Prime (32 page)

FIFTY-EIGHT

King had accomplished one of his objectives in the first moments of his
struggle with Rainer. The destruction of the PDA had not only severed the link
between the frankensteins and their leader, but it had also deprived them of
their collective intelligence. Now, instead of four creatures working with a
single mind, they were four wild beasts.

In every other way, they remained just as
dangerous as before.

With a howl, they broke from cover and
charged.

Knight felled one with a cannon-loud blast
from the Barrett.

The other three continued, undaunted.

Rook leveled his Desert Eagle at the nearest
target and squeezed the trigger again and again. The Action Express rounds hit
with such energy that the
frankenstein
seemed to come
apart before his very eyes.

The remaining two kept advancing.

With a bestial roar of his own, Bishop leapt
forward and met the charge head on. He towered a full head taller than the
monstrosity he faced, but the
frankenstein
did not
show the slightest awareness of the fact. Its eyes locked onto Bishop, and it
stretched its arms out to him, looking in that moment exactly like the iconic
Hollywood character that had inspired its nickname.

As the two men met—one driven by steroids and
inhuman surgical alteration, the other fueled by an almost incomprehensible
primal rage—the frankenstein tried to seize hold of Bishop’s arms, perhaps
intending to rip them from their sockets, but Bishop was too quick. Instead of
drawing back to avoid the reaching arms, he stepped in close and hugged the
thing’s face to his chest.

There was a sickening crunch and a wet
tearing noise, as Bishop twisted its head completely around.

Only a few seconds had passed since the
frankensteins began their final attack, and for those few seconds, Queen had
felt completely useless. While she had stood by waiting for something to do, her
teammates had seized the day and destroyed the enemy.

Not completely destroyed, though. One
frankenstein
remained. It had dodged Rook’s bullets and
slipped past Bishop, even as the big man had torn its brother’s head off.

Knight brought the Barrett up, bracing it
against his hip and firing point blank. The round punched a fist-sized hole
clear through the creature’s abdomen. The
frankenstein
staggered back a step, but before Knight could fire again, it started forward,
seizing the barrel of the rifle. There was an audible hiss as the thing’s skin
blistered against the hot metal, but the
frankenstein
ignored the pain and pulled the gun, along with an unbalanced Knight, forward
into its reach. The wounded beast seized Knight’s arms, stretching them out like
a child preparing to rip the wings off a captured fly.

Queen ran at the creature, pummeling it with
the butt of her carbine, but she was disdainfully swatted away. She sprang up,
desperate to do something…anything…that might keep Knight alive long enough for
one of the others to come to the rescue, but she’d lost her carbine in the
fall. She groped for the knife sheathed to her combat vest, but her hand found
something else instead, a hard cylindrical object.

Yes!

Knight’s cry of pain galvanized her. She leaped
onto the
frankenstein’s
back, wrapping her right arm
around its head as Bishop had done, and clawed the fingers of her free hand
into its eyes.

Though virtually immune to pain, the
frankenstein
reacted instinctively to the threat to its
eyesight. It let go of Knight and reached up to defend against this new attack.
Queen dug deeper, driving a finger between the orb and the eye socket,
eliciting a howl of rage.

That howl was just what she had been hoping
for.

“Cover up!” she shouted.

She dropped her left hand, using it to hold
herself in place, and then jammed the object she’d been holding with her right
hand into the thing’s open mouth.

With a sharp hiss, the M14 incendiary grenade
ignited and transformed the
frankenstein’s
head into a
miniature sun.

She threw herself back, scrambling to put
some distance between herself and the bloom of white hot fire. Shading her
eyes, she circled around to check on Knight.

He had heeded her advice and gotten well
clear of the creature before the grenade had ignited, but even though he was
several meters away from the blazing pyre of flesh, he was rubbing at his skin.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”
He managed a wan smile as he looked up at
her. “Weird thing though; I’ve got pins and needles all over.”

That was when Queen realized that she did
too.

FIFTY-NINE

Two things saved King’s life.

The first was the shape of the fissure. The
rift narrowed with depth, coming together at a seam so tight that a piece of
paper could not have slipped into it. As he and Rainer fell, still locked
together in combat, the shrinking gap between the walls caught them like
friction brakes, slowing and ultimately halting their downward plunge.

