The two Russians did as they were commanded, squeezing between the concrete barriers. Soon as they were past, O’Neil signaled to Loeb and Van. The two SEALs let their weapons fall on their slings and pounced on the Russians, yanking the soldiers’ arms behind their backs and securing them with flexicuffs, then shoving them to the ground, drawing their weapons up again.
They’d succeeded in securing the Russians faster than a Skull could tear the stomach out of its prey.
O’Neil slowly stood with Tate at his back. They crept forward toward the concrete barriers, sweeping them with their rifle barrels to make sure no Russians were still hiding behind them, waiting to strike.
“Barriers on the southside clear!” O’Neil said.
“Barriers on the northside clear!” Reynolds called back. “Three hostiles secure.”
“Two secure here.”
“Casper, ready for exfil at primary extract,” Reynolds called to the choppers waiting on standby. “Charlie, Delta, remain on overwatch. Watch for movers. Bravo, help us clear the trucks.”
O’Neil signaled for Loeb and Van to cover him and Tate while they approached the first truck in the convoy. He and Tate moved through the smoke rolling off the burned-out Typhoon. The smoke stung O’Neil’s eyes, and he blinked to clear them, keeping his stock pressed tightly against his rifle.
No one in the cab of that truck could have survived the assault, but there was a remote possibility someone had survived in the rear, ready to tear them apart just when they thought they’d won.
Tate wrapped his fingers around the doorhandle.
O’Neil stared down his sights. He gave a slight nod.
Tate tore open the door, and O’Neil roved his rifle barrel over the inside of the vehicle’s troop hold. He saw a couple of soldiers’ whose uniforms were charred, their fingers curled and twisted, their flesh burned to a crisp.
“Lead Typhoon, clear,” O’Neil reported over the channel.
He and Tate prowled to the next truck. Checked the cab. The driver’s side door was half open, and the Russian that had been driving the vehicle had taken a handful of bullets to his side and chest. His body was still in his seat, but hanging halfway off, leaning against the partially open door.
They made their way to the rear of the truck. Their boots crunched through the gravel and broken glass. Tate started to peel back the canvas sheet over the rear of the truck’s cargo area.
O’Neil suddenly felt a chill in the air. He realized that between the odor of smoke and burning plastic, the smell of death had grown stronger. Like the air had shifted, carrying with it the scent of a hundred nearby Skulls.
But there had been no change in the wind.
He shivered, wondering if it was just his imagination or the result of that blast that had knocked him on his ass. Or was there something on the back of this truck? Something dangerous that had set off every instinct for self-preservation bubbling beneath his conscious?
Tate peeled back the canvas, revealing a sight that sent ice through O’Neil’s vessels.
“Ho-ly shit,” Tate muttered.
They had found the cause of the smell.
-11-
The first objects O’Neil saw in the back of the truck were what appeared to be six oil drums. There was no marking on them, not even Russian, to tell them what might be inside. But he had a feeling it wasn’t oil or fuel or anything else so innocuous.
This might have been a shipment of the Oni Agent itself, transported, ready for deployment. But those six oil drums weren’t the cause of the rank odor or O’Neil and Tate’s shock. It was the three beasts in the back of O’Neil that made them pause.
Three monsters who looked to be in various stages of transformation, their body riddled in bony plates and spikes jutting from nearly translucent skin, vessels and muscles bulging. Two of them snarled as soon as they saw O’Neil and Tate, their ragged noses wrinkling. But their mouths were locked together by steel muzzles. The third beast simply stared at them, hardly reacting at all.
O’Neil had never seen a Skull act so calm around a live human, but this looked at him with an expression that seemed to reveal an almost human intelligence. Like it was sad, pitiful. That disconcerted O’Neil more than the huffs of the other two as they lashed out against their restraints, yelling in eerily human voices, the chains pulling on the bolts securing them to the inside of the truck.
One of those chains started to give as the monster pulled on it, the bolt groaning as it began to loosen from its hold on the floor of the cargo area. O’Neil fired at the monster. Rounds broke through the bony plates over its chest, then another punched into its face, its head whipping back.
The monster fell to the floor, blood spreading around it. Another three shots ended the second Skull fighting against its chains.
But the third made no move. O’Neil thought he could see its mouth moving against the muzzle. Maybe it was trying to chew its way out or growling. He couldn’t quite tell, but it almost sounded as if the thing was speaking.
He figured his hearing was definitely screwed up still.
Raised his sights right over the center mass of the creature. Instead of bucking against its chains, the monster seemed to shrink back and shake its head, yelling out not in anger, but fear.
O’Neil fired.
Bullets lanced through the beast. Blood splattered from the exit wounds and painted the interior of the truck. The monster collapsed to the floor with a violent clang. But it wasn’t dead yet. It reached a claw out toward O’Neil, its eyes seeming to stare straight through the tubes of his NVGs. Like it thought he could somehow help it, turn it back into the human it had once been.
The human it could never be again.
He aimed straight at its bony forehead, between the rounded spikes jutting out from its temples. The monster’s eyes almost looked watery, blood trickling out from between its muzzled mouth and the slits that had once been its nose.
“O’Neil?” Tate asked. “You good, man?”
O’Neil fired. Two shots erased the creature’s forehead, and its hand fell to the floor of the cargo hold with a thump.
“Truck clear,” O’Neil said, moving to the next vehicle. “Ruskies seem to have been moving Skulls with their cargo. Be cautious.”
“Copy that,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds and McLean approached the rear of the last truck in line. The two Alpha operators disappeared behind the vehicle as O’Neil and Tate worked their way to the middle truck. O’Neil peered into the cabin. Bullet holes riddled the fractured windshield and the wheel wells. The tires had both been punctured, deflated, and steam rose from the hood where O’Neil assumed they had hit the radiator.
Inside the cabin, he saw no bodies, no soldiers.
He signaled for Tate to move toward the back of the truck. But before they made it a step, gunfire exploded from Reynold and McLean’s position.
At first, O’Neil figured they had spotted hostile Skulls chained inside like he had.
“Eagle down!” Reynolds yelled. “Eagle down!”
Those words struck a knife straight through O’Neil’s heart.
More gunfire burst from Alpha’s position, bullets ringing out against the truck.
Eagle down meant a SEAL had been hit.
McLean.
O’Neil and Tate dropped to a knee, watching for a soldier to come racing out of the truck. Alpha had all the sight lines on the rear of the vehicle, and gunfire continued to burst from their positions in flashes of muzzle fire that struck out into the darkness.
Reynolds appeared again, holding his rifle against his shoulder with one hand, dragging the downed operator from the rear of the truck by the guy’s collar.
“Anyone got eyes?” Stuart called over the comms.