Ripper (21 page)

Collins examined the damage and cursed as he kicked at the blockage in front of him.

“Gentlemen, we have more company,” Henri said as he dropped the first man who
poked his head through the opening above. Then he fired a second time and hit one of Guzman’s men in both hands as he reached to move the first attacker out of the way. He emptied another clip up and into the floorboards where he heard men scream in pain. Then all of a sudden it was silent.

Farbeaux had just ejected the expended clip when his eyes fell on something about ten feet away from him.
He stepped forward and then kicked at a white object on the dirt floor. Curious, he reached into his pocket brought out a lighter, and then flicked it to life. His eyebrows rose as he spied the misshapen skull staring up at him. He allowed the flame to go out and decided it wasn’t worth asking about. He turned and then joined the others at the cave-in while watching the floorboards above him for
any sign of movement. He saw shadows through the cracks in the wood but decided not to waste any more ammunition on guesswork. He shook his head as his vision blurred briefly and then turned to face the men who had become his strictest enemies. Jack and Everett were already on their knees digging away at the blockage. Henri could see it would be a painfully slow process.

“Gentlemen, you have
made an otherwise boring night into something I will remember for years to come,” a man said from above in very good English. “Now, if you will surrender we can—”

The rest of the words were drowned out by a sudden burst of thirty rounds as they struck the floor above. The bullets hit everywhere around the hole.

“You ever notice how assholes like that always want to make a speech when they have
the upper hand?” Jack said as he tossed the now empty carbine to Mendenhall to reload as he bent to continue digging. Thirty feet away they heard Guzman laughing near the hole in the floor.

“Do I bore you? What are you, Special Forces perhaps?”

“This guy never gives up,” Mendenhall said and then was knocked from his feet as an explosion rocked the large laboratory. Jack, Everett, and Farbeaux
were stunned as a large hole opened up against the far wall, knocking jar after jar of the stored chemicals from their shelves. Then before they could react, several men jumped through the new opening before a defensive shot could be fired.

“I think you pissed him off Jack,” Everett said as he came to his knees and fired his weapon toward the area where the men had taken cover. Several of the
wooden tables had caught fire, adding light to the darkened laboratory.

Farbeaux stood on shaky feet and fired twice from the Beretta. He was suddenly struck and went down with a clean bullet hole in his arm.

“That hurt!” he shouted as he scrambled on his belly toward Collins, Everett, and Mendenhall. “I lost your weapon, Colonel.”

“Yeah, and you’re going to pay for it. I signed that out!”
Collins said as his anger at being trapped spilled from his mouth.

Mendenhall pulled two of the poppy-filled barrels over to use as cover while Everett and Collins dug at the fallen earth. He turned in time to see a small opening at the top. They were making headway.

“Jack!”

“Damn it Lieutenant, get those girls down that tunnel and out of here!” Collins stopped long enough to shout. Sarah had
once more disobeyed his order and came back when she heard the explosion that sealed the laboratory from the culvert. When he didn’t hear her respond, he once more started tearing at the loose earth.

“She’s starting to follow orders like the rest of us,” Everett said as he threw a large chunk of wooden beam away. He noticed that Collins was too angry to say anything.

Mendenhall fired five rounds
and hit one of the next men through the now large gap where only a few missing boards had been before.

“I see you are trapped, gentlemen. Give up now and the women can go free. Do not and they will be caught and skinned alive before they reach the river.”

Jack knew it was Guzman. The Anaconda was actually one of the men who came through the flooring from above them.

“Brave son of a bitch isn’t
he?” Farbeaux said as he opened fire with Jack’s carbine. The rounds struck the shelving above where Guzman and his men were taking cover. Through the flames of the burning wood Mendenhall saw the jars on the shelves shatter. The he saw more of the samples from a hundred years before break and splatter onto the men below.

Mendenhall changed magazines in the smoking MP-5, which had totally burned
out its sound suppressor, and then aimed at the spot he thought the voice of Juan Guzman was coming from. He was about to fire when he saw a man’s arm wave from the cover of the burning tables. Then he realized that he wasn’t waving as a small object flew from his hand. Will’s eyes widened when he realized just what the object was. He angrily stood, and in the flickering light he caught the grenade.
In a split-second reaction he tossed it back in the direction in which it was launched.

