Bestiary Read Free Page B

fine mesh net large enough to have created an aviary a hundred feet high and ten times as wide.
     
     
    As they passed the garage with the Rolls parked inside, Lopez cast a covetous glance inside. What if the thing still ran? Why couldn’t he drive it back to camp, right behind the Humvee? Wouldn’t that be something?
     
     
    But then, he could swear he saw something move inside the garage. No, not that he’d actually seen something, but the light in there, the shadows, had changed. He glanced ahead at the others—was it worth calling out an alarm? He looked again, his rifle leveled at the front of the Rolls. But now there was nothing, and the others were even farther away.
     
     
    He picked up his pace, his head turned to keep an eye on anything behind him. He was sorry he’d listened to all that bullshit from Hasan. Strange cries in the night, people disappearing. But he was even sorrier that he’d listened to Greer. What was all that crap about a treasure hunt? The only treasure he’d seen—and who knew what was inside that box?—was now gripped in Greer’s loving arms.
     
     
    On his left, he saw what he took to be the stables—there were empty stalls and unidentifiable pieces of harness hanging from the half doors. Lopez was from Santa Fe, and he’d actually worked summers at a ranch, but he’d never seen tackle like this. Maybe the al-Kallis kept those famous Arabian stallions he’d heard so much about.
     
     
    As they approached the back of the palace, he scanned the many narrow windows, wondering what lay behind them. Christ, did people really live like this? The palace reminded him of pictures he’d seen of places like the Taj Mahal. By joining the army he thought he’d see some of them. But so far, this was it.
     
     
    There was a cry, a loud, prolonged cawing from somewhere in the distance. It sounded like a baby being strangled.
     
     
    “Jesus,” Lopez exclaimed. “What was that?”
     
     
    They’d all stopped in their tracks.
     
     
    “It was a peacock,” Hasan said. “They cry for rain.”
     
     
    Lopez swallowed hard—his mouth was suddenly as dry as the desert. “They ever get it?”
     
     
    “Not often.”
     
     
    In the colonnade, the shadows made a kind of zigzag pattern on the floor. The sun had fallen now to just below the top of the outside walls. Their footsteps echoed here, too, but Lopez knew enough to make no Ghostbuster jokes this time. He pulled the damp collar away from his neck, and as he did so, he thought he heard breathing behind him, a low rasping sound. He whipped around, his finger on the trigger of the rifle, but there was nothing but a row of stone columns, glowing like burnished gold in the dying sun.
     
     
    “Hey,” he said, and the others stopped and turned toward him.
     
     
    “What?” Donlan said.
     
     
    “I thought I heard something.”
     
     
    “Hasan already told you—it’s peacocks.”
     
     
    “No. Something else.”
     
     
    Greer wedged the box under one arm and took out his gun. “Let’s keep moving.’”
     
     
    The back of Lopez’s neck tingled, and it wasn’t the drying sweat. He felt as though he were being watched. Tracked. He thought of the coyotes he’d shot back in New Mexico—and he felt like one of them.
     
     
    “When we get around front,” Greer said, “spread out in a—”
     
     
    And then it was on top of Lopez. A running shadow, a huge black stain, it lunged out from behind one of the columns and snatched him like a wolf picking off a stray lamb. Donlan panicked and sprayed a burst of automatic fire around the colonnade; Hasan flattened himself against the inside wall, but Greer suddenly felt something like a splash of hot water on his left leg. He knew he’d been hit by a ricochet, but he didn’t have time to look. He needed to get himself, and the box, out of there.
     
     
    He tried to run, but his leg was barely able to hold him up.
     
     
    Donlan was still firing as they fell back.