The Phoenix Egg

by Richard Bamberg

The swirling snow parted and, for a moment, she thought she could see the dark shape of a body at the foot of the embankment. It wasn’t moving.

  Although the bank was only ten or so feet high, it was steep and obviously slippery.

  “Damn, life is just one damned thing after another,” Dewatre said. “There’s no time to be positive. If he was lucky enough to survive, then, c’est le guerre. Come on, give me any more trouble, and I’ll kill you and take the chance that you don’t know anything critical.”

  She let him pull her toward the Ford. He forced her into the front seat, and then got behind the wheel. He cranked the engine, turned around, and pulled onto the road heading toward the Springs.

  The Ford was cold, but the shiver that came over her had nothing to do with the temperature. “Why’d you have to kill him?”

  His eyes met hers for just a second, and then returned to study a road that was barely visible through the snow. “John Blalock impressed me as the unforgiving kind. If I hadn’t killed him, then someday he would have come across me again, and then I might not have the upper hand.”

  “John wasn’t like that. If you’d let us go, he wouldn't have ever bothered you again.”

  “Truly? Well, perhaps, but I think not. He was a hard man with a reputation in the business of being both ruthless and determined. He was not a man to cross.”

  “No, he wasn’t like that. He wasn’t a monster like the rest of you,” Caitlin said. “I ... he was kind, sacrificing, he wasn’t the vendetta type.”

  “And you base that opinion on what?”

  “I knew him once, a long time ago.”

  “Ah, so he couldn’t have changed so much, eh?”

  “No, not that much,” Caitlin said.

  “Did you ever read Nietzsche?”

  “A little. A very little, his writings seemed to contain the touch of base paranoia.”

  “Truly? I suppose that could be one interpretation. But he had a saying that fit this man you once knew.”

  “I hardly think so.”

  “‘He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby becomes a monster.’“

  She stared at him for a moment, and then she asked, “Is that what happened to you or were you born this way?”

  “Ah, touché. Perhaps the saying may apply to me also. Who knows?”

  They reached Powers Boulevard and turned south. “What are you planning? Are you going to kill me too?”

  “Only if you make it necessary. You will have a questioning, a debriefing, and if you are honest with us, we will give you a choice of returning home or accepting our protection.”

  “Your protection? Are you crazy?”

  “No, Ms. Maxwell, I am not crazy. Surely you realize that those in your government who are after this artifact are willing to kill you to get it.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “Ah, well if you insist on a strict interpretation of my orders, then yes, we are also willing to kill for it.”

  “I think I’ll take my chances at home,” Caitlin said.

  “That is your choice, and I do not care.”

  She stared at him for a moment. “You called it an artifact, why?”

  “What else could it be?”

  There was a tone in his voice that Caitlin had not expected. His voice held the almost innocent note of a child when confronted with something beyond his keen.

  “It’s just an advanced telephone system. A technological breakthrough, but artifact certainly doesn’t apply. Perhaps your English isn’t as good as you think.”

  For a second he silently drove down the wide deserted boulevard, then his lips pursed, and he nodded slowly. “Ah, then you think someone invented this device, this advanced telephone.”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s not what your government thinks.”

  “How would you know what they think?”

  “We have our sources. When I received this project, I was fully briefed. I know everything Holdren, and his crew know.”

  “And that is?”

  “Are you sure you want to know? It may be dangerous information.”

  Caitlin exhaled an unbelieving grunt of surprise. “Dangerous? Like dangerous in that someone may try to kill me for it? Get real, Dewatre. Someone killed my husband, you’ve killed John, and I’ve seen Holdren kill a totally innocent man who just happened to get in the way. I’m already living under a threat of death. What could make it worse?”

  “What if I told you that your government doesn’t believe anyone here invented this device? That it came from somewhere else?”

  “Who else has that capability, the Brits, the Japanese? The French certainly don’t.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “There aren’t any other countries with the basic research needed to achieve this sort of breakthrough,” she said.

