by James Axler
With his free hand, he grabbed the man by the back of his jacket. Clumsily, he had to catch hold with the knife hand, as well. The man’s deadweight was tough to handle, even for someone of his strength.
He heard a scuffling sound and looked over to see the other sentry drop to his knees. Jak had managed to leap up on his back and wrap strong legs around his waist, while yanking the man’s bearded chin back with one hand and slicing his big bowie side to side through the sentry’s throat. The blade’s bell was outward: a single powerful push cut jugular veins, carotids and tough windpipe with brutal efficiency. As the sentry collapsed, deflating from instant blood loss as had Ryan’s victim, Jak rode him down, got his feet planted and used the strength of his core to lower his victim silently to the stone.
“Odale, hombres. ¿Qué tal?” a voice said from between them.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ryan froze. The worst possible luck had just kicked him and Jak squarely in the balls. Another coldheart had strolled out to pass the time with his buddies on sentry duty. And with Ryan and the albino youth both still occupied controlling their dying but still-moving victims, there was no way either could stop him from raising the alarm—if he didn’t blast them first with the AK he had slung muzzle-down over his back.
Ryan heard a thump, like knuckles softly rapped on an oak tabletop. The EUN coldheart’s eyes started to widen as his brain tried to process the utterly unexpected sight in the vestibule.
Now they bulged halfway form their sockets. Literally. A hole had appeared above the arched brow of the right one.
The man pitched forward. The space was so narrow that Ryan, still holding his man with one hand, was able to catch one arm of the head-shot sec man. Jak caught the other. Ryan’s shoulder strained in its socket, but they managed to ease him down along with his dead comrades.
Jak slipped into the entrance. After a moment he popped his head out and nodded. All clear.
Ryan stepped to the edge. He saw his companions’ wide eyes turned up at him. He made a “come on” gesture, then stepped hastily back to stand against the smoothed-off stone beside the actual door into the redoubt.
He held up a hand and waved a thank-you salute at the lonely boy watching their backs from the far crest. The lonely, betrayed boy.
“Ricky saved our asses again,” J.B. muttered as he slipped past Ryan into the redoubt with his shotgun leading the way. “Bet you feel like a bastard, ’long about now.”
“Yeah, well.” Ryan moistened his lips. “What else is new?”
Last came Krysty, giving him a quick kiss in passing. He followed her inside the cave, unslinging his Scout longblaster as he did so.
The vanadium steel door was wide-open, which signaled something was wrong with the controls. There was a brief interval of unlit hallway to minimize the light that showed outside. Past that, the usual concrete walls were illuminated by the usual fluorescent lighting.
The redoubt surroundings were familiar to Ryan, but he stayed on edge. Though there was no sign of them, in all likelihood EUN coldhearts swarmed throughout the stronghold. His companions’ only realistic hope at this point was that the coldhearts were overwhelmingly occupied below, where the best scavvy was liable to be found.
The corridor was about twelve feet wide and about eight tall. Doors were set to either side. It ran to an apparent T-junction, perhaps fifty yards along.
J.B. stood side by side with Jak, across the group from Ryan, where they could take the lead.
“How do we play it?” J.B. asked softly as Ryan joined him. “Clear each room as we pass?”
Ryan shook his head. “If a door’s open, second person in line can stick their head in and give a quick but careful check while the rest of us power on. Then catch up at the end of the line.”
J.B. nodded. “We don’t want anybody popping out a door and blasting us in the back.”
“Lots of things I don’t want,” Ryan said. “First and foremost being on this bastard island in the first damn place. Even less do I want a whole squad of coldhearts catching us in the middle of this bare metal corridor while we lollygag along. After stealth, speed gives us our best shot at seeing the sun come up tomorrow. Wherever.”
“Gotcha,” J.B. said with a nod. He turned and touched Jak’s shoulder, gingerly, so as not to slice his fingers open on the sharp bits Jak sewed onto his jacket. “Lead the way, Jak.”
