Of course, Cade always came back. Always. You could send him out against the worst possible nightmares, things that handed out death and destruction like business cards, things that had extinction encoded into their DNA—and Zach had—and he’d still come back.
Which meant Zach could act as tough as he liked on the phone, but there would be a price to pay. Eventually.
Still, Zach figured, you have to enjoy yourself when you can.
“Hey, fire me,” he said. “We’ve done our best. I’ve run names of all the pirates through our covert databases, with no contacts to any of the known players. No activity at all in that part of Africa. The Archies looked at their database. No employees match the authorization for the original Somali shipment.”
“That’s what they did, is it?” Cade left that hanging for him.
Zach didn’t pick it up. “Well . . . yeah.”
“And what did you see when you looked through their records?”
Son of a bitch, thought Zach. Of course he should have checked their findings. Old habits. He’d actually started to think of them as coworkers, like they were all on the same side. He chipped in for the pizza, for Christ’s sake. Stupid, stupid, stupid . . .
“Call you back in five.”
He hung up and moved around the desk to sit at Book’s workstation.
Book, who was lying on a couch across the room, flipping pages of documents, began to rise. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”
“This is your shipping and freight database, correct?” Zach clicked around, getting a feel for the interface.
“You don’t have clearance—”
“Nice. Very intuitive. Almost like a Mac.” He quickly found the shipment number. Book had left it up on the screen. He was over Zach’s shoulder now.
“I’m not going to tell you again, Barrows.”
“He’s right, Zach,” Bell piped up. “There’s a protocol we have to follow. We’re talking about trade secrets as well as national security—”
Zach talked over her. “You couldn’t find any record of this guy here who authorized the shipment, right?”
“That’s right, genius,” Book said. “No such employee. Fake ID number, fake clearance level, all planted in our records. Otherwise the shipment never would have gone out. But no way to find out who did it, either. We’ve been over this.”
“Right,” Zach said. “A/A employee: Stephens, Justin. A transport engineer, whatever the hell that means.”
“He doesn’t exist,” Book snapped. “We explained this.”
“Yeah?” Zach spun in the chair and faced all three of them. “Well, he sent another shipment twelve hours after the first one.”
Silence. Zach pushed back from the screen to show them what their own computer database had pulled up a few seconds before.
“Maybe we ought to figure out where that’s going, you think?”
NINE
Cade’s speed is perhaps his most formidable attribute, even more than his strength or resistance to damage. Cade’s running speed is nearly three times that of the fastest recorded human, at 75 mph. However, what is more impressive (and more useful, from Cade’s perspective as a predator) are his “short burst” movements—i.e., moving across a room or another limited distance. These have been clocked at over 50 mph from a standing start. This speed is on par with the action of the pistol shrimp, which attacks its prey so quickly that even the highest-speed cameras have trouble catching the movement.
Cade is able to accomplish this due to his altered physiology. His tightly coiled, highly dense muscle tissue is almost always in the “potential” state to release energy (excepting, of course, when he is in his coma-like state for rest during the day). His neural transmission is much faster than human as well, so his nervous system delivers commands nearly instantaneously—thought and action are almost simultaneous. The potential energy is released explosively and Cade is effectively hurled into motion.
The mean human response time to visual stimuli is approximately 180–200 milliseconds. In that amount of time, Cade could move 13.1 feet. In a confined space or in the dark, this is nearly impossible to track visually. In these circumstances, Cade is, for all practical purposes, faster than the eye can see. This is probably what gives rise to the myths of vampires being able to disperse into mist or even fly.
—BRIEFING BOOK: CODE NAME: NIGHTMARE PET
CAMP LEMONNIER, DJIBOUTI, NORTHERN AFRICA
PFC Tom Gangwer was working the midnight-to-0800 shift with Lewis, both of them inside the guard station at the front gate.
Lemonnier was the only U.S. military installation in Africa. What was once a collection of double-wide trailers and air-conditioned tents—basically an afterthought in the defense budget—received a serious upgrade for the ongoing War on Terror. Over the past few years, they’d added an airstrip capable of landing a C-130, dorms for personnel, a drone launch facility and a new rec center. The number of soldiers and sailors had doubled to more than three thousand.
Even though the Navy was in charge of the site, the Army helped out with security. Gangwer didn’t mind. Security was a pretty easy detail, all things considered. Yeah, they had to watch out for any local who decided that a car bomb was an e-ticket ride to Heaven. But most of the locals were actually pretty cool here. And the soldiers were assisted greatly by the fact that the camp was in the middle of BFE. Sentries could see anyone coming on the main road, and anyone who wasn’t on the main road had to cross open space—miles and miles of flat, dusty ground.
Tonight, the only thing on the schedule was a prisoner transfer. Archer/Andrews was bringing in human cargo. Soldiers were, in fact, encouraged to look the other way from these special deliveries. The less you knew, the better.
That was fine by Gangwer. This wasn’t Iraq, where everyone and his brother wore a suicide belt under his robes. He’d been happy to get the transfer order here, and he wasn’t about to screw it up.
