When there’s blood in the ocean, it’s never long before the first shark arrives. And in this part of the world, where the waters have been deemed a shark sanctuary, man-eating species are as plentiful as they are large. Luckily, neither King nor I are bleeding, so the sharks will home in on the croc, but it sure makes me a lot more eager to get out of the water. That, and I’m about to drown. And I’m not the only one. King hitches a thumb toward the surface and we angle upward, while slipping ever closer to the mainland. We surface just beyond the farthest ring of fire, still fifty feet from shore, both of us sucking air as quietly as possible.
Still recuperating from our long swim, when a loud thrashing sounds out behind us, all we can do is turn and look. A croc has been struck by a shark. Blood pools into the water, mixing with burning jet fuel. The assault attracts the remaining crocs, one of which is struck from below a moment later. Jaws snap. Bodies death roll. Sharks twitch. The feeding frenzy is mutual and bloody as predators from two different worlds clash. The absolute mindless violence disturbs me, and despite still not being fully recovered, I find myself moving away.
“We need to get the fuck out of this water.”
King swims beside me, his strokes steady and smooth to not attract attention. We could swim faster, but flailing limbs look and sound a lot like struggling fish. Of course, that won’t stop the swirling mass of sharks from detecting our rapid heartbeats. When I feel the soft sand of the mainland beneath my feet, I start to feel better, but we’re still ten feet from shore, and anyone who’s watched Shark Week knows that even knee-deep water isn’t safe. So when we reach waist-deep water, two men who have seen their fair share of action stand and run for shore, lifting our feet high to clear the water.
Mangrove roots turn our run into a climb, but then we’re clear. I turn back, expecting to feel embarrassed by my retreat from the water, but when a dorsal fin passes by and, fifteen feet behind it, the tip of a tail, I realize the fear crawling up my back wasn’t cowardice. It was something closer to a sixth sense.
“Find them! Kill one of them!” homunculus-bird shouts, shouting at whoever is controlling the drones, and maybe the crocs. His amplified voice sounds smaller and distant, but also in stereo.
My head snaps to the dark jungle ahead. “They’re close.”
Without another word, we slip into the twisting coils of tree branches and roots. Distant voices grow louder with each step through the slick earth. There’s light ahead. A camp nestled in a recently hewn clearing. All of this for us. I crouch lower when I see movement ahead. King follows my lead, ducking beside me.
“We can flank them,” he says. “Come in from either side.”
A chip of wood slaps my face. There’s a bright white gouge in the bark just above King’s head.
“Or not. Stay here,” he says, and then he’s on his feet and moving, running pell-mell toward the camp, like a man who thinks bullets won’t hurt him.
“Stay here?” I say to myself. “Stay here? Not fucking likely.”
I move away from King, who has done a splendid job of drawing fire. So far, the web of trees are shielding him from the barrage, but he’s not going to last long if he charges out in the open.
I exit the jungle behind a trailer, but it looks and feels like a prop. I peek around the corner. The clearing is lit by a pair of floodlight stands. There’s a smoldering fire pit at the center. Two wooden posts jut from the ground. Laura is bound to one, her head hanging down, unconscious. There’s a man tied to the second post. King’s friend.
Gunfire highlights the positions of four men. They’re standing by a table, upon which are several sets of drone remotes and a series of interconnected laptops. They’re controlling a dozen aerial drones and the crocs with just four men, which means the laptops must be using some kind of AI. It’s a fairly sophisticated setup, and very expensive. Whoever the Princes of Peace are, they’re not hurting for money.
But where they’ve got money, they’re lacking in brains.
The machete silently slides from its sheath. Homunculus-bird reveals himself by screaming toward the jungle where King continues to evade the bullets being sprayed by the assault rifle–wielding men dressed in black BDUs. “You’re breaking the rules! You should have let me tell you the rules!”
I step out from behind the trailer and cover the distance to the nearest man in ten quick steps. The sound of the man’s life ending is drowned out by the roar of gunfire. Unfortunately, all three men run out of ammo just as the dead man’s death groan slips from his lungs.
All three shooters turn to me, reloading quickly.
But not quick enough. I reach down, snatch up the AR-15 hanging from the dead man’s shoulder, turn the barrel toward the men, and pull the trigger. The weapon’s last three bullets tear through the night air and then through one of the men. While he drops, the other two take aim.
Bullets thud against the dead man’s body. I drop the spent AR-15 and clutch his shirt and the machete, holding his twitching form up, knowing that eventually one of the rounds is going to slip through his flesh and into mine.
And then one does, lodging itself in my shoulder. My arm gives out, and the dead man falls.
I fall with the corpse, trying to stay behind cover, but he’s falling faster than me. I see the assault rifle barrels tracking me, and then chaos arrives. King punches his three-inch blade into the neck of one man, ending his life with a quick jab. He pulls the blade out, eyes on the second man, when he’s shot in the side. The blast jolts the knife from King’s hand, but it doesn’t slow him down. He moves in close as the soldier holds down the trigger. Bullets tear through the night. The scorching barrel hisses against King’s skin as his hands reach up, one grasping the back of the man’s head, the other coming up under his chin. His strong hands twist in unison, first to the right and then the left. There’s a crack and then the man falls away.
