Ripper (43 page)

Caulfield looked offended. “My people always keep their mouths shut, Mr. President.”

“No offense, Max, but what I’m talking about is beyond anything you know. For the first time in American history I am bringing a military officer into the loop on this
agency. It exists, and that is all you will ever know, Max. Is that understood? There will be no questions, no official answers. Now I have to say this; if I didn’t, the ghosts of every president since Woodrow Wilson, hell, possibly even Abe Lincoln, would turn over in their graves, and the ones still alive would crucify me and then throw my rotting corpse in jail. Which, Max, is the same thing
I am now threatening you with on an official basis. I will have you skinned alive if this leaks from anyone under your command.” The president held up a hand. “Think, Max, before you speak. This group is special and they have just declared a state of emergency. The complex they utilize has been attacked. Most of the personnel have been successfully evacuated, but there are over seventy men and women
still down in that hole in the ground.” The president looked hard into the general’s eyes. “And it’s one damn big hole.”

“What size assault element is it we’re speaking of?”

“Colonel Collins estimates no more than twenty, maybe less. But he also says these people are good.”

“Jack? Jack Collins?” the general asked with his eyes growing concerned.

“Let’s just say he’s involved with this group
and needs assistance in regaining control of the facility. That’s another name you will forget about after tonight, General,” the president said with a sternness he had never used with Caulfield.

“I need details,” the general said raising his left brow after all of the threats were delivered.

The president went to his desk and returned with his laptop. Instead of sitting across from Caulfield,
he sat next to him on the couch.

“Okay Max, officially you’re the only one outside of this office that will ever be told directly about this group. Some have guessed at its existence, especially after the Atlantis thing, and then the space shots, but no one could ever prove it. Throughout the modern history of this country they could never prove a thing.” The president opened the laptop and brought
up a file after he entered his personal code. “This is a layout of the complex. Study it and commit it to memory because you can’t have any drawings for planning.”

As Caulfield looked at the detailed layout of the eighty-seven levels of the Event Group Complex, his eyes widened. “What in the hell is this?” he wondered. The massive complex was laid out before him and he couldn’t believe the scope
of the construction.

“Max, I said don’t ask. I’m breaking about a thousand laws laid down by my predecessors about secrecy where this group is concerned. I need you to come up with an assault plan to help Colonel Collins and his men. I need you to get my friend Dr. Compton the hell out of there. The operation is to be kept tight and small. You run it for me. Just an officer and as tight a unit
as you can find. Who do you have in mind?”

Caulfield had a hard time drawing his eyes away from the underground structure he was looking at. It was shaped like an upside down bowl with a large stem coming from its center, followed by another inverted bowl, then another, and still another.

“This son of a bitch is a nightmare, Mr. President.”

“I know, I’ve been inside and said the same thing,”
he answered, again rubbing his face in frustration.

“And we have to keep it tight and quiet?” The general didn’t expect a response. He looked away and then glanced back at the tired and even grayer-haired man than the one who appointed him to his current position. “Thank you for trusting me with this. I knew that quirky little bald man was something, but running a joint like this? I guess we
have to help save him, don’t we?”

The president placed his hand on the general’s shoulder. “Thanks Max, I would hate to have you … well, dealt with.”

Caulfield looked up after the president’s small joke, but when he saw that he wasn’t smiling the general turned away with his eyes a little wider and the threats to him that much more vivid.

“I think maybe you better save the thanks for the DELTA
team I have to send in there, and please don’t make me threaten them like you did me. I don’t know if these boys would take it as well as I did.”

“Oh, they would take it if I sent a regiment of FBI agents to their front door. Now, where are these gentlemen?”

“Right now they’re at Fort Lewis, Washington, conducting their mountain training on Mount Rainier. I can have a team at Nellis in about
three hours with luck. Mr. President, you said most of the personnel were evacuated successfully. Wasn’t Dr. Compton one of those people?”

