by John Ringo
“Graham’s got a team coming up with lists of buyers in the area,” Randell said. “We figure it has to be cattle or pigs or something, from the description of how much this thing eats. There are several animal auctions in the area and they’ve gotten lists of all the purchases from them. So far, nothing’s standing out.”
“Who buys the animals?” Struletz asked.
“You want the short class on animal husbandry?” Randell asked with a chuckle. “My dad had a small farm. Cattle, it works like this. Farmer has a bunch of cows. The cows have babies, male and female. The females he keeps. The males he sells at auction. Other farmers, that don’t want to bother with breeding, buy the males and deball them. Those sit out on grass and feed up for a few years as steers. Feed-lots buy the steers and feed them up. Slaughterhouses buy the steers. From time to time the breeding farmer takes his bull to auction, sells it and gets a different one. Then he puts it to the cows, some of which are the daughters of the former bull. Which is why you’ve got to change bulls from time to time. So there’s some minor sales of cows when a farmer has too many or needs to raise cash, a few bulls change hands, but mostly it’s steers that get moved around. It’s all carefully tracked because of mad-cow and other stuff. So there’s plenty of records.”
“So what are you looking for?” Janea asked.
“Anomalies,” Randell said. “Farmers who are buying a lot of mature steers, mostly. Or a lot of cows. If you’re talking at least a head a day, that’s thirty head a month. Farmers don’t buy thirty head in a month. They don’t buy thirty calves a month, generally. Not in this area.”
“Be back,” Barb said, sliding off her perch and moving forward.
“Problems?” Attie asked.
“Just an idea,” Barb said.
She clambered down the passage to the next domed area, keeping a careful eye out in case any Old Ones had lingered, then paused at the next narrow section of the upper passage.
Juggling her pack out was a bit awkward, but she removed a spool of wire from it and then put it back on her back.
She used the wire first to attach one of her fragmentation grenades to the wall, then ran a section of wire across the passageway. Last, she straightened the cotter pin on the grenade, and then carefully tied the wire into the pin.
“Set a little present for our friends in case they come back,” Barb said as she settled back into her perch. “Grenade IED. Give us some warning that doesn’t involve Laz spitting and hissing.” She stroked the cat gratefully. “Thanks, Laz.”
“That’s the sort of thing I’m supposed to be thinking of,” Attie said. “Want me to set one to the rear?”
“Trail seemed to go this way,” Barb said. “The only thing to the rear is however Laz got in, and he got through presumably without running into any of them. Most of them should be to our front. Up to you, but it would just be a booby trap I’d have to get past. Not to mention Laz, who I don’t think understands tripwires.”
“Point,” Attie said. “We don’t have any movement yet.”
“Think I’m taking counsel of my fears?” Barb asked.
“No, ma’am,” Attie said. “Just pointing out that we’re in here to see if we can find the lair of this Gar thing. Which we’re not doing.”
“I’d like to see what responds to the fire,” Barb said. “Give it thirty minutes.”
She dropped her pack again and pulled out a ration bar.
“Besides, I’m hungry.”
She was on her third ration bar, and the thirty minutes were nearly up, when there was the crack and szting of a grenade going off down the passageway.
“Heads up!” she shouted, dropping her FLIR and going to IR.
She braced against the side, pointed at the narrow opening to the domed area, and waited. And waited.
“Just a scout?” Attie said.
“No,” Barb said a moment later. “Not just a scout!”
This time the things attacked from every level. They were pouring down the upper passage in a mass but more were clambering along the sides and the ground. There seemed to be hundreds.
“I’ve got ground,” Struletz said, taking a knee next to the standing master sergeant.
“Middle,” Attie said, triggering a burst into the mass coming down the passage.
“Top,” Barb said, firing into the mass. Targeting any one of the Old Ones was nearly impossible. The tentacled monstrosities were writhing into and across each other, and the small bodies were nearly impossible to make out between the FLIR and the way that they chaotically moved. Chopping them apart with. 45 was the only way to go.
