A giant talon followed through the hole as the creature shrieked and slashed at them.
Knight flopped to the ground as the clawed fist fought toward him. It grabbed onto the ladder and tried to yank itself through the opening. Its red eyes looked down at Knight, and their gazes locked.
It stopped its shrieking, and its mouth peeled open to reveal rows of razor sharp fangs. Saliva dripped down from the hungry maw. It slowly raised its arm back through the opening, but it continued to stare down at him. He could feel something being passed between them. It wanted him to know that this was far from over, that it would kill him.
He stared back at the beast and matched its animosity. This thing had taken the lives of good soldiers, and he wanted its head as much as it wanted his blood. He gave the beast a two-fingered salute. It snarled back and then disappeared.
18.
Salvatori surveyed his handiwork. It was a shabby patch job, but it didn’t really matter as long as it worked. The small device resembled a garage door opener with large flat button and a slot on its back where a clip could be inserted to allow it to attach to a belt.
He pointed the device at the door to his cell and held his breath. If it had been damaged beyond repair and didn’t function, he knew that he would have no choice but to give Cho what he wanted. He had no illusions that he was tough enough to withstand the kinds of torture that a mind like Cho’s could dream up. He would crack, and the world would die along with his resolve.
He knew that Cho wouldn’t recognize that the remote for his cell’s locking mechanism was missing until the next time he returned. The door automatically locked when it was closed, and Cho had already opened it from the inside when Salvatori stole the device from the younger man’s jacket pocket. The maneuver had been expertly choreographed; he had spent plenty of time alone in a cell considering how to best accomplish the deed. He also suspected that Cho’s mind was too burned out from all of the drugs to allow for rational thought.
He closed his eyes as he pressed the button. His heart seemed to stop as there was no sound for a second, but then a small click of the mechanism signified his deliverance. He breathed a long sigh of relief. Emotions overwhelmed him, and he nearly wept. But he didn’t have the luxury of savoring his new found freedom. Now was not the time for celebration; it was the time to set things right.
19.
There was no sound within the sewers or on the streets above, and they only had one small flashlight between them. A pale halo of illumination lit the path ahead. The air was moist but stagnant. The sound of their movements bounced off the tile walls and created the illusion of footsteps at their backs. Their voices echoed down the tunnel, and they spoke in hushed tones for fear that the beast would track them by the noise.
Knight found the sewers oddly clean. But he supposed that he should have expected that, since hardly anyone other maintenance workers had ever lived in the city. “So Donahue,” he whispered. “You mentioned that we might have the next best thing to a nuke. If you’ve got some kind of plan, now would be a good time to share.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it a plan, but if we can get to that Osprey, we should find a little something to even the odds.”
“I checked the weapons hold, and there wasn’t anything there other than small arms.”
“This little toy is mounted under one of the wings, not in the hold. We didn’t know what kind of enemy base we would encounter out here, so we asked the Americans to bring along the ultimate bunker buster. A thermobaric warhead.”
Knight was familiar with thermobaric weapons. They were powerful explosive devices that used a two-stage detonation process. The first stage blew the casing of the bomb and released an explosive chemical vapor into the air that expanded out and filled all the surrounding space. Then, the second stage ignited the accelerant and flash-fried everything within the blast radius. The explosion literally set the air on fire. The final effect was a massive concussion wave that would crush anything that hadn’t been turned to ash. Thermobaric warheads were the most powerful non-nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal.
It would surely be enough to kill the creature. There wouldn’t be a single cell left to regenerate. But there was a problem.
“It would do the job,” he said, “but the EMP attack that took down the chopper would have fried the warhead’s electronics. Without the detonator, it’s just a big paperweight.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. If you can get me there, I’m pretty sure that I can make it work.”
“Pretty sure?”
“You have any better ideas?”
“I was giving some serious thought to bugging out and heading to the beach with Beck, but I suppose we could give the warhead thing a shot.”