by Toby Tate
Hunter had an idea.
“Why don’t we just leave him here and get the hell out while we can?”
Jason shot him a look and Hunter could see the gears turning in the operative’s head. He seemed to get the message.
“Hey, give me the cuffs out of my assault pack, will you?” Jason said to Anderson. “The steel ones.”
Anderson reached into Jason’s backpack and produced a small, black case with a pair of Smith & Wesson black steel handcuffs.
“What are you gonna do with those?” Jenkins asked, his voice wavering.
“I’ll show you,” Jason said, pulling the cuffs out and dropping the bag to the floor. Before the young man could move, Jason grabbed his right arm, snapped a cuff around his wrist, then yanked it over to the steel cable of the elevator and snapped the other cuff around the cable.
Jason grinned sardonically. “Since you can’t seem to remember the code, I figured this might help jar your memory a little bit. Just think, Jenkins, this close to the blast your bones will be ashes before you even have a chance to scream. It’ll be quick, trust me.”
Jason climbed up out of the shaft, followed by Harrison.
“Let’s move out while we still have time to get back to the ship,” he said.
The group picked up their gear, switched on their flashlights and started making their way out of the station, when Jenkins yelled, “Wait! Don’t leave me down here, man. I swear I don’t know the code!”
Jason stopped walking and glanced back at Jenkins.
“Sounds like a personal problem to me,” he said.
“Okay, okay, wait! I think I might remember it,” Jenkins said, his voice hoarse and ragged. Hunter could tell that between the blood loss and the fear, the young man might be going into shock. He just hoped Jenkins could put in the right code, otherwise it was about to get very hot very quickly.
CHAPTER 90
Scientists say that in a split second a one-megaton nuclear explosion creates a flash of ultraviolet light and a fireball tens of millions of degrees, scorching everything within the blast radius for half of a mile. Just to look at the flash would cause retinal injury and blindness. Metal, concrete, wood, glass and living matter all fuse together into one mass in the incredible heat.
Hunter couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be this close when it went off. Would it be like standing inside a microwave oven with your guts being roasted, or would it simply peel the flesh off your bones like paper mache in a blast furnace?
Hunter watched with trepidation as the drama played out before him. He held onto the backpack with Lilith’s egg in it, looking back through the dark at the young mercenary alone in the elevator shaft with nervous sweat dripping off his brow. Lisa was holding his other hand, squeezing it with anticipation. If the bomb went off, he prayed that they would all be spared a slow death. He wanted it to be quick, especially for Lisa’s sake and for his child’s sake. He couldn’t stand the thought of her suffering the pain of being burned alive, not even for a microsecond.
He watched as Jenkins knelt next to the backpack and carefully turned it towards him. Hunter could feel a cold breeze blowing from somewhere in the station and wondered if they were near an exit. He wished they could find that exit right now and get the hell out of there, but he knew they couldn’t run far enough to escape the reach of the bomb even if they wanted to. There wasn’t even time for a helicopter to swoop in and pick them up. And what about all those people on the Ford? They would be doomed along with whoever was still on the island of Manhattan. He guessed there were at least a few hundred thousand, maybe a couple million or more. The island would be a complete wasteland, as barren as Hiroshima or Nagasaki was after World War II and just like those cities, uninhabitable for years to come.
Dave glanced up at the group, his eyes wide with apprehension. Everyone had spread out to watch the proceedings, keeping their distance as if it would somehow protect them from the blast.
“Just concentrate, Jenkins,” Jason said. “Don’t worry about anything else but putting in that code. That’s all you need to think about right now.”
That seemed to reassure the young man somewhat and he cast his eyes back down on the small, shiny metal cylinder that could potentially unleash the wrath of God.
Hunter only prayed that Jenkins didn’t have a death wish.
Jenkins’ good hand disappeared inside the backpack and Hunter heard the first beep of a button being pushed, followed by another, then another.
Jenkins was moving painfully slow, concentrating his effort on entering the correct code. No one in the group dared to breathe for fear that even that might cause Jenkins to punch in a wrong number.
Another beep.
Then another. That was five. How many numbers were there?
Dave looked back up at them. “Last one,” he said.
He reached down to punch in the last number.
Suddenly a blur of white shot past the group directly toward the elevator shaft and they heard Dave scream in terror as Lilith dove in on top of him.
* * *
“Lilith, no!” MacIntyre screamed as everyone raised their guns to shoot. But they knew Jenkins was already dead.
Hunter grabbed the pistol out of his waistband then raised it toward Lilith. He knew there were only seconds left on the timer and the clock was ticking.
Jason laid a hand on top of Hunter’s arm.
“Don’t, he’s gone,” Jason said. “The bullet might ricochet.”
“I know. I just want to get her attention.”
Jason nodded in understanding and yelled, “Lilith, we have something of yours. Do you want it?”
The beast glanced through the door of the shaft and Hunter could see her maw dripping with bits of shredded flesh and cloth and suddenly felt sick. He swallowed hard and held up the bag containing the egg.
