Threshold Read online

  The guards’ voices grew louder. Commanding. They’d found the bodies and discovered they hadn’t passed out, but had been knocked out. The squeal of distant sirens—police and medical—converged on the forum, which would soon be an inescapable quagmire of men in uniform.

  And the stone wasn’t budging.

  “We’re trying to force it,” Pierce said. “Maybe it’s a more complicated lever.” He placed his hands on top of the stone like he was about to do CPR chest compressions. “You pull. I’ll push.”

  As the legs and feet of the approaching guards came into view, King nodded.

  Pierce put his weight onto the stone and felt it drop a fraction of an inch. King pulled and the stone shifted easily, completing the circle and the Herculean Society’s symbol. They let go and moved back. The stone began shifting back into its previously unaligned position. It clicked into place as a flashlight cast it in yellow light.

  The first guard to arrive drew his weapon and pointed it beneath the low ceiling where he thought he’d seen moving shadows. But the pit was empty and looked untouched. He stood and scanned the area, finding no one but his partner. If someone had been there, they were gone now.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Washington, D.C.

  DOMINICK BOUCHER HAD been wrong.

  Not only had Marrs not backed down, but he’d responded to the vulture comment like something out of a Tazmanian Devil cartoon, spinning madly from rally to news station to rally again. With a beet-red face, he shouted at the media. At crowds. At the television audience. And despite the flying spittle and shaking jowls, people were listening.

  He turned the self-serving vulture comment around on Duncan. “If one senator keeping the president accountable is enough to make him crack, how is he going to lead the nation?” he had said.

  When the media picked up on the fact that Marrs was also responding in anger, he spun the story. “I’m responding to a man who has failed this nation several times. A man who’s inaction has led to the deaths of our children. I should be angry. Every good citizen of this nation should be angry. At Duncan for not preventing the attacks and at the people who perpetrated them. But who is our president angry at? Me! The office needs transparency. It needs accountability. If he can’t handle it, well…” With that he threw up his hands.

  The man provided enough sound bites and accusations to keep the media and the public focused on Marrs and, as a result, on Duncan. His hands were bound more than ever now. The media requests didn’t stop coming. There were protesters surrounding the White House grounds and more arrived every hour.

  Alone in the Oval Office for a few minutes before meeting with a slew of advisors on a range of issues arising because of the current crisis, Duncan looked out the row of windows. The south lawn, trim and neat like a marine’s head, stretched out before him. The trim grass annoyed him. Nothing was that clear cut anymore. In the Rangers there were good guys and bad guys. Black and white. Right and wrong. He had successfully carried on that tradition through the Chess Team. But now … now there were other battles, unnecessary battles that had to be fought. With Marrs. With the media. With public opinion.

  And given the sensitivity of the Chess Team’s mission, he couldn’t fight back. He couldn’t say he had teams spread out around the world, infiltrating the territories of sovereign nations in order to kidnap the sole survivors of ancient languages. If that got out it might start a war. And it would certainly ruin his presidency and provide a lifetime of fuel to Marrs’s smear campaign. Hell, it might make Marrs look enough like a hero that he could be the next president.

  Let him try, Duncan thought. After learning the truth behind the threats against the country—mythical monsters, gene-splicing madmen, Neanderthal viruses, and stone golems—the man would resign with his tail tucked between his legs.

  But right now Marrs had freedom to act. Freedom to say what he wanted to whomever he chose. Freedom to disappear if he chose. And for those reasons, Duncan envied him.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Come in.”

  He heard the door open, but he didn’t turn around. A woman’s voice said, “They’re ready for you, sir.”

  “I’ll just be a minute,” he replied.

  After the door shut, Duncan looked down at his right hand. He held his M9 Beretta; the same one he had used as an Army Ranger. The weapon had saved his life a few times, but it couldn’t help now. As much as he might like to have Marrs stare down the barrel of this gun, a different solution had to be found; one that would not only put an end to the recent attacks and catch those responsible, but also free the team up so they could really function as a cohesive unit. Only then would the American people be safer.

