Siege Line

by Myke Cole

  She could feel Yakecan digging in his pockets, jostling her as he searched. “Mighta left my field glasses in he—”

  “Don’t need ’em.” Mankiller cut him off, elbowing him back. Just as there was an art to squinting, there was an art to seeing too, and the two were closely related. She squeezed her eyes shut more, shrinking the light down further. Her peripheral vision vanished, but in the tunnel that remained, all was made clear.

  It took her a moment to reacquire the helo, but once she did, it looked much as she’d expected. The huge bay doors were open, a gunner hidden behind the hardpoint affixed to the airframe. Mankiller could see the telltale lined cylinder of a minigun barrel, the long cable of the ammunition feed snaking inside.

  “Is it military?” Yakecan asked.

  “Looks like a Black Hawk, only four times the size,” Mankiller said. “Loaded for bear. They have twenty-mil cannons on your ride in Iraq?”

  “Yeah,” Yakecan said. “Vulcan or some shit. That what’s on there?”

  “I count two. Guns out. Barrel’s moving a bit; someone’s harnessed up and watching. Good thing we got cover.”

  “What, did a war break out in Canada?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “Well, shit. Is it American?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know?”

  Yakecan sounded frustrated. “Well, what flag’s on the tailboom, boss?”

  “No flag.”

  “There’s always a flag.”

  “No flag. No number. No nothing.”

  “That’s some spy shit.”

  The tenor of the rotors changed from a dull thudding to a higher-pitched whirring, the blades sounding almost frantic as they took on more load.

  “It’s comin’ down,” Mankiller said.

  Yakecan crowded up toward the gap in the sticks again. “Why?”

  “’S a transport,” Mankiller said. “Probably lettin’ folks off.”

  “Why the heck would they let folks off here?”

  The helo sank lower and lower, so fast that Mankiller’s stomach dropped a little, just as it would have had she been inside during so rapid a descent. It was a skilled pilot who could lower a bird that big that fast without crashing it, but it wasn’t a pilot overly concerned with the comfort of their troops.

  The pilot stopped the descent roughly fifty feet off the ground, jerking the airframe so hard that it practically bounced, making Mankiller wince. Ropes came flying out of the airframe, three to a side, thick black hawsers covered in some kind of fabric that she guessed would make them quiet as a whisper. A moment later, the first of the operators came down them. They were uniformly dressed in white, trousers bloused into combat boots, tactical vests and packs, carbines and pistols with enough mods and add-ons to make any holster-kisser drool. All were painted the exact color of the snow around them, slashed through with gray that mirrored the landscape. Even using her squinting trick, it was hard for Mankiller to focus on them.

  Yakecan couldn’t miss them now. “What the . . .”

  The men reached the end of the ropes, dropping into the snow, guns coming up to the low ready, spreading out from the circle of the helo’s rotor wash. She’d seen armed professionals execute the same maneuver every day in the war. These people knew their business. But the soldiers she knew had worn patches on their sleeves, flags of the nations that paid for all the expensive gear they carried. These operators were utterly unmarked, the gray-white surface of their parkas and tac vests marred only by the straps that held their ammunition and armor.

  With a click, the belly of the airframe swung open, issuing a grinding roar almost as loud as the turbines spinning the rotors. Military transport helicopters usually offloaded from the ramp in the back, and Mankiller watched in shock as a giant metal cage lowered directly out from the bottom of the airframe, sinking slowly earthward on a thick metal cable. Somewhere in the cabin, there had to be a capstan, a winch, and one hell of a motor.

  She looked at the helo’s modified airframe, the gear on the operators moving out beneath it. The metal winch and cable. All customizations off aftermarket military hardware. Whoever outfitted this mission had an awful lot of money.

  The cage thudded into the snow, the cable detaching and hauling skyward.

  Yakecan didn’t even bother speaking now. He stared, jaw open so wide, his chin disappeared below the parka’s zipper.

  The operators had turned. They were pointing their weapons inward now, at the cage.

