“Where is—” he started to yell.
The chainsaw roar of an M-249 cut him off. A Black Hawk rose over the rooftop, a crew chief manning the machine gun and firing into the climbing monsters. The rotor blades washed away the oily clouds of smoke rising around the building.
Once it had completed a full flight around their perimeter, the crew chief stopped firing and the chopper swooped in close to the roof, the side door open.
“Get in!” Fitz said.
Rico put an arm over his shoulder, and he helped her toward the bird. Once they were all inside, he stared at the bloodstained roof where the headless body of Ace lay sprawled.
“I’m so sorry,” Fitz choked out.
Climbing monsters continued to ascend faster toward the rooftop, driven by the scent of spilled blood.
The crew chief passed out headsets to them, and Fitz turned his on.
“You okay, Jeni?” Fitz asked.
A wet sheen covered her eyes. “Ace… he’s…”
Dohi looked over. “What happened to Ace?”
Fitz bowed his head, unable to talk.
Toussaint checked over her rifle, and Neilson peeled off some red vines still clinging to his ACU that he’d never gotten the chance to remove.
Dohi slammed a fist into the bulkhead.
“I promise we will kill Elijah,” Corrin said through clenched fangs.
“That beast wasn’t the Prophet, was he?” Fitz managed his voice still shaking.
“No,” Corrin said. “He’s one of the members of the Prophet’s Council… but he’s not the Prophet.”
The primary pilot’s voice crackled over their headsets. “Master Sergeant Fitz, I’m Liam Tremblay, an old friend of Beckham’s.”
“Thanks for risking your neck for us,” Fitz said. He tried to hold himself together for whatever came next. The name, Tremblay, sparked a distant memory. “You’re the one who flew Beckham down to Colorado.”
“That’s right,” Liam said. “Beckham told me you all could use my help. I’m just sorry I couldn’t make it here sooner.”
Fitz wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. It came away with a mixture of sweat and blood. “Where are we headed?”
“To Beckham’s location.”
“Where is he?”
“The Venetian.”
Fitz looked out from the window in the side door to see pillars of massive flames ravaging the city. Black pillars of smoke blocked out the stars.
Amid it all, Fitz spotted the main strip, illuminated by flames and gunfire.
They had just escaped one hell, and now they were headed straight into another, missing another member of Team Ghost.
— 16 —
Smoke poured around Beckham and seeped into his lungs. The shemagh scarf he had used to cover his nose and mouth hardly helped. He coughed with each struggling breath, searching through the ember-filled atmosphere with his rifle pressed against his shoulder. His night-vision goggles were worthless in the screen of black and gray, and he had resorted to using his barrel-mounted light.
With his M249 SAW strapped over his back, Horn carried Ruckley in his arms. She cried out in pain as he navigated the rubble, but she still managed to hold her pistol with her good arm, too stubborn to keep it holstered.
The crack of gunfire burst through the roar of the flames devouring the destroyed hotels and casinos along the Las Vegas strip. Howls shrieked through the darkness like angry banshees, and the public channels on the radios were filled with desperate calls.
“Taking fire!”
“Recon Bravo, Eagle Four, we need to leave now. Hostiles—”
More static, more voices lost to explosions and the cacophony of the ongoing battle.
Beckham knew they didn’t have much time before the last of the helos took off. He could only hope that Tremblay would hold out and still be able to give them a ride.
By all counts, the mission had failed, but there was one objective Beckham would not give up on. One reason he had not yet run to one of the evacuation sites transmitted to them by Command.
I can’t leave Timothy.
They stopped at an intersection. Somewhere past the smoke, he heard the clatter of claws against asphalt.
Beckham looked over his shoulder, stifling a cough. His lungs were burning, and he had to duck low, gasping for what little oxygen remained in the scorching air.
Horn was hunched low, still holding Ruckley. Sweat carved through the ash on his face.
The crack of gunfire sounded to their left. Could that be Timothy?
A sudden growl cut through the air to their right, and Beckham dropped low. Horn reached for his sidearm, gently lowering Ruckley in case he needed to fight.
They remained frozen as the smacking and pop of Variant lips sounded from behind the dark fog. Claws scratched over concrete as a pack of beasts sprinted past.
The only benefit of the burning city was that the smoke and fire masked scents.
Horn tugged on Beckham’s sleeve, gesturing toward Ruckley.
“We have to get her out of here,” Horn said. “She’s not doing so hot.”
She wasn’t going to last much longer in the smoke. And truth be told, neither would the two operators.
“We can’t leave Timothy,” Beckham replied.
He had made a promise. And if he left Timothy behind, he knew that choice would haunt him like a terrible cancer eating at his mind, sending it to the dark places he had worked so hard to get past with the help of Kate and friends like Big Horn.
Now he needed to be that friend to Timothy.
“You go with Ruckley and get to an evac site,” Beckham said. “I’ll keep searching.”
“Hell no,” Ruckley said. “I ain’t leaving the kid either.”
Horn smirked. “I’ll do whatever she says, boss.”
Wasting no time, Beckham pushed onward through the rubble of the Venetian.
Horn picked Ruckley up and followed through a cloud of smoke. On the other side, forms of construction equipment appeared like monstrous creatures. Small cranes and aerial work platforms were tangled in a jumbled mess outside a loading bay with semi-trucks and trailers. Part of the concrete ceiling of the bay had collapsed and crushed two of the trucks.
Beckham took the long way around the docking bay. Congealed or not, the fuel inside those trucks could
