~18~
Seeing the guy below, running for his life, reminded Cutter of the day he’d lost his wife. It was hard not to be reminded of her. But, sadly, she’d never had the opportunity to run, and he could imagine hearing her anguished cries over the beating of the rotors and the whining of the twin engines of the Mi-8.
Those same screams had cut off so abruptly when she’d died, but those screams had not died out in Cutter’s mind.
Never
. He heard them day and night, awake or asleep.
Only the alcohol helped keep them at bay.
On that terrible day, he’d tried to get to her. Hell, he’d tried to with every fiber of his being, but Gauge and Morgan had stopped him and dragged him away before the final explosives had gone off and brought the entire mountain down on top of them. Only later had he realized he’d broken his arm at some point along with two ribs. And, somehow, he’d also cracked open his skull in a futile attempt to save her.
There was blood everywhere—all of it was his.
Sharon had repelled deep inside the mine, down to where the artifact had supposedly landed after they had been attacked by some kind of crazed people. Those people looked human, but they didn’t act human.
Cutter had said he would make his descent first, but she argued how he barely knew his elbow from his asshole when it came to this kind of thing, and he would not be able to properly handle the artifact, so he capitulated, and she had gone before him.
That had been his mistake.
When Morgan’s call had come over the radio to evacuate immediately, he was ready to make the climb back to the top. He urged Sharon, who was below him, to climb up to him so they could both get out together. But she’d yelled back up to him that she was almost to the artifact. She could even see it a few feet below her in the mineshaft and only needed to descend another few feet to reach it.
Morgan’s repeated radio calls then became more and more insistent.
Still, Cutter trusted his wife completely. She knew what she was doing. If she said it would only be another few seconds, he could give her that time. So, against his better judgment, he ignored Morgan’s cries of alarm and let Sharon finish her work while he began to climb in anticipation of pulling his wife up when she had the artifact in hand. There was still plenty of time. There always was. He was certain of it. He’d set the charges himself, so he knew just how long they had before they were scheduled to go off.
But he was wrong. The clock in his head had been wrong. And everything from that point forward had gone so terribly wrong.
He’d just started to pull her up when the concussion wave from the first charge knocked him flat on his ass. He lost control of the rope that held her, letting it slip right through his fingers before realizing what had happened. He tried to lunge for the rope and snatch it. But, before he could reach it, the line went taut, and the first anchor cam jerked free. Then another blast wave hit, and he fell again and the second cam broke free. And as that shiny metal anchor disappeared over the edge and into the gloom, so too went his wife, Sharon.
~19~
Cutter’s eyes focused on the man running below across the large stretch of gray. The man fell. Got up. Ran faster, arms pumping hard. Tiny puffs of brown dust followed his footsteps as he raced across the open space. It appeared he was heading for the thick line of trees at the edge of the clearing.
What the hell are you running from?
Cutter suddenly had a very bad, bad feeling about all this. It was all eerily similar to what had happened in Ecuador when they’d been attacked by those crazed people hopped up on some kind of drugs. Cutter had no idea how many of them had died when the mountain came down on top of them, but they had tried to kill him, so they had gotten what they deserved.
The helicopter continued to circle above the cluster of buildings while Cutter and Suvorov watched the man below. With a jolt, the helicopter nosed over and plunged into a steep descent.
Cutter lost sight of the man as the Mi-8’s heading changed to intercept the guy near the tree line. When he glanced over at Suvorov again, the colonel was speaking into the microphone of his headset while balanced on the balls of his feet and peering out the open doorway.
Suvorov was directing the pilot.
Chase that guy,
he was probably saying in Russian. Cutter returned to his seat and pulled his own headset on to listen to the conversation. It did him little good as they were conversing only in Russian. He waved for Morgan to slip hers back on and interpret what was being said.
With another shocking jolt, he felt his stomach float into his throat as the helicopter fell from the sky into an even faster descent, sinking like a stone. His stomach began to settle down right as Morgan managed to get her headset on. He shook his head at her and removed his headset and hung it on a hook above his shoulder.
The engines on the Mi-8 raced, and the pitch of the whine grew higher and higher, almost screeching, and about a second later, a green light winked on near the rear hatch, and the hinged back door released downward before the helicopter had even set down. The men onboard remained seated until touchdown, then all of them stood up and filed out two at a time and spread out, crouching low, guns raised, nervous, but ready.