  She did her squinting trick, brought it into better focus.

  It writhed.

  For a moment, she had the crazy idea that it was filled with fat, gray snakes, giant pale worms, sliding and crawling over one another, but a moment later, her vision came into full focus and she saw they weren’t worms.

  They were people.

  The cage was packed with people straining and clawing at the bars.

  “Jesus.” Yakecan crossed himself. “Are they naked?”

  “Yeah,” Mankiller said. “All of ’em.”

  “They’ll freeze. Ten minutes tops.”

  “No,” Mankiller said. “I don’t think they will.”

  The people in the cage were naked, but their skin was the color of old fish, the dirty gray of the snow on a well-used highway.

  Their eyes burned. Like the wolf.

  A shape appeared in the cabin door, leaning on the gun hardpoint. Now that Yakecan was looking at the cage and the ring of operators around it, he found the helo easily, eyes tracking up as the last of the cable winched in and disappeared inside the cabin. His eyes were wide enough already, but they looked like they were going to pop out of his head when they settled on what Mankiller was seeing.

  “Is that a . . . a guy in a suit?”

  “Yup,” Mankiller said.

  “His head looks like a lightbulb.”

  “He’s got a white hood on, or a mask or somethin’. It’s stretched over his face.”

  “Wilma, what the hell is going on? This is the weirdest damn thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  Mankiller nodded, put her hand out for the rifle. “We’re going back to town. We’ll come back for the ATV later. I don’t want to be throwin’ up that much noise now. We’ll walk.”

  Yakecan looked grateful for the chance to put distance between himself and the spectacle outside their crude shelter. He immediately turned to scramble out from beneath the woven canopy of broken branches and ice, crouching as he made his way up the gulch’s far side. “You think they see us?” He whispered.

  If they do, there ain’t much we’ll be able to do about it, Mankiller thought, but she said nothing. They hadn’t brought snowshoes, relying instead on the ATV’s broad tires. Now, hurrying on foot, they crunched and plunged through the crust on the surface of the snow with each step, making so much noise that it seemed to Mankiller they’d be heard even over the rotors. Her shoulders tensed with every step, waiting for a shot to ring out, to hear footsteps coming behind her.

  But in the end, there was nothing, and before long, the rotors were fading in the distance and she and Yakecan entered a stand of stunted trees, following a winding logging trail that would see them back to Fort Resolution in an hour or so.

  Mankiller plunged on in silence. There was a rhythm to labor, a drumbeat that reminded her of drum gatherings, or the beats they played at hand games. Following that beat let her lose herself in work, feeling only the steady pulsing of her feet crunching on the snow, rather than her aching legs, or the cold nipping at her nose.

  But Yakecan had no ear for that rhythm. Fast and strong as he was, he didn’t like hard work, and Mankiller could always tell when he was avoiding it. It was the same when he was frightened, or hurting, or almost anything else. He talked. He talked and talked and never stopped.

  “Boss.” Yakecan sounded winded, the snow
sucking at his boots, sapping his strength as much as it did hers. “What the hell just happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yeah, but . . .” Yakecan began. There was more to the stuttering cadence of his speech. He wasn’t just winded; he was hesitant, timid. He was deeply frightened.

  Mankiller didn’t blame him. So was she.

  “Who were they? What do they want?”

  “Nothing good,” Mankiller said. The light sputtered in the trees around them. The sun was going down, and it wouldn’t be long before the temperature plunged. “Come on.”

  CHAPTER I

  PUBLIC SERVANT

  ONE WEEK EARLIER

  James Schweitzer fled into the darkness and the city of Des Moines roused itself to action.

  Senator Don Hodges bounced on his shoulder, grunting with each jostling step. His suit was rumpled along with his elder-statesman dignity; only his hair remained perfect. Schweitzer’s magically heightened sense of smell was nearly overwhelmed by the generously applied spray that held it in place.

  “Put me down, damn it!” Hodges managed winded gasps between bumps. “I can walk.”

