Sally pursed her lips, looking between Beckham and Horn. Then she frowned, and said, “I’m sorry for coming off a little hot.”
“Skepticism isn’t the worst thing we’ve faced,” Beckham said. “You’re just trying to look out for your friends and family. Trust me, I can understand that.”
Horn just grumbled.
“I don’t mean to sound so standoffish, but I know the military brought something here,” she said. “It can’t be a coincidence that the beasts showed up now.”
Sally still didn’t look like she was going to back down, and as much as Beckham respected that, he also couldn’t spill classified intel just because she was someone willing to fight for it.
“Ma’am, if you were in danger, I would tell you. I believe we’re all safe down here,” Beckham said. “I wouldn’t put my family in harm’s way, or yours.”
Sally nodded, but didn’t seem satisfied.
“Let’s leave these men and their families alone now,” said Rodman.
Brown nodded and turned his wheelchair, returning to his spot along the wall.
“All right, Dad,” Sally said. She turned back to Beckham, but then reached out to help her dad.
Beckham also reached out to assist.
“Sir, if I may,” he said.
Frank nodded and his daughter and Beckham helped get him back to his cot.
“Thank you,” Sally said.
Beckham nodded and returned to his family where Fischer was talking to Javier.
“Your son was just telling me how he hopes to be a soldier or a scientist someday,” Fischer said. “I’m trying to convince him being an engineer—especially a petroleum engineer—isn’t such a bad thing.”
“Good luck with that,” Beckham said.
Fischer smiled and Beckham smiled back.
“Your wife is still in the lab, I take it?” Fischer asked.
“She is,” Beckham replied.
“When do we get to see Mom again?” Javier asked.
“Shouldn’t be long now,” Beckham said.
The dogs wiggled their way through the throng of civilians. Fischer crouched and petted Ginger.
“Good lookin’ dogs,” he said. “I sure miss having one.”
Beckham also bent down, tousling the fur behind Spark’s ears. In a quiet voice, he said, “Want to tell me why you came down here?”
“To tell you something I didn’t earlier,” Fischer said. “This room isn’t exactly fit to talk candidly about certain subjects, though.”
Beckham checked to make sure the kids weren’t listening. Javier had gone back to tapping his foot, bored. The girls were talking to Horn.
“I’ll be right back, okay?” Beckham said.
Horn frowned and mumbled something about being a babysitter.
“Kate should be here in about half an hour,” Beckham said. “Why don’t you guys get out some food?”
Javier went to their bags and started digging in.
“Thanks, buddy,” Beckham said. He left with Fischer and his guards before Javier could protest.
The soldiers standing at the shelter door opened it to let them out. They walked up the basement stairs and into the chilly night. Smoke fingered away from chimneys across the outpost skyline.
Beckham pulled his collar up and looked to Fischer.
“All right, so what is it?” he asked.
“There’s something I want to tell you that I would regret too much if I didn’t, Captain,” Fischer replied. “I was told to keep this quiet, but my conscience kicked in and my gut tells me you’re someone that I can trust. In a world where even the crack of a branch might mean something’s trying to kill you, that means a lot to me.”
“And?” Beckham looked at his watch. It was already eight o’clock, and Kate was supposed to be meeting them any minute for her short break.
Fischer looked around like he was making sure no one was listening. Tran and Chase moved outward to give them some space.
“I think this place is compromised,” he whispered. “And I think Presley knows it but won’t admit it.”
“You mean there are collaborators here?”
Fischer nodded. “We believe there are cells at virtually all the outposts.”
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t suspect the same thing now,” Beckham said. “But I wanted to trust Presley that he had this place locked down.”
“He sure thinks he does, but General Cornelius warned me I needed to be cautious. He fears that the collaborators know far more about what we’re up to than we could have ever predicted. We need to be vigilant.”
Beckham cursed his decision to bring the children here. If there were collaborators here, then Manchester was a ticking time bomb. Especially with the mastermind here.
