“No, you're only authorized to get us killed,” Flaherty muttered. He gestured. “Thomas and Tormey, cross with Castle. Dane and I will provide far security, then you cover us.”
Thomas climbed down without a word or a look back. Tormey looked at Flaherty, then across the river and back at his team leader before he followed. Flaherty thought he had never felt the responsibility of command as sharply as the moment Tormey’s face shifted to utter resignation.
Dane extended the bipod legs of the M-60 and lay down on the bank behind a log. He flipped up the butt plate and put his shoulder under it. Flaherty joined him. The other three men were moving in a triangle, Castle in the lead, Thomas on the left and Tormey on the right, ten meters between each man.
“Call them back,” Dane suddenly said as the men reached the halfway point.
“What?”
“Call them back. It's an ambush!” Dane's voice was low but insistent.
Flaherty whistled and Thomas stopped, ten meters from the bank. He looked back and Flaherty gestured, indicating for him to return. Thomas hissed, catching Tormey's attention. The new man halted. Castle looked over his shoulder, irritated, then continued, reaching the far bank.
Thomas was backing up now, retracing his steps, his M-203 swinging in arcs, aimed over Castle's head. Tormey was frozen, uncertain what to do. Flaherty gritted his teeth, waiting for the explosion of firing to come out of the tree cover of the far bank and the bodies to be riddled. Castle climbed up, but nothing happened as the CIA man disappeared. He seemed to just fade from view and be swallowed up by the fog and jungle.
Flaherty blinked, but Castle was gone. If there was going to be an ambush it would have been sprung while the men were in the kill zone of the river.
“No ambush,” Flaherty said.
“There's something over there,” Dane insisted.
Castle suddenly reappeared on the far bank in a brief opening in the fog, angrily gesturing for them to follow.
Flaherty stood and indicated for Thomas to hold. “We have to cover Castle,” Flaherty put his hand on Danes arm. “Plus he's the only one who knows where the pickup zone is.”
Dane reluctantly stood and followed his team leader down the bank and into the river. They hurried through the water, linking up with Thomas and Tormey.
As they clambered up the bank, Dane suddenly grabbed Flaherty's arm. “Listen!” he insisted.
Flaherty paused and strained his ears as Thomas and Tormey got to the top of the bank. “I don't hear anything.”
“The voice,” Dane said.
“What voice?” Flaherty cocked his head but heard nothing.
“A warning,” Dane whispered, as if he didn't want to be heard. “I've been hearing it for a while, but it's clear now. I can hear the words. We have to get out of here.”
Flaherty looked ahead. Castle was nowhere to be seen. Flaherty heard nothing, the silence in the midst of the jungle as disconcerting as Dane saying he heard a voice. “Let's get Castle,” Flaherty ordered, not wanting to let the CIA man further out of sight.
They climbed up. All four paused as they reached the top. Dane staggered and went to his knees, vomiting his meager breakfast. It felt as if his stomach had been turned inside out. His brain was pounding, spikes of pain crisscrossing in every direction. And still the voice was there, inside his head, telling him to turn around, to go back.
Flaherty shivered. The fog was different here. Colder and there was a smell in the air that he'd never experienced before. The air seemed to crawl across his skin and he couldn't seem to get an adequate breath.
“You all right?” he asked Dane.
Dane shook his head. “You feel it?” he asked.
Flaherty slowly nodded. “Yeah, I feel it. What is it?”
“I don't know,” Dane said, “but I've never felt anything like it before. This place is different from anywhere I’ve ever been. And there is a voice, Ed. I can hear it. It's warning me not to go forward.”
Flaherty looked around. Even the jungle itself was strange. The trees and flora weren't quite right, although he couldn't put his finger on the exact differences. Dane struggled to his feet.
“Can you move?” Flaherty asked. “Let's get Castle and get the hell out of here.”
Dane nodded, but didn't say anything.
The team went into the jungle about fifty meters, the eerie quietness making each member of RT Kansas jumpy. Flaherty shivered, not so much from the cold but the feeling of the fog against his skin. It felt clammy, and he could swear he felt the molecules of moisture ripple against his skin like oil.
Then there was a sound, one that pierced through each man like an ice pick. A long, shivering scream of agony from directly ahead. The four men paused, weapons pointing in the direction of the scream. Something was crashing through the undergrowth coming toward them, hidden by the vegetation and fog. Fingers twitched on triggers and then suddenly Castle was there, staggering toward them, his left hand clamped onto his right shoulder, blood pouring between his fingers. He fell to his knees ten feet from them. He reached out, bloody hand toward the team. Four inches below his shoulder, his right arm was gone, blood pulsing out of the artery with each beat of his heart.
Then something came out of the fog behind him, freezing every member of RT Kansas in his tracks. It was a green, elliptical sphere about three feet long by two in diameter. It was moving two feet above the ground, with no apparent support. There were two, strange dark bands crisscrossing it's surface, diagonally from front to rear. The bands seemed to pulse but the men couldn't make sense of it until it reached Castle. The front tip, where the bands met, edged down toward the CIA man, who scrambled away. The tip touched Castle's left arm, held up in front of his face, and the arm exploded in a burst of muscle, blood and bone. For lack of any better comprehension, the men could now see the bands were like rows of black, sharp teeth moving at high speed on a belt. From the widest part of the elongated sphere, the thing suddenly expanded a thin sheet of green like a sail and the object slid forward, catching the remnants of Castle's left arm in the sail. Then the green folded back down, taking the flesh and blood with it.
RT Kansas finally reacted. Dane's M-60 machine-gun spewed out a line of rounds right above Castle's body into the sphere, which promptly floated back into the fog. Dane raised the muzzle and cut a swath through the undergrowth into the unseen distance. Tormey spewed an entire magazine of his AK-47 on automatic. Thomas fired off a magazine, quickly switched it out, then fired three rounds of 40 mm high explosive in three slightly different directions to their front as quickly as he could reload. Flaherty contributed his own thirty rounds of 5.56 mm from his CAR-15. Silence reigned as their weapons fell silent. There was the stench of cordite in the air and smoke from the weapons mingled with the fog.
Remarkably, Castle was still alive, crawling across the jungle floor toward the team, using his legs to push himself, leaving a thick trail of blood behind.
“What in God’s name was that?” Thomas demanded, his eyes darting about, searching the jungle.
“Let's get him,” Flaherty ordered. He and Dane ran forward and grabbed the CIA man by the straps of his ruck and dragged him back to where Thomas and Tormey waited.
Flaherty ripped open the aid kit. Castle was in shock. Flaherty had seen many wounded men in his tours of duty and he knew the signs. Castle's face was pale from loss of blood and he didn't have much time. Even if they had a medevac flight on standby there was no way the man would make it.
Flaherty leaned forward, putting his face just inches from Castle's. “What was that?”
Castle ever so slightly shook his head. “Angkor Kol Ker,” he whispered, his eyes unfocused, the life in them fading. “The Angkor Gate.”