Nightstalkers
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2012 by Bob Mayer
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612185835
ISBN-10: 1612185835
To our grandson: Riley Kiran Cavanaugh
1/4/2012
Roland fired the M-240 from the hip—not approved procedure for accuracy, but he was a former Special Forces weapons man with three combat tours, and every 7.62-millimeter round went directly at the seventeen-inch screen of the laptop. The golden iris emanating from the screen sucked the bullets in like a raging ocean absorbing rain, without the slightest ripple or effect.
The laptop rested on a boulder at the foot of a mesa fourteen miles outside of Tucson. A generator was stuttering nearby, providing power to the laptop and having supplied energy for the initial opening of the phenomenon protecting the computer. Roland was still in his jump harness, having just completed a high-altitude, low-opening parachute drop through the night sky.
“Confirming a Rift,” Roland yelled into his throat mike. “Six Fireflies are out.”
Moms’s unflappable voice replied in his earpiece. “Roger. Inbound.”
Roland released the trigger after wasting a second fifteen-round burst, knowing bullets were now useless against the Rift. His head was on a swivel. He’d spotted six golden sparks come out of the screen just before his feet hit the ground, and who knew
what they’d gotten into? The Rift was Doc’s problem now. The Fireflies were the real danger.
The Snake came roaring in, wings rotating from horizontal to vertical, jet engines pulsing, almost eerily silent as the thrust passed through sound dampeners. Doors slid open on both sides of the delta-shaped aircraft and fast ropes were tossed out. Four figures slid down. The fast ropes were released and the Snake rose to over-watch height. A door slid open at the nose of the Snake and the chain gun extended into firing position.
Racing from the discarded ropes, Moms—the team leader—led the way, her MP-5 submachine gun at the ready. Nada was on her right with his sub, along with Burns armed with an M-203, and Doc brought up the rear, carrying a military-hardened laptop of his own along with a small dish transmitter.
“Eagle,” Moms ordered the pilot, “get a Wall in.”
The Snake banked and raced in a clockwise circle, five hundred meters around the Rift, firing down probes every three hundred meters of the circumference. When the last one was in, they were activated, forming a Wall around the area of operations, and the Snake returned to over-watch.
Out of the corner of his eye, Roland caught movement as he shrugged off his parachute harness. He wheeled as a coyote launched at him from twenty meters away. An unnatural leap for a coyote and plenty of distance for Roland to stitch it with a solid burst. But close enough that the rounds weren’t enough to stop a creature taken over by a Firefly. The bullets barely slowed the coyote’s flight.
It landed on Roland, teeth snapping, claws ripping at his body armor.
Moms and Nada fired at the coyote on top of him, making the Delta Force live-fire training for hostage rescue in the Kill House
at Bragg look like child’s play. Every round hit the beast, not a one scratching Roland.
The combined force of the fusillade knocked the coyote off Roland and he rolled in the opposite direction, bracing for what he knew would be next.
“H.E.,” Burns warned as he fired the forty-millimeter grenade launcher underneath the rifle barrel of his M-203. The high explosive round hit the coyote’s center of mass, blowing a huge chunk out of the creature’s chest and stunning it for the moment. It had been dead since Roland’s initial burst, but the Firefly still had enough to work with.
“Doc, forward!” Moms ordered. “Nada, cover him. Burns, finish it. Eagle, we got one in a coyote, scan for anything living.”
Doc—a short, balding man with thick glasses—was completely out of place among the military personnel blasting away with weapons all around him. And yet he ran toward the growing golden iris in front of the offending laptop. He dropped to his knees and opened up his own computer. He scrambled to connect a FireWire cable to the dish.
Roland ignored Doc, firing his M-240 at the coyote, but despite the damage, the remains of the coyote came toward Roland.
Burns fired again, and this round blew the remnants to shreds. Roland slid the machine gun on its sling over his shoulder and grabbed the pistol grip attached to the tank of napalm on his back, pulling it out of its asbestos sheath. He flamed the remains, charring it to ashes.
A golden spark of light, four inches in circumference, lifted from the corpse, then disappeared into a wisp and then nothing.
“How many?” Moms was at Roland’s side as he slid the flamer back into its holster and readied the machine gun once more.
“Six. One down.”
“You certain?” Moms asked as the two went back-to-back to gain 360-degree coverage. Nada was hovering over Doc, head turning to and fro.
“Yes.”
A new voice came over the team’s net. “Got two hot to your west, moving in tight to each other toward you,” Eagle reported from the Snake, hovering a hundred feet overhead. “Targeting. Looks like more coyotes. I’ve got a Wall surrounding you at five hundred meters.”
The chain gun mounted in the nose of the Snake let loose, firing thirty-millimeter depleted uranium rounds. At a rate of over ten rounds a second, Eagle was not only hitting the two targets with the heavy rounds, the pyrophoric nature of the bullets caused what they hit to burst into flame as the uranium cores released their built-up heat. Eagle fired for twenty seconds, saturating the target, knowing he had to do more than kill them—he had to destroy them.
“Nothing warm, but be careful,” Eagle announced into the sudden silence as he finished firing.
“Status, Doc?” Moms asked. “I don’t want any more Fireflies coming through.”
“Getting the frequency.” Doc’s fingers were flying over the keyboard. His focus was on the data on the screen, ignoring the battle raging about him. He sounded a little puzzled. “This one’s a little different somehow.”
“Roland, ready the flame,” Moms ordered. “Burns: with Nada, and secure Doc.”
Roland moved to Moms’s left shoulder, five feet away, as she headed toward where Eagle had chewed up the ground with his firing.
Roland slid the machine gun on its sling over his shoulder and grabbed the pistol grip for the flamer.
“Intriguing!” Doc’s exclamation caused everyone to shift attention to him.
They could immediately see what had caused it: the golden iris was expanding and pulsing. “That’s new,” Roland said.
“It’s bad,” Nada said, but then he said that about pretty much everything.
“We’re fucked,” Burns added.
“A little faster please, Doc,” Moms said. “On task, people.”
Moms moved into the kill zone, Roland at her shoulder, and they mentally tallied body parts.
“Two dead?” Moms asked, which was polite, since she wouldn’t specify the number if she wasn’t certain.
“Two,” Roland confirmed as he incinerated the remains with the flamer.
“Did you see the Fireflies?” Moms asked.
“No,” Roland said, “but Eagle tore them into such tiny pieces, they had to have dissipated before we got here. You saw what was left.”
Moms frowned. “Eagle, did you have observation?”
“I was watching,” Eagle said. “I definitely saw one Firefly dissipate and they were moving as a pair. It was hard to see with all the rounds hitting.”
“We’ve got three left,” Moms informed the team, which wasn’t needed, but she was a worrier. Not as much as Nada, and in a different way. “Eagle?” As she spoke, she was leading Roland back toward the rest of the team. He shifted from flamer back to machine gun.
“Got one small hot spot about thirty meters to your south-southeast. Real small, but it’s moving fast, back and forth, not
advancing. It’s—” Eagle paused. “Hopping? I can’t get a lock, but I could blast the area.”
“Negative,” Moms said. “We couldn’t confirm something that small when you’re done.”