“Hey you ugly son of a bitch, I’m down here!” Will shouted back into the darkness. The move had caught even himself off-guard. He shook his head as the beast situated around the bend in the hallway ceased moving and attacking the vault. Will just knew it was now looking down the once-gleaming corridor trying to discern where his prey was situated and what trap could possibly be waiting for it.
Then Mendenhall heard what he feared most — the creature turned on its heels and started his way.
“Well, this is what you wanted,” Will mumbled to himself as he turned into the largest vault on the brand-new level sixty-one and closed the giant door behind him, shutting out the running footsteps of the creature as it came on.
* * *
Inside vault number 0001, things had calmed when they felt that the beast had left the vault door. As they relaxed momentarily, everyone fought for breath and as they did they all noticed for the first time what vault Virginia had led them into.
“I’ll be damned,” Gloria said, wiping her eyes dry as she staggered over to assist Sarah in getting Henri to his feet.
Farbeaux whistled as he took in the artifacts he could see with the single light bulb at the back of the vault.
“You people never cease to amaze, I’ll give you that.”
Arranged around the large vault were riches and artifacts that had once belonged to a Zulu king known to the world as Cetshwayo — the man who brought down British forces in the largest defeat of a modern well-equipped army by native tribesmen in history. That battle brought on the legend of the Zulu Dawn, a historical fact that the trapped men and women inside vault number 0001-61890 had in common with the British Empire on January 22, 1879. They were in danger of being trapped and wiped out without mercy.
11
Niles ran so fast around the blind corner that his black shoes caught on the carpet and sent him flying to the floor within sight of the computer center. He cursed his own clumsiness as the radio flew from his hand and smashed against the far wall. He quickly tried to rise as he heard the creature slam into a wall as it negotiated its huge body around the bend in the hallway, taking the turn too fast. Compton hurriedly tried to raise himself from the floor, and as he collapsed back down he knew that he had broken his left ankle. He tried once more and finally made it to his knees and then to his right foot. He hopped three feet before he had to reach out and take hold of the plastic-lined wall. He shook his head in anger and realized he would never make it the thirty feet to the bulletproof computer center.
Suddenly and frighteningly hands were on him lifting him up, and for the life of him he couldn’t help it — he screamed. It was a high-pitched sound that he couldn’t believe had emanated from his own mouth.
“Oh, hang on you sissy!”
Niles realized that the tall and lanky Pete Golding, who hadn’t lifted anything heavier than a stapler in the past ten years, had actually picked him up and placed him over his slight shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He was running down the carpeted hallway to the sanctuary he called home. Before Compton realized what was happening they were through the double six-inch glass doors and he was roughly thrown onto a large desk as Pete swung around and manually locked the doors. As Golding backed away he saw how close they had come to a bad end. In his efforts, through his grunting and his yelling, he hadn’t realized how close Niles’s pursuer had been to catching them from behind.
“Oh, shit!” Pete yelled as he backed away from the glass so fast that he crashed into the desk where Compton was fighting to rise. The desk tilted and Niles went flying off onto the risers above the computer center floor.
The beast hit the glass wall just to the left of the double doors. The impact into the bulletproof glass sent a wide, streaking crack snaking through the reinforced wall. The beast rebounded and then fell to the floor, surprised that it hadn’t crashed through this glass like any other in the complex. Pete watched in stunned silence as the former mercenary shook its head and jumped back to its feet. Instead of backing away and gaining momentum for another charge, it took two steps to the left and started to examine the wall. Its head tilted right and then left as it studied the problem before it. The two men saw the wide swath of blood as it coursed down from the left ear of the giant.
“Jesus, Niles, it’s using problem-solving skills,” Pete said as he backed farther away from the glass. “It’s that advanced even though the massive dose it ingested is at this moment killing its brain cells, the very ones the drug just activated. If these men had taken a normal dose, a dose intended in actual combat, they would have just been unafraid to die; still thinking, just a want of killing slicing through their expanding brains.”
Niles looked up at Pete as if he were crazy.
“Perhaps it would be better if you filed your report on Perdition’s Fire later, when we have more time?”
Pete knew he had started running on because he was so frightened at what was happening. Explaining something to Niles allowed Pete to slow his mind and get a better grasp of the situation. He cleared his throat and moved his weight away from the director.
The creature stopped examining the crack in the window for a moment as Pete’s movement caught its glowing eyes. It watched the thin computer director for a moment and then like the others before it, it smiled. It slowly placed a hand near the spiderweb crack and ran one of its elongated, trunklike fingers over it.
Pete turned to look at the computer center’s main viewing screen and saw the ticking down of Europa’s power system. She had forty-four seconds of life left to her.
“Europa,” Pete called out loudly, hoping her internal systems could pick up his voice, “are you still with me baby?”
After examining the glass and probing the crack, the beast closed its hand into a ham-sized fist and hit the broken glass precisely where the riverlike crack formed, sending small pieces of clear material onto the carpeted floor inside the computer center. The smile widened as it caught sight of Pete once more. Then its eyes moved to Compton as the director finally managed to stand on one leg and use the desks to hop away from where he thought the mercenary was going to crash through the wall.
