Predator soldier ambush

Then, as the black cloud of carrion scavengers disappeared, Billy’s face froze into a mask of horror. His eyes bulged and his mouth went slack as he fell into a state of raw shock. A curl of disgust gurgled in his throat as he stared transfixed at the horror inches from his ancient eyes.

  It was the leering death-grin of a human face completely stripped of skin, glistening with newly exposed muscle tissue and dripping with blood. The body was hanging upside down like a side of beef, every inch of skin methodically flayed, precise as if a team of demented surgeons had been at work. Some muscles still twitched as the body swayed in the humid breeze.

  In shock. Billy stumbled backward and lost his footing, then hugged the trunk of a tree and let the vomit come. As he stood quaking in a cold sweat, a little distance now between him and the horrible face, he took in the rest of the gruesome scene. Suspended from branches above, vines threaded through their Achilles tendons, hung the bodies of three dead men. Each was completely gutted and skinned. Thousands of insects beat the air as they attacked the carcasses in a crazed, exultant mass feeding.

Billy—the mercenary who had survived the worst trench wars from Angola to Cambodia—turned away as he felt his throat roar with the urge to scream. He put a hand to his mouth and bit his fingers, gasping for air, controlling the gag reflex, then forced himself to turn away just as Ramirez stepped quietly into view. Schaefer was a couple of paces behind him.

  Gaping at the decomposing and desecrated bodies ravaged by the vultures, a whimpering Ramirez crossed himself in an almost childlike way.

  “Holy Mother,” he gasped, his voice shaking. Then he shouted over his shoulder, breaking the code of silence. “Somebody—somebody get some help!” he cried.

  As if he’d forgotten that they were the help. As if he still didn’t realize, even with the evidence bleeding all over the matted ground, just how very alone they were.

As Billy and Ramirez stood there frozen and helpless, Schaefer moved into the clearing, kneeling beside the bloody pile of clothing and entrails. He examined the discarded gear carefully, turning it over, then stood up holding a dog tag on a broken chain. His expression grew stony, his face taut and strained as he stared at the tag, recognizing the name.

  “ ‘J.S. Davis, Captain, U.S. Army,’ ” he read out loud, toneless and grim. His bewildered eyes moved from the dogtag up to the gutted bodies. He swallowed once, and a muscle in his jaw fluttered for a second. Then he turned and faced the six men who stood pale and dumbstruck at the clearing’s edge.

  “Cut them down, Mac,” he instructed coldly. The evenness of his voice masked a rage beyond a mere soldier’s revenge after a bloody battle. Davis and Schaefer had a long history together. Since boot camp nearly twenty years ago, they had been mates and comrades. They’d barely squeaked out with their skins on a secret mission in Malaysia in seventy-nine, Davis was the best chopper pilot in the business, and he’d twice come in under fire to scoop Dutch up. Silently Schaefer vowed to destroy whoever had desecrated his friend. Now it was private between him and the enemy. He would walk through hell to make them pay.

  Mac moved forward, obeying Schaefer’s command. He shinnied up the tree and one by one cut the bodies down. With a slice of his razor-edge combat knife, the severed vine released the first corpse, and it fell with a sickly thud to the ground. Then the second, then the third. The men stood around like an honor guard, too proud to fall apart, steeling themselves till the shock had passed, knowing that as with Schaefer it would quickly slide into rage and make them strong again. Mac bent over the bloody pile, picking out the other two dog tags.

  At last Schaefer turned to Dillon, who had been standing silently like the others, mouth slightly agape, as incapacitated as the men he was meant to lead.

  “I knew this man,” said the major, holding the dog tag close to Dillon’s face, swaying it like a hypnotist. “Green Beret, out of Fort Bragg. What the hell was he doing in here? Last I heard he was runnin’ taxi service to Camp David, transportin’ the Big Man’s sheepdog. He needed a tour of jungle duty like he needed a second dck. So what’s he doin’ gettin’ himself scalped in this jerkwater two-bit country? You got any answers to that, Dillon?” he demanded angrily.

