“What in hell is that?”
When no one answered, she swung the finger around and pointed to one of her lab techs. “You. Get to a terminal, call up image recognition, and cross-reference with the fossil record database and any other source you can access. I want to know everything about that thing, all the way down to the size of its dick, and I want it in the next ten minutes.”
The tech literally broke into a dead run.
She pivoted and speared another tech with her glare. “You, I want a different search. Go into art files and other image sources. If someone so much as doodled that thing on a cocktail napkin, I want a full report. Move! ”
She kept rattling orders. Junie stood and watched, finally impressed by Doc Holliday. Until now she had been getting very frustrated by the woman’s reluctance to think outside of the box. That had been a flaw in Dr. Hu’s makeup; Bill Hu had flatly refused to believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial life until the unfolding Extinction Machine case forced him to. Foot-dragging was always tedious to Junie, but ten times more so when Joe’s life was on the line.
When Doc paused to gasp in a breath, Junie asked, “How can I help?”
Doc looked around, clearly seeing no one else that she needed to make jump. She turned back to Junie. “If there’s more I need to know, then damn well tell me. I am officially open for business in every possible way. We got big green Reptilians, madness-inducing green crystals, interdimensional gateways, and giant alien tentacles. I think we can declare my skepticism dead and damn well buried. So… as Joe is so fond of saying… hit me.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWELVE
There is a popular military acronym: SNAFU. It stands for “situation normal, all fucked up.” Some people will insist it’s “fouled” up, but it’s not. It’s fucked. As we pretty much were.
Duffy said that the newcomers were massing at the doors but had not yet breached. “Not sure what they’re waiting for, Cowboy. No breaching tools that I can see, but they haven’t touched the hand scanner or keycard box. Wait. One guy in the front has his hand to his ear. Think he’s talking to someone, maybe getting orders. I’ll send a bird drone over to try and eavesdrop.”
“Bug,” I asked, “can you hack the transmission on the new players?”
“Working on it, Cowboy,” he said, and I could hear him hammering on his keyboard. “It’s some kind of cyclical scrambler. Something new and spiffy.”
“Ticktock,” said Top. “I’ve got guards coming.”
“Me, too,” said Bunny, “but they’re still on slow foot patrol. No one seems to be running. No alarms going off inside. What gives? Are the jokers outside on their side or did someone else just buy into this poker game?”
“Unknown,” I said. “Don’t even know if the rent-a-cops up there knew about the pro ballers I ran into.”
“Guys outside look like serious players,” warned Duffy.
“Call the play,” suggested Top.
“I—”
That was all I got out, because suddenly there was a sound. Very loud, very odd, impossible to really describe. Kind of a gigantic whooooomp!
It shook the entire building with such force that my immediate reaction was: Bomb. But it wasn’t. I’ve heard thousands of explosions, from firecrackers up to fuel-air cluster bombs. This wasn’t like any blast I’d ever heard. It was softer, more compressed. Close to the sound of something very large and flat being forcibly slammed down on a flat table, with the sound of impact softened by the air as it is forced to escape. Like that, but not like that. It was also something that vibrated everything. I felt it like a punch to the breastbone. It hurt my heart and buckled my legs, and I went down into a duck walk that ended with me on my knees, crammed up against the corridor wall. Ghost belly flopped and skidded past me. We both froze there, gasping. Feeling momentarily battered and sick. All of the alarms in the entire building went off at once.
Smith, outside, was the first to call in. “Cowboy, was that an explosion? It looked like the whole damn building shook.”
“I… I don’t—” But again I was interrupted.
“Spartan to Cowboy,” yelled Duffy. “Be advised, you have hostiles coming in all three doors.”
In the distance, I could hear gunfire. And screams.
So many screams.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN
Soft exfil my shiny white ass.
“Cowboy to Echo Team,” I yelled as I struggled back to my feet. “Cleared to go weapons hot. Hard exfil. Repeat, hard exfil.”
I whipped the door open and ran into the hall with Ghost at my heels. There was no one in sight, but in the distance, coming from several other parts of the building, I could hear the gunfire. Various calibers. Shouts in Russian, some in English, all too muffled to understand. The screams were not the high-pitched shrieks of pain. Not exactly. I’ve heard enough battlefield injury cries to know them in their various intensities, and this wasn’t that. This was more like madhouse screeching. Filled with power and raw emotion.
I heard one voice shouting “Zatknis! Zatknis!” Over and over again. Shut up. No one seemed to be responding to him, though. His voice was rising to a hysterical pitch and sounded odd. Wrong.
Then there was another, louder voice bellowing at my men to stand down. From the barrage of responding gunfire it was clear my guys weren’t all that much in a stand-down kind of mood.
“Ghost,” I said, “find Sergeant Rock. Shield. Shield. Shield .”
My dog was trained to locate my team by real names or combat call signs, and he bounded forward toward the left end of the corridor and I raced after. We were halfway down the hall toward our intended exit route when a door opened and two men stepped out of a stairwell. Both were dressed in identical black suits, both carried automatic rifles. Soldiers, not guards. They immediately swung their barrels toward us and began shooting. What happened next occurred all inside the bubble of a cracked half second.
A bullet punched into my hip and slammed me halfway around.
White-hot pain exploded in every nerve — but even with its intensity I knew that the round hadn’t penetrated. The Kevlar and spider silk had done their job, and the impact-dampeners had sloughed off some of the force. There was impact pain but not the hot burning agony of a bullet passing through.
I used the impact to spin me all the way around and came out of it shooting. The two soldiers split left and right and my rounds chased them. Ghost was already moving, having launched himself at them before their fingers had squeezed the triggers. He was a white missile; all teeth and claws and savage intent. The closest man went crashing back against the wall. I corrected my aim and used my pistol to put two center mass in the other guy. He was not wearing the most advanced shock-absorbing, bullet-stopping body armor currently available, and I was firing armor-piercing rounds. He sat down and died, his gun hitting the polished floor and sliding ten feet.
All of that. Done in a heartbeat.
I wheeled to see if Ghost needed help.
He didn’t.
It takes a little bit of time for him to wrestle a guy down and subdue him if the command was to “own.” Killing is always quicker. It simplifies the math.