Alien Hunter: Underworld (26 page)

“They're holographic. Even a small bit of one will retain the functionality of the whole.”

“What about containing them?”

“With things you manufacture? Some of your safes might work. I'll look into it.”

“Unfortunately, we didn't understand their capabilities and put them in a jar.”

“That wouldn't work.”

“It didn't. When I last saw them, they were in the process of breaking through the glass in a car window. We ran. Within fifteen minutes, we had transport and were ten miles away. I'm now twenty-two miles from the spot where I last saw them. What's my exposure?”

“All of this was in populated areas?”

“Yes.”

“It's possible that they've lost you for a while.”

“How long?”

“They'll be doing a grid search right now. Your advantage is the populated area. They'll need to get pretty close to you before they can detect you against all the background noise.”

“Listen, Geri, we sort of know each other.”

“I would say we do.”

“So I need to give you some friendly advice.”

“And what would that be?” He heard the rigidity that had come into her voice. She was the authority figure here, at least in her own mind.

“We're not incompetent. Just uninformed and technologically backwards. Forcing us to use only our own locally produced equipment is tying our hands.”

“You threw my pulse weapon onto a roof. My weapon, registered to me. What if somebody tossed your gun away? You'd have to report that. You'd have to take a reprimand.”

“I'm sorry about that, but it didn't work, and that was dangerous to all of us. But some things do work. Those implants, for example. I'd love to be able to get something like that into Morris. And the disks. So I want to repeat—we need a disk.”

“That's all gap-distant technology, meaning that your science is so far behind on it that you can't understand it even if it's explained to you. Exporting technology like that for any reason is highly illegal, and licenses just do not get granted. The latitude for abuse is too great, not to mention the cultural disempowerment that's involved. Scientists who see something so potent and so advanced that they can't even begin to understand its most basic principles, lose hope. They become scavengers.”

“Look, your technology is so advanced—the stuff that works—that this one guy is potentially more powerful than all the military forces on Earth.”

“He has vulnerabilities.”

“What are they, exactly?”

“One disk and no ability to resupply without letting the main body of biorobots know where he is. He's a full biological running a squadron of biorobots who know nothing about what's happening on Aeon, and they must not find out, or he's going to lose control of them. He can't go back. What he has is all he'll ever have.”

“That's true now, but what about next year? The year after? We're talking Cortés taking the Aztec Empire with five hundred Spaniards. You know that story?”

“It's a great myth that higher ethics follow scientific advancement. Lower planets are vulnerable.”

“Morris and a few hundred robotic entities could end up owning this world, so I have to tell you, I don't think your scruples matter just now. Earth is on the line, so
give us what we need.
”

“Flynn, the truth is that we don't have the resources.”

“Not one spare disk? A couple of implants?”

“Getting things off-planet is the problem. All of our movements are resisted, and as far as Earth is concerned, we must not be followed here by the main body, as I said.” She stopped. He heard a swallowed gagging sound that told him she was fighting back emotions of great power.

He realized, really for the first time, how much courage it had taken for her to come here.

“Just do what you can.” He hung up. “Let's go,” he said to Mac. “We've got a flight to catch.”

Diana had done her administrative work well, and they were escorted through TSA security by the station supervisor. As they stepped away toward their gate, she saluted them.

“What's that about?” Mac asked.

“She's probably been told we're on some sort of crucial mission.”

“True enough.”

The plane was crowded. Given what Geri had explained to him, that was a good thing. As best he could, Flynn leaned back, forcing his substantial frame into the narrow economy-class seat.

“You know what their greatest problem is?”

“Whose?”

“Aeon's. They didn't just invent a new life-form, but one that's also stronger, faster, and more intelligent than they are. Their biorobots are an evolutionary leap, and they're going to replace their creators. What's happening to the people of Aeon is what happened to the Neanderthals. A better species is pushing theirs aside.”

