The Dragon Factory jl-2

by Jonathan Maberry

Tuesday, August 31, 2:53 A.M.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 7 minutes E.S.T.

  Grace moved away from the corpse of the Berserker and retraced her steps to the path. Ahead of her in the darkness she could hear the whispered conversation of Hecate and her father. It was no longer stationary. Grace crouched and listened, tracking the sound even though she couldn’t make out the words. The sound moved from left to right in front of her. There were no points of reference to guess distance, especially with whispers, but it couldn’t have been more than twenty yards.

  What was to the right?

  The sound told her. The soft hiss of the waterfall. That’s where Hecate was going. She remembered that metal panel in the back. A door or access panel. Grace was willing to bet a lot on it being a door.

  She adjusted her course, feeling ahead for the terrain. She found a line of small rocks and recognized them as stones that lined the path used by the groundskeeping staff. Perfect.

  “—give me a second—”

  It was a snatch of a comment and Grace froze. Whoever said it couldn’t have been more than a dozen feet in front of her. She drew her pistol and listened.

  “—here it is!” whispered Hecate. “There’s a release right under the—”

  Grace fired in the direction of the voice. She knew that her first shot would probably miss, but the muzzle flash would show her where to put the second shot.

  After the absolute darkness the flash was eye-hurtingly bright, but it froze a picture in her mind. The back of the waterfall. Hecate reaching up under the overhang of moss, her lithe body stretching. Cyrus behind her, his fist clutched around something that hung from a lanyard around his neck. Otto Wirths in the foreground, bent in the direction of the panel.

  A flash image. There and gone.

  Grace smiled and squeezed off five more shots.

  She heard a scream.

  And then the wall five feet to her right exploded, showering her with debris. A chunk of rock the size of a fist struck her on the side of her shoulder, and her last shot was high and wide.

  Grace fell over and her gun vanished into the darkness.

  A moment later Hecate slammed into her, snarling and spitting with insane rage, grabbing her arms with insane strength.

  “You fucking bitch!” snarled Hecate as she drove Grace Courtland into the dirt. They rolled over and over again through the darkness, tumbling sideways down the hill away from the waterfall, colliding with rocks and smashing through plants. Hecate snarled continuously and Grace could feel hot spittle on her face and throat. The woman was enormously strong, her fingers like iron bands crushing into Grace’s arms with enough force to crush skin and muscle.

  Grace jammed a forearm under Hecate’s chin to keep those sharp white teeth away from her throat. With her other hand she shoved back on the woman’s shoulder, trying to create space. Grace twisted to bring her knee up between them, using the long thighbone as a strut to separate them.

  What the hell was she fighting? Had this mad bitch used her own genetic science on herself? Everything about Hecate provoked an image of one of the big fighting cats. Hecate even hissed like a panther.

  Hecate suddenly let go of Grace’s arms and grabbed her throat. It was like being crushed by a vise. All at once Grace was unable to breathe.

  Grace stopped pushing on Hecate’s shoulder and immediately hit her in the face—once, twice, again, pounding on the side of Hecate’s cheek and eye socket. The pressure eased by a tiny fraction. Grace dragged in a spoonful of air, but then Hecate tightened her grip, overlapping her thumbs to try to crush the windpipe. Grace pressed her chin down on the thumbs, forcing them against her sternum to slow the choke while continuing to hammer at Hecate. She cupped her palm and slapped Hecate over the ear.

  Instantly Hecate howled in pain and toppled sideways. Grace pivoted on the floor and kicked out with both feet, catching Hecate on the hip and stomach, driving her farther away. Grace didn’t want to escape; she needed to breathe and reorganize. She spun around and came up into a crouch.

  OTTO WIRTHS TORE away the decorative vegetation and ran his hands over the panel. The moss had hidden four wing nuts and Otto grabbed the first one and tried to twist it. It resisted and he growled in fury and frustration—and then it moved. He spun it around and around until it reached the end of the thread and fell away.

  “Hurry!” Cyrus urged. “They’re breaking through the wall.”

