1941539114 (S) (11 page)

“You’re trying to trick me,” Maigo said.

Brice shook his head, but it looked something more like a manic twitch. He looked genuinely nervous.

“The injection was saline,” he said. “You got my photo? The stone. The symbol?”

“That was you? Why?”

“We’re born, sort of, with the same body. The same knowledge. But not the memories. Not the experience. We’re not all identical where it matters.”

He rapid-fire tapped his head, and then his heart. “We’re not all insane, though I will admit we are genetically predisposed to greed and ambition. But some of us are not part of all this by choice. I sent you the image because I have seen what GOD does with alien DNA. They justify it because of what’s coming. Fire with fire. Monsters with monsters. But there is a point when we become the monsters, when we lose our humanity, when it becomes not worth the cost of saving it.”

“So helping me is you saving your humanity?” Maigo asked.

“You can understand that,” he said. “Can’t you?”

She glared at him for a moment and then said, “Yes.”

“I can set you free,” he said. “Give you a head start. But once they know you’re missing, you’re on your own.” He pulled a key from his pocket and reached for the first pair of handcuffs.

Maigo lifted her arms, feeling a moment of resistance before the chain links stretched and snapped. She reached down and tore through the polyester straps like they were duct tape. Once they were loose enough, she pulled her legs up, breaking the cuffs around her ankles, and then yanking them off, as well as the ones on her wrists. She swung herself around on the table and hopped onto her bare feet. “I can handle myself.”

Brice staggered back and caught himself on a counter. “I-I can see that.”

Maigo looked down at her black bra and underwear. “Clothes?”

“Uhh.”

“Nevermind.” Maigo said. The cold wouldn’t bother her much, and the white lab clothes Brice wore would stand out even more than her slightly tan skin. “What’s a Leshiy?”

“Russian folklore. The ‘one in the woods.’ The name was chosen to...intimidate our comrades, but it is somewhat appropriate, given the creature’s tendencies. It—”

Maigo’s attention snapped to the door. There were footsteps outside. Someone was coming. “This is for your own good,” she said quickly, and then snatched Brice’s throat in her hand.

The door opened and Kozlov stepped inside. “If we are to—” The big man froze for a moment when he saw Maigo, upright and clutching Brice. He reached for his weapon, but before he could reach it, Brice crashed into him and both men went down. Maigo stood over the two men, cocked a fist back and knocked the Russian unconscious with one well placed, and carefully controlled punch.

She looked down at Brice, who was cringing in fear. “Thank you.” He nodded, and she started to step away, but stopped. “And if I were you, I’d let him wake up first.”

“Right,” Brice said. He didn’t move.

Leaving the two men on the floor, Maigo entered the hallway connecting two of the domed sections and opened an outer hatch. Frigid wind swirled inside, biting her skin. Then she stepped out into the darkness and snuck around the side of the building until she saw the three-ringed structure revealed by the explosion, now lit up by a circle of halogen lamps. She would glow like a road flare under all that light.

Just get to the center
, she told herself, repeating Brice’s advice.
Make physical contact with the door
. “Easy peasy, half-Japanesey,” she whispered, trying to channel her adoptive father again. Then she ran into the light, and all hell broke loose.

12

“Just like old times!” Woodstock shouts over the chop of Helicopter Betty’s rotors.

I climb up into the passenger seat of the red Bell 407 holding a hard black case stamped with the Zoomb logo. I’ve never been a fan of the Zoomb name, logo or their personal history of meddling in secret projects, but now that I’m the primary shareholder with access to those secret projects and enough money to have a Scrooge McDuck gold-coin swimming vault, I’m learning to deal with it. In general, I try to keep Zoomb projects separate from the FC-P, but on special occasions, like when a space monster is swimming toward the coast of Massachusetts, I make exceptions.

There will likely be blowback from my superiors and the military when they discover Zoomb has been developing anti-Kaiju weapons systems, but if it works, they’ll get on board. And then probably place an order for themselves. I’d like to say I can trust DARPA to develop these kinds of weapons, but there’s no way to know if GOD still has an influence there. I find that ‘Jon’s rule of thumb’ from my college days applies to government organizations as much as it does to women: if she makes you burn when you pee, let her be. Solid life advice I will never say aloud now that I’m married and a father, but Hawkins has heard it.

