Authors: Tom Clancy

Tags: #Fiction, #Action & Adventure

Tom Clancy's Net Force 6-10 (210 page)

BOOK: Tom Clancy's Net Force 6-10

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Five hundred meters away from the walls, Jethro stepped into the maw of a flesh-eating plant and was gobbled down in this slow-motion peristaltic spasm that took a while, though the plant apparently injected him with some kind of narcotic so that he was smiling as it ate him. Jay had a handgun, a blaster that fired a charged-particle beam, and he’d started to cut loose on the plant, but Reef said, “Don’t! The guards’ll spot the beam on their sensors this close! Jethro’s already dead anyhow, no point in shooting.”

So Jay, Gauss, and Reef kept running. They wanted to be deep in the swamp before the guards came looking for them.

If they could stay alive for a while—and Jay would make sure of that as best he could—he should get something from the two escapees that might be useful.

A thunderstorm rolled in from somewhere, fast, and lightning and thunder flashed and boomed as a rain so heavy it turned the world into watery grass fell.

“Don’t step on anything red or blue,” Reef said. “Or round,” he added.

Given how hard it was to see anything, much less colors or shapes in the deluge, Jay was trusting to mostly blind luck about that.

After fifteen minutes, the rain stopped, as suddenly as it had come, and the sun burst out and started cooking the water away. They splashed through puddles, avoiding red, blue, and round.

“There’s a caldera that way,” Reef said, “Hot springs. That’ll throw off the guards’ IR scanners. They won’t put anybody on the ground there, it’ll be skimmers above the treetops. If we can make that before they come looking, we’ll have a chance.”

“How do you know this?”

“I been in the Cage for thirty-three years—what there is to hear, I heard five times already.”

“Lead on, then.”

“I don’t suppose you want to give me the blaster, since I’ll be in front?”

“You’d be right about that,” Jay said.

“You don’t trust me?”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but no, I don’t.”

The old man cackled. “I wouldn’t trust me, either. Come on. Keep an eye on the trees, there’s hanging serpents there look kind of like moss—one bite, you’re done.”

“Nice place.”

“Only bad men get sent here, son. We’re all guilty.”

As they walked, Jay figured he had better get whatever information he was going to get sooner rather than later. He was a little ways behind Reef, ahead of Gauss. He dropped back a little more so he could talk to the bigger man.

“So,” he said. “Stark.”

“What about ’im?”

“You tell me.”

Gauss shrugged. “Soldier. Killer. Got shot in the back trying for the gate when a supply flitter came in.”

“I know that much. What else?”

“He hung with ex-troopers, mostly. Mercs, freelancers, guys who made money in shooting wars, guarding dopers or smugglers.”

“Any names?”

“Groves. Russell. Hill. Thompson. Carruth. Couple others I never got to know. Special Forcers—Recon, green hats, Rangers. Badasses. Just as soon kill you as smile at you.”

Ahead, Reef said, “We’re almost—ah, shit!”

Jay turned his attention to the old man, who had dropped to his knees. What—?

There was something that looked like an arrow piercing the man, the barbed point of it coming from his back. As he watched, Reef was jerked off his feet and dragged along the wet ground. Jay saw that the “arrow” was actually the end of a long, vinelike tentacle, connected to a creature he couldn’t immediately tell was animal or plant. Looked kind of like a squid, but squatter, and covered with what looked like scales or bark. It had a huge, circular mouth with lots of pointed teeth in concentric rows.

Whatever Reef had, there was no getting it now.

Terrific scenario, no question. Scared himself.

“FREEZE RIGHT THERE!” came an amplified voice.

Jay glanced up and saw a five-man flitter floating twenty meters above them, the snout of a plasma cannon pointed over the side at them. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Crap.

“I’m not goin’ back!” Gauss yelled. He started running, lumbering through the brush.

The squidlike thing fired a sharp-ended tentacle at Gauss, but missed.

The gunner in the flitter was more accurate. He opened up with the plasma cannon and when the bolt hit Gauss, like a tree being hit with lightning, Gauss’s sap turned into superheated steam and blasted him apart—
ka-blam!

“Euuww,” Jay said. “Ick!”

Time to leave.

“End scenario,” Jay said as the gunner started to line up on him.

Not much, maybe, but he had a few names. Something, at least.

Washington, D.C.

Lewis, at home, worked out the best way to deal with Carruth. There were a few risks, but she figured she could handle those. It was all in the setup.

First, she had to pick another Army base. Which one didn’t matter, as long as she could convince Carruth he had every chance of getting in and out okay, and that ought not to be a problem. Then, it was just a matter of how best to make sure he wouldn’t be captured alive.

She could use a vox-scrambler and make the call from a moving car in the middle of the city; she knew who to talk to to get the maximum response, and they’d never be able to get a fix on her in time.

She imagined how it might go:

“Listen, don’t talk—the terrorists who have been hitting the Army’s bases are going to hit another one.” She’d fill in the blanks here—time, place, like that. “But here’s the thing: the leader of the group, guy named ‘Carruth’? He’s an ex-SEAL who won’t let himself be taken alive. He’s already killed a bunch of GIs, plus a couple of civilian cops—he carries this monster handgun—and he has wired himself up with explosives. There’s a button on his belt, if he pushes it, he’ll take down half a city block when he goes. . . .”

She smiled at the scenario she was creating. She could easily imagine that she was the officer in charge of security. They wanted these suckers, bad, but they sure as hell wouldn’t let Carruth and his boys get within a hundred meters of anything they didn’t want to see blown up. So the ideal place to take him down would be in the middle of nowhere. But if they stopped him before he got onto the base, they’d have to bring in the civilian authorities—local and state police, FBI counterterrorism force, Homeland Security, maybe even the National Guard. The Army wouldn’t like that for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which would be the lack of control.

