Holly couldn’t see the map, but she could listen to our conversation. “I’ve been flipping through the radio and the police bands. If I hear anything I’ll let you know.”
“We might get lucky. All the Hunters in airplanes will get there fast to the wrong place, and everybody else in a car will be too slow, but if the creature makes a move in that window, we’ll be in the right position to catch it. They’re too fast or too slow, we’re just right.”
“We can be Team Goldilocks!” Milo exclaimed.
“I like it,” Holly said. “Goldilocks. It has gravitas.”
I ignored them. “If it shows up somewhere else, we’ll be the first to swoop in on it.”
“Us and the MCB,” Milo said. “A bunch of them bailed out of the conference too. Just because Stricken sent all the Hunters doesn’t mean that MCB answers to him.”
“Maybe they do.” Since Myers was gone and Agent Franks wasn’t being shown much love, I had my suspicions about who was actually calling the shots. “MCB will be too busy keeping snoopers out of the area and lying to the press.” I didn’t know if my guess about their internal politics was right or not, but I really didn’t want to get in Franks’ path if I could help it. “If only we had a clue what it was, we might be able to figure where it was heading, how fast, or if it’ll just hunker down. Anything interesting on the map?”
“Nothing major in the area…Pretty desolate. Some little towns here and there. Not very much farming, some mines. It snowed a few days ago, and the desert gets really cold, so there probably won’t be campers to pick off. It would be nice if it was cold-blooded and sleepy…You go out further, Wendover is north. Lots of nothing to the west. I hope it doesn’t go east.”
“Why?”
“Dugway Proving Grounds, where the Army stores all of its nastiest chemical and biological weapons. North of that is the test range where the Air Force does bombing practice. The whole thing is bigger than some states. I’m guessing a Russian attack helicopter flying over will raise some eyebrows. I don’t think Skippy wants to get shot down.”
“Skip no like crash again. Just fixed Hind. Crash bad.”
“Regardless of where it’s going, I’m worried about what happens when we find it,” Trip said. “That gigantic dollar figure making you guys nervous? That’s more than master vamp money. What the heck is this thing?”
“Beats me, but I do like the idea of sleeping on a gigantic pile of money,” Holly answered.
“You totally should try it. It’s awesome. I sleep like a baby.” I could get away with saying crap like that in this crowd. Even by MHI standards, I had been the primary on some very impressive bounties, but my closest friends knew that I’d donated most of my Lord Machado money to the families of the Hunters that had died at DeSoya Caverns. Not that I was hurting financially. I’d married a Shackleford.
We stopped at the small airfield along the way and paid way too much for avgas. The only employee had been excited to see us. Our brutal chopper was a lot neater than his usual Cessnas and crop dusters. Even with the red-and-white pseudo-civilian paint job, the Mi-24 still looked dangerous, and therefore interesting. Busy day too, he told us, since a plane full of Germans had landed, topped off, and departed only ten minutes before we’d arrived.
That didn’t make any sense. Why would Lindemann stop early to top off the tanks? The kid said that they were flying in a PAC P-750, which Holly said should have given them plenty of extra range to get to the site. Now Earl would beat Lindemann there for sure.
Unless Lindemann had an idea of where the monster was heading…
I mentioned that once we got back into the air. My personal theory was that maybe Stricken had given the Germans intelligence he hadn’t shared with the rest of us. He’d told Earl about Unicorn’s missing team and no one else. Stricken had called this a contest, but as he’d admitted himself, he wasn’t the type of man that cared about concepts like fairness.
“Maybe Lindemann has a psychic on his team,” was Trip’s guess.
“That’s stupid.”
“Says the psychic.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not psychic.”
“Can you read minds?”
“Come on, Trip, we’ve been over this a hundred times. Only in very specific circumstances, after being exposed to a specific artifact of the Old Ones, and the effects don’t seem to last for very long. I haven’t read someone’s mind in like forever. And it isn’t mind reading, it’s just particular memories.”
“Psychic.”
This was an argument I was never going to win. Trip still believed it was a gift from God. Yeah, I suppose it sort of was a gift from a god, just not ours.
