Predator

by Paul Monette

  Seven men. War was their profession, death an occupational hazard. But this time, they weren’t fighting a war. They were fighting something far more deadly . . .

  One by one, it stalked them. And one by one, they died, each death more horrifying than the last.

  Only one man is left. Major Alan Schaefer. Now, in the heart of the jungle, he must face the most terrifying creature ever to land on Earth. One on one . . .

  Also by Paul Monette

  POEMS

  THE CARPENTER AT THE ASYLUM

  NO WITNESSES

  NOVELS

  TAKING CARE OF MRS. CARROLL

  THE GOLD DIGGERS

  NOSFERATU

  (based on a screenplay by Werner Herzog)

  THE LONG SHOT

  LIGHTFALL

  SCARFACE

  (based on a screenplay by Oliver Stone)

  PREDATOR

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with

  Twentieth Century Fox

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / June 1987

  Copyright © 1987

  Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

  All rights reserved.

  TM designates a trademark of

  Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group. 200 Madison Avenue. New York, New York 10016.

  ISBN: 0-515-09002-6

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group. 200 Madison Avenue. New York, New York 10016.

  The words “A JOVE BOOK” and the “J” with sunburst are trademarks belonging to Jove Publications, Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  To Roger Horwitz

  Achilles was not such a warrior

  nor so mourned by his comrade-in-arms

  P R O L O G U E

  The predator woke slowly from the icy depths of his dream-state. As his consciousness returned in languid waves of recognition, the insular silence of his life-chamber softly echoed with the sigh of his breathing and the swift quadruple rolling of his heart, intense as a hummingbird.

  A finger touched a smooth plate at the side of the console. Instantly the light in the cocoon chamber shifted from amber to blue as the stasis field—a modular pattern of strobing light-beams that hovered above his warrior’s body, controlling his vital functions—dissolved, returning control of the ship once more to his command.

  The light flow across the control panel fluttered, settling into familiar navigational patterns, analyzing and adjusting the craft’s velocity to the constraints of the unexplored gravity field. Constantly decelerating, the ship began to ease into a steady, high-altitude orbit, where analysis of vital data on the watery planet far below would begin.

  As the craft responded to the predator’s adjustment of speed, altitude and parabola, his finger again touched the burnished plate on the console. A matrix of microscopic wire rose soundlessly, energized and began to glow, resolving into an electronic display screen. Information as to the planet’s location in the solar system was entered, A high-speed display of data momentarily filled the screen, followed by a spectrum review of the planet’s inhabitants, the predator’s only guide to the alien species of the planet Earth.

  Big cats, rhinos, bears, elephants—all passed in rapid review, accompanied by a biological analysis of each animal. Then primates appeared, and the images began to slow, holding on the image of a hairless, bipedal creature The image expanded to full frame, becoming three-dimensional, as a more complex array of data flashed around the periphery of the screen.

  A detailed, biomechanical analysis followed, indicating the range of the creature’s varied and remarkable evolutionary adaptations to the planet. The predator touched the plate again, and the analysis shifted to an anatomical breakdown, peeling away, in layers, the muscular, organic, and skeletal composition. The brain followed, showing the left and right hemispheres and the quadrants relating to memory, speech, and motor activity.

  A final touch to the plate and the encyclopedic screen filled with further configurations of the biped depicted in a variety of situations, then followed by an image totally unlike the others.

  The predator leaned closer to the screen, studying the final image of this creature, dressed in camouflage and heavily armed with weapons strange in appearance but familiar in function and deadliness. Here was a creature modified and trained for a single function—to kill—exactly the creature the predator sought, the challenge worthy of his own vast skill, a kindred spirit at last, a reason to exist.

