Once Base Camp was constructed, Grey flew in top scientists from Greytech and the nation’s most prestigious universities to conduct experiments onsite, under strict non-disclosure agreements. Secrecy was paramount; Elizabeth Grey kept even her board members in the dark by claiming it was a mining operation searching for a rare element to be utilized in the company’s portable electronic devices. Thor thought the story a bit fishy, as did some other board members. But Ms. Grey’s orders were not to be questioned under any circumstances, something he had learned during his nascent years with the company.
On the board, he served as Vice President in Charge of Design, a worthy title for an engineer who specialized in ergonomics. He and his team had been the face of Greytech, for they designed the outer casings and controls of every electronic retail device produced over the last five years. A device simply wouldn’t sell if it didn’t come in a sleek, sexy, user-friendly package, no matter how well it might function. He enjoyed the work and technically still had a job, though he would resign in short order if all went well. And with a bit more cheese than the other rats jumping ship.
The “substance” became Greytech’s undoing, for its properties were more than merely regenerative—it could expand and assume any form imaginable, change shape at will. Some of these foul incarnations were allegedly beyond imagination, and all of them proved to be nightmarish creatures hostile to humanity. Inevitably, creatures formed by the “substance” broke free and slaughtered most of the project’s workers. Greytech security couldn’t contain the beasts, so Ms. Grey hired an elite team of private security contractors to secure the site and the ship and recover all research data they could find on the “substance”. Thor didn’t know the details of the actions taken by the contractors, only the outcome: the ship blown to smithereens, all of the “substance” destroyed, no research data located.
That last revelation had gotten Thor thinking, for the scientists had certainly recorded copious data on the “substance” before it began producing creatures. Someone in possession of the missing data might retire a very wealthy man. Thor was fortuitously appointed to head Greytech’s internal investigation of the incident. The feds came a-knocking of course, but not before he had completed a covert search for the hard drives containing the missing data.
The implosion of Greytech provided a convenient cover for his machinations. Though the dark details of the Alaska debacle never became public knowledge, Greytech stock nevertheless plummeted after it became public that Ms. Grey had died onsite in Alaska, trying to get the situation under control.
Greytech’s new CEO hadn’t the charisma or business savvy to keep the company afloat after it had been heavily leveraged to support the research operation and further saddled with the costs of the environmental cleanup. Investors lost confidence. Rival tech companies swooped in and bought up Greytech stock at junk prices and began installing their people on the Board of Directors. Thor still sat on the board thanks to a good bit of finagling, one of only two Greytech executives remaining. He’d lost several million dollars when Greytech stock tanked. The company existed only on paper now; soon it would be only a memory, or perhaps end up a division of Apple or Raytheon, the two top contenders for ownership. If Thor didn’t resign, he would certainly be fired within the next few weeks. Only a matter of time, and yet another logical reason for his course of action.
“ETA two minutes, sir,” the pilot said.
“Very good,” Thor responded. He pressed the button that raised the partition between himself and the pilot, then turned a small knob on his headset, one of his own design, and changed frequencies. “Loki calling Bloodhound; do you copy, over?”
“Copy, over,” Bloodhound responded a moment later.
“ETA two minutes, over.”
“Roger, have a visual on you. Out.”
The chopper slowed, hovered, and began a slow descent into the valley about a mile past the crater. The GPS coordinates provided by Bloodhound left little room for pilot error. Every fir tree in the area had been knocked flat by the blast. With no heavy equipment at their disposal, Bloodhound and his two-man team had lifted out a few trees by helicopter, just enough space for the skids to touch down. Thor saw Bloodhound, a lone man in a white HAZMAT suit, waiting near the landing zone. The pilot descended cautiously into the cleft amongst the fallen trees. Outside temperature stood at 4º Celsius, cool for early September in east Alaska.
