Instinct (2010) (39 page)

‘Hey! Not so fast, littl’un. Yes, your mom’s down
there. Yes, two more died. But you’re jumping to some dumbass conclusions right now.’

‘But one of those could be my mum, Taj!’

‘Yeah? And what’s the use of talking in “coulds”? If it was my mom in there and there was eight of ’em still alive, I’d be thinking she was one of the eight, ’cos the odds of that is much higher than she’s one of the two dead. Don’t that make sense to you?’

Andrew’s face was a frown of consternation.

‘I suppose,’ he said quietly.

‘Damn right you suppose! Damn right, little man. Taj will tell you this for nuthin’: you give up before every single one of them lights has turned blue, you giving up on your mom. How would she feel down there if she knew that? Huh?’

‘Yeah, I see what you mean,’ Andrew conceded.

‘You best see what I mean. Now come on and keep that chin all the way up. They gonna see this out and we gonna watch it happen.’

At Jacobs’ suggestion, Mills had tried one bullet first, just to see what would happen. It went through the nest like it was stale sponge cake, but only to a diameter of his .223 ammunition.

‘OK, how are we going to make that work? I’m going to run out of bullets before we make a hole big enough to look through, let alone crawl through,’ said Mills.

‘Just let me think.’

While Jacobs stood looking thoughtfully at the nest, Madison peered into the hole Andrew must have climbed through.

‘Helloooooooo! Anybody there?’ he shouted.

‘Thank God we brought you along,’ said Mills.

‘Do you have any grenades?’ asked Jacobs.

‘Sure. Fire or frag?’

‘You’re carrying an incendiary grenade?’

‘Be prepared, that’s what I learned in the Scouts.’

‘Yeah, that and how to give a reach-around to the scoutmaster,’ said Madison.

‘Do fuck off, you enormous …’

‘Frag. Incendiary will send a fireball back up here. I’d suggest you throw it down one of these holes, but they might stop five feet in, so what we need is some bullet holes close together in a circle formation to
create what we know will be a long tunnel for the grenade. But aim for a long diagonal that will hit the floor halfway across. If it goes straight it might come out the other side and hit one of the others.’

‘Easy,’ said Mills. He pressed his Glock to the nest and fired it off in a small circle, leaving the narrow tunnel Jacobs was looking for.

‘OK, now drop the grenade in, and we take cover back up the stairs.’

‘Shouldn’t we give Madison a head start?’

‘I never knew you cared,’ said Madison, taking the hint and bolting up back the way they had come. Jacobs followed, leaving Mills to drop the grenade.

He pulled the pin on the M67 and listened for a second to make sure it rolled, then he sprinted up the stairs.

Ten seconds later the explosion reverberated around the stairwell as fragments of shrapnel streamed through the nest. The weak, dessicated structure had no chance, collapsing like so much polystyrene.

But as the brown chunks disintegrated, the termites were revealed. The ones that weren’t killed by the blast fell to the ground then flew screeching into the darkness of the staircase towards the three soldiers.

‘Don’t let them get past you,’ warned Jacobs.

Mills fired off his AK-47, killing or maiming most of the swarm. The ones that got past were dealt with by the boots and handguns of Jacobs and Madison.

‘Woooah … is that the shit they’re having to deal with?’ asked Madison after the last one had gone.

‘That’s the shit Andrew had to deal with, with a
pocket knife, in a tunnel, and that’s the shit we’re going to deal with right now. Come on, let’s go, time’s running out,’ said Jacobs, heading down the last flight of stairs.

They came out at the back of Level Two and could barely see anything. They had one last flare, which Jacobs lit and threw into the middle of what was left of the floor.

‘Fuck me,’ said Mills in a hoarse whisper.

The insects were flowing and seething amongst themselves, a sprawling morass of chattering jaws, clackering limbs, roaring wings and the tear and grind of flesh as they attacked one another. Sounds of aggression and submission, intimidation and death coursed through the air; a foul burst of noise as ugly and brutal as the creatures that made it.

Madison, Mills and Jacobs were poleaxed by the reality of what they had to face. The creatures that had crawled through their imaginations had not even come close to these beasts which writhed in front of them, clambering and scraping their way to kill or be killed.

