Killer Thrillers Box Set: 3 Techno-Thriller, Action/Adventure Science Fiction Thrillers (13 page)

He entered the complex confidently, an air of ownership surrounding him. Everything was perfectly under control: Karn had set up his assault rifle on a separate mount and rigged the trigger to stay pulled, freeing him up from having to constantly keep the gun firing in the direction of the incapacitated guards. Beka joined Karn at the gate as Vilocek entered. Professor Andrews and Corinne followed behind, still in shock from what they had just witnessed.

Once inside the gate, Vilocek nodded at Beka and Karn. They hustled into action, Karn turning toward the small box he’d mounted on the gate and Beka rushing toward the group of paralyzed men. Corinne thought she saw a smug grin on his disgusting face. Whatever he was planning, he was excited about it.

He approached the first two men, still held in the powerful force from Karn’s rifle. He stood face to face with the first guard, a young man no older than twenty. Suddenly, Beka brandished a huge combat knife in his right hand. Corinne wasn’t even sure where it had come from, and she gulped in dread of what she was about to see.
 

Slowly, meticulously, Beka took a pair of gloves out of his breast pocket and slipped them onto his hands. Still wearing his smirk, he stared the young man down, knowing that although the boy couldn’t move, he was still completely aware of Beka’s every move, taking in every terrifying second that passed.

Suddenly, Beka lifted his hand and plunged the blade into the man’s throat.
 

Corinne and Professor Jensen gasped in horror.
 

Beka calmly pulled the blade completely through the man’s neck, from the left side and out the right. Where the knife had passed through his neck, there was now a thin red line of blood, but it was not dripping — it was as if it had been drawn on his skin with a red pen. The young man seemed completely unaware that he’d just been fatally wounded.
 

Vilocek knew better.
 

The testing on this new weaponized form of the crystal had been nothing short of astonishing. It had taken them awhile to develop a sort of “antidote” for the paralysis — something that could be effectively woven into a protective cloth — but Vilocek’s scientists had found that a simple pair of gloves made of the infused cloth offered the best freedom and maneuverability when handling the paralysis victims. The live subjects in the lab hadn’t even flinched when pricked, prodded, and even hit with different objects, but complained of feeling sick and weak once the effects wore off. One test subject, a young girl of fourteen, had even had her arm broken while paralyzed. When they released her, she had shrieked in terror and pain, crumpling to the ground and clutching her arm. She began convulsing uncontrollably on the floor while Vilocek and a few of his scientists jotted down notes from the other side of the glass.
 

So Vilocek knew these guards would also feel pain.

That’s why he’d hired Vladimir Beka. He’d never met any man who killed with such swiftness, such ease. Beka was without remorse — he would do anything for the right price. He eliminated Vilocek’s enemies, and followed orders well. He scrutinized each target carefully; then he eliminated them with brutal efficiency.

But sometimes, like now, he was more cavalier and creative.
All the better,
Vilocek thought. The plan was to sabotage the base, kill the guards, and leave the mess for Whittenfield’s team to explain to the Egyptian government. Although Madu Jabari had arranged for the gate to be opened, Karn had thought it better to destroy the gate and make it look like an assault by Whittenfield’s force. The charge Karn had set on the gate would go off any minute now, lending another layer of authenticity to the ruse.

Meanwhile, Karn and Beka had reached the middle of the group of eleven remaining men, stopping at the last. The man stood frozen in place, a deep scowl on his face. An insignia on his shoulder patch indicated that he was some sort of officer. Karn motioned for Beka to wait, and turned toward their boss.
 

“Care to finish things off?” he asked, offering the knife to Vilocek.
 

Vilocek smiled. “You know I don’t like to get my hands dirty, gentlemen.” Ignoring the bloody knife in Karn’s outstretched hand, he drew the pistol Karn had given him.

He shot the guard twice. The shots were aimed carefully — one through the neck, just left of the jugular, and one through the right kidney. Neither wound by itself would necessarily be fatal, but taken together, they were too much — he would bleed out slowly in agony.
 

