The popcorn popper fell silent.
Fiona wiped her nose and turned from the window. This was an emotional trip she made on a daily basis and she was determined to get over it. To move on. Be emotionally solid. Like Dad. King.
As she stepped away from the window, she took one last look back, expecting to see the face of her grandmother once again. Instead, she saw right through herself as a bright orange glow in the distance caught her attention. She stepped forward and placed her hand on the glass.
It was shaking.
“Lew?”
She could hear him walking into the room and could smell the buttery popcorn.
Aleman heard the concern in her voice and quickened his pace. As he approached, Fiona recognized the growing yellow orb for what it was—a distant explosion. “Lew!”
Aleman had just a second to look out the glass pane, see the fireball, register the shaking beneath his feet, catch sight of the approaching shockwave as it flattened the grass on the baseball field across the parking lot.
The popcorn fell to the floor as Aleman picked Fiona up and dove behind the thick Ikea couch.
The window blew in just as they hit the thin rug, sending shards of glass stabbing into the opposite wall, the TV, and the room’s furniture. The building shook for a moment as the shock wave passed, then fell silent.
Lewis rolled off Fiona and stood, shaking the glass from his back. His handgun was already drawn and at the ready. He looked down at Fiona, his eyes more serious than she had ever seen them. “You okay?”
She nodded.
“Get up,” he said, and moved to the now glassless window. A second, small explosion plumed into the air. It was followed by the distant popping of small-arms fire. Then an alarm sounded. One he thought he would never hear used. It meant the unthinkable.
Fort Bragg was under attack.
He looked back at Fiona, whose skinny body looked frail in her black pajamas. She had her eyebrows furrowed, her fists clenched, and her lips down turned. She knew what was happening just as surely as he did.
They had come for her.
ELEVEN
Mount Meru, Vietnam
AS ROOK STOOD outside the cave entrance leading to the subterranean necropolis that he, Bishop, and Knight had discovered a year ago, he listened. And heard nothing. No distinct Neanderthal hoots. No movement inside or outside the cave. Nothing. Which meant they were either being watched, or no one was home.
“This is it?” Queen asked, peering into the lightless black square cut into the mountainside. Vines had begun to grow over the opening that Rook and Bishop tore apart when they fled the cave system, but it was still easy to spot.
“Ayup. Bringing back such fond memories I can hardly stand it.”
“I’m the one with a brand.”
“Hey, an ape woman tried to make me her man-toy,” Rook said as he pushed the vines out of the way with his M4.
“Good point,” she replied before entering the cave. “That’s much worse.”
Rook smiled and followed her in.
The smooth grade led them down. One hundred feet in, the walls glowed. “We’ll be able to remove our night vision goggles soon. The algae covering everything glows bright enough to see by.”
The downward slope ended and opened up into a grand chamber, seventy feet wide, twenty tall, and longer than a football field. “What the f—”
“This isn’t how you described it.”
What once was a city built from the skulls and thick bones of generations upon generations of Neanderthal dead looked like a green-glowing war zone. Many of the buildings were crushed. Walls were burst. Skulls and bone fragments filled the stone streets. Statues of ancient Neanderthals had been overturned with their limbs pulled off. Rook noted that several of the skulls, which were dense and tough, had been crushed to powder, a feat he doubted even the strongest Neanderthal could accomplish.
“No bullet holes or blast craters,” Queen said.
Rook nodded. “This wasn’t a military j—”
A splash of dark shiny liquid caught Rook’s eye. Tiptoeing through the scattered bones, he made his way to it and knelt down. He switched on his flashlight and aimed it at the fluid. The yellow light turned the black puddle red.
Blood.
And a lot of it.
