Eden's Children (Earth Exiles Book 2) (22 page)

The team stayed very quiet.  Without knowing how many people were out there, the last thing Mike wanted to do was initiate a gun battle.  If they stayed quiet, there was a very good chance that the people making the sweep would walk right past them.  Mike had seen it happen before.

The man walked past.  Mike didn’t turn his head to watch him, because any motion could give the team away.  Mike listened as the man’s steps receded behind him.  A few minutes later, another man appeared behind the first.  This man looked the same as the other, same uniform, same weapons, though he had a golden sun embroidered on the left breast of his vest.  This man was closer, but still far enough away that he could walk past the team.  Mike wasn’t an overly religious man, but he was praying fervently at that moment.

The man with the golden sun stopped, wiped his brow, and yelled at the man that had just walked past.  Mike heard the other man stop, and start walking back toward them.  One step, two steps, three steps . . .

Mike heard a shout, then the bark as a rifle spit out a double tap.  The man with the golden sun raised his rifle, pointing it past Mike.  Mike shifted, brought his rifle up, and shot the man through the head.  Mike heard a shot from his left, and more shots behind him as Everett dealt with that target.  More steps from the left and right as the other patrol moved towards the gunshots.  Another one of the grey men went down.  There was more yelling, but no answer.  The footsteps stopped as they suddenly realized that the hunted had teeth.

Tom looked back at Mike, using his hand to point forward.  Mike nodded.  Tom stood up and started walking, Matki behind him.  The line started moving, knowing that others would soon head towards them.  They walked slowly, all eyes looking for more targets.  It was dangerous where they were, out in the open.  Tom would be looking for places that gave them more cover.  If they didn’t find cover, there was a very good chance the team wouldn’t live through this, especially if more of the grey men showed up.

A hundred yards down the valley, Tom found a jumble of rocks, and led the team into cover.  They slipped in behind the moss covered rocks, sliding down behind them for cover and concealment.  Mike looked around the team.  He flashed a thumbs up with a questioning look in his eyes.  He received a thumbs up from each team member.  They’d taken out the grey men without the grey men firing a shot.  Mike knew that wouldn’t happen again.  The grey men would be better prepared for the next engagement.

It wouldn’t take long now.  They listened as footsteps sounded around them.  The grey men would probe until they located the team, then there would be a concentrated attack.  The team heard a shout back where the bodies lay.  The sound of steps grew as more of the grey men converged on the area.

The team’s strategy hadn’t changed.  They still didn’t know how many grey men were out there, so they didn’t want to open the next shooting match.  In fact, their greatest tactical advantage was that the grey men didn’t know where they were or how many were on the team.

For the next thirty minutes, they watched as groups of the grey men walked through the area.  Mike saw a trio of grey men walk in their direction.  The three men were looking around.  Mike could tell that these men didn’t know what they were looking for.  They weren’t woodsmen.  Their body language didn’t show stalking or hunting experience.  They had weapons, though, and looked like they knew how to use them.

The three men kept walking toward them.  A stick cracked as one of them stepped on it.  The one in the middle slapped the man who’d stepped on the stick with the back of his hand.  Then the man in the middle stopped, and stared towards Mike’s location.  Mike wasn’t sure if the man saw Mike, or somebody else.  He stopped, then quickly grabbed at his rifle and started to raise it.  Mike shot, the first bullet ripping through the man’s throat, and the second hitting him in the face.  Mike shifted his aim to the man that stepped on the stick, pulled the trigger twice, and that one went down as well.

The last one stood there, staring at Mike, knowing that Mike had him dead to rights.  The man stared at Mike.  Mike’s eyes hardened.  Mike wasn’t going to let the guy leave and come back with a company of men to kill them.  The man made his choice, knowing that Mike was going to kill him.  The muzzle of the rifle twitched upwards.  Mike pulled the trigger.  Mike heard a shot from his right as Rob shot at the same time.  Two bullets smashed into the man’s face.  A voice range out through the trees.  Nobody answered.

