Target Rich Environment 2 Page 13

  “How many sites are there like this?” I asked, nodding to the Assyrian ruins.

  “Too many,” Franks grimaced, or maybe it was a smile. Really hard to tell with a face like his. “Most stay lost.”

  “So why haven’t we heard about the Alghul until now?”

  “We have. MCB find stray Alghul, we put them down. They’re here. Somebody hears a woman calling at night. Goes to look . . . The bodies are torn apart. Blame it on war. Nobody looks at a corpse over here and thinks ‘demon.’”

  “Um,” I said, but I had nowhere to go with that.

  “A few days ago a girl taken captive by ISIS returned to her village as a monster and slaughtered everyone. MCB found out. Intel says this is the source.”

  “We shut this place down, and we shut down the threat?”

  Franks shrugged.

  “And here we are,” I said. The shadows were lengthening and the heat of the day was already beginning to shift. Once the sun was down it would get very cold very fast. “So, what’s the plan? Soft infil? Gather some data and call in an airstrike?”

  “No. Explosives only kill the body. We need to kill the demons.”

  “Shit. Let me guess, only silver does the trick.”

  “It varies, demon to demon,” he said. “With the Alghul, it is silver or the hands of a true warrior.”

  “Isn’t that just peachy. What if there are a lot of them?”

  Franks shrugged again.

  “Okay,” I said, “there are forty hostiles in there and my team is hours out. We’re two guys. So again I say, what’s the plan?”

  Frank handed me a Glock and two spare magazines. I still had the silver-coated Ka-Bar. Franks had taken enough firepower from his convoy to launch a frontal assault on the gates of Hell. He pointed to a pair of guards walking sentry outside of the opening to the ruins.

  “Kill everything. How much more plan do you need?”

  14

  Special Agent Franks

  Franks gave Ledger a few minutes to get into position before he started walking right up to the front of the dig site. The site was a haphazard maze of crumbling ancient buildings, twisted rock, modern prefabs, and heavy equipment. It was crawling with insurgents and absolutely reeked of demon stink. He didn’t know how many humans had already been possessed by Alghul, but it looked like they’d practically formed a line to wait their turn to go down into the prison. The tactician was smart, only letting one volunteer descend into the depths at a time, because possession wasn’t pretty, and it might make the others lose their nerve.

  Idiots.

  Construction spotlights kept most of the area well lit, but there were plenty of shadows for Ledger to work in. Franks had thought about taking out the generator first, since he could see in the dark, but so could the Alghul.

  There was a Toyota pickup truck with a machinegun mounted in back blocking the road. The man on the gun saw the darkened shape of Franks approaching, pointed, and began shouting something. Franks shouldered the SCAR, put the ACOG scope’s glowing green triangle on the man’s chest, and launched a .308 round through his heart. The guard spun around and toppled from the bed of the truck. Franks kept walking.

  The sudden noise had gotten everyone’s attention. Another man had been sleeping in the cab of the truck, and he bolted upright, glancing around, confused, until Franks’ second bullet went through the driver’s window and blew his brains all over the passenger’s side. A man in black pajamas and white sneakers ran around the truck. He had just enough time to fire a wild burst from his AK before Franks shot him once in the chest. He tumbled forward, skidding to a stop on his face.

  There was movement all over the front of the camp now. Excellent. If they were all paying attention to him, then Ledger could get a shot at the ISIS tactician before he could create any more Alghul. Just in case Ledger needed more time, Franks slung his rifle, hopped into the back of the pickup, worked the charging handle on the big 12.7mm DShK machinegun, and turned it on the camp. Franks was really good at being distracting.

  15

  Captain Joe Ledger

  THERE ARE TIMES you have to nut up and say “fuck it.”

  So I nutted up and said fuck it.

