by Kane Gilmour
Bishop stepped out of the portal again, only this time, he backed into the room. After another step backward, he was fully into the room, backing toward Fenrir and firing his rifle into the portal, sweeping the barrel left and right.
Then they came.
Dire wolf after dire wolf poured out of the opening toward Bishop. The first wave of them crashed into him, sending him flying toward Fenrir, where his armored body slammed into Fenrir’s second left-side leg, just as it lifted from the floor and stepped forward. It was like getting hit by a bus. The impact launched him back into the room. He hit the floor hard and slid for a few feet before coming to a stop. He didn’t get up.
King saw twenty, then thirty, then forty of the creatures enter the room, some so eager that they climbed over each other. Fenrir had recovered from its wounds, or was simply ignoring the thirteen ruptured sacks hanging from its underside like popped balloons. It turned its slathering jaws toward the weapons that were barking at it, spitting bullets like vicious hornet stings. Carrack, Beck and Deep Blue had all added their weapons fire to the melee, but even added to Queen’s, Rook’s and Knight’s fire, they were not able to hold back the tide of oncoming dire wolves.
King looked up at Knight and the pack sitting next to him. He whistled to the man through his fingers and shouted, “Knight!”
Between shots, Knight glanced down. King pointed to the pack. Knight pushed it over the side without hesitation. King bent his knees and snatched the heavy bundle from the air, squatting to absorb the impact. He opened it up to confirm its contents.
The suitcase nuke. His suitcase nuke.
As the melee came closer, King did the only thing he could think of.
He turned and ran.
Gilmour, Kane Robinson, Jeremy
Ragnarok: A Jack Sigler Thriller
SIXTY-NINE
Aboard the Persephone, Fenris Kystby, Norway
4 November, 0415 Hrs
The huge flying-wing aircraft settled gently in the snow, the thrusters of the engines blasting the white flakes in all directions, clearing a landing spot for itself.
Lewis Aleman sat in the computer room with the makeshift desk and chairs, frantically searching for more information about portals, alternate dimensions, Fenrir and dire wolves, as were Sara Fogg, George Pierce and Black Five back in New Hampshire. He could feed anything they found to Deep Blue over the earbud communicator in their leader’s ear.
“So, we’re thinking that this Fenrir thing might be secreting scent out of glands. The scent could carry pheromones, and that would explain the control over some of the team. Look for something that looks like a sphincter, or large pore. If you could…”
Deep Blue cut him off. “Timing, Lewis, timing. I think that problem is solved for now.” Aleman could hear tons of background noise on the line. He knew Deep Blue’s helmet was off, but at the moment, his anonymity wasn’t a concern. “We’re seeing increasing numbers of dire wolves, too, and we’re down several men. We need a way to stop these things and to kill the portal. We might have to go with your plan for the Crescent.”
“Working on it.”
“I know,” Deep Blue said. “But work faster.” He clicked off and Aleman’s earpiece went quiet.
Aleman shouted in surprise as the metal door to the room slammed open.
King stood in the doorway, dirty, bloody and missing the top portion of his armor. He was out of breath from his sprint through the snow drifts to the Persephone.
When he spoke, his voice sounded like a growl. “I need you to do exactly as I say.”
That’s when Aleman noticed the suitcase nuke clutched under King’s arm.
SEVENTY
Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway
4 November, 0430 Hrs
Knight had a bird’s eye view of the entire conflict. He still didn’t feel like himself after his ordeal on the other side of the portal. His brain felt loose, his thoughts all erratic. He had a hard time remembering what had happened in all the time he was on the other side. But he and Bishop were able to agree that Knight must either have been on the other side for much longer-and they realized time worked differently on that side-or else his body had aged at an accelerated rate in the short span of time he was there. Either way, Knight was a few years older now.
Although strangely, Bishop wasn’t.