The men they were fighting didn’t seem professional to Mike, despite their uniforms.  They didn’t know how to move through the woods, they didn’t know fighting techniques.  Mike only had to shift an inch, two inches to take out each of the three men.  Trained soldiers wouldn’t make that mistake.  They’d have plenty of distance between each other so one rifleman wouldn’t be able to take them out.

Mike heard a low voice.

“Well?” Everett asked.

“We need to move.  That last volley will bring them to us,” Mike replied, in hushed tones.

Mike motioned for Tom to move out again.  The team moved faster now, knowing that the noose was closing around them.  Even Matki was prepped for combat, his right hand holding his atlatl with an arrow ready for use.  Tom stopped, and pointed toward the distance in front of them.  Matki nodded, and let fly.  Tom started walking again.  Tom approached the body and kicked the weapon away from the dying man.  The patrol snaked past the body of the grey man lying on the ground, his neck pierced through by the arrow.  His life ebbed away as blood weeped past the shaft of the arrow.  A bloody froth leaked out of his mouth and nose.  Hatred glared out at Mike though the man’s eyes as Mike walked by.  Then, in an instant, there was no more emotion as the muscles in his face went slack.

They continued down the valley.  They walked a thousand meters with no contact, and Mike stopped the team for a fifteen minute security halt.  They made a circle and stopped to look and listen for the enemy.  They didn’t hear anything close by, though they did hear yelling behind them.  After the fifteen minutes, Mike motioned for Tom to continue down the valley.  As they walked, they heard more yelling where they’d left the bodies.  The team walked another thousand meters and took a knee for another security halt.  They didn’t hear or see anything close to them.  They moved two thousand meters, then half a kilometer for the next security halts.

Mike was pretty sure they were past the cordon.  They weren’t going to rest, though.  The further they got away from the grey men the better.  They picked up speed to put distance between them and their adversaries.  The area they were descending to had more vegetation, more concealment.  The land was easier to move across as well, flatter with less rock.  Tom found an animal trail and they used that for several thousand meters.  Mike was hoping to speed up, but Matki’s hand shot up into the air, fist closed.  They froze in place again.

Tom stopped and looked back when Matki snapped his fingers.  Matki pointed at the juncture of his jaw and ear.  They all knew what that meant.  They quickly looked for overhead concealment.  They each moved underneath one of the large pines that were now prevalent.  Unless they moved, there was no way they could be seen from above.

Through the vegetation, Mike saw the aircraft.  Mike used the hand signal for ‘enemy.’  His fist was held with thumb out, pointed down at the ground, forefinger pointed in the direction of the enemy.  He wasn’t sure if the rest of the team could see the aircraft through the foliage, but at least they knew where the danger was at.

Mike watched through the foliage.  What he saw was interesting, an aircraft of a type that he never could have imagined.  Mike couldn’t figure out how the hell the thing stayed in the air.  It looked like a brick with turbine engines.  Gun metal grey, it didn’t have wings like an airplane or rotors like a helicopter.  It was quiet, disturbingly so.  With so little noise, Mike didn’t think it was a VTOL jet, or Vertical Take-Off and Landing.  The engines were pointed in the wrong direction to keep it in the air, anyway.

The light was distorting around the aircraft, though not like heat plumes thrown off by a jet engine exhaust.  This wasn’t a heat distortion.  The colors of the air and mountains behind it shifted subtly.  It reminded Mike of oil spreading across a puddle of water.  Kaleidoscope rainbows danced across his retinas.  The colors were beautiful, but the effect was nauseating.  The warped colors, combined with the buzzing in his skull made him feel sick.

If it was a military aircraft, it was probably a scout.  It was a small aircraft and probably couldn’t hold a lot of passengers. There were windows at what he thought was the front.  The proportions reminded him of a hovercraft.  The bottom was solid, though, not like the inflatable curtain of a hovercraft.  The door was open and one of the grey men was secured with a strap, leaning out, rifle at the ready, looking for Mike and the team.

The aircraft hovered for a moment, then moved across the valley.  It stopped at another location, hovering, looking.  This continued for thirty minutes before the nose of the strange aircraft pointed back up the valley toward the necropolis.

