The loud whistles could usually get the Centurions’ attention, but not this time. Bascombe had never seen them so agitated. The only weapons the trainers carried were tranquilizer rifles, and Nichols made it known they were never to be used for fear of damaging the subjects. Looks like today would be the day they found out how the Centurions reacted to the tranquilizers, Nichols’s orders be damned.
And if the crap really hit the fan, Bascombe was prepared to take care of his own butt. His right hand casually slid under his left armpit, feeling the small reassuring bulge tucked under his uniform jacket.
General Attwood and his six-man team stood in the BoDex monitoring center, watching the training operation fall apart. Shaking videos of the chase unfolded on wall-mounted screens.
“Nichols!” shouted Attwood. “What the hell’s going on?”
Jonathan Nichols screamed into the mike on his headset, his shouts only adding to the already confused exchanges crowding the frequency. “Blue Team! Stop the Centurions! Use the tranquilizer guns! Bascombe, damnit! Do you read me?”
Bascombe heard Nichols but he was too busy to answer him. He yelled into his microphone, “Blue Team, we are cleared to use tranq guns!”
The men in the lead shouldered their weapons and fired. A red-feathered dart sprouted from the back of the rearmost Centurion. The creature dropped to the ground, face down.
A voice came through Bascombe’s headset, “Delta is down!”
The next Centurion at the rear of the stampeding pack caught a dart in its shoulder and crashed in a twisted heap.
A female voice now. “Charlie is down!”
The trainers ran past the two downed Centurions in pursuit of the rest of the pack.
Frank saw they were almost to the fence. He glanced behind him without breaking stride. There were only three bears, or whatever they were, chasing them now, and the armed men were chasing the creatures. The creatures were even closer now, the big one outdistancing the other two. The fence was only twenty feet away. Frank looked for the gap while running flat out.
One of the trainers brought his weapon up and fired. Bascombe saw another Centurion collapse in a pile of dark brown fur, arms and legs flailing, before becoming motionless. The shooter vaulted over the fallen Centurion and kept running.
Bascombe’s headset crackled, “Bravo is down!”
A fourth Centurion soon plunged to the ground, a red-feathered dart protruding from the back of its left thigh.
A new voice. “Echo is down!”
The last Centurion was almost on top of the two people racing for the fence. Damn, Bascombe thought, it’s Alpha! Alpha was by far the most aggressive of the five. Bascombe screamed into his mike, “Somebody take Alpha down!”
Jessica and Frank slammed into the chain link barrier. “Right there, Jess! Go, go, go!” Frank spun around to find a nightmare upon him. He threw his dad’s urn as hard as he could at the creature’s head.
Alpha swung a massive paw studded with razor-sharp claws, sending the copper urn over the fence. It came down like a mortar shell and slammed against the windshield of the Pruitts’ vehicle. The force was so great that the windshield shattered.
Frank staggered backward. He grabbed a fallen tree limb, his eyes never leaving the creature. When the beast made a move toward him, Frank swung with all his might. Alpha raised a massive paw and grabbed the limb before the blow connected. Neither the creature nor Frank would release their grip.
Jennifer Pruitt screamed when the urn crashed through the windshield. She dropped her mp3 player to the floor and yanked the earbuds out, then fumbled at the seatbelt release. She could not understand what was happening. Pressing her face and hands against the rear passenger window, she saw her father and something big, like a giant bear, fighting while her mother tried to scramble back through the fence.
Jennifer pounded on the glass. “Mom!”
Alpha tired of Frank. With one squeeze of its vice-like paw, the tree limb disintegrated into splinters.
“Frank!” screamed Jessica, “I’m stuck!”
The belt loop on the rear of Jessica’s jeans had snagged on a loose link in the fence. She could not get through, nor could she get back in. She was pinned like a bug on a fly strip.
Frank made a desperate move toward his wife, hoping he could shove her through the opening. Alpha was a lot faster though. With one swipe, its claws sliced through Frank, nearly severing his head. Frank Pruitt’s dead body dropped to the ground, blood pouring from his destroyed neck.
