“You want a promotion, special privileges?”
“For a start.”
Dault winced. Finally he said, “I can get you ten grand on top of it.”
“And… the lieutenant?”
“I’ll send her out to check on him. If the alien doesn’t get her—you make it look like it did anyway.”
Double the risk. But…
Promotion. Special privileges. Cash.
Opportunity like this didn’t come along too often. A man had to grab it by the tail…
After a moment, Javitz nodded.
“I’ll get ’er done, General. But—my rifle’s not much use against that armor Nialls is wearing.”
“That’s right—it stands up to snipers, small arms fire of all kinds, grenade fragments, flamethrowers, mines, and most IEDs. But you think it’ll protect him from a 30mm cannon? He’ll be pulverized inside it. Second shot’ll blow it open. I’m giving you a Stryker outfitted with a cannon.”
“Those things have some kind of self-destruct in their gauntlet? I don’t want to suck on a small nuke…”
“You don’t think it would’ve used that by now if it had one? It was unconscious when we found it. We stripped that out of its gear.” He sighed. “Only thing I gave back to it was the chest armor, its camouflage, and those spikes in its gauntlet. Mistake to let it have the active cammie…”
“Thirty millimeter. Only fired one once.”
“It’s pretty self-guided, these days. Just try not to use it on the alien. Not unless you have to. Only don’t let that thing get clean away either. But make sure Nialls is dead. Slam him with the shell dead center. We’ll say he just plain got in the way.”
* * *
It was dark by the time they’d picked up the trail. Just Ramirez, driving the Humvee, and Nialls, suited up beside him.
“It’s not headed for town, if the heat signature is right,” Nialls said. He could see its tracks glowing red in his helmet’s infrared scan mode. “It’s changed directions.”
“What the hell for? Those things are into taking trophies, right? More trophies in town.” Ramirez winced, put his hand to his throat. “They take the head off, the skin off the skull…”
“There’s a ranch out here. And there’s Special Hangar Fourteen right past the ranch. I don’t think it’s going for any more trophies. It already took some. Security camera has it shoving the heads of three sentries in a duffel bag.”
“Oh Christ. Cooper and Morris and Lapsky. I didn’t know it…” He grimaced. “What’s in Hangar Fourteen, anyway? Above my pay grade.”
“T situation, I guess you’ve got a right to know. They found the alien out cold after its vehicle was shot down— built the hangar around ship. They keep trying to take it apart without detonating it. It’s got armament—soon’s they took the Yautja off, the ship started up some kind of defense protocol. Two techs got themselves fried by its plasma casters.”
“So that’s one time the rumors were true.”
“Tracks are heading down that wash… right along the road there. Take the road for now.”
* * *
Gage Binch had spent all afternoon clearing brush from the back acreage. He figured he could turn it into pasture. The acreage was right up against that tall fence topped with razor wire around the Army outpost. Outpost Fourteen. Gage doubted it was an outpost—it was a distance off, across a pretty wide stretch of asphalt; but he could see it well enough: a long squat gray metal building, with two fifty-foot-high metal roll-up doors. Place looked more like a hangar than an outpost. And those searchlights, those four sentry boxes—lot of security for some little outpost.
Plus the fact that the Army MPs told him he was not to even get near the fence.
Screw them. This was his land. This was a “don’t tread on me” situation. If he wanted to turn it to pasturage, that was his choice. He could hear his cattle mooing from the other side of the ranch house. Soon enough he’d be able to put the new bull in with some cows and get another herd started. And he’d put it right here in the new pasture.
He surveyed his work. Six of those little desert trees cut down, room to move his tractor in so he could push the rock out of the way, lay down some soil for the grass. There was the old oak tree, likely to fall down on its own next big wind. But he had to leave it: too close to that fence to mess with. And nearby the oak was a small fenced pasture where he kept the new Brahman bull—Gage could see it tramping up and down, shaking its big horned head. Something was spooking it, seemed like. Maybe the chainsaw noise.
