Apex

by Ryan W. Aslesen

  “Dug it up when I was running around in the bunker.”

  Max nodded. The logistics and details of Wilde’s operation didn’t concern him. He needed to find the man himself—then they could worry about exposing his crimes to the world.

  They explored several more rooms and hallways, none of which offered access to a basement level. “Maybe there is no basement,” Heat suggested.

  “Has to be. We haven’t run across any utilities like the water heater or circuit breaker. They’d be up here if there wasn’t a basement, probably in the kitchen we already searched.”

  “We’ve been all over this floor. Maybe time to check upstairs?”

  “Not quite. We have a couple of rooms left to search.”

  Max pushed open an arched door of heavy wood that accessed a library. He gave a cursory glance at the shelves packed with rare, leather-bound books. Behind a monumental desk that looked as if it had been carved from a single block of ebony, a high-backed chair of green leather spun slowly, as if someone had just gotten up from it.

  Startled by the motion Max waved Heat back. “Don’t move.”

  He advanced to the desk, where the chair stopped spinning about the time he arrived. Atop the desk sat a computer monitor—currently turned off—a blotter, and a couple of fountain pens sticking up from a marble stand.

  A quick scan out the library’s other exit revealed a music room, currently empty.

  Max was about to call Heat forward when a faint footprint on the threshold caught his eye. He’d killed many of Wilde’s soldiers over the last fourteen hours, and was certain that none of them had been wearing this boot.

  “What’s up?” Heat asked.

  Instead of lambasting her for not following orders, Max said, “Footprint. US-issue jungle boot.”

  “Not Wilde’s preferred footwear,” Heat stated with a sarcastic lilt.

  “Nor that of his troops.”

  “One of the other team members?”

  Possible... “Nah, they would have contacted me if they entered.”

  “The gunfire stopped a while ago.”

  “Swift’s busy clearing the perimeter. He hates surprises, the only trait we have in common.”

  Heat’s brows drew tight. “Then who the hell is it?”

  “I don’t know. But we need to give this room a thorough ransacking.”

  They started at the desk, where a quick rifling of the drawers produced nothing but office supplies. The monitor wasn’t even hooked to a computer, which had been removed at some point, probably to hide evidence.

  Max held up an unplugged cable. “Somebody cleared it out, either Wilde or our mystery man.”

  “Maybe he called someone,” said Heat.

  “There isn’t a phone.”

  “But there’s that.” She pointed to a cutting-edge digital radio setup in an alcove across the room.

  “Convenient.” Max had a satellite phone buried at the bottom of his pack, his preferred method to contact Duke for their extraction. Still he liked having a failsafe whenever possible. And why unload a pack to make the call when the radio would work just as well? He moved to the alcove, donned the headset, powered on the radio, and tuned it to the frequency Duke would be monitoring.

  “David calling Marine1, do you copy, over?”

  Nothing. Max tried two more times, receiving only dead air for his efforts. Sat phone it is.

  A tiny crackle of static, then, “Marine1 to David, copy, over?”

  “Affirmative, over.”

  “Missed you, on the shitter—”

  “Don’t care.” Max checked at his watch: 1556. Is Wilde here or not? One thing was certain: it would not be prudent to wait until the end to call for Duke. “Extract from chateau at 1700 hours. Watch for my signal. And you better be on time, over.”

  “On my honor, over.”

  “How reassuring. David out.”

  “You’re only giving us an hour?” Heat asked.

  With an amused snort Max answered with his own question, “How many would you prefer?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Start looking for clues.”

  Max searched the floor for more boot prints. Get a magnifying glass, Sherlock.

  After a couple of minutes Heat called, “Hey?” She stood high on the rolling ladder that accessed the upper shelves of books. A couple of volumes lay to the side.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Max asked.

  “Finding clues, not looking for them.”

  Max chuckled. “You don’t seriously think there’s a lever behind those books, do you? You’ve seen too many old movies.”

