~32~
Cutter jogged to the helicopter. He lifted himself up by the footholds and peered inside the front windscreen. It was too dark to see anything, so he raised his flashlight and shined it inside. Other than the forms of the two dead pilots under blankets, there appeared to be additional bodies in the back of the helicopter. They were all gathered against the rear hatch. He raced around to the backside of the helicopter and joined Morgan. She had the panel to lower the ramp already open.
He stopped alongside her. “Didn’t see anything to lead me to believe it’s trapped. But there are bodies in there, so be prepared.”
She glanced at him and nodded, then toggled a switch, and the large hatch opened like the mouth of a giant guppy.
The stench immediately hit him. The reek of unwashed bodies, the soured sweat of fear, blood, and grime. It was all one big soup of stomach turning funk. But he also detected an acrid odor that he could not quite identify. When the ramp descended halfway, he spotted six men all crumpled together inside the craft, huddled up near the rear hatch.
What the hell?
None of them appeared injured. He shined his light on them and stopped on one man in particular. It was Colonel Suvorov. Drool and mucous streaked the man’s face, but his mouth was still open, and his chest was moving up and down rhythmically.
“What the hell?” he said, this time out loud.
“Gassed,” Morgan replied. “Still alive, though—it seems.”
“This is just getting weirder and weirder. You think it’s safe to go in? I’m not going to pass out, will I?”
She shrugged and backed away. “Maybe. I don’t know for sure.”
Cutter ignored her and went to check on Suvorov, bending over and feeling for a pulse—it was strong. He tapped the man on the cheek, trying to wake him.
Nothing?
He hit the guy harder.
Nothing.
Finally, Cutter slapped the man with the back of his hand, hard enough that he had to suck his hand back and shake away the pain.
The colonel stirred and began to wake. Then he came alert with a start, squirmed, and reached for the gun on his hip.
“Whoa,” Cutter said. “It’s okay. Hold still.”
The man blinked in confusion, and Cutter could see what was about to happen the instant before it did, but could do nothing to stop it.
Oh, shit.
He scrambled, pushing himself back and away as the colonel bent forward—and expelled the contents of his stomach onto the grooved metal floor of the helicopter.
Cutter waited for more, but the colonel coughed once and wiped his mouth on his wrist. The guy tried to stand. He said something in Russian and then shook his head, jaw all rubbery. Long streamers of drool dribbled from his mouth and nose and reached almost to the floor. He wiped them away with his fingers and flung them aside.
“What…what happened?” Suvorov asked, this time in English.
Cutter moved closer to the man and checked him over. “You tell me, you were knocked out by something. Some kind of gas, probably.”
The colonel eyed him suspiciously.
“And, we just found out that one of our crates was rigged with explosives. Did your team do that?”
Cutter didn’t expect the colonel to answer, or for the answer to be entirely truthful, but the man shook his head no.
Then who the hell did?
he wanted to say but held his tongue. He quickly ran down a list of other possibilities. If the colonel’s team hadn’t done it, that left only Dr. Martinez as the only remaining suspect who could have set the trap on the ammo crate.
If she is willing to kill us over this, and knock out Suvorov and crew, what else is she capable of doing? And, if she planted that bomb, why didn’t she kill the soldiers? Were they her ticket out of here?
In an instant, his desire to save her switched to a desire to figure out what she was up to. Much more was going on here than he first thought. He didn’t know exactly what that was, but he damn well intended to find the hell out.
~33~
Cutter added to his pile, taking as much as he thought he could carry from the crates. He’d slipped spare clips into the pockets on his vest and adjusted to the different weight of the .30-caliber ammo for the ARs.
As he grabbed a few extra clips for his Glock, he debated again if he should bring the MP5K instead. It was lighter and the ammo could be swapped with his Glock, but Gauge kept insisting they’d need the extra punch the Badger AA6s provided. Ultimately, he deferred to the man’s better judgment on the subject—
would be silly not to.
He also grabbed his ACH and slapped the helmet on his head but did not strap it.
He was still bothered by the question of why only one crate had been booby trapped.
Why not all of them? She must have figured she needed to wire up only one.
It had almost worked. If it hadn’t been for Morgan’s quick thinking, they’d all be dead now, and he felt that in his bones.
