by Bob Mayer
That should have been a hint.
She didn’t realize she’d gotten to her feet, the laptop forgotten on the grass. Through the golden arch, she saw rows of…something. Even though she couldn’t make out what the somethings were, she had the distinct sense the somethings were facing this arch and if it stayed open much longer, they were going to come through.
In the way ancient man used to stare out the mouth of the cave into the darkness, knowing danger lurked out there, Eden felt a primeval fear of those somethings.
Here there be monsters used to be written on ancient maps to fill in the blank spaces. In this case, it should be written in capital letters. With one or two exclamation points.
As quickly as she thought that, though, instead of a bunch of somethings, a single someone stepped through and the golden arch snapped out of existence.
Roland was focused on the Arch and the area around it. There was a golden glow underneath the stainless steel structure, which was never a good sign.
As he passed through eight thousand feet, he checked in, because it was Protocol that he check in at eight thousand feet.
“Eagle, thermals?” Roland asked as he adjusted his descent.
“I’ve got one hot spot near the Arch. On the landward side. Probably our genius scientist.”
“That’s the side on the other side from the river,” Mac added, in this case probably a smart add, because Roland had been a bit puzzled by the landward part, although Mac’s explanation didn’t help much with its redundancy.
Roland was using a clockwise spiral to descend, checking all directions.
“Beyond that, looks like a couple of homeless on the riverfront,” Eagle continued. “And then there’s the city. You’ve got I-70 cutting the park off from it.”
Doc’s voice cut in. “The Rift is closed. I’m getting nothing. That was different. Like it snapped shut.”
“Roland, see any Fireflies?” Moms asked.
“Too high up,” Roland replied.
Roland started to dump air, increasing his downward speed.
The someone was a man. He was walking straight toward Eden. He wore a long tan bush coat, inappropriate for the warm night, and a fedora, pulled low over his eyes.
“What—” Eden began, but then she saw his face under the fedora and the next words were clenched in her throat. His skin looked like he’d been through a shredder. He paused about five feet from her and cocked his head, revealing more of his disfigurement.
“Does my face disturb you?” he asked. As he spoke, his skin rippled and smoothed out. “Better?”
Eden still couldn’t find words.
“I guess not.” He looked down at the laptop and tsked. “One should not interfere with things beyond one’s comprehension. My associates on the other side are getting rather irritated with the whole thing and believe it’s getting near to time that this be brought to a conclusion.”
He leaned over to pick up the laptop, and that move finally stirred Eden to action. “That’s mine!” She stepped toward him and grabbed his arm, her other hand going for the computer.
Her second mistake of the evening.
And her last.
With his free hand, the man grabbed the top of her hand, seizing it in a grip that froze her muscles, and he lifted her off the ground. She dangled from his hand as he peered into her eyes. They remained like that for several seconds; then the man dropped her.
Eden lay stunned for a second; then her spirit came back and she jumped to her feet. “That’s—”
She never finished as the man drew a silenced pistol from inside his coat, pressed it against the side of her head, and pulled the trigger. The round went into her skull with a soft chugging sound, then fragmented, shredding her brain. She was dead before she hit the ground, but the man fired again, this round into her forehead.
“Nada Yada,” the man said with a grin, the scars returning to his face. “Always double-tap and make sure they’re dead.” He stared down at her. “I saved you considerable pain.”
He holstered the pistol, snatched up the laptop, and tucked it under his arm. He began walking toward the nearest road.
As he was about to pass through four thousand feet, Roland took a moment to get oriented. It was easy, given the size of the Arch. The M240 machine gun was rigged tight against his body on one side, a flamer on the other, the fuel for it underneath the parachute case on his back. Protocol said he was to reverse directions after passing through four thousand feet, so Roland regained the toggles and reversed. Roland was a big believer in Protocol.
“Wind?” Roland asked.
“Negligible,” Eagle reported. “You’re still clear. We’re holding at three thousand to the west.” There was a pause. “We’ve got a second person with the first.”
“Where did that one come from?” Roland asked, peering down.
“I think out of the Arch,” Doc said. “No indication of Fireflies, though.”
Roland couldn’t make out the people on the grass, but he did see a church across the road from the Arch. It stirred memories of a wedding, a buddy in the army, and holding a sword forming an arc, but not much more of the wedding itself since he’d been drunk and there’d been a bunch of singing and girls crying and crap. The reception, on the other hand, he could remember clearly. He’d gotten into a fight with the best man, and the bride had been pissed, but his army buddy, the groom, had laughed, because what was an army wedding without some blood being spilled?
It had been a great reception, but as Roland went through three thousand feet, he had a feeling this reception wasn’t going to be as good.
Keith was drunk, it was 3:00 a.m., and he could have sworn the Arch had been shimmering just a minute ago. Maybe some special promo, like when they’d shone pink lights on it in support of breast cancer research. He was stopped at a red light, left turn signal on, nervously drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, constantly glancing in his rearview mirror, dreading that a cop car would pull up behind him.
