King kicked harder, his legs and lungs burning, as a small stream of lava oozed into the water to their right, filling the ocean with steaming bubbles. King watched the bubbles burst and expand as a second stream of lava struck. They’d be trapped in seconds.
A shadow shot out of the depths like a hunting shark, moving fast and fluid. King fought the urge to stop swimming and face the object, whether it be shark or torpedo, but with gouts of lava about to rain down from above, he kept on kicking...and waiting for death to come from above, or below.
37
Tristan da Cunha
The shadow emerged from the depths, reached out, and took King’s arm in a vice grip. He and Queen were yanked up and away as Bishop, still holding the high-powered scooter pulled them away from the mouth of the cave. An explosion of bubbles and wave of heat pursued them as lava spilled into the ocean. With the scooter pulling and King still kicking with his fins, they cleared the area just in time not to be boiled alive, but as King’s vision began to fade, a new threat emerged.
He needed to breathe.
Sensing this, Bishop turned the scooter toward the surface and pulled them up. After breaking through the waves, King and Queen gasped for air, taxed beyond their limits, but unwilling to give the grim reaper his due. As they fought against the waves, hands reached down from above and plucked them from the ocean and onto the plush, comfortable deck of the Mercury. Bishop started up after them.
Rook reached down to help him up.
“I got it,” Bishop said.
He took Bishop by the wrist. “C’mon, big guy. Let me help you—”
“I said I got it!” Bishop twisted his wrist out of Rook’s hand, took hold of Rook’s shirt, and pulled him overboard. Rook sank under the water and came back up a moment later. “Bishop, what the hell!”
Standing on the deck of the Mercury, Bishop looked back at him. “Just stay away from me, Rook.” He stalked away, ignoring the stunned looks of King, Queen, and Knight, and entered the cabin.
King helped Rook back onto the deck. Water poured from his waterlogged clothes. “What was that about?”
“Probably upset about being captured,” Queen said, wrapping a towel around her scantily clad body. “He’ll cool off soon enough.”
“Well, I’m doing like the man said and steering clear of his grumpy ass,” Rook said. He didn’t like being humiliated, or manhandled, by a teammate. Broken trust could lead to all kinds of trouble on the battlefield. As Rook stripped out of his drenched clothing he frowned and added, “To top things off, the island is a total loss.”
King looked up as Knight hammered the throttle, launching the yacht away from the island. The whole of Tristan da Cunha was consumed in lava, smoke, and fire. Edinburgh burned. Manifold Beta sat beneath a pool of molten lava that would cool and harden. The site would take years, perhaps more, to excavate. Even then any evidence left behind would have been burned or melted within the cauldron.
The mission had been a disaster.
Well, not a complete disaster. King looked to his side and found Pierce, if it even was him, lying next to him. His eyes remained closed and breathing shallow. He’d rescued his friend, but at what price? He might have been better off if they’d shot him and been done with it. Now he had to, what...live life as an immortal monster? A modern mythological creature?
“Near as I can tell,” Rook said, “your buddy is in a coma.”
Queen checked Pierce’s pulse, holding his wrist. Checked his eyes. Squeezed his hand hard, looking for a reaction to pain. Nothing. “The regens reacted to regeneration by losing their grasp on reality. They became animals...worse than animals. But this is something new. Still not perfected. His mind might be reacting by shutting down.”
King listened. It made sense and he was glad Pierce wasn’t awake to see himself like this. Still, on the off chance that people in comas really could hear the people around them, he leaned in close and said, “George. It’s Jack. Listen. I’m going to take care of things. I’m going to figure out a way to help you. That’s a promise.”
“We’ve got trouble,” Knight shouted back from the captain’s chair. He pointed out toward the ocean. Debris clung to the waves. Body parts, too.
“They didn’t make it,” Rook said.
“Who?”
“The locals. A bunch launched out to sea.”
