“I feel like a pregnant kangaroo on a pogo-stick in this friggin’ armor. Doesn’t anyone ever use a handgun any more?” Rook pulled out one of his two Desert Eagle pistols and waited on the floor. As soon as he saw the forearms of the first man enter the room, he fired twice, the loud booming shots echoing through the long room. The first shot missed, but punched a softball sized hole in the wall. The second shot struck the mercenary’s arm — and took it off. The merc fell back, screaming in pain.
Rook looked up to the metal guard rail around the second story balcony. He saw Asya was rapidly tying a bed sheet to the rail, while nervously watching the door at the end of the gallery’s lower level. He holstered the Desert Eagle and scrambled on hands and knees for the dangling sheet.
“I can’t cover you and help you climb,” Asya said, as she finished tying and then swept her submachine gun up again on its strap.
Rook didn’t see any sign of Peter or Lynn. He assumed they had already left the upper room, looking for the way out. He couldn’t blame them. He would have done the same.
Rook quickly unbuckled his chest armor, removing the bulky plate and impact foam pieces around his arms and torso, dropping them to the floor. They offered protection, but they were stiff and added a lot of weight. He debated removing the leg armor, but the one now coated in his blood, was probably acting as a compression bandage for his wounded leg. He decided to leave it.
Freed of the weight of the chest armor, and wearing only a black synthetic t-shirt over his broad chest, Rook attacked the bed sheet, shimmying up the cloth, while Asya sprayed the door at the end of the hall with the odd burst of gunfire, hoping to dissuade further incursion. But Rook knew it was just a matter of time until they tossed in another grenade — or worse. He tugged his weight up and after two pulls, gave up on keeping his legs wrapped around the spindly sheet, relying instead on the raw strength in his beefy arms.
Once at the lip, he placed one hand on the concrete floor, and reached up with the other for the bar, pulling himself horizontal in the process, and then rolling under the guard rail onto the balcony. When he stood, Asya was again blasting down into the gallery, by the door. He took quick stock of his location — a large, swank, sparsely decorated office of some sort. Most likely Ridley’s, he thought. Potted plants dotted the space around a low leather sofa and a glass-topped coffee table. When Rook spotted the executive bathroom at one end of the office and the ajar doorway to a nice bedroom at the other end, he knew his guess was right. He could see the fitted sheet from the bed on the floor of the bedroom. Now I know where the sheet came from, he thought. One more exit led from the room to a lighted hallway beyond, the door left wide open. That’ll be where Peter and Lynn went.
“Can we run now?” Asya asked, stepping up to him.
“Cover me for just a minute,” he said, jogging over to the desk near the center of the huge office. The opportunity to learn even a little of what Ridley might have planned was too good, but he’d only sacrifice the minute. He knew Asya’s supply of magazines would run out, and he counted on the mercenaries downstairs to get crafty any second now. Plus, if they figured out he and Asya had ascended to the next level, they would try to flank him by taking the stairwell at the end.
Asya made it back to the rail just as a sustained burst of AK-47 fire strafed the balcony. Rook recognized the sound of the weapon, and knew the jig was nearly up. He altered course away from the desk before he’d even made it there, and instead he made for the far end of the balcony, where he saw a control panel on the wall, next to a large potted fern.
Rook opened fire on the gallery floor, and the AK stopped with a sputtering burst. Asya popped up at her end of the balcony and fired her own sustained burst of gunfire down at the mercenaries, who quickly darted back to the cover of the doorway. Rook caught a glance of the last guy — dressed in black BDUs and snakeskin cowboy boots with a big white ten-gallon hat.
“What a maroon,” he mumbled to himself. He raised one of the Desert Eagles and held his angle on the doorway down below at the end of the gallery. “Asya, go. Get with Peter and Lynn, then rendezvous with Queen if you can.”
Asya paused and looked at him sternly.
“I got this. Go,” he told her.
She turned and sprinted for the door to the hall.
