KRONOS RISING: After 65 million years, the world's greatest predator is back.

by Max Hawthorne

  “Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength. Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness!” he yelled, raising his fist to the heavens, and then glaring down at the marine reptile cruising by. It blinked as it studied him with undisguised interest.

  As the huge creature once again vanished from view, Harcourt wiped a torrent of drool from his chin. He turned to his protector. “I know you can’t speak, Johnson,” he said, reaching up and taking hold of the giant mute’s thick arms. “But I know you can hear me. The time for action is upon us. The time to strike draws near. Like Gabriel, who was sent by the Lord to punish the Leviathan once, it is you who must become God’s emissary now!”

  Johnson’s blue eyes blinked repeatedly. He cocked his shaved head quizzically to one side, scratching the back of his neck as he stared down at his employer.

  “Do you understand me?” Harcourt panted with exasperation. He turned toward the Harbinger’s bow. Frustration and fury waged a tug-of-war across his face, the meaty scar on his jaw aching as it darkened and swelled with blood. He placed one hand flatly on the fore grip of the Uzi that hung by the merc’s side.

  ‘The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold. The arrow cannot make him flee; he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.”

  When an even more confused expression emigrated across his escort’s flattish face, the senator turned away in disgust. His shoulders tensed, and his sausage fingers tightly gripped the railing before him as he waited for his enemy’s approach.

  “All right, Johnson.” Harcourt’s balled fists shook like a prizefighter battling Parkinson’s. “It’s obvious we’re suffering from a communication barrier. So I’m going to spell it out for you in a language you’ll understand.” He looked to make sure no was within earshot. “I want you to kill the monster for me,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “I don’t want it alive, and I don’t want to waste time loading submarines. Why risk missing the opportunity to destroy it now, while it swims at our feet? It’s coming around now,” he said, gesturing at the five-foot displacement wave heralding the creature. “For all we know, this may be its last pass. Kill it for me Johnson. Shoot it now, and I’ll pay you what I offered Karl . . . five million dollars!”

  Johnson’s oversized head snapped up, and his eyes traveled furtively from the mercs still prepping the Eurypterids to the bridge where Von Freiling disappeared. He turned to the water, his lantern jaw set. With his hips pressed against the railing, he detached the nine-millimeter submachine gun from his side, cradling it in his ham-sized hands. Deftly removing and inspecting the weapon’s box-shaped magazine, he reinserted it, slammed it home again, and pulled the Uzi’s charger back in preparation for a full-auto burst. His eyes alert and determined, the giant merc waited.

  Harcourt shifted his weight from foot to foot, unable to contain his gleeful exuberance as he pointed excitedly at the approaching pliosaur. The monstrous reptile was incredibly close to the ship. So close, one of its triangular-shaped pectoral fins scraped noisily along the Harbinger’s hull as it passed directly underneath them.

  It was staring hungrily up at them when Johnson emptied his machine gun into its face.

  TWENTY-THREE

  With her back to the sea and her hands on her hips, Amara Takagi straddled the doorway that led to the Harbinger’s bridge. She gaped in disbelief at Karl Von Freiling, as her estranged spouse brandished the biggest rifle she’d ever seen: a black and gray-colored monstrosity he’d extracted from a polished aluminum case, resting on a nearby table.

  “What the hell is that?” she sputtered.

  “This little thing?” Von Freiling smirked as he made minute adjustments on the menacing weapon. “I guess you’ve never seen one this big before, hmm?” He hefted the gun, showing off its sheer mass. “Well then, allow me to introduce you. The thirty thousand dollars of unbridled excitement you’re gawking at is the Barrett military-issue, XM109 anti-material rifle . . . in twenty-five millimeter.”

  He placed the weapon carefully back within its padded casing and reached for one of the oversized clips resting nearby. After inspecting the magazine’s action, he popped open a box of armor-piercing rounds the size of bananas and began loading them into it with sharp, snapping sounds.

  “Twenty-five millimeter?” Amara’s jaw dropped and she glanced back over her shoulder. Her stomach tightened up as she realized Jake and Willie were no longer with her. She swallowed and took a hesitant step closer. “What are you going to do with that–”

  “C’mon now, dearie,” Von Freiling said. “If you’re going to hunt dinosaurs for a living, you need a gun that’s up to the job.”

