Gorgon: An Alex Hunter Novel Page 4

  He stepped out from behind the tree again. He had so much to tell the boy, so much he could show him. He could help.

  Help? You can help get him killed.

  Alex paused.

  When they know what he is, they’ll cut him up – like they tried to do to you.

  I won’t let them – I’ll tear them apart. Alex’s fingers came together, gouging a chunk of bark from the trunk.

  You can’t even protect yourself, the voice said. Look at you – you have to hide like an animal. You couldn’t protect him all the time. Once they know, they’ll snatch him up, and he’ll end up in a hundred pieces – an experiment, a lump of tissue under a microscope. That would be your legacy. What would Aimee say if you brought that to her door? A disdainful laugh. You know what she’d say, don’t you?

  He closed his eyes and ground his teeth, knowing that everything the voice said was true.

  Aimee lifted the boy and placed him on her hip. He looked back to where the snake’s body lay, then up to the tree. He stared, seeming to see through its trunk, and Alex knew the boy saw him.

  Joshua waved.

  Alex lifted a hand and waved back slowly.

  After another few seconds, he rolled away around the trunk, his eyes watering.

  Get the fuck out of here, dead man.

  Alex nodded, and started to walk.

  *

  He jacked a car, and drove without a plan, cap pulled down to hide his face from the many cameras he knew were watching. Alex had been a HAWC, a Hot-Zone All Warfare Commando, and he’d been the best of them. He had lived off the land, slept under snow, hidden under burning sands and in more urban environments than he cared to remember. He knew how to make himself invisible if circumstance demanded it.

  He also knew who, and what, he was. He was capable of things that other people couldn’t hope to accomplish. He was different, very different, and because of that people either wanted him dead, or wanted to dissect him to see what made him tick. His own military science division had tried to take him down, then the Israelis. The memory of Adira Senesh, the Mossad agent who had saved his life, and nursed him back to health, made him frown. She had turned out to be no better than any of them. Trust was the one thing he missed, and without it he felt truly lost and alone.

  His memory had slowly returned, but there were still some gaps. When he pushed hard to see into those dark places, he got tattered images of freezing caves, and loathsome jungles inhabited by creatures that should only exist in nightmares. The headaches still kicked his ass, but given he’d been almost liquefied by a black bacterium from the center of the Earth, he counted himself lucky to be alive.

  The endless lines on the road were a tether, dragging him forward. His face was blank, but his mind was a cyclone of emotions – and the sneering voice was always with him. You’re a coward, a hobo, a dead man. You got nothing left, no purpose, no hope. As the voice sounded again, he screamed his fury and banged the steering wheel until it broke in his hands. He held the single remaining spoke and put his foot down, his fury matching the machine’s speed, until the engine popped and spluttered, then died.

  As the car rolled to a stop, he blinked, conscious that he didn’t know where he was. It was dark, and after midnight. He looked at the shopfronts – Omaha, Nebraska. Over 1200 miles from Boston. He’d been driving nonstop for two days, without sleep.

  He pushed open the door, grabbed his duffel bag, and started to walk, keeping his head down. He had to believe he’d done the right thing, that he’d saved Joshua. By fleeing he’d made him safe.

  What makes you think they’re not watching the kid now, waiting to scoop him up?

  Alex shook his head and kept moving.

  You certainly can’t help him now, huh, tough guy?

  He placed a fist to his forehead and pressed hard. ‘Leave me alone!’

  His voice echoed down the dark streets. He was on the outskirts of town, in an industrial area. He’d been walking as if in a trance. The place was rundown, with graffiti all around. There would be no cars worth stealing here.

  I just need to rest, he thought as his mind churned.

  He only heard the men as they hurried to catch up to him.

  ‘Hey, Jesus … creeping Jesus … what’s in the bag?’ one of them called.

  Alex kept his head down and kept moving, his fatigued mind trying to make plans where none existed.

  The three men jogged to come abreast of him and watched him for a while, eyes sharp and hungry. They exuded a sense of menace, like a pack of savage dogs preparing to circle their prey. To them Alex would have seemed a drifter, with his long hair and beard. The duffel bag over his shoulder and dirty longshoreman’s jacket completed the image of a traveler who’d been down on his luck.

