The bank of overhead lights cast a white glow across the tile floor and concrete walls. Whoever these guys were, they hadn’t been able to shut off the power, which told him they either were amateurs or didn’t have much firepower.
Wood was going to have fun killing them.
He approached one of his soldiers, standing guard at the end of the hallway. The dark-skinned man kept his gaze on his gun’s sights and said, “Hostiles in the lobby upstairs, sir. Please stay behind—”
Wood walked around the corner, completely ignoring the soldier. Kufman hustled to keep up. There were two crumpled ROT soldiers in the hallway. At the other end were two more bodies, both dressed in civilian clothing. A pair of Wood’s soldiers stood there with their rifles angled up the stairs.
“Which one of these fuckers is still breathing?” Wood asked.
Kufman pointed at the man at the bottom of the stairs who was lying on his back. A second, larger man with red hair was slumped against the wall, his freckled face caved in from multiple gunshots.
Wood couldn’t hold back a chuckle. The guy looked like one of the shattered bullfrogs he had tossed against the barn in his backyard as a kid!
The other man, a middle-aged guy with a five o’clock shadow and a sharp nose, was still breathing a few feet away. The rattle in his chest told Wood he had a punctured lung, or perhaps two. He wasn’t going to last long.
Wood bent down and said, “Who the fuck are you?”
A pair of brown eyes roved toward Wood. Then they moved back to the ceiling. The man was probably doing what most men did before they died—thinking of their family, or all the things they would miss out on now, or perhaps trying to focus on something other than the pain. Not giving up his name and unit was honorable, but Wood wasn’t going to let him off that easy.
He pulled out a blade sheathed on his belt and used the tip to open the man’s shirt beneath a trench coat, plucking off buttons and exposing a flak jacket soaked with blood. A small camera was mounted on a cord that snaked down the armor.
“Well, what is this?” Wood asked. He pulled out the camera and wiped the warm blood off on the man’s pant leg.
“President …” the dying soldier wheezed. “President …”
Kufman crouched down and snapped his fingers in front of the man’s face. He was wheezing harder now, struggling for each breath, lungs crackling and blood bubbling out of his mouth.
President …” the man said again.
Wood rolled his eyes. “Come on, brother, I know you’ve got a few words left in you besides my title.”
The soldier glanced at him again, and Wood saw an anger in his gaze that must have prompted enough adrenaline to help him speak. In that moment of clarity, the dying soldier said, “Jan Ringgold is the true president, you piece of shit.” He hacked up blood and spat it onto Wood’s face.
Wood remained froze in place, the blood dripping down his chin and his body on fire with the rage swirling inside of him.
Kufman handed Wood a handkerchief, but Wood pushed it away.
“You better start talking,” Kufman said.
The injured soldier looked away and focused on Kufman. In that split second, Wood jammed the tip of his blade into the man’s left ear. A complicated rattling sound emerged from the man’s bloody lips, and his eyes bulged wider as Wood pushed his blade deeper.
“Jan Ringgold is not the president!” Wood screamed, thrusting the blade as far in as he could. He left the knife inside the man’s skull and directed the camera toward his face. “I’m in charge! Me! You get that?”
After exhaling, Wood finally wiped the blood off his face, took in another deep breath, and then smiled politely at the camera, hoping that General Nixon’s men hadn’t captured Ringgold yet so she could hear this.
“Jan, I presume you’re watching this,” he said, narrowing his gaze at the tiny lens. “Your time is up. I’m coming for you and everyone you care about.”
Beckham sat in the troop hold of the Seahawk, eyeing Crew Chief Ronaldo and the Beretta M9 still angled at him.
“You really think I’m infected?” Beckham said.
Ronaldo didn’t shrug or nod. He simply said, “I’m following orders.”
“Orders.” Beckham snorted and looked back at the dark woods at the edge of the field. He was really getting sick of orders. For his entire life, he’d been following them, and watching bad men carry out the orders of even worse men.
Beckham reached down with his hand and attempted to untie the bonds on his boot and blade.
“Don’t do that,” Ronaldo said.
