Hunters

by Whitley Strieber

He forced back the impulse to hammer the thing to bits.

  Under the pecan tree by the house, the doves were still pecking at nuts.

  Mac and Diana were not in the barn.

  He stepped out and moved away from the structure. Turning slowly around, he listened for anything that might help him. His hearing was good and it was very quiet, but the silence was total. By now the dogs would be breathing heavily, but he didn’t hear anything that suggested their approach. Fearing the tiger, he looked, also, along the rooflines.

  He dared not go close to the house. The dogs would hear the doves rising from a long way off. They would know what it meant, too, no question.

  He looked toward the shed. There was a padlock on the door, a new one. His picklocks were gone, of course.

  No matter how carefully he listened, only the cooing of the doves disturbed the silence of the place.

  Could they have actually left him an opening? Maybe they’d never considered the idea that he’d be so foolish as to return to the compound.

  He went to the shed, moving carefully and methodically. The lock was a good one. He could not force it without tools. Behind the shed, though, he found a low roof with a trapdoor in it. A storm cellar. Not surprising, given that one of the most powerful tornadoes ever recorded had touched down a few miles north of here.

  He bent down, grasped the rusted iron ring in the center of the trapdoor, and pulled it up.

  It was dark and silent and it felt large. Hill Country ranches didn’t have big underground chambers, just root cellars, and usually not even that. So this could be something constructed by Morris.

  He wanted to call out to Mac and Diana in the darkness below, but to raise his voice was far too dangerous. As he listened, he thought he heard a faint pulsation, like a big pot boiling.

  He wanted to go down the ladder, but that was beyond the limit of responsibility. He was here to make best efforts, not throw himself away.

  For a long time, he listened to that sound. Boiling, he thought, definitely. No voices, no sound of movement.

  As he left the shed, he heard a sound coming from the direction of the ranch house, high and sharp, that certainly was not doves. But what was it? Not a voice … or was it? Perhaps not a human voice.

  And then he heard another sound, just the slightest edge of a yap, quickly stifled.

  He saw movement at the house, a door opening.

  Even so, the doves did not move, which meant only one thing: they were not normal doves. They were another deception, and a very clever one indeed.

  At the same moment, one of the dogs appeared at the edge of the compound. It came across the field at a trot, its tongue lolling, its eyes intent on the house. It went up to somebody hidden just inside, and as it did the person crouched down to greet it.

  It was one of the creatures from the village. In the sunlight, its skin was yellow-gray and its eyes seemed, if anything, more deeply sad than they had in the gloom of the structure. He could see a shadow of humanity there, but also something else. Was it a mix of a creature like Oltisis and a man?

  Maybe, but it couldn’t walk the streets, not by a long shot, not like Morris could.

  The high-pitched sounds became a strange, musical cooing, joined by the dog’s voice, a group of vocalizations more complex than any ordinary dog could make.

  They were taking pleasure in one another, these two misbegotten creatures, a dog with a man’s eyes and this … thing. The dog licked the creature’s hands and it smiled, its teeth jutting out of its mouth like blades.

  More dogs appeared, and then the snarl of engines as two four-wheelers burst out of the brush.

  Flynn faded back toward the far side of the compound, trying to keep the shed between himself and the danger.

  When he was back in the brush and somewhat concealed, he turned and ran toward the road he and Diana and Mac had come in on.

  As far as he was concerned, the secrecy was over. Without Diana and Oltisis, he had no official recourse. So he needed to bring some level of policing authority into the situation, and damn the secrecy. Let the secret get out. Better that it did.

  Problem was, he also knew that the cops wouldn’t do anything serious unless they had evidence of a crime, and so far he couldn’t offer much. Certainly not enough to enable, say, the Travis County Sheriff’s Office to get a warrant to enter onto the ranch property. No judge was going to approve a warrant on the basis of what would sound like the ravings of a lunatic. The fact was that he wasn’t going to get any police action out of a claim that there was a village full of aliens on some rancher’s property—unless they tossed him into the state hospital over in Austin.

