Carpathian (81 page)

Another roar of the Golia sent Anya flying up the stairs as she realized one of the precious and irreplaceable beasts was actually inside the club and they were hearing a lot of gunfire.

*   *   *

Zallas stood next to the balcony railing and surveyed the disaster that his precious Castle Dracula had become. The Russian was so angry he failed to feel the massive stone blocks beneath his feet shift, and again most did not see that the liquid in the half-filled glasses was beginning to lean to the south with a prominent tilt.

Zallas turned and took the wounded Ben-Nevin by the coat collar to pull him to the railing and then shake him as he gestured at the catastrophe below.

“What have you done to my club?” he yelled as spittle flew from his mouth and into the Mossad agent’s face. “All of this and nothing from you!”

Ben-Nevin watched as the women and men continued to try to get out of the giant nightclub, most fearing the animal as it ran from spot to spot in a frenzy of excitement. His eyes widened at the familiar sight of Mikla, the beast that had rescued Anya on board the train just two nights before. Ben-Nevin slapped Zallas’s hand away from his coat collar and then pulled a nine-millimeter from his waistband. He took quick aim and fired into the crowd in an attempt to hit the wolf. Mikla went to all fours and practically flew up the wall and into a dark vestibule and vanished. Ben-Nevin then sighted a new target. The white-haired man and the strange fellow from the hotel were huddling in a far corner by the stage. It looked as if they were waiting to make a break for the rear door and the cable cars outside. Ben-Nevin took aim at the crazy-haired man.

*   *   *

Charlie Ellenshaw and Pete Golding had finally given up trying to separate the guests from the armed men that were in the mood to kill everyone in the confusion caused by Mikla. Charlie pulled Pete down closer to the floor when Ellenshaw had spotted the thirty or so men streaming into the club. They were Zallas’s as the automatic weapons attested. Charlie was getting ready to pull Pete to his feet when he was knocked down just as three bullets punctured the stone wall next to his head.

“Wow, man, I think that cat was trying to kill you!” Drake Andrews said as he rolled off of Ellenshaw. Charlie managed to look up and see the harried and now very much crumpled American entertainer. His black show jacket was covered in blood and the young people behind him didn’t look any better.

“Thanks,” was all Ellenshaw could say as more bullets struck the tables and the walls behind the group of frightened entertainers.

“Are you an American?” Andrews asked.

“Yeah, we’re Americans, but if we don’t get out of here we’ll never see the golden shores again,” Pete interjected.

A bullet pinged off the black wall behind them and one of the young Russian singers screamed in pain as she grabbed her arm. Drake pulled her closer to him and then covered her.

“We have to get these kids out of here,” Andrews said.

“Yeah, any suggestions?” Charlie asked. “If I’m not mistaken there seems to be a pretty angry Russian up there!”

*   *   *

Ben-Nevin had the white-haired man in his sights again and this time that American singer wouldn’t help him. Suddenly several angry hornets crossed in front of his face. He turned and looked and saw several men and to his surprise running along with them was Anya Korvesky, or as the colonel knew her, Major Mica Sorotzkin. She took cover quickly behind a large pedestal with a suit of armor on it. Zallas pushed Ben-Nevin away and then his men returned some of the fire directed at them by the Americans.

Zallas gestured for his remaining men to advance on the Americans and he didn’t care how many men he lost taking them out.

“Kill them all,” he screamed as he looked around at the shambles of his castle. He could not believe he had been talked into this by that Israeli traitor. He knew he always had to go for the brass ring even though he had enough money already to buy the factory that made the brass rings. He always had to have what others had, and now here he was. The castle was going to be a complete loss and now he had to make sure this disaster didn’t touch the much more valuable property below—the Edge of the World. That had to be saved after this fiasco. He looked at the cowardly Ben-Nevin and knew this man would die slowly in his hotel’s basement just as Marko Korvesky had earlier in the evening.

Jack chanced a look down over the railing and saw that the only guests left in the club were Charlie, Pete, and a group of terrified-looking young people huddling together by the stage. There was no way with the minimal firepower at hand they could extricate Ellenshaw and Golding.

“Jack!” Sarah shouted as she held the handgun out and pointed to the far wall closest to the cable car platform.