  16

  Special Agent Franks

  THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP

  The massive bullets tore right through the sheet metal of the prefab buildings. Lights shattered. Men died. Orange muzzle flashes rippled across the camp as they returned fire. Franks methodically swiveled the heavy machinegun toward each one and mashed the trigger, ripping apart bodies and cover. An insurgent ran from the ruins with an RPG over one shoulder and took a knee. Franks tore him in half and the rocket streaked off into the darkness.

  As the last of the belt of heavy rounds cycled through the gun, Franks heard a new sound over the pounding. The screams were unnatural, like a sandstorm processed through tearing human vocal cords. Alghuls incoming, Franks thought as he saw the twisted figures loping across the camp on all fours toward him. About damned time.

  17

  Captain Joe Ledger

  I MOVED IN, low and fast, running with small, quick steps to keep my aim level, firing the borrowed Glock in a two-handed grip. The ISIL tactician ducked backward, grabbed the shoulder of one of his guards and hurled him at me. Part shield, part weapon.

  I put two center mass and dodged around him to get to the tactician, but there were more of the fighters. So many more.

  They screamed at me in half a dozen dialects and began firing their AK-47s, filling the tomb with thunder. But they were panicking, too. In surprise attacks panic is the sword and shield of the attacker and it bares the breast and throat of the attacked. The swarm of bullets burned the air around me. I did not panic. I closed on them and fired, taking them in turn, shifting to interpose one in front of the other, making them pay for their fear that made them miss when I did not.

  I could hear carnage and destruction behind me. Franks was a goddamn tank. I think he scared me more than what we were fighting. If he was an example of the MCB operators, then what the fuck else could they put in the field? I mean, I’m top of my game for what I am—a black ops gunslinger—but I’m flesh and blood. I couldn’t shake off the kinds of damage he was wading through. Even so, I heard him grunt, saw out of the corner of my eye as some of the enemy fire hit him hard enough to tear chunks away, to slow his advance. Could he die?

  Probably.

  I damn well could.

  And so could the fighters in this tomb.

  Franks and I had proved that.

  Then in one of those moments of combat improbability that offers proof that the gods of war are perverse sons of bitches, a heavy caliber round hit the side of my gun. The force tore the gun from my hand and nearly took my trigger finger with it.

  The tactician had two burly guards with him and they were all eight feet from me. Their guns were swinging toward me.

  I had no time at all, and I gave them none. Eight feet is a long step and a jump. I leapt into the hair, slapping the barrel of the closest AK aside a microsecond before he fired, and at the same time I hooked the shooter around the back of the neck, shoving him sideways. He crashed into the second shooter and I landed on the balls of my feet, pivoted, snapped out a low flat-footed kick to the second man’s knee. The joint splintered audibly and it tore a shriek from him. I gave him a double-tap with my elbow, one very fast and very light hit to the eye socket to knock his head backward and a second much harder shot to the Adam’s apple. He fell gagging and trying to drag air in through a throatful of junk.

  The first shooter tried to slam me across the face with his rifle, but he wasn’t set for it. I slapped the swing high and ducked low, chop-punching him in the groin, then rising fast and hitting him in the throat, too, this time with the stiffened Y formed by index finger and thumb.

  That left the tactician facing me.

  He did something cute. He pulled a knife.

  So, what the hell, I pulled mine.


  He was pretty good. Fast, strong, knew some moves.

  Pretty good is great if you’re fighting in a back alley or in the dojo using rubber knives. Not when you’re fighting for your life.

  He tried to drive the point of his knife into my chest, maybe hoping to end it right there. I clubbed the knife down and away with a fist and used the Ka-Bar to draw a bright red line beneath his chin. I whirled away to avoid the spray of blood.

  18

  Special Agent Franks

  FRANKS CRASHED THROUGH THE CAMP, keeping up a steady stream of fire on the charging Alghuls. The contorted bodies were nearly as fast as he was, and it was taking several solid hits to put them down.

