by Kane Gilmour
I free solo rock climb!
“He has the one with the large buckle.” The whispers were frantic.
I am fearless!
She moved her hand up in the darkness to touch the scar on her forehead. The brand-it was a skull encased in a star, the symbol of the VPLA Death Volunteers, Vietnam’s Special Forces Unit. Trung had branded her like cattle, but she had escaped and exacted her vengeance on the bastard. Then she made the symbol her own, drawing strength from the wound. She felt the rough lumpy surface of her scarred skin beneath her fingertips and the sensation brought her fully back to the here and now.
Queen opened her eyes and looked at the small room in which she lay. There were a few wooden crates with swastikas on them and the legend Ahnenerbe. Queen recalled Rook mentioning the word-the name for a WWII German unit that focused on historical research and German superiority. The room had a door with no handle on it. Beyond that, she was alone in a storeroom of sorts, turned into the perfect jail cell. No window, but a lone 40-watt bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling.
She sat up from the floor where she had been lying and rubbed the brand on her forehead again, reassuring herself that she was in the present and not lost in the quagmire of her childhood. It was there under her fingers. Her old anger about the mark resurfaced, and with it bloomed a new anger at the people who ran this place and the creatures they employed. Her face felt red and hot. She could feel her heart beating faster as rage coursed through her strong body, cleaning out the last vestiges of the fear that had filled it moments before.
And then her anger turned toward Rook.
“I am so going to kick your ass again, Rook.”
Had he called this in sooner, the team could have come together and moved through this place like the coordinated tor-nado of destruction they trained to be. Sure, they could solve a puzzle or two, unlock the secrets of history, science and the unknown, but they really excelled at blowing shit up. It was an art form they perfected as a team. Solo, they were dangerous. In two-man teams, they were deadly. United, they could fight the unkillable and win.
By her logic, the blame for the trouble they found themselves in lay squarely on Rook’s broad shoulders.
But she couldn’t stay angry at him. He’d suffered a loss in Siberia, and right or wrong, it had affected him deeply. Loss was part of the game, but Rook had never really experienced it before. Not like that. Now he was damaged goods, just like her.
She smiled at the idea. A match made in Heaven.
Or hell.
She couldn’t deny her growing feelings for the man. She’d nearly come out with it back at that store, but he’d gone and used that nickname.
Zel.
It was the name her mother used for her, before she succumbed to cancer and left her alone with her abusive alcoholic father. She didn’t remember a lot about her mother. Didn’t think about her much, either. But that single word, Zel, was like a key to her soul. It unlocked the past and she wasn’t ready to share that yet, with anyone.
She stood and examined every inch of the room until she had assured herself that there were no other ways in or out and that nothing in the room would help her pry the door open. The crates held oddly shaped scientific equipment. She didn’t recognize most of it. One of the things she did recognize was a dirty, broken microscope that looked older than the one she had used in high school biology class, but it didn’t hold her interest.
Across the room, there was a small air vent near the ceiling, on the wall adjacent to the door. It was far too small for her to fit even her head into it. She considered removing the grill over the vent and using it to pry open the handle-less gray door, but then she had a better idea. She managed to get her fingers behind the edge of the flimsy vent grill by standing on the Ahnenerbe crates. She pulled hard and the pliable metal popped free into her hands. No way it would be strong enough to go to work on the door. She didn’t even think she could use the weak metal as a stabbing implement. Next she slid two stacked crates to the center of the room and reached up to the lightbulb.
Hello darkness, she thought and unscrewed the bulb. She climbed down and set the bulb down into one of the other crates she had opened. It might come in handy later-she didn’t want to break it. Then she carefully felt her way through the dark, back onto the stacked crates where the dangling lightbulb hung. She grabbed it and tugged hard. The wire, insulation and all, came free in her hand. She pulled a long length of it out of the ceiling and wrapped it around her hand.
Now she would just wait for someone to come open the door and meet doom.
