Damnation Code (William Massa) - William Massa Page 0,37
sanity and strangled all thoughts. He knew these guards, had served with them, fought with them. He’d seen them die.
Zagan’s security team was made up of his fallen comrades in arms. On his right was Sgt. McComery. Killed by a sniper bullet in Fallujah. To his left, Robert J. Walker. Torn apart by a roadside bomb on the dusty roads of Kabul. At the center of the undead trio was one of his closest friends, Michael Dugan, who’d taken a bullet meant for Talon and succumbed to his wounds in the stark mountains of Afghanistan. Was he going insane?
His fallen brothers-in-arms raised their firearms and locked in on him.
Talon hesitated. It’s a trick, an illusion…
Bullets punched the air and Talon automatically returned fire. Lead ripped into the guards wearing his dead friends’ faces. Talon stifled a scream as he felt the impact of each bullet on his own body. He looked down at his chest and saw blood oozing from ragged holes in his torso.
Talon spit blood and turned away from the dead guards, the once-again lifeless eyes of his old friends haunting him. Under his feet, the shiny floor shifted and undulated, distorting and changing texture. It was turning syrupy as physical reality turned against him. With each successive step, he sank deeper into the swamp-like floor.
Talon’s gaze became wild, ticking back and forth in a frenzied attempt to make sense of his warping reality.
Another figure appeared. The master of this nightmare. Zagan.
The Omicron CEO loomed before Talon, now an impossibly tall, otherworldly presence, strangely distorted as if Talon was viewing him through a funhouse mirror. The man tore off his robot mask to reveal the gaping holes where Talon’s bullets struck him earlier. Under the gory skin, Talon saw glimpses of silver gray that hinted at a metallic death skull lurking behind the flesh-and-blood façade.
The man had become the mask; the mask was becoming the man.
A second later, the swirling floor engulfed Talon, erasing the world in darkness.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THEY CALLED HIM the devil soldier.
Zagan’s head-of-security, Fisher, had earned the nickname in Fallujah when his Marine division came under heavy fire. With the casualties in his unit mounting, Fisher started praying. First to God, but the Almighty refused to answer his calls for help. All around him, bullets kept felling good men. The dust of the desert city turned red with their blood.
Desperate, his fury growing, Fisher kept whispering new prayers. Prayers directed at the Prince of Lies.
Thirty minutes later, reinforcements arrived in the besieged city and the tide of war turned. As superior firepower tore the Iraqis apart, Fisher switched his allegiance to a new master.
Stumbling through the battlefield, bleeding from various wounds, his skin baking in the desert heat, he sought out his enemy. He found one bullet-ridden Iraqi, head held high despite his sorry state. His defiance dissolved into an expression of agony as Fisher sunk his Ka-Bar into the man’s throat.
As the Iraqi soldier perished in the blood-soaked dust, Fisher pledged the fallen enemy’s soul to his dark savior. Later that evening, he stripped off his armor and fatigues and, using his Ka-Bar, he carved a pentagram into his chest.
It was a token of his newfound devotion to the forces of darkness.
Within a year he received a dishonorable discharge for his actions. Fisher worked odd jobs when he returned to San Francisco, mostly as a bouncer in seedier nightclubs. His chance for redemption came when Zagan hired him as his head-of-security.
Almost immediately he felt a kinship with his new employer. They both served the same dark master, in their own ways. Consequently, Omicron’s new enemy was his enemy. Fisher promised to make the masked man who’d slaughtered three true believers pay dearly for his insolence.
The brazen attack, as well as the willingness to take lives and resort to guerilla tactics, indicated the work of a fellow professional. The ferocity of the Tarot warning suggested a personal vendetta.
This assassin must be connected to one of the victims, Fisher thought.
His next step was to review the cult’s recent victims. Michelle’s soldier boyfriend jumped out at him from the start. The photographs of Mark Talon that accompanied the reports of Michelle’s murder gave him a bad feeling. The man’s hollow gaze spelled trouble to Fisher’s battle-hardened mind. This was a foe to be reckoned with. He needed to learn more about the man and his relationship with Michelle.
Fortunately, they still had the reporter bitch’s laptop.
A few hours after Talon sent his declaration of war, Fisher was going through