Ripper

9

The president stood silently at the window that looked out onto Pennsylvania Avenue. The street was clear of any protesters for the day and that was when he liked looking out at the quiet Washington night. He felt the Oval Office was most secure at that time. His visitors thought he was intentionally ignoring them, and the two men sitting on the two couches facing each other waited for the president to speak.

Harlan Easterbrook, the director of the CIA, sat with his glasses at the end of his nose and read the report from the man in front and opposite of him, Director of Operations Samuel Peachtree.

Finally the president turned and faced his guests. “And we have no idea the location of your agent?” the president asked as he sat on the edge of his desk and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“No, sir. According to our records Agent Simpson checked out and went to Georgetown. We checked out the address, and as it turns out it’s a model home that is up for sale,” Easterbrook said as he looked up from the flimsy report that had been offered up by Peachtree. He handed the paper over to him and then looked at the president. “I knew you had met the agent in question before, so when she came up missing we thought you would like to be briefed.”

“I do know Agent Simpson, and my concern for her safety is of paramount importance, but no more so than any other American intelligence employee. Why isn’t Ms. Simpson’s boss here with you gentlemen?”

“The Assistant Director of Intelligence is currently visiting his counterpart in London, Mr. President. He has been informed about the absence of the North American Desk supervisor.”

The president looked hard into the dull eyes of the recent appointee by the Senate Oversight Committee to the position of director of operations, Samuel Peachtree.

“She has a name, Mr. Peachtree, not just a desk or an assignment or a title.”

“Of course, Mr. President, Miss Simpson,” Peachtree said feeling the heat of the president’s glare.

“Okay gentlemen, keep me informed.”

With that the brief meeting was over. The two men waited for a word before they left, but the president kept his head down in thought. The two CIA men left the Oval Office.

The president took a deep breath, hit the intercom switch, and then mentally calmed himself. “Please send in General Caulfield.”

A moment later four-star marine general Maxwell Caulfield walked into the Oval Office and greeted his boss. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff stood rigid at the center of the office.

“Jesus, Max, knock it off and have a seat will you?” the president said as he tossed the pen he was holding onto his desk and stood and walked over to the couch opposite of where Caulfield sat. He rubbed his face and looked up at his own appointee from almost two years before.

“Max, I need your help with something, and I need you to keep it close to the vest and not ask any questions. Do you understand?”

The general matched the president’s move and leaned forward. “Of course, anything; you know that.”

“That group you think is just a think tank buried under Nellis Air Force Base?”

“The one run by that little bald fella that shows up here from time to time?”

“You know damn well who I’m speaking of so don’t play games; it’s too late at night.”

“Yes, sir, I know of the rumors that have circulated inside the military for years. I first heard of it at the Academy. Everyone thinks we have secret bases and covert operations all over the country, why—”

“We have a problem in the desert Max. We need an assault team put together that can not only pull off a hard job, but is able to keep their mouths shut once the operation is complete. A small unit if possible.”

Caulfield looked offended. “My people always keep their mouths shut, Mr. President.”

“No offense, Max, but what I’m talking about is beyond anything you know. For the first time in American history I am bringing a military officer into the loop on this agency. It exists, and that is all you will ever know, Max. Is that understood? There will be no questions, no official answers. Now I have to say this; if I didn’t, the ghosts of every president since Woodrow Wilson, hell, possibly even Abe Lincoln, would turn over in their graves, and the ones still alive would crucify me and then throw my rotting corpse in jail. Which, Max, is the same thing I am now threatening you with on an official basis. I will have you skinned alive if this leaks from anyone under your command.” The president held up a hand. “Think, Max, before you speak. This group is special and they have just declared a state of emergency. The complex they utilize has been attacked. Most of the personnel have been successfully evacuated, but there are over seventy men and women still down in that hole in the ground.” The president looked hard into the general’s eyes. “And it’s one damn big hole.”

“What size assault element is it we’re speaking of?”

“Colonel Collins estimates no more than twenty, maybe less. But he also says these people are good.”

“Jack? Jack Collins?” the general asked with his eyes growing concerned.

“Let’s just say he’s involved with this group and needs assistance in regaining control of the facility. That’s another name you will forget about after tonight, General,” the president said with a sternness he had never used with Caulfield.

“I need details,” the general said raising his left brow after all of the threats were delivered.

The president went to his desk and returned with his laptop. Instead of sitting across from Caulfield, he sat next to him on the couch.

“Okay Max, officially you’re the only one outside of this office that will ever be told directly about this group. Some have guessed at its existence, especially after the Atlantis thing, and then the space shots, but no one could ever prove it. Throughout the modern history of this country they could never prove a thing.” The president opened the laptop and brought up a file after he entered his personal code. “This is a layout of the complex. Study it and commit it to memory because you can’t have any drawings for planning.”

As Caulfield looked at the detailed layout of the eighty-seven levels of the Event Group Complex, his eyes widened. “What in the hell is this?” he wondered. The massive complex was laid out before him and he couldn’t believe the scope of the construction.

“Max, I said don’t ask. I’m breaking about a thousand laws laid down by my predecessors about secrecy where this group is concerned. I need you to come up with an assault plan to help Colonel Collins and his men. I need you to get my friend Dr. Compton the hell out of there. The operation is to be kept tight and small. You run it for me. Just an officer and as tight a unit as you can find. Who do you have in mind?”

Caulfield had a hard time drawing his eyes away from the underground structure he was looking at. It was shaped like an upside down bowl with a large stem coming from its center, followed by another inverted bowl, then another, and still another.

“This son of a bitch is a nightmare, Mr. President.”

“I know, I’ve been inside and said the same thing,” he answered, again rubbing his face in frustration.

“And we have to keep it tight and quiet?” The general didn’t expect a response. He looked away and then glanced back at the tired and even grayer-haired man than the one who appointed him to his current position. “Thank you for trusting me with this. I knew that quirky little bald man was something, but running a joint like this? I guess we have to help save him, don’t we?”

The president placed his hand on the general’s shoulder. “Thanks Max, I would hate to have you … well, dealt with.”

Caulfield looked up after the president’s small joke, but when he saw that he wasn’t smiling the general turned away with his eyes a little wider and the threats to him that much more vivid.

“I think maybe you better save the thanks for the DELTA team I have to send in there, and please don’t make me threaten them like you did me. I don’t know if these boys would take it as well as I did.”

“Oh, they would take it if I sent a regiment of FBI agents to their front door. Now, where are these gentlemen?”

“Right now they’re at Fort Lewis, Washington, conducting their mountain training on Mount Rainier. I can have a team at Nellis in about three hours with luck. Mr. President, you said most of the personnel were evacuated successfully. Wasn’t Dr. Compton one of those people?”

“No, he’s missing, along with many others. They are cut off far underground.” The president turned and faced the general. “Max, besides Collins and his security force, the people that work inside that complex are only thinkers — doctors, professors, and God only knows what else. They are the best people this country has to offer as far as brains. They need your help and the silence of you and the men you choose.”

Maxwell Caulfield stood and removed his uniform jacket. He placed it on the back of the couch and sat back down to study the layout of the Event Group Complex underneath Nellis.

“I need a direct line to Fort Lewis in Washington State,” he said as his eyes started roaming over the large gates that were the entrances to the giant complex in the desert.

“Get them out of there Max,” the president said.

The general raised the phone to his ear. “This is General Caulfield. Connect me with the JSOC immediately.”

The president overheard the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff request the Joint Special Operations Command.

The JSOC and the DELTA team they planned operations for were about to assault the underground complex that housed the most secret organization in the history of the United States — the Event Group.

The three men had almost made it down to level twelve by the stairwell when Niles said he had to return to the office level up on seven. Charlie shook his head no and Pete just sat down and tried to catch his breath.

“If we go back the captain will shoot us instead of any intruders,” Charlie said as he helped Pete to his feet in the semidark stairwell. “We had one job to do and we can’t even do that.”

“Look, I’m not leaving while I have people still inside the complex. Now you two can either come with me or continue on to the evacuation point, but I would prefer you come along. Pete, Europa could be helpful in what’s happening. How many men are left here with the expertise to get her up to spec enough to help out Captain Everett?”

Pete shook his head negatively. He finally took a couple of deep breaths and looked back up the stairs. The distant sounds of gunfire had ceased for the moment.

“I haven’t heard any shots in a minute or so. Maybe it’s all over,” Pete managed to say.

“Maybe, but why isn’t Europa telling us anything? You of all people should know her programming. We’re literally in the dark here,” Niles said as he turned and started back up.

Charlie Ellenshaw looked at Pete and then nodded his head upward. “Well, the office on seven is ten levels above the danger on seventeen. Niles has a point; I really don’t relish the thought of running out on the rest of them.”

Pete took the first few steps back up the stairs. “Neither did I, but someone could have mentioned that just a bit earlier — like when we were on level seven.”

The three men went back up the stairs where they thought it would be safe.

They were wrong.

The silence coming from the clean room was overwhelming. Everett didn’t want to get men killed by rushing the outer office, knowing the killers of his men were one room beyond that. Where were Will and Sanchez? They needed the assault packages before they could chance a move into the room. Carl scowled and motioned for his men to stay down. He had to keep this Smith talking to know he wasn’t making a move out of the clean room.

“Smith?”

There was nothing other than the moans of someone wounded inside the room. Then they heard a grunt, followed by another. Everett closed his eyes because he knew he had to risk exposing himself to gunfire from inside. Making a quick decision, he rose to his knees and raised his head to the shattered window above. With a quick glance he saw that the observation area was clear. He lowered his head and grimaced. Then he chanced another look. As he rose he quickly saw that the clean room was filled with a fog that was just starting to roll free. He thought he saw several shadows moving about. There were more screams of pain and then, not believing his ears, he heard the laughter of not only one but several men from inside the clouded and fogged clean room. Everett quickly ducked back down, not believing what he had just seen. It was the same fog that had engulfed Guzman and his men at the hacienda.

“We can’t wait for the assault packages,” he called out to the twenty men lining the wall. “When I give the word, we give those bastards everything we have.”

The ten men on the right and the ten on the left gave him the thumbs up. Everett quickly noted the twenty weapons his men had. Most were from the smallest of the three armories located in the Security Department, not the heavier-caliber weapons in the main armory down on level forty. The ones his men were armed with were light M-14 carbines, the small version of the M-16. He counted four shotguns in the mix, and they weren’t the solid-shot rounds he would have preferred, but double-ought buckshot. He knew that would have to do.

“One — two — three — now!” Everett shouted.

The men as one rose ten on the left and ten on the right with Carl taking up the middle ground with his nine millimeter. The opening salvo was so fierce that each man couldn’t believe anything could live through it. The weapons’ rounds ricocheted off the robotic arm and smashed through any remaining glass inside the clean room. As Everett emptied his Beretta into the fogged-up room, he heard the discharge of the four shotguns. As the rounds and pellets were blasted into the clean room, Carl could see the streaking rounds create eddies and rolling fog as they sliced through the mist.

“Cease fire,” Everett called out, but as he did he saw one of his sergeants, a marine, start to inch toward the door. “No, hold back!”

The sergeant started to take a step backward when a large hand pierced the fog that now covered the entire observation room. One minute the man was there, the next he was gone. Then they heard the scream and most chilling of all, more laughter. One laugh was joined by many more. The screaming stopped abruptly, but the laughing continued. As Everett took in his men he could see the unsettling effect the situation was having. They were looking to him for the strength he usually possessed.

“Open fire!” he called again.

This time the barrage was intense, and for the first time they heard other screams of pain as they were finally striking something other than glass, steel, or plastic. The men were firing and dropping empty magazines at a furious rate until Everett called a cease-fire yet again.

“Smith!” Everett yelled as he waved three men away from the fog that was starting to roll out of the observation room and beginning to touch the carpeted floor in the hallway.

“Yes?” came the deep, unnatural voice.

That was enough for Carl. He had heard the same change come over Guzman in Mexico.

“You ten men, get to the stairwell and down to the main armory on twenty,” he said to the men on his right. “You ten, come with me. We can’t fight this with what we have.”

For the first time ever Captain Everett saw hesitation in his men.

“Move!” he ordered as he quickly turned right and started for the far stairwell as the first team made a dash for the closest elevator and the stairwell doors next to it.

As they moved, something crashed through the plastic-and-concrete-reinforced wall. It was huge, and as the last man passed, he was taken in the arms of a man with torn, black-colored clothing. The security man was pulled inside and his screaming was heard in the ears of the men that were making a run for the stairwells.

Everett managed a look back to see three more of the transformed Men in Black as they burst through the fog with a childish-like glee of laughter and animalistic roars. As Everett forced his nine remaining men in through the stairwell opening, he saw a much larger man step out of the fog and into the hallway. His eyes locked with the altered orbital structure of the man he had met in Mexico. As Everett watched, the man’s four men spread out and went in opposite directions, two coming at him and his team, the other two heading in the opposite direction.

Carl could see that their firing hadn’t been in vain as blood was coursing down the bodies of the men who had grown so much that they had broken free of their body armor and most of their clothing. Everett quickly aimed his nine millimeter at the head of the beast he thought was Smith and fired five quick shots in succession at the man’s head. The creature Smith had become smiled even as he saw Everett aim his weapon and ducked quickly back into the fog bank now moving like a rolling wave into the hallway. He remembered the description of the formula and how it may boost the IQ of the user, or guinea pig, if it was ingested. With that thought, he didn’t wait to see if he had hit anything. He turned and entered the stairwell and started the retreat back into the depths of the Event Group Complex.

Behind them two of Smith’s men, their teeth elongated and with both drooling spittle, started convulsing as even more of Perdition’s Fire was inhaled. Then as one they started bashing their ham-sized fists into the walls, creating giant holes with each blow. Farther down the hallway as Smith once more rose from the fog laced with Perdition’s Fire, he saw what the two men were doing and nodded his massive head and laughed as he and the other two started to repeat what the first men were doing. They needed to get into the walls and the spaces behind them so they could control the complex from directions its defenders would never believe possible. The first two broke through to the empty and nonfunctioning elevator shaft at the far end of the hallway, even as Smith started laughing uncontrollably as his men were tearing into the walls like they were papier-mâché.

The Security Department had lost the first round with Lawrence Ambrose’s chemically improved soldiers, with four security personnel dead and level seventeen lost.

On level eight, Niles stopped to get some air into his lungs. It was right about then that he regretted excusing all officers and supervisors from the intramural activities such as the football game they watched just three days ago. As he sat down on one of the steel risers to catch his breath, he was soon joined by the other two scientists that could have used a prescription for exercise as both Pete and Charlie virtually collapsed on the steps just below him.

“Did you hear that gunfire a minute ago?” Charlie asked as he leaned against the sealed elevator tube that ran along the stairwell. “That was a serious firefight.”

“I wouldn’t know a serious one from two gang members banging it out on a street corner,” Pete said as he reached up on his chest and felt his racing heart.

“Pete, why is Europa off-line? The warning lights have stopped and she hasn’t made any announcements about the evacuation since we started back up the stairs.”

Pete managed to look up at the director. They were all soaked with sweat because one of Europa’s last commands was to shut down the air conditioning systems because of the threat of spreading the contaminate to other levels.

“When the intruder alarm was sounded, Europa had programming instructions to shut down everything so she cannot be compromised by the intruders. A serious programming error by yours truly I’m afraid. I just couldn’t fathom any scenario where I could not override any of her protocols.” Pete looked away. “I’m sorry.”

Niles reached down and patted Pete on the back as he rose from the stair he had been resting on.

“Well, that’s another reason for returning to the office level. You can get her going once you reach the computer center, right?”

“You bet I can, as long as nothing interferes once we get there.”

The white-haired Charlie Ellenshaw was still leaning against the steel and plastic tube of one of the eighteen different elevator shafts when he thought he felt something inside of the sealed tube the elevators rode on with compressed air. He removed his glasses and tried not to breathe for a moment as he listened. He shushed Niles and Pete as he placed his ear closer to the tube.

“Pete, Europa shut down everything you said?”

Pete saw what Ellenshaw was doing and nodded his head. “The elevators were the first thing cut off after the intruder alarm sounded, Charlie.”

Ellenshaw leaned back onto the stairwell. “Uh, maybe we better get to the next level because something seems to be coming this way — it’s noisy and very much in a hurry.”

Pete placed his ear to the tube and listened as Charlie shot up a few steps, took Niles by the arm, and started pushing him up the remaining stairs. As Golding listened he could hear grunting coming through the round tube that activated the elevator system just like an everyday drive-through bank deposit tube. His eyes widened when he heard the impact of something as it traveled upward. Pete wondered if something was in the tube but didn’t wait for an answer as his frightened imagination produced any number of possibilities after Captain Everett’s description of the nightmare in Mexico. He started running after Niles and Charlie.

“Oh, this is bad,” Pete said as he tried to catch up with the suddenly fast-moving director and cryptozoologist.

Virginia, Mendenhall, Gloria, and Sarah were having the same problems getting down to level thirty-four where they could evacuate. Sarah was just now getting her senses back and refused to slow the others down. She leaned against the stairwell wall and wiped the last of her bleeding wound to the top of her head away. Virginia again ripped part of her lab coat to dab at the large cut in Sarah’s scalp.

“Girl, you’re not doing too well the last few days, are you?” Virginia said, trying not to hurt the small geologist anymore than needed.

Sarah looked up with her swollen and blackened eyes and touched the large gash on her cheek. “I have had far better weeks.”

“Sarah, is what you said about the colonel true?” Will asked as he placed an arm around the still-sobbing Gloria Bannister.

“I don’t know Will. When I was taken Jack was still alive, but these men are ruthless.”

“Do you think you can get to level thirty-four from here?” Mendenhall asked as he pulled Gloria’s arms from around him where she had been holding on to him with a death grip.

Sarah and Virginia looked at him at the same time. Sarah removed the blood-stained rag from Virginia’s hand and glared at Will.

“We’ve already been separated from everyone else, and in case you didn’t hear what I heard, Carl has his hands full up on seventeen. So consider that if you want to get yourself into the fight, because we’re going to go with you if you attempt to leave. We follow orders remember?”

From somewhere high above them they heard a crash and a moment later several large chunks of plastic and concrete flew past them on the stairwell. Each person standing on the stairs ventured to look up into the darkness over their heads. That was when they heard loud, very heavy footsteps on the steel steps several levels up.

“What in the hell is that?” Virginia asked out loud.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like kids playing on the stairs,” Sarah said as she tried to penetrate the darkness with her damaged eyes.

Suddenly the stairwell was filled with an animalistic roar that reverberated off the concrete walls. The sound vibrated the steel stairs beneath their feet and shook the handrails.

“Oh, shit,” Will hissed as he started pushing the women before him down the stairs. “I’ve heard that before and I didn’t like it much then either!”

The four people started their flight down the stairs and just hoped beyond reason that unlike the regular elevators, the cargo elevator was up and working.

That was when the lights went out.

As Everett and nine men ran upward after being cut off by two of Smith’s enraged giants, he heard something breaking into the elevator tube on seventeen that was even more terrifying than the roars, laughter, and screams of the transformed men. He called a halt to their flight so he could listen more clearly. His men came to a stop and immediately went into a defensive position with weapons aimed up and down the semidark stairwell. Everett leaned over and placed a hand on the steel tube, feeling the shocks from the blows and then something else — the steady thump of something that sounded as if it were running, or worse, climbing or descending the tube itself. He leaned back and looked at a marine gunnery sergeant who had just spent two full tours overseas, one in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan.

“I think the damn things are using the tubes to move around.”

The sergeant unzipped his body armor, lazily scratched his chest, and then looked from Everett to the tube and back again.

“Well, Cap’n, not knowing just what in the hell we have going on here is throwin’ a kink in my train of thought,” the old sergeant said as he reached out and felt the tube himself. His eyes widened and he pulled the nylon glove on his right hand free and then touched the tube. “Damn,” he hissed.

“What we have here is what amounts to a genetic, or viral, experiment gone bonkers Gunny. One that’s damn hard to kill,” Everett said.

“Okay,” the sergeant said with a wry look at his squad of men around him.

“From what I learned, they can’t last that long. The substance starts eating away at their brains if there was too much of the formula taken into their system. It was invented to be given out in light doses to soldiers to bolster their aggressiveness. It has properties that can open up the unused portions of a person’s brain.” Everett again felt the tube and realized that the movement inside was moving away from them, traveling farther down into the complex. “But that in and of itself starts a fast process of something akin to brain cancer.”

“Some kind of super trooper, huh?” the gunnery sergeant said with a grin and shake of his head.

“Something like that,” answered Everett.

“Sounds like something the army needs,” quipped the gunnery sergeant.

“Hey!” came a shouted protest from farther up the stairwell.

“It feels like the movement is heading down.”

“Yeah,” the gunnery sergeant said spitting a large stream of tobacco juice onto one of the steps, “but what about the fifteen other tubes inside the complex, Cap’n?”

Everett closed his eyes as the point the sergeant just made hit home.

“What kills these bastards, Cap’n?”

Everett looked around at his small band of men. “One hell of a lot of bullets,” he said in frustration, noticing that his words didn’t have a very good effect on his men. “Head shots men. They can’t very damn well function if they have no brain.”

The men started shaking their heads in response to the captain.

The gunnery sergeant pulled the magazine from his M-14 and inserted a full thirty rounds. “Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but we’re running low on ammo.”

