by James Hilton
He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the evening. Almost no noise, save for the soft tink-tink-tink of the RV’s massive engine as it cooled. It provided a welcome change from gunfire. He pushed the thought from his mind. This was time to relax, no muss, no fuss. Some quality rest and relaxation with his older brother. He smiled as he caught the smell of fried potatoes on the night air, and returned to the Winnebago to look for them.
Clay was already busy in the kitchen area as Danny entered. He looked oddly at home surrounded by the beech panelling and the brass swan-shaped cupboard handles. A single photograph was fixed to the side of one of the cupboards: a woman, caught mid-turn. Her smile was spontaneous and her brown eyes crinkled at the edges with undisguised mischief. Danny watched as Clay paused, eyes on the picture. He touched a finger to her nose as he often did when reminiscing, a delicate gesture for a man topping six foot.
A Jace Everett CD was playing but not at the ear-wrecking decibel level that Danny usually had to endure. He didn’t mind country music but enjoyed a variety of styles, unlike his brother. At least Jace was modern country with a rock-guitar twang to it.
“Need a hand with anything?”
“Nah, I’ve got it covered,” replied Clay brandishing a spatula coated with some dark and sticky sauce. Danny knew better than to question his culinary skills. “Wanna beer?”
“Sounds good.”
Clay pointed to the curved refrigerator door. Danny pulled it open and lifted out two chilled Coronas. A sheen of condensation coated the glass. “Got any lime?”
Clay clicked his tongue.
“I guess we can rough it.”
“Yeah, they made you tough in the British Army, all right,” laughed Clay.
“Hey, I once went two weeks without toilet paper.” Danny winked and took a long pull on the beer.
“Did you get a Scouts badge for that?”
“What, the chapped-arse merit badge? No, I never did.”
“Harsh.”
“Indeed…”
Ten minutes later Danny accepted a plateful of steaming food. Both men moved to the dining area at the rear of the RV and chewed through two of the best rib-eye steaks money could buy. With thick-sliced potatoes and fried eggs on the side, the meal was simple but perfectly cooked.
“You could make a fortune selling these,” said Danny between bites. He wiped Budweiser barbecue sauce from his chin. He saw Clay’s eyes flick to the photograph. His voice dropped.
“I hardly cooked anything while Diana was alive.”
Danny smiled in sympathy. “I don’t think she married you on the promise of your short-order cooking skills.”
“I guess not.”
Danny raised his beer. “To fallen friends and lost loved ones.”
“Ay-men to that.”
The brothers lapsed into an easy silence as another track began. The country guitar twanged a sorrowful melody.
“Got any Duran Duran?”
Clay scowled. “I’d rather stick cactus spines in my ears than listen to that noise.”
Danny started to sing. “Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand…”
“Please stop.”
“Just like that river twisting through that dusty land…”
“I can see I’m going to have to put a bullet in you to shut you up.”
Danny paused. “You can’t shoot for shit. I’m surprised the Rangers ever let you near a rifle.”
Clay narrowed his eyes, sighting along two fingers. “At this range even I couldn’t miss.”
“Ah, you Yanks are all the same; spray and pray. You couldn’t hit a bull’s arse with a blunderbuss.” Danny knew the mock insult of calling a Texan a Yankee would do the trick of lightening Clay’s sombre mood.
“And you Brits are so stiff-assed that you don’t need a gun. Just shove a round up there and let one off.”
Both brothers grinned. It was a routine that never seemed to get old. They clinked their bottles together in mutual respect.
Danny turned in his seat, favouring his right hip. The web of recent scar tissue on his left side was still tender.
3
Andrea stood at the edge of the outlook, taking in the view. The evening air smelled and tasted so different from the city air back in London. So clear, fresh and somehow raw. And it was so quiet. No blaring taxi horns or wailing sirens. She hugged herself against the evening chill, enjoying the moment. It was good to see Greg happy. He and Bruce were the real deal.
