Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy (36 page)

“Your friend, the aborigine, headed out to the...library. He wrote you off. He and Steuben left two hours before dawn this morning.”

“Why didn’t they—”

“We’re to eliminate any of those things that return here,” Peaslee replied, cutting Joe off.

“What?”

“The others, the things from the library. They get into people. Take them over. Now they know. They know about DELTA GREEN, about everything. It was all true, all along. I saw it.” Peaslee’s dark eyes held secrets behind them, like a poorly constructed dam bulging with rushing water.

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, really. But I was there, in the past. They took me. I saw...them. I
was
them.”

Camp’s mind tried to encompass all the facts which suddenly assaulted his mind, and failed. Nothing made any sense. Perhaps he had gone mad. If it were so, nothing he did mattered anyway. What could you do but comply when your mind turned against you?

“I have to go after them.” Joe stood and slung his pack over his shoulder. He checked the web belt for magazines, looped it over his shoulder, cross-strapped the Sten around his sickly chest (had friends once called him barrel chested?) and searched several bags for rations. Finding them, he stood and faced Peaslee, whose eyes held indifference.

“No. We have to wait,” Peaslee offered serenely, but made no move to stop him.

“Why?”

“They told me to. They knew all this. When I was there, back there...back then, they told me to wait two days after I was released. I would...see something then. They told me not to go out to the site in the desert. They said something...bad...was going to happen. They said they had to...correct something. Change something near a...crux. It doesn’t make any sense, I know...”

Camp trotted out of the cave into the boiling sun before Peaslee could react. The little man did not pursue and Joe didn’t look back. He skittered down the face of the mountain in a barely controlled fall. Joe headed off into the desert to the north, towards where the lanterns had gone before. Across the sea of rock and sand, out in the wastes, where old Muluwari claimed the Nulla made its home in the earth.

Joe Camp found belief and fear fluttering in his chest, which had held only cold, hard, dead facts before. These new feelings intertwined to form some perfect basis of will, which moved him forward despite the heat. He stumbled north into the desert like a madman. Or a corpse.

From the safety of the lip of the cave, Wingate Peaslee watched with near sunblind eyes as Joe Camp became a dwindling dot on the northern horizon. A shifting black speck in a sea of bright grey and tan.

“Just like they said he would,” he mumbled to himself, and turned to the coolness of the black.

“What’s the word on the teams?” Wild Bill demanded, slamming the tiny humidor shut with a beefy, squat-fingered hand. Martin Cook had just entered with a clutch of papers. The fat man waddled around the desk slowly.

“No word yet, Bill,” Cook replied blank-faced, as he sank into the comfort of his favorite chair. Behind him, dim rays of sunlight poured through the cracks in the sandbag-filled window.

“Cornwall shucked us, Martin. We’ve been screwed.” Donovan leaned forward in the chair and placed both hands on his head. From outside the din of traffic could be heard. The two old men sat for a time in silence and then Cook leaned forward.

“I don’t think that’s the case, sir.”

“Why’s that?” Donovan did not look up, only slicked his hair back with the flat of his palm while looking at the floor.

“We have indications from the other British sections that PISCES has lost its team in Australia as well,” Cook stated plainly.

“What?” Donovan glanced up for the first time in minutes.

“Menzies informed us less than a day ago that Cornwall had called on him for some men. To go to Australia. To perform a certain task Menzies would not detail.”

“This is in addition to the PISCES men Menzies informed us were traveling to Darwin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank God Menzies has some sense of honor. Shit. If we only had that information sooner!” Donovan continued his vigil, head downcast, elbows on his knees, eyes searching the fantastic patterns on the Indian rug.

“Whatever happened, happened to both teams, PISCES and us, sir. Regardless of motive, we are up against something which knows exactly what is going on and what is going to
happen—before
we do.” Cook spun his chair and looked at the imposing mass of sandbags at his window.

“Yeah. You’re right. This can either be divisive, or bring the groups together...“

“Our new crop of freshly debriefed men for the DG unit are on their way here. We just got word on that too.”

“Who the hell’s left to debrief them?” Donovan laughed.

Cook spun his chair back. “Stillman, the wounded one, sir? The specialist from the second raid?”

“Oh yeah, Stillman. He’s back in the States then?”

“Yes, sir, in Virginia. Teaching.”

Donovan looked up and then at his hands. “More men,” he said hollowly. “This DELTA GREEN thing got out of hand pretty damn fast.”

“Yes, sir.”

The clock chimed and both men looked up at its silver face, marveling at the low, perfect sound it produced. When Cook looked back, Donovan was looking towards the shelves. His eyes were far away.

“The worst thing is, everyone thinks I have only one war to worry about. The fucking Axis is the least of my problems, believe me. But then why am I tellin’ you this? You know what I mean. Me, the president, you, Churchill, Cornwall the smart bastard, we’re all doing triple duty here.”

“This is so different from the first operation with the division,” Cook said sadly.

“You mean the seaside raid with P-Division? What was that, 1928?” Donovan lifted a questioning glance.

