The Eagle's Last Stand

by Gibson Morales

  Snake-eaters usually wore helmets, but the para-rescue one wouldn't be deflecting any bullets or Anunnaki pulse surges. Still, she might need to continue this illusion of a para-rescue personnel, so she slipped hers on.

  Thick vines surrounded the railings on all edges of the roof. It resembled the décor of a Vietcong bunker. The plants probably required a lot of water. It didn't rain a lot in Los Angeles, however.

  Looking around, it occurred to her that any building worth its salt should've been infested by local refugees. She doubted the Wendenbergs were paying a street militia to keep people out.

  She peeked through an opening in the vines. Menendez said Sledge had survived and ended up in the skyscraper across. It looked to be an office building. The rooftop was as barren as an Anunnaki prison chamber. No signs Sledge landed there. She gripped one of the vines hard. She needed to find him before someone else did.

  Most of the windows were in fair condition, aside from the neon-colored graffiti and dirt smudges, but one was straight out shattered.

  That looked promising, and she whirled around. A pale man with brown, slicked-back hair, dressed in a badly wrinkled light blue dress shirt was staring directly at her from the doorway of the glass bulkhead.

  “You know what I always liked about these doors? They don't creak. Quiet as a mouse's fart.”

  Dagos hesitated. Everything about him looked harmless, except for a long red cut running down the right side of his face.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I used to be the office manager,” he said. “Now I live here.”

  “What about gangs?”

  “Gangs? Oh, you mean the blood mobs. Far worse than gangs. Gangs are ultimately in it for money. But blood mobs, well, it's self-exclamatory, isn't it?”

  Suddenly, a garbled bark came from the man's back pocket. He whipped out a walkie-talkie, his face drawn in unease. The words were in Russian, which Dagos spoke. Any damage to our building?

  “You're not here alone, are you?” Dagos asked, wishing they'd been able to smuggle firearms onto the aid helicopter.

  The former-office manager licked his lips and extended his arms, peeling back his shirt sleeve. A black tattoo of a lizard ran on his wrist. A blood mob calling card.

  “This is my boss's private garden,” he said quietly. “He won't be happy to find a trespasser.”

  “I'm happy to go,” Dagos said, knowing she already wasted too much time here. If she was dealing with this, someone must've been giving Sledge trouble, too.

  “Sorry,” the officer manager said, extracting a Mark 23 and leveling it at her.

  Dagos jumped back and sidestepped behind one of the hedges before he could work up the nerve to eliminate her. She was sure he was a nice guy, but she needed a gun and his checked out.

  “Just come out,” he said, his voice shaky. “I'll make it quick and painless.”

  He was approaching. The way he held the gun straight out in one hand, far in front of him spoke of an amateur. He obviously didn't suspect any resistance from her. She squatted on her haunches, shifting her footing to make sure her body could react as quickly as possible. He was two strides away when she peeled off her helmet. As he wove around the bush, she sprang forward and cupped the helmet over his firearm and shoved it down. Leaning in, she raised her right knee and dug it into his stomach.

  The gun dropped to the floor and he staggered backward. Pivoting, she delivered a round-house kick directly to the side of his left knee. He was down like that, whimpering.

  She scooped up the Mark 23 and walkie-talkie and stepped out of his range. Ejecting the magazine, she found herself in possession of 12 rounds. This would do for now.

  “Listen to me. I've killed people and Anunnaki,” she said, training the gun on his head. “Tell me the fastest way down.”

  The man looked up at her in an odd mix of anger and appreciation. Like a teenager who'd been grounded for stealing his mom's car keys, but knew, deep down, it was for his own good.

  He panted for a few seconds as if pushing away the pain. “Down the stairs one level. Take the elevator to the second floor. Use the stairs down the hall. There's a guard there.”

  “Sorry about your leg,” Dagos said, realizing that with medical supplies so limited, she might've left him with a permanent limp.

  He hid his face from her. “The Komodos will hunt you down for this. For whatever you do to the guard.”

