He took two more swallows before disconnecting the canteen and returning it, along with the drinking tube, to their respective places in the canteen carrier.
With a satisfied sigh, Decker reached down to retrieve his Pitbull. The weapon was gone.
He knelt, searching the dusty bottom of the shallow foxhole with his starlight viewer. The assault rifle was nowhere to be found.
A strange sensation prickled along the back of Decker’s neck. Fear gripped his belly. Slowly he turned his head, rotating his shoulders as the helmet reached its limit of motion. There, perched on the rim of the foxhole, was a Masher. The thing squatting above him wasn’t as big as the dead one Gunny Frost had carried back after the attack on her party, nor was it so tall as the one that had attacked Dr. Cortez on Cabot’s upper deck. But its filthy hide bore more scars than either of the other two. An arching row of bolt heads followed the line of the creature’s ridged eyebrows, looking like a rounded M of metallic war paint across the thing’s forehead. Even more horrible than the monster’s disfigurement was the fact that it held Decker’s Pitbull in its massive hands.
The weapon was not aimed at the young Marine. The Masher had it resting across its knees. The thing seemed to be ignoring Decker and gazing at the black rifle. Then, a light of comprehension dawned into the creature’s small, black eyes. It laid its right forearm along the rifle’s lower receiver. An expression of concentration, more intense than Decker would have believed possible for the savage alien, crossed the Masher’s face. The flesh of its forearm rippled and parted, flowing over the weapon’s firing grip and collapsible shoulder stock. The Masher tipped its head back and let out an eerie high-pitched gasp of pain. Thick purple fluid seeped from the juncture between the weapon and the thing’s crawling flesh as the Pitbull continued to sink into the monster’s arm.
Decker was frozen in sick fascination by the spectacle. He tried to will his hand to move, to reach for the Pug holstered on his right hip, or the Ka-Bar hanging from his combat harness, but his flesh was as unresponsive as the dirt beneath his feet.
The Masher’s long moan continued, even after its flesh had sealed itself up around the Pitbull. Small writhings in the alien’s forearm told of some internal process at work. In a remote corner of his horror-stricken mind, Decker guessed that those little jumps and twists in the thick muscle behind the thing’s wrist meant that the creature would soon be able to use the rifle.
That thought sent a galvanic shock through the young Marine, and he found his muscles were his to command once again. Moving as slowly as he could, so as to avoid the Masher’s attention, Decker reached carefully for his Pug. A flip of his fingers undid the catch on the holster flap.
He glanced up at his enemy. The creature was rocking back and forth, cradling its right arm, whimpering. The thing’s cries reminded the Marine of the sounds a wounded dog might make just before expiring. Decker hardened himself to the piteous mewling and slipped the big autopistol from its holster. Slowly, cautiously, he turned, bringing his weapon up in both hands. The laser sight affixed to the pistol’s frame superimposed a small red dot over the Masher’s torso. The thing was still sitting on its haunches sniffling.
Decker thumbed off the Pug’s safety, took a deep breath, and began to squeeze the trigger.
The soft, flat click of the safety catch being removed might as well have been an alarm Klaxon. In an eyeblink, the Masher surged to its feet and leapt into the foxhole with the startled Marine. It swung its beweaponed forearm at Decker’s head. The Marine ducked, trying to parry the creature’s follow-up attack. A fist the size of a child’s head smashed into Decker’s right elbow. Pain shot up his arm as the joint was dislocated. His Pug went spinning off into the darkness. The Masher swung again, battering Decker’s helmeted head with the stolen rifle’s fore end.
Fear gripped the young Marine again; this time, it was tinged with the red stain of panic.
Decker lashed out with his right foot. The blow landed exactly where he intended and produced the results he had hoped for. The Masher let out a sharp yelp of pain and doubled over, clutching itself.
Wasting no time, Decker scrambled out of the foxhole. Even through the curtain of pain that had accompanied the injury to his elbow, he had seen the direction his Pug had flown when it was knocked from his grasp. In desperation he loped off into the darkness after the big pistol.
