Threshold

by Robinson, Jeremy

“Knight’s team took three casualties when Taiwanese SWAT struck their position. The bodies aren’t identifiable, but the Taiwanese are claiming they’re ours. The tipster apparently told them as much.”

  “And Rook?”

  The mention of Rook’s name turned Boucher’s face to the floor. “They were attacked by three Ka-50 Black Sharks. His team is dead. Same story as Taiwan. Can’t be I.D.’d, but they’re claiming the men are ours.”

  “What about Rook? Is he—”

  “Unknown.” Duncan tapped his keyboard. “Satellite imagery was intermittent at the time, as satellites passed in and out of range. But we have a few shots of him.”

  Duncan’s screen filled up with satellite images. He combed through them, looking at the three black helicopters from above. There were images of explosions in the forest, Rook running up a hill, and then facing off against one of the Black Sharks. But in the five minutes following, there was nothing. The next image showed a mass of troops running north, through the cow pasture. Using his remote connection, Boucher circled a small area on the last image.

  Duncan zoomed in on the circle, seeing a splash of red on a patch of yellow grass. “Is that blood?”

  “Looks like it,” Boucher said. “We believe Rook was shot. Here, listen for yourself. This was his last message before we lost communication.”

  Rook’s voice came through the computer. He sounded shaken and out of breath. “They’re all dead. My team is KIA. And I’m bleeding out. So don’t come looking for me. Tell Queen—”

  The connection cut off.

  “We’re not sure what happened,” Boucher said. “But he’s gone without a trace.”

  Duncan sat back in his chair. Allegations from Russia, Taiwan, and Argentina would soon become public. And though he could deny the citizenship of the men killed in action, it wouldn’t convince the Russians, who might very well see the incursion as an act of war. And it didn’t feel right.

  No matter how it played out, the allegations would add fuel to the media firestorm. Despite all that, he couldn’t keep his mind far from the safety of his team. Three were safe. Rook was MIA. But there was still one unaccounted for.

  “What about King?”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Rome, Italy

  WHAT ROME WOULD later deem a small, localized magnitude-four earthquake shook the underground tunnels. Dust fell from the ceiling, stinging King’s eyes and further obscuring his view of the dim hallways lit by the occasional electric bulb.

  Following Alexander proved to be difficult. The man was faster than he looked, and his intimate knowledge of the tunnels made every footfall well placed. He also seemed to be unaffected by the dirty air, which congested King’s and Pierce’s lungs.

  The three emerged into a larger hallway, free of dust, and picked up speed. Shrieks of the Forgotten suddenly drowned out the screams of dying people. Somewhere ahead, Alexander’s guardians were fighting back. But King knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  He also knew there was very little the three of them could do against the golems he’d seen. But he would rather die than not try.

  Alexander stopped in front of a door that had been torn off its hinges. A body, cloaked in black flew out and struck him in the chest. They both fell back hard against the tunnel wall. The Forgotten shook off the impact, spun to its feet, and dove back into the room with a shriek.

  As a wound on his shoulder quickly healed, Alexander stood and took a small bottle from his pocket. It looked like the small liquor bottles they served on airplanes. He drank the contents down and turned toward King. “Stay here. It’s not safe for you.”

  Then his body shook with a strange kind of energy that made his eyes gleam with intensity. With a battle cry, he charged into the room.

  King approached the door, his weapon drawn and ready. The tunnel shook with a massive impact, causing him to catch himself. He looked back at Pierce, who shook his head. The message was clear: don’t go in. But he had to. This was where Fiona and many other people had been held, and not one of them was screaming now.

  Thinking of Fiona, King spun around the doorframe and pointed his weapon inside the room. His eyes took everything in, but his mind took several seconds to process what he was seeing. The floors, walls, and ceilings oozed with overturned cots, human body parts, smeared flesh, and a thick coat of crimson blood.

