“I dunno, about ten, maybe fifteen minutes ago.”
“Did you see where it went?”
“Yeah, to the north.”
Elena began to pace back and forth. “David, we’ve got to leave here immediately and check it out.”
“Are you sure that’s a wise move?” said Grant. “It’s dark outside, and all of those yellow notes plastered on that map don’t fill me with too much confidence.”
“David, we have to take a look around,” pleaded Elena.
“What do you think, Doc?” Grant asked Hayes.
“While I’d rather not drive around in the dark, something very peculiar is going on around here,” said Hayes. “As a military scientist, I’m duty-bound to investigate.”
“Okay, saddle up. We’ll take both vehicles. I’ll lead. Elena, please let Sheryl know that we’re going to take a drive to the north of the town; you know, just in case we don’t come back.”
“Will do,” she replied.
“Jeremy, do you have any more toys in the back of your vehicle?” Grant asked.
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
On the street, Grant and Maclean waited, while Hayes opened up one of his black plastic storage boxes.
“For added firepower, I brought along two Heckler and Koch MP7 submachine guns,” explained Hayes, as he handed over the weapons. “They fire 4.6 x 30mm ammunition, which is more than capable of penetrating military-grade body armor and Kevlar helmets. There are both twenty and forty round magazines for the MP7. You can use the weapons’ iron sights, or a detachable laser sight, if you wish.”
Grant studied the weapon in his hands. It was small, with a collapsible butt. There was also a folding handgrip forward of the magazine housing, allowing the weapon to be fired as either a pistol or an SMG.
“Another good choice, Doc,” said Maclean, holding the lightweight weapon out in front of him. “What about you two?”
“We aren’t trained in the use of firearms,” replied Hayes. “I did, however, bring along a couple of powerful police Tasers for Ms. Leon and me to use in self-defense.”
“Consider them needed,” said Grant. “Did you think to bring any body armor?”
“Of course I did,” responded Hayes, flipping open another box.
Grant picked up the slender vest and held it in his hands. “This is really light. What’s this made of?”
“Liquid body armor. I brought along four sets, just in case we needed them.”
“How’s it work?” asked Maclean.
“The tissues inside the vest have been coated with a shear-thickening fluid, which will instantly harden when struck. It’s lighter to wear, and far superior to normal body armor.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” said Grant, slipping one on under his shirt. He was pleased to see it was comfortable and didn’t restrict his movements.
“Are they heavy?” asked Elena, watching Hayes adjust his.
“No,” replied Grant. “Remember, safety first.”
“Say, you’re right,” she replied, slipping hers on. “It’s not bad at all.”
“If we’re all good to go, I say we get moving before anything else goes wrong around here.”
Chapter 28
“Look out!” yelled Mrs. Moore, recoiling back in her seat as she frantically pointed at the windshield.
Sheriff Black’s eyes widened as she swerved to miss a person standing in the middle of the fog-covered road. Black jammed her foot down on the brake pedal and brought her vehicle to a screeching halt.
Behind her, Tracey Tibeluk reacted likewise.
“Stay here,” said Black to Mrs. Moore, as she opened her door. The smell of burnt rubber hung in the air. Black walked back to the person standing on the road.
Tibeluk’s vehicle’s headlights lit up the mist.
As she got closer, Black could see it was a young girl in her late teens. She was wearing blue jeans and a yellow fleece top. The young girl’s dark hair was matted to her pale face. “Are you all right?” Black asked.
The girl didn’t respond. Instead, she stood there staring straight ahead, shivering.
Black looked at the girl. She didn’t appear to be hurt.
Tibeluk joined them. “Hon, can you tell me your name?”
The girl remained silent.
“Do you recognize her?” Black asked Tibeluk.
“No. She’s not from around here,” replied the officer. “Perhaps her family was camping in the woods nearby?”
Black gently placed her hands on the girl’s shoulders and turned her so she could look into her brown eyes. She made sure her voice was as soothing as possible. “Is that it? Is your family somewhere nearby?”
The girl stood there, unresponsive.
“What do you want to do, Sheriff?” asked Tibeluk.
“I’ll take her in my vehicle. We can drop her off at the clinic with Kyle and Mrs. Moore. After that, we’ll head to the station. Bill and Sean can come back up here and look around for her parents.”
“Come on, hon,” said Tibeluk, guiding the girl to Black’s Suburban.
Black removed the flashlight from her belt, switched it on, and walked to the trees lining the road. She shone her light on the forest, trying to see if there was anyone else out there in need of help. All she saw were dark, crooked shadows among the trees, and more fog. Black shook her head and turned on her heel to leave when out of the corner of her eye she spied a large boot print in the dirt. Black bent down to examine it. The imprint looked fresh, but it wasn’t from the girl. Black estimated the track was at least three times the size of the girl’s foot.
“Hello, is anyone out there?” called out Black.
Only the incessant buzzing of insects and the croaking of frogs answered her call.
Black stood up and stepped back onto the road. She pursed her lips. Something bizarre was happening around her town, and she was having trouble trying to make sense of what it was. She walked back to her vehicle and got in. The young girl was sitting in the backseat, with a blanket draped over her shoulders. Mrs. Moore had moved back there with her, and held her tight in her arms.
