That gave him an idea. One he hoped the Russians hadn’t prepared for.
“Best way to win a battle like this is split up the enemy defensive forces,” he said. “Attack on multiple fronts to keep them confused and sow chaos.”
“We don’t have the numbers to do that,” Meredith said.
“We don’t,” O’Neil said. “But maybe we”—he used his claws to indicate his SEALs and the Moroccans—“can call in some Skull reinforcements.”
Andris looked at Meredith. The big, muscular Latvian almost looked scared. “Before you do, tell me, how well can you control them?”
O’Neil thought back to what he had learned from talking to Hassan. The man had relayed knowledge from the prisoners who had been in those cells longer. His own experiences had been limited to handling no more than two Skulls at a time, too.
“Not well enough, maybe. The goal wouldn’t be to let the Skulls loose in here. Just get them excited and aggressive outside the gates. Make the Russians scared, so they’re forced to defend the walls and not just against us. Maybe even loosen their control over the ones by the docks. Then we can fight our way past the defenses around the ships, and you can plant your bombs. How does that sound?”
The Hunters gave each other glances as if they were communicating through their own unspoken language. Despite the horror surrounding him, despite what the people had done to him, these people were actually considering his plan as if he was still the SEAL he had once been.
Miguel was the first to speak. “Sounds insanely risky and, well, insanely insane, bro. I like it.”
“Damn right, man,” Tate said.
“We can do this,” Loeb added.
“I—” Meredith started.
But spotlights drew toward their positions.
“We got movement headed our way,” Stuart said. “At least another ten hostiles.”
O’Neil could feel the wave of anger filtering between the prisoners. The SEALs were prepared to move out, to do what was strategically necessary. But judging by the faces on the Moroccans, they did not feel the same. Many had been imprisoned far longer than O’Neil. And they didn’t share the same discipline that he had carried with him throughout his career in the Navy.
Gunfire burst from the enemy positions, slamming into shipping containers and crates. The Russians were getting desperate. Aggressive. Doing their best to keep O’Neil and the others from moving.
Soon enough they would be surrounded completely. Even with the weapons O’Neil’s men had gathered from the soldiers they had killed, they simply did not have the numbers to make a stand.
“I do not think we have another choice,” Andris said finally.
Meredith nodded, looking toward O’Neil. “Do it. We have to.”
O’Neil felt a sense of purpose swell in his chest. He had lost his place in this world. Lost the career he had spent his life cultivating. Failed his men. Van, who had died. Tate and Loeb whose lives may as well be forfeit now.
But at least he could do this one last thing. He could bring hell to the people who had turned him into this abomination.
Because they were the real monsters.
-33-
The gunfire pelted the shipping containers in a fierce rattle. Russian voices barked between the blazing gunfire, and their footsteps echoed between the rows of crates and containers in the shipyard. Sounded like they were spreading out around O’Neil and the others’ positions.
O’Neil gathered the Hybrids as the mercs provided cover. He told them what he had discussed with the Meredith, Miguel, Andris, and the others. Then he asked if the Hybrids had any objections to his plan. When Hassan translated his instructions to the nearly twenty Moroccans standing around them, not one objected.
“Stuart, Henderson, take these three to the western part of the wall,” O’Neil said, gesturing to a group of Moroccans. He split up what was left of Delta and Charlie, too, to lead two other groups of prisoners. Then he motioned for Loeb, Tate, Hassan, and a final group of five Moroccan prisoners to stay with him.
At his commands, the teams dispersed through the shadows around base, hightailing it between the raking spotlights.
“I hope I didn’t just send them to their deaths,” O’Neil said.
“We were already dead the moment they injected us with this shit, man,” Tate said.
“Death would be a release,” Loeb added.
Sporadic gunfire blasted from elsewhere in the base. The rumble of vehicle engines roared into the night, too. O’Neil figured maybe the Russians were preparing to bring in the big guns or escape. Which he figured was fine now.
Once the Hybrids got the Skulls raging outside the gates and walls, no one would escape. Big guns didn’t matter. The beasts were like hundreds of millions of tons of storm water building behind a cracked dam, ready to ravage everything in their path.
Less than a minute later, he felt the first tingle of rage.
Like a spark igniting dried leaves, the fury carried in the air. A chemical cocktail that flamed at the back of his mind, heating the furnace of his own animalistic instincts, feeding the beast of annihilation residing in his bioengineered body.
Slowly he felt that signal grow. What had been a neglected bonfire spread to the dry trees and grass around it.
He assumed each of the groups he sent out were now in position, focusing on doing exactly what the Russians had designed them to do. He concentrated on amplifying that signal, too. On making it all-consuming.
Instead of picturing that peaceful beach in Virginia, he saw Van’s body as he pulled it from the wreckage of the MRAP. He saw his country turned to an ashen, rubble-filled landscape. He saw his neighbors and friends and innocent civilians across the globe infected by a biological agent, forced to fight in a war they had no part in, their bodies transformed into gruesome beasts.
All of them living weapons.
Like him.
He saw his life as a Navy SEAL stripped from him. Everything he had worked for torn away in an instant. His body was a ragged mess, his life destroyed. Constant pain was the only thing he had been left with.
It was working.
His chest heaved; the device in the back of his head responded to this anger, his nerves firing, activating all the cells in his body. He started to feel an intense hunger, his metabolism working overtime, converting all his innate energy into churning out the pheromones or chemicals or whatever crap the Russians had imbued the Hybrids with.
The howls started to erupt with a new fervor outside the base.
“Now we wait?” Andris asked in a low voice.
“Now we wait,” O’Neil rasped back.
“How will we know when the others start calling the Skulls?” Jenna whispered.
“It’s already begun,” O’Neil said. He almost felt as though his feet were lifting off the ground. Like the unfettered, sweltering heat of fury could send him soaring above this port as a god of death. “I can feel it. That pheromone, chemical bullshit… whatever it is. I could feel it each time the Skulls went crazy outside the base, even when we were stuck in our prison cells. They’re always inside my head, you know?”
The mercs stared at him, each with their own personal expression of horror and pity painted over their faces.
“That’s so messed up,” Spencer said.
“I’m so sorry,” Jenna added.
O’Neil hated what he had become. But he didn’t need these people telling him how screwed up it was. “What’s done is done. All that’s left is revenge.”
Loeb harumphed beside him. Tate nodded.