by Ricky Sides
The pilots acknowledged the orders as Namid spun her fighter seeking the little girl. She’d reached the bus and was standing there knocking on the door and waiting to be let in.
Sighing Namid said quietly, “Sorry, Jeff,” as she landed her fighter and opened her cockpit. She wrenched her helmet off, and then pushed her brimless hat back onto her head to its proper position. Namid scrambled out of the fighter. In a moment, she was on the ground and running for the little girl. She saw a dark figure emerge from behind the bus just as she reached the girl. Namid grabbed the girl and turned to run reaching for her pistol as she did so. Behind her, a laser flashed and she heard the man behind her fall. Running toward her fighter, she saw two more men running toward her from the edge of the woods. Something slammed into her head from behind and she fell. She heard the little girl scream as she fell and then she succumbed to unconsciousness.
Two of the running figures stopped and fired rocket propelled grenades at two of the fighters. The round hit one fighter in the side of the nose and exploded. The concussion of the explosion severely buffeted that fighter and two of the others beside it as well. The other grenade missed the fourth fighter as the pilot dropped fifty feet of altitude to avoid the projectile. The fifth fighter fired at the men with the rocket propelled grenade launchers with his laser. By the time that the fighters had fully recovered from that attack, there was no sign of Namid and the little girl. They had simply disappeared and had to be presumed captured by the cult.
Chapter 12
Pete, Jim, and the seven men with them entered the nest from their chosen entrance without incident. They maneuvered through the tunnel seeking the enemy. The first half hour they encountered no sign of the cultists. They did encounter several dogs laying in wait, and those they managed to dispatch quietly.
Then they began to encounter the traps. The traps were crude, but effective. There were tripwires that would activate swing traps armed with what appeared to be sharpened stakes dipped in a foul substance. There were also rock fall traps set up in several spots. Pete located them all but they had to proceed slowly and he had to disarm the traps to prevent other peacekeepers from stumbling across them. Some had to be sprung because they couldn’t be disarmed.
Finally, Pete stopped and said to Jim, “This is starting to look like a setup to me. Almost as if Clarissa knew we would find the nest, so she raided the city and took the children knowing that would make us want to work fast to recover them.”
“You don’t think there are cultists in the nest now?” Jim asked.
“There’s only one way to know for certain, and that’s clear the nest anyway,” Pete said. He’d radioed the sergeant at the first sign of a trap and cautioned the man to be careful and search for traps. The sergeant had reported that they had rescued nine children and that the children were aboard the Peacekeeper. Pete knew from radio intercepts that the children had been taken from three divergent locations. Nine had been located in a church. Twelve children had been taken in a grammar school, and ten in an orphanage. He surmised that each of the remaining nests had grabbed one set of the children, but that was theory. They would have to clear the nest to know for certain that no additional prisoners were located within this cavern system.
Pete did radio the Peacekeeper to have Patricia contact the Constitution and the Alabama to warn them that they may be walking into a trap. He radioed at the same time that the emergency with Namid and the little girl was unfolding. He was informed that both Namid and one of the children were missing. Pete instructed her to contact the sergeant, and have him send strike force two back to the ship to assist in the search. He suggested that Tim try to recover Namid’s fighter, or destroy it to prevent it from falling into enemy hands if they had to leave for any reason. He advised her that they were encountering no resistance, so Tim could redirect the drone from their entrance to assist in the search.
***
Sergeant Thompson sent strike force two back the way they had come to return to the surface and assist in the search for Namid and the missing child. That left him with four men. They moved on deeper into the labyrinth of passageways. David noticed that the passageways seemed older. The walls had the appearance of rock that was brittle. He brushed his hand against a wall, and noted that the surface crumbled into course grains of flaky rock easily. This passageway was dangerous. It was a miracle that it hadn’t collapsed the night of the quakes. David whispered for the men to avoid contacting the walls as much as possible and pushed deeper into the maze of cavern passageways.
