As Skeeter Newland’s internal organs were hungrily exorcised from his body, the pilot sensed the strain of the Huey s engine as it sputtered and died. Despite his agony, he could feel the momentum of the downward plunge as the vast weight of the winged monster pulled the helicopter toward the earth. There were quick flashes of blue sky and green forest, as well as the presence of the dark thing with its muzzle buried in the hollow of his chest. Then there was a tremendous crash and a crushing wave of blackness as both attacker and prey slammed into the northern side of Pale Dove Mountain with earth-shattering force.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Joe Nickles was climbing out of his squad car in front of the Tucker’s Mill town hall when an explosion echoed from the southern limits of Peremont County. He turned his head just in time to see a fireball blossom over the distant peak of Pale Dove Mountain a few miles away. A small group of state troopers were standing at the front entrance of the municipal building, watching as the burst lost its intensity and died into a cloud of dense black smoke.
“That was the third one in the last few minutes,” said Officer Olsen as the captain approached the building.
“You mean there has been more than one explosion?” asked Nickles.
“If that’s the case, then why the hell aren’t you guys up there checking it out?”
“We’ve got orders to stay put,” said Officer Tom Purnell. “Lieutenant Ashton made it clear that no one makes a move until you get here and give the word.”
“Well, I’m giving it now, by God! Head on out to Pale Dove Mountain and see what’s going on. In the meantime, I’ll gather up the other guys and join you as soon as possible. I’ve got a helicopter and another dozen men coming in from Knoxville, but they won’t be here for another thirty minutes, so I reckon we’ll just have to do the best we can until the reinforcements arrive.”
Purnell and his partner, Frasier, hopped into their patrol car and lit out. Nickles took Hal Olsen aside, for he knew the man to be a law officer he could trust. “Do you have any idea why Ashton held you guys back? I mean, it sounds like there’s a freaking war going on over there.”
“I’m not sure, Captain,” said Olsen. “The lieutenant has been acting mighty strange ever since we started investigating that mess over at Rebel’s Roost last night. It’s almost like he’s dragging his heels on purpose. Even when that lady came in this morning—”
“What lady?” asked Nickles.
“Some elderly woman…I think she said her name was Compton. She was all fired up about Sheriff Mayo’s disappearance. She claimed that something had happened to him up on Pale Dove Mountain. Ashton wouldn’t do anything about it, though. He just said he would talk to you when you arrived.”
A cold suspicion crept into the mind of Joe Nickles, a suspicion that he hoped was false. “Round up the rest of the fellows, Olsen, and break out the shotguns. We’re going up the side of that mountain and find out what’s going on. But first, I’m going to have a little chat with the lieutenant.”
The state police captain entered the town hall and walked down the corridor to the county jail. He stepped in quietly and made it to the open doorway of the sheriff’s private office before Frank Ashton was even aware that he was standing there. The lieutenant was counting something beneath the concealment of the desktop, carefully hiding it from the troopers in the outer squad room. When Nickles cleared his throat, Ashton nearly jumped out of his skin. He quickly crammed the mystery bundle back into its envelope and tried to conceal his sudden nervousness.
“What have you got there, Frank?” Nickles asked him calmly.
“What do you mean, Joe?” countered Ashton. An uneasy grin cut across his pale features.
Joe Nickles stood there in indecision for a long moment. He found his temper rising as he sensed the hidden guilt in Ashton’s eyes. Then he did something that he thought he would never have to do during his long career as a state policeman. He unsnapped his holster strap and drew his gun on a fellow law officer. “The thing you’ve got in your hand…toss it on the desk.”
“What do you think you’re doing, Joe?” said Ashton, swallowing dryly.
“I hope I’m making one hell of a mistake. But I won’t know until I see what’s in the envelope.”
Reluctantly, Lieutenant Ashton brought the brown envelope into view and tossed it across the desk at his superior. Nickles kept his gun trained on the man’s chest while he picked up the envelope, opening the flap with his thumb. Inside was an inch-thick stack of hundred dollar bills.
