Chang was looking at his watch and counting beneath his breath, “Should be…just about…now!â€
Thunder boomed, a rumbling cacophony that pounded the landscape like the crash of a hammer on an anvil. Mason was forced to put his hands over his ears, but he didn’t take his eyes off the storm and afterwards he was glad he had not, for he never would have believed what happened unless he’d witnessed it himself. The storm rapidly sucked back in on itself, the clouds rolling backward like a video of an explosion run in reverse, while the thunder continued to pound at his ears with a fury of its own.
Then, just as quickly as it had started, the fury died down and silence returned. The storm was back where it had been before Echo’s incursion into the base, compacted into a smaller set of storm clouds that hovered over the center of the installation around the base of that odd column of darkness. Even the lightning seemed to have taken a break, for Mason could only catch a flicker of its presence within the depths of the clouds themselves.
Mason stared, astonished.
“What now?†he asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“If it follows its previous pattern, it will take a few minutes for it to build up enough mo-mentum to make another attempt,†Chang replied.
The captain knew instinctively that Chang was right. The storm, if that’s what it truly was, would keep trying, would keep pounding against whatever strange barrier kept it locked in place until it managed to find a way to free itself.
Then things would rapidly go from bad to worse.
“Keep your eyes on the situation, Private, and let me know the second anything changes.â€
“Yes, sir!â€
Turning away, Mason thought he heard the storm growl back at him in response.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A WATCHER IN THE DARKNESS
“Cease fire! Cease fire!â€
Cade’s voice could be heard clearly even over the din of the gunfire and the two sergeants reacted to his command, pulling their fingers from the triggers and lowering the muzzles of their weapons. In front of them, the “enemy†was lost in the darkness, the mysterious strobe light suddenly winking out with the arrival of the rest of the team.
Cade pushed between Duncan and Riley, staring ahead at the strange tableau, lit now by only the thin beam at the end of his weapon. “Lights!†he called, “we need some light up here.â€
Flashlights were handed forward. In their high powered beams, the identity of their assailants became immediately obvious.
It was D Squad, 3rd Platoon.
Jackson’s missing teammates.
Cade stepped forward, moving amongst the bodies. Closer examination showed that they had been tied upright to the posts that served as handholds throughout the train car, their arms extended and secured to the horizontal crossbar. They’d been tied so tightly that not even the onslaught of Echo’s bullets had torn them loose. With the strobe light flashing behind them, their positioning had given the illusion that the bodies were lurching forward.
It was an eerie spectacle, shocking in its blatant use of the dead. Just what had their op-ponent hoped to achieve with such a display? What was the value of dragging the bodies down here into the dark and arranging them like life-size puppets that no one would ever see?
Unless, of course, it had known that they were coming.
“Freakin’ weird sense of humor,†Ortega said quietly from the back of the car and the comment struck Cade between the eyes. Could that be it? Could this have all been some kind of a sick joke? An attempt to get under their skin and play with their emotions?
There were nine bodies in all, which meant that the entire platoon was now accounted for, if you included Jackson. Cade shone his light on the various corpses, searching for one in particular. When he found him, he pulled his knife and carefully cut the ropes holding him in place. By the time he had the man free, Duncan and Riley were there beside him, helping him lower the body gently to the floor of the tram car.
The nametag on the front of the man’s uniform read Stoddard. From his review of 3rd Platoon’s personnel files, Cade knew this was the lieutenant that had been in charge of the patrol. He’d been young, 28 or 29, if memory served, but you wouldn’t know it looking at him now. His face was shrunken, collapsed in on itself, the once smooth skin now grey and wrinkled. His eyes bulged from their sockets and his mouth remained frozen in an “O†of surprise or fear, Cade wasn’t sure which. Even stranger was the fact that the man’s hair, once jet black, had now gone completely white.
A quick glance at the rest of the bodies showed that they, too, were in a similar condition.
“What do you think, boss?†asked Riley, while keeping watch on the shadows around them. “Could it be a wight? Or maybe a nest of Chiang Shih?â€
Sitting back on his heels, Cade shook his head. “There hasn’t been a wight sight-ing in the continental U.S. for more than fifty years. Besides, this isn’t the right environment for them. I’d be inclined to think it might be the Chiang Shi,†he said, referring to the vampire-like creatures of Chinese origin, “except for the fact that the eyes are intact and they’re always one of the first things to go.â€
“Which leaves us back at square one,†said Olsen.
Turning his attention back to Stoddard, Cade searched the man for injuries. There were a variety of bullet wounds, but from the lack of blood it was clear that all of them were post-mortem. Duncan and Riley’s handiwork, no doubt. But aside from these, that was it.
There were no other obvious injuries that could have caused the man’s death aside from the strange condition of his face. It was as if the very life force had been sucked out of him.
