“You’re nice,” he spoke aloud and the dreamy quality of his voice made him giggle.
The dire wolf moved away from him and another came closer, sniffing at him. He liked this new one even better. Friendly. Fiona would like him.
But this second thought of Fiona gave power to the insistent, niggling voice at the back of his brain.
No. She wouldn’t. No! This is wrong.
“Go away,” he told the voice, and it died a quiet death in his subconscious. The dire wolf didn’t move away from him.
He knows I’m not talking to him. Or is it an it? I didn’t see any naughty bits.
King assessed the beast again, but came away from the glance only feeling better, if that was possible. His thought of determining its gender, if any, was swept away, as if a glorious breeze had just rushed by him, carrying scents of his favorite foods, the sea after a storm and gentle winds from an almost artificially green Alpine valley he had once visited in Switzerland.
This place is so good. I should bring Sara here. He grinned a huge grin.
No. The quiet voice returned. You have to keep them safe.
His grin faltered as images of cities being devoured by globes of devastating lightning-hurling energy filled his mind. But the pretty King tightly squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the glistening wall of the portal in front of him. No longer looking at the soft, friendly dire wolves. The images were still in his head though. The horror of people killed and cities scooped out of the ground by a cosmic event unlike anything before it.
You have to keep them safe.
Thoughts of his girlfriend, adopted daughter, team members and friends like George Pierce filled his mind. His memories of them made resisting the euphoria that much easier. There was a nuclear weapon in a satchel at his ankles, and he remembered what he was supposed to do with it. But it was hard, so very hard. Fighting against that warm happy place, where he had been for days-or had it just been moments-was the hardest fight of his life.
He sensed his resistance slipping. He wouldn’t last much longer. He yearned to go back to the bright light and the wonderful smells of autumn in Vermont, skiing in Europe, the beach in Florida… Florida. He remembered Disney and the Russian helicopter.
In one sudden, lunging movement, he reached down and grabbed the satchel with the nuclear weapon. He spun in a fast circle and flung the backpack into the wall of bright light before him. It disappeared as it hit the edge of the portal. He could only hope that it had gone in far enough.
Then as the warm happy feelings began to engulf him again, filling up all the empty places in his soul with a pulsing joy, the likes of which he had never even imagined existed, it happened.
That tiny voice that had brought him back to sanity for one brief moment spoke again. A doubt. A whimper. Little more than a squeak.
You didn’t arm the device.
King didn’t care.
The warm glory of God Himself wrapped him in a loving embrace.
THIRTY-TWO
London, England
The two dire wolves, glistening wet from the rain, slammed into Bishop’s body, knocking him to the river-facing end of the capsule. His body smashed into the glass and metal of the end of the passenger car, but with the impact-absorbing armor, it felt like little more than a light shove. He lost his hold on the XM312-B and the machine gun flipped out the shattered window, toppling away. A second weapon lost in 24 hours. Bishop swore silently.
The dire wolves stopped halfway inside the capsule. One now squatted on the center of the wooden bench and the other on the floor to its left. They waited, and Bishop wondered why. He stayed on the floor of the capsule, unmoving, watching them.
Great big eyes, but you can’t see too good, can you?
He realized they couldn’t see in the rain and had waited for it to abate before moving again. But it wasn’t raining inside the capsule. Bishop strained to hear and then realized he couldn’t hear anything but his own breathing. The armor. Maybe they detect body heat too. Maybe they only track movement. Then inspiration struck.
Bishop couldn’t hear any external sound and his body was cushioned from impact by the armor. Slowly, he moved his hand up to his chest. The MP5s were still strapped to him. Attached to the strap of one of the rifles was an M84 stun grenade, more commonly known as a flash-bang. It didn’t contain shrapnel, but instead emitted a non-lethal burst of magnesium-based flaring light and an incapacitating bang of sound. But with the sound dampener in his helmet and the impact-absorbing armor, all Bishop would have to do to avoid the effects of the grenade was close his eyes tightly. He slipped his finger into the circular pull ring and then struggled a second to get another finger into the secondary, triangular pull ring. He didn’t bother depressing the safety lever. His movements were minimal, but still the dire wolf on the bench moved its head slightly at the motion.
Crap. He’s seen it.
Bishop lunged to his feet, dropping the grenade on the floor of the cabin. The dire wolf on the bench turned its attention fully in his direction, but it lunged laterally, grabbing the metal railings again as it had done when it entered the capsule. The other dire wolf swiveled its eyes and lowered its head to examine the grenade as it skittered to a stop in front of the creature.
Bishop crushed his eyes shut and lunged forward toward to dire wolf on the wall. The shockwave impact from the grenade hit his armored body just before he slammed into the creature on the wall. The creature bounced off his moving body like a superball bouncing off a wall. The dire wolf was moving away from Bishop as he opened his eyes, in time to see the beast sliding out the open doors of the capsule and falling away. He looked back to see the second dire wolf stirring on the floor, where the grenade had temporarily done exactly what it was designed to-it had stunned the creature. Bishop didn’t wait to see how long it took the dire wolf to recover. He sprinted for the open door and leapt out into the air.
The Crescent hadn’t moved from its position above Bishop’s capsule on the top of the wheel, so the rappelling line still hung from the underside of the huge curve-winged transport plane. But it was further away than Bishop had thought. He stretched his fingers out as far as he could. His body shot out into open space. Just when he thought he would miss the rope entirely, the back of his fingers brushed the line. He scrabbled at it and snagged it. As he moved through the air and before the rope absorbed his weight, he quickly wound the rope around his left arm once. Momentum swung him out and away from the wheel. The line wasn’t long enough for him to slide to the ground, so his only option was to swing back to the frame of the Eye.
He twisted on the rope as he began to swing back. Keeping the rope wrapped around his left arm, he reached out at the apex of his swing and caught hold of the nearest tie rod. Hooking his knee around the rod, he moved his hand back to the rope and began to climb. Knight must have noticed what was going on, because Bishop looked up to the capsule he had just escaped in time to see the second dire wolf’s head explode, coating the doors on the end of the capsule with a milky fluid.
He climbed hand over hand, rewrapping the rope around his left arm each time for an added measure of security. He slid his leg up the tie rod until he got to a crawlspace formed by a triangular tunnel of bars and struts that ran under the capsules-or above them at the bottom of the wheel. Knight picked off a few more dire wolves from around Bishop while the big man focused on his climbing. He could see the creatures pitching off the rails to either side of him, falling to the ground and river below. As Bishop worked his way down the tunnel of bars, heading for a capsule two away from the first one he’d entered, he could see three people still trapped inside. He also noticed that Knight’s firing had stopped.