Black_Tide (29 page)

They settled in and brought out the computers, using Matt's bed as a makeshift operations suite. They had little to go on—Yardley's cell phone didn't have GPS enabled, and neither UPSTREAM nor CO-TRAVELER could give them a specific location, so they had to settle for "somewhere around Centralia, PA." They'd tracked medical equipment a man in Yardley's condition might need and turned up nothing.

A truck roared by on 61, the thin walls doing little to muffle the noise. With their FOB a Marine Reserves barracks an hour away in Harrisburg, it'd have to do.

"So what's first?" Keene asked.

"Less than six thousand people live in this town. First thing we do is show some pictures around and see if anyone recognizes any of our perps."

Keene looked out the window. "You don't think that might tip them off?"

Matt shrugged. "They're already tipped off. There's no way Yardley isn't smart enough to know that we tapped his mom's phone before dropping by."

The FBI agent gaped like a fish. "So you think it's a trap?"

"Of course it's a trap. He took my son for bait, used easily traceable mercenaries from a legitimate company, and then took a call from his mother on an unencrypted cell phone. It's got exactly the subtlety I'd expect from that sadistic meathead. Thing is, he's always been smarter than he lets on."

Keene stood and looked out the window. "So what if he just blows the place up with a drone?"

Sakura shook her head. "In seven years with ICAP, Yardley never once used a firearm or explosive device. He's a warrior, not a soldier."

Keene furrowed his brow. "I'm not sure I know the difference."

"When war ends, soldiers go home to their lives. Warriors find another war, because that is their lives."

Matt leaned in. "Yardley likes to kill. Loves it. But it has to be up close and personal, brutal and bloody and physical. He may not be able to come for us himself, but he'll at least make it something he can watch. No, the only drone strikes anyone has to worry about are ours."

Keene frowned. "So the plan is to bait Yardley into attacking and then take him out?"

Matt sighed. "I don't care about Yardley. I just want my son."

"Okay, so how do we find him?"

*   *   *

John Murray frowned down into the crevasse. Hot smoke trickled out of the sinkhole, the smell and the deadly vapors imperceptible through his gas mask. The ground shifted under his feet, so he backpedaled away from the natural deathtrap straight into a tree, leaves withered to a late-October brown.

"Sergeant," Todd Nelsen said.

Murray turned. "What is it, Corporal?"

"This place gives me the fucking creeps."

"Acknowledged." A city boy by birth and upbringing, he found the deep woods freaky enough without pits of fire emerging out of the ground, scattered buildings crumbling between streets overtaken by plant-life. For the sake of morale, he didn't see the value in agreeing with more vigor. "Take your team to the next intersection."

"Rah, Sergeant." Nelsen turned and screamed.

Murray whirled, jerking up his M-4, but Nelsen had already fired his M203. The massive shadow batted away the grenade and charged. It exploded behind the monstrosity.

Twelve feet tall, the humanoid form grabbed Nelsen with a huge claw. The fireteam leader exploded in sprays of blood, severed chunks dropping to the ground as the beast laughed. An M27 chattered behind Murray, the bullets pinging off the burnished metal plates. He fired, backpedaling.

His stomach lurched, the ground disappeared beneath him.

Hot gas seared his lungs, and daylight disappeared. He scrambled for purchase on crumbling rock walls hot enough to blister his fingers. Skin bubbled, his uniform caught fire. Then the high-explosive rounds on his bandoleer detonated.

*   *   *

Matt held up a fist. Seeing it, Sakura froze. Keene took two more steps, then stopped when she grabbed his arm.

Idiot.

She heard it then, the distinct chatter of automatic weapons, something light like a 5.56mm just at the edge of hearing. The ground shuddered. Matt bolted. She turned to follow, and Keene grabbed her wrist.

"Wait!"

She jerked free as the sound from the explosion reached them, and raised her combat visor to look him in the eyes. "What?"

"Don't leave me out here on my own. I'm not combat trained."

She rolled her eyes and slapped a hand to the side of her neck at a sharp pain. Keene jerked his hand away, flinging something small and glass into the brush. She stepped after him, and her knees gave way, pitching her to the forest floor.

"I have to help Matt," she mumbled. She struggled to open her eyes, to stand up, but her body wouldn't cooperate. ". . . can't do it himself."

