Fast (9 page)

            ‘Captain,’ hissed Forest. ‘I think we’ve found First Unit.’

            Coleman rallied to hear some good news for a change. Perhaps First Unit heard their radio message and decided to make for the pool room. Perhaps they picked up some survivors. Perhaps David. ‘Any civilians?’

            Forest didn’t sound happy as he answered, ‘I think maybe the weapons inspectors.’

What?
The inspectors were supposed to stay out of harm’s way up on the plug until Coleman gave the all-clear. Why would First Unit have brought them to the pool room?

            ‘Are you sure?’ Coleman asked, crossing to the vent.

            ‘God knows.’ Forest sounded shaken. He pushed open the vent. ‘You’ve got to see this.’

            The first thing Coleman saw was a twenty-five meter swimming pool littered with debris and floating corpses. The dead wore Marine Corps fatigues. For a moment, Coleman couldn’t understand how the Marines came to be floating in the pool.

            Then he looked up. His hope fizzled like a misstruck match.

            Embedded in the ceiling was a US Marine Corps Pave Hawk helicopter.

            He recognized the helicopter’s designation. It was their mission’s first deployment Pave Hawk, the same helicopter the weapons inspectors were supposed to be waiting in for the all clear. Bewildered by the totally unexpected sight, Coleman groped for an explanation. He scanned the pool room. Somehow, at least half of First Unit managed to reach the helicopter waiting up on the plug. The helicopter had taken off, and then somehow flipped over in-flight and crashed into the pool room’s transparent ceiling.

            The pool room itself measured only slightly larger than the pool, and its ceiling framed a huge plexiglass skylight. The helicopter’s impact smashed through
the skylight, and now the entire top half of the aircraft hung precariously suspended above the pool.

            Sparks rained from the wreckage and fizzed out on the pool’s surface.

            Despondently, Coleman judged it unlikely anyone survived the wreck. Three Marines in the pool still occupied their seats. The buoyant seats suspended their bodies upside-down in the water. A lone body wearing ill-fitting fatigues floated nearby. The person’s frame looked too small for a member of First Unit. The corpse had long blond hair.

            She was the pretty inspector sitting opposite me.

            Coleman experienced a moment of intense regret as he groped for her name. They had been introduced very quickly.

            Conway. Her name was Lisa Conway.

            Coleman directed his flashlight into the Pave Hawk. More suspended corpses occupied the wreckage. One dangled in the Pave Hawk’s winch-cable. The body hung midair below the helicopter’s fuselage.

            King and Marlin shone their torches in the pool. Their lights probed the blood-stained water and found the helicopter’s tail rotor twisted and buckled on the bottom. The massive shadow of the Pave Hawk blotted most the light entering the room.

            Marlin’s torchlight settled on the submerged hand of a Marine. The man wore a wedding band.

            The entire scene made Coleman feel strangely surreal and disengaged. He felt the shock of their situation catching up. Adrenaline and terror buffered them through the non-stop mayhem up to this point, but now their minds and emotions demanded a reckoning.

            King looked glassy-eyed around the carnage. Weariness dominated his usually animated face. Slowly, he directed his light back up to the fuselage and the dangling inspector.

            Something zipped through his torchlight. He flicked his wrist and tracked the tiny object with the light.

            ‘More butterflies,’ observed Forest.

            About a dozen more butterflies clung upside down from the fuselage. A few struggled on the pool’s surface.

            King stopped tracking the insect and returned his light to the suspended fuselage.

            ‘How did First Unit end up here?’ His voice was a somber rumble.

            Coleman saw no evidence of surface-to-air weapon damage on the helicopter’s fuselage. A stinger missile left a big mark on a helicopter. He crossed to where a body bumped against the poolside. Kneeling, he rolled the body over, discovering massive flesh trauma lacerating the man’s face and arms. King shone his flashlight over the wounds. All the lesions occurred on the front of the body. They were extreme versions of the wounds Coleman had earlier observed on the man being dragged behind the creature.

            He released the body. It turned over slowly in the water.

            After a moment’s grim reflection, he fashioned a theory. Without rising from the poolside, Coleman said, ‘First Unit retreated back to the waiting helicopter. Somehow the hostiles got on board at the same time. The Marines couldn’t fire for fear of hitting each other. Everybody was trapped inside and getting torn apart. It looks like the pilot tried to take off.’

            Coleman’s imagination painted a far more graphic version. Even a single creature surging into the helicopter’s confined interior would have been like detonating a shrapnel grenade in a shoebox. He imagined the pilot looking over his shoulder and seeing the creatures tearing apart the passengers, the screaming inspectors, the madness inside the helicopter as someone started firing. Bullets hitting the creatures and maybe each other, perhaps hitting the pilot. The helicopter turning sharply, then tipping…the ground racing up….

