Pulse Page 17

  Three shots rang out as Bishop beat the guard to the punch, placing three rounds in the man’s chest. He dropped and slid to a stop. Looking forward again, Bishop found what looked like a striking python streaking toward his face. He tried to duck, but was struck by a solid force that threw him back and slammed his body against a tree. A massive weight continued to press against him. He fought against it, making ground, but then the grip solidified. As though caught in Medusa’s gaze, his body became rigid. Stonelike.

  “Got him!” one of the guards shouted. The man stepped into view and lit the area with a flare.

  Bishop recognized the modified weapon in the man’s hand as a sticky foam gun, though the foam had been modified to something resembling quick-dry cement.

  The other two men emerged from the forest. One had a blood-soaked shoulder. The other had three dents in his chest where Bishop’s 9mm rounds struck his body armor. His night vision goggles were ripped from his head as the three men looked at him. “This the guy Reinhart warned us about?”

  “Too big. Skin’s too dark.”

  Bishop looked each man in the eyes, making mental notes about their physical appearance. If he didn’t get to kill them later he might be able to I.D. them. That is, if they didn’t kill him on the spot.

  “Let’s take him back. Give him to Ridley.”

  One of the men leaned in with a sick grin. “Looks like you just volunteered for—”

  Dust and chunks of dry foam burst into the air as Bishop’s hand shot out and took the man by the throat. He squeezed tight and felt, more than heard, a crunch. The man fell limp before the other two had time to react. Bishop shook as he put his whole body into breaking the rock-hard foam. But before he could break free, a pinch in his neck drained his strength. As he became lethargic he realized he’d been drugged.

  As consciousness faded he heard one of the men speaking. “Oh God, John’s dead, man!”

  He stirred in what felt like seconds later, but was actually ten minutes. He felt the ground beneath his heels as he was dragged through the forest by his arms. He willed his eyes to open, but the drugs fought his body, returning him to unconsciousness.

  Again, his mind returned for a moment. He lay on his side now. Felt a hot breeze on his face. He managed to force his eyes open. Lights streamed past, buried in stone. Between the lights—blocks of C4. A moment of clarity put the pieces together—they were passing through the volcano. That’s how the men had appeared so quickly in the forest. As his thoughts returned to the C4, his body numbed again. As he slipped into darkness once more, a final thought ran through his mind.

  They’ve rigged the volcano to blow.

  Ridley, Reinhart, and Maddox stood outside George Pierce’s cell, looking through the five-inch-thick glass window as his body changed. The man’s skin had turned green and what looked like scales or calcification had begun to cover his body. His eyes had turned yellow and the pupils were beginning to stretch vertically—oblong, serpentine. “Well, that’s a dismal failure,” Ridley said.

  Maddox shook his head. “Not at all. His body regenerated. We’ve narrowed the genes down by a great deal. Further refinement is just a matter of weeding out the other bad genes.”

  “How long?”

  “Weeks. A month, tops. Less if we work around the clock.”

  “Then you’re back with the game plan?”

  Maddox looked at George, squelched his guilt, and nodded. “This is too important.”

  Ridley turned to Reinhart. “Round up a new batch of volunteers. Use force if need be.”

  “We’ll have to cut off contact with the mainland before—”

  “Do it. We can’t—”

  “Sir!” The voice was sharp. Loud. And Reinhart recognized it immediately. David Lawson. One of his best. Lawson stopped, looked at Ridley, then Reinhart, unsure of who to address. He chose Reinhart. “Sir, the island has been infiltrated.”

  “By whom?”

  “Same as before. Delta operator.”

  “King?”

  Lawson shook his head. “We hacked into the Fort Bragg database again and found a match. Intel I.D.s him as Erik Somers. Bishop.”

  “Bishop?” Ridley said. “Ah, chess pieces. Cute.”

  “King must be here as well.” Reinhart pursed his lips, then turned to Ridley. “There is nowhere for them to go. We have superior numbers and know the terrain. I don’t foresee a problem.”

