Herculean (Cerberus Group Book 1)

by Jeremy Robinson

  That, Pierce decided, was something to worry about once Gallo and Dourado were safe.

  At their current speed, he guessed it would take less than three minutes to cover the ten miles to the drop zone. It turned out to be the shortest three minutes of his life. After what seemed like only a few seconds, the pilot began counting down. When he got to zero, Lazarus shouted, “Go!”

  Carter immediately trundled to the edge of the cargo ramp and stepped out into the void.

  Pierce felt fear tugging at him, but squelched it down and followed Carter, leaping into the abyss. He expected the fear to surge as the fall began, but instead he felt something unexpected. Exhilaration.

  His parachute harness went rigid—painfully so—as the chute deployed above his head.

  The initial discomfort passed after a moment, as his body began to compensate for the abrupt change in inertia. He experienced yet another wave of excitement and euphoria, as he processed the new sensation. He was still falling, but he could feel the resistance from the chute, holding him back.

  He saw the control lines hanging down in front of him and took hold, one in each hand. Off to his left, he saw Carter and Lazarus, both of them angling back and forth across the sky like skiers slaloming down a black-diamond slope.

  Pierce tugged the controls, getting a feel for the system. When he pulled, he could feel increased resistance on the respective sides of the chute, comparable to dragging an oar in the water while rowing a canoe. Once he figured out the right amount of pressure to exert, he lined up behind the others and let gravity and aerodynamics do most of the work.

  Further out, the dark silhouette of their destination rose above the forest, and gleaming at its tip, like an enchanted emerald, was a dot of artificial light marking the presence of humans atop the remote tepui.

  The light of the Cerberus camp drew them onward, like a beacon. When they got closer, Pierce could see the bulky outline of a helicopter. A few seconds later, they passed over the parked aircraft, still several hundred feet from touchdown, but there was no sign of human activity around it or anywhere else on the mountaintop.

  “I see them,” Lazarus said. “They’re rappelling down into the sinkhole.”

  Pierce craned his head around and spotted the network of ropes that extended from the top of the tepui, down into the chasm where they were lost from view. Tiny shapes moved down the ropes, like spiders on a web.

  “I count nine,” Lazarus said. “No way to know if any of them are friendly.”

  Pierce strained to see if he could pick out Gallo, but they were still too far away. “Will they see us? Or hear us?”

  “They’re using flashlights, so they won’t be able to see much of anything.” Lazarus was silent for a moment, then added. “Stay ready though, just in case.”

  Pierce let a hand fall to the Heckler & Koch MP5K that hung from a sling across his chest. Pierce had never fired this particular weapon before, but Lazarus had assured him that it was as simple as point-and-shoot. It was even equipped with an infrared laser sight that would show him, with a fairly high degree of certainty, where the bullet would go.

  Killing someone has never been so easy, he thought darkly. But the men they were going up against weren’t innocents. Kenner and Rohn had already tried to kill him once, and they had kidnapped Gallo and Fiona. He intended to remember that when the time came to pull the trigger.

  “Let’s take it in,” Lazarus said. “I’ll go first. Corkscrew down and watch for a safe drop zone.”

  Pierce held back until both Carter and Lazarus were at least a hundred feet below him before pulling on his right-hand toggle to begin a clockwise spiraling descent into the sinkhole. When Lazarus had told him they would be parachuting into a sinkhole, Pierce had imagined something like diving into a swimming pool from four miles up. It was only now, as he turned lazy circles in the sky above the tepui, that he understood just how big the sinkhole was. It would be more like diving into the East River.

  He could not distinguish the ground. Although the walls positively radiated infrared light, the bottom of the sinkhole—which was rushing up—looked like a Jackson Pollock painting in hues of green and black. There was no way to know what awaited them down there.

  As the remaining distance closed to almost nothing, he was able to make out the landscape in relief. There were irregular patches that might have been vegetation or uneven terrain, perhaps even trees, and in-between them an unnaturally smooth black surface. He steered toward the latter, realizing too late that it was not flat ground at all, but water.

