The Tide (Tide Series Book 1) (2 page)

“Amanojaku,” General Yamada muttered. “Maybe. But now it seems I am watching
shinigami
with my own eyes.”

Matsumoto inhaled sharply. For a moment, he thought to correct the general. Shinigami were death gods, but these people tearing into each other were no gods.
He,
Shigeru Matsumoto, was the death god.

The remaining Marines, bleeding from multiple wounds, cowered in a corner of the cage. The infected trio, bruised and scraped, inched toward the Americans. One of the nurse’s arms hung crooked at her side, bent where no joints existed. Her left foot jerked inward, far past the limits of normal human anatomy.

She didn’t seem to notice, nor did it slow her as she approached her prey.

One man reached up to the fence with his lanky, skeletal arms. His body weak from starvation but fueled by adrenaline and an ancient survival instinct, he scaled the fence, making it to the barbed wire before Matsumoto signaled his guards to fire.

Gunfire cracked out, and his body fell limply to the ground. The nurse shuffled over it, ignoring the dead man. Her eyes, like those of the other two enraged Marines, were locked onto the bodies of the living. Their prey.

Everything Matsumoto had done in the lab, the countless experiments and countless hours away from his family, had paid off. His creatures were programmed to hunt now, eat later. Destroy before devouring.

He would avenge his family after all.

A single Marine crawled from under the pile of bodies in the center of the arena. Ewing’s eye was swollen shut. A gash in his left upper arm glinted red in the summer sun, his muscle exposed. He stood, his legs quaking, his fists clenched.

“Bastards!” He yelled as he charged the line of Japanese riflemen behind the fence. Matsumoto signaled for them to cut him down, feeling a trace of something tingle through him as the bullets punched through Ewing’s flesh. Sympathy? No, it wasn’t that, but maybe a hint of respect. The man had, in the end, died fighting.

The infected Marines switched from hunt mode to devour mode. They swarmed over Ewing’s twitching body, ripping his flesh. His cries devolved into gargling gasps, a death rattle, and then silence. When they were finished feeding, the monsters honed in on the frightened remnants of the Marines. The scuffle was brief and the aftermath gruesome.

Once the enclosure was devoid of life, the trio of infected charged the fence. They wore expressions of hunger.

Matsumoto stared hard at the nurse, her hair matted in blood, her almond-shaped eyes filled with animalistic intensity. Her good arm reached through the chain links though he stood yards away from her. She jumped at the fence, attempting to scale it.

With a flick of his wrist, Matsumoto signaled for the guards to end the demonstration. Gunfire cracked, resounding across the hot asphalt. The smell of gunpowder and the coppery odor of blood filled the air.

“The gaijin will not stand a chance,” Ishii said as Nishiyama ordered the guards to clear the bodies. Several of the men hesitated before opening the gate. Nishiyama yelled until they relented and entered the cage.

“This is...abominable,” Yamada said. He regained his composure. “How long before this is ready to deploy against the Americans? And the Soviets, too?”

Matsumoto withdrew the glass vial from his pocket again. “The protein complex can be ready and produced in a matter of weeks.”

“The most important problem is being addressed,” Ishii said. “We’re developing strategies to spread the Amanojaku. We need a method of infection other than direct injection, something to reproduce the proteins once they’re in a human host to encourage their spread among a population.”

“Very good. But though this concoction, this protein complex, as you say, turns people into monsters, how will it aid our efforts?”

“I apologize, but what do you mean?” Matsumoto asked.

“If we turn our enemies into monsters, if we make them more effective killers, how does that help us? Must we sneak into their camps, their naval ships, their home countries to administer shots in hopes they will destroy themselves?”

“No, not at all,” Matsumoto said. He pictured his family. The children, the wife, the parents he’d never see again. They’d perished without so much as lifting a finger against their enemy.

Destroyed by cowardly bombs, they’d never been given the opportunity to fight back against the Americans.

He thought of the men dying on the Pacific isles, the men fighting against the American soldiers. The men sacrificing themselves by flying their planes, loaded with explosives, into the gaijin forces.

Such an honor
, he thought,
to die for the Empire.

But his family had died for nothing, killed in their sleep.