But it was dark out. Time to go in, drink some Scotch. Have a talk with Regina. Of course, his wife had died on him, but he talked to the urn of her ashes all the same.
Maybe just cut that one snag… He had enough light with the electric lantern…
Gage tugged his goggles into place, switched on the chainsaw, held it firmly in both hands, and cut through the snag on the scrub tree.
Then a shadow cut off most of the light from his lantern.
He turned. There was a big man there—he couldn’t see the guy’s face. Just a mane of some kind, a gnarly bald head, those strange hands… a bloody duffel bag lying on the ground beside it.
“Who the holy fu—”
Then the guy vanished. Just sort of blinked out.
What the hell? Was he having a stroke? He thought he caught some motion from the corner of his eyes, turned—in time to get a big military trench knife shoved through his belly.
He stared down at it, stunned, exploding with pain, gurgling, the chainsaw still in his hands—
He tried to swing the chainsaw toward the knifer—but the chainsaw was taken from him, all too easily pried from his grip. Then it reversed, and came right at his throat…
* * *
“Que mierda!” Ramirez burst out. He stopped the Humvee, and its headlights lit up the bloody, decapitated head of a bull, a gray-black Brahman with thick, curving horns. The hulking head was stuck on a post to either side of the road leading up to the ranch house. Its jaws were open, lolling tongue dripping blood onto the gravel road. Its dead eyes were still shiny in the headlight glow.
Nialls’ gut lurched at the sight. “Guess it didn’t have room in that duffel for the bull’s head—so it figured to scare us off.”
“Yeah. It’d work on me, too, if I was out here alone, Sarge.”
Ramirez accelerated slowly past the staring bull’s head, peering at the cactus garden in front of the ranch house. “Damn thing could be anywhere out here with that camouflage.”
Nialls switched on his infrared vision. Saw nothing but what appeared to be an owl sitting in a saguaro.
But there, to the right, maybe a trail of blood. Traces of footsteps. He switched to night vision instead. The dark landscape lit up in greens and yellows. No sign of the Yautja. “Pull up. Roll the windows down…”
Ramirez pulled up, the windows hummed down. “I hear something… like a… is that a chainsaw?”
“Yeah. Must be how it cut through that bull. He was probably watching someone using it and…”
“And they’re dead about now.”
“Go slow, around to the right. There’s a road to the back…”
They drove around the dark ranch house, Nialls considering cutting the headlights—and then they saw something big, bigger than the alien; shifting, falling—it was an oak tree tipping over onto the high razor-topped fence around the Hangar Fourteen compound. The big tree fell with a clinking crunch they could hear through the open windows. Ramirez picked up speed, drove toward it, bumping over cut shrubs and plant debris. Then Nialls spotted it, in pale gray outline. The Yautja, climbing up the slanting trunk of the fallen tree, which had fallen on the fence. It had cut down the tree with the rancher’s chainsaw, giving it a way past the guards at the outer sentry box.
The Yautja was already running, now, across the asphalt, going into active camouflage, the canvas bag of trophies showing over one shoulder as if the bloody duffel were flying along alone.
“That thing is crazy smart,” said Ramirez.
“We’ve got to get word to Fourteen—I’ll have to go through Dault.” Nialls spoke the code word that would voice-activate his radio, and heard its line crackle open. “Mark Three calling base, code twenty-three, connect me with General Dault.” He waited. The line crackled with static. No response. “Maybe the damn helmet was damaged after all,” Nialls said. “Try the Hummer’s radio.”
Ramirez picked up the mic, clicked the on button.
No response. He checked the dashboard radio unit. “Someone’s cut the wires! This radio’s dead, Sarge. We’re in this alone.”
“Maybe not alone,” Nialls said. “I just spotted a drone flying over.”
“Is it armed?”
“Just an observation drone. The General doesn’t want to hear from us, seems like. But he wants to keep an eye on us. Let’s jam through where the fence is down…”
There was just enough room to drive the Humvee through, following the Yautja. Nialls hoped the fallen razor wire wasn’t going to wreck the Humvee’s tires. But it kept on, rumbling over the broken fence and onto the asphalt.
