The Curse of Medusa

Deakin turned once again to Brooke, Hawke and Alex. All of them were thinking the same thing.

Brooke spoke first. “We need someone to get over to his place right now!”

Deakin nodded and turned to his man. “Doyle — I want you to get over to Kevin Novak’s place right away, and take your best man.”

“No… wait,” Hawke said. He turned to Brooke. “We need to stay inside of this, Jack. We should send one of our guys with Agent Doyle.”

“Who do you suggest?”

“An old friend of mine just arrived in DC and is waiting outside the White House. He can be trusted one hundred per cent.”

Brooke looked confused. “How did he get to the White House in the middle of this curfew?”

“Yeah, curfews don’t stop a man like Vincent Reno.”

“Ah,” Alex said. “So that’s the mystery back-up you texted from the jet.”

“Exactly.”

Brooke nodded. “All right, so here’s what we’re going to do. Doyle and this Reno guy — get over to Novak’s place and see where that leads. Meanwhile I want Hawke and one of my agents to get over to the Smithsonian and check out just what the hell Frank Watkins is talking about.”

Suddenly they were on the go again. Not for the first time, Hawke found himself being grateful that Lea and the others were nowhere near this mess. The thought of her safe and sound on Elysium was of some comfort, at least.

* * *

The six men all had Secret Service ID and were armed with SIG Sauer P229s. They arrived at the Smithsonian a few moments after President Kimble’s telephone call to Director Watkins, and moments later were ushered through the main gates and shown to the elevator.

As the elevator descended to Archive 7, no one spoke until the little light above the door indicated they had arrived. Then one of the men said: “Let’s make this quick.”

They moved to the security team, where Captain Aaron Reznik looked at the paperwork. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. In nearly twenty years in the US Army he’d never seen anything like this before.

“I’m going to need to show this to the Colonel. Wait here.”

Reznik ordered the guards to keep the men outside the archive while he made a phone call.

“Sir, I think you need to see this.”

“What is it, Reznik?”

“It’s an Executive Order, sir, signed by the President of the United States.”

Colonel Prescott was unmoved. “That’s fine, Reznik. I’m on my way.”

Reznik hung up the phone and told the men to wait. Two minutes later the heavy, metal door swung open and the tall, slim figure of Colonel Douglas Prescott appeared in the half-light. “Follow me,” was all he said.

Reznik and the group of men obeyed in diligent silence as they followed the senior army man through the doorway and down a long corridor. Their footsteps echoed loudly off the brushed aluminum walls and ceiling as they walked to the end where a second door awaited them.

Prescott punched in a long keycode and the second door swung open to reveal a large warehouse, several storeys underground, built into the bedrock beneath the city itself. If any of the men were impressed by it, they didn’t show it.

“Where is the object?” one of them asked.

“Over there,” Prescott said quietly, his breath showing in the cold damp air of the storage facility. The whole place was full of boxes stacked up to create what looked almost like a maze. He pointed to the far wall, which contained hundreds of what looked like very large safety deposit boxes. “Follow me.”

They walked across the warehouse to the far wall in silence. Something made Reznik glance over his shoulder but nothing was there except the USSS Agents. As he moved along behind the Colonel he read the codes and descriptions on the locked doors of the boxes… X193745-4: ARK OF THE COVENANT… X375837-1: POSEIDON’S TRIDENT… X422387-0: ULTRA-CLASSIFIED.

Reznik shivered. “This whole place creeps me out.”

Prescott shot him a look. “That’s enough, Captain!”

The Colonel tapped in another long keycode and the large door clicked open. He swung it fully open and walked inside.

The men swarmed inside the small room. “We’ll take it from here, Colonel.”

They moved ahead of Prescott and Reznik and formed a huddle.

“What are you men doing there?” Prescott said nervously. He reached for his gun as the men opened the heavy safe door at the end of the room and extracted something from within it.

The agents turned to reveal they were now wearing gas masks and fitting long black NBC gloves on their hands. The man who had spoken back in the elevator was now holding the most dreadful thing Reznik had ever seen, but the young American officer had no time to react. A second after his eyes settled on the horror before him, he felt himself stiffening. His breathing became more labored and now he was unable to move his legs, or even call out for help.

His desperate eyes moved just enough to see Colonel Prescott going through the same terrible ordeal — clutching at his throat but unable to move or even scream out in terror.