The Tide (Book 5): Iron Wind

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  Bullets clattered against their body armor, but enough of the rounds found unprotected flesh. Dom drew satisfaction from each man who hit the ground and stayed there. Rage filled him, blocking out the sorrow he normally felt when forced to kill. No matter how justified, taking a human life never felt good. But at that moment, as a swirling tornado of fire filled his chest and the cacophony of the ongoing gun battle exploded around him, regret and guilt took a backseat.

  He had to capture Spitkovsky. Had to take him back to the Huntress. Nothing else mattered.

  Meredith had dispatched two of the soldiers crawling from the right. Alizia had taken down one on her side. The other three men left on their flanks had apparently shielded themselves from the flashbangs. Each was posted behind a wooden crate, exchanging fire with the two women.

  Beyond them, Spitkovsky took potshots at Meredith and Alizia. He gripped a rail extending from one of the choppers. One boot was already inside. The men and women in white coats threw a few more crates into the second helicopter, while two of them lifted the man in the wheelchair toward Spitkovsky’s chopper.

  Dom tried to guess the risk of a direct assault on Spitkovsky. The Russian fired another salvo at Meredith’s position, and Dom dove to a different stack of crates to stay out of the man’s sight. Bullets rang against the crate where Alizia had hunkered down.

  Spitkovsky cursed and grabbed the wheelchair the white coats appeared to be struggling with. He pulled it single-handedly into the craft. In a matter of moments, they’d be airborne, taking with them everything Dom had come here to find.

  Everything the Hunters had done to get here, every sacrifice they had made, every life they had lost, would be worthless if that chopper took to the air. They’d be back to the starting line with only a few poorly translated computer files to show for it.

  Dom wouldn’t let that happen.

  “Meredith, Alizia, cover me! I’m going in!” He aimed at a white coat. With a squeeze of the trigger, he sent a burst into the man’s back. The man’s arms tensed, and his head snapped back. He let out a gargling yell and then slumped out of the open chopper door.

  Spitkovsky wasn’t prepared for the sudden shift in weight. The wheelchair tumbled sideways, spilling the old man onto the concrete. He wouldn’t be in great shape after a fall like that, but at least the chopper wasn’t going anywhere. Spitkovsky hopped out and scanned the darkness. Dom ducked behind the crate and then crawled to a stack of oil drums. From there he fired into the flanks of two soldiers too concentrated on Alizia and Meredith to notice him.

  A man’s pained yell sounded behind him. Meredith or Alizia had taken out another of the goons. Spitkovsky grabbed the old man’s wrists and pulled him up with one hand. In his other, he scooped up the wheelchair.

  Dom took advantage of the moment and fired on one of the soldiers trying to assist with the wheelchair. When the man crumpled, Dom charged forward. Spitkovsky turned at the sound of Dom’s footfalls.

  At first, Spitkovsky’s eyes widened in surprise, but then he began to smile. It was a knowing grin. Like he had somehow seen this coming. Like had expected Dom.

  Spitkovsky ignobly dragged the old man onto the floor of the helicopter’s cabin. A soldier hopped in beside him, but Spitkovsky pushed him back out and pointed at Dom. The soldier turned, wheeling his gun on his new target.

  But Dom wouldn’t be stopped. Couldn’t be. He threw his shoulder into the soldier, knocking him backward. The chopper lifted off, and Dom jumped. He heard the hiss of bullets cracking through the air behind him. A couple stray rounds pinged off the side of the chopper.

  He let his rifle fall to his side. The strap caught on his shoulder, and his fingers stretched toward the rail along the chopper’s open side door. He snagged it and swung himself in as the helicopter lurched into the air.

  Spitkovsky whipped his submachine gun up. The gun rattled as Dom ducked, going low to tackle the big Russian. He caught his adversary in the knees, and the submachine gun went up, firing into the fuselage. Bullet holes pocked the ceiling. Through his pounding pulse and the heat filling his head, Dom thought he heard Meredith call his name.

  Spitkovsky hit the floor hard. His elbow smacked against an empty seat, and he lost his grip on his weapon. Dom stood over him, cocking his fist back. He pictured Renee, the way the fever had slowly broken her fierce spirit. He pictured Owen torn in half, Brett transformed by the Agent, and Hector impaled by a Skull. Adam lost to those savage men in Virginia, Ivan and Scott killed by Kinsey’s people. He saw the thousands of Skulls the Hunters had faced to get here and imagined the people they’d once been. Every painful memory, every vengeful thought, every bit of burning anger raged through his brain, traveling through his nerves and erupting into his knuckles.