  Almost directly below, Lazarus’s chute seemed to curl in on itself as he pulled his control toggles hard. Then, the canopy settled gently into an amorphous heap, marking the spot where the big man had touched down. Carter flared her chute a moment later, and landed about thirty yards from Lazarus. Pierce guessed he had about ten seconds to do the same.

  He hauled down on the toggles a couple of seconds later and his descent came to what felt like a screeching halt. Then he dropped another fifteen feet into chilly, waist-deep water. The thick muck that rose halfway to his knees absorbed most of the impact of landing, but it also wrapped around his legs. He wobbled for a moment and then heaved himself out of the mud and onto the shore. He quickly removed his respirator, unbuckled his harness, reeled in the water-logged parachute, bundled it up and shoved it beneath some tall ferns.

  He crouched next to Lazarus beside a stand of trees that stood up out of the water on thick conical trunks with partially exposed roots. Pierce thought they might be cypress trees, which were found in wetlands along the Eastern seaboard of the United States.

  Lazarus clapped him on the shoulder. “Not bad for an archeologist. I can see why Jack picked you.”

  “Maybe I missed my calling as a Special Forces operator,” Pierce said, managing to get a smile out of the big man.

  Carter clung to the stringy bark of one of the boughs, evidently trying to stay out of the water. Pierce wondered why for a moment, then remembered that Brazil was the land of piranhas and anacondas. He decided that maybe she had the right idea, and scrambled onto the nearest exposed root.

  The trees obscured their view of the sandstone walls, but even through the forest canopy, Pierce could see the glow of the Cerberus group’s flashlights, amplified by the night vision goggles, a stark contrast to the near total darkness at the bottom of the pit.

  He watched the lights for a few moments then turned to Lazarus and Carter. “They’ll be down soon. We need to get moving.”

  Then the distinctive crack of a gunshot echoed across the treetops.

  34

  Cerberus Headquarters

  At the first touch of the aerosol mist, Fiona leapt off the examination table and dove under it. The abruptness of her reaction sent two of the mice scurrying away, but for several seconds, that was the most dramatic thing that happened.

  “Excellent,” Tyndareus crooned. “Tell me, are you feeling anything yet?”

  Fiona ignored the question, but the mere suggestion was enough to make her skin crawl. What was in the mist? Tyndareus had called it a plant-based organic bio-weapon, but what did that even mean? Some kind of nerve agent?

  She felt a tingling sensation on the exposed skin of her face and arms.

  I’m imagining it, she told herself, but if she was, then her imagination was running wild. She wiped a hand across her face, then began rubbing her arms vigorously. Her skin felt slightly wet, and after a few seconds, the tingling became a warm glow, like the heat of menthol or jalapeno peppers.

  Okay, definitely not my imagination.

  An urgent chirping noise distracted her. The mice, all of them, were now running back and forth across the room as if their tails were on fire.

  They’re dying, she thought. She felt a stinging in her eyes, and blinked away tears. I probably am, too. Or will be soon.

  Then she noticed something else. There were faint green lines on the skin of her arms, long streaks marking the places she had
rubbed. The floor was also marked with splotches of green, and as she watched, they started moving.

  No. Not moving. Growing.

  Tiny shoots, no thicker than single strands of hair, were rising from the green spots, both those on the floor and those on her arms. She wiped her fingers across her arms, obliterating them completely, but the tendrils on the floor grew thicker, like vines, throwing out branching extensions and vestigial leaves.

  Plant-based bio weapon. That’s what he meant. This isn’t some kind of organic poison or nerve agent. It’s a plant that…does what exactly?

  The growth rate was extraordinary, and judging by the stinging sensation, the plant secreted some kind of toxic enzyme. The chirping of the mice had grown into a frantic cacophony. They had stopped running around. She found one nearby, caught in a tangle of green threads, squirming but unable to break loose.

