Flaming Arrow: The Hooded Man Trilogy by Paul Kane

Author:Paul Kane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

CHAPTER SIX

THERE WAS NO point in asking how things had taken such a turn for the worse, this quickly.

They had, and not for the first time, so that was that. Now it was simply a case of dealing with them. Though how this was ever going to be resolved was anyone’s guess.

“Why don’t they just make their goddamn move?” asked Jack, standing next to him on the battlements of the outpost, looking out at the forest ahead, then looking up and seeing the sky was growing dark. It would be night soon; they’d probably come then.

The monsters.

Of course, there were no such things. Robert used to tell Stevie that, when he swore blind there were goblins and all kinds of hideous creatures hiding in his wardrobes, or under his bed. Humans were bad enough—the things they did to each other—without anything supernatural adding to the mix.

He cast his mind back to when they’d arrived at the fort, hours ago. To when that local Ranger had also sworn he’d seen monsters. That is, until he’d passed out from blood loss. Medic Cole had tried to stabilise him as best he could—which wasn’t easy, as what passed for a med-bay at the outpost had also been trashed—but the man needed urgent medical attention.

Nobody asked the obvious question: what had happened to the rest of the contingent? Nobody really wanted to know.

“Get on the radio, we need to call this in,” said Robert to a young female Ranger called Poynter. And that’s when they’d encountered their first problem. None of the radios in the vehicles they’d been travelling in worked, she reported. And the same went for the battered jeeps they’d found in the yard, the radios in them still strangely intact.

“Could be just a problem with the signal out here,” suggested Lagorio once more; they were, after all, surrounded by hills. But Robert, Jack and Azhar thought otherwise.

“They have... had a radio,” said Robert. “But something tells me it wasn’t working even before it was busted up.”

“Some kind of jamming?” said Jack, scratching his chin. “You’re thinking whoever struck this place knocked out communications first, right?”

“It’s definitely a possibility,” Robert replied. “And way too much of a coincidence.”

That didn’t help the poor local Ranger, however. So Robert suggested sending him off with Cole and an armed guard, to get the medical attention he needed and to alert the authorities. For all they knew, those people were still working under the assumption that there had been some kind of communications breakdown rather than an enforced blackout.

So, a handful of Italian troops accompanied Cole as they loaded the dying man into the back of one of the Lince vehicles. They trundled off out of the gate, towards the one way to and from this outpost—through the forest.

The rest watched as it entered, Jack nodding in satisfaction. But only a few minutes later the sound of gunfire reached them. “What in the Sam Hill...?” said Jack, opened-mouthed, as he saw the Lince backing up again,

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