Ragnarok (7 page)

Black Three nodded to Duncan, and then the side cargo door to the Black Hawk helicopter opened. Duncan looked down to the blinking lights on the roof of the John Hancock building under him. Far below that, the rest of Chicago was aglow as a dome of energy sat in the heart of the Magnificent Mile.

“After I’m gone, get out of here, Three. I have another transport coming for evac.”

“Roger,” the pilot said. “Good luck, Sir.”

“Thanks, we’ll need it.”

Deep Blue deactivated the heads-up display on his faceplate, checked the altimeter on his wrist and jumped out of the helicopter to freefall a thousand feet through the Chicago night sky.

NINE

Olderdalen, Norway

3 November, 0700 Hrs

ROOK PRESSED THE End button on the phone—a cell phone he had paid to borrow from a small storekeeper in the nearest town south of Fenris Kystby. He stepped out of the shop to the quiet street where Asya waited for him by Peder’s battered car, which they had used to drive the hour south.

The sky had gone overcast with a dark, heavy cloud cover. The brittle Norwegian coastal breeze ripped into him. He noticed that Asya seemed less affected by it. He supposed that was from her Russian upbringing. He himself was from New Hampshire, and he was used to both the cold and the damp sea air, but this far north in Norway was different from home. He was almost a full 30 degrees of latitude north of the chilly New England farm he knew. They were above the Arctic Circle, and Rook’s body and his emotions had taken a battering over the last few weeks. He figured it was okay to admit to himself that he was cold.

“Your friend? He will send help?” Asya seemed impatient.

“Yeah. As soon as he can, someone will be here.” Rook saw that she wasn’t looking at him but over his shoulder and behind him as he spoke.

He turned quickly to see a long-legged blonde woman strutting up to him. She wore a fleece headband that covered her ears and the scarring on her forehead—the only blemish to an otherwise sensationally gorgeous woman—the woman Rook had begun to fall in love with: Zelda Baker, also known as—

“Queen.” Rook whispered her name, then smiled wide. “Sonovabitch, that was fast!” Rook was stunned to see anyone from his team so quickly after Deep Blue’s brusque brush-off.

Then she drove her right fist into his jaw, squatting slightly and using the thrust from her legs as she came back up to throw her whole weight into the blow. Rook rocked back off his feet and into the air, flying backward to slam his head against the rear window of the old Two Series Volvo, shattering it. He slid down to the pavement amidst the sprinkling of safety glass cubes, landing on his ass with a thump.

Queen looked furious. Long blonde hair streamed behind her in the Arctic air. Her cheeks were a fierce red and her eyes were filled with anger. Rook understood immediately what it meant. He was both thrilled and terrified. Thrilled because it was instantly clear to him that she had come to care for him the same way her had for her, but he was also afraid that she might have construed his recent unauthorized departure from the team as his premature death. She might never forgive him for leaving and causing her to worry so.

Unfortunately, Rook was so taken by the sight of Queen and by the power of the blow she had landed on him, that he completely forgot his companion.

Asya didn’t know Queen at all and had come to a natural conclusion—only it was the wrong one. She leapt to Rook’s defense.

As Rook tried to stand up, he saw Asya’s black clad leg fly through the air as she executed a perfect flying sidekick. Her foot connected with Queen’s face, knocking the woman back, but she managed to keep her feet. Asya landed in front of Queen and both women took a long look at each other, sizing up their opponent before the real fight started.

Rook could see what was about to happen, but his head still hurt from the impact with the Volvo—to say nothing of the impact with Queen’s right cross. His body was battered and beaten from the earlier fight with the villagers and his shoulder was still brutalized from events even before that fight. He could barely move. And he couldn’t get a breath into his lungs fast enough to call out a ceasefire.

Large flakes of snow, lumped together into bold shapes, fell from the sky. A single flake fell between the women, striking the ground with a barely audible
tick
.

The two women ran at each other.

