Doomsday Recon
WarGate Operator is pleased to provide this expanded preview of Doomsday Recon by Ryan Williamson & Jason Anspach.
Text © 2023 by Jason Anspach & Ryan Williamson.
Panama City, Christmas Day, 1989
“Guns N’ Roses or Aerosmith?” Sergeant Wilson asked as he tore open his MRE pouch. The three of us were sitting in our Humvee, waiting for something to happen. We’d been waiting for a long time.
“Beastie Boys,” Arizona chimed in.
“No one asked you, Arizona. Chicken a la King again?” Wilson grumbled. “Wanna trade, Bennett?”
“Trade ’em for your stripes,” I said.
“You can’t handle these stripes, Specialist. Whatcha got, Arizona?”
“Frankfurters. And no trade, Sarge.”
“Bogus. I love franks. So anyway, Roses or Aerosmith?”
“Welcome to the Jungle,” I said.
“Most definitely. Crawford or Ireland?”
“Macpherson,” Arizona said.
“Shut up, Arizona.”
“No, he has a point,” I said.
But Wilson wasn’t having it. “Come on, man. Kathy Ireland is choice.”
“She is,” I conceded, “but we require more research. I think Arizona needs to recon Sanchez’s Sports Illustrated.”
“Affirmative,” said Wilson.
Arizona shook his head. “Why do I gotta do it?”
“Because you got mosquito wings and we don’t,” I said.
The kid remained unconvinced. “Are you mental? Platoon Sarge would dust me.”
“So don’t get caught,” I said. “Are you a badass scout or what?”
“You’re a lean, mean fighting machine, Arizona,” Wilson added, pumping his fist. “Scouts Out!”
“Fine, I’ll trade,” Arizona said. “Gimme your Chicken a la Grody.” He passed over his MRE—properly known as Meals, Ready to Eat, or, as we referred to them, Meals, Rarely Edible.
Sergeant Wilson chuckled as they exchanged packets.
I rested my head on the back of the truck’s rooftop hatch, sitting on the sling, and hummed the bass line from “Higher Ground.” It was mid-afternoon and hot, but not too hot, and there was a breeze carrying with it a hint of salt from the Pacific. Fortunately, it was the beginning of the dry season in Panama, so the humidity and the mosquitos were tolerable. It felt good.
Sergeant David Wilson was the same age as me, twenty-three, but had been in the uniform two years longer. He was a bodybuilder from California, tall and seriously pumped. A surfer. Arizona’s real name was Paul Balmochnykh, but nobody could pronounce his last name. He was a decent kid from Phoenix, fresh out of One Station Unit Training, or OSUT. He’d only been with us a few months. Skinny and cursed with bad acne, his pride and joy was the fuzz growing on his top lip he insisted on calling a mustache. It wasn’t. Not like our section leader, Staff Sergeant St. James, who had as close as you could get to a perfect Magnum P.I. ’stache without breaking grooming regulations. He was constantly on Arizona’s case to shave the caterpillar off his lip. The kid wouldn’t hear of it.
I closed my eyes and listened to the monkeys and parrots fighting to be heard over one another. It was only five days since America had invaded Panama. Things were buttoned down already, more or less, aside from bands of “Dingbats”—Noriega’s Dignity Battalions—who hadn’t gotten the memo that the war was over.
Special Forces, Rangers, and the 82nd had effectively shut down the Panama Defense Forces in short order. Cavalry Scouts like us were just there to provide protection for convoys, do some route reconnaissance, and secure landing zones for the birds we supported in the Air Cav. Aside from providing the Dingbats with sporadic target practice, nothing exciting had happened to us since we landed with the 7th Infantry Division as part of Task Force Atlantic a few days before. We’d missed the main event.
“You served your mission around here, didn’t you?” Wilson asked me.
“No, up north. Mexico Veracruz Mission.”
“Lotta betties up there?”
“I tried not to notice.”
“Man, I couldn’t do it. Two years wearing a white shirt and tie and no señoritas. Forget it, bro.”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad.”
Wilson had a devilish gleam in his eye. “Yeah, but you’re still a virgin.”
“Mmhmm.”
Arizona’s acne-filled face erupted into a grin. “Bennett’s a virgin?”
“Shut up, Arizona,” Wilson and I said together.
Before the conversation could go any further, I caught our section leader walking over to our mount. “Here comes trouble.”
Staff Sergeant St. James leaned into Arizona’s window and smiled. Tom Selleck, eat your heart out. It was always trouble when he flashed that trademark grin.
