Herculean (Cerberus Group Book 1) (28 page)

44

The doors opened and Lazarus shot out of the elevator like a burst from a machine gun. If there was an ambush waiting, he would have only a millisecond to acquire a target and fire before the bullets began tearing into him. His Kevlar vest would stop some of the rounds, especially if the Cerberus men were armed with pistols and shooting nine-mil, but some of their shots would undoubtedly find unprotected areas of his body—arms, legs, head—and he would go down.

He would die, but that would only be a temporary problem. What mattered was that he would be rendered combat ineffective.

To give Pierce a fighting chance at rescuing Fiona, he had to kill as many hostiles as he could, as quickly as he could, and to do that, he would have to be more than just Lazarus, the man who came back. He would need to be the man he had left behind on the bottom of Lake Kivu. He would need the rage again.

All his life, it had been with him…
in
him. He had never understood why. The traumas of his early childhood played a role, but they did not explain the intensity of his primal anger. Being a soldier had given him a way to channel the emotional firestorm that always burned within him, but that was not a solution. Rather, it just added fuel to the fire.

The regenerative serum had changed all that, forced him to control that which had always controlled him, because if his focus slipped, he would become nothing
but
rage. Yet, control was not the same as peace. The fire never went out. Not until Felice.

She had shown him that rage was not, as he often believed, his oldest and only true friend. It was a drug, and he was an addict. She had shown him how to kick the habit.

Like any addiction, the urges never completely went away, but every day that passed, every quiet moment spent meditating, every second in Felice’s arms, made it easier. Made him believe in a life without rage.

He knew how to tap into it, to make it work for him. He had done it in Liberia to survive the carnivorous plants and rescue Felice and the others. He had used it to withstand the assault of the Stymphalian birds, to help her and Pierce reach safety. Now, he needed to unleash it to save Fiona.

And to kill the bastards that took her.

It wasn’t enough. Indignation wasn’t enough. He couldn’t just throw a switch and decide to be mad. He needed more. He needed pain.

He needed to remember what that felt like. The birds tearing into his flesh. The vines, burning his skin like acid. The lake…

The lake filling his lungs and extinguishing his life again and again and again…

A red mist filled his eyes as he surged out of the elevator car.

Kill the bastards!

Except there was nobody to kill. This hallway was as empty as the first. Without waiting for Pierce to catch up, he began clearing rooms, kicking in doors one after another, his frustration mounting with each discovery of absolutely nothing. With each empty room, the anger built within him like the pressure in a volcano, demanding release.

“Erik!”

He wheeled toward the sound of the voice, his finger finding the trigger, squeezing…

He barely managed to jerk the muzzle up before the bullets started flying. The ceiling erupted in a shower of broken plaster, which rained down on the man standing at the other end of the hallway. George Pierce stared at him in wide-eyed disbelief.

Anger continued to boil within him, but now it was self-directed. He had given in to the urge, taken the fix, convinced himself it was the only way to win, and it had almost cost Pierce his life. He closed his eyes and tried to quiet his rapid breathing.

He could almost hear Felice’s voice in his head.
You are, without a doubt, the strongest, toughest, most badass person I’ve ever met. But there’s something inside you…eating at you.

I can help.

I want to.

He needed her now. Needed her to talk him down.

Maybe I’m not as strong as you thought, Felice
.

He opened his eyes and looked at Pierce again. “No one here,” he said. “The place is completely deserted. We missed them.”

Pierce blinked, the shock of almost getting killed starting to fade. Then his eyes went wide and he brought his gun up. The motion was so abrupt that Lazarus did not have time to react before Pierce pulled the trigger. He saw the puffs of smoke leaving the end of the suppressor, and felt waves of pressure buffeting him as bullets creased the air to either side of him, but none of the rounds struck him.

There was a cry of pain from behind Lazarus, followed by the thump of a body hitting the ground. Then another.

Pierce lowered his gun.

Lazarus turned and was surprised to discover a pair of bodies—men, wearing charcoal gray combat fatigues—sprawled out behind him. He had no idea where the duo had been lurking. All he knew for sure was that Pierce had just saved his life.