He followed the trail to a pile of bones. Setting down his M4, he shoved the bones away and stepped back. The twisted face of a Neanderthal-human hybrid stared back at him. The body was tall and strong, with thick brown hair on the limbs, back, chest, and head. A male. And given its muscle mass, one of the hunters. Despite its impressive size and strength, the body was bent at an odd angle and many of the limb bones were bent where they should have been straight. This creature, who could make short work of any living human being, had been mauled and folded up like an origami puzzle. “It’s a hybrid,” he said. “It’s been mauled something fierce.”
He looked over at Queen. She had found a body buried in the remains of a small structure. “This is one of the old mothers. Same story.”
Rook shook his head. For all the strength, speed, and instincts the hybrids had, the old mothers had double. “I think it’s safe to assume we were beat to the punch.”
Queen stood and activated her throat mic. “Deep Blue, this is Queen.”
She waited for a reply, but none came. “Deep Blue, do you read?”
“We’re too deep,” Rook said. “Go topside and warn the others. I’ll poke around here and try to figure out what happened.”
Queen didn’t like the sound of that and said so with a look.
“This place is a ghost town, twice over,” he said.
“It’s a bad idea.”
“If I get into trouble I’ll yell.”
“From a hundred feet below a mountain?”
“I’ll yell real loud.”
Queen shook her head, but couldn’t hide her grin. She headed for the exit. “I’ll be back in five minutes.” She paused at the large archway leading to the tunnel. “Hey, Rook, good to be back in the field with you.”
He nodded. “Likewise.”
Then she was gone, running up the slope.
Rook sighed, still concerned for Queen’s well-being, but also concerned over his own distraction. Queen took up too much space in his mind. As they had studied, sparred, and trained over the past year, he sometimes found his thoughts off target and on her. And in the field, that could get him killed.
Of course, they all had their distractions. Knight’s grandmother’s health was failing. Bishop was only sane because of a crystal around his neck. Queen had a cherry red stamp on her forehead. And King now had a foster daughter. “Course, none of the guys look as good in fatigues,” he mumbled to himself.
Shuffling through a sea of green-glowing bones, Rook made his way deeper into the city. He stopped occasionally to listen as every step he made created a cacophony of noise. He would be simple to find. If anyone were looking.
After counting fifteen bodies strewn throughout the ruined city, he decided that all the Neanderthals were either dead or had fled. But he’d still found no evidence of what happened. The bodies were crushed, dismembered, or impaled with bones, but it was as though something huge and blunt had been used to kill them.
The clunk of bone on bone spun him around, M4 tight against his shoulder. “That you, Queen?”
No reply.
He waited just a moment before an off-balance bone slipped from one of the half destroyed walls and fell. He relaxed for a moment, but another clatter of bones turned him around again.
Something was making the loose bones fall.
Then he felt it. A vibration.
Something big was approaching.
Bones rattled again, but Rook didn’t turn this time. He remained focused on the shaking beneath his feet, trying to determine its origin. It wasn’t until the rattle of bones turned into a crunch that he turned to look. And when he did, his head craned up as his mouth fell open.
“
Holy mother … Que—!”
Rook didn’t get to finish his shout as something massive struck him in the side and sent him flying into and through the wall of one of the bone huts.
TWELVE
Uluru, Australia
AS KNIGHT AND Bishop arrived at the mouth of the valley, the sun had just begun peeking up over the horizon. The sandstone surface of Ayers Rock was well known for its ability, some believed supernatural ability, to change colors under certain conditions, most frequently at sunset and sunrise. Removing their night vision goggles, the pair saw the stone was beginning to glow red.
They paused at the valley opening, hoping to hear or see something that would give some hint about what they were about to run into. But only minutes after the attack had begun, the valley had fallen silent.
Bishop sniffed. “I smell the fire.”
Knight pointed to a wisp of smoke filtering up over the red rock. “I think it’s been put out.”
Sudden movement brought their weapons to the ready. Both men had opted for small, light UMP submachine guns over their usual specialized weapons. Without the rest of the team in tow, Knight’s sniper rifle and Bishop’s machine gun made a bad combination for standard combat. With fingers on triggers, both men nearly shot the small black-flanked rock wallaby as it hopped from the valley, its eyes wide. The small marsupial paid no attention to the two men it would normally flee from, hopping between them and into the desert beyond.
