Casey pushed her rifle up over her shoulder, and then pulled a flashlight — its handle split in half and opened into a loop that she pulled over her forehead. She then looped the rope around her groin and ass, turned, and stepped back, dropping down quickly, the rope zizzing between her gloved hands, one up and one down.
The group crowded around the hole, watching as Casey hopped her way down. At about fifty feet, the rope slackened as she obviously had stepped onto something or reached the end of her rope.
Her beam of light illuminated the cave as she continued down. After another few minutes the light went out or disappeared around a bend.
Seconds passed, a minute, then more.
Aimee got down on her belly again. “Okay down there?”
They waited. Silence. The rope stayed slack.
“Yo, boss.” Rhino leaned out.
A bobbing light, far down appeared. “All good.” Casey’s voice repeated ever softer in an echo. “Plenty of ledges on the way down. Comin’ back up.”
The rope began to jerk, and in another few moments Casey was hefting herself over the side of the hole. She sucked in a single deep breath, and rolled her shoulders.
Aimee shook her head. That climb would have near totaled her, but the female HAWC barely broke a sweat.
“Steep to begin with, and no handholds. But then it breaks up and gets a lot rougher — lots of boulders and jutting ledges, before it bends slightly and the angle eases off. More a scramble over loose debris then.” Casey wiped her gloved hands together, dislodging some wet cave-slime. “It’s damper, and looks like it keeps going and going, all the way down.” She grinned at Aimee. “Maybe to that underground sea of yours, huh?”
Casey stepped back from the edge, and stared off into the tunnels behind the group for a moment. She snapped back. “Okay, people, form up. Let’s get this party started.”
Hank Rinofsky stood back and watched the team descend. Rhino kept one hand on the rope, just monitoring its tension. He continually turned his head, using his scope now to switch between thermal, night vision, and then back to light intense as he checked for anything above the grunts and heavy breathing of the team as they vanished into the chute.
When it came his turn, Rhino hovered at the lip for a few moments, contemplating his own descent. First he needed to untie and retrieve the rope. He laid his hand on the soft but extremely strong cord. From away in the darkness, there came a tiny sound from the cave they had just left. He paused, reaching up to switch his scope back to infrared, and then thermal — there was nothing.
“Hey, little tattoo guy, that you?” His voice was soft, but still carried in the dark silence. He squinted, trying to remember the word for hello that Blake had taught him. “Nín hǎo?”
He waited, but there was nothing but a prickling sensation on the back of his neck. “Nín hǎo?” This time softer, and again he listened for a response.
His hand went quickly to the rope. He knew he was skilled enough to climb down without it, and Franks wanted all the gear recovered. He picked up the knot, and then froze — there was a wet sliding noise and then a soft thumping, like something bouncing.
He pulled his huge weapon from over his shoulder. Come on, you motherfucker, he thought, as he braced huge legs.
The bouncing continued, and when it started to slow, it then sounded like it was being kicked along, sped up again to bounce some more. He waited, the grip on his gun so hard his knuckles were probably bone-white under his armored gloves. From out of the dark cave they’d just exited, came what he at first took to be a football. It ricocheted off the walls to bounce several more times, and then it rolled wetly to a stop.
Big Hank Rinofsky stared, open-mouthed. It was a human head, slightly flattened and the stump of neck ragged. In the few seconds he stared, time seemed to elongate — he took in every detaiclass="underline" the blood, the Asian features twisted in horror and pain, and on one side of the neck a dragon tattoo, with the reds, greens, and yellows still flaring hotly beneath the blood.
Little tattoo guy, that you? his mind yelled. Rhino snapped into action, raising his weapon and firing into the cave. His laser pulse cut into the dark, but hit nothing but stone. There was the smell of hot plasma in the air, and Rhino shut it off. He held his position. He could hear or see nothing, but every sense in his body screamed at him to run.
“Fuck this, I’m seeing things.” He left the rope tied off, and grabbed it, dropping down into the chute, jumping and bouncing down to the first landing fifty feet below. He quickly unhooked himself, and spun, pointing his gun back up the pipe, using the barrel-mounted light to scan its edges.
He stepped back a pace, and was about to turn away, when beside him, the rope wriggled, and then started to be pulled up. He watched it, his mouth open for a few more seconds.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me.” Rhino backed up, his gun ready. The massive HAWC was scared of no man, but this… this was something far different. He turned, almost sprinting, as he retreated over the tumbled boulders to catch up to the group.
CHAPTER 38
Sam Reid waited in the snow. It was heavier now, the wind having eased back so it fell in sheets, long curtains of white that piled up, obscuring much of the McMurdo Base, and also turning the soft mounds into growing hills around him.
Jack Hammerson had kept them up to date on the small boats that had arrived on the Antarctic shoreline, dispatched by the Kunming, to immediately birth a half dozen high-speed snow skis that had powered furiously over the ice and snow towards them.
A few miles out, they had stopped, and Sam knew what that meant. Their visitors had taken to foot. Stealth was their objective now, and therefore the attack was imminent.
Sam stretched, growing bored. He flicked ice crystals from his face as he stood waiting, like a colossus in the snow. He was six feet, eight inches tall and as wide as two men. He was by far the most powerful HAWC in Jack Hammerson’s arsenal, bar Alex Hunter, but Sam liked to think his strength and skill was natural, so that put him in front.
He rolled massive shoulders, not feeling the bitter cold inside the Advanced Combat Suit’s military grade exoskeleton. On Sam, the synaptic electronics were a molded framework that was built on, and into, his body. A metal bracing belt fit around his waist, and comprised a power-pack and supportive base for the banded ribbing up the back, with needle-like nodes pressed into his spinal cord, basically making the suit’s mechanics part of his nervous system.
The titanium hyper-alloy composite exoskeleton framework was enhanced for full combat mode, with molded ceramic armor plating that had a density nearly off the Mohs hardness scale. Sam, the HAWC, was now a mobile heavy weapon.
His scanners beeped, letting him know that his visitors were now at the perimeter’s line of snow mounds, and were probably taking up flanking positions and readying their attack. He deployed the helmet shield and a full-face mask telescoped up and over his face in an armadillo plating structure, just leaving a clear panel for vision.
A digital readout above Sam’s brow showed him the time they had left until the two navies were head to head: 16 hours, 21 minutes, and 45 seconds, 44, 43… Events were accelerating.
He grinned, ready. What would they make of him? A giant, made more giant by the suit. He turned slowly, switching to thermal. He could see the white-clad bodies, flaring red, each easing forward, undoubtedly seeing him, but unsure if he was really a man or not. He counted twelve, and detected lots of metal — lots of weapons.