Killer of Enemies Read online

  I sit down and take my pack off my back. The first thing I remove is a roll of wire. It is deceptively thin, supple as fishing line. But the way it was spun—by a molecular process far beyond any technology left to us humans in our new Stone Age—created a nearly unsnappable filament. This line could pull in a sea monster twice the size of a blue whale. And angling, in a way, is what I hope to do.

  I lay the coil of wire to one side and take out a zippered pouch. I like the heavy weight of it. Then I pull out a rounded green object about the size of a fat avocado.

  I hold the grenade up and tap a finger against its hard plastic surface. Taken, like its six brothers still in my pouch, from the basement of an abandoned army warehouse, it’s the timed fuse variety, standard in wars since the early twentieth century. Grip it in your throwing hand tightly, holding the safety lever in place with your thumb. Pull the pin with your other hand. With the safety lever depressed, nothing happens until you let go—preferably as you throw it, unless you are feeling bored with breathing.

  As soon as that safety lever is released, a spring strikes the firing pin and ignites a wick that takes a few seconds to burn its way down the detonator. Time enough for the grenade to have flown seventy or eighty feet through the air, beyond the effective killing radius or fifty feet or so. And then:

  Ka-boom!

  It’s not just the blast that does the trick, but also what the explosive was surrounded by inside that little bomb—a layer of ball bearings that add to the shrapnel from the shattered shell.

  Am I planning to throw this at my large reptilian playmate? Nope. The only result then would be to bounce shrapnel off the crawly critter’s armored body. Even a rocket launcher—if we had one—might not pierce it. But all that tough, impregnable skin is on the outside. What is within said monster is a lot more vulnerable—as Coyote discovered when he destroyed the Swallowing Hill.

  So all I need to do is to get Super Snake to swallow one or two of these. Easy . . . right?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Best Laid Plans

  The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray.

  That, more or less, is what an old Scottish bard named Robert Burns wrote in one of his poems.

  Maybe he was referring to the time when a tribe of mice decided the best way to make their lives safer would be by tying a bell to the neck of the cat that was always hunting them. That way they would know wherever it was and it could no longer creep up on them.

  Capital idea, my dear rodent!

  Perfect solution!

  Hurrah, squeak, whoopee, huzzah!

  Much mouse celebration and self-congratulation ensues.

  Until one pointed question is asked.

  How are we going to put the bell on that cat?

  And that sums up my current task. How? How does one get a snake to swallow a hand grenade?

  Plus I have this nagging feeling that there’s something else, something I haven’t taken into account. But what? It is just not coming to me.

  Okay, as the saying goes, if you can’t remember, just forget about it.

  Back to work.

  Numero Uno. I take out another grenade. I’m tempted to use them all. But it is best to keep most in reserve. Two should do it. I loop the end of one of my two lengths of wire through the removable safety pins. The wire flexes easily and I tie it off so that it will not slip out of the pins and spoil things. One yank and they’ll be simultaneously released—and the armed grenades will be only a few seconds away from exploding.

  Done. Good.

  Like a gambler producing the final ace that makes a winning hand, I pull a coyote skin from my pack. Folded up, it hasn’t taken up that much space, but when I spread it out, it almost looks like the animal whose pelt was taken and tanned by my mother’s father long before I ever lived. It’s not like a rug. It was sewn together to make it into a bag, so the only opening is through its mouth. The sun beating down on the top of the wall warms the coyote skin. That’s a good thing. Snakes respond to heat from their prey.

  I remove the large balloon that’s the third element in my plan, work it carefully down the throat of my coyote bag and then, leaning so close that it probably looks like I am giving a coyote CPR, I blow the balloon up. As it inflates, the skin bag takes on more of the shape of a living animal. There is still enough space for me to, even more carefully, insert those two grenades down into Coyote’s throat.

  I put my hand on the skin.

  “Help us, Old Brother,” I say. And then I can’t help but smile at the way we’re recreating that story about him and the swallowing hill.

