When he first saw them, Pierce thought these might have been part of the same group who stole the Argo crew manifest, but while these men held just as keen an interest in a Hercules-related artifact, their high-tech weapons and military precision set them apart from his previous attackers, who were much more...primitive. Those men had been passionate about protecting the secrets of the past, even if it meant destroying it. But these men, if they truly were interested in Hydra for its regeneration abilities, which seemed entirely likely given the miracle he’d just witnessed, were more interested in unlocking ancient secrets.
The men holstered their weapons and led Pierce up the incline, back toward the U.N. base camp. As they walked, the leader shouted back to Atahualpa, “Keep them tied up for two hours, then let them go.”
“What about my money?” Atahualpa asked. A wad of cash was tossed his way. He caught it and smiled. “Two hours. Right!”
As they reached the top of the hill, Pierce looked back and saw Atahualpa sit down in the sand. “Oww!” he shouted as something bit his neck. His first thought was that a scorpion or spider had stung him, but he caught a glance of a syringe before a wave of nausea struck. His vision blinked out next.
Though he could no longer see, Pierce could still hear, though his consciousness quickly faded. He raged, unable to move, as one of the dark-clad men said, “That’s mean, boss.”
“Why’s that?”
“Would have been nicer to just shoot them all in the head than leave them with her. She’ll tear them to bits when she wakes up.”
“Too bad I’m not nice.”
Pierce groaned as the men’s laughter roared in his head, bent and distorted by his delirium. He lost consciousness as his body flopped down onto a hard surface and an engine roared to life.
10
Nazca, Peru
King woke to a hard object poking his ribs. He grabbed at it and pulled it away, tossing it to the side. It clattered across the floor of the pitch-black, resealed burial pit. He realized he’d thrown a bone, probably one of the mummified men’s arms.
Colors danced in his vision as he opened his eyes wide, searching for any sign of sunlight that might signify an escape route, but saw only phantom colors. He knew he hadn’t been unconscious long because the colors he saw were created by his eyes adjusting to the pitch dark of the tomb. He experienced the phenomenon every time he went on a night mission. That first plunge into darkness always filled his vision with reds, purples, and greens.
Two other indicators told him he hadn’t been out long. First, he was still breathing. There couldn’t be much air inside the chamber and the lack of light also meant a lack of air passage. That was good news and bad news; good because he wasn’t dead yet, bad because he soon would be. The second indicator was that he was only beginning to feel thirsty. Dehydration would set in soon enough as the sun-baked sand cooked him like a roast pig in a Hawaiian imu pit, but for now he was functioning fine, except for the ringing in his ears. Damn grenade.
King stood and smacked his head on the ceiling. “Damnit!” he shouted, bending down. The center of the pit stood seven feet high, but the edge, where he’d been thrown, shrunk to just under five feet. He shuffled to the center of the pit, hunching until his foot struck something, filling the chamber with a metallic clang. He bent down and searched with his hands until he found the source of the noise—the lantern.
He felt the electric lantern’s body, searching for the power button. As he did, he wondered if he really wanted to light the chamber. What good would it do him? Any sunlight peeking through wouldn’t be able to compete with the lantern light. He’d never see it. And he’d have to look at the ugly mugs of the mummified men surrounding him, reminding him of his fate. Buried alive. Mummified by the scorching sun and moisture-sucking air. But when he found the button, he decided he’d rather die being able to see. He said a quick prayer and pushed the button.
Light filled the small chamber, revealing a circle of horrified expressions, eyes pale, mouths agape, fingers torn to shreds, heads bashed in. Most of the men had survived the blast, being dead already, but several had been tossed and shattered after being blown across the chamber and striking the far wall.
The light blinked out as King pushed the button again. Perhaps it was best to keep it extinguished. Bullshit, King thought, then switched the light back on. Doing his best to ignore the never-fading shocked expressions of the corpses, he circled the chamber, hammering away with the butt of his handgun where the earth wall met the stone above. The sand and stone, packed in tight, couldn’t be budged, even where the entrance used to be. Without a shovel, there would be no getting through. Still, he had to try.
