Alien Hunter: Underworld

by Whitley Strieber

  “Got it,” the liaison officer said.

  The engines howled. The pilot was running them as ordered.

  Flynn watched the land slide past far below, the trees tinged with autumn, little towns nestled in among them, America in its quiet majesty, her people in their innocence.

  He wanted things to be right for them. He hadn’t been able to protect Abby, but he could protect them, at least a little, at least for a while.

  As always at such moments, he wished he had Mac with him. They’d grown up together but gone down opposite paths. Mac was a criminal, more or less, so tangled up in being a DEA informant and massaging the drug cartels, you couldn’t tell at any given time which side of the law he was on.

  If Flynn missed anybody besides Abby, it was Mac. He’d helped wreck Morris’s operation just like he lived his generally illegal life—with skill, ease, and pleasure.

  His extensive criminal record made him a security risk. So no clearance, which meant no job, despite the fact that he’d been effective and, unlike most of the others who worked on that case, lived. Morris had been running his operations out of a ranch near Austin, Texas, complete with bizarre intelligence-enhanced animals and human accomplices.

  Flynn slid his hand over the butt of his pistol. What success he’d had—the killing of four of the things so far—came from one central fact: He had become very, very fast with his weapons. None of the trainees he’d been given so far were able to come even close.

  It wasn’t too surprising, given that a man could practice for a lifetime and never learn to shoot a pistol as fast as Flynn could. He’d always been good with a gun, but in the past few months, he’d reached a level of proficiency that was, frankly, difficult even for him to understand.

  The engine note changed, dropping. The plane shuddered, headed down. Flynn looked at his watch. Fifty-four minutes.

  He hit the intercom. “Thank you.”

  The reply was a burst of static. The pilot was probably thinking about whom he’d have to deal with if he blew his engines.

  From the air, Mountainville appeared to be little more than a few stores and some houses tucked in among a low range of hills. The single-strip airfield wasn’t manned. The plane could land, though, and that’s all that mattered.

  The place looked the picture of peace, but Flynn knew different. Somewhere down there a man had endured what was probably the worst death a human being could know.

  Also down there, he had reason to hope, would be his quarry.

  The plane bounced onto the runway and trundled to a stop, its engines still roaring. He got out and crossed the tarmac to the car that had been left for him. As per established procedure, the vehicle was dropped off by the regional FBI office. Nobody was to meet him. What Flynn did, he did alone.

  He tossed his duffel bag into the trunk, then got behind the wheel. He sat silently, preparing himself for whatever might come. Then he started the engine.

  The hunter was as ready as he could be. He headed off toward Mountainville, and whatever might linger there.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE TAIL Flynn had been expecting showed up ten minutes after he left the airport. Now he drove down a quiet country road—two lanes, not in good repair, choked on both sides with pines. Diana’s tail was about a mile behind, staying out of sight, or imagining that he or she was doing so.

  As he drove, the forest on his left fell away to reveal an open field. Beyond it was Mountain Ridge, a low rise of land shadowed by the darkness of the pines that covered it. Somewhere along that ridge, Daniel Miller had met his end.

  Flynn noticed a flicker of movement in the rearview mirror. He sped up a little, drove until he saw a mailbox ahead, the name MILLER painted on it. He turned quickly into the drive and sped up the unpaved double track.

  He began to see flickering light bars winking through the trees ahead. So the locals still hadn’t left, which was not good. The longer the body stayed out there, the more chance for word of its condition to spread. Public knowledge would turn very quickly into public terror if the world realized what was happening.

  At that moment, his cell phone vibrated. It was a text—and an odd one: the number three repeated three times. Nothing else. It wasn’t a police code, at least not one familiar to a Texas cop.

  He glanced in the rearview, but the apparent tail was gone, so he killed the phone and pulled over. He looked for the number where the text had originated, but it was blocked. He called Diana.

  “Did you just text me a three-code of some sort?”

  “No, I did not. What did you get?”

  “Three threes from a blocked number.”

  “Some sort of phone scam?”

  “On a line this secure? I don’t think so.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “By the way, pull off your tail.”

  “Flynn, you need somebody on your back.”

  “The poor guy is vulnerable as hell, you know that.” Only it wasn’t just any FBI agent pulled in for the duty. It was Diana herself, of course. Soon enough, he’d send her packing.

  He hung up and returned to his drive. A moment later, the phone buzzed again.

  “Go ahead.”

  “You got your maps.”

  He killed the phone and pulled over. Drawing his iPad out of his duffel, he examined the maps he’d been sent. They were eleven years old, but far more detailed than what he’d found on Google. He saw the Miller cabin, and another cabin two miles away. Could be others around by now, but from the look of the woods he was in, not too many. Good. The fewer people who were exposed to this, the better.

  There was a little stream, called a “kill” in this area, from the original Dutch word kil. This part of Pennsylvania had originally been settled by immigrants from Holland. Hecker Kill descended from the mountains, passing no structures until it went under the road and meandered across the flats toward the Delaware River. So the water in the upper reaches would be as pure as Earth could make it, the milk of the planet, just the kind of water the creatures liked best. There were also deep ravines.

