"I'm gonna stay with the professor," Bobbi Jo said to Hunter alone. "And when the nurse returns I'm going outside to take up position. Probably on the roof."
"All right." Hunter followed Hamilton from the room, but turned backwards for a single step — he didn't know why — to see her staring intently after him. Then she moved her lips to frame a silent sentence and Hunter knew exactly what she said. With a slight surprise, he realized that he'd expected it.
"Be careful. "
Takakura and Taylor scanned the compound, roaming. They checked the fence at one point with a small piece of steel, laying one end on the ground and letting the other end fall over so that the current grounded out. A split second later the automatic breakers reset and they knocked the steel aside with a long section of a severed two-by-four — a safe thing to do because wood can't conduct an electrical current — and resumed roaming.
Taylor had spent most of the afternoon, or what time was left after his debriefing by army intelligence, arming himself for the expected battle. Two bandoleers of shotgun shells, at least fifty per belt, crisscrossed his barrel chest. A semiautomatic street-sweeper — a short shotgun with a cylindrical twelve-round magazine — hung heavily on a sling. And he had a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun in a hip holster. The side-by-side barrels were barely eight inches long; the stock had been sawed off and sanded to allow a firm and comfortable pistol grip. He also had a .50-caliber Desert Eagle semiautomatic on his right hip with clips attached to his combat belt. Night-vision goggles hung on an elastic strap from his neck.
Takakura carried the katana on his back and the M-14 in his arms. He also was heavily armed, with a .45-caliber pistol on each hip and at least eight antipersonnel grenades in his pockets. He had used a thin strip of white tape to doubly secure each pin, thereby preventing the pin from being pulled prematurely. Although the tape made it twice as difficult to pull the pin, a man in combat, hyped on adrenaline and fear, might disregard it.
Glancing down, Taylor noticed the combat trick.
"Nice gig, securing pins like that," he said. "Reminds me of Panama when we were hooching the worst bush you'd ever seen. And some green puke, about two months in, was trying to work his way through a jungle of 'wait a minute' vines. I was at covering distance right behind him, maybe fifteen feet, and he was almost through the wall when the pin on one of his grenades got jerked loose by a vine." He cocked his head sympathetically at the memory. "Never did trust grenades after that."
Takakura grunted. "Precaution is always wise, especially in combat, where surprise is the last thing the dead realize. I suppose we will discover if we have taken enough of them."
"You really believe it's coming? Tonight, I mean?"
"Yes."
Silent for a moment, Taylor then asked, "What makes you so sure? I mean, look around you."
Takakura lifted his eyes to the ceiling and angled them to the darkened hills outside the compound. A stygian cloak seemed to absorb the light rather than be illuminated by it. "It will come," he frowned. "It comes for him."
"For Hunter?"
"Yes," Takakura said with subdued emotion. "For Hunter."
He had discovered the outside listening post by scent, disappointed that it had been abandoned. Then a distant, mournful howl carried through the night and he raised his head, laughing.
Yes, the wolf he had slain with a single slashing blow, severing the head and consuming the brain just for the primitive pleasure of it, had been discovered by its mate.
Killing was such sweet pleasure.
Feeling again the physical release he had felt when the wolf's body had fallen, so slowly, to the ground — its eyes blinking in shock as the head hung suspended in the air before it landed on a slope — he growled and turned back to his task, studying the structure.
Wooden logs covered with a thick layer of dirt and brush would have concealed the bunker from a visual search, but human scent thickly marked the air.
Only a small slit cut into the hill had allowed a narrow view. He knew that the entrance and exit would be in the back, also concealed. Yes, they were wise to withdraw within the safety of the fence, a fence higher than any it had yet encountered.
Crouching in darkness three hundred feet from the compound, he saw the soldiers, dogs, guns, and armed vehicles, the heavily manned towers in constant movement.
Frowning, he studied all that was here, memorizing the routine, the location of troops. With narrow red eyes he spied a large building located at the back. Even across the distance he could hear the drone of machinery as the machine powered the fence, the lights. Without the machines, they were helpless in the dark.
Rising slowly, apelike arms hanging with a fullness of refreshed strength, he inhaled, and his mammoth chest swelled gigantically. Snarling, he prepared himself, rising on an internal tide of empowering rage, knowing this would be the most difficult of all.
And yet fear did not enter his animal mind as he turned, loping high across the surrounding ridge, constantly searching for the tiny wires that had injured him once before, because he had not known the danger. And quickly he was close to the building that roared with the turning electrical thing that he would destroy.
Creeping soundlessly across waist high bush, he moved in.
"What's this, Doc?"
Chaney's voice echoed across the near-silent underground chamber and Hamilton moved slowly toward him.
"Oh, that is a backup electromagnetic monitor," he answered. "We are trying to correlate any sunspot activity with the change in the tectonic plate shifts. So far, we have been unsuccessful in tracing any coordination. But it was an interesting theory, nevertheless."
Rising slowly, Chaney removed a crowbar from the wall. "Let's have a look."
"Of course, Marshal, you are in authority here. Feel free to examine anything you wish."
In a minute Chaney pried off the wooden lip and removed the cushioning Styrofoam and cardboard. He didn't lift it from the box, but felt the back, the front. Then he walked inside to examine the seemingly endless rows of food, fuel, spare parts, weapons, clothing. It was a virtual harbor of goods, and Chaney wore a displeased frown as he wandered about.
On the far side of the room, Hunter was utterly still. He hadn't moved more than thirty feet since he'd entered the lower level, though Chaney thought Hunter was also checking inventory.
No, he hadn't moved, nor did he plan to blindly wander the storage aisles looking for what he knew was not there. He was confident Hamilton would have never complied with their request if there were any evidence of guilt.
For certain, whatever they were searching for would be better concealed. And so he turned his mind to role-playing the prey, attempting to think as Hamilton. It was a trick he used when hunting elusive animals; he hoped it would help him now.
Think like a tiger…
Like a wolf…
Like a fox…
What did an animal do when it wanted to conceal something?
He knew most of the answers without effort: An alligator would shove the body of its prey beneath a stump, allowing it to rot before it fed. A bear would cover his prey with dirt, all the while hovering nearby and eating the carcass at its leisure for days at a time. A fox would cover his food inside a log close to the den and bury it with leaves. But never too close, lest the dead prey lure rivals into a fight for possession of the hard-won sustenance. A tiger would simply drag his prey into a secluded location where he would bury it under leaves and eat for a week, never leaving the slaughter for more than an hour at a time. A quick review, and Hunter realized that the same instinctive practice was occurring again and again, though in varied form.