Slowly Lilith squeezed through the door of the shaft and moved stealthily toward them. Everyone in the group began to back up except for Hunter and Jason. All of them had their guns trained on the beast. Hunter noticed that the wound from where she had been shot with the grenade launcher was nearly healed. Great, he thought—on top of everything else, she can regenerate healthy tissue at lightning speed.
“Hunter, be careful,” Lisa whispered from behind him.
Hunter pointed the gun at the backpack.
“Well, it looks like we’re back where we started,” he said, knowing there were only seconds left and hoping that was enough. “Think about your situation here, Lilith. You’re not getting out of here with your egg, and if we stay here, we all get incinerated. So, you have a choice. You can enter that last number in the code, which I suspect you know, or we can all say our goodbyes. What’s it going to be?”
Lilith loomed ever closer to them, her shoulders as high as a man. Her ears stuck straight up off of her huge head like the ears of a wolf and her sharp claws clicked ominously along the concrete floor as she walked on all fours. Her white fur was course and matted with dirt and blood and her breathing was still somewhat labored, but strong. The rumbling from deep within her chest reminded Hunter of the idling diesel engine of a tanker truck, but he was mesmerized by the sight of two silver eyes and two jaws full of fangs so long he wondered whether she could even close her mouth completely.
There was no sign of humanity left in Lilith whatsoever.
She stopped in front of them, sniffing with her fleshy snout, eyeing them like a lion stalking a herd of gazelles.
Everyone jumped when the bomb started beeping.
“Shit, the final countdown started,” Harrison said. “If we don’t disarm that thing in the next few seconds, we’re all going to get the worst sunburn of our lives.”
Hunter jiggled the backpack, letting the egg bounce from side to side, then jabbed it with the pistol to emphasize his intention.
“What’s it going to be, Lilith?”
Beep.
The beast furrowed its brow and stopped in its tracks. Hunter wondered
if Lilith was thinking, or if she could even think at all. Maybe she was nothing more than impulse, an animal driven by instinct. The instinct to kill.
Beep.
Three beeps so far, if Hunter was counting correctly. How many more would there be before they were consumed in the world’s biggest blast furnace? Ten? Or five? Or maybe none.
Beep.
Lilith stood her ground, completely silent and still, waiting. Was she waiting for the nuke to go off? Or was she considering her options? She really didn’t have any, Hunter thought. It was either disarm the nuke or die.
Beep.
Hunter wiped sweat from his brow. It was getting much too close for his comfort and he braced for the inevitable.
Beep.
As Hunter was about to give up hope, Lilith abruptly turned and padded back toward the elevator shaft and reached down inside with a massive paw. Then Hunter heard a sound as sweet as anything he had ever heard in his life.
Nothing.
CHAPTER 91
Lilith had entered the final number into the timer and disarmed the nuke with no time to spare, Hunter was sure. Was there still some humanity left in her after all? There was no way to be sure. But she was a killer. Now every gun was trained on the beast in a standoff as she once again began advancing toward the team. She wasn’t finished with them yet. Jason shrugged off his backpack and pulled an M9 Beretta out of a side pocket. He dropped the pack, chambered a round in the pistol, took a shooting stance and pointed it at Lilith.
“What the hell are you doing?” Hunter asked. “That gun’s not going to do anything.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not trying to kill her. It’s a little something Chin made up for me.”
Before he could fire, Lisa stepped up between the two men and said in Jason’s ear, “Let me.”
Jason glanced at Lisa, and without taking his eyes or his aim off Lilith, slid the gun into Lisa’s hand.
She squeezed the trigger once, the tranquilizer dart striking Lilith in her thick neck just under her muzzle. She roared in pain and advanced toward the team, huffing and puffing like an angry bull ready to charge. Lisa chambered another round and fired, hitting her in a spot just under the other dart. Lilith was striding forward with the fury of a locomotive and was almost on them when her front legs gave out and she slid to a stop a few short feet from Hunter and Lisa.
Lisa slowly lowered the pistol.
“Go to sleep, bitch,” she said.
Lilith tried to stand, got her feet under her, then toppled over sideways like a drunken horse and lay still.
* * *
Getting the team, the prisoners and the nuke out of an abandoned subway tunnel in the middle of the night was no easy task, but compared to hauling up Lilith’s huge carcass, it was a Sunday morning stroll. Hunter reminded himself to stop volunteering for crazy stuff, but he wanted to see the Lilith beast one last time. It must have been the reporter in him—he wanted to remember every detail. She actually looked peaceful lying there on the concrete floor of the tunnel, snowy white and sedated. He tried to remember her as a human and decided that he actually liked her better as an animal. At least he could have a little sympathy for an animal. For Lilith the human, he only felt contempt.
The CIA had managed to find another way down from 34th Street so they didn’t have far to take her, but to say she was heavy was an understatement, Hunter thought as they fastened a harness around her and began to pull her along the floor. Once they got her to the stairwell, the winches took over and she rose into the air as if she were being levitated by a magician.
