Predator

by James A. Moore

  The medics were doing their best to clean, and clamp, and cauterize and keep everything where it should be, but it was obvious they were fighting a losing battle. No amount of drips providing the Captain with a constant flow of fluids and painkillers, nor a machine that appeared to be doing his breathing for him, could make up for the fact that a significant number of his internal organs had been either lost or ravaged, and that much of what should have been on the inside of his body was now on the outside and slithering for freedom. Although the man’s stout, sixty-year-old heart was still beating, one look was enough to convince Scott that his superior officer was not long for this world. A strong-jawed, square-headed man with grizzled white hair, the Captain’s face was now a ghastly clay-gray, his skin as slack as old, damp wallpaper. Inside his gaping mouth his teeth looked like tiny yellow tombstones, and his neat white hair was clotted with blood.

  Scott watched silently as the medics worked on the Captain for another five minutes, and then for what seemed an eternity more after he had flatlined. Finally, the guy holding the defibrillator paddles, a lean black man with a pointed beard, stepped back with a sigh.

  “Let’s call it, guys.” He consulted his watch. “5.29 p.m.” By the time Scott stepped from the tent he was drenched in sweat. It had been hot in there, and he felt as though the stink of blood and chemicals was clinging to him like smoke. He took a deep breath and looked around. The atmosphere in the camp was one of calmness and composure, the guys recovering in their various ways. Some were sitting in groups chatting or smoking, others dozing in their tents or lounging in the shade, sipping from water bottles. Those with minor injuries – mainly cuts from flying debris – had either patched themselves up or been patched up by their friends.

  Aside from the three fatalities, their collective injuries were relatively slight. There was only one other semi-serious injury, sustained by a round-faced, pimply-cheeked private called Zusak, who had a compound fracture of his left leg. Zusak’s leg had been splinted and strapped and he was now lying on a stretcher with a damp cloth draped over his forehead. Despite the cloth he was sweating and in obvious pain.

  “Why has this man been left out here?” Scott said.

  One of the soldiers sitting nearby, elbows on knees, looked up, then jumped to his feet, snapping off a salute.

  “He’s broken his leg, sir. But he knew the medics were working on Captain Graham, so he didn’t want to bother them.”

  Scott gestured wearily toward the tent. “Well, they’ve finished now, so get him in there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you help him,” Scott said, pointing at another private who was stretched out on the ground nearby.

  The two privates picked up the stretcher. The one who had first replied to Scott’s question asked, “How is Captain Graham, sir?”

  Scott regarded him steadily. “I’m afraid he didn’t make it.”

  The young private swallowed. “I’m really sorry to hear that, sir. The Captain was a fine man. We all liked him.”

  Scott nodded curtly and the two men moved away.

  As they entered the field hospital with Zusak on his stretcher, Marcus sidled up to Scott.

  “Guess that makes you the commanding officer,” he said. Scott nodded. He was used to the weight of responsibility, but the burden of this mission was the heaviest he had ever known.

  “Guess it does,” he said.

  * * *

  The call came through half an hour later, by which time the daylight was fading rapidly. Scott had told the men he would brief them at 7 p.m. Until then they were to eat, drink, and get some rest to conserve their strength.

  He was lying stretched out on his ground sheet, sleepless, his head buzzing with thoughts, when the portable transceiver beside him crackled into life and the voice of Benedict, one of the snipers he had dispatched to keep watch on Moreno’s stronghold, came through.

  Instantly Scott snapped upright and reached out to grab the small black handset.

  “This is Sergeant Scott. Go ahead, Benedict. Over.”

  “Sir, the gates of the castle have opened and approximately sixty men, women and children have exited the building, accompanied by four armed men carrying what look like AR-15s. All but the four men appear to be prisoners. They’re chained together, and after being led out of the building they were secured to the outside wall to form what appears to be a human shield. After securing the prisoners, the four men went back inside the castle and closed the gates again. Over.”

