by Rob Jones
Doyle had been less enthusiastic to work with him, but they were the orders of the Secretary of Defense so he had no choice but to go along. Now, it had taken less than fifteen minutes to get to Palisades, the neighborhood where Kevin Novak lived on his own in a modest house near the canal. Doyle spun the wheel and took the corner so fast the Cadillac nearly tipped onto two wheels.
“That son of a bitch better have a damned good explanation for his disappearance,” Doyle said as they approached the property.
“I’ll take the back,” Vincent said quietly. As he spoke he checked the magazine in his PAMAS G1 and slid it back into the grip, locking it in place with a gentle nudge.
“We need him to talk,” Doyle said, glancing at the gun in Vincent’s large hand. “If he’s alive, then he stays that way, got it?”
Vincent shrugged his shoulders. “It’s your country.”
They didn’t even stop to close the Escalade’s doors when they got to the house. They drew their weapons and split up, Doyle going to the front door while Vincent climbed over a side gate and jogged up the deck steps at the back. A few seconds later Doyle rang the bell and moved his hand smoothly to the SIG under his jacket.
*
Vincent barely had time to react when the back door burst open and Kevin Novak came scuttling out. He looked up at the enormous French merc – the last person he had expected to find outside on his deck. He tried to draw his gun but he ran out of time.
“Putain!” Vincent screamed, and drove his fist into the startled man’s face.
Novak staggered back into the kitchen and crashed into a chair.
Vincent moved into the kitchen to finish the job, and saw the silhouette of another, bigger man in the hall. His features were obscured by an electric light behind him, but he looked pretty out of shape and was carrying what looked like some car keys.
Vincent raised his weapon and aimed at the man in the shadows. “Stay where you are and put your hands up.”
“Sod that!” came the reply, and he slipped into a doorway behind him and out of sight.
Below Vincent, Novak was struggling to his feet, one hand on his broken nose and another raised palm out to indicate he’d already had enough. Vincent didn’t believe him, and punched him once again, this time knocking him out.
Then he began to sweep the house for the silhouette, wherever he was.
He paced down the hall and turned at the door he had seen the man flee toward. Now he was just a few yards from the front door and he saw Doyle standing on the stoop. He unlocked the catch with his free hand. “You want an embossed invitation to joint the party, or what, American?”
Doyle said nothing, but cocked his gun and joined the Frenchman in the hunt.
“Bastard went in there,” Vincent said, pointing to the door. He opened it and saw steps descending to the basement.
“Shit!”
They heard a car engine roar to life and then a brand new bright red Dodge Viper smashed through the garage door in a burst of splinters and wood dust and skidded out into the street.
Doyle sprinted back out of the house to catch the licence number but it was too late. The 8 liter V-10 had spirited the Viper away in a cloud of burned rubber and tire squeals.
“Damn it!” Doyle screamed, and kicked over a trashcan at the side of the house.
“Don’t sweat it, mon ami,” Vincent said, tipping his head to the house to indicate Novak. “We might have lost the engine driver, but we still have the oily rag, n’est-ce pas?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Charles Grant tried hard to fight down his fear when Klaus Kiefel took possession of some kind of mystery delivery. Seeing half of the capital city destroyed had excited the German in an almost unnatural way, but this latest arrival seemed to delight him more than ever.
Whatever it was, it took two armed men to carry it into the room and place it in front of the boss. Sprayed on the side in black paint was a serial number: X422387-0, and Grant knew one thing – items catalogued in Archive 7 with an initial ‘X’ code were always related to the vital national interest of the United States.
Kiefel stared at the steel box with undisguised glee for a few moments before ordering his men to open the outer container. They obeyed and used a pair of hardened alloy bolt cutters to snap off the six padlocks with which they had secured the lid to the heavy container back in DC. Clearly they weren’t taking any risks with the contents.
