Reign of Evil - 03 (29 page)

He pushed himself back and stood.

The hound moved on again.

This time Ian feinted, stepped back just as the hound lunged, and spun to his right, finishing a 270-degree arc by slicing the black blade through the creature’s neck.

It fell soundlessly and began to melt into the air.

Ian turned to his men. Eight of them were down. A single hound held the rest at bay. Try as the Marines might, they couldn’t get past the hound’s defenses, and vice versa.

The hound was facing away from Ian so it was an easy five long strides before he hacked off this one’s head as well.

With no current opponents, he began to check the men.

Five were dead, one of whom had his chest ripped open and another with his spine ripped out. Ian saw it lying a few feet away but didn’t have the stomach to return it to the dead. Three others were wounded, one of whom didn’t have long to live.

“Observation Post, report,” Ian said.

“They’re arguing on the hill. They must know what you’ve done. The hounds
are
dead, right?”

“Affirmative.”

“They seem to be trying to decide. One’s pointing this way.”

The observer in the front of the home joined the conversation. “I bet he’s pointing at the troop trucks.”

Ian could hear trucks coming up the road. Sounded like several of them. A sinking feeling replaced his sense of impending victory. “Did you say ‘troop trucks’?”

“The trucks stopped. Men are disembarking. They’re wearing black and carrying SA80s. They’re forming into two groups and look ready to come down each side of the road.”

“How many?”

“Thirty. Fifteen and Fifteen.”

“Stand by.” Ian sheathed his sword and grabbed the nearest Marine. He spoke in a harsh whisper. “Listen up. We’re crossing the road and going into the house. We leave in five seconds. Magerts, stand by. QRF, stand by. Two, one, move!”

He jerked free his pistol and pulled the Marine through the shrubbery and let the others follow. He rushed across the narrow two-lane road, through the charred doorframe, and into the house. Parlors stood off either side of the entry. He posted the men in each one as they came through. The last two in line were the wounded as they came under fire from the new threat. One took a bullet in the back. The other made it in.

“Magerts, when they get in front of the house, open fire with everything you have. QRF, establish positions to their rear. Machine-gun fire on my command. You lot in here. I want you to clear the first floor. Kill anyone who is a threat and zip-tie everyone else. And for the love of god, look out for Trevor.” Ian faced ten sets of wide-eyed stares. “Move!” And they jumped into motion.

He remained by the front window. He didn’t like being forced to bring his men inside without knowing what they faced, but the alternative would get them killed. And they weren’t even close to completing their mission. He tried to call Holmes but got only static. He tried Preeti with the same results. Could someone be blocking cellular coms? If so, he was thankful their short-range radios were working.

Several shots rang out behind him. He didn’t dare turn. He just had to trust that the Marines were doing their jobs.

The radio crackled as the machine gunner spoke. “One group is moving behind the shrubbery you just vacated.”

“And the other?”

“Moving slower toward the near corner of the house.”

Ian pulled a fragmentation grenade from his belt, slid free the pin, and held the spoon in place. He put his back to the wall just left of the window. It gave him the angle to see the first man of the group of black-clad soldiers closest to him. He was dressed like the others, and his and the faces of the men behind him were painted with black and green camo.

“Magerts, fire on my signal.” He let the spoon slip free and cooked the hand grenade for two seconds before tossing it through the window. He had just enough time to see the surprised expression on the lead man’s face before Ian was forced to dive to the ground.

The grenade went off, peppering the outside of the home with shrapnel. Screams were cut off by a surge of SA80s firing from Magerts’s hide site. Then a few seconds later, the rattling of the machine gun began to eat the rear of the line of men.

He pulled his last two fragmentation grenades, removed the pins, then tossed each of them across the road until they rolled beneath the shrubbery. He jerked his head back. Both went off simultaneously, throwing superheated shrapnel in all directions. When next he looked, a pair of truck-sized holes had been blown in the shrubbery. Men were picking themselves off the smoke-hugged ground. Many had hands over their ears. They never heard the machine-gun shots that took them down.

Then as suddenly as the violent confluence started, it stopped.