“Maybe he’s got someone that can do magic,” Milo supplied.
“Possible, but also stupid.”
“Obviously, because that would be so unlikely, as we’re riding in a helicopter with orcs,” Holly said. “Hell, Earl’s even got a magic-using elf girl with him—”
The helicopter jerked harder this time, slamming all of us back into our seats. Only this time it wasn’t a mechanical effect, but rather because Skippy had freaked out on the controls. “Elf! Elf? Harb Anger has filthy elf?”
“Bad move, Team Goldilocks,” I shouted at Holly.
“Crud. Sorry, Skippy.” Holly had forgotten about the animosity between elves and orcs. They’d been at war since the dawn of time, with both sides blaming the other for all manner of atrocities. Earl deciding to hire one of the trailer park elves was a subject that he’d been planning on broaching to Skippy’s people gradually.
“Elfs?”
“Oh crap.” Milo grabbed his headset. “Listen, Skippy, it isn’t like that.”
“Tribe not…not good enough? Urks brave for Harb Anger? Elfs are evil—filth—grugnulish!”
I had picked up a handful of orcish, but I didn’t know that word, though it was obviously not meant as a compliment.
“Wretched pack of pig dogs…” Milo clarified the Orcish profanity. “I wouldn’t say a pack. We just got the one. Easy, Skippy. Inferior elf magic can be useful for lesser things that we would never bother a noble orc for. It was Earl’s call. He was planning on telling you.”
“Harb Anger…wise chief.” Skippy made a grumbling noise, but he wouldn’t be so easily placated. “Keep elf grugnulish…away. Elf no corrupt tribe!” Skippy continued to mumble for a bit, then he changed the CD to rage-infused Scandinavian death metal and somehow made the stereo go even louder so he wouldn’t have to listen to us. We’d hurt his feelings.
“Way to go, Holly,” Trip said. “We weren’t supposed to mention Tanya.”
At that, Edward, who hadn’t shown the least bit of reaction to his older brother’s fit, leaned forward and removed his ear buds, head turned quizzically to the side, apparently interested for the first time.
“It’s cool, Ed. Same one you met before in Indiana,” Milo said soothingly. After Earl had been conned into hiring the elf girl for a temp job, it had been Edward who had gone into the pocket dimension with her. It had been a rescue mission, us trying to get to a couple of lost children, but no humans could get past the telepathic assault of the creatures inside. The elf girl’s stupid bravery had been enough to convince Earl to grant her wish and let her have a shot at becoming a Hunter. Ed had seemed happy because he’d gotten to dismember some giant fey monsters. Mission accomplished by the magically immune elf and orc, and MHI had gotten paid, so it had been a good day all around. “No need for…slashy slashy,” Milo pointed at the two sheathed swords balanced between Ed’s knees. “You two seemed to get along okay.”
Edward seemed to ponder that for a minute. The only thing visible beneath the baggy black balaclava were two unblinking yellow eyes. As usual, Edward was a complete cipher. Then he simply put his earbuds back in and returned his attention to the window. Ed always seemed to be in his own little world right up until the time to get his slice and dice on.
With Skippy still occasionally muttering orc profanity into our
headsets, we passed the time by running through possible scenarios and coming up with plans and backup plans. Normally this would be the part where I’d nervously triple-check my gear, but there wasn’t enough room to safely maneuver guns inside the crew compartment, and besides, Skippy, who frowned on the idea of someone negligently putting a round through his precious chopper, was already in a bad mood.
“That was Julie on the radio. The jet has landed.” Holly said. “One of our Utah guys arranged for a truck to pick them up. Earl’s group will be on their way to the attack site in a few minutes.”
My watch said we were still at least half an hour out. “What’s the ETA for—”
Holly cut me off. “Hang on. Got something…Highway patrol is going nuts…Shots fired. Officer down…”
We all perked up. Could this be it?
“He’s injured, says he can’t tell what it was, but it’s huge…Some sort of animal…Bug…Something. He’s panicked.”
Trip got excited. “Bet that’s our monster!”