King is fearless, skilled, and fast, but the third man draws a bead on him, too far away for King to reach, too close to miss.
But he’s not alone, and the confidence in his eyes says he knows it.
I draw the fallen soldier’s sidearm, lift it fast, and squeeze off three rounds. The second and third bullets strike the last soldier’s thigh and gut, throwing off his aim. King closes the distance and ends the fight with a throat chop that drops the gasping man to the ground.
Mostly naked and unarmed, King’s body glistens with water, sweat, and blood. He looks possessed, but he doesn’t move. I roll to my feet, gun in hand, and see what’s stopped him cold.
Homunculus-bird.
If not for the dead man’s switch clutched in the man’s hand, he’d look about as threatening as a toddler with a rattle. He backs away toward the jungle. “I told you there were rules. I told you.”
“One of us has to die,” King says. “We got it.”
“But if one of you doesn’t,” the man says. “If one of you doesn’t … if you both survive … they”—he points to the two gagged prisoners, who have been roused by the fight; Laura meets my eyes, confusion giving way to desperation—“both die.” He cackles out a laugh. “And you’d have done it. One of you would have died to save them. I honestly don’t know which, but one of you, and that’s the kind of person the Princes of Peace don’t want. Good riddance. We wanted the survivor. The one who valued his life. Instead, here we are, with both of you.”
I aim at his chest, but don’t fire. If he dies, Laura dies.
She’s already dead, the Civilized Man mourns. You killed her.
The homunculus-bird man pauses at the jungle’s edge.
“Don’t,” King says, coming to the same realization.
“Next time you hear from us,” the man says, “listen to the rules.” His thumb comes off the trigger at the same time my index finger squeezes. I lose sight of him as a fireball erupts from beneath the two prisoners. In a blazing flash of heat, the bodies are incinerated, their screams coming and going with the speed of my fired bullet.
I’m lifted off the ground and slammed into the trailer, my consciousness sinking into the depths along with my hopes of saving Laura.
* * *
I wake to find the site smoldering. A crater is all that remains of the wooden stakes and the people tied to them. Twenty feet away, King sits up holding his head. Blood seeps from a gash on his forehead, no doubt the result of metal fragments from the explosion.
We stand in silence, surveying the scene. The table has been overturned, the laptops destroyed. The drones under their control are no doubt sinking to the bottom of the sea, along with the remains of the crocs. Despite the amount of physical evidence, not to mention bodies, I suspect it won’t lead anywhere. But there is one corpse I’m glad to see as I hobble across the clearing.
Homunculus-bird lies at the jungle’s fringe, a look of surprise frozen on his face, a neat hole punched through his forehead.
King grunts at the man, but says nothing. His death provides little comfort for the two innocents who died here today, who died because King—because both of us—didn’t listen to the rules. Rules we might have chosen to ignore. It seems equally likely that one of us would have given up his life. But we’ll never know who.
A phone chimes, spinning us around. The sound comes from the overturned table. Then it’s joined by a second phone. We head for the mess and find two phones, one adorned with a king chess piece, the second with a Stetson hat. The screens display identical messages.
Cast your vote.
Target: Afanas Konstantinov, Russian oil tycoon.
Tap for more details.
Operation parameters: Assassination.
The text is followed by two buttons: Approve and Oppose.
“Shit,” King says.
“We have no choice,” I say.
He nods. “I know.”
We both tap Oppose, casting our vote against the assassination and confirming that we are both, like it or not, Princes of Peace.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeremy Robinson (aka Jeremy Bishop and Jeremiah Knight) is the international bestselling author of more than fifty thriller, horror, science-fiction, fantasy, and action-adventure novels and novellas, including Apocalypse Machine, Hunger, Island 731, SecondWorld, and the Jack Sigler thriller series, the first of which, Pulse, is currently in development to be released as a major motion picture. His bestselling Kaiju novels, Project Nemesis and Island 731, have been adapted as comic book series from American Gothic Press/Famous Monsters of Filmland. His novels have been translated into thirteen languages. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and three children. For the latest news about his novels, comics, movies, and TV projects, and the Beware of Monsters podcast, discussing all things monstrous, visit www.bewareofmonsters.com.
ROOKIE
BY JOE McKINNEY
Takes one to know one, right?
That’s what all the kids say.
Well, I used to be a Ranger, and the guy who walked into the D. B. Grocery that night, he was a Ranger.
He had Fort Benning written all over him.
“Pay attention,” my close-quarters combat instructors used to say. “It don’t cost nothing.”
For Rangers and cops alike, that’s the mantra. Pay attention. Head on a swivel. If you get surprised, it’s your own damn fault.
Don’t ever let it be your fault.
Good words to live by.
So I was over by the freezers, trying to figure out which TV dinner was going to keep me company that night, when I heard the door chime and saw movement out of the corner of my eye.
I pay attention.
Naturally, I turned that way.
