“Daddy, can you hear me?” she said into her headpiece.
Nothing.
“Daddy, can you hear me?”
Not even static.
“Oh, God …”
Lips trembling and breath heaving, Melissa tore her headphones off and rose to her feet. Kamir and the two workmen had the cable coming up very fast now; too fast, as if her father had grown somehow weightless. No, he had fallen and somehow snapped the cable line in the process. His communication equipment had shattered and that was why he had not been able to reply to her calls. That was it; that had to be it. And as soon as Kamir retrieved all of the cable, she would suit up herself and rescue her father. She would—
“Tanrl yardimcimiz olsun!”
One of the workmen had plunged to his knees in a position of prayer. The other ran screaming for the rope ladder that would lift him free of the excavation. Only Kamir remained to pull the rest of the cable up. He backpedaled, staggering, then leaned over and retched. Melissa came forward on feet that seemed made of steel. Kamir’s position blocked her from sight of whatever had been lifted from the chasm.
“No, miss, don’t.”
It was too late. Melissa had drawn up even with him. She looked down. Her world wavered. She threw her head back for a scream that never came. It seemed to her that her breath had been torn away. She sank to her knees, gasping.
Before her, the remains of her father lay on the rim of the rectangular entryway. She recognized his shredded safety vest, now drenched in blood. The upper part of his torso was still tucked within the vest, though it, too, had been badly torn. The right half of his stomach was there as well, along with his neck and a portion of one of his arms.
The rest was … gone.
No legs, no head. Sinewy entrails and intestines hung down from the torso, dripping blood and gore.
The Dream Dragons, Melissa thought as she sank to her knees.
Dream Dragons …
But this time they hadn’t come from nightmares at all. This time they were real.
And they were still down there.
Part Two
Dream Dragons
Chapter 8
Friedrich Von Tike stared fixedly at his favorite Impressionist painting as he listened to the voice of the man sitting opposite him.
“Herr Von Tike, my company and I have been loyal to you ever since the merger,” Lars Heidelberg said earnestly. “We’ve gone along with the layoffs and cost-cutting procedures. But this we cannot overlook.”
“Is that a threat, Herr Heidelberg?”
“Not at all, sir. What is being threatened here is the very survival of the many villages on the shores of the Rhine that will be destroyed if this flow of pollutants from our company is not halted.”
Von Tike fingered the report Heidelberg had brought with him. “I find your data unconvincing.”
“How many cases of cancer will it take, Herr Von Tike? How many abnormal births? This company could never survive the backlash. No company could.”
“And do you suppose, Heidelberg, we could more easily survive the kind of retooling your report calls for? Listen to me, I purchased your company and all the others so I could expand production, not slow it. If those victims of our progress elect to sue, we will settle their cases as generously as we are able.”
“These are simple people. Even if they made the connection, they are hardly likely to …” Heidelberg cut his own words off, realizing.
Across from him, Von Tike smiled. “Precisely, Herr Heidelberg, precisely. I think you have grasped my point at last.”
Heidelberg rose and leaned across Von Tike’s desk. “Herr Von Tike, I beg you, sir, not to do this. I beg you to close these plants until the proper modifications can be implemented.”
“Your suggestions have been duly noted and will be taken under advisement,” Von Tike snapped off curtly, and rose to face him. “Now, if you will be kind enough to excuse me …”
Shoulders slumping, Heidelberg was halfway to the door when Von Tike spoke again.
“Oh, and Herr Heidelberg, I trust this conversation will be kept between ourselves.”
Heidelberg stiffened and turned.
“After all, my friend,” Von Tike continued, staring him straight in the eye, “there are your wife and children to consider. Three boys, ages eight, ten, and thirteen. The youngest has brown hair and blue—”
“Enough! You’ve made your point.”
“Good,” Von Tike said. “Now get out.”
After Heidelberg had closed the door behind him, Von Tike sat down again and reached for his pocket-sized tape recorder. He composed his thoughts before beginning to speak. Von Tike owned the controlling portion of Levenhasse, a thriving giant in the German military-industrial complex. He had made his first fortune selling major components for advanced weaponry to any country that could afford them. Oh, nothing that could be traced back in any amount great enough to do Levenhasse significant harm. Recent disclosures, though, had become a nuisance, and, worse, the fall of the Soviet Union had led to a drastic reduction in military orders. Von Tike saw his empire crumbling and was scrambling to reroute his priorities.
As a result, companies like Heidelberg’s had been swallowed in a series of monstrous gulps to expand Levenhasse’s industrial base. Many possessed inadequate and antiquated equipment. Von Tike’s engineers had updated them and increased their efficiency at the expense of dumping huge volumes of pollutants into the Rhine and its tributaries. It was a cost Von Tike found easy to accept. As far as he was concerned, all of the backward villages bordering the river could be wiped out, so long as his company’s revenues continued to rise.
Von Tike switched on his tape recorder and spoke into it. “Meeting with Heidelberg, April seventeenth. Commissioned his own report on pollutants flowing out of his plant and several others. Probably intends to approach the government with his findings now, which we cannot allow to—”
Thump …
Von Tike eased the machine away from his mouth. He looked toward the door to the conference room.
Thump …
Coming from inside it. Who was there? There was no entrance to the conference room other than through his office, and no one had passed that way.
Thump …
Von Tike rested the still-running tape recorder atop his desk and stood up. He moved out from behind his desk and started toward the conference room.
He was almost there when the door crashed inward. The force blew Von Tike backward, nearly spilling him over.
“What?” he managed. “Who the devil is—”
The scream that followed was the last discernible sound on the tape the security guards would later find. They arrived barely a minute after Von Tike uttered the scream, but it took them several more to locate the recorder, because it was hidden beneath their employer’s severed arm. The blood had rendered the recorder inoperable, and it was some time later before another was found, and the guards could listen to the last agonizing moments in the life of Friedrich Von Tike.
Javier Kelbonna stood on his balcony watching the night waves break over the shoreline. He was the master of all that he saw, all that he could see. The island belonged to him. It had been granted along with asylum after he had fled his own country in the wake of a disastrous civil war.
The world had judged him wrongly, harshly, and in the end had turned his own people against him. They had risen up in the streets, and Kelbonna had ordered his militia to use all means at their disposal to quell the violence. Then crowds had gathered to oppose him, and the militia had fired on them, regardless of whether or not the crowds were armed. Preemptive strikes were launched against the insurgent leaders’ villages. The fact that many of these raids had claimed only women and children as victims meant nothing to Kelbonna. After all, the young who did not grow up could not threaten him — the ultimate preempt.