She saw the Upgrade straighten up, tossing aside the merc’s eviscerated body like discarded packaging, as the jeep tore across the clearing toward it. At first, she thought the jeep was going to ram the Upgrade, and wondered who’d come off worse. But then the vehicle screeched to a halt and a trio of black-clad mercs spilled from it, each of them loaded with heavy artillery.
Casey had to admire their bravery. They must have concluded either that the previous attack had originated from the Upgrade itself, or that their attackers would see the Upgrade as a common enemy, and would either join forces with them or hold fire. On that last assumption—if that was their assumption—they were kind of correct. The Loonies were holding fire for now—but not out of any sense of commonality or fair play. If things were going as discussed, they’d be moving into position, their single aim being to retrieve McKenna and Rory, and get them out of the kill zone. As for Casey, for now she had a grandstand seat. Up in her tree, she watched events unfold with a horrified fascination.
Even as the mercs were spilling out of the jeep, the Upgrade was on the move. It was frighteningly fast, its movements almost a blur even without its cloaking technology. Although Casey had little sympathy for Traeger’s black-clad soldiers, their massacre was still painful to watch. It was like seeing a tiger pitted against tortoises in a gladiatorial arena. Armed as they were, they appeared cripplingly slow next to the swiftness of their enemy. The Upgrade was on them before they could get their guns up and aimed, though not without the alien first reducing the odds by throwing some sort of whirling blade, which took one of the mercs’ arms clean off at the elbows. As he lay in the grass, screaming, the Upgrade ploughed through the remaining two men, slashing one open with its claws, before picking the other up with both hands and simply ripping him in two.
Now, as the Upgrade strode purposefully toward the original Predator’s craft, more mercs started to emerge from hiding—though whether to avenge their fallen comrades or simply because their orders were to protect the ship at all costs, Casey wasn’t sure.
Even in greater numbers, though, they were no match for the eleven-foot-tall Predator. It simply cut through them like a barracuda through a pool of minnows, dodging their clumsy attempts to take it down, and dispatching them in a variety of ways—ripping some apart with its bare hands, beheading others with its throwing blades. It shot one man who tried to sneak up behind it with his own weapon, and it snapped a wrist cuff onto one merc’s arm as it passed him by, then pressed a detonator on its gauntlet and reduced him to an explosion of chunky red confetti.
Leaving a battleground of dead and dying men behind it, it continued its remorseless progress toward the alien craft.
And toward McKenna and Rory, who were still crouched beneath the ship’s ramp.
22
The armored personnel carrier was the pit bull terrier of the motoring world. Ugly, squat, compact and powerful, it was effectively a dark-gray metal box, which perched on eight wheels—four on each side—and had two narrow, widely spaced headlights at the front, which resembled mean little eyes.
Also known as a GPV, this was the vehicle that had been parked closest to the alien ship when Traeger had made his escape from McKenna. It was the one he had sought refuge behind, and it was the one he was still crouched behind now, hunkered down beside one of the massive muddy wheels with two of his remaining men, out of sight of the battleground, the perimeter fence and the jungle at his back.
Because he had been hiding behind what was, to all intents and purposes, a three-meter-thick metal wall, he had seen little of the massacre of his troops. He had heard the screams, though, and the explosions, and the grisly tearing sounds. And now he could smell the blood, and hear the groans of the injured and dying.
He had shown defiance, and even bravery, in his dealings with McKenna, but he didn’t feel brave now. Cowering in the dirt, his clothes spattered with mud, he trembled, and sweated, and prayed to a God he had never really believed in, as the footsteps of the Upgrade thumped relentlessly closer to his hiding place.
Please don’t let it know I’m here, he thought, squeezing his eyes closed. Please don’t let it know I’m here.
Was the ground really shaking as the creature approached, or was that merely his imagination? As the footsteps seemed to boom right on top of him, he couldn’t resist it: he opened one eye.
Backlit by arc lamps, he saw the Upgrade looming over the GPV, its shadow spilling across the top of the vehicle and shrouding him and his men like a black blanket. He half-expected the creature to pick up the vehicle in one vast hand and toss it aside, then lean down toward them in a macabre game of peekaboo.
But it didn’t. It simply passed them by, either ignorant of their presence or uninterested in it. Traeger breathed a sigh of relief as its footsteps receded, and risked creeping to the edge of the vehicle and peering around it to see what the Upgrade would do next.
He saw it march up the ramp and enter the Predator ship, the hatch closing after it with a pneumatic whump!
Then there was silence. It was almost an anticlimax. Traeger’s men who had been hiding with him looked at one another in fearful bewilderment, unable to believe they were still alive.
What the fuck now? he thought.
He made a quick decision. He had to get hold of this situation as quickly as possible, had to regain the upper hand.
He made a quick inventory of his men. There were six still standing, albeit scattered around the battleground, hiding behind trees and other vehicles.
“McKenna?” he yelled.
No response. Nothing but drifting smoke and silence.
He tried again. “C’mon, be reasonable. There’s… what? Five of you? Seven of us.”
That was a total guess. He was trying to recall from the intel he’d received how many crazies there’d been in the prison van with McKenna—this was assuming they’d all stuck together. He guessed one was now dead, if that scream from the jungle was anything to go by, and he wasn’t counting Casey Brackett. She was a woman, and a scientist, so if anything, she’d be more of a hindrance than a help to guys like this.
In answer to his question, someone (Traeger thought it might have been Williams, but the movement was too quick for him to really tell for sure) popped up from behind a tree surrounding the area and let off a shot. The head of one of the mercs who’d been cowering behind the GPV with Traeger snapped back, and next moment he was lying in the dirt, his brains leaking out of his skull.
From the tone of his voice as he replied, Traeger sensed McKenna was grinning. “Who taught you math?”
Traeger seethed. The death of the merc was a clear signal that McKenna’s rabble had them surrounded and could pick them off at will. Glaring down at the dead soldier, as though the guy had got himself shot on purpose merely to spite him, he bellowed, “Okay! Okay!”
He struggled inwardly to keep his voice steady. The men in his employ were not loyal to him, they were little more than hired thugs, and it wouldn’t do to show them he was losing control of this situation.
Trying to make it sound as though he was being generous, he said, “Fine. You can walk away, Captain. I just want what’s in that ship.”
Still huddled beneath the ramp of the Predator ship, Rory touched his dad on the arm. “He’s lying.”
McKenna looked down at Rory looking up at him, his face trusting, open, and he gave him a brief hug. “Yes, he is. Good boy.”