“Sure you are. You’re a cop, and a good one.”
“I don’t have that gene, I’m sorry.”
“I’ve read your DEA file. You’re as good an undercover as they’ve got.”
They rode on, Mac saying nothing further.
“Anyway, I know what you really do. I know you make a little on the side, but most in your sort of business do. It’s not blood money—that’s what’s important. I also know that you’re not rich like you make out. There is no Lamborghini in Marfa, for example. And your brother was no damn good and that broke your heart, and you didn’t screw Cissy Greene, but you did protect her from a very abusive father until she figured out how to fend for herself. I know you, Mac.”
“Aw, shit.”
“And I’m proud to.”
They flew in another blessedly jam-packed jet from Dayton to LaGuardia Airport in New York. On the flight, Flynn reflected on Deer Island. It had started out as a biological warfare research facility, but obviously its mission had expanded to include a major alien research center.
They had a layover at LaGuardia, and ate a quick meal at a Five Guys burger stop.
“I’m still bone tired,” Mac said, biting into his hamburger. “Feel like I didn’t sleep a wink.”
“You could go into the city, stay there until it’s safe to return home. Probably be okay holed up in a big hotel.”
“While you go in harm’s way alone?”
Flynn nodded.
“Nothing stops you. Nothing slows you down, even.”
“I need to get this bastard.”
“Mano a mano ain’t gonna cut it, my friend. You need an army of tough sonembitches who know how to work close.”
“When we are close, we are going to need a master sniper. As you know.”
“I’m not gonna get that seam. Nobody is.”
“Maybe not.”
“Definitely not. You don’t need a sniper. Not a human one, anyway.”
“Not entirely.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe nothing. We’ll see.”
Mac knew Flynn too well to continue to question him. But after a moment, Flynn decided to say a little more. “Mac, I need to ask you something and tell you something.”
Mac raised his eyebrows.
“Have you recently had a headache? Bad, but it faded almost immediately?”
“I don’t have headaches.”
“Because I think I know how these implants go in. When I was leaving the job I did in Pennsylvania—it was a good haul, I got four dead—I got this fierce headache.” He paused, remembering the confident Flynn of those days. The great alien hunter. On that night, he’d actually thought that he cleaned up the problem. “Anyway, as I was driving out, I felt a terrific pain that started in the top of my head and radiated down into my face and neck. It was so bad, I thought I was having some kind of stroke. But then, just like that, it was gone. I think that’s when the implants went in, right under the skin and through the skull without leaving a mark. I think that’s how it feels. So have you had a headache recently?”
Mac leaned back and closed his eyes and thought. “No. Definitely not.”
“If you do, tell me.”
“I sure as hell will. I’m gonna go apeshit if I get something like that in me.”
“We can get them out. I’m living proof.” He thought of the objects racing back and forth in endless, ever-changing search grids, hunting him down.
They took a commuter flight up to Bridgeport. The moment they disembarked and entered the terminal, a tall, grim-faced man appeared, walking toward them. He was jammed into a dark business suit, his build and bearing broadcasting not only military, but elite military. He looked like a Delta Force operator crammed into civvies he didn’t really know how to wear.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “please come with me.” He turned and walked swiftly toward an alarmed door marked NO ADMITTANCE. He pressed a code into the keypad, opened the door, and stepped aside.
This was airport operations, where pilots checked in, filed their plans, then went out to their aircraft. The man led them into the supervisor’s office, which was small and windowless, with three metal chairs and a cluttered desk. There was a picture of Governor Wade on the wall, a flight school diploma, and another picture of a man shaking the hand of what appeared to be a foreign dignitary.
“We’re going to borrow Mr. Reilly’s office for a few minutes, gentlemen. Please sit down.”
Flynn and Mac sat on two of the steel chairs. Their host, if he could be so described, took the third.
“I’m Adam Caruthers,” he said. “This is the first time in the history of this program that any outsiders have been handed off to me. May I see your identification?”
“Have you been briefed?”
He held out his hand.
Flynn reflected that secret bureaucracy was a labyrinth, full of dead ends and empty spaces. The empty spaces were between the ears of the bureaucrats.
“Colonel, I think you have been briefed, and therefore you know perfectly well that I’m not carrying ID at present, and you know why. Also, I don’t think you’re at the top of your chain of command, so I would suggest that you cease diverting from the order you have received and carry it out.”
Caruthers’s eyes stayed hard. Real hard. “Gentlemen, I’m going to tell you the real reason for the extreme secrecy we maintain.”
“We know the reason.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Do tell.”
“There are all kinds of aliens out there, and a lot of them do a lot of strange things, not just the ones we’re having trouble with. Like abducting people out of their homes, and the air force can’t do a thing about it.”
“That’s actually pretty accurate. It’s illegal activity, and we can’t enforce against it. As I understand it, you’re a specialized policeman who deals with matters like this, so maybe you can help us.”
Flynn said, “I deal with aliens who steal people and murder them, and do worse.”
“The ones we have had interaction with generally return people.”
“Fortunately, the group we’re dealing with is small. If we can eradicate them now, their numbers won’t grow. Like getting rid of a cancer while it’s still small.”
