THE SQUAD OF ARCHIES dropped into firing formation as if they’d practiced the move all their lives.
Cade stood completely still, hands at his sides.
They were sealed head-to-toe in a combination of biohazard protection and body armor. Faces were hidden behind tinted-glass visors and sealed behind gas filters. Stubby antenna poked up from their helmets for the radios that clicked behind their masks. They looked as if evolution had taken a different, insectile path, and equipped gleaming beetles with heavy artillery.
Red dots of multiple laser-sights danced over Cade’s chest and face.
“I’ll make you an offer,” Cade said.
Cade heard one soldier in the back snicker, even through his gear.
“Every man who puts his weapon down will not spend the last minutes of his life in agonizing pain.”
A moment.
“Last chance,” Cade said.
Almost as one, they opened fire.
LIEUTENANT DAVID VAUGHN never thought much about firefights or explosions. The sound of the bullets barely made him flinch, even on his first tour of duty. He didn’t know why, but somehow it didn’t register with him the same way as with other people.
Maybe that’s why he was fast-tracked through Special Forces training and assigned to Delta. His temperature just ran cooler than most guys’. He could focus on the mission, even with shrapnel and slugs tearing inches past his face.
About the only thing that got his pulse above sixty was when he would go back to the States on leave and spend a few hours carving up a teenage girl with a knife. He’d spend days roaming the streets of small cities in the Northwest in his unregistered truck, looking for hookers, homeless and runaways. He’d leave the bodies in a river or near a rest stop or on the side of the highway.
He kept the sides of his life separate and clean. He’d always had a knack for organization, and the military had nurtured those habits in him. Vaughn never left any trace evidence; he wasn’t one of those pathetic psychos who could only get it up while masturbating over his kills. Vaughn would never be caught because he never stuck to any pattern. His leave would end, and he would return to combat. Nobody really missed the girls he selected anyway. He varied his itinerary around the Northwest, making sure to put at least six months between cities.
Vaughn liked Portland especially. Nice place. They still trusted people there. Vaughn thought about maybe buying a house in the city when he retired. Near a school. A good neighborhood, with lots of kids.
Someplace with a basement.
When his third tour was almost up, an A/A recruiter came to see him. His CO knew the guy from way back and gave him Vaughn’s name. They offered him five times his Army salary to kill the same people. His superiors could have stop-lossed him, or hindered him in some other way, but they were happy to see him go. Despite what you see in the movies, most officers aren’t stupid. They smelled something wrong on Vaughn. He knew it and they knew it. Maybe it was the spring in his step when he came back from leave. Maybe he just gave them the creeps.
So he took the job. The pay was better, the gear actually worked and he didn’t have to buy his own body armor anymore.
He wasn’t thrilled when he was assigned to the prison. For a guy who found combat uninteresting, working security was almost dull enough to put him in a coma. He was in charge of one of the emergency response teams. The ERTs were supposed to put down riots, fights or unruly prisoners. That was in theory, anyway. Most of the detainees at the Black Site were broken by the time they arrived, and if they weren’t, it didn’t take much more than a few days. A guy sitting in his cell sobbing quietly to himself wasn’t much of a threat to a trained Delta commando.
Still, he got a bump in pay, and he was able to keep pursuing his hobby.
Lately, however, his job had been getting interesting. Vaughn wasn’t sure he liked the change.
The prisoners had been fighting the guards with surprising strength and desperation, like animals cornered by something bigger and meaner. A week earlier, he’d had to break a prisoner’s collarbone just to get him back inside the cell. Even previously cooperative (or comatose, which was pretty much the same thing) detainees had turned into vicious spitters, biters and fighters. And the uncooperative prisoners now required three or four ERT members to wrestle them down.
They didn’t seem to be fighting the guards, at least not directly. They just wanted out. It didn’t seem to matter that the double-locked doors beyond their cells could not be opened from inside. Or that they were a mile underground, or that some of them didn’t even speak English. They were like dogs at the racetrack, seemingly conditioned to run as soon as the doors opened, making a direct line for anywhere but here.
Vaughn wasn’t stupid. Delta didn’t do stupid. He could see the pattern developing. On some atavistic level, the prisoners knew they were running out of time. It made them desperate, and desperation was dangerous.
He was happy, at first, when Graves gave the ERT their orders: post outside Level Five and shoot whoever tries to get out. Straightforward. He could deal with that.
But not for long.
The screams coming from inside Level Five were god-awful. He’d heard human beings make all kinds of noise while in pain. He could identify the age, race and gender of a victim by the type of sound that came out of them, like a wine taster picking up hints of the grape’s home soil on his tongue.
But he’d never heard anything like that before. He had no idea what was happening in there.
That implied some freaky shit. He double-posted sentries at the doors—just in case.
It was a relief when Vaughn got the call from Graves, ordering him to fall back and intercept the hostile moving toward Level Five.
His men hit their marks and formed up on his position.
One man wearing a stolen uniform. No weapons.
The hostile just stood there, and despite what Graves had told him, Vaughn couldn’t believe they were supposed to take this guy seriously.
Maybe that was why Vaughn gave him the chance to speak.
In response, the dumb bastard threatened them.
“Last chance,” he said.
Vaughn almost laughed, and tightened his finger on the trigger. He began to squeeze.
He didn’t have time to wonder why he felt so nervous now, even more than outside the cell blocks.