“Yeah, and I don’t think we’re going to run into Sergeant Sanchez with his assault packages before we run into more of these monsters. We’re heading in the wrong direction to get more bullets. It’s either make it down to level ten and resupply at the security office, or make a run to the main armory on thirty-two.”

Before the gunnery sergeant could say anything, they were caught completely off-guard when a loud hollow-sounding bang came from the tube. A large dent appeared in the steel right where Everett had placed his hand. The men on the landing stepped back as another large dent appeared. The steel of the elevator tube was only an eighth of an inch thick and was standing up too well to the assault from the inside.

“Jesus,” the gunny said as he stood and backed away from the fifteen-foot-diameter elevator shaft. “Whatever that is has been waiting right there, probably hearing every word we were saying.”

“I think it’s time we start fighting back and get our asses to the armory,” Everett said as he checked the remaining rounds in his Beretta. “I want something a little heavier than this cap pistol.”

“Then may I suggest we beat feet the hell out of here?” the marine said as he waved the men farther up on the stairs to start back down.

“If they’re smart like the docs say, they may be able to cut us off. And if they’re real smart they will make it to the breaker boxes on each level. Smith will know we can’t fight in the dark without the right equipment.”

Suddenly the already-dim lighting in the stairwell went completely out, followed by the flash and start-up of the battery-powered floods on each level. They were now almost totally in the dark.

“Well, I guess they’re real smart, Cap’n.”

Everett turned away and motioned downward as his squad started a headlong flight back down the stairs and into the darkness below.

The man once known as Smith had stayed the longest inside the cloud of Perdition’s Fire. He had inhaled deeply knowing that he and his men were done for. In his mind-set he had quickly realized that he wouldn’t go down without a fight. Without regard to himself or his men, and needless to say the thought of the many lives inside the underground complex. He had been fully briefed by Hiram Vickers on the properties of Perdition’s Fire and knew exactly what it was he was in store for. He quickly figured he would rather go out this way than placing a bullet into his own head as the Black rules of engagement called for.

As he had inhaled the toxic mixture of Perdition’s Fire he felt the burning as the mist penetrated his eyes, nose, and throat. At first he couldn’t catch his breath while all around him his four men writhed on the floor, covered in fog. He felt the dreamlike sensation of actually floating off the floor but also had the wherewithal to realize he was still there, covered with the wetness of the mist. He had shaken his head when the effects started to take hold. He felt the bones in his body start to ache. The pain set in as the bones started their growth spurt, contracting the muscles around them like a vice grip. The marrow inside was reacting far faster than the tissue surrounding it. At the time he didn’t realize it, but the section of brain that had lain dormant his entire life started firing on all cylinders, sending endorphins through his system to help expand those body parts that it felt were the weakest.

Smith remembered rolling over onto his back in sheer agony as the formula coursed through his system. He felt his clothing expand until his arms burst through the material. He felt the crunching as bone met bone and cartilage was torn free from tissue. He felt his eyes bulge and his teeth separate. His body began to convulse even as his system started to heal itself. Even through the excruciating process Smith realized that Ambrose had not only hit on an aggressive formula of absolute mind control; he had hit on a miracle drug that made the expanded brain system produce chemicals that could heal, escalating the natural process of blood clotting and bone marrow production. All this because for the first time in human history the key to unlocking the unused portion of a human brain had been introduced by pure chance by expanding the brain cells in the operating portion of the mind. With the correct and lighter dosage, Smith would have realized without the severe pain he was going through that Ambrose had actually accomplished what he had started out to do. He would have created a soldier that not only was brighter, but could heal faster and take more punishment than a normal man would have been able to achieve on his own.

After the transformation was complete, there was the problem of clothing. His muscles and bodily tissue had expanded so much that his circulation was being cut off and robbed of blood by the tightness of his clothes and boots. He remembered ripping free the vest, most of his shirt, and the waistband of his pants. His massive hands had torn through the laces of his boots until he could feel the cold floor beneath him. As he had risen from the mist covering the clean room floor, he felt free for the first time in his life. His mind was seeing and understanding things he never realized possible. His vision was perfect. He could see shadows and knew that through the mist he could actually see his men around him. He felt so good he had to laugh at the newfound power he was feeling. He found he was near hysteria as his nose widened and flattened, expanding his nasal cavity to allow smells and odors to penetrate that he could never have smelled before.

The biggest difference in Smith was his desire to hurt, destroy, and render flesh into pulp. The thought of taking life from anything and everything overwhelmed his mind as he shook his head with an ecstatic swelling of near perfection. He remembered laughing uncontrollably.

Since he had intentionally breathed in far more of the formula than his men, he had immediately taken control of the altered men before him. He was the dominate of the group according to the millennia-old adage that the strong will out. He had had to make an example out of a soldier who had thought he could control the group by smashing the man’s head through a wall. The man was still alive but was now far more receptive to control. This was all due to Smith’s much larger stature.

He was also aware that his brain could only take so much before the sensitive synapses overwhelmed the very tissue that contained the electrical firings. Its material could not expand fast enough, nor was the cranium strong enough to hold the enlargement. The brain was dying and Smith knew he had only a short time to extend the magnificent feeling he was experiencing. The drug had made him not regret anything in the slightest as he saw beyond the mere death of the body and knew he was truly living for the first time. He was now seeing what life for humankind would be like millions of years in the future with the expansion of the mind. The evolutionary growth was an intoxicating mix that sent euphoric riches into the thought process. He realized that this is what being God was meant to feel like.

And a vengeful God he was.

The clinic on level nine was silent for the moment, but Farbeaux had the sense to know that something had gone quickly to hell as men and women were seen running through the halls and his senses could fathom that there was more than just a biohazard happening inside the complex. He cursed his luck as he felt the cold steel of the handcuffs that secured him to the bed. He looked over at the security man who had been trying to raise someone on his radio. Henri watched the man step into the clinic, look around, and then step back inside the room shaking his head and trying the radio once more.

“Sergeant, how long have you been in the military?” Farbeaux asked.

“Five years, eight months,” the young airman said as he again walked to the doorway.

“That’s long enough for you to have developed a sense that all soldiers get over the years.”

“And what’s that Colonel?” the sergeant asked as he angrily turned away from the activity in the hallway.

“A sense that should tell you, as you Americans would put it of course, that the proverbial shit has hit the proverbial fan.”

The kid didn’t say anything as he turned back around, ripped the headphones off his head, and walked over to the phone beside Henri’s bed. He lifted the receiver, but then Henri saw his face flush with even more anger when he heard the continuing announcement by Europa to evacuate. The guard started to slam the phone back down into its cradle when he felt the Frenchman’s eyes on him. He looked up and saw Henri raise his right eyebrow. He was about to say something when Denise Gilliam strode quickly into the room, walked over to the bed, and started removing the tape that held the IV in place on Farbeaux’s left arm.

“Hey, Doc, what are you doing? I have orders that say he goes nowhere,” the guard said.

“I override any authority inside this clinic young man. Now free up Mr. Farbeaux’s restraints; it’s time we get the hell out of here,” the young dark-haired MD said as she started to pull the bed away from the wall. “Now Sergeant!” she said far harsher than she would have liked.

“Ma’am, this is a very dangerous man,” the sergeant said even as he produced the handcuff key.

“I suggest you follow the good doctor’s orders son. Smell that?” Henri said as he jangled his right cuff against the steel bedrail.

“What?” both Gilliam and the sergeant said at once.

“Cordite. There is one hell of a battle taking place somewhere, more than likely below us on another level, possibly even on level seventeen where the emergency was declared.”

Both the doctor and sergeant looked at each other, realizing that the Frenchman was telling the truth. The airman started to unlock the right handcuff as Denise finished pulling the IV line free of Henri’s arm.

“Help me push him to the elevator,” she said as she started tugging on the large bed.

“Doctor, if you would release this other restraint, I assure you I can walk, possibly even run, which I think may factor into this situation any moment.”

“No, we can get you to safety,” the sergeant said as they reached the doorway.

“Then may I possibly persuade you to get my clothes out of the closet?”

“No!” both the sergeant and doctor yelled at once.

As the load of over a hundred and fifty staff rose into the ancient hangar on level one, the perimeter security element of the Event Group was waiting for them. They were in the process of herding the last of the science staff off the giant cargo lift to join the first lift of men and women out in the scrub of flat desert to await orders and transport to a safe location when the exterior lights flickered and then went out. The twelve men of the outside security team whose job it was to secure gate one were frustrated in not being able to join their mates down inside the complex, especially when they started hearing the stories about heavy gunfire coming from level seventeen.

Every man, woman, soldier, doctor, professor, or technician knew the Event Group was compromised, and its largest element was sitting out in the open where the world could discover a secret that had been buried in the sands of Nellis Air Force Base for the past sixty-one years. Even more, they wanted to return and assist those men and women who were now trapped inside that darkness that may have become a mass grave for their friends and colleagues.

And what was worse, they knew there was now something in that darkness that had a functioning and scheming brain and worst of all — teeth.

As Niles Compton, Pete Golding, and Charlie Ellenshaw banged through the doorway of the stairwell and into the main reception area they heard the crashing through the steel conduit that allowed the elevators to ride on a cushion of air. Niles could see enough through the battery-powered lighting to know that his staff had successfully evacuated, a load off his mind. Still, he had to know there was something and as he moved away from the two scientists they were shocked to see him move toward the elevator doors. Their eyes widened when they saw their boss start to pull the doors apart.

“Niles, what in the hell are you doing?” Pete called out as Charlie reached him first and tried pulling his hands away. Just as Charlie reached the doors Niles slammed backward into him and he was forced to catch Compton before he fell to the floor. Something had impacted the double doors leading to the shaft. As they watched, there came a loud bang and then a large bulge appeared in the stainless steel.

“How are they moving up that shaft?” Pete asked as he pulled the two men away from the elevator.

“With the description Captain Everett gave us, they must be using the guide rail that centers the elevator inside the shaft, and with no compressed air they have no resistance to impede their climb.”

Both Pete and Niles turned and looked at Ellenshaw, who returned the look with a “what?” expression. All three jumped when the left side of the steel door bent outward and for the first time they saw the hand of the thing inside of the tube. It grasped the corner of the steel door and pulled down. The screech of metal was deafening as the creature wrenched and warped the elevator doors, first one side and then the other.

“Uh-oh,” Charlie said even as Niles started pulling them toward the double doors that led to the main hallway. The only other way was through the conference room, which was a dead end.

As they inched their way toward the doors, in the battery-powered and very weak light they saw a massive head poke through the widened gap of the twin doors. The creature actually saw them and smiled, showing elongated and crooked teeth with wide gaps between each. The eyes were overly large and it was Niles that noticed large patches of hair that had fallen out of its scalp. The remnants of a black military uniform hung around its neck and chest. The men were so shocked at the sight that Niles stumbled, taking all three men down to the floor. The creature that had once been a human being actually laughed, sending fear and chills down the men’s spines.

As they watched, trying to rise, crawl, crabwalk, anything to distance them from the Perdition’s Fire — created monstrosity before them, the beast reached through with both massive arms and started pulling the left-side door away from the frame with a sickening crunch of steel. As it did so blood was coursing out of the creature’s ears through the exertion it was placing on its body and brain. Little could Niles and the other two men know that the beast was dying but was too hopped-up and euphoric to realize it. The altered man finally managed to tear free the door, letting it fall eighty-seven levels down the elevator tube. Then with little effort it finally extricated itself from the shaft.

“Oh, shit!” Pete said as he leaned farther into Charlie and Niles.

The beast stood in the darkness and they could see the whiteness of its teeth. The massive arms hung like those of a giant ape as it leaned to the right and then to the left, taking the three men in. The smile was ever present as its long fingers closed and then opened, only to close again. They saw tatters of skin hanging from its hands that it had damaged on its climb up the shaft. The blood was flowing far more freely from its large ears even as it kept staring at them. Then its eyes enlarged and it took the first step toward Niles, Pete, and Charlie.

Suddenly a heavy stream of gunfire opened up from somewhere behind the cowering men. As they watched, a line of tracer fire stitched its way across the beast’s expanded chest. Then another line of bright phosphorescent bullets struck the creature and made it take three steps back toward the open shaft. They saw the M-14 carbine hit the carpet next to them and looked up in time to see Colonel Jack Collins dressed in civilian clothes as he advanced toward the beast with his nine millimeter drawn. Jack started firing into the head and neck of the creature, not giving it a chance to recover as the colonel advanced on it. Finally the creature was backed into the shaft where it grabbed the elevator doorframe and held on tight. Jack fired the Beretta until the clip was expended and then without missing a beat ejected it and resumed firing. He caught the beast three times in the head and it still hung on to the frame. Then he took careful aim, still walking toward the creature, and fired all of his remaining rounds, striking the altered man in the wrists and hands. Finally the rounds to the head and hands did the work Jack was hoping for, and the beast was forced to let go. It fell back into the darkness as Jack ran the short distance to peer into the dark shaft. He arrived just in time to see the beast falling. It struck the side of the tube and finally vanished. Collins turned and ejected the empty clip from the automatic. He looked at the three men with resolve.

“You three alright?” he asked as he finally reached down and started pulling them up from the floor one at a time.

“Thank God you came in. I don’t think that gentleman cared for us all that much,” Charlie joked as Niles placed his hand on Jack’s shoulder and lowered his head, thankful for his sudden appearance.

“Jack, is Alice alright?” Niles asked when he thought his heart could stand the exertion.

“She’s at home and the last I knew was trying to get you some help down here. Now where are Captain Everett and the rest of security?”

“Colonel, the entire security team is spread out inside the facility. As far as we know there are at least four more of those monstrosities around. We heard one hell of a lot of gunfire coming from the lower levels,” Niles said as he looked away from Jack. “I should never have allowed that formula into this complex.”

“Well, sometimes it takes a lot to get a policy changed. You know that Mr. Director.” Without waiting for comment from Niles, Jack turned and faced Pete. “Can you get the complex systems up again, especially Europa?”

“That’s what we came back to do, Colonel.”

“Then may I suggest you get to it Pete. Niles, you go with him; you know the system almost as well as he does. Charlie, you’re with me. You get to play John Wayne. We have to get below. Are you game?” Jack reached down and retrieved the M-14 carbine, inserted another magazine, and handed it to Ellenshaw.

Ellenshaw looked the lightweight weapon over and grinned, his white hair flying in all directions. “I’m always game Colonel.”

The Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules had left McChord Air Force Base under tight security. There had been no witnesses to the rollout of the special-operations aircraft and even the normal air force personnel that manned the tower had been replaced by a unit of “special” technicians that always traveled with the unit that had loaded onto the massive transport plane. Under cover of darkness, the Hercules lifted free of Washington State and was in the air less than five minutes after her rollout from the giant hangar. Inside were men that had received more special-operations training than any unit in the United States military. They were so special that they knew their missions would be few and far between.

Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, also known as the Combat Applications Group (CAG), or simply DELTA, were the United States’ most elite tactical combat group.

Contrary to rumor, DELTA wasn’t an army Special Forces detachment. Delta Force was a unit unto itself, composed of members from all branches of the U.S. military. Its home base was considered to be Fort Bragg, North Carolina, but its training took place all around the world. The special men inside of the Hercules were not really soldiers at all but were called operators and were said to shun the traditional philosophies of military life. They most often wore civilian clothing and were rumored to work for everyone from the FBI to the CIA. The three groups on this mission were made up of twelve men to a section. All thirty six men, plus their commanding officer, Major Jerry “Grateful Dead” Garcia, were dressed for one of their most trained-for assignments — a high-altitude, low-opening jump, or HALO. The need to get to their target quickly without being seen by anyone at Nellis Air Force Base was of particular interest to the powers that be, but when the president of the United States said to get to Nevada, they were going hell bent for leather.

Each man had been briefed on the rescue. They were going into a scenario that few had ever trained for, the taking back of an underground complex that may be held by an opposing force that may or may not be genetically altered. Each man in the three teams took the mission parameters with a grain of salt. They understood that someone up the chain of command was either out of his mind or very near to it.

Major Garcia checked his watch one last time as the Hercules climbed to their jump altitude. They would jump at 32,000 feet and low open at 2,000 feet from the desert scrub, hopefully below the radar of the Nellis tower.

He looked over at Sergeant Major Reynolds and winked.

“Major, I have one hell of a stupid question for ya,” Reynolds said in his Texas drawl.

“And what pray tell can that be Sergeant Major Reynolds?” Garcia said as he studied the other thirty men inside the cavernous hold of the C-130J. He saw that most of them had their eyes closed, bored as always with the “getting there” portion of a mission.

“Who in the hell is in charge of naming these missions? I mean, come on, my fifth-grade niece could come up with something better than this.”

“Well, according to my sources Sergeant Major, this one comes from the very top.”

“Besides the name of the mission, I also noted a name that wasn’t entirely blacked out on the mission parameters. I guess it got through some egghead sensor.”

Major Garcia turned away and saw that no one else was listening over the drone of the four powerful engines.

“I saw that myself. I’m glad most of these boys are too young to have noticed and recognized the name, or maybe they just didn’t care. But it did add a little element of surprise to the game.” He looked over at the smaller man from Texas. “I mean, if the man that trained most of the officer corps in this outfit is in deep shit, it definitely means we’re not headed for a picnic.”

The sergeant major nodded his head and adjusted the oxygen tank on his back. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep but leaned over and said, “Yes, sir, if the Jack Collins I know is in trouble, there must be one large shitstorm where we’re goin’.”

The huge aircraft increased power as it slipped out of its planned flight path and climbed with its four engines screaming.

Operation Nerdlinger was nearing the sand and scrub of Nellis Air Force Base.

Jason Ryan was feeling the course of light-dose morphine as it rushed through his system. He watched as the duty nurse administered the injection through the IV line attached to his right hand. For the first twenty-four hours the doctors had been worried about infection setting in, but since his three bullet wounds had been treated right away by the attending physicians in Laredo, that fear had been laid to rest very quickly. With the drugs running through the naval aviator’s body, he had decided he hadn’t felt this good since his Annapolis days. And the nursing staff was on the receiving end of that feel-good situation.

The young nurse looked down at the dark, short-haired Ryan and shook her head as she finished administering the morphine into the IV tube.

“Look, if you persist, I’ll write your fantasies down on your chart and then you’ll have to deal with the nurse we call Ratchet.”

“That doesn’t sound too good,” Ryan said as the warm feeling started streaming through his head. “Did you know I was shot taking down the largest drug dealer on the American continent?” he said as his hand wandered down to the nurse’s leg and “accidentally” brushed the white nylon stocking.

“You are so humble,” she said as she took a step back.

“Yeah, that’s me, humble and shy.”

She shook her head and wrote down her injection on his chart. “With any luck to the staff, you can leave here in a couple of days.”

“Ah, come on, I don’t want to go back to work. You don’t know my boss like I do.”

“I’m sure he knows you though,” she said as she left the room with a smile. Jason tried to sit up in time to see her hindquarters but was too late. Instead of lying back down he reached over and grabbed the cell phone from his table. He had one of the younger nurses buy it for him in the gift shop and actually talked her into purchasing minutes for him on the promise that they would all be used talking to her. He opened the cover and dialed the security cover number for the Group. As the TV in the corner of the room showed some of the devastation wrought by a massive explosion south of the border in Nuevo Laredo, Jason smiled. His smile faltered somewhat when there was no completion to his call other than a recording administered through the office of the National Archives. The United States government offices you are trying to reach are temporarily experiencing technical problems with their phone lines. Please try your call again at a later time.

“What?” he said as he tried again.

After receiving the same message again, he punched in Will Mendenhall’s cell number he knew by heart. Again there was no answer as his call went straight to voice mail.

“Ah, to hell with it,” he said as he set the phone down and changed the channel on the television. After perusing the channels three times he snapped off the set. He again picked up the cell phone and tried Will and the complex once more. He closed the cover in frustration.

“Damn, this isn’t right,” he mumbled. He again opened the cell phone cover and dialed a number he had only used one time — Jack Collins. “Goddamn it!” he cursed as the colonel’s phone also went straight to voice mail. The hair on the back of the aviator’s neck rose as he dialed one number that was always answered, Charlie Ellenshaw’s. As he listened, the phone rang ten times before he heard Charlie’s voice on the recording. You’ve reached Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw the third. If I’m not answering, that means I either don’t want to talk to you, or my music is so loud I can’t hear the phone. Either way, call back later.

Jason’s face turned whiter than his lack of blood could account for. He swallowed as he realized that something was wrong. He tossed back the blanket and sheet and then sat farther up in bed. He started to place his legs over the side, became lightheaded, and then paused while his equilibrium settled back down into its rightful place. Jason tried to reach over and pull himself to the right with his left hand, but the connected IV pulled his hand back with a slight stab of pain. He cursed and yanked the needle out of his vein, tossing it to the floor. Then he slowly placed his right foot on the cold tile of the floor and hissed. His head felt fuzzy, but he persisted in getting his left leg off the bed. As he braced himself as best he could, he used his ass to push up and off the bed. He felt a sharp stab of pain from the bullet wound closest to his heart. It had passed through cleanly between his heart and lungs, and the doctors said he had been far more than just lucky that there hadn’t been any more significant damage — that it had been a small miracle.

Right now Ryan wasn’t so sure about the lucky part as he realized he had never felt this horrible in his life, even after ejecting from an F-14 Tomcat over the Pacific Ocean five years before at over a thousand miles per hour.

