Reliquary

= 60 =

SNOW WATCHED AS the dark figures massed, filling the mouth of the tunnel before them. They had paused in the harsh brilliance of the flare, but were now moving forward with a kind of deliberation that made Snow’s skin crawl. These were not brainless creatures throwing themselves mindlessly into battle; some kind of strategy was at work.

“Listen,” Donovan said quietly. “Load one of those canister rounds into the XM-148. We’ll fire together on my signal. You aim at the left of the group, I’ll aim at the right. Reload and fire again as fast as you can. Grenade launchers have a tendency to pull high, so keep your aim low.”

Snow loaded the round into the launcher, feeling his heart thumping at the back of his throat. Beside him, he felt Donovan grow tense.

“Now!” Donovan yelled.

Snow pulled the forward trigger, and the weapon almost bucked out of his hands as the load roared toward the group. The bright plumes of the two explosions filled the narrow tunnel with orange light; Snow found he had aimed too far to the left, hitting the wall of the tunnel. Then, with a deep shudder, a section of the ceiling collapsed. Horrifying screams came from the group of hooded figures.

“Again!” Donovan cried, loading another round.

Snow reloaded and fired again, letting the barrel drift slightly to the right this time. He watched, mesmerized, as the shell erupted from the barrel and—seemingly in slow motion—pinwheeled its way over the heads of the roiling group at the tunnel’s mouth. There was another shudder and a fresh burst of light.

“Lower!” Donovan screamed. “They’re closing!”

Sobbing now, Snow ripped open the extra pouch with his teeth, loaded the round, and fired again. The bright fierce plume erupted in the midst of the figures. Muffled shrieks sounding piercingly over the roar of the explosion.

“Again!” Donovan yelled, firing his own grenade launcher at the figures. “Hit them again!”

Snow loaded, fired; the shot fell short, sending a concussive blast of heat toward them, knocking him to his knees. He righted himself, blinking against the clouds of dust and smoke that billowed through the dark space. He was out of grenades, and his finger moved from the forward trigger to the rear trigger.

Donovan held up his hand in the signal for “danger point.” They waited, guns pointed into the blackness, for what seemed to Snow like several minutes. At last, Donovan relaxed his weapon.

“That was a hell of a shitstorm,” he whispered. “You did all right. I want you to hang back for a moment while I recon. If you hear anything, give a holler. I doubt we’ll find anything larger than a pinky waiting for us after that, but I’m not taking any chances.”

He checked the magazine of his M-16, snapped on a flare, and tossed it into the drifting smoke. Then he moved forward slowly, hugging the tunnel wall. As the smoke dissipated, Snow could see the dim outlines of Donovan’s head and shoulders as he moved stealthily forward, the dark bar of his shadow flickering behind him.

As Snow watched, the SEAL picked his way around the broken, smoking forms that littered the mouth of the tunnel. Reaching the mouth of the tunnel, Donovan looked cautiously around, then rotated himself out into Three Points. Finally he took a step into the chamber and was swallowed up by the blackness, and Snow was left alone with only the dark for company. It suddenly occurred to him that the duffel of magnesium flares was still hanging by his side, forgotten in the fight. He fought back the urge to shrug it off and leave it behind. Rachlin said it stays with me until the mission’s over, he thought. So it stays.

Rachlin… it seemed impossible that those creatures could have killed all the SEALs. They were too well armed, too battle savvy. If the other two tunnels were like this one, maybe some of the men escaped up the ladders at the end. If so, we ought to go back and try to…

Suddenly, Snow stopped, surprised by the coolness with which he was thinking these thoughts. Maybe he was braver than he’d thought. Or just more stupid. If only that bastard Fernandez could see me now, he thought.

His thoughts were interrupted as the form of Donovan once again emerged from the blackness, looked around, then motioned him forward. Snow moved quickly toward him, then slowed as a grim sight came into view. The gear was still neatly piled along the wall, a stark contrast to the dismembered, headless figures lying at crazy angles in the muck of the tunnel floor.

“Hurry up!” he heard Donovan whisper. “No time for rubbernecking.”

He looked up. Donovan stood there, arms folded, surveying the equipment with an impatient scowl on his face.

Above Donovan, in the thick darkness of the vault, a black form dropped from the dangling chain with a sudden shriek and landed on his back.

Donovan staggered and managed to shrug the thing off, but two more figures dropped nearby and grappled with the SEAL, bringing him to his knees. Snow stumbled backward, aiming his gun, unable to get a clear shot. Another lunged forward, knife in hand, and Donovan screamed: an impossibly high, almost feminine sound. There was a strange sawing motion, a guttural roar of triumph, and the figure raised Donovan’s head in the air. Momentarily paralyzed by the sight, Snow thought he saw Donovan’s eyes rolling wildly in their sockets, dim reflections of the red glow at the rear of the tunnel.

Snow fired then, short staccato bursts as Donovan had taught him, hosing the barrel left and right toward the obscene group huddled over Donovan’s body. He knew, somehow, that he was shouting, though he couldn’t hear it. The magazine emptied and he slammed home the spare, screaming and firing until the clip ran dry. As his ears rang in the sudden silence, he took a step forward, waving the cordite aside, searching the gloom for the nightmare apparitions. He took another step, then another.

The blackness ahead seemed to shift—as if moving in against itself—and Snow wheeled and ran for the end of the tunnel, his feet churning through the mud and the dank water, the empty clip clattering forgotten onto the slick stones behind him.