What could do that to a man? They’d already eliminated the known candidates. Could it be a new species, something they’d never encountered before? He was tempted to take off his gloves to try and use his Sight, that psychometric power given to him during his encounter with the Adversary several years ago, but knew it would be pointless. The bodies had been down here for over forty-eight hours; anything residual information the corpse might have held was now long since out of reach.
Movement to his left caught Cade’s attention. Duncan had drawn his combat knife and was moving toward the rest of the bodies, seemingly intent on cutting them down as well.
Cade stood quickly and grabbed his arm, stopping him. “We don’t have time,†he said. “We’ve got to keep moving.â€
“But we can’t just leave them here like this!†the young sergeant protested quietly.
Cade gently turned the other man around so that he was facing away from the corpses, forcing him to pay attention to what was being said. “We have to. I don’t have the manpower to watch over the bodies and we can’t spare the time to take them back through the tunnel to the surface.†Duncan opened his mouth to protest but Cade shook his head, silencing him. “It’s only temporary, Duncan. I promise you. We’ve got to focus on the mission, to complete what we came here to do, but we’ll be back to give these guys the proper respect and care that they deserve. You have my word.â€
Reluctantly, Duncan nodded. He knew the commander was right; they didn’t have any other choice. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.
Conscious that the dead men had been fellow knights, Cade ordered Olsen to collect their signet rings. He would turn them over to Captain Mason as evidence of their fate, just in case something happened to the bodies before they could return.
Once that had been accomplished, the team continued their advance, moving through four more cars without incident before coming to the end of the train and exiting out through the service door in the rear.
The tunnel stretched on before them in the darkness and they continued on the
ir way, this time with Olsen and Cade on point.
* * *
Behind them, in the darkness of the tram car, one of the slumped “bodies†sat up and got to its feet. It walked to the end of the train and stared out into the darkness of the tunnel in the direction Echo Team had gone moments before. As it did the flesh of its face began to twist and turn, features forming and then fading away again only to be replaced by a new incarnation seconds later, the skin melting and reforming like toffee in the hot summer sun, until at last it made up its mind and a new face emerged in place of the old. Two eyes, one steel grey, the other milky white, stared out of a face made of harsh planes and sharp angles.
A wide band of angry scar tissue wrapped around the right side from the ear to the chin and was only partially covered by the long hair that covered the top of its head.
Satisfied with his new appearance, the lord of Eden stepped down off the train and began to follow the men of Echo Team back into the darkness of its temporary lair.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ENTERING EDEN
Echo emerged from the tunnel and found themselves in another underground station. The platform here was identical to the one they’d left behind at the other end, except that the shaft back up to the surface had been replaced by a steel security door. Climbing up out of the tunnel, the team advanced to take a closer look and as they did so, they could see that there was an inscription in Hebrew written above the entrance.
“Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden, and there he put the man that he had formed,†Cade read, translating for some of the others. While everyone in the Order was familiar with Latin, ancient Hebrew was another story. “Genesis 2:8.†The words had been cut deep into the steel with a blowtorch and were clearly a recent addition, but whether they’d been placed there by Vargas and his team when they’d taken over the facility or after the trouble had started Cade didn’t know.
He considered the inscription. He was familiar with the verse and those immediately around it, a key section of the Creation story, but he didn’t understand their relevance here. Had Vargas considered this his Eden, his garden of earthly delights? Or did it have more literal connotations, maybe suggesting that he considered what he was doing here his calling from God? Had it even been Vargas who had put it there? There was no way of knowing at this point, but still, Cade was troubled by it. The verse made him uncomfortable, though he couldn’t grasp why.
Putting it out of his mind for the time being, he turned to more practical matters. A numeric keypad was placed to the right of the door at chest height. A common sight at high security installations, both civilian and military, the unit was designed to provide limited access to the facility by requiring the entry of a nine digit password. The number of possible combinations was astronomical. If the person seeking entrance knew the proper code, the door would open easily for them. If not, they could grow old and die before they chanced on the right combination. Without the proper code, it was a dead end.
He experimentally tried a few buttons but the adjacent screen did not light up or acknow-ledge his efforts in any way. There didn’t seem to be any power running to the unit. Stepping back, Cade gestured to Olsen. “See if you can run a bypass.â€
The sergeant pulled a multi-purpose tool off his belt and quickly gained access to the guts of the unit through its maintenance panel. With the wiring exposed, it took only a few minutes for him to splice a handheld computer into the lines. When he flipped the switch, the computer began running through all the possible numeric combinations. The viewscreen next to the keypad glowed red as the numbers churned past, one after another, until a nine digit combination had been selected. The screen turned green and something inside the door gave a sharp click.
“That should do it,†Olsen said, as he removed the computer and stashed it away in his belt pack. “Somebody give me a hand.†Using the edge of his combat knife, he pried apart the twin doors, creating a slight opening between them. With Chen’s help he was then able to shove the doors back along their tracks.
