Predator trip wire

 Then Dillon and the newly docile Anna—the antithesis now of the fiery Amazon who’d been taken at the guerrilla camp—walked silently back up the slope to the others. The commandos had begun to establish their defensive camp in a dense grove of firs that abutted a solid wall of canyon rock. They had already dug makeshift foxholes, and Ramirez and Billy and Mac were kneeling in theirs, weapons cocked and ready.

  Their sweaty fatigues were well suited to the high-country surroundings, the greens and browns fading with the daylight, the dark tones all merged in a way that seemed almost magically unified—except that by comparison the alien’s capacity for camouflage was lightyears ahead.

  Dillon helped Anna step into a shallow foxhole where she huddled in her dreamlike state, rocking in a slow and methodical way like a mental patient on high-dose salts. Now and then she looked down at the alien bloodstain, which glowed sweetly in the gathering dark with a faint orange luminosity. Slowly she moved a hand toward the spot and stroked it lightly, then caught her breath with a shiver, as if a memory of the brutal attack on Hawkins had rushed to the front of her mind. Then the next stroke seemed to calm her down, and she fell into a peaceful doze.

  Nearby Mac was stringing a trip wire low to the ground, covering it with leaves and grass. After completing a wide circle maybe fifty feet across, till there wasn’t a single break surrounding the site, he moved into camp and reported to Schaefer.

  “We got most of the flares set up,” he said. “And two claymores just outside. Nothin’s comin’ close without trippin’ on somethin’.”

  “Good work, Sergeant,” Schaefer acknowledged curtly, his mind trying to process a hundred details. Then, suddenly sensitive to the bond that lay broken between Blain and Mac, he added softly, “I’m sorry, Bull. It’s never easy. He was a good man.”

  “I never had no brother. He was it,” Mac replied simply, almost matter-of-factly, his lips tightened as if to contain his emotions.

   The Predator (1987 novelization), chapter 11

Then he walked back over to the poncho containing Blain’s body where he had left it lying at the edge of the camp. He pulled back the zipper to reveal Blain’s face, which looked peaceful in death, as if lying in state. The weapon had done no damage here, and the nightfall pale of the last light made the gray of death softer. Gently Mac reached a hand into Blain’s shirt pocket and pulled out the flask they had shared earlier in the day.

Ramirez ran to grab the medic’s bag as Billy, who’d been scouting the perimeter beyond the foxholes, called out. “Major, over here!” he shouted urgently.

  Schaefer turned apprehensively, something dire in Billy’s tone warning him that the Indian had discovered something bad and irreversible. Dutch walked with bitter resignation toward the scout, whom he found standing with a flashlight pointed at the canvas bag that had cradled Blain’s body. It was violently slashed open, covered in blood, empty.

  The Sioux looked up at the major and spoke the obvious, as if he found some weird comfort in sticking strictly to the facts. “The body’s gone,” he said flatly.

  Ramirez came running up. He had patched Mac up, then made a quick tour and checked out the trip wires surrounding the camp. “Came in through the wires,” he reported. “Took him right out from under our noses.”

  Anna, once more seeking the security of the men, appeared at their side and stared down into the empty, blood-soaked bag. Then she glanced anxiously into Schaefer’s eyes. The major knew from her stricken look that she sensed, she knew the horror that had driven her mind astray was not just a nightmare. The body bag woke her up for good. She looked as if she would never sleep again.

  Hours passed in a grim silence, each of the men turned in on himself and hunkered above his weapon. Slowly the blue-black predawn sky offered a hushed clarity, and the men’s imaginations were calmed by the gathering light. A patchy ground fog still covered the area. Anna, who’d finally been overtaken by sleep, awoke with a start in her foxhole, the rising cacaphony of early morning jungle music reaching its high-pitched tempo. A blue-tail monkey screamed at a cropping mountain goat. A cheetah yawned and turned belly up, fat and sleepy from a night of eating a side of deer.

  Directly above Anna’s head a chameleon emerged on a leaf. Carefully the rebel woman extended her arm, allowing the lizard to crawl onto her, watching fascinated as it changed color to match her tawny skin tone. Then she gently placed the creature back on the leaf and watched with a half-smile as it changed once more to a cool green and glided into the jungle.

  Schaefer, Billy, and Ramirez were busy examining the area near the empty bag, poring over every inch of trip wire, worrying the ground for signs and hints of what happened.

  “Boar set off the trip,” Billy reported to Schaefer finally. “No other tracks.”

Schaefer knelt and examined the thin, well-hidden stretch of wire, with the ash-gray short in the copper where the boar’s hoof had connected. Then the major stood, looking around the makeshift camp. The canyon below was slowly steaming clear of mist.

“How the hell could anything get through this setup and carry Blain out?” observed Ramirez with brooding frustration. “And they did it right under the light of a flare without leaving a fuckin’ trace.” The Chicano kicked a rock in frustration, exploding a nest of centipedes that scurried away in panic.

Schaefer considered the possibilities, his eyes drawing a bead on the tree line as if it were a graph. “He’s using the trees,” he said at last, pointing to the thick-crowned cottonwoods. “The bastard knows our defenses,” he went on bitterly.

Then he caught his own use of the singular noun. Instinctively he’d concluded this was not the work of a team. There was nothing guerrillalike about it. It was the macabre work of a singular enemy, and thus the logic sided more and more with Billy’s story.

In his mind Schaefer traced the path the intruder might have traveled through the trees, then down to the ground where it could’ve hopped the trip wire. But what sort of creature could move like that he didn’t have a clue. What he did know was that they were dealing with a remarkable villain, cunning beyond anything Schaefer had witnessed in Thailand, Beirut, or any other blood-hole of the world.

Somehow, it seemed, this enemy flew through the trees with the dexterity of a monkey and across open turf with the speed and agility of a jaguar. On top of that it possessed the strength of ten gorillas and the subtle stealth of all the wildcats of the jungle combined. God knew what else it could do. And so far there’d been no sign of even a knife or a pistol, let alone the kind of high-tech combat gear the commandos carried. So far, Schaefer thought grimly, there wasn’t a sign of anything human.

As the major squinted along the dawn-streaked tree-line, Billy and Ramirez stood rigid and motionless, glaring blankly in among the branches, seeming to share a dread as acute as their mutual feel for the flow of a trail. It was becoming clear to each of the remaining commandos that they were up against terrible odds. Ramirez, normally the tough, abrasive street kid, blunt and not given to asking questions, suddenly revealed a rare twinge of anxiety. “Why didn’t he try to kill one of us last night?” he asked in the meek tones of a child afraid to sleep without a night light.

Schaefer turned abruptly to him. “He came back for the body,” he replied coldly. “He’s killing us one at a time . . .”

“Predator,” Billy stated flatly, his face showing no emotion.

   The Predator (1987 novelization), chapter 13