Part 14 (1/2)

'No,' said Branch. 'Slaves.'

There was a silence.

'Slaves? There's no such thing. This is modern days, Major.'

He showed them the brand marks, the stripes of paint, the ropes linking neck to neck.

'Makes 'em prisoners. Not slaves.' The black kids acted like authorities on the subject.

'See those raw marks on their shoulders and backs?'

'So?'

'Abrasions. They've been humping loads. Prisoners, labor. Slaves.'

Now they saw. Cued by Branch, they fanned out. This had just gotten very personal.

Spooked, high-stepping, the troops moved among the limbs and smoke. Most of the captives were male. Besides the neck-to-neck rope, many were shackled at the ankles with leather thongs. A few bore iron bracelets. Most had been ear-tagged, or their ears had been sliced or fringed the way cowboys jingle-bobbed cattle.

'Okay, they're slaves. Then where's their keepers?'

The consensus was immediate. 'Gotta be a keeper. Gotta be a boss for the chain gang.'

They went on looking through the pile, absorbing the atrocity, refusing the notion that slaves might keep themselves slaves. Body by body, though, they failed to find a demon master.

'I don't get it. No food. No water. How'd they keep alive?'

'We pa.s.sed that stream.'

'That's water, then. I didn't see no fish.'

'Here we go, see here. Jerky.' A Ranger held up a foot-long piece of dried meat. It looked more like a dried stick or shriveled leather. They found more pieces, mostly tucked into shackles or clutched in dead hands.

Branch examined a piece, bent it, smelled the meat. 'I don't know what this could be,' he said. Then he did. It was human.

It had been a caravan, they determined, though an empty one. No one could say what these captives had been hauling, but hauling they had been, and for long distances and recently. As Branch had noticed, the emaciated bodies had fresh sores on their shoulders and backs, the kind any soldier recognized, from a heavy load carried too long.

The Rangers were grave and angry as they made their way through the dead. At first glance, most of these people looked Central Asian. That explained the strange language. Afghanis, Branch guessed from the blue eyes. To his Lurps, though, these were brothers and sisters. That was enough for them to think about.

So the enemy had beasts of burden? All the way from Afghanistan? But this was sub-Bavaria. The twenty-first century. The implications were staggering. If the enemy was able to run strings of captives from so far away, it could also move armies... beneath humankind's feet. Screw the high ground. With this kind of low ground, the high ground was nothing but a blind man waiting to be robbed. Their enemy could surface anywhere, anytime, like prairie dogs or fire ants.

So what's new? Who was to say the children of h.e.l.l hadn't been popping into mankind's midst from the start? Making slaves. Stealing souls. Raiding the garden of light. It was a concept too fundamental for Branch to accept easily.

'Here he is, I found him,' the Spec 4 called near the back of the heap. Knee-deep in the torn ma.s.s, he had his rifle and light aimed at something on the ground. 'Oh yeah, this the one. Here's their boss man. I got the motherf.u.c.ker.'

Branch and the others hurried over. They cl.u.s.tered around the thing. Poked and kicked it a few times. 'It's dead, all right,' the medic said, wiping his fingers after hunting for a pulse. That made them more comfortable. They gathered closer.

'He's bigger than the rest.'

'King of the apes.'

Two arms, two legs: the body looked long and supple, lying tangled with its neighbors. It was soaked in gore, some its own, to judge by the wounds. They tried to figure it out, carefully, at gunpoint.

'That some kind of helmet?'

'He got snakes. Snakes growing out his head.'

'Nah, look. That's dreadlocks. Full a' mud or something.'

The long hair was indeed tangled and filthy, a Medusa's nest. Hard to tell if any of the muddy hair-tails on his head was bone or not, but he surely seemed demonic. And something in his aspect - the tattoos, the iron ring around his throat. This was taller than those furies he had seen in Bosnia, and immensely more powerful-looking than these other dead. And yet he was not what Branch had expected.

'Bag him,' Branch said. 'Let's get out of here.'

The Spec 4 stayed as jumpy as a Thoroughbred. 'I ought to shoot him again.'

'What you want to do that for, Was.h.i.+ngton?'

'Just ought to. He's the one running the others. He's got to be evil.'

'We've done enough,' Branch said.

Muttering, Was.h.i.+ngton gave the creature a tight kick across the heart and turned away. Like an animal waking, the big rib cage drew a great breath, then another. Was.h.i.+ngton heard the respiration and dove among the bodies, shouting as he rolled.

'He's alive! He's come back to life.'

'Hold your fire!' Branch yelled. 'Don't shoot him.'

'But they don't die, Major, look at it.'

The creature was stirring among the bodies.

'Keep your heads on,' Branch said. 'Let's just walk in on this, one step at a time. Let's see what we see. I want him alive.' They were getting closer to the surface. With luck, they might emerge with a live catch. If the going got complicated, they could always just cap their prisoner and keep running. He watched it in their light beams.

Somehow this one had missed the ma.s.sed headshot woven into their ambush. The way Branch had set his claymores, everyone in the column was supposed to have taken it in the face. This one must have heard something the slaves hadn't, and managed to duck the lethal instant. With instincts this acute, the hadals could have avoided human detection for all of history.

'He's the boss, all right, he's the one,' someone said. 'Got to be. Who else?'

'Maybe,' Branch said. They were fierce in their desire for retribution.

'You can tell. Look at him.'

'Shoot him, Major,' Was.h.i.+ngton asked. 'He's dying anyhow.'

All it would take was the word. Easier still, all it would take was his silence. Branch had only to turn his head, and it would be done.

'Dying?' said the thing, and opened its eyes and looked up at them. Branch alone did not jump away.