* * *
RICKY LAY ON HIS BELLY on the ridgetop, concentrating with his entire being on watching the valley, with no more light than that of the tropical stars overhead.
It kept him from thinking about the rustling and chirping of the restless bloodsucking monsters around him.
But, so far, they continued to keep clear of him. He doubted it was because they were all that scared of a skinny kid with his blaster. More likely they’d just decided he wasn’t much of a threat. And they clearly had something more pressing on whatever passed for minds in those narrow, quill-crested skulls than making him their dinner.
He wondered how long he was going to have to wait up here in the wind. It was getting chilly—at least, to a boy who’d been raised in a humid coastal ville. Would they signal him from the doorway? Send somebody across the valley to fetch him, to make sure he got the word and came in safely?
Or did they expect him to hang out here all night while they looted the place at their pleasure? They couldn’t expect to grab more than a few kilos of the choicest scavvy with El Guapo and some sizable chunk of his army inside. So Ricky reasoned it couldn’t take them that long.
Then he glanced down the valley and saw disaster bearing down on his new friends at a fast swagger.
* * *
THE COMPANIONS WORKED their way deeper into the redoubt. They saw some signs of hasty ransacking on the way, but fortunately they didn’t run into anybody.
It was a big facility, bigger than the standard redoubt. Clearly this one had fulfilled some major purpose other than weathering the Big Nuke. Ryan had taken up position right behind J.B., who followed Jak with his scattergun ready. Next came Mildred, then Doc. Krysty pulled rear guard.
The rooms they passed were mostly offices or small labs. Some might hold valuable scavvy. But of course Ryan and company couldn’t afford to stop and check.
What they were trying to salvage in this redoubt hive was their asses.
Jak slowed to approach the next stairwell. He had his big bowie in hand, in hopes of chilling anybody they ran into quietly. Discovery was their biggest fear.
They’d descended five stories by now. Mat-trans gateways were usually located near the bottom level of redoubts, which was generally the most secure location.
Several stairwells plumbed the depths of the giant facility. They’d passed by a centrally located bank of elevators several times as they descended. It was tempting to hop in and ride right to the bottom, but the elevators were potential death traps so they ignored them and hoofed it.
They knew the entrances to the stairwells were their biggest risk zones. The heavy doors would keep them from hearing the sounds of enemies approaching from below or above.
Sure enough, when Jak had crept within ten feet of the steel door with the wire-mesh reinforced window, it swung open to reveal a pair of EUN coldhearts, smoking and joking with longblasters slung.
* * *
FIRST RICKY SAW THE GLOWS, bobbing up from where the valley twisted out of sight below to his left. He initially froze, wondering if all the myths he’d disregarded growing up were true, that the spirits of lost dead souls really did haunt the land by night as free-floating balls of fire: luz mala, “evil light.” Such sightings were reliably reported on a regular basis in the coastal regions, but Ricky’s father and uncle both dismissed them as fool’s fire. They were lights caused by the gases of dead plant matter decomposing in marshy regions, spontaneously catching fire. Certainly Ricky was too firmly rooted in the real and practical world of making and fixing things to believe in ghosts.
Until now,
cold, alone on a windy mountaintop, surrounded by monsters unmistakably real as he was himself. Not that any modern Puerto Rican would dismiss monsters as legendary. They were much too common for that.
Then he realized he was seeing something worse than ghost lights: torches. Held up by a party of men who didn’t give a glowing night shit if anyone saw them or not.
That could only mean one thing: EUN coldhearts, either a returning patrol or reinforcements come to join El Guapo in his new treasure house.
He had a small pair of binoculars his uncle had given him, scavvy he’d bought cheap from someone who thought them broken when all they needed was a good lens-cleaning. Ricky aimed them at the train of dancing lights and dialed in the focus.
He saw what he knew he’d see: armed men. There were at least twenty of them. And though the little lenses didn’t give him a very clear picture, he couldn’t mistake the bald, slanted head and evil snout of Tiburón himself.