  Duncan opened a drawer on the Resolute Desk, placed the handgun inside, and locked it. Before heading toward the door, he looked around the Oval Office, and for the first time during his presidency, the space felt cramped.

  THIRTY

  Rome, Italy

  THE LAST THING King saw before descending into total darkness was a shrinking crescent of light above him. He realized that they’d fallen through a triggered hatch that was now quickly, and quietly, closing. All thoughts of the hatch left his mind as his body impacted against a cold stone floor. He landed at an odd angle, which compressed his ribs near to breaking and knocked the wind out of him.

  Unable to speak, he listened as Pierce whispered his name. “Jack … Jack, where are you?”

  A bright light struck his face a moment later as Pierce switched on his flashlight.

  Seeing King squint from the light and in pain, Pierce said, “Sorry,” and moved the light away, revealing a nondescript stone tunnel. After King caught his breath and was helped to his feet, he looked at Pierce, who seemed unfazed by the fall.

  Pierce noticed King’s attention and questioning gaze. He smiled. “I landed on my feet.”

  King shook his head. The bookworm archaeologist was becoming a catlike Tomb Raider while he, an elite soldier, became a potato sack.

  When Pierce’s grin turned cocky, King said, “At least I didn’t hit a girl.”

  Pierce had opened his mouth to issue a retort, but stopped short and then deflated. “Hey, what happened to ‘you have to be a bad parent to be a good parent’?”

  King shrugged. “I was trying to make you feel better.”

  Pierce forced an unsure smile as King used his conscience against him. “B.S. You’ve hit girls.”

  “Not like that,” King said. “You coldcocked the kid.”

  “Kid!” With a laugh and a raised fist, Pierce said, “Better watch it, or you’re next.”

  “Don’t make me tell Queen you hit a girl,” King said as he found his flashlight on the floor, picked it up, and switched it on.

  The light cast a now serious George Pierce in bright, white light. “That’s not even funny.”

  King gave him a firm pat on the back. “C’mon, let’s find out which layer of hell we’ve dropped ourselves into.”

  King led the way, flashlight out, gun at the ready. The tunnel, a simple brown tube tall enough to stand in and just wide enough for the pair to stand side by side, led down at a steady angle.

  “We must be under the Lacus Juturnae by now,” Pierce whispered.

  But King wasn’t interested in what lay above. He wanted to know what waited below. The color of the tunnel ahead shifted from dark brown to a dirty, mottled white with splashes of color. Pierce’s eyes went wide with recognition and he rushed past King.

  The walls of the tunnel were covered in mosaic tiles, many chipped or fallen away, but enough remained so that the pictures could be pieced together. Blocky shapes slightly more detailed than a sixteen-bit Nintendo game formed pictograph story lines. King couldn’t make them out, but Pierce deciphered it aloud.

  “Look here, at this swamp,” Pierce said. “This must be the land Rome was founded on.” He counted the hills in the image, whispering the numbers to himself. “The seven hills of Rome. The original settle
rs had villages on each hill, but they eventually drained the swamp and formed the city.”

  He moved on, looking at a large image of a woman, whose beauty was impossible to hide, despite the rough condition of the wall.

  “Who is she?” King asked.

  Only fragments of the name spelled out in ancient Greek above the woman’s head remained, but it was enough. “Acca Larentia. We found her.”

  They moved faster, all but ignoring the images of Rome’s early development and battles. The tunnel ended in an arched doorway that led to a T junction. They passed through and found a second arch to the left, leading into a small chamber, and a second hallway to the right. Not wanting to proceed too quickly, King entered the small room and cast his light side to side, stopping at the room’s only feature—a marble tomb. They approached the tomb and found a relief of a woman on its lid. Acca Larentia.

  “She’s been here the whole time,” Pierce said, his voice full of the same kind of wonder that Rook displayed when assembling a new weapon. Pierce reached out to touch the woman’s face, but was stopped by a guttural clicking growl. The sound was organic, but inhuman.

