“Highly classified information,” Dutch said. “No paper trail. But I’ll tell you where I’ve been, Scott.”
“You don’t have to, sir.”
“Not sir,” Dutch said.
“I’m sorry?”
“While we’re in here, off duty, don’t call me sir. Call me Dutch. After all, we’re friends, aren’t we? We trust each other?”
“I’d like to think so.”
“So. Friends call each other by their names. I’m Dutch, and you’re Scott.” He took a breath, then said, “I nearly died that day, even though the bitch spared me. I would probably have died if it wasn’t for…” He broke off, then laughed suddenly. “If it wasn’t for the Hunters themselves, in fact.”
Scott raised his eyebrows. “How do you mean?”
“Over the years, as you know, we’ve managed to salvage a lot from the Hunters. Not just weapons and technology, but biological material, chemicals, medical supplies. Armed with the knowledge that our alien visitors have the ability to repair and regenerate severely damaged tissue, the scientific research team at OWLF has spent years developing a serum containing Predator blood cells augmented with human DNA, with the hope that it could be adapted to regenerate damaged human tissue with the same degree of effectiveness.” He grimaced. “I was given a choice. Either I could allow nature to take its course, and end up dead or too badly injured to continue my duties. Or become a guinea pig for the new serum.”
“And you chose the latter?” Scott said.
Dutch shrugged. “I had nothing to lose. I was kept in quarantine, not only until the serum had taken effect, but also until any and all possible side effects of the treatment had been identified and treated. As it has turned out, the news has all been good. My injuries have healed at four times the rate they normally would have done, and my rehabilitation has been similarly enhanced. I’m fitter and stronger than I’ve ever been, and this despite the reduction in my muscle mass.”
Which accounts for the new, leaner framer, Scott thought. “And how about side effects?”
“Nothing so far.” Dutch picked up his bottle, tilted it toward Scott, then took a swig. “It’s all good.”
“So what’s next?” Scott asked.
“Next, I go back out into the field with my new team, which I’ve been putting together for the past eighteen months. We’ve got a lot of ground to make up. While I’ve been out of commission, our rivals have stolen a march on us.”
“How so?” asked Scott.
“Our fallow period has caused rumblings of discontent within government circles, which in turn has led to talk that the OWLF’s funding is about to come under review. We’re pretty sure that Ellison and his cohorts have been spreading rumors that the OWLF are nothing but a bunch of UFO lunatics chasing conspiracy theories, and that these constant whispers are starting to take effect. In the meantime, there’s reason to believe that Ellison and his ilk are selling off alien salvage to the highest bidder. Trouble is, they’re too skilled at covering their tracks for us to prove anything. Plus they have powerful friends.”
“Friends in the government?”
“Some. And some outside.”
“Like who?”
“Men with money who want more money. Men with power who want more power. Men to whom acquisition is far more important than moribund concepts like integrity and honor.”
“So if you have no proof of this, what do you have?”
“I have leads. I have eyewitness accounts. I have a whole heap of evidence, which is compelling and irrefutable, but which would never hold up in a court of law.”
Dutch stretched his hand across the table, and for a second Scott thought the Major was about to take his hand and squeeze it, so fired up was he with his mission to expose his rivals. Then he withdrew his hand, leaving behind a blue USB stick.
“Everything I’ve found out is on there. Take it.”
Casually, Scott placed his own hand over the USB stick, slid it across the table toward him, and put it in his pocket.
“Why are you giving it to me?”
“Because there’s no one I trust more.”
“Not even your OWLF buddies?”
Dutch gave a grunt of laughter. “Half of them could be working with Ellison and lining their own pockets for all I know.”
“So what do you want me to do with it?”
“Just keep it. In case anything happens to me.” Dutch grinned a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “We are both men who live dangerous lives, Scott.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Scott murmured and raised his bottle. Dutch raised his too and they chinked them together. The cold mouthful of beer felt both needed and well earned.
