The Shadow Project bh-5

by Scott Mariani

  ‘There’s no other way out of here,’ Jeff yelled, pointing down the empty shaft. ‘We’re trapped.’

  Ben’s mind raced, fighting the rising tide of dizziness that was beginning to overcome him. He felt a tug on his sleeve and turned to see Rory standing there gesticulating back down the corridor. ‘I know a way,’ the boy shouted.

  ‘What way?’

  ‘Trust me. I found it.’

  There was no choice but to follow the kid. Ben and Jeff manhandled the unconscious scientist as his son led them at a run back towards the stairway where they’d found him.

  The moment they started down the metal steps, Ben knew they weren’t going to get out in time. The stairway was rocking and swaying dangerously as they clattered down it. Struts and rails were cracking and breaking off, falling down around them. A guillotine blade of sheet metal crashed down, narrowly missing them and tearing away a section of framework. The whole construction lurched sideways and began to topple slowly over.

  Seconds after the four of them had reached the bottom, the stairway fell apart. Debris rained down, burying Ivan’s body where it lay on the cavern floor. They ran. Adam was beginning to come round as Ben and Jeff hauled him along.

  ‘This way!’ Rory was yelling. ‘Here! This is it!’

  Ben looked where the boy was frantically pointing. ‘Where does it lead?’

  ‘Some kind of air vent. Like a big pipe. It goes all the way through to the outside.’

  Ben looked hard into Rory’s eyes, blinking to focus his vision. ‘You’re sure? You’ve been in?’

  ‘Some of the way in.’

  Ben took a deep breath. It seemed insane, but it was their only option. The facility was rumbling like the world’s biggest volcano about to erupt. ‘Can you crawl?’ he asked Adam.

  ‘Just leave me here,’ Adam slurred. ‘Get my son out.’

  Ben ripped his tactical webbing belt out of his trouser loops. ‘You’re going up that vent if I have to drag you. Hold this and don’t let go.’

  Then it was the frantic scramble up the tunnel. Rory led the way, followed by Jeff. Ben half-dragged Adam behind him on the end of the belt, praying it wouldn’t snap. After half a minute of crawling, he could taste the cool air from outside and there was a definite glow of moonlight up ahead. But would they ever reach the end? The metal walls were heating up fast, burning their hands and knees. The nausea was crippling.

  At that moment, the world seemed to come apart. The explosion was like nothing Ben had experienced before. A horrible sensation of weightlessness as they seemed to be falling, falling, followed by a barrage of enormous impacts. The steel pipe was as fragile and vulnerable as a twig tossed around in a hurricane. Ben heard Rory’s scream of terror as it rolled over and over, battering them around inside. The pipe groaned as unimaginable outside pressures tried to stamp it flat. An ear-splitting shriek of rending steel, a cascade of dust and stones showering over them.

  And then, nothing. As suddenly as the insane forces of destruction had reached their climax, it was over. There was silence, just the sound of grit and pebbles slithering down the inside of the pipe, and the soft groans of the others.

  Ben raised his face out of his arms and blinked. The awful sensation was gone, the headache and nausea quickly clearing. Raising himself on his hands and knees, he realised he could stand. The pipe had ruptured above them, creating a jagged opening through which he could see moonlight and twinkling stars. He slowly, painfully got to his feet. A couple of metres away, Jeff was doing the same, looking stunned, his hair white with dust.

  Rory stirred, let out a whimper and went scrambling over to his father. Adam O’Connor groaned in pain and joy as he sat up and hugged him.

  The moon shone down on a transformed landscape. Kammler’s mountain was gone. It had collapsed in on itself, the facility swallowed up, vaporised. All that was left was a giant crater of rubble and debris and twisted metal, like the scene of an air disaster without the plane.

  Ben knew he’d never be able to describe what they’d just witnessed. The power of Kammler’s machine was too incredible to contemplate. Now it was buried forever in its rocky grave – the Nazi weapon that might have saved the Earth or destroyed it was going to remain a secret for the rest of time.