No other father should go through such pain. No other family should suffer in vain without the chance for honor, for pride. The chance to sacrifice their lives for the preservation of the Empire of the Rising Sun.

“General Yamada, you asked me to develop a weapon of last resort, one to be used when all other hopes and prayers have gone unanswered. I have done just that.” He thumbed the glass vial again and peered at the crumpled body of the infected nurse. She’d been frail, weak. A lowly servant, nothing more. But with the Amanojaku inside her, she’d been a warrior worthy of highest honor.

“If the Americans or Soviets set foot on our soil, every man, woman, and child of the Empire would be proud to defend their homeland.” Matsumoto held up the vial. “And with this, not only will they have the pride and honor, but they will have the ability to do so.”

Gulf of Guinea

Present Day

––––––––

T
he plastic explosives detonated, and the hatch burst inward. The acrid scent of the charges stung Dominic Holland’s nostrils as he charged into the pilothouse of the
MT Elizabeth
. A band of Nigerian pirates, bristling with AK-47s, had taken up positions around the wheelhouse of the massive oil tanker. Once inside, he ducked under the chart table. Bullets pinged across the walls and shattered the windows overlooking the tanker’s decks and the crystal-blue Atlantic.

Miguel Ruiz peeked around the doorframe, taking several careful shots. Returning gunfire lanced into the wall. A round tore into his left forearm, and he staggered backward.

“Careful!” Dom yelled. He rolled to his right and shouldered his rifle. Without proper cover, the pirates were easy targets. He shot two in the chest before a third and fourth returned fire. The noise in the pilothouse swelled with the crack of automatic gunfire.

Grunting, Miguel leaned in again and squeezed off two more shots, picking off the final pirates.

“Nice shooting.” Dom stood, brushed himself off, and sauntered over to Ruiz. He smacked Ruiz’s left arm, the one that had been shot. “Be more careful, buddy. Could’ve been your good arm.”

“This
is
my good arm.” Miguel winked and pulled back his sleeve over the complex prosthetic. He’d lost his flesh-and-blood arm in an IED blast during his time as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan. The Army wouldn’t have him back on the ground, but Dom didn’t have any such prejudices against wounded warriors when it came to his Hunters, the group of men and women who served beside him on any mission requiring firepower. They made up just one unit of his private covert ops organization, which specialized in combatting biological and chemical warfare.

“Glad to see that’s all it was.” Dom patted him on the back. “Don’t do something that stupid again.”

“Whatever you say, Chief.” Miguel pulled a photograph from his pocket and compared it to the four men sprawled across the floor of the pilothouse. None matched the dark complexion, piercing brown eyes, and eyebrow scar of Molih Klisman.

Dom glanced across the ship’s deck, scanning the latticework of pipes and beams. Across it, a spidery man ducked under and jumped over the veritable jungle gym.
Klisman.

“Hector, Jenna? Do you read?” Dom barked into the microphone secured to his collar, his comm link with the rest of the men and women in the Hunter squad aboard the
MT Elizabeth
.

“Here,” Jenna’s smooth voice rang back.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Hector said. “Hostages are secure. Took down the pirates camping in the mess hall but no sign of Klisman anywhere.”

“Klisman’s moving across the deck, headed toward the bow,” Dom said. “We need to take him down.”

“On it,” Jenna said.

Dom raced out of the pilothouse and leapt down the stairs toward the deck. Miguel sprinted after him. Klisman had almost reached the gunwale, where the pirates’ rope ladder led to their rust-pocked speedboat. Dom fired; the bullets ricocheted off the pipes. Klisman dove for cover, and Dom narrowed the distance between them.

“Keep him down!”

“I’m working on it!” Miguel’s voice boomed as he fired off several potshots.

Dom raced forward, his lungs burning and his chest heaving. Sweat trickled down his back and across his forehead, the salt stinging his eyes. He had no intention of letting Klisman get to his boat. The Nigerian pirate was suspected of funneling money toward the development of chemical weapons. He made these funds by holding ships like the
Elizabeth
hostage and selling the weapons he helped develop to Al Qaeda.