According to the big Iranian American, they had both been on the other side for about the same amount of time-Bishop having entered a portal on a rope like Tarzan just moments after Knight had been carried through the one on Westminster bridge. In the end they came to agree that time had worked differently for each of them, either because they had gone through different portals, or because Knight spent most of his time on the lower plane while Bishop entered the other world atop the cliff. Knight knew that time ran slower the further you got from Earth’s surface. You needed an atomic watch to see the difference, but the effect might be exaggerated in Fenrir’s dimension.
What Knight hadn’t told Bishop was that, when they met at the top of the cliff, Bishop had been covered in dried white dire wolf blood. It covered his armored chest and the side of his face. Bishop told him about his encounter with the dire wolf, that he’d hallucinated his worst fear-becoming a Regen once more, but Knight suspected the man had actually attacked, killed and eaten a dire wolf. Having personally survived Bishop as a Regen, it was a nightmare neither man wanted to think about, so Knight didn’t. He put the memory out of his mind with no intention of ever telling Bishop.
A burst of gunfire brought him back to the battle.
Knight focused on the chaos below him. Deep Blue fired on leaping dire wolves. Queen was back to her preferred method of up-close devastation with a wickedly curved blade, moving with a display of predatory violence that put the dire wolves to shame. Carrack, Beck and Rook were all near each other, unleashing a barrage of bullets at the giant creature’s sack-covered chest, which didn’t seem to hurt it as much as distract it.
In a perfect sniping position, he focused on the largest target, the behemoth. He considered the chest, but rupturing the hanging wombs wasn’t doing any real damage. Instead, he targeted the eyes, thinking if he couldn’t kill the gigantic animal, he could at least handicap it.
He lay on the metal catwalk and supported the FN-SCAR under the barrel and sighted one of the creature’s round eyes. The SCAR was a Belgian rifle with an effective range of about 1200 feet. He was less than a hundred feet from the beast. Of course, the monster was eighty feet tall; it would be an easy target from any distance.
He fired twice into the beast’s left eye and the creature roared, shaking the foundations of the underground lab. The metal catwalk rattled, shaking Knight to the point where he wondered if the whole catwalk system might come down.
The team continued their assault on Fenrir. It struck out wildly, unaware of where the bullet strike to its eye had originated. Its torso spun from side to side, swinging its arms and flailing the dangling sacks so hard that some burst open, dropping dire wolves sixty feet to their deaths. The giant snapped its tremendous jaws at the soldiers on the ground and pounded its feet, trying to crush them.
Knight waited until the creature turned again to snap toward Rook’s position. Rook ran out of the way and leapt over a pile of rock and sand, sliding down the other side. The beast’s head lunged at Rook, and then swung back to snarl at Anna Beck-Knight’s girlfriend-as she fired on the creature from behind, helping Bishop to his feet with her other hand. He was once again firing at the newly arriving dire wolves as they entered the fray through the portal.
The right eye stayed frustratingly out of Knight’s view, so he took a few more shots at the already damaged and closed-over left eye.
Then he heard a new kind of roar. This one was loud and higher pitched, more like a whine.
A mechanical whine.
When Knight looked to the hangar doors, he understood that he didn’t need to hit the creature’s right eye. King was back, and he was goi
ng to hit the eye-and everything else.
SEVENTY-ONE
Outside the Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway
4 November, 0445 Hrs
The Crescent, Chess Team’s personal stealth, troop transport ship, looked like a giant croissant that had gone gray and black from mold. Radar-reflective material covered the ship from one tip of its half-moon shape across 80 feet of breadth to its other tip. The giant, flat plane could carry 25,000 pounds of load and travel at above Mach 2. Its newly designed VTOL engines could run in a silent stealth mode, which sounded like little more than a strong wind with an undercurrent of high-pitched metallic squeal. When the engines were running without the stealth technology, the massive engines roared like the sound of twelve 747 jumbo jets. It cost 500 million dollars, not counting the billions in research and development for the prototype.
