tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24397885258183387182024-02-07T14:59:04.178-08:00The Twitter Novel ProjectA blog about an attempt to write a first draft of a novel entirely on Twitter (at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/Tweet_Book">www.twitter.com/Tweet_Book</a>).TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.comBlogger392125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-47844664770728322312017-05-18T22:03:00.002-07:002017-05-18T22:04:11.137-07:001: 怪獣惑星<p>"And that's episode 209, kids. Take care of yourself out there."</p>
<p>Jason clicked the Pause button. </p>
<p>"You sound like Kermit, motherfucker. Wanna try that again?" he grumbled. </p>
<p>The empty RV had no response, so Jason cleared his throat and clicked Pause again. </p>
<p>"And that's Episode 209, week of November 2, 2015. Take care of yourselves out there, kids. You never know who's watching."</p>
<p><i>Better, </i>Jason thought. <i>Good enough for the free episode, anyway.</i></p>
<p>Jason checked the timecode: an hour and fourteen minutes. Not bad. It'd come down a bit in editing, of course, but he was surprised he'd been able to squeeze over an hour out of Peter Kurten. The guy wasn't boring -- he was a monster, actually -- but he hadn't been able to dig up much while researching The Vampire of Düsseldorf. The data he did find was often sketchy and contradictory; although Jason had to admit he'd rushed this one. Too much driving last week, too much time staring at the road rather than at the screen. </p>
<p>He'd make it up in the premium episode, though. Later that day, he had an interview scheduled with a junior professor at the University of Berlin who'd written extensively about Kurten. Their Skype call was at 8pm in Berlin -- 1 pm Central, so he had a few hours.</p>
<p><i>Wait, is this even the Central time zone I'm in?</i> he asked himself.
<p>It was. A quick check on <a href="http://nist.time.gov">nist.time.gov</a> confirmed that he was, indeed, still in central time, but just barely. </p>
<p>Panama City, Florida wasn't his final destination for this leg of the trip, but it was as good a place as any to hole up for the day and knock out the podcast stuff. With any luck, he'd be back on the road by dark, heading south. </p>
<p>He had a couple of hours to kill, a situation he hated. He'd gotten up at five and run two miles, come back and recorded the week's free episode, and caught up on email and tweets. Still three hours until the Berlin call. Too early for the one meal of the day, too much work to find a local diner to hang out in and suck down coffee. </p>
<p>Jason logged into his subscription portal and checked the numbers. A little over 1,200 monthly subscribers at $5 each, up just a few from the day before. After the subscription service and the government got their chunks, he did OK... better than he'd ever done at a <i>real</i> job, anyway.</p>
<p>Of course, Jason had no illusions as to why he had as many people paying to hear him talk as he did. It wasn't his stupid Kermit voice. He probably wasn't even that interesting on his best day, and his "premium" subscriber services consisted mainly of him rambling on even more, occasionally broken up with interviews with people even weirder than he was. </p>
<p>No, Jason knew why people listened week after week, and why far too many of them paid for the privilege. </p>
<p>In the worst possible way and in the most questionable subculture out there on the Internet, Jason had become a celebrity. </p>
<p>Not only was he the last victim of the Brier Creek slasher, he was the only one who'd survived. </p>
<p>That would have been enough to endear him to all the murder-heads floating around the digital ether, but there was one more facet to the story that cemented him as a legend to them. </p>
<p>Jason hadn't just survived. Jason was the man who had killed the Brier Creek Slasher. </p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The interview had gone well -- better than most of his interviews tended to go, actually. Ulrike, the professor in Berlin, was actually the great-granddaughter of one of the original detectives on the Vampire of Düsseldorf case (which Jason might have known if he hadn't half-assed the research on this episode). She had all of the original notes and case files stored digitally, and intimated that she might share them with Jason if he ever did a Part 2 on Peter Kurten. The premium episode was shaping up to be far better than the free one. </p>
<p>A good interview helped to put Jason in a better mood, and the early November weather in Panama City was perfectly pleasant. Granted, a KOA Kampground wasn't the most scenic spot for a stroll, but it was better than sitting around in the Winnebago for hours on end hunched over his laptop editing. A break and some radiated Vitamin D would probably do him good. </p>
<p>Jason couldn't easily remember the last time he'd gone on a walk just to walk. Sure, he ran miles almost every morning, but that wasn't recreational. That was functional. Necessary. Unavoidable. </p>
<p>Once, in Arizona, the RV had just stopped dead on the road between Tucson and Phoenix. It wasn't out of gas, the check-engine light hadn't come on, nothing -- it had just stopped working. Jason had walked for about an hour through flat, featureless desert before finally coming on a town that seemed to only have a gas station, a single house, and a prison. That was a year or more ago, and that was the last time he remembered "going for a walk," though that wasn't recreational, either. </p>
<p>About fifteen minutes and three-quarters of a mile into his walk, Jason remembered why he didn't often just stroll around for fun. Walking didn't give him enough to occupy his mind; that meant his thoughts were free to go in any direction they wanted, and that wouldn't do at all. Jason turned around and quickened his pace. </p>
<p><i>Focus on something. Next week's episode. Possible routes to Tampa that avoid all Interstates. Optimization of your weight workouts to increase total tonnage pushed per week rather than reps. Anything.</i>
<p>"Civilize the mind and make savage the body."</p>
<p>Jason was pretty sure the quote came from Mao Tze Tung, but a good quote was a good quote. 22-year-old Jason probably would've gotten that tattooed somewhere, probably in inaccurate Chinese characters that actually said "Guangzhou Heavy Machinery Corporation, Model 413." This version of Jason, though, 35-year old Jason, never really stuck around anywhere long enough to find a reputable tattoo shop. </p>
<p>He made it back to his assigned Kampground spot in significantly less time than his initial journey had taken, but he didn't have to make it back to his RV before he saw something was wrong. </p>
<p>Two Panama City black-and-whites -- still the jellybean-shaped Ford Crown Victorias, not the hard-angled Dodge Chargers most departments had adopted -- were parked a few spots away from Jason's, lights on and flashing. Another Crown Vic, this one gunmetal-gray, was parked between the two cruisers. Uniformed officers were taping off the area around one of those ridiculous, tour-bus-sized RVs. A fortyish, buzz-cut gym rat in a too-tight sport coat and mismatched khakis was on his iPhone, talking to someone too quietly for Jason to hear. He was jotting down notes on a tiny spiral notepad while he talked, balancing the phone between his neck and his shoulder like Jason hadn't seen anyone but cops -- specifically, homicide cops -- do in years. </p>
<p><i>Those phones come with hands-free units,</i> Jason thought, slowing his pace considerably. <i>Wonder what cops have against the headphones?</i></p>
<p>Normally, if Jason saw a scene like the one he was approaching, he'd be in his vehicle and down the road in a heartbeat. This time, though, that wouldn't be a option. His RV was too close to the crime scene for him to jet without being suspicious. And, as he approached his vehicle, the no-necked detective looked up and locked eyes with him. </p>
<p>Jason sighed and prepared himself for yet another conversation with yet another local cop. </p>
<p>Those conversations happened with alarming frequency, and they never went well. </p>
<p>There were three modes cops tended to approach with, in Jason's experience. The first, cold and businesslike, was the least common. Second, and all too common if they'd run his ID first, was barely contained aggression. Those first two modes didn't bother him, even the aggression; that was just a byproduct of feeling like your life was constantly in danger, so Jason understood that.</p>
<p>The third mode was the one you had to worry about: the overly friendly cop. Jason only had problems with the local constabulary seven times of ten, but each time, it was the overly friendly cop who hauled him downtown and threw him into an interrogation room. </p>
<p>"Hey, bro, how are we doin' today?" the gym-rat cop asked. His smile seemed genuine, so Jason immediately started to worry. </p>
<p>"Doing okay," Jason said, trying to keep his tone as even as possible. </p>
<p>"So...any idea what happened here today?" the cop asked. </p>
<p>Jason knew what he should have done. He should have asked if he was suspected of a crime. He should have called his lawyer in Houston, the one he kept on retainer for instances just such as this one. He should've refused to answer any questions. That was what he <i>should </i>have done. </p>
<p>Against his better judgment, Jason decided to play the odds. Mostly, if he was just honest and polite, told the police what he knew (which in this case wasn't a hell of a lot), the cops would usually just get some contact information from him and never use it. </p>
<p>"Couldn't tell you, detective," Jason said, subtly shifting his posture so that his arms hung at his sides, slightly apart from his body, palms facing out. It was a trick he'd read somewhere in the course of his internet wanderings: adopt a nonthreatening posture, and people see you as honest and open. </p>
<p>He had no idea if it would work, but it was worth a shot. </p>
<p>"Did you know your neighbor over here in 15A?" the detective asked, nodding slightly in the direction of the crime scene. </p>
<p>He didn't answer Jason's question, but the word "did" -- past tense -- answered it well enough. Definitely homicide. </p>
<p>"No, sir. Just got here this morning, kept to myself most of the time."</p>
<p>Jason mentally kicked himself. Saying he "kept to himself" was almost the most serial-killer thing he could've said, except from possibly "seemed like such a normal guy."</p>
<p>If the detective noticed the odd phrasing, he didn't let it show on his face, which meant he was either oblivious or very, very good at his job. Jason hoped for the former.</p>
<p>"Oh, hey, 'fore I forget, mind if I get some ID from you?"</p>
<p>Jason really didn't want to give his identification, and legally, he didn't have to, but he was already committed to trying to nice his way out of this one. </p>
<p>"Sure thing," he said. "Wallet is in my right rear pocket. I'm reaching for it now."</p>
<p>The detective nodded. Jason pulled out his wallet, fished his license from a sea of gas-station receipts, and handed it to the detective. </p>
<p>"Jason Collins. Texas boy, eh? Still live on Brazos Road in Terlingua?"</p>
<p>"That's my legal residence, yes, sir. I mostly live in my RV these days, but I do have a house at that address."</p>
<p>The "house" was really little more than a shed, sitting on five acres of land Jason had bought four years ago for $2000. There was no heat, no power; only a mailbox and a tiny building that looked, from the road, like someone could live there.</p>
<p>"Terlingua. Never heard of that before. Whereabouts is that?"</p>
<p>"About fifteen miles northeast of the Mexican border," Jason said. </p>
<p>"What brings you over Panama City way?"</p>
<p>"Traveling. Just passing through."</p>
<p>"Oh? Where you headed?"</p>
<p>"Haven't figured that out yet."</p>
<p>Jason was being completely honest and transparent, and that was a problem, because the truth made him sound sketchy as hell, like a drifter. Which, Jason had to admit, he kind of was. </p>
<p>So when the detective asked him to have a seat in the back of his car -- to "get out of the heat," as he said, though it was maybe 75 degrees out -- while he ran Jason's information, Jason wasn't terribly surprised. </p>
<p>He was a little more surprised when the detective let him out a couple of minutes later, though.</p>
<p>They were a tense couple of minutes. Jason saw the detective on his phone again, still cradled between his neck and his shoulder like a time traveler from 1998. The call was less than a minute -- <i>probably giving my information to have someone back at the office run it</i>, Jason figured. </p>
<p>Then, another man had approached the detective. Thin, older, dressed in brown cargo pants and a white, short-sleeved button-up, this guy didn't read as a cop, not to Jason. The thin man had a few sheets of white paper, folded lengthwise, that he handed the detective as they spoke. The detective nodded over towards Jason's Winnebago, and the thin man turned around to look. When he turned back, he was shaking his head. </p>
<p>None of this seemed like positive progress to Jason, but his life up to this moment had necessarily instilled a healthy sense of pessimism.</p>
<p>The thin man, Mr. Not-a-Cop, looked somehow vaguely familiar to Jason, but he didn't look friendly. Not a cop, but not an ally, either. </p>
<p>After another moment's conversation, the detective picked up his phone again. This time, there was some scribbling in the notepad, though not a ton. This call was short, too; probably under two minutes. When it was done, the detective put his phone back into his coat pocket, said a few words to the thin man, and walked back to the cruiser. </p>
<p>"Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Collins," the detective said, still all smiles. "You can hop out of the car if you want to."</p>
<p>Jason got out of the backseat, slowly, still keeping his palms exposed whenever possible. He still didn't have a great read on where this situation was headed, but he wasn't going to escalate it if he could help it. </p>
<p>"So, I talked to the camp manager," the detective said, "says you showed up late last night, just like you indicated."</p>
<i>The manager,</i> Jason thought. <i>Of course he's the manager, idiot. You talked to him at about 1 a.m. when you showed up.</i>
<p>Paranoia wasn't a habit he'd actively cultivated, but it was a significant part of his psychological profile these days nonetheless. Though Jason preferred not to think of it as paranoia; paranoia was counterproductive. </p>
<p><i>In the city always a reflection, in the woods always a sound.</i></p>
<p>Hypervigilance wasn't counterproductive. Hypervigilance kept you alive. </p>
<p>"So, you're obviously not involved with all...that," the detective said, waving vaguely in the direction of the massive RV. </p>
<p>"So what did happen?" Jason asked. </p>
<p>The detective studied him for a moment, squinting as he looked into Jason's eyes. </p>
<p>"Remember, I ran your ID, so I know who you are. Dispatcher back at the office listens to your radio thing. I'm not sure I want this ending up on the air."</p>
<p>Rather than explain how podcasts weren't on the radio and how they didn't go out over the airwaves -- the few times he'd tried to explain that to anyone, it'd just been a waste of time -- Jason just shook his head. </p>
<p>"I do historical stuff. Serial killers. Cult murders. Not looking for a scoop here, just curious. You can tell me to fuck off if you want. Totally fine."
<p>The "you can tell me to fuck off" comment loosened the detective right up. He relaxed visibly and smiled. Of course, that's exactly what the comment was designed to do. </p>
<p>"Well, this goes no further than you and me, but a guy got killed in there a couple nights back. Some crazy shit written on the walls."</p>
<p>Part of Jason -- the research part, the part that had a show -- wanted to ask more. How had the guy been killed? What was written on the walls?</p>
<p>The larger part, though, was concerned with self-preservation. And that part told him to quit while he was ahead. </p>
<p>"Yikes. Good luck with that, detective."</p>
<p>"Yeah. I've got your info; appreciate it if you'll make yourself available if I have any further questions?" </p>
<p>"Of course."</p>
<p>"Here, take my card," the detective said, digging into his shirt pocket and handing Jason an off-white business card. </p>
<p>Jason glanced at it, but didn't bother to encode any of the data on the card. He'd never hear from the guy again anyway. He put the card into his back pocket, to be added to the collection in the desk drawer in the Winnebago eventually.</p>
<p>Jason turned to walk back to his RV, and he'd almost made it before he heard something he really didn't want to hear.</p>
<p>"Hey, hold up a second," the detective said. "My dispatcher says you really know about this murder stuff."</p>
<p>It wasn't the first time Jason had heard the words that came next -- and every time, he hoped it would be the last time he heard them.</p>
<p>"You want to take a look at the crime scene?"</p>
<p>Jason really <i>did </i>want to see the crime scene, and not just out of professional curiosity. He wasn't wild about the idea of seeing it with Detective Creatine Powder, but if it got him a look inside...</p>
<p>"Sure. I could take a quick look."</p>
<p>"Stays between you and me, of course."</p>
<p>"Understood."</p>
<p>If Jason had been suspicious before, his alarm bells were really ringing now. This cop had miraculously changed his opinion about Jason after maybe 120 seconds of conversation with his dispatcher? Not very likely. Something about the situation smelled like a trap, and Jason wanted to be sure he kept his eyes open and his ears tuned in. </p>
<p>"Here you go, hoss. Glove up," the detective said, handing a pair of latex gloves over to Jason. Before putting them on, Jason quickly brushed out his beard with his hands -- no reason to have a stray hair or some skin flakes drop off in an active crime scene. He put the gloves on and followed the detective into the RV.</p>
<p>"'S okay," the detective told the uniformed officer just inside the door. "Civilian consultant."</p>
<p>The officer nodded.</p>
<p>"Gonna ask that you hang back here in the doorway," Detective No-Neck said over his shoulder to Jason. "Crime techs are still inbound, so we can't have you inadvertently moving anything."</p>
<p>"Oh, yeah. Totally understand," Jason said. It felt less like a trap now, but only slightly.</p>
<p>He'd been so tuned in to his own paranoia -- or hypervigilance, rather -- that he hadn't immediately seen the scene right in front of him. As soon as he saw it, though, the realization slammed into his mind with an almost tangible jolt. He'd seen this scene before.</p>
<p>Not this exact scene, of course. But he'd seen pictures of one so similar that this one had to be a copy of it. There were some missing pieces, but the staging was clear.</p>
<p>One victim, male, shot in the temple, laying in bed; killed in his sleep, Jason was pretty sure. The "crazy shit" on the walls the detective mentioned earlier was a pentagram, scrawled in lipstick, along with the words "Jack the Knife."</p>
<p>"Dumb motherfucker signed his crime scene," the detective said, pointing to the lipstick scrawls on the wall. </p>
<p><i>Do I tell him?</i> Jason thought.
<p>On the one hand, telling the detective that he knew exactly what this was, and what message the killer was trying to communicate, would only make Jason himself seem super-suspicious. He'd just gotten to the point where he was pretty sure the detective didn't think Jason was involved, and telling him what he knew would definitely wreck the fuck out of that train.</p>
<p>On the other hand, a man was dead. Jason had information that might help the police find the killer. Sure, they might figure it out eventually anyway, but it's entirely possible they wouldn't see it. Not many people were as obsessed with murder as Jason, even professionals who worked in the murder business. Even cops didn't have a twice-weekly podcast called "Murdershow."</p>
<p>When did civic responsibility override self-preservation?</p>
<p>The answer, apparently, was now.</p>
<p>"That's not him signing is work. It's a reference to another murder," Jason said, sighing. He was almost sure of a trip down to the station now.</p>
<p>"Huh? What are you talking about?"</p>
<p>"Depending on how much of a purist your killer is, I'm guessing you'll find a .25 caliber bullet in your victim's skull. The pentagram and the name aren't his -- Richard Ramirez wrote them on the wall at a murder in San Francisco in 1985."</p>
<p>"Who's Richard Ramirez?" the uniformed cop at the door asked. The detective shot his officer a look, but he was probably glad the officer had asked instead of him.</p>
<p>"Serial Killer, Los Angeles mostly, 1985. My guess is you'll find a shoe print, and it'll come back to a size 12 Avia, possibly one period-appropriate, again depending on how much of a purist your guy is."</p>
<p>"How do you know all this?" the detective asked. He didn't reach for his cuffs, but Jason could tell he wanted to.</p>
<p>"It's my job," Jason said.</p>
<p>Jason wasn't psychic, but he knew the words that were coming next before the detective even opened his mouth.</p>
<p>"Would you mind coming to the station with me? Talk about this a little more?"</p>
<p><i>Well, fuck.</i></p>
<p>Jason hated it when he was right.</p>TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-44856369484699943832017-05-16T21:19:00.000-07:002017-05-16T21:20:41.132-07:00Prologue: You Are Being Watched"The absolute worst way you can start a novel is with a line of dialogue." </p>
<p>Jason rolled his eyes so hard he swore he could hear them pop. </p>
<p><i>Why did I sign up for this class again?</i> he asked himself. <i>Oh, right. The wife's idea.</i></p>
<p>"You need hobbies, Jason," she'd told him, which was code for <i>you need to get the fuck out of the house before I strangle you.</i></p>
<p>Community college was cheap for Wake County residents, and Creative Writing looked like it would be interesting. </p>
<p>It was not. </p>
<p>The professor was a young-ish guy, pushing 40, who'd published a couple of lackluster sci-fi novels years back. Those who can't do -- and according to his book sales, he couldn't -- teach. Unfortunately, this motherfucker couldn't even teach. He could pontificate. </p>
<p>This was Jason's third class, and so far, all this guy had done was tell thec class how not to write. No writing assignments. No reading -- well, apart from the first two novels of this guy's terrible magnum opus, which Jason suspected was just a ploy to sell a few more copies.</p>
<p><i>Maybe I could just go hang out at a coffee shop Thursday instead of coming back here</i>, Jason thought. <i>Or finally go to the gym.</i></p>
<p>That last thought almost made him chuckle. The gym wasn't likely; the last time he'd been there was six months prior, December 2010. He'd signed up that day and never once gone back... so at least his Adult Education endeavor had lasted a few hours longer. </p>
<p>He knew he'd been driving Ellie nuts puttering around the house, but there had to be a better solution than listening to L. Non Hubbard two nights a week.</p>
<p><i>Of course, I won't bother to tell Ellie where I do end up going,</i> he thought. <i>No real reason to. She couldn't give a shit where I am or what I'm doing, as long as I'm not anywhere near her.</i></p>
<p>The blood and the sirens were still a few hours away. Jason had no way of knowing that his dickish, dismissive dig at his wife would be the last thought he had of her while she was alive.</p>
<p>Later, he'd tell himself that he wasn't a horrible person, that he'd just been annoyed and venting some steam with the thought. </p>
<p>He also knew that wasn't true. He was an awful person, and someone was waiting on the periphery of his life to remind him of that fact.</p>TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-19597303756980638452017-05-11T21:36:00.001-07:002017-05-11T21:50:00.960-07:00Wot's all this, then?So, by way of explanation...<br />
<br />
Last night, I restarted the Twitter Novel Project after doing fuck all with it for exactly 1700 days. This was not planned. The number 1700 has no significance (though it does work out to 4 years, 7 months, and 27 days, and I WAS born on 7/27... spooooooky). There's no real answer to why I started the Project again after all this time.<br />
<br />
Best I can figure: while I was driving back from the office yesterday, words just started popping into my brain.<br />
<br />
Actually, back up. I know just when this started. A week ago or so, I was helping my wife and her community group clean up and pack up a historical monument. The property on which the monument (a 19th-Century schoolhouse) stands has been abandoned for three years, and looters, taggers, and drunken teenagers have taken over. Now, while they've decimated the other 15 or so buildings on the property, they've mostly left the schoolhouse alone.<br />
<br />
Except one tagger, who'd spray-painted a single, huge reptilian eye next to the front door.<br />
<br />
Since then, the phrase "an eye is upon you" has been on my mind.<br />
<br />
So, on the way home from work, I started writing. Nothing substantial, not a part of any story; just words and phrases, whatever came into my head as I let my brain go where it wanted.<br />
<br />
I liked it. I liked putting words together. I haven't done it in a while, but when I did it yesterday evening, I wanted more.<br />
<br />
I was in my car, just about to leave the house to go to the gym, when I made the decision. Reboot @Tweet_Book. Write again, every day, like you used to.<br />
<br />
And while I sweated my middle-aged fat cells off of my doughy midsection, I wrote a chapter. (It's labeled as Chapter 1, but it's really the prologue; I'll be numbering the chapters correctly here on the blog, and will eventually get there on the twitter stream.)<br />
<br />
So, a few disclaimers: I am coming up with this book as I go, entirely off the top of my head. It might suck. I'm rusty. But plus side, you'll get to see a first draft as it forms.<br />
<br />
Also, I plan to use my gym time to write (I'm actually in between sets as I write this blog, and it's taking forever). I take Fridays off from the gym, so I might take Fridays off from writing. Or I might write more. We will see.<br />
<br />
That's about it; I'll be posting chapters to the blog here as they're completed, after I clean up after the hobos and taggers that have set up in the four and a half years I've abandoned this property.<br />
<br />
Thanks for taking one more ride with me.TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-2866960512195235472012-08-09T00:07:00.003-07:002012-08-09T00:07:28.378-07:00E/B:H -- Chapter Ten<br />
When our wheels touched down at DFW, you would have never suspected the city was in the middle of an alien invasion. Yeah, I was comfortable calling it "alien" by that point. It's weird -- logically, we all kind of knew that's what was going on. All of us were aware that these things were coming down from space, but no one was using the word "alien." I have no idea why. I guess we thought if we didn't say it, it wasn't happening.<br />
<br />
And in Dallas, it was hard to believe it *was* actually happening. Real humans -- obviously not aliens posing as humans -- met us at the plane. They were from the Federal Police Force, Dallas sector. They were all smiles when they saw heavily armed Marines pouring out of the transport.<br />
<br />
"Finally," one of them said, beaming. "We've been waiting for reinforcements from Sam Houston for hours now."<br />
<br />
The man who said this was young, maybe twenty-four. His shoulder rank insignia showed he was a watch Lieutenant, in command of at least a hundred other Federal Law Enforcement Agents.<br />
<br />
"That's not us," Keller said, shaking the man's offered hand. "We were just at Hood."<br />
<br />
"Oh," the Lieutenant said, frowning. "Hood's a no-go. Comms say we lost it hours ago."<br />
<br />
"I can definitely confirm that we did," I said.<br />
<br />
"Wait. I know you, right?"<br />
<br />
It took me a second to realize the watch Lieutenant was talking to me. Even when I did, I wondered "how would he know me?"<br />
<br />
Yeah. That's fucked up, right? One day of complete chaos had turned my brain into meat sludge. I hadn't forgotten who I was, exactly. I'd just forgotten that, more days than not, I was talking to the nation on the biggest news network in the whole damn country. To be fair, though, it had been a hell of a day.<br />
<br />
"Dane Phoenix," I said, putting on the smile again. Felt like it had been ages. I had to actively think about how to *be* Dane Phoenix, how to act and talk and speak in the manner Dane Phoenix was known for. The reason was simple: I hadn't been Dane Phoenix since the cameras went off the air in Honolulu. I'd been someone else. Someone new. And this new person was someone I didn't really know -- or rather, a weird combination of two distinct people I didn't really know.<br />
<br />
"Mr. Phoenix, sir. Welcome back to Dallas. I can arrange a ride to Global for you and your crew," the watch Lieutenant said.<br />
<br />
I looked over at Keppler, who nodded.<br />
<br />
"Looks like this is where we part ways," he said, reaching out his hand. I shook it.<br />
<br />
"I'm going to hold you to that story you promised me," I told him, grinning. We both knew I was joking. My chances of that were slim.<br />
<br />
The watch Lieutenant led us -- all of the Global employees, plus Jeb and the surfer kid -- to a waiting Federal Police transport. None of us talked much as the transport lifted off and slowly hovered away from the airport. We were all glued to the windows.<br />
<br />
There was a sort of sick fascination that had taken hold of all of us -- we just had to see how bad Dallas had gotten it. Curiosity. Morbid curiosity. That was all it was. We'd seen Honolulu -- a huge, modern city -- reduced to rubble, then quickly abandoned. We had seen Fort Hood evacuated, ceded to the invading alien forces. So it was natural to wonder how fucked up Dallas would be.<br />
<br />
Shocked doesn't begin to describe what I felt as we flew away from DFW along the old I-35 corridor. It wasn't the carnage or chaos. It wasn't dead bodies jammed along the roadway that surprised me. It was the complete and utter lack of anything along those lines.<br />
<br />
The area surrounding the airport looked perfectly normal. It was past midnight, but there were still vehicles down on the roads. None of them seemed in a particular hurry to get anywhere, either -- traffic was light, moving along just fine. Just another day. No evidence of alien invasion, of metal spheres falling from the sky and unleashing hell. Light traffic. It was in-fucking-sane.<br />
<br />
As we swooped low through the skyscrapers in Far North Dallas, I started to wonder about Ryan, and the whole phone-not-working thing. Dallas looked unscathed so far, but Ryan's phone had simply... well, stopped existing as far as the Umbra servers were concerned. Other phones in the area seemed work -- Jeremy had been able to get in contact with one of the twins before we got to Dallas.<br />
<br />
So what was up with Ryan's phone? Last I heard from him, he was trying to keep me on the air before the Federal Police shut us down. When I hadn't been able to get him on the phone, I'd assumed they killed him... but Umbra's servers would have compensated then. They would have at least played a message saying the phone was no longer active. They hadn't. So what had gone down in Dallas?<br />
<br />
As we approached downtown, it still looked like "nothing" was the answer to that question. Dealey Plaza looked just the same. Apart from the fact that it was dark out now, I didn't see anything different than I had when I'd been there two days before. Odd.<br />
<br />
I wanted to ask the pilot some questions, but we were in a police transport, commonly used to detain and ferry criminals around. We were separated from the driver by armor plating and bulletproof glass. He could have talked to us on the transport's intercom. He didn't. We never saw anything but the back of his head. When we landed at Global, he just flipped the switch to open the door.<br />
<br />
Once we were all out of the transport, he simply lifted off. We never once spoke to him, never even saw what he looked like. When the watch Lieutenant said he'd set us up with a ride back to Global News, he meant exactly that -- a ride. Nothing more.<br />
<br />
The lobby doors at Global are secured -- of course -- but every one of us but Andrevich, Mischa, Jeb, or the kid could open them. Jeremy placed his palm against the sensor, and we heard the whirring and clicking of the door's locking system go to work. Easy. Just like it had a thousand other times, the door popped open.<br />
<br />
Unlike every other time I'd been there, the lobby was dark. Empty. It was well past midnight, but normally, the office was up and running 24/7. Not so anymore -- there was no one around downstairs. There should have at least been security, so we waited for a few moments in case the guy was walking his rounds or something. Nope.<br />
<br />
Elevators still worked fine, though. We crammed into one car and headed upstairs, bound for Ryan's office. No one said much. No one really even suggested we go upstairs to Ryan's office -- I think we just all understood that was where we should be going.<br />
<br />
I'll admit it. With the empty, darkened lobby, and the fact that I couldn't get him on the phone... I expected Ryan to be dead. I figured we'd walk into his office and find a corpse, or worse, nothing at all. The whole night had taken on a horror-movie vibe.<br />
<br />
It snapped back to an even weirder sense of normalcy when we cleared the door to Ryan's office, though. He was just sitting there. Same place as usual, behind his desk, going over whatever the hell it was he looked at on his computer all day. Strangest thing. When you've got yourself steeled for a dead body or a missing person, a guy sitting at his desk can freak you right the hell out.<br />
<br />
"Oh, look. You've brought everyone in the world," Ryan said dryly, looking up from his desk.<br />
<br />
I suppose we looked pretty odd. To be honest, though, I didn't care about how we *looked*. I just wanted to know what the fuck was going on around here. I said so.<br />
<br />
"You're going to have to be more specific," Ryan answered, sighing. "Rather a lot has happened here in the last 24 hours or so."<br />
<br />
"I tried to call you about a hundred times," I said, exaggerating to make my point.<br />
<br />
"Yeah, that. Phone system fried itself. About half the phones in the state went tits-up when Umbra turned on its defense network," Ryan said.<br />
<br />
"What defense network?"<br />
<br />
"Maybe you've noticed, with your keen journalistic skills and all, but things here in Dallas are a little less chaotic," Ryan said. "Especially compared to the part of the world you've just come from. The city has Umbra Dynamics to thank for that."<br />
<br />
Umbra. The huge mega-company that owned damn near everything. "If you have it, Umbra gave it to you," their ads constantly reminded us.<br />
<br />
"How did Umbra manage to protect this city?" Andrevich asked, but only because he got to the question first. It was on my mind.<br />
<br />
"No one's talking," Ryan said, shaking his head. "But I did some legwork. There are four other cities with major Umbra R&D facilities. Amsterdam, Shenzhen, Bogota, Mogadishu, and Dallas. None of them were hit, and electronics went crazy in all five. We saw lights. Way up in the sky, maybe 25,000 feet. But that's it."<br />
<br />
"Some kind of shield," Jeb said. It wasn't a question. "I've read... things. Rumors about Umbra and directed-energy projects."<br />
<br />
"Which network would carry that story?" Jeremy asked, raising an eyebrow.<br />
<br />
"None that you'd be familiar with," Jeb told him, winking.<br />
<br />
Undergrounds. ICPs --Independent Content Producers. I fucking knew it. I pegged Jeb for an illegal broadcaster the second Andrevich and I met him. Kid had a hell of a rebellious streak. Good for him.<br />
<br />
So Dallas and a few other cities were safe, at least for the time being. But I wondered how Ryan had *really* come by that info. The guy wasn't a journalist, and never had been. He was a manager -- a good one, but still -- not a researcher or an investigator. I'd find out that answer soon enough.<br />
<br />
"So, what are we supposed to do now?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"Essentially nothing," Ryan told me. "We're off the air indefinitely. It's not just us -- all the networks are shut down."<br />
<br />
Even then, that seemed like a horrible idea. People everywhere -- those of them still alive, anyway -- would need information. Would need to know what the fuck was going on. That was the media's job. That was our whole reason for existing.<br />
<br />
"For now, we lay low. Go home," Ryan continued. "Wait for..."<br />
<br />
He didn't know how to finish that sentence. I don't blame him. I wouldn't, either. He just trailed off, and it was briefly silent.<br />
<br />
"Um, Ryan," Jeremy finally said. "None of us live here, boss."<br />
<br />
"Yes, Jeremy, I have thought of that," Ryan said, sighing. "The network has a block of suites at the Hotel Palomar. I've gone ahead and set them aside for you folks. There aren't a ton. Some of you will have to double up."<br />
<br />
And that was it. That was all he told us. Sure, we talked for a few minutes after that. But as far as any sort of useful information, that was all he gave us.<br />
<br />
I wasn't one of the ones who had a roommate. Of course. That goes without saying. I was the talent, the number one network draw at that point. My suite was, accordingly, freaking huge. And I was all ready to put the king-size bed to use -- couldn't remember the last time I slept -- when there was a knock at my door. It was Jeb.<br />
<br />
"Hey," he said when I let him in. He was grinning like a lemur. "What say we go get into some major, major trouble?"<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
Ten minutes later, we were in Jeb's car, cruising North. OK, we were in *a* car -- Jeb didn't own one, here or at home.<br />
<br />
"It's stolen," he said before I asked, nodding his head in response to the unverbalized question. "Hotel parking garage."<br />
<br />
"Jesus, Jeb," I said, shaking my head. "Why didn't you just check one out from the network?"<br />
<br />
"Network vehicles have locators. If I wanted Umbra Dynamics to know where we were going, I'd have just called them up and told them."<br />
<br />
"Umbra Dynamics?" I asked. "What do they have to do with anything?"<br />
<br />
"Oh, you know. Not much. They just bought out Global News early this morning," he said.<br />
<br />
"I don't believe that," I said, scowling.<br />
<br />
"Not just Global, either. A handful of others, too. Lungshan bought the rest."<br />
<br />
I had a hard time accepting that. Sure, the Networks were huge corporate entities, but they were supposed to be their own animals. If Umbra and Lungshan controlled all the news, how was any accurate information supposed to get out?<br />
<br />
Then it hit me, and hard. Information *wasn't* supposed to get out. They'd bought the networks to shut them down, choke off the flow of news to the people.<br />
<br />
I started to say something about it to Jeb, but he just nodded. He already knew what I'd just now figured out. He's a sharp guy.<br />
<br />
"Where are we going?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"The suburbs," he told me, winking. "There's someone there you need to meet. Someone insane." We drove along the old US75 route for a few minutes. I saw town names go by -- Richardson. Plano. We pulled off onto surface roads. The street signs went from blue to green, and the houses started getting lower. Older. Streetlights were few and far between.<br />
<br />
"These houses must be a hundred years old," I said.<br />
<br />
"One fifty, give or take," Jeb told me, nodding.<br />
<br />
"Are we in the ghetto?"<br />
<br />
"No, but you can probably see it from here if you squint hard enough."<br />
<br />
The streets wound back for miles. Tons of low houses. Few vehicles. Old garages not wide enough to house the smallest commercially available transports. Not the ghetto -- but not far off.<br />
<br />
"Town's called Garland," Jeb said. "Used to be middle class, then lower middle, now... this. Well inside Umbra's supposed shield. What do you think Umbra would want to protect out here?"<br />
<br />
It sounded like a rhetorical question, so I didn't bother to answer. My silence didn't seem to bother Jeb at all. He just kept driving us deeper into the darkened neighborhood. Dark, but not abandoned. Several of the houses we passed had lights on, even at this late hour. There was no one outside on the sidewalks, though. Made sense. I can certainly say I wouldn't want to be out in this neighborhood after dark.<br />
<br />
"We're here," Jeb announced, stopping the car.<br />
<br />
We'd pulled up outside a house that, to me, looked no different than any other we'd passed on the drive. It was different, though. I could tell that as soon as I stepped out of the car -- it stank.<br />
<br />
I don't know what the smell reminded me of, but it wasn't good. It was sharp and obviously unpleasant, but also familiar in a way I couldn't place.<br />
<br />
If the smell bothered Jeb, he didn't let on. He just walked right on up to the front door and raised his hand to knock. Before he did, though, he turned back to face me.<br />
<br />
"Don't make any sudden moves or loud noises around this guy," he warned. "He's jumpy, and I know for a fact he's armed. Heavily."<br />
<br />
I nodded. I kept my hands out at my sides, palms facing in front of me, and slouched my shoulders a bit. Nonthreatening stance. I'd perfected it years back -- you never knew when you'd have to interview some nutjob dictator in a tiny South American country. Jeb went ahead and knocked on the door, which opened seconds later.<br />
<br />
The guy definitely *looked* crazy. Like, textbook definition. Long black hair, long black beard, even *glasses*. In this day and age. The green eyes behind the glasses darted constantly, quickly. He looked jumpy, sure, but I got the definite feeling he was expecting us.<br />
<br />
"Get in the house," he spat before Jeb could speak.<br />
<br />
Somehow, I was prepared for the inside of the house to be completely different from the outside. I expected smooth, modern, clean. I expected decent lighting, computers tucked away in spotless corners, running scenarios and probabilities.<br />
<br />
I got none of that. The front door opened up into a dirty living room. A third-hand couch was pushed up against one wall, and there was actual trash... well, everywhere. I hadn't seen papers since I was a kid, but there were piles of them just hanging around. I was slightly disgusted.<br />
