Quake by Andy Remic Page B

after the insane strike across the English Channel, France, Germany and Italy. They walked through long grass, ducking beneath the idling rotors, dragging their kit and piling it beneath a large cherry tree. Slater moved off to release the KTM 800Vi motorcycles from beneath the Comanche as Jam lit a cigarette, checked the magazine on his SA1000 and walked out beyond their LZ, a hand shading his eyes. He propped his SA1000 against his thigh as he peered off into the hazy distance. He was sweating within seconds of landing under his heavy clothing, and his gaze took in the steep slopes leading to woodland and distant villages of white buildings with red-tiled roofs - a mountainous landscape of jagged grey peaks filled with a fluid beauty of deep green and the distant glimmers of a winding river.
    Jam coughed on his cigarette smoke, his mind settling into a businesslike mode now that he was here on the ground, ready for work and ready for the killing to begin. His lips tightened as he thought of all the friends he had lost at the hands of the Nex; many good men and women, cut in half with machine-gun bullets, throats slit, limbs strewn around after massive terrible detonations. The war had become personal, and so Jam’s hatred was personal - he would hunt the Nex to the ends of the earth and slaughter them in their sleep.
    Slater approached. ‘We’re rocking.’
    Turning, they watched the Comanche roar and leap into the air, huge rotors glinting in the sun, camouflaged flanks gleaming dully as the huge machine hovered for a moment, banked, and disappeared with a high-powered engine whine. The trees settled, the late-summer scents of the woods and the cherry trees drifting across to the small DemolSquad. The grass hissed in the breeze as Jam cocked his SA1000.
    ‘Time for business,’ he said.
    Darkness was falling as Jam slowed the KTM on the winding unmetalled stone-littered road which sliced between woodland trails. Tyres crunched, skidding a little on the loose stone, and TT and Slater pulled up close behind him. The three bikes burbled quietly, their 800cc engines ticking over, stealth exhausts electronically stealing any sounds the machines might make and so rendering them, to all intents and purposes, silent.
    ‘Everything OK?’
    Jam said nothing. He sat, eyes surveying the incline ahead of him. Heavy woodland, conifers, beech and spruce sloped away to either side, their bases covered with the detritus of a hundred years of fallen branches and leaves. The Spiral operatives watched a deer, brown with soft white spots, wander aimlessly and pause, its head coming up to gaze at them with large oval brown eyes before it sprinted off between the trees, disappearing like a drifting ghost.
    Jam gave the military hand signal for silence.
    They waited, Jam watching the trail, eyes slowly scanning the tree line ahead and to either side where thick boles were scattered. Perfect ambush territory, his brain was telling him. Perfect...
    With the unclenching of his fist they moved off, slower now, more warily. Something had spooked Jam, and Slater had known his friend long enough to trust the man’s instincts. A drinking hedonistic womaniser he might be, but there were two things he was certainly good at: killing and, more importantly, keeping his men - and women - alive. It was an unspoken talent. A gift.
    They cruised, moving higher into the mountain pass, the roads becoming more and more pronounced as Vs of worn stone shrapnel, the slopes steeper and more rugged, the trails more and more disused. As darkness fell Jam pulled to the side of the trail where a footpath or deer trail of some kind crossed the rough stone road. Jam pulled his bike onto the trail and, ducking branches which whipped against their faces and heavy canvas combat jackets, they rode through the woods until they came to a huge natural outcropping of massive boulders, some larger than a house and balanced precariously on one another to form a natural wall. Jam