Predator

by James A. Moore

  The leader of the suits – whom Scott immediately recognized as Ellison, the gangly, lantern-jawed guy who had turned up at the abandoned school in Scotland several years ago – was waving his arms about and shouting. Scott heard him telling the Major that he would be in deep shit if he didn’t stand aside, but instead of doing so, Dutch was merely staring back at him with a half-smile of amusement on his face.

  When Scott and his party appeared over the lip of the crater, the heads of the three suits immediately swung toward them, and all twelve of the mercs pointed their rifles in their direction. Ishfaq and Collins froze, and Scott had to resist an urge to raise his hands. Cook, though, merely began to tramp down the side of the slope, ignoring the mercs. Halfway down he looked across at Ellison, then pointed back at Dorantes, unconscious on the stretcher.

  “This man needs immediate medical attention,” he shouted. “If he don’t get it, he’ll die.”

  Cook had already put a call through en route, informing Schaefer of the situation, who in turn had alerted the Chinook to their imminent arrival. In a moment the Chinook would be with them, unable to land but ready to airlift Dorantes from the lip of the crater to the nearest medical facility.

  Ellison glared at Cook even as they heard the Chinook approaching. “That’s hardly my concern, soldier.”

  “That man lost an arm in pursuit of his duties,” Dutch said, raising his voice above the increasing noise of the Chinook. “Another lost his life. You really expect us to dishonor their sacrifices by handing the site over to you?”

  Ellison gave him a disbelieving look. “Dishonor their sacrifices? What are you, Schaefer? A Knight of the fucking Round Table?”

  Dutch’s face remained deadpan. “Take your men and go, Ellison. This find belongs to us.”

  Ellison was shaking his head, still with that same disbelieving look on his face. “You really don’t understand, do you, Schaefer? This is not a child’s game. This is not finders keepers. We have jurisdiction here.”

  The Chinook had appeared over the crater now and was hovering above them, causing dust to swirl up from the rubbly ground.

  “I don’t think so,” Dutch shouted.

  Ellison’s face was turning red, his eyes bulging. “I know so.”

  Dutch raised his arm and suddenly a bolt of light shot across the crater and hit a small tree to the left of the group of mercs, instantly reducing it to burning charcoal.

  “This is the only jurisdiction I need,” Dutch yelled as the Chinook began to lower a stretcher to the waiting group clustered around the prone form of Dorantes below. “Goodbye, Mr. Ellison.”

  Ellison looked as though he might explode. If sheer rage could kill a man, then Dutch would have been as dead as the tree he had just destroyed. The government man simmered for a moment, fists clenched, shoulders hunched, eyes darting to take in the wrecked shuttle, the men standing around it, the men standing behind Dutch, and then finally, once again, Dutch himself.

  He’s not seriously weighing up the odds? Scott thought. Not seriously wondering whether his dozen guys, standing out in the open like targets on a shooting range, could possibly win a gun battle with over twice as many armed troops?

  If Ellison was wondering that, then it took him only seconds to discard the notion. Face clenching like his fists, he yelled, “You have made a serious mistake here, Schaefer. There will be repercussions for this. I promise you that.”

  Like Cook before him, Dutch appeared unmoved by the threat. His face was like stone, his eyes unblinking, as he watched Ellison swing round and, trailed by his entourage, stomp back up the slope.

  CHAPTER TEN

  2011

  There were times during the next three and a half years when Scott wondered whether Dutch Schaefer was dead.

  Aside from Flynn’s absence, which they all felt keenly, it was almost as if the mission to the Zuni-Bandera Volcanic Fields had never happened. Once Ellison and his men had beat a hasty retreat with their tails between their legs, Dutch had thanked Scott and his team for their help, and then had told Scott that he had arranged for alternative transport to take them back to base.

  Scott had been taken aback. “Have we done something wrong, Major?”

