Callsign: King II- Underworld by Jeremy Robinson Read Free Book Online Page A

it?”
    King shrugged.
    Pierce pondered the problem a moment. “Okay, let’s look at this objectively. That picture shows what appears to be some kind of bipedal animal. At first I thought it looked similar to Red.” While Pierce wasn’t part of the mission to Vietnam that took the team up against a pack of devolved Neanderthal women, he’d been told the story, shown pictures and knew exactly who Red was; Rook wouldn’t let them forget. “But the more I look at the image, the more the hair doesn’t make sense. There are different lengths. Different colors. It doesn’t look natural. But it’s definitely some kind of hominid. It’s also wearing that coin as a medallion, like an amulet, and that most certainly is not typical primate behavior.”
    “So, maybe someone else…a human…put that thing around its neck. Like dog tags?”
    “Possibly, though why they would choose an ancient Greek coin is beyond me. I think it’s more plausible that the animal is exhibiting a higher degree of intelligence than its appearance suggests. It could be a living example of the fabled ‘missing link’ in the fossil record. Of course, that still doesn’t explain the coin.” Suddenly, Pierce’s eyes grew wide as the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. “You think this is something like the hydra, don’t you?”
    “We know for a fact that Hercules—Alexander—traveled to South America in ancient times. What I want to know, and I’m asking you in your professional capacity, is if you can give me a better explanation for how that coin wound up in Phoenix, Arizona?”
    “Don’t bullshit me, Jack. It’s a lot more than that. You think that coin might be evidence that Ridley has found another monster from Greek mythology.”
    King heard the anxiety in his friend’s voice when he spoke of Ridley. Only a couple years previously, Manifold Genetics’ experiments with the remains of the hydra—a creature with the ability to instantly heal from any wound, and which unfortunately had not been simply the stuff of fairy tales—had resulted in Pierce being taken prisoner by Ridley, and subsequently used as a guinea pig in unspeakable medical experiments. Pierce had made a full physical recovery from the ordeal; whether he had recovered from the psychological trauma was another matter entirely.
    King wondered if he hadn’t made a grave mistake in dragging his old friend along on this outing. “George, right now I know as much as you do. Yeah, it could be Ridley. Or it could be something completely unrelated. That coin is our only clue, and that’s why I immediately thought of you. But if you have even a hint of a bad feeling about this, we’ll call the game.”
    “I may not be in your league,” Pierce said, trying to sound confident, “but I know how to duck and cover when the bullets start flying. If this turns out to be a chance to take down some still functioning project of Ridley’s, then I definitely want in. And if not…well, then the explanation for that coin’s presence in the Americas might rewrite the history books. Just one thing, though.”
    “Name it.”
    Pierce grinned. “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you call me ‘pawn.’”
     

 
     
     
    10.
     
    East of Phoenix, Arizona — 0520 UTC (10:20 pm Local)
     
    Nina Raglan stepped out of the cool, air-conditioned environment of the Toyota Land Cruiser and embraced the warm desert night. The temperature was still in the high eighties, but cooling as the rocky soil radiated its stored energy away into the cloudless sky. A life-long resident of the southwest, she thought of this as comfortable weather; in just a few short weeks, the daily low temperature would be closer to one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and the highs would regularly exceed one-hundred and ten.
    She was parked at the Campaign Trailhead, in the northeast part of the Superstition Wilderness. The Land Cruiser had nimbly negotiated the eight-mile long stretch of unimproved Forest