A noise—a strange, unfamiliar sound she couldn’t identify—made her turn towards the Jeep. The towering pylons stood sentient; their only contribution to the night was a low and constant hum. The twin beams of the Jeep’s headlights cut into the twilight, the glare ruining her already meagre night vision. Her brother was huddled over something, something dark and still. His mouth was working like a fish out of water. His eyes met hers.
A low metallic whoomph sounded through the evening air. The middle three fingers on Greg’s right hand detached themselves in a spray of crimson. His arm jerked, folding at an unnatural angle behind his shoulder. As the ruined limb flopped back into view, Greg screeched—an unearthly howl.
“Greg!” Her brother staggered towards her, clutching what remained of his hand. Streaks of crimson had transformed his freckled face into a terrifying visage. His eyes stood out in stark terror, bright dots amidst so much blood. An old photo taken in Iraq flashed into Andrea’s mind; a grief-stricken mother looking up from her dismembered child, her eyes and hands imploring assistance. She was horrified to recognise that same expression on Greg’s face.
Fighting her own shock, she ran towards her brother, her laptop satchel slapping painfully against her hip. Jesus Christ, his fingers were gone! “Greg, what’s happened? Where’s Bruce?”
Two savage impacts caught Greg in his right side. A sound like the slap of wet washing against a rock and Greg’s jaw all but detached itself from his skull. Then a chunk of muscle and a thin line of blood erupted from just above his heart. He tumbled sideways.
Andrea fell on top of her brother’s body, repeating his name over and over. She looked around frantically. “Bruce!” Then louder, “Bruce, help us!” Her screams went unanswered, echoing in the barren landscape.
Greg had been shot. The ragged fist-sized hole in his chest left little doubt. She gagged, ashamed at her reaction as the contents of Greg’s bowels escaped. A fierce trembling began in her hands as if a live current were passing through them. She tried to stand but her legs folded weakly beneath her.
Who did this?
Then a strange but familiar sound cut into the night.
Cssssht.
“Help me…” The words were like shards of broken glass in her throat.
Cssssht.
Andrea crawled on all fours towards the Jeep. Her hands were slick with Greg’s blood. As she grabbed the door to pull herself upright, both of the Jeep’s halogen headlights exploded in turn. Andrea screamed.
She hesitated, her mind momentarily frozen by indecision as a shadow detached itself from the base of one of the nearby trees. Andrea squinted, her eyes struggling to adapt to the sudden blackout. The figure was a mottled grey with a misshapen head. It moved towards the Jeep, hunched forward, in a short scuttling walk. As it drew closer she saw huge black eyes staring down at her, unblinking, alien.
A staccato voice whispered.
“’Fermative. Got eyes on her.”
Andrea scuttled backwards, crablike, as survival instincts began to nip at the nerves in her cerebrum. Run! Run! RUN!
Her legs pumped into action, spitting up loose gravel and shale as she threw herself bodily in the opposite direction.
A rattle of automatic gunfire sent up a cloud of sand and stones as the rounds impacted around her feet. Then a horrendous pain seared up her left thigh. Andrea screamed, but kept running full tilt. Her laptop case bounced awkwardly as she sprinted, slapping against her back and rebounding high into the air.
A second
figure burst into view twenty yards to her left. He had some kind of short-barrelled machine gun carried at waist level. As Andrea veered away from him, she reached the edge of the overlook. She had two options: give up and suffer whatever fate the attackers had planned for her, or risk breaking her neck by going over the edge. An unseen rock decided for her as her ankle slammed into the unyielding obstacle. There was a moment of terror. Then she fell into darkness.
4
The gunman known as “Mark” watched as his target tumbled out of view with a screech in an uncoordinated somersault. Another man joined him, looking over the drop. The night-vision goggles they wore turned the vista an unearthly green. They watched as the woman bounced and tumbled down the steep incline. Even from their elevated position they heard a resounding crack as she hit a rocky outcrop. Then she disappeared from view.
He sucked air between his front teeth. “She’ll be a bag o’ bones at the bottom.”
