That was the right call, and Steve knew it. He’d been hoping the first wave would overwhelm the human soldiers, but they were too well trained and too well armed.

“We don’t have many of those M72s, General.”

She nodded again. “Yes, Emperor. However, I’m certain the humans detonated all of their Claymores, and they have to be running low on ammunition. Our fast ground attack should breach their perimeter if we can clear out the snipers.”

If the second wave didn’t work, Steve’s only option was to launch the third wave. That wave was supposed to be his containment wave, the troops that would kill anyone — Converted included — that came out of the hotel.

He didn’t have time to think it through. The humans could send more helicopters at any moment, and his people had used up most of the Stingers.

The humans were running out of ammo, but so were the Chosen Ones.

He raised the binoculars. “General Brownstone, launch wave two.”

A MAN’S WORD …

Paulius ejected a spent magazine, popped in a fresh one. The enemy had fallen back, but they were still firing. He’d found new cover behind a white delivery truck. Bullets smacked into the metal body so fast it sounded like an off-rhythm drummer experimenting with a new song.

One Ranger lay dying to his left. Another to his right was already gone, or he would have screamed from the flames that engulfed his chest and arm.

An explosion came from the towering hotel above and behind him. Paulius looked up to see a cloud of thin smoke billowing from the fifth floor, window shards tumbling down to the street below. He saw a second explosion — a there-and-gone fireball blowing out a cloud of spinning gla.s.s, shredded insulation and torn metal.

He thumbed his SEAL channel.

“Overwatch, displace, rockets targeting fifth floor!”

Another explosion hit the hotel, farther to the right; three smoldering holes gaped wide, making the building look like a tree chopped at the base that might topple over and crash into the street.

The interior perimeter suddenly lit up with hard-hitting snap explosions that cast out waves of dirt and snow. Paulius threw himself face-first to the pavement — there wasn’t much one could do against a grenade volley but lie low and pray.

A machine gun barked. A man shouting “Here they come again!” drew Paulius’s attention back to the street.

He stayed on his belly, aimed his M4 under the truck, found his first targets: a pair of kids — kids, dammit — sprinting forward, each holding a kitchen knife. He took them out, two shots for the first, three for the second.

And then, Paulius saw something that his eyes couldn’t immediately process: a taxi, sliding sideways toward the perimeter, toward him, smashing bodies aside, tires pushing up little waves of red slush. There was something behind that car.

Something big.

“All units, concentrate fire on that taxi!”

The taxi’s doors blossomed with new holes as Rangers and SEALs alike focused their fire, but the vehicle was moving too fast — it was too late to stop it.

Paulius dove away from the delivery truck a moment before the cab crashed in. The truck toppled, smashed down on its right side. A Ranger who had been using the truck for cover didn’t make it clear; the heavy vehicle crushed his left foot, trapping him.

Klimas rolled to his feet, came up ready to fire — and for the first time in his military career, he froze.

A monster. Eight feet tall, shoulders and chest rippling with thick coils of muscle. Molotov firelight played off wet, dark-yellow skin. Open sores dotted the body, some trailing visible rivulets of pus. The wide neck supported a huge, heavy-jawed head topped with spotty patches of tight, curly black hair. The face seemed toylike compared to the oversized body. Its mouth was full of long, thick teeth that could easily rip flesh from bones.

And sticking up from behind each clenched fist, a long, jagged, pointed arc of bone.

The trapped Ranger rolled to his back, stared up at the monstrosity only a foot away. The Ranger screamed.

The yellowish beast raised a bare foot, drove it down into the Ranger’s stomach. The soldier’s screaming stopped. His hands weakly gripped the long leg, then his fingers slid away and his arms fell limply to the wet pavement.

The monster leaned down and roared.

Klimas heard the telltale thoop of a grenade launcher. An explosion knocked the ma.s.sive creature back, splashing his b.l.o.o.d.y entrails in a long streak across the white top of the overturned truck.

Gunfire brought Paulius out of it, gunfire aimed at him — a man and a woman sprinting around the delivery truck, the man firing a rifle, the screaming woman aiming a shotgun.

In less than a second, Klimas. .h.i.t them each twice. The man dropped hard. The woman landed face-first and slid across the packed snow. Klimas fired twice more, aiming for her head, but his shots. .h.i.t her back instead. As she slid, she raised the shotgun one-handed, screamed “a.s.shole!” and fired.

He felt the blast smack into the left side of his chest and belly, felt a dozen needles dig deep as some of them found ways around the gaps in his body armor.

She slid to a stop. He put a bullet in her head, then looked up.

A dozen more hostiles poured in around the truck. Two of them tackled a fleeing Ranger. Another Ranger lay on the ground, screaming obscenities at the three people on top of him, one biting his face, another stabbing a knife into his right thigh over and over again. And just beyond the truck, Paulius saw two more of the yellow monsters rushing in fast.

His position was being overrun.