  “Then they can get in line.”

  With a quivering hand, he pushed back his hair and prompted himself up with an elbow. “You're her, aren't you? The Eagle.”

  “Maybe,” she said, making her way to the bulkhead stairs.

  4

  With working electricity in most cities sketchy at best, Dagos half-expected the elevator to stall, stranding her in the middle of a tower that apparently belonged to a blood mob. Commander Ham had briefed them on the blood mobs days earlier. They were, in his opinion, nothing more than street gangs driven to extremes. An alien race on your planet would do that to you.

  Still, a US Navy Seal had no business locking horns with locals. It was an unnecessary mission risk. And people already distrusted the government enough after all the rumors that politicians and the military knew about the Anunnaki threat well before the public did. She didn't blame them.

  If word got out that a Navy Seal, let alone the legendary Eagle, was starting trouble in Los Angeles, that would make any future missions all that more difficult. Major cities presented serious tactical value and they couldn't afford to alienate anyone. She also couldn't allow her reputation to be tarnished. The Eagle was more than just a myth. It was a reason to hope and believe humanity could stop the Anunnaki.

  But the thing she feared most was that if this mission went south, the Anunnaki would learn the coordinates of the four Conifers. Special alien artifacts. When combined, they would awaken an Anunnaki weapon of biblical proportions.

  Due to this threat, the US government had hidden the Conifers so well than only a handful of people even knew their locations. Courtney was one of those people. Or rather, she'd deduced them accidentally. The others with that knowledge were either unreachable or would take weeks to track down and warn. Dagos knew that one Conifer was at the bottom of the ocean, for instance. Currently, deep-water subs were impossible to come by.

  So, the possibility of moving the Conifers somewhere before the Anunnaki could find them was out of the picture.

  The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Dagos counted to three before she exited. The marble floor gleamed in the dim lighting. Then she noticed cigarette butts and crushed cockroaches. This seemed fairly docile compared to the tunnels of Al-Qaeda and Taliban compounds where she'd broken her teeth executing Islamic fundamentalists in her first years as a Navy Seal. Those tunnels were lined with Kalashnikovs, bags of opium, ammonium nitrate, and bottles of Valium.

  At the stairs, she paused and listened. She could still hear a commotion from outside and gnawed her lip. She needed to check the chopper for any survivors. She hated to think what would happen if the Komodos took one of her Snake-eaters hostage. Plus, it was a sure bet that if she was worried about this, Sledge would be as well. More than likely, she'd find him outside or at least salvage some useful gear from the wreckage.

  She proceeded down the stairs, ready to fire at the first sign of danger. A burst of Russian sounded from her walkie-talkie. She cursed herself under her breath for leaving the volume unchanged. She pulled it out and lowered it, her mind deciphering the message. Someone wanted to scavenge gear from the helicopter. Not good.

  “Who's there?” a man asked. She tensed as a figure came into view from below. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, wearing a basketball jersey and baggy black pants. A Komodo tattoo shone on his left shoulder. One of his hands was parked inside his pocket in a way she recognized. He had a gun.

  “Out of the way,” she hissed, motioning with hers.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Just le
t me through.” She took a cautious step and saw the light spilling in from the door on the first floor.

  “I didn't say you could go,” he warned.

  “You really think you can beat me to the punch?” she said quietly.

  “You really think you can shoot me without anyone hearing?”

  Assuming he wasn't bluffing, he had a point. Discharging a firearm was going to draw some attention. Wherever the rest of the Komodos were, they'd likely be on edge after the chopper crash.

  “What are you packing, anyway?” she asked in a lighter tone.

  He looked relaxed and drew out his revolver. As soon as it was free, she squeezed the trigger. The gun clacked to the marble along with blood from his wounded hand.

  Cursing, he darted away, screaming in Russian into his walkie-talkie with his good hand.

  Dagos grabbed his weapon and stashed it in her pocket, knowing things would get very hairy in short order. But she had a schedule to keep if she wanted to find Sledge before he encountered the Komodos.