TEN

Shanghai, China

3 November, 1400 Hrs

THEIR ORIGINAL DESTINATION had been Beijing, but in the time it took for Knight and Bishop to get to China—even at supersonic speed—the field of battle had changed again. Right now, all they had to go on was that giant globes of energy and lightning were randomly appearing in different population centers around the globe. In some cases, the sphere would be present only a short time. In others, it would stay long enough to disgorge a payload of creatures that were vicious and fast. The creatures could be killed, but it was very difficult to do so. Beyond those few facts, Knight and Bishop were going in blind.

On their way to Beijing, the pilot, callsign: Black One, had been informed that the portal that had opened in the Forbidden City had closed unexpectedly, without sending any of the killing creatures into the population of 20 million. Unfortunately, the Forbidden City, the former imperial palace dating from the Ming Dynasty, was carved from the face of the Earth by the devastating effects of the globe’s collapse, just as other cities had been ravaged. But before the
Crescent
could be set to a new course, reports of another globe effect in nearby Shanghai had come in through Lewis Aleman, back at Endgame HQ.

News of the giant energy globes had spread rapidly around the world, so when this new globe had begun to appear in Shanghai, people had fled in terror on foot, in cars and on bicycle—by whatever means they had available to them. The People’s Liberation Army had yet to arrive on the scene and even local law enforcement had bailed at the sight of the giant white and yellow crackling sphere.

So it was in relative quiet that Knight and Bishop approached their target. The
Crescent
dropped them on the street before taking to the skies again with its VTOL thrusters and disappearing. A few injured people lay on the sidewalks and in the middle of the road, but most were still moving away from the site, even if at a crawl. Bishop and Knight might have stopped to help the people, but their first priority was to guard the greater population against the creatures that sometimes came out of the energy globes.

Lightning blasted from the sphere ahead of them, arcing upward to strike the tops and sides of tall concrete, steel and glass skyscrapers. As Bishop and Knight approached the thing, debris from the ruined buildings rained down while streaks of lightning performed a spastic dance accentuated by the booming of thunder. Choreographed chaos.

“Endgame, this is Knight. As far as I can tell, the lightning strikes are completely random. They don’t seem to be targeting us or anything in particular.”

“Copy that, Knight. We’ve already had reports from Egypt that weapons fire into the sphere doesn’t do a damn thing, so hold your fire. If a tank can’t stop it, neither can you.” Lewis Aleman sounded tired and jittery on the small earphone in Knight’s ear. If Bishop was listening in, he made no indication of it. “Also, don’t get too close to the thing. When they blink out, they take everything with them. Remember, you’re there to fight anything that might come out of the sphere. We have reports from a Ranger, whose brother was in LA, that the things are like milky white pumas. They’re damn fast, but initial reports suggest they only go after fleeing prey. So set up somewhere and be ready. If your globe closes, we’ll get the
Crescent
back to deliver you to another hotspot.”

“Understood,” Knight said. He switched off the microphone on the side of his face and turned to Bishop. “Where do you think?”

Bishop scanned the scene. They were in a section of the city called
The Bund
. The river was to their right and a huge multi-lane road with abandoned cars was to their left. HSBC Bank and the Customs House, with its distinctive clock tower, were across the asphalt. The sphere was further up Zhongshan Road. The sun still hung overhead, but in a few hours, bright neon lights and spotlights would illuminate everything. The glow from the crackling sphere, which Bishop judged to be about 60 feet in diameter, washed out the daylight with an intensity that made him squint.

“That clock tower looks to me like a good spot for you. I’m just gonna walk along the river here and get closer.”

“Bish,” Knight looked concerned as he stared up at the larger man. “There’s no cover along the river. If those things come out…”

“If I need to, I’ll bail into the water. Let’s get it done.”

Without another word, Knight sprinted across the now empty multi-lane road, carrying his new favorite toy—the EXACTO rifle—strapped across his back. He wondered, as he made his way across the road to the large bank, whether this road had ever been deserted of people since its construction. He figured it hadn’t. He knew Shanghai had something like 24 million people, and it had always been a crowded place.