  Alex allowed his eyes to flick over them: two solid, one whip-thin, all dressed in the uniform of the disaffected – dirty jeans and hooded tops. One of the tops lumped slightly at the belly – the unmistakable impression of a handgun. He had to assume they were all carrying something. But it didn’t matter.

  ‘Hey, asshole, I asked you a question. What’s in the fucking bag?’

  Alex kept staring straight ahead but he heard the footsteps quicken. They were close. A cigarette butt bounced off his shoulder.

  ‘Hey, creeping Jesus – give to the poor.’ The man laughed cruelly. ‘Give every fucking thing you’ve got to the poor.’

  The laugh came again, confident, and closer. They were fanning out behind him, moving into a simple attack position. Alex automatically assessed their assault pattern and picked up speed, quickly scanning the street. There was no one else around – good.

  More yelling, and an empty bottle exploded against his shoulder. His hands curled into fists, and he ground his teeth. Parasites – he hated them; these ticks on civilization that burrowed in and then corrupted it from the inside out. So many good and decent people had died – family, friends, comrades – so these … men could replace them. Life’s transaction was all wrong.

  They were nearly on him now, their footsteps rapid, almost dancing in anticipation. They hooted and catcalled with the exhilaration of the hunt. They didn’t really care about what was in his bag or pockets. They wanted to rain hell down on someone, and tonight he’d been chosen.

  ‘Stop, or we’ll fucking stop you!’

  So be it, Alex thought, and quickly shifted sideways into a small alley. It stank of urine and was almost pitch-black and tomb-quiet.

  The men sprinted after him, screaming their annoyance, thinking he was attempting to flee. ‘You sonofabitch – we gonna want some skin now.’

  They careened around the corner, and skidded to a stop. Alex hadn’t run deeper into the gloom to hide among the mounds of soggy newspapers and rotting garbage. Instead, he stood with his back to them, hands down at his sides, as immobile as dark block of stone. His body was relaxed, ready, but his mind burned; his pent-up fury was like a tidal wave smashing against a rock wall, the pressure building.

  He felt the trio’s soft footsteps on the wet asphalt as they approached. They slowed, wary. He closed his eyes. He heard and sensed everything – their breathing becoming quicker as excitement accelerated into nervousness. There was a slight ruffle of clothing, then the click of a hammer being drawn back on a small caliber revolver. He automatically identified the weapon from the sound: a .22 snub-nose Smith & Wesson J-Frame – a toy.

  A snigger as the men’s confidence returned, and then an almost imperceptible movement of air behind his head.

  Kill them all, the voice whispered deep inside his brain. Let me.

  He spun, and grabbed the man’s gun hand just as it was coming up behind his ear. He bent the hand around and back on itself, forcing the gun under the shooter’s chin, crushing both his finger and the trigger at the same time. The bullet entered his skull and probably ricocheted around a few times in the cranium, not able to escape and turning an already addled brain to mush.

  The man’s face retained a look of surprise
even as life’s spark left him. Alex released his body, but before it had fallen to the ground he’d turned and swung his closed fist backhanded like a sledgehammer into the face of another attacker, who was holding up a greasy blade. The blow came so fast and hard, the man’s skull crumpled like an old soda can. Alex flung the body into the wall behind him.

  The third attacker dropped the metal bar he held and turned to run. He didn’t get half a dozen paces before Alex had him by the collar and was flinging him to the slick ground. It was the whip-thin one, scrabbling backward, babbling now.

  ‘I didn’t know … sorry, man … I didn’t know.’

  Alex lifted him again and slammed him into the wall. The thin hands tore at his captor’s grip, but he might as well have tried to break steel chains.

  Alex brought his face in close. ‘You have no idea what’s really out there.’

  ‘I didn’t know. Please … don’t.’ The eyes that had been aggressive and confident were now wide with terror. The predator had become prey. He clawed at Alex’s hands and then at his bearded face, babbling and sobbing. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  Alex felt nothing for the man. No, that wasn’t true; he did feel something. He felt good. He drew his fist back.

