O-Men: Liege's Legion - Merc Read online

  MERC

  O-Men: Liege’s Legion, Book 3

  Elaine Levine

  Contents

  Other Books by Elaine Levine

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Other Books by Elaine Levine

  About the Author

  Merc

  O-Men: Liege’s Legion, Book 3

  Merc is back in Valle de Lágrimas, the Valley of Tears—the Colombian hell hole he knows all too well. Having survived years of rebel wars and illegal cartel activity, it faces a new and worse threat, an enemy long known to the Legion: the Omni World Order. Merc’s job—and that of all Legionnaires—is to protect humans from Omni mutants, not each other. But Merc doesn’t do rules, and the chaos he unleashes takes on a life of its own, making it impossible to throttle down.

  Ashlyn DeWinter is excited about her trip to Colombia. Valle de Lágrimas keeps popping up in her research, but her friends warn her it isn’t safe for tourists. Something about the village draws her nonetheless. Her visit comes in the wake of an unusual man’s time there—a man who did terrible and wonderful things to protect the village. A man whose energy she hungers for, though she hasn’t met him and likely never will. A man like that couldn’t possibly exist—could he?

  A better question is—how does she find him when the only name she has for him is his odd nickname: Merc?

  Other Books by Elaine Levine

  O-Men: Liege’s Legion

  Paranormal Suspense

  Liege

  Bastion

  Merc

  Red Team Series

  Romantic Suspense/Military Suspense

  (This series must be read in order.)

  1 The Edge of Courage

  2 Shattered Valor

  3 Honor Unraveled

  4 Kit & Ivy: A Red Team Wedding Novella

  5 Twisted Mercy

  6 Ty & Eden: A Red Team Wedding Novella

  7 Assassin’s Promise

  8 War Bringer

  9 Rocco & Mandy: A Red Team Wedding Novella

  10 Razed Glory

  11 Deadly Creed

  12 Forsaken Duty

  13 Max & Hope: A Red Team Wedding Novella

  14 Owen & Addy: A Red Team Wedding Novella

  15 Greer & Remi: A Red Team Wedding Novella

  16 angel & Wynn: A Red Team Wedding Novella

  Sleeper SEALs

  Romantic Suspense/Military Suspense

  11 Freedom Code

  Men of Defiance Series

  Historical Western Romance

  (This series may be read in any order.)

  1 Rachel and the Hired Gun

  2 Audrey and the Maverick

  3 Leah and the Bounty Hunter

  4 Logan’s Outlaw

  5 Agnes and the Renegade

  Dedication

  Barry—

  I love everything about our life.

  Because of you.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to my good friend Rihaneh and her mom, Tata, her daughter, Kate, and her goddaughter, Estefania, who held a kitchen table summit to help me brainstorm a name for the unusual mountain village in this story. Valle de Lágrimas—the Valley of Tears—is haunting and perfect!

  1

  Valle de Lágrimas wasn’t now and had never been a town for the faint of heart. It was too small and too violent to be put on any map. Until recently, even the Colombian government pretended it didn’t exist. The only people who cared about it were the villagers born to it—and latest gang to own it.

  The thing was, with the latest peace negotiations completed and the new access road, a town as beautifully situated on a jungle hillside like this one should be overrun with tourists. Something was keeping them at bay, and Merc knew what it was.

  Omnis.

  The air just smelled like them.

  Maybe that was why the Legion’s mentor, Santo, had been hanging around here checking things out.

  And maybe it wasn’t. You never knew with Santo.

  Merc stood in the shade of a loquat shrub, watching the old woman sweep her front steps. The dirt road in front of her home had to make that an endless task. Her shack was the last in a block of similar dwellings, all built from construction scraps scavenged locally, each dependent on the homes around it for support.

  He was glad she was still there. He considered unshielding himself, but a walk down memory lane wasn’t part of his mission. He turned away before he changed his mind.

  It was best this way.

  Dusk was closing in on the town. He walked a few blocks to the main square, where he’d parked his Jeep. The road into the village had only recently been cut in through the jungle. Prior to that, the town could only be accessed by helicopter, horseback, or foot. The villagers were wary of outsiders and wouldn’t make eye contact. Merc didn’t make things easier for them by keeping his gringo appearance when he asked around at one of the cafés for a place he could rent. Word spread fast in the cash-starved town. Didn’t take long for a man to approach him. He was willing to offer Merc the use of his modest hacienda for the requested month, paid in advance. Merc knew the price he was being offered was easily ten times what a villager would have been charged, but he didn’t care. Money was not an issue for him. Nor did he fear the fallout of having the cash to pay the high price. His only negotiation was for cleaning service and one meal a day.

