Justice Comes Due (Birth Of Heavy Metal Book 7) Read online

  Justice Comes Due

  Birth Of Heavy Metal™ Book 7

  Michael Todd

  Michael Anderle

  This book is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2019 Michael Todd, and Michael Anderle

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US edition, August 2019

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-426-5

  The Zoo Universe (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are Copyright (c) 2018-19 by Michael Anderle and LMBPN Publishing.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  Connect with Michael Todd

  Other Zoo Books

  Books written as Michael Anderle

  Justice Comes Due Team

  JIT Readers

  John Ashmore

  Jeff Goode

  Dave Hicks

  Kelly O’Donnell

  Jeff Eaton

  Dorothy Lloyd

  Deb Mader

  Peter Manis

  Editor

  Skyhunter Editing Team

  Dedication

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  to Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  to Live the Life We Are

  Called.

  Chapter One

  There was a time when she would have enjoyed sunbathing surrounded by people who loved and adored her as their benefactor. Watching them was relaxing for her. Well, usually, anyway.

  Sitting out in the sun, enjoying the view, was still a pleasurable experience. Her house in Ibiza was on the water and looked over one of the highest-end beaches in the area. It regularly saw celebrity DJs and musicians perform for the young or newly rich who came to enjoy their winter vacations to a wide variety of upscale music.

  But today was different. Something nagged insistently at the back of her mind. The worry had been there ever since she had talked to Salinger Jacobs and he had shared his thoughts on their chances of surviving their greed.

  “Royally fucked” had been his exact words. As the blue in her veins spread insidiously, she couldn't help but feel he was right. But Molina wasn't the type of woman to go quietly into the night. She would continue to fight and try to find what she was looking for until she died or...whenever the journey she was on reached its end. It was a tough way to live but it was the life she had chosen.

  And one she enjoyed, which was why she persisted in her search through the details that he had retrieved from the lab and left for her in exchange for her life. So, instead of watching the beautiful people outside tanning, swimming, and drinking, she had to dig through the information that could save her life. There was an abundance of technical shit from specialists she'd hired to examine the data—those who didn't mind keeping everything they looked at confidential, irrespective of what they found and whether it was simply groundbreaking or utterly horrifying.

  She knew for a fact that they would find a plethora of both in the files that had been transferred.

  They kept her updated regularly on their findings, and since she couldn't actually share precise details of the problem she needed to solve, she needed to sift through the mountains of data they sent her on almost a daily basis. She had thought that it would be easier to find what she was looking for—some kind of cure for the changes she could feel and see overtaking her body, spreading like a weed. Most of what she read—couched in scientific jargon that, quite frankly, bored her overactive mind—simply went over the top of her head but she persisted. Perhaps if she waded through it enough times, something would stand out.

  If Sal wanted to think he was fucked royally, let him. Molina wouldn’t be beaten so easily.

  One of the usual staff stepped out of the house with a tray that didn't have a drink on it. She knew what she would find, given that she had left her phone in her room in order to help her focus a little more on the work that she did outside—not that she had really found anything of note. Admittedly, there were ideas discovered in the lab that would jump her pharmaceutical stocks ahead by at least three or four years of research. People hated the moral problems that came from human testing, but the fact remained that it worked, whether they liked it or not.

  But the call on the buzzing phone that was carried on a tray to where she was seated at the pool was another kind of problem that required a more physical approach.

  "A phone call for you, ma'am," the man said in English with a soft Latin accent. He was the type she generally fell for, but Molina was feeling something for someone else at the moment. Besides that, she was too busy with literally everything else to really care about her love life at the moment.

  "Thank you, Jorge," she replied with a smile and stroked his wrist gently as he turned away. While she wasn't interested now, it didn't mean she wouldn’t be in the future. She would consider it an investment.

  He smiled at her before he returned to the house. She picked the phone up and glanced at the number to confirm it wouldn’t be traceable. It met her expectations, mainly because she had invested a great deal of money into making sure that was the case. She had insisted that she receive this call since the pilots tended to be a little paranoid about who listened in on their operation and had balked when she made it a not-negotiable condition. There was no way in hell she would trust a complete stranger with critical information. The hundred thousand Euros that had arrived in their bank accounts made them more amenable to her stipulations—and, hopefully, capable of following her directives without argument. They had to call her to obtain the code that would enable them to fulfill the mission and be paid.