“Take left,” Randell said, appearing to her side. “I’ll fire across to right.”
“Got it,” Barb said, retargeting to the left of the domed area. The Old Ones were soaking up the fire to get to the party, pouring through the opening on the far side of the dome.
She had nine magazines in ready pouches. She’d laid three of those out on the rocks, ready to hand. She ran through those in less than a minute, then scrabbled for more in her pouches.
The only thing that kept them alive was that the Old Ones were choked by the opening to the dome, the narrowness of the passage and the two shooters on the top. None of them even got across the domed area. But the entire area was covered in ichor and deliquescing Old Ones by the time she slid in her last magazine.
“We don’t have the ammo for this,” Attie said. “I’ve only got two hundred more rounds of forty-five.” With thirty rounds per magazine, that was only eight and a half mags. One more heavy firefight.
“We’ve reduced their numbers, at least,” Barb said, her face tight. “But you’re right. We don’t have any clue how many more of these things there are. We need to pull out and regroup. If we’re going to do it this way, we need more people and more ammo.”
“That means we have to go back in that damned mud,” Janea said. She’d been unhappily covering the back door alone during the fight.
“Would you rather be eaten?” Barb asked.
CHAPTER TEN
“This whole caving thing is throwing off my sense of time,” Barb said as she dragged her aching body out of the cave opening above the Boone house. It was nearly three in the morning and raining.
“Ah, clean water,” Janea said as she stood up gratefully. With the exception of the serpentine keyhole passage, the entire trip had been either crawling or on hands and knees. “I need a shower, a real meal and about two days’ sleep.”
“We’ve got all three available,” a voice above her said.
“Holy Freya!” Janea snapped, raising her weapon and triggering the light.
“Ouch,” the ghillie-covered man said, raising an arm to shield his eyes. “That smarts. Mind taking that light out of my eyes?”
“Who are you?” Barb asked, pointing her own light to the side.
“Just a passing stranger who wondered what might come out of the cave,” the man said. “We’ve basically taken over the neighborhood. You can get a shower, and a meal, down the hill. Oh, welcome back, by the way. Although I just lost some money.”
“Delta Force,” Graham said to the first question asked when the team found him. “They’ve sent in a full squadron and are covering this opening as well as a couple of others. There’s a battalion from the 82nd that’s setting up in Goin, a SEAL team on the way from the Little Creek, and the National Guard is in the process of fully clearing the area. We’ve taken residence of most of the houses in the neighborhood. There’s even another SC team here. You can head over to their house for showers and some rest. What happened? Did you find the Gar?”
“I don’t think we even got close,” Randell said. “But we were running low on ammo.”
“That bad?” Graham said.
“That bad,” Barb said, shrugging. “The cave was filled with them. I’m not sure how many we killed. A bunch. And I’m pretty sure there were more. We heard some scrabbling behind us on the way out.”
“Look, we’ll do something l
ike a full report in the morning,” Janea said. “I’m whipped. And not in a good way. Sergeant Struletz? Do me a favor and after you get cleaned up, come over to the SC house. I need to worship. Oh, wait, you’d find that a sin, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Struletz said, unhappily. “And I don’t think that ‘I figured I could just confess’ would sit well with my priest.”
“Master Sergeant?” she said. “Married, right. Okay, Randell?”
“So I’m third choice?” the FBI agent said.
“I could go find a Delta if you’d prefer,” she said.
“Nope,” Randell said, raising a hand. “Be there with bells on. I’m not planning on converting, though.”
“Sharice,” Barb said happily, as Barb and Janea wandered into the kitchen of the house. “I’d hug you, but you don’t want to get this muck on you.”
The homes in the neighborhood still held most of the furniture and possessions of the owners. They had been seized under eminent domain, but the rules were “use carefully.” After the emergency was over, the owners would be back and the government would pay for any damages. Assuming the entire region wasn’t swarmed by Old Ones.
