When the screen goes black, Kuruk shakes his head. “Don’t use him against me.”
“Wasn’t me,” I say, feeling a bit taken aback. “It also wasn’t me who made the reservation under the Smith name, or opened the window when you approached.”
A phantom itch fills the inside of my head. It doesn’t really exist, but I feel like reaching through my skull and scratching the gray matter within. Clutching my head in my hands, I think, Are you alive? Are you conscious?
My memory of Lindo replays, “Will you do that?
Again. “Will you do that?”
“Stop,” Kuruk says.
“It’s not me,” I grumble.
“Will you do that?”
“Yes!’ I shout at the TV. “You know I will!”
The screen goes black.
Kuruk’s eyes are wide. “The nanites are…communicating with you?”
“I think so,” I tell him. “But…I don’t think they’re conscious. I’m not an expert with these things, not even close, but my gut says they’re carrying out Lindo’s final orders, or desires, with some degree of intelligence, taking steps and directing me along a helpful path.”
“Which brought you to me,” Kuruk says, glancing at the TV. “I think they’re talking to both of us.”
“Then maybe you should answer them?”
He takes a moment to think things through and then speaks to the TV. “Yes,” he says, turning to me. “Yes. I’ll help. But I’m not sure how. There isn’t much I can tell you that you can’t find out on your own. I don’t have any combat gear.” He pats his round belly. “And my days of moving fast are long behind me. I’m good at hiding in plain sight, not much more.”
“Maybe that’s not the kind of help I need,” I say. “Lindo obviously relied on you, right? For support. For friendship. Maybe it’s that simple?”
Kuruk grins and slaps his hands on his knees. “You think Dénzhóné wants us to be friends?”
“First, can we both call him Lindo? You’re confusing me. Second, I wouldn’t have made it this far without my friends.”
“Those other people in the video? In the warehouse?” he asks.
When I nod, I realize that separating from the group might have been a mistake. I only made it this far with their help, and strength. Then again, I can’t fathom the idea of putting Wini in any more danger.
“Where are they now?” Kuruk asks. He looks uncomfortable asking, no doubt suspecting the worst.
“Alive,” I say. “And safe. I think. I hope.”
Kuruk settles back in his chair. He opens his hands and then plants them on his belly. “So, how are we going to do this? I mean, without a way in, I don’t know how good a plan we can come up with.”
“Oh, I have a plan,” I say. It’s been percolating since Sheba’s, and now that I have a location, all I really need is sleep. The Tesla is filled with an assortment of weapons and gear collected from Reg’s. Along with the nanites, I have everything I think I need.
He leans forward, elbows on knees, eager to hear my madness.
It only takes a few minutes to explain the plan, but when I’m done Kuruk is rubbing his head. “You’re serious?”
“Already in motion.”
“That’s…ambitious.”
“Close as I could get to Biblical,” I say, recalling Lindo’s Moses comparison.
“Generations of Taken will likely regard you with the same admiration as the freed Jews did Moses,” Kuruk says.
“If I recall, the Jews spent forty years wandering the desert because they decided worshiping golden cows was a better idea than listening to the guy who helped God rain frogs on Egypt.”
“Yeah,” he says, “but they didn’t have smartphones. You pull this off and everyone on Earth is going to know about it.” He chuckles. “Just realized that your insane plan might be the only way to actually accomplish what Lindo wanted all along.”
“Exposure,” I say. “A united front against the Others.”
“Yes, sir. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?”
I’m not sure ‘hoot’ is the word I’d use—the worldwide ramifications Lindo was concerned about are very real—but to make the world a better place, sometimes you need to shake things up. It won’t be an easy adjustment, learning that a species older and more technologically advanced has been treating humanity like lab rats, but in the long run, I’m sure everyone will agree that ignorance is not bliss. In this case, it’s slavery. I’m about to say a simple ‘yeah’ in reply, but it comes out as a long yawn. “I haven’t slept much in the past few days.”
Kuruk pushes himself up out of his seat. “Understood. Going to be a long day tomorrow.”
