Threshold

by Robinson, Jeremy

“Lew,” he said, kneeling down by Aleman’s body. “Lew, wake up.”

  Aleman’s eyes blinked open. “King…”

  “What happened?”

  Aleman tried to sit up, but a stab of pain kept him down. “Took a hit to the head. Shrapnel I think.”

  “Where’re the others?”

  “Gone,” Aleman said.

  “Fiona’s with them?”

  Aleman frowned and King knew the answer before the man said the words. “They took her.”

  King clenched his fists. Fiona was gone.

  His daughter was gone.

  At that moment all of King’s fears became realized—Jack Sigler never would be, nor should be, a father. And if he were somehow able to bring her back alive, he would find a better, and safer, home for her. King picked up his friend and headed for the barracks where a makeshift triage was already being set up.

  As King passed, Peter saw a flicker of something in King’s eyes, an anger bordering on primal, screaming for revenge.

  “What’s going to happen?” Lynn asked her husband as he closed the door.

  “I’m not sure,” he said, meeting her eyes with a strong gaze that communicated more than words, “but whoever did this…” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to be them when Jack comes calling.”

  “Are you sure this isn’t more than he can handle?” she said, lowering her voice to a strong whisper.

  Peter took her arm. “He’ll handle it.”

  “I couldn’t live with myself if something happened and we—”

  Peter took hold of her other arm and pulled her close. “He’ll handle it. We Sigler’s are hard to kill.”

  “I hope that’s true,” she said. “For both of them.”

  SEEK

  SIXTEEN

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  DESPITE AN UNCEASING urge to find out who was behind the attack and where Fiona had been taken, King was duty-bound to aid in the rescue efforts under way around Fort Bragg. Collapsed buildings buried the dead and dying. Triages treated burns, puncture wounds, and crushed limbs, some of which had to be amputated. Outside of a war zone, he’d seen nothing like it.

  And neither had America.

  The attack, seen and heard for miles around, was impossible to hide from the media. At first, news helicopters had hovered outside the no-fly zone, zooming in for close-up shots of the rescue operation under way, but they had since been chased away by several deadly attack helicopters now securing the aerial perimeter. Shots from visitor camera phones flooded YouTube. And a few reporters, who were already on the base when the attack occurred, took advantage of the chaos, hiding in the ruins and snapping photos of bloodied soldiers, destroyed buildings, and parking lots filled with overturned vehicles.

  By the time the military launched a full-scale search to find and remove press from the base it was too late to contain the story. The world knew about the attack on Fort Bragg. The images of destroyed buildings and dead soldiers revolted each and every American who saw them.

  Once they were sure the press had been cleared, the pilots of the large green and white helicopter known as Marine One were given the go ahead. The presidential helicopter swung into view above the base accompanied by two fully armed AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters. A squadron of F-22 Raptor fighter jets secured the airspace above and around the base, their engines a constant roar in the sky.

  The grass of the barracks’ central quad bowed away from the massive helicopter as it set down, the chop of its blades slowing. As the rotors stopped spinning a small group of soldiers gathered to see if Marine One carried who they all thought it did. When the door opened and President Thomas Duncan stepped out, his face grim, each and every one of the beaten and tired men snapped sharp salutes.

  All but one.

  King walked past the saluting men and stomped toward the president, who he knew as Deep Blue. Two Secret Service men moved for King but Duncan stopped them with an open hand.

  The Secret Service men looked uneasy as they eyed the messy-haired man dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt approaching the commander in chief. The raw anger in King’s eyes set the president’s guardians on edge, but they stood down. King stopped and didn’t bother with a salute. “Fiona’s gone.”

  Deep Blue’s eyes opened wide. “What?” Duncan had been so inundated with presidential damage control in the wake of the incident that he had yet to read the detailed briefing from General Keasling. “How?”

  “Last I checked Lewis was still unconscious, so I’m not sure.”