Just then, Ten Gallon came back into the doorway. The sights on Rook’s barrel were already lined up. All he had to do was squeeze. The big Desert Eagle boomed once, and the white hat jumped, the brim of it splattered with blood and bone. The mess that had been Ten Gallon’s head actually stuck to the wall next to the door — hat and all. “Now that’s nasty,” Rook said before the hat fell with a wet thud.
“Bunch of amateurs,” he called out. “I got a bullet for each of you. Maybe you nut-twists should go home and get more guys.”
He glanced to the control panel on his left and scanned the controls. There was a button labeled Kliegs, so he pushed it.
Immediately, the massive dark Plexiglas wall came to life, as several enormous underwater spotlights on the other side illuminated the water. A bewildering array of fish were swimming just on the other side of the wall. Rook guessed the glass wall was maybe 350 feet long by 30 high. This isn’t an aquarium, he thought, it’s the fucking ocean!
The water was crystal clear, with a sandy bottom and a few bits of coral and tufts of sea plants. Sea stars and several dozen black spiny urchins sat on the sand.
None of those things held Rook’s attention though. The glass wall had been built for one obvious purpose. To view the monstrosity taking up ninety percent of the underwater view. Lying on its back was a giant statue of a man, measuring at least 300 feet in length. The surface of the statue was covered in barnacles and coral, and other sea life, but the massive figure, posed as though standing, was impossible to miss.
As soon as the thought of the statue standing entered Rook’s mind, his eyes grew wide. Remembrances of past battles with Ridley’s animated golems filled his mind. The thought of this monstrosity standing up made Rook’s stomach flip.
“Satan’s flaming taint! Why do I get all the fun?”
Just then the balcony erupted in sparks as bullets ricocheted off the rail, and Rook realized the shots were coming from behind him. He was pinned.
THIRTY-NINE
Sub Level 3, Manifold Omega Facility, 2013
Knight shoved Queen and Bishop out of the way, hurling a grenade at the door to the security suite, and another toward the damaged wet wall. Then he pulled the door closed all the way. The grenades exploded seconds later, and the door’s automatic bio-hazard seals inflated, then quickly deflated. Knight guessed they had been punctured by a grenade fragment.
Luckily, the locking mechanism didn’t engage, even though the seal had. He swung the door all the way open and loosed a burst of MP-5 fire around the room. No one had made it into the suite, but the previously damaged deathtrap wall was now a gaping hole into the adjacent bathroom, with pipes and spitting electrical wires having been cleared by the grenade blast. Knight leapt through the opening, his weapon up and ready to fire in the direction of the parallel corridor. Then he ran for the hall before Queen or Bishop had entered the bathroom.
Knight whipped the bathroom door open and prepared to blast any mercenaries in the long corridor, but all he saw to his right was a long pile of black-clad bodies, stretching back to the loading dock doors and beyond to the stairwell at that end. The other end of the hallway was clear except for some stone rubble near the end. Knight sprinted in that direction.
He found a storage room on his left. Ran past. Just as bullets pinged down the hallway near his feet, he dove through the next door, into a lounge. He quickly scanned the space. Sofas, a table. Nothing he could use. Beyond the lounge was an open double doorway filled with debris. He crossed to the doorway and looked in on what appeared to be a natural cave formation, but the room was filled with mechanical wreckage and the rubble of the collapsed ceiling. Above him, a few wooden cabinets and pa
rt of a tilted refrigerator hung out of the ruined ceiling. A kitchen, he thought.
He heard gunfire down the corridor. An AK-47. Queen and Bishop answered with a barrage of their own, spurring his climb up the rubble and wreckage, heading to the next level. Most of the kitchen floor was gone, but Knight managed to scramble into and out of the second floor kitchen. He pulled himself to a tottering standing position by the horizontal door handle. As soon as Knight stood, the handle of the door jiggled. The door opened inward. With nowhere to go but backward and down, he quickly leaned forward, straightening one arm above the door handle and leaning his weight against the shoulder. There was a tiny one-inch-square plastic catch at the bottom of the door designed to grab the stopper pin on the wall, so the door could be kept open. Knight placed the toe of one of his boots on the plastic box, and stepped up.