  “Sir,” Lawson looked less sure of himself. “We did a satellite sweep...”

  “And?”

  “And...there’s a full battle group waiting on the other side of Inaccessible Island. We couldn’t I.D. the flagship, but it’s clearly U.S. Navy.”

  Reinhart sighed. “Give us one hour to take out King and his crew.” Ridley met his eyes. “No.”

  “Sir—”

  “Our work is too important to risk! Upload then erase the database. Evacuate the personnel to Alpha.” Ridley headed for the exit. He paused before leaving, looking back at the three stunned men. “Release the regens. Let them take care of King and his men.” He turned to leave, but paused again. “And while you’re at it, destroy the island and do something about that battle group.”

  31

  Tristan da Cunha

  With a grunt, Queen pushed her body through the tight confines of the ventilation duct. With her arms stretched out in front of her body, she could only pull with her fingers and push with her toes. Given the cramped space it was only the smooth surface of the vent shaft that allowed her to move at all.

  For the most part, darkness ruled the vent. Only when the occasional beam of light pierced the darkness where a screw was missing did she have a sense of how quickly she moved. And each time the experience was discouraging. Progress was slow. She moved until reaching a junction, then turned right. At the next she turned left, then right again, determined not to move in circles.

  As she began to wonder why there were no vents in the shaft, she felt the floor beneath her hand disappear. Taking the edge of the dropoff in her hands, she pulled herself up to the edge and looked down. A pinprick of light greeted her more than one hundred feet below. She reached out across the drop and felt a bare, cold metal wall.

  Only one way to go.

  A breeze wafted up the vertical shaft. The air smelled of antiseptic. Like a doctor’s office. Or a lab. That sealed the deal. She squirmed forward, leading with her arms until she was hanging over the edge by her waist. She looked down. The drop was a killer, but would take her at least three stories below the bottom floor of the main facility. It was her best shot. Her only shot.

  Bracing herself, she squirmed forward, then launched downward like a torpedo exiting a submarine. She spread her arms and legs as her body became fully vertical, careful to only make contact with her cloth-covered forearms, legs, and the rubber soles of her boots. If a hand struck the metal, it might stick and be yanked up. If the arm didn’t break, her body could twist within the vent and become lodged like an overweight Santa Claus.

  Her arms began to burn as the friction between her arms and the vent wall grew. But her fall slowed only marginally. She pushed hard as the feet flew past. She began to slow as the light below grew in size and lit up the shaft with a dull glow. Forty feet from the bottom, still moving fast, Queen saw vent shafts branching off in either direction, both in the path of her bracing arms and legs. To avoid smashing a limb on the tunnel edges, she bought them close again and freefell past.

  Having regained momentum, Queen pushed hard against the walls, making more noise than she cared to as the sudden slow jarred her UMP loose from her back. It smacked against the side of the shaft and scraped loudly—metal on metal—as she continued to fall. With five feet left to descend, Queen planted both hands against the walls and put her muscles to the task of stopping. Her arms bent and protested, but slowed her fall to a stop, inches from the vent. Sweat dripped from her nose, trickling between the slats and striking the dimly lit linoleum floor ten feet below.

 
; As she worked on slowing her breathing, she listened to the sounds of the space below. There was the mechanical twitch of working hard drives and whine of computer cooling fans, but no alarms, shouts of concern, or stomping feet. Still, she wouldn’t underestimate her enemy.

  Bracing her feet against the walls, she removed her hands and placed them on the grate. She shoved. The grate stayed in place, but shook. Its hold on the duct was precarious at best. She shoved again, this time letting her feet go and put her weight into it. With a crack, the hinged grate swung open.

  As she fell, Queen snapped her head up, spinning her body beneath her. At the same time she reached behind her back. She landed, ten feet below, in a crouch. A red dot of light from her silenced handgun’s LAM shot back and forth across the room as she searched for a target. Finding none, she stayed silent and still, taking in the room. The space was massive and filled with an array of computer stations, laboratory equipment, and several long examination tables. Looking up she saw the vent she’d fallen through twenty feet up, in the ceiling. Across one wall she saw four large containers marked with warning symbols and the words “liquid nitrogen.”

