“Movement in the tower,” a voice reported in Franks’ earpiece. “Taking fire! Taking fire!”
It wasn’t much of a control tower, more of a shed with windows and a balcony on top of an old wooden house. There were two figures inside and both of them were shooting rifles at his people. A bullet bounced off their armored hood. Franks left one hand on the roof to keep from being flung off, and pulled out a Glock 20 with the other. The long extended magazine hanging out of the grip made drawing it from his suit slightly awkward, but Franks liked this pistol. It was special.
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrppppp.
All thirty rounds ripped through the control tower and its inhabitants in less than two seconds. Franks was probably the only member of the MCB who could use a full-auto 10mm handgun with the cyclic rate of a buzz saw, especially one-handed and bouncing around on the side of a moving vehicle without uselessly decorating the clouds. Even with the brand new, still unsteady hand, he was certain he’d hit both targets several times each.
Except they kept on firing, which told Franks he was dealing with Nemesis. MCB agents came out of their turrets and opened up with their machine guns. Their hidden snipers engaged the tower with their .50, but Nemesis wasn’t backing down. “Keep going!” Franks ordered as bullets tore through the air around him. They reached the side of the hangar and the driver stomped on the brakes. Franks stepped off the running board and hit the ground, but his new leg wasn’t quite strong enough yet to take a twenty-mile-an-hour impact, and he stumbled. Franks crashed into the dirt and slid on his face until coming to a stop.
He rolled over, yanked another long magazine from his belt and slammed it home. He cranked that off through the tower windows in another continuous burst. He saw blood hit the broken glass a split second before it disintegrated entirely. One of the Nemesis soldiers leapt out the back. The other took a .50 to the chest and bounced off the back wall.
MCB were bailing out, taking cover, and pouring fire into the tower, until the Mk19 belt-fed 40mm mounted on their command truck pulverized the building into splinters and fire. He caught a glimpse of one of the Nemesis soldiers still inside the collapsing structure before losing sight of it in an expanding cloud of dust and smoke.
Franks reloaded, stood up, and holstered the Glock. His new leg was shaky, but it would do. One of the agents came around the side of the Suburban and tossed Franks an FN SCAR. He might not be wearing proper armor, but he’d buckled multiple pistol belts together and put them over his shoulders like a makeshift bandoleer, so he was covered in pouches, mags, grenades, and knives.
“Secure the buildings now!” They were all on the same radio frequency, but Franks bellowed the command with so much volume that everybody, including their sniper overwatch and the Catholics on the approaching bus, heard him. Franks ran toward where he’d seen the soldier go down.
He had to duck as the demon came out of the wreckage and hurled a large beam at him. The soldier was so shredded that he couldn’t tell if it had been a male or female body, but it didn’t matter for long, because Cueto dropped a 40mm grenade at the thing’s feet. Franks was just outside the blast radius, but he was still pelted with red rain. He saw where the biggest chunk of body landed, then gave some quick hand signals for some of his men to finish it off.
There was movement in his peripheral vision as the other Nemesis soldier from the tower rushed into the nearest hangar. Surprisingly, the demon he’d thought had been finished by the 40mm had gotten up, grabbed its guts, and with an awkward limping run, made it to that hangar as well. That was an impressive level of resilience. Franks shouldered the FN, guessed where the demon would be through the wall, and started putting rounds through the tin. Most of the other agents couldn’t see what he was shooting at, but they followed his example and within seconds that building was absolutely riddled with bullet holes.
The MCB tasked with taking that building were on it moments later, tossing bangs through the windows and doors before sweeping inside. Franks followed them. He was almost there when an MCB agent’s body crashed through the wall to fly far out into the field. That was immediately followed by the sounds of screaming and gunfire.
The door was too far, so Franks crashed through the wall.
A single Nemesis soldier was in the middle of the open space. A couple members of the assault element were sprawled around it, leaking blood from deep lacerations. The rest of the MCB were falling back and taking cover. The demon’s scorched, torn flesh was pulsing and throbbing, mutating right before their eyes. Part of it was spouting fur and the other half scales. One arm had been blown off. It turned, revealing a hideous dog face, and when it opened its mouth, a long tongue that ended in a snake head rolled out. The snake even hissed at him.
That was unexpected.
Franks walked forward as he emptied the FN into the demon’s remaining arm trying to cripple it. Dropping the rifle the second it was dry, he pulled two full-auto Glocks, one in each hand, and opened fire. The demon twisted and jerked, trying to scurry away, but this time Franks concentrated on its legs. Sixty rounds of 10mm didn’t leave the demon with much more than bloody stumps, and by the time Franks dropped the two empty Glocks, the demon had flopped to the floor. Franks kicked it in the chest.
“Where’s Kurst?”
“Preparing the way!” the demon shrieked.
The snake tongue lashed out, trying to bite him, but Franks caught it before it could sink its fangs into him. “Wrong answer.” He ripped the demon’s tongue out of its head. A geyser of blood erupted from the thing’s mouth. So much for getting anything useful out of it, so Franks repeatedly stomped on the demon’s head with his boot. He smashed it until his foot hurt. He did it until he was sweating from the exertion and its skull was pancake flat.
