Authors: C. E. Martin
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
"In here. I'm sure of it," Laura said. She stepped to the side of the large door, hand on the wheel that would have to be turned to open it.
Kenslir stowed his tomahawk, sliding it into the ammo carrier strapped to his left thigh. He drew his pistol from his left hip and screwed a silencer on. Holding up a hand, he counted off on his fingers—one, two and three.
Laura spun the wheel and jerked the door open. To her surprise, the heavy metal pressure door opened quietly, its hinges well-oiled. Kenslir stepped quickly through, handgun at the ready, covering wherever he looked.
The chamber beyond was vast, easily as large as the Fountain Chamber back in Miami, maybe larger. Its ceiling stretched up not three stories but six or even seven, terminating in a high, vaulted ceiling made of huge blocks. The chamber was round, save in one area where there was a flat wall crusted with a thick layer of ice. The flat wall was at least sixty feet across.
"Jimmy'll love this," Laura Olson said, stepping through.
In the middle of the large chamber, suspended from I-beam cranes were the remains of at least three aircraft. Circular, about thirty feet in diameter, with heavy metal plating and Iron Crosses painted on them, the vessels did not look like any conventional flying craft. They were more disk shaped, almost like flattened bells.
"Don't get too excited," Kenslir said, ignoring the aircraft and looking around the chamber. Light was glowing from the very blocks of the ceiling, which he zoomed in on with the tactical goggles. The measurements came back quickly: each was precisely three cubits long and one cubit high.
"We found flying saucers and you're like
no big deal
? Seriously?"
"I've seen pieces of them before."
"Say what?" Not much surprised Laura Olson—she was, after all, a super vampire herself now, and had been killed and returned to life twice.
"The Nazis had alien technology and you knew?"
Kenslir crept around the chamber slowly, pistol at the ready. "They're not alien. They're antediluvian."
"Like the shapeshifters? Or those smurfs we capped in Greece?"
"Neither," Kenslir said grimly.
Laura stopped walking, putting her hands on her hips. "Okay, stop. Just stop. I get the feeling there is so much more that you know that I don't."
"It's going to stay that way." The Colonel was by another door in the circular wall of the chamber, ignoring the aircraft that Laura now realized were either in a state of disrepair or unfinished assembly.
"Excuse me, but I thought I was a part of this team!" Laura's voice was getting loud now.
"Get over here!" the Colonel said in as loud a whisper as he could. "Now."
Laura walked over slowly, shaking her head in disbelief, almost unable to tear her eyes off the three aircraft. "How have you seen these before? Are there other bases? Have you been here before?"
Kenslir rolled his eyes, but knew the vampire wasn't going to shut up. "They're Vimanas—ancient flying craft described in the Sanskrit epics. The Nazis recovered several and reverse engineered them. After the war, they were flying them all over the place, testing them."
"And?"
"And we shot them down. So did the Soviets."
"Hold on," Laura said raising a hand. "You're telling me all those UFO reports were Nazis? And how do you shoot a flying saucer down?"
"With a heat seeking missile. Same as any other aircraft. Eventually, we stopped seeing them."
Laura was at a loss for words. It was more than something of a revelation for her.
"What about this one?" Kenslir asked, gesturing with his pistol at the door.
Laura sniffed the air, even leaning in close to the door. "Yes, they've been through here."
Kenslir reached for the door, then hesitated. "In case you hadn't noticed, this chamber wasn't built by the Germans."
Laura looked around again, ignoring the aircraft and actually looking at the walls and vaulted ceiling. "What is this place?"
***
"Josie!" Jimmy whispered across the hallway. "Josie!"
"What?" Josie whispered back.
"How do we override the broadcast lock out?"
"We don't."
Jimmy shifted his weight, trying to get comfortable. "This is ridiculous, I'm getting a cramp in my leg. How long do we have to wait?"
"This is a pretty big place, Jimmy."
"I have to pee."
"Go in the corner or something—you're a boy."
"Shh!" Javi hissed. "Shut up, you two." She strained to see in the dim light of the tunnel, trying to focus down the hall. Somehow the tactical goggles sensed this and zoomed in, replacing her field of view with a digitally enhanced view.
"What?" Josie asked.
"I think I heard something."
"Oh, God," Jimmy said sighing from his room. "I thought I was going to burst. My teeth were floating."
Josie zoomed in now as well, peering out into the darkness. She dug in one of the pockets of her vest and pulled out a small, tube-like device.
"What's that?" Javi asked.
"Infrared laser illuminator," Josie said. "Basically a flashlight on steroids."
She had it up and on before Javi could stop her.
"No! You'll give away our posit-"
It was too late. The light was on, revealing an überwolf in full werewolf form, not a hundred feet away, clinging to the shadows. The creature recoiled, then roared, mouth open wide.
Javi and Josie immediately opened fire.
***
"Well, it's about damn time," Dean Johnson said, relief filling him.
