They were dressed just as Hunter and Joxx: baggy pants, old jackets, and dirty boots. One was wearing a tie and vest. The deep lines in their ruddy faces spoke volumes; they'd grown old before their time. Their eyes were steely and cold. Neither one was smiling.
They took one look at Hunter and groaned. "Oh God," one said. "It's not you again, is it?"
"We stopped the Fifth Paras down on Boxley Road," Hunter told them, knowing from experience that this was the best thing to say at this particular moment.
"The Paras? But they are special operations troops—"
"I know, they fought like them," Hunter replied.
"So where are the others then?"
A short silence. Hunter planned it for exactly five seconds.
"We are the only ones who made it," he finally replied.
As always, the news hit the two men hard.
"All of the lads? Gone?" the second man asked.
Hunter nodded; Joxx did, too.
"Paddy? And Paddy? And Big Mike, Mike, and Mac?"
Again, Hunter nodded gravely. It sometimes got a bit sticky at this point. "And Little Mike, Dirty Mike, Dennis, and the other Paddy as well," he said. "But they all died well and took out a bunch of Paras, too."
The two men stood frozen for a long moment. In some of his early mind trips, the two men would turn on Hunter at this moment, claiming that he might be a Provo spy or worse. No one ever trusted the only survivor of a suicide mission. But whether it was repeated use of the mind ring or some other factor, in his later trips, the two men accepted his story and treated him as one of their own.
They looked at the small cache of weapons and both men finally lowered their rifles.
"Those weapons will be needed," one said. "Get them back into the hollow — and don't ever be telling anyone what you're about to see back there."
Hunter and Joxx picked up the rifles and wordlessly moved on.
They walked through the high grass for what seemed like a very long time. Every once in a while, they would come upon another flat-cap fighter, standing ramrod straight in the tall weeds, allowing them to pass with little more than a grunt.
They finally reached the edge of the grass to come upon yet another thicket of woods. The stink of iodine was stronger than ever.
They moved forward, passing more unsmiling guards, before coming up to a battered van that someone had somehow driven into the deep woods. This place, Hunter would learn, was called Kelly's Hollow.
Gathered around the van was a small clutch of what Hunter would accurately describe as lieutenants. There were five of them; they were dressed like everyone else. The back of the van was stuffed with many strange and exotic items.
"How can this be?" he asked Hunter in an astonished whisper. "Such inventions weren't around in the twenty-first century—"
Hunter gave him a sharp elbow to the ribs, nearly knocking him off his feet. It was a painful signal to shut up.
The lieutenants weren't paying them any attention, though. They were in obvious disarray and very anxious. Their little band was suddenly leaderless — Hunter knew this from before. And they'd just had a massive assault on their senses as well.
As a result, they were arguing among themselves.
"I'm telling you… that the thing didn't fly away. It just disappeared. Vanished. And left the glow behind…"
"My guys said they saw it fly away."
"They watched it come in…. They followed it here. They were here when it came down. When it all happened…"
The fourth man exploded on cue. "What the fook difference does it make?" he bellowed. "Whether it vanished or flew away, what's been done here has been done. The brothers are dead. And they stirred up a lot of commotion before they went. Now we have the choppers out looking for us, and with this commotion, the whole magee will be compromised."
"I think we should tell the blokes what happened here," the first man said nervously. "This thing is bigger than the troubles we have with them…."
The four others turned on him. "Are you gone daft finally?" one shouted in his ear. "Bringing the blokes in—to this? What do you think, they'll just pat us on the head and say, 'Interesting piece of science here, boys?' "
This man then turned back to the others. "Now, let's forget about how the thing got away, ok? We must think about what to do with the present."
At this point, Hunter and Joxx entered the scene. The lieutenants looked up at them, happy to see the weapons they were carrying yet instinctively knowing that the ambush, now a mere afterthought, had been costly.
"They are all gone," Hunter said, again knowing from the past that this was the quickest and best thing to do.
"Took nearly three dozen Paras with them," Joxx added without prompting.
The lieutenants let the bad news sink in. Then one said, "Poor souls. But they bought us a few minutes. That chopper is out there again, though, and it's just a matter of time before they come upon all this…. We have to get a move on."
"We have't'get rid of the bodies first," another said, nodding toward the deepest part of the hollow. The other four men agreed.
They turned back to Hunter and Joxx and said, "Give us a hand down here lads, will you?"
Hunter and Joxx dropped the weapons and followed the men down into the hollow. It was almost dark as night down here now, there was that much overgrowth above. A small stream ran through the center of this place — or one once did. There was now a large but shallow crater smack in the middle of this brook; it was from here that the bright light had been shining. Any water still remaining was rising out of the hollow in the form of steam.
The ground around the depression formed what looked to be an almost perfect circle, maybe twenty to thirty feet across. Some of the trees to the north of this position were shorn off at the tops. Something had obviously come out of the sky and landed — or crashed — onto this spot.
About one hundred feet farther down the stream from all this, three bodies were lying in the mud, each one about fifty feet from the other. They were dressed as they all were, except they were also wearing black ski masks with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth. There didn't seem to be any wounds on these bodies. No indications how they had died. Behind them was a tiny thatched cottage hidden so deep in the overgrowth it was impossible to see from the air.
They all walked alongside the suddenly dry streambed and up to the bodies.
"We're throwing the brothers into the bog," one of the lieutenants told Hunter and Joxx. "Though I can't believe those words are coming out of me mouth. But we can't take them with us; if we get stopped with them, it will be curtains for us. And we don't have time to bury them, either. Besides, the Paras will have the sniffing dogs out for us at any minute, and they'll surely smell them if we put them in the ground. So it will have to be the bog for them…."
Joxx began to protest, but again, Hunter gave him a shot in the ribs. "We do what they say or, believe me, they'll throw us in with them."
Joxx was horrified. He was as superstitious as the next Special, and touching a dead body was considered the ultimate in taboo. Ironically, Hunter understood his dilemma.
"Don't wet your pants," he told Joxx sternly. "These guys might not be dead — not really, anyway."
This only horrified Joxx further. They certainly looked dead.
Hunter pushed him toward the first body. He looked about forty years old, and he was stocky. He was lying facedown, his mask still covering most of his features, his cap floating in the mud nearby.
Hunter grabbed him by the shoulders. Joxx reluctantly took the legs. They started walking farther down the barren stream. A large clearing was ahead, made up of a very dark, very deep bog.