Black Order (37 page)

Gunther finally spoke up, gruff, a grinding of boulders.
“Genug!”
He’d had enough and struggled with English in his frustration. “The bastard has Bell…has
Xerum
…we find it. We use it.” He waved an arm to his sister. “Enough talk!”

Lisa found herself heartily agreeing, siding with the giant. “We must find a way inside.” And soon, she added to herself.

“It would take an army to storm the place.” Painter turned to Paula. “Can we expect any help from the South African government?”

She shook her head. “Not a chance. The Waalenbergs have greased too many palms. We’re going to have to find a more covert infiltration.”

“The satellite photos didn’t help much,” Painter said.

“So we go low tech,” Paula said and led them toward the waiting Isuzu Troopers. “I have a man already on the ground out there.”

6:28
A.M
.

Khamisi lay flat on his belly. Though dawn had come, the first rays of the sun only cast deeper shadows along the floor of the jungle. He wore camouflage fatigues and had his large double-bore rifle, his .465 Nitro Holland & Holland Royal, strapped to his back. In his hand, he carried a traditional Zulu short spear, an assegai.

Behind him lay two other Zulu scouts: Tau, the grandson of the elder who had rescued Khamisi from the attack, and his best friend, Njongo. They also carried firearms, along with short and long spears. They were more traditionally attired in pelts, skin daubed with paint, and otter-skin headbands.

The trio had spent the night mapping the forest around the mansion, discerning an approach that avoided the elevated walkways and the guards that patrolled them. They had used game trails that burrowed through the underbrush and skirted along with a small herd of impala, keeping hidden in the shadows. Khamisi had stopped at several points to rig ropes, linking walkway to ground, camouflaged as vines, along with a few other surprises.

With his duty done, he and the scouts had been heading out to where a stream flowed under the wildlife fencing that circled the estate.

Then a moment ago, he had heard the feral scream.

Hoo eeee OOOO.

It ended with a screeched yowl.

Khamisi froze. His very bones remembered the call.

Ukufa.

Paula Kane had been right. She had believed the creatures came from the Waalenberg estate. Whether escaped or purposefully planted to ambush Khamisi and Marcia, she didn’t know. Either way, they were loose now, hunting.

But who?

The call had come a distance to the left.

It wasn’t hunting them. The creatures were too skilled hunters. They would not give away their presence so soon. Something else had drawn them, stirred up their bloodlust.

Then he heard a voice shout out in German, a sobbed cry for help.

It was closer.

His bones still vibrating from the call, Khamisi wanted to run, to flee far and fast. It was a primal reaction.

Tau mumbled in Zulu behind him, urging the same.

Khamisi instead turned in the direction of the pleading cry. He had lost Marcia to the creatures. He remembered his own terror, neck deep in the water hole, waiting for dawn. He could not ignore this other.

Rolling to Tau, Khamisi passed on the maps he had drawn. “Get back to camp. Get these to Dr. Kane.”

“Khamisi…brother…no, come away.” Tau’s eyes were huge with his own fear. His grandfather must have told him stories of the
ukufa,
the myths come to life. Khamisi had to give the man and his friend credit. No one else had volunteered to enter the estate. Superstitions ran high.

But now faced with the reality, Tau had no intention of remaining.

And Khamisi couldn’t blame him. He remembered his own terror when he’d been with Marcia. Instead of holding his ground, he had fled, run, allowed the doctor to be killed.

“Go,” Khamisi ordered. He nodded toward the distant fence line. The maps had to get out.

Tau and Njongo hesitated for a breath. Then Tau nodded, and the pair rose up in a low crouch and vanished into the jungle. Khamisi couldn’t even hear their footfalls.

The jungle had fallen into a dread silence, heavy and as dense as the forest itself. Khamisi set out in the direction of the cries—both man and creature.

After another full minute, another yowl burst out of the jungle like a flight of startled birds. It ended in a series of yipping cackles. Khamisi paused, struck by something familiar in this last eerie bit.

Before he could consider it further, a soft sobbing drew his attention.

It came from directly ahead.