One of the guards was definitely dead, a hole drilled neatly between his eyes. The other was still alive and reaching for the pistol that had fallen from his grasp when Pierce’s bullet had punched into his chest. Lazarus strode over and kicked the gun out of the man’s reach.

Pierce knelt beside the stricken man. “Where is everyone?” he demanded. “Where’s Fiona?”

The man stared up at him, face twisted in pain, but eyes defiant. Lazarus doubted the man was capable of answering the question, but Pierce was not going to let him slip quietly into the hereafter. He punched the man’s oozing chest wound. “Where is the girl? Is she here?”

The man shuddered and let out a gasp, and then his eyes rolled back in his head, his body deflating. Pierce, however, did not relent. He kept shouting the question until Lazarus reached out and put a hand on Pierce’s shoulder. “George. He’s gone.”

Pierce sagged back. “Damn it.”

“We’ll find her.”

Pierce climbed to his feet and raised his pistol to a ready firing stance. “I appreciate what you were trying to do back there, but we’re supposed to be doing this together, okay? No more rogue ops.”

Lazarus nodded. “Roger that.” He stood up and gestured to the bodies. “Good work. I think you’ve officially graduated to badass.”

Pierce managed a wan smile.

“Did you see where they came from?” Lazarus continued. “I thought I checked all the rooms.”

Pierce pointed down the hall. “That way. Maybe there’s a secret door. Something that isn’t included in the blueprint.”

Lazarus stared down at the dead gunmen again, this time taking note of the ID badges clipped to their belts. He plucked one up. “I think you’re right. This is a proximity key card. Let’s go see what it opens.”

Pierce took the second key card. “Sounds like a plan.”

As they approached the end of the hall, a section of wall slid aside. Lazarus and Pierce went through the opening with their guns at the ready, but there was no one to shoot at. The room beyond the secret door was as deserted as the rest of the compound.

It was not however, empty.

45

Gallo had no memory of the tunnel or the small parking garage just off the Via Cossa where it began—or ended, depending on which direction you were going—but things began looking familiar once she reached the other side.

Coming back was a bittersweet experience. She had left as Kenner’s hostage, cooperating with him only to ensure Fiona’s safety. Now, her former prison was under Herculean Society control and Kenner was the captive.

But Fiona was missing, and all the battles they had won meant nothing.

As Pierce walked them through the facility, Gallo realized that she had seen only a small fraction of the place. Aside from an entire floor of guest quarters, several of which were much more accommodating than the room where she had been kept, there were libraries and laboratories, conference rooms, even a movie theater.

There was an entire lab devoted to genetics research, which prompted Carter to ask Pierce if he had kept the receipt for the SMRT sequencer he’d bought for her. “Because there’s no way I’m going back to that cave.”

Lazarus flashed a smile at the comment, but said nothing. He was a strange man, and although she had known him for only about a day, Gallo sensed that even Pierce, whose history with the man went back several years, had barely scratched the surface.

They moved on to a computer server room with hardware that almost brought Dourado to tears. “Can you hack your way into this?” Pierce asked her. “And figure out where they went? Where Fiona is?”

“I am looking forward to trying,” she replied with an eagerness bordering on hunger.

Pierce let her skip the rest of the tour.

After they passed through a gallery filled with priceless art and artifacts ranging from Neolithic to neo-classical, Pierce held them back for a moment. “The next room isn’t going to be easy,” he said. “But I think it will explain a lot about who we’re dealing with.”

With that ominous warning, he led them into a room that was filled with the stuff of nightmares. Gallo immediately realized that she was looking at images from the Holocaust, but it took a little longer to grasp the ghastly intent behind the collection. After that, she stopped looking until Pierce brought them to a trophy case filled with Nazi memorabilia.

Kenner, who had been unusually quiet up to that point, let out a gasp. He nodded at the photographs in the case. “Oh, God. It’s him. That’s Tyndareus.”

The outburst prompted Gallo to take a closer look at the pictures and documents in the display. One name stood out. “That’s not possible. He’s dead.”

