O’Neil pushed his agonized muscles. Each step dragging Van toward safety sent daggers of pain stabbing up through his nerves. He felt something catch at the back of his throat. Started coughing, and blood sprayed up.
But he didn’t let that stop him from getting Van to the cover of that passage.
Soon as he made it past Loeb and Tate, he saw the frightened prisoners waiting in the passage. Behind them, only meager starlight filtered in through the slats in the wooden roof of the passage. Just enough light that O’Neil could see rows of market stands. Smelled them too. Some with rotten fruit and decaying meat. Others with mosaic glass lanterns hanging from the ceiling.
It looked to be the entrance to a winding marketplace. Maybe they could lose the Russians in there and finally escape this hellhole of a city. Get Van back to the Rangers. Back to someone who could help.
“I will help, brother,” Hassan said, picking up Van by his shoulders with O’Neil’s help.
“Loeb, Tate, we need to go,” O’Neil said. Every word he spoke sent a fiery pain through his head. Red seemed to bleed into his vision. He clenched his jaw, fighting back the electricity coursing through his nerves, starting to limp forward.
As he took point, leading the prisoners through the maze of refuse, Tate and Loeb stayed on rear guard, covering their exit.
They hurried as best they could over a brick-paved walkway, dodging between souvenir drums and bags hanging from a display stand. Blood spattered the paintings and dog-eared postcards at another to their left. Their feet pounded between chewed up bones.
“Two hybrid soldiers down,” Loeb said, sounding nearly out breath. “The other two disappeared.”
O’Neil wasn’t foolish enough to believe that meant they had given up the chase. “Reynolds, where are you guys?”
“We’re heading southwest,” he said. “Moving between the—”
A barrage of howls and shrieks ripped into the night, echoing between every corridor.
“Reynolds!” O’Neil called over the comms. “Reynolds, do you copy?”
Gunfire burst somewhere to their south. O’Neil started limping toward an alleyway, dodging between bags of leaking trash. He advanced toward the sound of gunfire and the scraping scratch of Skull claws on stone. The growls and roars grew louder the deeper he went down the alley.
“Reynolds, we’re on our way!” He let Hassan take Van.
He had to help his brothers. He could not leave them behind. Could not let them be swallowed up the Skulls, torn apart by the beasts when they were so close to finally getting out of Tangier. To bringing back the intel they’d gathered on the Russians.
They might not have blown the lab. But with everything they had found, they could give ample warning to the United States and all its allies what was going on in Tangier.
He just couldn’t bear to let another SEAL be a victim of the Russians. Not after what had happened to McLean in Lithuania. Not if Charlie and Delta hadn’t made it back to the water.
Each step sent a shiver of pain up through his legs. He felt as though his legs might break under his own weight, but he kept fighting to move forward. Toward the sounds of Skulls.
“Shit, we got Skulls on our ass!” Tate yelled. A second later gunfire blasted from the rear of the group. In between the strobe light of the muzzle-fire, monsters hurtled between the passage walls, tearing out from market stalls and from inside stores and restaurants. They shrieked and screamed, chasing after the group. Loeb and Tate struggled to hold them off with waves of gunfire.
A pair of creatures climbed up the wall of a building. Their muscles and limbs tensed as though they were preparing to launch themselves from their perches on the second floor and over Tate and Loeb’s head.
O’Neil raised his rifle. His arms shook with the effort, his body growing weaker by the second. His vision was growing blurry again, unable to focus on the shape of the beasts. He squeezed the trigger and blasted a spray of rounds toward the monsters. One fell away as its limbs flailed. It let out an agonizing scream when it hit the ground.
The other jumped and landed on a prisoner, tearing its claws into the man’s guts, then biting at his neck. It tore its head back, flesh and blood dripping from between its needle-like teeth. O’Neil held his breath, steadying his aim, and fired. Rounds punched through the beast. The impacts painted the wall behind it with gore as the creature collapsed face-first to the ground.
But as soon as he tried to press forward again, as soon as he spun to advance toward Reynolds’s position, more Skulls appeared at the lips of the roofs above.
“Hurry!” he yelled, hobbling down the passage. Each step sent pain shuddering up through his limbs.
He only made it a few feet before another monster appeared at the end of the passage.
This one carried a rifle.
A hybrid creature.
“Stop,” the beast said in clear, Russian-accented English. Had its rifle pointed straight at O’Neil.
O’Neil would never stop. So long as he could help his men, he wouldn’t listen to the commands of these beasts. He aimed his rifle. Started to squeeze the trigger.
But something punched into his shoulder. His left arm went numb, and the rifle fell on its sling.
“No, no, no,” he said, falling backward.
He managed to pull his pistol. Aimed up at the monster and fired. But his vision was still blurry, the pain rocking through his body, his mind barely hanging on.
His shots went over the beast’s head as it advanced toward him. Another dropped down from an adjacent roof, a rifle in its clawed hands.
Gunfire still exploded somewhere to the rear of the group. More screams rent the air. Blood-curdling voices mixed with the shrieks of the monsters.
He couldn’t tell if it was his people or the prisoners or the Skulls calling out in fury and agony.
All he could do was try to hold his pistol still enough to fire at the two beasts stalking toward him.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Van and Hassan. The Moroccan was cowering, hands over his neck next to Van. O’Neil dragged himself toward Van, determined to shield the man from these two beasts. Determined to help his brother.
He kept firing his pistol at the blurry shapes until the slide locked back, the magazine spent. He let the pistol drop from his hand and reached for Van’s. But before he could, a boot stomped down over his wrist. He heard a snap. A flash of pain shot up through his arm, and he yelled a curse.
One of the Russian hybrid monsters had its boot on O’Neil’s arm, pressing the heel into the bricks. The hybrid soldier twisted it, grinding it harder against the ground.
O’Neil saw nothing but red as he screamed.
The monster had him pinned. And while it looked down at him, he saw the shapes of Skulls perched on the edges of the roofs above. Heard their talons all over the brick and stone walkways.
They were completely surrounded.
There was nowhere else to run.
No way the Rangers could do anything to save them in time, either.
The hybrid drew back his rifle and gave O’Neil a wicked grin, then slammed the stock of it into O’Neil’s forehead.
He fell back onto Van’s limp body.
Then his world went black.
O’Neil smelled rot.
Carrion.
Death.
It clung to his nostrils, filled his lungs. Made his eyes water in those moments he opened them.
The world came to him in blinks as he fought against the pain throbbing beneath his skull and up his arms.
He saw the creatures, half-human, half-beast, pull him into one of the Russians’ Typhoon MRAPs. Felt the cold press of metal against his spine. Pain jolted up through his broken wrist. Every time he tried to move the fingers of his right hand, he felt only hot fire.