After holding on to the bedrail for as long as it took for his head to clear, he realized that his ass was hanging out of the back of his hospital gown. As he half turned he saw his reflection in the mirror attached to the bathroom door. He saw the white of his butt and tilted his head. “Not bad,” he mumbled as he attempted his first step. He actually felt that things were going well as he raised his right leg and stepped. The one thing he didn’t realize until too late was the fact that he raised the right leg just a little too high and brought it down where he thought the white tile was located. He was wrong — about a foot off as a matter of fact. If he hadn’t been able to grab the rail in time he would have flipped completely over.

“Okay, let’s try that again,” he muttered.

Still holding the bedrail, Jason cautiously tried again. This time his right foot came down where the estimation of distance and space had been calculated. Then as he removed his hand from the bed he tried it again, this time with the left foot. Success. Moving at a snail’s pace he reached out and again calculated correctly as he grasped the doorknob to the closet. He took a deep breath and waited for his heart rate to slow and his mind to scan his wounds for any leaking that may have happened. There was none.

“Okay, step one complete.” Jason twisted the knob and pulled the door open, once threatening to continue on with the momentum of the heavy closet door but stopping and arresting his movement with a fancy balancing act. Once straight again he looked into the closet. He immediately realized he was in trouble as he didn’t know how to cover his body with the ten wire hangers that hung there. “Houston, we have a problem.” Jason remembered that his clothes were probably somewhere in Laredo, Texas. He closed his eyes to think, even though he knew for a naval aviator that usually meant trouble. So before he could do some damage to his brain he slowly walked to the door and opened it a crack.

As he scanned the darkened and half-lit hallway he spied the nurses’ station where he saw the tops of two heads as they sat working on the reports. A candy striper came around the corner and spoke to the nurses there for a moment and then turned away and continued her rounds. Jason managed to take a step out of the room and into the hallway. His eyes widened when he saw a rack of clothes still in their plastic wrap from the dry cleaners. With his feet freezing and his coordination returning, he made it to the rack and quietly started going through the hanging clothes, hoping beyond hope for a doctor’s smock, surgical clothing, or anything he could find to cover his nakedness. He cursed when he realized as he moved the plastic-covered garments aside that he was looking at nothing but nurse’s uniforms and candy striper’s dresses. He rolled his eyes and wanted to scream in frustration, that is, until he felt the cold draft rushing up his spine from his open hospital gown. Shaking his head, he removed the white nurse’s uniform from the rack. He realized that this must be the only hospital in the country that made nurses wear skirts instead of pants or surgical greens.

“Las Vegas,” he said under his breath as he moved back into his room to change and grab his wallet.

It took U.S. Navy Lieutenant J.G. (Junior Grade) Jason Ryan nearly an hour to wind his way past the nurses and another forty minutes to travel the stairs from the third floor to the first. The trip hadn’t been all that unlucky as he did manage to at least snag some paper shoe covers. Now he had his feet somewhat covered and the color did match the white of his skirt and the blouse with the small red cross on the breast. He also had a surgical cap on his head and knew he must look the sight as he stepped from the shadows of the hospital emergency room.

Another fifteen minutes passed as he waited for his cab to take him to the Gold City Pawn Shop where he would undoubtedly find the Security Department running some kind of a drill that Colonel Collins was fond of designing. As he gave the cab driver the address he saw the man looking into his rearview mirror every five minutes. His eyes roamed over the nurse’s face. Ryan realized that although he thought he was a passable nurse, he forgot that he hadn’t shaved in three days.

“These long shifts are killing me,” Ryan quipped and continued to stare at the cabbie’s eyes until he looked away.

The man with the dark hair and arrogant aviator’s walk, who guessed he looked at least decent in his nurse’s outfit, was in for a shock when he pulled up to a closed and locked pawn shop.

As Dr. Denise Gilliam waited in front of the elevator to take them to level thirty-four, she felt the Frenchman’s eyes on her. She looked from the elevator to the airman who watched Henri and finally at Farbeaux.

“What?” she said louder than she intended.

“Hear that?” Farbeaux asked.

“I don’t hear anything. The gunfire has stopped.”

“That’s not the only thing that has stopped dear doctor.”

Denise looked around as the overhead fluorescent lighting flickered. Then she realized what the Frenchman was referring to.

“What’s he talking about?” the airman asked.

“The bioalarms have stopped,” Gilliam said as she looked up and down the small clinic, not liking the empty feeling of it for the first time since she joined the Group.

“Not only that,” Henri said as he too glanced around, jingling his cuffed hands as he did, “that sexy computer you people rely on so much seems to be on her lunch break.”

“Jesus, that isn’t right,” the airman said as he moved to the phone at the small nurse’s station to try to reach someone again. As he clicked the disconnect button several times, he knew they were in trouble. No radio, no phones, and worst of all, no Europa to tell them what to do.

“Where’s that damn elevator?” Denise said as she placed her hand on the scanning screen to see if Europa would react.

That was when the lights went out.

“I hope this is budget cuts,” Farbeaux said as his senses started their small dance inside of his body.

“Shit,” Denise said as she wheeled the bed Henri was restrained to back around and away from the elevator. At that moment the dead circuit tripped the battery-operated lighting in the distant corners of the clinic. “This isn’t right. The clinic and other facilities are on an emergency line. We have a separate backup generator. Why isn’t it kicking on?”

“Because Europa isn’t there to tell it to,” the airman said as she returned.

“Uh, may I suggest the stairs?” Henri said as he once more jingled the cuffs on both hands.

The pounding made all three go rigid. The noise came from several directions at once, the closed elevator doors, the doorway leading to the stairwell, and even more strange, from the walls itself.

Farbeaux watched the doors to the elevator. In the semidark of the clinic his hackles rose to an all-time high on his danger meter. He again jangled the handcuffs.

“Airman, I would feel much better if I was able to move about. Release me from this bed — it may be a bit too heavy to run with it on my back.”

“Colonel, you know I can’t. Captain Everett was specific in his orders about you.”

“I think the colonel’s right. I’ll take responsibility,” Denise said as her eyes turned from the elevator doors to the far wall where the stairwell was located. “I’m officially saying that his circulation is being cut off and am ordering the cuffs removed.”

The sergeant looked hesitant but then pulled his sidearm and tossed the key to the doctor.

“A wise decision Airman,” Henri said as he watched Denise undo his restraints.

“Colonel, make no mistake; I will shoot you if you try anything.”

As the cuffs were removed Henri flexed his wrists and sat up enough to place his bare feet on the floor.

“I’m afraid by the sound of that racket in the walls and elevator shaft, you may have to shoot something.”

All eyes were on the elevator doors as the pounding got louder and louder. The tension was building as whatever was making the horrible sound was growing closer. Suddenly the door to the stairwell burst open. The sergeant turned with his nine millimeter poised to blast their visitor. It was Henri who reached out and forced the gun barrel down just as Virginia Pollock, Sarah, Gloria Bannister, and Will Mendenhall came through the door. They watched as Will closed the door and then slowly started backing away from it as if he expected something to burst through it at anytime.

“God,” the airman said, grateful that the Frenchman forced his aim off as he had come close to killing Dr. Pollock. “Doctor, Lieutenant McIntire, I almost shot you!”

Farbeaux watched as Sarah caught her breath. His eyes told him that she had received far more damage to her head and face. Still breathing hard, Sarah saw Henri and their eyes locked. She immediately went to the side of the bed where the Frenchman was trying to get to his feet. She took his hand but said nothing. As for Farbeaux, he just felt the warmth of her touch but made no move to comfort her.

“What in God’s name is that noise?” Denise asked as Mendenhall joined the group, still looking at the stairwell door.

“Something real bad,” Virginia said as she hurried to the opposite side of the clinic and placed her ears to that door, hoping she wasn’t hearing anything from there like they had heard at the door they just exited.

“Sergeant, we need more weapons. Is that all we have on this level?” Mendenhall asked as his eyes never left the stairwell they had just left.

“Yes, sir, and the radios are out. We’re not picking up anything.”

“Our security teams are scattered all over the damn complex. As long as we are keeping to the stairwells, any signals will have one hell of a hard time getting through all of this steel. The radios are meant for use in the complex, not its inner workings,” Will said as an even louder bang sounded from the elevator shaft. Mendenhall reached out and took Gloria’s hand, pulling the frightened woman close to him when she jumped at the sound.

“What in the hell is in the tubes?” Dr. Gilliam asked as another large bang sounded from either two levels down or maybe even closer.

“The men who attacked the complex, they’ve changed. The formula is reacting just the way it did in Mexico, only this is different; it’s like they have actually grown far more than Guzman and his men. The higher dose of Perdition’s Fire, it was in the clean room like a fog — the exposure was far more than at the hacienda,” Will said as he stood in front of the weakened Sarah and frightened CDC doctor.

“Dr. Pollock, I know this is not your field of specialty, but perhaps you can give us something that could explain the impossible way in which these men have grown. It cannot just be the hallucinatory effects of poppy splicing,” Farbeaux said as he reached out and took a pair of green surgical pants from a rack on the far wall. Trying to keep his balance, he slid his legs into them with much difficulty until Sarah stepped out from behind Mendenhall and held him up. Henri placed his arm around her and squeezed as he finally accomplished the task.

Virginia walked quickly back into the main clinic and to the elevator doors, sliding her lab coat off as she did. She stopped in front of the doors and then without looking tossed the coat over to Farbeaux.

“Thank you Doctor,” Henri said as he tossed the hospital gown away and slid into the coat.

Virginia listened intently as the grunts and scraping continued beneath them. The sound was getting louder, as if whatever it was was checking each floor for people before it moved on.

“I don’t know, but I do have a guess. That unknown element that the CDC doctors ran across, Europa was close to identifying it before she went down. She tagged the unknown as human tissue, but that was as far as she got. It was too arcane for the CDC’s analyzer to identify,” she said as she started backing away from the elevator doors until she bumped into the now empty bed. “The only thing it can be that explains the unnatural growth of these men has to be an HGH synthesis that Ambrose created during his experiments.”

“HGH? That’s impossible,” Gloria said, finally thankful she had something to think about. “He couldn’t have synthesized anything close to human growth hormones, not at the turn of the century.” Gloria allowed her mind to wander into the realm of impossibility for a moment. Then she vigorously shook her head, frightened at the prospects of the growth hormone in conjunction with the human brain power that had been opened up in the men who had basically overdosed on Perdition’s Fire. “The second unknown?” she said as she went into deep thought.

“What’s that?” Virginia asked seeing the stunned look on the face of the CDC doctor.

“Could it be possible that this man was working on something related to stem cell research? There is no telling what he could have achieved. But that would have been impossible at the time. Ambrose was a barbarian compared to today’s scientists. He didn’t have the equipment necessary for the work.”

“Regardless of the impossibility of it Miss Bannister, we’re facing something that is a direct enemy of the natural laws of nature here. There can be no other explanation. The human body is capable of so much, but add to that the fact that the human brain has only used 10 % of its power throughout human history and now it has been expanded to use 100 percent. What you have in the end is what is out there: the brain mixing with a human growth hormone and possible embryo research, fetus material, if you prefer. The consequences are phenomenal,” Virginia said just as the first crash of steel sounded on the other side of the elevator doors, creating the smallest of bulges.

“I’m leaning toward the good doctor Pollock’s theory and the young lady’s guesswork,” Farbeaux said as he stood next to Mendenhall. “Lieutenant, I know I’m not a citizen of your country, at least legally speaking, but I vote we get the hell out of here, and I would prefer to be armed as we run like hell for the surface of this menagerie.”

Will looked at Henri and nodded his head. “You don’t have to convince the U.S. Army, Colonel — everyone to the stairwell. Sergeant, give me the weapon and go with them. I’ll draw that thing’s attention.”

Gloria reacted first as the second, much larger dent appeared in the double elevator doors, creating a small separation between them. She reached out and grabbed Will and just shook her head. “No, please don’t,” she said with pleading eyes.

“You go with Dr. Pollock and the others. Sarah and the colonel are too weak, they need a hand.”

“We all go, Will,” Virginia announced loudly. “For once in my life, with Niles out of the complex, someone is going to damn well follow my orders.”

“Perhaps we can discuss this when we’re headed upward in the unaffected stairwell?” Henri said as he pulled Sarah to the left, heading for the opposite set of stairs just as eight very large and grotesque fingers pushed through the opening.

“Jesus,” the airman said as he pushed everyone in the direction Farbeaux had taken with Sarah trailing. “Lieutenant, go!” he shouted at Mendenhall and the others.

Suddenly the doors separated and in the dark they saw the glowing eyes. The impossibility of it struck everyone as the eyes were radiating like those of a night-hunting animal. The brain of the affected was altering the way humans were seeing — Perdition’s Fire was adapting to its situation.

As everyone turned and ran, the airman who was responsible, at least in his mind, for this level opened fire, catching the retreating Mendenhall off-guard. The lieutenant shoved Gloria forward toward the far exit door and turned as the airman emptied his nine millimeter into the creature that was even now balancing itself in the right half of the empty elevator doorframe. It was too large to squeeze through such a small opening so it angrily started battering the left section of steel door, warping and bending it even as the powerful nine-millimeter rounds struck and penetrated its upper body. As each round hit, it would yell and roar in pain as it continued to battle with the steel of the remaining door.

Just as Mendenhall reached out to grab the young security man, the beast had a similar thought as it leaned as far into the clinic as it could, bending the remaining door even further until it caught the airman while he was reloading. The beast’s grip was wrapped so powerfully around his neck that he dropped the Beretta with the clip still only partially inserted. Will reacted fast as the man was pulled toward the towering beast. As his struggles continued, Will retrieved the weapon and finished inserting the clip. He quickly took aim at the monstrosity still struggling in the elevator opening. When he saw he couldn’t get a shot in without hitting the terrified security man, Will placed the gun in his waistband and attacked.

The beast was caught off-guard by the blows raining into its face delivered by Mendenhall. It reacted by squeezing his grip even harder on the airman. The beast roared with insult as Will continued to fight for the young security man’s life. Then, even through the screams of outrage from the creature, Will heard the airman’s neck snap. It was a sound the lieutenant would never forget. The struggles of the giant and the security man ceased at once. The beast let the boy slip through its grip as the large, unnatural eyes fell on Will. The giant brows rose and the creature smiled. With its bare chest almost through the door it reached out with lightning-quick speed and grabbed Mendenhall around the neck. The lieutenant knew that he hadn’t moved fast enough just as his life force was being squeezed from his body.

Suddenly the grip was released and a roar of pain sounded that actually shook the pictures from the clinic’s walls. As Will fell to the floor he looked up in time to see Henri Farbeaux step away from the flailing, infuriated giant. Then Mendenhall finally saw why the beast had let go as it pulled the ballpoint pen from its right eye. Farbeaux and Sarah were there to pull him up and out of the creature’s flailing arms.

“Thanks!” he screamed.

As they ran for the stairwell door being held open by Virginia and Dr. Gilliam, Farbeaux looked back as the creature now began to concentrate on the only remaining obstacle trapping it, the second door.

“This is the second time I’ve been here, and I must say you people go out of your way to make my stay vigorous and exciting,” Henri said.

A choking Mendenhall reached the door and allowed Henri and Sarah to go through first just as the beast bent over the remaining door.

“That’s what we’re here for Colonel, to make sure your days are filled with wonder and awe.”

Virginia cursed and pulled Will into the complete darkness of the stairwell.

For the first time in Compton’s fifteen years and Pete Golding’s ten at the Event Group, they saw the computer center go dark. With Europa being down for the first time ever, the sight was surreal for both men. As Pete pushed the large bulletproof glass security door open, he realized with the only lighting coming from the battery-powered floods in the corners and center of the large room, that the cavernous area with its empty theater-style seating and main-floor desks looked ghostly. The fifty-foot main computer screen with the flashing red light at its base was a reminder just how vulnerable the complex was without Europa running things.

“How long to reboot the system, Pete?” Niles asked as he walked down the main aisle of seating while looking through the glass walls out into the main hallway. He felt like they were being watched. He knew that was probably a wrong sensory input due to the stress of the situation.

“She should come right up,” Pete said as he practically ran down the steps to his large desk on the main floor. He immediately checked his personal system and then paused as his security code challenge came up on the monitor. He entered Golding-Hercules — Marilyn 11900-A-1.

“You better not let Jack see the Marilyn part of the code — he’ll kill you.”

“Ah, what the colonel doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

Even through the terrifying situation they were now locked into, Niles Compton had to smile and shake his head. After all of this time he just learned that it had been Pete Golding all along who had programmed Europa’s voice synthesizer to mimic the sex symbol Marilyn Monroe’s voice. Collins had been looking for the culprit from the first day he started at the Group.

“Come on old girl, come on,” Pete urged. “I’m feeling mighty exposed here.”

Suddenly the main screen flashed a bright white. Then it did it again. Finally it went to a solid blue and the code Pete had entered started flashing at the top minus the numbers in case Pete wasn’t alone. This was a very good indication that Europa was regaining her programming. Golding lowered the microphone on his desktop and leaned in. He swallowed and closed his eyes.

“Europa, are you online?”

Silence filled the giant room. Then: “Good evening Dr. Golding. With my systems down, can you tell me if the emergency on level seventeen has been resolved?”

“We need you to help with that assessment.”

“I will need five minutes, thirty-seven seconds to regain sensory input from that section.”

“Hurry, please hurry,” Pete said as he pushed the microphone away from him and looked at Niles who was looking up through the bulletproof wall upstairs. As Pete started to inform Niles of the delay in case he hadn’t heard, the lights flickered overhead and Golding breathed a sigh of relief. He waited, but the lights didn’t come back on. He grabbed for the microphone once more. “Europa, is that you getting the power grid back up? Is that the first protocol?” Pete asked as he tried his hardest to remember the sequence of her reboot program.

“Dr. Golding, the power has been severed at the source. With my surveillance systems still down, that is my best estimation.”

Niles heard that. He turned and faced Pete who lost all the feeling in his legs and had to sit. Then he caught himself and sat back up.

“Europa, do you have a status report on nuclear reactors one and two?”

“I must source query by utilizing the programs that are currently available, Doctor. Standby.”

“Pete, what are the odds that one of those soldiers could access the reactor area on eighty-four?” Niles asked, no longer concerned about the boogeymen in the darkness outside the walls.

Pete shook his head. “Niles, with her systems down, the area could have been unsecured to allow our reactor technicians to get to the evacuation point. God only knows, but if Europa shut down her systems for a security breach, resecuring that area may have come too late.”

“Doctor, by accessing the main water systems and the sublevel systems such as distilled water storage, I have calculated that the hard-water levels in all four reactor pumping stations are down 46 percent,” Europa said.

“Is this an occurrence due to the emergency shutdown procedure?” Pete asked, doubting his own question.

“Negative, Dr. Golding. The pumps have been shut down at the source and both reactors have scrammed.”

“They can’t be capable of that!” Niles said as he ran over to Pete’s desk. “Europa, we need you to bypass normal start-up procedures and go directly to your surveillance systems. Reboot now!”

Before she could react, the red flashing of her warning systems started back up with the irritating buzz of the alarm.

“Doctor, we have a biohazard warning on level seventeen and a security breach on levels one, four, eight, eighteen, and eighty-four. Untagged persons are inside the complex.”

By untagged Europa meant that all Event Group members had a microscopic bug placed in their thigh area just under their skin that told Europa where every member of the Group was currently located. Event guests like Gloria Bannister and Henri Farbeaux had been tagged on a temporary basis. The untagged people she was currently picking up on her security scan were obviously the intruder element inside the complex.

“God, they made it into the reactor section and shut down the cooling pumps and water,” Niles said as he reached for the phone on an empty desk. “Europa, I need communications ASAP!”

“Estimate two minutes until program reboot on communications, Dr. Compton. I am now receiving security video from level eighty-four. Low-quality night vision has been achieved.”

As the two men watched, a hazy and greenish picture came on the main screen. At first they saw nothing out of the ordinary except for the flashing red and yellow lights indicating that the reactors, both one and two, had scrammed automatically or had shut down as per fail-safe protocol when they started being starved of coolant.

“Location of Colonel Collins?” Pete said into the microphone.

“Colonel Collins is currently on level eight, south stairwell.”

Pete realized that they had to get people down to the very bottom level of the complex to restart the distilled water pumps and get the reactors to start their cooldown. Without getting them up again, the reactors would blow, taking all of Nellis and Las Vegas along with the complex, and also leave a radioactive hole in the ground half the size of Lake Mead.

“Niles, you have to leave here, get to some radios, and pray that the colonel pops out someplace where he can receive.”

Compton didn’t hesitate as he knew where there were at least a dozen radios — his own office. He ran up the stairs knowing that if they didn’t get this stopped, growing giants would be the least of the problems for his Group.

“Dr. Golding, security cameras on thirty-four have picked up nine members of Department 5656 that have not achieved egress from the complex.”

“What? We still have more people down there?”

“Correct, Doctor, they are trapped.”

“Can you get any kind of emergency power to the main cargo lift and get them out of there?”

“It may be possible to reroute my battery power to the cargo lift.”

“How will that affect your backup power system?”

“Total drainage in seven minutes, ten seconds, Doctor,” Europa replied.

“And how long to get the lift to level one?”

“Five minutes, thirty-seven seconds.”

Pete felt the knot in his stomach grow larger. If he ordered Europa to assist the trapped men and women in the gymnasium and sports complex, she wouldn’t have but one minute and thirty-three seconds of power to either get the men and women help or go up with the reactors.

