Alien Hunter (Flynn Carroll) (11 page)

Flynn felt Diana tense. He said, “We need to get in out of this.”

The man rolled his chair back away from the entrance as they struggled in.

“Who the hell are you? You ain’t from around here.”

“We were waiting for the bus.”

“No, that’s not the answer. You DEA lookin’ for meth labs. Every other house has a meth lab out here. State don’t care. They let it go. They have to.” He whipped the chair around and rolled toward the back of the house. “Clara! Where in hell is she?”

Briefly, Diana’s hand squeezed Flynn’s. He was thinking the same thing: maybe the whole town had been raided. Maybe the old and infirm were the only ones left.

“She went out?”

“To the barn, see to the horses. The intercom’s down, the cell phones don’t work, the landline is down and she’s been out there more’n a hour.”

“We’re cops,” Flynn said, “but we’re not looking for your meth lab.”

“I told you, I ain’t got any damn meth lab! None! Natha! Find my girl, you two, you’re a damn gift from God.”

There was no time to get warm, they went directly out the back. Flynn pointed to the faint trench in the snow that led to the barn. Diana nodded.

“Guns,” he said.

“Guns.”

“Are you proficient, Diana?”

“I score okay.”

They pushed the door open together. “Clara,” Flynn called into the dark interior. “Clara!”

A horse whickered, that was all.

The barn was unheated, but the two horses in their stalls had been expertly blanketed. A couple of big electric heaters stood in the center of an area of the concrete slab that had been carefully swept of anything that might catch fire. Their cords led to an orange cable that hung from an overhead socket attached to a rafter. No power, though.

“Clara!” he said again, then, “Oh, shit.”

“What?”

“Smell that? That’s blood.” He looked into the darkness. “Over there.” He moved deeper.

A third horse was up against the back wall, deep in the shadows. It lay on its side.

He went to it. Looking down at the maimed animal, he wasn’t sure what to make of its condition.

“You ever see anything like this?” he asked Diana as she came up.

“Oh, no.”

The lips had been sheared off, the eyes cut out, the genitals removed. A large section of the exposed flank had been flayed down to the bone. Where the rectum had been, there was a neat round wound.

“So you have.”

“Only in pictures. Animals mutilated like this have been found for years. None in the context of the kind of disappearances we’re investigating, though, not as far as I am aware.”

“You know more about this whole damn mess than you’re telling me, and I’m getting to really not appreciate that.”

“I can’t—”

“Yeah, you can, and you will, and you’ll do it soon.”

Flynn had seen something like this before, too. Some case file. Then he remembered. It was a rural crime down near Alice, Texas. “I saw some of these. Cattle, not horses. A rancher got the hell knocked out of his herd. Two prize bulls and three breeder cows. Fifteen thousand dollars worth of prime beeves. Sheriff thought it was coyotes. We wrote it up as vandalism so the poor guy could collect on his insurance.”

He remembered that place. Alvis something-or-other had been leasing that property. He’d run it with Aussie cattle dogs. Good beasts, but not good enough to prevent the loss.

“I have a feeling that the help does most of the heavy work. The kidnappings. But this is him,” Flynn said. “Him personally. His help isn’t going to be cutting animals like this.” He looked toward the rafters, then reached back and pulled his night vision goggles from his backpack.

The upper reaches of the barn were empty. He took off the goggles. “Let’s go out the back,” he said.

“Three guys are down, remember that.”

He said nothing.

This door also slid on rollers, but wasn’t as large as the one in the front. Similarly, it wasn’t kept up, and it took Flynn an effort to get it to grind open. As he did so, ice showered down on him.

Behind the barn was a mostly bald hill, topped by a few twisted trees. Close in, he could see a faint indentation in the snow. Further out, it was deeper. “That’s a buried track,” he said, moving forward. He drew his gun.

The further up the hill they went, the deeper and clearer the track became.

“Why would she come out here?”

“She was running. She saw that horse, and when she did, she ran.”

As they approached the trees, Flynn felt the same indefinable sense of menace that had saved him in deceptive situations before. “Let’s take our time. We want to watch those trees pretty closely.”

