by Jon Land
Alexander ducked under Armura’s next blow and seized the brief advantage that gave him to go for the Beretta holstered low on his hip, managing to free it when the giant slammed into him, pinning the weapon in place as they crashed through a heavy door into what felt like a fetid jungle. Alexander felt his shoulders smash into some kind of terrarium, followed by a matching one and then a third. His pistol went flying, clattering to the tile floor while the giant moved in for the kill.
But Alexander had learned to always carry two knives. He managed to free his second, a Gerber MK2, and plunged it deep into Armura’s midsection once and then again, feeling it cut through cartilage and scrape against rib bone.
The hulk of a shape stiffened before him, but showed no pain, not even a grimace or a wince, no signs of slowing whatsoever. Alexander had started to plunge the blade in a third time when Armura wrenched his wrist and jerked the blade out. Alexander heard it first clatter and then flit across the floor, freeing Armura to capture him in a grasp that felt like steel clamps tightening on his ribs.
He tumbled to the floor with the giant atop him, his assault rifle pinned beneath him against the floor. Blood was everywhere, soaking Alexander and widening in a pool through which the army of scorpions skittered.
ONE HUNDRED EIGHT
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
Dracu was standing in the middle of the Forbidden City atrium, holding a gun to Scarlett’s head, when Michael emerged from his private glass elevator. Her nose was bloodied and looked swollen. One of her eyes was half-closed. More blood dribbled from one side of her mouth.
“Put your hands in the air,” Dracu ordered.
Michael obliged and started forward.
“That’s far enough, Michele,” his half brother continued when they were thirty feet apart.
Michael held his gaze on Scarlett. Her hands had been bound behind her in the chair Dracu had placed her, but the barely perceptible jostling of her shoulders told him she was working to free herself.
Their eyes met again, Michael seeing the resolve and belief in him displayed. She tried not to appear scared, trying to make herself look strong and resilient.
“You’re just in time,” Dracu said, grinning. “The real show’s about to start.”
And, as if on cue, another blast sounded, more like a loud pop that Michael recognized as a main transformer blowing. An instant later, all the lights in the Forbidden City and virtually all the Strip beyond flickered and died. The Forbidden City’s emergency lighting snapped on from the fixtures’ wall mounts not far from the security cameras that were still off-line, barely touching either Dracu or Scarlett in its reach.
“After what you and your warrior did at the Securitate building,” Dracu told him, “forgive me for not taking chances.”
“I don’t blame you,” Michael said, leaving his hands poised above him. “You’re real good at beating up women, Vlad. Children, too. I’ve always wondered what it feels like when a coward like you meets his match.”
“Like the lucky coward who hid in the barn while I killed his family? You should know, my brother.”
Michael watched Scarlett stiffen. Dracu must have as well.
“Wait,” Dracu continued, “she doesn’t know, does she? What have you told her about your past, Michele? Does she know you were born a peasant? Does she know I did you the greatest favor anyone ever could by murdering the family that would’ve otherwise held you down? Did you explain our relationship, that we’re half brothers?”
“We don’t have a relationship and you’re not my brother.”
“I’m talking about blood.”
“So am I.”
Michael felt something churn inside him, up here in what he envisioned as the crown jewel of the Seven Sins property—literally, since it occupied the top three floors of the complex stretching from one side all the way across to the other. The three-story atrium in which they stood was an architectural model of form and function; authentic wrought iron holding up glass on all sides that finished with a dome on top. That dome was enclosed by a custom-sewn tarpaulin to shield it from both the elements and prying eyes, except on a single side where workers completing a section had neglected to replace the tarp. Even the most spying eye peering inward, though, would have trouble determining exactly what the Forbidden City was to be.
Just the way Michael wanted it, until the very moment it opened. At that point the world would be treated to a beautifully balanced mix of retail, relaxation, gaming, entertainment, and two hundred high-end, glass-walled suites that could be booked for extended durations at exorbitant prices.
All themed around a jungle environment, including the “Tiger” suites built to offer guests the opportunity to effectively live in the wild with the majestic animals. Only a foot of glass would separate those guests from the most accurate recreation of the tigers’ native habitat ever fashioned. The finish work remained to be completed, the structure little more than a raw shell. No furniture had been brought in yet, nor was there any signage for the vast array of shops, stores, and restaurants that encircled the atrium, accessible by elegant reproductions of rope-style bridges that climbed upward to the second story and the third.
Had it been daytime, however, anyone up here would’ve been treated to a recreation of the golden plains beyond the glass at the Forbidden City’s rear. A sunny glade of tall, swaying pampas grass gave way to a lazy river shifting in man-made winds through the section Michael himself had named the Valley of Thunder. Clumps of giant bamboo dotted the river’s edge where the tigers would soon be seen lapping up water.
“Us sharing the same blood isn’t something I’m proud of,” Michael said, seeing the shock still showing in Scarlett’s eyes.
“Why, when we have so much in common? Our father made me the monster that I am and I made you into the Tyrant you are that day you escaped death. You might even say you owe me more than you owe anyone else on Earth.”
“Then let the girl go, so we can discuss the terms further.”
