Hunter (54 page)

Without another word or expression, Hunter loped quickly and lightly across the yard with silent, tiger-like leaps. He did not slow down until he reached the motor pool, engulfed in darkness.

* * *

Chapter 20

Hazy lights came slowly into focus, and Dr. Arthur Hamilton stared, unknowing. He saw a white ... ceiling? ... Slender white rods ... Fluorescent lights ... Tiles ... Black pinholes in chalky white ...

T
he laboratory!

It came to him.

"What the – ?" he shouted, rolling painfully to a knee and reflexively reaching for something, anything, for balance. His knee and shoe crunched fragments of broken plastic, glass, paper, and other debris. He crouched like a boxer, staring in a daze. Speechless, reviewing the situation as he could re-member it before he lost consciousness, he was appalled at the carnage, understanding with raw emotion the consequences of what lay before him.

Hunter had survived!

"My God," he whispered. "My God ..."

He turned toward the back of the laboratory. "Come out, you cowardly fools!" he called, not troubling to disguise his anger. "Come out before I come back there and drag you out!"

A moment of silence passed.

Then Emma Strait's black-haired head peeked timidly around the corner. A male and female assistant looked out from behind her shoulders, holding onto Emma as if she were their security. Emma's face was fearful.

Dr. Hamilton regained enough emotional control to hesitate, drawing breath. He would have to ignore the stiffness in his neck, the strange lightness in his step. Understanding that Hunter had apparently struck him across the neck, he motioned with forgiveness for Emma to step forward.

Then, to further ease her fear, he leaned back heavily on a computer terminal and rubbed his neck. And as she watched him so closely, he made a smooth display of interpreting this event as a tragic but expected occurrence. His act was polished brilliance, even without words: a madman was in their midst, and he had done this ...

Not appearing so agitated as to seem unhinged, he looked back at her and nodded. "Come, Emma, we must nevertheless deal with this unfortunate situation. Nothing can be gained by securing yourselves in the bunker. Although I'm sure it was a prudent measure at the time. Yes, we are fortunate, very fortunate, to be alive."

On an impulse that he wished he could have avoided he glanced at the tube and saw that the creature's coffin was shattered by rifle fire, the body disintegrated. Nothing remained but a smoking mass of liquefied flesh and starkly visible bone. Hamilton could not conceal the bitter grimace that twisted his face. When he glanced back at Emma, she had stopped in stride.

"Oh, it is nothing, Emma." He gestured, trying to maintain a smooth manner. He tried to close his mind to the horror of all his great effort, now destroyed by this base wild man, this nobody, this tracker who would not surrender to superior forces. "I ... I was simply wondering how much damage our complex had suffered in this ... this gunfight ... which I seemed to have missed entirely."

"You
... you missed it?" she asked.

"Oh, yes." Hamilton made a great display of rubbing his neck: you must make her sympat
hetic. "I'm sure you and the others were secured safely in the bunker—I'm glad that I included it in the budget—but I was out here among them, trying to reason with them.

"The intruders, apparently renegades from this hunting party, surreptitiously stole in here to either injure us or acquire something. The guards caught them, and I attempted to negotiate, in order to avoid senseless injury. Then one of them—this madman called Hunter—struck me unconscious. I suppose I am fortunate to be alive." He grimaced. "Yes, I need medical attention, but now is not the time. A cursory examination will have to suffice as long as we remain under his attack."

Emma, followed closely by the rest, had cautiously moved closer to him. But Hamilton attempted to make it seem of no importance, as if saying, "Of course you would stand beside me. Why not? Have I not protected you thus far? Am I not your colleague? Your teacher?"

He gestured to indicate that he had no doubt of their loyalty. "Now we must discover if any of the data have been stolen."

Bending to indicate pain beyond what he truly felt, Hamilton continued, "Please run a file check, the times and user, to determine what has been examined in the past three hours. Then do a physical inventory of the vault, and determine if any materials have been removed."

Unmoving, they stared.

"Well, come on!" Hamilton used his authoritative tone, knowing that by now they had been properly prepared; their suspicions were dulled, their fears assuaged by his honest appearance of his own pain and shock. He added more angrily, "We have work to do!"

Swarming like worker bees who knew their responsibilities without instruction and were willing to drive themselves to death in order to fulfill their roles, the crew assumed their shattered work stations. Some of the terminals were still smoking, and the ten-man technical team immediately initiated undamaged backup systems housed in adjoining rooms.

Hamilton's last orders were all but lost in the activity as he turned to Emma.

"Please contact Mr. Dixon on the NSA satellite immediately," he instructed calmly. Then, as an afterthought: "And, just in case, have someone lock the entrance to this level. I believe it is time to secure the vault."

***

Hunter moved stealthily and silently, knowing the creature would be forced to track by scent in this chaos. Frowning, angry and fearless now, he'd make it work.

Hesitating beside the body of a dead soldier, he reached out and touched the man's gaping wound, feeling compassion. Then he rubbed the blood on his boots and continued moving, crossing the path of a dozen more slain soldiers, repeating the procedure, mixing his scent with the scent of the dead.

It was impossible to remain in the darkness because blazing orange light from the inferno of the tanker and disintegrating shed threw dancing diagonal shadows across the motor pool. So he kept loping, going high over the roofs of trucks and descending to the ground again.

He held the Weatherby close as he threaded a path through an army of dead men. But he saw nothing, heard nothing, sensed nothing. Then, heart flaming, he heard a low moan and whirled, searching with narrow eyes.

In the distance, perhaps thirty feet away, he saw a hand weakly raised in
the air and loped easily toward it, all the while alert to any movement or sound beside or behind him.

It was a young soldier. Almost a boy.

Hunter almost groaned at the sight, and knelt beside him.

