Second Round: A Return to the Ur-Bar by Garth Nix

Author:Garth Nix [Joshua Palmatier, Patricia Bray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zombies Need Brains, LLC
Published: 2018-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

Sixteen hours later, Westerley was looking at the suspect structure from the ruined bank of a bombed-out rice paddy. Cao was with him, talking to his headquarters on the radio. He’d brought two of his smiling killers with him, as well as the radio operator; they were out on the flanks. The long, tropical dusk was setting in, bringing with it all the usual bugs and making sweat and the humid air seem to be pretty much interchangeable. They’d been dropped five kilometers back and had walked and waded in the hard way, staying off paths.

The whole area had been designated a free-fire zone by the Americans some months before, but even that didn’t explain the quiet. Nugget had never experienced such an absence of people, not anywhere he’d been in his time in-country. Cao and his men were nervous, too, something Westerley hadn’t seen before either.

“It looks like it’s made of adobe,” said Westerley. “Kind of out of Texas or somewhere. You sure this isn’t some weird Yank thing? Psy-ops or something?”

“It is made of mud bricks, we know that much,” said Cao. “But not local mud. Wrong color. And the Americans… the ones that know about it are worried. They sent in a team as well.”

“What?” spat Westerley. “You didn’t tell me that! Surefire way to fuck everything up is not tell me shit like that!”

“I didn’t know,” said Cao. He looked across at his radio operator, who was lying on his side against the earthen wall, making sure the folded-over bush-whip antenna of his ANPRC-77 stayed below the rim of the bank. “I just got word.”

“I hate this fucking left-hand right-hand bullshit,” said Westerley. “Who’d they send in?”

“Ranger lurp,” said Cao. “Six men. Went in just before noon, none came out.”

“And eight of your guys the day before? Went in, didn’t come out?”

“Yes, eight.”

“Got to be a tunnel complex below, but … no communication at all? Nothing?”

“Both units confirmed they were about to enter, then nothing,” said Cao. “I had two men to cover mine, a little closer than we are now. They heard nothing, saw nothing. They waited two hours, then retreated to the LZ and reported. That’s when the General asked his astrologer and I came to find you.”

“The Americans have anyone else here now?” snapped Westerley.

“No one has told me they do,” said Cao.

“Find out,” said Westerley. “I’m going to take a look. By myself.”

Cao nodded and took the handset from his radio operator again. Westerley was a little surprised. He’d expected an argument, expected Cao would want to come along. But then this whole thing wasn’t anything like normal.

A fucking two story adobe building in a destroyed village in a free fire zone with a flashing neon sign above the main door that said “Bar.” It was either the most complex practical joke ever perpetrated in wartime—or it was even weirder than that night by the stream eight kilometers out of Polei Kleng.

Westerley took his time getting to the bar, moving from cover to cover, pausing to listen and watch.

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