Blood and Stone (5 page)

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Chadwick Phillips felt awful. His head was pounding and he was pretty sure that at any minute he would throw up. He was glad this was his last day as a flesh and blood man, because he never wanted to have a drink of alcohol again.

Phillips was hunched over the bar in the third floor lounge of Argon Tower, covering his eyes from the bright light pouring in the floor to ceiling windows. An empty bottle of vodka and two glasses sat on the bar in front of him. One glass still had some liquid in it. The other was upside down on the bar, with bright red lipstick on the rim.

Phillips had been out drunk by the tiny blonde FBI Agent.

He should have realized it was a bad idea. Drinking that is. He knew full well the Fountain restored people to perfect health—before draining it from them at midnight. His new body didn’t have the years of tolerance to alcohol he’d built up in bars around the world when he was younger. He was starting over, fresh, with a new body that had never had alcohol.

After lunch, when the blonde had invited him to the bar, Phillips had thought she was interested in him. And, truth be told, the widower was very interested in her. His wife had been dead for twenty five years, after all.

But Pam Keegan wasn’t interested in Phillips. She wanted to know more about Mark Kenslir. Everything about him. And she proved to be a skillful interrogator. She’d plied Phillips with a variety of drinks while asking him all sorts of things he shouldn’t have talked about. Rubbing against him, running her hands over him and whispering in his ear had helped too.

Phillips groaned as he held onto the bar. He hoped there was a cure for this, he couldn’t stand to be stuck this way in his stone body. He couldn’t possibly feel any worse than he did right now.

“Chad?” Mark asked from behind him.

Phillips leapt from the bar and ran to a nearby garbage can and promptly threw up in it.

“Oh, man,” Chad said, holding onto the can. He couldn’t believe he’d gotten so drunk, so fast. And Keegan had happily walked away. A half hour ago. “Sorry, boss.”

When Phillips looked up, Kenslir was standing there, arms folded over his chest, giving him that disapproving parental glare he was still so good at.

“When I said to enjoy the day, this is not what I had in mind.”

Phillips wiped his mouth on his sleeve and staggered over to a large recliner and flopped down into it. “Sorry, Mark. I’m used to being able to hold my liquor much better.”

Kenslir sat down across from his friend. “Really? And when was the last time they did shots at the nursing home?”

Phillips blushed—or at least he would have if his face wasn’t already bright red. “Okay, okay. It was the girl’s fault.”

“Which girl?”

“Keegan—the blonde with the huge knockers.”

Kenslir sighed and shook his head. “I’m not running a brothel here, Chad.”

“I know, I know.” At least the embarrassment was helping him to sober up. “But, you know, my wife has been dead-“

As soon as he said it, Phillips regretted it. Even with his vision blurry he could see the look Kenslir gave him.

“I’m sorry, Mark, I-”

“I’ll have Max send a security detachment to wake you up tonight, so you don’t miss your petrification. Go sleep this off for a few hours.”

“I’m not gonna be like this forever, am I?”

“No, I suppose we can dunk you in the Fountain one more time.”

That made Phillips feel a little better. He just hoped that Keegan felt half as bad as he did. Because she couldn’t go in the Fountain.

“Colonel!” a nearly-breathless Major said, running over.

Both Phillips and Kenslir looked up. “Yes?” they said in unison.

Major Campbell snapped a quick salute in his dress uniform. “We’ve got a situation out west.”

“The shapeshifter?” Kenslir asked.

“We’re pretty sure.”

Phillips tried to stand, but his legs were rubbery and the room was spinning a bit.

“Stay here, Chad—I’ll have security help you to your room.” Kenslir turned back to Campbell. “Where?”

“Alcatraz.”

CHAPTER NINE

The exercise yard of Alcatraz was the most horrifying thing Josie had ever seen. Bodies were strewn everywhere, mutilated, their hearts removed. Some had just hand-sized holes ripped in their chests. Others had their whole rib cages exploded open.

In the midst of all this, several Alcatraz guards stood immobile, turned to stone. One still clutched the radio he had been speaking into.