They could just about keep enough distance and cover of darkness to be ignored, but that would only last so long. These claws and jaws and stingers and antennae would soon seek them out, and they would not be able to keep that kind of force at bay for long.

Captain Tony Fox stood at the back of the Swoose Goose bar in the US airbase at Santa Cruz. He was only five foot six, but what he lacked in height he made up for with ability. Since his first term at the Academy he’d been known as Fantastic Mr Fox for taking down his tutor three training missions in a row. He was the one they all looked up to, even when they were six inches taller than him.

To his right, First Lieutenant Henry Wells was dancing with his groin pressed up to the buttocks of a lissome Brazilian stripper. Surrounding them, fifteen other airmen cheered the couple on with a version of ‘Happy Birthday’ that was peeling the paint off the walls. More jugs of margaritas were ordered, more bottles of Bud cracked open and more shots of Patron lined up.

Captain Fox joined in with the singing, but he was drinking nothing stronger than soda water. It was his misfortune to be this afternoon’s emergency pilot on call. No one in that position had been scrambled for over three years, but it was a hard and fast rule that the pilot on call was ready to go at any moment, and that meant no booze.

In eight minutes’ time the responsibility would shift to Captain Mark Jenson, but that possibility
disappeared when the emergency link came through with the codes of Tobias Paine.

A call was placed to the bar, and Janie Weathers, the Goose’s landlady for the past nineteen years, frantically signalled to Captain Fox that he would be required to take off immediately.
At least I didn’t spend the afternoon sober for nothing
, he thought as he pushed past the birthday boy and into the blazing afternoon sun.

After changing into his flight kit, he went to find his F-35 Lightning 2. It was supposed to be as ready as he was, sitting close to the edge of the runway, canopy up, waiting for its pilot. Fox ran across the tarmac looking troubled, until one of his flight crew came out of the north hangar and beckoned him in.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ Fox snapped as he walked towards his jet. ‘I’m supposed to be wheels up in five.’

He saw his usual AMXS crew working with his payload, but there was another man with them. He was older than Fox, with a granite face and dark suit that made it plain this was going to be no ordinary mission.

‘Captain Tony Fox reporting for duty, sir.’

The man stood and removed his reflective aviators. ‘Major Kenneth Finn, WSO. Son, I apologize for the unusual protocol today but this is an unusual situation. These men are attaching a B61 Mod 11 nuclear-bunker buster to your JDAM. You understand that I won’t be explaining further and that I will be expecting you to carry out your mission as normal, but of course you have to know what you’re carrying in case you need to bail. Not that we expect that to be the case.’

‘No, sir.’

‘OK. It’s going to be another couple of minutes, then you’re gone. Good luck.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

They saluted each other, and Major Finn headed back to the control tower.

Captain Fox understood why he was being told, but it didn’t make any difference to him what he was carrying. If he’d had a problem with it, he’d never have joined up, let alone made it this far.

He climbed the eight thin, steel rungs to his cockpit and eased his helmet over his head. As always, a shudder of excitement passed through his shoulders. He wanted to be cool and dispassionate, but flying the finest, most advanced Joint Strike Fighter in existence was the reason he had decided to make the Airforce his career.

It was the first aircraft designed to be unstable in order to enhance its manoeuvrability, so it took real skill to work it. It also used a side-stick controller for the same reason, along with HUD and JHMCS for enhanced weapons deployment. To someone like Fox, it was a pilot’s plane, and that suited him just fine.

The ground staff cleared the runway, removed the fuel line and signalled him for take-off. He rolled the plane gently over the tarmac then waited as the F110-GE-100 Turbofan kicked in.

A second later he was on the move, rammed into his seat to blast backwards and forwards simultaneously at full force.

MEROS was now on a very real countdown. In a little over an hour, anything living within a mile of Colinas de Edad would be gone for ever.

‘The way I see it, we’ve only got one hope,’ said Jacobs.

From her backpack she took out the umbrella-like form of the Ripple Gun. Madison had watched it being loaded on to his Spartan many times but had never seen it in action and had no idea what it did. He watched as she cocked the barrel and spread the spokes out before handing it to Mills. It took real strength to handle, so this was a job for him.