THIRTY-FOUR
Outside the Exxon Building, New York, NY
Deep Blue marveled at how in moments of extreme action, the human mind could sometimes slow things down to a crawl and your perceptions heightened to the point where you could pick out a speck of dust floating in the air, as if it were suspended in time.
That was happening now for him. He and the dire wolf that had propelled him through the window on the 40 ^th floor of the Exxon Building fell in spectacular slow motion. Tiny fragments and slivers of glittering glass rained down around them. Deep Blue was further from the wall of the skyscraper than the dire wolf that was already reaching out toward the wall of glass. Deep Blue drew his knife. The EOD variant of the Army M9 bayonet came up and Deep Blue thrust the wicked blade down toward the exposed rear flank of the falling dire wolf.
The upside down monster scrabbled at the slick glass and concrete surface of the building with its clear claws. At the same moment that Deep Blue plunged the sharp point of the blade into the creature’s rump, its claws found purchase on the concrete space between the windows. The blade sank into the creature at an angle and a thick white fluid spurted out of the wound in a slow-motion arc, sweeping over Deep Blue’s knife hand. The creature stopped falling. Deep Blue nearly lost his grip on the knife as his fall suddenly jerked to a stop, but he held on with a determined shout that filled his helmet.
Then he slipped lower.
The dire wolf’s claws had found a tight grip on the concrete upright of the building. It wasn’t falling anymore. But the knife, sunken deep into the beast’s flesh, was too sharp. The weight of Deep Blue’s body pulled the blade down, along the creature’s ass and into its lower back.
Finally, the blade chewed into spinal bone-Deep Blue could see the pronounced spinal column pushing against the skin, like the bones of a hideously skinny man. The blade lodged fast into the spine and Deep Blue’s descent stuttered to a halt, just as time resumed its natural pace.
Deep Blue looked back up the building and saw that the spectacular fall had only taken two stories from the shattered window up on 40. The dire wolf clung to the wall upside down outside the 38 ^th floor. Deep Blue hung from one arm, his hand clutching the knife tightly. He looked down to the street far below him.
A mistake.
It was a long way down and the street was totally empty. There was no sign of Keasling or the Army. Then he remembered where he was. He was dangling from the creature’s back over West 50 ^th Street. Keasling and his men were on 49 ^th, under the portal.
He turned his attention back to the dire wolf. It wasn’t moving, but he suspected the beast was in pain. The muscles in its back were twitching out a samba, but it refused to move. The extra weight of Deep Blue, plus the twenty pounds of armor and weap-onry he wore, were clearly taking a toll on the thing. Deep Blue wasn’t sure what his next move would be.
Then the dire wolf made the choice for him.
It slid one of its rear legs backward and up the concrete pillar. The helmet’s heads-up display and the camera built into the faceplate registered the motion and reported it to Deep Blue. The creature stretched the leg as far up as it could and then sank its translucent claws on that foot deep into the concrete. Then it slid one of its clawed hands higher.
Son of a bitch. He’s going to try to climb backward up to the window, with me still hanging from him.
That was not going to work out wel
l for Deep Blue. If the creature made it to the shattered window above, it would be free to attack him while he was still hanging out over the drop.
He tried King one more time through the communications link. “King! Wake up soldier! I need you!”
No response. Whatever was holding the man under its thrall was powerful.
Deep Blue reached his free hand up and grabbed the beast between its legs. The area was smooth, lacking any reproductive organs that he could feel.
Thank God for small favors.
He climbed up the creature’s back as it pulled itself up the wall backward. Once his grip was secure in the beast’s crotch, Deep Blue released the knife and quickly pulled an M67 fragmentation grenade-the only one he had-from a pouch on the front of his armor.
He popped the safety clip, thumbed out the pin and let the spoon flip outward into a graceful arc across the Midtown sky. He then rammed the grenade into the oozing wound left behind by the knife in the creature’s ass. He let go of the device and pulled his fist back. Then for good measure, he rammed his fist back into the wound, punching the grenade deeper.
