The Crucible: A Lawson Vampire Novel (The Lawson Vampire Series)

by Jon F. Merz

  “What’s that noise?”

  Jack had stopped moving. I stopped as well. I strained my ears and after a moment, I heard it. An engine of some type.

  “Car?”

  Jack shook his head. “No way. We wouldn’t hear that from this distance. Besides, we’re not close to the road.”

  I frowned. The engine noise grew louder. And it seemed to be in front of us. The landscape ahead continued to slope upwards and peaked at a ridge line maybe two miles distant. There had to be something further up there that we couldn’t yet see.

  “I don’t like this,” said Jack. He was holding the Cloak up and looked at me. “Maybe we should get under this now?”

  “Wait out,” I said. “We don’t know what it is yet. It might be a farmer with a tractor for all we know.”

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a tractor. It sounds like something out of a video game I used to play.”

  “Which one?”

  “Tank Command.”

  I looked back at the ridge. “You think it’s a goddamned tank?”

  “Sure sounds like it,” said Jack.

  The engine sound grew louder and louder. As I scanned the ridge, I saw something dark easing over.

  And my stomach sank.

  “Looks like you might be right, after all,” I said.

  “Cloak?” asked Jack.

  I nodded. “Definitely time for the Cloak.”

  “I thought you’d never agree.”

  I nodded off in the distance. “I’m not about to wait for that to get any closer. It’s time we vanished.”

  12

  To our left, I spotted a shallow depression in the ground. I nudged jack over and we hunkered down, spreading the Cloak over the top of us. It felt incredibly weird still being upright and not trying to conceal myself behind something. Trusting that the Cloak would render us invisible felt at odds with every single one of my combat instincts. I wanted to find cover and not be anywhere close to what was coming down the slope now at us.

  Jack hadn’t been technically correct; what trundled our way wasn’t a tank.

  It was an armored personnel carrier.

  “That’s a ZSD-89,” I said softly. “Troop transport.”

  “As in lots of soldiers in the back?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. It’s lightly armored and pretty much all-terrain. The Chinese have been using them for a while now and exporting them as well. Weird that they would be out in the country like this in one instead of over on the road we just left.”

  “Are they looking for us?” asked Jack.

  “I don’t know. Probably not. We’ve been off the grid this entire time. I don’t think we were compromised at any point so far.”

  “So why is this thing coming at us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jack frowned. “I’m guessing that machine gun jutting out of the front end is pretty real?”

  “12.7mm. Plus four smoke grenade launchers to provide cover in case things get rough. It can carry about fifteen all told.”

  “Great,” said Jack. “It’s not slowing down, either.”

  He was right. The ZSD continued to grind away at the ground with its tracks and kick up rock and dirt in its wake as it moved ever closer to us. The engine sound grew much louder as it churned toward us. Every fiber of my body wanted to yank Jack and scramble for some sort of cover. But even if we didn’t have the Cloak, our position couldn’t have been improved. Aside from the shallow ditch we were in, the ground around us was flat and open. There simply wasn’t any cover anywhere. Like it or not, we were going to have to trust the Cloak and pray that it concealed us both entirely.

  I was willing to bet that the driver, operating the ZSD by using a series of three periscopes, would ignore all but the most obvious signs of something amiss. After all, it’s not the easiest thing to drive by using a periscope. But even still, we had to make sure we didn’t give them a reason to stop.

  The ZSD was maybe a hundred yards away now. Its bearing would bring it just off to our right side by perhaps twenty yards. Close, but not dangerously so. If we kept still, didn’t say anything, and let it continue past, we could hopefully resume our trek shortly.

  “No noise,” I said.

  “I doubt they could hear us over that engine,” said Jack.

  “You’re probably right, but we’re not taking any chances. Wait until I give the all clear.”

  The noise of the ZSD invaded our ears and made me want to wince. Tracked vehicles are incredibly intimidating - especially if you’re out in the open the way we were. You just want to burrow into the ground and pray they go away fast. I couldn’t even imagine the terror the German soldiers must have felt when the British rolled the first tanks toward them back during World War One.

  I figured the driver of the ZSD would opt to steer clear of the shallow depression we huddled in and keep the transport on level ground. He did and the ZSD kept its bearing. As it lumbered on, it seemed more and more massive with every passing second. I could feel the fear in Jack’s body as we stayed close together. I was plenty nervous myself. But we kept it together and the ZSD had soon drawn to within ten yards of us.

  Relentless.

  I looked at the vehicle and could see where the welded steel plate of the frontal armor gave way to thinner side sections. The smoke grenade launchers looked like cardboard paper towel tubes sprouting off in a variety of angles. And the dull green exterior looked like the standard fare for the Chinese army.

  The ZSD swerved slightly away from us and I grinned. As expected, they were cruising along and looked like they were headed out toward the road Jack and I had left some time back. I figured another twenty minutes and we’d be able to move on. All we had to do was rest here and stay quiet. The ZSD didn’t have any of its scopes pointed behind it, so I felt reasonably comfortable in moving into a new position to ease the cramping in my legs.