A howl of rage split the darkness, followed by the sound of a burst of automatic fire from a Pitbull rifle. Small black geysers of dirt erupted from the ground over a meter to his left. The Masher might have learned how to fire the Pitbull, but its accuracy left a lot to be desired. A second burst laced the ground almost beneath Decker’s heels, telling the Marine that the creature was learning quickly. He hoped that the sound of gunfire had attracted the attention of his comrades. Soon, surely, there would be a half dozen Marines coming to his rescue.
Something gleamed faintly in the darkness ahead of him. Decker raced forward, praying that the softly shining object was his Pug. Even if his buddies were coming, he didn’t want to be caught alone and unarmed in the darkness. Another burst of fire lanced through the night, missing him by centimeters.
He dived for the shining metal. His injured right arm hit the turf, sending a fresh wave of agony through his body, clouding his vision, but his healthy left hand closed around the cold, comforting bulk of his Pug. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Decker rolled onto his back, pointing the M-43 back the way he had come.
Movement to his left signaled a new threat.
Crabbing around on his back, Decker lined the pistol’s sights up on the breast of an alien that approached him out of the darkness, its ungainly spike gun at the ready. The young Marine squeezed the trigger twice in rapid succession, and the Masher tumbled to the ground.
Training and instinct began to override the fear in Decker’s guts. No sooner did the alien fall under the slamming effect of the pistol’s heavy slugs than the Marine was on his feet. Running a few steps, he took cover behind an outcropping. Exertion, injury, and terror all combined to set his heart pounding in his chest.
Two more Mashers appeared out of the night. Decker killed one with a single round to the creature’s massive chest. He was swinging the Pug toward the second when a fifteen-centimeter spike punched into his belly.
Decker collapsed.
There wasn’t any pain, not yet. He groped around weakly, searching for the pistol that had fallen from his shocked and nerveless fingers. It was no good. He couldn’t see the Pug, and he couldn’t make his legs work enough to carry him to safety.
Looking up, he saw the Masher ramming another sharpened steel projectile into the muzzle of its weapon. Decker stared at the blunt, asymmetrical point of the crude killing tool. The Masher seemed to be in no hurry. It looked at him, a cruel gleam in its small piggish eyes. The thing’s face split in a hideous grin full of broken and crooked teeth.
Decker tried to curse the Masher, but all that came out was a harsh rattle.
With an odd, almost apologetic cock of its head, the alien leveled the big pistol-like spike gun at the crippled Marine.
Father, Decker prayed, into Your hands I commit my spirit.
His ears did not have time to register the spike gun’s pneumatic report before the long steel projectile tore his life away.
28
* * *
G unnery Sergeant Frost crouched in the shelter of Cabot’s ruined starboard tailplane, her Jackal combat shotgun held at the ready. Behind her Corporal Henry and five Marines waited for her signal. It had taken only thirty seconds for the troopers to converge upon the spot that had so recently echoed with gunfire. The explosion-shredded combination stabilizer and elevator gave little in the way of hard protection, but afforded the Marines excellent cover under its black shadow.
“Post Five, Arrow?” she called out, waiting for the countersign, “Longbow”, but it never came.
“Post Five, Arrow!” Frost said again urgently.
; Again silence.
“Post Five, Arrow! Respond!” Frost shook her head. “That’s it. Something’s wrong. Tim, you and Martinez swing out to the left. Scarpetti, you’re with me. Koll, you’re backup. Just watch where you fire that bloody thing. I don’t want you dropping any grenades in our laps, got it?”
“Yes, Gunny,” Kevin Koll said with a grin, hefting the six-kilo bulk of his Bulldog support rifle.
Frost gave the cheerful private a cold look and peered around the edge of the stabilator. The darkness that was so often a Special Forces trooper’s best friend had turned against the Marines, becoming a somber, threatening curtain. Frost hesitated a moment, straining to pick out the details of the area surrounding the sentry post.