He only realized, at the last moment, that the tickle under his arm was a single bead of cold sweat.
Vaughn suddenly understood. He was scared.
By then he was already shooting.
HE HAD TO GIVE the mercenaries credit: they were more than merely competent. They had covered every possible angle of fire.
They were using AA-12 combat shotguns—possibly the deadliest gun ever made, capable of delivering 300 rounds of 12-gauge ammunition per minute.
His reflexes accelerated so that seconds stretched like taffy.
The metal-jacketed slugs looked like snowflakes, drifting in the air, to Cade. He had all the time in the world.
He chose the least crowded section of air and leaped for the ceiling, his fingers clawing into the smooth concrete.
Pain—and surprise—nearly made him lose his grip. Despite his speed, one bullet from the swarm caught him in the leg—and tore right through the meat of his calf.
Regular ammo couldn’t do that. Fully fed, as he was, Cade was close to bulletproof. A Magnum load at close range would raise a bruise, but not much more.
Cade hit the ground behind the mercs. He was moving much slower now. The mercenaries ceased fire, realizing their target had vanished right in front of them.
The man closest to Cade began to turn around. Cade grabbed his helmet with one hand, his vest with the other, and yanked. The mercenary’s neck snapped; his head nearly twisted off.
Cade grabbed the weapon from the man’s nerveless fingers before the body fell. He snapped open the ammo drum and examined the shells.
Depleted uranium rounds. Loaded with the same material used in tank-piercing weaponry, these weren’t supposed to exist in this size. The Shadow Company had made sure its men could hurt things like Cade.
Cade allowed himself a small smile.
This just got interesting.
Another merc turned when he heard the body of Cade’s first victim hit the ground. He didn’t waste time in shock or disbelief. He aimed and began firing.
Cade dropped the drum and the gun. His leg flared with pain, and he only barely managed to avoid being hit again.
He’d already been hobbled. If the mercs got another chance to pin him down, he’d be shredded.
So he dived into the center of the squad.
The mercenary stopped firing as Cade moved among his squad. Before he could shout a warning, two more soldiers went down with crushed windpipes.
Three down. Nine left.
Shouting. Random shots. The squad leader screaming orders at the men.
The confusion didn’t last.
They turned inward, breaking into smaller three-man groups, back to back, guns out.
Cade at the center of the ring, the bull’s-eye.
Cade really was impressed. These men were well trained and well equipped.
But it wouldn’t save them.
Cade hit the ceiling again. Even limping, he moved too fast for them. They shot at the empty space where he had been.
Cade smelled fresh blood as a DU round tore through the armor of one of the men. Friendly fire.
Eight left.
Cade dropped from above. The mercs had as little hope of touching him as they did avoiding him.
Fact about Kevlar helmets: they will prevent a bullet from going through your skull, but they cannot stop the laws of physics. The shock wave from impact can still jelly a man’s brains, killing him instantly.
Three of the mercs discovered this as Cade’s fist connected with their heads at the velocity of a tank shell.
Three bodies hit the floor.
Five left.
Cade didn’t bother going up again. He just ran, right into the remaining mercs. His fingers, pointed like a knife, went clean through a mask and helmet, into the man’s face, then his skull, mashing it to pulp.
Four left.
Now panic set in. One of the mercs lost it. He began shooting at everything, emptying his drum on full automatic. He tore up a lot of concrete in the walls and ceiling. Then he took a grenade off his belt and threw it, a wild pitch in Cade’s direction.
Cade ducked it easily. The man behind him didn’t.
There was a searing blast of heat behind Cade’s back. His shirt caught on fire and his skin felt crisped.
He didn’t slow down, but kicked, catching the grenade-tosser in the jaw. The man’s spine broke neatly at the C3 vertebra, ending autonomic functions like breathing and heartbeat.
Cade checked behind him. The man hit by his comrade’s grenade was still burning.
White phosphorus. It burned on contact with oxygen and clung to skin and clothing. Impossible to extinguish with water. Technically outlawed by international conventions for use as a weapon. It was supposed to be used as a smoke bomb or a marker.
The burning man stopped thrashing as he was cooked down to the bone.
Two left.
One ran.
Cade caught up with him in a leap, landing heavily on the man’s legs. He heard the crunch of bones and tendons as they splintered and tore. He was crippled. Cade left him there.
One more.
It was the squad leader. He reached for a dead man’s switch on his front vest. Cade had intended to take him alive to question him, but the runner had already broken. He’d be easier. So the squad leader was no longer needed.
Before the leader could reach the suicide button, Cade crushed his fingers, then hurled him as far down the corridor as he could.
Which was about the length of a football field.
Lieutenant David Vaughn was traveling at about thirty miles per hour when Cade heard the impact of the body against the wall. It was like a car crash, minus the car. The mercenary’s body slid down the wall and rested in a puddle on the floor.
Cade didn’t bother to look. Moving at human speed now, he walked to the sole survivor, lying among the corpses.
He had a little fight left. Cade removed the pistol from the Archie’s hand, fracturing a finger on the way.
Cade held the back of the mercenary’s head and tore open the biohazard suit like a candy wrapper. The Archie’s face was gritted teeth and sweat.
“I have questions,” Cade said. “Believe me when I tell you that you’ll want to answer them.”
A sound—half laugh, half sob—emerged from the soldier.