The Dragon Factory (61 page)

On the other hand, a high-altitude low open jump means that the bad guys usually don’t know you’re coming, so there are fewer bullets to try and dodge while you’re in the air. Kind of a silver lining.

We saw the landing point we’d chosen from the satellite photos and I tilted my chute forward to spill air out of the back and drop down, but suddenly I saw a ripple of bright flashes and heard the hollow
pok-pok-pok
of automatic gunfire. In the same moment I heard Church’s voice in my ear:

“Deacon to Cowboy, Deacon to Cowboy, be advised, the island is under attack. Identity and number of hostiles unknown. Estimate one hundred plus hostiles. Confirm; confirm.”

“Confirmed, dammit.” I tapped my earbud and identified myself. “Alpha Team, report location.”

“Alpha Team is inside the complex and taking fire,” Redman said.

“Hold tight,” I said. Back on the command channel I yelled, “Deacon, are any friendlies on the grounds?”

“Negative. Alpha Team is inside, other assets inbound. No friendlies on the ground.”

“Roger that.” I tapped the earbud once more as we circled around the line of trees and headed back to our drop site. “Echo Team, zero friendlies on the ground. Let’s rock and roll.”

While I was thirty feet above the dark lawn I saw four men in the same nondescript BDUs we’d seen on the Russians in Deep Iron. They didn’t see me. Sucked to be them.

I cut them down.

Gunfire flashed from our right, but I was below the tree line now. I stalled my speed and dropped to a fast walk, hit the release, and ran from my chute. There was no time to be neat and tidy. I headed straight
for the cover of a close stand of palms, and I could hear rounds burning the air around me.

Bunny yelled, “Frag out!” and threw a grenade toward the muzzle flashes. I don’t know if he got any of them with the burst, but it gave him and Top a clear moment to land. They split up and went into the trees on either side of me.

The main building was on our left, the lawn and another row of trees to our right. There was a stone path lined with torches nearby, but half of the torches had been knocked over or torn up by gunfire. I saw a dozen bodies littering the ground between here and the door, and more sprawled on the steps.

I turned and headed toward the building, zigzagging behind trees and shrubs, firing at anything that moved. I killed a couple of exotic ferns that got caught in a breeze, but I also took down several of the hostiles.

“Grenade!” Bunny yelled, and slammed into me with a diving tackle that rolled us both to the foot of the stone steps as a blast tore a hole a few feet from where I’d been standing. I’d never seen the throw. Top spun and chopped up the hedges and a man screamed and toppled to the ground.

The steps offered no cover, but the main glass doors were intact despite dozens of impacts from armor-piercing rounds. High-density bulletproof glass. I scrambled to my feet and ran inside, crouching instinctively as a line of heavy-caliber bullets whacked into the glass. It held. So I turned and knelt to offer covering fire as Bunny and then Top ran from cover and risked the open ground near the steps. A ricochet bounced off the open door and pinged around the lobby for a heart-stopping moment before burying itself in the wall six inches from Top’s head.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

I held the door while they checked the hallway behind me. A crash door opened and six men wearing security uniforms rushed the hallway. Top and Bunny put them down with short bursts and I rolled into the doorway and put half a magazine in the next four who were running up a flight of metal stairs to this level.

“Clear!” called Bunny, and I backed away from the doorway.

I tapped my earbud. “Cowboy to Amazing, Cowboy to Amazing.”

No answer.

Then, “Headhunter to Cowboy.” Headhunter was Redman’s call sign.

“Go for Cowboy.”

“We’re hearing gunfire behind us. Sounds like M4s.” He described his location.

“That’s a roger,” I said.

“We could use a quarterback sneak.”

“Copy that. On our way.”

We ran down the hallway, passing several bullet-riddled bodies and the signs of mass panic. A lot of people had fled this way, dropping coffee cups and clipboards and trampling the dead.

We slowed. If Redman had heard our gunfire and could tell the difference between M4s and either the H&Ks used by the Dragon Factory guards or the Kalashnikovs carried by the Russians, then so could whoever they were fighting. The corridor was a long curve and the ambush was exactly where you’d expect it to be—at the sharpest point of the curve where decorative potted trees provided cover.

Top and I tossed our party favors at them and the fragmentation grenades ripped the ambush to pieces.

“Hopscotch!” I called, giving today’s code.

“Jump rope!” It was Redman’s voice.

We moved around the bend as his people came out from behind the meager cover they had found. Only six of Alpha Team could walk. Two were badly wounded—one with multiple gunshot wounds to the legs and the other with a facial lacerations from flying glass. A third—a new transfer from the SEALs—lay in the kind of sprawl that only looks like what it is.

“Report,” I said. “Where’s your commander?”

Redman turned toward the heavy portal. “She saw something and went in there just as the alarms kicked in. The door swung shut automatically.”

“Any sign of Cyrus Jakoby . . . ?”

“From the way the major went diving into that room, I think she must have seen something.”

“Can you open it?” Top asked.

“Sure, if I had two hours and a lot of C4.”

I pointed. “There’s a keypad. Uplink to Bug and get him on it. If that thing has a computer control then let’s put MindReader to work on it.”

“Yo!” called Bunny from the sharp bend in the hallway. “We got company.”

“How many?”

“A shitload. We’re about to get outnumbered really fast.”

I cast a desperate look at the closed hatch. There was no time to break through. Damn it to hell. The advancing Russians began firing and bullets tore through the air, the ricochets turning the hallway into a killing floor.

“Fall back!” I shouted, pulling on Alpha Team members and shoving them down the hallway toward a set of exit doors. Bunny picked up one of the wounded and ran with him as lightly as if the soldier was a little child. Two other Alpha Team operatives grabbed the second. We had to leave the dead for now. Alpha Team looked hurt and angry. They didn’t want to leave Grace behind any more than I did, but there was no way we could hold this position.