“There must be over twenty thousand dollars in here,” he said. His voice was hard with anger and disappointment. “What is this, Frank? A bribe from Eco-Plenty? Payola for keeping the troopers away from whatever’s going on up at the mountain?”
“You’re crazy, Joe,” laughed Ashton. “Dammit, man, we’ve known each other for fifteen years—”
“Don’t pull my chain, Frank. Just tell it to me straight.”
Ashton’s face tightened and he averted his eyes from the captain. “I refuse to say anything else until I talk to a lawyer.”
Joe Nickles felt like shooting the traitorous lawman right then and there, but he resisted the urge and kept his finger steady on the trigger. “Okay, if that’s the way it is, I’m going to have to lock you up until we get the situation on Pale Dove Mountain straightened out. Unbuckle your gun belt and lay it on the desk.” After Ashton had done so, Nickles nodded to his chest. “And the badge, too.”
Ashton looked stricken. “Is that really necessary?”
“In my opinion, yes it is,” said the captain. “Besides, that badge is no longer yours. You’ve already sold it and your honor to that damned corporation.”
Under gunpoint, Frank Ashton was marched through the center of the squad room, much to the surprise of the junior troopers. Nickles took him to the cellblock and locked him in one of the two cells. “Should I read you your rights, Frank?” asked the captain, with more than a trace of sarcasm.
“No,” replied Ashton dejectedly. “I reckon I know them well enough by now.”
Without another word, Nickles left the lieutenant confined behind steel bars, to ponder his involvement with Eco-Plenty and suffer the guilt of the awful mistake he had made. Grimly, the captain returned to the squad room.
“What was that all about?” asked a dumbfounded trooper named Kissler.
“I’ll fill you guys in later,” said Joe Nickles. “But now we’ve got a job to do.” He looked around and saw that there were only six troopers present, armed with revolvers and pump shotguns. With the two troopers who had left moments before, that meant a scarce eight men under his command. It would have to do for now, though. From the thundering barrage of missile fire over Pale Dove Mountain, he knew they were probably biting off more than they could chew rushing up there on their own, but the reinforcements were a good half-hour away and he simply couldn’t afford to wait for their arrival.
After the ten members of Red Team had finished scaling the rocky bluff, they moved across a partial plateau, crossing a babbling brook that bordered a dense stand of forest. Frag Hendrix took the point, leading his men toward their new objective. The sunlight that broke through the leafy foliage overhead was misty with smoke. Up ahead, just beyond the trees, was the point of impact where Skeeter’s crippled Huey and the demonic black Falcon had hit the upper reaches of Pale Dove Mountain with the destructive force of a meteorite.
“Stay alert and be careful,” he told his men, but figured that there was really no longer any danger from the threat that had brought so many casualties during the course of the operation. The creature had seemed nearly invincible during the aerial battle, but nothing could survive a fall from such a height, even a monster with armor plating
Red Team spread out and emerged from the dark forest. A large clearing of spring clover and wildflowers separated the woodland from the rocky slope of the mountain peak. In the center of the clearing was a massive crater some thirty feet in diameter. Wisps of oi
ly smoke drifted from the open hole, stinking of burnt fuel and fire-burnished steel.
Before the team could approach the chasm, Hendrix called one of the commandos aside. “Jacobi, I want you to take four men and continue up the slope for the planned rendezvous point at the top of the peak. Whatever this thing was, it looks like its dead now, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more of them. That’s why we have to finish the job right. When you get to the cave entrance, wire it with C-4 and seal it shut. The rest of us will be checking out this crater, but we should join you in time for the festivities.” Hendrix remembered Jackson Dellhart’s condition about wanting to call the shots about the final play, but Dellhart wasn’t there to argue the point with him now. Hendrix didn’t even know where the executive and his crony were at that moment. Hollinger had reported that Dellhart and Russ had disappeared into the forest right after Blue Team had set out. Maybe they had ended up getting slaughtered like Jamal and his men.
