When the two dozen or so surviving subhumans saw her, they immediately assumed subservient postures, just as they had been trained to do. The losses—two, maybe three dozen left, out of more than a hundred—were astonishing. More shocking was the empty space in the middle, where the helicopter had been.
“Where are they?” Alexei asked from behind her.
Catherine was surprised, and a little dismayed, that he had ventured out of the relative safety of his lab. She pointed at the open roof overhead. “Where do you think?”
“This is unacceptable!”
“It is unfortunate,” she admitted. “But you have King’s genetic material.”
“A very small sample. We may require more, especially with the accelerated timetable. And we needed him for the test phase.”
She stared up at the night sky, wondering how long they had been gone. “You have air defenses here, don’t you?”
“A battery of Buk M3 surface-to-air missiles.”
Missiles.
The helicopter would be blown apart, everyone aboard killed. King would die. Lynn—
Mother?
—Machtchenko would die.
It didn’t matter. They were nothing to her. No, they were worse than nothing. They were the enemy.
“Track them. Shoot them down.” When Alexei’s dancing eyes refused to meet her gaze, she pressed on. “What are you waiting for? We’ll retrieve his remains from wreckage and reconstitute him. You’ll have all the bone marrow you need.”
“There’s a problem,” Alexei admitted. “The missiles are radar guided.”
“So?”
“Our prisoner, the other test subject. He’s with them, isn’t he? You know what will happen if he’s exposed to a burst of electromagnetic radiation.”
Catherine did know. It was the problem that had bedeviled the Firebird project almost from the beginning. It was an ironic reversal of the intended effect that, it was hoped, might be overcome with a selective introduction of genetic material from a descendant of Adoon.
“You call that a problem?” A rare smile touched her lips. “I call it an opportunity.”
35
Queen handed King one of Deep Blue’s quantum ansible comm units and a Bluetooth enabled earpiece. He put the latter in place and then made his way forward to the cockpit.
He settled into the co-pilot seat and gave Rook a nod. “Good flying back there. You’re officially promoted to team pilot.”
“That’s about as likely as an elephant winning a small pecker competition.” Rook smiled, and then frowned. “Damn. I should have said ‘as likely as me winning a small pecker competition.’”
“Yeah, but then it would have been a lie.” King grinned and peered through the windshield, but saw only inky darkness. “Can you actually see where we’re going?”
“Not really. Compass says we’re going north and the altimeter says we’re high enough that we won’t run into any mountains.”
“Might as well turn the lights on. I don’t think there’s anyone out here to see us.”
Rook started examining the switches until he found one that activated a bright spotlight mounted on the nose of the craft. The light shone down to reveal craggy snow-capped peaks towering over broad white valleys several hundred feet below. They flew along for a few more minutes before Rook noticed something framed in the moving circle of light.
“Huh. What the hell are those things?”
King peered forward and saw several strange vertical protrusions erupting from the snow. Pillars of stone, twisting upward like frozen tornados rising from the otherwise flat snow-covered plateau. It was difficult to judge their size from overhead, but based on how far away they were, King guessed that the shortest of them was still close to a hundred feet high, while the tallest was at least double that. There were seven in all, standing in a haphazard line vaguely reminiscent of Stonehenge or the Moai statues of Easter Island.
“I really want to make another dick joke,” Rook said, “but I don’t want you getting the wrong idea.”
King gave Rook a sidelong glance, raising a single eyebrow. “Uh-huh.”
“C’mon, you can’t tell me they don’t look like a row of oversized wangs to you.”
“I don’t see it,” King said, trying not to laugh. “But I’m not judging, either. To each his own.”
“You do remember I’m boinking the only good looking member of our team, right?”
“Well as long as you and Knight are happy. That’s all that matters.”
Rook grumbled to himself and fell silent. He liked to pal around and argue, but he knew when he was beat.
King’s smile faded as he stared at the columns. Something about them was familiar, but at the same time, wrong, like returning to a childhood home only to find it demolished and replaced by an apartment complex. He was fairly certain he had never been in this particular spot, though with three thousand years’ worth of memories to sift through, it was possible he was remembering wrong. Perhaps he had seen them in a photograph. “Blue, can you do an Internet search for ‘stone pillars in the Urals’?”
There was a grumbling sound over the comm. “Now I know how Siri feels. Okay, well, you’re in luck. That was an easy one. Those are the Manpupuner Rocks.”
Rook gave a snort of laughter at the unusual name, but offered no commentary.
“Also called the Seven Strong Men,” Deep Blue continued. “There’s a legend that the pillars were giants walking through the mountains on their way to attack the local tribes, but a shaman turned them all into stone.”
The pillars had an anthropomorphic aspect, like colossal statues worn down by time and the elements. As King stared at them, his mind’s eye saw what they might once have looked like: towering sentinels, chiseled out of the natural rock, like the Sphinx or the presidential faces at Mount Rushmore.
Is that just my imagination, or is it a memory?
What had Julie said about the research facility being built atop the ruins of an ancient underground city? A city built by giants, worshipped by the natives as gods?
Who were these giants?