Knight made his way into the Customs House building expecting to find cowering civilians or possibly even morons still attempting to carry out a normal day’s work despite the inconvenience of a gigantic electrical ball of hellfire just down the road. Instead, he found the place completely deserted. As far as he knew, the energy effect had only started in Shanghai about thirty minutes previously. He was stunned that the Chinese had managed to evacuate the area so thoroughly in such a short time.

As he made his way into the elevator to get to the roof, Knight reflected on the fact that as the only Korean American member of Chess Team, he was their de facto Pacific Rim agent, and yet he had rarely been to China. The last time was to one of China’s new ghost cities, Shenhuang. That hadn’t been a fun mission. Although one positive thing had come from it: his new girlfriend, Anna Beck. She had helped the team once before the Shenhuang mission, and as callsign: Black Zero had now become one of Deep Blue’s right-hand assistants back in New Hampshire. Although things were going well with Beck, he turned his mind away from her, getting his head in the game.

Out on the roof, he made his way to the huge clock tower’s stairway. The structure was nearly 300 feet tall. The perfect vantage point. But as he got closer to the top of the staircase, Knight heard the distinctive
boom-boom-boom
of Bishop’s XM312-B blasting away.

He was too late.

ELEVEN

Walt Disney World Resort, FL

2 November, 1330 Hrs

FIRST THE CRAZY sweaty bomber on the monorail. Then the guy had done a swimmer off the rear of the train, splattering himself on the concrete support strut. King didn’t like killing people (or seeing them killed) unnecessarily. He hadn’t intended to kill the sweaty man; he only wanted to question him. Now he had turned and seen the Russian gunship pointing its nose cannon down King’s throat.

For a moment, King hesitated. He wasn’t sure what to do or how to react. Why in hell was there was a massive Russian helicopter hovering over Disney World? The decision was made for him. The massive helicopter turned, so its side faced King, no longer maintaining its hover over the speeding monorail train, instead letting the train pass beneath it and bringing King right up to the vehicle.

King spotted a bright, neon-yellow chess piece hastily spray-painted on the sidewall of the fuselage—a
King
piece. The picture was nearly three feet tall, and King could see the drips where the paint had bled before drying. The side door was open, and in it was a crouched US Army Ranger, who was waving King to approach the helicopter—as if he had a choice with the train carrying him to it.

The picture came clear immediately for King. He sprinted along the rooftops of the monorail cars to the helicopter and nimbly leapt into the open cargo door, rolling and hitting the closed side door on the other side of the craft. The Ranger passed him a set of headphones, which he donned. The man then started to close the open door as King seated the headset on his ears.

“Talk to me,” King said.

“You’re desperately needed, sir. We were told to paint that symbol outside and pick you up.” The Ranger seemed apologetic as he secured the door. He was dressed in desert-style battle dress uniform, with a distinctive gold and black
RANGER
tab on one shoulder and a green and blue shield patch with a red lightning bolt on the other. King recognized it as the insignia for the 75
^th
Ranger Regiment. The man’s nametape said ORTIZ.

“I was kind of in the middle of something, Ortiz. There’s a bomb on that train.”

“We know, sir.” Ortiz turned and smiled at King. “Everybody on board has a cell phone. They flooded the local police dispatcher with calls. We overheard. We were given very specific orders almost immediately to drop a small EMP device on the roof of the train. As soon as we’re out of range, we’ll set it off. It’ll stop the bomb and bring the train to a halt as well.”

King eased into a chair and strapped in. The helicopter continued its ascent and laid on some speed. “Nice work. You wanna tell me why I had to nearly crap my pants at the sight of a Russian bird over Disney?”

The Ranger laughed. “We use this thing for training scenarios up at Camp Blanding, but we were in the area doing a meet-and-greet at the Naval Air Warfare Center in Orlando. We were the nearest warm bodies when General Keasling needed someone to high-tail it over to get you.”

King chuckled too, now that his heart wasn’t in his throat any more. “Well let me tell you: it’s no fun being on the business end of that big-ass cannon.”