Duke’s castle (Dover, England)

A real battle began. All commands started shooting to where the Duke was. Men started to fall on both sides like Black Jack cards. The guards of the Duke offered great resistance. Desperately, I searched for the Duke and Mr. Smith amid the mass of bullets and bodies fighting. Agent Chang pulled me by my arm, showing me her PDA. She pointed to a blinking dot indicating the location of the Duke. It was weird, but he was in the other wing of this medieval fortress. We decided to follow the sign, in the middle of the shootout and explosions.

The right wing of this very old but solid building was completely desolate. We stopped in front of a heavy wooden gate. Agent Chang checked her PDA.

"The Duke is coming towards us! He's right behind that door." "Let's go!"

We entered a large hall lighted by electric chandeliers.

"He's over there!" my companion warned me.

There was the Duke, wearing a black robe and holding his gold cane in his left hand. He slipped out through a door on the corridor followed by two security guards. I took the safety off of my gun and shoot, hitting one of the guards while the other managed to flee, closing the door behind him.

We ran to the door and I smashed the lock. I fired at close range and killed the last escort of the Duke. Behind him, there was a closet door full of holes. When we opened it, a ladder leading into a dark and smelly space surprised us.

I turned on the flashlight and checked my rifle. "The Duke is down there. Are you ready?"

Agent Chang nodded and together we climbed down the stairs with caution. After a few minutes, we reached a small corridor that ended in a door ajar. A faint emergency light showed us the way. The closer we were, the stronger it grew a sickening and unbearable smell. My head was throbbing.

We stayed on the right and left side of the entrance. She confirmed that the Duke was in. When I saw between the hinges, I checked his location. I entered and was surprised by the bizarre image in front of me: The Duke was in the middle of the room, kneeling and covered in a black robe. The room was illuminated by a hundred black candles on both sides. The candles were resting on metal tables where their shadows danced. The Duke was reciting some sort of prayer. In front of him, there were three monitors off on the stone wall.

Agent Chang and I walked to opposite corners of the room to better meet any surprise reaction. The walls seemed to move together with the effect that the dancing light of the candles produced. When I approached him, a macabre and cold laugh filled the whole room. I noticed that the voice did not come from the hooded man.

"Who would imagine it?" echoed the voice, "Look who we have here!"

I approached the Duke and removed the hood, but when I uncovered his face, out of nowhere, two metal gates fell down destroying the entrance doors. In front of us there was a young albino guy with eyes closed, muttering a prayer. We fell into another trap of the Duke.

"You are still a coward! Where are you, bastard?" I said while pointing to the kneeling man, who didn't stop praying.

The three monitors lit up. In one of them was the Duke. He was sitting on a red chair, smoking a big Havana cigar. There was a fluffy cat with red eyes lying on his legs. The albino guy tried to stand up, but I hit him in the stomach with my gun and he fell down to the floor. He opened his eyes and when he saw the Duke, he started to laugh hysterically.

"Master!" he called.

"You still have your manners, my dear Pitbull. How is your headache going? By the way, I enjoyed torturing your little ones about fourteen years ago, now they are my obedient lost souls."

He laughed again, showing teeth that were remarkably similar to the ones of his feline companion. In the right monitor appeared a video of Migdalia playing with my children in a London park. I myself had filmed that video before going to Russia to capture him.

"Damn you! Where are you, coward?"

"How is my beautiful agent Danielle Chang?"

He opened a folder and with his sharp eyes he scanned my colleague from top to bottom. "I know that you still don't have children," he added while looking at her with its natural sadism. And then, on the first monitor, appeared Agent Chang jogging in a park in New York. She was apparently being filmed from a car in movement.

While she was handcuffing the man who kept laughing madly, I was checking the room. In a corner I found some controls with a scanner, perhaps those were used by him to enter and leave this place.

Agent Chang walked to the middle of the three monitors and fearless aimed some words to the Duke in a persuasive tone of voice. He was muttering a few words that turned me even angrier. I felt like my head was about to explode and my eyes were flooded with pain and anger because of the images of my family.

"I recommend you to surrender voluntarily and peacefully. I have the whole castle under my control."

"You don't say?"

He took the camera that was recording him and pointed it away, showing the window of a car. He was going at high speed and he was near Dover Bay.

"He escaped!" I shouted and shot against the steel doors, flashing lights of various colors because of the bullets hitting it.

"Do you want to kill us? Don't you see that these walls are shielded?" cried out Agent Chang.

The strident laughter of the Duke echoed throughout the room, which turned Agent Chang nervous and made my migraine unbearable.

"I'll get you and this time I won't let you live! Damn!"

"Stupid... Who told you that death would be a punishment?" He closed his eyes and with his cadaverous hands he pulled his hair up in a ponytail.

