The room was piled high with artifacts from every part of the globe. Pierce’s eye was drawn immediately to something familiar, a pile of bronze armaments—swords, spearheads, helmets—from the early Greek Classical period. But right next to those were gold figurines that looked Meso-American. There was no logic to the arrangement; the only common thread was that all the pieces were metal, specifically metals or alloys that were resistant to corrosion. Reddish and green lumps on the floor marked the resting places of objects of iron and copper that had not survived the passage of centuries…millennia, even.
Yet, it was not the temporal journey of these artifacts that interested Pierce, but rather their physical journey. How had artifacts from civilizations in every corner the globe come to rest here, in this cave in Arizona?
There might have been an explanation for the ancient coins—the banliang and the tetradrachm—worn by the creatures as amulets. Coins had a way traveling well beyond the borders of their country of origin, and there was plenty of evidence to suggest that ancient mariners had visited the Americas many centuries before Columbus. Coins brought by travelers might have found their way into the underworld. But Pierce had also been entertaining another possibility, and what he saw here seemed to reinforce that theory.
Then De Bord had hastened into the cavern. “They’re right behind me,” the soldier had shouted, gripping Pierce’s shoulder and propelling him forward. “And they’re pissed.”
And so they had run. Deeper, ever deeper into the Earth.
The creatures, when he happened to glimpse them in the distance, were not driven by the rabid fury that had possessed them during the attack on the camp, but they were nevertheless agitated by the intrusion. Their shrieks multiplied as the sound echoed down the long tunnels, like the cries of the damned rising up from Hell itself. What he could not comprehend, what he dared not even stop to think about, was why they had not already been caught. The creatures were fast, and on their home turf; by all rights, Pierce and De Bord should have been caught a dozen times over.
They’re toying with us, Pierce thought. Some kind of cat-and-mouse game.
Yet what alternative did they have but to scurry like mice?
“Left or right?” De Bord shouted.
Pierce glanced ahead and saw two diverging tunnels framed in the circle of the soldier’s flashlight. It was the first time they’d been confronted with such a choice, and now the enormity of the consequences of making the wrong decision seemed too terrible to contemplate. There were no obvious cues to suggest which path—if either—would lead to safety. Unlike the elaborate ruins he’d had occasion to explore, these passages were the work of nature, carved by flows of water and the vagaries of geology, without any thought for superstitious preferences. It was a coin-flip really.
“Left,” he said, barely able to get the words out. “Stay with the main passage.”
That it was the wrong choice became evident almost right away. Almost as soon as they passed the opening on the right, the creatures pursuing them let loose with a bone-jarring chorus of shrieks. Then, as if to answer them, a second cacophony erupted from the darkness directly ahead of them. They were caught between two groups of the creatures. De Bord skidded to a halt and raised his carbine, ready to make a desperate last stand.
Pierce glanced back. The monsters chasing them had not closed in, but hung back, cloaked in shadows.
“Back!” Pierce yelled. “We can make it to the other tunnel.”
De Bord nodded and with Pierce now leading the way, the two men sprinted back to the diverging tunnel. As soon as they entered it, the creatures lowered their cries, and began advancing again, pushing them forward relentlessly.
The tunnel was cramped, barely large enough for De Bord in his combat gear to make it through, and for a brief instant, Pierce thought maybe the constricting passage would hamper the pursuit. Somehow though, the creatures slipped confidently through the tight confines; both men could hear the scrape of hard knobby skin against stone and the low ululations of the monsters drawing closer all the time.
Then a different noise punctuated their desperate flight, the electronic chirp of Pierce’s cell phone.
He dug it out of his pocket automatically, as if he were merely strolling across the campus quad at the university in Athens. The glowing screen displayed the words:
One missed call.
Pierce gasped as the significance of the message hit home. The phone had a signal. That could only mean that they were very close to an opening to the surface. The realization opened a reservoir of strength, and he leaped ahead with renewed urgency, one eye always on the bars indicating the strength of the wireless signal. Fifty steps and a second bar lit up, then a third.
They were close.
With the abruptness of a guillotine slice, the tunnel came to a dead end.
“No!” The denial ripped from Pierce’s lips even as he checked the screen again. Three bars still. There had to be an opening here somewhere.
“Climb!” De Bord shouted from behind him. The soldier directed his light to a spot above his head. Instead of bouncing back from the rough basalt, the light revealed an open space.
That was good enough for Pierce. With the agility of a world-class climber, he scrambled up the chimney-like passage, finding handholds and steps in the jagged rock. De Bord was right below him, shining the light straight up now and revealing the narrow slot of an opening just a few more feet above the archaeologist.
Pierce erupted from the hole and onto the desert floor like a dolphin leaping out of the water. He hastily reversed his position and reached down to help De Bord complete his ascent, and a few moments later they were both free of the underground prison.
Pierce scrambled to his feet, ready to start running again, but then he realized that the creatures had left off their wailing. He glanced at De Bord. “I think we’re okay,” he said, uncertainly. “I think they were just trying to run us off.”