“Or a very short one.”
He smiles, tries to come up with something encouraging to say, gives up and says, “Can I get you anything? Cheeseburger? Bourbon?”
I mentally scan through the hotel restaurant’s menu. “How about six loaded beef tacos and a tall glass of milk?”
He gives a nod and heads for the door.
Thirty minutes later, after pounding down the promptly delivered food, I lie back in bed with a stuffed belly. For a moment, I consider reliving a memory. Hopped up on calories and experiencing a food buzz, I think it might even be fun. But before I can decide on a memory I all but pass out, sleeping through the night secure in the knowledge that even while I dream, the nanites are carrying out my plan.
I jolt awake to the sound of a ringing phone. The lights have been on all night, so I have no trouble finding the receiver. I pick it up and with a groggy voice say, “Yeah?”
“It’s time,” Kuruk says, sounding as groggy as I feel.
I glance at the clock. 4am. An hour and a half until the sun starts turning the horizon pink. Until I need to be in position. Until the sound of helicopters fill the sky, and soon after, the screams of men.
42
“You’re sure about this?” Kuruk asks. “It’s not too late to get the hell out of Dodge.”
I look around the mesa, spotted with pine trees growing up and around a network of ancient fallen trees and inhospitable, loose slopes of sandstone scree. It’s peaceful and mysterious, but will soon be drenched in chaos, and its mysteries laid bare…I hope.
Kuruk’s doubts aren’t misplaced, but I don’t share them. While my rational mind can weigh out pros and cons for what I’m about to do, and the lists are somewhat balanced, my confidence instilled by Jacob tips the scale toward action rather than passivity.
“Somewhere below us might be hundreds of people…children. Maybe thousands. I can’t imagine what they’ve had to endure, and how many will never be seen again.”
That’s all it takes to get Kuruk nodding. He gets it, even if he can’t join me. Had he offered, I would have declined for the same reason I left Wini and the others behind.
“I was nearly one of them.” Kuruk looks to the sky, which is just starting to melt into a purple hue.
We haven’t seen any UFO activity, but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there, or that the Others are unaware of our presence. Kuruk has us in disguise, using his Dulce Alien Base Tour SUV that he operates out of the casino for visiting UFO enthusiasts. He believes the Others tolerate the vehicle’s frequent presence and its occupants because it promotes their alien agenda. All the while, he’s been using it as a cover to monitor the Others, and he can drive up to their proverbial front door without raising an eyebrow…assuming the Others have eyebrows. There isn’t a free man or woman on the planet who knows what they really look like. But that’s going to change. Today.
“They’re thirty minutes out,” I say, tracking a fleet of Black Hawk helicopters flying toward Dulce from the west. They’re flying dark and hugging the ground, well below radar level. If I wasn’t looking for them, with the nanites’ assistance, I’d have never found them. If not for the heat showing up on infrared spectrum, they would be invisible. There are eight choppers, each with a maximum capacity of eleven passengers, plus two pilots and two gunners. As
suming the pilots and gunners remain in the birds, that will put eighty-eight pairs of boots on the ground.
It’s not even double the number of Green Berets who lost their lives here in the 1960s, but Aeron has likely been prepping for this since then. That they’re coming at all means they believe success is possible.
That they’re coming now means they believed my timetable.
In the past day, I have shifted money through Chimera accounts, summoned imaginary security forces rivalling Aeron’s, and mobilized equipment that doesn’t exist. And I’ve done it sloppy, as though rushing, allowing Aeron to detect Chimera’s apparent operation. I didn’t spell out what was happening, but the heavy hitting armaments and mercenaries tell a story. As far as Aeron knows, in three hours, Chimera is going to invade the Archuleta Mesa and abscond with all the technology held within. To prevent that, Aeron is doing the only thing they can do—they’re going to raid the mountain first.
Kuruk extends his hand. “I’ll be ready on the outside. The buses are on the way.”
