Carpathian (82 page)

Ben-Nevin was the only one to react since he had become used to seeing these creatures. He allowed Zallas to step behind as he removed his nine-millimeter. Stanus lowered his head and fixed the colonel with his eyes as if daring the man to shoot.

Four more men turned and decided they would rather face this strange giant dog than face Zallas. They slowly brought up their AK-47s and took aim.

At that precise moment all the hell stored up in the history of the dark Carpathian Mountains broke free. The Golia struck the castle in force. Mikla was the first to jump from the top of the cable car where it had hidden amid the pulleys and platform cables and leaped onto the roof and then to the floor, crashing through the thin aluminum manufactured to resemble thick wooden beams. It was on all fours and was taking up station in front of his older brother, Stanus, growling and making the men hesitate just long enough for the rest of the male Golia to strike from the open sides of the promenade. They hit with such force that the men had no time to react. While backing away, Ben-Nevin fired blindly, missing Mikla by inches as the Golia moved and struck, barely missing the colonel as he turned and ran with Zallas and the last fifteen men.

The rest of his assassins were facing the wrath of the Golia and started losing very quickly as one man would go down and three of the giant wolves would strike as a team and the man was soon rendered in pieces. The frightening screams of the men covered up the sound and masked the movement of the castle as it broke completely free of the mountain, tearing the electrical conduits that snaked through the cement foundation, making the lights flicker and then go out completely.

In the sheer blackness in the few seconds it took for the emergency lighting to come on, Zallas heard his men being torn to pieces by something out of a nightmare. Suddenly Marko and his Gypsy band didn’t seem so foolish. Water mains ripped from the mountain added to the flood of rain from the pass above. The final collapse of the City of Moses shook the mountain one last time as if God were saying an end had come to all.

Zallas and his force of personal bodyguards knew they had only one way out of the frightening scene now visible in the weak emergency lighting. They had to get to the top of the castle and then work their way down and hope the Americans had decided to take another route. They ran for the stairwell that was well camouflaged as a thick wooden castle door. Ben-Nevin thought it best to stay with the only firepower left on the mountain and followed as the wolves of God finished off the evil that had invaded their lands.

*   *   *

Stanus collapsed inside the car and didn’t move. The push it had received from Madam Korvesky, who had vanished with the other Gypsies, had brought him to the cable car tower and that was where he climbed to the top and waited for the return car to the castle. The other Golia had met Mikla and joined him on the roof of the castle and had waited patiently to spring their trap, which they pulled off to perfection, just as it always had. Now Stanus was nearing the end as his blood flow was starting to ease for lack of pressure. On the roof Anya stopped and felt the sudden loss as Stanus started breathing heavy and as Mikla stood over his brother whining as it sniffed the giant Golia. Stanus raised his head, smelled Mikla, and then lay back. Mikla looked at the remaining male Golia and then it stepped from the car as the doors slid closed behind. The Golia used its special eyesight and saw the imprint the retreating men had left on the cobbled stone flooring. The prints stood out as a shade of gray brighter than their surroundings.

Mikla growled and then anger over the wounds to Stanus overcame the calmer of the two brothers and forced the shape shifting to begin. Mikla roared as it tried to stand and failed. Then it roared again as its hips finally popped free and the thigh bones fell free of their sockets, and Mikla, roaring in pain, finally gained his hind feet and then looked and lowered his large ears and howled. The other Golia stopped and then as one they tore through the cable car promenade heading for the stairwell door.

*   *   *

Jack was balanced on the outside wall on a small ledge that wrapped around the back. The cable car promenade was a hundred feet below and the only way they could reach the cars was to jump from the castle wall just below one of the massive parapets to the cable car roof and then down into the car. Jack wished they had the time to just run away on foot but knew that the flooding on the road prevented any foot traffic to the resort. They were now forced to brave the cable car. Sarah was behind him as she saw him stop and listen. The screams coming from inside the castle had startled even Collins. The Golia were inside and he didn’t know if once their blood was up they would differentiate good guy from bad. Luckily Anya was in front of Everett straddling the six-inch ledge.