“Are you certain?” Pierce locked eyes with Kenner, but Gallo got the sense that he was not at all surprised by the news. “Augustina’s right. Josef Mengele died over thirty years ago. His remains are locked in a safe in Brazil. The DNA was checked against known relatives.”

Kenner shook his head. “No. That’s Tyndareus. He’s older now, of course, but I’d recognize that…” He looked as if he was about to throw up. “That smile. My God. What have I done? I was helping that monster.”

“So kidnapping and attempted murder were okay when you weren’t working for a Nazi?” Pierce asked. Kenner feigned disgust for a moment, but Pierce cut him off with a raised hand. “Liam, I just want to know one thing. Where is he now?”

Kenner shook his head. “I promised him the source. The Well of Monsters. I thought I would find the location in the Amazon city, but there was nothing there.”

“In the myths, the monsters came from the Underworld,” Gallo said. “That’s where their mother Echidna lived. If there is some kind of…something…that can create monsters, that’s where we’ll find it.”

Pierce considered this, then lowered his voice as if sharing a secret. “Hercules—the real Hercules—did visit the Underworld. I don’t mean Hell. A real place. We have records of a massive underground network—we’re talking global in scope—that almost certainly corresponds to the Underworld of Greek mythology. There are dozens of entrances though, and probably thousands of miles of connecting passages. It would be virtually impossible to simply stumble onto a specific location.”

He paused, looked at Kenner again and then at Gallo. “He learned the location of the entrance from the Amazons, right? So the answer has to be on the map.”

Gallo shot an accusing glance at Kenner, but she knew she shared some of the blame. “Tyndareus must have forced Fiona to translate it for him.”

“We need to figure out how to read it, too,” Pierce said. “Were there any clues in the
Heracleia
that might narrow it down?”

“If it’s still here, I’ll go through it again.”

“I might be able to help,” Carter said, raising a tentative hand. “Remember how I told you that the DNA of the hybrids might help us narrow down the geographical location of the parent animals? Well, I haven’t had a chance to sequence that bird I brought back yet, but I can tell you that it looks like a cross between a great egret and a porcupine. Probably a lot of other contributors as well, but those two species account for most of the dominant traits. Now, egrets don’t help us since they’re found on every continent, but the quills are similar to those found on the body of the North American porcupine.”

“North American?” Pierce said. “Just like the Lion?

Carter nodded. “I can use the equipment here to verify it, but I’d say the odds are good that these hybrids originated in North America.”

“That doesn’t exactly narrow it down,” Pierce said.

Gallo felt as if scales had fallen from her eyes. “I know where it is. In the
Heracleia
, it says that Herakles found the Underworld ‘in a burning land, with poisonous air, at the center of a lake of fire.’”

“That’s pretty typical imagery for the Land of the Dead,” Pierce countered.

Gallo shook her head. “That was where he found the entrance. Before he went into the Underworld. Ancient historians tried to pinpoint its location from the stories. The Greeks believed it was in a cave at Cape Matapan, but that doesn’t fit the physical description. A much better candidate is Mount Chimaera in Lycia—modern-day Turkey—because it’s a very geologically active location with burning methane pockets that erupt from the ground. But those were just educated guesses based on their limited knowledge of the world. They didn’t know the Americas even existed.

“There’s a place in North America that matches that description. It’s one of the most geologically active places in the world. The Yellowstone caldera.”

“Yellowstone,” Pierce echoed. His tone was more thoughtful than disbelieving.

“Of course,” Kenner exclaimed. “It’s a perfect fit.”

Gallo shot him a withering look. “No one asked you.

Kenner ignored her. “But that’s still a lot of ground to cover.”

Pierce looked up. “No, it isn’t.” He turned to Gallo, a hungry gleam in his eyes. “We’re not looking for the entrance to the Underworld. Tyndareus is, and he’s the one who’s got his work cut out for him. We’re looking for Fiona, and now we know where she is, assuming that she reached the same conclusion you did.

“He’s got her. We’re going to get her back.” He looked around the gathering, as if daring anyone to question his decision. No one did. His gaze settled on the SS uniform in the display. “We’re done here.”