  CHAPTER 5

  Special Forces Mobile Command Center, Istanbul

  Kemel Baykal’s frustration showed in the volcanic glare he turned on the team of local police who were tasked with monitoring the image feeds from the cisterns. He had requested a twenty-four-hour watch on the cameras placed in both the inner and outer chambers of the deep tunnels. But sometime during the night, one of the image feeds had gone dead, and no one had noticed for several hours. Whoever was supposed to have been watching, wasn’t.

  Baykal noticed a young policeman’s eyes darting back and forth, refusing to meet his own. You, he thought. He leaned his large frame toward the young man, his moustache a black shelf of bristles and fury.

  At last the young man’s eyes slid up to his, and he dry-swallowed. ‘I just stepped out for –’

  ‘Go.’

  The policeman’s mouth snapped shut. He looked like he was about to plead his case, but then must have thought better of it. He got to his feet and left the room.

  Baykal turned to a seated technician and spun his finger in the air, indicating he wanted the relay feeds backed up so he could look at the information prior to the image whiteout, for the tenth time. He folded his arms, but one hand crept up to pull at his moustache. There was always something, a tiny speck that might seem insignificant but gave a clue as to what had taken place, he thought.

  Concentration drew his brow into deep clefts on his forehead as he viewed the footage. Like all the other times, the cameras showed nothing – all was quiet, dark, no motion. However, the mobile unit still stationed over the pit had picked up some sound: initially, a sighing, or low weeping. Then a soft padding, like slow heavy footsteps, followed by a noise like ragged breathing – as if someone or something large was moving around in that pitch-black of the pit.

  Baykal waited while the technician tried once again to focus in on the pit’s depths, but just as a slow-moving lump began to take shape, the camera’s lens clouded, as though steam had risen in front of its electronic eye, and then the image changed to static. The breathing turned to a soft hiss, a sob, and then something indistinct. If a language, it was impenetrable.

  ‘Kahretsin!’ Baykal’s curse bounced around the small room. He stood straighter, feeling an angry tension from his feet to his furrowed brow. His fist came down on the benchtop. ‘Again.’

  The technician rewound the recording. The answers were there – they had to be. Baykal had had the place locked down, no one had gone in or out, and his guards were stationed at all known entrances. But he knew that for every entrance that was on a map, there could be a secret passage into the enormous 1500-year-old tunnel system that hadn’t been used for centuries.

  Again the recording played; again, nothing. Baykal dragged his fingers through his hair. He couldn’t afford to sit on his hands any longer. His request for orders from his superiors had placed him in an operational suspended animation, but enough was enough. He needed information; he needed to know what happened to his men, the tourists, and the first police teams. There was a knot in his stomach that tightened every minute he delayed. For all he knew, there was a terrorist cell down there, releasing some strange gas or plague into the cisterns, which would slowly seep out to infect the whole of Istanbul.

  He couldn’t send in another team; not after seeing Zeren Yanar literally crumbling to pieces before his eyes. Kemel Baykal had risen through the ranks of the elite Special Forces to become an Atsubay, and though age had ground down his stamina, his spirit remained as strong as ever. He wouldn’t ask a man to do anything he wasn’t prepared to do himself.

  He picked up a phone. ‘I’m going in.’

  *

  Nobody spoke as Baykal kneeled beside Yanar’s remains. He held a long heavy flashlight up at shoulder level, and with his other hand reached out to touch the man’s shoulder. He hesitated; even though he and his team wore fully sealed level-1 biohazard suits made of toughened PVC, he had no idea if what he was seeing was the result of biological, chemical or radiological assault on the young man’s system. He shrugged and placed his gloved fingers on the body anyway. His first impression was of coldness, and a density more like concrete than flesh. There was no blood, just a dry and powdery residue, and chalk-like debris close to where Yanar’s body and head had separated.