  After all the uncertainty that had surrounded her since this whole debacle had started, it now appeared that it would finally reach the logical conclusion. She wanted to be sure it actually happened.

  In all honesty, if the pilots selected for the mission had been problematic, she could have simply made sure someone who was a little more receptive to her purposes would replace them after they faced some kind of injury or death in the family. People in that corner of the world had languished under oppressive
and corrupt puppet regimes for decades, which meant corruption was a way of life that seeped into almost every element of their daily existence.

  It truly was weird how communism inspired this kind of pure capitalism, she thought with a small smirk.

  Molina always got what she wanted. Except, of course, for when it came to finding a cure for possibly poisoning herself with alien blue goop. But that was still a work in progress. She anticipated success, even if it wasn't clear at the moment.

  "Are you connected to my comms, ma'am?" the pilot asked over the deafening roar of the helicopter's rotors in the background. Chatter from a few people was muted but barely audible. She assumed the man had a copilot and perhaps a gunner or two added to the mix, considering where they would fly into.

  "I have audio," she replied and leaned back in her seat.

  "Unfortunately, there will be no video coverage of the operation, so you'll have to settle for listening in while we operate," he said crisply like he talked while he worked. It would be difficult to access the biodome, so she would have preferred to know his focus was on the objective rather than talking to her.

  "The biodome hatch is now open," the pilot reported, possibly to ensure that his crew were advised of the status rather than simply Molina herself. She assumed the men would remain vigilant. They were under no impression that this would be a milk run. It could be but given what they knew about the Zoo and what had been reported to be inside the dome, they would undoubtedly be as careful as possible.

  "I see movement on the sensors. Do you see anything?" the pilot asked his gunners, and from the sudden thunder of massive machine guns, she could imagine that the men behind those guns had chosen to shoot first and ask questions later. From what she'd heard and read of Heavy Metal's team and their experiences while inside that fucking dome, the team in the chopper were certainly wise for taking that approach. While the plan was for the helo to remain airborne and not land, they could never predict if or when the alien creatures would finally develop wings—at which time they would really be in the shit.

  She couldn’t question the decision to simply annihilate the mutants on sight. They intended to wipe the place off the map anyway, so a few monsters having an early taste of what was to come was irrelevant.

  "There’s far more movement coming from the biodome," she heard through his headset.

  "Maintain fire. You know the drill," he responded and displayed an impressive amount of cool-headedness as he worked to both keep the chopper in the air as well as connect the UI of his aircraft to the servers. They had decided this would be a more effective method to activate the failsafe that had been built into the lab and the dome to allow anyone inside to destroy the entire facility if something went wrong.

  “Server connection established. Connecting to the failsafe sequence now,” he confirmed calmly.

  Originally, she’d thought to simply use the remote activation device she’d been assured would work. Until, of course, someone had pointed out that the Zoo had a habit of scrambling signals. While they had no way to know whether this was the case at the dome or not, it seemed entirely stupid to take the chance and miss the opportunity to obliterate it before it became even more of a problem. Thank God, someone had thought to create the failsafe in the first place or, in Sal’s words, they’d be “royally screwed” in more ways than one.

  It begged the question, though, of exactly how bad things had become for the people who were in there that none of them could see the real danger and take the necessary steps to end it. They'd either waited too long and been overwhelmed or it had happened too quickly and suddenly for them to react. They had been scientists, not soldiers. All of them had been thoroughly briefed on the dangers of anything getting out of control inside that dome. Regrettably, they would always have that moment of uncertainty, a lack of commitment to their duty that most soldiers had in spades and so could usually be counted on to do what had to be done, no matter the consequences for them or others. That small difference had allowed everything to go to shit.

  If she ever decided to attempt something like this again, she would make sure the failsafe button was in the hands of someone who wouldn't consider the morality of blowing themselves and their coworkers the hell up. Personally, if she had to.

