Cannibal

by Jeremy Robinson

  As he dropped down behind the wall, Rook gave a hoot of triumph. “Bishop for the win. I’ll say one thing: You don’t throw like a girl.”

  “You’ll pay for that,” Queen said.

  “Promises, promises.”

  Knight ignored the banter and scanned the other trucks, which had broken formation following the explosion, but they were continuing their charge. He was not sure exactly what he was looking for, but then he saw it again. A dark spot, like a shadow, seemed to hover over the bed of one truck, partially shrouding the men riding behind the cab. The effect was most pronounced in thermal view; the shadow seemed to be absorbing the body heat of the passengers.

  Thermal view, Knight realized with a start. The shadow was absorbing heat because it was freezing cold. “King, they’ve got a thermal scope. A big one. Cryo-cooled.”

  “Shit,” King said. The curse seemed to be self-directed. “Of course they do. That was a TOW missile that took out Crescent.”

  Although he was not completely read up on the TOW, Knight quickly made the connection. The TOW’s optical guidance system incorporated thermal imaging, which had allowed its operator to home in on Crescent’s turbine exhaust. While the cartel fighters evidently did not have a second missile, they were using the launcher to detect the team’s body heat. Unlike infra-red night vision, a cryogenically cooled scope could detect very minor differences in temperature, but to do so, the device had to be kept very cold at all times, which used an enormous amount of energy and made it extremely cumbersome. When Aleman had designed Knight’s implant, he had managed to partially overcome this limitation by using an experimental graphene superconductor, but that technology was still in its infancy. Still, Knight’s thermal view was vastly outclassed by the system the enemy was using.

  “Well, that explains how they can see us,” King went on. “Where is it?”

  “Middle truck. In the bed.”

  “How did a bunch of drug thugs score a piece of hardware like that?” Rook asked, unfolding the bipod legs of his 240B. Before anyone could answer, he strafed the designated vehicle with 7.62-millimeter rounds.

  The cold spot fragmented as the bullets slammed into the truck, throwing up little blooms of heat energy. One of the rounds hit the coolant tank, releasing a fog of super-cooled air that quickly boiled away to nothingness.

  “You got him,” Knight reported, between bursts.

  “So they can’t see us anymore,” Queen remarked, “but now they know exactly where we are.”

  “A simple thank you will suffice,” Rook retorted, shifting to another target.

  King’s stern voice silenced any further argument. “Queen, Bishop. Watch our six. Knight, do we still have a peeping tom on that pyramid?”

  Knight turned his gaze toward the apex of the monument, but there was no longer any indication that the observer was still in place. “Negative.”

  “One less thing to worry about,” Rook muttered, and let lead fly. The remaining trucks had stopped less than a hundred yards from their position, the men inside leaping out and throwing themselves flat to avoid the onslaught. The virtual targeting system marked them each, faster than a human eye could; twelve in all, though there was no way to know if all of the enemy were accounted for.

  They had whittled the attacking force down to an almost two-to-one margin. Knight would have felt better about that if not for two things: the fact that the cartel had managed to blow Crescent II out of the sky, and Deep Blue’s ominous report that Endgame was under siege.

  Deal with the immediate problem, he told himself, sweeping the flanks of the pyramid with the muzzle of the CheyTac, and gritting his teeth against the relentless pounding in his skull. There was still no sign of any activity from within the ancient complex. Knight wondered now if perhaps the earlier sighting had been an animal or something equally innocuous.

  “Rook, if it’s not already too late,” King said. “Try to leave one of those vehicles intact. My ankle still hurts, and I’d prefer not to walk out of here.”

  Rook hummed guiltily. “I think that ship has already sailed. But if it’s any consolation, these guys can’t shoot for shit.”

  Knight had noticed that as well. Despite knowing exactly where the team was situated, the sporadic incoming fire was not accompanied by the sound of bullets striking stone. The cartel soldiers evidently had exceptionally poor aim.

