by J. F. Holmes
“Agreed,” I said just as Gunny came back in. The look on his face told me everything I needed to know. There was no evidence of magic or ritual, not even a circle scuffed on the floor or a burnt candle. A shitload of weapons, but that was par for the course with any bad guys in this part of the world. Hell, for any organized group, bad guys OR good guys.
“Looks like a dry hole, everyone, out front in five mikes, break.” I paused. “Dah, call for evac. One EPW.”
That’s when I felt the ground rumble beneath my boots. A faint tremor that lit up that sixth sense. Gunny, the most experienced member of the squad besides myself, felt it too, and he looked down at the same time I did. The walls weren’t shaking, just the ground beneath our feet.
“RALLY ON MY POSITION! POSSIBLE CONTACT!” I called and knelt to place my hand on the floor. The rumble had changed to a vibration, an almost subsonic hum. It grated on my nerves like Hell was reaching up to squeeze my soul.
Chapter 4
“OK, there has to be an entrance to an underground somewhere around here,” said Gunny.
“Yep,” I agreed, and we started searching the ground floor. I told Dah and Reynolds to search outside and look for a path that might be well worn, one that didn’t go anywhere. They came back to me in less than a minute.
“Hey, boss, we’ve got a trail to a cliff face, goes into a cave that you can’t see directly in. Directly behind the building due west. We’ve scouted ten feet in, nothing there but evidence of heavy traffic,” said Reynolds, his southern accent made thick by excitement and stress.
“Roger, on our way, hold position.” I made a motion to the team, but they were already moving.
“Got it, boss.”
We filed out of the building, leaving the wounded man behind. He wasn’t a threat, and maybe we’d pick him up on the way out. Maybe, but we had other priorities now. The vibrations had stopped, but the world felt flat, like everything had gone silent all at once.
“What the hell?” asked Gandolfini. Although he’d been an Army infantry sergeant before joining the team, losing his stripes just before that for an incident in Djibouti, he’d only had one supernatural encounter. That was against some fairies, some of the wee folk, who’d decided they were tired of Bradleys ripping through their gardens and crushing their homes. He’d kept his cool and run them off with a shotgun, but that was nothing like what we might face. Gandolfini hadn’t been to the JTF basic integration course at Quantico. Knew his gun and how to clear a house, though, and that was good enough for Gunny.
I saw Dah standing by what looked like a blank rock face. “OK, Dah, get on the horn, tell the evac to hold up. You and Tommy,” —Reynolds, our anti-armor guy— “hang out up here and watch our backs. Corporal Hemmings, just outside the entrance with your 240. Be ready to move either way. Doc, stand by for anything.”
She nodded and started messing with her radio while Reynolds put his Javelin and two AT-4s on the ground, looking to his short barrel M-4. Hemmings propped up his 240 on its bipod and placed it in a location that covered the most likely avenue of approach for any reinforcements.
“We might lose radio coms if we go underground, so bust out the 312 and make sure you’re on it,” I said to Hemmings. “Jeremy, you’re on our end. No matter what, make sure the wire is clear and you do regular checks with him. ANY break in coms, you let me know.” He gave me a thumbs up and pulled out the two Vietnam-era TA-312 field phones. Old as dirt, but they worked, and sometimes Spooky activity messed with radio coms.
The worn trail disappeared around a slight rock face and ended in a blank wall, cement block set into the rock face. Dah and Reynolds hadn’t taken any fire, but whoever was inside probably knew we were coming No time for screwing around and trying to figure out how it opened; we had a door knocker with us. Smith quickly taped plastic explosive to the door at four points and waved us all back. When it came, the explosion was a dull thud, deadened by the shaped charges and the intervening corner. We didn’t wait for the dust to settle, just charged forward, night vision down and guns up.
I was fourth in, following Gunny and his two shooters. I’d worked often enough with them that I could fill into their team, but my job was command and control. Behind me came Williamson with his 240, and then Jeremey with the coms and extra ammo. There was nothing in front of us but a downward sloping tunnel, bending to the left, and steps that looked to have been worn down by hundreds of years of traffic. The tunnel itself was big, much bigger than the usual rat holes I’d had to climb into over ten years of war, maybe fifteen across and twenty high. It looked and felt old, and our targeting lasers swept back and forth through the monochrome displays on our night vision. We stepped forward, hugging the edge of the turn, the point man watching for tripwires, the man behind him looking forward over his shoulder.