“You were supposed to shoot her in the leg, and only if absolutely necessary. She’s valuable until we have the package.”
“I did. Well, I clipped her, anyway.”
“You’d better shape up, Mark. Topcat will tear you a new one if we don’t deliver on this. You’d better not have killed her.”
Mark shrugged, trying to feign nonchalance.
“And your radio lead must be loose. I could hear static bursts all the way over from my position.”
Mark tapped the walkie-talkie unit at his waist. The resulting csssht made him wince.
The other man raised his own walkie-talkie. “This is Matthew. Bring up the ATVs. The target went over the edge. We need to get to the base of the hill and collect the package.” He turned to Mark. “Search the vehicle.”
As Mark started going through the Jeep’s contents, he heard a low growl of engines. Thirty seconds later, two Kawasaki All Terrain Vehicles rolled to a stop behind the Jeep.
Matthew spoke. “The two males are down. The girl took a swan dive over there.”
The two men driving the quad bikes were dressed in almost identical clothing to Mark’s: dark-grey camouflage trousers and jackets. The webbing packs they wore held numerous pouches and a compact sub-machine gun lay slung across each man’s back. Their night-vision goggles were pushed back high on their heads. They both nodded without speaking.
Mark gestured to the Jeep. “There’s nothing in here.”
Matthew gave him a hard stare. “Look again, just to be sure.”
Mark clenched his jaw muscles but he did as he was told. As he carefully rechecked each bag in the Jeep he tossed them out into the dirt. He swept his hands under the seats, rifled the glove compartment and checked behind the sun visors.
“Nothing.”
“Come on then. We better get down and finish this. Find her, get her to talk, terminate her.”
Mark looked over at the man he knew as “John”. All four of them had been assigned tags by their employer, who himself used an alias. Topcat was one of those people that seemed to have been created in a military test tube. Every other word out of his mouth was delivered in grunt-speak. It was all military acronyms, abbreviations and warrior philosophy. But as long as he paid as well as he did, Mark would endure his staccato Patton-esque speeches. Plus, the guy knew his stuff.
The ATVs rumbled as the two men designated as “Luke” and “John” revved the powerful engines. Matthew clambered onto the back of John’s Kawasaki, pushing his stubby Heckler & Koch MP5K firmly against his hip to stop it bouncing. Mark rode pillion with Luke, his eyes searching for any sign of movement that would indicate the woman’s location.
The rugged treads of the ATVs kicked up a cascade of dust as the four-man team powered down the hillside.
5
The dregs of his fourth beer had formed a small, damp Rorschach pattern on the chest of his grey T-shirt. Danny paid it no attention. He was enjoying the down time with his brother way too much to let spilled beer bother him.
Clay grinned and continued his story, “So then the guy comes back into the bar with a six shooter and starts getting all Clint Eastwood on us.”
“What… just because he got a slap from a bouncer?”
“Yeah.” Clay took another long pull on his beer.
“So what happened to quick-draw McGraw?”
“Well, Patty makes a chilli that you can grease an axle with. So when he passed by Buffalo Joe, he got a face full of it. I grabbed the gun and Joe landed the hammer on him. That was pretty much the end of him. The sheriff rolled by ten minutes later and hauled his ass off to jail.”
“You still keep in touch with Joe?”
“I see him now and again on the rodeo circuit.”
“I liked him. Plus he’s the only Indian I’ve ever really talked to.”
“We say ‘Native American’ these days.”
“Whatever, I remember he had hands as big as a gorilla.”
“Yeah, he’s a tough one, all right. He took a lot of crap in the army on his way up. Good in the field though. For a big guy he never made a sound when he was on duty. He’d just turn up out of the darkness like a ghost.”
“Well, Casper he ain’t,” Danny mimicked Clay’s southern drawl perfectly.
“You got that right.”
Danny drummed his fingers on the neck of the bottle. “Talking of things that go bump in the night, what do you reckon about Area 51?”
“What, about the UFOs?”