“You know, in my hometown, there was a theater called the Baghdad when I was a kid?” he told Lewis.
“No shit?” Lewis was only mildly interested, but it beat staring at the planes coming in and out of the airport.
“Yeah,” Gangwer said. “They changed it right before Gulf War One—”
“Hah. I bet.”
“—but my dad said it had been around since the twenties. It was a big old place, with all this fancy gold stuff on it. I mean, it was pretty run-down by the time I saw it, and it was in a part of town we usually didn’t go. I think they were running porn movies there, actually.”
“We had a theater like that downtown,” Johnson said. “Not porn movies. But it used to be a silent movie theater. Lots of gold decorations. Statues of King Tut. The Egyptian.”
Gangwer nodded. “Exactly. The Baghdad, even when it was a shit-hole, you could see it had been something once. Lots of fake palm trees and all kinds of Middle Eastern stuff, all crammed together. It made me think, you know, once upon a time, our grandparents, all they knew about Baghdad was it was a cool name. They thought it was exotic. Like dancing girls and all that.”
Lewis laughed. “Not exactly accurate.”
“Right. You think they ever would have thought their grandkids would end up fighting in Baghdad? Probably seemed like going to the moon to them.”
“Sure. If the moon was a hundred-twenty-degree toilet filled with people trying to kill you.”
Gangwer sighed. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to say, but he knew Lewis wasn’t getting it.
Then he noticed the truck. “Hey,” he said, pointing. Lewis turned and looked.
A big panel transport; a new truck with no markings. The Archies were here. But the truck was moving slowly, barely idling along.
It slowed even more, as if the driver somehow noticed their attention. Finally, roughly three hundred yards from the camp perimeter, it chugged to a halt on the road.
Not good. They both knew it. Maybe something happened to the Archies. Maybe the prisoners got
control of the truck. Or maybe it had been hijacked and turned into a bomb.
But those were all just maybes. It would suck balls to call out the cavalry for nothing more than engine trouble.
“Check it out?” Gangwer asked.
Lewis nodded. “I’ll go.”
Lewis jogged to the truck while Gangwer made the call. So far, nothing too far out of the ordinary. Just a truck . . .
Then, when Lewis was about twenty yards from the truck, the driver door opened and a man sprinted away.
He was gone, out of sight into the dark, in seconds.
Oh shit, Gangwer thought. He and Lewis shared the same thought, separated by distance: bomb. They both hit the deck.
A moment later, they both got back up. Nothing. Just the truck, still idling.
Lewis looked back, shrugged. He hand-signaled that he was going to check it out.
Gangwer began to get a bad feeling about this. A truck bomb would make sense. But a guy running away in the middle of the night? That was just weird. Even weirder, Gangwer was pretty sure that the guy was wearing A/A fatigues. He could recognize the corporate logo. And the Archies were so damn proud of their slick uniforms.
Lewis wasn’t being stupid. He had his rifle up and ready. Gangwer wished he’d called for backup already. He picked up the phone.
Lewis went to the back doors of the truck. He tested them, carefully, using the butt of his rifle to flip the latch.
Gangwer was tensed for another explosion. Again, nothing. Then the door swung wide, and Lewis disappeared behind it.
Then gunshots burst out—stuttering, hesitant, and over almost before they began.
The screaming just kept on going, however.
Lewis was a veteran. He’d been in firefights and transports hit by IEDs and pinned down by insurgents with heavy artillery. But Gangwer had never heard that kind of fear in his voice before.
Lewis broke from around the truck and sprinted toward the gatehouse, as fast as he could, something black covering half his face.
Not black. Red. It was blood. Half his face was simply torn away. Peeled open like a banana. Lewis’s rifle was gone. His helmet was gone.
Something was right behind him.
It hopped almost playfully, jumping at Lewis’s heels, springing along in his wake with an ease that said it could take the soldier at any time.
Gangwer thought it was a big cat, maybe—they don’t have tigers in Africa, do they?—but then it moved into the perimeter light, and he got a look at the green-black scales.
Some kind of big . . . lizard? But it walked on two legs. It stood up like a man.
Gangwer realized Lewis was screaming his name. Over and over. And a single plea: “Shoot! Gangwer! Shoot!”
Gangwer broke from his daze of shock. He dropped the phone. Picked up the rifle, aimed and fired.
“Son of a bitch,” Gangwer said. He tagged the fucker—he knew he did—but it just stumbled and then kept going. What was that thing?
It leaped on top of Lewis with one long, loping stride.
“Please,” he shrieked as he went down. “Please, Gangwer! Just shoot!”
Gangwer wanted to cover his ears. He realized Lewis wasn’t asking him to shoot the creature. He was asking for a bullet himself.
Gangwer dropped the rifle. His hands felt clumsy and thick on the phone. He wasn’t sure how to call it in, but he knew the other guard stations had to be alerted.
“This is main gate to all points, we have an unknown on the base, repeat, an unknown on the base—”
The phone dropped from him. He looked at it, wondering why he’d done that.
