The Chimera Secret (25 page)

‘We should try,’ Mary Wilkes insisted. ‘He’ll die if we don’t.’

‘He’ll probably die if we try it!’ Kurt Agry snapped. ‘We need to reassess the situation. No radios, we’ve lost two tents and several days’ supplies and
we’re one man down.’

Duran Wilkes looked up at the sergeant.

‘Not one man down,’ he replied. ‘Two.’

Ethan looked at the old man and saw him pointing out into the woods near the edge of the treeline, right where the glow from the freshly burning camp fire ended.

‘Oh no,’ Lopez uttered.

Ethan followed Sergeant Agry and his men across to where the body lay sprawled across a thick bed of damp ferns and moss.

Lieutenant Watson was lying on his front but his face stared lifelessly up at them. In the flickering firelight Ethan could see that his head had been twisted back upon itself until his spine
snapped like a twig, killing him instantly.

‘You definitely need to reassess your situation,’ Lopez said to the sergeant. ‘You’re in command.’

In a moment of terrible realization, Ethan understood what had happened.

‘It planned this,’ he said finally. ‘It took Simmons down as a distraction, to get us out of the camp so it could be destroyed.’

‘It must have attacked Simmons because he was a sentry,’ Milner said. ‘Only way through without being spotted by the other two was right through the middle.’

Jenkins nodded, and wiped droplets of fine drizzle from his face as he spoke.

‘Came from downwind of us, so if it’s some kind of wild animal it could probably home in on our scent. Hell of a thing, something that big to creep up on Simmons without him seeing
it.’

Sergeant Agry looked down at his commander’s remains, and then lifted his chin.

‘There’s nothing we can do for him or for Simmons tonight. We get our heads down and reassess our situation in the morning.’

‘Reassess our situation?’ Lopez uttered in amazement. ‘Our situation is that we’re in deep shit!’

Ethan stepped forward. ‘He’s right, Nicola. Moving in this terrain at night is suicide. We’ve got to wait for first light.’

Lopez fumed but took a breath and nodded once. Sergeant Agry said nothing as he stared down at his commander’s remains. Duran Wilkes looked across at the sergeant without sympathy.

‘Like I said, son, we shouldn’t have crossed the six-thousand-foot line. It’s onto us now and, believe me, it’s not going to let up.’

The dawn broke cold and damp and was enveloped in an eternity of silence, as though the thick veils of mist draped across the hills had trapped all sound somewhere above. Ethan
rolled out of the warmth of his sleeping bag and let the cold air caress his skin. He rubbed his face with one hand and then clambered out of his tent.

The chill air was sharp in his nose, tainted by the smell of wood smoke as Duran Wilkes tended to the flames of a meager fire in the center of the camp. Mary was gathering firewood nearby on the
edge of the treeline, Klein watching her protectively with his rifle in his grasp.

‘Any word?’

Duran looked up at Ethan and shook his head. Ethan made his way across the camp to where a tent slightly larger than the rest had been erected close to the fire, its entrance facing the warmth
of the flames. Inside, he could see Kurt Agry tending to the injured soldier, who lay comatose and silent. Ethan crouched down at the tent entrance.

‘How’s Simmons doing?’

Kurt glanced briefly at Ethan as he checked a saline drip jury-rigged to the roof spar of the tent. He shook his head.

‘Not good,’ he admitted. ‘Hard to do a proper analysis in the field, but I’m thinking multiple skull fractures, probable hemorrhaging and it’s quite likely his
neck’s broken.’

Ethan felt his guts plunge inside him as he looked at the stricken, unconscious man and knew that without a hospital and professional care he was doomed.

‘We’ve got to get him off the mountain,’ he replied. ‘There’s nothing we can do while he’s here and I’m not willing to risk his life for this
expedition. One of us could head back down and call in a helicopter.’

Kurt Agry turned to face Ethan.

‘We came here to get a job done and we’re not leaving until we’re finished.’

Kurt made his way past Ethan and out of the tent.

‘We can’t carry on with this guy on a stretcher,’ Ethan protested. ‘One false move and you’re talking about the difference between him walking again or spending the
rest of his life in a wheelchair.’

‘Simmons knew the risks.’

Ethan stared at Kurt Agry in disbelief and was joined by a sudden chorus of voices. Dana Ford and Proctor were alongside him in moments, along with Lopez.

‘He’s dying,’ Dana said. ‘He’s our priority now.’