“Yes, Dr. Golding,” Europa finally answered.
“Tell me you came up with something while I was out?” Pete said as he reached out and helped Niles down the steps leading to the center’s floor.
“If you are referencing our earlier discussion on power replacement, yes, I have a solution, but it involves a major shutdown of all civil systems.”
“What in the hell does that mean?”
“Europa, commence implementing your plan immediately!” Niles called out loudly.
“Yes, Dr. Compton.”
“For God’s sake, hurry before you’re dead in the water!” Pete added as the beast hit the wall again, this time with both hands, fingers entwined. A plate-sized hole appeared in the wall as glass cascaded into the center.
“Well, we gave it a hell of a shot, Peter,” Niles said as he hopped in time with Pete’s movement to the floor.
“Yeah, we did boss,” Golding said as he watched a third blow shatter ten feet of wall.
The creature smiled broadly as it stepped through the hole it had just created, its bare feet crunching through the thick glass as it did so.
Niles Compton and Pete Golding watched as their fate stepped toward the large aisle leading down to their location on the center’s floor.
It was over.
THE NEW YORK, NEW YORK
HOTEL AND CASINO, LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
The fifty-five-year-old man who had worked all of his life in his family’s dry cleaning business in Wheeling, West Virginia, one who had saved for this vacation for he and his wife for two years, watched as the smiling but sorrowful blackjack dealer pulled the last of his chips away. His last card was a queen of hearts, breaking him at twenty-two. His wife placed her arm around him as the last of their savings had disappeared in less than twenty-four hours. The man hung his head as a stranger patted him on
the shoulder.
“Tough luck, buddy,” he said with a less than genuine smile. “Think I can have that seat now that you’re done?”
The dry cleaner could only nod as he finally looked over at his wife. He expected her to be angry, but instead she smiled and leaned into him placing her arm on his waist and making the man waiting for an empty seat roll his eyes at the sentiment being displayed.
Suddenly the lights in not only New York, New York but every building inside the Las Vegas city limits went out. The power was taken from lines all the way to the outskirts of Los Angeles as Europa had done the only thing she could do — she had hacked directly into the power grid streaming outward from Hoover Dam.
Women screamed and men jumped in the seconds just prior to the emergency lighting coming on. The dry cleaner was knocked to the swirling red carpet as he lost his wife of thirty-two years in the confusion. The blackjack table was knocked over on to him and was literally broken in two as men scrambled for the thousand chips that were loosed on the floor.
What everyone thought was mass panic was actually the largest robbery in the history of the United States, as every casino in Las Vegas attempted to fend off every man, woman, winner, and loser inside of their darkened establishments. The revenge for sixty years of casinos in Las Vegas separating people from their money had started.
The dry cleaner tried desperately to gain his feet as men and women rushed around him in the dim lights of the battery-powered system. The backup generators for New York, New York kicked in at thirty-one seconds, but not before mass chaos struck the strip.
Suddenly the dry cleaner felt hands on him and was helped to his feet. He was bleeding badly from a scalp wound as he realized it was his wife who had helped him escape the stampede. As they tried to traverse the gaming floor and make it to the front doors, security men came running in every direction. Then the backup generators kicked in. The bright lights illuminated a historic mess as men and women fought hand to hand for the spoils on the tables and floor. Security was doing its best to get the situation under control, making people drop their chips and warning them that all chips on the floor that night were accounted for and their surveillance systems knew exactly which players were winners and which ones were losers. The frenzied crowd didn’t really care. They looted anyway.
As the couple made it to the front door, the two security men pushing people back into the main floor saw that the man being helped by the woman was cut badly on his head. Looking around to make sure they weren’t being watched, the two large guards had a moment of sympathy and allowed the couple to get free of the mess inside the main casino.
As they hit the hot night air they saw that the situation outside wasn’t any better than inside. Cars had rear-ended each other and there were massive jam-ups on Las Vegas Boulevard. The couple walked until they found a stone bench that had been placed in an area designed to look like Central Park, another place they had always wanted to travel to. The woman used a handkerchief to wipe some of the blood away from her husband’s head. She leaned over and kissed his cheek.
“I’m sorry honey,” the man stammered. “I should have known I wasn’t a gambler. I’m an idiot.”
The woman smiled and put her arm around the man who struggled to get by at their dry cleaners in Wheeling all of their married lives.
“Oh, you’re not that bad,” she said smiling. Then she reached over and showed him the inside of her purse. It was full of cash from the drop box located on the bottom of the blackjack table. When the locked steel top had been stepped on so hard that it was forced open, his wife had struck as fast as John Dillinger. While everyone was fighting for chips they would never be able to keep, she had grabbed the one thing that would never fail — cash. The man looked inside the purse and his eyes widened.
“What … how—”
“Look, I would say we came out of our little foray to Las Vegas about five thousand dollars ahead of the game. What do you say we go home?”
The man leaned over and kissed his wife deeply.
