Ripper (54 page)

Collins saw the two reactor vessels and the steam lines running out of them. Then he looked to the right and saw the coolant lines. He took a breath, relieved that they hadn’t been smashed into oblivion. He allowed his eyes to adjust to
the near darkness and then took three quick steps over to a large tank of distilled water. He saw fifteen of the 5,000-gallon tanks and again was relieved to see that they were undamaged. He stopped at that point and listened. He thought he heard a sound coming from a distant corner of level eighty-four, but he wasn’t sure. He knew he couldn’t risk turning on the pumps, which were located between
the two reactor cores, without ascertaining if one of the killers was in here with them.

He eased himself along the stainless-steel tanks, careful to place his boots on nothing more than concrete. He brought the Ingram up close to his cheek so he wouldn’t have to get off a snap shot at anything that came out of the dark. He came to a small separation between water tanks five and six and risked
a look in between them. He saw a longer blood trail, but couldn’t see where it led. He cursed the darkness as he continued to move forward. He finally came to the last tank, meaning that the next step he took would leave him fully exposed to anything in the large room. Before he did that he looked around the giant tank and examined what he could of reactor number one. He saw the view port in the
sixteen-inch steel door. There was a soft-green hue emanating from the vessel. He realized that time was running out. The steam from inside, generated by the nuclear fuel rods not being cooled, looked as if it were starting to melt the rubber seal not only around the view port but the thick containment door as well. There were streaks of blackened rubber flowing down the front of the reactor. He
didn’t have to see number two as he suspected that it was also in a state of total meltdown. He looked down at his wristwatch and saw that according to his calculations he had about eighteen minutes to get the coolant flowing again. He had to risk exposure.

He stepped out from the protective cover of the last water tank.

The wounded beats struck Jack from the side. He was sent sliding along
the polished concrete floor until his head slammed into the twenty-inch steel base of reactor number one. The stars flew bright as he came close to losing consciousness. As he shook his head to clear his vision, he was shocked to see the very same soldier he thought he had killed on level seven. The shots to the head, coupled with its fall down the elevator tube, should have smashed it to bits. Then
he understood that the blood he found and the scratches and dents in the tube meant that the creature had somehow arrested its fall.

As he tried to sit up, he saw that the beast was staggering. It hit the water tank and came close to dislodging it from its secured base. Then he saw the stumps at the end of its long arms. Blood was pouring from the wounds where he had shot free the massive appendages.
Jack reached for his fallen weapon, but the beast acted much faster than Collins would have thought possible considering its state. It actually leaped from fifteen feet away and landed in front of him. It kicked out with its tree trunk–sized foot and smashed Jack in the ribs, snapping two of them. With no air in his lungs Collins tried to roll before he was kicked again. The beast roared
in anger as bullets started slamming into it from behind. As he rolled away, his eyes saw a sight he would never forget: Charlie Ellenshaw was limping forward from the spot he had just been. He was taking careful aim with the M-14. There was one second between each perfect shot as bullet after bullet struck the wounded soldier in the neck, face, and head. It staggered as Charlie ejected the spent
magazine, and with a determined look he slammed home a fresh one. Then as Jack took his first breath in thirty seconds, he saw Ellenshaw stop and push his glasses back up his nose and begin his deliberate firing at the beast once more.

The creature finally went down to one knee and then both. Ellenshaw with a determined gait purposefully stepped as close to the dying creature as he dared and
placed the muzzle of the M-14 against the center of its forehead. As the former mercenary meekly lifted its handless arm to protect itself, Charlie quickly placed four 5.56-millimeter rounds into its brain, making sure each side of that brain received two bullets. The naked creature fell over onto its side and died lying against nuclear reactor number one, right next to the badly hurt Jack Collins.

Ellenshaw slowly lowered the weapon and took a breath before he passed out from lack of oxygen. He felt his knees weaken and caught himself as he saw Jack struggling to get up. He quickly forgot about his own feeling of nausea at what he had just done and rushed forward to assist the colonel. He knelt beside Collins and helped him to his feet, where Jack took one and then another deep breath,
each one more agonizing than the one before it.

