O’Neil plucked a flashbang and tossed it through the door. A pop and flash of light burst from inside the building. Tate kicked the door the rest of the way open. The team flooded into a dark lobby with a receptionist desk, a few scattered tables and chairs. At first, O’Neil couldn’t see where the guards were, even with his NVGs.
But then he saw movement behind the reception desk. He and Tate moved to the left of the desk as Loeb and Van covered them. The two Russian guards behind the desk were still clenching their hands over their ears and blinking, trying to recover from the effects of the flashbang.
A few well-aimed shots ended both of their futile efforts. The team pushed down a corridor, kicking open doors to other offices. Almost all were filled with nothing but scattered papers and computers and bookshelves.
No contacts, though.
The hall hooked to the left at the end.
“Alpha, we’re close to your position,” O’Neil whispered into the comms. “Took out two hostiles.”
“Copy,” Reynolds called back. “There were four men in the offices to the front of the labs.”
That meant two more men were left. After hearing that commotion, they would likely be waiting just down the hall to the left. Sending his team rushing down that hall would be suicide.
They might be cut down as soon as they peered around the corner.
Gunfire continued to ring through the port outside, followed by shouts under the low bark of the alarms. The howls of a few Skulls tore into the night, rising above the rest of the din.
The SEALs were running out of time if they wanted to level this facility and escape, with or without the prisoners Reynolds wanted to take.
“Alpha, Bravo, you’ve got eight, maybe ten more hostiles spreading out around the north face of C-Two,” the drone operator called. “We’re picking them off, but they’re getting smarter. Our positions may be compromised soon.”
O’Neil didn’t know a good way to get past these guys without opening himself or his people up to fire. “Alpha, we’re held up in the hall. If we’ve got two more contacts with a bead on us, we’re going to be pinned down.”
“Copy that,” Reynolds said. “Hold tight.”
The rattle of gunfire roared outside in a sustained burst. The wails of the Skulls were growing louder as if they were agitated by the assault on the Russians’ base. Then came the blast of gunfire from down the hall, followed by the smack of two bodies hitting the floor.
“Bravo, your path is clear,” Reynolds called.
“Roger. Hold your fire.” O’Neil twisted around the corner. He saw the bodies of two Russian soldiers sprawled on the floor. Each appeared to be sticking just halfway out of office doorways.
Just as he’d expected, they were perfectly situated to stop Bravo.
But not Alpha.
Beyond them, Reynolds, Stuart, and Henderson were standing at an open doorway, holding two steel doors open. O’Neil rushed to join him with the rest of their team. Once they cleared the doors, Reynolds shut and locked them.
“This is their lab facility,” Reynolds said. “I already took pictures, and we packed up every hard-drive and notebook we could find.”
On one side of the space, lab benches lined the wall. Microscopes, monitors, and a dozen other pieces of equipment O’Neil didn’t recognize filled those lab benches.
“We took some of the samples in the freezer, too,” Reynolds continued. “I have no idea what they are or how useful they’ll be, but I’m hoping the scientists will know when we get them back to Frederick.”
As Reynolds led them past the laboratory section, O’Neil saw two more Russians—one a soldier, another in a white lab coat—lying dead in another room. This room was separated by clear hanging plastic sheets smeared with dried blood. Underneath a bank of lights was an operating table. Trays full of surgical tools were placed on a cart near the operating table, and a sink dripped on the other side of the OR.
“What’s this for?” Tate asked.
“For them,” Reynolds said, pushing open another door. “Khalid was right about the prisoners.”
The odor of human excrement and rotting meat poured out of the room. O’Neil took his first few steps in and stopped, drawing his rifle up immediately.
On the edges of the room, biosafety cabinets and chemical fume hoods contained all manner of glass apparatuses. There were Bunsen burners heating glass flasks and liquid trickling down condenser tubes into beakers. Everything he saw looked straight out of a pharmaceutical laboratory developing experimental drugs.
Except for the four cages with steel bars separating the other half of the room into what looked almost like a dog kennel on steroids. But instead of canines, about fifteen people looked to be crammed into two of the cages.
“Help us…” one of the men said.
“Please. Please.”
“They… they…”
O’Neil counted a good ten people inside the first cell. Their clothes were soiled and in tatters, their faces gaunt and glazed over as if they had given up on life.
Reynolds pointed to three looking out at O’Neil. “Those ones were taken in here while we were scouting the place out.”
“They’re the three prisoners that survived that Skull-soldier we saw in the warehouse,” Loeb said.
“Oh, shit, what about those ones?” Tate asked, raising his rifle.
Another group of nine prisoners reached out from a different cell.
At first, O’Neil thought it was filled with Skulls. But they weren’t all growling and snapping like he would have expected of the Skulls. Most of the prisoners were covered in bony plates, and long claws sliced out of their fingers. Their teeth protruded from their mouth into a mess of fangs. Some had longer spikes poking out of their spine; others had flatter plates covering their bodies.
One of those Skulls reached out toward O’Neil. “Please… it hurts… just…”
A few of the others spoke in Arabic or French. O’Neil didn’t understand the exact words they were using but the pleading couldn’t be more clear. They were in pain.
All of them.
They reached toward him, their faces drawn up in grimaces. But unlike all the monstrous Skulls plaguing the States, there was no hate or hunger in their eyes. Only agony.
“The ones that can speak English told me the Russians are developing an agent here that turns people into these,” Reynolds said.
More gunfire popped outside, followed by the rattle of a machine gun.
“What exactly are they?” Van asked.
“The guys in here don’t speak great English,” Reynolds said, “but from what I can tell, the Russians are making Skulls that can still think like humans.”
“What the actual fuck, man?” Tate asked.
“So the Skull-soldiers we saw in the port… maybe the ones in Lithuania… they’re all the next generation of weapons for the Russians,” O’Neil said.
“Exactly,” Reynolds said. “Which is why we have to blow this place now. We cannot let this weapon get out.”
“Already might be out,” Henderson added. “Those barrels in Lithuania could’ve been filled with this stuff.”
“Even more reason to stop any more of this weapon or agent or whatever it is from being shipped abroad.” Reynolds jerked his chin toward the prisoners. “But I don’t want to kill all those people either.”
“The mission though…” O’Neil said, thinking of the choices they had made before. Choices that left innocents to die so they could complete what they had to do.
“Look, I thought about that,” Reynolds said. “First, as much as I hate to say it, these people, if we get them back to the States, could help our scientists. Second, we’re going to rig this whole lab to blow. But we’ve got too much equipment, too much cargo from the labs to swim away with anyway. So we’re going to drive out of here.”