  “I concur.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean. If it wasn’t some other country, then it must have been here, perhaps in a private lab such as those AT&T funds.”

  “No, not there either. They are just as anxious to get their hands on it. No, you have to expand your thinking, to think out of the box that your naiveté keeps around you.”

  “I suppose you intend to convince me it has extraterrestrial origins.”

  He didn’t react.

  “You can’t be serious,” Caitlin said as her hand rose to cover the hard lump beneath her coat.

  “I am quite serious. That is exactly where Holdren believes it came from.”

  “Yeah, but just because that murdering bastard believes it doesn’t make it so.”

  “I didn’t say it was so, I just said that your government believes it to be so.”

  “And your government?”

  He shrugged. “Ah, who can say what one’s own government believes?”

  They turned off Powers and pulled into the old terminal area of the airport.

  ***

  John’s head pounded so loud that he thought he was stuck in some fantastical kettledrum during a drum solo. Pain assailed him from a multitude of injuries, the least of which seemed to be the place he’d been shot a few days earlier. What the hell had happened? He was foggy on everything since meeting the Frenchman. Dewatre, yes, his name was Dewatre. John opened his eyes.

  It was dark, but a faint glow shown from somewhere above. He lay at the bottom of a snow-covered embankment.

  Caitlin! Where the hell was Caitlin? He broadcast over the egg, but there was no reply. Damn, she had to be out of range. She had to be. He didn’t want to think of the alternative.

  He sat up and received a new set of pain signals from various parts of his anatomy. His right shoulder blade felt like someone had busted it with a sledgehammer. The side of his head screamed its pain as he moved. John raised his left hand and felt blood and something missing. At least half of his left ear was missing.

  “Son of a bitch bastard. Rotten no good ... you’re going to die when I find you Dewatre!”

  The light grew brighter, and John realized headlights were approaching. He rolled over onto his knees and struggled erect. If it wasn’t Dewatre and Caitlin coming back, then it must be Holdren’s men. He had to get moving.

  One step, sway a moment, and then another step. Stop, sway again, he wanted to shake it off, but as dizzy as he felt, he was certain that shaking his head would compound the problem.

  He tried climbing the frozen embankment but slid back down before he’d gone half way. The road was off to his right. He followed the ditch for forty feet or so until he reached the road. The headlights of a car were already turning into the drive where Dewatre had made him stop.

  John waited until the lights were pointed away from him then climbed the short bank onto the road. As he ran after the vehicle, he drew his gun from its holster.

  The Suburban parked twenty feet behind John’s rented Cherokee. The big Chevy’s multiple headlights blanketing the scene through the swirling snow. All four doors of the Chevy opened. Tw
o men got out and advanced toward the Jeep. The other two covered them with drawn weapons.

  John slowed and moved silently closer.

  “There’s blood here,” one of the lead men shouted.

  “Any bodies?” one by the passenger side of the Suburban asked.

  “No, wait. There’s a ditch up here, and it looks like someone may have fallen into it.”

  “You check it out. Bennings, check the Jeep,” the second man ordered.

  John reached the rear of the Suburban and put out his left hand to steady himself. He was in danger of puking up his guts. Bitter bile burned his throat. He swallowed, steeled himself against the buck and sway of the earth, and moved forward again.

  Raising his gun, he chopped it down into the temple of the man who had given the orders. The man grunted and sagged to his knees.

  John shoved him to the side and fired through the open door at the driver who was trying to bring his weapon to bear. John fired twice in rapid succession.

  The first bullet took the driver in the throat; the second opened up his sinuses.

  One of the forward men was still standing at the front of the Jeep. He turned at the sound of the shots; his Uzi came up, his finger already on the trigger. A line of shots walked the distance between them then cut off abruptly when John’s next shot took him in the chest and shoved him backward toward the ditch. John took his time and placed another round in his face just before the man pitched backward out of sight.

