The Cerberus Protocol (Hellstalkers Science Fiction Horror Series) Read online

  Jock frowned. "What’s his background then?"

  Henderson cleared his throat. "I’m not former military if that’s what you’re asking."

  Jock sighed. "How do you know about guns, mate? That’s what I’m asking. After all, it’s not as though you’ve been assigned to lead us without any combat experience, is it?"

  Memphis frowned, feeling the barb.

  Henderson shrugged. "I grew up around guns. My father was an instructor in the military. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been shooting. You want to know fps, windage, angles, I can tell you."

  Jock pointed. "Suppose you start by telling me why we’re not using the old reliable MP5 and instead got that thing?"

  "That thing," said Henderson picking up the submachine gun, "is known as a PSD - personal security detachment. It’s from a company called LWRC and it hits much, much harder than your friend the MP5." He smiled at Jock. "I love the MP5, too. And for CQB stuff, it might once have ruled the roost."

  "Did the job when I was in the Regiment," said Jock.

  "No doubt," said Henderson. "But the problem with the MP5 is that it shoots 9mm. It lacks stopping power in close quarters battle. And judging from what Trent has told me, you’re all going to need some extra kinetic energy going downrange at your targets."

  Ulf spoke up. "So, what’s the score on the PSD then?"

  "6.8 Remington SPC," said Henderson. "It’s a more powerful round and at CQB distances, it’s like taping a cinder block onto a sledge hammer. It hits hard, dumps out, and takes your target down like a tractor trailer slamming into a wall." He looked at Jock again. "Your MP5 usually shot 9x19mm Parabellum, unless it was configured for the 10mm. The 6.8 is heftier."

  Alena picked up one of the PSDs and hefted it. "It’s not heavy."

  Henderson nodded. "That’s the Magpul CTR stock. Plus, the barrel’s only eight inches. It’s compact, lightweight, and capable of shooting from inside a car. Or from under a sport coat. On an aircraft. When you’re short on space and need to have a reliable knock-down weapon, this is it."

  "So you say," said Alena. "But I never trust a weapon that I have not used myself before."

  Henderson smiled and turned to Trent. "Which would bring us to the next activity, wouldn’t it?"

  Trent nodded. "Indeed." He looked at the team. "We’ve arranged a little exercise for you."

  "What sort of exercise?" asked Memphis. He wondered why this was the first he was learning about it.

  Grinning, Trent said, "How about a day in the Killing House?"

  Jock’s eyes lit up. "You’ve got one?"

  "We’ve got pretty much everything we need right here on the compound."

  Jock scooped up a PSD and slid the bolt back before slapping it home again. "Right, that’s a bit of good news then."

  Ulf looked excited as well. Memphis frowned. He’d done some urban assault training in the Rangers, but probably nothing like what Jock and Ulf had done in special operations. He glanced at Alena who looked at Jock and Ulf like they were two little boys getting ready to play with squirt guns.

  Trent led them outside to the Jeep Cherokee and they clambered inside with the guns. As Henderson drove them down the worn track to a part of the compound Memphis hadn’t seen before, he nodded at the pistols.

  "Those are standard issue U.S.Ps. But we’ll be customizing them for the type of ammunition you guys will be using on your special targets."

  "Meaning what?" asked Memphis.

  Trent turned in his seat. "We’ve got some special rounds that Henderson is working on. A combination of stuff that should kill targets quite easily."

  "We hope," said Henderson.

  "Lot of hoping going on," said Jock. "Good thing we can get some training in before we crack on."

  Ulf nodded. "Agreed."

  Alena shrugged. "Training is no replacement for actual experience."

  Jock frowned. "Well, it sure in bloody hell helps." He nudged Trent. "Live fire, yeah?"

  Trent nodded. "Have to use live ammo. We train like we fight."

  Jock nodded. "Glad to see this unit has got some standards after all. I was beginning to wonder."

  Memphis frowned. "Stop the car, Henderson."

  Trent eyed him but nodded at Henderson, who dutifully pulled over to the side of the track. Memphis looked at Jock. "Outside."