“Is everyone good to go?” asked Black.
“I can’t say for my young friend, but I sure as heck am,” answered Mrs. Moore.
“Okay then, let’s head back to town and get ourselves some coffee and a bite to eat.” Black placed her SUV in drive, and with a gentle push on the accelerator, she drove off into the swirling mist.
Chapter 29
“Nothing, absolutely nothing works!” screamed Max, slamming his satellite phone’s handset down.
“Have you tried your secure laptop?” asked Dan.
“Yes, of course, I tried the damned thing. It, along with my cell phone, can’t send or receive a bloody thing.”
“Why would anyone want to jam all of our comms equipment?” asked Carter.
Max shrugged. “The U.S. military, maybe? It would be prudent to assume that they’ve got people up here looking for the downed craft.”
“What about that silent orange disc we saw fly over the hills?” asked a stocky, black-bearded mercenary. “It could be behind all of this.”
“Yeah, there’s that possibility too, Raoul.”
“Sir, what do our mission protocols say in the event of a total comms failure?” asked Dan.
“We carry on with the original mission, until ordered to cease our operation,” replied Max.
“The only problem is that, in my opinion, the mission has changed,” said Raoul. “The craft we were looking for is no longer here. We all agree that it was most likely vaporized when it cooked off the water in the lake. Aside from some dangerously strong radiation readings on the Geiger counter at the edge of the lake, we have found nothing of the UFO.”
Max tapped his right foot on the ground while he thought. “You’re right, Raoul. Let’s pack up our gear and drive to the last spot we saw the new disc before it disappeared. Maybe we’ll get lucky and stumble across this other craf
t before someone else does.”
A couple of minutes later, they were on the road, heading back into the hills. The men in Max’s truck sat in silence. The thought of running into another terror bird weighed heavily on their minds.
Just before the turnoff to the lake, the lead vehicle began to decelerate.
“Why are we slowing down?” asked Max.
“Sir, there’s a man on the road,” replied Dan.
Max leaned forward in his seat. Sure enough, there was an old man jogging on the side of the road as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Max shook his head and said, “Go around him.”
“Sure thing.” Dan turned the steering wheel in his hands and gave the man a wide berth, as did the car behind them.
The man paid the vehicles no heed as they drove around him. He just kept on running. The odd thing about the old man—other than the fact that he was out for a leisurely jog in the middle of the night—was that he wasn’t wearing any running attire. He was jogging along in his normal clothes, with a pair of old leather boots on his feet.
“This is one awfully strange place,” said Max under his breath.
“Sir, rather than go back to the lake, why don’t we take the side road and come out on the hill overlooking it?” asked Dan. “I’m sure we’ll be able to get a better view from up there.”
Max could hear the hesitancy in his colleague’s voice. He didn’t blame him; he was nervous, too. “Sure, why not. We can launch the drone from up there, and survey the entire valley.”
After they had parked and assembled their drone, it took off into the night sky. A cold breeze came from the north, accompanied by the faint sound of thunder. Max could see a long line of dark clouds approaching as it blocked out the stars. Max stood, resting his back on the warm front grill of his truck, hoping the clouds didn’t bring rain. He dug out his cigarettes and lit one. He had tried to stop smoking several times in the past to no avail. Max’s life and his job were far too stressful to let him quit.
“What are we looking for?” asked Carter, at the controls of the drone.
“Heat signatures…the bigger, the better,” replied Max.
“Won’t whatever we’re looking for be shielded, or invisible to the naked eye?”
“That’s why you’re looking for heat. I doubt they can mask the heat from an engine, or the ground the disc may be sitting on.”
The air was tense. While Carter and Max waited for the drone to find something, the other three men stood guard.
“Boss, I’ve got something you may want to see,” Carter announced suddenly.
“What is it?” asked Max, tossing aside his cigarette.
“There are two cars parked at the bottom of the hill, and I can see people moving around the vehicles.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Four,” said Carter, turning the screen so his boss could see.
“Can you get in close without them hearing the drone?”
“Sure. This baby’s engine is barely audible to the human ear. I could bring it to within a meter, and you’d think there was a mosquito flying around your ear. It’s that quiet.”
Max watched as the UAV descended from the sky toward the unsuspecting group of people. When it was less than fifty meters above them, Carter focused the drone’s camera on a tall man with short hair and a tough-looking face. Max studied the image for a moment before pointing at another man standing next to one of the cars with a weapon in his hands. The state-of-the-art camera swung over, and zeroed in. Max clenched his jaw when he thought he recognized the man as someone he had seen running from the airplane hangar in Batumi, Georgia.
“Do you recognize him, Boss?” asked Carter.
“Perhaps. I think that man was in Georgia a few weeks back. Show me the faces of the other people.”
Carter moved his thumb on the control pad until the last two people in the group appeared on the screen.
Max swore. “Elena Leon and Jeremy Hayes. I should have known those fools from Gauntlet would come sniffing around here.”