The second factor that had made the
difference between life and death was Kevin Rainer. Positioned as he was
beneath King, Rainer’s body cushioned the eventual impact just enough to spare
King from serious harm. King was bruised, battered and bloody, but none of his
injuries were life-threatening.

The same could not be said for Rainer; King’s
body drove into him like a hammer, forcing him deeper into the fissure than
seemed possible, leaving him sandwiched between slabs of limestone about three
inches apart. The pressure crushed the man’s ribcage, driving nails of bone
through his lungs and into his vital organs.

King felt the walls pressing in on either
side of him as well, and he started to panic. He was afraid to move, fearful
that doing so might cause him to slide deeper into the crevasse, to a place
where it would be impossible for him to get free. Then he felt the tingling in
his skin, and he knew that being trapped in stone was the least of his worries.

His awareness of what was at stake did not
make his task any easier, but Rainer’s body was a stable platform from which to
begin clawing his way out of the abyss. With each inch he climbed, the press of
stone against his chest diminished.

There was light now, bright but indirect,
pouring down from high above to reveal his destination: the dark passage that
led to the Prime.

Parker’s words came back to him.

If I
can’t stop this, everyone dies.

Parker hadn’t been able to stop it, though.

King’s skin was burning, and the tingling was
sinking deeper into his limbs. He wondered how much worse it would get before
the end.

Pulling himself up into the tunnel was like
sticking his head in a
furnace,
only in this case, the
fire was inside him. He gritted his teeth against the pain and forced himself
to move forward.

His brief respite from the darkness ended
when he started down the passage, but there was a faint glow ahead, and he
fought through the blossoming agony toward the beacon.

It was a computer—Sasha’s laptop. He saw that
much from a distance, but it was only when he got closer that he saw Parker’s
body crumpled in front of it.

There’s
a ring of stones
, Parker had
said.
I think that’s the marker. I’m
going to try to put it there.

Further down the tunnel, King saw another
body—Sasha’s—lying prone in front of the stone circle. It was tantalizingly
close; Parker had fallen just a few steps from the Prime.

If
this thing kills me before I can get clear, someone else is going to have to
finish it. Do you understand?

He understood.

King reached for the computer, but even as
his fingers closed on the hard plastic, his legs simply gave out.

No,
damn it!

He planted his elbows on the hard stone and
pulled himself forward, one ahead of the other, over and over again, until he
reached Sasha’s lifeless form. The stone circle was just beyond her, but he
could go no further.

With what he thought was surely the last of
his strength, he flung the laptop toward the stone ring that marked the
location of the Prime, and then collapsed in pain. His body curled up, feeling
ready to implode, but then, as though he was suddenly touched by the divine,
his pain faded. Still wary, he sat up.

The cave was silent.

His body felt untouched by the destructive
force that took Sasha’s and Parker’s lives.

The world—he noted with a hint of
surprise—had not come to an end.

EPILOGUE: LIMBO

Pope Air Force Base, North
Carolina

“So what do you think is going to happen?”

It wasn’t the first time Rook had asked the
question, but as before, the only answer he got was silence.

The truth of it was
,
King had no idea what was going to happen.

There had been a few moments, as he lay
unmoving on the floor of the Prime cavern, where he felt something approaching
satisfaction. But then, like the painful sting that accompanied the return of
sensation to his nerves, the bitter reality of the situation hit home.

Parker was dead. That by itself was almost
more than he could bear, but the way it had happened…

He thrust the thought from his mind. Yes, his
friend had died. Parker had made a rash decision to help Sasha and it had cost
him his life, and therein
lay
the problem.

King couldn’t tell the truth, and not just because
of how crazy it sounded; he was much more worried about the possibility that
someone would actually believe him.

He had dragged Parker’s body into the stone
circle that marked the location of the Prime, laid him next to Sasha, and then
ignited an incendiary grenade to erase all evidence that either of them had
ever existed. He’d fed Sasha’s computer and al-Tusi’s treatise to the flames as
well; maybe someday, someone would figure out how to read the Voynich
manuscript and would discover the Prime and what it signified, but with a
little luck, that day wouldn’t come until the world was a much better place.

