Alien Hunter: Underworld (8 page)

“Flynn, Aeon knows you're the fastest gun in the West and the toughest hombre in town—and they're not impressed, as I've told you. They also know that you're richer than God, and therefore a dilettante. And they have been speculating about whether or not you're crazy.” She folded her arms. “I think that question is answered.”

He turned around so they could see the gash that extended from his neck to the center of his back. “I could use a Band-Aid.”

“My God, Flynn, you don't need a bandage, you need medical attention.”

“We're off to Bullshit Central, remember. Fifteen minutes.”

“I'll have medics on the plane. Now, get out of here.”

He drew on the shirt. Nicely tailored, too. She'd spared no expense. As he buttoned it, he said, “So when do we leave?”

“When I say. Now, go away. You're not need-to-know on this conference.”

“333676. Track down that blocked number.”

He went back into the bedroom, threw himself on the bed, and waited.

The sheets were scented. They smelled like her.

“Flynn!”

It was Abby, calling to him from her porch across the street. The summer wind whispered in the trees; the sweet smell of the Texas prairie filled the air.

“Flynn!”

The movie ended. Blank screen. Then he realized that it wasn't a movie. He opened his eyes.

“Christ, I was about to call for a blowtorch. I thought you were in a coma.”

He bolted upright. “Sorry, I didn't realize—”

She sat down on the bed and pulled the shirt away from his back. “That needs ten stitches at least.”

“It'll heal.”

“We have to go now, so get your ass moving, please.” Her voice was harsh, but not her eyes.

He reached out and touched her cheek. She did not turn away, and he knew that he could kiss her if he wanted to. Neither of them moved. In the silence that they shared, there was a lot of life lived together, friends as they were who were also enemies, lovers longing for each other across a gulf of conflicting agendas.

“We're on a strict schedule,” she said.

They rode to the airport in his car. He drove fast; he took chances. He liked to hear her yell at him, and she obliged him, saying he was going to lose his license, she'd see to it, on and on. Just made him drive faster. With this car and his reflexes, it wasn't dangerous, and with no strange cargo to hide, things like tickets didn't matter. Often enough, they got written, but the same hand that protected him from all other official harm made them go away. Her hand.

He said, “As I said, I got three good kills.”

She said nothing.

They'd been given an excellent plane, not one of the cramped puddle jumpers he was used to. There was a private cabin, behind it an office and a small press unit. To the rear was a galley.

“Impressive.”

“You could afford your own jet.”

“Not interested.”

“Your frequent-flier miles, I know.”

“I haven't been on a vacation in a real long time. I dream about it. First class, all the trimmings, on my way to somewhere sweet. Barbados. Ever been to Barbados?”

“Course not. My salary won't take me that far.”

“Don't hand me that. You're just like me, a rich dilettante. What I've become.”

“You've accepted your family. That's not being a dilettante. And I'm not rich.”

“Senator's daughter. Senators are rich.”

“The senator is comfortable. That is not rich.”

She called her dad “the senator,” her mother Mrs. Glass. She didn't talk about it much, but it didn't sound like a happy home. She had kept that powerful last name, though, even through her marriage.

Once the plane was at altitude and heading into the sunset, the medics took over.

“Sir,” the doctor said uneasily, “I'm afraid I've only got some topical anesthetic. I didn't realize—”

“He doesn't need anesthetic,” Diana said. “He's not like us.” He heard pride in her voice. He liked that.

While they stitched away, he smelled steak cooking, and when they finally let him up, he found an exceptional meal waiting in the office, which had been reset as a dining room. A general's plane was not Air Force One, but it had first class pretty well beat. He gestured toward the meal. “How many taxpayers did it take to pay for all this?”

“None. Or rather, one. I paid for it.”

“The poor senator. Did you leave him to starve?”

“Yes.”

He picked up the wine. “An '83 Romanée-Conti? That's worth a trip to Barbados at least. First class.” Then he had another thought. “Is this my last meal?”

