"Yep, Gooder. They're under the sand," Tyler said in a smooth voice.
"Oh, right, under the sand." Donovan snickered, then reconsidered and decided maybe Ham wasn't kidding. In a quick motion, he rolled over, yanked the field glasses out of Tyler's hands—and found he didn't need them. About a quarter of a mile away, illuminated by moonlight, something was breaking through the desert surface like an impossible beast rising from the core of the planet.
He used the binoculars and saw it was no beast. It was a machine with some sort of swiveling boring device on its nose which was still spinning as it cut through the dirt and rock, allowing the vehicle to surface from its hiding place. The body was about the size of a small panel truck and it rode on tanklike treads. It had no visible armaments on its outside, but Donovan figured it must have ports of some kind that allowed weapons to be fired from the interior.
"We've breached the surface, Commander;" said James, who'd moved to the cockpit and sat next to Lydia. He steered the vehicle while she fine-tuned the locator beacon to signal the approaching skyfightec
"Beam locked on," Lydia said.
"Son of a bitch," Donovan whispered as he watched. "Good thing we didn't make the bet."
"We did," Ham said firmly. "We just didn't decide what it would be. We'll decide later," he finished before Donovan could protest.
Back in one of the four-wheel drives, a young man with a blond military haircut looked up from the scanning screens, "Ham, Mike, I've got two blips—the skyfighter is closing fast."
"What about Julie and Chris?" Donovan asked quietly, watching the night skies in search of both aircraft.
"They're circling, tightening the noose," said the young man, whose name was Dan.
"Radio exact coordinates, Danny boy," Tyler said. "Tell 'em it's time to make our move."
Dan did as he was ordered. Donovan took a deep breath. "This better work," he said.
Tyler looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "My buddy's up there too, Gooder. It'll work."
They heard the whispered approach of the skyfighter, then saw it banking in from the west. They also heard the chugging whine of the biplane's prop motor from the south. Then they saw it. Donovan felt a tightening in his stomach, but there wasn't much he could do about what was going to happen in the air. He decided he'd better occupy himself with the ground activities, and he turned to the waiting assault squad.
"Everybody ready?" He looked at their faces, acknowledged the nods of the dozen men and women, and licked his lips. "Okay, then, into formation, on alert."
Tyler stood back a bit, letting Donovan give the order. He knew that Donovan's rapport with the fighters was better than his. Sure, he knew these people had been businessmen and teachers and storekeepers and surf bums two years ago, and he knew they weren't long-time battle veterans, but he just didn't have the patience to coddle them. If that's what they needed now and then to get them to risk their necks like real men, then he'd let Donovan handle the public relations. When they were ready to mobilize, he'd step back in as co-commander.
The modified control panel of the old crop duster contained several special electronic extras, and Chris's trained eye ran quickly along them. A flashing green light winked at him. "We're in firing range, Julie," he murmured into his headset.
Julie hefted the launches bracing it in the cradle they'd installed on the plane's body. She loaded three small shells into the tubular firing chamber—all it could hold at one swallow.
"All set," she said.
"Duster to Prowler," Chris said. "Do you read?"
"We read," came the answer in Tyler's voice. "Danny boy will tell you when you're at optimum range."
Aboard the skyfighter, Lieutenant Lawrence leaned forward in his seat. "Captain," he said, staring at the sensor screens.
"What is it?"
"Another aircraft in the vicinity."
"One of ours?" Simon asked.
"No, sir. By configuration and air speed, it's a very old human airplane."
"What's it doing?"
"Just flying, Captain. It's not making any moves to intercept us or interfere."
Their radio transceiver chimed—a signal from Lydia's sand rover. "Captain, I've been monitoring your sensor readings—shoot that plane down. I want no chances taken with this mission—none at all. Is that clear?"
Lawrence and Simon exchanged glances. "Perfectly clear," Simon answered. "We're diverting now to intercept."
Dan's eyes stared unwaveringly at his readout screens in the Blazer's back seat. Tyler and Donovan stood just outside the small truck.
"That's it," Dan said. "The skyfighter's just veered off— heading right for Duster." The young resistance fighter adjusted the mouthpiece of his headset. "Julie, Chris—do you read? They're heading your way."
"We read you, Prowler We'll take it from here," said Julie. "You do your part down there. See you on the ground when we're all done."
"Are you sure this is going to work?" Julie said to Chris.
"Theoretically," he answered over the engine's droning.
"That's not what I wanted to hear" On her night scope, she could see the skyfighter quickly approaching. "What do you mean?"
"If we do it right, no way do we lose."
"That's more like it," Julie said.
Chris banked the little plane hard over to their left and turned to face the skyfighter head-on. Julie couldn't see it from her rear seat, but Chris's mouth spread into a wide grin.
Simon stared at the main viewscreen and its computer-enhanced night image, an image of a tiny air vehicle bearing on what seemed to be a collision course. "Are these humans insane?"
"I don't know," Lawrence said, answering the rhetorical question. "Maybe they don't see us with our running lights off."
In the aft compartment, the gunner intently watched her
own screen, with its forward view showing the odd little aircraft closing in leisurely fashion.