“The time for negotiation is long past, Michele. You might say what’s about to happen, what I’m about to do, is the ultimate hostile takeover. See how well I speak your language?”
“Sorry, I don’t speak crazy, deviant, or murderer.”
“Deviant? It is the curse of all great men to be ostracized, isolated. You should look in the mirror and count your friends, those you can truly trust. Something else we have in common.”
“We have nothing in common. Now let the woman go so we can finish this, just the two of us.”
“We need a witness to our arrangement.”
“What arrangement is that, Vlad?”
“The one I’m about to force upon you.”
Michael could see Scarlett’s shoulders shifting ever so slightly, evidence she was continuing to work to free her bound hands. “What happened to your veil?” he asked Dracu.
“You convinced me to shed it. See, I’m learning from you.”
“I was wrong. You should put it back on to remind yourself how ugly you are on the inside,” Michael told him, holding Vlad’s dark eyes with his own to keep him from looking up at the hands he still held overhead.
Dracu’s expression didn’t change. “Be careful, Michele.”
“I guess you haven’t heard the news, Vlad,” Michael told his half brother. “All of Black Scorpion’s primary cells have been or will soon be hit across the globe. Human trafficking, drugs, gun-running—all of it. You’re out of business.”
Dracu smiled, holding up a cell phone in his free hand. “All the more reason to cement the business we have between us and solidify my new life in your world.”
“Don’t tell me. You touch a key and a signal gets sent, through Romania, to all those Guardian chips I heard about.”
Dracu’s eyes widened. “I’m impressed.”
“I’m not. What’s it going to be this time? Las Vegas again?”
“I’m far more ambitious than that, Little Brother: The whole United States.
America goes dark, back to the stone age where it belongs until I see fit to turn the switch back on.” Dracu grinned again. “You’re forgetting something else, aren’t you, Michele?”
Michael realized he was. “Aldridge Sterling … Buying up my company’s bonds, shorting gaming stocks, doing everything he can to make my casino default on its debt and take me out of the picture.”
“You’re finally getting it,” Dracu said, grinning again. “And, you mean, my casino, don’t you?”
Michael felt something sink in his stomach.
“Surprise! This won’t be your casino very much longer. Once the lights come back on, I’ll own it. Black Scorpion the man is a myth and he’s about to disappear, only to resurface again just as Michele Nunziato did as Michael Tiranno. So you did me a favor by taking out Black Scorpion’s cells around the world and eliminating any possible connection to me in the process. I made you from a peasant and now I’m going to send you back to being one. Everything you have, everything you own, will be mine soon.”
“Sterling shorting the dollar,” Michael started, working it all out for himself, “betting on economic collapse. The lights come back on after he’s bought up everything on the cheap, after the dollar crashes, and the two of you are left sitting on a mountain of cash.…”
“Yes, but I don’t care about a mountain of cash. It’s all of this I really want,” he said, gazing about the Forbidden City dramatically. “I’m killing your dream, turning the light of your world to darkness. Don’t you see? We’re trading places, you with nothing and me with everything. Just as it should have been all along.”
* * *
Michael grasped it all now, both the madness and genius in Vladimir Dracu’s plan. He wasn’t out to destroy his half brother so much as replace him, his entire plan all about seizing what he felt was rightfully his. Dracu wouldn’t actually own the property, of course; that role would be filled by investors beholden to Aldridge Sterling. But the casino would be his all the same, even if the management company brought in to operate it never knew.
“Ah, I see you’ve figured it all out.” Dracu’s grin held on his expression, stretched from ear to ear, his attention rooted entirely, obsessively, on Michael just as it had in Caltagirone. “Your efforts only destroyed who I was, not who I’m about to become. And nobody knows who Black Scorpion really is, do they? You want to know why I hide my face? Now you do. When the light returns, Little Brother, I can be anyone I want to be and nobody will know any different. And I believe the show I’ve arranged for you is just about to continue.” Dracu turned toward the exposed glass on the side of the atrium overlooking the Strip. “Behold, my brother.”
A series of flame bursts indicating fresh explosions could be seen both close by and in the distance behind heavy, insulated glass. But then the glass on that side of the building facing the rear of the property shattered from the blistering percussions, opening the Forbidden City up to the night to reveal a chorus of car horns, vague shouts and screams and, finally, an endless cascade of sirens.
“Your world’s on fire, my brother,” Dracu resumed, “in return for what you did to mine. But I’m pressed for time, so I can offer you a trade,” he added, his eyes wide and glistening. “The relic in exchange for your love.” He shook his head almost whimsically. “How can you resist such an offer, a true romantic like yourself? Therein lies your weakness, Little Brother. You feel too much. You think you crave power, but what you really crave is love. That’s why you’ll make the trade, because you can live without the relic, but you can’t live with yourself if you let your love die.”
“You’re wasting your time, Vlad,” Michael told him, feeling the warm night air blowing in through the now open side of the Forbidden City. The sirens and car alarms continued to wail, the fires from the blasts set by Black Scorpion dotting the night beyond through the darkness.
“About your feelings for this woman?”
“About the relic. It can’t help you. Whatever power it has doesn’t come from just possessing it. You don’t choose the relic; the relic chooses you.”
