The Eagle's Last Stand Read online

  “Do we ever accomplish the secondary objectives?”

  “Not enough.”

  Commander Ham didn't care about those, though. As long as she and the Snake-eaters pulled off enough to maintain her image as the Anunnaki's boogeyman, the drinks were on him.

  When Dagos thought about the lives at stake, any guilt at utilizing a dying woman as bait disappeared.

  “You know we can't call it quits,” she said quietly. “If the Anunnaki break our girl...”

  “Courtney was always too smart for her own good,” Sledge muttered.

  “She was also stubborn as hell. If they haven't broken her in ten hours, they won't break her by tonight.”

  But if they didn't make it inside the Anunnaki's Los Angeles base by then, they'd lose their shot. Intel suggested the Anunnaki were transferring Courtney to a different base at eighteen hundred hours. And then it would be nearly impossible to rescue Courtney before she broke. Sooner or later, the Anunnaki would break her. Everyone cracked eventually.

  “I know I wasn't that tough when I was her age,” Sledge said.

  “You were tough, though. I wouldn't mind if Laura turned out a little like her,” Dagos said, a momentary warmth at the thought of her daughter replacing the feeling of impending failure.

  “Well, she didn't even cry when Orun took her. That's a start.”

  Dagos nodded. It took time to get used to a good Anunnaki. Even she'd only just begun really trusting Orun. And that was more because she knew you could never truly trust anyone. She swallowed, trying not to think about what a psychologist told her once. Maybe the reason you distrust people so much is because you know what you're capable of. If he knew what she had to do on this mission....

  In that way, an Anunnaki like Orun was as good a babysitter as a human. Plus, Orun knew what she did to Anunnaki who'd pissed her off in a personal way.

  “So, you and Ham aren't back together? Because there were rumors...”

  Dagos would've slapped Sledge if he hadn't saved her bacon once or twice. And because she owed him this. If she completed this mission, there wouldn't be a time to talk with him later. “I'll put it this way. Laura's going to grow up with a mommy and that's it.”

  “She'll always have an uncle,” Sledge said, slapping his chest.

  Dagos fought against the frown weighing on her mouth and injected some energy into her words. “We're getting way off mission.”

  “Well, we can't go above ground.”

  It would be practically impossible to come up with a new fake identity on such short notice. Heck, they'd barely scrounged up the resources for this operation in time.

  “Sewers will be a toxic waste dump,” she said. The dirty bomb that had gone off two years ago had spread underground.

  And then an idea popped into Dagos's head. It was ludicrous, suicidal, and beyond risky. There was well beyond a chance of this backfiring. And it wasn't one of those cool ideas that was so crazy it might almost work. It was simply crazy.

  “Hey, if we're playing the Trojan Horse card, let's give them the ultimate Trojan Horse,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “Me.”

  8

  The bloodied helmet tumbled to the cell floor and Courtney flinched. At first, she thought it was a full-on head, but the helmet was empty.

  “So much for a rescue attempt,” the overseer said dully.

  Trembling, Courtney stepped over to the helmet and bent down. Fear made her hesitate, but when she picked out a paramedic logo on it, she knew it couldn't be one of the Snake-eaters. At once, she clasped it between her palms and lifted it up for inspection.

  “Why do you say that?” she managed.

  Looking almost straight up at him, the light carved a hungry expression across his gray face. “A local blood mob told us they're tracking two highly trained soldiers. One of them fits the Eagle's description.”

  That set her mind on fire. She had so many questions. Her heart hammered and she grew aware of how shocked she must've looked. Menendez's voice echoed in her head. Never let them see you bleed. She drew a deep breath before she spoke. “So why the paramedic helmet?” she said, just managing to inject a bit of impatience into her words.

  “I'm guessing your friends thought they could infiltrate our medical unit. Their chopper was carrying a patient,” Overseer Drekken said like he had a bad taste in his mouth.

