Forged From Ash (26 page)

“You must really want to keep your prisoners under wraps,” Cole mused. “Who have you got inside?”

The guard clamped his mouth shut, and when Cole twisted his arm again, he turned red with the effort to resist.

“Easy,” Frank warned. “He’ll try to…”

Before he could be stopped, the guard let out a bellowing cry of pain that lasted less than a second before Cole silenced it by stomping his heel against the man’s temple.

“He’ll try to draw attention to us,” Frank said in an aggravated tone.

“Take a look around, and see if anyone’s headed this way. What’s that sound?”

Frank opened his hand to reveal the radio he’d taken from the guard. It was currently squawking with chopped syllables interspersed between bursts of static. When Cole held out his hand, Frank tossed the radio to him. “I’ll climb to higher ground and see what I can see,” Frank said.

“You do that, and I’ll see what this guy has for us.” Even though the guard was lying completely still, Cole gripped his halberd and willed the forked end to open like a crude set of scissors. He then drove that end of the spear into the dirt so both tines of the fork dug in on either side of the guard’s head to pin it to the ground. With his other hand, Cole patted down the Vigilant’s pockets.

Apart from a small arsenal of handguns and knives, the guard didn’t have much to offer. When he discovered a set of three keys, Cole held them up to examine them. They looked like they fit into standard door locks and one padlock, so he didn’t get his hopes up as far as being able to gain full access to a prison. Even so, he pocketed the keys as well as one of the handguns. The remaining weapons were tossed into the trees before Cole searched the guy one last time. The bundle of papers he found was about the size of a postcard and folded up so tightly that he hadn’t felt it when he’d first patted the pockets stitched into the legs of the guard’s fatigues. He removed the bundle now and unfolded the papers.

“Perimeter Two report in,” said a crackling voice through the radio. Until now, the few words Cole had been able to understand from the radio were disconnected and choppy. When he heard the first complete sentence, Cole brought the radio to his mouth and hesitated before responding. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that what he’d heard before hadn’t been words clipped due to poor reception but a code of some kind. Having those words shift out of code and into something anyone could understand wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

“There’s movement from the canyon,” Frank announced. “The one guard I saw before is headed this way, and another is climbing up from below.”

Cole had guessed there might be reinforcements coming and wasn’t at all happy about being right. “How soon before they get here?” he asked.

“Won’t be long. They’re moving quickly.”

“Any vehicles?”

“No, but they’re headed in this direction. I wonder,” the Squam added with a layer of sarcasm that Cole wouldn’t have thought possible from reptilian vocal chords, “how they found out where we are?”

“They may know where to look,” Cole said, “but they don’t know what they’re going to find.” He picked up the radio, pressed the side button and said, “This is Perimeter Two reporting in.”

If the Vigilant on the other end of the line was expecting code, Cole’s response would be like flicking a lit match onto a pile of oily rags. It wasn’t long before Frank called down from the trees again.

“Another one’s coming from the bottom of the canyon. The others are closing in faster.”

“All right,” Cole said. “Follow my lead, and if we get separated, meet me down below.”

“I’m assuming you mean the floor of the canyon instead of an early grave,” Frank said.

“Whatever works for you.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

C
ole dragged the unconscious guard a few yards into a small clearing so he could be more easily found. Frank jumped down from his tree to approach him. “The first one will be here soon,” the Squam said. “Come here.”

“We need to split up,” Cole told him. “Take them out as soon as…what are you doing?”

Frank swiped a finger beneath his eye as if it had been irritated by dust. He was now extending that leathery digit toward Cole’s face. “Just stand still.”

Before he could protest again, Cole felt Frank’s scaly touch brush against his cheek just below his eye. “What is that?” he groaned as he felt moisture smear onto his skin.

“You know how my people hunt. This will help.”

“Oh! We made something kind of like this, but they were drops using some of that stuff from your eyes.”

“Taken from the bodies of those slain by Skinners in Florida. Since you were not one of those Skinners, I am putting that aside and helping you now. Don’t get any of this in your eyes, though. Just let it drift up from where I put it. The effect won’t be as drastic, but it should help.”