  Unless they’re just trying to keep us pinned down, he realized. Or they’re afraid of hitting their buddies who are sneaking up from behind.

  The latter possibility seemed extremely likely, and Knight was just about to tell King that when he felt the first tremor rise up from the paving stones under foot.

  “What the—?”

  The floor gave an abrupt heave, and Knight was pitched headlong toward Queen and Bishop, who had likewise been knocked off their feet, but instead of landing on hard stone, he felt the floor give way beneath him, and then he was falling again.

  He plummeted into an unseen Stygian darkness for what felt like an absurdly long interval of time, before gravity at last hammered him against the unyielding anvil of stone below. The impact left him dazed for a moment, how long, he couldn’t say, but shouted voices—King, Rook and Aleman—brought him back to the surface. He gaped like a fish, trying unsuccessfully to draw breath.

  Got my wind knocked out. Is that the worst of it?

  He did not dare to hope that he had been that lucky, but if he had broken any bones, he was too numb to feel them. He straightened his glasses and looked around to find Queen and Bishop also picking themselves up off the floor.

  The floor of what?

  He glanced up and saw an irregular hole, nearly a dozen feet overhead, and peering down into it, the faces of Rook and King. He opened his mouth, intending to tell them that they were all okay—not a lie exactly, just unconfirmed wishful thinking—and to stay focused on the immediate threat topside. But no sound was forthcoming, so he had to settle for a wave off.

  He finally caught his breath and was rewarded with a nose full of dust and the smell of high explosives residue. He heard Queen coughing—a good sign, since it meant she was still breathing—and he ventured across the debris-strewn floor to her side.

  “I’m okay,” she rasped. “Help Bishop.”

  Bishop was already on her feet, waving him off. “What in hell just happened?”

  “There was some kind of pit under the ruins,” Knight said. “They must have rigged the support posts and blown them out from under us.”

  “That’s crazy,” Queen said. “How did they know we’d choose that particular spot?”

  It was a fair question and one for which Knight had no answer, but illogical or not, it had happened. Now they needed to focus on getting out. The muted sound of Rook’s machine gun reached his ears, adding urgency to that purpose.

  He turned a slow circle and realized that they were not in a pit at all, but rather at a junction, where several subterranean passages intersected. “One of these has to lead back to the surface,” he said. He peered down each in turn, testing the dark corridors with thermal view. The mere act of concentrating on the visual input seemed to intensify his migraine, but he ground his teeth through the discomfort. One of the tunnels, which if straight would lead under the pyramid, showed a residual heat trace. “That’s the warmest.”

  “What does that mean?” Bishop asked.

  “Probably nothing good,” Queen said, bringing her rifle to the ready. “But it’s a place to start.”

  “I’ll take the lead,” Knight said. It was not merely chivalry that motivated him. His enhanced vision represented their best chance at early detection of booby traps or a force of men waiting in ambush. He slung his sniper rifle across his back—in the close confines of the tunnel, the CheyTac’s length and seven-round magazine would be a liability. He switched to the MP5 he carried as his secondary weapon.

  The heat signature grew stronger as he advanced into the tunnel, as did his sense of foreboding. The throbbi
ng in his head was growing more intense, and he was having trouble concentrating and making sense of what he was seeing. The temperature changes he was registering seemed to be everywhere, as if the air itself was heating up.

  “Disgusting.”

  Bishop’s whispered comment stopped him in his tracks. He had been so focused on trying to see what lay ahead that he had neglected to consult with his other senses. He closed his eyes, and let the warm thick air drift over him. The pungent familiar odor stung his nose, but before he could comment, Queen said aloud what he was thinking.

  “Shit. More pigs.”

  “Back. We need to go back.” But before he could take a step, he felt a fetid breeze stir the air, carrying with it the faint noise of animal grunts and the clatter of hooves on stone.

  He realized it was already too late.