A slashing blow had torn away part of the boy's chest. Blood had matted in the wound, concealing its depth. He grasped Hunter's hand weakly, and Hunter knew he could do nothing for him. The creature's blow had torn away ribs, leaving the chest cavity exposed; it was a matter of moments.

Gasping, the boy spoke.

"Did we
...get it?"

Hunter grimaced. "Yeah, soldier. You got it."

There was almost a smile, then the boy took another breath and was gone. Slowly, Hunter stood, staring down. His rage was channeled now, and he stood like a monument of judgment. It would die for this, he swore to himself. As surely as he lived, it would die.

Hunter gazed about, knowing exactly what had happened, though he had seen none of it.

It had chosen its terrain well, using their fear, and they had fallen into the trap. If he had been here, he was certain, this never would have happened. At least not on this scale. But they had allowed themselves to get caught up in the chase. Had lacked the patience to pick their terrain more carefully and wait with infinite patience until the prey was close and vulnerable. He shook his head.

Here, with shadow and light crossing like a chessboard, it had been able to move only a step before it disappeared, only to re-emerge from complete blackness to kill with a blow before moving on, vanishing again into darkness, stalking.

Such a loss ...

It was a battlefield, a graveyard of dead men that might have won, but for want of his direction. He cursed himself silently as he heard a sound.

Whirling, he had the Weatherby centered.

Takakura ...

The Japanese commander was holding his chest, sword in hand. And his face was slack, sweating, while he stared down over the boy, as if the soldier were somehow different from the multitude surrounding him, or if he somehow epitomized the score of dead. Then the Japanese simply shook his head, bowing wearily to lean on the hood of a Humvee.

"Come on," Hunter said, not wasting time on questions. He put his arm under Takakura s shoulder, supporting him, and they began to move.

"We've got to get inside the building before it finds us. Which it's going to do fast enough."

Takakura, a true soldier, merely frowned at his injury. He asked no questions as he stumbled alongside Hunter, his sword dragging a narrow trail in the dust. Hunter knew the Japanese was badly wounded but never asked how or where; this was no time.

A cacophony of explosions erupted in an area near the shed and Hunter froze, lifting his head. He saw blasts of gunfire and heard heated shouts from the glowing devastation. The gun blasts continued, broken only by short pauses of cursing before they resumed once more.

Hunter glimpsed a distant silhouetted figure moving back and forth and saw it raise a rifle, firing two rounds that were followed by a heated curse that carried across the compound. In the next moment the figure ran to the right and vanished.

Hunter leaned Takakura against the front grill of a troop carrier. The big truck easily supported the Japanese, although Takakura's head was bent forward in exhaustion and shock. Hunter pushed him back and spoke close to his face.

"Takakura!" Hunter pointed to the installation. "Can you make it to the building? Bobbi Jo and Brick are at the side door! All you have to do is get to the building! It's not that far! Do you understand me!"

A slow nod. "
Hai
."

Grimacing stoically, he pushed Hunter's hand aside and staggered forward. Hunter moved toward the place where he had seen the gunfire. He glanced back once to see Takakura moving slowly and slightly off balance, but with determination. It might take him longer to make it alone, but Hunter believed he would. And, although Takakura was easy prey in his wounded condition, Hunter didn't think that the creature was an immediate danger to him. No, he was confident that the man at the far end of the motor pool, the one firing the gun and raging at the night, had sighted the thing and was trying to finish the fight.

Hunter had a good suspicion who it was before he ever reached the liquefied remains of the tanker.

Even 150 feet away, the heat was blistering, and Hunter glanced to the far right to see Chaney raise the Weatherby against a shoulder, firing twice. Obviously getting more skilled with the double-barreled rifle, Chaney had ejected the spent rounds and inserted two more in the blink of an eye. As quickly as Chaney had performed the action, he might as well have been firing a semiautomatic.

"Chaney!" Hunter yelled from behind the protection of a Humvee. As enraged as Chaney was, Hunter was taking no chances that he might accidentally shoot him.

Chaney paused before he called out, "Hunter?"

Instantly Hunter was out from behind the Humvee running forward, searching the area where Chaney had been shooting. And they began the conversation long before they stood face-to-face, Hunter alert to everything, close shadows on the right, distant shadows beyond flame on the left. He raised an arm briefly against the tidal wave of heat pouring from the ruined tanker and shed.

"What do you have?" he shouted to Chaney above the roaring inferno.

"I near tripped over the thing!" Chaney yelled back. "Somebody finally hurt it! I don't know who! It was on the ground and I just shot it point-blank!"

Hunter knew before he even asked. "Did you kill it?"

"Hell, no!" Chaney glared at him, sweating. Hunter saw that he had used about a third of the cartridges on the bandoleer. "But I sure got it mad." He grimaced, catching his breath. "I hit it again as it got up off the ground and then it was gone! I chased it across the compound, hittin' it every chance I got! Then it vanished over here! I got a glimpse of it a second ago and sent two over there!" He pointed to the far side of the flames, shook his head. "Haven't seen it since!"

Another time Hunter might have congratulated him, but there was no time for praise. Then a voice roared from the flames on the other side of the shed.

"Hunter! I know your name! I will kill you for this!"

It was the beast.

Still alive …

Hunter debated a reply, and shouted back, "Then come and kill me! Do it now!"

"No! Not now! But soon! Soon! You think you have won but you have won nothing! Because I am more than man!"

Hunter snarled, "You're an animal, Luther! An animal! You'll always be an animal!"

"Tell me that when I eat your heart!"

Chaney shouted, "Eat this!" and fired the Weatherby blindly toward the voice before Hunter grabbed his arm.

"No!" he said. "We've got to get back to the building. It's our only chance. We can't stop him with these weapons. Come on! Let's move! We gotta get everyone into the building and wait for it to come to us!"