The first punch tore the wind from Walker, but he rolled with the second. He saw the kick coming and dodged it so that it intersected the cowling. Then he turned and dropped an elbow on the knee. He tried to sweep his opponent’s base leg out from under him, but the man limped free.
They each took a moment to appraise the other. This man wasn’t a simple People’s Liberation Army soldier. He had to be something more, one of their Special Forces or quick-reaction forces.
Walker took the initiative. He fired two punches at the man’s left shoulder, knowing that they’d be blocked, then slammed the elbow of the hand that had worked its way into his opponent’s guard into his chin.
The man reached out to grab his arm, but Walker was ready for that. His feet moved to enable his hips to pivot into a coiled spring. Walker leaned and turned, allowing the man to come even closer. Then he whipped his body around thanks to his savage pivot and caught the man in the jaw with his other elbow.
The man stumbled backwards, but Walker wouldn’t let him recover. He stayed in close so he could reach down to his left thigh. He pulled his knife free from its sheath and slashed it across his opponent’s throat, so deeply that he could hear the man’s last breath sluicing through the slit.
Walker put a hand on the man’s forehead and pushed him over.
He fell, his fingers probing pathetically at the wound.
Walker glanced over and saw that Hoover had subdued his man, now on his knees, his head down. The dog had the soldier’s hand in his mouth, teeth clamped down hard. Every time the man twitched or moved, Hoover would bite harder and pull back. She’d probably broken all twenty-seven bones in the man’s hand and was scraping them together.
Moving quickly, Walker slit the man’s throat; then he stood and wiped the blade on the man’s uniform.
As he was resheathing his knife, Holmes rounded the air vent. “What the hell are you doing out of place?” Holmes barely glanced at the dead men.
Walker realized his mistake. If it was up to him he’d never do it again. Still, he hated being called out a second time. “I wanted to get a better view.”
“This isn’t television. You don’t get a better view.”
“But I—”
“Shut the fuck up. We’ll talk about this later. Thanks to those gunshots, we’ll probably have the entire People’s Liberation Army on our ass in no time and we haven’t even found out what’s so special about this tug.”
“Boss?” Fratty said, over the MBITR. “There’s something down here.”
Holmes’s eyes flared. “Hoover, come. Walker, come.” Then he turned on his heel.
Walker followed, just like the dog.
The hold was pretty much as he’d expected. The only difference was the body atop the crate. It was hard to believe that just moments before, the man had been alive. His entire being had been drained of blood.
Ruiz and Laws stood to one side. Fratty was closest to the box, but his stance made it obvious that he wanted to get away from it.
“What’s going on?” Holmes asked.
“Inside the box,” Ruiz said, failing to suppress a shudder.
“In that one?” Holmes looked back and forth at his men. “Fratty, I thought I told you to search that fuckwad.”
Fratty gave the box a long look, then asked, “Can I shoot it first?”
“What? The box?”
“Yeah.”
Then they heard the scratching, like from the claws of a large animal. The box shuddered. Once. Twice.
“Yeah. Go ahead and shoot the box,” Holmes said, narrowing his eyes and frowning.
Fratty raised his Super 90 at about the same time the crate’s side exploded in a hail of splintered wood. A monster now crouched in the opening.
The size of a pony, the beast had six legs, a thick, muscular body, and the head of a prehistoric saber- toothed cat. Spikes jutted from its body and head as if it were a dinosaur. Except it wasn’t a dinosaur, it was something that should never have existed.
The creature didn’t pause to be admired. It reached out with a talon-tipped paw and swiped at the nearest moving object—Fratty. The swipe took off the left side of his face, sending ribbons of blood arcing across the hold. The SEAL fell on top of his weapon, blood pulsing out of his ruined face.
Laws opened fire first. Nine-millimeter rounds slammed into the creature with little effect.
Holmes joined in, as did Ruiz and Walker, all firing virtually point-blank at the fell beast. Its body shuddered with the impacts of the rounds, but otherwise it ignored them. It turned baleful eyes at them and swiped again.
The SEALs kept out of the way.
Laws’s magazine emptied first. He ejected it and slid another in place without breaking rhythm.
Holmes did the same.
The noise inside the hold was deafening. Cordite and dust filled the air. At first, the rounds didn’t seem to have any effect, but bits and pieces of the creature began to fly off with the multiple impacts.
When Ruiz ran out of ammo for the 12-gauge, he dropped it, pulled out his SIG Sauer P226, and fired at the beast’s head.
Walker, Laws, and Holmes reloaded and continued firing. Damage to the beast was evidenced by larger and larger pieces of it falling away.
Finally the beast fell to its knees, snarling. It tried to get its legs back under it, but it couldn’t seem to manage.
Everyone took a step forward.
Laws was the first to run out of ammunition. He dropped his weapon and let it hang. He snatched up a length of wood and began to beat the creature on the back.
Walker ran out next, but managed to pull Fratty’s weapon free from beneath him. He fired as he drew it level, then kept firing.
Finally Holmes inched up to it, shoved the barrel of the MP5 into the beast’s mouth, and let loose his last magazine, screaming at the top of his lungs as he did it.
The beast lurched to the ground, held up only by the spikes jutting from its side and head.
The silence was shocking after the violent assault.
The thing lay still. Whatever it was, it was no longer a threat.
Holmes ran and knelt beside the downed SEAL and turned him over. Fratty’s face looked like raw meat. His eyes were fixed.
“Ah, hell! Ruiz, give me a hand. You two, Laws and Walker, get this ship under way. All this shooting couldn’t have gone unnoticed. We still need to do a search and the army’s going to be down on us any fucking second. Got it?”
Both men nodded numbly.
“Wait? Where’s Hoover?” Holmes asked.
They spied her under the stairs, tail between her legs, terror in her eyes as she stared at the dead beast.
They coaxed the dog out and let her smell the corpse. When Laws and Walker left the hold, Hoover gladly followed them.
23
SOUTH CHINA SEA.
It took both of them a good ten minutes to remove the anchor lines. On the bridge, Laws was only able to start one engine. He got the ship moving away from the dock just in time. They could see police cars speeding in their direction, lights flashing. Laws pulled a walkie-talkie out of his cargo pocket, but it was silent. Whatever frequency the police were using, it wasn’t the same one the guards had tuned in to.
After checking to ensure there were no recording devices, they removed their masks, slipping them around so