  Tyndareus’s wheeze sounded again. “You see? It works well in a controlled environment. But we could not replicate these results in the field.”

  Fiona paid him no heed. She was aware now of green tendrils sprouting from her skin, probably her hair and clothes, too, but the threads on the floor scared her the most. While it was hard to imagine those tiny little fibers holding her down, she knew that enough of them might be able to do just that, immobilizing and enveloping her like some kind of invasive weed.

  She scrambled out from under the table, intending to climb back on top, but found it already covered with fibrous green stalks. The sight stopped her cold. There was nowhere to escape to. Every corner of this room was infested with green.

  She was going to die. Maybe not in the next few minutes, or even the next few hours, but eventually the plants would overwhelm her.

  She whirled to face the glass, wondering how much force it would take to smash through. Maybe if I used the table like a battering ram…

  Tyndareus’s weird mismatched blue eyes continued to regard her with an eagerness that approached hunger. He’s enjoying this. He’s getting off on watching me die, like some kind of psycho James Bond movie villain.

  The thought triggered a lightning bolt of inspiration. I just hope he doesn’t watch the same movies I do. She met his stare and shouted, “Is this supposed to scare me into helping you?”

  Uncertainty flickered across his strange eyes. She could see him parsing her words, trying to discern what she meant. His mouth opened, but then closed again.

  Damn it.

  She started to turn back to the exam table, intending to scrape away the thin layer of green that had started sprouting there and buy herself a few more seconds, but the tendrils had already begun wrapping around her feet, digging into the fabric of her shoes.

  I’m running out of time.

  She tore free and hopped up onto the table. Her feet started to burn, so she pulled her shoes off, revealing inflamed skin. She looked at Tyndareus again. “South America is a dead end. Kenner isn’t going to find anything there.”

  His gaze narrowed, but he said nothing.

  “He doesn’t know how to read the map, you know,” she pressed. “That’s why he had to ask me for help. But he still doesn’t know how to translate it. I’m the only one who can do that.” She was not desperate enough to tell him about the Mother Tongue, not yet at least.

  The old man’s silence continued.

  “Don’t believe me? Ask him what he’s found. Go on. I’ll wait. Only…” She looked from side to side. “I’m not sure exactly how long I’ve got.”

  Finally, Tyndareus stirred. He raised a bony finger and stabbed at the screen of his tablet. For a few seconds, Fiona dared to believe that her ploy had worked, and that he would activate some kind of counter-agent to neutralize the strange growth. But a full minute passed with no appreciable change in the room, save for the fact that the mice had stopped chirping and the room seemed to be getting increasingly warmer. Uncomfortably so. Fiona’s skin began to burn anew as her sweat reacted with the acidic plants on her skin.

  Instead of sparing her, Tyndareus had just turned up the heat, literally. The room was nearly sauna hot. The lights seemed brighter, too, so brilliant, in fact, that she had to shade her eyes and squint.

  “Interesting,” the old man said after a few more minutes. “When the temperature increases to above ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit, the organism stops seeking out new victims and simply begins growing like an ordinary plant. That explains the failure of the field test. Not a failure at all, really. Simply a different outcome than expected.”

  He tapped the screen again, and the lights dimmed perceptibly. “I would hear more about the map, child.”

  Despite the heat, Fiona felt a chill shoot down her back. She did not know if Tyndareus had chosen to curtail his experiment because of what she had said, or if he was merely playing some kind of sick game with her—like an evil child torturing ants with a magnifying glass. She regretted now having revealed the truth about the map, even if she had kept the part about the Mother Tongue to herself. Her death would have all but ensured that Kenner would never unlock the real secret of the map. Now, Tyndareus would not stop until she had revealed everything.

  Nevertheless, she couldn’t help but think about what Pierce had said in the Labyrinth.

  Where there’s life, there’s hope.

  She was still alive, and that was good, because it meant there was still hope. The funny thing was that she no longer hoped for rescue or a chance to escape.

