Aleman had just a second to look out the glass pane, see the fireball, register the shaking beneath his feet, catch sight of the approaching shockwave as it flattened the grass on the baseball field across the parking lot.
The popcorn fell to the floor as Aleman picked Fiona up and dove behind the thick Ikea couch.
The window blew in just as they hit the thin rug, sending shards of glass stabbing into the opposite wall, the TV, and the room’s furniture. The building shook for a moment as the shock wave passed, then fell silent.
Lewis rolled off Fiona and stood, shaking the glass from his back. His handgun was already drawn and at the ready. He looked down at Fiona, his eyes more serious than she had ever seen them. “You okay?”
She nodded.
“Get up,” he said, and moved to the now glassless window. A second, small explosion plumed into the air. It was followed by the distant popping of small-arms fire. Then an alarm sounded. One he thought he would never hear used. It meant the unthinkable.
Fort Bragg was under attack.
He looked back at Fiona, whose skinny body looked frail in her black pajamas. She had her eyebrows furrowed, her fists clenched, and her lips down turned. She knew what was happening just as surely as he did.
They had come for her.
ELEVEN
Mount Meru, Vietnam
AS ROOK STOOD outside the cave entrance leading to the subterranean necropolis that he, Bishop, and Knight had discovered a year ago, he listened. And heard nothing. No distinct Neanderthal hoots. No movement inside or outside the cave. Nothing. Which meant they were either being watched, or no one was home.
“This is it?” Queen asked, peering into the lightless black square cut into the mountainside. Vines had begun to grow over the opening that Rook and Bishop tore apart when they fled the cave system, but it was still easy to spot.
“Ayup. Bringing back such fond memories I can hardly stand it.”
“I’m the one with a brand.”
“Hey, an ape woman tried to make me her man-toy,” Rook said as he pushed the vines out of the way with his M4.
“Good point,” she replied before entering the cave. “That’s much worse.”
Rook smiled and followed her in.
The smooth grade led them down. One hundred feet in, the walls glowed. “We’ll be able to remove our night vision goggles soon. The algae covering everything glows bright enough to see by.”
The downward slope ended and opened up into a grand chamber, seventy feet wide, twenty tall, and longer than a football field. “What the f—”
“This isn’t how you described it.”
What once was a city built from the skulls and thick bones of generations upon generations of Neanderthal dead looked like a green-glowing war zone. Many of the buildings were crushed. Walls were burst. Skulls and bone fragments filled the stone streets. Statues of ancient Neanderthals had been overturned with their limbs pulled off. Rook noted that several of the skulls, which were dense and tough, had been crushed to powder, a feat he doubted even the strongest Neanderthal could accomplish.
“No bullet holes or blast craters,” Queen said.
Rook nodded. “This wasn’t a military j—”
A splash of dark shiny liquid caught Rook’s eye. Tiptoeing through the scattered bones, he made his way to it and knelt down. He switched on his flashlight and aimed it at the fluid. The yellow light turned the black puddle red.
Blood.
And a lot of it.
He followed the trail to a pile of bones. Setting down his M4, he shoved the bones away and stepped back. The twisted face of a Neanderthal-human hybrid stared back at him. The body was tall and strong, with thick brown hair on the limbs, back, chest, and head. A male. And given its muscle mass, one of the hunters. Despite its impressive size and strength, the body was bent at an odd angle and many of the limb bones were bent where they should have been straight. This creature, who could make short work of any living human being, had been mauled and folded up like an origami puzzle. “It’s a hybrid,” he said. “It’s been mauled something fierce.”
He looked over at Queen. She had found a body buried in the remains of a small structure. “This is one of the old mothers. Same story.”
Rook shook his head. For all the strength, speed, and instincts the hybrids had, the old mothers had double. “I think it’s safe to assume we were beat to the punch.”
Queen stood and activated her throat mic. “Deep Blue, this is Queen.”
She waited for a reply, but none came. “Deep Blue, do you read?”
“We’re too deep,” Rook said. “Go topside and warn the others. I’ll poke around here and try to figure out what happened.”
Queen didn’t like the sound of that and said so with a look.
“This place is a ghost town, twice over,” he said.
“It’s a bad idea.”
“If I get into trouble I’ll yell.”
“From a hundred feet below a mountain?”
“I’ll yell real loud.”
Queen shook her head, but couldn’t hide her grin. She headed for the exit. “I’ll be back in five minutes.” She paused at the large archway leading to the tunnel. “Hey, Rook, good to be back in the field with you.”
He nodded. “Likewise.”
Then she was gone, running up the slope.
Rook sighed, still concerned for Queen’s well-being, but also concerned over his own distraction. Queen took up too much space in his mind. As they had studied, sparred, and trained over the past year, he sometimes found his thoughts off target and on her. And in the field, that could get him killed.
Of course, they all had their distractions. Knight’s grandmother’s health was failing. Bishop was only sane because of a crystal around his neck. Queen had a cherry red stamp on her forehead. And King now had a foster daughter. “Course, none of the guys look as good in fatigues,” he mumbled to himself.
Shuffling through a sea of green-glowing bones, Rook made his way deeper into the city. He stopped occasionally to listen as every step he made created a cacophony of noise. He would be simple to find. If anyone were looking.
After counting fifteen bodies strewn throughout the ruined city, he decided that all the Neanderthals were either dead or had fled. But he’d still found no evidence of what happened. The bodies were crushed, dismembered, or impaled with bones, but it was as though something huge and blunt had been used to kill them.
The clunk of bone on bone spun him around, M4 tight against his shoulder. “That you, Queen?”
No reply.
He waited just a moment before an off-balance bone slipped from one of the half destroyed walls and fell. He relaxed for a moment, but another clatter of bones turned him around again.
Something was making the loose bones fall.
Then he felt it. A vibration.
Something big was approaching.
Bones rattled again, but Rook didn’t turn this time. He remained focused on the shaking beneath his feet, trying to determine its origin. It wasn’t until the rattle of bones turned into a crunch that he turned to look. And when he did, his head craned up as his mouth fell open.
“Holy mother … Que—!”
Rook didn’t get to finish his shout as something massive struck him in the side and sent him flying into and through the wall of one of the bone huts.
TWELVE
Uluru, Australia
AS KNIGHT AND Bishop arrived at the mouth of the valley, the sun had just begun peeking up over the horizon. The sandstone surface of Ayers Rock was well known for its ability, some believed supernatural ability, to change colors under certain conditions, most frequently at sunset and sunrise. Removing their night vision goggles, the pair saw the stone was beginning to glow red.