  If the aliens were in one of those ravines, that could be useful. The deepest of them also had a pool at the bottom, and caves.

  They liked hiding in caves, and the nearby water supply would likely make that their first choice. Somewhere between here and there would be the point of ambush.

  He looked long at the map, committing all the elevations to memory. Too bad there were no water depths. He might have to take one hell of a risk involving that pool, and it had been a dry autumn.

  Thinking out confrontations with the aliens was like playing chess for your life.

  He started the car again. Soon the drive was choked on both sides by dense growths of pine. As he proceeded up the dark, steepening track, he prepared to meet Eve Miller.

  He felt his body relax into a scholar’s slump, felt his breathing become less measured. He’d be Dr. Robert Winter, an infectious disease specialist from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  He counted the ruts of six vehicles in the drive—one of them large enough to be an ambulance. Or, in this case, a coroner’s wagon. The tire marks went in only one direction. So nobody had left yet. He wasn’t about to expose himself to the local cops. The FBI guys had better be in control of that body by now, and all evidence confiscated. The tail he’d deal with in due time.

  The drive ascended steeply, penetrating into thicker and thicker stands of pines and oaks, ash and maple. Lovely spot.

  He reached the row of official vehicles parked at cockeyed angles in the grassy roadside. There were two black FBI Fords, the coroner’s wagon, and two sheriff’s department cruisers.

  Farther on, he could see a log cabin huddled under an overhanging oak.

  He pulled his car up past the official vehicles and into the gravel roundabout in front, then sat listening and watching, just letting himself settle into the scene. Then he opened his duffel again and took out his weapons.

  He carrie
d two pistols. His main weapon was a Casull Raging Bull loaded with .454 rounds. It was a superbly engineered pistol that could handle high-speed shooting and still provide accuracy, so long as you were practiced with it. Its ported barrel reduced recoil, giving it an accuracy edge. The other weapon was also a Casull, this one a .454 quarter-inch—basically a Police Special with more juice. In the past, he’d carried an AMT Backup, but the Casull offered both more power and accuracy.

  He attached the Bull, still in its holster, to his right hip with a clip, then locked the holster into the belt. The little pistol he tucked into a shoulder holster under his left arm. His guns were protected by a biometric array, which made it impossible for anybody else to fire them.

  So the aliens couldn’t shoot him with his own pistol, but they had a lot of other ways of dealing with him. If they got him, he knew that it would be slow. They made their victims suffer, and they would undoubtedly pay special attention to him.

  In the event of capture, he had a way out. He withdrew a black steel box from the duffel and opened it. Inside were two silver capsules, each a quarter of an inch long. He took one out, then looked at its chemically treated seating in the box for any discoloration that would reveal even a microscopic leak. He then fitted the cyanide capsule into the back of his jaw. Crack it, and he would be dead in three seconds.

  He went up onto the porch and pressed the doorbell.

  Nobody came. So had the widow left? If so, the ambush could be about to go down right here, right now.

  He rang the bell a second time.

  The door creaked. An eye flickered in the peephole.

  “I’m Dr. Winter from the CDC,” he said.

  There was a faint scraping sound behind the door. She was sliding her fingernails along the doorframe, unsure about whether to open it.

  “I have a few questions, ma’am.”

  The lock clicked and the door swung open. Standing before him was a woman of perhaps forty, her considerable beauty wrecked by lack of sleep. No tears, though. He noted that.

  “Please come in,” she said.

  He found himself in a large living room with a cathedral ceiling. There were checked curtains on the windows, and a couch upholstered to repeat the pattern. An oak coffee table stood before the couch. Two deep recliners faced it. In the open kitchen he could see a Bosch dishwasher and a Sub-Zero fridge. A collection of copper pots, all of them gleaming, hung from a rack above a broad granite countertop.

  “Very nice,” he said.

  “Thank you. The CDC. Is that why they won’t let me see my husband? Is some sort of a disease involved?”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She gave him a defiant look, her eyes full of fire and sadness.

  “When you last saw him, he was riding out toward the ridge?”

  “On his mountain bike. It’s in the cop report. Why is someone from the CDC here?” She added in a low, ominous voice, “What happened to his eyes, his face?”

  “You did see him, then.”

  “The sheriff came up here after he found him. He showed me—” She shook her head.

  “Pictures?”

  She nodded.

  He would make certain that the FBI got those pictures, and they ended up in a shredder. “Did he say what he thinks happened?”

  “He fell off his bike and became disoriented. But that doesn’t leave a man all cut up, not like that.” She looked him up and down, blinking once when she noticed the bulge on his right hip. “You’re not from any Centers for Disease Control.”

  No point in continuing the lie. “No, I’m not.”

  “So it’s not a disease?”

  “No.”

  “Are you here about Dan’s clearance?”

  “Did he talk about his work?”

  She considered that, then shook her head.

  He pressed her. “What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing.”

  He went to the couch. “May I sit down?”

  “I can’t stop you.”

