Callsign: King

21.

Noise and dust enveloped King as bullets split the air around him, striking the ground directly in his path or zinging harmlessly into the sky. A red tracer round occasionally flashed past, like a laser bolt from a science fiction movie weapon. It seemed impossible that none of the shots had yet found him, and he figured it was only a matter of time before that changed. But he was still alive, still on his feet, and still moving, and as long as he had that, there was still hope.

He kept changing directions every few steps. It increased the distance separating him from his ultimate goal-the cave entrance-but if he ran in a straight line, he would be an easy target. Like his chess piece namesake, King’s only advantage was his ability to move in any direction, and he knew it wouldn’t be enough to turn the tables on the mysterious attack force.

Behind him, one of the helicopters began powering up, and he knew without looking that both Felice and Sara were aboard-one of them held the key to a weapon that might conceivably unmake the human race, the other held the key to his heart. Part of his mind wanted to wrestle with the puzzle of what had happened, but he pushed away everything that wasn’t directly related to figuring out how to survive the next few seconds.

Though it felt like an eternity, it probably took him less than twenty seconds to make the meandering dash across the open area to the cave mouth. He plunged headlong into the darkness, trusting the memory of his earlier explorations to guide him through the impenetrable black. The gunshots ceased almost immediately, but King did not stop running until the cave’s mass swallowed up the noise of the departing helicopter. Even then, he kept moving, one hand extended forward to prevent him from smacking headlong into the mass of elephant bones.

He didn’t trust the darkness to provide him safety. If the men accompanying Fulbright were the professionals he thought they were, then they would almost certainly have night-vision equipment; they would be able to sneak up on him without betraying their presence with flashlights. But he did have one thing going for him; he knew that he wasn’t alone in the cave.

King located the edge of the bone pile and skirted along the perimeter, searching for the path leading to the tusk shrine. There was risk in seeking refuge amidst the zombies; without Felice to command them, they might simply attack as soon as they detected his presence.

His outstretched hand guided him along the wall of bones until he reached the clearing. In the total darkness, he could hear the noise of the zombies, laboring in the dark, perhaps continuing their work of transforming the shrine into a cathedral, or perhaps gnawing on the bones of the dead. He turned to where he thought the center of the clearing was located, and then struck out blindly toward the shrine.

For once, luck was on his side. He found the massive structure almost exactly where he thought it would be. He turned right and circled around to what he hoped was the back side of the shrine-it was impossible to know for certain-and hunkered down to wait.

The wait wasn’t nearly as long as he thought it would be.

The commandos did not make a sound as they entered the clearing. But their stealth counted for little when one of them opened up on a target, presumably one of the zombies. That single shot opened the floodgates, and for the next few seconds, gunfire reverberated throughout the spacious cavern. There were at least two different rifles firing-King thought they were M-16s or some variant thereof-interspersed with shouted commands, but then something changed. The frequency of the shots trailed off, and less than a minute later, they ceased altogether, as did the shouts. The only sound that remained was of flesh tearing and bones cracking, only a few meters away.

King kept waiting.

The next sound he heard was of something wet sliding across stone. In his mind’s eye, he could see the zombies dragging their victims to the charnel pile. He followed their actions as best he could, and roughly pinpointed the location where the noises stopped. When he heard nothing more, he moved from his hiding place and struck out across the darkness.

Once more, his instincts led him true. His searching hands, and in no small measure, his sense of smell, led him to the heap of decaying bodies that had evidently become a food source for the zombies. Mixed in with the smell of decay, he detected the coppery smell of fresh blood and the odor of recently fired weapons, and after some trial and error, his hands encountered something that wasn’t flesh, but rather hard plastic-the butt-stock of an assault weapon. He kept probing until he found what he was really looking for-the dead commando’s night vision goggles.

As best he could tell, it was a military standard A/N PVS-14 monocular night optic device. He held it to his right eye and worked the power switch to reset the device and turn it on. After a moment or two, the interior of the cave was revealed to him, rendered in a murky monochrome green.

The zombies had resumed working in the bones, but their ranks had been reduced by three and two of the survivors appeared to be bleeding from wounds to their extremities, wounds that would likely prove fatal in the short term. The floor was stained with blood and littered with shell casings, but King also spied a discarded M-4 carbine. He turned back to the stack of bodies, and wrestled one of the dead commandos out of his load-carrying vest. A quick check showed four full thirty-round magazines in the ammo pouch, along with two fragmentation grenades and a gaudy, oversized Rambo-style combat knife. With the night vision device strapped in place and wearing the vest, he crept past the oblivious zombies, collecting the carbine as he made his way out of the clearing.

He expected, at any moment, to encounter a second assault team, but that did not happen. He made it as far as the cave entrance before spying two figures silhouetted against the opening. He drew back quickly, and then hastened to the far end of the tunnel, a plan already taking shape in his mind.

King knew that eventually they would want to find out why their comrades had failed to report back, but he didn’t have time to wait them out. He needed a diversion, something to draw the rest of the team into the cave.

When he reached the edge of the elephant graveyard, he did not circle around as before, but instead climbed onto the piled skeletons, scrambling to the top of the nest of bones that were as thick as tree trunks. From this vantage, he took out one of the grenades, armed it, and hurled it out across the graveyard.

Five seconds later, the cavern resounded with an enormous thump. King felt the bones beneath him ripple with the concussive force, and a few seconds later, a shower of debris rained down on him, but his perch remained more or less stable. He nevertheless kept his head down, and once again waited to see if his plan would work.

It did. Two more commandos wearing night-vision devices entered the tunnel and raced down to investigate the blast.

King decided not to snipe them from his perch. If he failed to kill both men quickly, he would lose the advantage he had created with the diversion. Instead, he let the men pass by, and when they had, he dropped down to the cavern floor and hastened up the tunnel.

From the cavern entrance, he surveyed the dark landscape. A helicopter was parked a hundred meters away, and a single figure, presumably the pilot, lurked nearby, calmly smoking a cigarette. From a distance, the man didn’t appear to be wearing night-vision goggles. King crept across the open area, watching to see if the pilot would notice his approach, but the man remained oblivious until it was too late. King clubbed him senseless with the butt of the carbine and left him on the ground alongside the chopper.

It was, King now saw, a Bell 206 JetRanger, one of the most popular commercial helicopters in service. As part of his Special Forces training, King had learned how to fly the military variant-the Kiowa OH-58-and although it had been a few years, once in the pilot’s seat, it all came back to him. He started flipping switches and felt a thrill of exhilaration as the turbine engine started powering up.

The lights on the instrument panel flared brightly in his night-vision display, but he kept the device turned on and simply shut his right eye when it was necessary to look at the panel. A minute later, he gave the collective control lever a nudge, and as the rotor blades tilted and started pushing air, the helicopter lightened and lifted off the ground. As soon as it was hovering, he pushed the cyclic forward and the Bell shot ahead, across the floor of the valley.

As his forward velocity increased, the helicopter got more and more lift, and soon was climbing into the night sky. He scanned in all directions, and quickly located the running lights of the first helicopter near the western horizon, already forty or fifty miles away. Without the added weight of passengers, he would be able to push the throttle a little harder and close that gap.

He didn’t know what he was going to do when he caught up to them, but by his best estimate, he had about thirty minutes to come up with a plan.