The Dragon Factory (64 page)

Church explained about the electromagnetic pulse bomb. “If we’re lucky, then Cyrus won’t be able to access a working computer terminal in order to send out the code for the Extinction Wave.”

“If we’re lucky?” repeated Rudy.
“Dios mio.”

The satellite image showed hundreds of bright dots, milling around across the island. Every few seconds a brighter spot would flare.

“What’s that?”

“Thermal scans of the battle. Each dot is a signature for a combatant. The flares are explosions, probably grenades.”

“Which ones are ours?”

“We’ve lost all telemetric feeds from the island,” said Church.

“Which means what?”

“Which means we don’t know which ones are ours.”

The collision of the hundreds of dots made no sense to Rudy. Everyone seemed to be right on top of everyone else. All those soldiers, each person dressed in black, out of communication even with their own teammates. It was a frightening thought to him, and he could only imagine the terror the men on the island must be feeling.

“You’re a religious man,” said Mr. Church. It wasn’t framed as a question, but Rudy nodded.

“Yes.”

“Now would be a useful time for prayer.”

The Chamber of Myth

Tuesday, August 31, 2:41
A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 19 minutes E.S.T.

For the second time in twenty minutes the lights went out in the Chamber of Myth.

“What now?” growled Cyrus.

“I . . . don’t know,” said Hecate.

“It’s that woman,” said Otto.

“No. There’s no bypass in here for the security lights. They’d have to be turned off from the security office. Your men must have done this.”

“No,” insisted Otto. “They are under strict orders to leave all systems in operation.”

“Why?” Hecate asked, then answered her own question. “Oh . . . you need a working computer terminal for your device.”

“Why don’t you say that a little louder?” said Otto icily. “Just in case the female agent didn’t hear you.”

Hecate ignored him. Instead she said, “Listen . . . can you hear the blowers?”

They were all silent in the absolute darkness. “I can’t hear anything except a few birds,” said Cyrus.

“Damn it! The blowers are offline.” Her voice was shrill with tension. “They’re on a dedicated system with their own generator. The controls for that are in my office.” She paused. “That means the main power is out as well as the security systems and auxiliary systems. All at once?”

Cyrus opened his cell phone. There was no light.

“Otto, try your phone. See if the light comes on.”

“It’s dead.”

“Something took out all electronics in a single burst,” said Cyrus, his voice low. “Either the island has been nuked or someone hit us with a precise EMP.”

“Our teams don’t have anything like that,” said Otto.

“Then the Americans are on the island. If they used an E-bomb, then they know about the trigger device. Nothing else makes sense.”

There was a distinct note of panic in his voice.

“We have to get out of here,” said Otto in an urgent whisper. He fumbled in the dark until he found Hecate’s arm and gave it a fierce squeeze. “We need to get out of here before they can stop us or we will have lost everything we’ve worked for.”

“I have a ruggedized laptop in my office,” she said. “It can withstand any kind of EMP and it’s in a lead-lined safe along with a portable hard drive with our backup files.”

“But how can we get to your office?” demanded Cyrus. “We’re trapped in here.”

Hecate laughed, a strangely feline sound in the darkness.

“I designed this place, Father. Do you think I would be so careless as to let it be my tomb?”

“Then get us out of here.”

“I need to find the waterfall. The rear panel is false. There’s a door that leads to a service tunnel. Now be quiet and let me get my bearings.”

CONRAD VEDER TOOK
the darkness philosophically. He wasn’t frustrated, because he was not emotionally invested in the kill. All it meant was that the change in circumstances required a new plan.

He remembered the process of climbing up to the ledge and climbing back down would be easy enough. But he didn’t move right away. There was no immediate threat to him up here and the lights might come back on.

One of the greatest advantages of having a mind like an insect is that there is no tendency toward impatience.

TONTON DID NOT
like the total darkness. It was the only thing that made him feel vulnerable.

He could still smell the woman and if he was careful he could track her. But what if she had night-vision goggles? How was she dressed? Fatigue pants and boots, a black tank top.

Did she have an equipment belt?

He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t sure.

A few seconds passed.

No, he decided. She hadn’t been wearing an equipment belt. On the other hand, she may have had a pack and left it among the foliage. He hadn’t seen her after she’d run into the brush. She might have had time to grab a pack and keep going.

So what did he do?

If he had one of the new recruits he’d have ordered him to stand up and then he’d see if the bitch put a bullet through his head. Tonton was not willing to risk his own head.

Miss Jakoby might have a trick. Tonton reached into his pocket for his cell, but the unit was dead. Not even a glow from the screen. What the hell?

Wracked with indecision, Tonton did nothing.

GRACE COURTLAND DID
not fear the darkness. She would have preferred night vision or some useful light, but she didn’t need it. There was too much of the predator in her to be stymied by darkness.

