Sara shushed her and then spoke into the phone. “Ira? It’s Sara.”
Beck could faintly hear a voice at the other end of the line, but was unable to make out what the man was saying. “No, just listen. This place is hot and the fire is spreading fast. I don’t know what it is yet, but you have to initiate containment protocols… Red… It’s an island for God’s sake. Activate the National Guard and have them close off the bridges. Well, all of them. Anywhere there’s a connection to the mainland. No one in or out.”
“Does that include us?” Ellen asked, her voice rising an octave.
This time it was Beck that silenced her with a withering glance.
“Right,” Sara continued, ignoring the disturbance. “And activate the Emergency Notification System. Tell everyone to stay in their homes and lock the doors… No, I’m staying. I’m going to keep working it as long as I can… Too late.”
A long silence followed, then the tinny voice sounded again.
“I will. Whatever this is, it’s not following a linear vector. As soon as I know more, I’ll call. Meanwhile, just shut this place down.” She glanced at Beck. “I’d better go.”
As soon as she ended the call, Ellen uncorked her bottle of panic. “You just trapped us here!”
Beck ignored the outburst. “Okay, what the hell were those things? What’s going on?”
“We’re calling them wendigos. It’s from an old Native American myth about cannibal monsters.” Sara looked back at Ellen. “She’s the expert.”
Beck frowned. “Those things weren’t a myth. And we both saw what happened to that doctor.”
Sara shook her head. “Ellen, I need you to calm down and talk me through this again. You were exposed almost a full day ago. What’s different about you?”
“It’s the curse,” Ellen said, desolately. “The curse. I’m Eleanor Dare’s ancestor. She was spared, and now I have been, too. But everyone else, all the people here who have perpetuated the myth of the Lost Colony, ignoring their sins… They’re all guilty.”
“Knock it off,” Beck snarled in a voice that shocked Ellen into silence. “This isn’t some bullshit curse, okay? It’s a disease, and this lady here is the person who can stop it. So give her some straight answers. If you don’t like that, you’re free to get out right now.”
Ellen shrank back in her chair, but nodded.
Sara put a restraining hand on Beck’s arm, but the latter could see that her intervention was not unappreciated. “Everybody just take a breath, okay? Ellen, you might be right about the ‘curse,’ but Anna is right, too. This is a disease, and we can fight it. I need to know how it works, and how it spreads. How did it start? What was the last thing that happened before the appearance of symptoms?”
“Jason found something.” Ellen’s voice was hollow, beaten. “An old animal bone.”
“Are you sure it was an animal bone?” Sara pressed.
“Yes. It was the wrong shape to be…” Ellen trailed off, but then sat up a little straighter. “I thought it was the wrong shape to be human. Too long and thin, but it could have been a wendigo bone.”
Sara nodded. “I’ll need to see that bone. Can you take me there?”
“It’s at the Fort Raleigh historical site.”
“Can you walk me to the spot?”
Ellen swallowed. “Okay.”
“Fort Raleigh it is,” Beck said, slotting the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled to life. She quickly backed out of the parking space, and then shifted into drive.
There was almost no warning. She glimpsed movement in her peripheral vision, and then something slammed into the car, rocking it sideways. Outside the windows, there was a flurry of motion, pale bodies and twisted, misshapen limbs covering the windshield. Beck stomped the accelerator, and the Versa lurched forward, only to encounter resistance, as if the tires had run into a curb.
She touched the brakes, shifted into reverse and hit the gas again, and this time she was rewarded with movement, albeit in the wrong direction. The engine revved louder as the car picked up speed. Outside, the attacking creatures fell back, taken unaware by the move, and in that instant, Beck counted more than a dozen wendigos, at least twice as many as she had seen in the parking lot only a few moments before.
Contagion or curse, whatever the cause, it was spreading fast.
Beck shifted into drive and accelerated forward, this time with enough momentum to break free of the combined strength of the wendigos. One of the creatures crashed noisily onto the hood, but rolled off. Another one rebounded off the front bumper, spilling onto the pavement directly in their path. With a sickening crunch that reverberated through the Versa’s interior, they rolled up and over the fallen creature. As the tires hit the pavement again, the car shot forward, slipping the stranglehold.
Beck felt relief at having escaped the attack, but no accompanying sense of satisfaction at having killed another of the creatures. The wendigos were as much victims as the people they hunted. The worst part was the knowledge that the same transformation might at any second add her to their rapidly growing ranks.
31
Mexico
Queen pushed forward, leveling her SCAR at the oncoming stampede. “Knight, find us another exit.”
Asya felt rooted in place by the sheer scope of the threat they now faced, but the thunderous report of Queen’s rifle broke her out of her paralysis. She aimed her own weapon into the seething mass and started firing.
The combined storm of lead slammed into the front of the advancing wave, and several of the pig-faced monsters went down, tumbling forward in a flurry of limbs. Asya kept pulling the trigger, pouring bullets into the boars until, with alarming suddenness, her rifle fell silent. She had fired out the entire thirty-round magazine in mere seconds.
The fallen beasts were piled up in the passage, momentarily blocking the way for the rest, but Asya could see the next wave climbing over the bodies of their dead kindred.