  Duncan turned and looked at the destruction, meaning to walk toward the line of approaching generals and their marine escorts. King took his arm. “Why wasn’t I told about the mission?” King asked, his voice tinged with anger.

  Duncan looked at King’s hand then met the man’s eyes.

  “You put Fiona’s life at risk.”

  “There was no way to know this would happen,” Duncan said, motioning to the destroyed base. “We thought you needed more time to grieve your mother’s—”

  “My mother’s not dead,” King said.

  Duncan looked stunned.

  King pointed to his mother, who was helping pass water out to the wounded. She saw him pointing and gave a little wave. Duncan smiled sheepishly and raised his hand to her. “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  King shook his head. “We can figure out how that story fell through the cracks later. I need to find Fiona. Now.”

  Duncan looked around. The approaching generals, most of whom did not know the president was also Deep Blue, were almost upon them. He leaned in close to King. “I’m going to be out of commission until things settle down. Every move I make is being watched. But I want you to do whatever it takes, King. Keasling has a blank check for this. The gloves are off. Find your daughter. Find who did this. Figure out what they want and put a stop to it.”

  King nodded and turned to walk away, but this time Duncan took hold of him and turned him around.

  “You and I may think of each other as equals, King, but when we’re in public remember who you are. And who I am.” He glanced at the approaching generals. “People are watching.”

  Despite King’s frosty mood he snapped a salute. “Yes sir.”

  King walked away as the swarm of marines and generals overtook Duncan and moved him to a more secure location. With the team due to arrive at Pope Air Force Base in an hour, he would meet them there, put the pieces together, and then turn them loose. But first he needed Aleman for information, his parents for good-byes, an ass-load of weapons for the obvious, and a few friends to level the playing field.

  SEVENTEEN

  Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina

  FORTY MINUTES AFTER meeting the president, King stood outside Hangar 7, Delta’s personal hangar that typically housed the Crescent. Right now it was devoid of any aircraft but held four Delta teams made up of five soldiers each. The men, dressed in black fatigues, quickly off-loaded their gear from the two large trucks that had carried them to the airfield and stood before King. The four team leaders approached.

  Jeff Kafer, call sign Mouth, thanks to his audiobook narrator’s voice, said, “I hear you’ve got an ‘ask and you shall receive’ order from Keasling. Well, you asked and we’re here, so mind telling us what this is about?”

  King motioned to the open hangar. “Come with me. You can brief your men when we’re done.”

  The five team leaders entered Decon, where a bandaged but conscious Lewis Aleman sat waiting behind a laptop. General Keasling stood in the corner, his short arms crossed over his chest. As the men entered the room, the tension became palpable. They’d all seen friends and comrades killed and the shock from the strange attack had not yet worn off. The team leaders, who were accustomed to sitting around this table with their own teams, sat down and turned to Keasling. He motioned their attention to King, who stood at the head of the table. “He’s running the show
.”

  “As of this moment,” King said, “your teams are serving under the Chess Team. Each one of you will serve under a member of my team and will obey their orders as though each and every one of them was God himself. You will be Pawns One through Five with the team leader’s designation coming first.

  He pointed to Kafer. “You’re Rook’s Pawn One and your men are Two through Five. In the field this will be shortened to RP-One. Understood?”

  Nods all around. Despite their battle-hardened experience and high rank, the men knew they were being brought, at least temporarily, into the fold of the Chess Team. Each of them felt a mix of honor and intimidation.

  “We’ve got a connection,” Aleman said before tapping a few keys on the laptop.

  The wall behind King, actually a well-disguised flat-screen display, came to life. Queen, Rook, Knight, and Bishop appeared on the screen, sitting around a laptop on their end from within the Crescent. Their serious faces reflected that they had been briefed on the Fort Bragg attack and Fiona’s kidnapping.

  “Can you hear us?” Rook asked.

  “We hear you,” King replied and then nodded at Aleman. “Give what you have.”

