Alien Hunter (Flynn Carroll)

by Whitley Strieber

  He remembered that place. Alvis something-or-other had been leasing that property. He’d run it with Aussie cattle dogs. Good beasts, but not good enough to prevent the loss.

  “I have a feeling that the help does most of the heavy work. The kidnappings. But this is him,” Flynn said. “Him personally. His help isn’t going to be cutting animals like this.” He looked toward the rafters, then reached back and pulled his night vision goggles from his backpack.

  The upper reaches of the barn were empty. He took off the goggles. “Let’s go out the back,” he said.

  “Three guys are down, remember that.”

  He said nothing.

  This door also slid on rollers, but wasn’t as large as the one in the front. Similarly, it wasn’t kept up, and it took Flynn an effort to get it to grind open. As he did so, ice showered down on him.

  Behind the barn was a mostly bald hill, topped by a few twisted trees. Close in, he could see a faint indentation in the snow. Further out, it was deeper. “That’s a buried track,” he said, moving forward. He drew his gun.

  The further up the hill they went, the deeper and clearer the track became.

  “Why would she come out here?”

  “She was running. She saw that horse, and when she did, she ran.”

  As they approached the trees, Flynn felt the same indefinable sense of menace that had saved him in deceptive situations before. “Let’s take our time. We want to watch those trees pretty closely.”

  They were taller than they had appeared from the barn. The snow made distances seem longer, but the trees were under a hundred yards from this end of the barn, and he was soon among them. He was careful, though, never to lose sight of her. He didn’t want to lose her, God no, but she wasn’t only important as a human being and a fellow officer. Without her, he had no idea who he was working for because she was too secretive to tell him. Probably didn’t even have the authority.

  In among the trees there was less snow, but every movement brought a fall of the stuff off overhanging branches. It got in around his hood and dripped through his clothes in the form of freezing cold water.

  Just beyond the stand of trees they found an area about thirty feet in diameter where the snow had been blown away right down to the grassy hillside.

  “Something landed here,” Diana said.

  He estimated the grade of the hill at a good thirty degrees. “Wasn’t a chopper,” he said, “not on a slope this steep.”

  “It must have hovered.”

  “The pilot is a real expert, then,” Flynn said. “Very well trained.”

  “You think she was taken from this spot?”

  “Maybe. Thing is, the snow was blown back from here well after these tracks were made. Hours. If they took her, they took her frozen solid.”

  “We’ll need to tell him she’s lost in the snow.”

  He had his doubts about that. “Maybe.”

  Flynn turned and headed back through the trees. Diana stayed close.

  As they walked, he said, “I don’t think we’re forming an accurate picture of what’s going on here. If you think about it, it just doesn’t make sense. Not a damn bit of sense. Some kind of cult group in possession of highly classified equipment, including an exotic aircraft? Hardly seems likely.”

  “That’s what it looks like, though.”

  They reached the back door. “It’s what you’ve been telling your team. It’s not what you know. Question is now, what do we tell this old guy?”

  “His wife is lost in the snow. Won’t be found till the melt. If then.”

  He entered the house. The old man sat in his wheelchair. He looked up with the dead eyes of a man who already knows that he’s defeated.

  “We didn’t find her,” Flynn said.

  “She’s dead. Froze by now.”

  “We don’t know that. Could she have gone to a friend’s house?”

  “She’s not in that barn, she’s froze.”

  “There’s been predator action in the barn, sir,” Diana said.

  “Oh, Lord.”

  “One of the horses has been killed. Looks like coyotes.”

  “The hell, it’s them damn wolves! The Fish and Wildlife owes me for that horse.” His face suddenly screwed up. Flynn knew the way tragedy can roll past you at first, then come back and hit you like a boulder dropping from the sky.

  “She’s still breathing, mister,” he said. “Count on it.”

  Diana glared at him.

  “What’s she shaking her head for? Don’t hold out on me!”

  Flynn heard noises on the front porch, the crunch of boots in snow. “She’s back,” he said.

  Diana’s eyes widened.

  A voice called through the door, “Hey, Lar, I got your thermos refilled, the Katz’s’re running their genny.” Then, “Get this door unlocked, you damn nut!”

  Lar wheeled himself off into the front room. A moment later, a tall woman, Montana lean, came striding in on a blast of cold air, snow falling off her boots.

  “Hi, where’d you folks stray in from on a day like this?”

  “We’re police officers,” Diana began.

  “Well, I got me a horse up in my barn got cut up by space aliens, so you better go up there.”

  “We’ve been up there.”

  “It was them wolves,” Lar said.

  “Ha! That’s what you people told him? Why do cops lie? It’s space aliens. We all know it. Been goin’ on for years.”

  “That damn yearling,” Lar said. “Too young and foolish to stay away from wolves. Probably didn’t even know what they were.”

  “They took my Bill, you senile old fool. Left the two yearlings just fine. They ain’t even spooked.”

  “What about Jenny?”