Scott was about to ask another question when he heard approaching voices, rounding the front of the bar and moving up the passage toward them. The voices were raucous and slightly slurred, exchanging drunken banter interspersed with barks of laughter. Scott knew the rest rooms were at the back of the bar, behind where he and Dutch were sitting, just beyond the farthermost booth, which was empty. Presumably, the country boys had finished their game of pool, and their night’s drinking, and what sounded like a quartet of them were now heading to the john for a final leak before setting off home. He took a swig of his beer as he waited for them to pass by, and saw Dutch, sitting across from him and facing the approaching guys, give a nod of greeting. Instead of walking past, though, the guys suddenly came to a halt. Scott saw a hairy fist attached to an arm clad in green and black checks lean heavily on the edge of the table, beside his right elbow. When he turned to look up he received a face-full of hot, beery breath.
“Help you?” Dutch rumbled.
The guy leaned farther forward, his ample belly lapping over the edge of their table and straining against the buttons of his shirt. He had a wide, florid face framed by a scruffy black beard, and a tangle of oily hair tumbled from beneath the brim of a filthy blue baseball cap.
“You fellers a couple o’ homos or what?” he asked, prompting a chorus of hyena-like cackles behind him.
Scott sighed. Pleasantly Dutch said, “If you’re looking for action in that direction, I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere.”
For a moment the man’s eyes narrowed in puzzlement, then abruptly they widened in outrage.
“Hey! Who the fuck you calling a fag?”
Dutch grinned. “Are you going to buy me a drink or ask me to dance?”
“Fuck you!” the guy snarled, jabbing a finger at Dutch. Behind him his friends grumbled and jostled, urging him on.
Fully confident that he and Dutch could handle the four guys, whilst simultaneously aware they were in the slightly disadvantageous position of sitting with their knees tucked under a table, Scott said mildly, “Look, guys, my friend and I are just here for a quiet drink.”
“And then what?” one of the other guys retorted – thickset, vacant stare, white Harley-Davidson T-shirt, scar above his left eye. “You gonna blow each other under the table?”
Dutch fixed the man with a stare and smiled. “Is that the kind of thing you like to think about alone in bed at night?”
The man bellowed and lunged forward, almost knocking over his check-shirted friend in his eagerness to get at Dutch. His meaty arm came back and then forward, aiming for Dutch’s face. Although Dutch was maybe twice as old as his attacker, his reflexes were at least twice as fast. As the club-like fist pistoned toward him, his arm shot up and he caught it in midair. His considerably larger hand enclosed the man’s fist, and then, with considerably little effort, he gave a squeeze and a twist. There was a crunch and a snap and then the man was screaming. Still clutching his attacker’s fist, Dutch rose from his seat and gave a sharp shove, hand springing open. The man screamed again and fell backward, his already swelling hand dangling limply from his broken wrist. As his legs gave way and he collapsed against the side of the bar, the three other men surged forward. One of them swung something at the side of Scott’s head, and he raised an arm to p
arry it.
It was a pool cue, and it hit the bone on Scott’s forearm hard enough for him to know he’d have an impressive bruise there tomorrow. For now, though, adrenaline and focus nullified the pain. Almost without realizing it, he slid his legs from under the table and jumped up onto the leather seat. When the man swung the cue at him again, Scott kicked at it with the toe of his boot, knocking it backward and jarring his attacker’s arm. As the man took a couple of impromptu steps back, Scott jumped down from the seat of the booth, and when the guy came at him again, his attack clumsy and slow, Scott dipped his shoulder to avoid a swinging haymaker and shot his arm out, arrow straight and lightning fast, his fist connecting with the bridge of the guy’s fleshy nose.
There was a crunch, and blood burst from either side of the man’s nose, across his cheeks. He blinked and swayed, and another punch would have put him down and given Scott a clear route to the door if, at that moment, someone hadn’t leaped onto his back.
