Alien Hunter (Flynn Carroll)

by Whitley Strieber

  “If Charlie says he can take it into the storm, he can. Now, I want to brief you in procedures, because they’re not Bureau standard.”

  That mattered little to Flynn. He was only vaguely aware of standard Bureau procedures anyway.

  Charlie began turning on the electrics. His doubts seething, Flynn strapped himself into his seat, the rearmost in the plane.

  Beside him, Diana sat paging through a file on her iPad.

  When he realized that the plane was moving, he was shocked. He hadn’t heard the engines start or felt the slightest vibration, and yet they were heading out onto the apron.

  “Boy, this thing is quiet,” he said.

  “New engines,” Charlie said.

  They moved swiftly across the apron. Charlie spoke into his mike, and after a moment the tower’s clearance crackled through the confined cabin. The controller’s voice, sharp with surprise and concern, made it clear that he’d been taken by surprise.

  “Have you filed a flight plan?” came his voice, sharp in the silent cabin.

  “We’re not required to.”

  “Sir, if you’re heading north, I’d advise filing.”

  Charlie’s reaction was to click off the radio.

  “You oughta file a flight plan,” Flynn shouted over the engine noise, which was rising as they taxied onto the runway.

  “Flynn, we can’t afford to leave tracks. Please understand that.”

  “Tracks? It’s a flight plan, for God’s sake! The perp doesn’t have access to FAA records, surely.”

  She dropped her iPad down on his lap. “You need to do a little studying on the way up. See what you make of the cases. Try to form in your mind an idea of the kind of capabilities the perp possesses. I guarantee you, they are awesome.”

  The takeoff pressed Flynn back into his seat. In under five minutes, they were leaving ten thousand feet behind.

  “This is the damnedest thing,” Flynn said. “What is this? Because it sure as hell ain’t no fifty-year-old Piper Apache.”

  “The friction-free coating makes it a different airplane. And the turbos. The airframe’s been strengthened. And the avionics, like I said—you can’t find better. Plus, it’s pressurized. Convenient in a storm. We can do forty thousand feet.”

  “It’s not a Piper Apache, is it? It’s camouflaged as a Piper Apache.”

  She smiled. “I could answer that question for you. But if I did, I’d have to kill you.”

  There had been humor there—a little. It was clear, though, that Diana Glass really would kill to keep her secrets. It was understandable, though. This was a crack unit. These people were dedicated. Maybe people like this could actually win, even against a genius psychopath … assuming they lived through the damn flight.

  He watched home slip away beneath the speeding plane. Ahead, the sky was big and dark and mean, and the distant purr of the engines meant that he could hear the wind screaming around the airframe, like a voice from another world, mad and wild.

  As the land slid past far below, it became more and more snow-choked. The silence that had settled over the cabin spoke to him in a clear voice. These people were all doing the same thing most people in police work do when they’re heading toward danger. Each one considers his life and wonders what will come, and grows silent, seeking within himself for his deepest strength.

  Half an hour passed in this silence. Flynn read case files, one after another, more than he’d ever had access to before.

  “I notice a pattern,” he said. “The same articles of clothing every time. Three changes of underwear, three shirts or blouses, two pairs of pants.”

  “Interesting,” Mike commented.

  “Damn interesting,” Diana said.

  “I wish we could access Behavioral Science resources, Diana.”

  “Louie, no.”

  “I know—‘until we know what we’re dealing with, no leaks.’”

  Flynn said to Charlie, “You came out of Behavioral, so what can you add?”

  The engines drummed. The plane, now enveloped in grayness, was being steadily buffeted.

  “Charlie?”

  “I gotta fly an airplane,” he said at last.

  Soon the snowy fields below disappeared into a gray gloom. Flynn could hardly see the strobes on the wingtips. He craned his neck, looking up at the instrument cluster and seeing gleaming flat panel displays. An autopilot was operating, the plane banking and changing altitude on its own. Charlie didn’t even have his hands on the stick. The plane, on its own, was navigating its way through the storm.

  These avionics were ten years ahead of the airlines, maybe more.

  Flynn thought he should feel safer, but he really wished that Charlie had his hands on the controls instead of reading files on his own iPad. And what about “I gotta fly this plane?” Apparently what it really meant was, “I decline to answer your question.”

  He watched the wing strobes disappear into the muck. Then the wings.

  He leaned forward. “Shouldn’t you descend into visual?”

  Charlie didn’t react.

  “Hey, Charlie, I can fly a damn airplane well enough to know we need visual.”

  Again no answer. Flynn turned to Diana. “Look, this is dangerous. No general aviation aircraft is up to this kind of flying, no matter what kind of avionics it has. What about deicing equipment? It has to be minimal.”

  “I just did a statistical analysis on the cases,” Charlie called back, “and he’s right. There’s a very fixed pattern to the things that are taken.”

  “We know our perp has a team. He has to,” Diana said. Then, to Flynn, “Just relax, let him do his thing. We wouldn’t be up here if the plane couldn’t do its job.”

  “What the hell is it, a drone with seats?”

  She laughed a little. “The military’s got some very good autopilots, obviously. Look, the computer’s a lot better pilot than he is, right, Charlie?”

