Alien Hunter: Underworld (24 page)

As he was lifted into an ambulance, Flynn saw two bodies in bags, lying on a sidewalk streaming with soot-blackened water. More ambulances were lined up, and he could see personnel with burns and other injuries crowding toward them.

“This patient is a just-closed brain,” he heard a nurse say as the ambulance doors shut.

He was driven only a few hundred feet, and in minutes was in a second recovery room, this one jammed with patients, many of them wearing the same sort of turban that was probably on his head.

“Sir, we need to do a neuro check on you now. Can you tell me your name?”

This he had not expected. He couldn't leave his real name. He wasn't an official admission to the hospital. He did not remember which aliases he might have in his wallet. He'd just been through too much to do that with any hope of accuracy.

“Sir?”

He tried one of them. “William Haffner.”

“Mr. Haffner, you don't have a bracelet.”

“Fell off, I guess.”

“What day is it?”

“Wednesday.”

“Can you look at that clock and tell me the time?”

He looked up at the wall clock the nurse was indicating. “Four fifty-three.”

She started to ask him another question, but a page caused her to go hurrying off. A patient just evacuated from neurosurgery was having a heart attack, and chaos was erupting.

Flynn realized that he was done here. The next thing to happen would be that they would try to find him in the system, which was going to create a problem. Perhaps he should have anticipated that Morris would use this particular technique, but he hadn't. He'd been thinking exclusively in terms of an entry being made.

He had to find Mac, get out of here, and get out of this hospital complex as fast as possible. But right now, that was a problem. He was wearing briefs, a hospital gown and a thick head bandage. If he tried to leave like this, he would certainly be stopped. His wallet and other personals were in a locker on the burning surgical floor. No chance of retrieval.

Like the other recovery room, this one had lockers, and many of them were full. He might be able to pop one of the simple combination locks quite easily, but how would he know what he'd find inside? Women's clothes, clothes that didn't fit, the ID of a person who looked nothing like him. He might have to pop a dozen of them, even all of them. The minute the nurses noticed him up off his gurney, they were going to come running.

From where he had been left, he could see the big double doors that led into the room. That wouldn't be the right direction, not for what he needed to find.

As best he could, he turned. The door leading out in the other direction was narrower, not a public passageway.

When opportunity appeared, hesitation was always a mistake, so he pushed himself up off the gurney, waited for the dizziness to subside, and went through the door.

The staff room was about twenty feet long, with stacked lockers on both walls and a well-stocked break bar. The lockers were identified only with last names, and locked not with hospital-issue locks, but with whatever the nurses had brought in themselves. He looked from one locker to the next, trying to guess which one might conceal male clothing, and also might have an easy lock.

There must be a security problem here, though, because the locks were good quality.

No, this wasn't going to work. He'd have to get as far as possible dressed as he was. When he headed for the exit door at the far end of the room, though, he got a break, a door to a janitor's closet. Even better, it wasn't locked. He stepped in and turned on the light. There were six steel shelves of cleaning supplies, a number of mops and other equipment, and some buckets. There was also what he was hoping for, which was a steel locker. In fact, there were three steel lockers. Two were locked with hospital-issue combination locks, the third with an even simpler one, which had probably been bought off the hardware shelf at a drugstore.

Flynn did it first, and was rewarded with a woman's slacks and sweater and a pair of platform shoes.

He did the second one, but it was empty.

The third had the worst lock, and it took time to work. As he was testing its drops, counting from click to click to determine the combination, he heard voices outside.

“She said he came this way.”

“Shit, he's gotta be in the stairway.”

“Did you contact his doc yet?”

“How? You know who that would be? We got a John Doe here, and he's a damn head case.”

There was a faint click as they went through the door to the stairwell Flynn would shortly need to use himself. They'd be back soon, he guessed, once they realized he hadn't been seen in the lobby. Almost certainly, they would do what they should have done in the first place, and search this room.

He found himself looking at a gray sweat suit. On the floor, a pair of track shoes. Even better, the suit had a hood.

The occupant of the locker was soon the proud owner of a hospital gown, and Flynn was in the stairwell, the hood pulled over his head.

He'd gone down a flight when he heard the tramp of feet. More than two people this time, some of them in heavy shoes. They were bringing security with them. Not taking any chances with a brain case.

Moving quickly, he ducked into the nearest fire door. He found another break room and another janitor's closet. He went in and got a bucket and mop, then went out onto what turned out to be an ICU floor.

“Hold it, this is a sterile floor,” a nurse said. She was wearing greens, a hair covering, and bulging white shoe covers. All the nurses in the station turned toward him.

“Sorry, I'm due on the cleanup right now.”

“Get out of here, then, or I'll have to write you up.”

“Sorry, ma'am.” He went to the elevator bank and waited for what seemed like the better part of an hour before an elevator finally appeared that had room in it for a janitor with a mop and bucket. He remained hunched under the hood, careful not to reveal the bandage.

Finally, he walked out through the jammed lobby and into the chaos that still filled the street. Fire ladders were being brought down, and hose pulled out of the neurosurgery building. Its front was streaked black with sooty water. All the windows on the top floor were shattered, the interior behind them a blackened ruin. Yellow barrier tape blocked the lobby doors, but a man with a mop and bucket went unnoticed as he walked through, heading toward the entrance to the parking structure.

He had to find Mac and get out of here and do it fast, or there was no question in his mind that the hunters were going to pick up his scent again.

He went down into the dripping, water-soaked darkness of the structure. In light, he might see a shimmer as the aliens approached him. In darkness, he would see nothing.

He stepped out onto the highest floor. The only light came from a single emergency lantern, its battery-powered glow almost completely faded.

