Relentless

by Jonathan Maberry

  Christ.

  I moved in a rapid half circle, avoiding a series of incredibly quick and powerful swings, keeping an empty hallway behind me instead of a wall. Ghost was still fighting the second guy on the floor. The Kevlar was slowing the dog down, but that kind of armor is necessarily thinner around the throat, allowing for mobility. Thin protection means exactly jack squat against a big dog with titanium teeth. There was a lot of blood.

  But no screams.

  The man was still fighting Ghost, despite obvious serious and savage damage. And in a flash, I saw his eyes. The sclera had also turned a vivid, furious red.

  What the actual fuck? Everything since I’d walked into Casanova’s cell felt like it belonged in The Twilight Zone.

  He is coming.

  The man I was fighting kept trying to grab my knife wrist instead of actually fighting me. It was freaky. He ripped off his goggles and tore off his balaclava as if it were all choking him. My knife had ripped him open from side to side, giving him a red smile like the Joker. Blood poured from it, splashing his clothes and the wall as he came at me with renewed vigor, red eyes blazing.

  But as he attacked, he made a little series of yippy noises like a child so lost in a fit of rage he was unable to form words. It chilled me. I’ve never seen anyone lose their shit like this before. He was clearly a trained soldier—whether regular military or private contractor—and yet there was absolute madness in his actions. It made no sense at all, even with the severity of the injuries. It was so weirdly out of place that if this were a movie, it might have been comical. But there was nothing funny in real life. He slapped and pawed and bled as I tried to chop him down.

  Even with all that, he was so goddamned fast.

  His hands blurred. I kept shifting and turning to evade his grabs. His blood spattered me, the walls, the floors. Drops of it seeded the air, punching small holes in the thickening smoke. I feinted left and shifted right, snapping out with a kick to his groin. My shoes have steel tips, and I kick really damned hard. The blow connected, and I could see the shock of it register on his face. He uttered a high-pitched whistle of pain and staggered, and so I kicked him again. And again. Driving the Kevlar groin cup hard into the pubic bone. Even with the alarms ringing, I could hear bones break.

  And yet he kept coming.

  His ferocity, his animal drive absolutely terrified me. He was hunched over now, white flecks of spit on his bloody lips; his feet losing their sense of control. He was not reacting to the pain in any normal way. It seemed to both increase his pain and fury while driving him into some whacked-out headspace.

  I jagged to the other side and stamped down in the inside of his left knee with the flat of my heel, exploding the joint. He cried out, but in the voice of a hurt child. It was the strangest, eeriest thing I’ve ever heard from someone in a fight. It was as if the man I fought had retreated and his inner child—wild and terrified—had emerged and that was who I’d just hurt.

  As he fell, I followed him and stabbed downward, my blade slicing through the thin sheath of protection around his throat. He gagged, spurting dark blood from the wound and from his mouth.

  I whirled away from him and saw that Ghost was still fighting the other guy. I’ve never known my dog to have anywhere near that much trouble with anyone, body armor or not. The man was bloody and screaming, but he was still trying to win. I moved in and shouldered Ghost aside and drove the blade down like a spike, smashing through the right lens of his goggles and deep into the man’s brain.

  Then I half toppled away onto hands and knees. Ghost stood there, trembling with bloodlust and fear, his eyes wild. The sounds of gunfire were somewhere close by. Down a hall, around a corner.

  I saw that Ghost was looking past me, but not in the direction of those shots. He began to snarl, and I turned to see something I would have thought impossible. With a broken knee and dozens of cuts, with a crushed pelvis and a slashed throat, the first of the men I’d fought was struggling to sit up. He pawed at a holstered pistol, still trying to fight.

  Still trying to be alive.

  I gaped at him, speechless, horrified.

  I scrambled over and slapped his hand away from the pistol, drew it myself, put the barrel under his chin, and blew the top of his head off. He flopped back.

  But he still did not stop twitching.

  It was insane.

  I recoiled as an atavistic dread surged up inside me. I felt as if I were fighting something inhuman. Something that could not be killed.