Hendrix watched as Jacobi and the four commandos steered clear of the crater and moved up the craggy face of the rocky peak. Then he waved his own soldiers forward. They spread out, forming a circle around the open pit. Hendrix peered down into the hole, but it was too dark and smoky to see anything lying at the bottom. He took a pair of infrared night goggles from his pack and slipped them on. Still, he could see nothing definite within the dense shadows.
“Lob a grenade down there and see if we get any response,” he called to a brawny Arabian named Akbar.
The bearded soldier primed a fragmentation grenade and tossed it into the crater. The five mercenaries stepped back and waited for the explosion. A moment later the detonation sounded from the bottom. After the thunderous report had subsided, they listened and watched for a sign of movement, but there was only dark immobility.
“Whatever it was that wasted poor Skeeter is stone-cold dead now,” said Mason, a black commando with a patch over his left eye. “There’s no two ways about it.”
“I’m still not satisfied,” said Hendrix. He knew he was acting overly cautious, but he couldn’t help but remember how the black creature had shrugged off missile fire and fifty-caliber rounds effortlessly. “Can I have a volunteer to rappel down there and check it out?”
“I’ll go,” said Caldwell, a wiry fellow with a maroon beret and a goatee beard. He unshouldered a camouflaged pack and produced a coil of nylon rope, tying it to a large oak at the edge of the clearing. Then he returned to the edge of the crater and fastened a rappelling harness around his chest and waist. He threaded the rope through the steel carabiner rings of the harness, then, with a quick salute to Hendrix, dropped into the open pit, propelling himself downward with his feet against the sloping side of the crater. The man was soon swallowed by the swirling, steaming darkness below.
“Caldwell,” the scar-faced commander called down into the pit. “Caldwell, have you reached the bottom yet?”
“I’m here,” answered the soldier. “What a mess! I can see what’s left of Skeeter’s chopper and…wait a second…there’s something else down here, too.”
“What is it, Caldwell?”
The soldier didn’t answer for a moment. Then called out in sudden excitement. “Cripes, whatever it is, it’s still alive! I can hear it moving!”
Hendrix felt the potential for disaster brewing within the obscurity of the pit. “Leave it alone, Caldwell. Get out of there right now.”
Caldwell seemed to ignore him. “That noise,” he muttered from the shadowy depths. “Colonel, do you hear that freaking noise?”
Yes, Frag Hendrix could hear the sound echoing up from the bottom of the crater. It was a brittle sound, a loud and inexplicable crackling. A disturbing image nagged at the commander’s mind—an image of the legendary phoenix which was consumed by flames, yet rose from the warm ashes, transformed. “Get back up here this instant, Caldwell! That’s an order!”
The staccato of Caldwell’s Uzi sounded from below, as well as his frantic cries for help. “Somebody pull me up! Somebody get me the hell out of here!”
Hendrix and the other three ran to the nylon rope and began to pull, hand over hand. At first, they made good progress, but then there was a tug of incredible resistance from below as Caldwell’s voice shrilled into a panicked scream. “Pull, dammit, pull!” At Hendrix’s command, they put their muscles into it, but something began to pull back from the bottom of the pit. It was like four men engaged in a game of tug-of-war with an eighteen-wheeler. Their feet began to slip on the grass of the clearing and, slowly, their combined weight was drawn toward the edge. “Don’t let it pull you over the side,” Hendrix told them. “Let go if you have to.”
But before they had to resort to such abandonment, the pulling force stopped and they found themselves in control again. They began to pull the bodily weight of Caldwell to the top of the vast crater. “He’s almost here,” said Mason, who was at the end of the rope nearest the chasm.
Suddenly, Caldwell’s face appeared over the lip of the crater. It was a horrifying sight to behold. The muscles of the pale face were contorted into a gaping rictus of terror and agony. The members of Red Team gave the rope a final tug and brought Caldwell out of the pit and onto the grass. Or rather, what was left of Caldwell. Only the soldier’s upper torso remained in the rappelling harness. Something had made away with his lower body, biting it in half at the waist.