  Stupid.

  She spotted two security cameras at either end of the room. Luckily, neither was pointed in her direction, though both were headed her way. She jumped up, slapped the vent shut, then ducked beneath a desk. She watched as the cameras passed her position and then swung the other way.

  She spied a discarded lab coat, slipped out from under the desk and threw it on over her black fatigues. She removed the black covering from her head, twisted her hair into a conservative-looking pony-tail, donned a pair of phony glasses and clipped a Manifold I.D. card to her shirt that might fool one of the scientists but would certainly alert security to her scam. With the lab dark and the time passing midnight, Queen had the lab to herself. She sat down at a computer terminal hoping to look like just another scientist working late, and took hold of the mouse. The screen blinked to life, casting her in a sickly blue glow. The cameras would see her now.

  A prompt appeared on the screen, asking for a password, which could be a problem if someone was watching the video feed. She tried the most common password used on computer boot screens—none—hitting the Enter key. She smiled as the operating system booted and displayed a variety of folders, icons, and files on the cluttered desktop. But none of that mattered to her. The terminal was just a gateway for the little gem Lewis Aleman had provided the team with before leaving. “Hacker in a bottle” he had called it; a worm that sought out information on predetermined search patterns, slipping past security and erasing all traces of its existence along the way. Queen plugged the small device into the computer’s USB port and with a feigned yawn of an overworked scientist began opening random files on the screen, giving the impression that she was hard at work.

  An image appeared on the screen and made her pause. Spread out on a table was what looked like a serpentine head. Standing behind it was a man she recognized from photos King had shown her: George Pierce. He looked fine. In fact, he was smiling. Then she recognized the background. The photo had been taken in this very lab. Pierce had been here. Possibly still was. Queen stood and looked over the lab. She saw the lab table from the photo at the center of the room. But the table was as empty as the lab was devoid of life. Why was that? she wondered. If they were so close to a staggering discovery, why were they not working around the clock?

  As the doors at the far end of the lab burst open with a sound like thunder, she realized why.

  32

  Tristan da Cunha

  “Rook to King. Come in King.”

  Dressed in fatigues, now covered by a black wet suit, King walked across the Mercury’s cabin, heading for the radio. He and Karn had taken the Mercury around the island and dropped anchor just outside what Karn claimed was a submarine dock. To King it looked like every other slab of rock descending into the ocean, but the old man insisted they’d blasted out a hole big enough for only one thing he could think of: a sub. King picked up the radio. “Go ahead, Rook.”

  “Things are going to hell fast, King. We’ve got a mass exodus taking place from the back side of the compound. Looks like scientists and some security. They’re skipping town.”

  Shit, King thought. How did they know we were here?

  “It gets worse,” Rook said. “Bishop is M.I.A. He should have checked in a half hour ago.”

  “What about Queen?” King asked.

  “She’s still inside. Haven’t seen any sign of—What?”

  King heard Knight talking quickly in the background. The signal cut out for a moment, then Rook returned. “King, we’re counting fifteen...eighteen people exiting the front of the compound, heading for the main gates and... Holy... King, these people, they’re like the capybara. Regens. If they get to town...”

  King closed his eyes and shook his head. He knew the people had no control of themselves, that they were, in fact, innocents. But letting them live meant the deaths of hundreds more. “Take them out. Protect the town. I’m going in.”

  King dropped the radio and exited the cabin. He walked to the back of the boat where Karn waited.

  “What’s got your panties in a bind?” Karn asked.

  King held a small, handheld oxygen tank with a regulator attached to his mouth, taking a test breath. The small tank would give him five minutes underwater. “Take the Mercury back to the dock. Use anything you find on board to protect the town. I’ve got some friends that will lend a hand. And see if you can raise the USS Grant. Tell them to keep that plane on the ground, but under no circumstances shoot it down.”