  Fighting in the center of it all were two Forgotten, Alexander, and one very large stone monster constructed of ancient marble columns, bits of arches, tiled wall, and a worn bust for a head. The golem was more refined than the one King had seen before. It wasn’t just humanoid, with arms, legs, and a head, it also had fingers for gripping. The giant was hunched over, a Forgotten clinging to its back. It swung its arms side to side, trying to grasp the dark cloaked creature, but couldn’t reach.

  Alexander dove at the golem’s leg, sweeping it out and knocking it off-balance. The second Forgotten descended from the ceiling, adding weight to the golem’s back and knocking it to the floor. The chamber shook as the several-ton giant fell. But when it did, King was allowed a clear view of the back of the room.

  Two more golems walked toward the rear of the chamber, where a large tunnel awaited. They flanked a man, dressed in black. He was tall, bald, and white. But other than that, distance and violent vibrations made any details impossible to glean.

  There was his enemy, the man who had killed fifty innocents and countless others around the world. King burned with rage. The man who had killed Fiona and everyone else held captive by Alexander.

  King took aim. Despite the distance and shaky footing, he knew he could make the shot. “Hey!” he shouted, wanting to see the man’s face before he put a bullet in it.

  As the golem on the floor struggled to stand under the strong hold of the Forgotten and Alexander, the man slowed his pace and stopped. The golems to his sides did as well.

  “Turn around!” King instructed.

  As the man complied, King’s eyes were drawn away from his face by what he held in his hands. A small limp body with long black hair.

  Fiona.

  King was instantly unsure of his aim. Hitting the man somewhere wouldn’t be an issue, but he couldn’t guarantee a clean headshot. And he wouldn’t take the risk.

  The gun lowered in his hands.

  The man raised a hand, giving King a wave. The gesture brought King’s attention back to his face. As the man backed into the darkness of the freshly made tunnel behind him, King caught a quick glimpse of his face. “No…”

  Pierce looked over King’s shoulder and saw him, too. “Oh God.”

  Both men recognized him.

  Richard Ridley.

  Ridley grinned at them as the two golems with him sealed off the tunnel with their bodies and returned to their former, solid, lifeless stone forms. The madman whose genetic tinkering turned Bishop into a regen, who tortured Pierce, and killed scores of people in the name of scientific progress, available to the highest bidder, had returned.

  King’s mind whirled. Ridley must have know about Fiona. Why else would he take her? His foster daughter had just become a human shield for the vilest man on the planet. He fought against the twisting in his gut. He couldn’t let himself be consumed by worry. Ridley knew King, knew what he was capable of and the force he commanded. He would keep her alive, at least long enough to complete whatever it was he was doing.

  A shout pulled him back to the situation at hand, which was far from over. The golem on the floor regained its footing and tossed one of the Forgotten into a wall. There was a loud crack as it hit. Though King doubted it was dead, it would clearly not be rejoining the fight any time soon.

  Alexander flew through the air next, landing at King’s feet. “Run!” He shouted at King. “To the gallery.”

  King saw the golem stand, gripping the Forgotten in its stone hands. The ancient dark specter shrieked as it was pulled in two directions. As he turned and ran, following Pierce, King heard the shriek rise in pitch and volume before it w
as cut off by a wet tear.

  “Go!” Alexander shouted from behind as he fled the room behind King.

  A pulsing vibration filled the tunnel, growing in intensity. A sickening impact followed as the golem crashed through the wall behind them. King allowed Alexander to pass him in the tunnel, knowing Pierce was likely to get lost. He looked over his shoulder as the golem righted itself and gave chase.

  King fired his weapon over his shoulder. He knew the bullets would have no effect on the creature, so he aimed for the lightbulbs, darkening the tunnel behind them as they moved. He wasn’t sure if the monster had eyes to see with, but it was all he could think to do.

  Besides run.

  Thirty seconds later he was out of ammo. Despite the darkness, the tight confines of the tunnel and its eight-foot height, the golem closed the distance. It lunged at King, reaching out for him with its heavy hands.