“Bishop,” Queen shouted. “Go!”
Asya spun on her heel, orienting on the bobbing blue icon that marked Knight’s position, and ran. She buttoned out the magazine, letting it fall, and then she fumbled a fresh one from her gear belt. Her fingers felt fat and clumsy. The simple act of reloading, which ought to have been second-nature after endless hours of rehearsals in training, now felt like a complicated three-dimensional puzzle.
Queen fired again, three-round bursts loosed with almost rhythmic perfection, which only seemed to underscore Asya’s inadequacies. With the magazine finally seated, Asya spun around just as Queen’s rifle went empty again.
The initial surge had been broken, but the boars were still coming, two and three at a time, the nearest less than ten yards away. Asya dropped it with a single shot that struck right above its porcine snout.
“Leapfrog,” Asya shouted. “I cover you.”
Queen instantly grasped the strategy and slipped past Asya, reloading as she went. Asya dropped two more boars, and then began backing down the passage.
“I’m up,” Queen shouted. “Your turn.”
Asya quickly found her stride. Fall back a few steps, turn, fire a few shots to cover Queen’s retreat, repeat. Yet the boars kept coming.
They made it back to the rubble strewn pit where the underground journey had begun and followed Knight down another tunnel that seemed to run along the perimeter of the ruin. About twenty yards along that passage, Asya saw another area where the roof had collapsed, littering the floor with huge chunks of rock. Two more tunnels branched off in different directions, but as she started down the tunnel Knight had chosen, she met him coming back out.
“Dead end,” he warned.
Queen backed into the open pit, firing down the tunnel. “Keep moving!” she urged.
Knight turned into the remaining passage while Asya covered Queen. The boars were still hunting them.
“I have idea,” Asya shouted as soon as Queen was in position again. She let her rifle hang from its sling, and quickly p
repped another grenade. “Knight. Come back, quickly.”
“Are you crazy?” Queen shouted, not looking away from the advancing beasts. “You’ll bring the whole place down on us.”
“It will work,” Asya countered. There was no time to explain why she was certain they would not be caught in a cave-in. She pulled the pin and then darted back into the open area and hurled the grenade down the passage they had just left. “Frag out.”
Knight had just returned to Queen’s side when the explosive device detonated. A gout of smoke and debris erupted from the tunnel mouth, showering them with particles, but the deadly storm of shrapnel and the main force of the blast itself had been absorbed by the tunnel walls. The cave-in Queen had feared was indeed happening, but because the place where they stood had already collapsed, there was nothing left to fall on them.
Queen kept her rifle trained on the dust cloud for several seconds but no boars emerged. “Okay,” she admitted, sounding just a little bit impressed. “Not bad. Next time though, give us a little more warning.”
“Should I not trust instincts?”
Queen inclined her head. “Point taken.”
Asya gestured to the rubble that already littered the floor. “I knew we would be safe here.”
“Safe, but still trapped.”
Before she could reply to that, Asya heard her brother’s voice, low and steady. “I take it you guys are still alive down there?”
“Roger,” Queen answered. “Bishop dealt with our pig problem. Now we just need to find a way out of this hole. Don’t suppose there’s a ladder laying around up there.”
“No ladder, but Bishop has given me an even better idea.”
Asya felt the scrutiny of her teammates. “Way to go, Bishop,” Knight murmured.
A blue dot appeared on the virtual map, marking a location that was outside the network of tunnels they had previously explored. “Get as close to this location as you can.”
“Is there an exit?” Queen asked.
“There will be.”
32
The explosion sent a tremor radiating through the surrounding stone, causing Parrish to hug the stone platform on which he lay. The blast had come from somewhere out in the ruins, underground he thought. The top of the pyramid was well outside the blast radius, but the shock had reverberated through the monument, shattering the illusion of safety.
He didn’t fully understand Beltran’s plan, but it was a safe bet that things were not quite working out as intended. Although the cartel had successfully brought down the stealth plane, the commando team was proving to be elusive, to the point that nobody seemed to have any idea where they were. The underground explosion was a sure sign that the Americans were still fighting, and unless Parrish was very wrong about them, they were probably going on the offensive.
Beltran turned to him and thrust the binoculars into his hands. “Find them.”
Parrish had to fight to keep his frustration in check. “You’ve lost the advantage here. It’s time to pull back.”
“Not until they are dead.”
“We’re not going to find them in the dark. Your only chance is to pull your men back and establish a secure perimeter, if it’s not already too late.”
“They’re here,” Beltran insisted. “That explosion proves it. The pigs were chasing them.”
The pigs. That was the part of this whole scheme that confused Parrish the most. The drug lord had been insistent; drive the Americans into the ruins and either drop them into the tunnels where a huge herd of semi-domesticated wild hogs were waiting to devour them, or force them to seek refuge atop the pyramid, where the bulk of Betran’s men lay in wait, poised to capture the intruders and sacrifice them to their bloody Aztec god. Parrish saw this as a needlessly complicated denouement to an otherwise perfect ambush, but Beltran was insistent. “Huitzilopochtli demands blood. Besides, my pigs need to eat,” he had said with a laugh, as he had outlined the plan earlier, and then he had added with a wink, “And so do my men.”