  Karn stared at him, wide-eyed for a moment and then gave a quick salute. He immediately began pulling up the anchor. He turned around to ask a question but King had already entered the water. His swim fins slid beneath the waves as he descended into the depths.

  With the anchor up, Karn sat himself in the captain’s chair, turned the key, and smiled as the dual engines roared to life. He slammed the throttles forward, launching the yacht forward as though it were a speed boat. “Calvary’s coming!”

  He picked up the boat’s CB as the Mercury pounded over the waves. “USS Grant. This is the yacht Mercury. Please respond. Over.”

  No response. “Damnit, Grant. I know you’re out there! Pick up the line or so help me, I’ll sink you myself.”

  A cold voice came back from the CB, “This is the USS Grant. Who the hell am I talking to? Over.”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Jon Karn, U.S. Marine Corps,” he said, then added, under his breath, “Retired. Over.”

  “Say again. Did you say retired? Over.”

  A large wave nearly threw him from the chair. He gripped the steering wheel hard with one hand and raised the CB to his lips with the other. “There isn’t time for bullshit! I’m working with a fella. Goes by the name King. He needs some help.”

  Karn waited for a response as he turned the Mercury toward the lights of Edinburgh. This time the silence lasted fifteen seconds. He was about to speak again when a new voice came on the line. “This is Captain Steve Savile of the USS Grant. What do you need?”

  He laughed as the Mercury pounded through another large wave, casting a spray of seawater over the deck, plastering Karn’s gangly hair and beard against his head and chest. I’ll be damned, he thought. For a moment it felt good to be back in the thick of things. Then he saw muzzle flashes from the mountainside, like distant fireworks and the rising of panicked voices from Edinburgh.

  He opened his mouth to respond, but a sudden series of rapid-fire explosions pounded the air. Rising toward the sky were thousands upon thousands of large tracer rounds. He knew the rounds, designed to be seen, showed the path of even more rounds hidden by the night sky. In all his time in the service he’d never seen such a condensed and massive amount of shells being fired. It seemed impossible. He took note of their southwestern trajectory. The only thing there was Inaccessible Island...unless something was behind it.

 
; He crushed down the button on the CB. “Savile! Move your ass! You have incoming!”

  He listened for a response, but only heard the distant sound of explosions.

  33

  Tristan da Cunha

  Frothing mad, seven regens, both men and women, burst into the large laboratory. Queen ducked behind a workstation and watched as the mindless group snapped at each other like a pack of wild dogs. One caught the arm of another and bit a chunk free. The flesh healed immediately, but the injured regen reacted violently, tackling the other in a bloody frenzy.

  Queen crawled toward the workstation that held her thumb drive and Aleman’s virus. She had no idea if it had time to do its work, but time was up. If she wanted to leave alive it had to be now.

  The battling regens rolled across the linoleum floor, leaving streaks of liquid red as they tore one another apart, healing time after time, descending deeper into madness. The pair fell into a computer terminal, shaking the hibernating machine. The screen blinked to life and played a start-up chime. The sudden light and sound startled the regens and without pause, the group flung themselves at the computer, treating its actions as a sign of life and, therefore, food.

  Monitors flew through the air after proving too tough to bite through. Wires snapped and fell to the floor like disemboweled entrails. All the while, the regens worked their way across the lab, headed straight for Queen. She reached up over the desktop and felt for the thumb drive. She found the front of the computer tower and the thumb drive attached below. She grabbed on tight and yanked.

  The device removal chime sounded like a gunshot.

  Queen held her breath as the regens stopped and listened. In that moment, she knew she wouldn’t leave the room without a fight. Never one to take the first blow, Queen unslung her weapon and stood up. As the closest regen’s eyes widened, its head ceased to existed. Queen placed three hollow-tip rounds between the eyes of a second. But her luck ran out when she aimed at the third.