“Aha!” Alexander stopped and hugged the rock wall, stretching his massive arms around a huge protruding rock. The man took a huge breath and then struggled until King could hear a grinding sound. Alexander rolled the massive round stone to the side, revealing the dark yawning mouth of a cave.
“That’s a little Biblical, isn’t it?” King asked, raising an eyebrow. He was frequently amused, and sometimes disturbed, by Alexander’s stories of the hubris of his youth. He had certainly seen improvements in the man’s behavior over the last two decades, and he attributed the change to their friendship. Alexander himself professed to not having had nearly enough close friends over the years in whom he could confide.
“It was practical at the time. No one else around would have been able to move the stone but me.”
Alexander stepped into the darkened tunnel. King looked around and voiced his concern. “Should we close it up after us?” He couldn’t see how it could be done, but it went against his nature to leave his six unprotected.
“No need,” came the soft reply from down the tunnel.
King walked cautiously into the dark, feeling for the walls and ceiling of the tunnel, but they were broad enough to allow Alexander to move through them swiftly. Then something occurred to King, and he slowly pulled his sword from his belt.
“Why are you whispering?”
The reply took a second, and King knew he was about to receive bad news.
“I forgot to tell you something.”
Before King could ask, he heard a low snarling sound that rose in volume until the bass of the growl shook his bones, like amplifiers at a rock concert.
“I forgot to mention the dog.”
“The dog?” King asked. But then understanding dawned on him. “Please tell me it doesn’t have three heads.”
Alexander’s reply was drowned out by a robust growling that vibrated the stone under King’s feet. Three heads or not, the thing sounded huge and hungry.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Viewing Gallery, Manifold Omega Facility, 2013
The heavy door smashed hard into the Plexiglas wall, dislodging the explosive Rook had set, and knocking it to the floor against the aquarium wall, where the door promptly landed on top of it. Rook had been thrown backward by the blast and ended up on his back, struggling like a tortoise to get onto his legs.
Asya let a burst of bullets fly from her position on the second level, strafing the doorway. Rook heard her utter a Russian curse as a heavy mercenary fell through the doorway onto his face. Then he saw something arc down from the balcony, hit the door and bounce out through the open doorway and into the corridor.
Rook got to his feet and let out a grunt as he raced for the wall. Asya had tossed a grenade she had taken from the armory down the length of the gallery. It was a good throw. A deflection off the 45 degree angled door, and straight out of the room and into the waiting arms of the mercenaries was a nearly impossible shot. But with the door open, Rook could find himself on the receiving end of more metal fragments. He heard screams behind him and then the explosion. The shockwave sent him slamming face first into the wall. He missed Asya’s outstretched hand and slid down the wall to the floor.
“I feel like a pregnant kangaroo on a pogo-stick in this friggin’ armor. Doesn’t anyone ever use a handgun any more?” Rook pulled out one of his two Desert Eagle pistols and waited on the floor. As soon as he saw the forearms of the first man enter the room, he fired twice, the loud booming shots echoing through the long room. The first shot missed, but punched a softball sized hole in the wall. The second shot struck the mercenary’s arm—and took it off. The merc fell back, screaming in pain.
Rook looked up to the metal guard rail around the second story balcony. He saw Asya was rapidly tying a bed sheet to the rail, while nervously watching the door at the end of the gallery’s lower level. He holstered the Desert Eagle and scrambled on hands and knees for the dangling sheet.
“I can’t cover you and help you climb,” Asya said, as she finished tying and then swept her submachine gun up again on its strap.
Rook didn’t see any sign of Peter or Lynn. He assumed they had already left the upper room, looking for the way out. He couldn’t blame them. He would have done the same.
Rook quickly unbuckled his chest armor, removing the bulky plate and impact foam pieces around his arms and torso, dropping them to the floor. They offered protection, but they were stiff and added a lot of weight. He debated removing the leg armor, but the one now coated in his blood, was probably acting as a compression bandage for his wounded leg. He decided to leave it.
