by Lyn Gala
Chapter Twenty-Two
CLYDE OPENED the blast doors of the old fallout shelter and invited Marie and John to go through. He hadn’t taken them to the street level entrance, or through the courthouse, or even to their usual corridor attached to the sleeping quarters, but he suspected that he would never get her cooperation if he didn’t show her a few of their toys.
“Nice place,” Marie said as she walked in. The irony was that this part of the basement was a dump. Old crank radios and tents promising protection from Soviet bombs crowded the shelves.
“Yeah, well, you know how it goes. A little kidnapping, an alien invasion, and no one has time to clean up the back porch.” Clyde ran his hand over what looked like a rusty plate with a room number. The lights flickered, and he used his phone to send a signal. The interior lock disengaged, and a second, more secure door popped open an inch.
“Okay, that wins some cool points.”
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Clyde said as he pressed his hand against a palm screener that appeared in the newly opened portion of the wall. The general was going to kill him, but then the general had been nursing homicidal fantasies about Clyde for years now. After a second the last door opened, revealing the base’s tech center.
Inside, a number of people were working. Major Sadler and a couple of her programming staffers talked while standing over a large display. From the stiffness in Sadler’s back, Clyde guessed it wasn’t good. Lev was leaning over one of his engineers, and Private Tankersley stood off to the side. A sergeant, one of Clyde’s security team, stood near one wall, but the rest of the guys were probably catching some sleep or reviewing tactical plans.
The sergeant came to attention when he spotted Clyde. “Sir!” Sadler immediately followed.
“Everyone, this is Marie. Marie, this is almost everyone. Where’s Van Agteren?” Clyde asked.
Lev answered. “I sent him back to run some tests on captured equipment to try to duplicate these readings. A panic attack may or may not have been involved.”
Great. Lev’s secondin-command might be brilliant with technology, but the man’s phobias had phobias. Clyde preferred Campbell, even if he tended to plod along with alien technology at such a slow pace that even Clyde noticed his lack of enthusiasm. Lev’s department had issues, but then most engineering people resented having alien-snot lubricant and biological reproduction in their engine rooms. It drove a lot of contractors away.
“What has the really smart people looking weirded out?” Clyde looked at the techies who were still working.
“I never look weirded out, sir,” Sadler protested. “I might look rightfully concerned.”
“Concerned?” Now Clyde was more worried.
“We have a massive power surge about one mile south-southwest.”
“In the bay?” That would be a problem. Clyde wondered if the Navy had any subs they could loan out.
“No, sir,” Sadler said. “It looks like it might be the Governors Island or Staten Island Ferry buildings. We have a massive energy spike.”
“Governors Island?” Marie’s voice was shrill, and by the time Clyde had turned to look at her, she was already texting away on her phone. “Zhu has a charity drone-racing competition on Governors Island.”
“Drone racing?” Clyde looked at Sadler.
She nodded. “It’s a thing, sir.”
As far as Clyde was concerned, drones were war machines used for painting targets on enemy locations. Clyde knew that he spent way too much time under the Alaskan ice, but it seemed like the country got weirder every time he came back for a visit.
“We have to get over there,” Tank blurted out. Sadler gave him a shit look, but then, enlisted men really weren’t supposed to be telling officers what to do. Clyde chose to ignore the bad behavior and have someone talk to him later. Maybe Washington. He’d been enlisted for a number of years before going through officer training.
Clyde addressed Sadler. “I’m going to take John over there and discreetly look around. Everyone else is going to wait here.”
Marie stepped into Clyde’s personal space. “I’m going with you.”
This was why noncontracted civilians were not allowed in secret facilities; however, Clyde had made the mistake, and now he had to minimize the damage. “Fine, but we’re going to look around only. We are not taking technical support, and that means we will not engage.”
“Bring technical support if you need it,” Marie complained.
“I don’t take noncombat personnel into areas without looking around first. If I have to take them into live fire, I at least want to know what direction people will be shooting from.”
