Nightstalkers (12 page)

Physics was a young man’s game, and now that he was in his forties, it wasn’t as though his synapses were going to fire more rapidly and come up with a brilliant new theory. He’d seen it in those older than him. It had been a gentle, almost unnoticed slide from original brilliance to his single decent, well-paying idea—now gently fading into the past—to his eventual harrumphing for or against whatever the topic was depending on who was paying him and how much he stood to lose intellectually. Physics was like acting or novel writing or any other venture where one stepped into it with youthful verve and high expectations, but only a handful became Tom Hanks or Hemingway or Einstein.

Winslow found it amusing that so few understood that blinding ambition was the necessary ingredient of any intelligence or talent. He had the ambition, and as he pushed open the building
door into the stifling heat of summer and the almost empty parking lot, he thought it was ironic that Ivar, his most talented student, had no ambition at all. It was the reason so many successful scientists stole the work of their lessers. Someone had to do something with it. A mind was a terrible thing to waste.

He walked to his car, the sweat already ruining another good shirt, and thought of Darwin, who’d read Wallace’s letters about evolution; while they shared many theories, Darwin was the one who ran with the big one. How many people knew who Wallace was? Darwin had had the ambition while Wallace had been content to merely be mentioned by the greater man.

Winslow’s wife, Lilith, had a Serbian grandmother who’d filled her head with tales of Tesla and how Edison had screwed him over, and how even Einstein’s wife, well-educated in her own right and ahead of her time, had lost out on her contributions to her husband. Winslow wasn’t sure he bought into the latter part, but the fact that Lilith was raised with the concept that stealing was an integral part of science made them a good pair in the ambition area. She just didn’t realize he wasn’t Tesla. Poor Tesla, whose better concept for alternating current had been relegated to the electric chair instead of home lighting, due to the manipulations of Edison, who had some of his assistants “accidently” kill animals with AC current to show its “danger” and secretly lobbied to get AC in the electric chair. It wasn’t surprising that no one wanted to turn on a light that shared the same current that Sing Sing used to turn off someone’s lights.

Winslow smiled. He had to remember that for the dinner party. He pulled his cell phone out and hit the record button so he wouldn’t forget: “No one wants to turn on a light that shares the same current that Sing Sing uses to turn out someone’s lights.”

Talking into the phone was why he didn’t hear the footsteps behind him. It was only as he clicked the record app off that he heard the voice right behind him and almost jumped out of his shoes.

“I’ve been everywhere but the electric chair and seen everything but the wind.”

Winslow spun about, the phone held out as if there were some app that could protect you from a stranger sneaking up on you in the dark.

“Who are you? What are you talking about?”

The man wore a hat, his face in darkness. There was an implied threat in the way he stood, in just the way he breathed. “Something from my old life. It’s a Nada Yada.”

“A what?”

The man gestured with his hand and there was clearly something metallic in it. “Just unlock all the doors and get in the car, Doctor Winslow.”

Winslow hesitated, considering his options. Swing his briefcase? Run? Scream?

He pressed the unlock button on his car key as he looked anxiously about at the tall smokestacks poking up above all the lab buildings so they could vent the by-products of various procedures. A distant blue light indicated where you could press an alert for campus police. Very distant. Too distant. Maybe this stranger only wanted the car?

“Get in the driver’s seat.”

Winslow slid into the leather seat as the man got in the back, behind him.

“Hot out, isn’t it?” the man said, as if this were the most normal of occurrences for him. “You’d think there’d be Fireflies out,
it’s so hot.” He laughed to himself, a private joke apparently. There was a slightly manic edge to his laughter.

“What did you say?” Winslow felt his fear lessen slightly at the odd comment.

“Fireflies,” the man repeated. “You have to wonder where they are. And relax your grip on your briefcase, Doctor, because if you swing that at me, it will only result in severe damage to that arm.”

Winslow tensed once more. “That’s an odd thing to say during a robbery—fireflies.”

