Nightstalkers (8 page)

Thinking of pulling the Glock on her excited him as much as watching her climb in the door as he shoved it open for her. She tossed the sucker over her shoulder as she squirmed in.

She smiled, didn’t say a word. She took the twenty and leaned over into his lap.

College girl would have still been talking, he thought.

She unzipped him. Her hand was cold, but exciting enough, and he thought once more of the Glock, of putting it against her head as her lips closed on him. He leaned back, fingers closing around the grip of the Glock, eyes half-closed.

She pulled her mouth off him with the same slow movement she’d done with the lollipop.

He looked down. She smiled up at him with wide, innocent eyes as she shoved open the driver’s door.

Stunned, the Courier looked to his left, into the visage of a human monster. The man’s face was terribly scarred, with lateral marks across it as if he’d been flayed. The man smiled as he
jammed the icepick into the soft spot on the bottom of the Courier’s jaw, right up into his brain.

He was dead before the Glock hit the floor.

The girl screamed and scrambled back against the passenger door.

“You said you were robbing him! Not killing him!”

“I am robbing him,” Burns said. He had a silenced Beretta in his off hand and he fired a round right between her eyes, following it up with a second bullet, sticking to Nada’s Yada to always double-tap in the head and make sure they’re dead.

Two beers were all the Nightstalkers were allowed, although Mac snuck four. Moms was firm about that rule in the Den, but it was her and Nada’s turn to in-brief the newly minted Kirk. Roland, Mac, and Eagle ambled off to their little rooms—cells almost—to catch some Zs while Kirk cleaned up before going into the CP. New guys always cleaned up. It was the same in every unit around the world.

As Kirk tossed the last can into the trash, the door to the Den from the outside corridor hissed open and a short man with glasses walked in. He spotted Kirk and smiled.

“Good day. I am Doc.” His voice was almost musical with a strong trace of his parents’ Indian accent. He held a finger up to his lips as Kirk was about to reply. He looked at the whiteboard. “Let me guess what Ms. Jones picked.”

He frowned as he read the list. “Know is out, naturally. A pathetic attempt at humor in some way, perhaps by Mac or Moms. Slick would be Roland. He wants a Slick and he does not care who it is. Ah, Cheetah. That would be Mac since Fred is Nada. Nada thinks every team needs a Fred and we are never going to have one. So Moms did Know. She never wants to name anyone. As if she does not take enough responsibility.”

Kirk waited patiently as Doc unraveled the naming mystery that was only a mystery to him.

“So that leaves Eagle with Kobayashi Maru, and Ms. Jones almost always goes with him, but I do not see it this time. Kobe? Maru?”

“Kirk.”

Doc blinked, cocked his head, and then nodded. “Ah. Got it.
Star Trek
. So you are a cheater, no disrespect intended, a former Ranger, and Ms. Jones chose you. As good an intro as you can get. Welcome to the Nightstalkers.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

“Nada did get to name me. He broke his Fred rule and said every team’s medic had to be called Doc, and Ms. Jones went along with him.” Doc sighed. “I am indeed a medical doctor, by the way, so come to me with any ailments or concerns. But I also have four PhDs in—”

The door to the CP cracked open and Nada stuck his head out. “Yeah, Doc, we know you’re a multiple professor of whatever and wherever, but we need the new guy. And welcome back.”

“Thanks, Na—” But the door was shut. Doc’s shoulders slumped. “I suppose since I missed the naming ceremony I missed my two beers?”

Kirk nodded and reached into the other can, pulling out two cold ones. Doc sat down with a sigh and popped open the first. “When will these uncouth savages learn about champagne or wine?” he asked no one in particular. He then looked back at Kirk. “It is best not to keep Moms waiting.”

Kirk went to the door and knocked, barely making an audible thud in the steel. It seemed Nada had been on the other side waiting and opened it immediately, escorting him in. The walls of the CP were covered with maps, satellite imagery, and printouts of things Kirk couldn’t make sense of in his quick glance about.

