Bullets started slamming into the floor and the walls around them. The suit armor finally toppled over, narrowly missing a rolling Anya as it crashed to the floor. Collins saw that the Russian was done, he wanted out but they were in his way. Collins wasn’t about to raise his hands and give Zallas free passage to the cable car that was just pulling in. As Jack tried to get Ellenshaw’s attention below a bullet hit the colonel in the left shoulder and he felt the sting. Sarah saw him go down and there was nothing she could do about it.
Jack and his rescue team were about to be overrun.
Zallas knew he would make it with the human shield in front of him. He turned and grabbed Ben-Nevin once more and pulled him close.
“You will stay with me, my friend, until I have in my hands what I was promised. I want those men and I want what those Gypsies took from the temple!”
One of Zallas’s men fired a long burst from his AK-47 and the mobster looked up in time to see the dark-haired American go down. To the Russian that was a start. He had bad vibes ever since meeting the American with the intense green eyes. He smiled again as he shook Ben-Nevin and pointed. “Now you’ll see how we conduct business in Russia!” he said smiling maniacally.
* * *
Mikla was standing on the highest parapet on the east side of the castle. The giant Golia reached up and took hold of the ornate weather vane for balance and let loose a howl that was heard even over the building storm. Mikla was calling for help.
The mountain above the castle suddenly came alive with a black-on-black movement that looked as if ants were heading down the side of the mountain. The Golia had arrived to battle one last time against the forces of Pharaoh.
* * *
“That’s it, I’m out!” Sarah said as she looked around hoping that Mendohlson and his men had something extra to give. They did not. Their volume of fire diminished. They were done for.
Zallas was seen pulling the Israeli colonel around by the collar as his men kept up the withering fire as they worked their way to the platform. The cable car was there looking none too good after the wild ride down with screaming guests that had been terrified by what they still thought was a special effects show gone awry.
* * *
“You better pray that old Gypsy and her backward people are down below or you will never leave here, Jew Colonel,” Zallas said as his anti-Semitism came flowing from his mouth like corruption from a wound. “They better have what you have promised me.” He shook the colonel once more as he walked behind his curtain of men, dodging from fake castle appointment to potted plant. “Look at this, you are responsible for this!”
As Zallas looked around, his club was a shambles and as it stood he knew he would at least lose millions in a delayed opening. Dmitri Zallas was the type of man who never looked at the legal ramifications of anything he came across, he always had the fix in, just as he did at the moment with the interior minister. The damage could be controlled but that didn’t mean that the Jew had made a deal and he was going to stick to it if Zallas had to kill every last Gypsy inside Romania. And then he would start in the neighboring countries—nobody lied to Dmitri Zallas or ripped him off.
* * *
“Doc!”
Professor Ellenshaw heard the shout coming from behind. The din of battle from up top was starting to slacken as their rescuers ran low on ammunition. Charlie eased his head around the woman he was protecting with his body. He saw Jason Ryan and Will Mendenhall lying on the cold stone floor looking at them from a small cubbyhole at the end of the stage. It had taken them ten minutes to work their way outside and then to one of the ornate leaded glass windows where it took another three minutes to break through the lead that held most of the stained glass in place.
“Come on, Doc, we gotta split, man,” Ryan said, frantically waving Ellenshaw and his charges away from the main floor.
Ellenshaw started with the girl beneath him. It was the young woman dressed as Janis Joplin, and that made crazy Charlie give her a double take.
“Must have been one hell of a show,” he said as he pushed the young girl, who was still wearing her sunglasses, toward Ryan, who also gave Janis a second look.
Next Pete was pushing Jim Morrison, and holding on to his long fringe-lined vest were the three Supremes screaming as bullets stitched the thick brick walls. Each of the Russian performers, all dressed as past greats for Drake Andrews’s performance, was sent through the small opening to the rear of the stage and the false front of the castle beyond. Ryan and Will exchanged astonished looks as the evening just became far stranger.