She had also said that there was a connection between the giants and the line of Adoon. He knew that Alexander Diotrephes had been a visitor from a parallel reality, but he had been, in appearance at least, a normal, if somewhat exceptional, human being. Tall, but definitely not a giant.
But if there were other universes, then the possibilities were endless. The giants might be from some other reality, or visitors from an alien star.
He did not recall Alexander ever mentioning giants in their travels together. If a city did exist beneath the research facility, then it probably predated Alexander’s time on Earth by thousands of years.
So why am I tuning in on this frequency? He shook his head. One more mystery I’ll probably never solve.
The light slid away from the last of the strange rock formations, revealing a relatively flat and empty snowfield glinting like a field of white crystals. The image of the ancient stone guardians lingered in his mind, tugging at his consciousness, beckoning him to return. “Rook, how far have we gone?”
“Maybe thirty miles. That’s just a guess.”
“What made you decide to go north?”
“Flipped a coin.” Rook shrugged. “North is the Barents Sea. We’ve got enough fuel to reach it if we think light thoughts. Everything else in our range is in Russia. We might make it to the border of Kazakhstan, but I’m not sure Borat will be much help.”
King glanced over at the fuel gauge and did the math. “Light thoughts won’t cut it. Come around and head south. The Trans-Siberian Railroad crosses about a hundred miles from here. We can ditch this bird and catch a train.”
“Ah, riding the rails. The authentic Siberian Hobo Adventure Experience. Vladivostok is only…what, five thousand miles? Figure a week? Could be worse.”
King decided not to mention that Vladivostok would not be the ultimate destination, at least, not for everyone.
Deep Blue’s voice sounded immediately in his ear, as clear as if he was standing beside King. “I’m here. Time to chat now?” His tone was playfully sarcastic, but there was an undercurrent of paternal ire.
“Couldn’t be helped. It was a personal thing.” King sighed. “And it’s not done yet.”
“It was her?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. I think…” He hesitated. “Julie died in that crash twenty years ago. But I think the Russians got ahold of her remains and used a version of the regen serum to bring her back.”
He did not need to explain what that meant. They had all witnessed the effects—good and bad—of Richard Ridley’s attempt to create a serum that would rewrite human DNA, giving the recipient the ability to heal from almost any wound—even regrowing lost limbs. But the serum had the unfortunate side-effect of driving a person insane. They also knew that Alexander Diotrephes had created a more successful version, which had not only imbued instant healing but literal immortality as well—the elixir of life.
“That makes sense,” Deep Blue said. “Your sister would be in her forties, but the woman we saw on television didn’t look a day over twenty-five.”
It wasn’t much of a stretch to believe that a similar potion or serum could have reconstituted Julie Sigler’s remains, restoring her to full health and even preserving her youth for more than twenty years.
“Yeah, but the clincher is that I saw her regenerating. She practically ripped her thumb off to get away from me, but two minutes later, the wound had completely healed.”
“Okay. So mystery solved. The Russians brought her back to life and brainwashed her.” He said it as if it was an everyday occurrence. “We’re gonna get her back and deprogram her, right?”
King was grateful for the expression of unconditional support, but he knew that what Deep Blue had just suggested would be far more difficult than anything they had ever attempted. They were still deep in enemy territory. The last thing they should be worried about was the next mission. “Grab a pen and paper. I need you to do some shopping for me.”
“Pen and paper. That’s cute. This is the twenty-first century, King.”
King began reciting a list of rare botanicals and other exotic ingredients. When he was done, Deep Blue let out a low whistle. “This is some pretty obscure stuff. Dare I ask?”
“It’s the formula for permanently reversing the immortality elixir.” King had used the same recipe on himself a few years before.
“Ah. Okay. This could take a while.”
“Expedite it. I don’t care if you have to hire couriers to hand deliver the stuff to you. We need it ASAP.”
Rook looked over. “We’re going back, aren’t we?”
“Bishop can take our mom and Joe on to Vladivostok. They can find a boat to Japan or something from there. The rest of us—”
“It’s cool. Felt like we left some unfinished business there anyway.” Rook banked the helicopter into a spiraling turn that brought the aircraft down until the snowy plain was just thirty or forty feet below the helicopter. Then he headed due south. As he did, an alarm sounded and an indicator light on the control panel began flashing furiously.
“It wasn’t me,” Rook said, hastily.
King read the Cyrillic letters on the indicator. “It’s a missile lock.”
Rook’s eyes went wide. “I don’t—”
Before he could get the thought out, a scream ripped from the passenger area, loud enough to be heard over the noise of the turbines. Simultaneously, Queen’s shout came over the comm. “King! Get back here!”
“What the—?” King looked back reflexively. Over the terrified wailing—an inhuman sound, like an animal caught in a trap in the path of a brushfire—he could make out the shouts of his teammates, and Queen’s voice alternately cursing and calling for him.
Somebody was dying back there.
Mom?
“Deal with it,” he said, knowing it sounded heartless and hating himself for it. But no matter what was happening aboard the helicopter, it could not be worse than the radar-guided SAMs that were about to take them out of the sky. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much he could do about the latter threat either.