Beckham looked up but continued struggling with the tie. “There still might be infected out there, and I’m sick of waiting for Davis and Blade to get back. Now, you can either sit there and look dumb when trouble shows up, or you can—”
The whoosh of an incoming helicopter cut Beckham off.
“Are we expecting company?” Ronaldo said to the pilots who were still sitting in the cockpit.
“Negative,” Pressfield said.
Omstead shook his head.
“Untie me, right fucking now, and give me a gun,” Beckham said to Ronaldo.
The crew chief looked at the pilots, who both gave reluctant nods.
“Hurry,” Beckham said.
Using a knife, Ronaldo cut the tie around Beckham’s boot and blade. As soon as he was free, Beckham ducked out of the troop hold to look at the sky.
The surrounding area was so quiet it wasn’t hard to track the choppers. Judging by the noise of the rotors, they were MH-6 Little Birds—the same helicopters ROT used.
“Someone contact Davis and Blade and let them know we got company,” Beckham said.
“They said radio silence,” Ronaldo replied.
“This is a fucking emergency,” Beckham said. He grabbed an M9 from Ronaldo and staggered out into the grass to search the dark skies while Ronaldo relayed a transmission over the comms.
In the glow of the moonlight Beckham glimpsed the outline of three Little Birds heading in from the north and moving in the direction of the Greenbrier.
“They’re finishing up downloads,” Ronaldo said with one finger pressed to his earpiece. “Bravo team has been compromised. Watson isn’t answering on the comms.”
“Goddamnit,” Beckham said. “Tell them to haul ass back here. You two, get ready to fly.”
Ronaldo sent the second message and reached for his M4. Beckham eyed the M240 door gun, wishing Big Horn was here to carry it. He would have turned the ROT soldiers into meat in no time. Hell, Beckham would have been able to use the gun three months ago, but in his condition, he could hardly fire a rifle.
“Ronaldo, grab the M240 and follow me,” Beckham said. “That’s an order,” he added before Ronaldo could protest.
Beckham grabbed Ronaldo’s M4 and set off into the woods while the pilots fired up the chopper. Trip sticks and weeds filled the path ahead. He moved through the forest as quickly as he could manage. His blade was still damaged, so he put more weight on his boot. He nearly fell when he scanned the skyline for the Little Birds. They were already closing in on the Greenbrier.
“Come on!” he shouted back at Ronaldo.
Swollen, fatigued, and covered in blood, Beckham wasn’t anywhere near fighting shape, but once again, he had no choice. At least he wasn’t facing monsters. He would rather battle ROT soldiers over a Variant any day.
Even with the full moon guiding him, he couldn’t see much and tripped on a root that sent him sprawling to the ground.
Ronaldo reached down to help, but Beckham shook off the crew chief’s free hand. He pushed at the dirt with his stump, but slipped.
Gunfire cracked in the distance.
“Davis is reporting contacts,” Ronaldo said.
Beckham grabbed his hand and let the crew chief help him upright. This time Ronaldo took point with his night-vision goggles.
Another flurry of cracks sounded.
At least six rifles, maybe more.
Ronaldo led Beckham out of the forest onto a manicured lawn divided by stone walls. Rays of moonlight illuminated ornamental brick piers and planters stuffed full of flowers.
The gunfire seemed to be coming from the other side of a hill.
“That way,” Beckham, said, pointing.
Ronaldo guided them around the maze of piers. He hurdled the stone wall and began the ascent up the hill with the M240 cradled. Beckham quickly fell behind and struggled to keep up. When he got to the wall, he carefully climbed over.
The hill was even harder to climb. At the top, he dropped to his knees, panting and taking in the view of the grounds beyond.
The three ROT Little Birds were parked on the lawn between the parking lots outside the front of the building, and three fire teams consisting of four men each were slowly advancing on the left, center, and right wings. Gunfire crisscrossed the gardens and shattered the windows at the front entrance of the building, where Blade and Davis appeared to be holed up.
“Melnick’s been hit,” Ronaldo said.
