There was silence on the phone for a few seconds.
Fischer had made some tough decisions in his time, but he did not envy the president’s position now. Every soldier they had left was a valuable asset from a dwindling pool of resources.
“General Cornelius, I want you to send myself and General Souza all the intel you have on Project Rolling Stone,” Ringgold said. “We’ll need it if we’re going to send a team out looking for it.”
“Uploading now,” Cornelius said.
“Thank you, we will be in touch shortly. Until then, stay safe.”
“You too, Madam President.”
The call ended and Cornelius stood.
“I’m counting on you now, Mr. Fischer,” he said. “As soon as the SDS equipment arrives, I want your men ready to deploy it. In the meantime, I’ll be heading back to Galveston.” He crossed around the table closer to Fischer. “There’s something else I want to warn you about.”
“What?” Fischer asked.
“We have good reason to believe most of these attacks have been aided by collaborators within and outside of the outposts.”
Fischer furrowed his brow. “You’re telling me there are traitors in our midst?”
A firm nod. “What you and the rest of the people are doing in this base is extremely important. Between the mastermind and the SDS equipment, these are perhaps the most crucial missions if we’re going to beat the Variants and their allies.”
“I’m all too aware of it.”
“There very well could be people at this outpost that are compromised. You might run into some of these collaborators here on base and not even realize it. I want you to be vigilant, and I trust you can make sure the SDS equipment is safe when it’s brought here.”
Fischer swallowed. “I’m a good judge of character, but…”
“Stay frosty at all times and keep all classified intel quiet. The collaborators might be planning something even more sinister, and we can’t afford any of our plans to fall into their hands.
“That sounds like you don’t think our military and its scientists can keep a secret,” Fischer said.
“Unfortunately from what I’ve heard and seen, it sure as hell seems like we’ve got compromised people who have sufficient security clearance to intercept classified data.”
“Then who do I trust out here?” Fischer asked.
Cornelius drew in a breath. “Wish I could tell you exactly who to trust and who not to. But if we’d figured that out already, I wouldn’t have to give you this warning, would I?”
Fischer swallowed even harder.
“All I can say is use your brain, use your gut, and trust basically no one,” Cornelius said. He gave Fischer a nod and then exited with his team behind him.
— 14 —
“Ghost, Falcon 1, ETA five minutes,” came a voice over the channel.
Dohi and the rest of Team Ghost had been patiently waiting for this moment, all of them spread out and hidden in vantage points covering Jackson Square around the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans.
After calling in the mastermind’s location, they had retreated to observe the beast through the cracked and broken stained-glass windows. Dohi watched the abomination with a growing dread. He had grown up listening to Navajo folklore about many different demons, and had always believed them to be more fantasy than fact, but this beast proved his ancestors were right.
“Eyes on target,” Fitz responded over the channel. “Awaiting orders.”
“Four birds incoming, two to touch down,” Falcon 1 called back. “Confirm LZ clear?”
The channel went quiet. Dohi scanned the flooded terrain filled with debris and charcoaled vehicles around Jackson Square.
“Negative,” Fitz finally replied. “Not enough room to land you, Falcon 1.”
“Understood, Ghost 1. We’ll find an alternative.”
The distant whir of the helicopters rose over the clicking of joints and the moans of the monsters’ captives inside the cathedral. A howl burst over the din—the Variant version of an air-raid siren sounding the alarm over the helicopters.
From his position, Dohi could see the beasts cease feeding their master. Several of the smaller monsters skittered over the webbing toward the broken windows and doors.
“Eyes on movement,” Fitz said over the private channel.
“Six… no, seven hostiles from the south,” Rico reported.
Next came Mendez. “Got a pack of juvies streaming out of the apartments to our east.”
“Four more around the museums to the northwest,” Ace chimed in.
The whoop of the chopper blades cut them off. Dark silhouettes appeared in the rolling gray clouds.
“We’re drawing heat,” Falcon 1 said over the comms. “Got a horde growing in our wake. Ghost, you’ll need to clear the pickup zone.”