If, however, they could channel Carruth once he was on the base—a detour into an artillery range would be good, like that—then they could surround him somewhere relatively safe, and if he went nova, too bad. There were some stiff antiterrorism laws on the books these days, but if Carruth was simply captured, eventually he’d get a day in court.

An Army security guy would almost surely be thinking that it would be better for a bunch of killer terrorists to go up in smoke than maybe having some bleeding-heart liberal lawyer convincing a jury to let the clowns off because they had unhappy childhoods or some such crap.

That Carruth wouldn’t be strapped with bombs wouldn’t matter. Some Army sniper who could shoot out a bug’s left eye from a kilometer away would be perched somewhere with a scoped rifle and when Carruth tried to run—believing that he could get away, because Lewis had convinced him there was a secret bolt-hole he could use—then Carruth would be no more. . . .

Shoot, she could even set it up that he had to go into the base alone—that since he was just going to collect a colonel, there wasn’t going to be any shooting necessary. . . .

She smiled again. She was good, she knew it. Good enough to pull this off.

Carruth didn’t have a prayer.

Fort McCartney
Chesapeake Point, Maryland

Something was wrong.

Carruth couldn’t put his finger on it, but it felt . . . off, somehow.

He had the information Lewis had given him, codes, orders, specific and detailed directions, same as always. The gate-check had gone smooth as silk. The sun was shining, felt almost like spring was in the air, getting close to shirt-sleeve weather.

Lewis hadn’t screwed up yet—the time that things had gone south was something nobody could have figured, some GI who wasn’t supposed to be where he was, an X-factor for which it was impossible to calculate, and certainly not Lewis’s fault.

This would be easier, it involved stealth, and nobody would think twice about seeing him until he grabbed up the target. And even then, all he had to do was show the colonel the gun and keep it hidden, they’d be two guys walking to his car, nothing to see here, move along.

Once he drove onto the base, there was a roadwork sign blocking the main drag a couple hundred meters in, and the detour wasn’t on her plans, but that could have started this morning and even so, it shouldn’t matter. He ought to be golden.

But something was not right here. This place was so new the paint wasn’t dry. Why wouldn’t the road be in good repair?

Could be anything. Laying electrical lines, water or sewage pipes. Or maybe they just hadn’t finished paving yet. It was the Army—they didn’t do things like everybody else.

Could be anything.

But it didn’t feel like that. It
felt
like somebody he couldn’t see was out there, he could
feel
their gaze on him, tracking him. Stalking him . . .

Nothing reasonable about it, this feeling, nothing whatsoever to confirm it, but it was as if there was an invisible cloud of doom hanging over him, gathering itself to hit him with a monster lightning bolt that would blow him out of his shoes.

He’d had this sensation a couple times before. Once, it hadn’t been anything he could ever tell. The feeling came, he looked around, didn’t see anything, and eventually it passed.

The second time, he had been walking outside a camp in Iraq and he felt a panicked urge to stop right where he was. In that instance, he had halted, cold. Looked around, didn’t see anybody outside the camp within rifle range who might pot him. Then he’d looked down.

Another step, and he would have put his foot smack on the trigger of a terrorist-rigged mine planted by some local scumbag, what turned out to be an old artillery shell with a spring-loaded striker that would have no doubt blown off a foot at the least and probably killed him. IED, they called ’em. Improvised Explosive Device.

How had he known that? What sense had been tripped?

It wasn’t dependable, this feeling—he hadn’t felt squat when the two cops had braced him, nor when the shooting had started in Kentucky. But he felt it now.

If he kept going, he was going to die. He knew it right to the marrow in his bones.

He pulled the car into a hard U-turn, breaking the back end loose, laying rubber and noise over the road. As soon as the car’s wheels regained traction, he tapped the gas.

Two things happened: Three men in field gear with M-16s at the ready came into view to his left, running in his direction.

A car started up behind him, a flashing light bar lit, and a siren screamed.

The M-16s opened up, their sounds reached him about the same time as the first rounds hit the car—
clunk-clunk-clunk!
—and punched through the metal just behind him. Part of a shattered bullet spanged around inside the car and blew out a back window—

“Shit—!”

He ducked instinctively and stomped the gas pedal.

The rental car wasn’t a Formula One racer, but it did surge a little. He turned the steering wheel sharply to the right, zig, then back to the left, zag. Soldiers kept shooting, but he couldn’t worry about that. They’d either hit him or they wouldn’t.

He saw a camo’d Hummer heading toward the gate, angling to cut him off.

The only weapon he had was a SIG side arm, a fucking nine, but he pulled it, aimed through the closed passenger window, and cooked off three fast shots, aiming at the other vehicle.

The first shot shattered the window, and it and the other two were damned loud in the car, but there was no help for that.

The Hummer’s driver hit his brakes. Too much to hope for that he’d hit the guy, but at least he’d slowed him down—

He saw sparks from the road in front of him. They were trying for his tires. He wouldn’t make much speed running on the rims.

He swerved the car again, slewing back and forth.

The gate was ahead, and a counterweighted pole was the only thing blocking the exit, though the guy in the kiosk had triggered the rolling gate and it began to close—

The pedal was floored, he wasn’t going to make the car go any faster, but it looked as if he might make it—

The guy in the kiosk ducked as Carruth pointed the SIG and let one go in his direction—

Why weren’t they closing on him? It was like they were hanging back on purpose—

BOOK: Tom Clancy's Net Force 6-10

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