Then he realized he hadn’t done it himself. His hand was still around the phone. It was just no longer attached to his body.
Gangwer looked up, blood dropping out of him so fast that everything seemed to be happening in a dream.
There was another one. Tall as a man, blazing yellow eyes and sharp teeth. And claws; claws so sharp they could reach out and sever limbs faster than an industrial saw.
In the distance, more of the things came sprinting out of the dark. He could see them now. Hear them hissing.
He realized Lewis wasn’t screaming anymore. The thing next to him moved, too quick. He couldn’t process it.
His brain vainly tried to send signals down to his body, and nothing was coming back.
In that nanosecond, Gangwer had the strangest flash of memory—of being upside-down on a roller coaster at the state fair. Then he felt nothing.
His head bounced twice on the ground, right at the feet of the other Snakeheads going through the gate.
TEN
Meeting with C. tonight at the Gayety. Hard to enjoy the fan dance with that thing sitting beside me in the box. He showed me a copy of a magazine he said had been taken from the stands due to its strange and unsettling content. (Thankfully, he did not make me read it.) It was related to a supposed creature or animal in a house in Massachusetts, and requested permission to investigate. I gave him free rein, knowing it would get him out of my sight that much faster. I know that what C. does is vital, but I am a simple man of limited talents from a small town. The less I have to deal with him the better for us all.
Had I known this would be part of the cost, I would have stayed in Marion and told the Duchess to go to hell. May God help me, for I need it.
—President Warren G. Harding, private diary (classified)
Cade knew it, even as he calculated time and distance, listening to Zach’s hurried, stuttering information over the phone. He knew it even when he picked Graves up bodily, despite the old man’s shouted protests, and ran them back to the plane. He did everything he could short of picking up the Gulfstream and hurling it into the air.
They were only a few hours away.
But they would never make it in time.
MOST OF IT WAS OVER by the time the plane touched down. The air was thick with the smell of cordite and blood, and the cleanup had already begun.
Cade walked.
Cade had witnessed too many disasters at military bases, and the response was almost always the same. Men and women put aside their shock and horror. They didn’t ask anything but relevant questions, such as “Where?” and “When?” and “How many?” Abstract concepts like “Why?” they saved for later, along with their mourning or panic. Soldiers and sailors swarmed to the source of the problem, and each one found an angle they could approach, a role to play in staunching the bleeding, whatever small effort they could make.
Cade crossed half the camp in three seconds when he heard the hissing.
Buried amid the piles of dead bodies, he found one Snakehead, disoriented, newly transformed. It still wore some of its human clothing—remnants of a Marine uniform.
Everyone nearby turned and stared as it kicked and tore its way out of the corpses. It was looking for fresher meat.
It turned to see Cade coming, but was in no way ready. It almost split open on impact. He didn’t allow that to stop him from beating it down into the dirt.
He didn’t care about the witnesses. They were military, and they could be shut up later. Most would want to forget what they’d seen. Others simply wouldn’t believe it, would rather disavow the knowledge from their own eyes than live in a world where things like this were real.
None of that mattered to Cade.
All that mattered to him, at that moment, was that he was too late.
GRAVES WALKED THROUGH the camp’s medical center, surveying the wounded—the ones who had not been bitten or clawed, the ones suffering from merely human injuries.
Graves moved with authority, as if he belonged, so people assumed he must belong. No one stopped him or even questioned him. It was as if the entire camp was still in shock, stunned into a kind of mute acceptance. Many soldiers and sailors hadn’t even seen the Snakeheads. There were rumors, but they were muted by the threat of court-martial or worse. Anyone who had actually seen the creatures didn’t want to talk about it. They were too busy with g
rief or struggling to hold on to their sanity.
The only certain thing was that whatever had happened tonight didn’t happen.
In this kind of atmosphere, Graves might as well have been invisible.
The critically wounded had already been moved to the nearby French army hospital, which had better facilities for the men hit by shrapnel or caught in the cross fire of their own forces. But a few dozen were still on the base, recovering from minor injuries.
In one of the patient areas, Graves found a young Marine sleeping. The young man had a clean bullet wound through the meat of his right leg. He was on IV fluids, and according to his chart, would be up and walking in days.
Perfect.
Graves took a small hypo from a pocket of his vest. It contained a clear solution, indistinguishable from the saline and plasma the Marine was already receiving.
He poked the needle into the tube, emptying the fluid into it. It flowed into the young man’s IV, and from there, slid into his veins.
He didn’t even shift in his sleep. Graves noted the time, then walked out.
On his way to the front door, he put the needle into a sharps container marked CAUTION—BIOHAZARD.
CADE FOUND GRAVES overseeing the extraction of a young Marine at the helipad. An Archer/Andrews transport chopper idled, its rotors starting to spin.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
Graves looked up. “Kid needs medical attention.”
“Then take him to the hospital. Or bring the doctors here.”
Graves shook his head. “Nothing they can do for him here. There’s a carrier out in the gulf, on its way to Kuwait. They’re better equipped.”
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