Sveta stared at him incredulously.
“Do what he says,” said the other. “He knows what he’s talking about.”
“Yeah, what he said unless you want to keep bleeding.”
She did as she was told and before long, the red flow stopped. She wiped away the excess blood with her sleeve.
“You still look like shit, but you ain’t bleeding no more,” said the shorter man.
“Who are you?” she asked Hauck.
“I’m … Anatoly.”
“Bullshit. I’ve never heard of you. And you,” she asked the other.
“I’m Prince Charming,” said the short man with a grin. “But I left my white horse back on the farm.”
“Where’s Zoe?” said the tall man.
“Dead.”
He looked away, something in his eyes that he did not want her to see.
“Listen, can we just get out of here and talk about this later?” said the other man.
“If Hauck really isn’t going to kill me, let me have my gun.”
“I don’t think so, girlie,” said the short man.
“Let her have it.”
“Your funeral,” said the other.
He reached down, picked up the pistol, and gave it to her, barrel first. He moved closer to her, waiting for her next move, but Sveta turned it around and looked at the tall man.
“Okay for now. How’d you get in?”
“Same way as that creature. I don’t suggest we go back that way.”
“What about the explosion?”
“Later. Where do these stairs go?”
“Up to street level. I don’t know how many men are still left out there.”
“Not enough,” said the Instructor. “Let’s go.”
“After you,” Sveta said to the tall man.
“Hey, you hear that?”
“What?” said the tall man.
“It sounds like somebody yelling in a tin can.”
“It’s nothing,” Sveta said. “Somebody left a radio on. You don’t hear anything.”
The short man said, “I like her, you think she’s too young for me?”
And they went up. The tall man in the lead, Sveta in the middle, and the short, muscular man taking up the rear position. No one spoke on the way.
When they made it to the last platform right before the metal door that Mishka’s men had blown wide open, the tall man leaned back to her and spoke.
“Keep it low, keep it soft,” he said, and turned to climb the last few stairs.
Sveta moved as quickly as she’d ever moved, snaking an arm around his neck, spinning him around so that he was between her and the short man while pressing her pistol to the side of his neck.
“Hello, Hauck,” she whispered in his ear.
*****
“Sveta,” he began.
“Shut up,” she said, “and drop your pistol nice and slowly.”
“We ain’t got time for reunions,” said the short man quietly.
“I can explain.”
“You don’t need to explain. Lies and more lies. Zoe’s dead. How many others because of you?”
“There are always risks in what we do, you know that.”
“Don’t give me that shit. You kept me in the dark every step of the way on this. You keep everyone in the dark so you can play your spy games. Drogol was right. You have no heart. You don’t care who dies as long as you get what you want.”
The short man took a small step forward.
“I’ll kill him,” she said.
“Honey, if you were going to kill him, you’d have already done it.”
She got a tight grip on Hauck’s throat and aimed the pistol at the other man.
“Now if you don’t put that away, I’m going to have to take it away from you and hurt you.”
Sveta had enough. She lowered the pistol and shot at his legs.
Except he wasn’t there anymore.
He was suddenly right beside her with his hand clamped on her wrist. Incredible pain shot through her forearm as he twisted it and grabbed hold of her neck. She almost screamed in agony as he yanked her head to the side and she could no longer feel anything but her spine compressing in on itself. Her pistol dropped to the floor as she fell to her knees completely unable to move. She no longer had control of her body.
The Instructor leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
“Honey, you’re good, but I’m a hell of a lot better,” he said.
*****
“Let her go,” said Hauck, massaging his neck.
“You crazy? She just tried to shoot me in the leg.”
“My fault. I should have told her who I was.”
“You don’t know nothing about women. You told her who you was and she would have shot you right then.”
Hauck squatted down in front of Sveta and looked her straight in the eye.
“Sveta, please trust me on this. I never knew that things would get this far out of control. Believe me. I was trying to do it the best way I knew how. I was wrong. But you can shoot me later if you want, after I’ve told you everything.”
He waited for an answer.
“She can’t talk, Bozo,” said the Instructor. “She’s kind of paralyzed right now.”
“Let her go. If she shoots me I probably deserve it.”
The Instructor looked down at Sveta and smiled.
“Ain’t love grand?” he said.
*****
They encountered no one on the rest of the way to the building. The Instructor checked around while Hauck dismantled the GPS in the SUV. Neither he nor Sveta spoke a word to each other as he did so. Sirens blared in the distance as though there were a major fire somewhere in the direction of downtown.
“Lot of bodies outside,” said the Instructor when he returned.
“Evgeny had it under surveillance.”
“Evgeny had shit to do with it. They’re pretty well ripped to pieces and chewed up.”
Hauck started the SUV. Sveta got in the front passenger seat and the Instructor got in the back.
“Let’s roll,” he said.
They backed out onto the street, and then Hauck sped away without so much as a backward glance at the bodies. He could feel Sveta staring at him as he reattached his throat mic.
“Yuri,” he said.
“Where the fuck have you been? All hell has broken loose everywhere. Evgeny’s dead and your monster has gone public.”