Cole had tried the eye drops created from Squam optical fluids personally. There were always a few seconds of burning followed by a prolonged period of seeing the world as smoky colors and moving shades. After what Frank had done to him, Cole wondered if his exposure to those drops had spoiled him for whatever was supposed to happen now. If so, he was still coming out ahead compared to the Skinner who’d blinded himself while creating the drops.

Then, Cole felt a mild itching in his eyes. When he reached up to rub them, Frank grabbed his hand to stop it.

“Leave it,” Frank said.

It wasn’t long before the itch faded and Cole’s vision took on a vague shimmer. The effect was more noticeable when he moved his eyes from side to side, and bleary afterimages were left behind like misty trails.

“You’ll see different colors,” Frank explained. “Most of the plants and native animals should be similar, but human scents will stand out from the rest. Other scents not indigenous to these woods will stand out as well.”

“Doesn’t sound like much,” Cole said.

“More than you had before.”

“True. Now remember, these guys are armed to the teeth and crazy, so don’t pull any punches.”

“You’re the one who got knocked around.”

Cole reached up to feel the swollen portion of his face and a small cut from his fight with the guard. “I was just getting warmed up.”

He and Frank discussed as much strategy they could in the short amount of time they had. Their plan was simple and relied heavily on being underestimated by the rest of the men in that prison. Since he hadn’t even laid eyes on the prison yet, Cole had his doubts about making it out of those woods in one piece.

After Frank had dropped to all fours, pressed his belly to the ground and scurried through a dense section of bushes, Cole hunkered down and gave his eyes some time to adjust to the fumes that were drifting up into them. The fluid Frank had smeared on his cheek felt cool on his skin although his vision was partially blurred by the afterimages he was seeing. There were colors and textures imprinted upon the air that reminded him of the times he’d used the Skinner-created eye drops. Soon, he saw shades that didn’t belong with the others. He couldn’t decipher it all, but the discrepancies were as easy to pick out as a few words written in Chinese embedded in a page of hieroglyphics.

Cole scrunched down as far as he could, gripping the halberd in both hands to drive its thorns deep into his palms.

The movement he spotted between two trees about twenty yards away was so subtle that he would never have seen it if not for the colors he’d picked out drifting over that spot. A few seconds later, more of the inconsistent colors wafted through the air to lead his gaze to a patch of green that moved without disturbing a single leaf. Cole reached out with the forked end of the halberd to shake one of the bushes to his right. He made a rustling sound that was just loud enough to be heard and then narrowed his eyes so he could focus on any response that followed.

The movement stopped, and the vague shape he’d picked out disappeared. The source of the color that had caught his attention drew closer like a torch that could only be tracked by smoke drifting up from an invisible flame. Cole reduced his breathing to a trickle of air. His body remained perfectly still as the unseen inconsistency drew ever closer.

He heard something brush against the dirt.

A portion of light between the lowest branches of another tree was blocked.

Cole had no idea how anything could move that stealthily, but he knew it was coming his way. Instinct more than anything else told him when the unseen other was close enough. When Cole felt tension crackle against his skin, he lunged forward.

For the first few moments of his charge, Cole thought he might stomp through some bushes, announce where he was to the world and wind up getting picked off by someone who wasn’t such a moron. Instead, he chalked up another victory for blind instinct when he cleared a tangle of branches and rammed into a solid form that looked like something spat out from the woods themselves. Instead of anything supernatural, however, Cole found a person wrapped from head to toe in loosely fitted clothing with leaves and branches stuck to a canvas web flowing down from a military helmet.

Cole’s blade knocked against the long barrel of a rifle, angling it away from him until both weapons grated against each other. A face covered in black, green and brown paint scowled at him until the stock of the other man’s rifle pounded against Cole’s ribs. Cole absorbed a few more blows while positioning his weapon so the rifle was wedged between the tines of its forked end. He then leaned all of his weight behind the halberd in an attempt to leverage the rifle away from its owner.

