Event

THIRTY

Sarah turned and watched the Blackhawk carrying Jack and his tunnel team to Chato's Crawl. She thought he was looking down at her and she gave a halfhearted wave as the big helicopter lifted skyward. She turned and counted the heads that made up her team, then looked toward the command tent. Lisa was there with her arms crossed over her chest. She waved and Sarah just smiled as she threw her nylon rope down the dark hole. Thirteen more ropes followed, and two by two her team rappelled into the darkness.

The heat and humidity hit her immediately as her light searched for the area where the hole became a tunnel. She came to a stop with her partner on the opposite side and scanned the area with her helmet light. Then she snapped it off and lowered her night-vision goggles and the world became a greenish hue. She nodded and they continued the final few feet to the floor, landing softly and pulling the ropes from their rappelling rings. They both lowered to an assault crouch as they scanned the emptiness of the tunnel ahead of them. Sarah raised her goggles and turned her helmet light on and off twice, signaling it was safe for the next two to finish the drop and enter the hole. Sarah moved to the mouth of the tunnel as the rest of the team came down in twos. Sarah raised her XM8 and stepped into the blackness.

She moved twenty feet into the darkness before holding her hand up in a stop gesture. She removed her glove as the team assembled behind her and felt the wall. It was sticky, not to the point it made her fingers stick together, but it felt moist and tacky. The tunnel had a musky odor, like a lot of caves that host large bat populations, and some ammonia smell, but the humidity was the worst aspect thus far. Sarah replaced her glove and started forward.

Her team had only gone two hundred yards into the increasingly deepening tunnel when a Ranger, a young sergeant, started talking loudly and shaking his head. He slid down one of the shining walls, losing his weapon and placing his hands over his face, knocking his night-vision goggles from it.

Sarah turned and made her way back. The man was now screaming.

"What in the hell is going on?" she asked as she knelt before the young soldier.

"I gottta get outta here, the walls are closing in on me, I can't stand it!" he screamed.

Sarah reached out and grabbed his right arm and shook it. "Calm down, calm down," she said as she reached out and took his oxygen tank and unclipped the plastic mask and quickly placed it over his mouth. "Breathe, troop, breathe, easy, easy."

The sergeant started taking deep breaths, his eyes closing as he finally started calming.

"Anyone else?" she said loudly. "Come on, you're no good to us if you're going to freak out, so is anyone else claustrophobic?" she said, looking around.

The sergeant removed the oxygen mask and looked at Sarah with pleading eyes. "Sorry, sorry, I need someone to take me back," he said as he slammed the mask back over his mouth.

"I'm the one who's sorry, Sergeant, but I'm not going to spare a man walking you out of here. You get back the best way you can. The rest of you, let's go."

With that, the sergeant's eyes widened as Sarah abruptly turned and went back to the head of her team. The other Rangers and two Delta men didn't look back, but joined their team leader. The young sergeant scrambled to his feet and started back to the tunnel opening.

Sarah shook her head as she once again started forward into the dark and humidity of the tunnel. If the truth be known, she wanted nothing more than to follow the kid out of there.

As Collins hit the bottom of the hole, he was hit immediately by the heat. Everett landed easily on the opposite side. This tunnel was far smaller than the one Sarah was currently struggling in. It must be one of the offspring holes. They had to bend slightly to keep from scraping their heads on the rounded ceiling. Jack turned his night vision on and saw the small, sparkling elements of sand and dirt that made up the compressed walls. They were smooth and warm to the touch. Everett looked his way and shook his head.

"Goddamn, Jack, but it's blacker than a well digger's ass down there," he said as he brought his XM8 up, thinking it was too light to do any good, armor-piercing rounds or not.

Collins watched as the tunnel sloped down into nothingness. He looked at the ground and saw large marks gouged into the earth. He reached down and saw they were scrapes made by the passing of the animal. He was looking at what were claw marks. He shook his head and moved forward so Mendenhall, Ryan, and the rest of his team could crowd in. Then Everett stepped aside and allowed a master sergeant from Delta to take the lead. The Delta sergeant went forward, held his hand up, then slowly lowered it, indicating that they should follow.

Before long the team halted and Jack was asked to come forward. As he did, he nodded for Everett to follow. The Delta point man was kneeling and examining something on the floor of the tunnel. Jack looked down and immediately knew he was looking at an arm. It was severed at midfore-arm and had a watch that was still ticking off the seconds. As he looked up the tunnel, he could see a darker hue from his glasses as they were now able to follow the blood trail left by the animal and whatever victim the arm belonged to.

