The Soul Collectors

77

A dirty oxygen mask covered Taylor Casey's mouth and nose; a tube ran from the bottom of the mask into the ground. Her body swayed, limp and useless, and Darby pulled her out of the hole and laid her back against the solid ground. She checked for a pulse, found one and removed the mask.

Blood bubbled from her nostrils and the woman's left eye and her entire forehead were swollen. Darby remembered the video, snapshots flashing through her mind — the woman strapped to the operating table and her eyelid being pulled back and the grimy hand holding the long, surgical ice pick — and she yelled over the awful howling:

'I have Taylor Casey, need immediate EVAC.'

'Stand by,' Knowles replied.

Darby stood perfectly still by the woman's body as new sounds filled the woods: the rattling of chains and thumping. She turned along with Clark, who had his HK back in his hands. He swung the tactical light in the direction of the noise — it was coming from the path — and she saw a tangled mess of pale arms reaching out from underneath the hatch. Hands gripped the edge of the hatch, trying to push it up. Emaciated bodies and scarred faces with shaved heads and frightened eyes, oh Christ there were dozens of them fighting to escape through the gap and they were screaming and howling.

'Command,' Darby yelled. 'We're going to need additional support. We have people trapped down here, underneath a hatch.'

A spotlight came from high in the air directly in front of her, from the fast-approaching Huey, and it lit up the clearing. In the space left by Taylor Casey's body Darby saw skeletal remains, bones and skulls stacked on top of each other.

The Huey hovered over the treetops, its engines drowning out the awful howling. Leaves kicked up and spun around her in the powerful wind, and she caught sight of a shadow rappelling down a rope. Looked up and saw the heavy orange stretcher swinging underneath the copter's black steel belly, being lowered by a rescue hoist.

Now Farrell screamed over her headset, his voice nearly drowned out by the copter's engine. 'Command, this is Bravo One. We have a possible IED situation.'

Darby turned around holding the woman's limp body and almost dropped her when she saw Farrell standing at the edge of the clearing, his hand gripping a nest of multicoloured wires that ran in different directions, each one disappearing underneath the ground where she stood.

Clark had Reggie on his shoulder and was making his way around the edge of the clearing, heading to where Jack Casey now stood. Darby, wary of any additional bear traps, backtracked.

Knowles said, 'Can you disarm it?'

'I have to find it first,' Farrell said, staring down at the wires in his hand like they were a puzzle he could solve.

Casey had already unbuckled the straps for the stretcher. He wore a combat helmet but not night-vision goggles, and his face was pinched into a fist, his eyes wet. He took his wife from her hands. Darby held the stretcher to keep it steady and Casey's face broke when he saw her. His stomach hitched and the tearing sound that erupted from his mouth rode down her spine like a bolt and made her want to turn and run.

Casey didn't seem to know what to do with his hands. She went to work buckling the straps around his wife while Reggie sat on the ground, hissing in pain and putting pressure on the bleeding wounds of his shattered leg. Clark helped secure the rope to Reggie's harness and then he secured himself.

Darby reached around her back for the bolt cutters.

'I'm coming with you,' Casey yelled, and his face nearly broke again. 'My daughter could be somewhere down there. If she is, I want to be the — '

The explosion came east of their position, a low, thunderous boom from deep within the ground. She heard trees splitting and the night sky bloomed with dirt and rock and wood.

The helicopter started to climb, while Reggie and Clark tried to climb up the swinging ropes. Casey turned to look at his wife's stretcher, saw it dangling in the air and almost seemed to want to grab it, as if he could keep her safe. Darby took his arm and pushed him north, screamed at him to run like hell.

A second explosion, closer, like God's mighty fist had punched up from underneath the ground, sending up earth and stone and splintering trees high into the air. The copter's searchlight crossed through the woods directly in front of her and she sprinted, trying to see the terrain up ahead, trying to commit it to memory. Branches whisked past her face and her hands released the clips of her tactical vest so she could cast off the additional weight. Another explosion and the force of it rocked the ground and she stumbled sideways against a tree. Darby regained her balance quickly and sprinted, as debris rained down through the woods. BOOM, another explosion, too close, from the clearing packed with bones, it had to be. The shock wave slammed into her and sent her spinning into darkness.