“Okay, come on, Johnny, move it!” Ryan yelled out as the second to last performer, a kid dressed all in black like Johnny Cash, almost got stuck in the small opening.
“Wow!” Mendenhall said as the last man through was none other than Drake Andrews.
“Hey, dude, thanks a lot,” he said as he started crawling through the hole and into the small passageway.
“Come on, Doc!” Ryan said as he finally assisted Ellenshaw and Pete through the opening. “Good job getting those kids out of there,” Jason said to Ellenshaw and Pete as bullets slammed into the hole from upstairs.
“Where to now?” Pete asked as he waited for the others.
“The drawbridge in the front, it’s the only way out to get to the platform, we can’t take a chance getting to the stairs from the main room,” Mendenhall answered as he pushed Pete forward through the tunnel beside the stage.
“The drawbridge?”
* * *
Jack, Carl, Mendohlson, Sarah, Anya, Everett, and three of the Israeli commandos were forced to break off and make a run for the far corner away from the platform, as they could no longer stand and fight.
Before Jack realized what was happening he was taken off guard by the brass of the Russian, as he not only directed men to the cable car to hold it, he was actually sending twenty men after his small retreating unit. As he watched the men turn down the balcony hallway the castle gave a giant lurch as the concrete sealant around the foundation and stone block walls finally gave up its hold on the mountain. The castle slipped forward on its foundation by one and a half feet. This time the undermined anchor bolts twisted free of the earth until there was no longer anything holding the castle tight to the mountain. It was starting to come down and Jack knew it.
“To the roof, we’ll catch the cable car from there and hope Mr. Ryan finds a way up, let’s move, people,” he said as Major Mendohlson took the lead and rushed for the stairwell at the end of the hall and just hoped it went up at least one more floor to the castle’s promenade at the top.
* * *
Zallas and his men immediately realized the Americans had broken completely off. They made a mad dash for the giant cable car that had docked just moments before. It was still partially in motion as it swung into the loading area. Three of the Russian’s men ran to the ornate wooden door but the automatic system had failed and the double doors remained closed. The men batted on the clouded window but the doors remained closed. The first man tried to look inside and found the view obscured. He stepped back and that was when he noticed that every specially etched glass window was covered in a thin film of red. The man’s eyes widened when the doors suddenly hissed open and before he could stop the first two men they ran inside.
The Russian heard the screaming men just as they broke into the promenade for the cars. The men inside were screaming and the large, heavy car was rocking on its cables. As the remaining men stopped short of the car, Stanus broke free of the doors and stood silhouetted in the ornate lighting from the interior. The beast was in the standing position. Its black muzzle shining with the fresh blood of the two men that were now scattered all over the Queen Anne decor. Stanus was breathing heavy as it took in the startled men standing before it. The yellow eyes were now dulled by pain and its two bullet wounds were bleeding heavily, one from its upper right back and one in the back of the neck. Stanus shook its massive head back and forth sending saliva a
nd blood flying in all directions and then it gathered its strength and raised its muzzle high and roared. The sound shook the platform and had the toughest men in Eastern Europe reversing as quickly as they could.
Ben-Nevin was the only one to react since he had become used to seeing these creatures. He allowed Zallas to step behind as he removed his nine-millimeter. Stanus lowered his head and fixed the colonel with his eyes as if daring the man to shoot.
Four more men turned and decided they would rather face this strange giant dog than face Zallas. They slowly brought up their AK-47s and took aim.
At that precise moment all the hell stored up in the history of the dark Carpathian Mountains broke free. The Golia struck the castle in force. Mikla was the first to jump from the top of the cable car where it had hidden amid the pulleys and platform cables and leaped onto the roof and then to the floor, crashing through the thin aluminum manufactured to resemble thick wooden beams. It was on all fours and was taking up station in front of his older brother, Stanus, growling and making the men hesitate just long enough for the rest of the male Golia to strike from the open sides of the promenade. They hit with such force that the men had no time to react. While backing away, Ben-Nevin fired blindly, missing Mikla by inches as the Golia moved and struck, barely missing the colonel as he turned and ran with Zallas and the last fifteen men.
