Stone Soldiers 1: Mythical (11 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

It had started with an ocean exploration vessel, the
Lady Jane Franklin,
being found adrift near Miami. The Coast Guard boarded the vessel to find all thirty passengers and crew dead. With their hearts ripped out and missing.

Over the next two weeks, several more, similar murders were reported by the FBI- from Florida to Arizona. A string of twenty-three more bodies, all with their hearts ripped out, but with no connection to each other. The work of an apparently-random serial killer.

Then the FBI had brought in a specialist. A parahuman, with the ability to postcognitively see events by touching items- or corpses. What he reported from his investigation terrified the Postcog and had the FBI seeking military assistance.

A shapeshifter was to blame for the deaths. The Postcog had relived the death of the many victims over and over again. Each time, a new face doing the killing. Normally the face of one of the previous victims.

The shapeshifter was murdering people, then assuming the identities of his victims.

The trail led to Arizona. Facial recognition software searched for the many deceased, and finally found one, staying in a hotel in the desert, uncomfortably close to where the Vice President was scheduled to be spending a vacation with his family.

Ordinarily, the FBI had capture teams for situations like this. Contractors hired for their own paranormal abilities, coupled with human support agents. But a shapeshifter was something different. Something that hadn’t been seen before.

There had been the mystics, with their spells to create the illusions of shapechange. There were the various were-creatures that could turn from a man, or woman, into an animal or something in between. But this was something different. A being capable of taking the identity of a victim- of many, many victims.

The military had people trained for that sort of heavy duty response. So the FBI passed the case on to them.

Within twenty-four hours, Colonel Mark Kenslir and his squad found themselves in Arizona, sneaking up on a remote, roadside motel.

It was a simple, one story, long, rectangular building, with an office on one end, and rooms stretching to the other end, built back to back. Some rooms faced the road that ran through the small cluster of buildings making up the very small town of Freedmont.

Across the street from the motel, a row of buildings sat dark. A diner, a souvenir shop and a small convenience store. All were closed at 2:00 AM when the team arrived silently on foot. They had parachuted into the area two miles away, then moved in on foot for maximum stealth.

Satellite reconnaissance showed twenty people staying in the motel. Weary travelers just wanting somewhere to stay. Noncombatants who had to be removed from the situation.

The team had a telepath attached to them, call sign Echo. He was dressed as a vagrant and sent in to remove the noncombatants, while Colonel Kenslir and his four man squad surrounded the motel and waited.

Echo shambled up to the motel, staggering along, feigning intoxication as he reached out telepathically to those sleeping inside.

It was an easy process. Seize control of the sleepers’ minds, plant a command for them to get out of bed and walk across the street. It was something like inducing sleepwalking, and the weary travelers would never remember it had happened.

One by one, the sleepers quietly sat up in their beds and proceeded out of their rooms and across the street. Where Colonel Kenslir waited for them at the diner.

Kenslir wore black combat pants and boots. His shirt was skin-tight, black- made of a material similar to what standard troops wore. A garment designed for maximum comfort, able to wick away sweat- not that he ever really sweated. The shirt bore a name tag over his right breast: ANTAEAN.

Over his shirt and pants, Kenslir wore a dozen different straps and belts, supporting a variety of weapons and gear. A large submachine gun hung on his right thigh. Ammo pouches were on his left thigh. A huge, semi-automatic magnum hung under his left armpit, just above his belt. More ammo pouches hung under his right armpit. On his belt, grenades and more ammo pouches were aplenty.

But Kenslir liked reliable, ammunition-less weapons as well. Like the twin, twelve-inch Bowie knives hanging on his chest, handles-down, supported by his combat harness. And on his back were two simple iron rods- each twenty-inches long and nearly an inch in diameter. Heavy, but as useful as any hammer, baton or any other crushing weapon ever designed.

Kenslir supplemented all this equipment with his main weapon. A modified M82A1, semi-automatic, anti-vehicular sniper rifle, firing .50 caliber rounds that were capable of penetrating armor plate or engine blocks. Instead of the small ten-round magazine conventional forces used with the heavy rifle, Kenslir had a special drum magazine over a foot in diameter holding a hundred rounds.

The Colonel watched the mesmerized travelers come across the street one by one through large, goggle-sized, wraparound sunglasses. The glasses was equipped with a heads up display, earpieces and microphone so he could stay in contact with his team. The tactical targeting visor also provided night vision and real-time satellite feeds.

After the first few travelers had gone into the diner, sat down at tables then laid their heads down and resumed sleeping, Kenslir leapt onto the roof of the building. He was careful to land as light as possible. With all his gear, and his own immense weight, he tried to avoid property damage whenever possible.

Kenslir set up his massive rifle to cover the room the target was staying in and waited. Echo was nearly done with his removal operation.

For Echo, the whole thing was a little unnerving. He wasn’t used to field work. As rare as telepaths were, he was used to being in an office, with subjects brought to him for memory retrieval. The few times he’d left a secure facility, he’d been under the close supervision and protection of at least a dozen armed men.

Echo also wasn’t sure about his new commander. It was unnerving for a telepath to meet someone who’s mind could not be read. Truth was something Echo had grown up with- no one being able to hide their thoughts, or lies, from him. He wondered just what the Colonel really thought of him and this mission. And whether he had been given all the details.

When Echo had been awakened in the middle of the night, he had seen the fear in his regular handler’s mind. The intel on the target was disturbing. Echo absolutely understood the importance of stopping the creature and whatever plan it had in place.

