The Last Peak (Book 2): The Darwin Collapse (38 page)

He tried to remember the rudimentary Arabic they’d been taught back at Camp Fallujah while working up to the assault. He wasn’t exactly the tower of Babylon with languages, but he knew enough for rudimentary communication.

“Shakhs akhr?”

He was pretty sure that meant “Someone else?”

The man quickly shook his head. “No. No. No.” He continued shaking it.

Too quickly.

“Miro, check it out,” he said as he pointed to the kitchen.

Miro nodded and sliced the pie into the room. He entered and reemerged a moment later with a woman struggling and shouting at them both. Miro wrapped a hand over her mouth and pinned her to his chest. Her muffled screams dipped and rose in volume as her wild movements intermittently broke the seal over her mouth.

She was going to get them all killed if she didn’t shut up.
 

She bit down on Miro’s hand and he yelped with pain. She slipped free and cowered on the couch next to her husband. Miro raised his clenched hand to crack the woman a good one.

“No!” Mason shouted as he stumbled over to intervene. They weren’t here to beat up on innocent people. But they did need to keep her quiet. He slapped a hand over her mouth and put his mouth next to her ear.

“Nahn In yadurr bik,” Mason said. It was as close to “We won’t hurt you” as he knew how to say.

She seemed to finally get the message as her piercing wail quieted to a sobbing murmur.

A hard pounding at the door made Mason jump. He whirled around with his rifle ready to go.

“Aftah!” a harsh voice yelled from outside. “Aftah albab!”

The man outside pounded on the door again. Someone yelled from farther away and the man gave a gruff reply. His footsteps receded. Perhaps they’d decided the door was locked and their quarry must’ve gone elsewhere.

The voices faded and it sounded like the search had moved on down the alley.

That’s when the little girl shrieked. Whatever curiosity she had minutes ago had finally settled on the side of fear. Now committed, she wailed and sobbed like an alarm bell going off.

Mason turned to quiet her when bullets blew holes through the middle panel of the door. The bullets peppered the wall next to the couch. He stepped back and dropped to a knee ready to fill whoever entered full of holes. Miro dove into the kitchen and rolled into cover behind the wall.

The husband pulled his wife to the floor while still holding his daughter in one arm. The child curled into his chest bawling like a banshee.

No use in trying to quiet her now.
 

Men gathered outside the door. They spoke in harsh, clipped tones. Mason didn’t catch the words but he understood them well enough anyway.

The Americans are inside. Good. Let’s kill them.

That was the conversation, or near enough.

The wife screamed and clutched her chest. She struggled to her feet while her husband tried to hold her down. She shook him free and yelled something Mason didn’t catch before dashing into the kitchen.

“What the hell are you doing?” Miro shouted. “Get down!”

Mason ran into the kitchen and saw the woman digging through a deep drawer on the far side.
 

Miro had his sidearm drawn and pointed at her. “I said get on the ground!”

“Lower your weapon, Corporal Pike!” Mason shouted.

He didn’t. “She’s digging for a weapon! Get on the fucking ground or I will shoot you!”

More gunfire blasted through the front door from the hallway. The muj knew they had the right door now. The husband shouted something. The wife frantically shoveled through the drawer. She latched onto something and whirled around with something black in her hand.

BANG. BANG.

Smoke wafted from the muzzle of Miro’s M9.

The woman collapsed with two holes in her chest. The black thing in her hands tumbled to the ground.
 

“Goddamnit, Corporal!” Mason said as he wrenched the pistol out of Miro’s hand.
 

The husband appeared around the corner. He stared at his wife and then at Mason holding the smoking gun.
 

“Nalasif! Nalasif! No!”

He sobbed and screamed at the same time. He rushed to his wife’s side and set the girl on the floor next to her. The girl dipped a finger in the blood pooling beside her mother.

The enraged man picked up the thing she’d dropped and showed it to them while screaming wildly.

A small black, zipped bag.
 

He yanked open the zipper and pulled out a bottle of prescription medication.