  She passed through the glass doors and onto an elevated walkway. Billowing smoke called out to her. Twenty feet below, a crowd had amassed around the ravaged emergency aid helicopter that had torn up the asphalt. The trail of burning debris and sliced-up vehicles helped orient her.

  The front of the chopper was too smashed for their pilot to have made it. But the rear looked intact enough. If she could get inside, she could grab the extra set of clothes they'd stashed there plus the other gear. Their mission-specific gear. As she walked along the railing, she registered the black lizard symbols on some of the people's clothes. Men with Kalashnikovs and Uzis hanging from shoulder straps. Immediately, she retreated to a crouch. They had the chopper surrounded.

  She bit her lip. There didn't look to be an easy way past the crowd.

  Without warning, a cold metal tip dug into the back of her neck.

  “You're the one causing all the trouble, huh?” a man whispered with a thick Southeast Asian accent. She couldn't believe she'd let them get the slip on her. That jump from the chopper must've jarred her worse than she'd thought.

  She started to turn around, when he said, “Don't move. Just drop your weapon.”

  Two more men, tanned with pepper-colored beards and multi-colored bandannas, lumbered in front of her with shotguns aimed directly at her face. Sighing, she relinquished her gun.

  5

  After frisking her and confiscating the revolver and Menendez's designator, the men dragged Dagos back into the building. She used the opportunity to burn every instance of the floor map diagrams on the wall into memory. Once they got through the fancy corridor, they ended up in a small, nondescript room with a single table. It looked as if someone had intended to decorate it, but never got around to it.

  With a shove, Dagos found herself beside the table.

  “Take a seat,” the Southeast Asian man said. Komodo dragon silhouettes streaked across his pink headband.

  She obeyed, weighing whether or not she should explain why she was here. No doubt they'd ask her soon enough. She could cut right to the chase. Maybe they'd even let her free. On the other hand, they might also decide to sell her out to the Anunnaki.

  She remained quiet as she stared at the tiny scratches and blemishes on the otherwise barren laminate surface of the table. Racking her mind for escape possibilities brought her nothing. Ironically, the possibility of Sledge finding her remained her only real hope. If anyone could pull it off, he could. He'd once saved her bacon from an Anunnaki prison chamber when a dozen politicians had written her off. Wanted her replaced with a look-alike. But Sledge figured out how to break her free.

  Pink Headband barked something in a language Dagos didn't recognize. Maybe Cambodian or Thai. Someone responded on the radio in the same language. And even though she didn't speak the language, she sensed a warning. In response, Pink Headband's voice cracked.

  “I'll be back,” he said quietly. The gun fell away from her neck and she was left in the room with the two guards. She glanced at them, but they were murmuring to themselves, shotguns propped against their guts. Thai. She was pretty sure.

  “Why'd Pink Headband seem so worried?” she asked.

  One looked at her as if surprised by the nickname she'd given their boss.

  “We know who you are,” he said dully with a slight accent.

  “Who's that?”

  “You're the Eagle.”

  “You must have me confused.”

  “You look a lot like her.”

  “And what if I were? What would that mean?”

  A hint of deviousness sparked in the guard's eye, his voice rising. “You're smart. Use your imagination.”

  Just then the door opened. Two more guards hauled in a second prisoner. Dagos's eyes flashed with recognition then her spirits sank.

  Still in his orange uniform, Sledge plopped into the seat opposite her with a look that said, We really screwed the pooch on this one, didn't we?

  You could almost see the rural skepticism etched into his classic Midwestern features.

  Dagos almost gave her own sarcastic comment when Pink Headband swooped in and dug a pistol into Sledge's temple. He winced and Dagos's whole body tensed.

  “What's the name of this woman?”

  “Shelby Dotson,” Sledge grumbled. They all had fake names and this was Dagos's preplanned one.

  “With a y, not an e-e,” she said.

  Pink Headband shot her a fierce stare, which she happily met. If he thought he was going to intimidate anyone, he was wrong. Finally, he focused back on Sledge.