  “If you tell me to leave, I’ll leave.” He wouldn’t, but hopefully she wasn’t going to try that particular path.

  “I know what you are.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Like I said, you’re worried if his clearance was compromised.”

  “I want to help you.”

  “How in the world can you help me?”

  “By finding who did this and bringing them to justice. May I know your first name?”

  “I’m Eve. But shouldn’t you know that?”

  “It’s in the file, but I prefer to ask.” He tried a smile. No reaction. He asked her smoothly, “What do you think happened to Dan?”

  “What do I think? I don’t know what to think. He fell off his bike. He was maimed. He drowned in two feet of water. It’s not exactly a straight story, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  She fell silent. Grief? No, not quite. When her eyes came back to him, there was a nasty little spark. But why? What was she hiding?

  “Is this work-related?” she asked. “Are you trying to tell me he was murdered, is that what this is about?”

  “We don’t know what happened.”

  “But it could have been murder, or someone like you wouldn’t be here. And the local cops aren’t going to be told, are they?”

  “They’re going to close it out as an accident.”

  “And the FBI?”

  “They’re here because of his clearance. To make sure no classified information slips out in the course of the investigation.” He paused. “Look back to before this happened. Anyone come up to the house who was unexpected?”

  “That’s why he was out there in the first place. Three children came to the door. They asked if they could come in. I asked what they wanted, and they just walked off the porch and sort of wandered back into the woods.”

  “And you’d never seen them before?”

  “They looked like little tramps. They were filthy. They smelled. And no, I don’t know where they came from.” She drew her shoulders together. “They made us worry that drifters were camping in our woods. We have three hundred acres of this mountain.”

  The aliens could hypnotize the unwary into seeing them as deer, as owls, even as children. They could put hallucinations in your mind, damned convincing ones. “What do you remember about the kids?”

  He watched her eyes flutter closed. She was trying hard. She said, “I was glad they left.” She leaned toward him. Her voice a low whisper, she continued, “I found them loathsome.”

  “But no more details?”

  “Were they part of this? Because they were not normal children. No way.”

  He offered the simplest and safest of all the lies he could have told her: “No, they weren’t part of this.”

  “I want to believe you.”

  “Let’s think back again. Besides the kids?”

  “Nothing important.”

  “Everything is important.”

  “He was murdered. That’s why you’re here.”

  Flynn did not reply.

  “Did you work with him? Can you at least tell me that?”

  “I did not,” he said.

  “You’re like him—you come off as a real gentleman, but inside you’re tough as nails.”

  “He was a hard man?”

  “Strong. Like you.”

  He nodded. “Now, think back. Anything else? Anything last night?”

  She looked into the middle distance. Flynn watched the pulse in her throat. He’d interrogated too many people to watch her eyes. Do that, and even a person with nothing to hide would spar with you. Lower your gaze, and they feel an unconscious sense of control, even though they are not in control.

  “You know, there is.” She leaned forward. “I couldn’t sleep last night.”

  “I understand.”

  “Very late, there was an owl at the bedroom window.”

  “An owl? Had that ever happened before?”


  “Never. It was just looking in at me. I hit the window with a pillow, and it flew away.”

  Owls didn’t look in windows, so the aliens had been here as recently as last night. They’d still been interested in her twelve hours ago, so maybe their interest was ongoing. Maybe she was also a target, or, as was more likely, they had planned their ambush of him near the house, and wanted to be sure he would be nearby tonight, protecting her.

  “Let’s talk about Dan and Deer Island. What do you know?”

  “His employee number was 333676. I knew very little else. It was all secret.”

  The first part of the number sent enough of a shock through Flynn that he had to drop his head for an instant, so she wouldn’t see his expression.

  In that same instant, the blocked number became a central issue. He needed to find out at once who was behind it.

  He lifted his lips into the appearance of a smile. “Tell me the very little.”

  “What you want to know is whether or not he shared his secrets with me. He didn’t. I just figured a few things out.”

  “Run down what he did tell you.”

  “His project was called Dream Weaver. He did a lot of work with hypnosis, which I figured out from things he said.”

  The project name didn’t ring any bells, but the fact that he worked with hypnosis meant that he almost had to be involved with the bodies. The question of how the aliens could hypnotize people without speaking to or touching them was of major interest to the U.S. government, especially the intelligence community.

  “Anything else? Anything at all?”

  “Three nights ago, we thought we heard somebody on the porch.” She nodded decisively, fixing it in her memory. “We did.”

  “After the children or before?”

  “After. It’s what finally decided Dan to investigate up the ridge.”

  “He was armed with what?”

  “Not armed. We’re not gun people.” She glanced again at his hip.

  “I’m a police officer,” he said. He lifted his jacket to reveal the butt of the big pistol.

  “From where? What department?”

  “Can’t answer, I’m sorry.”

  Given that Dan Miller worked in an advanced facility that was involved with the mysteries of alien neurology, Flynn was now almost certain that he had been looking for a meeting with them, not a confrontation with squatters. They had granted him a meeting, all right—his last.