As Garm started in Dwyer’s direction, Grayson reached out and touched him on the forearm. He wore a knowing look. “Captain Braddock, a word with you.”
“Sir?”
“I know what you’re thinking, Garm. But I don’t want any more trouble,” he said. “It’s over. You taught him a lesson and it’s done. I’ll handle things from here. Do I make myself clear?”
Garm’s lips were a seamless crease on his rugged jaw. He inhaled slow and let it out as a sigh. “You’re the boss.”
“Good. I’d hate for you to miss the meeting, as well,” Grayson said. He turned to Admiral Callahan, who continued to hover beside Garm, a huge grin still on his face. “Ward, shall we go?”
“Uh, you go on outside. I’ll catch up with you,” Callahan said. “I wanna talk to Gate, for a minute.”
Grayson hesitated, but then acquiesced. His keen eyes studied the faces of those still present before focusing once more on his fallen officer. He snorted amusedly. “Very well. But make it quick, please.” He reached over and placed a hand on Dirk’s shoulder. “I’ll see you this afternoon?”
The young scientist forced a smile. “Of course, sir. And . . . I’m sorry about all of this.”
“Not your fault, son,” Grayson said. “I’m really looking forward to the meeting.” As he walked off, Dirk overheard him muttering, “There are lots of exciting things happening. Lots of exciting things . . .”
CHAPTER
25
“Gate, that was goddamn amazing,” Admiral Callahan declared, his bulldog-like head’s enthusiastic nod underscoring his words.
Garm Braddock sighed. The head of the Navy’s bio-weapons division had been following him around like some starstruck groupie ever since his brief-but-brutal brawl with two of Tartarus’s security guards.
“Seriously, if asked, I’d have paid good money to be front and center for that,” Callahan said. He scoffed. “You dropped White like he was a used condom. And when your uppercut lifted Dwyer’s fat ass right off the floor? Unbelievable!” The thickset officer’s eyes lit up as he lobbed a clumsy blow at some imaginary opponent. “It was like watching a modern-day Foreman-Frazier – something to tell the grandkids about!”
Garm’s hunter’s eyes scanned the curved concrete corridor where Security Chief Dwyer and Oleg Smirnov had vanished, mere moments before. He was inwardly alarmed by the hostility Dwyer had been directing at Dirk as he walked up on them. It was far more than two gym guys razzing one another. It was personal, like the sadistic ex-con had some deep-seated grudge against his twin that had built up over time. That kind of enmity didn’t fade. And Dwyer was treacherous – a threat not to be taken lightly.
A whirlpool of unease inundated the big submariner and he shook his head. Eric Grayson could give all the mealy-mouthed speeches he wanted about disciplinary action and “docking pays.” The aging CEO was far from a boots-on-the-ground kind of guy. In fact, he had no combat experience whatsoever. Garm, on the other hand, had spent most of his life facing down dangerous foes. And his pugilist’s instincts told him Angus Dwyer was a problem that still had to be dealt with.
As he surveyed the empty passageway, nodding occasionally in response to Callahan’s incessant rambling, Garm realized his options were frustratingly limited. Grayson had effectively put him on notice, so claiming self-defense was now no longer an option. If he put Dwyer in a body cast now, as he was very much inclined to do, he would undoubtedly be brought up on charges. And if he didn’t seize the moment and teach the sadistic creep a lesson, he would lose his chance. Gryphon would be back on patrol soon. Either way, whether he was rotting in a holding cell or imprisoned in his captain’s chair, his little brother would be left alone and defenseless.
Garm ground his molars. The only silver lining was that, with a three-week suspension in effect, Dwyer would be thrown off-base temporarily. Gryphon’s next patrol would be completed by then, allowing him plenty of time to get back and deal with the issue, if it was still necessary.
“C’mon, Gate. I gotta know!” Callahan demanded.
Garm snapped back to the here and now. He realized, with some embarrassment, that the admiral had been prodding him about something. What, he had no idea. Although he found the boisterous, cigar-munching naval man annoying, he was the key to Grayson and GDT’s ever-growing profits. It would be career suicide to upset him.