  “I see.” Scott felt his heart thumping hard in his chest. “So the prisoners are still secured to the wall now? Over.”

  “Yes, sir. They’re just sitting or standing there. Over.”

  “And how far round the building does this human chain stretch? Over.”

  “All the way round, sir. There are approximately fifteen people lining each of the four walls. They’re spaced out pretty evenly. Over.”

  “All right, Benedict. Let me know of any further developments. Over.”

  “Will do, sir. Over and out.”

  Scott dropped the receiver and sat back. Shit. This complicated things. There was now no way they could mount a surprise attack under cover of darkness, and no way he could initiate an air strike. So unless they could find some way to get close enough to release the prisoners, all they could do was sit tight and observe.

  His mind scrolled through possible scenarios. He tried to put himself in the enemy’s position. They had fired on Scott and his team earlier, but did they actually know who they had fired on? Had their bombardment been based on solid intel, or had they seen the sunlight reflecting off field glasses or rifles and decided their best option was to throw everything at whoever was out there?

  Clearly Moreno had concluded that whoever was watching them was something to do with law enforcement, and not merely a rival cartel gang, because why bother with the human shield otherwise? Human lives meant nothing to the cartels, so a human shield would be no sort of deterrent to a rival intent on all-out attack.

  If, as US Department of Defense intelligence suggested, Moreno and his men were harboring Al-Qaeda operatives, then what would their next move be? If Moreno had a helicopter inside the castle (which was a possibility, it was big enough for one), they might try to escape in it. But a helicopter’s flight path could be monitored, and it would be surrounded as soon as it touched down. A better option for Moreno, therefore, might be to threaten to kill the hostages one by one if he and his “guests” were not granted safe passage.

  But again, such a tactic was fraught with peril. There was no way the US authorities would allow potentially dangerous terrorists to get away scot free, just as there was no way they would stand by while innocent hostages were executed. As it stood, the situation was finely balanced, with no give or take on either side. To Scott, the welfare of the hostages was just as important as the security risk to the US. How his superiors would view the situation was another matter, but he would deal with that eventuality if and when it arose. For now, all he could do was make his report and ensure he and his men remained both vigilant and patient.

  * * *

  “Man, I really gotta take a piss,” Marcus muttered.

  Scott grinned at him in the darkness, his teeth and eyes glowing like tiny Halloween lanterns through the night goggles. “Go for it, soldier. Have one for me while you’re there.”

  “Will do, Sergeant.”

  Marcus shuffled backwards down the hill, only standing up when he was sure his head would not be seen above the lip of the slope. Not that Moreno’s men would be able to spot him in the darkness – well, not unless they had night-vision equipment, which, given they had armor-piercing shells and a rocket launcher, was not beyond the realms of possibility.

  Four hours they had been watching the castle. Four hours, and the only signs of life had come from the chained hostages surrounding the building. From what Marcus and his colleagues could tell, the hostages seemed to be in okay shape. The ones visible f
rom their fairly wide vantage point, which covered two sides of the building, all carried plastic bottles of water, from which they took occasional sips. None of them seemed to be in any physical distress, not even the kids, and pretty much all of them were now either lying on the sand, sleeping, or sitting with their backs against the wall of the building. There had been a concern that hypothermia might be an issue, but fortunately, although the air in the desert had turned chilly, it wasn’t anywhere near cold enough to cause a problem.

  After the bombardment, and the subsequent casualties they had suffered that afternoon, Scott, after consultation with his superiors, had had to make the ultimate decision whether or not to put his team in the firing line again. It had been a tough call to make, but Marcus thought his best friend had ultimately made the right one. He could have just left the three snipers on watch, or he could have hedged his bets and sent a minimal fighting force to keep tabs on the enemy. In the end, though, he had decided their camp was too far away from the castle for them to mobilize quickly enough if anything should happen, and so, rather than breaking the camp down and re-establishing it closer to Moreno’s stronghold, which would have put them within missile range of the enemy’s weapons, he had decided they should creep back en masse under cover of darkness and re-establish surveillance.