Parrish had been trying very hard not to think about what that might mean.
“Listen to me. You’ve already won. Those men out there are nothing. You’ve taken out a plane worth almost a billion dollars. Right now, Senator Marrs is leading a raid on the people who sent them here, and it’s a good bet the trail is going to lead right to the President of the United States. You have won.” He enunciated each word for emphasis. “But those soldiers aren’t going to just give up. They’re going to attack, and believe me, right now, they have the advantage.”
He could not tell if his plea was reaching Beltran. The cartel leader was nothing if not unpredictable, a dangerous mix of evil, insanity and intelligence. Parrish could only hope that the man possessed enough of the latter to know when he had reached the point of diminishing returns. The ensuing silence was a hopeful sign. The sky was lightening with the approach of dawn. Perhaps Beltran would at least wait for the arrival of daylight to renew his offensive.
But if the cartel leader had an answer for him, it was drowned out by the boom of yet another explosion. The pyramid heaved beneath Parrish. The binoculars fell from his hands as he threw his arms out once more, but this time the tremor did not abate. Instead, the sound of stones grinding together intensified, and everything began to move.
33
The M67 fragmentation grenade that Bishop had used to collapse the tunnel and block the stampeding boars contained a few ounces of Composition B high-explosives. The charge that she placed near the spot King had designated consisted of five pounds of C-4, and when she activated the remote trigger, most of that energy went straight up into the pyramid.
If he had not already been hunkered down with Rook at the edge of the ruins, anticipating the blast, the explosion would have knocked King flat. Even after the initial shock wave, the ground continued to shake as the pyramid tore itself apart, collapsing like a house of cards.
The comparison was not far off the mark. The explosion had jarred the foundation of the pyramid, like someone kicking a table leg, and fractured the limestone mortar that held everything together. The corner nearest the detonation began to crumble first, and then everything behind it slumped inward to fill the void. King spied movement atop the ancient temple, men with guns frantically trying to escape, but their ultimate fate was hidden from view as the pyramid’s collapse was eclipsed by a rising column of dust.
“Queen, what’s your status? Are you clear?”
There was silence on the net for a long time, too long, but then he heard coughing sounds. “We’re good,” Queen managed to say. “Can’t tell which way is up, but we’re all alive.”
King breathed a sigh of relief. “Stay where you are. We’re coming to you.”
He tapped Rook’s arm and together they rose, moving cautiously through the gloom, toward the cluster of blue icons that marked the location of the others. Visibility was nil, and the blast had wreaked havoc on the original map of the ruins, knocking down the few remaining walls and collapsing the sub-surface passages to create treacherous crevasses, forcing them to creep forward one careful step at a time.
“Scratch one more irreplaceable ancient monument off the list,” Rook said, as the dust finally started to settle and the scope of the damage became apparent.
Strangely, King felt no regret over the destruction of the pyramid. He had seen the bloodstains on its flanks. Whatever archaeological significance the place might have possessed had been overshadowed by the atrocities committed here in the name of Beltran’s perverse religious beliefs. Better to wipe such a place off the face of the Earth. With any luck, they had wiped out the leader of El Sol in the bargain. King was a lot more concerned about the fate of his teammates. Demolishing the pyramid had been a crazy gamble, with the lives of his friends—and his sister—in the balance, but it had paid off.
A few minutes later, they reached the edge of a large hole where Queen, Knight and Bishop had weathered the final demolition of the ruins. Rook peered down into the
rubble. “Somebody blink so we’ll know where you are.”
“Very funny, jackass,” Queen said, and even though he was looking right at her, King had trouble distinguishing her from the surrounding rubble.
He looked along the edge of the pit until he found a newly created slope of loose stone, a result of the pyramid’s collapse. “There’s your exit,” he told them. “What are you waiting for?”
34
Endgame, New Hampshire
The sun was just breaking over the mountaintops when the agents made their move. There was a loud whump as a shaped charge blew a neat hole in the outer door of Post One. The noise echoed through the empty corridors of the Labs section.
Tom Duncan peered at the video feed for the hidden surveillance camera trained on the disused entrance to the facility, watching as FBI SWAT team operators advanced to inspect the results of the attempted breach. The entire latch mechanism had been excised, allowing the door to swing open on its hinges, but beyond it was a wall of solid concrete.
“Will that slow them down?” Boucher asked.
“Maybe for a few minutes,” Duncan replied with a shrug. He switched his gaze to the other screen, which showed the ongoing mission in Mexico. He was relieved that King had turned the tables on the cartel, especially as there was very little that he could do to help them.
“So what happens next?” Boucher made a show of looking at the control console. “Is there a self-destruct button around here somewhere?”
“An app, actually. Buttons are so twentieth century.”
“So are we.”
Duncan smiled ruefully. “A hundred feet below us is a cavern filled with natural gas. We’ve been using it to generate power for the facility, but when I initiate the self-destruct, the gas will be piped into the ventilation system, filling the entire complex. Ten minutes after that, incendiary charges in critical areas will ignite the gas and completely sanitize the entire facility.”
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