Collins looked to where Sarah was pointing and then he jabbed Mendohlson and then yelled for Carl. He pointed to the same spot as McIntire. Their eyes widened. As they watched, the rip in the stone blocks where they had been cemented together was separated by a good eight inches and the gap was widening. Sarah knew the castle was starting to separate from the mountain. The tremor hit and that made all the gunfire magically cease for the briefest of moments as everyone realized at the same moment that something was starting to go terribly wrong with Dracula’s Castle. Even Zallas remembered Sarah’s dire warnings about a catastrophe in the making. Now the Russian was starting to see—and feel—her point. He was thinking maybe it was time to leave and sort this out in a better location, like his offices.

“The doc is pinned down by the stage, it looks like they may be the last ones to get out, he and Pete are with a bunch of kids.”

“Kids? Here?” Carl said as he accepted another nine-millimeter clip from one of the Israeli commandos. Everett popped up and downed one of the mobster’s hired killers, who grabbed his face and then fell over the balcony and then his body smashed into a table in the center of the room. “If we have to do this one at a time we may be here when this damn castle falls down,” Everett finished and then fired one more round at the mass of killers fronting them.

“If you don’t mind me asking you gentlemen, just who in the hell are you?” Mendohlson asked.

“He’s Navy, I’m Army, and that really doesn’t matter at the moment, Major,” Jack said as he looked at the man. “What does matter is that I have two men down there protecting a bunch of kids. I have to get them out.”

“Well, we’re down to fifteen men. The rest are wounded or assisting the evacuation. We’re it.”

Jack grimaced.

“Here they come, Jack!” Everett said as he fired blindly into the men who were trying to make it to the cable car platform. “Damn!”

Bullets started slamming into the floor and the walls around them. The suit armor finally toppled over, narrowly missing a rolling Anya as it crashed to the floor. Collins saw that the Russian was done, he wanted out but they were in his way. Collins wasn’t about to raise his hands and give Zallas free passage to the cable car that was just pulling in. As Jack tried to get Ellenshaw’s attention below a bullet hit the colonel in the left shoulder and he felt the sting. Sarah saw him go down and there was nothing she could do about it.

Jack and his rescue team were about to be overrun.

Zallas knew he would make it with the human shield in front of him. He turned and grabbed Ben-Nevin once more and pulled him close.

“You will stay with me, my friend, until I have in my hands what I was promised. I want those men and I want what those Gypsies took from the temple!”

One of Zallas’s men fired a long burst from his AK-47 and the mobster looked up in time to see the dark-haired American go down. To the Russian that was a start. He had bad vibes ever since meeting the American with the intense green eyes. He smiled again as he shook Ben-Nevin and pointed. “Now you’ll see how we conduct business in Russia!” he said smiling maniacally.

*   *   *

Mikla was standing on the highest parapet on the east side of the castle. The giant Golia reached up and took hold of the ornate weather vane for balance and let loose a howl that was heard even over the building storm. Mikla was calling for help.

The mountain above the castle suddenly came alive with a black-on-black movement that looked as if ants were heading down the side of the mountain. The Golia had arrived to battle one last time against the forces of Pharaoh.

*   *   *

“That’s it, I’m out!” Sarah said as she looked around hoping that Mendohlson and his men had something extra to give. They did not. Their volume of fire diminished. They were done for.

Zallas was seen pulling the Israeli colonel around by the collar as his men kept up the withering fire as they worked their way to the platform. The cable car was there looking none too good after the wild ride down with screaming guests that had been terrified by what they still thought was a special effects show gone awry.

*   *   *

“You better pray that old Gypsy and her backward people are down below or you will never leave here, Jew Colonel,” Zallas said as his anti-Semitism came flowing from his mouth like corruption from a wound. “They better have what you have promised me.” He shook the colonel once more as he walked behind his curtain of men, dodging from fake castle appointment to potted plant. “Look at this, you are responsible for this!”

As Zallas looked around, his club was a shambles and as it stood he knew he would at least lose millions in a delayed opening. Dmitri Zallas was the type of man who never looked at the legal ramifications of anything he came across, he always had the fix in, just as he did at the moment with the interior minister. The damage could be controlled but that didn’t mean that the Jew had made a deal and he was going to stick to it if Zallas had to kill every last Gypsy inside Romania. And then he would start in the neighboring countries—nobody lied to Dmitri Zallas or ripped him off.

*   *   *

“Doc!”

