Alien Hunter: Underworld (30 page)

“I did. Nothing happened. I felt like a monkey fooling around in a car. Not only did I have no idea how it worked, but I had no idea how even to
learn
to make it work.”

“A monkey could be trained to drive a car. It'd be hard, but it's doable.”

“Maybe, but he'd never learn to fix a car, or why it runs, nothing like that.”

“Flynn, a fighter pilot can't begin to understand his aircraft. He knows the general principles. That's all. But I say again, he could be trained.”

“They're telling me nobody knows how it works. They've had it for sixty years—more—and they haven't gotten to square one. What's worse, I can believe it. The thing is just amazing. And that feeling that we both had, that it was somehow alive—” He shook his head. There was nothing more to say.

“I gotta tell you, some asshole with a gun is not gonna pull down one of those things, no matter how much skill he has.”

“Remember, we're not dealing with state of the art.”

Flynn offered no sign to Mac of what he intended to do, but, as always, his old friend sensed something. He probed a bit, but thankfully in the wrong direction, asking him if there was any way to get the disk out of its containment.

“It's hundreds of feet underground. Access tunnel's filled in.”

Mac seemed to look into himself. Flynn waited, watching him as he sank deeper and deeper into the truth. He said, “We've lost.”

“Looks like it.”

“We'll all move. We'll run.”

Again, Flynn waited for him to realize what would actually happen if that scenario was played out.

“Goddamnit, Flynn!”

“I don't have a choice, Mac. It's me or it's you and Eddie, and his little family. That baby, Mac.”

“You can't throw yourself at this thing, Flynn.”

Flynn could not look at his friend. He said no more.

“I've never been a coward, Flynn. But I don't see what purpose is served by us going back to Menard, especially you. You already told Eddie to get the hell out. He
said
he would get out immediately. If he didn't, it's his problem. If he went to New York, tell him to stay there. Buy him an apartment there or in London or anywhere. You can afford it. Me, I'll live on the run. I'm good at that.”

“Morris can be satisfied.”

“Flynn, no.”

“What the hell else can I do?”

“No!”

“I'm gonna go back to Menard, and I'm gonna take it from there. But you're right about New York. You stay there. Bury yourself in it. If Eddie's there, you'll have some company. When I come face-to-face with Morris, I'll bargain for your lives.”

Mac stood up. “I've been mad at you a lotta times in my life. You're a person who's good at making people mad. I'd like to be mad at you now. But I'm gonna leave it. See if you start to make some sense in the morning. Because you're not making sense now.”

“Mac—”

“No, don't talk. It is time to cut and run. Spend a little of that damn cash of yours to stay alive. Who knows, the longer you live, the more chance you have that Morris will slip up and give you the opening you don't have right now.”

Flynn said nothing.

Mac left, slamming the door hard behind him. Flynn hated to see him go like that, but there was no choice. He stayed quiet, listening to the building. He'd already spotted all the visual surveillance. There was a good deal of it, typical of a facility that housed classified records and materials. Most of what was here had to do with biological warfare, though, not with the even more secret alien materials.

He turned out the light and then lay on his back in the dark again, waiting. He'd already planned his moves. He had a reasonable assurance that they would work. But care had to be taken. The least misstep, and this would all be over.

Before he made a move, he was going to need to figure out the cameras. While he was talking to Mac, he'd spotted both of them, fish-eye pinhole jobs—one in the back wall, one in the wall near the door. He could safely assume that the setup would be the same in all the rooms.

He was sure the surveillance team just saw a man who was waiting, hands behind his head, seemingly staring bleakly at the ceiling, wallowing in his defeat.

He noted that the edges of the two-square-foot ceiling tiles did not end above the closet door. Useful information. Because the roof was peaked and there were vents at each end, he knew that there was an attic above the tiles. To reach it, he would need to go through the hatch at the far end of the corridor outside.

The drop out of one of the vents was survivable, but only barely. Somebody using that escape route would need to land exactly right to avoid a sprain or worse.

Still, it was doable. He could get out of this place without alerting security. But how would he manage to take Mac along with him? Without Mac, there was no point in going. In fact, leaving Mac behind would mean defeat.

It was time to test security. He got up off the bed, paused to open the closet and put his jacket in it. Leaving the closet door open, he strolled out of the room. There was a guard station beside the only stairway, manned by no fewer than three armed guards. Their careful eyes followed him as he crossed the hall and knocked on Mac's door.

“Want to take a walk?”

“Outside? Are you kidding?”

“Just down to the vending machines. Get a Coke.” He nodded, communicating necessity.

“Why not?”

As they walked down the hallway, one of the guards spoke into a walkie-talkie.

“Evening,” Flynn said as they stepped around the desk.

“You're restricted to the structure,” the guard lieutenant said.

“Not a problem. We're going to get some food.”

There was another guard station at the foot of the stairs. Three more guards, all now on their feet, all with their holsters open, their hands on their weapons.

Had he wished, Flynn could have taken their weapons and knocked them all cold before they could take a breath. Whoever had set these guards knew it, too, because stations at both ends of the building were in sight of this one, meaning that anything he did to these men would be seen by six more pairs of eyes, and dealt with accordingly.

He knew exactly who had placed these guard stations in this way. The only person who knew enough about his skills to be able to thwart them.

“Hey, Diana,” he said, “you'll be watching this little charade, so listen up. I'm gonna get a Coke and go to bed to cry my eyes out. Tomorrow morning I'm going to New York and I'm going to disappear. So this is good-bye, love.”

Until they entered the small space of the basement vending machine room, he said nothing more. There was a Pepsi machine, a water machine, and a machine dispensing microwavable food. A microwave on the chipped white counter nearby.