Thor donned a Gore-Tex parka and gloves as the chopper touched down. He shrugged into a large hiker’s backpack, empty, and then alighted from the aircraft into the wasteland of toppled forest. Russo—aka Bloodhound, current chief of Greytech security—stepped over one final log and joined him as the pilot powered down the engine.
“How far?” Thor asked.
“About a hundred meters,” Russo responded through a speaker on his HAZMAT suit.
Thor had debated wearing a suit but decided that the radiation remaining in the area wasn’t enough to do him harm from a short visit. Russo and his men had been secretly working in the area on and off for almost a month, however, and had lived in their suits the entire time.
“Lead on, then.”
They began traveling. Most of their trek consisted of climbing over the fallen tree trunks that littered the earth like titanic matchsticks. Rough going, but at age forty Thor was still in excellent shape thanks to several strenuous workouts a week. He took in the area and imagined how it must have looked before the blast. Somewhat like home, I’d say. He would be there soon enough. And may it never look like this.
Russo scrambled quickly over the trunks; he also had a payday coming and wanted to get this over with. It took them five minutes to cover the hundred meters.
“Is it unearthed?” Thor asked as they neared journey’s end.
“Yes. And we left it as it was, per your instructions.”
“Very good.”
“Just watch your step around here. The transponder only got us to within five meters, so we dug a lot of holes before we found it.”
Thor nodded and followed closely. They climbed over one last fir trunk and stepped around a hole. Russo’s men sat on another fallen tree, one of them drinking water from a canteen through a tube in his facemask. Beside him lay a small black box housing the transponder’s receiver. Thor hadn’t designed it—it was one of a kind, not a retail Greytech item—and it showed in the box’s poor ergonomic construction: sharp corners all around, tiny rubber buttons, too thick to be held and operated with the same hand. Cobbler’s work. A chainsaw sat next to the man’s feet while three picks and three shovels rested against another trunk. A shallow hole about two feet deep yawned beneath the men’s dangling feet.
Thor covered the last few feet in two long strides and looked down upon his prize: a one-foot square steel cube, painted green and constructed to military-grade specifications. “Get it out of there.”
The resting lackeys hopped from the tree trunk and complied, though it only took one of them to pull the grimy box from the hole. Thor figured it weighed about ten pounds. The hard drives hopefully secreted within would weigh no more than two pounds. He could tell that the box’s two locks had not been opened, as they were still caked with black earth. He had no key.
“You have hand tools?” Thor asked.
Russo nodded.
“Break the locks. Do it carefully. Damage these drives and we’ll all remain poor men.”
Russo’s men grabbed hammers and flathead screwdrivers from a nearby tool bag and set to work breaking the locks while Thor and Russo observed. The locks proved quite durable, and it took the men a good ten minutes to break them. When the second lock snapped, Thor shouldered between the two men and flipped open the lid. The two hard drives within were hardened to mil-spec as well, though they were gray instead of green and otherwise unremarkable. Next to them sat the tiny transponder beacon that had led Russo’s team to within five meters of the
box. A single bright green light on the transponder blinked every five seconds.
Thor removed the hard drives from the box and stuck them in his backpack. “And that is that, men.”
Russo’s men exchanged glances.
“Not quite,” Russo said. “How long is this gonna take?”
Thor shrugged. “I’m not sure. I need to confirm what is on the drives and talk to the buyer. But you men will receive your shares very soon, do not worry.”
“We’d better. Don’t think for a minute I can’t reach you if you stiff us.”
“Please! There is enough money in these drives for a hundred men to live like kings. You will get your share, fear not.”
Through the window on his HAZMAT suit, Russo silently appraised Thor for several seconds before nodding. “Long as you know what’s at stake.”
Thor did, and he took Russo’s threat seriously. The man had learned his trade from the late Michael Stewart, the ruthless former chief of Greytech security, who had died trying to secure this site. Even through the glare on Russo’s face shield, Thor could make out his dark, deadpan stare, the unflinching mask of a killer.
He has a victim. All he needs is a reason.