“How’re you boys doing?”
“Righteous,” Wilson said. “Lemme ask you a question. Crawford or Ireland?”
“Macpherson,” he replied.
“Told you,” Arizona mumbled from behind the steering wheel.
“Shut up, Private,” St. James said. “And shave that caterpillar off your lip. Listen up, we’re moving out in fifteen mikes. Tankers are coming through and Brigade wants to make sure the road’s clear up ahead. The Dingbats have been felling trees to make roadblocks. Wilson, squad leader meeting at my mount, now.”
“Yes, Sergeant.” Wilson donned his Kevlar helmet and unlatched his M16 as he exited the vehicle.
Arizona started drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and bobbing his head. I nudged him with my boot.
“What?” he asked, annoyed.
“Better do your maintenance checks, Private.”
“Did ’em earlier.”
“Do ’em again,” I said.
“Bogus, man,” Arizona grumbled. He kicked open his door and grabbed the laminated checklist.
“Don’t forget your Kevlar and weapon,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, yeah.” Arizona tossed his helmet on and slung his rifle over his shoulder.
“Yeah, yeah, what?”
“Yeah, yeah, Specialist.”
“And do up your chinstrap, John Wayne.”
Arizona flipped me the bird as he started around the Humvee, checking off boxes.
Meanwhile I busied myself with double-checking the love of my life. I was the assigned gunner on our mount, and my responsibility was the sleek black MK-19 automatic grenade launcher mounted on the turret. She was finicky and required just the right touch to pull back the charging handles, but when she let loose, it was a beautiful thing to behold as she belched out belt-fed 40mm grenades once per second, thump-thump-thump. I could drop an egg down a tank hatch at one thousand meters. Hole in one. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Jack Nicklaus.
Fifteen minutes later the platoon fired up the Humvees and we pulled out of the assembly area, our mount taking point down the dusty hard-packed dirt road.
“Red Two, this is Red Seven,” I heard Sergeant Wilson shout into the prick’s handset—that’s what we called the heavy PRC-77 radio, “the prick”—trying to be heard over the driving rain that beat on the roof of our Humvee.
“Go for Red Two,” replied our section leader, Staff Sergeant St. James.
“Be advised, road is washed out. Sending dismount to see if we can ford it. How copy?”
Dismount. I was up in the turret manning the Nineteen when I heard that. Water pooled around my boots, and I had no desire to invite it into my boots.
“Roger that,” the staff sergeant said. “Charlie Mike, out.”
Charlie Mike. Continue mission. Awesome.
Sergeant Wilson glanced back at me and flashed a grin. “Showtime, bro.”
“Moving, Sergeant.”
I ducked down and unlatched the rear door as Wilson took my position up in the turret, only for a gust of wind to rip it free from my hand. Outside the rain fell in driving sheets so thick I couldn’t see beyond a few meters. Fat droplets drummed on my Kevlar helmet and poncho. Lightning forked overhead, lighting up the dense jungle on either side of the road and washing out my NODs for a moment. A tremendous thunderclap shook the heavens.
The Humvee’s blackout lights shone in my NVGs on a torrent of water that had taken out a good section of what had been a hard-packed dirt road. Now it was a quagmire that sucked at my boots as I trudged forward, leaning into the howling wind.
The washout didn’t look any better from out here than it had from inside the Humvee. Water was still moving in a white-capped brown froth that greedily ate away at the road, carving a deep channel. If we were riding in the old M113 armored personnel carriers, we could make it across no problem. But these new trucks? Not so sure. Either way, I wasn’t about to step into the washout and cross it on foot. I moved back to the truck and told Wilson as much.
“Hop in, Bennett, and let’s see what these trucks can do,” he replied.
I nodded and remounted, absolutely drenched and dripping water all over the Humvee’s interior. The vehicle revved as if Arizona was trying to build up the courage to move by making the engine roar.
“Take it easy, Arizona,” said Sergeant Wilson, trying to calm the kid, who held on to the steering wheel white-knuckled like it was a lifeline. “Give her a little gas, not too much. Just ease into the water.”
I felt the front wheels drop as the road disintegrated beneath them. Arizona hit the gas too hard, and we were suddenly in the middle of the current, listing sideways as the wheels lost purchase.
“Slow is steady, steady is fast,” Wilson said, trying to keep his voice calm, his volume just south of a shout. “You can make it, man.”
Water foamed up over the hood, and Arizona revved the big diesel engine slowly. A moment later the wheels caught on something, the truck straightened out, and we were up and over the far bank and back on the road.