  “Wilde has too.” She reached deep into the shelf where she’d removed the books.

  At the metallic click, Max approached the bookcase. “I’ll be damned; it did something.” He ignored Heat’s satisfied smirk. “Let’s find out what.”

  25

  The bookcase rolled slowly aside to reveal a spiral steel staircase descending a concrete shaft.

  “Holy Batcave,” Max muttered.

  Heat joined him. “Where would you be without me?”

  “Futilely searching for a lever until 1700 hours.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Someone left those two volumes sticking out slightly to point the way. The question is, was it Wilde or jungle boots?”

  Good question. Wilde had lured him into a trap at the bunker, but the mystery man might have other reasons to tip them off.

  Caged fluorescent bulbs lit the stairway at wide intervals. Max descended slowly with Heat at his back. The stairway terminated about thirty feet down at a heavy metal door with a lock similar to those in the bunker. Max didn’t figure the magnetic cards from the bunker would work here, but he also doubted that would matter. He turned the handle on the door and pushed.

  The door swung into a room wainscoted in dark wood below real velvet wallpaper, a blood-red pattern accented with faint swirls of gold paisley. Furnished in leather and antique wood, the room reminded Max of a nineteenth-century gentlemen’s club, right down to the large rolling globe in one corner.

  The owl sigil of the Brotherhood of Foreseers—four-feet tall, rendered in gleaming gold—hung prominently on the wall opposite the door. Poster-sized framed pictures occupied a good deal of wall space, with many featuring famous political figures. On the wall next to Max, a ranting Richard Nixon pointed into a crowd of suited men as torches burned on the stage around his podium.

  “Bohemian Grove,” Heat said. “That’s Earl Warren standing behind him.” She then pointed out a picture of Bill Clinton standing next to Wilde, both dressed in golf attire and flashing smiles that would have fooled nearly anyone. Wilde appeared in many more pictures with the elites, stretching back decades—US Presidents and Congressmen, George Soros and one of the Koch brothers, as well as others whom Max didn’t recognize and assumed were foreign leaders.

  “Not a single woman though,” Heat said with a laugh. “If Hillary Clinton can’t join the Illuminati, then there’s definitely a war on women.”

  “This must be where Wilde entertains the uber bigwigs. I doubt he has any real admiration for them.”

  “Agreed. To him they’re just tools to build whatever he’s working on.”

  “Your trip around the bunker didn’t reveal his endgame?”

  Heat swiped a few small pictures off the wall. “Unfortunately not.”

  They exited through an open archway into a carpeted hallway that featured several polished wooden doors. Max tried his pass cards on each and found them locked. The hallway turned right, ran another ten feet to another thick steel door.

  “Here we go,” Max said, knowing the door would be unlocked.

  Heat took a deep breath. “Yeah. Of course.”

  He opened the door, submachine gun at the ready. The sumptuous carpeting
and appointments disappeared, supplanted by an antiseptic world of harsh lighting reflected from white tiles. A hallway stretched before them, perhaps ninety-feet long, lined with windows and doors.

  Max set off. The first window showed a chemistry lab full of glassware and computers. The window across the hall revealed a security room, the walls lined with color monitors beaming images from the dozens of cameras around the chateau grounds.

  Max spied his team at the perimeter. “Looks like Swift’s getting along okay.”

  They passed a room with a mainframe computer, then came across an operating room where sterilized packets lay spread on a cart, ready for surgery. All of the doors were locked, so Heat insisted on taking time exposures through the windows.

  Max checked his watch: 1618. “Don’t bother, it’s just an operating room.”

  “Fuck you; I want all of this.”

  “Forty-two minutes to dust off. Josh is priority. Now move your ass.” He’d humored her thus far, albeit grudgingly, but the time for that had passed. Get it done. Drag her if necessary.

  They passed an x-ray room, a phlebotomy lab, and a chamber with an electron microscope that had been expertly built out of components from other name-brand machines.

  A faint cry teased Max’s hearing, barely enough to know it wasn’t a draft. “Hear that?”