The machine gunner said it simply. “They’re all dead.”

“Rule number one.” Magerts laughed. “Never walk into an L-shaped ambush.”

But Ian didn’t find any of this funny. Thirty men with families had just died much like Jerry and probably Trevor. And for what? For a mythical king to come back to life?
Fuck!

One of the Marines approached from behind. “First floor cleared, sir. No sign of Trevor.”

“Clear the second floor. Magerts, clear the front, and bring your men inside.”

Ian turned and walked into the main salon where his men had already zip-tied several dozen revelers. It had been an orgy of epic proportions. Many of the men were still erect, trying to edge their way closer to the nearest zip-tied woman. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture or square meter of carpet that wasn’t occupied by someone.

Some of the men still wore masks. Long beaks of birds. The mane of a lion. The whiskered snout of a rat. He pulled the rat’s mask off and recognized the man immediately.

“You looked different on television.”

The flab of the man’s midsection almost covered his semi-erect cock. The mad, lust-filled look in his eyes showed no signs of diminishing. It was either drugs or magic or both. Whatever was in these people, it wasn’t anything Ian wanted to be part of. He glanced over at the naked women and noted that they did nothing for him. In fact, he felt sadness for them. Whatever they’d had that was good had been spent. He wasn’t sure how he knew it, but he just did. Something evil had come to harvest and laid them bare.

A few shots echoed in the street out front; then Magerts and his men fanned inside.

Magerts whistled. “Now this is what I call a party.” He waggled a finger at one of his Marines. “Treat this like a museum, boys. Look, but don’t touch.”

“Pretty fucked-up museum,” one of them said.

Magerts’s face held the afterglow of battle. “We’ll follow you anytime, Lieutenant Colonel Waits. Those bastards never knew what hit them.”

Ian shook his head at the pure sadness of it. “No, they didn’t.”

It had been a little while since he’d heard from the other Marines he’d sent upstairs. He found the staircase and looked up at the landing. His heart chilled as one of the lip-sewn women stood there, her eyes glowing with power.

He felt the amulet grow hot against his chest.

Magerts began to approach, but Ian waved him back. He didn’t know what the woman had done to his men upstairs to overcome them and didn’t want it to happen to Magerts and his men. Ian alone seemed to be impervious to her powers. At least for now.

“Where are my men?” Somehow he managed to keep the terror from his voice.

She pointed at him and he felt his amulet grow warmer. He was so thankful he’d worn it.

“I’ll ask again, where are my men?” Then he laughed softly. Here he was asking a question of a woman whose lips were sewn shut. Correction. Not a woman but something that looked like a woman.

He put a foot on the first step just to see what would happen.

He was rewarded, so to speak. One of his men stepped woodenly beside her. Ian had talked to him. His name was Todd something. He had a kid who was in some Christmas pageant somewhere.

And now he stood, staring dumbly at Ian, holding a rifle, but not yet pointing it at him.

Please don’t point the weapon at me.

Ian had his hand on his pistol and was ready to draw it but hoped he wouldn’t have to exacerbate the situation.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said as much to her as he did to the Marine.

Then the Marine raised his rifle.

Ian had no choice. He drew quick and fired three times, catching the young man named Todd in the chest, head and throat. As his first target fell, he shifted his aim to the woman and fired three more, catching her in a similar pattern. But whatever success he’d found outside with the other lip-sewn girl, this one was different. She remained standing, and as he watched the bullet holes in her skin closed. He heard in his mind the voice of a famous actor known for his deep voice who said simply, “Oh, shit.”

Then two Marines stepped forward to replace the one he’d just been forced to shoot.

Instead of participating in this insane assassination of his own men, Ian turned and walked away. He saw a tabletop covered with liquor bottles. He grabbed a bottle of twenty-year-old Highland Park, flipped off the top with a finger, and brought it to his face. He gulped deeply, holding the bottle there, knowing full well that he was a babe suckling at his mother alcohol. Images of all the men who’d been under his command and not survived slid past in a parody of a mortician’s photo gallery until the final face caused him to jam shut his eyes. Trevor. Good kid to have helped Preeti like he’d done. Even better to have loved her after. He blinked away his tears, heaved back, and threw the bottle against the wall. He breathed deeply, then drew his sword. He knew what he had to do.

