Artifact Read online

  They might have frozen Jack if this had been the first time he looked into them. But it wasn’t. Even so, a psychic shock blossomed against the back of Jack’s brain. The creature leaped at him.

  Jack held the shotgun with rocklike steadiness. He pulled the trigger, knowing that his little sister stood behind the madman. He could not afford to miss. The weapon boomed with a thunderous noise. The buckshot tore into the freak’s chest, stopping his forward momentum.

  Jack pumped the weapon, ejecting a smoking cartridge that struck the wall, putting a new shell into the chamber.

  BOOM!

  The round staggered the skinny freak.

  Jack pumped the shotgun again.

  BOOM!

  He knocked the freak onto the floor, bleeding badly, splashing red onto the walls. A streak crossed Penny’s left check.

  Pumping another shell into the chamber, Jack walked up to the staring animal on the floor. He lowered the barrel, touching the freak’s forehead. He didn’t want to miss.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Click, click, click, click, click.

  Jack finally realized he was out of shells. He stood over the thing, poking it with the shotgun barrel. Only once he realized the freak wasn’t going to come back to life and murder his little sister did he drop the shotgun and go to her.

  That night forever altered their lives. They went to live with their aunt and uncle across the country. As anyone could imagine, Penny had problems after that. She’d become a psychiatrist, trying to work through her trauma, finally marrying a good man and having two children.

  Jack had become a cop. He’d done his job a little too well for the new United States of America. More than once, his superiors had told him he wasn’t the caped crusader. That kind of thinking would land him in prison sooner rather than later.

  Luckily, D17 had found him in time. The mental fuse that burned out at fifteen had stayed that way. Jack had uncommon presence of mind and a fierce determination. The episode had turned him upside-down. He had a hard time living a normal life, doing the stuff that everyone else found easy like hosting barbecues or lounging in front of the TV. Instead, what normal people found extraordinarily difficult, like staying cool in a firefight or knowing what to do during a blazing fire, he could do like he’d been born to it.

  It made for a hard life. In order to compensate, Jack lived by a strict code of honor. He was afraid that if he went by his gut, he would go so far off the reservation that the rest of humanity would have to hunt him down and put a slug in his brain.

  So far, in his struggle to live right, Jack had stayed on the good side of the law.

  Tonight, he stalked through the Ardennes Forest with Simon Green. The rest of the D17 team was in a van a mile away, monitoring their progress.

  Their cover was perfect: industrial spies working for a Russian consortium—IZENOV—known for their heavy-handed theft. D’erlon Enterprises was the target, the experimental industrial site deep in the forest far away from prying eyes.

  Something odd went on inside the plant. At least, that was Jack’s suspicion. Why otherwise did his orders call for this clandestine search? Simon and he were particularly in search of anything magnetic, a specialty of D’erlon Enterprises. The company was one of the major suppliers of magnetic containers for the giant CERN collider in Switzerland.

  Jack was the protection and movement specialist. Simon knew how to use a gun, of course. More importantly, Simon had trained with DARPA people, making him the scientist on the op, the magnetic-everything specialist.

  Motioning sharply with his left arm, Jack advanced. He scanned the forest as he cradled a suppressed rifle. Simon and he climbed a hill one slow step at a time. They crested the top, starting down into dark foliage.

  “Trouble,” Phelps said in Jack’s earbud.

  She was in the van, monitoring Jack and Simon’s body sensors. Elliot had optics in his goggles slaved to her screen. There was an infrared sensor clipped to his chest and a high-frequency chip in the headband of his hood. The same held true for Simon.

  “To your left,” Phelps said.

  Jack raised his left arm with his fist clenched to halt Simon. Slowly, he turned to his left.

  “I see it,” Phelps said. “I think it’s an emitter. Just a second…okay, you can go closer.”

  Jack had been crouching. He stood, moving a couple of steps closer.

  “Stop,” she said in his ear.

  He froze.

  “Give me a sec to figure this out,” Phelps said.