I owe her big time.
But, again, he couldn’t figure out why Dr. Martinez had just left them outside to die with those zombie things earlier.
Why did she let us in—?
It was all very puzzling.
Morgan was rifling through one of the now unstacked crates and stuffing things into her pack. Cutter joined her, getting down on one knee. “What else you got for me?”
She kept drawing various items out and inspecting them. “We can leave most of the explosives near the exit. If I set the charges there, we can collapse the entrance and leave whatever those things are trapped inside without necessarily killing them. At least until we can get re-enforcements.”
“That’s supposed to be the colonel’s job. Where the hell is he?”
“Search me, Jack.”
He regained his feet and found Suvorov working behind the helicopter with his remaining men. They had one soldier who they were not able to wake. The man had apparently suffocated when he’d been smothered by another after they had all been knocked unconscious.
That left five soldiers still alive and the three total in his crew.
Not the greatest odds going up against all those zombies.
But he implicitly trusted his people. Suvorov and his men had already proven untrustworthy, perhaps even dangerous. There was little choice, though. He had to work with what he had.
Standing alone now and staring at the compound, he ran through his final mental checklist. First, they had to wire up the mine with the explosives. Then locate Dr. Martinez. She’d probably lead them to the artifact directly. After they figured out where the artifact was, they could perhaps destroy it, which should save all those people instead of having to kill them all. Each one was essentially still a human being on the inside, with dreams and desires and value—
or so I hope.
“Here,” Morgan said as she joined him, “put these in.” She gave him a set of small earplug devices. He put them in his ears and followed her back to the assembling men.
She gave a pair of the earplugs to Colonel Suvorov. He looked at her suspiciously as he lowered his short-barrel submachine gun and let it rest on the strap.
To head off his question, Cutter said, “They’ll keep your eardrums from bursting if we get into a firefight in an enclosed space, especially with all those unsuppressed AKs of yours.”
“They are far better than those,” the colonel said, nodding toward Cutter’s AR and shaking his head side to side. “Too fancy. Too complicated.
Too American.
”
Cutter grinned back at the man as he yawned to adjust the fit of his own earplugs. He quickly figured out that the tiny devices were also amplifying faint sounds. He could hear the buzzing of insects and the breathing wheezes of those around him, and maybe even faint heartbeats.
Hmmm. Interesting.
“What about NVGs?” he asked.
“I think I got all the lights down there turned on now. We should be able to see just fine. NVGs will just hinder your movement and mess with your head.”
Cutter nodded.
And these earplugs won’t—?
“You’ll need these, too.” She passed out small black boxes to Cutter and Gauge that looked like old cellphones or pagers. “Our radio comms don’t work so well underground, but these will if we get separated. These work on VLF. They’ll take a bit longer to send messages, but they’ll travel through nearly a mile of rock.”
Cutter examined the device. “We didn’t have these last time.”
“I know. New tech. Problem is you have to type the message. Like texting. It will take about 30 seconds for a three-word message to transmit, so don’t get chatty.”
Cutter figured he wouldn’t need the thing and put it in his back pocket just in case. He wasn’t going to let them get separated. He planned to keep everyone together.
~34~
John Wayland peered through the porthole-size side window of the helicopter, looking down on the field below. It was just as his advance team had described it, but the expected outcome had not occurred according to the established plan. He was very disappointed in the performance of his team, and that was why it was time for him to step in and clean up the mess.
He stepped off the helicopter, instinctively ducking the rotor wash as he cleared the landing field.
“What happened?” were the first words out of his mouth, directed at the soldier standing in front of him, NVGs still lowered and glowing green.
The man he had hired, dressed completely in black and armed to the teeth, nodded once and cleared his throat. “We did not expect them to find it so easily.”
“Any additional hostiles in the area?”
“No,” the soldier reported.
Wayland stood there for a minute, thinking. The man with him waited patiently, wordless. Every part of his carefully laid-out plan was falling to pieces. After his team had staged the brutal killings of the two helicopter pilots, Dr. Martinez was supposed to have returned and stuck around and rendezvoused with him here at the landing zone. But the tracker chip he had put inside the outfit he’d purchased with her indicated that she had indeed abandoned him and was going after the device directly. Which was a big mistake—
that selfish bitch.