  Even if by some miracle they did move, it would not happen overnight, and this needed to get done fast. The only thing that might work against the kind of power and intelligence he was seeing was speed.

  There was only one answer: he had to come back here with serious firepower, and fast, and he needed to kill them all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  He sat hunched over a beer at one of his college haunts, a place called the Scholz Garten in central Austin. He’d come here because it was deep in the inner city, and Morris and Elder might be cautious in a populated area.

  He sat at his old table in the far corner of the outdoor beer garden. Across from him was Abby’s chair. It was late in the afternoon, the shadows were long, and the memories of her were as raw as blood.

  Once he had reached the road, it hadn’t taken him long to find the spot where the Rover had been. It was gone, but there was no sign of anything unusual, such as tire marks that might indicate a sudden departure. The truck had remained in place for some time. He had even been able to make out scorch marks left where the catalytic converter had touched some grass.

  As he sipped beer, he searched gun classifieds in a local rag. He was looking for a very specific weapon, a Heckler and Koch MP5. If he could find a dealer with a Federal Firearms License and the weapon in his inventory, he was hoping he could obtain it and let the paperwork float along behind the transaction. To own a fully automatic machine gun in Texas, he’d need to get a sign-off from a local honcho of some kind, but he was figuring that could be accomplished with a donation.

  He went to the pay phone, dropped in four quarters and phoned a guy called Joe Harris in a little town called Lost Mill, who advertised a selection of weapons. He had no HK in stock, but he thought he could get his hands on one pretty quickly.

  “How fast?”

  “Well, I could get it brought in here—let’s see—how about seven?”

  He would need to carry it around, so he wanted concealment. “Does it have the CIA case?” This was a briefcase with a trigger in the handle, a nice piece of equipment.

  “No CIA case. Those things are hard to come by.”

  “Don’t I know it. So I’ll be around at seven to take a look.”

  After he’d reached the highway, he had hitched and walked until he got to a place called Four Points, where he’d found a bus and taken it into Austin.

  When he’d rented the car he was now driving, the clerks at the Avis station had been concerned about his appearance. He looked like a tramp with an improbable amount of cash, and the cash was mysteriously damp. He’d used his real credential, and the police identification had reassured them, fortunately, just enough to get them to give him a car. The use of cash would keep the rental record at the station until the car was returned and the completed transaction processed.

  He didn’t want to show the gun dealer his real pass, for fear of spooking him, and he couldn’t meet him looking like he was headed directly to the nearest 7-Eleven to commit mayhem, so he planned a first stop at a motel to clean up.

  Everything was so very normal, the Texas sun starting to set behind tight little clouds, traffic passing on Congress Avenue, up the street the improbably immense state capitol building looming over the city. All was quiet—but Texas streets could be deceptive, as he well knew. There had been some notable crimes
committed in this city, some textbook crimes. A classic story of police action against a sniper had unfolded at the summit of the University of Texas tower back years ago, which was still studied as a model of how to respond to such an emergency, and, for that matter, how not to. A cop had died investigating the sound of gunshots. The lesson: don’t expose yourself until you know where the shots are coming from.

  He drove south on Congress, then took First Street to Interstate Thirty-Five. Harris was just the other side of the line in Hays County. Between here and there was a Super Target, and not far away, a motel.

  As he drove, he automatically kept his rear under surveillance. Once on Thirty-Five, he stayed well below the speed limit and far to the left, letting the traffic pass him like a river. Texans are not slow drivers, and nobody hung with him.

  He knew that the gun was going to cost a lot. He would need to bring cash, which meant a visit to a bank. When he’d dipped the special ATM card earlier, though, it was dead. He visualized some bureaucrat deep in some Washington cubbyhole canceling the cards as soon as contact was lost with their holders. Nobody would ever stop to think that this might leave them in the wind. Budgets trumped lives, always.

  Fortunately, there were Frost Bank branches here. This was his bank in Menard, an old Texas outfit, and he was going to need to make a substantial withdrawal from his personal savings. He had about thirty grand on deposit and he’d have to get it all. It was already a quarter to six. He watched for a branch.