  He had warned the men it was likely to be a waiting game, and so it had proved. In the past four hours, very little had happened. In fact, the only thing of any note had come toward the tail end of Scott’s briefing. The men had been gathered outside, under a sky festooned with stars, when they had all heard a sound overhead that had made them look up. It had sounded a little like an engine, but one that was sleek, high-powered, almost impossibly quiet.

  Marcus’s first thought – and he suspected Scott’s too, judging by the brief expression of alarm on his face – had been that Moreno and his men were making their escape. But it quickly became evident that the craft, or whatever it was, was heading not away from Moreno’s stronghold, but toward it.

  Like everyone around him, Marcus immediately produced his binoculars and scanned the sky, and just for a split-second he thought he saw a shimmer in the air, a brief distortion that made the stars overhead stretch and blur, as if reflected in a breeze-ruffled pool. Then the anomaly was gone, and Marcus blinked and refocused and decided that the fault lay with his eyes or his equipment. He said nothing about it, and neither did anyone else, and when Scott radioed through to the three snipers on the ridge they reported nothing out of the ordinary. In the end, after checking with the support team, who had satellite links with a whole slew of civilian and military high-security clearance specialists, and being told that no aircraft, either authorized or unauthorized, had been detected in the area, it was decided that the sound must have been some auditory fluke that had reached them across miles of desert from some distant location – or even, as Flynn put it, eyes wide and voice breathy with portent, “It’s a ghost plane, man. A fucking ghost plane. I’m serious. I’ve heard about these things.”

  Marcus chuckled now at the memory as he trudged down toward the trench that he and the other guys were using as a toilet. The trench was behind a thick clump of agave plants, each of whose fleshy leaves curled upwards from the central base like a mass of barbed green tongues.

  He pissed long and hard, sighing in relief, and was just tucking himself away when he heard a rustle of movement in the tangle of scrub and cacti on the far side of the trench. Instantly his muscles tensed and his hand went instinctively to his handgun. His first thought was that Moreno had put a call out for reinforcements, who were now sneaking up behind them in the darkness.

  Feeling vulnerable, Marcus edged back toward the agave plants, hoping to find at least some cover behind them, even though he knew they wouldn’t provide much of a shield if the enemy opened fire.

  By the time he had reached the plants and crouched behind them, he had begun to think a little more rationally. Whilst not discounting his initial theory, he thought it more likely he had heard something far less threatening than a human being – a fox, maybe, or a hare, or a prairie dog. Or a coyote or bobcat, maybe even a wolf. Deciding that shooting at desert wildlife was not a wise move – the sound might carry all the way to the stronghold, and prompt Moreno to launch another barrage – Marcus kept his right hand on the grip of his holstered pistol, and used his other hand to slide his combat knife from its sheath.

  For a couple of minutes he remained where he was, listening, but the sound was not repeated. He scanned the terrain through his night goggles. He saw rocks, man-sized cacti and clumps of foliage, all of which were potential hiding places, though not great ones – not unless the hiders were tucked in tight and completely motionless.

  He wondered how long he should wait. Although it was likely he had heard nothing but some nocturnal creature going about its business, if there was one thing he had learned in the army, it was that he should never be complacent. If he dismissed what he had heard, and moved away, and the team was ambushed, he’d never forgive himself.

  Another couple of minutes passed, then two more, by which time Marcus had decided that his best bet was to head back to the ridge, tell Scott what he’d heard, and return with a few guys to check the area out thoroughly. He gave the terrain another quick scan, and prepared to move away.

  That was when a six-foot-long rattlesnake slithered out from between two agave plants two meters to his left.

  Marcus’s head snapped round, his heart leaping in his chest. His first thought was that the snake had deliberately snuck up on him, and as he leapt to his feet he jerked up his knife, pointing it at the reptile, as though daring it to attack.