  Nobody spoke for a long while, just breathing the air, listening to the silence and savouring what it felt like to be alive. Ben stepped over to where father and son were holding each other tight. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘You saved us, Rory.’

  Adam O’Connor gripped Ben’s hand in his bloodstained fist. ‘You saved us.’

  Ben just smiled.

  ‘Who the hell are you, anyway?’

  ‘Nobody much,’ Ben replied. He looked towards the sweeping forest, and pointed across the tree line to where they’d left the Porsche Cayenne, a few hours and a lifetime ago. ‘There’s a car down there. Let’s get you to hospital, and then home.’

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  While Adam was getting patched up in Budapest the next day, Sabrina flew out from London on a Steiner aircraft. Meanwhile, Ben was on the phone to Switzerland. Heinrich Dorenkamp told him the news. Ruth was on her feet and had already discharged herself from hospital after arguing with the doctors. As for Maximilian Steiner himself, he had come out of intensive care, weak and grieving for his nephew, but stable and headed for a full recovery.

  Ben didn’t bother watching the news, because he knew nothing would ever come to light about the incident in the wilds of Hungary. What had happened there was buried and gone, just as surely as the legacy of SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler. Nobody would ever know the whole truth about who had been behind it. With Otto Steiner dead and his operation in ruins, the faceless, nameless figures who’d financed the project would now slip back into the shadows and wait for their next opportunity. That was just the way things worked. Always had, always would.

  Ben hung around for a while in the hospital while Adam and Rory were reunited with Sabrina. He smiled to himself at the emotional scenes. Things hadn’t worked out too badly in the end.

  He walked away without anyone noticing. Jeff was sitting in the Porsche outside. Ben climbed in next to him, and they headed for the airport.

  It was the next afternoon, when Ben was sitting with Storm in the kitchen at Le Val, feeding him pieces of sirloin steak and watching him grow stronger by the hour, that he heard a car outside, and a minute later the door opened.

  He turned, half expecting to see Jeff.

  It was Ruth. Other than the sling around her arm, she looked fine.

  ‘Is he all right?’ she asked, looking with concern at the bandaged dog.

  ‘People who’ve been shot don’t just travel about the place,’ he scolded her.

  ‘Would you take that kind of advice from anyone?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted.

  She swiped a glass off the side, pulled up a chair at the table and poured herself some of the wine he was drinking. ‘How are you, bro?’

  ‘I heard about Maximilian. I’m glad he’s going to pull through.’

  She shrugged. ‘Me too. I feel pretty bad about what’s happened.’

  ‘Some of the things you did were wrong,’ he said. ‘But you did them for the right reasons, and that’s what’s important.’

  ‘You’re too nice to me. Fact is, I have some changes to make to my life. A lot of amends to make, and it starts here. Did Heinrich tell you that Maximilian is thinking of retiring?’

  Ben shook his head. ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Well, Silvia’s not interested in running a business. So, with Otto gone, that just leaves me.’

  ‘Sounds like something new for you,’ Ben said.

  ‘Franz will help me. We’re going to build the greenest multinational corporation you’ve ever seen. Use its power and money to do something for the world.’

  ‘Something that doesn’t involve Zero Point Energy?’

  ‘Maybe that’s still a little ahead of its time. We’ll find
other ways to make a difference.’

  ‘Something tells me you’ll do pretty well.’

  She smiled. ‘Now, enough about me. Did you call Brooke?’

  ‘We’ve left messages for each other.’

  ‘You’re nervous about talking to her.’

  ‘Things were left a little up in the air,’ he said.

  ‘She and I have been talking a lot on the phone. She told me a few things. Like the fact that your business is in deep shit because of that guy Rupert Shannon.’

  With all that had been going on, Ben had almost managed to forget the Shannon situation. The prospect of losing Le Val returned like a toothache. ‘Back down to earth with a thump,’ he said.

