Pandora's Temple (36 page)

Roy smiled tightly, smugly. “I’ve seen your kind before.”

“My
kind
?”

“I know your type, men with nothing in the world, no stake at all, who find purpose in convincing themselves they must save it because otherwise you have to face the fact that you’re nothing more than a mercenary, an assassin.” Roy paused long enough to study McCracken again. “Why, you’re as much a prisoner as I am.”

“But I’m not a liar, Mr. Roy. You should fess up to the truth.”

“And what truth would that be?” Roy shot back, unruffled.

“About Stuttgart.” McCracken took a step closer to him. “The story about you rushing back into the fire to save your family—how brave and heroic. Be even more brave and heroic if it were true.”

Roy stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. See, this friend of mine pulled all the video footage, both from security cameras and television feeds, and managed to string it all together chronologically. Know what he found?”

Roy swallowed hard, made no response.

“You ran at the first sign of trouble. You ran and left your family to die. Trouble was, you ran the wrong way and ended up getting caught in the flames yourself. Only thing true about your story was that getting pinned beneath other bodies
is
what saved your life. And your whole life, if you want to call it that,” McCracken added, looking around him, “goes back to that lie. All this power, all this money, and this is what you’re left with. I may be little more than a killer, but I know true weakness when I’ve got it centered in my crosshairs. And you—”

Before McCracken could finish, a crack and a slight ping sounded almost simultaneously. McCracken saw a spiderweb-shaped fissure form around a neat hole in the window; in the same moment, Pierce pitched over forward, the back of his head reduced to a pool of bone and gore as he fell to the floor.

The Tokushu Sakusen Gun snipers opened fire on their targets from perches half extended into the night air in the same moment the commandos in the lead chopper fast-roped down onto the fortress. With the chance of resistance now substantially diminished, these initial dozen would deliberately and systematically eliminate Sebastian Roy’s guards at their normal posts, revealed by the satellite reconnaissance photos thanks to their thermal heat signatures.

Of course, Asahara’s numb hand ruled out fast roping and he lacked such specialized training anyway. So the plan was for the second chopper with the other half of his Tokushu Sakusen Gun warriors inside to land on the helipad and prepare to enter once the compound had been secured.

In the night ahead, his warriors were mere specks of motion, which was nonetheless enough to show them reaching the fortress roof and fanning out to their assigned grids to execute Roy’s remaining guards. Asahara felt no remorse or regret, only excitement over his anticipated entry into the compound to seize Pandora’s jar.

•

“Down!” McCracken shouted. “Everybody down!”

And he barreled into Katie, taking her beneath him to the floor, as more gunshots blew out the rest of the glass and peppered the room.

“I’ve got security!” Sebastian Roy managed, having pinned himself against the wall over Pierce’s corpse still leaking fluid and brain matter from his ruptured skull. “Whoever’s out there, they’ll stop them!”

“A doomsday cult’s out there, and I saw your men. They’re no match for Aum Shinrikyo, trust me on that. But you do have one ace up your sleeve to stop the cult from getting their hands on the jar.”

“What’s that?”

“Us.”

The second helicopter touched down only long enough to allow its passengers to exit quickly. Asahara did so in the middle of a group of Tokushu Sakusen Gun commandos, following their motions as best he could and hoping not to slow their efforts. He had fit the earpiece Kuroda had given him into his ear and the chatter was coming fast now.

“Six down!”

“Seven!”

“Eight and nine!”

“Ten!”

Sebastian Roy’s unprepared guards were being felled in just the effortless fashion Kuroda had promised. This was, after all, a holy mission, and Asahara wondered if his father was watching as he moved to enter the compound with his warriors.

“How many, Indian?” McCracken asked, back on his feet in Roy’s chamber now.

“Two choppers, Blainey,” Wareagle replied without needing to check the window. “One’s already dropped its passengers; the other should be landing soon.”

“Thirty men, maybe a couple more, boss,” said Sal Belamo, his tone like he’d swallowed stomach acid. “Pros for sure.”