“Good thing I didn’t stay put, huh? That fella was treating you like a football.”

All Collins could do was nod his head.

“Well, let’s get the water flowing again,” Ellenshaw said. Jack nodded still in dire pain from the broken ribs.

Suddenly the overhead lights blared to life, filling the reactor room with such a bright luminescence that it stunned
the two men. Charlie lowered his eyes, the light nearly blinding him as it shot through his glasses. Immediately after that the scram alarms started, and the warning bells began decrying the stoppage of distilled water to the cooling pumps. Then came the shock of their lives as Europa announced in her sexy voice, making the message sound trite and flippant, “There are fifteen minutes and twenty-seven
seconds left till core meltdown. Repeat, there are now fifteen minutes,
five
seconds remaining till core meltdown.”

“Oh, shit,” Ellenshaw said as he held Collins upright. “We have plenty of time, right Colonel? I mean, we just have to switch on the cooling pumps right?”

He suddenly felt Jack move as he started struggling against Charlie’s grip. As Ellenshaw looked down he saw the colonel’s face
go flush. He tried to see what it was Collins was seeing, and then he did.

Standing not thirty feet away with its huge arms at its side was the creature once known as Smith. In his right hand both men saw something in the bright light. As Smith smiled, the creature allowed the six large fuses to slip from its grasp and strike the floor at its feet.

“Uh, what are those?” Charlie asked staring
at the six large tubular-shaped sticks.

Jack coughed up blood but managed to get the words out as he looked up at the gloating Smith, who stood with a large and sickening smile on his elongated face.

“They’re … four … hundred.… amp fuses.”

“And what are the fuses for?” Charlie asked slowly, getting a horrible, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“The … cooling … pumps.”

“I take it
that’s bad?”

Jack again coughed up blood and then fell to his knees.

“Well, why the hell not?” Ellenshaw said, feeling all alone and not exactly ready to face the hulking giant before him.

All around him the sound of the alarms increased as Europa continued her countdown from five minutes.

LEVEL SIXTY-ONE

Will Mendenhall placed his weight against the giant steel door, knowing his body couldn’t
possibly fend off that much beef. The beast struck the door once more, and Mendenhall lost his footing when the space between the door and jamb widened by a foot. Will caught his balance and then pushed back, using the very weight of the door as leverage. But the beast pushed back before the door could seal itself. This time Mendenhall flew back as if tossed by an angry child. His back struck
something in the dark and the impact sent a sharp jab of pain jolting through his entire body. After striking the large object, he slid down to the floor where his head came to rest next to something that smelled like an old worn-out tire. As he lifted his head from the tiled floor, he saw the large steel door standing ajar. Will in a panic raised his arm and tried to find a handhold to assist him
to his feet. Instead of finding something solid, his hand wrapped around something that rattled with a metallic sound as something broke and he and his failed rescuer fell back to the floor.

“Damn it!” Will shouted as he just knew that the beast was coming straight through the door at him. He struggled to frame the open door in his vision and noticed that the door hadn’t moved since he had been
knocked down. The sound of the beast was gone. Mendenhall reached down and pulled up the object he had grabbed a hold of before it broke away and saw that it was a belt of large-caliber ammunition.

“Damn, these are fifty-caliber machine gun rounds,” he said beneath his breath as he finally managed to pull himself to his feet. He checked the door once more and stepped forward. He slowly turned
as his eyes finally adjusted to the near darkness of the vault. As his eyes widened he saw the giant torpedo bomber rising majestically above his head. There were more lined up on either side of the first. “Wow,” was all he could say as he took in the doomed aircraft of Flight 19. The planes looked down with their empty canopies like they were cyclopian eyes angrily watching an invader to their cave.

Will examined the contents of the vault and saw that the ammunition belt he had grabbed was dangling from the loading port underneath the left wing. Then his eyes spied the three barrels of the Browning fifty-caliber machine guns protruding from the wing’s edge. His eyes roamed to the right wing and he saw three more barrels sticking out there. He looked over and saw a large battery-powered cart.
It was used for moving heavy loads. Then he glanced up at the magnificent-looking aircraft once more.