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘It’s true. But I’ll sort it out somehow. I’ll be talking to Dupont at the bank soon. Whatever happens, we’ll survive.’

  ‘Well, maybe you won’t need to,’ she said enigmatically as she reached into her bag and took out an envelope.

  Ben slipped out a single folded sheet from inside. It was a letter from the new CEO of Steiner Enterprises, Ruth Steiner-Hope. He smiled at that.

  ‘Read it,’ she said.

  The letter was brief and straightforward, an offer to reinstate the original contract with Rupert Shannon and his team. Ben read it twice, then looked up at her with a frown. ‘But you don’t need them any more. Especially as they weren’t much use in the first place.’

  She chuckled. ‘Shannon will be so keen to grab the dough, he won’t read the small print of the new contract that’ll be attached when this is posted in the morning. It basically states that they’re being hired for general duties. No specific mention of bodyguarding. Which means we’re going to put them to work mucking out the new stable complex I’m building, mowing the golf course and sifting out the swimming pools. If they refuse, it’s their choice. Either way, you’re off the hook.’

  Ben folded the letter back into the envelope and handed it to her. ‘Thank you, Little Moon.’

  ‘There’s a condition. Something I want you to do.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘I want you on a flight to London. You’ve got to go and see Brooke.’

  Two hours later, cutting northwards over the Channel on board his sister’s personal jet, he dialled Brooke’s number.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said.

  ‘At last. Where have you been?’

  ‘I’ll tell you about all about it when I see you.’

  She was quiet for a second. ‘I don’t know when that will be, Ben.’

  ‘It’ll be within the hour,’ he said.

  She said nothing, but he could hear the smile in her silence.

  ‘You and I started something,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, we did,’ she replied after a beat.

  ‘How would you feel about picking up where we left off?’

  ‘You and me?’

  ‘You and me.’

  There was a pause. ‘See you in an hour,’ she said.

  Read on for an exclusive extract from the first book in the

  thrilling new VAMPIRE FEDERATION series coming

  from Scott in summer 2010.

  SINCE THE DAWN of civilisation, vampires preyed on human beings, drank their blood and regarded them contemptuously as an inferior species, a mere disposable resource. For aeons, the vampires ruled.

  But things have changed. With the birth of the modern age and the explosion in human communications and surveillance technologies, many vampires realized that they could no longer carry on the old ways. Something needed to be done, if the ancient culture was to survive.

  In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the powerful World Vampire Federation was founded to control and oversee the activities of the vampire community. No longer would vampires prey unrestricted on human beings and turn them into creatures like themselves. New biotechnologies enabled the Undead to walk in daylight, living among us, in our cities, our streets. Strict laws were imposed to control vampire activity and allow their community to carry on. Quietly. Unnoticed. Undisturbed.

  These laws were enforced by the Federation’s Vampire

  Intelligence Agency, or VIA, with a licence granted by the

  Ruling Council to hunt and destroy transgressors.

  But not all the vampires were willing to obey …

  1

  Eighteen years later

  October 27

  Pockets of thick autumnal mist drifted over the waters of the Thames as the big cargo ship cut upriver from the estuary, heading for the wharfs of the Port of London. Smaller vessels seemed to shy out of its way. With its lights poking beams through the gloom, the ship carved its way westwards into the heart of the city.

  On the approach to the docks, the beat of a helicopter thudded through the chill evening air.

  Eight sailors of mixed Romanian and Czech origin were assembled around the helipad on the forward deck, craning their necks up at the sky at the approaching aircraft. At their feet lay a pair of steel-reinforced crates, seven feet long, that had been wheeled up from the hold. Most of the crew preferred to keep their distance from them. The strong downdraught from the chopper’s rotors tore at the men’s clothing and hair as its pilot brought it down to land on the pad.

  ‘Okay, boys, let’s get these bastard things off our ship,’ the senior crewman yelled over the noise as the chopper’s cargo hatch slid open.