  He followed the man to his modest abode on the fringe of the Colonial section of town. It was a one-room place with a rustic kitchen and tiny bathroom. Merc paid his landlord and got the key. The lock was something that a swift kick to the door would undo, but that didn’t matter. He would put an energetic block on his quarters—no one would be coming in without his knowledge and permission.

  He lay down on the bed and folded his hands under his head, then stared at the fading blue ceiling.

  He never thought he’d be back in this beautiful, wretched place. Hopefully, he could complete his mission in a few days and bug out.

  At last, the village was quiet. Time to figure out what felt so off about the town. He geared up, expecting trouble. A bandolier with magazines of double-aught buckshot cartridges was slung over his left shoulder and his short-barreled shotgun over his right. His Bowie knife hung in a holster off his belt. Acier had designed both weapons specifically for Merc, and they fit him so perfectly that they were like extensions of his own body.

  He walked through the village, hidden behind an energetic shield he’d set that would cause anyone looking at him to see the area as it was before he was there. He absorbed the feel of the town’s occupants, trying to see if Santo had been around lately. He couldn’t sense the Legion’s mentor, but the villagers were filled with a low-level anxiety. What had them on edge, Merc couldn’t get a clear read on. The tow
n had lost many of their residents to the old cartels and to the gang now operating in the jungle. His read told him some of the elders who’d gone after the younger ones had either not returned, or had come back changed.

  Something caused the shadow that sat heavy on the town.

  Merc passed a building that stood at a corner, its smooth stucco wall covered in street art. He didn’t give it much thought until he took a second look at it.

  The mural was a tribute to lost members of some gang—current or former, he didn’t know. Somber faces, drawn in ghostly black and white paint, were stacked in a corner like skulls in a catacomb. Gravestones with crosses listed first names. Weeping civilians were drawn kneeling in prayer, guided by a priest, as if any of the dead thugs were actually mourned or the church endorsed their activities.

  It was a gruesome reminder to the citizens of Valle de Lágrimas that the town was owned by violence.

  Other than the rough dirt road that entered the village on the west side of town, there were three paths into the jungle—two of them off-road trails. Merc took the trail heading north. He’d check the others out soon, just not tonight. He wasn’t emotionally prepared to go where the trail to the east led yet. Besides, the north trail was where he was most likely to discover what he’d come here to find.

  The jungle was very much alive and active at night. Noise from the constant hum of insects, the night monkeys in the canopy above, and the frogs that were everywhere kept up a constant hum.

  The sound transported Merc back a decade to the training camps where he’d learned to use the genetic modifications he’d been given. He’d spent a year in there before Liege formed the Legion, and they’d left to do their own thing.

  Those first years had cost Merc his family. He wasn’t the only one who’d lost everything—they all had. None of the newly minted mutants had been able to resume their former lives.

  The fact that he’d tried had gotten his family killed.

  That was seven years ago, just before his first visit to Valle de Lágrimas. This place held a host of bad memories.

  He forced his mind back to the present. The path was narrow and uneven. Several animal trails forked off in different directions. Merc’s eyesight, enhanced by the mutations he’d received, served him well at night. He didn’t need a flashlight—in fact, using one would diminish his vision.

  The jungle was heavy with the leftover energy of those who’d recently used the path he was on, like perfume trailing from a woman.

  A couple of hours into his hike, the forest lightened. The animal sounds shifted from night to day. Birds became active. Merc listened to their different sounds, distinguishing dozens of them. It was a game he’d played while in the cages of the training camp—enclosures, it turned out, that had existed only in his mind.

  He wondered what would have happened to him had Liege been assigned to a group other than his. Probably, he’d still be locked up.

  The sun had fully risen by the time he made it to his destination, which was near a river, in the middle of nowhere. He couldn’t see the camp yet, but he could feel its energy. The emotions he sensed were a strange mix of happy and fearful. Beyond that was the caustic smell of a coca operation.

  He turned off the path that had led him there, moving to another one that appeared to circle the camp. He came across a boy squatting down, burying something. Keeping himself invisible, he watched the kid carefully cover whatever it was, then scratch two parallel bars into the nearby tree, about waist-high. Merc figured he was planting coca seeds, but was surprised to see the kid move to another spot on the opposite side of the tree, pull a canister out of his canvas shoulder bag, and repeat the steps.

  The boy looked up, then around nervously. Merc knew him. He was Pablo, the grandson of the woman he’d seen in town earlier. Even though it had been seven years since Merc last saw him, and he was no longer a little kid but a teenager, Merc knew it was him.

  He allowed the kid to see him.