“Reed!”
The sound of Kate’s voice snapped Beckham from his thoughts. He saw his wife jogging down the street with two soldier escorts.
“We’ll talk more later,” Beckham said to Fischer.
Kate ran to meet Beckham.
“What are you doing outside? Where are the kids?” she asked.
“With Horn. Don’t worry, I was just talking to…”
“S.M. Fischer,” he said, holding out a hand. “Doctor Lovato, I presume.”
“Oh, pleased to meet you,” she said, her gaze flitting to Beckham. “I’ve only got a few minutes. We’re making headway, and I need to keep at it.”
Beckham nodded and looked to Fischer.
He had an almost wistful look in his eyes as he said, “Go be together with your family, Captain.”
“Nice to meet you,” Kate said. She gave Beckham a look that told him she knew something was up. He surveyed the quiet outpost one more time, hoping he and Fischer were both wrong about the collaborators.
— 20 —
Dohi stood beneath a line of trees inside the National Accelerator Laboratory campus. A full moon burned away some of the darkness enveloping the scattered buildings and trees.
If he were alone, he would have no issues infiltrating a place like this. There was plenty of cover and shadows to conceal his search for the SDS equipment. But with Mendez and ten Wolfhounds following, sneaking was far more difficult.
He held up a fist to halt the team.
From their vantage in the trees, he surveyed a row of four warehouses lining a road. A large office building loomed on the opposite side of the street. Nearly a dozen SUVs and trucks were parked in a line along the curb.
Mendez paused beside him, and the ten Wolfhounds took shelter between the tree trunks. Using his scope, Dohi glassed the vehicles.
As he suspected, these didn’t have rotted tires or rust tracing up the side panels. More telling of recent activity were the pair of Humvees at the end of the line. An M249 was mounted atop each with ammo belts trailing inside.
“People with firepower like that aren’t fucking around, amigo,” Mendez said.
“Best we don’t piss them off then,” Dohi said.
“We’re already sneaking around their backyard. That would piss me off.”
Martin moved up next to them, fidgeting with the AK-47 necklace hanging from his neck. He pushed it back behind his armored vest. “Think we should call this in?”
“What don’t you understand about radio silence?” Mendez asked.
Martin shrugged.
Dohi remained prone, considering everything he had seen so far. The people who used those vehicles couldn’t be far. Normally he could tell if he was being watched. This felt different. It was like these people had disappeared in a hurry.
Maybe the people had seen Ghost and the Wolfhounds, then bailed, he thought.
But why would they leave behind these vehicles?
“Martin, you wait here with the rest of your team,” Dohi ordered. “Stay hidden, okay?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“Mendez, you’re with me,” Dohi whispered.
They peeled away, creeping around the north side of the warehouses through the underbrush. Dohi normally
didn’t like splitting up, but Martin was clueless. Leaving him behind was better than dragging him along.
Dohi scanned the rooftops for contacts, expecting someone to pop up with an RPG or a machine gun. He used the cover of the vegetation until they made it past the fourth warehouse.
That’s when he heard it. Muffled footsteps and the clink of weapons. Someone was headed toward them.
He motioned for Mendez to get down, and they dropped to the grass. Dohi kept his barrel just high enough to fire should they be spotted.
Two men in black fatigues walked through the woods at a hunch. They were no more than a half-dozen yards from Dohi’s position. Further north, Dohi spotted another pair. Then beyond them, another.
Mendez tapped Dohi on the shoulder, then pointed toward snipers that had appeared in the windows of the office buildings rising above the trees across the street from the warehouses.
“What are we going to do?” Mendez whispered as they watched the mysterious soldiers continue onward.
Dohi took out his radio. “We should let Fitz know.” He opened a private channel. “Ghost 1, this is Ghost 3. Do you read?”
No reply.
“Ghost 1, Ghost 3. Contacts spotted.”
Still nothing.
An icy vein of anxiety wormed through Dohi.