“No, he’s missing, along with many others. They are cut off far underground.” The president turned and faced the general. “Max, besides Collins and his security force, the people that work inside that complex are only thinkers—doctors, professors, and God
only knows what else. They are the best people this country has to offer as far as brains. They need your help and the silence of you and the men you choose.”

Maxwell Caulfield stood and removed his uniform jacket. He placed it on the back of the couch and sat back down to study the layout of the Event Group Complex underneath Nellis.

“I need a direct line to Fort Lewis in Washington State,”
he said as his eyes started roaming over the large gates that were the entrances to the giant complex in the desert.

“Get them out of there Max,” the president said.

The general raised the phone to his ear. “This is General Caulfield. Connect me with the JSOC immediately.”

The president overheard the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff request the Joint Special Operations Command.

The JSOC
and the DELTA team they planned operations for were about to assault the underground complex that housed the most secret organization in the history of the United States—the Event Group.

THE EVENT GROUP COMPLEX
NELLIS AFB, NEVADA

The three men had almost made it down to level twelve by the stairwell when Niles said he had to return to the office level up on seven. Charlie shook his head no and
Pete just sat down and tried to catch his breath.

“If we go back the captain will shoot us instead of any intruders,” Charlie said as he helped Pete to his feet in the semidark stairwell. “We had one job to do and we can’t even do that.”

“Look, I’m not leaving while I have people still inside the complex. Now you two can either come with me or continue on to the evacuation point, but I would
prefer you come along. Pete, Europa could be helpful in what’s happening. How many men are left here with the expertise to get her up to spec enough to help out Captain Everett?”

Pete shook his head negatively. He finally took a couple of deep breaths and looked back up the stairs. The distant sounds of gunfire had ceased for the moment.

“I haven’t heard any shots in a minute or so. Maybe it’s
all over,” Pete managed to say.

“Maybe, but why isn’t Europa telling us anything? You of all people should know her programming. We’re literally in the dark here,” Niles said as he turned and started back up.

Charlie Ellenshaw looked at Pete and then nodded his head upward. “Well, the office on seven is ten levels above the danger on seventeen. Niles has a point; I really don’t relish the thought
of running out on the rest of them.”

Pete took the first few steps back up the stairs. “Neither did I, but someone could have mentioned that just a bit earlier—like when we were on level seven.”

The three men went back up the stairs where they thought it would be safe.

They were wrong.

LEVEL SEVENTEEN

The silence coming from the clean room was overwhelming. Everett didn’t want to get men
killed by rushing the outer office, knowing the killers of his men were one room beyond that. Where were Will and Sanchez? They needed the assault packages before they could chance a move into the room. Carl scowled and motioned for his men to stay down. He had to keep this Smith talking to know he wasn’t making a move out of the clean room.

“Smith?”

There was nothing other than the moans of
someone wounded inside the room. Then they heard a grunt, followed by another. Everett closed his eyes because he knew he had to risk exposing himself to gunfire from inside. Making a quick decision, he rose to his knees and raised his head to the shattered window above. With a quick glance he saw that the observation area was clear. He lowered his head and grimaced. Then he chanced another look.
As he rose he quickly saw that the clean room was filled with a fog that was just starting to roll free. He thought he saw several shadows moving about. There were more screams of pain and then, not believing his ears, he heard the laughter of not only one but several men from inside the clouded and fogged clean room. Everett quickly ducked back down, not believing what he had just seen. It was the
same fog that had engulfed Guzman and his men at the hacienda.

“We can’t wait for the assault packages,” he called out to the twenty men lining the wall. “When I give the word, we give those bastards everything we have.”

The ten men on the right and the ten on the left gave him the thumbs up. Everett quickly noted the twenty weapons his men had. Most were from the smallest of the three armories
located in the Security Department, not the heavier-caliber weapons in the main armory down on level forty. The ones his men were armed with were light M-14 carbines, the small version of the M-16. He counted four shotguns in the mix, and they weren’t the solid-shot rounds he would have preferred, but double-ought buckshot. He knew that would have to do.