  Jack shifted as well. “Ouch.”

  “Keep your voice down. They’re still close.”

  Jack frowned. “They’re already a hundred feet away from us. What harm can it do?”

  “I told you to stay quiet until I give the all-clear.”

  “Lawson-“

  Both of us stopped talking then.

  Because the ZSD jerked, grunted, and then drew itself to a stuttering halt roughly fifty yards away. Jack turned to me and I shrugged. I didn’t know if they’d heard us or not, but we had a bigger problem just then. The time for Monday morning quarterbacking would be later, not now.

  I expected to see the back ramp of the ZSD come down and a flood of armed soldiers come streaming out. Instead, a hatch opened atop the ZSD and a single man slid out. Even from here, I could see the deep frown on his face. Then I saw the smoke and smelled the sharp tinge in the air. A stream of Chinese profanity soon followed. It was obvious that the ZSD had broken down.

  Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem. But the fact that the ZSD was so close to us made me extremely nervous. If the driver was forced to call for help - or worse, camp out - the shallow depression Jack and I huddled in made for a perfect windbreak. It was logical that he would come to our location. And if help showed up, there would be a whole lot of people crawling all over us.

  Not good.

  The driver slid himself under the chassis of the ZSD and the swearing continued. I had no idea what he was looking at since the mechanics of the troop transport weren’t something I was familiar with, but it seemed likely that the vehicle was continually troublesome. That might explain why it was out on the open plain as opposed to traveling down the road: maybe he was field testing it after some repair work.

  Hunkered down as we were, I saw three options. One: we could attempt to sneak away and hope the driver didn’t notice us in the process. Two: we could sit and wait and hope that the driver could repair the vehicle and then drive off. And three: we could take the driver out and then move on.

  The problems with each option were immediately obvious. Sneakin
g away was risky and there was always the chance that he would hear us even if the Cloak managed to keep us both hidden. With the engine turned off, the only sound was of the wind whistling.

  Waiting also wasn’t a good option. The likelihood of the driver fixing the vehicle and leaving were slight. It was far more likely that he would end up calling for help and that would bring with it a whole new set of problems.

  Taking the driver out - either by killing him or knocking him unconscious - was also problematic. If we killed him, he’d be missed and then a search party would be dispatched to find him. And if we only knocked him out, then when he regained consciousness, we were going to have a whole lot of angry Chinese troops looking for us.

  But we had to do something. Jack and I couldn’t sit there all day waiting for a better chance. That’s the thing about opportunity: where none exists, you have to create one. Every second we waited meant less time to locate and then rescue Talya. I wasn’t going to wait for some grease monkey to figure his shit out at the expense of the woman I loved.

  I nudged Jack. And contrary to how I might have normally handled things, I gestured that we were going to move away as quietly as possible. The less traces we left of our passing, the better. The longer we could remain undetected, the better shot we had at pulling off the impossible. I wasn’t ready to gamble Talya’s life any more than I already had.

  I pointed out another spot and gestured that we would move as one to it. If we kept quiet enough, we should have been able to put a lot of distance between us and the driver. And if we could make the ridge line, all the better. Once we were beyonds that and out of sight, we could even relax a little.

  The ridge line was about a half mile away, though. That was a whole lot of open ground to have to cover. Still, I felt good about having a plan now instead of a bunch of options. Killing the driver was easy. Resisting the urge to do so was hard, but made better sense. And I’ve always tried to think things through as logically as possible. Not that I’ve always succeeded, but you know, a man’s got to try.

  I held up three fingers and Jack nodded. Time to move. On one we rose and climbed out of the shallow depression together. I pointed out a twig and Jack stepped over it. It was awkward and slow-going, but we managed to make it to the next position. Once there, we settled down and waited to see if our movement had attracted any attention.

  But the driver showed no signs of having heard us. In fact, the swearing only grew louder.

  Scanning the landscape, I spotted our next location. Twenty yards ahead to the right there was a group of smaller rocks. They almost looked like a trail marker. I pointed and Jack nodded again. We moved and made it to the next spot.

  By this time, we were both breathing heavily. There’s nothing like having to move with forced silence; it wears hard on you. It’s not easy to sneak around. And anyone who has ever had to do so knows just how labored your breathing can get. Adrenaline dumps into your system and that makes it hard to maintain control over your body.

  A line of sweat broke out along my hairline. I wiped it away as I scanned for our next point. It felt like we were zigzagging across the open ground. I’d have much preferred running for it, but the driver could have emerged at any moment from under the ZSD. If he spotted us or heard us, we were screwed.

  We moved like this for the better part of a half hour. Each time we risked movement, we’d get twenty yards or so under us before hunkering down to see if we’d made any sort of noise that the driver could have heard. But he never emerged from under the chassis.

  The further we drew away, the better I felt. And now we were on the incline of the ridge line. Another movement would bring us over the lip and on to the other side out of the driver’s line of sight.

  Jack looked at me with a grin. It was hard to resist grinning back, but I wasn’t convinced we were in the clear yet. Close, but not yet. I pointed out the next location and we moved on three. Our feet scrambled up over the lip of the ridge line and we were on the other side.