  “Not at all,” Dutch said, seemingly surprised by the question. “Your men have acquitted themselves admirably. But there’s nothing else you can do here, so you might as well head back, return to your normal duties.”

  Scott looked at the various pieces of equipment which had been stripped from the alien shuttle, some large, some small, laid out on the ground in readiness to be transferred to… well, he didn’t exactly know where, but he guessed it was some government R&D department linked to the Major’s employers.

  “Won’t you need help loading all this on board the Chinook when it gets back?”

  Dutch shook his head. “No, we’re good. We’ll send a team out to the caves too, though Cook tells me he doubts there’ll be much to salvage there.”

  Scott nodded. “Most of it got blown up.” He hesitated, then said, “But Flynn’s still out there… his body, I mean. I’m reluctant to leave without him.”

  “We’ll bring him back to you,” Dutch said. “I promise you that. We’ll treat him with the utmost respect.”

  “I don’t doubt that, sir.” Another hesitation. “Are you ordering us to leave?”

  “I guess I am, Captain.”

  “Then I suppose we don’t have much choice.” Scott saluted. “It’s been an honor to serve with you, sir.”

  Dutch returned the salute. “This won’t be the last time, Captain.”

  “I hope not, sir.”

  But over three years later, Scott had begun to think that maybe it had been the last time. Because since the mission in New Mexico, Schaefer and his team had dropped off the radar. Although Scott now had access to reports and information he wouldn’t have dreamed would ever fall within his purview a few years ago, there was no mention in any of them of Dutch Schaefer, or of Havana. Indeed, neither was there any mention of recent alien engagement. It was obvious that occasional incursions had taken place, nearly all in remote locations, but they seemed nothing more than snatch-and-grab raids, the Hunters long gone, leaving nothing behind, by the time the skinned and headless bodies had been found.

  Scott could only conclude from all this that Dutch Schaefer and his men had either gone into deep, deep cover, that Havana had been disbanded, or that they were all dead. Would Schaefer contact him if he could? Scott wondered. He had to admit he wasn’t sure. After all, why would Dutch contact him? To catch up? Chew the fat? No, he’d surely only get in touch if he needed the extra manpower that Scott and his team provided.

  Perhaps, then, these last few years had been, for whatever reason, a fallow period. In an attempt to put it out of his mind he had got on with his life, his own missions, his own job. He had thrown himself into his work with the commitment and focus that he had always shown, and that had earned him the respect of his superiors and the men who served under him. But secretly he hadn’t been able to help wondering whether there was a whole different battle going on without his knowledge, a battle he had once been given a taste of, but from which he had now, for whatever reason, been frozen out. Despite Schaefer’s words, Scott had wondered, over the years, whether he had done something wrong, whether he had somehow fallen short of the Major’s expectations. Then, at other times, he had wondered whether Schaefer was keeping him at arm’s length simply in order to protect him. But from what? The Hunters? Internal politics? The shady factions within the government? He no longer had his little red book, because the questions he had been asking in that had long since been answered. Only trouble was, he had new questions. Questions he was aching to learn the answers to.

  Then, one day in February 2011, a whole slew of those questions were answered.

  It was a quiet time, a lull between missions. New information had been coming in, and Scott was at the end of a week of meetings and briefings, where strategies had been discusse
d, risks evaluated, possibilities and probabilities debated over ad nauseam. In many ways he found all this – the diplomacy required, the need to appease politicians, and to strike a happy balance between reasonable concern and outright panic – more exhausting than being in the field. Brain and eyes throbbing, he had gone for a run to clear his head, and when he returned to his quarters, dripping with sweat and looking forward to a hot shower, the toe of his running shoe had kicked against a folded scrap of paper which had been slipped underneath his door.

  A quick turn of the head to check the corridor, then he closed the door behind him and picked up the paper. It was a sheet ripped from a cheap lined notepad, perforations torn raggedly across the top. He opened it and read the words printed there in blue capitals:

  O’REILLY’S 9 P.M.