“Some nervous nelly at the checkpoints might open fire on us,” Ramirez said.
“Someone’s got to have told them—”
That’s when the cannon shell struck the Humvee. One second they were driving steadily toward the looming light-streaked hangar, the next was all fire and splintering glass and the world flipping sideways. The Humvee pitched over, Ramirez yelling wordlessly, falling down on Nialls. The Humvee rocked and settled on its right side. The windshield was partly smashed out in front of Nialls, smoke was thickening, and Ramirez was groaning. Nialls said, “Mark Three, full operation.” Lights flickered inside his helmet. He reached up, pushed out the metal rooftop hatch, and wriggled through, then pulled Ramirez out by his collar, Ramirez shrieking in pain.
He got him out just as the Humvee lit up like a bonfire.
Carrying Ramirez in his arms, Nialls hurried away from the Humvee before the rest of the gas tank went up. Nialls turned, saw flame geysering, lighting the area around the burning wreck. It quickly died back, but there was no getting into that Humvee.
Which meant that Nialls had no weapon now—his assault rifle was in that burning Humvee. But then, his armor was itself a weapon. He could batter down a metal door with it—or an enemy’s skull.
Ramirez went limp in Nialls’ arms. He laid him gently on the ground, switched on a helmet light, and saw broken bones jutting up, pink and yellow, from the corporal’s chest; a blankness was coming into his eyes as if the night around them were pooling in the sockets.
Ramirez was dead before Nialls straightened up.
In a cold fury now, Nialls looked around, spotted the Stryker, its lights off, swinging toward him, the cannon centering itself. Maybe forty yards off. That looked like a 30mm cannon swiveling toward him. A direct hit and his suit would crack open like a lobster shell under a hammer.
Nialls ran left, his boots clanking, the armored suit working overtime; then he zigged to the right. The cannon’s muzzle tracked to compensate, and Nialls changed direction again, then leapt—as the shell hit the ground behind him, the shockwave lifting him, pitching him head over heels.
He came down on his back, dazed, ears ringing, but intact.
“You missed, you prick,” he growled. He rolled over, saw the smoking blast crater in the asphalt. He got up, ran to the crater, flattened down and tried to recon the field.
Who the hell was in the Stryker? Dault? Naw. Too risky. Most likely Dault’s bully boy, Javitz. Using a weapon that could be sure to bust through the Mark III armor in a direct hit.
Nialls switched on the infrared, hoping to pick up a body shape in the Stryker. No good, the Stryker’s armor was too thick—but he picked up another figure, silhouetted in red: the Yautja, moving toward the armored vehicle from its rear. No mistaking that outline. It had ditched the chainsaw, still held the duffel bag, and there was something else in its hand. The distinct shape of a special forces issue combat knife. Long, partly serrated, vicious. What the Predator had used to take the heads from the sentries at the base.
The Stryker was moving, coming slowly, implacably toward Nialls, the cannon tracking—wanting that direct hit.
But then the infrared outline of the Yautja was hunched atop the armored car. It was going after whoever was in that vehicle. Why them, in particular? But maybe it was the Stryker it wanted.
Nialls switched on his night vision, saw the creature more clearly, a glowing white-gray shape tugging at a hatch. Figuring out how to open it. The hatch swung back. Driver had neglected to lock it.
The Stryker suddenly stopped as if the driver had realized someone was breaking in on him and wanted to deal with it…
Nialls jumped up, ran toward the Stryker, making sure he was angling to keep out of the cannon’s current firing zone. He was aware of shapes moving beyond the Stryker’s windshield—a flurry of movement.
Then a pair of headlights swung into his path and a car came straight at him.
He had no way to evade the car in time—but it stopped, brakes screeching. A moment, then Olivia Curson got partly out of it, waving for him. “Come on, Nialls, now!”
He rushed to the car, his boots clanking on the asphalt. He was aware of sentries in the distance, shouting from the front of Hangar Fourteen—flashlights, men shouting orders, other men arguing. Nialls stopped by the car. Maybe he should remove his helmet, ID himself…
“Nialls—get in!” Olivia yelled, getting behind the wheel.