They looked as if they had practiced the maneuver before, but it was also easy to see that they weren’t very good at it, either, because one guy stumbled and the rest piled up behind him causing them all to nearly fall over like toppling dominos.
Cutter glanced at Gauge, who was drawing his polished Desert Eagle and grinning with pleasure as he followed behind.
Morgan rose from her seat next to Cutter and prepared to exit, but he indicated for her to stay behind with Dr. Martinez.
Stay there
, he gestured in his haste, like he was commanding a dog to obey. She looked wounded by the order that he had meant to be a suggestion.
Sorry.
He grinned an apology at her then grabbed his gear. After exiting the helicopter, he ducked low on instinct and jogged to where everyone was assembling outside the rotor wash. The man who had been running across the field stood on a patch of grass, surrounded by Suvorov’s men.
The frightened man had his hands on his knees and was bent over panting. He was covered in dirt and muck and filth as if he had come from the mine. There were also wet streaks that were probably blood.
Flailing his arms, the guy came alive and spoke rapidly in highly-animated Russian.
“What’s he saying?” Cutter asked as he closed in on Suvorov.
“It is nothing for you to be concerned about,” the colonel said from the corner of his mouth.
The man continued to point back at the cluster of blue buildings in the distance, stabbing his finger repeatedly at them and saying, “
Chudovishe
.
Chudovishe.
”
Colonel Suvorov left Cutter standing with Gauge and grabbed the gibbering man firmly by the shoulders, held him still, and then shook him hard, snapping the guy’s neck like a kid shaking a rag doll. The colonel then forced the man to remain still and spoke in slow and reassuring tones. The guy calmed somewhat, coughed, and resumed stabbing his finger in the direction of the buildings making up the mining complex. There was blood under three of the man’s fingernails, and two of them were completely missing.
“What’s going on?” Cutter asked as he stepped alongside the colonel.
Suvorov did not initially answer. Instead, he made a series of hand gestures that sent four of his men running toward the cluster of distant buildings. The soldier’s boots crunched with each double-time step they took, and their heads swiveled left and right, and their guns came up, and their backs were bent as if they expected to encounter trouble at any second even though the way ahead was clear.
That earlier bad feeling Cutter had had was growing worse by the second. “We should get out of here. No amount of—”
The colonel cut him off with a snort and hand wave. He then said something in Russian to his remaining troops. A laugh rippled through the men.
What?
Cutter could not understand what was being said, but he could discern the meaning. It wasn’t good.
“He’s calling you a coward,” Morgan whispered in his ear. “Specifically, he’s calling you a ‘
trusikha
,’ which means a fema—”
Cutter whirled on her. “I thought I said for you to stay behind and keep an eye on Dr. Martinez?”
She smirked. “And when have I started listening to you when you didn’t make any sense?”
Never
, was what came to mind. When it was truly important, she listened. Both she and Gauge did. Still, she should have remained behind in the helicopter. Someone needed to watch Dr. Martinez carefully until they knew if she could take care of herself and not jeopardize the entire mission.
“Okay, then,” Cutter said. “Suvorov can think whatever he damn well wants, but I’ll tell you this. We need to scoot on out of here, and do it now.”
“Should we call you a ‘
trusikha’
as well?” Morgan said. She waited a beat and added, “Just suck it up, buttercup.”
Cutter looked to Gauge for support. He found none there either. And they were right. He was acting far too fearful for the facts that they knew to be true.
Shit.
He’d lost his nerve for a moment.
That was all,
yeah
.
God, I want a drink. A double, maybe. Or triple
.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Let’s go do this. We’ll play along for now. But I won’t let it get anywhere close to how it went last time.
No way. No how.
We’ll bail first, okay?”
Morgan asked, “And you think you can do that all on your own? You think you can tell us to leave when we haven’t even seen a good reason to go yet. You are better than this, Jack.”
“Seeing that guy doesn’t—” He stopped himself. He was slipping again.
Let it drop.
The colonel asked the panic-stricken man another question, holding him by the shoulders and glaring into the man’s eyes. Then he let him go. The guy fell on his backside and started pointing frantically again at the buildings, mumbling nonsense. About half the soldier’s heads turned in that direction, looking somewhat nervous, not liking the way the situation was developing much either.