  King rounded a sharp corner and was knocked forward by the impact of the golem striking the wall. Had he not reached the corner, he would have been crushed like a frog under a steamroller. He gave a quick look back at the golem, which he now noted was dark red in color, smeared with the dead Forgotten’s blood, and bolted for the archway entrance to the gallery.

  Pierce, with wide, panicked eyes, waved him on. “He’s going to lock it down!”

  King ran for the arch, remembering the metal beams hidden at the base and top of the entryway. The ground shook at his heels as the golem gave chase once more. With a glance over his shoulder, King saw a large hand reaching out for his head.

  Then he was through the door.

  Alarms sounded. Metal screeched. The room shook.

  King fell to his stomach, rolled over, and scrambled to his feet, ready to keep running. But it wasn’t necessary. The golem’s stone arm had been sheared off. It lay on the floor as inanimate rubble.

  The one-armed golem slammed into the thick bars twice, but had no luck. It wouldn’t be getting through.

  Alexander appeared at his side raging with anger. He shouted and punched a marble statue of himself, breaking it in two.

  King marveled at the man’s power. Whatever he had drunk before joining the battle had boosted his strength amazingly. But it hadn’t made him impervious to harm. The hand he’d just punched with was a crumpled bloody mess.

  “It seems we share a common nemesis,” Alexander grumbled as his hand stitched itself back together.

  King nodded. “Ridley.” He looked at Alexander. “You mentioned a physicist-ex-rabbi who might be able to help. Still think so?”

  Alexander looked at his fully healed hand, his nerves calming. “He’s in Haifa. Israel. At Technion Institute of Technology. He shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  Alexander led the way out of the gallery, explaining that they would exit into one of his Roman homes, where they could rest and coordinate. As they left the gallery amid the chaos of sounding alarms, flashing lights, and the occasional slam of stone golem against steel bars, King and Alexander failed to notice Pierce pause at one of the gallery displays, taking the ancient contents and hiding them in his pocket.

  THIRTY-NINE

  20,000 feet

  KING LOOKED OUT the window of Alexander’s Gulfstream G550. The Mediterranean sparkled like an azure crystal, twenty thousand feet below. Alexander sat next to him, his eyes covered by a blindfold. The man was sound asleep, looking like nothing more than a tired businessman on his private jet. Pierce had insisted on coming, but King wouldn’t place him in harm’s way again, so he remained behind in Rome.

  King leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes. Despite the freakish things he’d witnessed in the past few days, his thoughts were on family. He’d been trained in combat, survival, and intelligence gathering, but none of that prepared him for the emotional upheaval he’d been going through. His dead mother had been resurrected while his deadbeat father was redeemed and returned from jail. Add to that the revelation that his parents were in fact Russian spies, and then the kidnapping of a girl who called him Dad despite him not wanting the title and doing a piss poor job of protecting her.

  Giant killer golems had some fierce competition for his attention.

  Thoughts of Fiona came to him as vivid images. She’d been wary of him at first, waking up in the backseat of his rental car. She remembered flashes of the attack, of a man who had saved her from the wreckage, and then King. He did his best to smile at her, to put her at ease, but he’d never been good with kids. Then, his awkward first words to her—“You’re a girl”—had made her laugh. He still didn’t know why he said that. It had just come out, as though she’d just been born to him.

  In the following months their relationship grew fast as Fiona lived on base, under their protection. She brought smiles to a team that faced horrors on a regular basis. Her presence was a blessing, especially when their reeducation began.

  But an injection of stress came into the mix thanks to the child welfare office. The job of foster father fell on him like a piano dropped from twenty stories above. His studies suffered as he became distracted by his new, parental duties. Sparring matches became a painful reminder of his inadequacies. And though he didn’t feel up to the task, Fiona took to the idea and ran with it. It was a responsibility King never wanted, but was duty bound to take on.