“Europa, reroute your power to the cargo lift and get those people out!”

Jack placed his hand on the chest of Charlie Ellenshaw when he not only felt something below them on level eight but smelled it. It was an odor he had smelled on every battlefield he had ever served on. It was the smell of blood — a lot of it.

“Stay here Doc,” he said just above a whisper, knowing that Crazy Charlie didn’t understand military hand signals.

“What is it?” Charlie asked gripping the M-14 as tightly as he could. He looked up at the weak lighting of the floodlight and then cursed that he couldn’t see the landing on the next level down.

Jack took the steps one at a time without any weapon at all. He was only ten steps away from the sharp curve in the stairwell when he saw an arm stretched across the landing. Jack cursed as he took another step and then suddenly felt a presence behind him. He turned as fast as he could and almost gave Charlie a coronary as well as himself.

“Damn it, Doc!” Jack hissed, “I told you to hang back and cover me.”

“Colonel, from that angle, the trajectory of any form of cover fire would not have accomplished what I was asked to do, if—” In the darkness Ellenshaw saw Collins and knew that he better not continue his geometry lesson at that time. “Sorry,” he said as a way of completing his sentence.

Jack took another step, and another, and then was at the next level. His jaw set when he saw the six men sprawled on the large grate leading to level eight. They were torn to pieces. Jack had to grab the handrail as Charlie moaned behind him. The worst thing they saw was the head of Sergeant Sanchez placed directly on top of his own chest. Collins knew it was meant to frighten. That was the only statement the killer of his reaction team could have meant, to send fear down the spines of anyone who saw the decapitation. Instead of shaking in his boots as the beast who did this foul act intended, Jack simply reached down and grabbed three of the assault packages that were scattered on the landing. As he passed his men, stepping over them with care, he stopped and waved Charlie over.

“Take two more of these, Doc — we’re going to need them.”

“There is no sign of Captain Everett and his men, Colonel. The last we heard, he was off to find,” he hesitated as if saying the sergeant’s name would bring on more bad luck, “Sergeant Sanchez.”

“Remember that the captain is not only good, he’s the best at evasion, even from these assholes.”

“Yeah, the captain can be on my team any day,” Charlie said with as much bravado as he could muster.

Collins came to the thick steel door and paused. He tilted his head and listened for anything coming from the far side. Then he placed a hand over the door and felt the cold steel. He looked back at Ellenshaw and shook his head.

“Pete and Niles should have had the power up by now. Where in the hell is Europa? That expensive bitch better not have bailed out on us.”

Collins reached into one of the bags and brought out a small box. He felt better just seeing what was inside. Six hand grenades were packed in foam and looked like diamonds in the rough to him. He started filling his pockets.

Above Jack, Charlie’s eyes widened. “Can I have—”

“No,” Collins answered before the stupid question could be voiced. Jack turned and tossed Ellenshaw three new magazines one at a time. Charlie fumbled but managed to catch them all. He then reached inside the canvas bag and brought out a sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun. He quickly loaded it with the blue plastic-cased solid-shot shells, adjusting the strap and then placing the shotgun over his shoulder. Next came the Ingram submachine gun. He quickly taped two of the long clips together, both facing in opposite directions, and then slammed the magazine home. “There, that feels better,” Jack said.

“I must admit it, you look better, Colonel,” Charlie said, happy that Collins was happy.

Collins brought the Ingram up and slowly reached out in the light of the floods above him and cracked the door open. He looked inside the dimly lit corridor and into the clinic. He saw that a bed had been pushed up close to the heavily damaged elevator doors, which lay bent and crumpled on the tiled floor. The colonel then opened the stairwell door wide enough to get his head through.

Charlie Ellenshaw winced as Jack’s head disappeared through the opening, wanting to say that that’s how teenagers get killed in all the slasher movies — by sticking their heads into dark rooms. He managed not to warn Jack of the danger.

Collins quickly saw that the clinic was empty. He let the door close and then turned to face Charlie.

“It looks like they managed to evacuate Colonel Farbeaux.”

“Oh, joy,” Ellenshaw said.

“Okay, we know the only ones above us are Pete and Niles in the computer center, so it looks like we’re headed down, Doc.”

Charlie had his throat catch in midswallow but managed to nod his head.

“Don’t worry, Doc, it’s all downhill.”

10

The attack had come upon Everett and his nine men so suddenly that two of the men were dead before a shot was fired in their rushed defense. Just before the creature came through the plastic-lined wall, they had been up two levels and then back down three as the maze of trying to reach anyone still alive was quickly becoming fraught with pitfalls. The creatures had torn free steps in the steel staircases, wrenched away handrails, and rolled large chunks of concrete down upon anyone who might be traversing the stairwells. Everett felt the intelligence of these creatures, even before they came upon several bodies of technicians he recognized as being a part of Virginia Pollock’s Nuclear Sciences division. Somehow they had missed the evacuation order, had been cut off, and then tried to make their way in the dark down the stairwell, where they were ambushed and then busted to pieces. As they examined the bodies they could clearly see that every bone had been smashed.

They had hoped to be at level forty-two and the main armory far before this, but with the obstacles around them they were slowed to the point of crawling. Just a moment before the attack came, Carl had thought he heard voices from the stairwell they were traveling in at least two levels below them. As one of the sergeants started to call out, Everett hushed him.

At that moment he heard a woman’s scream from down below and simultaneously the concrete wall beside the middle part of his remaining nine men crashed inward. Standing in front of them was one of the creatures, which had grown so much that its remaining tattered clothing had been completely shed. The beast was standing on one of Everett’s men as the others, including the captain, opened fire at point-blank range. The beast ducked and covered its head with its massive forearm, and in the darkened stairwell they could not get a clear shot at its head. It quickly swung outward and caught Lance Corporal Jimmy Dolan across the chest, sending him crashing into the hardened steel rail, snapping his back, and tumbling him over the edge. Then the monstrosity before them reached out with a backswing and grasped a young corporal by the neck. With its free arm guarding its most vulnerable area, the head, it pulled the young marine into the wall and then vanished into the honeycomb of the cave system that lined the entire complex.

Everett shook his head and watched as army staff sergeant Frakes emptied his M-16 into the large hole. The return flash made Everett turn away. The captain was now down to seven men. Hanging his head, Everett took a moment to collect himself. Then he remembered the scream he had heard just before the ambush hit. He steeled himself and waved his men on. The blackness of the staircase loomed and Everett realized for the first time that Smith’s men had smashed the remaining battery-powered light to bits.

“It didn’t take them long to discover the cave system,” Sergeant Frakes said as he came up on Everett’s rear.

“Yeah, well, we have a few surprises left also if we can just get to the damn armory,” Carl said as he looked back at Frakes. “And if I ever see you empty a weapon like that again, with the chance that my man is still alive, I’ll toss your ass right off this stairwell.”

Frakes gave a nod, happy the captain still had the fire to chew on his ass.

They would all need that fire in the next hour.

At thirty-five thousand feet the giant Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules opened her rear ramp as the thirty-seven men operating under the auspices of Presidential Order 122213, designated Operation Nerdlinger, lined up as the high-altitude, freezing air blasted into the open ramp. As Major Garcia stepped forward, the U.S. Air Force Special Operations team waited for the red light to flash to green. “Grateful Dead” Garcia didn’t have to turn to check on his DELTA element as he knew they were ready. Each man was self-sustained from radios to weapons. And their weapons were of the special kind. They each carried three of them and ammunition. Garcia felt the cold air coming from his oxygen system and knew it was just enough for the four-and-a-half-minute freefall to the desert below. He made sure his ambient-light goggles were secure on his helmet until he would need them as he neared the ground.

“Gentlemen, the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command wishes you all good luck!” the loadmaster called out through the secure radio channel just before the red light flashed green in the red tint of the sight-saving lighting inside the Hercules. “Go, go, go, go!” the loadmaster called out as four rows of men jumped from the ramp at the same time. As he watched, a single man brought up the rear and delayed his HALO jump by ten seconds. Then the plane was empty and the Hercules turned away to the West where it would head to March Air Force Base in Southern California to be hidden from prying eyes and immediately prepped as the special operations crew rested. In just ten hours the Hercules would be ready to be called upon once again to deliver any secure package anywhere in the world.

The group of nine men and women huddled in the far corner of the football field, not far from the goal line where Virginia had scored her winning touchdown not three days before. That event now seemed like it had taken place a thousand years before.

The eldest of the group, and by far the most tenured person on the Event Group staff was Professor Henry Thomas, a man who graduated from Cal Berkley in 1977. He kept all those around him silent as they heard time and time again loud, roaring screams, gunfire, and then as now, complete and utterly terrifying silence. They had been hiding since the power failed and the giant lift failed to return from level one.

“Take it easy. Captain Everett and old Pete Golding will do something soon; you can bet on it,” said the totally gray-haired professor of Middle Eastern philosophy.

In the near darkness of the sports complex he examined the young, frightened faces of technicians and chemists, photo analysts, and chefs. They all looked to him as the elder statesman for the nerve it took to sit in the dark and tell themselves time and time again that there was no such thing as the boogeyman, that there was never a monster under your bed, and that the thing in the closet was nothing but your own fertile imagination.

As Professor Thomas moved from person to person, reassuring as he went, a sudden crash sounded right above the high-ceilinged gymnasium. He flinched as several large chunks of plastic and plaster fell from high above and struck the fifty-yard line of the football field.

“Must be rats up there,” he joked, but when no one laughed he felt terrible for making light of the sound of the concrete as it hit the artificial turf.

The sound of laughing froze everyone, and those that were sitting stood. The old professor froze as the sound chilled him to the bone.

“It seems your friends have abandoned you,” came the deep, raspy, and booming voice from somewhere in the darkness. This elicited more than one of the frightened people to scream, and that alone made the others want to run in the opposite direction of the voice.

“Who are you?” Professor Thomas called out.

More laughter. “Why I am Darkness. I am Fear. I am Satan and you are in the ninth level of hell,” came the voice with almost hysterical laughter. “My hell!” the booming voice echoed.

A woman screamed and turned away, only to be kept still by two men next to her.

“Do not panic; it’s trying to frighten us,” Thomas said.

“Trying?” the voice asked with a chuckle. “I have achieved at least that,” came the horrible sound.

They heard the sound of something moving above them. Thomas looked up at the spiderweb of girders above the athletic field. His old eyes could not penetrate the darkness, but he thought he saw movement. Then he saw something move hand over hand above them that made him move away toward the group of frightened men and women.

Suddenly a screech sounded to their far right. Several men and women screamed as they thought whatever was taunting them was right behind them. They all realized at once that it was the sound of the cargo elevator descending the great carved-out shaft of natural rock. They heard the eight-inch cables as they creaked and whined in its powerful descent.

“Everyone move toward the elevator gate. Get ready to enter it and then close the gate behind you. Now move! Go as quietly as you can.”

“You’re coming too, right?” asked a young woman who had spent the past four years analyzing the download of information from the Group’s KH-11 Blackbird satellite, code named Boris and Natasha. She sounded as if she were near tears as she realized what the old professor had planned.

“I’m afraid not dear. Now get moving and I’ll see if I can keep this thing, whatever it is, occupied.”

Just as they started to move away, the laughter came once more. The professor nodded at his small group of survivors and moved off into the dark. The others started moving toward the back of the sports arena. They heard the elevator drawing closer as they moved, stumbling and cursing in the dark, but still doing as the professor ordered. Then suddenly they heard the cargo elevator hit their level and stop with a loud whine. First one, then another, and then the others started a blind and panic-driven run toward the gates that housed the lift.

Professor Thomas started a run of his own. He ran toward the center of the field and then tripped immediately over the rubble that had fallen. He rolled onto his back just as something large fell from the girders above him. It fell the one hundred feet and landed with a thud only five yards from his prone body. He heard the growl of whatever it was immediately. He raised his head and saw the darkened shape standing before him. The figure looked like the largest primate he had ever seen. It was at least seven feet tall and built like a tank. He could see the outline of its body and knew it to be naked.

“What in the hell are you?” he asked as he tried his best to sit up, but his body would not cooperate.

“I and others like me are dead men, just as you are,” came the deep and menacing voice.

“Who are you?” Thomas said in a low voice, shocked when he realized that the creature standing before him heard the question. Its hearing must have been like that of a timberwolf in the winter months.

“Who … am … I?” came the lowered voice, which had lost the menacing, just-beneath-the-surface growl. “My … my name is…”

Thomas saw the line of drool fall from the beast’s mouth. It shimmered in the weak lighting from the emergency floods. The professor chanced a look behind him and tried to see where his people were. He heard the opening of the large cargo gate and the hollow thump of footsteps as people started to fill the giant floor of the elevator. He knew he had to stall for more time.

“Yes, tell me your name,” he asked, trying to use as much sympathy-laced injection as he could.

The shadowy beast before him tilted its head as if it were deep in thought. It was still drooling and it shifted its massive weight from foot to foot.

“Car … Car … Carmichael, Sam … uel, rrrrr, serial num … ber … 556 … 67 … 48 … 79.”

“That’s a nice name, son.”

The beast straightened up and with a shake of its large head lifted its face to the dark area above them and screamed in rage. It started forward and Professor Thomas said a silent, quick prayer as the creature came into full view. The old man crossed himself as he realized he had been speaking to a beast who said his name, and then offered his serial number, just as a soldier would have. He hoped it wasn’t one of Captain Everett’s security men just as he closed his eyes at the exact moment the giant soldier stomped him literally to death. Then its green and glowing eyes looked up and penetrated the darkness as it caught sight of the lift and the people inside who were just lowering the gate. It started running for the elevator and its occupants.

The men and women inside were screaming for whoever was operating the lift to step on it. They realized that they weren’t going to move in time. The beast was almost upon the steel gate as it reached out. Suddenly the giant cargo elevator started to rise and it was the sudden movement that made the beast miss the mark. It was left grabbing at empty air as the lift rose on its sixteen massive cables. As the lost souls rose from the depths of the ninth circle of hell, they looked through the steel grating and watched in abject horror as the large gate sealing the shaft crashed inward.

“Oh, God!” one of the men shouted as the beast rose in the darkness, leaped from the shaft, and grabbed hold of a trailing cable. It started to climb.

The giant lift started to climb faster as the large motors on level one coiled the cables and took on the massive weight of the elevator. Still, the creature came hand over hand on the slippery cable.

“Jesus, what do we do?” asked one of the women.

The beast hit the bottom of the lift before any answer could be given. Everyone screamed as the thick and elongated fingers came through the grating that made up the flooring. The beast held on as it ripped and pulled at the steel mesh. It was now in a frenzy of madness as the men and women tried to get as far into the opposite corner as possible. Soon, the beast was able to get its entire arm through the steel floor. It swiped at those closest and nearly managed to snag a woman’s bare foot.

It would be through the floor of the lift in less than a minute.

As the thirteen security men watched, they could see the top of the lift as it rose. They had been caught off-guard when the giant elevator started down into the complex. The sergeant in charge of gate security cursed his luck that he hadn’t been closer so at least six of the team could have lowered themselves into the complex. As it was, they were stunned when the lift started rising once more. They could hear frightened screams of men and women coming closer out of the blackness below.

“Stand ready to cover these people,” the sergeant said as he backed away from the gate where the elevator would arrive. “It sounds like they may have company coming with them.”

Finally they could see the anxious, scared faces staring up at them from the terrified men and women on the lift. “Stand back,” the sergeant shouted as the concrete flooring parted fully. The gap they had been looking into separated into a massive thirty-foot-long chasm as the lift neared the top.

The sergeant quickly opened the steel gate that protected the open pit and readied his M-14 carbine as did his twelve men. The lift finally appeared and as it cleared the opening the steel gates that made up its side slowly lowered on their hydraulics until they were flat against the old concrete of the hangar. He didn’t have to order the men and women off the lift, as they came at his men in a stampede. Shaken, the sergeant was yelling for them to slow down and tell him what was happening. Then he heard one of his men shout as another sound came into the mix, the tearing and wrenching of steel as the beast finally tore away the last of the flooring.

“My God,” the sergeant said as his men’s gunfire drowned out his exclamation of shock at what he was seeing. The beast covered its head and face and charged the security detail. It was only focused on getting through them and their gunfire to kill everyone that had been on the lift. It was as if its brain had locked on to one desire only: get those that had escaped it.

The security men saw that their 5.56-millimeter rounds were just punching holes in thick, pulsing skin while not doing any real damage.

“Fall back, out of the hangar!” the sergeant yelled as he started to back away, pushing and pulling his men as he did.

The beast roared and advanced. It moved with purpose as Jack and Carl’s well-trained security men maintained their fire until they were clear of the giant hangar doorframe. They backed away while keeping up a withering fire at the beast. They watched as large pieces of flesh were torn free of its chest, legs, and arms, but still it advanced.

The camouflaged security detail ventured into the dark night where the desert surrounded them but offered no hope of cover. They realized too late that they were walking the creature directly into the path of every man and woman they had pulled from the complex, over three hundred of them, most of which were yelling and screaming in fear as the beast was free of the hangar and bearing down up them.

“This is it, no farther, hold the line!” the sergeant shouted as the beast was only fifteen feet from them. Men were firing and quickly emptying their weapons.

Suddenly they heard the command coming from behind the creature. The order was loud and clear, even over the crackle of gunfire.

“Soldiers to our front, hit the deck!”

Collins had trained his men to not hesitate. He had drilled into them that any form of hesitation got people killed. The thirteen men of gate one security hit the ground just as a withering, powerful eruption of heavy-caliber gunfire opened up at almost point-blank range. The heavy-caliber rounds, most fired from fifty-caliber weapons, struck the creature, forcing it to turn and face the new threat behind it. That was its fatal mistake. It thought that it was going to face more of the light-caliber rounds of the security men, but instead it faced heavy fire that tore the front of the beast to pieces. It roared in pain and shook its massive head. It continued forward. Suddenly the altered soldier was dropped as a round fired from a fifty caliber Barrett single-shot rifle struck it between the eyes. The creature’s head literally exploded into mist. Still it took one, two, and then three steps forward before it fell into the desert sand outside of the old hangar.

Suddenly the frightened group of civilians and the security element from gate one saw over thirty shadows rise up from the still-hot sands of the desert. One of the men still held the smoking M107A1 fifty-caliber Barrett rifle.

“Jesus Christ!” the sergeant from the Event Group said loudly. “Where in the hell did you guys come from?”

A small man that held the large-bore fifty stepped forward and removed his ambient-light goggles and then his bush hat. He wiped sweat from his face as he stared down at the monstrosity he and his men had just dropped.

“We just dropped in from Never Never Land Trooper,” Major Jerry “Grateful Dead” Garcia said as he motioned his men forward. “Tommy, it looks like we’ll be rapelling. Get the gear ready.”

The sergeant stepped forward and held out his hand to the smaller man. Garcia noticed the civilians in the desert start to come forward. He ignored the sergeant’s handshake gesture.

“Sergeant?”

“Reggie Anderson, U.S. Air Force,” he answered.

“Well, Anderson, Reggie, Sergeant, U.S. Air Force, would you please keep your people back? If you were trained by Jack Collins, you can guess as to why we cannot mix with the civilian element of … of … hell, whoever you people are.”

The sergeant realized as he looked from the smaller man to his other rescuers that he was dealing with the highly deadly group of men known as DELTA. He understood immediately, turned, and waved everyone but his security team back into the darkness of the desert.

“Thank you, Anderson, Reggie. Now, can you tell me where Jack is?”

“I have no idea. The last I heard … well … the last I heard was that he was off base. Captain Everett has been stuck below since this mess began.”

The major looked down again at the beast at his booted feet. He reached over and removed a flashlight from his collar and snapped it on. His eyes roamed over the transformed man and he looked up at the sergeant once again as he snapped off the flashlight.

“One of yours?” he asked.

“Not exactly. This is one of the intruders. From what I understand, he didn’t come into the complex that way.”

“Must be the water down there, huh?”

The sergeant remained silent even as the major slapped him on the shoulder.

“Sorry, it was a long freefall, and I don’t handle it as well as when I was a sprout.”

One of Garcia’s men came over and handed him a small bag of gear.

“What’s you plan?” the sergeant asked.

“Well, the president said he wants those people down there brought out in one piece, so I guess we’re going in.”

“Can my men and I come along?”

Garcia looked up as he handed the heavy-caliber Barrett over to the man who had given him his rapelling gear.

“Thanks, but we work better alone. Grateful for the offer though.” Garcia turned away and then stopped and faced the Event Group security man once more. “By the way Sergeant, from two hundred feet up, we saw that you put up one hell of a defense. Pass that on to your men. I can see Jack Collins’s training there. You did real well. You and your men can fight with us anytime — just not tonight.”

The sergeant watched the small officer and his thirty-six-man team move off toward the hangar and the black hole that awaited them.

“Good luck.”

Niles had never been as frightened in his life as he walked the long and curving corridor. The white plastic helped in reflecting the weak lighting from the emergency floods but did nothing to dispel the shadows that threatened to give him a stroke every time he saw his own as reflected in the plastic wall and ceiling. In the million times he had walked this very corridor heading to either his office or the conference room he had never given one thought to the darkness that would prevail in the underground complex if power had ever been lost. If they survived this night of horrors he swore to himself that he would line every hallway, office space, and stairwell with so much backup emergency lighting that the heat would fry an egg if needed. With billions of dollars in high-tech equipment and millions more for a military arm, right at that moment Niles would trade half of it for more emergency lighting.