He couldn’t afford another DUI. He’d lose not only his job, but also his license. And how could he get another job if—
Just as the light turned green, the engine stalled out, which was almost impossible to tell since he was driving a Prius and the battery had been powering the car, but a warning light flashed on the dash and nothing happened when he pressed the accelerator. Keith cursed and punched the start button to no avail.
The rap on his window startled him. A man wearing a raincoat and a fedora stood there. The man signaled for Keith to roll down his window. Keith panicked, thinking the man was a cop and knowing he couldn’t roll the power window down without power and that the cop would think—
The man placed his hand on the window and slid it down, the glass going with the hand. Which was weird.
“What? Who the—” Keith began, but the man reached in and grabbed him by the throat. With a distant part of his mind, Keith heard and felt his seat belt unbuckle, but that was impossible because the man was holding him by the throat. As he was lifted out of the open window, gasping for breath, Keith saw the terrible scars on the man’s face. The man held him in the air, peering into his eyes as if evaluating him like a side of beef he was deciding whether to devour.
“Don’t drink and drive,” the man said, and then Keith was flying through the air, landing in a drunken tumble.
Being drunk actually saved him from serious injury as his body simply absorbed the contact without the resistance sobriety brings to impacts. He lifted his head, watching the man get in his Prius. The turn signal changed from left to right and then the car drove off, heading for the bridge over the Mississippi.
Roland landed on the very top of the Gateway Arch. Eagle had told him on the flight from the Ranch to St. Louis that someone had tried doing a double jump in 1980: landing on the Arch using a main and then jumping again and deployi
ng his reserve. That person had died, because he’d gotten no purchase on the slick stainless steel. Instead of being able to launch again off the top, he’d slid along the north leg to his death, the reserve never deploying.
Roland had solved that problem by duct taping large magnets to the outside of both his boots. When he clanged down on the top and his main deflated, his feet were locked in place. Roland cut away the main, letting the wind blow it toward the Mississippi.
The riverward side, Roland thought, but that hurt his head so he focused on his mission.
He leaned over and looked below. There was a body on the grass.
Roland sighed, a true believer in Heinlein’s principle that the only capital crime is stupidity, a Nada Yada before Nada even thought of his Yadas. M240 now readied in one hand, he reached for his knife to cut the magnets loose from his boots.
“Sitrep?” Moms’s voice echoed out of the earpiece.
“We’ve got a body,” Roland said.
“Eagle?” Moms asked.
“The body is going cold. Someone walked out of the Arch to the body, grabbed the laptop, went to a car, tossed the driver, and is now driving away. The driver is still alive.”
“Roland, secure the Arch. I’m sending Nada and Mac down to assist. We’re going after the car.”
Moms finished giving orders as Nada and Mac jumped off the ramp in tandem. The second they were clear, Eagle banked the Snake and took chase after the car. The Snake was a prototype of cutting-edge flight technology: similar in design to the tilt-wing Osprey, except instead of rotors, the Snake had powerful jet engines, whose noise was muted by running them through baffles. The outside of the aircraft was also coated with radar-reducing material. It was all angles and flat surfaces, everything designed to lower the radar signature of the entire craft to that of a duck in flight, a comparison that Mac constantly goaded Eagle about.
Not a Snake but a flying duck.
Moms moved forward in the cargo bay until she could lean into the cockpit, looking over Eagle’s shoulder. Moms was a tall woman, almost six feet. She had broad shoulders with narrow hips, making her appear a bit awkward, although she was anything but. Her hair was growing grayer by the year and by the mission. She had a vague Midwestern accent that indicated a childhood anywhere from eastern Kansas to western Kansas, which is actually a long spread, but for a kid, not much different.
“Where’s the target?”
Eagle nodded to the right front. “Going onto the bridge. Red Prius. Someone’s driving it.”
“We’ve got to get containment,” Moms said.
Eagle flipped a switch. “Chain gun deployed.” Underneath the nose of the Snake, a door slid open and a thirty-millimeter chain gun poked its ugly snout out. It was a gun designed to destroy tanks, so the Prius shouldn’t be a problem. Whoever, and whatever, was in it might be more of an issue.
“If it’s not a Firefly, who’s the person?” Moms wondered. “Kirk, get me Ms. Jones.”
“You’re live with the Ranch,” Kirk announced.
“Ms. Jones, we’re losing containment,” Moms said. “At least one human in a car, escaping on the I-70 bridge over the Mississippi. I need to go wet.”
“Authorized,” a voice with a Russian accent replied. “I am mobilizing more support for containment and concealment.”
Eagle hit the throttle and they raced over the dark Mississippi to the Illinois side, beating the Prius across the river. Eagle spun the Snake to face west and descended until they were less than twenty feet above the roadway, the thirty-millimeter pointing directly ahead.
“Pretty desolate here for about two klicks,” Eagle said. “If we want to fire, this is the place.”