“Wilco,” Fitz said. “All right, boys and girls, you heard him. We keep this square clear, then move inside and secure the cathedral. On my mark.”
There was tension in his voice.
Dohi was nervous too. They were about to attempt something no other team had tried and he had a feeling it wasn’t going to be easy, even with the air support en route.
The other members of the team shouldered their rifles, standing amid the overgrown bushes and masses of webbing. Dohi spotted an armored juvenile Variant with roving, saucer-shaped eyes.
“Execute,” Fitz ordered on the comms.
Dohi pulled the trigger and suppressed rifle shots choofed all around the square. Their targets crumpled, red holes weeping from heads and chests.
The next volley punched through the flanks of the Variants drawn out of the cathedral by the noise.
Through the gaping holes in the windows of the cathedral, Dohi saw the mastermind go mad behind the altar where it stood. The hulking red form shook, the vibrations traveling through the folds of tissue that covered the monster. It reached out with huge, glistening claws and yanked on the tissue vines attached to its body like it was orchestrating a sickening puppet performance. Multiple cocooned bodies were slashed open by the raging beast, dumping the contents to the floor.
“South square clear,” Rico said.
“North clear,” Ace said.
Fitz gave the advance signal.
Dohi got up and walked at a hunch past the foliage and webbing he’d sheltered behind, moving across the lawn toward the cathedral. A clearing in the clouds let sunlight wash over the choppers. Their shadows surged over the hellish cityscape.
Screaming Variants chased after them on all fours. It wouldn’t be long before the reinforcements arrived. Team Ghost had to move fast.
Keeping low, Dohi took point with Fitz and Ace converging on him at the Cathedral. At the south entrance, Rico and Mendez had joined up.
One of the stained-glass windows suddenly burst into rainbow shards. Dohi brought an arm up to shield himself from the hailstorm of glass as a Variant lunged through.
A suppressed burst took it down, and Fitz patted Dohi on the back.
“You good?” he asked.
Dohi wiped fresh blood off his cheek where a shard had opened his flesh. He managed a nod and followed Fitz and Ace into the nave of the cathedral. The mastermind thrashed around, knocking into the webbing-wrapped bodies dangling from the ceiling as it tried to separate itself from the organic netting in an effort to escape.
The few remaining Variants in the cathedral launched themselves off the rafters and webbing-covered walls. Calculated shots dropped them all before they could get within striking distance.
Rico and Mendez joined the team in the nave, and they slowly surrounded the writhing beast.
“Falcon 1, Ghost 1,” Fitz said into his headset. “We’re inside. Mastermind is alone now, but trying to escape.”
More webbing snapped from the mastermind. A gaping maw opened as it let out a roar so powerful its breath hit Dohi like gale force wind.
Fitz flashed hand signals for the team to spread out and cover th
e entries and exits. The team spread out behind the pews, facing the mastermind as if the creature was a demonic priest and they had come to worship.
Rotor wash cascaded through the missing chunks of the cathedral’s roof. The Chinook blocked the sunlight as it managed a dangerous hover. Ropes uncoiled, and Marines fast-roped down. The men landed amid the puddles of water between the pews.
“Move, move, move!” a sergeant shouted as they rushed into positions, scattering among the pews, and securing the entryways throughout the cathedral.
One skinny Marine slid next to Dohi, carrying a tranquilizer rifle fit for taking down an elephant.
The sound of the horde increased, the ground rumbling from what sounded like hundreds of clawed feet and hands pounding the concrete outside.
The Marine with the tranq rifle didn’t waste time. He aimed and fired at the mastermind. Several other Marines did the same. The feathered metal rounds plunged into the folds of the mastermind’s tissue.
Explosions boomed outside as Hydra 70 rockets from the Apache helicopters slammed into the advancing beasts. The chainsaw growl of the Apaches’ 30 mm M230E1 chain gun burst to life next, spewing rounds into the onrushing horde.
