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  He shed the majority of his wet clothes, improving his mobility without losing any stealth thanks to his dark skin. He also left behind his night vision goggles, which were not appropriate for running. The only weapons he kept were his silenced sidearm and KA-BAR knife.

  The jungle tore at him as he ran through the darkness, but he gave the momentary pain no heed as his body quickly healed every superficial wound. He didn’t slow until he heard angry voices speaking Spanish. Seven of the ANG soldiers had stopped to perform an impromptu interrogation before bringing the men in officially. When he peeked through some brush and saw his men bound and on their knees, he wondered if they would be brought in at all. When the man questioning brought his handgun up and shot BP-One in the leg, it was all the motivation Bishop needed to act.

  Over the shout of pain from BP-One, no one heard the whistle of Bishop’s KA-BAR knife sailing though the air. But they saw the end result as the seven-inch blade buried itself into the interrogator’s leg. The man shouted and fell, clutching the knife.

  Bishop followed the knife’s path, charging from the jungle with his silenced Sig Sauer raised. Aiming for the soldier’s body armor, he squeezed off two shots, dropping a second man. The rounds didn’t kill the soldier, but the impact, like punches from a young Mike Tyson, took away his breath and will to fight. The five remaining men opened fire, riddling his body with bullets.

  Flesh flew.

  Blood sprayed.

  But still he charged.

  As he fired four more shots, aiming through blood-coated eyes, Bishop saw abject fear enter the eyes of the remaining ANG soldiers. Suddenly, three of the four men fell to the ground, where Bishop’s Pawns One through Five, who had easily freed themselves from the plastic cuffs, made short work of them, each following Bishop’s lead in subduing but not killing the soldiers.

  The last standing ANG soldier unloaded at Bishop’s chest. As Bishop felt the bullets enter his chest and exit his back he worried that one might strike the crystal that kept him sane. He leapt forward with a yell, fearing insanity more than death, and struck out with his fist. Despite his arm taking three rounds, it regenerated by the time it struck the man’s helmeted head. Despite the helmet dulling the blow, the man crumpled to the jungle floor, unconscious.

  Bishop grunted as the intense pain from being shot innumerable times overpowered his adrenaline. He fell to one knee, clenched his eyes shut, and waited for the wounds to heal. The pain was replaced by a fiery itch and then faded completely. He stood up, a bloody, but hale, mess of a soldier and looked at his team, who were staring at him.

  BP-One looked at the unconcious ANG soldiers, then back to Bishop. He grinned. “You do realize how entirely fucked up that was?”

  Bishop nodded. “Tip of the iceberg.” He pointed to BP-One’s injured leg. “Can you make it to the LZ?”

  “It’s not going to heal on its own, but I can make it.”

  Bishop headed out. His team had survived, but the mission was a failure. And he’d nearly lost everything. Had the crystal been destroyed … He made a mental note to find a way to keep the crystal better protected and started the long trek home.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Taipei, Taiwan

  THE WOMAN IN the power suit leveled her weapon at Knight’s head. When he dove to the side, she fired. The round whistled past his ear—he could feel its heat—and struck a passing taxi.

  As he hit the sidewalk and rolled, Knight heard the taxi’s tires squeal over the screams of fleeing pedestrians. The vehicle’s driver lost control, possibly hit by the round meant for him. The woman shouted something in Chinese that he couldn’t make out as he got his feet under him again. He spun toward the woman, drawing a weapon of his own, and when her body lined up in his sight, he pulled the trigger without hesitation. The silent round sailed out of the gun, striking the woman in the throat. The dart, meant for Walis Palalin, dropped her to her knees as she held her throat in surprise. She slid down the stairs on her back, stopping on the sidewalk.

  He opened her suit and inspected the badge. National Police Agency. How did the Taiwanese police force know we were coming? Knight thought.

  But there was no time to figure that out. A loud engine announced the presence of a large gray van, its side stenciled with the Chinese text that translated to: SWAT.