Josie glided silently over the scene. Even in astral form, she felt sick to her stomach at the site of the carnage. There were at least thirty corpses—although it was hard to tell with them laying around on top of each other.

Josie wasn’t an expert on crime scenes, but even she could tell it had been a slaughter, with the inmates putting up no resistance.

She had seen enough. She broke the telepathic link.

Josie leaned back in her seat, letting her eyes adjust. She was back in Daisy’s room, holding hands with the elderly woman and a younger, black woman. The pair made an interesting contrast—the aged, gray-haired former hippy, in her tie-dyed clothes, holding hands with the dark-skinned woman in the power suit.

Daisy’s going to keep checking the island for survivors
, Gwendolyn projected into Josie’s mind. The 30-something telepath was a far cry from Josie’s first encounter with a Ghost Walker’s handler. She much preferred Gwen over the lecherous PJ.

“I’ll be back later,” Josie said. She climbed to her feet from the over-sized beanbag she’d been sitting on, leaving Daisy and Gwen to continue the astral reconnaissance of Alcatraz.

Josie walked quickly to the telephone built into the wall beside the room’s exit. It was the one thing in all the decor that didn’t look like it had come from 1968.

“Command Center,” Josie said into the handset, “It’s confirmed. The giant was at Alcatraz.”

“ONE MOMENT PLEASE,” the mechanical voice on the other end said. Then the phone line clicked and she was patched through to Colonel Kenslir.

“You’re sure, Josie?” the Colonel asked.

“Yes, sir—there’re bodies everywhere. Maybe thirty inmates dead just outside. It was horrible.”

“Okay, Victor and I are just entering the tunnel.”

“Be careful, Colonel.”

***

Victor Hornbeck was nervous. Even though his stomach was made of stone and didn’t even have acid in it anymore, he felt butterflies. The Colonel had explained before, that could happen—he likened it to the same phantom limb sensation amputees often felt.

Victor wasn’t nervous about the breakneck speed they were traveling in their boat. He knew that his stone body could survive a crash at this speed. What worried him was the fact he was going on his first real mission since being petrified.

Victor reflected on that as he and Colonel Kenslir raced through the long underground tunnel that connected Argon Tower to nearby Homestead Air Force Base. The water-filled tunnel that they used boats, very fast boats, to travel through.

Victor had only been a stone soldier a month now. And even though his training had been going well according to the Colonel, he wasn’t sure he was ready for this. He checked over his gear again as Kenslir raced the boat along, at full throttle.

Victor was wearing black, gray and white camouflage battle dress uniform pants with black boots and a black and gray combat vest. An over-under, double-barreled, pistol-sized grenade launcher hung on his right thigh—a weapon capable of firing a variety of 30mm rounds. On his left thigh he had pouches, holding ammunition for the weapon. On his left hip, under his armpit, a large automagnum pistol was holstered, the barrel pointing back, behind him. It fired armor-piercing rounds that could penetrate just about anything.

The walls of the tunnel were whipping by now, the speed they were traveling displayed in bright green letters in his field of vision, thanks to the over-sized goggles he wore. They were connected by a thin wire that ran down the back of his neck to a small transmitter in a pouch on his vest.

>>>TWO MINUTES<<< Colonel Kenslir transmitted from his own tactical targeting visor. Unlike Victor, the Colonel could control his visor cybernetically by means of small electrodes in the goggles reading signals from the skin of his temples.

Kenslir was dressed similarly to Victor—he had on the same black, gray and white BDU pants, but wore a tight, black, long-sleeved shirt under his combat vest. And instead of one Bowie knife on his vest, he wore two, handles down.

Almost to the second, they arrived at their destination—an underground bay at the end of the tunnel. Kenslir all but rammed the boat into a slip, where several Air Force Airmen on the dock quickly tied up the craft.

Kenslir leaped nimbly from the boat, then pulled Victor up onto the dock. Despite Victor’s immense four hundred pounds of living-stone weight, the Colonel lifted him with no apparent effort.