Kiefel beamed. “Brought to us courtesy of an experimental UAV borrowed from the German Luftwaffe a few days ago. It travels at nearly seven thousand miles per hour, Mr Grant – too fast for even your fighter jets to shoot down.”
“How did it get past our radar?”
“It has the latest stealth technology and flies very, very high… you’ll have to do better than that!”
Jakob swung open the lid and recoiled in horror, while Angelika gave an appreciative nod.
Kiefel peered inside for the first time, his eyes wide with an almost childish anticipation.
“Remove the inner container!” he said, taking a step back.
As the men carried out his instructions, Kiefel turned and pulled a gas mask from the bench behind him. His men, including Angelika and Jakob, secured their own masks from their belts, and Kiefel tossed two casually at the former President and Partridge.
“I strongly recommend you wear it,” the German said coolly, and pulled his own mask on over his goatee beard.
Grant picked the mask up from the floor and brushed the dirt from it. “What about her?” he asked, nodding at the female security guard tied to the distillation unit.
“She won’t be needing one, Mr Grant... You!” he snapped, pointing his finger at one of the men. “Put the box on the bench and open it.”
The man, a young shaven-headed recruit in a black boiler suit moved cautiously forward and put his hands inside the steel container. For a few moments he struggled to get a good grip on the inner box, causing Kiefel to roll his eyes and sigh, but then he lifted it from the steel container and placed it carefully on the bench.
Grant stared at it through his gas mask, and then looked over at the guard with growing concern.
Kiefel did not share his disquiet. Instead, he put on a pair of military surplus NBC gloves and opened the inner box. Grant couldn’t see through the German’s mask, but he got the feeling he was smiling as he leaned over the small black box and started to undo a series of worn leather straps. Then, he gently pulled back the lid and peered inside.
He gasped and took a step back, shaking his head in disbelief.
“What the hell is going on?” Grant said.
Partridge looked at the President, fear and confusion on his face.
Jakob stepped forward and smashed his rifle butt in between Grant’s shoulder blades and sent him crashing to his knees where he cried out in pain.
Partridge stepped forward to defend the President but Angelika cocked her pistol and pointed it at the senior USSS man. “Back in your box, puppy.”
Kiefel laughed. “Jakob is simply teaching you good manners, Mr Grant. You must learn to be patient. You are not in charge any more… I am.”
Kiefel pulled something from the box and held it in his shaking hands.
Grant stared up at it from the tiled floor. At first he thought it was some kind of rotting fruit – a blackened cantaloupe melon came to mind, but then Kiefel turned and proudly showed it to Angelika and the other men.
Grant was aghast to see it was a severed head – a badly decomposed one – with black and blue skin all covered in blotches and stretched tight over the skull like dried-out Chamois leather. He was mortified with disgust and thought things could get no worse when he noticed that the black mass at the top of the skull which he had presumed was hair was in fact dozens of dead, desiccated black snakes – tiny and twisted around in knots. He felt like throwing up, but he was also strangely fixated by the terrible object in Kiefel’s hands.
“What the hell is that?” he asked, his words muffled
by the gas mask.
“This, Mr Grant, is the head of Medusa.”
Grant moved back involuntarily along the dirty floor. “What are you talking about, Kiefel? There is no such thing as Medusa! Are you insane?”
“I take offense to that remark, Mr Grant. I am calculating, scheming, and manipulative, and I also have some bad qualities… I am not, however, insane.”
“You’re wrong, Kiefel! How can you believe that thing is what you say it is, if you’re not totally crazy? Medusa was a myth, damn it!”
“I see American education does not extend to the Classics! We know from our reading of Ovid that Medusa was a real, mortal being – her head of snakes… these snakes… was given to her by Athena as punishment for desecrating her temple when she slept with Poseidon!”
“Fairy tales…” Grant said, but he was no longer sure of it.