“What’s the matter?” Mendez asked in a low voice.
“Radio isn’t going through.”
Dohi tried to open a channel to Martin.
“Wolfhound 2, Ghost 3. Contacts headed your way.”
Again, he got no response.
These people had set up an ambush that, thankfully, Dohi had discovered. But they must have a Warlock system operating, which made Team Ghost’s comms broke dick.
The implications were nerve wracking. Fitz, Rico, Ace, and all the others were out there, potentially headed straight into another ambush.
“What’s our move now, jefe?” Mendez asked.
Dohi shook his head, unsure.
“Maybe we should just shoot our way out of this,” Mendez suggested. “I can get a drop on those two, you get the other pair. That leaves just two more.”
Dohi thought about it but there were too many contacts to take on without suffering major casualties.
“I say we try making contact,” he said. “If nothing else, we’ll learn their intentions.”
“How about contact with bullets, not words? We got the drop on them. Couple of clean shots, and we got ourselves an escape path.”
“And a gunfight. I want to avoid that. Follow me.”
They stood quietly and snuck through the trees. Dohi was close enough to the first pair of contacts that he heard them breathing.
With a hand signal, Dohi gestured for Mendez to take the one on the right. He would take the other. The men moved like jaguars through the forest toward their marks.
Mendez slammed the butt of his rifle into the back of his target’s head. The man fell unconscious instantly. Dohi took out his buck knife. He locked one hand around his target’s mouth and pushed the blade against his throat. The man froze in Dohi’s grips.
Pulling him tightly against his body, Dohi took him back into the woods while Mendez dragged his guy. When they were safely out of view and away from the other patrols, Dohi loosened his grip around the man’s neck.
“Listen good,” Dohi said. “I’m Sergeant Yas Dohi with Delta Force Team Ghost, and I’m not here to harm you. Nod if you understand.”
His prisoner hesitated, then nodded.
“We’re not here to hurt you. We’re here for some old equipment in those warehouses,” he said. “That’s all we want. Nothing else.”
The man didn’t reply.
“I’m taking my hand away from your mouth but if you scream, I’ll trace this knife across your throat. Got it?”
Another nod.
Dohi turned the guy around enough so he could see the fear in the man’s eyes. He trusted that meant the prisoner wouldn’t do anything stupid. Then he slowly removed his hand, but kept the blade pressed against his flesh.
“How many of you are there?” Dohi asked.
The man kept his lips tightly closed.
“Seriously, we don’t want to hurt you,” he repeated. “We want equipment and that’s it. If you help us, we’re willing to pay.”
The man snorted. “Fuck you and whatever you have to offer.”
Mendez glanced over, but Dohi kept his gaze on the man.
“You abandoned us out here,” he said. “My people have survived on our own, and we aren’t giving you shit.”
Dohi wanted to curse, but remained calm. “Look, we’ll give you whatever you want.”
“We want to be left alone,” the man snarled. “You’re better off leaving and pretending you never set foot here.”
Dohi kept the knife at the guy’s throat, trying to figure out what to do.
“Who’s in charge here?” Dohi asked. “Maybe he’ll—”
Muzzle flashes suddenly lit up the night, and bullets plunged into the tree behind him, sending a shower of bark over his back.
Mendez squeezed off a burst of return fire.
The captive held Dohi’s gaze, eyes burning with rage. Dohi knew if he took the knife away the man would try to kill him.
But he wasn’t about to execute the guy in cold blood either. Instead, he gripped the man’s neck with his free hand, taking him in a sleeper chokehold. The man soon fell unconscious.
Dohi got up and set off with Mendez the way they had come. Rounds chipped at the bark and whistled by their retreat. Keeping low and running fast, they made it back to the Wolfhounds unscathed.
Martin stood suddenly, pointing his barrel at Dohi.
“Friendly!” Dohi hissed.
“What the hell is happening?” Martin said, lowering his rifle.