  O N E

  The shivering red-orange burn of the humid sun throbbed like a fever along the Pacific rim of the Conta Mana coast. The beach and shallow harbor at Balancan, deadly still in the late afternoon heat, nonetheless looked pristine as a travel poster with its limpid emerald water and white powder sand. The thatch huts of the fishing village were simple as an urbanite’s dream of Eden, though inside every one was like an oven, stinking of rotten grass, the air thick with the whine of green-headed flies. You never lost the heat in Conta Mana in September, even at night, especially at night. It hadn’t rained on the coast since June, and no one in Balancan was holding his breath. The heat was a given like being poor, or being shot by guerrillas.

  Inland from the village, darkness was already thick in the trees, and the coastal jungle hissed and seethed like a pot of boiling water. A hungry cougar began to flex in his lair in anticipation of the chase, the rip of a boar’s hide, the thick-clotted heart sweet as wild honey. Everything small and succulent—the mice, the ferrets, the blue-hair monkeys—plunged into their burrows and nests, giving over the night to a thousand snakes, a thousand kinds of venom. Nothing tender would still run free by morning.

  Tangles of exotic flowers groped for the last of the light. Rotten orchids fell into jelly, trampled by sunflowers two feet across. Whatever bloomed exploded, aching with pollen. Jasmine ran riot like weeds, looped with snags of vines and reverberating with the screams of macaws and parrots, who flew in a green blaze of magic, erasing time. In every rush of their wings were conjured images of blood-soaked Mayan priests and nobles a thousand years gone, praying at their zigzag temples beyond Lake Panajachel.

  And beyond the lake, at the humped spine of Conta Mana, the ominous black bulk of a dead volcano’s peak pierced the last clouds of a thunderstorm riding east toward the highland jungles and out to the pale Caribbean.

  Then suddenly, like a siren in a dream, the timeless balance of Balancan was invaded by the sputtering blades of a helicopter, a huge U.S. Army assault chopper slapping the heavy air as it approached the village. It hovered above the huts along the shore, rippling the matted roofs, seeming to watch like an alien ship, absurdly incongruous in the primitive setting, till just as abruptly a ring of landing lights flicked on in the close-cropped field beyond the huts. Three puffs of pale blue smoke rose from a tin chimney in the largest hut. The UH-1H chopper sank toward the field.

  As it fanned the grass its whacking blade kicked up violent swirls of heavy dust, sending a pair of rutting monkeys scurrying and screeching into the brush. Yet no native children ran and hid behind the banana trees; no women looked up from their looms; no peasant farmer bent for a ladle of water from a clay jug.

  But the helicopter’s landing was watched most closely, by a uniformed man with a twitch in his jaws who stood silently behind a window of the main hut. General Homer Phillips was top man of the Balancan command, a place that had stopped being a fishing village ten years ago. At fifty-five, Phillips was a hardened, tough lifer, canny and methodical like the jungle hunters prowling in the wild coastal forest around him. His nameplate and insignia were routine Ar
my, and the braid on his chest showed his steady rise from infantry corporal, cutting his teeth in the ditches of Da Nang. Only a thin pale silver bar in his collar identified his special unit: Code 4 BRAVO. They were the elite of the elite commandos—post-Vietnam, post-Beirut. Homer Phillips and his men fought the newest kind of war in the oldest kind of way.

  Even before the chopper’s skids touched ground, the sliding door of the aircraft was hurled open. The first man to appear was dressed in fatigues and armed with full combat gear, belt studded with ammunition, a sheathed machete swinging at his right side. As he leaped from the chopper he seemed as massive as a linebacker, yet as quick on his feet as a hurdler. His blond hair was clipped low, and his eyes were steel gray and level as a falcon’s. His ruggedly handsome face was totally alert, totally ready. As he hit the ground running he barked an order over his shoulder, the words all swallowed by the roar of the engine.

  The general lowered the bamboo shade on the window and turned back to the room. “He’s here,” he said curtly to a soldier who was working at a desk in the dim light a few feet away, as if the soldier hadn’t heard the chopper land. Mostly the general sounded relieved.