Today, Jack Sigler, the man known as King, intended to crash it.
He was flying the huge plane alone. The pilots wanted to come with him on his suicide mission, but he hadn’t allowed it. He had been taking flying lessons, and had been at the helm of the Crescent in the air and on takeoff. He had yet to land the plane, but for today’s exercise, that wouldn’t matter.
Sitting on the co-pilot’s seat and strapped in with a seatbelt was the suitcase nuke King had lost in Manhattan. The goal was to get the bomb through a portal and close the portal before the timer detonated. If for some reason the portal couldn’t be closed-or the device didn’t make it into a portal, there was the remote control he held in his hand.
King looked at the device.
He pictured Sara. Her sarcastic smile. Her sharp eyes. He could hear her voice, whispering in his ear, but he didn’t like the words. Do it Jack, you have no choice.
I have a daughter, he thought. I can’t.
Fiona came into his thoughts like a specter, her voice, high and raspy, sounded like a breeze. It’s you or the world, daddy.
King knew the words were his own thoughts, imagining what he thought they might say, after weeping, shouting and threatening to kill him themselves. It had to be done. They would understand that.
The remote clattered to the floor where King threw it.
“Love you guys,” he whispered, then focused on aiming the world’s largest boomerang.
King had swept the sickle-shaped transport out over the Norwegian Sea, before bringing it back toward his target-the open hangar doors on the side of the lab. He could see how cleverly the facility had been built into the landscape, using the night vision features built into the cockpit of the vehicle. The doors were hidden from pretty much everything except a direct approach from the sea-and this far north along the Norwegian coast was well off the standard shipping lanes. The timing for this stunt would be crucial. He sped up on approach and then slowed just as he was reaching the open doors, carefully adjusting his aim.
He tightened the seatbelt strap crisscrossing over his chest and prayed the high tech crash gear did its job.
The plane slipped through the massive open hanger.
Then everything happened at once.
Fenrir turned to the hangar doors and saw the fast-approaching black plane. The monster opened its gaping mouth wide to howl.
King hit the gas.
The Crescent rammed into the creature’s open mouth, snapping off its mighty lower jaw and plowing into the beast’s flaccid-skinned chest. The thrust from the plane knocked the giant back as it flailed in pain. The Crescent ’s engines roared, pushing the giant back and together, they slipped through the portal.
King opened his eyes to a world of white.
He was still alive, but where? He reached out a hand and found the world around him was pliable, like a cushion…or an air bag. King was surrounded on all sides by nylon airbags designed to protect pilots from controlled crashes. While his crash wasn’t exactly controlled, he wasn’t moving at Mach 2, either.
King drew a pocket knife, flipped it open and stabbed at the airbags. One by one, the bags popped and deflated. King’s head spun as he fumbled with the seatbelt. His chest ached. Broken ribs, he thought. Could have been worse.
He looked at the seat next to him. The suitcase nuke was still in place, held tight by the belts.
Still might work.
King flinched when a pair of hands reached around him.
“Slow down, killer,” Rook said and quickly unbuckled his teammate.
“Rook, what are you doing here?”
“Same thing as you,” Rook said. “Playing the big hero so maybe I can get laid tonight.”
King laughed, but groaned as his chest filled with pain. “Seri-ously.”
“Seriously?” Rook said. “I lost a lot of men in Siberia. I ain’t losing you, too.”
King looked in Rook’s cool blue eyes and nodded. “Let’s go.”
Rook helped King through the back of the plane, which seemed to be largely in one piece. They stumbled when the Crescent shifted underfoot.
“FYI, that Fenrir bitch is beneath us.”
A shadow shifted at the back of the plane, where the loading ramp was bent open.
“Shit,” Rook said, then led King to a chair. “Stay,” he ordered like a dog trainer. He ran into the plane’s armory and returned a moment later carrying two chrome Desert Eagle magnum handguns. He kissed them one at a time. “I’ve missed you, girls.”