  He saw no sign of the fourth man. Unless he was a lot more agile than John was, he’d have to hoof it out to the road in order to get back. That gave John a moment of freedom.

  The man he’d clubbed tried to rise. John clubbed him again, and he decided to sleep instead.

  John rolled him over and patted him down. He had a wallet and a badge holder in an inner coat pocket. John shoved both items in one of his pockets, and then was suddenly unable to control himself any longer.

  He emptied his guts over the prone man. He couldn’t stop until there was nothing left but dry heaves. John wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, coughed once, and spit out a foul taste.

  His minute was almost up. Time to get moving or he’d have another killer to handle. He took an Uzi carbine from the front seat of the Suburban and a satchel of 30 round magazines. John stopped long enough to take the driver’s Uzi from his corpse.

  It didn’t make sense, but the puking seemed to help. John reached the Jeep without needing to stop to catch himself. He slammed the rear hatch closed and climbed into the driver’s seat. The engine roared to life. John threw the transmission into reverse, backed around the Suburban, shifted into drive, and accelerated toward the road.

  When he turned toward town, his headlights lit a figure climbing onto the pavement. John aimed the Cherokee at him as the man raised his gun. For an instant, John thought he’d try to shoot, and then the man dove back off the road, and disappeared into the night as the Jeep thundered past.

  John turned his head as the man disappeared from the road. He caught sight of his reflection in the mirror and turned it toward him as he accelerated. Blood matted the hair on the left side of his head. Some of it had begun to dry, but it was renewed by a continual seep from the remains of his ear and from a tear in the side of his scalp. For the first time since he’d been shot, he noticed that sounds reached him oddly. The bullet that had taken off part of his ear must have done something to the inner ear also unless the ear canal was just full of blood. There wasn’t time to clean up the mess and find out just now. He had to locate Caitlin before Dewatre shot her too.

  He slowed and turned toward town onto Black Forest road. His guess was that Dewatre would either take her to a safe house for questioning or to the airport so he could get her out of the country. There was a French consulate in Denver, but he didn’t think the French government would want to be too obvious about their involvement. It was one thing to have DGRG spies working in an ally’s country, but quite another to kidnap one of their citizens and take them onto consulate property.

  John turned and spotted the canvas bag he’d left on the floor of the back seat. He stretched back to get it and was rewarded with a fresh stab of pain from his upper back.

  “Damn sonofabitch!”

  Refusing to let the pain stop him, John clutched the bag and dragged it into the front seat. The movement gave him a sticky feeling beneath his shirt. That wasn’t good. He’d thought his back was just tender from taking a round in the Kevlar vest, but sticky meant blood. What had Dewatre been using? Teflon bullets? Maybe even those solid copper bullets the French had produced back in the eighties. He didn’t think they were still available, but government agents would have them if anyone did.

  Reaching Powers Boulevard, John slowed and turned toward the airport as he opened the bag. The transceiver was in its own leather case. He pulled it out, flipped back the cover to expose the controls, and turned it on.

  “Caitlin. Caitlin can you hear me?” he transmitted.

  ***

  Caitlin was being dragged by the arm across the tarmac toward a hangar when John’s voice sounded inside her head. She stumbled and nearly fell, but Dewatre jerked her to her feet.

  “None of that now, Ms. Maxwell, I thought we had an understanding.”

  “I slipped, damn you. If you weren’t pulling so hard, I might be able to keep my feet.”

  Dewatre had holstered his weapon when they parked the Explorer. He’d warned her that as long as she cooperated, he wouldn’t hurt her.

  “John, thank God. I was afraid he’d killed you.”

  “He came close. Where are you now?”

  “We’re at the airport. Take the old terminal exit off Powers. We’re going into an older hangar. There’s a big sign that says Rocky Air Freight over the doors.”

  “All right, I’m crossing Constitution now. I’ll be there in five minutes. Keep me informed on what’s happening.”

