The Tide_Ghost Fleet

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  “Hear that, Frank?” Thomas asked. “We don’t need you there anymore. Go pick up Dom and the others.”

  “You don’t need to tell me twice,” Frank said.

  Thomas shook his head, pulling the cigar from between his teeth. The end of it had been demolished from being clamped in his jaw. “Chao, keep that drone back as far as you can. It doesn’t have flares, and Frank isn’t flying it. I doubt very much it can dodge an incoming missile.”

  For a while the drone circled far above the ship, using the storm clouds as cover. The flashing lightning gave them a chance to study the ship as Samantha took still images from the drone’s video feed. She put several of them on the monitor next to the live view of the vessel.

  “Looks like this is the Karlstad,” Samantha said, pointing to the block letters scrawled on its side. “That’s one of the original Swedish Visby-class corvettes. This wasn’t made special like the Huntress was for us.”

  “So they stole it from the Swedes,” Thomas said. “That means their intelligence operations and their military operations are still running hot. I don’t like this at all.”

  “Ahoy, boys and girls,” Frank said, “I’m almost at pickup.”

  “Good,” Dom said. “We need to get Spencer out of here, and the Skulls won’t leave us alone.”

  “I’m going to warn you,” Frank said. “This will be tight. I’m already lower than I’d like to be on fuel, and racing around a goddamn missile had me pissing gasoline like the Seahawk has a UTI.”

  “Too much, Frank,” Samantha said. “Way too much.”

  On the drone’s monitor, the Karlstad was slowly accelerating out to sea. It cut through the stormy waters with the same grace as the Huntress, slicing through the cresting whitecaps and letting waves roll over the deck like they were nothing more than the wind. Thomas almost admired the way the ship surged forward, except that it meant the Karlstad was trying to disappear into the squall.

  “Stay on that ship,” Thomas growled at Chao.

  The drone circled the area in wide loops. Chao maintained a healthy distance to minimize the chance of being discovered. The ship began sailing in a southeasterly direction that would take them close to the Huntress. Thomas was itching to stop them, but he wasn’t sure engaging in an all-out sea battle with a ship carrying nuclear warheads was a wise decision.

  “Cliff,” Thomas called over the comms to the officer of the watch on the bridge, “stay out of the Karlstad’s sight. I want to tail it as best as a six-hundred-forty-ton ship can. We cannot let them spot us.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cliff replied. The Huntress’s engines growled louder a moment later.

  The ship began drifting westward, pulling them further out to sea so the Karlstad would pass between them and the shore.

  “How long before that second drone needs to take off?” Thomas asked.

  “Thirty minutes,” Chao replied.

  “Good,” Thomas said. But he didn’t feel good about it.

  The Karlstad was quickly approaching maximum speed. They were hightailing it somewhere, and Thomas wanted to know where. But as the Karlstad started to put distance between itself and the Huntress, it made the prospect of tracking the ship with just drones impossible. Soon it would be out of the drones’ effective range, and they’d need Huntress constantly moving just to keep the drones in service to follow the Karlstad, unless the ship decided to stop miraculously close to their position. Thomas had a feeling that was unlikely.

  “You better be close to picking up our people, Frank,” Thomas said over the radio.

  “One minute out,” Frank said. “Then I’ll see you back in time to dry off and have a warm cup of cocoa.”

  “I was thinking of something stronger after this,” Thomas replied.

  “I’d have an Irish coffee, but that wouldn’t go over well if y’all wanted me flying again tonight.”

  “Cocoa it is then.”

  Another glow of light flashed from the Karlstad’s bow. A plume of rapidly dissipating smoke followed.

  “Frank, incoming!” Thomas asked.

  “Christ,” Frank said, “didn’t they see I already got the hint? I’m leaving them alone.”

  Flares showered from Frank’s chopper again. The Seahawk plunged to the side, all the cam feeds going wild. Thomas waited, fingers tightening and teeth clenched together. He couldn’t believe Frank would be able to dodge a second time. In his mind’s eye, he pictured the chopper a burning wreck, rotors fracturing and tail tearing from the fuselage. The Hunters would be completely, utterly screwed.