“Mac,” he said into the echoing silence, “you here?”

There was no reply.

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

FLYNN HAD
worked his way down to the lowest level he could enter. The two levels below this were flooded from the fire. It was on this level, also, that their rental car was parked. The silence was broken only by the echoing sound of water dripping from below. It was much darker here, too dark now to see any sign of the aliens at all. The emergency lighting was failing fast.

He was more helpless here than he had been on the other levels. The sound of the aliens' breathing was going to be drowned out by the dripping water. He could not expect to catch their distinctive odor over the stench of the fire, either. It was no place he wanted to be.

“Mac?”

Faintly from along the line of cars, he heard a clattering. He listened. The clattering had not been there a moment ago. Its source was about ten cars down on the right. He moved a little closer. Listened again. There could be no question. The sound was coming from the black Chrysler he had rented.

“Mac?”

No reply. He took a step closer. The rattling became louder. Was it Mac, somehow trapped in the car? And why make a noise like that?

“Okay, buddy, I'm here, I'm gonna get you out.” He went close to the car, cupped his hands, and peered in the passenger-side window.

Something hit the glass so hard that it cracked. He jumped back, to see two gleaming silver buttons clattering against the inside of the window, which was already cracked in four or five places, as if it had been hit by stones that weren't quite powerful enough to break it. As he watched, all but frozen with surprise, they crashed into the window again and again, hitting it so hard that the car rocked.

The glass bulged. Pieces of it shot past his head.

He had exactly one choice. He ran as he had never run before, down to the far end of the floor and into the stairwell. He slammed the door, but it wouldn't shut properly. He ran up to the next floor and the next, then out onto the street level of the structure.

He threw open the door into the brightness of the exit lanes. A figure stood by the pay barrier, darkly silhouetted against the light flooding in from outside.

“What kept you?”

“Mac, run!”

He dashed past him and heard him come following, his shoes slapping on the wet pavement.

“What the hell?”

“They're out of the jars, they're busting out of the car, and I don't know their range.”

“Aw, man!”

They ran down the middle of the street, finally stopping only when they reached the lobby of a building that hadn't been affected by the fire or the patient rescues.

Flynn was so winded when he stopped that he had to bend full at the waist and gag for air. Mac came up from behind. He was silent, breathing hard, too winded to speak.

“Keep going.”

They dropped back to a steady trot, stopping again only when they reached a bus shelter. They waited for ten minutes, sitting hunched in the shelter.

“Were they doing that when you had them?”

“They were flying around in those jars so fast, you couldn't see them. I was lucky to get them to the car. I got the guns, though. Barely.” He produced the Bull from the back of his waist.

Flynn took it. “This won't help now.”

“How far can they go?”

He shook his head. “No idea.”

He punched in the secure exchange, listened to the recorded warning, then keyed in Diana's number.

“Mac, where's Flynn?”

“This is Flynn. I'm sitting at a bus stop in Houston with Mac. We need transportation, it's as urgent as hell, and I don't want to stay on this line or any line.” He told her the street. “Now, listen up. There's somewhere I need to go. I want you to smooth the way for me at Deer Island.”

“Who do I call? What do I say?”

“Call the director. Tell him I need carte blanche on the island for at least a couple of days.”

“What's going on?”

“It has to do with those blocked calls. It's important, maybe critical.”

“Please tell me more, Flynn.”

“Not on this line.”

“Flynn, please.”

“When I get to a pay phone, I'll fill you in. Also, I'll need to talk to Geri. Right now, just do what I need you to do. And I have no ID. It was lost in the fire.”

“What fire?”

“You watch CNN?”

“That hospital? That was you?”

“We've got plenty to talk about, believe me.”

“I'll get everything set up.”

“Fast as you can.”

She was true to her word. It was not ten minutes before a Houston Police Department squad car rolled up and collected them. The officer had obviously been told not to talk, because he remained completely silent during their drive to Ellington Field. It was a training facility and also the headquarters of the 147th Reconnaissance Wing, which flew Predator drones in the Middle East via satellite uplinks.

The guard station was manned by serious security. Understandable, given that a war was being fought in this quiet, sunny place.

The cop stopped and rolled down his window. One of the security personnel came forward and leaned in. She was well trained and on her game; Flynn could tell by the way she used her eyes.

“Identification, please.”

Flynn turned toward her. “I'm Flynn Carroll.”

She stared at him. Hard. “Okay. I got it. Let me clear you ahead.”

A moment later, a guard vehicle pulled up in front of them. They followed it across the base.

“Mac, planning ahead. How much cash do you have on you right now?”

“Couple thousand bucks, probably.”

Mac still ran a cash economy, which would shortly prove useful. Flynn watched the low buildings of the base. There was little activity. Once, a couple of airmen walked into the Noncommissioned Officers' Club. Shortly, a civilian sedan fell in behind the police car.

“Phone,” he said to Mac, holding out his hand. He called Diana. “We're on our way to the flight line, and what I believe to be an offended general just pulled in behind us.”

“That'd be General Stevens.”

“Okay.”

“He's pissed off as hell. He wants to yell, I guess. I can make him disappear.”

“No, it's fine. Just so you know. If he goes off rez, I'll call you back.”

They reached the Air National Guard building, a structure in need of a bit of paint. Once again, there was little activity, which was all to the good. Flynn got out of the car and told the cop to go back to Houston. The general stopped also, got out of his car, and came hurrying over.

“Excuse me, I understand you two people think you're taking my plane. I'm afraid it has a prior commitment.”

“Good afternoon, General,” Flynn said.

“I have no intention of letting unidentified civil service bureaucrats take this aircraft. If I have to, I'll call the Secretary of the Air Force.”