Читать книгу Arachnosaur - Richard Jeffries - Страница 8

Chapter 1

Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Goodman’s head exploded with such force, and so near Josiah Key’s face, that a piece of the commanding officer’s helmet smacked the corporal’s forehead. It knocked Key unconscious, despite his own strapped-on flack helmet.

Key had no idea how long he was out. It could’ve been a second, it could’ve been an eternity. He might even be dead, he couldn’t be absolutely sure. What he woke up to certainly seemed like perdition; hell a la Yemen. Sergeant Morton Daniels’ contorted face filled his vision, bellowing at him. Then Joe noticed that all around the mans’ swarthy, mottled, sweaty head was a halo of fire.

Goodman’s brain and body started moving the moment consciousness touched him. Grabbing a fistful of Daniels’ curly, black, naturally greasy hair, Key dragged himself up while moving the other man’s head out of his field of vision.

Key immediately regretted it. His waking ears and opened eyes were immediately filled by the sound and sight of all-encompassing enemy fire.

At once, releasing the hair of his companion, Goodman’s M249 Squad Automatic Weapon was up, seeking targets at the same moment Daniels’s M240 machine gun was doing the same in the opposite direction.

Key started barking as soon as he found his voice. “What the hell happ—”

But as usual with the sarge, he was already answering just as loudly.“One sec, nothing, next sec, shit-storm!”

Key could now see that. The dead corporal had warned them things could always get messy as soon as they left base, but not this messy. This messy challenged even Key’s well-developed imagination.

“Take cover!” he bellowed, his M249 SAW finding nothing but ricochets, reports, and detonations to target. Where the hell was the enemy?

“Copy that!” Daniels yelled back. “Any suggestions where?”

Trust Sarge D to crack wise even in a firestorm. Key remembered that was one of the reasons he’d gravitated toward the man in basic, despite his rep of having a bite far worse than his bark. But, strangely, that was just about all Key could remember. As if God was scrunching the edges of his brain, his memories started dissipating like popping soap bubbles.

“Find a friggin’ hole and fall into it!” he yelled, getting increasing anxious and annoyed in equal measure.

He felt Morty’s huge, rough hand grabbing his arm, and the next thing he knew they were both flat on their backs in a shallow divot created by a tank tread. It was hardly enough to give them cover, but it would have to do.

One question, he thought. Where’s the fucking tank? Then God started rubbing petroleum jelly around the edges of his eyes as well.

Key tried to focus at the way the front of his boots poked up against the divot’s lip, expecting to see his toes blown off at any second. But it didn’t take more than another second for him to realize what was happening to him.

“Shit,” he said over the whomping going on all around them. “I’ve been conked.”

“What?” Daniels complained as a tree limb shattered above them, scratching their faces with jagged bark. “Not again!”

Yeah, that’s right, Key managed to recall. That’s where he had heard the “conked” term before. The base doc had said it when he had diagnosed Key’s previous, original, concussion. And doc had given him the self-diagnostic list then, too.

“Symptoms check.” Key grunted miserably. “I’m nauseous.”

“You’re nauseous!” Daniels snapped. “I’m nauseous! Anybody’d be nauseous in this shit!”

There was a vicious whine just above them, and Key could feel a wave of heat make a line from his forehead to his crotch. The thing causing it just missed them before continuing on to smash through an already crumbling wall fifty feet beyond.

FGM-148 Javelin, Joe automatically assumed. Nice that some hard-won memories defied even concussions. But whether the anti-tank missile was fired by the good or the bad guys was anybody’s guess.

“Headache, dizzy, ringing in my ears,” Key continued, trying to stave off total amnesia.

“Okay, okay!” Daniels grumbled. “You oughta know. What do you want from me?”

“Memory loss growing, need your help.”

“Christ, Joe.” The honest concern in Daniels voice was music above the cacophony. “Do you even know you’re Joe?”

“Yeah,” Key answered, struggling to be present, feeling stronger already.

“Tell me.”

“We’re 3rd Battalion, Marine Raiders, M Company, eighty-five strong.”

“Not anymore,” Daniels reported with his usual lack of empathy. “Heavy defensive fire. Surprisingly heavy.”

That comment let Key know the attack must’ve been seventh level of hell heavy. Daniels prided himself on taking the worst in stride. “What are we down to?”

“Last time I could check, less than fifty. Sergeant major shot to hell. Lieutenant colonel just blew up in your face.”

Key gritted his teeth, then hazarded a quick look around. He returned to his prone position with his cracked skull thankfully still just cracked. But he could still not distinguish enemy from friendly fire. Worse, he couldn’t find any human source of the shit-storm. “Where is everybody?”