  And here he was, sitting on the goddamn ship with no way to help them. No backup plan except for taking a Zodiac to shore himself and plunging through Skull-infested territory to retrieve them.

  Of course, taking the Huntress off course now would also mean they’d lose effective range for monitoring the Karlstad. And that would mean that the warheads they’d stolen would disappear with them.

  He’d been between a rock and a hard place before. This was worse.

  But as he watched the feeds, he realized that the Karlstad hadn’t been aiming at the chopper after all. Instead, the drone feed went dark in a sudden blast of static.

  The FGL had destroyed the drone and, with it, their hope of tracking the ship.

  -21-

  Dom shielded his eyes from the rain sprayed by the rotor wash of the Seahawk. The engines remained hot as the Hunters rushed toward the open side doors of the chopper. Meredith, Glenn, and Miguel carried Spencer as the others provided covering fire. Skulls still trickled out of the neighboring forest, and stragglers from within Cesta surfaced to join the carnage.

  Everything had gone to shit, and the FGL had escaped. He cursed under his breath with his rifle pressed against this shoulder. It kicked each time he fired. A blind rage filled him, threatening to take over. He continued killing every Skull he could. He hated every single one of them.

  But their destruction was only a weak remedy for the anger he felt. They weren’t the real reason he wanted to punch a hole straight through the chopper’s fuselage. Dom wasn’t sure whether he was angrier at the FGL—or at himself, for letting them get away.

  When Jenna had jumped into the cabin, Dom slapped the fuselage. “That’s it, Frank. Take us home.”

  “Sure thing, Captain,” Frank said.

  The Seahawk rose, buffeted by winds. Puddles formed across the deck from the rain-soaked Hunters as each of them struggled to catch their breath, chests heaving. Spencer lay sprawled on the floor with Andris and Meredith hunched over him.

  Dom unstrapped his helmet and chinned his comm link. “Huntress, have the OR ready.”

  “Already prepped,” Thomas replied. But it sounded as though his voice had caught in his throat. “But we’ve got another problem. The drone just went dark.”

  “Vid feed error?” Dom asked.

  “They shot it. That last AA missile wasn’t for Frank. It was for the goddamn drone.”

  “Get the second in the air.”

  “Already did.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “At the speed the Karlstad is traveling, we’ll have to follow the drone to stay in range.”

  Realization poured over Dom. “If you wait around for the chopper, you won’t be able to refuel and recharge the drone to keep pace with the Karlstad.”

  “Exactly,” Thomas said. “According to our estimates and Frank’s report, he doesn’t have enough fuel to catch up to us if we take off after the Karlstad.”

  “One hundred percent,” Frank said. “I burned through enough running after the Karlstad in the first place, then I had to dodge their presents.”

  Once more, the answer was clear to Dom. And judging by the clenched eyes and grimaces on the other Hunters’ faces, they knew what was going to happen, too. “Thomas, do not lose that ship. We need to know where the hell they’re going.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Thomas said. It sounded like he had a cigar clenched between his teeth, a sure sign he wa
sn’t pleased with the turn of events. “Is there anything we can do to support you all out there?”

  Dom grabbed a handrail as the helicopter bucked on the storm-blown winds. “Call Ronaldo at Lajes.”

  “In the meantime, this bird can’t fly forever,” Frank said. “It’s gotta nest somewhere.”

  “Search up the coast,” Dom said. “Let’s find ourselves a municipality airport. Somewhere to hold out until Ronaldo’s people can get to us.”

  Meredith looked up from Spencer’s still form. “I don’t know if Spence is going to last that long.”

  “He will,” Dom said. He wanted to believe his own words. Spencer didn’t deserve a death like this. Not because of one dumbass Hybrid. It wasn’t right. “He’s strong. One of the strongest.”

  “I hope you’re right, Chief,” Miguel said, his tone anything but sure.

  Frank took them swooping along the coastline. The storm began to dissipate, but the skies were still dark with clouds blotting out the moon and stars. The earth below was just as dark. It was still an odd sensation, seeing the lack of electric lights where he knew cities and towns were—or had at least once stood.

