“What’s our timeframe look like?” Deep Blue tried to sound unconcerned, like he was asking about the weather. But he had hired Aleman because the man was smarter than anyone he had ever known. He was unlikely to be fooled.
“Two to four days, but probably closer to the two.” Aleman’s face was grim, all traces of smiles and jocularity gone.
“What? Why? What’s happened?” Deep Blue sat up straight in his chair. If he had felt sleepy before, he was wide-awake now.
“Seismic activity around the world suggests the existence of portals that we’re not seeing. You saw for yourself that some are opening far above the surface of the Earth.”
“Oh God, inside the Earth.” Deep Blue shook his head. “How deep?”
“No way to know, but a portal in the wrong place could set off massive earthquakes, floods or worst-case scenario, a mega-volcano like the one in Yellowstone park. If that happened, we wouldn’t have to wait for the portals to finish chewing up the planet.”
Deep Blue could see that Aleman wasn’t quite done. “What else?”
“Well, going with the theory that whatever is causing the portal in Norway to stabilize is of human origin, there must be some kind of a receptor. Possibly in the shape of a bowl or a cage. Something that would regulate the size of the portal. Contain it. We won’t know what that is until we get there. Also, if the thing is being powered locally, it would take one hell of an energy source too. With that in mind, I checked Arctic satellite scans for the last few weeks, and looked for heat sources. Rook’s little town of Fenris Kystby has a huge power plant on the edge of town. I’m guessing that’s the target. The Crescent is due to rendezvous with us over the Svalbard Archipelago, before we get to the mainland. They’re still carrying the nuclear device the UK was going to provide to Bishop and Knight. Their man got there just before Black One was ready to leave. I think if we can’t shut this thing down on the ground, we have the Crescent nuke the site, destroying the stabilization mech-anism and the power plant all in one go.”
Deep Blue looked at Aleman for a minute before he spoke. “This is crazy.” Aleman looked down at the laptop screen as if his idea had been ridiculed. “No, no. It’s a solid contingency plan. Let’s just hope we don’t have to resort to it. I’m not sure the Norwegians would ever forgive us.”
“I’m not sure the Norwegians aren’t behind this.”
Deep Blue laughed hard. Aleman joined in with him.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Fenris Kystby, Norway, 4 November, 0100 Hrs
Rook activated the LED backlight on his wristwatch and saw that it was just after one in the morning local time-he’d been down in the pit with the dead for hours.
“Fuckity McFuck Sauce,” Rook hissed through his teeth, not for the first time.
He understood that the pheromones from the big energy doorway were controlling Asya the same way the other scientists working for Fossen had been. He also realized that she must have been fighting the pheromone control to some degree. She had given him the little LED flashlight and told him to hold it tightly. He just wished she had been able to stop herself from kicking him down into this hellhole.
He sat on the heap of dead dire wolves and fondled the little plastic light in his hand. He didn’t activate it. He had already seen the pit and the bodies. He had scoured every part of the pit looking for a way out. He had tried scaling the walls too, but his bulk was all wrong for delicate rock climbing, and his center of gravity didn’t help. Every time he got a few feet up from the pile of mashed dire wolf corpses, he would fall off the wall, landing in the spongy mass. The last time he had cracked his head on the side of the pit, too, and that had put an end to any further climbing attempts.
He sat on the pile with his back against one of the lumpy walls. His head hurt, he was ravenously hungry and his mood was as dark as it ever got. Fossen was up there, opening a freeway for monsters from the outer limits to come destroy the world. Rook’s team was on the other side of the planet. He was trapped and helpless.
And Queen was up there somewhere.
Where are you, Zelda? Has that bastard controlled you like Asya? Did you run into a dire wolf? Are you lost?
Rook had done a lot of thinking on Queen during his time in Norway. He knew he had feelings for her. Couldn’t deny that any longer. She was smart, bad ass tough, trustworthy and looked good slathered in head-to-toe mud.
He smiled at the memory of the two of them, covered in mud for camouflage, hiding in a tree from a bunch of human-Neanderthal hybrids. Good times. He’d been on the receiving end of Queen’s fury that day, too, when she’d mistaken his muddy form for the enemy. But today was different. When he hung up that phone and turned around to see Queen…the look in her eyes. She was hurt. Queen was hurt. And he’d done the hurting. He regretted it, but it also confirmed what he suspected.
His growing affection was mutual.
Of course, all the affection in the world did diddly-squat for him right now.
He growled in frustration until his voice was hoarse. Then he heard a scraping noise on the other side of the pit. Something sliding.
Sonovabitch, what now?
He pressed the button on the little LED flashlight and the scene was suddenly as bright as day in the blue-white light. The grayish-white skins of the piled-high genetically engineered dire wolf pups were everywhere. He saw nothing that might have caused sound. Nothing A small mound of dire wolf corpses shifted to his left. Then they stopped.
Then the same pile moved again.
Something was moving under the dead monster babies.
Rook played the light around the confined space and the pile of dead shifted again. He stopped breathing and moved a hand over the light to dim it, but not extinguish it entirely. He wasn’t afraid. Wasn’t capable of it. He was filled with so much seething rage at his confinement that fear didn’t exist. The presence of something living in the pit with him filled him with a desire to fight it. He was a hunter now and whatever it was that shared this pit with him, it was his prey.
Slowly, Rook moved his legs under him so he could pounce if necessary. The shifting of the mound stopped. He waited, still holding his breath. When it emerged, it happened so fast that Rook fell backward, startled.
A few of the crushed baby dire wolf bodies launched a foot into the air as a furry gray snout erupted from the pile. The creature’s head was rounded but with a short elongated snout. Its eyes were beady black specks in its fur, and its nose was a black lump at the front of its head. When it opened its mouth and Rook saw the teeth, he knew without a doubt what it was. He had seen plenty of them in the woods around Fenris Kystby.
Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf? Course, you’re bigger and badder than most.
Rook let the light hit the creature fully as it struggled out of the vertical tunnel it had dug through the corpses. The wolf was huge. At least six foot long, with a wet matted coat that was dark in front and gradated to white by the time it reached the hindquarters. Rook had never seen a wolf like this.
The creature had elongated, white-furred legs and no tail. Its front half looked normal, but its back half had powerful muscles that looked almost human. The rear paws weren’t paws, but feet. With talons.
Damn, Rook thought. That batshit Fossen left a half-wolf, half-dire wolf abortion down here to die. Looks like death didn’t take.
Then he realized he was the one who’d been left to die. There was no way Fossen didn’t know about this beauty. Rook stayed perfectly still, wondering if the creature would attack or not.
Then it opened its huge jaws like a cat yawning-large enough to swallow most of Rook’s face. And the thing snarled at him.
Right, that’s it for you, Benji.
The hybrid lowered itself, its muscles tensing, preparing to spring. But Rook surprised it. He lunged across the the pit and slammed his body into the startled creature.