“That’s—” Marie started to say.
“Sadler!” Clyde called. The major was up and at Marie’s side immediately. God, Clyde loved Sadler’s mind-reading powers.
“The colonel will call us in as soon as he knows what assets we have on the ground. This power could be from something benign like an observation system or transport or even some sort of illusion. Those of us with technical experience will be in a second SUV, ready to come in once the scene has been cleared.”
“And not before,” Clyde said firmly. He triggered his radio. “John, back to the SUV. We have a location, and you’re not driving.” Clyde needed to get there before he was old enough to retire. “Sergeant, call Washington in to drive second with Underwood and Sadler.”
“Sir.” The sergeant was on his cell phone in a millisecond.
“Sir,” Tankersley said. “I could stay with the second van.”
Clyde gritted his teeth. He wanted Tankersley to stay here, but if he ordered that, Lev might stay with him. Lev and Sadler were his best scientists, and Clyde needed them on deck. A unit of all military would be easier to command, but they wouldn’t get as much accomplished. Most of the top scientists were civilian. Clyde just thanked his lucky stars that Sadler hadn’t retired and taken a million-dollar private industry position.
“Fine. Private, you will stay in the van. Byrne, are you riding with me or going off on your own and running blind into danger?”
“I don’t run in blind,” she said darkly.
“Yeah, sure you don’t. Tell it to someone who will believe it. Plan Foxtrot,” Clyde told the sergeant as he turned and headed back for the SUV. He trusted his security team to deploy, and trusted Sadler to run the tech team.
“What’s Plan Foxtrot?” Marie asked when they’d reached the SUV. At least she wasn’t slowing them down. Clyde ignored the question as he focused on driving like a bat out of hell, but John answered her.
“We pretend we’re looking for something dangerous.” John grabbed the dash as Clyde took a corner fast. Clyde had his police lights running, and if some idiot wanted to try to cut him off, Clyde would be very happy to play chicken. John asked, “Do you want me to tell you which laws you just broke?”
“No. List the laws the other guys are breaking.”
John snorted. “Too many to count.”
“New York drivers,” Marie said. Clyde looked in the rearview mirror—she was texting again. He hated taking an emotionally compromised asset into the field, but he didn’t want Chow and Byrnes assuming the US Army was the enemy.
“Any word?” Clyde asked.
“Nothing,” she said. Clyde traded worried looks with John. If the aliens decided to pick up one of their experiments, Clyde wasn’t sure he could convince them to give him back. SOP was to identify the incursion and then expose some part of it to public view, causing the aliens to close up shop and move on.
“If they’re after Zhu, they might be after you,” Clyde warned.
“My father is dead. Zhu’s father is the demon de jure.”
Clyde was pretty sure she actually meant du jour, but for once he kept his sarcastic comments to himself. After driving the SUV up onto the sidewalk, Clyde jumped out and flashed his Army Chemical Corps identification.
“Sir, you can’t park here,” a police officer was quick to say.
“A colonel? Is this an attack? We didn’t get anything from the Counterterrorism Bureau.” The officer was young, and Clyde got the feeling he was more likely to panic than help in any orderly evacuation.
“I don’t know what this is, which is why I’m here.” Clyde went to the back of the SUV and took out a black backpack, slinging it over one shoulder. It contained a number of alien toys. “Keep an eye out for our second SUV. It has our science people.” Clyde found that when people were confused, they responded well to straightforward orders. Sure enough, the officer stood up a little straighter. “Yes, sir. Should I call someone?”
“If someone needs calling, I’ll do it,” Clyde promised. Thankfully John and Marie both managed to keep their mouths shut. Neither would pass for regular Army.
New York was a busy city, but at least the terminal didn’t seem particularly crowded. Or worse—it could be empty. The aliens would often use uncomfortable noise and vibrations to get rid of people so they could clear an area. John held his hand out, and Clyde slipped him a detector Lev had put inside a case for a low-end e-reader. John took his device and headed for the far end.