Khamisi used the muzzle of his double-bore rifle to part some leaves. A small glade opened in the jungle ahead, where a tree had fallen recently and cleared a part of the forest. The hole in the canopy allowed a shaft of morning sunlight to pierce to the floor. It made the surrounding jungle even darker with shadows.

Across the glade, movement drew his eye. A young man—no more than a boy—low in a tree, struggled to reach another branch, to climb higher. He couldn’t reach. He couldn’t get a grip with his right hand. Even from here, Khamisi saw the trail of blood soaked down the boy’s sleeve as he vainly struggled.

Then the boy suddenly sank to his knees, hugging the bole, attempting to hide.

And the reason for the boy’s sudden terror stepped into view.

Khamisi froze as the creature stalked into the glade, under the tree. It was massive, belying its silent tread out of the forest. It was larger than a full-grown male lion, but it was no lion. Its shaggy fur was albino white, its eyes a hyperreflective red. Its back sloped from thickset high shoulders to a lower rear end. Its muscled neck supported a large, muzzled head topped by a pair of wide batlike belled ears. These swiveled, focused on the tree.

Lifting its head, it sniffed upward, drawn by the blood.

Lips rippled back from a maw of ripping teeth.

It howled again, ending again in a hair-raising series of cackling whoops.

Then it began to climb.

Khamisi knew what he faced.

Ukufa.

Death.

But as monstrous as it appeared, Khamisi knew its true name.

6:30
A.M
.

“Species
Crocuta crocuta,
” Baldric Waalenberg said, stepping to the LCD monitor. He had noted Gray’s continued focus upon the creature on the screen, overlaying the video feed of Fiona in the cage.

Gray studied the massive bearlike creature, frozen, facing the camera, growling, mouth wide, baring white gums and yellowed fangs. It had to weigh three hundred pounds. It guarded the macerated remains of some antelope.

“The spotted hyena,” Baldric continued. “The species is the second-largest carnivore in Africa, capable of dropping a bull wildebeest all by itself.”

Gray frowned. The creature on the monitor was no ordinary hyena. It massed three to four times the normal size. And the pale fur. Some combination of gigantism and albinism. A mutated monstrosity.

“What did you do to it?” he asked, unable to keep the disgust from his voice. He also wanted to keep the man talking, buying time. He matched gazes with Monk, then returned his attention to the old man.

“We made the creature better, stronger.” Baldric glanced to his grandson. Isaak continued to watch the play dispassionately. “Did we not, Isaak?”

“Ja, grootvader.”

“Prehistoric cave pictures in Europe show the great ancestor of today’s hyena. The giant hyena. We’ve found a way to return
Crocuta
to its former glory.” Baldric spoke with the same scientific dispassion as when he had discussed breeding black orchids. “Even enhanced the species’ intelligence by incorporating human stem cells into its cerebral cortex. Fascinating results.”

Gray had read of similar experiments done with mice. At Stanford, scientists had produced mice whose brains were one percent human. What the hell was going on here?

Baldric stepped to the blackboard with the five runic symbols. He tapped the board with the cane. “We have a series of Cray XT3 supercomputers working on Hugo’s code. Once solved, this will allow us to do the same with mankind. To bring about the next evolution of man. Out of Africa again, man will rise anew, putting an end to the mud races and racial mixing, a purity will supersede all. It only waits to be unlocked from our corrupted genetic code and purified.”

Gray heard echoes of the Nazis’
Übermensch
philosophy, the superman myth. The old man was mad. He had to be. But Gray noted the lucidity of his gaze. And on the screen lay proof of some monstrous success toward that end.

Gray’s attention shifted to Isaak as he tapped a key and the mutated hyena vanished. Insight flashed through him. The albinism in the hyena. Isaak and his twin sister. The other white-blond assassins. Children all. Baldric hadn’t been experimenting only with orchids and hyenas.

“Now let us return to the matter of Painter Crowe,” the old man said. He waved a hand toward the screen. “Now that you understand what awaits the young
meisje
in the cage if you don’t answer our questions truthfully. No more games.”

