The Tide (Tide Series Book 1) (7 page)

“Hector, Jenna, Glenn, Scott, and Miguel, you're on me.” The five Hunters positioned themselves by Dom. “Andris, Terrence, Brett, Ivan, and Spencer, follow Renee's lead on team Bravo.”

The remaining Hunters gathered up around Renee. She nodded at Dom, her green eyes serious and focused. The former gymnast and CIA clandestine agent took stock of her team. Leading came naturally to her, and Dom always had enough confidence in her ability to command a squad whenever he had to divide up his Hunters.

“We don’t know what the hell is on that platform, but we don’t want to let it off,” Dom said. “Webb suspects bioweapons, and if what we saw in this video is the result of some kind of biological agent, then we’re about to enter a hot-zone of unparalleled proportions. Questions?”

Glenn Walsh, a former Green Beret, sauntered forward. Even beneath the unflattering bio suit, the man’s muscles pressed against the blue plastic fabric. “Are we to engage all hostiles? Take prisoners? What’s the deal with these things?”

The video raced through Dom’s mind again. “I don’t think these people—these things, whatever they are—will surrender. Eliminate any aggressive threats with extreme prejudice.”

“Why the hell are we going in again? Let’s just blow the place apart,” Scott said. “Boom. Problem solved.”

“No way, bro,” Miguel said with no hint of his usual good humor. “Maybe this isn’t the only place they’re developing this agent. Maybe this weapon is already being deployed. Pretty stupid to destroy the only evidence we have, if you ask me.”

“Exactly,” Dom said. “First and foremost, our mission is to figure out what is or was going on there. Gather up any biological or chemical samples you can and get it all back to Lauren’s team.” He hated bringing back samples of what they found on the drilling platform aboard his ship, but they had no choice. Lauren and her team couldn’t do the science without the samples to test.

“Bring back
everything
,” Lauren added with deliberate emphasis on the word. “If someone uses the biological or chemical weapon that was developed at the IBSL, it’s crucial we know
what
the weapon is. We need to know its origins. Depending on what it is, determining its chemical or genetic makeup is crucial. We can only find a way to treat or prevent it if we can characterize it in our lab.”

“Ready?” Dom asked the eleven Hunters before him.

“Aye aye, Captain!” Their voices carried up in unison, and energy coursed among them.

Dom watched Lauren quickly glance at Glenn as the former Green Beret adjusted the strap of his rifle. Her face contorted in a worried expression for only a moment before she turned away. Dom had always suspected the two had once shared something more than friendship, but there wasn’t time to contemplate intra-ship relationships now. He signaled to Alden Jorgenson, one of the ship’s engineers. Alden tapped a touchscreen on a command console built into the bulkhead. The entire bay went dark before being filled with the dim red glow of the battle lights. A starboard-side hatch opened to reveal a black sky above roiling waters. Howling ocean winds pierced the inside of the ship and rattled against Dom’s suit. Alden’s fingers danced across the console again. A hoist and pulley system extended out above the churning ocean.

Two of the Hunters in biosafety suits clipped the first Zodiac to the small crane system.

“All right, we’re going to go six to a Zodiac,” Dom said. “Bravo, load up first.”

He watched the team board the small black craft and then disappear beyond the bulkhead as the Zodiac was lowered toward the ocean. When Alden raised the cables again, Hector and Jenna attached the second Zodiac. Dom boarded with them, joined by Miguel, Scott, and Glenn. He shot a hand signal to Alden, and they swung out over the rough Atlantic. The first Zodiac had already cleared the
Huntress
and drifted a couple dozen yards away.

The pulleys clinked as the cable was fed through them, and Dom looked back toward the open bay door. Illuminated by the dull crimson interior lights of the ship, Lauren leaned out. Her dark hair whipped about her face. The worried expression she wore turned to a weak smile when she caught his gaze.

The Zodiac hit the ocean’s surface, and a wave rolled over them. Hector and Jenna released the clasps holding the Zodiac to the cables. Given his experience as a former Navy SEAL, Hector took his spot as coxswain and adjusted the tiller on the craft. He directed the boat toward the first squad in open water.