  “Your horse? Nobody’s gonna take that ole bag a bones. You couldn’t even sell that thing to a glue factory. What’s ’is name down the road, that weird beard, offered fifteen dollars. He wanted to make pillows outa the hair.” She swung away from her perch looming over her husband, and trained tight eyes on Flynn and Diana. “So what in hell are you doin’ invadin’ my home, officers? If I may be so bold?”

  “Our vehicle failed,” Diana said, the very picture of smoothness. “We’re looking for a ride into Billings. We can pay.”

  “You will pay. No question there. You must be feds.”

  “DEAs lookin’ to bust up some meth labs,” her husband said.

  “That ain’t hard to do around here. ’Cept the state police, you talked to them lately? ’Cause they don’t share their turf, not to put too fine a point on it.” She spread her hands. “I mean, this is not a threat. Far be it from me.”

  “We’re not in drug enforcement.”

  “Oh. Well, do you do something useful, then? ’Cause maybe then nobody’s gonna gut you and throw you out in the snow for your wolves to drag away.”

  The threat was delivered with the kind of smile that said it had meaning. So this little ole couple were indeed involved in drug operations. He wondered where she had her lab. Probably one of the sheds he’d seen out there. Normally, he would’ve been interested, just automatically. No more.

  “Look, how much is it gonna take to get us to FBI Headquarters in Billings?” he asked.

  “Well, let’s see. If you tell me why you’re here, that’s one price. If you don’t, then it’s another. Which you ain’t gonna be able to afford. And, lady, will you please stop thinking about that ridiculous little pistol you got in the right pocket of your parka? In fact—” An impressively quick hand reached in and withdrew Diana’s pistol. “Man, who do you work for, you get crap like this as your issue gun? What shit.”

  She was right about that. An officer carrying a Beretta without a tracking light was not well equipped.

  Flynn said, “We’re working on a kidnapping. We were overtaken by the storm.”

  “Who’d kidnap trailer trash? What’re they gonna get for ransom around here, twenty bucks and a pair of used boots? This whole town ain’t go
t enough cash to ransom a donkey.” She chuckled.

  “We tracked the person of interest to Black Canyon City,” Diana said. “Then the storm hit, we lost contact with our vehicle and took the bus.”

  “The wrong way. You’re toward Bozeman.”

  “We were too cold to wait. We had to get on it.”

  She was quiet for a good minute. She looked down at Diana’s gun. “First off, I know you’re not a cop, lady. This ain’t a cop pistol and here I am holding it and you ain’t pissing your pants, which means you ain’t gotta file a missing weapon report.” She looked at Diana. “Three hundred bucks and I’ll take you to Billings. Cash now.” She turned her head toward Flynn. “That’s apiece.”

  Flynn could have taken the gun out of her hand and made her eat his own. But he said, “Pay the lady, Ossifer.”

  A silently furious Diana produced a checkbook.

  Clara barked out a mirthless laugh.

  Diana put away the checkbook and counted out six one-hundred-dollar bills from what looked to be a narrow stash.

  Clara was good at driving in snow, and so the truck clanked along at a steady thirty miles an hour. “Animals get cored out like that around here. Nobody but the poor rancher gives a shit. The cops lie. Insurance company probably pays ’em off, ’cause if it’s predator action or act of God, they don’t gotta pay, see.”

  “Space aliens would be what?” Flynn asked.

  “God only knows. Whatever, they ain’t gonna pay anyway. Bastards.”

  There was a world of hurt in the way she spat that word. He didn’t want to hear the story of her life, though, so he remained silent.

  The truck moved steadily along. Flynn watched the road, what he could see of it. He kept an eye on the sky, which was darkening again.

  Time crawled. Flynn could almost feel the perp’s frustration that they were getting away. Feel his bitter rage. With his trained animal and his fabulous chopper, he had to feel that a couple of dumb cops had no damn business escaping from him.

  They arrived in the snow-choked city, finally reaching a recently plowed street where the going was a little better.

  After a couple of turns, Clara pulled up in front of an office building, small, on the same scale as all the buildings around here. A small, trim city, the kind of place Flynn favored. Menard with snow.

  When they got out, Clara sped off immediately.

  “She’s glad to be gone,” Diana said.

  “Probably with good reason.”

  They entered the building.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Nobody will have heard of us,” Diana said as they went down the hall toward the FBI office.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She opened the door and went in, Flynn behind her. Two agents and a clerk were on duty, sitting at desks in a single, large room. Along a side wall there were three offices, all closed.

  Diana walked up to the clerk and spoke quietly. She produced a small leather folio and laid it on the desk. Inside, Flynn could see a badge and an unfamiliar identification card with a pink sash across its surface.

  The secretary stared down at them. “Bill,” she called, turning in her chair, “what is this?”

  One of the two agents got up from his desk, a tall man in his fifties. He had a tightly neutral expression on his face, the habitual mask that many field officers wore.

  Flynn had never gotten much support out of the FBI. Down in Menard, their office was such a revolving door that nobody ever really got to know the community. Menard was just a way station in the drug wars. The agents who were going somewhere in the organization were all further south along the border.

  The first agent took Diana’s credential to the second.

  “They never know what it is,” she said.

  “So how does this help us?”

  “Just wait.”

  He watched as the agents, their faces sharp with suspicion, huddled over a phone.