  Jack waited, scanning the darkness. There were millions of leaves. A section of the forest down there rustled as the wind moaned, bending a few of the highest branches. Then the wind eased and the leaves stilled.

  Something felt…wrong. Jack didn’t know what, but something waited for them. Maybe it was time to abort.

  -2-

  ARDENNES FOREST

  FRANCE

  The wolfish beast trotted through the forest, whining eerily to itself. It was big like an Irish wolfhound with a shaggy coat, but it had a wider chest and extra-powerful jaws. The braincase was also larger than seemed natural. The eyes glittered with an intelligence that was higher on the Benson-Harris Cogitative Scale than a chimpanzee.

  A bulky, black-matted collar buzzed gently around its neck. The beast knew the meaning of that. Through painful trial and error, the beast knew to the exact millimeter the length and breadth of its range. It had explored every rock and tree, seeking a way to extend its territory.

  The masters brought it food. At other times, they induced lesser humans to engage it in battle. The beast had proven victorious four out of six times. Each loss had brought electrical agony from the collar. As if the jolts could exceed the pain of its wounded vanity. The beast detested every defeat with an unquenchable pride.

  Twice, it had attempted to escape the boundary limits of its territory. Each of those times had brought debilitating pain.

  The beast felt constricted by its narrow band of territory. It was intensely curious about what went on inside the forbidden zone. Often, it lay in the shadows, watching the humans enter and exit the block buildings. They did things down there that made its hackles rise. Sometimes, the high-pitched sounds from there drove it away to the edge of the outer fence.

  The beast knew its role. It was a guardian, but it refused to bark at anything. It had seen dogs before, pack creatures of low cunning and high instinct. Dogs were more cunning than rabbits and deer. They looked like the beast, but growled and barked with savage stupidity.

  Oh yes, the beast knew it was greater than a dog. Three times, the masters had let a pack into its territory. Once, the dogs had been the subspecies known as German Shepherd. The beast had heard humans speak the words. The last time, Great Danes had roamed through its territory, pissing on everything.

  The beast had slaughtered the dull-witted German Shepherds and another, tougher breed. The Great Danes had chased it, finally cornering it by the creek. Using their instinctual mentality against them, the beast had whined in submission, cowering, finally turning onto its back for them.

  The Great Danes had sniffed it at great length, growling menacingly. Finally, the pack had let it live. For a week afterward, it trailed the Great Danes like an outcast. They suffered its existence and the beast watched and cataloged everything they did. Finally, the beast began an insidious campaign, making its first kill by the creek, trying to wash away its former humiliation with their blood. After the second kill, the giant dogs hunted it again, which was exactly what the beast wanted. It turned at bay each time the fastest Great Dane reached it. The beast knew a cunning move, knocking the opponent onto its back, lunging in and ripping out the throat in an instant. The instinctual creatures had wished to dominate its narrow strip of territory. That night, they paid the ultimate price for their error of judgment.

  The beast recalled the episode as it trotted in the darkness, plotting its escape. It cataloged the restrictions surrounding its territory as it had the movements o
f the Great Danes. The humans acted as if they were the highest species. The beast thought otherwise, having a feral hatred of the two-legged creatures.

  The beast halted then and cocked its head.

  Why did it hate humans with such ferocity? Why had it needed to slaughter the larger but lesser dogs? It had observed the other animals in its territory. No other creature had its murderous nature.

  As it stood there in the darkness, the beast wondered about that. It wasn’t an instinctual animal, but a thinking creature of high reasoning power. Why then should it hate so unreasonably?

  The beast whined, scratching the leaves and dirt with its front paws. It did not hate now. The ferocious desires only leapt into existence when it saw other higher forms in its territory.

  It growled while thinking of dogs and humans wandering in its zone.

  The beast shook its head. It must think this through. Might this hatred have an unnatural cause? By unnatural, it meant…a human causation.

  The beast had seen young animals before. They always acted stupidly. It had come to see that young creatures learned. That held true for rabbits, squirrels, robins, any animal really.