A burst of distant lightning sliced the dark clouds rolling through the sky, and heavy rain started to pound against Dom’s suit. It reminded Dom of an old joke among SCUBA Divers:
Don’t go diving when it’s raining. You’ll get wet.
But he hardly felt like laughing. Another wave rocked the small craft, and Dom tightened his grip on the rubber gunwale. He didn’t want anybody, wet or not, ending up in the stormy ocean tonight.

The outboard motor’s low chugging intensified. They shot out westward into the night, toward the unknown against an enemy they’d seen only once in a grainy video feed. Already, the storm brewing above them threatened to upend their efforts and send them all into the sea. Just one of the many pleasures of hurricane season in the Atlantic.

Any other mission, Dom would’ve waited for better weather, a clearer night. But the nightmarish bioengineered weapons on the IBSL wouldn’t wait. They must be eliminated before they unleashed their horrors on the world.

The Zodiac sliced through a capping wave. Again, water rushed over the rubber gunwale. The Hunters faced forward with their eyes trained on the distant, almost invisible horizon. Dom knew what was on their minds. They usually functioned on thorough intel provided by one of the world’s most prominent intelligence agencies. Tonight, they ventured toward a target they knew almost as much about as they did the deepest depths of the ocean.

Dom gripped the SCAR-H hanging across his chest. Another distant arc of lightning silhouetted the oil platform beginning to loom before them. Adrenaline pumped through his vessels as he imagined what terrors lay in wait for them on that rig.

––––––––

T
he derrick in the center of the platform shone like a skeletal finger thrusting into the sky. A framework of steel beams and rails lay across the deck.

“What’s it look like?” Miguel asked, yelling over the rolling thunder and crashing waves.

“Let’s find out.” Dom lifted a pair of night-vision binoculars to his biosafety suit’s face shield. He aimed the binos over the menagerie of beams and lattices. “Nothing but metal and shadows.”

Another crack of lightning activated the binoculars’ automatic safety shutoff feature, and Dom’s vision went black for a moment. If there was something on that rig, they wouldn’t find out until they were on it.

The Zodiac motored toward one of the massive legs of the platform. They closed in on a ladder extending up to the platform. Hector struggled with the till against the relentless waves. Jenna and Glenn threw heavy cords around the rungs of the ladder and moored the Zodiac in place.

At another ladder a couple dozen yards away, Bravo team followed suit. The team’s leader jumped to the ladder and scaled it like a monkey with a rifle strapped across her back. Near the top, she paused and waved at Dom.

“Hold up, Renee,” Dom said over his comm link. “I know you all don’t like to hear it, but we’ve got to play this by ear.” He stretched out toward the ladder. A rising wave pushed the Zodiac higher, and he braced himself on a rung. “But what I said on the ship still applies. If they’re aggressive, take them out.”

He began climbing. The rest of his team padded after him. When he reached the top, he paused and looked toward Renee. She already had one hand on the steel diamond-plate surface of the platform and appeared ready to leap up.

“As soon as we hit the deck, stay low and watch for contacts,” Dom said. “Renee, you’ll take Bravo team down to the bottom decks first. Alpha, stay on me to sweep the top decks.”

A flurry of affirmatives echoed through his comm link.

“On my signal.”

Renee flexed her arm. Her legs were coiled and appeared ready to propel her up.

“Now!”

Dom heaved with all his might and rolled across the metal surface. He swung his gun in front of him and dove behind the legs of a massive crane. Miguel followed after and dashed forward to a wide, cylindrical tank. Hector and Jenna pressed themselves against the tank next to Miguel. Glenn dashed toward one of the vacant crane legs with Scott at his heels.

“Bravo, you got contacts?” Dom asked. He stole a peek around the legs and scanned the platform. He glanced toward Renee.

“Negative,” she reported. She’d already set up position behind the yellow tube-shaped drilling drawworks near the derrick’s base. Two more of her squad mates joined her near a steel wall stretching around the derrick’s feet. Another sprinted toward them with a gun cradled in his arms.

The last Hunter scurried over the lip of the platform’s deck but caught his foot on the final rung of the ladder. He spilled forward. His gun clattered across the metal flooring.

For a moment, everyone froze.

Then an ear-shattering howl erupted from near Renee’s position. A shape hurtled out of the darkness. It careened straight toward the fallen Hunter as he scrambled to his feet. Dom shouldered his rifle and fired at the racing target. Each recoil sent a shudder through his body.