He bought a burrito and put it in the microwave and turned it on. The machine wasn't so noisy as he had hoped, but it would have to do.

He spoke softly. “You willing to try it?” He waved his hands across his lips, indicating that Mac was to nod or shake his head.

Mac paused. His brows knitted. A question came into his face.

Flynn said, “Do a bedbug like when we were kids. Go out through the closet ceiling. We'll be dealing with a forty-foot drop to the ground. Is that okay?”

Mac's face, lips tight, eyes full of edge, said that he wasn't at all sure.

“Me, neither,” Flynn said. The microwave turned off, and he added in a normal tone, “Like I said to Diana, I've decided to take your advice. Right now, I don't have an implant, so the longer I wait, the more danger I'm in. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to start running while I still have the chance.”

Mac opened his arms and embraced him. “You oughta be in the movies,” he whispered.

“See you on the other side.”

Mac bought a Diet Pepsi, and they returned to the second floor.

The making of what they used to call a “bedbug” was a matter of getting in the bed and leaving it with the sheets arranged in such a way that a parent peeking into the room would—hopefully—think that it still contained a boy.

Would a subterfuge this simple actually work? Not for long, but hopefully for long enough.

To minimize the effectiveness of the cameras, he drew his blinds and turned out his lights. It would actually help a bit with the tiny nailhead units. You weren't talking all that many pixels. The best of them used computers equipped with sophisticated algorithms to supply the data that the lenses would be missing. With just a few pixels to work with, a good system could provide crystal-clear images in full light, but only adequate ones in the dark.

He sat on the side of the bed and took off his socks. They would form the “head” of the bedbug. Leaving his shoes on the floor, he got under the blanket and sheet. In fact, he got under both the top and bottom sheets. More bulk for the bedbug. He turned on his side with his back facing into the room and pushed the sheets until they formed a long wad sufficient to lift the blanket. Then he slipped the socks onto the pillow in front of his face and went deep into the blanket, until all but the top of his head was covered.

He slid backwards out of the bed and down to the floor. Remaining low, he slid on his stomach into the closet. Then he rose up, pressing himself against the back wall.

There came a knock at the door. “Mr. Carroll?”

“Yeah.”

“Bed check.”

“Who're you, the hall monitor?”

“Just doing my job, Mr. Carroll.”

“Okay, let me get some sleep, then. I'm not going anywhere.”

As he spoke, he reached up and slid one of the big ceiling tiles out of place, Then he raised himself by gripping a girder with his fingers. The air in the attic was choking, full of dust and insulation, and the pulsing of an unusually complex ventilation system that, judging from all the electronically controlled flues, was capable of being sealed in an instant. Shades of the biological-warfare days.

Above the layers of insulation and massive equipment, a thick cable harness ran from one end of the building to the other.

Moving quickly, he found a supporting beam and climbed along it to the rear of the structure, knowing that a man of his weight would cause sounds below in this otherwise lightly framed building.

He reached the metal vent, which was two feet by two feet in size, as he had observed from outside the building. Feeling its edges, he determined that it wasn't wired, and was screwed into the building's frame with standard construction screws, which he removed with his pocketknife.

Behind him, there was the breath of a whisper.

“Guard came to my door,” Flynn said.

“How deep is their security going to be?”

“On the way in, I identified a motion-sensor grid, but we can avoid it.”

As he was working, he realized that he could see his shadow. Immediately, he dropped down, pulling Mac with him. He watched the beam of a flashlight play along the girders.

The light continued to explore the space for a time. Finally, there came the faint scrape of a hatch closing. Still, Flynn and Mac didn't move. Flynn waited a full minute, but nothing else happened.

He pulled out the vent and looked down at the drop.

Immediately below the vent was a window, the one at the end of the second-floor corridor. The sill was about an inch deep, just enough to enable a jumper to balance, assuming that he would be able to cling to the inch-deep upper ledge.

“Mac, what I'm going to do is lever myself out until I'm hanging from my forearms—then you're going to climb down my back. You got that?”

“What about you?”

“I can take the fall.”

“You're sure?”

“It's just a guess. Now, move.”

Mac was lithe and as strong as twisted wire. Flynn felt him slide quickly across his back, then overhand himself until he was dangling from Flynn's ankles. Then he let go, landing silently and efficiently.

Flynn lowered himself until his arms were stretched and his feet were about eight inches above the sill below. He dropped.

As his feet contacted the sill, he thrust his fingers hard against the upper window frame and pressed his body into the window itself. He was still in control of the descent, so he immediately dropped down, letting his feet slip off the sill and cutting the speed of his fall as much as he could by grabbing it as it passed eye level.

He hit the ground jarringly hard, rolled, then got to his feet and moved at once away from the building. A moment later, Mac followed him.

Darkness didn't matter to security in places like this, not anymore. Security would certainly be able to see them, so speed was essential.

As they moved off, lights began turning on all over the building, including outside lights—bright ones, many of them.

Staying low and close to the miserable little shrubs that stood around the building, Flynn ran. Mac followed.

They blended with the shadows and were gone.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THEY HAD
reached the shell road that led to the biology labs, and were trotting down it when Flynn heard the whine of electric vehicles. They darted off the road and into the scrub, but there was little cover. Anybody with infrared look-ahead or a starlight scope would spot them instantly, and Deer Island security would undoubtedly have both.

“Why are they doing this?”

“Something's wrong.”

“What?”

“Flat on the ground, flat as you can be.”

Lying very still, protected by a slight indentation in the ground, they heard a sound nearby, a low grunting and snuffling.

“Russian boar?” Mac whispered. They were all over Texas.

“Not up here. Probably a feral—”

There was a sudden burst of very weird, very complex chattering.

An instant later, the lights of three electric carts flooded the area.