            ‘Fifth Unit should have arrived by now,’ Coleman said, shaking the ghastly scene from his mind.

            Forest moved his flashlight beam across the wall further down the room, then suddenly backtracked the light. ‘Captain.’

            Coleman looked up and saw the intercom Forest had spotted about twenty feet away. He could finally call the evac center for David and Vanessa! Nervous hope drew him two steps towards the intercom.

            He only got two steps before it all happened.

            The automatic glass doors at the end of the pool room slid open. Then they slid shut again.

            Third Unit spun towards the doors, and then froze warily. The intercom was between Coleman and the doors.

            Coleman’s mind whirled into action.

            The pool room had a simple design. Lockers down one side, and a single archway leading into a row of dead-end changing rooms on the other. The archway was up the Marines’ end of the pool room. The automatic doors down the far end of the pool room offered the only conventional exit. They resembled the doors of an air-conditioned shopping center with a motion sensor at the top. Something or someone had tripped the sensor, but they hadn’t come through the doors.

            Like someone stealthily approaching the pool just triggered the doors by accident.

            Coleman remembered Fifth Unit’s last radio message had contained the sound of foreign gunfire.

            Coleman glanced at the intercom and swore. It was
so
close.

            ‘Back, back,’ he hissed. ‘Take cover.’

            The glass doors exploded.

            Whoever occupied the corridor realized their mistake and tried to cut their losses by catching Coleman’s team in the open.

            Third Unit scattered for any scrap of cover.

            Coleman dove towards the bay of free-standing lockers. Across the pool, Marlin and Forest returned fire and dashed for the changing rooms’ archway. The gunfire caught King right out in the middle. Dropping to his belly, he scrambled behind a low steel hump at the end of the pool. King’s cover was the lid of the machine that rolled up the pool cover. The steel lid measured hardly larger than King himself.

            Coleman scrambled to his feet, keeping his back pressed to the tiled wall. The locker at his left shoulder provided slim cover from the glass doors.

            ‘Anyone hit?’ he called out.

            ‘Intact,’ radioed Forest. The same response quickly echoed from Marlin and King.

            ‘Who the
hell
are they?’ called Forest.

            ‘Good question,’ Coleman answered. ‘Marlin – escape route, pronto.’

            ‘On it.’

            Coleman heard the gunmen knocking glass fragments from the door with their weapon barrels. Leaning forward slightly, he looked down the bay of lockers to catch a view of the gunmen taking position.

Shit. This isn’t good.

            At least six gunmen took offensive positions against Third Unit. The gunmen’s grey body armor incorporated six horizontal magazine pockets arranged like shark gills. All their equipment matched the color of the facility walls. No standard military unit, not even Special Forces, issued mission-specific camouflaged uniforms. To Coleman, this suggested the hostile force outfitted with this exact location in mind. It indicated Third Unit faced a well-prepared force.

            Coleman jerked his head back
barely
in time.

            Bullets tore down the lockers. The locker doors buckled and caved-in. Glancing down with alarm, he saw the locker’s edge twisting right beside his knee-cap. Some of the bullets came too damn close to punching through and hitting him.

            ‘Now!’ he called.

            He hung his rifle around the locker and let rip back at the gunmen. King was lying flat, belly down. He lifted his rifle and sprayed a burst of unaimed bullets towards the doorway. Forest swung his weapon around the corner and fired.

            The gunmen fired back at exactly the same time.

            For six seconds, everyone was shooting at once.

            The pool room became a metal hailstorm. Arcs of bullets swam across the room, trailing lines of exploding tiles. Sparks flew off the maintenance vent.

            The wall near Forest disintegrated as bullets smashed the tiles like a thousand heavy hammer blows focused into six seconds. With all the tiles gone, the wall began eroding in explosive bursts of masonry dust.

            Beside Coleman the lockers buckled and jerked, and then they started sliding towards him under the force of the sustained fire. Jamming his boot against the base of the locker, he prayed the metal could withstand the damage. Bullets destroyed the wall just a hand span from his right shoulder.

            King’s cover became a steel snare-drum, amplifying the sound of every round that buried into its surface. In seconds, every inch of King’s cover was puckered with fist-sized dents like someone had gone crazy with a pick-axe.

            The sound was deafening.

            Absolutely deafening.

            Then all the shooting stopped.

            A single wall-tile dropped to the floor. A locker door fell free and clanked down.

            Then it grew quiet again.

            ‘Fuuuck me,’ King called out when the firing stopped, lifting his head to survey the devastated room.

            Coleman shook his head to dislodge the chips of tiles that had stung his face.

            The pool room was shredded. The only patch of undamaged floor lay under King. The only patch of undamaged wall stood behind Coleman. No one’s cover could last long under this kind of punishment.