“Evgeny is dead?”
Sveta turned away and stared out into the night.
“What happened? Tell me everything.”
So Yuri did.
“Fucking thing is on national television now. It’s running through the streets of Detroit nailing everything in its path. Cops everywhere. Helicopters. They’re shooting up the place like it’s a war zone.”
That would explain the sirens, he thought.
“Son of a bitch just threw a police car into the GM Building,” shouted Yuri.
‘What’s going on?” asked the Instructor.
Hauck told him.
Sveta listened with her mouth open.
“Threw a police car into them big towers?” said the Instructor. “Man, I wish I was there to see that.”
“Homeland Security’s all over this,” said Yuri. “They’re going nuts. Chatter on the official wires is screaming hot. They’re sending everything they’ve got after it. I think they’re bringing the military into action.”
“Time to disappear,” said Hauck. “This is totally out of control.”
“Anna Kazakova is dead,” added Yuri. “I picked it up a while ago before this went crazy. Heart attack. Hold on, shit, the damned thing just downed a helicopter. You ought to see this shit. It’s on every channel.”
“Listen to me, Yuri. Listen hard. Close everything down. We’re coming to the firehouse and from there we’ll wind things up. Do you understand? We have to move quickly.”
“I’ve got you boss, but they just fired a missile at it, but it moved out of
the way and the Joe Louis Arena exploded.”
“We’re on our way.”
“So what’s going on?” said the Instructor. “Give me the juicy.”
Hauck told them both.
Sveta stared coldly at Hauck.
“See what you’ve done?” she said. “All this because of your obsession.”
“A fucking helicopter?” said the Instructor. “I’m telling you, we’re missing out on all the good stuff.”
*****
The beast was invincible.
Power flowed through it, supercharging its body with such bursts of resonant energy the pavement shook beneath it. Blinding helicopter floodlights targeted it. Round after round of bullets pounded into its body, but each impact seemed only to make it stronger as the Tesla resonance energy absorbed and multiplied it back outward.
And it exulted in this sensation.
In the beast, power and destruction existed as one.
Traffic was a confusion of crushed cars and bleeding people. Police personnel bullhorning commands to the stampeding crowds were drowned out by the sounds of sirens, gunshots, explosions and the roaring of the monster.
Behind it, a shattered Joe Louis Arena burned. Fire trucks couldn’t find their way through the tangle of upside down, crushed vehicles. Water shot out and up into an arcing spray from broken fireplugs.
The corner of West Jefferson and Woodward was like an opening night riot. Painfully bright halogens strobed the streets arcing crazily as helicopters swooped in and out. The creature changed direction so fast it was all they could to avoid mid-air collisions. Street lights shattered and sparked as bullets strafed the scene. The beast leaped to the side of the old Ponchartrain Hotel and began scrambling up its side, smashing windows with clawed hands and feet and using ledges for purchase. Jets screeched through the night sky.
A police helicopter moved too close and the creature thrust back from its position two thirds up the side of the Ponchartrain Hotel, arcing back with extended claws and jaws opened wide. In a blind rage it grabbed the landing skids and swung back and forth. The helicopter rocked from the impact, canting and swinging wildly. The beast reached one clawed hand up and smashed through the cockpit windshield. It yanked the pilot with such force it broke him free from his seatbelt With an angry roar the monster threw him out into the night.
A cabin door slid open and a policewoman decked in full riot gear leaned out with a long barreled rifle. She aimed directly at the top of the creature’s wire-haired head and pulled the trigger. She fired until her weapon was empty and then struggled to keep her balance long enough to slap a new ammunition clip into place.
The helicopter rocked wildly to one side. Dangling from her safety strap, she looked straight down into the yellow eyes and slavering maw of the monster and began to scream. The swirl of malevolent yellow eyes fixed on her horror as it slashed viciously upward at her. Its sharp claws cut through her and she burst open like a sack of blood.
The creature released its grip on the helicopter skid and dropped straight down. The sensation of free fall lit its nerves with pleasure.
Impact.
It landed on a SRT personnel van with a sound like a tin can being stomped flat. Broken fragments of safety glass flew outward, spraying a man and woman clutching to each other as they pressed against the side of a building. A jagged shard sliced into the woman’s eye and she screamed. Gasoline poured from the ruptured fuel tank.
“Stay inside, stay inside. All citizens must stay inside for your own safety,” blared an electronic bullhorn as the beast tore off down the street.
Seconds later, the helicopter came crashing onto the flattened SRT. An exploding fireball shot straight upward with a blast so powerful, windows shattered down West Jefferson, spraying the night with deadly glass projectiles.
Across the river, Canadians lined their side of the riverbank, watching the chaos through binoculars and telescopes. The Windsor Tunnel was blocked by collisions and pileups. Terrified people abandoned their cars and tried to make it on foot. Shots were fired and a mobilized Border Patrol locked down the Canadian tunnel entrance.