  In the shower, after tearing the sheet of paper into tiny pieces and flushing it down the toilet, Scott considered his options. He was known as an exemplary officer, one who was calm in battle and never took unnecessary risks, but who was nevertheless resourceful, adaptable, intelligent, occasionally inspired. He was known too for his excellent instincts, but what did his instincts tell him about the note he had received? He was one of the US military’s top counterterrorism officers, and although his identity was fiercely guarded, by that definition alone he had many potential enemies.

  So could this be a trap? Although not beyond the bounds of possibility, it seemed to Scott unlikely. A budding assassin would not be so circumspect, so mysterious. He would leave no room for doubt, but would instead, if he wanted to lure Scott into the open, come up with something eminently more plausible and less likely to arouse suspicion.

  Still… it would be unwise to go, particularly alone and with no backup. But the sender of the note would know that, wouldn’t he? Unless he was phenomenally stupid, he would know exactly what was going through Scott’s mind right now. Which meant…

  At 9 p.m. that night, Scott walked down a flight of steps and entered a basement-level bar in a quiet backstreet in the sleepy town of Viner Hill, South Carolina, which was a little under four miles from the Viner Hill US Military Base, where he was currently stationed.

  He was alone.

  O’Reilly’s was dark, low ceilinged, and smelled of sweat, stale fabric and old beer. A red neon Budweiser sign on the wall gave the place either a rosy glow or a hellish cast, depending on how you looked at it. Booths in cracked red leather lined both sides of the central bar, behind which a skinny man wearing a checked shirt, his buggy eyes peering from between curtains of lank hair, was morosely polishing glasses with a gray cloth. In an open area off to the right the green baize of a pool table looked luminescent beneath an overhead light. The click of pool balls competed with a thin drawl of country music, which drifted tinnily from hidden speakers.

  Aside from the pool players, a bunch of burly-looking country boys, the place was sparsely populated. Looking around, Scott saw a fat, bespectacled barfly in a sweat-stained cream shirt and bootlace tie perched on a stool at the far corner of the bar; a young couple in one of the booths to his left, staring glumly into their Cokes, as if lamenting the fact they’d been refused alcohol; and, in a closer booth, two up from the couple, a thin, fidgety man with unkempt hair and a long threadbare overcoat, whose hands were curled around his whiskey glass as if it was an injured bird he was nursing back to health.

  Seeing nothing that seemed to constitute a threat, Scott approached the bar, studiously avoiding eye contact with the barfly, whose body language suggested he was up for a chat. The bartender put down the glass and cloth with a sigh and sidled over.

  “Get you?”

  Scott ordered a bottle of Belgian beer, at which the bartender raised his eyebrows as if he considered the choice ostentatious. While he popped the cap, Scott looked around again, and a few booths down from the young couple, on the left-hand side of the bar, he saw a silhouette of a man raise a hand.

  Scott paid for his beer, grabbed the condensation-freckled bottle from the bar, and walked down toward the man. The low-level lighting around the bar area threw that part of the room into shadow, and he approached cautiously, eyes narrowed.

  He recognized him when he was two booths away, though only because he half-rose to greet Scott. Scott nodded in greeting, but in truth he was more than a little shocked by Schaefer’s appearance. It wasn’t that the Major was noticeably thinner than the last time Scott had seen him (though, by most normal standards, he still looked fighting fit), or even that his hair and beard were whiter than ever before. No, it was the ugly grid-like pattern of red scars on one side of Dutch’s face. The Major looked as though someone had tried to force his head through the mesh of an electrified fence.

  “Major Schaefer,” he said, trying to keep his face and voice neutral. “I had a feeling it might be you.”

  “More than a feeling, I would guess,” Schaefer replied. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have come here alone. You are alone, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “Though you will have informed Sergeant Thorne of your whereabouts. And he will be expecting you to message him right about now.”

  “Am I really so transparent?”

  “You’re only doing what I would do under similar circumstances. You take risks, but not reckless ones. And you cover your back as much as possible. Please, sit down. Can I get you a drink?”

