Then Harry was there, rounding the same corner, seeing what Violin saw. He skidded to a stop, tripped, fell. Lay there staring, unable to do anything else. His heart punched the inside of his chest cavity over and over again.
The intense green light poured out through a doorway. Or a cleft. Or a hole. He could not understand what it was, because it seemed to hover in the air. It was not a door in the wall. It was not anchored to anything. It was merely there and it was open, and from the other side of that doorway stretched a dozen…
His mind tried hard to refuse the word.
Tentacles .
Gigantic tentacles were stretched through the doorway and they curled and thrashed and beat at Ghul. They curled around the shrieking tomb raiders. They crushed them and tore the men to pieces and dragged them, bleeding and dying, back through the doorway. Harry caught Ghul’s eyes for a moment, and even though they were strangers, even though they would have otherwise murdered each other, there was a pleading and desperate appeal. Person to person. Human to human. But when Ghul opened his mouth to scream for help, he vomited a torrent of dark red blood.
However, it was not the tentacles, nor the impossible doorway that rooted Harry to where he lay and made him stare with eyes so wide they ached.
No. It was what he could see on the other side of the doorway. Beyond it was… daylight. Bright sun shone on hills and fields, and above them machines flew through the sky. He could see them quite clearly, silhouetted briefly as they flew in front of the moon.
The several moons that hung in a sky that was a luminous green instead of blue. The sky of another world.
That’s when Harry Bolt screamed and screamed and screamed until he passed out.
INTERLUDE NINE
Ari sat on one side of the table in the suite overlooking the bay. He was drunk, but Valen could not blame him. Neither of them had been entirely sober since the opening of the pocket in the Green Caves.
Valen sat across from him. There were wine and whiskey bottles everywhere. A thousand-dollar bottle of Pappy Van Winkle had fallen over and leaked a puddle onto the carpet, but neither of them cared.
The hand was wrapped in plastic and sitting in a cooler packed with dry ice. The green crystal gun lay on the table. Gadyuka was sending someone to collect them. All Valen told her via coded message was that there were unusual “artifacts” she needed to see.
Valen’s cell phone rang, and he tensed when he saw the display. “It’s the site.”
“Valen,” cried a breathless Marguerite, “you need to come back here right away.”
“Whoa, wait… why? What’s happened?”
“We found something else. God… how soon can you get here?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
DMS special agent D.J. Ming wrapped the blood-pressure cuff around Aunt Sallie’s upper arm and began squeezing the rubber bulb.
“You’re making it too damn tight,” she complained, but D.J. ignored her. He had been her driver, bodyguard, and private nurse for two years now and had become so hardened to complaints and abuse that his friends joked that he was literally bulletproof. No one in the DMS was harder to work for than Aunt Sallie.
She was in a blue nightgown with little white flowers on it. It made her look like a senior citizen in a nursing home, and she knew it. Her dreadlocks hung limply down beside her rounded cheeks and the jewels in them caught little bits of lamplight. Dots of beauty around a sad, angry face.
D.J. finished pumping and then eased pressure as he looked at his watch. The digital meter told the story: 161 over 98.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathed, appalled.
“It’s better than it was this morning,” Auntie said defensively.
“This morning I was going to drive you to the ER.”
“You can’t drive with my foot up your ass.”
D.J. removed the cuff and stepped back. Not for perspective, but to be out of range. “Auntie, I’m just going to say this one more time—”
“Don’t bother.”
He ignored her. “Your blood pressure is off the charts and your blood sugar scares the hell out of me. Don’t get me started on your balance. The fact that none of this scares you, scares me even more.”
“It’s fine. It’ll go back down once I knock in a few heads tomorrow.”
“And how long’s that going to take?”
“A day, tops.”
They both knew she was lying. Auntie was the queen of power phone calls. The fact that she couldn’t unravel the mess involving Captain Ledger and thought coming here was a good next move told D.J. that the knots were tied way too tight. A day was a laughable estimate and they both knew it.
The agent-cum-nurse walked across the room and placed the cuff on the dresser next to her blood glucose monitor and insulin supplies. He turned, leaned back, and folded his thick arms. D.J. Ming was in his middle thirties and had been a Navy SEAL for seven years and a DMS operative for nine. He was one of the most highly qualified experts in small-arms and hand-to-hand combat in the agency, and would have had a chestful of medals if the DMS gave out any. Instead he had scars and memories. It was fair to say that there wasn’t a whole lot that scared him.
Aunt Sallie did, but not for the reasons she scared everyone else. He knew the difference between bluster and real threat. He could take her barbs and insults and complaints without blinking. But he cared very deeply for her, and her declining health worried him more than any battlefield he’d ever been on. If he could put himself between her and her own self-destructive nature and somehow fight that enemy, he would do it without the slightest hesitation. Auntie, despite everything, inspired a level of loyalty that ran very deep in people like him. In soldiers. D.J. was a third-generation American citizen and a second-generation special operator. His mother and Auntie had run field ops together years ago. Now D.J. was watching her wither away. Maybe die. And it was killing him.
She was the deputy director of the Department of Military Sciences, second only to its founder, Mr. Church. No one crossed her. No one went behind her back. Ever. D.J. was giving it some real thought, though. It was a balancing act — betrayal or broken heart.
Before he could try another tack with her, Auntie heaved a sigh and held up a hand. “Look, kid, give me one more day. I promise to take better care of myself. Go fetch my pills and syringe and all that crap.” When he didn’t move, she smiled. It was a ghastly attempt at relaxed affability. “Trust me, this will all be fine.”
He nodded and turned to begin sorting out her pills. And, mostly, to hide the tears that kept trying to form in the corners of his eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Something woke me from another round of bad dreams. I sprang awake, thinking it was an explosion or an attack. Ghost started barking. I grabbed my sidearm and whipped the door open, expecting to see flames and armed hostiles. Instead, a few other confused and sleepy DMS staff came out of bedrooms, peering around like confused turtles.
One of the science techs stood listening, then nodded to himself. “Minor earthquake.”
“You sure that’s all it was?” I asked.
“Positive.”
We stood and listened to what a grumpy Mother Earth had to say, but apparently, she rolled over and went back to sleep.