  I can almost hear Coyote’s laughter.

  I take the second length of wire and tie it around Coyote’s neck. Tight enough to hold the grenades in place while also making it possible to use that wire to lower my decoy toward the great snake.

  Which is nowhere to be seen.

  Where is it? I feel tense, and my hands are tingling. So it has to be somewhere relatively close.

  Focus, Lozen.

  I walk back to the middle of the roadway and start to lay out the wires, careful not to tug on the one in my left hand, which is connected to those safety pins. I take out a piece of cloth and begin to wrap it around the loops I’ve made in the end of the second wire to both identify it as the one connected to the pins and make it easier to grasp, since the wire is so thin it might slip through my fingers.

  Then it comes to me. When I looked at the far side of the ring wall I saw something without knowing what it was that I was seeing. Could it be?

  I put down the wires. I reach into my pocket, pull out, and click open the scope as I rush over to the wall and begin to scan the wrecked grounds of Big Ranch.

  Where was it? There! That distant spot on the wall where no sunlight reflected back.

  Oh crap!

  What I observe is just what I was afraid I’d see. Super Snake is even smarter than I thought it was. Piled against that distant stretch of the wall are slabs of wood and chunks of stone and concrete ripped from the demolished structures. A ramp giving access to the top.

  My Power has been tapping me on the shoulder all this time, trying to get me to pay attention. But I’ve been too stupid to . . .

  I hold up my hands and as I turn the burning sensation in my palms is so strong that I almost lose my breath. Or is it because of what I see that I feel this tightness like a rope being cinched around my chest? There, filling the roadway pretty much from one side to the other, is the one I was looking for. Who has politely decided to save me the trouble. It has crawled up on me so silently that it is less than a hundred feet away. Super Snake.

  It raises its head up and up, so high it seems as if it is going to thrust itself into the clouds. It stares down at me with what I can only interpret as self-satisfied amusement in its eyes. It knows I’ve seen how fast it can move. I’m too far away from the stairway to reach it before the big snake can catch me.

  But there at my feet are both wires. And Coyote’s skin is fifty feet closer to the snake than I am. I slowly bend down and grasp the wires. One in my right hand, one in my left. But which is which? When I put the wires down the cloth slipped off the string. The cloth fell closest to the wire on the left. It has to be that one. I wrap the cloth back around it as I slide one foot back, then another. My eyes are on the giant snake. Its head is swaying back and forth, but it’s not striking. I’m still out of range.

  I count under my breath as I walk backward. One and one pony. Two and one pony. When I hit fifty, the snake moves forward, just a little. If I turn and run, it will get me before I can take a dozen strides.

  All the while I’m doing this I am keeping my mind as blank as possible. I have the feeling, a feeling being passed to me by my power, that just as I can pick up what that great snake is feeling, it can also sense my own thoughts. Not in human words, but in emotions. When it feels my fear is when it will strike. That’s what it is waiting for.

  Nothing, nothing, I am thinking of noth
ing.

  I pull gently on the wire in my right hand. And it is the right one. Coyote slides an inch in my direction. I pull again and he moves a second time, looking almost as alive as when that skin embraced a breathing body.

  The snake’s gaze shifts down.

  And now is the time.

  No, no. Mine. Don’t. No, no!

  The giant reptile has felt that thought. I know it. It looks at me, pleased that it has found another way to play, cat-like—with my emotions before it devours me.

  Then, its gaze still on me, it lowers its head to Coyote, opens its mouth to grasp the inflated skin—almost delicately—then raises its head to swallow it with such force that the wire I’ve released from my right hand snaps back toward it like a whip being cracked. It is pulled across my hand so fast that I am jerked two stumbling steps forward as it slices into the skin of my palm. Blood wells out.

  I would have lost the left-hand wire, too, if it hadn’t been so much longer. I catch my balance, begin to move backward again as I play out that longer wire, slick with my blood, through my right hand. One backward step, another, the snake staring down. And at last I’ve backed up enough to take in the slack. I tighten my grasp on the wire.