In the extreme distance, the men who had been sent were already rounding one of the largest of the blue steel buildings.
Then they vanished from sight.
Everyone watched, waited.
Cutter took a few calming breaths, chastising himself for his onset of fear. It had never been this bad for him before.
What the hell has happened to my nerve?
His deep breathing calmed him just enough to begin to put the pieces back together again.
We have a full complement of men. Yes, they are probably not the highest quality, but we’ve got Gauge, and Morgan, and a mini-arsenal. What trouble could there possibly be that we can’t handle?
A few staccato gunshots rang out. It was enough to cause the soldiers near Cutter to shift into a more defensive posture, fanning out to cover all angles of potential attack—from the trees behind, from the left, from the right, from whatever might come charging at them from the clustered buildings.
Then more shots went off—rapid, erratic shots.
A scream.
Another.
And then silence.
The spooked man sitting on the ground clawed his way back to his feet and began jumping from foot to foot like a madman and pointing and repeating the same word over and over.
“
Chudovishe! Chudovishe!
”
Cutter had to know what that meant. He leaned over and asked Morgan.
“Monster,” she said. “It means monster.”
~20~
Inside the helicopter, Cutter broke open one of their three crates of supplies—the biggest one with all the guns in it. To Morgan and Gauge, he handed an MP5K and six spare magazines. He grabbed the same for himself and stuffed the spare mags in his tactical vest and left behind their fancy assault rifles, helmets, and body armor for now. They’d come back for it later if necessary. He figured with all the soldiers there to escort them into the mine, they probably wouldn’t need all that. It would just slow them down.
He nodded to Gauge and Morgan in turn, and his two teammates stepped forward to fetch their favorite sidearms from the crate. Morgan, who always professed to hate guns, grabbed a Glock 19 and strapped it to her hip. Gauge, who was already well armed with his Desert Eagle .50 protruding from its resting place closest to his heart, grabbed an additional Glock, then another, stuffing both guns into hidden pockets in the hulking vest and harness he wore over a long-sleeve T-shirt, black.
Cutter grabbed the Glock that had been brought along for him, racked the slide, and inspected the condition—brand new, just broken in. Then he switched to his familiar M1911 Colt .45 that he’d found in his desk drawer back in Texas. He weighed both in his hands.
Which one should I take?
He only wanted to bring one and wanted the one that had the least chance of jamming. He grimaced and put his old Colt .45 automatic away. It was a great gun, but it had been fired so many times that he just couldn’t count on it any longer. It needed a complete rebuild. But he loved that gun, so it was difficult to just leave it there. He did, though, giving it final look as he rested it on the foam inside the packing crate. Instead of bringing along the .45, he snatched up a few extra magazines of 9-millimeter for the Glock and stuffed them in the pockets of his tactical pants.
“What are you doing?” Colonel Suvorov asked, poking his head back inside the helicopter.
“Getting dressed.” Cutter racked the slide on his MP5K and checked the chamber, looking for that reassuring sparkle of brass.
“You will not need your own guns. We are in charge of security here. My soldiers will protect you.”
Cutter shared an uncertain glance with Gauge and Morgan. He had seen the colonel’s nervous men, who were really no more than pimply teenage boys drafted into service and escaping impoverishment. That made them soldiers that could not be counted on, and Cutter would not risk his life on them, or the lives of his two teammates.
“Sorry, but we brought our own.”
“You will not need them,” the colonel said. “I assure you they will not be necessary.”
“We’ll see.” Cutter, satisfied with his weapon choices, let the slide slam forward on the MP5K.
“I must insist,” the colonel said. “Leave them here.”
Like hell, I will.
The colonel’s statement also caused another nervous glance from Morgan, who had her back to the man.
“Okay,” Cutter said slowly, and he stood to his full height. “You can just come take them away from us then.”
Colonel sized Cutter up again. Gauge pulled out Betty and racked the slide, checking the chamber as Cutter had on his MP5K. The big gun remained pointed in the colonel’s general direction while Gauge inspected the mighty weapon.
“Very well,” Suvorov said, turned, and disappeared.
Gauge whispered to Cutter, “I do not trust them. Young boys make poor soldiers.”