Clyde tried to look like a tourist as he checked the ferry times and smiled at a harried mother dragging a couple of complaining kids behind her.
“Do I get one of those?” Marie asked when Clyde took out a second scanner.
“I don’t know, can you read one?”
She moved close to his side. “What does it do?”
Clyde looked around at the people. “Not the time, Byrne.”
She snorted. “I’m going to see if I can spot anyone suspicious.” She turned and trotted toward the far end of the dark ramp that led to the ferry loading zone. Clyde sighed. He had no idea what would look suspicious to her, but any clues would be ones the aliens intentionally left behind. He had to figure out a way to tell her that before she got herself into serious trouble.
Before she’d been gone a minute, John appeared at Clyde’s side. “Planted the surveillance.”
“Good,” Clyde said. The small buttons looked like standard listening bugs, but they had more sophisticated sensors to help the technical crew pin down the source of the energy. “Why don’t I retire and let someone else deal with all this crap?”
“Because you’re too stubborn to give up,” John answered. “And you’re honorable.”
Clyde loved that “stubborn” came before “honorable.” Some days that felt weirdly accurate. “I’m not that honorable. Trust me, I would love to watch court TV all day.”
“The way Tankersley is happy washing dishes?” John asked.
“I do see the parallels.”
“Do you plan to make him stay behind all the time?”
Clyde lowered his voice to give them some privacy. “He’s compromised. I don’t trust him to recognize or evaluate relative danger.”
“Bullshit. Be honest with yourself. You’re worried about Lev,” John said. Then he walked a little faster.
Clyde wanted to deny it, but John’s words made sense. In special ops, bonds formed. Tight bonds. Lev was Clyde’s brother. They’d suffered together, and Clyde would die for him. Hell, he nearly had. Part of him wanted Tankersley gone because Lev was too damn involved. Another part wanted to protect the kid. Lev had already given up too much for this mission, and Clyde had seen relationships end in ugly ways. He didn’t want his friend suffering that.
Hell, Clyde had watched the woman he loved slowly learn to hate him, so he knew how bad this could get. Since he couldn’t do anything about the situation, Clyde focused on planting button monitors and scanning the area.
Chapter Twenty-Three
TANK WATCHED people walking past their SUV. “Do you ever wonder what people would think if they knew about this?” he asked.
“No.” Major Sadler sounded cranky.
Lev turned around to offer Tank an apologetic smile. “We all get a little touchy about the idea of security leaks. It’s not something we talk about.”
“I thought about it back when I believed in demons. I even tried warning a few, but the only person who took me seriously right from the start was a homeless vet who takes cover when a car backfires. I thought about how people deserve to know that demons were stalking them and sometimes killing them, but I stopped telling them because I was afraid. I didn’t want people to call me a kook.”
“That’s fair. People don’t believe things that don’t fit into their world view,” Lev said. “I’m actually pretty impressed that you believed in aliens so quickly. When General Zeller came to me back when he was the colonel in charge of the program, I pretty much accused him of being part of a psychological experiment in gullibility.”
“I heard that story,” Major Sadler said. “Zeller was not one of your fans, but the major who headed the engineering department said he needed you in the department.”
Lev blushed.
“He was that good, huh?” Tank asked.
Major Sadler glanced in the rearview mirror. “Better.”
“But I didn’t believe until Zeller showed me some nifty alien technology. So don’t feel guilty about not telling the world. The world wouldn’t listen.”
“And that’s a good thing,” Major Sadler added. “Human beings get very panicky when they’re helpless and afraid, and right now we don’t have a way to fight these guys.”
Tank snorted. “A brick wall dropped on their head worked wonders.” Tank hated thinking about that day. The image of Ellie’s blood spraying through the air, the drops hitting the force field to create a red film that hung in the air… it was too much. However, he had watched Marie’s father go down. That had felt good.
