“So, how’re we doing this?” Diego asked.
Bowcut moved by his side. She unfastened his backpack and grabbed a rope. “We throw strobes into the breach to push back any nearby creatures, and we all keep one lit on our belts at all times. This should keep the creatures at bay. I’ll rappel down first, you both follow behind.”
“That nest has gotta be full of methane like New York, don’t you think?” Cafferty asked.
“I’m sure,” she agreed. “We’ve got twenty minutes down there max, before we lose consciousness. So let’s move fast.”
“You don’t gotta tell me twice,” Diego said. He took deep breaths to keep calm. He had no problem getting involved in the action, even as the thrill battled internally against the fear of death. He reminded himself he was capable. He was the man who single-handedly saved President Reynolds, the man who took out the Foundation’s top agent, who had infiltrated the Secret Service.
The gangster turned good . . . turned gangster. Sort of.
The disaster in New York had changed him. It was as if invisible chains had snapped off his previous vow to follow the straight and narrow. Back to being street Diego with a legit cause.
“Ready?” Cafferty asked.
“Let’s do it.”
Munoz squeezed the sides of a strobe and threw it into the hole. Intense flashes blasted from the sphere as it plummeted. He had nicknamed them “disco balls” but it had never caught on with the team—their loss, he thought. When the strobe hit solid ground somewhere below, hundreds of shrieks exploded out of the breach, though they quickly grew fainter as the creatures fled from the blinding light.
Munoz started humming “I Will Survive” as he watched the dangerous dance playing out below them until a sharp look from Sarah cut him off.
“Would you prefer I sing ‘I Need A Hero’?” he asked. Bowcut finally smiled.
Meanwhile, Cafferty threw in another strobe for good measure. Bowcut had already secured the rope. She slung her lasers over her shoulder, then rappelled down, leaning back, boots planted against the wall. She lowered herself through the man-made tunnel for maybe a hundred feet.
Toward the bottom, the tunnel opened up into a massive, cathedral-sized cavern thousands of feet deep, with small caves peppering the walls—very much like the one below the Hudson River. It was like hanging over the Grand Canyon—if the Grand Canyon was filled with lightning-fast monsters bent on wiping every human off the face of the earth.
She could hear the screeches of the creatures in the shadows, shielding themselves from the powerful strobe lights. It was a cacophony louder than the Giants games her father and brother used to take her to. Bowcut could also feel the air was different. Without gas masks, as they hadn’t expected to enter a breach, they had only minutes to uncover Van Ness’ plans with this nest.
Below her was a rocky overhang with some kind of large man-made device on it—probably whatever Van Ness’ men had lowered down. She tossed a strobe grenade onto the ledge, and unseen creatures bolted to safety. Bowcut’s boots hit the ledge and she quickly whipped out her laser for any creature bold enough to strike.
“I found something,” she called up to Cafferty and Munoz, who were in the process of descending.
“On our way,” Diego shouted back, halfway down the breach with Cafferty. As they neared the cavern below, the sound of the creatures grew louder.
Munoz attempted to copy Bowcut’s rappelling technique. After sixty feet of descending, though, his feet slipped, and he dangled over the abyss, clutching the rope in a white-knuckled grip. He told himself to stay calm and drew in a deep breath. He hadn’t done anything like this since a disorganized team-building exercise a few years ago, and even back then he didn’t pay much attention because the instructors had done all the hard work for them. He gradually lowered himself, inch by inch, gaining confidence as he neared the ledge, and eventually his boots hit the ground. Cafferty landed next to him moments later. They stood on the rocky ledge and looked out on the expanse, in awe of what the creatures had carved out of the earth.
“It’s oddly beautiful,” Diego said.
“Too bad everything in here wants to rip us to shreds,” Cafferty replied. He scanned the walls of the cavern for any signs of an impending attack, but the strobe lights were doing their job.
“All right, let’s see what we’ve got,” Diego said, approaching a large glass case perched on the overhang. Inside the thick glass sat a three-foot-long dense metallic cylinder. A black wireless antenna protruded from the small hole on the left side. It led to a module inside with a tiny blinking green light. Wires from the device connected to a timer. The timer counted down methodically.
25:07:23
25:07:22
25:07:21
With each blinking flash, the clarity of the situation increased. All he could do was stare in disbelief.
“Holy shit . . . is it a bomb?” Cafferty asked, but Diego ignored him, still studying the device and the markings on the case itself. “Diego?”
Cafferty stared at Munoz, a sickly green cast to his face.
“Diego,” he asked again. “Is it a bomb?”
“This . . . this isn’t just a . . . bomb,” Diego said, his voice trembling. “It’s a thermonuclear bomb. Big enough to wipe out these creatures . . . and all of London. And probably much of southern England.”
Cafferty’s eyes widened and he shot a look at Bowcut.
“And it goes off tomorrow at . . .”
Diego glanced at his watch.
“. . . midnight.”