I pat the hard case on my lap. “Not quite.”

Collins climbs into the back and slams the sliding door shut. She’s seated next to an FN MAG machine gun that’s loaded and ready to go, but probably won’t be very useful. We should have upgraded the weapon to something a little more hardhitting, but with Future Betty, I didn’t think we’d need Helicopter Betty for combat again. The weapon probably won’t do much damage to what’s coming, but it can be a useful distraction tool, just in case we feel like incentivizing something to eat us.

“Take us up,” I say, but I don’t really need to. We’re already lifting off the Crow’s Nest rooftop. My thoughts shift to the girls for a moment, worry clouding my mind.
They can take care of themselves,
I tell myself. Physically, they’re unmatched, but they’ve already proved themselves lacking common sense.

As we head out over the open ocean, barely visible in the half-moon light, I turn my attention back to the task ahead of us. Something Kaiju-sized—but not Nemesis—is coming our way. And before we just let something new savage this already ruined stretch of coast, we’re going to, at the very least, shoot the shit out of it. At the most...I look down at the case in my hands...we’re going to field test the
Swarm
.

I toggle my headset, which is patched into Devine, but currently transmitting only between us and the Crow’s Nest. “Do we have eyes on the target?”

Cooper responds, calm and collected. “Forty miles out. Trajectory now has it headed toward Boston.”

The city has spent the past three years rebuilding. Hundreds of years of history were lost in Nemesis’s assault on the city, but the country rallied around its rebuilding, just as they had for Washington, D.C. and the West Coast cities that were destroyed a year ago. To let Boston get decimated again, just as it’s picking itself back up in good ol’ Yankee fashion would be a crushing blow to the country’s morale. To the world’s.

“What’s our ETA?” I ask Woodstock.

“Between our speed and its,” he says, chewing on his bottom lip. “Ten minutes, give or take.”

“Get us above the action,” I tell him. “Cooper, I want the Navy to torpedo the crap out of this thing in ten minutes. Drive it to the surface. Then the Navy and Air Force can unleash hell in unison. But...tell them that in a more official sounding way.”

“Always do,” she says. “What if it’s like Nemesis? The orange membranes?”

“We’ll be far enough from the coast,” I say. “Doesn’t matter what it looks like, or if it will explode with nuclear force. We need to stop it before it reaches the coast.”

“Should we consider nuclear options?” she asks, still calm. It’s the one thing we haven’t really tried, in part because it would cost human lives, but also because Nemesis survives detonations of that magnitude, sans the radiation, on a regular basis. With such a high price tag, and no evidence to support its effectiveness, that option has remained off the table. And I’m not about to be the one to put it on the table. I have no illusions going into this fight. If this creature is anything like Nemesis, we’re not going to kill it now, nuke or not. We
are
going to hit it with the equivalent force of several nukes, but the best I’m hoping for is to deter the thing. Turn it around. Give us time to regroup. Because so far, the only way to kill a Kaiju, is with another Kaiju. And Nemesis hasn’t been seen in a long time.

“No. I want MOABs in the air, though,” I tell Cooper. “Ask them to drop a few on its head...if it has one.”

“Better keep your distance,” she says.

“I’ll take us up to fifteen thousand,” Woodstock says. “Should be plenty of wiggle room.”

The minutes tick as we rise high above the Atlantic, the monotonous chop of the helicopter broken up by status reports. Two Ohio class nuclear submarines are giving chase. If we wanted the nuclear option, they’d provide it. A third Virginia class fast-attack submarine stands between the monster and Boston. The subs will kick things off by launching an array of Mark 48 torpedoes designed for sinking other subs. Once the creature hits the surface, they’ll follow up the torpedoes with cruise missiles. They’re joined by two Zumwalt class destroyers. The ship’s stealthy build won’t help it against a Kaiju, but distance will. They’ll be miles away when they launch Tomahawk missiles. And all of that will be joined by the most advanced aircraft from the U.S. Navy and Air Force: five brand new F-35s and five F-22 Raptors, not to mention a B-2 bomber carrying more than a few MOABs. While the Mother Of All Bombs didn’t stop Nemesis in Boston, and very nearly killed me, it’s the biggest non-nuclear option we have. It’s the biggest boom we can make without the threat of fallout peppering the already battered New England coast.