  “If you can walk, you can run,” Schweitzer said, “and if you can run, you can run away.”

  “I know I can’t outrun you,” Hodges choked. “I’m not stupid!”

  “You’re a politician,” Schweitzer replied. “It’s a job requirement.”

  The explosions and gunfire in Hodges’ office had drawn the attention of the police. Schweitzer could see the dancing colors of police car lights reflecting off the undersides of the thick clouds that hung low and close over the city. A living man wouldn’t have noticed anything, but death and reanimation had made Schweitzer’s senses more powerful. He knew how he would look to a passerby, a ragged corpse, missing an arm, running as fast as a speeding car, as silent as a stalking cat.

  Or he would have been if it hadn’t been for the man flopping on his shoulder. Hodges wheezed. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Somewhere we can talk.”

  “We can talk right here.”

  The lights may have been faint, but the sirens were loud enough to be heard by anyone. It sounded like every cop in the world was converging on the building Schweitzer had just fled.

  “Nice try,” Schweitzer said. “I don’t think the cops would take too kindly to a zombie kidnapping a Senator. I’ll put you down as soon as it’s safe.”

  “I’ll call them off,” Hodges said.

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” Schweitzer asked.

  Hodges went silent for a moment, and Schweitzer could almost hear the gears turning in his head as he tried to figure a way out of this. But it was just a moment. The man thought fast. “I just watched you take out my entire security detail in the blink of an eye. Surely, you can handle a few cops.”

  “Surely, I can,” Schweitzer agreed, “but you’re forgetting that I’m one of the good guys here. I don’t want to hurt other good guys.”

  “Well, you’re hurting me now.”

  “I’d hardly call you one of the good guys, and I’m not hurting you. Not yet.”

  Hodges went quiet again. Schweitzer’s real gut had stopped churning the moment he died, but his spiritual gut more than made up for it, his anxiety’s phantom limb. He hated threatening Hodges, even if it would secure his cooperation. Schweitzer’s death and resurrection had made him into a horror-movie monster, but those changes were physical. His heart and soul were still his own, and he had fought like a lion to keep it that way. He wasn’t a man who bullied others. Life in the SEALs had made him no stranger to the utility of violence, but that didn’t mean he liked it. Stealth was key to his former role, but he had always preferred a stand-up fight, facing the enemy, showing the world who and what he was.

  He thought of his wife, Sarah, and his son, Patrick, both gone now, one to the afterlife, the other to the care of his former enemy. He remembered how they’d looked at him as they’d fled through the woods from the Gemini Cell. Sarah, eyes forced wide so as not to betray her disgust; Patrick showing his naked fear of what his father had become.

  Hodges might be his prisoner, but he hadn’t taken the Senator to punish him. Eldredge had said that Hodges was the man who knew about the Cell and authorized its funding, which meant he was the man who could help Schweitzer shut it down. But that was nothing compared to the fact that threatening Hodges made Schweitzer feel like the monster he knew he looked like. His spiritual gut churned with the worry that if he acted that part often enough, it would eventually become a distinction in search of a difference.

  Schweitzer raced for an unlit alley snaking its way between two office buildings, windows dark at this time of night. His augmented hearing brought him the sharp intakes of breath and mutters of every nearby security guard, street sweeper, or couple out for a late-night stroll. There were precious few of these in Des Moines. It was a city that truly died after dark.

  He could smell the metallic tang of the Des Moines River, the soft stink of garbage and motor oil. He shouldered a Dumpster aside, careful to keep Hodges’ head clear, then burst out into the streetlights, speeding toward the railing that separated the asphalt from the dark water flowing beneath it.

  Hodges, seeing what was about to happen, began to thrash. “Wait! What are you . . .”

  Schweitzer leapt the railing and yanked Hodges’ body off his shoulder, locking the Senator close to him and arrowing him into as graceful a dive as he could manage. Despite his best effort, there was still quite a splash, and then all sound was swallowed by the river water enveloping them.