  Their chopper? Suddenly, the Snake-eater's plan came into focus. A chopper crash must've killed all but two. No doubt they'd deployed their best for an operation to rescue her. When she'd last seen the Snake-eaters, they all looked to be in tip-top shape. That suggested at least a few she'd known personally hadn't survived. The realization tightened like a belt around her heart.

  She tried to look unconcerned even though her mind was still reeling. “This was supposed to worry me, right? Weaken my resolve. If anything,” she paused for effect, “this gives me more hope they'll rescue me.”

  For all the reaction of the overseer, she might as well have said nothing. Then she noticed she was rising. A few seconds later, the cell floor leveled with the overseer.

  Without a second thought, she sprang forward. In the corner of her eye, he advanced. Adrenaline rushing in her, she rolled to the left. Her leg tugged back.

  Twisting over her shoulder, she discovered his claws wrapped around her ankle.

  She expected a strike of some sort. A painful surge of electricity or crushing of her limb.

  Instead, her vision dizzied and an intense wave of heat spread from her toes to her fingertips. She couldn't make heads or tails of the fever until she sucked in a breath against the tightness in her chest. That's when it clicked.

  Anunnaki air was a different combination of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide than human air. She'd assumed they'd been pumping in air tweaked for humans into her cell. But she was wrong. Overseer Drekken had bided his time, exposing her to stressing updates, all to deal her this enervating blow.

  Intense pain wracked her muscles. Her heart pounded and she felt her consciousness dwindle.

  She heard a gasp and realized it was her own.

  “Save me the trouble and tell me the coordinates of the Conifers,” the Anunnaki said.

  Something optimistic lingered in the back of her mind. They can't kill me, she thought even as a burning hand squeezed her lungs. Seconds plodded by as she gasped for air. She swore her lungs were shriveling.

  Dark blurs crowded at the edges of her vision. The chamber around her bent and distorted. Had something gone wrong? Overseer Drekken didn't seem intent on saving her.

  The burning hand gave her lungs another squeeze.

  “Please,” she croaked.

  9

  “I didn't know you were so eager to throw yourself to the wolves,” Sledge said with less sarcasm than Dagos would've expected.

  “Unless you can think of something better, it's now our default plan,” she said, weaving around a badly faded blue Mazda minivan. As team leader, she had the “luxury” of foregoing a debate. Still, as a friend, she knew Sledge wouldn't give in.

  He folded his arms across his chest as they hiked along the bumpy asphalt road. A beagle rifling through trash darted away at the sight of them. “And what am I going to say? I'm a local who happened to find you?”

  “Say you're a bounty hunter and you've been tracking me. The Anunnaki will more than likely let you into their territory.”

  Sledge looked less than impressed and grunted. “They'll probably kick me to the curb. If they even believe it's really you.”

  A breeze carrying the scent of trash and piss met her nostrils. She winced.

  Her plan had a lot of holes to be sure. She was okay with that, though, if it gave them a shot of getting this mission off the ground. As to how Sledge would somehow free her and Courtney, that was a different story. A problem she couldn't quite wrap her head around. Yet she could hear Commander Ham's voice in her head. Good. Make him think you'll be the one staying behind.

  Sledge groan
ed, and Dagos knew he only needed to get his complaints out of his system. Which he had.

  “Ham would kill me if I let you sacrifice yourself,” Sledge said, carefully watching a wrinkled homeless man lying on the sidewalk. “So, we better make sure we've got at least two designators.”

  Dagos pursed her lips. He was referring to golden bracelets that Anunnaki wore on their wrists or ankles that let them use certain technology much more conveniently. Essentially, they were like ID or credit cards. Humans could use them too, if they were specially programmed. Ham secured them a total of six designators for this operation with the express purpose of using them to escape from the Anunnaki base, once they rescued Courtney, via a snake-hole. An Earth-based wormhole.

  Commander Ham said each designator allowed for two passengers on a snake-hole. So even if the Anunnaki confiscated one or two, they'd probably still have enough for each of them, plus Courtney.

  But he'd lied.

