Left With the Dead (16 page)

Zeke sidled up to his side. Acheson reached down and scratched him between the ears. The dog stood still as a statue and stared at the horizon.

###

Acheson checked every team member’s weapon to ensure they were locked and loaded. Once satisfied all was in order, he turned to a hard-shell backpack. He opened it carefully and inspected the tapered cylinder within. It was just shy of three feet long and made of a durable gray metal. Two handgrips were bolted to either side, and at the wider end was a single pin. Attached to the pin was a red streamer printed with the innocuous legend, REMOVE TO ARM.

Acheson patted the cylinder almost lovingly.
Nothing like a little fuel-air explosive to brighten up your day.

Once he sealed the FAE in its case, Acheson turned to Helena Rubenstein. Her pale blue eyes met his. Whenever he looked at her, Acheson got the impression she was a child trapped in a woman’s body. The fact she hailed from the cold metropolitan canyons of New York City was a source of amazement. With her strawberry-blonde hair and unblemished, tanned skin, she looked more like a waif from the San Fernando Valley. Acheson smiled at her and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. He knew she feared him on some basic level; her ability to see the true nature of a man revealed something to her that frightened her almost as much as those he hunted. More than once he had asked why that was, but she could not explain it. That he was used to dispensing violence as casually as she might order an alfalfa and vinaigrette salad was the closest analogy she had been able to draw.

“What are you feeling, Helena?” he asked. He removed his sunglasses so she could see his eyes, so that she could see he was as human as she was, despite his skills.

“Death is near,” she said. Acheson understood her to mean him, and he let go of her shoulder. Helena suddenly took his hand in hers. Her abruptness startled him; Acheson had never seen her move with such instinctive speed. She smiled at him.

“I wasn’t talking about you,” she explained. “I know you would never hurt me.” She looked away as her smile faded. “I can feel him, Mark. I can’t feel any others, because his signature is so strong—it’s drowning them out, like white noise. All I get is... static.”

“How close is he, Helena?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Acheson patted her hand. “Nothing to be sorry about. What you do isn’t exactly a precise science—”

“Take care of Robert. I’m pregnant,” Helena blurted.

Acheson blinked, totally caught off guard. “Uh—what...?”

“I said I’m pregnant. You’ve got to take care of Robert.”

Acheson was shocked. The thought of Helena having sex was something foreign, almost dirty, like sudden pedophilic urges. “Ellenshaw’s the
father?
”

She nodded, looking away.

“Well, ah... does he know?”

Helena shook her head. “Don’t tell him,” she said. “That’s for me to do. Okay?”

“I understand,” Acheson said woodenly. “I’ll make sure he stays here—”

“No. This is his calling. This is why I haven’t told him. He needs to sanction Osric. To see it done. To take part in it.” Helena looked at him. “Don’t interfere with this, Mark. This is Robert’s... destiny.”

Acheson sighed. He rubbed his eyes and slipped on his sunglasses. His head started to pound. “Okay, listen, Helena. You get in the TOC and button it up tight. George and Phil will take care of you. I’ve given them orders to vamoose at the first sign of trouble. You’re not to interfere with them if they try to leave the area, understand? If the TOC comes under attack, they’re to get the hell out of here—”

“I know, Mark. I won’t interfere.” She held his gaze for a long moment, her eyes unblinking in the harsh sunlight. “You’ll look after Robert?”

Acheson nodded. “Yes.”

She smiled, child-like and trusting. “Then I know he’ll be safe. And once Osric’s been sanctioned, Humanity will be safe.”

“At least from Osric,” Acheson muttered, turning away.

CHAPTER 2

It began with the stories of
El Cucuy
, the Mexican equivalent of the Boogeyman.

When the usual stream of illegal immigrants dried to a mere trickle in the Arizona frontier and the legends of
El Cucuy
were whispered more and more frequently—by illegals detained by the Border Patrol, even by the coyotes who smuggled them in—it served as a vector for the Group’s intelligence analysts. The poor wretches who were captured by the BP told grave stories of how
El Cucuy
set upon them, decimating them, littering the landscape with their corpses. No bodies were recovered, but the Border Patrol was quick to rationalize the rumored violence as cartel-related, though sometimes American groups such as the Minutemen were fingered as potential culprits. It was those veiled accusations which elevated the story into a newsworthy item, as Minuteman spokespersons vehemently denied involvement in the murder of illegals.