***
Lieutenant Wilcox squatted on his haunches staring down at the spot where Namid and the girl had briefly lain. Behind him, the Peacekeeper landed with its cargo bay door down. Five men ran down the ramp and turned in the lieutenant’s direction. “Strike force team two reporting for duty, sir,” one of the snipers said and handed the lieutenant his pistol belt, helmet and an ammunition bag that contained spare magazine of ammunition for his M16.
One of the pilots landed his fighter. He hurriedly got out of his fighter and climbed inside Namid’s. The lieutenant gestured toward the empty fighter as he buckled on the pistol belt. His team fanned out to guard the deadly fighter. The lieutenant radioed Patricia saying, “Patricia, Namid’s hat is not here. Please see if you can locate her to give me a heading.”
Namid’s fighter disappeared inside the cargo bay. Soon the pilot emerged and the lieutenant yelled at the man asking if he’d remembered to lock the fighter to the deck. The pilot nodded his head, and waved as he ran to his own fighter and climbed inside. He had the fighter off the ground going up to altitude before he even sealed the cockpit.
The cargo bay door closed. The drones began a search pattern as the lieutenant waited for input from Patricia. As he waited he followed the faintly visible trail from the spot where Namid had fallen until he arrived at the edge of the thin band of trees that ran east away from the site and west toward the forest he had passed through to get here.
Patricia’s voice held a worried tone as she said, “Lieutenant, I have her signal but it is erratic. I’ve never seen this before. It’s almost as if the unit is barely connecting and at times it loses the connection. It is located a hundred yards to your west and then just a bit south.”
Pol’s drone zipped in that direction. The lieutenant led the men that way on the run, but the lieutenant had a bad feeling that something wasn’t right. The cultists should have been much further away from the area by then. They had had the time to get three times that distance even loaded with prisoners. He radioed Pol asking, “Pol, don’t you have a thermal imaging camera in your drone?”
“Yes I do, Lieutenant. I am using it now to track the people who took Namid and the girl,” Pol responded. A moment later he said, “I think they went underground here. Their heat traces just disappear.”
“We’ll be there in a moment,” the lieutenant stated.
Two minutes later, they arrived at the spot in the woods where the drone was hovering. Pol directed the lieutenant to the spot where the heat traces disappeared. The spot was covered in leaves. Kneeling on the ground the lieutenant probed the area carefully with his fingertips. He encountered what felt like chicken wire and empty space beyond. He pulled on the wire lifting the door a fraction of an inch trying to determine where the edge of the door was located. Three shots were fired from beneath the surface. The lieutenant fell backwards away from the entrance unharmed. He drew his pistol and flicked the safety off. Reaching out with his arm he aimed the pistol down on what he hoped was the right angle and opened fire. He shifted his aim many times, as he emptied the magazine. Moving back, he motioned for one of the men to grasp the door and fling it open as he replaced his spent magazine and chambered a round.
Two of the men were ready, and when the chicken wire and wooden framed door covered in leaves crashed to the earth, they leaned over the hole with their rifles at the ready. Five feet below, a man lay dead on the floor of the man made tunnel.
Th
e lieutenant radioed Patricia asking for an update on Namid’s position. “She was moving south about forty yards from you a minute ago but the signal died and hasn’t reappeared,” Patricia reported.
“Roger, Peacekeeper,” the lieutenant responded and climbed down into the hole. He moved down the tunnel to the south as fast as he dared. Behind him, the members of strike team two dropped inside the tunnel to follow his lead.
This tunnel was small compared to most of the tunnels that the team had thus far encountered in their fight against the cult. At four feet tall and two feet wide, it was large enough for a man to navigate, but Lieutenant Wilcox didn’t like having his mobility this restricted when fighting. If they encountered entrenched guards while within the confines of this tunnel, they would be at a distinct disadvantage.