"Laura," the captain's voice said in her headset, "target weapons."
"Tracking system engaged," Laura replied, pressing a switch.
"Hold on to your dinner;" Chris said.
"I'll do my best," Julie answered. Her fingers tightened around the trigger of the missile launcher.
Donovan and T^ler led their troops toward the edge of the brush that offered them some protection from being sighted. Overhead, the biplane continued its unwavering approach, moving ever closer to the skyfighter.
"Dammit, do something," Donovan whispered through clenched teeth.
Chris felt himself starting to tense, and he ordered his muscles to relax. After all, what was there to get tensed, up about? he thought. Just because he had to make a move at the last possible instant before the skyfighter opened fire? If he misjudged, the first shot would blow them out of the sky.
But he had to wait, had to be close enough that the alien craft couldn't match his maneuvers. Piece of cake . . .
"Optimum range," Laura said.
"Good," Simon said from the cockpit. "Get it over with—-fire."
Now! Chris thought. His hands translated the decision in a split second and the biplane dove down like a rock.
And the laser blast from the Visitor ship sliced through open air where the plane had been a moment earlier.
Simon cursed in his native language.
Donovan and the resistance fighters on the ground wanted to cheer but remained still and silent, watching. Soon, Tyler thought, they'd have to advance.
Inside the stopped Visitor sand rovei; Lydia swore to herself.
And Chris let out a war whoop as the Visitor skyfighter, moving too fast to react, flew far past its target and made a sleep turn to try another sweep. Chris pulled the plane out of Its dive and felt the old girl shudder down to her last rivets. He'd wanted to swing around quickly and give Julie a clear shot at the skyfighter while the Visitors tried to figure out what happened, but the crop duster couldn't respond fast enough. He'd have to be faster himself to compensate.
"Fire, Julie," he said.
There was no hesitation. Julie's eye aimed through the sight and her finger pressed the trigger. One, two, three— the shells rocketed out of the weapon with surprisingly little recoil. She watched in fascination as they changed course in flight to home in on the Visitor craft.
Simon saw them coming, threw the skyfighter into an evasive dive, and cursed again.
In the weapon turret, Laura whirled her cannon around and took out the first two shells with a curtain of laser bolts.
But the third one found its mark. It hit the skyfighter in one of its maneuvering thruster jets. The initial explosion was just a soft thud. The vessel shivered and then blew up into infinitely small pieces that showered the desert floor, sparkling as they fell. The explosive sound spread rapidly across the open country.
* * *
"Now—let's move!" Ham tyler barked. The resistance squad ran in a spread pattern toward the immobile sand rover.
Inside the rovei; Lydia sat stunned. James looked to her for a word, a decision, an order
Before she could react, the radio chimed with an incoming message. The two Visitors looked at each other. Lydia opened the channel.
"Lydia, you are ordered to surrender your prisoners and your vehicle," said Mike Donovan's voice.
"We have no prisoners, you human slime," Lydia answered. "And you'll pay for the unwarranted destruction of our skyfighten" Then, to James, in a low voice: "Start the engines."
Donovan paused, the radio phone in his hand.
"Look," Tyler said suddenly.
They all saw it—the borer drill on the sand rover's nose had begun to spin. "They're going to try to get away by going down the way they came up," Tyler said.
"Lydia, don't try it," Donovan said. "Our plane is still armed. You try to escape, we'll destroy you before you can get a foot under the sand."
"I don't believe you," Lydia spat.
"Fine—we'll prove it."
On cue, the biplane made a dive and fired a single shell off-target. It hit the ground and blew a plume of dust and dirt a hundred feet up in a minimushroom.
"Better hope they don't call our bluff," Julie said to Chris as he turned the plane away from the sand rover. "I'd hate for them to find out that was our last shell, and it wasn't even a heat-seeker."
"We can't fight like this," Chris said angrily. "We gotta get more weapons through that pipeline."
"I know, I know," Julie said. "Maybe by the time we get back, we'll know something on Ham's Central American connection."
"We better" Chris said, biting off the words.
* * *
"Surrender now," Donovan said into the radio phone. You don't have any choice—except death."
They waited. After a long silence, the Visitor security ihief replied, "We're shutting down the vehicle now."
With Ham in the lead, the squad surrounded the sand lover, weapons poised. The side hatch slid open and Lydia loud haughtily in the opening. Unarmed, she climbed out and jumped down to the ground. The three human intelligence agents followed, with James coming out last. Donovan handed the radio phone to Danny and approached I ydia with his laser rifle held ready.
"Well, Mr Donovan," she said, "I congratulate you on your boldness. This time the day is yours. Or should I say llie night. But the victory is only temporary, so savor it. I suppose we're your prisoners?"
Donovan shook his head. "We don't need you as prisoners."
"But we have information." She sounded almost insulted.
"Which we wouldn't get out of you by anything short of lorture—and we don't do that, even if it's second nature to you people. And I use that word loosely. We don't have prison camps, and we don't eat Visitors—so you're free to go. Besides, I think your going back to face Diana after blowing this mission is more punishment than we could ever inflict on you."