<br />
"Who's the cover boy?" the guy who answered the door asked. He was looking at me, but obviously talking to Jeb.<br />
<br />
"Dane Phoenix. You remember -- the reporter I told you about."<br />
<br />
"Network," the man scoffed. "Umbra drone."<br />
<br />
I'd been about to offer my hand. I got the impression it wouldn't be a good move, so I just stood there.<br />
<br />
"Dane, meet Richard Graves," Jeb said with a long sigh. "Weapons designer, and *former* Umbra drone, himself."<br />
<br />
"Uh, hi." It was all I could think to say.<br />
<br />
"You bugged?" Richard spat. His eyes stopped darting around and immediately locked in on mine, sizing me up. I saw his hands twitch at his sides.<br />
<br />
*He's crazy. Paranoid at best,* I thought, keeping my palms out and open.<br />
<br />
"Why would I be bugged?"<br />
<br />
"Umbra owns your damn network now. They've been trying to get surveillance here for months. Tried everything else -- why not a quasi-celebrity?" Richard said, grinning.<br />
<br />
"He's not bugged, Richard," Jeb said, sighing. "If you know Umbra bought his network, then you know he's off the air."<br />
<br />
"Sure. *Currently,*" Richard said, sneering. "But you journalist types are all alike. I'm including you in that, Jeb."<br />
<br />
"Look, " I said. "I don't even know what I'm doing here. You want me to leave? Fine with me. This neighborhood gives me the fucking creeps anyway."<br />
<br />
Richard looked at me for a long moment, squinting his eyes as if he was performing some sort of microcellular analysis. After a few seconds, his eyes opened to a normal aperture, and he shrugged.<br />
<br />
"Ah, fuck it. World's ending anyway, am I right? I assume you're here about the worms."<br />
<br />
That got me paying attention. The field Lieutenant had said Dallas had been unaffected. Ryan had said the same -- nothing had landed here, just lights in the sky. So how did this guy in the ghetto know about the worms?<br />
<br />
Richard might have been crazy, but he was perceptive. He noticed my surprise, smiled big and wide. He had awful teeth. Just awful. Near as I was aware, Umbra employees could get that fixed on their first day of work, if for some reason it wasn't corrected earlier. Simply put, no one had bad teeth anymore. Except this guy.<br />
<br />
"Umbra told you about the shield, right? Protects the whole metro?"<br />
<br />
I nodded.<br />
<br />
"'Fraid not. I mean, there is one, but they didn't get it up in time to stop the worms. Or the big cat things. Not at first," Richard said. "Not until the aliens contacted them and *told* Umbra how to activate the shield for the first time."<br />
<br />
"For the first time?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"Shield was a prototype," Richard told me. "They'd never gotten it to work until today."<br />
My mind was throwing up red flags everywhere. Aliens contacting a mega-corporation... to tell them how to thwart the alien invasion? Umbra making a power grab on a society that seemed headed down the tubes anyway? And a guy, very nearly a hobo, knew all this? When no one else did?<br />
<br />
Richard might have been a borderline homeless drifter, but he was perceptive. He saw the doubt on my face.<br />
<br />
"Yeah, yeah. Crazy guy doesn't know shit. Except this -- I can prove all of it."<br />
<br />
I seriously doubted that, and I said so.<br />
<br />
"Of course you doubt me. I might too, in your position. But I'm the guy who destroyed the initial worm infestation," he told me. "Right out there on the street behind you. And I can show you exactly how and why I knew what to do."<br />TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-65605256477679113672012-06-08T00:11:00.003-07:002012-06-08T00:11:58.844-07:00E/B:H -- Chapter Nine<br />
In freakout mode, my brain has about a billion thoughts at once. Panic thoughts-- run, hide, fight, surrender, scream. They jumble together, the different commands contradicting each other, throwing my body into paralysis. I freeze right the hell up. In this case, that was the right thing to do.<br />
<br />
*Don't react. They think they're passing. They'll fight if you tip your hand.* It was that other voice again, cutting through the maelstrom of panic thoughts.<br />
<br />
Keppler looked over at me, eyebrow raised. He knew something was up. I shook my head slightly.<br />
<br />
"Welcome to Hood!" one of the... I don't know... guys? Impostors? Aliens? Anyway, it was the tall one who said it. His voice was cheerful, which definitely seemed out of place.<br />
<br />
"Please come with us."<br />
<br />
It was the other one who spoke this time, his voice flat, grave.<br />
<br />
I wasn't going to do anything, as per the voice in my head. From the way he looked over at me, I thought the voice might have been Keppler -- that he was the one in my brain, feeding me info. He disproved that almost immediately, though, by training his assault rifle on the tall one's forehead. His men backed his play. In the space of a few seconds, the two impostors had more than a hundred guns pointed at them.<br />
<br />
The cheerful one smiled widely. The serious one raised an eyebrow, or would have if he'd had them.<br />
<br />
That was when I noticed they didn't just have shaved heads. Neither of the two huge guys had any visible body hair whatsoever -- eyebrows, stubble, arm hair. Nothing. Like two shaved monkeys.<br />
<br />
*They think they're passing,* the voice in my head had told me, but they weren't doing a very good job of it. From a distance... Maybe. But up close, though they had the right number of arms, legs, and heads, they still stuck out like pigeons among seagulls. The differences weren't completely alien, but they were enough to warn us these guys weren't who they said they were.<br />
<br />
"All right. Answers or bullets, your choice," Keppler said. "Tell me who you are and what's going on around here."<br />
<br />
A brief silence then. Cheerful and Serious looked at each other, their expressions locked. Then they looked back at Keppler. The Serious one spoke first.<br />
<br />
"We need you to come with us, Colonel," he said. His pronunciation of "colonel" was off -- he said the "l"s, like it was written.<br />
<br />
"Drop the act," Wong said, "or the *Major* will definitely make good on his promise to have us shoot you."<br />
<br />
More odd silence. They looked at each other again. Cheerful spoke next.<br />
<br />
"Welcome to Fort--"<br />
<br />
"Wong, shoot this motherfucker," Keppler said.<br />
<br />
Keppler had his Marines trained well -- Wong didn't hesitate for an instant. One round flew from the barrel of her assault rifle. It augered into the Cheerful one's skull just above the bridge of his nose. All of it took less than a second, but it seemed slower. I felt like I was watching the scene play out in slow motion, like the fight recaps Andrevich and I reviewed the night before.<br />
<br />
I half-expected the bullet to have no effect. I was sure these guys were alien now, invaders that came down from *up there,* right? Both of the invading creatures we'd dealt with so far had shrugged off bullets like flies, so you can see my train of thought there.<br />
<br />
I was wrong. The bullet did what you'd expect a bullet to do -- went in through the front and sprayed a red mess out the back. Cheerful crumpled to the Tarmac like any human would. But Serious didn't react like any normal human might -- not by a long shot. In fact, he didn't really react at all.<br />
<br />
"I'm going to need you to come with us," he said, his tone exactly the same as before. Never mind that he'd just seen Wong obliterate his buddy's skull. Never mind that we *obviously* weren't buying any of this shit. Nope. To look at him, you'd think we just stepped off the transport, and nothing of any significance had happened in the interim.<br />
<br />
"Your turn, big man. Who are you?" Keppler demanded, indicating with a small hand motion that Wong was to lock in on this guy now. She shifted her assault rifle slightly, the barrel now deadshot-aimed at the Serious one's forehead.<br />
<br />
Serious didn't say a word. He just stood there, not moving, for what seemed like a really long time. Keppler sighed.<br />
<br />
"Wong, kneecap," he ordered quietly.<br />
<br />
Wong shifted again and let one round fly. Again, I expected something... well, I don't know. Different than what you'd expect. And again, just what you'd think would happen when a bullet hit the knee happened. A lot of blood, a guy hitting the pavement.<br />
<br />
Well, not everything you'd expect to happen, actually. When a normal person gets a kneecap blown off, you hear screaming. Lots of it. This guy, though, apart from falling right down, didn't show any signs of pain. No screaming, no cursing -- no vocal sounds at all. He just stayed there on the ground, not really doing anything.<br />
<br />
"Oh, fuck this," Keppler said, obviously exasperated. "Wong, Arch. You two stay here and babysit this motherfucker. He makes a wrong move, turn him off. Everyone else, fan out. Top-to-bottom search. I want a situation report on what's going in here in five minutes, clear?"<br />
<br />
I stuck with Keppler. It was an easy choice, really. Keppler had already shown a willingness to kill the shit out of anyone who got in his way, and I wanted to be behind that guy. I ended up walking next to Henderson -- Hendo -- as we headed away from the airfield and into the base itself.<br />
<br />
Very, very quiet. That's what I remember thinking as we walked down the darkened streets, the Marines deployed four across as we moved forward. There wasn't anyone moving -- it was like a ghost town. Keppler told me that this was beyond unusual, which I had already guessed.<br />
<br />
"Maybe an evacuation? Like the one we saw back in Hawaii?" I suggested.<br />
<br />
"Beacon doesn't fit with that," Keppler told me. "Evacuate, then turn on the beacon telling airborne forces to land here?"<br />
<br />
"Unless the military didn't turn on the beacon," I said. "Those guys back there might have. You know, to wipe out the possibility of reinforcements."<br />
<br />
"I don't like that idea one bit. That would mean we've already walked into a trap, and are just walking further," he said, toggling for his radio. "All positions. Report in now."<br />
<br />
I checked the screen on my forearm. It had gone dark. I thought for a second the feed had been disconnected. That Sanchez had finally realized his mistake and shut off my access to the Marines' intel. Turned out, that wasn't the case. Keppler and his people apparently weren't getting any intel at all. Keppler's radio call went unanswered, too. Something was wrong.<br />
<br />
It wasn't like all the power was dead -- my screen was still functional when I tapped it. It just couldn't send or receive. That made it basicslly useless --every function the screen had was based on its ability to connect to larger networks, Umbra servers. Best I could do with it now was amp the brightness and contrast all the way up and use it as an awkwardly placed flashlight. Great.<br />
<br />
The Marines seemed to be in worse shape, though, and I guess I understand that. They're used to having multiple data streams. Take those away, and they're going to be pretty confused.<br />
<br />
For a moment.<br />
<br />
"Harden up, Marines," Keppler barked at them. "You've trained without peripherals. Search pattern back to the transport. Once they realize they're in the dark, the others will--"<br />
<br />
Gunfire -- a lot of it -- interrupted him. I couldn't tell where it was coming from, but it sounded pretty goddamn close to me. The Marines, though, were able to lock in on it even without their technological advantage. At a wave from the Major, they took off. I had to run to keep up, and I didn't have the huge pack each Marine carried to weigh me down. These dudes were fucking *quick*.<br />
<br />
The gunfire was pretty close by, just two streets over. When we got there, we were confused by what we saw. OK, I was confused. I can't say for sure that the Marines didn't know what was going on, but... well, I don't see how they could. It didn't make sense.<br />
<br />
It was Sanchez's team, and they were taking cover from -- and firing on -- well, it looked like they were fighting with nothing. A few of them would pop up, empty the magazines in their rifles, and dive back behind parked transports. Then a few more, same deal. It was obvious what they were doing -- giving the other guys a chance to reload -- but it was still really confusing from my POV. That was mainly because, no matter where I looked, I still couldn't see *what the fuck they were shooting at.*<br />
<br />
I wasn't alone. Even with their night-vision goggles, the Marines didn't seem to see anything.<br />
<br />
"Switch to thermal," Keppler ordered quietly.<br />
<br />
"Still seeing nothing, boss," one of the Marines -- no idea what her name was -- said to the group. I could have told her that. I thought maybe Sanchez's team had all gone insane, until Keppler finally yelled over at them.<br />
<br />
"Sanchez! What the fuck, Sergeant?"<br />
<br />
"Get down, sir!" Sanchez yelled. I felt someone tackle me to the ground from behind. It was Andrevich, and his timing was spot-on. I felt something fly over my head, something insanely hot. Luckily, no one was right behind me -- I'd had my back against a building. The wall of said building collapsed, burning as it did so.<br />
<br />
"Cover!" Keppler yelled, and the Marines scattered in every direction. They took positions behind ground transports, ducked into buildings, hit the ground. Andrevich dragged me behind a large transport. I took a look back at the building that had taken the hit from.... whatever that was... instead of me. The whole thing was in flames. I kind of wondered what kind of cover these huge, olive-drab transports could really provide from whatever weapon had done that.<br />
<br />
"'Chez!" Keppler yelled from a transport just down the street from us. "You see who the fuck is shooting at us?"<br />
<br />
"Negative, boss! Shit just started blowing up!"<br />
<br />
"Then what the fuck are you shooting at? Stop wasting ammo until you get a target!"<br />
<br />
Made sense. I can't say I would have reacted any differently than Sanchez, but I wasn't a trained Marine. But his response seemed logical to me. Something's firing on you and your team, you shoot back. Maybe you'll get lucky and hit something.<br />
<br />
The transport sat pretty low. There was just about six inches between the bottom of its armor plating and the street, but if I lay flat on the ground, I could see. I scanned up the street, in the direction Sanchez and his crew had fired their weapons. I didn't see anything up there, either. Not at first. Not until that voice in my head came back, that same weird, transplanted thought process I'd been dealing with all day.<br />
<br />
They weren't easy to see, of course. I mean, if they were, the Marines would have already started killing the shit out of them. They hadn't, though, for two very simple reasons, the first being what I just said -- they were hard to see. The second reason -- and the most important -- they were looking in the wrong place.<br />
<br />
I imagine, when you're getting shot at, the process is simple. You look in the direction the shots are coming from, wait for some movement, and fire back. It makes sense, at least normally.<br />
<br />
Nothing about today had been normal. We assumed whoever was shooting had to do it the way we did -- aim down a straight line. Nope. I looked up the street and between two buildings -- barracks, maybe? -- the the left, and saw a quick white flash. It wasn't fire. He -- or it -- would move, and then, a second later, something would blow up *around the corner*.<br />
<br />
*Indirect fire,* the voice said. Or maybe that one was my own thoughts. I'm not too sure at this point.<br />
<br />
I motioned for Keppler to come over to where I was. Keppler crawled over to my position fast, keeping his head and body down below the line of transports.<br />
<br />
"Over there," I told him. I pointed, under the transport, to the alleyway where I'd seen the movement. Just as he got on my eyeline, another white flash.<br />
<br />
"Looks like a dog," Keppler said, his voice marginally louder than a whisper.<br />
<br />
"That's a damn big dog," I said. "Just wait. He's about to do something no dog could do."<br />
<br />
And he did. The white-silver flash moved fast, and another explosion erupted near us.<br />
<br />
"Holy shit," Keppler muttered, flattening himself on the ground and adjusting his goggles.<br />
<br />
"Yeah," I said. "Pretty wild. Firing around a corner."<br />
<br />
"Not that," he said. "Don't pull the trigger, just look through the scope."<br />
<br />
He passed me his rifle. I guess what I saw through the scope mirrored what he was seeing with his goggles. And "holy shit" was pretty goddamn accurate.<br />
<br />
The white-silver flash... well, the silver part was armor, much like the stuff the cat had back in Honolulu. There was more of it. This armor covered the thing pretty much from head to toe. But the white part...<br />
<br />
Well, that was the thing's face, behind a shield. Kind of like a helmet visor or a faceplate... but I could just make out the face. It... it did kind of look like a dog, I suppose. It was covered in white fur, and I could see two eyes and a mouth -- but the facial structure didn't match that of a dog, really. It looked more or less like one of our faces, yours or mine, but covered in thick, white fur.<br />
<br />
Like I said -- holy shit was right.<br />
<br />
It took Keppler a lot less time than me to process what we were seeing. I was still trying to reconcile the image in the scope. Keppler was already formulating a plan.<br />
<br />
"So the motherfucker can fire around corners. Good for him," he growled. "Sergeant Green. Over here, now."<br />
<br />
One of the Marines -- one I hadn't met yet -- lumbered over. The guy was huge, which was fortunate for him. He had a ton of gear to carry.<br />
<br />
"Set up the Indigo system. Faster the better."<br />
<br />
"Indigo?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"Yeah. Some new shit. Computer-controlled indirect targeting system. It links in to several weapons systems we have."<br />
<br />
I didn't necessarily get it. My confusion must have showed.<br />
<br />
"He's not the only one who can fire around corners, or through walls, or up a flight of stairs."<br />
<br />
Green was setting up during this short explanation, putting down a solid tripod base and a tiny camera. It looked like Jeb's. This one, though, didn't just record and transmit -- as I looked on the panel at the base of the tripod, I saw how much more it did. It had locked in on not only an infrared version of the thing around the corner, but had found four more behind that same building.<br />
<br />
"Targets are painted, sir," Green said. "I'm up on three launchers and two fifties."<br />
<br />
"Good man. Kill the fuck out of 'em."<br />
<br />
Green didn't need to be told twice. He hit a single button, and it sounded like the world was coming to an abrupt, firey end.<br />
<br />
"God and Thunder," he said, winking at me. I had no idea what he meant.<br />
<br />
I watched through the assault rifle's infrared scope. I could still see the -- I think it's safe to call him a humanoid at this point -- down the alley, and he saw the rockets coming. I could tell by his reaction. He turned to run, but he wasn't nearly fast enough. The explosion blanked out the scope for a second.<br />
<br />
When the image flickered back on, I could see the humanoid was down for the count. He was facedown in the concrete alley. Dead.<br />
<br />
Or so I thought. As you probably know, since you survived long enough to hear me tell this whole story, he wasn't actually dead. He was hurting, I'm sure -- it had to have been like getting hit by a car -- but the rockets didn't kill him. He slowly got up.<br />
<br />
"Movement, sir," Green said, pointing to the screen. All four of the figures were getting shakily to their feet. Unbeleiveable.<br />
<br />
"Well, fuck me. Hit them again," Keppler ordered.<br />
<br />
"Right away, sir."<br />
<br />
Same munitions, same results. Knocked down, not out. Thing is, we couldn't really tell if we were even doing any damage. They'd get hit, fall down, and get back up a second later. They could be totally fine, or they could be bleeding internally from just the impact. There was simply no way for us to know which.<br />
<br />
"Major? What's next?"<br />
<br />
"We fall back to the transport. Green, see if you can get on with Texas ANG," Keppler ordered.<br />
<br />
"Radio's still down, sir," Green said after a minute.<br />
<br />
"We might have some better luck at the transport," Keppler told me. "Bigger transmitter there, and maybe out of range of whatever's jamming us. Green, get everyone ready to move."<br />
<br />
"But," I started. "Your other teams. Without radio, how will they know we're going back to the plane?"<br />
<br />
"They'll figure it out," Keppler assured me. "Probably already have. Once they realized the net was down, the team leaders would've given the order to regroup. They'll be fine."<br />
<br />
I wasn't so sure about that -- what if they were under fire, like us? But Keppler seemed to know what he was talking about. He waved over to Sanchez and made some motions with his hands. Sanchez apparently understood, gave the thumbs-up, and started moving. The team I was rolling with merged with Sanchez and his people, and after another barrage from Green's system, we got out of there.<br />
<br />
I expected the enemy... humanoid... things to shoot at us as we retreated. They did, but not for very long, maybe thirty seconds. I doubt it's because we moved out of range -- if they could fire around corners, they obviously had better weapons than we did. But we weren't too far away when the incoming fire dropped off.<br />
<br />
We weren't going to stop, though. Keppler had us move double-time. I know Keppler wanted to call it a strategic retreat or something, but it sure as hell felt a lot more like "running the fuck away."<br />
<br />
The transport was just as we left it, and Archer and Wong were still guarding the fake Army guy. He looked as passive as ever. He must have been aware of the firefight a few blocks down -- it wasn't quiet -- but he looked calm and serious. Unfazed. Zenlike.<br />
<br />
I could see his disposition annoyed the hell out of Keppler. The Major was angry, and I don't blame him a bit. I wasn't angry -- just confused. But Keppler, like a lot of his Marines, had unlearned most of their emotions. Confusion often manifested as anger.<br />
<br />
"Wong, have any of the other teams reported in?" Keppler asked, glaring at his downed prisoner.<br />
<br />
"All but one, sir," she said. "They got a few miles out into the base, past whatever was jamming our comms. They're on the way back right now."<br />
<br />
"Good," he said.<br />
<br />
Keppler looked down at our prisoner, sneering at him.<br />
<br />
"Wrap this motherfucker up to go," he said. "We're taking him with us."<br />
<br />
"Taking him where, sir?" Wong asked, zip-tying the prisoner's hands behind his back.<br />
<br />
"We'll figure that out in the air. This place is a write-off," Keppler said. "And the beacon was just meant to draw us in so those things could take us out."<br />
<br />
I'd mentioned that to him earlier, and I guess now he agreed. Jeremy stuck his head out of the transport -- I hadn't realized he was in there. He waved a hand to get my attention.<br />
<br />
"Jeremy? What's up?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"I finally got someone back at the home office," he said.<br />
<br />
"Your home office is in Dallas, correct?" Keppler asked.<br />
<br />
I nodded.<br />
<br />
"Then that's where we're going."<br />TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-76042311274448501652012-05-11T22:48:00.003-07:002012-05-11T22:49:34.956-07:00E/B:H -- Chapter Eight<br />
The plane Archer and Henderson found was an thirty-year-old Russian airliner, complete with pilot and flight crew. They'd taken cover in the plane when the spheres started hitting, and as the passengers were either dead or running, they were free. It hadn't taken much convincing to get the pilot to take us to a safe location. He probably wanted to get out of there more than us.<br />
<br />
The Marines filed in first, and they were all loaded up in a matter of seconds. My fellow civilians and I took longer, of course. We were running on adrenaline, moving what we thought was fast -- but we didn't have anything on the Marines and their discipline.<br />
<br />
I ended up sitting next to Jeremy, across from Mischa and Andrevich. Andrevich was still covered in the cat's watery, dark blood. As the plane taxied toward the runway, one of the stewardesses gave him a pile of those hot towels that usually serve no purpose.<br />
<br />
"That thing really bled all over you," Jeremy said.<br />
<br />
"This? This isn't blood, I think," Andrevich told us as he cleaned up. "There was a... sort of a bag around the beast, under its armor. It was filled with this stuff. And it was very cold. I think it was a coolant."<br />
<br />
Coolant. That was interesting. And it also was a little frightening -- I'd assumed it was blood. I'd based my whole "it's an animal, we can kill it," on the premise that it was bleeding like an animal. It had worked out, I guess. But that realization let me know that I was making stupid logic leaps in dangerous situations, and I could have gotten us all killed.<br />
<br />
Andrevich's tattoos were slowly turning back to blue. If I had done a fraction of the fighting he had, I'd be damn near dead. It seemed the big New Soviet, though, only needed a few minutes off his feet to start recovering. The guy was truly impressive.<br />
<br />
Mischa said something to him in Russian, and though I used to speak a bit of the language, I didn't catch it -- it was too quiet. Andrevich waved his hand dismissively -- I'm guessing Mischa asked if he was all right, and Andrevich indicated he was five by five.<br />
<br />
"So what was inside that thing's head, anyway?" Jeremy asked Andrevich as the plane started to level off at its cruising altitude.<br />
<br />
"I'm not a biologist, but I was sure it was the thing's brain," Andrevich said, accepting a bottle of water from a passing Marine. "But between the chunks the Marines here and I took out of it, it couldn't have been. So, I'm not sure."<br />
<br />
Andrevich shrugged. He took a swig of his water and looked out the window.<br />
<br />
"Now, what do you make of that?" he asked, pointing out and slightly down.<br />
<br />
I looked out the window and followed Andrevich's indicated line of sight. We were flying rather low, well below the cloud layer. The plane was passing over a wide field, a cow pasture. I didn't even know Hawaii had cattle, but I saw them, dozens, below us. But that wasn't the interesting bit -- they weren't alone in the field. There was a cat making his way through the pasture, as well. But even the cat wasn't the interesting part -- the fact that it was nearly tiptoeing around the cows was the important bit.<br />
<br />
The cat was moving carefully, not like the rip and hack and slash we'd seen back at the airport. I couldn't guess at the motivation. All I could be sure of was what my eyes were telling me -- that big beast was *avoiding* the goddamn cows.<br />
<br />
"Are you seeing this?" I yelled across the plane to Keppler. He looked out the window, crossing the aisle to get a better view.<br />
<br />
"Huh. Now, that's odd." Keppler said, shaking his head. "Get some video on this, Arch. CENTCOM will want any data we can get."<br />
<br />
"On it, sir," Archer said. It was the first time I had seen him. He didn't look like the rest of the Marines. He was shorter than me or Jeb, and skinny as hell. Something in my head immediately assigned a nickname to him -- "The Littlest Marine." That name stuck in my head until... well, now.<br />
<br />
"Why do you think it's doing that?" Jeremy asked.<br />
<br />
Thanks to my missed assumption about the cat earlier, I was slightly wary. I didn't really want to hazard a guess, but my mouth started talking before I could really think to stop it.<br />
<br />
"My guess?" I said. They're not interested in killing cows, or birds, or anything... except for humans."<br />
<br />
"Because we fought the thing?" Archer asked.<br />
<br />
"No, it was killing people in the airport pretty much indiscriminately," Mischa said.<br />
<br />
"Right," I said. "It's after humans."<br />
<br />
We didn't have too much time to study the cat traipsing through the fields, though. We were flying low, but not really slow. We'd passed over the pasture in under 90 seconds, and were now winging our way towards Pearl Harbor.<br />
<br />
It was quiet in the plane. Apart from the civilians, no one was really talking much, but the Marines seemed plenty busy, kind of off in their own little worlds. It was then that I remembered Sanchez had linked my screen into their data feed earlier, and I wondered if the link was still active.<br />
<br />
It was. And the screen was crowded with a confusing jumble of information, stuff that I'd need special training to figure out. I remembered Meg telling me that the Marines were trained to sort through all of this information and process it simultaneously. I had no such training, but I was able to pick out bits of info here and there anyway.<br />
<br />
First, there was video. Lots of video. Quick clips popped up of worms attacking large groups of people, cats tearing through crowded shopping malls. Brutal, violent stuff. There was a map overlaid on all of it, one of those flattened-out world maps, with hundreds of spots all over the world lit up. I guessed the dots represented cities under attack -- Africa was the lightest by far.<br />
<br />
*Coolant,* I thought. *Africa's too hot.*<br />
<br />
I was doing that thing again, jumping right to conclusions with minimal data, or worse, data I didn't actually understand yet. I knew it was a bad idea, but it was hard not to -- a human mind, I guess, wants to make sense of things, wants to figure stuff out. I needed to put some order to the events of the last couple of hours, to feel like I had some handle on the insane stuff happening. Of course, I had no handle on anything, no real idea what was going on, except for one thing -- invasion.<br />
<br />
That was obvious, right? That had to be what was going on. They weren't going after livestock, because cows weren't a threat. They were smart predators. They knew humans would fight back, and cows would just sit there and fucking be cows.<br />
<br />
My mind was racing a mile a second again. Fortunately, before I'd convinced myself I had the whole situation figured out (I wasn't even that close, really), Keppler spoke up.<br />
<br />
"We're approaching Pearl Harbor," he said to the cabin at large in a loud, commanding voice. He seemed to have leveled out. He was back in his element, landing at a military base, commanding his troops. No insane, armored alien cats to deal with right now. Now it was just more of the usual -- get your troops where they need to be, get your orders, act on orders. Simple. Comforting.<br />
<br />
It was about to get a whole lot less comforting, though. The base was in chaos when we landed, uniformed soldiers running all over. A scrawny kid in a Navy Ensign's uniform ran over to the plane as the hydraulics dropped the door to ground level.<br />
<br />
"2-6 MEU?" he asked, his voice shaking.<br />
<br />
"That's us, Ensign," Keppler said.<br />
<br />
Like I mentioned earlier, I was getting so I could read him. His expression didn't change much, but I could tell Keppler was confused. It wasn't that such a junior officer was meeting the plane. That was no big deal. But the chaos around the base -- the breakdown of military discipline -- that was what really bothered him.<br />
<br />
"You came back from Japan?" the Ensign continued. I noticed his uniform didn't have his name on it anywhere. That was odd.<br />
<br />
"We did," Keppler said. His tone of voice let the Ensign (and me) know he was losing his patience with the 20 questions routine.<br />
<br />
"Transport there, sir. Runway 3. You're going to Texas," the Ensign said, turning to leave.<br />
<br />
"Hold on, Ensign," Keppler growled. "What's the situation here? What are our orders in Texas?"<br />
<br />
"Fuck if I know, sir," the departing Ensign called over his shoulder. "We're in the middle of an evacuation. I've just been ordered to make sure people know what planes to get on."<br />
<br />
Evacuation. Shit. An evacuation meant all sorts of things, none of them good. First, it meant they were treating Hawaii as something of a lost cause. That meant that the U.S. Military felt they were losing, and the best course of action available to them was a hasty retreat.<br />
<br />
I flashed back to a history class in college, one that focused on the skirmishes of the 21st Century. The teacher was ancient. He was teaching the class possibly because he'd lived through every one of the wars he talked about, from Iraq to China and beyond. The common thread in his lectures, at least the ones concerning the U.S. Military, was they didn't retreat, even when they should. In the China War, they'd started losing almost immediately, but they kept with it. They made some sacrifices to civil liberties. And though they were outnumbered almost ten to one, eventually, they pushed through and managed to win... sort of. I'm no historian. I just know America's victory in that particular conflict is a matter open for debate, as my grandfather often told me.<br />
<br />
So, yeah. Evacuation, retreat -- these were extremely uncomfortable words to be thrown around within the vicinity of heavily armed Marines. And the hurried manner with which the evacuation was being carried out, the breakdown of discipline and order -- also damned scary.<br />
<br />
But the chaos and lack of orders wasn't our only problem. I could see it in Keppler's face as he turned to address his troops. He still had that vaguely unsure look about him, and I figured out why before he said it.<br />
<br />
"Marines, load up on that transport. Civilians..."<br />
<br />
He trailed off, but he didn't need to say the words. We all got the message. *I have no idea what to do with you.*<br />
<br />
It was obvious just by looking at him that he didn't want to leave us there, even though I didn't know much about him personally. I could tell he was a good Marine, and in addition, a good human. He didn't relish leaving us in a place the military had forsaken.<br />
<br />
"Transport got room for a few more?" Jeremy finally asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence.<br />
<br />
"Fuck it. We'll make room. Your home office is in Dallas, yes?" Keppler asked.<br />
<br />
"That's correct," Jeremy said.<br />
<br />
"I don't know where in Texas we're going. Still, anywhere there is closer than anywhere here. 'Chez, these civilians are your personal responsibility, we clear on that?"<br />
<br />
"Five by five, sir," Sanchez said. "Come with me, folks. Let's find you a place to sit."<br />
<br />
I was glad to be getting out of there. But I didn't even think *why* Keppler had bothered to keep us on. It wasn't just that he was a good guy -- I mean, of course he was. But more than that, he'd later tell me, it was because of me. I'd shown myself to be useful. I seemed to figure things out quickly. Never mind that I was either pulling it out of my ass or someone was implanting it in my brain -- I was earning my keep either way.<br />
<br />
There was no scenery to watch out the window this time. And since we were crammed in all over, I had no one to really talk to. Jeremy was on the other side of the plane, Andrevich was chatting to some Marines near the cockpit... I was near some sleeping guys. So I had plenty of time to think, which would've been nice if my brain hadn't decided to play a long, loud tone instead of thoughts.<br />
<br />
I didn't really make the connection, but I was more asleep than I was awake at that point. I'd had too much input for 24 hours. My mind had retreated to a place where it didn't have to think, didn't have to process what had been going on all day. Shut down. I guess it was a post-traumatic stress response, but it felt more like I was sleeping with my eyes open. It was an odd sensation. It also didn't last very long -- maybe half the flight, or about an hour.<br />
<br />
When I finally came around, my brain was hyper-aware. I could feel the transport vibrating slightly under me as we cut across the Pacific, hear the Marine passed out next to me breathing. I decided, since my brain was not only functioning now but sort of mega-functioning, to try and make sense of the Marine intel. Sanchez still hadn't turned off the feed to my screen -- he'd probably forgotten -- so I had streams of information pouring in. And though my brain felt sharper, my thoughts clearer now, I still wasn't making a whole lot of sense out of the data I was seeing.<br />
<br />
Understandable fragments would pop up here and there. Seattle -- reports of large creatures on the ground, wreaking havoc. Omaha -- the Air Force bombed the living shit out of a suburb with thermite plasma to contain the worms running rampant there. Reports of fighting in all sizes of cities, all over the country, and rumors from the rest of the world -- all going about the same. There were little victories here and there -- worm advances stopped, lucky shots on battle cats like the one we had in Honolulu. But mostly, the battles were going exceedingly badly.<br />
<br />
I also got the impression that various forces were trying to share intel. The Americans had broken off diplomatic relations with the New Soviets 60 years ago, but now the two nations were talking again. Or trying to, anyway. The impression I got was that kind of international cooperation was mostly like the evacuation at Pearl Harbor. Chaotic. Undisciplined. Disjointed and confusing.<br />
<br />
I decided to try my phone -- to be honest, I'd just remembered I still had it. Maybe I could call back to the office -- maybe they'd have better information, know more definitively what was going on.<br />
<br />
Nope. I called Ryan, but I didn't get a response at first. There was no ring on the other end, no voicemail -- just silence. It was odd. I thought about running a quick check to make sure my phone was working, but I didn't want to move the Marine Intel off the screen. I could dial all I wanted -- that was a passive part of the screen -- but running the diagnostic would mean switching applications. I wasn't sure I could get the intel feed back if I minimized it.<br />
<br />
So, instead, I tried dialing Jeremy's number. That should work. It went through, and Jeremy answered it immediately. I could see him across the transport, but could only hear him through the phone.<br />
<br />
"Dane? What's up?" he asked. I could see him mouth the words.<br />
<br />
"Tried to get in touch with Ryan. I got nothing."<br />
<br />
"Odd. Did it just ring until it went to voicemail?"<br />
<br />
"It didn't ring at all."<br />
<br />
The thing is, our phones never really get turned off. They're incapable of it, as they run off the same power source as our screens -- the electrical energy the human body puts off. If you're going to sleep or something, you can set it to silent, and the phone will just ring and go to voicemail without waking you. But I'd never dialed another phone and gotten nothing at all when my phone was working. Even a dead or broken phone wouldn't do that. Theoretically, when the power source stopped (the owner died), the phone server at Umbra would detect that and take over instantly. If Ryan had died or broken his phone, I should have at least gotten a boilerplate message from the servers saying the phone was dead.<br />
<br />
"What's that mean?" Jeremy asked. I could hear concern in his voice -- he'd probably never gotten no response like that either.<br />
<br />
"No idea," I said, "but it can't be anything good."<br />
<br />
"I'll try to raise one of his assistants," Jeremy said. I remembered them. The twins. The ones I thought were clones. I'd only seen them a couple of days ago, but it seemed like over a month. Time dialation. When shit really hits the fan -- and that's all it had been doing all day -- time seems to slow down. The coffee shop with Andrevich? Meeting Jeb for the first time? Seemed like weeks ago, not earlier that morning.<br />
<br />
We crossed into Texas airspace after dark. Normally, you know when you're hitting Texas airspace, as a computer voice comes on the speakers in the plane and tells you so. Not this time. It was completely silent in the cabin -- the only reason I knew we were in Texas is because I glanced at my screen. The Marine intel feed flashed up a map of Texas with Ft. Hood dotted out -- our landing spot -- and the plane graphically represented. I happened to catch the screen just as the tiny animated graphic representing our transport crossed over the border into Texas. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known for a few more minutes.<br />
<br />
Keppler had apparently forgotten about the intel feed going to my screen. He came over to tell me that we were headed for Fort Hood, and we had just crossed into Texas. I decided to play dumb -- not hard.<br />
<br />
"I didn't hear the announcement over the speakers that we'd entered Texas' airspace," I said. "Military transports not get that?"<br />
<br />
"We do, normally. Not this time. The beacon that sends out that signal isn't transmitting," he said. "Reasons currently unknown."<br />
<br />
They might not have had any confirmation as to why the beacon was down, but I'm sure we all had a pretty accurate fucking guess.<br />
<br />
"There's something else," Keppler told me, dropping his voice so low I had to strain to hear, "something I need you to keep quiet. At least until I can figure out what it means."<br />
<br />
I nodded. Whatever he had to tell me, I got the impression I wouldn't like it.<br />
<br />
"We've been ordered to Fort Hood, but the order came in from an automated system."<br />
<br />
"Like the Texas airspace beacon?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"Similar. It's a military channel."<br />
<br />
"Why is that one still up if the State's is down?"<br />
<br />
"Tougher system. It's in a bunker. Nothing short of a direct nuclear strike would take it out. Problem is, it shouldn't be active right now," Keppler said, frowning. "There should be someone at the base relaying orders, a Combat Controller, or at least a communications duty officer."<br />
<br />
I nodded. "So what does that mean? Could it just be chaos, like at Pearl Harbor?"<br />
<br />
"There were people at Pearl Harbor handing out orders. People who had almost no clue what was going on, sure. But people nonetheless," Keppler told me. "This beacon shouldn't be live. Not unless..."<br />