“Jesus, Ryan, where are you when I need you? This is just about right up your alley.”

Mendenhall again looked from the Grumman TBF Avengers to the electric cart with the tracked drive system. A plan started to form.

Just as Will started moving on his idea, sharp, ear-shattering blows started
coming from down the corridor. The beast was again at work on Virginia’s vault and this time it was using tools.

Mendenhall was running out of time to help his friends survive the darkest night of their lives.

*   *   *

Sarah, Farbeaux, Denise Gilliam, Virginia, and Gloria Bannister liked the silence even less than the pounding or twisting of the locking wheel on the vault’s door. The beast
outside was roaming around the corridor and every once in a while it would slam its great fists into a wall in frustration at not being able to get at its enemy. Then its rage would move off farther along the corridor as if it were looking for something, or someone, else.

“I have a sneaking suspicion that our friend is out there doing that problem-solving thing we discussed earlier,” Henri said
as he allowed Denise to change the rough material covering his wounds. The doctor looked up and saw that Sarah was looking at her while she held Henri’s head in her lap. Gilliam shook her head negatively. “Please, Doctor, you can tell her what it is you’re thinking,” Farbeaux said as he looked up into the bruised face of Sarah.

“Okay, Colonel. If we don’t get you upstairs in the next half an
hour, you’re going to bleed out on us. You not only tore out your stitches on the outside, but you somehow managed to break open the three I had to put into your arterial artery in your hip.”

“I can’t imagine how that happened, Doctor,” he said as he continued to look into Sarah’s face. She again pulled his blonde hair out of his eyes and then smiled. “I guess the prospect of life in one of your
federal prisons wouldn’t look too bad about now.”

“Knock it off, Henri; we’ll get you out of here,” Sarah said.

Henri decided to risk Sarah dropping his head onto the cold steel flooring. “I don’t think Jack the giant killer is going to come this time little Sarah.”

McIntire looked away as the reality of losing Jack struck once more. She turned and with the smile still weakly planted on her
lips looked down at the Frenchman.

“He’s been late before.”

“What in the hell is that noise?” Virginia asked as she placed her ear against the steel door. “Is that scratching?”

Gloria joined Virginia at the vault’s barricaded door and also placed her ear against the cold steel.

“What could it be doing out there?” she asked.

Suddenly they heard hammering against the door. They realized immediately
that it was not flesh against steel, but metal upon metal. It started at the upper corner of the door, paused, and then started again. Virginia stepped back and looked upward. She heard the banging stop and then begin once again. Her eyes widened when she saw the corner of the door nearest the solid steel threshold opposite the locking mechanism vibrate from the continued hammering.

Henri sat
up in Sarah’s arms, stilling the hand of Dr. Gilliam as she placed another makeshift bandage on his hip. Farbeaux cocked his head and listened.

Virginia walked up to face the door as the blows became louder.

“Shit,” she said as she realized what the beast out in the hallway was attempting to do.

“The tungsten hinges for the vault door are on that side, aren’t they?” Henri asked, already knowing
the answer.

“Yes,” Virginia confirmed just as they heard the almost muffled sound of something hitting the door with a ping and then a thump.

“It’s taking the door off at the hinges,” Virginia said as she pulled Gloria Bannister away from the door.

“If it would make you feel better young Sarah, even I would welcome your Jack Collins at this particular point.”

Sarah stood, easing the Frenchman’s
head down, and with strength she didn’t know she had, started pulling Henri by the lab coat’s collar toward the back of the vault.

“We’re not catching a break here,” Virginia said as she also started pulling Gloria in the same direction as the others. After they had reached the back of the vault, Virginia started examining what they had to fight with. She counted ten more of the small spears.
There were also cowhide shields and slingshots, but no rocks.

“The instrument of death you’re looking at Dr. Pollock,” Henri said motioning toward the small spears, “is far more dangerous than it looks. It’s called an assegai. I had a few in my own collection at one time. I believe it’s a very appropriate weapon for our circumstance.”