His attacker was big and bulky, and Scott staggered forward, barging the man he had punched aside, whilst trying desperately not to fall to his knees and have the crushing weight of his new attacker land on top of him. The man on his back swung an arm round, attempting to either get a firmer hold on Scott or to choke him, and Scott saw green and black checks. As he stumbled forward, the smell of the guy wafted over him, meaty and hot, fusty with stale sweat and piss. Recovering his balance, Scott locked his knees, swung his arm forward, then pistoned it back, slamming his elbow into the padded cushion of the man’s belly.
The man gave an “Ooof!” and rancid, beery breath gushed across the side of Scott’s face, mingling with the other odors. Before the guy could recover, Scott snapped his head back and felt the satisfying crunch as the back of his skull connected with a more tender part of the man’s face – his nose or cheek.
The guy’s grip loosened, enabling Scott to shake himself free of it. Taking a few steps forward to give himself space to maneuver, he turned.
Green-and-black-check guy was leaning over, as if about to throw up, his hands clenched to the right side of his belly, his teeth dripping red and his beard clotted with blood. To the right of him, leaning against the side of the bar, was the guy Scott had punched, his face a mask of blood, and more blood seeping between his fingers and dribbling down the back of the hand that was pressed to his broken nose.
Behind them, sitting with his back against the side of the bar, knees up to his chin, was the guy with the broken wrist. He was cradling it and either weeping in pain or simply sweating and shaking, his face as gray as a tombstone.
That just left Dutch and one other guy, whose physical connection could currently be described as “intimate.” That was to say, Dutch had his hand around the guy’s throat and had lifted him off the floor. The guy was gurgling for breath, kicking his legs and beating at Dutch’s arm with his fists, to no avail.
Dutch glanced at Scott. “I think it’s time to take the trash out,” he said.
Scott nodded, then stepped back as Dutch surged past both him and their beaten enemies, still carrying the kicking man by the throat. As Dutch neared the corner of the bar, Scott a few paces behind him, the skinny bartender suddenly appeared around the front of the bar, a baseball bat in his hands. He looked nervous, and more bug-eyed than ever. He glanced down the aisle between the side of the bar and the row of booths, and saw the country boys with their bloody faces, the other guy cradling his broken wrist.
“What the fuck you doin’?” he bleated at Dutch. “Comin’ in my bar, causin’ trouble?”
Dutch eyed the man as though he was a minor irritant, a buzzing mosquito, and said nothing. It was left to Scott to raise his hands placatingly.
“My buddy and I were having a quiet drink. These guys insulted us, then attacked us.”
“Those guys are regulars o’ mine. They ain’t never caused trouble before.”
“Yeah? Well, they caused it tonight,” Dutch rumbled. “Sadly for them, they picked on the wrong guys.”
The bartender hefted the bat as though about to face a pitch. “You better put that there feller down, mister, or I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
He looked like a mouse threatening a silverback gorilla with a toothpick. Dutch said, “I’ll put him down just as soon as I throw him out in the street.”
The bartender shook his head. “No, mister. You’ll put him down right now. And then you’ll leave, or I’m callin’ the cops.”
Dutch scowled, and looked about to argue, but Scott, realizing that what the bartender had suggested would probably be the best option for all concerned, stepped forward, all set to agree.
Then he noticed the guy in the booth on Dutch’s right – the one with the unkempt hair and threadbare overcoat who had been sitting nursing a glass of something when Scott walked in. While Dutch had been speaking to the bartender, the guy had sidled to the edge of his seat, his hand reaching into the inside pocket of his coat. At first Scott assumed he was simply angling for a better view of proceedings, or was planning on slipping out of his booth and making his escape before things turned really nasty. What grabbed his attention was a flash of red light from the Budweiser sign reflecting off the barrel of the pistol he pulled out of his pocket.
As the scruffy man raised the gun, Scott, who was already running forward, yelled, “Dutch!”
As Dutch swung round, Scott instinctively grabbed an empty Coca-Cola glass from the now empty table where the young couple had been sitting, and threw it as hard as he could. Dutch was still turning when the glass hit the wooden corner of the booth and shattered, showering the gunman with glittering fragments.