Then he pulled his feet up and thrust them against the dire wolf’s back. He sprang and flew backward into the chasm of air between the Exxon Building and the Time-Life Building.
Deep Blue was still in his lateral swan dive out into space when the fragmentation grenade detonated, ripping the dire wolf in half and grotesquely sending its severed legs flying first up and then down, while its torso remained clinging to the wall for a horrible second longer, before it, too, began to fall.
With only 450 feet to fall, Deep Blue’s body was moving rapidly, so he just barely had time to twist in the air and pull the ripcord on the small parachute he wore. They had only had one nuclear device, and King carried that. With battle in a vertical space, Deep Blue had thought to carry a parachute-just in case.
As his parachute popped open, Deep Blue enjoyed the relatively calm nine-second ride to the street below him. He reflected that this was now the second time in a period of 24 hours that he had needed a parachute. I might start wearing one of these all the time.
The ground rushed up to meet him as Deep Blue pulled and released the toggles. As he came to a landing, Lewis Aleman contacted him on the headset in his helmet.
“That was interesting, Boss. Twice in one day?”
“Shut it, Ale.” His feet touched the ground and he quickly detached from the parachute and began to sprint back to the building’s doors. He needed to get back inside to help King.
“Got something that might help a lot. The dire wolves don’t see well with interference in the air surrounding them. Bishop reported they can’t deal with rain. Anywhere you can pick up some chaff?” Aleman’s voice sounded excited. They finally had a way to combat the creatures.
“As a matter of fact, yes. There is. Thanks, Lewis. You might just have saved the day.”
Deep Blue signed off and reversed his direction away from the building, and headed toward 6 ^th instead. As he reached the road, an olive drab Humvee came ripping around the corner, its thick tires barking on the pavement. Before it was done skidding to a halt in front of Deep Blue, General Keasling had the door open and was getting out.
“Holy shit, Tom! Are you okay?” Keasling hadn’t bothered to don his hat upon exiting the vehicle. Deep Blue thought this might be one of very few times he had seen the General lose military bearing when in uniform. He felt touched that his friend was exhibiting such care for him. Plus, he was pretty glad to be alive, himself.
“I’ll be fine, General.” Deep Blue shook the man’s outstretched hand. “In fact, I feel like having a party. Aleman says the creatures can’t see though airborne chaff and rain. The sprinkler system in the tower is empty, but there was a party supply store a few blocks down on 6 ^th, remember? Let’s go buy us some confetti. Then I need to get back up there. Something has control of King. It’s time we took control instead.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Westminster Bridge, London, England
Knight couldn’t believe it, but he was starting to run low on ammunition for the Barrett. The Crescent lowered down to the middle of the Westminster Bridge and stayed in place, hovering about a hundred feet above it. Knight was now lying in the same open doorway he had used to fire down on the Eye. Night began to fall in shades of dark blue and purple. A tiny flicker of golden sunset was still visible on the horizon through the trees of St. James Park, at the end of Bridge Street.
It would have been a perfect view, if not for the huge portal of light enveloping Portcullis House, the office building just across the street from Big Ben, at the end of the bridge. Knight watched as wave after wave of dire wolves peeled out of the energy globe and turned left onto the bridge toward their deaths at his hands. He fired shot after shot, and with the speeding creatures coming directly toward him, he had no problem gauging their speed. At this point, the entire surface of the bridge was covered in viscous white fluid that leaked from the mounds of dead monsters. Some of the beasts even slipped in the muck, allowing Knight to fire on them while they were on the ground. Easy targets. He must have shot a hundred of them, but they were still pouring from the portal. He needed something with a higher rate of fire if he was going to get them all.
He had no idea why none of them chose to turn right out of the portal and head deeper into the city, toward the parks. It was like they were a flock of birds, or a shoal of fish, moving always in the same direction. He lined up one last shot with the Barrett’s Leupold scope, and squeezed the trigger. A bloom of fluid erupted from the front of the fast moving dire wolf’s chest.