King ground his teeth together. The submarine. Had to be. He punched the side of the boat and looked back at Tristan da Cunha. The island glowed bright orange like the devil had ascended from the thirteenth level of Hell and settled on the island. A great billow of smoke filled the sky above, blotting out the stars. Ash fell from the sky, the gentle flakes kissing their skin like warm snowflakes.
“Head inside,” King said. “We don’t need to be breathing this crap.”
Rook took Pierce in his arms and carried him into the cabin and lay him down on a comfortable couch. Queen followed. King stepped up to Knight at the controls. “Set a course due north, then come inside. We’ll take shifts out here. For now, let’s see if we can raise the Grant on the radio inside.”
Knight turned the wheel, looking at the compass, when he caught a flash of green in his periphery. The luxury yacht came complete with sonar. Something was rising next to them. Something big. “King...”
He saw it, ducked into the cabin and came back out with an RPG, ready to launch. Bishop, Rook, and Queen followed him out, similarly armed with a variety of explosive projectiles. He looked at the sonar screen, took aim at the ocean, and waited to fire. The submarine broke the surface one hundred yards away, rising like a breeching whale and crashing back into the water. A massive wave rolled out and away from the sub, pushing the Mercury up at an odd angle, throwing off their aim.
The sub was easily recognizable as a Los Angeles-class attack submarine, but King had no way of knowing what kind of sub Manifold had got its hands on. He took aim again, as the Mercury settled in the water. The others followed his lead. The sub approached slowly and stopped ten feet away. Too close to launch torpedoes and not sustain damage. The message was clear: We come in peace. But King maintained his vigil. The sub could easily ram them, letting its conning tower tear the Mercury in two.
Only when the top hatch opened and two men in U.S. Navy uniforms stepped out, hands in the air, did King relax. The two sailors were followed by Captain Savile looking like a drowned cat.
He lowered the RPG staring at the captain, his mouth open in shock. He realized immediately what the captain’s presence and physical appearance meant. Something awful had happened to the USS Grant.
“Get your people on board,” Savile said to King.
“How many were lost?”
The side of Savile’s mouth twitched for a moment. “Five hundred thirteen dead or lost so far. Maybe more. The Grant is wounded, listing, but not sunk. She’ll make it.”
“Those sons-a-bitches,” Rook muttered.
“Get what you need,” King said to the others, “and take George. I’ll sink the Mercury.”
“Hey, King,” Savile said. “Yes, sir.”
Savile looked at the glowing remnants of Tristan da Cunha. “Did you get them?”
King felt his stomach lurch as he heard the eager tone in the captain’s voice. He wanted to know the bastards that sunk his boat and killed his men had paid for their crimes. But they hadn’t. They’d escaped right out from under their noses. King let them go again. King’s silence and cold eyes said what words couldn’t.
Savile shook his head. “When you find the man who sank my ship, make him hurt.”
King nodded. It went without saying. Manifold and Gen-Y had not only drawn first blood, but second blood, too. The only acceptable solution was to draw third blood...and much more of it.
38
Pope Air Force Base, Limbo
A day after their failed mission, the team found themselves once again sitting in Limbo. They had been plucked from the ocean by helicopter, rendezvoused with a second aircraft carrie
r, and flown in the navigator’s seats of five F/A-18 Super Hornets. The thumb drive data had been sent ahead to Aleman via satellite but only contained useless fragments of information.
Aside from retrieving Pierce, the mission had been a total failure and then some. A town had been destroyed. Two hundred seventy-one foreign civilians had perished, and while the proper authorities had been notified by a “passing vessel” of Tristan da Cunha’s destruction, the world would never know it wasn’t a volcano that killed all those people. After counting and recounting it turned out that six hundred seventy-two sailors had died in the attack. And the government’s first CVNX-class, eleven-billion-dollar aircraft carrier and billions in aircraft had nearly been sunk to the bottom of the ocean. The military term FUBAR (fucked up beyond all recognition) didn’t do the mission justice. If the whole mess hadn’t been swept under the rug and buried deeper than the Mariana Trench, it would have gone down in history as the military’s single most expensive mission, outside of a war, and would be recorded in history books for centuries to come.
