Two men wearing black fatigues got out of the lead Humvee. Several people in the food line watched, others put their heads down, clearly afraid. Not that Beckham blamed them, after last night’s raids.
But instead of going toward the line, the soldiers aimed their path at the park.
“Captain Beckham,” one called out.
“Yeah…”
“Who’s asking?” Horn said.
The men jogged toward him as Horn led the kids over with the dogs.
“Colonel Presley,” a soldier said. “He wants to see you.”
“About what?” Beckham asked.
“Please, come with us,” the other said. “We’ll have you back to your family shortly.”
“Dad, why do they want you to go again?” Javier asked. He eyed the soldiers suspiciously.
Beckham crouched down on his prosthetic in front of Javier. “I’ll be right back.”
“I want to come,” Javier said.
“Sorry, bud, but this is official business.”
Javier frowned and Beckham gave the boy a playful tap on the shoulder. “You stand guard with Big Horn, okay?”
The boy lit up at that. “You got it, Dad.”
Beckham nodded at Horn and then went with the Raven soldiers. They drove to a brick complex surrounded by twenty-foot tall metal fences topped with razor wire. Two armored vehicles were parked outside a gate, machine gun turrets occupied by men wearing black face masks.
The gate rolled back, and they drove inside to a parking lot with squad cars sitting in a neat row. Beckham spotted a Raven sign hanging over the main entrance where a police station sign had once been.
“Let’s go,” said one of the escorts.
Beckham got out of the vehicle.
“Rifle, please,” said the other soldier.
Beckham unslung his M4A1 and handed it over. Then he followed them into the building. He was led down a flight of stairs into a basement. From there, they took him to a jail with two dozen cells. Each had only a small window to see through the heavy metal doors. As they walked past, Beckham stole glances into those small windows, surveying the cells’ inhabitants.
Realization set in.
Presley wanted to show him the men and women they had taken into custody. People who had probably lost loved ones over the past few months or years that Beckham suggested they investigate.
The two soldiers turned down another wing and stopped to throw up salutes. Colonel Presley stood reading a document with a female staff member in uniform. A second soldier, about a foot taller than Beckham with muscles like Horn’s was looking into one of the cells. A black t-shirt clung to his bulging frame and a face mask covered his features. His knuckles were cracked and bloodied, as if he’d just been in a fight.
Presley acknowledged Beckham’s escorts with a nod and then handed the document to the woman.
“Captain Beckham, thank you for coming,” Presley said. “I need your help. We have someone in custody who we found with this.”
Presley held out a small vial.
Beckham leaned closer to look at what appeared to be juvenile acid. The sight of a substance that had all but destroyed his body, leaving him with a prosthetic hand and leg during the great war, made his blood boil.
“I thought you didn’t have a collaborator problem,” he said, angrily.
“I may have been a little too confident, Captain.” He gestured toward a cell door. “We found this on a young man last night.”
The guard with the face mask stepped aside so Beckham could look. Inside, a man knelt on the floor, his head hung low. The prisoner must have sensed him and glanced up with a bruised and bloody face.
Beckham turned away from the view. “He’s just a kid.”
“And he’s a stubborn one at that,” Presley said. “We can’t get him to talk. I thought someone with your experience might have better luck.”
“My experience?”
“Before the war, Team Ghost spent time in hot spots around the world. Don’t tell me enhanced interrogation techniques were off the table.”
“Like I said, that’s just a kid,” Beckham said. “We never tortured kids. Even in war.”
Presley frowned and handed the vial to a guard. “This isn’t the same type of war. Our enemies are monsters.”
“You don’t fight monsters by becoming one.”
“Maybe not. But if we don’t try, we might not win this war.”
Presley motioned for the man in the t-shirt to open the door. He went inside with the colonel. Beckham followed, instantly smelling urine and body odor.
The kid was maybe twelve. Not that much older than Javier, and much younger than Timothy and Bo. He was kneeling, his hands cuffed behind his back and his feet held to a chain connected to the wall.
“This is Captain Reed Beckham,” Presley said. “Sounds like he doesn’t want us to hurt you. Unfortunately for you, he’s not in charge.”
The boy looked up with one eye swollen shut, glaring at Presley.
“Tell us where you got the juvenile acid or things are going to get a lot worse,” Presley said.
The boy, quivered, his cracked lips trembling. His brown eyes flitted from Beckham to Presley, and then to the guard with bloody knuckles.
“You know what we did to the last collaborators, right?” Presley asked.
The kid managed a slow nod. “You burned them.”
So much for that working, Beckham thought.
“Tell us where you got the acid, or we’re going to put you in a barrel of it,” Presley said.
The boy glanced down.
Presley sighed, then nodded at the big guy.
“Wait…” Beckham said.
It was too late. The man kicked the kid in the face with a sickening thud that echoed in the small cell. His head jerked back, nearly snapping his neck.
“Stop!” Beckham shouted as the guard went to throw a punch.
Presley hesitated, then jerked his chin back.
“Tell us where you got the acid,” said the colonel.
