Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) (30 page)

Morgan glared at her. “Is that all, Agent Boisson?”

“For now, Mr. Morgan. But I’d appreciate it if Ms. Petrovsky would facilitate our search of your personnel records for information on Kelso. And we’ll also obviously keep digging for any information on whatever might have been in your torched lab. You’d better hope we don’t find anything.”

* * *

The FBI agents were pleasant enough, but Naomi didn’t make the mistake of thinking they were her friends. Not now.
 

She wasn’t sure where she was, because they had whisked her away from Morgan Pharmaceuticals in a van that didn’t have any windows in the back. They’d driven for over an hour, taking a lot of turns. When the van stopped and they let her out, she found that the van was parked in the garage of a nice, if bland, three bedroom house. They wouldn’t let her near the windows in the front, although she could move about as she wished through the rear part of the house. The windows of the bedrooms were masked by a six foot wall that went all the way around the back of the property.
 

The one redeeming feature was that she was free to wander into the back yard, where there was a covered porch and a pool. The brick wall and the lack of any buildings close by that were tall enough to see over into the yard made sure that any prying eyes couldn’t see inside.
 

Of course, she couldn’t see out, either.

She had Alexander and Koshka with her, and one of the four agents had been accommodating to their unexpected feline guests by going out to get a litter box and some food for them.
 

She had sat in complete silence during the ride here, wondering what was going to happen. She felt as if she’d betrayed Carl and the others. Making her deal with Morgan had been a necessary evil, but that didn’t help lift the burden from her soul. She’d placed Carl in a terrible position, and fervently hoped that it wouldn’t further damage his career.

And then there was Jack. She was worried to death about him. She had tried calling him all morning before the FBI raid, but all she’d gotten was a female voice speaking English with a Russian accent, telling her that the number was unavailable.

Now she didn’t even have her phone. The FBI agents “protecting” her had confiscated it. They’d brought her laptop along from the office, but had made it clear that she wouldn’t be allowed to use it. One of the agents was in one of the bedrooms, the door closed, and she suspected he was trying to hack into it to see what incriminating evidence it might contain.

She made it through a full thirty minutes from the time they’d arrived until she felt as if she were going to explode. She couldn’t just sit here. She had to do something.
 

“Agent Garcia,” she asked, “I need to call Jack Dawson.”

The head of her protective detail, a stocky Hispanic man in his late twenties, shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t let you make any calls at this time.” The look on his face made it clear that he wasn’t about to brook any argument.

“Fine, then. Could you make a call for me?” Garcia frowned, and Naomi sensed an opening. “Listen, it’s to someone who works at the Bureau’s headquarters in D.C., Renee Vintner. Maybe you’ve heard of her?”

Garcia shook his head, unimpressed.

“Look, could you just give her a call and ask her to track down Jack for me. He’s my fiancé, and I’m worried sick about him. Renee can find him.” She stared at Garcia, who’s expression hadn’t changed a bit. “Please?”

“Where does she work?”

“She’s been reassigned to the Intelligence Directorate. Her phone number is…”

Garcia held up a hand and shook his head. Then he turned away, pulling his phone out of his jacket. He wandered into the kitchen, and she heard him speaking quietly for a few minutes.
 

He reappeared, a chastened look on his face. He handed the phone to Naomi.

“Yes? Renee?”

“Naomi?” Renee was nearly shouting into the phone. “Jesus Christ, woman, turn on the news!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The open field at the center of the village of Ulan-Erg had become a killing ground as the harvesters swarmed over the Russian paratroopers. Jack forced down his guilt at falling for the harvesters’ feint, using the cats to draw the humans’ attention to the western side before they made their main attack from the opposite direction.
 

Mikhailov had no choice but to commit the battalion’s tiny reserve of twenty men. With a roar that briefly rose above the sound of gunfire, shrieks and shouts, the troops of the reserve, guns blazing, crashed into the mass of harvesters on the eastern side of the perimeter.
 