  Dom swung.

  But Spitkovsky dodged.

  The punch went wide.

  The Russian laughed as Dom stumbled forward, carried by the momentum of his own punch. Then a sickening crack exploded as the man’s fist connected with the side of Dom’s face.

  Dom’s vision went blurry and turned red as he caught himself on a chair. Another punch sent his teeth rattling, the taste of blood flooding his mouth. The drone of the helicopter’s engines sounded muddled. Dom tried to hold his hands up to defend himself. Dizziness threatened to overtake him as his brain rattled inside his skull.

  He was too tired. Too slow. Too old.

  Spitkovsky’s fingers wrapped around Dom’s neck, crushing his windpipe.

  “Captain Holland,” he said, tightening his grip. He spoke clear English with the touch of a Russian accent. “You’re more stubborn than a cockroach. Do I need to teach you how to die?”

  Dom clenched the man’s wrists. He squeezed, trying to loosen the fingers. But Spitkovsky lifted him so that Dom’s feet no longer touched the floor. Blackness crept into his vision. His head pounded with the heavy beat of a bass drum, and his lungs burned with furious intensity.

  Below, the ground fell away. The chopper was taking him away from Meredith. If that happened, Spitkovsky would win. They would rise from the hidden helipad, rise above the forest, and disappear.

  Then a spiky shape jumped into the chopper. Spitkovsky twisted in surprise. Skull or human, Dom didn’t care what had joined them. He leveled a kick into the man’s groin. To his credit, Spitkovsky loosened his fingers only slightly. But slightly was more than enough for Dom.

  He shot his arms between Spitkovsky’s and spread them, breaking the man’s grip entirely. Dom rammed Spitkovsky, and the man hit the back of the pilot’s seat. The chopper wobbled as the pilot yelled in alarm. The old man in the wheelchair let out a wheezing cry. His hands grasped feebly for a free seatbelt as his unsecured wheelchair rolled toward the open side door.

  But a hand grabbed the old man before he fell. It was the same person who had saved him, too. Alizia locked a harness around the wheels of the chair. Dom offered her a nod of thanks as he drove an elbow in Spitkovsky’s neck.

  The chopper continued to rise. The pilot seemed determined to get them out of here even if all hell was breaking loose in his helicopter. Dom slammed Spitkovsky against the pilot’s seat again. The chopper rocked perilously close to the walls of the underground helipad, shaking as the pilot struggled to regain control. Dom fought to hold his grip on Spitkovsky as the huge man kicked and punched. Blow after blow landed on Dom, but he wouldn’t let that stop him now. Not when victory was literally within his grasp.

  Just knock this guy out, tie him up, and we’re out of here, Dom thought. We win.

  He fought through the pain and thrashed Spitkovsky against the bulkhead. The chopper shook, and the screech of metal against concrete screamed out. Helicopter blades scraped against the side of the silo, fragmenting into deadly shards. The chopper shuddered and dropped, falling sideways. Alizia braced herself. Dom wrestled to control Spitkovsky even as the rocking of the chopper threatened to throw them both out. Spitkovsky’s face was turning purple. His eyes bulged, and his hands flopped in a final fai
led effort to break Dom’s grip.

  Almost there, Dom thought. Almost there.

  The alarms in the helicopter’s cockpit shrieked, and lights flashed. Burning plastic and the smell of smoke hit his nostrils. The cabin tilted sideways, and Dom was forced to reach one hand out, grabbing the pilot’s seat for balance. As the chopper banked, he saw a soldier and two white coats still locked in battle with Meredith below. They looked up at the shrieking chopper, their eyes wide with fear. Meredith ran for cover, sprinting like a deer. One man held his hands in front of his face, as if that would save him, just as a spear of broken rotor impaled him.

  Cargo boxes flew around the cabin. An agonized scream sounded as the fuselage ground against the helipad. The unhealthy cries of the failing engine pierced Dom’s eardrums.

  Dom was thrown from the chopper. His head clunked against the ground. He could almost feel his brain slamming against bone. Pain rocked through his head, shredding his vision.