  Separately, he revealed to Dagos that each designator only allowed passage for the wearer. To get Courtney out of there, a Snake-eater would have to stay. That way Courtney could use the designator for herself.

  Ultimately, it was to be Dagos's job to reveal this news at the right time. Ideally, Ham told her, one of the Snake-eaters would die and they could simply recycle that person's designator. But if they all survived, Dagos would have to pressure someone into staying back.

  Dagos stopped mid-jog, bent down, and revealed the designator on her right ankle.

  “Then we need one more,” Sledge said. “Those Komodo bastards took mine. Mitchell and Johners never made it out of the chopper.”

  “They took Menendez's. Raimes's out of reach,” she replied, trying not to think about her smacking into that building shortly after her.

  “It's the chopper then.”

  “One more designator,” Dagos breathed, knowing it would be for Courtney and Courtney alone.

  If a designator was all they required, they could hunt down an Anunnaki and scavenge one of the gold bracelets. Because theirs were specially programmed, they needed to find one off another Snake-eater. Or steal Sledge's back from the Komodos.

  “Either way, we're heading back to the Wendenberg Estates,” she said, reorienting herself. She spotted the skyscraper quickly enough. They needed to get there ASAP, too, or risk finding a helicopter that the locals had already cleaned out.

  Within six minutes, they were hunkered behind a graffitied cinder block wall that stretched for about ten feet. That's where a crater ended it.

  A row of overturned orange Metro buses blocked off the street and their view ahead. The familiar symbol of the Komodos ran along the vehicle roofs. She didn't see any of their foot soldiers, but there were half a dozen buildings with a couple hundred windows between them where their scouts could be lurking. They might not have suspected Dagos and Sledge thanks to their new clothes. And plenty of refugees in the surviving cities carried around firearms. They'd even passed a couple homeless with pistols hanging out of their pockets in the last few minutes.

  “You know what I think?” Sledge asked.

  “What?”

  “We go right up to them, we're asking for trouble. And they've made it so a person has to go right up to them.”

  “Right you are...”

  “I say we pull off a stunt to showcase our skills. Let them think we're guns for hire.”

  She couldn't shake off the feeling this just wouldn't work. Unless the Komodos were idiots, they'd want to see their faces. Or they'd outright recognize the oddity of two fantastic shooters showing up an hour after two Snake-eaters prisoners had escaped.

  A different angle was their only option to get inside. They'd trained to overcome obstacles like this, but that took time. Time they didn't have. Every minute they spent trying to reach the Estates was another minute that a local scavenger might steal the designator they needed for himself.

  She spitted and cleared her throat. “When we were brainstorming plans, Ham mentioned a local city police force.”

  “He said the blood mobs ruled the police.”

  “You and I have a very different memory sometimes,” she grinned. “Do the words West Coast Militia Patrol ring a bell?”

  Sledge removed his headband and massaged his forehead. “Now there's an idea.”

  “Their closest base is out of the way, but maybe they can help us get through that blockade.”

  Rule number one for local improvisation. Rely on old contacts. If you didn't have any, make new friends.

  Half an hour later, they reached the downtown structure that Dagos recognized as the WCMP outpost from their mission briefing. She'd never visited Los Angeles before the Shroud War, unfortunately, so it was hard to know whether all the graffiti and trash on the streets was due to war or simply part of the city's traditional aesthetic.

  The sight of faded, dusty tents donated by companies and shopping carts stocked with cardboard boxes both depressed and angered her. She watched some old man roasting hunks of meat on sticks with a boy around an oil drum. That boy was presumably his grandson, but could just as well have been an orphan. There were hundreds of refugees. Few resembled a typical family. She knew all too well how the Shroud War tore people apart. Parents and children, siblings, lovers. Whenever she questioned her actions or her mission, she thought about the alternative.

  Newsfeed images cycled through her head of Anunnaki warships cutting through a haze of ash over the high rises and landmark towers of New York. The uproar of millions of people screaming at once, emergency vehicles and alarm systems whirring, staccatos of gunfire trading with pulse surges. The biggest city in America brought to its knees in a matter of days. She only wished she'd been able to join in with the police, firefighters, and other first responders. Everyone thought of her as a hero, but there were so many more.