She must have learned something about the device he wasn’t aware of yet. He intended to find out post haste. And then he intended to finish the job he had started well over a year ago.
He would kill Jackson Cutter and his team for what they had failed to do for him in Ecuador. Everything had been their fault.
Wayland sighed. “You’ve failed me here, Mr. Briggs,” he said in a tone of complete disappointment. “I’ve compensated you very well.” And he had. He’d spent everything on this. Every last dime he’d stolen from that asshole Moray. This would be his swan song. He would sell the device to the highest bidder and live the rest of his life as a king among men.
“Sir, we did not expect them to find it.”
“But they did.”
The man said nothing.
Wayland swatted at an insect that had tried to crawl into his mouth. He spat air, trying to shoo it away. “Well, I guess we are just going to have to kill them ourselves now, aren’t we?”
~35~
“Did she go this way?” Cutter asked.
“Not sure,” Morgan replied. “Too much interference. The signal in here is almost non-existent. But there is one way to find out. We go find her.”
Cutter held up a hand to keep Colonel Suvorov and his men arrayed behind him as he knelt and examined the dust on the mineshaft floor immediately outside the lift they’d taken to get deep inside the mine. The elevator ride had taken almost ten minutes from start to finish, and by Morgan’s calculations, they were at least half a mile down inside the earth. Probably deeper underground than he had ever gone before, and he just hoped he hadn’t descended into deep shit.
The ride down had been uneventful. Morgan had maps of the mine stored on her tablet, and she’d shared them with him on the way down. There were other ways to get to where they planned to, but it would take far more time to do so. In fact, it would have meant miles of walking down crisscrossing access tunnels. At best, though, that would keep those things up top from getting to them for some time to come. Unless, of course, those zombies could somehow work the lifts—
or are down here already.
He swept his fingers across the dust at his feet and used the mini-flashlight strapped to his tactical vest to highlight the various ridges of the individual tracks. There were many prints—almost too many to count—but one set of bootprints stuck out from the rest. They were fresh and sharp and somewhat smaller than the rest. He figured they had been made by the newly purchased hiking boots that Dr. Martinez was wearing. And those prints led off into the brightly lit shaft to his left.
“She went that way.” He stood and headed down the tunnel he had indicated. He heard hesitant shuffling coming from behind him. Words were being exchanged in Russian, but he chose to ignore them. The men would follow Suvorov no matter what Cutter said to them, or what they each thought of him personally. They had no choice but to follow the man. All he wanted to ensure was not being anywhere near them if they decided to panic and started rattling off those noisy Russian AKs indiscriminately.
Gauge raised his Badger AA6 and stepped alongside Cutter. The beams of their green lasers crisscrossed each other and stabbed into the distance, reflecting off dust particles hanging in the air. With as much tunnel-clearing firepower as they were carrying, nothing coming from the front stood much of a chance of lasting much longer than a half-a-second post target acquisition.
Cutter held his AR one-handed at the hip with the lanyard supporting most of the weight on his shoulder. It was slightly heavier than he would have liked, but now he fully understood Gauge’s reluctance to bring along the smaller MP5Ks. In the end, Gauge’s decision had been the wisest approach. Those tiny 9-millimeter sewing machines could throw out a lot of lead quickly, but they just didn’t have the same kind of punch that the .30-caliber assault rifles had. And Gauge had also chosen the more powerful supersonic loads for their kits, which, given the mining helmets some of the zombies had strapped to their heads, meant a clean, penetrating shot right straight into the brain pan each time with only a small chance of deflection.
“
There!
” Morgan whisper-shouted. The blip representing their target had reappeared on her tablet. She pointed in the direction Dr. Martinez was taking. Cutter signed to Suvorov to follow closely. His men remained behind with him, huddled together like a little a brood of rabbits seeking safety in numbers. But it was a bad formation for them to take. Being that close together, they would all get in each other’s way if the shit actually did hit the fan. And they were making far too much noise.
He was about to warn them to be a little more quiet when—
From out of a side shaft came a whole host of zombies. Gauge sprang into action first, pushing Morgan ahead of him. Cutter joined them, and they formed a line from which to pour hot lead into the group of approaching zombies.