Freed of the weight of the chest armor, and wearing only a black synthetic t-shirt over his broad chest, Rook attacked the bed sheet, shimmying up the cloth, while Asya sprayed the door at the end of the hall with the odd burst of gunfire, hoping to dissuade further incursion. But Rook knew it was just a matter of time until they tossed in another grenade—or worse. He tugged his weight up and after two pulls, gave up on keeping his legs wrapped around the spindly sheet, relying instead on the raw strength in his beefy arms.
Once at the lip, he placed one hand on the concrete floor, and reached up with the other for the bar, pulling himself horizontal in the process, and then rolling under the guard rail onto the balcony. When he stood, Asya was again blasting down into the gallery, by the door. He took quick stock of his location—a large, swank, sparsely decorated office of some sort. Most likely Ridley’s, he thought. Potted plants dotted the space around a low leather sofa and a glass-topped coffee table. When Rook spotted the executive bathroom at one end of the office and the ajar doorway to a nice bedroom at the other end, he knew his guess was right. He could see the fitted sheet from the bed on the floor of the bedroom. Now I know where the sheet came from, he thought. One more exit led from the room to a lighted hallway beyond, the door left wide open. That’ll be where Peter and Lynn went.
“Can we run now?” Asya asked, stepping up to him.
“Cover me for just a minute,” he said, jogging over to the desk near the center of the huge office. The opportunity to learn even a little of what Ridley might have planned was too good, but he’d only sacrifice the minute. He knew Asya’s supply of magazines would run out, and he counted on the mercenaries downstairs to get crafty any second now. Plus, if they figured out he and Asya had ascended to the next level, they would try to flank him by taking the stairwell at the end.
Asya made it back to the rail just as a sustained burst of AK-47 fire strafed the balcony. Rook recognized the sound of the weapon, and knew the jig was nearly up. He altered course away from the desk before he’d even made it there, and instead he made for the far end of the balcony, where he saw a control panel on the wall, next to a large potted fern.
Rook opened fire on the gallery floor, and the AK stopped with a sputtering burst. Asya popped up at her end of the balcony and fired her own sustained burst of gunfire down at the mercenaries, who quickly darted back to the cover of the doorway. Rook caught a glance of the last guy—dressed in black BDUs and snakeskin cowboy boots with a big white ten-gallon hat.
“What a maroon,” he mumbled to himself. He raised one of the Desert Eagles and held his angle on the doorway down below at the end of the gallery. “Asya, go. Get with Peter and Lynn, then rendezvous with Queen if you can.”
Asya paused and looked at him sternly.
“I got this. Go,” he told her.
She turned and sprinted for the door to the hall.
Just then, Ten Gallon came back into the doorway. The sights on Rook’s barrel were already lined up. All he had to do was squeeze. The big Desert Eagle boomed once, and the white hat jumped, the brim of it splattered with blood and bone. The mess that had been Ten Gallon’s head actually stuck to the wall next to the door—hat and all. “Now that’s nasty,” Rook said before the hat fell with a wet thud.
“Bunch of amateurs,” he called out. “I got a bullet for each of you. Maybe you nut-twists should go home and get more guys
.”
He glanced to the control panel on his left and scanned the controls. There was a button labeled Kliegs, so he pushed it.
Immediately, the massive dark Plexiglas wall came to life, as several enormous underwater spotlights on the other side illuminated the water. A bewildering array of fish were swimming just on the other side of the wall. Rook guessed the glass wall was maybe 350 feet long by 30 high. This isn’t an aquarium, he thought, it’s the fucking ocean!
The water was crystal clear, with a sandy bottom and a few bits of coral and tufts of sea plants. Sea stars and several dozen black spiny urchins sat on the sand.
None of those things held Rook’s attention though. The glass wall had been built for one obvious purpose. To view the monstrosity taking up ninety percent of the underwater view. Lying on its back was a giant statue of a man, measuring at least 300 feet in length. The surface of the statue was covered in barnacles and coral, and other sea life, but the massive figure, posed as though standing, was impossible to miss.