Jack nodded for the team to move on. The coppery odor of blood was becoming more apparent the deeper into the tunnel they progressed, but in their minds it had become even stronger with the finding of the arm. Jack stayed behind with Mendenhall for a moment and indicated he should go ahead and take a reading on his VDF. The sergeant shouldered his weapon, raised his goggles, and removed the steel probe from its clip on the box and slowly pushed the spearlike instrument into the compacted earth. He removed his hand and looked at the lit gauge. One of the needles pointed west, toward the center of town, while the other needle picked up minute vibrations coming from underground, which they could only assume were the animals as they dug.

"Looks like we're headed in the right direction, Major," Mendenhall said.

"Keep that thing on and check it every sixty feet or so, it'll make me feel better," Jack said as he patted Mendenhall on the shoulder.

Mendenhall quickly pulled the probe from the wall and decided to just let it dangle by its cord for quicker reach. Then he turned and hurried after the major, deciding the one with the VDF box should be in the middle of the team.

Group geologist Steve Hanson, Sarah's friend, led his team of fifteen soldiers through one of the small holes. They had found nothing significant since coming into this underground hell. He had called a stop at a junction where their smaller tunnel joined one that was far larger. Unlike any of the intersecting tunnels before, Steve investigated and found that the musky odor they had noticed in all the other small excavations had changed significantly. This stench was far sharper and made him wince. He placed his mask over his mouth and took three deep breaths and headed back to his men. Jackie Sanchez, an Event Group army sergeant, raised her night-vision goggles and asked if he was alright.

"Something's different here, you getting that smell?"

"Just what I'm getting off of you, that's bad," she said.

"That tunnel is far different than what we've seen. Any luck with the radio?"

"Nothing but intermittent chatter. "Other teams, I think, trying to get Site One."

"Doc, I'm picking up something here," a Ranger spec five said. He had his VDF probe stuck in the wall to his left. "Not strong, but it's steady, seems close, but can't say for sure."

The rest of Hanson's team started looking around. There were three holes besides the large one that Hanson had just investigated, plus the one they occupied, and one more that seemed too small for one of the animals. The Ranger removed the probe and stepped to the smaller hole that was right in the middle of the team. He placed it into the loose earth that had been pushed out into the larger tunnel. The gauge moved minutely and held steady. The red indicator light came on for the first time and stayed on.

"We definitely have something," he said, replacing the probe.

"Go to the end of the line and make sure we don't have something coming in behind us," Hanson said, as he brought his XM8 around and kept it pointed at the larger hole ahead.

The Ranger squeezed his way past the other Rangers until he came to the end of the team. A lone Delta commando covered their rear.

"Excuse me, Sarge," he said as he placed the probe into the wall. As he started to take his reading, he noticed the red light on his VDF had become brighter. He lightly hit the box and was starting to question the sensitivity of the machine when he felt movement to his left. He looked back along the length of tunnel; there was nothing but blackness in the area they had already covered. He turned and looked at the Delta sergeant, who was taking a drink from his canteen. He could have been picking up his movement. He lowered his ambient-light goggles and turned back to his rear. He didn't catch it at first because it was so close it was unrecognizable. The creature was there, staring right at him. The eyes were actually glowing bright yellowish green as it tilted its large head and studied him for a moment. He quickly brought up his weapon and pulled the trigger; nothing happened. He had forgotten to remove the safety he had put on as he maneuvered around the team.

Suddenly he was blinded as the Delta sergeant opened fire. The armor-piercing rounds flew by his head and struck the animal dead center in its broad chest. Then three more Rangers added their fire to that of the Delta soldier. Rounds were ricocheting off the creature as it roared. The Ranger was still blinded as he was grabbed by the lethal claws of the enraged animal. He felt the air being crushed from his lungs, and though he wasn't aware of it, three armor-piercing rounds went through his own armor where it met his hips, and then through his body, and struck the animal. He saw one round hit an area uncovered by the beast's exoskeleton, the pain causing it to squeeze him even harder. But still the animal had shown no ill effect from the bullet penetrating its body.

