Alien Hunter: Underworld (12 page)

“We've got a hike,” he said, “and we need to do as much of it as we can before sunrise.”

“What if they find us?” Geri said.

“Will they? You tell me.”

“I have no idea.”

They set off, with Flynn guiding them by the stars. No way was he going to allow any electronics to be turned on. In any case, this was his country. He didn't expect to get lost. The tricky part would come later. You didn't walk up on Mac Terrell's outfit without taking extreme precautions. He could easily make a target a mile away, and he wasn't going to like the look of three people approaching without any preliminary warning. Even if he let them come up, his dogs were going to be another problem. They were incredible animals. Off-the-charts smart. When they were working for Morris, they had nearly killed Flynn. Instead, a number of members of their pack had gone to dog heaven.

They'd remember him for sure, and they'd likely be eager to even the score.

How Mac had gotten them to go over to his operation was very simple. Money meant nothing to them, but they did like good food. Dog food was out, even things like slabs of raw steak were out. These dogs lived on the finest meats, superbly prepared. They were gourmets. Mac had seen their value and hired a cook, built a cookhouse, even brought in some real high-grade food animals to service them—the best beef, mutton, and poultry Texas could provide—not to mention game, with which they were abundantly supplied.

Morris had obviously designed and built them. They were full of human DNA and nearly as smart as a man. With their superb ears, eyes, and noses, they were far superior to any human tracker.

As they walked, Flynn kept close to the few draws he found, ready to roll into them if he noticed the least sign of movement in the sky. Probably, all that would be visible would be a blotting of stars. The bottom of the thing wouldn't be reflecting any light.

“Geri, I want you to tell me if the ship has any other vulnerabilities. I stopped the light working for a few minutes. Could I do more?”

“These ships are meant for inter–solar system travel. In an atmosphere, they can do about forty thousand of your miles in an hour. In space, up to a million.”

“A million miles an hour?”

“In space. They work by generating their own gravity field. This is done with counterrotating magnets that turn really fast. That's the vulnerability. Hit that, and the ship disintegrates.”

“How would I hit it?”

“It rotates around the lower part of the ship, but the fuselage protects it.”

“The fuselage is strong, I assume.”

“Very.”

“And there are no seams, no cracks?”

“There is a seam. It's a millimeter wide. It's there to allow the ship's gravity field to establish itself in the right pattern.”

A millimeter was not good. Not good at all.

“I want us to stay as low as we can. Keep to the draws. I know it's harder going, but those guys have got to be looking for us.”

“Maybe they're still following the train,” Diana said.

“Geri, let me ask you another question. You know that mind-reading device last year, the one that didn't work—are there better ones? Might they be able to pick up our thoughts and track us that way?”

“I can't say for sure. I don't know what they have.”

He thought on that. “What might they have?”

“Another MindRay would be the only thing.”

“Good, because they're damn near worthless.” They weren't designed to actually read thought, but only to detect and evaluate it, and offer a reading as to the target's state of awareness.

“Again, it's the planet's magnetic field. They need to be purpose-built to work on Earth, apparently.”

“And none have or will be.”

“No.”

“Answer me this: Is it possible that the crooks have weapons built into their bodies? Because they can paralyze you or render you unconscious by just touching you. They can hypnotize at a distance.”

“There are lots of models of biorobot. That sounds like a crowd-control unit.”

“Models? Units?”

“As I said, we created them. They became self-aware and turned on us.”

“I'll say they did.”

“They're in rebellion at home, but the ones here are run by somebody. They're not part of the rebellion. They probably don't even know about it.”

“And they're the only form? Spindly legs and arms, deep-set eyes, and narrow faces? Those claws.”

“Yes.”

“What about other forms?”

“Some of them have the ability to use a tone that hypnotizes people. They're used in the entertainment industry, to create special effects.”

“Like bears that aren't really there?”

“I suppose.”