Attwood and his team watched helplessly from the monitoring center as the last standing Centurion swung at the male trespasser, slamming him against the fence. The men in the room gasped as the nearly decapitated body hit the ground. Attwood grabbed Nichols by the front of his shirt and screamed, “Nichols! Do something!”
“Daaaaaad!” Jennifer shrieked, pounding on the window. Her father wasn’t moving. And there was so much blood. “Dad! Dad!” She grabbed at the seatbelt release. This time it unbuckled. Jennifer sobbed, pulling at the door handle with shaking hands.
Alpha had been fixated on the scent of Frank’s blood. Jessica’s scream only brought its attention back to her now.
The belt loop on Jessica’s jeans tore free and she started to pull herself through the opening but the creature grabbed her leg and yanked her effortlessly back inside. As she was being reeled in by Alpha, she caught a glimpse of her daughter in the open door frame of the Jeep, and for an instant, their eyes met. In desperation, she reached out to Jennifer, knowing it was a useless gesture. “Run, Jen!” she yelled. “Get out and run! Don’t look back!”
Alpha dangled Jessica upside down by her leg. She had an inverted view of the group in blue running toward her, but she knew they would never reach her in time. They were screaming and yelling, and blowing those damn whistles. But it meant nothing. Her eyes fell upon Frank’s lifeless body as she swayed in the creature’s grip. She knew it was her turn to die.
With an ear-splitting howl, Alpha swung Jessica against the fence like a rag doll. Her head crashed against a steel post, crushing her skull. The Centurion threw her dead body to the ground near Frank, then raised its arms and roared. A tranquilizer dart hit the creature’s back. Alpha faced the approaching trainers, then fell over, unconscious.
The men in the monitoring center were silent, all eyes on the wall of screens, all ears trying to sort out the tangled voices. Gasps rippled through the room as they watched the last Centurion drag the female trespasser back through the fence and whip her against a steel post. Suddenly, the Centurion’s roar leapt out of the speakers, grabbing them in an aural death grip. Finally, a red dart hit Alpha in the back.
Bascombe’s voice came through the speakers. “Alpha is down.” A pause. “All Centurions are down.”
General Attwood turned on Jonathan Nichols again, struggling against the urge to grab him by the throat. “Nichols! What the hell happened out there? You may have just killed this entire project single-handedly!”
Jennifer Pruitt’s mother had screamed for her to run, and she did so without hesitation. She unknowingly spared herself the vision of Alpha killing her mother. As far as she knew, her mother was still alive. She ran straight into the woods with no idea of what lay before her, and no understanding of what lay behind her. She just knew she had to keep running.
While General Attwood reamed out Nichols, Hector Valdez, a young technician slowly backed up the video feed on his screen. Something had caught his eye.
He slowed the recording down. There! He moved the recording forward a bit, his face almost touching the screen’s surface. There was a third person poised in the open rear doorframe of the vehicle. Was it worth interrupting the general in the middle of a tirade?
“Whatcha got there, Hector?” Gerry Evans was one of the older, seasoned technicians. He had stood up to stretch during the verbal assault on Nichols. Just like everyone else, he was enjoying the beat down. No one at BoDex had ever cared a lick for Nichols. The general�
��s screaming rose to a new level. Nichols’s only reaction was to look away.
“I think there’s someone else in the video.”
“Well, what do we have here.” Evans leaned in closer. “Looks like a little girl. Where’d she go?”
“I don’t know.” Hector hesitated. “You think I should interrupt that,” he nodded toward the general, “or just wait?”
“Hate to say it, Hector, but I think he’s gonna want to know if there’s another person wandering around out there.” Evans gestured with his thumb.
Valdez shuffled toward the general. “Uh, excuse me, General Attwood,” Valdez said, “if I could interrupt for a second, sir?”
The general glared at Valdez. “What is it?”