Gray studied the screen, the girl in the cage. He could not let anything happen to Fiona. If nothing else, he needed to buy her time. The girl had been pulled into all of this because of his own clumsy inquiries in Copenhagen. She was his responsibility. And more than that, he liked the girl, respected her, even when she was being a pain in the ass. Gray knew what he had to do.

He faced Baldric.

“What do you want to know?”

“Unlike you, Painter Crowe has proven more of an adversary than we had anticipated. He has vanished after escaping our ambush. You’re going to help us find out where he’s gone.”

“How?”

“By contacting Sigma command. We have a scrambled, untraceable line. You’re going to break communication silence and find out what Sigma knows about the Black Sun project and where Painter Crowe has gone into hiding. And any hint of treachery…” Baldric nodded to the monitor.

Gray now understood the strident lesson here. They wanted Gray to understand fully, strangling any hope of deception. Save Fiona or betray Sigma?

The decision was momentarily postponed as one of the guards returned with another of Gray’s demands.

“My hand!” Monk called out, noting the prosthesis carried by the guard. He struggled, his elbows still bound behind his back.

Baldric waved the guard forward. “Give the prosthesis to Isaak.”

Isaak spoke up, speaking Dutch. “Did the lab clear it of any hidden weapons?”

The man nodded. “
Ja,
sir. All clear.”

Still Isaak inspected the prosthetic hand. It was a marvel of DARPA engineering, incorporating direct peripheral nerve control through the titanium wrist contact points. It also was engineered with advanced mechanics and actuators that allowed precise movements and sensory input.

Monk stared at Gray.

Gray noted Monk’s left fingers had finished tapping a code on the contact points of his right wrist’s stump.

Gray nodded, stepping closer to Monk.

There was one other feature of DARPA’s electronic prosthesis.

It was
wireless
.

A radioed signal passed between Monk and his prosthetic hand.

In response, the disembodied prosthetic clenched in Isaak’s grip.

Fingers formed a fist.

Except for a raised middle finger.

“Screw you,” Monk mumbled.

Gray grabbed Monk’s elbow and yanked him toward the double doors that led into the main house.

The explosion was not large—no more than an extra loud and brilliant flash grenade. The charge had been blended directly into the plastic sleeve of the outer hand, impossible to detect. And while it wasn’t much, it proved enough of a distraction. Cries of surprise and pain erupted from the guards. Gray and Monk slammed through the double doors, fled down the hall, and took the first turn. Out of direct sight, they pounded across polished hardwood floors.

Alarms immediately erupted, clanging and urgent.

They needed an escape route ASAP.

Gray noted wide stairs leading up. He guided Monk to them.

“Where we going?” Monk asked.

“Up, up, up…” Gray said as they fled, taking two steps at a time. Security would expect them to make a break for the nearest door or window. He knew another way out. In his head, a schematic of the manor house revolved. He had studied the estate closely as they were marched over here. Gray concentrated, trusting his sense of direction and position in space.

“This way.” He hauled Monk off a landing and down another corridor. They were on the sixth floor. Alarms continued.

“Where—?” Monk began again.

“High ground,” Gray answered and pointed toward the end of the corridor where a door awaited. “To the walkway in the canopy.”

But it wouldn’t be that easy.

As if someone had overheard their plan, an inner metal shutter began lowering over the exit door. An automated lockdown.

“Hurry!” Gray yelled.

The shutter trundled quickly, already three-quarters closed.

Gray sped faster, leaving Monk behind. He grabbed a hall chair as he ran past it and flung it ahead. It landed on the hardwood floor and skittered across the polished surface. Gray chased after it. The chair struck the closed outer door as the inner metal shutter clamped down atop it. Gears ground. A red light flared above the doorway. Malfunction. Gray was sure some warning bulb was already flaring in the mansion’s main security nest.

As he reached the door, the wooden chair legs splintered and cracked, crushed beneath the grinding shutter.

Monk ran up, out of breath, arms still clamped behind his back.

Gray ducked under the chair and reached for the knob on the exit door. It was a strain with the shutter blocking the way.