The Descent Part 9

'It's Ramada,' Branch insisted. The navigator must have climbed from the broken craft to do what navigators do: orient.

'Major.' Jefferson's tone had changed. With all the world listening, this was just for him. 'Get out of there.'

Branch hung to the side of the wreckage. Get out of here? He could barely stand.

Mac came on. 'I'm picking it up now, too. Fifteen yards out. Coming straight for you. But where the f.u.c.k did he come from?'

Branch looked over his shoulder.

The dense atmosphere opened like a mirage. The interloper staggered out from the brush and trees.

Lasers twitched frenetically across the figure's chest, shoulders, and legs. The intruder looked netted with modern art.

'I've got a lock,' Mac clipped.

'Me too.' Teague's monotone.

'Roger that,' Schulbe said. It was like listening to sharks speak.

'Say go, Major, he's smoke.'

'Disengage,' Branch radioed urgently, aghast at their lights. So this is how it is to be my enemy. 'It's Ramada. Don't shoot.'

'I'm vectoring more presence,' Master Sergeant Jefferson reported. 'Two, four, five more heat images, two hundred meters southeast, coordinates Charlie Mike eight three...'

Mac cut through. 'You sure, Major? Be sure.'

The lasers did not desist. They went on scrawling twitchy designs on the lost soldier. Even with the help of their neurotic doodles, even with the stark clarity of his nearness, Branch was not sure he wanted to be sure this was his navigator.

He ascertained the man by what was left of him. His rejoicing died.

'It's him,' Branch said mournfully. 'It is.'

Except for his boots, Ramada was naked and bleeding from head to foot. He looked like a runaway slave, freshly flayed. Flesh trailed in rags from his ankles. Serbs? Branch wondered in awe.

He remembered the mob in Mogadishu, the dead Rangers dragged behind Technicals. But that kind of savagery took time, and they couldn't have crashed more than ten or fifteen minutes ago. The crash, he considered, perhaps the Plexiglas. What else could have shredded him like this?

'Bobby,' he called softly.

Roberto Ramada lifted his head.

'No,' whispered Branch.

'What's going on down there, Major? Over.'

'His eyes,' said Branch.

They had taken his eyes.

'You're breaking up... Tango...'

'Say again, say again...'

'His eyes are gone.'

'Say again, eyes are...'

'The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds took his eyes.'

Schulbe: 'His eyes?'

Teague: 'But why?'

There was a moment's pause.

Then Base registered. '...new sighting, Echo Tango One. Do you copy...'

Mac came on with his cyber-voice. 'We're picking up a new set of bogeys, Major. Five thermal shapes. On foot. They are closing on your position.'

Branch barely heard him.

Ramada stumbled as if burdened by their laser beams. Branch realized the truth.

Ramada had tried to flee through the forest. But it was not Serbs who had turned him back. The forest itself had refused to let him pa.s.s.

'Animals,' Branch murmured.

'Say again, Major.'

Wild animals. On the edge of the twenty-first century, Branch's navigator had just been eaten by wild animals.

The war had created wild animals out of domestic pets. It had freed beasts from zoos and circuses and sent them into the wilderness. Branch was not shocked by the presence of animals. The abandoned coal tunnels would have made an ideal niche for them. But what kind of animal took your eyes? Crows, perhaps, though not at night, not that Branch had ever heard of. Owls, maybe? But surely not while the prey was still alive?

'Echo Tango One...'

'Bobby,' Branch said again.

Ramada turned toward his name and opened his mouth in reply. What emerged was more blood than vowel. His tongue, too, was gone.

And now Branch saw the arm. Ramada's left arm had been stripped of all flesh below the elbow. The forearm was fresh bone.

The blinded navigator beseeched his savior. All that emerged was a mewl.

'Echo Tango One, please be apprised...'

Branch shucked the helmet and let it hang by the cord outside the c.o.c.kpit. Mac and Master Sergeant Jefferson and Christie Chambers would have to wait. He had mercy to perform. If he did not bring Ramada in, the man would blunder on into the wilderness. He would drown in the ma.s.s grave, or the carnivores would take him down for good.

Summoning all his Appalachian strength, Branch forced himself upright and pressed away from the s.h.i.+p. He stepped toward his poor navigator.

'Everything will be okay,' he spoke to his friend. 'Can you come closer to me?'

Ramada was at the far edge of his sanity. But he responded. He turned in Branch's direction. Forgetful, the hideous bone lifted to take Branch's hand, even though it lacked a hand itself.