  King had plucked Aleman from his cot, which he’d been forced to stay in, and had him working on finding answers for the past thirty minutes. It wasn’t a lot of time, but Aleman tended to think faster than most men. And he didn’t disappoint.

  “Here’s what we know. About a year ago, the Siletz Reservation was destroyed. We now have a pretty good idea how. That said, we still have no idea what actually attacked us.”

  “A shitload of living rock, that’s what,” Kafer said.

  Aleman looked at the ceiling for a moment, his eyes squinted in thought.

  “Lew,” King said.

  Aleman looked back at his screen. “Then we received tips that certain targets in Australia and Vietnam were in danger. In fact, the targets were killed before our team arrived on site. Or, in Rook’s case, just after. And it was the last words of this dying victim that clued me in. She said—correct me if I’m wrong, Rook—that they were after ‘bad words’ that you were then told not to speak. ‘Can’t speak them. Don’t speak them.’”

  “You got it,” Rook said.

  “Given the ancestry of the victim, it occurred to me that her native language would be very old; perhaps one of the oldest, if not the oldest, spoken language on the planet. I did some research on the other victims. All of them were the last surviving speakers of nearly extinct ancient languages. The Gurdanji in Australia had five living speakers. They’re all dead. The Siletz had two living speakers, Fiona’s grandmother—”

  “And Fiona,” Queen said. “Shit.”

  “I compiled a list of all dying languages around the world and found a disturbing trend. Many of the last speakers of ancient languages have either gone missing or been found dead. Someone is exterminating them. But because they’re relatively few people spread out all around the world, some in obscure places, no one has noticed. I’ve identified the speakers of the most at-risk languages that are still living. Tinigua has two speakers. Taushiro, one. Uru, one. And Vilela, two. All four of these languages are in South America. Then there is Chulym, known as Ös to its three speakers in Siberia, down from fifteen three years ago thanks to a flu that killed thousands of people in the remote area. And Pazeh with one speaker born in the Philippines, but living in Taiwan.”

  “Are you assigning us to kidnap these people?” Kafer said.

  “That’s your mission,” King replied. “Yes.”

  “And you’ve done this before?”

  “Bag and tag,” Bishop said, which got a smile from Rook and odd looks from the four team leaders in Decon.

  “Are you questioning your orders?” King asked, his voice heavy, his eyes leveled at Kafer.

  For a moment it appeared Kafer might argue the point, but he leaned back in his chair instead. “Just curious is all.”

  Aleman cleared his throat. “Queen and Bishop will lead two teams to South America. Knight will take one team to Taiwan. Rook will take Siberia.”

  “I don’t need to tell you that not only do we not know who we’re up against, but we also don’t know what,” King said. “You and your men have fought conventional wars up until now, but all that changes today. Throw out your preconceptions about human capabilities and effective tactics and do not, ever, believe a bullet can kill the enemy.”

  “What do we know?” one of the team leaders asked. “I saw the damn statue from Bragg’s main entrance come to life and kill a man.”

  “And that about sums up our intel,” Aleman said. “Someone has found a way to imbue nonliving material with, for lack of a better word, life. Statues come to life. Crude stone monsters. It doesn’t seem to matter what the material is as long as it is inanimate.”

  “I faced off against two of them,” Rook said. “One made of stone and the other of giant crystals.”

  “They appear to feel no pain,” Aleman said, “and when their mission, again for lack of a better word, is complete they return to their inanimate state, which is why the statue you mentioned is now in a barracks lobby.”

  “You all need to move fast and quiet. I want you in and out of these countries with the targets without ruffling a feather, blipping a radar, or engaging the enemy.” King looked up at the screen, eyeing the members of his team, and then looked at the team leaders at the table. “Because as good as you all are, you won’t stand a chance.” He looked back at the screen. “ETA?”

  “We’re incoming now,” Knight said. “Wheels down and hatch open in three minutes.”

  King switched off the flat-screen and spoke to the team leaders. “I want you all on that bird in four minutes. Brief your men in the air. Got it?”