Vilocek sighed, almost pained that it had to be this way. He knew the men were innocent, but he also knew that there was a larger game to be played here —
much
larger. Their mission hadn’t changed; he
needed
to get that crystal. He also needed to recover Cole Reed. After all the tests they’d done, Reed was their only fully successful case.
 

He gave the pistol back to Karn and motioned for the others to follow, careful not to get too close to the cloud surrounding the guards.

They walked the rest of the way to the entrance of the Great Pyramid in silence, and as they climbed the stones below the entrance, Karn’s charge destroyed the gate behind them with a loud crack.

Vilocek paused in front of the opening leading to the Descending Passage of the Great Pyramid of Giza. He took out his phone and dialed Madu’s number.
 

CHAPTER 19

8:07 PM - OUTSIDE OF Cairo, Egypt.
 

Whittenfield’s plane landed at the Cairo International Airport barely an hour before the fight at the pyramid. They were making exceptional time, and Whittenfield was pleased. He had never met Vilocek, but if his fathers’ journals and the current media opinion were even moderately accurate, Whittenfield felt he knew him enough. Dr. Tanning Vilocek was known to be aggressive, confident, and egotistical, as well as charming and disarming at the same time. Newspapers, magazine articles, and websites proclaimed him as the “new face of popular science,” for his extensive pharmaceutical and bioengineering work around the world. The man attracted more reporters and gossip columnists than most celebrities. He was undeniably intelligent — possibly even a genius — and there was no doubt his business sense matched his expertise in research and science. Still, Whittenfield had always had a bad taste in his mouth regarding the man — despite all the public praise and media fawning, there was always something sinister about Vilocek, just beneath the surface.

Whittenfield didn’t need anyone to remind him of the disgrace Vilocek had caused his father — and he didn’t need to be reminded that this same man, long loved by American culture, had orchestrated a break-in at his company, stolen precious documents, and apparently had two people held in captivity. Now, Whittenfield was tantalizingly close to discovering what this was all about, and with any luck, equally close to snatching his father’s most prized possession out of the grasp of his arch rival. He
had
to recover the stone, and he
had
to prevent Vilocek from cashing in on its potential power.

Not to mention that finding the stone and eliminating Vilocek would provide an unbelievable boost to Whittenfield Research.
 

He turned to his computer and pressed a button next to the display. A satellite-fed image flickered a few times and a grainy black-and-white silhouette of a triangular-shaped structure appeared on the screen. The image was extremely shaky, evidence that the low-resolution video was being captured by a helmet-mounted camera, except in this case the camera was mounted onto a shoulder pad of Bryce’s body armor. Bryce’s team was bouncing over the road leading into the heart of the Giza necropolis in a rented Jeep, and the resulting video feed was less than ideal.

As he tried to focus on the feed without getting seasick, Bryce’s voice crackled over the speakers. “Time to target, under 2 minutes. Nothing unusual, no personnel in view. Stand by for arrival.”

The camera panned left, toward the driver’s seat, where Sean Bartlinski sat. Sean was guiding the Jeep around the larger potholes on the road toward the tourist station outside the Great Pyramid, followed by the Thompson brothers and Cole Reed in another Jeep directly behind. As Bryce turned right to left in the passenger seat to offer the camera an unobstructed panorama of the scene, Whittenfield could see the old village of Nazlet el-Samman situated to the east of the pyramids. Behind the main pyramid, the rest of the landscape was dotted with buildings ranging from the ancient structures of the Egyptian builders to modern security and communications huts. Two other looming figures on the plain mirrored the shape of their larger sister and were situated directly south of the Pyramid of Khafre and the Pyramid of Menkaure. Each had been built for a different Pharaoh who had reigned over the Egyptian dynasty. Each was a spectacular achievement of engineering, and Whittenfield knew that the grainy image in the failing light of dusk didn’t do the complex justice.
 

He would have given almost anything to be there with the team and see the sight for himself, but he knew the risk was too great. If Bryce’s team couldn’t retrieve the stone, or if they were eliminated by Vilocek’s group, Whittenfield would find another opportunity to take it from Vilocek. Plus, at his age, Whittenfield knew he wasn’t quite suited for a chase through the small crawlspaces of the pyramid’s internal passageways. He was only ten years older than Vilocek, but the younger man moved and acted as though he was no older than twenty. It was fascinating what the human body could achieve when habitually trained and optimized. An optimization no doubt enhanced by not a few pharmaceutical remedies that Vilocorp hadn’t yet released to the general public.
 

