Sam Fielding adjusted his binoculars and scanned the area below them for any sign of life from the brave stand the tunnel team had made on the open plain of the valley. Then he tensed as he saw another of the teams exiting the earth about a half a mile from the massacred first team. Then he shifted position and saw they had already been spotted by the animals. At least three of them were now streaking toward the second tunnel team from two miles out.
"Sir," Lisa said at his side. "I have Colonel Jessup on the radio asking permission to cover that team."
"Tell them permission denied. I have a small surprise for those motherfuckers. Tell them to hold position for two minutes. I'm going to buy them some time," Fielding said as he lowered his field glasses. He looked at Lisa. "Go, go."
Lisa turned and sprinted into the tent, knowing the pilots on the radios were going to scream bloody murder because they were now ordered to watch the men on the ground get chewed to pieces.
But Sam Fielding knew they would never have time for the fighters to cover them, nor the helicopters to land and get all of the survivors on board before the animals struck. So he would buy them the time they needed with something he had had the foresight to airlift in.
He heard the sound of the engines and looked up. The AWACS was there, and he knew the big 707 had painted the desert terrain and was sending out a position on the attacking creatures. He smiled and turned for the command tent.
Lisa was trying to pacify the angry Jessup and the Blackhawk pilots when Fielding ordered her to contact his field artillery, code-named Gunslinger.
The commander of the three M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzers received the radio call from Command Site One.
"This is Gunslinger. Affirmative, we are tracking on GPS relay from the air force. Standing by for fire mission, over," said the captain in the lead Paladin.
"Fire at will, Captain," came the call from Fielding.
"Lock and load Excalibur!" the captain called from his command seat.
The loader opened the automatic ammo-storage door and pulled a brand-new piece of untested ordnance straight from the Aberdeen proving grounds. The Excalibur round weighed forty pounds and had compressed, funny-looking fins on the back end that told any expert in the world this couldn't be an artillery round.
The round was loaded into the M284 cannon and it immediately started communicating with the Paladin's computer-fire system. The round was fed constant updates as to its target, and the fins, which were still compressed against the sleek shell, would automatically be set accordingly after it left the tube. The information was relayed by military satellite to the orbiting AWACS and then to the small dish antenna atop the strange-looking tank.
"Fire!"
The three Paladins simultaneously spat fire and smoke as they hurled three GEO positioning smart rounds from their 155 mm cannons at the three moving targets. The Paladins were fed constant information from the AWACS overhead, and their own Global Positioning Systems cross-referenced with the big plane, which received signals made by the animals' vibration caught on the portable VDF bomblets dropped on the valley floor earlier, and now the targets were painted, as the tank commander had told Fielding earlier, three ways from Sunday.
After leaving the muzzle of the cannon, the fins popped free of the outer warhead and started to make their minute adjustments of trim and angle, sending the rounds right or left depending on the changing aspects of their individual targets. This is what basically amounted to an enemy's worst nightmare, a smart bullet.
The heavily damaged team that had just exited the ground watched as one of the animals split off and the other two stayed together in tight formation as they sped toward them. The soldiers as one all stood and started aiming their weapons at the large plumes of dirt and sand as the wakes grew closer to them, a mere two hundred yards away.
Suddenly a thunderbolt wrenched the sky overhead as the first Excalibur found its mark, exploding exactly on top of the creature on the left, sending pieces of it flying skyward. The second animal veered away from the explosion and altered its angle of attack, but it only made it another thirty feet before the second Excalibur round also changed its aspect to target via a minute adjustment at the last minute by its small tail fins, changing the flow of air over the surface planes of the fins and sending the warhead to the right, with the Global Positioning System calling the shot. That round exploded three feet in front of the beast, tearing it apart and flooding the surface with its flesh and blood and immediately collapsing the tunnel it was in back sixty yards.
