Javelin Rain Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise for Books by Myke Cole

  Ace Books by Myke Cole

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Author’s Note

  CHAPTER I | THE PLAN IS SOUTH

  CHAPTER II | HUNTING THE DEAD

  CHAPTER III | CALIFORNIA SUNSHINE

  CHAPTER IV | BRIEFING

  CHAPTER V | TOUCHING DOWN

  CHAPTER VI | MAMA DADOU

  CHAPTER VII | PATCHING UP

  CHAPTER VIII | WHAT IT’S LIKE

  CHAPTER IX | HONESTLY, OFFICER

  CHAPTER X | COLLATERAL DAMAGE

  CHAPTER XI | TOGETHER

  CHAPTER XII | PURE GOLD

  CHAPTER XIII | PROGRAM REVIEW

  CHAPTER XIV | ON TO THE LIVING

  CHAPTER XV | ALL THE DEAD CAN DO IS PROTECT

  CHAPTER XVI | DOESN’T ANYONE KNOCK ANYMORE?

  CHAPTER XVII | THE PLAN IS WEST

  CHAPTER XVIII | PUSHED TOO FAR

  CHAPTER XIX | THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

  CHAPTER XX | WHY DID YOU GO?

  CHAPTER XXI | LAST RESORT

  CHAPTER XXII | NEW MANAGEMENT

  CHAPTER XXIII | RETURN

  CHAPTER XXIV | THE FLIGHT IN

  CHAPTER XXV | COMBINED

  CHAPTER XXVI | SO OTHERS MIGHT LIVE

  EPILOGUE | COASTLINE

  GLOSSARY OF MILITARY ACRONYMS AND SLANG

  PRAISE FOR

  “The best novel [Cole’s] written so far . . . A military fantasy that combines intense personal anguish with elements of actual horror.”

  —Tor.com

  “Myke Cole’s novels are like crack: they’re highly addictive, and this one is no exception.”

  —BuzzFeed

  “Intense and explosive—Cole tells a hell of a story.”

  —Mark Lawrence, international bestselling author of The Liar’s Key

  “The story is a powerful one . . . it takes some oft-maligned tropes of military adventure fiction and shows us how those things are supposed to be done.”

  —Howard Tayler, awardwinning creator of webcomic Schlock Mercenary

  “Think Vince Flynn plus a whole lot of magic mixed in and baked in hellfire, and you’ve got the gist of how awesome Myke Cole’s new series is shaping up to be.”

  —Michael Patrick Hicks, author of Convergence

  “Cole’s books are an intriguing mix of fantasy and military fiction . . . [Gemini Cell] is outstanding.”

  —SFcrowsnest

  “With each book, Myke Cole levels up, and Gemini Cell is no exception. This is Cole’s best work to date . . . A fast-moving, page-turning story that you’ll read late into the night.”

  —Fantasy-Faction

  “Myke Cole is a fantastic author who gets better with every book he writes.”

  —Whatchamacallit Reviews

  “This is some really good, exciting military/urban fantasy. Cole’s style is fast-paced, immensely enjoyable, and delivers on both action and character in equal measure.”

  —SFRevu

  PRAISE FOR THE SHADOW OPS NOVELS

  “It’s not just military . . . It’s just a great book.”

  —Patrick Rothfuss, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Slow Regard of Silent Things

  “Hands down, the best military fantasy I’ve ever read.”

  —Ann Aguirre, New York Times bestselling author of Breakout

  “Fast-paced and thrilling from start to finish . . . military fantasy like you’ve never seen it before.”

  —Peter V. Brett, international bestselling author of The Skull Throne

  “Excellent, action-packed novels that combine elements of contemporary magic and superhero fiction with the type of atmosphere genre readers usually only get in military SF.”

  —Tor.com

  “Arguably one of the definitive military fantasy novels.”

  —The Founding Fields

  “[Cole] proves that an action blockbuster can have heart and emotional depth, while never skimping on the fireworks and explosions.”

  —Fantasy-Faction

  “Myke Cole is an absolute gift to urban fantasy and military fantasy subgenres.”

  —Fantasy Book Critic

  Ace Books by Myke Cole

  SHADOW OPS: CONTROL POINT

  SHADOW OPS: FORTRESS FRONTIER

  SHADOW OPS: BREACH ZONE

  GEMINI CELL

  JAVELIN RAIN

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  JAVELIN RAIN

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2016 by Myke Cole.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-425-26965-7

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / March 2016

  Cover illustration by Larry Rostant.

  Cover design by Diana Kolsky.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Peat and Pete, my brother and my brother

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing novel acknowledgments is always a fraught exercise. So many people other than the author are involved in making a successful book that it is inevitable you’ll miss someone. Any omissions are my own, and I hope those slighted will accept my apology.

  I want to single out for praise my tireless teams at Ace/Roc and Headline, and my agents at JABberwocky and Zeno. Thanks also to my audio publishers at Recorded Books and W. F. Howes, and extra-special thanks to GraphicAudio, whose gorgeous fullscale radio dramas have brought my books to life in a way I never imagined possible. Thanks also to Larry Rostant, who similarly evokes my world through imagery. I see my world because of you, and I am incredibly grateful.

