Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

He reached the top step and paused. The splintered wicket gate hung precariously from its hinges, and light from the Great Hall shone through the opening to wash over the overturned Rezvani. He glanced through its rear window and saw two dead men inside, one in front, the other in the rear. Their arms and legs were wildly contorted, and the interior of the vehicle was clotted with blood.

His carbine at the high ready, Carmody strode around the Rezvani to the castle’s enormous main door, backed against the latch side of the shattered wicket, and leaned his head slightly past its frame to peer into the hall. He saw no movement, took a deep breath, and angled into the castle. Leading with the barrel of his outthrust rifle, his legs spread apart, his knees bent to lower his center of gravity.

He stopped, checked left and right. The hall was one of the few parts of Castle Graguscu he’d seen in Satu Mare’s photographic archives, all dating back to the end of World War II. But those drab black-and-white images were of a crumbling, neglected ballroom hastily converted into a Wehrmacht field headquarters and crowded with radio equipment, maps, and military banners. There had been faded and peeling wall murals, cracked and broken floor tiles. The gigantic fireplace opposite the door had been crammed with Nazi plunder. Silver and gold and statues and artwork.

What Carmody saw in front of him now was an expensively, conscientiously restored shrine to warfare, conquest, and death. The carved stone skulls under the ceiling posts, the grisly battle scenes, the rows of swords, axes, and lances...

He knew centuries separated the Poisoner’s rule from its Nazi occupiers. But there might as well have been a direct, uninterrupted line of succession.

He moved forward, stopped again, scanned the room, and listened. He saw no sign of Clinia from Cluj and heard nothing but the drones making their approach. The sound was loud and low, heavy and undulant. A pulsing oscillation in the air outside the wicket. He didn’t know how fast the swarm could travel. But it was getting close.

A long moment passed. Carmody’s eyes briefly came to rest on the high spiral staircase ahead of him. He wondered if they reached all the way to the tower where he’d left Clinia.

He looked up the stairs. There didn’t seem to be anyone on them. From what he’d read of her emotional state, he didn’t think Clinia would have stayed in the tower. She had been frightened, angry, and humiliated. No, she wouldn’t have stayed. But she would have had plenty of time to come down here. So where was she?

Carmody sensed something was very wrong.

He went deeper inside. The floor was square black-and-white marble tiles. His footsteps were flat and unechoing. He studied the walls for hidden doors as he advanced but didn’t see any obvious telltales. That didn’t mean there were no secret ways in or out. It just meant he couldn’t see them.

He neared the middle of the hall and checked around some more, glancing ahead, and up, and to his sides. Above him on the left was a balcony overhang. It was about fifty feet up, oval, and in partial shadow. In the historical photos, a swastika banner had been displayed from it.

Carmody couldn’t see up onto the balcony from his angle. He took a couple of steps forward and craned his neck around for a better look and finally saw Clinia standing behind its stone railing.

She wasn’t alone. A guy was behind her, holding a gun against her head. He was tall and bony with combed-back yellow hair, and wore the same kind of black uniform the security men in the hallway upstairs had worn.

“Stay right where you are,” he said. “Another step, and I’ll kill her.”

Carmody said nothing. He didn’t move. Clinia looked dazed, in shock. Her face was a battered mess.

His neck tightened up. There was a wide-open gash on her forehead, one of her eyes was swollen shut, and her right cheek was about twice its normal size. She was laboring for breath, and no wonder. Her nose was broken and skewed to one side, the blood dripping thickly from her nostrils. It ran down over her lips and chin and had streaked and spattered the front of her dress.

“She told me you would be back,” the yellow-haired guy said. “Her gallant American.”

Carmody said nothing. He heard what sounded like an elevator door opening to his right. In his peripheral vision, he saw a group of three men appear through a sliding panel in one of the murals. The guy in the lead was enormous with a bald head like a cannonball. He didn’t have a visible firearm, but the two behind him were carrying Kalashnikov AK-74 military rifles, the original, better-balanced version with a laminated wood stock and handguard. The big guy came up on Carmody and stopped slightly to his right, while his companions swung around behind him.

He felt the bore of a rifle push against the middle of his back.

“Drop your weapon,” the big one said. His voice was hoarse and gritty. “Hands up in the air.”

Carmody stayed very still. He did not let go of the carbine.

“Drop it,” repeated the giant. “Or she’s dead.”

Carmody didn’t move. He was six-one, and the guy towered above him. He knew he’d seen him before; a living mountain wasn’t easy to forget.

But that wasn’t important right now. The important thing was that there was no bluff in his voice. The guy on the balcony had done an awful number on Clinia. Savagely beaten her. He would have no compunction about killing her.

He let the rifle drop to the floor. The big man kicked it away, and it went spinning and clattering across the checkered marble tiles.

“Now your helmet. The goggles.”

Carmody kept staring at the woman on the balcony. He’d told her to wait for him, wait here, and she had listened.

His lips moved. It could have been a curse spoken under his breath. Then he took off the helmet assembly and held it out. The big man grabbed it with his right hand and passed it to one of the guys behind him, reaching into his jacket pocket with his other hand.

Carmody barely had a chance to react, rolling his head to the left a split second before the giant brought his hand out of the pocket and hauled off at him, smashing a fist the size of a meat loaf into the side of his face.

Carmody saw stars. It was like being hit with a carpenter’s mallet. If he hadn’t sideslipped the blow, it would have shattered the hinges of his jaw. He rocked on his legs but somehow kept them underneath him.

The giant threw another punch, a sweeping right hook at his face, and he brought his forearm up to block it. Carmody had solid, powerful arms. They were built up and corded from his shoulders to his wrists. But the hit was worse than he expected, shooting a bolt of pain through flesh and muscle to his radial bone.

A glimpse of what was in the giant’s thick, blunt fingers—the object he’d gotten out of his pocket—explained things. It was a weight load, with a stirrup around the knuckles and a tubular metal rod wrapped in his hand.

Carmody no sooner saw it there than the huge, brass-knuckled fist swung at him again. He bent at the knees to duck below its arcing path, then sprang up with his hands clenched together and drove them up hard under the giant’s arms and into his throat. If he remembered right about where he’d seen him before, it would be a sore spot.

The giant staggered on his heels. His growl of pain and anger sounded like wet gravel rattling inside a metal pipe. Carmody pressed in on him, and was about to ram his interlocked hands up into his throat again, when one of the guards who’d been standing behind him slammed his rifle’s wooden butt into his temple.

This time Carmody didn’t just see stars. This time a bright white nova blew up in his vision and splintered off in all directions. His knees going rubbery, he managed to swivel around, hit the guard with a right uppercut, and then jab his left fist into his cheekbone. The guard went spilling back onto his ass, but Carmody was just barely aware of it. He was still blinking and trying to clear his eyes of the flying, shooting shards of light, when the giant came in on him again like a maddened bull, moving faster than someone of his proportions should have, driving him backward with all his mass and muscle, slamming him up against the wall adjacent to the archway. Carmody hit it with a thud. His spine crunched. His ribs groaned. He felt his knees buckle some more and sagged an inch or so down the wall but stayed on his feet. The giant was right up against him now. Pressing him against the wall with his broad slab of a chest. His hammy, loaded fist clubbed the side of Carmody’s skull again, and again, and again.