E-Branch - Invaders Part 3

'But yours first/' said a sm all but resolute female voice. The moonlight came back, and Jake saw the vampire's yellow eyes go wide. As Liz stepped closer, the monster snarled and turned his awful head towards her. The muzzle of Liz's tiny weapon was almost in his astonished, gaping mouth when she pulled the trigger. In that same moment Jake turned his face away, but in any case the debris went the other way.

'The .'Rover!' Liz was pale as a ghost, stumbling in the moonlight that picked out her softly feminine curves. She managed to run a few paces, but Jake caught up with her at the vehicle and almost threw her into the pa.s.senger seat. He had seen a handful of silent, flame-eyed figures approaching from the direction of the shack.

They were the most immediate probl em, obviously, but as yet Jake wasn't aware of the lone pursuer tracking Liz. She knew she hadn't lost him, however, and continued to urge Jake: 'Let's go.' Let's g0/', 'Seat belts/ he snapped. 'It's going to be b.u.mpy.'' Then the engine was roaring, the gears grinding, the Land Rover kicking up dirt as it wheeled for the service road.

Which was when Liz's lone pursuer came aboard.'

He came from the side, came vaulting into the rear seats in the moment before Jake picked up speed. And, off balance, he staggered there, his eyes like hot coals in the night. Jake and Liz had seen him; Liz twisted her body, tried to fire her Baby Browning point-blank, and heard the click as the firing-pin fell on a dud.'

The vampire grinned and reached for her, and Jake curs ed, changed down and floored the accelerator. In the back, the vampire was taken by surprise and thrown off balance again, if only for a moment.

Then, falling to his knees on the back seat, he leaned forward, put his head between theirs, grinned first at Liz, then at Jake - before taking the backs of their necks one in each hand. Which was exactly what Jake had hoped he would do.

And: 'Hang on!' Jake yelled, and literally stood on the brakes.

Mercifully Liz had seen it coming; she leaned to the right even as Jake leaned left.

And the loathsome thing gurgled, 'Eh? What?' But the explanation was already forthcoming.

As he flew between them, he released their necks, tried to bring his hands forward to protect his face, di dn't even nearly make it. With his arms forming a 'V behind him, he hurtled forward and smashed face first through the windshield.

'G.o.dawful - d.a.m.n - thing!' Jake choked, slamming the 'Rover into first and crunching forward over something that was trying to stand up. They heard its body grinding and thumping, mangled between the 'Rover's underside and the stony rubble of the terrain. Then: 'My G.o.d!' Liz gasped. 'I think we might actually make it!'

'Never doubted it/ her partner told her, lying for all he was worth.

Just as they turned onto the service track and headed for the ramp, a light commenced flashing on the dash. 'Radio/ Liz said, reaching under the dash to grab a hidden m ike. Thumbing the transmit b.u.t.ton, she said, 'Hunter One for Zero. What kept you?'

'This is Zer o One/ a gravelly voice answered in a stutter of static to match the sudden throb of a chopper's rotors. 'Is that you mobile down there?' And a searchlight beam swept down from above.

Jake leaned over an d spat into the speaker, 'Only f.u.c.king just! Zero - Trask, is that you? - we could use some help.'

'Do you have a target?'

'If it's behind us and it's moving, it's a target/ Jake said, 34

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straightening up in time to avoid a pothole. And as the adrenalin began to recede and his skin stopped p.r.i.c.kling, he eased up a little so as not to send the Land Rover nosediving off the rim of the ramp.

Then Liz said, 'Stop!' 'Stop?'

'Stop the vehicle. I want to see.'

'Feeling bloodthirsty?' Jake looked at her, frowning as he cautiously applied the brakes.

'Not me.' She shook her head, shuddered her relief as she thumbed her nostrils one after the other to blow out her plugs.

Then she half-turned her head, inclined it to indicate the dark shelf of rock that they'd left behind. 'And no t them, not after this.' And now her voice was a sigh.

They looked up an d back. First at a sleek, black dragonfly shape under the gleaming blur of its fan, a shape that blotted the stars in its pa.s.sing and turned the night to a whirling dervish dust-devil with its downdraught as it sped overhead, then at the torpedo- shapes that tumbled lazily, -end over end, down from its belly like so many elongated eggs.

'Jesus!' Jake's sigh matched Liz's. And: 'Let there be light!' she said.

And there was light. The napalm hit a little way back from the top of the ramp. It lit up a widening path all the way back to the knoll, roared with the thunder of its all-consuming pa.s.sion, washed the wall of the outcrop like a tsunami of fire. In the s.p.a.ce of a few short seconds the scene might well have been that in the c ald era of an active volcano: a small mountain burned in the night, with man-made lava flowing down its flanks.

For long moments there were running, leaping, screaming figures in the roiling smoke, blackly silhouetted against terrible b.a.l.l.s of fire that seemed to roll across the shelf of the rocky outcrop with lives of their own. The spidery figures were there ... and they were gone, cindered, rolled under ...

