Candle spent a lot of time commenting anonymously on blogs, starting chain e-mails and planting rumors on message boards. It didn’t take much effort. He planted the seeds, and they grew like kudzu.
But he thought he should be closer to the action. He’d been excited when Graves pulled him in to work counterintelligence on Barrows. He thought he’d finally get to see some real action.
Now that he had his chance, however, he felt a little nauseous.
Hewitt’s special skills unlocked doors and got Candle into the tunnels—the geek part of him was pretty psyched about the secret tunnels. But after that, he was on his own. He got lost twice, even using the detailed turn-by-turn map programmed into his phone.
He was sweating and queasy by the time he found the morgue. He had his gun in one hand, his phone in the other, but he didn’t feel particularly dashing. He was pretty sure a secret agent’s underwear wasn’t supposed to ride up his crack while on a mission.
He peered into the morgue. It was a disaster area. Carefully, he shoved the door open, sweeping first with the pistol, the way he’d been taught at A/A’s firearms course. However, he insisted on holding the gun sideways, despite all the times his instructor had yelled at him about that.
It just looked so damned cool.
The lights flickered in the room. Something really bad had happened in here. He could tell. His foot came down on something sticky, and he knew it was blood.
But the bubble of his fantasies—I’m really doing it! I’m a spy!—was thick enough to be a force field. Candle literally couldn’t imagine anything bad happening to him. In his head, this was all part of the script. This was where he found the way to pry Barrows loose from their group, where he learned a way to control Cade, and he got Graves’s approval and Bell would have sex with him.
Then he heard the hissing.
He turned in time to see the Snakehead, battered and half-frozen, a crusted scab over its chest. It looked pissed. And worse, it looked hungry.
Candle pulled the trigger—and just like his firearms instructor warned him, the gun ejected a hot shell casing back into his eye. He recoiled in pain, blinded. He kept pulling the trigger.
He couldn’t see a thing between the tears and the pain. He kept firing, bullets spanging all over the metal surfaces of the room, hoping for a random hit.
His slide locked open. The clip was empty. He still couldn’t see. Deafened by the gunshots, he couldn’t hear the hissing either.
But he was still alive.
Maybe he got lucky.
Then a heavy weight landed on his back, and he felt the skin separate as something sliced through it.
His bubble of fantasy popped. The real world was right in his face, and it was a small square of tile on a cold floor. It finally occurred to him that he was not the secret-agent hero of this movie. He wasn’t the plucky sidekick. He wasn’t even the damsel in distress, because no one was coming to save him.
TWENTY
Operation OFTEN was the name given by Sidney Gottlieb to the CIA’s attempts to “weaponize” black magic. Gottlieb, who was already famous among conspiracy theorists for his part in the CIA’s mind-control experiments (see: Operation MK-ULTRA), used untold amounts of taxpayer dollars to hire psychics, astrologers and mentalists in an effort to tap into real magical power for America to use against its enemies. It was even rumored that OFTEN conducted séances to debrief CIA personnel who’d been killed in action. No wonder Gottlieb’s nickname was “the Black Sorcerer.” A similar operation, code-named CONNECTICUT-HULU, was reported to extend OFTEN’s research by using cult rituals and techniques, although no documentation exists to support this charge.
—Cole Daniels, Black Ops: The Occult-CIA Connection
GULF OF ADEN
A helicopter rose over the Virtue, its spotlight sweeping the deck. It revealed six of the Snakeheads feeding on a single corpse, their slit pupils contracting in the sudden glare. They looked like animals on the highway, feasting on roadkill while caught in the headlights of a car.
Cade didn’t drop from the chopper as much as launch himself out into the air. Thirty yards to the deck, then he hit and rolled to his feet, right in the center of the carnage.
The Snakeheads stared at him. He was smiling.
No. Not smiling. Snarling. Showing them his own fangs.