  ‘I’d love to know what the hell’s in there,’ said one of the Romanians.

  ‘I don’t fucking want to know,’ someone else replied. ‘All I can say is I’m glad to be shot of them.’

  There wasn’t a man aboard ship who hadn’t felt the sense of unease that had been hanging like a pall over the vessel since they’d left the Romanian port of Constantza. It hadn’t been a happy voyage. Five of the hands were sick below decks, suffering from some kind of fever that the ship’s medic couldn’t figure out. The radio kept talking about the major flu pandemic that had much of Europe in its grip. Maybe that was it. But some of the guys were sceptical. Flu didn’t make you wake up in the middle of the night screaming in terror.

  The crewmen heaved each crate aboard the chopper and then stepped back in the wind blast as the cargo was strapped into place. The hatch slammed shut, the rotors accelerated to a deafening roar, and the chopper took off.

  A few of the ship’s crew stood on deck and watched the aircraft’s twinkling lights disappear into the mist that overhung the city skyline. One of them quickly made the sign of the cross over his chest, and muttered a prayer under his breath. He was a devout Catholic, and his faith was normally the butt of many jokes on board.

  Today, though, nobody laughed.

  Crowmoor Hall

  Near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

  Forty miles away, the gnarly figure of Seymour Finch stepped out of the grand entrance of the manor house. He raised his bald head, peered up at the sky. The stars were out, seeming dead and flat through ragged holes in the mist that curled around the mansion’s gables and clung to the lawns.

  Finch couldn’t stop grinning to himself, even though his hands were quaking in fear as he nervously, impatiently awaited the arrival of the helicopter. He glanced at his watch.

  Soon. Soon.

  Eventually he heard the distant beat of approaching rotor blades. He rubbed his hands together. Took out a small radio handset and spoke into it.

  ‘He’s coming. He’s here.’

  2

  The Carpathian Mountains, Romania

  October 31

  It was getting dark as Alex Bishop emerged from the path through the woods. Across the clearing, she could see the old tumbledown house. She just hoped that her informant had been right. Lives were on the line.

  She quickly checked the equipment she was carrying on her belt, unsnapped the retaining strap on the holster. The steps on the porch were rotten and she overstepped them, treading carefully. She went to the front door, all peeled paint. It swung open with a creak and she could smell
the stench of rot and fungus.

  Inside, the house was all in shadow. She stepped in, peering into the darkness. The door creaked shut behind her.

  Her sharp ears caught something. Was that a thump from somewhere below her feet? She stiffened. Something was moving around down there. She followed the sound through the front hall towards a doorway. A rat, startled by her approach, darted into the deepening shadows.

  A muffled yell from behind the door. Then another. Shrill, scared, all hell breaking loose.

  Someone had got here before her. She kicked the door open with a brittle cracking and splintering, and found herself at the top of a flight of stone steps leading down to the cellar. She wasn’t alone.

  Alex took in the situation. Three young guys in their twenties. One of them lay writhing in a spreading, dark pool of blood. Two still on their feet, one clutching a wooden cross, the other holding a mallet in one hand and a stake in the other. Both howling in panic, wild, demented, as the cellar’s other occupant rose up from their friend’s body and took a step towards them. His mouth opened to show the extended fangs.

  Vampire.

  The guy holding the cross rushed forward with a yell and held it in the vampire’s face. It was a brave thing to do, textbook horror movie heroics, but foolish. If he’d been expecting the vampire to cover its face and hiss and shrink away, he was in for a shock.

  The vampire didn’t blink an eye at the cross. Alex knew he wouldn’t. Instead, he reached out and jerked his attacker brutally off his feet. Pulled him in and bit deep into his shoulder. The young guy fell twitching to the ground, blood jetting from his ripped throat.

  There was nowhere for the third guy to run as the vampire turned his attentions to him and backed him towards the corner of the cellar. The young man had dropped his mallet and stake, and cowered pleading against the rough wall.