  As it stood in the dark, the beast tried to recall its puppyhood. Dimly, it recalled harsh-sounding humans poking shock rods at it. They had tormented it. Then, handlers had slipped crazed dogs with dense necks and wide jowls into its cage. Each of those fighting dogs had always attacked and proven difficult to kill.

  The beast was shocked to realize that humans—the masters—had taught it to hate as it did.

  Why would the masters have done such a thing?

  The beast resumed its trot. It must reason this out. Was it destined to attack every higher form? What kind of existence was that?

  It would seem a lonely and hatful existence. Was it possible there was more to life?

  The beast whined eerily. It needed to think this through carefully.

  -3-

  THE CALYPSO

  87 MILES OFF THE COAST OF SUMATRA

  Dr. Selene Khan sat in her cabin, studying the latest radar readings concerning the sea floor. In her shorts and half-buttoned shirt, she didn’t look like an underwater geology professor for the University of Hawaii. Selene was thirty-two, had long, dark hair and could have posed in a Calvin Klein ad. Although she pretended otherwise with others, Selene still grieved over her broken relationship with Dr. Daniel Ferguson, the former chair of the Geology Department.

  Selene slapped a folder onto the chart table. She should be happy that she was finally free from the manipulative Danny Ferguson. The man had been twice her age when they’d begun dating. Selene had realized that she had issues in this area. Her foster parents had adopted her when she’d been three. They’d divorced two years later, and her foster mother had been too bitter to remarry, wanting nothing more to do with men.

  Danny had swept Selene up her first year of college. She’d truly felt loved for the first time in her life, and the wining, dining and “cultured” existence had been intoxicating. What had finally broken the relationship after all this time was Selene’s realization that Danny had been taking credit for her work from the beginning. It reminded her how Edison had used the brilliant Nikola Tesla, promising him a staggering amount of money if he could redesign Edison’s inefficient electric motors and generators. Tesla had done just that and then asked for his promised money. Edison had laughed it off, telling Tesla that he didn’t understand American humor. That sounded like something Danny could have said.

  Danny had been more cunning than brilliant. She wondered these days if he’d zeroed in on her for her brains rather than her body, as she’d believed at first.

  Selene glanced at the TR-1010 she had invented and constructed. She wondered how Claire was doing with hers at Angkor Wat. She should have heard from Claire by now.

  Shrugging—sometimes Claire was gone for weeks at a time, telling no one—Selene opened the folder. She scanned the radar-mapped sea floor, comparing it to the one before the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake. When the India Tectonic Plate had subducted on December 26 beneath the Burma Plate, it had raised the ocean floor in the Indian Ocean to such an extent that there had been a permanent rise in the global sea level by 0.004 inches. In fact, it had—

  A loud bang sounded from outside, causing Selene’s head to snap upright.

  What was that?

  The Calypso lurched—several seconds passed—and went hard to starboard. That threw Selene out of her chair and might have tumbled her onto her side. She’d practiced ballet in junior high and high school—the original instructor had told her foster mother she was very gifted and strong for her age. Selene had worked hard at the art. It was one of the reasons she still had exceptional balance and firm, pleasantly elongated muscles.

  The years of training and the natural inner balance allowed Selene to catch herself before she sprawled onto the cabin floor.

  She realized the steady thrum of the main diesel engines had stopped. The Calypso, a rather small, ocean-going vessel, usually had a steady vibration to it. That had quit as well. Undoubtedly, that had something to do with the bang and the lurch.

  Selene hurried to the hatch. She couldn’t believe how many accidents had occurred during the voyage out. It had never been this way when Danny ran the research trips.

  Selene opened the hatch, stepping into a short corridor. Several quick strides brought her to a ladder. She climbed it, seeing the bare-chested Forrest Dean listening to the chief engineer on deck.

