The Omicron Kill - An Omega Thriller (Omega Series Book 11) Read online

  Somewhere glass shattered. Njal shouted, “Shoot him!”

  There was a crack, then two more. Dust spat up from the ground around us. Njal grunted and knelt down. I heard him say, “Not today…”

  I knelt beside him. He scowled at me. “Get him! I will not die for nothing!”

  “You’re not going to fucking die! Get up!” I dragged him to his feet, hurled him in the back of the Land Rover and slammed the door. Ochoa was at the barracks, fumbling with the lock. I took aim. He wrenched the door open and I missed the shot. A soldier went down instead, but all the guys behind him came storming out. I let off a burst and five guys fell. Then I clambered behind the wheel. The engine roared, I floored the pedal. Slugs like hailstones pelted the chassis and shattered the side windows as we hurtled toward the gate. I heard Njal’s voice from the back, weak and breathing hard.

  “The gates are locked, Lacklan. How you gonna get out…”

  “I don’t plan to.”

  I spun the wheel and screamed around the villa in a cloud of dust. I reached back and grabbed one of the assault rifles Njal had collected. There was no windshield because I had shattered that earlier. I rested the magazine on the window frame above the dash and came around the back of the villa, on the barracks side, to the sight of some fifteen soldiers, all with their backs to me, charging after their general to where they thought I was, when I was actually behind them. I could hear Njal laughing and realized I was laughing too. And to our crazed laughter was added the laughter of the AK-47 I was holding as it opened up, spitting death. The hail of lead tore into the running soldiers, spewing up great fountains of blood and gore, crippling, maiming and killing as the men went down.

  And then it wasn’t the bullets killing them, but the wheels of the truck as I crashed into them and rode over them. I spun the wheel again and again as the few remaining men scattered and fled, and I went after them, picking them off, mowing them down in hot hails of death.

  Finally, there was no one left. No one but the general, lying in the dust, staring at me. I climbed out of the truck and walked toward him.

  “Get up.”

  “Why…?”

  “You granted me my life when you could have killed me. I’ll give you the chance to die with honor.”

  He got to his feet and squared up to me. For a moment we stood in the floodlit yard, staring into each other’s faces under the black sky. Then he did what I knew he would do. He bent, pulled his Bowie knife from his boot and charged me, screaming. I stepped to my left, gripped his wrist in my left hand and smashed the heel of my right into his nose. The pain made him gasp and stagger back. I kept pace with him, still holding his wrist, and smashed my knuckles into his wind pipe. His eyes bulged as he struggled to draw breath. He dropped the knife and tore at his throat with both hands. I bent and picked up the big blade with the serrated back. I took a large step toward him and rammed the blade home, up to the hilt, into his chest. He shuddered, then fell on his back.

  I looked down at him, where his bulging eyes were staring unseeing at the emptiness of space. Flames were dancing in his eyes from where the lab had started to burn.

  “I stabbed you in the heart, Omicron. You’re dead,” I said. “And so is Ben.”

  I walked back to the Land Rover and opened the back door. Njal was lying very still.

  “You still with me, pal?”

  After a moment he said, “Yuh…” but his voice was weak, like he was very tired.

  I closed the door and got behind the wheel. As I drove toward the gate again I asked him, “Where are you hit?”

  He answered like he was half asleep. “In the chest. Left. Is not my heart, cause I ain’t dead, right?”

  “Right. You stay with me, Njal. Don’t you go to sleep. You understand?” I pulled off my shirt and handed it back to him. “Press this against the wound to stem the flow of blood.”

  He took it.

  “I’m OK… Just getting kinda sleepy…”

  I stopped at the gate and swung down from the cab. I ran to the guards’ hut, found the green buttons to open the gates and hammered on them. The gates groaned and creaked, rattled and buzzed as they rolled open. I climbed back in the cab and drove through, into the blackness, with the cones from the headlamps picking out the road ahead, and the twisted, diabolical shapes of the trees as they leapt out at me. I spoke as I drove.

  “I’m going to take you to Cosalá, pal. We’ll get you a doctor. You’re going to be OK.”

  He didn’t answer.

  I went on, “It’s probably a through and though. No vital organs. Your heart’s OK, and your lungs…”

  I should have stopped, should have turned and looked. I should have checked how he was. I should have examined the wound. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t turn around. I kept driving, careening down the dirt track, willing the damned truck to go faster, not wanting to see what I knew was behind me. It was not today. He had said so: not today.

  “They have to have a doctor, Njal,” I said. “We’ll wake him up. We’ll drag him out of bed, pal. Don’t you worry. I’m not going to let you die. There is no way you get to Valhalla before me. Not today…”

  My voice sounded strange and twisted in my ears, and ahead the lights of the village, growing closer, were blurred because there were tears in my eyes and my face was wet, because behind me there was only silence. Not even the sound of breathing.