  The boy’s mouth dropped, then he rushed over and gave Merc a hug. “It’s you! You’re here. I never thought I’d see you again.”

  Merc set his hands on the boy’s shoulders and pushed him back a bit. “What are you doing here, Pablo? Surely your abuela worries about you.”

  Pablo squared his shoulders and gave Merc a slight smile. “I am supporting her and my sister. What I earn here pays for their food and housing and Belén’s schooling.”

  Merc sighed. He looked back at the little disturbances in the dirt, many of them as far as he could see. “Do you not remember how your mother died?”

  Shadows darkened Pablo’s face. “Of course I remember.”

  “Then how could you set out more landmines? And who would have a child do such a dangerous task?”

  “These aren’t to hurt people. They are to protect us.”

  “Landmines kill and maim—humans, animals, everything.”

  “It is the everything we are after. Look, I show you.” The boy went over to the mine he’d just set and stepped on it. Merc jumped forward, but wasn’t fast enough to stop him. That terrible night, seven years ago, flashed through his mind. The blood, the tourniquet, Pablo’s mother’s screams of pain, Pablo’s chest-deep weeping, and the woman’s early labor brought on by the trauma.

  But in this moment, nothing happened to the boy. He stood in the middle of a thick puff of smoke that streamed from the canister with a loud whistle. “See? It’s for la Tunda. Not people.”

  “La Tunda?”

  “The monsters. They come in the night. We set these so we know when to run for cover.”

  “Can you describe these creatures?”

  Merc didn’t know what a Tunda was, but he did know Omni ghouls. They used them to spread fear and enforce compliance. It was troubling that they’d brought their monsters here, but they clearly had a use for them.

  Pablo shook his head vehemently and sent a frightened look around. “We should not be talking about them. Doing so summons them.” He stepped closer to Merc. “I have told my friends about you, about the man who saved me and my mom—my sister too.”

  “I didn’t save your mom.”

  “You got us home. You did save us. Will you come into camp to meet everyone?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m an outsider. If you bring me in, you’ll lose their trust.”

  Pablo considered that a moment. “Are you going to rat us out?”

  “No.” Didn’t mean that Merc wasn’t going to end the coca op here; he just wasn’t going to use the authorities to do it.

  “If you won’t come in with me, then you have to head back for town now so you can get there before dark.”

  “The Tunda doesn’t exist.” The Tunda didn’t, but ghouls sure as fuck did. Merc was curious how much this kid had seen for himself.

  “It does exist. It’s real.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “No, but I’ve heard its screams. We’ve all seen the bodies of the people who’ve been attacked—or what’s left of them.” Pablo held his hand out, pointing toward a windowless shack down the hill. “Look. We even have hiding places if it comes out while we’re still working.”

  The shack was too frail to keep a ghoul out. If anyone took shelter in one of those, and there were several that Merc could see, a ghoul would just rip it apart to get to whomever it was after. That made Merc realize that the ghouls, if they were indeed patrolling the compound, weren’t being sent after the workers inside so much as outsiders trying to get in. Maybe they were also there to deal with escaping workers.

  Had the villagers who had disappeared come here to retrieve their loved ones and fallen victim to the ghouls? Perhaps there hadn’t been enough left of their remains to identify them. Conveniently.

  Another thought struck Merc. The Legion believed that the ghouls were managed by Brett Flynn and possibly his handful of officers. So was Flynn himself here? Or whom had he put in place to manage the beasts they unleashed at ni
ght? He had to be local—the beasts couldn’t be managed from a distance, could they?

  A man in a sweat-stained, dark green safari shirt, camp pants, and a wide-brimmed cotton hat hurried over to Pablo. He had a machete at his hip and a semiautomatic rifle slung over his shoulder. He sent an irritated look around, but couldn’t see Merc, who had been hiding his presence from anyone other than Pablo.

  “What are you doing?” the bossman asked, irritated. “Who told you that you could take a break?”

  Pablo looked around, but couldn’t see Merc either. “I needed one.”

  “You tripped one of the alarms. It’s wasted now and has to be rebuilt. Give it to me.”

  Pablo dug it out of the ground. He handed it to the man, receiving in exchange another bag of devices to put out.

  “No break for you until these are all buried, every one of them. Get on it, boy. I’m watching you. We aren’t paying you to stand around.”

  Merc pushed into Pablo’s mind the thought that he was leaving for now but would be back to talk to him later.

  The boy sent a nervous look around, but obviously didn’t see Merc, which clearly didn’t sit well with him.

  As Merc moved deeper into the compound, he reached out to Liege via their mental connections. I have questions, Liege. You heard what the boy said?