Arachnosaur

by Richard Jeffries

  Key looked back at him, his smile now dusted with slight resentment. “No, sir, I don’t think it’s that. Ask anyone I’ve served with, or under. They trusted me with their lives, sir, and I did my utmost to deserve that trust. No, the people who could promote me didn’t like the fact that they couldn’t predict what I’d do. And that, in a marine grunt, is not conducive to promotion.”

  Both men looked up when they heard Strenkofski’s quiet realization. “Too smart for a private, too pensive for a sergeant.”

  Key smiled, nodded, and pointed approvingly at her. “Bingo. You may give Destiny Arnold a run for her money after all, ma’am.” Key waited until the blonde reacted to his comment with a hastily-concealed expression of being flattered before turning back to face Logan—who was not even trying to conceal his expression of growing anger for losing control of the debriefing. He resumed flipping through the report.

  “I will attribute this borderline insubordination to post-trauma stress,” Logan said.

  “It isn’t, sir,” Key informed him.

  Logan’s impatience was growing. “Oh? What is it, then?”

  “Impatience,” Key assured him. “We both know why we’re all here.”

  The Captain’s look of amazement turned to one of begrudging admiration. He slapped the file closed, leaned back, and crossed his legs. “All right, I’ll bite,” he announced, clearly deciding that if he couldn’t beat him, he’d join him. “Why are we all here?”

  Key put his hands up. “You told me so, yourself, sir. ‘A supervising commander has full discretion to dictate the service of any active marine.’ If you weren’t my new supervising commander, you wouldn’t have full discretion, now would you, sir?”

  Logan just stared at Key, as if he were examining a particularly talented circus monkey. “Go on,” he urged.

  “So you’re here to offer me a new assignment, and I’m here to tell you I’ll take it, but with one caveat.”

  Logan actually laughed. He rose and started walking in a bemused circle.

  “You’ll…take it,” he said. “With a caveat.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s your caveat, Corporal?” He stressed the final rank in a last-ditch attempt to return to normal marine relations.

  “Sergeant Daniels has to be included,” Key said.

  “Why is that?”

  “He was there, too, sir. He will be invaluable in this new mission.”

  Logan stopped and put his hands flat on the altar table. He leaned down to pinion Key with his most challenging stare. “So you already know the mission too, Corporal?”

  Key leaned back. “Any Brigadier General could’ve discounted my report from the safety and comfort of a tropical paradise. They didn’t have to send you, and your big guns—” Key had the politically correct grace not to even glance at the blonde behind him “—to the Gate of scorching Tears to read me my life story. But they did. So there’s something in my report they want explained, and I’m guessing it’s not how I thicken my very fine hair.”

  By that time, Logan had returned to his seat and reopened the file. “Yes, Corporal, your observations in the field were somewhat contradictory.”

  “There,” Key interrupted, pointing at the file. “That’s why you want Sergeant Daniels involved.”

  Logan looked up in confusion, so Key continued.

  “Sergeant Daniels would’ve said ‘contradictory how?’ I don’t have to. Your case history tells you my IQ, so let’s get to the heart of it. You want me to find out how Lieutenant Colonel Goodman died, and I do too.”

  Logan sat and stared at his new soldier, seemingly trying to decide how to proceed. Finally he sighed, closed the file, stood, and faced the altar. “We can’t spare any regular non-comms or officers,” he said flatly. “The battalions are stretched too thin. We can’t deploy any to investigate this. Not on the word of one Corporal, a corporal no one can—well, no one knows what he’ll do.”

  “But the corporal no one can predict might be the right one for this job,” Strenkofski added.

  Logan sighed again, and faced him. “You were going to be de-commed,” Logan admitted. “So, as far as those still in the shit-storm are concerned, you’re blameless and at liberty to investigate a possible new weapon. A weapon, if it is a weapon, that we must control at all costs.”

  “Full discretion, sir?”

  Logan looked at Key with renewed exasperation. “You are one piece of work! No, not full discretion, Corporal. You don’t spit without clearing it with me, first, is that clear?”

