Two more shapes burst up from the water. Loeb and Van.
Loeb snagged the guy’s kicking foot, and together, he and Tate pulled him toward the water. Van held out his hands, catching the man and putting his hand over his mouth both to quiet his yells and keep him from splashing too loudly into the water. Loeb and Tate dragged the guy underwater as Van kicked over to O’Neil.
Together, they dragged the other man beneath the surface, slipping him under as quietly as they could.
O’Neil slit the guy’s throat, then snagged the guy’s boot into the concrete anchor holding a dead Skull on the seafloor. Tate and Loeb held the second Russian as he flailed, bubbles pouring from his open mouth.
Finally, he went unconscious, his arms floating, eyes staring vacantly through the dark. Loeb used flexicuffs to secure the man’s ankles to the concrete anchors of another Skull whose flesh had long-since been devoured by the crabs and fish.
The rest of the SEALs pushed out of the water, and as soon as O’Neil was certain the two Russians wouldn’t be found floating face-down in the middle of the pier in a few minutes, he led Bravo back up onto the pier.
Already, the other three teams had removed their fins, spread in combat intervals, watching down the length of the pier. Crates and shipping containers had been left in rows next to the massive ships. Tall cranes loomed overhead.
All down the pier, red lights glowed from the lamps instead of the brackish yellow that O’Neil normally would have expected at a facility like this. He saw the glow of those same red lights from inside a warehouse about three-hundred yards from their position. The other warehouses appeared to be closed. O’Neil scanned the rest of the port, studying the office buildings at the center. One had a large antenna on top that appeared to be only half-finished. There were a couple of machine gun nests situated on the catwalk around that building.
Past the offices, the fortified walls of the port-base blocked the view of most of the city. All he could see of Tangier were the dark silhouettes of minarets and a few towering apartment buildings. The rest of the base was masked by shadows where those dim red lights didn’t touch.
The Russians definitely wanted to keep this place hidden. Which made it all the more imperative that they acted quickly tonight.
“Eventually they’re going to come looking for those guys,” Reynolds said. “Delta, Charlie, you take the piers. Alpha, Bravo, we’re moving.”
O’Neil motioned to his team to put down their NVGs. His clicked into place, and the world bloomed in a vivid wash of greens and whites.
They prowled down the pier, sticking close to the shipping containers and crates. The smell of fish and oil hung thick in the air, mixing with the overwhelming odor of death.
When they heard approaching footsteps, O’Neil signaled for his men to press themselves low behind a shipping container.
“Two movers, headed down the pier,” he whispered over the comms.
Their boots thumped over the wet concrete, their voices carrying on at a normal volume. O’Neil didn’t understand a lick of Russian, but the sporadic laughs told him this was hopefully just a casual conversation.
As they passed down the center of the pier, he leaned out slightly from the container.
“Do not engage,” Reynolds said.
O’Neil could see his IR tag on his NVGs. The chief was positioned behind another shipping container nearby on the opposite side of the pier.
The two Russians continued down the pier, rifles slung over their back. They wore dark fatigues that clung to their muscular frames. Judging by their confident gait and the gear strapped to their uniforms, these weren’t just some run-of-the-mill goons that had established a Mad Max-style militia.
Soon as they were clear, O’Neil motioned for his team to advance. They made it past the end of the pier, where they posted up around another yard filled with shipping containers. O’Neil climbed up the side of one to get a better view of what lay beyond the shipping yard. He crawled on his belly, drawing his rifle up and looking through the magnified optics.
Three two-man patrols walked the walls beyond the warehouses. Another set of five contacts marched around or stood between the warehouses. That was all he could see from his position—he worried there were far more beyond his vantage.
The warehouses were Bravo’s first objective. The teams had identified them as A-One, A-Two, and A-Three. As they infiltrated them to find any available intel, Alpha would start at the other end of the docks near what appeared to be the command building, B-One, and the two office buildings, C-One and C-Two. He thought he could hear scratching and scraping, the occasional groan and guttural howl. The slightly muffled sounds seemed to be coming from either somewhere inside the base or just beyond the walls.
None of the Russians seemed bothered by the sounds, which only piqued his curiosity. How could they be so nonchalant about what sounded like dozens of beasts nearby? An ongoing clamor like that would set off every alarm at Fort Detrick, calling every capable man and woman to the walls to defend against an impending attack.
His mind flashed back to Lithuania, how that Russian convoy had driven straight through Klaipėda.
There had been no Skulls until after the SEALs had virtually destroyed the convoy. The Russians must have developed some kind of technology to control the beasts. That was the only explanation that made sense.
Whatever the Russians had, O’Neil hoped he could figure it out and bring it back to their people.
But that also begged the question, if they could control the beasts—or maybe just keep them away somehow—did they really need all these defenses?
A chill shuddered through his spine at the obvious answer. The defenses weren’t for the monster. They were to keep people out. People like the group Khalid claimed to belong to.
People like his SEALs.
That only made him more certain the Russians were hiding something here that needed to be destroyed. Their special recon mission was going to turn to direct action very quickly.
Before the outbreak, back in Afghanistan and Iraq, the analysts back in DC would want to take their time with a target like this. They would want to pore over the data the SEAL team brought back from tonight before deciding how they would deal with the situation, but as the world was increasingly pushed to the edge of oblivion by the Skulls, those careful analyses were a luxury they simply couldn’t afford.
The SEALs would have to make their own decisions tonight—and fast.
“Drone out,” an operator on Delta called.
O’Neil slipped back down to the ground, landing next to the rest of his team. They all crouched in the shadows. A blinking IR light showed where the hand-held drone was, flying high above them.
“Positive confirmation of ten contacts on the walls,” the SEAL commanding the drone said. “Another eight moving between the warehouse, running patrol. Two at each warehouse entrance. By the offices, ten contacts. Parking lot filled with four Typhoons, three Uniform Alpha Zulus.”
The presence of Typhoons and the off-road UAZs all but confirmed this was indeed Russian military or at least a highly capable military-like faction of Russians with deep resources.
“I’m seeing action,” the drone operator said.
“All units, hold,” Reynolds said.
O’Neil pressed himself tight against the shipping container, his rifle at the ready.
He heard voices screaming across the port, echoing between the containers. Sounded like women shouting in Arabic and stilted English. Between their shouts, he heard Russians yelling back at them in what sounded to be a mixture of Russian and broken English.
He could just make a few of the words from the Russians. “Stop. Stop. Stop. You listen.”