Geri was worthless as a cop, but she was a fountain of information. He'd learned more about Aeon and its weapons and its troubles in the past hour than anybody on Earth had learned since the first aliens had showed up. At least, as far as he'd been told. With the government so secrecy-obsessed, maybe there was more knowledge in other areas.

“Diana, do we have any liaison with the air force?” He'd read things like the testimony of Dr. Milton Torres, who was ordered to shoot at a UFO over England in 1957, and he knew that in 2008, fighters had been scrambled from the Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth to confront UFOs that appeared over Stephenville, Texas. In addition, he'd gone through dozens of public reports of helicopters following the things. But whenever they queried the Secretary of the Air Force, they'd been informed with absolute sincerity that “The air force takes no interest in unidentified flying objects,” and this despite the clearances of all involved.

The result? The three of them were being menaced by something in the air, and there was nobody to call, and nothing to do but fire a gun at it and hope for a lucky shot. MacAdoo Terrell, however, might be a real help in that department, given that all his shots were lucky.

The eastern sky began to glow, but at the same time, they had entered the low, nameless bands of hills that rose north of Mac's place. They were probably on his ranch by now, in fact, and so had just another few hours to go before they reached the house.

Nobody complained—he had to give them that. Geri shambled along. Diana tried to maintain her dignity, but the way she pranced was a familiar giveaway. She was dealing with blisters. Flynn noted this carefully. If they had to run, she would be slowest.

“I don't want anybody getting snakebit,” he said. “They come out with the sun, and they come out hungry. Geri, I assume you know what a snake is.”

“I did the Earth course and trained on-planet last month—so, yes, as I recall, a snake is a sort of self-propelled muscle that uses its mouth both for swallowing prey and defending itself. Some are venomed, and some are not. We have nothing like that on Aeon.”

“The diamondback rattlesnake is the main threat in this part of Texas. There are a lot of them, and we'll see some. What's critical if you hear the rattle is to stand absolutely still until you've identified the location of the snake. Then you can probably move off if you take it slow. If not, I'll deal with it.” He would avoid killing a snake if he could. They were just trying to protect themselves. They didn't deserve to die for that. When they were kids, he and Mac and Eddie had used them for target practice. People changed.

The sun was well up in the eastern sky when Flynn spotted the first faint gleam off a tin roof far ahead.

“Okay, hold on. No closer.”

“What?” Diana asked.

“That's Mac's place out there. We want to be real careful from here on. If we're close enough to see it, we're close enough for him to hit us.”

“He wouldn't fire on you.”

“He might shoot first and ask questions later. It happens. Plus, he's got Morris's dogs.”

“That can't be true.”

“It's true.”

“How in the world did that happen?”

“With Mac, you never know. But he sold his old pack to the DEA, the way I heard it. Now he has the finest pack of dogs in the world.”

“What sets them apart?” Geri asked.

“They've got human genes. They're highly intelligent.”

“That kind of hybridization is illegal.”

“Not here. We don't know how to do it, so we don't have a law against it.”

“Well, you should.”

“Geri, what kind of person is Morris? He's not just here for fun. He kidnapped and he kills. Now he's on a revenge kick.”

“We have psychopaths, too, unfortunately. He came here to steal genetic and sexual material because he was looking to make money. Then, I guess when you thwarted him, his ego took over.”

“Sounds pretty familiar.”

“Have you seen Mac recently?” Diana asked.

“I came out for a visit a couple of months ago, so yeah.”

About half an hour later, Flynn saw another flash of light, this one on the windshield of a pickup. It was sending up a dust cloud and coming toward them.

“Thank God,” Diana said, “I'm just about done in.”

“Get out of sight,” Flynn said.

“Excuse me, the arms are turning pink on this. Is that a problem?”

“It's called sunburn, Geri.”

“How strange.”

