Gunfire erupted behind them and a storm of 7.65 millimeter rounds sizzled through the air above their heads. There was a noise like a jackhammer as some of the rounds smacked the other door; the rest of the burst shattered the ceiling plaster in the entryway. White dust rained down on them as King angled toward the lobby, still dragging Pierce, who was still struggling to find his footing. None of the bullets had found King, and he didn’t think Pierce had been hit either, but there wasn’t even a moment to stop and check.
On an impulse, he snatched up a pressboard side table, scattering dog-eared and tattered back-issues of Time and People, and heaved it toward the entry just as the first of the gunmen ventured through. The table struck the man in the chest and bowled him backwards into his companions.
King did not linger to survey the results of his hasty counter-attack. With Pierce now solidly on his feet it was time to go, but the only other way out of the lobby was through the electronically secured door to the left of the receptionist’s window, and the gatekeeper had evidently fled as soon as the bullets had started flying. King analyzed the situation with the efficiency of a chess master, and immediately saw that getting through the door would require a lot more time than they had.
“Shortcut!” he yelled, diving headfirst over the counter and into the receptionist’s office. He tucked and rolled, making the maneuver actually look easy; he’d done similar things in both training and actual combat, and it was a whole lot easier without fifty pounds of body armor, weapons, and other sundry pieces of gear hanging off his body. Still, all things considered, he would much rather have been fully equipped, because then he’d have something more than furniture to throw at the gunmen.
Pierce came over the counter a second later, his landing not quite as graceful as King’s, and together they dashed into the hallway, seeking the building’s emergency exit. Another staccato report hammered their senses as one of the attack squad unloaded a full magazine into the door’s latch plate.
For just a moment, King considered turning the tables on the attackers. It was plainly evident that they weren’t professionals. Even though he was unarmed, he felt certain of his ability to use the environment—in this case, the corridors and stairwells of the clinic—to isolate and overpower the men. If not for Pierce’s presence, that was almost certainly what he would have done. But he couldn’t take that chance with his friend…his brother.
He fixated on the overhead “EXIT” sign, and hastened toward it. Sometimes, as bitter a pill as it was to swallow, running away was the best option.
5.
Sokoloff spat a curse in his mother tongue as he saw his carefully laid plans disintegrate. Something had spooked the target; the damned impetuous junior Russian mobsters, so eager to spill blood, had probably jumped the gun. They might yet redeem themselves, charging into the brownstone with guns blazing like characters in a bad Hong Kong action movie, but it seemed equally likely that they would prove no more effective as the tip of the spear than they had as a diversion. With ten million dollars resting in the balance, to say nothing of his freedom, he had to see the target’s dead body with his own eyes, even if meant risking exposure.
The black Mercedes peeled out noisily, and raced down the street, turning at the corner, presumably to block the alley that backed the line of brownstones. At least one of them has a little sense, Sokoloff thought.
He left the rifle where it was, confident that its eventual discovery would never lead the police to him, and he sprinted for the stairs leading down from the roof.
6.
An alarm started shrieking as soon as King hit the panic bar on the emergency exit. There would be little question now as to where they were, but it couldn’t be helped. He burst through the door and with Pierce right behind him, raced into the alley.
He was immediately confronted with a choice: left or right?
Easy; right. The alley exited onto a cross street at either end, but the intersection to the right was closer.
He took off at a full sprint, and Pierce was right behind him. King was grateful that his friend seemed to grasp the urgency of the situation. The two of them had been in a couple of tight spots, and Pierce knew better than distract King with a lot of questions. Survival under the circumstances required quick decisions and instantaneous action; a single moment lost second-guessing one of those decisions, or worse, trying to explain them, might be the difference between life and death. That, and luck.
And sometimes, luck was just plain bad.
The black Mercedes cut across the end of the alley, screeching to a stop in a haze of rubber smoke. In his peripheral vision, King glimpsed Pierce’s stride faltering, and he almost did the same as, twenty feet ahead of him, the car door flew open and the driver half-emerged, reaching over the doorframe with his Škorpion pistol.
“Screw this,” King muttered.
As the muzzle of the submachine gun swung toward him, King lowered his shoulder and poured on the speed. Before the gunman could get off a round, King slammed into the door like it was a tackle dummy. The door crunched against the driver’s upper chest, driving the wind from his lungs. The man’s finger tightened on the Škorpion’s trigger and lead began to spray randomly down the alley. King slid a hand along the outer surface of the window and struck the man’s outstretched gun arm with the flat of his hand, deflecting it straight up into the air so that the last few rounds flew harmlessly skyward.
He rammed the door again. There was a satisfying crack as ribs broke under the assault and a spray of bloody spittle flew from the man’s lips. King threw the door open, ready to meet whatever counter-attack might follow, but the driver simply slumped to the ground.
Pierce had sought refuge behind some trashcans, but King hastily waved him over. “George. Let’s go. Our ride’s here.”