“Sure, whatever you say, Little Brother, but I’ll take my chances. Your relic for your woman. Otherwise, I’ll kill her right in front of you, so you can know the kind of loss I’ve lived with all my life.” Dracu’s hand twitched ever so slightly, ready to pull the trigger. “Get ready to say good-bye to her. But, first, say good-bye to your world.”
Vlad returned his gaze to his cell phone, ready to press a button on the touch screen, when Michael hurled the knife he’d tucked up his sleeve forward. Vlad twisted at the last moment, the blade still grazing his shoulder enough to send his cell phone flying.
ONE HUNDRED NINE
HOIA-BACIU FOREST, ROMANIA
For Raven, it was all about the hostages—everything. She struggled with her hearing, the staccato bursts of gunfire seeming to come from everywhere at once. And now the lake waters were surging in through the entrance, blown out in jagged fashion and exposing the fortress to the torrents.
She had six men left by the time she reached a big black SUV parked at the head of the pack. Raven climbed in behind the driver’s seat, her remaining men firing even as they joined her inside and continuing to spray fire through the vehicle’s open doors. She was ready to hot-wire the car when she found the key already in the ignition and just turned.
The powerful engine roared to her life and Raven wasted no time in screeching into reverse, shoving the vehicles behind her SUV aside before she spun it around in a whir of grinding rubber to face Black Scorpion’s gunmen. They opened up on her, her men literally dangling out the windows to better return their fire as the view through the windshield disappeared before a blur of pockmarked glass.
Bulletproof! Raven realized, finding the confidence to give the SUV more gas, plowing through anything and anyone it encountered.
She sped past the Black Scorpion gunmen still firing on her and twisted the vehicle onto a wide hall where more troops were rushing to join their fellows in reinforcing the fortress’s first level. She was down to four men now and all were clacking off a constant cacophony of fire that held the enemy at bay well enough for her to continue barreling along.
Finally, her tires bore the brunt of a fusillade that spun the SUV to a halt at a break in the maze-like hall bending both straight and to the left. Climbing out with her own assault rifle at the ready, Raven reframed the thermal satellite imagery in her mind, convinced the hostages were being held somewhere to the left. Just three of her own men remained, and they all accompanied her in the mad dash through the waters that had begun to collect this far down as well.
But how to find the hostages’ exact position?
That’s when Raven glimpsed a parade of rats scurry past her, absurdly feeling a burst of instinct-bred fear. But where were they coming from?
Food, she thought. They’d congregate in areas where there was the most food to be had.
As in that part of the fortress where the hostages were being held.
Straight ahead.
* * *
The lake waters continued to rush in through the breached entrance, halfway up the height of the SUVs’ big tires as the firefight raged on. Thanks to the reinforcements who’d dropped through the ceiling, Black Scorpion maintained the advantage over Paddy’s forces that were down to six now with dwindling ammo to boot.
Paddy glimpsed two of those placing shaped charges at key points of the structure’s ground floor meant to undermine its integrity once the explosive wave was triggered. Then a blast sounded from above, followed by another and then a third.
“Second Squad, report!” he called into his mic between firing bursts from his assault rifle.
“They’re blasting through our debris field!” the squad leader’s report came back in a hollow echo bred by the confines of the stairwell from which he was making his stand.
“Gotta hold ’em for me, mate!”
“I can buy you another three minutes, sir!”
“Make it five, you bloody wanker, or I’ll shoot you myself!”
“Five, sir, that’s a roger!”
He’d had just clicked off when one of the two men planting shaped charges fell to a barrage of bullets that sent his pack skittering across the floor in Paddy’s direction. Paddy had never been much for explosives himself, preferring bullets to bombs, but knew an opportunity when he saw one.
Wasting no time, he flashed the hand signal to his remaining troops to give cover and then darted out for the pack, diving to the floor to scoop it free of the rising waters.
* * *
The floor had been built with a slight upward grade, steep enough for Raven to feel in her thighs, as she sloshed through the water up to her ankles now. Gunfire erupted behind her, one of the three men left accompanying Raven shot down immediately while the other two returned fire.
“Go!” one of them cried out and Raven knew she had no choice but to do so, continuing to follow the last of the line of fleeing rats to a break in the hallway.
Raven swung right at the head, certain the hostages, her very purpose for being here, must be close. Before her, though, was nothing but wall, this hall a dead end. And she could hear the ratcheting of more gunfire, recognizing the steady clacking from Kalashnikov-style assault rifles with which she was familiar. Her last surviving men would be overwhelmed before long, leaving nothing between Raven and the coming charge of enemy gunmen.
But the rats couldn’t be wrong.
That thought left her looking at the walls again, before turning her eyes upward for the ceiling. She spotted a grooved rectangular outline up there consistent with a pull-down ladder of the kind normally used to access attics. Smelling her own sweat and feeling it beginning to soak through the Nomex gloves Alexander had provided, Raven leaped up and felt her hand close inside a deeper groove that gave behind her momentum. The folding ladder attached to the floor above dropped effortlessly, and she scrambled up the rungs and yanked the ladder back upward into what felt like hell itself.