The Hydra toppled onto its side as its entrails spilled out and dragged through the grass behind it, unraveling like an anchor line. Its head swung up and around, biting at the exposed guts as the wound tried to seal. But with too much flesh in the way, the wound remained open, seeping more rank blood into the grass. The Hydra flailed madly, but soon focused on the source of its continuing pain. It quickly bit away chunks of its own organs, snapping through them and discarding the shriveling meat. It stopped when the wound was clear and free to heal over.
Knight took aim at the stationary Hydra, but Bishop stood in his line of fire. "Bishop!" he shouted. "Get down!"
Before the big man could move, one of the Hydra heads, attracted by the sound of Knight's voice, turned and found Bishop. It struck out, catching him by the waist. The head clamped down and twisted like a crocodile, tearing out a large chunk between his rib cage and hip bone. Bishop cried out and fell to the ground. A second head shot toward the prone man as the Hydra righted itself. But the strike never finished. A glowing burst of tracer bullets shot from the sky like a laser beam, striking the head and reducing it to the consistency of pulled pork. The headless neck flailed like a dying snake as the other six turned upward.
Knight followed the Hydra's gaze. A hel icopter circled and unleashed a second round of Gatling-gun fire, striking Hydra's side. With a rattling roar, the Hydra quickly healed and stomped off in pursuit of the helicopter, which stayed just high enough not to be caught, but low enough to entice the beast.
As the chopper spun around the quad, laying down bursts of powerful Gatling rounds, Knight noticed a small black speck in the sky above. Its boomerang shape brought a smile to his face. The cavalry had arrived.
SIXTY-FOUR
Wind tore through the rear compartment of the Crescent as the rear hatch opened. It was cold enough to blister skin and powerful enough to suck a man's breath away, but Rook and Queen didn't feel its effects from within their thermal jumpsuits, face masks, and helmets. As the rear hatch continued to open, Rook looked over at Queen.
"You sure that's going to work?"
Queen looked down at the weapon she and Rook had rigged during the flight from Gibraltar. They had raided supplies from the both the onboard armory and medical suite. With advice from experts quickly assembled by Deep Blue they were able to create a high-power dart gun capable of firing three rounds full of Alexander Diotrephes's serum, which they had yet to test. Any number of things could go wrong. The gun could jam. The injection mechanisms could fail. The serum might not work.
"Without a doubt," Queen replied.
The hatch finished opening and the pi 1 ot's voice came over the comm. "Target sighted. Jump on my mark. Three…"
Rook hefted a heavy AT-4 SMAW (shoulder-launched multipurpose assault weapon) over his shoulder and strapped it down tight. It was loaded with a single high-explosive antiarmor rocket capable of obliterating any tank or armored vehicle in service.
"Two… "
He nudged Queen. "Hey, if I don't see you at the bottom…" "You'll see me in Hell." "I would have said—" "One. Go! Go! Go!"
Queen and Rook leaped from the back of the Crescent and quickly reached a terminal velocity of 124 miles per hour. The air pressure pushed against their top-heavy, weapon-laden bodies, threatening to make the fall an uncontrolled tumult, but both kept arms and legs spread wide, controlling the descent and staying on target.
The first minute of the two-and-a-half-minute drop passed in a blur of clouds that covered their face masks in mist. Once through the cloud cover, the mist evaporated, revealing the scene below.
The Hydra twisted and writhed under a constant barrage of Gatling-gun fire, shooting from the side of a small jet black helicopter. A pool of blood covered the field and reflected the sun. A small figure by a ruined SUV launched grenades, which blew gouts of blood and flesh away from the roaring creature. The sound of the roar was so powerful that it covered the distance to Rook and Queen, who heard it over the wind and through their helmets. But what caught Rook's attention as they closed in was the body laying in the grass, fifty yards from the Hydra. The man's size and dark skin made him wince. It was impossible to tell from this height, but his gut said the body was Bishop's. He lay twisted and still. A dark red pool covered the grass to his side.
He wanted to fall faster, but they had long since reached terminal velocity and would greet the ground in less than thirty seconds… far fewer if he forgot to pull his chute. He took hold of the ripcord and waited for the last possible second to cheat death.
Knight held his fire as the two falling specs grew in size. Rook and Queen were taking the express route down. He watched as both chutes popped and unfurled, snapping the two soldiers violently, but only slowing their decent enough to avoid death. After a quick semicircle decent, Queen hit the ground with a roll and came upright in a crouch. She intended to take aim and fire upon landing, but Hydra lunged at her billowing parachute, took hold of it, and yanked hard. Queen was tossed low and fast. She landed in the blood-soaked grass, sliding to a wet stop. She fought past her revulsion of being covered in rank-smelling blood, wiped the grime from her helmet's face mask, and took aim from where she lay. Lining up the Hydra was easy and she pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession. Three small projectiles shot from the weapon's muzzle. The first ricocheted off at an odd angle. The next two pierced Hydra's back and stuck there, dangling limply from its hide.
Hydra turned toward the source of what was merely a pinprick and saw Queen's parachute billow once more. It shrieked and charged the large fluid intruder.
Queen discarded the makeshift weapon and tried to stand and run out of the path of the oncoming behemoth, which now had its eyes on her. But she had become entangled in her parachute lines. She drew her knife, intending to cut herself free, but it was easy to see she wouldn't get loose soon enough. She drew her pistol and fired at the beast as it stormed toward her.
Rook landed hard on the shingled roof of the Snack Shack, denting it. But his momentum didn't slow. He rolled down the roof's incline, toppling head over heels, and fell over the edge. But the ten-foot drop to the grass below was stopped short when the chute snagged on the roof's cupola. He hung, three feet above the ground.
A shriek brought his head up as he swung back and forth on the parachute lines. He looked up and found the Hydra, massive and horrific, bearing down on Queen, who was firing a pistol at it. He had no idea if Queen had managed to inject the Hydra with the serum, and if she had, how long before it took effect. But there was no way he was about to let this thing trample Queen.
Rook unclipped and raised a beige cylinder to his shoulder and did his best to aim while hanging from the parachute lines. Not only did he have to line up the Hydra, he had to lead the last-moving creature. With only thirty feet between Hydra and Queen, he pulled the trigger. The SMAW boomed as a blast of flame burst from its back and a rocket shot from the front. The recoil, not normally enough to phase a crouched soldier, flung the hanging Rook back and up, smashing him against the roof's overhang, knocking the now spent antitank weapon from his hands.