As we stepped forward, my radio checks with Dah on the surface faded out, as I’d suspected they would. I slowed and put my hand back, and Jeremey slapped the phone into my palm. I was about to get a coms check with Dah when Smith, on point, violently pulled Gandolfini back and opened fire, short coughing bursts that were instantly returned by something a LOT heavier. The rounds rattled off the stone to our right, gouging holes and showering us with splinters.
We’d tripped them early; if they’d waited for us to come around the corner, or if Smitty had been a second slower spotting them, the mission would have been done right there. It was a drill we had trained for, though, and despite the instinctive reaction to turn and haul ass, the best way to react to an ambush is to charge into it. Smith and Gunny flowed around the curve of the wall, while Gandolfini emptied a whole magazine from one knee. My smoke grenade was off my harness and out of my hand before he even got halfway through, spinning off the right-hand wall and clattering toward the MG team.
Williamson, who was carrying the short-barreled 240L with a collapsible stock, stepped right, firing down the tunnel from the shoulder as he knelt. He didn’t have a target, he was merely laying suppressive fire to keep the MG teams’ heads down, and the enemy gun arched high, chewing up the ceiling. Individual shots erupted, the echoing BANGBANGBANG of an old school AK-47 snapping off single shots, and the cough of our suppressed weapons, which I barely heard in the ringing tunnel.
The entire thing stopped as abruptly as it started, like so many firefights. Gunny’s voice rang out over the team net, “CLEAR!” and everyone stopped shooting, though my ears were ringing, and the echoes were still running up and down the tunnel.
“Status? Moving!” I yelled into my mic, probably way too loud, and headed into the smoke, following the left curve of the wall, Jeremey right behind me. Gandolfini had already disappeared into the smoke, and Williamson was swapping out his short belt of ammo for another.
“Need Doc, Smith took a hit. Assessing,” Gunny’s voice came back calmly, even as his form materialized out of the choking smoke. He’d knelt down and was unsnapping Smith’s plate carrier, a headlamp shining, his night vision tilted back on his helmet. There was a pool of blood already forming on the ground beneath him, and the rifleman had an agonized look on his face in the harsh red lamp.
Staying out of Gunny’s way, I leaned down and said in Smith’s ear, “next time swerve left instead of right.”
“No shit, asshole!” he gritted out between clenched teeth, but smiled. “Stay with him until Doc comes up,” I told Gunny, who nodded, “then take up the rear. No time to stop, gotta press forward.” I didn’t wait for his answer, just told the rest to follow me. We passed the three dead bodies clustered around the Russian PKP machine gun, putting one round into each head as we went. One jumped in reflex; tough shit.
The tunnel had straightened and leveled, taking a turn in the distance, and as we ran, that weird rumble or vibration started again, coming up through our boots. Ahead some kind of light flickered, not electric, probably firelight, and I heard a loud chanting, accompanied by a blood-curdling scream, even over the ringing in my ears. I’d heard a scream like that before; i
t wasn’t made by any human voice. This one, though, was louder, deeper, almost a roar. I grabbed the phone and called for Reynolds to come down with his AT-4 and advanced slowly forward.
Chapter 5
I didn’t have to give any orders; we all just knew. There was a crackling tension in the air, and the ground started humming beneath our feet. We rushed forward, guns up, and stepped out onto a platform of rock into an immense cavern.
It must have been one of the central worship places of the city thousands of years ago. The place appeared natural; a vast, hollow bowl lit by flickering torchlight. The only man-made thing was the floor, shaped into a circle, and the columns. Incised in the floor was a no-shit circle with a pentagram, and the columns surrounding it had been shaped into upward curving claws or fangs. Clustered around the floor, but not on it, were a half dozen armed men. Two had their weapons raised and pointed in our general direction, but none were really paying attention to us. They were fixated on another man who wore, instead of the usual headscarves of the region, an ancient looking turban-type headdress. He was shouting in a some weird, undulating language, almost singing, and between us and him there was shimmering, human shaped haze, and it was huge, probably twenty feet high. I could see the demon caller through it, but it was getting thicker.