The Delta sergeant lowered his weapon and was joined by two other Rangers as they tried in vain to pull the first man free of the clawed monstrosity before them. Hanson was there, adding his firepower to those trying to find a weak spot on the creature. Suddenly the wall exploded outward onto Hanson and the would-be rescuers. The creature that struck them in force was larger than the tunnel and brought down the rounded ceiling on them as they turned in terror. Hanson felt a powerful arm as it raked by his face and grabbed someone to his right. All he could hear was a scream of pain as the man was pulled over him through the loose collapse of dirt. He couldn't breathe as the sticky dirt fell into his mouth. He tried to pull back on someone he had grabbed on to when the roof fell in, but as he pulled, he realized it was someone's weapon and not an actual person. Then he was suddenly free of the cave-in as he was turned upside down. He spit out dirt as he felt blood rush to his head. He heard firing in all directions and just knew he was going to catch a wild round in the back. The screams were now reaching his ears as he finally focused his night vision on what had him. The beast roared and quickly bashed him against one of the hardened walls. His senses flew out of his body and he became mercifully numb as he heard his back and legs snap into several pieces. The beast screamed again, then threw him to the ground where he lay in a slumped position against the wall. Still alive, he saw around him at least five of the smaller animals as they attacked what remained of his team.

The last thing Hanson saw was the larger of the animals as it lowered its large head toward him and the eyes blinked, as if it was smelling him, studying something it hadn't seen before. He didn't feel the roughness of the black tongue as it slowly curled free of the mandibles and delicately licked his face. The odor was the same as what he had smelled in the tunnel. Hanson's senses were gone forever as the beast started feeding.

The first tunnel team to meet the enemy had been wiped out within two minutes of first contact.

Ryan pushed the earpiece as deep into his ear as he possibly could and still the static was too much. He removed his Kevlar helmet and shone his light at Collins's chest, making sure not to hit his goggled eyes. He wiped sweat from his brow and shook his head.

"Still can't make it out, Major. It may be Site One, or one of the other tunnel teams, I just can't be sure." He reached for his oxygen to get a breath of clean air.

They had been deep underground for almost an hour and forty minutes and hadn't made contact with as much as a ground squirrel. Collins shone his light ahead of the others in his team and noticed a branch in the tunnel up ahead. The men were squatting and taking some of their own oxygen. The humidity was off the scale and the heat was close to unbearable. They would have given anything to leave the 0 ₂ masks on because of the stench clinging to the tunnel walls, but they knew they might have at least a few more hours of this, so they conserved as much as they could.

"Being underground is hell on the COMM links. Where do you estimate we are, Sergeant?"

"I believe the center of town is just that way," Mendenhall answered, pointing to the right. "Maybe a thousand yards or so. The depth of this tunnel is making the GPS signal we're receiving from base sporadic at best and nonexistent most of the time, but my last fix was pretty dead-on, so I'd say not far ahead."

Collins had chosen this particular hole because it seemed to be the freshest and hottest of the many trails. It seemed to have been created by two animals traveling side by side because it was wide enough for the men to get around without too much difficulty. He looked at the other members of his team. They were hot in the new abalone-shell armor and were using too much of their water.

He placed his hand on the wall and felt the eerie smoothness through his glove. It was almost crystalline in feel and shimmer. He glanced again at the other fifteen members of his tunnel team. The Delta men were in the lead, then him, Ryan, Mendenhall, and Everett, and the last five were Rangers bringing up the rear.

"Well, if the town is that way, I'm thinking the branch to the left, away from the town. Thoughts?" Collins asked them all, not just the officers.

They all concurred with silent nods.

Suddenly, the VDF Mendenhall held started blinking. Something was moving toward them and it was coming fast. The lights started blinking on and off at a faster rate, and the needle on the motion sensor went into the yellow. Mendenhall raised the small stainless-steel probe that was attached to the side of the handheld VDF device and shoved it into the wall of the tunnel. The lights became brighter and started blinking even faster. The gauges were starting to really move into the higher ranges, indicating extreme movement. He then removed the probe and jammed it into the wall to his right; the blinking lights slowed and dimmed at the same time. He returned the probe to the other wall but farther to the left, then he pulled it free and placed it in the wall farther to the right. The lights again sped up their blinking and glowed bright red. The directional indicator showed the vibration coming straight at them, and the motion sensor was now pegged in the red.

"Uh, we have company headed this way, Major."

"Which direction?" Collins asked, bringing his XM8 rifle up into firing position.

"Shit, sir, now in every direction." Mendenhall took his eyes off the VDF and raised his own weapon. He glanced down at the signal once he was prepared to defend himself. "Shit, the needle first points to the south, then jumps to the east, then west." Mendenhall kept his eyes on the device. "The only place they're not coming is from behind us."

"You men, bunch up, four-man teams. I want weapons coverage in all directions. Keep fire discipline, you are now weapons-free."

He watched as the team broke up into the four-man groups they had rehearsed before coming down. It was a tactic Jack and Sarah had devised to protect against sudden attacks.