“I’m sorry, know what?”
“What you said,” Callahan replied. His big salt and pepper mustache drooped atop an uncharacteristic frown. “Weren’t you listening to me?”
“I’m sorry, admiral . . .” Garm said, faking disorientation. “I caught a cheap shot in there, left me a little loopy.”
The admiral nodded. “Yeah, I saw that. Frankly, I was stunned you didn’t go down. But, still, I gotta know what you said.”
Garm was confused. “Said to whom? White, Dwyer . . . Grayson?”
“No.” Callahan’s eyes brimmed with excitement. “Do you remember the Angelo Rubino fight?”
“Remember it?” Garm chuckled. “I should. I was in it.”
“You sure were. I was ringside, and you were in command the whole time. You were using that guy’s head as a bongo drum. Then, outta desperation, in the fourth, the big meatball low-blowed you when the ref couldn’t see. Right in the balls.” Callahan’s face contorted and his fists balled up as he recalled the moment. “He bulled you into the corner, kinda like Dwyer did, today.”
“Ah, yes. I remember now.”
Callahan started breathing hard as he moved around with his hands up. “He was trying to pummel you and you were in your cage, your guard up and leaning back while he kept firing away.”
Garm’s head snapped to attention. “Ah, you mean--”
“Yes! He was throwing all these bombs, trying to finish it before you could recover . . . but he got winded and you guys ended up in a clinch. I saw your head come up and you wore an evil smile, just like you did today. You whispered something in his ear and then proceeded to take him apart like a bunch of Legos.”
“So, all you want to know is what I told Angelo that night?”
Callahan did the bobblehead thing. “Fuck, yeah! I couldn’t make it out and it’s been driving me nuts for years. Even tried hiring someone to read your lips on the video, but the angle is no good. I’m positive it’s the same thing you muttered to that juiced-up orangutan, a few minutes ago.”
Garm nodded imperceptibly. “Now that you mention it, I think you’re right. It must be force of habit or maybe a jogged memory.” He looked at Callahan. “Guys like Dwyer and Rubino are cut from the same cloth. They’re big, clumsy sluggers who can’t win fair and square, so they go all street, figuring they can overwhelm you.”
Garm snorted. “I’ve dealt with their kind many times. They’re like rhinos; they’ve got no staying power.” He shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. Rubino messed me up pretty good before I bounced back. He split my lip, busted my nose, and caught me with a hook to the side of the neck that hurt me. But then he ran out of steam. And I ran out of patience.”
Callahan reached out with trembling hands. He was so wound up, he wanted to grab the front of Garm’s bloodstained shirt and start shaking him. But he managed to stop himself a few inches shy. “Gate, please . . . the anticipation is killing me. I gotta know. I just gotta.”
Garm angled his head to one side. “Geez, I didn’t realize it was such a big deal. Okay, fine. I told Dwyer the same thing I told Angelo. The same two words I’d say to anyone who tries to take me down and fails, right before I drop a world of pain on them.”
“And they are?”
“My turn.”
As he saw a huge, “that’s-one-off-the-bucket-list” smile make its way across the admiral’s expectant face, Garm winked at him. Then he turned and started off.
“Where are you going?” Callahan asked.
“To the showers,” Garm replied. He gave him an apprehensive look. “You’re not going to follow me, I hope.”
Callahan grinned and shook his head. “No thanks, Gate. You’ve shown me enough for one day. For a lifelong fan of the sweet science, it means more than you could know.”
“Good. Then let’s leave it at that.”
* * *
Anticipation of the hunt began to well within the Ancient’s cavernous breast as he closed on his unsuspecting quarry. They were less than three miles ahead now and heading right toward him. As they traveled, their plaintive calls resounded like dinner bells through the water column, combining with their blubbery scent to entice him hungrily forward.