  Moments later he was feeling foolish. Ignoring him completely, the rattler turned not toward Marcus, but in the opposite direction, and slithered almost disdainfully away, heading for a clump of nearby rocks. Marcus watched until it had disappeared from sight, and then gave a shaky laugh. Man, if that thing had appeared while he’d been taking a leak, he would have jumped a mile in the air and pissed down his leg.

  Giving the terrain a final check, and shuddering at the thought of what else might be lurking out in the darkness, he turned and trudged away. He was plodding back up the slope, halfway between its base and the ridge that overlooked Moreno’s stronghold, when the stillness of the night was torn apart by gunfire.

  He threw himself to the ground, worried that one of the team had been spotted and they were once again under attack. But then, raising his head, he saw nothing had changed. There were no explosions, no flashes of fire, no bursts of debris, nothing to suggest the gunfire was directed at them. So who the hell was it directed at? Pushing himself to his feet, he began to run in a crouch up the slope. The only possible source for it was the castle, and Marcus dreaded to think what was happening there. Were the hostages being executed? Were Moreno’s men under attack from another source? Had civil war broken out among the cartel soldiers, or maybe between the cartel and their terrorist “guests”?

  Sliding to the floor beside Scott, who was lying flat on his stomach, peering through his binoculars, he panted, “What’s going on?”

  “Fuck knows,” Scott said, “but the hostages are escaping.”

  “Escaping?”

  “Take a look for yourself.”

  Marcus fumbled his own binoculars from their pouch.

  Sure enough, he saw prisoners breaking free from the wall, rushing into the desert. Watching a woman snatching up a small child and fleeing into the darkness, he asked, “What happened? How did they get free?”

  “I don’t know,” said Scott. “It’s like someone cut the chain. But if they did, I didn’t see it. Must have happened on the other side of the building.”

  There was more gunfire. Three short bursts, followed seconds later by a fourth. Then, drifting up the hill toward them, another sound.

  Screaming. The screaming of someone in abject pain or terror that was then abruptly cut off.

  Marcus looked at Scott. “Wha
t the fuck is happening down there?”

  “Sounds like someone’s doing our job for us.”

  “Sounds like a fucking slaughter,” Marcus said.

  More gunfire. More screams. It continued, off and on, for five more minutes. Then there was silence. Murmured reports came in from the other guys, but no one had seen anything, and they were all asking the same question: What the fuck just happened down there?

  If it had been part of some cartel war they’d have seen vehicles and men. So what did that leave? Another black ops team? No, that was crazy. Scott would have been informed.

  He thought of the mission in Scotland a year ago. Of how Havana had turned up, followed closely by those government goons.

  What was it Dutch Schaefer had said to Scott? Something about his team having different priorities, hunting more dangerous prey than terrorists.

  “What now?” Marcus muttered. “Do we go down there?”

  Scott shook his head. “We wait. The hostages got away, so we wait just a little longer. See if anyone comes out.”

  But no one did. Now that the mayhem was over, the castle looked like nothing but an abandoned building in the middle of the desert, silent and lightless. After an hour Scott gave the order for the men to move in. Slowly and cautiously.

  As it turned out, their caution was unnecessary. No one attacked them. No one fired at them. They converged on the castle from all sides, and were astonished to find the main double doors – reinforced oak at least two feet thick – standing wide open like an invitation.

  Beyond the doors was a cobbled courtyard fringed with palms and other plants, a fountain gurgling happily away in the middle. Beyond that was a beautiful, three-storied house, all elegant columns and arches, its walls painted pink. Surrounding the house on all sides were the interior castle walls, which resembled old-fashioned castle ramparts, gun posts set at regular intervals. It was an odd and incongruous arrangement, and Scott couldn’t help thinking that the house was like a pretty pink cake protected within a sturdy cardboard box.