  “No, what?”

  “Listen.”

  This time they both heard it—a wordless yowl that might have come from a man under torture.

  “Holy shit.” Heat glared at the ominous steel door at the end of the hallway, her head finally in the game.

  “And we know where it’s coming from.”

  Max stalked to the door, threw it open on a room lit to midday brilliance by fluorescent bulbs. About twenty feet square, the only furnishings were a desktop computer atop a work table and a single wooden chair.

  Three cells with barred doors lined the right wall. A captive—unshaven, brown hair grown long and shaggy, insane blue eyes—moved to the bars of the middle cell. His lips spread in a wide brown grin when he espied Max and Heat.

  “Josh?” Max asked, advancing slowly to the cell. “Josh Pierce?” He knew this was Josh; question was, did Josh?

  Josh averted his eyes, stared past them into the room as he muttered something over and over. He heard the shutter on Heat’s camera, looked up, pointed at her through the bars, and growled something.

  What has he done to him? Had Wilde forced a dinosaur blood transfusion on him at some point? Would he become the next reptilian? Maybe he’s just insane from torture and isolation.

  Heat stopped taking pictures. “I don’t understand, Josh. We’re here to rescue you. Your mother sent us.”

  If we can get you out of your cell. Wilde, of course, had left the grand prize well secured.

  “C-Can’t be...” Josh gasped, his words as gritty and dry as a desert wind.

  “Can’t be what?” Max asked when he didn’t continue.

  “Can’t be stopped.” The effort of uttering the words left him panting. He stank unbearably in his ragged, soiled clothes.

  “He has been stopped. We’re going to get you out of here.”

  “Can’t be stopped... can’t be stopped... can’t be stopped!”

  Max turned to Heat. “Search the work table; find a key card.”

  “They’ll get us,” Josh whimpered in fear. “Kill us... All dead.”

  “What will? The dinosaurs? They can’t get in here.”

  “Yes, they can!” Josh hissed. “You don’t know... you don’t know...”

  This boy’s gone crackers. Most people would under the circumstances. “Any luck on that key card?”

  “Nothing,” Heat replied, “just what you see here.”

  “They’ll get us... They’re coming!”

  “They’re not coming,” Max assured him.

  How do I bust this kid out? Without the key they were pretty much fucked. Explosives were not an option—not that Max had any grenades left—and Swift had their breaching kit. He’s done securing the perimeter. Despite his being underground, Max figured he could contact Swift by radio.

  “Coming!”

  “The dinosaurs aren’t coming, Josh.” Max started to call Swift.

  “No... not the—”

  The whip-like crack of a single gunshot reverberated from the white walls.

  Max turned, saw Heat lying supine on the floor, a crimson stain blooming on her belly as she gasped heaving breaths. He raised his submachine gun to take out her killer.

  “Don’t even try.” Gideon Wilde grinned, his pistol already trained on Max.

  26

  Over the course of his career, Max had seen many people die in grisly and unspeakable fashions: burned, blown apart, decapitated, skinned alive. Heat’s passing would be peaceful in comparison, yet that didn’t make it any easier to witness. Though he knew he wasn’t culpable for her fate in any way, as he looked into her glassy, panicked eyes while she writhed on the floor, he couldn’t help but think that he’d led yet another person through hell, only for them to wind up in heaven. Fuck... Why didn’t she listen?

  “How unfortunate.” Wilde shrugged and straightened his tie like an office worker facetiously grieving over a busted copier. “Another death at your doorstep, Max. Though I doubt you’ll be around long enough to grieve.”

  “Can’t be stopped!” Josh shrieked from his cell.

  Wilde laughed. “You see? Even that raving lunatic knows you don’t stand a chance. Such a fool you are, thinking you could stand up to me and the forces I bring to bear.”

  “We killed your forces, Wilde. You’re finished, whether you kill me or not.”