Although the seafloor lay five thousand feet beneath his hard-scaled belly, he maintained a cruising depth of only six hundred feet. Lurking in the dark, just below the ocean’s phototropic zone, he was shallow enough to make spouting easy, yet deep enough to be able to disappear into the embracing blackness of the abyss at will. Behind him lay the termination point of the Cayman Trench, to his left and right, the islands of Cuba and Haiti.
As he spiraled back down from replenishing his air supply, glittering bubbles danced along the Ancient’s scaly flanks. His twin blowholes were clamped tight to ensure no oxygen was lost. There would be no more spouting. He had stalked the pod of gray whales for hours, his four boat-sized flippers using an alternating power stroke to conserve energy as he traveled soundlessly through the choppy waters of the Windward Passage. Eventually, he had managed to get ahead of them and cut them off. Within minutes, he would be within striking distance.
As the grays’ communication clicks permeated the surrounding sea, the Ancient closed his deepset eyes and relished both the welcoming sound and the sensation of tepid water rushing over his rough skin. The layers of fibrous scar tissue that coated much of his body itched like mad at times, and the Passage’s warm embrace was a much needed spa to the old bull. As huge and powerful as he was, and despite his regenerative abilities, he had his share of aches and pains.
He was far from indestructible. Nor was he immortal.
A sudden squeal of alarm caused the giant pliosaur’s ruby-red orbs to snap back open. He had been approaching the gray whales from the southwest, staying downstream to minimize giving away his position. Once he drew close enough to ID the member of the pod whose blood trail he’d picked up on, he planned on accelerating to attack speed, broadsiding his hapless victim and killing it instantly.
But something was amiss. From two miles away, he could hear the pod’s high-pitched calls growing louder and more frantic. Soon, their sonar clicks echoed throughout the region. The Ancient’s ivory fangs interlocked as his titanic jaws closed and flexed. It was an unforeseen aggravation. Unlike the toothed sperms he fought and fed upon, the big baleen whales were not active hunters that relied on their sound senses to target prey. As a result, what echolocation abilities they possessed were far less sophisticated. Their sonar was used mainly to pinpoint distant clouds of krill, or at night, to navigate. During daylight hours, they relied on their sensitive hearing and keen eyesight to show them the way.
Now, however, the entire pod was on high alert. Their cries grew more and more raucous and clumsy broadband clicks began to radiate from every member. Soon, cones of sound spread out like a spider web, covering every direction at once. It was just a matter of time before they managed to--
The Ancient uttered a grumble of frustration as he felt himself being pinged by active sonar. A second later, a uniform squeal of terror split the water and the entire pod turned and took off at breakneck speed. Shaking his huge head, he immediately switched to a four-flippered power stroke and threw himself forward. His speed increased rapidly, from the slothful twenty miles an hour he had been maintaining until he was doing more than twice that.
As he closed the distance between himself and the fleeing cetaceans, the bull noticed that, for some bizarre reason, the whales had stopped running. Like a besieged wagon train, they began forming up until they took on the appearance of a giant baitball.
The Ancient slowed his approach. Although his primeval brain was capable of only limited problem solving, he had centuries of experience to draw upon. The gray whales were far from mindless cows. They should have scattered in every possible direction. If they had, they’d have lost only one or two members of the pod. But instead, they were huddling together like fish in a barrel, their squeals of terror traveling far and wide.
The old bull’s football-sized eyes contracted inward as a strange scent wafted into his nostrils and through the scoop-shaped sensory organs in his palate that broke down smells. A moment later, he realized why the whales had stopped running.
Something was in their way.
Throwing caution to the wind, the Kronosaurus imperator scanned both the whales and the ocean beyond with a quick burst of his powerful sound sight. The mile-long cone of sonar he emitted lashed out at four-and-a-half times the speed of sound and reverberated back. As his gigantic mandibles absorbed the incoming broadband clicks and sent them to his brain for analysis, he got a detailed picture of the surrounding sea.
In a heartbeat, he knew there were exactly eighteen members of the gray whale pod – all adults. He had pinpointed their location, as well as their current speed and depth. He could tell their approximate age, size, and even their physical condition. And he also knew what was hunting them.