Colonel Kenslir and Doctor Olson rushed to his side, the Colonel checking the corners of the room with his pistol as he entered.
"Command!" Kenslir barked, briefly transmitting through his tactical goggles. "We have located Johnson! Deploy the team!"
"Are you injured?" Laura asked, then immediately regretted saying it. Johnson was missing one leg. If he was any more injured than that, he wouldn't be talking.
"I'm fine, look you've got to-"
"Where are the Germans?" Kenslir demanded. He was standing in the doorway of the room, half in, half out, watching the hallway he and Laura had taken from the prehistoric aircraft hangar.
"I don't know—he left just a few minutes before you arrived. Look, sir, I need to tell you something."
"Can you get the chains?" Kenslir asked.
Laura shook her head. "They're welded. What the hell are they? Where do
you even get chains this big?"
"They're anchor chains. Can you break them?"
"Maybe if I huff and puff..."
"Sir!" Dean Johnson said. "Sir, there's more than two of them!"
"What?" Kenslir said, turning his head to look in at Johnson. He stopped doing so as a large form came leaping out of the darkness at him. It crashed into the Colonel, knocking his pistol out of his hand and sending him flying down the hallway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
This was it. His first combat drop. Isaac Jacobson was excited. Very excited. He'd done two training drops before, but this was different. It was in to a live combat zone.
Laying on his back, he felt the coffin-like tube he was in pitch downwards, so his head was toward the earth. He knew it was rotating around as it fell, so that he was facing the planet, instead of on his back, looking up.
The HUD of the tactical goggles showed the blinking marker for the MA-12
Raven
that had just dropped him and his teammates. The sleek, black, hypersonic plane was banking and turning back North, headed for a rendezvous with a refueling plane over the Atlantic. After so many hours of circling, the Raven had to be running on fumes. Loitering was not what it had been designed for.
The transport tube continued its rapid plummet toward the continent of Antarctica. When they finally reached a few thousand feet, Jacobson's goggles flashed >>>EJECT<<< and the drop tube blew apart.
He was tumbling in the air now, in freefall. He extended his arms and legs, trying to catch the air to stabilize himself. As heavy as he was, it was a lot harder than when he had been flesh and bone, but the stone soldier finally managed it.
He steered himself along, following the waypoints on his head-up display. At five hundred feet his parachute deployed and he was jerked around by the sudden deceleration.
He continued down, finally crashing into the ice, his boots breaking out huge chunks of ice from the surface of the glacier. He caught himself with one hand, barely avoiding landing on his face.
Visibility was nearly zero. A brutal wind was blowing ice crystals around in the air now. If he'd have been flesh, they'd have probably scoured the
skin right off him. He ignored the pelting and rapidly gathered his parachute.
"Let them go!" Commander Smith, ATLAS, directed over the comm channel. Jacobson could barely hear him over the wind. "Release your chutes and harnesses!"
Jacobson looked around, counting the markers for his team in the HUD. ATLAS, ZEUS, JANUS, BRIONES, STEVENS. All six men had made it down.
Jacobson broke into a jog, headed toward Smith, the team commander for this mission. The others were doing the same thing. To his right a pulsing red square marked the exact location of the hatch the scouting team had located. Once they formed up, they'd head into the Nazi bunker.
And hopefully into some action.
***
"Did we kill it?" Jimmy asked, checking his rifle as they crept up on the überwolf collapsed in a pile on the floor of the tunnel. It had finally dropped not twenty feet short of their improvised barricades, riddled with bullets.
Even now, smoke was curling up out of many of its wounds, flesh sizzling as white phosphorous tried to ignite it.
"Just hold up," Josie said, her own rifle at the ready. "Let me freeze it."
She began to concentrate on the still überwolf, when Javi spun in place, aiming her rifle back down the corridor. "Did you hear that?"
"On it!" Jimmy said, pulling a slapflare from a pouch on his vest. He held it parallel to the floor and struck the end, sending a bright, white flare racing down the hallway.
About two hundred feet away, just where the tunnel ended at a t-shaped intersection, two more überwolves were illuminated by the flare passing between them.
"Shit!" Jimmy said. He dropped to one knee and began firing his M4.
The überwolf on the ground suddenly moved—ice encrusting its thick fur cracked and broke, and the beast rose up from the ground, supporting itself with one hand.
Javi Wallach squeezed her trigger, sending a spray of white phosphorous and silver bullets into the creature.
The beast roared and pushed with its legs, managing to move closer to Javi. Its free hand swung around and caught the Mossad agent in the chest, lifting her off her feet. She was flung against a wall, crashing against it and dropping to the floor.
Then the überwolf that had struck her was on fire.
It was as though the creature had been doused in gasoline. It was enveloped in a huge ball of orange and white. The flames lasted only for a second, then died out, leaving a blackened, smoking form.
Josie fired her M4 into the creature, concentrating her fire on its head. The enormous body shuddered and collapsed back to the floor of the tunnel.