The machine was no longer emitting a chirp or a beep, but a solid buzz. The blinking lights were now a steady red glow, casting those around it in an eerie shade.

"Shut that off, everyone use your regular lighting, no ambient devices, they'll blind you if there's shooting."

Suddenly the wall exploded right behind Mendenhall. The shattered wall threw him to the ground. Lights immediately illuminated the animal as it shook itself free of the clinging dirt and sand, slinging outward its armor neck plates. The plates dug into both walls of the tunnel creating deep gouges in the rock and dirt. The beast roared, then leapt for the fallen Mendenhall, who screamed and rolled just as the creature swiped with its claws. Collins and Everett opened fire at the same time the group to Mendenhall's rear did. Over one hundred armor-piercing rounds hit the animal simultaneously. All but a few glanced off its purplish armor and embedded in the walls. As the tracer rounds struck, it stumbled forward and leapt onto the sergeant. At that moment, another animal burrowed into the tunnel somewhere in front of Collins. He heard the loud pops of automatic fire as well as screams of terror and pain. Jack saw the bright flashes as the Delta and Ranger teams opened up.

Everett used the muzzle of his short-barreled XM8 and lifted one of the plates of armor just below the Talkhan's skull and fired a twenty-round burst of 5.56 mm rounds into the back of the animal's head. It roared and shook its massive head, then collapsed heavily onto the sergeant and firmly pinned him to the tunnel floor. They could barely hear Mendenhall screaming below the heavy carcass of the dead creature over the screams and bursts of gunfire in the enclosed tunnel. Collins and Everett both reached down and quickly pulled him out from under the animal.

"Goddammit, sirs," the sergeant said loudly and breathlessly, "just a little fucking faster next time." Mendenhall started checking himself, making sure he was all right. The new armored vest had paid major dividends for the sergeant because when he turned, the officers saw three large gashes almost through the back of the abalone-shell protection. One of the animal's teeth was still lodged in the collar of the new armor vest.

They didn't have time to answer Mendenhall or comment on the armor as more shots rang out down the entire length of the tunnel, each weapon sparking a myriad of bright colors on the crystalline walls. Screams and yells could be heard, along with cries of horror and injury. Suddenly, the firing stopped. Then started again as another animal broke through the wall. They heard Ryan's shouts as he directed fire down the tunnel. Collins reached for a flare, popped it, and threw it into the darkness. It settled and revealed a nightmarish scene as the Delta front guard was battling for their lives against three of the animals. One of the lead animals struck out with its tail and caught a Delta sergeant in the throat, impaling him and yanking him away from the others and into the midst of the flailing claws of the attackers.

Suddenly a clawed hand burst through the wall and creased the air in front of one of the men just before the entire bulk of the animal crashed into the tunnel. The claws had slashed a specialist from Delta almost in two, catching him between the neck and shoulder. The beast had blindly ripped down, severing flesh, bone, and cartilage as easy as a knife slices through paper. A corporal was too close to use his XM8, so he pulled his combat knife from its scabbard and leaped onto die creature's back when it became fully exposed. He thrust the knife between and under its flapping neck armor and into its neck three times in rapid succession before the beast reached behind and grabbed the soldier with its long claws. The stinger swiped and nicked the corporal, but the claws were already doing the necessary damage. The sharpened points pierced the soldier and he screamed in agony as the beast brought the struggling Ranger toward its face and roared in anger and pain.

"Yeah," the soldier screamed back into the gaping, teeth-filled maw, "fuck you!" He then quickly plunged the knife into the animal's left eye. The Talkhan screamed in pain, slamming the soldier again and again into the hardened wall of the tunnel. It pummeled the lifeless body until the corporal simply came apart.

"Move!" Collins's shout filled the tunnel as others rushed up from behind the wounded and enraged beast. Collins, Everett, and Ryan opened fire at the same moment, taking the animal first to its knees and then to its side. The rounds followed it down and kept striking it as it lay prone on the blood-slick floor, the tail and stinger still twitching. Then abruptly, the animal at their feet roared and staggered to its feet. It swung outward with its claws, seeking out anything it could kill. Collins quickly removed a grenade and pulled the pin. He waited until the beast had swung and missed, then while it roared, Jack quickly jammed the grenade into its large mouth, scraping his arm and hand on its teeth as he did so. He threw himself at the creature's feet as the grenade went off with a muffled explosion, and Jack saw the head come apart, spraying him, Everett, and Mendenhall with gore.