Knight took a step forward, but was stopped by Deep Blue’s voice. “Knight, Bishop, you read?”
“Go ahead,” Knight said.
“I’m patching Queen through.”
“Knight, Bish…” Queen was uncharacteristically out of breath. “We arrived too late. Our targets are down.”
Knight and Bishop both keenly remembered the strength and ferocity of the Neanderthal hybrids and their mothers. “Seriously?” Knight said, keeping his eyes on the valley ahead.
“Looks like they didn’t stand a chance. Listen, just—” A muffled boom sounded over the headset, followed by Queen’s voice saying Rook’s name. Then she was gone.
“I’ll try to get her back,” Deep Blue said. “The valley is in shadow with the sun rising so we’re not seeing anything on the visual scan.”
“Infrared?” Bishop asked.
“That’s the thing,” Deep Blue said. “I’m not seeing anything other than embers from the fire. Either everyone is gone, or…”
“Everyone is dead,” Knight finished. “We’re on it.”
Knight and Bishop crept into the valley, weapons ready. They focused on every crag and shadow where someone could hide. A series of petroglyphs caught Knight’s eye. He looked at the ancient pictographs. Some depicted ancient peoples and animals and others were simple swirling circles that he knew represented a watering hole. His eyes followed a streak of black algae that had grown in a water channel. Halfway up, the dry black surface became wet.
And red.
A small trickle of thick blood rolled down the stone and dripped at his feet. “Bishop!”
He followed the blood trail up and found a dark-skinned arm protruding from beneath a large boulder. It appeared the boulder had fallen on the person, but there were no cliff faces above it.
Bishop stepped farther into the valley as Knight continued looking at the crushed arm. “That stone must weigh a ton, Bishop. How—”
“Knight.” Bishop’s voice was quiet, but full of dread, which was an unusual inflection for a man who could not be injured or killed short of decapitation. Sensing the danger had passed, he lowered his weapon.
Knight joined him at a curve in the valley, which opened up into a large atrium. The back wall, covered in petroglyphs, rose up and hung over a large watering hole. It was fringed by adder’s-tongue ferns and mulga and bloodwood trees. A small clearing held a circle of crushed, smoldering ash. But none of this held their attention. It was impossible to see the beauty of the place amid the sheer carnage.
Counting the bodies was impossible because many were torn apart and intermingled. Several were squashed, like roadkill—bodies bent, faces twisted in disgust, entrails burst from stomachs. Others lay beneath massive stones, as though they’d fallen from the sky. And one man hung upside down from a tree, twenty feet above the valley floor, his legs bent at impossible angles. Several piles of sandstone dust, now scattering in the breeze rolling down Ayers Rock, were spread among the dead.
The attack had only lasted a few minutes, but had been brutally efficient, leaving only a single wallaby as an eyewitness.
Bishop bent down to a severed head and rolled it over with the barrel of his UMP. Ignoring the look of horror frozen in the man’s eyes, he focused on the Aboriginal facial features—pronounced brow, wide nose, dark skin. “These were our targets.”
Knight crouched by a nearby body, possibly the one belonging to the head Bishop was inspecting. A pouch tied around the waist contained a wallet. Knight opened it and found a photo I.D. The name read: Balun Ammaroo. But the man in the photo wore a business suit and tie. “They were reenacting all this. Connecting with their heritage or something.” Knight toggled on his throat mic. “Deep Blue, this is Knight.”
“What’s your status.”
“We were too late. Everyone here is dead. Same M.O. as the Siletz Reservation.”
The line was silent for a moment, then Deep Blue spoke again. “Take pictures of everything. Collect any evidence you think is important. When you’re done we’ll call in an anonymous tip so the bodies can be collected.
“Copy that,” Knight said, “and Blue…”
“Yeah?”