To Cade’s surprise, they did not come right for him. They stood, looking as if they considered the idea, then seemed to sniff him out.
Interesting, Cade thought. They sensed his inhumanity. They weren’t going to try to eat him; he didn’t suit their tastes.
Cade realized they would only fight him if they perceived him as a direct threat.
He could manage that.
“All right,” Cade said, still snarling. “Who’s first?”
HE PICKED THE BIGGEST ONE, absurdly clothed in a hospital gown still strung around one arm and its neck.
He leaped high above it and kicked.
His heel cracked the Snakehead right at the neck. The kick would have killed one of the creatures on the yacht.
But instead of the familiar snap of bone, Cade felt only a dull thud of impact. The Snakehead fell down, but it wasn’t dead. It was barely even hurt. They were like jerky; tough but flexible.
No question about it now. This was an entirely different generation of creature. They were evolving rapidly—too rapidly to be random chance. Someone was refining the virus with each new strain; deliberately producing tougher breeds of the creatures.
Cade just hoped they hadn’t gotten any smarter.
It scrabbled back to its feet and slashed at him. He grabbed the Snakehead by the neck and hurled it to the deck. It slashed at his gut with the talons on its feet; Cade moved barely in time to avoid being disemboweled.
The others left them alone, concentrating on the meat. They had no herd or pack instincts, apparently. They just wanted to eat.
The Snakehead suddenly barreled forward and pinned Cade to the deck. Cade held its neck just far enough to avoid those needle-sharp teeth snapping at his face.
The creature kept shifting position, snapping crazily. It didn’t want to devour Cade; it only wanted to kill him. Cade had learned he could make them angry. That was a sort of progress, he supposed.
He knew he couldn’t keep its jaws away much longer. He was on his back, at a disadvantage. Sooner or later, the Snakehead would get past his guard.
So Cade let it.
He slipped its thrust, driving it face first into the deck behind him. At the same time, he turned his head and bared his fangs.
He bit as hard as he could, tearing free the leathery hide of its neck.
Blood poured over his chin and neck, even dribbling into his ears.
The Snakehead rolled away with a strangled kind of hiss that could only be a shriek of pain.
Cade spat out the snake flesh. It wasn’t human anymore; not even close. It made him slightly nauseous.
But Cade noticed the other Snakeheads didn’t have any reservations.
Their heads lifted as one from the body, and they narrowed their eyes on the thrashing, bleeding Snakehead.
They ran headlong at it, shoving one another out of the way in their eagerness for the kill. Primal instinct took over. They saw weakness and they pounced on it.
In a second, the creatures were tearing at one another, all trying to find a fresh chunk of the wounded Snakehead. Inevitably, they tore open new wounds, and the fresh blood drove them even crazier. Several more, attracted by the hissing cries of the scrum, joined in the slaughter.
Cade watched from a safe distance as the Snakeheads ate one another.
Now Cade knew how to kill them all.
FIRST, HE MADE a trip to the bridge. He had not piloted a boat in years, but it was easy enough to set the Virtue moving forward. He hoped it wouldn’t run into anything before he was done.
In the stairwell to the lower decks, Cade found another Snakehead waiting. It sniffed the blood on him and attacked immediately.
Cade was ready. He ducked, grabbed the Snakehead by the leg and slammed it into the metal stairs.
Dazed, it thrashed weakly at him, tried to bite.
Cade’s hand darted in between those needle-like teeth, grabbed and yanked.
He came out with the Snakehead’s forked tongue and some other things that used to be stuck in its throat. It began choking, scrabbling at its neck in pain.
Now that it was distracted, Cade easily hooked one of its claws and tore it free.
Then he used the claw like a knife to slice open the Snakehead’s belly.
It was not too deep—not enough to gut the creature—but it was enough to make the blood run. He punched the Snakehead back to the ground and swabbed it with the bloody tongue. He stomped on its knee, keeping it from gaining its feet.