El Guapo’s sec boss was dragging his ass and his straggle of survivors back to their leader to report failure in catching or killing the fugitives El Guapo had sent them to hunt. The Handsome One didn’t take disappointment well.
But then again, Tiburón was his valued right-hand man, and while he’d probably receive a virulent ass-chewing, the horrid weight of any physical penalties that occurred to a furious El Guapo would doubtless fall on a scapegoat or two.
Ricky lowered the glasses. The head of the little column was already starting to climb what appeared to be a random trail up the slope, no different from any other of the thousands that ran up and down through the island’s central mountains. Nervous energy filled Ricky like an army of soldier ants on jolt, so that he could barely lie still.
I have to do something, he thought. They’re going to realize something’s wrong when they find the sentries chilled or missing.
He laid the binocs aside and shouldered his carbine. He knew what place Tiburón had in the file of men now angling up the far slope. Shooting at night was a tricky business, but he was sure he could do it. He lined up his sights on the tall misshapen figure, drew in the shooter’s deep breath, let out half, and caught and held the rest. His finger began to tighten slowly, steadily on the trigger.
Then Ricky stopped. He shook himself like a wet dog, sighed out the last of the breath and rolled away from the longblaster.
If I chill Tiburón, he thought, what then?
If he missed, there was a chance nobody would notice the heavy bullet striking the ground. Unless, of course, it bounced off a rock and went howling off into the night. But if Tiburón or any of them went down suddenly, no way would the rest of the patrol fail to notice right away. It wouldn’t take them more than a moment to discover the victim had been shot.
And that would doom his friends as much as if he’d walked into the redoubt and pulled the alarm himself. Even if El Guapo and his men were too deep within the cave to hear the inevitable storm of blasterfire, Ricky couldn’t shoot fast enough to ensure nobody dashed up the trail to the entrance and ran inside to alert them.
Rage blazed up inside him like wildfire. The man who had so horribly murdered his mother and father before his eyes was in his sights. He wanted to blast the mutie more than he’d ever wanted anything in his young life. He wanted vengeance.
But his rational mind poured water on the flames of his passion. Chilling Tiburón would chill his friends. And Yami would be lost to Ricky.
He shook his head. Frustrated tears rolled hot down his cheeks as he watched the torches climb toward the hidden entrance, from which he fancied he saw the faintest hint of glow.
What do I do? he wondered, sick with fury and fear and indecision. Madre, padre, what can I do?
* * *
WITH A COUGAR LEAP, Jak was in the face of the man on his right, jamming his knife hilt-deep in his big belly. At the same time, he clamped a white hand over the his victim’s mouth.
The other man’s eyes went wide in a round, bearded face. He opened his mouth to shout as he fumbled at the sling of his longblaster.
But J.B., while lacking the incredible speed of the albino youth, was nobody’s slow-foot. He moved forward and slammed the steel buttplate of his M-4000 into the fat coldheart’s face before he could get a sound out. The warning cry turned to a moan that turned to a gargle as the blood from his mashed-in nose and teeth filled his mouth and poured down his throat. The man toppled backward into the still-open stairwell door.
Ryan was in motion himself by then. Jak’s guard was struggling furiously. The noises that escaped around the albino’s white hand were as angry as they were agonized. The skinny coldheart was bastard tough, or perhaps adrenaline had taken away the edge of the pain from the knife twisting in his entrails. Either way, he was struggling furiously, and Jak was in a poor position to hang on. He’d even have trouble hanging on to his knife, with the man’s blood flooding hot and slippery out over the hand that gripped it.
Ryan dashed past the wounded guard to the right. As he did, he swung his panga backhand. It was a risky move—a miss with that heavy, razor-keen blade could take Jak’s left hand off. But even that was a better outcome than the bastard being able to scream his lungs out.
The panga struck true. The big, heavy knife sliced through the neck vertebrae to sever the spinal cord. The coldheart jerked once, as if a charge of electricity had shot through him, then fell.