Klisman turned back, spraying rounds from his AK-47. Dom bent low and charged, hurdling over a series of pipes. He fired a salvo before Klisman disappeared behind a large steel drum near a set of stairs. Focusing on the drums, Dom approached in a stealthy crouch, his gun shouldered. He hugged the walls and then curled around the drums toward where he’d last seen Klisman. The pirate was gone, but his AK-47 remained. He picked it up and checked the magazine. It was empty.

Then a heavy weight fell on him. He crashed to the deck. Klisman had climbed into the latticework above and tackled Dom. The pirate pummeled him until Dom knocked him off with a powerful left hook. He swept out one leg, and Klisman fell, his head hitting the deck with a sickening thud. But the blow didn’t keep the man down. He jumped to his feet and pulled a crooked knife from his waistband. He sprinted and leapt at Dom.

Two gunshots rang out.

Klisman crumpled. His knife clattered away, and blood poured from the two holes in his side.

Jenna lowered her weapon. “Don’t need a pirate making Dom sushi today, do we?” She marched toward him, training the barrel of the FAMAS on Klisman in case the pirate made a final attack despite his fatal wound. The French assault rifle had become a favorite of Jenna’s since Andris Jansons, a former French Foreign Legionnaire originally hailing from Latvia, had joined Dom’s Hunters. She brushed a hand over her short-cropped blonde hair. Her blue eyes gleamed under the unrelenting sun hanging over the Atlantic.

“Thanks,” Dom said. “But—”

“Yeah, I know how it goes. You could’ve handled him.” She rolled her eyes. Jenna was one of the first women to go through Ranger school after the US armed forces had opened up the Special Forces to women. “You going to send confirmation of the elimination to Webb?” she asked.

Dom held up his smartwatch, snapped a picture of the grisly scene, and transmitted it. An error message popped up, proclaiming the message could not be delivered.

“Strange,” Dom said, nonplussed by the notification. He tapped the smartwatch’s face to save the image. “We’ll have to confirm with Webb later. Problem with the watch.”

Jenna’s brow scrunched in worry. She didn’t say anything, but Dom read her expression. They both were surprised anything would go wrong with their technology. Back aboard his ship, their technical operations comprised a talented team of computer scientists and electrical engineers. They ensured all devices worked properly on and off the vessel. His smartwatch’s face glowed green, indicating an incoming call from one of the communications specialists, Chao Li.

“Dom, something’s up.” Chao’s voice was crystal clear. “We got a transmission from Webb.”

Meredith Webb was Dom’s contact at the CIA, responsible for supplying work to his agency of private covert contractors. “Antsy, isn’t she? We’re just wrapping up here.”

“No, it’s not about Klisman. It’s something else. Something bad, I think. A new directive.”

“Man, she doesn’t waste any time.” Dom inhaled slowly, soaking in the smell of gunpowder and oil mixing with the ocean air. “But we got to earn a paycheck somehow, huh?”

***

D
om ran toward the AW109 helicopter in a hunch. Hector, Jenna, and Miguel followed him to the bird. He climbed inside and looked to the cockpit where Frank Battaglia was waiting.

“Ready to get the hell out of this joint?” Frank asked.

Dom gave him the thumbs-up, and they lifted into the air, accelerating westward over the Atlantic. His thoughts strayed toward Chao’s words. Meredith had always kept her communications with them brief. She’d warned him his relationship with the CIA was tenuous at best. She was their sole connection to the agency, and their business could be severed without warning if her superiors deemed Dom and his Hunters a risk to national security.

If they failed a mission, there wasn’t anything to prevent the CIA from eliminating all evidence they’d ever done business with Dominic Holland and his crew. Such a move would leave him a sea-bound vagabond, not dissimilar to the recently deceased Klisman. But unlike the Nigerian pirate, Dom’s primary motive wasn’t jihad or profit. He’d proudly served his country as an agent in the CIA, and he still found immense satisfaction in defending the world against the threat of biological and chemical warfare. But now he found his thoughts straying toward his daughters, Kara and Sadie, back in their Maryland home with his ex-wife, Bethany.

He wanted to provide for them, and this was the best way he knew how. He’d already managed to use the earnings from his life as a contractor to create an enormous trust fund that would take them through the rest of their lives. With Kara already at the University of Maryland, he hadn’t yet told her how he was paying for her education and wouldn’t until he’d retired from his covert services for good.