“Talking with those assholes didn’t work,” Mendez said.
“We need to fall back to the rally point,” Dohi said.
“All the way back to the freeway?” Martin asked.
“Yes,” Dohi said. “Now go!”
Mendez still looked like he wanted to stand and fight, but Dohi knew very little about the enemy numbers. They already had entrenched positions in the buildings. The last thing he wanted to do was be flooded by a veritable army with the ground advantage and cut off from the rest of their team without radio contact.
He led his team away from the trees around the warehouses, charging back toward the rally point. They ran through areas that had taken them a couple hours to infiltrate when they’d been sneaking through.
Now Dohi didn’t care about stealth. Just about keeping the team alive. The only way to do that was retreat as fast as possible.
A cacophony of curses and hollers rose behind them. Gunfire lanced into trees and lit up the darkness like fireflies.
The group broke from the cover of the trees and dashed across an open field. Then they passed along a road that took them another half-mile to the parking lots filled with vehicles, apartments, and other buildings they had first seen when approaching the laboratories. They finally made it to a street that would take them another fifty yards to the freeway.
One of the Wolfhounds went down and slid across the asphalt.
Dohi stopped and went back to check the guy, but he was gone, his forehead destroyed by an exit wound. More rounds bit into the ground, and Dohi rolled away, keeping low behind a few cars parked along the street.
On his feet again, he bolted for the highway, hoping Fitz and his team would be ready for them.
Mendez and the others made it to the freeway and started across. They crossed the first few lanes, then dove over the concrete wall of the center median.
“Friendly!” shouted a familiar voice on the other side. Fitz.
The crack of gunfire continued.
A second Wolfhound dropped to his knees, clutching his throat.
“Find cover!” Dohi yelled.
Half the team had made it across the center median and into t
he ditch where Fitz and Singh were waiting. Fitz’s team provided covering fire, and Dohi used it to cross the road, keeping low as possible. Martin and the other half of the Wolfhounds were still crossing the freeway.
Muzzle flashes sparked from some of the vehicles in the parking lots and from the windows of the apartments and buildings adjacent to the freeway where a second group of hostiles had set up firing positions.
The Wolfhounds stuck on the road were in the middle of an open killing field. Dohi was right there with them, crouched next to Martin against the center median wall.
“Over here!” Martin yelled.
Another Wolfhound made a run for their position but was cut down. Dohi moved out to help drag him, but rounds peppered the pavement around the man’s body.
“Come on!” Dohi said to Martin.
Dohi and Martin climbed over the center median just as a flurry of rounds slammed into the other side. He hit the ground. Ace was standing in a ditch in front of him.
“Run, Dohi!” he shouted.
Martin ran for cover but tripped and went down.
“Shit,” Dohi grumbled. He hunched down and went back to help him up.
“Grenade!” someone yelled.
Dohi had just enough time to help Martin to his feet when a fiery blast threw chunks of hot asphalt into them. The concussive force sent him flying forward, and Martin tumbling into a ditch.
Ears ringing, Dohi pushed himself up, engulfed by a cloud of dust. He and Martin scrambled into the ditch. One of the Wolfhounds lay on the slope, chunks of shrapnel jutting from his face.
Ace was sprawled at the bottom of the ditch, coughing. Blood streamed from his nostrils. Rico ran to the older operator, and he threw his arm around her shoulder, limping away.
Martin turned and drained his magazine into the distance.
“Fuck you, assholes!” he shouted.
Dohi grabbed him and yanked him down. The rest of the team was retreating into the woods, helping the injured get away. Fitz remained there, waving.
“Let’s move!” he shouted.
Dohi and Martin hurried after. But the Wolfhounds were moving too fast, and he could hardly keep up.
A body suddenly flung into the air up ahead, dangling by a rope. He screamed for help but was silenced by a sniper’s round to his chest. He spun, limp, and dead.
Extinction Cycle Dark Age (Book 2): Extinction Inferno Page 25
