The Eagle's Last Stand Read online

  THE EAGLE’S LAST STAND

  GIBSON MORALES

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Bonus Material

  About the Author

  Copyright

  A Prequel Novella in

  1

  “We're going down!” Menendez cried over the radio.

  The dip in Dagos's gut told her they needed a miracle if they hoped to stay airborne. Everything slowed to a slug's pace as she braced herself.

  “Are we hit?” Sledge yelled, gripping his x-shaped seat belt.

  The pilot spouted some technical code that Dagos vaguely knew as accidental engine failure.

  The high rises twisted below them as the chopper teetered. Dagos dug her fingers into the seat handles. There was the split-second sensation of weightlessness. And then gravity took the reins. The chopper dove.

  Her entire body pumped with adrenaline as the centrifugal rush of the chopper shoved her against the foam of her seat. The horizon spun around them. Chrome skyscrapers and glinting sunlight and the hazy blue sky whirled past.

  In front of Dagos, the gray-haired woman in the stretcher woke up, eyes vein-riddled in terror. Harnesses held her body and the gurney down, but her arms flailed as she screamed for help. Her heart rate monitor kicked into overdrive, almost in sync with the chopper's alarm.

  Dagos clutched her seat belt, her orange para-rescue uniform fluttering like crazy as wind raced through the aircraft cabin. She gasped for breath, her lungs burning. Her vision dizzied. For an instant, the other Snake-eaters in the cabin became nothing more than silhouettes. Someone yelled for parachutes over the radio. The ones stowed below their seats.

  Then she managed to breathe, giving her a renewed clarity. She'd be damned if she died like this. Due to engine failure when a million Anunnaki wanted her head.

  “Forget the chutes,” she growled into her mike. High rises were stabbing up at them. They didn't have time for parachutes. “Rappel. Three and three.” She couldn't help yelling at the top of her lungs. The effort left her dazed as she unbuckled her seat belt. Willing herself toward the chopper's side exit, every buffet of wind threatened to topple her over. Two feet felt like forever. Direction and situational awareness were drifting from her mind. There was only the open door frame.

  Somehow, she staggered to it, ripped the orange nylon cord from her belt and snapped it onto the wall clip handle. Protocol demanded she give it a tug to double-check its strength. Instead, she kicked off, praying she didn't fly into the propellers. Her gut flew into her throat as the buzz of the cord's loosing rang in her ears. Then the wind screamed at her. Between that and the blood rushing in her head, she might as well have been wearing ear plugs.

  Windows and pigeons streaked past her. A dozen a second. She could've been Spider-man, swinging from skyscrapers. A drunk Spider-man. Suddenly, the cord went taut and her body jerked. Every inch of her seized up.

  In that instant of pain, all her senses sharpened. Hyper-alert, she registered the rooftop garden below. Twenty feet? Ten feet? No way to know for sure. The helicopter dragged her back. She wouldn't get a safer landing than this. It was now or never.

  She slapped a hand to her belt and depressed the cord's release switch. Once again, the short feeling of weightlessness precluded a fall. This fall like the devil grinning at her. Because she'd escaped death, but, grass or not, this was going to hurt like hell.

  She tried leaning to the side and promised herself she wouldn't hit the brick path surrounding the grass. Panic smothered her as her body twisted in mid-fall.

  A crash into grass. She bounced. Another thud into the grass. She bounced again and her body skidded against the brick, edges and nicks digging through her para-rescue uniform. She lay on her side, everything numb. Her bones felt like they'd shifted positions by a few inches. Seconds slipped away, her vision a blur. She blinked, willing it to clear. She couldn't move yet. I'm totally vulnerable.

  In the corner of her eye, a figure flew through the sky and collided with a neighboring building. Dread tightened in her and she tried not to think about it. But she knew it was Raimes. She'd been sitting right next to her. She would've been next in line. Except, no, that wasn't a certainty. The fall had rattled her brain. It could be any of her teammates who'd perished. There were three on each side of the chopper and who knew how many had managed to escape.

  A violent tremor ran through her. At first, she thought she was going through her death throes. Then she realized it was the chopper meeting the street.

  As her heartbeat retreated from her ears, she heard a growing commotion from below. Hollers and curses. Based on the lack of frantic screams, either the helicopter hadn't hit anyone in the crash or it hadn't left anyone alive. Dagos tried to escape that grim thought, but couldn't. Besides her and the five other Snake-eaters, the pilot and the old woman had been on board. She didn't see how they could've survived.

  Dagos discovered her body respond. She inched her left arm out from underneath herself. Without warning, her body tilted forward. She jerked her head back, but hit the grass with more force than she expected. Lying flat on her stomach, she gritted her teeth and stretched the arm she'd landed on. Miraculously, it moved. Her entire body throbbed in a weary sort of pain, and her left arm didn't stand out in that regard. But it didn't hurt any worse. Grimacing, she staggered to her feet, her knees as hot as coals.