The mercenaries recoiled at the sight of their mutilated comrade. They grabbed for their weapons and watched the deep gash in the center of the clearing. A low grumbling growl echoed from within and they could hear the sound of something huge digging its way out of the pit. The rattle and roll of dislodged dirt and stone heralded the appearance of the underground creature, causing the team to mentally steel themselves for the horror that was to come.
But no amount of preparation could ready them for the thing that slowly emerged from the depths of the earth.
It appeared to be some hellish mating of subterranean mole and military juggernaut. The armored body was glossy black and resembled the sturdy structure of an M-60 tank. It even sported an oval gun turret and the jutting barrel of a howitzer. The only difference between it and a real tank—and it was certainly an unsettling difference—was the lack of rotating treads on the sides. In their place were great, gnarled paws like those of a common garden mole. The grasping fingers were tipped with sharp gray claws, digging deeply into the earth and pulling the weight of the monstrosity farther into the open clearing.
“Forget the rifles!” ordered Hendrix. “Frag the confounded thing!” He pulled a couple of pineapple grenades from his flak vest, jerked the pins, and tossed them in front of the lumbering beast. The other soldiers did likewise. The dark tank pulled itself over the grenades just as they exploded. It was instantly engulfed in a cataclysmic chain reaction of fire and shrapnel. But the thing didn’t even slow down. It kept right on coming.
They watched as the cannon barrel weaved back and forth like the probing trunk of an elephant. Its open snout slammed into the earth, burrowing deeply, then emerging bloated with soil and rock. With a forceful gust of air, the tank expelled the contents at one of the soldiers, pelting him with a deadly hail of grit and gravel. A hunk of stone the size of a football hit him in the chest, leaving a gaping hole. It burst from his back and then flew onward, striking the trunk of a sour gum tree behind him and splintering it like a stick of rotten firewood.
“Let me take it, Frag!” called Akbar. He reached to his backpack and withdrew a portable LAWS rocket launcher.
“Give it your best shot,” agreed Hendrix.
The tubular trunk of the great creature dipped beneath the surface of the grassy clearing again, then withdrew, packed with flinty soil. It fired with an exhalation of beastly breath, this time decapitating Mason with a sharp, flat sliver of gray shale. Akbar quickly primed the bazooka; popping the end caps, sliding the launch tube to full length, and raising the top sight. Akbar then knelt, shouldered the bazooka, and took careful aim before firing. A
66mm rocket left the LAWS launcher and struck the rampaging tank squarely in the front of its bulbous turret. A blinding explosion engulfed the creature, as well as a heavy pall of powder smoke.
“I got it!” laughed the Arabian. “I wasted the ugly son of a bitch!” He took a few steps forward and realized that he had made a terrible mistake. He found the dark tank barreling out of the black cloud, roaring like an angry lion. Akbar tried to leap out of the way, but the monstrosity was already upon him. He was caught by one of the flailing claws and crushed beneath its weight like a fragile bug beneath the sole of a shoe. His broken body was ground under the paw, then immediately buried beneath the churned earth it left in its destructive wake.
Frag Hendrix, who had survived three tours of duty in Vietnam and countless battles in troubled countries throughout the world, suddenly found himself facing a menace that he was totally unprepared for—one that was impervious to both gunfire and explosives. The M-16 he held in his hands seemed like an absurd toy compared to the unbridled fury of the horrible beast that scrambled across the earth toward him. Regretfully, he knew that he must do something that he had never done before—retreat from the threat of his enemy.
But as he turned to escape into the dense cover of the forest, the length of the living howitzer snaked out, wrapping around his body, and clenching tightly. Hendrix choked back a cry of agony as he felt his ribcage collapse beneath the steely tendril of the monster. I won’t scream, he vowed to himself. No matter how bad it gets…I won’t give it the satisfaction.
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