Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

His earlier comparison to an alligator wasn’t far off the mark. He judged it to be some kind of crocodilian reptile, easily twelve feet long from tip to tail.

The impact accomplished what Somers’s initial display of strength could not. He felt the pressure around his ankle vanish; he was free. But he did not scramble back to the relative safety of the ridgetop. Instead, he twisted around and dove down the hill, probing with his hands until his fingers felt the rough, scaly skin of the thing that had attacked him. The creature wasn’t moving, stunned perhaps, but Somers wasn’t going to take any chances. He wrapped his arms around the thick body and wrestled it out into the open.

As soon as he lifted it off the ground, it began thrashing like a live wire, slamming its tail into the ground with such force that Somers nearly toppled over.

Nearly…but not quite.

When he had charged into the fray, he had released the cork on the bottle of his primal anger. There was no turning back. Driven by an inner fire that the ancients had once called berserkergang, Somers just squeezed even harder.

He felt his arms start to burn with the build-up of lactic acid. He was hugging the beast against his chest so tightly that he couldn’t even draw breath. The creature’s thrashing seemed to build to a feverish climax, and then, with a hideous cracking sound, its bones snapped and its torso deflated like an empty balloon. Somers held on through its death throes, but when he was certain of his victory, he heaved the carcass into the bushes from where it had originated.

The reptilian body landed with a crash amid a rustling of broken vegetation, but Somers’s victory was short lived. A cold sliver of doubt insinuated itself into his battle-rage as he saw three more shapes dart out from the thicket to avenge their fallen brother.

Oh, he thought. Shit.

He backpedaled, but the things moved like dark lightning across the open ground. Then, seemingly without reason, the nearest of the things began to jerk spasmodically. Its tail swept out, knocking one of the remaining animals off course, sending it tumbling back down the slope. The third creature seized the advantage and hastened forward, only to suffer the same fate as the first.

Something had killed these two scaly behemoths.

He glanced up the hill and saw the silhouettes of the rest of the team—five in all—including a short man standing next to Zelda, aiming a large rifle into the thicket.

Somers felt the tide of his fury start to wane. “Good shooting,” he said, his voice a low rumble that might not have even been audible from where the team now stood.

“Just returning the favor,” replied the man with the gun. “It was the least—”

The rest of his words were lost as the din of automatic rifle fire erupted in the distance. The Burmese troops had engaged the frankensteins in the compound. Almost simultaneously, several dark shapes appeared on the ridge line and charged the team’s position.





THIRTY-TWO


Zelda wheeled and unleashed a burst from her MP5 that nearly tore the head off the frankenstein leading the charge. Parker also fired into the horde, but his shots were less precise, only wounding the attackers.

Unable to clearly see the abominations, King and Tremblay could do little more than step back and let the others carry the fight, but in an instant, two of the monstrosities broke through and closed with them.

King drew his only remaining weapon, a razor sharp KA-BAR combat knife, and thrust it forward. The frankenstein impaled itself on the blade, but its momentum knocked King back, and both tumbled down the hill. Somers bounded forward, arresting King’s fall and hurling the frankenstein into the underbrush that concealed the reptilian creatures’ nest.

Tremblay faced the remaining foe, but as it reached for him, he deftly stepped aside, grasping its ragged shirt as it passed, and redirected its momentum to send it crashing headlong into a tree trunk.

Just like that, the skirmish was over, but the threat was far from past. King recovered his footing and hastened back up the hill.

“We’re out of here,” he rasped. “Buddy up, everyone. Nighteyes, you know the way. Eastwood, stay with him. Juggernaut, you’re with Legend. Danno, you lead me.”

They moved out without further discussion, running—at least to the extent their various injuries made that possible—where the terrain would allow. For King, Tremblay and Somers, the journey was surreal; a game of blind man’s bluff, requiring absolute trust in their guides, who not only had the ability to see in the near total darkness, but could also talk to each other and to the distant Deep Blue.

The long silence was too much for Tremblay. “What the hell were those things? They looked like alligators.”

He had hoped the mostly rhetorical question would ease the tension with a little soldierly commiseration, and the only soldier within earshot was someone with whom he was particularly interested in commiserating.