  EPILOGUE

  The moon had not risen yet. The sky was almost black. The number of stars was astonishing, like gold and silver dust cast over infinity, incredibly far away. The ocean, a sheet of black glass, lapped gently against the hull of our small sloop. The sails were furled. The breeze was chill on my skin. The world seemed an empty, cold, wet place.

  Sole came up from below, wrapped in a blanket. She handed me another and sat next to me.

  “He’ll have to come soon. The moon is gonna rise, then it’s not safe.”

  I studied her a moment, then put the blanket around my shoulders. “It is never safe for you. Why do you live here?”

  “I’m from Sinaloa. I was born here. I was more at risk when I was sixteen, eighteen, till I moved to California. Now I am old. In the cartel’s eyes I am old. Nobody is interested in me.”

  “Your kids?”

  “They’ll go with their father before they are at risk.”

  “Jim?”

  She nodded. “He is my husband.”

  I smiled. “Tough break.”

  She smiled too, then laughed. “Good man, terrible husband. Like you, I guess.”

  “I guess. I don’t know if I’m a good man. I am tired of killing. I am tired of all the death.”

  She reached under her blanket and pulled out a pack of Camels from her shirt pocket. She shook one free and offered it to me. I took it. She flipped an old steel Zippo and we lit up.

  “What were you doing there?”

  I shook my head.

  She said, “I know about Omega. Jim is my husband, remember?”

  “I can’t talk about it.”

  She sighed. “Cosalá, that’s Zapata, el Vampiro. He has a ranch up there, and it’s no secret he is close pals with the governor and General Ochoa. So I figure that was your job. What went wrong?”

  I took a deep drag and released a stream of smoke over the black sea. “Compassion went wrong. We hit a senior member of Omega. Professional logic dictated we take out his mistress too, make it look like they killed each other. But we didn’t want to kill an innocent woman. So we framed her for her lover’s death, but gave her a new identity and a new life in the States. It was a costly mistake, not just financially.” I gestured at her. “Just like Jim talks to you about Omega, I figure this guy spoke to his mistress, gave her information, people to contact if she was ever in need…” I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe he even introduced her to other members. But I figure the minute she got off the plane in L.A. she called somebody, and when we struck, they were waiting for us. It was stupid and naïve of us. And Njal
paid the price in full.”

  She nodded and sighed. “Being noble is a weakness, Lacklan. But it is also a strength. You just gotta learn to be noble and smart.” She gave me a gentle punch on the shoulder. “You gonna die anyway, right? People who are bad, and people who are noble but stupid, die thinking their lives were wasted. People who were noble and smart, die knowing their lives were worth something.”

  I nodded. “That’s wise. But a bit late for me.”

  “It’s never late, dumbass.”

  I looked at her and laughed. “No?”

  She smiled with hooded eyes. “Nope. It is never early and it is never late. It is always now. No more, no less.”

  “Zen.”

  “Nope. Truth. Give yourself a break.”

  We were quiet for a while, smoking and watching the northern sky, waiting for her husband. My mind drifted. I thought of Njal sinking to his knees. His quiet voice, “Not today…”

  “What?”

  I turned to Sole, realizing I had spoken out loud. I shook my head, then said, “It never ends, Sole. You eliminate one cell, one group, and then there’s another, and then another. And you keep killing them, but they keep coming back. And you begin to realize that it is not Omega that’s evil, it’s people. And you are not killing Omega, you are killing people. And…” I gave a desperate, humorless laugh. “The reason you are killing them is because they plan to kill…”

  “…people…”

  I looked at her and nodded. “I have become my enemy.”

  “If only it were that simple, Lacklan, but I think there is a lot more to what Omega do than killing people. Killing is the least of their evils.”

  “I know, you’re right, Sole. But I don’t want to become like them. I am tired of the killing, tired of being the destroyer.”

  I looked away, to the north, and saw one star that was brighter than the others. I was surprised to feel a pang, and a twist of resentment at its appearance that I could not quite place. I would have been happy to spend the night on that yacht, talking.

  I turned to her and said, suddenly, with a strange sense of urgency, “Sell me your house.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “What?”

  “Your house, sell it to me.”

  She shook her head. “I told you I don’t want charity.”

  “And I told you, you won’t get any from me. The house would have its uses for operations against the cartel. For real, Sole. And you and your kids could get away, somewhere safe.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Listen, my old regiment, the DEA, the Feds, the CIA, not to mention me and Jim, we could all use that house.”

  She was frowning, hesitant.

  “Please,” I said, and surprised myself. “Let me do something useful that does not involve killing people. Let me do this.”

  She nodded. Then she smiled and she nodded again. “OK, thank you.” Then there was mischief in her hooded eyes. “But it won’t be cheap.”

  “Good. I hate cheap things.”