Jack watched them through the thermal sight on the shotgun, feeling helpless and useless. He fired at a harvester that vaulted over the human line, and the night was again torn by a living bonfire as the thing burst into flame. Mikhailov pumped a round of Dragon’s Breath into another nightmare shape, and its brethren leaped aside to avoid a similar fate. He, Jack, and Rudenko used their shotguns to good effect, picking off harvesters that broke through. In short order, the darkness had been peeled away by the light of the creatures’ blazing pyres.

The harvesters changed tactics and began to snatch soldiers away from the line, dragging them away into the darkness. A few of the men screamed in terror, but most cursed and fought, blasting away at their opponents at point blank range with their rifles or stabbing at them with knives. Mikhailov shot a few of the snatching harvesters, but the things were so fast that they quickly escaped beyond the short range of the Dragon’s Breath rounds. Some of the creatures that had dragged men away suddenly exploded, and Jack realized that the soldiers must have triggered grenades, killing their attackers along with themselves.

He heard Rudenko bellow, then felt himself flying through the air. Slamming into the cold mud, he rolled over onto his back just in time to see Rudenko blast a harvester at point blank range. The big NCO had knocked Jack aside just in time. The harvester’s stinger landed inches from his face, and he rolled away as its flaming corpse collapsed beside him.
 

What shocked Jack was that this harvester had come from behind him, from the western side of the perimeter where Kuybishev was leading the battle.
 

The cats that had been swirling around them in a mixture of terror and rage converged on another harvester that had somehow vaulted past the defensive line. Jack had noticed that most of them were as big as Alexander, a Siberian cat who weighed just over twenty pounds, and some were bigger. He wasn’t sure how many of them there were, but they swarmed over the creature in a snarling mass of fangs and claws. Jack doubted they could kill it, but there was no question the harvester was out of the fight for the moment as it collapsed to the ground under the weight of the feline assault.

“I change my mind about cats,” Rudenko growled as he loaded a fresh magazine into his shotgun. “If we live through this, I will get one. Maybe ten.”
 

Drawing his pistol, Rudenko stepped forward. Taking careful aim at the thing’s thorax, he fired. The cats darted away from the boom and flash of the gun. The harvester convulsed once, then lay still, a hole as big around as Jack’s thumb in its chest and a fist-sized exit wound out the back.

After a moment of blind panic, the cats seemed to again find their rage and attacked a group of harvesters that had pinned several soldiers to the ground.

Jack brought the thermal sight to his eye, but instantly wished he hadn’t. It was clear they were losing. The Russians were fighting like madmen, but once the harvesters got in close, it was no contest. They were natural killing machines, just like sharks and killer whales were in their ocean domain. If Kuybishev’s men had been armed with the right weapons, the story would have been very different. But there was no question in Jack’s mind of the final outcome of this battle.
 

He swept his shotgun in an arc, taking in the carnage around him. As he looked to the northeast, he stopped: more figures were approaching, but they didn’t look like harvesters. They looked like humans.

“Rudenko! There’s a bridge northeast of town, isn’t there?”

“
Da!
Polkovnik
Kuybishev dropped a platoon there to hold it.” He paused as he fired his shotgun again at a harvester loping toward them.
 

Jack was shocked to see the thing leap out of the way, anticipating the shot. Rudenko had to fire twice more before he hit the thing. It was so close by then that he and Jack had to back away to avoid being burned.

“Shit! They’re learning fast!” He pointed toward the northeast. “I think the platoon from the bridge is coming. Look!”
 

He held up the shotgun and Rudenko took it, peering through the sight. “Da, I see.” Rudenko dialed up the magnification and stared through the eyepiece.

He gave it back to Jack, and in the light of burning harvesters and muzzle flashes from the guns of the surviving Russian soldiers, Jack could see the horrified look on the big man’s face.

Bringing the shotgun back up to his shoulder, Jack looked again through the sight at the approaching soldiers. He didn’t see it before, because they were too far away, but now he could clearly make out their faces in the scope. While the shapes were right, their thermal profile wasn’t.
 