“Sir, I believe there was a third person in the trespassers’ vehicle who ran off into the woods.”
Attwood hurried to Valdez’s monitor, his team shadowing him like guard dogs. Valdez laid the tip of a pen on the image of the young girl halfway out of the rear door of the vehicle. “Right there, sir. She’s only in the image for a second and then she’s gone. I believe she took off into the woods.”
“Sonofabitch!” General Attwood pointed at his team leader. “Master Sergeant Foster, get your team back to our plane and gear up. Be back here and ready to hit the ground running in ten minutes. You men are to track down and retrieve this third unknown person. You will use any means necessary. She is not to make contact with anyone else outside the fence. Is that understood?”
“Sir, yes, sir!” Foster shouted. He turned to the other five members of Attwood’s entourage. “Back to the plane and get your gear! Move, move, move!”
The sound of six pairs of heavy combat boots pounding on the concrete floor reverberated through the monitoring center as Attwood’s men bolted toward a van outside.
Master Sergeant Sean Foster jerked the driver’s door open. A surprised BoDex employee assigned to the Runway & Transportation Unit sat behind the steering wheel.
“Hey! What the hell—” Foster grabbed him by his coveralls and yanked him out.
“Sorry, pal. We need this van.” Foster hauled himself up behind the wheel. The other five men had already piled into the back seats. Foster slammed the van into drive and floored the gas pedal, spewing dirt and grass behind them.
With his Special Forces team on its way to the jet to collect gear, General Attwood turned his attention back to Nichols. He leaned in close. “Are you able to follow my orders or shall I deal with your next-in-command?”
“General Attwood, sir, I apologize for what has transpired today, and I am ready to put myself and this facility at your disposal,” said Nichols. “Whatever you desire, you shall receive, no questions asked, sir.”
“Follow me,” said Attwood. They went into a glass enclosed area inside the monitoring center. “Jonathan, you know what we do here is for the good of our nation, even if the people running the government don’t always understand that. What I am going to order you to do is for a purpose bigger than the both of us. If you are not comfortable with my request, I will have someone else handle it.”
“As I said, General, I am at your disposal. I guarantee I can fix things, sir, if given the chance.”
Attwood was glad to hear the confidence back in Jonathan Nichols’s voice. “I need you to get your recovery team to the accident site immediately and clean things up. At the same time, my personal detail will search for the third trespasser and bring her back here. It is very important that we contain what happened out there.”
“Just tell me exactly what you need me to do,” said Nichols.
“We must retrieve the vehicle and bodies, and keep them out of sight until we decide what our next step is.”
“Sir, we can relocate the vehicle to the unused hangar near the runway. As for the bodies, there is a lab we haven’t used for a while now, originally set up for cold weather experiments. I could put the bodies in there and declare it off limits.”
“Very good. That will do just fine. Understand that this project is on life-support right now. We either save it, or it dies.”
Foster did not stick to the paved roads curving between the buildings. Instead, he ran the van in a straight line toward Attwood’s aircraft, parked off the end of the runway. It was truly a wild ride, between driving on paved surfaces, tearing through grassy areas, and even plowing through an area of flower beds.
Foster leaned his head back and yelled, “Vincenzo, Serrafino, get inside the plane and hand the gear out to the rest of us!”
Seconds later, the van screeched to a halt on the tarmac next to the aircraft. Sergeants First Class Dave Serrafino and Sal Vincenzo, the group’s weapons experts, charged into the aircraft and handed rucksacks and weapons through the doorway to the rest of the team, who, in turn, piled the gear into the van.
Serrafino carried two boxes of ammunition while Vincenzo hefted a case of communications gear on his shoulder. They tossed their cargo into the van, then jumped inside with the others.
“Punch it, Sean!” Vincenzo called. The van rocketed back the way it had come.
While Foster drove, the others passed around magazines of ammunition, strapping on SIG Sauer P226 and Beretta M9 sidearms, preparing their Colt M4A1 assault rifles, and adjusting their communications headsets. Staff Sergeant Kurt Cummings, the communications expert, got Foster’s gear ready and stacked it on the seat next to him.
