The Lost Island

60

Gordon Delgado had started out as a dog handler in Iraq. Several tours and many citations later, he was honorably discharged and went to work as a crack dog trainer for the FBI. He had seen a lot of shit in his career, but when he’d arrived on the island the day before, he couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw that monster in the cage. And when it got out and went berserk, that was something beyond even his worst nightmare: worse than Iraq, crazier than any movie. He could still vividly see, in his mind’s eye, that monster with its dreads flying, bellowing, cavernous mouth open like a giant funnel, exposing rotting teeth and a ropy tongue plastered with foam, its furry hands swiping open a man’s belly with no more effort than scooping butter out of a tub, that loping sideways run — and that eye, Mother of God, that eye, a pinpoint of black surrounded by bloodshot piss-yellow, big and shiny as a saucer, rotating crazily in its orbit. During its rampage, the thing had looked at him for just a moment — one soldier in each massive paw — a look that he would never shake as long as he lived. He hoped to hell he never had to look into that eye again.

They had left the camp behind, which he’d been glad to do. The fences were down while the backup generator was being repaired, the men jumpy and firing at nothing. The dump fire was at least getting under control, or so it seemed, and thank God for that, because if it spread into the thick jungle, there was no telling what might happen.

The dogs had picked up the creature’s scent trail along the newly cut road to the other side of the island and they were following it rapidly. Holding their leashes, he moved along the path that had been freshly hacked out of the jungle, the two soldiers behind him, left and right point. Delgado knew quiet competence from braggadocio and half-assery, and these were two good men. He himself carried a .45 and an M4A1 carbine. His radio was clipped to his belt, its channel kept open to the camp’s main frequency. The idea was to track the monster and circle him, then drive him back toward camp, where an eight-man squad was set up in an L-ambush, ready to take him out. The girl, if she was with him, was to be captured, or — if that was impossible — neutralized.

Delgado had never worked with this kind of dog before, an Italian breed used for sniffing out truffles. But while they weren’t killer dogs, they were clearly intelligent, alert, steady, with no lack of guts. And anyway, against a monster like that a mastiff would be as useless as a terrier. These animals immediately understood what they were to do and had not lost their minds in terror.

The dogs paused at the wall of jungle next to the road, indicating that the scent trail went that way.

The plan seemed simple enough, and likely to succeed. But Delgado couldn’t get out of his head the speed and ferocity the monster had displayed in its tear through the camp. As they left the road, pushing into the thick vegetation, he understood that there would be little warning if the creature decided to rush them.

Almost immediately the dogs’ leashes started getting hung up.

“Hold it,” he told the soldiers as he knelt over the dogs. They were eager, tense, their flanks quivering with excitement. “Gotta unleash the dogs.”

The soldiers said nothing. He liked that. Soldiers joking and talking trash at the beginning of an op were only displaying their fear.

The dogs, unleashed, understood they were to stay close to him. All the better. He would know when they were closing in on the monster by their behavior. These were damn good tracking dogs, he decided, quiet and focused. Dogs, cars, guns, and women — the Italians did well where it counted.

It was hard to move through the jungle without making a racket. It was hot and green and overpoweringly humid, and Delgado was soon soaked. The monster would hear them long before they would become aware of him — except for the fact that the dogs would act as a kind of early warning. What he worried most about was their own rear. He didn’t know how intelligent the huge creature was, but even a dumb-ass Cape buffalo knew enough to circle around and come up on its trackers from behind. They had to expect anything.

As they penetrated farther into the jungle, everything became very quiet. The sounds of the camp disappeared. The jungle seemed devoid of life. Delgado found it spooky.

The island was small. It wouldn’t be long before they closed in on the creature. He could already see they were getting nearer from the behavior of the dogs: their heightened tension, their quickened movements. He signaled to the soldiers, and they nodded their understanding.

They moved slower, more cautiously, hyper-aware of every little sound.

And now the dogs began to tremble. They were tense, frightened, but still in control. And then suddenly Delgado realized he could smell it: a thick, cloying odor with a foul human component he found nauseating. But it was good news: if they could smell the monster, because of the wind direction, it couldn’t smell them.

With a hand signal, Delgado indicated to the soldiers that they were to make a ninety-degree turn. This would be the beginning of the stalk and circle. They moved off the scent trail, the dogs whining and reluctant to go but obedient in the end. Moving slowly, he led the soldiers two hundred yards to the nine o’clock position, and then began the clockwise circle to noon. He had done this more than once with insurgents in Iraq, and it was a move that tended to confuse and frighten them, causing them to retreat along the six o’clock line. He hoped it would have the same effect on the monster.

They reached the twelve o’clock position, and he signaled to the soldiers to stop. He figured that the monster should be about three hundred yards due south of them. Now the time had come to drive the creature toward the ambush salient. With additional hand signals he readied the group; they raised their rifles and awaited his signal. The dogs, sensing something was about to happen, went rigid with tension.

Delgado raised his hand, paused — then brought it sharply down.

The soldiers charged forward, discharging their weapons in burst mode. The dogs joined in immediately, leaping ahead of the soldiers with hysterical barking. Delgado brought up the rear, firing his .45 into the air, the massive ACP rounds sounding a deep thunder to the chatter of the M16s. Shock and awe — enough to terrify anything and send it fleeing.

Then came something like a gust of wind, a disturbance in the leaves, a sudden blur, followed by the brief shriek of a dog. Then nothing. Delgado halted in sudden confusion. Both dogs were gone. And then he saw it: a long streak of gore clinging to the vegetation, going off in a perpendicular path into the dense jungle — blood, ropes of intestines, meat, fur, a pink tongue still twitching, a floppy ear.

All was silent.

It took a moment for Delgado to process what had happened. The monster had crossed their path at right angles and swept up both dogs, utterly dismembering them in passing, and then vanished again.