Flynn thought,
And maybe ours, too. Maybe a lot of species.
How ironic that a civilization far away and so deeply hidden in the vastness of space had created something that would turn out to be such a scourge right here at home.

He was a cop, though, not a soldier—at least, not yet. Right now his job remained what it had been from the beginning: Get the lawless element under control. Contain Morris and roll up his operation.

The plane flew on, as did Earth on its mysterious journey, each bearing its cargo of innocent lives into an uncertain future.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE MOMENT
they entered their room at an airport motel, Mac fell onto the first bed he reached. He was snoring before he hit the mattress.

Flynn had gotten a sewing kit from room service and cut off his various bandages. There was swelling on his scalp, as well as an angry red knot at the center of the incision the doctor in Fort Stockton had made. Could be the beginning of infection. He'd keep a close watch. Next, he went into the bathroom and stood in front of the plastic sink. He took a long look at himself in the mirror. Stone bald, he looked frightening, no question about that. The surgical wounds were held together by gleaming staples, two in each incision. He was way too close to Frankenstein.

He lay back on the empty bed, wondering what the future held. Morris had to guess that he'd go to Deer Island. Would he also come? Of course he would.

He slept a shallow, worried sleep. Every sigh of breeze, the tapping of a tree on the bathroom window—any slightest sound brought him instantly awake. He hugged his gun like the life preserver that it was.

They got up at six to a room service breakfast, which they ate in silence, the way soldiers did before a fight. The trip to Wright-Pat was a familiar one, and once again, Diana had paved their way past the guard post.

Flynn knew his way around Wright-Pat, of course, and they were in General Dickerson's office at exactly seven.

Dickerson was younger than Flynn had imagined he would be, more the age of a colonel than a general. He had the easy manners of a man used to command, and the contained watchfulness of somebody who knew more than a few secrets. When Dickerson smiled as he crossed his large office, Flynn knew immediately that care was to be taken here. This man could be hard and he could be difficult.

“Gentlemen! The two mystery men. I'm curious as hell, I have to admit.” His handshake was perfunctory, almost as if he had forgotten it even as he extended it. “Please, sit down.” He hurried back around his desk, a wary officer manning a battlement. “So, may I know why you're wearing the uniforms of a service to which you do not belong?” The smile reappeared for an instant, and then was gone.

“We're trying to stay alive,” Flynn said. “It's been hard.”

“You're sure as hell beat up, Mr. Flynn. Or Colonel Flynn. I'm not sure what to call you.”

“Just plain Flynn will do.” He gestured toward Mac, who was hunched up in his chair like either a scared possum or a coiled rattler, take your pick. General Dickerson would never guess that this was a man who had played polo with human heads, or at least was willing to. “We're just a couple of cops from Texas, but we've gotten ourselves into a heap of trouble.”

“A heap of it,” Mac said.

“We need your help, sir. There is a flying disk—an alien craft—that is going to kill us if we don't shoot it down. Basically.”

Surprise widened Dickerson's eyes, followed by a wary narrowing. “Are you nuts? How did you get in here?”

“Don't even go there, General, please. There just isn't time. I've had bodies autopsied in your facility here. I've incinerated them in the burn room. That airman you lost the other week—that was on my watch, I'm sorry to say.”

“The need-to-know barriers are so high, I just didn't know where to go with this when I was told you were coming.”

“We've got to cross those barriers. Officer Terrell and I have been working on this for a while. We're trying to clean out a nest of rogue aliens without panicking the public. And we've gotten ourselves into a pickle. According to our counterparts in the alien police force, the leader of this criminal enterprise is a real psychopath. He's aggressive as hell. Very frankly, General, it's a battle to the death, and we're losing.”

As if to himself alone, General Dickerson nodded. He closed his eyes. “I think you probably shouldn't have told me a lot of that.”

“I need help. From you. Now.”

“What can I do?”

“You have a disk. We need to see it.”

“That might be hard.”

“If you stall for even a minute more, I'll have you up on charges of high treason.”