“We’ve seen some crazy things in the past few years…” Knight looked around the clearing imagining how long it would take the Neanderthals or even the Hydra to inflict this many casualties, this brutally, and then disappear without a trace. He thought back on the large shadow he’d seen in the valley and shook his head. “And personally, I’d hoped all that was behind us, that some kind of normalcy had been restored to the world. But that’s one wish that won’t be coming true anytime soon. We’re chest deep in it again.”
THIRTEEN
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
ALEMAN RAN DOWN the staircase with Fiona over his shoulder and his handgun in his hand. Surrounded by brick and concrete, the sounds of the battle raging outside were dulled, but he could still feel the shaking of explosions in his feet. The second-floor door sprang open as three Army Rangers entered the stairwell, ready for battle. Aleman recognized them and, outranking them, commandeered their protective services.
“They’re after the girl,” Aleman shouted. “Do not leave my side.”
The front man nodded. They had all been briefed on Fiona and knew she was under the military’s protection, though they did not know why. “Where to, sir?”
Aleman had been wracking his brain on this point. They had never assumed someone would actually infiltrate Fort Bragg and hadn’t come up with a fail-safe plan for such an event. They needed to be safe, but more than anything, they needed to hide. Someplace dark. Someplace secure. “Nearest fallout shelter.”
The three Rangers took the lead and descended the staircase first. They entered the short hallway at the end of the stairwell and made for the lobby. At the lobby door, the last of the three Rangers held out an open hand to Aleman.
He stopped in the doorway and waited for the men to give the all clear. One man was about to, but his voice caught in his throat as his eyes grew wide. Something outside the lobby had caught his attention, and there was no time to shout a warning.
The lobby imploded as a large projectile burst through one side, plowed over the three Rangers, and exploded out the other side of the building. Fiona screamed as Aleman turned and shielded her small body with his own, taking a chunk of concrete to the back of his head. He fell to one knee, felt his mind swirl, and then forced himself back onto his feet, ignoring the warm trickle of blood dripping down the back of his neck.
He ran i
nto the destroyed lobby, holstered his handgun, and picked up one of the dead Ranger’s MP5 submachine gun.
Fiona’s second scream was directed straight in his ear and caused him to drop her. She landed on her slippered feet and tugged on his shirt frantically. She pointed through the ruined lobby wall, where the large projectile had exited. “Lew!”
He turned and looked through the opening. A large gray mass, perhaps one hundred feet away, was turning around.
It heard her scream, Aleman thought.
Then it charged. In the brief moment he took to look, Aleman saw that it ran on four legs and vaguely resembled a rhino, though perhaps twice the size.
Hoisting Fiona up again, Aleman ran out the opposite side of the building and into the parking lot. A garage full of Hummers ready to go stood on the far side of the parking lot. Once mobile in one of the tough vehicles, he would make his way to the fallout shelter—after losing the behemoth, which he could hear gaining on them.
Running down a thin alley of parked cars, Aleman did his best to keep their heads low. Bullets were flying. Buildings were exploding. Bragg had become a war zone. As he exited the sea of cars Aleman turned to look for the large hunter. He saw nothing. But it was there. A car on the far side of the lot exploded into the air. Moments later a second car followed. It was charging straight through the lot, flinging cars out of its way.
Aleman took hold of the garage doorknob and turned. But it didn’t budge. “Damnit!” He put Fiona down and kicked the door. Once. Twice. His head began to spin as blood seeped from the back of his skull. Knowing he wouldn’t get through the door in time, he turned to face the creature.
As cars in the middle of the lot were flung skyward, he turned to Fiona. “We’re going to dive out of the way at the last second, okay?”
She nodded and tried to look tough, despite her shaking lower lip.
“We’ll be okay.”
“Don’t die, Lew,” she said with a quivering voice. “Not for real.”
Aleman focused on the giant gray force approaching them and refused to promise something he knew he couldn’t. “Just jump when I say.”
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