  Maybe it was a sign then, when she spotted men and women in police uniforms and similar gear with holstered weapons handing out rations to a line of refugees along the steps of a park.

  “That's them,” she said and looked at their shotguns. “We better put these away.”

  Sledge accepted hers and tucked them into a thick street robe he'd found a few blocks earlier.

  They approached the line and she registered the sea of tents in the park. Scraps of trash, cans, bottles, and rotten food dotted the yellowing grass. Clothes, wooden panels, and cardboard signs covered the trees. It was a sorry sight, but she'd seen worse overseas. Her job was to ensure this country never became the worse.

  “Excuse me, who's in charge here?” Dagos asked one of the servers.

  The woman was in her late-forties, yet still slim. She had the look of an active field patroller. Given this post-apocalyptic new world they were living in, few could afford to be overweight and sedentary.

  The woman sized up Dagos and Sledge, her eyes briefly darkening. Clearly, they were not refugees.

  “Who's asking?” the server barked.

  Dagos forgot she was wearing a scarf around her mouth. That wouldn't earn her a whole lot of trust now would it? Slowly, she removed it and let the woman see her full face. Her eyes lit up with recognition.

  “You look like...you know that?”

  “Who?” Dagos asked, tilting her head.

  “Well,” the woman hesitated, glancing at the refugees in line a few feet away. She was smart enough not to say it for them to hear. That was one way word-on-the-street spread.

  “Listen,” Sledge cut in. “I'm not saying she's the person you're thinking of. But if she were, she'd probably be here on an important mission and need to speak with your commander. Pronto.”

  The officer nodded curtly and called to someone. “Sam, cover for me. I got some business.”

  “You always got business,” a lightly tanned man with a scruffy beard complained, rising from a beach chair.

  “My name is Cecilia,” the officer said, leading them away. “I've got a lot of questions, but I probably shouldn't know too much, huh?”

&
nbsp; “That's about the measure of it,” Sledge said.

  “But maybe we can get a few things answered by you,” Dagos said. “I'm guessing you heard about the helicopter crash?”

  “Heard about? I heard it,” she said. “Like a dying elephant.”

  “What else do you know about it?”

  “Word is that it was the US government. Are you here to make sure no one talks about it? Seems like a cover-up is a moot point with the Anunnaki running around.” Cecilia raised an eyebrow. “Unless there's a deeper conspiracy you're trying to hide.”

  Dagos laughed it off and yet, she knew that such a thing wasn't as crazy as it sounded. With all the compartmentalizing that went on at Groomlake, she could hardly be sure what other missions were going down. Given how much information she hid from her teammates on some operations, she had to assume her superiors kept secrets from her.

  “Nothing immediate, no,” Dagos said wryly. “We're here because that chopper brought us. We're the only two survivors. As far as we know.”

  Cecilia's face dropped. “Did the Anunnaki shoot you down?”

  “If they'd tried, we wouldn't be here at all,” Sledge said. “Engine failure.”

  “Yeah, things are breaking a lot now. There's just not the time or budget for a maintenance team. Two weeks ago, one of our MRAP's transmissions goes out. Guess why we can't fix it? Our in-house mechanic died last month fighting the Scorpions.”

  “A blood mob?”

  Cecilia nodded as they reached a chain-link fence gate.

  “Leave the scarf off your face. If you're armed, you'll want to put your weapons in that. Our guards are pretty trigger happy.” She gestured to a trash can with the word GUNS spray painted on the side.

  Dagos and Sledge exchanged a look and stashed their shotguns with a collection of carbines, submachine guns, and handguns.

  At the fence, Cecilia flashed her badge to the guards, two teenagers with matching green army uniforms and the constant look of nervousness etched on their faces. The German Shepherd there gave Sledge and Dagos a sniff then laid down. One of the guards grunted and opened the gate for them.