  The Taiwanese SWAT were elite fighters who were not just brutally efficient, but also masters in hand-to-hand kung fu combat. Knowing that a full squad of heavily armed and highly skilled men would burst from the back of the van at any second, Knight scoured the street for some hope of escape.

  The taxi that had been shot sat empty and running. The owner had stopped on the curb and limped quickly into the hospital, a trail of blood marking his passage. He had taken a round and, being at a hospital, wasted no time in seeking help. In doing so, he’d left Knight the perfect getaway car.

  He turned to his two teammates. “Get to the taxi!”

  Shrieking tires followed by hard metal bangs and angry shouting voices filled the air behind Knight. The SWAT van had stopped and expelled the men inside, who were now shouting at him to stop. But stopping was impossible, both because he couldn’t afford to get caught, but also because he was airborne, leaping over the hood of the taxi.

  He landed on the driver’s side and hopped into the front seat of the still-running vehicle. As his teammates opened the back doors and jumped in, a sound like thunder erupted behind them. But there were no storm clouds, only twenty men opening fire with automatic weapons.

  One of the Delta operators in the backseat shouted in pain, struck by a round. As the cloud of bullets ate up the back of the vehicle, Knight knew it wouldn’t be long before all three men were reduced to tenderized, indistinguishable meat. He slammed the car into drive and hit the gas.

  Bullets pursued them as they shot out into the road, turned left, and merged with traffic. Sirens could be heard converging on their location. Escape in the taxi, which was easy to spot with its shot-up back, would be impossible. As the rubber of the left rear tire sheared off and rolled away, Knight stopped the vehicle in the middle of the road and ran to the black sedan parked to the side.

  He opened the driver’s side, sat down, and started the engine of the team’s car. He looked back as his teammates entered the vehicle. One man was bleeding from the shoulder. Nothing serious. But what he saw rounding the corner behind them was very serious. The SWAT team had run on foot, entering the street fifty feet back. Knight rolled down his window and tossed a small object into the ruined taxi.

  He hit the gas, drawing the attention of the SWAT team, who had been focused on the taxi. They adjusted their aim, but before a round could be fired, the taxi exploded, sending metal fragments and a ball of fire into the air. The SWAT team ducked for cover and missed Knight’s quick left-hand turn.

  Knight slowed his pace, took several turns, and merged with the busy city traffic. Of course, their car had been seen and would have to be abandoned shortly. But as police vehicles swarmed past them, headed toward the explosion, the team took comfort in the fact that their car’s tinted windows hid their identities. Driving toward the team’s rendezvous point at one of the city’s many ports, Knight activated his throat mic and contacted the other members of his team. “This is Knight. Abort mission. Meet at the port in thirty. We’re bugging out.”

  “Copy that, Knight. We had no— oh shit!” Knight recognized the sound of bullets striking metal and glass. He could hear shouts. Angry at first. Then desperate. The return fire was loud in his ear. Then everything went quiet. And he knew what that meant.

  The rest of his team was dead.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Rome, Italy

  “I’M AFRAID THAT’S impossible,” Alexander said, leading King and Pierce into a nearby storage room. He sat on a tarp-covered crate while Pierce inspected the remnants of an old worn statue and King paced. The wraith had gone, but they knew it lurked nearby.

  “Nothing’s impossible,” King replied.
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  Alexander laughed. “Now that you have encountered some of the strangeness our world has to offer, you fancy yourself an expert on what is, and what is not, impossible?”

  “Just let me see her,” King said, his voice less demanding than the first time he’d asked to see Fiona. “She’s diabetic and needs insulin.”

  “I noticed the insulin pump and have taken steps to see that she is provided with refills when required. If I allowed you to see her it would brew hope of rescue among the others. Hope would lead to discontentment, unruliness, and anger. Right now they are content prisoners. Right now, they are safe.” Alexander crossed his arms. “So it is as I said before, impossible.”

  “The others?” Pierce asked, turning from the statue. “How many people have you kidnapped?”

  “Fifty-seven. But kidnapping implies a negative intent,” Alexander said. “I am saving their lives.”