The old witch, who these days rarely left the compound of the Foundation, was one of Barb’s favorite people. Elderly, wise and accepting, she was also one of the most powerful Wiccans in the world. If anyone besides Barb could handle a skru-gnon, it would be Sharice.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Sharice said, smiling brightly. “And there is the cat,” she added, looking at Lazarus. He’d stopped to clean himself, as he’d been doing repeatedly since getting out of the cave. “I have some premium cat food around here for you. Vivian!”
“Yes, mistress,” a plump young brunette said, coming into the kitchen. “Welcome back, questers! Merry moon and a fair day.” She bobbed a curtsey and smiled. Like Sharice, she was wearing a paisley dress, and was about covered in silver jewelry.
“Merry moon,” Barb said, nodding to her. “We met in Chattanooga but I never got your name.”
“Vivian Le Strange, Janea and the redoubtable Mrs. Everette,” Sharice said. “Vivian is one of my proteges. Dear, if you could find a can of something for this poor stray that has wandered into the house? And then get started on something for our weary questers. They are not vegan. Steak and eggs?”
“Sounds great,” Barb said. “And thank you. Showers?”
“Upstairs,” Sharice said, standing up and waving to the door. “I’ll wait for you to eat before plying you with questions.”
“This is not good news,” Sharice said, sipping her tea. “The Gar could not have produced so many Hunters if it was not well fed. And it must have been in existence for some time.”
“We’d gotten that far,” Barb said. “The FBI is trying to figure out where all the food is going.”
“What you may not have considered is that the Gar is reported as continuously growing,” Sharice pointed out. “If it has been in existence on this plane for that long, if it has been so well fed as to produce hundreds, at least, of Hunters…it must be very large. The facility to hide such a thing would be, in turn, large.”
“It could be in a cave,” Janea said, doubtfully. “But most of the ones around here are pretty small.”
“That’s a piece of data,” Barb said. “One the FBI needs. Damn, I was looking forward to sleep…”
“That is interesting information,” Graham said, yawning. “This area doesn’t have a lot of large structures. How large are we talking about?”
“A building that has at least twenty thousand square feet of open area,” Barb said, shrugging. “It could be a very large barn. An old factory. A warehouse.”
“Figure it’s going to be a barn,” Janea said. “Running a bunch of cattle or pigs into a factory is going to raise questions. If you run a bunch of cattle into a barn, nobody’s really going to notice that they’re not coming out.”
“The problem being, none of the farms around here have been buying a lot of cattle,” Graham said. “Fewer than normal. There’s been a long-term drought in the area and there’s a bit of a glut. The price is actually down.”
“Who is buying?” Barb asked.
“Mostly feed-lots and slaughterhouses,” Graham said. “And that’s often more or less one operation. Most of those are over in the Midwest. There are a couple in the area. But a slaughterhouse is a big operation. Lots of workers. It’s not a one-man thing.”
“Special Agent, I got into this whole field when I stumbled upon an entire town that had been converted to the worship of Almadu,” Barbara said.
“And we’ve been ignoring the slaughterhouses,” Graham said, slapping his forehead. “We figured this couldn’t be a whole bunch of people involved.”
“I would suggest waiting until morning to check them out,” Barb said. “Have they been evacuated?”
“I’m not sure,” Graham admitted. “And I need some sleep, too. I’ll get somebody to run up a list overnight. Get some sleep. We’ll check it out in the morning.”
“We have work to do,” Barb said as they walked to the commo trailer.
She was tired and grouchy. Exhausted as she was when she went to bed, she had slept fitfully, her sleep constantly eroded by nightmares. There was the repetitive one, the one that she and Janea had identified as a Sending, of being held in a dark place. But she also woke up, more than once, with dreams that were memories of battling the hundreds of Hunters of the Dark. And she still suffered from nightmares of the battle against Almadu. They had eventually all rolled together.