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The unit was made up of two choppers, a giant support truck and various smaller vehicles, mainly 'Rovers. The truck and lesser vehicles wouldn't get here for some time yet. They had miles of rough road to cover.

The choppers landed on the shelf itself, one to the north and the other to the south. In half an hour their combat-suited, gas- masked, heavily-armed special forces crews were moving forward into the scorched zone. Meanwhile Jake and Liz had joined up with Ben Trask, in charge of operations, also with lan Goodly, his 2I/C, and a 'civilian/ Peter Miller, of Australia's Rudall River National Park Administration - or 'Mister' Miller, as he insisted on being called.

Obviously Miller hadn't been told too much, which was perfectly understandable; it was all on a need-to-know basis, and when E-Branch went out into the world it was standard procedure to avoid unnecessary rumour-mongering and the panic that might ensue. Miller was small, round and bouncy as a rubber ball; he was very excitable and utterly confused. And like many another small, insignificant man in a position of a.s.sumed 'authority/ he made a lot of noise. Right now he raved on at the tall, unflappable beanpole that was lan Goodly, who kept steering him away from Ben Trask so that Trask could talk to Liz and Jake. But still Miller's yappy, little-dog voice could be heard over just about everything else that was going on. Right now he was flapping his arms, yelping about: '... This uttermost devastation? d.a.m.n it all, Mr Goodly, I know that this is a wasteland, a useless desert region that you can't damage any worse th an Nature herself has. B ut ... there were men in that blaze! I saw men burning in those h.e.l.l-fires! What was that stuff, napalm? But in any case, what does it matter? What happened here tonight was sheer murder!

There is no other word for it. I... I still can't believe what I witnessed here ... cold-blooded murder, Goodly! And someone will be called to answer for it. In fact, I demand an answer right here and now!'

'Who is he?' Liz asked.

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And Trask frowned. 'He's supposed to be our local liaison officer for the Western Deserts Region. A handful of top men in the Aussie Government know what we're doing, just how important our work is. Even so, they couldn't simply let us loose, give us carte blanche to get on with things. We were obliged to accept an observer. But that doesn't make him one of us, and I've managed to keep him out of it... well, until tonight.

Even now I don't intend to waste time with him on long explanations. What we're doing is impossible to explain, anyway - not if we expect to be believed. But whether we want Miller or not we've got him, and maybe the best way to keep him quiet will be to let him see for himself something of what's going on.'

'Well, he's seen it,' Jake growled. 'But he isn't quiet.' 'He hasn't seen everything.' Trask's face was grim. And to Liz, 'What do you reckon?'

Knowing what he meant, she opened her mind, gazed intently through the smoke of the remaining fires at the burning shacks where they slumped in the lee of the knoll. And as lines of concentration formed on her brow, she said, 'The worst of them - the "old man," Bruce Tr ennier? - is still alive. Alive, afraid, and angry. He's still very dangerous, very clever, too. Despite that he tries to hide his thoughts, maybe because of it, I know he's there. His - what, mindsmog? - is as thick as the mist on a swamp, and it stinks a lot worse/ He's the boss, but he isn't alone. Back wher e the fire couldn't reac h, in the depths of the old mine, there's a handful of others.

They're waiting for us.'

Trask nodded. 'Well, let's not keep them,' he said, his lips twisting in a cold, cruel grimace, and his eyes lighting with a vengeful fire of their own. And: 'Mr Miller,' he called for the small and small-minded official. 'If you will please accompany me? I hope to be able to answer some of your questions ...'

CHAPTER THREE.

Firestorm Looking at Ben Trask, Jake Cutter found himself wondering what it was about the man. He knew some of it - that Trask was the head of a British Secret Service organization called E- Branch, based in London but with many other branches, affiliations and powerful friends throughout the world - but not everything by any means. One thing seemed certain, however: Ben Trask was a driven man. Moreover, Jake thought it likely that whatever was driving him was the same thing that caused him to look so much older than his years.

Not that Trask was young; in fact, he could be anything between fifty-five and sixty years old. But while his mousey hair was streaked with white, his skin pale and his aspect in general aged and maybe even fragile, still the man inside, the mind, soul, and personality - the id itself - was diamond- hard. Jake sensed this, and felt a certain empathy for Trask, felt that he knew him, despite that the man had only recently become a fact or in his life. But one h.e.l.l of a factor!

For his height of about five-ten, Trask was maybe a couple of pounds overweight. His broad shoulders slumped just a little, his arms tended to dangle, and his expression was usually, well, lugubrious? Or maybe that, too, was as a result of... of what? His loss? For that was the impression you got if you caught him unawares: the feeling that something had gone out of him, leaving

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him downcast, empty; his green eyes strangely vacant or far away, his face drawn, and his mouth turned down at the corners. As if he'd suffered a loss too great to bear. And Jake t hought he knew something of how that felt.

On the other hand, if what little Jake had been told about Trask were true, then he might well be misjudging him; Trask's pain could have its origin in something else entirely. For in a world where the simple truth was becoming increasingly hard to find, it would be no easy thing to possess a mind that couldn't accept a lie. And that, allegedly, was what Trask was; a human lie-detector.

