He was angry. Angry at himself for walking into the trap that he had known was a trap. Angry at the man he had known as Vladimir—his father? He still wasn’t ready to accept that—not only for this latest betrayal, but for an entire lifetime of treachery and manipulation. Angry at his daughter for not being who he thought she was, and then angry at himself again for not being able to save her.
The door opened, and the person foremost in his thoughts entered. “Hello, Peter.”
He stared back at her. “What am I supposed to call you?”
“Julie,” she said, though her tone was uncertain, as if she was trying the name out for the first time. “That’s who I am, right?”
“If you’re Julie, then you should call me ‘Dad.’ I’m old fashioned that way. Kids today, addressing their parents on a first name basis…” He gave a snort of disapproval. “Too familiar. And you know what they say about familiarity?”
“I don’t, actually.”
“It breeds contempt.”
She stared at him in consternation.
“Like the contempt your grandfather seems to have for his offspring,” Peter went on. He used the word ‘grandfather’ deliberately, just as he had when suggesting Julie call him ‘Dad.’
“You don’t understand what he’s trying to do,” she said, immediately defensive.
He wiggled his arms and legs in the restraints. “I’ll admit, it’s kind of hard for me to see him as a benevolent visionary.”
She pulled a chair away from the wall, positioned it near the table and sat facing him. “You don’t need to be afraid. Whatever he does…whatever he has to do…he can bring you back. That’s why he wanted to test the Firebird on King…on Jack. Because only the Children of Adoon can be brought back.”
“You make it sound like he’s doing us a favor. Where I come from, when someone does medical experiments on their children and grandchildren, we call social services.” He stretched his hand out, palm up, in an inviting gesture. “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring you back, Julie. But the fact that he did is no reason to trust him. He’s using you. Using all of us. That’s not love. That’s not what fathers are supposed to do.”
“You don’t understand,” she said again. “He’s doing this to save the world.”
Peter sensed that he would gain nothing by trying to force the issue, but the fact that she had sought him out was reason for hope. “He told me that your mother and brother were captured. Is that true?”
She looked away. “They were here.”
“But they aren’t now? What happened to them? Are they okay?”
“You will see them again.”
He realized that what he had taken for guilt at having imprisoned her closest relatives was actually embarrassment at having lost them. She’s not really Julie at all, he thought. “So what happens now? He’s going to test this Firebird on me, right?”
“Yes. But you don’t need to worry. The latest generation of the serum utilizes your son’s DNA. It should provide complete protection from nuclear radiation, with no attendant side effects.”
“Wonderful. So I’ll survive the end of the world.”
“We all will.” She frowned, realizing too late that his comment had been sarcastic. “There won’t be a nuclear war. NATO is already finished, and once the Americans realize that atomic weapons are useless against us, the war will be over before a shot is fired.”
“You’re as naïve as he is arrogant.”
Julie’s lips curled into a patronizing smile. “Great men are often accused of hubris by their rivals, while the masses cheer for them in secret. The world craves a leader like him. Bold. Fearless. With this courageous step, he will forge a new Russian empire, and we—the bloodline of Adoon—will rule beside him.”
“Just like Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon. I seem to recall that didn’t work out so well for him.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but just then a resounding thump shook the room. Her forehead creased in sudden alarm and she bolted to her feet. She turned toward the door, but it opened before she could reach it, revealing the would-be emperor himself.
“We’re under attack,” he snarled.
Julie shook her head in disbelief. “How is that possible? Our early warning system—”
“They are coming up from the old city.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think?” The President flashed an angry look at Peter.
It’s Jack, Peter thought. Jack is attacking them.
“We should leave,” Julie said. “Alexei can finish his research elsewhere.”
“We will not flee before our enemies.” The President continued staring at Peter, his rage solidifying into resolve. “This attack will fail. Send the remaining subhumans down there. And have Alexei bring the Firebird. We will test it now.”
43
King could pinpoint the exact moment when the ape-creature figured out where the attack was coming from. Its fiery orange eyes, squinting against the storm of incoming bullets, seemed to be staring right at him.
With eyes that big, it was probably staring at all of them, but somehow it felt personal, which was fine with King. The creature was no mere wild animal protecting its turf. It was a smart, deadly predator. A carnivore, possibly even a cannibal, depending on how closely it was related to the partially eaten humanzees, the remains of the creatures the team had fought in the hangar. Evidently, Volos was part of the local waste removal system.
“That got his attention,” King shouted, unnecessarily. They could all see the thing swinging along the edge of the spiraling platform like the mutant monkey it was. “Fall back.”
They had already taken Lynn through the narrow opening in the concrete slab that sealed off the ancient city. The slot was barely wide enough to permit a person to pass through. Once they were inside, Volos would not be able to follow them.
Queen squeezed off several more shots at the approaching primate before shouting, “What about Rook and Knight?” Her tone was grim, determined, but with a hint of desperation.
The beast would be on them in a matter of seconds. “Right now, we’re in more danger than they are.”
