Prime (29 page)

FIFTY-TWO

Bishop wasn’t normally given to making loud, emotionally-charged
utterances. Most soldiers believed it was a good thing to vent some of their
pent up rage with outbursts of colorful language, but Bishop knew that even a
small crack could weaken a dam, and if the dam holding back his anger ever
failed… Well, he didn’t like to think about what might happen. The safer course
was to meet every surprise, every disappointment, every reversal of fortune,
the same way: with silence.

Once in a while, though, he would make an
exception.

“What the—”

He had been looking away, watching the tree
line for enemy activity, and so he had missed Sasha and Parker disappearing
into the rock wall. He almost missed King’s exit as well; he turned just in
time to see King plunge into the stone face as if it were merely a curtain
stretched over an opening in the wall. For a few seconds, he told himself that
was exactly what he had seen, but when he approached the cliff and extended his
hand, his fingers immediately encountered solid rock.

No, that wasn’t quite right. It didn’t feel
solid exactly; more like stiff clay. He pressed harder and his fingers went in
up to the first knuckle, but then stopped abruptly as if he’d hit something
harder.

The substance was warm to the touch, almost
uncomfortably so, and when he pulled his fingers free, he discovered that even
that little bit of plasticity was gone from the rock; it had hardened once more
into brittle chalky limestone.

“—fuck?”

He keyed his mic. “King, this is Bishop. Do
you copy?”

Nothing.

He glimpsed movement from behind and whirled
to find Knight jogging toward him, the enormous Barrett cradled in his arms.
Knight’s normally serene visage was twisted with concern; he had overheard
Bishop’s transmission, and the distinctive silence that had followed. “What’s
wrong?”

Bishop just gaped at the cliff face, silent
mode re-engaged, but only because he didn’t have the words to explain what he
had just seen.

“Where’s King?”

Bishop pointed at the wall. “He just…walked
through it.”

“Walked through it?”

The big man nodded. “Like a ghost or
something.”

“A ghost.”
Knight’s forehead creased. “Bishop, you
sound like my grandmother.”

Bishop had no reply, but continued to probe
the wall with his hands.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Knight came
over to stand beside him. “So, is there a secret passage or something?”

The noise of gunfire—distant, but still close
enough to warrant keeping their heads down—curtailed further discussion. Rook
and Queen had engaged Rainer and his men. Knight opened the bipod legs for his
Barrett and got down behind the weapon, ready to meet any threat that came
their way, but Bishop went back to studying the rock. He felt a growing anxiety
that had nothing to do with bringing down the rogue Delta operators.

King was inside the rock. There had to be a
cave or a hidden tunnel entrance, but damned if he could find it. Had King gone
in willingly? Was he in danger right now?

“Shit!”

Knight’s rare expletive brought Bishop back
to the moment. He wheeled around and saw the reason for his teammate’s oath.
Two figures—Queen and Rook—had broken from the cover of the pines and were
bolting across the clearing toward them.

His concern deepened. It wasn’t like those
two to run from anything.

A
frankenstein
appeared behind them.

Why hadn’t Rook dropped it with a couple of shots
from his hand cannons?

Two more of the monstrosities emerged on the
heels of the first, and the situation became clearer to Bishop.

There were two more behind those, and then
more. Suddenly, the clearing was filled with the lumbering once-human things,
moving so fast that Bishop couldn’t accurately count them—at least ten, maybe a
dozen, maybe more than that.

Knight’s Barrett boomed, the muzzle brake
throwing up a huge cloud of dirt as it vented the hot sulfurous gases that
propelled a .50 BMG round with lethal accuracy into one of the monsters.

The sniper rifle thundered again, but without
the same effect; the frankensteins were moving too fast for him to sight them
in.

Queen and Rook were only a few seconds from
reaching them, and their pursuers were just a few more.

“Knight!
Let’s go!” Bishop shouted.

“Where?”
Knight must have intended it to be a
rhetorical question, because he didn’t look up from his grim but futile task.

A good question.
King had gone into the rock, but they
couldn’t follow…

There was another way. He remembered the door
they had passed when moving up on Rainer and his men; a door that led straight
into the cliff, and to some old cave beyond. If they could get inside, that
door would become a kill zone where they could repel almost any attack, even
from the prodigiously strong frankensteins.

There was no time to explain all of this to
Knight, so he simply reached down and plucked the smaller man up and threw him
over one shoulder. The abrupt action startled Knight, but instead of
struggling, he clutched at the rifle.

“This way!”
Bishop shouted as he started running along
the base of the cliff. He didn’t look back to see if Queen and Rook were
following.

The door seemed further away than he remembered—probably
a trick of his battle-heightened perceptions.

Knight had stopped struggling against him
almost immediately, but he didn’t speak until Bishop reached his goal. “Put me
down,” he said calmly. “I’ll hold them off while you get the door open.”