“Sadly, we can never know the truth, but that is Ovid’s account.” Kiefel held the head up to his face and stared at it almost lovingly through the mask. “Others claim Poseidon was besotted with her, but when she rejected him he grew enraged and used his divine power to turn her hair into snakes.”
“You did all this killing just to get this thing released from Archive 7?”
Kiefel beamed. “There’s no need to congratulate me, Mr Grant – it’s implied.”
“For God’s sake, Kiefel – you need help!”
Kiefel was unmoved. “She was still incredibly beautiful, but the snakes terrified anyone who looked at her and turned them into stone… this was mighty Poseidon’s revenge on the woman who had rejected him.”
“Please, just stop this!” Grant watched the madman’s eyes through the gas mask, distorted by the warped plastic lenses.
The German ran a hand down the skull’s cheekbone. “Some say that when Perseus was sent to kill her, he took a glass shield so he could look at her reflection and never at the Gorgon herself. This was how he was victorious. This was how he beheaded Medusa without getting turned to stone!”
Grant ignored the lecture. “For God’s sake give that woman a gas mask, Kiefel!”
His voice muffled through the mask, Kiefel sighed. “When Perseus returned to Greece, he gave Athena Medusa’s head, which she wore on her shield – her aegis – as a weapon, allowing her to turn her enemies to stone simply by showing them the head.”
Grant shook his head in despair and banged his fist into the dirty floor. “You really are insane!”
“I am insane for liberating Medusa, but your government is not insane for storing it in secret for decades? How sane is it to withhold the real truth of our world from all the people?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course not…” Kiefel offered a low, guttural belly laugh. “Of course you know nothing about Medusa being stored in Archive 7! I expect you also know nothing about why the severed head of Medusa – a Greek Gorgon – was in northern Norway? About who took it there and why?”
“As a matter of fact I do not!”
“Have you ever heard of Valhalla, Mr Grant?”
“Of course.”
“Perhaps that will help you put the dots together, but in the meantime, I have business to attend to.”
“I’m not playing your games, Kiefel. Whatever the hell that thing is, I know you can’t possibly believe looking at some dead snakes can turn a man to stone!”
“I never said that, Mr Grant.”
Kiefel slowly walked the head over to the female security guard. She kicked and struggled against the ropes binding her to the support post of the distillation unit.
“You see, when Poseidon turned her hair to snakes, this was the act of a spurned, enraged lover, and it became her curse – the true curse of Medusa was that she could never fall in love with anyone without turning them to stone. Now the curse of Medusa will fall on the entire world, starting with America which I intend to use as a testing ground. Jakob!”
Jakob padded across the room and gripped the security guard’s head, forcing her to look at the severed, mummified head of Medusa. The young woman recoiled in terror.
“Now, Mr Grant, you will see the true power of Medusa – the world’s most ancient doomsday weapon!”
Grant wanted to look away, but his inherent sense of leadership and responsibility forced him to behold the ancient evil that was unfolding before his very eyes. He couldn’t turn his back on this poor woman, not now.
Kiefel held the skull up to the woman, whose head was now in the vice-like grip of Jakob’s broad, gloved hands. He moved the skull closer until it was almost touching her terrified, sweat-streaked face, and her screams echoed in every room and corridor of the sprawling, abandoned processing plant.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
With Kiefel moving the skull ever closer, the young woman stared at it with wide, crazed eyes, and then began whispering an unintelligible Spanish prayer. She kicked more, and writhed like a trapped pig, but it was too late.
Grant watched with a sense of growing, desolate horror as the woman began to judder and shake uncontrollably, and then her skin slowly turned a strange putty color. A few seconds of agony later, the woman was silent and totally still.
Jakob staggered back, his trembling hands at his sides, and moved away from the dead, ossified guard as fast as he could.
“You’ve frozen her!” Grant muttered, incredulous.
“Wrong!” Kiefel said. “As I tried to explain to you before, this woman is not frozen – she is stone… behold!”