CHAPTER 45

BRATTON, WILTSHIRE. 0900 HOURS.

Walker slid into a ditch along with YaYa and Hoover. He breathed heavily through his mouth, trying his best to ignore the cold, wet mud. YaYa held the dog down as they all peered over the edge. At street level, they could see the sticks strewn across the road that were once the Tuatha. The cargo truck had hit it going fifty at least, exploding it into tinder.

But what of the Tuatha? Did the impact of a truck carrying a heavy cargo on a long flatbed kill it? Or even injure it?

Walker had his answer right away.

The driver climbed out of the cab and walked to the front of his truck. He was tall and broad shouldered with a gut that told of a lifetime of off-duty beers and taking up space in pubs from here to London. He held a hand on his head as he stared at the sticks, then looked at the front of his truck. From Walker’s vantage it didn’t seem to have done any damage. But he doubted the trucker cared. At this point, he probably thought he had been seeing things, such as a human-shaped stick man running across the road.

What the man couldn’t see was what was happening beneath the truck—a single stick began to drag itself into the brush on the other side of the road.

Hoover saw it and began to growl, but YaYa hushed him. But the man had heard. He turned to the sound, but the SEALs ducked as low beneath the lip of the ditch as they could.

They heard the man begin to walk in their direction, the heels of his boots clomping on the pavement. Walker reached toward the 9mm pistol under his left arm, wondering what he was going to do once the man saw them. It wasn’t like they were chartered to kill random civilians, nor did he want to.

Holmes spoke over the MBITR. “Walker, what’s your status?”

He didn’t dare speak. The man was almost upon them.

Then a horn honked. Then another. It looked like the local Bratton townsfolk didn’t appreciate a truck stopping in the middle of the road.

The footsteps stopped as the honking increased.

“All right, all right,” he hollered. Then in a softer voice he added, “Bloody eyes are seeing things.”

The restless locals stopped honking. His footsteps receded, then were stopped by the sound of the truck door closing. Soon the truck had pulled away, followed by the seven cars that had stacked up behind it.

Holmes’s voice was filled with stress. “Walker, report!”

“Think it’s on the move again. Stand by.”

YaYa pointed and Hoover took off across the road. The SEALs waited for a car to pass, then followed. Soon they were running across a field. Hoover was sprinting straight for a stick figure. It looked different from the other. Probably because of the shape of the sticks and wood that was available. But Walker had no doubt that it was the same creature.

“Got it. Heading west northwest.”

YaYa pulled ahead as Walker slowed, his legs becoming leaden. Gone were his stress fractures that had plagued him in BUD/S, but the sprinting was tiring him out. But not YaYa, who was an ultramarathoner. He could run for days.

Holmes spoke. “We think it’s heading toward Ian.”

“That far?” Walker figured it would take them hours to run that far. Correction. It would take YaYa hours. It would take Walker days.

“Break off and meet us in Westbury.”

“Dressed like this?”

“Make it happen.”

Walker slowed to a walk. YaYa did as well and called Hoover through his own MBITR connection. The dog slowed but kept going. YaYa called in a stern voice and the dog stopped. She turned and loped back with a disappointed look on her face. Not that she was disappointed she couldn’t keep going, but that her human team members were so damn slow. If the dog could shake her head in exasperation she would have.

YaYa found a minivan parked on the side of the road in front of a nineteenth-century stone house. He checked the driver’s side door. It was unlocked. Although it would have been nice if the keys had been inside, they weren’t that lucky. But it was an older model and it wasn’t long before he’d hot-wired the ignition and they were backtracking to where the others waited with the witch in a copse. It was the farthest they had dared go. After those trees were open fields with homes and travel trailers. None of them thought that they’d go unnoticed.

The three other SEALs got in after the witch was loaded into the back.

Walker wondered if Holmes had spoken to Ian on his private command channel. “Any word from Section 9?”