I shot him first—or tried to. I swear I hit him dead center and in the shoulder, my third shot of the burst plowing up stone and dirt behind him, and he flinched, but didn’t fall or even stop singing. Around me the squad opened up with a crashing roar, even as Gunny Arsene and Specialist Gandolfini hurtled past and down the stairs on each side.
Whatever had been holding the bad guys in place broke, and they started firing at us. They were good, but we were better. Three of them went down, drilled through the head or body, and the other two took cover behind the stone claws, spraying AK fire.
I looked for the demon caller to hit him again, and the mist between us snapped into reality, stepping across the plane of the supernatural into our material world, with a CRACK of displaced air. With a roar of exultation, the demon reached down and grabbed one of the still moving terrorists and popped him into his mouth. I say he instead of it, because it was pretty freaking obvious that it was a he.
The pictures we have from most ancient religions always tried to, in some way, give a human visage to the supernatural beings that stepped between worlds. It was conjectured that the reality of the demons and demigods had little resemblance to humanity, but the artists could only go by what they were told. I’m sure some of them were shining beings of ultimate beauty, but this son of a bitch was ugly as sin. Brick red, with a gaping mouth that was more a beak than anything, filled with razor sharp teeth, and four frigging eyes.
Reynolds hurled past me, AT-4 up and ready to go. They normally had a ten meter arming distance, but he had cracked this one open and rewired it. The five meters that separated them would have to be enough, and the rocket ignition and detonation were almost simultaneous, a deep BANG that echoed all around the chamber.
The bad guy laughed, a booming rumble, and his tail lashed out and cut Reynolds in half, his blood splattering across the wall. Gunny Arsene, who had just taken down the last terrorist, yelled in fury and charged the demon thing with his knife. He was a brave dude, and cold steel could usually hurt these things, but it was three times his size. The demon batted him away like an annoying fly, to go crashing across the floor.
I dropped my magazine and reached into my kit, grabbing at the mag loaded with the steel jacketed silver bullets. “FALL BACK!” I yelled into the squad radio, just as Williamson opened up next to me with the 240. The rounds hammered against the red skin and skipped away in a shower of sparks, ricocheting all around the chamber. I saw Gandolfini grab gunny and half carry, half run with him towards the stairs. He howled in pain as one of the stray rounds hit him in the leg, making him stumble, and Williamson stopped firing with a curse.
My hands were shaking with adrenaline and the iron sights bounced around, but I said screw it and switched to full auto as the tail shattered rock in front of me, then whipped around to knock the 240 out of Williamson’s hands. The flying rock chips cut my face and I ducked back down without firing as the tail whistled overhead. The laughter was booming now, and I could see the demon caller on his knees, worshiping, yelling something at the devil. The monster turned and squashed the old man into the floor, and the lines making up the pentagram started to fill with blood. Ungrateful bastard.
I popped back up just as the demon turned to us again and fired three long bursts into the thing’s face, fighting the recoil of the SCAR. Two of the glowing eyes went out, and the roar that erupted actually shook the ground. Gandolfini and Williamson ran past me like something from hell was chasing them, carrying a still knocked out or dead Arsene, so I stood up from behind the rock and yelled, “NOBODY STEPS ON A CHURCH IN MY TOWN!” to get its attention. The thing screamed in rage and started to move towards me. Oh shit.
I turned and ran, last one out of the chamber, firing regular rounds behind me as we retreated. As soon as we rounded the bend, we came across Doc, who was setting up a claymore. One of our specials that Smith had been carrying, it too was filled with silver ball bearings. Ole’ red was about to get a hell of a surprise. Then the lights went out, my radio went dead, the red dot on my sight, the torches snuffed out, and we were in pitch blackness. “JEREMY! I yelled, “PHONE!”, hoping it would work. The claymore was useless without an electrical detonator, and we had no time to rig up a trip wire.
