Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) (25 page)

“Where do you want me, sir?”
 

“You and Mikhailov stay with me. We will also keep men with thermal imagers to scan citizens of Ulan-Erg to make sure everyone is who and what they are supposed to be.” He looked hard at Jack. “Now you tell me what we are fighting, and how we kill them.”

Jack returned Kuybishev’s stare, and decided to go for broke. “They’re not human, colonel. We call them harvesters. They can take the shape of a man or woman and mimic them perfectly, not just in appearance, but in how they talk and act.”

“Like Putin.” Kuybishev spat the man’s name.

“Yes, sir, like Putin. Normally they kill the people they mimic, so we can assume that Putin is dead.”

“How do we kill them?”

“Fire is the best way. The outer part of their bodies are covered with flesh that can change shape, but it’s highly flammable.”

“That is why we burned the facility,” Mikhailov interjected. “We learned this from Jack during the Spitsbergen operation. White phosphorous works quite well against them. Tracers also work, and the Dragon’s Breath rounds from the shotguns do quite well, but only at close quarters.”

Jack nodded. “Aside from fire, you just need to hammer them hard with the biggest guns you can. Their skeletons are as strong as reinforced carbon fiber. Your assault rifles can take them down, but you’ll need to hit them repeatedly. These,” he pulled out the .50 caliber Desert Eagle and handed it to Kuybishev, who turned it slowly in his big hands, studying it, “can take one out with a single shot. If you’re lucky.”

Kuybishev handed the pistol back, a look of envy on his face.
 

“And colonel, these things can move fast, a lot faster than a man. They’re extremely strong, and they also have a stinger that can kill a man at a distance of more than ten feet. Three, maybe four meters.”

After a moment of silence, Kuybishev said, “You expect me to believe this?”

“Every word is true,
polkovnik
,” Rudenko told him. He had served under Kuybishev in Chechnya, when Kuybishev was a company commander, and they had come to know one another well. “
Kapitan
Mikhailov and I have seen these things with our own eyes. And you know what happened to
Polkovnik
Zaitsev.” He shook his head. “No man could have jumped ten meters to the ground, then escape from airborne troops chasing him. Not possible.”

“You are asking me to believe in aliens?”

“We don’t know where they came from, colonel,” Jack explained. “We killed all the original harvesters, which we believe were around for a very long time, maybe centuries. The ones we’re facing now are a new generation. But trust me, they’re just as deadly as the old ones. Maybe even more so.”

Kuybishev grunted. “I will leave such details to men with imagination. I simply want to kill them. Perhaps we do not have best weapons, but we will leave none alive when we are through.”

* * *

Forty minutes later, Jack was on his feet, his hand clinging to the static line that ran from his parachute and was clipped to a cable that ran the length of the An-12’s cavernous cargo hold. He and the others had followed Kuybishev to the rear of the plane. The
polkovnik
always insisted on being the first out the door, and Jack found himself number six in the drop order on the starboard side, right behind Mikhailov and in front of Rudenko. Another line of men stood on the port side, ready to jump.
 

He felt his stomach fall away as the cargo ramp opened and the frigid air of the slipstream hit his face. He felt like puking, but wasn’t about to give his Russian friends any last minute entertainment.

“You okay?”

Jack felt a reassuring hand on his shoulder and turned to see Rudenko peering at him.

“Yeah, I’ll make it.”

Rudenko grinned. “At least there are few trees here for us to land in!”

“Thank God for small mercies.”

The jump indicator light on the side of the fuselage suddenly changed from amber to green. It was time.

The men ahead of Jack leaped out into the darkness. He kept pace with them, shuffling forward as his old training and experience overrode the more sensible part of his brain that was screaming in abject fear.
 

Ahead of him, Mikhailov leaped from the ramp, and with one final step, his breath coming in rapid heaves, Jack followed him, stepping into space. He felt a slight nudge against his back: Rudenko, making sure Jack didn’t balk at the last second. Jack would have laughed had he not been so scared.