“Any meal could be your last. Damn you, Flynn.” Her voice broke. She choked back her emotions. “What if they tell us something like they'll kill the whole planet unless we kill you?”

“I'd kill me.”

She closed her eyes briefly, then looked away from him.

They ate quietly for a few minutes.

“This spread looks to me like it's meant for a celebration. Was something good supposed to happen, and you forgot to tell Transportation that it fell through?”

She said, “You miss nothing.”

“Comes with the job.”

“I've often wondered why you were hiding in that little job in Texas. A man like you.”

“It was a big job, and I wasn't hiding.”

“I mean, why weren't you running an oil company or something? Doing something incredible?”

“Being a cop isn't incredible?”

She shrugged, then poured them both wine.

“By the way, that blocked number. Can't be located.”

“How is that possible?”

“It was purged from the carrier's system.”

“That's unusual.”

“Also illegal. They're frantic about it. You have any idea what it was all about?”

Flynn did, but if he was right about why he was being messaged like this, he had no intention of telling anybody. It might be dangerous even to think about it. “Not a clue,” he said.

“I know when you're lying, but never why.”

They drank in silence. The medical team had retired to the press section, so the two of them were alone. She glanced back to be sure the door was closed.

“You know, Flynn, I'm not being very fair to you.”

“What's new about that?”

She laughed a little, but said no more. He was curious, of course, but he didn't press her. If somebody wanted silence, that was fine with him.

He closed his eyes for a couple of seconds, and suddenly the plane was landing. He recognized that he had come to the point where he was desperate for sleep.

“Listen,” he said as they lined up on the runway, “if I'm supposed to talk to these people, you better tell me what I need to say.”

“No talking necessary.”

“It's a dog and pony show, then. They're going to try to convince me that there's something good going on here, which is and always will be utter horseshit. Diana, I could be needed somewhere right now.”

“There's no dog and pony show. In fact, no scientists at all. It's past their bedtimes, anyway—you should know that.”

As they touched down, he stared out into the glare of the runway lights. Beyond them was blackness.

Very little of Area 51 was actually devoted to the legendary secret of the aliens. For the most part, the place was exactly what it was claimed to be: a test bed for future aircraft, including new designs that utilized the earth's magnetic field for propulsion and lift. There were space planes here and, Flynn suspected, some devices that were of alien construction and defied gravity.

“Leave your guns, take your jacket,” Diana said as a steward cracked the door.

“My guns?”

“Leave them.”

“No.”

She sighed. “Flynn, just please cooperate for once.”

“I don't go out on lonely desert airstrips at night without my guns.”

“Do you think you're being handed over?”

“Maybe.”

“Trust me.”

“No.”

She glanced at her watch. “Take them, then.” She marched down the steps and into the shadows.

Flynn followed her into the cold of the desert night. As the wind whipped across the tarmac, he zipped his jacket. Yet again, his tongue touched his cyanide capsule. Would it be now? If he was about to be given to some creeps in a flying saucer, then yes, it would.

The plane's door was pulled closed, and its engines whined as it taxied slowly away.

“Hey, we're not anywhere!”

“No, this is the right place.”

Once the plane was gone, they were left standing on a strip of concrete surrounded on three sides by desert. Now and again, a tumbleweed went bounding across, a gray shadow in the thin light of a sickle moon. His right hand slid down to the butt of his pistol. She held tight to him, and he couldn't tell if she was trying to control him or holding on for dear life.

The sound that came then was not something you heard, but rather something you felt. It vibrated your teeth; it made your skin crawl.

“Look,” Diana whispered. Flynn followed her gaze upward and saw the hazy outline of a descending shape, perfectly round. It quickly grew larger, blotting out more and more stars.

Flynn's finger went to his trigger. He tongued his cyanide capsule until it was between his teeth.

Now the object was hanging in the air before them. It did not move. It was not affected by the wind. Flynn didn't try to convince himself that he wasn't afraid. He was very afraid.