On a personal level, the feud started by Bishop tossing Rook into the ocean had continued as neither man spoke to the other. A rift was growing on the team and that usually meant bad things. If someone didn’t get injured as a result, someone would end up quitting. If they weren’t reconciled by the mission’s end, King would be forced to send one of them packing. The alternative was to risk all their lives. For now, the two would be separated. King spoke to Deep Blue in private, arranging the break.
On top of all that, Pierce showed no signs of coming out of the coma and still looked more like the Creature from the Black Lagoon than a human being. If that wasn’t bad enough, the brightest minds in the U.S. government, from the CDC to folks who didn’t officially exist at Area 51, couldn’t make heads or tails of the skin and organ samples taken from Pierce. It seemed he was no longer fully human. He wasn’t only not human, he wasn’t like anything in recorded history. But King knew there was something similar. The artifact stolen from the Nazca dig site. It was real. Had to be. The Hydra. They’d somehow extracted and transferred its DNA to Pierce.
As King sat, waiting for Keasling to arrive, his anger at the situation built. He wanted to be reprimanded. Shouted at. Something. But it was business as usual. They’d underestimated their enemy. King. Keasling. Deep Blue. All of them. With such a big noose, it seemed no one would be hung. So long as the right people were caught in the end. Then the noose would belong to them.
Keasling entered and looked the team over as they sat around the table, sullen-faced and quiet. Even Rook remained silent. Aleman entered a moment later and took a seat at the table. He was straight-faced, but couldn’t hide the tiny smirk at the sides of his mouth.
He’d found something.
Keasling frowned. “The time for licking your wounded egos is over. You look like a bunch of first graders after a recess fight. Snap out of it.”
They did. Faces hardened. Postures straightened. Each turned their guilt into anger. They’d been trained to do it when it needed to be done. They’d deal with the guilt later, when there was no one left to kill. Hell, killing the right people could actually relieve the guilt. Knowing how many people would die if Manifold succeeded and sold its formula to terrorists or dictators made the lives and billions lost seem like chump change...chump lives.
The screen glowed to life. Deep Blue sat in shadow. “How’s everyone holding up?”
“We’re ready to kick some ass,” Rook said.
Deep Blue nodded. “Good. And that will come soon enough. But first there are two mysteries that need solving. The first is Manifold’s new location. We know they had at least five large facilities, all secret. Two of them are now destroyed thanks to their cut-and-run, slash-and-burn tactics.”
“Bunch of pansies,” Rook said.
“Effective pansies,” Deep Blue added. “After Aleman confirmed the thumb drive contained no useful information I set the CIA to the task of finding any evidence of large facilities being built in the United States.”
“You think they’re here?” King asked. “Right under our noses?”
“Almost. They’re in New Hampshire.”
Rook looked surprised. “Where at?”
“Your backyard. Pinckney.”
“Little town, north of Plymouth?”
“That’s the one. A few boaters off Rye reported seeing a submarine beneath their boats. The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was put on high alert. Nothing turned up, but it put our attention on New Hampshire and Maine. It took a lot of digging, but we found evidence that something large had been built in Pinckney. Tolls and weigh stations reported large amounts of material entering the area, but never appearing on the grid again. A lot of building material went in and never came out. But that’s not all. As you know, we’ve been testing Pierce with the hopes of understanding and reversing his condition. What we’ve found is that his healing ability is greatly increased in the presence of radiation.”
King sat up straight, his voice tinged with anger. “You’re exposing him to radiation?”
Deep Blue held up a hand. “Nothing more significant than the background radiation found naturally in certain environments.”
“The Granite State,” Rook said, understanding. “The whole state is riddled with the stuff.”
“Which contains ten to twenty parts per million of uranium,” Aleman added.
Rook nodded. “The uranium decays and escapes as radon gas. My grandmother had to move because her foundation leaked the stuff like a sieve.”