We fired, we threw grenades, but we yielded ground yard by yard, letting ourselves be driven around the curving hallway until we could no longer see the hatch.

No bullets hit me, but as I backed around the corner I felt like I’d taken a fatal wound to the heart.

Grace.

The Chamber of Myth

Tuesday, August 31, 2:23
A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 37 minutes E.S.T.

Grace moved behind the rows of exotic plants, closing on the Jakobys in a wide circle. The artificial terrain was uneven, and at times she had to tuck her pistol into her belt in order to climb a rock or up and down a ravine. Mammals and birds scattered from her and at first Grace took no notice of them, but then a creature stepped briefly into her path that froze her heart and almost tore a cry of surprise from her lips. The creature had the twisted legs of a goat, a roughly manlike torso, black bat wings, spiked horns, and a grinning face that was out of ancient nightmares.

It was a gargoyle.

Grace stared, not knowing what to do. She forced herself to remember where she was. These people made monsters. This was just another perversion of transgenic science . . . but a wave of atavistic fear gripped her heart as the monster climbed onto a rock and stared down at her with bottomless black eyes.

Then, in the space of a few seconds, Grace’s perception changed. The gargoyle was three feet tall, and it moved with an awkward jerkiness of limb that looked clumsy and painful. As Grace moved slowly up the slope, the creature scuttled away, but it threw a single penetrating look at her before it disappeared under a fern. In that moment, though, Grace saw a human intelligence in the lustrous black eyes and a depth of horrified self-awareness that chilled her to the bone. In some grotesque way the transgenic animal was partly human, and that fragment of its mind was totally aware of its own wretched nature. Sadness crashed down on her as she stared after it. Then a moment later the sadness was overwhelmed by a burning fury as the enormity of this abomination of nature struck her. She set her jaw and drew her weapon and continued her hunt for the real monsters here in this chamber.

She tried to contact the TOC or Joe, but all she got from the earbud was a low-level buzz. A jammer. It must have kicked in when the building
went on alert. Grace hoped that Church would realize what was happening and order the drop of the E-bomb.

Grace found a path that looked like it was used by the groundskeeping staff and she ran along this, circling closer and closer, trying to hear the conversation. Eventually she moved into a natural blind formed by the edge of a decorative waterfall and there she stopped. The waterfall was built over rock, but the back was clearly made from painted metal. She ran her hands along it and found the edges of a doorway fitted so snugly into the façade that it was virtually invisible. A door or an access panel of some kind. She filed it away for later.

Grace could see all six of the people in the room. She recognized the Jakoby Twins easily enough—tall, white as snow, and beautiful. The brute standing near them was one of the transgenic guards, though he was bigger than any of the others she’d seen. The two older men were strangers, but she felt that it was safe to guess that one of them was Cyrus Jakoby and the other possibly Otto Wirths. The last of the men there startled her and also made her feel like the earth was shifting under her feet.

If the photos Mr. Church had shown were correct, then this was Gunnar Haeckel.

Or Hans Brucker.

Both of whom were dead.

So . . . who was the tall man with the calculating expression? Another clone?

Clones, transgenics monsters, ethnic-specific pathogens.

She was surrounded by monsters.

Grace drew her pistol and leaned close to listen.

“—
YOUR LITTLE MAGIC
castle is about to come tumbling down,” said Cyrus Jakoby.

Hecate sneered. “You may find that more difficult than you imagine, Father. We’re not exactly vulnerable here.”

“Which is why we brought enough muscle to sweep past whatever defenses you have,” said Otto.

“Maybe,” said Paris. “And maybe your guns for hire are about to encounter a few surprises.”

“The teams know about your Berserkers. Ape DNA does not provide protection from armor-piercing rounds.”

Paris smiled. “No, but the Berserkers are not the only defenses we have. You’ll see.”

Otto gave a small shrug. “Yes, we’ll see.”

“What I want to know,” said Hecate, “is why you’re doing this. Why attack us at all?”

“Retribution, Miss Jakoby.
You
attacked the Hive.”

“The Hive? What the hell’s the ‘Hive’?” said Paris.

“In Costa Rica?” prompted Otto, but the Twins shook their heads.

Cyrus studied both of the Twins, checking body language and eye movement. He frowned. “You really didn’t attack the Hive,” he concluded.

“We still don’t know what it is.”

Cyrus didn’t elaborate. His expression, at first bemused, quickly darkened. “Then what happened to Eighty-two? Who hit the Hive? Who took him?”

“It had to be a military hit.” Otto frowned. “Question is . . . which government?”

“Could be Germany,” suggested Cyrus savagely. “Our former homeland would love to see our heads on pikes. Or it could be the Americans.”

“Then why didn’t they hit the Deck, too?”

Cyrus shook his head. “If the military took the Hive, then it’s possible that Eighty-two was killed along with the rest of the staff.”

“It would be better than being taken.” Otto’s voice said one thing, but his eyes conveyed a different message. All of the psychological profiles that had been done on Eighty-two had indicated that the boy did not have a predatory nature, that he lacked the strength to be a killer. It was so anomalous a finding that Cyrus had refused to accept it, had killed the testing doctors, had made Otto try over and over again to prove that Eighty-two was truly a part of the Family, that the boy’s loyalties were
not a “given.” Now this belief could possibly be put to the test under interrogation by the United States. The boy could already have broken. Military forces could be closing in on the Deck even now.

Cyrus looked deeply hurt and it took him a moment to master his voice enough to speak. “We have to move up the timetable for the release.”

“The real question,” interrupted Hecate, “is why
you
sent assassins here to kill us.”