  We dropped to the ground and lay there for a second, breathing hard.

  But what greeted our eyes did little to still my thundering heart.

  Next to me, I heard Jack mutter, “Shit.”

  Indeed.

  13

  We’d blundered into some sort of makeshift Chinese army camp. The ZSD had been bad enough on its own, but what we raced now were roughly a hundred soldiers, more ZSDs and two tanks.

  Jack whispered into my ear. “Shouldn’t have said anything about tanks.”

  But I was frowning. The tanks looked like something out of a science fiction flick. Not like the typical type 99 variants that I was used to seeing show up in the military equipment reports the intel guys frequently ran past us. And then it hit me.

  “Those are Type 5 main battle tanks.”

  “What?”

  I glanced at Jack. “There have been rumors that they were developing a new battle tank to replace the older model they’d been fielding. But the last time I saw any intel on them, they were still several years away from putting out anything other than a prototype.”

  Jack nodded at the tanks. “Those don’t look like prototypes.”

  He was right. The type 5s looked like they’d been out in the field for a while. Mud clung to their tracks and the camouflage pattern seemed perfectly suited for the high elevation we were operating at. Light green and brown splashed across the chassis.

  “That gun looks huge.”

  I nodded. The type 5s had a bigger smooth bore main gun than most of the other tanks in circulation. Whichever army came up against these things was going to have a hard time with them if they operated as fiercely as they looked.

  I made a mental note to let the ferrets back home know that the 5s weren’t a possibility, but a certainty. They’d see to it that the rest of the western human intelligence services knew about them. And that would mean their respective countries would take appropriate countermeasures.

  We had a more immediate problem: avoiding contact with the ZSD and its driver had been one thing. We now confronted the prospect of having to thread our way through a hundred soldiers and vehicles before we could continue. The chances of us doing that successfully were remote, even if we did happen to be invisible.

  The camp spread before us roughly two hundred meters to our right and left. Ahead, the bulk of the camp stretched out approximately three hundred meters. Our options were slim and I didn’t like any of them. I just thanked the gods that we hadn’t elected to take out the ZSD and its driver. A shit storm would have befallen us once the body was discovered and the entire operation would likely have been compromised.

  We could try to box around the encampment, keeping the ridge line to one side as we moved left or right and then continuing ahead once we were well clear of it, but that would mean we’d have to move extremely slow and hopefully not dislodge any loose dirt and rocks on the incline.

  The other option was to continue moving straight ahead, knowing we would have to go right through the actual camp.

  Going straight through the camp was the far riskier option because the chances of us bumping into one of the soldiers was greater. But it was also faster. Still, anything could happen, even if we did have the Cloak protecting us.

  I cupped my hand over Jack’s ear and told him the plan. We’d head down the slope, ease into the camp and then make our way through. His job was to do exactly what I did, when I did it. If we screwed up our timing in any way, the risk of exposure was high.

  Being invisible did have its advantages. If we accidentally bumped into someone, they would be more likely to brush it off if they didn’t see anyone. And given that the camp wasn’t on any sort of high alert meant the soldiers would be more laid back. I assumed the camp was simply out on exercises and given the vibe of the place, I was optimistic we could make it through unscathed.

  Jack was less so. I could tell from the way he held himself that he was worried. I didn’t blame him. If I wasn’t used to being ou
t on the edge, I would have felt the same. But this was all new ground for Jack and he was decidedly out of his element. He’d done well so far, but even that had its limits. I certainly didn’t begrudge him being scared.

  I patted him on the shoulder and we moved off. Each step we took down the slope threatened to unleash a minor avalanche of dirt and shale if we weren’t careful. But we managed to descend without doing so and paused at the base of the hill to pick out our next location.

  Ahead of us, one of the tanks sat parked with its main gun elevated. Up close, it looked even larger. I was tempted to snap a quick picture on my phone, but that wasn’t the priority just then. Still, being this close was intimidating and the tank looked more than capable of destroying just about anything.

  Two soldiers loitered around it. One of them was in the process of refueling it with a large gas line running from a fuel truck into the tank chassis. The other looked like he was updating his Facebook status. But distracted was good. The less attention they paid to us, the better.

  I pointed out our next spot and Jack nodded once. We rose and slid past the tank, stepped over the fuel hose, and then moved another twenty yards to a stack of supply crates that were marked with the a variety of Chinese characters. Some of them were obviously food. We huddled close and I considered our next option. We were deep into the camp now. Soldiers milled about and others walked around with purpose. Ahead of us, I could see the boundary of the camp and the freedom that lay beyond.

  A part of me was genuinely concerned about the powers of the Cloak. Did they fade after a while? Would two of us using it diminish its strength? Every second we stayed in the camp, we risked exposure. And if the Cloak did lose its powers, then what would we rely upon once we located Talya?

  For now, I had to block those fears out while we moved through the camp. But the sooner we got out and could risk not using the Cloak, the better I was going to feel.