I knew that already. I’ve been tracking the small fleet of buses approaching Dulce. I’m sure the drivers aren’t thrilled about driving through the early morning hours, but Chimera paid them enough to ease their woes and fill their coffee cups a few thousand times.
I shake Kuruk’s hand. “If you don’t see me again, I’ve put the contact information for Winifred Finch on your computer system along with a bank account in her name.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he says, squeezing my hand.
With a nod of thanks, I slip out of the SUV dressed in tactical gear that perfectly matches Aeron’s. As soon as they hit the ground, and I emerge from hiding, I’ll be just another masked mercenary.
Armed with one of the Heckler & Koch HK416s from Reg’s stockpile, I climb up the loose scree, heading for an outcrop partially concealed by a pair of pines. I’m counting on the natural bunker, my dark clothing, and the telepathy-shielding nanites to keep me hidden from Aeron and the Others.
I monitor Kuruk’s progress from above as I climb and he drives the steep, stone-laden dirt road down the mesa. He manages the drive with far more ease than I do the climb. Every few steps, sheets of rock slip out from under my feet, clattering down the steep grade.
Slow down, I tell myself. You have time.
Picking my handholds and footholds more carefully, I scale the mesa at a turtle’s pace, yet I still reach the outcrop with fifteen minutes to spare. After rolling a few large rocks aside, I slip into a shallow cave. Looking at my position through one of the many satellites the U.S. government has in geosynchronous orbit over the sight, I confirm that I’m hidden from view. To spot me, one of the Aeron mercs would have to land right outside, and even then, confusion would give me the upper hand long enough to subdue him and stash the body. Maybe. I hope. I’ll see them coming, so I can be up and moving before anyone touches down outside my door. Until then, I’m going to rest.
Surrounded by solid stone, in a north-facing cave, the first rays of morning sunlight fail to reach me. In the absolute silence, the experience is something like a sensory deprivation chamber, without the floating. My mind drifts. Memories surface.
I’m standing above Kailyn, holding her hair, because that’s what an awesome husband does when his wife is puking in a toilet. It’s already in a ponytail, so I’m really not contributing much, but I’m there, and I think that’s what matters. It’s the second day of what now appears to be a stomach bug.
“Shit,” Kailyn says between spitting the taste out of her mouth. She points to the bathroom closet and snaps her fingers. “Bottom shelf. At the back. Pink and white box.”
I follow the order with military precision, knowing that now is not the time or place to question what I’m searching for. Locating the box is easier said than done. The closet is a mess. Layers of shampoos, soaps, band-aid boxes, old prescriptions, lotions, salves, loofas, and Q-tips guard the mystery prize.
I don’t find it until Kailyn’s impatient “C’mon…” spurs me into what she used to call my gorilla mode. My forearm sweeps through the chaos like a knife scraping away chunky peanut butter, gathering it in a pile and revealing the box.
I pluck my prize from the closet, glance at the box, and for the first time in my life, feel my heartbeat inside my chest. Before that moment, I’d been shot at, stabbed once, and pursued by a serial killer, but none of it affected me the way the two bright pink words in a swirling feminine font did: Pregnancy Test.
“Shit,” I say, mirroring Kailyn’s thoughts.
We had talked about children a few times, but never planned on them. Mostly because her doctors said she couldn’t conceive children. Adoption came up a few times, but being in a line of work that included being shot at, stabbed, and pursued by killers tended to squelch most conversations regarding new and fragile life.
Without brushing her teeth or rinsing her mouth, she dropped trou, sat on the toilet, and peed on the test strip. While I paced, and she freshened up, we waited for the results.
“We can do this,” she said. “We can totally do this.”
“We don’t know that’s what’s happening,” I said.
“It’s been three months since my last period.”
“But that’s happened before, right?”
She calmed a little bit, and said, “Twice. But look…” She stood up, turned sideways, and pulled her T-shirt tight. The swell over her stomach was obvious enough that I wondered how I hadn’t spotted it earlier.
Because it happened gradually, I thought, and then I denied it. “You’re pushing your stomach out.”