  In Mano’s compound, they had faced a few dozen of the creatures Rook had nicknamed ‘hell pigs,’ and they had narrowly escaped being ripped to shreds. If the seething red blob of heat surging toward them from the depths of the tunnel system was any indication, the herd they now faced numbered in the hundreds.

  28

  Endgame, New Hampshire

  “Desperado?” Aleman saw Boucher’s eyes move from Deep Blue to himself, looking for an explanation.

  Desperado. Aleman drew in a breath. “It’s our walk-away code. Abandon ship.”

  The protocol was actually a little more involved than that, as was the term itself. In chess, desperado was a strategy for inflicting the most damage from a piece that was already doomed. In this instance, Endgame itself was that piece. While the security team and the various intruder defenses might keep the authorities out or even inflict heavy losses, there was only one possible outcome: Endgame was already lost.

  Desperado was a two-stage contingency for dealing with that no-win scenario. The first stage was the evacuation of all non-essential personnel, which in this case meant everyone that wasn’t in the control room. When the Black and White support teams heard that code-word, they were to drop everything and head for the nearest safe exit, which for most was the faux outhouse just above the Labs section of the complex. The fact that the imminent raid was being staged at the decommissioned Post One entrance suggested that the authorities had access to the original site plans, but the outhouse-elevator was a more recent addition. Once everyone was clear of the complex, their only priority was self-preservation. Get as far from Endgame as possible, start a new life somewhere, and never look back. Once they were clear, the bio-safety doors would drop, buying a little more time for those who remained behind to finish the protocol.

  Stage two required complete sterilization of the site. Every piece of physical evidence that might jeopardize the surviving members of Endgame and Chess Team had to be destroyed, including the quantum computer that was now the team’s only lifeline.

  Deep Blue sank wearily into his chair at the console and stared at the multiple feeds displayed on the wall screens. The team in Mexico, stranded, divided, under fire. Post One, surrounded by men in tactical gear and blue FBI windbreakers. Radar images of an advancing phalanx of Black Hawk helicopters, probably on their way to reinforce the siege.

  “I’ll take care of things here,” the former president said in a weary, resigned voice. “You guys get clear. Dom, I don’t know how much time we’ll have. Can you arrange transport out of Mexico City?”

  Boucher shook his head in confusion. “Slow down, Tom. What are you saying? Get clear? I’m not leaving.”

  Aleman jerked in his chair as if he had touched a live wire, but managed a wan smile. “That goes for me, too. You’re stuck with us.”

  “Desperado isn’t a suggestion,” Deep Blue said, his voice patient but firm. “It’s an order. You’re going to be able to do a lot more for them on the outside, but you have to go now.” He turned back to the screens as if the matter was concluded. “King, you were right about the ruins being a trap. Can you extract the others?”

  “Negative.” King’s voice was startlingly clear in the control room, as was the intermittent noise of gunfire. “But the situation is under control up here. Concentrate on helping them get out of that hole.”

  “Roger.”

  “And Blue… Did I hear you correctly? ‘Desperado?’”

  “Affirmative, King. We’ve got the law knocking at the door. I’ll stay online as long as I can.”

  “Understood.” A pause. “I need you to patch a call through to George Pierce.”

  Deep Blue did not question the request. “Standby.”

  With a few keystrokes, he made the connection, and as the ring tone began to sound, Deep Blue muted the feed and turned to face Aleman and Boucher again. “Why are you still here?”

  Boucher shook his head. “I’m not going.”

  Deep Blue’s patience evaporated like flash paper. “Damn it, Dom. I need you out there. They need you.”

  Boucher was adamant. “I can’t help them. Don’t you see? Whoever did this used me to get to you. I’m damaged goods. All my contacts are compromised. There’s nothing I can do and nowhere for me to run, so I might as well stay here and help you.”

  Aleman could see that Boucher had hit the right pressure point. Unlike the men and women of the support teams, Boucher was a high-profile public figure and the only one of them who was definitely on the authorities’ radar.