<br />
I caught up to him then. I knew what he was going to say, and I said it first.<br />
<br />
"Unless everyone there is dead."<br />
<br />
Keppler didn't say anything. He just nodded slowly.<br />
<br />
"I could be wrong," he finally said after a long moment. "I hope I am."<br />
<br />
I hoped he was wrong too, but the way things had been going for us that day (shitty), it didn't seem a likely possibility.<br />
<br />
Kepler left to tell a couple of his closest people -- Sanchez, Archer, Henderson, and Wong -- what he'd already discussed with me. I was a little disturbed that he told me before he told his people, but I was getting the impression I was a kind of good luck charm. I could see that, I guess -- I'd managed to stumble my way into two life-saving solutions in the space of a couple of hours.<br />
<br />
Yeah, no pressure there.<br />
<br />
Keppler confirmed my good-luck-charm hypothesis when the transport landed and we got ready to deboard. Along with those four clutch Marines, I was next to Keppler -- first out the door and onto the Tarmac. Turned out to be a good move.<br />
<br />
We were met by two fucking *huge* guys in Army battle dress. And I mean they were big -- I guessed between 6'10 and 7 feet each. Their uniforms barely fit them, and both had pale skin, shaved heads, and ridiculously large hands and feet. Both were sweating. And not just a little -- they were drenched in sweat, though it was night and maybe only 90 degrees out, tops.<br />
<br />
Something was... well, wrong is an understatement. Something was completely fucked. It wasn't just their odd appearance -- it was more than that. The thoughts that were not my own, that other voice in my brain, let me know in no uncertain terms that these guys were not Army. Moreover, I got the distinct feeling the voice was telling me something else -- *these guys weren't even human.*<br />
<br />
I freaked out.<br />
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<br /></div>TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-79512479933221434372012-04-09T21:55:00.000-07:002012-04-09T21:56:08.591-07:00E/B:H -- Chapter SevenI'm going to back up for a moment, because in the flow of telling you what happened, I had to leave information out. I didn't know at the time what I know now, so there are gaps I need to fill in before things get too confusing. OK, *more* confusing. <br /><br />The way Meg had explained the Marine's combat network to me, I thought they were only in contact with each other on the ground. Not that she was keeping anything from me -- that's how she understood it, too. And Keppler's plan to make a report jived with that. I thought we were still operating alone, in the dark, with no one but us aware of what was happening in the streets of Honolulu. <br /><br />Turns out, that wasn't correct. The report was a formality, really. A commander's analysis of information his bosses already had. Keppler and his men weren't just connected to each other -- they were connected to CENTCOM, the U.S. Central Command, at all times. Somewhere in a basement at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, a server was routing their video and audio to all interested personnel. Which, as it turned out, there was quite a lot. <br /><br />There was more I wasn't aware of yet, information the Marines had and I didn't. Because not only were they connected to their bosses at CENTCOM-- the connection went both ways. The Marines got any important intel. There was quite a lot of that, too, as it happened. Like the fact that Hawaii, China, and Japan weren't the only areas hit by pods. The Marines had been informed that pods had landed all over the place -- Eastern and Western Europe, the U.S., Mexico. Everywhere. <br /><br />Information transfer wasn't instantaneous, though. If it was, the Marines would've known about the fire trick before I told them. Apparently, some nutbag in Texas had figured it out first, though no one wanted to give him credit for it, since he was a criminal. Or he would've been a criminal, anyway, if laws meant anything by then. <br /><br />Apparently, he was a guy living in the Dallas subburbs. His name was Marcus Stahl, and he was a chem weapons designer laid off by Umbra Dynamics years before. He was a shut-in, a hermit. He'd been brewing batches of Napalm-B in his garage for reasons no one had really been too eager to discover. When the pods landed... well, Stahl was hell on the creepy-crawlies inside. Those plastic vats of diesel-soaked polystyrene cooked the worms off beautifully. Stahl saved his whole neighborhood, and the local Federal authorities conveniently forgot about the many felonies in his garage. <br /><br />The Marines knew all of this before we touched down outside their makeshift headquarters in the auxiliary hangar at the airport. They even had Stahl's recipe for Napalm-B -- but all the Napalm-B in the world wouldn't help us with what we found at the airport. <br /><br />Calling the worms "worms" had been an easy decision, as the little things looked pretty much like a terrestrial worm species. Nobody knew what the fuck to call the thing we found rampaging around the Honolulu airport, at least not at first. Names came later. Initially, the thing was simply classified as E/B:H.2 -- Extraterrestrial/Biological: Hostile #2. The worms, of course, were #1. <br /><br />The second creature was much larger than the first -- nearly five meters long and three meters high -- and it was frankly horrifying. Initially, I only saw a quick glimpse of it as we landed. The thing moved fast, but I saw a massive, dark shape dart into a hangar. I wasn't the only one who saw it -- Keppler did, too. And he had no intention of meeting whatever it was up close, at least not yet. <br /><br />"Wong, get in there and secure our people. Get us something we can put in the air," he ordered. "I need to see what's out there. Have Taylor get on the line to CENTCOM. Advise for further orders." <br /><br />"Right away, boss." <br /><br />"Well, Mr. Phoenix? What've you got?" Keppler asked me, leaning up against the skimmer's bulkhead. He was trying to convey that same sense of battlefield calm as before. This time, though, it wasn't working as well. I could see something in his eyes -- apprehension, perhaps all-out fear. It worried me. <br /><br />I was a little surprised at the question. Why the hell was he asking me? And for that matter, just what was he asking me anyway? Normally, I'd hate looking like I didn't know exactly what was going on, but I was well past that now. <br /><br />"Um... what?" I asked. <br /><br />"Thing is, you're the closest thing we have to an expert about any of this... whatever it is. You're the one showing awareness. So I figured I'd get your opinion on that thing you and I both saw head behind the main terminal building," Keppler said, pointing. <br /><br />I couldn't fault his logic, I guess. I mean, he was wrong about me having any sort of awereness on the situation. I'd been lucky. Simple as that. <br /><br />But then I remembered something. My grandfather, as I've said, was American. Military man, through and through. And he'd once told me a story -- not sure if he made it up or not -- about invaders in ancient times using battle animals. Elephants? That sounded absurd, but also what I remembered him saying. <br /><br />"Battle elephants," I mumbled, only half-aware I was speaking aloud. <br /><br />Keppler froze and looked directly at me. Though there was no one else in the skimmer with us just then, he dropped his voice low. <br /><br />"Did you just say..." <br /><br />"Yeah, sorry. I was thinking out loud," I said. I might have smiled to cover up how stupid I felt. <br /><br />"Jesus, Phoenix. Jesus. You're either a psychic or a genius," Keppler said, shaking his head. "Like Hannibal crossing the Alps." <br /><br />So I said something right, I guess. But before Keppler could say anything else, Sanchez hurried into the skimmer's passenger area. <br /><br />["Found an old UAV, boss. Still works. Wong's getting it to talk to our setup now." <br /><br />"UAV?" I asked.<br /><br />"Probably the airport's. They bought a fuckton of decommissioned Air Force drones to help with traffic control," Keppler told me. "How long until it's up?" <br /><br />"Coming online now, sir," Sanchez said. <br /><br />"Patch it through to Phoenix's screen, too." <br /><br />I don't know how Sanchez got access. Probably had something to do with the wicked-cool tech the Marines seemed to have standard issue, but I didn't see him do anything. The image simply popped up on the screen in my forearm a second after Keppler gave the order.<br /><br />And it was a fucking horrible image. I don't mean the quality -- that was fine. But what the drone was showing turned my stomach. <br /><br />It didn't look like an elephant. It had four legs, but that was the only similarity. If anything, it resembled a dog skeleton. That was the first thing I thought of. It wasn't a skeleton, of course, but the shape was similar -- high, arched back; long, thin, jointed legs. A narrow, pointed skull. Its jaws were wide open, and glistening red. I saw what I'm pretty sure was a human torso impaled on one long, jagged, sharp tooth. <br /><br />At that time, I knew nothing of its physiology. I didn't know if the metallic-looking plates all over it's body were biological. My first thought was that they weren't -- that it was armor. It turned out I was right there. And it was some damn tough armor, too. Later analysis would reveal that the armor plating was made of the same material as the pods that had carried the beasts to Earth. That meant it could stand up to the heat and pressure of atmospheric entry, and it could ablate the shock of crashing to the ground. The Marines were heavily armed, but nothing they had with them could even scratch that stuff. We found that out pretty damn quick. <br /><br />We watched the thing tear through the rest of the hangar building, which was packed with people trying to board small planes. I noticed that the beast (someone at Fort Carson would later call them "cats," and the name stuck) wasn't eating any of the people. I'd assumed from the human torso in its jaws that it was feeding, but that wasn't so. It was simply killing, and doing so quickly. It wasn't just using its jaws, either -- it had a massive, metal spike on each foot, and it could impale and stomp at the same time. It was making quite a mess three hangars over, and I was pretty sure we were on its short list of people to turn into little chunks. <br /><br />"OK," I said, not looking up from my screen. "That's just about the most awful thing I've ever seen. What do we do?" <br /><br />"We go. Orders are coming in from CENTCOM -- we're to rally at the Pearl Harbor Naval Station," Keppler said. <br /><br />I looked at my screen. As Keppler spoke, I noticed several lines of data running the length of my forearm, almost transparent over the images from the UAV. I could just make out the words "MCAS Pearl Harbor" in one of the lines. Sanchez hadn't just jacked me in to the UAV feed, it seemed. He'd connected my screen to the same network the Marines used to communicate with each other. I decided not to mention it to anyone. I might need the access later. <br /><br />"Leave in this thing? I asked, waving one arm to indicate the skimmer. <br /><br />"Negative," Keppler said. "Too low, too small, and too slow. I have 190 Marines to worry about, plus you and your crew. We need a plane. And we've got one." <br /><br />A tiny line on my screen read "A-26: Obtained transpo." I guessed that was what Keppler was talking about. <br /><br />"Where?" I asked. A map was already popping up on my screen, but it didn't mean much to me. <br /><br />"That's the bad news, I'm afraid," Keppler told me. "It's on the other side of the airfield. That thing is between us and our ride out if here." <br /><br />Well, that sucked. And I said so. And Keppler agreed. <br /><br />"But saying it sucks ain't going to get us to that plane," he said, sighing. "Arch, Hendo, come back." <br /><br />I could see their data, make out some of it even with my untrained eye, but I couldn't hear their radio conversations. Unfortunate. I would have liked to have been kept in the loop as much as possible. <br /><br />"We're moving. Data enroute. Get the civilians over here. We'll put them in the skimmer, then walk it through the hot zone," Keppler said to his men. "Everyone tool up heavy. We move in 90." <br /><br />Keppler turned to me and pulled out his sidearm. <br /><br />"Your people are going to stay inside the skimmer. Your guy can fly it, yes?" He meant Jeb. I nodded. <br /><br />"I'll post ten of my men inside the skimmer here with you, fully armed. The rest of us will be outside." <br /><br />"And we're all just going to mosey over to the airplane your guy found?" <br /><br />"Pretty much the plan. That thing gets near us... Well, we'll rain down hellfire of ammo and munitions at the thing. It's an animal, which means something has to be able to kill it." <br /><br />He seemed pretty confident in that statement, but I wasn't so sure. Even then, I was thinking the plates were some kind of armor. Our own technology had armor that could stop bullets and small rockets -- and whatever this thing had was more advanced, definitely. I mean, it had to be more advanced, right? These things cruised our whole solar system in a matter of, like, a week or something. Last I checked, we couldn't do that. <br /><br />Keppler's Marines were assembled in a minute flat. My crew took a little longer to pile in. Andrevich smiled wide when he saw me. <br /><br />"Dane! Was watching you on the Marines' data feed. Hell of a trick you pulled, young man." <br /><br />"Agreed. I didn't know--" Jeremy started, but the sudden lurch of the skimmer getting underway cut him off. I looked outside. Through the huge tour windows, I could see the massive black-uniformed Marine force walking below us, weapons up and at the ready. I felt much safer knowing they were there, but it turned out we were about as safe as if we'd decided to run across the runway naked. As we got near the cat's hangar... <br /><br />Here's the thing. If I said "all hell broke loose," that would be correct. But the words... they lack something. They fail to convey just how fucked we found out we were, and just how fast we found out. <br /><br />First, nothing. No movement from the hangar. No indication we were going to have any trouble. Then we got around the back side of the building. The corrugated steel of the back wall exploded outward, and a huge, silvery blur rushed out. <br /><br />The guys on point never had a chance. I didn't even clearly see the cat take them out. One second, they were there, keeping their weapons ready, scanning for trouble. The next second... <br /><br />Well, they weren't so much *gone.* But they were definitely dead. I can say that without any uncertainty. People can't live through getting flattened, spread out on the tarmac, and forcibly dismembered. <br /><br />I didn't even catch the attack. The cat was moving too fast for that, so I didn't see if it bit them, ripped them with its claws, stomped them -- it just ended them. I don't know that I even had time to register shock. <br /><br />I didn't know how many we'd lost, but it felt -- and looked -- like a lot. The survivors were quick, though, unleashing every bit of ordinance hey had at the beast. I couldn't see clearly from all the smoke. Couldn't hear over the roar of gunfire and shoulder-fired rockets. [P] But the smoke didn't last long. And when it cleared, we saw... well, we saw just how fucked we really were. <br /><br />Not a scratch on the thing. I'd expected to see it dead on the tarmac, but no luck. It was just standing there, looking at the skimmer. <br /><br />I couldn't see its face clearly through the armor, couldn't see its eyes. But I got the impression that we slowed it down for a moment, but not by damaging it. I definitely felt like... like we *amused* it. <br /><br />I looked over at Keppler, who was standing near the front of the skimmer, next to Lt. Wong. He wasn't one for facial expressions. Still, by that point, I'd somehow figured out how to read the Major. And I realized, with horror, that he had no idea what to do. <br /><br />That realization shouldn't have surprised me, rationally. He was used to killing any enemy by throwing enough firepower at it. It was his one move, and it hadn't worked. And this wasn't a rational situation, so I was surprised that he was out of ideas. <br /><br />Fortunately, someone else did have a plan. OK, I'm using the word plan pretty damn loosely. But someone else decided to take action. <br /><br />"Chto za huy," I heard someone mumble next to me. I turned and saw Andrevich rolling his shoulders. He caught my eye and winked. Then, he was on the move. <br /><br />He grabbed a Ka-bar -- the standard-issue Marine combat knife -- from one of the Marines' boot sheath. As he made his way to the front of the skimmer, he stole another. He leaned over Jeb's shoulder and spoke calmly. <br /><br />"Go higher." <br /><br />Jeb was in the same boat as the rest of us -- no idea what to do -- so he did it. I imagine "higher" seemed a good idea to him. Higher meant further away from that thing. Higher was good. <br /><br />We were all in some form of shock, I guess. No one was moving much. And no one moved to stop Andrevich when he opened the boarding door and jumped right out of the slimmer, a knife in each hand. <br /><br />I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself. Andrevich didn't say anything, didn't preface his move. He just fucking dove. No one moved to stop him, partially because (I think) no one actually thought he was going to do something so balls-out insane. <br /><br />He landed directly on the top of the thing's neck, but didn't stay there long. Quickly, he scrabbled up to the back of its head. There was that strange armor plating covering both sides of its face and the crown of its skull, but it wasn't a single metal piece. There were little breaks in the armor, little seams that formed the whole helmet-face-shield combo. That's where Andrevich started. He dug one of the knives into the seam between the top piece and the left-side bit and worked the blade violently from side to side. <br /><br />At the very least, he got the thing to stop wiping out Marines. It was solely focused on its uninvited, stabby passenger now. The cat tried to shake the muscular New Soviet off, flinging its head around like a wet dog. But Andrevich hung on, seemingly easily. I couldn't tell his he'd managed to gain such a solid foothold on the thing's head, but he wasn't going anywhere. He kept working. And his knifework paid off --after about a half a minute, we all saw him pry away the top piece of the cat's skull armor and toss it. <br /><br />Andrevich didn't stop at stripping the cat of a vital piece of its armor, either. He obviously wasn't content to leave it at that. He could have jumped off or taken cover, let the 20-odd Marines on the skimmer shoot the hell out of the weak spot. But he didn't. He just kept right on hacking away at the cat with his knives, tearing into its flesh, which I could now see was a purple-black hue. <br /><br />Stripped of its armor, the cat seemed to start bleeding at the slightest provocation. Andrevich was covered in very short order. The thing's blood was watery and thin, though -- I could still see his fight tattoos, glowing dark blue, under the purple-black mess. But even though the cat seemed to be bleeding profusely, it wasn't slowing down, not even a little. It still thrashed violently. It still tried as hard as it could to toss Andrevich off the back of its head, and he still stayed clamped to the damn thing's skull. As I watched him hack away like a prep cook on methamphetamine, I saw how he was keeping himself locked onto the cat's massive skull. It was a variation of the brutal leg lock he'd perfected years ago in the ring, using the power of his massive legs, crushing inward. And it was also taking his toll. As I watched, I was sure I could see his fight tattoos getting darker, trending toward red. Danger. <br /><br />I knew we had to help him. OK, to be more accurate, I knew I had to help him, as no one else was making any moves to do so. First, I needed to get the guy out of there before he gassed out, fell from his perch, and smashed his head open on the black Tarmac. I started looking around the skimmer's interior for a rope, some cord, anything we could throw down to Andrevich to get him away. Finding nothing, I waved to get Keppler's attention. <br /><br />"Rope," I said the second his eyes met mine. <br /><br />"'Chez. Hook the man up." <br /><br />"Roger that, sir," Sanchez said, pulling off his pack and grabbing a coiled, thin black nylon cord from inside. <br /><br />"Pretty thin. Will it hold Andrevich's weight?" I asked.<br /><br />"Shit, sir. Might pull that thing out there up with him," Sanchez said, smiling faintly. <br /><br />Without having to say much at all, Sanchez quickly put together a team of himself plus five to pull. I took one end of the cord. Bracing myself against the skimmer's doorframe, I threw my end of the rope hard. It landed squarely on Andrevich's left shoulder. If he noticed the rope at all, he ignored it. <br /><br />"Vladimir!" I yelled. "Grab the fucking rope, man!" <br /><br />Andrevich didn't look up. Instead, he waved one of his knives quickly in my direction. I'm sure he was annoyed I was interrupting him. <br /><br />"Nyet!" he yelled. <br /><br />"Shit. He's gotta know it's hopeless," Sanchez mumbled next to me. He didn't sound annoyed, though. His tone was more of respect. Andrevich was fighting what looked to us to be an unwinnable fight, but still, he kept fighting. Marines like that sort of thing. <br /><br />But it wasn't long before we saw the point behind his continuing assault, the reason he'd shrugged off the rescue we offered. To him, he wasn't fighting an impossible battle -- he was giving us an opening. <br /><br />After one final, huge stab, he made his move. Andrevich stuck the knives in his belt, then jammed his hands deep inside the network of deep cuts he'd made in the huge cat's head. A roar loud enough for all of us to hear, a wordless shout of exertion, as he pulled his arms apart. The cat's skull came with it. <br /><br />Or, at least, part of the skull did. Andrevich held onto a piece of black bone with one hand and grabbed the rope with the other. Sanchez and his crew hauled the big New Soviet up fast -- he was on the floor of the skimmer next to me in seconds. <br /><br />"Come on. What are you waiting for?" he panted, rolling over onto his back. "Shoot it in its fucking brain, already!" <br /><br />Keppler gave the nod. As one, the Marines took up firing positions at the open door and the large windows. The noise of their assault rifles was deafening. <br /><br />I'd moved back to let the Marines through for a clear shot, so I was relegated to a couple windows back. Still, I saw well enough. I could see that Sanchez and his boys were definitely hitting what they aimed at -- sure, a few shots went wild as the cat thrashed. But from what I could tell, the lion's share of their fire was right on target in the small area Andrevich opened up for them to hit. <br /><br />On target or not, the effect was pretty underwhelming. They were certainly doing damage -- chunks of flesh flew almost everywhere. But as far as slowing the thing down... Nope. Not even a bit. All we did was piss it off, focus its attention on us in the skimmer. I can safely say that wasn't the outcome any of us was hoping for. <br /><br />I had a thought then -- why assume its brain was in its head? This was an alien creature, after all. Its brain could be anywhere, assuming it had a brain as we think of it. <br /><br />But it was alive. I was pretty sure of that. It wasn't a machine. It bled. It had armor to protect its softer, fleshier parts. <br /><br />If it was alive... Well, that meant we had to be able to kill it, didn't it? <br /><br />I started running through ways to kill anything living in my mind. Shooting -- hadn't worked. Nuclear bomb -- no, that was stupid. Running it over -- not a vehicle big enough. Electrocution -- wait. There was something there, maybe. If it was a living thing anything at all like we were, electrical signals controlled its actions. Thoughts became commands became signals to its musculature. Electricity, all of it. Add more, and we could disrupt the whole system. Add enough, and maybe we could kill it. <br /><br />"Major!" I yelled, pushing past the somewhat dumbfounded fire team near the skimmer door. "I need something that can deliver a lot of voltage to a tiny area!" <br /><br />Keppler caught on quick, or could read minds, as I suspected. He thought for a split second, then grabbed Sanchez by the shoulder. <br /><br />"Large-field UP system!" he yelled. "Bring it up here!" <br /><br />Sanchez covered the length of the skimmer in a couple of seconds, returning with a case about four feet long under his right arm. Inside was something that didn't really look like a weapon, a long box with "Urban Pacification System 442" stenciled on its side. Sanchez pulled it out of the box and attached a control unit to its side. <br /><br />"Large-area tazer," Keppler explained. "Old, but..." <br /><br />"Showing full charge, boss!" Sanchez said. <br /><br />"Aim all of them right at the spot Andrevich opened up for us," Keppler ordered. "Juice the fuck out of that thing." <br /><br />Sanchez set the box longways at the doorframe and fiddled with the control unit for a moment. I heard a few short beeps from the weapon, but I didn't know of they meant something was going right or something was malfunctioning. I found out soon enough, though. <br /><br />As soon as the beeping ended, the weapon fired. There was no real noise, just a quiet "whoosh." A lot of projectiles -- I would guess about a hundred -- burst out of the front of the device and flew in a tight cluster at the cat. All of the projectiles were attached to thin, long wires. <br /><br />The projectiles hit where they were supposed to, for the most part. It was a small area, about a foot square, so a couple bounced off the adjacent armor plating. Again, there wasn't a lot of noise. I was vaguely aware of a high-frequency hum from the weapon, but I think I felt that more than I heard it. <br /><br />The cat sure felt it. Immediately, the monster stopped thrashing about and froze in place. Then, a second later, it started to seize, jerking wildly. The seizure continued for a good ten seconds, and then the cat crashed to the Tarmac, pulling the weapon from the skimmer as it fell. <br /><br />None of us said anything for a good thirty seconds. We just hovered there in the skimmer, staring down at the motionless beast. I think we were all waiting for it to jump up and kill us all. I know I was. <br /><br />But it didn't. It just lay there, completely still. <br /><br />"Someone poke it with a stick," Jeb suggested unhelpfully. <br /><br />No one jumped on that idea. <br /><br />"Did you kill it?" Andrevich asked. <br /><br />No one was sure how to answer that question. OK, I assume that's the case, as everyone was still quiet, and I didn't know myself. Didn't matter how long we stared at the thing, though -- it wasn't moving. <br /><br />"Shouldn't we just get the fuck out of here?" I asked. <br /><br />"We need to confirm we killed it," Keppler told me. "If we did, then we just figured out *how* to kill them. Useful information. Wouldn't you agree?" <br /><br />I had to admit, he had a point there. But I also didn't want to stick around in case the thing wasn't dead. "How would we even judge if it's alive or not?" I asked. "We don't know. Can't you, I don't know, leave a camera or something?" <br /><br />"Monitor it from the air," Keppler said, nodding. "I like the way you think. 'Chez, get us into any cameras are still operational. Airport security, whatever we got. Assign one of your boys to keep an eye on the feed." <br /><br />"Roger that, sir," Sanchez said, nodding. He started messing with the screen on his forearm. <br /><br />"Arch, Hendo? Where are we at on my plane?" Keppler said. I checked my screen. I could see two lights pop up next to designation numbers at the extreme left side -- I guessed that meant radios went active. <br /><br />"I copy. Tell the pilot to hold on. We're there in two minutes," Keppler said after a moment. He turned to me. <br /><br />"So, electricity. How the hell did you come up with that one?" <br /><br />I wished I had an answer for him, but the best I could manage was a confused shrug. <br /><br />It seemed to me that I had reasoned it out, but when he asked me, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how I'd done that. It'd made perfect sense at the time, when my brain was kicking away a mile a second -- but now, as the skimmer landed, I was unsure. How had I come up with that? It felt like I hand't really had the thought myself. I was running through options, and then just... <br /><br />Stopped. But I felt like it wasn't me who had stopped my brain on the right option. It felt like the suggestion to stop came from... outside, somehow. Like someone had helped me along. I can't describe why I felt that to be the case, only that I was now sure of it. <br /><br />Someone else had been in my mind. Or I'd been in someone else's. <br /><br />I decided not to say anything about that as we landed. <br /><br />I mean, obviously.TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-76306646559457189892012-03-08T22:11:00.000-08:002012-03-08T22:12:05.432-08:00E/B:H -- Chapter SixAs it turned out, what I could do to help was stay out of everyone's fucking way. <br /><br />The Marines were damn efficient. They moved fast, coordinated, barely speaking as they moved. Meg was one of them as she helped find and drain the chopper's fuel. Three other soldiers methodically took apart the hydration systems from their uniforms, filling the reservoirs with aviation fuel. We were lucky again to have such an old vehicle that ran on volatile chemicals -- most modern skimmers were solar or rechargeable. If we'd had one of those instead, we'd be stuck burning uniform jackets on some sticks as our only defense. <br /><br />Marines improvise. I'd heard that saying somewhere before, I think from my grandfather. He was an American citizen in his youth, and in the military. Army, I think. I know he served in the China War. Regardless, even after he moved to The Netherlands, he told us his war stories. And he had huge respect for the Marines, and their talent to do more with less. <br /><br />And these Marines were improvisational geniuses. In just about five minutes, they used three hydration systems, two rifles, and some fuel to improvise some fucking flamethrowers. <br /><br />"Wong and her team are still working on the skimmer," Keppler eventually told me. Good. At least he still remembered I was there. "We're going to move to them, cover them while they work. Hope you're right about this fire thing, Phoenix." <br /><br />I hoped so, too. <br /><br />Then, we were moving. Sanchez took point, and I just sort of fell in next to Meg as we walked.<br /><br />"How do they know where to go?" I asked. Everyone just started moving -- neither Sanchez nor Keppler gave any order, any directions. <br /><br />"I had to guess?" Meg said. "BattleNet, or something like it. They're connected via audio and video to all of their guys on the ground. It's those cool goggles." <br /><br />"So they all see what the other soldiers see?"<br /><br />"They can. Or the goggles can just pop up signposts," Meg explained. "Turn. Stop. 300 feet that way. That kind of thing." <br /><br />"And how do they process that information and keep a lookout for worms and stuff?" <br /><br />"Specialized training. Your brain would go nuts if you tried it. Hell, mine too, probably. We had a version of this back home. But I'd imagine it's primitive compared to what these guys have." <br /><br />"Yeah, I've been meaning to ask --" <br /><br />But Sanchez cut me off. He held up a hand, and everyone stopped. <br /><br />"Movement. 500 meters west," he said.<br /><br />"I see it," Keppler said. <br /><br />"Civilians?" The question came from me. <br /><br />"Negative. Ground level. Crawling, moving fast," Sanchez reported. <br /><br />"Your worms," Keppler told me. "And it looks like they wanna say hello." <br /><br />I was sweating already, but I think I started to sweat more. My jaw clamped tightly. It looked as though we were about to find out if my logic leap had been sound, or if I'd had a stupid idea that would kill us all. <br /><br />"'Chez, fire that thing up," Keppler said to Sanchez. <br /><br />"Rog. Say a prayer that I don't burst into flames, boss," Sanchez said. <br /><br />Sanchez twisted open the valve at the barrel of his rifle. It had originally been a drinking spout, but Marines were resourceful. I'd seen them fit the valve with an atomizer, a thing that would make the fuel come out in a spray rather than a hot, volatile mess. After taking a deep breath, Sanchez flicked open his lighter near the end of the spout, and flames immediately shot straight up. <br /><br />"You got any attitude control on that thing?" Masters, the injured Marine, yelled from behind me. <br /><br />"Yeah. Isn't working, though. This is what we got," Sanchez said. <br /><br />The flames were shooting a good eight feet out of the barrel -- not much of a kill radius. Still, better than nothing. <br /><br />"I got 'em," Keppler said, pointing just downrange. "Goddamn, they're fast. Be here in seconds." <br /><br />"I'm locked on," Sanchez said.<br /><br />The Marines sounded so fucking *calm.* I was doing my best not to shit myself. Yes, I'm very brave. And that was when they came into view, like a quick, slithering black carpet. There had to be hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. More pods must have fallen, or these things could breed really quickly -- neither possibility was comforting. <br /><br />"Anytime, 'Chez." Keppler's voice was calm, just loud enough to be heard.<br /><br />"Lightin' em' up, sir."<br /><br />Sanchez turned the barrel to the creeping mass. It looked for a second like they were just going to plow right through the stream of flames Sanchez was pouring into them, but no. They stopped, moved back a bit, then split into two masses, trying to go around the column of fire. <br /><br />"Use a hand up here, Leo." <br /><br />"On it," the Marine at the back of the formation said, rushing forward with his makeshift flamethrower and opening the valve. Leo moved fast, lighting his weapon off of the flames Sanchez was already shooting. Together, they managed to scatter the mass more. I even saw several of the worms... well not really explode. More like... pop. When the flames hit them, they just burst into pieces. <br /><br />"How much time do we have with those things?" Meg asked. <br /><br />"Couple-few minutes," Keppler replied. He sounded almost... bored? <br /><br />I couldn't understand how these Marines could be so cool under fire. I mean, sure, they're more used to life and death scenarios. Being a reporter rarely puts my life in danger, so they've got the advantage there. But Keppler basically told me we'd be dead soon. In a few minutes, even -- but that didn't seem to bother him at all. <br /><br />It bothered the hell out of me. And I was going to do... <br /><br />OK, to be honest, I didn't know what I was going to do. I just started running back to the wrecked helicopter as fast as I could go. No one bothered to stop me. They probably thought I was running away, if they noticed I was gone. I couldn't blame them for that. I hadn't been a paragon of bravery up to that point. <br /><br />As it turned out, though, I wasn't. My brain was working ahead of me then. I had a plan before I realized I had a plan, which was an odd sensation when said plan finally crystallized in my conscious mind. <br /><br />Meg and the Marines hadn't drained even a fraction of the chopper's fuel. It carried some pretty volatile stuff in its mixture -- diesel, benzine, alcohol. In the age of solar and hydrogen power, you had to get special government dispensation to use the stuff. That meant it was somewhat rare, and I wasnt sure if the polycarbonate water jugs I'd seen in the back of the chopper could hold it. I planned to find out, though. <br /><br />The hoses Meg has used to drain the chopper fuel were still in place and working, so I used them. I did a better job of getting it all over my hands than I did into the four-liter jug, but I still managed to fill up pretty fast. I'd dropped the cap somewhere, but I didn't have time to look for it. Open jug in my left hand, I started to rub back into the chaos. <br /><br />The Marines were pretty much as I left them, calmly shooting flames into the masses of black worms, still keeping them at bay. I charged up in between Sanchez and Leo, throwing the jug as hard as I could underhand into the crawling dark horde in front of them. Fuel spilled out of the bottle as it tumbled end over end. It flew further than I thought it would, landing dead-center of the mass. <br /><br />Sanchez turned to me and raised an eyebrow. I think he laughed a little. <br /><br />"Shoot the damn bottle!" I yelled at him.<br /><br />"Boss?"<br /><br />"Eh. Sure, Chez. Why not?" Keppler said, shrugging. <br /><br />Sanchez turned his flamethrower on the jug, and it went up immediately. The jug itself, now a quarter empty, exploded at ground level. I could feel the sudden rush of heat a it blew -- it was intense. The quarter or so of the liquid that had spilled out sent tendrils of flame through the rest of the mass of worms, popping a bunch. <br /><br />I turned around to look at the Marines -- let's be honest, I turned around to see and hear them praise my brilliant idea, really. But that didn't happen. They still looked damnably calm, bored almost to the point of falling asleep on their combat-booted feet. I was understandably a bit on the confused side. <br /><br />"Well, that certainly was an impressive explosion," Keppler said. He sounded... <br /><br />You know when you want to show a kid how impressed you are by some mundane shit he did? Tying his shoes, not pissing himself? That's the tone Keppler had. And a second later, I saw why. <br /><br />Behind him, the tour skimmer came in for a silent, soft landing. Those fucking Marines had known the thing was on its way for probably the last five minutes. They just hadn't bothered to share. That's why they'd been so fucking calm. Why they hadn't worried that the flamethrowers would run out on us. Fucking assholes. <br /><br />They'd let me run off and possibly get myself killed for nothing more than... what? Cheap entertainment value? My vision turned red. Before I could fully realize what I was doing, I lunged at the Major. That action surprised even me -- I've never reacted that way. And even as I dove at him, some part of me realized how incredibly stupid the move was -- Major Keppler was easily twice my size. <br /><br />Keppler wasn't in any danger of getting hit, though. He'd already figured out what was coming, and he reacted at light speed. In one quick motion, he twisted his body to the left and stuck out his right hand, driving two fingers into my solar plexus. <br /><br />Now, I want to be very clear about this. Keppler didn't hit me -- he merely reacted, stopped me from hitting him without injuring me. Essentially, I ran into his hand and knocked the wind out of *myself.* <br /><br />I completely understand how nonviolent he was toward me. Well, I understand it *now.* Back then, all I really understood was that I was on the pavement, struggling to draw in a breath. <br /><br />Keppler motioned to his Marines, who picked me up as if I weighed nothing, loaded me into the waiting skimmer, and strapped me in. The rest of the group loaded up in seconds, and we took off. Slowly, the shooting pain in my torso subsided, and I could breathe. Keppler walked to the back of the skimmer and crouched down next to my chair. <br /><br />"Calmed down now, Mr. Phoenix?" he asked, smiling. <br /><br />I wasn't sure I had regained the ability to speak yet, so I just nodded once -- a short, quick bob of my head. Affirmative, sir. <br /><br />"Good. Now, I'm sorry I had to put you on the ground back there. There wasn't time, and I couldn't risk a freakout. We good?" <br /><br />I answered this with another quick nod. <br /><br />"Good. I should have let you and the girl know that we were in no danger. My fault." I answered this with another quick nod. <br /><br />"Good. I should have let you and the girl know that we were in no danger. My fault." Keppler bounced a bit on his toes, stretching his legs. "I'm just not used to working with civilians. I tend to forget you're..." <br /><br />"Disconnected?" I said. The word was barely identifiable as language -- it was more of a polysyllabic croak. <br /><br />"Exactly. Right. We're in constant contact with each other, and I end up forgetting that you folks aren't. My apologies."<br /><br />It was a weird situation. This Marine, slightly smaller than the skimmer we were in, was apologizing to me -- and the thing was, he sounded totally sincere. I realized that I couldn't be mad at him -- he could've knocked the shit out of me and no one would have called him on it. He didn't. <br /><br />"'S OK," I managed to mutter. <br /><br />"That thing with the IED -- the makeshift bomb. That was pretty impressive, Mr. Phoenix." <br /><br />"Unnecessary," I said. My voice was coming back. <br /><br />"But inventive. And you didn't know it was unnecessary. Share a secret?" <br /><br />I nodded.<br /><br />"General feeling among my people was you'd go to pieces on us at the first sign of trouble. You didn't. You took action."<br /><br />I couldn't say I was flattered that the Marines had a running bet on how long it would take me to fall apart, and it wasn't long. <br /><br />I couldn't say I was flattered that the Marines had a running bet on how long it would take me to fall apart, and it wasn't long. But I understood it, and, truth be told, probably would have thought the same thing in their situation. <br /><br />"So what now?" I asked. "Seems like your mission out here was a bit of a... well, I don't want to say failure, but..."