It appeared as if something had been dragged across the earthen floor of this tunnel. The lieutenant assumed that the enemy was dragging Namid if she was still unconscious. Spotting something on the floor of the tunnel, he reached down and picked up one of the brimless hat communication devices that also served as a tracker. The Peacekeeper strike force teams and Namid all cut the brims from the hats so that they could wear them beneath their combat helmets, and in Namid’s case a flight helmet. “Namid,” he said to himself and slipped the hat into the left cargo pocket of his pants. The lieutenant reported finding Namid’s hat.
A bit farther down the tunnel, he came to a right turn. Moving as quickly, and at the same time, as quietly as possible he approached that turn. He stopped twenty feet from the turn and turned off his light. Behind him, his men did the same and for a moment, they were plunged into darkness. Then a light became visible at the turn ahead of them. The lieutenant got down on his hands and knees and crawled as quickly as he could, and still remain quiet. When he reached the turn, he stopped. Taking some of dirt from the floor of the tunnel in his hands, he rubbed it on his face and the backs of his hands. With this makeshift camouflage preparation complete, he proceeded.
The lieutenant reached the turn and placed his head near the floor of the tunnel. He eased his body forward until he could see down the tunnel ahead. A cult member sat in a hole fifteen feet down that tunnel. The man’s upper body was all that the lieutenant could see. The cultist appeared to be sleepy. The man was yawning hugely, and he appeared to be resting his back against the backside of the hole he was sitting in when the lieutenant risked his quick look. He backed away carefully and drew his pistol. He would have preferred to remain quiet, but there was no way that he could get to that guard without the man firing a shot with his pistol. The lieutenant screwed his silencer onto his pistol and once more eased his upper body out beyond the turn. The last time he’d used the weapon the lieutenant noticed that his silencer must have burned out some of the baffling because it was considerably louder than normal. He was afraid that it was now so loud that it would still be a liability. Lieutenant Wilcox was bringing his pistol around to shoot the man when he noted that the guard had actually fallen asleep.
The lieutenant drew Tim’s fighting knife with his left hand and slowly crawled around the corner. He paused momentarily to signal the men to wait where they were, and then he proceeded to inch toward the man. That fifteen-foot crawl seemed to Lieutenant Wilcox to take an eternity but he soon drew near the sleeping guard. The strike force leader quietly laid his pistol on the ground and shifted the knife to his right hand. The guard stirred briefly in his sleep, but then he remained still, his breathing slow and even. The time had come to act. Getting to his knees fluidly and quietly, the lieutenant clamped his left hand hard over the guard’s mouth and stabbed him in the heart. The man eyes flew open in terror, and he thrashed about for a moment and then he grew still.
Lieutenant Wilcox pushed the body down into the hole and then he gave his team the proceed signal with the radio. They rounded the corner as he was wiping Tim’s knife clean on the dead cultist’s clothing. He took the dead guard’s flashlight and proceeded down the tunnel. His men followed and crawled across the body just as the strike force leader had done before them.
***
Pete, Jim, and their party of peacekeepers were making better time. They hadn’t encountered a trap in the past half hour, but that didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be more. Pete was moving faster but still at a cautious speed. Soon they came to a large chamber. As the lights of the team played along the surface of the interior, Pete realized that this was the chamber they’d seen in the photo. In that picture, the chamber had contained a very large number of the cult members. Now the chamber was empty.
On the far side of the chamber, they saw another exit situated four feet above ground level. Someone had built a small staircase that led to that exit. The team crossed the chamber and Pete climbed the staircase to peer down the exit tunnel. He quickly spotted the trip wire trap and sighed. Each such trap delayed their progress. He was beginning to have a healthy respect for the leader of this nest. He didn’t admire Clarissa, but he respected her cunning.
***
Sergeant Thompson moved ahead down the latest tunnel that they had encountered. With Pete’s warning firmly in mind, he had been very careful to check for traps along the way, but he had found none. He stopped at a tunnel intersection between two more tunnels turning off his light as he did so in order to seek light in the distance down both passageways. The one on the left was dark and unrevealing. But to the right he saw light which was growing brighter by the moment. He prepared to defend himself and signaled the men to be ready. Sergeant Thompson took the precaution of sending a query to Pete asking if that was him approaching his unit. However, it was Patricia who advised both teams that they were in close proximity to each other and should exercise caution. She further advised them that both teams were getting closer to Lieutenant Wilcox and his team and speculated that all of the tunnel systems must be interconnected.