High above the water, the Ambassador Bridge was a mass of stalled and abandoned cars. It was a giant parking lot of honking horns, fist fights and shootings. A bus lay on its side crumpled and smoking after a head on collision with a tractor-trailer. It was impossible to pass either way in the panic. Within half an hour of the beast’s entrance onto Detroit’s center stage, the bridge that carried one fourth of the commerce between the United States and Canada became a battleground of people so terrified they would maim or kill their neighbors to escape.
The Detroit River itself was a scramble of Coast Guard vessels herding ships like cattle to safer pastures. Military assets from both the United States and Canada turned the river into a barrier the beast could not cross.
But it was now headed for I-75, with an entourage of police vehicles, helicopters and fighter jets keeping up with it almost as well as the television news crews.
Chapter Thirty-three
The monster bounded on four legs like a giant wolf tearing through a rusted steel forest. Twenty feet tall and growing. A blur of wire-brush hair, teeth and claws.
It threw cars over the edge of the freeway overpass in a sparking shower of shrieking metal and exploding plastic. The immense power of Tesla’s resonance waves shot through its body with each chaotic act. Sirens blared their warning across the night. The constant noise created more confusion as panic spread.
Rain mixed with 50 caliber rounds poured from the sky like an angry judgment. The beast’s heart pumped rage and power. It exulted in the chaos and destruction.
Up ahead lay a sprawling production refinery with lighted towers and distillation columns surrounded by acres of gigantic storage vessels. Thick, gray clouds of steam billowed up from its operations and wrapped its machinery in a somber cloak.
After a quick, defiant upward glance at its enemies, the monster reared back its head, fixed its eyes on the pale red moon and roared. Before the echoes had died away, it was bounding toward the refinery, pulled toward it by an image of flashing red atop one of the towers.
Its pursuers blasted away with no effect. The city of Detroit was a war zone, but the beast moved so quickly and erratically that most of the rounds and ordinance tore up empty ground. Nothing in their planning had prepared the security forces for an enemy that moved with such blinding speed and lashed out with such destructive power.
The night lit suddenly with a terrifying yellow-orange radiance when a plane tore through high-voltage power wires. Live wires ripped through the air and snapped against the ground like manic spider legs.
When the beast reached the refinery, frantic commands were issued to security personnel to cease firing, to pull back. But as the monster clawed up the side of a storage vessel painted up like a giant basketball in honor of the Detroit Pistons basketball team, bullets strafed after him. Suddenly an angry explosion erupted into the night skies the likes of which no one had ever seen.
*****
“Fuck, would you look at that,” said the Instructor.
They were at the firehouse, which Yuri, following Hauck’s instructions, had cleared of all other personnel for the meeting. Curtains were drawn and only a single solitary desk lamp lit the room. They were assembled around banks of monitors that Yuri had hooked into the national and local news stations which showed endless loops of video and still footage of the refinery explosion. In the heat of combat, where one mistake leads to another, flying pieces of metal ripped open other storage vessels that exploded like fireworks strung on a line. A running tally of dead refinery workers was displayed on the screens while reporters interviewed families of those who had died.
“They tried to put a lid on news coverage soon as this started, but there was no way. No way at all. It was too late. YouTube took it viral and I think Facebook is overloaded with everybody in the country talking about it. The government started shutting down webs
ites and Twitter feeds, but there was no way for them to keep up. The Feds are used to control and this thing just can’t be controlled.”
Sveta watched with the rest of them. She tried to keep a grip on her emotions, but the awe and terror she saw played out on the screens was too much. Hauck paced the room, unable to sit down for a moment. The Instructor slid a chair next to Yuri’s to get a front row seat. Yuri alternated between watching the destruction and stealing glances at Hauck. He’d never really thought he would ever see the man’s face.
“If we would have just left him alone,” said Sveta, “none of this would have happened. None of this.”
Hauck raised his hands in frustration.
“Left him alone? He’s a monster. Look at what he’s capable of. And it’s not we who have caused this destruction, it is Drogol himself.”
“They’re not reporting any sign of him,” said Yuri. “Consensus is that he was destroyed in the explosion.”
The Instructor looked over at Hauck, who looked away.
“We must debrief before we separate,” said Hauck. “I need to know everything that means something before we disappear.”
“Debrief,” said Sveta. “What are you, a machine? How about we mourn for our dead first?”
“Sveta,” began Hauck.
“Have you no heart at all? Zoe is dead. Evgeny is dead. Crue is dead. I could have been killed. All of those people who died when the beast ran loose tonight, have you no thought for them?”
“Of course I feel them. But I also feel for those of us left alive. We didn’t kill those people.”
“You may not have pulled the trigger, but you killed them” said Sveta coldly.
“Get hold of yourself. You are a field operative. I have to hear what you learned from Drogol so that I know what to do to protect us.”
Sveta stood, knocking over her chair, which hit the floor with a loud bang.
“Could you two keep it down,” said the Instructor. “I’m trying to listen to television.”
“And who—and don’t lie to me anymore—who is this evil little man?”
“Evil little man? I like that,” said the Instructor.
“We have to stay on point, Sveta. We have so little time. What happened to you in that underground complex?”
Tainted Blood Page 25
