Alternate Europe:
The Dragon Horn
Dark Crusade
Assassin of the Damned
Historical Novels:
The Great Pagan Army
The Sword of Carthage
The Rogue Knight
Other Novels:
Invasion: Alaska
Strontium-90
The Dragon of Carthage
Accelerated
ACCELERATED
(An excerpt)
I was having the nightmare again.
Iron bands shackled me to a gurney. Fluorescent lights passed above as grim-faced men wheeled me down a corridor. Their shoes scuffled on the tiles and their garlic breath fogged over my face. Straining, I tried to arch my head to see how near I was to the laboratory. There was a loud buzzing noise. I wanted to shout, but the orderlies had stuffed a wadded cloth in my mouth.
Then a cold, hard feeling built in my gut. No, I told myself. This isn’t going to happen again.
I struggled so hard I broke out of the dream. A moment of disorientation followed. It was dark where I lay, and the gurney’s dream-wheels had stopped squeaking, although the buzzing continued. I frowned, wondering what had happened to the orderlies. Then I realized I was on my boat, my cabin cruiser, lying on my bunk with a pillow jammed over my head. My bedspread was damp with sweat, the blanket shoved to one side. The one constant was the buzzing. In the nightmare, it had come from the laboratory. Here—
I sat up. The buzzing came from my security system. Someone was on my boat.
My heart sped up with adrenalin. Had they found me? After four years of running, of hiding—I’d escaped the terrible facility, the one from my dream that had been a grim reality of inhuman tests.
The red-glowing numerals of my clock showed it was 12:16 PM, about noon. That couldn’t be a coincidence. They came at me during the height of daylight.
I slid from my bunk, shoving my legs through a pair of shorts. Then I turned off the alarm. Were Kevlar-armored commandos signaling to one another as they inched toward the door? Were they ready to rush down here, using flash-bang grenades to blind me?
“Never again,” I whispered.
I crouched by my bunk, shoving my hand under the mattress. My fingers wrapped around a loaded Browning .45. I yanked it out and flicked off the safety. A round was already in the chamber.
The Alamo, my cabin cruiser, was docked in San Francisco harbor south of Fisherman’s Wharf. My idea this time had been to hide in the open. That might have been a mistake. I examined my gun. There was a city ordinance against firearms. But that was the least of my concerns as no ordinary prison could hold me for long. Letting them find me was the danger. Letting them take me back to the lab—
My grip tightened around the gun.
I exited my cabin, moved silently through a cramped corridor and started up a stairway. I was bare-footed and bare-chested, and I listened, striving to hear any telltale sound that would let me know who had invaded my sanctuary. It was possible tourists had boarded my boat, or kids from another vessel docked at the same pier. I had a Stay Off sign posted in three languages: English, Spanish and Chinese. I could imagine the commandos sneering at the sign, quietly making a quip about it or even tearing it down.
As my stomach tightened, I slipped through the narrow galley and into the carpeted lounge. There were several portholes with dark curtains in front of them. I had a wet bar, some chairs and a couch. It was comfortable, the most comfortable I’d been in four years. I’d “liberated” a hefty sum of cash to buy the boat outright. Each of my actions toward getting the money and buying the boat had no doubt collectively added up to a mistake.
I crouched by a chair, aiming my Browning at the door. Shop commandos could wear all the armor they wanted, but it wouldn’t help if I shot them in the face. I’d cover my eyes if the door crashed open. They’d toss in flash-bang grenades first, hoping to disorient me. They would be highly trained, at least as good as the Green Berets of my former A-team in Afghanistan. I’d always known this day would come. I was going to take down as many of those bastards as I could. If I could take them all down, I could run again and find a better place to hide. It was a wild hope. Shop commandos were the best and I’d be going against them at noon.
A creak sounded by the door that led to the sheltered aft deck outside. My muscles tensed. Then I saw a blot of darkness under the door. It was nearly impossible keeping myself from emptying the magazine through the heavy plastic. I needed aimed shots, however, aimed shots at faces.
“Don’t let them take you alive,” I whispered to myself.
Someone tentatively tapped the outside of the door. Was that a trick? It had to be a trick.
“Gavin,” a woman called. “Gavin Kiel?”
My chest tightened. The person out there knew my name. They knew I lived here. I’d taken every precaution this time—
No excuses, I told myself.
“Gavin,” the woman said, with a hint of desperation.
I scowled. The voice sounded familiar. How had this woman found me? I wasn’t going to find out crouched here. As I stood, I shook my head. They were playing me. The minute I opened the door, grenades would land at my feet, or they’d fire shock rounds into my chest, trying to knock me down so they could rush in and capture me.
I could send them a signal by firing a bullet through the door. I raised the gun, but hesitated. I thought I knew the voice from somewhere.
I crept to a porthole. Slowly, I pulled back a tiny portion of the heavy curtain. It was noon and the sunlight was nearly blinding. I vaguely made out the shape of a woman who looked as if she held something heavy. I mentally berated myself for leaving my sunglasses in my shirt down in the sleeping quarters.
She tapped at the door again, “Gavin. I need your help.”
I withdrew my finger from the curtain and ran a forearm across my lips. Was it possible she was alone? I hardly dared believe it. Was I going to have a chance to fix my mistake? Dear God, but I hoped that was true.
I cleared my throat, then took a combat-shooting stance before the door. “Who is it?” I said.
“Kay Durant,” she said. “Will you let me in?”
If commandos waited out there behind her, now was the moment for them to blast down the door. But if she was alone—this didn’t make sense. Kay had worked with them, helping in the experiments on us. Luckily for me, four years ago her conscience had driven her to powering down my cell and unlocking the door.
“You must run,” she’d told me. She’d given me five thousand euros and a Gerber combat knife. The laboratory had been in Italy outside of Milan.
I’d been running ever since. Now Kay was outside my door here in San Francisco, pleading for help. If she knew my whereabouts, others surely knew it, too.
I clicked open the lock, even knowing this could be a trap. I opened the door quickly. Sunlight poured around me, blinding my eyes, but I grabbed for where her wrist should be if she’d raised her hand for another knock. My fingers squeezed flesh, and I heard her say, “oh,” in surprise. It reminded me that I was too strong now. I eased pressure. I didn’t want to break any of her bones. I felt horribly exposed, and I expected shock rounds to thump against my chest.
I pulled, and Kay shot past me into the lounge, with her feet drumming on the carpet. Then I glided outside onto the sheltered aft section, with my Browning thrust before me like a spear. I squinted, trying to scan the deck. I’d pump rounds into anything dark, into anything that might indicate black uniforms. Blinding sunlight hammered my eyes. It put purple splotches of pain there and it made my frontal lobe throb as if steel needles stabbed brain tissue. There had been experiments done to me that had felt like this.