Cutter nodded. “Then they’ll need someone to show them just how it is done, won’t they?”
“And I am supposed to do that?” Gauge said, then growled.
Moving beside him, Morgan added, “They are a bunch of pathetic little monkeys, aren’t they?”
Gauge grunted his approval while Cutter considered the implications. Colonel Suvorov was in it for Colonel Suvorov. They would have to watch the man closely.
Anyone who asked another to disarm was a potential threat
— Cutter understood that lesson very well.
“Dr. Martinez,” Cutter said when she appeared from behind Gauge. She’d come back inside the helicopter. “Would you care for a weapon? We brought along extras and—”
She waved him off. “I don’t care for guns,” she said and adjusted the collar of her shirt. “I find them distasteful.”
Gauge flashed a vulpine smile at Morgan, and she shook her head in disapproval. Cutter just stared ahead at Dr. Martinez, wondering what in the hell was wrong with her. Morgan at least realized the dangerous situation they were in and the value of a quality weapon to mitigate it.
I’ll just have to keep an eye on her.
“Best we get the show on the road,” he said before motioning to them to exit the helicopter.
After assembling with the young soldiers outside the Mi-8, as a group, they approached the outskirts of the large blue buildings. The gravel crunched under their boots, and the air was still and calm. Perhaps too calm. Bugs swarmed around Cutter, and he batted them away. He was doubly wary of what they might be walking into. He kept sniffing the air, picturing in his mind that he would be able to detect trouble before it happened. It was a mental game he often played that kept him on his toes. Sometimes it worked.
One of the young soldiers took the point position in their walking formation. He was a tall, thin, blond-haired kid who could not have been more than seventeen years old. He still had acne on his face and neck. The other soldiers followed him, scanning for trouble, but seemed completely unprepared for any trouble that might find them.
Cutter and team followed the soldiers with Colonel Suvorov and his two bodyguards. He held the MP5K loosely in his grip, trigger finger stiff along the trigger guard, ready to bring the weapon up and fire it should the need arise. It was a strange dilemma he faced. Having so many soldiers at the ready should allow them to take down almost anything they might encounter, so he figured the four men who had been sent earlier had to have been taken by surprise, which also meant the colonel was making every effort that any mistakes those men had made would not be repeated. Still, he was not at all reassured.
Not in the least
, and that was feeding his growing unease and tension. And, judging by the pale glances Gauge and Morgan were giving him, he was not alone.
As they approached, the buildings became larger than he had first thought they were when he had flown over them. They seemed broader, yet more squat. It was probably the multi-shaded blue paint and the fading light. The sides had been textured in a way that looked almost like a diffused-edge camouflage that would make them appear far smaller from above, or from any oblique angle. From space, probably even smaller. Red Cyrillic writing adorned the buildings, not English. Even so, it was relatively easy to make out the Roman numerals. And it was not difficult to guess the purpose of each building.
The first of the buildings was long and narrow and two stories high with deeply inset square windows running along at each level. External metal stairs led up to the second story, and it was topped by a grooved metal roof. Just outside the lower landing, a pair of barren trees stood alongside a series of park benches surrounding a concrete fire pit. Stained plastic chairs were arranged haphazardly around the blackened ring, and the ground near it was stubbled with crabgrass and littered with cigarette butts.
Cutter wondered if there were any cigarettes left that he could get a hit or two from. Morgan had taken his last pack and crushed it before they had boarded the plane in Texas. He glanced at her, wishing she hadn’t taken away his cigarettes.
“What?” she asked, then shook her head. “These are the dorms,” she added as the passed by the building’s entrance.
As they swung around to the other side of the building where the four soldiers had disappeared, Colonel Suvorov ordered his men to fan out. Cutter and Morgan both raised their guns and followed. Gauge stood guard next to Dr. Martinez, who had remained silent and observant the whole time. She seemed curious and self-assured—if nothing else.
As they rounded the corner of the building, taking slow steps, preparing, they all drew to a halt behind the colonel’s outstretched arm signaling for them to stop.
But there was nothing to see.
No soldiers. No bodies.
Nothing
. Just more mud, dotted bits of grass, and murky brown pools of water with bootprints. There were so many it was hard to tell what was what. Cutter scanned the area and followed the edges of the buildings up to the rooftops.
