O’Neil nodded. “Thanks.”
He braced himself with the handrails along the ceiling and made it to the front of the vehicle. He dropped heavily into the front passenger seat, pain shooting up the back of his ribcage.
“Follow us out,” Reynolds called over the line.
Both MRAPs started to accelerate. Skulls continued to throw themselves at the vehicles. Alpha’s MRAP turned hard to the left and started racing down a short road to the wall where the gates were. Van gunned it after the other MRAP, and O’Neil fell into the side of the vehicle from the rapid change in momentum. Another ripple of pain trembled through his back.
Bullets rained against the MRAP like they were in a bad hailstorm.
O’Neil wanted to do something, anything, to stop their aggressors. But he couldn’t so much as stick his head out the top hatch to fire back or he would be cut down in the onslaught.
Their engines roared with a monstrous rumble as the gate to the facility grew ever closer. O’Neil saw a barrier gate with a boom. Just beyond it was what appeared to be a sliding chain-link gate and then another barricade of corrugated metal.
If the MRAPs couldn’t break through, then they would be forced to fight the swarm of Skulls roiling after them. And from the ground on either side of the gate, Russian soldiers were unloading rounds that cracked against the windshield and windows or sparking over the hood of the MRAP. Those soldiers would breach the MRAPs as soon as the vehicle’s wheels got hung up on the broken gate or the barricade.
They had one shot at this.
“Come on,” Tate said. “Faster, faster!”
Some of the prisoners in the back were frozen in their seats. Other prayed, eyes closed, rocking. And more, eyes wide with fright, faces skinny with starvation and disease, yelled or cursed, taken hold by panic.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” Van said, leaning forward as if he could squeeze just a little extra juice from the vehicle.
More gunfire rattled over the windshield, marring it with a maelstrom of chips and white marks. O’Neil instinctively ducked, though no bullets broke through. These MRAPs could take a lot of abuse, but O’Neil wasn’t ready to test their limits.
“Everyone brace,” Reynolds said.
Alpha’s MRAP hit the boom arm on the first barricade.
The candy-cane-striped boom splintered, breaking into three big pieces that went flying at the impact.
With a crunch and the clang of bending metal, the chain-link gate crumpled over the vehicle. Part of it got stuck on top of the MRAP, but the vehicle kept going, bashing into the corrugated metal panel with a bang that sounded like thunder. For a moment, the gate didn’t seem like it would give, even as the MRAPs wheels bit against the asphalt, slipping slightly on another part of the chain-link gate that had fallen underneath the big rubber tires.
But then with another tremendous crash, the metal panel broke free, slamming against the pavement outside the walls.
Alpha’s MRAP pushed straight over the panel and out onto the road beyond. It turned hard to the right, and Van followed the vehicle.
“Watch out!” O’Neil said.
Just down the street, O’Neil could see what appeared to be a massive traffic jam of abandoned vehicles. That mess blocked the Route de la Plage Merkala. If it weren’t for the passenger vehicles filling that street, they could have taken the road straight back toward where the Rangers had left them on tonight’s mission.
But even with the heavy-duty MRAPs, O’Neil didn’t think they could make it through the quagmire of abandoned vehicles. Van twisted hard on the wheel to the left, the MRAP leaning heavily on its right wheels, suspension groaning with the tight turn.
Alpha’s MRAP turned just as hard. The vehicle made the turn halfway, but its side bashed into a taxi and a white SUV. Metal scraped against metal. Tires squealed as they fought for purchase on the pavement against the overwhelming inertia of the bulky vehicle.
Through the back and side windows, O’Neil watched Skulls pouring over the walls of the port base after them. He saw more gunfire flicker from the walls as soldiers painted the MRAPs’ sides with rounds.
Van leaned forward in his seat. The MRAP blasted ahead, this time headed south on the other major roadway leading from the port: Mohammed VI Avenue. That road would take them far in the opposite direction, but O’Neil didn’t care so long as it got him and his team away from this terrifying base full of monstrosities.
Between the gurgling growl of the engine hungrily guzzling diesel and the pop of bullets hitting the MRAP, the Skull howls wailed into the night like beastly sirens.
Skulls began to emerge through the puff of black exhaust from the MRAP in front of them and the lines of broken vehicles littering the streets alongside the coast. The monsters rushed from within the boats washed up onto the Tangier beach to their left or trickled out of restaurants and hotels lining the avenue to their right.
With enough speed, the MRAPs could outrun them.
But as they raced further along the road, coming toward a bend, O’Neil saw the ghostly silhouette of a massive oil tanker against the nearly moonless night. The gigantic ship had been driven up onto the beach, carving into the sand and pushing up across the street, asphalt and pavement and piles of rubble around its hull from the buildings it had plowed into.
The wide avenue would offer them no escape either.
“Alpha, Bravo, enemy QRF headed your way from the north,” the drone operator said.
Of course. It was only a matter of time before the Russians’ mounted a quick reactionary force to come after them, to kill them and retrieve the experimental subjects they had taken.
“You have four aggressor vehicles headed your way,” the drone operator said.
Then another voice broke over the comms. “Alpha, Bravo, we will no longer be able to maintain overwatch or drone support. Enemies headed our way. We are going back toward the—”
Gunfire filled the channel.
“Delta, Charlie, what’s going on?” Reynolds asked, his voice carrying over the team’s channel.
“Taking heavy fire,” an operator reported back. “But we’re—”
The line cut into static.
“Shit!” O’Neil said, pounding his fist against the dashboard of the MRAP.
Delta and Charlie should have had the safer exfil. The water was safe from the Russians and the Skulls, but they had overstayed their welcome at the port.
And now Alpha and Bravo had nowhere else to run on the roadways leading directly out of the city. The Skulls’ screams and howls were only growing louder and closer.
“Charlie, Delta, do you copy?” Reynolds called over the comms again.
No answer.
“Charlie, Delta, do you copy?”
The only reply was the chorus of monstrous voices descending on their beleaguered convoy from every direction.
-25-
O’Neil could only hope that Delta and Charlie had made it back into the water. That their lack of response was because they had already slipped back into those oil black depths of the Strait. That would be the only way they made it out alive.
But even if they had been overwhelmed by the Skulls and Russians, Alpha and Bravo couldn’t go back into that port.
At least, not alone.
The best thing they could do for the teams and for their country was get the prisoners and stolen intel back to the villa for extraction.
Through the back windows, Skulls hurtled along the street toward them. He saw the sweep of vehicle headlights, too, curving around a bend in the highway. That would be the QRF.
Directly ahead, he could even make out the silhouettes of the monsters crawling over the decks of the listing, beached oil tanker. At the MRAPs’ approach, some threw themselves over the side of the ship and smacked against the asphalt or the sand, violently desperate to attack this new threat. Others crawled along the chains and ropes hanging over the side of the ship. Several of the creatures navigated the handholds provided by the metal hull where it was puckered and bent, burst from hitting land.