Knight pulled his eye away from the scope and watched as the dire wolf fell forward on its chest and face, its legs grotesquely in the air behind it. It slid forward for another dozen feet, its intense momentum carrying it onward, before it rammed into another dire wolf corpse that lay on the bridge.
More dire wolves emerged from the portal up by the clock tower, but he had cleared them from the bridge for the moment. He took the opportunity the brief lull provided to stand up and abandon the Barrett. He headed deeper into the Crescent, running to an armory closet. Normally, Bishop was the one that used heavy machine guns. For one thing, he was the only team member strong enough to lug one around all day. Although Knight was smaller, he could still lift the 127-pound gun Browning M2 with its tripod, but he wouldn’t be able to carry it far. He brought the weapon over to the door and set it down.
“Black One, can you set down? I’m gonna hop out with a Browning.” Knight spoke to the pilot and before the man replied, the VTOL engines slowed and the ship began to lower the last hundred feet to the bridge.
“If you’re sure, Knight. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be on the ground with those assholes.” One of the things Knight had come to like about Black One was that the man was always congenial and upfront with his thoughts, but he complied with requests almost before they were issued. His copilot, Black Two, was usually taciturn to the point of sullen. Knight tried to remember when he had last heard the man speak. He couldn’t.
“I’ll be fine.” The Crescent gently set down on the surface of the bridge and Knight hopped out of the open door, pulling the giant Browning with him. He set it down in the middle of the bridge on its tripod, just behind an effective barrier of dire wolf corpses. Then he went back to the open doorway and pulled out a couple of boxes of belt-fed. 50 caliber ammunition.
“Pull back to a safe distance. I’ll call when I need you.” The Crescent pulled up and moved away toward St. Thomas’s Hospital on the south side of the bridge.
Knight set one of the boxes of ammunition next to the Browning and loaded a belt. The weapon had an effective range of around 2000 yards, so he’d be able to hit the dire wolves pretty far down the bridge. He was only about 500 feet from the portal, so he would have to be careful not to strafe the buildings on either side of the road as the monsters ran at him. He felt certain that while Britain would be grateful for US assistance in pu
tting down the dire wolf incursion, they might look less fondly on him turning Big Ben into a Swiss cheese building full of eight-inch holes.
Knight opened fire on the end of the bridge with the huge gun, simply rotating it on its tripod to mow down an entire line of dire wolves that were heading his way. The gun’s violent recoil shook his arms as he fired an arc of. 50 caliber death back across the bridge again, ripping through a second wave of dire wolves. All that remained were the creatures still emerging from the portal. He waited for them to make the left turn and come at him.
Just like birds. Or bats. Bishop said they couldn’t see well in the rain. Maybe they do have some flocking instinct and don’t know what to do when the leader is confused. Or dead.
The thought of Bishop, and the knowledge that he had a second or two before he needed to fire again, made him look to his right along the river, toward the London Eye. He looked at the exact moment that the wheel crashed down vertically on its lower rim. A quarter of the wheel was gone. The tie rods flailed in the middle like a broken bicycle wheel. The entire wheel was off the support-because the top third of the cantilevered struts were just missing. Vanished. Like the portal.
Oh shit. Bishop was still on the top of the wheel. Knight could just barely see him clinging to the top, as the remaining structure toppled slowly forward into the river, mashing the small pier that ran parallel to the river’s shore, where the wheel had sat. The steel buckled and flopped as it came crashing into the river, and Knight followed Bishop with his eye, the man riding the falling pile of metal like a bucking bronco, until the splash from the impact with the water sent up such a plume of murky brown water that the tiny figure was obscured.
Knight was about to call out to Bishop over the microphone in his helmet when he felt something slam into him. He wasn’t hurt at all-the armor absorbed the impact perfectly, but he was startled to find himself several feet in the air, being carried over the shoulder of a dire wolf. The Browning was already far behind them.