J.B. straightened from crouching over the supine fat man. As he did, he wiped the angled tip of the folding knife on the man’s trousers. The guard wasn’t dead quite yet, but any breath he might have used to cry out now wheezed and bubbled through the blood that welled from his cut throat.
“Too close,” J.B. said, as Jak jumped back from the pathetic, blood-drenched crumple that had been his opponent a few heartbeats before.
Ryan just looked at him and shrugged. It was going to get worse before it got better.
* * *
IN AN AGONY OF INDECISION Ricky Morales watched the last torch vanish behind the tall jutting boulder that helped hide the cave entrance. As it did, he heard angry shouting from somewhere just inside.
He couldn’t make out the words. It didn’t matter. He knew what they meant.
He got up to one knee, stuffing his compact binoculars back into his heavy pack and shrugging it on. Then he picked up his longblaster.
He hesitated, sensing shadowy predators close by. Oddly, he felt no threat from them. He knew that the strange, horrific beings who had been sidling and chirruping around him the whole time had frozen because he had moved. They didn’t know if he might threaten them.
“Listen, monsters,” he said, first in English, and then Spanish. “Listen well and fast, if you want to get your home back....”
* * *
DOWN THE CORRIDOR, twenty yards to the right, a door opened. A man walked out, swigging from an upturned bottle. It fell from his hands to shatter with a crash on the concrete floor when he saw half a dozen heavily armed strangers bearing down on him.
J.B. took a step toward the left wall to clear Jak, shouldered his shotgun and fired. The man screamed even before the fléchettes struck him in the upper chest and neck in a splash of red.
As he fell backward, other doors flew open. His fellow coldhearts jumped into the corridor with blasters blazing.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Cautiously Ricky peered around the edge of the open redoubt entrance, his shoulder pressed to the cool steel framework. The corridor was empty. As expected, he saw no bodies, but a door standing open a few yards down the concrete corridor on the left showed Tiburón and his men had quickly found their missing comrades. Not, he suspected, that it mattered much.
Tiburón was a devil, but he was cunning. He would never have become the sec boss for a man like El Guapo—much less survived in the role—without being smart. His finely honed paranoid instincts would have screamed alarm the moment he found the sentries missing.
And no matter what his brain told him might have happened—th
at they had snuck off for a smoke or a drink, or even to watch each other’s backs while they pissed—the sec boss’s gut would have told him instantly what had happened, in no uncertain terms.
Ricky was far from worldly despite his yearly trade trips with his father. But just from hearing the traders talk on the trail, or the travelers who came to his uncle’s shop to buy gear, or have theirs repaired or even just to shoot the breeze, he knew quite well that no sec boss believed there was any such thing as coincidence.
Tiburón knew perfectly well who had snuck into what appeared to Ricky to be a stronghold. And the fact that he hadn’t raised the alarm himself only gave Ricky a clammy, cold punch to the gut.
It could only mean the shark-faced sec boss planned to make up for his failure to chill Ryan and his friends by hand-delivering them to his commander.
Clutching his carbine to his skinny chest, Ricky ran. He doubted anyone would be left behind to spot him and bar his way; Tiburón would want every man on the hunt lest their pesky quarry give him the slip again. But he didn’t care.
All that mattered to him was saving his friends. And Yami.
If only he could pretend he had a moth’s chance in a furnace of reaching them in time....
* * *
THE BARE WALLS GAVE BACK shattering waves of noise as J.B. ripped off a burst from his Uzi.
“Dark night,” the armorer said as he stepped back into the room where he and Ryan had ducked to find shelter from the horizontal bullet storm outside. “Why haven’t they punched up the alarm yet?”
There were about half a dozen men just ten yards down the hall, themselves ducking in and out of side rooms to loose off a burst or two.
As far as Ryan could tell, his companions were all fit to fight. Jak was in the office across the corridor. Krysty had shouted that she, Mildred and Doc were holed up in the next room back on that side.