As the soldiers and Event Group members stood stunned, the third Excalibur caught the other animal as it came from a roundabout direction from the first two. They were silent at first, then they collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. They had been saved, at least for the moment, by something none of them ever knew existed, a lightweight, forty-pound artillery shell with a brain the size of Einstein. It was a new sword for the working soldier called Excalibur. But they also couldn't know there were only three hundred rounds in the entire American arsenal. And that the three Paladins had only fifty on hand.
Fielding was pleased as he watched the attack and knew the pilots in the Blackhawks were satisfied as they swept down to evacuate the team on the ground.
"My God, that was impressive," Virginia Pollock said at his side.
"Yeah, it's too bad we only have forty-seven more rounds, and those will be used to save the lives of any more survivors down there." He looked at Virginia. "We're going to need a lot more than a few experimental artillery shells to survive this day."
"Well, the engineers that my boss requested are here, and so is the president's special gift. They're drilling as we speak.
Fielding removed his helmet and rubbed his forehead. "God, I hope those murdering bastards cooperate and head to the exit door."
Sarah watched as two Delta Force men stabbed the darkness ahead with their powerful lights. The tunnel was wide, almost like that of a large concrete storm drain. Sarah chipped away part of the wall and looked it over in the light.
"This has been compacted, that's why there's no excess dirt from the tunneling, only at the surface. It's literally compressing the soil as it drives through the ground," she said, looking from the sample to the man next to her.
The hole was hot and humid and smelled badly of rotting meat and sweat. They had been traveling downward for the past hour and forty-five minutes and had to stop and breathe the clean air supplied by their oxygen tanks. Now two point men waved them forward, and once again they started moving.
Suddenly one of the men held up a hand and made a fist, then opened it and gestured for them to lie low. He then waved for Sarah to come forward.
"What is it?" she asked in a low tone.
"Listen, sounds like a freight train," the Delta sergeant said.
Sarah placed a gloved hand to the smooth wall, then she removed her helmet with her other hand and listened.
"Whatever it is, it's coming this way," the commando said in a whisper.
"And coming fast," added Sarah as she stepped back from the wall and removed the safety on the XM8, making the deadly automatic ready to fire.
The remaining thirteen members of her team did the same. They took up various positions for defense, using the four-man pack defense they had discussed. The one thing they did that was exactly the same was to point their weapons at the far wall as the vibration grew lou4er in the tunnel. Dirt and sand started to slowly come off the roof of the unnatural cave in soft splatters, then in whole chunks.
"It has to be the mother" Sarah said softly, almost speaking to herself. "It's too damn big to be the smaller ones. Look at the VDF, it's off the scale."
As quickly as the vibration started, it stopped. Whatever was on the other side of the tunnel wall was only feet from where they were standing. Sarah and the others could feel it, it was a palpable thing. Most of the soldiers brought their automatic weapons up to eye level, focusing on the spot. As they did, the vibration and
noise of the displacement of soil began again, coming closer. It seemed to have turned their way and was coming on in small advances. They felt it in their feet first, then the vibration caused by the movement traveled up their calves to the thighs. Then it stopped. As they watched the wall, small pieces began to fall. They were still and quiet.
"Hear it?" Sarah whispered. "It's right there," pointing the muzzle of her weapon to her right. "It's definitely the mother."
Suddenly a roar shook the air and brought an avalanche of dirt and rock down upon them. Then the noise started growing fainter. It was moving away, back up the mountain.
"What the hell?" the Delta sergeant asked. "Why didn't she attack?"
"I don't know. This thing has to have senses that should have felt our heartbeats through the soil. It should have attacked."
Suddenly a horrible thought crossed Sarah's mind as she was shaking dirt off herself and she froze. They had been briefed on the animal and how it would adapt to whatever it was up against. Now that, coupled with the fact it was heading away from the desert floor and traveling up the mountain, seared the answer to the sergeant's question in her mind. Not only was it going after a bigger target, it was going after the target that was controlling the fight against it and its offspring: the crash site and all the support personnel gathered there. The thought of Lisa, Virginia, and the unsuspecting Event teams working at the site raced through her mind. She quickly hit the transmit switch on her radio, hooked to her web gear at her side.
