Кристофер Голден - The Predator - The Official Movie Novelization

“Can I be honest with you?” she asked.

He nodded.

Gently, she said, “That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

He started to chuckle, but didn’t reply. In the conversational lull, Casey cocked her head at a distant, growing burr. It took her a moment to realize the sound was the approach of a helicopter, chopping at the air.

McKenna, however, recognized the sound instantly. By the time Casey had figured it out, he had already jerked upright and then slammed out the door of the RV, into the darkness. Casey took a deep breath and followed him out. Whatever came next, they were all in it together, for better or for worse.

She had a terrible feeling it was going to be worse.

Bursting from the RV, McKenna nearly ran headlong into Nettles, who stood frozen in the field, listening to the sound of the incoming chopper. All the amusement that had been on the man’s face just minutes earlier had vanished, leaving just the soldier behind. The warrior.

“Sounds like a Pave Hawk,” Nettles said, glancing at McKenna. “Sikorsky. Not civilian.”

This was all McKenna needed to hear. He whirled around, scanning the team. Baxley, Coyle, Lynch, Nebraska, Nettles himself, Casey… and Rory. Jesus, he wished he could have taken the kid home, but nowhere was safe for Rory right now. Nowhere. He consoled himself with the thought that as long as he was with his son, he could at least try his best to keep the kid alive.

How the hell had it come to this?

“Lights out! Move!” he barked, even as he darted back to the RV, reached inside, and killed the lights.

When he turned, he saw that the Loonies were all looking to him, waiting on orders. He’d become their ersatz CO, which meant it was on him to formulate a plan. Right now, his only plan was to keep as many of them alive—and out of the clutches of their various enemies—as possible. Whatever happened in the next few minutes, if some of them kept to the shadows, there was always hope for the others. If they were all captured, the government could tell any story they wanted about the violence and fear unfolding tonight.

Yet, in their faces, he could see that they thought of themselves as a team—that they wouldn’t like the idea of splitting apart. They needed something to cling to. The Loonies needed a mission.

“We’re gonna need air transport,” McKenna said. He glanced at Nettles. “And maybe some incendiaries. Nebraska, you’re with me. The rest of you, go. Get moving!”

They all stood a little straighter. Even Rory. One by one, the Loonies saluted McKenna, sealing the deal—making it official. He was their commanding officer. He snapped a salute in return, trying to hide how absurdly moved he suddenly felt, and the Loonies took that as their cue. They bolted, grabbing weapons on the way, and disappeared into the woods at the edge of the field.

McKenna grabbed Rory’s hand, nodded to Casey and Nebraska, and the four of them ran across the field. Tall grass waved around them, but he knew it wouldn’t be enough to hide them. They’d only run five yards when they nearly tripped over the Predator dog, a thick stick clenched in its mandibles.

Casey rushed at it, making silent shooing motions with her hands. “Go,” she urged, but the bolt through its head hadn’t just tamed the monstrosity. Dumb as a stump, it capered back and forth with every shooing motion, thinking Casey was playing with it.

While they’d been in the area, the men had spread out to clean their weapons and take inventory. Casey spotted something on the ground and bent to retrieve it. Only when she stood up did McKenna see that it was an errant grenade, sloppily left behind by one of the Loonies. He’d have ripped them a new asshole if they were still standing there. Instead, he felt relief as Casey tossed the grenade—pin still safely in—toward an irrigation ditch. The Predator dog raced after it, snatched it up, and then tumbled into the ditch.

“Dad, we’re never gonna make it,” Rory said.

McKenna gave him a tug and they started running again. Casey and Nebraska fell in behind them, racing toward an old barn a hundred yards across the field.

The helicopter roared in from over the tree line. The chop of its rotors went from loud to deafening as it swept overhead, circled back, and then hovered above them, its spotlight stabbing down onto McKenna and the others like God had decided it was time for them to have a conversation. They were caught dead to rights, nowhere to run.

McKenna let go of his son’s hand and spread his arms, to make sure the shooters up in the chopper knew he didn’t have a gun. Nebraska and Casey did the same.

Moments later the Sikorsky was on the ground, tall grass bent by the blowback of the rotors. The door slid open, and a figure jumped down into the field. McKenna recognized Agent Traeger immediately, and reluctantly had to admire the man’s courage. Though his men followed him out of the chopper, all of them armed and with their weapons trained on McKenna, Nebraska, Casey, and Rory, Traeger had exited first and unarmed. Whatever he wanted from them, it wasn’t a firefight.

Even so, McKenna shifted to put himself between the mercenaries’ guns and his son.

Traeger stopped a dozen feet away and regarded them impassively. “Where is it?”

“Where’s what?” McKenna replied.

“The device,” Traeger said. He mimed placing something on his arm, as if he was wearing the same type of wrist gauntlet the Predators wore. “It goes right in here.”

McKenna knew instantly what he meant, remembered the thing in Rory’s hand—what the original Predator had come for, and what the Upgrade had killed him for.

“That… thing has it.”

One of Traeger’s men—not a soldier, but an aide of some kind—gave them a look of disdain.

“I see,” the aide said. “Well, if that’s your position, I think it’s time for some robust discussion.”

As the helicopter’s rotors finally stopped spinning, throwing an eerie silence over the farmland, armed mercenaries hustled forward and grabbed McKenna and Nebraska. Rory started to argue, but McKenna quieted him with a look. The mercs started marching McKenna and Nebraska toward the barn across the field. In the dark, Casey and Rory were accompanied by Traeger and his aide. No guns were aimed at the scientist and the boy, but they were no less prisoners, and in no less danger.

McKenna had his face in the dirt. He didn’t like the taste. His thoughts were all static fuzz, like a TV screen when the cable connection went out. His face throbbed where boots had kicked him, and his ribs ached. He tried to get his knees under him and another boot kicked him. He grunted and went down on his face again. Thoughts of Rory filled his head. He pictured the kid drawing in the dirt… then sliding in the dirt to get to first base… and somehow that led his mind to an image of the Loonies saluting him.

An image flickered in his head—the men he’d lost in the jungle, the smell of their blood, the Predator uncloaking, soaked in gore. He should have killed the bastard at the time, but it was dead now, wasn’t it? Muddy as his thoughts were, he knew that. The giant one, the Upgrade, had hung that son of a bitch like a side of meat. He wondered how many more there were, how many on their home planet. How many on his home planet?

“You hid it once,” a voice said.

McKenna glanced up at the two mercs who loomed over him. They had him in some kind of holding pen beside the barn. One of them kicked him again.

“In the mail,” the mercenary reminded him. “Where’d you hide it this time?”

With the next kick, McKenna coughed up blood.