<br /><br />"Quite the opposite," Keppler said. "We needed to do a flyover to determine the situation inside the city of Honolulu. The situation is, politely, fucked. Back to base. We get on DefNet, make our report, and wait for orders." <br /><br />"Base is the airport?" <br /><br />"That's affirmative." <br /><br />"Is that smart?" I asked. "We saw how fast those things could move. How long is the airport going to be safe?" <br /><br />"Thanks to you, we know what to do. Fortify. Put up walls of fire, and we'll be fine. For an alien invasion, this ain't shit," Keppler said. <br /><br />"Boss!" It was Wong. Fortify. Put up walls of fire, and we'll be fine. For an alien invasion, this ain't shit," Keppler said. <br /><br />"Boss!" It was Wong. <br /><br />"What's up, LT?" Keppler yelled back. These Marines sure were loud. <br /><br />"We got a proximity alarm. Check that -- multiple alarms." <br /><br />"Where?" <br /><br />"Above us, about three miles up and closing fast." <br /><br />"More pods?" I asked, unstrapping myself and standing up. I walked over to the nearest window -- as this was a sightseeing skimmer, they were huge, and gave a good view of the blue sky above. <br /><br />"If they are, they ain't the same type," Wong said. "They're measuring five meters in diameter. Each." <br /><br />"How many?" Meg said. <br /><br />"Many many," Wong replied. From her face, I could guess she didn't like answering civilian questions, but she did it anyway. <br /><br />"I count at least 40," Jeb told me, looking up from his controls and tapping the large screen between the two front seats. <br /><br />"Can we evade?" Keppler said. <br /><br />"Sure. I can make sure we don't get hit by one," Jeb said. "That's easy. Not what worries me." <br /><br />"Well? Talk, kid," Wong said after a minute, blowing out an exasperated breath.<br /><br />"Anyone else wonder what the toy surprise is?" <br /><br />"What the fuck are you talking about?" Sanchez asked, frowning.<br /><br />"The Kinder Surprise," Jeb said. I knew I'd nailed his accent. South Africa. We called them Kindereier in Holland when I was growing up, but I knew what he meant -- little hollow chocolate eggs.When you broke them open, there was a shitty toy inside -- kind of like when those littler pods had broken open to reveal the worms. <br /><br />"I get it," Keppler said. "If there were those bug things in the smaller vehicles, what's in these things?" <br /><br />"We'll find out. Soon," Wong said, pointing again to the monitor. "Looks like we got about 20 seconds before the first one hits." <br /><br />"Where?" I asked. <br /><br />"That's the bad news. The airport."TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-15001610526679842032012-02-19T20:23:00.000-08:002012-02-19T20:24:15.972-08:00E/B:H -- Chapter FiveU.S. Military forces are pretty damned easy to pick out of a crowd these days -- full body armor, tech uniforms. But easiest by far -- and the sure way to tell they're American forces -- is the small black tattoo below each soldier's right eye. There are two parts to the tattoo-- a rank insignia and a 3D barcode. Scan a soldier's face, and you have his entire military record. Well, the unclassified stuff, anyway. <br /><br />The guy who was standing outside the helicopter door when we opened it was a Sergeant. Of some kind, I guess. I know there are a lot of them, but he had four stripes and a chevron tattooed under his eye, so... Sergeant. <br /><br />"I'm going to have to ask that you shut your rotors down, step out of the vehicle, and come with us, please," the Sergeant said. His voice was polite, level. I didn't doubt, though, if we refused to do as he said, his tone would suddenly change significantly.<br /><br />I stepped out first, holding my hand out to the young Sergeant. Well, kind of young, anyway. He was about my age.<br /><br />"Hiya. Dane Phoenix, Global News. How can I help you, Sergeant?" I said. A smile was pasted on my face -- it usually was in cases like this. It usually worked, too, but not on the Marine in front of me. He simply blinked, looked to see if the rotors were powering down. When they stopped moving, he looked at me again and repeated himself.<br /><br />"If you would all come with me, please." <br /><br />Still polite. I figured it would be in our best interests to do what he said, and to not test the limits of his calm, emotionless courtesy.<br /><br />I haven't dealt with the American military too much before. Used to be a time when reporters and the DoD were tight, but no more. Around the beginning of the China War, support for stuff like imbedded reporters died out completely. It was a total media shutout. Nowadays, even getting a press release out of those guys was like pulling teeth barehanded. <br /><br />Also, they were scary as fuck. Especially the Marines that met us at the airport. Every one of them was as muscled-up as Andrevich, if not more, and they had guns. Not those crappy, non-lethal guns, either -- real, honest-to-crap automatic weapons that could shred a person from 500 yards away. Even if it had just been one of those guys, not about 20 like there were, I probably would have done what he said. Yeah... I know. I'm not exactly a model of bravery and manliness, but you've no doubt noticed that already. <br /><br />The Marines herded us into a hangar. Inside were more Marines, and a ton of tech equipment. It looked like they had taken over the hangar and set up a sort of home base. <br /><br />"Wait here, please," the Sergeant said.<br /><br />As he walked away, I looked behind me at Andrevich. I didn't want a repeat of earlier. I mean, he'd kicked the *shit* out of the Coal Creek guys, but we were extremely outnumbered here, and more than a little outgunned. Andrevich still looked calm for the moment, though, but he did flag down a passing Marine. <br /><br />"We have injured with us," he said. I'd forgotten about the surfer kid. "Do you have a medic in your unit?" <br /><br />The Marine nodded slowly. <br /><br />"Corpsman!" he yelled. <br /><br />Another Marine came over, and he and Andrevich tended to the surfer kid, who was still out cold. <br /><br />"Mr. Phoenix," I heard. I turned around. <br /><br />Standing in front of me was a bigger, scarier version of the Sergeant from before, but with a different tattoo. I wasn't too up on Marine ranks, but I guessed he was an officer. <br /><br />"Call me Dane," I said, holding out my hand and smiling wide. That smile had gotten me out of hundreds of scrapes before, and in this type of situation, it was the only move I had in my arsenal. He ignored me completely. <br /><br />"Mr. Phoenix," he repeated, "Major Keppler, commanding, 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit." <br /><br />I nodded. I guessed from his body language all of that was supposed to mean something to me, and that I was supposed to be impressed by it. I played along. Satisfied that I was showing respect, Keppler continued. <br /><br />"I'm going to need to debrief you. All of your footage. Your data. I'm going to need copies of all of it." <br /><br />I didn't see the harm in it, not logically. But I still bristled at the order. Maybe it was something about the way he said it, or maybe it was some throwback to the whole outdated freedom of the press thing. <br /><br />"I don't think you can legally take that," Jeb piped up behind me. I almost told him to shut up, but... well, he was kinda right. And what he'd just said wasn't so far off from what I'd been thinking. <br /><br />"Under normal circumstances, you would be correct, sir. But I'm going to let you in on a little secret," Keppler said, the faintest grin creeping to his face. "Breaking news, as it happens. Within the hour, the President will declare martial law. I'll be able to take the data regardless of your perceived legal rights." <br /><br />I don't know where the next words came from, but I certainly didn't think the whole thing out. If I had, this story would end. Right there, in the hangar. For me, anyway, because I would have just handed over everything I had and gotten the hell out of Hawaii. But that's not what happened. <br /><br />Some part of me, probably inherited from my father, went into salesman mode. The smile appeared. The voice dropped to a near whisper. And I found myself leaning in closer to the hulking, terrifying Marine officer in front of me. <br /><br />"Tell you what," I said quietly. "I'll make you a deal. You feed me some info here, and I'll hand over everything. The data. The video footage. Put you in touch with the scientists who made the discovery. All of it. Just keep me hooked up on the story." <br /><br />I could see Keppler didn't like the idea, but he didn't give me an immediate "no." He motioned for me to follow him, so I did. He led me away from my crew, away from the Marines huddled over machines. <br /><br />"I'm going to level with you," he said. "I dislike... No, let's be honest. I despise journalists." <br /><br />So, that conversation wasn't getting off to the start I'd hoped. Keppler continued. <br /><br />"Here's the situation, though. My men and I were on our way back from training in Japan when we got the order to land in Hawaii. Your broadcast had put all American forces on alert, and we were ordered to secure the airport and get data on the situation." <br /><br />That tracked. He wasn't telling me much that was new, except that he wasn't originally supposed to be here. I knew when to be quiet. That was one of those times, so I shut up and let the Major talk. <br /><br />"We can get your data, but we really need to get on the ground. The equipment you see here is all we had on the plane. What we really need is a helicopter, and a pilot." <br /><br />"And I've got both." <br /><br />"Correct. Now, I could commandeer the chopper, but we have no one who can fly it -- at least not well. Who's your pilot?" <br /><br />"Name's Meg. Former Israeli Army. I've seen her fly that chopper like you wouldn't believe," I said, the reporter smile returning. <br /><br />"You talk her into flying a couple of observation runs with my men, and give us any data you have, and I'll keep you in the loop." <br /><br />That was an offer that was too good to pass up. I nodded and went over to convince Meg to step back into the role of combat pilot. <br /><br />Convincing Meg took less time than I would have thought. I only had to mention the Major's proposal, and she agreed instantly. She wasn't surprised at all that they needed her to fly the helicopter, either. <br /><br />"Think about it, boss. Most of these kids are 18. Even the Major can't be much older than 35. None of them have probably even ridden in one of these old buckets before," she told me. "Whereas we're still using them back home. Much better than those damn patrol skimmers for watching the borders." <br /><br />It made sense. What didn't make sense was why a former Israeli chopper pilot was doing hair and makeup for the Network, but I didn't ask about that. Probably should have. <br /><br />Major Keppler's deal was pretty clear-cut. Me, Meg, and one other could go on the chopper with the Marines. The rest would have to stay back at the hangar -- I had an idea about that. As the Marines were loading up, I pulled Andrevich aside. <br /><br />"You've done some broadcast work, right?" I asked him. I knew he had -- I'd learned that in my earlier research. <br /><br />"A little. Hosted a show for a Network years ago during the off season. 'Asia's Next World Champion.' It only lasted the one year," he said. <br /><br />"I know it would be asking a lot, and you've been great so far... but if anything happens here, anything significant, could you --" <br /><br />"Cover it for your Network?" <br /><br />I could swear that big New Soviet knew how to read minds. It wasn't the last time I'd think that. <br /><br />So Andrevich was set. I decided to leave Jeremy and the "A" crew with him -- they'd be able to walk him through any problems. Hair and makeup weren't a problem -- Andrevich had a shaved head, and I dare anyone to try to convince a guy like him to wear makeup. Jeb would be my ridealong, as he was accustomed to being a one-man show. I had him steal the "A" unit's backup camera and uplink. <br /><br />We were ready, and we left immediately. With Meg at the controls and the the Major next to her to provide direction, we took off. I expected a fair amount of chaos in the the city we'd just fled, but I wasn't prepared for the scope of it. Not even a little bit. <br /><br />The first thing I noticed were the fires. They were hard to miss -- I could see the black smoke the second we got some altitude. I nudged Jeb to start filming, but that turned out to be unnecessary -- he'd seen the plumes of smoke as well, and had the camera up. <br /><br />"Head for downtown," Keppler said. It was easy to hear him -- it was fully, deathly quiet inside the chopper. No one was talking. I could hear the Marine next to me breathing, and it's not like he was loud. <br /><br />"Lance Corporal May! Open up the doors back there! Let's get a good picture of what we're looking at!" Keppler yelled from the front of the chopper. <br /><br />A Marine reached for the door. The air, finally getting hot as we moved into the midmorning sun, blew into the chopper in a gust. I fell back into my seat a bit. Jeb didn't move -- he was steady, shooting out of the now-open door as we hovered over the highway into town at two hundred feet. <br /><br />The highway, was, of course, jammed. And as happened when everyone was trying to go one place at one time, nothing was moving. Instead of waiting in their cars, though, we could see that most of the drivers had abandoned them and were running down the street. I think they were heading for the airport -- the very same one we had just left -- and all of a sudden I felt monumentally stupid. These people were making the smart move -- getting the fuck out of the city -- and I was leaving a safe area to go into the chaos. And I hadn't remembered to call Ryan and tell him what was up. <br /><br />That didn't turn out to be a problem. My phone chimed just then. Ryan was on the line, and in all the time I'd known him, I'd never heard him sound worried -- until that call. <br /><br />"Dane! Jesus, man! Is everyone OK? What's going on?" <br /><br />That's when I remembered Jeb crashing through his equipment and cutting us off in a live feed. <br /><br />"All alive for the moment. I'm with --" <br /><br />"Two-six MEU. Jeremy called me. Can you go live in one minute?" <br /><br />I asked Jeb. He gave me a thumbs-up and a wink. <br /><br />"We're good to go over here," I told Ryan. <br /><br />"Free reign, Dane. Tell us everything you see. No delay, no censoring. Other objects have been sighted in Asia -- we're putting you on all the Networks. People need to know wh--" <br /><br />I thought the call had gone dead, but Ryan had just stopped talking in mid-syllable. I could hear him breathing.<br /><br />"Ryan?" <br /><br />"Live in ten seconds. Make it count -- the Feds just said they're shutting us down. I'll keep you on the air as long as I can." <br /><br />The line really did go dead this time, but I didn't have time to process what he'd said. Jeb tapped me on the shoulder -- go time. <br /><br />Jeb was shooting out the window, so I just started talking. "Dane Phoenix from Global News reporting from Honolulu," I said. "The city is in chaos. Less than an hour ago, a... projectile slammed into the Big Island Mall, collapsing much of the structure. The projectile contained... life forms of some sort." <br /><br />Jeb focused in on one of the downtown skyscrapers -- Lungshan's, I think. There were fires raging on a few of the upper floors, spitting flames out what was left of the window frames. <br /><br />"These... beings. They resemble worms -- short, black worms," I continued. "They're extremely dangerous. Contact with them is fatal. If you see them --"<br /><br />I was interrupted by an explosion -- a large one. It was the nearby Lungshan Building -- the fires had hit something really volatile. We were close enough that I could feel the heat, was blinded by the flash. As I blinked to clear my vision, the chopper bucked hard. <br /><br />"We're hit!" Meg yelled. <br /><br />"How bad?" Major Keppler asked. <br /><br />"Shit! It ain't good," she said. <br /><br />The chopper bucked again. <br /><br />"Bet you we're gonna crash," Jeb said, his voice even, a small, flat grin widening his features. <br /><br />"Oh, Christ. I hope not." <br /><br />"Think he might be right," the Lance Corporal next to me said. "You might wanna hold on to something, guys. This is gonna suck." <br /><br />Closest I'd ever been to a crash before that moment was two years before, when a patrol skimmer I was riding in lost all power. We were only about fifty feet up at the time, and the cop driving (it was for a story on prototype Federal Police forces) was a pro. He deployed the emergency glider wings immediately and guided us to a safe, soft water landing. <br /><br />This wasn't like that. At all. The chopper shuddered one final time, and all of a sudden, we were spinning. Fast. The city outside whipped by in a nauseating blur. I had a firm hold on one of the handles by the doorway, but not everyone was so lucky. A Marine flew by me, sliding toward the door. Jeb reached out and caught his body armor under one shoulder harness, but he only managed to work two fingers into the neoprene strap. I couldn't reach the Marine -- at least, not with my arms. I hooked one boot under the armor strap near the guy's ribcage. <br /><br />"Pull!" I heard Jeb yell, but that was easier said than done. The chopper was spinning even faster now, and I'm not a real strong guy anyway. Fighting the centrifugal force was beyond my capabilities -- the best I could do was hold on, keep my foot jammed in his ribcage. <br /><br />Fortunately, it was enough. The Lance Corporal who had spoken to me earlier was finally able to make his way over to us to help. Working at odd angles and against the still-spinning helicopter, we managed to pull the Marine back inside and hold him to the deck. <br /><br />It seemed like we were up there, spinning, for a really long time. It felt like we would never hit the ground -- and then we did. The avenue in front of the Lungshan Building was almost wide enough for the chopper to set down -- almost. We hit at a slight angle. It didn't sound like much, but Meg had wrestled the controls to make it happen that way -- otherwise, we would have hit the building. This, she assured me later, would have been a Very Bad Thing -- we would have no doubt ruptured the fuel lines and caught fire. At the least, we would have had a lot more shrapnel to deal with when the blades sliced into the first couple floors of the building. <br /><br />I say "a lot more shrapnel," because there was still plenty when we hit. The rotors on the right side of the chopper hit first. It was the side opposite our door, and we could see the rotors gouge into the street before breaking off and flying four stories up. They sliced through the windows of the Lungshan Building, showering tons of broken glass in through the open door. I covered my eyes. When I didn't feel chunks of glass hitting my face anymore, I moved my arm away from my eyes. <br /><br />The helicopter was on its side. Apart from the rotors breaking off and the tail cracking in half, it was still mostly intact. I was at the top of a pile of bodies. Jeb was next to me, and there was a leg sticking out of the pile between us. <br /><br />"Sound off, 2-6!" the Major bellowed from my left. <br /><br />"Sanchez, good to go!" I heard from under me. The other Marines called out in turn -- it seemed we hadn't lost anyone. Not yet. <br /><br />It took a little doing for all of us to get untangled. Masters, the one who'd almost fallen out, had a dislocated shoulder. Otherwise, we were in remarkably good shape -- a few cuts and bruises here and there. I had a bit of a headache, but that was it. <br /><br />"Archer, Henderson. Find us some transport," Keppler ordered. As the two Marines set off at a run, he turned to face me. "Phoenix. I need a no-bullshit answer here. What are we dealing with?"<br /><br />"Worms," I told him. "They're small, and they're really fucking fast. From what I've seen, if one of them latches on to you, you're dead in a few seconds." <br /><br />Keppler thought for a second, then nodded. <br /><br />"Understood. How do we kill them?" <br /><br />Good question. And one I realized I didn't have any kind of answer for. I thought hard. All I'd seen was the worms chowing down on citizens. They'd seemed unstoppable at the time. <br /><br />"No idea. Your guns, maybe. But..." <br /><br />"They'd be really hard to hit," Jeb piped up. "Unless every one of your guys can shoot a bullet out of the air, that is." <br /><br />"My guys are good, but not that good," Keppler said to Jeb. The two of them kept talking, strategizing. But not me. I tuned out. <br /><br />It wasn't so much an idea that was forming in my head, not yet. It started more simply than that, as a rather big observation. One that, in the chaos of the crash, I hadn't really realized. <br /><br />It had been perhaps an hour since the first pod fell, maybe less. Even in that short time, Honolulu had gone into full-scale meltdown. That couldn't just be from the worms, I remember thinking. Even if multiple pods had fallen, the things were only a couple inches long -- they shouldn't be able to cause this much destruction. <br /><br />*That's because the worms didn't do all this,* I thought. *People did.*<br /><br />I suppose some of the destruction could be accidental. A candle left burning knocked over in the haste of escape, a crashed car burning out of control. But not this level of devestation. This was intentional. [P] "Fire," I blurted, interrupting the Major in the middle of a word. <br /><br />"What's that, Phoenix?" Keppler said. <br /><br />"Fire, Major. Look around -- we haven't been out of the city that long," I said, "and nearly everything in sight is burning. <br /><br />"Yeah? So?" Sanchez said. <br /><br />"So civilians set them on purpose. Maybe it kills them, or slows them down," Keppler said. "Nice work." <br /><br />Keppler might have smiled at me -- it was so quick I couldn't be sure. He pressed the left side of his helmet, and I heard a chirp. <br /><br />"Arch, Hendo, where are we on transport?" he asked. He listened for a short moment, then: "Copy that. See what you can do. Out." <br /><br />"They find something?" Meg asked. <br /><br />"Tour skimmer. Big enough for everyone, but there's some damage. They're not sure it'll fly. Don't suppose skimmer repair is in your bag of tricks?" <br /><br />"No luck there, sir. Israeli Police has a few skimmers, but not the Army. Brass hated them," Meg said. <br /><br />"I've done some skimmer work, back in college," Jeb piped up. <br /><br />"You're on, then. Lt. Wong?" <br /><br />"On it, boss. Follow me, Chief," a short, female Marine said, shouldering her rifle. "Try and keep up. I move fast." <br /><br />"Dane?" Jeb asked, cocking an eyebrow at me. <br /><br />"Do whatever you can," I said, frankly surprised he even asked me. I was his boss, kind of. But I guess we'd all just taken to following the Major's orders as if we were his troops. Well, most of us. <br /><br />"All right, people. Let's see what we can do about producing some fire for Mr. Phoenix, here," the Major said. I definitely saw him smile that time. It took me a second to get it -- fire, Phoenix. In another situation, I'd have laughed, as horrible and unfunny as the pun had been. Now, though, I didn't. <br /><br />"Tell me what I can do to help," I said. "I very much doubt we have a lot of time."TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-72040797135478853932012-01-30T23:22:00.000-08:002012-01-30T23:23:29.961-08:00E/B:H -- Chapter FourThe car could drive itself, of course. But in case some Coal Creek APCs popped up, I wanted a human on the wheel. Andrevich had grown up in an area with old cars kept running mostly with prayer, so he was quite a good driver. Unlike me, that is. I'd never bothered to learn, and the Networks had arranged for transport all my adult life. <br /><br />We found the Tidal Motel pretty easy. Calling it a shithole would be insulting to legitimate shitholes -- this place had to be a hundred years old, and looked like it. The white and teal paint was fading, cracked, and gone altogether in some areas, exposing the bare, rotten wood underneath. Ugly.<br /><br />I checked with the thin, greasy guy behind the bulletproof glass in a shed at the top of the parking lot with an "Office" sign. I asked for the Global News backup crew -- he stared at me blankly for a long moment. <br /><br />"You must mean Jeb," he finally drawled. "Boy always told me he was a freelance Network guy. Never did believe him. Hey, you're that dude from the news program, ain't you?" <br /><br />"Dane Phoenix," I said, shooting him the old charming smile. "Where can I find -- Jeb, you said?"<br /><br />"Hey! Hey, Helen!" he yelled. "Come on out here, woman! You gotta see who's at the window!" <br /><br />I shook hands and signed autographs for The Thing Called Helen. She was the manager's wife, and she was 250 if she was a pound. Finally, though, we got a room number out of The Power Couple -- 407. <br /><br />You'd expect room number 407 to be on the fourth floor, right? I know I did, and the Tidal Motel did, indeed, have four levels. Andrevich and I would have climbed the rickety staircase all the way up, had he not noticed room 401 from the second-floor landing. <br /><br />"That... Well, that makes no kind of sense," I said, heading down the dark hallway. Room 407 was between 406 and 409. Of course. I was starting to think this entire hotel was designed as an elaborate, unfunny practical joke. <br /><br />I knocked on the door. Nothing. Andrevich then pounded on the door, and he's much stronger than I am, so that got an immediate response. We heard shuffling, cursing. A few seconds later, the door opened, and I was sure we had the wrong room. <br /><br />The guy in 407 looked like a full-on train wreck. He was younger than me -- maybe 28 -- but in much worse shape. He looked like he hadn't slept or showered in at least four days. His brown hair was longish, greasy, and plastered to his skull with what I hope was just sweat. He wore an old bathrobe, no shoes. Just as I was about to ask if we had the right guy, he looked me in the eyes and smiled. He still had all of his teeth, at least. <br /><br />"Mr. Phoenix," he said. "Pleasure to meet you. Sorry for my appearance -- wasn't really expecting anyone to come by today."<br /><br />The guy looked like shit, sure. But when he spoke -- I don't know. He came across as intelligent. Not like how he looked at all. <br /><br />"You weren't told to be on standby?" I asked. I was feeling more than a little odd standing outside in the hallway.<br /><br />"Oh, sure. But you gotta understand, Chief, being told to be on standby ain't shit. 99 times out of 100, that means sit back and collect pay. Last time I actually had to do standby work was... well, back when you were still fighting, big guy," Jeb said, nodding to Andrevich. <br /><br />"Well, we need you now. How soon can you have your equipment ready?" <br /><br />"Give me a few minutes to get cleaned up. Like, fifteen. I'll meet you over at the cafe across the street, yeah?" <br /><br />I was just grateful to be out of the hall and away from the Tidal Motel. The Surf Shack Cafe wasn't much better -- definitely wasn't cleaner -- but at least I didn't feel like the building was collapsing. Andrevich and I took a table in the back, and I ordered the only thing on the menu I was pretty sure wouldn't kill me, black coffee. I never considered coffee a monumental request, but it still hadn't arrived when Jeb strolled into the cafe fifteen minutes later. <br /><br />He was cleaned up considerably now, wearing jeans and a shiny, synthetic button-up shirt. He had a black bag over one shoulder. As soon as he sat down at the table, three mugs of coffee suddenly appeared. <br /><br />"You gotta understand, they like locals," he said. "You and your buddy are making them nervous."<br /><br />"Because of who we are?" Andrevich asked.<br /><br />"What, celebrities? Nah, man," he said. "I doubt the folks who run this place have watched a network feed in 30 years. They don't like outsiders, is all." <br /><br />He wasn't joking. The entire time we were in the cafe -- 20 minutes or so -- the guy behind the counter never stopped staring. It was more than a little creepy. <br /><br />As we talked about the job, I noticed a few things about Jeb, the redneck one-man backup crew. First, he wasn't really a hick or a local, just tried to pass as a bit of both. I detected a hint of an accent whenever he spoke. South Africa? Accents tend to get a bit muddled these days. Everyone sounds like they're from Omaha or Kansas City or something. You'd never really guess I grew up in Holland unless I told you -- I sound like I grew up in a cornfield, like everyone else does. <br /><br />Another thing I noticed about our new crew member -- he *really* wasn't a Network guy. Not a bit. At heart, he was a total ICP. Or at least he would have been, if the corporation-backed Networks hadn't wiped out the Independent Content Producers years ago. Before Jeb was even born. <br /><br />It had come down to money, and the Networks realizing that while they had more of it, they wouldn't for long. So they'd thrown what they had at lobbyists in dozens of countries, and essentially made broadcasting non-Network content a felony. The US government got the Federal Entertainment Commission out of the deal, a steady flow of license revenue right to the Treasury. License fees were too high for independents to afford, so competition from the smaller guys died off extremely quickly. All history. <br /><br />Of course Jeb would be an ICP. They were still around, they were just way underground and had tiny audiences. Freelance work? That was the perfect cover to have high-def cameras and a transmitter around your crappy hotel room if the Federal cops came calling. <br /><br />But one thing about ICPs -- at least, from the few underground broadcasts I'd seen, they were competent and good under fire. I'd seen one of them report on a riot outside Umbra's Kyoto office years back, and I have to admit, the camera work was outstanding. So I knew Jeb would have the equipment and skills to get my transmission to the Network servers in Dallas, and that was all I needed. <br /><br />I tasked Jeb with finding a place to shoot incognito, where Umbra's thugs wouldn't come looking, but that didn't look like shit. He said he'd work on it and call when he had a spot -- we'd meet there at first light. <br /><br />I called Ryan in Dallas and woke him up. He was pissed off at first, but when I told him that breaking this story would really fuck Umbra over a barrel, he brightened up. Probably helped that I'd done the story the Network wanted me to do, and this one didn't mean I wouldn't cover Andrevich's award. This story was in the A.M., the ceremony was in the P.M. <br /><br />Of course -- and this bit you know -- I never made it to the ceremony. The ceremony didn't actually happen. I'm not sure they cancelled it, but I am sure that no one showed up -- the reason being obvious. <br /><br />As we really didn't have anywhere else to go, and the neighborhood was low-rent enough Umbra wouldn't drop by, we stayed put. Jeb, of course, left to do his prep work, but just him coming by to talk to us seemed to give Andrevich and I enough cred to order. Not that the waiter was happy about it, but he did let us put in an order for breakfast, and eventually even brought us the food. After that, we drank a metric fuckton of coffee and waited around for Jeb to call us. The coffee was, surprisingly, pretty damn good. <br /><br />According to my screen, sunrise was scheduled for 6:18 a.m. At 6:10, my phone chimed in my ear, and I took the call. It was Jeb. He gave us an address, which I scrawled down on a napkin and gave to Andrevich -- I still wanted him on the wheel. Paranoia, I guess. <br /><br />The big New Soviet was being an amazingly good sport about all of this, and I was thankful. I'd seen what happened when he got angry. He'd put quite a hurt on those Coal Creek bastards, and I wasn't in any real hurry to find out what that beat-down had felt like. But looking at him now, across the table as we paid the ridiculously low breakfast check, he looked calm, happy, -- amused, even. <br /><br />As you know from the broadcast, Jeb picked a shopping mall that was just opening for breakfast. I thought it was a stupid choice. At first, anyway.<br /><br />"You mentioned you had some Umbra PMC problems, right?" Jeb said, catching the look on my face when I arrived. <br /><br />"Yeah."<br /><br />"Trust me, this is what you want. Plenty of people milling around. Makes for good shot composition, but it's also --"<br /><br />"Safer," I said, catching on. "Coal Creek is less likely to try something to stop us in a crowded, public area like this." <br /><br />So Jeb set up the shot, and I have to admit it looked pretty good -- even as those... things... started falling from the skies.<br /><br />You remember how it went from the original broadcast. I'd already dropped the bombshell -- that something huge was up there. I'd shown the pictures from the lab, told everyone I was pretty sure it was an alien spaceship. Yeah, sure, I didn't know that yet. Fuck it, I'm a reporter. You want facts, go to a damn schoolteacher. Speculation is part of my job, has been since I can remember. <br /><br />Anyway, I was just about to talk about where it would likely make planetfall -- China or Japan's airspace. That wasn't my idea. The little scientist, Jeff -- he'd done the math on that one. As we found out seconds later, he was close. Well, kind of close. <br /><br />Thinking back on it now, I might have it figured out. They must have seen my network feed -- and I do mean *them*. Up there. I don't claim to know anything about how they think, but I'd wager they saw their ship on the feed and traced it right back to me. That makes sense, because a few seconds later was when the first shell hit. <br /><br />Here's a little confession from me to all of you. When the hit came, I didn't connect the dots right away. Taiwan had been making angry noises of late -- my first thought was of them. Hawaii was well within their conventional missile range -- you know, the big systems we'd sold them during the China War? Yeah. Seems dumb now, but I was sure they'd decided to go Pearl Harbor on our collective asses. When that mall crumbled, I hit the ground. <br /><br />'Course, they weren't missiles at all. They were pods. Carriers of some indeterminate material, strong enough to laugh at heat. Pressure. Impact. Any of those niggling little problems of being shot into our atmosphere. <br /><br />The network feed cut out right then. It wasn't interference, as many have since speculated -- no, Jed plowed into his setup when he dove for cover. Smashed it right up. So you didn't see the size of the projectile that had just leveled a shopping mall. You might have seen one in your town that day. If you didn't, let me fill you in -- it was only about a foot around, a perfect sphere. And it wasn't a weapon. It was a transport. <br /><br />Of course, I wouldn't have seen the pod to describe it to you, had I not still been hanging out with Vladimir Piotr Andrevich. Remember, the thing was buried in what was left of the front quarter of a shopping mall -- one that had certainly had people in it. Most of them were probably dead, but there was at least one guy still breathing. And shouting for help, as the situation turned out. <br /><br />As soon as he heard the man yelling, Andrevich was on it like Action Man. Jeb was right behind him, sprinting over piles of junk. I would have been more than happy to stay where I was, in a tiny ball on the pavement, but Andrevich yelled at me to help them out. I dragged myself to my feet and joined them, helped them pull what was left of a coffee bar off some poor 18-year-old surfer kid. <br /><br />He was pretty banged up, and we were helping him away from the wreckage when I saw it. I didn't know what it was at first, of course. I figured it must have just been some piece of crap for sale in the mall -- people will buy anything. But it pulsed, a bright flash. And just after the light from that first pulse faded, the thing opened neatly at the center of the sphere, the top half falling away. <br /><br />Nothing happened for a second after it opened. Then, as I watched, those... *things* started slithering madly out of the ball. The best I can think to call them was worms, though that's not exactly accurate. They were each a couple, maybe three inches long. They were black, so they stood out against the white remains of the coffee bar. There seemed to be hundreds, and they were fast. <br /><br />Andrevich saw them at the same time I did; neither of us said anything. He just grabbed the kid as if he weighed nothing, not 150 pounds. He chucked the surfer kid over his shoulder and was off like a sprinter, me and Jeb on his heels. <br /><br />"What the fuck are those?" <br /><br />I think it was Jeb who yelled that, though I'm not sure. Could have been anyone -- I was just focused on getting my ass out of there. I chanced a look over my shoulder as I ran for the street, and immediately wished I hadn't. <br /><br />The worms went after the weak first. The poor fucks stuck in the wreckage couldn't get away, couldn't run. The worms didn't swarm -- a single worm picked each target. One second, they'd latched onto a poor, helpless person -- the next, that unfortunate motherfucker was twitching and bleeding out. I wasn't sure if it was because the initial targets were already injured, but it only took each of them couple of seconds to die. <br /><br />We were moving fast -- adrenaline -- but the worms were already swarming out from the wreckage, and they were a fuckton faster. I tried to think of some way to escape -- maybe get into the car and lock the doors, slam on the power and get the fuck out of there. <br /><br />Even as I had the thought, I saw it wasn't going to work. A car near ours had its windows up, doors locked, and it didn't matter. Worms had gotten inside somehow anyway, and the two occupants of the car were spraying blood all over the inside of the vehicle. <br /><br />"Keep running!" I yelled, though that was probably unnecessary. Andrevich and Jeb were ahead of me, and weren't slowing down. Even with the 150-pound teenager on his shoulder, Andrevich was really eating up the distance, and Jeb was keeping right up with him. I was the slow one, the liability -- and it looked like I was going to be the one bitten and killed by those... whatever they were. <br /><br />The thought didn't make me stop running, though. If anything, it gave me a burst of power like I'd never felt, not even on speed. I was almost about to catch up with Jeb when it happened.<br /><br />Helicopters went silent before they became obsolete a few decades ago. I think it was a People's Liberation Army design from the China War, but after that, the rest of the world's militaries got them. I had seen them float over my granddad's house as a kid -- Dutch Army training flights, I think. They were fast, sleek, and silent. One of those helicopters -- a massive cargo model -- dropped down right in front of Andrevich and Jeb, and the side doors flew open. I could see Jeremy and Mischa inside, waving us toward them. The helicopter didn't land, just hovered a few feet off the pavement. I poured on the last bit of speed I had, then jumped. I felt hard, metal deck slam into my chest, felt hands grab me and pull me in. <br /><br />In less than a second, we were climbing, the chaos below us getting smaller by the second. I pulled myself into a sitting position. As I looked around, I could see Andrevich, the kid, Jeb. The rest of our crew was there -- it was the chopper they'd used earlier. The one I had felt bad for saddling them with rather than springing for hoppers for all of them. Turned out that saved our asses. <br /><br />"We're heading to Honolulu Airport," Jeremy said as he and Mischa slid the door closed. I looked up -- Meg was flying the chopper. <br /><br />"Where did you learn to fly one of these things?" I shouted up to her. <br /><br />"Israeli Army," she yelled back, throwing me a grin. <br /><br />"It was in her file, if you'd bothered to read it," Jeremy said. <br /><br />Ah, same old Jeremy. Always the producer. I smiled a little. <br /><br />"What's at the airport?" <br /><br />"Flight for all of us to Dallas. We'll figure this shit out there," Jeremy told me.<br /><br />"Andrevich? Jeb? You good with that?" I asked. <br /><br />"I'll go along for the ride. And our young friend here is unconscious," Andrevich told me. <br /><br />"Should we take him to a hospital or something?" Jeb asked.<br /><br />"Entire island's chaos," Reg said. "Better chance of that in Dallas." <br /><br />We did make it to Dallas, eventually. But not right away. <br /><br />When we landed at the airport, the Marines were waiting for us.TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-59200528164759762202012-01-15T00:18:00.000-08:002012-01-15T00:19:13.843-08:00E/B:H -- Chapter ThreeOK, I thought I knew how to drink, but that New Soviet fucking took me to drinking school and left me there. I assumed we'd get hammered -- at least a bit -- but I didn't expect to wake up in the fountain in the hotel lobby. <br /><br />So, yeah. We drank quite a bit that night, and there's a certain point where I stop remembering what actually happened, but my plan worked. I remember that much, because it worked pretty early on in the evening. So I should have quit while I was ahead, but... <br /><br />Anyway. Andrevich. He was smaller than I thought he would be. I mean, dude was massive, but he was shorter than me. I didn't see that coming. Still, for a guy nearing 50, he was in outstanding shape. He almost crushed my hand when he shook it, and I noticed he was sweating. Like, a lot. <br /><br />"The heat," he apologized, waving one of his hands around to indicate... well, everything, I guess. "Not used to it. Where I'm from, it's much colder." <br /><br />I just nodded. It was July in Honolulu -- of course that wouldn't be comfortable to Andrevich. Not with him being from Siberia, and all.<br /><br />He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts -- likely to combat the oppressive heat. I could see his fight tattoos glowing blue on his arms, legs, and neck. He wasn't sick or injured, then. That meant I'd lost a bet. A colleague and I at Global had once figured he'd quit the fight game not because he'd killed that other guy, but because he was ill. Couldn't fight anymore. When I met him, though, I knew that wasn't the case. He looked like he could tear me in half with one hand. <br /><br />"I just wanted to say, it's an honor to meet you, Comrade Vladimir. I've been a fan since I was a little kid," I said, smiling. The smile was an attempt to hide a wince at the crazy handshake, but thankfully, he let go of my hand.<br /><br />"I, too, am a fan of yours. Your report on the Atlantic Rail scandal was fascinating," Andrevich told me. "Well, shall we get something to drink?" <br /><br />I nodded. The bartender could smell the blood in the water, and he was at my elbow when I turned around. <br /><br />"What'll you have?" I asked. I expected the answer to be vodka. <br /><br />"Hmm. A Scotch, I think. Laprohaig if you have it."<br /><br />I ordered a vodka tonic, and it was on. The first drinks only lasted a few seconds -- Andrevich's was gone before he even sat down.