For ten minutes he hammered at the wall where the entrance once was. After loosening a small chunk he began clawing at it with his fingers. Progress came slow and he noticed each dust-filled breath doing less and less to satiate his body’s craving for oxygen. His physical exertion used more oxygen than his body at rest...or unconscious. He stopped digging and rested his hand against the wall. After a few breaths, which he attempted to slow, a dull ache in his fingertips caught his attention. He looked at his hand and found it covered in blood. He pulled his hand away from the wall and saw bloody finger marks matching the ancient, dry stains left by the men first buried here.
He had become one of them.
King looked at his fingertips, rubbed raw and bleeding. He couldn’t escape. And though someone would come looking for him long before the moisture-wicking air transformed him into a mummy, he’d still be just as dead.
Accepting his fate as each breath he took sucked more oxygen out of the stale air and replaced it with more carbon dioxide, King sat down between two of the mummified men. He looked at each and grinned, finding humor in the fact that he was dying slowly at an archaeological dig rather than being blown to bits or riddled with bullets during combat. “This is gonna suck, right?”
The heat of the chamber pounded on his body, clinging to his black Elvis T-shirt and pulling the water in his body to the surface and away. He longed to remove his clothing, but found himself unable to move. His eyes lulled as his mind and body began shutting down. The only consolation he felt about dying was that he wouldn’t be awake to experience it.
As his head slowly tilted toward his shoulder, his thoughts turned to Pierce. He’d failed his friend. He’d never failed so grossly at a mission, but even that would have been forgivable—war was hell and even the good guys sometimes lost. But Pierce was his friend. This never should have happened and he’d never forgive himself for it, not that he had long left to self-deprecate.
In his waning moments, King resolved that if he returned as a ghost, he’d haunt the bastards that did this for the rest of their lives. And if he somehow survived, he’d make them wish he were a ghost. His vision failed and his head thumped heavily against the skull of his neighbor. He’d become one more sacrifice for the sands to absorb.
11
Nazca, Peru
The darkness consumed.
Reality twisted, then fled, and the surreal invaded.
King floated past lines of bodies, brutally disassembled and strewn across the desert. A battle had taken place. No. He’d seen battles. This was a slaughter. The stars above glistened like beads of water, thick and wet, stuck to the black blanket of the sky. The view spun away as his ethereal form drifted higher, sliding away from the grisly scene and up toward the heavens.
King had never pictured death. In his line of work a fear of death often quickened its arrival. Fear of pain did wonders, but fear of death could immobilize even the most well trained soldier. But this—floating out from his tomb, drifting over the dead, and rising up—defied even stereotypical near-death experience. Where was the white tunnel? The relative to guide him on? Shouldn’t his sister be here? Where was Julie?
“Julie,” he said. “Show me the way, Jules.”
There was no reply, only the sensation of rising through a thick ooze. His thoughts turned to
Hell. The bodies. Clearly tortured. The cold. He felt cold. Was Hell cold? Maybe Hell really did freeze over. Ha. He wanted to laugh, but could not feel his body. He no longer had a body.
He tried to will his spirit, or whatever this was, in a new direction, but he continued up and away, steadily forward to an unknown destination. The stars beckoned to him, then faded from view. He slipped back into the abyss thinking of his sister again.
“Sir,” a voice said. “Drink.”
Liquid filled King’s mouth. He took a breath. Gagged. Sat up quick and felt a blow to his head like a spike being driven through. The pain pulsed there like a flashing streetlight.
“Stay still,” the voice said, barely a whisper. “She will hear you.”
“Julie?”
“No. The old one.”
“Who are you?”
“Atahualpa.”