“Anya, what is it?” Carl asked when he felt the woman hitch up and then almost fall from the wall. Everett quickly reached out and took her and held her. Mendohlson saw Everett’s struggle and assisted in holding the woman. She finally opened her eyes and then fixed them on Everett.

“Stanus is dying.”

Everett didn’t know what to say. He helped her straighten as Jack started moving again.

Collins was nearing the parapet rising high above them when the first shots struck the wall next to him, sending stone chips into his face.

“Damn!” he said as he almost lost his grip on the ledge. Sarah winced as she braved removing one hand from the mortar gaps and taking Jack by his belt. She closed her eyes not knowing for the briefest of moments if they both were going over into the chasm between the road and the castle. Jack finally caught his balance as more shots pinged off the stone facing around them. “Thanks, short stuff,” he said as he completed the ledge walk and made it to the open window of the parapet. He assisted Sarah inside and then the others. He chanced a look outside and saw Zallas and his men starting to step out onto the large ledge.

As they moved through the darkness they all lost their footing as they searched for a way out to the opposite ledge and then the short jump to the promenade roof as the castle broke into two distinct halves. The top half broke free from the foundation and came sliding five feet over the club below. It stopped just as the mountain quit convulsing. Jack got to his feet and felt the tilt of the castle. The movement was now constant as mortar and stone started splitting apart in unseen places, evidenced by the constant scraping they were now hearing.

“I do believe we are out of time, Jack!” Carl said as he finally sped to the door in the darkness.

Everett threw the door open and Mendohlson stepped through and vanished. Collins’s heart froze as he reached out and was barely able to take the Israeli commando’s sleeve preventing him from falling the four hundred feet to his death. Carl and Anya with Sarah holding Jack’s belt again pulled the major.

The entire wall of the west side tower was gone, leaving a gap of twenty feet to the promenade roof. Jack and the others finally managed to get the major back through the open doorway.

“Whoa, many thanks,” Mendohlson said as he tried to get his heart going again. One HALO jump in a year was enough, much less doing one without a chute.

“I think we have to find another way, the jump is too far,” Collins said as Everett looked out the doorway and confirmed what the colonel was saying.

“Where is Stanus when you need him,” Carl said as he put his head back in. “Jack, you know when those assholes get here they are going to place so many bullets into this room it’ll be like a shooting gallery with these stone walls. We have to go up even higher and try another way. We won’t have time to scale down from here.”

“You lead the way this time, swabby; I think I’ve lost my mountain goat skills.”

Carl nodded, took Anya’s hand, and then looked out the open doorway once more. He saw a small ladder just outside the door, what was left of one leading to one of the skylights now lying four hundred feet below in the gully. Everett leaned over and kissed Anya on the cheek and then reached out and took hold of the ladder that would lead them to the highest portion of Castle Dracula.

They were unaware that it was the portion now dangling over the remains of the club and teetering over the abyss.

*   *   *

Charlie, Ryan, Mendenhall, Pete, Drake Andrews, and the sixteen Russian musicians and performers had found getting to the promenade platform would be impossible so they took the only route available. The many stairwells leading to the base of the cable car tower had taken almost ten minutes to travel as they slipped and fell on the wet steel as the storm continued around the steel towers. Ryan could feel the short jolts of electricity flow through the handrails as lightning struck close by on several occasions. Finally they spied the bottom.

Pete was the first one to step out of the stairwell and into the inky blackness. He vanished as the water took him. The rainwater was now turning the roadway into a debris-swollen river. The collapse of the temple complex had opened up the pass sending a wave of mud cascading down the mountain. Now the raging river had Pete. Charlie had to be pulled back as he tried to leap into the water to save his friend.

“No, Doc!” Ryan shouted into the fierce mouth of the raging storm. “You’ve done enough, it’s my turn,” Jason said as he turned to Mendenhall. “Get them down the best you can, Will,” he said and then saluted him with a smile and without another word dove into the swirling water and was swept away.