  She peeled off her helmet, shook out her shoulder-length blonde hair, and inhaled deeply, pain spiking in her back with the effort. It might've been serious or just a soft tissue injury. She doubted it was internal bleeding or she would be in a lot more agony. She sighed. None of her injuries mattered anyway. So long as she wasn't dead, the life Conifer could mend any wounds, major or minor. The Anunnaki were a wretched species, but human forces had hijacked some of their best technology. Of course, the life Conifer was a thousand miles away and hard to retrieve. Instead, she'd probably have to rely on Orun's healing tech. And she still had one major rescue mission to complete.

  She was closing on forty years old and these stunts never got any easier. She cracked her neck and right ankle then took inventory of the rest of her limbs. All in all, everything worked. Well enough to complete this operation? She'd find out one way or another.

  The rooftop garden broadened out around her. A few feet away, a purple mat lay curled along the brick.

  “Thank God people can still find time to do yoga,” Dagos grumbled out loud.

  “Don't you mean, thank the gods?”

  Her heart skipped a beat at Menendez's voice. He was close. In two seconds, she spotted the legs of his orange para-rescue pants poking out from behind a hedge on the other side of the roof.

  “You better be careful,” Dagos barked, dragging herself over to him. “Say that around the wrong person, like a Snake-eater, and you might get shot.”

  As she cut around the hedge, she expected to exchange a grin. Instead, Menendez's dark-brown face was crinkled in obvious pain, his helmet and sunglasses a few feet away. A branch speared out from his stomach, his uniform tainted with dark orange. He wasn't sitting up, b
ut the other end of the branch prevented him from lying flat on his back. She didn't want to think about how badly that must've hurt.

  “Why do you think I said it?” he said. He coughed and specks of blood dotted his uniform.

  “Hermano,” she said quietly, using his nickname.

  “Permission to speak honestly.” He winced and assumed it. “This mission was all fucking wrong.”

  We knew the risks, she almost said. Were those Commander “Ham” Hamilton's words or hers?

  If they didn't rescue a girl from an Anunnaki base by eighteen hundred hours, their enemy would win the war. With the chopper gone, they needed a miracle to pull the mission off now.

  Dropping to a knee beside him, she grasped his quivering hand in her own weak grip. They both knew there was no way he'd make it off this roof in anything but a body bag, if that.

  “You don't know the half of it,” she said.

  There was a hint of mirth in his eyes as he watched her. “I don't want to know, do I? I'll bet Ham tasked you with something heavy...”

  His head sagged to the side, his hand's shaking slowing. “Building across the street. Sledge made it...”

  And then his hand went stiff.

  2

  Most of the time the temperature ran high enough to make Courtney sweat. But right now, her body shuddered like she was in the middle of a frozen tundra. After spending so many hours in Anunnaki detainment, Courtney had no idea if she was trembling from fear, sickness, or both.

  A dimly lit cell surrounded her. The only light filtered in through the swirling blur of air above her. It was like looking through heat waves on a hot day. A sort of resonance field to keep prisoners from escaping, not that it was an option. She hated this cell even worse than the last one, where she was at least sitting on an elevated platform.

  Suddenly, the swirling vortex vanished and a flash lit up the pit. Courtney plastered her hands over her eyes.

  Her body trembled, the shakes climaxing in her arms. She didn't feel outright afraid, yet she sensed approaching danger.

  Slowly, she let her arms drop, accepting the barren metal cell, the rising walls and then the top. There he was. The nine-foot gray man with an elongated head. The Anunnaki.

  Like all Anunnaki, his orange serpentine eyes dwarfed a human’s. In fact, once you got past the difference in eye color, he looked mostly the same as the others. The lack of hair, the scale-like skin. You had to travel into the very secluded areas of the world to find someone who didn’t know this was an Anunnaki. Or Naga for short. Nebirian to get technical.

  The difference between this Anunnaki and all the others was he was the first to frighten her so intimately. There'd always been someone to protect her from the others. There was nothing holding this one back.

  With a thud, the Anunnaki hit the ground and squatted down to face her, his metallic extra-dermal layer punctuating his tight physique.

  Courtney forced her entire body into a rigid pose. The moment she faltered in front of him, showed weakness, signs of reaching the breaking point…he would have her. She had to act tough.

  “What do you want this time?” she growled.

  “Now would be a good time to drop the attitude,” the Anunnaki said in a deep voice.

  “I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “Play dumb as long as you like. But I'd bet my life you have the information we want.” The Anunnaki sighed and slid his hand, three fingers and two thumbs, across her neck, pulled back the lining of her tattered blue dress and lingered over a shoulder tattoo that read USMC.

  “Such dedication to your husband,” he said.

  “Get away.” Her arms jerked up. Suddenly he clutched her wrists.