The man flinched, half turning away and throwing up his free hand to shield his face. As a result his gun arm swung away from Dutch, allowing Dutch to drop the guy he had been holding by the throat. Next second, both he and Scott were hauling the scruffy guy out of his booth and slamming him onto the floor, face-first.
Dutch sat on the guy’s back and used his weight to pin down his shoulders while Scott dropped onto the guy’s kicking legs. Unable to move, he whimpered and gasped, glass shards glittering in his hair.
Dutch leaned forward so that he could speak directly into the man’s ear.
“Relax,” he said. “Calm down and breathe, or you’re going to hyperventilate.”
While the gunman did that, Scott noticed the four country boys who had attacked them making their exit. They barely gave Scott and Dutch a second glance as they limped and shuffled past, beaten and bloody.
The bartender, meanwhile, remained where he was, bat in hand, but now he looked both uncertain and ineffectual. Slowly, he lowered his arms, the bat drooping. Finally he said, “You want I should call the police?”
Immediately the man began to whimper and gasp again. “No police. Please, no police.”
“Shh,” said Dutch reassuringly. He looked up at the bartender and shook his head. “Not yet.” Speaking to the man again he said, “Open your hand and let go of the gun.”
The guy was still gripping the gun so hard his knuckles were white, but Scott was pretty sure he didn’t even know he was holding it. Now, after a pause, he opened his fingers slowly. They were long, thin fingers, and the action reminded Scott of a spider slowly unfurling after being threatened.
“That’s it,” Dutch said, as though speaking to a child. He picked up the gun and passed it to Scott, who emptied it of bullets and put it in his pocket.
“Good,” said Dutch. “Now we can have a civil conversation. So, you want to tell me why you tried to kill me?”
The man began to bleat again. “I’m sorry, mister, I’m sorry.”
“No apologies,” Dutch said. “I’m not interested in apologies. I’m just interested in why.”
The man gasped like a beached fish, his unshaven cheeks inflating and deflating. “They won’t hurt me if I tell you, will they?”
“Who won’t?”
“The… the men.”
Dutch looked at Scott, w
ho raised his eyebrows. “Well, we won’t tell them. Will we, Scott?”
Scott shook his head. “Uh-uh. No way.”
“So why don’t you tell us about these men?” Dutch said reasonably.
“Can I get up, please?” the man asked. “I’m feeling kind of claustrophobic down here.”
Dutch thought about it, then said, “Okay, on one condition. You don’t try to run. Because if you do, we’ll catch you. I guarantee that. Do we have a deal?”
The man twitched his head in a nod. “Yes, yes, I promise.”
“Well, all right then.”
As Scott let go of the man’s legs, Dutch stood up, grabbing a handful of the back of his overcoat and hauling him upright. For a moment the man was floppy in Dutch’s grip, like a ventriloquist’s doll, and then he put his weight on his feet, wincing and staggering before steadying himself. Dutch gestured toward the nearest booth. “Shall we?”
The man looked warily at the booth, then reluctantly he slid into it and Dutch slid in alongside him. Scott sat on the seat opposite, facing them both.
“What’s your name?” Scott asked.
For a moment he thought the man wasn’t going to answer, then he said, “Dennis. Dennis Morano.”
“So, Dennis,” Dutch said, “tell us about these men.”
Morano rubbed his face. “Can I get a drink?”
Dutch looked at the bartender, who was still hovering around as if uncertain what to do next. “Any chance we could get some coffee here?”
Scott was not sure who looked most unhappy, Dennis Morano or the bartender. After a moment the bartender said sulkily, “Sure. I guess.”
“Thank you,” Dutch said, offering him a wide and somehow terrifying grin. The bartender slouched away.
“You were saying, Dennis?” Dutch said, nudging Morano gently with his elbow.
Morano shrugged. “I just want you to know, I got nothing against you. And I ain’t never hurt no one before, I swear it. But… see… things haven’t been going too well for me lately, and these two guys come up to me and…”
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