"Site One, come in. Site One, come in!" she said loudly into the mike just inches from her mouth.
The other members of her tunnel team quickly realized what she was thinking. The sergeant grabbed Sarah by the arm and turned her roughly as they started running back the way they had come. They knew down to a man they had been outmaneuvered.
THIRTY-ONE
Superstition Mountains, Arizona
July 9, 16.10 Hours'
Lisa sat in the communications tent with Virginia. They had heard little in the last few minutes, and from what they had monitored, a massive slaughter was obviously taking place beneath the surface of the earth. Lisa had tried for forty minutes to recall all the tunnel teams after the initial attack just outside one of the town holes. But thus far, she hadn't been able to raise a single team. Being deep underground was taxing the systems they currently had. As usual, the army had delayed sending the more reliable M-2786 radios out from Fort Carson, radios that were in use in caves and tunnels in Afghanistan. Lisa wished now they had at least had time to run antenna relays throughout the tunnels; they could have been placed as the troops went deeper, like bread crumbs. Now the softball-sized ground-penetrating radar units were not furnishing anything on the animals' movements as they had obviously caught on to the attacks and moved deeper under the ground, thus defeating the weak signals of the small units.
"S... t... ne, Si... One, come... !"
The static was cutting off whoever was calling. Lisa took a chance.
"This is Site One. Repeat, this is Site One, over."
"Get the hell... o... of there, the mother... heading... way."
"That sounded like Sarah," Virginia said.
Lisa didn't wait as she clearly understood the broken message. She threw off the headset and ran for the front of the tent. She hit a large red button on the way out that had been mounted to the main support pole, and a Klaxon started sounding throughout the crash site.
Colonel Sam Fielding was standing on a rock with field glasses pointing toward the valley floor when the alarm started. He immediately jumped from his perch and ran to organize the Event staff and remaining Rangers and Airborne personnel.
The state troopers or what remained of them drew their nine millimeters again and started scanning the area.
Gus grabbed Mahjtic and heard him say one word in a frightened voice with its eyes larger than normal: "Destroyer!"
Lisa grabbed an M16 from the arms locker and started back for the COMM tent. On the way she yelled at the remaining state troopers, "Get your asses over here and get something with a little more kick to it than those potato guns!"
They all immediately ran for the arms locker where Lisa had been a moment before. Trooper Dills arrived first and grabbed for an M79 grenade launcher. He smiled as he hefted a bandolier of grenades over his shoulder, saying, "Payback is a motherfucker!"
Fielding slammed into the COMM tent and yelled, "Get the goddamn Apaches up here, now!"
Lisa immediately put the M16 down beside the radio gear and started calling for reinforcements. Everyone from the White House situation room, Nellis, and the Event Center, to a few of the newly surfaced and severely damaged tunnel teams, heard Lisa's call for assistance.
The remaining Event staff were starting to run from the saucer's crash area to the tent site. Before most of them made it clear of the debris field, the ground rumbled beneath their feet and a high-pitched whine came to their ears. Suddenly, the ground exploded in the middle of the site, and the large, thick-haired form of the mother burst from the hole, sending pieces of the broken saucer flying in all directions, with some of the debris striking a few of the technicians, knocking them from their feet. The large beast roared, flaring her neck armor, and immediately went on the attack.
Virginia ran out of the tent in time to see Dr. Thorsen from the anthropology department picked up and torn in two by the massive animal. He was ripped like a rag doll and tossed aside. But still she couldn't bring herself to look away. The brutal life-form was horrible, but still a mesmerizing sight to the scientist in her.
The mother quickly grabbed two of the staff as they tried to dodge the towering beast. The mouth opened and the mandibles worked at an incredible speed, almost undetectable. The tail swiped at another doctor as she ran the opposite way, sinking the stinger deep into her back. As the barbed tip pulled free, it took with it most of her coverall and about eight inches of flesh. She collapsed and her skin instantaneously shriveled and collapsed in on the bone, as her insides, including the hard muscles, were reduced to jelly by the alien's venom.
