The silence that followed was harsh and filled with dreadful promise. We stared at the bend in the corridor, and then one by one my team looked to me for direction.
“We’re going in,” I said. “I’m on point. I want two rounds in anything that isn’t DMS.”
“Hooah,” they whispered.
I reached for the door handle and gave it a quick turn. There was no gunfire. I took my last flash bang and lobbed it inside. We covered our ears for the big bang, but a split second later we were going through that door in a fast line, ready to finish this fight.
We stopped in our tracks.
What I saw hit me like a punch to the brain, but I had enough presence of mind to keep my mouth shut and my weapon ready. Behind me I heard a small gasp escape Bunny’s throat. Top came up behind us. Everyone stopped and we all stood there staring at the Spetsnaz team.
“Mother of God,” Top whispered.
The room wasn’t big. Maybe forty by fifty, stacked to the ceiling with file boxes. A few of the old punch-card computers draped in plastic sheeting stood against one wall. There was a desk, a chair, and a sorting table. The floor was littered with hundreds of shell casings. Smoke hung like green ghosts in the air, and on the floor, strewn around like refuse, were the Russians.
All of them, the entire Spetsnaz hit team. Eight of them.
Dead.
And not just dead . . . they’d been torn to pieces. Their guns still smoked; hands were still curled around the stocks, fingers hooked through trigger guards. Arms and legs and heads were scattered like islands in a sea of blood.
Bunny moved up beside me. “God . . . what the hell happened here?”
I sensed more than saw the stack of boxes to my left begin to shift and then I was moving, shoving Bunny and Top backward as a ton of boxed paper canted over and fell. Bunny tried to pivot and run, but the bloody shell casings rolled under his feet and he went into a wet slide. His flailing left hand clubbed Top right across the face.
A second stack of boxes began to fall and I leaped aside, swinging my gun around to aim at the shadows behind them, ready to kill.
“Cap’n!” I heard Top yell. “On your—”
But that was all I heard as something came out of the shadows behind the stack to my right and slammed into me. The blow was so fast and so shockingly hard that for a moment I had the unreal thought that I’d been hit by a car. I could feel my body leave the ground as I hurtled ten feet through the air and slammed into another stack of file boxes. I tucked my chin into my shoulder to buffer the impact, but I struck so hard that the whole tower of boxes canted and fell, knocking me to the floor and then slamming into the adjoining tower. Suddenly the whole room seemed to be collapsing around me as columns of dusty boxes toppled. I heard a barrage of shots, but there was no coordinated counterattack as everyone scrambled to avoid being crushed by the tons of paper.
There was a sound—a roar like a bull gorilla—and I turned to try to see what the hell was in the room with us, but I was half-buried beneath hundreds of pounds of paper, my night-vision goggles knocked askew so that one eye saw green and the other saw blackness. I had the vague sense of something moving toward me very fast and I tried to bring up my pistol, but it was slapped out of my hand so hard and fast that I thought my wrist was broken. I never saw the hand that disarmed me.
I saw the guy—he was a brute with a barrel chest and huge shoulders. I caught a glimpse of a black metal helmet and fatigues, and then he came at me, head down like a boxer, and fired off a punch that was a green blur. I got just enough of my shoulder up to protect my head, but his massive fist crunched into my helmet and tore it off my head. I heard the straps pop. My vision went from green to black as I lost the night vision, but there was light from some other source—one of the Russians’ flashlights on the floor. Bad light, but enough to allow me to fight.
I dropped and rolled sideways and came up into a crouch with my Rapid Release folding knife. I wasn’t going to go down without a fight, not like the Russians, and unless this guy was very damn good I was going to take him with me. The blade snapped open as the big son of a bitch closed in. He was wearing night black BDUs and a balaclava that hid his face. All I could see were his eyes, which were small and sunk into gristly pits, and his wide slash of a mouth. His lips curled back from jagged yellow teeth and he opened his mouth to bellow at me as he lunged forward.