She was starting to realize that PTSD really sucked and that she was, unfortunately, susceptible to it. Which meant she was going to have to find a PTSD therapist who either was already briefed in on Special Circumstance or who could actually be convinced she wasn’t totally crazy.
And now, instead of going and finding the Gar, they had to go to a videoconference.
“This operation has gotten huge,” Graham said. “Part of the work is coordination. You have to have it. And you two are the on-site SC experts.”
“This is usually the sort of thing that Germaine handles,” Janea said. “I can be…less than politic.”
“I already had a brief meeting setting it up with the aides of all the bosses that are going to be in the conference,” Graham said, waving to a golf cart. “I just pointed out that you ladies were the equivalent of mystical shooters and that they should expect shooter attitude.”
“I think I’m a bit more polite than that,” Barb said. “But I’ll admit I’m not at my best at the moment. Who’s going to be in the conference?”
“You don’t want to know,” Graham said, swallowing.
While the team had been in the cave, the operational tempo in the area had picked up. Goin had the look of a military post, with soldiers moving everywhere and several mobile command posts set up. Graham led them to a full-sized trailer with about a dozen antennas on top, and opened the personnel door.
The interior was lined by plasma screens, with workstations lining both sides. And it was occupied by only one technician.
“Bobby, we nearly up?”
“We’re going live in about thirty,” the technician said, waving to a set of three chairs. “Left side of the trailer and end. There’s a couple of minor players I’m having to shift to right, so if you have to look at them, you’ll have to spin around and everybody will be looking at the back of your head.” He handed Barb and Janea headsets and pointed to the chairs. “The cameras have pretty fair depth of field, but try not to move around a lot. If you’re wondering what you’re looking like, these are you,” he added, pointing to two small monitors at the work station.
Barb looked at the monitor and saw a very wan version of her normal self.
“I should have done my makeup better,” she said, shaking her head. She looked up at the row of monitors and shook her head again. “I can’t see most of these.”
“Center will be NSA,” Bobby said. “Rig
ht FBI, left Homeland. Spreads out from there. You can back the chair up if you need to look far to the side. Just try to stay in front of the camera. And we’re going live in five…three…two…”
“NSA?” Janea said as the monitors went from color panels to video.
“National Security Advisor,” Barb said, waving at the middle-aged man in the center screen.
Each of the screens had a tag on it so that the unfamiliar knew who they were dealing with. There was a name, but the title was always, unfortunately, an acronym, many of which she had a hard time working out.
NSA, FBID, HS, NORTHCOM, NGB, ARNGT, and on and on.
Barb spun briefly in place to look over her shoulder, and shook her head. Augustus was on one of the rear panels with the acronym USEURSCCOM under him. He smiled and nodded with a glimmer of humor in his eye. It was the first trace of humor she’d ever seen in him, and she suddenly realized that he must have a very nasty sense of humor.
“Odin’s missing eye,” Janea whispered.
“Uh, Janea,” Graham said, wincing. “We’re live.”
“I’ll be chairing this conference,” the National Security Advisor said. “If you wish to make a comment, press the alert button and I’ll bring you in. Review of the threat. As of this morning, we have the report from the SC Onsite Team that they encountered in excess of fifty of the…‘Hunters in the Dark’ during their penetration of the Goin cave system. This is in addition to previously encountering and dispatching a…screw-ganon?”
“ Skru-gnon,” Janea said. “Child of Foulness.”
“A skru-gnon in the first insertion, and in excess of twenty Hunters and a Child in the encounter at the Boone residence,” the NSA said. “Mrs. Everette, is there any way to get any sort of feel for the actual threat numbers?”
“No, sir,” Barb said, taking a sip of coffee. “The caves are just chaotic and you run into what you run into. My best guess is that we ran into only a fraction of the total. Every time we’ve gone deeper into the caves, we’ve run into more.”