‘Abandon the search for somebody who’s already dead,’ Lopez agreed. ‘This is about keeping your man alive.’

Kurt whirled to face them all.

‘Yes it is, and that man is my responsibility, not yours! I’ll decide how and when we get him back to civilization.’

‘The longer you wait, the greater the chance it is that we’ll have two dead bodies coming back with us,’ Lopez pointed out.

Kurt Agry barged past her as he replied. ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

‘The hell’s that supposed to mean?’

Duran Wilkes stood up from the fire when Kurt did not reply, and spoke quietly.

‘We can’t move him safely at all, whether up or down the mountain. The risk is too great to his injuries, especially his neck. Only way that boy’s going off this mountain is by
helicopter and that’s no option at all right now.’

Ethan realized the truth of Duran’s words and turned to look at the camp around them. The military radio carried by the soldiers was smashed beyond repair, as though somebody had taken a
sledgehammer to it. Many of the cellphones, the satellite phone and other radios and emergency beacons had been burned and melted in the fire that had taken down the supply tent the night
before.

The bergens were carefully cached beneath the watchful eye of Corporal Jenkins.

Ethan looked at Kurt Agry. ‘What’s your real mission here, Kurt?’

‘This is a milk-run,’ Kurt shot back. ‘It’s not a real mission at all. Riggins is only twenty miles away. We could march out of here in six fucking hours if we wanted
to.’

‘Not now you can’t,’ Ethan said, ‘and in my experience there’s no such thing as a milk-run.’

‘Your experience?’ Kurt uttered in disgust. ‘And what would that be?’

‘Lieutenant, 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, 1st Battalion, 4th Marines,’ Ethan shot back. ‘Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.’

The other soldiers looked up at Ethan with renewed interest in their eyes, but they said nothing as Kurt screwed his face up at Ethan.

‘Congratulations, you got your colors and I’ve got mine. Right now it’s not worth rat shit.’ He gestured to the tent. ‘Best option is to leave him here and pick him
up on our way out once the job’s done.’

Duran Wilkes took a pace toward Kurt and pointed at him.

‘That’s as good as a death sentence, son, and you know it. If he’s hemorrhaging then he may only have a few hours left to live.’

Kurt nodded, his features hardened by years of learning to bury emotion.

‘That’s right, so we’d better get movin’, hadn’t we?’

‘Lieutenant Watson wouldn’t have left him here,’ Lopez pointed out.

‘Lieutenant Watson is dead,’ Agry snarled. ‘I’m in command now and this is the way it’s going to be. Any of you don’t like it, you’re free to
leave.’

Duran Wilkes watched as Kurt turned his back on them and walked toward his tent. The old man shook his head as he called after the sergeant.

‘Am I the only one here who thinks that leaving this poor man to die is the wrong thing to do?’

‘No,’ Lopez cut in. ‘You’re not.’

‘Me either,’ Ethan said, facing Kurt. ‘You ever hear of the saying “No man left behind”, Kurt? Or would that be something that gets in the way of the
mission?’

‘The mission objective is my priority,’ Kurt replied as he hauled his bergen onto his back. ‘Everything else is secondary.’

‘You ever get left behind, Kurt?’ Ethan pressed, already sure of the answer.

‘You wanna stay here and baby-sit his ass, you go ahead!’ Kurt snapped, pointing directly at Ethan. ‘But we’ve got a job to do and I’m not going to let you and a
bunch of crackpot scientists stand in our way.’

‘That’s funny,’ Lopez murmured, ‘I could have sworn you were sent out here to
escort
us.’

Ethan saw Kurt hesitate and glance across at the other soldiers. They were watching their sergeant with interest, as though they had never seen him challenged in this way before. Fact was, he
probably never had been. Military troops most often dealt with their tasks using the black and white logic of mission goals. They did not often have to deal with the annoying gray area of civilian
morality and compassion.

Kurt stared out at the trees for a long moment and then back at the lonely tent stranded in the middle of a cold, desolate forest. Ethan saw the man, not the military machine, make the
decision.

‘Prepare him for movement,’ he snapped finally at the soldiers. ‘We’ll get him below the six-thousand-foot line and secure him there on one of the ranger
trails.’

Duran Wilkes nodded at Kurt as the soldiers dashed into action. ‘Relief to see you’re still a human being.’