  He rolled the detached head toward him. Yanar’s face was literally frozen in a mix of agony and surprise. Baykal remembered the statue with the gold ring on its finger in the lower chambers. He had a growing suspicion about what might have happened to the missing tourists.

  He half-turned to one of the men standing close behind him. ‘Bag it … him; all of it.’

  He got slowly to his feet, wiping his hand on the biohazard suit’s trousers. He knew it was a futile gesture, but it was instinctive to want to shake off something so horrifying. He turned to his three soldiers waiting patiently and cradling skeletal M16s with illuminated flashlights on their barrels. He pulled his own pistol from the holster nestled in the middle of his back, nodded toward the pit, and walked to its edge. He stared down into the inky blackness for a few seconds, waving the flashlight’s beam back and forth.

  Baykal was the first to descend. He eased down the slick steps, finding the thick PVC suit restrictive and counterproductive for any sort of stealthy approach. The faceplate was front-facing so he had no peripheral version; and the suit’s oxygen cells gave off a constant whine, like having a mosquito trapped inside with him, which meant any small external sounds were lost.

  The deep chamber at the bottom of the steps was exactly as it had appeared on his original team’s monitors. Baykal waved his men toward the large archway, cautiously stepping over the tumbled stones and dislodged bricks scattering the floor. A few pieces of the statues were strewn about, and Baykal no longer thought their tortured expressions had been created by long-dead artisans with an eye for the macabre.

  The SFC commander raised his hand and his small team halted mid-step. Something about the tunnel before him, the impenetrable darkness that refused to be illuminated by his pipe of yellow light, made his animal instincts scream. Fight or flight. His heart rate must have been close to a hundred beats per minute; he could feel the pulse from his stomach to his neck.

  Baykal swallowed, and carefully placed one foot in front of the other until he passed under the arch of the doorway. His three men immediately followed, fanning out to either side of him. Baykal moved his flashlight around the room: it was no more than fifty square feet, and octagonal in shape.

  ‘Temple room.’ His voice sounded loud inside his suit.

  The walls were decorated with mosaics of serpents and hideous faces either screwed in torment or with something like blue ropes writhing around their heads. Baykal stepped toward one of the faces a
nd saw that its eyes were filled with a dulled orb of metal. Lifting his light he realized that it was solid silver. He rubbed his gloved thumb back and forth across one of the orbs, and revealed his own ghostly reflection. Pure, he thought, to remain intact and without corrosion.

  He turned and moved his flashlight around the room; each set of eyes glowed momentarily as the beam passed over them. When his light came to the farthest wall, it fell into more depth – there was another small room. He motioned for two of his men to approach from one side, as he moved up from the other.

  The vestibule was undecorated, suggesting it was a vault rather than the antechamber of a place of worship. In its center stood a vessel made of age-darkened bronze. It was huge, six feet across, and stood on three ornate clawed feet. On the side was a horrible face, crowned with what looked like writhing snakes.

  There was a manhole-sized cover resting on the floor, and bronze chain-links strewn about nearby. Judging by the fresh scars on the side of the huge urn, Baykal assumed the cover had only recently been removed. Whatever had been inside had been sealed in tight and then the lid further locked.

  The Special Forces commander walked forward and then stopped, frowning. He looked around the vestibule. It didn’t make sense. The urn was large, and certainly could have held several people, but it wasn’t big enough to conceal the thirty-plus that had gone missing.

  Baykal stared at the urn, concentration making his eyes burn. All he heard was his own breathing and the whine of his suit’s air-conditioning unit. Though he was thankful for the insulation, he wished he could have turned it off momentarily, so he could listen, or smell the air, or use any of his other senses, rather than having to rely on the narrow focus of vision the faceplate afforded him.

  His men held their positions, waiting for him to make a move or issue an order. Any of them would have been willing to peer inside the vessel first, but Baykal never asked his men to do anything he wouldn’t consider doing himself. He sucked in a deep breath and stepped forward, his flashlight in one hand, the other gripping a gun held defensively in front of his face, his finger already putting pressure on the trigger. If someone, or something, unfriendly leaped out, it would take a point-blank slug to the head.