This all feels like déjà vu. We’ve been down this conventional warfare road before, and we got nothing for it. But until the slightly less conventional Swarm arrives, we’re stuck with weapons that blow up.

“Target in sight,” Woodstock says, pulling me from my mental inventory.

“How’d you see it from—” Collins leans forward, between the front seats, and sees what’s ahead at the same time I do. “Oh.”

While the creature is definitely below the water, its position is easy to see, thanks to its gleaming white body. But is it glowing, or simply reflecting the moon’s light? I glance up at the half-moon.
Glowing,
I decide.
A bioluminescent Kaiju.

I toggle Devine so the FC-P and all military assets in the area can hear me. “To all U.S. Military in the Gulf of Maine, participating in Operation—” I switch Devine over to Cooper. “Coop, did we name the operation?”

“Blockade One,” she says.

“That’s a horrible name,” I say and switch Devine back to the military broadcast. “—Blockade One, this is FC-P Director Jon Hudson. If you are prepared, please indicate by—”

The smart phone connecting me to Devine vibrates in my hand. The screen shows a series of green lights appearing next to the names of ships, subs and aircraft. In less than a second, all have indicated their readiness. And they’re all seeing the same thing.

“On my mark,” I say and switch off Devine. “Take us in a wide circle, counterclockwise. I want to see this.”

Helicopter Betty banks hard to the left and then cuts a slow right-hand circle around the target area. As we come up behind the creature’s backside, I marvel at its size, even from this far up.

Is it bigger than Nemesis?

Doesn’t matter.

I toggle Devine back to the military channel and say, “Phase one, fire, fire, fire.”

My phone vibrates. The names of the three subs are blinking. The message ‘Torpedoes away,’ appears beside each of the names.

It takes a few seconds to see any real world results, but then several dull white streaks slide up behind the massive shape. The bubble trails
are
reflecting the moon’s light. And then there are too many to count.

“Here we go,” Collins says, peering out the side window.

The first torpedo strikes with a plume of white. It’s followed by more and more, until the water behind the creature churns. Water cascades into the air, propelled by the explosive force, but nothing else rises.

Streaks from the east cut into view, heading toward the creature’s head, and torpedoes continue to detonate behind it. They strike with equal force, but the result is far more explosive. A mountain of white frothy water bursts hundreds of feet up into the air. For a moment, I think someone has prematurely dropped a MOAB, but then a shape resolves amidst the foam. A massive, luminous white body lifts itself free of the water, extending two ape-like arms up toward the sky, and issuing an angry roar that shakes my insides.

Bolstered by phase one’s success, I shout, “Phase two, go, go—”

My third ‘go’ gets lost in my throat as the behemoth turns free of the exploding waters and turns its head in our direction.

“Oh my god,” Collins says. “Is that...”

“Cthulhu,” I say. “Fucking Cthulhu.”

13

“Vy! Stoy!” The bellowed Russian words chased her into the light. Maigo didn’t understand them, but was fairly certain someone was telling her to stop. The path ahead lay mostly open. The three rings of the Atlantean structure were separated by three-foot-deep, six-foot-wide circuits, cut through by a single raised line, which could act like a walkway toward the center, but was far to the right. Rocky debris covered everything, most of it dust, but some the size of desks, which would make good cover.

But I won’t be taking cover,
she decided. If she stopped, she’d get pinned, and if that happened, she would be dead. Russian soldiers weren’t just chasing her. They were everywhere. She could see them on all sides of the Atlantean structure, raising their weapons toward the mostly naked woman bolting through the night.

“Rasstrelyat’!” came the voice again, this time quickly drowned out by the sounds of automatic gunfire.

Maigo dove forward and rolled. Bullets pinged off a rock as she passed. She planned to follow through back to her feet and keep running, but halfway through the roll, she reached the first ring. She fell inside the ring, dropping three feet, flat onto her back. The solid metal surface drove the air from her lungs, and rough stone scraped her skin.