‘This better work on these big-ass monsters like it does on the mission wasps,’ Jacobs said as Mills strapped the gun around his shoulders. ‘Run it for as long as you can.’

Pointing it into the Abdomen, he held on tight as the spokes started to spin. When the lasers appeared, Jacobs and Madison took a step back and looked away. Without the usual protection of his safety suit and goggles, Mills had to shut his eyes and hope that the machine’s powerful judder didn’t leave him aiming in the wrong direction.

‘UUUUURRRRRGGGHHHHHHHHH!’ he yelled as the pain and the vibration combined to send him bouncing off his feet.

Jacobs and Madison were bouncing, too. Jacobs had never seen the weapon used for this long before. It was
convulsing violently, like a tumble dryer on a trampoline.

‘AAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHH!’ It rumbled up and down over Mills’s shoulder like a giant thumb intent on rubbing his humerus out of its socket.

Just as Jacobs thought it might be doing permanent damage, Mills was knocked off his feet. The jerk caused him to let the trigger go, and the rumble tailed off to a stillness.

Without the vibrations to shudder through their ears, they could now hear that the sound of the insects’ movement had disappeared.

There was a brief moment of disturbing quiet, suddenly replaced by one almighty crash after another.

Bees the size of dustbins dropped from the ceiling. Vast beetles plummeted like gargoyles falling from a roof. Ants and cockroaches crashed from the wall to the floor, making the Abdomen feel like the epicentre of an earthquake for the second time in as many minutes.

On Level One the people were running for cover.

A cockroach’s rear leg sliced down the back of George’s lab coat, ripping it in half and cutting an inch deep line down the length of his back. It was like being slashed with a machete. Blood seeped through the rest of his shirt and coat while the pain sent him to his knees in a puddle of roach guts.

Mike and Susan dived under a lab table that took the thunderous weight of a white-kneed spider crashing down; its enormous legs were left flopping around them like curtains. Susan screamed as it lost balance
and slid to one side, leaving the spider’s dark eyes staring her in the face.

Garrett and Webster covered Carter with upended chairs. This shield worked fine until a tiger centipede lost its grip directly above them and plunged to the floor with enough size and weight to squash them flat.

Garrett reacted quickly, blasting everything she had into the huge length of armoured sections. This sent it off course, and it landed with a deafening crash just to the left of Carter’s prone body.

To reduce the chances of anything landing on him, Bishop had run for the corner furthest from the blast hole. He thought that fewer insects would have made it all the way over there, so he pressed up against the wall and watched the others cope with the rain of creatures that was crashing across the Abdomen.

He was right that this was the area least populated by the inhabitants of Level Two, but in the darkness he could not see the black form of the enormous rhinoceros beetle hanging above his head. Its round, solid shell and big black horn were hanging by just one tarsal claw, so when Bishop backed up against the wall with a relieved thud, the vibration sent the giant insect falling towards him.

He had no idea what had happened until all 200lbs of it landed right on top of him. The impact was full and jarring, sending waves of bruising pain from his shoulders to his knees. Miraculously, no bones were broken, but he was badly winded, with mild concussion and a pair of shoulders that throbbed with a deep ache.

Laura was running across the Abdomen, avoiding the hailing insects by the smallest of margins. She knew she had to find cover, but couldn’t see where it would come from.

To her right, in a pool of guts, stood the wide dome of the whip scorpion’s shell. Laura gave the matter a millisecond’s thought then slid into the pool of leaked innards and curled herself into a ball under its dark hardness.

The stench was what she imagined a recently opened grave would smell like: fusty and stale, yet pungent with a foul sourness that seemed to cling to her olfactory receptors. Her stomach leaped and lurched, but it was a small price to pay for safety.

By the stairs of Level Two, Jacobs, Mills and Madison were pleased to see that the Ripple Gun had had the desired effect. The floor in front of them was carpeted with upturned bodies offering an occasional faint twitch but nothing of the malevolent threat of before.

On Level One the noises of crashing and gunshots had stopped. Everyone was still wary, but it seemed the danger had come to an end.