If she couldn’t see, then neither of the men who were hunting her could see, either. And she understood the
why
of the darkness. Church had dropped the EMP, which meant that she had a little breathing room. But she also had a very specific purpose. There might be a hardened terminal or laptop on the island. She doubted there was one in this chamber, but that meant that she had to prevent Cyrus Jakoby from getting out of the chamber.

Her Special Forces training ran deep. Grace had been one of the very first women accepted into the SAS, and she’d been the first field team operator for Barrier. Church hadn’t recruited her for the DMS because she was decorative. Church wanted her because she was the best of the best. Now was the time to live up to that, and in the absolute darkness Grace smiled.

If anyone had seen that smile—even a killer like Tonton—it would have given him pause.

She moved out of her niche, recounting the steps she’d taken. Her training taught her to remember directions, yards run, right and left turns, elevation. This wasn’t a time for gunplay. She couldn’t see a target, and the muzzle flash from a missed shot would give her position away. The gun went back into her waistband and she practiced drawing the fighting knife from her right-hand pocket several times until she knew that she could have it out and flick the blade into the locked position in under a second.

That gave her the confidence to keep her hands free while she retraced her steps. She paused briefly to feel along the ground for small rocks, and she put several of them into her left pocket.

Somewhere off to her three o’clock position she could hear the whispered voices of Cyrus, Hecate, and Otto. Their position sounded about right for where she thought she needed to go.

Her greatest care was in placing her feet, making sure that each step
was featherlight until she was sure of her footing, and then she shifted weight in a flow from one leg to the other. It was like using Tai Chi to stalk her prey in the darkness—long, slow, controlled steps.

TONTON THOUGHT HE
heard something and he turned his head and sniffed at the darkness. The air was thick with the scent of fear from several of the transgenic animals that had panicked when the lights went out. It clouded his sense of smell, but he was sure that he’d just caught a fresh whiff of the woman. Humans don’t smell like animals, and though Tonton did not possess the genes necessary for processing the thousands of individual scents that jungle apes had, he had trained for many hours to hone his olfactory skills.

He was sure that it was the woman. She’d moved.

There was a sudden sound far off to his opposite side and he turned suddenly, swinging his pistol around to point at the blackness. What had made the noise? The woman? Veder? One of the animals?

There was a second sound. Sharp and fast, like a stone dislodged by a running foot.

Then a third. All off to his right side.

It
had
to be her. Somehow she’d tricked him and was crossing the open field under cover of darkness instead of coming back along this path.

“Got you, bitch,” he said with quiet malice as he rose from a prone position and got to his feet. He took a tentative step, then another.

And then something brushed against his leg and he spun, but as he spun he felt his thigh ignite with a white-hot burn. He smelled a confusion of scents. The woman—close!—and then the sharp, coppery tang of blood.

He swung a vicious a blow through the shadows, but all he hit was air.

There was another flash of burning pain across the back of his knee and suddenly he found himself tilting to that side, his knee buckling.

Tonton cried out as pain hit him in waves, a one-two burst of agony from thigh and knee. He scrabbled at his thigh and could feel wetness,
and then he felt something hot splash against his palm. He was bleeding. Fast and hard. An artery.

The bitch had cut him!

She’d found him in the dark and cut him.

“You fucking cu—!” he started to shout, but he was struck across the face. His cheeks burned with unbearable pain, and when he touched his face he could feel something weird, something terribly wrong. His mouth seemed to stretch wide . . . absurdly wide. Where the corners of his mouth should be were two ragged double lines of torn flesh.

He flailed at the darkness as fear burst through him like fireworks. Then he felt fingers curl into a knot in his hair and his head was jerked violently backward. Then there was the hard edge of a blade against his throat. It pressed deep but did not cut.

Something brushed his ear and he realized it was a pair of soft lips.

“This is for those poor bastards in Deep Iron,” the woman said in a murmur that was as soft as a whisper of passion.

He didn’t understand. He hadn’t been at Deep Iron. That job had been done by two of his men. He hadn’t killed those people. He opened his mouth to tell her, to plead with her. Then there was a lava-hot line across his throat and he had no voice at all. Tonton heard a weak and distant gurgle that sounded like it came from underwater. He felt hot wetness in his mouth, and then he was falling forward into a darkness more complete and eternal than the temporary shadows of the Chamber of Myth.

The Dragon Factory

Tuesday, August 31, 2:44
A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 16 minutes E.S.T.

If there were more of the scorpion-dogs down in the lower level we didn’t encounter them. We did find a half-dozen guys in greasy overalls lying dead inside a shattered office. It looked like they’d tried to make a stand against the monsters by pushing a desk against the door and arming
themselves with wrenches. They’d killed one of the transgenic creatures by smashing in its skull, but from the looks of the place the other monsters had swarmed in. The workers looked to have been stung dozens of times each.

“Poor bastards,” Bunny said.

“Poor bastards who work for the bad guys,” I said. My sympathy level was bottoming out.

We ran on, chasing our flashlight beams. The EMP had wiped out our night vision, but we each had a flashlight and extra batteries wrapped in lead foil for this purpose.