“Drewbeck Road in…Where’s Lutz?”
Milo got the map out in a jiffy. “South of the attack site, not too far west of where we are now.”
“Skippy, hang a left!”
Holly wasn’t much of a navigator, but Skippy got the idea, and I had to grab onto the straps again as Skippy banked us hard to the side. Sideways turned to down and all of the unsecured gear cases slid across the floor. “Easy there, Airwolf!” It would be nice for Skippy to say hang on or something before doing something crazy.
Milo began reading off numbers and Skippy corrected course. The light in the crew compartment changed as we flew toward the rapidly setting sun. “Be there…ten minutes.” The Hind began to rattle harder again as we shed altitude and gained speed. “See stupid elfs do that.”
“Cop’s radio went quiet,” Holly warned. “I’ll alert Julie.”
There’s a certain feeling that comes with the beginning of a new hunt. Excitement, tension, nervous energy, and yeah, even fear…It’s kind of addictive. I could feel it and I could see it on the faces of my companions. Except for Ed, who didn’t seem to care one way or the other. “Let’s blast this thing fast and save them the ride.”
“Think we should use the door gun?” Milo asked.
We still had a few minutes of daylight left, and after that we could always switch to night vision. “You ask that like there was any possible way I’d say no.”
Milo gave me a thumbs up, and went to unzipping the case that held the FN 240 machine gun. Trip opened an ammo can and lifted out one end of a belt of silver 7.62. We’d wait until we slowed down before opening the door to place it on its mount. It was cold outside, and I could only imagine what a two-hundred-mile-an-hour wind chill would be like. Between Milo’s belt-fed and one of Julie’s custom M-14s she’d left aboard if we needed a precise shot, we could rain down some hurt from the sky.
“Airplane above. Go same place as us,” Skippy said. “But go faster.” He sounded offended by that.
“Skip’s right.” Holly said. “Somebody just blew right past us.”
“Can you tell who it is?”
“No idea.”
“More Hunters?” I looked to Trip and Milo, but neither one of them had a clue either. “They must have heard the same distress call. Maybe they’re going to land in a field or something.”
“It’s a really rocky area,” Milo said. “Is it like a bush plane?”
“No, Milo. It’s a big, twin engine prop plane,” Holly said. “And they’re leaving us in the dust.”
“Propel-or,” grumbled Skippy. “Faster than Hind…but boring.”
“They’re way ahead now, hard to see them with the sun. Skippy, I’m borrowing these binoculars.”
That was the same type of plane the German team had rented. “Lindemann.” I know that we weren’t in this for Stricken’s stupid race, but I couldn’t help feeling angry. I’m competitive like that. Money is money, and this was MHI’s territory.“They’re probably going to land on the road.”
“Ooh, he’s good.” Milo whistled. “I wonder how much he had to bribe the rent-a-pilot to try that.”
Holly came back over the intercom. “Okay, I can see a sign for a garage ahead. Couple structures. No other buildings for half a mile. There’s the flashing lights from the police car right in front. I don’t see anything else around. There’s lots of big rocks and the road is curvy. I’m not seeing any long flat spots.”
“It’ll take the Germans a pass or two to find a place to land. We can still get in there before they do.”
“On the bright side, if they do pull it off, maybe they’ll be able to help that highway patrolman in time,” Trip said.
Leave it to Trip to be the voice of compassion. I’d been so distracted at being beaten by our rivals on our own turf that I hadn’t even thought of that unfortunate man. The sad truth of this business was that more often than not we got there to clean up after the monsters had done their thing, and actually rescuing people was rare. “True. But I still want to beat these assholes on principle.”
“Uh…guys?” Holly sounded surprised. “The Germans have gotten out.”
“What?”
“They’ve jumped. When I looked up I saw somebody fall out the door.”
“Parachutes? That crafty bastard.” Well, now I could see why Lindemann had been getting so much admiration from the international Hunters at the conference. Lindemann hadn’t just rented a plane, he’d rented one used by skydivers. They probably even had all of the equipment right there ready to go at the airport. That’s also why they’d stopped early to gas up. Simply get to the general area and wait for the target to show. “Why didn’t we think of that?”