“Who says I’m robbing you, Doctor Winslow? Maybe I want to sell you something?”

Winslow swallowed, feeling a wave of excitement greater than his fear sweep through his body. “So you have the fireflies?” he whispered, playing along on the sneaky spy stuff, figuring it was some code word.

“You don’t even know what a Firefly is, do you? But you do know what a Rift is, correct? You did get that e-mail from your former student. He didn’t know what Fireflies were either. None of you really know what you’re doing. What would you be willing to pay me if I said I have what you need? Does the name Craegan ring a bell?”

Winslow had to bite back the instant answer that formed on his tongue:
Anything
. He thought for a moment. “Fifty thousand.”

“Move the decimal place.”

Winslow wanted to turn and shout that was robbery, but he knew it actually wasn’t. Winslow glanced up at the rearview mirror. The man was sitting back, hat still keeping his face in the dark. Winslow reached for the light switch.

“Don’t.” The man laughed, the manic edge sharper. “The Fireflies got to me.”

“What are you talking—”

The man tossed something over into the passenger seat.

Winslow saw the hard drive with the ASU control number on the side. “I’ll need time to get the money,” Winslow said. “A week?”

“What are you going to do?” the man asked. “Take out a fourth mortgage on your house?”

Winslow started in surprise.

“I wouldn’t be here trying to make a deal if I didn’t do my homework,” the man said. “I know you don’t have the money. But there is someone who does have the money who actually lives rather close to you.” Burns tossed a slip of paper over the seat. “Tell him it’s an investment. He’s the sort of man who would be interested in that. But I wouldn’t cross him.”

Winslow picked up the paper. He read the name. “But—”

“Trust me on this,” Burns said. “He can loan you five hundred thousand. It’s nothing to him. Unless you don’t pay him back.”

Five hundred thousand was nothing to what he could reap if he made this work, Winslow thought. “All right. Five hundred thousand.”

“Smart man.” The man shifted in the seat.

Winslow resisted the urge to grab the hard drive and race back inside and start right away.

“Something you need to know,” the man said, “if you want to not get caught and stay alive. Unlike Mister Craegen.”

But Winslow’s mind was racing ahead, hearing the applause from the audience in Geneva. Forming the words to the speech that was now inevitable. “Yes?” he muttered, his mind on other things.

“You need to shield it so there are no emissions once it activates,” the man warned. “Especially muons.”

“Muons?”

“That’s how they can find you,” the man said.

“Who?”

“The Nightstalkers.”

“Uh-huh.” Winslow wondered how much the Nobel medal weighed. How it would feel on his chest.

The man held a hand between the seats. “Give it to me.”

As Winslow reluctantly handed the hard drive back he saw the scars on the back of the man’s hand. The drive disappeared and then the man extended a small slip of paper. “Once I see the five hundred thousand in that account, I’ll call you. Set up a dead drop so you can get the drive. You know what a dead drop is?”

Winslow tensed at the term.

The man laughed again, sounding a bit insane, but Winslow wasn’t listening. “Of course you don’t. Tradecraft. Not required learning for physicists. Put simply, I’ll call you and tell you where you can find it. It’s now on you, Doctor.”

The man abruptly got out of the car, slamming the door shut. Winslow powered down his window. “How soon—”

“As soon as you deposit the money.” The man was gone into the darkness.

As Winslow put the car into drive to race home, he began to hear the applause once more.

Moms and Nada sat in the CP still discussing various ways they could catch Burns. Arriving back at the Ranch just before dawn, most of the day had been spent standing down from the Courier operation and doing the After Action Report. Now payback was on their minds.

In the Den they were discussing various ways to kill him.

Given the state of the van, it had to have been, as Nada had immediately surmised, an inside job. Someone who knew the Protocol, knew the vans, knew the Couriers, knew it all.

It only took till early afternoon for Ms. Jones’s long arm to discover that Burns was off the grid.

