"No."
The colonel seemed vaguely stunned. "But surely by now you have some idea!"
Hunter was thoughtful. "I know how it moves, Colonel," he said. "I know how it thinks. How it attacks. How it kills. I know it's right-handed, and I'm pretty sure about its age. I know it weighs close to three hundred. I know it's strong and fast and dangerous. But, no, I don't know what it is."
"Yet you said the tracks were vaguely bearlike."
"Those tracks were severely marred, and that doesn't make it a bear," Hunter responded. "I also said they were vaguely humanlike. All I know is that it's not a tiger. And I don't see how it can be a man because no man can carry that stride width. Right now I think it's something I've never seen before. Maybe something none of us have ever seen."
Tipler lifted the cast and studied it before raising his eyes to Maddox. "Colonel," he began, "would you have any objections about sending this cast back to the Institute where we might analyze the indentations? It is an excellent reconstruction of the print, and my people might be able to discern clues that we may have missed by a simple visual examination."
"Of course not, Professor."
The colonel was clearly becoming frustrated at the continuing enigma. He strolled away for a minute. A decision was evident in his tone when he spoke again. "All right, gentlemen, the Special Response Team should arrive at first light. But since you've told me that time is such a vital factor, I'm going to change orders so that they will rendezvous with you at the first base that was destroyed. From there, we'll fly you to the second and third stations so you can study its habits. And from there, Mr. Hunter, it will be your responsibility to track it down."
Hunter shook his head. "Just drop us at the third base. The tracks at the first two stations will be useless. When was the last station attacked?"
"Twenty-four hours ago."
"Survivors?"
"None."
The answer was clipped.
Tipler's brow hardened with a slight scowl.
"Colonel," he asked, "you must have increased your security at these outposts. You must have had more men, more guns, more gadgets. Why is this thing still alive?"
"It seems…" Maddox gazed down as he lightly touched a photo of red flesh on snow, "to understand… things."
Tipler waited. "Things?"
"Yes, it seems to understand our, uh, tactics." The colonel didn't look up as he continued. "It seems to know how to penetrate a security screen, such as the timing of patrols, the formation of flanking. Apparently it does some kind of circular surveillance of an area before it attacks. And it appears to kill listening posts before it does anything else. It doesn't sneak past them, it kills them. Only then does it move into a compound."
There were so many questions floating in Hunters mind that he wasn't even tempted to ask the first one. Obviously, whatever had done this was nothing he'd ever seen. And if he hadn't seen it, it was a safe bet that nobody had.
He knew the only way to find any answers would be at the site. Only by learning to think like this thing could he harbor any hope of tracking it. He stared at the colonel, trying to determine whether something vital was being hidden behind that military mask.
Rising, he turned to Tipler.
"Try to get some rest tonight, Professor," he said. "Tomorrow's gonna be a hard day."
"Ah, my boy, most certainly." Tipler rose beside him. "Thank you, Colonel. We shall leave at…?"
"0500 hours." Maddox nodded curtly. "We'll be on site by 0600."
"Very good. I shall retire now, so that I can prepare."
"Everything you need is in your quarters, Professor."
"Thank you," Tipler waved. "Good night."
With Ghost at his side, Hunter saw the professor to his room. Then he slipped silently into the night and, hidden in shadow, searched through a mound of discarded construction materials. It was a long while before he found what he needed: a long, pliable shoestring-thin wire of titanium alloy and a peg-sized section of solid steel. The steel fit perfectly in his hand, comfortable and cold.
Then he returned to his own room and made preparations through the long night, working till sunrise. When he was finished he carefully placed the improvised weapon inside his wide leather belt with a frown.
He thought that if this thing went as he feared, it might give him a last desperate chance.
Chapter 4
Thundering out of low dark clouds, the Blackhawk descended into a charred glade. Twenty-four hours after the carnage, the snow was still widely stained with red — trampled by military boots.
He quickly scanned the surrounding terrain for a quick orientation and in a breath memorized ravines and hills, what would be the natural approach, the most calculated line of an attack. It took him ten seconds to read the scene, proceeding more by instinct than by intense scrutiny.
The Blackhawk settled gently in the square and Hunter was out first, turning back to help Professor Tipler from the bay. Then, after the old man dusted himself off, they walked out a hundred yards or so and stared silently at the fire-scarred facility. Clearly, the unfortunate team trapped inside it when the creature attacked didn't stand a chance.
Entire portals constructed from fire-resistant steel had been ripped from the hinges as if by a hurricane.
Shaking his head at the devastation, Hunter turned and saw them; the support team. A group of five, they wore specialized forest-camouflaged BDUs. They also wore load-bearing vests packed with weapons and clips. Ignoring Hunter and Tipler, they were unloading equipment from a second Blackhawk.
Hunter observed that they moved with a certain cold economy; no emotion, no questions. They spoke little and each seemed to recognize his responsibility without instruction. Then he saw something else that attracted his attention.
It was a woman dressed in forest BDUs like the rest, but also wearing some kind of high-tech, obviously lightweight armor. She knelt on one knee beside the chopper, bent over a rifle of formidable size. Hunter had never seen one like it, but noticed how adeptly she managed it. When she had finished loading four oversized rounds in a clip and tapping it on her knee to seat the cartridges, she inserted it into the rifle and loudly chambered a round. When she was finished, she lifted it to her shoulder as if it were weightless and aimed across the scorched square, moving left, right, hesitating…before centering on him.
For a moment, she held aim.
Hunter didn't move, gazing stonily into the glare of the sniper's scope. Then, expressionless, she lowered the massive rifle to her side and turned back to her work. Hunter ignored her and studied the devastated, windswept station.
An air of utter defeat was the first impression, then a lingering sense of horror: shattered steel doors, scars of explosions and fire, broken windows and red snow told the story.
Everywhere the ground was stained crimson, and Ghost was pacing busily across the compound, checking scents. Hunter knew he was attempting to separate the human from the inhuman.
Studying the tracks, Hunter determined easily that many of the men and women present here had fled wildly into the freezing night, heedless of the consequences. Obviously, facing what had been inside that facility had been infinitely worse than the grim fate of freezing to death in the dark.
Hunter moved toward the facility. He glanced at Maddox. "Tell everyone to stay where they're at until I get back."
The colonel turned. "What?"
"Tell everyone to stay where they're at." Hunter approached the shattered door. He knew that the discovery team, or sanitation team or whatever they had used, had already marred whatever evidence he could gain from the facility, but he would give it a try.
His best hope of picking up a track, he presumed, would be in the woods, in finding its mind through its approach. But if there were tracks inside the facility he might learn something of its habits. As he neared the door he saw a portal of solid steel blasted from the hinges by some incredible velocity of force. It was split widely at the top, as if struck by a foot-wide ax.