“What about Bulattus and the Colonel’s daughter?” Lanyard asked.
“You two stay flexible, but make sure they don’t get to Hateley before I do,” Wallis said, and then disappeared down the hill, heading directly toward the distant green flashing light designated in the computer program as BP1.
Less than thirty seconds later, as Gavin was working quickly to load the platform-mounted M107 sniper rifle with a magazine of ten. 50-caliber rounds, and then clamp it back into the platform mount, an inhuman scream echoed across the chilled night air; followed moments later by a second scream that was far more agonized, and definitely human.
CHAPTER 40
Bait Pile 4
Like the creatures Achara and Bulatt had interacted with at Bait Pile 2, the mother elephant and the young mammoth feeding at Bait Pile 4 watched the approaching human figure with only casual interest.
Having been hand-fed by humans for the entire twenty-one-month gestation period leading to the birth of her genetically-altered offspring, the mother elephant wasn’t the least bit concerned about their safety; nor was she particularly interested in the long pointed sticks the human carried in his hands. She was aware that, unlike elephants, humans had two long appendages with which they could hold or grab onto things; but awareness and concern were two very different things to a mother elephant long accustomed to being bigger and stronger than any other creature in her immediate vicinity.
The fact that this particular human seemed to be moving slowly and cautiously toward the feed pile, as if it was afraid of the hay or fruit, was also of little interest to the mother elephant. Humans were strange creatures, and it was often difficult to predict what they might do next; but food was the focus of her concern at this particular moment.
Thus it wasn’t until Max Kingman suddenly broke out of his cautious approach pattern, ran forward toward the feed pile and threw one of the sticks at her young one — the pointed stick glancing off the small mammoth’s back, and causing it to squeal in surprise — that the mother elephant became alarmed.
Instinctively, the mother elephant moved forward, placing herself directly between the human and her offspring, and trumpeted a warning.
But Max Kingman didn’t heed the nature or the importance of the warning. To Kingman, the mother elephant was just another big and more-or-less dumb animal standing in the way of his coveted trophy. Intent on getting her out of the way, and not thinking about the possible consequences, Kingman took another lunging step forward and threw his second spear directly at the mother elephant; the obsidian spear point slicing deep into her trunk.
Shocked by the unexpected attack, the mother elephant screamed in rage and pain; the bellowing roar almost completely masking the outraged scream another creature that was closing in on the feed pile fast.
But Max Kingman heard the lesser-cry of outrage, turned, saw the furious and now-completely-altered greenish-tinged face of Borya coming at him, froze in shock; and then screamed in soul-wrenching agony when the home-made spear ripped into his shoulder and sent him sprawling backwards into the now-blood-splattered snow.
Bait Pile 3
Stuart Caldreaux, a far more cautious man than Max Kingman, was still working his way through the trees on his hands and knees, intent on approaching his feeding pair in a wide loop from the rear, when the first non-human scream of rage and pain echoed off the surrounding rocks and outcroppings like an artillery airburst.
The mother elephant reacted instantly by yanking her unresponsive offspring away from the bait pile, and driving him toward a cluster of protective rocks a few yards away.
Frustrated that all of his tracking efforts were now for naught, and he would have to start over again, Caldreaux rose to his feet and was starting toward the rocky cluster where the feeding pair had disappeared when the second all-too-human scream ripped through the icy night air.
Startled and deeply frightened, Caldreaux suddenly wanted nothing more than to be as far away from the source of that agonized scream as possible. Accordingly, he began to run in the opposite direction, bouncing off trees, tripping and slipping off rocks, and seemingly catching the long spears in every scraggly bush and tree branch in his way; until, suddenly, he found himself stumbling backwards into a small clearing that he quickly recognized as the landing zone where Quince Lanyard had dropped him off in the helicopter a few hours earlier.
Quince!
Caldreaux had the walkie-talkie out of his pocket and up to his mouth without ever realizing he’s do so.
“Quince!” he yelled into the small device, realized he’d forgotten to press the talk button, did so, and then yelled “Quince, did you hear that?!”
“Yeah, we heard something, mate,” Quince Lanyard voice rasped from the small speaker. “Do you know what it was?”
“I don’t know, it sounded like Max, but — ”
Stuart Caldreaux then stopped dead in his tracks, and blinked in horrified disbelief.
“Oh my God,” he whispered, unaware that his thumb was still pressing the TALK button, as he stared at the huge, dark-green creature that was charging toward him from the opposite side of the drop zone.
Reacting purely on instinct, because every rational thought had been driven out of his head, Caldreaux turned and ran for the trees. Behind him, he could hear the incredibly heavy sounds of huge feet slamming down hard on the snow-packed ground.
“Help! Help me!” he shrieked in between frantic gasps for breath as he ran as fast as he possibly could, knowing that the nightmarish creature was closing in fast… almost there…
With a final desperate lunge that consumed every last bit of his remaining strength, Caldreaux dove in- between the trunks of two large fir trees a bare second before an earth-shattering impact drove both trees backwards, tearing portions of their roots from the frozen ground.
Sniper Post, Base Camp
Quince Lanyard stared at the walkie-talkie in his hand in disbelief, and then looked over at Jack Gavin, who was at the computer, using the powerful digital night-vision scope attached to the M107 rifle to search the area around Bait Pile 3.
“Can you see anything?”
“No. We’re still getting a signal from Caldreaux’s radio, and I’m scanning around it, but I can’t see… oh bloody hell, what was that?” Gavin whispered as he stared at the intermittent ghostly images on the laptop screen. “Quince, how do I go backwards on this thing?”
Lanyard came up beside Gavin, looking over his shoulder. “Hit Alt-F-Nine, then use your back arrow key to scroll back — ”
Then Lanyard blinked in disbelief as the dark partial-image of a huge head and a portion of a strangely-curved tusk — mostly concealed by the light green swirls of snow — suddenly appeared on the screen. He quickly reached over Gavin’s shoulder and hit the F-Twelve key, freezing the image in place. “What the hell is that?”
“I don’t know, but it’s bloody-well big,” Gavin whispered.
“Whatever it is, it’s going after Caldreaux. Disengage the auto-tracking mode and try to get a clear shot,” Lanyard directed as he grabbed one of the nearby M4 carbines and magazine-filled assault vest. “I’m heading out there with the chopper.”
“What do you think you’re going to do with that pop-gun?” Gavin asked as he re-set the laptop screen to real time, disengaged the tracking program, and began to manipulate the aim-point of the M107 with a joystick.
“Create a distraction until you can start pumping rounds into that bloody big head,” Lanyard yelled over his shoulder as he ran toward the landing zone, signaling for the pilots to get the helicopter revving up fast.
“I can’t find it!” Gavin yelled, frustrated by the slow response of the servo to the joystick. Then he realized that Lanyard couldn’t possibly hear him over the sound to the revving rotors. Cursing, he pulled the walkie-talkie out of his vest, switched it over to channel seven, waved it at Lanyard — who was at the open cargo door of the