  He jumped out and eyed Jock as he nonchalantly exited the vehicle. "You got a problem with me? Spit it out, old man. And be done with it."

  Jock smirked. "Yeah, mate. I got a problem with you. I don’t think you’re up to the task. Yeah, you got yourself a Ranger tab, but you’re missing the edge of a combat veteran."

  "I’ll hold up just fine, thanks," said Memphis. "And you’d better not forget that I’m in command of this unit. So you’ve said your piece."

  "Just because you’re in command doesn’t mean you can’t be called out for bunging something up. Just be sure to remember that."

  Trent stepped out. "If you gentlemen are done?"

  They climbed back in and five minutes later Memphis saw a three-story building through the trees. It was a cinder block job that looked tough and weatherproof despite the promise of a beating from the Maine winter.

  "Looks like Hereford," said Jock.

  "Three stories," said Trent. "Fully customizable depending on what we need to train for. There’s a basement as well with a fuselage of a 747 in it."

  Ulf whistled. "Rad."

  Alena shrugged. "Let us get on with it."

  "How we playing this, then?" Jock eyed Memphis. "I’m assuming you’ve got an idea of what we’ll be doing?"

  Trent interrupted before Memphis could answer. "Let’s just work on a basic room takedown first. No hostages to start. Just targets. You four go in and clear the room."

  "Respirators?"

  Trent shook his head. "Not yet. Just walk it through first. Know your angles."

  Jock nodded and jumped out of the Jeep followed by Ulf. Memphis watched them go and felt the chasm of his inexperience gaping before him. Alena ran to catch up and as Memphis started to follow, Trent called him back.

  "A word?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Don’t let Jock get to you. He’s just unsure about you. In his world, lives depend on being able to know the man next to you has your back when the shit flies."

  "I’ve got his back. I’ve got all their backs."

  Trent nodded. "Yeah, but he hasn’t seen you in action yet. You can do a lot to prove your worth as a leader today by having a good time in there."

  Memphis eyed the Killing House and nodded. "Will do."

  "We’ll be monitoring the action from the control room. Work it through slow and steady at first. Nothing too big. If things go well, we’ll escalate the training accordingly. Make sure no one shoots a team member."

  Memphis nodded and then ran to catch up with the others who were busy drawing on assault gear and stuffing extra magazines into pouches. Jock checked the slide on the U.S.P and then made sure he only had to drop his right hand to his thigh for it to meet the butt of the pistol. "Stoppages, mate. Got to plan for them. If you can’t clear the thing, you’ve only got a split second to draw your secondary before you’re dead."

  Memphis strapped his gear on and looked at Ulf. "This is pretty tame stuff to you, isn’t it?"

  Ulf shrugged. "I’m always glad for more time training. Makes the real world easier to take."

  Alena said nothing as she hefted the PSD and slapped a fresh magazine home. She eyed Memphis. "Your pouch is open."

  Memphis glanced down and saw the pouch on his right side was indeed open. With a loose flap, it could make noise on an actual operation. He frowned and snapped it shut. "Thanks."

  Jock shot Ulf a look and then smirked. "Right, let’s see how this goes. Maybe after a few runs we’ll have a spot of a wager on it?"

  Ulf grinned. "What are you thinking?"

  "Shot groupings and head shots?"

  Ulf pursed his lips. "Yeah, good."


  Memphis frowned. "Let’s get the training done before we start making bets on it."

  "Just a bit of fun," said Jock. "Me and the kid there have done this many times before." He glanced at Alena. "Not sure what Cinderella has done."

  Alena eyed him. "Worry about yourself, old man," she said. "I’m more than capable of shooting well."

  "We’ll see."

  The intercom clicked overhead. "You guys all set? Henderson just set up the room. It’s number two on the second floor. Extractor fans are already on, so just do your thing."

  Memphis nodded at the group. "Okay, let’s move out." They climbed the stairs to the second floor and as soon as they came abreast of the floor, Memphis looked at the team. "Who’s number one through?"

  "You don’t want it?” asked Jock.