E-Branch; E for ESP. Telepaths, em paths, locators, precogs ... psychos? That's how Jake had thought of them just five days ago: as raving lunatics. No, as very quiet lunatics. For nary a one of them had actually raved.

But that was five days ago, and in between he'd seen some stuff. And anyway who was he to talk? What, Jake Cutter, who went on instantaneous, hundred-mile-long sleep-walking tours in broad daylight, and suspected that someone was hiding in his head?

All of these thoughts pa.s.sing through Jake's mind as he and Liz followed Trask, Goodly, and Miller - who in turn followed a team of four, armed-to-the-teeth special agents - between the stinking fires and towards the slumping, blazing ruin that had been the main shack. The lone pump had disappeared; now a column of shimmering blue fire roared its fury at the sky as fuel from the subterranean storage tank burned off. And as Trask's party advanced on the shack, so Miller went prattling on: 'Do you think there can ever really be an answer to this, Mr Trask? Good Lord, man.' But who gave you the authority to do such as this? I mean- Look!' And his hand flew to his mouth.

'A b-b-body!'he stammered. 'For G.o.d's sake! A cindered body.''

In the lee of a clump of hip-high boulders where the blackened, smoking skeletons of cactuses and other once-hardy plants oozed bubbling sap, the clean-up squad had missed something. It was an arm and a hand, protruding from the molten mess of vegetation like a root among all the other exposed roots.

Obviously someone had tried to escape the fire by diving for cover in the foliage ... any port in a firestorm.

Or rather it lad been an arm and a hand. Now it was a smoking black twig-thing with four lesser twiglets and the remains of an opposing thumb. Yet even now it was twitching, vibrating, showing signs of impossible life, and the vile soup within the nest of rocks was heaving and bubbling.

'You there - you missed something/ Trask called out. And one of the specialists came back with his flame-thrower, playing its bright yellow lance on the shuddering mess until it seethed into a black liquid slop.

In the meantime, Miller had been sick. Trask looked unemotionally at the little fat man where he stood trembling, holding a handkerchief to his mouth, and said, 'Best if you stay here.' And to Liz and Jake, 'You two keep Mr Miller company.

But make sure he gets a good look at it if... if anything happens.' He turned away, moved off with lan Goodly. Both of them were equipped with vicious-looking machine-pistols.

'Oh my G.o.d!' Miller moaned, hanging half-suspended between Jake and Liz, swaying from side to side. 'Oh my good G.o.d!

Doesn't the man have a heart? I mean, doesn't he feel anything for these poor p-p-people?'

'Ben Trask is all heart,' Liz told him. 'And yes, he feels a great deal for people, for every man, woman and child of us. For our entire - and entirely human - race. That's why we're here.

Because these creatures aren't human, not any longer ...'

But Miller was bending over, being sick again, and Jake had got be hind him , was holding on to make sure he didn't fall face down in it.

The fires were burning lower now, and the night was creeping in again. Long shadows danced like demons, turning the barren rock ledge into a scene from Dante's Inferno. Near the main shack the column of flame from the underground tank shrank down into itself, issued a final m.u.f.fled blast, and then became a fireball that rolled like a living thing up the face of the cliff.

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Along the foot of the knoll, a second half-team of agents had killed the fire at the shack with the cage and gone inside to explore the secondary mine shaft. While fifty feet away from the main shack - which continued to burn, sending a column of smoke and the occasional lick of red and orange fire into the night sky - Trask brought his team to a halt.

'How about it?' He sh outed at Goodly over the crackle of burning brush and scorched timbers. 'What do you think? Do we burn him out?'

Not him, them! Liz wanted to yell, but Goodly was already doing it for her. 'There's more than just him, Ben,' the precog's piping voice, carried on gusts of hot smoke.

'But we can handle them?' Trask seemed undeterred. Goodly shrugged and said, 'I'm not forecasting any casualties, if that's what you mean. But it won't be very pretty.'

'It never is,' Trask told him. He came to a decision, nodded, turned and called for Liz. 'Tell them we're going to bring the whole d.a.m.n' place down around their ears ... and tell him he isn't getting out alive. I want you to taunt the b.a.s.t.a.r.d/'

'But... do you think that he'll hear me?' Liz seemed dubious, unsure of herself. 'I mean, I'm only half a telepath. I can receive but not send, and-'

'We can't be sure about that,' Trask cut her off. 'That's one of the things we're here to find out. But we know your talent isn't fully developed yet, and just because you can't send to a human telepath doesn't mean Trennier won't h ear you. He's in there, a vampire, and these things have skills of their own. Maybe this will give us some indication of what to expect from you when your talent is fully developed.'

Liz gave an answering nod, moved forward. And Miller stood up a little straighter and asked Jake: 'Who ... who is he talking about? And how can that girl talk to someone in there?'

'Just take it for granted she can,' Jake answered, despite that he wasn't too sure himself.

And now Liz was concentrating, concentrating, sending her