Moms sat behind one desk, Nada taking his place behind the other. They were standard government-issue gray desks and they faced the door from opposite corners of the CP. Surprisingly, a plump armchair was in the center facing them.

Kirk suspected a trap, perhaps no support in the seat, and sat down gingerly. But the chair was firm. Even comfortable, which further aroused his suspicions.

Moms started. “Every unit I ever went into, when I met the CO, it was always a series of warnings. Don’t fuck up. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Behave. And I’ve walked into a lot of units in my time. Your experience?”

Kirk ran his career reel through his head. “The same, Ms. Moms.”

“Save the Ms. shit for Ms. Jones. There’s no Ms. or Misters here. I’m Moms. That’s it. You’re Kirk. He’s Nada. I heard Doc out there. Just Doc. Got it?”

“Just Doc. Got it.”

Moms smiled slightly. Kirk noticed a bend in her nose and knew it had been broken and badly set a long time ago. Dee’s nose had the same crook. From Pads’s fist. Kirk pulled his mind back to the present as Moms continued.

“The ceremony outside is real. The people are real. We’re very happy to have you on the team.” She glanced to her left. “Right?”

“Oh, yeah.” Nada was pulling open a drawer in his desk and glanced up. “Thrilled beyond words.”

“If you notice, we don’t wear rank, we don’t have patches or tabs or badges. I know you’re proud of them, but we don’t do that stuff. We don’t do medals, we don’t do plaques or memorials or any of that. But you are still in the service, okay?”

Kirk nodded.

“We work for Ms. Jones. Who exactly she answers to, we don’t know and we don’t have a need to know. She did the ‘things that go bump in the night’ shtick, which she alternates with some other stuff for new people, but officially Nightstalkers is on call to deal with extraordinary emergencies. That includes incidents involving nuclear, chemical, and biological material. Doc will get you up to speed on what you need to know in that area and our special gear to deal with contingencies. A lot of the times we bring scientists with us. Nada interrupted him, but putting it simply, Doc is a genius in a whole bunch of fields I can’t even pronounce.”

“Yeah,” Nada snorted. “I remember you wrote Genius on the board when he in-briefed with Ms. Jones.”

Moms ignored him. “Doc has what we call the Acme list, after that company the Coyote always bought his stuff from in the Road Runner cartoon.”

This time Nada actually laughed as he started piling up binders on his desktop. “Yeah, Mac wanted to call him Road Runner. Beep beep. He’s always interested in figuring shit out. Keep an eye on him with that. You can get killed while figuring shit out.”

Moms continued. “The Acme list contains the names of a whole bunch of scientists who are on call to the government. We Zevon them—”

“Excuse me?” Kirk said.

“Zevon,” Moms repeated. “It’s an alert ring tone on their phones. You’ll understand soon enough; hopefully not too soon.”

“Good luck on that,” Nada muttered as he took out an alcohol pen and began thumbing through a pocket-sized acetated pad.

“Working with those from the Acme list can be a pain—”

“Working with Doc can be a pain,” Nada said to himself, checking the binders against his small pad.

“—but they’re the experts. They tell you don’t touch something, don’t touch it. They tell you to flame something, flame it. They tell you to run—”

“You’re fucked,” Nada said.

“True,” Moms said. She stared at Kirk as if reading him. Seeing how he was taking it. She must have liked what she saw. “Okay. There is an event that’s our primary mission, and actually prompted the founding of this unit many years ago. Something you’ve never heard of.”

“Join the rest of the world,” Nada said.

“Rifts and Fireflies,” Moms said.

Kirk blinked and hoped for amplification.

“No, I can’t tell you what a Rift is,” Moms said, deflating his hope. “No one can.”

“Not even Doc,” Nada added.

“But Fireflies—” Moms began.

“We kill,” Nada finished for her.

“Fireflies come through Rifts,” Moms said. “Anywhere from one to fourteen, which happened back in ’68 and is the record.”

“
That
must have been a motherfucker of a firefight,” Nada said enviously.