Cade hooked his hand under the Snakehead’s jaw and began running down the steps, dragging it behind. It painted a trail of blood wherever he went.
THE VIRTUE WAS a big ship, nearly the length of four football fields. Cade had to settle for making two circuits of the upper decks. He could not go down any deeper; he’d be hopelessly outnumbered and caught.
The idea was to be the fisherman, not the worm.
They came after him halfway through his second trip. Drawn by the blood of one of their own, they began chasing him.
As he reached the main deck again, Cade finally looked back. Dozens—maybe even hundreds—of Snakeheads were following him now, eagerly, jaws snapping, in a frenzy. He heard their claws on the metal like rain. Saw them scrambling over one another. Some peeled off into minor fights and tangles, like little storms breaking out of a massive thundercloud.
The thrill of the hunt had overridden any other caution or instinct they had. All they wanted was the meat.
Cade ran faster and tried not to think about what it meant for the crew if the Snakeheads were still this hungry.
He reached the rear of the ship. Below him, the Virtue’s twenty-six-foot propeller churned the sea with enough force to shove the seventy-ton ship through the water.
He didn’t let go of the still-living Snakehead until after he’d leaped over the railing.
Unable or unwilling to stop, the mass of creatures surged over the side after him, a green-black wave pouring into the sea below.
His fingers wedged into a seam of the ship’s steel plating, Cade watched as they fell. Some even seemed to look at him where he clutched the side of the hull.
The prop caught them in its backwash, drawing them into the metal blades. The Snakeheads were made for the water, but even they couldn’t outswim the pull of the giant metal screw. It sucked them down, again and again, cutting them to pieces.
In minutes, there was nothing left but a stew of lizard skin and bone.
Cade watched to make sure nothing else surfaced. Then he began climbing back.
CADE LISTENED CAREFULLY ONCE he reached the top deck.
Not everyone who had been attacked had been killed. He heard the groans of pain, the screams of people asking for help.
The worst part, however, was what he didn’t hear: no one was rushing to assist. There were no barked commands from anyone in authority. The Snakeheads had had hours. No one was left to come to the rescue.
All that remained was the wounded.
Cade knew they were infected. Given time—almost no time at all, really—these people would become the same things that nearly murdered them. There was no way around it.
There would be no survivors.
He walked toward the closest sounds of pain, knowing that he’d end their suffering, at least.
It was no comfort.
TWENTY-ONE
Then there was the mysterious “Mr. Gray” or “Mr. Grace” who showed up in New Orleans at Guy Banister’s offices, which just happened to be the same address given by Lee Harvey Oswald on the flyers of his “Fair Play for Cuba Committee.” Banister—who also investigated UFO sightings when he was still employed by the FBI—wasn’t known to be a pushover, but witnesses said he did whatever Grace/Gray said, despite the fact that the mysterious stranger was much younger than he was; barely out of college, in fact.
—Cole Daniels, Black Ops: The Occult-CIA Connection
CHANTILLY, VIRGINIA
Bell and Zach showed up at the office at nearly the same time. They were a little shy of each other, but not so much that Book noticed.
He had other things on his mind.
“Candle’s missing,” he told them.
“He’s probably just late,” Bell said.
“No,” Book said flatly. “He’s not.”
Bell looked to Hewitt and Reynolds. They sat, almost sheepish.
Zach tried to pick up on the subtext. Something wasn’t being said out loud.
“How do you know he’s not late?”
Book ignored him. Bell didn’t reply. Zach got it in a second.
“You know he’s not late because you know what he was doing,” he said. “And it’s something you didn’t want me to know.”
Bell had the courtesy to look embarrassed, at least.
“He might have followed us to that place we went yesterday.”
For a moment, Zach thought she meant his apartment. Then he realized it was worse than that. It was the morgue.
He’d broken protocol, revealed a deeply classified secret lab to an unauthorized private contractor, and allowed some fat bastard who was probably working for the most evil organization he’d ever known to find out where it was.