An eerie silence then filled the smoke-shrouded tunnel as the flare sputtered and died, leaving them in total darkness. Seven men were left standing. Two were only slightly wounded with gashes and cuts from the sharpened claws. Seven men had been lost during the brief two-minute encounter with the four Talkhan.

"Okay, let's get ourselves together and start moving. I don't like just standing here like ducks on a pond. You have anything on the VDF, Sergeant?" Collins asked while reaching for his oxygen.

Mendenhall was shaking badly. He wiped some of the animals' blood from the OD-green face of the small device and examined the gauge. "No... uh, no, sir, needles are flat and steady."

Collins lit another flare and examined what was left of his team. The mangled bodies of the dead littered the floor.

"Pull these men back against the wall. If we can, we come back and retrieve them." Jack focused on one of the Rangers who couldn't be more than nineteen.

As they started forward, the first Delta man to the branch in the tunnel called back behind him using his radio, "Major, you better have a look at this."

Collins squeezed past the others and knelt beside the highly trained commando from Fort Bragg.

"What have you got?" Collins asked.

"It looks like we're not the only ones to come this way." With his flashlight the Delta man pointed at the footprints clearly evident in the soft floor of the tunnel.

"This looks like it may be one of our teams, number's about right. Maybe fourteen to eighteen men, give or take a couple," Jack said.

"Normally I would say you're right, sir, but look at this." The flashlight fell on a set of prints that were too small to be that of a soldier. And they were obviously made by tennis shoes. "And this set here, they're not military boots, they're probably cowboy boots." Then the beam swung forward about a foot and illuminated another set. "These are small and are like nurse's shoes, maybe a waitress; my wife wears something like these."

Collins straightened and cast his light down the tunnel. The beam seemed to trail off to nothing as it tried to push its way through the blackness and smoke ahead.

"Whatever unit is down here, they've taken along at least three civilians. A man, a boy, and possibly a woman, Major."

At the same time Collins had started worrying about possible civilians in the tunnels, Carl Hastings, one of the Event Group's most experienced tunnel engineers from the Colorado School of Mines, was in a frightened, headlong flight from the hole his team had entered. The Delta teams led the way as the Rangers brought up the rear as they carried what wounded they were able to snatch away from the attacking animals. Their team was down to only seven men, not counting the four wounded. Bobby Jenks, a friend of Sarah's, had been pulled screaming into a hole that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, crashing into him and knocking him off-balance just long enough for the beast to grab him.

The sheer numbers of the attackers had caught them off guard. They thought that maybe they had killed at least one of the animals, but could honestly account for no more. The Delta teams in the front took the brunt of the attack while those in the rear tried to help, but it had been hopeless from the beginning, and by the time the attacks were on in force, the Delta teams were using their nine-millimeter handguns at close range. Some even had to use knives in the closed spaces. The animals had knocked several of the soldiers down easily by collapsing walls of dirt and sand upon them, then struck at them while they were in the worst possible position to fight. Now they only prayed to make it to the surface and not die in this underground hell, but to do it fighting in the light of day.

Hastings pressed his earpiece into his ear. "We have a break in the tunnel up here, there's sunlight. Let's move and get the wounded up front and out."

"Oh, thank you, God, thank you," Hastings said aloud.

As they moved into the sun that was cast down into the tunnel from a hole, they saw the shadows and heard the distinctive thumping of rotors. The breach in the ground was being circled by at least three AH-64D Apache Longbow gunships. The dispirited group of soldiers and Event members could never have imagined a more welcome sound.

Two Delta men used one of the XM8 weapons as a step as they thrust first the wounded and then the rest through the opening. Once up and out, they helped pull their comrades to safety. As the final Delta sergeant cleared the hole, they collapsed down on the hardpan as the Apaches continued to circle.

The pilot of the lead Apache, a veteran of the Event Group for eight years with his team, Chief Warrant Officer Brett Jacobson, watched as the tunnel unit emerged from the hole. He quickly counted the men on the ground and shook his head, knowing the number they had started with.

"Those guys were mauled," he said into his mike.

"Yeah, and it may not be over. Look, Chief," his weapons man in the front nose of the Apache calmly called.

As the pilot turned, he saw with horror the speeding animals as they parted the sands in their rush toward the grounded troops, two from the north, a third from the east. He estimated a closing speed of close to sixty miles an hour as one of the creatures breached the surface as a dolphin would, most likely to spy its quarry, only to disappear again into the soil as quickly as it had breached a moment before.

"Jesus! Predator flight, we have men on the deck and three, I repeat, three targets closing on their position. Let's move!" he called to his attacking wolf pack. "Break, break, break!"