He loosed a burst at one of the enormous grasping hands, hoping the shock of impact might cause the creature to lose its grip and fall. But the beast was moving so fast, it was impossible to tell if he even scored a hit. Abandoning the effort, he drew back from the edge, shouting again for Bishop and Queen to fall back.
There was a rush of movement as the ape-beast heaved itself up and onto the platform. It landed so hard the floor shook and almost knocked the three of them over. King emptied his weapon into the creature’s face, all the while shouting for the others to move, but they were doing the same thing he was.
We’re gonna have to have a talk about following orders, he thought.
He spun on his heel, grabbed ahold of Queen and Bishop by the arms, one in each hand and propelled them toward the slot. Something crashed down right where they had been standing, and the stone floor lurched again. He glimpsed a series of fracture lines shooting up the gray concrete wall, but then they were inside the narrow corridor, half-running, half-stumbling.
A roar filled the passage, and King knew without turning that the creature was looking in at them, filling the opening with its bestial visage. Then he heard a rustling noise, something scraping against the sides of the corridor.
It was reaching in for them with the full length of its massive shaggy arm.
He shoved Queen and Bishop ahead of him, stumbled and went face down on the concrete. Something struck his foot and he recoiled, as if from a fire or deadly snake. As he scrambled forward on all fours, he looked over his shoulder and saw the hand, dark leathery skin, chipped fingernails…huge.
And just out of reach.
The hand drew back a little, then came forward as the beast tried to jam its whole arm deeper into the slot. The corridor shook and more cracks appeared in the walls.
“Okay,” he said, pant
ing to catch his breath. “He’s a little pissed off.”
Queen was staring…no, glaring at him. “We aren’t leaving Knight and Rook.”
“Of course we aren’t,” he said, and then as if to give further reassurance, he activated the comm device. “Knight, Rook. What’s your status?”
“Still here,” Knight said. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we can get to you.”
“There’s a great big monkey-ass blocking the exit,” Rook put in.
King gave Queen an encouraging nod. “Just keep out of sight until he loses interest and goes back to his hidey hole.”
Another tremor rattled the passage, loosening pieces of dust and grit from the ceiling.
“He does not seem to be losing interest,” Bishop remarked.
“He will,” King said, sounding more confident than he felt. What if he doesn’t?
He picked himself up and looked further down the corridor to where they had left Lynn. She was on her feet—or rather, on her good foot—leaning against the wall, a borrowed pistol in one hand. Her attention was divided between the team’s narrow escape and the far end of the passage, which presumably led into the research facility. “Blowing the reactor is the mission. Everything else is secondary.”
“Everything?” Bishop asked, one eyebrow raised.
His answer was to push past her and continue along the corridor, but he had not missed the none-too-subtle accusation. Perhaps he deserved it. Even now, in the back of his mind, he still wondered if it was possible to save Julie, to break the hypnotic spell she seemed to be under. Nevertheless, he intended to heed his own admonition. There was no guarantee any of them would make it out alive, but he was going to make damn sure that Volosgrad and all its secrets were wiped off the face of the Earth before he went down. That was priority one. A safe exit for the team and his mother was second on the list. Finding Julie was a distant third.
He allowed Lynn to drape one arm over his shoulder, and they continued along the passage and through the door at the end of the corridor, which opened onto a stairwell. Bishop went out ahead of them.
The stairs—utilitarian metal grating on a frame of steel I-beams—went up ten feet through a vertical channel cut in the slab of solid concrete that kept Volos a prisoner of the abyss. As they rose above it, King saw that they had not reached the end of the ancient city after all. The cylindrical shaft continued up, as far as the eye could see, which was not very far given the low light conditions. The new tenants had made some additions, using the cap as a foundation for the modern subterranean facility. The stairs kept going up the exterior of a flat wall that bisected the shaft, almost certainly the outside wall of the facility to which Julie had brought him and Lynn. Somewhere up there was the hangar and a possible exit to the surface. But without an aircraft to bear them away, it was a less than ideal objective. They would have a better chance making their exit through the ventilation system.
First things first.
Opposite the wall, the top of the concrete slab continued all the way to the far side of the cylindrical shaft. The space was mostly empty, save for a domed concrete structure that looked like a squat grain silo with several metal pipes of varying dimensions sprouting from it. Some disappeared into the slab and others rose straight up and out of view.
“That looks about the right size to hold a small pressurized water reactor.” He pointed to a line of steel elbow pipes rising from the slab and connecting to the side of the containment building. “Those are probably feeding the coolant system. We blow those and this thing will go critical in half an hour. There won’t be a thing anyone can do to stop it.”
The floor jumped again, and this time the cracks spread all the way to the top of the slab. Volos was still at it, and by the look of things, angrier than he had ever been.
“Maybe you don’t need to blow reactor,” Bishop observed. “Giant monkey is going to do the job for us, I think.”
“I’ll give him an assist.” He eased out from under Lynn, shifting her onto Bishop’s shoulders. “Help Mom get up those stairs. Queen, go with her. I’ll set the charges.”
Queen glowered at him. “Women and children first, is that it?”