So, after a long flight, a terrifying High Altitude, Low Opening parachute drop into the Arizona desert, and then a very undignified ride through the desert on the back of the much faster-running super soldiers, Echo found himself dressed in smelly clothes, standing outside a sleazy motel room door.

Echo reached out to the sleeping traveler inside.

Ted Marshall was a middle-aged salesman from Oklahoma, on his way back from a convention in Las Vegas. His dreams were filled with nightmares about paying his mortgage and supporting his family.

Echo carefully eased Marshall out of bed. He was glad this one was wearing clothes. The salesman wore boxer shorts and a dirty white t-shirt. And at least a quart of sweat. Echo had not enjoyed dressing the last man.

Echo steered Marshall out of the room. Marshall robotically closed the door to his room then walked across the pavement parking lot of the Motel, toward the street. Along the way, his bare feet stepped on small bits of gravel. They’d be sore in the morning.

Marshall crossed the dark street with no difficulty, then entered the diner.

Inside, the other travelers were all sleeping- seated at tables, their arms crossed, their heads laid down. They were a varied selection of Americans. An elderly woman in a nightgown. A large-chested, Hispanic, twenty-something woman in a thin
negligee. A grungy-haired, blonde twenty-year-old man in tattered jeans.

They’d all ended up at this particular motel, exhausted after a day of whatever life had
thrown at them. And all were now sleeping a deep, deep slumber in the diner, courtesy of Echo.

The telepath opened his eyes. He reached up to his earpiece to signal the Colonel. It struck him how odd it was that a telepath should even have to use a radio. But then, he couldn’t exactly telepathically communicate with the Colonel.

“All clear- that was the last one,” Echo whispered. The earpiece picked up his words and transmitted them in burst form- a split-second digital transmission.

Across the street, Colonel Kenslir whispered a reply into the wire-thin metal microphone boom coming down from his tactical visor.

“Move to safe distance,” he directed.

Echo nodded, and carefully walked away from the room, staggering, but not too much, back across the parking lot. It took him at least three minutes, but he was finally off the lot. He then circled around, crossed the street, passed down an alley, and finally entered through the back exit of the Diner.

There, Echo hid in the kitchen, watching over his sleeping charges. He still thought the best plan would have been for him to just seize control of the shapeshifter, telepathically, then let the soldiers capture it.

The Colonel had absolutely forbidden that plan. He had tersely pointed out to Echo that all telepathic connections created a two-way bridge of information, and if something went wrong, they simply could not have this shapeshifter running around the country with operational knowledge of the Detachment.

From his rooftop perch, Kenslir looked through the scope on his rifle. Thermal imaging showed the target still in bed, sleeping.

“Knock, knock, squad,” Kenslir directed into his radio.

Like wraiths, the other four members of the squad emerged from hiding.

Each wore a uniform similar to the Colonel’s, with the same augmented-reality tactical visors. Their choice of weapons differed slightly from the Colonel. They each carried a large, belted-ammunition machine gun, and only one large pistol held in holsters on their right thighs. They carried far more grenades than the Colonel as well. And only one Bowie knife each, hung on their chest harnesses.

And all four of the men were made of stone.

The United States military had spent years trying to develop a super soldier for any situation. In the 1960s, Kenslir had worked with a variety of parahumans with different abilities. But with few exceptions, they’d all been mortal. They could be, and sometimes were, killed in combat.

It was Kenslir’s own wife that had started the project in 1960. Her plan was simple- find a way to petrify a human being into a living, moving, thing of gray stone. A soldier who didn’t need to eat, to drink, to even breathe. Who wouldn’t get tired. Who was bulletproof. And who would be far stronger than normal men.

Kenslir’s current squad was the culmination of that research started fifty years ago. And for the past three years, the squad had gathered an impressive mission completion rating under Kenslir’s careful direction.

A shapeshifter would be child’s play.

First, from his concealment behind a parked car, came Atlas. A former Navy Seal, with no family, Atlas had been selected for his combat skills and extensive training. He had developed into Kenslir’s second-in-command in the field and was a very apt soldier.

Atlas moved in quietly, drum-fed machinegun held tight against his shoulder, ready to fire. With his hairless, granite-colored head, Atlas embodied the mythical Titan he was named for.

Cronus was the second soldier out. Cronus had left a promising career in Marine Recon to become part of America’s most elite. Like Atlas, Cronus and the whole squad appeared to be moving, bald statues. Because hair didn’t hold up well when petrified.

Cronus approached from a different direction, covering the far end of the motel by the office.

From behind a dumpster at the far end of the motel, Perses advanced. Perses had been recruited from Delta Force. He was the only member of the squad to have been reluctant to become petrified. Perses was smart like that- he wasn’t planning on staying a soldier forever.

Behind the motel, the final stone soldier emerged from the brush. His name tag identified him as HYPERION. A knee injury had removed him from Air Force pararescue training. But his record prior to that, and his unmarried, no-family status had brought him into the program. Fixing his knee injury had been all part of the petrification process.

Atlas hesitated just outside the door to the target’s room. The tactical visor superimposed the thermal image of the sleeping form into his field of vision. The visor also displayed ambient air temperature, compass heading, barometric pressure and a variety of other information about the world in real time.

Atlas glanced to his right, then left, to ensure Cronus and Perses were in position, only twenty-feet away.

“In position?” Atlas asked into the radio.

Hyperion had just stopped in front of the door to a room on the back of the motel, directly adjacent to the target’s room. The door, two sheets of drywall and some 2x4s were all that separated him from the target.

“Ready,” Hyperion answered.

Atlas stepped forward, kicking the door so that it exploded inward, in a spray of splinters.