The kid spat out a tooth onto the concrete floor. Blood drooled from his mouth. He grunted and mumbled something that sounded like a curse.
Presley shrugged. “Okay then.”
The soldier walked around the boy and then swung low, hitting him in the ear so hard it split the top.
The boy wailed and then shouted, “You bastard!”
“You will talk,” Presley said.
Beckham stepped forward and crouched down to meet the kid’s gaze.
“Hey,” he said. “Look at me.”
The boy glanced up.
“Look, whatever the collaborators did to you, whatever they told you they would do, we can help you,” Beckham said. “You just have to tell us where they are, and we’ll make sure they never hurt you again.”
“That’s what you don’t understand,” he grunted. “They didn’t hurt me. He did.”
Beckham glanced back at Presley.
“I wanted to help them,” the boy said, staring at Presley. “To kill people like this piece of shit.”
“See, Captain, he’s one of them and there’s only one way to deal with the enemy,” Presley said.
Beckham stood.
The boy spat more blood. “The brotherhood is right… The Variants are the future. Places like this are meant to burn.”
“See what we’re up against?” Presley asked.
He nodded at the guard again. This time Beckham closed his eyes as the guard went to work on the kid. Several smacks, wails, and cracks sounded.
Over the noise came a distant wailing sound, but the impact of knuckles on flesh and the kid’s yells made it difficult to hear.
“Let me out,” Beckham said. He looked at the boy one last time before leaving, his heart breaking at the sight of his bloody features. Collaborator or not, he was just a damn kid.
Beckham walked into the wing to the sound of footsteps. Over the click of boots came the same wail again.
A si
ren, he realized.
Two guards ran toward the open cell door.
“What the hell is going on?” Beckham demanded.
Neither answered.
“Colonel Presley,” said a guard. “You better get to command. We have a problem.”
“You want to know where I got the acid?” mumbled the boy.
The guards, colonel, and Beckham all looked in the cell.
The kid glanced up with a twisted, bloody smile.
“You’re about to find out…” he said.
— 23 —
The sun had set around six o’clock, forming a golden glow across the horizon. Team Ghost prepared their night vision goggles as they approached their target.
Dohi had spent the better part of the afternoon and early evening leading them into position behind the trees overlooking the easternmost side of the National Accelerator Laboratory Campus. The long circuitous route ensured there were no Variant-eating hostiles lying in wait.
He had already stepped into one ambush. He wasn’t about to walk into another.
But what if he was losing his touch?
Back at the freeway the Wolfhounds had been entrenching themselves to the west of the campus, setting up both a covering position and distraction. It was working.
Dohi had spotted dozens of enemy forces moving that way. If all went well, the cannibals would divert most of their forces to defend against the perceived assault.
From what Dohi had seen through, their enemy didn’t have near enough to cover the wide swathe of campus, and Team Ghost was using that to their advantage.
Fitz crawled up to Dohi’s side to peer over a fallen log.
“Anything?” Fitz whispered.
Dohi shook his head.
Another agonized scream wailed into the night. It drifted over the buildings like an angered spirit. Dohi tried not to imagine what horrors Hopkins and the other Wolfhounds were enduring at the hands of these cannibals.
The breeze suddenly shifted and cold air swept over Dohi. With it came something else. The distinct smell of a bonfire.
“Anybody else smell that?” he whispered.
“Sure do, bro,” Mendez said.
The others nodded.
Strangely, Dohi didn’t see the flicker of a fire. The low hanging clouds and dark sky masked most of his ability to see any rising smoke. Maybe these people were using a wood-burning oven or something else to conceal the light of the flames.
But either way, if they had a fire going, then that meant they were cooking. Dohi had no illusions about what was on the menu tonight.
He rose to his feet, keeping low, and signaled for the others to follow. They drew further south, slinking through the trees, closer to the buildings. Dohi halted at a clearing near the parking lot filled with shipping containers.
“This is where my team was before,” Fitz whispered to Dohi as he signaled the rest of the team to find cover.
Dohi spotted a flicker of light flaring across his NVGs from the shipping containers. He flipped his goggles and lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
Sure enough, in one container with its doors opened, a fire burned with a spit roast above it. Pipes had been fitted to the top of the container to disperse the smoke, making it less likely to raise in one huge column.
A foot was slowly being rotated above the fire by a child. Nearby, women and children gnawed on pieces of meat, ripping at the barbecued meal.
Dohi swept the binos over the containers until he saw a man chained against the wall inside one of them. A woman prodded at him with a knife as his face contorted in pain.
A face Dohi recognized.
“Hopkins,” Dohi whispered.
Two other Wolfhounds were prisoners in the container. One was either passed out or dead. Probably the latter, Dohi thought when he saw his lower legs were gone. The stumps were blackened and cauterized.
The other prisoner writhed in his chains.
Dohi glassed the rest of the compound until he spotted two men marching between the containers. He used a hand to signal the contacts.
They waited a few more minutes in silence, scoping out the area. Dohi counted another four more men patrolling with rifles. Nothing that Team Ghost couldn’t handle, especially if they were the ones doing the ambushing this time.
