Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) (10 page)

Bringing up the rear as the team made its way along the stream bed, he caught a whiff of a foul odor that made his hackles rise at the same time the cat carried by the crazy Norwegian officer who was halfway up the patrol’s column let out a low growl.
 

Turning around again, as he did every few steps to keep watch behind the team, he caught sight of someone…or something…moving. It was no more than a flicker in the vivid green of the night vision goggles that could easily have been dismissed as an illusion, but Klimowicz had been doing this sort of thing too long. A surge of adrenaline heightened his senses as he tightened his grip on his weapon, his electronically aided eye sighting down the scope at the culvert where he’d seen the movement. “Contact at our six,” he whispered into his microphone as he knelt down behind a rock.
 

“What do you have?” It was the major’s voice, a whisper in his ear piece.

“I don’t know, sir. I just caught a glimpse of something…” He paused as a hair-covered face with a set of long ears peered out from the culvert. “Scratch that. It’s a damn goat.”

As if in reply, the goat, which was looking right at him, made a low
neaghh
sound.

“Yeah, fuck you, too,” he whispered to himself, imagining the big goat roasting on a spit over an open fire.
 

“Move out,” Captain Alvarez ordered.
 

“Roger.” Klimowicz got back to his feet and resumed the march. The major was pushing fast, trying to get to the rendezvous point, and they were making a lot more noise than Klimowicz would have liked.
 

The goat followed along. Klimowicz found it distracting, as the animal’s movement drew his attention as he tried to scan the landscape behind them.
 

The cat growled again.

“Down!”

At Alvarez’s whispered command, Klimowicz and the others silently sank to the ground, kneeling or prone, the muzzles of their weapons pointing outward, covering the approaches to the patrol’s location. His attention was focused on their rear, but all he could see was the goat, which was still ambling toward him.

The cat growled again, louder this time, the sound sending a chill through Klimowicz’s gut. He’d never heard a cat do that before.
 

“Anybody see anything?” It was the major.
 

Everyone whispered a chorus of
Negative
, except for Klimowicz. “Just the stupid goat.”

“How big is it?”
 

The question caught Klimowicz by surprise. “I don’t know, sir. It’s hard to tell, but pretty big. A lot bigger than the little ones like you’d see in a petting zoo, but not as big as some I’ve seen.”

The goat stopped to peer at him, let out another
neaghh
, then kept on coming. The cat was going crazy.
They’re going to hear that beast’s yowling all the way in Tehran
, he thought.
So much for sound discipline
.

“Take it out!”
 

“You sure, sir?” He wouldn’t have questioned the order had it come from Alvarez, but the major had struck him as not being terribly field-savvy. The Norwegian, Stoltenberg, had been right. Getting shot a couple times didn’t prove that you knew what you were about in combat, only that the other guy got the drop on you. “That’s going to really wake up the neighborhood.”

“Kill the goddamn thing, sergeant!”

“Roger that.” The goat was less than a dozen feet away now and still coming. He put the crosshairs of his sight right between the goat’s eyes, trying to hold his aim steady as the animal moved toward him. “Sorry, little buddy.”

With his vision focused through the limited field of view of the sight, he never saw the stinger-tipped tentacle emerge from the goat’s belly. It whipped forward, the six inch needle sinking into his neck before he could pull the trigger.
 

“Contact!” Klimowicz heard the shout, followed by a volley of gunfire, but the only thing that mattered was the burning agony that began to consume his body as if he were being slowly coated in molten metal. He felt blood pouring through his fingers as he pressed his hand to the wound in his neck, and saw the shadows of the other men on the team coming to his aid. He opened his mouth to speak, to scream, but all that came out was blood.
 

***

“He’s gone, sir.”

“Shit,” Jack hissed as the medic closed the dead man’s eyes.
 

“The thing’s run off.” Alvarez reached down and angrily yanked one of the dog tags from Klimowicz. “You should have warned us they could do that.
Sir
. That little bit of intel could have saved his life.”

“I’ve never seen them do this before,” Jack said. “It’s always been a theory, but the only thing we’ve ever seen them mimic was human beings.”