  “Right. I’m looking at the site on the looksee. Snow’s really building up around the house.”

  “What’s a looksee?”

  “We have surveillance cameras deployed around the target’s home,” Diana said.

  As he paged through case after case, Flynn wasn’t seeing a single indication that any witness had ever identified any person, vehicle, sound, or light that seemed to them to be unusual during the times the kidnappings had taken place. “My case is the only one with any sort of witness at all?”

  “It is.”

  Flynn tried to relax. He hadn’t slept much and he was tired. Looking at a rough day ahead, probably a stakeout tonight. Stakeout in a blizzard. Lovely. He closed his eyes—and immediately felt a sensation of falling. Then the stall horn howled.

  “Jesus!”

  “No big deal,” Charlie yelled. “I’m on it.”

  The horn warbled a last time, then stopped.

  Flight became steady again, the engines now droning, the wingtip strobes faintly visible. Flynn had not realized until this moment how tired he actually was. Still, though, he clung to the arms of his seat.

  More time passed. Finally, he found himself once again closing his eyes.

  What seemed just a few moments later, he heard Diana saying, “Good morning.”

  “I’ve been asleep?”

  “Deep. Three hours.”

  It felt like three minutes. “I can’t believe that.”

  “Big changes, lotta stress, it’s natural. Healthy.”

  The plane was still deep in the storm system, but flying smoothly, banking gently from time to time.

  He saw that Diana had a readout of the plane’s position on her iPad. “What’s our ETA?”

  “About twenty minutes,” she said.

  “We’ve made good time, then.”

  “The autopilot has an intelligent seek function. It finds the smooth air, so we don’t have to cut back our speed.”

  When he was younger, he’d flown his dad’s plane between ranches, taking the old man from one of his properties to a
nother. He still had his license and kept up with the field. “A hell of a nice toy.”

  “That it is.” She raised her voice. “ETA upcoming, gentlemen. Just to be on the safe side, let’s do a weapons check.”

  Flynn knew the law, and the law said that he wasn’t a police officer in Montana or anywhere except Texas unless in hot pursuit, and flying in to a town and looking for a bad guy was hardly that.

  “If you’re asking me to check my weapon, that means you’re expecting that I might need to use it. So I need to know where we are in the chain of command. Am I legal here?”

  “We’re not in the Bureau’s chain of command at all. Me and Charlie are FBI, but this unit is seconded to the National Security Council.”

  “Seconded? And since when did the NSC have any enforcement powers?”

  “Okay, now I’m gonna tell you something that’s classified. You need to sign, though.” She took her iPad back from him, turned a few pages, then handed it back. “Electronic signature. Use the keypad.”

  He read the letter, which was under the logo of the National Security Council and signed by the chairman. It granted him a Sensitive Compartmented Clearance under the code name Aurora. It was listed as a Human Intelligence Control System clearance and seemed to have something to do with the National Reconnaissance Office.

  “I don’t understand this.”

  “It’s an above top secret designation. Officially, we’re part of the National Reconnaissance Office, but that’s not where our actual chain of command runs.”

  “Okay, so when you send a memo, who do you send it to?”

  “My boss.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “All I can tell you.”

  “And if I sign?”

  “A little more.”

  “Not a hell of a lot,” Louie said over his shoulder.

  “Look, people, this does not look like a police unit to me. National Security Council? I was looking for a serial kidnapper and probable killer. Where’s the national security issue?”

  “And the answer is the same, sign and find out.”

  “Do it, buddy,” Mike said. “You need this. Heart and soul, man.”

  “First I want to know if I discharge my weapon in Montana, what happens?”

  Diana explained, “We’re operating under a National Security Letter. You fill out a discharge report and forget it.”

  “A National Security Letter? For a serial killer? How? Why?”

  She pointed at the iPad. “It will make sense, Flynn. It really will.”

  He brought up the keyboard and signed his full name, then added his police ID number and his social security number in the blanks provided.

  “Okay, so what have I done to myself?”

  The airframe creaked loudly as the plane banked. The wing roots crackled. He could practically feel the tail torsioning, sense the metal weakening, the whole assembly getting ready to come to pieces. No matter how juiced up a small plane was, weather conditions like these were dangerous.

  Snow seemed to gush at them. Charlie continued his maneuvers. He hadn’t even turned on the wipers, so he was still relying on full IFR. That was absolute confidence, or absolute stupidity.

  The ground suddenly appeared below them, a spreading, featureless vastness of snow. When they banked again, Flynn could see roofs buried in the white desert, smoke whipping away from their chimneys. Nearby was a single dark line that looked like runways look when you should definitely not land there.

  They banked yet again, and as they did, Flynn saw that there was a sign on the roof of the larger of the two hangars that marked the airport. It said, “Ridge, Montana.”

  As they lined up on the runway and began to descend, he stopped asking questions. No time for that now.

  In the end, he’d discover every secret thing about this damned operation, he was confident of that, but not just now. Just now, it was time to let this thing unfold and hope that the blood that would fall in the snow on this day would not be his own. There would be blood, he felt, most certainly.

