SEAL Team 13 (SEAL Team 13 series) (22 page)

“Got it,” Rankin answered instantly, and he heard assent from the others as well.

They cut the corner at the intersection, blasting through someone’s yard and coming into the street at an angle. Masters brought his AA-12 to his shoulder as the figures appeared out of the night.

The group slowed to a fast walk, their weapons all coming to the ready as they assessed the figures. Given what they’d seen, it was pretty unlikely that there would be any civilians wandering around, but there was very little chance of the enemy opening up on them with automatic fire, so Masters felt they could spare a couple of seconds to identify the enemy.

“Hostiles confirmed!” he called when he saw the dead look in their eyes, and a hint of decomposition filtered through to his nose. “Engage!”

The AA-12 was joined by two other twelve-gauge shotguns and Eddie’s M4 in an engagement that lasted about three seconds.

They group sped up again, running past the fallen as they swung north and headed for the power generators.

Nathan “The Djinn” Hale adjusted his sighting slightly for the wind shift, though it was almost pointless in many ways. For his Sassy, any engagement within the ranges he was looking at was basically point blank. He could have corrected automatically for wind, but habit and detail were the bread and butter of his world.

He kept moving between his rifle and his spotter scope, wishing that they’d had time to recruit a good spotter before being deployed. A sniper without a spotter was like a fighter pilot without his wingman; he was maybe a third as effective on a good day.

Reliable spotters had been hard to come by since he first crossed over, however. His life had become hard on him, but even harder on those around him.

Honestly, he’d been planning on taking his discharge papers the next time they tried to get him to re-up.

When the call came in from Rankin, he’d expected this to be his last hurrah with the Teams. That could still turn out to be the case, of course, but Nathan was beginning to feel that same sense of belonging he’d originally found in the Teams.

It was like coming home again.

Speaking of which…

He narrowed his gaze as he glanced through the spotter scope, then casually keyed open his radio.

“Converging from the west and east, dead ahead.”

“Roger,” Masters responded. “Request cover.”

“Wish granted,” The Djinn said, tilting his head away from the spotter scope and leaning into the rifle.

He focused onto the group to the west of the team’s approach. Like those who had shown themselves earlier, they were moving more or less as a group, but there was a degree of milling and staggering that gave them away. Nathan had never encountered vampires before, but he had seen more than one form of the dead that refused to stay in the ground.

Every culture on the planet had what the modern world would term “the undead,” creatures that wore the skin and bones of recently deceased humans. In all but a few very rare cases, that was exactly what they were, creatures stealing bodies that weren’t theirs and using them to wreak havoc.

The most common forms of the walking dead shared certain features. They were generally a little clumsy and usually a little slower than their living counterparts, but they almost always outclassed the living in terms of sheer strength. They felt no pain, so they could work their bodies beyond the limits that plagued a human.

You didn’t want to let them get within arm’s reach, but compared to some of the things he had seen, the walking dead were the lowest form of supernatural scum on the planet.

Dead meat walking. Literally.
Nathan smiled as he put his crosshairs on one of the shambling figures, choosing one at the back of the group. He aimed high, picking a point at the very crown of his target’s head, and slowly brought the pressure up on the trigger until it was riding the edge as he waited for his moment. It came when the group started to turn to go after the team, several of them bunched together, and Nathan relaxed as he gently pressured the trigger over the edge.

The M82 SASR roared.

There was no other word to describe the sound of a light fifty in action. It just
roared
. The heavy bullet briefly drew a line that connected Nathan to his target, popping the crown of the first vampire’s head off in a brutal spray of blood and ichor. The fifty was a penetrator, however, and it barely slowed as it blew through the next figure at neck level, then into the chest of a third, finally blowing the leg off a fourth before it plowed into the ground beyond.

Four with one shot,
he mused idly as he re-centered the rifle on the next target.
I do believe that’s a personal record.

The team had a goal, a place they had to be, so unlike with Masters’s earlier stand, there was no attempt to draw the enemy in and create a distraction. They slowed only enough to steady their aim, and marched right into the teeth of the beasts, guns blazing.

“That’s the power station, up ahead!” Eddie called over the roar of the twelve-gauges and the bark of his M4. “It’s a clear run beyond these guys!”

The distant roar of Hale’s light fifty was a comfort—they knew that someone had their backs as they ran—but each roar of that big rifle was a reminder that hostiles were riding their heels. They blew through the few of the shambling figures that were in their way, and then the race was on.

“Haul ass!” Masters called, waving them forward.

In a dead sprint they broke for the big buildings that held the town’s power generators. With nothing but clear roads ahead, there was no holding back. The group of six raced down the street, ignoring the sporadic shots of Hale’s light fifty roaring in the night behind them.