Someone cracked a chemlight and tossed it down, back the way we had come, and I grabbed at the handset he shoved into my hand. “Dah, we got some bad shit coming up after us, put out a BLACK IRON call!”
The phone, powered by the batteries on her distant set, whispered to me, “Black Iron, out.”
The darkness masked an eerie, still quiet that seemed to envelope us. The bellowing from down the tunnel had stopped, but a strange light began to flicker, almost pulsing. Not red firelight, though. This was more electric than anything, and it was time to get the fuck out of dodge. I grabbed Smith struggling to my feet with him in a fireman’s carry, and we started running as fast as we could. I had no idea what kind of condition he was in, but his blood quickly soaked my uniform as I struggled with his weight. He groaned as we pounded up the steps, so he was still alive.
We burst out into the sunlight to a burst of radio chatter as we cleared the tunnel. The SF sniper team was calling targets, and Hemmings was laying out short bursts from his 240 at a ridgeline about three hundred meters away. Dah was taking shots in between talking on the radio, and blood streamed down her face. Three trucks were silhouetted in the ridge, one burning fiercely, and muzzle flashes from a half dozen weapons accompanied the zip and crack of bullets around us. It was shitsville, bad guys in front and a demon crawling up our ass. To accompany that thought, the ground shook and started to vibrate under our boots again.
“TO THE BUILDING! MOVE IT!” I yelled, and the squad took off like deer at the sound of a gunshot, the wounded men being carried or dragged. I had put Smith down, exhausted, and Williamson picked him up. Gunny shook off Gandolfini and slid a round into his 203, thumping it into one of the trucks. We peeled off, each man firing and rushing until they reached the corner of the building, the burning ammo once again to cover the next man.
I moved to the middle of the space and flopped to the ground, behind a large rock, cursing as all my gear was driven into my chest. I immediately started a slow and steady fire towards the ridge, just to keep their heads down, as Hemmings ran past me. There were a thousand things going through my mind and number one what the hell was coming up behind us.
“Dah,” I called through the team radio, “tell me you got shit on the way, PLEASE!” It was just like those shitbird politicians sitting at their desks to draw a line on a map and ignore the tactical situation on the ground.
“Don’t worry, boss man, called it in as soon as you went into the tunnel. CAS on sta
tion in two mikes.”
“Not sure we have two mikes,” I muttered, wishing now for the longer barrel of my SCAR as the guy I shot at ducked down. Adjusting for a bigger drop of the bullet, I popped him when he stood up to run again. Another round buried itself in the dirt right in front of my face, bouncing up to hit my helmet edge, hard enough to make it tug sideways. I resisted the urge to move, to jump up and run for safety, because that’s what the sniper wanted. Instead, I rolled left and then sprinted back towards the cave mouth. The ground shook beneath me as something huge hammered its way up the steps. I picked up the discarded Javelin launcher and ran my ass off the other way, back towards the building.
Chapter 6
“Valkyrie Six Seven, this is Darkstar. What’s your fuel and ammo status, over?” The sound of the AWACS orbiting over the Iraq / Syria border at thirty thousand feet interrupted Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth “Valkyrie” Suarez’s thoughts as she flew a racetrack pattern two hundred miles west of there. She and her wingman, First Lieutenant John “Rocket” Marlin, were, to be honest, pretty damn low on both. The morning had been spent bombing and gunning ISIS positions outside of Aleppo and they were waiting for another pair of planes from their squadron to take over.
“This is Valkyrie, we each are red on ammo, down to guns, and about thirty minutes of fuel before bingo, over.”
“Roger, stand by for Iron Black tasking, troops in contact, Darkstar out.”
A cold sweat broke out on Suarez as she acknowledged. She had been flying A-10’s for seventeen years, one of the first to engage targets in Afghanistan when the war started. She had heard that call once before, two years ago, over the mountains on the Pakistani border, and had barely escaped with her sanity, and her plane, intact. The nightmare thing that had plummeted onto her bird from a cloud bank was a from vision from hell, and it had only been some serious flying that had brought her out on top. She had pushed that encounter WAY back in her mind, tried to forget about it, but it still haunted her nightmares.