SNAFU: Hunters
Page 38
If you want a bull…
Miguel charged, as they’d expect him to, but at the last second leapt, punching into the overhead tunnel, driving his massive fist and barbed metal spikes into hard armor and soft flesh. The hidden man let out a strangled grunt as his abdomen imploded, and as Miguel tore away he went slack. Miguel’s foot came down, slipped on the body, and the world went white.
* * *
The whispers cooed their disapproval as Matt rounded the corner too late for the explosion to shred his flesh. The bonk had stumbled to one knee, a mass of charred skin smeared with red where the mass of fragmentation grenades had sheared through. Pale metal shone through the injuries, an enhancement Matt hadn’t expected.
Conor dropped from the shaft, hairless skin golden and shiny from the intense heat, and hit the ground on his knees and elbows, too hard. And stayed there, gagging.
Matt fired, a single round straight to the forehead. The bonk jerked sideways and the bullet ricocheted off, gouging the skin but otherwise doing no damage. As burnt flesh knitted over metal, it looked healthier than when they’d started.
Holy shit.
The bonk leaned forward and drove a fist down, crushing Flynn to the floor. His pelvis shattered and his legs twitched, but he didn’t scream.
Matt charged, firing, as the bonk raised his fist again. The impacts should have driven it back, but instead it lunged forward, rising to its feet in an athletic leap. It stumbled as Flynn lashed out. His composite blade caught it in the knee, slicing through the meat to lodge in the joint.
Flynn held on, two-handed, as it dragged him another half-step and then fell, unable to drag its other leg underneath it.
Matt stepped forward and aimed, point-blank, at the top of its head. The single shot rang out and the bonk dropped, hot red fluid pulsing from the hole. He let out a breath, pointed down, fired twice more into the fractured skull.
Kneeling, Matt put his hand on Conor’s shoulder. “You alive?”
Conor’s hand twitched, and his thumb extended.
Matt patted the top of his head. “Sorry about the dibs. You maniac.”
* * *
Six hours later they landed in D.C., Karle and Flynn still on stretchers, al-Azwar, Platt, and Washington in body bags. Matt shook Jeff Hannes’s hand on the tarmac, Jeff’s tie lashing in the downwash from the propellers.
Jeff pinned Flynn with his eyes and spoke as the chopper lifted off. “What the hell was that, Flynn?”
Karle held up a hand. “We already discussed it, sir. Flynn thought he’d taken down his target, so once he’d recovered from his injuries he’d redirected to assist in the hunt for, um, for Pointy.”
Jeff looked from Flynn to Karle, his anger fading to his familiar grimace. “We lost three Augs taking down four, with drone support. How did that happen?”
Matt licked his lips. “We’re still not sure. Something ambushed us on the way down, killed Platt and isolated al-Azwar so that Pointy could take her out. We looked at the Dragonfly feeds, and IR picked up a signature, but not much of one, and it disappeared into the crowd before we’d finished the sweep.”
“What are you saying?”
Karle answered. “We… we don’t know, sir. Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie squads came in on cleanup, and we vetted everyone before we released them or turned them over to metro PD for warrants. Nobody flagged, not even as suspicious, though way too many tested positive for Jade – nothing serious yet, just junkie-level cut crap.”
Jeff looked at each of them in turn. “Well, in that case, I think you have a new mission.”
More SNAFU releases:
CLICK ON THE IMAGES FOR MORE INFORMATION:
FUBAR by Weston Ochse
Table of Contents
Apex Predator
N.X. Sharps & Tim Marquitz
Two Birds
Evan Dicken
Non-Zero Sum
R.P.L. Johnson
Only Stones In Their Place
Christine Morgan
That Old Black Magic
James A. Moore
Ngu’Tinh
D.F. Shultz
Warm Bodies
Kirsten Cross
The Bani Protocols
Rose Blackthorn
Hungry Eyes
Seth Skorkowsky
The Secret War
David W. Amendola
Outbreak
V. E. Battaglia
Droch-fhola
Brad C. Hodson
Bonked
Patrick Freivald