They skidded to a stop as they arrived at the building’s front doors, and Masters surged up the stairs and grabbed the handle, pulling it hard. The door opened, and he ushered the others through with a wave of his AA-12.

“Inside, move!”

They rushed in past him as he covered the rear, eyes and AA-12 seeking out targets.

When they were inside, he backed into the building after them and pulled the door shut, casting around for a way to barricade it. Before he could say anything, Norton stepped in and pushed him slightly out of the way. Masters couldn’t see what he was doing, but a second later he heard the click of the door locking.

“How did you—” he started to ask, then paused and shook his head. “Never mind.”

They were in a reception area, he saw as he turned around, and security doors were at the back of the room. The place was clearly labeled, for ease of navigation, he supposed, which was certainly going to make things easier on them.

“Okay, back to the generator rooms,” he said. “We need to shut this place down.”

The group nodded and they breached the security doors, still on the alert for any signs of current “occupation
.”
They followed a long corridor deeper into the building, pausing when it ended in a large pair of heavy-duty doors. Beyond, they could hear the thrum of machinery, even through all the insulation.

Masters nodded at the door and Rankin stepped up, nudging it open with his shoulder as Masters took up the entry position. When it opened, he stepped through, AA-12 to his shoulder, eyes scanning the room.

It was a huge room, large enough that he could see no fewer than four house-sized buildings
inside
of it, but other than the expected machinery, there didn’t seem to be anything or anyone around. Masters waved the others in, and they quickly joined him.

“Okay, the generators will be in there.” He nodded to the house-sized constructions. “We need to figure out which ones are active and shut them down.”

“Right,” Norton said, scowling over the scene. “Any idea how to do that, mate?”

“Just help us find the ones that are running, will you?” Rankin asked sarcastically. “They’ll be the ones making noise, just so you know.”

Norton flipped him the bird, but he stepped forward to help nonetheless. The group stayed more or less together, walking up the center line between the large insulated buildings that housed the massive generators.

“This one is making a racket,” Rankin said as they passed the first.

When no one responded, he looked around, raising his voice, ”Did you hear me?…Oh.”

“Yeah,” Masters said from a short distance away, turning slowly as he looked up and around.

Above them, lining the catwalks of the massive room, were dozens, if not hundreds, of pairs of dead eyes looking down on them.

“Well…shit,” Rankin muttered.

“Richard, Perry,” Hannah said softly, “I believe that you may be about to meet with your fate.”

The two men grunted as they fingered their shotguns idly.

“Do try to leave an impression, if you would?”

The two suddenly grinned widely, nodding.

“Ah, Hannah, love,” Perry chuckled. “What would we do without you?”

“Die,” she said, “alone and peacefully in your beds in five decades or so.”

“And to avoid such a fate, we’ll owe you well into the afterlife.”

Masters ignored them, muttering instead to Norton, “Alex…check your six high.”

Norton frowned, looking up over his shoulder. There was a female figure above them that was standing apart from the mob and glaring down at them.

“Ah. Well, no need to flush her out then, yes?”

“That’s my guess.”

Norton sighed. “We’re screwed, but at least this saves time.”

Above, the figure that was watching them spoke loud enough for her voice to reverberate through the immense room.

“Kill them.”

The whine of the Coast Guard chopper winding up was loud enough that the SEALs had to strain to listen when Captain Andrews headed their way.

“Masters is making his play!” she called. “We’re going to get in the air and provide what support we can. I still don’t know what the hell is going on in that damned town, but we’re not leaving them flapping in the wind. Clear?”

“Clear, ma’am!”

“Get on board.” She nodded in the direction of the chopper. “Lift off in five. Don’t forget your kits, boys.”

“You heard the lady,” Derek said, hefting his gear as he rose up. “Pack your shit and mount up.”

The three SEALs headed for the chopper while Judith turned back and joined Captain Tyke.

“Captain,” she said as she approached. “We’ll be heading out shortly.”

He nodded. “I heard. You’re joining them?”

“I have my orders,” she said, “and they don’t include sitting around your ship, Captain.”

“Well, good luck,” he told her, his eyes on the chopper for a moment before sliding over to the distant lights of Barrow. “I don’t pretend to know what’s going on here, but I have a feeling that I probably don’t want to. Captain…Judith, I have to ask, are you taking military personnel in against
rioters
?”

Judith’s face closed up. She knew why he was asking; more importantly she knew
what
he was really asking. The use of military personnel against American civilians was pretty strictly limited; however, a state of emergency had been declared, and a military presence had been authorized by the federal branch. Still, even though the legality of ordering men into Barrow in this situation was probably on the white side of gray, it was as good as putting a gun to the head of her career and squeezing the trigger if it got out.