The rest of his assassins were facing the wrath of the Golia and started losing very quickly as one man would go down and three of the giant wolves would strike as a team and the man was soon rendered in pieces. The frightening screams of the men covered up the sound and masked the movement of the castle as it broke completely free of the mountain, tearing the electrical conduits that snaked through the cement foundation, making the lights flicker and then go out completely.
In the sheer blackness in the few seconds it took for the emergency lighting to come on, Zallas heard his men being torn to pieces by something out of a nightmare. Suddenly Marko and his Gypsy band didn’t seem so foolish. Water mains ripped from the mountain added to the flood of rain from the pass above. The final collapse of the City of Moses shook the mountain one last time as if God were saying an end had come to all.
Zallas and his force of personal bodyguards knew they had only one way out of the frightening scene now visible in the weak emergency lighting. They had to get to the top of the castle and then work their way down and hope the Americans had decided to take another route. They ran for the stairwell that was well camouflaged as a thick wooden castle door. Ben-Nevin thought it best to stay with the only firepower left on the mountain and followed as the wolves of God finished off the evil that had invaded their lands.
* * *
Stanus collapsed inside the car and didn’t move. The push it had received from Madam Korvesky, who had vanished with the other Gypsies, had brought him to the cable car tower and that was where he climbed to the top and waited for the return car to the castle. The other Golia had met Mikla and joined him on the roof of the castle and had waited patiently to spring their trap, which they pulled off to perfection, just as it always had. Now Stanus was nearing the end as his blood flow was starting to ease for lack of pressure. On the roof Anya stopped and felt the sudden loss as Stanus started breathing heavy and as Mikla stood over his brother whining as it sniffed the giant Golia. Stanus raised his head, smelled Mikla, and then lay back. Mikla looked at the remaining male Golia and then it stepped from the car as the doors slid closed behind. The Golia used its special eyesight and saw the imprint the retreating men had left on the cobbled stone flooring. The prints stood out as a shade of gray brighter than their surroundings.
Mikla growled and then anger over the wounds to Stanus overcame the calmer of the two brothers and forced the shape shifting to begin. Mikla roared as it tried to stand and failed. Then it roared again as its hips finally popped free and the thigh bones fell free of their sockets, and Mikla, roaring in pain, finally gained his hind feet and then looked and lowered his large ears and howled. The other Golia stopped and then as one they tore through the cable car promenade heading for the stairwell door.
* * *
Jack was balanced on the outside wall on a small ledge that wrapped around the back. The cable car promenade was a hundred feet below and the only way they could reach the cars was to jump from the castle wall just below one of the massive parapets to the cable car roof and then down into the car. Jack wished they had the time to just run away on foot but knew that the flooding on the road prevented any foot traffic to the resort. They were now forced to brave the cable car. Sarah was behind him as she saw him stop and listen. The screams coming from inside the castle had startled even Collins. The Golia were inside and he didn’t know if once their blood was up they would differentiate good guy from bad. Luckily Anya was in front of Everett straddling the six-inch ledge.
“Anya, what is it?” Carl asked when he felt the woman hitch up and then almost fall from the wall. Everett quickly reached out and took her and held her. Mendohlson saw Everett’s struggle and assisted in holding the woman. She finally opened her eyes and then fixed them on Everett.
“Stanus is dying.”
Everett didn’t know what to say. He helped her straighten as Jack started moving again.
Collins was nearing the parapet rising high above them when the first shots struck the wall next to him, sending stone chips into his face.