  Thanks are due to my beta readers, and in particular to Mallory O’Meara, who weathered the storms of my moods as she applied the same critical lens with which she brings incredible films to life. This book would not be worth reading if not for her.

  Thanks also to my two tribes: the nerds and the military/ police, both separate and intersecting, simultaneously teaching me to fight and giving me something to fight for.

  And Peat, once more, lighting the way and covering my six, not a day goes by that I don’t remember how very much I owe you.

  CONTENTS

  Praise for Books by Myke Cole

  Ace Books by Myke Cole

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Ackn
owledgments

  Epigraph

  Author’s Note

  CHAPTER I | THE PLAN IS SOUTH

  CHAPTER II | HUNTING THE DEAD

  CHAPTER III | CALIFORNIA SUNSHINE

  CHAPTER IV | BRIEFING

  CHAPTER V | TOUCHING DOWN

  CHAPTER VI | MAMA DADOU

  CHAPTER VII | PATCHING UP

  CHAPTER VIII | WHAT IT’S LIKE

  CHAPTER IX | HONESTLY, OFFICER

  CHAPTER X | COLLATERAL DAMAGE

  CHAPTER XI | TOGETHER

  CHAPTER XII | PURE GOLD

  CHAPTER XIII | PROGRAM REVIEW

  CHAPTER XIV | ON TO THE LIVING

  CHAPTER XV | ALL THE DEAD CAN DO IS PROTECT

  CHAPTER XVI | DOESN’T ANYONE KNOCK ANYMORE?

  CHAPTER XVII | THE PLAN IS WEST

  CHAPTER XVIII | PUSHED TOO FAR

  CHAPTER XIX | THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

  CHAPTER XX | WHY DID YOU GO?

  CHAPTER XXI | LAST RESORT

  CHAPTER XXII | NEW MANAGEMENT

  CHAPTER XXIII | RETURN

  CHAPTER XXIV | THE FLIGHT IN

  CHAPTER XXV | COMBINED

  CHAPTER XXVI | SO OTHERS MIGHT LIVE

  EPILOGUE | COASTLINE

  Glossary of Military Acronyms and Slang

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The term “Javelin” denotes the seizure, theft, or loss of a national security asset with strategic impact. The term is followed by an explanatory code word indicating the severity of the incident and the nature of the response. Code word “Dry” indicates executive authorization of a diplomatic or clandestine response, with no action required from major commands. Code word “Drizzle” indicates a combined response involving assets from the State Department, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Code word “Rain” indicates a crisis of existential proportions representing a direct and pressing threat to the continued security of the nation. Javelin Rain incidents authorize any and all means necessary to bring the matter to a resolution as quickly and completely as possible. —Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Manual 3250.03B Joint Reporting Structure Event and Incident Reporting

  A glossary of military acronyms and slang can be found in the back of this book.

  The fear of death follows from the fear of life.

  —Mark Twain

  CHAPTER I

  THE PLAN IS SOUTH

  James Schweitzer’s bare foot came down on a splintered root that punctured his sole, digging an inch-deep furrow in the gray flesh. His senses registered the cut, assessed the damage, dismissed it.

  He felt no pain. The furrow in his flesh didn’t bleed. Schweitzer knew he should be horrified by what he had become. What little clothing remained on him was shredded, filthy, and stinking. The body beneath was a landscape of puckered purple-white scars, dotted with darker gray rents, wounds that would never heal, revealing the yellowed articulation of the bone beneath. His face was a dark horror, a parody of his features stretched over a skull that was mostly metal.

  His eyes were gone. In their place burned twin silver orbs, thimbles full of metal-colored fire.

  He was a Hollywood zombie. No, movie zombies shambled. Schweitzer picked his way through the forest as nimble as a cat, his body instinctively low, hands up and bone claws extended, ready for the fight that might find him at any moment.

  His wife came behind him, their son slung across her chest. Schweitzer had tried to carry him, but Patrick wouldn’t have it. Sarah Schweitzer knew her husband despite what death had made of him, years of love bound up in the magic that linked their souls, but Patrick was just a boy. Maybe, one day, he would develop the arcane sympathy that connected Schweitzer and his wife, but he hadn’t yet, and he squalled and fought whenever Schweitzer came near.

  Keep them alive. The words were a mantra, repeating in his mind. Over and over again, Keep them alive. His magically augmented hearing picked up the steady beating of Sarah and Patrick’s hearts, the rhythm keeping him from panic, reminding him that he hadn’t lost them. Or had he? He listened to Sarah’s panting breaths as she struggled to keep up. She was alive.

  He wasn’t. His embrace was cold, his skin hard from the glycerol they’d used to keep his veins inflated and resistant to wear. Even if they shook off the Gemini Cell, found a way to escape them forever, he couldn’t stand at her side at art shows, laugh with her at parties, take her out to dinner. No matter how much he loved her, he couldn’t be a husband to her anymore.