  “As a South Pacific sea,” Key said without pause or shame. “And my caveat?”

  Logan nodded. “You’ve got your man.” The Captain paused. Then, as if trying one final attempt to come out ahead, Logan asked sarcastically, “Anything else you want, Corporal?”

  No one was more surprised when Key rose from the wheelchair than Key himself. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I need to know what happened to my unit. We went out there a team—a team I’ve spent two years with. Now they’re gone and no one can tell me what happened to them. Are they dead, captured, or what? I need to go out there, find them, or find out what happened, then come back and tell you. I don’t know what else I’ll need to do that—personnel, tools, intel—but whatever it is, you’ll provide it. Yes?”

  Logan rose to meet his eyes. For the first time the Captain showed Key something approaching respect.

  “Yes, Corporal,” Logan said quietly. “If it’s within my power, you’ll have it.”

  Chapter 5

  If there was a thread that wove its way through Josiah Key’s military experience, it was assholes in bars.

  No matter what continent, country, city, or town he was in, there they were: darkly brooding or overly friendly, full of bravado or deep in self-pity. He could set his watch by them. If he went into any establishment that served booze, there one would be, a woozy jerk-off looking for a fight.

  Key understood, even appreciated, it. When you get up every day with a good chance of getting killed before you went to bed, the need to use your downtime wisely, constructively—get lost in alcohol—becomes a bit more pressing. And, if you went into the military seeking power, only to find out just how powerless you were, even with a big old gun in your hand, those folks you ran into…they tended to get a bit testy.

  “Hey,” said the latest one. “You don’t belong here. This is a military bar.” By the slur of his voice, Key estimated he was on his third boilermaker.

  They sat in a dark, low-ceilinged, yellow-lit, forty-by-sixty, glorified modular home unit lined with a bar, shelves, and stools that could’ve been anywhere in the world, but was, in fact, at the edge of the RAFO Thumrait air base in Dhofar Governorate, Oman—a large hop, skip, and jump directly east of Lemonneir and Shabhut.

  “We are military,” Key told him, as he placed a hand on Daniels’ chest to keep him from using the drunk’s head like a fistful of beer nuts.

  “No, you’re not,” Key heard the drunk slur as he started to turn away. “You don’t look it. Where’s your uniforms?”

  Key took a second to consider their new lightweight, breathable, smooth, odor-eliminating, antibacterial, cool-to-the-touch, slightly shiny black pants, collarless jackets, and dark gray T-shirts.

  “These are our uniforms,” he replied. Then he held open the left side of the jacket to reveal the Sig Sauer 9mm P229 automatic in its shoulder holster. “And these are our side arms. And these are our spanking new badges.” He held up his billfold and let it flap down to reveal a gold, blue, and red shield that announced USMC Criminal Investigation Division, Intelligence Activity.

  “Nice, huh?” Daniels asked the drunk. The drunk suddenly shrunk, then slunk closer to the bar.

  Turns out Logan had been as good as his word. Key and Daniels were reassigned and outfitted faster than Weicholz could protest. Key found exactly
what kind of pull the Captain had when they waived the CIDSAC Special Agent Course, as well as the normally required six months of on-the-job training.

  “This is a special assignment,” Logan had insisted, which apparently, was already agreed upon by the powers-that-were even before he arrived at Lemonnier.

  “Oh,” said the drunk. “Oh, sorry.” He started to turn away, but hastily snapped his head back with a final word. “Sir.”

  “Yeah, you better be sorry, bud.” Daniels growled. “We’re the military who can lock up drunken, pissant other military, right?

  “Yeah, yeah, sorry, said I was sorry already,” the man muttered before returning to his fourth boilermaker. Key gave the seen-it-all bartender the universal sign of on me, which only added to Daniels’s disapproval and increasingly foul mood.

  But rather than say what he actually felt, the sergeant groused instead. “Why didn’t that second louie assign you herself? Why did she hand you off to the chrome dome?”

  “Ah, you know the corps.” Key shrugged. “Can’t wipe their asses unless the toilet paper’s in triplicate. Beside, he had to give Babs something to do or else he wouldn’t be able to justify keeping her around.”