“Are they trouble?” asked Carter.
“Hayes and Leon are a pair of government scientists and, as such, they are no physical threat to us. The other two, I don’t know.” Max waved Raoul to his side. “Take Clive with you and eliminate those four people. Place their dead bodies in their vehicles and then drive them deep into the woods.”
Raoul nodded and left with his comrade to kill the interlopers.
Max patted Carter on the arm. “It’ll take them about five minutes to get down the hill. Until then, let’s do what we came here to do and continue looking for that craft.”
Chapter 30
“Did you hear something?” asked Elena, looking up at the night sky.
Grant shook his head. “No. What do you think you heard?”
“It sounded like a strange buzzing sound coming from right above us.”
Grant looked up and saw nothing. “It could have been a dragonfly hunting mosquitos. They can make a fair bit of racket with their wings.”
“Yeah, that was probably it.”
Grant walked over to the back of Maclean’s vehicle and patted his colleague on the shoulder. “How long until you can get our drone airborne?”
“Not long at all. Give me thirty seconds more and we’ll be good to go.”
Grant joined Hayes, who was hunched over, checking the ground for radiation. “What’s the word, Doc?”
“There’s no sign of radiation in the soil,” replied Hayes. “Luckily, the water from the lake didn’t get this far.”
A couple of seconds later, their drone shot skyward.
“Circle the lake, and look for any large hot spots on the ground,” said Elena to Maclean.
“Will do,” replied the Australian, sending the UAV flying toward the drained lake.
“Uh…Captain Grant, you need to come and see this,” said Hayes. His voice quivered with fear.
Grant flipped on his flashlight, saw Hayes had walked away, and was looking at something on the ground. “What have you found?”
“I’m not a paleontologist, but I don’t think these tracks should be here,” Hayes said, shining his light on several sets of large, three-toed tracks.
Grant got down on one knee to study the tracks up close. “What do you think could have made those?”
“If I’m right, and I think I am, they belong to a large, predatory, flightless bird. The problem is that they died out tens of millions of years ago, and to date, their fossils have never been found this far north.”
Grant moved his light around on the ground and found dozens of tracks. His mouth turned dry with fear when he realized the tracks led in and out of the woods right next to where they were parked. He flipped the safety off his MP7 SMG, and shone his light at the forest where the tracks had come from, and was reassured when he saw, that for now, they were alone.
“Back to the car, Doc,” said Grant, as he walked backward, with his weapon aimed at the woods.
“What’s wrong, David?” asked Elena, when Hayes ran past her, jumped inside his vehicle, and locked the door.
“I’ll explain when we’re on the road. Please get in the vehicle right away.”
“Okay,” replied Elena, reaching for the passenger-side door.
“Jim, where’s the drone?” Grant asked.
“On the far side of the lake. Why?”
“There’s not enough time to bring it back. I want you to crash it into the lake. We still have a second one in the back of your vehicle, should we need to use it.”
Maclean looked over at Grant. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes! Do it and get behind the wheel of your vehicle, ASAP. We’re leaving.”
Maclean didn’t question his friend’s orders. With a flick of his thumb, he sent the drone flying into the muddy bottom of the lake. He threw the controller into the back of his Mustang, slammed the trunk closed, and ran to get into his vehicle.
In the rearview mirror, Gr
ant saw Maclean wave at him. He started his car, put it in drive, and jammed his foot on the gas pedal. He spun the wheel around in his hands until his Mustang was facing the dirt trail leading back toward town. Grant never let up on the accelerator. His vehicle’s tires clawed at the wet ground for traction. Dirt and sand shot into the air, as his tires spun on the ground. A second later, they gripped some large rocks, and the vehicle shot forward like a racehorse hearing the starter’s pistol.
“You’re frightening me, David,” said Elena. “What did you and Jeremy find?”
“We found tracks belonging to a large, carnivorous bird that has no place being here in Alaska,” responded Grant, steering around a deep pothole on the narrow path.
“My God, I would have loved to have seen it.”
“No, you wouldn’t. There were dozens of tracks, which means there are a whole lot of them out there in the woods.”
“David, look out!” screamed Elena, as two men emerged, as if out of nowhere, and stepped out onto the path. They each held M4 carbines.
For a moment, Grant thought about running the men over, but when one of them brought his weapon up to his shoulder and fired off a burst into the grill of his car, he thrust his foot onto the brake pedal. His vehicle came to a sliding halt a couple of meters from the two armed men.
“Turn off your vehicle, and get out nice and slowly,” ordered a short man with a thick, black beard.
“What are we going to do?” whispered Elena.
“We do what he says, and play for time,” replied Grant. He switched off the engine, opened his door, and raised his hands to show he was unarmed. Grant got out of his vehicle, and stood motionless with his hands in the air.
“Walk to the front of your car, and then get down on your knees,” said the man.
Grant and Elena moved to the front of their vehicle and knelt on the gravel.
“Get the people in the other vehicle,” said the bearded man to his partner.
The man nodded and walked to the other Mustang with his M4 at the ready. He returned a couple of second later with Hayes, who was shaking like a leaf caught in a storm.
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