“I do,” Thor said. “You will have your money, on my honor.”
Russo gave a rattling chortle through his speaker. “Does that really mean something in Norway? Because it don’t count for jack shit around here.” After a pause he continued, “Hell, I should shoot you right now and take them myself.”
Thor was ready for that. “Oh, I wouldn’t recommend that. If I do not return, the consequences for you will be dire, of this I assure you.”
“You’re bluffing. You don’t have anything on me.”
“Then why are you still talking? Shoot me and be done with it.”
Russo’s right hand moved to the pistol on his belt. He held the grip tightly but did not draw.
“Go on, do it!” Thor shouted, drops of his spittle splattering Russo’s face shield. At this point he could only finish the game of Liar’s Poker and hopefully walk away with the pot. “Well?”
“Shut up, and get out of my face,” Russo said.
“I’ll take that as we still have a deal.”
“Just take the goddamn drives and go get our money. You’ve been warned.”
“And I shall heed your warning.”
“You better. If I’m not a multi-millionaire by October, your ass is grass.”
Thor laughed. “October? You are a reasonable man after all, Mr. Russo. You’ll be a multi-millionaire by next week.”
“Oh yeah? And who the hell are you gonna sell them to that fast?”
“The buyer is not your concern, but you aren’t the only one who has connections.” Thor turned and started back to the chopper.
2
Max Ahlgren parked his black Ford Raptor in the small lot behind Sharp’s Shooting Gallery just as the morning sun crested the horizon. He grabbed his shooting bag from the passenger side floorboard and headed for the range’s rear entrance, his breath frosting in the dissipating chill of desert night. Sharp’s lime green Camaro occupied a space next to the steel door, though Sharp himself would already be across the street playing video poker at the Golden Wheel, one of the seedier biker joints in Vegas.
Should have the place all to myself. Then Max noticed the black Ducati crotch rocket parked next to the Camaro. Better luck next time. Officially, Sharp’s didn’t open for business until eight o’clock—it was now 6:10—but he opened the rear door at six to accommodate certain preferred clients: hardcore shooting enthusiasts and cops looking to avoid the crowds and politics at the police range. Max had become acquainted with several of them, good people mostly, though the civilians sometimes pestered him with questions regarding his rigorous shooting drills. He didn’t come to Sharp’s to socialize and never mentioned his profession, calling himself a military retiree if asked. He supposed he still had a profession, though he hadn’t been in the field for over a year.
Max entered, and traversed the long, narrow hallway that skirted the shooting lanes. He came into the lobby through a door marked Employees Only. To the left was the gun store, though the sign above the lowered security grille read Pro Shop, as if the range were a country club. He always got a kick out of that. To his right ran a floor-to-ceiling wall of soundproof ballistic glass that allowed spectators to observe the twenty-four shooting lanes. Someone—the motorcyclist, he presumed—occupied lane 18. Max donned a pair of electronic ear buds that cancelled sound above 30 decibels and entered the range.
The other guy turned out to be a woman, the first Max had ever seen at Sharp’s so early in the morning. Max walked to his lane, sat down his gear bag, looked over at her lane, and watched as she raised her SIG Sauer P250 .40 cal. pistol and sighted in on the target. The muscles in her arms and shoulders tensed into taut cables as she began firing.
Her target, a caricature of a menacing burglar with a pistol and wearing a watch cap, hung at ten yards. A little distant for a burglar. Max watched her first few shots pepper the target paper; only two struck the burglar, neither in the vitals. Her grouping could be measured in feet instead of inches and watching her shoot he could see why: her stance was all wrong. Her taut grip and rigid form gave the burglar the edge. He shook his head. Consider yourself raped and robbed.
She was obviously neither cop nor enthusiast, but Max didn’t question her presence. Sharp had a weakness for women that nearly rivaled his gambling addiction. Max only hoped she knew more about gun safety than she did about shooting. He didn’t need some amateur six lanes away waving a pistol in his direction while he concentrated on performing his drills.