  “By keeping them in a subterranean tomb?” King asked.

  “You were charged with keeping just one of them safe,” Alexander said. “And we know how that turned out. Until the matter is cleared up, they must remain under my guard. They will be safe in the secret places that only my people and I know about.”

  “The Herculean Society?” Pierce asked.

  Alexander gave a nod and a grin. “Your old friends, yes.”

  King hated to admit it, but he agreed with Alexander. His methods were shady, as they had been in the past, but what he was doing wasn’t any different from the mission the rest of the team had undertaken; to protect the last speakers of ancient languages, they had to be stealed away and hidden. The difference was that Alexander employed inhuman helpers and kept the prisoners in the dark, both figuratively and literally.

  Alexander leaned back, his large elbows resting on another crate. “Of course, your presence here debunks my claims of safe refuge.” His eyes, brimming with a mixture of cockiness and annoyance, glared at King. “How did you find me?”

  “You didn’t mean for us to find you?” King asked.

  “Not at all.”

  King explained how they pieced together Alexander’s two separate mentions of a promise to someone—a promise he was now breaking by getting involved with the problems of the world. He related the logical jump to Acca Larentia and the hints about her burial place not in what history said, but in what it was missing. When he was done, Alexander looked stunned.

  King noticed the ancient man’s flabbergasted expression. “What?”

  “I’m … impressed.” Alexander sat up straight. “I thought you were simply a man who knew how to kill people.”

  “I’m that, too,” King said.

  “Dare I ask if you could have been followed?”

  King thought about his unease while in the ruins of the Roman Forum. He’d felt a presence watching them, but he was sure it was the guard’s they had encountered that his instincts had detected. “We weren’t followed.”

  Alexander didn’t look convinced. “These are strange times. The rocks themselves can have eyes.”

  “Only Lewis knew exactly where I was headed,” King said. “We weren’t followed.”

  “Mmm,” Alexander said, still not entirely convinced, but moving on. “You say you entered through the Lacus Curtius?” Alexander asked.

  Pierce nodded. “A ladder might be a good idea, though.”

  Alexander smiled. “It’s a favored entrance of the Forgotten. They don’t need ladders.”

  “The who?” Pierce asked.

  “The cloaked men you have encountered. They are as ancient as I am, but lost their voices and souls long ago.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Test subjects,” Alexander said. When he saw the angry stares of both King and Pierce, he added, “Unending life has slowly peeled away my curtain of immorality. I do not see things the way I used to when I was young. When I was mortal. I wasn’t all that dissimilar from Richard Ridley.”

  King pictured Ridely, the head of Manifold Genetics, who had tried to unlock the secrets of immortality. The man’s pursuit of godhood had been ruthless. Human experimentation left victims insane and nearly impervious to harm. Thousands more had come close to death when Ridley’s actions resulted in the mythical Hydra being reborn. No price was too steep, and in the end he achieved his goal of immortality, but lost his company, his men, and his fortune. But he was free, and had all the time in the world to make a comeback. He pictured Alexander in a similar role and the image frightened him. Thank God he’s on our side.

  Alexander continued. “The Forgotten are proof of this. I keep them to remind me of what I could be. What I have been. And what the cost of my failures can lead to.”

  King waited for the account to continue, but Pierce had already put the pieces together. “They killed Acca. The Forgotten?”

  A sudden sadness swept over Alexander. He stared at the floor. “Could you believe it still stings after all this time?” He looked up at them. “They are prone to madness on their own. Desperate with thirst. Hundreds died at their hands in the early years, before Acca was killed. Since then I have kept them sated with a supplement that replaces their craving for blood.”

  “You’re not saying they’re vampires,” King said.

  Alexander shook his head. “Not in the traditional sense, but it’s possible they’re responsible for the legend.”

  “My God…” Pierce said.

  “Their hands are covered in pores, each containing a small, strong, and hollow tendril. Thousands of them. This is how they walk on walls. It’s also how they drain blood through their victim’s skin.” He demonstrated by grabbing his own arm with his hand. “May you never end up in their embrace. It is an awful thing.”