It was amazing how his ears and mind were playing tricks on him. In the almost empty complex, echoes and sounds from many levels away could be heard wafting up through stairwells and elevator shafts. Screams of his people and gunfire from what remained of the security staff kept Niles praying and moving. As he approached the double doors leading to his office, he slowed when he heard a faint echo. To him it sounded like a deep breath had been taken in and then exhaled. He froze as he came to the last curving bend. He knew the curve of the last corner didn’t offer the protection a straight-lined wall would have, but he tried not to expose much of his body. Somewhere in the distance, perhaps three or four levels down, the thump of gunfire wafted through the soles of his shoes and popped in his ears.

As he looked around the bend he finally saw the offices where he, Pete, Charlie, and Jack had been but an hour before. The doors were still propped open and he could see the desks of his assistants inside. His private elevator was to the left of the door and from his vantage point he couldn’t see the damaged shaft. He shook his head, moved as fast as he could to the door, and then stopped.

This time it was something else. Not breathing like he thought he had heard before, but something else he couldn’t put his finger on. Cursing himself for his deep-seated fear of the dark, Compton stepped into the outer offices used by his four assistants. He quickly looked around. It seemed everything was still as it was. The damaged elevator doors and the empty tubular shaft inside looked as if they held no hidden monster waiting to jump out at Niles. He cursed himself again as he remembered the nine-millimeter Beretta Jack had slipped into his hands. He again wanted to stomp his feet in anger as his frightened state was fast becoming something that was as deadly as the unnatural soldiers prowling his complex. He angrily reached back and pulled the heavy handgun from his waistband. He felt the pressure plate designed into the new Beretta disengage the safety on the weapon as he gripped it tightly. He felt better for at least the moment as he scurried across the reception room thinking that at least now he could shoot something, even if it was himself. Niles paused at his large oak doors, just waiting and listening. His eyes caught the large portrait of Abraham Lincoln at the centermost point of the main wall. Niles rolled his eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that — all you had to deal with was the Civil War,” he whispered to himself, realizing that the humor of his small joke had made him feel better.

Collins and Everett had always told him that humor came out in the most pressure-filled situations for the simple fact that in a terrifying moment, a soldier’s brain will fall back on something that was familiar. In the American military, humor was the most common thread they had. Niles remembered what they always taught — keep it light even in times of stress; it will free your mind to think. He shook his head and for no reason he could think of, nodded up at old Abe. Then without further thought he opened the left side of the office doors.

As soon as he was in he was grateful that all fifty monitors situated around his curving walls were still on. They were all bright with the snow of no signal, but it still gave him more light than he was used to in the dark of the complex. The main thirty-foot monitor was on and the blue picture showed that Europa was still fighting to bring her systems back online. He noticed a clock in the far corner winding down from two minutes and thirty seconds. Above the clock it read “Time to power loss.”

“What in the hell does that mean?” he asked himself. He shook his head and walked quickly toward his desk and the credenza on the back wall. He knelt and as he did he suddenly looked behind him when he thought he heard something move in the outer offices. He froze for what seemed like ten full minutes but was actually only three seconds. He again shook his head to clear it of the fear and started to open the credenza drawers, hoping his radios were still there and that they had held their charge. His eyes widened behind his wire-rimmed glasses as his hands hit the first of five radios and their headsets. He pulled two of them out and turned the first one to the on position. He wanted to scream “Yes!” when the green light came on indicating a full battery charge. He stood and placed the Beretta inside of his belt and the headset onto his balding head. He looked down at the frequency and prayed that it was still set to complex security.

“Compton to Colonel Collins, come in,” he whispered, remembering the things that were stalking not only him but possibly anyone with a radio. “Compton to Colonel Collins, come in please,” he hissed.

Suddenly Niles heard a sound that stopped him cold, and it had definitely come from somewhere in the outer office.

“I hear you,” said the deep, raspy, and absolutely terrifying voice that had the quality of a bass speaker. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Niles closed his eyes and went down hard on the carpeted floor.

“Damn it,” he murmured to himself, “these things are really getting to me.” Niles slowly raised his head to look over the top of his desk and into the reception area of his office. His blood froze when he saw the large shadow as it moved from desk to desk in the office outside.

“This position is untenable,” he said quietly, trying to allow his own voice to give him the bravado he needed to take action.

As he thought, he lambasted himself for all of his inactivity over the years. If he had been in shape he would risk it by running as fast as he could out of his office and through the reception area in a break for freedom before the beast inside could react. But he knew he was fooling himself to the extreme. He could be Jessie Owens and still be caught by this thing from his deepest nightmare. He had seen how fast the creatures reacted.

“I can smell you little man,” said the voice as it tipped over the desk of one of his assistants.

Niles closed his eyes as he tried to think of something humorous as before, but nothing came. He realized that it must take practice for humor to come to your mental rescue in a stressful situation — something he would have to speak with Jack or Carl about.

When the thing had seen that there was no one hiding behind or under the first desk it went into a rage. It roared like an out-of-control animal and started smashing the other desks to pulp as it circled the office. Then it suddenly stopped and looked toward the double doors leading into Niles’s office. Its eyes next went to the adjacent double doors. The conference room was closed. Niles prayed that the beast went there first.

“Stop, think, plan, initiate,” said the deep voice as Niles heard calmness overwhelm the anger of the creature. The beast laughed again, an insane-sounding giggle-like noise that reeked of schizophrenia.

The laugh and trailing giggle were unnerving as they rumbled into his hiding place. As the beast came to his office doors Niles could swear he heard the giant sniff the air. What kind of a nightmare were they truly dealing with? Could this thing be the future of men, or their eventual doom? If this was evolution at its height, he could see no way that mankind could ever survive. Intelligence and violence advancing through evolution together? If this is what the human brain is capable of, Niles now feared for the very soul of the human race. A world of supermen and soldiers that were hard to kill, acted and hunted as animals, and could think as fast on their feet as Einstein? No, he wanted no part of that future, and he knew that this thing wasn’t going to outthink him. Not today.

The beast sniffed again, but for the first time one of its animal-like senses failed it. It went left instead of continuing into Niles’s office.

As Compton listened he screamed when he heard the beast suddenly fall into a rage again as it battered down the double oak doors and burst inside where it began to tear into the giant conference table and chairs that lined it, looking for its easy prey. Niles took that opportunity to start creeping around his desk and crawl from the office to the reception area and then to the hallway outside. Once there he knew through his frightened state that there wasn’t an animal wild or domestic that would ever catch him. At that moment he knew he was capable of flying.

As he finally reached the center of the reception area on his hands and knees, he chanced a look up and realized he would make it because the beast was even more frenzied as it tore through the inside of the conference room. Compton closed his eyes and had hope for the first time in what seemed like hours. Then disaster struck.

“This is Collins. Come in Compton. Over.”

The call could not have come at a worse moment. Niles had never adjusted the radio volume and it seemed anyone could have heard it through the entire complex.

“Oh, shit,” he said, not waiting for the beast to come at him. He leapt to his feet, his heart practically flying out of his chest. His feet spun on the slick floor of the main office. It was like a nightmare where he was stuck in sand or, even worse, syrup. His shoes finally caught traction just as the beast roared and burst out of the conference room. The enraged beast was just in time to see the backside of Compton streak into the hallway.

The chase was on between a heavyset, balding, beyond-middle-age director and a genetically altered superman.

Mendenhall led the way down the stairwell. He was down to three shots in his Beretta as they finally made it to level forty-two. He paused so the others could catch their breath before they ventured into the corridor outside the stairwell door. He looked back and nodded at Gloria, giving her a reassuring smile. Virginia was speaking softly with Sarah and Farbeaux, reassuring the Frenchman that they had made it to the level where the armory was. The Frenchman nodded his head and with the help of Denise Gilliam squeezed past Sarah and Virginia.

“What’s the plan?” Henri asked Mendenhall, interrupting his vision of Gloria Bannister.

“That’s what we need to discuss,” Will said as he moved over to the side of the landing to allow Farbeaux to stand next to him. “The armory will be locked, but unlike everything else in the complex, it’s not sealed magnetically, so power or not, we can open it with this,” he said as he pulled out a large key.

“Finally, a security design I can understand,” Henri said as he looked back at Sarah, now looking better than she had in the past hour. Her eyes managed to look up at him and she gave the Frenchman a ghost of a smile.

“You think maybe Sarah’s a little vulnerable right now, Colonel?” Mendenhall asked as his own eyes blazed at Henri when he saw the looks exchanged between Farbeaux and McIntire.

Farbeaux smiled and looked at Sarah and back again to Mendenhall. He could see Will was angry about Colonel Collins not being here, and possibly being dead. Still Henri could not resist. He looked back at Gloria who was anxiously awaiting Will to tell her to come the rest of the way up the stairs. Farbeaux’s smile broadened as he glanced back at the young black man.

“It’s highly possible she is vulnerable, Lieutenant Mendenhall, perhaps as much as Dr. Bannister is at the moment.”

Will got angry for the briefest of seconds, and his eyes went to Gloria as she looked up at him and smiled once more. The air was let loose from his lungs like a punctured tire. His shoulders slumped as he realized the Frenchman was right in his assessment. He was no better than the colonel and he knew it. He just nodded his head.

Farbeaux returned the nod and lightly slapped Will on the left shoulder.

“It is hell being human sometimes, isn’t it Lieutenant?” Henri again smiled. “But then again if we weren’t, we would end up something like those creatures out there. And I thought I was inhuman at times.”

“You are inhuman,” Will said and again nodded to the Frenchman. “Well, what do you say we go and get something to fight back with, Colonel?” Will said as he turned to the stairwell door.

“After you,” Henri said looking back at Sarah and winking in the weak lighting.

“Let’s just hope we don’t run into trouble,” Mendenhall said with a confident move to open the door.

He swung the heavy steel door open and his eyes widened as one of the giants was standing right in front of him. Mendenhall quickly closed the door and threw his body against it just as it was struck with the weight of the beast in the corridor. Farbeaux saw the lieutenant’s predicament and quickly threw his weight behind the effort to keep the abomination at bay.

“Okay, we’re in trouble!” Mendenhall yelled over the roaring outside.

Jack and Charlie stared into the black abyss where the stairwell had once been. At least three levels of steel landings and steps had been torn free from their mountings by the intelligent creatures they were struggling to survive against. Collins shook his head in utter frustration as he knew they would have to brave the hallway outside and the long curving corridor to get to one of the other three stairwells that were situated in a semicircle along this particular level.

“Doc, now you wait here while I see if there’s company waiting for us on the other side of this door. Do you understand?”

Frightened to death after he had peered into the darkness far below and seeing the stairs ripped out, Charlie could only manage to nod his head up and down several times.

“Damn it, Doc. I asked if you understood,” Jack barked angrily and then immediately regretted it.

“Yes … Colonel,” Ellenshaw finally managed.

“Alright, do as I say and maybe I’ll let you have a hand grenade,” Jack said with a wicked twist of his lips, knowing he would never give Crazy Charlie one of the small explosive devices, one that he could pull the pin on and hold until it went off in his hand. But the mere offer worked on the old hippie turned soldier wannabe.

Collins turned to the door, took a deep breath, and then opened it slowly. The hallway as far as he could see left and right seemed to be clear. The emergency lighting was still functioning, meaning that the creatures more than likely had not visited this level. He looked back at the wide-eyed, crazed-haired Charlie who waited without breathing for Jack to say something.

“Okay, come on, Doc.”

Charlie followed Jack into the curving corridor. He raised the M-14 carbine, careful to aim it away from the colonel’s back as he had numerous times since their journey had begun and been stingingly admonished for it. There were several flashes from the emergency floods likely due to weakened wiring that made the two men pause as they moved down the seemingly clear hallway. They passed the brand-new nuclear science labs and made sure to duck beneath the broad windows in case there were surprises waiting in Virginia’s laboratories. Collins raised his hand up in the air and Charlie stopped, but not before running into the colonel’s backside. Jack looked back and shook his head.

“Wipe your glasses off, Doc; they’re all fogged up.”

Ellenshaw did as he was told, surprised when he placed the thick glasses back on at how he had seen anything before he was told to clean them.

Just as Jack started to move forward again the radio at his side sent a message through to his earpiece. Collins was instantly ashamed that he had actually jumped at the suddenness of the noise, which in turn made Ellenshaw yelp. Collins hissed for the hundredth time in the last thirty minutes. He quickly placed a finger to his lips, making sure Charlie remained quiet, but still ashamed for acting just as frightened and actually showing it. The answer Jack knew was to blame Charlie … it made him feel better.

“Compton to Colonel Collins.” Jack tried to return the call, but Niles jumped in too quickly, cutting him off. “Compton to Colonel Collins, come in.”

At that very moment Charlie reached out and took Jack by the arm, tilting his head to their rear. Collins looked and saw nothing, but Ellenshaw pointed to his left ear and tapped it. Jack listened. He heard the sound of heavy breathing, and then something crashed far away but on the same level.

“Damn, we have company on this level, Doc,” he said as he started walking faster toward the large curve and the stairwell beyond. As they moved away from the sound behind them, Jack reached down and made sure his volume was lowered since he didn’t exactly know how sensitive the soldiers’ hearing was. “Collins to Compton, come in. Over,” he said softly into the microphone poised at the corner of his mouth. “Collins to Compton, over,” he repeated.

Suddenly Ellenshaw saw the colonel jerk as the voice of Niles came screaming over his earpiece.

“Colonel, listen, I don’t have a lot of time,” Niles said while breathing hard and running. “I have one ugly son of a bitch chasing me. You have to get down to level eighty-four immediately. Those smartass bastards have shut down the cooling pumps for reactors one and two. Do you hear? Level eighty-four, Jack, eighty-four — gotta go!”

Charlie saw Collins freeze as he heard what Niles had to say. “What is it?” Ellenshaw whispered as he turned when another crashing noise was heard below them.

Collins reached back and grabbed Ellenshaw by the collar, forcing him along the hallway. As they approached the stairwell door, Jack cursed as he heard something back along the corridor start running after them.

“Oh, there’s something coming Colonel,” Charlie said as his feet were flying down the hallway past Jack like a scared rabbit with the colonel dead on his heels.

The two men finally reached the nearest stairwell door and Jack threw it open. He took one step inside and started to fall. Ellenshaw reached out and caught Jack by his collar, reversing the roles from just moments before. Collins had stepped right off into space. Charlie dropped the M-14 and tried using both hands to pull Collins back from the abyss as he realized the creatures had torn out the landing and the stairs below it. Collins dangled as the three assault packages slipped from his grip and tumbled end over end into the darkness below. Charlie struggled to keep the colonel in check, but he was quickly losing the battle. Collins finally managed to reach out and take hold of a twisted piece of metal to arrest his fall and help Ellenshaw, who was far stronger than Jack had ever given him credit for, gain a better handhold on his shirt. Finally he found purchase for his foot on a partially ripped out stair and pushed himself backward. With a final heave both he and Ellenshaw fell backward through the open door. As they both tried to catch their breath, they heard the pounding of heavy footsteps stop and then the sound of breaking glass as whatever it was crashed through the window into the nuclear sciences labs.

“Thanks, Doc,” Jack said as he gained his feet and pulled Ellenshaw to his. He quickly reached out and grabbed the three remaining assault packages strapped to Charlie’s back. He immediately knew what their only escape could be. He pulled out several large coils of very thin black nylon rope. It wasn’t thick but had the tensile strength of a thousand pounds. Jack quickly brought out his rapelling ring and attached it to his pants at the waist. Then he repeated the same for Ellenshaw who was staring at him with wider-than-normal befuddled eyes.

“What is this?” Charlie asked with a small whine.

“Have you ever rapelled before Doc?”

“Uh, no,” he said shaking his head even though Jack had already started prying at the elevator doors next to the stairwell.

“Well, suck it up Doc because you’re about to get a crash course,” he said as he finally parted the two doors and looked down the black tube until it vanished forty-two levels below. The draft produced by the empty and powered-down shaft lifted the colonel’s collar as he watched and listened.

“Suck it up?” Ellenshaw said with panic forcing his eyes now even wider than the thick lenses could account for.

Jack continued to stare into the deep, dark elevator tube. He looked back through the doors when the sounds of crashing and breaking stopped inside the distant laboratories.

“We’re out of time here, Doc.” Jack went to Charlie and quickly threaded the rope through the tungsten steel ring attached to Charlie’s waist. He could feel Ellenshaw shaking almost uncontrollably as he made the connection. “You have to go first, Charlie. I hate to say it, but if for some reason you fall you won’t take me with you. I have to get to the reactors and start the cooling pumps.” Jack added this last little tidbit to take the sting off of Ellenshaw’s possible, no imminent, death.

“Reactors?” he said as he watched Jack reach into the tube and find a good solid attach point for the rope. Then he pulled out another coil of black rope and double-knotted the two together, adding the last of the rope from Charlie’s third assault package. “I hope this is enough,” he said as he stood and patted Ellenshaw on the back.

“What do you mean, you hope? What if it isn’t?”

Jack smiled. “Isn’t being a soldier fun Charlie?”

“If I get out of this I am never leaving my lab again.”

Jack quickly reached into the bag and pulled out two pairs of leather gloves, slapping one of them into Ellenshaw’s hand. “Put these on, that rope’s going to get hot.”

“Hot? What do you mean—”

“Okay, sling that weapon, no, no, sling it to your back. If it’s in the front it’ll take your head off when … when you land. Now, take your left hand and hold the rope here. Then bring your left to your back and take hold of it there just above your spine. You control the speed of your descent by tightening and loosening your grip at your spine. Do you understand?”

“Uh, no, not—”

“Good, now lean out backward with a firm grip … that’s it, just lean out over the tube. Balance yourself Charlie and hold both rope points tightly,” Jack said as he heard another crash of glass, this time outward into the hallway close by. “I hate to be a little wimp here, Doc, but something wicked this way comes. Hang on,” he said as he kicked Ellenshaw’s feet away from the edge of the elevator doors.

Jack was shocked when Charlie disappeared in a split-second. All he saw was the last of Charlie’s white hair as it vanished into the darkness below just as the colonel’s heart fell through his chest. He knew he had just basically murdered Ellenshaw. He quickly came to his senses.

“Tighten your grip damn it!” Jack screamed fast realizing he had just alerted the thing in back of them to exactly where he was. He leaned into the tube and tried to see Ellenshaw’s bent and broken body anywhere far below. “Doc!”

“Wahoo, that was a rush!” came Ellenshaw’s voice from deep inside the tube. The statement echoed six times before it vanished.

“Damn!” Jack said as he attached his own rope. “Go ahead, Doc, get moving and make it fast. Bizzaro superman is coming.” He had to smile when he heard Ellenshaw zip farther down the tube into the black hole where there was once nothing but good people, and now was filled with monsters. “Good boy Charlie.”

Collins slung three weapons, the shotgun, the Ingram, and an M-14 carbine over his shoulder, and then positioned himself facing away from the tube just as the creature hunting them came around the bend in the corridor. Their eyes locked and the creature exposed its teeth, which were wide and long and were showing through a surprised but very pleased grinning mouth. The abnormal eyes shown in the semidark like those of a hunting cat. It shook its head at the easy prey ahead of it and charged.

“You’ll excuse me if I don’t wait around dickhead,” Jack said as he pushed off into the great abyss of the tube just as the beast roared in anger and defeat.

As the six men and women scrambled down the stairs, it was Mendenhall who realized after half an hour that he was not hearing the sound of pursuit from the creature that had surprised him in the doorway. He held his hand up and the others stopped their descent. Sarah reached around Henri and felt the blood flowing pretty freely.

“Will, the colonel’s wounds have opened up,” she said, trying not to shout.

Denise Gilliam raised the Frenchman’s lab coat and surgical blouse. She shook her head. “Damn it, it’s like he wasn’t stitched up at all.” She looked up at Farbeaux and shook her head, knowing he would have a hard time seeing her disapproval in the darkness of the stairwell. “You stupid Frenchman; why didn’t you say something?”

“Well, Doctor, I didn’t really want to stop and receive any more wounds. That chap in the doorway up there didn’t look like the type that would pause for a wounded man. I don’t think mercy to the fallen is one of their strong suits.”

“Good point,” Sarah said, finally smiling up at him.

“Okay, if he dies, it may be a better death than what’s waiting for us,” Will said as he turned and faced his charges. “Dr. Pollock, we’re on sixty-one. The first vault enclosures are here. Is there anything we can use on this level to help us?”

Virginia tried to bring up the inventory secured inside vaults 0001–1000 from memory to see if anything stood out. She shook her head. “I don’t know, Will. We just moved new artifacts in four days ago. Hell, my mind isn’t working.”

“Can’t say as I blame you for that,” Mendenhall said as he cracked the stairwell door and looked through into the darkened corridor. He saw the security arch leading to the vault section. He could see the dead laser grid and darkened arch, meaning they could enter that section without getting zapped by ten thousand volts of electricity.

“Lieutenant, I think locking ourselves inside one of your magnificent vaults is a very good idea at this point. I prefer it to running aimlessly in this dark stairwell,” Henri said as he tightened his grip on Sarah, who returned the gesture. He was beginning to like being the helpless one in the group.

Mendenhall looked back at the five people behind and above him on the stairs. Gloria looked at him with the hope that he knew what to do. He was loath to disappoint the doctor, so he nodded his head.

“Okay, Colonel, I think you may have something. But the electricity is out, meaning that the vaults are all open. But maybe we can find one of the larger ones and barricade ourselves inside until the cavalry comes.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Virginia said.