  Daniels stared sourly into his beer. “I want to screw that second louie.”

  “I know, Morty, I know,” Key replied as if Daniels had commented on some bad weather. “But beyond that, you’re just pissed we’re not in Shabhut yet.” Key had wanted to hit Daniels’s release valve, and that was all it took.

  “Yeah,” Daniels exclaimed. “What are we doing in this wasteland? I say screw regs, let’s just go. Just two guys, no backup, no ordnance. We’d be in and out before they even knew we were there.”

  “That’s not what intel says,” Key reminded him with an edge of misery. “Intel says Usa Awar got Shabhut locked down tighter than a bull’s ass in fly season.”

  “Fuck intel.” Daniels growled. “They couldn’t keep us out.”

  Key shook his head sadly. “They couldn’t keep you out, maybe. I’m not such a great fan of standing on the railroad tracks with my arm out.”

  “What?”

  “It would be an empty heroic gesture, Morty. I told you about it before.”

  “Remind me.”

  “Bus of school kids caught on a railroad track. Hero stands there with his arm out as the freight train bears down on him. Everybody will talk about how brave he was, but he’s still dead, so are the school kids, and probably most of the folk on the train too. Better to figure out an effective way to save everybody than to make a big show of it.”

  Daniels stared at Key like he had grown another nose. “Eh, who has time to listen to your shit?” he finally muttered.

  He was about to turn his attention back to his beer when Key snapped, “That him?”

  “What him?” Daniels snapped back. “Who him?”

  “Your friend.”

  Daniels turned around, looked where Key was looking, and his sour melon almost immediately changed into a sweet persimmon. “Yeah,” he said with relief. “Yeah, that’s Speedy.”

  Key raised his hand and opened his mouth to signal him, but Daniels quickly yanked his arm down and hissed a hush. “Naw, naw, you don’t spook Speedy,” he quietly advised. “Chill out, Joe, just follow my lead.”

  His lead was right to the bar, where he secured a Jim Beam Black, a pickle, a stalk of celery, a shrimp stick, a beef stick, a boiled egg, four Spanish olives, and a tumbler glass of beer. Then he marched over to where the short, wide-shouldered, young man had sat with his back to the bar, dropped the plate and glasses in front of his face, and announced, “Your Snit, sir?”

  Speedy’s head snapped up, but when he saw who had served him, he broke into a wide grin. By the time the two had finished bumping fists, chests, and even heads, Key was standing beside them.

  “Speedy?” Daniels said, “this is my bud Joe Key. Joe, this is the man who can fly anything, fix anything, and knows everything.” Daniels looked at him like a prize bull. “The one they know from America to Asia as the Hispanic Mechanic.”

  Key’s expression was one of sheer disbelief. “Speedy? Really?”

  The man laughed. “Yeah, Corporal, no wux as our Aussie brethren say.” Key snorted, acknowledging the clear sign of a connection with Morty Daniels. “My name is actually Manuel Gonzales,” the man continued, “so guess what everybody called me from the school yard ’til now?”

  “And guess what?” Daniels laughed. “He made them all eat it, until he started liking it himself.”

  “Hunh.” Key took a chair after Gonzales and Daniels had settled down at the table. “I didn’t think anybody still remembered the Speedy Gonzales cartoon.”

  “I don’t know about anybody else,” Gonzales said between bites of celery, “but I loved it. Yeah, it might be racist, but it was the only Mexican hero on TV we had. And was he fast! Madre de dios!”

  “Nothing compared to you, Speedy,” Daniels said, turning to Key. “He could fix my chopper before I could even completely brake it.”

  Gonzales took a swig of beer. “But that can’t be why you’re in this armpit of the Middle East,” he said, his voice lowering. “Your message said something about Awar?”

  Key nodded. “No one in Bahrain and Djibouti could give us credible, solid, status of where he is now and what he’s doing. Morty swore you could.”

  Gonzales swallowed, then nodded. “This is deep, dark stuff, guys. Sure you want it?”