He pulled off her helmet and tossed it into the brush. "Sorry, Sakura. Rowley's not my problem."

Thoughts wouldn't form on her tongue, so they came out a jumble of English and Japanese. Rough hands hog-tied her, but she couldn't feel the bonds, only a vague sense of discomfort as he wrenched her limbs around.

". . . kill you . . ."

"Maybe some other time. Go to sleep."

She did.

*   *   *

Matt came upon the remains of the squad, a dozen men in hundreds of parts, the foliage painted red with their blood. Huge marks gouged the trees, and something had left tracks strong enough to mar the asphalt as it had crossed the road.

"Sakura, are you getting this?"

She didn't reply, so he switched his HUD to her helmet camera. It took him a moment to resolve the image, an ultra-close view of tree bark.

"Sakura?" Nothing. He followed the tracks of the massive whatever-it-was. "Janet, a hand, please?"

"What's up, Matt?"

"Can you do a rewind on Sakura's feed, tell me what just happened?"

"Moment."

The tracks stopped at a hole in the ground, a crevasse right out of a horror movie. Tendrils of black smoke rose from it, wiggling their way under Matt's helmet to tickle his nose and the back of his throat.

"Can't tell. She watched you run off, then slapped a hand up to her neck."

"She's with Keene. Where are they going?"

"I don't know. She took it off, dropped it on the ground."

"Delta squad is dead. Send Alpha and Bravo after Sakura and Keene, and route Charlie to my position. We've got to deal with whatever did this."

"Will do."

The ground rumbled. He looked into the pit, which glowed bright in the infrared spectrum, maybe a hundred and thirty degrees. "Shit. Janet?"

"Go ahead."

"Belay that order on Charlie. Send them after Sakura. There's no way they'd survive this heat. I'm going in."

"Roger that."

He clambered down crumbling rock into the pit, sweat evaporating as fast as it could spring from his pores. A tunnel wound downward, glowing way too hot. He set off, navigating by ultraviolet which turned the pitch darkness into a blue-black outline as he followed the thing deeper into the caves.

Monica followed Jason Rees into the pit, rock scree crumbling under her hands and feet. Her Vietnam-era gas mask fogged with her breath, making it next to impossible to see even with the LED lamps on top spearing the darkness.

Jason walked with confidence he had no right to, not in this light, not with never having been here before. "He's this way. Hurry! We have to get there before Matt does."

She stumbled through the rough, hot chambers after him, her faith in him shakier than his faith in whatever-this-was. The walls closed in, black slate and dark gray siltstone, oppressive in their drab majesty. The unbearable heat sucked the energy from her, and the gallon of water she carried on her hips would last only so long.

The ground rumbled, and dust fell from the walls. "We're going to die down here."

He turned and grabbed her shoulders, eyes bugged out behind his mask. "No. You must believe. He'll keep us safe."

Monica scowled. "Adam is not some messiah, Jason. He's just a little boy. A scared little boy who needs his momma."

"Right. Exactly." His tone told her nothing. He turned and scrambled down a narrow tunnel into a wide room, then up into another. With no choice at this point, she followed.

"This place is huge." Her clothes clung to her body, but she didn't yet dare take a sip of water.

"Yes," he said. "There are hundreds of miles of tunnels, only a fraction of which right around Centralia are on fire. The rest rumble and stink but aren't connected to the tunnel that's on fire, at least not yet. In a couple hundred years, who knows?"

"Hundreds of miles of tunnels."

"Yes."

"And you won't get us lost."

"No. We won't get lost."

She followed, a prayer on her lips.

*   *   *

Jason followed the silver filaments blazing through the tunnels, lighting the way better than any headlamp ever could. They twisted and intertwined like will-o-wisps stretched to infinity, an endless cacophony of joy and mercy and love.

Jade streaked through them, cruel and capricious, but he ignored it, and the single black filament that wormed along with the rest. That way led to madness, and he would not let them touch him.

The vision had no other interpretation. Monica would die if she wasn't there, die and be lost forever, and through her death invite a darkness that had slumbered since ancient Sumer. He didn't care about the world, only about her. Fragile yet so, so strong, she rode a knife's edge that could fall either way.