“Let’s do it. I have a real bad feeling our luck on this stairwell is fast running out,” Denise offered, looking nervously up into the darkness.

Will again pushed the door open and stuck his head out. He waited for something to rip it off, but nothing came out of the dimly illuminated corridor. He cautiously pushed the door open all the way and at the same time waved the others forward.

As they exited the stairwell next to the elevator tube, Sarah stopped and hushed everyone. They all heard it immediately. It sounded just like the muffled voice and yell of Crazy Charlie Ellenshaw coming from inside the elevator tube. But they all knew there wasn’t an elevator for Ellenshaw to ride. Then the sound vanished just as fast as it took for them all to stop and listen more closely.

“That was weird,” Sarah said as she took a stronger hold of Henri and started to move again.

Mendenhall held out the nine millimeter before him as he made it to the security arch. He cautiously leaned over the desk where a guard would usually be stationed to cover that level. He looked at the screen and quickly saw that it was still blue. Europa was still down.

“Damn it,” he said as the others approached.

“Has anyone checked the old girl’s batteries,” Henri said as he slumped a little further against Sarah.

“Good one, Colonel. I’ll remember to tell Dr. Golding of your comment. I’m sure he’ll make allowances for the next monster invasion,” Will said as he took Gloria by the hand and moved off into the long and curving corridor that housed the vault area. Mendenhall thought he had made a good return quip when he realized that he and Gloria were the only ones going inside the security arch.

“Uh, Lieutenant, our company has arrived,” Farbeaux said as all at once all four people turned and ran through the arch past Will and Gloria.

As Mendenhall peered into the darkness where they had all been just a second before, he saw it. The beast, the glow of its eyes visible, was just standing by the stairwell, or floating would be a better word as the beast dipped and rose as it continued looking at him and Gloria.

“As I was told earlier, there is now nowhere to run,” said the deep and raspy voice. The creature started forward at an easy gait, knowing the six men and women had no place to go but farther back into darkness.

As Virginia led the way, she turned suddenly to the left into a vault she had most recently been inside of just three days before. She stood at the front of the twelve-inch-thick steel door and waved everyone inside. Sarah and Farbeaux tripped over the steel threshold and went down, causing Will, Gloria, and Virginia to crash into each other. Mendenhall made a quick decision and pushed everyone farther inside and then just as quickly stepped back out of the vault.

“What in the hell are you doing Lieutenant?” Virginia shouted angrily as she pushed through the others to try to pull Mendenhall back inside.

“Giving this thing two targets instead of one. Seal this up as best you can,” Will shouted as he pushed the two-ton steel door closed, effectively shutting out the cursing from those inside.

They heard the beast laughing as it reached the very threshold of the vault Will had just left, or at least they hoped he had left. Virginia knew the vault door wouldn’t lock as she spun the security wheel in the center of the stainless-steel door. Just as the wheel locked, Virginia felt the beast outside start to turn it back to the open position. She looked around in a blind panic, and it was a shocked and stunned Gloria who came to their rescue. In the light of the single emergency bulb in the back of the steel-encased room Virginia quickly saw what the young scientist was carrying. Dr. Pollock nodded her head vigorously as Gloria, tears streaming over Mendenhall’s sudden departure, placed the short-shafted spear through the wheel’s spokes and then secured its bottom half against the metal framing crisscrossing the door. She made sure the sharpened point was secure against the steel bracing at the top just as the beast outside pulled heavily on the vault’s door and tried to turn the wheel from the outside.

Gloria and Virginia stepped backward with a start when the door was hit, sending dirt and small rocks down from the ceiling. The thick shaft of the spear held even though it bowed to the left, almost to the breaking point. Just as the wheel was about to turn, snapping the small spear, Denise and Sarah were there with two more of the short throwing spears copying what Gloria had just done. Now there were three of these small spear shafts holding the door’s locking wheel closed against the onslaught from the other side.

“Where would I be without you guys?” Virginia asked as she backed away from the steel door, watching the spears rattle and bend and then become still.

Will regretted not having at least perused the list of new artifacts now being stored on the newly constructed vault level. From behind him in the dark corridor with gleaming but at the moment dull stainless-steel vaults running along both sides of the wide hall, Mendenhall heard the scream of the creature as it attacked the vault he had just left with all of the women and a wounded Farbeaux inside. He was relieved when he failed to hear the screams of his friends after the first assault on the steel vault.

“Hey you ugly son of a bitch, I’m down here!” Will shouted back into the darkness. The move had caught even himself off-guard. He shook his head as the beast situated around the bend in the hallway ceased moving and attacking the vault. Will just knew it was now looking down the once-gleaming corridor trying to discern where his prey was situated and what trap could possibly be waiting for it.

Then Mendenhall heard what he feared most — the creature turned on its heels and started his way.

“Well, this is what you wanted,” Will mumbled to himself as he turned into the largest vault on the brand-new level sixty-one and closed the giant door behind him, shutting out the running footsteps of the creature as it came on.

Inside vault number 0001, things had calmed when they felt that the beast had left the vault door. As they relaxed momentarily, everyone fought for breath and as they did they all noticed for the first time what vault Virginia had led them into.

“I’ll be damned,” Gloria said, wiping her eyes dry as she staggered over to assist Sarah in getting Henri to his feet.

Farbeaux whistled as he took in the artifacts he could see with the single light bulb at the back of the vault.

“You people never cease to amaze, I’ll give you that.”

Arranged around the large vault were riches and artifacts that had once belonged to a Zulu king known to the world as Cetshwayo — the man who brought down British forces in the largest defeat of a modern well-equipped army by native tribesmen in history. That battle brought on the legend of the Zulu Dawn, a historical fact that the trapped men and women inside vault number 0001-61890 had in common with the British Empire on January 22, 1879. They were in danger of being trapped and wiped out without mercy.

11

Niles ran so fast around the blind corner that his black shoes caught on the carpet and sent him flying to the floor within sight of the computer center. He cursed his own clumsiness as the radio flew from his hand and smashed against the far wall. He quickly tried to rise as he heard the creature slam into a wall as it negotiated its huge body around the bend in the hallway, taking the turn too fast. Compton hurriedly tried to raise himself from the floor, and as he collapsed back down he knew that he had broken his left ankle. He tried once more and finally made it to his knees and then to his right foot. He hopped three feet before he had to reach out and take hold of the plastic-lined wall. He shook his head in anger and realized he would never make it the thirty feet to the bulletproof computer center.

Suddenly and frighteningly hands were on him lifting him up, and for the life of him he couldn’t help it — he screamed. It was a high-pitched sound that he couldn’t believe had emanated from his own mouth.

“Oh, hang on you sissy!”

Niles realized that the tall and lanky Pete Golding, who hadn’t lifted anything heavier than a stapler in the past ten years, had actually picked him up and placed him over his slight shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He was running down the carpeted hallway to the sanctuary he called home. Before Compton realized what was happening they were through the double six-inch glass doors and he was roughly thrown onto a large desk as Pete swung around and manually locked the doors. As Golding backed away he saw how close they had come to a bad end. In his efforts, through his grunting and his yelling, he hadn’t realized how close Niles’s pursuer had been to catching them from behind.

“Oh, shit!” Pete yelled as he backed away from the glass so fast that he crashed into the desk where Compton was fighting to rise. The desk tilted and Niles went flying off onto the risers above the computer center floor.

The beast hit the glass wall just to the left of the double doors. The impact into the bulletproof glass sent a wide, streaking crack snaking through the reinforced wall. The beast rebounded and then fell to the floor, surprised that it hadn’t crashed through this glass like any other in the complex. Pete watched in stunned silence as the former mercenary shook its head and jumped back to its feet. Instead of backing away and gaining momentum for another charge, it took two steps to the left and started to examine the wall. Its head tilted right and then left as it studied the problem before it. The two men saw the wide swath of blood as it coursed down from the left ear of the giant.

“Jesus, Niles, it’s using problem-solving skills,” Pete said as he backed farther away from the glass. “It’s that advanced even though the massive dose it ingested is at this moment killing its brain cells, the very ones the drug just activated. If these men had taken a normal dose, a dose intended in actual combat, they would have just been unafraid to die; still thinking, just a want of killing slicing through their expanding brains.”

Niles looked up at Pete as if he were crazy.

“Perhaps it would be better if you filed your report on Perdition’s Fire later, when we have more time?”

Pete knew he had started running on because he was so frightened at what was happening. Explaining something to Niles allowed Pete to slow his mind and get a better grasp of the situation. He cleared his throat and moved his weight away from the director.

The creature stopped examining the crack in the window for a moment as Pete’s movement caught its glowing eyes. It watched the thin computer director for a moment and then like the others before it, it smiled. It slowly placed a hand near the spiderweb crack and ran one of its elongated, trunklike fingers over it.

Pete turned to look at the computer center’s main viewing screen and saw the ticking down of Europa’s power system. She had forty-four seconds of life left to her.

“Europa,” Pete called out loudly, hoping her internal systems could pick up his voice, “are you still with me baby?”

After examining the glass and probing the crack, the beast closed its hand into a ham-sized fist and hit the broken glass precisely where the riverlike crack formed, sending small pieces of clear material onto the carpeted floor inside the computer center. The smile widened as it caught sight of Pete once more. Then its eyes moved to Compton as the director finally managed to stand on one leg and use the desks to hop away from where he thought the mercenary was going to crash through the wall.

“Yes, Dr. Golding,” Europa finally answered.

“Tell me you came up with something while I was out?” Pete said as he reached out and helped Niles down the steps leading to the center’s floor.

“If you are referencing our earlier discussion on power replacement, yes, I have a solution, but it involves a major shutdown of all civil systems.”

“What in the hell does that mean?”

“Europa, commence implementing your plan immediately!” Niles called out loudly.

“Yes, Dr. Compton.”

“For God’s sake, hurry before you’re dead in the water!” Pete added as the beast hit the wall again, this time with both hands, fingers entwined. A plate-sized hole appeared in the wall as glass cascaded into the center.

“Well, we gave it a hell of a shot, Peter,” Niles said as he hopped in time with Pete’s movement to the floor.

“Yeah, we did boss,” Golding said as he watched a third blow shatter ten feet of wall.

The creature smiled broadly as it stepped through the hole it had just created, its bare feet crunching through the thick glass as it did so.

Niles Compton and Pete Golding watched as their fate stepped toward the large aisle leading down to their location on the center’s floor.

It was over.

The fifty-five-year-old man who had worked all of his life in his family’s dry cleaning business in Wheeling, West Virginia, one who had saved for this vacation for he and his wife for two years, watched as the smiling but sorrowful blackjack dealer pulled the last of his chips away. His last card was a queen of hearts, breaking him at twenty-two. His wife placed her arm around him as the last of their savings had disappeared in less than twenty-four hours. The man hung his head as a stranger patted him on the shoulder.

“Tough luck, buddy,” he said with a less than genuine smile. “Think I can have that seat now that you’re done?”

The dry cleaner could only nod as he finally looked over at his wife. He expected her to be angry, but instead she smiled and leaned into him placing her arm on his waist and making the man waiting for an empty seat roll his eyes at the sentiment being displayed.

Suddenly the lights in not only New York, New York but every building inside the Las Vegas city limits went out. The power was taken from lines all the way to the outskirts of Los Angeles as Europa had done the only thing she could do — she had hacked directly into the power grid streaming outward from Hoover Dam.

Women screamed and men jumped in the seconds just prior to the emergency lighting coming on. The dry cleaner was knocked to the swirling red carpet as he lost his wife of thirty-two years in the confusion. The blackjack table was knocked over on to him and was literally broken in two as men scrambled for the thousand chips that were loosed on the floor.

What everyone thought was mass panic was actually the largest robbery in the history of the United States, as every casino in Las Vegas attempted to fend off every man, woman, winner, and loser inside of their darkened establishments. The revenge for sixty years of casinos in Las Vegas separating people from their money had started.

The dry cleaner tried desperately to gain his feet as men and women rushed around him in the dim lights of the battery-powered system. The backup generators for New York, New York kicked in at thirty-one seconds, but not before mass chaos struck the strip.

Suddenly the dry cleaner felt hands on him and was helped to his feet. He was bleeding badly from a scalp wound as he realized it was his wife who had helped him escape the stampede. As they tried to traverse the gaming floor and make it to the front doors, security men came running in every direction. Then the backup generators kicked in. The bright lights illuminated a historic mess as men and women fought hand to hand for the spoils on the tables and floor. Security was doing its best to get the situation under control, making people drop their chips and warning them that all chips on the floor that night were accounted for and their surveillance systems knew exactly which players were winners and which ones were losers. The frenzied crowd didn’t really care. They looted anyway.

As the couple made it to the front door, the two security men pushing people back into the main floor saw that the man being helped by the woman was cut badly on his head. Looking around to make sure they weren’t being watched, the two large guards had a moment of sympathy and allowed the couple to get free of the mess inside the main casino.

As they hit the hot night air they saw that the situation outside wasn’t any better than inside. Cars had rear-ended each other and there were massive jam-ups on Las Vegas Boulevard. The couple walked until they found a stone bench that had been placed in an area designed to look like Central Park, another place they had always wanted to travel to. The woman used a handkerchief to wipe some of the blood away from her husband’s head. She leaned over and kissed his cheek.

“I’m sorry honey,” the man stammered. “I should have known I wasn’t a gambler. I’m an idiot.”

The woman smiled and put her arm around the man who struggled to get by at their dry cleaners in Wheeling all of their married lives.

“Oh, you’re not that bad,” she said smiling. Then she reached over and showed him the inside of her purse. It was full of cash from the drop box located on the bottom of the blackjack table. When the locked steel top had been stepped on so hard that it was forced open, his wife had struck as fast as John Dillinger. While everyone was fighting for chips they would never be able to keep, she had grabbed the one thing that would never fail — cash. The man looked inside the purse and his eyes widened.

“What … how—”

“Look, I would say we came out of our little foray to Las Vegas about five thousand dollars ahead of the game. What do you say we go home?”

The man leaned over and kissed his wife deeply.

“Yeah, let’s get while the gettin’ is good.”

Suddenly the overhead fluorescent lighting came to full power, stunning the beast as it entered the computer center. It shielded its eyes as Europa came back to full life. Immediately alarms resumed sounding throughout the complex as Niles slapped Pete on the back.

“At least we gave those below a fighting chance!” Compton yelled happily.

The creature above them finally recovered its vision and shook its giant head once more. It took a moment to reacquire the two men, and when it did it smiled, once more exposing enlarged, crooked teeth. It was the most frightening grin either man had ever seen.

Before they realized what was happening, the beast stopped in its tracks and its body started to convulse as a cacophony of noise so loud it brought the men down accompanied by bullets teasing through the broken glass of the computer center. The beast roared and turned toward a threat it hadn’t seen coming. It tried to shield its eyes and head from the onslaught, but there was just too much metal-jacketed lead flying. Bullet after bullet struck the former mercenary. Large-caliber rounds tore its upper body to pieces as it went to its knees. The eruption of gunfire continued until four very loud blasts echoed inside the center. The head of the beast, along with the hand and arm that had been covering its face, exploded in a spray of red mist. The firing ceased as the body of the mercenary fell forward out of view of Niles and Pete who managed to look up in time to see the creature’s demise.

“Clear!” called out a voice from the hallway.

Niles looked over at a stunned Pete Golding who had covered his head with his arms after they had hit the floor.

“I said clear damn it!”

“C … c … clear!” Niles shouted.

As they looked up over the stair risers above them, a small man along with five others came through the hole in the glass wall. One of the men emptied a full magazine of nine-millimeter rounds into the twitching torso of the giant at his feet.

“Identify yourselves, please,” the man in the lead wearing an old bush hat called down. He reached up and handed his ambient-light goggles to one of his men.

“Dr. Niles Compton, Dr. Pete Golding!” the director called out as Pete slowly helped him to his feet.

“Dr. Golding, answer a question for me please,” the small man with camouflaged black and gray greasepaint covering his features said as his five men came forward and aimed their weapons at the two stunned men.

Niles could now only shake his head as the events of the last minute finally zapped his remaining strength and the adrenalin rush started to ebb.

“What is your nickname that the president uses when speaking to you?” the man asked as he cradled the Barrett fifty-caliber rifle across his chest. At that moment their savior didn’t look at all friendly, and neither did his men.

Niles looked from the six men above them to Pete. Then his eyes went down to examine his broken ankle.

“Baldy,” he mumbled.

“Sorry, sir, I didn’t hear your response,” the man said as the five aimed weapons zeroed in a little tighter than before.

“Baldy, damn it!” Niles answered loudly enough for his voice to echo inside the computer center. He finally looked up, angry as hell his nickname had been exposed in front of Pete.

The man smiled and gestured for his five men to lower their weapons. He used hand gestures to order them to take up station out in the hallway. He stepped down the risers as agile as a man walking on cotton and came face to face with Niles and Pete.

“I’ll have one of my men look at that ankle, Dr. Compton,” the small man said as he took in the haggard men before him.

“Who are you and who sent you?” Niles asked as he leaned on Pete even more than before.

“Well, sir, I am a major in the United States Army. I cannot tell you my unit, but I can say that we were sent by the president. Now, is Colonel Collins here and is he alive?”

“Yes, he’s here and was alive the last time I saw him.”

“Excellent,” Major Garcia said as he turned and started up the stairs. “Where is he located at the moment,” he asked as he moved back up the risers.

Suddenly Europa came fully awake. “There are fifteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds left till core meltdown. Repeat, there are fifteen minutes, twenty-five seconds remaining till core meltdown.”

Garcia pointed at the overhead speaker system. “I take it the colonel’s location has something to do with that?” “Grateful Dead” Garcia asked as he came to a stop on the stairs and then half tuned to look down on the two men once again.

“Level eighty-four, the reactor section, and he probably has some very angry and insane company down there with him.”

“Then that’s where we have to be,” Garcia said as he started back up the steps. “It was an honor to meet a friend of the president’s, Dr. Compton, and a man this mission was codenamed for.”

Niles looked from Garcia’s back to Pete and then back at the army major again. “And what was the code name?” he asked as his anger started immediately to grow.

“Operation Nerdlinger, Doctor. My medic will be down to help you ASAP.”

“Operation Nerdlinger, that bastard!”

As Collins traveled down the length of the darkened elevator tube he heard the beast they had just escaped from fall silent. He thought for sure the altered mercenary would have done what he had noticed the giants had become adept at — following them. As he slowed three levels from the bottom, he adjusted his grip on the rope and managed to get a small flashlight out and examine the sides of the stainless-steel shaft. His hunch was correct as he examined the deep indentations from one of the creature’s efforts to traverse the slippery sides. That confirmed in his mind that one of them was below on the reactor level waiting for them, and his soldier’s instinct told him who that would be — Smith.

Jack pocketed the small light and slowly continued his descent toward the lowest level of the complex.

Before he reached level eighty-four, he saw the top of Charlie Ellenshaw’s head. The white hair acted as a beacon to tell him where the bottom was. As he gently touched down he realized that Charlie wasn’t on the bottom of the pneumatic tube, he was kneeling on the top of the disabled elevator rubbing his knees and rocking back and forth. When he heard the whine of Jack’s hands on the rope, Ellenshaw nearly panicked and tried to grab the M-14 he had lain beside him. He fumbled it as Jack lightly landed on the elevator’s torn top.

“You alright?” he whispered as he undid his rigging.

“I damn near broke both of my legs,” Charlie said as he continued to rub his scraped-up knees.

“Are you going to live?” Jack asked as he examined exactly where they had landed.

The top of the air-assisted elevator had been wrenched open like a can of soup. Jack kneeled down and looked inside the dark interior. It was empty.

“I think I heard something a minute before you dropped in,” Ellenshaw said as he finally reached for his fallen weapon. Charlie shook his head as he wiped blood from his chin.

“Damn, Doc, did you slow down at all before you hit?” Collins asked as he placed his legs over the edge of the hole.

“I slowed down just fine,” he said and slapped the two weapons still slung in front of him. “Then these damn things came up and nearly coldcocked me when I hit.” He looked over at Jack. “I made one hell of a lot of noise, Colonel. If one of those things is in there he had to have heard me yelp like a schoolgirl.”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now, right?” Jack asked, feeling the stickiness of his gloves as he braced himself at the opening. He raised his hand and smelled the substance and knew immediately that it was blood — thick, rich, and still wet.

“Right,” Charlie answered, sad that he had let Collins down.

Jack looked at Ellenshaw one last time and slowly lowered himself into the black hole of the elevator. He hit softly, making sure nothing on his person rattled or made a noise. As Charlie’s foot came through the top, Collins reached up and tapped his black shoe. He saw Ellenshaw look down and Jack held his hand up and pointed. Charlie frowned as he understood that the colonel wanted him to stay put for the moment. Ellenshaw nodded his head, thinking that Jack was condemning him to once more stay out of harm’s way.

Jack hesitated as he leaned against the frame where the doors of the elevator once were. He saw one of the doors about ten feet away. In the dim lighting of the emergency lamp near the far wall, he saw even more blood on the sidewalls of the car. He looked out and saw the rail lead off toward the reactor. He just hoped that whichever creature was down here was too wounded to fight, or possibly even dead. Collins took his first step out onto the concrete floor of the reactor room.

