Four Summoners Tales Part 59

In retrospect, maybe it should have been. Don't ask me. I'm just a shooter.

Ten days ago, Rattlesnake Team went dark.

No telemetry at all.

The team leader, Sergeant Michael O'Leary-combat call sign "Finn"-was a friend of mine. We'd walked through fire more than once since we joined the DMS. Finn was a stand-up dude and a certified bada.s.s, but he was one of the good guys. He'd walk on his knees through broken gla.s.s for his friends and his team.And though he was patriotic, he wasn't one of those empty-brained "my country, right or wrong" a.s.sholes who are an embarra.s.sment to genuine patriots. Finn was smart and resourceful, too. So were all three of his men.

Rattlesnake went in, using intel from the CIA and some additional stuff from a friendly among the villagers. The Taliban convoy was due to pa.s.s through a dry valley that used to be a town way back when. Great place for an ambush, so Finn wanted to get there first. The job should have taken nine hours if it all went like clockwork, and maybe double that under worst-case scenarios.

They'd been missing now for three whole days.

I opened my tactical laptop, which was the size and weight of an iPad, but with a much stronger router and battery. The thing was snugged into a ruggedized case that clipped to the front of my chest.The screen still showed the same thing.

Four telemetric signals. Three here in this valley, and one eighty klicks away.That one was bright and green-theoretically proof of life-but it was in a fixed position and hadn't moved since the antic.i.p.ated time of engagement, ten days ago.The other three signals were weird. Every operative in the DMS has a radio-frequency identification chip the size of a rice grain surgically implanted in the fatty tissue under the triceps. Unlike the pa.s.sive chips used to store medical information, these RFID chips are true telemetric locators.They're late-generation models manufactured by Digital Angel, and as long as GPS tracking satellites circle the earth, the chips will locate the wearer and send a continuous feed to establish location and proof of life. The battery is charged by blood pressure. If the heart stops, the chip immediately begins losing its charge.That diminished signal is read as what it is-the death of the wearer.

Now, here's the kicker-the other three chips went dark for almost ten hours. Totally dark. Then they started back up again. None of them were transmitting at anything like full strength, but they were sending signals that made a case that the wearers were alive.

Both our computer geek, Bug, and Dr. William Hu, head of our science division, say that this would only be possible if the three soldiers wearing those RFIDs were so deep inside the earth that the collective iron-rich rock of these mountains blocked the signal-and that was a hard scenario to construct. Or all three of the RFID chips malfunctioned in exactly the same way at exactly the same time. The likelihood of that was somewhere around .000087 percent. Bug did the math.

The only scenario that was more plausible was the presence of an EMP.That might have explained why the chips all went out at the same time. Unfortunately RFID chips don't simply "get better" after an electromagnetic pulse. If they were blown out, then they should still have been dead.

That's the point at which we stopped speculating. No other scenario made a lick of sense.

Not one.

We flew on.

3.

rAttlesnAke teAm

Ten days ago . . .

Finn had no breath left for screaming. All he could do was lie there in the darkness of what had once been a market stall and was now a wind-blasted cave. He was curled like a beaten dog, bleeding, sweating, his pants soaked with p.i.s.s and heavy with s.h.i.+t, his mouth cracked with a paste made from snot and tears.

Blowflies had found him, and Finn could hear their buzzing wings and feel their threadlike legs as they walked over his face.

In the darkness around him, the laughter was still there.

Less, though. It only came once in a while.

It wasn't as loud.

It was a softer sound. Softer, but somehow worse than anything he'd heard before.

This laughter was different.

It was sneaky.

It was as if something big and hungry crouched just above him where he couldn't see. Sat there, waiting for something to happen, and delighted at the prospect.

It was an ugly laugh.

Finn realized at some point that it was also female. But there was nothing about it that fit his definition of feminine. It was earthy and raw, and oddly s.e.xual in a way that made Finn feel ashamed.

"I'm going nuts," he told himself."Jesus, I've finally f.u.c.king lost it."

The words tumbled out of his mouth and fell into the darkness.

The breath whispered across the unprotected upper curve of his lip, and against all possible sense or reason, Finn felt himself grow suddenly hard. His c.o.c.k swelled and pressed against the fabric of his soiled pants.

Then the voice murmured again.

"What will you give me for what you want? What bargain will you make?"

"I don't know what you mean," Finn lied. His voice broke in the middle and the rest of the sentence came out in weak little chunks.