  “Okay, I’ll try to repeat everything. Are you all right?”

  “I’ll live, which is more than I can say for our friend Dewatre when I catch up with him.”

  They reached the hangar and went in a small door set in the large hangar doors. “John, that’s what he said you’d do. He said it was why he had to shoot you.”

  “Really? I wish I knew how he knows me so well. If I get the chance, I’ll ask him before I kill him.”

  Caitlin received no emotion in his transmission. Strange that when they shared so much while touching they only shared words when apart. His words were enough, though. How could this man who had been so tender with her, who had shared feelings and sensations, that no other man or woman had ever shared seem so cold and vengeful now?

  Neither man nor woman. Could it be that Dewatre was correct? That aliens had delivered these devices to whomever Scott had gotten them from? But why would they? What would they have to gain? It just didn’t make any sense.

  The bright light of sodium lights flooded the inside of the hangar. In its shadowless glare, Caitlin saw at least three planes. One looked like a DC-3 or maybe it was a converted C-47. One was a Brasilia turboprop, and one was a sleek new Learjet. The jet faced the closed doors.

  A man sat on the steps of the Learjet reading a paper. When the wind banged the door shut behind them, he looked up, and then set his paper aside.

  In French, he said, “Alain, you have her. Good, did you have any trouble?”

  “A little, but we should get moving. Trouble seems to follow this assignment. How long before we can get airborne?”

  “It will take a couple of minutes to do the final preflight on the airplane. You call for takeoff clearance, while Carl and I start the engines. How’s the weather? Has it gotten any better?”

  “No, worse if anything.”

  “No bother, we’re fully equipped.”

  “Get the engines started. I’ll join you after I find Ms. Maxwell a seat. Have Carl get the doors now, I don’t want to waste any time.”

  “Right. I’l
l wake Carl.”

  “Did you get all that John? You don’t have much time,” Jill transmitted.

  “I’m turning off Powers now. I should be there in a minute or so.”

  “Please be careful, John. You know I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “I’ll be careful. Aren’t I always?”

  Dewatre pushed her toward the stairs as the pilot disappeared inside the cabin.

  Caitlin turned toward Dewatre. “Look, isn’t there some other way we can do this. I get acrophobia real bad.”

  “Yes, there is another way. I can give you an injection that will knock you out until we land outside Paris. Which would you prefer?”

  “Neither really, I don’t like needles either.”

  “Ms. Maxwell, your little stalling tactics are getting tiresome. Either march that cute derrière of yours up those steps or I will knock you down, give you the injection, and throw you in the cargo hold for the trip.”

  Caitlin gave him a little pout for effect and then turned and walked unhurriedly up the steps.

  “I’m entering the hangar area now, Caitlin. Where are you?” John broadcast.

  “In the third hangar, we’re just going into the airplane. It’s the big Learjet parked just inside the main doors.”

  Caitlin stepped into the cabin and bumped into a young man who rubbed his eyes sleepily. He muttered an apology and moved to one side to let her pass.

  Dewatre gave the man a disapproving stare and then joined Caitlin. The cabin was about twenty feet long and five wide. There weren’t many seats, perhaps enough for ten people.

  Dewatre motioned her toward two seats that faced each other across a small table near the cabin door.

  “Sit there, facing forward.”

  Caitlin moved to the chair, she had to stoop to walk, sat down, and waited. Dewatre set the case with the helmet onto the table and flipped the latches. Lifting the lid, he smiled down at the foam-encased helmet, but only for a second. His features puzzled, and then grimaced as he turned toward her. “There are two empty positions here. What was in them?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the way it was when we got it.”

  He stared at her, his pupils wide, his lips curled back from his teeth as if he were going to snarl. His gaze dropped to her chest. He blinked once then suddenly lunged at her. Before she could move, his fingers closed on the neck of her sweater and yanked, popping the top two buttons off as he exposed the swell of her breasts and the gold egg nestled there.