“Damned if I know,” Daniels said.

“Where’s comm?”

“No live communication for a coupla minutes now.”

“What? So who’s commander now?

“Near as I can tell, you,” Daniels said. Then he added sarcastically, “God help us.”

Key ignored the comment, but couldn’t disagree. Finally made it to chief with a nice new concussion as a reward. Even so, he still could remember that his rep was “Joe Cool.” According to Daniels, he never lost it. No time to start now.

First things first, he heard the father inside him instruct.

“Where are we?” he yelled at Daniels in a tone that broached no sarcasm.

“Outside of Shabhut,” Daniels spat back, then couldn’t help elaborating. “Well-fucking named. A more miserably shabby mound of huts I’ve never seen.” Then, when Key didn’t answer, he felt compelled to add, “Outside of Aden, inside of Yemen!”

Joe remembered where that was. Good sign. “What are we doing here?”

“Orders. Code C3,” Daniels reported, then added with just a tinge of doubt, “Do you at least know what that is?”

Clean the town.

“Yeah, I know what that is,” Joe answered, struggling to keep misery out of his voice. “But the town seems to be cleaning us.”

Key twisted in place, looking in every direction for a sign of anything or anyone who could help. He saw nothing but smoke, dust, and strafing. But, above the wining, sizzling bullet noises, he heard a growing, grinding, thundering sound just as the ground beneath him began to shake.

The tank? He both wondered and hoped. Had to be a tank. If so, had to be our side. Enemy didn’t have…!

“Fuckaduck!” Daniels bellowed at the same moment the sarge’s huge paw dragged Key up. “ASS!”

Within seconds of reaching his feet, Key knew Daniels wasn’t referring to their butts, or even suggesting in his usual subtle way that they move theirs. He was using the age-old term for “asset”—one with a lot of firepower.

Sure enough, rumbling and roaring down the tank track was a Marine HMMWV—High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, or Humvee—that seemed intent on leaving sergeant and corporal jelly beneath their ten-foot-ten-inch wheelbase.

Even though his mental fog, Key could tell that whoever was driving was fully committed to get the hell out of there. The now opaque windshield looked like crimson stained glass, and the doors looked as if they had been pounded by Satan’s fists. The big tan Humvee roared by them as Daniels’ eyes bulged—first at the retreating vehicle, then at his strangely apathetic friend.

“Fuck,” Daniels started as he let his M240 drop, it’s strap making it swing behind him. “A,” he continued as he grabbed the M32 Multi-shot Grenade Launcher that hung from his other shoulder. “Duck!” he boomed as he aimed it at the back of the diminishing lorry.

Key just stood there, feeling strangely calm amidst the storm. Then, as if his eyes were cameras, they suddenly zoomed in for a close-up on the rear of the Humvee. Strapped to the back of the payload bed was a large rectangular box he didn’t recognize.

That’s weird, he thought. We didn’t leave base with that.

“Daniels,” he suddenly yelled. “No!”

But it was too late. The sarge had decided that either the enemy had captured the vehicle or some chicken-shit coward was running. Either way they deserved a forty by fifty-one millimeter extended range low pressure high explosive.

Key was jumping onto Daniels as the shell made a grey line toward the back of the barreling Humvee. It hit its target just as Key hit Daniels. The reaction between the two, however, could not have been more different.

The corporal bounced off the sergeant, who had been described more than once, by more than one person—including soldiers too young to know what the expression even meant—as a brick shithouse. The fact that he could carry both a M240 and a M32 at the same time as if they were a messenger bag and a purse gave testament to his size and strength.

The grenade, however, did not bounce. It detonated with a cracking bang, followed, as Key feared, with a ground-shaking, Humvee-bouncing, air-quaking ba-boom. The back of the HMMWV was filled with boxed enemy ammo.

Key slammed to the ground just as a sizzling shockwave of heat, dust, sand, and shrapnel swept over him like a scythe. The force was so strong, he didn’t even bounce. Instead he was buffeted, shook, and even skidded a little. But this time he was sure he didn’t lose consciousness. Which was strange, because a cloud the color of bones settled over him, along with a perplexing sensation of peace.

That’s it, he managed to think. I’m dead.

The certainty of his demise made it easy for him. If he was dead, the concussion wouldn’t matter, nor would anything else. So, he just sat up, rolled to his side, and rose to his feet. He stood there for a few seconds, trying to see or hear anything. Anything: screams, gunfire, Daniels’s profanity. But there was nothing. Nothing but the uncanny off-white cloud that seemed to envelope him.