  “Chao, can you send us a map of all known airport locations within a two-hundred-kilometer radius of our position?” Dom asked.

  “Consider it done.”

  It didn’t take long for a map to display across Dom’s smartwatch, pocked with purported locations of airports—both small private strips and larger international ones. The same map glowed on a display in the cockpit, and Frank overlaid it with their current position. He tapped a couple of the closest airports and created a route between them.

  “We’ve got enough fuel to visit these four,” Frank said. “The first one that doesn’t look like a Skull orgy, I’ll take us down so we can sit tight for Ronaldo.”

  “And if we can’t find a clean airport,” Dom said, jaw clenched and fire burning beneath his ribs as he looked at Spencer, “we’ll make one.”

  ***

  Meredith shivered, but it wasn’t from the cold. She gazed around the cabin of the Seahawk. There was O’Neil, fresh to the team but already willing to protect the team with his life, the overgrown bones of his face doing nothing to mask his concern. Andris muttered a prayer in Latvian, and Miguel joined in Spanish, blood still trickling between his fingers as he pressed them against the bandages on Spencer’s pallid skin. Jenna stared out a window, eyes focused on some unimportant point in the sky, as Glenn did his best to suture Spencer’s wounds. But no one’s best here was as good as the operating suite aboard the Huntress.

  Dom watched out the cockpit with Frank as they approached the first airport on their map. They swept a searchlight over the area to assess for Skull threats.

  Meredith’s stomach sank.

  At least a hundred monsters lumbered across the single runway. Their eyes lifted in concert, glowing in the searchlight, and their claws scraped helplessly at the air as if to beckon the chopper down so they could feast on the people inside. Frank pulled back on the collective, and they ascended once more into the dregs of the storm, the engines growling as the rotors chewed through the dense, humid air.

  The roar of the engine was not as deafening as the silence of the crew.

  Spencer’s chest rose and fell in shallow gasps. They could all see that he was not long for this world, and still the crew fought to keep him alive.

  Meredith hoisted herself to the cockpit between Frank and Dom. The rolling hills of the forest and towns below passed under them like the gentle waves of a calm sea. The rain was letting up, and the clouds broke apart enough to allow a shaft of moonlight to caress the landscape.

  “Ten klicks from the next airport,” Frank said. Apparently even he was too tired and subdued to make a joke.

  Frank flipped on the searchlights once again. The spears of light stabbed over the runways. Planes littered the landscape like the bloated, decaying corpses of beached whales. Puddles shimmered along flooded ditches. And, like the last runway, far too many Skulls meandered below.

  There would be no reprieve here, and they only had two more airports to go before lack of fuel forced them down. Meredith inched closer to Dom then chinned her comm link to a private channel.

  “You doing all right?” she whispered. The mic carried her voice up over the throaty rumble of the engine.

  “I think you already know the answer to that question.”

  “I do, and I don’t. Talk to me.”

  He was silent. Even as the storm outside dwindled, the one in Dom’s head seemed to rage. Meredith didn’t really need to ask what was on his mind. She’d seen the looks in the eyes of the Hunters. There was a sense of betrayal at letting one of their own die. But hardly a word had been spoken out against Dom’s decision. From her time spent with the Hunters, she understood how they operated. They’d once been mercenaries working for the CIA, but even they had a calling: to protect those who didn’t know they needed protecting. And they took that duty seriously.

  She hadn’t asked yet, but she thought the others understood why Spencer was dying here instead of on the Huntress. Far more lives were at stake than just his if the Karlstad disappeared into the night.

  But Dom was the one that bore responsibility for that decision.

  “You know I once felt like an outcast in this group,” Meredith began. “I wasn’t sure I belonged. I wondered if the Hunters resented me. They’d all earned their positions through blood and sacrifice. I was just the face behind the desk that gave you the money and your orders.”

  She sighed as the chopper banked deeper into the dark country. “But these people have saved my life more times than I can count, and I’ve tried to do the same for them. They’re like a family.”