But it was the rumor of
El Cucuy
which sealed the deal.

If ever there was such a thing as the boogeyman, Osric was it. And so Containment Team 6 deployed to the deserts of southern Arizona, where the inhospitable landscape might possibly serve as a hiding place for one of Mankind’s greatest enemies.

The road leading to the Santa Clarita copper mine had fallen victim to the elements decades ago after being abandoned in the 1920s. The annual monsoons had swept the remainder of the road away, leaving only jagged ruts and gullies behind. These were so extreme the team was forced to abandon the Humvees two miles from the mining area. They had no choice but to continue on foot, in the oppressive heat, carrying their gear on their backs.

Even foot travel was difficult. Zeke ranged ahead with Nacho, scouting out the territory. Cecil was next up, cradling the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon across his barrel chest. Acheson trailed him, his AA-12 held at port arms, the FAE secure in the hard pack on his back. Chiho Hara, Julia McGuiness, and Robert Ellenshaw walked twenty meters behind him. Sharon Thompson played rear guard, holding her MP-5 with both hands. They marched across the hot Arizona landscape, counting on Zeke to provide the necessary cues; the dog relied on senses beyond olfactory, something primal, an instinctive guidance system that nature had purged from man but left in some of the so-called lower life forms. Not for the first time, Acheson marveled at the irony of it. Most animals had some natural self-defense mechanism that clued them to a predator’s presence. Against the threat posed by Osric and his kind, mankind was as helpless as a babe.

With the exception of Robert Ellenshaw and the group he had formed, that is.

Nacho held up his right fist as he grabbed Zeke’s harness with his left hand. The dog’s demeanor changed, and he pulled against Nacho, straining to move forward.

“Got a shake,” Nacho said over the radio.

Acheson and Cecil hurried forward. Acheson tightened his grip on his AA-12; behind him, Velcro parted with stitching rips as the rest of the team drew their weapons.

Ahead, three mangy dogs stood in a semi-circle before an open mineshaft, their ribs as prominent as stripes. They bared their teeth in a growling, mindless rage. Zeke snarled a reply, straining against Nacho’s grasp. Nacho spoke to him in soothing tones, but couldn’t put the dog at ease.

The pack advanced, snarling. Acheson nodded to Sharon, and she raised her MP-5 to her shoulder. She took aim and fired three rounds in quick succession, the retorts choked into bare pops by the weapon’s long suppressor. Before the brass cartridges had even stopped tinkling on the rock, the three dogs were dead, each with a single shot to the right eye. Flies alighted on the corpses, drawn by the smell of fresh blood.

Zeke continued growling, his dark gaze rooted on the mine’s entrance. And with good reason, Acheson saw; several pairs of human footprints led in and out of the shaft.

Not that they were left by humans.

He pressed the Push-To-Talk button on his transceiver. “Three-One, Two-Six, over.” Ellenshaw approached him, staring into the mine’s dark maw while pulling a hand-held GPS receiver from a holster on his belt.

“Two-Six, Three-One. Go ahead,” said George Sanders, who sat in air-conditioned comfort back at the TOC.

“Three-One, we’ve made initial contact. GPS coordinates are...” Ellenshaw held the GPS unit toward him, and Acheson read the position off its small liquid-crystal display. Sanders repeated the information back to him.

“Roger, Three-One, that’s a good copy. Stand by. Two-Six out.” Acheson motioned toward the shaft. Sharon and Julia advanced, one on each side of the opening, MP-5s at the ready. Acheson took Ellenshaw by the arm and pulled him back a few meters; the older man kept his eyes glued to the mineshaft, but didn’t resist him.

“They’re in there,” he muttered.

“Zeke agrees with you,” Acheson said. “Chiho, get Zeke ready. Cecil, you’ve got security. Nacho, stand ready with a flash-bang.”

Ellenshaw remained entranced by the mineshaft’s opening. Acheson let go of him as Cecil stalked past, the barrel of his SAW pointed into the darkness. Nacho held onto Zeke until Chiho arrived and took over, keeping one hand on the dog’s harness. Nacho moved to the left and pulled a tube-shaped concussion grenade from his belt. Acheson shrugged out of the heavy pack and set it on the ground beside him.