The door swung in abruptly, and Knight rode the back of the door as it swept him toward the wall. Two men rushed into the room only to find no floor on which to stand. They plummeted ten feet to the unexpected rubble below them. One man’s leg shattered on impact, and Knight could hear the sickening crunch of bones as he impacted a large piece of misshapen rock. Knight swung his MP-5 out in his left hand, firing two quick and deadly accurate three-round bursts before swinging around faster than most men can blink and firing twice more. The two men in the hall fell to the floor wearing matching surprised expressions frozen on their faces. One of them managed to squeeze off a single shot before he died, but Knight felt nothing. The quick spin and lingering effects of the gas stole Knight’s balance. He dropped the submachine gun knowing its strap would hold it in place. With his hand free, he reached out and snagged the front handle of the door, which was swinging closed. With a yank, he was upright again. Without people shooting at him, he slipped around the door and into the hall.
The two dead men dressed in black BDUs lay sprawled on the floor. One had a swarthy mustache, and the other man had tattoos of jigsaw pieces over one half of his face. Jigsaw man was still breathing, but unconscious.
There was no backup in sight. He looked right. The hallway ended at a T junction. He looked left. The hallway looked identical, but a woman suddenly appeared. He called to her. “Pawn!”
Asya ran up to him. “Are you alone?” He nodded and raised his MP-5, only to discover the weapon was ruined. The single shot fired by the merc had struck the MP-5’s barrel. The dent was small, but any imperfection could result in the weapon blowing up in his face.
He unlooped the submachine gun’s strap and dropped the weapon to the floor before drawing his Browning 9mm sidearm and pointing it down the long hallway.
“Everyone still alive?” he asked.
She nodded. “Queen and Bishop?”
“For now,” he said.
“Which way?” Asya asked.
“Your way. Up. Looking for a communications scrambler. Probably in Ridley’s office.” Knight said. He climbed to his feet, keeping a wary eye down the hallway.
“Just came from there. Nothing like that. Maybe in the labs upstairs?”
“Worth a try.”
He followed her around the corner to the stairwell. Distant bursts of automatic weapons fire echoed up from below. Asya opened the door to the stairwell and glanced down. No one in sight. She motioned for him to follow. Knight stepped into the landing and looked up. Finding no sentry, he raced up the concrete steps to the next level’s door, clearly marked Sub Level 1 in black letters. He peered through the chicken wire-reinforced glass window and found an empty hallway. He said a silent prayer for small favors and slipped into the hall. Asya was right behind him.
“Been in there,” Knight said, passing the initial lab doors through which he and the others had entered the facility. He started walking past the doors and down the hall.
“What about this one?” Asya asked. She pointed to a set of doors across from the Microbiology Lab. The sign next to the doors read Cold Lab. Beside that was a small stylized icon of a seven-headed dragon.
“They have tissue samples of the hydra in there,” Knight said, and he kept walking, quickening his pace. The hydra had been reawakened after its long, petrified sleep in a Manifold lab, just like this, while he traded bullets with Manifold’s security force. He wasn’t eager for a repeat.
“Are you sure?” Asya asked, joining him in his long strides down the hallway.
“Pretty sure.”
Asya smiled. “Last Crusade. Love that movie.”
“Indy never had to face a multi-headed regenerating nightmare. I would have taken the snakes.”
Further down the long hallway, they came to two more sets of doors on opposite sides. The room on the left was labeled Data Lab, the room on the right, Sequencing Lab.
Knight popped his head into the Data Lab. The room was dark, but the acoustics inside told him it was large. He found the light switch on the wall, and flicked it with an audible snap. Long rows of overhead lights flickered to life, revealing desk after desk of computer stations, reminding Knight of Hollywood versions of NASA or NORAD headquarters. At the far end of the room was a radio station with a long, thick rubber-coated black antenna. Although all the other computers in the huge lab had been turned off, this station was alive with green and red LED lights.
