Enemy One (Epic Book 5) (96 page)

Sliding desperately through the mud, Natalie’s searching hands found the cast-aside pistol. Whipping her head around with ponytail-flinging fury, she aimed it at Oleg just as he scampered out of sight through the trees. Her bullets found only bark as the adversary disappeared.

Thunder cracked as a flash of lightning illuminated the forest. Her chest heaving, Natalie knelt on the ground, pistol still raised as she gasped to catch her breath. Aside from the downpour, the forest was still. Buckling forward, she thrust out her right hand to stop herself from falling. As mud-soaked strands dangled from her forehead, her muscles loosened. Limbs shaking, she fought to regain physical control. Looking up and still open-mouthed, Natalie turned to look for Becan. The Irishman was crawling furiously away from the scene.

“McCrae,” she grunted desperately, clawing up from the mud as she stumbled his way. Sliding to her knees next to him, she threw aside her pistol and grabbed his shoulder. She quickly turned him around. “Let me see!” Wiping his wet hair back and over his head, she zeroed in on the Irishman’s face. The bullet had zinged him just off the side of his temple. An inch more inward and the Irishman would have been killed.

“Bleedin’
hell
!” he said as he pressed his hand against the wound.

Natalie pulled it away. “Don’t touch it. You have mud all over your hands. Let the rain wash it out.”

“Where did he go?”

Looking back into the woods, Natalie answered, “He’s gone.”

“Vecking coward.” He spit at the ground.

Though rain pelted her from head to toe, the Caracal captain sat still on her knees as she stared into the forest where Oleg had retreated. Natalie’s entire reason for being on this mission was to find out the truth. She thought she might find it in an alien device. What’d presented it instead was a cold, twisted reality.

EDEN was supposed to be on the side of humanity—the side that valued life, that fought for it. But it wasn’t someone from EDEN who’d charged into a fight to save her life. It was the total opposite. An outlaw had risked his life saving her
from
EDEN. From the organization she’d given everything to. That she’d fought and bled for. That’d she’d believed in. But she’d believed in a lie.

“You were right.” She could barely muster the words, though the person they were meant for was nowhere near her. Lowering her head woozily as her worldview came crumbling down, she said again, “You were right.”

This was not the work of an organization that cared for human life. This was from one that had an agenda. A plot. And if a human stood in their way, then that human would become collateral damage. EDEN’s lackeys wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

She looked at Becan. “Get up—we have to get back to the others.”

“But wha’ abou’ Remmy?”

There was no reason to believe Oleg had been lying about that. If his intent had been to deceive, he would have simply told the two of them that Scott was dead. “I think we’re too late.”

The Irishman shook his head. “With all due respect, captain, there’s no way in bloody hell tha’ I’m leavin’ him behind.”

“The two of us couldn’t take your friend just now—there’s no chance we’re going to take him
and
Vector. This isn’t cowardice, Becan. It’s knowing when we’re beat.” Slogging up to her feet, she reached down her hand to pull Becan up. He took it. “He wouldn’t want us to go after him. He’d want us to finish the mission he came here for—to blow the lid off this whole thing. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

There was no denying the reality before them, and after a second of what appeared to be internal deliberation, Becan sighed in resignation. “Aye.”

“Now let’s get moving. We’ve got to get back to the others.” With no further words, the two of them set off after Lilan’s team.

*
      
*
      
*

Javon was moving as fast as his boots could move through the mud, which was growing thicker and wetter with every passing minute. Jakob Reinhardt, the extent of whose injuries were still unknown, had taken voluntarily to moving on his own, despite the vastly slower pace it forced the rest of them to adopt. With the sheer amount of firepower being sent toward them by EDEN’s forces, the need for speed was replaced by the need to fire back. As long as Javon was helping Jakob, neither man was able to provide the suppression fire necessary for an escape. And the only other one moving directly with them, Mark Remington, was barely any help at all. He looked on the verge of falling apart.

It did not help matters that, shortly after Natalie left them to find Scott and Becan took off after her, a new force arrived on the scene—one markedly faster and more accurate than the surviving members of EDEN’s ambush team on the train. An entirely new squad, led by a lone officer in Vector’s purple and white armor, was pushing the escapees to their limit.

