Solfleet: The Call of Duty (58 page)

Yeah, sure
he would. He knew himself better than that. More likely he’d take her to bed as
soon as the opportunity presented itself. Either way, he wasn’t going to go
running over to her apartment and make a fool of himself.

No, he
wouldn’t be made a fool of. Instead, he took his dishes into the kitchen and
placed them in the dishwasher, then picked up the old General Norman Schwarzkopf
biography he’d been engrossed in throughout his convalescence and went back out
onto the deck to read.

And just
maybe to catch another glimpse of his new neighbor.

Except for a
couple of bathroom breaks and the occasional trip to the kitchen for a snack or
a drink, Dylan had spent the entire afternoon outside, reading and basking in
the comfortably warm late summer sun. Not long before dusk he’d finally set the
book aside and gone out for a quiet stroll through the garden, the only place
where the multitude of sweet floral fragrances were strong enough to overpower
the forest’s mint-laced, pine-like aroma. His thoughts had quickly turned to
Marissa again—for a guy who wasn’t in love he sure thought a lot about the
woman he wasn’t in love with, he’d recognized—and despite how awkward their
previous conversation had been, he’d decided to give her another call, just to
tell her that he was thinking about her and to wish her well. But her mother
had answered that call and had explained that her daughter had decided to put
her military life behind her and start over, and that she wanted no further
contact with her former comrades. Dylan had pushed to talk with her anyway, if
only just to wish her well and to say good-bye, but her mother had refused to
put her on and had then disconnected without another word.

Another
friendship had ended.

Soon
afterward, when the sun had finally sunk behind the treetops and the sky had
begun to darken, he’d fixed himself a quick dinner. Then he’d gone back out
onto the deck to enjoy the fresh night air.

The air had
cooled somewhat since he came back outside but remained just warm enough to feel
comfortable when it was still, but from time to time a cool breeze blew gently up
through the trees, coming off the surface of the lake several hundred meters
away, bringing a chill to the air and carrying with it the crackling and
popping of someone’s campfire, and the quiet hum of a far off power boat’s
engine.

* * *

Even from
inside its dimly lit and slightly chilly passenger cabin, Dylan could barely
hear the subdued whisper of the small vessel’s engines with their tactical
noise dampeners fully engaged, and no one had spoken much more than a few words
in the hours since departure, so the flight had been nearly as quiet as it had
been long. But that was normal for a combat mission. There was something very
humbling about the very real possibility of not living to see another sunrise
that tended to plunge even the bravest of Marines into quiet reflection.

He’d
spent that time thinking back over his career.

What the hell
was he doing in a Ranger unit?

The
overhead lighting changed from its normal soft blue-white to a not too bright blood
red. “Coming up on insertion point,” the pilot announced over the intercom.

“On your
feet,” the lieutenant called out from the front of the cabin.

Equipment
check. Routine. Thumbs up.

“Man the
capsules.”

Routine.

Amber
changed to green. The drop. The countdown.

Routine.

No
injuries.

Ready.

He gave
the order to move out.

At first
their trek was slow and precarious, through a forest as thick and as black as
road tar. The dense overhead canopy kept the starlight at bay, and without it
their night-vision displays were useless. They traveled in relative silence
using the faint sounds of each other’s careful footfalls to maintain their proper
intervals, because bunching up could be a fatal mistake.

Hours
passed.

Moonlight.

Night-vision
displays. Without bothering to give the word—he knew his troops didn’t have to
be told—he flipped his NVD into place over his eye. Through its dark
amber-green lens, the forest took on an eerie, haunted appearance, and a
feeling of foreboding suddenly filled the depths of his very soul. That feeling
grew more intense as they drew steadily closer to their objective, but he kept
that feeling to himself.

A
brilliant, blinding light suddenly flooded the forest.

* * *

The sudden
luminescence startled Dylan back to the present. Across the courtyard the girl’s
living room lights had just come on and her curtains were standing wide open.
He hadn’t even realized he was gazing in that direction. He sat and watched for
a few moments but perceived no movement inside. Then, driven by his curious,
albeit suspicious nature, he went inside, picked up his binocs, and switched
off the lights.

He focused
on the front door of the girl’s apartment just as she stepped inside, and her
sultry beauty instantly captivated him. She was wearing a black mini-skirt—was
that real leather?—and matching jacket with a low-cut cherry-red blouse and
black knee boots. Her hair was swept back on the sides and loosely braided down
her back. Two or three glittering gold necklaces, several bracelets, and a pair
of sparkling crystalline earrings completed her trendy outfit. Dylan had
thought she was attractive before, but now? He couldn’t believe her uniform had
hidden so much.

She closed
the door behind her and punched what he assumed was her locking code into the
wall panel, then pulled off her boots and set them in the closet. Then she
headed toward her bedroom, and Dylan’s gaze eagerly followed.

The bedroom lights
came up as she walked in, casting her shadow against the curtains—an indistinct
silhouette that quickly sharpened and then vanished an instant later when she
threw the curtains open. She pulled off her jacket and tossed it onto the bed,
then stepped over to her dresser and took off her jewelry—including a pair of
bright golden barrettes that Dylan hadn’t even seen—one piece at a time, carefully
arranging each one in its proper place. She ran her fingers through her hair
and shook it loose, then started to undress.

Now that he’d
seen she was safe and everything was all right, Dylan knew that he should stop
watching her. Despite the curious fact that she’d opened her curtains, she had
the same right to privacy as anyone else and to continue spying on her would be
wrong. But as she stepped out of her skirt and started to unbutton her blouse,
something—whether it was curiosity, appreciation of her beauty, or just plain
ordinary lust he couldn’t guess, nor did he dwell on it—something compelled him
to continue his unlawful surveillance. Probably the lust, he admitted to
himself. He hadn’t been with a woman in weeks.