“I thought cops put bad guys in jail.”
Flynn said nothing.
“Perhaps we’d better go over to the island, Flynn. May I call you Flynn?”
“That’s my name.”
They walked down a corridor to the back of the terminal building. A short distance away, Flynn saw a helicopter sitting on a pad.
“Recognize that?” he said to Mac.
“I sure do.”
It was the same type of ultra-sophisticated chopper Morris had used during their first encounter, at Lake Travis near Austin. Back in the good old days, before he had the disk.
“I’m surprised that you recognize it,” Caruthers said. “It’s still a secret technology.”
“Except it’s sitting here on a helipad at a public airport, plus one was used against us by the alien we’re tracking. It happened last year outside of Austin.”
“The one that was stolen.”
“And destroyed, because we destroyed it.”
They got into the chopper. The pilot, wearing a black uniform with double lightning strikes on its patch, wore his visor closed. Normal enough, but Flynn would have preferred it to be open. As the engine whined into life, Flynn’s instincts were starting to alarm.
Inside the chopper, there was almost no sound. Unlike every other helicopter he had flown in, this one’s wing didn’t pulsate, but rather moved smoothly. Therefore there was no characteristic chopping sound, but only a steady, high-pitched whine and the whistle of wind blowing past the cockpit canopy. The engine was entirely silent.
As Deer Island slowly emerged out of the haze of the autumn afternoon, Flynn examined the ground. The place seemed surprisingly familiar, and he wondered at once if he’d b
een here, but had his memory of it erased. There were hypnosis techniques that could do that.
He memorized the layout of the island, noting three clusters of buildings: one to the north that consisted of four structures, one to the south with two, and a more substantial main building.
They circled the main building, then dropped down onto a helipad across the narrow road that passed in front of it.
“We have a bit of a ride to our end of the island,” Caruthers said. “We’ve been here only a few months. Our operation back at Wright-Pat was a good bit larger, but I guess downsizing’s pretty much the order of the day.”
“And Biology’s at the other end?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know Dan Miller?”
“Guy who got killed by those drifters in his woods? I knew of him.”
“What did he do?”
“No idea.”
They arrived at a cart shed and took an electric golf cart around the headquarters building.
The facility was, to be honest, a dump.
Caruthers seemed to read their reactions, or expect them. “Sorry we’re not more impressive,” he said. “I don’t know about bio, but the hardware program has been in a holding pattern for years. Most of our contact is with the aliens popularly known as the grays. Contact, actually, is a bit of a joke. It’s hardly that. I think you’ll find that alien species aren’t exactly forthcoming about much of anything. They haven’t told us word one about our disk, and we’ve had it for more than fifty years.”
“We have the same problem. Our guys won’t detail one of our own disks to help us. Our hope is that their disks work on the same principle as the one you have, and we can learn something from it, or even use it.”
They arrived at a building even less impressive than the main structure. There was rust; there was flaking paint. Air conditioners jutted out of a couple of the windows. Beside the door was stenciled a number, 3-3-2.
“Where’s Building 3-3-3?”
“That’s Biology. South end of the island.”
Flynn got down from the cart. He’d known the answer to his question before Caruthers said a word.
He felt a quiet sense of triumph, but instantly suppressed it. The job wasn’t finished yet. One thing had changed, though, which was that he now—just possibly—had a chance to win this.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CARUTHERS USHERED them into a conference room. There were four men here: two in air force fatigues, one in a polo shirt, and one in a weathered suit.
“Gentlemen,” Caruthers said, “before we begin—” He cleared his throat uneasily. “Before we begin, I’d like to ask you to lay your weapons on the table.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
He smiled at his colleagues. “As you say. Gentlemen, these are our exoengineers. Officers Flynn and Terrell are working with a police force from a planet our exobiologists at Area Fifty-One have named Aeon. Now, here in our unit, we’re not familiar with this specific planet. But hopefully we do have some possible avenues of help for you.”
“I’m Dr. Evans,” the older man said. “These are my colleagues, Richard Dawkins and Martin Reese. Dr. Reese, will you begin?”
“Mr. Carroll, if I understand the briefing paper we’ve received, you have one of the most unique problems in the history of human–alien contact.”
“There are lives being lost, if that’s what you mean. We’re dealing with a murderous psychopath who has a disk, and we can’t get near the damn thing. We need to change that.”
“This liaison officer from this other planet—Aeon—isn’t being helpful—I mean, aside from not giving you a disk?”
“She’s answered some important questions, but no, in the end, she hasn’t been effective in assisting us to deal with this criminal.”
Dr. Evans said, “I find this whole thing amazing. You actually achieve developed, ongoing contact with beings from another planet, and it’s cops and robbers? Tell me this, what do they do? What’s the crime?”
“Wait, let’s back up just a minute. You make it sound like contact is rare.”
“It’s very rare. A few civilians. Some of them have published books, which you can read. A couple of politicians. Eisenhower, but he couldn’t make any sense of what happened.”
“And that’s it? That’s the whole story?”