He wouldn't let anyone have her, not even himself.

*   *   *

Matt felt it before he saw or even heard it, a deep rumbling cadence that rocked the caves and sent dust crumbling from the walls. He ran faster, lungs burning in the acrid air, hoping against hope that whatever killed those marines would lead him to his son.

He stopped just before a sharp turn, the whispers gibbering their delight at his near death. The rumbling had stopped. He held his breath, listening for any clue as to the beast's nature.

"I know you're there, Rowley." Yardley's voice carried through the chamber, far too deep for a normal man. "Why don't you come out and play?"

The whispers faded. Matt stepped around the corner and gasped.

He could just make out parts of Yardley within the bionic augmentation. The giant machine stood over twelve feet tall in a parody of human form, a collection of thick metal plates and nanofiber mesh, a robotic football player from hell. The helmet depicted a caveman-like parody of the worst of bonks, with a prominent sloping brow and huge serrated teeth through which he could just make out Yardley's eyes. Hydraulic pistons and electromuscle weaved over and even through Yardley's flesh, fusing the suit directly to his body.

"What is this, Murdock? Build yourself a new toy?"

Yardley laughed, a bray more suited to a startled cow carried by what had to be hidden speakers. "Where would I get the funds to make something like this?"

"That's the right question, but I've got a better one. Where the fuck is my son?"

Huge metallic claws like eagle's talons smashed together, then rubbed back and forth. "I'll fight you for him. Just you and me, like nature intended. And this time that bitch Sakura isn't here to interfere."

Matt smirked, projecting a confidence he didn't quite feel against the hulking behemoth. "Why would you think that?"

Yardley laughed again. "'Cause Agent Keene's got her in a van on the way to a black site to find out what makes the two of you so fucking special." He shrugged massive metal shoulders. "Everyone's got a price."

*   *   *

Sakura snapped awake and tried to sit up.

Metal ties held her to a gurney and sliced into her wrists and ankles as she struggled. The world swam, fuzzy and indistinct.

"I wouldn't bother." A woman appeared in surgical scrubs complete with a mask, her chocolate-brown skin a stark contrast to the bright white of her clothing. "Titanium-reinforced nanofiber. You'll just hurt yourself."

A man appeared on the other side of the gurney, Caucasian, a little too pale and similarly dressed. "An impressive recovery, Miss Sakura. Based on your current physiology we expected you to remain unconscious for at least another few hours, and a normal human wouldn't wake up at all."

The voice shouldn't have surprised her: Keene's coroner, who'd autopsied Big K.

She snarled and pulled. Muscles strained, the restraints dug deeper. She bit her tongue to distract from the pain in her wrists. Bright red blood splattered the woman, and she shied back. Sakura's arm throbbed, and with each pulse of her heart another jet of arterial blood sprayed through the makeshift ambulance.

The bonds neither heard nor yielded to her screams.

The man picked up a pair of gigantic forceps, the ends serrated, a pneumatic tube trailing from it up and out of sight. He leaned in, grabbing her left breast with the cold metal tongs, the teeth pricking her skin in almost a tickle. Only then did Sakura realize that she wore no clothes. He squeezed and twisted. Her cry of determination changed to agony and rage. She swore at him in Japanese, writhed and swore and screamed and kicked as he twisted farther, then wrenched. Her breast came free from her chest with a wet sucking sound.

She dropped back, hyperventilating, forcing her rage to overcome her panic.
I will not despair. Despair is the refuge of the lost. I am not lost. I. AM. NOT. LOST.

The coroner dropped her breast onto a scale. "Point-two-one kilograms, typical for size." He smiled at his companion, who had changed her mask but still had blood in her hair. "Let's see if it grows back, and how fast."

She leaned in next to him. "Look at the ribs, still fused, or is it fused again?" She turned to Sakura and held up a chisel and hammer. "Let's find out, shall we?"

*   *   *

Matt dove right as Yardley punched, and the cave wall exploded over his head. Yardley's reach extended at least nine feet, and the crude-looking mechanical body did little to hinder his reflexes. The massive helmet denied Matt the easy targets—mouth, eyes, or neck. Matt took aim on the run and fired, but the next three grenades performed exactly as the first two, impacting on the surface of Yardley's armor with no visible effect.