Once he was closer to the painted face, Cole could discern some features beneath the layers of camouflage. Unfortunately, he was also close enough for the rifle’s owner to snap their head forward to crack it against Cole’s nose. Grunting as pain stabbed through his face, Cole twisted the halberd around to pound the side of the blade flat against the guard’s temple. Not only did that make a satisfying thump, but something dropped from the guard’s ear.

“Perimeter One, respond,” said a voice through the little earpiece that had been knocked loose.

“What kind of defenses are in that prison?” Cole asked. When he didn’t get a reply, he angled the halberd so some of the thorns on its grip could rake against the other person’s cheek.

“You’re dead,” the camouflaged soldier said in a distinctly feminine voice. “Both of you.”

So the guards already knew how many they were up against. That wasn’t good.

Positioning one of the longer thorns close to her eye, Cole said, “Answer the call and give the all clear.”

“I’ll need that,” she said while nodding toward the fallen earpiece.

Cole looked over to the little device, which gave the guard enough of an opportunity to sink a sharp jab into his stomach, kick him in the thigh and break away from him. Finding himself on one knee after the quick attack, Cole was certain her kick had been meant for a much more sensitive part of his anatomy. The jab was even deadlier than he’d first thought since it had been made with a small blade. A warm trickle of blood flowed from that spot, followed by the rush of healing serum in his body speeding to close the wound.

Even though she was directly in front of him, the guard’s loose-fitted clothing and extensive camouflage made it difficult for Cole to get a firm grasp of just how muscular she was or what other weapons she might be carrying. “That’s a Skinner weapon,” she said while glancing at the halberd in Cole’s hand.

“And that,” Cole replied while nodding toward the knife she’d scooped up off the ground, “is a letter opener,” Cole replied. “Wanna bet which of our weapons is better suited for this fight?”
“Doesn’t matter. It won’t be just you and me fighting.”

“How many more are we talking about?”

She didn’t even start to get a word out before part of the trees behind her flowed outward to grab her around the neck. Frank’s scales were so perfectly attuned to the color of the guard’s camo that his yellow eyes seemed to float in space just behind and to the side of her head. The guard reached up to grab the arm encircling her neck and gouged Frank’s elbow with a wild stab from the little blade clenched in her fist. But the Squam had gotten too close and had sunk his grip in too deep for her to do much against it. In a matter of seconds, Cole could see the whites of her eyes as they rolled up into her head and she went limp in Frank’s grasp.

“There are others coming,” Frank said as he lowered the guard to the ground. “But this one was the closest.”

“Take that rifle,” Cole said.

Frank looked down at the long rifle the guard had been carrying as if it was some form of alien life. “I am not a very good shot.”

“Doesn’t matter. Just fire down toward the rest of those guys and get close enough to make them nervous. If you actually hit anyone, that’s a bonus. And unscrew that suppressor from the barrel. We want to make as much noise as possible.” Without waiting around for Frank carry out his orders, Cole hurried back to the spot where he’d left the Brown Precision Tactical. He scooped up the rifle and retraced his steps toward the spot where he and the camouflaged sniper had traded blows. Frank had already dragged the woman’s body into some bushes before disappearing into the trees once again. Instead of trying to find the Squam, Cole picked his way down a ridge to the north and waited for his partner to announce himself. He didn’t have to wait long.

A high caliber shot cracked through the air, causing a few distant voices to bark orders back and forth. Cole followed the sounds of those other voices, which led him further along an anorexic footpath which took him deeper into the trees. He wanted to move faster, but the wavy scent smears drifting in front of his eyes had suddenly thinned out to almost nothing. When he pushed through the next layer of low-hanging branches, Cole almost stepped into empty air.

Pulling in a sharp breath, he stopped and dug his front foot into the ground. If he’d been going any faster, his heel would have scraped right over the small lip of rock, and the rest of him would have fallen at least a hundred feet to a bed of logs and boulders below. Once he was no longer in danger of skidding over the edge, Cole took a moment to study Tensleep Canyon.