Arachnosaur. Richard Jeffries
the nicest, and, yes, the prettiest member of the unit. Also the toughest, strongest, smartest girl he had ever met. He was proud to work alongside her, and he wasn’t going to blame himself for feeling that way, or for feeling glad that he could find no evidence of her among the corpses.
Then he heard it. And felt it. A foot fall.
Josiah Key looked up, straining to see into the remaining mist, which encircled the ruined village like a net. As he stared, a silhouette began to outline itself in the steamy shroud. He suddenly felt his M249 SAW tight in his hands, but he did not shift his stare a centimeter. He waited until a figure began to emerge from the cloud like a drowning victim surfacing from the sea.
He was not a US soldier. He wore a darkly dyed thawb, the traditional long-sleeved, ankle-length garment, only with fatigue pants and army boots. He also wore a turban, but with a gauzy scarf that rippled in the breeze like a flag. But it was not a flag of surrender. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Key would have recognized him even if he was wrapped like a mummy. He had seen his face enough, on screen, on paper, on walls, on desks, and even on flesh in the form of a tattoo. It was Usa Awar, one of the enemy’s most wanted terrorists and killers.
He stood twenty feet away from Key, staring back at him with indifference. No, it was more than that. He stared at Key the way a serial killer stares at a victim: not as an animal, but the way a human stares at an animal it is about to kill. As something only worthy of slaughtering.
And he held in his right hand, blood pouring out its neck to spread on the village ground, the decapitated head of Private Terri Nichols.
Key screamed in regret and rage, his forefinger clamping on the trigger of the M249 until its thirty forty-five caliber shells obliterated Awar from his sight. Even then he didn’t stop. He instantly replaced the empty weapon with his M9 Beretta sidearm, emptying its fifteen nine millimeter rounds into the same smug face.
It wasn’t until a distant beeping distracted him that he finally stopped. He looked down to see a red light flashing inside his pants pocket. The beeping was coming from there.
Like an automaton, Key reached into his pocket to find his personal smartphone flashing and beeping—something he never equipped it to do. He raised it to his numb face to see a small box on the device’s screen. The box read: “Military Override. Urgent Incoming Message.”
Like so many in the cellphone age, Key’s thumb automatically, seemingly involuntarily, responded.
The message appeared, and repeated, again and again. “C5, C5, C5, C5, C5…”
The cleaning had been upgraded. It was now “With Extreme Prejudice.”
Josiah Key looked up to see that Awar was gone. There was no sign of Nichols’s skull, or any other part of her.
Chapter 2
“You should have seen him,” Usa Awar said quietly, even gently, to Private Terri Nichols.
They were in a cave, illuminated by oil lamps and candles, so a glimmering yellow sheen dappled over everything, making her flesh seem to glow. Awar was kneeling before the chair Nichols was tied to. The chair was obviously homemade, from coarse but demonically strong, heavy wood. The rope was also strong and coarse, as well as coiled and thin.
“Obviously in shock, his eyes vacant and unreasoning….”
Her ankles were bent back on either side of her, and lashed to the back slats of the chair seat. The chair did not have arms, but did not require them. Her arms were bent back and slung there by her wrists, which were also noosed around her neck, so if she let them hang naturally, she would strangle herself.
“I was carrying your helmet,” Awar said. “You know, the one with your name on it? ‘Nichols, T.’”
“He acted as if I was carrying your severed head,” Awar continued mildly. “He stared, eyes huge, then started firing wildly.” The captor shrugged smugly. “The shooting was easy to evade, as all your attacks are. Apparently I had hit a nerve….”
With that, he diffidently swiped her left breast with the back of his fore and middle fingers. Her nipples were covered by squares of duct tape that he had scraped in the dirt before affixing. Otherwise she was naked, her uniform in a puddle beside her. Nichols cringed, her expression souring.
“Apparently I have hit a nerve of yours as well.” Awar smiled. “Please understand that will not be the first or only one I will hit if you do not talk.”
Nichols would have loved saying all sorts of things at that moment—how many others have you captured, how many others have you tortured, how many others have you killed—but he had taken that choice from her as well. Her lower face was sealed with swath after swath of duct tape. Behind it, inside her mouth, was a small light bulb. If she bit down, or they slapped her, it would shatter, leaving shards behind. If her tongue or jaw moved, they would cut, filling her mouth with blood until she drowned. If she swallowed, even involuntarily, slivers would pass through her entire system, slicing as they went, leaving her to die in continuous, seemingly endless, agony.
It was the most effective gag she could have imagined—if she had ever bothered to imagine such things. But, astonishingly, it also gave her hope. It might mean that there were rescuers nearby her captors didn’t want to hear her.
Even as she thought that, they both heard a sound. They both looked over to see one of Awar’s shrouded men in the cavern opening. His obscured face was another thing that gave Nichols hope. The fact that they did not want the underling recognized announced the chance she might be asked to describe him some day.
The man said something in Arabic, which Awar reacted to with barely concealed concern. He thought for a moment, looking away from his prisoner, then nodded slightly before standing. He looked down at Nichols with an expression that mixed certainty and mercilessness.
“When I return, you will tell me what I want to know. I leave you to consider the means we will use.”
Then he grabbed her uniform and left, along with his underling, leaving her alone in the small cavern. If Awar expected her to sob, quake, or despair, he had captured the wrong soldier. As her family had constantly told her, she could have been anything: a ballerina, a gymnast, a nurse, a cheerleader. She chose to be a marine, and had worked damn hard to attain it, dealing with obstacles at every turn. Obstacles like Morty Daniels, who made leeringly clear that she had no business serving in combat units. She still wasn’t sure what she liked least, Sergeant Daniels continually ignoring her, or his bromance buddy, Corporal Key, continually looking out for her.
At least Key was yet another hope to cling to. He had come looking for her. That meant he wasn’t dead or captured, like so many others. If he had come looking, he’d still be looking, and others would to.
Nichols forced her eyes to stay dry. She forced her mouth to stay open. But she couldn’t avoid her hands turning into tight fists as the memory of what had happened threatened to engulf her again.
The emergency orders had been clear: clean a village. That meant make sure that the first and second battalions would not be surprised by the sudden appearance of insurgents who might be occupying the town. No problem; they had trained for this. Marine transport had brought them close, then the drone crew took over. The images that came back were both reassuring and disturbing.
The town was already “clean,” in that not a creature was stirring. In fact, the village of Shabhut looked like it had hit by tanks running side-by-side. It was not only seemingly uninhabited, it was flattened. The lieutenant had ordered them in anyway to make certain, and her unit responded with their usual skill and proficiency—until an ambush was sprung on them midway through town.
It was the worst firefight she had ever experienced. Suddenly her comrades had started twitching as if being shot by needles, and, once they hit the ground, started writhing as if the dirt was electrified. She had taken a step, crouching to aid them, then the blasts started.
They were blinding, deafening, and seemingly everywhere. She had staggered away, bringing