  The snake still hasn’t moved. But it is working its mouth, feeling those two wires in it. Is it going to regurgitate Coyote before . . . ?

  No!

  I jerk the wire back toward me hard. As soon as I do so, in response to that pull, Super Snake snaps its own head back. Still holding the wire, I’m yanked off my feet to go flying through the air toward the snake.

  And then over the guard rail.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Take Your Choice

  As I plummet downward I am thinking two things.

  Numero Uno is predictable.

  Oh crap!

  Numero Dos, though, is something less self-centered.

  Did I yank hard enough to pull the pins?

  Well, actually, more than that is going through my mind, which seems to be moving at something close to light speed. It is not my entire life rushing before my eyes, as people sometimes say happens when you think you are about to die.

  Numero Tres. Part of what I am thinking is this corny joke that Dad told me, about a man who fell off the top of a hundred story building. As he passed the fiftieth floor, he was heard to yell out, “So far, so good!”

  Numero Cuatro. While all this is happening, mentally I am still counting. One and one pony. Two and one pony . . .

  Numero Cinco. More practically, I am taking note of the fact that I am still holding on to the end of that second wire. And that it is not going to do me much good if I maintain my grasp on it. I’m falling so fast that if I come up short of its length before hitting the ground, the jolt might rip my arm off if the thin wire doesn’t cut my hand in half first. I yank it one more time and it takes up the slack with just the faintest hint of something finally giving at the end of that pull. I open my hand and the wire spins around before it rips free from my grasp.

  Numero Seis. The last thing that goes through my mind is what I now see. I’m not about to hit the ground after all. The wide whip of that snake’s big head has thrown me all the way back to . . .

  KER-SPLASH!

  I land hard on my back twenty feet out into the croc pond. The air is knocked out of my lungs. I’m so stunned that I sink for a second, not knowing which way is up or down. Everything around me is this hazy brownish green, visibility about six inches. Perfect definition of murky. My foot hits something hard that moves as I kick against it. A fish?

  It’s something sizable. As it moves away from me I’m pushed back by the displacement of the water.

  Oh, double crap!

  I kick again and I’m heading up toward the light. My head breaks the surface as I gasp for breath and spit out green slime. I’ve swallowed so much water that I think the level of the pond must have dropped a foot. But I don’t flail my arms or splash the surface. Not a good idea if what I hit down there in the depths is what I think it is. I side stroke as quickly and quietly as I can to the edge. I pull myself out like a crippled sea lion onto the muddy shore.

  Can’t stop now, Lozen.

  I push myself up to my feet. Holding my stomach and still coughing out water, I stagger back away from the pond toward the wall.

  All this has taken me no longer than getting to twelve and one pony and there has still been no explosion. Were the grenades too old to work?

  THWUMP-THWUMP!

  The two muffled explosions come right on top of one another. I look up and see the upper third of the giant snake’s body raised high above the parapet. Its head is thrown back. Its mouth is open and it looks for the briefest moment as if it is a dragon breathing fire—as well as a gory spray of macerated esophagus, stomach lining, heart, and whatever other internal organs have been turned into borscht by the multiple blasts.

  It’s been killed, but its writhing body doesn’t know that yet. Its convulsions throw it from one side to the other. Its tail, lolling head, and body keep hitting the roadway, making a sound like that of a rhythmically challenged musician pounding on the world’s biggest bass drum.

  BOOM-BA-BOOM-BA-BA-BA-BOOM BOOM.

  The mammoth snake’s coils are partway over the inner edge of the wall. As soon as more than half its weight slips over the railing it is going to fall. This way.

  My way! And if I don’t get out of the way I am going to be way dead.

  I turn toward the pond and see just what I did not want to see. The snout and then the entire head of what my brain tells me is a not-at-all-dined-upon, immense, genetically modified saltwater crocodile are emerging in slow motion. Time enough for it to register on me that crocs, like snakes, can live a long time between meals. And this one must be very hungry by now.