All things considered, Zach was pretty restrained in his reaction.
“Oh, son of a bitch,” he said.
IT WAS THE FIRST TIME Zach had seen the morgue and thought it really looked like death. Slicks of blood on the floor and red spatters on the walls. Paper in heaps, tables and medical equipment smashed and scattered.
Book had wanted to come. So had Hewitt and Reynolds. Zach only brought Bell, because he figured that he’d already spilled that milk. And, frankly, he didn’t trust the others.
Now it was looking like a big mistake for anyone to be here.
Bell thought the same thing. “We need to get out of here,” she said.
Zach walked inside anyway. The fluorescents overhead buzzed and flickered where they weren’t broken.
“Zach, did you hear me?”
“Shhh,” Zach said. Something was in the room.
Zach looked around. He saw the cold-storage drawer, torn open, and put it together.
“It wasn’t dead.”
Bell followed his gaze. She got it. “Oh Christ,” she said. “We have to get out of here.”
She was right. Zach stepped forward to go.
Then he heard the noise again, and knew it was too late. A clicking, hissing sound. He’d never heard anything like it, but he knew where it came from.
The Snakehead reared up behind the overturned autopsy table, showing them its razor-sharp smile.
As it lunged for them, Zach could see bits of flesh lodged in its teeth.
ZACH WOULD HAVE BEEN lunch had he not been training with Cade.
Eleven months earlier on his first assignment, Zach had to admit he’d been basically useless in a fight. Cade had remedied that in his own style.
Zach had been in the Reliquary, doing paperwork at what was now his desk. Without warning, Cade picked him up and threw him down on the floor.
“What the hell are you doing?” Zach had screamed. For a split second, every nightmare he’d ever had of Cade rushed through his head.
Cade simply stood there.
“You need to learn how to fight,” he said.
Zach dragged himself to his feet, wincing at the places where he’d hit the stone floor. “Isn’t that why I’ve got you?”
“I won’t always be around,” Cade said.
“This is not a good time for me.”
“You might be killed before we get another chance.”
Zach considered this. “I’ll clear my schedule.”
So
Zach had learned, the hard way. Cade would attack, and Zach would defend himself as best he could. He never lasted more than a few seconds. Cade would stop short of the fatal blow.
“That would have been your head,” Cade said, his hand like a knife at Zach’s neck.
“Son of a bitch,” Zach said, panting and sweating. “Haven’t you heard of sparring?”
“There’s no point. You are either fighting or you’re not. No middle ground.”
“Yeah, but what if I accidentally hurt you?”
Cade’s lip curled.
“Right,” Zach said. “Stupid question.”
“You can’t hurt me,” Cade said. “But by all means, you should try. Use whatever you can find. Use your teeth, your hands, your feet, your clothes, anything on the ground. Everything is a weapon. Don’t play by any schoolyard rules. Don’t be afraid to be desperate. Desperate is better than dead.”
So Zach learned. He doubted there was any cool name for the martial art he invented. He knew he must look ridiculous, flailing away, still wearing his coat and tie, eyes and mouth wide open. Maybe someone would call it “The Way of the File Clerk” in a hundred years or so.
But when he began seriously trying to hurt Cade—to kill him—he began to last a little longer.
Not much longer, true. Thirty seconds, instead of three. But Cade said he’d made progress. “You might survive,” he’d said.
High praise.
ZACH THOUGHT of that now as he dropped out of the Snakehead’s path.
It hit the floor and rolled, then turned toward Bell.
Bell made her first mistake then. She froze up. Disbelief all over her face.
Zach couldn’t blame her. It was unbelievable.
Unfortunately, unbelievable was a daily part of Zach’s job.
Zach dove over a desk to intercept. His hands automatically grabbed for a weapon. He snagged the scissors out of a pile of office junk spilled from a coffee mug.
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