  Deep Blue stared at Boucher, his look of irritation giving way to sadness. Finally, he nodded. “It’s the Dom and Tom show, then.” He turned to Aleman, his expression hardening in anticipation of refusal. “You have to go, Lew. Grab a q-phone and get clear. I’ll keep the net open as long as I can, but once it goes down, it will be up to you to bring them…” He faltered for second. “To keep them safe.”

  A wave of cold numbness washed over Aleman. This can’t be happening.

  Deep Blue took something from his pocket and pressed it into Aleman’s hands. “Go, Lew. Before it’s too late.”

  Aleman felt his body responding, following the former president’s explicit orders to the letter, but his mind was gripped by a fugue of disbelief that did not dissipate until he stepped out through the door to the ramshackle outhouse, which disguised the entrance to the Endgame complex. He wrinkled his nose against the foul odor of raw sewage—a chemical trick to discourage hikers from attempting to utilize the facility for its advertised purpose—and slipped on a pair of sport-frame sunglasses.

  The sky was beginning to lighten; it would be dawn soon, but the glasses went automatically into night-vision mode, penetrating the shadows under the canopy of trees. The forest was quiet. The support staff had long since melted into the woods. There was no sign that the FBI agents had grown wise to the alternate entrance. “I’m out.”

  A somber voice sounded in his head. “Understood. It was a pleasure serving with you, Lew. I have faith in you.”

  Aleman didn’t reply. What could he say?

  As he headed into the woods, he squeezed the object in his fist so tightly that his fingers grew stiff. He knew what it was without looking, a uniquely carved piece of ebony that resembled the king chess piece, but instead of the traditional crown and cross, the piece was capped with an eagle’s head in flight. When Tom Duncan had handed the carving to him, it was a symbolic message more explicit than anything he could have expressed in words.

  Aleman had received it loud and clear.

  29

  Mexico

  King felt like a juggler, monitoring three separate events, interacting with each just long enough to maintain control before shifting his attention to the next.

  The ongoing battle with the cartel soldiers was happening right before his eyes. Rook was holding them at bay with the machine gun, but how long could that continue?

  Queen, Knight and Bishop were running for their lives in the maze of tunnels below. Was there anything he could do to help them?

  The sound of a phone, ringing in his ears…a click and a tentative mumbled greeting.

  “Hello?
”

  “George, it’s Jack. Take Fi and go. Right now. Keep her safe.”

  “That bad?”

  “That bad.” There was no time to articulate a more detailed response, and even if he had been inclined to do so, a deafening burst from the 240B made the point much more succinctly. When the last echoes faded, he continued. “Be careful. Don’t trust anyone. You’re in charge now.”

  Pierce was silent for a moment, and King wondered if his old friend understood exactly what he was saying. “Is there anything I…we, can do to help?”

  “Not this time. Gotta go. Good luck.” He ended the call, confident that both his daughter and the secret entrusted to him by his ancestor and friend, Alexander Diotrephes, were in good hands.

  One less ball to juggle.

  He turned back to the gaping hole in the ruins. The virtual display showed the location of the rest of the team. The parts of the tunnel system they had already navigated appeared as ghost images, but there was little of value there.

  “Reloading,” Rook called out, pulling King’s attention once more to the immediate problem. He dropped down beside Rook and thrust his SCAR in the direction of the enemy, loosing short bursts of covering fire, while Rook fed a fresh belt of ammunition into the machine gun. King could feel the heat radiating from the barrel of the weapon. The battle had already gone on far too long.

  Rook slammed the feed-tray cover shut and racked a round into the firing chamber. “I’m up.”

  “Hold your fire,” King advised. The report from a volley of enemy bullets forced him once more behind the stubby walls, but the shots whizzed harmlessly overhead. “Get ready to pick up.”

  Rook jerked his head in the direction of the recently opened pit. “Going down?”

  King glanced over his shoulder, checking the situation below, scanning the ruins for a better position, and more than anything else looking for inspiration. “Bad idea. We’ll have a better chance finding an exit for them up here. Let’s get to that pyramid.”