“The whole story would take me a year just to begin. Suffice it to say that we started out by shooting at the first groups we encountered, and we should never, ever have done that. Of course, that’s a major secret.”
“I’m not concerned about your secrets. My only interest is getting help downing a disk that’s causing a lot of problems.”
Evans said, “Let’s roll the film, Colonel.”
Colonel Caruthers opened a laptop and a small projector, connected them, and turned out the lights.
A moment later, Flynn found himself looking at gun-camera footage. Old-fashioned tracers crossed the sky, moving toward what appeared to be a bouncing searchlight beam. Then blackness. The film ended.
“What happened?”
“This was one of our first shoot-down attempts. The plane came down filled with thousands of tiny holes. The pilot disappeared.”
“The gun-camera footage was intact?”
“This strip was intact.”
“This next strip is from the gun camera on the Sabre Jet of a pilot called Milton Torres. It’s from 1957. Take a look.”
The black-and-white gun-camera footage flickered and jumped. Something flashed past. A young male voice said, “Target sighted.” The sky whirled, clouds racing past. A disk appeared. It was difficult to estimate size, but the great, gleaming thing appeared to be huge, hundreds of times the size of Morris’s disk. It was also far more sophisticated, morphing and changing, almost as if it were a liquid. The voice resumed. “Target acquired.” A pause. A buzzer sounded. “Target lock. Target lock. Commencing firing procedure. Missiles armed. Preparing—” The object disappeared. A faint, under-the-breath comment: “Oh, shit.” Then, “Target lost. No target. Firing sequence abort. Abort.” Then another voice, “Return to base, FF245.”
The image flickered and was gone.
Dr. Reese said, “In 1947, General Curtis LeMay convinced President Truman to go to war with the aliens. Any and all aliens who showed up. Between 1947 and 1957, when we called a halt to the shooting, we lost a hundred and fifty-eight pilots and an even larger number of aircraft. During the Korean War, we lost more pilots and aircraft in our secret war here at home than we did over the Korean Peninsula.”
As Dr. Reese spoke in his precise, dry voice, Flynn grew increasingly aware of the fact that he wasn’t dealing here with the dynamic military engineering operation he had hoped to find.
“Right now, I have a man and his family out in Menard who are in imminent danger of being kidnapped and killed. I am looking at an entire town burned to the ground a few nights ago.” He gestured toward Mac. “This man has lost everything that mattered to him, burned out. I have lost my wife. Now, I am not dealing with some brilliant, huge civilization like I think you are. The grays. I am dealing with biorobots who are more like viral particles or a disease vector. They are controlled by a psychopathic alien. As far as I understand it, they have just the one disk, and it’s not the best. Potentially, they’re vulnerable. What I am trying to do here is find a way to shoot down that disk.”
Evans stood up. “I thought that’s what this would be about. We’ve failed in that department. Your mission is futile.”
Rage flared in Flynn’s guts. He fought it and nearly lost, but finally forced himself not to deck Evans. Still, his mind turned to Eddie out there on the empty Texas plains with his new family, and to Mac, a helpless, proud rooster who would crow defiance to his last breath, and to all the victims—the cases that haunted a good cop, the ones where justice hung suspended.
When he spoke, his voice was mild. “We’re not done, Mr. Evans, s
o I suggest you sit back down.”
They had all been getting up. None of them stopped. They began to move toward the door. They’d done as ordered. Now it was time to escape the pain.
“Because I could tell the world about you people and your failure. There’s nobody powerful enough to stop me.”
Evans turned his liquid, sorrowful eyes on him. “We can get a kill order, you know. We can do that.”
“Am I killable, do you think?” He brought his gun out so quickly that their eyes flickered. He slipped it back into his belt as smoothly as if it were silk.
“Tell you what,” Caruthers said to his colleagues, “why don’t we take them down? Let them see.”
“See what?”
“The disk, Flynn. Maybe looking it over would be useful to you.”
Now, this was better. This was what he’d come for. “Sure, let’s have a look.”
“All right, but first I have to insist that you leave the weapons behind. I can’t take you into a sensitive facility like that when you’re armed and we aren’t. If something walked out of there, it’d be my ass.”
“You are armed, Colonel, speaking of your ass. You’re wearing a compact pistol in an SOB holster. So don’t tell me you aren’t armed. Plus, Dr. Evans has what looks like a Police Special in the right-side pocket of his pants.”
Silence fell, broken after a long moment by Evans. “He’s good.”
“They say that,” Caruthers commented. Then, to Flynn, “I still can’t let you go down there armed.”
“I’m not going to draw on you down there or anywhere else.”
“I don’t know that. If you want to do this, there’s no choice. I’m sorry.”
Flynn glanced at Mac, then took out his pistol and laid it on the table. Mac did the same.
They followed Caruthers and Evans back into the corridor, then down a steel stairway into a basement.
“There’s an elevator.”
Flynn stopped. “An elevator? How deep are we going?”
“It’s a couple of stories.”
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Mac said.
Flynn said, “If the things have any vulnerability, we might see it. If their disk has the seam that Geri talked about. If you could see it, see exactly where it was—”
Alien Hunter: Underworld Page 21