"Drop 'em!" Brick bellowed and two of the guards, quicker than the rest, spun with rifles raised. But before the first guard had completed the turn Brick fired, the enormous expanding flame of the Weatherby reaching out six feet, and the guard's chest exploded with the impact. Then Brick swung the barrel and fired again, thunderously lifting the second guard off his feet as Hunter threw Hamilton to the ground and the laboratory was ripped by gunfire.
Chaney was becoming more frustrated as the moments passed, moving in and out of the trucks, Humvees, tankers, and transport trucks at the motor pool. The area was checkered with pits of black that could have contained anything: he had left his night-vision device in the facility, not reckoning that he would need it.
Despite stumbling on a dozen listening posts that denied seeing Hunter — he had not chanced upon Takakura and Taylor — he was certain that Hunter said he was moving outside to check the perimeter. He was loping at a respectable gait across the yard, passing the front of the shed containing the two-ton generators that were powering the facility, when he caught a slowly moving form high in the air.
It was a bizarre floating, grayish image — like a ghostly apparition emerging from fog. It came across the earth without touching it, hanging in the air, arms outstretched.
Chaney looked curiously, and although he was among the most controlled of all men, shouted something incoherent.
For, seemingly suspended, neither rising nor descending, the beast was nearly twenty feet in the air, hanging for what seemed an impossibly long time before it came down hard, its stone-heavy impact sending a gunshot effect that made a hundred heads turn together.
So shocked was Chaney that he didn't immediately open fire, somehow doubting against reason that it might turn and flee. Then it leaped again, angling for the domed hull of the green tanker parked beside the shed. Immediately Chaney raised the Weatherby and fired.
He had no idea if he connected as it completed an arching descent to vanish from view, landing without sound on the grassy area between the truck and building.
"HOLD FIRE! HOLD FIRE!" a commanding voice boomed over the intercom system. And Chaney needed no one to explain why. It would be simple for panicked troops, some having never seen true combat, to open fire in fear and accidentally detonate the ten-thousand-gallon tank. Chaney himself had recognized the threat only at the last moment and purposefully shot high, hoping to catch it in the shoulder, virtually assuring that he had missed.
Chaney stared in shock.
Nothing could have prepared him for this.
For what he had seen suspended in the night air made all human conflict seem insignificant. He had almost not believed it even when it landed with such fearless intent, and cursed himself for his hesitation. For he had had one moment for a clean shot and might have caught it as it stood gloating.
As an afterthought, remembering the hulking might outlined by the fog-shrouded skylight, he was glad he had brought the Weatherby and quickly replaced the spent round, clicking the breech closed.
Soldiers in teams of ten and thirty ran past him, taking lateral and frontal positions on the motor pool. Officers bellowed commands to compete with the roar of the generators, and Chaney ran down the line of Jeeps and trucks, hoping for a glimpse. Whatever it was, they had it cornered in the twenty-acre lot of automotive vehicles.
A hideous scream that rose in volume erupted in the night for a split second, then died abruptly. A wild rattle of M-16 fire was followed by another and even shorter shout of panic. Then silence. Chaney knew what it was doing; it had located the first listening post situated in the pool, killing both soldiers like lightning.
One platoon, close and tight with weapons ready, moved into the south end of the motor pool. Two more teams of thirty, one in the center and one on the north end, moved with them, a hundred men spreading into a skirmish line as they crossed the first line of vehicles.
Carefully, alertly, they moved forward, the instructions of sergeants and lieutenants to "look sharp and fire on acquisition" repeated over and over in the semi-darkness.
Chaney scanned the vast acreage, and in the distance, at the eruption of another frightful scream, saw a brief blurred shape of black moving left to right in a frenzy. Chaney's teeth came together in frustration and rage: two more down.
It was moving quick, slaughtering methodically.
The skirmish line had covered about a third of the distance when more screams echoed violently in the night. Chaney remembered Taylor and Takakura. He keyed his throat mike and tried to raise them, repeating their designation in order to warn them.
But they didn't reply.
Taylor glanced up and saw Takakura's sweating face silhouetted by a stadium-like display of floodlights. The Japanese was bent, sword in hand and a .45 pistol in the other. His eyes were feral, staring with rage, and his teeth shone white in the pale light that made his dark face glisten. He stared high and then dropped, silently searching underneath the truck beside them. When he rose he shook his head in frustration, snarling as he spoke: "It is working its way to the north end, away from us. It is methodically working its way through the listening posts."
"You wanna go after it?" Taylor asked, tightening the bandoleer so it wouldn't slide from his shoulder in violent movement.
Takakura shook his head sharply. "No… I don't think so. Then again, it will find us soon enough. As it has found the others." He calculated, his eyes blinking hard and quick. "Yes, it will find us. But not as it found them."
"You wanna set an ambush?" Taylor whispered.
"There remains one more listening post between us and the creature. If it continues to kill methodically and is not somehow deterred, it will finish them next." His face hardened, dark eyes narrowing into slits. "It will be our only chance. It will be upon us in moments." He wasted a single second. "Do you believe those depleted uranium slugs will penetrate its skin?"
"I don't know. It'll penetrate the armor of a tank. But I don't know if these magnum shells give 'em the velocity it's gonna take. I'm damn sure it's gonna feel it, but to kill it… I don't know." He shook his head, sweat dripping from his scarred face as he took a breath.
"It will have to suffice." Takakura crouched, peeking around the front of a transport.
Frantic rifle fire tore through the night at the other end of the field, a wild continuous blaze of at least twenty rifles on full automatic. A bestial roar rose above it all, and there were the horrifying sounds of men dying in fear, and then the firing became wildly unorganized and sporadic. Even from a distance Takakura could tell from the white muzzle blasts that some of them were firing in all directions or into the air, lost in war madness and fear.
"Now is our chance," he rasped. "While it is engaged we will take up a flanking position near the right listening post. If it comes for them next, then perhaps we can make contact with it before it hits. We must move quickly."
Forsaking greater stealth for speed because the far end of the field still thundered with rifle fire and an occasional bellow that could only have come from a man knowing death was upon him, they located the listening post without being sighted and took up a discreet flanking position. Takakura laid the M-14 across the hood of a Humvee, turning on the starlight scope. And Taylor angled across to the back, securing himself inside the rear of a tent-covered transport truck with a thirty-foot clear range at the probable area of contact.
Startlingly, the next chaotic cries and rifle fire erupted behind them, near the front of the lot.