The other two Apaches broke formation and started their run for the fast-attacking animals. They aligned themselves and targeted two Hellfire missiles each; in moments the laser-guided weapons were streaking toward their intended targets. But they would never make it as two of the animals came to the surface and sprang into the blue sky. The relatively slow-moving Apaches were easy targets as they slammed into the first gunship, jolting the big chopper and breaking the Hellfire's laser hold on the target. The second of the two beasts hit the Apache's tail boom and rebounded to the ground, stunned for a moment before it shook itself, then dove once again into the sand. The Hellfires remembered the last position the laser designator targeted before it was knocked offline, but the speeding creatures were by the point of the missiles' initial impact by twenty yards, as they missed the animals totally. The warheads struck the hardpan, sending surface sand one hundred feet into the air. The pilot regained enough control to bank hard and bring the Apache under control. But he didn't know the first animal was still attached to the Apache's undercarriage until the beast brought its claws up in a swinging arc and punctured the armored belly of the attack bird.

The lead pilot saw what was happening and he brought his stick forward. His Apache shot toward the dangling animal. His gunner aligned his eyepiece and targeted the clinging beast on his wingman's underside, and the thirty-millimeter chain gun erupted. The slow-operating weapon sent large tank-killing rounds forth in a perfectly straight line, catching the animal in the large bulk of its torso, severing it from the remaining parts of its body. What was left fell three hundred feet to the floor of the desert. Only four or five errant rounds hit the Apache.

"Now that was never put in the book by the manufacturer," the weapons officer shouted in triumph.

Jacobson then turned his Apache and the chain gun fired at the distinctive lines of thrown-up soil made by the attacking Talkhan. Another animal had joined the other two on their ground attack. The explosive rounds found the first animal as it breached the surface. The thirty-millimeter shells tore through its armor, stopping it dead in its tracks. Then a Hellfire caught the second, exploding a foot in front of the parting wave of dirt, sending chunks of purple and black skyward.

The pilot pulled back on his stick, but as he did, the third animal suddenly surfaced and shot like a homed-in missile toward the hovering Apache. The pilot watched in horror as everything seemed to slow to a crawl. The animal was traveling so fast that the Apache's computer took it for an incoming missile and started to automatically pop off chaff and flares. The animal hit the cockpit with so much force, the front half of the attack helicopter separated from the back, sending the chain gun, weapons officer, and most of the fire-control system tumbling three hundred feet to the ground. The army warrant officer was inundated with flying glass as he fought for control as the huge machine started a plunge for the desert below. As the men on the ground watched in utter horror, the Apache hit hard, tearing away the wheels and weapons pod on the right side of the gunship. The rotors dug into the ground and sheared off as they struck. Jacobson was pelted with dirt and pieces of flying metal as he fought to hold on. The Apache skid along the sand and dirt, tearing access panels and the left-side weapons pod away as it hit a small rise in the earth and bounced into the air, then it flipped over once and came down on its side, sliding to a stop in two pieces.

Two Delta sergeants broke for the fallen bird to try to free anyone alive. As they approached, they saw Jacobson fighting his harness trying to get out as aviation fuel was pouring all over the two engines. The first Delta man started cutting away the damaged harness with his knife, and the other started pulling and tugging at Jacobson, who was screaming for them to hurry as he spied one of the dirt waves approaching at breakneck speed. As they finally released him and pulled the pilot from the broken Apache, the animal surfaced and jumped, missing the three men by a foot. It struck what was left of the cockpit and became entangled in wiring and broken glass. One of the Delta sergeants stopped and took out his nine millimeter and emptied his clip into the engine compartment of the Longbow. Suddenly all three were knocked flat by the explosion as one of the bullets made the spark the soldier was hoping for. The aviation fuel went up with a loud thrump and the animal was caught inside. It fought free of the remains of the chopper and started toward the prone men. Then fifty rounds tore into it and dropped the flaming beast mere feet from the three men. The remaining tunnel team was there and was now helping the men up. Then they retreated from the remains of the animal and the crash site in case any of the other creatures had the same idea.

The other wounded Apache was coming down also. The remaining arm and claw of the destroyed animal had kept working, its nerve endings continuing to fire. It tore the fuel lines and severed the tail-rotor wiring harness, stopping the thrust the bird needed to counter the main-rotor torque, thus sending the chopper into a spinning hell ride. The whine of the two turbines wound down quickly as it slammed into the ground. The Apache bounced once, breaking off all three landing gear assemblies. Then it rolled, tilting over onto its side until the rotor blades struck the rocks around it, disintegrating, sending composite metal shards in every direction.