So Key started walking. He thought the mist would soon dissipate, but it didn’t. So he just kept moving. He didn’t know for how long or in what direction. As long as he was covered in fog he kept moving.

Come on, come on, he thought. Heaven or hell, make a decision.

He only paused for a second when he realized that maybe they already had. Maybe this was purgatory. Maybe he was doomed to walk in this for God-knows-how-long.

Key chuckled at the truth of that. Yeah, only God knew how long. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken Your name in vain so often….

As if in response, the mist finally began to clear. Key stopped dead in his tracks as the smoke retreated—like he was a circular fan. All around him a devastated village began to appear. The whole place looked like a giant lawn mover had been dropped on it. The dwellings didn’t look so much detonated as shredded. The foliage didn’t look so much cracked or broken as frayed.

Then something else started coming into view. At first Key didn’t even recognize them as corpses. The pungent smell—it could’ve been anything dead. He’d smelled carcasses before, in the mountains of Southern California where he grew up. It wasn’t until he realized that the hair, fingernails, and toenails were human in origin that he acknowledged them as more than elaborately slaughtered animals.

The hands and feet of the corpses weren’t just sliced open, they seemed inflated until they burst. In fact, all the limbs of the corpses were like that—even the heads. Popped balloons. Balloons popped from the inside, by shattering nails. What sort of weapon did this? What sort of weapon could do this?

Key walked slowly around, forcing himself to stare at the devastated bodies—trying to recognize something, anything, about them. Their hair was colored the same dark black by their staggeringly violent deaths, so that was little help. Only the length gave hint of male or female—but not in any convincingly effective manner.

But their remaining, tattered, blood-and-gut-stained clothing held the only real clues. Key could distinguish villager from soldier, but just barely. He dreaded seeing insignia or ID patches, but he looked intently for them just the same.

A young woman’s face flashed in his mind’s eye. He wasn’t proud that he put his hope that Terri Nichols was alive above the rest, but he had felt protective from the moment she joined their squad. She was also from Michigan, like him, and was the youngest, the nicest, and, yes, the prettiest member of the unit. Also the toughest, strongest, smartest girl he had ever met. He was proud to work alongside her, and he wasn’t going to blame himself for feeling that way, or for feeling glad that he could find no evidence of her among the corpses.

Then he heard it. And felt it. A foot fall.

Josiah Key looked up, straining to see into the remaining mist, which encircled the ruined village like a net. As he stared, a silhouette began to outline itself in the steamy shroud. He suddenly felt his M249 SAW tight in his hands, but he did not shift his stare a centimeter. He waited until a figure began to emerge from the cloud like a drowning victim surfacing from the sea.

He was not a US soldier. He wore a darkly dyed thawb, the traditional long-sleeved, ankle-length garment, only with fatigue pants and army boots. He also wore a turban, but with a gauzy scarf that rippled in the breeze like a flag. But it was not a flag of surrender. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Key would have recognized him even if he was wrapped like a mummy. He had seen his face enough, on screen, on paper, on walls, on desks, and even on flesh in the form of a tattoo. It was Usa Awar, one of the enemy’s most wanted terrorists and killers.

He stood twenty feet away from Key, staring back at him with indifference. No, it was more than that. He stared at Key the way a serial killer stares at a victim: not as an animal, but the way a human stares at an animal it is about to kill. As something only worthy of slaughtering.

And he held in his right hand, blood pouring out its neck to spread on the village ground, the decapitated head of Private Terri Nichols.

Key screamed in regret and rage, his forefinger clamping on the trigger of the M249 until its thirty forty-five caliber shells obliterated Awar from his sight. Even then he didn’t stop. He instantly replaced the empty weapon with his M9 Beretta sidearm, emptying its fifteen nine millimeter rounds into the same smug face.

It wasn’t until a distant beeping distracted him that he finally stopped. He looked down to see a red light flashing inside his pants pocket. The beeping was coming from there.

Like an automaton, Key reached into his pocket to find his personal smartphone flashing and beeping—something he never equipped it to do. He raised it to his numb face to see a small box on the device’s screen. The box read: “Military Override. Urgent Incoming Message.”

Like so many in the cellphone age, Key’s thumb automatically, seemingly involuntarily, responded.

The message appeared, and repeated, again and again. “C5, C5, C5, C5, C5…”

The cleaning had been upgraded. It was now “With Extreme Prejudice.”

Josiah Key looked up to see that Awar was gone. There was no sign of Nichols’s skull, or any other part of her.