Beckham cursed and propped up the M4 on his stump. He couldn’t see much through the scope, but he did a quick scan to form a plan of action before the lead started flying.
“You take the assholes to the left, I’ll take the ones on the right. And conserve your ammo, man. Sustained rate of fire,” Beckham said. “Every round counts.”
“Got it, Captain.” Ronaldo finished setting up the bipod of the M240 and then lowered his helmet, whispering, “Goddamnit.”
“What?”
In a pause amid the gunfire, Beckham heard, “Melnick is KIA.”
Beckham swallowed hard, the senseless death of the SEAL building the rage inside of him. He put the scope back to his eye with renewed focus. Somewhere out there Kate was waiting for him. He was going to make it to her, one bullet at a time.
With a squeeze of the trigger, Beckham started the madness. The first rounds from his M4 lanced into the dirt behind one of the black silhouettes on the lawn. The bark of the M240 followed, rounds whizzing downrange at the unsuspecting ROT soldiers.
Beckham was born and bred a soldier—it was in his DNA, much as an Olympian was born to compete in a specific discipline. He didn’t like killing and didn’t take pleasure in doing so, but it was his duty to protect his country—a duty he took very seriously.
But killing the ROT soldiers was different than killing Variants and terrorists. He felt satisfaction in taking the lives of men who had sworn allegiance to Wood. Deep down, under muscle, grit, and blood, Beckham knew how dangerous it was to feel anything but disgust and necessity in killing.
This was war—war should never be pleasurable.
Ronaldo killed one of them with his first shots and mowed down the pilots standing outside the Little Birds, but Beckham, who could hardly see in the darkness and with his bum eye, missed all three of his targets as soon as the ROT soldiers began to move.
They bolted for cover in the parking lot to the right of the gardens. A lucky shot took one of them down with a hit to the leg, but he was pulled to safety behind a car.
Then came the return fire.
Bullets whizzed past Beckham and cut into the ground. He flattened his body against the grass, cursing and frustrated. He was already down to half of his magazine, and Ronaldo had only given him three back at the bird.
“I got two of ’em!” Ronaldo shouted.
Beckham waited a beat and then aimed for a soldier hiding behind the bumper of a minivan. The bullets shattered glass, punched through metal, and deflated a tire, but didn’t hit their target.
You’re shooting like a kid with a BB gun.
Two ROT soldiers popped out and unloaded on his position. He ducked his head down, listening to rounds whiz overhead. Return fire clipped the earth around him, and one bullet hit the ground to the right side of his face, stinging his bruised cheek with dirt.
Ronaldo reported another friendly casualty; this time it was Dixon. The SEAL had been hit in the knee, one of the most painful places to take a round. Beckham thought he could hear the man screaming, but the high-pitched noise seemed too animalistic to be human.
He peeked over the hill again to see shadows moving from the right wing of the building and into the parking lot where his targets were all camped out behind vehicles.
Bravo team, he realized. The former SEALs were no longer gun-wielding warriors. Infected with the hemorrhage virus, they bounded across the parking lot, screeching as they tore into the ROT soldiers there.
Beckham quickly turned his fire on the ROT soldiers who were in the gardens. Two of them were dead or too injured to move amid the flowers, but he spotted two more muzzle flashes near trees.
A round zoomed past to his left, but this time Beckham didn’t push his head down. He lined up the sights where he’d seen the muzzle flash and pulled the trigger several times.
There was no return flash.
Gotcha.
Beckham had finally killed another one of the bastards. He ducked back down to change his magazine.
“How many targets you got left?” Beckham shouted.
The bark of the machine gun suddenly stopped, but Ronaldo didn’t respond to the question. Beckham jammed the new magazine into his M4 and turned for a look at Ronaldo.
The crew chief was facedown in the grass.
“Ronaldo, come on, man!” Beckham shouted. He moved over and used his stump to push at the crew chief’s limp body. His head rolled toward Beckham, a hole where his face had been. Blood spewed from the gaping wound.
“Fuck,” Beckham said. He quickly pulled off Ronaldo’s headset and then his night-vision goggles. After putting both on, Beckham grabbed the M240 and readjusted the bipod.