There were several sets of headlights on the bridge, but containment took priority. The Nightstalkers and their support had binders full of cover stories for civilians who might get caught up in the action.
“Acquiring target,” Eagle said as he centered the chain gun’s sights right between the headlights of the oncoming car.
Moms was just about to order him to fire when there was a flash of gold. It leapt from the car and hit the Snake at light speed, faster than they could dream to react.
Everything electric on the aircraft shut down.
Eagle jerked the controls with all his strength, using what little altitude he had to manually force the hydraulics to move the Snake to the side of the freeway where it crashed, then rolled.
Nada and Mac hit hard, their bodies instinctively doing what had been drilled into them years ago at Fort Benning in jump school, using the five points of contact: balls of feet, calf, thigh, buttocks, and the pull-up muscle along the side. Then they were on their feet, cutting away their chutes, readying their weapons.
Nada was the longest serving member of the Nightstalkers, which meant he was both good and lucky. His parents were Colombian and his face was pockmarked and scarred. During the Battlestar Galactica marathon, Mac had started calling him Adama, but he’d only done it twice before Nada cut that crap off at the mouth. He had short gray hair, racing Moms to see who could go totally gray first.
“Status, Roland,” Nada demanded over the net.
“One KIA, one wounded,” Roland reported.
They could see Roland standing near a body, his machine gun tight to his shoulder, scanning the area through the scope on top. They could also hear sirens approaching. Sometimes the locals were almost as dangerous as the threats the Nightstalkers had to contain.
Almost.
“Fireflies?” Nada asked, leading Mac over to Roland.
“I didn’t see any,” Roland said. “But someone shot this woman. Double-tap.”
Nada stared down at the body. One round on the side of the head (some blood, so the first shot), one in the forehead (no blood, so she’d already been dead from the first bullet). His skin went cold, because that meant a well-trained professional. The first bullet had done the job, but the second was insurance.
Nada shook the premonition off. “If she’s the scientist who opened the Rift, where’s her computer?”
“Shooter must have taken it,” Roland said. He pointed. “Got a wire running to the Arch.”
“Moms will get ’em,” Nada said with more confidence than he felt. “Let’s—” he began, but an urgent transmission cut him off.
“Snake down, Snake down.” Eagle’s voice was faint, but the words were clear.
“Moms?” Nada asked.
“I’m trapped in the cockpit,” Eagle said. “I can’t see the cargo bay. Transponder is on. We’re on the other side of the river. We’ve lost containment.”
The first police car roared up, cops leaping out, screaming for the three Nightstalkers to drop their weapons.
“Fuck me to tears,” Nada muttered as he lowered his automatic rifle.
“I’d like some French toast,” Scout said, and her mother shot her a look as if she’d asked for a shot of pure heroin.
Scout’s mother was terrified of calories. She was making an egg-white omelet and some asparagus. And not much of either.
Mother also didn’t like that her daughter insisted that her name was now Scout. This change had occurred the previous summer when all sorts of strange things had happened in the gated community in North Carolina they’d lived in while Scout’s dad worked in the Research Triangle. Gas explosions, mysterious fires, strange people out and about; it had all been quite unnerving for Mother and she’d been happy to see North Carolina in the rearview mirror. Unfortunately, Tennessee in the windshield didn’t seem much different, with just the Smoky Mountains in front or behind.
At first she’d ignored Scout’s name request, an irresistible force against an immovable object.
The object won, because Scout simply refused to acknowledge her given name, Greer.
It only took her twenty-six days and forcing her mother to watch To Kil
l a Mockingbird and then leaving it on, playing off the DVR on a constant loop. Every time her mother turned it off, Scout turned it back on. It also didn’t hurt her cause that she had an aunt, a cousin, and a grandmother who were also named Greer and the whole mess got quite confusing at times.
Scout was easier all around was the way her mother finally rationalized it. A phase the seventeen-year-old would grow out of.
But Scout was who she was.
Of course, Scout also knew giving up Greer meant she was the outsider, not of the clan, but she’d never really been inside, so it shouldn’t have bothered her that her mother now called her Scout. She’d wanted it and her mother had given in. Victory.
But the still-child part of Scout kind of wished her mother hadn’t given in. She was wise enough to realize that sometimes people gave in when the fight wasn’t worth it because they simply didn’t care that much.
Awareness was a bitch.
Scout’s hair was now red with blue streaks, since Scout believed change was good. Short and spiked. A lot of kids laughed at it in the new school that first day in January, but Scout had noted the ones who didn’t laugh. Who watched. She knew Nada would have approved. Eggs and ham, or ham and eggs. There was a lot of difference.
She missed Nada. She missed the team. She didn’t even resent that they’d knocked her out to go do whatever they’d gone to go do, although the online newspaper had reported a lab explosion on campus at UNC. Yeah, right, Scout had thought upon reading that. Had Nightstalkers written all over it. The team really needed better cover stories. They’d left without a good-bye or fare-thee-well. Still, she’d understood on a base level that Nightstalkers never said good-bye.