“Righteous!” Wilson yelled, performing a trademark surfer boy fist pump.
The grin on Arizona’s face went for miles.
Wilson got on the radio. “Red Two, this is Red Seven.”
“Go for Red Two.”
“We’re across. Washout is fordable.”
Fordable if you’re insane, I thought. And I was right, because Wilson was, in fact, insane. He was an adrenaline junkie. Surfing, snowboarding, whatever. He’d been to the Air Assault and Pathfinder schools. Just because.
“Roger. Sending Red Three.”
One by one the mounts of Red Platoon, Apache Troop, Second Squadron, Ninth Cavalry Regiment forded the washout. To my amazement no one got stuck, sucked in too much water, and cracked an engine block, or worse, washed downstream. Maybe these new trucks weren’t so bad.
Captain Brown’s voice came over the radio. “All Red elements, this is Red One. Charlie Mike.”
“You heard the man,” Wilson shouted to Arizona. “Move out. Nice and slow.”
“I can’t see shit, Sergeant.”
Wilson pointed a knife hand at the heavy fat rain-obscured windshield. “Just follow the road.”
The kid shrugged his shoulders while maintaining his death grip on the steering wheel. “What road?”
“Guide him, Bennett,” Wilson yelled up to me.
Rain assaulted me as I tried to peer through the storm. I could barely make out the road, a dark patch of black cutting through thick jungle, everything a mottled fuzz of green on green. There was another flash of lightning, far too close, and my NVGs washed out, blinding me. A thunderclap followed immediately, making my ears ring. I ducked back down.
“Sergeant, I’m gonna get fried if I stay up there!”
“Someone has to man the Nineteen,” he answered. “Find Arizona that road.”
“Yes, Sergeant. Arizona, just keep moving forward.”
“Nice and slow, bro,” Wilson added. “Feel out the road. You’ll know if you leave it.”
St. James’s voice came over the radio. “Red Seven, this is Red Two.”
“Go for Red Seven.”
“Red One says there’s a clearing up ahead, half a klick. We’ll coil up there. How copy?”
“Roger, Red Two. Coil up at the clearing.”
It took far too long to make those five hundred meters. Arizona left the road and crashed through brush more than once, but eventually we made the clearing and took up a position at the twelve o’clock while the rest of the platoon filed in, parking our ten Humvees in a tight circle, all facing outward, keeping about twenty meters’ separation between vehicles.
I guessed the clearing was about the size of a Major League Baseball field, but with the driving rain it was impossible to tell for sure, and my NVGs kept fogging up.
“How long I gotta stay up here, Sergeant?” I called down to Wilson. “I can’t see anything and nobody’s going to be out in this weather.”
“Captain wants all eyes on the perimeter,” my fearless squad leader replied.
It took an hour for the rain to let up, although the thunderstorm continued. By then Captain Brown had ordered us to fifty percent security. It looked like we would be staying in the clearing overnight. Wilson sent Arizona up to man the Nineteen and I wedged myself into the back seat. Water drenched me through to the bone, and even though the nights in Panama seldom dropped below seventy degrees, I felt cold and clammy.
A word about Captain Brown. He was an interesting officer, to say the least. A towering, burly man, he was a former heavyweight boxer and a scrolled Ranger—which meant he’d served in the 75th Regiment, not just went through the school for the tab like a lot of officers. He was a dead ringer for Larry Holmes, except he was bald as a cue ball. And he was a captain, which might sound unusual for a platoon CO, but wasn’t uncommon for Cavalry Scouts. He was also obsessed with the X-Men. Somehow every briefing contained snippets of wisdom from the comic book series. For Captain Brown there was only one Uncanny God, and Chris Claremont was his prophet.
All that aside, he was a good officer, the best I’d served under. He listened to his NCOs and had an open-door policy. If you had a problem, he’d talk you through it, provided you were willing to listen to the wisdom of Mr. Claremont.
As to why a former Ranger captain was commanding our platoon, we could only speculate. Specialist Bond had a pool going with a list of outlandish options to bet on, ranging from the ridiculous to the outright scandalous. My money was on one of the longshots—that he was on some secret squirrel Ranger mission and needed us and our trucks for some upcoming direct action. A man can dream.
I changed my socks and tried to get comfortable in the Humvee’s confines. As I drifted in and out of sleep, I heard snippets over the prick about a loss of comms with higher up. It seemed we couldn’t raise Apache Troop, or anyone in the 7th Division. I figured it was just the weather.