“Heart! Heart!” he shouted. He lunged forward and began beating on Mason’s chest armor.

Jesus.

Miro had just killed a woman for trying to get her medication. But Mason couldn’t jump his shit about it, no matter how messed up the situation was because they’d both heard countless accounts of Marines that had been killed by someone who claimed to be an innocent civilian.

Fallujah was a fucked up place to be. That was all there was to it.

The husband climbed Mason like a tree as he beat his fists and clawed at him.

The shock kept Mason from responding. Or maybe it was the horror. He blocked the ineffectual swings with one arm while his mind reeled. The horror of busting into this man’s life and killing his wife a few minutes later. And all the while claiming to be the good guys and being there to help the very people whose lives they had just destroyed.

Mason shoved the man aside and stooped to check on his wife. She was dead.
 

The report of AK-47s turning the front door into toothpicks went quiet and the voices of their pursuers came through loud and clear.
 

“Sarge, we have to get outta here!”

Miro pulled him to his feet.
 

“I’m sorry,” Mason said to the raving husband. “I’m so sorry.”

The daughter’s hands were covered with her mother’s blood. She’d streaked it across her own face. She grabbed a golden pendant hanging from her mother’s neck. It looked like a bird symbol of some kind. She sobbed while pulling on the pendant as if that might make her mother wake up.

The husband lunged forward and wrapped his hands around Mason’s throat. His nails dug furrows into Mason’s skin.

Mason’s black revery snapped.

The shit was fucked. So you dealt with it.

He slammed a fist into the man’s stomach, doubling him over. The clenched fingers hooked on the chain of his dog tags and it snapped as the man fell away.

Mason’s dog tags slipped out and fell to the floor as Miro dragged him toward the open doorway at the back of the kitchen. Their flashlights bobbed and weaved as they sprinted through a plain back room with only a bed and another door. They smashed through that door and entered a small open air courtyard.

The voices behind grew louder. The enemy rushing through the small home.

Mason ran to the perimeter wall abutting the alley. Miro clasped his hands together and Mason stepped into the offered foothold. The adrenalized Texan nearly threw him over the seven foot wall. He managed to grab hold of the edge and fall down the other side. Miro was up and over an instant later.

They scanned the alley in both directions and saw no immediate threats.

“I thought she was getting a weapon, Sarge,” Miro said as his voice cracked with emotion. “I swear I did.”

“I know you did. I know.”

Mason didn’t want to think about it anymore. Right now or ever. Besides, they didn’t have the luxury of contemplation. Their survival required immediate action.

Mason looked down the dark alley to the south. It ended about a block down. It was too dark to tell for sure, but they had to be getting close to Phase Line Fran.

A humvee screeched to a stop on the street beyond. A mounted spotlight on the roof bathed them in light, nearly blinding them as well. A soldier in the turret pointed his fifty cal down the alley, above their heads.

“That’s our ride!” Mason shouted as Miro wrapped an arm around him, and they sprinted as fast as their damaged bodies allowed. They made it halfway when the fifty cal opened up.

Withering fire sliced through the air just above their heads. Tracer rounds snapped by like lasers. The concussion of the passing rounds slapped them from above.
 

Sporadic return fire chipped off the walls nearby as they ran for it. They were running through a meat grinder. Weapons designed to chew up flesh and spit it out.
 

Mason knew they were dead. Continuing to run was merely a mechanical performance until the curtain came down.

The door to the humvee flew open and they piled in as the turret-mounted gun continued to vaporize everything and everyone unlucky enough to be in its field of fire.

Miro slammed the door shut and the vehicle jerked forward.
 

The marine in the turret dropped down and stared at them both with wide eyes. “Sergeant West, third squad?”

Mason slumped into the seat and nodded with what little energy remained in his body.

“Shit, bro! We thought we’d lost you guys!”

Mason closed his eyes and tried not to see the images forming in his mind.

Of the other men of third squad that were gone.