“Yes, sir. That one. Innsmouth. It all was so clear then.” Cook spun his chair back and stood, walked to a cabinet and began to fix himself a drink. Donovan turned down the silent offer of a drink with a swift shake of the head.

“What was so different?” Donovan mumbled as Cook dropped ice into a dirtied, empty glass.

Cook drank three quarters of the amber liquid in his glass before answering. His jowls shook as he coughed out his answer.

“They weren’t...human. They weren’t even near human. It was...simple to see them...to kill them.”

“That made it easy?”

“No. That made it hard. What made it easy was that it was
obvious—even the most
wet-behind-the-ears Marine could see it. It was us or them. Now—” Cook gestured vaguely, indicating the uncertain world, drained the rest of his glass and poured another. “What are we going to do?”

“What can we do?” Donovan glanced up, eyes expectant and needy. “Jesus.”

“Pray?” Cook replied, startled by the look of despair in Donovan’s eyes.

“To what?” Donovan spat out and stood.

“We can still hope...right?” Cook countered. Donovan stood still for a time while Cook sipped from his second glass.

“We can still do that, thank God.” Donovan returned, his raised face flush with anger.

“It’s all out of our hands now, anyway,” Cook wheezed.

“Yeah, but whose hands is it in?”

The phone began to ring. Cook lifted the receiver in his thick hands and listened for a moment.

“Three of our men came out of the desert yesterday,” he said.

“Good boys,” Donovan whispered, his eyes far away.

A field of trees. Golden, thin. Standing in rows like a picket fence erected by nature. They rose up from the cold, marshy embankment on the far side of the river, distant. Behind them, the face of the mountain crawled up, spattered here and there by drifts of snow, imposing and as big as the sky itself. The air was rich with the smell of coming snow. A cold wind passed down the valley.

In the river, a reflection of the trees and the mountain hung, rippling gently in the early morning breeze, catching the golden colors of the sun as it rebounded off the world.

On the river was a boat, small, L-shaped and red, a vivid color, so that it stood out on the water despite its distance. A boy and an old man sat in the boat. In the water, a reflection of the boy and the old man sat in the reflection of the boat.

Manbahadur Rai was that boy.

His grandfather sat across from him on the rickety red boat. Dilprasad Rai, the old man, spoke suddenly. Manbahadur looked up, startled. The boat rocked, sending a million reverberating ripples out into the river, intersecting and changing until the trees and sky disappeared from the surface, lost momentarily in the confusion.

“I am sorry, grandfather, I did not hear you.”

His grandfather smiled toothlessly and wagged a crooked finger at him.

“You have not learned much in life, have you?” the old man chided.

Manbahadur simply stared at his grandfather politely, waiting for the old man to continue. Anything else, he knew, would be disrespectful.

“I was saying that you are having a hallucination. You are in a jungle in a place called—‘Congo’? You should wake up now.”

The world leapt back to him like a nightmare.

Manbahadur Rai lay on his side in the damp heat of the oppressive jungle. It was still night. Which night, he did not know. The smell of seared meat hung in the still air, with the foul stench of burned cotton, cordite, and shit rounding out the scene. Somewhere nearby in the dark, someone was hitching thick, liquid breaths. Memory crept back as Rai attempted to gain some semblance of order in his jumbled mind.

He had leapt into the clearing to dispatch the natives who had pinned Lieutenant Arnold to the ground. He had shot two of them nearly point blank as they crouched on the semi-conscious American. One he had shot in the head with the Webley, the other in the chest with the .45. The last native had produced an odd, silver cylinder before Rai could get a bead on him.

Something had happened then. Something bad which he could not remember.

Rai shifted his weight and rolled onto his shoulder. Sharp, perfect pain ripped through his arm as he placed his hand down to facilitate his movement. Sweating and struggling to regain his breath, Rai lay still for some time, listening. He heard what he now knew to be the native he had shot in the chest take his last few breaths, slowly drowning in his own blood. Hardly any time had passed, it seemed. Rai carefully tested his legs, which responded weakly to his commands. He slowly shifted himself back towards the knobby roots of a huge tree, pushing with his thick-heeled boots against any purchase his feet could find in the dark. Slowly, straining with effort, Rai propped himself up in a sitting position with his back against the bark of a tree. His breath came in ragged gasps and his heart rang in his chest like a jackhammer.

Time passed.

Rai noticed the dawn as it slowly insisted itself upon the land. A slight shift in the dark, from perfect black to a thin, navy blue and then to a hazy glow of white which seemed only to gather near the ground. The jungle glowed all around them, crouched and ready to spring like some creature.

Three dead natives lay in the clearing. One, spread eagle near a tree, had a near perfect hole through his face, like an apple which had been cored. A second lay on his back peacefully, one arm lazily draped across his chest, a chest which was no longer heaving, thanks to the neat hole punched through it. The third native was a mess; his face and chest had been seared by some sort of flame, and his black skin had been charred to a barbecue-like crustiness. His lower jaw was gone, removed violently in what looked like a shrapnel wound.