  Then I saw thin tendrils of smoke curling up from under his body armor. Ghost barked sharply, and I turned to see that he was staring at the other man. Smoke was rising from him, too.

  “Oh, shit!” I cried. And then I was moving. I scooped up my weapons, yelled for Ghost, and we ran. We ran really goddamned fast.

  We got halfway down the hall when the two dead men exploded.

  CHAPTER 102

  THE TOC

  PHOENIX HOUSE

  OMFORI ISLAND, GREECE

  Doc said, “Don’t focus on the weapon he’s carrying and look at the armor. It’s similar to our best—and by that, I mean my best—but as much as it twists my panties into a real tight bunch, it is better. A lot better. It’s made from the same kind of composite aramid materials as is used in the K-110 fighting machine. Not as dense, so it can’t take an RPG in the breadbasket and might not stop a sniper firing armor-piercing rounds, but don’t bet your lunch money on it.”

  She clicked and changed the image to a page of very technical specifications. Church leaned forward and studied the arcane notations very carefully.

  “From a distance,” said Doc, “what we’re seeing is basically next-gen combat body armor. That’s scary, but what makes this more frightening than the K-110 fighting machine is what’s built into the armor.”

  She used a laser pointer to indicate a series of formulae on one side of the screen.

  “Each of the suits is fitted with pockets for chemicals,” she said, “very similar in theme to the thermite A91 we have in our own gear for post-action disposal when that gear cannot be recovered. But these slippery sons of bitches have gone and upped the ante. One of their mad scientists has found a way to get the big bad bang of azidoazide azide, which has fourteen nitrogen atoms, with most of them bonded to one another in successive, unstable nitrogen-nitrogen bonds, which makes them very prone to going bang! That stuff was developed by my old drinking buddy Thomas Klapötke about a dozen years ago. Normally, any attempt to handle the chemical at all causes those bonds to break and turns them into multiple molecules of rapidly expanding nitrogen gas, which creates a hell of a lot of heat and boom. But these cats have found a way to stabilize it, and I wish to hell the entire formula was there because I’d like to steal it, patent it, and sell it. Just contracts with construction companies alone would net me enough money to buy, oh … Mars, and turn it into a luxury resort.” She paused. “I know I keep saying this, but it beats the living hell out of me why Kuga doesn’t go straight and, like I said, patent it and become richer than God.”

  “Because he steals the research?” suggested Dr. Coleman, who was a big, burly, and bearded man in contrast to Isaac’s small and slender appearance.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Doc said, “I know. Just grousing. Anyway … this stuff is packed into airtight stabilizing pouches throughout the suit. About seven pounds of it.”

  “Why do they need that much?” asked Nikki. “Is the body armor that hard to melt down?”

  “No, no, no, no,” said Doc, “it isn’t for after-action disposal. With that modified azidoazide azide, you’d only need three ounces to turn the suit and occupant into smoking fairy dust. Nope. This, ladies and gentlemen, is crime and punishment here. You see, they had a tricky little system of wires synced with telemetry from modified RFID chips. As long as the person wearing the suit maintains a pulse rate above a certain number, all’s fine and dandy. But if that person were to die? Well, then, there’s a triggering mechanism tha
t sends little electric shocks to each and every darn one of those chemical pouches. The resulting explosion from nine pounds of that stuff? Well, if one went off in, say, a high school auditorium, then no one would be graduating that year. You see, they didn’t just stabilize that chemical, they upped its kick.”

  She clicked back to the photo of the Fixer in the body armor.

  “Our boy Kuga has developed the most powerful suicide vest in the history of global terrorism. If a Fixer walks into any environment, he can either fire with impunity or kill as many people as he wants. Not because of the armor’s toughness—and remember it’s really tough—but because anyone firing in self-defense who gets lucky and pops the guy will trigger a blast that will kill every single living thing inside of fifty yards.”

  She paused, letting that sink in.

  “Now imagine a team of them going into North Korea’s Rungrado First of May Stadium, which has a capacity of 140,000. Or Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. That’s 114,000 people dead in a flash.”