The third Apache was a smoking ruin in the distance.

The remaining troops on the ground had watched the incredible air battle around them as at least twenty of the animals made a run for them. They stared in stunned silence, the wounded pilot, Jacobson, among them, as the creatures swam toward them in a huge dust cloud. Jacobson slowly stood on a broken leg and drew his .45 automatic from his shoulder holster. The others picked up their weapons and waited.

From the monitor in the White House, the president and the National Security Council members watched as the animals rose in the last fifty feet, then dust obscured the remaining men of one of the tunnel teams and the pilot who had at first rescued them, and then they him. A moment later when the dust cloud cleared, the men were gone and the only thing that remained was the large hole where they had been making their last stand.

The president lowered his head, and the other members just closed their eyes against the scene.

Sam Fielding adjusted his binoculars and scanned the area below them for any sign of life from the brave stand the tunnel team had made on the open plain of the valley. Then he tensed as he saw another of the teams exiting the earth about a half a mile from the massacred first team. Then he shifted position and saw they had already been spotted by the animals. At least three of them were now streaking toward the second tunnel team from two miles out.

"Sir," Lisa said at his side. "I have Colonel Jessup on the radio asking permission to cover that team."

"Tell them permission denied. I have a small surprise for those motherfuckers. Tell them to hold position for two minutes. I'm going to buy them some time," Fielding said as he lowered his field glasses. He looked at Lisa. "Go, go."

Lisa turned and sprinted into the tent, knowing the pilots on the radios were going to scream bloody murder because they were now ordered to watch the men on the ground get chewed to pieces.

But Sam Fielding knew they would never have time for the fighters to cover them, nor the helicopters to land and get all of the survivors on board before the animals struck. So he would buy them the time they needed with something he had had the foresight to airlift in.

He heard the sound of the engines and looked up. The AWACS was there, and he knew the big 707 had painted the desert terrain and was sending out a position on the attacking creatures. He smiled and turned for the command tent.

Lisa was trying to pacify the angry Jessup and the Blackhawk pilots when Fielding ordered her to contact his field artillery, code-named Gunslinger.

The commander of the three M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzers received the radio call from Command Site One.

"This is Gunslinger. Affirmative, we are tracking on GPS relay from the air force. Standing by for fire mission, over," said the captain in the lead Paladin.

"Fire at will, Captain," came the call from Fielding.

"Lock and load Excalibur!" the captain called from his command seat.

The loader opened the automatic ammo-storage door and pulled a brand-new piece of untested ordnance straight from the Aberdeen proving grounds. The Excalibur round weighed forty pounds and had compressed, funny-looking fins on the back end that told any expert in the world this couldn't be an artillery round.

The round was loaded into the M284 cannon and it immediately started communicating with the Paladin's computer-fire system. The round was fed constant updates as to its target, and the fins, which were still compressed against the sleek shell, would automatically be set accordingly after it left the tube. The information was relayed by military satellite to the orbiting AWACS and then to the small dish antenna atop the strange-looking tank.

"Fire!"

The three Paladins simultaneously spat fire and smoke as they hurled three GEO positioning smart rounds from their 155 mm cannons at the three moving targets. The Paladins were fed constant information from the AWACS overhead, and their own Global Positioning Systems cross-referenced with the big plane, which received signals made by the animals' vibration caught on the portable VDF bomblets dropped on the valley floor earlier, and now the targets were painted, as the tank commander had told Fielding earlier, three ways from Sunday.

After leaving the muzzle of the cannon, the fins popped free of the outer warhead and started to make their minute adjustments of trim and angle, sending the rounds right or left depending on the changing aspects of their individual targets. This is what basically amounted to an enemy's worst nightmare, a smart bullet.

The heavily damaged team that had just exited the ground watched as one of the animals split off and the other two stayed together in tight formation as they sped toward them. The soldiers as one all stood and started aiming their weapons at the large plumes of dirt and sand as the wakes grew closer to them, a mere two hundred yards away.

Suddenly a thunderbolt wrenched the sky overhead as the first Excalibur found its mark, exploding exactly on top of the creature on the left, sending pieces of it flying skyward. The second animal veered away from the explosion and altered its angle of attack, but it only made it another thirty feet before the second Excalibur round also changed its aspect to target via a minute adjustment at the last minute by its small tail fins, changing the flow of air over the surface planes of the fins and sending the warhead to the right, with the Global Positioning System calling the shot. That round exploded three feet in front of the beast, tearing it apart and flooding the surface with its flesh and blood and immediately collapsing the tunnel it was in back sixty yards.