  Meanwhile, several men ran out from various huts in the camp even before the rotors on the UH-1H had stopped slicing the air. Heads were lowered, and hands covered mouths as protection from the choking dust still swirling in the air. There was apparently no time to waste. The detachment of Conta Mana regulars who were cooperating with the Americans quickly began to transfer equipment from the vibrating UH-1H, landing it onto a hoist and moving it across to a pair of smaller assault helicopters silently standing by at the clearing’s edge.

  The man in fatigues strode through this flurry of activity and urgency, heading for the main hut. He stopped on the porch, pulled a cigar from his shirt pocket, and struck a match on his thumbnail. Major Dutch Schaefer had been through every jungle outpost the Army could think up, and the wildness of the territory never seemed to ruffle his demeanor. He might look like a football hero from the Midwest, but he had a street kid’s surly underlip, and something in him was wilder than any jungle. If he was weary from constant duty, he didn’t show it. He seemed on guard like a watchdog waiting to spring into action, his instincts so highly tuned he could hear a leaf rustle ten meters away in his sleep. But he always had time to stop and light a cigar.

  Schaefer turned to watch the men move the equipment, casting an appraising eye on the assault choppers. The hoist lurched past him, its engine growling and skipping at the insult of the crude petrol available in this backwater of the world. Night was now quickly overtaking the village, at a pace only possible in the tropics, where a curtain of darkness dropped as if every day was the end of a play. Then, as if a switch had been turned on, the cool night breeze blew in from the harbor and started to give some relief to the overheated village.

  As Schaefer walked into the hut, Phillips stepped forward into the dim light cast by a lone naked bulb hanging over a desk littered with maps. As the two men exchanged the briefest smile, enormous moths attacked the bulb like miniature warplanes mimicking an air raid.

  Then the major informally saluted the general, who was not only Schaefer’s senior in rank, but two wars older.

  “You’re looking well, Dutch,” Phillips said warmly as he returned the major’s salute, then immediately reached forward and grasped his shoulder. It was a gesture of respect.

  “I make sure they feed me good.” Schaefer replied with a wry grin as the two men descended a flight of stairs into the basement command post. They walked quickly through a tunnel lined with radio equipment, then ascended again into the palapa, a large, two-room shed with a concrete floor and thatched walls and roof. Here was where the assault choppers had been stored. Behind a partially drawn curtain another bare bulb was strung from the rafters, illuminating a bank of compact field radio gear, maps, and stacks of infrared aerial photographs, all of it as incongruous in the primitive place as the chopper had seemed minutes before.

  A sense of urgency was mutually understood from the start. It was time to get to work. Schaefer was as always energized by the thought of a raw challenge, taut as a whip and itching to be presented with an impossible assignment. He was a tough, effective combat man who preferred to lead the front lines, where he could test his physical and mental strength against the worst odds. He didn’t yet know why he had been summoned here with such immediacy, but he knew already that if Phillips was involved, it must be the heavy guns.

  “We’ve got ourselves one hell of a problem here,” Phillips said, pointing at a topographical map that was edge to edge with deep jungle, “Somethin’ right up your alley.” He leaned close to the map where it trailed through the Guatemalan highlands near the mouth of the Usamacinta, circling a set of coordinates in the pale green along the Conta Mana border. It seemed like the middle of nowhere. No roads, no villages marked, nothing.

  “Eighteen hours ago,” Phillips began, “we got word that one of our choppers was down. It was transporting three cabinet members of this charming little country—don’t ask me where, don’t ask me why. All we know is it was shot down right here,” he said, pointing to the tiny circled area on the map. “The pilot radioed from the ground that they were all alive. Their position was fixed by the transponder beacon onboard. Right here,” he said again, tapping the location repeatedly, as if he could jog loose some feature of the place, something to make it make sense.

  Schaefer studied the map carefully for a half a minute, then looked up at Phillips. “That’s over the border, General,” he said flatly.

