and killed our people. This is an organized enemy. If they get away with this word will spread. Our location will be revealed and others will think us easy targets.'
Jon asked, 'So, what are you saying? Send in the choppers and blow everything up?'
'I’m not going to waste rare munitions and fuel on primitives. Besides, the camps won't be easy to find from the air. No, we need boots on the ground. I need somebody who can track these things; someone who can take a minimal team and do maximum damage.'
I need a killer, Nina heard.
Trevor walked to her. His words seethed with anger. Nina fixed her eyes straight down as Trevor growled in her ear.
'I’m unleashing you, Nina. Do what you need to do. Do it the way you want to do it. I command only one thing: hunt down every Red Hand in our grasp. Wipe them from our planet. Kill them. Every last one of them. No mercy. You are my vengeance. You are my sword.' Still, she did not look from the floor.
Trevor nodded to the other men and the group left the room leaving her alone. When they were gone, Nina raised her head with her eyes wide open. She looked forward and saw, with total clarity, what she was to do.
– Nina leapt off the wooded embankment completely surprising the enemy. Two quick three-shot bursts from her Colt M4 killed both Red Hand warriors. The aliens staggered and fell, never having a chance to pull taught their bows.
She glanced in both directions along the wide swath the utility company had cut through the forest so long ago; a path cut to clear passage for massive electrical wires and towers.
Nothing moved under the gray, drizzling sky.
She motioned her arm forward. The woodland came alive. Danny Washburn, Woody 'Bear' Ross and Dustin McBride appeared, followed by Odin the Elkhound, six Siberian Huskies, and another five German Shepherds.
Ross and McBride hid the bodies of the Red Hand patrol
She knew the encampment could not be far…
…Nina watched through the telescopic lens on a Heckler amp; Koch MSG-90 sniper rifle. The cross hairs fell first on a Red Hand warrior slapping around a thin, sickly human prisoner…then on that prisoner…then back again; alien and prisoner shuffled, conspiring to obstruct her aim.
'One…more…second.'
Washburn crouched next to her under the prickly limbs of a bush.
'Hey! They’re too close. Watch what you’re shooting at.'
Three silenced shots whistled from the military sniper rifle. The rounds slammed into the shoulder of the warrior…and through his body into a prisoner.
'Shit! Damn it! Every one move, move, move!'
They rushed down the wooded slopes through a soaking rain into the Red Hand colony with assault weapons blazing. Seven enemy warriors fell in the first moments of battle. Puffs of steam rose as rain droplets splashed on hot gun barrels. Arrows and spears flew. Warriors charged futilely toward the modern weapons.
Nina descended upon the primitives like a vengeful goddess of war slaughtering with precision. At the same time, the Grenadiers closed and attacked working in pairs. They grabbed legs, dodged weapons, pulled the Red Hands to the ground and tore them to pieces. All the tribe-even non-combatants-fell to the iron of guns and the flashing ivory of canine teeth.
As the assault team overran the camp, the Red Hands spitefully slit the throats of slaves, but the speed of the attack saved most of the humans trapped inside the pen.
The entire colony died in minutes.
While the dogs swept the forest for stragglers, Dustin, Bear, and Washburn freed the remaining prisoners and Nina brought fire to the buildings of the village…
…Nina climbed the slope until she came to an open rock face. There, under a cloudy night sky, she assembled a high-powered radio and sent a message home.
Trevor received the message while examining a map on the desktop in the Command Center. A circle represented the camp where Jon had found Sheila. An ‘X’ had been drawn through that circle. As he listened to Nina’s report, Trevor drew another circle. When her report finished, he ‘X’d’ that one, too.
He could nearly smell the smoke from the fires of his revenge…
…In the morning, Nina’s team led the freed human slaves through the wilderness to the nearest major road, Route 187. A heavily armed convoy met them and transported the survivors to the estate on a luxury bus.
Nina Forest and her band continued their mission of destruction…
…The tents, buildings, and slave pen of the second Red Hand settlement rested alongside a small, peaceful stream at the base of a forested valley.
Not long after dusk, the warriors returned carrying home small game hunted in the forest. They turned those kills over to the young and the females for cleaning and cooking.
Meanwhile, the slaves finished the day's final chore by carting water from the stream to the massive container at the center of the village. They could expect entrails and bones from the cleaned animals as sustenance.
Fires started across the camp, flickering to life below cooking spits. The flames tried to chase away the chill in the air, but the day’s rain lingered like ice carried on the wind.
The Red Hand people collected around those fires, feasting on fresh kills and covered in animal skins while the ruling class of warriors and their Chief gathered in the community hall.
The scrawny human slaves lay in one mass inside the muddy pen, clothed in the remains of business suits and sweatpants, short sleeve summer T-shirts and socks pulled over bloody hands as makeshift mittens. A moan came from the pile of forlorn souls.
A soft pop stayed hidden beneath that moan, the chatter of Red Hands, and the steady trickle of the bubbling brook. Neither warrior nor slave saw the first sentry die.
Another guard walked behind the main lodge. He heard the next pop and felt a warm pain in his chest. His body twisted, fell, and tumbled into the stream with a quiet splash.
Another pop. Then another. Screams erupted as a Red Hand dropped his wooden cup and collapsed face- forward into a campfire.
More pops. More bullets striking tribesmen. The alarm sounded in a series of cries. The Chief and his warriors mustered in the center of the settlement.
No more pops. Nothing moved.
The Red Hands gathered and scanned the surrounding forest. Their ivory eyes saw only shadows, but a noise came to their ears. It started low then rose to a terrifying cacophony echoing around the doomed primitives: a chorus of snarls and barks, of growls and yaps from beasts unseen. Louder…louder…LOUDER!
Warriors gripped their bows and spears tight in sweaty slender fingers. For months the tribe had hunted, enslaved, and killed unarmed men, women, and children. Now they shivered and shook as an unknown enemy stalked them.
A warrior’s chest exploded. The Red Hands scrambled to cover behind buildings and posts and piles of chopped wood.
The sounds of barks and snarls from the woods suddenly stopped, leaving only the gentle roll of the stream in the warriors’ ears.
Arrows flew blindly into the dark: shots of frightened desperation.
On orders from the Chief, four Red Hands approached the perimeter with spears and bows raised. They disappeared, seemingly swallowed by the forest.
A second later, the snarls and barks returned joined by the cries of the four scouts.
The Chief focused on the darkness, hoping to see what haunted his people, to glimpse whatever nightmare this strange world had unleashed.
The snarls and barks stopped again. No more screams. No trace. No sign.
A cold autumn wind gust across the settlement carrying fallen leaves on its wings.
They came.
Flashes like lightning exploded around the camp followed by loud claps not of thunder but of man’s deadly weapons, wielded by a handful of human soldiers and led forward by the icy blue eyes of a blond-haired demon of
