Resistance (20 page)

15

Captain Heath checked his gear over one more time as Dave stood by chewing joylessly on a choc-nut Atkins Endulge bar. Zach scoped out the bridge over the Platte River as the sun made its final dip toward the horizon. Dave could hear a deep throbbing bass beat coming from the Djinn camp, the drums of the legions, muffled by the enormous tarpaulins of cured Drakon-hide under which the regiment still sheltered. Loud enough that it drowned out the choppers flying overhead.

‘We should go with you,’ Zach said. ‘A close protection detail at least.’

Dave shook his head. ‘Nah, it’s a trap for sure. Fucking Djinn. Now we’re here, I’d rather go by myself.’

‘That isn’t happening,’ Heath said, finished with his checks. ‘We need to buy another twenty minutes.’

He had more to say, but an Apache roared over, heading for the bridge like a dark bolt thrown by a minor god.

‘Two things,’ Dave shouted.

‘Yes?’ said Heath.

Dave dropped his voice as the uproar of the chopper died away. ‘One, the orcs are familiar with the whole death from above thing because of the Drakonen, who love a barbecued orc. You’ll need to tell your folks to be careful about flying too low near them. Remember that helicopter that got taken down in New Orleans?’

‘Anything in particular they should watch for?’ Heath asked.

‘Big-ass crossbow thing,’ Dave said. ‘That gladiator movie with Russell Crowe? I think they had them in that.’

‘Ballistas, I’ll pass it on,’ Heath said. ‘And your other point?’

‘We really should have done this at high noon.’

Heath gave him a little touch of his rare smile.

‘We were in transit. As I recall you were drinking expensive bourbon like you were possessed of a thirst that could cast a shadow.’

Dave enjoyed the memory for a quiet moment.

‘You get even a little drunk?’ asked Heath.

‘A little. Not for long.’

They stepped off, the two men starting the long walk down toward the bridge without either of them saying anything about it. Heath took out his phone and relayed the warning about big-ass crossbows back up his chain of command.

‘
Vaya con dios, mis amigos
,’ Zach called after them.

‘
Hasta la vista,
’ Heath replied with a wave back over his shoulder, a surprisingly non-military gesture. More like a man setting off on a pleasant walk to his favourite bar. Behind them Dave could hear Zach turning to his men, speaking low and calm, giving them orders to cover the two of them as they made their way over the bridge. They might not rate Hooper, but they had his back. He felt pretty good about that, for what it was worth.

Not much in a few minutes, he guessed.

‘Other thing is, Dave,’ Heath said. ‘De Brito wasn’t putting us anywhere near these things until he had his armour and airborne in place. Half an hour, they will be. If the air force has to start bombing, we want to make sure nothing gets away. Especially not those tumour creatures.’

‘Tümorum,’ Dave corrected, feeling silly now in his expensive casuals and tactical vest full of chocolate bars. Maybe he should have changed into something more kick-ass. Ahead of them the Platte River was broad, shallow and looked somewhat muddy, although it caught the dying light and threw off a few golden flares as they approached. It was a bit on the low side, Dave thought, not even suitable for canoeing. On the other hand, when it rained he suspected it would flood easily, the water running over the riverbanks and into the adjacent fields. Might explain the thick tree and foliage cover, where it hadn’t been cleared for farming.

‘Heath?’

‘Yes, Dave.’

‘You scared?’

Heath actually stopped to laugh at that. Only for a second, before resuming his steady, slightly lopsided gait toward the bridge. But it was a genuine laugh, surprised out of him, Dave supposed.

‘Hell yes. Of course I am. You?’

‘A bit, I suppose. Like I was a bit drunk. But only a bit. I think it’s part of my superhero menopause. You know, the change.’

‘Nothing wrong with being scared, Dave. Or admitting it. All you have to do is put one foot in front of the other. That’s ninety percent of the game, right there.’

The drums grew louder again, perhaps because the choppers that had been circling had backed off a ways after Heath had warned them. Dave casually hauled Lucille out of her scabbard and hefted the weapon in his hands. She felt good and made him feel good, humming an unknown song in his head, in his hands, growing warm and yearning to have at the enemy.

‘Can you hear that at all?’ he asked Heath.

‘Hear what? The drums?’

‘No. Lucille.’

