“I’ll crush all of you down to pulp before you leave this building. You’re not free, and if I cannot have your body, then neither can you.” It looked to the huge Eli thing. “Pull him to pieces — we’ll use them again later.” It eased back into the shadowy alcove, until just its yellow eyes remained floating in the velvet darkness, before they too vanished.
Alex was lifted off his feet by the giant, rising into the air to stare in Eli’s broad face. It was a ripped patchwork of scars and different colored flesh. The eyes were dead, unfocused, and the scarification of ancient script still wept a clear fluid.
Alex strained until he felt his shoulders begin to pop from their sockets. He flexed, screamed and writhed, and then flexed again, feeling his own strength begin to bend back the colossal power of the giant. The whole time he could feel Jabir ibn Hayyan in his mind, watching, screaming his own fury at losing his prize, promising a pain beyond madness to be rained down upon Alex.
But there was also frustration from the withered alchemist, since Alex’s mind refused to be dominated and controlled like so many humans had been in the past. Alex wrenched hard, and one of his arms came free, then the next. The Eli thing just held Alex by his chest, which had already suffered broken ribs. It immediately began compressing his rib cage. Alex’s bones screamed and began to shatter, and Alex knew he had mere seconds before his diaphragm was totally collapsed, and his lungs and heart shredded by the daggers of his own splintered bones.
Alex jerked forward, gripping Eli by the head. He tugged, swung, and ripped at the huge melon-sized cranium. The face remained indifferent to the attack, passive even, but Alex felt the hands increase their pressure on his torso. He tasted blood in his throat, and with one last burst of strength, he jerked his hands upwards. There came a sound like tearing canvas, and the line of stitching at Eli’s neck started to pop open. Alex gave one last mighty heave, and then the head totally ripped free, and a spray of dark jellified, coagulated fluid splattered stickily around them.
The hands dropped and Alex fell to the ground. He threw the head into the dark shaft where Jabir ibn Hayyan had disappeared, now screaming his own rage. He sensed the thing that had once been a man was already fleeing deep into the labyrinth below the ground. Behind him the headless giant still lumbered about, perhaps searching for its face and eyes.
Alex got to one knee, holding his chest and carefully sucking in deep breaths. Every movement was like a hundred knives piercing his flesh. He shut his eyes, grimacing, but remembering his learned techniques to quell the agony of his body and the tormented screams from the damaged psychology rampaging through his mind.
Alex searched out sun-sparkling waves breaking on a deserted beach, the smell of green apples, and an image of his son, Joshua, holding up a favorite toy. He stayed silent, immobile, ignoring the lumbering monster and the grotesque whispering of the small being somewhere in the dark caves, and just concentrated on calming himself. After a moment he opened his eyes and pressed the comm. stud in his ear.
“Sam.”
“Boss.” The response was immediate. “Goddamnit, you’re alive. I knew it.”
“For now.” Alex backed away from the headless giant which was snatching at things that came within its grasp. “We need to get to that escape tunnel that Hammerson found to take us out to the Kashaf-Roud area in the desert. Jabir ibn Hayyan has hundreds of IRG waiting up top for us. We’ll need to go down. Where are you now?”
Sam snorted. “Just outside. Where else would we be?”
Alex grinned; there was obeying orders, and there was obeying orders. “This isn’t over yet. You start down, I have one more thing to do. Be with you in a few minutes.”
“You got it, see you soon.” He heard Sam issuing orders as the connection was broken.
Alex then weaved his way around the lumbering thing that had been Eli, its stained smock sticking to its huge lumpen body as sticky fluids leaked from the stump on its shoulders. At the door, he turned back, trying to see into the small alcove where the goblin-like creature had scurried. There was nothing there to see, but he knew the evil thing watched him from somewhere.
“See you in hell.” He smiled, and then raced to the stairway, taking five steps at a time, until he felt the familiar tingle of radiation in his gut behind a nearby door. Pushing it open, he crossed quickly to one of the bombs, and ripped the lid from its top. Each device had a different kiloton setting and a timer. The one he selected was ten kilotons, and he set it to sixty minutes.
His hand hovered over the initiator button. They needed to be at least five miles away, and if the exit tunnel was what, and where, he expected it to be, they had a chance. He almost laughed out loud. It also needed to be open, and unguarded. And if there was a vehicle waiting, then it’d be a piece of cake, and they had a chance.
Better than having zero options, he thought, and punched the button. He ran to the door, locking it, and then ripping the handle free — if anyone needed to enter, they’d need to bring a blowtorch or battering ram.
Seconds mattered as Alex flew down the steps, an entire flight at a time. In a few minutes he had caught up with his team.
“Let’s go, people. Gonna be one helluva fire in the hole.”
“Yo.” Casey clapped her hands and screamed her delight, immediately putting a hand up to her temple. “Ow, that hurts my brain.”
“There’s a brain?” Sam nudged her. “Let’s go, soldier.”
At the bottom of the steps was a pair of formidable looking silver doors that were sealed. Sam didn’t hesitate, lifting the M203 grenade launcher and firing two M433 high-explosive rounds. The plugs could easily penetrate two inches of armored steel.
“Hit the deck!”
The group flung themselves to the ground, covering their ears and crushing their eyes shut. Before the smoke cleared and the debris settled, they were moving again. The steel doors were bent inwards as if a titan had punched through them. Inside there was a garage, a workshop, and a long roadway as large as a four-lane highway, and in pristine condition.
But what made Alex feel a surge of elation was the line of new Iranian military trucks, sitting idle as if waiting for them.
“Load ’em up.”
The group leaped into back and front cabins, Sam taking the wheel and immediately flooring it before the doors were even closed. “Buckle up, children, and keep your arms inside the ride at all times.”
Alex checked his wristwatch. “Thirty minutes. We need to be outside the tunnel or it’ll be like being in the barrel of a cannon when that nuke goes off.”
“You set a nuke?” Adira’s brows went up.
“Sure, Jabir ibn Hayyan is still in here somewhere, pulling the strings. And I can guarantee he’ll be plotting his revenge on all of us. I gave him a choice and he chose the wrong option.” Alex’s smile was grim. “Like I hoped.”
Sam had the truck up to eighty miles per hour in the tunnel, but the smooth roadway surface made them seem like they were floating.
“Faster,” Alex said.
Sam’s foot stamped down, squeezing the last few ergs from the engine. Alex’s eyes moved from the hands on his watch to the distance ticking over on the odometer. In his mind he calculated, remembering the tunnel network schematics from Hammerson’s stratigraphic sonar readings. They had twenty minutes until detonation, but at the rate they were traveling, he allowed himself a glimmer of hope.