It lifted higher as it turned and slowly headed towards the necropolis.  They waited for ten minutes to see if it came back.  The stop turned into a security halt as they looked and listened for anybody else that might be out there hunting them.  They finished their halt and started down the valley again.  They walked for hours.  They didn’t stop for food.  The team ate pemmican as they walked.  Mike felt like he was back in Ranger school.  Combat driven adrenaline for two days.  They’d been on the move for twenty-six, twenty-seven hours the day before and all day today.

Mike studied the mountains on his left and his right.  They could expect more attacks if they didn’t get out of this narrow valley soon.  Mike was pretty happy when he saw a cut in the mountains to his right, back to the west.  They weren’t going to take the cut into the other valley, but it would give the grey men more area that they had to cover.  Mike was hoping for multiple valleys, routes that a team could use to move out of the area, to increase the search area.

As they moved further down the valley, the ground leveled and spread out.  The valley broadened out to a large bowl.  Other passes and valleys opened up to the west and northeast.  Trees thinned and open fields appeared.  Ponds of standing water appeared through the vegetation.  The open fields were danger zones that they had to avoid.  They traveled through the concealment that the trees provided to avoid ambush.

Finally, after they’d put enough distance behind them, Mike felt they could take a break.  The other valleys and routes would hopefully throw the grey men off of their trail.  Mike halted the patrol and called the team in closer.  They still needed security, so Tom moved some distance away to keep watch.  They hadn’t seen any signs of he grey men lately, so Mike felt comfortable talking in a low voice, “What do you guys think?  Think we’re past the cordon?”

Everett nodded, “yeah, I think we probably left them behind.”

Mike looked at Matki, “Well, are we on the right track?”

Matki looked around him, looked at the position of the sun in the sky, “I think we are going in the right direction, but I’m not sure.  I was more interested in getting away than keeping track of where we were traveling to.”

“Do you think you can find some food for us?” Everett asked.

Matki hesitated before he answered, “I can, but I don’t think we should hunt right now.  I can bring down an animal here, but we would have to make a fire to cook it.”

Roberto sighed, “Another cold camp then?”

Mike, Everett, and Matki nodded.

Mickey chuckled, “I guess you won’t mind my big ass when you’re looking for some warmth.”

Rob stared at Mickey, “Do you even hear what comes out of your mouth?”

Mickey’s cheeks colored, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Everett pressed, “Is there something you might want to tell Tracy?”  Everett held his hand out, palm up.  He proceeded to flip his hand so that the palm was down, then back up.

Mickey grinned, “You could tell her, but she’d never believe it.”

Rob turned to Mike, “So Mike, think it was worth it?”

“What?”

“Killer robots, grey men.”

Mike nodded, “We know more than we did.”

Rob didn’t buy it, “I don’t know.  I’m thinking dealing with the dragons may have been the better choice.”

Everett shook his head, “Better to know what’s out here instead of it sneaking up on us.”

“What if there’s a whole lot more of them?” Rob asked.

Mike grinned, putting his hand on Matki’s shoulder, “Then we may need to emulate MACV-SOG, and enlist some help.”

Everett smiled and looked at Matki, “So want to be a Montagnard?”

Matki looked confused, “What is a Montagnard, Everett?”

Everett explained, “Montagnard means ‘Mountain People.’  They were people that fought with our ancestors during the Vietnam War.  Jennifer’s people, the Hmong, was one of the mountain tribes.”

Matki’s face turned serious, “Were they bad asses like Jen?”

Mike nodded, “Dude, you have no idea.”

A grin lit up Matki’s face.

----------------------------------------------------

Lord-Caon Ranthon stood over Sub-Caon Mikton, now bloodied and unconscious on the ground.  The Lord Caon had beaten the Sub-Caon into submission.  The younger officer had been impertinent to Ranthon, and he’d paid for his transgression.  Ranthon had given Mikton one mission, and he’d managed to lose eight men with no indigenous hominid bodies to show for it.