Bishop stepped out of the portal again, only this time, he backed into the room. After another step backward, he was fully into the room, backing toward Fenrir and firing his rifle into the portal, sweeping the barrel left and right.
Then they came.
Dire wolf after dire wolf poured out of the opening toward Bishop. The first wave of them crashed into him, sending him flying toward Fenrir, where his armored body slammed into Fenrir’s second left-side leg, just as it lifted from the floor and stepped forward. It was like getting hit by a bus. The impact launched him back into the room. He hit the floor hard and slid for a few feet before coming to a stop. He didn’t get up.
King saw twenty, then thirty, then forty of the creatures enter the room, some so eager that they climbed over each other. Fenrir had recovered from its wounds, or was simply ignoring the thirteen ruptured sacks hanging from its underside like popped balloons. It turned its slathering jaws toward the weapons that were barking at it, spitting bullets like vicious hornet stings. Carrack, Beck and Deep Blue had all added their weapons fire to the melee, but even added to Queen’s, Rook’s and Knight’s fire, they were not able to hold back the tide of oncoming dire wolves.
King looked up at Knight and the pack sitting next to him. He whistled to the man through his fingers and shouted, “Knight!”
Between shots, Knight glanced down. King pointed to the pack. Knight pushed it over the side without hesitation. King bent his knees and snatched the heavy bundle from the air, squatting to absorb the impact. He opened it up to confirm its contents.
The suitcase nuke. His suitcase nuke.
As the melee came closer, King did the only thing he could think of.
He turned and ran.
Gilmour, Kane Robinson, Jeremy
Ragnarok: A Jack Sigler Thriller
SIXTY-NINE
Aboard the Persephone, Fenris Kystby, Norway
4 November, 0415 Hrs
The huge flying-wing aircraft settled gently in the snow, the thrusters of the engines blasting the white flakes in all directions, clearing a landing spot for itself.
Lewis Aleman sat in the computer room with the makeshift desk and chairs, frantically searching for more information about portals, alternate dimensions, Fenrir and dire wolves, as were Sara Fogg, George Pierce and Black Five back in New Hampshire. He could feed anything they found to Deep Blue over the earbud communicator in their leader’s ear.
“So, we’re thinking that this Fenrir thing might be secreting scent out of glands. The scent could carry pheromones, and that would explain the control over some of the team. Look for something that looks like a sphincter, or large pore. If you could…”
Deep Blue cut him off. “Timing, Lewis, timing. I think that problem is solved for now.” Aleman could hear tons of background noise on the line. He knew Deep Blue’s helmet was off, but at the moment, his anonymity wasn’t a concern. “We’re seeing increasing numbers of dire wolves, too, and we’re down several men. We need a way to stop these things and to kill the portal. We might have to go with your plan for the Crescent.”
“Working on it.”
“I know,” Deep Blue said. “But work faster.” He clicked off and Aleman’s earpiece went quiet.
Aleman shouted in surprise as the metal door to the room slammed open.
King stood in the doorway, dirty, bloody and missing the top portion of his armor. He was out of breath from his sprint through the snow drifts to the Persephone.
When he spoke, his voice sounded like a growl. “I need you to do exactly as I say.”
That’s when Aleman noticed the suitcase nuke clutched under King’s arm.
SEVENTY
Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway
4 November, 0430 Hrs
Knight had a bird’s eye view of the entire conflict. He still didn’t feel like himself after his ordeal on the other side of the portal. His brain felt loose, his thoughts all erratic. He had a hard time remembering what had happened in all the time he was on the other side. But he and Bishop were able to agree that Knight must either have been on the other side for much longer-and they realized time worked differently on that side-or else his body had aged at an accelerated rate in the short span of time he was there. Either way, Knight was a few years older now.
Although strangely, Bishop wasn’t.
According to the big Iranian American, they had both been on the other side for about the same amount of time-Bishop having entered a portal on a rope like Tarzan just moments after Knight had been carried through the one on Westminster bridge. In the end they came to agree that time had worked differently for each of them, either because they had gone through different portals, or because Knight spent most of his time on the lower plane while Bishop entered the other world atop the cliff. Knight knew that time ran slower the further you got from Earth’s surface. You needed an atomic watch to see the difference, but the effect might be exaggerated in Fenrir’s dimension.
What Knight hadn’t told Bishop was that, when they met at the top of the cliff, Bishop had been covered in dried white dire wolf blood. It covered his armored chest and the side of his face. Bishop told him about his encounter with the dire wolf, that he’d hallucinated his worst fear-becoming a Regen once more, but Knight suspected the man had actually attacked, killed and eaten a dire wolf. Having personally survived Bishop as a Regen, it was a nightmare neither man wanted to think about, so Knight didn’t. He put the memory out of his mind with no intention of ever telling Bishop.
A burst of gunfire brought him back to the battle.
Knight focused on the chaos below him. Deep Blue fired on leaping dire wolves. Queen was back to her preferred method of up-close devastation with a wickedly curved blade, moving with a display of predatory violence that put the dire wolves to shame. Carrack, Beck and Rook were all near each other, unleashing a barrage of bullets at the giant creature’s sack-covered chest, which didn’t seem to hurt it as much as distract it.
In a perfect sniping position, he focused on the largest target, the behemoth. He considered the chest, but rupturing the hanging wombs wasn’t doing any real damage. Instead, he targeted the eyes, thinking if he couldn’t kill the gigantic animal, he could at least handicap it.
He lay on the metal catwalk and supported the FN-SCAR under the barrel and sighted one of the creature’s round eyes. The SCAR was a Belgian rifle with an effective range of about 1200 feet. He was less than a hundred feet from the beast. Of course, the monster was eighty feet tall; it would be an easy target from any distance.
He fired twice into the beast’s left eye and the creature roared, shaking the foundations of the underground lab. The metal catwalk rattled, shaking Knight to the point where he wondered if the whole catwalk system might come down.
The team continued their assault on Fenrir. It struck out wildly, unaware of where the bullet strike to its eye had originated. Its torso spun from side to side, swinging its arms and flailing the dangling sacks so hard that some burst open, dropping dire wolves sixty feet to their deaths. The giant snapped its tremendous jaws at the soldiers on the ground and pounded its feet, trying to crush them.
Knight waited until the creature turned again to snap toward Rook’s position. Rook ran out of the way and leapt over a pile of rock and sand, sliding down the other side. The beast’s head lunged at Rook, and then swung back to snarl at Anna Beck-Knight’s girlfriend-as she fired on the creature from behind, helping Bishop to his feet with her other hand. He was once again firing at the newly arriving dire wolves as they entered the fray through the portal.