“Yeah, let’s get while the gettin’ is good.”
EVENT GROUP COMPLEX
NELLIS AFB, NEVADA
Suddenly the overhead fluorescent lighting came to full power, stunning the beast as it entered the computer center. It shielded its eyes as Europa came back to full life. Immediately alarms resumed sounding throughout the complex as Niles slapped Pete on the back.
“At least we gave those below a fighting chance!” Compton yelled happily.
The creature above them finally recovered its vision and shook its giant head once more. It took a moment to reacquire the two men, and when it did it smiled, once more exposing enlarged, crooked teeth. It was the most frightening grin either man had ever seen.
Before they realized what was happening, the beast stopped in its tracks and its body started to convulse as a cacophony of noise so loud it brought the men down accompanied by bullets teasing through the broken glass of the computer center. The beast roared and turned toward a threat it hadn’t seen coming. It tried to shield its eyes and head from the onslaught, but there was just too much metal-jacketed lead flying. Bullet after bullet struck the former mercenary. Large-caliber rounds tore its upper body to pieces as it went to its knees. The eruption of gunfire continued until four very loud blasts echoed inside the center. The head of the beast, along with the hand and arm that had been covering its face, exploded in a spray of red mist. The firing ceased as the body of the mercenary fell forward out of view of Niles and Pete who managed to look up in time to see the creature’s demise.
“Clear!” called out a voice from the hallway.
Niles looked over at a stunned Pete Golding who had covered his head with his arms after they had hit the floor.
“I said clear damn it!”
“C … c … clear!” Niles shouted.
As they looked up over the stair risers above them, a small man along with five others came through the hole in the glass wall. One of the men emptied a full magazine of nine-millimeter rounds into the twitching torso of the giant at his feet.
“Identify yourselves, please,” the man in the lead wearing an old bush hat called down. He reached up and handed his ambient-light goggles to one of his men.
“Dr. Niles Compton, Dr. Pete Golding!” the director called out as Pete slowly helped him to his feet.
“Dr. Golding, answer a question for me please,” the small man with camouflaged black and gray greasepaint covering his features said as his five men came forward and aimed their weapons at the two stunned men.
Niles could now only shake his head as the events of the last minute finally zapped his remaining strength and the adrenalin rush started to ebb.
“What is your nickname that the president uses when speaking to you?” the man asked as he cradled the Barrett fifty-caliber rifle across his chest. At that moment their savior didn’t look at all friendly, and neither did his men.
Niles looked from the six men above them to Pete. Then his eyes went down to examine his broken ankle.
“Baldy,” he mumbled.
“Sorry, sir, I didn’t hear your response,” the man said as the five aimed weapons zeroed in a little tighter than before.
“Baldy, damn it!” Niles answered loudly enough for his voice to echo inside the computer center. He finally looked up, angry as hell his nickname had been exposed in front of Pete.
The man smiled and gestured for his five men to lower their weapons. He used hand gestures to order them to take up station out in the hallway. He stepped down the risers as agile as a man walking on cotton and came face to face with Niles and Pete.
“I’ll have one of my men look at that ankle, Dr. Compton,” the small man said as he took in the haggard men before him.
“Who are you and who sent you?” Niles asked as he leaned on Pete even more than before.
“Well, sir, I am a major in the United States Army. I cannot tell you my unit, but I can say that we were sent by the president. No
w, is Colonel Collins here and is he alive?”
“Yes, he’s here and was alive the last time I saw him.”
“Excellent,” Major Garcia said as he turned and started up the stairs. “Where is he located at the moment,” he asked as he moved back up the risers.
Suddenly Europa came fully awake. “There are fifteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds left till core meltdown. Repeat, there are fifteen minutes, twenty-five seconds remaining till core meltdown.”
Garcia pointed at the overhead speaker system. “I take it the colonel’s location has something to do with that?” “Grateful Dead” Garcia asked as he came to a stop on the stairs and then half tuned to look down on the two men once again.
“Level eighty-four, the reactor section, and he probably has some very angry and insane company down there with him.”
“Then that’s where we have to be,” Garcia said as he started back up the steps. “It was an honor to meet a friend of the president’s, Dr. Compton, and a man this mission was codenamed for.”
Niles looked from Garcia’s back to Pete and then back at the army major again. “And what was the code name?” he asked as his anger started immediately to grow.
“Operation Nerdlinger, Doctor. My medic will be down to help you ASAP.”
“Operation Nerdlinger, that bastard!”
LEVEL EIGHTY-FOUR
As Collins traveled down the length of the darkened elevator tube he heard the beast they had just escaped from fall silent. He thought for sure the altered mercenary would have done what he had noticed the giants had become adept at — following them. As he slowed three levels from the bottom, he adjusted his grip on the rope and managed to get a small flashlight out and examine the sides of the stainless-steel shaft. His hunch was correct as he examined the deep indentations from one of the creature’s efforts to traverse the slippery sides. That confirmed in his mind that one of them was below on the reactor level waiting for them, and his soldier’s instinct told him who that would be — Smith.
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