“Okay, I admit it, only it’s not what you think.”
“What I think is that I’ve had enough. I’m going home.”
Jessica spun around on her heels, causing her headphones to slide off her head. As she reached out to catch them, her brain was accosted by a symphony of clicks and whispers, screeches and grunts.
Disoriented, she lost her balance, her legs folding beneath her.
Joyce grabbed her as she fell, minimizing the impact. She quickly returned the headphones to Jessica’s ears, tightening the tension. “You okay?”
“No. What the hell was that?”
“That is why I brought you here… to show you MAJI’s real secret.”
Joyce helped her to her feet then led her down the hall to another corridor guarded by two members of DELTA Force. She glanced at a sign posted above a set of double doors.
Genetics Lab
Dr. Joyce LaCombe: Director of Operations
The garage was situated between the farmhouse and the barn and was the newest structure on the property. An assortment of tools and farming equipment hung from the back wall. Open cardboard boxes held plastic containers of engine oil, a gasoline pump fed diesel fuel from and an underground storage tank housed beneath the concrete slab.
There were two vehicles parked inside. The silver Audi A4 had been leased under a phony name and provided to Kelly Kishel for her use. The candy-apple-red 2013 Case IH Steiger 550S 4x4 tractor belonged to the agents working undercover as farmers.
Adam Shariak opened his eyes to the scent of diesel fumes. He was arched backward over one of the tractor’s enormous pair of rear tires, his arms outstretched painfully over his head, his wrists and ankles duct taped to the vehicle’s undercarriage. The tape had been hastily secured around his left sock, indicating the biker hadn’t noticed the artificial limb.
Barely able to turn his head, he looked to his left and saw the dark-haired female Devil’s Diciple rummaging through a tool chest.
“Baby, do you want a molar or a front tooth?”
“Sasha, I’m on the phone.” The big man with the shaved head and thickly-muscled tattooed arms gave the edge of his hunting knife several slow passes against the silicon carbide stone sharpener while he waited for the secured line to process the call.
“It’s Snowman. The job is done but we’ll need a clean-up crew.”
“How many?”
“Two in the house, one in the garage.”
“Understood.”
Adam tested his bonds — the duct tape around his wrists was cutting off his circulation, but there was some play on his right ankle. As for the prosthetic, the sock was loose; he knew he could slip the bare metal hinged foot out of his shoe at anytime.
He looked up as the woman filled his vision, her human tooth necklace an ugly foreshadowing of what was about to happen. Gripping his lower jaw, the female biker jammed a pair of needle-nose pliers into his mouth. In a well-practiced motion, she forcibly yanked one of his upper right molars out of his gums.
Adam’s groan was choked off by a wad of blood gushing down the back of his throat. Turning his head as far as he could, he spit, only his head was too far back and he ended up dribbling it across his chin and sweatshirt.
The big man approached, the blade of the hunting knife gleaming beneath the bare fluorescent lights anchored beneath the garage roof’s crossbeams. “Sasha… she don’t mess around. Me? I like to take my time. But I’ll make you a deal. You tell me where the drop point is and I’ll end things quick and easy with a bullet to the brain.”
“Detroit… the drop-off is in Detroit.”
“Where in Detroit?”
“A warehouse near the football stadium. I don’t know the address, but I can take you there.”
“He’s lying,” said Sasha, who was busy at a work table, fitting a drill with a narrow bit.
Brent Snowden leaned over Adam. “Are you lying?”
The former Apache pilot and prisoner of war spit again, this time managing to hit the biker in his face. “Maybe that ugly bitch is the one who’s lying?”
The biker wiped his right cheek with his skeleton bandana. “Babe, bring that drill over here.”
Sasha finished drilling a hole in Adam’s pulled tooth, then walked over to the tractor and handed the tool to her boyfriend.
Adam’s eyes went wide in terror. “No, no… please God, not in the knee!”
With a maniacal leer, the biker squeezed the trigger, his muscular right arm jamming the spinning drill bit straight into the fabric of Adam’s left pant leg and down through the metal appendage—
— as Adam’s thoughts commanded the robotic limb to hyperextend.
The sudden movement powered on both of the King Cobra tasers that Jared Betz had rigged to a briar patch of stripped copper wiring around the prosthetic leg, sending a combined six million volts of electricity through the metal and into the biker’s body, instantly stopping his heart.
For a surreal moment the Devil’s Diciple’s two-hundred-and-eighty pound torso continued to convulse in place. And then the dead man toppled forward onto Adam’s lower legs—
— the impact snapping the duct tape around his right ankle and freeing both legs!
Sasha laughed. “Snowman? Baby, get up.”
It took her a moment to realize her motionless boyfriend was dead.
Adam flipped his legs up and over his head so that he was now facing the tire. He gnawed at the twisted mess of duct tape around his left wrist with his blood-drenched teeth like a deer caught in a bear trap.
The biker chick screamed at him, venom in her eyes. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Prying the hunting knife loose from her dead boyfriend’s hand, she wheeled upon Adam—
— who had freed his left hand and was now brandishing a second 9mm that he had removed from a holster hidden inside the struts and springs of his artificial limb, the gun’s barrel aimed at Sasha’s right eye.
Without hesitation he pulled the trigger, the slug tearing through the woman’s cornea and brain before exploding out the back of her skull.
He spit out a wad of blood. “That’s for making me have to go to the dentist.”
Adam quickly chewed through the tape around his right wrist that was still pinning him to the tractor. He slid down the back of the double tires as the last piece of silver tape gave way. Locating Snowden’s knife, he cut loose the remains of his bonds.
He managed two steps — only to realize the damaged prosthetic was wobbling badly.
Fix it… then get out of here before the clean-up crew arrives.
Slicing off the pant leg, he inspected the damage to the hydraulic knee, which was bent beyond his ability to repair it.
Maybe Kishel left her keys in the car?
He attempted to limp over, only the prosthetic leg buckled. Searching the garage, he found a push broom. Inverting it, he tucked the broom’s head under his left arm and used the stick like a crutch in order to make his way over to the silver Audi.
A quick inspection turned up nothing.
And then the garage window panes startled to rattle…
38
Adam stood by the garage window, staring at the roof of the three-story barn. The A-frame of the dilapidated structure had split open like a giant pair of praying hands, its weathered shingles and struts concealing a pair of aluminum doors anchored on hydraulic rollers.
Exiting the garage, he hid behind the rusted jalopy and gazed up at a starry night sky and a bizarre amber-red light.
The disc-shaped UFO was fifty feet in diameter, with a band of multi-colored lights that circled randomly around its circumference. Descending rapidly, the ship stopped to momentarily hover above the barn’s still opening gullet — revealing tell-tale seams along its hull in the process — confirming to Adam its identification as a man-made Alien Reproduction Vehicle.