  Beneath their tearing uniforms, their skin quickly dried and cracked apart, and unholy yellow light poured through the gaps. Bones twisted into points and ripped through their fingertips. As the possessed around them shed their humanity, the mortal ISIS fighters lost their nerve and fled into the desert. Not all of them made it as, overcome with bloodlust, the Alghul fell on them, tearing them limb from limb, and painting the stone walls with blood. Franks would have shot the survivors in the back as they ran away, but he couldn’t spare the ammunition.

  There was a ripping noise as an Alghul tore through a canvas tent to get at him. When it appeared, the yellow glow leaking through its tearing visage reminded him of a candle inside a jack-o’-lantern. But when he knocked it down and then stomped its chest flat with one big combat boot, what came squirting out wasn’t much very pumpkinlike at all.

  “Franks! Over here!” He turned to see Ledger standing in a doorway to an ancient stone building. He no longer had Franks’ Glock and instead held a Russian Stechkin automatic pistol he’d picked up from one of the dead ISIS fighters. Behind him, stairs led down into the darkness. Ledger glanced up as a shadow crossed him. An Alghul was spider-climbing up the rock above him. Ledger calmly raised his Stechkin and fired several rounds through its face. “I found the prison,” he said as the Alghul landed next to him with a sick thud.

  And the rest of the Alghul must have realized it too, because they’d quit tearing the terrorists’ guts out and shoving them into their mouths long enough to all focus on the American intruders. There were at least a dozen of them left, and they all ran shrieking toward the doorway.

  “Whatever you’re going to do, do it fast.” Ledger grimaced as an Alghul swiped at his eyes with its claws. He shot the creature repeatedly as it stumbled away. Then Ledger darted forward and punctuated the attack with a deep slash from the silver Ka-Bar. The demon shrieked and crumpled to the stone floor.

  Franks shoulder-checked another Alghul into the ground and then dumped the rest of his rifle’s magazine into its body, sending up gouts of blood and sand. “Don’t let anything past this point,” he told Ledger as he shoved by him.

  “I sure hope Church was wrong about your allies tending to die horribly,” Ledger muttered as he got ready to hold off a horde of demons on his own.

  “Not really,” Franks said as he went down the stairs.

  “That’s not helping,” Ledger shouted as he kept shooting.

  19

  Captain Joe Ledger

  I SWAPPED OUT a spent magazine for a fresh one just as a wave of Alghuls rushed at me.

  The Modern Man inside my head more or less screamed and passed out. The Cop backpedaled because this wasn’t his kind of fight.

  But the Killer . . . ?

  Well, hell, I think he was waiting for the right moment to take the wheel and drive us all to crazy town.

  And I liked it. They rushed at me. And I . . . fuck it. I rushed at them.

  I let the gun barrel lead the way but I chased the bullets into the crowd. The heavy rounds punched holes in foreheads and burst eyeballs and painted the walls with dark gore. If we’d been in a wider space they could have circled me and cut me apart. This was a narrow stairwell and it worked for the kind of close-range fighting I do best. When the slide locked back, I simply rammed the barrel into the screaming mouth of one of the Alghuls and then slashed her across the throat. As she twisted down to the ground I reached past and quick-stabbed the next one in the right eye and then the left. One-two shallow thrusts with the sharpened clip of the Ka-Bar. The demon staggered back, clawing at its face with black talons, and I knee-kicked it into the others, jamming and crowding them even more. I grabbed a fistful of hair and drove the knife into the socket of a throat, gave the blade a quarter turn and ripped it free.

  The dead and dying monsters toppled against the others, pressing them backward, transforming their savage attack into a clumsy rout. I jumped onto them, riding the falling, tumbling, bone-snapping avalanche down the stairs. Claws tore at me, the stone walls and the stone steps pummeled me, teeth snapped at me, but I rode a magic carpet of destruction down to the bottom. This was my moment and although they were demons from some twisted corner of hell, I was the red king and the knife was my scepter.

  Then something massive crashed past me, striking the last of the demons like a runaway truck.