A thousand bits of information flashed through my head in the second before we collided. He was bigger and stronger than me. And unless he was a silverback gorilla he was wearing thick layers of body armor. Something that could stop armor-piercing rounds. There’s a lot of experimental stuff out there, and some if it even diffuses the foot-pounds of bullet impact. He had a handgun strapped to his hip; I had a knife in my hands. There were yells and gunfire all around me.
The bruiser made a grab for me, and he was fast. Really damn fast.
I’m faster.
I twisted to one side and his fingernails raked across my chest armor. I didn’t try to grapple. I’m good at it, but I’m not stupid. And though I know a knife can often cut through Kevlar, I wasn’t in the mood to find out whether the stuff he wore could turn a blade.
So as I twisted I rammed the blade into his mouth.
I drove my fist almost all the way into his maw, the blade ripping deep into the soft muscle of his tongue and soft palate until it struck bone. I twisted my wrist and tore the blade free, and that tore a scream of white-hot agony from him that was the loudest sound I’ve ever heard from a human mouth. It was like the animal roar we’d heard earlier, but now it was filled with searing pain. His body began thrashing wildly, all control lost. His huge fists swung out in all directions. I evaded the first but caught the second on my shoulder and suddenly I was flying into another stack of boxes.
I crumpled to the floor, and before I could scramble out of the way a full stack of boxes crashed down on me.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The Deck
Saturday, August 28, 3:22 P.M.
Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 92 hours; 38 minutes E.S.T.
The Twins walked arm in arm toward their plane. It was an old affectation—a European habit they’d picked up that also allowed them enough physical closeness to have a confidential conversation.
“Slow down,” Hecate said, tugging gently on her brother’s arm. “He’s watching. Probably Otto, too.”
“They’re always watching,” murmured Paris. “God! I can’t wait to get out of this place. He gives me the creeps.”
“Who? Dad or Otto?”
“Either,” Paris muttered. “Both. A couple of pit vipers, the two of them.”
“Mm. Useful pit vipers,” she said, and tapped her purse, in which she carried several CD-ROMs of data Cyrus had downloaded for them. Material that would either solve the rage problems with the Berserkers or at very least dial it down.
They reached the jet. Two of their own guards flanked the stairs and straightened as the Jakobys drew close.
“Anything to report, Marcus?” Hecate asked quietly.
“Nothing much, ma’am. The jet’s been refueled and no one has been aboard.”
Paris snorted. “Did anyone try?”
“Yes, sir,” said Marcus. “Mr. Otto asked to go aboard to leave you both some flowers. I told him that we were under orders to allow no visitors.”
“The flowers?”
“He took them with him.”
Paris shot Hecate a knowing look. “Probably a tracking device hidden in the bouquet.”
Marcus said, “I can promise you, ma’am, that no one and nothing got aboard this plane.”
“Good job, Marcus,” Paris said.
Hecate cast a quick, doubtful look at the plane; then she turned and ran lightly up the stairs. Paris threw a wicked glance back at the Deck and hoped his father or Otto was watching. He mouthed the words: Kiss my ass. Smiling, he climbed aboard.
A few minutes later the jet was rolling fast down the
runway.
OTTO WIRTHS STOOD looking out of the observation window in the Deck’s communications center. Now that the Twins had left, the techs had pushed buttons that sent a big wall sliding backward in sections to reveal the other two-thirds of the room, in which there were many more workstations for communication and scanning. The deck panels slid away to reveal the glass floor below which the computer cold room and the virus production tanks hummed with terrible potential. As he had told Mr. Cyrus, the Twins saw only what he wanted them to see.
“They’re airborne, sir,” said a tech at a nearby console.
Otto looked down at the screen. “Wait until they’re at twenty thousand feet,” he said softly. “And then turn on the jellyfish sensors.”
“Yes, sir.”
When the Twins’ jet had been refueled the fuel had included dozens of tiny sensors no bigger than a drop of water. They floated in the gasoline and transmitted a signal via several wiry tendrils. The sensors used collaborative nannite technology—singly their signal strength was faint, but a dozen of them could broadcast a strong, clear signal for miles.