As it turned out, I figured very, very wrong.
The drums that started that night were my first clue.
Chapter 2
It was a couple hours before dawn, and I was on watch again, stationed behind my MK-19. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear the rhythmic pounding of drums growing slowly closer. Every few minutes a low-pitched whistling sound would rise between the beats and make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It made me think of what a banshee wail might sound like because it wasn’t human. It also didn’t sound like any animal I’d ever heard before.
The tree line was about fifty meters away and lit up in a fuzzy green-on-green haze in my NVGs. By the book, fifty meters is too close to safely engage with a MK-19, although the grenades arm themselves within about fifteen to thirty meters. Still, anything closer than seventy-five meters isn’t safe, doctrinally speaking. So if anyone burst out of the jungle, I’d be just about useless. Theoretically.
By now the thunderstorm had stopped, but we still didn’t have comms with higher up. The captain was debating heading back to base, but the roads had been barely passable in getting this far, and after several more hours of the stuff, the road would be a major hazard to navigate in the dark, even with night vision.
And then of course there were the drums. Nobody had any idea what that was about—other than that it was creepy as hell.
The radio squawked. “All Red elements, this is Red One. I need eyes in that tree line.”
Sergeant Wilson thumbed out toward the jungle. “You’re up, Bennett. Arizona, go with him. Quick sneak and peek. Don’t get lost.”
“Affirmative,” I said, ducking down from the hatch and grabbing my rifle.
“How come you get to stay in the mount, Sergeant?” Arizona asked.
“Someone has to man the Nineteen and monitor the radio, bro.” Wilson flicked at the chevrons pinned to his lapel. “Merry Christmas.”
Still grumbling, Arizona joined me outside the truck. “This sucks,” he said, fumbling to attach his NVGs to his Kevlar.
“Affirmative,” I agreed, pulling the charging handle on my M16 to load a round. Arizona followed my lead, and we bounded forward across the open ground in a crouch. The drums were hella unnerving.
Once we were a few meters into the trees, I signaled Arizona to stop, and we took a knee. Water dripped loudly from leaves in the canopy high overhead.
“What are we waiting for?” Arizona whispered.
“Patrol voice,” I subvocalized. “Whispers carry, man. Better to talk real low. Better yet, Arizona, don’t talk at all. We’re stopping to get our bearings. Just scan your sector and listen. Don’t fixate on anything. Keep your eyes moving.”
We waited for about ten minutes, keeping as motionless as possible before I waved Arizona to follow me. The jungle floor was thick with deadfall, making movement difficult. I cringed as the kid stumbled behind me. If there was a twig to step on, somehow he found it. Every time.
“Stop walking like an ox,” I hissed at him.
“Sorry.”
We moved another dozen meters before I called a halt again to watch and listen. After a few minutes Arizona plucked excitedly at my sleeve.
“What?” I grumbled.
“I think I saw something!”
“Keep your voice down. Give it to me as a SALUTE report.” I was testing him, asking for a standardized Size, Activity, Location, Unit identification, Time, and Equipment report.
“Uh, three—no, five men approaching from, uh, fifty meters to the south. Dingbats I bet. 0423 local. They’re carrying uh, spears, maybe?”
I had my NVGs on and was about to call Arizona out on several shortcomings in that report as I peered in the direction he’d indicated. But his equipment report gave me immediate pause. “Spears?”
“I… I think so, Bennett.”
“How desperate are the—oh, hold up.”
It was hard to make anything out, just green on green, but for a moment I thought I’d seen a really short man, or maybe a child, duck behind a tree. And yeah, it really did look like he had a spear in his hand. Moments later another one popped up from behind a screen of vegetation and rushed to cover. That one I got a good look at. He appeared to be a man, not a child, but very short. Half-naked and carrying a bundle of three or four short spears. Javelins really. Were there unreached tribes here in the Panamanian jungles? I didn’t know, but it sure looked like it.
Whoever they were, they were closing on us, using a kind of bounding overwatch. The single tube on the NVGs gave me zero depth perception, so it was hard to accurately estimate distances.
“What do we do?” Arizona whispered, his nerves evident in his voice.
“Just get ready,” I said.
“Ready for what?”
“If they get too close, I’ll fire a warning shot to alert the platoon. You know the ROE.”
The Rules of Engagement we’d been given were very specific: we were not to fire until fired upon. I wasn’t a fan, but orders were orders.
Another little man jumped up and silently ran a few meters before vanishing in the undergrowth. I was on one knee now, scanning through my M16’s iron sights.