Mendenhall and Ryan knew when playtime and the joking ceased and when it was time for the junior officer to take orders from a superior and this was one of those times as much as Will hated to admit it. He shook with anger that Ryan had gone without hesitation. He knew he had to move as the tower they had just climbed down was swaying the whole time they traversed the stairs.

Mendenhall moved his charges out of the tower to ease along the rim of the road, which was now only inches above the water. The first girl, the one dressed as Janis Joplin, slipped and nearly went in. Mendenhall and Ellenshaw caught her and pulled her back. The girl was shaking so badly Will knew he would never get her to attempt it again.

“Damn, Doc, we need a cab in the worst way!”

At that precise moment the dull red 1962 Chevy Impala bumped against the cable tower and careened into the stairwell doorway narrowly missing Mendenhall and Charlie. Will acted quickly, as he never looked a gift horse, or in this case, a gift boat, in the mouth. He reached out and used the door frame as leverage and jumped onto the hood of the car and then scrambled up the windshield and through the open window. Luckily the old and battered Chevy lodged momentarily against the cable tower, the bumper digging into the doorway. Mendenhall waved at Charlie, gesturing wildly for him to get all sixteen people into the car. It was going to be a tight squeeze but knew it was any boat in a storm. The Russians started jumping onto the car’s hood and top. The trunk sank in the water as even more jumped onto the car. Charlie was the last one on and got stuck on the top as he kicked out several times with the help of Drake Andrews until the Chevy dislodged from the tower.

Soon the Impala was moving rapidly down the most recent rapids to come into existence in the Eastern world—Dracula’s Wild Ride, Will would call it later when telling the tale.

The men and women of the Russian musical troupe, with Drake Andrews and Charlie Ellenshaw adding their weight, screamed as the car started twisting in the rapidly moving floodwaters as it rushed for a collision date with a doomed resort.

*   *   *

Zallas finally made it through the open window and it was another ten minutes of nearly falling ten times until they finally made it to the now silent promenade deck. Zallas took a head count and found he had only ten men left. He had lost another three in the harrowing climb down to the car. He gestured for his men to advance and make sure all of those insane dogs were gone.

As they approached the door it slid open automatically and then men jumped back with a start when they saw the prone body of Stanus. The giant wolf wasn’t moving as it lay on the Persian carpet of the car’s interior. Ben-Nevin, angry at seeing one of the animals that could no longer take his head off at the shoulders, stepped up and placed two bullets into the still animal’s back. The Golia didn’t move. Ben-Nevin gestured for them to get inside the car but had to brace himself as the castle shifted once more. It stilled but they all knew it wouldn’t stay that way as they all saw the very long, very deep crack in the cobbled flooring of the promenade.

“Come, you fools, get aboard, this castle is no longer destined to stay attached to this mountain.” He looked at Zallas as he stepped past the Israeli. “I guess the little American woman was right, you should have paid for a good engineer instead of the one you paid off.”

Zallas gave the colonel a filthy look as he stepped over the bleeding Golia. He should have noticed the large hitch in the beast’s chest as the automatic doors slid closed and the car started its slow push out from the covered promenade.

*   *   *

As the car below started to leave the barn, Jack knew they weren’t going to make it. It was too far down. They could possibly get Anya and Sarah and maybe the major on board the roof but that would be it. It was Anya and Mikla who settled it.

“You three go, Mikla will carry me, now move!” she shouted just as Mikla jumped onto the roof of the promenade. With another leap he easily managed to jump to the large window overlooking the moving car below. Without hesitation Mikla took a struggling Anya by the arm and tossed her roughly onto his back and then the Golia jumped free of the window and vanished.

“I guess he has his priorities,” Sarah said as she leaned out the large window and saw the Golia deposit an angry Anya on the cable car’s roof and then he started to climb again away from the frantically waving Gypsy and frustrated woman.

“I think maybe the wolf is coming back to—”

Sarah was unceremoniously yanked from the room by Mikla, who repeated the process until Sarah was standing next to Anya as they both looked up at the three men.