But King didn’t have time to consider what he had done. Lake came at him, fast and furious and before King could counter her move, he felt the surreal-ness of a blade ripping into his abdomen. His Kevlar vest softened the blow marginally and prevented the blade from going deep but it still hurt like hell!
He dropped his own knife and sank to his knees. Fresh agony ripped at him anew as Lake ripped the blade out and slashed at his throat—
Her head exploded in a gruesome eruption of gore that splashed over him before her carcass fell back against the railing and slumped to the catwalk!
“No!” Gibbs screamed in rage.
Engrossed in watching the brief but brutal fight, he had failed to notice O’Rourke slip silently from the control room, climb the access ladder to the catwalk and take aim with his SCAR rifle. His bullet had been straight and true, but so would Gibbs’ own.
He spun to the rear of the control room. A ‘cross-roads’ of ladders and catwalks spread out from there, one to either side, one above and one below. He aimed up, his HK416 on full auto and opened fire. O’Rourke dashed along the catwalk just in time, narrowly missing the barrage of bullets.
“Stop shooting!” Tobias cried at him.
Gibbs swung back to the scientist and the three technicians, his ugly face twisted into a snarl. “Start the process!” he ordered.
“I can’t,” Tobias replied. “Not while there are people in the accelerator. The failsafe—”
“Override it!”
“I can’t!” he screeched, panic rising in his voice.
Gibbs took aim and fired. The head of the nearest technician, a gangly lad with long hippy hair, exploded all over the scientist. He let out a high pitched wail as blood and brain matter coated him and fell out of his seat. He retched and vomited all over the floor, sobbing like a child. The two remaining technicians likewise quaked in terror.
Gibbs marched to the pathetic scientist on the floor, grasped him by the collar and hauled him to his feet, placing the hot muzzle of his rifle under his chin. A pool of golden liquid washed across the deck as the man pissed himself.
Gibbs leaned in close, his pocked, ugly face snarling. “You get this fucking process started now, or I’ll blow off your limbs one by fucking one. Got it?”
Tobias’ body trembled. His voice was weak and stuttered in terror. “Y-y-yes.”
“Good,” Gibbs snarled. “I’ll be back in a minute and it had better be working.” Then he thrust Tobias roughly back into his soiled chair, slung his rifle over his shoulder and climbed the ladder.
“Doc, come on, we’ve got to go!”
Rudy O’Rourke skidded to King’s side. Blood oozed out from the archaeologist’s vest but they didn’t have any time to administer the wound. Instead, the big soldier pulled him to his feet and began to lead him back towards the access hatch.
King pulled away. “No!” he gasped, grimacing at the pain.
“Doc, what the hell are you—”
“Traitor!” Gibbs’ voice suddenly echoed through the chamber. He scrambled onto the catwalk above the control room. For a moment, O’Rourke thought he might use his gun but he knew he wouldn’t risk damaging the accelerator. His earlier outburst had been born out of rage instead of reason, whereas O’Rourke’s shot had been calculated and certain not to miss.
Instead, Gibbs unsheathed his knife and set off in an angry sprint towards them. O’Rourke pushed King behind him and wrenched his own weapon free. “Get to the hatch. Get out of here.”
“No!” King pushed forward but the larger man slammed his hand into his belly. The knife wound shot new agony into him and he crashed onto his knees. The cruel move saved his life as just at that moment Gibbs skidded into striking distance and almost sliced the archaeologist’s throat wide open. Instead, O’Rourke took the blow to his upper arm and yelped in pain. He thrust his own knife forward but Gibbs side stepped it and struck again. O’Rourke dodged this one and slammed his fist into his superior’s stomach. He bent double, winded, then, as O’Rourke lunged in for the killing blow, Gibbs dropped flat to the catwalk. Missing his target, O’Rourke stumbled, off balance. Gibbs jammed his knife into the other man’s calve muscle. He howled in pain and dropped to his knees but Gibbs had already wrenched his knife free, up turned it and in one fluid motion, he jammed it into the bottom of O’Rourke’s jaw! He pushed up and felt the satisfying scrunch of muscle, sinew and, eventually, brain.
At that precise moment, the access hatch through which King had entered blew inwards in a blaze of flame and debris. The noise was deafening in the enclosed space as the C4 plastic explosives Nathan Raine had planted around it, detonated. A moment later, the ex-SOG operative slipped through and landed on the catwalk, handgun raised. He stared in horror at the sight of Gibbs’ knife buried to the hilt inside his friend’s skull.
“No!” he cried in rage. It was that moment of passion that cost him. Before he even squeezed the trigger of his gun, Gibbs wrenched his knife free and hurled it at Raine. The blade slammed into his left shoulder and hurled him backwards. His gun clattered free and tumbled off the edge of the catwalk.
Gibbs noticed movement as King took the distraction to make a run for it. But, instead of fleeing out the hatch, the archaeologist ran past the carnage, sprinting down the catwalk towards the control room.
He could wait.
Gibbs had a score to settle.
Now weapon-less, he hurled himself bodily at his wounded ex-commander and wrapped his powerful hands around his throat.
King’s mind was focussed only on his goal. All else was irrelevant to him and had been since the moment he had seen Sid lying on the deck of that boat in a pool of blood.
It had all been for nothing! His mother and sister’s murders, his father’s sacrifice, Abuku’s assassination, the hunt for the Moon Mask! All the victories, all the defeats! It had all come down to that one moment, when he realised that all the prestige he had desired, all the recognition, the celebration, the pompous self-righteousness he would feel when he could gloat in the face of so-called scientists like McKinney, was irrelevant!
All that he wanted was Sid.
Now, all he wanted was to get her back.
Nothing else mattered. He had shut all else out of his mind, absorbing only whatever information would assist him in his new quest, his new obsession: Langley’s report on the Phoenix Project, the basic principles behind the Eldridge and the key to it all, the Moon Mask. He had slipped away the moment Langley’s team had been attacked by marines, and he had shut out of his mind his killing of Garcia, the pain of his own knife wound. Even the brutal murder of O’Rourke in front of his eyes and the plight of Nathan Raine had been locked away in some dark, inaccessible part of his mind.
Nothing mattered now. He would do whatever he needed to do to save the woman he loved.
He charged down the catwalk, each footstep reverberating in the enclosed space. Reaching the ladder at the far end, he dropped down it and through the roof of the control room. The ladder continued down below the platform and a catwalk branched off from either side, giving maintenance access, first to the giant computer servers and their spinning fans, then to the accelerator itself.