Callsign: King II- Underworld

King glanced at the glowing numbers on his watch and then at the display on his phone, which showed Pierce’s location as a dot almost right on top of the dot that showed his own. Almost twenty minutes had passed since he’d gotten Pierce’s call; in less than half an hour, Copeland would activate the Bluelight generator—whatever that was—and in all likelihood trigger another attack from the Mogollon Monsters.

The decision to leave Bluelight and retrieve his friend had been one of the hardest King had ever made. He’d thought about it for almost a full minute, which was an eternity for the decisive, highly analytical Chess Team field leader.

Shutting down Bluelight might have been as easy as stepping through the door to the control room and telling Copeland to stand down. Given the physicist’s reluctance to continue the experiment, he probably would have complied eagerly. But then again, there was every possibility that he would have been unable to stop the generator from being activated. Brainstorm probably had contingency plans in place against just such a breakdown of his control, and without understanding more about Bluelight and how it worked, there was no guarantee that King could actually prevent the next activation cycle. And if he had tried and failed, there was no guarantee that Pierce would survive another rampage. On the other hand, there was just enough time for him to exit the Bluelight compound, rendezvous with Pierce, and make it back before Copeland threw the switch. If he could pull that off, it would be win-win, so while there was a degree of risk involved, it was clearly the preferable course of action.

But what if I’m wrong? What if more people die because I put my personal feelings ahead of the mission?

He knew better than to ask “what-if” questions.

Pierce had reappeared on the eastern flank of the Superstitions, almost two miles to the north of the FOB where they had briefly been held, and only about five miles from the Bluelight facility. Ideally, even at off-road speeds, the round trip should have taken no more than about twenty minutes, and that had probably influenced his decision as well. Unfortunately, the landscape had decided not to be cooperative. He had anticipated that the rough terrain would slow him down and restrict his ability to drive in a straight line. Some of the undulating hills were low enough that he could simply drive up and over, while the steeper ones, those that couldn’t be surmounted, were circumvented. What he had failed to take into account was that Mother Nature was not the only force shaping the topography. About a mile from the Bluelight facility, he spotted a smooth, dark area directly in his path. At a distance, it looked like a lake, but as they drew closer the air filled with the pungent rotten-egg smell of sulfur dioxide, and he recognized it for what it was: the sludge pond for the copper processing plant.

Finding a way to detour around the toxic pool added another seven minutes to the journey, and to get around it, he had to drive across the sloping flanks of the hills that formed a natural bowl in which the mine operators had chosen to dump the byproducts of the ore separation process. There were more than a few hairy moments where the Humvee started sliding, forcing him to steer up the hill until the wheels found purchase. And all the while, the clock kept ticking.

On the far side of the bowl, he pointed the front end of the Humvee up the hill and pressed down on the accelerator. The tires slipped a little, throwing out an unseen cloud of dust, and then the truck grudgingly started climbing up and over the crest. As they rolled over the top, King spotted a bright glow directly ahead; a small light, amplified to blazing intensity by his night vision.

“There’s George,” he said.

Nina didn’t respond, and he wasn’t sure if she had heard him over the engine noise, but a moment later she shifted forward in her seat and peered out into the darkness. With the unaided eye, the light probably wasn’t visible, and by King’s best guess, they were still a good quarter-mile away, with a long, winding valley between them and Pierce.

Despite being built for such conditions, the Humvee bounced and slipped precariously as they raced along the sloping hillside, bumping over large rocks, dodging enormous saguaro cacti and crushing smaller desert flora. As the driver, he was only slightly better able to anticipate the violent jolts; Nina was being mercilessly tossed around in her seat. Nevertheless, King maintained steady pressure on the accelerator pedal, eager to reunite with his friend, and all too painfully aware of the fact that the impending activation of the Bluelight device was about to unleash another wave of hell on earth.

But then, with only about a hundred yards separating them from the glowing orb of light that marked what he presumed to be Pierce’s location, King slammed on the brakes. The Humvee skidded sideways as the natural decline of the hill redirected some of its momentum.

“What’s wrong?” Nina shouted.

King’s eyes never wavered from his goal. “George has company.”





27.