"I must leave. By the way, here you have a video that you will find interesting..."

"We will capture you, Duke, there is no place to hide!" shouted Agent Chang.

In the middle monitor a documentary about an Australian reptile, the most poisonous snake in the world, the coastal taipan started.

"Fuck! "I shouted.

From some holes that were located in one of the corners of the ceiling hundreds of snakes that were identical to the ones of the documentary started to fall. In an unguarded moment, the albino guy ran to the waterfall of snakes and was bitten by the reptiles.

"Master, I'm going back to you! I will go to your arms, my Lord!"

Agent Chang asked me to keep the snakes as far as possible while she tried to get us out of there. She put her gun into her holster and was surprised by the explosion of the three monitors when I shot them. I couldn't bear to see the pictures of my family in this hell.

"Are you okay?" she asked me, approaching.

"Yes, I'm fine. Call Charles and tell him to get us out of here. The Duke is escaping!" I turned around and shot at the mass of writhing snakes.

She asked for help using her intercom, but it was useless: these walls apparently didn't permit it; she pulled out her PDA and connected it to the scanner.

"What are you doing? "I asked as I blew the head of a snake that was a little too close for comfort.

"How much time do you need?" I grabbed her machine gun because my gun was running out of bullets.

Nervously, she texted, asking Charles to hurry up. I threw the gun that was out of ammo to the mountain of reptiles, which was getting dangerously close. The gates began to be lifted up and we saw some yellow lights. She hugged me in joy and together we escaped into the hallway. When we left the room, I stopped suddenly:

"This is not right..." The snakes were right behind us. "What's going on?" she asked me, looking at me with fear. "The floor is moving."

"What?"

I took out my flashlight and threw it into the middle of the hallway. We saw with horror that it was not a moving floor, but a shapeless mass of snakes that was rapidly approaching us. Now the situation got worse.

"What kind of ammo do you have?" "C-4, four remote charges."

"I have an idea" I said, as I took her bag and gave her my two guns. "Distract them."

I dragged he metal table, knocking down the candles to where the poisonous snakes were. She shot right behind me at a snake that stroke past my right foot. I threw four charges of C-4 in different parts of the dark corridor and placed the table in a corner. She looked at me nervous and remembered me that we were out of ammo while she held my hand:

"Are you sure that this explosion will not kill us, too?"

"We'll find it out soon!"

Ducking behind the table, huddling close to Agent Chang, I pushed the button and yelled, "Fire in the hole!"

The worst of the explosion was stopped by the metal table, but the blast fractured the walls and several pieces of rock collapsed on us. The hallway was immersed in a dense cloud of dust, making it difficult to breath. I coughed several times. I stood up and pulled away some stones, Agent Chang had fainted. Even knowing that perhaps one of the snakes could have survived, I took her and decided to go through that dark corridor.

I climbed the stairs and ran into some agents of the assault groups who were just getting down, trying to determine the source of the explosion.

"Agents, I need to talk to your immediate supervisor."

"Major Pullish is our immediate supervisor, sir. He's just off the hallway from where we came, sir."

"Where's the outpatients clinic?"

"It's upstairs, sir, after leaving the room," a young lieutenant of the British Special Forces explained me while they started descending with night sights and laser sights.

When I left the room, I heard some less intense shots in the distance. Several nurses helped me with my companion when they saw me. Agent Chang was still unconscious. I found Major Pullish, grabbed him by the arm and ordered, "Please, get a map of Dover Bay, I need it. The Duke just escaped."

One of the soldiers gave him a PDA, which showed us the different roads that could lead to that place.

"We have to block him. He is possibly fleeing by one of the roads that are bordering Dover Bay. We must stop him either by air or land, he can't escape!"

"Inspector, I will immediately notify the Coast Guard to stop any ship that leaves the bay; and also the police, to set checkpoints in these four places," he said, pointing at those locations in the map.

"Do it."

I saw Agent Chang being helped by a paramedic; she had regained consciousness.

"Inspector, I already gave the instructions. In this moment three Troopers are approaching the bay and two helicopters will be sent to comb the area. All land units are available and in the area closing the perimeter, sir."

"Good job, Major!" I said, though deep inside I knew that the Duke was already far away, but where? Dammit!

We were surprised by another explosion that took place in the basement and brightened the room temporarily.

"Eagle One? Here Eagle Leader. Please, inform," said the Major of the Army while we were checking in the map the possible ways to escape.

"Eagle Leader, you better come to see this, sir."

The officer was about to go down when I grabbed him by the shoulder. "I'll go with you."

I requested the gun that he had in his jacket. He gave it to me and charged his semiautomatic rifle. I walked to the snake pit without expecting what I was