“Well, I guess now we know they mimic goats pretty well, too.”

“Leave his body here,” Jack said, taking a long look at Klimowicz, committing his face to memory. “We’ll pick him up on the way back.”

“Yes,
sir
.” Alvarez stalked off, whispering orders to his men. Like ghosts in the dark, they got to their feet and started moving out.

“That was the first time I have seen one.” Stoltenberg stood next to Jack. In the carrier on his back, Lurva meowed as she turned back and forth in her carrier. She’d stopped growling as soon as the harvester had run off. Reverting to its natural form, it disappeared back the way they had come, its insectile body moving with blinding speed through the rocks. They’d fired at it, but there had been no sign of blood on the ground. “Devilish things.”

“That was nothing,” Halvorsen said. “We were very lucky.”

“Tell that to him,” Jack said, nodding at Klimowicz’s body. Keying his mic, he said, “If you guys see anything else that moves before we get to the rendezvous point, shoot first and ask questions later.”
 

***

They were being followed. The team had seen flashes of movement on the rocky slopes above them, but nothing they could shoot at and hope to hit. Lurva was restless, but she wasn’t carrying on as she had when the harvester disguised as a goat had made its appearance.
 

“I can’t believe this isn’t a trap,” Alvarez said to Jack without using the radio. “We’re surrounded, and the enemy holds all the high ground.”

“If they really wanted to kill us, they could have done it a dozen times over,” Jack told him. “I think that’s why they killed Klimowicz. Just to let us know that they could.”

Alvarez spat something in Spanish.
 

A warning came over the radio from the man at the head of the patrol. “Contact forward!”

Everyone dropped to the ground, weapons at the ready.
 

“Report,” Jack said.

“I’ve got one man, or what looks like a man, standing in the middle of the stream bed at the rendezvous point, maybe fifty meters ahead.”

“Understood. Alvarez, you and your men hold here and cover us.” Turning to Halvorsen and Stoltenberg, Jack said, “You two come with me. I want to see what Lurva makes of whoever’s waiting for us.”

“I’d rather we check first with a few rounds from my rifle.” Stoltenberg was looking at the lone figure through his rifle sights.

“Not this time. Let’s go.”

Jack led the way along the stream bed. Even in the monochromatic light of the night vision goggles, he could see that whoever it was looked haggard and unkempt. He was wearing a torn uniform that bore dark stains. He studied the face as he drew closer.

It wasn’t Vijay.
 

“Kiran?” He called out the name softly, and the man flinched as if he’d been struck.
 

“Jack,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Is that you?” He took a halting step forward.

“Stay there. Don’t move.”

Kiran stopped and raised his hands. Jack was close enough now to see his friend’s face clearly. He was terrified. Jack motioned for Stoltenberg to come forward. The big Norwegian moved up on one side of Jack as Halvorsen came up on the other, both their weapons trained on Kiran. If it really was Kiran.

Leaning over, Jack peered at Lurva in her backpack carrier and found her staring back at him. She was still uneasy, but only meowed at him. He poked a couple fingers through the fabric slats and she rubbed her muzzle against them. “Good girl,” he whispered. Then, to Kiran, he said, “Walk toward us slowly.”
 

With a heavy limp, Kiran limped toward them. He stumbled a few times, and kept glancing up at the high ground above them.

“Oh, God, Jack, it’s so good to see you!” Kiran embraced him, tremors of fear running through his body. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Where’s Vijay? He spoke to me on the radio. We’ve got to take him back, too.”

“He’s dead,” Kiran said as he let go of Jack. “He was badly injured when the plane crashed, and probably would have died, anyway. But they killed him. They…they
ate
him, Jack. They ate his head, then the rest of him. Right in front of me. Then they ate the others.” Tears were streaming down his cheeks. “I’m the only one they left alive. What you spoke to was one of
them
.”

“Jesus, Kiran, I’m so sorry.”

“Major,” Alvarez said over the radio, his voice tight. “We just got a heads-up over the satcom that company’s coming. Some Iranian fighters that were buzzing around up north are headed our way.”

