Monster Hunter Legion-eARC (12 page)

“It’s a really rocky area,” Milo said. “Is it like a bush plane?”

“No, Milo. It’s a big, twin engine prop plane,” Holly said. “And they’re leaving us in the dust.”

“Propel-or,” grumbled Skippy. “Faster than Hind…but
boring
.”

“They’re way ahead now, hard to see them with the sun. Skippy, I’m borrowing these binoculars.”

That was the same type of plane the German team had rented. “Lindemann.” I know that we weren’t in this for Stricken’s stupid race, but I couldn’t help feeling angry. I’m competitive like that. Money is money, and this was MHI’s territory.“They’re probably going to land on the road.”

“Ooh, he’s good.” Milo whistled. “I wonder how much he had to bribe the rent-a-pilot to try that.”

Holly came back over the intercom. “Okay, I can see a sign for a garage ahead. Couple structures. No other buildings for half a mile. There’s the flashing lights from the police car right in front. I don’t see anything else around. There’s lots of big rocks and the road is curvy. I’m not seeing any long flat spots.”

“It’ll take the Germans a pass or two to find a place to land. We can still get in there before they do.”

“On the bright side, if they do pull it off, maybe they’ll be able to help that highway patrolman in time,” Trip said.

Leave it to Trip to be the voice of compassion. I’d been so distracted at being beaten by our rivals on our own turf that I hadn’t even thought of that unfortunate man. The sad truth of this business was that more often than not we got there to clean up after the monsters had done their thing, and actually rescuing people was rare. “True. But I still want to beat these assholes on principle.”

“Uh…guys?” Holly sounded surprised. “The Germans have gotten out.”

“
What?
”

“They’ve jumped. When I looked up I saw somebody fall out the door.”

“Parachutes? That crafty bastard.” Well, now I could see why Lindemann had been getting so much admiration from the international Hunters at the conference. Lindemann hadn’t just rented a plane, he’d rented one used by skydivers. They probably even had all of the equipment right there ready to go at the airport. That’s also why they’d stopped early to gas up. Simply get to the general area and wait for the target to show. “Why didn’t we think of that?”

“None of us know how to jump out of airplanes?” Milo asked rhetorically.

Boone and Gregorius both had Special Forces backgrounds, so had Cody, but he was too old for that kind of thing now. So they’d all been jump qualified at one point, but they were all either with Earl or in the convoy coming up from Vegas. The only other member of MHI I could think of that would’ve been ready to do that was Sam Haven, who had been a SEAL, but he was dead. As far as I knew, none of the rest of us were prepared to get out of a perfectly good aircraft while it was still in the sky. “Valid point.”

“I can’t see…Whoa…He’s going to hit! Wait. There’s a chute. Holy shit. It opened right before the ground. There’s another one. They’re landing right on top of the place.”

“Okay,” said Trip. “That’s pretty tough.”

“The ladies love Klaus,” Milo added. “And it sure isn’t because of that accent…All shouty and stuff.”

“Please, not another word about your man crush on Klaus.” I had to hand it to Lindemann, that was a clever move, but would it be ten million dollars clever? We could still get this thing first. They were on foot, had to be lightly armed, and we had mobility on our side. “Okay, Skip. The German team is on point. Let’s back them up. Bring us in to provide cover.”

The three humans in the back unstrapped from our seats and clipped safety carabineers to the ruggedized straps on our armor. The attached bungee cords would keep us from falling out the door and to our deaths if Skippy had to maneuver suddenly. We each checked the man next to us to make sure he’d been properly secured. Edward, as usual, didn’t care, as orcs didn’t really like to pay attention to things like safety. If things got nuts, Ed would stay inside by the sheer power of his badassitude. When everyone was ready, Trip yanked one side door open and I got the other.

A blast of freezing wind struck us.
Damn, it’s cold.

Milo and Trip went to work moving the heavy 240 into place on the left. Taking Julie’s rifle, I threw the single-point sling over my head and right arm, because if I dropped her four-thousand-dollar gun out the chopper she’d murder me.