“Stay down,” McCracken warned Roy, as the three of them started for the door. “We’ll be back.”

Almost there just behind Wareagle and Belamo, McCracken saw Katie DeMarco following in tow.

“Uh-uh, you’re staying here too.”

She looked revolted by the prospects, stealing a glance back at her father who had slumped against a wall in the corner. Amazing, thought McCracken, to note how even the most powerful wilt when faced with the terror of combat. For the untrained and inexperienced, there was simply no way to describe what it felt like to be under fire by men determined to kill and trained to do so.

“Looks like you were right, after all, old man.”

“How’s that, young lady?”

She smiled sadly. “Nothing much changes.”

“Not today, anyway,” McCracken said with a wink.

Despite Kuroda’s assurances, Shinzo had had trouble believing it would be this easy. The resistance his warriors encountered was feeble at best and wouldn’t have even reached that high if they’d had the opportunity to first practice this assault in a controlled environment.

The group of commandos of which he was now a part entered the complex through the south, the others through the east and west, with the north side being accessible only via a sheer face of rocks. The rendezvous point was fluid, based on the ability of the warriors who’d fast-roped down under Kuroda’s command to eliminate as much resistance as possible and then funnel the rest here to the south. For his part, Asahara was to remain with the second wave of Tokushu Sakusen Gun warriors outside the heavy bulkheadlike doors just inside the compound.

He’d wait here in accordance with Colonel Kuroda’s instructions. Time seemed to crawl, nothing but garbled splotches of exchanges going off in his ear, as the first wave of his commandos continued to encounter little additional resistance. Some sporadic exchanges of gunfire were swiftly quelled, with his warriors triumphing. Any stragglers would be forced this way to be concentrated in a cross fire from Kuroda’s force in pursuit and Asahara’s lying in wait. And, once all the security forces were neutralized, they would move on to a defenseless Sebastian Roy who would be utterly at their mercy—an asset until Pandora’s jar belonged to Asahara.

He closed his eyes, settled himself with a few deep breaths, and instantly began to breathe easier when he opened them again.

Until the sounds and cries of panic began to resound in his ear. They seemed to come from the whole first team of his warriors at once, followed by gunshots, wails of pain, calls for help, or warnings to others.

What was happening?

Time crawled again in agonizing fashion now, Asahara left to ponder his next move when the heavy door burst open and Colonel Kuroda stumbled through, heaving for breath and bleeding from a shoulder wound.

“Sensei!” Shinzo managed.

Kuroda staggered to the wall and laid his shoulders against it. “It’s them!”

“Who?”

“The same men . . .”

“The same men who
what
?”

Kuroda looked at him for what seemed like a very long time before responding.

Times changed. Places changed.

But not the battle.

And Wareagle and McCracken took to this one, just as they’d taken to all the others dating back to times long past but never forgotten. Nothing was forgotten, each piece of every war they’d ever fought leaving an indelible mark. In these moments, age was rendered meaningless in the face of purpose. There was no age, there was no time. There were only moments between kills both had long trained themselves to remain as indifferent to as possible.

Something happened in the moments they slid about the corridors moving downward and out from the fortress’s top floor, the world slowing down, becoming surreal. Starting when McCracken lay in wait after glimpsing a Japanese man on a stealthy patrol.

Aum Shinrikyo’s forces had penetrated the compound now.

Additional footsteps pounded up the stairs from the level below, and McCracken dropped the nearest man with a single shot to the head from his pistol, then stripped off the silenced submachine gun slung from his shoulder. It took a pair of three-shot bursts to kill a second and third man in the stairwell, both plummeting down the stairs, dead.

McCracken kept a mental count in his head, hearing the echo of gunshots indicating both Johnny and Sal were encountering similar resistance, and using the same element of surprise, in their sweeps. He’d seen it all before, more times than he could count: a superior invading force having too much confidence in their intelligence and reconnaissance to be prepared to face an opposition they’d never expected to encounter.