As if to underscore the urgency of the situation, the other three gunmen burst out into the alley, and immediately upon recognizing that King had taken down one of their number, opened fire.
The distance between the end of the alley and the rear exit of the clinic was just about the effective range of the short barreled Škorpions, but what they lacked in accuracy, they could make up for in volume. King didn’t bother with further exhortations to his friend, but instead slid behind the wheel of the idling Mercedes and shifted it into drive.
He stayed low, barely peeking above the steering wheel, which he turned in the direction of the gunmen, while nudging the accelerator. The car swung around into the narrow space, and he immediately heard the harsh cracking sound of rounds perforating the windshield and whizzing through the space over his head to repeat the process on the rear window.
He angled closer to Pierce, giving him enough cover to reach the rear passenger-side door, but as soon as the archaeologist dived headlong into the rear seating area, King punched the accelerator and drove straight at the gunmen.
The fusillade diminished to nothing, either because the men had fled in the face of the onrushing Mercedes, or simply because they had simultaneously burned through their curved, twenty-round magazines and were all pausing to reload. King thought it the course of wisdom to leave that little mystery unsolved, and he kept steady pressure on the accelerator until the car broke out onto the cross street. Only then did he raise his head up to see where they were going, and once he did, he stomped the pedal all the way to the floor.
7.
Sokoloff exploded from the front door of the building just in time to see the black Mercedes skid around the corner. It wasn’t too hard to divine the truth of what had happened. The target had somehow overpowered the team of gunmen and taken control of their vehicle. Sokoloff didn’t care whether the junior mobsters were dead or alive, they had botched the mission and as far as he was concerned, they were as good as dead anyway. His entire focus was on the target.
He dashed down the block and rounded the corner to where his own rental car was waiting. He considered trying to somehow give chase, but that window of opportunity had long sin
ce closed. Literal pursuit would be an exercise in futility, but there were other ways to hunt a man.
He dug out his secure phone and hastily tapped out a message giving his employer the bad news. He didn’t try to sugar coat it; as the American’s were fond of saying, shit happened. The only way to save this, to save his ten million dollar paycheck, was to deal with the reality of the situation head on.
The reply came within seconds.
Your plan had only a 48.1% chance of success. You underestimated King’s professional abilities.
Sokoloff made a rude comment about his employer’s relationship with his mother, but the words that left his mouth did not reach his fingers. He simply waited for more information.
Standby. Reacquisition of the target is underway.
Sokoloff knew that his employer had vast resources at his disposal—the ability to access computer networks, traffic cameras and phone records. It wasn’t too hard to imagine the mysterious figure sifting through a flood of digital information, looking for King’s face, scanning cellular phone transmissions that might give away the target’s location. He knew that his employer had been unable to hack King’s communication network, but every cell phone call in the world still relied on the same basic technology—radio signals that were picked up and retransmitted through a vast electronic web. Somewhere, maybe only a few blocks away, King was probably calling for help, and even though the call itself might be wrapped in a blanket of security encryption, the simple fact of its existence would raise a red flag.
In the distance, he heard the sound of sirens and knew that it was time to move. As he pulled away from the curb, he mentally discarded the disastrous results of the attempted hit in much the same way that he had left behind the rifle. His employer had been correct; he had underestimated King, and he wouldn’t make that mistake again. But a failure did not in any way subtract from his own considerable skill. He had been hunting and killing men long before the digital age, and he had succeeded in that profession, not just because of his ruthless efficiency, but also because he knew how to outthink his prey.
So, where will you go next, Jack Sigler?
8.
King pulled the shot up Mercedes into another alley only a few blocks from the site of the failed ambush, then looked back at Pierce. “You in one piece?”
The archaeologist, still lying prone on the back seat, took a deep breath, then with a grin commenced patting himself down as if checking for damage. “No worse for wear. So what the hell was that all about?”
King shook his head. “That’s what I’m going to find out.”
As they hiked out of the alley, King called Aleman. “Sorry to give you one more thing to worry about,” he said, “but we just got hit.”
He told Chess Team’s tech expert everything he could about the ambush, which wasn’t much, and answered the other man’s questions as briefly as he could, with a minimum of speculation. That wasn’t to say he didn’t have a few ideas; the problem was, he had too many. He was fairly certain that the gunmen had been Russians—ethnically, if not nationally—and that represented a host of possibilities.
Chess Team had recently been involved in several operations in Eastern Europe: Queen was currently in the Ukraine. Rook had gone missing while on a covert mission to Siberia. Further back, but by no means a distant memory, the team had taken out a terrorist camp on Russian soil—a technically illegal military action that could have been construed as an act of war, even though the terrorists would probably have carried out attacks on Russian civilian targets. And then there was the elephant in the room; King had just recently learned that his own parents were deep cover Soviet-era sleeper agents, willing to sacrifice their only son to accomplish their long range mission.
That was assuming, of course, that he, and not Pierce, had been the target, which actually seemed like an even more likely scenario, given that the attempt had occurred at the facility where Micah Pierce was currently residing. George Pierce was not without his own enemies; his archaeological investigations had more than once put him in the crosshairs.