He handed one to King and walking as one with Rook helping to support King’s weight, they made for the back of the plane. The Magnums only held seven rounds each, but the. 50 caliber bullets would take a dire wolf’s head clean off. Just about any hit would be a kill shot. And Rook had four spare magazines in his pocket.
As they exited the plane, King raised his gun and fired. The bullet struck a waiting dire wolf’s shoulder removing the arm and dropping the beast. It wasn’t dead, but it would be soon.
They moved as one, leaving the plane, scrambling over Fenrir’s squishy body, which was slick with slime from its burst wombs. They ran, and fired, and scrambled and fired some more until their bullets ran out. Both reloaded fast, fired twice more each and then ducked into the brilliant portal, leaving the other world, which Rook had seen in shades of green and King in white, behind.
They emerged on the other side, but King didn’t feel safe.
The nuke he’d left behind would detonate in four minutes.
SEVENTY-TWO
Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway
4 November, 0450 Hrs
Queen sighed with relief when Rook and King hobbled out of the portal. She was covered in cuts and scrapes, her ankle was twisted, maybe broken. Her hand was swollen like a red balloon, she was coated in dried dire wolf blood and secretions and she could only move by hopping on her unaffected foot, but she still laid down fire on the dire wolf army that turned toward Rook and King as they separated.
Beck had seen the situation and moved over to help support her and share the last of her ammunition-two normal-sized curved 32 round magazines. Together, they covered their teammates as the men scrambled toward them.
Bishop moved to the high ground of the metal stairs in the corner of the giant room and fired down on dire wolves. A pile of ten of the creatures lay dead below the landing where he stood; an effective barricade.
Rook and King split up. King held his chest, but seemed to be recovering from whatever wound had slowed him down. Rook caught Queen’s eyes and pointed to Bishop. “To the stairs,” he called.
When he saw Queen take a limping step, he shot the leg off a dire wolf and ran to her aid. But instead of helping her run, as he had King, he scooped her over his shoulder and carried her.
“Rook!” she shouted angrily.
“I’ll run, you shoot!” he replied. “We’re running out of time!”
Queen’s body shook with every step, but she managed to trace a line of bullets across the chest of a dire wolf pounding toward them.
“Time for what?” she asked.
Across the room, Deep Blue ran to meet
King. The Russian came over to them from behind her barricade of dire wolf corpses, now coated in thick white blood.
“Seriously, Jack? My 500-million-dollar stealth plane? You couldn’t come up with a better plan than that?” Deep Blue fired his MP5 twice, hitting dire wolves that ran at them. His face showed only concentration as he focused on hitting his targets.
King couldn’t tell whether the former President of the United States was joking with him or really upset, but decided he didn’t care.
“It worked. We need to find a way to shut down the portal. Knight found the suitcase nuke on the other side and brought it back. I remembered to arm it this time. Probably would be good if we could shut down that portal before it goes off in…” King checked his digital watch, “three minutes.”
“We need to completely destroy the containment apparatus. The metal arms that Rook blew up before-” Deep Blue began. He fired another volley of bullets at the oncoming dire wolves and his weapon was empty.
“That didn’t work out so well last time,” King said, pulling out a new magazine of 9 mm bullets from one of the Velcro attachments on his suit and handing it to the man.
“Ale says Rook was on the right track. We need to get them all-not just the two. And then cut the power.”
“Wait,” the Russian woman spoke up. “I have seen it. A power relay.”
Both Deep Blue and King turned to her and at the same time said, “Where?”
“Follow me. I saw it on a video camera. There was a map.”
“Go with her,” Deep Blue ordered. “We’ll take care of the cage.”
The woman circled around the side of the energy ball, moving along the wall, back behind the side of the sphere where the dire wolves were still coming through. King followed her, while Deep Blue provided cover fire.