<br /><br />"So, I hear you requested me?" I said. <br /><br />"Indeed. As I didn't want to come to this thing anyway, I might as well use it as an excuse to meet someone I admire," he said. "I much prefer my retirement, staying at home and writing. I'm working on a book, you know." <br /><br />I hadn't known that, of course. Books were a tough sell these days, but I was sure he'd do well with it. <br /><br />"I was thinking about where we could do the interview. I know the heat down here is uncomfortable, and sweating like that won't look good on camera. But I was just up at Manua Kea --" <br /><br />"The volcano?"<br /><br />Was it? I thought it was a mountain. <br /><br />"Yeah. It's much cooler up there. Not as cold as you're used to, but..."<br /><br /> "I like to train in the mountains, in the Urals. Good for the blood," he said, downing another Laprohaig. "And cooler weather...Well, that definitely helps. The interview is tomorrow night?" <br /><br />I nodded. <br /><br />"We can go up early, do all the prep work," I said. <br /><br />Like I said, it didn't take me long to convince him. And then we started talking politics, something he was whip-smart about. In fact, the more we talked, I realized that Andrevich was a smart man. Possibly even a genius, but that could have been the booze. <br /><br />Anyway, I don't remember much about that night, and I certainly don't remember how I wound up in the fountain. Hangover -- brutal. I didn't dare start up with the speed again, though, as I knew I was headed back up to the insane elevation at the Manua Kea site. My granddaddy's old hangover cure would have to work today -- greasy breakfast, lots of coffee, and mild painkillers. Smart plan. I was feeling quite a bit better when I met Jeremy and crew for the day's planning session. Apparently, granddad knew how to drink. <br /><br />"OK, folks, let's get this knocked out quickly," Jeremy said to the four people in front of us. Two camera, one sound, I knew. I figured the good-looking 30-year-old woman who looked like she didn't belong around the others was on hair, makeup, and wardrobe. <br /><br />"We're filming today at the top of Manua Kea, highest spot in the islands," Jeremy said. "I know you were all planning for warmth. That's not going to happen today -- weather says about 28 degrees for the high up there. Might want to find yourselves some coats." <br /><br />I heard the crew grumbling, all but the wardrobe person. She just nodded, a short, curt little bob of her head. Her element, I guess. <br /><br />"Good news, though, is that at that elevation, our link to Global will be instant. I plan to do the interview live," I told them. "So you'll have plenty of downtime." <br /><br />No grumbling at that one, but no mumbled words of praise, either. Tough room, I guess.<br /><br />Jeremy and I took another hopper up to the Observatory, but the crew was stuck with a helicopter that had to be 60 years old. I wouldn't have been surprised if the thing had seen action in the China War. <br /><br />Andrevich and his people would also take a hopper. I'd paid for both of them, and you don't even want to know how much two round-trip hoppers ran. I could afford it, and all, but... I don't know. Maybe I could get the Network to reimburse me later. <br /><br />Meg, the girl in wardrobe, was pretty good. My sizes weren't hard -- I knew she could pull them up on her screen. But even when I've had wardrobe people get the sizes right, they've messed up styles. Not so with this girl --classic-cut black leather jacket, neoprene combat-style shirt, dark gray pants, heavy black boots. Excellent. I'd have to figure out who she was and ask to have her work with me again -- good wardrobe people were tough to find, inexplicably. <br /><br />Up on the mountain, Andrevich seemed to be comfortable in the below-freezing temperatures. He also seemed to not be hung over. Not in the slightest. That was annoying-- while I was feeling better than I had, I could still feel the damage from the night before. <br /><br />"Dane!" he boomed, slapping a massive hand on my back. I managed to keep my feet, but I'm not entirely sure how. "How are you?"<br /><br />"Feeling pretty good," I lied, trying to keep from coughing. That playful slap on the back had acted like a Heimlich maneuver. <br /><br />What followed next was what you'd expect. Meetings. Those were about as interesting to sit through as they would be to recount. Jeremy and I met with Andrevich's PR person, then with the camera and lighting folks when they arrived. Upshot -- we'd film outside. The observatory had a small garden, and Meg was confident she and the camera guys could make it look good. The PR meeting was fine.Mischa, Andrevich's PR guy, asked that we didn't spend much time on what Vladimir had been doing the last four years. Fair enough. Mischa assured me it was boring anyway, and I didn't doubt it. <br /><br />Andrevich and I ran through some old fight highlights after lunch. We picked out a few moments to use in the piece -- his first World Championship in 2072, his last title defense in early 2094. Easy. The interview was looking like a walk.<br /><br />Tim tracked me down between meetings. He was red-faced and out of breath, which I expected. The guy wasn't in what I would call stellar shape, but he was running to catch up with me. Obesity and thin air didn't mix too well. I was surprised he didn't have a heart attack and drop dead at my feet, but he caught his breath back and started talking eventually. <br /><br />"It's really close now," he panted, finally uncapping a bottle of water and drinking. "Near Mars."<br /><br />"How soon will it be here?" <br /><br />"I don't know for sure. Its speed isn't constant. It stopped near Jupiter for several hours. But we finally have measurements. It's bigger than we thought." [P] "How big?" I asked. <br /><br />"Really fucking big. Surface area is about 270,000 square miles." <br /><br />Shit. That did sound big, but I had no idea how big that was. Tim apparently saw my confusion. <br /><br />"About the size of Texas. Little bigger. And it's at least twenty miles high." <br /><br />"Are you sure about that?" <br /><br />"Reasonably sure, yeah."<br /><br />"What does that mean?" I asked. "I mean, what would happen if it hit the Earth?" <br /><br />"Uh... that would mean no more Earth. Something that big traveling at speed? It would crack the planet in half, if we were lucky." <br /><br />I thought he must be fucking with me. No way he could sound so calm, right? I mean, not if that was true. But even crimson-faced and panting, he didn't sound like he was in the mortal terror he should've been. <br /><br />"You don't sound worried," I said. <br /><br />"It's not going to hit. Neptune, Europa, Jupiter were all in its path. It went around."<br /><br />"And you think it'll go around us?"<br /><br />"I really don't think it would avoid all of those other bodies, plus asteroids, and not us. If we go under the theory that it's being intelligently piloted -- which I'm leaning towards -- that wouldn't make any sort of sense." <br /><br />Of course, as you well know, he was right. The Object didn't hit us. But it didn't pass us by like Tim then theorized it might. <br /><br /> Anyway, the appointed time finally came -- 7 p.m. Central, which was only 3 in the afternoon in Hawaii. We were all set to go. Andrevich and I were sitting across from each other, the view down the mountain in the background. Reg, the lead camera, was set up. At precisely 3, he gave us the signal, and the interview went live. <br /><br />I said this would be about what you didn't see, and it will. So I won't go into the interview, as you probably saw it -- especially if the ratings I saw later were any indication. It was smooth. Well, except for one small bit, about an hour into the program. <br /><br />We were discussing the final title defense. I remember that well. My earpiece suddenly went live, and Jeremy was on the other end. It was way out of bounds to call a personality on-air. This was big. <br /><br />"Dane. Keep talking. We've got a situation out here," Jeremy's voice buzzed in my ear. "Three patrol vehicles just landed outside. Not Honolulu PD or Hawaii State Police. Markings look like Coal Creek." <br /><br />Coal Creek was a PMC -- a Private Military Contractor. I had no idea what they were doing there, but Jeremy provided updates on their movements throughout the last hour of the interview. <br /><br />"They've locked off the perimeter. Guns are out, but fingers aren't on triggers." <br /><br />Then, a bit later: "I just talked to them. The guy in charge says this place is in total lockdown. They're going to let you finish the interview, so keep going." <br /><br />Finally: "As soon as you're off the air -- three minutes left, by the way-- they're going to escort you and Andrevich inside for questioning." <br /><br />And, soon enough, they did. Reg signaled me as soon as we were off the network feed, and the doors leading into the garden opened. Six men in black combat suits -- body armor, tactical goggles, tech boots -- poured out of the doors and headed straight for us. In seconds, they had Meg, Reg, and Jackson and Celio (the second camera and sound guys) surrounded and headed back into the building. That left Andrevich and me in the garden with two of the PMCs. <br /><br />They carried nonlethal weapons -- large-field tasers, foam guns. Federal law stated that only police and federals could carry lethal weapons in the U.S., but I noticed they had some of those, too. They both had pistols, old ones, probably relics from the China War or before. Probably used antique collection laws to carry them. <br /><br />"You're filming here without permission," one of them, the taller one, finally said. <br /><br />"We have permission," I said, smiling. "Dr. Timothy Miller --" <br /><br />"Dr. Miller does not have the authority to authorize anything," tall guy said. "Mr. Andrevich. An honor. I've been a fan of yours for years. I apologize for this, gentlemen, but Umbra Dynamics has ordered the facility closed. Immediately. We will need to detain you for questioning, but we will make it as quick as possible." <br /><br />*Don't rock the boat.* <br /><br />I nodded to him. <br /><br />"I understand," I said. "Can I contact my network? Let them know I'm going to be late?<br /><br />"In time, after we've questioned you."<br /><br />They led Andrevich and me to a small room somewhere deep inside the Observatory complex. Tim and another scientist were there, along with Jeremy. This second scientist was as thin as Tim was fat, and I guessed he made the fatal mistake of getting to the food machines after Tim. Without another word, the two PMCs closed us in the room, and I heard the door lock. <br /><br />"So, Tim, want to tell me what's going on?" I asked, trying to keep the anger out of my voice. I doubt I succeeded. <br /><br />"I'm not entirely sure," he started. "Umbra sent them. They must have read about the Object in my weekly report. I didn't even know they were paying attention to us up here." <br /><br />"And me? Do they know I know?" I asked.<br /><br />Tim shook his head.<br /><br />"I don't think so. I never mentioned you or Jeremy."<br /><br />"Anyone want to --" Andrevich started, then trailed off, waving his hand around the room to indicate "all this." <br /><br />"Oh, sure. Sorry," I said, smiling. I'd have to be very careful about how I told him -- it wouldn't do to have the former Cage Champion of the World ripping my arms off. I suspected he wouldn't be too happy that I'd used his big comeback interview as an excuse to keep an eye on the Object situation. <br /><br />"My buddy Tim here and his colleague -- sorry, I don't know your name -- have been monitoring something damn interesting," I said. <br /><br />"Jake Cross," the thin scientist said. I did my best not to shoot him a poisonous look for interrupting me. <br /><br />"Right," I said. "They picked up an Object coming toward Earth, what... three days ago, Tim?" <br /><br />Tim nodded. He knew not to interrupt. Good man. <br /><br />"I see," Andrevich said, nodding. "And my guess is that your superiors wanted you to cover my story more than this one?"<br /><br />He had it dead to rights, but he didn't seem angry. His voice was calm, measured, as was his expression. I nodded, and he went on. "So you figured you'd talk me into coming up here, keep an eye on the story anyway? Smart. That's why I requested you. You're..."<br /><br />"Not an idiot?" I guessed. <br /><br />"So you've met the sports reporter Global wanted to assign to me, then," he said with a laugh.<br /><br />Andrevich seemed cool, so I turned back to Tim. <br /><br />"So what's the progress on the... you know..." <br /><br />"Earthfall in six hours."<br /><br />Christ. That was much sooner than I expected. I didn't think we were going to be out of there that soon, but I was wrong, apparently. I'm sure the PMCs would have liked to have kept us there all night, but that's not how it worked out for them. We left minutes later. <br /><br />In the space of two minutes, Andrevich went from jovial, even-tempered, to agitated. I started to get worried, so I asked him.<br /><br />"Vladimir? You OK?" <br /><br />"Vladimir Piotr Andrevich does not get locked up," he said, snarling. "Does not like to be told what to do."<br /><br />He was standing now, pacing the room. I wondered idly if he had claustrophobia. <br /><br />The room we were in wasn't in any way secure. It wasn't a jail cell, or a holding area-- just a regular-ass room with a regular door. Before I could try to get him to calm down... Before I could even say another word, really, Andrevich was through the door. I mean, he charged himself right the fuck through it. One second he was standing back against the wall -- the next, he rammed through the locked door, turning it into effing kindling.<br /><br />There were guards just outside the door, and seeing Andrevich tear through them was an insane blur of violent heraldic poetry. There were two of them, one on each side of the door, and before I could make it out of the room, I had to dodge one flying at me. He slammed into the opposite wall hard enough to knock him out, even through his helmet. Then I got into the hall and saw carnage. <br /><br />The other guard was trying to raise a gun to Andrevich, who was having none of it. A quick, savage right uppercut was all it took. His knuckles connected with the guard's chin, snapping his bulletproof visor and knocking his helmet clean off, chin strap be damned. With his left hand, Andrevich caught the helmet by the broken strap, then swung it in front of him. I hadn't seen the third PMC yet. But Andrevich had. The newly liberated helmet collided with the oncoming PMC's skull, knocking him into a nearby open door. <br /><br />Madness. In the space of the time it had taken me to get out the door, Andrevich had neutralized three much younger men, and done so easily. Other Coal Creek guys came at us, but it was all a blur. A blur of a pissed-off, older New Soviet, tearing through them like nothing. I lost count of the PMCs he knocked out (or possibly killed) before we made it outside, but it was a lot. He wasn't even sweating. <br /><br />We fought our way outside -- OK, to be correct, Andrevich fought our way outside. Tim, Jake, Jeremy, and I just followed his wake. The New Soviet left bodies all along the observatory to the spot where our two hoppers were surrounded by the three patrol vehicles. When he finally stopped moving, Andrevich turned to us. <br /><br />"I think it is time we should leave," he said, his voice a flat monotone. <br /><br />"What about our crew? Your people?" Jeremy asked. <br /><br />"Hmm. Suppose I should have thought to leave one of these guys conscious." <br /><br />"I'm sure they're around here somewhere. We can look --" I said. <br /><br />"We don't have time," Jeremy said. "The second these guys wake up --" <br /><br />"They'll drop in on this place in force," Tim said, nodding. "I know this company. That's exactly what they'd do. You need to go. Get this story out." <br /><br />That was something I knew I could do, especially now. Ryan would have no problem going to air with this one. Umbra Dynamics ran National News Network, Global's only real competitor in the States. A chance to royally fuck Umbra Dynamics? Ryan would be falling all over himself to jump at that one.<br /><br />"I'll stay behind. Find our people. There's a backup crew in Honolulu. They're at the Tidal Motel. Find them and get this story out there," Jeremy said. <br /><br />"I'll need data," I said. "Video. Something."<br /><br />"I can do that," Jake said, bringing his screen online and tapping away. My own screen chirped -- a data transfer was in progress. In a few seconds, I had everything I needed. <br /><br />"Umbra's soldiers will be looking for you," Andrevich said. "I will come along. Not to be insulting, my friend, but I don't think you could handle them in a fight."<br /><br />"You're 100% correct," I told him. "Let's go." <br /><br />I normally hated that the hoppers were on a programmed flight plan, but not that day. The control freak in me took a back seat. Jeremy and the scientists had us in our pressure suits and helmets in a minute flat, and as soon as we were in, the hopper took off. The flight was short, and there was nothing we had to do to make it safely to ground. I expected Coal Creek guys at the landing site.<br /><br />Nope. Just the same bored local who had been there the day before, and earlier that morning. I wondered if he ever left the area. <br /><br />"Other hopper?" he asked in a slow, monotone voice. <br /><br />"Coming down soon," I said. <br /><br />"K. Gonna have to charge an extra day. Don't have it back by midnight, that is." <br /><br />"That's fine," I said. "You have my account info on file."<br /><br />"Yep. Back by midnight." <br /><br />I nodded and headed for the cars we'd taken from the hotel to the launch site. <br /><br />"Shit," I mumbled. <br /><br />"Problem?" <br /><br />Uh, yeah. There was a problem, and if I already wasn't feeling emasculated by watching this guy knock out several soldiers while I cowered... <br /><br />"Um... Vladimir... I don't suppose you know how to drive, do you?"TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-23794211200251245912011-12-26T23:55:00.000-08:002011-12-26T23:56:03.988-08:00E/B:H -- Chapter TwoI can't say for certain, of course, that you've never taken a ride in a hopper. But I'm pretty sure you haven't. Not unless you're one of the miners they've been sending to Luna City on the moon lately, or unless you're extremely wealthy. Shit, I'm a network personality, and I make boatloads of cash, and I'd never been on one until that night. They're not inexpensive. <br /><br />The fact that Jeremy must have paid for it himself -- Network wasn't going to cover it -- made me think he had a serious story. I made a mental note to throw some cash his way when we got back -- I know what he makes, and it's less than a quarter of my salary.<br /><br />The hopper essentially looked like a big metal ball on three legs. A short, burly local handed us pressure suits. Mine was red. As we suited up, I finally thought to ask the obvious. <br /><br />"So, where are we going?" I asked, hoping he wouldn't say "the moon." I mean, I trusted the guy, but come *on.* <br /><br />"Mauna Kea," he said. <br /><br />I had know idea what those words meant. Something Hawaiian. So at least we weren't leaving the atmosphere. <br /><br />"And that is?"<br /><br />"Observatory. Up in the mountains. Used to be a college thing. Funded by corporations now, I think. Anyway, an old buddy of mine works there. Got me the scent of something that..." he trailed off. <br /><br />I simply nodded. I didn't know much about hoppers, but I knew they were mind-blowingly fast. We'd be back before we were missed. That was the hope, anyway. <br /><br />I'd never taken a hopper ride before, but I knew the concept. The little ball would shoot up -- fast. Faster than any humans inside would be able to withstand without becoming a permanent part of the vehicle's floor. Exact speed? No clue. But the news report I'd seen on them mentioned that, without the hopper's safety system, occupants would be liquified. <br /><br />The pressure suits were only a part of the system, and were mainly there to keep the riders... well, clean. We also got helmets. Once the helmets were on, the suits were air- and water-tight. Well, liquid-tight, anyway. <br /><br />Then came the second safety feature. The entirety of the hopper -- the ball -- filled with a sort of... goo. It was a thick gel that took the shock of the acceleration. The passengers floated in the center of the ball, surrounded by this crud, as the hopper rocketed directly up. <br /><br />We were alone. There was no pilot on board the hopper -- its course was pre-programmed into its computers. There was, however, an operator of sorts. One guy at the hopper's takeoff point monitored the flight via a link to the hopper's flight computers. In an emergency, he could... <br /><br />OK, in an emergency, we were probably fucked. The most the operator could do was come up with a convincing story about our deaths. Our flight was too short to make any corrections -- it would be over in less than 30 seconds. <br /><br />Jeremy and I were lowered into the gel. As we cleared the frame of the sphere's hatch, mechanical clamps grabbed our ankles and pulled us into position at the ball's center. The clamps let go, and I was floating in the center of the sphere. I tried to turn and look at Jeremy, but the clear gel was thick. Moving my head wasn't going to happen without more effort than I wanted to put in, so I did my best to relax my body for the flight. <br /><br />There was no countdown, no red light turning on inside the sphere to let us know we were taking off. But there didn't need to be. We definitely knew it when it happened. Even with the gel, even with the pressure suits, I felt like I was being curb-stomped. By an elephant. With an overeating disorder. <br /><br />I know the flight only took 30 seconds -- 28, really -- but it seemed much longer. I could swear I felt the heavy metal boots attached to my pressure suit touching the hard bottom deck of the sphere at one point. Just as the pressure started to get unbearable, though, it stopped in an instant. We had landed without so much as a tiny jolt. We floated in the sphere -- in the center, I noticed, so my boots probably hadn't reached the floor -- for a couple of minutes. I guessed we were there for about three minutes, maybe three and a half -- so 6 or 7 times longer than the actual flight had been. <br /><br />Finally, the hatch at the top of the sphere slid open, and the clamps grabbed us around the ankles again and pushed us upwards. When we were halfway out of the hatch, Jeremy and I could pull ourselves out onto the ladders on either side. The clamps let go. There was no one outside to meet us, to help us out of our suits. I pulled off my helmet, first twisting to the left, then the right. The first thing I noticed after the seals unlocked and I pulled the helmet off was that it was cold outside. Really cold, actually. <br /><br />"The fuck, Jeremy. I thought this was Hawaii," I grumbled as Jeremy took off his own helmet. <br /><br />"It's the altitude," he told me. "More than 14,000 feet. Like, three miles up." <br /><br />I nodded. That made sense, I guess. I'd been up in the Nevada mountains in summer. That time, I'd been able to see my breath, and I don't think those mountains were anywhere near this high. And I had another thought. "What about air?" I asked. <br /><br />"Thinner up here. Don't try to run any marathons," he said, pulling off his gloves. <br /><br />Well, shit. That was bad news. I'd taken another couple doses of speed on the flight over, which meant my heart rate was somewhere north of 130. Higher heart rate meant I needed to pull in more oxygen. It would be very easy for me to pass out up here. I'd have to be careful. <br /><br />"Turn around so I can get you out of your suit," Jeremy said, holding up his now-ungloved hands. <br /><br />"Thought you had a pal here. Why isn't he out here helping us?" I grumbled as I turned. <br /><br />"He's working. This place only has a couple of employees these days. Back when it was government funded, huge staff. Now that it's basically a corporate tax writeoff, it's got a skeleton crew," he said. <br /><br />And as you'll see in a few minutes, everyone's pretty busy."<br /><br />Getting us both out of the suits took another ten or fifteen minutes. Upside of that, though, was that all of the goop stayed on the suits, and my clothes were still clean and pressed. Gotta look good. Apart from being a talker, it's one of the main parts of my job.<br /><br />I checked the screen on my wrist as we headed to the observatory. Despite the darkening sky, the screen was dimming. I didn't remember the last time I'd eaten -- lunch in Dallas hadn't happened. As the screen used my body's electrical impulses for power, the dimness was a bit worrying. <br /><br />Worrying, too, were my vital signs. My pulse was 138, and my blood pressure was 150 over 95. I was already feeling dizzy, a combination of malnutrition and amphetamines. <br /><br />"Anything to eat up here? A snack bar or something?" I asked as I trudged after Jeremy through the observatory's front door. <br /><br />"Shit, that was rude of me. Didn't even ask when you ate last. I was just so on about this story --"<br /><br />"It's fine. I'm just a bit--"<br /><br />"No, totally. I understand. I'll try to track you down something. The scientists live up here, so they must have food around."<br /><br />That was good news. Food would help -- not as much as if I didn't have five doses of speed kicking around my bloodstream, but...<br /><br />Even inside the observatory, no one came to meet us. Didn't seem to matter, though, as Jeremy seemed to know where he was going. Our route took us through what looked like a small kitchen. Though all of the lights were off, we could see a food machine blinking. I hated the food from these machines -- soy and tofu mechanically formed into foodlike shapes, sprayed with taste chemicals. Yech. But if I wanted to stay vertical, I couldn't afford to be picky.<br /><br />I chose the least evil-looking option -- braised "beef" and rice. The food machine was old -- it rattled and bubbled -- but it produced a small, trapezoidal container with Chinese characters on it. There were some chopsticks and plastic forks in a small bin next to the machine. I learned to eat with chopsticks when I was two. I tried the faux-Chinese faux-food. It was authentically terrible, but I ate it as Jeremy and I continued through the huge complex.I didn't vomit, anyway. I'm counting that as a win. <br /><br />Finally, we saw another human being. It was after I'd finished my sad "meal." We were walking, of all places, past a men's room. Just after we passed it, the door opened, and a big man in a black coat came out. <br /><br />When I say big, I don't mean muscular; I mean fat. I couldn't help staring for a second -- you never see overweight people. Not these days. Especially when being trim, with the ubiquity of soy and tofu and the easy availability of metabo-boosters, is easy. Easier than letting yourself get heavy, anyway. I don't even know how one would go about gaining 50 or 60 extra pounds anymore. <br /><br />"Tim," Jeremy said to the heavy man. <br /><br />"Jeremy!" Tim said, his pudgy face breaking into a wide grin.<br /><br />"Hi, I'm --" I started. <br /><br />"Oh, I know. Watch you on Global all the time," Tim said. I didn't think it was possible, but his grin got wider. A bit scary. The big man looked like he was about to unhinge his jaw and swallow both Jeremy and me. <br /><br />"Want to show Dane what you showed me?" <br /><br />"Of course, of course," Tim said, his grin shrinking back to a usual size. He waved a massive hand in the air and started walking. Jeremy and I just followed him. <br /><br />I was starting to feel a little less shaky, but Tim was walking fast, especially for a fat man. I dropped back a bit -- I figured if I could keep Jeremy and the big scientist in sight, I would be OK, and I was gasping for breath. At least my screen wasn't as dim anymore. That was definitely something. <br /><br />"It's just through here," Tim called back, turning. He led us into a small room with screens covering three of the walls. The lights were off, but they really didn't need to be on. Even in suspend mode, the screens threw enough light to illuminate the room. Tim rolled up his sleeve and tapped his screen twice. The screens jumped to life, but the room got darker -- we were looking now at black screens with only pinpoints of background light. <br /><br />"Think your screens are broken, boss," I said, leaning against the doorframe and trying like hell to calm my heart rate.<br /><br />"No, they're functional. You're looking at a bit of space between Jupiter and Saturn. Lemme just..." Tim mumbled, tapping his screen. <br /><br />The screen's image shifted, and that's when I first saw it. The... object. I couldn't say what it was, but I wasn't the only one. <br /><br />"What is it?" I asked. <br /><br />"I try not to ask those questions," Tim said, magnifying the image. It was massive, whatever it was. The shape was... well, not quite symmetrical, but not asymmetrical, either. I'd say it was roughly squareish, but it had odd angles. Protrusions. Ridges and valleys. <br /><br />"Asteroid?" I asked. <br /><br />"They don't think so," Jeremy said. <br /><br />"We don't want to rush to --" <br /><br />"Fine. No conclusions. But what do you think it is?" I asked, sighing. Scientists could certainly be fucking frustrating.<br /><br />"Well, I can tell you what we've observed," Tim started carefully. "It's moving. Fast."<br /><br />"It was near Neptune yesterday," Tim said. <br /><br />"That doesn't seem that fast," I said.<br /><br />"Trust me, it's faster than you think. It's gaining speed," Tim told us. "There's more. It's heading this way." <br /><br />Well, yeah. I'd guessed that, otherwise they wouldn't have dragged my tired ass all the way up there. <br /><br />"I can see that doesn't mean much to you. Let me restate -- it's coming for Earth. That means it's changed direction. More than once. It's had to make course corrections to keep headed towards us." <br /><br />"You mean it's being... flown? Intelligently?" I said, blinking. <br /><br />"Like I said, we don't like to make those kinds of conclusions..." Tim said, trailing off. <br /><br />They couldn't make conclusions. But I could. And this was shaping up to be a much, much bigger story than some has-been cage fighter popping up to get a shit award. <br /><br />* * * <br /><br />When I got off the phone with Ryan, it would be an understatement to say I was shocked. Dumbstruck would be accurate.<br /><br />"This is the same bullshit Jeremy told me the day before I sent you," Ryan had said, sighing heavily on the other end of the line. "It sounds just as weak and fictional as when he said it." <br /><br />"I don't think you understand, Ryan. There are scientists here who --" <br /><br />"Scientists," Ryan scoffed. "Right. If they were any kind of real scientists, they'd be working for Umbra or The Lungshan."<br /><br />OK, so pure research under corporate grants didn't hold much weight with my boss. Good to know, I guess.<br /><br />"They have data, Ryan. Real-time imagery of the object. It could be the first contact with alien life. Don't you think Global News needs to be there first?" <br /><br />That shut him up for a minute. But only a minute. <br /><br />"Look, they said this thing is moving pretty slowly, right?" he asked. <br /><br />"Well, they said it was picking up speed."<br /><br />"It's still at least two days before we have to worry about it. Do the Andrevich story. "We'll revisit this conversation after that." <br /><br />Ryan didn't wait for an answer. He just terminated the connection. And I was...<br /><br />Well, I was furious. There was no doubt of that. But more than anything, I was confused. This was a huge story. Gigantic, in fact. Why couldn't Ryan see that? Why was this Vladimir Andrevich story so important to him, but a potential alien ship was back-burnered? <br /><br />In any event, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot I could do. Ryan wanted the Andrevich story, and that was what I'd have to give. It's not like I could just do the Object story on my own --Global News would never air it. And I couldn't even go to another Network. If the story was too hard-news for Global, then none of the other Networks would touch it for anything. Not in this country, anyway. Probably not even in Old Blighty, though I'd pretty much burned my bridges with Royal when I left four years ago. I was stuck. <br /><br />Taking another ride down in the hopper wasn't something I was looking forward to -- it wouldn't be a powered flight, after all. It would more just be a straight gravity-drop until a couple of hundred feet before the landing site. Then, a controlled landing. But there was really no other way to get back to where I was supposed to be, where I guess I *had* to be, now. So we suited up again. A few minutes later, we were back on the ground, almost exactly in the same spot where we'd started. The burly local guy was back. He helped us out of our suits, and Jeremy drove me to the hotel where we would meet Andrevich and his people early in the morning. <br /><br />"Have they landed yet?" I asked as we rolled down the long, slick highway into the center of Honolulu.<br /><br />"Hang on. Let me check."<br /><br />Jeremy let the car's computer take over the driving and tapped a few commands into his screen. After a second, he nodded to me. <br /><br />"Looks like they landed 20 minutes ago. They should be... well, right behind us on this road," he told me.<br /><br />"Staying in our hotel?" <br /><br />"I think so, yes." <br /><br />A plan was forming. Maybe I'd be able to do the story I wanted to do, after all. <br /><br />"Kick up the speed. Make sure we get to the hotel before they do," I told Jeremy.<br /><br />"Why?" <br /><br />"Because, my friend... I have an idea." I said, grinning. <br /><br />There's a skillset required for every job. For Andrevich's job, you had to be a big, mean motherfucker who could hit really hard. But there are those of us out there who aren't big, aren't fighters. My job has two requirements --that I look good and talk well. And thanks to those two skills, I've never had to fight anyone in my life. <br /><br />Growing up, I got myself into plenty of trouble, sure. I don't think you've been a teenager unless you've pissed off most of the people you know. I got close to some fights a few times. But I never had to throw a punch. I could always smile or talk my way out of pretty much everything, which is why I became what I am. <br /><br />So you'd think there was nothing Andrevich and me would have in common, right? Well, there's one skill in my set that helps. Even when dealing with a guy who could disassemble me without his fight tattoos even changing colors. It's a skill I'm proud of. <br /><br />See, Andrevich was New Soviet, but New Soviets shared more similarities to their Russian neighbors than either wanted to admit. Apart from the common language and history, both Russians and New Soviets liked to drink. And I could hold a masterclass on drinking. So when I arranged to meet Andrevich in the hotel bar, I knew I had my work cut out for me -- but I knew my plan would work.TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-9187221929748064672011-12-12T22:11:00.001-08:002011-12-12T22:11:52.598-08:00E/B:H -- Chapter OneYou know what I've noticed? No matter where you go these days, you got some motherfucker telling you he was there. And it's always a guy, too, telling you that shit. <br /><br />"You know," he'll say, thinking he's being all smooth and casual and shit. "You know, I'm one of the few people in the world who was actually there. On Day One."<br /><br />It doesn't matter where you are, either. Could be at work, showing the new guy to a desk where he'll spend his day plugged into the system, doing monkey-easy tasks for years. Could be at a party for your Great-Grandma's 132nd. Someone will do it, even though we all know by now 99% of them are full of shit. <br /><br />But, of course, you're going to believe me when I tell you that I *was* actually one of the people there on Day One. Why, you ask? Well, I can prove it, unlike everyone else. And most times, I don't even have to break out said proof. People know when they see me. Because while other guys point to a flesh-colored blob in the network feed and claim it was them, all I have to do is smile at you. Sometimes, I even introduce myself. <br /><br />"Hi," I'll say. "Dane Phoenix, Global News Network." <br /><br />Not my real name, of course. Phoenix is a stage name, but all the network reporters have them. Dane is what my mother named me, though, so call me that.<br /><br />So, you know for a fact I was there. Most likely, you first heard about the events of Day One from me, or at least someone like me. I'll tell you the stuff they didn't show you on the network feed, the stuff they only told us in the media/entertainment complex. And I'm telling you that stuff now, because, seriously, what can it hurt at this point? <br /><br />It doesn't start on Day One, of course. My involvement with the story starts a couple of days before -- Day Minus One, if you like. It was one of those days. Errand days. I had a lot of crap to take care of, not the least of which was re-registering my entertainment license. That meant a trip to Dallas. <br /><br />I could have been driven there, of course. The Network would have been more than happy to hire me a vehicle and a driver. I mean, they kind of bend over backwards to do stuff for me -- I bring them ratings, after all, so they want to make sure I'm happy. Wouldn't do to have one of their most popular personalities jump ship, though, between you and me, that's something I wouldn't do. Global News is one of the few with any journalistic cred these days, though I could bitch about the pay if I wanted. But nah. Not me. My mother always told me not to rock the boat, and she was right. I was on top right *then*, but that didn't mean it would always be. I tried to be as easy as possible to work with, unlike some of my co-personalities... but I'll get to that later.<br /><br />Anyway, Dallas. I decided to take the train, mainly because I was still nursing a hangover from the night before and could use the time to sleep. Network personalities always get the private cars on the train, so that meant two hours from my house in L.A. of undisturbed time. <br /><br />Yeah, I know. No one actually *lives* in Los Angeles anymore, right? It's almost passé at this point, but I don't really care. I like the weather, and the old-school "we used to be the home of the entertainment industry" vibe. And Dallas is... well ... It's fucking Dallas, isn't it? Mega-City One. Too many damn laws in Texas. Too many people watching your every goddamn move. <br /><br />I know. Coming from a network personality, that might almost seem funny. We all have the *hey, look at me!* disease, don't we? But the insane level of surveillance in Texas made me avoid it unless absolutely necessary -- usually once a year, like today. <br /><br />So, the nap on the train didn't wipe out the hangover like I hoped it would. I might have dropped some perfectly legal amphetamines. OK, so I was pretty much flying on speed when I switched trains at Arlington for downtown Dallas. Judge if you want, I suppose. Pretend you don't take some Umbra Dynamics uppers after a rough night out. I only mention it because it becomes pertinent later. <br /><br />Downtown Dallas is like time travel, man. There's this part of it called Dealey Plaza that they've kept as it was in the 1960s. When... something... happened. Can't remember what off the top of my head. But it's like walking through an old movie. Kinda cool. The train to downtown lets you off right at Dealey, and there's a pleasant five-block walk through Past-Ville to the FEC building. The FEC -- Federal Entertainment Commission-- used to be the FCC. They once regulated what we could do on Network, before I was born. Nowadays they had no regulatory power -- the Networks just paid them a yearly fee to license its personalities, like me.<br /><br />Extortion, really, but the Network always paid my fee for me. All I had to do was show up, submit to a DNA scan, and sign a screen. Boom, done. But I had to do it in person, which sucked. <br /><br />It took me all of five minutes to get that done, and it was almost noon. I was thinking of tracking down some lunch when the chime sounded in my ear. <br /><br />A lot of the personalities have the implants. It's a simple operation in the middle ear, where their phones are implanted just above the jawline. I don't, at least not anymore. I used to, but retro is coming back in, so I had the implant taken out and replaced it with an old-school earpiece. It looked tight. Still, it was Network property, and it was always on. The chime meant it was Global News calling, and that I couldn't ignore it. I knew I had five seconds to clear my throat and get ready to start talking to whoever was on the other end.<br /><br />It wasn't a person. It was one of the computers at Global News Headquarters, about a mile and a half from where I was standing in Downtown Dallas.<br /><br />"Dane Phoenix," the computer's voice, deep and male, said. "You have a mandatory appointment at Global News Network Headquarters. Appointment date, 27 July 2098. Appointment time, 1315 Central. Please check in with Ryan Jackson, News Department Head. Confirm." <br /><br />"Confirmed," I sighed. I'd hoped to get in and out of Dallas without having to go into the office, but they knew I was in town. Probably knew the second I stepped off the train. Fucking Texas. <br /><br />I'd never met Ryan before, though he was my boss. He'd hired me. But he picked me up out of the London market, back when I'd been working for the Royal News Network. That was in, what, 2094. We interviewed entirely over video chat, and I moved to Los Angeles as soon as he gave me the job. I'd managed to avoid him so far. Him wanting to talk to me in person... well, I had no clue what that meant, but suffice it to say it was a highly irregular request. <br /><br />I had just over an hour before the meeting, and the speed was starting to rob me of my appetite. I could have called for a lift. Again, the Network would only be too happy to send a driver to me. But it was a nice day, and I was suddenly bursting with energy. That was probably the speed, too. So I decided to leg it, and covered the mile and a half in just under ten minutes. <br /><br />Yeah. I walk fast. Something odd I've noticed since moving here is that Americans walk painfully slowly. I grew up in Europe, though. Amsterdam, specifically. There, everyone walks like there's a shadow person tailing them, ready to pounce and attack at any second. Here, everyone walks like they've got nowhere in particular to be, even if it's patently obvious that they do. It's weird.