  He glanced back over his shoulder, and his spiritual stomach seized as he realized how far behind him she was. Sarah was young and fit, but the monsters pursuing them were immortal, needing neither rest nor food. She stumbled, wheezed. Schweitzer forced himself to slow, to wait for her. The need to run was almost overwhelming; the dead muscles in his legs twitched with the desire to move on.

  For the hundredth time since they’d fled together, he considered telling her to leave him, to take Patrick and find some place to lie low, to start over. He dismissed the idea as soon as it arose. He was the Gemini Cell’s primary target, but they would never suffer someone knowing as much as Sarah did. As for Patrick, they’d either kill him or take him as their own, and Schweitzer wasn’t going to let either of those things happen. The Gemini Cell had all the resources of a special operations regiment and intelligence service combined, but that paled in comparison to their Gold Operators, feral monsters, all as immortal and superpowered as Schweitzer himself.

  No, Sarah and Patrick were safest with him. Only Schweitzer was strong enough to protect them. Grief for all he had lost ripped through him yet again, and yet again he quashed it. Grief was an emotion for the living. As was anger, or regret, or joy. He couldn’t afford those luxuries now. He could take one thing from his former life: his oath as a Navy SEAL. So others might live.

  He’d died trying to protect Sarah and Patrick. He’d been fortunate enough to get a second crack at it, and by God, he’d take it.

  So others might live.

  He turned his focus to the woods around him, leaping over a fallen log, landing on a stone barely larger than his foot and balancing there. The magic that animated his corpse gave him heightened senses. He could see for miles in different spectrums. He could sniff out a rose petal buried in a garbage heap. Now, he dialed his hearing out, straining to catch the sounds of dirt-bike engines or helicopter rotors, anything that might indicate that the Cell’s agents were closing in.

  Nothing. His boosted senses brought him only the sounds of beetles foraging in the dead leaves beneath them, the wind rushing in the canopy over their heads. The only smells were leaf mold and wildflowers and fresh water a long way off. No trace of humanity.

  They were deep in nearly two million acres of forest spanning three states. Years of running counterinsurgency ops in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan had taught Schweitzer firsthand how hard it was to locate a single man on the run, even one with a family. All the drone cameras and ground teams backed by largest defense budget in the world couldn’t make the haystack any smaller, the needles any bigger. He nodded and pressed on.

  “Jim!” Sarah sounded winded and a lot farther behind him than he’d realized. He stopped, whirled.

  She was bent at the waist, hands on her hips, breathing in labored gasps. Her pink hair was clotted with leaves and mud, her T-shirt ripped and filthy. Patrick flailed in his makeshift sling, all cried out but still struggling.

  “Wait . . .” she panted. “Jesus . . . fucking . . . Christ . . . just wait . . . one . . . minute.”

  He had pushed her too hard, too fast. He had forgotten mortal limitations. It was a reminder of the chasm that separated them, and it tore his heart anew. “Sorry.”

  “Patrick and I aren’t like you.” She straightened, spat a long streamer of mucus-flecked saliva, and suppressed a coughing fit. “We can’t keep going like this.”

  Her skin was pale and waxy, her eyes fever bright. He was hurting her, as his frequent absences had i
n life, all the missed art shows, her long nights at home alone caring for Patrick while he was away on ops. And now she was condemned to run like an animal, hounded by the undead, all because of him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, hoping that his tone conveyed just how much. “I’ll slow down.”

  But he didn’t want to slow down. The Gemini Cell wouldn’t rest until it had them. He turned to go.

  Sarah didn’t move. “Where are we going?”

  Schweitzer realized that he didn’t know. Since they’d won the battle at Drew’s farm and fled into the forest, his only thought had been an animal litany of get away get away get away. He cursed himself. That was feral thinking, better suited to jinn like Ninip, the monster who’d shared his own corpse. At last, he’d figured out how to exorcise the jinn and take full control of his body, but he wondered if Ninip hadn’t corrupted him, warped him with its predator lust.

  “Away,” Schweitzer said. “We have to put miles between us and our last known position. They’ll be launching from that old man’s house.” Drew and Martha, kindly old retirees who had taken Sarah in, and paid the ultimate price for it. More deaths laid at Schweitzer’s door.

  “Away?” Sarah asked. “That’s the plan? We have to do better than that.”

  She was right, of course, but the feral side of him, the jinn side, as he was coming to think of it, snarled. She was slowing them down. “We can’t stop,” he said.

  “Your goal here is to protect Patrick and I, and you’re not going to succeed at that if we both drop dead of exhaustion. We need to rest.”

  “Sarah, I . . .”

  “No, Jim. We are in this together. If you want to help me, that’s fine. I accept your help, but I won’t accept a leash. We need to come up with a plan.”

  One advantage to death was that Schweitzer had no trouble keeping his emotion off his face. He swallowed his anger and frustration, doubly intense because he knew she was right.

  “Fine,” he said, keeping his voice neutral. “The plan is that we keep moving as fast as we can, but slow enough that you and Patrick can keep up.”