The soldier blinked at him, then cautiously played his light over the hole from which they had emerged. There was no sign of the creatures.
Pierce sat down wearily, resting his head against his knees.
De Bord sat next to him, shaking his head. “I sure as hell didn’t sign up for that,” he said with a forced chuckle. “Any idea where we are?”
Pierce checked his phone again. There was a GPS application that would pinpoint their exact location, but that was the last thing on his mind. King had tried to call, and that meant his friend was still alive. The implications of the discoveries he had made in the underworld lair of the creatures seemed insignificant compared to that.
He touched his finger to the screen, bringing up King’s number, and then tapped it again to send the call.
There was an interminably long delay before a familiar voice said: “George?”
The sound of King’s voice triggered a wave of relief. “Jack! Thank God.”
“What the hell happened to you? Are you all right?”
“Yeah. There was a minute or two where I wasn’t so sure, but…Jack, you’re not going to believe what I’ve found.”
“You can tell me all about it when I get there. Where are you?”
25.
Ivan Sokoloff scanned the hills with his night vision device, watching for his target’s approach.
Always a consummate professional, he had never once treated any hit as easy money, and despite his failure in New York, he had not made that mistake with this one last job. But never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined a hunt like this. He almost considered demanding more money for the job, but would his mysterious employer really believe his tale of inhuman monsters?
Probably not.
Sokoloff sighed wearily. At least it was almost over now. He’d picked up the trail of King’s friend, George Pierce, confident that the archaeologist would lead him to his quarry, and his patience was about to be rewarded. Although barely visible against the night sky, he caught a glimpse of a dust cloud rising
over the crest of a hill less than half a mile away. A moment later, the silhouette of a military truck rolled into view and then proceeded down the exposed flank.
It seemed to take Pierce a little while longer to make out the approaching Humvee, but as the vehicle drew closer, the man got to his feet, presumably in anticipation of the impending reunion.
Sokoloff smiled, thinking about the ten million dollars he was about to earn. He lowered the night vision device, hefted the weapon he had earlier appropriated, and then, in his best approximation of a Texas accent, said: “Well, I reckon it’s time you introduce me to this buddy of yours.”
26.
King glanced at the glowing numbers on his watch and then at the display on his phone, which showed Pierce’s location as a dot almost right on top of the dot that showed his own. Almost twenty minutes had passed since he’d gotten Pierce’s call; in less than half an hour, Copeland would activate the Bluelight generator—whatever that was—and in all likelihood trigger another attack from the Mogollon Monsters.
The decision to leave Bluelight and retrieve his friend had been one of the hardest King had ever made. He’d thought about it for almost a full minute, which was an eternity for the decisive, highly analytical Chess Team field leader.
Shutting down Bluelight might have been as easy as stepping through the door to the control room and telling Copeland to stand down. Given the physicist’s reluctance to continue the experiment, he probably would have complied eagerly. But then again, there was every possibility that he would have been unable to stop the generator from being activated. Brainstorm probably had contingency plans in place against just such a breakdown of his control, and without understanding more about Bluelight and how it worked, there was no guarantee that King could actually prevent the next activation cycle. And if he had tried and failed, there was no guarantee that Pierce would survive another rampage. On the other hand, there was just enough time for him to exit the Bluelight compound, rendezvous with Pierce, and make it back before Copeland threw the switch. If he could pull that off, it would be win-win, so while there was a degree of risk involved, it was clearly the preferable course of action.
But what if I’m wrong? What if more people die because I put my personal feelings ahead of the mission?
He knew better than to ask “what-if” questions.
Pierce had reappeared on the eastern flank of the Superstitions, almost two miles to the north of the FOB where they had briefly been held, and only about five miles from the Bluelight facility. Ideally, even at off-road speeds, the round trip should have taken no more than about twenty minutes, and that had probably influenced his decision as well. Unfortunately, the landscape had decided not to be cooperative. He had anticipated that the rough terrain would slow him down and restrict his ability to drive in a straight line. Some of the undulating hills were low enough that he could simply drive up and over, while the steeper ones, those that couldn’t be surmounted, were circumvented. What he had failed to take into account was that Mother Nature was not the only force shaping the topography. About a mile from the Bluelight facility, he spotted a smooth, dark area directly in his path. At a distance, it looked like a lake, but as they drew closer the air filled with the pungent rotten-egg smell of sulfur dioxide, and he recognized it for what it was: the sludge pond for the copper processing plant.
Finding a way to detour around the toxic pool added another seven minutes to the journey, and to get around it, he had to drive across the sloping flanks of the hills that formed a natural bowl in which the mine operators had chosen to dump the byproducts of the ore separation process. There were more than a few hairy moments where the Humvee started sliding, forcing him to steer up the hill until the wheels found purchase. And all the while, the clock kept ticking.
On the far side of the bowl, he pointed the front end of the Humvee up the hill and pressed down on the accelerator. The tires slipped a little, throwing out an unseen cloud of dust, and then the truck grudgingly started climbing up and over the crest. As they rolled over the top, King spotted a bright glow directly ahead; a small light, amplified to blazing intensity by his night vision.