  King spun and fell to one knee, aiming both flashlight and handgun toward the entrance.

  A cloaked figure in the doorway flinched away from the light and blocked its face with the loose fabric of its black sleeve. Clearly uncomfortable in the light, the creature stepped back but made no move to retreat or advance. It simply stood there, crouched and swaying slowly side to side.

  Waiting.

  King recognized the creature. The cloak and bits of gray face and arm he could see were exactly what Rook and Queen had described. A wraith. One of Hercules’s mysterious gofers. Despite the wraith having an aura of evil, King knew it meant them no harm. He lowered his weapon and aimed his flashlight to the floor.

  Free of the intense white beam, the wraith stood taller and lowered its arm. In the dim light reflected off the room’s brown walls, King could make out the lower half of the creature’s face. There was no nose to speak of, simply a horizontal slit in its skin. And its mouth, well, there wasn’t one—just a patch of wrinkled gray flesh.

  For a moment, King felt pity for the wraith. It had clearly once been a human being, but now … it was a monster. Then it turned, motioned for them to follow with its hooded head, and hopped up onto the hallway wall. It crawled away like a four-legged spider. Or, King thought, like a gecko.

  Keeping his weapon ready, King and Pierce followed the wraith, which paused when they fell behind. It led them through a confusing maze of tunnels through which neither man could retrace his steps. Some tunnels were plain stone bearing no markings of any kind. Others housed portions of ancient columns, ruined busts, and half-buried arches.

  “These are the ancient layers of the city,” Pierce said. “We’ve been so afraid to hurt what was on top we never thought to look beneath. But cities this old are always built on layers. This is the stuff of legend.” He looked at King. “This was the Rome that Hercules would have known. Before the Caesars. Before the Coliseum. Before the vast empire.”

  King was about to respond when he heard a voice. A woman. He stopped at a crossroad and listened. The sound distinctly came from the right-side tunnel. He cocked his ear toward it, as did Pierce.

  “Sounds like an Italian accent,” Pierce said.

  A second voice, also feminine, but higher pitched and American replied. King’s heart pounded. Fiona! He took one step down the hallway when a darkness swept above them and descended before them like a wall of shadow. King raised his pistol at the wraith’s head and slowly brought his light up toward its face.

  As the light grew closer to the skin of its face, the creature let out a low shriek. King could see its slit of a nose vibrating as the call slipped out.

  Sensing a violent conclusion to the stand-off, Pierce backed away.

  As King continued to bring the light up, the wraith did something unexpected. Instead of shying away from it, it leaned into the light, fully exposing its face and revealing its large, oval eyes with black, quarter-sized pupils. The light caused it immense pain, which could be seen in its deeply furrowed brow, but it refused to back away. Its actions told King that despite being hurt by the light, it would not be intimidated by it. He also noted that it was not at all concerned about the handgun.

  Pierce took another step back and was suddenly in the grasp of a pair of large hands. He let out a shout that spun King around. A man he had never seen in person stood behind Pierce, holding him in place. He was tall and burly, but well dressed in a black casual suit. His face was chiseled and hadn’t been shaven in perhaps a week. He had a barrel chest and a confident gleam in his eyes that either came from always being in control of a situation, or from being an expert at pretending to be.

  King lowered his weapon. It would do him no good. “Hercules.”

  “Please,” the man said. “Call me Alexander.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Chaco Province, Argentina

  BISHOP WAITED FOR the sound to come again, but the jungle had gone silent—tense—like every living creature knew something bad was about to happen. They sensed it, just as Bishop and the five Delta operators with him sensed it. But what was going to happen, he had no idea.

  Closing his eyes, Bishop relaxed in the dark water, focusing all his attention on his hearing.

  He listened to the jungle. The large palm leaves of the trees overhead scraped against each other. The river bubbled as it rolled over rocks on the shoreline.

  He listened to his men. Silent. Waiting.

  He listened to the targets, Miguel and Nahuel Franco. Bishop opened his eyes. The Francos had gone silent, too.