Bishop complied without comment, letting his
teammate slip to the ground. Queen and Rook reached them at almost the same
moment. Four of the frankensteins were about a hundred feet behind them.

“Keep moving!” Queen was breathing so hard,
she could barely get the words out.

Bishop shook his head. “We can make our stand
here…inside.”

“You got the key big guy?” panted Rook.

Bishop raised one foot and slammed it against
the door, just below the U-shaped handle. The door buckled, practically folding
in half around his boot, as it swung inward, revealing the darkness beyond.

“I guess you could knock,” Rook said.

A piercing shriek filled the air as the
cave’s intruder alarm activated.

“Or ring the bell.”

Bishop swept them all through the opening
with one mighty arm; with his other hand, he fired his carbine into the
approaching enemy. He didn’t wait to see if his shots had any effect. He
whirled and plunged headlong into the cave behind his teammates.

A narrow passage lay just beyond the door,
and Bishop was forced to squirm through the tight throat of stone. Then,
without warning, he was birthed into a great black void.

The oppressive darkness lasted only a few
seconds. One by one, the tactical flashlights mounted to their carbines flared
to life. Rays of tightly focused brilliance stabbed through the still air
without really illuminating anything, but Bishop got the sense of being in an
enormous enclosure, as big as an aircraft hanger. The floor alternated between
loose chips of rock and a smooth surface that looked almost polished, but
riding above both was a narrow bridge of steel plate—part of the conservation
effort designed to minimize impact on the cave. The sweep of the lights
revealed other discrete details: pillars of limestone and other minerals that
stretched from floor to ceiling; stalagmites that seemed to be erupting from
the floor like milky white mushroom clouds. One of the lights revealed
something else, something that at first glance appeared to be moving, but was
in reality an image painted on one wall—a buffalo or bison that appeared almost
to be running. The illusion was gone even before Bishop could register it; the
lights were sweeping back the way they’d come, shining on the narrow slit
leading to the doorway.

Something was moving there.

Rook fired his pistol. The entire cavern rang
with the noise of the discharge, and the acrid smell of burnt gunpowder
obliterated the earthy odor of ancient stone. The shape in the entry twitched
grotesquely with the impact, but then the figure began moving forward once
more.

Rook fired again, and this time the damage
was unmistakable; the bullet cratered the
frankenstein’s
forehead.

Impossibly, it kept advancing.

Rook fired out the last of his magazine, but
the monstrosity just seemed to absorb each hit as if it was impervious.

There was an ear-splitting report as Knight
fired the Barrett straight into the thing’s chest, nearly tearing it in half.
This time it went down permanently, as did the
frankenstein
right behind it. But even before the bodies hit the steel decking, a third
creature rushed forward and lifted the fallen body, holding it between itself
and the Chess Team like a shield.

Bishop realized now why the first
frankenstein
had seemed invincible; it had been dead all
along, and its body had sheltered the advance of its brothers through the
chokepoint of the cave entrance.

Rook and Knight hastened to reload, while
Bishop and Queen kept up a withering barrage of fire from their carbines, but
the invading force just shrugged off the damage as they poured unhindered
through the gap.

FIFTY-THREE

The darkness surrounding King was becoming substantial. At first, he
attributed this to some lingering vestige of claustrophobia, but as the air
became viscous, like syrup clinging to his limbs, he realized that it was the
literal truth. The strange effect that had opened this passageway into the Earth—science
or magic, or maybe a little of both—was receding; the stone was returning to
its solid state.

The realization triggered a surge of panic,
and he started clawing his way forward, swimming as much as running. Abruptly,
the resistance vanished. He
stumbled
forward,
sprawling face down on hard stone.

What
just happened
?

He knew the answer. The rational part of his
brain stodgily refused to embrace the reality of the experience, but what other
explanation could there be?

Understanding the Voynich manuscript and
securing the Prime had never been his highest priority, but he had been paying
attention when Parker and Sasha had told their tale of medieval scientists discovering
the secret source of life and using music to change the very nature of the
physical world. If even a little bit of what they had told
him
was true…

I
just walked through a solid rock wall!

There was a faint glow directly ahead, and
King heard raised voices, conversing heatedly just a few yards in front of him.

“You have to let me do this,” Sasha urged.

“And you can,” Parker said.
“Once Jack has secured the area.”

“And what if he can’t? What if Rainer kills
him? Kills them all?”

Frowning, King got to his feet, and with his hands
extended ahead, probing the darkness, he moved toward them. He could see their
silhouettes now, lit by the glow of Sasha’s computer.

He brought his carbine around and switched on
the attached light. The high-intensity LED bulb revealed a tunnel, cut and
smoothed by the passage of some ancient subterranean river long since diverted,
sloping gently downward, and standing partway down the slope were two human
shapes.