  What surprised him the most was that now that she had been taken from him, he was terrified he might lose her for good. Because despite all his fears, discomfort, and doubts, he’d become smitten by her. He wanted his parents to meet her. He wanted to finish reading The Hunger Games with her. His career-oriented five-year forecast was in disarray because it now involved a girl he had no right raising. And he knew child services would agree.

  King checked his watch. The others should have completed their missions by now. He powered up his cell phone, which he’d shut off during his and Pierce’s nighttime search of the Roman Forum, and found eight messages, which was an unusual amount since only seven people in the world had his number. He ignored the messages and dialed the number he knew would get him answers.

  The line clicked as the connection was established. After a single ring, a familiar feminine recording asked him to leave a message. He gave his name, “King.”

  The feminine voice followed with, “Voice print confirmed,” and the phone began ringing again.

  The ringing was quickly replaced by the voice of Tom Duncan, Deep Blue. “Where have you been?”

  King immediately heard the tension in Duncan’s normally relaxed voice. Things were not going well on the home front. “Rome. I’m on my way to Haifa now, with Alexander Diotrephes.”

  Duncan’s voice brightened. “You found her?”

  “She was here, but … I lost her. Alexander had fifty people, all speakers of dying languages, hidden beneath the Roman Forum. They’re all dead now.”

  King heard a whispered curse on the other end before Duncan’s voice returned in full. “What’s in Haifa?”

  “A physicist slash rabbi Alexander thinks can help.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m rolling with the punches,” King said. “How about you? Are the others back yet?”

  “Knight, Queen, and Bishop are en route as we speak. They should be ready to deploy wherever you need them within four hours.”

  King could hear the man had more to say, but was having a hard time spitting it out. He’d noted Rook hadn’t been included in the last sentence and followed the lead. “What happened to Rook?”

  Duncan sighed. “The foreign countries we deployed to were tipped off. They knew we were coming.”

  King winced. Rook had gone to Russia.

  “Queen’s and Bishop’s teams made it out intact. Knight took three casualties. And Rook … his team is down and he is MIA, possibly KIA.”

  Killed. In. Action. They were words King dreaded hearing, especially about members of the Chess Team. His chaotic emotions began to swirl again, threatening to overpower his soldier’s mask.

  Then he realiz
ed a connection. “He was able to follow me, too. He took Fiona and killed the others. Controls the golems.”

  “You know who’s doing this?” Duncan asked.

  “Richard Ridley.”

  “Son of a bitch…” Duncan was silent for a moment. “I’ll have every law enforcement agency in the country on the lookout for him in case he returns to the U.S., and I’ll have Boucher coordinate with any foreign agencies still willing to talk to us.”

  King was about to ask what had happened, but came to his own conclusions. If several countries had been tipped off that U.S. soldiers were kidnapping their citizens, provable or not, an international drama would be unfolding. That, combined with the post-attack-on-U.S.-soil madness that must be consuming the country, Duncan had his presidential hands full. He decided not to press the issue. “If I find anything in Haifa, I’ll let you know.”

  “Ditto on Ridley,” Duncan said. The statement was followed by a click and a dial tone. The man was busy.

  King hung up the phone and dialed a second number. Aleman answered it almost immediately. “Aleman here.”

  “Lew, it’s King. I just wanted to check in on my parents.”

  “Dropped them off at the hotel. Your father seemed pretty excited about the continental breakfast. They asked a lot of questions about you. Lots of questions. If they weren’t your parents I’d think they were digging for intel.”

  For a moment, King worried that it could be true, and then decided it was. His parents now knew his job was a lot more interesting than they had previously believed. They probably wanted to know everything about him. “So what did you tell them?”

  “The truth. That you’re on the Special Ops Galley Team—and let’s face it, that’s about as threatening sounding as ‘the Chess Team’—and your current mission has you scouring the globe for truffles.”

  King grinned. The humor felt good. “Uh huh.”

  “But once we got to the hotel they wanted nothing to do with me. Asked me not to come back. Said they’d be fine.”

  “That’s odd,” King said.