“I’m not,” she said, and then glanced at the urine-soaked test strip lying beside my toothbrush. “What does a plus mean?”
Positive, I thought, but couldn’t say it. Instead, I fumbled with the tightly folded instructions and found the images revealing what I already knew. “Pregnant…holy shit, you’re pregnant. Holy damn, we’re having a baby!”
By that time, we were both smiling. Both in tears. Holding each other.
Given our lives up until that point, I had never really let myself consider what it might feel like to be a father, to hold the living, breathing result of Kailyn’s and my love. But in that moment, I did, and it felt amazing.
“Let’s not get our hopes up,” she said when we peeled apart. “These things give false positives. It’s been in the closet for two years. I’ll go see the doctor today. Get this confirmed.”
“I’ll come with you,” I say.
“You and I both know you can’t,” she says. “You’re close, right?”
My nod is unenthusiastic, but accurate.
“How about this?” she said. “I’ll come to you with the results. I won’t even let them tell me. We’ll find out together.”
“At a police station…”
“We’ll meet out front.”
After agreeing to her plan, and feeling strangely renewed about everything, I went to work.
That was the last time I saw her.
The sound of helicopters snaps me from the relived memory. I wipe tears from my eyes in the dark, wondering how the choppers got so close without me registering the sound.
Looking from above, I see lines dropping from the sides of choppers, some higher on the mesa, some lower. Aeron’s mercs drop from each Black Hawk in pairs, spreading out across the mesa, taking up positions and giving me the perfect opportunity to rise and stand among them. I scramble from my position, not worried about the sound thanks to the thumping rotor blades, or my tears, thanks to the black facemask.
I stand from my position, weapon at the ready, just like all the other men who have already landed. I start moving upward, as though I was one of the first men on the ground, fanning out.
Then I scan radio frequencies, looking for their chatter, which will allow me to follow orders and blend in as they breach the mesa and reach its insides.
Only, there is no chatter.
I scan other modes of communication—
Wi-Fi, satellite, cell networks, Bluetooth—and find nothing but a few early morning locals talking about the choppers they can see and hear from town.
They’re either operating in perfect synchronicity while totally radio silent, or…
Shit.
The moment the possibility reaches the forefront of my mind, it is confirmed as eighty-eight soldiers turn toward me from every angle, aim their weapons, and speak in a chorus. “Lower your weapon. All hope is lost.”
43
The chorus of male voices, muffled by facemasks and distance, coupled with the ‘All hope is lost’ message sends a shiver through my extremities. While I know the cryptoterrestrials are flesh and blood, the experience has a supernatural vibe to it that shakes Jacob’s gifted confidence for the first time.
I’m going to die here, I think, but it doesn’t have to be for nothing.
Broadcast this, I instruct the nanites. Send it everywhere.
My hope is that the Others will reveal themselves rather than simply having the mercs cut me down. That it will be enough to mobilize the world against them. The pessimist in me surfaces, arguing that people will just look the other way. Despite most Americans still patting themselves on the back over the Civil War’s results, slavery is more prevalent than ever. With thirty million slaves worldwide, sixty thousand of whom reside in the U.S., people might just shrug their shoulders and go back to watching The Bachelor.
Or they’ll revolt against a common enemy. The fact that these slave drivers aren’t human, and are taking mostly children, might be enough to shock the world into action. The few science fiction movies I’ve seen present an alien invasion as the only thing capable of uniting the world. That the aliens have been here longer than us doesn’t change the theme: humanity’s last hope is each other.
We’ll see.
A strange kind of tension fills my body, and I sense that the nanites are as close to frustrated as they’re capable of getting. They’re trying to reach out to the world beyond the mesa, but something is blocking my signals. I’m still connected to a few satellites, but they’re the kind with cameras pointed at the Earth, not the kind that can broadcast a signal. I’ve been made mute, but not blind. The difference, I think, is that the spy satellites are protected by military encryption and firewalls, while the rest…well, a smart teenager could work their way past that security.
The Others Page 26