“The town of Pinckney is situated in a valley that rests between several large mountains of granite. If Manifold discovered the effect of this background radiation on regeneration, then it makes sense that they would retreat to that location. The problem is, finding the facility has proven impossible from above. They’re most likely underground, so we need boots on the ground. King. Knight. Bishop. I want you to handle this.”
“Why not just flood the area with troops?” Knight asked. “Smoke ‘em out George W. style.”
“They’d see us coming long before we smoked anything out,” Deep Blue said. “We don’t want them bugging out this time. If it takes you a little longer to find them, fine. Let them get comfortable. Catch them with their pants down. And don’t let them escape again.”
Rook began to object. New Hampshire was his home state. His people. But Deep Blue beat him to the punch, “I know all the reasons you want to go, Rook, but there’s more. I’ll let Aleman explain.”
Aleman sat up straight and cleared his throat. “The symbol Pierce drew, the circle with two vertical lines... It took some research...a lot of research. But I found it mentioned in an archive of the Natural History Museum of all places. Turns out, quite appropriately, that it’s a symbol for Hercules. To be specific, the pillars of Hercules, also known as—”
“The Strait of Gibraltar,” Queen said. She leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Some legends say that Hercules formed the strait by striking through a mountain with his club, but most believe he traveled to the strait to fetch the Cattle of Geryon, a giant with six arms, three heads, and three bodies. His tenth labor.”
“Hydra was his second?” King asked.
Queen nodded. “Seems he kept the true distance of his travels to himself, though. Gibraltar was supposed to be the farthest he traveled.”
“That’s right,” Aleman said with a grin, clearly impressed by Queen’s knowledge. “Which brings us to Agustina Gallo.”
“You found her?” King asked.
“Well, there were two hundred fifty-seven women with the name, worldwide, but only one of them is an expert on Greek mythology.”
“Where is she?” Knight asked.
Aleman smiled. “Greece, of course.”
“You’re sending me to Greece?” Rook asked, doing nothing to hide the annoyance in his voice.
“You and Queen,” Deep Blue said. That alone seemed to settle Rook down, but Deep Blue continued, “Queen
speaks the language, and as she’s shown us, isn’t too shabby when it comes to Greek mythology. But Rook...you’re needed to complete her cover story.”
Rook’s right eyebrow rose a centimeter. “And that is?”
“Queen will pose as a local. Your guide. You’ll be the loud, obnoxious, American tourist.”
Rook sighed, bit his lip, and shook his head, clearly frustrated. But he didn’t argue. He knew he was perfect for the job.
“Your plane leaves at seventeen hundred hours. Bags have been packed for you. Posing as tourists you’ll have to take a commercial flight in. Get your passports stamped. The whole deal. So no weapons. If you run into trouble, which you shouldn’t, head to the U.S. embassy or take a boat to the naval base in Souda Bay on Crete. Dr. Pierce seemed to think Gallo was important. I need you two to find out why. In the past twenty-four hours she hasn’t answered her phone or checked her e-mail. We don’t know if she’s busy, antisocial, or otherwise disposed, so stay alert. Any questions?”
No one offered any. The screen went black.
Keasling stood. “Hit the road gumshoes. Don’t come back unless you’ve got Manifold by the balls, or I’ll have your balls in my own personal vice.”
Queen grinned.
“What are you smiling about?” Keasling said. “You’ve got more balls than the four of them combined. Now move your asses.”
39
Greece
Flying as civilians meant a flight first from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Boston, then to London, and south to Greece, where they landed at Athens International Airport—Eleftherios Venizelos. Rook had done his best not to complain, but on the flight to Greece, after already spending eight hours on a plane, decided to start practicing his American tourist cover by complaining that the seats were too tight for his bulk. To his surprise, he and Queen had been moved to first class mid-flight and given a bottle of champagne. Apparently, Greece wanted loud, obnoxious tourists...and they wanted them drunk and spending money straight away. While neither Rook nor Queen imbibed the spirits, Rook did save the bottle, stowing it in his very American, Boston Celtics gym bag.
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