“They’re getting closer!” Arizona hissed.
“Just watch your sector.” I thumbed off my safety and glanced at Arizona. “Finger off the dang trigger, man.”
“Right,” he said. “Sorry.”
For several long moments nothing happened.
Then, as if by some unseen and unheard command, five little men materialized all at once, not twenty meters away, and unleashed a volley of javelins. Not just normal throws either, like those guys in the Olympics. They used some kind of hooked sticks, about as long as your arm, to launch the javelins with tremendous velocity. I had a sudden memory of making one of those stick-things one summer in Boy Scouts. A word came to mind: atlatls. That’s what the Aztecs had called them.
All such thoughts vanished as I felt a javelin rip through the hood of my poncho and deflect off my Kevlar. Another hit me square in the stomach. Fortunately, I was still wearing my flak vest. Still hurt though, like a punch in the gut.
I didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.
One of the men caught my round in the chest and went down. I was already pivoting to the next and firing. Another volley of javelins flew at us, and I felt a searing heat as one grazed my right bicep. Another slammed into my flak vest, hitting my solar plexus dead center. I gasped for air as I returned fire, putting two rounds center mass into another one. I hadn’t heard Arizona fire once. Kid must have frozen in fear.
I tried to shout for him to start engaging, but only a sort of cough came out of my mouth. That spear to the chest had taken my breath away. Swinging my muzzle, I tracked a third target and fired. Rounds zipped into his head, and he dropped while I tried to steady myself. I had aimed for center mass.
That left two, and they pounced with the grace and speed of jungle predators as they rushed me.
Twenty meters isn’t very far once people start sprinting at you. I managed to drop one, and then the other was already right on top of me, swinging a tomahawk at my throat.
Time does funny things in moments like that. For me, it got really slow. I could hear the sharp crack of M16s firing, everyone in the trucks shouting, but it sounded distant. And my attacker, he was so close he blurred in my NVGs, but I got the impression of a snarling old man’s face, oddly feline, with big bat ears sticking out of the sides of his head. Two pairs of ears, I registered later, one smaller set, long and pointed, the other much larger and higher up. But at the time, I didn’t even process the fact that something from Weekly World News was jumping at me out of the Panamanian jungle. It was all instinct and survival.
I didn’t know it then, but these little creeps would soon become a serious pain in my rear.
I raised my rifle to block him, and he crashed into me, the two of us falling into the wet, muddy ground. Somewhere in the process he knocked my NVGs off and I dropped my rifle.
The guy’s breath was foul, like rotten eggs, and he hissed, baring sharp fangs that gleamed in the darkness. He might have been small, but he was solidly built and heavily muscled. I had one hand gripped around a wrist to keep the tomahawk from hacking me to pieces and another around his throat, holding him back as he tried to bite my face off. I needed a third hand to stop the guy from repeatedly stabbing my flak vest with a knife.
I tightened my hand around his neck, trying to strangle him, but he just hissed and spat all the louder. So I did the only thing I could think of in the moment: I head-butted him. Hard.
Pygmy cat-boy, meet Kevlar helmet.
The blow stunned him long enough for me to draw my knife and jam it up under his jaw and into his brain. He twitched for a few moments and then went still.
I fumbled, found my rifle, and brought it up to my shoulder, looking for more little men in the darkness. I could hardly see anything. My mind went to Arizona, who still hadn’t fired his weapon once that I could recall.
“Arizona,” I shouted. “You okay, man?”
The shooting was happening elsewhere now, with my platoon firing into the tree line far away from my position. I pulled the flashlight off my load-bearing vest and shone the red light around me, feeling a sense of dread that the little savages had taken the kid off into the jungle. What I found was just as bad. Arizona was lying in a heap off to the side, twitching and kicking his legs.
Meanwhile the weapons fire wasn’t dying down. If anything, it was intensifying.
I turned the kid over, still trying to keep a lookout on my surroundings. Arizona’s panicked eyes stared up at me. A javelin was stuck through his throat—it looked to have snapped in half when he fell—and he was choking on his own blood, making sick gurgling sounds.
“Hang on, Paul,” I said. “I’m getting us out of here.”
There was no point calling for Doc. We were too far away. But I didn’t know what to do so I shouted for him anyway. Maybe it would comfort the kid to think a medic was coming. But he needed help now. Only… I wasn’t qualified to give it. I knew if I pulled out the shaft, he’d die for sure. The best I could think of was to rip out a field dressing, wrap it around his throat, and haul him up in a fireman’s carry. So I did. Then I ran as fast as I could, stumbling and tripping over deadfall. I heard a javelin thunk into meat—whether it was Arizona or me I couldn’t even tell, that’s how hard the adrenaline was pumping—and another flew by my face, embedding itself into a tree only inches away.