Sharp had prepared lane 24 for Max, as he always did. Ten paper upper-body silhouette targets and 500 rounds of .45 ACP sat on the bench rest. On the floor lay two rusty fifty-pound dumbbells and an ALICE pack loaded with about sixty pounds of junk, the training aids he kept at the range. He wore no shooting glasses, for he did not wear them in the field. From his range bag he removed the Glock 21 and the M1911 he would train with: four hundred rounds through the Glock, his primary sidearm in the field, and a hundred through the 1911, just to keep his edge with it. Both weapons were equipped with reflex sights.
He stripped down to the tank top beneath his flannel shirt. Then he loaded the four magazines he’d brought for each pistol, strapped the Glock on his hip, shrugged into the ALICE pack, and clipped on a target. The target sailed down the lane on the electric trolley to a range of twenty-five yards, no need to send it any further for pistol training. He was ready to go.
His training began on the floor with a set of twenty-five pushups, no easy feat with the heavy pack on his back. He then jumped to his feet, drew the Glock and put a dozen shots into the target. Most of the bullets struck center mass in the ten ring from what he could see, though a couple of stragglers were in the nine, and the shot he’d jerked landed in the seven. Not bad for a first set, but he didn’t have time to admire his handiwork. He did another set of pushups, slapped in a fresh mag and shot again, a tighter group with only a couple of strays in the nine ring. Known for its soft recoil—as soft as a .45 could get—the Glock barely bucked in his firm grasp.
Max repeated the process, this time performing two sets of bicep curls with the dumbbells between rounds with the Glock. The first faint hints of muscle fatigue set in as he shot for the fifth time, his group once again scattering a bit. Battlefield conditions demanded such training to simulate the rigors of combat, when it was a struggle to shoot accurately with every muscle in his body screaming for rest.
A year ago, he wouldn’t have felt so much as a tic in a muscle until the eighth set or so, but he’d lost focus on his work after the Alaska mission. You lost a lot more than that. Seven of the bravest elite warriors he’d ever known had followed him into that godforsaken wilderness and the spacecraft it concealed. Only Max returned home.
The nightmare of that mission still haunted him.
He pushed the memories aside and continued his drills, moving on to sets of diamond pushups, burpees, dumbbell squats, and overhead presses. His aim suffered as his muscles screamed for relief, so he moved the target to twenty yards, then fifteen, and then ten. At the closest distance he practiced headshots. Upon firing the last shot in the magazine, the slide locked to the rear on his pistol. He placed the smoking Glock on the bench rest after shooting about 250 rounds and opted for a short break.
After he’d downed half a bottle of Gatorade, Max noticed that his noise-cancelling ear buds were no longer functioning, for the range had gone silent. He glanced over at lane 18. The woman had departed her bench, but the presence of her shooting gear told him she hadn’t left the building. He turned to find her standing right behind him.
Eh, Christ...
Las Vegas was a city of beautiful women, so many that only a few could still catch Max’s eye, and the woman in front of him certainly qualified: Asian, tall, with an athletic body and jet-black hair pulled into a ponytail that ran to the middle of her back. She wore a white tank top that accentuated her curves, black leather pants so tight they might have been painted on, and black riding boots. Lustrous olive skin reflected the harsh lighting as if she were coated in a fine sheen of oil. She stood confidently with her hands on her hips and her head cock slightly to the side.
She didn’t smile at him but rather let her face extend the greeting, one side of her mouth slightly raised coyly, almost mocking.
That’ll get you nowhere around here, sweetheart. Max was no Sharp, and he didn’t have time for this shit, though he had to admit that up close she was a rather stimulating sight. Dark eyes behind yellow shooting glasses bored deep into Max’s hazel ones—unflinching, deliberate, calm. Whoever she was, he could tell by her stare that she didn’t rattle easily.
Max removed one of his ear buds. “Can I help you with something?” He immediately regretted the utterance.
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