“Grenade!” Blake yelled. “Hit the deck!”
Dempsey’s hand shot out and closed around the grenade. Time seemed to slow, and Aimee saw the PLA soldier in absolute clarity — every strand of hair, every crease on his face. She also saw that the determination in his eyes was matched by Dempsey.
“No shot.” Casey Franks had her gun up like the rest and crabbed to the side. Her yell was echoed by the other HAWCs, the frustration in their words as Dempsey’s larger body shielded his attacker.
Both men became locked in place as they looked into each other’s eyes — they both knew where this was going to end, and the HAWC captain must have summed up the futility of his predicament. He knew what he needed to do and made the call.
Dempsey hugged the PLA soldier to him and then leapt into the abyss.
“Fuck!” Franks’s yell was loud in the cavern, but was immediately drowned out by the colossal thump of the explosion that rose up from just fifty feet down into the chasm. They were all thrown off their feet, and then each lay flat, waiting and listening.
Then it came — the pop, the creak, and the splitting of rock. The grinding slide that turned into a roar.
“Take cover!” Franks yelled.
The roof above them simply slid down like a huge wine press, covering one of the tunnel mouths. The rockfall stopped as quickly as it started, but then sand rained down, and seemed pregnant with menace, as though millions of tons of loose rock was held back by just a few grains of sand only waiting for an excuse to crush them flat.
Alex froze, hearing and feeling the faint ghosts of the detonation as they pulsed through the stone.
“Did you hear that?” Cate asked. “Sounded like thunder. Does this place have its own weather?”
“No,” Alex said without turning. “Not thunder, some sort of an explosive device.”
“Explosive dev…? Great, they’re excavating.” She caught up to him, grinning. “Look’s like they’re coming down to get us after all.”
“Maybe, but that didn’t sound like dynamite, more like the compression shock from a fragmentation device. Military.”
Cate turned momentarily to where she believed the sound had come from. “Your people, you think?”
“Don’t worry about it; let’s keep moving.” Alex hoped it wasn’t his people — that noise would bring predators as sure as ringing a dinner bell.
The booming echoes pounded away along the huge crevasse. The waves of sound and vibrations reached out to every corner, tunnel, and crack in the rock, and finally down to the deepest places.
Silence fell, but only for a few seconds. The liquid sound that followed was heavy, sticky, and sliding, as something colossal heaved itself out of the brackish ooze to test the air. Its huge, muscular body had flattened, spreading over a vast distance, with its enormously strong limbs braced against the rock walls, the sensitive tips feeling the vibrations in the stone, reading them, and waiting momentarily as the final rock debris rained down around it. Boulders dropped and bounced harmlessly from its tough striated muscle hide.
And then came the rain of meat and warm liquid that finally followed from the two small, obliterated bodies. It tasted the morsels, and its skin flared with colors and shapes of delight — it remembered them.
Its enormous tentacle clubs, covered in suckers and hooks formed and reformed into myriad shapes — feline, reptilian, fish, and then human, faster and faster as excitement surged through its body. It began its climb to the higher caves. It surged upwards once again, its soft body flashing with color, a light display revealing its eagerness, and its hunger.
CHAPTER 29
No one moved. A fog of silt and dust hung in the air, and flashlight beams waved about like pipes of light from firefighters in a burning building.
“Clear.” Rinofsky was the first to his feet — the ceiling now only a foot over his head.
“Fucking son of a bitch, that bastard was waiting for us.” Casey Franks turned to Soong, enough fire in her eyes to scald the woman to cinders.
Aimee stood in front of her. “Forget it, Casey, it’s over.”
Soong remained expressionless. “He believed he was just doing his job.”
“Yeah, stabbing people in the back.” Franks jabbed a finger at Soong. “That’s some job they’re trained to do.”
“As far as he was concerned, he killed the enemy leader, and sacrificed himself doing it. Would you do any different?” Soong turned away.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Rinofsky was looking down into the chasm, and then overhead at the hanging stone. “Now what?”
“Captain saved us… and the bridge.” Hagel looked at the gap. “We can cross back if we need to.”
‘What the fuck for? It’s blocked anyway.” Casey spat dust to the cave floor.
“We go on,” Aimee said.
“Someone make a call.” Rinofsky looked across at the teams. “Who’s got seniority?”
Casey Franks exhaled. “Goddamnit… that’d be me.”
“Hey, hey there, hold your horses, girl.” Hagel grinned. “I vote for someone with a little more relevant mission experience here. I was on the Afghanistan caves mission.” He shrugged. “I can take over.”
Casey Franks’s teeth looked to be grinding in her cheeks, but the scar pulling her face into a sneer made it hard to tell.
“Hey, asshole, the only one on the team with mission experience is Dr. Weir. Hagel, you went a few hundred feet into a cave one day, so as far as I’m concerned, you got jack shit. This ain’t a democracy. I’ve got seniority, debate over.” She glared, and Hagel returned the incendiary stare for a few seconds, before scoffing and turning away.
Casey watched him for another second or two before looking along the assembled faces as though seeking any other objections — there were none.
Aimee walked up close to the stocky female HAWC. “Okay then, let’s get going.”
“Goddamnit, Dempsey was a good man.” Blake shook his head. “You know, we should at least…”
“He’s gone. If he were here, he’d say suck it up, and get your ass moving.” Casey Franks’s jaw jutted for a moment. “Listen up, people. We got good and bad news. The bad news is, we just lost a good man, and also one of the caves has now collapsed. The good news is, the rest of us are alive, and now we don’t have to waste time checking two caves out.” She looked to Rinofsky. “Lead us out, big guy.”
Comrade Han Biao came back in, breathing heavily, his hands and face grazed by multiple wounds, and his body covered in gray rock dust. He snapped to attention when Wu Yang approached.
“Captain Yang.” He saluted. “There has been a cave-in.”
“A cave-in?” Yang tilted his head. “From an explosion, you mean. I know the sound of a Type 86 grenade when I hear it.” Yang’s jaws clenched, and he leaned in. “Why was one of our grenades deployed?”
Han Biao stood rod-straight. “We were attacked… by the Americans.”
“Americans?”
“They must have come down from our base — many of them — following us.” He swallowed. “I wanted to stay, but Fan Kai said you needed to be warned… he stayed. Must have thrown a grenade.”