The team member it held in its right claw was dispatched quickly with a bite to the top of his head as it casually tossed the man aside. It threw the other scientist against an outcropping of rock, smashing most of the bones in his body.
After the initial shock of seeing the parent and its size for the first time, the few Rangers, Airborne, and Arizona State troopers opened fire on the animal. It easily dodged most of the flying bullets, and most of the projectiles that hit ricocheted harmlessly away after striking the hardened chest plates of the beast. The Talkhan sidestepped Dills's grenades as it leapt into the air and sank into the soil. It surfaced again in the center of the gathered policemen to quickly seize three troopers, one in its maw, the other two in its huge claws as they cried out in sudden pain, then disappeared with the beast below the surface. The others watched; a few, out of frustration, fired into the sand and rock in which men and animal had vanished.
Fielding grabbed a few of the remaining 101st personnel and set up a perimeter around the command tents. It seemed as if an hour had passed, when it had actually been only a moment since the attack had begun. Finally they heard the sound of rotors as the Apaches fought for altitude and climbed the mountain.
The ground once again exploded as the beast breached the surface twenty feet in front of the command tents. Fielding saw it first and fired a burst into the animal. The bullets bounced harmlessly off the armored chest and side as the Talkhan swiped at him. Dills quickly saw an opening and, without aiming, fired a grenade from the M79. The round exploded at the animal's feet, and it quickly turned and jumped through the air, landing in front of the state trooper, swiping at his chest and driving him to the ground, snapping ribs and breaking one arm. Fielding saw the animal's amazing leap and ran forward, still firing the M16. It swiped at Dills's prone form, claws barely scraping through his shirt as it missed. Then Virginia screamed as Fielding fired more rounds into the creature'
s back. It forgot about Dills as two of the bullets found the mark between the two plates that protected the animal's shoulder blades. It roared in pain and confusion as it turned from Dills and swiped at Fielding's still form. The huge claws easily separated the muscle, sinew, and vertebrae of the colonel's neck, sending his head flying thirty yards to strike the side of the forensics tent. The Talkhan immediately dove into the earth, again creating a soil eruption that covered most of Dills's agonized body. Then they all saw the wave as it sped for the COMM tent. As they watched, the battle started up again in the huge command enclosure, with Lisa-facing the Destroyer of Worlds, alone.
***
Gus grabbed Matchstick into his arms and ran for their tent opening. The sight that met his eyes stopped him in his tracks. Bodies were lying everywhere, mutilated and smashed, crumpled and discarded as easily as one would toss away dirty clothes. As he was looking at the scene of slaughter, the whine and zing of bullets sounded in his ears, bringing back memories of his taking fire in Korea. And then he remembered what he'd wanted to do back then and couldn't. But now he could, he thought. The bullets barely missed him as they thumped into the tent flap. He ducked and ran in the direction of the crash site. Mahjtic, sensing the thoughts of the old man, said, "Bug out, bug out, beat feet!"
The animal came straight up through the ground and into the tent's plywood flooring. Lisa was lifted up into the air as the wood cracked and separated. As she hit the ground hard, landing on her back, knocking the wind from her lungs, she came face-to-face with the mother as it roared, shaking its head and sending her mane flaring and slicing through the sides of the tent. She roared again, sending spittle mixed with the blood of Lisa's comrades to soak Lisa's fatigues and face. The animal cocked its massive head and looked with hate-filled eyes at the weak creature staring up at her arrogantly.
Lisa stood stock-still, looking directly at the animal as it stood before her. Drool slowly fell from its open mouth as it leaned forward toward the diminutive human. Lisa swallowed as the creature seemed to be looking her over, possibly smelling her. Her right hand slowly started reaching for the M16 that was caught between an upturned desk and a support pole.
Event (event group thrillers) Page 39