Dwayne trotted toward the fire with Chaz on his heels. They picked off a few spearmen between them and Kemp. Dogs barked and showed teeth. Dwayne put a round through one that sent it spinning away in two pieces. The dogs backed down with a series of long high squeals. They vanished across the sand and into the dark.
Unlike the mutts, the blood-spattered mob was restless but not moving away. They bared teeth and swayed from foot to foot like animals before a charge.
“What’s wrong with the skinnies?” Chaz said. “They should be scared shitless by now.” Chaz reverted without a thought to the term “skinnies,” the generic term for foreign hostiles who were invariably thinner and shorter than US troops.
“Well, they’re not,” Dwayne said. He let go with a triple burst at the spearmen massed around Kemp. The slow discharge followed by the rapid trajectory of the missiles took some getting used to.
Some of the skinnies still stood on Kemp’s arms and legs to keep the doctor pressed to the ground. Even as fire from the four rifles brought them down, they were replaced by others screaming defiance and showing filed teeth. They weren’t going to give away their prize that easy.
The spearmen pulled at the hooked bits of carved bone they all wore on their belts and fixed the butt end of their spears to carved notches at the crook of the devices.
With the spears resting in the bone crooks, the men began to throw them in an underhand lob with all their weight behind it. Dwayne and Chaz threw themselves to the sand as spears whistled by close above them. They each took turns firing long volleys from the prone position as the other reloaded. The clutch of spear throwers wouldn’t give up their prisoner and stayed in a phalanx no matter how many fell. Kemp howled as bodies fell on him in a heap. Some men with clubs and spears were moving away from the fire to flank Dwayne and Chaz.
“The guns are too damn quiet!” Chaz said. He turned on his side and drilled a few of the circling men. The others ran out of sight behind the cover of a hut. “We need some noise! Some fucking noise!”
Dwayne rolled on his back and called out. “Renzi!”
A satchel charge sailed over the heads of the spearmen with none of them noticing. The clutch of enraged skinnies was solely focused on Dwayne and Chaz. The Semtex bundle exploded in the middle of the bonfire with a force that sent burning logs spinning end over end in all directions. The fire spread across the ground and ignited dozens in the shrieking crowd. Blazing logs crashed into huts and set them afire. This was finally enough to throw the spearmen off their game, but not before one drove the stone head of his spear deep into Kemp’s gut. Kemp convulsed with an animal howl. A triple-tap from Dwayne sent the bastard with the spear flying away, ripped open like a piñata.
A second satchel charge landed on the other side of the fire and shook the ground when it went off. The crowd of hooting spearmen and their kin backed away into the dark making low moans of what Dwayne hoped was terror.
Jimbo joined them at a run as Dwayne and Chaz reached Kemp. The man was in bad shape. The broken end of the spear nailed him to the ground through the gut. He was wide-eyed and gasping. Blood sprayed from his mouth with each panicked breath.
They started to move him, and he screamed. “He’s not going to make it,” Chaz said.
“And we’re down to our last magazines.”
Dwayne dropped down next to Kemp. He put his face close to the other man’s.
Kemp blinked. His eyes moved in his head. He moved his lips. Blood spilled in thick strands from his mouth and nostrils, then his eyes were no longer seeing anything.
“Dwayne,” Chaz said
“We move for the cave,” Dwayne said. “While they’re still disoriented.”
7
Dr. Morris Tauber
The flash of blue light was different than the sheet lightning that sometimes illuminated the valley floor in the hours just before dawn. The resounding boom of thunder echoed among the rocks atop the mesa and was a long time dying away.
Inside the refrigerated chamber, Tauber was watching, squinting into the thick white mist rolling from inside the Tube’s frame as the field opened again. Nothing emerged. It was two days since the team of four Rangers had walked into the array of frozen coils.
Tauber stood for moments with his jaw clenched tight. It was an opening to a world he could only dream of, a world he populated with dark imaginings. The weeks of worry over the fate of Caroline were taking their toll.
“Idiot,” he said. He moved quickly to the computer station, where he fine-tuned the power levels from the tower to the Tube. He moved the mouse to bring the feed into the parameters his calculations determined were the right ones for keeping the field open within the target time frame. Attuned correctly he could hold the door open for thirty minutes maximum.
He opened the program for the wave transmitter and turned up the gain. The indicator showed that there was a recorded message coming through.
It was Dwayne’s voice. It came from the speakers with a heavy background hiss.
“Roenbach to Tauber. Mission time oh-one-twenty-two. We are at…formation of rock with a cave at its base…three klicks west/northwest…from…point…found an encampment of humans…bach out.”
The transmission was faint and spotty, but Tauber could run it through audio programs later to clean it up.
