Black Mountain

TWENTY-SIX

Sarah turned the car as Thomas directed, onto a track that was little more than a pair of ruts pressed into the cold, wet grass. Matt jammed his hands up under his armpits — they shook slightly, and much as he tried to convince himself it was from the cold, the knot in his belly told him otherwise. Matt peered through the windscreen from the back seat, where he and Charles were jammed in with their equipment. He noticed that the blanket the old Indian was draped in smelled like cigarette smoke and camphor. Next to him, Charles was holding a long handgun and what looked like a flat plastic lunchbox. As the car bounced into and out of a pothole, the gun poked into Matt’s leg.

‘Careful with that, cowboy,’ Matt said.

Thomas turned in his seat, looked briefly at the gun and made a small sound of contempt in his throat.

Charles shrugged. ‘It’s okay… tranquilliser only.’ He turned the gun sideways, forcing Matt to recoil to avoid the barrel. ‘It’s an X2 — aluminium, gas-based dart pistol. Twelve shots — short range but silent and very accurate.’

Thomas shook his head.

Sarah spoke over her shoulder. ‘What chemical mix are you using?’

Charles opened the small plastic case, and smiled down at a row of four pencil-long darts, each filled with a small amount of clear fluid. ‘I doubt we’ll actually find anything up there, but just in case I decided on a neuromuscular paralytic — Pavulon actually, 1.44 micrograms. It’s pretty powerful stuff, but a good choice for larger… um… targets. It should give us immediate knockdown, and, depending on the size of the creature, at least two hours for study.’

Sarah briefly turned, frowning. ‘Pavulon? That’s one of the drugs they use in lethal injections, isn’t it? How do you know the dosage is right?’

Charles shrugged. ‘I don’t — everything we’re doing is a first. I’ve prepared the dosage based on a 1200-pound animal. We just have to hope its physiology reacts like any normal mammal.’

Thomas Red Cloud looked at the gun again, then at Charles. ‘How big is your anus, Mr Schroder?’

‘What?’ Charles looked from Matt to Sarah, and then at Thomas. He frowned. ‘Uhh, I didn’t quite catch that, Thomas.’

‘I asked you how big your anus is. I just want to be sure the gun will fit there after you’ve fired it at the Chiye-tanka and it’s taken from you. ’Cause that’s where it’s gonna end up.’

Matt burst out laughing, feeling his anxiety lift a little, and patted Charles on the shoulder. ‘See, he likes your idea as well.’

Charles pulled a face before resting the long-barrelled dart gun on the seat beside him. ‘Very funny, Chief. At least I came prepared. What did you bring — some more magic spells and woofle-dust?’

‘Yes, Mr Schroder. I brought the dust of my ancestors, magic bones from Geronimo, and a spirit amulet made from the hair of a wild buffalo.’

Matt sat forward. ‘You’re shitting me. Really?’

‘No, you pair of assholes, I brought a .45 Colt Anaconda.’ Thomas looked into Charles’s face. ‘I do not intend to study this creature, Mr Schroder. It is the slayer of my ancestors. I intend to put a hole in it the size of a dinner plate.’

Sarah stopped the car. ‘That’s as far as we can go.’ She turned and raised her eyebrows. ‘Okay, I guess that’s the team-bonding session out the way. Anyone for a nice freezing hike?’

The three men returned to their vehicle. They had stuffed the veterinarian’s body into one of the cages at the rear of the surgery. It would be hours before anyone found his beaten and tortured remains, and by then they would be out of the city and closing in on their target.

The man in the back seat removed his sunglasses and cap and examined his ulcerated hands in the semi-light that came in through the tinted windows. ‘It hurts.’

‘Graham will fix us,’ said his colleague in the front passenger seat. ‘Put your gloves on, we need to hurry.’

The man in the back nodded and slowly pulled his gloves back on over the oozing flesh.

Casey Franks narrowed her eyes as the enormous chopper settled onto its three sets of double tyres. Beside her, Officer Markenson pulled his hood up to protect his ears from the biting down-draught.

‘Holy shit, do you think you could have gotten anything bigger?’ he said disagreeably, folding his arms against the swirling icy air.

The single pilot gave Hammerson a thumbs-up; the HAWC leader nodded in return.

Franks felt a surge of pride as the behemoth settled into the cold earth. At nearly 100 feet in length, the CH-53 Stallion had been one of the US army’s most formidable transport machines when in service. Despite the fact that Hammerson had raised it up from one of the aeronautical boneyards where newly retired equipment went to be deconstructed and recycled, the chopper still bristled with rocket tubes, machine-gun pivots and sensory equipment, and the tilted rear fin gave it a modern appearance.

