The Skull-soldier shrugged his massive frame, the bony plates ringing against each other. “You will see your families soon enough.” He looked at the two soldiers at the warehouse doors and said something in Russian.
“Da,” they said nearly in unison.
They began walking toward the prisoners. Before they even made it more than a couple of steps, the Skull-soldier looked back down at the man on his hands and knee, still struggling to recover his breath.
“You are very weak,” he said. “I do not think you will be good enough to be one of us. But you will help feed the hungry horde.”
“What are you saying? Tell me, what are you saying?” Hassan asked.
Instead of answering, the Skull-soldier picked the other man off the floor. The man began to kick again, but this time, the Skull-soldier didn’t choke him. Instead, he struck out with a claw that tore right into the man’s gut, peeling the claw up until the man’s innards fell out and pooled over the floor.
He dropped the man back to the warehouse floor, and O’Neil watched in abject horror as the man tried to gather up what he’d lost and stuff it all back into his body, mumbling the whole time, blood dripping from his lips.
O’Neil fought to prevent himself from unloading his entire magazine into the side of that Skull-soldier.
The other three men yelled, thrashing against their chains. They pulled on their ankle restraints as if to free themselves. With a click of the Skull-soldier’s fingers, four more guards emerged from the back of the room. They undid the chains holding the prisoners to the floor and escorted them toward the front of the warehouse. The soldiers yanked on the chains hard, making the prisoners stumble and trip until they were half-dragged out of the warehouse door, back outside.
“We’ve got eyes on four hostiles dragging what look to be three Mikes in front of A-Three,” the drone operator said. “They’re taking them to building C-One.”
That was the building that Reynolds’ group was investigating. The office structure where the small pharmaceutical company had been. O’Neil thought the men would be hauled to the ocean and dumped like the women and children had been. But apparently the Russians had other purposes for them.
A shiver crept down his spine, wondering what those purposes might be.
As the Skull-soldier followed them out the front door, the drone operator announced his presence too.
That left the team alone in the warehouse with just two soldiers.
“Bravo, be advised, you’ve got activity outside warehouse A-Three. Four hostiles patrolling at the north end.”
That was right outside the door where O’Neil and his team were. The two soldiers remaining in the warehouse marched over to the dying man. They lugged him up by his shoulders. His face was growing pale. His lips still moved, though no words came out. Blood matted down most of his beard.
The soldiers unlocked the man’s ankle restraint and started pulling the man straight toward O’Neil’s position.
O’Neil whispered as quietly as he could into his comms. “Delta, is route behind A-Three clear?”
“Hard negative,” the drone operator called back. “Four hostiles near the door. Two more standing out front.”
There was no clear escape, and nowhere else to hide in the warehouse besides the crates.
The Moroccan man’s head finally went limp on his shoulders. His tongue hung out as the two soldiers approached. In seconds, those soldiers would round the crates and see Bravo.
Instead, O’Neil motioned to Tate, Van, and Loeb, then signaled toward the two Russian soldiers. He counted down on his fingers, listening to the taps of their feet on the concrete floor.
Three. Two.
When O’Neil hit one, he tore out from behind the crate. Tate erupted beside him, rifle shouldered. Van and Loeb burst up from the crates they were sheltering behind.
All four fired at once.
Their suppressed shots lanced through the chests of the soldiers and ripped out from the soldier’s backs, blood splattering behind them. An expression of surprise crossed the face of one of the soldiers as he dropped the dead prisoner and reached for his chest. Then he looked down at his hands as they came away wet with blood.
O’Neil raised his aim, firing once more into the man’s head. The soldier tumbled forward, next to his crumpled comrade.
“Two hostiles down,” O’Neil said. “Need a clear exit.”
“You’re not getting one,” the drone operator said. “Four soldiers headed in the rear door now. If you can make it out the front, we can provide direct cover fire.”
“Alpha, are we free to engage?” O’Neil asked.
A couple seconds later, Reynolds’ voice came in softly. “Free to engage if you have no other option.”
“How long do we have?” O’Neil asked, directing his team to find new shooting positions for when the four soldiers came through that rear door.
“Looks like they’re thirty seconds from the door,” the operator said, “assuming they do in fact enter.”
“Roger,” O’Neil said.
He hoped the other operator was wrong. That maybe those soldiers weren’t coming into the warehouse.
In all likelihood, they had heard the gunfire. But given the way the Skull-soldier treated their prisoners, maybe they were expecting gunshots.
Reynold’s voice came back over the comms. “Alpha has completed sweep of C-One. We identified a laboratory and a prison. The prison is filled with at least twenty humans and… Skulls. Skulls that are acting like people.”
Skulls acting like people? Jesus, what the hell was going on?
“Good God,” Tate said in a whisper.
“We’re going to try to blow the lab,” Reynolds said. “But we’ve got to get these people out first.”
O’Neil had no idea how the chief planned to do that. They certainly couldn’t just free all those prisoners and expect them to swim for it with the SEALs.
What the hell was Reynolds thinking?
Whatever he had seen in that lab must have been even more horrifying than what O’Neil had witnessed so far. It was the only reason Reynolds would want to act so suddenly and fiercely, instead of trying to regroup and organize a better rescue effort.
Those were all questions that would have to be answered later though.
Right now, he had four more soldiers about to enter the warehouse.
Reynolds came back over the line. Sounded almost angry, like he was biting back a mouthful of curses. “Bravo, Alpha actual. Meet us at C-Two as planned. We need you here for what may be a hot exfil. Eliminate all hostiles in your way with extreme prejudice.”
O’Neil took a deep breath. The door to the warehouse opened. Figured he didn’t have much of a choice.
The first two Russians wandered in. As they turned toward the middle of the warehouse, their eyes grazed right over the bloody bodies lying on the concrete.
“Take them out,” O’Neil said.
He squeezed the trigger, catching the first of the Russians in the neck and face. The man fell before he could so much as think about lifting his rifle. The second man’s face was erased by a blast from Van, his chest hammered by rounds from Loeb.
The third and fourth soldiers had enough time to swing up their rifles, dropping to kneeling positions as rounds hammered into the wall behind them. They started spraying wild gunfire back. Shots punched through the crates, sending showers of splinters over O’Neil’s shoulder. He ducked to avoid bullets tearing through the crates and crawled toward a new position.
“Cover me,” he said to Tate.
The other SEAL curled out from around one of the crates. He fired toward the two Russians who were sheltering behind crates of their own.
O’Neil sprinted toward a new position, past the crates, getting as close to the wall as he could. He had a perfect view of the soldiers’ flanks. His sights fell right over the side of the first one. A squeeze of the trigger, and a round punched right into the guy’s side. The Russian slumped against the crate. Another shot hammered his body, and the man fell sideways, his grip going slack and his rifle clattering to the concrete floor.