Threshold (47 page)

The mantises had found a way through.

King stood and ran, headed downhill toward the river.

“Bowers! Start the engine!”

He saw Bowers stand up, his head appearing over the sand like a groundhog. He gaped at what he saw: King running down the hill with two giant insects emerging from the sand behind him. The cigarette in the man’s mouth fell free as one of the mantises swiveled its head in his direction, locking its hungry eyes on him.

SIXTY-NINE

Location Unknown

FIONA’S JOINTS THROBBED
as she pulled herself off the floor. In fact, her whole body had begun to ache. But she heard voices again and needed to know what was happening. She was the next guinea pig in line and wanted to be prepared for whatever might come.

The deep voice returned. As did the wet voice. And a whimpering. Whoever they were experimenting on this time was not as strong-willed as the last. She could hear belt buckles being cinched tight, which brought the occasional high-pitched squeal, but not a word or protest.

“Cainan, are we recording?” the deep voice asked.

“Not yet, Alpha,” replied a new voice that sounded nearly identical to the first. Was he talking to himself? Or were there really two people? Alpha, the man with the deep voice who had been there all along, and Cainan, whose voice was so similar. Then there was the one with the wet voice. He had yet to speak, but always seemed to be at Alpha’s side.

“Recording,” Cainan said.

There was a shifting of light in front of the tunnel as someone walked past. Fiona strained to see, but her view was blocked by the narrow hallway.

There was no warning from Alpha, he simply launched into the strange language, speaking slowly, carefully enunciating. “Arzu Turan. Vish tracidor vim calee. Filash vor der wash. Vilad forsh.”

No one spoke or moved for ten seconds. During that time, Fiona repeated the words in her head, over and over, committing them to memory.

Then someone asked, “Did it work?”

“Remove the tape,” Alpha said.

The woman’s mouth was taped shut,
Fiona thought.
That’s why she hadn’t complained
.

There was a sharp tear, but still no complaint from the woman.

“How are you feeling?” Alpha asked.

“Blessed,” the woman replied, her voice as heavily accented as the man killed earlier. If they were capturing locals, then she was being held someplace in the Middle East.

“Blessed?” Alpha said, his voice tinged with humor “How so?”

“To be in your presence.”

“And who am I?”

“The Lord God.”

Fiona couldn’t see the man, but she knew he must be smiling.

“I am.”

“My God, it worked,” said a farther-off voice that didn’t belong to Alpha or Cainan. How many of them were there?

“Was there ever any doubt?” Alpha replied. “Play back the recording.”

After a moment, a tinny version of Alpha’s voice repeated the phrase. “Arzu Turan. Vish tracidor vim calee. Filash vor der wash. Vilad forsh.”

Fiona followed along, making sure she had the phrase memorized correctly, but her train of thought was interrupted by a shrill scream, followed by a stream of curses in a language she couldn’t understand. Whatever had been done to the woman had been undone when the phrase was repeated.

The woman’s screams became frantic and high-pitched, her voice angry and then desperate. A gunshot blasted, echoing in the tunnels.

Fiona fell back, clutching her ears.

The woman was dead. Silence followed.

Fiona fought against her tears, picked up a stone, and crawled to the side wall of her cell. As her emotions sapped the last of her energy, she began scratching at the wall with the stone.

SEVENTY

Babylon, Iraq

BACK IN THE
open air, King was more in his element, but the oversized mantises showed no signs of being slowed by the sand. They not only skittered quickly over it, but they now moved in silence.

The loose sand of the desert shifted beneath King with every step, slowing him. But his course was straight and his legs fast. The river lay ahead, and the small black boat that would carry him across—if Bowers got his shit together and started it.

As though he’d seen the annoyance on King’s face, Bowers turned the key on the boat and it started with a roar. But he’d failed to notice that half the craft was still beached.

“Throw it in reverse,” King shouted. “Get it off the beach!”

Bowers responded quickly, putting the boat in reverse and slowly giving it gas. As the propeller blades dug into the river water faster and faster it became clear that it wasn’t going to be enough to get the craft in the water.

As Bowers stood to get out of the boat, King leaped over a mound of sand separating river from desert. He landed behind Bowers.

“I’ll push!” he shouted before throwing his weight into the front of the boat. King’s shove and the still churning propeller launched the boat into the river. King jumped onto the front of the boat, swung himself around the mounted machine gun, and stood behind it. Already looking for targets, he wrapped his finger around the trigger of the belt-fed M240 machine gun.

“Just keep it in reverse,” King said. They would reach the far side of the river a little slower, but moving in reverse would allow him to use the mantises for target practice.

As the insects emerged over the rise at the river’s edge, King opened fire. The rounds fired like bursts of thunder, perking up the ears of soldiers all around Camp Alpha. While gunfire wasn’t uncommon in the surrounding territories, it was relatively unheard of on base.

When the first round struck, a burst of guts shot out of the mantis’s side, but it moved quickly, darting backward and down. King strafed to the side, striking the insect only once more before it and its partner disappeared from sight.