“None of us know how to jump out of airplanes?” Milo asked rhetorically.
Boone and Gregorius both had Special Forces backgrounds, so had Cody, but he was too old for that kind of thing now. So they’d all been jump qualified at one point, but they were all either with Earl or in the convoy coming up from Vegas. The only other member of MHI I could think of that would’ve been ready to do that was Sam Haven, who had been a SEAL, but he was dead. As far as I knew, none of the rest of us were prepared to get out of a perfectly good aircraft while it was still in the sky. “Valid point.”
“I can’t see…Whoa…He’s going to hit! Wait. There’s a chute. Holy shit. It opened right before the ground. There’s another one. They’re landing right on top of the place.”
“Okay,” said Trip. “That’s pretty tough.”
“The ladies love Klaus,” Milo added. “And it sure isn’t because of that accent…All shouty and stuff.”
“Please, not another word about your man crush on Klaus.” I had to hand it to Lindemann, that was a clever move, but would it be ten million dollars clever? We could still get this thing first. They were on foot, had to be lightly armed, and we had mobility on our side. “Okay, Skip. The German team is on point. Let’s back them up. Bring us in to provide cover.”
The three humans in the back unstrapped from our seats and clipped safety carabineers to the ruggedized straps on our armor. The attached bungee cords would keep us from falling out the door and to our deaths if Skippy had to maneuver suddenly. We each checked the man next to us to make sure he’d been properly secured. Edward, as usual, didn’t care, as orcs didn’t really like to pay attention to things like safety. If things got nuts, Ed would stay inside by the sheer power of his badassitude. When everyone was ready, Trip yanked one side door open and I got the other.
A blast of freezing wind struck us. Damn, it’s cold.
Milo and Trip went to work moving the heavy 240 into place on the left. Taking Julie’s rifle, I threw the single-point sling over my head and right arm, because if I dropped her four-thousand-dollar gun out the chopper she’d murder me.
I stuck one leg outside, braced my foot on the step, and leaned out. The skin of my face was exposed, and it immediately stung from the cold. You didn’t think of Nevada as frigid
, but in the high desert in January, it was nasty. “Wow! That’s refreshing.” I rocked in a twenty round mag, pulled the bolt back and let it fly, chambering a round of silver .308. Then I was really glad for the sling, because it let me free my hands to dig around in a pouch until I found my ski-mask. I fumbled it on, then got my headset back on over my head.
Trip had gotten the same idea as me and was putting on his mask too. He was from Florida, and normally started shivering at sixty degrees, so he was hating life right about now. Now we matched Ed. Milo, who was from Idaho and seemingly immune to cold, slapped the feed tray down and ran the charging handle of the machine gun. “Left side ready!”
The pouches on my armor were filled with 12-gauge magazines for Abomination. I had one sack of mags for the M-14 on the floor, so I stuck my inside boot through the strap to keep it from sliding away. “Z, ready on the right.”
“One minute,” Skippy roared, so of course that meant it was time to change the music. I don’t know if it was a coincidence, or out of spite because we’d hired an elf, assuming Skippy even understood concepts like nation states, but his choice of Mein Herz Brennt by Rammstein was rather suspicious.
I flipped up the scope covers. I still had a few minutes of light, so I was going to use them as well as possible. I was no Julie, but I wasn’t too shabby with a rifle, and I’d shot this particular heavily modified Troy chassis enough times to know it was a tack driver. It was probably better to start with the scalpel before going to Milo’s meat cleaver. “Give me an angle, Skippy.”
The chopper turned a bit, and the tall sign of the gas station came into view. We were only fifty yards off the ground by the time we crossed the road. The gas station was an ugly building, with a grimy little convenience store attached to a cinder-block garage. The garage door was open, and there was an older car parked inside with the hood up. There was a single gas pump, not even covered by an awning. Twenty yards behind the garage was an old single-wide mobile home. The whole area was lightly dusted with snow.
“The Germans are all in the parking lot.” Holly said. “Friendlies are dressed in gray-and-black camo.”
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