  “Who’re they calling?”

  “It’s a nonstandard ID. They’ve never seen one like it before.”

  “Because of the secrecy bullshit?”

  She nodded. “It’s not bullshit, Flynn.”

  The second agent came striding over. “You can use office two,” he said. He handed Diana back her ID.

  “That worked, at least,” Flynn said as they crossed the room.

  “I’m sorry, Flynn, I’m going to need to do this alone.”

  There were chairs along the wall, and Flynn took one of them. The plaster was thin enough to enable him to hear that she was talking to somebody, but he was unable to make out the words. Once or twice, she raised her voice. He still couldn’t discern specific words, but he could hear the emotion in them. She was reporting the deaths of her men.

  Her voice stopped. He waited. The silence extended.

  She came out. Her face was rigid, her lips compressed.

  “You reported,” he said. “They were not happy.”

  “They were not.”

  “So what happens next?”

  “Flynn, you’re still going to be with me, but very honestly I asked to have you relieved and was turned down on the theory that you’re all I have left. So my problem now is that you’re clueless and I don’t have the authority to bring you up to speed.” She glanced across the room at the agents. “We need transport,” she snapped.

  One of the agents got up and sauntered over. “Yeah? Can I help you?”

  “Get us out to Logan.”

  “Call a cab.”

  “There’s no time for a cab, Delta’s about to leave. We need to move right now.”

  “We have motels. Not up to your standards, I’m sure, but you’ll live.”

  “If you don’t want a complaint in your file, I’d advise you to stuff your ego up your ass and do what you’re told.”

  Flynn was as surprised as the agent, who glared at her.

  “Right now, Agent.”

  He jerked his head toward a side door. They followed him down a couple of flights of interior stairs and out to a well-plowed parking lot.

  There were two sedans parked in it and three black SUVs, immediately recognizable as federal cars.

  “I wanta take my Subaru,” the agent said. “Better in the snow.”

  Once they were in the car, a dense silence settled. Nevertheless, Flynn thought he would try asking the agent some questions that could be useful.

  “What kind of crimes do you guys cover out here?”

  “Us guys cover the waterfront.”

  “I mean, specifically?”

  “I know I don’t have any hotshot National Security clearance, but that’d be privileged information.”

  An asshole for sure. He kept going anyway. “Any kidnapping cases?”

  “Kidnapping? No. Is that what this is about?”

  “I can’t answer that. My hotshot National Security clearance prevents me.”

  This brought a slight chuckle. “We had a disappearance four months ago. Not a kidnapping case. The vic packed a bag.”

  Diana glanced at Flynn, who said nothing.

  They pulled up to the departure gates and the agent let them off and sped away.

  “Are federal officials always so helpful to each other?” Flynn couldn’t resist asking, but he knew the answer.

  “Yes.”

  “So where are we going?”

  “Just stay with me.”

  The airport was small and intimate, a reminder to Flynn of another America, one that still clung to life, just barely, in little places like this and Menard. Steady, settled, and safe—assuming, of course, if you ignored things like the meth industry that drove lots of local economies in poor areas.

  Security was no problem, just a single TSA agent with an old-fashioned X-ray device and nobody ahead in line. Not surprising, since Delta to Salt Lake was the last flight out to anywhere, and they had just a couple of minutes to go before the doors were closed. They showed their creds and got their guns passed for hold stowag
e without trouble. Unlike the FBI agents, the TSA worker accepted Diana’s credential without question. He passed his Menard Police Department ID card with equal disinterest.

  As they walked down the aisle, Flynn took careful note of the other passengers. He didn’t want a repeat of what had happened on the bus, and he thought they should assume that this perpetrator was capable of almost anything.

  He was surprised to identify a Federal Air Marshal three rows behind him. Normally, you found these guys on long-haul flights in big planes. So why was he here? He slid into his seat between a businessman and a kid sealed up in an iPod. The FAM was carrying, which is what had identified him. There was a pistol, small, probably a .38, under the left arm of his thick jacket.

  The flight was hot and cramped and seemed longer than it had any right to be. Twice, Flynn went back to the john so that he could pass the FAM. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for the fact that he was there.

  Toward the end of the flight, Flynn closed his eyes for a few minutes, waking up when the aircraft shuddered as it began to land.

  On the way to the next flight, he commented, “There was a FAM a couple of rows behind me.”

  “Really?”

  “No, I made it up.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  “Odd that he was there.”

  “A coincidence, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She stopped. She turned to him. “We are alone, you and I. I know one other person, the individual I report to.”

  He continued walking easily. Inside though, he was dealing with a major shock. Only her immediate superior officer? What in holy hell was going on here?

  Their next flight turned out to be to Chicago. They were seated in first class.

  “I could get used to this,” he said to her. The seat actually had room for him.

  “Don’t. These were the only seats left. The storm’s headed east, and folks want to get in before it closes O’Hare. The flights are packed.”

  “Why are we going to Chicago? If I may be so bold.”

  She opened her mouth, seemed about to speak. Remained silent.

  “We’ve got a choice of prime rib or mahi-mahi,” the steward said after they took off.