In the distant light from the hangar area and the low moon, the object shone like burnished steel. It was nothing like the disks he was used to seeing—not worn, not small, not clattering like an old truck. No matter his loathing of the aliens and their ways, this thing's sleek form was beautiful to see.

He realized that a tripod landing gear had come out of it, and it was now standing on the runway. There hadn't been a sound nor the slightest suggestion of movement. A narrow line of light appeared in its base. This grew wider and brighter, until he could see part of an interior of featureless bright metal. Very slowly then, something began moving in the light, a form.

“My God,” he heard himself whisper. Hardly thinking of it, he drew his gun.

“Put that away.”

“Diana—”

“If they see that thing, we might die right here, right now. Both of us.”

He holstered the pistol.

A figure glided down in the column of light. He was expecting to see the thin form of an alien, but what he saw instead was a trim human shape, a woman in a blue jumpsuit.

Immediately, he thought of what he'd seen the alien do at Wright-Pat, and of Morris.

The object rose enough to spread the light into a pool a hundred feet across. Flynn and Diana were in that pool, and so was the alien, which now came walking toward them with the easy gait of absolute confidence.

She stood before them, a woman of perhaps twenty-five. If he hadn't seen her come out of a flying saucer, he would have said that she was human.

She looked up at him, her eyes searching his face, and when she did, he saw in her blond arched eyebrows and her subtle, almost sensual smile, an unmistakable shadow of Abby.

“Hello,” she said, turning toward Diana. “You are Police Commander Glass?” There was in her lilting voice just the faintest trace of an accent, oddly Asian in so Caucasian-looking an individual.

Diana saluted her.

The woman's gaze returned to him. “And you are Officer Carroll?”

“I'm Flynn.”

She wasn't smiling now, far from it. Her eyes were glittering with something he could not mistake. She hated him.

Diana said, “Officer Carroll, meet your new partner. This is Gt'n'aa. We're going to call her Geri.”

Geri extended her hand. Flynn stared at it.

“Flynn?”

“Oh—yeah.” He took the coldest, strongest hand he had ever felt in his life. As he shook it, he could feel the power there, like living steel.

“Very well,” Geri said, glancing off into the dark. “Shall we proceed?”

Flynn's mind was racing with questions, all of them unanswered, all of them urgent. But before he could speak, Diana and Geri moved off toward the edge of the runway. Simultaneously, the light went out and the ship ascended, swiftly disappearing into the night.

A familiar sort of chime sounded. Flynn saw a Jeep Cherokee on the edge of the tarmac, revealed by its interior light. Diana had just unlocked it with its remote key. She went around to the driver's side and got in.

Flynn opened the passenger door.

“Backseat,” she snapped.

He got in. The alien got in the front beside Diana. They drove off toward the buildings of the Area 51 complex, through a desert night lit only by the distant stars and the beams of their headlights.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

FLYNN SAT
silently in the Jeep, fighting back confused feelings of hatred and longing. He was used to living in a reality that he didn't quite understand, but not like this. This was too much.

They came to the familiar Science Building 3, with its glass doors and its lobby lit with glaring neon. In the days of the Lockheed Skunk Works, this had been Lockheed's on-site office building, two stories of cubbyholes now filled with exobiologists, alien ethicists, exopsychologists, and other irrelevant, time-wasting dreamers.

They crowded together, at least thirty of them, their brilliance well hidden behind their slack jaws and childishly wide eyes.

Diana went front and center with Geri in tow. Flynn hung back. He didn't even like these people to see his face, and socializing with them was not going to happen.

“Ladies and gentlemen, a lot of history has happened in this building, but I think that this qualifies as a—”

“Excuse me, I can introduce myself,” Geri said. “Please call me Geri or Colonel—either will do. I'm the equivalent of a colonel in your air force, or a senior police commander. I'm from Aeon Central Police Command, and my mission is to get this situation under control, because it's obviously running amok. I'd shake your various hands, but I'm here to work, so if Major Glass would show me to my office, please.”