The moment of nauseating free-fall abruptly ended as the static line yanked the parachute open. After the chute deployed, slowing Jack’s descent to a speed that was merely insane, rather than suicidal, he looked up to make sure the canopy had opened properly. He could barely make anything out in the dark and rain, but from what he could tell, all was in order. While night jumps were something all airborne troops trained for, Jack thought the Russians were complete loons for dropping in weather conditions like this.
 

“At least there aren’t many trees to land in.” He laughed as he repeated what Rudenko had told him, sure that if there was a single tree down there, with his luck he’d land right on top of it.

He didn’t have much time to worry about such things. It was hard to judge distance under these conditions, but the ground, a vast stretch of deep black beneath him, was coming up fast. Off to his left, beyond a group of his fellow paratroopers, he saw a slightly less dark shape that ran in a straight line, parallel to the path the aircraft were flying.
That must be the road south of the village
, he thought. Looking a bit to the north, he could make out a few scattered lights that he thought must be Ulan-Erg.

The ground rushed up quickly enough during daylight drops. At night, to Jack it seemed like at one moment he was hundreds of feet in the air, and the next the ground was right
there
. He judged his landing more by the grunts and curses of the men who landed before him than by sight. His feet slammed into the wet ground and he fell to his side, absorbing the impact through his right calf, thigh and hip before rolling over onto his back.
 

Breathing a sigh of relief, he hit the quick disconnect on his harness and shucked it off as he got to his feet. Checking that his shotgun was ready for action, he trotted through the muck to where he heard Kuybishev shouting orders.
 

Mikhailov and Rudenko appeared out of the darkness beside him. As poor as the visibility was, Jack could see that Mikhailov was in pain.
 

“Did you twist something?”

“
Nyet
,” Mikhailov told him through gritted teeth. “My ribs, from the battle at the facility. Perhaps I should have stayed in bed.”

“Stupid bastard. You could’ve wound up with a punctured lung.”

Mikhailov’s teeth flashed in the darkness. “Thank you for your sympathy. You are a true friend.”
 

“Come on, you lunatic. There’s Kuybishev.”

The three stood by as the colonel got the two companies of the battalion’s first drop organized. Above, the An-12s droned away, turning back to the west to pick up the rest of the battalion for the second wave.

Quickly and efficiently, the Russians spread out according to Kuybishev’s orders and moved north to the road that served as their first phase line. Jack was thankful that the Russian pilots managed to drop them right where they were supposed to. It was a short walk to the road.

After everyone had reached the edge of the pavement, Kuybishev whispered a brief order through the radio carried by one of the soldiers. As one, the men of the battalion started moving north toward Ulan-Erg.

It was three kilometers of slogging through wet muck before they reached the edge of the town. Jack’s anxiety grew with every step, because he remembered all too well the horror that had greeted him in the village outside of Koratikal in India.
 

At least this time we’ve got some real firepower
, he consoled himself. Even if they did run into harvesters here, he knew that a few companies of airborne troops would kick some serious ass.
There’s nothing to be afraid of. We’ve got this
.
 

Despite his internal pep-talk, he was shivering. He tried to convince himself it was just the cold.

Kuybishev called a halt as they reached the southern edge of town, and the men dropped to their knees or lay prone in the mud. Pulling a set of binoculars from his combat webbing, he carefully scanned the nearest houses. Some still had lights on, others didn’t.

Jack was listening carefully, but he didn’t hear anything over the rain. No screams, human or otherwise, reached his ears.

Beside Kuybishev, the two soldiers with the thermal imaging sights mounted on their rifles swept their electronically enhanced vision over the nearest houses.

“
Nichevo
.”
 

Jack turned to Mikhailov, who whispered, “They see nothing.”

Kuybishev spoke again into his radio, then said, “
Vperyod
.”
 

“Forward,” Mikhailov translated for Jack’s benefit as the men got back to their feet and marched onward. “He ordered the company commanders to halt as they reach each major east-west street to help us stay on line.”

“So no one can flank us,” Jack added. “How big is this place?”