Charlie watched as the colonel vanished. He knew he just couldn’t hang back like Collins wanted. He hated disobeying his order to stay, but as he was reminded time and time again by the security men he admired, he wasn’t a soldier. So orders meant little to him. Charlie eased himself through the hole, careful not to go crashing down and making him look the fool again. When he eased his aching feet onto the carpeted floor of the car, he quickly removed his glasses and wiped them clean. With a deep breath that he was careful to hold and expel silently, Ellenshaw stepped out into the open to follow the colonel.

Collins saw the two reactor vessels and the steam lines running out of them. Then he looked to the right and saw the coolant lines. He took a breath, relieved that they hadn’t been smashed into oblivion. He allowed his eyes to adjust to the near darkness and then took three quick steps over to a large tank of distilled water. He saw fifteen of the 5,000-gallon tanks and again was relieved to see that they were undamaged. He stopped at that point and listened. He thought he heard a sound coming from a distant corner of level eighty-four, but he wasn’t sure. He knew he couldn’t risk turning on the pumps, which were located between the two reactor cores, without ascertaining if one of the killers was in here with them.

He eased himself along the stainless-steel tanks, careful to place his boots on nothing more than concrete. He brought the Ingram up close to his cheek so he wouldn’t have to get off a snap shot at anything that came out of the dark. He came to a small separation between water tanks five and six and risked a look in between them. He saw a longer blood trail, but couldn’t see where it led. He cursed the darkness as he continued to move forward. He finally came to the last tank, meaning that the next step he took would leave him fully exposed to anything in the large room. Before he did that he looked around the giant tank and examined what he could of reactor number one. He saw the view port in the sixteen-inch steel door. There was a soft-green hue emanating from the vessel. He realized that time was running out. The steam from inside, generated by the nuclear fuel rods not being cooled, looked as if it were starting to melt the rubber seal not only around the view port but the thick containment door as well. There were streaks of blackened rubber flowing down the front of the reactor. He didn’t have to see number two as he suspected that it was also in a state of total meltdown. He looked down at his wristwatch and saw that according to his calculations he had about eighteen minutes to get the coolant flowing again. He had to risk exposure.

He stepped out from the protective cover of the last water tank.

The wounded beats struck Jack from the side. He was sent sliding along the polished concrete floor until his head slammed into the twenty-inch steel base of reactor number one. The stars flew bright as he came close to losing consciousness. As he shook his head to clear his vision, he was shocked to see the very same soldier he thought he had killed on level seven. The shots to the head, coupled with its fall down the elevator tube, should have smashed it to bits. Then he understood that the blood he found and the scratches and dents in the tube meant that the creature had somehow arrested its fall.

As he tried to sit up, he saw that the beast was staggering. It hit the water tank and came close to dislodging it from its secured base. Then he saw the stumps at the end of its long arms. Blood was pouring from the wounds where he had shot free the massive appendages. Jack reached for his fallen weapon, but the beast acted much faster than Collins would have thought possible considering its state. It actually leaped from fifteen feet away and landed in front of him. It kicked out with its tree trunk — sized foot and smashed Jack in the ribs, snapping two of them. With no air in his lungs Collins tried to roll before he was kicked again. The beast roared in anger as bullets started slamming into it from behind. As he rolled away, his eyes saw a sight he would never forget: Charlie Ellenshaw was limping forward from the spot he had just been. He was taking careful aim with the M-14. There was one second between each perfect shot as bullet after bullet struck the wounded soldier in the neck, face, and head. It staggered as Charlie ejected the spent magazine, and with a determined look he slammed home a fresh one. Then as Jack took his first breath in thirty seconds, he saw Ellenshaw stop and push his glasses back up his nose and begin his deliberate firing at the beast once more.

The creature finally went down to one knee and then both. Ellenshaw with a determined gait purposefully stepped as close to the dying creature as he dared and placed the muzzle of the M-14 against the center of its forehead. As the former mercenary meekly lifted its handless arm to protect itself, Charlie quickly placed four 5.56-millimeter rounds into its brain, making sure each side of that brain received two bullets. The naked creature fell over onto its side and died lying against nuclear reactor number one, right next to the badly hurt Jack Collins.

Ellenshaw slowly lowered the weapon and took a breath before he passed out from lack of oxygen. He felt his knees weaken and caught himself as he saw Jack struggling to get up. He quickly forgot about his own feeling of nausea at what he had just done and rushed forward to assist the colonel. He knelt beside Collins and helped him to his feet, where Jack took one and then another deep breath, each one more agonizing than the one before it.

“Good thing I didn’t stay put, huh? That fella was treating you like a football.”

All Collins could do was nod his head.

“Well, let’s get the water flowing again,” Ellenshaw said. Jack nodded still in dire pain from the broken ribs.

Suddenly the overhead lights blared to life, filling the reactor room with such a bright luminescence that it stunned the two men. Charlie lowered his eyes, the light nearly blinding him as it shot through his glasses. Immediately after that the scram alarms started, and the warning bells began decrying the stoppage of distilled water to the cooling pumps. Then came the shock of their lives as Europa announced in her sexy voice, making the message sound trite and flippant, “There are fifteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds left till core meltdown. Repeat, there are now fifteen minutes, five seconds remaining till core meltdown.”

“Oh, shit,” Ellenshaw said as he held Collins upright. “We have plenty of time, right Colonel? I mean, we just have to switch on the cooling pumps right?”

He suddenly felt Jack move as he started struggling against Charlie’s grip. As Ellenshaw looked down he saw the colonel’s face go flush. He tried to see what it was Collins was seeing, and then he did.

Standing not thirty feet away with its huge arms at its side was the creature once known as Smith. In his right hand both men saw something in the bright light. As Smith smiled, the creature allowed the six large fuses to slip from its grasp and strike the floor at its feet.

“Uh, what are those?” Charlie asked staring at the six large tubular-shaped sticks.

Jack coughed up blood but managed to get the words out as he looked up at the gloating Smith, who stood with a large and sickening smile on his elongated face.

“They’re … four … hundred.… amp fuses.”

“And what are the fuses for?” Charlie asked slowly, getting a horrible, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“The … cooling … pumps.”

“I take it that’s bad?”

Jack again coughed up blood and then fell to his knees.

“Well, why the hell not?” Ellenshaw said, feeling all alone and not exactly ready to face the hulking giant before him.

All around him the sound of the alarms increased as Europa continued her countdown from five minutes.

Will Mendenhall placed his weight against the giant steel door, knowing his body couldn’t possibly fend off that much beef. The beast struck the door once more, and Mendenhall lost his footing when the space between the door and jamb widened by a foot. Will caught his balance and then pushed back, using the very weight of the door as leverage. But the beast pushed back before the door could seal itself. This time Mendenhall flew back as if tossed by an angry child. His back struck something in the dark and the impact sent a sharp jab of pain jolting through his entire body. After striking the large object, he slid down to the floor where his head came to rest next to something that smelled like an old worn-out tire. As he lifted his head from the tiled floor, he saw the large steel door standing ajar. Will in a panic raised his arm and tried to find a handhold to assist him to his feet. Instead of finding something solid, his hand wrapped around something that rattled with a metallic sound as something broke and he and his failed rescuer fell back to the floor.

“Damn it!” Will shouted as he just knew that the beast was coming straight through the door at him. He struggled to frame the open door in his vision and noticed that the door hadn’t moved since he had been knocked down. The sound of the beast was gone. Mendenhall reached down and pulled up the object he had grabbed a hold of before it broke away and saw that it was a belt of large-caliber ammunition.

“Damn, these are fifty-caliber machine gun rounds,” he said beneath his breath as he finally managed to pull himself to his feet. He checked the door once more and stepped forward. He slowly turned as his eyes finally adjusted to the near darkness of the vault. As his eyes widened he saw the giant torpedo bomber rising majestically above his head. There were more lined up on either side of the first. “Wow,” was all he could say as he took in the doomed aircraft of Flight 19. The planes looked down with their empty canopies like they were cyclopian eyes angrily watching an invader to their cave.

Will examined the contents of the vault and saw that the ammunition belt he had grabbed was dangling from the loading port underneath the left wing. Then his eyes spied the three barrels of the Browning fifty-caliber machine guns protruding from the wing’s edge. His eyes roamed to the right wing and he saw three more barrels sticking out there. He looked over and saw a large battery-powered cart. It was used for moving heavy loads. Then he glanced up at the magnificent-looking aircraft once more.

“Jesus, Ryan, where are you when I need you? This is just about right up your alley.”

Mendenhall again looked from the Grumman TBF Avengers to the electric cart with the tracked drive system. A plan started to form.

Just as Will started moving on his idea, sharp, ear-shattering blows started coming from down the corridor. The beast was again at work on Virginia’s vault and this time it was using tools.

Mendenhall was running out of time to help his friends survive the darkest night of their lives.

Sarah, Farbeaux, Denise Gilliam, Virginia, and Gloria Bannister liked the silence even less than the pounding or twisting of the locking wheel on the vault’s door. The beast outside was roaming around the corridor and every once in a while it would slam its great fists into a wall in frustration at not being able to get at its enemy. Then its rage would move off farther along the corridor as if it were looking for something, or someone, else.

“I have a sneaking suspicion that our friend is out there doing that problem-solving thing we discussed earlier,” Henri said as he allowed Denise to change the rough material covering his wounds. The doctor looked up and saw that Sarah was looking at her while she held Henri’s head in her lap. Gilliam shook her head negatively. “Please, Doctor, you can tell her what it is you’re thinking,” Farbeaux said as he looked up into the bruised face of Sarah.

“Okay, Colonel. If we don’t get you upstairs in the next half an hour, you’re going to bleed out on us. You not only tore out your stitches on the outside, but you somehow managed to break open the three I had to put into your arterial artery in your hip.”

“I can’t imagine how that happened, Doctor,” he said as he continued to look into Sarah’s face. She again pulled his blonde hair out of his eyes and then smiled. “I guess the prospect of life in one of your federal prisons wouldn’t look too bad about now.”

“Knock it off, Henri; we’ll get you out of here,” Sarah said.

Henri decided to risk Sarah dropping his head onto the cold steel flooring. “I don’t think Jack the giant killer is going to come this time little Sarah.”

McIntire looked away as the reality of losing Jack struck once more. She turned and with the smile still weakly planted on her lips looked down at the Frenchman.

“He’s been late before.”

“What in the hell is that noise?” Virginia asked as she placed her ear against the steel door. “Is that scratching?”

Gloria joined Virginia at the vault’s barricaded door and also placed her ear against the cold steel.

“What could it be doing out there?” she asked.

Suddenly they heard hammering against the door. They realized immediately that it was not flesh against steel, but metal upon metal. It started at the upper corner of the door, paused, and then started again. Virginia stepped back and looked upward. She heard the banging stop and then begin once again. Her eyes widened when she saw the corner of the door nearest the solid steel threshold opposite the locking mechanism vibrate from the continued hammering.

Henri sat up in Sarah’s arms, stilling the hand of Dr. Gilliam as she placed another makeshift bandage on his hip. Farbeaux cocked his head and listened.

Virginia walked up to face the door as the blows became louder.

“Shit,” she said as she realized what the beast out in the hallway was attempting to do.

“The tungsten hinges for the vault door are on that side, aren’t they?” Henri asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yes,” Virginia confirmed just as they heard the almost muffled sound of something hitting the door with a ping and then a thump.

“It’s taking the door off at the hinges,” Virginia said as she pulled Gloria Bannister away from the door.

“If it would make you feel better young Sarah, even I would welcome your Jack Collins at this particular point.”

Sarah stood, easing the Frenchman’s head down, and with strength she didn’t know she had, started pulling Henri by the lab coat’s collar toward the back of the vault.

“We’re not catching a break here,” Virginia said as she also started pulling Gloria in the same direction as the others. After they had reached the back of the vault, Virginia started examining what they had to fight with. She counted ten more of the small spears. There were also cowhide shields and slingshots, but no rocks.

“The instrument of death you’re looking at Dr. Pollock,” Henri said motioning toward the small spears, “is far more dangerous than it looks. It’s called an assegai. I had a few in my own collection at one time. I believe it’s a very appropriate weapon for our circumstance.”

“Why is that Colonel?” Gloria asked as she pulled two of them off the wall.

“It’s a brutal close-in stabbing weapon, which I believe is the sort of battle we are about to fight.”

“Damn it, I hate it when he’s right,” Virginia said as she also removed two assegais from the wall and handed one to Denise who hefted it and tested the weight.

Sarah placed Henri against the rear wall, but he fought against her in order to stand. She cursed and helped him do so.

“I think I would much rather go out standing my dear,” he said as he reached down and took Sarah’s small hand, bending with considerable pain and kissing it.

McIntire reached up and, not caring if the others saw her movement, kissed Farbeaux deeply on the lips. “There, we’re even, you ass,” she said smiling and stepping away to get the last two spears hanging from their steel holders.

Henri’s shocked face registered his surprise as he watched the small woman hand him one of the assegais.

“I’m going to go down fighting. I have decided I very much want to live,” Henri said as he looked at Sarah and winked, not knowing if she could see the gesture in the darkness. “If only to have you visit me in prison,” Henri finished as he braced himself against the wall just as Virginia announced with a fear-laced voice that the second and middle set of hinges just fell to the floor outside the vault door.

As the five trapped people prepared to make their final stand, the beast outside threw them a curve as its animalistic impatience must have overwhelmed its intelligence. It started pulling on the eighteen-inch-thick vault door. At that very moment Europa got the power back on just as the thick steel was ripped away from the frame. They heard as well as saw the large locking rods slide out of the door, but they had nothing to slide into.

“If it weren’t for bad luck, we wouldn’t have any luck at all,” Virginia said as the lights in the vault illuminated a sight they hadn’t wished to see — the beast raising the two-ton steel door over its head and tossing it out into the corridor.

Brave Virginia, so scared she was furious, was the first to move as she charged the beast before it had a chance to recover from throwing the door. The nuclear sciences engineer stabbed outward with the four-foot-long assegai. The razor-sharp tip slid easily into the creature’s abdomen and struck its liver. It howled in pain and reached down and snapped the Zulu spear off, leaving its tip imbedded in its stomach. The beast came into the vault. Denise Gilliam, forgetting Henri’s advice, threw her spear and it struck the mercenary in the shoulder where it immediately ripped it free. The creature caught Virginia totally off-guard by swinging the shaft end, and it struck her across the chest, sending Virginia crashing into the steel wall of the vault.

Gloria stabbed next and hit the thing in the upper thigh. Again it cried out in pain, but it still kept coming. It swung at the CDC doctor, but she easily moved out of the way.

Sarah started forward, but Farbeaux grabbed her and threw her back, sending her crashing into the enclosure where Cetshwayo was laid out in his temperature-controlled sleep. Henri charged, moving slowly due to his loss of blood, but charge he did. He planted the spear deep into the giant’s chest, pulled it free, and then struck at it again. The beast was so shocked at the sudden and vicious strikes that it half turned and kicked out with its leg. The giant’s foot struck the Frenchman and sent him flying the length of the large vault where he hit the wall and bounced off, striking the floor and remaining still.

The once-upon-a-time soldier roared in triumph as it regained the initiative and came on. The defenders saw their fate moving toward them and would have liked to have continued the fight but knew they had nothing left to fight with.

Suddenly the vault erupted with bright flashes of light and the creature turned away from its intended victims only to be met by a withering wave of gunfire from outside the doorframe. At least a hundred and fifty rounds struck the future of soldiering, with the bullets that struck its head dropping the already wounded beast in the doorway. The next thing they saw was a large man in black Nomex battle dress jump atop the still moving creature and empty a full magazine into it.

Sarah held Farbeaux and Gloria roused Virginia from the floor. Denise Gilliam stepped forward and looked up at the man still standing atop the downed beast.

Captain Carl Everett winked at a still-reeling Virginia Pollock.

“You want to really apologize for that cheap shot you gave me in the football game, Doc?”

Virginia shook her aching head, trying to clear it further. “Okay, I did it on purpose.”

“Uh huh,” Everett said as he hopped down from the back of the dead mercenary. “You owe me and my men here dinner … no, a lobster dinner.”

“I’m not that sorry,” Virginia said as she hugged the blonde captain. The vault filled with the remnants of Everett’s fire team who had finally made it to the armory on level forty-two and were now assisting with a wounded Farbeaux and the others.

“Okay, we have to get these people out of—”

Everett saw the giant shadow rise from behind him. He saw the reaction of every person still inside the vault when the beast they thought they had killed rose from the supposed land of everlasting peace they had sent him to.

“Oh, damn, the bastard’s right behind me isn’t he?” Everett said just as the beast screamed in triumph and sprang at Carl’s exposed back.

Suddenly a deafening roar filled every square inch of level sixty-one. The heavy popping noise pierced through the air and almost knocked everyone standing inside to the floor with its power. As Everett dove for cover he felt the heavy impact of metal against flesh. Before he hit the floor he heard the slap and thump of something hitting the beast. The creature was struck so hard that it didn’t have time to react to the attack.

“Jesus!” Carl called out as he turned over on his back to see round after round strike the beast in the chest, legs, neck, and head, sending it reeling backward. The fifty-caliber bullets kept filling the air to the point that the echoes and the actual sounds of the rounds exploding became one and the same.

Silence filled the air and then they all heard the voice outside.

“Hah, got you! That looks like it hurt!”

Everett tried to stand on shaky legs. He looked over at Sarah who was holding the head of Henri Farbeaux in her lap. Once standing, Carl walked to the doorway and looked out. He had to smile when he saw the face of Will Mendenhall as he leaned against the large electric cart that held the still-smoking Browning fifty-caliber machine gun.

“Nice gun,” Everett said as he leaned against the sill of the vault.

“I’ve got a torpedo bomber that comes with it.”

Will stepped inside and helped the others leave their small sanctuary. It was Gloria who came up and gave Will a deep, well-meaning kiss on the lips.

“What about the reactor?” Sarah asked.

“Europa says we have someone down there restarting the cooling pumps right now, but we still have to get the hell out of here,” Everett said.

Sarah and Denise helped the unconscious Frenchman sit up.

“Carl, give us a hand,” Sarah said as she struggled with Henri’s weight.

“Do I have to?”

“There is now three minutes, seventeen seconds until core meltdown,” Europa announced just as Smith attacked the two men.

Collins quickly pushed Charlie Ellenshaw out of the way as Smith hit him full force, sending him flying once more across the reactor room. The creature laughed as it turned on Ellenshaw.

Crazy Charlie knew he had to get to Jack because he didn’t know where the fuse box for the cooling pumps was located. He hurriedly scrambled back behind the water tanks, turned, and made his way toward the spot where the colonel had landed. Instead of coming after him, Smith went for the stunned Collins fifteen feet away.

Jack opened his eyes as he took short, painful gasps of air into his damaged lungs. He felt the heavy steps of Smith as he came forward to finish the job. The drool hit Jack’s back as the beast stood over his prone body. Jack tried desperately to get his hand under his body as he knew he only had seconds before Smith stomped him to death.

“I remember you now — Jack Collins, Fifth Special Forces Group, Afghanistan, 2004,” came the horrid deep and booming voice. Smith chuckled. “You going to tell Congress about this, Collins?” the beast asked as it reached down and picked Jack up by the body armor collar and lifted him to face level.

Jack opened his eyes and spit blood into the distorted face of Smith who raised his free hand and wiped the blood away, licking his fingers as he made a yummy sound deep in his throat.

Charlie charged at the creature’s back, not firing his weapon as before for fear of hitting the colonel. He jumped onto Smith’s back and started pummeling the giant with his thin-fingered fists.

Smith shook his body vigorously until he dislodged Ellenshaw. Charlie hit the hard floor and lay still.

“He is irritating. Is that the best you can do Collins?” The fetid breath struck Jack, helping to bring him around.

“You now have one minute, fifty-one seconds to reach safe distance. Core meltdown is imminent.”

Jack heard Europa’s calm voice and smiled, wondering why he had never been able to find the culprit who had altered her voice synthesizer to that of the deceased Hollywood sex goddess.

“Drop the colonel and back away,” said a voice in back of Jack, “you ugly son of a bitch!”

Smith looked up and saw twenty men facing him. But still he smiled as he knew they would never kill him in time to stop his eventual suicide.

“Come and get him,” boomed the unnatural voice as the beast raised Jack up closer to its head and almost unhinged its jaw as it opened its mouth wide with laughter, realizing that any rescue was now too late. It wouldn’t be stopped.

Jack found his opening. He had what he had reached for in his hand as Smith opened his mouth with that irritating laugh of his. Jack had already pulled the pin on the grenade before he had been lifted free of the floor. He drew his arm back and then let the safety handle pop free. He slammed the round grenade as hard as he could into Smith’s exposed mouth. He broke teeth off as the beast realized what had happened. Smith let Jack fall free and then tried desperately to dig the grenade from his large and deformed mouth.

As Jack hit the floor he rolled away, damaging his ribs even more. He finally stopped and managed to look up.

“Fuckhead,” Jack whispered lowering his head and covering up just as the grenade detonated.

Smith’s eyes widened when he realized what was in his mouth. His fingers finally managed to lock around the object and as he tried to pull it free, it went off, sending brain matter and skull bone out in an arc that covered the two reactor vessels.

Before Collins knew it, hands were on him, turning him over. He opened his eyes into the smiling face hovering over him.

“Hello Jack.”

“Grateful Dead, I’ll be damned,” Jack whispered.

“That you will my friend. It looks like we were a bit too late to save the day here, so I guess all us grunts are damned,” Garcia said as he cocked an ear upward just as Europa sounded her final warning.