The light from the corner lamppost poured in, framing a tall white guy in a dirty yellow halogen stain, as if he were stepping out of an old sepia photograph. He was built trim, like a swimmer. I’d guess six three, maybe 180 pounds. He had a surfer’s haircut, blond and shaggy, but the rest of him looked like a killing machine. His chin looked as though it had been carved out of stone and in his icy gaze I saw the reflection of all the crap I’d seen back in my time with the teams. If he’d been dressed in BDUs and a boonie hat, his face painted green and black, rather than a T-shirt and jeans, he’d have been a ready-made recruitment poster for the Rangers.
That is, if they had recruitment posters.
And trust me, they don’t.
He stopped in the doorway, made a long, slow scan of the store, skipping over Jun Kwai, the shop’s owner, and then lingered for a bit on me, summing me up, before taking in the rest of the place.
Only then did he walk in.
I let out a sigh. I knew the guy was trouble. When you see someone like that, a full-boat military bad boy, in the middle of one of the rowdiest neighborhoods in West Baltimore, you just know something’s wrong. I’d been a Baltimore police officer for something like seven months at that point, but even a rookie cop like me could have told you the guy didn’t belong there. West Baltimore is almost all black, and a white guy with a surfer haircut and a Ranger stare just doesn’t fit with the general population.
Was I racially profiling him?
Yeah, maybe.
But the guy didn’t fit the neighborhood, and any cop worth his or her salt will tell you that is what the FBI calls a clue that something bad is about to happen.
Plus, the guy had a fine sheen of sweat on his face.
And he was out of breath.
Just a little.
He might have looked normal to anyone else, but like I said, I used to be an operator. I know the breathing drills they teach you. I know how they teach you to step outside of your own OODA loop, how to master it. How to stay glassy calm, no matter what you’re dealing with. How to work the problem. He was pulling himself together right in front of me. Something had happened, and this guy was trying to stay on top of it.
But whatever his problem was, it was my problem now.
I put the milk down on the shelf and steadied my breathing with the same technique Grunt Boy had just used. My hand moved to my sidearm and I thumbed down the holster’s hood. Nice and slow, nice and quiet. Grunt Boy was on full alert. No need to agitate him further. Still, I wanted to be ready. If my instincts were right, and they always are, this guy had a trailer full of trouble dragging along behind him. I wasn’t going to be surprised. I wasn’t going to be last on the draw.
Grunt Boy glanced over his shoulder, just once, and so discreetly someone else might not have noticed it, and then headed toward the back of the store. The bathrooms were back there. I thought maybe he’d lock himself in.
Maybe, I thought, he was a junkie.
That’s becoming more common these days, even in the Ranger community. All that time in the Sandbox has left a lot of guys with some serious hurt, both inside and out, and sometimes, when you come back home and find the world tells you they love you, but shows you nothing but hate and indifference, the needle and the spoon can make that hurt seem a million miles away.
For a little while, at least.
Maybe, I thought, that was this guy’s deal. It would explain the furtive glance over his shoulder. The brief spark of worry that lit his eyes when he saw me. The sweat on his brow.
Maybe.
I looked at Jun Kwai. He answered me with a shrug. This shop was a regular stop for me on my way home from work. Jun Kwai had run this business for twenty years. He’d seen three riots and more robberies than most of the cops I knew, and all of it had given him a sort of Zenlike calm in the face of the weird. Not much of anything fazed him.
It was then I spotted the trucks outside.
Two FedEx trucks pulling up to the curb across the street. Like I said, I was pretty new to the Baltimore Police Department, but I’d worked this neighborhood long enough to know that FedEx rarely puts in an appearance around here, and never at two in the morning.
Much less two trucks at once.
Behind the cash register, even Jun Kwai was starting to get nervous. I saw him fidgeting out of the corner of my eye. I knew from
previous experience—actually, a lot of people knew from previous experience—that he kept a Ruger Super Redhawk revolver under the counter. It was an obscenely huge handgun, way too big for him. He was reaching for it now.
I shook my head, gave him a hard look. Don’t do it. Not yet. I had a feeling things were about to get out of hand, and I didn’t want any unintended collateral damage.
Out on the street, the back end of one of the trucks rolled open and a team of soldiers in black BDUs jumped out. They moved quickly and efficiently, a well-oiled machine.
And they were armed to the teeth.
I checked out the other FedEx truck and saw the same scene repeated.
The two teams rolled out, then melted into a dark, vacant lot at the corner.
They were pros. That much was obvious. Who they were I had no way of knowing, but I had a pretty good idea of who they were looking for.
“Keep that pistol out of sight,” I told Jun Kwai.
“You got it, boss. You sure you don’t need any help?”
“You want to help?” I asked. “Keep your finger on the phone. Get ready to call 911.”
“I’ll call right now.”
“No,” I said. I knew my fellow cops. I also knew the kind of men recruited into special teams like the ones I’d seen off-load from the FedEx trucks. If I called in backup without knowing exactly what was going on, somebody was going to get shot, and good men would probably die. I wasn’t ready to let that happen. I’ve been to enough funerals. “Not yet. Let me figure who the players are first.”
“You got it, boss.”
I went to the bathrooms at the back of the store. I drew my weapon and set up next to the men’s room door. Just outside of the kill funnel that would form if the guy decided to start shooting at the door.
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