  Franks.

  He was splashed with blood and there was a wild light in his eyes that was no more human than the monsters we fought. He smashed them with fists the size of gallon pails; he stomped on them. I saw him tear an arm from its socket in exactly the same way the first Alghul had done back at the village.

  It was all red madness.

  I was the only one down there who was human.

  If you could call the Killer human. He was like a demon howling inside my head, and through my mouth and with my voice.

  But I was wrong.

  I wasn’t the only human down there.

  I saw a man standing at the rear of the chamber.

  He was dressed in strange clothes, all of gold and jewels and leather, like someone who had stepped from a history book. In a flash of insight I realized that he was probably dressed as a shaman or sorcerer from the courts of King Shalmaneser, emulating everything down to his garb so that there was no chance of getting his horrible ritual wrong.

  He was the one responsible for all this death. He was the one who had taken all of these innocent girls and turned them into monsters. He had participated in a kind of spiritual rape by opening them to the demons who destroyed their souls while stealing their flesh. The depth of this crime—this sin—was bottomless. If he lived, if he escaped, then all of this destruction, all of this pain, was for nothing. He would start it up again somewhere else. He would ruin more lives, and by doing it, hand ISIL a weapon more dangerous than any nuke.

  Behind the sorcerer was a doorway in the living rock of the cavern. It was open and beyond it I could see flames. Maybe there was a bonfire in there, but I don’t think so.

  I think I was looking straight into the mouth of Hell itself.

  One after another of the Alghul came running from the flames to join the fight.

  “Franks!” I screamed, pointing.

  The brute had three Alghuls tearing at him and he bled from at least fifty deep cuts, but he turned, saw me, saw where I was pointing. Saw the sorcerer.

  I saw him stiffen. I saw the moment when he understood what we were seeing.

  Franks reached up and ripped one of the Alghul from him and used her body as a club to beat the other two into shattered ruin. Then he lowered his head, balled his fists, and charged toward the sorcerer.

  Leaving the other ten Alghuls to swarm at me.

  But I kicked myself backward and stepped on something that turned under my foot. It was one of Franks’ guns. A mate to the Glock he’d given me. I snatched it up, vaulted the rail and dropped fifteen feet to the floor. My knees buckled under the impact, but I tucked and rolled as best I could. The Alghul shrieked like crows and swarmed down the steps toward me. The sorcerer pointed at me with a ceremonial dagger and at Franks with a scepter.

  “Kill them!”

  The demons closed around me like a fist.

  I raised the pistol and took the shot.

  One bullet.

 
; There was only one round left and the slide locked back.

  The sorcerer stared at me. All the Alghul froze. The world and the moment froze.

  The sorcerer had three eyes. Two brown ones and a new black one between them. Two of the Alghul stood behind him, their faces splashed with blood that was redder than theirs.

  We all lived inside that frozen moment for what seemed like an hour. Or a century.

  And then the sorcerer fell.

  20

  Special Agent Franks

  IT REALLY PISSED HIM OFF when stupid mortals fucked around with things beyond their comprehension. This idiot had probably pieced the spell together out of some forbidden tome. He’d gotten the costume right but the actual magic words written in blood on the walls were the equivalent quality of Crayon scribbles. The workmanship was so shoddy they were lucky he hadn’t sucked northern Iraq into another dimension with this half-assed summoning spell.

  Ledger drilling a hole through the summoner’s brain had stopped the ritual. No more would cross over. However, they were still up to their eyeballs in Alghul, but since the path was still open, Franks had a solution to that little problem.

  This next part wasn’t in any of the MCB’s manuals.

  Franks walked to the shimmering portal, and placed his hands against the edges. His gloves immediately burst into flames. Even though they were all around them, the humans couldn’t sense the disembodied, but Franks could. He saw that the Alghul’s spirits were still tethered to this prison. In this place of power he could apply the might of his will against theirs.