They were taller than they had appeared from the barn. The snow made distances seem longer, but the trees were under a hundred yards from this end of the barn, and he was soon among them. He was careful, though, never to lose sight of her. He didn’t want to lose her, God no, but she wasn’t only important as a human being and a fellow officer. Without her, he had no idea who he was working for because she was too secretive to tell him. Probably didn’t even have the authority.

In among the trees there was less snow, but every movement brought a fall of the stuff off overhanging branches. It got in around his hood and dripped through his clothes in the form of freezing cold water.

Just beyond the stand of trees they found an area about thirty feet in diameter where the snow had been blown away right down to the grassy hillside.

“Something landed here,” Diana said.

He estimated the grade of the hill at a good thirty degrees. “Wasn’t a chopper,” he said, “not on a slope this steep.”

“It must have hovered.”

“The pilot is a real expert, then,” Flynn said. “Very well trained.”

“You think she was taken from this spot?”

“Maybe. Thing is, the snow was blown back from here well after these tracks were made. Hours. If they took her, they took her frozen solid.”

“We’ll need to tell him she’s lost in the snow.”

He had his doubts about that. “Maybe.”

Flynn turned and headed back through the trees. Diana stayed close.

As they walked, he said, “I don’t think we’re forming an accurate picture of what’s going on here. If you think about it, it just doesn’t make sense. Not a damn bit of sense. Some kind of cult group in possession of highly classified equipment, including an exotic aircraft? Hardly seems likely.”

“That’s what it looks like, though.”

They reached the back door. “It’s what you’ve been telling your team. It’s not what you know. Question is now, what do we tell this old guy?”

“His wife is lost in the snow. Won’t be found till the melt. If then.”

He entered the house. The old man sat in his wheelchair. He looked up with the dead eyes of a man who already knows that he’s defeated.

“We didn’t find her,” Flynn said.

“She’s dead. Froze by now.”

“We don’t know that. Could she have gone to a friend’s house?”

“She’s not in that barn, she’s froze.”

“There’s been predator action in the barn, sir,” Diana said.

“Oh, Lord.”

“One of the horses has been killed. Looks like coyotes.”

“The hell, it’s them damn wolves! The Fish and Wildlife owes me for that horse.” His face suddenly screwed up. Flynn knew the way tragedy can roll past you at first, then come back and hit you like a boulder dropping from the sky.

“She’s still breathing, mister,” he said. “Count on it.”

Diana glared at him.

“What’s she shaking her head for? Don’t hold out on me!”

Flynn heard noises on the front porch, the crunch of boots in snow. “She’s back,” he said.

Diana’s eyes widened.

A voice called through the door, “Hey, Lar, I got your thermos refilled, the Katz’s’re running their genny.” Then, “Get this door unlocked, you damn nut!”

Lar wheeled himself off into the front room. A moment later, a tall woman, Montana lean, came striding in on a blast of cold air, snow falling off her boots.

“Hi, where’d you folks stray in from on a day like this?”

“We’re police officers,” Diana began.

“Well, I got me a horse up in my barn got cut up by space aliens, so you better go up there.”

“We’ve been up there.”

“It was them wolves,” Lar said.

“Ha! That’s what you people told him? Why do cops lie? It’s space aliens. We all know it. Been goin’ on for years.”

“That damn yearling,” Lar said. “Too young and foolish to stay away from wolves. Probably didn’t even know what they were.”

“They took my Bill, you senile old fool. Left the two yearlings just fine. They ain’t even spooked.”

“What about Jenny?”

“
Your
horse? Nobody’s gonna take that ole bag a bones. You couldn’t even sell that thing to a glue factory. What’s ’is name down the road, that weird beard, offered fifteen dollars. He wanted to make pillows outa the hair.” She swung away from her perch looming over her husband, and trained tight eyes on Flynn and Diana. “So what in hell are you doin’ invadin’ my home, officers? If I may be so bold?”

“Our vehicle failed,” Diana said, the very picture of smoothness. “We’re looking for a ride into Billings. We can pay.”

“You will pay. No question there. You must be feds.”

“DEAs lookin’ to bust up some meth labs,” her husband said.