“What’s the status on the pursuit craft?”
“Birds one, two, and four are at thirty-five thousand feet. Bird three is coasting along the deck at one thousand feet. All remote stations are on alert and the infiltration teams are on deck. Everything’s ready to go, sir.”
Otto smiled.
“Good,” he said as he watched the blip on the radar climb into the sky and begin a slow turn toward the southeast.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sokoto, Nigeria
Six Days Ago
Dr. Hans Koertig banged through the swinging doors of the field surgical suite, tore off his mask and gloves, and threw them into the trash. For two minutes he stood in the center of the scrub room, his eyes bright with fury, his fists balled into knots. He didn’t turn or look when the doors opened and Frieda Jaeger came in and quietly began stripping off her stained scrubs.
“I’m sorry, Hans,” she said softly, but he said nothing. Cartilage bunched at the corners of his jaws. “You did your best, but these things happen—”
Her words died on her tongue as he suddenly wheeled on her. “Did my best? Is that what you think, Frieda? That I did my best?”
He took a step toward her and she backed up.
“What I did in there was superb work. Superb.” Spit flew from his mouth as he shouted. “I’ve done reconstructive surgeries on two hundred noma patients in the four years I’ve been in Nigeria. Two hundred. I have never once—not once—lost a patient on the table.” He pointed at the doors. “That boy in there is the sixth child to die under my knife in eight days. Don’t you dare tell me that these things happen!”
“Perhaps you’re just overworked—” But as soon as she said it Frieda Jaeger knew that it was the wrong thing to say. Koertig’s eyes blazed with dangerous fury and for a moment she thought he was going to hit her, but instead he wrenched himself away, stalked to the sink, and began scrubbing his hands as if he wanted to wash the reality of it from his skin.
“I don’t lose patients, Frieda,” he said over his shoulder. “You can call me an arrogant ass, but the facts are the facts. I don’t lose patients. Not here, not in Kenya, not back home in Munich. God damn I don’t lose patients. Not children with noma. This isn’t the nineteen fifties, for Christ’s sake. This isn’t an aid station treating gangrene with a first-aid kit and a prayer. This is an AWD-Foundation surgical unit. No one on the continent has a better record than us for saving children.”
“I know, Hans,” she said weakly, “but the children are dying. It’s not just you. We’ve lost thirty in six weeks.”
Koertig wheeled on her. He looked stricken. “Thirty? What are you saying?”
Noma was a terrible disease, a severe form of infectious gangrene of the mouth or cheek that affected malnourished children throughout Africa, parts of Asia, and sections of Central America. Nearly all of the patients were between two and six years old and the disease literally ate away at the flesh of their cheeks and mouths, leaving them horribly disfigured and vulnerable to secondary infections. Since the mid-nineties the AWD-Stiftung Kinderhilfe, Dutch Noma Foundation, and Facing Africa has sent medical teams to Nigeria and other afflicted places. The teams, like this one in Sokoto, had done miraculous work in combating the disease and improving living conditions for the people. Plastic surgeons from Interplast had volunteered to do hundreds of reconstructive surgeries for children so they could return to normal lives. So they could live.
The disease was no longer universally fatal unless left untreated . . . but treatments existed, preventive medicines were being distributed, and food supplies were coming in from humanitarian organizations around the world.
And now this. Children dying from a disease that should no longer be able to kill them.
“How are so many dying?” he demanded.
“We . . . don’t know.”
“Have you done tests, for God’s sake?”
“We have. It’s noma . . . but the disease has become more aggressive.”
“Are you talking mutation?”
She shook her head, then nodded. “I’m not sure what to call it.”
Frieda Jaeger was a pediatric nurse in her fourth month in Nigeria. She was clearly out of her depth.
“Who is handling the tests?” snapped Koertig.
She gave him the name of the lab. The doctor finished scrubbing and then hurried out to make some calls. Noma was an old disease. It was vicious but stable, predictable.