  “I am hurrying, damn it.” Otto attacked the second one, which was stuck just as firmly as the first. “What about Hecate?”

  Cyrus was invisible beside him. He said, “She’ll catch up.”

  The second wing nut began to turn. “And if she doesn’t?”

  “We have a large family, Otto.”

  Otto dropped the second wing nut and began turning the third. That one was looser and it yielded immediately. The fourth was harder, but he threw all of his strength at it and the nut turned.

  “Otto . . . ,” Cyrus hissed. “I hear something. . . .”

  THERE WAS A second and much bigger explosion and debris flew outward into the chamber. A jagged piece of stone whistled through the air and struck Grace on the side of the head and she spun and fell facedown on the grass and did not move.

  Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Three

  The Dragon Factory

  Tuesday, August 31, 2:55 A.M.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 5 minutes E.S.T.

  The moment I leaned close to the hole in the wall I heard a male voice yell, “They’re breaking through! Get us out!. . . .”

  A second male voice yelled, “Hecate . . . did you kill that bitch?”

  “I don’t know,” a woman snarled from the darkness deeper in the chamber. “Otto, get my father out of here. Up the stairs. My office. The gray case.”

  “What about . . . ?”

  “I’ll make sure you’re not followed. Go!”

  Christ.

  I could tell Grace was in trouble. Maybe dead. But the Jakobys were about to escape. There was no way for me to know whether a distraction at this moment would help or hurt. If Grace was still alive and hiding, then I could get her killed. On the other hand, I needed to know what the Jakobys were doing.

  Grace’s own voice echoed in my mind.

  The mission comes first.

  I knew what the mission required. I put the flashlight and the muzzle of the Berretta into the hole, which gave me only a few inches of extra space to see. I prayed I was making the right move.

  I switched the flashlight on and pointed the beam in the direction of the male voices. The woman had told Otto to get her father out of there. Cyrus was the one with the trigger device.

  The flashlight beam swept over tropical foliage of all kinds and for a moment I saw nothing else; then I caught a momentary image of something at the edge of the beam of light. I immediately angled the beam back and saw a vulture-faced old man squinting at me through the glare. He held a piece of flat metal in his hands that he had obviously just lifted out of a rectangular hole in the wall. I fired at him and the first bullet hit the metal plate at an angle and whanged off into the darkness. I fired again as the man dropped the plate and tackled a second man who stood closer to the opening. Was that Otto and Cyrus Jakoby? It had to be. I fired and fired, sure that I hit at least one of them, but the tackle had sent them spilling into the opening. I fired the entire magazine and then tore the M4 from Bunny’s hand, jammed it into the opening, and let it rip. I wanted to fill their bolt-hole with ricochets that would chop those maniacs to pieces.

  I thrust the gun at Bunny to reload and I swept back and forth with the flashlight.

  “Hopscotch!” I bellowed.

  But if Grace heard my call, she was not able to shout back the countersign.

  My heart sank in my chest.

  I spun and grabbed Redman by the shoulder. “The DMS and SEALs are all over this island. Find them. Get all the C4 you can and blow me a fucking hole. Bunny—
I’m going back to the stairs and see if I can find Hecate’s office. Cyrus and Otto are on their way upstairs. Hecate said something about a gray case—”

  “Shit . . . you think she has a ruggedized laptop?”

  “Yeah, dammit, that’s exactly what I think. I’ve got to find that office.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “No . . . Redman’s going to need muscle to fight through to our teams outside. We need that hole. As soon as he’s secured, then come find me.”

  He wanted to protest, but I was already in motion.

  Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Four

  The Chamber of Myth

  Tuesday, August 31, 2:57 A.M.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 3 minutes E.S.T.

  It was the blood that woke Grace Courtland. It seeped from the gash in her scalp and curled in lines over her cheek and into her nose. She choked and the sudden spasm of a cough brought her out of her daze. She rolled over onto her stomach and coughed the blood out of her nose and mouth. Her head felt like it was ten times normal sized and stuffed with broken glass. Nausea was a polluted wind that blew through her stomach.