Chaos rounds zipped past Javon’s head as he ducked, sliding behind a toppled tree trunk to fire a burst of suppression fire while Jakob caught up to him. Fortunately for both men, they were not the only ones fighting back. As Javon had focused his efforts on getting Jakob out of there, Feliks Petrukhin had taken to commanding the slayers that Valentin had lent them. Of the six slayers originally on the team, five were still alive, the other having been dropped shortly after the Vector-led reinforcements arrived. Together with Feliks, they formed the barrier that prevented Javon and Jakob from being clear targets.

What Javon saw in Feliks, he had never seen before in a soldier on the battlefield. The slayer was a war machine, issuing orders and dictating suppression zones in a manner that was as ruthless as it was efficient. That they were still hanging on by a thread and notably on the defense didn’t matter. If not for Feliks, none of them would even be alive.

Overseeing it
all
was Colonel Lilan. Having delegated the task of slayer-control to Feliks, Lilan freed himself up to be the scrambling party’s guiding hand, keeping a constant, watchful eye on both the advancing enemy and the muddy forest ahead of them. Despite his efforts, however, the colonel’s ability to keep up with the frantic pace of combat was on the verge of not being enough. Be it due to age or injury, he was struggling.

Several seconds after Jakob caught up with Javon behind the fallen tree, things got worse. A bullet from the Vector’s party struck Lilan in the midsection; the colonel yowled and buckled over. “Coach!” Javon yelled, leaping back over the tree and dashing after Lilan. The colonel screamed in agony as Javon grabbed him from behind and under his shoulders, dragging him back behind another tree while Jakob took over the role of protection.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Lilan said, though a second after the statement was uttered, blood was coughed up out of his mouth.

“You ain’t okay, coach,” Javon said, stepping in front of Lilan to fire off another volley at the enemy forces. Seconds after he laid down on the trigger, his weapon stopped firing. He was out of ammunition. Casting the assault rifle aside, Javon knelt down to scoop Lilan up into his arms. Looking up to find Feliks, Javon called out to the slayer at the top of his lungs.
“Petrukhin! Colonel is down!”

Despite the cacophony of battle noise, the amplification of Javon’s slayer helmet was loud enough, and Feliks heard the call. Glancing back briefly, the Russian’s focus returned to the five slayers with him. Barking orders out in Russian and making the “perimeter” sign with his hand, Feliks knelt down behind a tree and halted his slayers’ movement. All six of them committed fully to laying down defensive fire.

“All right,” Javon said, looking back at Lilan. Behind his faceless helmet, the black soldier’s jaw dropped. Lilan’s eyes were rolling back; his neck was swaying in discombobulation. “Hey!” Sliding around to sit in front of Lilan, Javon pulled off his helmet to stare at the colonel face-to-face. His brown eyes wide in panic, Javon propped Lilan’s face upright. “Stay with me, coach! C’mon, man, keep it goin’!”

His mouth bloodied, Lilan smiled. “It’s all right, man. I’m feelin’ all right.” The colonel’s eyes closed, and his head slumped forward.

“Veck!”
Looking around in a panic, Javon’s stare found Mark, still hunkering down like a kid beside Jakob. “Hey, you!” Mark shot a scared look at him. “Get over here,
now
!”

Tears were literally in the youngster’s eyes. “I…”

“I said
get over here
!”

Popping up more from fear than obedience, Mark scampered from his cover toward Javon, covering his bare head with his hand as if that would make any difference to the bullets zinging past him. Nearly falling over his own two feet at the halfway mark, the younger Remington finally made it to the tree where Javon was with Lilan.

“You’re a medic, right?” Javon asked, rain streaming down his face.

Mark paled two shades. “I’m—yeah, but no, I—“

“Fix him up!”

Staring down at the colonel, Mark froze. Lilan’s head was still limp, his body devoid of motion. Reaching with violently shaking hands, Mark searched aimlessly for the colonel’s wound.

Pulling back after firing several shots with his pistol, Javon pointed at the colonel. “His stomach, man!”

Nodding frantically, Mark reached around Lilan’s back to undo his chest piece. When it finally detached, the cadet pulled it away. In the dead center of the colonel’s torso, a baseball-size, dark red stain seeped through his uniform. “Oh, crap,” Mark said through tears. Reaching forward nervously, he unzipped the uniform to see the wound beneath.

