He wasn’t going to be able to count on surprise. He needed to think this through. The animal would have his scent.
He reached the end of the passage, and as he turned to enter what seemed to be a cavernous laboratory hewn out of the ground, he saw the wild-eyed Russian crouching beside one of the sabertooth tigers. His first thought was that the beast was one they’d faced down in the mountains. No, it was smaller, caged in this space. How many more of this extinct species could there possibly be?
The beast opened its mouth and roared, but it didn’t move an inch closer to him.
The Russian rose to his feet and stood beside it, one hand resting on its great head. The creature showed no sign of objecting to his proximity. Was it tame?
“Ah,” said the Russian in heavily accented English. “Join us, please.”
“You can speak English?” Maddock shouldn’t have been surprised, but realized that meant the man had understood everything they’d said in his presence despite the fact he had only babbled in Russian. He’d played them.
“I can do many things,” the man said. “Most importantly for you, I can allow you to leave alive, or I can let Lena here play with you, if you’d prefer. Your choice.”
Maddock shook his head; it was an involuntary movement. Close up, the beast was every bit as threatening as the ones that had attacked them in the mountains, despite its smaller stature. Its menace seemed almost amplified because it was more restrained, controlled, making it all the more obvious it was the madman’s weapon.
Maddock took a breath. The Sabertooth matched it with a rumble, jowls curling back into a snarl. The creature was tensed, ready to spring at the word of its master.
Maddock said, “All I want is the egg. I’m not after you, I don’t care about this place, or your pet. My mission was to bring Pandora’s Egg home. I can’t leave here without it.”
“This.” The Russian reached into the depths of his pocket to fish out the exquisitely crafted Fabergé egg. “Do you even know what it is?”
“I don’t need to know. I just need to do what I’m told.”
“Ah, the military mantra. Let me educate you. What you call Pandora’s Egg, was made by the great Fabergé. Every year he would fashion an Easter egg to be presented as a gift to the Russian royal family. Many of them have survived, but not all. Some were lost during the chaos of the revolution. This one was designed by my ancestor Grigori Rasputin. It contains something as powerful as anything ever created in this place. Inside its brittle shell is Romanov’s Bane, revenge on the kind of people who betray the spirit of Mother Russia.” He ran a hand along the tiger’s back. The creature turned its head to look at him for a moment before turning its gaze back to Maddock.
Ancestor? Was this man claiming to be descended from the Mad Monk who had become so entangled in the court of the Tzars and their downfall? Could he have created some kind of nerve agent or biological weapon could have survived this long hidden inside the egg? Was that what had killed the people in this place? The men on the submarine? Was the Russian immune to it? A shudder passed through him as he realized the much more likely alternative that the man was willing to die for his revenge.
“How did you manage to steal it?” Maddock asked, moving a step closer, keeping his hands visible, knowing it would make him seem less threatening, even with the gun in his hand. “You did steal it, didn’t you?”
“One cannot steal what is rightfully his.” The Russian’s voice remained calm, even.
“Right, and I suppose you’ve never heard the story about the evil released from Pandora’s Box never being able to be put back inside again?”
The tiger strained forward, opening its mouth on those vicious teeth that gave it its name and releasing a roar of defiance. The Russian’s touch was enough to hold it at bay.
For now.
But there was no way he could get close enough to the Russian to take the egg without the big cat going for him.
“You are a sanctimonious, condescending young man who knows very little about the world. That is not your fault. You are a military man. As you say, you do not need to know these things. This will stop the enemies of our great country, those who would make peace with the West. Those of our own people who would allow the capitalists to corrupt our nation.”
“What about the innocents? Don’t they factor into this?”
“Innocents? There are no innocents in this world. When this gift is opened there will be no innocents there. It will be presented to a weak Russian and a corrupt American. There will be the yes men and advisers who hang onto their every word, and the media who get pleasure out of the weakening of our state. But no innocents.” His voice rose with each line. There was an anger and a passion in the words as he spat them.
His control over the tiger relaxed as he lifted his hand from its back.
The cat understood that he’d been given freedom to act.
It sprang forward, full body rising, claws out, too fast for Maddock to react, closing the ten feet between them in a heartbeat. He couldn’t do anything. The weight of the beast hit him square in the chest, hammering the air from his lung. His arm went back, the gun spinning out of his grasp. The sabertooth’s momentum drove him to the floor, the beast’s weight slamming him down. He could taste the cat’s meaty breath in the air. He could feel the heat of it on his face.
Claws pierced his coat.
They snagged against his flesh, tearing.
The big cat lifted its head back one last time, unleashing a final roar of victory before snapping his jaws.
Maddock had no time to fight back, and no leverage or strength to fight with. He felt it all leak out of him with the trickle of blood from the exposed chest wound. The creature tore into him. There was nothing he could do to stop it.
In a heartbeat it could rip into him and tear him apart.
All it would take was one mighty snap of its jaws to cleave his head from his shoulders.
Maddock reached out desperately, stretching his fingertips, trying to snag hold of his gun. He knew that it was already too late. Even if he could catch hold of it there was no way he’d be able to fire a bullet to stop the arrival of bloody death.
He was a dead man.
A crack echoed; a sound so out of place, quickly followed by another.
The creature’s eyes glazed over, dead, its weight falling onto Maddock’s chest and pinning him down as the tiger gave up its grip on life. The sheer weight of the beast was suffocating. He gasped for breath, struggling against the pressure, but saw Bones behind its head.
“You can thank me later,” the big man said, stepping over Maddock as he strained to push the dead animal off him.
“Stay back.” The Russian held the egg out in front of him. “Stay back or I break this open.”
“You break it, you lose your revenge. That isn’t going to happen. All these years of festering hate wasted? No.”
“Keep back,” the Russian repeated.
Maddock gave another heave, succeeding in shifting the weight a little.
He breathed deeply, feeling the pain lift from his chest as he gasped for air. There was something broken in there. A rib or two at least. He just had to hope that it wasn’t any worse than that.
“I said keep back,” said the Russian.
“Look, we both know that you aren’t going to do anything with that thing,” Bones said. “So why don’t you hand it over?”
“I would rather die.”
“That can be arranged.” Bones sounded as if he would like nothing better.