<br /><br />So, of course, I made it to the office early. Had to ask a receptionist -- tall, blond guy with impossible good looks -- where to go. He directed me to the 23rd floor, told me to check in with the receptionist there. <br /><br />I suspect the Network is doing secret cloning. The guy behind the desk on the 23rd floor looked exactly like the one in the lobby, or so I thought. Could have been the speed again. It's safe and legal, and everything, but it can throw your brain a curve ball or six if you overuse it... which I really had lately. <br /><br />Anyway, the clone pointed me to Ryan's office, down at the end of the hall, with instructions to have a seat outside. I didn't. Only because I didn't have a chance, though. The door was open, and Ryan was inside. Without a word, he waved me into the office. <br /><br />"You're early. I like your initiative," he said. He was wearing workout clothes, black athletic pants and a black tank top. There was a cross-training machine in his office, I saw as I stepped inside and he closed the door behind me. He'd been working out. I could tell by the sweat he was still toweling off his brow. I didn't know people still really worked out, with machines and stuff. I take the pharmaceutical route, and so does everyone else I know. Not Ryan Jackson, apparently.<br /><br />"Vladimir Andrevich," Ryan said. He sat behind his desk and tossed the towel onto the machine. "You know him?" <br /><br />"Know *of* him," I said. "Everyone kind of does." <br /><br />"Well, everyone over the age of 15. He's been off the grid for years." <br /><br />"But not anymore?" I asked. I was sweating now, too. Damn speed.<br /><br />"Apparently not. His press agent contacted the Network this morning." <br /><br />Andrevich was a legend when I was a kid. Best cage fighter the world had ever seen. Nowadays, it was a rare thing to be considered a global celebrity, but Andrevich sure was.<br /><br />"He returning to the cage?"<br /><br />"No. But the IFAA is planning a ceremony to honor him, day after tomorrow. And he's attending." <br /><br />Now, that was interesting. Andrevich had been undefeated until 2094, when he'd killed a man in the cage. Accidentally, he said. And though I already suspected the answer to this question, I asked anyway. <br /><br />"And this has something to do with me?" I asked. <br /><br />"We're sending you out on assignment. You meet with him tonight, interview him tomorrow, cover the ceremony after." <br /><br />Yep. Pretty much what I thought.<br /><br />"I don't cover sports, Ryan. Celebrity beat, hard news. Wouldn't someone like Jagger Cash --" <br /><br />"Jagger Cash is an idiot," Ryan said, cutting me off. "And Andrevich's people said he specifically requested you. So that's the job." <br /><br />And that was it. That was all he said to me. He looked at me, then at the office door. I'm not brilliant, but I got the hint. I stood up, managed a quick half-wave, and I left. The 23rd floor clone was waiting outside, and he motioned for me to follow him. <br /><br />"Your flight leaves DFW in two hours," he said, heading for the elevator.<br /><br />"Where am I going?" <br /><br />"Hawaii. Honolulu," he said. <br /><br />"Hear that used to be pretty nice."<br /><br />"Parts of the island are. The part you're heading to might as well be Chicago," he said. <br /><br />"Beautiful. Background info?" <br /><br />"Already downloading to your screen," he said, nodding at the thin-film screen on my forearm. I checked, and there was, indeed, a progress bar just finishing up. <br /><br />"Private flight?" I asked. <br /><br />"Goes without saying."<br /><br />"Good man. Hey, is the guy downstairs -- " <br /><br />"My brother. Yeah."<br /><br />"Twins?"<br /><br />"No, just born on the same day."<br /><br />I smirked. I thought I saw Clone-23 smirk, as well, as the elevator doors closed and I descended quickly down into the lobby to see his brother. I was sure Clone-1 would have my ride to the airport ready, as well as the list of the crew I'd be working with. Locals, I'd guess. Hopefully, they weren't as bad as the last local crew I'd used -- the wardrobe person was shit. Shirts too small, pants too big. I'd had to go shopping myself with half an hour until I went live. Didn't want a repeat of that one -- not with a story this big. <br /><br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Yeah, I know. You're saying, "What the hell, Dane? You said you were going to talk about Day One. This ain't that. This is some boring shit about Network politics, about how you rich people talk to each other."<br /><br />Trust me. I'm getting there. All of this stuff is relevant, believe it or not, though you might not see the whole picture for a while yet. I know I sure didn't. But I know it must seem disjointed, especially because you never saw the interview with Vladimir Andrevich. You never got the chance. A bigger story -- Day One -- came up before you could. Remember where I was when I first reported on the incidents of that day? <br /><br />That's right. Hawaii. You think you're starting to put it together now, and I suppose you are -- at least part of it, anyway. The full picture is something that didn't make much sense when I finally put it together. Hell, I'm not sure it makes much sense now. <br /><br />Anyway, I did my research on the flight to Hawaii. It was only two and a half hours, but turns out I didn't need all the time. As I started reading the network-assembled dossier, stuff started coming back to me.<br /><br />Like I said, Andrevich was a global celeb. Everyone was a fan, even me when I was younger. I never saw him fight in person, but he was all over the network for effing years.There were some interesting details in his file, though, stuff I didn't know before. <br /><br />First, there was the matter of his hometown. I'd assumed Andrevich was from Russia, but that wasn't true. He was born in a small town in the New Soviet Republic, winter 2049. That couldn't have been an easy place to grow up. After the China War in the 20s, part of Russia had split off and gone communist. Again. The land they claimed was mostly crap wilderness in Siberia near the Chinese border, so Russia let them go. Well, eventually. <br /><br />There were the requisite border skirmishes and saber-rattling, but even Russia knew the land was horrible, cold, and mostly useless. There wasn't much there in the way of natural resources, and the NSR quickly became a third-world country. Even China abandoned them. China ditched Communism in the 40s, but the NSR bullheadedly stuck with it. I'd never known anyone who grew up in that area. I just assumed most people didn't make it to adulthood alive. <br /><br />He was the hero of his hometown, of course. His file showed that. There was a picture of the town square in New Odessa, one showing a depressing, brown sculpture of Andrevich in a fighting pose. It looked like a child had made it -- the fight tattoos on his arms looked like they'd been scratched into the metal with a knife. They were also inaccurate. <br /><br />In any civilized society, such a statue would be 30 feet high and stunningly lifelike. Fuck accurate. The fight tattoos would stand out in electric blue, showing the fighter had taken no damage and was in top physical shape. There wouldn't even be a hint that they might be turning red -- that the fighter might be tiring or injured. <br /><br />Not in New Odessa. Just looking at that one picture of the town square... well, let's say I could see how Vladimir Andrevich wanted to punch someone. <br /><br />I closed Andrevich's file and checked the time on my screen. Still more than an hour to fly, and I was out of research material. I suppose I could have used the time to write a few interview questions, but I don't really do that anymore. Haven't for a few years. When I stopped overpreparing for interviews was when I got noticed, got a reputation as a guy worth talking to, so I got a bit lazy. Nowadays, I came up with one question -- the first one -- and built all of my subsequent questions on the subject's responses. <br /><br />Like I said, it's lazy, but it also works. It got me out of a crap job at the bottom rung of the lowest-ranked Euro Network. The Royal News picked me up, and I haven't looked back since. <br /><br />I was expecting someone from Andrevich's camp to meet me. When I landed, though, I knew the person waiting as I got off the plane. It was Jeremy Ford, one of Global News' best producers. I'd worked with Jeremy for years now, but he hadn't been on my crew list in Dallas a few hours ago. <br /><br />"Jeremy," I said, smiling. <br /><br />"Dane," he replied. No smile, and that was unusual. Jeremy was one of the most laid-back guys I'd ever met. Something was up.<br /><br />"Andrevich's people back out on the interview?" I guessed. <br /><br />"No, you're set to meet with them tomorrow morning. Flight delays. Some kind of storm at the airport in Munich." <br /><br />Well, that was good. I would'ver hated to have come all this way for nothing. <br /><br />"So what's up?" I asked. "You look... well, not happy."<br /><br />"Something else. Could be big, could be nothing." <br /><br />Man of few words. That, at least, was like Jeremy. <br /><br />"And?" <br /><br />"Ryan wants you to stay on this. No side trips, no B story." <br /><br />I knew Jeremy well. Better yet, I trusted his instincts -- he'd been the producer on the Atlantic Rail story, which had won me all sorts of awards. <br /><br />"Well," I said, smiling, "We have time. What say we take a look anyway?"TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-3935191237342452082011-11-01T23:28:00.001-07:002011-11-01T23:28:28.272-07:00EpilogueI went to work for Jason Black a couple of days after we detonated the bomb. When he offered the job, I didn't even hesitate. I mean, let's face it -- even though he cleared off my criminal record, I wasn't swimming in job prospects. My employer had turned out to be the company I was fighting, and Mike was in the wind anyway. Never saw him again. And, like I said earlier, I'd pretty much exhausted all of the big, scary guy jobs... except for the one Jason Black gave me, I guess.<br /><br />We tried to go after Umbra for the whole "let's blow up Los Angeles" thing, but we really had nothing. We had no evidence except for the bomb, which we destroyed (and remember, its radiological signature couldn't have been traced back to Umbra anyway). We had Laura's testimony, but she was just one person. Her word against thousands of Umbra employees... yeah, couldn't make that stick. There was my story and Quentin's story, too, but neither of us made stellar witnesses, and our testimony was all stuff that Laura told us, anyway. <br /><br />So, we had nothing. We tried to put some undercover people inside Umbra for the next couple of years, but it never really worked. The DoD, at Jason Black's recommendation, cut all of their defense funding... until three years later, when 9/11 happened. Then everything was either forgiven or forgotten, because Umbra got an assload of money to ramp up our war machine for the Afghan and Iraq wars.<br /><br />I worked for Jason Black for, Jesus, 35 more years. So you know what's coming. The nuclear bomb set off in Los Angeles -- Aon Center, sixth floor -- in 2018. Both Black and I smelled a rat, and the investigation landed in our office... and we couldn't do shit with it. Umbra had learned from its mistakes, learned to cover its tracks too well. The most we could get anyone to believe was that North Korean extremists somehow obtained and copied Umbra's plan from 1998, but we couldn't prove it. I mean, we couldn't even prove it was their plan back then. There were rumors, bad reputations, but Umbra kept on getting tons of money throughout the entire China War.<br /><br />It may seem like we lost. I mean, it seems that way to me, most of the time. But here's the thing -- I'm not dead yet. Neither is Laura. Just saw her before I went to work this morning. And as long as we're still kicking around, we'll find a way to prove it, even as Umbra is looking heroic here in the fourth year of the war. We'll expose what they did.<br /><br />You know. Eventually.TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-42090391126319554062011-10-31T23:14:00.000-07:002011-10-31T23:15:04.401-07:00Chapter Twenty-OneMeskhiyev's goons took all of the weapons off me, and I let them -- not like they were going to do me a hell of a lot of good anyway, as none of them was likely to have even a single bullet in it. Fuck.<br /><br />Fucking Mike. I'd known the guy for two years. When had Umbra gotten to him? They just waltz in while some cholo was shooting at me with an AK-47 and drop a pile of money on his desk? Or was it before that, even?<br /><br />"Take our friend to the holding area down the hall," Meskhiyev said. "We found a perfect use for him. Kenneth will show you where it is."<br /><br />I looked at Mike, who was nodding. He was also frowning, and lighting yet another Marlboro Light.<br /><br />"Come on, pal. Let's not make this any harder than it has to be," he said, sighing and blowing out smoke.<br /><br />Kenneth was a big dude, and Mike had one of his Glocks trained on my back. He might not have been the fastest guy, but I'd gone shooting with him before. His reactions were great, and he was a deadeye. All I'd do if I ran for it was get a nice hole blown somehwere in me, and I was pretty damned tired of getting shot by this point.<br /><br />"How long have you been in on this, Mike?"<br /><br />"Only a couple of months longer than you have, man," he said.<br /><br />"What the fuck are you talking about?"<br /><br />"Jesus. Wake up. You know how much business we don't get. Really think I can support a staff the size of the one I maintain? Umbra owns the bail bond shop, Jake."<br /><br />"Then that means..."<br /><br />"Yeah. We're both Umbra employees. Though I doubt your recent adventures have put you in the running for employee of the month."<br /><br />As soon as Mike said that, it clicked. What he'd said back in the Excursion before we jumped out and ran for the doors -- it was from the U.S. Army Ranger Handbook. I'd read it once on a particularly boring war movie, where I'd found it laying around. Mike was a former Army Ranger, and probably former Umbra Security. Or maybe not so former, after all.<br /><br />I guess I've never been great at reading people. I mean, sure, I like to tell myself I can see a certain look in a jumper's eye when I confront them and they're going to run, but I don't think you have to be John Fucking Douglas to see that. They're already in fight or flight mode, and if their eyes are darting around rather than sizing you up, chances are pretty good they're going to bolt. But that's about the extent of my people-reading abilities.<br /><br />Still, when I looked into Mike's eyes as he and Kenneth led me down a long hallway towards a block of offices at the edge of the building, I could swore I saw something there. Regret. Sadness. That he didn't want to be doing this, and that we were, after all, friends. It could have been wishful thinking on my part, but if I got a chance, I knew I'd try to play it. Not like I had a whole lot of other options at this point.<br /><br />"So what's Meskhiyev's plan for him?" Mike asked. If there was something in his eyes, it wasn't in his voice -- he sounded as level and steady as ever.<br /><br />"Hey, every good conspiracy needs an Oswald," Kenneth rumbled, turning to Mike and grinning. "We leave him here when everything goes boom, and he gets counted as one of the missing. When the police go looking for him -- eventually -- they'll find a whole bunch of crazy shit at his apartment. Won't help that we'll mess with his police record, too. You'd be surprised how easy it is to create a Chinese collaborator. Boom. Insta-terrorist."<br /><br />Mike nodded.<br /><br />"I see."<br /><br />I'd never seen Mike move as fast as I did then. Guess he must have been keeping some of those Army Ranger skills sharp, because his right hand suddenly became a blur. Before I knew what had happened, Kenneth was gurgling on the floor, a large blade stuck directly through his throat. He twitched for a few seconds, then stopped moving altogether. Mike wiped the blood off of his right hand onto Kenneth's black trouser leg, then pulled out a Marlboro Light and tucked it in his mouth.<br /><br />"She's at the other end of the building," he said. "Umbra has offices here under the name Global Computing. The bomb is in the waiting area there, tucked in a cubby under the receptionist's desk."<br /><br />Mike lit the smoke and looked at me. He reached into his jacket and handed me both Glock .23s.<br /><br />"You can shoot me now, but that'll bring a lot of people down on us, make it harder for you to get to her. Go down to 5 and take the back stairwell up to 6. It'll put you right at Global's door. You succeed, find me and we can settle up after. If not... well, we'll both be dead anyway. Go."<br /><br />I didn't wait for Mike to tell me again. I was off like a shot before I even considered hitting him -- old habits, I guess. I mean, the guy was my best friend for the last two years. It's only recently I found out he's an Umbra scumbag. Though, to be fair, I guess I'm an Umbra scumbag, too. It was all getting a little too confusing, and I don't even think I could blame the concussion anymore.<br /><br />I ran down the nearest staircase to the fifth floor. Every fourth light in the hallway was on, which meant that everyone had probably cleared out for the night hours ago. The back stairwell was a bit of a jog, but I was wrong earlier when I said my adrenaline had run out. Either that, or I had produced more, because I was running faster than I knew I could, and for once, I was feeling no pain. I stopped at the entrance to the back stairwell, not even a little out of breath, and slowly opened the door. These interior stairwells were like speakers -- if I slammed the thing open, it was sure whoever was waiting on the next floor up would hear it. I pushed the door open just enough to squeeze through, then closed it behind me as softly as I could. I ascended the stairs sideways, one at a time, moving on the balls of my feet. There were only fourteen steps and a landing between me and the sixth floor, but it took me almost a full minute to reach them.<br /><br />The stairwell had a tiny window in the center, and I flattened myself against the wall next to it and slowly peeked out. No one in the hall, at least not that I could see. I pressed my ear to the crack between the door and the frame and listened. Except for the sound of my own breathing, which sounded way too loud, I heard nothing. No movement, no sound. If ever there was a go time, I suppose it was right then.<br /><br />I used the same care in opening the door to the sixth floor as I had to the fifth. No one jumped out at me, and about ten or fifteen yards away, I saw the door for Global Computing. It was closed, and there was a floor-length window on the side opposite me. I crouched down in the hallway for a few seconds, but nothing moved near the window.<br /><br />The temptation was to shoot right through the glass with one Glock as I kicked open the door and sprayed the room with bullets from the other. Panic, chaos, and hopefully a pile of dead Umbra Security people. Problem there, though, was that Laura wasn't expecting me to show up, so she wouldn't know to drop to the floor. If I just peppered the room with gunfire, my chances of hitting her were pretty good.<br /><br />I won't lie and say I didn't consider doing it anyway, even after I thought about Laura. But I didn't just open fire wildly. I suppose that counts for something.<br /><br />But I did kick in the door, mainly because I couldn't think of anything else to do, and time was a factor. And I lucked out and caught them sleeping. There were only four Umbra Security guys in the room, probably because they didn't think they needed any more than that to handle a 120-pound girl scientist. Only one had a weapon in his hand, and as I cleared the doorframe, I saw he had it pointed halfheartedly in Laura's direction as she worked on the device in front of the receptionist's desk. He tried to turn the gun on me, but I put one in his forehead before he could even complete his turn toward the door. I kept both guns up and pointed at the other three guys, who were across the room.<br /><br />No one said anything for a second -- everyone just froze. I guess shooting that dude in the head was a real conversation killer. One of the Umbra guys started to put his hands in the air.<br /><br />"Come on, Laura. Gotta move," I said.<br /><br />"Give me one of those guns," she told me. "I can't wrestle this thing into the bag by myself."<br /><br />I walked sideways, never taking my eyes off the Umbra guys, keeping both guns pointed at them. They stayed motionless, and I backed over to where Laura was now standing.<br /><br />"Take the gun from my right hand," I told her, still dead-locked on the Umbra Security people.<br /><br />I felt her reach around and place her hand over mine, and I slowly released the Glock into her grasp. <br /><br />"Got 'em?" I asked.<br /><br />"Got 'em."<br /><br />I turned my head and looked at the bomb. It was roughly cylindrical, about three feet long, and covered in a steel casing that was new since the last time I'd seen it.<br /><br />"This thing operational?" I asked.<br /><br />"I've had it done for a half an hour. Just stalling until you showed up," she told me.<br /><br />There was a green, military-style duffel bag on the floor near the bomb. The device was heavy, but I managed to wrestle the bomb into the bag and get the whole mess slung over my shoulder in a matter of seconds. I took the Glock back from Laura.<br /><br />"Head for the door. Stairwell outside and to the right. I'll catch up with you in a couple of seconds."<br /><br />Laura didn't need to be told twice. She was out the door in a flash, and I cocked my head at the Umbra guys in front of me. I wasn't entirely sure what to do with them -- if I just bolted, they'd surely raise the alarm and chase after us. That was no good. But I didn't want to just kill them all -- one body on my conscience was quite enough, thanks.<br /><br />"Sorry, gentlemen. I'm going to have to kneecap you," I said with a sigh.<br /><br />"Try just below the knee," one of them, a tall Hispanic guy, said. "Better chance we'll recover, less chance we'll have to hunt you down and rip your legs off."<br /><br />"Fair enough."<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />I had a key to the Excursion -- Mike gave me one months back when the Beast was in the shop. I didn't think about it until Laura and I were in the truck and moving, but I realized Umbra might be able to track the vehicle. Of course, I had no other car, and there was really nothing I could do about it other than hope they couldn't track us. If they did, I'd just have to deal with it.<br /><br />"You OK?" <br /><br />It wasn't me who asked, though common courtesy and chivalry dictated that it should have been. It was Laura.<br /><br />"I'm still breathing. That's enough," I said. "Could use about a sack of painkillers, but I'll hold."<br /><br />"Good. We need to get out into the desert. Can you handle that?"<br /><br />"Yeah. You're going to disassemble the bomb?"<br /><br />"Yes. Well, kind of. I'm going to detonate it."<br /><br />I thought about it for a second, and that made a lot of sense. Umbra couldn't rebuild it if there was nothing left. And out in the desert made sense, too -- didn't she say the thing's effective range was only about a kilometer? Or a mile? One of those.<br /><br />On one of my Vegas trips in my youth, I'd decided to rent a car and drive out to where Area 51 was supposed to be. I never saw anything but blank, open desert. Just the kind of place you could set off a nuclear bomb with no one knowing. So that's where I headed.<br /><br />It took six hours to drive out that far, and no one seemed to be following us. Out past Rachel, NV, we drove for another 20 miles before we found a nice, empty stretch of nothing with mountains on either side. I drove off the road about a mile and a half, but the mountains didn't seem to be any closer. It was as good a spot as any.<br /><br />As we unloaded the bomb from the back of the SUV, my cell phone rang. That was odd, because it was off. And the battery was supposed to be dead. But it rang, and I noticed a Nevada area code. I shrugged and answered it.<br /><br />"Hey, Jake. Wanna tell me why you're dumping a nuclear device on my front lawn?" Jason Black asked.TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-52476125044748191072011-10-26T23:32:00.000-07:002011-10-26T23:33:57.620-07:00Chapter TwentyI managed to make it off the plane relatively quickly, but I was definitely looking over my shoulder as I jogged through LAX to catch a cab. I'd never taken a cab in Los Angeles, but I figured the not-insignificant wad of cash in my front pocket would cover the ride to...<br /><br />Well, that was the question, wasn't it? Where do I head? I mean, I knew I had to get to the Aon Center. That much was a given. But I wouldn't be rolling in there unarmed, I can tell you that for sure. My apartment would be the logical place, but all I have there is a .38 Revolver that's probably older than I am. No ammo for it anyway. I knew Quentin kept a stockpile of all sorts of guns around his place in Silver Lake, but he kept that house locked up like a fortress. If he wasn't back from Las Vegas yet, I'd just be wasting my time going all the way out there and having to try and get a cab to come pick me up in a sketchy neighborhood in the middle of the night.<br /><br />My cell battery had died hours ago, and I was having trouble remembering things like telephone numbers. That started to worry me -- the concussion (or, more likely, multiple concussions) had to be worse than I thought.<br /><br />Still, I could think clearly enough to remember that Mike kept several guns around the office, so that's the address I gave the taxi driver. <br /><br />We pulled up outside the office in 20 minutes. And, of course, it was open, even closing in on 11 at night. Thing is, bail bond offices don't often close -- there's always someone there. It's usually Mike, because I'm pretty sure he doesn't sleep, but every once in a while, it's his younger brother Jerry. Jerry's an idiot, so I was hoping for Mike.<br /><br />I was in luck. When I walked in, Mike was just lighting up a fresh Marlboro Light. No one else was in the building, which was also lucky, as Mike would soon tell me.<br /><br />"Jesus Harold Christ, Jake. You look awful," Mike said, blowing out smoke and frowning.<br /><br />"Good to see you too, man."<br /><br />"Did you get Laura Mills?"<br /><br />"Had her. Lost her. But she's here in town, and I know where she's going to be."<br /><br />"Just tell me, man. Shit, I'll go pick her up. You look like you need a fucking hospital. Or maybe an undertaker."<br /><br />Now that was tempting. Bow out now, get some medical attention. Let Mike go in -- he was fresh, uninjured, and I knew for a fact the guy could take care of himself. I almost told him about the Aon Center, but I didn't. Not right away.<br /><br />I can't tell you why I needed to finish this myself, but I did. Even with my frontal lobe shaking around inside my head like a tennis ball in a cement mixer, I couldn't think of anything else but finishing the job. When I closed my eyes, all I saw was Laura Mills' face. I shook my head, and even that hurt.<br /><br />"No, man. What I need from you is a gun."<br /><br />"What happened to your Sig?" Mike asked. He knew I was attached to the weapon.<br /><br />"Sitting in the back of a Cadillac in DFW's long-term parking."<br /><br />"I don't even wanna know, man," Mike said, shaking his head. "Cops were here earlier looking for you anyway. More I know, more I gotta tell them when they come back. Come on. Follow me."<br /><br />Mike led me back through the office, past his private office and to a door between the two public bathrooms. The door was heavy, steel, and marked "Electrical." Every time I'd popped into the office, I'd pretty much ignored the door -- what the fuck did I need with the building's electrical room? I'd accidentally tried the knob once, but it was of course locked.<br /><br />Mike selected a key from his massive, crammed key ring (I always joked that he had janitor keys) and unlocked the door.<br /><br />It wasn't the electrical room.<br /><br />The room was much larger than I would have thought -- probably bigger than my apartment. The walls to the left and right of the door were half-covered with shelves, all of them packed with boxes, cans, and plastic bottles. The rest of the room was crowded with weapons -- assault rifles, pistols, sniper rifles, machine guns, shotguns, and even a minigun. I wasn't sure what to say for a minute. I just stood there blinking.<br /><br />"Fuck, man."<br /><br />"Cool, isn't it?" Mike said, grinning.<br /><br />"Why the fuck..."<br /><br />"Y2K, man. Whole world's going down in 18 months. And I'm going to be ready when it turns Mad Max out there."<br /><br />Part of me wanted to find that reasoning a little crazy, but I really couldn't. Who knew what was going to happen in the next couple of years? For all I knew, he might be right. And for all I knew, it might happen a lot sooner than that -- if Umbra managed to set off their nuke before I could stop them. <br /><br />Calling the cops was out. They'd arrest me on sight, and not entirely without reason. So it was just me and however much of Mike's hardware I could carry.<br /><br />I was facing a bit of optional paralysis. I mean, the minigun was the biggest, so that had to be the best, right? But even a guy my size probably wouldn't be able to control that monster. It was meant to be mounted inside of helicopters, for Christ's sake. I can't even imagine how Mike got his hands on one.<br /><br />"Having trouble choosing?" Mike said after a minute.<br /><br />"Yeah."<br /><br />"Here," he said, pulling an assualt rifle off the wall. "M-16A3. Full auto, laser sights, extended magazine. Basic all-around, can't-miss workhorse."<br /><br />I took the M-16 -- it was lighter than I would have thought. As I slung it over my back, Mike opened a large case and pulled out two pistols. They were ginormous.<br /><br />"Desert Eagle .44's," he said, grinning proudly. "They'll kill a freaking rhino. I can't use 'em -- firing one would probably break my wrist -- but you shouldn't have a problem."<br /><br />Mike dug around and found a double shoulder holster for the giant-sized pistols, then found a couple of extra clips for each.<br /><br />"Careful with the ammo on those, now. Only have seven rounds each. Plus side, hit anywhere near what you're aiming at, and you'll probably kill it. Now, for behind the back, the classic 1911 .45. Most dependable pistol ever made," he said, holding up one of the pistols.<br /><br />"Yeah, I've used one before."<br /><br />"Better take two."<br /><br />I was loaded up now -- five guns, close to 75 rounds before I'd have to reload. I hoped I wouldn't *need* 75 rounds, but I couldn't be sure. My impression was that everything up to this would have felt like a cake walk -- they had to know I was coming as soon as White never reported in. They'd be ready.<br /><br />"I appreciate this, Mike."<br /><br />"You appreciate what, man? You were never here. And I," Mike said, grabbing an AK-47 off the wall and slinging it over his shoulder, "Well, if anyone asks, I was at a family barbecue in Inglewood."<br /><br />"You don't have any family in Inglewood, Mike. And you're not coming with me."<br /><br />"Fuck that, man. You're damn near dead on your feet. You need backup, and I'm right behind you. Remember, I'm your boss. I tell you what to do, get it?"<br /><br />Mike lit a fresh cigarette and smiled before grabbing a pair of Glock .23s from a shelf and shoving them into his belt.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Traffic was light, and we weren't that far from the Aon Center anyway. We took Mike's ridiculous 1997 Eddie Bauer Ford Excursion, a crazy-large SUV that was totally inappropriate for driving around the city, but it was the company car. Mike's reasoning was that it doubled as advertising, and it was good for taking bail jumpers to jail in. Whatever.<br /><br />Mike rolled up slowly on the building, and I scanned the front as we rolled by. I counted several black sedans out in front, parked in employee spaces. There were lights on on the sixth floor, where White had said they'd be putting the bomb. We didn't have much time.<br /><br />"I think they're here, and they're setting up," I told Mike.<br /><br />He nodded and kept the Excursion rolling slowly, driving a block away and parking on the street. We'd have to jog it a twelfth of a mile with automatic weapons strapped to our back, but Mike and I had done that before, sadly. And we had a way around it. Bail bondsmen are issued badges in California, which we wear around our necks when we need to look official. They really looked nothing like LAPD or LA Sheriff's badges, but most people couldn't tell the difference. They could have been Fire Marshal badges and folks still wouldn't usually question why the two of us were running around with assault rifles. Mike took two badges out of the pile in the glove compartment and handed me one.<br /><br />"Glass doors," he said as I put the badge around my neck. "Even if they're locked, we're in. Elevators are only secured after the tenth floor. Let's do this fast. Overwhelm with extreme violence, yeah?"<br /><br />Something about what he said there sounded familiar, but I wasn't sure what it was. I chalked it up to the head wounds -- I mean, it was a miracle I was still understanding the spoken word at that point. I wouldn't have put it past my bruised, swollen brain to ring familiarity bells at something I'd never heard in my life. I thought about shaking my head to clear the sensation, but the last time I did that, all I got was a bunch of black spots in my vision. Instead, I hopped out of the truck, grabbed the M-16 from the footwell, and slung it over my back. Mike was already out and jogging, but he's a littler guy, so I caught up with him pretty quickly.<br /><br />He stopped just short of the glass front entrance to the Aon Center and posted up behind a stone column. Seriously, whoever designed most buildings must have had situations like this in mind -- it's rare that even a guy my size can't find anything to hide behind for a couple of seconds while assessing the situation. Mike was frozen for, well, a couple of seconds.<br /><br />"No security guards moving in the lobby," he whispered.<br /><br />"Umbra probably took them out or bribed them," I said.<br /><br />"I bet you're right. Come on."<br /><br />Mike moved low and fast, and silently. That was one of the advantages of his size over mine, I guess. I move pretty quiet for a big dude, but Mike's like a fucking ninja. A two-pack-a-day ninja, sure. But he's quiet. I tried to keep the M-16 from clanking around as I followed, but he made it to the door first and put a hand on it. It opened with no problems.<br /><br />I followed Mike into the lobby, where he still moved low and silent, but it looked kind of silly in a brightly lit, high-ceilinged room. I, on the other hand, just walked normally over to the elevator and hit the call button. The door opened immediately.<br /><br />"Too easy," I grumbled as the doors closed and the car started to ascend.<br /><br />"I was just thinking the same thing," he said quietly. "Finger on the trigger, yeah?"<br /><br />As the door opened, I did have my finger on the trigger of the M-16, and had it pointed down in front of me so I could whip it up quickly if there was anyone on the other side of the door. It was a tactic some military advisor had taught us on a terrible film I did back in '92, but it worked. As the doors opened, I saw Meskhiyev and several of his pals in black suits, all armed, all waiting and ready to fire.<br /><br />I brought up the M-16 and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. <i>Fuck. Jammed,</i> I thought, dropping the assault rifle and going for the Desert Eagles.<br /><br />I never put my hands on them, though. I felt the barrel of a gun jammed into the back of my head.<br /><br />"Sorry about this, man," I heard Mike say from behind me.TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-10965858904996055052011-10-10T23:31:00.001-07:002011-10-10T23:31:36.571-07:00Chapter Nineteen[Chapter Nineteen]<br /><br />I had an idea. It was a long shot, and it meant I'd have to move fast, so I was already running as I started to figure out the small details.<br /><br />White hadn't fired when I'd jumped up and emptied my clip, which could have meant he was ready to extract. To get the hell out of there. Assuming he hadn't left immediately after the last shot he'd fired, he would need time to break down his rifle, get to the street level, and get to his vehicle. With the black Caddy just tearing around the corner as I watched, I figured he hadn't started packing it in until Meskhiyev contacted him to let him know they had Laura.<br /><br />White would have had stairs or an elevator to deal with, whereas I had distance. The building across the courtyard from the City Center was a block away, and I could cover a city block pretty fast. As I made it to the end of the block, I flattened myself against the wall and peeked out quickly. Nothing moving on the street yet, but there was another big black Cadillac parked just across the street from the entrance to White's building.<br /><br />I paused to check my weapon -- empty, and I didn't have another clip on me. I would just have to hope that White wasn't rocking a secondary weapon. That was, of course, past the hope that he hadn't already vanished. Really, there was very little plan at this point, but plenty of blind, stupid hope.<br /><br />It only took a few seconds of waiting before White came barelling out of the building, a long duffel bag slung over his shoulder. For an ex-Marine, his situational awareness was crap -- he didn't bother looking left or right as he left the building, just headed straight on towards his Cadillac. I only had about ten steps between me and him, and I covered them as quickly and quietly as possible.<br /><br />Though not quietly enough, as it turned out. When I was still three steps away, White turned and reached inside his coat, but he wasn't fast enough. I was already on him, and I tackled him to the ground like he had just caught a nice 30-yard pass near my end zone. Whatever he was reaching for in his jacket stayed in his jacket, and the back of his head bounced off the street next to his car. I didn't have to make sure he was out cold -- I'd heard a loud crack when his skull hit the pavement. I had to check to make sure he was still alive.<br /><br />He was, thankfully. He was breathing, and there wasn't any blood coming from his head. Would have been kind of counterproductive to kill him -- no way to beat any information out of him then. I knew I'd have to move fast, though. Unless I'd done some severe damage, he wouldn't be out more than a couple of minutes. <br /><br />First order of business -- neutralize any threat he might pose when he woke up. I checked his jacket -- he had been reaching for a handgun, a 1911 model .45, which I took and shoved into my own jacket. Further searching turned up two knives and an extra clip for the handgun, so I took all of those, as well as his car keys.<br /><br />I used the knife to slice up his jacket into strips, then wrestled the large ex-Marine into the Caddy's passenger seat. I used what was left of his jacket -- high-tensile stuff, like a black BDU coat -- to tie him securely to the seat.<br /><br />There wasn't time to go back and get Mendez and Rodriguez, as Laura was just getting further away with each passing second. Besides, I'm pretty sure neither one of them would approve of what I was about to do. Hell, I didn't even like the idea, but it was the only one open to me.<br /><br />I got into the Caddy, started the engine, and tore off in the direction I'd seen the other Cadillac heading. White woke up after maybe a minute.<br /><br />"They're going to kill you, you know," I heard him say from the passenger seat. His words were slurred a bit -- concussion, probably.<br /><br />"Yeah, probably," I said. "So, let's make it easy on them. Where are we headed?"<br /><br />White said nothing. Not taking my eyes off the road, I pulled one of his knives from my jacket. It was a smaller blade, maybe three inches long, but double-edged and pretty damn sharp, if the way it had gone through his coat was any indication. I held it up in the area between us.<br /><br />"Might want to tell me," I told him.<br /><br />"Fuck off," he grumbled.<br /><br />So I jammed the knife into his thigh just above the kneecap.<br /><br />To his credit, White didn't scream, though anyone with eyes could tell he wanted to. His eyes went wide and his face turned red, and he bit into his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. I knew I'd gotten him pretty good -- I'm pretty sure I felt the blade hit bone. Not that I'm an expert at torturing people for information, or anything, but I think I was off to a pretty good start. Or a bad one, I guess. Depends on your point of view.<br /><br />"Now, if you don't want me to start twisting the blade around, or see what else I can stab while keeping my eyes on the road, you probably want to tell me where we're going."<br /><br />"Fuck, man. I didn't think you'd actually do it," White panted.<br /><br />"Yeah, well. I did. So, where are they taking Laura?"<br /><br />"Couldn't make the bomb work without her," White grumbled. "Needed her to execute the plan."<br /><br />I chanced a look over in the passenger seat -- White was, no pun intended, turning white. He was going into shock, I guessed. Looks like I wasn't so good at this torturing thing after all.<br /><br />"I already figured that much out, jackass," I told him. I could feel sweat forming between my nose and mouth.<br /><br />"He's taking her to the bomb," White said. His voice was getting weak.<br /><br />"Again, figured that bit out," I said with a sigh, reaching for the knife handle, exaggerating my shoulder movement so he could see I was going to twist the knife in his thigh.<br /><br />I really didn't want to do that, though. I was already feeling a little sick about the damage I'd done -- what if I'd hit the femoral artery? I hadn't even thought of that before now. What if he bled out?<br /><br />"Los Angeles," White said. "Aon Center. Sixth floor."<br /><br />"See? That's all you had to say. Hey, you know where there's an emergency room around here?"<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />I had a choice to make, and I had to make it fast. Did I get on the phone to Jason Black, let him know what was up? Or did I ditch White's car and weapons and catch the next commercial flight to Los Angeles?