  Spitkovsky pulled himself from the wreckage of the chopper. His chest heaved, and blood covered his face. Wind washed over Dom as the second chopper lowered itself again. Gunfire rattled from its open side door, and Dom tried to crawl away, tried to find shelter behind a crate as broken as his own body. Pain lit up one of his legs as he drew it behind the collapsed crate. The chopper came in low enough for two soldiers to reach down and help Spitkovsky into it. Once they hoisted him inside, another reached down into the ruins of the downed aircraft, presumably for the old man in the wheelchair.

  Dom coughed, spitting blood across his chest. He tried to reach for his rifle, but the electric pain shooting up his shoulder paralyzed him. His fingers felt numb, useless. Blackness shrouded his vision, throwing him into a world of shadows.

  Then his world disappeared entirely.

  -48-

  “No!” Meredith yelled. Heat flashed across her face, and her vision tunneled. She could barely see Dom in her periphery as she stepped over him. A distant place in her brain cried out, telling her to check on Dom, make sure he was still alive.

  But another, louder voice screamed at her to fulfill the mission. Dom would haunt her for an eternity if she didn’t take care of their objectives.

  The soldier stepped out of the chopper and bent to recover the old man from the wreckage. Meredith lined him up in her sights. A fire coursed through her guts. All the injuries she had suffered since the outbreak seemed to hurt at once. Bruised ribs. Shot-off ear. Cuts and tears, lacerations and heavy blows from the creatures created by these people, these abominable villains.

  She squeezed the trigger, and the soldier’s body dropped. He disappeared into the pile of twisted metal. Another soldier on the helicopter spotted her and aimed.

  No you fucking don’t.

  She fired first. His body slumped from the chopper and tumbled into the tongues of dancing flame. Two more soldiers positioned themselves at the open side door and fired on her. She dove behind a crate. Bending around the corner, she fired back. Two more men hopped out and reached to grab the old man. His body lay motionless, a useless sack of blood and flesh. A plastic hose still snaked from his nostril to his oxygen tank, which was perilously close to the ravenous fire. Meredith thought about firing at that tank, causing an explosion that would take out all the hostiles at once.

  But to do so would forfeit the old man’s life. And Dom would not be happy about that. She would not be happy about that. The old man might hold the key to this mess. He might know something about the IBSL out in the Atlantic, or the cryptic note that had sent her on this wild goose chase, or why her boss, David Lawson, thought she had somehow been complicit in the spread of the Oni Agent.

  Instead, she sighted the first soldier in her optics and fired until his body hung halfway out of the chopper, swinging in the rotor wash. The second man withdrew, but he didn’t find shelter fast enough to avoid the bullets streaming from Meredith’s rifle.

  But even with those soldiers dead, the goddamn helicopter didn’t leave. They wouldn’t abandon the old man, no matter how Meredith tried to beat them back. The side door closed momentarily, and her bullets pinged against it. Some caused spiderwebbing cracks in the windows; others ricocheted uselessly. She was determined to send a message.

  And in response, the side door cracked open once again. This time it wasn’t a soldier with a rifle. Spitkovsky had mounted a Kord-12.7 mm heavy machine gun. Throaty thumps blasted from the Russian-made machine gun as it released a torrent of rounds. The bullets crashed into the helipad, tearing up fist-sized chunks and spraying Meredith with concrete shards. She crawled behind the crates and oil drums. Bullets turned the wooden crates into splinters, and the contents were reduced to scrap. Whatever these people had been so diligently trying to salvage seemed to matter very little compared to the old man.

  Meredith scurried behind a wall of metal gun cases. She wanted to return fire, to take Spitkovsky out, but she knew as soon as she poked out from behind shelter, her head would turn into a mist of blood and bone.

  That was the thing about the heavy guns. You didn’t even have to aim very well. One hit from those rounds, and she’d be dead.

  “Bravo, Charlie, anybody,” Meredith yelled into her comm link.

  A burst of static answered her plea. The ground lurched beneath her feet. Concrete cracked, and a huge slab spiked upward as if the Earth had skipped millions of years of tectonic shifts and decided a mountain needed to be right here, right now. Just as soon as it had risen, the mound of concrete disappeared, and cracks fissured away from a sinkhole.

  Something shot up from it.

  A hand, Meredith realized with dread. A Titan’s hand.