“Come on.” Jack took Kiran by one arm while Halvorsen took the other. Stoltenberg covered their backs. “Let’s haul ass back to the Osprey and get the hell out of here.”

THREE KEYS

Once back on the ground at Incirlik, Alvarez and his team, carrying the bag containing Klimowicz’s body, were first out of the plane, stepping into the darkness without a single word to Jack. Stoltenberg made a somber farewell before taking Lurva and the two other Norwegian soldiers with him to return home aboard the C-130 that had brought them here.

Terje remained, with orders to act as a liaison with the Americans to learn all he could about how to defeat the harvesters and send that vital information back to Norway.
 

The two of them escorted Kiran, who had been patched up by the medic on Alvarez’s team, to a C-17 transport that was waiting to take them to the States. The base commander was waiting for Jack, and in a voice that could be heard all the way to the operations building, described what an idiot he had been. Iranian F-4 fighters had pursued the Osprey to the border as it fled back into Turkey, turning back at the last second rather than going up against half a squadron of Turkish F-16s. Since then, the base commander had informed Jack, the Turks had been forced to put every available fighter in the air to ward off the growing swarm of Iranian fighters probing into Turkish airspace.

From there, the C-17 made the long flight to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, where the three men boarded a Black Hawk that took them to the SEAL-2 facility.
 

The view during the flight was sobering. The city of Omaha was wreathed in flames, and tens of thousands of cars choked I-80 as people tried to flee the city.
 

When they set down at SEAL-2, Naomi was there waiting for him, and had hugged him so hard that he thought his ribs would break.
 

Her welcome home kiss was interrupted by Carl, who after a very perfunctory greeting dragged them all into a conference room, ignoring Jack’s protestations that he hadn’t even had a chance to shower since he’d left Norway and that Kiran should be sent to the infirmary to rest.

“There’s time for that later,” he’d growled before ushering them into the room where Renee was already waiting. She had time to give Jack a hug before Carl told everyone to sit down.

Turning to Jack, he said, “You almost started a war. Do you know that?”

“You know something,” Jack said, feeling a flush of heat rising up his neck, “I’m getting goddamn tired of people telling me I fucked up when this mission was such a cluster from the get go. We were told nothing —
nothing
— other than to go to this little burg in Turkey and wait for someone to call us on the radio and follow their instructions. Oh, and that I had full operational discretion. That was it. What if I’d been a good little boy and not gone across the border? Then we wouldn’t have Kiran. Would that have made you happy?”

“No, but you should have called in for clearance and had some backup lined up before you went in. The Iranians are panicked about the nukes the Russians lit off right along their border to the north and they’re seeing this whole disaster as a deception cooked up by the Great Satan. Their relations with us, and by extension the Turks, are as bad as they were after the fall of the Shah.” He shook his head. “No, they’re worse, because they’re blaming us for the harvester outbreaks that have started popping up in their country.”

Jack leaned forward. “Fine. Shoot me. And tell the Army they can take their commission and shove it.”

“They just might. I’ve had three calls from guys with stars on their shoulders threatening to send you to a court martial. You…”

“Carl, I think Jack got the message,” Naomi interrupted, putting a hand on Jack’s shoulder and gently but firmly easing him back. “The important thing is that the mission was successful. Jack got Kiran out. That’s far more important in the long run than whether the Iranians got their noses bent out of shape.”

“Tell that to the president,” Carl snapped. “Or, better yet, the vice president, who ripped off my right butt cheek over this.”

“Join the crowd,” Jack murmured.

“Stop it!” Naomi glared at each of them in turn. “We don’t have time for this. If you want to throw sand in each other’s faces, go ahead, but do it somewhere else.”

Before either man could say anything more, the keypad on the secure door beeped, and after the lock clicked open Howard Morgan came in, closing the door behind him. His expression was bleak.
 

Carl shot him a glare. “And where have you been? You’re late.”

“I got an emergency call in the communications center,” Morgan said as he took the seat to Carl’s left. “We just lost SEAL-12 outside of Chicago.”