  There was movement, noise, and light off to her right and she turned her muzzy head to try to make sense of it. Colored lights popped on and flew through the air and in her confusion Grace didn’t understand what she was seeing, and then clarity returned to her. There was a hole in the wall to the Chamber of Myth and someone was tossing chemical light sticks inside. The Jakobys wouldn’t do something like that. It had to be . . .

  “Joe!” she called, but her voice was a hoarse croak.

  Grace climbed shakily to her feet. Her gun was lost somewhere in the shadows. There was no sign of Hecate or the others.

  “Effing hell!” she growled, and began climbing back up the hill toward the waterfall and the hole in the wall. Her feet were unsteady and from the dizziness she felt Grace knew that she had a concussion. It was hard to think, but she forced herself to remember where she was and what she had to do.

  When she was ten feet from the hole she called out.

  “Hopscotch!”

  There was a pause and then a familiar voice called back, “Jump rope! Major . . . is that you?”

  “Beth . . . thank God. . . .” Grace stumbled the last few steps and leaned on the wall. She saw Beth’s eyes go wide and realized what a mess she must look. Her face was covered with blood.

  “Beth . . . what happened? Where did the Jakobys go? Where’s—”

  Staff Sgt. Beth Howell, Alpha Team’s number two, gave it to her in a few quick sentences.

  Grace turned and reached for Beth’s flashlight and shined it on the back of the waterfall, saw the open portal.

  “Damn it.”

  “Give me a flashlight and your sidearm,” she ordered, and Beth passed them through along with a spare magazine.

  “It’s the last one I have.”

  “If Captain Ledger or anyone else gets in touch, tell them I’m following the Jakobys.”

  “Major—Captain Ledger took the stairs. He’s trying to find the Jakoby woman’s office, too.”

  “Then I’d better bloody well beat him to it. Can’t let Echo Team take all the glory.”

  Beth smiled, but she looked as stressed and nervous as Grace felt.

  “Good hunting!” Beth called.

  Grace said nothing. She racked the slide on the Sig Sauer, laid her pistol arm across the wrist of the hand holding the flashlight, and stepped through the opening. In her mind this wasn’t a simple hunt. The bloody Jakobys weren’t the only ones capable of extermination.

  The stairs led upward into the darkness.

  Gun in hand, Grace began climbing.

  Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Five

  The Dragon Factory

  Tuesday, August 31, 2:58 A.M.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 2 minutes E.S.T.

  I pushed through into the stairwell, cleared it, and then began climbing. There were two floors above the main level, and I would have to check them both. My heart was racing and my nerves were screaming at me. Images of Grace, alone and hurt in the dark, kept trying to climb into my head and I kept forcing them out.

  The mission comes first.

  The pressure I felt was almost unbearable because the cost of failure was too high to calculate. Global ethnic genocide. How is that concept even possible for a human mind to grasp, let alone attempt to undertake? Even if someone was a racist, the concept should be so alien to the mind that it would never form, and yet these maniacs were within minutes of setting it into motion. Evil should never be allowed to flourish, but this transcended evil. I don’t know if there’s even a word for what this was.

  That’s what put the power in my muscles; that’s what gave me focus.

  At the first landing I pushed the door open slowly and quietly. The hall was dark as pitch. I risked my flashlight, casting the beam up and down, and then shut it off and shifted quickly away from where I’d been standing.

  No shots tore through the doorway.

  So far, so good.

  I turned the light back on and moved down the hallway at a light run. Seventy feet in I found a body. It was a Russian and even from ten feet away I could tell there was something wrong about him, but it wasn’t until I was right on top of him that I could see that he had no arms. They had been ripped out of their sockets.

  A second man lay against a wall a few yards away, and from the damage done to him and the smears of blood it looked like someone had beaten him to death with . . .

  Holy shit.