“Down!” he shouted as Henri fell next to him after seeing the amazing catch in midair.

The grenade exploded amongst the scrambling and now screaming men, sending large pieces of them in all directions. The remainder of the sample jars and more than a few of the wooden barrels of dried flowers erupted as shrapnel
tore through them.

Mendenhall stood and emptied the thirty-round magazine in his MP-5 in a spray of bullets in the general area where men were either dead or writhing in pain.

“Hah! Didn’t see that one coming did you, you bastards! That one was for Ryan!” Mendenhall screamed just a second before the wounded Farbeaux pulled him roughly to the floor.

“Didn’t Collins teach you better than that?”
the Frenchman asked with a mask of pain and anger on his face.

“Just thrilled to be here, Colonel, you ought to know that by now,” Will said as he changed the empty magazine for a new one.

“If you two are finished, we could use a hand here,” Everett said as he continued to widen the gap at the top of the cave-in.

“Go, I’ll cover us,” Henri said grabbing the MP-5 from Mendenhall.

“Why? I got
’em all!” Will said as he saw Farbeaux fire into the flickering firelight cast by the burning tables and wooden barrels.

“Well, evidently you missed one or two Lieutenant!” Henri said as he loosed more rounds in the general direction of the man who had just risen. Mendenhall, instead of helping Jack and Carl, bent back down near Farbeaux. He saw the man that had thrown the grenade go down when
Henri’s stream of bullets cut him down.

In the direction where the grenade had detonated, screams of agony were heard—cries of pain so loud and piercing all four men felt like covering their ears. They could all smell burnt flesh, the smell of dried foliage, and something they could never describe—the odor was medicinal, and as the stench grew, so did the screams of Guzman and his men.

“What
the—”

His question was interrupted by another four rounds fired by the Frenchman. They both saw the same man go down again.

“That’s one hard to kill son of a bitch!” Mendenhall said as he tried to ignore the powerful smell from the burning poppies and the stench of the liquid that had been stored in the jars.

Even as the exclamation left Mendenhall’s mouth, Farbeaux’s eyes widened. The same
man Will had shot, and then hit with the grenade, actually stood up again, this time holding a flaming leg from one of the smashed tables. Henri took careful aim and fired again. This time three rounds left the MP-5. One bullet struck the man in the neck, the next two in the jaw and the cheek. He moved back two steps and then looked up toward where his attacker had fired. Farbeaux was shocked he
was still standing. He fired one more round. This one hit the man directly where his heart should have been. Both Henri and Will saw the man’s white shirt puff out where the bullet had hit. The man started walking toward them. As Henri’s jaw dropped, a sound came from behind the overturned and flaming tables near the wall. It was an actual roar. It sounded like an ape or a bear. Will looked at Farbeaux
as the sound reverberated off the wall.

Both Everett and Collins stopped digging long enough to turn their heads to see what was happening. The sound sent chills down everyone’s spines.

“Oh, shit!” Mendenhall screamed. “Colonel, we have a problem here!”

As Jack looked on in amazement, Farbeaux emptied the rest of the magazine of 5.56 rounds into the man’s body, even striking him on the right
side of his head. The attacker was finally knocked down. As Collins started to turn back to widen the hole, he saw the man that had just been hit with fifteen rounds pop up like a Jack in the Box.

“What the hell is this?” Will said as he reached for Everett’s weapon, raised it to his shoulder, and took careful aim. This time he loosed a single round as the man drew closer. This bullet hit the
bloody guard right between the eyes. Mendenhall was relieved when the man fell back, and this time he didn’t move. He looked down at Henri. “You just have to know how to shoot, Colonel.”

Farbeaux wasn’t listening as he watched two men, one without an arm and the other with his lower jaw missing, stand up from behind the spreading flames.

“Okay, Colonel, I think I want to leave now.”

Collins
couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Men that had been shot, filled with shrapnel from a grenade, and wounded beyond any reason for them to even be moving were growling and walking toward them.