“What’s he got?” Javon asked.

“He got shot!”

Looking at Mark deadpanned, Javon simply said, “Really?”

Feliks and his slayers were doing their best to stave off the advance of the Vector-led squad—but to little avail. Another slayer had fallen since the defensive stand began, leaving only four of them to help Feliks try and defend the injured colonel. But the oncoming adversaries were greedy and fast, not content to simply sit back and let their weapons do their work from afar. With every offensive shot an operative fired, the one next to him fired suppression so his partner could move forward. In what seemed like every ten seconds that passed, the enemy line was not only firing, but drawing closer.

Another slayer was felled, his body riddled with chaos rounds as his own weapon flew from his hands and he collapsed. The entire defensive effort was down to four.

Suddenly, new firepower emerged from the north, not aimed at the outlaws, but at EDEN. Feliks ducked back momentarily to look. There, in the distance but steady approaching, was a pair of men in familiar armor. Though their faces couldn’t be seen behind the faceless helmets they wore, Feliks knew exactly who they were.

Tom and Pyotr.

The two soldiers were ducking and weaving, sliding behind trees and disappearing around others as they drew rapidly closer to Feliks’s defense effort. Behind them, a small female fighter in tactical gear emerged. Esther. The group was coming back together. Slamming the last spare magazine he’d picked up in the train car into his weapon, Feliks rounded the tree again and fired into the maelstrom. They couldn’t stay where they were for long—at some point, EDEN would press in and overwhelm them. But with these added numbers, as small as they were, it gave them a chance to hold the line.

Feliks would take it.

As Jakob fired his pistol from behind the fallen tree, a pair of heavy boot steps emerged to his right. The pilot turned to see the unconscious body of Lisa Tiffin being plopped down beside him, face sideways to the rain as Jayden knelt down beside her and readied his sniper rifle. “You okay, man?” the Texan asked him.

Nodding his head, Jakob asked, “Who is she?”

“A hostage, I guess!” Pulling the trigger, he sent a bullet zinging toward the EDEN offensive. “We like to take ’em!” Glancing about the battlefield, Jayden shot Jakob a confused look. “Hey, we got some people missin’?”

The pilot ducked back as part of the tree trunk near his head exploded. “Rockwell and McCrae went back to find Remington! We lost him somehow along the way.”

“What?”
His good eye widening, Jayden once again surveyed the area. “Veck, man, we gotta go after ’em!”

Sliding behind the toppled tree trunk next to Jayden, Esther asked, “Is it just me, or are we short a few people?”

“It ain’t just you! Scott went missin’, and Natalie and Becan went back there to find him!”

The Briton gasped. “You mean they’re out there somewhere
now
?”

“Yeah!”

Grabbing him by his shirt, she turned him to face her. “Jay…”

“I know, I know. I’m goin’ after ’em.”

“
We
are going after them!”

Jayden tapped Jakob on the shoulder. “Hey man! Make sure someone carries her outta here.” He motioned down to Lisa. “Tell Javon we’ll meet up somewhere if y’all get to movin’—we got some folks missing that we gotta get after!”

The pilot nodded. “Be careful.”

Without further delay, Jayden and Esther locked eyes. “Let’s go before someone tries to stop us,” the Texan said. Nodding vigorously, Esther joined him as they bolted parallel to the battlefield to work their way west.

Standing guard over Mark and Colonel Lilan, Javon barked out occasional words to Feliks, who was ahead of them. With the “slayer wall” formed in front of them, the amount of enemy fire that rained down on Javon’s position had greatly diminished. Just the same, he knew their window to stay there was rapidly closing. “What he’s lookin’ like, Remington? You got him patched up, yet?”

Mark didn’t. Not at all. Working without tools and without any medical experience in actual combat, the cadet was grasping at straws. Running his blood-soaked hands through his hair, he shook his head. “I think, uhh…I think…”

“You think
what
?” Javon asked without looking.

Lilan’s eyes shot open, and he stared half-crazed at Mark in front of him. His nostrils drawing hard breaths, Lilan reached for Mark’s collar as the cadet all but shrunk back in horror. The colonel’s gaze drifted about, then up, where it locked onto Javon. Reaching out, he grabbed the black soldier by the leg guards of his slayer armor.