In her starlight viewer, she could make out a broad band of disturbed soil around the foxhole’s rim. By itself, that meant nothing. Marines had been entering and leaving that hole all night, as their turns at guard duty came and went. What was significant was the breach in the low parapet of earth and stone that had been raised around the foxhole’s rim. The scattered rocks looked as though someone or something had clambered across them in a tearing hurry. The appearance of the crude fighting position, combined with the gunshots and a sentry who did not respond to calls or passwords, spelled trouble.
“All right, Tim . . . go!” Frost rapped out.
Corporal Henry and Private Martinez dashed from the shadow of Cabot’s destroyed tail section, running a dozen steps before suddenly hooking to the right. At the moment they turned, Frost slapped Private Mark Scarpetti on the shoulder, sending the stocky Canadian loping forward, with his gunnery sergeant right on his heels. Frost sensed rather than saw Koll step up into a covering position. Her words of caution to the Bulldog gunner had not been entirely a jest. The big rifle was capable of spitting out six variably fused high-explosive dual-purpose rounds in rapid, semi-automatic fire. With an airburst radius of six meters each, the grenades could devastate a significant section of real estate, and Gunny Frost had no desire to be caught on that deadly ground.
Frost and Scarpetti made straight for the foxhole, covering the ten meters in a half dozen long strides. A few meters short of their goal, both Marines went to ground and scrambled into what cover they could find.
A final time Gunny Frost called out the password.
“Post Five, Arrow!”
When the stubborn silence held, she looked toward Corporal Henry where he and Martinez had taken up a flanking position from which they could cover their partners and the guard post. The tall corporal shook his head.
Frost lifted her left hand, three fingers extended. Beside her, Mark Scarpetti nodded. She folded in her ring finger, then the middle. At last she jabbed her index finger toward the hole. Frost and Scarpetti surged to their feet and lunged toward the sentry post, their weapons held at low ready. Neither was surprised to see that the position was empty.
The Marines immediately knelt to reduce the size of the target they would present to a potential enemy. As she did so, Gunny Frost caught sight of several gleaming metallic cylinders scattered around the rim and the floor of the foxhole. She plucked one from the soft, dusty ground, realizing that the objects were spent 5.56 mm shell casings.
A more careful inspection of the area revealed a now-familiar dark stain spreading across the lip of the foxhole. Gunny Frost did not move from her spot, having taken Lance Corporal Dade’s lecture on spoiled signs to heart, but rather scanned the stretch of ground adjoining the foxhole. One large depression in the rim of the hole just behind the dark splotch gave a clear impression of a large, flat, bare foot, such as the rescue party had come to associate with the Mashers. Other scuff marks and the partially destroyed parapet on the side of the hole away from the wrecked survey ship suggested that someone, most likely Private Decker, had left the fighting position in a big hurry.
Though not the expert Rick Dade and Krista Black were, Gunny Frost had little trouble interpreting the signs.
“Lion Six, this is Three,” she said, contacting Captain Taggart. “Sir, it looks like we’ve got a missing man. Private Decker is not at his post, and from the looks of this place, I’d say the Mashers got him.”
The first three words of Taggart’s reply were the vilest of oaths.
“All right, Gunny,” he said, mastering himself. “Hold position there for a bit. I’m sending Dade and Black over. Maybe they can make some sense of things. Assign two of your men to that position. Those bloody damn monsters are getting more aggressive. I’m going to double the guard for the rest of the night.”
“Yessir,” Frost said laconically.
A few moments later the scouts approached their gunnery sergeant. Frost knew that the strain of this mission had fallen heavily on the recon team. It was beginning to show. Both looked weary.
Frost pointed out the signs and then stepped away, giving the skilled trackers room to work. Rick Dade squatted at the edge of the hole, his rifle braced across his knees, studying the churned-up ground. His partner stood over him, keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings. Before long he straightened and stepped up to Gunny Frost.
“Looks like you’re right, Gunny. The Mashers got him.”
“Are you sure, Rick?”