  Hodges flailed, but he might as well have been a child, for all the good it did him against Schweitzer’s magical strength. Schweitzer pinned him easily in place, his single arm as unyielding as an iron bar.

  He kicked his legs, righting them and preparing to swim to the surface if Hodges panicked and swallowed water. But the Senator kept his cool, and Schweitzer could feel the muscles in Hodges’ throat constricting as he pushed the air down out of his neck in an effort to keep his lungs inflated.

  Schweitzer swallowed his surprise and took advantage of the reprieve. He kicked along, moving them underwater for about thirty seconds. Schweitzer could easily hear the rapid beating of the Senator’s heart. When the oxygen starvation made the beats come slower, Schweitzer kicked off again, this time up to the surface.

  “Don’t screa . . .” Schweitzer was whispering in Hodges’ ear, but he needn’t have bothered. Hodges wasn’t screaming, wasn’t even gasping. He was taking short, shallow breaths, hyperventilating like a rabbit. That was good. They had taught Schweitzer to do that in training, a little trick that would help them stay down longer.

  Schweitzer kicked off again, dragging them underwater until he heard the slowing of Hodges’ heartbeat, then surfaced so he could take a breath. “Just relax,” Schweitzer said. “I’m not going to drown you.” But above the water, Schweitzer had a good scent of the blood in Hodges’ carotid. He was frightened, to be sure. Excited, but not panicked. Not by a long shot. Hodges ignored him, taking one deep breath, then hyperventilating again.

  Schweitzer could hear the whirring of helicopters, the screaming of sirens, but they were much fainter now, the response focusing on the Senator’s office. Schweitzer moved down the river, away from the sounds.

  At last, he dragged the Senator up onto the rocky shore under a bridge overpass, the tons of metal and concrete above them occasionally vibrating beneath a passing truck. Hodges lay on his back, gasping freely now, giving full rein to his lungs’ desperate scramble for air. He coughed.

  “You okay?” Schweitzer asked.

  Hodges waved a hand weakly.

  “I told you I wasn’t going to drown you.”

  “I figured . . . I figured if you wanted me dead, you would’ve done it back in my office.”

  “I don’t want yo
u dead.”

  Hodges propped himself up on his elbows, spat. “What do you want?”

  “What’s with that breathing trick?”

  “What?”

  “You hyperventilated each time we surfaced.”

  “I was panicking. You try being dragged under the water by a living corpse.”

  Schweitzer shook his head. “Don’t fuck with me. They taught me that in BUD/S. Purges the CO2 in your blood so you can hold your breath longer.”

  Hodges opened his mouth to respond, then finally shrugged. “You know what I did before I got elected?”

  “I know you were in the CIA. I always figured you were an analyst.”

  “Maybe I was, and maybe I wasn’t. We all had to go through training before we went overseas.”

  “What’d you do for them?” Schweitzer asked.

  “How about you answer my question first?”

  Anger flared. He was the stronger here. He had saved Hodges’ life and now Hodges was in his control. He would decide who asked the questions. No, that’s how jinn think. You have to be smarter. If he was going to get what he wanted from Hodges, they would have to work together.

  “I need your help,” Schweitzer said.

  Hodges looked genuinely shocked. “What the hell could I possibly help you with?”

  Schweitzer thought of Sarah stopping him in the forest as they fled the Cell what seemed a lifetime ago. Still alive, still his wife, him still clinging to the illusion that they were together, as they had been when he still breathed. Wherever you are, they will come. It’s the government. They don’t give up. They don’t run out of money. You have to stop this threat.

  Sarah was dead now, her body torn to bloody scraps, her spirit drifting in the soul storm. Alongside all the others he’d known and loved. His brother, Peter. His best friend, Steve. His mother. So many dead. But his son was still alive. Even now, Patrick was on his way west in the care of Dr. Eldredge, the scientist who’d overseen Schweitzer’s resurrection before going rogue himself.