Kurt didn’t respond. Ethan was about to say something when Mary’s voice screamed out across the camp.

‘Grandpa!’

Duran moved with surprising speed for a man his age, breaking into a low run and sweeping his rifle up into his hands as he went. Ethan followed, cleared the camp perimeter at
a sprint and leapt foliage and rotten tree trunks. Lopez appeared alongside him with a pistol in her hand, her long black ponytail flying as she hurdled through the forest.

Ethan reached Duran’s side as they smashed through thick branches that sprayed clouds of sparkling water droplets into the air.

‘Mary?!’

Duran’s voice was hoarse with the effort of running and the anxiety searing through his veins. They heard the girl’s voice shout back and moments later reached a clearing maybe a
hundred yards back in the forest.

Mary Wilkes stood near a huge fallen cedar trunk, a thick bundle of firewood under her arm as she looked at a strangely shaped branch protruding from the trunk.

Ethan and Lopez slowed at the edge of the clearing as Mary raised a hand to forestall them.

‘Watch where you step,’ she said. ‘Grandpa, you need to see this.’

The soldiers jogged up behind them from the forest as Duran carefully walked across the clearing, Ethan and Lopez following behind him.

‘Down there,’ Mary pointed ahead of them.

Ethan looked down as Duran deftly skirted the edge of a deep depression in the soft forest soil, half-concealed by rotting leaves. Ethan felt a tingle of what he could only describe as fear as
he saw the immense footprint, and two more ahead of it. The tracks led to where Mary was standing.

Lopez crouched down beside the footprint as the soldiers looked on, and pressed her hand into the soil alongside it. She whistled softly.

‘The ground’s not soft, Ethan, it’s hard, cold from the fall. Whatever made this—’

‘Must have weighed maybe six hundred pounds or more,’ Ethan finished her sentence for her. ‘I’m nearly two hundred pounds and I’m not leaving much of a mark on the
leaves, let alone the soil.’

Ethan looked up ahead to the next track and tried to walk alongside them and stretch his legs to match. After two attempts it was clear that his legs simply were not long enough to match the
stride.

‘Jesus,’ one of the soldiers muttered, ‘that thing must be ten feet tall.’

Dana and Proctor dashed breathlessly into the clearing, coming up short as they spotted the huge prints. Proctor almost laughed in disbelief as he literally dropped to his knees alongside one of
them.

‘Oh my God,’ he whispered reverentially. ‘Oh my God. Oh my God.’

Dana Ford knelt next to him and draped one arm across his shoulder.

‘This is it,’ she uttered. ‘This is the one. A new species. We’ve discovered a new species of hominid.’

‘I’ve never seen a print so clear, so fresh,’ Proctor gasped. ‘We must make casts, right now.’

‘There’s no time,’ Kurt Agry said as he marched into the clearing and cast an uninterested eye across the prints. ‘You wanted my man off this mountain, we gotta move
now.’

Ethan looked around at the clearing and then back in the direction of the camp.

‘This was where it was watching us from, last night,’ he said, and looked at Duran. ‘The one we saw.’

Duran nodded in agreement, but he was busy examining the branch of the fallen cedar with Mary. Ethan stepped up to join them, closely followed by Dana and Proctor.

‘Oh my God,’ Proctor whispered again, seemingly in some kind of trance of excitement.

Ethan looked at the branch, which protruded vertically from the main trunk about six feet. As thick as Ethan’s thigh, the branch was contorted in a strange pirouette about halfway up,
yanked around on itself until the upper half of the branch was parallel with the ground. Dense fibers of bark and wood had splintered outward and twisted the elbow of the branch, but it had not
broken or snapped.

‘What the hell is it?’ Kurt snapped as he stormed over and looked at the branch.

Duran Wilkes ran his hand gently up across the bark and then stood back from it.

‘It’s rage,’ he said.

It took a moment for Ethan to realize what he was actually looking at. The immensely strong branch had been twisted as easily as Ethan might twist a straw in his bare hands, bent sideways with
such grip that it had not snapped off or otherwise shattered.

Dana Ford stepped reverentially closer to the branch and touched it gently with one hand.

‘Stress relief,’ she said finally. ‘Like Duran said. It’s taking out its frustration about something on the tree. Do you have any idea how much force it must take to do
something like this?’

‘Why would it do it, though?’ Lopez asked, gesturing back toward the camp. ‘You think that’s why it attacked us and trashed our equipment last night?’