  Church said, “Dear god.”

  “Where are they planning on using these … these … things?” asked Nikki.

  “That, sweet cheeks,” said Doc, “is what we don’t know. And I pray to whichever deity is taking our calls that this is what our boy Joe Ledger is trying to find out.”

  CHAPTER 103

  DAS VERARBEITUNGSZENTRUM

  The young blond woman with the brace on her left knee stood in the gaping hole of what had been the main entrance to the processing plant. Now it was a cavern of rubble, torn bodies, and shattered glass. A chemical stink of high explosives hung in the air, pushed around by sluggish clouds of brick dust. Twisted sheets of metal stood up like broken ribs from some gigantic corpse.

  Eve grinned at it. Explosions always made her happy, and she’d been told that a big one was needed to breach these walls because they were concrete reinforced with steel. That intel had been correct, and she’d made sure that the first try was enough to do the trick. The blast had been so big that it destroyed the entrance to the building. It tore a line of hedges from the ground and threw them burning into the decorative trees. Those trees now burned like a row of tiki torches.

  Nothing of the original doorway remained, and although the blast hadn’t damaged the inner air lock, it had completely obliterated the walls into which it was set, so the air lock lay atop the rubble.

  “Awesome,” she gushed. “That was so rad.”

  A pair of heavily armored killers stood nearby. Cain and Abel.

  “The team’s located the cell, Miss Eve,” Abel told her, his fingers still touching his coms unit.

  “About time,” said Eve. She looked at her watch, which was set to mission time. It was three minutes since the breach. Standard response time for police at this time of night was five minutes, twenty seconds. Way off in the distance, she could hear a siren.

  “The team’s encountering some resistance inside,” added Abel. “We’ve lost signals on two … no, wait, four. Losing feeds on Ephraim and Asher.”

  As if to punctuate his comment, there was a heavy one-two ba-whooom from inside, and a cloud of hot gas and burning debris belched out at them.

  “Two down, for sure,” said Eve dryly. “Fucking idiots.” She gave Abel a scathing look. “Are we still in control of the scene? Will we get the package?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Abel. “We anticipated some losses, but we still have the numbers and the advantage.”

  Cain said, “And we’re on schedule, Miss Eve.”

  “You’d better be right,” Eve said with a venomous sweetness, “because Daddy will be really unhappy if we come back empty-handed. Really fucking unhappy.”

  Those words drained the color from the faces of the two big men. Cain turned aside, touched his coms unit, and began growling orders. Abel might as well have turned to stone for all the expression he showed.

  Eve turned away to hide her smile. She loved making these boys jump. All she had to say was “Boo,” and they pissed their pants. Genuine toughness, she’d been taught, was not a quality of height, gender, or muscle mass. It was all about potential. To reward and to punish.

  Eve checked her watch again. “Make sure Enoch’s in position.”

  All her Righteous had biblical combat call signs. She no longer recalled, or even cared, what their real names were. When she got back to the Pavilion, all she had to do was accept two new replacements into her cadre. They would become the new Ephraim and Asher. Real names offered the danger of actual emotional attachment, and Eve was done with that. Forever.

  The Righteous served her and entertained her. They kept her from screaming into her pillow every night. They were also without emotional challenge. Eve felt nothing for any of them. Not even when they made her come screaming. It was sensation, not emotion.

  Maybe once her network located Joe Ledger and brought him in chains to her, she’d feel something. Maybe after she skinned Joe Ledger, she’d allow herself to become alive again.

  God, the things she wanted to do to Ledger before he died.

  She wanted to force-feed him Viagra and then fuck him as he coughed out his last breath. She wanted to stab him with every single one of the 206 knives she’d collected.

  Would that make the pain go away? Would it chase the shadows out of her mind?

  She didn’t know, but she swore to herself she would find out. Who knew, maybe she’d even be able to fall in love again. Though, as far as Eve believed, there would never be anyone she loved like she’d loved Adam.

  Poor Adam. He had saved her life. He’d been her life.