He could see it clearly now as it rushed forward, five hundred yards behind the terrified cetaceans. It was herding them along, its ten-foot jaws opening and closing as it sought an opportunity to sink its teeth into a vulnerable member of the pod.
The notion of another predator appropriating that which was his sent a jolt of adrenaline lancing into the great bull’s sofa-sized heart. When it came to competitors, only the big females of his kind were tolerated, and then, only during the mating season. At all other times, he reigned supreme. He would not allow another carnivore to challenge him for a kill. Or even to scavenge what remained of one, unless he had abandoned it.
A black rage descended over the Ancient’s vision as he began to accelerate. With his front and rear flippers pumping at full power through their respective planes of motion, he increased his velocity to maximum. Foregoing his usual caution, he began to emit powerful sonar pulses, his eyes crimson slits and his battering ram jaw clamped shut as he hurtled forward. As he rocketed through the oncoming seas, his pulse rate quickened, pumping more and more blood to his muscles, and increasing his body’s already formidable ability to rend and destroy. He was, for all intents and purposes, a living engine of death.
And his target was the invading Megalodon.
* * *
Dirk stood in a gym shower stall, his hands resting against one tiled wall as the hot water beat down on his painfully tight trapezius muscles. He gritted his teeth and cricked his neck from side to side, both hearing and feeling vertebrae pop as he worked at relieving tension.
He was lucky Garm showed up when he did. Angus Dwyer was obviously out of his mind. What the hell is that guy’s problem? And what was Natalya thinking? She could’ve gotten hurt, bruised up, or even lost some teeth, and for what?
Dirk stuck his head under the showerhead, blowing an exhale through the sheet of water that cascaded down his face. He had to admit, witnessing his Amazonian love interest defending him like that was an absolute turn-on. She was like a tawny lioness, getting in Dwyer’s face like that. Unbelievably brave, and those thighs . . . God, she looked good today. Of course, her sticking up for him also meant, in her eyes, that he was a child who needed protection, instead of a man who could handle himself.
He shook his head ruefully under the spray. That’s just great . . . as if being Garm’s “little” brother wasn’t emasculating enough.
“Dirk, you in here?”
Speak of the devil. “Back here,” Dirk replied, poking his head out as his twin hung his comforter-size bath sheet up and jumped into the next stall. He’d already tossed his bloodstained shirt and was looking to rinse away the final vestiges of his fistfight with the guards.
“So, um . . . thanks for intervening like that,” Dirk offered. “It was looking pretty hairy there.”
“No worries,” Garm said. He kept to the front and started rolling his shoulders out as he waited for the water to heat up. “But stay away from that Dwyer creep. There’s something wrong with that guy.”
“I think there are a lot of things wrong with him.”
Garm snorted in amusement. “Yeah, you never found anything?”
“No. In fact, other than a standard employment file with his picture and salary, he’s got no personal info whatsoever. Not even on the DOC servers. There’s no contact number, former address, or next of kin. Not even a DOB. It’s like he doesn’t exist.”
“That’s bizarre. Have you asked Grayson?”
“Not yet. But I guess I’ll have to.” Dirk made a face as he caught sight of the nasty bruise gracing Garm’s temple. “That was one hell of a punch you took. You okay?”
“Oh, please. Those guys hit like first graders.”
Dirk faked a grin and started soaping up. A thought came to him out of left field. “Hey, Garm?”
“Yeah?”
“Speaking of first graders . . . you never told me what you did to Billy Balconis and his goon friends, to keep them from pounding on me every day.”
“Wow.” Garm’s chuckle echoed around inside the adjacent shower. “You’re time tripping. That really was in first grade!”
Dirk nodded. “Actually, I kinda know what you did to his two wingmen. I saw you grab Jimmy D’Angelo by the throat, behind the playground building. And Andrew Lawrence was sporting one hell of a mouse, the next day.”
Garm chuckled. “I heard he fell down.”
Kronos Rising: Kraken (vol.1): The battle for Earth's oceans has just begun. Page 51