Parker threw up a hand to shade his eyes, but
Sasha seized on the moment to break free of his restraining hand. She charged
ahead, deeper into the passage.

“Stop her, Danno!”

Parker was already moving. He caught her by
the shoulder and spun her around. King could see the desperation in her eyes.
She struggled in his grasp, her efforts becoming more frantic as King drew
near.

“
It’s
right there,”
she pleaded.
“The Prime.
I can fix everything, if you
just let me go.”

“Sasha…”

King reached them. “Miss Therion, I’m sorry,
but you have to come back with us.”

Sasha looked at him for a second, and then
turned the full force of her gaze on Parker. She pointed ahead into the
darkness. “The Prime is right there. It’s why we came here.”

King sensed that his friend’s resolve was
starting to slip.

“Danny, please let me. My whole life has been
leading up to this. Don’t let him stop me.” She reached out and placed her hand
over his heart. “You promised to help me.”

Parker’s restraining hand fell away. With a
sigh of resignation, he nodded down the tunnel. “Go.”

“Damn it, Danno.” King reached out to
restrain her, but Sasha was already forging ahead, deeper into the darkness. He
started after her, but then felt a hand pull him back.

“Let her go, Jack.” Parker’s voice sounded
weary,
defeated. King tried to pull free, but what had at
first been only Parker’s token effort to forestall him abruptly became
something more resolute. As he tried to wrench himself free, Parker yanked him
back hard enough to spin him into the wall.

The impact stunned him, but not as much as
the evident betrayal. Parker, too, seemed surprised by what he’d done; he took
a step back and raised his hands. He knew he had crossed a line, and now he had
to decide whether to retreat and do some damage control, or commit with both
feet.

“I don’t have time for this shit, Danno.”

King started forward, but Parker moved to
block his way. “Jack, just let her do this. It’s important to her.”

“The last time someone screwed around with
this stuff, it killed half the world’s population, remember? You told me that.
The Black Death?
The Prime is dangerous.”

The flame of Parker’s resolve flickered, but
then he shook his head. “That was different. Sasha knows what she’s doing. I
have to let her try.”

“Well I don’t.”

King advanced again.

Parker, with arms akimbo, tried to block the
passage, but King stepped to one side and lowered his head like a charging
linebacker. He plowed into Parker, staggering him back, but even as he fell,
Parker closed his arms around King, taking him to the ground in a bear hug.

Parker grunted from the impact, but instead
of letting go, he wrapped his legs around King’s, hobbling him, and then he started
grappling for a better position. King quickly recognized what was happening,
but before he could do anything about it, Parker had rolled him over and
slipped an arm around his neck.

King knew how to break free of such a hold,
and Parker knew how to prevent him from doing so. For several seconds, they
struggled without appearing to move more than a few inches at a time. They had
fought each other often in training, and sometimes just for the hell of it;
they knew each other’s best moves and Achilles’ Heels. Neither man could hold
an advantage against the other long enough to achieve a decisive victory.
Experience told King that exhaustion would be the decider, and that was
something he couldn’t wait for.

He slammed his head back, driving the back of
his skull into Parker’s face. There was a white flash of pain, accompanied by a
ringing in his ears, but he also heard the crunch of bones smacking together.

Parker let go and scrambled back. “Shit,
Jack.”

In the diffuse glow from King’s light, he saw
Parker holding a hand to his mouth, and bright drops of blood seeping through
his fingers. “Shit,” he repeated, the words distorted by the injury.

“You just can’t let go, can you?” Parker
continued, the accusation pouring out in an accompanying fountain of blood. “No
wonder you didn’t want me on your team.”

King shook his head, and winced as another
wave of pain spiked through his head. “Danno, we can talk about this later, but
right now, you need to get her back. The Prime is dangerous. Don’t let her mess
around with it.”

“Damn it, Jack. Would you just fucking back
off for once? You don’t have to be in control every God damned minute. It’s not
like the world is going to end.”

A deep rumble shuddered through the cavern,
throwing both men to the hard floor, and showering them with dust. The tremor
lasted a few seconds, and when it stopped, King could hear the sound of the
cavern walls groaning with the strain of holding up the earth.

The air was thick with falling dust, giving
the beam of King’s light the illusion of solidity but reducing its
effectiveness. He could just make out Parker, struggling to rise a few yards
away.

Between them, stretching from one wall of the
passage to the
other,
was a shadowy line that
swallowed the light whole, and as he peered into it, King saw that it was
getting wider. The tremor had opened a fissure in the cavern.

The earth rumbled again, and King’s side of
the passage dropped six inches, with an accompanying shower of dust. Over the
crushing of rock, other noises were audible, muffled but no less distinctive—the
sound of gunfire.

“You were saying, Danno?”