bashing her head on the concrete a second time. Stunned, she was still aware when his teeth sank into her shoulder.
She was going to die here. Eaten alive by these cannibals.
Something inside Sarah rebelled at the thought. No way in hell was she going down like this.
Help was on the way. All she had to do was hold on until her backup arrived. She could do that. She had to do that.
Channeling the adrenaline, Sarah ignored the pain and kicked the man off her legs. She bucked like a crazy woman, dislodging the first man.
Once her legs were free, she used them to leverage her upper body at an angle, forcing the second man to move. The slight change in position freed one of her hands. She grasped around for anything on the floor next to her and came up with a hard, cylindrical object. Her nightstick.
Praise the Lord.
Putting all her remaining strength behind it, she aimed for the man’s head, raining blows down on him with the stick. When that didn’t work, she changed targets, whacking at his body with the hard wood of the stick. She heard a few of the bones in his hand crack at one point, but this guy was tough. Nothing seemed to faze him.
Finally, she used the pointy end of the stick to push at his neck. That seemed to get some results and he shifted away. He moved enough for her to use the rest of her body for leverage to crawl out from under him.
His friend was up and coming back as she crab-walked away on her hands and feet, toward the door and the sunshine beyond.
The two men followed her, moving as if they had all the time in the world. Their pace was steady and measured as she crawled as fast as she could. It didn’t make any sense. They could have easily overtaken her, but they kept to their slow, walking pace.
Sarah hit the door and practically threw herself over the threshold. She had to get out in the open where her backup would see her right away. She was losing blood fast and her vision was dancing, tunneling down to a single dim spot. She was going to pass out any second. She had to do all she could to save herself before that happened.
Backup was coming. That thought kept her going. They’d be here any second. She just had to hold on.
She crawled into the sunlight, near her cruiser. Leaning against the side of her car, she tried for her radio, but the mic was long gone—probably a victim of the struggle with those two men. They were coming for her. They had to be.
But when she looked up, she saw them hesitate at the doorway to the building. The second man stepped through, but the first stayed behind, cowering in the darkness. He looked like some kind of walking corpse, with grisly brown stains of dried blood all around his mouth and on his clothes. Some of it was bright red. That was her blood—from where the sick bastard had bitten her.
The man walked calmly forward, under the trees that shaded the walkway to the old building. Sarah had parked on the street, out in open sun. She watched in dread as the man walked steadily toward her, death in his flat gaze.
Then something odd happened. He stopped where the tree cover ended. He seemed reluctant to step into the sun.
Sarah blinked, refocusing, but there wasn’t any other explanation for his hesitation she could think of. Then she heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. Her backup.
With salvation in sight, she finally passed out.
USSOCOM Commander’s Office,
MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida
The next day
“Commander Sykes, reporting as ordered.” Matt stood at crisp attention waiting for the admiral to acknowledge his presence.
“At ease, Commander. Have a seat.” The busy admiral pointed to a chair in front of his giant mahogany desk and pulled a red folder from a stack on his desk. It sailed through the air toward Matt and he grabbed it in a purely reflex action. “Read that while I finish signing these orders. Note the security level. It’s eyes only, Commander. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Whatever this was, it couldn’t be good. Matt had met with this terse admiral only once before, when he’d been called down to MacDill unexpectedly to interface with some Army Special Forces officers. Admiral Nealy was the current head of the unified Special Operations Command that got involved whenever the special ops