That would settle it down for a minute.
“Evacuate the wounded. You two, drag this thing outside and burn it,” Franks told the agents. They immediately did as instructed.
“We’ve got the airfield locked down.” Cueto entered, took one look at his injured men and began swearing. Then he saw the twisted mutant as it was hauled past him. “What the fuck is that?”
“Nemesis.”
“I thought they were supposed to look human?”
“They are.”
“Well that sure as hell doesn’t! I’m assuming this is a bad development?”
“Yes and no.” The demons had not had physical bodies for long; they were powerful, but Franks knew from experience it took a lot of time and practice to maximize your effectiveness after modifying a body. They’d had just enough time to be truly dangerous with their original forms, but now they were somehow shape-shifting them into something else. Demons tended to be greedy and flashy when they found a way to Earth, like they were trying to make up for lost time. There was no way they were practiced in such complex forms yet.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“They’re overcompensating. If it hadn’t stopped and tried to scare these men, it would’ve gotten away too.” Franks picked up his guns and started reloading them as he followed the blood trail. The wounded demon had entered, heading one direction, and then turned back to engage the entry team. The other tower guard had kept going. Once he was past the stacks of equipment and shelving it was obvious that the hangar was just a cover for the entrance of a much larger structure. The floor sloped downward. There was a tunnel large enough to fit a semi truck carved into the bedrock. At the end of the slope was a massive steel door, so heavy it had to be operated by hydraulics on the other side.
The blood trail ended at the door. The handle wouldn’t budge. He keyed his radio. “Breachers to main hangar. We’ve got a bunker.”
As they walked back toward the surface, Franks downed another dose of the Elixir. It was better to get the pain and weakness out of the way with fewer witnesses.
Cueto watched Franks grind his teeth and wipe away the tears of blood, but didn’t comment on what he’d seen. That was nice. “I’m guessing this thin
g was originally built to withstand Russian nukes, Franks. I don’t know if we’ll be able to cut through before Stricken’s reinforcements get here.”
“Got a better idea?”
“Yeah. I should have stayed in bed.”
The Catholic tour bus had arrived and the Swiss Guard were debarking. Their civilian attire had been replaced with flecktarn camouflage and armored vests. They were armed with Sig rifles and surprisingly enough, a few halberds. It was amusing watching them trying to maneuver the long pole arms through the bus door. Not that Franks was going to tell them how to do their jobs. Having dealt with many demons in his life, it was hard to argue with the effectiveness of pinning them to something solid with a giant spear.
Gutterres drove his motorcycle directly into the hangar and parked next to them. “Any luck?”
“They’re holed up below us,” Agent Cueto answered. “It’s going to take a while to get in, and since Stricken probably saw us coming a mile away, I doubt we’ll make a dent in those monster blast doors before his people get here. I hope the Pope has a good lawyer on retainer for you guys.”
The Secret Guard tilted his head. “What gave it away?”
“Your Swiss tourists all said a motivational prayer in Latin before getting back on their bus, and they’re sporting enough crucifixes to open a Catholic school.”
“I’ll have to speak with the Monsignor about being a little more subtle in the future. I won’t confirm or deny anything, but please think of the large Swiss men as our infantry.”
“That make you spec ops?”
“Something like that.”
The MCB breachers ran down the slope and went to work on the main door. The report they radioed back was as bad as expected. “We’re drilling now, but this is thick, heat-treated steel. We’ll need a few minutes.”
“So what now?” Gutterres asked.
Cueto checked his watch. “Ask your boss for a miracle.”
* * *
Heather climbed up the ladder as fast as she could. Stricken was right behind her, and surprisingly enough, he was managing to keep up. After that was Renfroe, and even if she wouldn’t have been able to place him by the panting and gasping, the odd glow would have given him away. Behind that weird guy was the rest of the surviving STFU staff members, stretched across three floors’ worth of ladder clear back to where they started. Not that Heather could tell any of them apart because the scents drifting up the shaft were a confused mix of fear hormones.
They were right to be scared, because the Nemesis soldier had just broken the door down and was coming in after them. Heather could tell by the sound and the smell, but Renfroe could see it somehow as well. “They’re in!”
Supersoldier on top, more below, they were trapped in a vise.
“Mr. Stricken, Agent Franks is at the main gate with a bunch of MCB,” Renfroe reported.
Stricken didn’t respond. It was like he was focused on climbing, and that was it. That was odd. Normally he wouldn’t shut up, though she’d never seen him in actual danger before.
“Can you let Franks in?” Heather shouted.
“Sure, I can activate the hydraulics, but Franks will kill us,” Renfroe answered.
“He can get in line. The more Nemesis fighting Franks the fewer fighting us.”
“Okay, I’m on it. Out of my way, chumps. Autolocks released. Hydraulic cylinders engaged. Okay, Franks has an open door. I hope you’re right.”
Somehow whatever put Renfroe on the PUFF table made it so he could mess with electronics . . . That meant maybe she wouldn’t need Stricken to get the exit open after all. She was suddenly tempted to stomp on his fingers and watch him tumble down the shaft, but with her luck he’d domino the rest of them, she’d lose the other guy who could open the door, and she really didn’t have anything against the secretarial staff. Now, the armed guards, on the other hand, had been there when she’d been getting tortured, so screw those guys.