She and Hammerson trotted to the open door, climbed in and waited just inside the frame. Logan took this as a sign to load his own officers and pointed to the door, his words lost in the swirling wind. His men ran towards the chopper in a hunched jog, even though the still spinning propeller was at least fifteen feet over their heads.

Franks dropped her duffel bag and flexed her hands to get the circulation going. Inside, it was warmer, but only just. Most of the equipment had been removed from the cavernous interior, leaving a row of attached metal seats down each side of the hold, a few small steel cabinets and netting on the walls, and two powerful-looking winches at either side door.

Hammerson motioned for Chief Logan to join him in the cockpit. Franks watched with amusement as Markenson and his fellow officers took seats along the opposite side of the craft from her. She doubted Logan’s men were keen on opening up the social lines anytime soon. Suited her; she wasn’t here to make friends.

As Hammerson passed her, he said briefly, ‘Suit up.’

She nodded and lifted the duffel bag to the metal seat and unzipped it. She caught Markenson looking at her and paused to smile at him and slightly purse her lips. The moustachioed officer mouthed, Fuck off, and stuck his hands in his pockets to keep warm, using his legs to hold his rifle.

Franks kept up her smile — she loved these hard cases. She turned to face him and started to remove her clothing. In no time she was down to her underwear. Most of the men acted like she was invisible, but Markenson shook his head and made a sour face at one of his fellow officers.

She caught one of the men sniggering and leering at her, and turned square on to him, her hands on her hips, displaying her muscled body, its skin crisscrossed and dotted with scars and burns and the swirls of multicoloured tattoos, her flattened breasts that were more like a weightlifter’s pectorals, the thick white bush crowding out of her underwear. She thrust her tongue out in an aggressively lewd gesture and the man quickly dropped his head to examine something on the floor.

Tiring of the game, she turned to pull her cold-terrain suit from the bag. The dark, close-fitting overalls looked like a combination of wetsuit and insulated body armour, with inch-thick flat ribbing around the torso, thighs and upper arms. The ribbing allowed for maximum movement, while its overlapping structure provided protection. The suits had built-in thermal controls and were fully woven through with a Kevlar fibre; they’d keep the wearer warm in temperatures down to twenty below and also stop a high-calibre slug.

Franks pulled on gloves with similar impact-resistant material over the back of the hand and knuckles. Then, machine-like, she slid two guns into holsters built into the low hips of her suit. She sheathed a long-bladed Ka-Bar into a holster on one thigh, and put a short-bladed Ka-Bar into a holster on the other. Finally, she inserted numerous electronics into concealed pouches and pockets.

She felt good, the suit’s warmth immediately infusing her muscles with mobility. She rolled her wounded shoulder, and threw a few air punches, her hands up in a fighter’s stance. She spun quickly and punched a metal cabinet, her fist making a deep dent in the steel.

She smiled and nodded to herself. ‘Oh yeah.’ Then winked at Markenson. ‘Let’s go do some damage.’

Jack Hammerson tapped the pilot on the shoulder and held up three fingers: Three minutes until take-off. The pilot nodded and began his pre-take-off check.

The blocky HAWC commander sat down, placed some earphones over his head, and motioned Logan to the seat next to him. The police chief strapped himself in and put on his own phones.

Hammerson’s voice came through the headset. ‘We’re in your hands, Chief. Where to?’

Logan pulled from his pocket a small map that had been folded open to show a topographic contour chart of greater Asheville. He placed the map on Hammerson’s leg and pointed. ‘Far as we can tell, everything seemed to start here.’ He jabbed his finger at the centre of a series of tight green circles that indicated a high, steep mountainous area. ‘The Black Dome. It’s where the Jordan couple were initially attacked. If we work through our incident timeline, everything seems to radiate out from that event.’

Hammerson read some of the numbers on the map, then looked out the window. ‘The Dome peak is over 6000 feet, and that cloud cover looks down to about 5000. We’re gonna have to do some climbing if we need to get to the top.’

Logan pointed at the map’s grid lines. ‘Too steep to set down up there. I’m guessing we’ll need to jump?’

Hammerson grinned and nodded.

Logan grinned back. ‘Pick-up?’

Hammerson shook his head. ‘Chopper’s heading back. We’ll be walking home, big fella.’

Logan laughed, then looked around the large military machine, and back at Hammerson’s hand where it rested on the map. The knuckles were raised and callused, the fingers large and blunt.

‘You’re not really city Feds, are you?’ he asked.

Hammerson seemed to think over his answer for a few moments, then smiled and shook his head.

‘Military?’

Hammerson shrugged.

‘What’s going on? Why are you really here?’

Hammerson handed back the map and his face became serious. ‘To capture a beast… before too many people get hurt.’