As soon as the thought of the statue standing entered Rook’s mind, his eyes grew wide. Remembrances of past battles with Ridley’s animated golems filled his mind. The thought of this monstrosity standing up made Rook’s stomach flip.
“Satan’s flaming taint! Why do I get all the fun?”
Just then the balcony erupted in sparks as bullets ricocheted off the rail, and Rook realized the shots were coming from behind him. He was pinned.
THIRTY-NINE
Sub Level 3, Manifold Omega Facility, 2013
Knight shoved Queen and Bishop out of the way, hurling a grenade at the door to the security suite, and another toward the damaged wet wall. Then he pulled the door closed all the way. The grenades exploded seconds later, and the door’s automatic bio-hazard seals inflated, then quickly deflated. Knight guessed they had been punctured by a grenade fragment.
Luckily, the locking mechanism didn’t engage, even though the seal had. He swung the door all the way open and loosed a burst of MP-5 fire around the room. No one had made it into the suite, but the previously damaged deathtrap wall was now a gaping hole into the adjacent bathroom, with pipes and spitting electrical wires having been cleared by the grenade blast. Knight leapt through the opening, his weapon up and ready to fire in the direction of the parallel corridor. Then he ran for the hall before Queen or Bishop had entered the bathroom.
Knight whipped the bathroom door open and prepared to blast any mercenaries in the long corridor, but all he saw to his right was a long pile of black-clad bodies, stretching back to the loading dock doors and beyond to the stairwell at that end. The other end of the hallway was clear except for some stone rubble near the end. Knight sprinted in that direction.
He found a storage room on his left. Ran past. Just as bullets pinged down the hallway near his feet, he dove through the next door, into a lounge. He quickly scanned the space. Sofas, a table. Nothing he could use. Beyond the lounge was an open double doorway filled with debris. He crossed to the doorway and looked in on what appeared to be a natural cave formation, but the room was filled with mechanical wreckage and the rubble of the collapsed ceiling. Above him, a few wooden cabinets and part of a tilted refrigerator hung out of the ruined ceiling. A kitchen, he thought.
He heard gunfire down the corridor. An AK-47. Queen and Bishop answered with a barrage of their own, spurring his climb up the rubble and wreckage, heading to the next level. Most of the kitchen floor was gone, but Knight managed to scramble into and out of the second floor kitchen. He pulled himself to a tottering standing position by the horizontal door handle. As soon as Knight stood, the handle of the door jiggled. The door opened inward. With nowhere to go but backward and down, he quickly leaned forward, straightening one arm above the door handle and leaning his weight against the shoulder. There was a tiny one-inch-square plastic catch at the bottom of the door designed to grab the stopper pin on the wall, so the door could be kept open. Knight placed the toe of one of his boots on the plastic box, and stepped up.
The door swung in abruptly, and Knight rode the back of the door as it swept him toward the wall. Two men rushed into the room only to find no floor on which to stand. They plummeted ten feet to the unexpected rubble below them. One man’s leg shattered on impact, and Knight could hear the sickening crunch of bones as he impacted a large piece of misshapen rock. Knight swung his MP-5 out in his left hand, firing two quick and deadly accurate three-round bursts before swinging around faster than most men can blink and firing twice more. The two men in the hall fell to the floor wearing matching surprised expressions frozen on their faces. One of them managed to squeeze off a single shot before he died, but Knight felt nothing. The quick spin and lingering effects of the gas stole Knight’s balance. He dropped the submachine gun knowing its strap would hold it in place. With his hand free, he reached out and snagged the front handle of the door, which was swinging closed. With a yank, he was upright again. Without people shooting at him, he slipped around the door and into the hall.
The two dead men dressed in black BDUs lay sprawled on the floor. One had a swarthy mustache, and the other man had tattoos of jigsaw pieces over one half of his face. Jigsaw man was still breathing, but unconscious.
There was no backup in sight. He looked right. The hallway ended at a T junction. He looked left. The hallway looked identical, but a woman suddenly appeared. He called to her. “Pawn!”