King’s eyes shot open as his mind fell back into his body. The vision. He wasn’t floating. He’d been carried. But that meant—King squeezed his eyes, erasing the nightmare. With fresh eyes he took in his surroundings.
Atahualpa knelt next to him. The man looked pale. Perhaps from the moonlight. Perhaps something more. The stars above, no longer bulbous, twinkled in the crisp, clear night sky. They sat in the dirt between two parked trucks. Atahualpa handed him a bottled water. “Drink.”
King took it and downed all twelve ounces. The liquid, cooled by the desert night air, chilled his stomach and quenched the fire in his mouth and throat. He felt life returning. He took a second bottle offered by Atahualpa and pulled from it more slowly, allowing the liquid time to be absorbed by his body and offered as a feast to his dehydrated cells. He met the doe-eyed driver turned traitor’s eyes.
“You saved me. Dug me out.”
The man nodded.
“Why?”
“They said no one would be hurt.”
King didn’t like the sound of that. His mind replayed the field of dead from his vision. He prayed it was a vision. “Who was hurt?”
“I could hear them screaming. I hid in a truck. For hours I hid. Then the screaming stopped. I looked from the window and saw her.”
“Who?”
“The old one. The gray-haired woman.”
“Molly?” King sat up straight, fighting the throbbing pain in his head. “She’s alive?”
“She is the devil’s.”
King sighed. Information steeped in religious paranoia would do him no good. “Skip what you learned in church and give me the facts.”
Atahualpa squinted. “I have never been to church. But I know a devil when I see one. Blood covered her body. Red. Pieces”—he sniffed, fighting back tears—“there were pieces of bodies... Their insides...clung to her body. To her lips. Her belly...” He arched his hands out and around his own belly. “Like a pregnant woman. Filled with their bodies.”
King tensed. “Whose bodies?”
With a shaking finger, Atahualpa pointed the way. “The workers.”
King realized he was pointing toward the dig site, toward Pierce’s dragon. He launched to his feet and stumbled, catching himself on the side of the red pickup’s flatbed.
“You must be quiet,” Atahualpa said. “She fled into the desert, but who is to say she will not return.”
“I’ll take my chances,” King said, draining the remainder of his second water bottle, then staggering toward the dig site. A hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“Take this.”
King turned and found his handgun offered. It was a peace offering. He could have let him dry out in his tomb. Judas wanted to team up. His pleading eyes begged. Forgive and forget.
King took the gun, checked the magazine, and slammed it back home. He turned to Atahualpa. The man had been duped and used. King had done the same to men just like him. Desperate for money or food. Willing to trade trust for survival. King nodded at the man. Forgiveness granted.
They fell in together, walking low, slow, and quiet. If there was danger lurking in the dark desert the only warning they’d get was the sound of feet crunching stone. King fought against waves of dizziness, and kept his gun aimed at the dark, willing his eyes to dilate just a little bit more, suck in the moonlight. They reached the hill’s crest and looked down.
Melding with the dark, bodies lay in the sand, still resting where they had the previous afternoon. But no heads turned at their approach. Several lacked heads altogether. King felt himself descending back into the hell he drifted by as Atahualpa carried him from his desert tomb. It wasn’t a nightmare. It was real. How many bodies lay scattered across the hillside was impossible to tell. Body parts and organs splayed across the scene held in place like sick sculptures by congealed and sun-dried blood. The sand was thick with the stuff. It crunched beneath his feet, chipping away like maroon crackers.
King held his shirt over his mouth and nose as the slightest breeze brought the rising stench down around them. He’d smelled death before, but this—bodies and organs exposed to the blistering heat of the day, cooked and bleached—he was reminded again; this had been no battle. These people were slaughtered.
He found the woman he’d startled and knelt down beside her body. What was left of it. A leg was missing. Following a trail of blood he saw it had been used to bludgeon a man’s head. Her arm, still attached, was missing large chunks from shoulder to elbow, as though an ogre had mistaken it for a corn cob. He lifted the dry arm, stiff and heavy and inspected the missing flesh. The bite marks were unmistakable.