Of the woman with holes in her chest.

Of Lopes.
 

Mason had made it out alive, but he’d never felt more lost.

The Present Day

Downtown Los Angeles, California

MASON
guided the personal aerial transport through the open expanse. The Milagro building lay a half mile straight ahead. The rush of air from the twin turbines rumbled in his chest. Wind whipped through his hair. A twisting plume of smoke curled up from the street below. He followed it to the source and saw a few deltas climbing around a downed chopper.

No.

No. No. No.

The fuselage lay on its side. Gouged tracks in the street showed where the rotor had chewed down to nubs. The tail lay a hundred feet behind the cabin.

Judging by the devastation below, the odds of survival weren’t something he wanted to consider. Even if there were just bodies below, he was damn sure not going to let his family be…

No.

Not going to happen.

He eased back the throttle and guided PAT down towards what he knew might be the final seconds of his life. Knowing it, and accepting it. If Theresa and Beth were gone, he had no reason to live.

He’d aim the transport directly at the aft gas tanks. The darker patch of concrete underneath showed that at least one of the tanks had likely been punctured.
 

Shit.

One of the tanks had likely been punctured.

He was so busy visualizing how he was going to go out in a glorious fireball that he hadn’t considered if they were still alive and trapped inside. If that gas caught, they’d be burned alive.

Mason yanked back on the throttle and PAT dropped toward the street below. At fifty feet to go, he slammed the throttle forward. The turbines screamed and the hull shook so hard it nearly tore apart. The transport clawed for lift even as inertia continued pulling it lower.

He stared down gritting his teeth, waiting for the bone-crunching impact to shove his pelvis up through his ribcage.

The deltas shrieked up at him like a god descending from Olympus. Terror and wonder gleamed in their eyes. They backed away, wary of getting too close.

The twisted wreck below rushed up in a blur.

He’d overreacted. The emotional response coupled with the unfamiliarity with the operational parameters of the transport combined to cause disaster. Like many catastrophic accidents, seemingly small mistakes could combine to cause unthinkable disaster.

The transport’s skids crashed into the passenger cockpit door. Metal screeched against metal. Glass fragments exploded out tearing into the flesh of the nearest delta. Its screams were lost to the groaning of metal stretched beyond its tensile strength.
 

And then he was in the air again.

The harness straps viciously cut into his thighs as the vehicle lifted into the air. It half-bounced, half-accelerated off the crash site. The cartilage between his vertebrae flattened like jello discs smashed in a concrete accordion.

The impact jarred his hands off the control joysticks. With no direct input, PAT leveled itself out ten feet above the wreck.
 

Mason looked down into the crashed chopper and saw two bodies. The pilot and one of the operators in black tactical gear. He eased PAT lower and found no one else.
 

So everyone but these two unlucky bastards survived the crash. The survivors must’ve headed for Milagro Tower. He scanned down the street and saw another pocket of deltas, less than a dozen, gathered in the center of the street. They were bunched up around something.

They were feeding.

But on what?

Or who?

Mason worked the controls and left the chopper behind. He swooped down on the pack ahead. Some of the more timid ones scrambled away to safety, while others ignored his approach completely. At the center of their activity lay two bodies in black tactical gear.

The rear guard had been overrun. Which meant nobody was left to protect the others.

He spotted a smaller knot of deltas further on. Their filthy bodies packed so tight at the center that Mason couldn’t make out the victim.

Please, God.

Please.

Mason hit the throttle. He bumped the nav joystick forward dipping the front lower. PAT flew in hard and fast. The landing skids tore into them, carving a channel through their ranks. The vehicle canted over forty-five degrees as their limbs and heads smacked off the skids.

The pack consciousness shifted. The feeding frenzy died and they turned as one to consider the new threat. Hands grasped for the skids. Several got a grip and dragged PAT, and Mason, lower.
 

Mason stomped on the fingers curled around the skids. Deltas howled in pain as his boots crushed slender bones. He broke free and lifted a few feet above their heads.