it tore a chunk from his shoulder. Kramer heard the man scream. She heard gunfire. Connor’s men shooting at the creature that reared up on thick hind legs and howled at them again. The thing stood eight feet tall. Bipedal, with a rough crocodile skin that bled yellow pus even as rounds punched into the flesh and splashed red blood to the ground. It stood for a long time, a long, muscular tail providing support. The elongated jaws opened to reveal rows of razor teeth. It roared once more and fell.

  Kramer dived left, under the lee of a wooden porch roof. She checked her team. They’d done the same as her. She looked back across the square and saw the creature down on the ground as it writhed in agony. That’s when more of them came. Some from surrounding streets, a couple from rooftops and one from the doorway of a store. They fell onto Connor’s team who were still out in the open and exposed. Two men disappeared in a haze of blood and flesh.

  ‘Select targets,’ Kramer shouted. ‘Open fire.’

  She fired at one beast until it closed on Major Connor and she couldn’t risk another shot. Connor emptied his magazine into the thing and still it closed enough to put its jaws around the Major’s neck and bite. Kramer closed her eyes for one, brief second. When she opened them Connor lay dead. She felt a bolt of fear. These monsters moved fast and killed faster. Three of them were down but nine more circled the rest of Connor’s team.

  No, the rest of her team. She was in charge now.

  Kramer came to her feet without thought. ‘Buhl, with me.’

  She ran out into the square, aiming for the well. As she ran she screamed and fired into the air. Nine heads turned and tracked her movement. Kramer saw Connor’s men scramble for cover, diving into the nearest doorway. The monsters ignored them. They saw moving prey and went for it. Kramer slid into the shelter of the well, Buhl a second behind her. As he came to a halt Kramer pulled a grenade from her belt and threw it towards the creatures.

  She ducked below the wall, heard the blast, and popped up again. One of them was down, minus a leg. The others had scattered, spooked by the explosion. Kramer levelled her rifle on one, tracking it as it moved left to right. She put three rounds into its skull, just behind one eye and the thing went down hard. Two down, seven left.

  ‘Head shots!’ she shouted. ‘Head shots.’

  She had no idea if the guys heard her. Buhl started shooting as one of the monsters came towards them. She joined him and put the thing down ten yards short of their position. Now the others joined in. Kramer’s guys from under the wood roof and Connor’s men from the barricaded house. Another monster fell and the others seemed to understand they were in danger and ran. Kramer swore and scrambled to her feet. The village square lay in silence now. An unnatural silence that pulled at Kramer’s nerves. She walked over to where Major Connor had fallen, or at least what she could find of him. The rest of his body lay scattered around like discarded junk. With shaking hands Kramer found Connor’s ID tags and, after a search, the tags of the three other guys who had died.

  Job done, Kramer walked t
o where Buhl had the rest of the team gathered. A couple of them look ready to puke. She knew how they felt. Buhl straightened as she approached.

  ‘What do you want us to do, Ma’am?’

  Do?

  Kramer looked round. All eyes were on her. She didn’t feel that confident as she said, ‘We need to sweep the village for survivors and gather what evidence we can find to prove this happened.’

  ‘And those... things?’

  Kramer gave Buhl a grim smile. ‘We need to hunt those fuckers down and kill them.’

  Chapter 1

  The spectral vision of the mountainside through night vision glasses made an already inhospitable landscape even less inviting. Staff Sergeant Greg Turman lay in a stone littered depression, aware of the cold air around him but even more aware of the red-hot bullet that had just buzzed past his ear and spat a chunk of rock from the ground behind him.

  Digging in to solid rock wasn’t an option, just praying that the insurgents were bad shots and the little cover he had would be good enough to protect him was all the hope Greg had at that moment.

  With a little wriggle that maybe got his butt a fraction lower he whispered, ‘Three, update location.’

  The throat mike he wore picked up the tremor of his vocal chords and translated them into an encrypted burst of communication that leapt across eighty metres or so of hillside to where two members of his team were working to outflank the insurgents.

  ‘Another four minutes ‘til we’re in place,’ the digitized reply hissed in his ear. ‘Slow going, we’re pretty exposed up here and could do with more covering fire.’

  Which Greg took to be a request to keep the bad guys focused downhill and not uphill. He saw a glow, the heat of a human body as it edged around the cold of a rock, and fired a three round burst. The insurgent ducked back out of sight as more gunfire came from Greg’s teammates to his left. There were seven others in the unit. A mixed bag for what should have been a routine hike into the mountains. Greg had two Brits, a Canadian and four Afghanis in the unit and right now they were all doing exactly the right thing, as trained and as expected. That gave Greg some hope that the firefight would have the right result. He put another burst into the area occupied by the insurgents before a glow, as bright as a dawning sun, erupted from the mountainside ahead.