“Detonation of nuclear material will occur in one minute and forty-one seconds.”

“The fuses,” Jack said low in his throat.

“What’s that, Jack?” Garcia asked.

Suddenly the warning alarms ceased. The red and yellow reactor lights started to slow their steady pulse and Europa made her last announcement as Collins tried raising his head.

“Core temperature has now been stabilized at six hundred fifty-two degrees. Coolant flow has been restored.”

Garcia helped Collins sit up as Charlie Ellenshaw came around the number ten water tank. He was waving his hands through the air as if to cool them. He grimaced as he saw the DELTA team and even Colonel Collins looking at his burnt hands.

“I couldn’t find the damn fuse box for the pumps. And then I didn’t know that you couldn’t push the fuses back in with the switch handle in the on position. That freaking hurt!” Crazy Charlie said as he waved his charred hands through the air.

“Hmm,” Major Garcia said as he looked down at the man who had trained him ten years before. “One minute and forty seconds to spare. You’re getting old Jack; you used to be exciting.”

Collins closed his eyes and passed out.

Doctor Denise Gilliam had every bed and most desks filled with wounded men and women. Virginia, Sarah, and Gloria had volunteered to assist the doctor as she tried to bring things under some kind of control. Niles Compton was complaining more than anyone that he would like a real doctor to help him as Virginia did her best to place the temporary cast on his ankle.

Two men no one recognized stepped into the clinic. They stopped and noticed Denise Gilliam attending her patients.

“You got room for one more Doctor?” a large man asked as he slung a weapon over his shoulder.

“Sure, the more the merrier,” Denise said with weariness lacing her voice. “Who is it?”

“Well, he may be one of yours. We found him passed out on the loading dock about a half hour ago.”

“What makes you think he’s one of mine?” Denise asked as curiosity finally made her look up from one of Everett’s security men.

The two strangers looked at each other and everyone could tell they wanted to laugh but held back.

“Well, ma’am, he’s wearing what looks like a candy striper’s outfit.”

“He?” Denise asked.

“Bring him in,” the first man called through the door.

As everyone inside the clinic waited, even the director stopped complaining long enough to watch. Two other men in black clothing brought a third man in and laid him down on one of the desks.

Will Mendenhall had to stand up and shake his head in wonder. Sarah’s eyes widened, and Niles had to laugh at the escapee from a hospital in downtown Las Vegas.

Jason Ryan, still replete in his stolen candy striper’s uniform, managed to look up to see where he was and then lay his head back down.

“Is this the best you can do for a bed, after all I went through to get back here?”

Denise walked over and shook her head at the naval aviator. Then she smiled.

“You know, that’s not a bad look for you Mr. Ryan.”

“I know.”

Sarah finally got her smile under control and stopped by to check on Henri. He was lying in bed sans handcuffs with his eyes closed. He had a whole pint of blood dripping into his veins from an IV line attached to his right arm. McIntire was about to turn away when she heard his voice whisper.

“Please tell me this is some of your blood my dear,” he said so low she had to bend over to hear him.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Henri, but I think you have some of Mendenhall’s blood in you. The blood bank went bad because of no electricity.”

Henri managed to look up and around until he saw Mendenhall sitting on a desk a few feet away getting his head bandaged by a highly attentive Gloria Bannister. Mendenhall saw the Frenchman looking his way and raised his right hand, extending his middle finger.

“I knew you liked me Lieutenant.”

Sarah smiled, but she knew she had to leave the clinic before the smell of blood and medicine did her in. She stepped into the hallway and Henri watched her as she leaned against the glass. He watched her and knew that he was in love with the woman and wanted to tell her. But he also knew he was going to prison, and he knew that she didn’t love him. She loved Collins and would for a very long time, even if he was dead.

As he started to lie down he saw Sarah straighten from the wall. He watched as she frowned and then started crying. She stepped forward as two men carried a third man in between them and threw her arms around the man being assisted. Henri Farbeaux felt his heart sink when he saw the familiar face of Jack Collins as he allowed Sarah to hold him. The two men carrying Collins looked away as Sarah McIntire welcomed Jack Collins back to the Event Group.

Farbeaux turned away and closed his eyes against the harsh florescent lighting.

The Baltimore state trooper watched as the two bodies were loaded into the ambulance. He shook his head at the senseless violence that happened on a daily basis along the Baltimore Beltway.

It was evident from the car that was still sitting on its jack stand and the spare tire lying nearby that the two women had stopped to fix a flat late at night. The two bodies had been found fifty feet from the car. Each had been shot once in the chest and left sprawled in the high grass close to the Beltway. This hadn’t been the only occurrence of violence on this stretch of road. There had been seven other murders, some drive-bys, others like the one he just recorded in his notebook, a senseless killing, probably at random, of two people changing a tire after a night out.

The trooper was approached by his sergeant. “We ID the driver?” he asked, also shaking his head as the bodies were finally sealed inside the ambulance.

“Yeah, we found her identification in her car. The younger woman we haven’t discovered anything about yet. The driver is Lynn Simpson. She has a company badge.”

“Yeah, what company?” the sergeant asked as the ambulance drove away.

“That’s why I called you out here, Sarge. She worked for the CIA.”

“Oh, boy.”

Niles Compton listened to the president speak, but his words became almost unintelligible as he listened. With his ankle in a cast, Niles was forced to sit and listen to his old friend. After the president said his piece he waited for Compton to say something. He waited for a long time as his friend sat stunned at the news that had been delivered. He was so stunned he couldn’t speak.

“Niles, would it help if I called and gave him the news?” the president asked.

Compton finally looked up and into his friend’s eyes. “You know Jack is not going to buy this bullshit the Maryland State Police are telling you.”

The president shook his head. “Why should he, I don’t. I’ve ordered CIA Director Easterbrook and the FBI to give this investigation a full-court press. I want to know what happened. I’m not a believer in coincidence.”

Niles sat and listened, maybe believing his old friend, maybe not. He was fast becoming a skeptic in such matters as governing a country.

“We have a detailed briefing by Pete Golding in two days. I think maybe you better be here to hear what he and Europa have to say,” Niles said.

“I’ll see what I can—”

“Mr. President, I never ask you for anything, yet you have asked me for everything. I want you here to learn what in the hell we’re dealing with. Then you can take your ball and go home.”

The president saw that Niles Compton was in no mood to hear anything other than yes.

“Okay, Baldy, I’ll be there in two days. Also I want Colonel Farbeaux transferred to FBI custody when he’s able to travel.”

Niles nodded his head without really answering and reached out and shut off the computer with the president’s image still on it, breaking every rule of etiquette and protocol on the books. He didn’t want to discuss the fate of the Frenchman and knew his friend the president just wanted to remind him he was still in charge. Compton reached over and hit his intercom switch to connect with the computer center.

“Golding,” came the quick response.

“Pete, ask Europa the location of Lieutenant McIntire.”

“Okay,” he said and returned just a second later. “She’s located in suite nine, level eight.”

Colonel Collins’s room?”

“Yes.”

Sarah watched Jack as he in turn looked at her. She reached out, took his hand, and smiled.

“You took your time leaving Alice’s house,” she said.

“You know me, I had to finish painting or Alice would have thrown a fit.”

Sarah shook her head. Then she became serious. “Jack?”

“Yeah, short stuff?”

“Colonel Farbeaux, what’s going to happen to him?”

“That’s not up to me, but I imagine he’s bound for trial for the murder of our people and possibly many others.”

Sarah bit her lower lip. “Do you believe he killed people from our Group or murdered innocents from anywhere?” she asked watching him closely. “I mean, do you really think he’s capable of cold-blooded murder?”

“Doesn’t seem to be his style does it? But I wasn’t here in the bad old days. I just don’t know,” he added. “But deep down? Yes, I believe Henri has killed in the coldest blood possible in the past.”

Jack watched Sarah closely. He knew she was feeling indebted to the Frenchman for coming after her in Mexico. But he also knew there was something else he couldn’t quite grasp. The why of it, he supposed. He saw the sadness in her eyes when he had hinted at Henri’s fate.

“Listen, I think—”

A knock sounded at Jack’s door. Sarah stood and hesitated a moment and then looked down at Jack.

“I love you.”

Collins didn’t say anything; he just winked.

Sarah went to the door and opened it but not before noticing that Jack didn’t respond when she had said she loved him. She looked up when she opened the door. Niles Compton stood there with a pair of crutches supporting him.

“Lieutenant, may I come in?”

“Of course,” she said as she stepped aside. “Would you like Jack…,” Sarah caught herself a bit too late, “the colonel to yourself?”

“No, I think you better be here for this.”

Sarah’s brows rose as she closed the door and worriedly looked at Collins who lay in bed bare-chested and bandaged heavily across his broken ribs. He was silent as once more he waited for the other shoe to drop on his head.

Niles nodded at Collins and leaned against his desk.

“Do you want a chair?” Sarah asked.

Niles just shook his head no.

“I’m no good at this Colonel.” Niles lowered his eyes. “So I guess I better just say it before … before I lose the courage.”

“Just say it,” Jack said, keeping his wary eyes on the director.

“Colonel, uh, Jack,” he said turning to the familiar. “Your sister Lynn was murdered in Baltimore last night — she and a friend of hers from Langley.”

Sarah was stunned as she looked from Compton to Jack’s frozen features. He seemed not to know what to do with his eyes as he looked from the director back to Sarah and then quickly away again. He cleared his throat and then again swallowing several times.

“What … what happened?” he finally managed to ask, avoiding Sarah’s look of shock.

“The Maryland State Police say she and her companion were killed randomly after they had a flat tire after midnight two days ago.”

Jack Collins went silent and remained that way for several minutes.

“Would you excuse me? I have to call my … our mother.”

Niles nodded and limped to the door as Sarah opened it. He didn’t use the crutches as he felt they would fail him at this, the worst possible moment.

Sarah remained by the door, but Jack never looked up as he reached for the phone.

After Jack had informed his mother of the death of her only daughter, he went silent for two days. Alice had volunteered to take Cally Collins back to D.C. to make arrangements for the family. Then the colonel clammed up. Sarah couldn’t reach him, and even when Carl Everett came to check on him and jokingly report on the progress of Lieutenant Ryan, the candy striper, Jack remained silent, only nodding that he heard what was said. Even when the president of the United States came into his room just before the debriefing Niles had ordered he remained almost totally mute, nodding his head and mumbling at the appropriate times in the conversation. He did that with everyone he came in contact with.

The conference room was only half full as most of the departmental managers were busy cleaning up the mess in their various departments from the recent attack on the complex. Niles Compton had decided to keep all of the information to be explained to the people meeting that day tightly controlled. The director had ordered a select few to hear Pete Golding explain, in theory, what they had been dealing with.

Jack sat in his customary place at the opposite end of the long table facing Dr. Compton. His eyes were dark and still haunted as Everett came in and sat beside him. Sarah was three seats down from the president and chanced a glance at Collins, but he never looked up until the meeting started.

Virginia sat next to Compton. He nodded his head, not making eye contact with anyone. The assistant director stood.

“Okay, we have a lot to cover, and the president can only fool the Washington Post for so long before they discover he’s missing.”

No one in the room laughed at her small joke except for the president. As he saw no one else, not even Charlie Ellenshaw, crack so much as a smile, he went as silent as the rest of the men and women present. Will Mendenhall, who was attending his first debriefing in the conference room, sat next to Gloria Bannister, whom Niles thought deserved to be in on the tale Pete had to relay because of her losing so much in the attack.

“Pete,” Virginia said, “the floor’s yours.”

“Thank you,” Golding said as he stood with pointer in hand. He strode to the main viewing screen and nodded his head at the navy signalman.

“Perdition’s Fire,” Pete began, “has been kept a well-guarded secret for over a hundred years, but has been in existence for over three thousand years.” Everyone in the conference room exchanged glances at the claim Pete had just made. “The formula has been analyzed by Europa and our Event Group people at CDC and the Harvard School of Medicine. We also brought in the CSU School of Botany and the National Center for Genetic Research. The information is factual and indisputable.”

The first slide provided by Europa appeared on the screen. It was of Lawrence Jackson Ambrose.

“Our friend here did something truly amazing and also a hundred years ahead of his time. But somehow the good professor Ambrose lost his way. The man was brilliant but quite possibly the most insane person of his time.” Pete nodded and the next picture depicted confused those watching. “This is an official police report submitted and classified as top secret by the government of Great Britain. It concerns a series of murders that occurred in the year 1888 at a location in London called Whitechapel.” Pete saw the recognition in the faces around the table. Even the president leaned forward in his chair to read the hazy report from 142 years ago.

Jack finally looked up and stared blankly at the screen. Everett and Sarah watched, but the colonel made no move to take part in the debriefing.

“The report was filed by the metropolitan police, in conjunction with the chief medical examiner’s office in London. This document is part of the most unbelievable cover-up the world has ever seen. It all started with a writer of some renown doing research for a little book he was writing on aggressive behavior through the miracle of modern medicine. The name of the book researched was a novel we know today as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and that author was Robert Louis Stevenson.”

This bit of information caused another round of talking and exclamations around the table. Still Jack Collins remained silent even though he heard every word spoken.

“It was Robert Louis Stevenson who originally tried to warn the metropolitan police about the true nature of just what they were dealing with.”

“What is it we are looking at on the screen?” Virginia asked Pete.

“This slide lists the autopsy reports of six women murdered in Whitechapel in 1888. These reports are in direct conflict with the reports filed by the medical examiner in Whitechapel. The local medical examiner listed the horrendous wounds received by these women. They were bad enough that anyone reading them would never suspect the police, or the British government, of trying to hide anything. That is where these reports come in.” Pete slapped the large screen with the pointer. “They were discovered buried in the archives of Scotland Yard and in the journal of Lawrence Ambrose himself, which the Event Group had in its possession for the past 120 years. But the real gold is the culpability of the British government in all of this that Europa uncovered through police sources directly.”

“I take it you and your computer friend broke into their system to uncover these?” the president asked with a frown while gesturing to the reports on the large-screen monitor.

“Yes, sir, that’s what Europa and I do.”

Niles nodded his head, thankful that Pete stood up for himself and Europa against the snide remark of his friend the president.

“What is not listed in the professor’s journal but can be found in the police archive reports is the fact that among the horrifying wounds received by these women in the tainted autopsy reports, each of the prostitutes listed as murdered had been pregnant at the time of her death. The real reports state that the two-to-three-month-old embryos had been cut from the wombs of these ladies. The massacre of the women that ensued afterword was to cover up the fact of the missing embryos.”

“Wait Dr. Golding. Are you saying that Jack the Ripper was responsible for this?” asked the president.

“No, not the Jack the Ripper that has been presented to the world by the London constabulary, Mr. President, but Professor Lawrence Jackson Ambrose, the real Jack the Ripper or, if you like, the real Jekyll and Hyde. He murdered these women while under the influence of small doses of Perdition’s Fire so he could break the laws of man and science with a clear conscience. He collected the fetuses to be used in an experiment that should not have been possible at the time, but one that Europa has uncovered evidence of — the stem cell research that led to gaining strength, growth, and intelligence, all to be used as an additive to the food eaten by members of the British armed forces. That is exactly what he was hired to do. Make supersoldiers for Her Majesty’s government. Not crazed beasts as we saw here at the complex, but coldly calculating men with superior fighting strength and intelligence. That’s with small doses.”

Everyone was stunned to silence as Pete went through his gathered evidence, from Queen Victoria’s letters ordering the hiring of Ambrose and the purchase of his advanced theory, to the cover-up that ensued. Even the photo analysis of the advanced equipment used by Ambrose to create a genetic monster for the ages, as they themselves had recently been witness to, was fully documented. The experts say Ambrose was a genius and a hundred years ahead of his time.

“He was the first true geneticist,” Virginia commented.

“Let’s skip to the point Dr. Golding. Do you and your outlaw computer know who sent in these mercenarys?” the president asked Pete, turning to Niles directly.

“No. But we will find out who assisted them over here; I damn well guarantee that,” Niles said, almost challenging his old friend to deny his efforts in that regard. “I lost twenty-two men and women in this attack, and I will find the people responsible. Do you agree?”

The president nodded his head.

“Thank you.”

With that the Event Group began in earnest to continue on with its work. Only now all 656 members of Department 5656 had the added incentive of finding out who the Americans were who assisted in the traitorous act of attacking their home.

Jack stood next to his mother as the coffin was slowly lowered into the grave. The colonel was happy that Sarah and his mother Cally had hit it off so well and in such a trying time as this. Jack wondered if maybe one day his mother would have another daughter to help with her sorrow of losing Lynn.

As Jack watched, he knew that his sister’s murder was not as random as the police made it out to be. Like the president, he never believed in coincidence. He had a gut feeling she had died because of him in some way. He felt responsible.

Cally Collins reached out and took Jack’s arm, reaching over with her other hand to take Sarah’s on the opposite side. Together they strode over to where a very sore and weak Jason Ryan, alongside Will Mendenhall, Gloria Bannister, Virginia Pollock, Alice Hamilton, and finally, Captain Carl Everett, stood waiting for them.

Jack saw Niles on his crutches with Pete Golding and Charlie Hindershot Ellenshaw III standing next to him. They were all dressed in their best black suits and looked as out of place as ever. Collins excused himself as Everett and Sarah joined him while Alice went to speak with Cally.

Jack faced the director of Department 5656 who only nodded his head and reached inside his jacket pocket, bringing out a piece of paper and handing it to Collins.

“Colonel, what would you like me to do with that?”

Jack looked down at the resignation letter and handed it back to Niles.

“Process it, I’m done,” he said as Sarah placed her arm through his.

“Jack,” Ellenshaw said, no longer the goof he was a few years back when Collins had joined the Group, “tear it up. You need us, and we sure as hell need you.”

“Sorry, Doc, but—”

“Colonel, listen to what Niles has to say, will you?” Pete Golding asked.

Collins took a deep breath and dipped his chin in surrender. Niles was going to say what he wanted to say.

“The FBI recovered the vehicles used by the assault forces in Las Vegas. They found very little with the exception of these,” Niles said handing over two sheets of paper to Collins.

“Recognize those, Colonel?” Pete asked for Niles as Jack studied the papers.

“They’re privately generated satellite target tracking reports. No company name though.”

“The tracking target, Jack, was you. Evidently that was how this Smith character tracked you to Nellis. You must have been tagged by those maniacs in Mexico during the rescue that night,” Niles finished.

Collins shook his head, barely controlling his anger over the fact that he had been bugged and hadn’t even suspected it. He started to give the tracking reports back when Niles pushed them away and gestured for Collins to look at the reports again.

“Jack, the reports are time and security stamped by a government agency that accepted them. The code is listed as one belonging to the CIA.”

Collins was stunned, but not quite as much as the others that were standing there listening.

“Someone at the CIA passed this information on to Smith and his assault team,” Sarah said, her own anger at the obvious betrayal showing in her voice.

Compton watched Collins for the longest time as Jack continued to look at the two tracking reports with their computer-generated time stamps on their faces. Niles swallowed and got the colonel’s attention.

“Jack, you have many duties at the Group, and if you would stay with the department and continue as the head of security, I swear to you that whenever you’re free, I’ll give you carte blanche to use any means at the Group’s disposal to find your sister’s killer. And I don’t mean to bring whoever it is to justice. You do it your way, and I’ll back you 100 %. Everyone here will. Just use all of your skills and find them.”

Collins swallowed hard. He looked at Jason, Will, Virginia, Niles, Pete, and finally Charlie Ellenshaw. He smiled and glanced at Everett, who just nodded his head. But it was Sarah who reached out and took the resignation form from Compton’s hand and tore into two, allowing the pieces to fall to the grass.

“Alright,” Jack said as he took in not just his colleagues but his friends. “But on one condition,” Collins said with his jaw set firmly. “Because justice has to start somewhere, and I think I know just where it does.”

On a small rise overlooking the cemetery, Hiram Vickers stood next to Director of Operations Samuel Peachtree.

“Imagine my stunned silence when I learned from the president himself that the brother of Lynn Simpson was a war hero and a favorite of the commander in chief?”

“I read his file, he’s not that frightening,” Vickers said.

Peachtree laughed, turned away from the gravesite, and started walking back to the limousine that was waiting for him.

“You find that funny?” Vickers asked.

“Tell me Hiram,” Peachtree said stopping and turning, “which file was it you read?”

“What do you mean?”

“You are an idiot aren’t you?”

“I am still not intimidated by a man who only achieved the rank of colonel in his time with the army. Not very motivated is he? The president’s friend Collins is nothing but a once-upon-a-time tiger that has been declawed and placed out to pasture, buried at some desk where the army can keep track of him.”

Peachtree smiled as he allowed his driver to open the rear door as he approached.

“You know Hiram, the president explained to me in the Oval Office after he lamented on Ms. Simpson’s passing that Jack Collins is probably the single best combat soldier this nation has ever produced.” He smiled. “Maybe you should really try doing your homework sometimes on people who could bring us both down.”

“Why is that?”

“Because if you did, you would know that Colonel Jack Collins won’t rest until he kills you. And that dear Hiram is from the mouth of the president of the United States himself.” Peachtree laughed as he sat down inside the limo. “Hell, he probably won’t rest until he kills both of us.”

Samuel Peachtree closed the door and the limousine left in a cloud of dust, leaving Hiram Vickers alone to contemplate his fate if Collins found out he was behind his sister’s murder.