  "I’m deferring to those with more experience," said Memphis.

  Jock shook his head. "Fuck me, mate. This is going to be interesting." He glanced at Ulf. "I’ll be number one. Our illustrious leader will be number two. You take three and Alena can be four."

  Ulf nodded. "Ja, good."

  Jock assumed the lead position as they came down the hallway and paused outside of the number two room. Memphis thought back to the times he’d run this type of training in the Rangers. Jock had the butt of the PSD in his shoulder at the low-ready position. Memphis was right behind him, stacked tight. He felt Ulf behind him, also ready to go. Alena, at the back of the group would squeeze Ulf’s shoulder to show she was ready and Ulf would pass it on.

  Memphis felt Ulf squeeze his shoulder and then Memphis did the same to Jock. Jock glanced back, nodded his head once-

  -twice

  -and on the third nod, kicked the door open, immediately going to the "heavy" side, the opposite of where the door’s hinges were, and where he was most likely to encounter the most targets.

  Memphis felt himself rushing in next. He had to make sure that as he came in right on Jock’s tail that he didn’t trip or fall or accidentally shoot Jock in the back. As he came into the room, he moved to the opposite side. Memphis saw a target in front of him, snapped the PSD up and fired two shots at the head. He kept moving along the inside wall, reached a corner and kept moving.

  Around him, he heard the staccato of gunfire and smelled the cordite in the air. His pulse thrummed in his temples and he fought to get his breathing under control. He saw another target in front of him and fired twice more. He reached another corner and turned to face back into the room.

  "Stop! Stop! Stop!"

  Jock’s voice broke the chaos and everyone immediately froze in their positions. The din died and only the smoke from their gun barrels continued to drift out lazily.

  Trent came in quickly from the control room. "What’s happened?"

  Jock nodded at Memphis. "Your boy there nearly shot me, that’s what."

  Trent frowned. "You sure, Jock?"

  "Look at my position," said Jock. “I’ve got my field of fire completely covered. Your boy there overstepped his arc and if he’d fired his gun again, he would have put a round through me."

  Memphis felt his stomach drop as he glanced down and saw that he had indeed come out farther from his area than he should have. "He’s right," he said quietly. "I screwed up."

  "Oh, well, that’s just bollocks, isn’t it?" said Jock. He let the PSD go back on its sling and stepped closer to Memphis. "Bloody brilliant of you to admit you bunged up. Brilliant. What’s the deal with you, anyway?"

  Memphis put the safety back on the PSD and looked at Jock. "What do you mean?"

  "Just how much actual combat have you seen, sonny?" demanded Jock. "Cuz from where I’m standing and my near run-in with impersonating Swiss cheese, it don’t look like bloody much."

  Memphis took a breath. "Counting the encounter I had at CERN?"

  "Yeah," said Jock.

  "Once."

  Jock spun on his heel and stormed over to Trent. "Look, mate, I’m down with what you’re trying to accomplish here and all. Really, I am. But this is getting ridiculous. Unless your boy can step it up and actually perform, I’m taking my toys and going back to the pub."

  Memphis watched him stomp out of the room. Ulf followed and Alena slid out as well, leaving Memphis and Trent alone.

  "Not exactly what I was hoping to achieve," said Memphis.

  Trent nodded. "Yeah, probably not your best showing." He shrugged. "But everyone makes mistakes."

  "I almost killed him."

  "Yep, you did. But this is why we train with live ammo. The intensity has to be this real. Mistakes are going to happen. Hell, Jock insisted on it, remember? Something about standards?"

  "He might be regretting that now."

  Trent smirked. "Nah, a guy like Jock knows there’s a learning curve. That’s not the point. He wants to see what you’re made of. He wants to see if you can accept your mistakes, learn from them, and then improve or if those mistakes cripple you or turn you into some kind of hothead."

  "You sure about that?"

  Trent shrugged. "Only one way to find out."

  "How’s that?"

  "Go back outside and run this again. And again. And again until you don’t make any mistakes. Let them see that you can screw up and recover from it. It’s the only way you’ll ever win their respect."