  CHAPTER SIX

  They taxied to the smaller hangar. There wasn’t anybody around, of course. Why would there be on a visual flight rules airport during IFR weather?

  Moving with lubricated precision, the team got out and pulled the plane into the shelter of the hangar.

  “Diana, I need to talk to you.”

  “We’re behind schedule.”

  “Look, I want to know what we’re dealing with and I want to know right now.”

  “No problem,” Diana said, “when the time is right.”

  The others began unpacking weather gear, warm jackets, hats, boots.

  “You didn’t get airsick, Texas,” Charlie said. “I’m impressed.”

  “Flight was smooth. Anyway, I slept.”

  “And yelled.”

  “A little.”

  “We need to move,” Diana said.

  “When do we meet the local cops?” Flynn asked.

  Silence fell.

  “Five personnel can’t run a stakeout in a blizzard!”

  Diana continued as if he had not spoken. “What we’re looking at is a relatively isolated house. About a mile from the nearest neighbor.”

  “Hey. You don’t go past the locals.”

  “Lieutenant Carroll, I’ll tell you what you need to know. That’s all I can legally do. Read your secrecy agreement.”

  “I thought there was going to be a big reveal when I signed it.”

  “As soon as possible.”

  Impasse. He had no choice but to accept the situation.

  “They’re in a house about four miles outside of town. Armed to the teeth. Scared shitless.”

  “In weather like this, that’s total isolation,” Flynn said. “Do we have a read on the local power grid? Because if they don’t have power, that’s going to look like a real vulnerability to the perp.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Which is why we’re going to cut their power at some point if he doesn’t show up. Use their helplessness as a lure. We hope it’ll prove irresistible.”

  “Why is he going after sisters, anyway? Explain that.”

  “He got the first two, so we’re thinking he could try the third. What his motive is, we don’t know. There is a selection process, though. High-functioning people, that’s clear. Not too old, not too young.”

  They began putting on the warm jackets, gloves, and boots that they’d pulled out of the plane’s rear cargo bay.

  “I need gear.”

  “There’s an Army-Navy outlet,” Diana said.

  “Good stuff, I hope.” In weather this cold a stakeout would get dangerous fast.

  “Far as I know. Let’s pull out the electronics, guys.”

  Mike and Louie opened the plane’s nose cargo bay and Mike drew out a black, hard sided briefcase. Mike carried it to a workbench and released the elaborate lock that sealed it.

  Flynn recognized night vision equipment and in-ear radios. But there were five blunt black wands, devices he could not place.

  “Ranger equipment,” Diana told him. “Mike will check you out on one.”

  Mike said, “First, you gotta know that it has a self-destruct system built in. And a fingerprint reader. Once you’re printed to it, if it gets more than ten meters from your body, acid’s going to spray all over its interior. So you don’t want to forget your little friend, and Uncle Sam really does not want you to do that. You’re holding a million dollars worth of his computing power in the palm of your hand.”

  He pressed a button on the side, then pointed the narrow end of the device at Diana. A moment later, a reading appeared on a tiny screen.

  “First, any reading at all tells you that a human being is out there somewhere, whether you can see him or not. Now, let’s evaluate the state of the commandante’s beautiful mind.”

  “Careful,” Diana said.

  “She’s reading eighty-four,” Mike said. “Anything over fifty is telling you the target’s awake. O
ver seventy, the target’s alert. Over ninety, the target has an elevated heart rate and high-level brain activity. In other words, your target is probably aware of your presence and your day is shortly going to be ruined.”

  He thrust it into Flynn’s hand. Flynn looked down at it.

  “It’s a sensitive radio receiver and a computer that can read and interpret what it picks up. The thing draws a couple of milliamps and has the computing power of maybe a hundred thousand laptops. The receiver is tuned to pick up brain wave frequencies. It works the same as a garden variety electroencephalograph, only without leads. It has an effective range of ninety meters line of sight.”

  Flynn said, “Police departments could really use this.”

  “And it’s also why we’re not going to be calling in the locals. It’s as classified a piece of equipment as the United States of America possesses. MindRay saves lives but it’s easily defeated. Word gets out, no more trick pony.”

  “Defeated how?”

  “Headgear that suppresses radio frequencies kills it. Embed a copper grid in a cap, and this device cannot read you.”

  So cops couldn’t have it. Word would get out. He saw that. But he also had a question that he didn’t ask: did this thing make them more effective than the addition of some local bodies would?

  “What’s to say the perp won’t be wearing a hat like that?”

  “The classification of this item is very, very strict,” Mike said.

  “Okay,” Diana came back, “we need to move right now.”

  Flynn thought that they would have been better off leaving these things behind and going in with local support. If he was in command of this operation, the MindRays would be headed straight back to the Pentagon.

  Outside, the wind was now howling down the runway, blowing a sheer white torrent of snow. They’d gotten in just under what was exactly what the weatherman was predicting: a snow hurricane.

  Transport was a weathered Cherokee with chains, a tight fit for five people, especially when one of them was as big as Flynn Carroll.

  There was no visible road. The only sign of any activity was a light, faint in the distance, appearing and disappearing as the snow gusted.