“Damn!” he said as he almost lost his grip on the ledge. Sarah winced as she braved removing one hand from the mortar gaps and taking Jack by his belt. She closed her eyes not knowing for the briefest of moments if they both were going over into the chasm between the road and the castle. Jack finally caught his balance as more shots pinged off the stone facing around them. “Thanks, short stuff,” he said as he completed the ledge walk and made it to the open window of the parapet. He assisted Sarah inside and then the others. He chanced a look outside and saw Zallas and his men starting to step out onto the large ledge.
As they moved through the darkness they all lost their footing as they searched for a way out to the opposite ledge and then the short jump to the promenade roof as the castle broke into two distinct halves. The top half broke free from the foundation and came sliding five feet over the club below. It stopped just as the mountain quit convulsing. Jack got to his feet and felt the tilt of the castle. The movement was now constant as mortar and stone started splitting apart in unseen places, evidenced by the constant scraping they were now hearing.
“I do believe we are out of time, Jack!” Carl said as he finally sped to the door in the darkness.
Everett threw the door open and Mendohlson stepped through and vanished. Collins’s heart froze as he reached out and was barely able to take the Israeli commando’s sleeve preventing him from falling the four hundred feet to his death. Carl and Anya with Sarah holding Jack’s belt again pulled the major.
The entire wall of the west side tower was gone, leaving a gap of twenty feet to the promenade roof. Jack and the others finally managed to get the major back through the open doorway.
“Whoa, many thanks,” Mendohlson said as he tried to get his heart going again. One HALO jump in a year was enough, much less doing one without a chute.
“I think we have to find another way, the jump is too far,” Collins said as Everett looked out the doorway and confirmed what the colonel was saying.
“Where is Stanus when you need him,” Carl said as he put his head back in. “Jack, you know when those assholes get here they are going to place so many bullets into this room it’ll be like a shooting gallery with these stone walls. We have to go up even higher and try another way. We won’t have time to scale down from here.”
“You lead the way this time, swabby; I think I’ve lost my mountain goat skills.”
Carl nodded, took Anya’s hand, and then looked out the open doorway once more. He saw a small ladder just outside the door, what was left of one leading to one of the skylights now lying four hundred feet below in the gu
lly. Everett leaned over and kissed Anya on the cheek and then reached out and took hold of the ladder that would lead them to the highest portion of Castle Dracula.
They were unaware that it was the portion now dangling over the remains of the club and teetering over the abyss.
* * *
Charlie, Ryan, Mendenhall, Pete, Drake Andrews, and the sixteen Russian musicians and performers had found getting to the promenade platform would be impossible so they took the only route available. The many stairwells leading to the base of the cable car tower had taken almost ten minutes to travel as they slipped and fell on the wet steel as the storm continued around the steel towers. Ryan could feel the short jolts of electricity flow through the handrails as lightning struck close by on several occasions. Finally they spied the bottom.
Pete was the first one to step out of the stairwell and into the inky blackness. He vanished as the water took him. The rainwater was now turning the roadway into a debris-swollen river. The collapse of the temple complex had opened up the pass sending a wave of mud cascading down the mountain. Now the raging river had Pete. Charlie had to be pulled back as he tried to leap into the water to save his friend.
“No, Doc!” Ryan shouted into the fierce mouth of the raging storm. “You’ve done enough, it’s my turn,” Jason said as he turned to Mendenhall. “Get them down the best you can, Will,” he said and then saluted him with a smile and without another word dove into the swirling water and was swept away.
Mendenhall and Ryan knew when playtime and the joking ceased and when it was time for the junior officer to take orders from a superior and this was one of those times as much as Will hated to admit it. He shook with anger that Ryan had gone without hesitation. He knew he had to move as the tower they had just climbed down was swaying the whole time they traversed the stairs.
Mendenhall moved his charges out of the tower to ease along the rim of the road, which was now only inches above the water. The first girl, the one dressed as Janis Joplin, slipped and nearly went in. Mendenhall and Ellenshaw caught her and pulled her back. The girl was shaking so badly Will knew he would never get her to attempt it again.
Carpathian: An Event Group Thriller (Event Group Thrillers) Page 64