  “Tell me her real name.”

  “Shelby Dotson,” Sledge repeated.

  “Take a good long look at the table. It's new. We had to get another. The old one was too stained in blood and shit from stupid people who lied to me. Who is this woman?”

  Sledge met Dagos's gaze as if to say, We knew this would happen. They'd requested a make-up kit for her. To make her look a little different. A simple make-up kit they could've found in a few hours of searching the city outskirts. But Commander Ham wouldn't sign off on such a risk in blood mob turf. He told them they'd wait for a shipment. That never came, though. They had to proceed with the chopper pick-up or abort the mission. And they couldn't abort.

  Like Menendez had said, This mission was all fucking wrong

  Sledge rolled his eyes. “Speaking of stupid, if you guys were smart you would've asked Shelby her name separately. That way you could cross-check what names we gave. Just a basic interrogation tip for—”

  Pink Headband whacked Sledge across the forehead with the handgun. Dagos watched his eyes momentarily waver as a red welt formed. It was odd seeing a man as large and burly as Sledge hurt by someone so much smaller.

  “No more games,” he said, looking directly at Dagos. “Tell me your real name or I'll blow his brains out.”

  He wasn't lying. She could hear the commitment in his voice. Whether it was psychopathy, desperation, or something else, he'd pull the trigger if he felt she wasn't being honest. She needed Sledge. She couldn't complete the mission without him.

  Sledge frowned at her. Yet there was more than a hint of desperation in his eyes. She knew Sledge wasn't worried purely about dying. As Snake-eaters, they were all ready to die for the right cause. But not if it meant failing the human race. That's what he feared. Mission failure. A lot of people were counting on them to complete this operation. Courtney most of all. Dagos couldn't help thinking of her almost like a niece. She was one of the few people she comfortably allowed to babysit Laura.

  She swallowed.

  “My real name is Amelia Dagos.”

  The gun dropped from Sledge.

  “AKA the Eagle.” Pink Headband wasn't asking, he was telling. He stepped back and cocked his head at the four guards. “No one dies. You keep them in this room, but keep them alive. Understood?”

  Collectively, they nodded, and he strode out of the room, looking like a million thoughts were going throu
gh his head.

  “I'm guessing we're about to get a lot of new toys,” one man grunted.

  The others grinned. “About time. Maybe we can get a few kegs, too.”

  That sounded less than good.

  Without warning the entire room rumbled violently. Vibrations waved through Dagos. Her pulse quickened as the uproar from outside returned. This time far more frantic and alarming.

  The guards' faces turned pale. One drew his handgun and pointed it at Dagos. “The hell'd you do?”

  For once, she came up empty. Panic made people do stupid things. There was a chance he would shoot her then and there.

  Then chatter burst from their radios in Thai. But one of those words was a cognate. The two recent guards rushed out and the two pepper-bearded ones from earlier remained, shifting nervously from foot to foot. Dagos didn't blame them. The one word she recognized from their walkie-talkies just now was Naga. Another name for the Anunnaki.

  6

  The overseer grinned down at Courtney, tucking his hands behind his back. She knew he couldn't have good news. “Your dog was in worse shape than I thought. Despite our best efforts to save her, she didn't make it.”

  Courtney felt her body go red-hot. She'd had Suzanna since 6th grade. Before the Anunnaki. Her black Labrador had survived the assault on the small Minnesota town. Stuck with her in the ruins of her friend's ranch, all the way to Groomlake, where the Snake-eaters realized Courtney was a resource they needed badly in a war where the best human minds had already been eliminated.

  Her chin dipped, and she expected to feel tears running down her cheeks. But there were none.

  Instead, she found herself speaking with surprising authority. “If I wasn't going to talk before, I'm definitely not now.”

  A foolish comment, but an honest one.

  “I believe humans have an expression: the bigger they are, the harder they fall,” Overseer Drekken said in a low voice. “That applies to your spirit. The stronger you are, the worse it is when you break.”