  Dom’s eyes roved her face for a moment before he turned back to stare out the cockpit. “Is there something you’re trying to tell me?”

  “I can’t pretend to know what you’re going through right now.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s Spencer. And them.” He gestured over his shoulder to indicate the others in the cabin, still huddled around their fallen comrade.

  “And I’m worried about you,” Meredith said. “I can see in your eyes that you’re feeling uncertain about your choice. But I know you made the right choice. They know you made the right choice.”

  “I’m glad to have you on my side, Mere,” Dom said. “It’s good to know at least one Hunter stands behind my decision.”

  “This is what it takes to beat the FGL.”

  “That doesn’t make it any easier,” Dom said. “Everyone who joined my crew knew what they were getting themselves into. They knew that we each might have to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect our country—and now, to save the world. But I’m the one who has to make the call.”

  Meredith wanted to say something more, but Frank was pointing out the cockpit.

  “Will you look at that?” He whistled as the searchlight swept over a runway. “The Skulls left this one nice and clean for us.”

  “Bring us down,” Dom said.

  In minutes, they had secured a perimeter around an abandoned hangar. Frank looked around hopefully for fuel—anything to get the Seahawk or even one of the abandoned single-prop planes back to the Huntress. But his hopes were quickly vanquished. All the fuel drums were empty, and there was no ground fuel truck to be seen at the small airport. Judging by the broken windows in the humble terminal and empty shelves and cabinets in the storage rooms, someone had already ransacked this place.

  While Dom and the others did their best to tend to Spencer’s wounds, Meredith and Frank manned the communications systems. They connected with Ronaldo, who immediately promised them the air support they needed. He could have a plane there in no more than a couple of hours with fuel to get the Seahawk airborne.

  But a couple of hours was far too long for Spencer. His last, ragged breath came less than ten minutes after they touched down.

  The others murmured prayers and curses
when they realized that he was gone. The floor seemed to give way under Meredith as the full force of another Hunter’s death hit her. Meredith caught Dom’s eyes. He stood frozen, his jaw muscles clenching and his gaze like steel. His expression told her that he would accept no comfort or sympathy. Helpless to do anything to save Spencer and without a tangible enemy to fight, the Hunters gathered around their fallen brother. Meredith felt a tear rolling down her cheek as she put her hand on Andris’s shoulder. Jenna leaned against Glenn, while Miguel pounded his prosthetic fist against the ground.

  They could do nothing but wait—and mourn—until Ronaldo’s reinforcements arrived.

  -22-

  Rain still pounded the steel roof of the empty hangar, echoing like machine-gun fire in the space. The scene was so goddamn familiar, and a sickening sense of déjà vu cut through Dom. Spencer lay still and cold on the concrete floor. Miguel crouched next to the body, seemingly unwilling to leave Spencer’s side. Nearby, Meredith was talking softly with Andris and Jenna, evidently comforting the both of them. Glenn stood off to the side with Frank.

  O’Neil sat alone. He had found a kettle in one of the hangar’s offices and had begun to brew a pot of hot coffee. Orange light from the small fire he’d built flickered over the bones protruding from his face.

  “This sucks, Chief,” Miguel said. His gaze never left Spencer’s body as he wiped the tears from his eyes.

  “It does,” Dom said. Spencer had been a hell of a soldier and a fine man. He had the aura of a perpetual frat boy, preferring cheap lager and dirty jokes to the finer things in life. But when duty called, Spencer was always nothing but professional—and selfless. Ultimately it was that selflessness that had gotten him killed.

  A seething ball of rage erupted in Dom’s chest. The heat rose to his head. “Fucking Oni Agent. Fucking Skulls. Fucking Spitkovsky.”

  “Fuck ’em all,” Miguel said. But there was no anger in his voice. Dom had never seen the man look so frigidly calm. It unnerved him.

  Dom unclenched his fingers. He hadn’t even realized he’d been making a fist. Goddamnit, he was letting anger control him. He forced aside the fury at all the things he couldn’t control. That left him with the choices he’d made.