Lisa had stayed with Hunter and they made their way up to 34th Street while the rest of the group met up with Samson, Chin and Slater farther down the tunnel. The prisoners were taken by helicopter to some unknown location and Hunter never really got to say thanks to Jason Fredrichs and his team or to Gabe, the woman who had saved him. But that’s how it was—the heroes always seemed to have the thankless jobs as they disappeared into the night like the Lone Ranger and moved on to the next assignment. Maybe they would meet again.
As they rode in the Sea Hawk back to the Ford, Blakely informed Hunter and Lisa that they would have to be debriefed when they got to the ship. Hunter nodded in understanding and glanced at his wife as she sat next to him. He reached down and squeezed her hand and thought about how fortunate he was to have the love of such a strong, beautiful woman.
And soon they would be parents.
That thought made Hunter smile as he gazed into Lisa’s dark, Asian eyes.
“What do you think we should name our baby?” he asked, yelling over the sound of the helicopter engine.
Lisa laughed; a beautiful sound to his ears.
“To tell you the truth I haven’t thought about it much in the last few days. I’ve been a little busy,” she said.
“Yeah, I guess you have.”
“What do you think we should name her?”
“Her? How do you know it’s a her?”
“Oh, I don’t know, just a feeling.”
Hunter didn’t care one way or the other, he would be fine with a boy or a girl—as long as they were together, he was happy.
They had managed to actually get a seat by the only window this time and Hunter looked out over Manhattan, going over the last few days in his mind. Had all of it really happened? It seemed like a dream now, something that took place long ago in a faraway land. It was like a fairy tale and a nightmare rolled into one. He considered possibly even getting therapy after this ordeal just to make sure there were no lasting effects from the parasite that had controlled him for those few days.
Then, he glanced back over at Lisa and she smiled at him and rubbed her still-flat belly.
On second thought, Hunter decided she was all the therapy he needed.
CHAPTER 92
After days of research, interviews and a few searches and seizures, George Saunders had finally amassed the evidence he needed to make the bust, and he wanted to be there personally when it happened. As he rode in the back of a black SUV on its way to D.C., he opened his laptop and started going over files, re-reading e-mails, getting all the facts straight not only to reassure himself that they had an airtight case, but to convince himself of the truth of the whole thing. He was disillusioned, heartbroken and on the verge of depression. How could he have not seen it? How could he have been so blind?
But Saunders knew that was the nature of deception—it always turned out to be the ones you thought were your friends, the ones you least suspected.
To be honest, for someone that was good at uncovering secrets, it wasn’t all that hard to find evidence, but it still left a sour taste in his mouth. For a person as high up in the chain of command as this man was to so willfully lie, cheat and steal, and even partake in mass murder, made Saunders’ blood boil. It was this type of thing that made him wonder who the hell he could trust. The answer always came back the same: trust no one. Blind trust had almost cost him the entire city of New York and possibly more—much more. Thank God he had followed his gut instinct. It had never steered him wrong.
Saunders closed his laptop, not wanting to see more, and leaned back in his seat. Outside his window, moonlit pine trees and wooden fences soon gave way to ranch-style houses and then office buildings. After a few minutes, he drifted off to sleep.
* * *
Senator James Clayburn, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, sat in his office on Constitution Avenue in Washington D.C., wondering how everything could have gone so wrong. Why had he ever agreed to this fiasco in the first place? His entire career, his entire life now lay in ruins with no hope of repair, a web of deceit unraveled by his own friend, George Saunders. He was an old man, but still young enough to retire and enjoy some time with his grandchildren. Now there was no chance of that. It was all a nightmare, a hell of his own creation.
He thought about his options. He could claim insanity, but who would believe that? It was all too carefully conceived and meticulously planned to
have been organized by a madman and even so, was it any better being locked up in an asylum than it was in jail? Somehow, he doubted it.
He could claim blackmail, which was closer to the truth. Lilith had him by the balls—literally. She had first seduced him when she was twenty-two and just out of college. Since her mother had died, Clayburn was living all alone in that sprawling house in Virginia. His other kids were grown and married with kids of their own and Lilith’s brother from her mother’s first marriage was a commander on the very ship that Clayburn had gotten her access to. She had come to him the night of her first day back from college graduation, dressed in a blood-red teddy that still made him break out in a cold sweat when he thought about it, and slipped silently into his bed. Without a word, she had leaned over and kissed him, her lustrous blonde hair brushing against the sides of his face, and then ever so slowly worked her way down.
That had been five years ago and he still couldn’t put it out of his mind.
Then she started asking for favors in return for sex. He knew what she was, knew that she had powers, but she didn’t want to control him that way. She wanted him to do it of his own free will, and he did.
As an ex-Navy captain and intelligence officer, Clayburn had knowledge of many of the military’s most guarded secrets and as a powerful U.S. senator he was able to use that knowledge to the utmost advantage. He helped Lilith change her identity to Julia Lambert, helped her recruit the mercenaries for her “project” and had even helped her get aboard the Ford as part of the media group. It was difficult throwing the CIA off her trail, but not impossible.