  As he drove south along the highway, he saw a Wells Fargo, and somewhat later a Frost Bank sign. He pulled off the next exit and doubled back.

  The branch was small, but when he handed over his withdrawal slip, the clerk didn’t react with any surprise. This was agricultural country south of Austin, full of farms and ranches and basic businesses like rock quarries. There were going to be a lot of illegals working, and that would mean cash payrolls.

  “Hundreds, please,” he said. Bigger bills were faster to count and took up less space. He carried the money out in a brown paper bag, got into the car and stashed it under the backseat.

  His next stop was Target. His clothes were done, and in any case, they’d been touched by those creatures out there—God knows what they had done to him while he was unconscious—and he wanted them off his body. He wanted a long, thorough shower, lots of soap.

  In the Target, he headed for men’s clothing. He passed a mother with her two girls looking through racks, a clerk stocking a shelf with radios, a couple of guys searching for T-shirts, and he found himself at once loving them as he had never been aware of loving his fellow man before, and also feeling oddly distant from them.

  He understood the origin of Diana’s inner distance. It was having secret knowledge of a larger world that did it. They were innocent, he was not.

  He found the camouflage sweats he needed, and then the black sneakers. A ski cap and mask were harder, but he eventually dug some up in a sale bin. He also got a white shirt and some slacks, and threw in a dark blue windbreaker, the thinnest one he could find. He planned to buy a pistol off Harris as well.

  In the checkout line, he waited behind a family who was buying a gas grill and had a lot of questions about it. The wait was hard.

  Finally, he left the store and crossed the parking lot to his car. The details of the world were in sharp focus, sounds, movements, the expressions on people’s faces, even the feel of the asphalt beneath his feet. It was how he felt just before walking into a domestic dispute, which can so often turn out to be a more dangerous situation than it seems. More cops were injured and killed on domestics than on any other type of run.

  Given his plan, he did not expect to survive his return to the compound, and, frankly, he was beyond caring. If there was an afterlife, he’d be with Abby. If not, then not. The only thing that mattered was that everybody at the compound also came out dead.

  He reached the motel at six twenty. He checked in and went quickly to his room. This was a point of vulnerability. He was unarmed, so if they were following him, this was an ideal time to take him.

  He threw his bag of clothes on the bed, stripped and showered with the curtain open. He was focusing down very tightly now, concentrating his thoughts on the unfolding mission, preparing his mind and body for action.

  Once he was cleaned up, he drove to Joe Harris’s operation, which consisted of two double-wides on a bare lot in bleak scrubland south of Austin.

  The first thing that came to his mind was that the setup wasn’t straight. The double-wides had the barren look of crook places.

  Harris had dogs behind a chain-link fence, which frantically announced themselves as Flynn walked up the uneven flagstones leading to the first trailer. This was about the point, when he was in a uniform, that he would’ve unsnapped his holster.

  At least they were just ordinary dogs.

  He knocked on the flimsy door.

  “Yo.”

  “I’m Flynn Carroll, I called about the HK.”

  The door opened onto a man who looked like he’d been inflated and then rubbed with beet juice. Even a mustache that would’ve caused a sensation in Dodge City failed to hide train-wreck teeth when he smiled.

  Flynn recognized it as meth mouth, the dentist’s dream.

  “Well, come on in,” Harris said, his accent deceptively softened by the south. But this was not a soft man.

  Flynn stepped into the dim, smoke-choked interior. An air conditioner screamed as if in its death throes, doing little more than jostle the sweaty air. The chrys smoke was almost dense enough to induce a transfer high, and, in fact, Flynn took a slight hit from it. Felt good, which was bad. Drugs and high-intensity action are mortal enemies. When quarter seconds count, as they would tonight, you need to be spotlessly clean.

  An HK in pristine condition lay on the Formica table that filled half the kitchen area.