“That ain’t hard to do around here. ’Cept the state police, you talked to them lately? ’Cause they don’t share their turf, not to put too fine a point on it.” She spread her hands. “I mean, this is not a threat. Far be it from me.”

“We’re not in drug enforcement.”

“Oh. Well, do you do something useful, then? ’Cause maybe then nobody’s gonna gut you and throw you out in the snow for your wolves to drag away.”

The threat was delivered with the kind of smile that said it had meaning. So this little ole couple were indeed involved in drug operations. He wondered where she had her lab. Probably one of the sheds he’d seen out there. Normally, he would’ve been interested, just automatically. No more.

“Look, how much is it gonna take to get us to FBI Headquarters in Billings?” he asked.

“Well, let’s see. If you tell me why you’re here, that’s one price. If you don’t, then it’s another. Which you ain’t gonna be able to afford. And, lady, will you please stop thinking about that ridiculous little pistol you got in the right pocket of your parka? In fact—” An impressively quick hand reached in and withdrew Diana’s pistol. “Man, who do you work for, you get crap like this as your issue gun? What shit.”

She was right about that. An officer carrying a Beretta without a tracking light was not well equipped.

Flynn said, “We’re working on a kidnapping. We were overtaken by the storm.”

“Who’d kidnap trailer trash? What’re they gonna get for ransom around here, twenty bucks and a pair of used boots? This whole town ain’t got enough cash to ransom a donkey.” She chuckled.

“We tracked the person of interest to Black Canyon City,” Diana said. “Then the storm hit, we lost contact with our vehicle and took the bus.”

“The wrong way. You’re toward Bozeman.”

“We were too cold to wait. We had to get on it.”

She was quiet for a good minute. She looked down at Diana’s gun. “First off, I know you’re not a cop, lady. This ain’t a cop pistol and here I am holding it and you ain’t pissing your pants, which means you ain’t gotta file a missing weapon report.” She looked at Diana. “Three hundred bucks and I’ll take you to Billings. Cash now.” She turned her head toward Flynn. “That’s apiece.”

Flynn could have taken the gun out of her hand and made her eat his own. But he said, “Pay the lady, Ossifer.”

A silently furious Diana produced a checkbook.

Clara barked out a mirthless laugh.

Diana put away the checkbook and counted out six one-hundred-dollar bills from what looked to be a narrow stash.

Clara was good at driving in snow, and so the truck clanked along at a steady thirty miles an hour. “Animals get cored out like that around here. Nobody but the poor rancher gives a shit. The cops lie. Insurance company probably pays ’em off, ’cause if it’s predator action or act of God, they don’t gotta pay, see.”

“Space aliens would be what?” Flynn asked.

“God only knows. Whatever, they ain’t gonna pay anyway. Bastards.”

There was a world of hurt in the way she spat that word. He didn’t want to hear the story of her life, though, so he remained silent.

The truck moved steadily along. Flynn watched the road, what he could see of it. He kept an eye on the sky, which was darkening again.

Time crawled. Flynn could almost feel the perp’s frustration that they were getting away. Feel his bitter rage. With his trained animal and his fabulous chopper, he had to feel that a couple of dumb cops had no damn business escaping from him.

They arrived in the snow-choked city, finally reaching a recently plowed street where the going was a little better.

After a couple of turns, Clara pulled up in front of an office building, small, on the same scale as all the buildings around here. A small, trim city, the kind of place Flynn favored. Menard with snow.

When they got out, Clara sped off immediately.

“She’s glad to be gone,” Diana said.

“Probably with good reason.”

They entered the building.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Nobody will have heard of us,” Diana said as they went down the hall toward the FBI office.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She opened the door and went in, Flynn behind her. Two agents and a clerk were on duty, sitting at desks in a single, large room. Along a side wall there were three offices, all closed.

Diana walked up to the clerk and spoke quietly. She produced a small leather folio and laid it on the desk. Inside, Flynn could see a badge and an unfamiliar identification card with a pink sash across its surface.

The secretary stared down at them. “Bill,” she called, turning in her chair, “what is this?”

One of the two agents got up from his desk, a tall man in his fifties. He had a tightly neutral expression on his face, the habitual mask that many field officers wore.