Heath looked at Dave as though he thought he was being kidded. ‘The hammer?’

‘Splitting maul. Yeah.’ He sighed, as though confessing to something. ‘She sings to me. Couple of days ago I wouldn’t have told you that because I’d’a worried you thought I was good for the fucking nut hatch. Now, here we are strolling down for cocktail hour with 10,000 daemon assholes who probably just called us here to use our testicles as fucking olives in their martinis. So, yeah. I thought you should know. She’s singing a sweet tune right now. I just wondered if only I could hear it.’

‘Only you, Dave. Do you know what she’s singing?’

‘I think she’s practising the epic ballad, that’ll be sung around campfires for a thousand years, of the night Super Dave and his one-legged captain died glorious but ultimately stupid deaths after walking into a daemonic cocktail party they probably should have just skipped.’

‘Catchy,’ said Heath.

His limp, Dave thought, was a little more pronounced than usual. He’d have worn the nub of his half-leg raw in New Orleans. And he’d barely stopped moving since.

‘I know some lyrics for her,’ said the black officer and he actually addressed the hammer formally. ‘Lucille. Ma’am, see what you can do with this
. . .

Then out spake brave Horatius

The captain of the gate

To every man upon this Earth,

Death cometh soon or late,

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds

For the ashes of his fathers

And the temples of his Gods?’

It was Dave’s turn to stop in his tracks. A shiver had run up his arms and into his shoulders, spreading out through his torso. The closest thing he could compare it to was the feeling of having a goose walk over your grave. But it wasn’t creepy or unsettling, and it was definitely coming from Lucille. If he had to describe what she was doing then it would be ‘purring’.

‘Whoa! Heath! She likes you.’

‘Really? Then she likes Macaulay.’

They crossed from the field they’d been walking down onto the hard surface of the highway, stepping over a length of guard rail.

‘You seem okay with the idea of a singing war hammer,’ Dave said.

‘I’ve had to get used to more challenging ideas the last few days.’

‘Fair enough.’

Dave looked quickly behind them. The thin lines of the army units seemed a long way off now. Captain Heath looked like the rest of his SEALs, geared up in body armour, a radio headset and fatigues. However, with each step, his gait grew a little more pronounced and laboured. Beads of sweat broke out across his forehead.

‘One foot in front of the other,’ he muttered.

Lucille positively thrummed in Dave’s hands with murderous intent. The Champion of New Orleans and the navy SEAL captain walked on in silence, lost in their own thoughts.

The sun sank behind the western horizon.

‘So. Igor’s gay married then?’

The war drums stopped.

Heath stopped too. His face was carved from teak.

‘Chief Gaddis is one of the finest men I have ever served with.’

‘Hey! I’m not a guy to be judging. I think we both know that by now. Just asking. Nobody ever tells me anything. And I wouldn’t want to, you know, say something dumb.’

‘No,’ said Heath. ‘You wouldn’t.’

‘Oh look,’ said Dave. ‘Our new friends.’

On the southwest end of the bridge a party of the Djinn appeared from within a yurt carrying their battle standards, lengths of bone festooned with the skulls and hides of those who had fallen before the Djinn in battle. A single warrior held an improvised white flag, perhaps a bed sheet, which was weird. None of the Sects went in for that sort of shit. They were a fight to the last orc kind of deal.

‘Shouldn’t we have brought a flag of our own?’ Dave asked as they stepped onto the bridge proper.

Heath tapped a finger against the American flag patch on his shoulder. ‘I got your back.’

Now that they were off the sloping, uneven ground, Heath’s ease of movement improved, but Dave understood why the captain had been forced out of the field. He also concluded the story he’d first given him in New Orleans was a cover. He hadn’t flown out to the Longreach with the marines and the SEAL teams because they’d just been ‘passing through’ on some training exercise. Or maybe they had, maybe he could give him that much. But it was pretty obvious now, after a couple of days hanging out with them that Heath and the professors had worked together for a long time.

‘Can I ask you something?’ he said, as they slowly made their way along the span.

‘Chief Gaddis has never broken out into a show tune in the field, no.’

‘Yeah, okay, you got me. I deserve that. But that’s not it. Well, not really. It is sort of about you guys not trusting me or telling me stuff. You knew Compton and Emmeline way before New Orleans, didn’t you?’