Professor Ellenshaw heard the shout coming from behind. The din of battle from up top was starting to slacken as their rescuers ran low on ammunition. Charlie eased his head around the woman he was protecting with his body. He saw Jason Ryan and Will Mendenhall lying on the cold stone floor looking at them from a small cubbyhole at the end of the stage. It had taken them ten minutes to work their way outside and then to one of the ornate leaded glass windows where it took another three minutes to break through the lead that held most of the stained glass in place.

“Come on, Doc, we gotta split, man,” Ryan said, frantically waving Ellenshaw and his charges away from the main floor.

Ellenshaw started with the girl beneath him. It was the young woman dressed as Janis Joplin, and that made crazy Charlie give her a double take.

“Must have been one hell of a show,” he said as he pushed the young girl, who was still wearing her sunglasses, toward Ryan, who also gave Janis a second look.

Next Pete was pushing Jim Morrison, and holding on to his long fringe-lined vest were the three Supremes screaming as bullets stitched the thick brick walls. Each of the Russian performers, all dressed as past greats for Drake Andrews’s performance, was sent through the small opening to the rear of the stage and the false front of the castle beyond. Ryan and Will exchanged astonished looks as the evening just became far stranger.

“Okay, come on, Johnny, move it!” Ryan yelled out as the second to last performer, a kid dressed all in black like Johnny Cash, almost got stuck in the small opening.

“Wow!” Mendenhall said as the last man through was none other than Drake Andrews.

“Hey, dude, thanks a lot,” he said as he started crawling through the hole and into the small passageway.

“Come on, Doc!” Ryan said as he finally assisted Ellenshaw and Pete through the opening. “Good job getting those kids out of there,” Jason said to Ellenshaw and Pete as bullets slammed into the hole from upstairs.

“Where to now?” Pete asked as he waited for the others.

“The drawbridge in the front, it’s the only way out to get to the platform, we can’t take a chance getting to the stairs from the main room,” Mendenhall answered as he pushed Pete forward through the tunnel beside the stage.

“The drawbridge?”

*   *   *

Jack, Carl, Mendohlson, Sarah, Anya, Everett, and three of the Israeli commandos were forced to break off and make a run for the far corner away from the platform, as they could no longer stand and fight.

Before Jack realized what was happening he was taken off guard by the brass of the Russian, as he not only directed men to the cable car to hold it, he was actually sending twenty men after his small retreating unit. As he watched the men turn down the balcony hallway the castle gave a giant lurch as the concrete sealant around the foundation and stone block walls finally gave up its hold on the mountain. The castle slipped forward on its foundation by one and a half feet. This time the undermined anchor bolts twisted free of the earth until there was no longer anything holding the castle tight to the mountain. It was starting to come down and Jack knew it.

“To the roof, we’ll catch the cable car from there and hope Mr. Ryan finds a way up, let’s move, people,” he said as Major Mendohlson took the lead and rushed for the stairwell at the end of the hall and just hoped it went up at least one more floor to the castle’s promenade at the top.

*   *   *

Zallas and his men immediately realized the Americans had broken completely off. They made a mad dash for the giant cable car that had docked just moments before. It was still partially in motion as it swung into the loading area. Three of the Russian’s men ran to the ornate wooden door but the automatic system had failed and the double doors remained closed. The men batted on the clouded window but the doors remained closed. The first man tried to look inside and found the view obscured. He stepped back and that was when he noticed that every specially etched glass window was covered in a thin film of red. The man’s eyes widened when the doors suddenly hissed open and before he could stop the first two men they ran inside.

The Russian heard the screaming men just as they broke into the promenade for the cars. The men inside were screaming and the large, heavy car was rocking on its cables. As the remaining men stopped short of the car, Stanus broke free of the doors and stood silhouetted in the ornate lighting from the interior. The beast was in the standing position. Its black muzzle shining with the fresh blood of the two men that were now scattered all over the Queen Anne decor. Stanus was breathing heavy as it took in the startled men standing before it. The yellow eyes were now dulled by pain and its two bullet wounds were bleeding heavily, one from its upper right back and one in the back of the neck. Stanus shook its massive head back and forth sending saliva and blood flying in all directions and then it gathered its strength and raised its muzzle high and roared. The sound shook the platform and had the toughest men in Eastern Europe reversing as quickly as they could.