  Claws reached up, scraping blindly. The rattle of the machine gun stopped, and the thrum of the chopper’s engine hit a crescendo. She risked peering from behind the stack of gun cases to see the helicopter lifting off once again. The raking claws of the Titan darted out like a striking snake.

  If Meredith had hoped to enjoy the irony of Spitkovsky being killed by his own creation, she was disappointed. The chopper slipped out of the Titan’s reach, leaving Meredith alone in a pit of smoke, fire, and a thrashing Titan desperate to escape its underground prison. The monster pushed its head through the hole. One of its eyes was missing, and long gouges cut canyons into the right side of its face. It must have been one of the survivors from the Titan grudge match back in the gigantic laboratory chamber.

  “Meredith!” a voice called out, shaking slightly.

  She shot from her hiding spot, running to the burning helicopter. Alizia shakily stood from the wreckage. Rivulets of crimson streamed across her brow. Ash and soot covered her bruised skin, and she limped, favoring one leg. The old man was slung over her back. Meredith couldn’t tell whether he was alive or dead.

  Meredith held out a hand to help the woman, but Alizia shrugged her off. “Get Dom,” she said.

  She didn’t need to be told twice. The ground shook beneath their feet as the Titan pushed its shoulder up, trying to free itself from the concrete and rebar. It let out another roar that threatened to burst her eardrums. She ignored the noise and heat and acrid smoke stinging her nostrils.

  Ahead, Dom lay under broken fragments of wood. Gray dust from the concrete covered him, sticking to the blood covering his flesh and fatigues.

  “Dom!” Meredith yelled as she ran to his side. “You have to wake up!”

  He didn’t move. The Titan roared louder. Huge globs of red saliva flew over her head. Alizia, gasping for air, set the skinny old man down at her feet. She took a knee beside Dom.

  “There’s no way out,” Alizia said.

  Meredith’s eyes raked the ground as if a tunnel would appear if she glared at it sternly enough.

  But instead of a way out, they were rewarded only with a cacophony of demonic voices shrieking from the top of the silo. All along the perimeter of the helipad’s aboveground entrance, where concrete met foliage, Skulls of all shapes and sizes peered down. Their howls carried up in answer to the Tit
an’s bellows. Several Goliaths loomed above the Skulls leaning over the precipice. Droolers gargled, acid oozing over their chests. Imps bounced, excited, ready to feast on human flesh.

  “You did this!” Alizia yelled at the Titan. “You ugly bastard!” She unloaded her magazine into the Titan’s face. Bullets lanced into the exposed flesh of its wounds, and it yowled an agonizing wail that shook Meredith to her core.

  She’d faced almost-certain death before, but things had never felt this final, this hopeless. She held Dom’s head in her lap, brushing the blood and dust from his forehead. She wanted to break down and sob. But even at the end, the wrought-iron control ingrained by decades of intelligence work wouldn’t let her be overwhelmed by emotion.

  “I’m sorry, Dom,” she said as the ground rumbled and a spike from the Titan’s shoulder burst free.

  Alizia slapped in a fresh magazine. “Get up! We must fight!”

  Meredith planted a kiss on Dom’s forehead and struggled to her feet, exhausted and bloody. Alizia limped over until they were back to back. The first Skull careened from the lip of the helipad. Its claws flailed, and they fired on the beast, riddling it with bullets before its body collided with the concrete.

  More Skulls followed, leaping with wild abandon. Meredith and Alizia swiveled on their heels. They killed the first few creatures that survived landing among the burning chopper and torn metal. The unluckiest Skulls landed in the Titan’s pit, where they were crushed, bludgeoned, or ground into a paste between the beast’s molars. But a few made it onto the concrete platform unscathed.

  “Not today!” Meredith yelled.

  Her gunfire impaled two of the beasts’ heads, ending their miserable existence. Alizia’s wild shots smacked against the chest armor of another. Rounds traced up its body until the bullets pierced its nasal cavity and sent it sprawling. A Goliath raised its fists in the air. Firelight gleamed off its bony carapace as it flexed limbs adorned with scything spikes. Its legs coiled as it prepared to lunge. The Skulls swarmed, churned on by the mob’s aggression. Their cries filled the silo, echoing against the walls, ringing until Meredith almost wished both of her ears had been shot off.