  For a moment, King wondered if that was a veiled threat, but the distant look of heartbreak had returned to the man’s face. He’d witnessed Acca’s death.

  “How did it happen?” King asked. “With Acca?”

  “She stumbled across my lab. She was always curious. Always searching for answers. It’s part of what I loved about her. But it also got her into trouble. When she found them, locked behind bars, they hadn’t eaten in weeks. They were starved and pitiful-looking. Assuming they needed water, she held out a cup. Her act of mercy resulted in her death. The water spilled to the floor. They drank her dry.”

  Alexander sniffed a deep breath through his nose and stood, his body thick, towering, and strong. All thoughts of the past were gone. “Enough of this. I’ll have one of the Forgotten escort you out at a secure location.”

  King raised an eyebrow. “To quote you: ‘impossible.’” To punctuate his statement, King placed his hand on the handgun tucked into the front of his pants.

  “You realize that’s useless in here, yes?” Alexander said, showing no fear of the weapon.

  “But it will hurt,” King said with a grin. “A lot.”

  Alexander chuckled and relaxed. “What do you want?”

  “The same thing everyone locked away in your dungeon wants,” King said. “Hope. And if you have them, answers.”

  Alexander walked past King and Pierce, entering the dark hallway. “I don’t know everything. But I can point you in the right direction.”

  King fell in step behind Alexander. “That’s all I need.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Asino, Siberia

  ROOK RAN DOWN the street, headed for the turn onto his targets’ road. He had no intention of giving up the mission because the Russian military happened to be flying overhead. The choppers had yet to arrive, but they would soon. The chop of their rotor blades pulsed through the forest as they grew closer. With his earbud back in place, Rook contacted his team again. “Give me a sitrep.”

  “Rook, this is fubar,” RP-Two came back. “These helos aren’t flying by. They’re circling.”

  What the fuck? Rook thought. It explained why he’d been hearing them for so long, but had yet to actually see one of the helicopters. But had the team? “What are we dealing with?”

  “
Unknown. We’ve seen shadows through the trees, but haven’t got a clear look. Best guess is that there are three of them, though.”

  Rook’s earbud crackled to life again, but the voice didn’t belong to the five men on his Delta team. “Rook, this is Dominick Boucher. Queen reported mission compromised. Bishop has gone silent. We have reports of shots fired and men down in Taipei. Abort mission. Abort mi—”

  Boucher’s voice was drowned out by the sound of an explosion. A pressure wave shot out of the forest carrying a cloud of pine needles. The shouts of his men followed the boom. “Rook, they’re Werewolves! Fully armed. Shit, they’re right on top of us!”

  Gunfire ripped through the forest as the five-man Delta team returned fire. But Rook knew it was hopeless. Werewolf was the nickname for Russia’s Ka-50 Black Shark attack helicopter, so named because it seemed only a silver bullet could knock it out of the sky. They were heavily armored tank- and jet-killing weapons of war. With an armament that included antitank missiles, aerial rockets, air-to-air missiles, and an array of machine guns, three of which was severe overkill for taking out a five-man team.

  Unless they knew who they were up against, Rook thought.

  “Abort mission!” Rook shouted. “Lose them in the trees and—”

  The buzz of two miniguns ripped through the forest.

  Rook held his breath.

  A loud cracking filled the air as a tree fell. It swished to the ground and struck with a boom.

  Labored breath came through his earbud, followed by a voice. “RP-Two through Five are down! Two of the helos are on me. One is headed your way!”

  Rook had been so stunned by the battle being waged in the forest that he still remained rooted in the middle of the country road. But there was nowhere to hide. Running toward the choppers was suicide and they clearly had thermal sensors to help locate warm human bodies in the cool forest. The road stretched on endlessly in either direction. And across from the forest was the open hilly pasture of the cow farm. Armed with only a handgun and three grenades, hidden beneath his thick sweater, he would last only as long as it took for the gunner to line him up and pull the trigger.