They reached the base-side dock a moment later. But Bowers didn’t stop. He plowed the boat into the shoreline. The engine grinded as it chewed up sand. Neither man felt concern for the craft. They left it beached, jumping onto the shore and pounding up the incline that led to the base.

They paused ten feet from the water, looking back at the far shore.

“What the fuck were those things?” Bowers asked, his chest heaving more from adrenaline than actual physical exertion.

“Exactly what they looked like,” King said. “Giant mantises.”

“Okay. Seriously. Giant mantises?” Bowers shook his head, confused and excited.

King nodded as he scanned the far shore. “I think we’re in the clear.”

Bowers laughed. King turned to find him running up the hill toward base despite no sign of the mantises. “Bad news, buddy,” he said. “Mantises can fly.”

A string of curses filled King’s mind as a buzzing sound rolled over the river. The mantises shot up over the Euphrates and honed in on his position, barreling toward him like kamikaze pilots.

King’s mind raced for solutions. To their right were the main facilities of the base. Lots of buildings to get lost in. Lots of guns to fight back. And Bishop and Knight were somewhere in that direction. But the soldiers there had no experience dealing with this kind of freakish problem and there would likely be a lot of casualties, from the mandibles of the mantises and from panicked friendly fire.
No good,
King thought.

He needed Chess Team support, minus the regular soldiers.

The ruins.

Queen and Alexander were there, both armed with XM25s. The mazelike ruins would provide ample hiding spots and bottlenecks to make a stand. Of course, the brown stone would also make perfect camouflage for the mantises. But there was no choice. And no time.

“Stay with me,” King said.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Bowers said, his voice shaking. “I’m sticking to you like a tick on a collie’s dick.”

Despite the circumstances, King grinned. Bowers’s colorful language reminded him of Rook. As they ran across the road and started up the hill that led past Saddam’s Babylon palace, King glanced back.

Mantises didn’t attack from the air, so the pair had to land and give chase. Given their slow and clumsy landing, King guessed these two had never landed, let alone flown before. The skill was instinctual though, and they would soon be cruising over the sand once again.

Bowers looked back as he ran up the hillside. The mantises were already gaining on them. “Oh damn. Oh damn!”

Not watching his step, Bowers tripped over some brush. He fell forward, striking his face hard on the loose soil, getting a mouthful of gritty dirt in the process. King took him by the shoulder, yanked him up, and shoved him forward.

“Move soldier!” King shouted. “I will not stop to pick you up again!”

Bowers charged up the hill. The mental spanking was exactly what he needed to keep his mind off the giant monsters trying to eat them alive. But King’s mind remained on both running and the mantises, because unlike Bowers, if
he
didn’t also figure out how to kill the monsters, they would
both
be dead.

SEVENTY-ONE

BEFORE KING EVER
exited the sandy tomb, Knight and Bishop followed Rahim toward the river, walking at a quick pace. Knight had a pair of binoculars out and ready. When they cleared the base, Rahim pointed to a mound across the river. “Over there. Just above those ruins.”

Knight raised the binoculars to his eyes and looked. “He’s not there.” He scanned the area, eventually reaching the river. “Hold on. There’s a soldier in a patrol boat. Looks like he’s waiting for someone. But he’s calm.”

They headed closer, skirting the river.

As they walked, more than a few soldiers stopped to give them odd looks. None of them had ever been seen on base before. Two of them were of Arab descent, one in plainclothes and one of them was Korean. Knight did his best to offer reassuring smiles. He knew they looked like a mini Axis of Evil to the men posted here.

Knight’s honed senses suddenly picked up on a subtle pressure wave. He stopped and looked around. No one else had detected it, not even Bishop. Binoculars raised, he looked across the river again. A puff of sand rose up into the air above the mound. Then King appeared from within, unarmed and running. He could see him shouting at the man in the boat. Then something rose out of the sand behind King.

He could see two large creatures with spindly limbs, but as they climbed onto the sand, their brown color blended perfectly and hid them from view.

“What the…” He lowered the binoculars and spun around. They’d passed a security tower on their way to the river. The men inside would have a sniper rifle.

“Head for the river,” he said to Bishop, handing him the binoculars.

Bishop took a quick look through the binoculars, located King’s position, and took off running. Knight ran in the opposite direction, leaving a stunned Rahim standing alone in the middle of the road.

Knight reached the security tower and threw himself onto the ladder. He landed on the fourth rung up and then climbed it as deftly as a monkey. At the top, he launched himself over the sandbag wall and landed hard on the other side. The two soldiers sitting inside the small, windowed room atop the tower flinched and drew their weapons.

When Knight raised his hands, showing himself to be unarmed, one of the men said, “We could have killed you!”

The other, who was less concerned with Knight’s safety, said, “Who are you and what the hell are you doing up here?”

“I need your sniper rifle,” Knight said, looking at the weapon propped up in the corner next to the grumpy soldier. It was a standard-issue rifle with a day scope. It would be accurate, but its bolt action would slow him down as each round had to be chambered by hand.