Another deafening shriek escaped the mastermind. It lashed out at the nearest Marines, tearing away more of the webbing. The Marines backed away, letting loose a second volley of darts.
The mastermind recoiled; its movements were clumsier, slower.
A pair of Marines cautiously approached it.
“How much longer is this going to take?” Dohi asked the Marine next to him.
“Don’t know,” the man said, sounding a bit desperate. He loaded in another tranquilizer round. “We’ve never done this before. They don’t work instantly either!”
The resonating blasts of bursting rockets shook the walls. Several of the red vines snapped, releasing shriveled corpses that crashed to the ground.
“Falcon, requesting a SITREP,” the Chinook pilot said.
Dohi heard the worry in his quivering voice. Things must not be looking so good from the air. The machinegun fire continued, and another blast from a rocket thumped into the concrete.
Over the noises, came the angry shrieks of beasts.
They were getting closer.
But finally, the mastermind grew still, its eyes rolling in its gargantuan skull. It slumped against the back wall, knocking a lopsided crucifix from the wall.
“Falcon 1, slings now!” the Marine sergeant shouted.
Slings and nets unfurled from the Chinook, hanging like tentacles in front of the mastermind.
The sergeant stood from his hiding spot behind a pew and waved for his men to follow. “Move it, Marines!”
The men rushed the giant monster as it blinked slowly like it was struggling to stay awake. Teams of the Marines threw the heavy slings and nets around the creature’s limbs, securing its bulbous feet and clawed hands.
A door suddenly exploded off the hinges and the first Variant staggered into the cathedral with a missing arm and blood cascading from multiple shrapnel wounds across its chest. It sucked in one last breath and then slumped to the ground.
But more creatures stormed over the corpse.
Dohi swiveled and squeezed the trigger, releasing a burst that blew off an armored hunk of a juvenile’s head. His bolt locked back after taking out three more of them that had climbed through windows.
The Apaches circled outside, their chain guns still cutting through the mass of beasts. Survivors bounded through the open door where they were cut down by Team Ghost and the Marines.
Within minutes a wall of the dead had formed.
And still they came, trying to save the mastermind. The Marines worked fast and Team Ghost provided covering fire, but the Variants had made it into the nave.
A sinewy female launched herself into the air and careened down the aisle, headed toward the men struggling to secure the mastermind.
The beast turned toward Fitz, ducking under his fire. Magazine dry, Dohi pulled out his hatchet and let it fly. The blade landed squarely in the middle of the creature’s face, splitting its nose.
“Step away from it! Step back!” someone yelled.
When Dohi looked, the mastermind’s eyes had opened and bloody red lips peeled back into a snarl. The cornered animal, desperate, thrashed against its restraints as men threw the slings around its limbs like lassoes.
It fell again, pulling on the slack sling roped around its limbs. Panicked screams rang out. The creature fell on three of the Marines trying to secure the slings, silencing their screams with a loud crunch.
Dohi rushed over with Ace and Mendez while Fitz and Rico continued to lay down covering fire.
The beast got up again, revealing the mangled, broken limbs of the crushed Marines. One of them was still alive, but his legs were twisted beneath him.
Dohi helped pull the groaning man to safety.
Ace and Mendez helped the other Marines. While they worked to secure the monster, a transmission fired over the channel. “Ghost 1, we got a problem,” the Chinook pilot said. “More hostiles headed our way.”
“You got a count?” Fitz asked.
“A few dozen Variants and what looks like two fan boats full of collaborators,” replied the pilot.
“Send an Apache to intercept and eliminate,” Fitz ordered.
Dohi got the injured Marine to safety. “Hang on man, we’re going to get you out of here.”
One of his eyes bulged from the socket, but despite his injuries, he still pulled out his pistol.
A massive hole in the side of the church provided a window to the skyline. Dohi saw the Apache fly to take out the fan boats. He went to turn away when he noticed a stream of white smoke in his peripheral. Before he could turn, an explosion bloomed across the sky.