Chiho worked quickly, her nimble fingers attaching a small video camera to Zeke’s harness. A fiber optic cable connected the camera to a hand-held video display unit clipped to Chiho’s belt. At her signal, Acheson led the team toward the shaft. At its boundary, where darkness and light mingled to create twilight, he paused and slipped on a pair of PVS-7B night vision goggles. The NVGs would augment the available light a thousandfold, allowing him to see in total pitch conditions. Grasping the shotgun’s pistol grip in his right hand, Acheson crossed over into darkness.

The shaft was rocky and narrow. Old rails ran along the floor, twisted and rusting from the occasional floods that marked the Arizona monsoon season. Flies buzzed. The NVGs became increasingly efficient the deeper he progressed, revealing rock and rotting wooden beams that supported the overhead. Torpid scorpions meandered sluggishly along the ground. Through the NVGs, everything was rendered a ghostly green-white. A dry breeze sidled past him, more inferred than felt.

Riding the breeze was the fetid stench of death.

The soles of his boots scraped against rock and twisted, pitted iron. With every step the shaft grew ever smaller. Not far ahead, Acheson could make out a jagged tumble of boulders—a cave-in. The gaps between the rocks had filled with sand and silt. At the base of the cave-in, another maw yawned, this one a yard in diameter. The smell of rot was strongest here. Keeping his weapon pointed at the aperture, Acheson knelt. He had never grown used to the stench, the fetid spoor of decay that surrounded his quarry like a cloak. For the longest time, it had made him vomit uncontrollably. Years of work in the field had hardened him to it, but his stomach still roiled. There were some things a human being was never meant to adapt to, and the smell of death was one of them.

Acheson sidled away from the small grotto, never removing his eyes or his weapon from it. “Approach is clear,” he whispered into his headset. “Send in Zeke.”

“Roger,” Sharon replied, her voice a distant whisper over the radio. A moment later, Zeke padded up behind Acheson, snuffling. Acheson marveled at how easily the dog seemed to withstand the olfactory assault. If the smell was enough to make him feel ill, then it should have been overpowering for the German Shepherd. Acheson reached over and checked the camera on Zeke’s harness. It was secure, and the fiber’s SC connector was snug.

“Chiho, how’s the transmit quality?”

“Very good, Mark.”

Zeke stopped at the edge of the hole and peered into it. After a brief hesitation, he hunkered down and slinked in, trailing the fiber optic cable behind him.

“Zeke’s on his way. Two-Six is outbound.”

Acheson backed away from the hole, his jangled nerves sending phantom alerts to his brain. His dread did not diminish even when harsh sunlight from the Arizona sky overloaded his NVGs, blanking out the displays with white snow. He switched them off and pulled them from his face, allowing the goggle assembly to dangle from his neck by its elastic straps.

Outside, he stood next to Chiho as she watched the feed from Zeke’s camera. Ellenshaw joined them while the others maintained their positions, covering the shaft entrance.

“Did you see anything?” Ellenshaw asked. It was a virgin question that reinforced Acheson’s opinion the older man should have stayed back in the operations center.

“No, but I smelled them.” Acheson turned his attention to Chiho’s flat screen monitor.

The tunnel Zeke crawled down was a meter wide. The camera attached to the dog’s harness was not only optimized for low-light operation, but it carried audio as well; the small speaker on Chiho’s display unit relayed Zeke’s panting in all its tongue-lolling glory. So far, all there was to see was rock and sand.

“How’s my boy doin’?” Nacho asked. He couldn’t see the monitor from where he stood, flash-bang and MP-5 at the ready.

“Great, Nacho. You did a real good job with him,” Acheson said. Delgado had trained the team’s K-9 detachment, and they all knew Zeke was something special. It was a sad fact that the K-9s were usually the first ones to go when a containment operation went bad. Acheson hoped that Zeke would be around for years because he was the best scout they’d had.

“He’s in the den,” Ellenshaw whispered.

It was then they spotted them, lying supine in the dank darkness several meters beneath their feet. Acheson gritted his teeth when Zeke approached the first one—a small form, rendered in gray and white. A child. Dark hair. Eyes closed. Mouth open. Fangs visible.

“How deep’s this cavern?” Acheson asked.

“Approximately five meters below the mineshaft,” Chiho said.

Acheson nodded.

The display revealed more forms, lying motionless in the dark confines of the cavern. Twenty, perhaps thirty of them. Maybe a dozen women, several men, and a handful of children. The confines were so close that Zeke must have been walking on their cold bodies. Deep in the sleep of the dead, they did not stir.