Mendenhall stood and just nodded his head at the two men as they came on. “Okay, okay! They’re drug addled or something.”

Henri fired until another of the magazines was empty. The man without a jaw was
struck in the center of his forehead and went down heavily and didn’t move. The second man stood his ground and was about to start forward once more with at least five bullet holes in his abdomen and chest, when another awful and animalistic roar filled the room once more. This time Henri, Will, and Collins actually saw the author of that sound, or rather his shadow, as he rose from behind the makeshift
and now destroyed cover.

Henri saw that the man was wearing the very same clothing that Juan Guzman was wearing earlier when Farbeaux was beaten inside of the cell. He stood and then called back to Jack.

“That’s Guzman.”

Collins saw that the man was at least a foot and a half taller than he was. He had grown so much that the shirt he wore was torn in several places. And what was worse he could
now see the man’s features in the flickering of the fire. His cheekbones were high and deep lined. His forehead was larger than normal and his arms hung far below his waist. Jack’s eyes went from the two men in front of them to the two corpses they had found earlier.

“Jesus, it’s got to be that crap from the barrels and the jars. They’ve changed!”

Henri looked from the monstrosities before them
to one of the sealed jars that had nearly decapitated him after the explosion. He involuntarily moved a few feet farther from it as another scream of animal rage filled the old laboratory.

The beast that was once Juan Guzman, the Anaconda, quickly moved, his actions as fluent as a cat’s, and took the wounded man standing before them by the throat. He raised his own man off the floor and then
they all heard his neck snap. Guzman then brought the man close to his own face and then to the complete horror of the men watching in shock, took a large bite out of the man’s face. He chewed once, twice, and then looked toward the men watching. The thing actually smiled, and then before they could react Guzman threw the dead body toward them where it landed against the rubble from the cave-in and
slid down at Everett’s feet. The roar of triumph pierced their ears.

“Oh, boy, look at this,” Will said as he stood stunned and motionless.

They saw several more men rise up behind Guzman. Some were torn to pieces, others had bullet holes across their chests and shoulders. All were changed almost as much as Guzman.

“The hole’s big enough!” Mendenhall said as he turned away from the terrifying
sight.

Henri saw Will dive next to Jack, pushing the dead man out of his way, and start tearing at the opening at the top of the debris. Everett dove in to help. Farbeaux fired the M-14 until the receiver clacked open and stayed that way. As he was starting to turn and join the flight, Jack jumped over him and dove for something Henri didn’t see, nor did he care what it was. As he turned his
eyes away from Collins, Farbeaux saw something that made him stop. It was the clear jar of liquid he had almost been killed by earlier. He quickly reached out, took the mayonnaise-sized container, and shoved it into his shirt. He scrambled up and over to help Everett and Mendenhall.

Jack was searching for something in the dark when he heard Everett. “Jack, come on, we’re through!”

He continued
looking on hands and knees. Then his hand brushed against it. He pulled the twin saddlebag to his chest, not caring that the dynamite inside was sweating. He turned toward the widened hole and started to scramble.

“Don’t wait on me, move it!” he shouted as the three beasts came on, slowly, all smiling.

As Mendenhall and then Farbeaux scrambled up and out of the old laboratory, Everett saw what
Jack was carrying. His eyes widened and then he turned and went through the opening. He didn’t wait for Jack.

Collins made it to the cave-in and then saw the two changed men behind Guzman turn on each other. The brief attack was brutal, but both of them survived. They regained their focus and then followed their boss toward Collins.

“Kiss my ass!” Jack shouted, and then, grabbing one of the
fallen M-14s, he tossed the twin saddlebags at the trio of monstrous attackers. He lowered his head, thinking that the nitroglycerine-covered dynamite would detonate upon impacting the floor, but all he heard was a laugh. He looked up and saw Guzman, his misshapen and distorted features looking down at the saddlebags.

“Shit!” Jack hissed as he scrambled to the top of the debris and entered the
hole.

Just as Guzman turned away from the saddlebags, he laughed, an evil, cold sound, as he saw his antagonist’s legs vanish into the escape hole.