“Sure as I can be, Gunny,” Dade said with a shrug. “It’s kinda hard to tell. It looks like he might have seen something and either engaged it or started to crawl out of his hole to investigate it. Either way, the signs suggest that a Masher snuck up on him. He turned around and blasted the thing, but didn’t hurt it very bad. There’s what looks like blood on the ground beside the hole, on one wall, and on the parapet where the tracks go across it. I think the thing jumped into the pit with him and took after him with a Thumper. I’d guess that Decker jumped out of the hole, trying to get some distance to use his weapon. After that, I can’t say, unless you want us to go out a little way and look for him.”
Frost sighed, shaking her head. She knew she would have to order the scouts to search for the missing man. Yet she feared for their safety.
“Okay, Dade. I hate to ask you this, but do you think you can track him in the dark?”
“He’s wearing issue boots, Gunny,” Dade replied, a faint thread of humor weaving itself into his tired voice. “As long as he doesn’t take his shoes off, we should be able to track him.”
“All right, but I’m coming with you for backup,” Frost said. “Hang on a second while I call this in.”
* * *
Dade had been correct. It had been painfully easy to track Decker’s movements after he left the foxhole. The signs were so clear that Frost, with her limited training in reconnaissance and tracking, could have followed the trail.
As the scouts moved from footprint to footprint, Dade confirmed his guess that Decker had intentionally abandoned his post, probably out of a sense of panic. The tracks were heavily indented toward the toe, with considerably lighter heel marks, indicating that the man had been running. Only a few meters out, Krista Black spotted a large puddle of drying purple-black blood. Not far away, in the middle of many large, deep scuff marks, was another viscid stain. This one, in the glare from Gunny Frost’s hooded flashlight, was the tacky brownish red of partially dried human blood. A nine-millimeter pistol casing lay in the center of the sticky puddle.
“I’m sorry, Gunny,” the recon team leader said sadly. “I’d have to say Saul’s dead. That’s an awful lot of blood there, and there are no human footprints leading away from here, at least none we can find in the dark. We’ve got a lot of Masher blood, too, but no dead Mashers. My read here is that the monsters got him and carried him away, probably to loot his corpse in private somewhere.” Dade’s last words were an angry snarl. “You want us to try to track them?”
“No, Rick.” Frost sighed. “I hate to admit it, but there’s nothing we can do about this tonight. You said yourself it’s too hard to track the Mashers by starlight. Even if we could follow them, what could the three of us do? No,” she repeated. “We’re gonna have t
o wait until sunup to look for him.”
* * *
Four hours later, with the shadows of night barely faded from the deep rift valley, Dade, Black, and the Marines of First Squad stood on the rim of the ravine, just east of the spot where Cabot had come to rest. Naked, save for bloodstained brown-and-green-splotched uniform trousers, Saul Decker’s body had been tossed into the same shallow defile where the rescue party had found the survey ship’s crew. Like them, Decker had been stripped of every bit of metal he had been carrying. Unlike Cabot’s crew, the dead Marine had a hole through his belly, just below the waistband of his fatigues, and a second, similar hole in the center of his chest.
“Dammit!” Frost spat. “God dammit!”
“All right, get him out of there,” she said, visibly mastering her anger. “Bag him up, and be quick about it. We still have a job to do.”
29
* * *
R ick Dade dropped to his left knee as he examined the shallow, soft-sided impression of a large, flat, bare foot. The tracks left by the Mashers as they retreated from their ambush on Gunny Frost’s party were easy to follow. The creatures seemed to be ignorant of the basic techniques of moving unseen; or, they just didn’t care if the Marines followed them.
The deep shadows of night faded from the rift valley as the Marines zipped Saul Decker’s corpse into a thick rubberized body bag and placed it next to those holding the bodies of the men who had died the night before. Dade viewed the dim light of morning as a mixed blessing. It provided him with enough visibility to discern, interpret, and follow the Mashers’ tracks where they led away from the ruined sensor platforms that had been the focal point of the ambush on Gunny Frost’s search party. On the downside, it would be full daylight before he and Krista Black would be able to locate the enemy’s base. Even that had its good and bad points. The Marines’ advantage of night-vision gear had already evaporated in the growing light of day. But, as Captain Taggart pointed out, daylight would make it easier to distinguish between the enemy and potential hostages.
Operation Sierra-75 Page 21