  Scott held up his bottle. “I’ve only just started this one, thanks.”

  He sat. As he messaged Marcus, Schaefer said, “First things first. Let’s address the elephant in the room.”

  Scott looked at him steadily. “I assume the other guy came off worse?”

  Something passed across Dutch’s face; a fleeting wince, as if at a sudden stab of internal pain. “In this case, unfortunately not,” he said. “And it wasn’t a he, it was a she.”

  Scott’s eyes widened.

  Dutch raised a weary hand, as if to ward off a flurry of questions. “It happened a few months after New Mexico. My men and I were dispatched to a small village in Laos, which intel informed us was a definite hunting ground. But when we got there the village was empty. No bodies, no blood, nothing. It wasn’t until we reached a square in the center of the village that we received our first and only indication we’d come to the right place – a fresh human skull and spine, impaled on a Hunter’s spear that had been rammed into a hole in the ground.”

  Dutch bared his teeth, though whether in a smile or a snarl it was difficult to tell, and lubricated his throat with a swallow of beer. “We knew straight away the Hunter was aware of our presence, and was taunting us. But before we could decide what to do about it, all hell broke loose. Every man who was with me that day was a highly trained soldier, most of whom had been with me for years. They knew how not to make themselves targets, and how to find cover when under fire. But despite that…” He faltered, cleared his throat. Took another swig of beer. “…they were wiped out, every last one of them. Angus, Blaine, Cook…”

  His voice didn’t just falter this time, but gave out completely. His head drooped and Scott, stunned by what Dutch had told him, found himself staring at the older man’s cropped white hair, old scars clearly visible on the skull beneath.

  Though country music still played over the bar’s speakers, it felt to Scott as if, for several seconds, he and the Major were enclosed in a bubble of silence. Then he cleared his throat and said, “You were ambushed?”

  Still staring at the tabletop, Dutch’s head moved in a nod.

  “How many of them were there?”

  Now Dutch looked up. The expression on his face was a complex blend of shame, embarrassment, anger, grief. “Just one. But she… she was faster, and smarter, and more ruthless than any Hunter I’ve ever encountered.”

  That word again. “She?” Scott repeated.

  “We’re pretty sure it was a female. I’m pretty sure she was… royalty of some sort. Or whatever passes for royalty on their world. I thought we had the measure of these fuckers. But she
tore us apart. And she did it without breaking sweat. We were like children against her.”

  “So how did you escape?” Scott asked.

  Dutch looked shamefaced. “I didn’t. She let me go.”

  “She let you go?”

  Dutch’s scarred features now settled into a grim mask, as if recalling the encounter was an ordeal he was determined to see through, no matter what.

  “Once she had picked off my men, she turned her attention to me. She’d pinned me against a wall with a razor net. I couldn’t move. Every time I struggled, the net tightened, cutting into my body, my face. I was completely at her mercy. I’d accepted I was going to die. I saw her walking toward me through the blood running into my eyes. She looked at me for a moment. And then she just… vanished into the jungle. I felt the net loosening, relaxing. Then it just fell away. I was left with these scars as a keepsake, the only survivor of the biggest clusterfuck I’ve ever been involved in.”

  He came to an abrupt stop, then consolidated the fact by taking another, aggressive chug of beer. Despite his granite expression, Scott saw the survivor guilt swimming in Dutch’s eyes. He wasn’t sure how to respond to the big man’s story. Asking Dutch directly how he’d coped with the experience, what he’d been doing since it happened, seemed too intrusive, too personal, but he needed to help him come back from the past.

  “And that was three years ago?”

  Dutch put down his beer bottle with a decisive clunk. “Yep. Bet you’ve been wondering why you haven’t heard from me in all that time, huh? Bet you thought I was dead.”

  Scott smiled. “It did cross my mind a couple times, especially as there was nothing in the reports. No mention of you or Havana.”