Part 53 (2/2)

The flicker of fire coruscated through the doorway. Someone had started a bonfire with the last of the scientists' papers.

'We're going home, boys,' the lieutenant called to his men as he welcomed them.

The lance that impaled him bore a beautiful example of Solutrean Ice Age technology. The flint blade was long and leaf-shaped, with exquisite pressure flaking and a smear of toxic poison milked from abyssal rays.

It was a cla.s.sic impalement, driving straight up from the water and penetrating the lieutenant's a.n.u.s precisely, pithing him the way, long ago, the lieutenant had readied frogs in junior high school science lab.

No one suspected. The lieutenant stayed erect, or nearly so. His head bowed slightly, but otherwise his eyes stayed open, the smile pinned wide.

'Made in the shade, Lewt,' one of the soldiers replied to him.

Down at the far end of the line of boats, a shooter called Grief sat straddling the rubber pontoon. He heard a sound like oil separating and turned and the sea was sliding open. There was just enough time to see a wall-eyed happy face before he was seized and pulled under. The water sealed shut above his heels.

The mercenaries spread out across the sand, angling for different boats beached along the sh.o.r.e. Two carried their rifles by the handle-sight. One draped his, cruciform, across his shoulders.

'Let's go, pendejos,' called one of the boat men. 'I can feel their ghosts.'

It was said that Roman slingers could hit a man-sized target at 185 meters. For the record, the stone that cored Boom-Boom Jefferson was slung from 235 meters. His neighbor heard the watermelon-like thump through Boom-Boom's chest wall, and looked to see the once-notorious center for the Utah Jazz stiffen and drop like a huge tree deciding it was time.

Ten seconds had pa.s.sed.

'Haddie!' cried the neighbor.

They'd been through this before, so the surprise was not surprising. They knew to react with no thought, to simply pull the trigger and make noise and light. They had no targets yet, but you didn't wait for targets, not with the hadals. In the first few moments, firepower was your one chance at jumbling their puzzle pieces and turning the picture around.

And so they fired at the cliff walls. They fired at the sand. They fired at the water. They fired at the sky. They tried not to fire on one another, but that was the collateral risk.

Their special loads gave spectacular results. The Lucifer rounds struck rock and shattered into splinters of brilliant light, July Fourth with intent to kill. They plowed the sand, blew up the water in arcing gouts. High overhead, the ceiling sparkled with lethal constellations, and bits of stone rained down.

It worked.

Haddie quit.

For a minute.

'Hold fire,' yelled a man. 'Count out. I'm one.'

'Two,' yelled another.

'Three.'

There were only seven left.

The mercenaries closest to the boats raced downsh.o.r.e. Three forged back toward the fortress through mola.s.ses-thick sand.

'I'm hit.'

'The lieutenant's dead.'

'Grief?'

'Gone.'

'Boom-Boom?'

'Is it over? Did Haddie leave?' This had been the pattern for weeks, hit and run. The hadals owned the night in a place where night was forever.

'f.u.c.king Haddie. How'd they find us?'

Huddled just inside the fortress gate, Shoat took in the scene and converted the odds. He had not quite left when the attack began, and saw no reason to announce his good health. He touched the pouch containing his homing device. It was like a talisman to him, a source of comfort and great power. A way to make this dangerous world vanish.

With a few simple taps on the keypad, he could eliminate the threat altogether. The hadals would turn into illusions. But so would the mercenaries, and they were still useful to him. Among other things, Shoat didn't enjoy paddling. He held his apocalypse pouch and considered: Use you now or use you later? Later, he decided. No harm in waiting a few minutes more to see how the dust settled out there. It seemed the hadals might have driven home their point, so to speak, and boogied back into the darkness.

'What should we do?' shouted a soldier.

'Leave. We got to leave,' yelled another. 'Everybody get onto the boats. We're safe on the water.'

Several of the rafts were drifting unmanned. The chain gunner was paddling his own boat back to sh.o.r.e. 'Let's go, let's go!' he shouted to three comrades crouched against the fortress wall.

Uncertain, the three landbound men stood and peered around for any more ambushers. Seeing no one, they snapped fresh clips into their rifles and tried to prepare themselves for the sprint. The soldiers in the boats kept waving at them to come along.

'A hundred meters,' one of the trapped mercenaries estimated. 'I did that in nine-point-nine once.'

'Not in sand you didn't.'

'Watch me.'

They offloaded their packs and shed every extra ounce, their grenades and knives and lights and inflatable vests.

'Ready?'

'Nine-point-nine? You're really that slow?'

They were ready.

'Set.'

A woman's cry fell upon them from the highest reaches of the fortress. Everyone heard it. Even Ali, winding her way down through the fortress, stopped to listen, and knew that Troy had disobeyed her.

The mercenaries looked up. It was the feral girl, leaning from the window of the tower overlooking the sea. With the tape pulled from her mouth, she unleashed a second call from deep in her throat. Her ululation echoed upon them. It felt like their own hearts lifting across the waters.

She could have been calling to the earth or the sea. Or invoking G.o.d.

As if summoned, the sand came to life.

Ali reached a window in time to see.

<script>