Where were all the lights?
It was getting dark already, and not a single light had come on. They were there, mounted under the eaves and on round metal poles, but—
Nothing
.
Almost in lockstep, they moved forward another fifty feet, and Suvorov again held up a hand to call a silent halt, then motioned for his soldiers to regroup into a new, wider formation next to a concrete wall that was about waist high.
Cutter came up to join the man. There were bootprints in the muddy earth along the wall—multiple sets, some big, some small, some uniform, some not. He squatted on his haunches and examined the prints. It was impossible to sort them out and tell what they meant, but then glints of yellow caught his attention and he rose and made his way closer to the building that was next to the wall. He let his MP5K drop and hang on its strap.
Brass casings had bounced off the sides of the building and landed in the mud there, showing him the direction from which the men had fired and where they had been standing when they did.
But that was it.
Just casings
. The men who had fired those guns were long gone.
One of the soldiers called out for the colonel. Cutter followed along and squatted next to them in the mud. Long streaks led off in a squiggly trail across the muddy ground as if someone had been dragged away. Those tracks led around the side of the building and then disappeared.
“Wouldn’t there be blood if they were hit?” Cutter asked no one in particular.
“Not if they were attacked and hit from behind,” Morgan answered. She’d snuck up behind him and was looking over his shoulder.
Gauge joined them. “What do you think this is?”
Cutter shrugged. “Not sure yet. Who would attack these guys? The miners? If so, why?”
He rose and repeated the question for Colonel Suvorov’s benefit. “Who do you think attacked them?”
“That is something we must find out,” the colonel said. He shouted orders in Russian at his troops, and the men regrouped and tracked the drag marks on the ground.
Cutter grabbed Suvorov by the arm, which drew a nasty return look. The colonel then shrugged him off and marched forward. Cutter said to his back, “We should think about going.”
“Those were my men,” the colonel said. “We are going to get them back from whoever took them.”
“And you are going to die too if you go after them,” a new voice said.
All heads pivoted toward Dr. Martinez. She was standing about ten feet away, but she quickly closed the gap between them.
“What do you know about this?” Cutter asked.
Just then came an agonizing cry that split the air. Birds took flight and flapped past overhead. Cutter tracked them back to the source. The cry had come from somewhere that was hidden from view by the largest of the buildings in the complex. It was a hulking structure three or more stories tall.
“What the hell was that?” Morgan asked, coming up from a crouching position.
Gauge had Betty out and looked as though he was ready to shoot whatever dared to move next. Cutter motioned for him to calm down.
The terrible cry came again. It was a nightmarish cry of anguish and pain and sent shivers down his backbone, locking him in place. Morgan shifted to stand closer to him while Gauge cocked his head left and right.
Cutter lifted his own weapon on the strap and scanned the area for threats. He saw none. “I think we should get back to the chopper.”
“You can go,” Suvorov said. “But I’m not leaving without knowing what has happened to my men.”
“They are dead,” Dr. Martinez said. “And the others will be soon if you do not recall them.”
“What the hell haven’t you told us?” Cutter asked, eyeing her with budding anger. “How would you know all that?”
She said nothing.
“Okay,” he said, “that seals it. We need to get back to the chopper and away from these buildings. We can regroup and reassess there. We’re too exposed here.”
The anguishing cry came once more. It was an inhuman wail, and this time, it went on for nearly ten seconds before it cut off abruptly with a gurgling choke. Cutter was sickened by the noise, but he was no longer frozen in place by it. His feet were already starting to move him back toward the helicopter.
A new distant shout rang out.
It repeated.
The new shout was something in Russian Cutter could not understand, but the universal tone of terror had been enough to tell him that now was a really, really good time to bug out and get the hell back to the chopper. Then that shout cut off and was replaced by another wailing scream, pitched higher, and made by the same tortured throat as the first shouted cry.
Colonel Suvorov barked fresh new commands. His men reacted this time and responded almost instantly.
Fear does that to men
, Cutter knew. Those with little real experience almost always look to someone else to save them. The colonel was supposed to be that man. But just then, the same guy who had been wanting to go after his men, grabbed Cutter by the shirt and yanked him forward and off balance. “We go now. We must go now, right? Back to the helicopter?”