The Jeep pulled through the abandoned ticket station. Around a bend in the road ahead, Bryce thought he saw a stream of rising smoke emanating from somewhere out of sight.
 

“Boss, you see that smoke?” Gary McGowan asked Bryce from the back seat. “Looks like they took the easy way in.”

“Yeah,” Bryce said, “but I can’t see where it’s coming from — Bartlinski, pull over here and we’ll walk the rest of the way in. If they’re waiting for us, we don’t want to let ‘em know we’re here.” He clicked a button on his headset. “We’re going quiet, Whittenfield, but we’ll keep the feed on.”

“Roger that, Bryce. Be careful,” Whittenfield replied. He heard the click of the microphone, and the video feed lost its sound. He leaned toward the screen, trying to capture as much of the mission as possible.
 

The teams dismounted from the Jeeps and Sean and Wayne parked them near a small rock outcropping, hidden from view on two sides. They didn’t want anyone stumbling upon their vehicles — assuming the smoke hadn’t already been seen by a local.
 

As they approached the pyramid on foot, the smell of fried electronic components stung their noses, and they saw some charred earth — sand that had been blasted into glass, and twisted metal from what could only have been an entrance gate. Next they found the open hole in the fence leading toward the main visitors’ entrance, as well as several bodies strewn about. Beyond that, Bryce thought he saw —
 

“God, what is that?” Bartlinski whispered. His eyes were glued to the area in front of the pyramid, a few hundred paces ahead. Wayne and Jeff ignored him and focused on the perimeter, taking up flanking positions.
 

“They look… frozen,” Cole offered, stunned as well.
 

A cluster of men, all dressed similarly, stood in an unmoving half-circle facing the gate. As Bryce and the team cautiously entered, they could make out a faint cloud of air encompassing the group. Something in Cole’s mind clicked. Frantically looking around, he spotted something to his right and ran over to it. “Here it is,” he muttered.
 

“What? What is it?” Bryce called, his weapon still trained on the catatonic group to his front.

“They’re under some sort of trance — like, frozen or something. The same thing happened to me — I was running away from those guys back in New Mexico, and they shot me — with this, I guess — and I couldn’t move. It’s like temporary paralysis or something like that. Completely harmless afterwards.”

Cole was standing next to an assault rifle, mounted on a folding tripod, with the trigger pulled and wired. An almost invisible line reached straight through the air and stopped at the strangely motionless group of men. Bryce walked toward them.
 

His pace quickened as he got closer to the guards, all frozen with their eyes open. He wondered if they could see him as well — it was like they were made of wax, uncannily lifelike figures cast with glass eyes. He approached the first man in the line, but took care to stay clear of the translucent line emanating from the rifle. He squinted, his eyes drawn to something just below the man’s chin.
 

“Cole,” he said, “don’t touch that rif — “ but he was too late.
 

Cole had already disengaged the wire around the trigger, and released it before Bryce finished speaking. Immediately, the stream of air vanished, and the cloud surrounding the guards dissolved.
 

Bryce jumped back. Eyes wide, he watched as the men were released from their invisible bonds and began moving.
 

He suddenly realized what he’d seen on the first man’s neck.
 

A thin red line.
 

Blood.
 

He watched as the men simultaneously woke from their paralysis, realized their predicament and struggled to stop the inevitable.
 

Some grabbed at their necks, the blood now flowing forcefully through their fingers.
 

Some of them dropped to their knees, either too weak to fight or resigned their fate.
 

One by one or in pairs, they all dropped to the ground, until one man remained standing.
 

About forty, his eyes were dark and set deep into his face. He looked toward Bryce, and opened his mouth to speak. Then he grimaced and suddenly clutched his side. Blood began to ooze from multiple bullet wounds, staining the shirt beneath his hands, as if he’d been shot no more than a second ago. The man tensed, then suddenly started convulsing as he, too, collapsed.