I picked up the pace.
As I broke through the tree line, shouting out the running password at the top of my lungs so no one would shoot me, I could see Wilson up in our Humvee’s hatch waving at me to hurry. My legs were burning, and I could barely breathe.
As we closed the distance, Wilson lit up the MK-19, thump-thump-thump, and I heard explosions resonating deep in the forest behind me. PFC McKee from Sergeant Clark’s mount came running up to me and together we hauled Arizona behind my mount. Doc was already there as we laid the kid on the muddy ground. Arizona’s eyes were glazed over, and he wasn’t making any sounds. He wasn’t breathing.
“Bennett, McKee, get on your rifles!” Wilson barked, but I didn’t want to leave Arizona. Doc met my eyes and nodded for me to go.
I’d lost my NVGs, and I couldn’t see anything except for muzzle flashes and tracers from the Fifties flying into the jungle. McKee pulled me after him and we hit the ground beside my mount. I could hear our platoon sergeant’s voice over the radio in the truck calling a cease-fire. There were a couple last bursts of machine-gun fire and the thump of a grenade exploding a moment later in the trees… and then all was silent. Even the drums had stopped.
“McCoppin’s missing, man,” PFC McKee said under his breath.
“What?”
“We were on patrol, like you and Arizona. Then these things come out of nowhere—you know what I’m talking about, right? Those strange-looking little men? You saw ’em too, right? Throwin’ spears and hissin’ and spittin’. We got separated. McCoppin and me. I think they captured him.”
“How’d you get away?”
“I ran, man. I just ran. Call me yellow. Go ahead. I don’t care. Those things ain’t human.”
Doc crouched down beside me. “You okay, Bennett?”
“I—I think so.”
“Let me check you out, just to make sure.” He started patting me down, feeling for blood. He found the graze on my arm and bandaged it.
“Is Arizona gonna make it, Doc?” I asked, despite already knowing the answer.
“He’s gone, Bennett.” Doc’s tone was cold. Just stating the facts. No emotion. Sergeant Johnny “Doc” Yazzie was a twenty-six-year-old former Ranger medic, a 91B attached to our platoon; he’d served in the batts before getting busted down to E-5 and transferred out of the regiment for some unknown indiscretion. He’d been there. He’d seen things. He was a legit professional.
Sergeant First Class Sanchez, our platoon sergeant, was making the rounds, ensuring everyone had ammo. He paused by Doc and me and took a knee.
“What happened, Bennett?” he asked.
I tried to compose myself and gave my report as clearly and accurately as I could, but my voice wavered.
Sanchez pursed his lips. “Run that description of the enemy by me again, Specialist.”
“They were short, Sergeant. Under five feet. Half-naked. Faces like old men…”
“And?” he prompted when I hesitated.
“It sounds crazy, I know, but they… they had big ears, like bats, and seemed… I dunno… cat-like. Like their noses were—”
“He’s been through a lot,” Doc said. “The mind plays funny tricks under stress.”
“I saw ’em too, Sergeant,” McKee put in. “It was just like Bennett said.”
Sanchez nodded. “I’ve heard similar reports from others.” His voice was flat. The man was short and wiry but seemed seven feet tall when he was in your face about something, even though he rarely raised his voice. He was former Marine Recon and had been through the Army’s Pathfinder and Recondo schools. He was about as hardcore as hardcore could get without putting on a green beret or pinning a trident to your chest. Nothing fazed him. Apparently not even little freakish Stone Age cat-men with bat ears.
That others had seen them too was exactly what I didn’t want to hear. It would be much better if McKee and I had simply been hallucinating. I started to shiver uncontrollably.
“Get him some coffee,” Sanchez said to Doc. “And dry clothes. You’re off duty for now, Bennett. Doc will get you squared away.”
“Come on,” Doc said, helping me to my feet. “Little bit of Doc’s famous brew and dry gear will do wonders for you.”
“I—I don’t drink coffee, Doc.”
“Damn good time to start, Bennett.
Thank you for reading. Get the rest of the story, available in all formats, February 13th, 2024.
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Kick ass story can’t wait to get my hands on this. Cover art is killer as well
Thanks for the preview, it looks like a good story. I have the book on my kindle now and preordered the next one. 🙂