Nialls looked toward the Stryker—and then saw it had turned away from him. It was rumbling toward the hangar.
It knows how to drive it. Can it figure out how to fire the cannon?
Nialls reached the car, climbed in beside her, having to move the seat all the way back—there was barely room for him in his armor. “Turn this car around!” he shouted, not caring about rank right now.
She brought the car around, started toward the hangar— then had to jog the wheel, skidding to avoid a headless body lying on the asphalt. Nialls caught a glimpse of a sniper specialist insignia on the corpse’s shoulder. Javitz.
Up ahead the Stryker was picking up speed, the big armored car going faster and faster, heading for the big doors of the hangar. The cannon remained silent—he guessed it didn’t have time to figure out the firing interface.
“I think Dault’s trying to kill you—maybe me too!” Olivia said, as she drove toward the hangar. Her voice was taut, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“Be a good guess. And the Yautja’s got hold of that Stryker…”
“Oh no, it couldn’t—!”
“It did. Slow down! We’re liable to catch some fire from our own people!”
She hit the brakes; the car fishtailed to a stop about twenty yards from the hangar—where men were firing, but not at them, at the onrushing Stryker. Nialls could see bullets sparking from the titanium sheathing. Then the Stryker plowed over two riflemen, and kept going, crunching head-on into the big metal doors, smashing partway through—then grinding to a halt. Stuck. Its wheels kept spinning in place.
“Pull over there, around the corner of the building. I’m going in the personnel door.”
* * *
The front end of the vehicle had jammed partway through the big reinforced doors—still, the escapee was able to climb out the door on the right, then leap at the nearest onrushing primate, to bear him down before he could fire his weapon. Its blade flashed, slashed, and the primate soldier was jerking in death. The escapee picked up the automatic weapon, turned it to the men guarding the spacecraft, and squeezed the trigger, spraying awkwardly at the enemy across the brightly lit concrete floor. They scrambled for cover, though the clip was quickly empty, useless.
The escapee could see its landing craft, waiting, scarred but functional, in the middle of the hangar. But an enemy projectile struck the escapee in the right side; it ignored the
pain, turned and vaulted over the front of the armored vehicle, dropping to cover. Then it reached through the shattered window, pulled out the well-stuffed bloody duffel bag.
Now…
The escapee growled to itself, switched on its active camouflage, and then sprinted, with projectiles banging and ricocheting around it, to the landing craft. The ramp was down, the door open— that much they had achieved. But after they had taken out their unconscious Yautja prisoner the vessel went immediately into self-protection mode. It had been keeping the enemy at a distance ever since, tolerating scans and superficial observations but not allowing disassembly.
Now that a Yautja master was in sight again, the vessel lit up, as if in welcome. The landing craft’s gun muzzles emerged and fired plasma bursts at the primate creatures, burning two of them to bubbling ashes, driving the others away… By now, the landing craft would be contacting the cloaked mothership…
Indifferent to the pain of its wound, the escapee roared in joy and ran up to the ramp into its landing craft…
Thinking: What glorious trophies I have…
But it had one more duty to carry out before it could leave this wretched planet.
* * *
Using full armor power, Nialls smashed down the locked personnel door, ran into the blazingly lit hangar, switched off his night vision in time to see the Yautja running up the ramp into the alien vessel. The craft was about eighty feet long, fifty wide; it was shaped like the spade of a shovel, with intricate aft parts, and insectoid metal legs holding it over the floor.
The ramp was still down. If he could get to it, penetrate the vehicle, he could stop the Yautja from escaping. The Mark III might protect him from the ship’s defenses—long enough.
And then he heard the helmet’s computer speaking to him. “External control engaged.”
“What?” His legs suddenly stopped moving—to be precise, the armor’s legs stopped, so his own had to stop inside them. The armor was frozen in place. “What external control is that?”
“Origin unknown. Centered in the mechanism directly ahead.”
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