The official story would be the same one he
had told the rest of the team: Sasha had been spooked by Rainer’s arrival and
fled into the cave. Parker had followed and both of them had fallen into a
crevasse and died. King had used Sasha to bait the trap, and even though they
had succeeded in running down Rainer and the other rogue operators, a CIA
contractor and a Delta shooter had paid for the victory with their blood.

King knew that the others had questions about
what had happened in the cave; he could see it in their eyes, but none of them
had pressed him for details. He was grateful for that. He alone would take
responsibility for what had happened, and if it meant the end of his career—or
even criminal prosecution—then he alone would bear the burden.

No one could ever know how the world had
almost ended.

The team had escaped Chauvet Cave to the
eerie melody of sirens bouncing between the limestone cliffs of the Ardèche
River valley. Chess Team was long gone by the time the gendarmes arrived. Less
than an hour later, they were back aboard Senior Citizen and on their way back
home.

Almost
home
, he amended.

As soon as Senior Citizen arrived at ‘The
Pope,’ the team was moved to Decon, an isolated quarantine area where teams
were debriefed after returning from particularly sensitive missions. Decon—short
for ‘decontamination’—was a place for operators to ‘come down’ from the
adrenaline high of combat before going home to their families. It was also the
last chance for the teams to get their stories straight before making an
official report.

They had been in Decon for two full days,
sleeping on cots, eating MREs, watching TV and playing X-Box games and generally
going stir-crazy waiting for the hammer to fall. Rook had joked that they were
“stuck in Limbo,” and King thought that was pretty close to the truth.

Then, on the afternoon of their second day,
the door was thrown open. General Keasling strode into the room. He made a low
growling sound when Rook, sprawled on a couch with a game controller in hand,
threw him a casual wave, but his expression was otherwise unreadable. He strode
to the corner of the table where King was sitting with the others, and calmly
put his hands behind his back.

Keasling wasn’t alone.

A second figure entered right behind him.
King had to do a double-take to recognize the man who had traded in his combat
fatigues for blue jeans and Star Wars T-shirt; it was Lewis Aleman.

“Lew!”

Just seeing the Delta sniper filled King with
a stew of emotions. Parker and Aleman had been friends, and the latter’s
presence was a harsh reminder of just how much King had lost along the way. Still,
it was good to see a friendly and familiar face.

Aleman’s right hand looked like the end of a
Q-tip, swathed in bandages, but he looked otherwise none the worse for wear. He
had a laptop computer tucked under his arm, and he promptly stepped in front of
Rook and plugged a cable from the computer into the X-Box.

“Hey!” Rook protested as his virtual
re-enactment of D-Day was replaced by a blank screen, but Aleman just threw him
a mischievous grin and started tapping on his keyboard.

“Game over,” Keasling said in flat voice.
“Deep Blue wants to talk to you.”

Here
it comes
, King thought.

“Got it,” Aleman announced.

A spherical object—King recognized it
immediately as a web cam—now rested atop the television, but it was the image
on the screen that commanded the attention of everyone in the room.

The silhouetted figure, a fit-looking man
with short hair—either a military buzz cut or a receding hairline, King
couldn’t tell for sure—was framed in the display. The man regarded them for a
moment before speaking.

“It’s good to finally see you all,” he said,
in the same electronically distorted voice they knew well from previous radio
communications.

King realized that the others were all
waiting for him to respond. “Likewise,” he began, and then added.
“Sort of.”

“Forgive the theatrics,” Deep Blue said. “At
present, it is necessary to keep my identity a secret, but I sincerely hope
that one day I will be able to meet you face-to-face. And let me apologize for
keeping you here so long; I had my hands full trying to cover your tracks in
France. That said, I think congratulations are in order.”

King was by nature suspicious of praise from
his superiors, but usually he knew better than to question it aloud. This time
however, his caution kicked in a moment too late.
“Sir?”

“You all showed exceptional valor. If you
were in a traditional unit, I would see to it that you all received the highest
commendation. Alas, all I can offer you is more work.”

King glanced at the others.

Queen’s eyes were alight with anticipation.
This was what she had dreamed of when joining the Army; a chance to prove
herself
, to test her limits in the most extreme ways
possible. There was no better reward for someone like her than to be thrown
back into the fire.