  “It’s—it’s inhuman, that’s what it is,” Dillon replied with difficulty. “I’m sorry, Dutch, I didn’t know—”

  “Maybe we should call the ACLU, huh? See if we can file a little complaint. All nice and typed, ya know?” His voice was thick with contempt.

  “Look, Dutch, I wasn’t told about any covert operations in this area. They shouldn’t have been here. I would have known.”

  “Well, somebody sent ’em,” Schaefer snapped, unsatisfied and irritated. As of this moment he was clearly uninterested in official bullshi)t. He walked off as Mac stepped out of the clearing, sheathing his knife with a violent gesture as he passed Ramirez.

  “Must’ve run into guerrillas . . . fckin’ animals,” growled Ramirez. He wiped his sweaty dirt-encrusted brow with his forearm, then realized his hands were shaking. He shoved them violently into his pockets.

  Everyone was trying to understand, to throw together some rational reason how this thing could have happened. None of them had ever seen such barbaric treatment by an enemy—not in Cambodia, not in Lebanon, not in all their combined years of combat service, which probably amounted to a century. Deep down they still believed that between enemies there was an unwritten code, setting limits to the degree of torture inflicted, at least among so-called professional soldiers. This was so far beyond the code that they didn’t even have any context for it. Why strip a man of his skin? Why bother? There were so many easier ways to hurt. It was like some demented autopsy.

  “Ain’t no way for a soldier to die,” Mac said tightly to Blain, hawking a yellow-brown stream of chew saliva that landed on a banana flower, drooling to the ground. “Time to get ol’ painless out,” he added with relish. He ripped at the Velcro closures on the canvas bag draped over his shoulder and pulled out his baby: a six-barreled automatic adapted for field combat. It caught the sun’s rays and glimmered darkly, deadly as a portable minefield.

  Billy had meanwhile moved a short distance ahead of the others and was examining the ground beyond the carnage. He plucked at the beaten grass several times, as if he were picking up coins. Then he stood and held out for Schaefer to see a handful of spent cartridges. Dutch walked over to him.

  “What happened here, Billy?” he asked quietly, sensing the younger man’s churning mind as he desperately struggled to put it together. Schaefer knew well that of all his men, Billy had the most intuitive feel for unraveling a puzzle. Billy moved to a subtler rhythm, his ears tuned to a higher pitch. Schaefer used to tell him he was part bird dog, part witch doctor.

  “I don’t get it, Major,” Billy said haltingly. Yet as always he was stubbornly certain, no matter how mismatched the evidence seemed. “There was a fire fight here. Shooting in all directions. Like four, five hundred rounds.”

  “I can’t believe Jack Davis walked straight into an ambush, even if he was a prisoner,” Schaefer retorted, recalling his dead friend’s radar. Davis had eyes at the back of his head. Nothing had ever taken him by surprise. In that he was just like Schaefer himself. The whole idea of an ambush was an insult.

  “No, it wasn’t like that, sir,” Billy agreed. “Besides, there’s not a single track to show what they were shooting at. It’s like they were firing like crazy into the air. It just doesn’t make sense.” Billy scratched the stubble on his chin and brooded a moment. “And I don’t know where the fck those guys with the new boots went. They must have turned off somewhere.”

  “Wait a minute—what about the rest of Jack’s men?” Schaefer was vehement. It was as if he wanted to slap Billy back to reality—whatever that was. “Where’re the guerrillas who took ’em out of the chopper? And where’re the goddam politicians?” He was practically yelling now.

  Billy shook his head. “No sign.” he said simply. “They never left here, Major.” Then, shying at the mystery of it even as he told it, he added awkwardly: “It’s like they kind of disappeared.”

   The Predator (1987 novelization), chapters 3-4