The Omega Command by Jon Land

Author:Jon Land
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2008-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

Part Four

Newport

Tuesday Morning to Wednesday Morning

Chapter 19

THE FIGURE RAN through the thickening snow, a furtive eye cast to his rear at regular intervals as if expecting a great beast to pounce upon him. He had run often since coming to these woods years before. His route was never the same, no concrete destination or purpose. He ran mostly when memories of the hellfire grew too near, ran as if to widen the gap separating him from them.

But today was different. Today he ran from a sense of wrongness, a feeling that something was out of balance. He was a huge man but his feet made only the slightest impression in the hard-packed Maine snow and his steps produced barely a sound. The old ones had taught him that anything was possible if one achieved balance, that of the spirit as important as that of the body and the world about. The three existed as one, none set into place unless all were. Today all were not.

Because something was coming. Not a great beast with dagger teeth and razor claws; something less defined but equally deadly. He could liken this feeling only to that which often preceded an ambush in the hellfire. He had survived on those occasions by heeding the sense of imbalance when it came, slight tremors which warned him when Charlie was about to spring from one of his innumerable tunnels.

But there was nothing slight about what he felt now. It reached out for him from the shadows, only to dart back when he swung around. Soon, though, he knew it would show itself.

And he knew he would be there when it did.

“It’s been a long time, Wells. Last time we met I think you had your whole face.”

Wells shoved him hard and all at once a half-dozen men with rifles enclosed McCracken. A van skidded to a halt. One of the men threw open the back doors.

“Get in,” Wells ordered.

Blaine started to, but then turned back to the guards.

“Has Pretty Boy here led you on any massacres lately?”

It went back to ’Nam in 1969. Wells and McCracken had been in different divisions of the Special Forces. Blaine had known the war was unwinnable from his first month in. The Viet Cong had built tunnels under the whole country. Troops appeared out of nowhere and disappeared the same way. Traps, mines, ambushes—it was a guerrilla war, the Cong’s war. But Blaine went about his business nonetheless with as much dignity and honor as the circumstances would allow.

His division had come upon the town of Bin Su in early March, and to this day the sight haunted him. The entire town—women and children included—had been slaughtered. Bodies and pieces of bodies lay everywhere, obviously there had been torture and, most hideous of all, a collection of heads had been staked to fence posts, where they had been used for target practice. Every code of ethics had been violated. Someone had to pay.

Blaine was warned to back off and told the adjutant to stick a Huey up his ass.

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