<br /><br />The logical thing to do would have been call Jason Black, of course. The guy obviously had the power to get me from Dallas to Los Angeles with no problem, but there was this itching in the back of my brain, like a single fire ant had crawled up in my skull where I couldn't kill him. Jason Black had sent us to Dallas. Dallas was a trap. Dallas was exactly where Umbra Dynamics had wanted us to go, exactly where they sent their two best shooters (at least) to snag Laura and bring her to the actual bomb site. Now, there was no way for me to *prove* Jason Black did or didn't know about the trap, but how had the Umbra folks -- the majority of them from the Las Vegas facility, I'm sure -- left for Los Angeles without him knowing it? <br /><br />The only thing that made me kind of trust him was that he was chasing down a bum lead, as well. But as I thought about that, I couldn't even be sure that was true. He *said* he was on a flight to Russia, but it's not like he called me when he got there. It's not like I even saw him get on the plane. Could the guy be on Umbra's payroll? I didn't think so, but they did work contracts for the government, and Jason Black was part of the government. Did Umbra's plan have some Shadow-Agency stamp of approval? Did it go deeper than one corporation's greed?<br /><br />In the end, I decided to go to the airport on my own and call Black when I was in Los Angeles. With luck, I'd be able to head Laura and Meskhiyev off at the airport, but that would take a lot more luck than I seemed to be having lately -- Dallas had three airports that I knew of (DFW, Love Field, and Addison), and probably five more that I didn't.<br /><br />I decided to head for DFW -- it was the biggest, and therefore probably had the best chance of having a flight to LAX sometime soon. The airport itself was bigger than the city I grew up in, so I didn't even know where to start. Eventually, I just decided to dump White's car in long-term parking (along with anything incriminating I might have on me, wiped down and cleaned of fingerprints) and take the shuttle to one of the terminals.<br /><br />I walked up to the American ticketing counter and found that there was a flight leaving for LAX via Phoenix in twenty minutes. I bought a coach ticket in cash, and ran to make my gate.<br /><br />It wasn't a crowded flight, and I ended up having a row to myself. Once the flight attendants were through their safety lecture and we were airborne, I went ahead and threw up the armrests and laid down. I've never been able to sleep on planes -- something about being in motion while trying to rest -- but that wasn't an issue this time. I'd been running full-bore for days, and apart from a quick nap at the start of this whole debacle and a little bit of sleep in Quentin's hotel room, I'd been awake and moving (and by moving, I mostly mean getting my ass kicked) the whole time. I was out before the seat-belt light turned off.<br /><br />In Phoenix, I finally got a chance to grab something to eat, something else I realized I hadn't done in a while. I realized then that I had no idea what was keeping me moving -- adrenaline had to have run out about a day and a half ago. I didn't have too much time to think about it, though -- I had a flight back home to catch.<br /><br />The flight to Los Angeles was strangely packed, and though I'm quite obviously the size of a small tree, they went ahead and seated me right in between two rather hefty gentlemen in full suits. It was a Friday night, well past midnight, so I couldn't figure out the reason for the formal wear. As I looked around (if I really concentrated, I could turn my head almost halfway to the left), I saw a bunch of other rather large guys in suits as well.<br /><br />"What is there, a convention?" I muttered.<br /><br />Must have been the large collection of concussions I was putting together, but it never really occurred to me that both of the portly dudes on either side of me could hear that. They sure could, though.<br /><br />"Yeah. Pharmaceutical sales convention in Phoenix this whole week," the guy on my left said. If he caught the condesending tone in my voice, he was polite enough not to mention it. Or, possibly, I looked too damn scary for him to want to make an issue of it. <br /><br />"Oh, yeah?"<br /><br />"Yeah. This company called Umbra Dynamics introduced some new anti-cancer research. It was pretty exciting," the guy on my right said. It was obvoious this dude hadn't heard anything amiss in my tone -- he was too damn excited.<br /><br />I nodded, but something about what he said struck me as odd. I thought Umbra was in the defense business. What the hell were they doing in the pharmaceutical field, too? And cancer research? That didn't sound like something a company dead-set on detonating a nuclear bomb in a major American city would waste money on.<br /><br />I had planned to catch another nap on the short flight from Sky Harbor to LAX, but that wasn't going to happen. You try catching a few winks when you're jammed between two sweaty human sausages wrapped in ill-fitting suits. It didn't help that both of them had the air conditioning fucking blasting, which shouldn't have surprised me. Big, out-of-shape dudes are always sweating, seems like. So in addition to being crushed on both sides, I was freezing -- my jacket was more for looks (and to cover guns) than it was for warmth. I was suddenly reminded of the scene in Empire Strikes Back where Han Solo cuts open that weird camel-thing and sticks Luke Skywalker inside to keep him warm. Using these guys for insulation would have been an improvement -- at least they wouldn't have been chattering back and forth across me the entire flight.<br /><br />A thought did occur to me while I was trying to tune out the whales on either side of me -- there could be Umbra employees on the plane with me. I mean, they had just been at the same conference as my morbidly obese seatmates. I doubted any Umbra pharmaceutical reps would know their company was looking for (or trying to kill) me, but I couldn't be sure of that. They'd surprised me with how far they could reach already -- I figured I'd better make it off the plane as soon as it hit the ground.<br /><br />That is, if I could extricate myself from the cellulite sandwich before the plane headed back to Phoenix for the night.TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-72330737300649158542011-09-19T22:08:00.001-07:002011-09-19T22:08:31.227-07:00Chapter EighteenI wasn't dead. As much as I'd like to say I realized that instantly, I didn't. It took Airman Mendez slamming into me -- for a little guy, he made a hell of a defensive tackle -- for me to realize I was still alive.<br /><br />Good thing he did, too. Otherwise, the bullet that just nicked my left shoulder would have gone straight into my chest. I hit the ground hard, jamming the other shoulder into the pavement, which slowed me down enough that when the side of my head hit the concrete, it didn't knock me out. It just hurt like a motherfucker.<br /><br />"Get away from the door!" Rodriguez yelled. I could see Laura, her back against the brick wall to the left of the door, and I managed to pull myself most of the way over to her. Mendez was right in front of me, dragging me the rest of the way.<br /><br />"What the fuck happened?" I groaned, blinking several times. There were spots in front of my eyes so big I could see more white than anything else.<br /><br />"Flashbang grenade," Mendez told me, reaching into my coat and pulling out one of the pistols. "Someone really doesn't want us to go in there."<br /><br />"Miguel! You ready?" Rodriguez yelled from the right side of the door.<br /><br />"On three!" he yelled back.<br /><br />Though he'd said they'd go on three, I didn't hear either of them counting. Instead, they both were on the move a couple of seconds later, clearing the doors with their guns at the ready. I struggled into a sitting position and reached in my coat for the other pistol, which turned out to be my Sig.<br /><br />"You really shouldn't go in there," Laura said, shaking her head.<br /><br />"Yeah, I know," I said, getting to my feet. I could hear gunshots inside. <br /><br />I blinked a few more times -- my vision was almost clear now, and my feet felt as steady under me as I suspected they were going to get. I crouched low and crept towards the open door, my gun held up and at the ready. As I spun inside, I caught a glimpse of Miguel. He was taking cover behind a decorative planter made of brick. I jumped toward him just as a bullet smashed into the door behind me.<br /><br />"You good, big man?" Miguel asked. He sounded calm.<br /><br />"Yeah."<br /><br />"Good. Shooter on the balcony across the way. One guy, bolt-action rifle. Remington 700's my guess. He's only got two more rounds before he has to reload."<br /><br />"Brendan White," I said. "He's a former Marine sniper."<br /><br />"Crap. That means he's not going to shoot again until we give him something to shoot at," Miguel said, sighing.<br /><br />"I'm wearing Kevlar," Rodriguez told us. I looked past Miguel -- she was taking cover behind a column about five feet from us.<br /><br />"No good," Miguel said. "My guess is on armor-piercing, the way it didn't even slow down when it went through my man's shoulder here."<br /><br />I looked at my left shoulder. I thought the bullet had just grazed me, but it had gone clean through my deltoid, making a neat little hole. I expected it to hurt more, but it just felt kind of numb.<br /><br />"So what do we do? Hang out here until he gets bored?" I asked.<br /><br />"He won't. Not if he's a Marine sniper like you say," Mendez said, shaking his head. "We're pinned down until one of us moves."<br /><br />"Or all three of us," Rodriguez said.<br /><br />"Now, that's something. All three of us take off for cover in different directions. He can only shoot at one of us at a time -- the other two can open up on him," Mendez replied. "But I think you're the one he really wants, big guy. You good with that?"<br /><br />"We got any other choice?" <br /><br />"Not that I can think of," Mendez admitted.<br /><br />"Looks like that's what we're doing, then," I said with a sigh, thumbing the safety off the Sig and getting ready to sprint.<br /><br />"You set the tone. You move, we move," Rodriguez told me.<br /><br />I didn't need to be told twice. In fact, I was glad they didn't. No countdown, no "go," just a simple sprint before I could talk myself out of it. It's easier to do something stupid like put your huge gorilla body out there as a target for a fully-trained Marine sniper if you don't take the time to think about it first, and I certainly didn't think this plan through. All thinking was going to do was get me killed, and I was pretty sure that was going to happen anyway, so why waste the energy?<br /><br />My destination was a matching planter on the other side of the doorway, the one some uninspired architect had put there to balance out this one. I ran for three steps and then dove, and it turned out that was the right thing to do. Just as I jumped, I heard the crack of the rifle, felt the wind of the round as it passed just over my back and took out what was left of the door behind me. I hit the tile floor hard, chest-first, as I hadn't even had time to put my hands up in front of me. I felt the air rush out of my lungs, and I rolled over on my back. I had the wind knocked out of me and I was seeing starts, but I wasn't dead. So that was a plus.<br /><br />As I moved, I was vaguely aware that Mendez and Rodriguez were running and shooting. Unless they were amazing shots, there's no way they could have hit White. The distance from us at the door to the balcony across the wide, open plaza was a good 300 yards, I estimated. If one of them managed to put a bullet within ten feet of him, it would be a miracle. <br /><br />White had only fired once, just the one that narrowly missed turning my spine into goo. That meant he had at least one round left, I thought. And that was when I realized -- he could have reloaded at any point. He didn't necessarily have to wait until he was out of ammo to reload -- he could have popped a fresh magazine in any time while Rodriguez, Mendez, and I thought we were being clever and coming up with a strategy. He could keep us pinned down here as long as he wanted.<br /><br />And he was just keeping us pinned down. The guy was a former Marine Scout Sniper -- they don't miss unless they want to, yet this guy had missed me once and grazed me once. It was impossible. Unless he was drunk or injured, there was no way he wouldn't have killed all three of us already. He meant to miss, and I was beginning to figure out why.<br /><br />You know how in movies, the hero sets off an explosion, and every dumbass thug runs right toward it? I never got that, and I often played the dumbass thug doing the running. It never made sense to me -- why would you run directly *toward* something that was trying to kill you? Yet the three of us -- a cop, a Special Forces guy, and a bounty hunter -- had just done exactly that, running right into gunfire. Stupid, stupid, stupid. <br /><br />We'd left Laura on her own. And that's just what they'd wanted us to do.<br /><br />The door was out -- White had already shown he could hit that anytime he wanted to. I briefly considered trying to run for more cover, find another exit where he couldn't easily shoot me, then circling back around outside, but giving up any bit of cover I had was probably a bad idea. I mean, I'd already figured out I wasn't his primary target, but I don't doubt he'd be only too happy to explode my skull if I made it easy for him to do.<br /><br />Mendez and Rodriguez were conversing quietly, but I was too far away to hear what they were plotting. I saw Rodriguez reach for the radio extender on her shoulder, and guessed that she was finally calling in backup. It didn't surprise me too much that she'd been hesitant to do so up until now -- none of us were supposed to be here, anyway. There would be a lot of explaining when the cops showed up, and I didn't doubt I'd be seeing the inside of a holding cell if I was still around when they did.<br /><br />So, you ever done this? Sometimes, you've just spent a couple of minutes convincing yourself that something's a bad idea, but then you inexplicably go ahead and do it anyway? What's that about? It's like our brains have a tiny suicide switch, and when (like me) you've been awake for far too long and are probably walking around with some minor brain injury, that switch goes firmly into the "on" position.<br /><br />And then you go ahead and take a deep breath, stand up, and fire directly at where you guess the sniper is camped out, even though you know you have no chance in hell of hitting him.<br /><br />And even though you know a .308 round is probably on the way to your chest even as you pull the trigger.<br /><br />I emptied my clip, but White didn't fire. I have no idea why, but I wasn't going to waste my time trying to figure it out. I dove back out into the street through what was left of the door, again landing hard on my tortured right shoulder again. If I kept this up, the damned thing would need to be held together by pins and plastic cartiledge. Even then, I was aware it had slipped out of joint at least a little bit.<br /><br />But I had to put that pain on hold for a second. There would be time to bitch about that later, and if you've followed me this far, you'll recognize that I will, indeed, bitch about it later, in great detail. Now I needed to find Laura, needed to make sure that White taking potshots at us wasn't just a distraction while Meskhiyev or someone grabbed her. I checked where I'd last seen her, but she wasn't there. That didn't necessarily mean anything -- she could have moved to what she felt was a more secure hiding spot. I know I would have.<br /><br />I checked behind and around the police car, and the Air Force car Mendez had used to ferry us there. Nope. I quickly jogged up and down the street about fifty feet in each direction, dropping low to check under cars and sticking my head into alleys. Still nothing. <br /><br />It wasn't long before I had no choice but to start yelling.<br /><br />"Laura!" I shouted, aware as I did so that I sounded like I was calling for a runaway puppy. "Laura!"<br /><br />No answer. But I soon saw why.<br /><br />I didn't find Laura, but I found her shoes, both of them, one neatly next to the other in the middle of the street. I don't know how I'd missed them as I was running around -- possibly because I was almost completely ignoring the street in favor of possible hiding places. As I looked up from the shoes, I saw a black Cadillac tearing off down the street. And that was when I knew they had her. <br /><br />Someone had left the shoes deliberately, both to ensure it was harder for Laura to run if she got free and to serve as a nice "fuck you" to me. That latter part made me suspect it was Meskhiyev. Guy was really becoming a pain in my ass, especially because he kept winning -- as of right then, I had no idea where he was taking Laura, but I was pretty sure the bomb wasn't in Texas. No, Texas had been a ruse for them to separate us from Jason Black (don't know how they knew he was involved) and get Laura. <br /><br />Back when she'd first showed Quentin and I the bomb in the back of the BMW, she'd said it was "nearly complete." And when I thought about that versus her abduction right of the street, it all came together. They weren't chasing Laura because she was going to expose them. They were chasing her because she was the one who could complete the device. <br /><br />And now they had her, and I had no idea where they were taking her.TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-61417836465491659942011-09-04T00:16:00.001-07:002011-09-04T00:16:50.594-07:00Chapter SeventeenSo, my memory is pretty good. Not foolproof, but decent. Especially my memory for faces -- I'm better with them than with names, though I've gotten better with names in recent years, thanks to my current job (where a name and a photo is often all I have to go on when tracking someone down). So, I thought I remembered what Jason Black looked like.
<br />
<br />The guy I met in the hotel bar at the Debbie Reynolds... well, I suppose it *could* have been the same guy I met back on the set of that horrible action film a few years back. I remembered him as being a few inches shorter than me (most people are), but built like a brick shithouse. This guy looked at least similar in the face, but I got the impression he was taller. Thinner. His hair had more gray in it than I remembered, too. But his voice matched up, and it was definitely the same guy I'd been talking to on the phone. I put it down to a combination of fatigue, a budding concussion, and reasoned that the last few years might have been a little tough on the guy. The height thing must have been an illusion, or an error of memory on my part.
<br />
<br />"Captain Black?" I said as I approached, though he was the only one at the bar and had probably had eyes on me as soon as I entered the casino floor.
<br />
<br />"Jake. Man, have you gotten bigger? Try a few minutes a day outside the gym, kid."
<br />
<br />I nodded. The way he talked matched up to the guy I knew. Must be the same guy. I realized at that point I should probably get a CAT scan to make sure my brain wasn't swelling. But that would have to wait.
<br />
<br />"What are you drinking?" he asked.
<br />
<br />"Something nice and strong. Vicodin in a glass, if they have it," I said, grinning and waving my hand past my wrecked face.
<br />
<br />"Rum it is, then."
<br />
<br />"So what did you find out?" I asked as my drink arrived and I took a sip.
<br />
<br />"Off-the-book flights. Two of them. A little tracking and some frankly illegal digging revealed that both of them were Umbra personnel."
<br />
<br />"Did you find out where they were going?"
<br />
<br />"One's headed to Moscow. The other one landed at Addison Airport in Texas about forty minutes ago."
<br />
<br />"Addison. Is that anywhere near Dallas?"
<br />
<br />"Yep."
<br />
<br />"Dallas and Moscow were two of the towns on my list," Laura said.
<br />
<br />"Yeah, he told me," Black said, nodding to me. "Now, this is unofficial, mind you, and I need you to understand that I am not speaking for, nor acting in any capacity for the United States government."
<br />
<br />"I get that."
<br />
<br />"Good. Personally, I think it's pretty fucking odd that two off-the-books flights are headed to two cities that could be targets in this little wargames scenario you say Umbra is running. Makes me think there might be something to this. Dr. Mills, do you have a precise location for each of these cities?"
<br />
<br />"Part of my job was to find a theoretical location in each city to maximize the damage. So, yeah."
<br />
<br />"I have some leave coming to me, so I'm going to take it. Let's check this thing out."
<br />
<br />Black took a long, slow sip of his drink. I realized I was the only one drinking alcohol -- Black had strong, black coffee, and Laura hadn't ordered anything. But to be fair, neither of them had the shit kicked out of them by a huge ex-commando. The rum was stinging the two holes where my back molars had been, but I like to think it was also working on the pain.
<br />
<br />"So, I'll take Russia. I can get you guys on a black flight to Dallas in about twenty minutes," Black said, finishing off his coffee and waving to the waitress, who was making a show of ignoring the only three customers at the bar.
<br />
<br />"Black flight?"
<br />
<br />"Unlisted. No plan filed with the FAA. Or I could send you to Moscow, but something tells me neither of you speak Russian, am I right?"
<br />
<br />I nodded, and Laura shrugged.
<br />
<br />"Not well," she told him. "My passport isn't up to date anyway."
<br />
<br />"Heh. Not like I'm going through official channels, here. My cell will stay on the whole time I'm gone. You find something, you call me immediately, got it?"
<br />
<br />"Got it."
<br />
<br />"Good. When you get to Maccarran, go to the airport security office and ask for a man named John Dixon. He'll set you up." Black looked at his watch. "Better get a move on. And don't worry about the stolen truck you rolled up in. I'll have someone take care of it."
<br />
<br />Black waved for the waitress again, but she continued to ignore us. I drank off the rest of my rum, and Black shrugged and dropped his coffee cup on the table.
<br />
<br />"Fine. Fuck you, then," he mumbled, getting up.
<br />
<br />"I'll take care of the check --" I started.
<br />
<br />"Don't bother. We don't pay for anything here. Call me from Dallas."
<br />
<br />
<br />* * *
<br />
<br />John Dixon wasn't what I expected. I was looking for a big dude, ex-military looking, crew-cut and Marine First Recon tattoos. When we got to the security desk and asked the short, thin guy with huge engineer glasses for John Dixon, he pointed to the nametag over his chest, which read, of course, "John Dixon."
<br />
<br />"I'm Jacob Harris. Jason Black told me to talk to you."
<br />
<br />Again, John Dixon said nothing, just nodded and hopped out of his chair behind the security desk. He was even shorter than I thought, as his chair lent him some height -- the guy was barely over five feet when his two tiny shoes hit the floor. He gestured for Laura and me to follow him, so we did. He badged his way through a security door and led us through a maze of poorly lit tunnels. I was lost pretty quickly, but Dixon seemed to know where he was going. After about two and a half minutes of walking (and for a little guy with a tiny stride, this dude was fast -- I had a hard time keeping up), we walked through a heavy steel door and out onto the tarmac quite a good ways away from the main terminal. Not 50 feet from us, a Gulfstream II sat waiting, the door open and the stairs down.
<br />
<br />Dixon just kind of nodded to the plane, jerked his head in the general direction of the open door. Laura went in first, and I followed her. As the stairs lifted up and the door closed, we saw Dixon standing there on the tarmac, short and gnomelike, waving goodbye with one of his tiny hands.
<br />
<br />The plane was airborne in minutes. I don't fly often for work these days -- most guys I'm chasing don't get much further than a day's drive. Once, I had to catch a plane to New Orleans to chase after this bank robbery suspect, and that all kinds of sucked. In Louisiana, we bounty hunters have to wear *uniforms* identifying us as such. Kinda makes it hard to sneak up on a motherfucker when you're wearing a blue shirt with "BOUNTY HUNTER" on it in bright, yellow letters.
<br />
<br />But anyway, I had to take a flight to that one, and the plane sat on the tarmac for a good half-hour after we boarded. Not so with this flight -- we were screaming down the runway as soon as Laura and I took our overstuffed seats. We were the only passengers, and the door to the cockpit was closed. The thing could have been flown by a robot for all I know.
<br />
<br />"How long is the flight to Dallas?" Laura asked me.
<br />
<br />"No idea. You're the one who's good with numbers. It's in the top middle part of Texas, and Texas is really fucking big. That's all I know."
<br />
<br />A small TV next set into the wall next to the cockpit door flickered on. There was a map of the Southwest on the screen, and as we talked, the words "ETA: 1 hour, 52 minutes" appeared on the screen.
<br />
<br />"Well, there you go, then," I said.
<br />
<br />I woke up as the plane landed. I wasn't even aware I'd fallen asleep. You know that feeling you get when you're dozing off, when your brain goes all nonlinear and all these odd, random thoughts start appearing in your head? Yeah, I didn't have that. Not a bit. This was more like being knocked out -- a hard, brutal awakening with no memory of being hit in the first place. It was like when that rig exploded, except I didn't wake up with a snapped spine this time.
<br />
<br />Felt like it, though. The chairs on the Gulfstream were great, but my back had taken a beating over the last couple of days. I realized that I was probably facing a couple of months of physical therapy when and if I made it back home to Los Angeles. I hate physical therapy.
<br />
<br />The plane taxied to a stop, and the door opened on its own again. As the stairs descended from the open door, I pulled myself out of the chair, stretched my back as best I could, and headed down to the pavement. I could hear Laura behind me. She wasn't moving terribly fast, either, not that I could blame her. The last week or so couldn't have been easy for her, especially since she normally worked a desk job. Hell, they'd been rough for me, and my job regularly consists of running, jumping, shooting -- like a human Super Mario, only without the greasy mustache, red overalls, or plumbing acumen.
<br />
<br />A dark blue Plymouth Reliant was waiting for us, and a young guy in an Air Force uniform was standing outside. He looked about 14 or 15 years old.
<br />
<br />"Jacob Harris?" the kid asked, yelling over the noise of the Gulfstream's engines.
<br />
<br />"Yeah!"
<br />
<br />"I'm Airman Mendez. Captain Black asked me to take you and Miss Mills wherever you need to go, sir."
<br />
<br />"Talk to the lady, Mendez. She's running the show," I said as I opened the Reliant's back door and crammed myself in behind the driver's seat.
<br />
<br />"Where are we going, Miss?" Mendez asked.
<br />
<br />"Downtown. Pearl and San Jacinto. Know it?"
<br />
<br />"The City Center, sure."
<br />
<br />"Don't rush. We have plenty of time," Laura said.
<br />
<br />"How do you figure?" I asked as Mendez drove us out of the small airport.
<br />
<br />"It's night. No way they're going to set off the bomb at night," she told me. "Not enough casualties."
<br />
<br />"She's right, sir," Mendez said. "It's past close of business. Downtown is dead right now, save a couple of folks out to nice dinners."
<br />
<br />"That's fucked up," I said, shaking my head.
<br />
<br />"Oh, you want to hear fucked up? Wanna know why they choose downtown areas instead of, say, residential ones?"
<br />
<br />"Like you said, more casualties, right?"
<br />
<br />"That's kind of it. But why not set it off in a neighborhood?"
<br />
<br />It wasn't me who answered. It was Mendez.
<br />
<br />"High-rise buildings."
<br />
<br />Laura nodded.
<br />
<br />"Exactly. It's a small device, a tactical nuclear weapon. Set it off in a neighborhood, you take out maybe a kilometer or so. You take out the same area downtown, but you kill a whole lot more people when the buildings just outside the blast zone start falling down."
<br />
<br />"You mean... all of the people in the high-rises are dead," I guessed.
<br />
<br />"Well, yeah. And all the people that the rubble falls on, well... they're having a really bad day, too. And optimal placement ensures a domino effect -- buildings fall into other buildings, knocking those down, too. Devastation and death combined."
<br />
<br />"And you designed this blast?"
<br />
<br />"In what I thought was an academic exercise, one to prevent terrorism. Not as a blueprint for terrorism."
<br />
<br />I couldn't think of anything to say to that. Sure, a big part of me wanted to condemn her for her part in a plot that could kill ultimately millions of people (provided her "provoke a war with China" story was true), but I could see how something like this could happen. As far as she knew, after all, she was just doing her job. How was she supposed to know that elements in her company would use her work to attack a friendly city? Besides, if we couldn't prevent the bomb from going off, I expect I wouldn't need to condemn her. She'd be doing it quite effectively herself for the rest of her life.
<br />
<br />As he drove, Mendez pulled out a slick-looking Nokia cell phone and started dialing a number into its lit-up keypad.
<br />
<br />"Who are you calling?" I asked.
<br />
<br />"Buddy of mine in DPD," he said over his shoulder. "We'll need someone to get us into City Center. It's closed this time of night."
<br />
<br />"Police?" Laura asked. She looked worried.
<br />
<br />"Yeah. But don't worry. Andrea's cool. And she knows what's up. You're not getting arrested, promise."
<br />
<br />Mendez wasn't on the phone long. He talked like most guys I know -- get out the required information and hang up. That's why our cell bills stay manageable, I suppose. I had a girlfriend who was always complaining about the size of her bill, but you should have seen her just bullshitting on the phone for hours. Somehow, she never connected the two.
<br />
<br />When we arrived at City Center, a Dallas Police black-and-white was waiting outside, with a young, female Hispanic officer leaning against the hood. As we approached, she gave Mendez a wave.
<br />
<br />"Hey, Miguel," the young cop said as we got out of the car. "More shit you're not allowed to tell me about?"
<br />
<br />"Afraid so," Mendez said. "Gotta check the building for some missing property. This lady and gentleman here will be conducting the search -- all you and me have to do is stand around and collect our paychecks."
<br />
<br />"That's what I was doing before you got here," the cop grumbled. As we got closer, I saw her name tag -- Rodriguez.
<br />
<br />"Thanks for coming out to help tonight, Officer Rodriguez," I said, smiling and forgetting that I was all busted up.
<br />
<br />"Jesus Christ, kid. Looks like someone used your face for soccer practice," Rodriguez said, shaking her head and reaching for the radio extender on her shoulder. "One Fourteen."
<br />
<br />"Go ahead, One Fourteen," a dispatcher's voice crackled over the radio.
<br />
<br />"Advise property owner at City Center I'm conducting a search of the building as arranged."
<br />
<br />"Copy."
<br />
<br />"After you," Rodriguez said, indicating the door.
<br />
<br />I moved to open the door... and that's when the explosion happened.TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-4457629340431334552011-08-22T23:20:00.001-07:002011-08-22T23:20:26.736-07:00Chapter SixteenLaura wanted to look around the complex more, but I knew it was pointless. Tracking scumbags over the past couple of years had taught me a couple of things, and one of them was to recognize when a place had been cleaned out. When a guy was about to run, he went to his place and took what he thought he couldn't live without. As I looked around the lab, I realized that was what had happened here. Tools had been left, but documents and the bomb, gone.
<br />
<br />"They might have left some clue where they were going," Laura protested after I suggest we leave.
<br />
<br />"You know where they were going. One in ten shot," I said. "This neighborhood's crap, but the security guards have definitely called the police. We don't have long before we have a lot of explaining to do."
<br />
<br />Reluctantly, she followed me back out to the car. I turned the key in the ignition, but nothing happened. A quick check revealed one of the guards' wild shots had cracked into the engine. Fluids had emptied themselves all over the pavement.
<br />
<br />"Gonna have to leave it," I said.
<br />
<br />"The cops will track Quentin down," she said as she got out of the car.
<br />
<br />"We can slow that down a bit," I told her.
<br />
<br />I lit one of the Molotovs and chucked it into the car with the rest. By the time we'd cleared the fence out onto the street, the car was burned down to the frame.
<br />
<br />That left us on foot in a neighborhood that even the most charitable of real-estate agents would consider "undesirable," or "hellish." Calling for a cab wouldn't work -- they wouldn't come to that part of town, and even if they did, waiting on one would just leave us out in the open to get shot at, robbed, or worse. We needed transport out of there, and we needed it yesterday.
<br />
<br />I learned everything you could ever need to know about cars during my stunt driving courses, except, of course, how to hotwire one. I knew I could get us into a car without a problem, but getting it started? No clue. I was running through the possibilities in my brain as Laura and I walked as fast as we could away from the burning mess we'd left.
<br />
<br />"You wouldn't happen to know how to hotwire a car, would you?" I asked. I was kidding, of course.
<br />
<br />"Yeah," she said.
<br />
<br />"Seriously?"
<br />
<br />"I'm an engineer, Jake. Hotwiring a mid-80s car is like... well, like something really easy you do. I don't know. Ripping phonebooks in half?"
<br />
<br />We found a 1982 Ford F-150 about a block from the complex. The window was cracked, so I had it unlocked in about ten seconds. Laura crawled into the driver's seat and started messing around under the steering column.
<br />
<br />"Hey, y'all stealing that truck!" a young black guy, maybe 20, covered in tattoos and dreadlocks, yelled from across the street.
<br />
<br />I pulled out the shotgun and aimed it at him. It wasn't like I could hit him from across the street with it, but I had no intention of firing. It was just a big, fuck-you looking gun, and it got the message across quite nicely.
<br />
<br />"Not that I got a problem with that," he yelled, his face splitting into the widest, whitest grin I've even seen.
<br />
<br />It took about thirty more seconds, but Laura got the truck started. She situated herself in the driver's seat, and I climbed in through the passenger door. She had the pedal floored almost before I got my door closed.
<br />
<br />"Jesus, kid, slow down."
<br />
<br />"You said we needed to get out of here fast."
<br />
<br />"And we do. But keep it somewhere near the speed limit, yeah? We are driving a stolen truck, after all, and I know you have warrants. I probably do by now, too. We get pulled over now, we're done."
<br />
<br />She nodded and laid off the accelerator, letting the truck drop down to 35 miles an hour. The engine didn't sound good, and forcing it up to 55 almost immediately probably hadn't done it any favors, but we didn't need it to get us far. Just...
<br />
<br />It was at that point I realized I had no idea where we should go next. The Strip would be my first choice, if for no other reason than we could probably blend in with the crowd while we figured out our next move. But, really, we had no base of operations anymore, nowhere we could sit and talk this out. While I considered what to do, I pulled out my cell phone. Might as well call Quentin and let him know his truck was gone.
<br />
<br />"I wouldn't," Laura said, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. "You can bet they have your number by now, and any idiot with a police scanner can pick up cell conversations."
<br />
<br />She was right, of course. I didn't want to admit that to her, though -- for a good-looking chick, she certainly knew how to get on my nerves. I just put the cell back in my pocket.
<br />
<br />"I'll stop if I see a pay phone. This thing's almost out of gas anyway."
<br />
<br />We stopped at a gas station that wasn't on the Strip, but well within view of the Stratosphere, so we had to be somewhere close. There were still bars over all of the windows, so we weren't out of the ghetto just yet, but if you've never been to Las Vegas... well, most of it is the ghetto. I think we were in a *better* ghetto, anyway.
<br />
<br />There were two pay phones on the outside of the building, but only one of them had the handset still attached. The other one had been ripped off in an apparent fit of Hulk-smash rage, if the remains of the phone itself were any indictation. The keypad looked like it had been punched squarely in the center by a massive, powerful fist. As Laura went inside to kick the guy behind the counter a couple of bucks for gas, I picked up the reciever on the un-Hulked phone. There was a dial tone, so I dropped in a quarter and dialed the Monte Carlo. I asked for Ken Adams.
<br />
<br />Quentin took the news about his truck better than I would have expected, but he explained that the vehicle wasn't *technically* his anyway. I asked if it was stolen, and he told me he'd rather not say. I was going to push a little on that point until I realized I'd rather not know.
<br />
<br />"You hear anything on the radios after we left?" I asked.
<br />
<br />"A bit of chatter about moving to another location. Something in code, Staging Area November. It's been quiet for the last hour or so, though."
<br />
<br />"All right, man. Thanks. You can probably roll out of there whenever you feel like it -- I think Umbra's burned right on out of here."
<br />
<br />Laura was putting gas in the truck when I finished talking to Quentin. After a moment's thought, I put another quarter in the phone and dialed Jason Black's number.
<br />
<br />It rang only once this time, and Jason Black picked up instead of his... I don't know, intermediary? Secretary just doesn't sound right. Anyway, it was him that answered.
<br />
<br />"Go for Black," he said.
<br />
<br />"Jason, hi. It's --"
<br />
<br />"Jake Harris. Assault not go like you thought, Jake?"
<br />
<br />Shit. He knew I was out there doing stuff I shouldn't, and he was in the employ of the Federal Government. Part of me wanted to hang up the phone right then, but I stayed on the line. I'm glad I did.
<br />
<br />"They moved the package."
<br />
<br />"And by package, you mean..."
<br />
<br />"I think you know what I mean."
<br />
<br />"I really don't. Though I'm guessing it has something to do with Umbra Dynamics, doesn't it?"
<br />
<br />"You know them?"
<br />
<br />"They're a major defense contractor, Jake. I really hope you aren't trying to supplement your income by stealing government research."
<br />
<br />"Umbra is dirty, Jason. I've got evidence they're planning something, something very bad."
<br />
<br />"You know what you sound like, Jake? You sound like a conspiracy nut. Tell me why I shouldn't scramble the FBI to hunt you down and put you in a nice, padded room where the big, mean companies can't read your thoughts through your TV."
<br />
<br />I was stuck. If I told him, would he believe me? More importantly, could he help in any way? I figured it really didn't matter. If I told him and he didn't buy it, or if I just didn't tell him, the results would be the same -- the FBI and probably military intelligence would join the police and Umbra in hunting me and Laura.
<br />
<br />So I took a shot. I told him what I knew.
<br />
<br />It didn't take me but a minute to explain it all. The last few days had been hellish, and probably the most active of my adult life, but when I boiled it down to the essentials, it didn't sound like much. Still, even though it probably took only about 60 seconds to explain, Laura was making the "hurry up" gesture over by the truck. I waved her off.
<br />
<br />Black was silent for almost as long as it had taken me to tell the story. I was beginning to think there was something wrong with the line, or that he'd hung up and the dial tone just wasn't happening for some reason, but he finally spoke.
<br />
<br />"That's some pretty heavy shit you're accusing them of."
<br />
<br />"I have one of their lead scientists backing it all up. And I believe her."
<br />
<br />"And if I was to believe this -- not saying I do, but if I did -- what is it you need from me?"
<br />
<br />Fair question, I suppose.
<br />
<br />"I've figured out that you're not just an Air Force desk jockey, or a PR guy who goes out to movie sets to make sure someone doesn't call an F-16 an F-15. You're deep in. I was hoping you could... I don't know. Find some way to help me figure out where they're going. The scientist gave me a list of potential targets."
<br />
<br />"Judging by the area code, you're still in Vegas. You know a place called the Debbie Reynolds?"
<br />
<br />"Yeah, I think so."
<br />
<br />"Good. Meet me there at sundown. Check into a room under my name. They won't ask for ID."
<br />
<br />* * *
<br />
<br />The Debbie Reynolds Casino Hotel was definitely on the way out. First, I had no clue who Debbie Reynolds even was, and, by the lack of people in the building when Laura and I walked in, neither did anyone else. The place was, charitably, a dump. But the bored-looking middle-aged lady at the front desk didn't bat an eyelash when I said my name was Jason Black -- she just slid a key across the table without a word.
<br />
<br />Laura and I went up to the room, and I sprawled out on the bed. My head had started hurting again, and I really wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. Maybe if I was lucky, I'd wake up in my apartment with Eammon banging on the door about the rent, and find out everything in the past three days had just been a nice, nonsensical dream after one too many rum and cokes down at the Viper Room.
<br />
<br />Turned out that wasn't the case, of course. I got about ten minutes to lay down. Then the phone on the rickety table by the bed rang. I picked up the receiver and held it to my aching skull.
<br />
<br />"Yello?" I managed to mumble.
<br />
<br />"OK. Not saying I believe you, yet, but I did some checking. Meet me downstairs in the hotel bar," Jason Black said.