  "I have successfully accessed the failsafe protocol," the pilot said over the steady drone of gunfire in the background. "Setting the timer for sixty seconds. Please advise override code.” She spoke clearly and concisely, and he repeated it as he entered it into the system. “Failsafe activated. T-minus sixty seconds to detonation. Pulling out of the biodome now."

  More gunfire erupted and Molina’s heart thudded in her chest. Honestly, she would have triggered the explosion even if there were anyone inside. Some people would say that was heartless and the unnecessary deaths would be a detriment to morale, but it had been that kind of thinking that had caused all the problems there in the first place.

  Probably. Either way, anyone left on site would be beyond complaints, after all.

  "Clear of the biodome. Sealing the hatch," the pilot said and still sounded calm and in control, although she could hear a hint of tension in his voice. Once they were clear and the hatch was sealed, the explosion would be contained to the dome itself to cleanse all the mutant beasts from the earth.

  It was a real pity that the same couldn't be done with the monsters in the Zoo, Molina thought and no longer paid much attention to the phone call. She would have preferred to see—or someone else see and confirm—that the explosion did in fact happen. Given the magnitude expected based on the enormous quantity of ordnance used to create the failsafe, no pilot in his right mind wanted to hang around longer than he had to. She would simply have to accept that the disaster would be completely obliterated and move on.

  "Hatch closed," the pilot said and now allowed himself a soft sigh of relief. "Moving out before detonation. Mission accomplished."

  "Good work," she said and cut the connection. That was one problem solved, at least, she thought and scowled when the sight of the blue veins in her arms suddenly brought her mind back to the problem with such an elusive solution. She would need to keep working on that.

  For now, though...

  "Jorge?" she called and pushed slowly from her seat and stretched languidly before she turned to see the man already there, waiting for her instruction.

  "Could you get the car ready for me?" she asked. "I have an appointment I need to attend to."

  "Of course, ma'am," he said quickly and hurried away to alert her driver that she was ready to head to the private air strip. Heavy Metal remained a problem, but for now, all she could do was stick as close to them as she could, and she had an idea as to how she could do that.

  Unfortunately, it required her to travel to Philadelphia in the middle of winter. The thought alone made her shudder.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate being back home. Despite his current predicament, there were more than enough reasons to celebrate. Getting out of an area that was considered one of the most dangerous on the planet alive—and in reasonably good health—was always a plus. Being able to see his family in Russia was good too. The fact that most of his finances had been transferred to the kinds of countries that would keep the additions to his accounts away from the grasp of the corrupt Russian tax collection agencies was even better.

  Gregor really didn’t have that much to complain about. He reminded himself of this more than once while he sat manacled to an uncomfortable wooden chair that looked like it had been bolted to the floor since the Stalin era. For now, he waited for a military tribunal to have a chat with him about what had happened in the Zoo while he’d been there. His present situation did contain a few severe negatives, but he constantly compared these to his escape from the snapping jaws of massive monsters developed from the DNA of creatures that were found on earth and twisted into nightmarish horror stories by some alien goop. When he looked at things from that perspective, he kind of lost his fear of t
he bureaucratic nonsense a military tribunal could throw his way. Even a firing squad lost its sting. It was far better to be shot near home than eaten and shat out of an alien panther or something.

  He was in Moscow, about fifty kilometers from the hospital he’d been born in, and he couldn’t really feel bad about that, no matter what his circumstances.

  A group of bailiffs stepped out of the courtroom and strolled over to where he sat secured in the abandoned hallway. It had been a while since he’d been to one of these trials, and he’d never attended as the person accused. The few times that he had been called ended with him having to testify for or against a couple of his senior officers. He smiled inwardly when he recalled that he’d told the truth about them maybe half the time.

  It was all a political show anyway and it wasn’t like they would actually give him the benefit of a fair trial. They already knew what they wanted to do with him, and everything that transpired there was to make sure it was all in the books and completely sanctioned by the powers-that-be.

  The bailiffs released Gregor from the chair but quickly cuffed his hands in front of him before they pushed him silently toward the doors of the courtroom. It appeared that he had been called immediately after another sentencing, as a second man was led off in chains by a team of men in uniform. That didn’t bode well for his case. Then again, he had long since given up on even the hope of success. It was inevitable that he would go to prison.