  Amara’s eyes popped. “Omigod . . . you’re not here to capture the pliosaur. You came to kill it!”

  “Not initially,” he said. “But our overzealous and obviously unstable benefactor has informed me he’d much rather see the creature dead than captured. He believes it’s some pre-ordained minion of Satan. Can you believe that? Anyway, ten million sounds much better than the five he initially offered.”

  “So, that’s it?” Amara retorted. “You’re just going for the money, and the hell with everything else? What about the thrill of taking it alive?”

  “Well, I do have some reservations . . .” He cricked his neck to one side and then winked at her. “Mostly about building an extension onto my Daytona house big enough to contain a mount the size of that thing’s head.”

  Amara’s colorful response was drowned out by the sound of automatic gunfire erupting right outside the door.

  “What the hell?” Von Freiling dropped the Barrett’s half-loaded clip onto the table. He reached for his radio, changed his mind, and stalked off toward the door.

  Alone in the ship’s crate-strewn radar station, Amara stared at the empty doorway. She took a half-step, and then stared helplessly at the monstrous firearm resting beside her.

  Jake’s hand made an involuntary grab for his sidearm as he wheeled in the direction of the gunshots. He sprang for the Harbinger’s port-side rails, just in time to see the pliosaur vanish beneath the waves.

  Fifty feet away, Johnson stood by the railing, his smoking UZI still gripped in cadaver-like hands. He stared unblinkingly at the water, scanning for his wounded quarry. As Harcourt slapped him excitedly on the back, the oversized leucist removed his weapon’s spent magazine, tossed it overboard, and inserted a fresh one. The joyous look on the senator’s face as Johnson reloaded told Jake everything he needed to know.

  Eyeing the water, the lawman started toward them, moving warily past the ravaged section of railing to his left. He could see the bearded form of Gibson as he emerged from below deck, shaking his leonine head back and forth as he bellowed furiously at Johnson.

  Jake was thirty feet away when he noticed the ocean starting to bubble over like an unwatched cauldron. Eyes wide with alarm, he tried to warn them, but his words were drowned out by a thunderous noise.

  Like an erupting geyser, the pliosaur’s head and neck exploded up out of the water, its streaming maw spread wide. Rearing up and over the railing, it snapped its toothy jaws sideways with a deafening crunch. The Harbinger shuddered as a full fifteen feet of the remaining railing was torn away, annihilated by a bite force that exceeded fifty tons per square inch. The painful sound of wrenched-apart metal was punctuated by a pair of high-pitched screams as the creature fell back into the sea, spraying gouts of blood and particles of flesh all over the deck.

  Von Freiling came staggering out of the bridge. “What the fuck was that?” Wild-eyed, he grabbed for the doorjamb to stop himself from slipping and falling. He took in the steaming charnel house that awaited him. “Jesus Christ!” He dropped down on one knee, reaching over and picking up a blood-soaked boot. He held it at arm’s length, grimacing as he realized it contained a foot. He blanched, then turned toward Dean Harcourt.

  “Senator?”

  The stocky poli
tician was sitting on the hard metal deck, his back against a nearby bulkhead. He was covered in blood and bits of bone, as was the surrounding deck, gunnels, and outer walls of the bridge.

  Von Freiling crouched down in front of him, the oversized combat boot still in his hand. He held it in front of his employer’s nose and shook it for emphasis. “Senator, what the hell happened?” Harcourt didn’t appear to hear him. He just sat there with a dazed and drunken look in his eyes.

  “I think your guy pissed it off,” Jake remarked. He walked over, shaking his head.

  A disgusted look on his face, Von Freiling rose to his feet and tossed the severed foot over the side. He gave Jake a baleful look, then exhaled resignedly.

  “Johnson?” He pointed at the splattered bloodstains and chunks of flesh adhering to just about everything around them.

  “And Gibson,” Jake said. He wiped at the spattering of blood running down his cheek with the back of one hand and spat irritably over the side. “He was right next to him. It took them both in one bite. Almost got your trouble-making employer, too.”