Terror gripped his heart as he ran to his trailer and the satellite phone he used for emergencies.
God help these children if it had mutated.
God help the children everywhere.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Deep Iron Storage Facility
Saturday, August 28, 3:59 P.M.
Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 92 hours, 1 minute E.S.T.
I kicked my way out from under the boxes and rolled over into a crouch, pulling my Beretta.
Top Sims knelt nearby, his M4 in his hands. He had a shallow cut across the bridge of his nose and one eye was puffed shut.
“Clear!” he yelled.
“Clear!” I heard Bunny growl, and to my right I saw him crawling out from another mountain of toppled boxes.
“Where are the hostiles?” I demanded.
Bunny switched on a minilantern and pointed to the rear door, which stood ajar. He kicked it shut. There was no interior lock.
“We giving chase?”
“No. Barricade the door.”
We worked fast and stacked boxes in front of both doors. Top was watching me as we worked.
“What?” I asked.
“Looked like that last box hit you in the head. You need me to go through all that ‘do you know who you are and who’s the President of the United States?’ crap, Cap’n?”
“I know who I am, and for the record the Vice President’s a total dick,” I said.
Top grinned. “You’ll live.”
Bunny sat down on the floor and began applying butterfly stitches to a long, shallow slash on his thigh. “Well,” he said, “this was fun. Don’t know about you fellas, but I’m getting tired of being ambushed by people who shouldn’t even be mad at me. I mean . . . what the hell was that all about? Did we just have a firefight with the Hulk and the Thing?”
“Something like that.” I looked at the bloody remains of the Russian team.
Top said, “Any idea what the hell we just stepped into, Cap’n?”
“I’m starting to,” I said but didn’t elaborate. “It seems pretty clear that there were at least two teams down here searching for the same stuff.”
“Three teams,” said Top, “if Jigsaw’s down here somewhere.”
I didn’t comment on that. If Jigsaw was in Deep Iron and hadn’t come to investigate the gunfire, then it meant that they weren’t able to. Top read my face and didn’t pursue it. Bunny was wa
tching us both and he cursed under his breath.
The flashlights did a good job of lighting the room. The firefight with the Russians had taken place in one corner, over by the door through which we’d come. That part of the room was a charnel house of mangled bodies. I’d seen a lot of death and I’d caused a lot of death, but there was something about this that was jabbing wires into my brain. I wanted to turn away, but I knew that would be the wrong choice. Denial is always a bear trap—you’ll forget about it and step in it later.
Top pulled the magazine from his M4, saw that he was down to three rounds, and replaced it with a full one. “Cap’n, either I’m getting too old for this shit or we nearly got our asses handed to us by just two guys. They were winning, too, until you shanked one in the mouth.”
“No joke,” said Bunny. “One of those guys knocked my rifle out of my hands—and not to blow my own horn, but that’s not so easy to do. So I laid into him, hit him four times. Two uppercuts, a hook to the ribs, and an overhand right. I might as well have been brushing lint off his lapels.” Bunny had twenty-two-inch biceps and could bench 460. When he laid a combination into a pair of boxing mitts, whoever was holding them went numb to the wrists. Bunny’s blue eyes looked deeply spooked. “Son of a bitch didn’t even grunt. It’s not doing a lot for my self-esteem.”
“He’s right, Cap’n,” Top agreed. “I put a full mag into both of those assholes and it barely even knocked them back. Sure as hell didn’t knock them down. I think we’re seeing a new kind of body armor, something that absorbs impact like nothing I ever seen. It was only when I went for a head shot that he turned tail and ducked behind the boxes. But . . . until then I was slowing him down, but I wasn’t hurting him.”
“Nobody’s got body armor that good,” Bunny said.
“I may have clipped one of them in the leg—the one you didn’t stab—because he was limping when he went out the door. He should have been Swiss cheese, though. And, considering how strong these guys were, maybe we’re looking at an exoskeleton. They’ve been working on that stuff for—”
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