Josie swung her rifle around, just as Jimmy yelled "Reloading!" and dropped a spent magazine from his M4. The two überwolves were nearly on them, charging forward, running on all fours up the
tunnel.
The sudden machinegun fire behind Josie nearly made her jump out of
her skin. Twin streams of tracer fire erupted on either side of her, racing down the corridor. She threw herself flat on the rough floor.
The torrent of bullets that narrowly missed Josie found their mark, slamming into the charging werewolves and making them bellow in pain. But they kept running.
Josie saw two pairs of boots run past her, stopping inches away from her head. A strong hand grabbed her ankle and she felt herself jerked backwards, across the cold floor of the tunnel. The staccato roar of machinegun firing seemed to increase in intensity.
Josie was lifted from the ground and shoved through the open door of the room she and
Javan Wallach had been in. She stumbled but managed to catch herself. She turned quickly and saw that Commander Smith was ducking back out the door, rejoining his team in the corridor.
The stone soldiers had arrived just in time. Paul Briones and Wayne Stevens were kneeling in the tunnel, firing M249 machineguns into the charging überwolves. Behind them, Chad Phillips and Isaac Jacobson were standing, firing their machineguns as well. Like Josie, Jimmy had been pulled from the tunnel
and roughly shoved into a side room by Victor Hornbeck.
The M249s roared in the tight confines of the tunnel, their two hundred round ammo packs and sustained fire making a considerable difference from the quick bursts the M4s
Josie and Jimmy had been using on the überwolves. The monsters were being ripped apart as they charged forward.
But despite the agonizing pain and the sizzling chunks of flesh being blown off of them, the
monsters continued on, finally leaping at the stone soldiers and knocking Briones and Jacobson off their feet like bowling pins. The roar of the machineguns abruptly ended.
***
Mark Kenslir had fought werewolves before. Many times, on multiple continents. But despite the debrief of the team from the attack on Argon Tower, he was surprised just how strong these überwolves were.
The beast had caught him off guard as he tried to cybernetically switch his tactical goggles to an intermittent, periodic burst transmission to keep Command updated on their progress. The eight-foot tall monster had hit him like a freight train, breaking even his dense bones and sending him flying. He'd even dropped his silenced MK 23.
Kenslir landed roughly, unprepared for the
sudden attack. He recovered his wits quickly, ignoring the rough landing and bringing his fists up. The überwolf was on top of him immediately. It was fast.
Kenslir didn't hold back, he struck with all his might. He was as strong as a werewolf, just like all the stone soldiers. His punches could bend steel plates and shatter concrete. He felt bones break.
Then a clawed hand raked across his face and a mouthful of fangs clamped down on his left forearm.
Green light flared in the corridor as the überwolf came into contact with Kenslir. That meant that the beast was not only magically transformed, but magically supercharged.
The Colonel ignored the pain as the bones in his left arm were broken and crushed by the bite of the monster. He ignored the strips of skin and flesh torn off his face. He ignored the agony of his right eye being sliced in half, the tactical goggles that should have protected it knocked off in the initial attack.
Kenslir twisted and kicked, driving his right leg up into the monster's stomach, not to crush, but to push. He threw himself onto his back and pulled the beast down with him, somehow managing to flip it up and over his head—wrenching his arm free of its mouth, taking several teeth with him.
The surprised überwolf landed on its back but quickly rolled over. It was on its feet even as the Colonel was back on his. The two stood still only for a moment—just long enough to size each other up.
Kenslir was badly injured. The gashes in his face were clear to the bone, which was itself carved with deep grooves. But his torn flesh, like his eye, had already petrified, turning to stone. His left arm, down to his hand
, was petrifying as well, the bones shattered, blood vessels severed, muscles and tendons shredded.
The überwolf was surprised more than anything. It had expected a simple human target. The fact that the soldier it had tackled could even get back to his feet was shocking.
The beast lunged forward, snarling.
There was no time to draw a weapon. Nor could he rely on his enhanced strength in this fight. But Mark Kenslir had other options. Even before his own transformation so many years ago he'd been trained to deal with the supernatural.
He pivoted in place on his left foot and his right snapped out, heel first. The blow was so fast the lunging überwolf couldn't dodge it. Tan boot heel crashed squarely into werewolf snout. Bone splintered and crushed, teeth exploded free from gums and neck vertebrae shattered.
The beast's momentum was halted. Then the Colonel followed up with a right-handed fist, a stony left-handed palm strike and a front kick from his left foot. All in under a second, and all with bone shattering force behind them.
The überwolf was smashed into the corridor wall, its skull fracturing, squeezed between the rock and the Colonel's blows. Then it was flung backward, flipping back and crashing down hard on its back.
Kenslir pushed his attack, leaping
onto the creature and driving a palm down into its chest. The monster’s rib cage burst under the force of the blow, ribs actually extending out its sides as its heart and other internal organs exploded.
Kenslir was reaching for one of his knives when something
hit him from behind.
It was another überwolf.