I stuck one leg outside, braced my foot on the step, and leaned out. The skin of my face was exposed, and it immediately stung from the cold. You didn’t think of Nevada as frigid, but in the high desert in January, it was nasty. “Wow! That’s refreshing.” I rocked in a twenty round mag, pulled the bolt back and let it fly, chambering a round of silver .308. Then I was really glad for the sling, because it let me free my hands to dig around in a pouch until I found my ski-mask. I fumbled it on, then got my headset back on over my head.

Trip had gotten the same idea as me and was putting on his mask too. He was from Florida, and normally started shivering at sixty degrees, so he was hating life right about now. Now we matched Ed. Milo, who was from Idaho and seemingly immune to cold, slapped the feed tray down and ran the charging handle of the machine gun. “Left side ready!”

The pouches on my armor were filled with 12-gauge magazines for Abomination. I had one sack of mags for the M-14 on the floor, so I stuck my inside boot through the strap to keep it from sliding away. “Z, ready on the right.”

“One minute,” Skippy roared, so of course that meant it was time to change the music. I don’t know if it was a coincidence, or out of spite because we’d hired an elf, assuming Skippy even understood concepts like nation states, but his choice of
Mein Herz Brennt
by Rammstein was rather suspicious.

I flipped up the scope covers. I still had a few minutes of light, so I was going to use them as well as possible. I was no Julie, but I wasn’t too shabby with a rifle, and I’d shot this particular heavily modified Troy chassis enough times to know it was a tack driver. It was probably better to start with the scalpel before going to Milo’s meat cleaver. “Give me an angle, Skippy.”

The chopper turned a bit, and the tall sign of the gas station came into view. We were only fifty yards off the ground by the time we crossed the road. The gas station was an ugly building, with a grimy little convenience store attached to a cinder-block garage. The garage door was open, and there was an older car parked inside with the hood up. There was a single gas pump, not even covered by an awning. Twenty yards behind the garage was an old single-wide mobile home. The whole area was lightly dusted with snow.

“The Germans are all in the parking lot.” Holly said. “Friendlies are dressed in gray-and-black camo.”

“Got them.” There were five figures crouched behind a tow truck. Colorful sports parachutes had been quickly abandoned, and the wind was dragging a few of them down the highway like rainbow tumbleweeds.

The police car was parked right next to the garage. The driver’s side door was open and I could see a pair of legs hanging out. As I watched, two of the Germans got up and ran for the police car while the others covered them. Their guns were aimed at the gas station, so I put the rifle to my cheek and glassed the windows to see what they were looking for. I turned the focus knob on the Leopold scope until the picture was crystal clear. A huge shadow zipped across the interior of the convenience store before ducking back down. “What the hell was that?”

“ID?” Trip shouted.

I wasn’t sure what I’d seen. It had been broad, at least four feet across, couldn’t tell how tall, and dark in color. It had seemed…bristly. “Beats the hell out of me, big, but it moves fast.” I kept scanning. The interior of the shop was trashed. Shelves were knocked over. Some of the windows were broken. Something was spilled on the counter. I couldn’t tell if it was blood.

The Hind was still moving, but slowly, gliding over the road. The gas station was in the middle of a small valley. There were hills all around, but there was a clear area for at least fifty yards in every direction. If the thing ran for it, there was nothing for it to hide behind besides sagebrush and rocks smaller than it had been. Unless it was bulletproof, we had it cornered. I turned my view back to the Germans.

The two runners had reached the highway patrolman, and one was dragging him by the arms while the other was walking backwards behind them, eyeing the building. Suddenly the front window of the store shattered outward, but I couldn’t see what had caused it. The Germans rushed back behind the tow truck, but held their fire.

“What did that?” Holly asked.

“Can’t tell…” I searched through the scope. I followed the sparkling trail of broken glass away from the station. Something had been hurled through that window, and I found it on the police car’s hood. “Wait. Got it…Oh hell.”

“What?”

It was hard to tell, because it was so red and mangled, but I was pretty sure I knew what I was looking at. “I think that’s a human torso.”

Something shifted inside the store, knocking over another shelf.

My inclination was to assume there were no survivors inside, hose the place down, then torch it to be sure. But I couldn’t see what Lindemann could see. Maybe he was going to try and reason with it or some nonsense. You never knew. Theoretically, I was in command, but Milo was far more experienced than I was. Earl had left me in charge because Milo wasn’t comfortable with the whole leadership thing, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t pick his superior brain. “How do you think we should play this?”