“Actually, that was an avatar,” Lev said. “It’s like a biological machine that an alien runs on remote control.”
“Wait. What?” Tank’s guts tangled in an ugly knot of horror. “We didn’t kill Marie’s father or genetic tinkerer or… you know, whatever?”
Lev scooted around so he faced the back of the SUV. “We don’t want to kill aliens. If they felt threatened enough to bring soldiers to protect them, we could be in real trouble. However, killing an avatar is an impressive feat. They are much sturdier than human bodies.”
“But Marie’s father—the alien playing him—is still alive?” Tank was going to throw up.
Major Sadler turned to look at him. “There’s a good chance that all the demons you’ve met have been operated by one alien.”
“But.” Tank pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes as his brain got rewired again. “Marie’s father was violent and sadistic. Zhu’s father was always more of the distant and financial sort who left us alone.” At least he had until now. The few times that Zhu had spoken to his father, Mr. Chow had even been borderline helpful. During a sleeping-sickness spell, he’d gotten Zhu pollen from an extinct plant for the counterspell. Tank might not believe in magic, but if the aliens were doing their version of a role-playing game, Zhu’s father had been the true neutral who had helped them when he thought it favored Zhu’s position. Marie’s father epitomized chaotic evil.
“The alien could be testing how you react to different authority figures,” Major Sadler said. “When we get back to base, we’ll have you write up everything you remember about your interactions with the avatars for the psychologists studying alien behavior.”
Lev said in a bad stage whisper, “Someone is going to get his very own fan club.”
Sadler snickered. “He’s just lucky the colonel won’t let them on base. They would stalk him. Five years of close interaction with multiple avatars—that’s a record.”
“I wouldn’t call it close.”
“Did you talk to the avatars?” Sadler asked.
“Well, yeah. Although with Marie’s father there was less talking and more listening to threats and vivid descriptions of where my body parts were going to end up.” Tank grimaced. At one point, Marie’s father had threatened to p
ickle Tank’s liver and use it to summon an Armageddon demon so that Tank would forever be an integral part of ending the world. That had not been a good summer.
“That’s close contact,” Sadler said. “I talked to an avatar once. I was on perimeter, back when I was a lieutenant, and one walked toward the secure area while the team was working. I asked him to help me with directions. He told me he was new to town and didn’t know where to find anything. That’s it. I was still the envy of the scientific team.”
“I ruined your reputation for being the badass alien-talker, didn’t I?” Lev asked.
“By spending months on a ship? Yes. And you are welcome to the title just as long as you promise to never get captured again.”
“Deal,” Lev said firmly. “It wasn’t all that fun.” That seemed to kill the conversation, and Lev and Major Sadler turned to discussing the readings they’d picked up back at the base in technospeak that meant nothing to Tank. He was left watching the crowds. A ferry came, and cars and people moved through the building with the same bustle that everyone in New York seemed to use. Tank was staring out the window when he saw a familiar figure. Half convinced his eyes were playing tricks, Tank sat up and stared out the window.
“Hey!” He tapped Lev on the shoulder.
“What?”
Tank pointed to the short, drug-thin man in the leather coat who was standing near one of the concrete traffic control posts. “He’s a demon, which I’m guessing means he’s an avatar.”
“Seriously?” Lev threw himself between the two front seats, crawled into the back, and then hung over into the third-row cargo area.
“Do you have it?” Sadler asked, although Tank hadn’t figured out what the it was they were going for.
“Got it!” Lev dragged a briefcase-sized box over the seat and shoved it at Sadler. She opened it and started flipping switches while Lev grabbed a large alien thing that looked like a cross between an octopus and an egg. He handed it over, and Sadler started plugging in wires.
With the center armrest full of equipment, Lev couldn’t climb back to the front, so he settled in next to Tank and leaned forward to stare at the screen. “Anything?”