As the soldiers and Event Group members stood stunned, the third Excalibur caught the other animal as it came from a roundabout direction from the first two. They were silent at first, then they collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. They had been saved, at least for the moment, by something none of them ever knew existed, a lightweight, forty-pound artillery shell with a brain the size of Einstein. It was a new sword for the working soldier called Excalibur. But they also couldn't know there were only three hundred rounds in the entire American arsenal. And that the three Paladins had only fifty on hand.

Fielding was pleased as he watched the attack and knew the pilots in the Blackhawks were satisfied as they swept down to evacuate the team on the ground.

"My God, that was impressive," Virginia Pollock said at his side.

"Yeah, it's too bad we only have forty-seven more rounds, and those will be used to save the lives of any more survivors down there." He looked at Virginia. "We're going to need a lot more than a few experimental artillery shells to survive this day."

"Well, the engineers that my boss requested are here, and so is the president's special gift. They're drilling as we speak.

Fielding removed his helmet and rubbed his forehead. "God, I hope those murdering bastards cooperate and head to the exit door."

Sarah watched as two Delta Force men stabbed the darkness ahead with their powerful lights. The tunnel was wide, almost like that of a large concrete storm drain. Sarah chipped away part of the wall and looked it over in the light.

"This has been compacted, that's why there's no excess dirt from the tunneling, only at the surface. It's literally compressing the soil as it drives through the ground," she said, looking from the sample to the man next to her.

The hole was hot and humid and smelled badly of rotting meat and sweat. They had been traveling downward for the past hour and forty-five minutes and had to stop and breathe the clean air supplied by their oxygen tanks. Now two point men waved them forward, and once again they started moving.

Suddenly one of the men held up a hand and made a fist, then opened it and gestured for them to lie low. He then waved for Sarah to come forward.

"What is it?" she asked in a low tone.

"Listen, sounds like a freight train," the Delta sergeant said.

Sarah placed a gloved hand to the smooth wall, then she removed her helmet with her other hand and listened.

"Whatever it is, it's coming this way," the commando said in a whisper.

"And coming fast," added Sarah as she stepped back from the wall and removed the safety on the XM8, making the deadly automatic ready to fire.

The remaining thirteen members of her team did the same. They took up various positions for defense, using the four-man pack defense they had discussed. The one thing they did that was exactly the same was to point their weapons at the far wall as the vibration grew lou4er in the tunnel. Dirt and sand started to slowly come off the roof of the unnatural cave in soft splatters, then in whole chunks.

"It has to be the mother" Sarah said softly, almost speaking to herself. "It's too damn big to be the smaller ones. Look at the VDF, it's off the scale."

As quickly as the vibration started, it stopped. Whatever was on the other side of the tunnel wall was only feet from where they were standing. Sarah and the others could feel it, it was a palpable thing. Most of the soldiers brought their automatic weapons up to eye level, focusing on the spot. As they did, the vibration and noise of the displacement of soil began again, coming closer. It seemed to have turned their way and was coming on in small advances. They felt it in their feet first, then the vibration caused by the movement traveled up their calves to the thighs. Then it stopped. As they watched the wall, small pieces began to fall. They were still and quiet.

"Hear it?" Sarah whispered. "It's right there," pointing the muzzle of her weapon to her right. "It's definitely the mother."

Suddenly a roar shook the air and brought an avalanche of dirt and rock down upon them. Then the noise started growing fainter. It was moving away, back up the mountain.

"What the hell?" the Delta sergeant asked. "Why didn't she attack?"

"I don't know. This thing has to have senses that should have felt our heartbeats through the soil. It should have attacked."

Suddenly a horrible thought crossed Sarah's mind as she was shaking dirt off herself and she froze. They had been briefed on the animal and how it would adapt to whatever it was up against. Now that, coupled with the fact it was heading away from the desert floor and traveling up the mountain, seared the answer to the sergeant's question in her mind. Not only was it going after a bigger target, it was going after the target that was controlling the fight against it and its offspring: the crash site and all the support personnel gathered there. The thought of Lisa, Virginia, and the unsuspecting Event teams working at the site raced through her mind. She quickly hit the transmit switch on her radio, hooked to her web gear at her side.

"Site One, come in. Site One, come in!" she said loudly into the mike just inches from her mouth.

The other members of her tunnel team quickly realized what she was thinking. The sergeant grabbed Sarah by the arm and turned her roughly as they started running back the way they had come. They knew down to a man they had been outmaneuvered.