The chopper went into a spin and vanished from view.
“Gun bird down!” cried the Chinook pilot.
Now it was all too clear what the mastermind had been doing when it tugged on the vines and thrashed around. It was calling for reinforcements, buying time for itself as its Variant and collaborator allies descended on the unwary Marines and Team Ghost.
It had sprung a trap.
The surviving twelve Marines and Team Ghost all exchanged looks, each of them knowing the implications.
“Keep working!” Fitz yelled.
The Marine Sergeant barked at his men, and they went back to securing the beast again. The creature’s eyes fluttered closed again from a new round of darts sticking out of its pink folds.
Dohi knew what was at stake, and the rest of the team would, too. Even if the team finished securing it, there was no guarantee of their success if the collaborators brought the other Apache down before they could leave New Orleans with their catch.
“We have to go back outside and take out those collaborators,” Dohi said.
“Let’s go, bro!” Mendez yelled. “I’ll fuck ’em all up!”
“You’ll get yourselves killed,” Ace grumbled.
“Dohi and Mendez are right,” Fitz said. “We have to buy these Marines time to get the target out of here.”
“Good luck!” yelled the skinny Marine.
Dohi nodded at the young man and took lead back into Jackson square.
From there, they rushed eastward past the vine-covered bushes and wall, then around the square, and back to the flooded streets. He navigated through the water-filled craters left from the Apache’s rockets and dodged past the red and crispy corpses of Variants. Smoke still shifted off their smoldering bodies.
Dohi paused at a street corner as the howl of Variants wailed over the square behind them. Another thunderous storm of Variant shrieks erupted from near the cathedral. The beasts were closing in around Jackson Square.
Geysers of dirt and water exploded around the monsters as the single remaining Apache struggled to keep them back. Chain gun fire cut through their ranks, but they gushed forward.
The monsters were mostly coming in f
rom the north, where they had followed the choppers. Their attention was almost entirely on the carnage around the cathedral as they rushed to the mastermind’s rescue.
If Team Ghost had delayed another minute, they wouldn’t have made it out of Jackson Square.
Ahead in the flooded street, the glint of the abandoned fan boats caught Dohi’s eyes. The burning wreckage of the Apache sizzled on top of a mountain of debris, sending up a column of oily black smoke, not far from the boats. A few Variants prowled, but these were the diseased, starving beasts, the ones too timid to charge into battle.
Dohi ignored them and searched for the collaborators. He saw no clear trail here except for their boats.
Another thump of rockets against the ground drew his eyes back westward where the cathedral was.
One of the Chinooks hovered with it slings hanging through the open hole in the cathedral’s roof. A crew chief on the other big bird manned an M240 on the open rear gate and two door-gunners unleashed hell from the M60s mounted on the side doors.
Despite their air superiority, the choppers were sitting ducks to the collaborators’ rockets. The traitorous shits were definitely preparing another shot. They would be looking for the best spot to bring the birds down, and that’s exactly where Dohi had to search, too.
He searched the roofs that weren’t yet covered in flames from the burning Apache. Most of the apartments, restaurants, and bars had collapsed in on themselves.
He spotted a three-story nightclub covered in red webbing. At the top floor was a railing around an open-air bar.
It was the optimal location to launch a couple of rockets at a vulnerable Chinook.
Dohi pointed toward it.
Fitz nodded, signaling for them to head into the nightclub.
Inside, they navigated a floor littered with broken glasses and upturned tables. Footsteps led through the muck and grime coating the floor leading to a stairwell.
Dohi’s pulse accelerated with each step.
“Ghost, Falcon 1, the mastermind is almost secure,” said the pilot. “We’re nearly ready to go, but—”
Something cut off the transmission. Dohi ran up the rest of the stairwell until he made it to the top, outdoor level. After opening the door, he sheltered in an alcove on the rooftop patio overlooking the street and Jackson Square beyond.
Extinction Cycle: Dark Age Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 49