A few minutes later, the two teams merged and stared down the darkened corridor that was their only remaining option. Pete told David to continue to watch for traps and then gave him the nod to proceed.
Almost immediately, Jim stopped David. Pete looked at Jim quizzically and Jim just smiled. He pulled his fighting dagger and walked to the front of the party. He whispered for the rest to stay where they were and proceeded down the tunnel in what was almost a normal walking pace. David looked at Pete about to question Jim’s behavior, but Pete said, “Just watch, Sergeant. You’re about to see something rare.”
Jim stopped with his hands at his side, but then, faster than the eye can follow, Jim’s body snapped into motion. His right hand holding the dagger streaked outward and the dagger flew through the air thudding into a darkened portion of the wall. David watched as a portion of the wall sheared away and fell to the floor. He aimed his flashlight at the area and revealed a niche in the wall, within which the man had been hiding.
“But how did he know?” David asked.
“You’ll have to ask him. I don’t feel I have the right to answer that question, Sergeant. It concerns a private aspect of his life,” Pete said and moved down the tunnel to join Jim, who had by now recovered his dagger and cleaned the weapon.
“Look at his mouth,” Jim instructed quietly and then he motioned for the men to proceed but to do so quietly.
Pete looked at the man’s mouth as Jim had suggested and saw a whistle still clamped between the man’s teeth. It was one of those dog whistles that men can’t hear. “He was waiting for us to pass and then call in the dogs,” Pete speculated quietly. “That means they must be fairly close.”
Nodding Jim spoke quietly to the sergeant and warned him of what they suspected. He was puzzled when the man said, “Not again with the dogs.” Then Sergeant Thompson asked, “How did you know someone was there?”
Jim studied the question for a moment and then he replied, “In my early twenties I encountered a place in the woods where an evil cult had performed rituals. I approached my martial arts master and asked how one defeated such evil. He warned m
e that such men were dangerous and then he taught me a few secrets to detecting them. It’s really complicated and we don’t have the time for this discussion,” Jim said.
Nodding his understanding David asked, “Do we try to stick to silent killing with the dogs?”
“If it is one or two then yes, we will try. If it is more than two then use your rifle,” Pete answered the man who nodded his understanding and proceeded down the tunnel. Three minutes later David eased around a corner and froze in place. Two Rottweilers stood baring the path. They bared their fangs and began to approach. David backed away slowly as the dogs approached. Soon he saw Jim stepping up beside him to assist. Behind them Pete stood ready with his pistol just in case one of the dogs overcame one of the men. The dogs saw the other men and stopped their stalking.
Examining the dogs with the practiced eye of a dedicated dog lover, David noted the abused condition of the animals and had a thought. “Sir, I’d like to try something,” he said. Jim nodded his head for the man to proceed and the sergeant reached slowly into a pocket and pulled out a sandwich that the cook had given him before he left on the mission. He cut the ham and cheese sandwich in half with his knife and asked, “Are you boys hungry?” He slowly squatted down and laid the food on the ground for the dogs. The dogs eyed the food, and then looked at the man.
Sergeant Thompson slowly stood up and backed carefully away from the food. Following the man’s lead, Jim did the same. The dogs inched forward suspiciously. When they were close enough to do so, they snapped up the food and turned to run away. “I’m glad that worked out, Sergeant, but if they return and confront us, we kill them. Namid is in danger. Every moment of delay increases that danger.”
“Understood, sir,” the sergeant said. He hoped that the dogs wouldn’t return.
They proceeded down the corridor. Soon they came to a spot where they could see light coming from another large chamber entrance. They killed their lights as they approached. Patricia’s voice came through his radio saying, “Captain, your team is almost on top of Lieutenant Wilcox and his party.”