“‘How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,’” Eagle quoted.

“About twenty times in the past year,” Mac said. “Why don’t you come up with something original?”

“I never liked Burns,” Roland said. He was throwing a hatchet at the three-foot-high stump of a tree. How the stump of a tree had found its way out here to the desert and down into the Den was a mystery, but it had quickly become the magnet of all matters of throwing devices: hatchets, knives, spears. Bored men needed some release. Bored killers liked to throw killing devices.

Mac snorted. “Moms named him after Major Burns from
M*A*S*H
for some reason. Moms never likes naming anyone and she was surprised when Ms. Jones chose it. I don’t know what they picked up in him. He didn’t like the name either.”

Eagle went over and grabbed the handle of the hatchet. He grunted with effort, trying to pull it out after Roland’s throw. It came on the second jerk. He walked to the other end of the team table and prepared to throw.

“Duck!” Mac yelled as Eagle let loose.

Kirk took it seriously and dove under the table—just in time, as the top of the weapon hit the stump and it recoiled back, skidding across the table and then clanking to the floor.

“Dude, we have a rule!” Mac said as he picked up the hatchet. “You don’t get to throw.”

Eagle frowned. “I’ll get it eventually.”

“You’ll get one of us eventually,” Mac said, holding the hatchet out to Kirk. “Let’s see how our new man does.”

Kirk remembered the woodpile, the one Pads had forced him to make that summer after finding him hiding in the hollow of the old tree down by the creek. Pads had ordered him to cut the old tree down and stood there pulling from the bottle as Kirk, then known as Winthrop Carter, did it. Then Pads had given him a quota of wood to be cut every day from the dead tree, until there was nothing left of that tree but kindling. No more hide spot, and every log tossed on the fire that winter was a reminder that you couldn’t hide from Pads.

Kirk threw, and the hatchet flashed across the room, hitting the trunk with a solid thud, the blade burying deep into the wood.

“Damn,” Mac said. “
You
can throw.”

From the corner of the room, Doc said a single word. “Rifts.”

All activity ceased as Doc continued. “While you gentlemen have been concerned all day with Burns and his betrayal, I believe we need to further educate Kirk on Rifts, since we might well be facing one sooner than anticipated.”

Mac and Roland sat down at the team table. Kirk grabbed the seat closest to Doc, who was in the armchair that had been in the CP for the in-briefing with Nada and Moms.

“Let’s start with what we don’t know,” Doc said. “We don’t know what Rifts are, nor do we know what the Fireflies are. Not exactly. But skipping all the scientific jargon and theories, let’s construct a framework from which you can conduct operational tactics.”

Kirk said nothing, beginning to understand Nada’s warnings about the scientists.

“My best guess is that Rifts are tears to the multiverse. To either a world parallel to ours or another world entirely. And the
Fireflies are probes. Some think the Fireflies are living entities who have crossed over, but the way they inhabit objects and creatures indicates a level of programming and not innate intelligence to me. Some of the choices the Fireflies make aren’t exactly the best—the cactus in the Fun Outside Tucson, for example.”

“Tell that to Burns,” Roland said. “And that rabbit didn’t seem a smart choice, but if Nada had been a shade slower, it would have torn your neck open and you wouldn’t be here. And the rattler
did
get you.”

Doc flushed; whether in embarrassment or anger, it was impossible to tell. “Yes, yes.”

“Doc,” Roland said, “as even you said: he don’t need theories.” Roland put his heavy hands flat on the table. “We’re the Nightstalkers. We, the Shooters, kill Fireflies, and Doc there, the Scientist, he shuts the Rift. That’s it. Moms and Nada told you how we kill the Fireflies. If it’s living, I usually ending up flaming it until there’s nothing but ash. Other stuff, Mac and I and the rest of the team blast and flame until there’s nothing left. Then this little gold thing floats up out of whatever it was in and—poof—no more Firefly.”