  Phillips furled his brow. “Probable,” he said with a curl of distaste. “Very fucking probable. Apparently, they strayed off course. We’re pretty certain they’ve been scooped up by the guerrillas.”

  Schaefer puffed on his cigar. “What have you got in mind, General?”

  “We figure we got less than twenty-four hours to catch up with them,” he replied. “After that, not much hope. They’ll realize they don’t really need them alive. They’ll be heroes if they kill three politicians. So we want a rescue operation mounted tonight. Which doesn’t give you shit for time.”

  “What else is new,” Schaefer commented dryly, inhaling on the cigar again. “Rescue three scumbag politicians, make the world safe for democracy. When do we leave?”

  “You lift off in three hours,” Phillips answered, looking at his watch. “Oh, there’s one other thing.”

  “Oh. yeah? Gee, I can hardly wait.” Schaefer chuckled. “One other thing is usually the pipe bomb in my sleeping bag.”

  “Someone else will be going with you,” came the response.

  Schaefer’s body tensed imperceptibly, and his eyes narrowed slightly. He stubbed the cigar out in an ashtray. “You know we don’t work with outsiders, General,” he said tightly. “It’s just me and my home team. Think of us like the Celtics.”

  As Schaefer spoke, another man entered the room in time to hear his reply. “Who said anything about outsiders, Dutch?”

  Schaefer turned. It was Al Dillon, a career intelligence man with whom Schaefer had shared special services duty in Thailand years before. Now in his mid-thirties, Dillon had grown up in South Central L.A., the only kid of color who’d made it off his block for good. He knew the violent ways of the coke-war streets, where his combat training started as soon as he could walk.

  Dillon was dressed in new jungle fatigues with the creases still in them, and holding a sheaf of papers. Although as rugged and hardened-looking as the other soldiers, his bearing and grooming indicated he’d been away from the business of soldiering for a while. In a way he was the whitest man in the room. He had obviously traded in his last fatigues for a desk job, and that made Schaefer very, very wary. To Schaefer a bureaucrat was a lowlife, no matter how high in the chain of command.

  “Last time we danced it was Lieutenant Schaefer,” Dillon added, joking, sensing the tension and trying to ease it.

  A grin broke out across Schaefer�
�s chiseled face. “Dillon, you son of a bitch,” he grumbled good-naturedly. But even though he appeared to lighten up, he filed a red flag on Dillon. At the same time he knew he had no choice but to work with the man, and it was best to make a show of cooperation. Dillon grinned back.

  Then the two men simultaneously swung their arms from the hip as if to land a punch. Phillips tensed. But the hands slapped together sharply in a gesture of camaraderie and gamesmanship—massive forearms bulging, testing each other’s strength.

  “How you been, Dutch?” Dillon inquired, his smile drawn tight only inches form Schaefer’s face. He was pushing hard, keeping up the pressure, as if to prove his desk duty hadn’t softened him. But Schaefer had the edge from the first, and slowly, methodically, taking his sweet time, he forced Dillon’s arm down three or four inches.

  “You been sharpening too many pencils, Dillon,” said Schaefer, a teasing glint in his eyes. Neither man grunted or even breathed hard. “Had enough?”

  “No way, old buddy,” Dillon replied through gritted teeth, still cocky, as if to say he was just getting ready to hit the field.

  “You never did know when to quit.”

  The two arms quivered and strained. Dillon’s fell another inch. Then a long moment of stasis as the two looked into each other’s eyes, each seeming to remember something from the past. Neither blinked, Then they suddenly broke away as if to call it a draw, Schaefer punching Dillon on the shoulder.

  “That was some piece of work you guys pulled off in Berlin,” said Dillon smoothly, as if there had been no break since the two men greeted each other. Dillon turned slightly so as to include General Phillips. “Sudanese embassy, three weeks ago. They blew the entry points on three floors and neutralized seven terrorists in ten seconds flat. Terrorists didn’t even have time to call in their demands. Never made the fuckin’ news at all.”