Blood dribbled out his nostrils.
Azrael approached him, then put his claws under the general’s long chin, lifting his face to catch his gaze.
“You will not fail me again, will you?”
“No, Prophet, I will… die before… I fail you again.” Each word came out forced, rasping.
Azrael gestured to the two masterminds at either corner of the throne room. “We have detected human interference within our network. They are trying to sabotage our communications.”
“Let me find them,” the general choked out. “Let me prove myself…”
Azrael retreated to his throne.
“Yes, find these humans, and bring me Captain Reed Beckham,” he said. “Or next time I will pull off your limbs myself and feed you to the Thralls.”
— 5 —
The light snowfall came down more steadily over the wilderness outside Banff. Cold wind cut into Dohi’s parka, finding every entryway to scrape over his flesh. His fingers were beginning to numb, and every breath of air seemed to freeze the inside of his lungs.
He wouldn’t let Mother Nature convince him to turn back though.
With the rest of Teams Ghost and Spearhead on his tail, he had only one singular thought: Follow the bears.
They had to figure out why they were organizing, especially if someone was using them for an impending attack on the Canadian base.
Dohi and the others were perched at the rim of the ravine, watching the bears follow a frozen stream nearly twenty meters below to the west. The beasts were heading directly northwest toward the Bow River.
“Where the hell are they going?” Toussaint asked.
“No idea,” Fitz whispered back. “That’s why we need to follow them.”
“I’ve been in this area long enough to tell you when a blizzard’s coming,” Daugherty said. “Even the best tracker can’t follow his prey when he’s frozen solid and buried under a ten-foot snow drift.”
“As much as I like solving mysteries, I like staying alive and killing bears more,” Sherman said. “Let’s just kill these ugly assholes and be done with it.”
Dohi lifted his binos and stared as far down the ravine as he could see, trying to find some clue as to where the monsters were headed.
“Dohi, what do you think?” Fitz asked.
Neilson was right, and as much as he hated to admit it, sometimes there was no advantage to being stubborn.
“The weather’s going to make it impossible to follow them,” Dohi said. “There’s no point in going on.”
“If we’re calling off the pursuit, I’d rather take these beasts down tonight so they’re not tomorrow’s problem,” Neilson said.
“Exactly,” Sherman said. “We didn’t follow these guys all the way here for nothing. Let’s make this count.”
Fitz nodded. “You’ve got a point, but damn, I really want to know what they’re doing.”
“Weather is shit, boss,” Ace said. “We’ve got the jump on them now. Better than them ambushing our guys later.”
“True, but…”
“He’s right,” Dohi said. “We really should take them down now, while we can.”
The bears were still marching in a line at the bottom of the ravine against the unrelenting snowfall.
“Okay, let’s do this quick, but safe, and then get our asses back to base,” Fitz ordered. “Ghost will run along the ravine to get ahead of the pack. Spearhead, you stay at their rear in case they turn tail. Radio silence from here on out until I give the go ahead.”
Dohi took off between the trees, taking the Delta Force operators slightly away from the ridge to stay out of the bears’ sight.
Once he judged they had run far enough ahead, he held up his fist. He, Fitz, and Ace then dropped low and crawled back to the edge of the ravine.
Sure enough the bears lumbered along next to the frozen stream, nearly one-hundred yards away. Dohi peered down the lip of the ravine to see the IR tags from Spearhead’s night-vision goggles as they too watched from their vantage points nearly fifty feet up from the bears. Spearhead was about twenty yards to the rear of the monsters.
Their positions would not get much better than this. The giant creatures had nowhere to hide along the stream except for a few lone trees and large rocks. But even that shelter was too meager for the hulking monsters.
Dohi raised his rifle and sighted up the first monster. Ace and Fitz mirrored his movements, each picking their targets. Everyone had already palmed in their magazines with armor-piercing rounds. It was their best and only shot of tearing through the thick hides of the beasts.
“Execute,” Fitz whispered over the radio.
Dohi squeezed his trigger. Rounds lanced into the chest of the lead bear, punching into its flesh. The creature staggered.
Other suppressed shots echoed from up and down the ravine as the operators joined in the fusillade, painting their targets with the AP rounds.
The bear Dohi had shot stumbled forward when more shots stabbed into its flank. But the big beasts were like walking battleships, huge muscled limbs covered in dense fur. They weren’t so easily dispatched. The monster let out a vicious roar that rivaled the bark of gunfire, and its eyes found Dohi.
It charged, opening a mouth full of curved fangs.
Three more bullets crashed through its mouth and forehead, breaking through bone and puncturing one of its eyes. The monster tripped and slid through the snow, pushing up a mound, steam rising from the fresh holes in its still body.
Fitz and Ace worked to take down another, and the Canadians began mopping up the monsters at the rear of the pack with headshots.
Dohi found his next target and unleashed a few controlled bursts into the monster’s side to get it to turn, then he sighted the head and fired.
The massive beast galloped on all fours straight for its attackers.
Dohi managed to take down the creature, and it slid across the