King didn’t tell Aleman any of this. Unsubstantiated musings would only serve to obscure the truth; the facts, sparse though they were, were all that mattered.
Aleman let out a low whistle. “I’ll do what I can. Do you want to come in?”
King glanced at Pierce and considered the offer. It seemed extremely unlikely that the attempt was tied to the incident in Arizona, but he couldn’t rule it out. As far as he was concerned, George Pierce was his brother—his only remaining link to a life that had been all but deconstructed by tragedy and betrayal—and the last thing he wanted was to put his brother in harm’s way.
But George wasn’t fragile or helpless. More importantly, his unique knowledge base might be just the thing to solve the riddle of what had happened in Arizona, and if Manifold was involved in that event, then the clock was already ticking. “No. We’re going to Phoenix. Get us on a flight—George and me—soonest possible. We’re heading to La Guardia now.”
“Consider it done.”
When King ended the call, Pierce asked: “Phoenix?”
“Yeah. Sorry, it looks like we’re going on a different kind of fishing trip.”
“If you’re talking about Arizona, and not the mythological bird which is reborn from the ashes of its own immolation, I’m not sure how I can help. The American Southwest is a little outside my area of expertise.”
King opened the file of the still photo Aleman had earlier sent and handed over the phone. Pierce studied the picture for a moment, then stared gravely at his friend. “So it’s true. The Wookies are massing for an invasion.”
King didn’t laugh. “The medallion, George.”
Pierce looked again, and this time his reaction was sincere. “Oh, that is interesting.”
9.
“It’s a silver tetradrachm coin,” Pierce told King as they finally settled into their seats on an American Airlines 737 bound for Denver, where they would catch their connecting flight, “It’s hard to make out with the screen resolution, but that’s the likeness of Athena stamped onto it. As the namesake goddess of Athens, she was arguably the most important deity of the era—the embodiment of wisdom and intelligence, but also military strategy. The reverse side probably has the image of an owl, another symbol of Athena.”
“Is it rare?”
“Today? Well, you aren’t likely to find it in under your sofa cushion, but there are quite a few surviving examples. It was the most commonly used coin in the world going back to the sixth century BCE, and right up to the time of the Romans. With the spread of Hellenistic culture under Alexander the Great, the coins were used as currency as far away as India. They show up pretty frequently at digs, particularly at burial sites.”
“Burials? I didn’t think the Greeks followed the Egyptian custom of burying their wealth along with the body.”
“They didn’t. But it was a common practice to place a coin in the mouth of a dead person as an obol. A payment to Charon, to bear the soul of the departed to the afterlife.”
“Pennies for the ferryman,” King murmured. “So how did this coin end up in Arizona?”
“As a fashion accessory for a Wookie, no less,” Pierce added.
“It’s not a Wookie, George.”
“Then what the hell is it?”
King shrugged.
Pierce pondered the problem a moment. “Okay, let’s look at this objectively. That picture shows what appears to be some kind of bipedal animal. At first I thought it looked similar to Red.” While Pierce wasn’t part of the mission to Vietnam that took the team up against a pack of devolved Neanderthal women, he’d been told the story, shown pictures and knew exactly who Red was; Rook wouldn’t let them forget. “But the more I look at the image, the more the hair doesn’t make sense. There are different lengths. Different colors. It doesn’t look natural. But it’s definitely some kind of hominid. It’s also wearing that coin as a medallion, like an amulet, and
that most certainly is not typical primate behavior.”
“So, maybe someone else…a human…put that thing around its neck. Like dog tags?”
“Possibly, though why they would choose an ancient Greek coin is beyond me. I think it’s more plausible that the animal is exhibiting a higher degree of intelligence than its appearance suggests. It could be a living example of the fabled ‘missing link’ in the fossil record. Of course, that still doesn’t explain the coin.” Suddenly, Pierce’s eyes grew wide as the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. “You think this is something like the hydra, don’t you?”
“We know for a fact that Hercules—Alexander—traveled to South America in ancient times. What I want to know, and I’m asking you in your professional capacity, is if you can give me a better explanation for how that coin wound up in Phoenix, Arizona?”
“Don’t bullshit me, Jack. It’s a lot more than that. You think that coin might be evidence that Ridley has found another monster from Greek mythology.”
King heard the anxiety in his friend’s voice when he spoke of Ridley. Only a couple years previously, Manifold Genetics’ experiments with the remains of the hydra—a creature with the ability to instantly heal from any wound, and which unfortunately had not been simply the stuff of fairy tales—had resulted in Pierce being taken prisoner by Ridley, and subsequently used as a guinea pig in unspeakable medical experiments. Pierce had made a full physical recovery from the ordeal; whether he had recovered from the psychological trauma was another matter entirely.
Callsign: King - Book 2 - Underworld (A Jack Sigler - Chess Team Novella) Page 4