“Let’s go!” Kenslir grabbed up his rifle case and sprinted down the dock. Victor followed him with his own rifle case in hand.

The two supersoldiers entered a small elevator that rocketed to ground level surprisingly fast. Faster than Victor remembered from their training run.

When the doors opened, they were in the Detachment’s special hangar, located in the southeast corner of the base. The hangar was large enough for most commercial aircraft. But what it housed no commercial pilot had ever flown.

The aircraft were sleek, black, and looked more like spaceships than airplanes. The pilot of the closest aircraft, dressed in what looked like a spacesuit, was already in the cockpit, being buckled in by ground crew.

Kenslir walked toward the closest of the twin MA-12s, pulling his rifle from its case—that he then handed to a ground crewman. The Colonel then walked over to a long, open tube on a cart. The tube was slightly larger than man-sized, a streamlined projectile just over three feet in diameter. Inside the tube looked like a coffin—lots of padding, and a pillow for a headrest.

Kenslir climbed into his transport tube and pointed to the one on another cart, its upper section also hinged back, lid-like. “Sorry we didn’t get to train you on one of these from a C-130.”

“I’ll be okay,” Victor said, climbing awkwardly into his own tube. Once he was laid down, two ground crew members came over and began buckling him in. The straps crossed his chest and came up between his legs, connecting him to the tube and the parachute he was now laying on. His rifle lay between his legs, muzzle pointed down, toward his feet. One of the ground crew connected a strap on the end of the weapon to the vest Victor wore.

Once he was buckled in, the ground crew asked if he was okay. Victor gave them a thumbs-up and tried to smile.

>>>THINK OF IT LIKE A ROLLERCOASTER<<< Kenslir texted him over the tactical targeting visors.

The lid closed on the transport tube, then Victor could feel his tube being moved. His cart was steered under the large MA-12, then hydraulics raised it up, under the aircraft’s belly, just left of center. Bolts could be heard clicking into place.

“Air these things air tight?” Victor asked. His voice echoed in the transport tube, despite the padding. “How do you breathe?”

>>>I’VE GOT AN OXYGEN BOTTLE<<< Kenslir responded. Despite the audio capabilities of the TTVs, he preferred cybernetically controlling his headset and sending script messages. >>>AND IT WON’T BE A LONG FLIGHT<<<

Once both tubes were loaded into place and secured, Victor felt the aircraft begin to roll forward. He imagined the hangar doors opening and the craft being quickly towed out. Something that had never been done in daylight before. But these were special circumstances.

The roar of the engines started and Victor soon felt himself pressed back down, his weight pushing his feet against a footrest at the bottom of the transport tube. The sensation of laying on his back changed to one of standing.

The acceleration was brief, and the pressure pushing down on his shoulders subsided. They were airborne. The altimeter reading on the TTV was scrolling wildly upwards, while the compass indicated they were swinging south, making a huge, banking turn and flying out, over the ocean. The pitch indicator showed them in an eighty-degree, near-vertical climb.

>>>HERE COME THE SCRAMJETS<<< Kenslir texted less than two minutes after takeoff.

The main engines seemed to shut off, the noise from the twin engines dying out suddenly. Victor knew this just meant the turbines had been disengaged. Air was now flowing past the compressors into the main body of the engines—located just above and beside his feet.

Then it was as if gravity increased three-fold. The aircraft surged violently upward, accelerating from just under the speed of sound to over Mach 3 in seconds. Victor guessed this must be what it was like for Space Shuttle astronauts on lift off. Even made of stone, with his sense of touch greatly reduced, he felt the g-forces.

After several long minutes the MA-12's nose tilted down, level. They were flying at one-hundred thousand feet now, and moving at nearly four-thousand miles per hour. And the plane was still accelerating. For an aircraft built in the early 1960s, it was impressive.

“How long is this going to take?” Victor yelled. Even in his sealed tube, the sound of the engines was deafening. And that was at an altitude where the air was too thin to even breathe.

>>>WE’LL BE OVER THE TARGET IN 35 MINUTES<<< Kenslir said.