  Soon we could hear the drone of the twin engines, and the great hulk of the Grumman Albatross came into view. We watched it settle on the water, among great spouts of luminous foam, and it came gently to a halt fifty or sixty feet away. Sole started the outboard and coasted over to the door in the rear of the plane. As we drew level, it opened and Jim stood looking out at us. He nodded at me and smiled at Sole.

  “How is he?”

  She shrugged. Her tone was hostile. “Lucky. Lacklan has offered to buy my house. I told him yes.”

  He regarded me with curious, bright eyes. “Good,” he said. “I’ve been trying to convince her to sell that place for a long time. Where’s Njal?”

  I said, “I’ll go get him.”

  When I got below, he was sitting on his bunk. He was dressed, but you could see the bandages under his shirt.

  “We going home?” he said.

  “Yeah, pal. We’re going home.”

  “Good.”

  He stood and I helped him up the stairs and onto the deck. He was still weak and groggy from painkillers. Jim helped him into the plane and they hugged. Then Njal disappeared into the bowels of the aircraft, muttering something about how he was going to lie down. Jim regarded me.

  “Let’s go.”

  I said, “Joelma blew the whistle on us. They were expecting us.”

  He nodded. “I figured that. We’re debriefing her now.”

  I went to move, but hesitated. “Ochoa said Ben is still alive.” The hull of the yacht tapped the side of the plane. The waves lapped. In the east, the orange rim of the moon peered over the world and warped. “I keep hearing he’s alive. I get messages from him. They said the war was over, and I just hadn’t got the memo.”

  He glanced past me at the moon. “They’re playing with your head, Lacklan. Don’t let them get to you. We need to go. The moon’s rising. We also need to talk. We almost lost Njal.”

  “I know.” I glanced at Sole. “I’m going to stay and deal with the buying of the house. I’ll see you back in L.A. Give me a couple of weeks.”

  He nodded a few times. Then snorted a small laugh and nodded a bit more. “OK, call me.” He looked at Sole. “You too. Keep me in the loop.”

  We watched the plane speed across the water, then rise up into the black sky, growing dim as the drone faded. Then we hoisted the mainsail and the jib, and headed slowly back to shore. I found a bottle of Jameson’s down below and poured us each a shot, then sat beside her and watched the moon slowly rise over the horizon.

  “Where are you going to stay?”

  She asked it looking at the moon, but then turned to face me. She had no expression, but there was humor in her eyes.

  I took a deep breath and puffed up my cheeks. “It’s funny you should ask. I was wondering the same thing about you, once the contract is signed, while you sort out a new school for the kids and everything… I guess I could rent you a room…”

  “Oh, you gonna rent me a room in my own house?”

  “But it won’t be your house. It will be my house.”

  “Not if I don’t sell it to you it won’t!”

  “Great! Now you tell me. Now the plane’s gone.”

  “We can call him back!”

  “No, don’t do that…”

  And so it went, as we sailed slowly along the golden path to the moon.

  * * *

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  DEAD COLD MYSTERY SERIES

  An Ace and a Pair (Book 1)

  Two Bare Arms (Book 2)

  Garden of the Damned (Book 3)

  Let Us Prey (Book 4)

  The Sins of the Father (Book 5)

  Strange and Sinister Path (Book 6)

  The Heart to Kill (Book 7)

  Unnatural Murder (Book 8)

  Fire from Heaven (Book 9)

  To Kill Upon A Kiss (Book 10)

&n
bsp; Murder Most Scottish (Book 11)

  The Butcher of Whitechapel (Book 12)

  Little Dead Riding Hood (Book 13)

  Trick or Treat (Book 14)

  Dead Cold Box Set #1: Books 2-4 (SAVE 33%)

  Dead Cold Box Set #2: Books 5-7 (SAVE 33%)

  Dead Cold Box Set #3: Books 8-10 (SAVE 33%)

  Dead Cold Box Set #4: Books 11-13 (SAVE 33%)

  THE OMEGA SERIES

  Dawn of the Hunter (Book 1)

  Double Edged Blade (Book 2)

  The Storm (Book 3)

  The Hand of War (Book 4)

  A Harvest of Blood (Book 5)

  To Rule in Hell (Book 6)

  Kill: One (Book 7)

  Powder Burn (Book 8)

  Kill: Two (Book 9)

  Unleashed (Book 10)

  The Omicron Kill (Book 11)

  Omega Box Set #1: Books 2-4 (SAVE 33%)

  Omega Box Set #2: Books 5-7 (SAVE 33%)

  Omega Box Set #3: Books 8-10 (SAVE 33%)

  * * *

  [1] See Kill: One and Kill: Two

  [2] See Kill: One

  [3] See Kill: Two

  [4] See Dawn of the Hunter

  [5] See To Rule in Hell

  [6] See Kill: Two

  [7] See Kill: One