Knight scanned the area above the manhole cover using a fiberscope. Nicknamed a snake cam, the device was a long, flexible bundle of fiber-optics with an eyepiece at one end and a lens at the other. It was an invaluable tool used by spec ops soldiers to recon a room or area without alerting the enemy to their presence. He saw no sign of the beast on the street above and grabbed for his radio. He was getting used to having Ling and Jiao watching his back. They were beginning to remind him of miniature versions of Deep Blue.
“Ling, are we clear to move up?”
“I think so. But we don’t see the monster on any of the other monitors, either.”
He knew that just because they couldn’t see the creature, didn’t mean it wasn’t up there somewhere waiting for them. But he had little choice but to proceed despite the risk. The last of Donahue’s men, a corporal named Jenkins, joined Knight on the ladder, and they pushed the cover free of the opening. The group moved cautiously over the street and up through the parking garage. Apparently, their escape through the sewer had been successful in throwing the beast off their trail. Once on the roof of the parking garage, Donahue set to work at dismantling the warhead. Knight, Beck and Jenkins kept their eyes on the perimeter. But there was no sign of the creature. The air was calm and still. The city, despite its warren of roads and skyscrapers, was eerily silent.
After a few minutes, Donahue called Knight over and gestured toward the open contents of the thermobaric weapon. “The warhead’s remote detonation control circuitry is fried, and the power source is shot to hell. I might be able to rig something up and bypass the damaged circuitry, but the power source is out of my hands. We’re going to have to find a replacement.”
“Like what? What can we use?”
Donahue shrugged. “Almost anything above a flashlight battery could work. It doesn’t need that much power to spark the detonation.”
He thought for a moment. “What about a car battery?”
Donahue nodded. “That’d do the trick. Too bad there aren’t any left in this bloody parking garage.”
“That would be too easy, but I do remember seeing an abandoned car down the road a bit near where I first encountered the creature.” He put a hand on Donahue’s shoulder. “Get this thing ready to blow, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“You got a deal, but you had better get those little legs of yours pumping. It’s only a matter of time before that thing tracks us here.”
“Little legs?”
Donahue shrugged and turned back to the warhead.
Knight climbed into the Osprey. The interior was the same jumbled mess that he had seen earlier, but this time, he knew where to look. He had seen the items he needed when he had broken into the weapons locker. He retrieved a small box from the cockpit and a can of emergency fuel attached to the back of the dead ATV. He dumped out the regular gasoline from the can and went to the side of one of the Osprey’s reserve fuel tanks. Then, using a hydraulic hose taken from the wreckage, he siphoned out some of the craft’s JP-8 jet fuel.
As he dropped down from the side of the ruined aircraft, Beck’s eyes passed over the items in his hands. “What’s all that for?”
He smiled. “A little surprise for our big-ass friend.”
23.
The beast watched from high above the streets of the ghost city, scanning for its prey. It burned with hatred for the small things that kept stopping it from completing the objective. Why did the small things keep hurting it? All it wanted was to complete the task that the master had assigned. The objective was all that mattered, all that it had left.
There was a time when there was more. Strange, fuzzy pictures like something from a dream occupied its memory. It saw images of a man, a soldier, a proud patriot. It saw the soldier as a boy fishing with his grandfather on Taihu Lake, and his mother taking him to the Temple of Heaven—a sacred place in southern Beijing where emperors in the Ming and Qing dynasties worshiped and offered sacrifices. Then it watched the boy grow to manhood and train to serve his country. It saw the soldier with a woman and a baby.
But after that, the only memories it could recall were pain, rage and the objective.
It remembered all these things, but it couldn’t make the connection as to why. Where did these images come from? What were they? It felt deep sadness and anger, but it didn’t truly understand either emotion.
All it knew was that it had to obey the master. It had to kill.
A scent carried on the wind drew its attention, and it leapt from rooftop to rooftop, tracking down the source of the smell. Then it saw the small thing running along the road below. This one was the worst of all the small things. This one had caused it much pain. But no more.
It was time to complete the objective.
24.