“Is that—” Asya began.
Knight raised his pistol and fired off three shots, shattering the equipment in the corner and throwing a shower of sparks into the air.
Knight tried his throat microphone. “Queen? You read?”
He heard a burst of static and then Queen’s voice came through. “Thank fuckery. Where the hell are you?”
“Sub Level 1. You still on 3?”
“We’re pinned down in the bathroom. You got out just in time.”
“Blast through the next two walls. You got a storage room, then a lounge. Access up to the next level through a caved-in kitchen.” Knight walked back to the hallway as he talked and Asya was right by his side.
As he stepped out into the hallway, bullets raced past him from the stairs he had used. He ducked back into the Data Lab. “Shit. You’re gonna need to try for the South stairwell when you get on Two, Queen. North is now hostile.”
“Crap,” he heard her say. “Hold on.”
Knight heard a distant booming noise from the bowels of the facility.
“We’re gonna try to circle around to the south side of the loading dock and pin these bastards down,” Knight said into his mic.
Knight looked at Asya and she gave a curt nod, indicating she was ready to rush out into the fray again. She was a lot like her brother.
“‘We?’ Who have you got?”
“Pawn. Give us five. Then make for the south stairs.”
“Got it. Where the fuck is Rook?”
“Haven’t seen him,” he said.
“Rook is on Level 2,” Asya said, intuiting Queen’s line of question. It wasn’t hard. She knew Rook and Queen were an item. Generally inseparable. She would never admit it, but Queen’s concern was personal as much as it was tactical.
Knight relayed the message and turned to Asya. “Ready?”
“Go,” Asya said from behind him.
Knight yanked the door open in one hard pull.
Standing on the other side of the door was a huge man dressed in black and wearing a camouflage Vietnam-era infantry helmet. His AK-47 was raised at Knight’s heart. As the man’s finger began to squeeze, Knight closed his eyes.
FORTY
Lake Bracciano, Etruria, 780 BC
“What…is that smell?”
“That…would be puppy,” the voice came floating back softly. King could just barely make out the man’s silhouette in the dark tunnel. They were coming up on some kind of light source in the distance, but it was faint.
“You called Cerberus, the three-headed hellhound guardian of Hades, ‘Puppy?’ Really?”
“I couldn’t bring myself to destroy the creature. He was…cute once. When he was small. Also, I have yet to weave the Cerberus s
tory into the ancient religions. It started on its own, really, after puppy got free one night.”
“You’re telling me that the fabled twelfth labor of the mighty Hercules was basically catching your loose dog?”
“Actually, that’s probably the most accurate telling of the story I’ve ever heard,” Alexander whispered. “I found him in a cave. Brought him home.”
As more light filled the tunnel, King could finally make out the stone wall of the natural cave. Alexander’s form was fully visible ahead. The tunnel ended at a huge round arena-like space, all carved from a naturally formed cavern. King could see where stone ledges had been fashioned as seating, but there were also natural stalactites that connected with stalagmites, forming thin columns that supported the roof far overhead. Across the floor of the giant space was a thick iron chain. Each link looked large enough for King to crawl through. One end of the chain was pegged to a rock wall. The other end of the chain was out of view to the right of the tunnel entrance.
Alexander held a hand up, preventing King from entering the arena. “‘Hellhound’ was a bit of an exaggeration, although he is large.”
“How big are we talking here?”
“Ever seen a rhino up close?”
“You’re kidding.”
Alexander’s grim face said he wasn’t. “That’s how big he was when I got him.”
King’s jaw fell slack. “You said he was small when you got him.”
“Comparatively speaking,” Alexander said with a shrug. “And we can’t kill him, either.”
“Why not? And won’t he recognize your scent?”
“I’m afraid he might not. My body chemistry might have changed since the inclusion of the herbs and serums that give me my longevity and strength. But the reason we can’t kill him is more complex.”
Omega: A Jack Sigler Thriller cta-5 Page 18