The creature ran faster as its prey leveled his gun. The Hunter fired, but nothing slowed the beast. It crashed into the man, and both bodies cartwheeled off the platform. They flew out over the hungry ocean. A scream echoed over Dom’s comm link, followed by momentary silence. His blood ran cold.

“Who the hell was that?” he asked as his stomach twisted in a painful knot.

“Brett,” Renee’s voice echoed back. She stood from her position and appeared ready to dash over the edge after him.

“Brett, do you copy?” Dom asked over the comm link. No answer. “Brett, do you copy?” Dom hoped the man had hit the water and his comm link had been knocked from his ear. Maybe Brett swam for safety back to the Zodiac...but the sinking feeling in his gut told him otherwise as he played his rifle across the deck, looking for more contacts.

The deck of the rig was eerily silent. No other screeches or screams sounded, other than the howling wind through the metal trusses.
Goddammit,
Dom thought. He didn’t have time to give in to the despair that was threatening to take him over now. If more of whatever had attacked Brett were lurking around, they needed to find out what the hell they were dealing with and how to stop it.

“Radio discipline, Hunters,” Dom said in a low voice. He shot a couple hand signals to his team, and they prowled forward. Renee’s team moved in parallel with his. Belabored breaths came over the comm link in rasps. The fear simmering in each of his Hunters was almost palpable.

Then the clatter of something hard against metal rang out behind him, and he swiveled to face it.

A beast appeared at the edge of the platform, illuminated by another arc of white lightning. The oil rig lit up as if it were day, and the features of the monster appeared more grotesque than Dom could ever have imagined. Its ribcage seemed overgrown, jutting out from its chest like a veritable suit of bony armor. Its shoulder blades, yellow and crooked, protruded from its back like the stumps of a fallen angel’s freshly shorn-off wings. The creature’s bones pierced through the ends of its fingers as if the skeleton beneath didn’t know when to stop growing. Bony flanges traced its brow, but its eyes, wet and gleaming, stared back at him with a frightening intelligence. Its fleshy tongue flicked between its gnashing teeth as its cracked lips peeled back. It howled at Dom. Water sluiced from the thing as it raced forward. It brought one claw back and appeared ready to impale Dom with its skeletal talons.

Then Dom noticed something as the beast yelled again and spittle flew from its mouth. Crimson stains colored its teeth.
Blood.
Dom’s hope of finding Brett alive disappeared like a grain of sand tossed into the ocean.

This was the beast that had fallen with Brett, and now it was hungry for its second course.

––––––––

F
ueled by anger, Dom sprinted at the beast. Three quick squeezes of his trigger sent bullets at Brett’s killer. Each of the rounds thumped into its body, but the creature didn’t slow.

“What the fuck?” Miguel said. He, too, fired off a salvo at the creature. But still the beast ran full tilt at Dom.

Cleaver-like skeletal plates cut through its skin at the joints, scraping against the creature’s body as it let out another howl and leapt.

A smatter of bullets left Dom’s rifle, peppering the beast. Dom was close enough now to see the rounds splinter and fracture the bone-like body armor. Yet not a single bullet appeared to penetrate the growths. The beast flew through the air, raking its claws before him. Dom brought his rifle up to aim for its face, but the beast caught his gun and sent the SCAR clattering across the deck.

Dom sidestepped the monster and barely dodged its talons. He didn’t want the thing to tear a single hole in his suit, lest he catch whatever vile contaminants this rig might be harboring. The creature bounded at him again—upright, like a human.

Like a human
. Dom juked to the left and avoided the second charge. At the same time he slipped a knife from the sheath holstered around his biohazard suit. He was too close to the beast for his Hunters to take a clean shot. He tried to back away, but it followed his moves.

The creature jumped. This time Dom couldn’t dodge the attack. He caught one of the creature’s wrists with his free hand and twisted his head to avoid the beast’s other claw as he fell backward under its weight. The skeletal growths covered the thing, marring its flesh, and only its face remained uncovered by the strange mutations. This might be Dom’s one chance. Spittle flew from the creature’s chomping teeth as it tried to bite him. Dom plunged his knife into one of its red eyes and twisted it deeper. The thing shrieked but kept swinging its free hand.