Asya ran up to him. “Are you alone?” He nodded and raised his MP-5, only to discover the weapon was ruined. The single shot fired by the merc had struck the MP-5’s barrel. The dent was small, but any imperfection could result in the weapon blowing up in his face.
He unlooped the submachine gun’s strap and dropped the weapon to the floor before drawing his Browning 9mm sidearm and pointing it down the long hallway.
“Everyone still alive?” he asked.
She nodded. “Queen and Bishop?”
“For now,” he said.
“Which way?” Asya asked.
“Your way. Up. Looking for a communications scrambler. Probably in Ridley’s office.” Knight said. He climbed to his feet, keeping a wary eye down the hallway.
“Just came from there. Nothing like that. Maybe in the labs upstairs?”
“Worth a try.”
He followed her around the corner to the stairwell. Distant bursts of automatic weapons fire echoed up from below. Asya opened the door to the stairwell and glanced down. No one in sight. She motioned for him to follow. Knight stepped into the landing and looked up. Finding no sentry, he raced up the concrete steps to the next level’s door, clearly marked Sub Level 1 in black letters. He peered through the chicken wire-reinforced glass window and found an empty hallway. He said a silent prayer for small favors and slipped into the hall. Asya was right behind him.
“Been in there,” Knight said, passing the initial lab doors through which he and the others had entered the facility. He started walking past the doors and down the hall.
“What about this one?” Asya asked. She pointed to a set of doors across from the Microbiology Lab. The sign next to the doors read Cold Lab. Beside that was a small stylized icon of a seven-headed dragon.
“They have tissue samples of the hydra in there,” Knight said, and he kept walking, quickening his pace. The hydra had been reawakened after its long, petrified sleep in a Manifold lab, just like this, while he traded bullets with Manifold’s security force. He wasn’t eager for a repeat.
“Are you sure?” Asya asked, joining him in his long strides down the hallway.
“Pretty sure.”
Asya smiled. “Last Crusade. Love that movie.”
“Indy never had to face a multi-headed regenerating nightmare. I would have taken the snakes.”
Further down the long hallway, they came to two more sets of doors on opposite sides. The room on the left was labeled Data Lab, the room on the right, Sequencing Lab.
Knight popped his head into the Data Lab. The room was dark, but the acousti
cs inside told him it was large. He found the light switch on the wall, and flicked it with an audible snap. Long rows of overhead lights flickered to life, revealing desk after desk of computer stations, reminding Knight of Hollywood versions of NASA or NORAD headquarters. At the far end of the room was a radio station with a long, thick rubber-coated black antenna. Although all the other computers in the huge lab had been turned off, this station was alive with green and red LED lights.
“Is that—” Asya began.
Knight raised his pistol and fired off three shots, shattering the equipment in the corner and throwing a shower of sparks into the air.
Knight tried his throat microphone. “Queen? You read?”
He heard a burst of static and then Queen’s voice came through. “Thank fuckery. Where the hell are you?”
“Sub Level 1. You still on 3?”
“We’re pinned down in the bathroom. You got out just in time.”
“Blast through the next two walls. You got a storage room, then a lounge. Access up to the next level through a caved-in kitchen.” Knight walked back to the hallway as he talked and Asya was right by his side.
As he stepped out into the hallway, bullets raced past him from the stairs he had used. He ducked back into the Data Lab. “Shit. You’re gonna need to try for the South stairwell when you get on Two, Queen. North is now hostile.”
“Crap,” he heard her say. “Hold on.”
Knight heard a distant booming noise from the bowels of the facility.
“We’re gonna try to circle around to the south side of the loading dock and pin these bastards down,” Knight said into his mic.
Knight looked at Asya and she gave a curt nod, indicating she was ready to rush out into the fray again. She was a lot like her brother.
“‘We?’ Who have you got?”
“Pawn. Give us five. Then make for the south stairs.”
“Got it. Where the fuck is Rook?”
“Haven’t seen him,” he said.
Omega: A Jack Sigler Thriller Page 18