  “I assume you can show the cash, ’cause she can’t go outa here on no check or nothin’.”

  Flynn noted that there had been no mention of paperwork or identification. He also took note of the Diablos tattoo on Joe’s arm, and of the fact that he was wearing a small pistol on his right ankle, maybe an AMG Backup. Not very accurate, but in a confined space like this, who cared?

  “It’s in my car,” Flynn said. “How much’re we lookin’ at?”

  “I’m thinkin’ about twenty-two thousand dollars, sir.”

  “That’s strong.”

  “You look at ’er. She got class, a lotta class. Plus this fella, it turned out he had—lemme get this here—” He brought up a black plastic briefcase. “This is just dead on for the CIA case.”

  It was a good briefcase, no question there, the trigger mechanism solidly constructed.

  What he had in the car was exactly twenty-two thousand two hundred dollars. He decided to see just how crooked this crook was.

  “I need to take the gun with me. Can we let the paperwork float?”

  “You plannin’ some kinda score?”

  “I have a buyer. Kinda on the warm side.”

  “Cucuracha?” It was slang for a cartel enforcer.

  “Big enough to cook and eat.”

  The guy looked into Flynn’s eyes, looking for some kind of sting, no doubt. In Flynn’s experience, guys like this always ended up trusting plainclothes cops more than they did their own damn mothers, they were that stupid.

  “I’ll tell you,” Joe finally said, “I don’t know if you noticed, but the governor’s kinda stopped carin’ who does fed paperwork and who don’t. I mean, you ain’t gonna go shoot up the capitol, I hope. ’Cause that would be embarrassing.” He chuckled. His eyes never left Flynn’s. “I see you in there, you little shit pussy. Your cucuracha ain’t around here, is he? You’re gonna sell this thing cros’t the border, ain’tcha? Gonna get some Border Patrol killed, probably. I don’t think I can do that.”

  It was an opening gambit. Soon, the price would be thirty grand. Flynn didn’t really care, because he had decided that he
wasn’t going to be a buyer today. He was, however, leaving with the weapon.

  “I’m not in the business,” he said. “I don’t bargain.”

  “What are you, then?”

  “I don’t want to lie to you. I’m gonna put you on your ass and take your gun.”

  “Wh-a-at?”

  “I don’t want to. But this HK is hot and I’m not gonna pay anything close to that kind of money for a hot gun. Anyway, I’m probably pretty hot myself, so I kinda think we were made for each other.”

  A hand meaty enough to be a filling meal started for the ankle holster. Flynn reached across the table and bumped Joe’s ulnar nerve against his humerus. The hand flopped and Joe yelled.

  Still without getting up, Flynn aimed a blow at the middle of his chin, thrusting upward as he connected. There was a crack and Joe’s head pitched back. He fell over in his chair, crashing against the sink hard enough to bring more than a few filthy dishes down with him.

  Flynn stood. One thing he had learned from watching bad guys screw up was never to waste time in a situation like this. Do what you have to do and get out.

  He looked down at Joe. He’d be in slumberland for ten minutes, maybe a little less.

  He laid the HK in the case and made sure all the magazines were full. There wasn’t time to toss the place for more rounds, so what was in the three thirty-round magazines had to be enough.

  As far as a carry weapon was concerned, he didn’t see any pistols in view, so he contented himself with taking Joe’s AMG. It was chambered for the .380 ACT round, which was good. This round gave it better stopping power than the more common version, which was chambered for a .22 round. There were also a few of these out there that could accept a .45 cartridge, but the accuracy was really poor. The combination of the pistol’s fixed barrel and the ACT round’s low breech pressure offered an outstanding mix of accuracy and firepower for a compact pistol. Ole Joe did indeed know his guns.

  Leaving the trailer, Flynn made it a point not to hurry. There were bound to be eyes on this meet, no question. He couldn’t afford to raise suspicion, otherwise every cracker inside of three counties was going to be here in minutes. Forget the cops, these guys were way more dangerous than the law. You messed with Diablos, you dealt with Diablos, no police need apply.