  And then Ledger had stolen him from her in Norway last December.

  “Enoch’s locked and loaded,” Abel assured her, cutting into her thoughts.

  She blinked, coming back to the moment. “Huh? What? Oh, good … good. And the choppers?”

  “Inbound, ma’am. ETA four minutes.”

  Eve measured out a tiny slice of a smile. “Good,” she said again.

  CHAPTER 104

  DAS VERARBEITUNGSZENTRUM

  The blast was big.

  A one-two punch that sent a tsunami of superheated gas racing after us.

  Ghost was faster and made it to the T junction at the end of the hall a half step before I did. The heat caught me, though. It picked me up and hurled me through the air. But I twisted and curled and hit the floor rolling. The main fireball passed over me; it spread out along the ceiling on both sides of the T, dispersing and fading and then burning out completely, leaving all the walls scorched black. Ceiling tiles melted and rained down, and I had to roll around on the floor to put out fires on my goddamn fire-resistant body armor.

  I’d never seen a blast like that before. If we hadn’t run as fast and as far as we did, we’d have been reduced to ash.

  Ghost whimpered, terrified. He began to get up, but I snapped at him to stay down.

  Despite the pain in every molecule of my body, I got up into a low crouch and scuttled like a half-cooked crab to peer around the corner. The hall in front of cell 13 was gone—burned and shattered, with sections of the roof leaning drunkenly down. The paint on the walls closer to the blast was burning sluggishly, though most of the flames had been extinguished by the blast.

  There was no sign of the two men. They had literally been blown to bits, and those bits still burned.

  I straightened and stood for a moment, trying to understand everything that had happened in the last two minutes. Forcing myself to make credible statements of practical analysis. Despite the wreckage inside my head, old and new, I needed to be in the moment. To understand this.

  A team of some kind had attacked the processing plant. Who they were or what their agenda might be was unclear. Certainly not regular military. No, these cats had to be PMCs on the payroll of someone who wanted to free one or more prisoners. They’d mentioned the Spaniard. Did that mean these guys were Fixers? If so, it meant that they were enhanced Fixers wearing ultrasophisticated body armor that exploded when the
men wearing them died.

  Yeah, find a comfortable chair for that to sit in.

  I glanced at Ghost, who was spattered with blood and soot.

  “Well,” I said, “it’s finally happened. The world’s now officially crazier than I am.”

  For no damned reason at all, he wagged his tail. He’s a weird damned dog.

  The gunfire was getting louder, but not closer. A hell of a battle was raging, and it was getting intenser. I tapped my tactical computer to bring up the feeds from the Busy-Bees and saw that parts of the prison had become full-tilt war zones. There were bodies all over the place. Most of the cell doors had been torn open—literally ripped from their hinges—and the corpses of prisoners lay twisted and dead. I saw one man with a distinctly Somalian face and a torn orange jumpsuit trying to crawl away, but he left such a thick blood trail that I knew he wouldn’t make it far. His left foot was missing.

  There were other bodies, too. Uniformed guards, sprawled and dead, their limbs shattered, flesh ripped apart with a level of savagery that was appalling.

  Then the bees found the main source of the gunfire. It was the staff quarters. A handful of guards—possibly the only ones left—were crouched behind a stack of overturned tables and chairs. Some were dressed, but most were in underwear or pajamas. A dozen of their comrades lay dead around them. They were firing at four more of the armored Fixers. I saw no Fixer corpses anywhere and wondered if that accounted for some of the explosions. Did they all wear suicide vests? Was it some variation of the “no man left behind” concept? Incineration rather than recovery? Were the explosives tied to some kind of telemetry, likely a heartbeat? If so, how’d they ever convince any of the Fixers to strap on those vests?

  I wanted—needed—to interrogate one of these spooky sons of bitches, but that presented its own set of problems. They were stronger and faster than I was, and there were a bunch of them. If I had Havoc Team with me, that math would be in my favor. Top, Bunny, Belle, and Andrea were a match for any squad of killers. At least I thought so.