  Daniels nodded with proud defiance. Key was more circumspect. “We were the only ones who got out of the C5 mission to Shabhut.”

  Gonzales stopped eating and drinking, then sat back. “Mierda,” he said. “Man, I’m sorry, Corporal. That’s rough.”

  “We’re trying to find out what happened, and what is happening now.”

  Gonzales stood on no ceremony. He leaned over the plate as Daniels and Key joined him. “Word is Awar has claimed it as his. His town. No one in or out without him allowing it.”

  “He can’t cover the whole thing,” Daniels maintained, still eager for a clandestine mission.

  “The hell he can’t,” Gonzales stressed. “Awar is mandamas in Yemen now.”

  “Top dog,” Key translated for the sergeant.

  “Got that from the inflection,” Daniels noted.

  “He says ‘his town,’ that means every insurgent, extremist, fanatic, radical, terrorist, even warlord will help out stopping any infidel who tries to set foot in the place. Stopping? Shit. Eradicating. Turning that guy’s dust into dust.”

  Daniels looked obstinate. “What is so important in that shitty little anthill that the brass wanted it wiped, and Awar wants it closed?”

  Key leaned back, his face thoughtful. “A weapon that makes people go pop.” Then he straightened and gripped the table edge. “Looks like you’re right, Morty. We got to get in there.”

  Daniels acted as if Key had announced every day would be Christmas. “So now you want to stand on the railroad tracks with me, now, huh? Good man, Joe!”

  “That’s crazy!” Gonzales gaped. “What for? You’ll get killed and be no closer to whatever this weapon is.”

  Key stood up, already hoping for the best and preparing for the rest. “I’m not going in for whatever this so-called weapon is, but I’ve got to see at least one of the bodies it left behind.”

  He took a step toward the door, but then froze as Gonzales gripped his arm like a bear trap. He looked down at the man, who was staring up at him like a savior.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?” Gonzales said.

  “What?” Key demanded. “What do you mean?”

  Gonzales was already heading for the door, pulling on his sand storm gear. “You said you were the only ones who got out of Shabhut, but you’re wrong,” he announced. “In truth, you may be the only ones who got out of Shabhut alive.”
<
br />   Key caught up to him at the door, Daniels right behind. “What do you mean, Speedy?”

  “I heard that something got out of there dead,” he announced. “And I know where it is.”

  Chapter 6

  One step out of the bar and the wind slapped them in the face and roared as if Daniels had called her a whore.

  Key stepped back instinctively, but saw Gonzales hunker into the tempest and continue toward his pretty remarkable vehicle. It was obviously a personally modified half-track that could run on wheels, treads, or both. There was also something Key had never seen: stiff plastic and rubber flaps hanging outside each door, which allowed Gonzalez to worm inside and grab some shrouded turbans without the cab being filled with blown sand.

  He pressed a headcover into each man’s arms, and made circular hand movements to indicate how they should be worn, before the sirocco-like conditions filled the orifices of Key and Daniels with silt. Then the newly minted men from the Criminal Investigative Division followed him to the vehicle and crawled into the cab—like astronauts navigating international space station airlocks. Gonzales all but dragged Daniels into the rest area behind the seats, then shoved Key into the passenger bucket, before slamming and locking the driver’s portal with a sharp twist of his wrist.

  “That was a blast,” Daniels cracked.

  “Comes in fast—you got to be quick around monsoon season, or they’ll still be picking grit out of your ass at your funeral,” he said by way of apology. Then he spread his hands as if presenting a birthday cake. “Welcome to the Desert Demon.”

  Key knew about deserts. He was practically raised in one. He was raised in the mountains of Riverside County, California. His home was located in the town of his birth, Murrieta, on a ridge overlooking the Temecula Valley; the Mount Palomar observatory glistened atop a peak on the opposite side. Wildfires caused by cigarettes or lightning frequently ripped through the adjoining Santa Rosa Plateau or hills covered with brush: there was one burning the day Josiah was brought home from the hospital. It was not wrong to say the boy was born in fire.