She opened
her blouse and slipped it from her shoulders, revealing sensuous black lace
lingerie, then stepped up to the full-length mirror next to her dresser. She
twisted back and forth from left to right as far as she could without taking
her eyes off of her reflection. Then, after a few seconds of that, she reached
up behind her and unfastened her bra, then turned her back to the window as she
slipped it off and headed into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Dylan set
his binocs aside, sat back, and rested his head against the back of the couch
with a sigh. His heart was pounding. This young woman, whoever she was, was
beautiful to be sure and certainly not very shy. But what was it that had
reduced him to spying on her through the windows? Why were women and sex on his
mind so much lately? Had he really grown so lonely so quickly or was he just so
incredibly bored, being stuck on medical leave for so long, that his mind—his
conscious mind at least—couldn’t find anything else with which to occupy
itself?

Maybe he
should
just go over there and introduce himself.

Maybe he
should.

Maybe...

* * *

They’d gained
entry into the poorly lit commander’s office and were busy grabbing all the
documents they could find and sealing them into water-proof/fire-proof
envelopes.

“Looks
like that’s everything, Sarge,” Marissa said. “I’ve emptied every drawer or
cabinet I can find.”

“Same
here.”

—He never
found anything more.

“Good.
Then what do you say we get the hell out of...” She fell silent, turned, stared
into the blackness.

“What is
it?” he quietly asked, raising his rifle. “What’s wrong?”

—He knew
what it was.

“I
thought I heard something in there.”

—Please,
God, not again. Don’t put her through it again.

“Like
what?”

“I’m not
sure. Like...someone crying maybe?”

No more
questions. They listened. A faint moan.

—He knew
what it was.

They
stepped into the darkness.

He found
something. A door.

—She was
in there.

Another
moan, from inside. No latch. The other side. He found the button.

They went
inside.

—There
she was.

Small,
slender, dark haired, she lay stretched out on some kind of surgical bed next
to a series of machines, her eyes rolled back in her head. Stripped naked,
beaten, perhaps tortured. Her badly skinned hands were strapped to a metal bar
above her head. Her legs, thighs badly bruised, were spread wide and strapped
to the sides of the bed frame just below her knees. Tubes ran from one of the
machines, feeding fluids into her arms. Small sensors fastened to her head,
beneath her breasts, and over her heart. Her belly, swollen as though she were pregnant...

—Inhuman.

Bleeding
heavily from her torn vagina.

—Poor,
innocent girl.

He called
Doc.

—Doc
would never show up.

That
familiar demonic hiss filled the room...

—filled
his entire world—

...and
once more, before he could react, a heavy stream of thick florescent bile-yellow
fluid sprayed in from the darkness and spattered over Marissa’s face and chest.
She dropped her rifle and clutched her face in her hands, screaming at the top
of her lungs as she collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain.

—Again.

“Marissa!”
He raised his rifle to the doorway and fired blindly into the darkness as he
rushed toward her, but a long and immensely powerful whip suddenly lashed out
and knocked him back as it ripped the rifle from his hands. In the same fluid
motion it struck Marissa square across her chest as she tried to climb back to
her feet and knocked her back against the far wall. She dropped back to the
floor.

—That
always happened, and it had happened again. Why did he always react the same
way?

It
emerged from the darkness.

—The
serpent! The Prince of Darkness! The Devil itself, risen from the fiery abyss!

The Beast
rose up. The Beast slithered slowly toward him.

He backed
farther away.

—He knew
he wouldn’t escape. He never escaped.

He drew
his sidearm.

—He knew
it would knock his sidearm away.

The Beast
dodged everything he managed to throw at it.

—He’d
never been able to hit it.

The Beast
spat—burned his arms but missed his face.

Lucky...but
he’d left himself venerable.

The Beast
grabbed him up in its long tail, which it swiftly coiled around his mid-section.
It lifted him off the floor.

—He’d
fallen for it again.

The air
gushed from his lungs. He couldn’t draw a breath. One by one his ribs began to
crack. Tiny sparks of light began dancing like fireflies in the darkness before
his tearing eyes. He was going to die.

—Again.

Gunfire.
The Beast dropped him to the floor.

More
gunfire, but not for long. A crash. Silence.

The Beast
lifted him again. He fought against it. He kicked. The Beast threw him down
again, but not for long.

Combat
knife.

The Beast
pulled him in. He opened its gullet.

The doomed
creature dropped him into the expanding pool of its cold, thick blood.

Blood. It
bled. It wasn’t the Beast after all!

The flapping
of its gullet tissue. The gurgling of its gushing blood.

It lay
there, twitching, silently waiting to die.

Excruciating
pain.

He was
dying.

Someone
moaned. “Marissa!” He crawled to her and turned her over. The rancid stench of
vomit. His own acidy bile burned his throat.

Her face,
badly discolored. Her eyes, nearly swollen shut. The front of her TAC-vest had
dissolved completely away, and what little remained of her battle-dress tunic
was torn wide open. A deep cut ran high across her burned and bloodied chest,
but it didn’t appear to be bleeding anymore.

—Always
the same.

“I’m
still with you. How bad is it?”

“I don’t
think it’s too serious.”

A lie.

Conversation.
No time.

He was
dying.

They had
to rescue the consort.

Weapons.

He helped
Marissa to her feet.

“Your
arms are burned.”

“The
bastard spat at me.”