Doomsday was going to have to wait for the members of Aum Shinrikyo.

McCracken padded down the stairs as softly as he could manage, emerging on the second floor and propping himself in the dark cover of an adjacent alcove. Sometimes victory was about patience, which meant waiting for the next man to show himself instead of going on the hunt. Sure enough, the next pair of men converged from either end of the hall, hoping to catch him in a cross fire. But their initial barrage, the only one that mattered, singed the air above him when McCracken dropped to the floor, firing the Heckler and Koch submachine gun as he rolled to cut down both enemy gunmen in a single spray. At this range, the high-velocity bullets pulverized them even through their Kevlar vests, the lighter variety worn by high-end commando teams just like this.

He bore no illusions it was going to be this easy from start to finish; it never was. No, McCracken had the very real sense the actual battle was still to come, and it would have to be fought with the element of surprise gone.

Katie crouched on the floor, glad for the almost incessant drone of gunfire because it distracted her from the fact that her father was just ten feet away from her. She was ten feet away from the monster who’d made her into one too.

“Alexandra,” Sebastian Roy, his shoulders slumped, said suddenly from a seated position against the wall across from her.

“Don’t call me that.”

“It’s your name. Your mother chose it, the mother you killed, along with your brother.” Roy rose slowly, a portrait in utter calm. “I have a tape of what happened in Greenland,” he told her. “Would you like to see your friends all murdered, cut down as they slept? Would you like to see your leader running for his life, dying in the mud? That’s what happens to those who oppose me. You think this ends tonight? You think you’re up to killing me? You think that assassin who brought you here will do it for you?” Roy shook his head, slowly and surely. “I’m not finished yet, and now I see you’d never be fit to succeed me. Because you’re too weak, a prisoner of emotions that have destroyed you because you never learned to control them.” Roy’s indifferent demeanor slid from his expression, replaced by a tight mask of condescending evil and power. “You want to know why Christian never stopped me, Alexandra? Because he was too scared, just like you are in the end without your assassin to back you up.”

Katie sank to her knees, Roy breaking out into a wide grin when he saw the pistol in his daughter’s hand.

“That’s better, Alexandra. Go ahead, prove me wrong. Show me how strong you really are.”

“Are you sure, Kuroda-sensei?” Shinzo Asahara asked when Kuroda’s breathing steadied and his eyes returned to normal. “The same men from the building in New Orleans?”

Kuroda grimaced in pain while nodding. “The very same. Ghosts, phantoms, spirits—I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“So what can we do to defeat them?”

“They’re going to circle back to the rooms Roy occupies. We use that knowledge against them.”

“What if they continue to advance toward us instead?”

Kuroda shook his head, calm in his consideration of the enemy’s strategy. “They know we still hold the advantage, and their trick of surprise is gone. They’ll believe they can wait us out, so we will move to a plan of attack that makes that impossible.”

“Attack ghosts, spirits?”

Kuroda moved off the wall, shoulder straightening and arm extending as if he was never wounded at all. “Even the dead can be killed, Shinzo-san. A wise lesson for you to remember. Now, prepare yourself to move.”

“Now?”

Kuroda nodded. “I’m going to take you to Sebastian Roy.”

McCracken and Wareagle met up in the center of the first floor together, the last of the first wave of attackers dispatched on the floors above.

“What do you say we slow the rest of them down, Indian?”

“I was just thinking the same thing myself, Blainey.”

That meant moving as far down the hallway as they dared, south toward the helipads, since that’s where the next wave of Japanese commandos would be concentrated. They closed and snapped off the locks on four different decoratively heavy wooden doors with steel cores to maximize their resistance to fire. The strategy had the dual effect of negating the enemy force’s still superior numbers, while making them vulnerable every time they had to blow or shoot their way through a barrier. Normally such a slowing ploy would be employed when reinforcements were expected. Even though that wasn’t the case here, it would serve a similar purpose by making the three of them, including Sal Belamo, much more effective fighters in comparison with an enemy thrown onto the defensive.