“The dog?” King asked. But then understanding dawned on him. “Please tell me it doesn’t have three heads.”
Alexander’s reply was drowned out by a robust growling that vibrated the stone under King’s feet. Three heads or not, the thing sounded huge and hungry.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The heavy door smashed hard into the Plexiglas wall, dislodging the explosive Rook had set, and knocking it to the floor against the aquarium wall, where the door promptly landed on top of it. Rook had been thrown backward by the blast and ended up on his back, struggling like a tortoise to get onto his legs.
Asya let a burst of bullets fly from her position on the second level, strafing the doorway. Rook heard her utter a Russian curse as a heavy mercenary fell through the doorway onto his face. Then he saw something arc down from the balcony, hit the door and bounce out through the open doorway and into the corridor.
Rook got to his feet and let out a grunt as he raced for the wall. Asya had tossed a grenade she had taken from the armory down the length of the gallery. It was a good throw. A deflection off the 45 degree angled door, and straight out of the room and into the waiting arms of the mercenaries was a nearly impossible shot. But with the door open, Rook could find himself on the receiving end of more metal fragments. He heard screams behind him and then the explosion. The shockwave sent him slamming face first into the wall. He missed Asya’s outstretched hand and slid down the wall to the floor.
“I feel like a pregnant kangaroo on a pogo-stick in this friggin’ armor. Doesn’t anyone ever use a handgun any more?” Rook pulled out one of his two Desert Eagle pistols and waited on the floor. As soon as he saw the forearms of the first man enter the room, he fired twice, the loud booming shots echoing through the long room. The first shot missed, but punched a softball sized hole in the wall. The second shot struck the mercenary’s arm — and took it off. The merc fell back, screaming in pain.
Rook looked up to the metal guard rail around the second story balcony. He saw Asya was rapidly tying a bed sheet to the rail, while nervously watching the door at the end of the gallery’s lower level. He holstered the Desert Eagle and scrambled on hands and knees for the dangling sheet.
“I can’t cover you and help you climb,” Asya said, as she finished tying and then swept her submachine gun up again on its strap.
Rook didn’t see any sign of Peter or Lynn. He assumed they had already left the upper room, looking for the way out. He couldn’t blame them. He would have done the same.
Rook quickly unbuckled his chest armor, removing the bulky plate and impact foam pieces around his arms and torso, dropping them to the floor. They offered protection, but they were stiff and added a lot of weight. He debated removing the leg armor, but the one now coated in his blood, was probably acting as a compression bandage for his wounded leg. He decided to leave it.
Freed of the weight of the chest armor, and wearing only a black synthetic t-shirt over his broad chest, Rook attacked the bed sheet, shimmying up the cloth, while Asya sprayed the door at the end of the hall with the odd burst of gunfire, hoping to dissuade further incursion. But Rook knew it was just a matter of time until they tossed in another grenade — or worse. He tugged his weight up and after two pulls, gave up on keeping his legs wrapped around the spindly sheet, relying instead on the raw strength in his beefy arms.
Once at the lip, he placed one hand on the concrete floor, and reached up with the other for the bar, pulling himself horizontal in the process, and then rolling under the guard rail onto the balcony. When he stood, Asya was again blasting down into the gallery, by the door. He took quick stock of his location — a large, swank, sparsely decorated office of some sort. Most likely Ridley’s, he thought. Potted plants dotted the space around a low leather sofa and a glass-topped coffee table. When Rook spotted the executive bathroom at one end of the office and the ajar doorway to a nice bedroom at the other end, he knew his guess was right. He could see the fitted sheet from the bed on the floor of the bedroom. Now I know where the sheet came from, he thought. One more exit led from the room to a lighted hallway beyond, the door left wide open. That’ll be where Peter and Lynn went.
“Can we run now?” Asya asked, stepping up to him.
“Cover me for just a minute,” he said, jogging over to the desk near the center of the huge office. The opportunity to learn even a little of what Ridley might have planned was too good, but he’d only sacrifice the minute. He knew Asya’s supply of magazines would run out, and he counted on the mercenaries downstairs to get crafty any second now. Plus, if they figured out he and Asya had ascended to the next level, they would try to flank him by taking the stairwell at the end.
Asya made it back to the rail just as a sustained burst of AK-47 fire strafed the balcony. Rook recognized the sound of the weapon, and knew the jig was nearly up. He altered course away from the desk before he’d even made it there, and instead he made for the far end of the balcony, where he saw a control panel on the wall, next to a large potted fern.
Rook opened fire on the gallery floor, and the AK stopped with a sputtering burst. Asya popped up at her end of the balcony and fired her own sustained burst of gunfire down at the mercenaries, who quickly darted back to the cover of the doorway. Rook caught a glance of the last guy — dressed in black BDUs and snakeskin cowboy boots with a big white ten-gallon hat.
“What a maroon,” he mumbled to himself. He raised one of the Desert Eagles and held his angle on the doorway down below at the end of the gallery. “Asya, go. Get with Peter and Lynn, then rendezvous with Queen if you can.”
Asya paused and looked at him sternly.
“I got this. Go,” he told her.
She turned and sprinted for the door to the hall.
Just then, Ten Gallon came back into the doorway. The sights on Rook’s barrel were already lined up. All he had to do was squeeze. The big Desert Eagle boomed once, and the white hat jumped, the brim of it splattered with blood and bone. The mess that had been Ten Gallon’s head actually stuck to the wall next to the door — hat and all. “Now that’s nasty,” Rook said before the hat fell with a wet thud.
“Bunch of amateurs,” he called out. “I got a bullet for each of you. Maybe you nut-twists should go home and get more guys.”
He glanced to the control panel on his left and scanned the controls. There was a button labeled Kliegs, so he pushed it.
Immediately, the massive dark Plexiglas wall came to life, as several enormous underwater spotlights on the other side illuminated the water. A bewildering array of fish were swimming just on the other side of the wall. Rook guessed the glass wall was maybe 350 feet long by 30 high. This isn’t an aquarium, he thought, it’s the fucking ocean!
The water was crystal clear, with a sandy bottom and a few bits of coral and tufts of sea plants. Sea stars and several dozen black spiny urchins sat on the sand.
None of those things held Rook’s attention though. The glass wall had been built for one obvious purpose. To view the monstrosity taking up ninety percent of the underwater view. Lying on its back was a giant statue of a man, measuring at least 300 feet in length. The surface of the statue was covered in barnacles and coral, and other sea life, but the massive figure, posed as though standing, was impossible to miss.
As soon as the thought of the statue standing entered Rook’s mind, his eyes grew wide. Remembrances of past battles with Ridley’s animated golems filled his mind. The thought of this monstrosity standing up made Rook’s stomach flip.