“All right, you old son of a bitch, Blade and Davis are counting on you now,” Beckham muttered.
He pressed the butt of the gun against his shoulder and used the optics to do a quick scan of the battlefield. On the left, two ROT soldiers appeared to still be in action. In the center of the gardens, another two were firing at the pillars. On the right, the infected members of Bravo team had torn the ROT soldiers in the parking lot to pieces. They were now bolting toward the central gardens, their shadows bending and distorting in the light like living scarecrows.
Beckham pushed the black bead of the comm link to his mouth and focused the M240’s barrel on the ROT soldiers to the left.
“Blackbeard One, this is Ghost One. Do you copy? Over,” Beckham said, hoping he’d gotten Davis’s call sign right.
“Roger, Ghost One, what the hell are you doing out here?”
“Just listen,” Beckham barked. “When I tell you to run, run as though your life depends on it, because it fucking does!”
He wasn’t sure how much ammo was left in the M240, but every round was going to have to count. The butt kicked against his shoulder as he squeezed the trigger, unleashing a burst of rounds that lanced toward the ROT soldiers in the left parking lot. He let up on the trigger, then fired again at the side of a sedan. The rounds tore apple-sized holes into the metal. Several rounds whistled back at him, but these ROT soldiers were amateurs and didn’t even come close.
Raising the gun’s barrel slightly, Beckham squeezed the trigger, taking off the top of a helmet and skull. In the green hue of the night-vision optics, the other ROT soldier scrambled for cover. Beckham clipped the man in the shoulder and finished him off with three more hits to the back.
The adrenaline was flowing now, and Beckham transitioned into the killing machine that had earned him the role of team lead of Delta Force Team Ghost. The pain of his injuries, the fear of losing Kate and his family, and the bloodlust were all buried beneath the instincts of his training and experience.
He was a methodical killer again.
The goddamn Grim Reaper. That’s what I’ve become.
A muzzle flash came from under one of the Little Birds, where an injured pilot had taken refuge. Beckham moved his barrel toward the chopper and held down the trigger. The windows shatte
red, and ripped through the metal. The small bird exploded into the air and fell back to the ground, pinning the man underneath, where he burned alive.
“Run!” Beckham yelled into the mini-mic.
Several figures bolted out of the front entrance of the building. Blade had Dixon over his shoulder, and Davis was firing her M4.
Beckham centered the barrel on the two men in the middle of the gardens. They were firing at the surviving infected SEALs now galloping across the ground like wild animals.
He fired a volley of rounds at the ROT soldiers. The deadly spray severed a leg and an arm off the man standing in the flower gardens. He crashed to the ground, blood geysering out of him like water from an ornamental fountain.
Two infected SEALs of Bravo team barreled into the final ROT soldier. Beckham saved his ammo and watched Blade and Davis move through the parking lot.
“Scorpion One, Scorpion Two, this is Ghost One. Get that bird in the air and meet us out front of the Greenbrier,” Beckham said over the comms.
The fight on the grounds wasn’t over. The final ROT soldier had killed one of the infected former SEALs, but the other infected was still alive. It had slashed at the ROT soldier’s throat and ripped off one of his arms.
Closing his blurry eye, Beckham held in a breath and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked, dry. He pushed it away and grabbed his M4. By the time he zoomed in, the infected SEAL was gone.
“Davis, Blade, we got a rogue infected out here,” Beckham reported.
He searched the gardens, the parking lot, the flaming Little Birds, and the lawns, but there was no sign of the beast. In the distance came the thump of the Seahawk’s rotors.
Davis and the two uninfected SEALs were working their way up the hill when Beckham finally sighted the beast. It was Watson, Bravo team’s former leader and the largest man on SEAL Team Four. All 270 pounds of muscle were moving toward their location on all fours.
“Three o’clock!” Beckham shouted. He fired at the creature, but it leaped into a row of hedges, tearing through the foliage. The rounds punched through branches and slammed into the dirt. He eased up on the trigger and waited for the beast to reappear.
Extinction War Page 27