“Yeah, it's strange, all right. Come on, you two, we need to—”

“I know what sunburn is, but normally you're better adapted to your own star. Are you sure the human species originated on Earth?”

Shaking his head, more to ward off the bizarre question than to answer it, he drew her down into a slight depression in the ground, which was the only concealment for a good mile.

From the distance, there came the echo of a single shot. The pickup slowed, then began jerking forward. The engine stopped.

There was a figure inside. Not moving.

“Hey, we're over here,” Diana said. She rose out of cover.

“Stay down!”

Another bullet sprayed dirt five feet in front of her.

“You've just been warned,” Flynn said. Mac did not miss. He was telling them to stay the hell away from that truck.

The next thing he knew, she had her cell phone out.

“I wouldn't turn that on.”

She ignored him.

He put his hand around hers, squeezing until she gave up the phone. “There's no coverage out here. Except for the aliens. They might have very good coverage.”

“They do,” Geri said. She pointed.

Just above the western horizon and moving slowly this way at low altitude was a bright silver disk.

 

CHAPTER TEN

AS HE
always did under such circumstances, Flynn inventoried his assets: both pistols, fully loaded; his knife; two people ill prepared in any useful way; and a pickup truck that was at the far end of a master sniper's shooting gallery and had a corpse behind the wheel.

He reached into his mouth, took out the cyanide capsule, and threw it into the brush.

“What are you doing?” Diana asked.

“Getting rid of my gum. It looks like we have a choice to make. Either we get killed by friends or by enemies. What'll it be?” He quietly ditched the rest of the cyanide. If the aliens captured them, there'd be no time to share it, and he didn't want to do that now. One of them was liable to bite down out of fear if an attack developed.

“They know we're here, so why not try the cell phones?”

Flynn watched the silver disk. It was now moving southward. “They could be combing the hills. Working their way back from wherever they were when they realized we had left the train. So forget doing anything that emits a signal.”

He looked toward the truck. The five hundred feet between here and there offered not the slightest cover.

Mac knew they were here, but he obviously didn't know who they were. He was likely to watch for hours, waiting to see if there'd be another move. He might even shoot the truck to bits, or blow the gas tank to conceal evidence. If the truck began to move, he'd certainly start shooting.

Flynn made his decision. “I think there's a chance we can reach the truck. We can find some concealment in it until dark. Then we can try driving back into the ranch. If we're luckier than God, we might make it before Mac opens up.”

“What about the disk?” Diana asked.

“They're going to detect four bodies in the truck. All we can do is hope that'll throw them off. Geri?”

“They could be able to identify us individually, or not. Depends on the technology they possess.”

“Okay, I'm going to go over there on my stomach. I'll signal each of you when to come.”

As it turned out, the move went smoothly. While Geri and Diana sat in the back of the double cab, Flynn shifted the body of a Mexican in ten thousand dollars' worth of superb leather clothing and—improbably—a pair of fine Lucchese polo boots into the passenger seat.

Blood did not smell good, and corpses were about as maneuverable as bags of wet cement, but he got it done. He considered the polo boots. Legend had it that the game of kings was once played by Tamerlane with the heads of dead enemies, and Mac had bragged about reviving that tradition with some of his friends from south of the border. So this character had probably been lured up to play, without realizing that the plan was to use his head. He'd gotten away, though. Almost.

Too bad Mac hadn't come out to harvest his prize, but if they finally got a little luck, maybe that would happen soon. Mac didn't waste things, and he hated clutter on his property. He wouldn't leave the truck out here forever, but if he didn't want the head, it could be a few days before he finally showed up with his handyman, Carlos.

Morning wore on, the flies of West Texas became thicker and thicker, and nothing moved except an occasional chaparral cock and, yes, a diamondback sliding along, coming toward the truck.

“See that?” Flynn said. “It's the heat of the day. He's going to shelter in our shadow. When the sun sets, he'll go hunting. He'll have about three or four hours before he cools down and goes to sleep.”