  On cue, Harcourt uttered a cry of alarm and surged to life. Slipping and sliding on the gore that covered his hands and shoes, he staggered to his feet. He took one look at the grisly scene and bolted for the ship’s bow.

  “I wonder where he’s going?” Jake asked, shaking his head.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Von Freiling muttered through clenched teeth. He turned toward the bridge. “I’ll be right back. If it’s stupid enough to stick around, that overgrown lizard has about two minutes left to live.”

  Five hundred yards away, and five hundred feet below the surface, the pliosaur performed angry contortions in the water, its deadly jaws chomping open and closed. It pawed cat-like at its mouth with one of its enormous flippers, dislodging the three-foot piece of railing embedded in its thick, white gums. Freed of the annoying metal, it surfaced for a lungful of air, then arced back in the direction of the Harbinger. Further aggravated by burning saltwater, the stinging pain from its wounded face maddened it like a face full of red-hot needles.

  The creature was seething. Despite its limited intellect, it now associated the hammer-like blows that struck its skull and muzzle with the noisy fire held by one of the tiny bipeds that crawled atop the big metal ship like flies on a beached carcass.

  The injuries were hardly threatening, but the pain of the unexpected assault and the infuriation that followed it were enough to birth rage. Accelerating through the murky gloom to its maximum velocity, the creature quickly closed the distance. Its lips pulled back in a hideous snarl as it focused its attention on the source of its ire. An adrenaline-fueled rage made its way through its dense musculature, propelled through its bloodstream by contractions of its gigantic heart.

  With its eyes ablaze and its crushing jaws spread wide, the pliosaur attacked the Harbinger.

  Ten feet from Amara, Von Freiling remained frozen in place. He blinked confusedly, staring down at the thick-legged table that supported his Barrett’s heavy metal case.

  Eyes narrowing, he wheeled in Amara’s direction. She stood with her hands in her pockets and her back to the largest of the wooden crates that cluttered a good portion of the room.

  Von Freiling’s tiercel’s face darkened and his deep voice turned hard and dangerous. “Amara, where’s my gun?”

  Her eyes wide with undisguised fright, she tried to speak, then shook her head and said nothing.

  “I don’t like repeating myself, woman,” he bristled, stepping threateningly close. “I just lost two of my men, and I need that weapon, so I’m asking you once more . . . where the hell is my gun?”

  “I . . . threw it overboard,” Amara managed through trembling lips. She tried to back away from him, feeling splinters prick her skin as her back pressed hard against the crate. She had nowhere to run.

  “You what?” Von Freiling’s bronze orbs went wide with fury. “Why you stupid . . . interfering . . . bitch!”

  The slap came out of nowhere, a vicious, right-handed blow across the cheek that would have brought most men to their knees. Amara staggered back, hanging onto the crate for support. She barely had time to cry out before an even worse backhand caught her square across the jaw, splitting her lip and sending her sprawling to the ground.

  Standing over her like a lion straddling its prey, a hateful look contorted Von Freiling’s features. He reached down, seizing the front of her blouse with his left hand, and hauled her to her feet. He held her at arm’s length, suspended like a sack of laundry. A toothy snarl spread across his face, and he drew his muscular right arm back to deal her another blow.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Von Freiling’s punch was intercepted in mid-swing, his arm twisted powerfully backward until he had no choice but to release her. Battered and bleeding, Amara collapsed to the floor. She gazed up through blurred vision, unable to believe what she was seeing.

  Ducking cat-like beneath Von Freiling’s hastily-thrown left hook, Jake forced him back and off balance with a double palm heel strike to the chest. He glanced down at Amara as she lay prostrate on the floor and spotted the damage to her face. He shook his head, thanking God he’d gotten there quickly. He shifted position, placing himself directly between her and her attacker. His cobalt eyes were cool as he sized up his foe. A strange little thrill ran through him. Ever since Amara told him about her abusive husband, Jake had been itching to fight this man.

  “You’re not very smart, are you, Braddock?” Von Freiling was completely enraged, his ubiquitous grin a distant memory. “Do you really think you can just waltz in here and interfere in my business? Don’t you know the penalty for that?”

