"How do you know?" I asked. "You don't even know what these things are."

"I can just tell. The ones we fought in '95 were just workers or drones. Mindless things with just claws and teeth. These things are the soldiers. They're gonna come again. That was just a test."

Explosions rocked from the direction of Alpha team as their position was attacked. We waited in anxious silence as the battle raged on without us. Sure enough, after a few minutes of fighting, Charlie team was attacked in turn. A stray bullet pulped a tree branch above my head. Other bullets whipped around us, sounding like angry bees.

"Watch your field of fire, you derelicts!" Sam shouted uselessly.

"MHI! I'm coming in," Franks shouted as he splashed toward us. He pushed his way to Harbinger's position and squatted in the mud.

"How's it going?" our leader asked.

"Two dead. Two wounded. One critical," the stoic man answered. He did not bother to ask about us. "We need to push out. Head for extraction."

"Negative. They can breathe under water. We could walk right into an ambush. If they get in close, those spear chuckers are gonna own us," Harbinger stated flatly. "We need to hold here."

"They are feeling us out for a rush."

"You saw how fast they move. We can't ditch them through the swamp, and with no cover, they're gonna tear us up."

"We have to fire and maneuver," Franks insisted.

"Listen, we're not fighting people. This ain't the army," Harbinger insisted. "We move out and we're dead."

"We're moving with or without you," Franks said. "Two minutes. We'll send up flares." The federal agent swiveled and moved away. "You can stay if you want."

Harbinger watched him go. "Shit."

"Earl? What do you wanna do?" Sam asked.

"We ain't got much choice. Without them, we get flanked and we're dead. We have to stick together." He changed the tone of his voice so that we could all hear. "Okay, team. When we see the flares, we move back the way we came. Lay down fire on anything that looks suspicious." He tried to rally us. "We can do this. We are the best. We've beaten these orange bastards before. I'm on point, then Skippy and Ed. We have the best senses. If we fire on a position, follow suit, it means we saw something." He switched magazines. "I'm loading tracers. I'll mark it, you kill it. Everybody get ready."

Flares rose into the rain-drenched sky. A cold weight shifted in my gut. The swamp before us was vast with shadowed hiding places.

"Move out!" Harbinger ordered.