There was a loud bang at the bottom of the shaft. Nemesis had found the secret passage. They didn’t waste any time. There was a surprised shout as the last person in line got yanked off the ladder. The noise turned into screaming and violent thrashing.
“I’m coming for you, humans!” shouted the Nemesis soldier at the bottom.
He reached the next one in line. “My leg! He’s got my leg! He’s got—” CRUNCH.
One of the guards began shooting downward. Bullets ricocheted back up the shaft. One of the secretaries yelped when she got hit, lost her grip on the ladder, and fell. From the noise—panicked wailing and crashing—she took somebody else with her. The Nemesis soldier began to laugh, like that was the funniest damn thing he’d ever seen.
Heather reached the top. There was a metal hatch. “How do I open this thing? Stricken?” But the spymaster didn’t respond. “Stricken!”
“It locks on this side. Just turn the wheel I think,” Renfroe answered. “There’s a Nemesis soldier right on the other side waiting for you. The coded door is past her.” Somebody else died below them. “Hurry!”
Grasping the rusty wheel, she forced it to turn. The smell of blood and torn open bodies filled the shaft. Heather’s heart rate was increasing. The change was beginning. “I better get my damned exemption coin out of this! I’ll take the soldier, just get that door unlocked!” Heather shoved the hatch open.
The thing waiting on the other side grabbed her by the hair, yanked her out of the shaft, then threw Heather so hard that she hit the bunker’s ceiling, which hurt, but the really painful part was when she got kicked in the chest on the way back down.
Ribs broken, Heather bounced across the dusty floor until she struck the far wall. Damn. And she’d thought that Franks hit hard. That had knocked all the wind out of her. Luckily, her bones were used to breaking and immediately re-forming. Heather rolled over. The Nemesis soldier was a tall, Nordic-looking woman, and she had returned her attention to the shaft. As tempting as it was to let her murder Stricken, Heather really wanted to get out of here. Once her sternum wasn’t smashing her lungs flat, she gasped in a lungful of air and shouted, “Hey! I’m not done with you!”
The Nemesis woman looked over. “You’re alive?” She was wearing a slightly bemused expression as she left the shaft and walked over, casually dropping the handful of red hair she’d ripped out of Heather’s scalp on the way. “Then you’re not human either. What has Stricken sent to challenge me?”
Heather pulled herself up the wall until she was standing, and tried to get her bearings. The entire concrete room was only twenty feet across. The hatch was in the center, and from the screaming noises coming out of it, Stricken’s people were getting chewed up. There was a big bank-vault door on the far side of the room with a keypad on it. There was a boot print on her tank top. The Nemesis soldier was closing on her fast. Heather held up one hand. Her claws weren’t growing like they normally would. “Hang on . . .”
“Why should I?”
The transformation wasn’t happening as fast as it should. Enough of that toxin was still in her system that it was really screwing her up. Damn it, Stricken! That was really bad news, and an even worse time to find out. “You want a real challenge?” Heather growled. “Give me thirty seconds to get ready.”
“That sounds fair.” The woman grinned until her mouth grew so wide that it nearly split her face in half. She extended her arms wide, proudly demonstrating that each of her fingers had somehow turned into a tentacle ending in a needle-sharp spike. “I’ll give you time if you grant me the same courtesy,” she said, only now her words were hard to understand, what with those things that looked like crab legs splitting through her cheeks.
I hate my job.
Heather flung herself at the monster.
CHAPTER 18
Pennsylvania Colony, 1775
Consciousness returned quickly. A surgery had been performed. The work was crude and extremely painful, but his lungs were drawing in air and his heart was beating.
“Well, then, I see that
our undying Hessian is awake.” A fat old man was sitting on a stool next to his bed. He adjusted his glasses as he studied Franks’ wounds. “That is a rather remarkable feat considering you had a wound to your abdomen sufficient to see daylight through. General Washington said you spoke English. Is this so?”
“Yes,” Franks croaked. Human languages were easy to master compared to the old tongue. “Where am I?”
“Most of you is present here in my laboratory in Philadelphia, however I regret to inform you that much of the rest of you is spread across a field in Virginia. Traditionally, when a man’s body is forcibly removed from the waist down by a cannonball, they have the decency to perish in a timely manner. To do otherwise tends to frighten the women and the livestock.”
“I’m not meant to die yet.”
“You made that rather clear. When you refused to expire, General Washington wanted your remains thrown upon a pyre. I believe the actual description he applied to you was an unholy abomination in the sight of the Lord. However, due to my small measure of reputation in the sciences, he thought I could ascertain what manner of beast the Hessians had unleashed upon us first, because heaven forbid we face any more soldiers so fearsome. So you were placed in a wagon and brought here as quickly as possible. You have proven to be a curious distraction. I am supposed to be preparing for an important diplomatic journey, but I’ve been engrossed in studying you instead. Would I be correct in assuming that you are the legendary creation of the alchemist Konrad Dippel?”