The general held up his hands. “I'm not stalling. It's just that we don't have it here. I'm going to send you to another facility. We only have a little bit of this still here at Wright-Pat. Air Materiel does metallurgical and functional analysis, and we have the exobiology section you've apparently dealt with. But operations are conducted from another base entirely. You've probably never heard of it. Deer Island.”

Flynn gave no sign of the effect that name had on him. “No,” he said carefully. “We have not.”

“I'm going to send you there to meet Colonel Adam Caruthers and his team. It's possible that they can help you in some way, but I can't tell you that, because I don't actually know what they do. Just that this is their baby. When the public says they see jets chasing flying saucers, those are the colonel's boys.”

“Can they shoot one down?”

“Again, I'm not concealing anything from you when I say I don't know. I'm not need-to-know on that information.”

“It's dangerous for us to travel. Very dangerous.”

“It's the only facility of its kind in the world.”

“Where is it?” Mac asked.

“Deer Island is in Long Island Sound.”

Mac started to talk, but Flynn motioned him to silence.

The general offered transport, but Flynn thought they were safer sticking to the crowded airlines.

On the way back to Dayton International, they stopped at a Target and bought civilian clothes. As autumn deepened, it was getting colder, so they got jackets as well as jeans and sneakers, and Flynn bought himself a baseball cap to cover his wounds.

In the rental car, Mac said, “I'm not a cop, and I'll never be a cop.”

“Sure you are. You're a cop, and a good one.”

“I don't have that gene, I'm sorry.”

“I've read your DEA file. You're as good an undercover as they've got.”

They rode on, Mac saying nothing further.

“Anyway, I know what you really do. I know you make a little on the side, but most in your sort of business do. It's not blood money—that's what's important. I also know that you're not rich like you make out. There is no Lamborghini in Marfa, for example. And your brother was no damn good and that broke your heart, and you didn't screw Cissy Greene, but you did protect her from a very abusive father until she figured out how to fend for herself. I know you, Mac.”

“Aw, shit.”

“And I'm proud to.”

They flew in another blessedly jam-packed jet from Dayton to LaGuardia Airport in New York. On the flight, Flynn reflected on Deer Island. It had started out as a biological warfare research facility, but obviously its mission had expanded to include a major alien research center.

They had a layover at LaGuardia, and ate a quick meal at a Five Guys burger stop.

“I'm still bone tired,” Mac said, biting into his hamburger. “Feel like I didn't sleep a wink.”

“You could go into the city, stay there until it's safe to return home. Probably be okay holed up in a big hotel.”

“While you go in harm's way alone?”

Flynn nodded.

“Nothing stops you. Nothing slows you down, even.”

“I need to get this bastard.”

“Mano a mano ain't gonna cut it, my friend. You need an army of tough sonembitches who know how to work close.”

“When we are close, we are going to need a master sniper. As you know.”

“I'm not gonna get that seam. Nobody is.”

“Maybe not.”

“Definitely not. You don't need a sniper. Not a human one, anyway.”

“Not entirely.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe nothing. We'll see.”

Mac knew Flynn too well to continue to question him. But after a moment, Flynn decided to say a little more. “Mac, I need to ask you something and tell you something.”

Mac raised his eyebrows.

“Have you recently had a headache? Bad, but it faded almost immediately?”

“I don't have headaches.”

“Because I think I know how these implants go in. When I was leaving the job I did in Pennsylvania—it was a good haul, I got four dead—I got this fierce headache.” He paused, remembering the confident Flynn of those days. The great alien hunter. On that night, he'd actually thought that he cleaned up the problem. “Anyway, as I was driving out, I felt a terrific pain that started in the top of my head and radiated down into my face and neck. It was so bad, I thought I was having some kind of stroke. But then, just like that, it was gone. I think that's when the implants went in, right under the skin and through the skull without leaving a mark. I think that's how it feels. So have you had a headache recently?”