“There’s George,” he said.
Nina didn’t respond, and he wasn’t sure if she had heard him over the engine noise, but a moment later she shifted forward in her seat and peered out into the darkness. With the unaided eye, the light probably wasn’t visible, and by King’s best guess, they were still a good quarter-mile away, with a long, winding valley between them and Pierce.
Despite being built for such conditions, the Humvee bounced and slipped precariously as they raced along the sloping hillside, bumping over large rocks, dodging enormous saguaro cacti and crushing smaller desert flora. As the driver, he was only slightly better able to anticipate the violent jolts; Nina was being mercilessly tossed around in her seat. Nevertheless, King maintained steady pressure on the accelerator pedal, eager to reunite with his friend, and all too painfully aware of the fact that the impending activation of the Bluelight device was about to unleash another wave of hell on earth.
But then, with only about a hundred yards separating them from the glowing orb of light that marked what he presumed to be Pierce’s location, King slammed on the brakes. The Humvee skidded sideways as the natural decline of the hill redirected some of its momentum.
“What’s wrong?” Nina shouted.
King’s eyes never wavered from his goal. “George has company.”
27.
Pierce felt a moment of apprehension when he spied the approaching Humvee, but quickly reasoned that King had somehow utilized his military connections to get some assistance from the troops in the area.
When the truck finally stopped in front of him and two soldiers climbed out, their rifles at the ready, he realized his mistake. One of the men stalked over to where he and De Bord were waiting and addressed the sergeant.
“What’s the story here?”
De Bord seemed a little confused by the turn of events. “Ah, this is one of the hikers we picked up. We got separated from the rest during the attack.”
“You were at FOB Apache?” There was a hint of awe in the soldier’s voice. “We didn’t think anyone survived.”
“Yeah, it was pretty bad,” De Bord remarked.
Pierce sagged in disappointment as he realized that King was not accompanying the soldiers, and worse, that he was now evidently a prisoner again.
“I better call this in,” the soldier said. He turned to his companion. “Take the civilian into custody. We need to get back ASAP.”
A third soldier, occupying the roof turret of the parked Humvee suddenly shouted: “Sergeant! We’ve got another truck rolling up.”
Pierce reflexively followed the gunner’s line of sight, but could only make out a dust cloud and a dark speck moving against the terrain.
“What the hell? There’s not supposed to be anyone else out here.” The sergeant in charge climbed into the truck and started talking into the radio, but the remaining soldier advanced on Pierce.
“He’s really moving!”
The gunner’s shout seemed only to add to the confusion, and for a few more seconds, all the soldiers, including De Bord, seemed paralyzed by indecision. That was all the time the driver of the approaching Humvee needed to close the gap.
The vehicle, outfitted with a canvas-covered cargo area, drove right up alongside the others steering straight toward Pierce and the others, as if it meant to run them down. At the last instant, Pierce was yanked away, in front of the parked Humvee, while De Bord scrambled in the other direction.
Amidst the confusion, the passenger door of the still rolling vehicle flew open, and Pierce found himself staring at the familiar face of Nina Raglan.
“Get in!”
28.
Sokoloff spat out a curse in Russian, along with a mouthful of dirt, as he watched the Humvee pull away. This job just kept getting worse.
The roar of a machine gun punctuated the sentimen
t. The turret gunner had opened up with his M240B and Sokoloff saw white tracers arc across the desert in pursuit of the retreating vehicle. It looked like a few of the rounds found their mark, but the Humvee continued picking up speed, and a few moments later, vanished around the edge of a hillside.
As the gun fell silent, Sokoloff heard some shouting and realized the words were directed at him. He looked up and found the sergeant in charge of the group standing over him. “Come on! In the truck! Let’s…”
Sokoloff saw the change in the man’s eyes, saw his lips continue moving to form a word even after his voice had trailed off.
“You aren’t De—”
Sokoloff jammed the muzzle of his carbine under the soldier’s chin and squeezed the trigger.
He was up and moving before the man’s body hit the dirt, dashing to the idle Humvee. The violence of his actions took the remaining soldiers completely off guard. The sergeant died from a contact shot to the forehead, the radio handset still pressed to one ear and a confused look on his face. The gunner, possibly unaware of anything that had transpired since the other Humvee’s escape, flinched a little when he heard the shot, but the tight confines of the circular turret opening made it impossible for him to see what was going on inside his own vehicle, much less respond when Sokoloff shoved his carbine up under the soldier’s body armor and fired off several more rounds.
With brutal efficiency and indifference, Sokoloff hauled the bodies of his latest victims out of the truck and left them on the desert floor, just as he had done earlier with the two-man patrol back on the hiking trail—the real Sergeant De Bord and another young man whose name he hadn’t bothered to learn.
Callsign: King - Book 2 - Underworld (A Jack Sigler - Chess Team Novella) Page 10