  “Understood,” Kafer said as he stood. “One last question?”

  “What is it?”

  “Where will you be going?”

  King’s nose twitched. “For now”—he looked at Aleman, who shrugged—“nowhere.”

  Kafer gave King a pat on the shoulder as he headed for the door. “You’ll find her.”

  The men filed out of the room. Keasling followed after them, intent on ensuring that each and every man made King’s four-minute schedule.

  King sat down across from Aleman. He looked grim.

  “Last night, did you get a chance to refill Fiona’s insulin pump and move it to a new location?”

  Aleman paled. He hadn’t thought of that problem. “I did. The pump was on her hip. The needle just above it.”

  Fiona’s insulin pump lasted three days when full. After that Fiona would be susceptible to hyperglycemia, which resulted in painful symptoms including coma and death, sometimes very quickly depending on circumstances such as diet and exertion. But that wasn’t the most pressing concern at the moment. The girl he’d been entrusted to protect had been taken from him by a man he knew very little about.

  After first hearing Aleman’s description of the mystery man, King suspected his identity was none other than Alexander Diotrephes. He was sure of it. And Alexander was a doctor, among other things. In theory, he should be able to supply her with insulin. Hell, he could probably cure her. But what did they really know about the man? He’d helped them defeat the Hydra, but he had personal reasons for doing that. He’d saved Fiona once before, at the Siletz Reservation, but no one knew his real motives or intentions. Who’s to say he wasn’t behind the attacks himself? Until all of these questions were answered, King couldn’t trust that Fiona’s life wasn’t in danger. “Let’s operate under the assumption that she’s not going to be cared for. There’s no way to know for sure until I find her.”

  Aleman nodded. “You really think Hercules—Alexander—has Fiona?”

  King’s mind refocused on the task of finding Fiona. He couldn’t do anything about her diabetes until she was safe in his care again. “Sounds insane, I know. The question is: Where did he take her? And does he have anything to do with these living statues
?”

  Aleman shook his head. There were so many unanswered questions he was having trouble keeping track of them all, which was frustrating because he could feel the answer to one of their questions on the tip of his tongue.

  Then it came to him. Living statues. “Oh my God,” he whispered, and then said loudly, “I know what they are.”

  King immediately sat up straight. “What?”

  “Golem.”

  EIGHTEEN

  “STAI BENE, TESORO?”

  Fiona opened her eyes to the concerned face of a middle-aged woman with dark curly hair. She couldn’t understand a word the woman said, but she recognized the language. “I can’t speak Italian.”

  “Sorry,” the woman said in English. “I should have learned to greet newcomers in English by now. Most of us here speak it well enough.”

  Fiona tried sitting up, but a spinning head kept her planted in what she now realized was a cot made up in white sheets. The woman saw Fiona’s trouble and helped her sit. “It’s the drugs. You’ll feel dizzy for just a few more minutes and drowsy for another day. Maybe more because you’re so small.”

  “Drugs?” Fiona gave her body a visual once over and saw no injuries, but her body and the woman’s face were as far as she could focus. She looked up and saw brown, but the room twisted madly causing instant nausea. She turned her eyes down and saw a brown stone floor. “This isn’t a hospital.” She looked at the woman. “And you’re not a nurse, are you?”

  The woman frowned and shook her head. “I am a linguist. And no, this is not a hospital.” The woman held out her hand. “Elma Rossi.”

  Fiona shook her hand. “Fiona Lane.” She looked into Elma’s eyes, wondering if she was someone she could trust. Deciding she had no choice, she asked, “Where am I?”

  “Where we are in the world … I cannot say. There are no windows. No clues. The only thing we know is that we are underground.”

  Underground? Fiona focused on the floor, fought down a fresh wave of nausea, and then looked again. The wall closest to her resolved as a continuation of the stone floor, brown and featureless. The room continued to spin, but she forced herself to look, to glean what she could.