  He grinned, released her and gestured to the orb on his palm. “Don’t make me use this.”

  A breath escaped her, but she didn't flinch. “You might have to. I’m not going to tell you snakers anything.”

  The Anunnaki’s expression hardened. “Listen up. I know there are rumors that we can’t hurt our prisoners. Well they're wrong. You see I'm not just another Naga soldier. I don’t play by any rules. I don’t answer to someone above me at this base. I am Overseer Drekken. I have complete freedom as to how I get results.”

  Courtney glared back. She didn't want to believe him, but she had definitely heard of this Anunnaki like this. He was a rogue overseer, who didn't abide by any rules. That snaker is like a damn psychopath, Menendez told her once.

  “You won't get any results. Shock me all you like.”

  “What if I were to probe your little Suzanna?”

  She gasped and shook her head wildly. “You're lying. You wouldn’t hurt my dog.” He had to be bluffing.

  A slap caught her across the face.

  As if reading her mind, he said, “Are you so afraid you forgot? I just told you, I have complete freedom.”

  Her heart pounded, but she couldn’t give in. Not yet.

  There had to be some way out. Nothing came to mind. If she told them what she knew, the Earth was finished. Finished for humans.

  “You snakers really don’t have any good in those brains of yours, do you?”

  “Enough to capture you.”

  She tried to form words, but fell short. The overseer was right. She'd taken a calculated risk to fly from Groomlake to Edwards Air Force Base. All her data suggested the risk was minimal. Less than a five percent chance they'd intercept the flight. But even she could be wrong occasionally.

  In a shaky voice, she asked, “How can I trust you? How do I know my dog will be safe if I talk?”

  “Courtney, you're just a girl the human forces have been exploiting for your intelligence. I can overlook that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You tell me the coordinates and I can have you released with a sweep of my fingers. You go back to Edwards. Back with your family.”

  Courtney scoured Overseer Drekken's face for signs of lying or hidden emotion, but it was nothing like analyzing data patterns or solving a mathematical equation. It came down to how much she would take for the human forces. She couldn't help but remember the Snake-eaters discovering her, alone and starving, in that abandoned ranch in Minnesota almost ten years ago.

  She'd been a middle schooler from the Twin Cities visiting a friend when the war engulfed the town. It was the Eagle who saved her. She'd always assumed the stories of her as Earth's savior were exaggerated. But the Eagle really was a hero. The Eagle even made sure she got back to her family, safe and sound. It was a lot more than the state troopers had done.

  She owed the Snake-eaters too much to give in.

  3

  The building Dagos crash-landed on turned out to be one of Los Angeles's luxury apartment high rises. One of the last built before the Anunnaki's rampage put all non-military construction projects on the back-burner.

  Dagos read the sign on the side of the mostly glass bulkhead. Wendenberg Estates, it said in the fancy cursive reserved for tasteless luxury apartments. The world had been getting pretty tasteless by the time the Anunnaki showed up, hadn't it?

  She recognized the Wendenberg family name. They were a wealthy bunch who'd shacked up with the Anunnaki, like so many other rich families, earlier in the Shroud War. She remembered reading about the exodus of the rich in a newspaper over breakfast with Commander Ham. It had been Mother's Day.

  She remembered because he'd cooked her quinoa, tomato, goat cheese omelet. Brought in the paper, and even been massaging her neck, when he half-laughed, half-groaned and began rubbing his own neck. “I'm starting to think I might need a massage myself. Too many of these aches. But the special forces will do that to you.”

  “You could always use the life Conifer,” Dagos suggested.

  He waved it off, and frowned. “Some injuries you keep to remind you.”

  That pulled her up short and she looked at him sideways. “You don't have to play the macho card. If it’s hurting, use the Conifer.”

  “It's not a macho thing
,” he said in a very serious voice. “It's about learning from pain. Making sure you don't repeat past mistakes.”

  She had to think about that because his words hinted at more than combat and tactical mistakes. In her mind, you didn't dwell on your mistakes, though. You carried out your mission for better or worse and you moved on. In fact, this mindset was one of the reasons Commander Ham selected her for his team of Snake-eaters.

  Her and Menendez's helmets in each hand, she sat down on a wooden bench and plopped both on either side of her.

  The US government had tasked her with rescuing Courtney Wilson from a heavily-fortified Anunnaki base run by the notorious Overseer Drekken. A herculean task to begin with and she was already at least one man down. Plus, one helicopter down.

  She slammed a fist so hard against the bench, a piece of the wood splintered. She had approximately seven hours to find Courtney. If she didn't rescue her by eighteen hundred hours, this war was as good as over. The Anunnaki would be able to activate their doomsday weapon.

  For an operation this high up the operational chain, she would've thought the engineering teams could've concocted some secondary usage for their helmets. Something like out of an old spy movie. But budgets were tight and timelines were rushed. Their helmets were, at most, disguises. Failed disguises now.