Heath kept his eyes on the party of monsters moving toward them. Dave knew without looking again that there were eight of them. The BattleMarshal of the Regiment, perhaps, and if not him the BattleMaster of the Senior Legion, a couple of Lieutenants Grymm or the Djinn version of the SS anyway – the Kravakh – and some bodyguards, which would be a joke under normal circumstances because the most feeble daemon would have no trouble dismembering a grown man.

‘Compton’s work with the anthropology teams in Afghanistan and Iraq is legendary, Dave. He didn’t invent the Human Terrain System but he refined it, and he saved a lot of American ass when he did that.’

Dave snorted. It hadn’t saved his brother.

‘Compton is a legend in his own lunch box, and you just avoided the question. You might have worked with him in Iraq or Afghanistan, but I meant whether you’d worked with OSTP before this. See, I got this theory that just as they call in people like Emmeline for particular jobs, like if you got an alien you need autopsied, when they need some ass-kickin’ done on the quiet, you get a call, captain, my captain. You and your boys Zach and Igor and SEAL Team 007 or whatever.’

‘Ask me again, if we live though this,’ said Heath.

‘For reals?’

‘For reals. If we survive. And when you’ve completed your S.H.I.E.L.D. security clearance.’

A pause.

‘Hey! Did you just make a funny, Heath?’

The blank expression on Captain Michael Heath’s face said that he had done no such thing, but a twinkle in his eyes said otherwise.

‘Time to get back into character, Dave. We’re good to go.’

‘Pfft. I’m always in character.’

The Djinn had stopped in the middle of the bridge over the Platte River. With longer strides they’d easily reached the mid-point ahead of the two, smaller, humans. Dave looked up as he and Heath trudged the last few yards. Far overhead he could see war planes loitering, looping around like commuter jets in a holding pattern. If any had been flying.

He had a sudden urge to call his boys.

They pulled up about ten metres short of the Djinn.

The largest of the monsters took one step forward. He held a cleaver that could have split a whole steer nose-to-tail with one swing. His face was a misshapen ruin of broken teeth, a giant hole where his nose should have been and a puckered scar running from one milky eye down to his jawline. A freshly harvested, copper-green Drakon-hide cloak draped from the creature’s shoulders to the ground. Human scalps sewn together in a necklace had dribbled clotted blood over rusted iron plate and chain mail. Around the monster’s waist were a number of heads, some recent human decapitations mingled with Hunn, Grymm and Sliveen, their mouths still locked in a permanent state of shock. Each had a sigil carved into its forehead which told the story of the kill. At nine feet the creature had to weigh close to half a ton, an armoured nightmare festooned with spikes.

‘Which of you is the Dave?’ it hissed in the Olde Tongue. The accent was different. Dave heard that immediately, and his flesh crawled into hackles at the sound of it.

‘You got me,’ said Dave.

‘A bold insult, to come upon us with only one lieutenant, calfling,’ the Djinn said.

Dave jerked a thumb at Heath, who could understand none of the exchange, and replied, ‘He’s a captain, and that beats two lieutenants. And I’m the Dave, and that’s all you need to know, monkey-boy.’

The Djinn bared its fangs and snarled, a guttural, animal noise, like something from a zoo – a private zoo, owned by a drug lord, where all the animals were mistreated. One of the Kravakh lieutenants lunged forward, drawing its blade, baring fangs, and hissing at Dave. He felt Heath flinch beside him, and sensed that flinch turning into a move to draw his sidearm. But before Heath could put a bullet into the meeting, and their chances of walking away from it, the leader of the Djinn swung a back-fist into the face of the Kravakh. The creature’s forward momentum crashed into the unstoppable barrier of the Djinn leader’s forearm and its legs shot out from underneath it as its face caved in with the sound of a rottweiler destroying a chicken carcass. Dave put his hand on Heath’s arm, catching his quick draw while the pistol was still mostly inside the holster.

‘Easy there, Wild Bill. You plug one of these assholes and they’ll demand I put you down, for honour’s sake. Of course, I won’t do that, but that’ll just raise a whole heap of other problems.’

All of the Djinn, he noticed, were looking closely at the weapon Heath had tried to pull out. All of them except
el Jefe
who was still locked in on Dave.