Danny nodded.
“Well it’s an Air Force base and testing range, one of the biggest in the world. People are bound to see lights in the sky. You know how people are. I don’t doubt there’s some secret shit going on in there, but little green men? I don’t think so.”
“We say ‘Alien Americans’ these days,” Danny smirked.
“Wiseass.”
“Still, I’m looking forward to seeing the alien café tomorrow.”
Clay stretched out his long legs, sliding lower in his seat. “They do a good burger. And the folks of Rachel are friendly enough. Probably sick to the back teeth of sky-watchers, though.”
“You want another?”
Clay emptied his bottle and nodded. Seconds later another cold one was in his callused hand.
As Danny sat down he again favoured his right side. Clay looked on, his face impassive, only his eyes displaying concern for his younger brother. “How you feeling now?”
“It hurts like a son of a bitch. But I’m still alive and kickin’… and still got all of my pieces. That’s more than I can say for some of the boys over there.”
“Why don’t you end that shit an’ come and live with me? I thought that when you left the army, you were done. Yet here you are, still yomping around with the private sector.”
Danny looked down at his hands; they were clean but not too long ago they hadn’t been. His left hand closing over the sentry’s mouth as his knife slipped deep into his kidney. Once, twice, three times to be sure. The body stiffening, high on tiptoes; then falling as a loose pile of limbs.
“Ground Control to Major Dan…”
Danny gave a weak smile. “I’m not ready to settle down yet. But I do appreciate the offer.”
“Consider it an open invitation. I can get you as much work as you want. The studios are always looking for ex-servicemen to act as extras and I’m good friends with Harry H. He knows good men when he sees them and he uses them in all the movies he works on. The pay is good, and there’ll be no more of these to contend with.” Clay traced the jagged scar that ran from his hairline down to his left eyebrow.
Danny’s mouth twitched as he remembered.
* * *
He is sixteen—just a few weeks away from joining the army—and using his last days as a civvy in the Scottish town of Dumfries to try to get into Cindy Howard’s pants.
Cindy is a great-looking girl and rumoured to be free with her favours to the right boys. But she also has an on-off boyfriend, Steve Grayson. Steve is two years older and fifty pounds heavier than Danny.
The couple happen upon Steve and five of his friends at a local shopping arcade. It is early evening and the cold night air has just started to turn their breath to mist.
“Wha’ the fuck’s goin’ on here, eh?”
Cindy backs up a couple of steps. “It’s no’ wha’ it looks like—this is Danny. We went to school together for a while.”
“Why’s he got his arm ’round you?”
Danny quickly takes his arm from Cindy’s shoulder. “Steve, we’re just friends, just larkin’ around. Cindy tol’ me she had a boyfriend, I wa’ just teasing her, that’s all.”
“Well, she’s got a fuckin’ boyfriend!” Then Steve plants a head-butt full into Danny’s face, sending him tumbling to the ground. He’s on the verge of blacking out. When he manages to struggle to his feet, he sees Steve laughing, leading Cindy away.
“You bastard.” He wipes blood from his face.
“Want some more, eh?” Steve cocks a fist back level with his shoulder. He charges.
Danny tries a kick to the groin but Steve’s fist crashes into his already bloody nose, knocking him down again. He plants kick after kick into Danny’s kidneys. Then his friends get in on the action. Within seconds, kicks are raining down from all sides.
Danny has taken karate lessons for almost a year, but it’s no help once he’s down. He’s outnumbered and outclassed. The gang leave him in the street. He can’t open his right eye and every breath sends shards of pain lancing into his ribs.
He lies curled in the foetal position for long minutes, then walks home. It usually takes ten minutes; tonight it takes over an hour. He hides his face in primitive boyish embarrassment. Being beaten is bad enough, but being pointed at is somehow even worse.
He reaches home and sees Clay parking up his motorbike at the kerb. His older brother is swinging his leg free from his motorbike as he turns and sees Danny, sees Danny’s face covered in dried blood, his jacket torn.