Bishop was not so easy to read. Although he
kept a tight rein on his emotions, he always looked like he was just a few
seconds from critical mass…except right now, he looked almost serene, or at
least as close to it as he would ever get.

Knight shrugged, feigning indifference to the
news, but King knew it was an act. The Korean Casanova was an adrenaline
junkie, eager for his next fix, and whether it was at a nightclub full of
supermodels or in the thick of battle, he lived for the thrill of beating the
odds.

Even Rook seemed to greet Deep Blue’s
statement with his own brand of enthusiasm. “More work? In this economy, what
could be better than that?”

King returned his attention to Deep Blue. “Am
I missing something here?”

Although he could not see the man’s eyes,
King got the impression that he was being scrutinized from across the
electronic ether. After a moment, the silhouette shifted slightly and the
auto-tuned voice said, “General Keasling, would you give us the room for a
moment?”

An irritated scowl flickered across
Keasling’s face, but he smartly executed an about-face and strode through the
door. Deep Blue waited a full ten seconds after his departure before speaking
again. “Is there a problem, King?”

King took a deep breath. “I…don’t think I’m
the right man for this job.”

There was a low roar of protest from the
others, though Queen’s voice was distinct above the others. “Bullshit.”

“You’re wondering how I can call this a win,”
Deep Blue said, as if reading King’s mind. “You feel responsible for their
deaths; for Daniel Parker and Sasha Therion.”

“I am responsible.”

“No, you aren’t.” There was
a sadness
in Deep Blue’s reply that the artificial voice
modulator could not disguise. “The ultimate responsibility lies with me. But if
I had it all to do over again, I would make the same decision.”

When King didn’t respond, Deep Blue
continued. “One of the burdens of command is that you feel personally
responsible for every soldier lost on your watch. In my book, that doesn’t make
you unfit to lead; it makes you human.

“There’s something else you should consider
also. Lewis hasn’t been able to figure out why, but instead of blocking radio
signals, the limestone in that cave amplified the outgoing transmissions. You
couldn’t receive, but I was able to monitor your comms.” His electronic tone
lowered almost to a whisper. “I heard everything that happened in that cave.”

The revelation hit King like a cold slap. He
looked around at the others, expecting to see unasked questions on their faces,
but none of them would meet his gaze.

They
know
, he realized.
They all know
.

Deep Blue went on as if the former matter was
permanently concluded. “You were given an impossible task, and you accomplished
it. You went up against an enemy with resources that—speaking frankly—still
boggle my mind, and you beat him. So, by any standard, that’s a win in my book.
So pull it together, and get back on the horse. I can’t think of anyone else
I’d rather have leading this team.”

Rook stood up raising his hands like an
old-time preacher. “Amen, brother.”

The others just nodded in silent agreement.

King was speechless for a moment, but when no
one else—not even Rook—filled the silence, he gathered his wits. “So, what’s
next?”

“For the moment: recovery. Mandatory R&R.
Stay loose, but stay sharp. Chess Team is going to be on alert status 24/7.”

“Chess Team,” Rook said. “I still think it
sounds like an after-school club for nerds.”

Aleman threw him a withering glance. “I
never
played chess.”

King ignored them. “We’re going to need an
HQ.”

“You’re sitting in it,” Deep Blue replied.
“It’s temporary until we can come up with something better, but feel free to
redecorate as you see fit; just submit your requisitions to General Keasling.”

Rook rolled his eyes at that news, but then
his face seemed to brighten.
“Dudes.
We’ve got to have
a horseshoe pit!”

Bishop’s face creased in annoyance.
“Horseshoes?
Really?”

“Just promise me this,” King said, cutting
Rook off before he could launch into an impassioned defense of his favorite
hobby. “Next time, can we just go up against some normal bad guys; you know,
tangos with loose suitcase nukes and nerve gas? No more freaky science
experiments, killer mountain crocodiles, historical
voodoo…no
more weird shit.”

Deep Blue laughed. “I won’t make promises I
can’t keep, but it’s hard to imagine that you’ll ever have to deal with
anything quite so extreme in the future.”

King had a sudden urge to knock on wood, but
before he could rap his knuckles against the tabletop, he realized that it was
molded plastic.

Ah,
hell
, he thought.
Deep Blue’s right. Nothing could be as weird
as what we just went through.