The Chimera Secret

32

Kurt Agry’s voice screamed out above the gunfire.

‘Fall back! Protect the camp!’

The soldiers turned and fired into the camp, rounds plowing through tents, boxes and bergens as they swept the camp with a lethal hail of bullets. Ethan flinched as more rocks arced down on them from above and thumped down onto the forest floor. One slammed into Klein’s arm and smashed the rifle from his grasp as he cried out and dropped to his knees.

Ethan sprinted forward and grabbed Klein’s M-16, then turned his back to the camp and squinted out into the darkness behind them instead. A massive form plunged through the trees away from him, barely visible. He lifted the rifle and fired two three-second bursts out into the woods, but the shadowy form was gone before he could determine if he’d hit it or not.

The gunfire ceased and the falling rocks vanished as quickly as they had come.

‘The camp’s on fire!’

Ethan turned to see flames curling and writhing up the walls of the tents, the burning embers from the fire scorching anything upon which they landed. Kurt Agry dashed into the center and hurled handfuls of dirt on the flames.

Ethan ran in alongside him and tossed the soldiers’ bergens clear of the flames, kicking out fires as Lopez joined him with Dana, Proctor, Duran and Mary. Ethan grabbed for another bergen and hauled it away from the fire. The top of the bergen spilled open as he yanked it away, and the flap of a canvas satchel toppled from within. As Ethan hauled the bergen clear of the flames, he almost leapt into the air as he saw the insignia on the satchel.

CHARGE ASSEMBLY, DEMOLITION

Ethan dropped the rucksack as though it were itself aflame and stared down at the satchel charge now laying half out of the bergen. He recognized the product instantly from his service in Iraq and Afghanistan with the US Marines. An M183 Demolition Charge was essentially sixteen blocks of Composition C-4 explosive packed in a case, each block wrapped in a Mylar-film container. Two priming assemblies would also be packed in the case. Each of the blocks, designation M-112, were easily cut and molded to fit specific targets and could be initiated with any number of high-energy devices. The entire kit had been extremely effective in the field of battle, able to be adapted to all requirements for general demolition.

Just beneath the charges lay a box detonator, which contained the electronics to set off the explosives either by direct connection or wireless signal. Ethan realized that this was Simmons’s bergen, and that he must have been the demolition man on Lieutenant Watson’s squad.

Ethan looked up and saw Sergeant Agry frantically hauling one of the other bergens away from nearby flames. Ethan dragged the bergen away and resealed the top before he returned to the center of the camp and began hurling clumps of dirt on burning tents.

After several minutes of furious activity, the fires were out. Ethan stood in the center of the camp as Duran began rebuilding the original fire, while the soldiers carried their fallen comrade into the camp on a collapsible stretcher. One look was all Ethan needed to know that the young soldier would not be continuing on their journey. As Duran got the fire organized and the light flickered again, he could see that the man’s skull was badly fractured.

‘He needs a hospital,’ Lopez said. ‘Fast.’

Kurt Agry looked down at the injured man and nodded.

‘Get on the radios,’ he ordered Klein. ‘We’ll need an extraction.’

‘Radios are all smashed,’ Klein responded. ‘That thing that came through here pretty much wrecked most of our communications gear.’

‘What about the satellite phone?’ Agry snapped.

‘Fire damage,’ Jenkins reported. ‘It was in my bergen. Most of the other stuff wasn’t damaged but the phone was in a side pouch and got burned. It’s useless.’

Sergeant Agry dragged a hand across his stubbled jaw. ‘You’re saying we’ve got no comms.’

‘None,’ Klein confirmed.

For a moment Ethan glanced across at the bergens now piled up away from the camp fire. Lieutenant Watson’s men were trained National Guard soldiers, tasked with escorting them through the forests in a search for a body. There was no requirement at all for demolition, and it wasn’t standard practice for infantry to carry charges: the M-183 weighed around twenty pounds, a significant burden for troops operating in mountainous terrain.

For the first time, Ethan looked at the soldiers in a different light. They had just come under attack from unknown creatures, were stranded in the middle of the mountains without communications and with one man wounded. National Guard would likely be pissing in their pants right now, but Ethan saw no panic in the men around him. More than that, they were each hauling an extra twenty pounds of explosives in their bergens and had shown little sign of exhaustion. That required levels of fitness beyond that of a standard infantry soldier.

‘What’s your EVAC plan?’ Ethan asked.

‘We return to our infiltration point after twenty-four hours and are pulled out,’ the sergeant replied. ‘Standard procedure. A chopper will be there if we need it.’

Lopez glanced at her watch and shook her head.

‘No way we can get him back down the mountains to Dixie in the few hours we’ve got left.’

‘We should try,’ Mary Wilkes insisted. ‘He’ll die if we don’t.’

‘He’ll probably die if we try it!’ Kurt Agry snapped. ‘We need to reassess the situation. No radios, we’ve lost two tents and several days’ supplies and we’re one man down.’

Duran Wilkes looked up at the sergeant.

‘Not one man down,’ he replied. ‘Two.’

Ethan looked at the old man and saw him pointing out into the woods near the edge of the treeline, right where the glow from the freshly burning camp fire ended.

‘Oh no,’ Lopez uttered.

Ethan followed Sergeant Agry and his men across to where the body lay sprawled across a thick bed of damp ferns and moss.

Lieutenant Watson was lying on his front but his face stared lifelessly up at them. In the flickering firelight Ethan could see that his head had been twisted back upon itself until his spine snapped like a twig, killing him instantly.

‘You definitely need to reassess your situation,’ Lopez said to the sergeant. ‘You’re in command.’

In a moment of terrible realization, Ethan understood what had happened.

‘It planned this,’ he said finally. ‘It took Simmons down as a distraction, to get us out of the camp so it could be destroyed.’

‘It must have attacked Simmons because he was a sentry,’ Milner said. ‘Only way through without being spotted by the other two was right through the middle.’

Jenkins nodded, and wiped droplets of fine drizzle from his face as he spoke.

‘Came from downwind of us, so if it’s some kind of wild animal it could probably home in on our scent. Hell of a thing, something that big to creep up on Simmons without him seeing it.’

Sergeant Agry looked down at his commander’s remains, and then lifted his chin.

‘There’s nothing we can do for him or for Simmons tonight. We get our heads down and reassess our situation in the morning.’

‘Reassess our situation?’ Lopez uttered in amazement. ‘Our situation is that we’re in deep shit!’

Ethan stepped forward. ‘He’s right, Nicola. Moving in this terrain at night is suicide. We’ve got to wait for first light.’

Lopez fumed but took a breath and nodded once. Sergeant Agry said nothing as he stared down at his commander’s remains. Duran Wilkes looked across at the sergeant without sympathy.

‘Like I said, son, we shouldn’t have crossed the six-thousand-foot line. It’s onto us now and, believe me, it’s not going to let up.’