She maintained her silence, lowered her head in a gesture of angry courtesy, and started to climb into the sand rover
Tyler grabbed her arm and roughly pulled her back. "No way, Jose. You go, this thing stays. If I had my way, lady, we'd take you back and do something with you—but I've been outvoted. So why don't you and your friend here just go for a little stroll. Lizards like to walk in the desert at night, don't they?"
There was ice in Tyler's tone, and Lydia straightened, then started walking away. James stood still, and she turned and glared at him. Docilely, he followed his commanding officer; and they headed across the desert without weapons or communications devices.
Two resistance fighters started to climb up into the rover, Tyler turned away from the retreating Visitors, saw them, and let out a roar.
"You idiots! What the hell do you think you're doing?" He yanked them down and shoved them to the ground. "Did it occur to you this thing could be booby-trapped? Or did you think they'd just leave an expensive piece of equipment for us to take joy rides under the desert?"
Sheepishly, the two rebels got to their feet and moved away.
"You really think, it's booby-trapped?" Donovan asked Tyler
"I'd put money on it, but i don't think you want to bet with me again, do you now, Gooder?"
"Okay, let's blow it up."
Ham took a grenade out of his belt pouch, waved to everyone else to move back, pulled the pin, and tossed the grenade inside. Then he dove for cover. The explosion thundered inside the vehicle and a tongue of flame and smoke rolled out the open hatch a few seconds later. The acrid smell of burning plastics wafted on the night breeze. With the trio of liberated prisoners in custody, the resistance squad left the sand rover burning, casting an eerie flickering light on the dark sands.
Chapter 2
Elias Taylor leaned back in the chair at his table in a private comer of Club Creole. The slim black man in his trademark white suit and panama hat surveyed his restaurant and let out a troubled sigh. He'd built this place into Los Angeles' most prestigious spot to see and be seen in the year alter the Visitors had been defeated. His sudden fame and status as a heroic freedom fighter had certainly changed his life, and on more than a few nights, he'd pondered the twists of fate that had led to his brother physician and friend of Julie Parrish, dying in the earliest days of the resistance and his own metamorphosis from small-time hoodlum to rebel to celebrity.
He'd learned a lot about himself—mostly how to turn his talents to legal roads to success. And he'd thought he'd I'ound his path—capitalism and hobnobbing with the beauti-lul people. To hell with heroism! he'd concluded.
Then the Visitors had returned. The renewed war had nearly destroyed Club Creole before L.A. had been turned into an "open city" following industrialist Nathan Bates's private deal with Diana. Elias' restaurant survived and so did he—but his comfortable acceptance of his new way of upper-class life had suddenly become uncomfortable. The year he'd come to view as time on Fantasy Island looked more and more like a very tenuous existence. There was a real world outside Club Creole's smoked glass, and it needed him. Not as Elias Taylor, restaurateur, but as Elias Taylor; resistance hero. Donovan and Julie and the others had come to him—they needed his help. How could he say no? I tried . . . God, did I try. But in the end, he had had to say yes.
Like others in the resistance, Elias found himself leading a double life. On the one hand was the white-suited host greeting everyone with a smile (just like in Fantasy Island), serving the best in food and drink to trendy Angelinos, to officials of Bates's p
rovisional government, even to Visitors in their red uniforms and dark, eye-protecting glasses. The aliens didn't frequent the place, but one of the rules of the city under Nathan Bates was "no discrimination."
Damned lizards even hire me to cater parties at their legation, Elias would think. As long as they pay me . . .
But downstairs at Club Creole, Elias ran a whole other establishment. He'd discovered a long-forgotten speakeasy down there, a remnant of Prohibition days. The room's elegance was still intact under years of dust and cobwebs. The ornate, sweeping curves and bold geometry of its Art Deco design still whispered of wealth. He'd planned to open it up as a private club and dining room—until the Visitors came back. Instead, much to Elias' occasional disappointment, the old speakeasy had become a hideaway for the resistance. In a sense, it was a place for private meetings, and now it was a haven for the three intelligence agents freed from Lydia's grasp.
With a nod to his maitre d', Elias slid out of his chair, disappeared from the main room upstairs, and went through the secret passage in his office. Flashlight in hand, footsteps echoing in the dark, damp corridoi; Elias found the stone stairway and descended to his other world.
He emerged into the speakeasy, where his eyes took a second to adjust to the light. When he came down here, he always sighed while he quickly thought of what might have been. Son of a bitch . . .
Donovan, Ham Tyler and Julie were huddled at a marble-topped table.
"How's it goin'?" Elias asked.
"Well," Julie said, "we've figured out how to get
Durning, the American, and Coopersmith, the Brit, back to their territories."
"Okay. How?"
"We marry them off," she said with a grin.
"Huh?" Elias took his hat off and scratched his head.
"They've both gotta go back east," Donovan explained, "so we're going to have them pose as a married couple traveling on our own specially forged travel permits to New York. That's where Durning was working, and Lauren Stewart and Pete Forsythe will be able to get Coopersmith back to England from there."
"Lauren and Pete still working together?" Elias asked. "They sure did a bang-up job with that New York rebel group first time around. But I got one big question."
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