Human.
King tried to imagine a tribe of cannibals descending on the group of workers. It was the only thing that made sense. But it lacked any kind of logic. There were no cannibals in Peru, and they certainly couldn’t run around the desert eating people without drying up and withering. Plus, he had an eyewitness.
“How did this happen?”
“The woman. Molly.”
King shook his head. “Not possible.”
Atahualpa made a stabbing motion over his chest. “They shot her. Dead. Injected her with something. She came back. They were gone when she woke up. I offered her water. Like you. She said she was hungry. Tried to bite me. I ran through...” He motioned through the dead bodies. “She stopped at the first man.” Shaking his head, rubbing out the images, he pointed to what little remained of the first man. Bones and bits of flesh. A large stain. And next to it what looked like a pile of vomit.
King found several piles throughout the scene. If his story was true, she was eating her victims, vomiting them up, and moving on to the next. One after another, the zip-tied crew had no chance of escape. “You could have cut them free.”
Atahualpa looked down. “I am not a brave man.”
King finished searching the bodies for familiar faces and found none. McCabe was missing, which corroborated his story. But Pierce was missing, too.
“They took my friend?”
“Yes.”
“Alive?”
He nodded.
“How did they leave?”
“Truck,” he said, pointing north. “That way.”
King rushed away from the blood-soaked hillside and entered the camp. Atahualpa stayed behind him, urging quiet, but King ignored him, rummaging through tents and personal belongings of the deceased. He found a flashlight and turned it on. His search sped more quickly and he found what he’d been looking for—a satellite phone. He turned it on and basked in the green glow of its digits. Help was a phone call away. Then he noticed a photo on the floor of the tent. It sucked the breath from his lungs. He placed the phone down and trained the light on the photo. Julie and George. Smiling. Happy. Streamers in the background revealed a party. The sparkle on her finger reflected the promise of what was to come. A life never lived. He picked up the photo, put it in his pocket, and dialed the phone.
After a few clicks, the connection was made and the phone on the other end began to ring. A digital female voice answered. “Hello, I’m sorry, but we cannot come to the phone right now. If you le
ave your name, number, and the time of your call, we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” With the recording finished, the line beeped.
“King,” he said.
“Voice print confirmed.”
The line beeped three times, then clicked. “That you, King?” King felt his body relax. Deep Blue. “I need some help down here.”
“You need company?” Deep Blue’s voice became serious. King didn’t ask for help unless people were dead and someone had to pay for it.
12
New Hampshire
The thick foliage covering the forest floor crunched beneath the feet of the approaching men. Each held their weapon nervously in front of them, twitching back and forth, looking for a target. Looking for him. Rook.
He took a slow deep breath, inhaling the scent of wet earth and decaying leaves. The smell of home. Growing up in the woods of New Hampshire, Rook felt more at home here than anywhere else. A twig snapped just feet from his face and brought him back to his current situation.
Fifteen combatants had been whittled down to three. These two and one more in hiding. Their plan wasn’t half bad. These two were bait. The third would take him out with a barrage from the overgrown rhododendron. Of course, if they’d known they were standing two feet in front of Rook, buried beneath the thick foliage, they might have rethought the plan.
“What do you see?” came a whispered voice from the rhododendron. Amateurs.
“Nothing, man. Shut up,” the closest of the three replied. “I don’t get it,” the third said. “This guy is old. Should have been a cakewalk.”
Rook did his best not to laugh. These pipsqueaks just guaranteed themselves a no-holds-barred ass kicking. No pain, no gain, girls. He took aim and squeezed his weapon’s trigger twice, unleashing two consecutive three-round bursts. Both men dropped to the forest floor, writhing in the wet earthy leaves, holding their red-stained crotches. They hollered in pain.
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