  “Hmm...” He scratched his chin as if in deep thought, the pistol in his other hand never wavering. “Done here, perhaps. But I’ll build a new sanctuary soon enough. And with you out of the picture, I’ll finally bring to fruition my life’s work.”

  “And what is that, exactly? Selling a reptilian army to the highest bidder? Plunging the world into even more chaos?”

  “You’d never understand, dear boy. Now drop that machinegun.”

  “Why? You’re going to kill me anyway.”

  Wilde sighed, then shook his head. “More overweening bravado, just as I expected. You should be more considerate of others, particularly the dearly departed lying on my floor. There is still time to save her, you know. All you need to do is surrender, and I shall give her new life.”

  Max glanced at Iris “Heat” Keller, who lay at peace in a pool of her own blood, blank eyes gazing at the ceiling. “As a lizard? She would never approve.”

  “No... but she would certainly improve.”

  “Too bad there’s no improving you. You’re not even intelligent enough to build your own monsters. You had to make a college kid do it for you.”

  Wilde’s smile dropped to a scowl, but only for a moment. “I won’t deny that young Pierce provided some insight into my research, but he is no longer needed. He’s become rather useless of late, as you can see.”

  “He can be helped.” Hopefully. “But you’re a mad dog, Gideon. And there’s only one cure for that.” Max raised his submachine gun, fully prepared to sacrifice himself in order to kill Gideon Wilde.

  As he brought his weapon to bear, Wilde laughed and aimed his pistol to Max’s left.

  Josh.

  Unsure if he could debilitate Wilde in time, Max sprang to his left, heard the crack of the gunshot, and felt the sting in his right shoulder where he took the bullet earmarked for Josh Pierce. The shot left Max seeing colorful flashes of bright light when he hit the floor. Wilde had tagged him good, the bullet lodged deep in his shoulder. Blood flowed copiously, already starting to soak his sleeve.

  Damn, he’d dropped his submachine gun upon being shot; it lay on the floor several feet away, well out of reach. />
  Wilde sneered at Max, laughed it up a bit more. “Pathetic! You could have put an end to me just now, and yet you opt to save a broken boy.”

  “It’s called defending the defenseless,” Max growled through his pain. “Only a man would understand... dear boy.”

  “You’re no man, Ahlgren. Men do what they wish and let no one stand in their way.” He stepped closer, towering over Max, the barrel of his gun a black portal to hell. “Men like me will always rise to rule the planet over the meek protests of the weak and the stupid. People like you. Such a pity that you only realize this at the end. Otherwise you might have stayed home and saved us both all this trouble. Alas, now it ends.”

  “Not the way you think it does.” In addition to death, Max had long ago grown accustomed to the physical pain he fought through on every mission. Yet even he had his threshold, and the bullet in his shoulder had nearly shoved him over the edge. Though morphine was the most effective painkiller in the field, rage finished a close second.

  And rage was far easier to administer in sticky situations.

  Max channeled every molecule of his seething anger into his right arm, fighting off an intense agony that pulsed through his nerve endings from shoulder to brain. He shot out his right arm and seized Wilde’s ankle, jerked, heard the madman gasp in surprise as he fell sprawling to the floor, ending up face to face with Max.

  His attack had surprised Wilde, yet he hit the floor unfazed and held onto the pistol. Needing to gain an advantage even as Wilde tried to press his own, Max grabbed Wilde’s wrist and squeezed, expecting him to drop the gun in short order.

  Not only did Wilde retain his grip on the pistol, he managed to inch the barrel closer and closer to Max’s head as they grappled. Wilde’s grunted exertions, Josh’s insane cries, and the pounding of his own heart flooded Max’s ears. Though he’d anticipated Wilde’s first move, he hadn’t counted on him being so strong.

  Wilde sat up, used his now-superior leverage to bring the gun level with Max’s face.

  The barrel yawned before Max’s eyes. He pushed through the pain and shoved. As Wilde’s aim edged to one side, the pistol fired. The bullet struck a steel bar on a cell door and ricocheted.