  She wanted payback.

  35

  Roraima, Brazil

  The noise of the shot startled Gallo, causing her hand to slip off the ropes. She clutched at them, trying to stop her downward plunge, but it was already too late. There was a flare of pain as the ropes burned through the skin of her palm, but that would be nothing compared to what would come when she reached the line’s end.

  Her descent stopped as abruptly as it had begun, with a hand reaching out to seize hold of her belay line, jerking her to a sudden, and thankfully premature, stop. She swung forward, colliding with the rock face. The impact stunned her but not enough to override her instinct for self-preservation. She grabbed hold of the ropes again, clinging to them for dear life.

  “Remember what I showed you,” rumbled a low voice from beside her. “Reach back and hold the ropes with your brake hand.”

  Gallo glanced toward the stern, unsympathetic visage of her savior, Vigor Rohn, and then she did as instructed. When she had the lines gripped in her right fist, locked in place against the small of her back, Rohn simply let go and resumed his own descent.

  She felt no gratitude toward him, nor did she sense that he expected any. She was still a prisoner, still a hostage who, for the moment at least, was more useful alive.

  After her recapture, and a brief interval to allow for Kenner’s recovery, Rohn had given her and Dourado a quick course in rappelling techniques. She had no choice but to go along with them now. Dourado’s noble attempt to liberate her had given Rohn and Kenner the leverage to compel her cooperation. Rohn did not even need to make the threat explicit; if she resisted, Dourado would suffer. Yet, despite the dire situation, Gallo felt a glimmer of optimism.

  Although she had not been allowed to speak to Dourado, Gallo assumed that the young woman had snuck aboard the helicopter during the transfer at Belem—Dourado’s hometown. Clearly, stowing away had been an impulsive decision, but the fact that Dourado had been able to track the movements of the Cerberus group to her own hometown meant that Pierce was looking for her, and might already know where she was.

  It was a slim hope, but reason enough to hang on, both figuratively and literally.

  Below her, Rohn had finished his descent. She could hear him growling at his men. “What were you shooting at?”

  She took a breath to gather her wits. Then she relaxed her brake hand and resumed her cautious rappel down the wall. When she finally reached the bottom, she sagged against the wall in exhaustion.

  The sheer cliff wall disappeared into a mound of rubble.
Chunks of limestone, some larger than passenger cars, had crumbled from the top of the sinkhole and accumulated into a gentle slope, or more accurately, a beach that disappeared into a vast body of water. Gallo could see trees in the distance, suggesting a shallow wetland rather than a lake.

  The Cerberus men had gathered near the water’s edge, sweeping their lights through the darkness in every direction, aiming with their pistols. Rohn stood next to one of them, gazing down at a large glistening gray-green shape.

  “You shot a frog?” There was a hint of disgust in Rohn’s voice.

  “It was attacking,” the man protested. “Look at it.”

  “Attacking? It’s a frog.”

  Gallo craned her head around for a better look at the fallen creature. From a distance, she could not make out any details, but even a glimpse was enough to reveal why the Cerberus goon had reacted so violently. The frog, or whatever it was, was huge. If not for the slick skin, she would have assumed that it was a small alligator.

  The corpse suddenly came alive in a flurry of movement. Rohn leapt back, narrowly avoiding the swipe of a long black tentacle.

  It’s a tail, Gallo thought.

  The other man was not quite fast enough. The creature’s tail knocked his feet out from under him, and he crashed onto the shore in a heap. There was a sharp hissing noise, like a forceful exhalation, and then the beast splashed back into the water and vanished.

  Rohn spat a disgusted oath at the unlucky man. “You can’t even kill a frog? Let’s hope we don’t face anything more dangerous than that.”

  The fallen man raised a hand, as if reaching out for assistance, then his fingers curled into a claw. He collapsed back in the throes of a seizure. Rohn’s eyes widened in alarm, and he retreated several steps.