The men running toward them weren’t human.

* * *

Kuybishev fought alongside his men, leading by example. There was no finesse in this battle, no need for orders or thought. There was only killing and dying. He had little time for reflection as he blasted away at the nightmare creatures that savaged his men, but images of the battles he had fought in Chechnya came to him, triggered by the screams and gunfire, the smell of blood and gunpowder smoke. As horrific as those battles had been, he would have gladly traded his right arm to again be fighting the Chechens, rather than these things. The Chechens showed no mercy, but at least once they finished with you, you were dead. With these harvester creatures, who could take the shape of any man or woman, who knew what evil could be done in someone’s name?
 

While few would have ever guessed it, Kuybishev was a deeply religious man, to the point of being superstitious, and the thought that something could steal his body made him wonder if it could also steal his soul. It would not be getting a bargain, by any means, for Kuybishev knew that there was no chance he would ever pass through the gates of Heaven, but it was all he had to offer. And the thought of his soul in the claws of one of these things frightened him far more than the prospect of a violent death.

Something whipped against his right arm. Dropping the rifle to dangle on its sling, he snatched at it with his right hand and brought up the knife he’d been holding in his left. With a savage slash, he cut the massive stinger from the tentacle-like umbilical that, somewhere in the madness around him, was tied to a harvester.

He heard the creature scream, and a glistening shadow turned toward him from where it had been tearing one of his soldiers to pieces. Grabbing up his rifle, he shoved the muzzle into its open jaws and pulled the trigger, blowing the back of its skull off.

Claws grabbed him around the neck, yanking him backward. Instead of resisting, he pushed as hard as he could with his legs, fighting for purchase in the cold muck. Throwing his attacker off balance, he twisted his body to the right, jamming the blade of the knife in his left hand into the harvester’s thorax. He was sickened by the slimy feel of the soft malleable flesh as his hand sunk into it, but the tip of the blade bit deep into the creature.
 

With an ear-splitting squeal, the thing released him. But instead of trying to escape, he wrenched the knife free before forcing the creature, which was already off-balance, onto its back. Using the momentum of the fall and the weight of his body, he drove the knife up to the hilt in the thing’s chest, using his left elbow to deflect the pod that held the creature’s devilish arsenal.
 

The thing went still as he felt a gush of something warm over his hand. The smell was horrific, even worse than the already pungent reek of the creatures, and Kuybishev involuntarily retched.

Ignoring his heaving stomach, he scrabbled to his feet. Planting a foot on the dead thing’s chest, he wrenched loose his knife.

“
Polkovnik!
”

Kuybishev looked at the soldier who’d called him, and was pointing off to the northeast.
 

“The platoon from the bridge is coming!”

“
Nakonets
,” Kuybishev breathed. “Finally.” When it had become clear that they were grossly outmatched here, he had called the platoon leader over the radio and ordered him to join the rest of the battalion. It had taken far longer than it should have for them to get here.
Perhaps they, too, ran into a bit of trouble
, he thought. No matter. It was something he would sort out later with the platoon leader, if he survived.
 

The platoon, approaching at a fast trot, spread out on a line, their rifles raised.
 

“Get down!” Kuybishev bellowed. He didn’t want his men cut down by friendly fire. He cursed the platoon leader’s stupidity. Then again, in this situation, there were precious few alternatives for them to fire on the harvesters without putting the men on this side of the line in harm’s way. “Down!”

The men around Kuybishev knelt or dove down on the ground as best they could, although many decided to take the chance of being shot as they stood, grappling with the beasts.
 

The soldiers of the platoon opened fire, and the harvesters, taken by surprise, whirled to face this new threat. Several of them were cut down instantly, others were wounded and maimed. Some of Kuybishev’s men died, hit by bullets from their comrades. It was tragic, but there were worse ways to die, as he knew all too well.

Firing on full automatic, Kuybishev knew that the platoon’s ammunition would be depleted quickly. But if they didn’t break the harvesters now, it wouldn’t matter.