Colonel Suvorov and his men tried to separate as well, but one of his soldiers collapsed when a creature put on a burst of speed and landed firmly on the young soldier’s back, knocking him sideways into the others.
The thing’s teeth sank into the soft flesh of the kid’s throat, and he fumbled and got tangled up while trying to raise his strapped weapon. He quickly went down under a pile of the swarming things. Their teeth bit deeply into the soft flesh of the poor kid’s quivering throat. He pushed one by the head, trying to shove it away, but as he did, his fingers slipped inside the thing’s mouth, and its exposed teeth bit down hard. The kid yanked his hand back and screamed as blood spurted from the remaining stumps of his missing fingers. His wail soon turned to a gurgle as more of the zombies bit into the flesh of his face and tore away skin and muscle from bone.
The two remaining soldiers with Suvorov fumbled for their weapons and turned to fire at the creatures that had flanked them while Suvorov backed away from the mess and raised his submachine gun and fired into a new group of zombies coming from their right. He was yelling at his men in Russian, but they had frozen in place and were spraying bullets into the horde like a pair of out of control firehoses.
It worked for a little while. Then their guns ran out of ammunition.
Cutter did not have the proper angle to open fire, not unless he wanted to chance hitting Suvorov’s men.
Desperately and heroically, Suvorov tried to save his men. He grabbed one by the collar and tugged him backward, away from the flailing arms of the zombies. But it didn’t have the desired effect. The man tripped and fell. Suvorov then tried to help the man regain his feet, but by that time, the creatures were already pulling themselves on top the guy.
“Come on!” Cutter yelled. “
Clear a path!
” He chanced it and fired once, killing the first zombie already digging into the shrieking kid. “
You can’t help them!
They’re dead already.
We have to go!
”
But Suvorov still tried to help, crouching low and tugging on the guy, locked in a tug-a-war game with three zombies each wanting the kid as its own, while another one gnawed on the kid’s ear and tore it off. It raised its head, and its exposed teeth ground back and forth on the stolen flesh.
Cutter and Gauge joined Suvorov, stepping to each side of the man and adding their combined firepower to the mix. The green laser beams from their weapons flicked between targets, and bright muzzle flashes accompanied the virtual wall of streaming death as they switched to the approaching mass of zombies. Lead slammed into the creatures, dropping them like bolted cows. Gooey splatters and chunks of gore flew off and slapped wetly against the rock walls behind them while their guns clacked efficiently and effectively, barely audible above the horrible cries of the dying creatures.
Cutter backed away like a fireman retreating from a hot blaze and kept shooting at the approaching zombies, watching his bullets destroy heads, popping them open like rotten pumpkins. Each man he was forced to kill, though, hurt him a little inside. He wanted to save them if he could, but he also wanted to remain alive.
Kill or be killed
—the apex law of nature.
He raised his AR and moved between three targets, firing single rounds in rapid succession as soon as the laser marked them for death. Three zombies dropped to the dust, but another five immediately took their places. Howling, the newly arriving creatures charged, stumbling over the bodies of their fallen brethren.
Cutter spotted the deception and could hardly believe it.
What the—?
He blinked. More creatures were circling in behind them and arriving even faster and in greater numbers. They would soon flank them completely.
Get out. Go. Go. Go.
Reacting instantly, he raised his weapon and fired again and again one-handed while signaling Gauge to clear a path through the horde.
Gauge hot-swapped another clip before going into full fury mode, shredding bodies and sending brass bullet casings pouring out of the side of the gun. The brass shells bounced about the shaft chaotically, making high-pitched sounds that Cutter’s earbuds selected for after filtering out the supersonic cracks of the bullets in flight. Gauge kept his attack going until his clip ran dry. He hot-swapped another and went searching for fresh targets. But he did not fire at first and seemed momentarily satisfied with the damage he had wrought. He then reset the stock against his shoulder and pressed the trigger and more flames and fire and lead streamed from his gun. Now he was being more surgical about his kills, and Cutter just held fire and watched. All the lead going downstream was having the desired effect. The flow ahead of them had slowed to a trickle as the bodies piled up and created their own stream-damming effects.