Branch avoided the amputation and got one arm around Ramada's waist and hoisted him closer. They both collapsed against the ruins of their helicopter.

It was a blessing of sorts, Ramada's horrible condition. Branch felt freed by comparison. Now he could dwell on wounds far worse than his own. He laid the navigator across his lap and palmed away the gore and mud on his face.

While he held his friend, Branch listened to the dangling helmet.

'...One, Echo Tango One...' The mantra went on.

He sat in the mud with his back against the s.h.i.+p, clutching his fallen angel: Pieta in the mire. Ramada's limbs fell mercifully limp.

'Major,' Jefferson sang in the near silence. 'You are in danger. Do you copy?'

'Branch.' Mac sounded violent and exhausted and full of worries high above. 'They're coming for you. If you can hear me, take cover. You must take cover.'

They didn't understand. Everything was okay now. He wanted to sleep.

Mac went on yelling. '...thirty yards out. Can you see them?'

If he could have reached the helmet radio, Branch would have asked them to calm down. Their commotion was agitating Ramada. He could hear them, obviously. The more they yelled, the more poor Ramada moaned and howled.

'Hush, Bobby.' Branch stroked his b.l.o.o.d.y head.

'Twenty yards out. Dead ahead, Major. Do you see them? Do you copy?'

Branch indulged Mac. He squinted into the nitrous mirage enveloping them. It was little different from looking through a gla.s.s of water. Visibility was twenty feet, not yards, beyond which the forest stood warped and dreamlike. It made his head ache. He nearly gave up. Then he caught a movement.

The motion was peripheral. It p.r.o.nounced the depths, a bit of pallor in the dark woods. He glanced to the side, but it was gone.

'They're fanning out, Major. Hunter-killer style. If you copy, get away. Repeat, begin escape and evasion.'

Ramada was grunting idiotically. Branch tried to quiet him, but the navigator was in a panic. He pushed Branch's hand away and hooted fearfully at the dead forest.

'Be quiet,' Branch whispered.

'We see you on the infrared, Major. Presume you are unable to move. If you copy, get your a.s.s down.'

Ramada was going to give them away with his noise.

Branch looked around and there, close at hand, his oxygen mask was dangling against the s.h.i.+p. Branch took it. He held it to Ramada's face.

It worked. Ramada quit hooting. He took several unabated pulls at the oxygen.

Seizures followed a moment later.

Later, people would not blame Branch for the death. Even after Army coroners determined that Ramada's death was accidental, few believed Branch had not meant to kill him. Some felt it showed his compa.s.sion toward this mutilated victim. Others said it demonstrated a warrior's self-preservation, that Branch had no choice under the circ.u.mstances.

Ramada writhed in Branch's embrace. The oxygen mask was ripped away. Ramada's agony burst out in a howl.

'It will be okay,' Branch told him, and pushed the mask back into place.

Ramada's spine arched. His cheeks sucked in and out. He clawed at Branch.

Branch held on. He forced the oxygen into Ramada like it was morphine.

Slowly, Ramada quit fighting. Branch was sure it signified sleep.

Rain pattered against the Apache.

Ramada went limp.

Branch heard footsteps. The sound faded. He lifted the mask.

Ramada was dead.

In shock, Branch felt for a pulse.

He shook the body, no longer in torment.

'What have I done?' Branch asked aloud. He rocked the navigator in his arms.

The helmet spoke in tongues. '...down... all around...'

'Locked. Ready on...'

'Major, forgive me... cover... on my command...'

Master Sergeant Jefferson delivered last rites. 'In the name of the Father, and of the Son...'

The footsteps returned, too heavy for human, too fast.

Branch looked up barely in time. The nitrous screen gashed open.

He was wrong. What sprang from the mirage were not animals like any on earth. And yet he recognized them.

'G.o.d,' he uttered, eyes wide.

'Fire,' spoke Mac.

Branch had known battle, but never like this. This was not combat. It was the end of time.

The rain turned to metal. Their electric miniguns harrowed the earth, chopped under the rich soil, evaporated the leaves and mushrooms and roots. Trees fell in columns, like a castle breaking to pieces. His enemy turned to road-kill.

The guns.h.i.+ps drifted invisibly a kilometer out, and so for the first few seconds Branch saw the world turn inside out in complete silence. The ground boiled with bullets.

The thunder caught up just as their rockets reached in.