The van slid to a screeching stop outside the monitoring center with three minutes to spare. The men shot out of the van and charged back inside the building.
By the time Foster and the rest of the team had reentered the monitoring center, the room was a beehive of activity. Off to one corner stood Jonathan Nichols laying out a plan of action for a crew of his own people. He stood in front of a large overhead map of the BoDex Research & Development grounds and surrounding area, tapping his finger on different spots of the map. “Brad, you’re in charge at the site,” Nichols said to Brad Peters. “You’re clear on what to do?”
“We get to the site. Johnson moves the vehicle into hangar number two, leaves it at the far end, and covers it with tarps. He locks the hangar doors, comes back here, and you get the key.” Sam Johnson gave a thumbs-up. “While Sam’s doing that, we bag the bodies and remove all traces of blood, etc. from the site. We move the bodies to the cryogenics lab, activate the system, lock the lab door, come back here, and you get the key.”
“Perfect,” Nichols said. “Get moving.”
Foster and his team stood before General Attwood. “The team is ready, sir,” Foster reported.
Attwood looked them over. Each man wore woodland camouflage battle dress uniforms (BDUs) and a matching boonie hat, olive drab Nomex gloves, a multiband inter/intra team radio (MBITR) with a microphone/earphone headset, and serious weapons. Their faces were striped with olive, light green, and brown face paint. Cummings carried a long-range radio.
General Attwood stood before the map, pointing out the same areas Nichols had, informing his team what the BoDex personnel would be doing at the same time they were tracking and retrieving the third trespasser.
“She has maybe twenty minutes on you men, but she is probably running around aimlessly so you should be able to catch up easily. You know what to do when you catch her. Any questions?”
With Nichols and his personnel getting ready in one corner of the room, and the general and his team preparing in another, there was little for the rest of the BoDex people to do. Most of the technicians wandered from their monitors to stretch and take a much-needed breather. As the least senior man in the room, Hector Valdez decided it would be better if he just sat quietly and stayed out of the way.
Something on the screen to his right caught his eye. He leaned sideways to get a better view. The orientation of the image on monitor two was wrong. It appeared as if it were from ground level and tilted to the right ninety degrees. Valdez looked at the name on the screen: P. SANFORD. That was Paul Sanford’s video feed. He slipped his headset on and
called Sanford. No response. He tried again.
Without warning, the image on monitor five jerked drunkenly. It was now looking straight up, showing puffy white clouds creeping across a cerulean sky. Hector checked the ID on that screen: K. YAMAGUCHI. He tried to make contact with Ken Yamaguchi. Nothing.
Valdez noticed his headset plug was not fully inserted into the console jack, and gave it a little nudge. With a click, the plug seated correctly. His headset exploded with noise. Voices screaming, yelling. A gun shot? He looked up. No one else had their headsets on and the wall speakers in the room had been turned off.
Bascombe’s voice tore through his headset. “Help us! These bastards are killing us! Hel— ” Another gunshot, more screams.
Valdez scanned the other monitors. One of the Centurions moved across Paul Sanford’s camera’s field of vision. The Centurion was attacking Dominick Briccola! The image on monitor six wobbled insanely, then showed grass up close. My God! Dom must be lying face down! Valdez realized that Paul must be lying on his side, and Ken had to be on his back.
Valdez pulled the boom mike on his headset close to his mouth and pleaded in a barely controlled voice, “Blue Team, can anyone hear me? Come in Blue Team!” He shot to his feet.
“Hey!” he yelled. There was no reaction. Nichols and the general’s groups spoke among themselves; the whole room was alive with competing voices. Valdez jumped up on his desk, waved his arms, and screamed as loud as he could. “Shut the hell up! Look at the monitors! Turn on the wall speakers!”
The room exploded with growling, screaming, cries for help, a gun shot. Only monitors one, three, and four showed movement.
The Devil's Claw Page 8