Attempting to outrun or outmaneuver the missiles would be an act of futility. The slowest surface-to-air missiles traveled at about 2,000 mph, more than ten times faster than the Mil Mi-8 helicopter. The fastest missiles could go well over 10,000 mph. It would be like trying to outrun a bullet, and not just any bullet, but one that could change directions if you attempted to step out of the way. And since Rook had the stick, about all King could do was offer suggestions and try not to be a back-seat driver.
“Those pillars,” he said. “Maybe we can lose the radar lock.”
“Right,” Rook said. “On it.”
King felt the deck tilt as Rook took the helicopter down. Just getting the aircraft down close to the ground might be enough to shake the radar lock. SAMs were designed to take down high-flying jet aircraft, not low and slow targets. Then the towering Manpupuner stone columns came into view, towering above the landscape.
Another warning indicator on the panel lit up. “We’ve got inbound. Five seconds. Four. Three.”
Rook slid the helicopter between two of the pillars.
The indicator lights began flashing on and off. Radio waves, both from a ground tracking station and the missile or missiles hunting them, were still sweeping the sky, but the stone pillars had eclipsed the helicopter from their line of sight.
Something flashed by in the darkness to their right. A sonic boom rattled the aircraft and shook snow from the pillars.
The missile had overshot.
King and Rook both let out a sigh of relief as the warning alarm ceased, but the relative silence was immediately filled with the screaming from the cabin.
36
Deal with it?
Queen was too astonished by what she was seeing to even be angry with King. Truth be told, she wasn’t really sure what she expected him to do about it. She had no idea how to ‘deal with it,’ and it didn’t seem likely that King would either.
Joe appeared to be having some kind of seizure. He doubled over without any warning, and then his entire body went rigid. He jerked in his seat, straining against the safety belt. His head thrashed back and forth so fast that Queen couldn’t see his face anymore. Beneath the rags that were his clothes, his muscles appeared to be swelling, but given the violence of the attack, Queen couldn’t tell if this was an illusion or the beginning of some kind of transformation.
Lynn, seated next to Joe, had initially tried to comfort him, but now she was fighting to get out of her seat belt, and for good reason. Joe was out of control, consumed by primal fury. If he started thrashing and flailing, Lynn would bear the brunt of it.
Bishop was shouting something. Queen couldn’t make it out over Joe’s shrieking.
Queen unbuckled her own seat belt and started forward, but just then, the helicopter tilted. She went stumbling across the cabin and slammed into a bulkhead. The aircraft leveled out almost immediately, but Queen hugged the bulkhead until she was steady on her feet, even as Joe’s wailing built to a fever pitch.
Behind her, Lynn, with some help from Bishop, had succeeded in getting free of the seatbelt, but the pitching of the aircraft had dumped both of them on the deck. Lynn cried out in pain as the tumble aggravated her broken ankle, which only added to the hellish din.
Joe jolted again, and then he went still with the abruptness of a red-lined engine seizing up. And like an overheated engine, he appeared to be on the verge of coming apart at the seams. His lips were pulled back in a rictus of pain, teeth grinding together with such force that Queen thought they might be crushed to powder in his mouth.
“Bones…on fire.” Spittle flew from his mouth, as he forced the words past his clenched jaws.
Queen knew she had to do something for him, something to him, to pre
vent him from harming himself or the rest of them. Knocking him out cold seemed like the only option, but as she pushed off the bulkhead and started toward him, both Joe and Knight shouted for her to stop.
“Don’t go near him,” Knight added. He was on his feet as well, but making no move toward Joe. “He’s hot.”
Her first thought was that Knight was somehow getting a temperature reading with his new bionic eye, but then she remembered that the eye picked up on background radiation. And Joe was suffering from radiation sickness.
Not hot as in hot. Hot as in radioactive.
But how was that possible? Could a person just become radioactive?
Joe managed to force out another word. “Kill...”
His eyes were boring into her, imploring her to do something to end his suffering.
“You,” he finished, with a gasp.
Queen felt her blood turn to ice. Joe wasn’t threatening her. He was warning her what would happen if she didn’t stop him first. He seemed to grasp that she understood. Then he looked at something behind her. She followed his gaze and saw that she was standing in front of the door.
Oh, God.
“No.” She shook her head. “There has to be another way. We’ll get you some help just as soon as we—”
A loud boom, like a thunderclap, reverberated through the cabin. Joe went rigid again, and then, as if the sonic boom had been a signal, he jerked hard against the heavy duty nylon seat belt. The mounting bolt snapped in two with a noise like a gunshot. Joe erupted from his seat and began staggering toward Queen.
She stood her ground, refusing to budge, even as Joe lurched closer, arms stretched out as if to embrace her. Then someone—Knight—was pulling her out of the way.
“No, damn it!” Some part of her knew that her protest was as futile as her refusal to let Joe reach the door. Knight wrapped his arms around her, preventing her from tackling Joe, and Joe kept going. He grasped the door handle and yanked it open.
The effort brought him to his knees. He dropped, wracked by another seizure as frigid air swirled around him.
“Joe, we can help—”
Empire (A Jack Sigler Thriller Book 8) Page 24