  One clawed front foot sinks deep into the mud, then the other. And now the top third of its body is visible. Far too visible. Too much visible. I shove myself frantically backward, but not as fast as I’d like. My hands and feet are slipping in the mud.

  In the wild, the original saltwater crocs from which this one is partially descended could get to be as much as twenty-three feet long and weigh over a ton. Try five times that big for this one!

  It has to be at least a hundred feet in length. Another stalking step toward me as it raises up higher on its tree-trunk legs. The double rows in its upper and lower jaws of two-foot-long teeth are now being displayed as its mouth gapes slightly open. Just open enough to swallow a hippo! Slimy green water slides off its ridged scales, thicker than the armor on a tank, as I manage to push back another twenty feet.

  No wonder Super Snake adopted a live-and-let-live attitude toward it. Trying to eat this thick-plated titan would be like brunching on a boulder. Thinking of meal time, that croc’s massive eye turned toward me is surely seeing me as sustenance.

  Still moving backward, I glance quickly up and over my shoulder.

  Oh great!

  I’ve managed to push myself further from the immense oncoming croc, but now I am closer to the wall where Super Snake’s noisy death throes seem about to carry it over the top in another few seconds. And the croc has positioned itself right between me and the entryway into Big Ranch.

  And now, ladies and gents, you pays your money and you take your choice. Which will it be?

  The frying pan or the fire?

  The devil or the deep blue sea?

  Crushed by a snake or consumed by a croc?

  I think I want my money back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Food?

  Sometimes things happen in ways you can’t predict. I’m in the middle of one of those moments right now. That’s when you have to trust your reflexes and have faith in them as much as your conscious mind.

  And that is why, as more tons of writhing reptile than I can guess come tumbling off the wall, I dig my feet into the mud, lean forward and dive. I don’t leap to the side, but toward the mammoth saurian looming over me. I can move fast and
I’m hoping this leap of faith will be fast enough.

  Fast as I am moving, my mind is moving faster. It’s repeating the reasons I have chosen to fly through the air in a low, long leap that I hope will end with me ducking my head into a roll rather than being chopped in half by one snap of those giant jaws.

  Numero Uno: crocodilian heads are connected to stiff, thick necks that flex much better back and forth than they can in the downward direction my dive is taking me.

  Numero Dos: I’ve seen little intelligence in the eyes of that giant croc and sensed even less with my sixth sense. Unlike the deceased-even-if-its-body-hasn’t-yet-gotten-the-message anaconda now answering to the law of gravity, this immense saurian menace is the reptilian equivalent of a dumb bunny.

  Numero Tres: My suddenly dropping out of its line of sight will take its focus entirely off of me and place it on another, much bigger target.

  WHA-BA-BOOOM!

  The earth shakes from the impact of the snake’s rendezvous with terra firma at the exact moment I land on my right shoulder, beneath and just past the big croc’s left leg. I roll, my momentum taking me into a second roll before I come halfway up to my feet and dive into the deep green water.

  Thwunk!

  Or not so deep. The place where I hit the water is shallower than I expected. I do a faceplant two feet below the surface into the oozy odiferous mud. It takes all my self-control not to thrash about and thrust my head above the surface to clear my nose and mouth and eyes. Instead, I push further into the deeper water, hoping to get away from the sweep of the crocodile’s tail. I raise my head enough to take a breath and look back to see just what I feared. I bend my body into a frantic dive just deep enough to avoid being swatted by the tip of the crocodile’s armored tail.

  When I come up again further out, I see that tail swipe was purely incidental. Just part of the croc’s pushing itself out of the water toward the objective I had hoped it would choose once I was out of view. Not an unreasonable hope, I might add. Even a stone stupid mutant beast couldn’t help but take notice of the earthquake-inducing impact that heralded the arrival of . . .