He continued to survey the cannibals, searching for signs of another trap. But no one appeared in the windows of the adjacent office buildings or in any of the other patches of trees surrounding the complex.
Then something caught Dohi’s attention. Two of the patrolling soldiers met each other between the containers. They appeared to be talking in frantic voices, gesturing wildly.
The two men jogged to a squat, square building with antennae protruding out of its roof next to the shipping containers. More guards met them there, opened the door, and were swallowed by white light, leaving the shipping containers patrolled by only a pair of soldiers.
Another scream shot from the shipping container.
“Dohi, I want you and Mendez to take care of the remaining guards, then save Hopkins and the others,” Fitz whispered. “The rest of you, follow me. We’re going to take that communications post and see if we can destroy their jamming equipment.”
Dohi and Mendez split off from the group. They descended from the grass-covered hill maintaining eyes on the two oblivious patrolling guards.
Once they reached the edge of the parking lot, the odor of burning flesh grew sickeningly strong. Dohi could hear laughing in the distance.
Time was running out for Hopkins and the others.
As soon as they were out from cover, Dohi and Mendez rushed toward the shipping containers. The two guards marched their way between the containers, still unaware of Team Ghost.
This time, the cannibal assholes would be the ones walking into an ambush.
Dohi let his rifle fall on its strap and pulled out his knife and hatchet. Mendez unsheathed his knife. They pressed themselves flat against the side of the shipping container.
The two guards passed in front of them. At Dohi’s nod, the two operators lunged like wolves, pulling the men into their grasp. Dohi’s knife bit into the first man’s throat. He felt a bit of resistance as the blade cut through the cartilage and muscle. Then with a swing of his hatchet, he finished the job.
Hot blood poured from the slit in the dying soldier’s throat and bubbled between his filed-down teeth. The man crumpled, clutching at his throat.
Mendez dropped his target.
As the two men bled out into growing pools, Dohi and Mendez dragged the bodies into one of the shipping containers that had been turned into a living space. Using a blanket, they covered the two dead soldiers.
Another scream echoed from the container holding the three Wolfhounds.
With the guards dispatched, Dohi hurried to the container with the hostages. The women and children cooking their meals started to stand, a few screeching at the sight of Dohi and Mendez. One dropped a plate of meat, and another backed into the rotating spit, knocking it over into the flames.
“Don’t say a word or we’ll blow off your fucking heads,” Mendez said.
The people grew quiet, shrinking into each other and trembling with fear.
Dohi strode over to the other shipping container and aimed his rifle at a man and woman inside. One held a cleaver and the other a bone saw.
“Drop the tools,” he said.
The man hesitated.
Dohi didn’t. He dropped him with a suppressed shot to the head. The woman went to her knees, raising her hands, and Dohi knocked her out with a butt to the temple.
He entered the container and held up a hand to signal for Hopkins to be quiet. Tears rolled down his blood-soaked face as he hung suspended by cables. A dirty, blood-soiled cloth covered his ankle stump.
Hopkins groaned in pain.
“Quiet,” Dohi said. “We’re getting you out of here, brother.”
Hopkins grunted something incomprehensible as Dohi undid the res
traints.
When Dohi lowered the wounded man gently to the floor, he heard charging footsteps behind him. He swung his rifle up and prepared to fire.
But it was just Fitz.
“We cleared the comms post,” he reported. “No luck on the radio jammers, but we did hear they’re preparing to attack across the freeway.”
“Good, the plan is working,” Dohi said. “Now’s our chance to find that equipment.”
Rico moved in with Ace to help Dohi release the other two Wolfhounds. They had both passed out from the pain. When they were done, Dohi handed the cables that had been restraining the Wolfhounds to Ace.
“Use these to secure the people Mendez is guarding,” he said. “Lock ’em in another container but keep the door open. I don’t want them to suffocate.”
Ace nodded and left with the chains.
Fitz bent down with Dohi to help bandage up the Wolfhounds. The man who had lost his legs was in bad shape, but the bleeding had stopped. Fitz whispered to him and took special care when dressing the cauterized wounds.
Dohi imagined doing so brought back some horrid memories of his own injuries from Iraq.
“No way we can move them,” Fitz said. “We’ll have to leave them here while we continue the search.”
“No, please,” Hopkins pleaded, his voice weak. “You can’t leave us.”
Dohi propped Hopkins into a sitting position against the wall of the shipping container. “Take it easy, man. We’re not going to leave you for long.”
Ace returned to the front of their shipping container.
“All the women and children are tied up and locked away,” he said. “You guys, ready?”
“Don’t fucking leave me,” Hopkins begged. He grabbed Dohi’s sleeve as he went to stand.
“We’re not going far,” Fitz said. “And your comrades are drawing out the rest of the enemy.”
Rico suddenly looked to the sky.
“Do you hear that?” she said.
Dohi strained his ears to what sounded like the thump of helicopter blades in the distance. He pulled free from Hopkins and joined Fitz outside.
Ace stood with his rifle cradled.
“Did someone call in reinforcements?” he asked.
Extinction Cycle: Dark Age Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 60
