“What do you need in terms of resources, Vince?” The major finally looked at him, the tension relaxing from his weathered, bronze face as he put the arrow tip back in his pants pocket.
“Top squad, Bravo commandos,” Vincent grumbled, his gaze on his drink. “Five men.”
All his dreams of going back home to the Makah Nation where he grew up were evaporating as he sat, his mood darkening by the second. All he wanted was a few weeks to return to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State…the small town of Neah Bay was calling his name…so was home cooking, and the beaches flanked with red cedar and pristine wildlife. He wanted to find a place of solitude that the people who lived by the rocks and sea gulls had known for thousands of years before invasion…to sit in the wilderness to stare across the Straight of Juan de Fuca to Vancouver Island. All he’d wanted to do when he walked in this bar was to relax, finally tie one on, and get laid—now this. “And a brunette.”
The major gave a start and then caught the joke and laughed. He downed his beer and slapped Vincent on the back. “You always get me, D’Jardin. I can never tell when your surly ass is serious or not. I’ll see you at o-eight-hundred in Anchorage. There’s a Black Hawk waiting for you at the military hangars here.” He shook his head and ran his fingers through his close cut hair as he slapped down a twenty-dollar bill on the bar and stood to leave. “You kill me, D’Jardin—I swear.”
Vincent watched his CO thread his way through the bar toward the exit. “Who was joking?” he said, polishing off his drink as he stood.
At least he didn’t have to go through a bunch of crap with rookies. The squad that assembled were familiar faces, and slow smiles crept across each one as recognition was made.
Lou, short for Lu Chen, everybody respected as a fighting machine despite his wiry, compact size. It was good to have him on the team, and his explosives expertise was undeniable. He offered Vince a slow, confident nod and Vince nodded back, feeling much improved as he quickly assessed the group. Dutch, the crazy Swede, was six feet, six inches, of blond destroyer. Having a solid artillery man was a must. Good. Jermaine, an insane brother from Brooklyn who was an unparalleled communications whiz, stood with sinew-cut arms folded over his cinder-block chest, attitude raw, and cornrows glistening. Cool.
Vincent laughed to himself as Donovan walked up and gave him a Cuban brotherhood embrace. Like him, Rodriguez could track anybody and find the wings of a fly in the middle of a hurricane, if he had to. They’d both survived Miami.
Jesse, one of the best snipers in the unit, stood back, chewing on a toothpick, his shock of red hair blowing from the force of the chopper blades as he pushed his lanky frame off the side of the craft. “Howdy, all,” he said with a wide grin and a distinctive Midwest drawl. “Good day for huntin’, ain’t it?”
Indeed it was.
CHAPTER 2
SHE SPIED THEM FROM THE TOWERING TREE TOPS, she and her nymphs blending into the thick canopy watching, their eyes keened like hawks to each male form that walked through the wilderness. These hunters carried weapons that no animal would stand a chance of survival against. Even their method of hunting was unbalanced, unfair. They made war against the innocent—her forests.
If they came in search of their missing generals of destruction, they would be trapped by their own folly. Those decimators of green places had been turned into stags as her great legends prophesized—he who befouled Artemis’s wilderness would be transformed and then hunted to his death. Was the edict not clear? Had they forgotten over the eons? The thought of such disrespect enraged her. She only wished she could deliver to them the fate that had befallen Actaeon, whom she’d turned into a stag and beset his own hounds upon!
Seething, Artemis followed the men with soundless footsteps, her nymphs taking strategic positions. They had employed mercenary Titans against her! These men were of no mere mortal proportions. Their height and stature, like her own, was surely a Titan blend, if not of pure blood.
Closely studying them, she keened her eyes, taking each in as she steadied her bow. One had hair like a flame and loped as he strode, another was thick and tall, his hair like sunburned wheat. Another was clearly of Nubian origin, perhaps Ethiopian, she couldn’t be sure. One had hair as dark as Egyptian onyx, his frame smaller, but his agile speed noteworthy. Another was hard to judge…Persian, Asiatic?
The most magnificent one in the lead had a mane like a lion’s…he walked with a royal cat’s agility, his aura almost stroking the trees with uncommon reverence as he passed them. Splinters of sunlight glinted off his tawny hue. His eyes were intense, that of a seasoned hunter…his shoulders broad and sure. He was at least two hands higher than her, and she stood as a goddess at six feet tall. Her bow lowered slightly, but then she reset her stance. She would not be tricked. This was no immortal, and certainly not one with reverence to her pristine lands.
Yet their mission intrigued her and she almost laughed aloud. Were they so foolish as to be searching for the missing? They already had them, the dead stags, that was the laughable thing. She had no real interest in slaughtering soldiers who simply followed orders—she had gotten to the generals who gave the orders. Once she’d conquered them all, no more orders would be given to harm the dear land. However, there was so much to learn…
Strange customs, strange palaces, buildings with lights that rendered no flame. Odd lifts that carried people away in fast-moving boxes higher than the tallest trees she’d ever witnessed. Chariots without horses…throngs of pedestrians more dense than all of Rome’s populace it seemed, and underground dragons that roared so loudly they shook the ground. All of this she’d seen quickly in her mind as she’d acclimated to the new time…some of it she’d seen as she’d dropped an errant stag in the high palaces. But the roaring, wide-tooth monsters that ate at land and trees had broken her heart. She had to understand this assault against the beloved earth, for it seemed to be everywhere, even against the seas. If there was one source to negotiate with, one king of all these lands, she’d have his head. Otherwise it could take years of battle to bring it all to an end, and she feared most deeply within her very being that time was running out for the wild.
“It’s like they’re ghosts,” Vincent said, shaking his head as he stooped with Donovan to study the ground. “There was a recent encampment here,” he added, feeling the heat off the small, charred remains of a campfire and hunting through the leaves to find where tents could have been pitched. “This is the only viable hiking path to the main pipeline outpost buildings, and all roads leading to it have roadblocks checking IDs, reporting nothing…no helicopter—”
His words were cut off by the whoosh of an arrow that tore through his fatigue jacket at the bicep, grazing his arm and then lodged deeply in the trunk of a tree. The squad immediately fell back, took cover behind trees, and open fired in the direction of the arrow.
Automatic weapon report rent the air. Flashes of bullets sprayed the terrain blasting away ground cover, bark, setting birds in flight, the stench of spent ammunition eclipsing the fresh forest air.