Grant watched as Kiefel took his pistol and tapped it against the young woman’s head. It made a soul-draining plink plink plink sound. It sounded exactly like he was tapping the metal gun against a piece of granite.
Where a woman had once lived, there now stood a statue.
Kiefel ran a hand across the statue’s face, lingering on its smooth marble-like cheek. “Don’t you think she is so much more beautiful now? The ancient Greeks dismissed the love of statues as a psychological defect – agalmatophilia, they called it – but they were wrong, and so we are wrong today as well. Now, rendered in perfectly smooth stone, this woman’s beauty has increased tenfold!”
“What the hell have you done?” Grant said, mumbling his words in fear.
“I have reawakened an ancient force, Mr Grant. An ancient weapon – the original Doomsday weapon… and it’s mine! Soon your whole country will be no more than a theme park full of statues for my personal amusement.”
“God save us!” Grant said.
Kiefel spun around and stared at him through the mask. “And which god would that be, Mr Grant? Zeus? Apollo perhaps? Perseus?” As he said this last word his voice broke into laughter, and he walked the head back over to the box, gently lowering it inside and closing the lid tightly. He did the same to the steel lid and then removed his mask.
“Angelika, it is time for you to start your work with Medusa.” He turned and pointed a gloved finger at some of his men. “Pick up this box and follow Angelika to the lab.”
Grant shook his head in total disbelief at what his eyes and ears were telling him.
“What are you doing now?” he asked desperately.
“This is for me to know and you to find out, Mr Grant.”
“You really are a madman, Klaus.”
“Repeating the accusation over and over will not make it so, Charlie!” he snapped. “Could a madman orchestrate the decapitation of the entire United States Top Brass and put his own man in the Oval Office?”
Grant breathed harder as he took off his mask. He was starting to feel hot and sick. Partridge also removed his mask, following the President’s lead.
“You mean..?”
“Ah – the penny drops! Yes, Teddy Kimble is in my pocket – is that the expression you Americans use?”
“I can’t believe it!”
“A President and Vice President are too high up the tree to reach, and in fact so is your Speaker, but Kimble was easier to get to. That is why he is now in the Oval O
ffice.”
“My God, you killed two good men and kidnapped me just to put Kimble in the Oval Office?”
“Daring, aren’t I?”
Grant struggled to understand why any of this was happening. There had to be something real at the bottom of it all. This had to be about more than just the lust for power.
“What is this insanity about, Kiefel – money? Power?”
Kiefel stared at him with ice cold eyes for a long moment without speaking. “You disappoint me, Mr Grant, but then Americans have a habit of doing that. Another habit of yours is reducing everything to those two things you just mentioned – money and power.”
“Well if not that then what, damn it?!”
Kiefel paused again, he looked like he was mulling something over. Then, his facial expression turned darker than ever before. “Kiefel is my mother’s maiden name, Mr Grant. Perhaps if I told you my real name – Kallweit – your memory will begin to work?”
A look of realization suddenly dawned on Charles Grant’s face. “Wait a minute – your mother was Elfriede Kallweit?”
“Ah ha!” Kiefel exclaimed, his voice laced with bitterness. “Give this man a Cuban cigar – he has it!”
“That’s what this is all about – your mother?”
“Your country executed my mother on trumped-up espionage charges in 1955. She was a good woman – a good East German, and loyal to the Soviet Union. You killed her. For this, Mr President, you and your nation will pay a terrible price.”
“That’s what this is all about – revenge? You murdered your way to me to avenge the death of your mother over sixty years ago?”
Kiefel glared at him. “You say death as if she had fallen over while picnicking, Mr President. My mother was shocked to death in Old Sparky – isn’t that the quaint little expression you use to describe the electric chair? It took four shocks to kill her, Mr Grant. By the time they had finished, smoke poured from her head like a chimney.”
“Elfriede Kallweit was notorious a Soviet spy! The scandal rocked the nation.”