  Forrest was a piece of work. He was older, maybe forty-five or so, stocky, not quite six feet with a chest full of white hair. Forrest had a permanently deep tan, rugged features and wore a gold chain around a muscled neck. He was the oldest person aboard ship and had come to them several weeks before they left Honolulu.

  Many years ago, Forrest had been in SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1, stationed in Pearl Harbor. The man knew diving and underwater vehicles. He would be helping Selene with the T-9 Driver Propulsion Vehicle. Forrest could be gruff, and there was something in his eyes Selene didn’t quite trust, a dangerous wildness.

  “No,” Junior said. The engineer was a big Hawaiian with massive hands who had previously worked on nuclear submarines. Junior towered over Forrest, looking as if he could hammer the ex-SEAL into the deck.

  “I don’t want to hear that,” Forrest told Junior. “You get the engines working or I’m—”

  “What’s going on?” Selene said.

  The two turned to her. Forrest gave her the once over, his gaze going down her bare legs and then back up, pausing at her breasts before he focused on her eyes.

  Selene crossed her arms, wishing she’d put on more clothes.

  “It’s the main engine,” Junior said, shaking his head. “We’ve lost—”

  “He’s trying to tell you that he wants to go home,” Forrest interrupted.

  “Is that true?” Selene asked Junior.

  The Hawaiian wouldn’t look at her now. “This is the third accident so far,” Junior said. “Fate is trying to warn us. The voyage is cursed. I can feel it, but I’ve been trying to tell myself it isn’t true. Now—”

  “Take a piss on your curse,” Forrest said. “Then, fix the engine and let’s get going.”

  Junior scowled down at Forrest. “You’re not as tough as you think, you know that?”

  Forrest smiled. “Why don’t you toss me off the boat then? Show the doctor how tough you are.”

  Junior glared at Forrest, flexing his thick fingers as if he might try.

  “I can deal with this, thank you,” Selene told Forrest. Why did some men think all women were helpless?

  The shirtless man stared at her. The force of Forrest’s gaze made him seem like a wolf ready to lunge at her throat. Then, Forrest blinked, doing something with his eyes. Their force faded back to normal. The man took a deliberate step away from Junior, and he looked elsewhere as if finding something absorbing in the sea.

  That was weird.

  “I
just want to know one thing,” Selene said, turning to Junior. “How long until we’re on our way again?”

  “You don’t understand,” Junior said.

  “How long?” she asked, remembering how Danny had spoken with the crew. The professor had never asked for their opinions on what he should do, but how long it would take them to do what he wanted done.

  A guilty look crossed Junior’s features. He seemed to be on the verge of telling her something, probably another excuse. She’d had enough of those.

  “I don’t want to hear about curses or bad luck,” Selene said.

  “Doctor Khan—” Junior said, going all formal on her. “It will take…hours.”

  Forrest quit sea gazing to stare at Junior again. He must have amped up the wattage because Junior noticed. Lines appeared in the Hawaiian’s forehead.

  Junior shrugged, muttering, “Maybe less.”

  “I want us going again in a lot less,” Selene said.

  “It’s probably an easy fix,” Forrest said, “a simple adjustment and bam, we’re on our way again.”

  “You want to give it a try?” Junior asked, without looking at Forrest.

  “If you want,” Forrest answered, “I can babysit you and make sure you don’t sit on your lard—”

  “Please,” Selene said. “Let’s keep this civil.”

  “Sure, doc,” Forrest said, with what might have been a smirk. “Fifteen minutes,” he told Junior.

  “I’m not making any promises,” Junior told Selene. “You don’t know—”

  “Junior,” Selene said. “Is something the matter? You don’t seem yourself lately.”

  Junior stared at the deck.

  “Do you know anything about diesels?” she asked Forrest, deciding to sting Junior’s pride.

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  “Doctor,” Junior said. “You don’t know what you’re…” His voice faded away.

  “What don’t I know?” Selene asked.

  Junior shook his head.

  “I want those diesels running right now,” she said. “Or I’ll put someone in charge who can keep them running.”