“Gas pump is far enough away we should be able to destroy the building and not blow us all up. But…” Milo stroked his long red beard thoughtfully. “Klaus has boots on the ground. Let him make the call.”

I could see one of the camouflaged individuals pointing and giving orders. A split second later, all five of them rose and opened fire on the building. The remaining windows shattered. The glass cases inside came apart. One German rose and chucked something into the open garage. Lindemann’s men all ducked as one. A sharp explosion later, a cascade of dust and smoke belched out every opening. A lone hubcab went rolling across the parking lot.

“You know, I’m starting to like these guys,” I said.

The Hind’s nose was pointed at the building as we slowly drifted across the parking lot, and with Milo and me hanging out by the bungee cords, we could both shoot forward. “They don’t get to have all the fun.” Milo let the 240 thunder. Every fifth round was a tracer, and Milo shredded the facade of the convenience store with a continuous stream of red flashes. Cinderblocks puckered, spat, and then broke. Milo kept working the muzzle side to side, absolutely wrecking the place.

“Hee hee hee…Pretty.” Skippy, for one, liked the tracer’s effect.

Once Milo had run through his two hundred rounds, he immediately yanked the cover open, just as Trip pulled over a fresh belt. “It’s cool, but I wish we would’ve brought the mini-gun. Six thousand rpm is so much niftier. In fact, I picked up a brochure for this new model today—”

While Milo carried on about justifying the purchase of another mini-gun, I was still watching, waiting. The place had been shredded, but there was no sign of the creature. It had to have been hit. The question was if we were dealing with something that particularly cared or not.

During our shooting spree, the last slice of orange sun had disappeared. Shadows were lengthening, but too early for night vision. It was a good thing the Leopold gathered so much extra light. I could still see pretty well through it. There was a flicker of movement from inside the destroyed garage. I shifted the scope over just in time to see that something bristly and black was pushing past the car. “Garage!” My finger went inside the trigger guard and flicked the safety forward.

The M14 barked. Shooting while hanging out a helicopter isn’t the most solid of positions, so the scope rose with the recoil. I brought it back down as the shape moved past the car. I fired again, certain that I got it, but my third hurried shot punched a hole in the car’s front fender. I only got the briefest look at the creature, but it seemed insectlike, with long, terrible legs, and a body coated in thick, bristly hair. Only it was the size of a horse.

The monster scuttled around the corner of the building and was quickly out of sight. Four of the Germans went running after it. Their muzzles flashed as they got a clear shot.

There was a strange vibration on my chest. It took me a moment to realize that it was my phone. It was bad timing. They could leave a message.

“Owen, answer your phone,” Holly ordered from up front.

“How—”

“Because one of the guys on the ground is making exaggerated phone motions like we’re playing charades and pointing at us.”

“Oh…” It took me a second to get to the right pouch. There was no way I could hear over the roar of the rotor, but apparently Lindemann had thought of that as well, and sent me a text.

Under control. It is ours.

“You greedy son of a bitch. Lindemann wants us to back off.”

Want to help? Police needs med evac.

I let out a long sigh of disbelief. “Skippy, can you land us close to that tow truck?” Skippy grunted an affirmation. I told the others what the message said. We’d just been monster blocked.

I’d unclipped and was ready to hop out by the time our tires hit pavement. Klaus Lindemann was waiting for me, wearing an odd suit of mottled gray-and-black body armor, with just a bit of a confident smile on his face. He was holding a G3K in one hand and my business card in the other.
So that’s how he’d had my number
. “I had hoped you were aboard. Thank you, Mr. Pitt, for your help,” he had to shout to be heard over the chopper. “However, we were first. We will take it from here.”

“My ass you will.”

“Your ass I will take from here?” Lindemann asked, totally sincere. “I am afraid I am unfamiliar with that expression.”

My crew knew what to do, and they’d all bailed out right after me. It took Holly the longest to get extricated from the front cockpit, but as our best medic, she went right over to the wounded man while Trip and Milo covered her. Edward sauntered over to stand behind me, still tucking swords into various places.