“Not big. A hundred buildings, maybe more.”

“A hundred buildings? We’re gonna be here a while.”

Kuybishev turned his head in their direction, and both men clamped their mouths shut.

As they reached the first line of houses, a squad surrounded each one, with three men at the front door. One knocked while the other two covered him.
 

No one answered at any of the houses.

As if on cue, there were multiple
cracks
as the first man in each entry team kicked in the door, and the other two ran inside, weapons at the ready.

After a few tense minutes, the radio operator murmured something to Kuybishev. Turning to Jack and Mikhailov, he said, “No one is in any of these houses.”

“Any signs of a struggle?”

“
Da
.” Kuybishev said nothing more before he turned his attention back to the radio. All along the first street his men broke down doors and swept through the houses.

By the time they had made it halfway through the town, without having found a single person, alive or dead, or any sign of harvesters, Jack was deeply worried. “Something’s not right,” he told Mikhailov. Beside him, Rudenko grunted his agreement. “You can feel it, too, can’t you?”

“I feel like I am being watched.” Rudenko had taken to turning around periodically, staring into the darkness behind them.
 

“It is the darkness and rain, the disorientation,” Mikhailov said, but his voice carried no conviction. “Although I cannot explain where the villagers have gone.”

A shout of surprise came from off to their left. The soldiers around them stopped and knelt, training their weapons in all directions.
 

The shout was followed by a string of curses. Then a long cry of pain.

“Come!” Kuybishev dashed past them toward the sound, grabbing Jack’s arm as he went.

“
Polkovnik!
” They were met by one of the officers. Even in the dark, Jack could tell the man was terrified. Without a word, he led them to where one of his men was writhing on the ground, screaming.

Breaking tactical discipline, Jack yanked his flashlight from the combat webbing, pointed it at the injured soldier and flicked it on.
 

“Oh, Christ.”
 

The soldier’s right foot was englobed in a mottled blue and yellow mass that Jack immediately recognized as what Naomi had thought a larval harvester might look like. The soldier reached for it, intending to tear it off.
 

“
No!
” Jack lunged forward, grabbing the man’s hands. “Don’t, or you’ll lose your hands, too!”

Two other men joined him, restraining the thrashing soldier.

“What is this thing?” Kuybishev demanded. As tough as he was, as many horrors as he had endured and done unto others, Jack could hear the fear in his voice.

The thing pulsed and oozed its way up the man’s calf, growing larger as they watched. His foot seemed to be shrinking, the toes and most of the heel clearly gone now.

“If you want to save him, we’ve got to amputate his leg! Now!” Jack wanted to vomit at the thought, but there was no other way that he could think of to save the man. The only alternative would be to burn the thing, but that would almost certainly kill the soldier, and it wouldn’t save his leg.

“We will fly him to hospital,” Kuybishev said, the strength returning to his voice.

“Colonel, there’s no time! He’ll be dead by the time he gets there, and this thing will kill the helicopter crew on the way!”

Kuybishev spoke to another soldier kneeling next to the stricken man who carried a large pouch along with his other gear. Jack immediately gathered that he was a medic, but he was shaking his head at whatever Kuybishev was saying.

“Jack, our medics do not have the tools to do this in the field.” Mikhailov stared helplessly at the soldier as the thing oozed up his leg.
 

Without a word, Rudenko stepped forward. Leaning down, he drew the Desert Eagle from Jack’s holster. The big NCO looked at Kuybishev, who nodded. “Hold him,” Rudenko said as he took careful aim.

The soldier saw what was about to happen and began to struggle even more violently.

Rudenko squeezed the trigger, and the .50 caliber slug blasted through the soldier’s leg not far below the knee joint, shattering bone and shredding the flesh. The soldier screamed even louder, then suddenly went quiet as he passed out.

Shoving the pistol into his web belt and then drawing his combat knife, Rudenko knelt down beside him. With a few powerful strokes of the razor sharp knife, the remaining flesh parted. Jack and the others dragged the man a few meters away, where the medic began treating a type of wound he was familiar with.