  Someone had torn the first Russian’s arms off and used them to beat the second man to death. As soon as I understood it, I knew that it had to be—

  Something hit me in the side hard enough to pick me up off the ground and send me crashing into the wall. My gun and flashlight went flying. I hit, dropped, and rolled away, and if I hadn’t then a booted foot would have crushed my skull.

  I scuttled backward as something huge and monstrous rushed at me from the shadows. It was roughly man shaped but way too big.

  One of the Jakoby Twins’ transgenic soldiers. A three-hundred-pound killing machine with the face of an ape and a chest twice as massive as Bunny’s.

  The soldier raised his foot to take another stamp and I swept his standing leg. He crashed with a sound like a clap of thunder, and I side-rolled back to my feet. My gun was on the floor fifteen feet away and I started to dive for it, but the ape-man grabbed my ankle and tripped me. As I fell he clawed at me with his other hand and grabbed a strap of my Kevlar.

  I rolled sideways toward him and chopped him across the face with an elbow smash that cracked bone. It knocked his head back against the marble floor, and I pivoted on my back to bring my legs to bear and ax-kicked him on the mouth. The heel of my boot smashed in his front teeth and suddenly he was choking and gagging on bone fragments.

  I got to my feet and drew my Rapid Response knife. I’m not one of those idiots who wait for their opponent to get back to his feet so there can be a round two. I threw myself at him and buried the knife into his eye socket. Then I cut his throat because I was having a bad fucking day.

  Blood geysered up and splashed my face and arm. Screw it.

  I got to my feet just as a second Berserker came running at me out of the shadows.

  A gun would have been so much easier, but there was no time.

  As he closed on me there was a moment when he passed through the flashlight’s glow and I realized that Bunny had been right and Top wrong when assessing the two men we’d fought in Deep Iron. These weren’t exoskeletons. Bunny had simply used fists against something so damn big and strong that his blows did little useful harm.

  We’d all been right, though, about the body armor. These guys were dressed head to toe in it. I doubted that it was anything cutting-edge that stopped the PSI of bullets. These guys just bulled through it. It wasn’t that they were big—if they had ape DNA, then they were also mu
ch stronger and with far denser muscle tissue.

  This passed through my mind in a microsecond. While those pieces were clicking into place I was moving forward to meet the brute.

  He tried for a grab, but I figured him for something like that, so I dropped into a low crouch and drove the knife into the top of his foot and then slammed my shoulder into his crotch. He howled in surprise and pain and instinctively shoved at me. I kept a solid grip on the knife and yanked it free as his shove sent me skidding ten feet down the hall. At the end of the skid I brought my knees up and tucked into a backroll, so I ended up on my feet right next to the Russian’s dismembered arm.

  The Berserker took a step and his foot buckled. I scooped up the Russian’s arm and threw it at the ape-man and as he batted it aside I was already moving forward. I slashed him from eyebrow to jawline in a hard diagonal slice that cut right through his nose. He shrieked in pain and clamped both hands to his face. In the narrow gap between his forearms I lunged in and stabbed him in the throat, gave the blade a quarter turn, and tore it free.

  He fell.

  I picked up my pistol and slapped my pockets for magazines, found that I had one plus what was in the Beretta.

  It would have to do.

  I wiped and folded the knife, picked up the flashlight, checked the action on the pistol, and ran like hell.

  I got to the end of the hallway without finding a single room that looked like an office. There were workrooms and a lunchroom and some computer labs but nothing else. Shit. At the far end I found a stairwell and crashed through. Hecate’s office had to be on the top floor.

  I was halfway up the stairs when I heard men shouting and screaming and firing. Flashlight beams cut back and forth and I risked a glance over the edge of the stairs. Two flights below, a group of Russians were fighting a losing battle against a pack of the scorpion-dogs.

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered, and ran upward. If I’d had a grenade left I’d have sent it down as a “hello” from Uncle Sam. Pity.

  I took the steps two at a time and then came out onto the top level. My flash showed a much more elegant hallway, with brass fittings, expensive art on the walls, and a décor that tended toward style rather than function. Hecate’s office had to be here, but as I shone the light down the hall I could see at least twenty office doors.