Inside it was dark. The air that drifted out to meet them was thick and musty, like a tomb that had been sealed up for centuries rather than the few weeks that it had actually been, letting them know that the air pumps had stopped working along with the electricity.
Olsen shone his light inside, revealing a short corridor that stretched ahead of them for roughly thirty feet before it ended at an elevator. The elevator doors were partially open.
With a nod from Cade, Olsen took point and advanced down the corridor. Riley stayed close on his heels. The two of them stopped about ten feet away from the open elevator doors and, as Cade watched, lowered themselves into a crouch and examined the situation before them. When they were ready, they quickly closed the distance to the open shaft and flattened themselves against either side. As one they spun into the doorway, Riley flashing his light into the darkness above while Olsen did the same below.
After a moment or two, Cade heard Riley’s voice in his ear. “Clear,†he said, and half a second later Duncan echoed him.
At their signal Cade moved up, the rest of the team behind him. Once he got closer he could see that the elevator doors were almost completely open, only a thin lip of each door showing on either side, and there was enough room for his two men to stand in the doorway side by side. Their lights revealed the shaft beyond to be empty. The car itself was four levels below them, at what appeared to be the bottom of the shaft, and the tangle of cables that covered its top like a nest of snakes at least assured them that it wouldn’t be headed up the shaft anytime soon. At this distance, it was impossible to tell if the car was intact or not.
“What do you think?†Cade asked, looking up and down the shaft.
Olsen was the first to answer. “The power plant’s bound to be on the lower floor,†he said. “We’re going to need to get the power up and running in order to cover this place properly, so I vote we head down.
Cade looked over at his exec.
“I agree,†said Riley. “It’d be a damn sight easier if we had some lights.
We’re also gonna need to access the computer system and personnel logs, too, once we find them, and we can’t do that while the power’s out either.â€
Cade thought it over for a moment and then nodded his head. It made sense and gave them a logical way to conduct the search, bottom to top. He quickly gave orders for Davis to guard the approach while Riley and Olsen got into position by the shaft. They would serve as climbing anchors for the rest of the team. Both men removed reinforced nylon ropes from their packs, tied one end off on built-in belaying devices on their harnesses, and settled down on either side of the doorway, their feet braced against the wall. The other end of each rope was then tossed down the elevator shaft, where they came to rest on the roof of the elevator car below.
“Chen. Ortega. You’re up,†said Cade.
The two men slung their weapons over their shoulders and grabbed a hold of the rope.
They swiftly moved over the edge and, feet firmly planted against the wall of the elevator shaft, and began walking down the rope. Cade stood between them, his weapon at the ready, watching over their descent. When they reached the roof of the elevator car, Chen carefully tested it to see whether the car would hold his weight. When he was confident it would, he gave two tugs on the rope, released it and stepped to the side. Beside him, Ortega did the same.
“Chen, give me a sitrep,†Cade said via the radio.
“Looks good, Commander. The elevator car is intact and there’s an access panel in the roof. We’re opening it up now.â€
Cade watched from above as they pried back the access panel and quickly checked out the interior of the elevator car. Ortega disappeared inside the car while Chen covered him and then the latter followed suit. Chen’s vo
ice came back at him across the tactical channel a moment later. “It’s clear, Commander. We’ve got the interior door open and are holding position outside the car.â€
“Roger that. Second team coming down.†Cade turned and looked back.
“Duncan. Callavechio. You’re next.â€
The process was repeated twice more, until only Riley remained at the top of the shaft.
Fashioning an anchor with a couple of slings and a locking carabiner, he secured himself to the line and threw the other end of the rope down the shaft. Turning his back to the open shaft, he grasped the line and rappelled quickly downward. When he reached the top of the elevator car, he stepped clear and then pulled sharply on one side of the rope. The loose end snaked free of the anchor and came tumbling down to where he waited below. After that it took only a moment to swiftly wrap it up and stash it back in his pack, ready for the next time he needed it.
When he was finished he joined the others in the corridor outside the elevator. To the best of their knowledge, they were on the lowest floor of the facility. Ahead of them, at the other end of the hallway, was a door, which led to the base’s physical plant.
The roar of running water hit them the moment they stepped into the room. A large generator and operating station stood on one side. On the other was a concrete platform with a waist-high railing. The platform extended out over an underground river, the source of the noise that filled the room. A large pipe ran from the base of the generator, across the room, and down the side of the platform into the water below.
Following the pipe, which he guessed was a conduit for cables, Cade stepped over to the railing and looked down to find an electric turbine suspended just above the water’s surface. He had little doubt that when the turbine was lowered into the roaring water, the result-ing electrical charge would be sufficient to fire the generators, which in turn would supply power to the entire base. The river itself was, for all practical purposes, inexhaustible, and therefore a brilliant solution to what might have been a difficult problem.
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