King knew the real source of her ire was the fact that she wanted to stay behind to make sure that Rook and Knight—one her boyfriend, the other her oldest and dearest friend—made it out. That was understandable, but not acceptable. Getting them all home was his responsibility, not hers. And he had a plan.
“That’s an order,” he snapped, but then added a little less forcefully, “Take care of my family.”
Queen’s expression softened a little, then she nodded to Bishop. “Let’s go.”
As the three women started up the stairs, King started out toward the containment building at a run, reaching it just a few seconds later. He worked quickly, pressing all but one of the remaining blocks of semtex around the pipes and affixing blasting caps to each block. All of them were daisy-chained to a radio-controlled detonator, and he set it all up while trying to ignore the intermittent tremors.
Volos was still trying to tear concrete apart with his bare hands, and judging from the tumult, he was succeeding. The steel pipes creaked and flexed with each new assault. King could feel heat coming off the pipes, and he tried not to think about what else might be radiating from the containment building. Bishop had not been wrong about the level of damage the creature was doing, and if one of those pipes ruptured prematurely, he wouldn’t live to see the meltdown he was trying to initiate. Although it would take time—as much as half an hour—for the nuclear fuel in the reactor to reach a critical temperature and melt everything in the ancient city to slag, the steam eruption from a bursting pipe would parboil him instantly.
With the explosives set, he turned and headed back for the stairs. He could just make out the others, slowly climbing the steps, their progress hampered by Lynn’s injury. Even with the headstart, he would have no trouble catching up to them, provided of course that what he was about to do next did not go horribly wrong.
“Knight, Rook, you guys still hanging in?”
Rook’s voice sounded immediately. “There was a traffic jam, so we decided to stop off and get Frappucinos. Who knew there was a Starbucks down here? Knight’s hitting on the barista. Beck is going to be pissed when she hears about it.”
Rook’s inclination to meet every crisis with a joke was either refreshing or infuriating depending on the circumstances. Counterintuitively, the worse the situation was, the more King found he appreciated Rook’s sarcastic wit. He could imagine Rook fighting alongside the Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae, taunting the overwhelming forces of the Persian emperor, laughing in the face of death.
“I’m gonna blow a small charge in the tunnel. Just enough to give Volos a hotfoot. If it works, he’ll probably pull back for a second.”
“Give this guy five more minutes and he’ll tear open a hole big enough for all of us to get through.”
“Yeah, I don’t actually want him to do that,” King replied. He hopped down the steps. Then at a considerably more cautious pace, he advanced into the crumbling passage.
The ape’s huge hand was systematically crushing the cement, breaking off boulder-sized chunks like pieces of an old Styrofoam cooler. The effort was shredding the leathery skin of his fingertips, but the damage was healing almost as quickly as it was sustained.
King got within about twenty feet of the thrashing hand. Close enough. He slipped a silver-colored blasting cap, already wired to another receiver unit, into the wrapped semtex block, then placed it on the floor and nudged it forward with a gentle kick.
“Operation Hotfoot is a ‘go,’” he said, backing away. “Standby for the signal to run.”
“Now would be a good time,” Knight said, cutting off any further humorous observations from Rook.
King backed out of the passage and climbed back up onto the slab. He had to stay close to the mouth of the passage to guarantee simultaneous detonation of all the
charges, but far enough away to avoid getting blasted by either explosion. He skirted along the base of the vertical wall about fifty feet, trying also to put some distance between himself and the reactor. Then he flipped off the safety on the ‘send’ unit.
“Ready?” His finger hovered above the trigger.
“As we’ll ever be,” Rook replied, with just a trace more apprehension than usual.
At the same instant, Queen shouted, loud enough to be heard even without the comm. “Contact high!”
As soon as the words were out, the shooting started.
It never just rains, King thought, and shouted, “Fire in the hole!”
And then there was.
44
Queen didn’t know if she was madder at Rook or King. Rook for being a hero and standing with Knight against the giant killer ape. King for showing up out of the blue, taking over and doing what, as their leader, he was obligated to do—namely sending them into harm’s way but being the first in line to pull them back out. Or was she madder at herself for being mad at either of them?
Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Anger was what she needed right now.
It had begun with a door, two stories above them, bursting open and slamming against the wall with a bang like a gunshot. Then they were everywhere. Humanzees poured down the stairs like a waterfall of flesh and teeth.
They were the same variety that had attacked them in the hangar, or more probably the veterans of that battle—the survivors. The metal grating of the stairs allowed her to see them coming, but it was an effective bullet screen. She would have to wait until they were practically face-to-face to start firing. It was going to be a very close, very ugly battle. Even though the enemy couldn’t shoot back, the three of them were outnumbered ten-to-one. She shouted a warning to her teammates, a military habit more than anything else, and then she waited for the creatures to step into the open.
Lynn actually got the first shot off, drilling the first humanzee to come around the corner. She dropped it in its tracks and in the way of the onrushing mob. Then all three of them were firing into the descending wave.
Empire (A Jack Sigler Thriller Book 8) Page 29