“Doc will give you more info on this topic,” Moms said, “but simply put, Fireflies are things that come through Rifts, and our best guess is that they are some sort of energy being or probe that can take over an animate or inanimate object.” She stopped because of whatever she was reading on Kirk’s face.

“They can go into things and animals,” Nada tried to explain. “And take them over. So anything around you can be under the control of a Firefly.” He thumped his desktop. “A Firefly could get into this desk, then slam shut the drawer when I put my hand in to get something. With enough force to chop my hand off, ’cause
they enhance whatever they’re in. You kill an animal they’re in, it ain’t enough. It’s got to be flamed to cinders. Roland does most of the flaming. Once the creature is reduced to pretty much nothing, the Firefly floats out of the body and dissipates.”

“They can’t jump from one place to another,” Moms said. “Once they go in they’re stuck—”

“Until we obliterate what they’re in,” Nada said.

“They can’t go into people,” Moms said.

“Not that we know of,” Nada warned. “Or yet. Whichever.”

That one stopped Moms for a second, then she went on. “If they get into an inanimate object, then we have to blast it, break it down, crush it, blow it apart—whatever—depending on what the object is. There is a critical point at which the object no longer has what Doc calls a sufficient level of integrity that the Firefly can survive in, so it finally just lets go and leaves and dissipates. I know this is all a bit much, but like I said, Doc can explain it better and more thoroughly. Okay?”

Kirk nodded.

“Some other basics,” Moms said. “We don’t do ranks here, but I’m your team leader and Nada is the team sergeant. Go to him before you come to me. That’s not because I’m big on chain of command, but because he can usually solve more things than I can. He has more time on the team than anyone. His focus is you, the team. My focus is Ms. Jones and the mission. Got it?”

Kirk nodded.

“But, as they say, my door is always open, except sometimes it’s not. If that sucker,” she nodded toward the big steel door, “is shut, there’s a reason for it. We do not want to be disturbed.”

“Unless it’s a Zevon,” Nada added.

“Unless it’s a Zevon,” Moms confirmed. “You’re going to be the team commo man,” Moms said. “
My
commo man. Which
means you can hear everything I hear if you choose. I ask you not to listen in when you give me a channel to Ms. Jones. If I want the team to hear Ms. Jones, I’ll put it on the team net. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“I ask you to keep to yourself anything else you hear that isn’t on the team net. If I want the team to hear it, I’ll put it on the net. Clear?”

“Clear.”

She reached into a drawer and pulled out a device that looked like an iPhone except it was attached to a wristband. “You’ve used the PRT before?”

“I trained on it, but they weren’t issued.”

“I know. Ms. Jones set that training up.” Moms tossed it to him. Kirk caught the state-of-the-art device. The screen was active. He strapped it on. “Now you’ve been issued one. Our commo goes through you and that for security reasons.”

Moms reached into a pocket on her fatigues and pulled out an acetated pad similar to what Nada was thumbing through. “This is the team Protocol. We don’t call them SOPs here. We call them Protocols.”

“More scientific,” Nada threw in. “Makes the Acme geeks feel better.”

Moms opened it to the first page. “Ms. Jones gave you her spiel. I just want to highlight a few things from my team leader Protocol for you.”

For once, Nada remained silent.

Moms began reading, but it was obvious she had the words memorized. “
The most basic tenet of teamwork is honesty
.” She paused and glanced at Nada. He raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. “Except when you have to lie to someone outside the team to accomplish a mission,” Moms finished her first rule.

“
Everyone on the team is a leader
. Except when I make a decision.

“
We do everything as a team
. Except when I tell you to do something alone.

“
Don’t get in a pissing contest with someone on a balcony. You just end up pissed on and smelly
. If you have a problem with someone, especially one of the Acme Assets, let me know and I’ll deal with it. Which reminds me.” Moms reached into her drawer and pulled out a badge case and tossed it to Kirk. “You’re now a senior field agent of the FBI. Your photo ID will be here within an hour or so. That badge and ID will be enough to keep pretty much anyone you have to deal with who is on the outside off your ass. Someone thinks they outrank that badge, you send them to me.”