“One—two—three—now!” Everett shouted.

The men as one rose ten on the left and ten on the right with Carl taking up the middle ground with his nine millimeter. The opening salvo was so fierce that each man couldn’t believe anything could live through it. The weapons’ rounds ricocheted off the robotic arm and smashed through any remaining glass inside the clean room. As Everett emptied his Beretta into the fogged-up room, he heard the
discharge of the four shotguns. As the rounds and pellets were blasted into the clean room, Carl could see the streaking rounds create eddies and rolling fog as they sliced through the mist.

“Cease fire,” Everett called out, but as he did he saw one of his sergeants, a marine, start to inch toward the door. “No, hold back!”

The sergeant started to take a step backward when a large hand pierced
the fog that now covered the entire observation room. One minute the man was there, the next he was gone. Then they heard the scream and most chilling of all, more laughter. One laugh was joined by many more. The screaming stopped abruptly, but the laughing continued. As Everett took in his men he could see the unsettling effect the situation was having. They were looking to him for the strength
he usually possessed.

“Open fire!” he called again.

This time the barrage was intense, and for the first time they heard other screams of pain as they were finally striking something other than glass, steel, or plastic. The men were firing and dropping empty magazines at a furious rate until Everett called a cease-fire yet again.

“Smith!” Everett yelled as he waved three men away from the fog
that was starting to roll out of the observation room and beginning to touch the carpeted floor in the hallway.

“Yes?” came the deep, unnatural voice.

That was enough for Carl. He had heard the same change come over Guzman in Mexico.

“You ten men, get to the stairwell and down to the main armory on twenty,” he said to the men on his right. “You ten, come with me. We can’t fight this with what
we have.”

For the first time ever Captain Everett saw hesitation in his men.

“Move!” he ordered as he quickly turned right and started for the far stairwell as the first team made a dash for the closest elevator and the stairwell doors next to it.

As they moved, something crashed through the plastic-and-concrete-reinforced wall. It was huge, and as the last man passed, he was taken in the arms
of a man with torn, black-colored clothing. The security man was pulled inside and his screaming was heard in the ears of the men that were making a run for the stairwells.

Everett managed a look back to see three more of the transformed Men in Black as they burst through the fog with a childish-like glee of laughter and animalistic roars. As Everett forced his nine remaining men in through the
stairwell opening, he saw a much larger man step out of the fog and into the hallway. His eyes locked with the altered orbital structure of the man he had met in Mexico. As Everett watched, the man’s four men spread out and went in opposite directions, two coming at him and his team, the other two heading in the opposite direction.

Carl could see that their firing hadn’t been in vain as blood
was coursing down the bodies of the men who had grown so much that they had broken free of their body armor and most of their clothing. Everett quickly aimed his nine millimeter at the head of the beast he thought was Smith and fired five quick shots in succession at the man’s head. The creature Smith had become smiled even as he saw Everett aim his weapon and ducked quickly back into the fog bank
now moving like a rolling wave into the hallway. He remembered the description of the formula and how it may boost the IQ of the user, or guinea pig, if it was ingested. With that thought, he didn’t wait to see if he had hit anything. He turned and entered the stairwell and started the retreat back into the depths of the Event Group Complex.

Behind them two of Smith’s men, their teeth elongated
and with both drooling spittle, started convulsing as even more of Perdition’s Fire was inhaled. Then as one they started bashing their ham-sized fists into the walls, creating giant holes with each blow. Farther down the hallway as Smith once more rose from the fog laced with Perdition’s Fire, he saw what the two men were doing and nodded his massive head and laughed as he and the other two started
to repeat what the first men were doing. They needed to get into the walls and the spaces behind them so they could control the complex from directions its defenders would never believe possible. The first two broke through to the empty and nonfunctioning elevator shaft at the far end of the hallway, even as Smith started laughing uncontrollably as his men were tearing into the walls like they
were papier-mâché.