  Chapter Fourteen

  As it turned out, they didn’t have as long to train as they’d hoped. Memphis was awoken in the middle of the night just a few days later by a harried-looking Ulf.

  “Shit’s hit the fan,” he said. “We’re being mobilized to deal with a rift.”

  “Where?” Memphis asked as he swung out of bed, praying it wasn’t some major metropolitan area. If things like those Grendels got loose in London or New York, it would be a bloody massacre...

  “Ogrodzieniska.”

  “Ogro-what? Where in hell is that?”

  Ulf laughed. “Poland, if you can believe that. First the Nazis, then demons from hell. Totally sucks to be them,” he said, as he headed out the door to wake the others.

  As Memphis pulled on his clothes and quickly followed, he had a moment to consider that perhaps there wasn’t all that much difference between the two invaders.

  And yes, he agreed, right about now it did suck to be Poland.

  The team grabbed their gear and assembled on the helipad, just as they’d drilled. Trent was already there waiting for them.

  “We’ve got reports of a rift opening in the town of Ogrodzieniska, Poland, a small farming community about seventy miles east of Podzamcze. I’ve downloaded your mission packets to your tablets; you’ll find maps contained therein.

  “While we don’t have a lot of information, what we do have suggests that several entities have come through the rift and have begun attacking the local populace. There was a flurry of emergency calls to the local civil aide services — police, fire, ambulance — before communications went down about ten minutes ago. We’re a long way from Poland, so I expect the situation to be considerably worse by the time you arrive.

  “I’m trying to assemble back-up, but right now I’m not getting much cooperation from anyone. At the moment, you’d better act as if you’re on your own. Your primary mission is to locate and seal that rift.”

  Jock spoke up from the back of the group. “And how in creation are we supposed to do that?” he asked.

  Trent pointed to the helicopter idly on the pad behind them. “Harley is already aboard; he’ll tell you what you need to do and how to do it. Times a wasting people. Good hunting.”

  A few minutes later the team was airborne, headed out over the north Atlantic as they listened to Harley, a particle physicist from Cerberus’ research division who looked like Jeff Goldblum’s twin, explain how they were going to close the portal in Ogrodzieniska.

  “As near as we can figure, the rifts are basically unstable wormholes torn in the fabric of space-time and are therefore susceptible to certain wave functions that eliminate excess contributions to the cosmological constant.” />
  Memphis glanced at the others and then caught Harley’s attention.

  “Uh, sorry, but I think you just lost all of us.”

  “Speak for yourself, Yank!” Jock shouted over the roar of the rotor.

  Memphis ignored him and addressed himself to Harley once more. “Give that to us again, but this time, use English, huh?”

  Harley muttered something under his breath that sounded like “damned heathens” to Memphis, but he let it slide, knowing the physicist was probably as stressed out as the rest of them.

  “We can disrupt the fabric of the portal by hitting it with a burst of neutrinos in a specific frequency and pattern.”

  Memphis smiled. “See? Much easier when you speak English. So how do we deliver the neutrinos to the site?”

  “With this.” Harley dumped a black go-bag in front of them and unzipped it to reveal a complicated looking device with a touchpad control system mounted atop it. “We’re calling it a wave frequency modulation disruptor for the time being because it, well, disrupts the rift.”

  How clever...

  Alena spoke up. “What’s its effective range?”

  Harley winced. “Well, uh, that’s one of the issues we’re working through at the moment.”

  Memphis didn’t like the sound of that.

  “How far?” he pressed.

  “You need to turn the disruptor on and then toss it into the rift in order for it to do any good.”

  The four HELLstalker commandoes stared at him.

  “Theoretically,” Harley finished.

  “Theoretically? You mean we don’t even know if this thing is going to work?”

  Harley shook his head. “This will be the first field test.”

  Great. Just fucking great...

  When they reached Boston, the team swapped the helo, and Harley, for a Lear, which would take them across the Atlantic and into Polish airspace in a little under nine hours. The team used the time to study the intel they had on Ogrodzieniska, confirm that all of their gear was in working order, and worry.