Chaingang

He looked closely. Something nudged him. Déjà vu? The floor bore the signs of trail. He'd seen incredible “hardballs” inside natural tubes such as this one, ceilings with precisely carpentered dink bamboo. He touched a great leaf with a midrib like the rigid blade of an epee and saw his sign.

Saw the man-tracks the way he'd spotted trip wires and traps and deadfalls—saw the sign, felt the presence of some human intrusion. He, Daniel, was the grandmaster of concealment. Nobody could track a human being like him. He read sign in bright moonlight—but how?

He froze. Chilled those vital signs. Waited. Listening. Reaching out for the enemy who was somewhere near. Would the Genneret outfit have a security unit? At night? Working the woods?

He remained very still for a long period—motionless—barely breathing. He heard something and his face broke into a wide and dangerous grin. Slowly he eased into the pipeline, with the focused concentration that had kept him alive so long, moving through the shadows.

The Genneret outfit was forgotten the instant he saw the watcher and identified him. The farm and the cruel men would have provided him with a smorgasbord of wildly delicious opportunities. Another time—perhaps.

When he saw the movement in deep shadow, he froze again. The huge links of the yard-long, friction-taped killing chain dangled at arm's length.

Now he knew what the sound of the human voice he'd heard represented; it was a watcher whispering into some kind of microphone. A headset thing, maybe, with a transparent tube-type mouthpiece and connected earplug.

“Negative,” he heard the shadowman whisper, “Blue Leader, I do not have a visual.” Chaingang moved forward as the man spoke into his tiny plastic mike, the powerful right arm in motion as he moved, the massive tractor-strength chain moving through the air, propelled by a wrist and forearm and upper bicep of steel, a blur of snaking chain whirling into the deep shadow and connecting.

The chain made more noise crashing into the bushes than the man did falling. Only a hard splat, an off of air, a relatively quiet clump of dead weight—two hundred pounds plus machine gun—falling in a crumpled heap, marked the kill. It was a far more merciful extermination than Bunkowski would have been preferred, but this was no auction house security guard. This was one of them—the invisible eyes. If they were this close, and in the numbers that they would have to be, logic dictated that he expedite his plan's final stages.

He checked the fallen man for life signs. Quickly searched for ID and found neither vital signs nor identification. The weapon was ID enough. That and the commo gear. He was very still again, listening, his sensors scanning for the presence of a partner.

Satisfied after several moments, he eased his great bulk down to the ground beside the man, carefully inserting the earpiece, which he'd found near the watcher's bloodied head. The umbilical cord that connected the headset to the guts of the radio apparatus was too short to facilitate much slack, but with his head beside the inert man's, he was able to insert the earplug.

There was nothing. He waited. As the seconds ticked by, he wondered if they had decided to move in and take him. Were they though with him now? Had he fulfilled his function? Was this experiment or operation now to be aborted with extreme prejudice?

“Blue Leader to Blue Tracker Five—do you read, over?” He grinned into the dark silence, stifling a coughing explosion of mirth. He could utter words now, and the watchers would hear him. What of it?

“Blue Leader, this is Blue Tracker, did Five confirm a visual on Side Show?” The other voice was less clear, but he could hear it.

“Uh—Negative, Blue Tracker, stand by one. Blue Tracker Five, do you copy this transmission? Over."

Chaingang removed the small earpiece and took the high-impact microphone between his thumb and index finger and squeezed. Crunch!

He silently backtracked his way through the pipeline to his vehicle, fighting to keep a damper on his rage, but boiling with irritation at having his plans for Mr. Genneret so rudely interrupted.

Chaingang was gone. Inside the office of the show and auction company, mean Dean Seabaugh, Sally Peebles, and Doyle Genneret shuffled papers and talked of a workaday things, oblivious to their luck. They should have run to their wheels, driven to the nearest airport, and chartered the first thing that would fly them to Vegas.

Lady luck was smiling on them this night. They'd come this close to riding the Genneret Exotic Animal, Livestock, Gun Show and Auction on the midnight red-eye straight to hell.

There are those to whom solitary confinement, isolation, and the horrors of restricted movement would be a nightmare. Others, perhaps, might find solace in the heart of private darkness. If it is all you have know, your escape can be a kind of exquisite pleasure—even the severe challenge of the biter.