  “What do you say we skip the usual chit chat and move straight to the part where you show me what you’re going to do about it?” Jake circled to the right, raising his fists as the infuriated soldier-of-fortune came charging.

  Von Freiling cursed and threw himself at Jake, his teeth bared and intentions obvious. He hauled back and fired a barrage of powerful punches at the sheriff’s head and ribs, attempting to overwhelm the younger man by the sheer ferocity of his assault.

  Jake backpedaled and weathered the fusillade. He saw each attack coming and deflected each straight right and hook punch with quick movements of his forearms and elbows – but just barely. Von Freiling’s speed and strength were astonishing, and he knew instantly the professional killer was by far the most dangerous opponent he’d ever faced. He started to wonder if he’d bitten off more than he could chew.

  Jake grunted and covered up as a looping overhand left landed flush, causing him to see stars. Rolling with the punch, he staggered backwards and then leapt unexpectedly forward. The fake worked, and he caught Von Freiling off guard with a savage sidekick to the solar plexus, a strike which lifted him off his feet and sent him sailing backwards, bouncing him off a nearby stack of crates.

  His eyes ablaze with unmitigated hatred, Von Freiling shrugged the blow off like it was nothing and uttered a bellow of pure rage. He charged Jake, pouncing like a hungry tiger as he sought to grapple him to the ground with the intention of beating him senseless. The impact sent them crashing down on top of an empty crate with Jake finding himself in the unenviable position of having his opponent straddling him, powerful hands locked tightly around his neck.

  Salivating at the prospect of victory, Von Freiling applied ever-increasing pressure to Jake’s vulnerable throat region, while simultaneously using his legs to keep the lawman pinned against the creaking crate.

  Jake felt a growing sense of panic. If he couldn’t break free, it was just a matter of time before his brain shut down from oxygen deprivation. He felt a paralyzing wall of blackness beginning to loom in the distance and started flailing wildly about. Then he froze.

  He’d been in this position before. Back when–

  “You insolent little bastard!”

  Jake’s eyes went wide in astonishment. Von Freiling’s face was gone and Jake’s father’s to
ok its place. He was sixteen years old again and helplessly pinned beneath his father’s crushing weight.

  “You dare raise your hands to me, you little shit?”

  Jake had come home from school just in time to see his mother collapse onto their family room’s hardwood floor with blood spewing from her broken nose. John Braddock was standing triumphantly over his wife, his right fist raised, his left choking a bottle of tequila. He was going on and on, ranting and raving about how things were all her fault. He’d been laid off because of her; he was always in her shadow.

  Jake’s backpack dropped to the floor, sending his textbooks scattering. At first his mom didn’t know he was there. Clinging to consciousness, she didn’t hear his youthful screams as he sprang to her defense. It wasn’t until he hoisted a nearby piano bench, slamming it against his father’s broad back to put an end to the assault, that she realized he’d gotten involved.

  Jake absorbed a blitz of humiliating smacks and slaps to the face before John Braddock pinned him to the bench and began systematically throttling him. He fought back hard, kicking and punching, but it was useless; his father was too big and strong. He could smell the booze on his breath as he raged on, each insult more vile and denigrating than the last. His voice was deafening, his spittle spraying. Jake shut his eyes tight, desperate to lessen the assault. He opened them as his dad poured the remainder of the bottle of tequila over his face, flooding his nose and mouth and searing his eyes. He watched through blurred vision as his father raised one huge fist overhead, preparing to bring it down on his adolescent son’s face like a sledgehammer. Jake saw the blow coming and knew he was helpless to avoid it. He braced himself, waiting for the sound of the strike and the inevitable darkness that accompanied it.

  Whump!

  Jake opened his eyes as a thunderous vibration shook the Harbinger. The room’s contents shifted violently, as if they’d struck a submerged reef. His steely gaze collided with Von Freiling’s, the latter’s meat hooks still locked around the lawman’s neck like eagle’s talons. There was a moment’s hesitation by the big game hunter. The look of hatred in his burnished eyes merged with confusion as he observed the myriad downshifts in Jake’s rapidly-changing expressions.