  Bishop peeked up over the log that hid him from their line of sight and saw both men still sitting on the sandy beach. But Nahuel was holding the shotgun and Miguel had produced a revolver. At first glance, Bishop thought the men had heard the same sounds in the jungle, but when he took a closer look he realized the awful truth.

  They were looking toward him.

  Not the jungle.

  Bishop turned to his men and spoke quickly. “Ditch your weapons and night vision. Do not engage. Do not speak. I will come for you.”

  He ducked under the water and disappeared into the darkness.

  BP-One blinked twice in surprise. Then he nodded and passed on the orders. The team quickly put their weapons and night vision goggles into the water and let them sink to the muddy bottom. They’d all been warned that the Chess Team did things a little differently, but had yet to experience it firsthand. It seemed Bishop’s Pawns were about to get their first taste in truly unconventional warfare.

  After a minute passed and Bishop had not yet surfaced, BP-One thought, suicidal warfare. Then he became distracted by the row of rifle muzzles sliding out of the jungle. Following orders, the team silently raised their hands.

  Ten darkly clad Argentine National Gendarmerie soldiers exited the jungle, keeping their weapons trained on the intruders. Bright lamps from within the jungle and from the sandy beach filled the river with daylight luminosity. “Mantenga sus manos hacia arriba y salir del agua. Ahora,” one of the men commanded, his voice firm and in control.

  Only BP-Three could speak fluent Spanish, but he remained silent, following Bishop’s orders to the T. Instead, he translated through his actions, stepping out of the water and entering the jungle, motioning for the others to follow. As BP-One stepped out of the river, he glanced back one more time, wondering how Bishop had remained submerged for so long. He could have swum away, but the river was wide and long. Anywhere he surfaced would have been seen.

  While the Delta team was restrained in plastic zip-tie handcuffs, three of the ANG soldiers scanned the river, looking for signs of movement. They scanned with flashlights, highlighting every inch of the water’s surface and the far shoreline.

  When five minutes had past, BP-Two shot BP-One a nervous glance. They were all wondering the same things: Where is Bishop? And is he d
ead?

  * * *

  WHEN BISHOP DUCKED beneath the water he released all the air in his lungs and sank to the bottom. Finding a tree trunk, he slid underneath it, wrapped his arms around it in a great bear hug, and squeezed for all he was worth. Just as his body began to crave more oxygen, the ANG soldiers had made their move. Bishop watched as lights lit the scene above, but failed to pierce the ten-foot-deep black water. When the flashlights began panning across the river, his body shook with the need to breath.

  That was five minutes ago.

  He’d been in the water for seven.

  At the four-minute mark he had been unable to fight his body’s natural urges any longer. His mouth snapped open and his lungs filled with water. But no bubbles rose to the surface. With no air in his lungs, Bishop’s drowning went completely unnoticed. As his body convulsed he focused on one thing—hanging on. For three more minutes he continued to drown, his body dying and regenerating over and over again. It was a torture unlike anything he’d ever endured before. Having a limb torn off, even nearly losing his head, had been less agonizing than this. Because no matter how well he knew he would survive, his body believed it was dying.

  The lights moved away from the river a minute later and then faded as the group moved off. After waiting another full minute, until the light had fully extinguished, he let go of the tree trunk and rose to the surface. It took all of his mental energy to rise slowly out of the water, to allow the water to drain fully from his lungs before taking a breath, but he managed the task. His resurrection from the watery grave was silent and unnoticed. He crawled onto the shore, mentally and physically exhausted. Ten seconds later, thanks to his regenerative abilities, Bishop stood, full of energy and feeling fine—as though nothing had happened.

  Despite that, his psyche had taken a beating. He hadn’t just tasted death, he’d shared a meal with the Grim Reaper himself. Bishop rolled his neck, took a deep breath, and pushed the memory of drowning out of his mind. A fear of death would not help him retrieve his men, especially when it was likely he would survive his death several more times before the night was through.