Cutter then knew what he had to do. He couldn’t wait around to explain it, nor could he save anyone else. He grabbed Morgan by the arm and shoved her next to Gauge.
“Go! That way!” he yelled, pointing in the direction they had come with his barrel. “We’ll be right behind you. Hustle!”
Cutter spun and fired at the remaining zombies that were attempting to flank them. He kept short bursts of fire going. Each new shot crashed into the head of an approaching creature, dropping it before it could come near.
“
We can’t leave you, Jack!
” Morgan yelled, or that is what he thought she said. He ignored her and nodded a
get-the-hell-out-of-here
to Gauge. The big man let up on his trigger, nodded back his understanding, and grabbed Morgan by the upper arm and pulled her alongside him. He opened up again with his AR, parting the zombies in the tunnel ahead of him like Moses parting the Red Sea.
Cutter chanced a peek. The temporary gap that Gauge had created would only remain open for a few more seconds and would quickly collapse when they got through it. The big man was already moving, pulling Morgan along behind him. Zombies reached out to grab them both as they went past, but each one that managed to lay a hand on Gauge got its head exploded in return. With a final burst of rounds, they made it through the last of them to the end and into the cleared spaced behind them.
Morgan stopped to signal Cutter, but he ignored her and turned again to refocus his effort on the creatures that had gotten behind him and Suvorov.
Cutter swapped clips just as Suvorov’s gun clicked empty, and the colonel went for a spare clip, but ended up only patting himself and not finding one. Cutter selected three more targets for neutralization and fired his AR to drop them then let his gun go slack and hang from the strap temporarily as he drew his Glock left-handed. He tossed the handgun to Suvorov who raised it and used it to shoot the next few zombies that were almost upon them. In the enclosed space, the report from the Glock was many times louder than the AR’s, but the earbuds were doing a damn fine job filtering all the noise.
“
We gotta go through that way!
” Cutter shouted. “Go the opposite way from them.” And as he said it, he headed in the direction with the least number of the creatures, weapon raised, but not firing to conserve ammunition.
Many pairs of mottled arms in shredded clothing grasped at him, attempting to drag him aside to attack him. He hit back at them with the AR’s stock and tried to drive them backward and on to their heels, but the creatures grew more frantic and began snapping at him with their yellowed, slavering teeth. He dodged and weaved their attacks like a boxer while keeping watch on the colonel. The man was right beside him, being attacked by the same creatures, and striking back at them with his own weapon, sending blood and bits of flesh flying off in all directions with each impact.
A zombie lunged at Cutter, and he smashed it in the face with the butt of his gun. The telescoping stock then collapsed sideways and sheared off, leaving him with a stunted weapon that he wasn’t sure how he was going to be able to fire. Chancing it, he yanked the AR up and fired off another two rounds, dropping the next two zombies in their tracks. Then he leaned forward and dug in his heels and pushed his way forward, weapon turned sideways to clear a pathway to freedom.
A few seconds later, he and the colonel stumbled through the last of the mob and broke free of the pawing grips and found themselves on the far side with nothing trying to attack them.
His hasty plan had worked. He just hoped separating them into multiple groups and trading distance for time was going to work out in the long run.
Spinning on his heel, he fired his crippled weapon again into the group. More creatures died, but it was not going to be enough to stop them completely. And he could feel by the weight of the gun that he was nearly out of ammunition. He had only a few rounds left, and he did not have any spare clips readily available. He’d have to open his pack to get to them.
Make ‘em count
.
He fired at the forward-most zombies, wanting to clog the rest up and get them all tripping over each other. He backpedaled again as Suvorov shot a stray zombie that had snuck up from behind them.
He turned and scanned the tunnel behind them as he backpedaled. The way to safety appeared clear.
“Watch my back,” Cutter said as he committed to a quick reconnaissance and sped past a sloping ramp leading to a downward tunnel to his right. He peeked inside.
No thanks.
It was dark inside, too dark to see. The lights that were strung along the upper right continued at the same level. They bypassed the downward offshoot and continued far into the distance before disappearing around a bend. He didn’t give the side route a second glance. He was not about to go descending into the darkness of an unknown passageway.