<br />
<br />Before I could say anything else, he hung up the phone.
<br />
<br />"Want a drink?" I asked Laura, rolling off the bed and stretching my shoulders as far back as they would go, trying in vain to knock some of the knots out of my back.
<br />
<br />"More than you would believe," she said.TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-74305826184809037672011-08-10T22:53:00.000-07:002011-08-10T22:54:23.865-07:00Chapter FifteenFinding a liquor store in Las Vegas isn't much of a challenge. Basically, you can just head in any direction and you'll be at one in a couple of minutes. And the stuff I was looking for wasn't rare or expensive, so I wasn't exactly picky. Still, though I didn't so much care where I ended up, I know I could have done better than Fredo's Discount Liquors.
<br />
<br />The bars on the windows weren't a great sign, nor was the armed, overweight security guard padding around out front. In my experience, fat security guards are way more dangerous than the overmuscled, jock types. The fat ones are less likely to chase you and more likely just to open fire. This guy definitely had that look about him, that hard, unfocused glare that he cast over Laura and I as we got out of the car.
<br />
<br />"Nice place," Laura muttered.
<br />
<br />"Yeah, it was highly recommended by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor's Bureau."
<br />
<br />My head was still killing me, but by now, it wasn't anything a couple hundred Advil wouldn't cure. I was pretty sure I had a concussion -- I've had them before -- but it wasn't severe. I was banged up, sure, but I'd still be able to carry the plan through.
<br />
<br />We left Fredo's Discount Liquors a few minutes later with five bottles of Bacardi 151, all they currently had on the shevles. Apparently, according to the talkative guy at the register, they'd just opened the last case before we'd come in. An on-duty cop had bought the first bottle. That was comforting.
<br />
<br />Laura was a little suspicious of me buying what was essentially a metric fuckton of booze, and it probably didn't help her confidence any that the next place I stopped the car was a dumpster. I rooted around until I found a half-dozen empty glass bottles, then found what looked like a very stained hotel pillowcase. I put the bottles in the pillowcase and came back to the car.
<br />
<br />"So now we're rooting for junk?"
<br />
<br />"Jesus, Laura. Did you grow up in a complete cultural void, or what?"
<br />
<br />"I don't follow."
<br />
<br />"You never watched any action movies when you were a kid?"
<br />
<br />"I was studying when I was a kid."
<br />
<br />"Ah. You were a nerd. Then riddle me this -- what happens when you fill a bottle half-full of something flammable, then stuff a rag down the mouth and light it?"
<br />
<br />"Molotov cocktails?"
<br />
<br />"Exactly. And Bacardi 151 is more flammable than gasoline. Even comes with a little flame supressor on the bottle to keep it from spontaneously combusting when you pour it. What, did you think the plan involved getting blackout drunk or something?"
<br />
<br />She didn't say anything, but I could tell from her expression that was exactly what she'd been thinking. She really didn't give me much credit, and my performance thus far probably hadn't merited a whole lot of respect. That was fine, though. When this was over, she'd probably still underestimate me, and I'd use that to my advantage to get her back to Los Angeles and turn her in.
<br />
<br />"You sure you can handle those? I've heard those things can go bad in a hurry," Laura said as I climbed back into the truck.
<br />
<br />"Yeah. I'm fire certified," I told her.
<br />
<br />"That a big thing in the bounty-hunter world?"
<br />
<br />"I used to be in entertainment. Stunt performer. I've been lit on fire by one of these before."
<br />
<br />"Under controlled conditions, of course."
<br />
<br />"Well, yeah. But I don't plan on getting lit on fire this time."
<br />
<br />"And just what is the plan? I'm a little vague on that."
<br />
<br />That was intentional, of course. I'd only shared the broad strokes of the plan back in the hotel room, mainly because I wasn't sure I could trust her. I wasn't sure I could trust her because I didn't believe her 100 percent, but that had changed after Roth kicked the fuck out of me. So I knew I had to trust her now, even if she had been acting cynical and, let's be honest, like a bit of a bitch.
<br />
<br />"The plan is... well, we roll up hard on the complex. Go right through the front gate. When the security car comes after us, that's where the first couple of Molotovs come in," I started.
<br />
<br />"Oh. I really don't like this plan," she grumbled.
<br />
<br />"Wait. It gets better. You're going to be driving -- unless, of course, you want to be throwing Molotovs -- so you're going to take us right up to where they're keeping the bomb."
<br />
<br />"It could only be in two places, and one's much more likely than the other," she said.
<br />
<br />"Good. Now, how heavy is it, would you say?"
<br />
<br />"About 70, 75 pounds."
<br />
<br />"I can do that. We grab it, put it in the truck, and get the fuck out of there. Then you disassemble it and we scatter the parts to the four winds."
<br />
<br />"And when they start shooting?"
<br />
<br />I nodded towards the duffel in the back seat, the one that held all of our guns.
<br />
<br />"We shoot back."
<br />
<br />I sounded confident, but that was, of course, a lie. I would really rather have just forgotten I knew anything and gone back to Los Angeles, stick my head under a pillow and pretend I dreamt the whole thing. But I knew I couldn't do that -- I knew I had to do this thing. There was no way I could live with myself if I saw a mushroom cloud on the news one day and knew that I could have stopped it.
<br />
<br />Laura helped me make the Molotovs. It wasn't exactly rocket science, but it went faster with both of us working on it. A few minutes later, we were ready to roll. Laura assured me she knew how to handle a gun, so I gave her Meskiyev's pistol. She started up the engine, and we were on our way.
<br />
<br />It's hard to really put into words the feeling I had as we cruised into North Las Vegas. I mean, sure. There was fear, obviously. But more than that, there was a sense of... well, just of not wanting to do any of this. We were rolling into a heavily armed compound with guns and homemade explosives, which isn't something I'd want to do on any day, ever. And we stood a very good chance of getting killed, also something I didn't want to do. But worse yet, I would probably have to kill someone, and I really didn't want to do that.
<br />
<br />I'd never killed anyone before. Oh, sure, I'd shot people, but they'd never died from it. And I'd messed some dudes up pretty badly. Once, I was serving a warrant in Silver Lake, and the dude charged out of his house like a coked-up rhino with a shotgun. He was ready as hell to kill me, and I would have been well within my rights to kill him at that point, but I didn't. It was the closest I've ever come to killing someone, but I emptied a clip into his legs and put one in his shoulder, one in the side of his neck. The guy survived.
<br />
<br />Now... well, someone was going to die, and I had to make sure it wasn't going to be me.
<br />
<br />It seemed to take less time to reach Umbra's compound this time around, but that was probably just my perception, not reality. Traffic thinned out right on schedule, and before I knew it, we were deep in the ghetto again. I could see the fence coming up, and I opened the Pathfinder's sunroof.
<br />
<br />"Gun it right through the gate," I said as I grabbed two of the Molotovs in one hand and my lighter in the other.
<br />
<br />I heard the engine rev as I took off my seat belt and stood. Laura missed a gear, and when it caught, I almost dropped one of the Molotovs all over the front of the car, but I managed to save it. The jolt from the missed gear was worse than the one when Laura crashed through the fence, and that one, I was ready for. Laura sped us toward the buildings, and my head was on a swivel for the security car.
<br />
<br />It came, all right, fishtailing around the corner and rocketing through the hole we'd made in the gate. I waited until it got within about fifty feet, then lit both Molotovs and rocketed them, one after the other, right at the security car's windshield. The first one went high, tumbling end-over-end just over the roof and smashing on the concrete behind the car. The second one, though, slammed right into the spot where the hood met the windshield, exploding in a perfect fireball that washed over the entire windshield.
<br />
<br />Crazily, the security car's windshield wipers came on. It was as if the driver was trying to wipe the fire off the glass like rain. I chuckled in spite of myself, but it didn't last long. As the wipers melted to the burning glass, the security car slammed on its brakes, and both doors opened. Out came two security guards.
<br />
<br />They were fat, both of them, which in my experience meant they were about to start shooting. I already had another lit Molotov in my hand, and I chucked it in their general direction before reaching into my coat and pulling out my Sig. The two guards broke to either side of the car to avoid the new firebomb, but quickly had their guns in their hands. They fired on us, but I fired back. I caught one of them in the hip, the other in the arm. They kept firing, but their shots weren't coming anywhere near us now.
<br />
<br />Laura slammed on the brakes, spinning the Pathfinder so that the driver's door was next to the building. I dropped back down through the sunroof and followed her out the driver's side, grabbing the bag with the guns and Molotovs inside as I went. She entered a security code on the keypad by the door, but the lights above the pad stayed red.
<br />
<br />"They changed the codes," she said. There was a hint of panic in her voice.
<br />
<br />"Don't worry. Those guys will run out of ammo soon," I told her.
<br />
<br />I pulled Quentin's pump-action out of the bag and motioned for Laura to get clear of the door. With two slugs, I obliterated the hinges -- not a great design, that -- and the door fell open. Laura dashed inside the darkened building, and I followed.
<br />
<br />"Where are we headed?" I asked.
<br />
<br />"There's a lab on the second floor. Be ready to shoot -- there's going to be security between us and the lab."
<br />
<br />There wasn't, though. We made it up the stairs and down a long hallway without seeing a soul. I used the shotgun as a masterkey again, opening the lab door with a combination of slugs and kicks from my right boot. Laura flipped on the lights inside, and the only thing I saw was a long, empty metal table.
<br />
<br />"Um..." I said.
<br />
<br />"Must be in the other lab, in the other building."
<br />
<br />We encountered no resistance on the way to the second lab, either. In fact, apart from the now-quiet security guards, we'd seen no one since we got into the complex.
<br />
<br />"Something doesn't seem right here," I told Laura as she led me to the second lab, this one on the third floor of the next building over.
<br />
<br />"I expected this to be tougher, too."
<br />
<br />The second lab was also empty. Laura tore around the inside of the lab, opening cabinets and drawers, as if someone had stashed a 75-pound nuclear device in their desk.
<br />
<br />"It's gone," she said.
<br />
<br />"Yeah, I can see that."TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-33555983903722205372011-07-30T23:15:00.000-07:002011-07-30T23:16:08.179-07:00Chapter FourteenI wasn't sure at first how long I slept -- only that it was still daylight out when I opened my eyes. I'd pretty much passed out where I'd fallen, stretched out on the couch in the living-room area of Quentin's suite. Though they were trying to be quiet -- nice of them, really -- I could hear Quentin and Laura arguing in the next room.<br /><br />"He can handle it," Quentin was saying. <br /><br />"Look, he's a big guy. But so far, you and he have just kind of been stumbling through this. I mean, he had to call somebody to ask how to get into the complex."<br /><br />"You've never seen dude in a fight. He's got this."<br /><br />"He's got what?" I asked, walking into the bedroom and stretching out my arms.<br /><br />"Quentin seems to think you can punch your way out of the building," Laura said, sneering. It wasn't a good look on her.<br /><br />"Q? What've you got?"<br /><br />Quentin shuffled off the bed and walked over to the desk on the other side of the room, motioning for me to follow him. He was up and moving now -- not quickly, but moving -- so I figured that was a good sign. As I walked up to the desk, he gestured down at a piece of paper. There was a sketch of the building floorplan on it, with several spots marked with X's.<br /><br />"Here's what we have so far. We've gotten seventeen separate signals, seventeen different guys watching the exits and common areas," Quentin told me.<br /><br />"Jesus. This is pretty detailed. How long have I been out?"<br /><br />"Couple of hours. Now, here... it's not exactly a hole, but it's the weakest point in their network. One guy, guarding the back entrance for the valets. You get past him, you get outside."<br /><br />"One guy. I can do that."<br /><br />"See?" Quentin said, winking at Laura. "Told you."<br /><br />"Yeah. Now tell him the rest."<br /><br />Quentin sighed and ran his hands through his hair. He shot Laura a glare, then turned back to me.<br /><br />"Laura here thinks it isn't a weak spot at all. Says she knows the guy they put there."<br /><br />"His name is Eric Roth, and he's former Israeli Special Forces," Laura said, returning Quentin's glare. "There's no way you'll be able to beat him in a fight. He's the one who teaches all of the combat classes for Umbra Security."<br /><br />"He's still just one guy," I told her, emptying out one of Quentin's duffel bags and putting the shotgun and pistols inside. "And it's not like I've never been in a fight before."<br /><br />"Look, you seem OK. Both of you do. But you do not want to underestimate this guy. I've seen him take a loaded gun out of someone's hand and knock them out before they even knew what was happening," Laura told us.<br /><br />"I can handle it. Besides, have you got another way out of here?"<br /><br />After a long moment, she shook her head.<br /><br />"That's what I thought."<br /><br />"Stairway down to the valet entrance shows clear," Quentin said, tracing the route from our room down to the back stairway on the diagram with his finger. "Once you get there and take out this Roth guy, you'll have to cut back around the building to catch a cab or a shuttle."<br /><br />"Right. We should probably walk down a couple of blocks off-Strip, minimize any chance of being seen by the guys up front," I said, zipping up the duffel and hoisting it on my shoulder. "Laura, you ready?"<br /><br />"I guess," she said with a sigh.<br /><br />"Enthusiasm. I like it."<br /><br />The back stairway was, indeed, clear, and we made it down to ground level without incident. As I cleared the door out into the valet area, I could see Roth -- a guy about my size, dressed in the same black suit as all of his other Umbra Security pals. I crept up behind him and wrapped my left arm quickly around his throat, pulling it tight with my right. A couple of seconds later, Roth slumped to the floor.<br /><br />"See? Told you I had this," I said, turning to Laura.<br /><br />And that's when I lost two teeth.<br /><br />The move I used on Roth was called a rear naked choke, and it usually put most motherfuckers to sleep in a matter of seconds. Not Roth, though, if the massive overhand right that crashed into my jaw and popped out two molars was any indication. Either he'd only gone out for a second or two, or he'd figured out what I was doing and gone limp, pretended to pass out before he actually did. Either way, I was dealing with a pissed-off ex-Israeli commando, and I was in way over my head.<br /><br />I don't know how I managed to stay standing after that mule-kick right hand hit me, but I did. My vision was interlaced with angry red and yellow spots, but I saw Roth go for his coat, no doubt for a gun inside, and I managed to lurch my big stupid frame in his direction, plowing into him with all the skill and dignity of a stroke victim. Dumb luck was on my side tonight, though -- my shoulder slammed into his elbow, pinning his right arm against his torso and his back against the wall. He had his hand on his gun, but he couldn't pull it out. I could see that from my vantage point, what with my head nearly inside his jacket and all.<br /><br />From there, though, I was stuck. As long as I kept pressure on him, he couldn't pull his gun, but he could throw any manner of knees and elbows into plenty of hurty spots on my body. I could do essentially nothing from where I was, with my right elbow smashed into his midsection and my left arm too low to even grab at anything except...<br /><br />There are things you tell yourself you're never going to do in a fight, things that are just off-limits even when you're fighting for your life. But then, one day you've got an Israeli commando pinned up against a wall in a back corridor of a Vegas hotel, and he's raining down hell on the back of your head with his left elbow, and all of your notions of fighting fair go out the window.<br /><br />And you grab a handful of that guy's junk and you pull and twist and crush with every ounce of strength you have in the left side of your body.<br /><br />Roth must've been trained to handle pain, because he kept fighting a lot longer than I would have. For a couple of seconds, he seemed almost unaffected by the damage I was doing, still throwing elbows into the back of my skull. But I noticed his strikes weakening, and I pressed further, bending my legs and picking him up over my shoulders, my left hand still firmly crushing his boys. I ratcheted my back and threw him forward, bouncing him off the wall. As he hit the floor, his gun fell out of his hand, and I kicked him as hard as I could in the face. <br /><br />He was out this time, I was sure of it. I waited several seconds, panting and trying to blink the spots and black edges out of my vision. He didn't get up, but I could see he was still breathing. Good. I didn't want to kill him, or anyone if I could avoid it.<br /><br />"That was... well, that was about the most awful thing I've seen in my life," Laura said flatly from behind me.<br /><br />"Let's go," I panted, grabbing Roth's gun and shoving it into my jacket.<br /><br />As soon as we were out on the street, the heat hit me. It wasn't even that bad yet, in the mid-90s, but with the beating I'd just taken... well, it wasn't pretty. I vomited almost instantly, the two molars Roth had knocked out spilling out with a fair amount of puke onto the pavement. As I coughed out the last bit of blood and bile, my head started to spin.<br /><br />"Man. It just keeps getting better with you, doesn't it?" Laura said, shaking her head. "You all right?"<br /><br />"I'll live."<br /><br />"Well, you don't look like it. We should probably get you cleaned up. No self-respecting shuttle driver will let you on looking like that."<br /><br />"This is Vegas. Self-respect is pretty much only theory here," I said, digging through my pockets for something to wipe my face with. Finding nothing, I used the back of my left hand to wipe my face. It came away slick with blood. I checked -- my nose was bleeding pretty badly. Possibly broken.<br /><br />"You're kind of pale. Can you walk?"<br /><br />My legs didn't feel too solid underneath me, and I suddenly became aware that my back was killing me. Tossing Roth hadn't done my spine any favors. Still, I was putting one foot in front of the other without falling down, so that was something.<br /><br />"Looks like it. Let's move. We'll get a few blocks down and try to flag down a ride."<br /><br />"If you make it that far," Laura grumbled, hooking her arm under mine and marching me down the alleyway.<br /><br />After a few blocks, Laura told me to stay put for a second and vanished off to the Strip. She came back a few moments later with a garish yellow plastic bag that read "Las Vegas' *Only* Souvenir Shop" across the front. I knew the bag was lying to me, and I realized I was a little punch-drunk when I started giggling at the bag.<br /><br />Laura shook her head and pulled out a white "I Love Las Vegas" T-shirt, which she handed to me.<br /><br />"It's a medium," I said. "No way that's gonna fit me."<br /><br />"It's not to wear. It's to mop up some the Niagra Blood Falls you're working with there."<br /><br />Of course it was. I felt a little stupid, but I used the T-shirt to towel away as much of the blood and leftover vomit as I could. The shirt came away red, and I realized that wasn't a great sign.<br /><br />"Is my nose broken?" I asked Laura.<br /><br />"I don't know. Maybe. It's pretty swollen. And your eyes are turning black like you got punched in both of them."<br /><br />I nodded, which caused more dizziness than nodding ever should.<br /><br />"Yeah, that's broken. Eh. I wasn't pretty anyway."<br /><br />She dug into the bag and brought out another shirt, this one light brown. It had a skull in a top hat on the front, with the words "Las Vegas" in Gothic script across the bottom.<br /><br />"I guessed on the size. XL?"<br /><br />"It'll be a little tight, but..."<br /><br />I took off the leather jacket and discarded my plain black T-shirt. I put on the new shirt, which actually fit OK, then put the jacket back on. <br /><br />"OK. You still look awful, but at least you're not covered in blood anymore. There's a shuttle stop just up the street. Let's get moving."<br /><br />The hot air wasn't doing me any favors, but I kept up with Laura as she bounded up the street. A shuttle bus with "MacCarran Airport" on the front was just pulling up to the stop, and Laura flagged it down. The door opened, and she got on. I followed.<br /><br />"$20," the bus driver said, smiling and showing nicotine-stained teeth.<br /><br />I pulled one of the many twenties Quentin had given me out of my jacket pocket and handed it to him.<br /><br />"You don't look so good, brother. You all right?" the bus driver said, one eyebrow arched almost into his baseball cap.<br /><br />"Yeah. King of the Cage," I said, surprised by how quickly the lie popped into my head.<br /><br />"Yeah, I heard of that. New kinda streetfighting thing in the octagon, right? You a fighter?"<br /><br />"Working on it," I said, forcing a smile and eyeing an empty seat. Sitting down was pretty much all I wanted to do, as I was starting to get dizzy again.<br /><br />"I got a cousin who does that. Y'all are some crazy motherfuckers, man."<br /><br />"Heh. Yeah."<br /><br />"All right. Find a seat and we'll get you headed for the airport."<br /><br />I collapsed into a chair in the second row, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath through my mouth. <br /><br />The next thing I knew, Laura was shaking me awake.<br /><br />"We're here," she said. "Get up."<br /><br />It's amazing how much good a fifteen-minute cat nap can do for you. I was much more solid on my feet as Laura and I got off the bus, and didn't feel near as dizzy as we walked through the parking garage looking for Quentin's SUV. Of course, getting into his car wasn't my original plan in going to the airport.<br /><br />See, as soon as Quentin had mentioned his vehicle was at MacCarran, a new plan formed in my head, one that had nothing to do with assaulting the Umbra facility in an insane attempt to snatch a nuclear bomb. I knew I'd have to do something about that, maybe tell the FBI or something, but I wasn't going to do anything about it. My new plan was to get Laura to the airport, slap the cuffs on her, and get her on a plane to Los Angeles. Then I'd collect my money, tell someone about the nuke, and go back to living my normal life.<br /><br />Quentin would be OK on his own. All he'd have to do is wait a day or two for the heat to die down, then go get his car and come on back home. He'd seemed to be rapidly getting better, and the fact that he hadn't died already meant he probably wasn't bleeding internally. I'd give him a call when I had Laura safely turned over to the LAPD and break him off some of the bounty as a thank you for all his help.<br /><br />But somewhere along the way -- and maybe this was the concussion (or the multiple concussions) talking, I realized I had to do something about the bomb. I hadn't really believed Laura until after the fight with Roth. If that guy was fighting as hard as he was to keep me from getting out, then it must have been a real threat. And if there really was a functional nuclear bomb in North Las Vegas, I couldn't afford to waste any time.<br /><br />So instead of slapping the handcuffs on Laura and hauling her into the terminal, we found Quentin's car and started it up.<br /><br />"OK," she asked, unaware that I'd been ready to turn her in until just a few minutes ago. "What's the first stop?"<br /><br />"The liquor store, of course," I told her, winking.TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-48842306673446628362011-07-21T21:57:00.000-07:002011-07-21T21:58:30.276-07:00Chapter ThirteenLook, I'm a realist. <br /><br />I knew I was lucky to have gone up against a guy like Meskhiyev three times without getting killed. I knew I was lucky the police hadn't caught up with me yet and thrown my ass in jail for any number of reasons. But I knew my limits, and I knew when I was out of my league -- which was over 48 hours ago, for anyone who was counting.<br /><br />In over my head. It was quickly becoming my mantra. There was no way I could just assault a building crawling with security and snag a damn nuclear bomb out of there. I couldn't sneak in, either -- assaults and infiltrations weren't part of my skillset. Need someone to drive a car through a flaming building? Need a dumbass bail-jumper tracked down? I'm your guy. Need someone to go all one-man-army against a fortified building filled with an ex-military private security force? You're thinking of Rambo.<br /><br />But right about then, I had a thought -- how would I handle this if it was a stunt?<br /><br />Well, first off, I'd have a serious discussion with the guy who wrote this script, because this was an unrealistic scenario for a single guy to survive. But, barring that... well, I'd work the stunt out with the show's stunt coordinator. I'd get expert help.<br /><br />And I know a guy who just might be able to help me out. I hadn't talked to him in years, but when I'd last talked to him, he'd told me to call if I ever needed anything. I was hoping he hadn't just been bullshitting. I didn't have his number on me, but it was in my files back at the office.<br /><br />So I called Mike and asked him to look up Jason Black's number for me.<br /><br />It took about an hour -- Mike had to go down to the office, after all -- but he called me back with the number. <br /><br />"You realize it's, like, 6:00 in the morning, right?" Mike asked.<br /><br />"Yeah. He's a military guy, right? He's probably up this early."<br /><br />"Just do me a favor and don't burn any bridges, OK? That guy throws a lot of business our way."<br /><br />I didn't know how Jason Black could be giving us business -- near as I knew, he was a military consultant on film sets. At least, that's how I met him. But I wasn't going to argue with Mike. He'd just done me a solid, and I could tell by his tone of voice he wasn't too happy about it. Could be that I woke him up early. Or it could be that he was still looking over his shoulder for an Umbra guy to put a bullet in his eye.<br /><br />Yeah, I owed that guy one.<br /><br />I jotted down Black's number on the notepad on the bedside table. It was a Nevada area code, I noticed. I thought he lived in Hollywood. I wondered if he would local -- that would be a big help. I dialed the number and hoped.<br /><br />"HT-117," a female voice answered on the first ring.<br /><br />"Uh, I'm looking for Jason Black? Uh, Captain Jason Black?"<br /><br />"I'm sorry, sir. I don't know anyone by that name. Perhaps you dialed incorrectly," the woman said.<br /><br />"Oh, uh, sorry about --" I started, but she'd already hung up.<br /><br />I checked the phone number and started to dial again when my phone rang.<br /><br />"Hello?"<br /><br />"Jacob Harris. We met on the<span style="font-style:italic;"> Delta Commando</span> set, right?" a deep male voice said without the courtesy of a hello.<br /><br />"Captain Black?"<br /><br />"Call me Jason. What's up?"<br /><br />"I just tried to call you."<br /><br />"Yeah, you must have dialed incorrectly," he said, but there was a chuckle in his voice. "So what's going on?"<br /><br />"I've got some consulting work, if you're interested. Should only take a couple of minutes."<br /><br />"Oh, you're back into the movie business? I heard you were running down scumbags."<br /><br />"Writing a script. Kinda, you know, in my off time. I'm in Vegas doing research."<br /><br />"Ah. Cool, then," Black said. I could still hear the chuckle in his voice. "So, uh, I'm not really in the consulting business. That was just a one-time thing when you met me, favor for a buddy. But if it's only going to take a couple of minutes..."<br /><br />"Yeah. Hey, if you're local to Vegas, I could meet you for a drink, talk it out."<br /><br />"I was there last week, but I'm kind of way out of town right now. Can we just do it over the phone?"<br /><br />"Yeah, sure."<br /><br />So I laid out the situation -- assault on a covered, fenced, protected building. Corporate security and rent-a-cops. Cameras, patrols, and plenty of firepower.<br /><br />"Right. And how many... characters... are you rolling with?"<br /><br />"One."<br /><br />"Armed?"<br /><br />"Two pistols. A shotgun. A really thick skull."<br /><br />"You're playing the lead role, then."<br /><br />"Yeah."<br /><br />"Look, I don't want to tell you how to... write your movie. But if you can get even one other person in the scene, it would help your chances a lot. Just someone to watch your character's back. More realistic that way."<br /><br />"Right on. I can do that."<br /><br />Jason Black laid out the perfect plan of attack, a broad-daylight raid that seemed so insane it almost had to work. I just listened and jotted down notes.<br /><br />"Hey, thanks, man. I really appreciate it."<br /><br />"No problem, man. Don't get yourself killed. Call me if you take down the building," Black said, chuckling and hanging up the phone.<br /><br />After I hung up, I took a long look at my notes. Black's plan wasn't bad -- it was great, in fact. Better than anything any one of us could have come up with. But it came with a long list of things we'd need that we didn't have.<br /><br />The first problem would be just getting out of that damn hotel room. Umbra knew we were in the hotel, and they'd have people watching every exit. It would be damn near impossible to get past them, as they were all trained by a former KGB agent. So that was one big problem right there.<br /><br />Next was transportation. My car was still -- well, probably -- back at the Imperial Palace, but either Umbra, the police, or both would have eyes on it. None of us could go get it. If I went, I'd either get killed by one of Meskhiyev's people or detained for questioning by the police. Laura had warrants that I'm sure were in the LVPD system right now, and they'd even snatch up Quentin as a person of interest. And Umbra security knew all of our faces now, so even if the cops didn't get us, Meskhiyev's goon squad sure would.<br /><br />Laura's car was out, too. It was at Caesar's, and we already knew Umbra knew about that one. They'd surely have at least one guy on it. <br /><br />"Quentin," I said after a moment. "What did you drive here? That rusted-out Chevy in your driveway?"<br /><br />Quentin started off laughing, but ended up in a coughing fit. As he finally got himself together, he just shook his head.<br /><br />"Shit no, man. That thing was there when I moved in. I took my car. Pathfinder."<br /><br />"Is it here in the hotel?"<br /><br />"Nah. Stashed it at the airport, long-term parking. Always do."<br /><br />I shook my head. Quentin's paranoia never ceased to amaze me, but it was probably that paranoia that had helped us out the most so far. <br /><br />"All right. We're going to have to catch a shuttle to the airport somehow. And I'll need you to watch my back. You ready, Q?"<br /><br />Quentin struggled to sit up.<br /><br />"Yeah, man. I got your back."<br /><br />Laura just shook her head.<br /><br />"Seriously? The guy can't even stand up. He's got broken ribs, a cracked sternum, maybe even internal bleeding. He needs to go to a hospital, not on some crazy-ass raid."<br /><br />"Who, then? You?" I asked.<br /><br />"I'm the only other one here."<br /><br />I wasn't wild about Laura backing me up. It wasn't because she was a woman -- OK, total honesty, that was part of it. It was that she was a scientist, not a fighter. I mean, Quentin wasn't exactly a fighter, either, but he was crazy. Crazy often went a long way toward keeping someone alive.<br /><br />When I was doing stunts, I had to take a bunch of fight training. Nothing makes a movie weaker than when it looks too easy for the hero guy to take out the hordes of faceless opponents (read: me), so I had to look like I knew what it was doing when it came time to throw down for the cameras. The easiest way to look like you know what you're doing? Actually know what you're doing.<br /><br />So, shortly after booking my first movie gig, I started taking lessons. Kung Fu, Muay Thai, Jujitsu, you name it. In one of my kickboxing classes, there was this little guy, 19-year-old kid with long hair and silly glasses, who was just fucking insane. After a while, none of us would even step in the ring with him. Punching him in the face or kicking him in the body -- even kicks and punches form a guy my size -- didn't seem to do much more than make him laugh. And when he hit, he hit like he had anvils for hands. Once, I saw him hop out of the ring and whip off his headgear, and he was bleeding from one eye and his nose. He calmly tossed the headgear, walked over to the water fountain, got a drink, and started talking to one of the other guys in class like nothing happened. Dude was crazy, and that's what made him dangerous.<br /><br />Quentin had that spark. Laura, though? She just seemed smart. Too smart to go through with some of the seemingly crazy shit I'd ask of her if she backed me up.<br /><br />Still, though, as she'd pointed out, Quentin could barely stand. Crazy or not, he was still more a liability than an asset in a fight. And another point -- she was the only other person available.<br /><br />"All right," I said. "Ever fired a gun before?"<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />So it was decided. Laura was going with me. I gave her Meskhiyev's gun and gave her a quick primer on how to use it. I really hoped I wouldn't have to depend on her aim, but as she'd said, she was the only one vertical besides me at the moment.<br /><br />The next step would be getting out of the hotel room. We'd have to figure a way to get past anyone who might be looking for us, which wouldn't be easy. I'm not entirely inconspicuous on my best day, and every member of Umbra security probably had Laura's face memorized. It was still early in the morning yet, and the casino wouldn't be busy -- so no real chance of blending in with the crowd, as the crowd didn't exist.<br /><br />"Do you know how the Umbra Security guys keep in touch with each other?" I asked Laura, sitting on the couch and stretching out my legs. I didn't realize until I sat down how tired I was. <br /><br />"Yeah. Radios. Little walkie-talkie things with earpieces plugged in, mics in the sleeves of their jackets," she told me.<br /><br />"Quentin? Anything you can do with that?"<br /><br />"I can run a scanner and try to pick up their frequency. At least we can hear what they're saying. I have some gear in the duffel bag over there if you'll bring it my way."<br /><br />I did, and Quentin started digging through the bag. He paused for a second and looked up at me.<br /><br />"This could take a couple of hours," he said. "You might want to use the time to get some sleep. You look like hell, and no use in going on a crazy suicide mission sleep-deprived."<br /><br />I nodded. That was the best idea I'd heard in quite some time.TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-73690622164389671302011-07-12T22:09:00.000-07:002011-07-12T22:10:16.091-07:00Chapter TwelveTo say I wasn't ready for that one is like saying that the Japanese gave us a playful tap on the shoulder at Pearl Harbor in 1941. That is, it's a dangerously stupid understatement.<br /><br />I'd never seen Quentin fazed by much, not even the two bullets that had most likely cracked his sternum and pulverized a couple of ribs. But after Laura told us what was in the trunk, dude turned all sorts of pale and sat down on the curb next to the BMW.<br /><br />"Yeah. I really, really need to lie down now," he said after a moment. <br /><br />It was a moment during which no one had said a word, and I hadn't really even noticed the silence. That's probably because my brain was too busy running a mile a minute, filling my head with questions, alarms, panic, fear -- all of it jumbled up into a nice, incomprehensible mess. I couldn't pick out a single thought in the turmoil, so I just decided to shut Mister Brain down for a while. Not like he was helping me out a hell of a lot anyway.<br /><br />"Right. Laura, help me get Quentin up to his room."<br /><br />"About the --"<br /><br />"We'll talk about that when we get there. The Umbra guys don't know where we are."<br /><br />"The car might have LoJack," Quentin said.<br /><br />Damn. Hadn't thought of that.<br /><br />"Anything we can do about that?"<br /><br />"Yeah. I have some stuff up in the room."<br /><br />So we headed into the casino, me trying to support Quentin without looking like I was holding him up. We looked like hell anyway, all three of us, and I really didn't want to draw any attention I didn't need to. Of course, this was Vegas, so I doubt we would have drawn any extra attention if we'd been running through the gaming floor naked and on fire.<br /><br />When we were safely in the elevator, I leaned Quentin up against the wall and turned on Laura almost instantly.<br /><br />"Start talking," I said.<br /><br />I tried not to sound angry, but it didn't really work. My dad taught me never to raise my voice in anger at a lady, but hey, these were the most extenuating of circumstances. You try sounding all cool and polite when you've just been told you're carting around a nuclear bomb.<br /><br />"When we get to the room and I can check it for bugs," she said.<br /><br />"No. Now," I snapped.<br /><br />"She's right, big guy. Just calm down a second," Quentin said, coughing. "My room is clear of bugs. I always check when I leave the house."<br /><br />I felt pretty damned silly all of a sudden. If a paranoid, gun-nut, crackpot like Quentin was telling me to calm down, then maybe all of my anger was out of place. After all, she'd said *most* of a nuclear weapon, right? I mean, maybe the thing was safe. Maybe.<br /><br />"Fine," I grumbled, sticking my hands in my pockets and intentionally not looking at either of my two companions. That made me feel even sillier -- I was throwing a temper tantrum, I realized. Just like when I was six goddamn years old and my dad wouldn't let me hold the shotgun from his police cruiser.<br /><br />We got to Quentin's room a few minutes later, and he grabbed a suitcase from the floor and, with my help, threw it up on the bed. He rummaged around inside for a moment and produced a small box with wires snaking all over it.<br /><br />"Here," he told me. "Go put this in the BMW and turn it on. Anywhere should do. It'll jam the LoJack if the thing has one."<br /><br />I wanted to stay and argue, to tell him I was promised answers as soon as we got to the room, but I knew he was right. We had to get the BMW off the grid as soon as possible. Even if the bomb wasn't complete, we still didn't want Meskhiyev and his pals coming after it.<br /><br />"You'll make sure she doesn't leave?"<br /><br />Quentin propped himself up on the bed and patted his shotgun.<br /><br />"She won't have knees if she tries."<br /><br />I nodded -- that was a good enough answer for me -- and headed back to the parking garage. On the way, I might have stopped for a beer. Hey, fuck it. After the night I'd had, I'd earned a drink, and it's not like there's anywhere in Vegas you can't drink. I was at the bar maybe a minute, minute and a half, but maybe if I'd stopped after... well...<br /><br />The BMW was gone when I got there. I looked around, thinking maybe I'd gone to the wrong space, but no. The space I'd parked in was empty, and the same two cars -- a Ford F-150 and a Pontiac Grand Am -- were still on either side. I guess the BMW really did have a LoJack or something similar, and the Umbra guys were on top of it as soon as Meskhiyev or his buddy called it in. <br /><br />I was immediately back on my guard, figuring there would be Umbra guys in the hotel looking for Laura Mills, probably for me and Quentin as well. I was thankful for his paranoia then, as he'd checked in under an assumed name, so the hotel wouldn't have any record that he was checked in, assuming the Umbra people knew who he really was in the first place. I was in alarm mode all the way back up to the room, taking random left turns and doubling back, trying to catch any evidence that someone was following me, that I'd been spotted. Either I wasn't being tailed or my stalker was really good, because I didn't see anyone. Still, it took me a good half an hour to circle my way back to the room.<br /><br />The scene inside was much as I'd left it -- no Umbra guys had come in and started shooting while I was gone. Quentin was still on the bed, still with one hand on his shotgun. Laura had taken a chair across from the bed, and I could tell by the looks on their faces that I'd walked into the middle of a conversation in progress.<br /><br />"BMW's gone," I said, sighing and dropping onto the couch. Quentin -- or Ken Adams, I suppose -- had a nice suite.<br /><br />"Wow. These cats are good," Quentin said, nodding appreciatively.<br /><br />"I know where they'll take the car," Laura told me.<br /><br />"Yeah, I have a pretty good idea, too." I was thinking the office park out in the ghetto.<br /><br />"Good. Then we have to go get it back."<br /><br />I shook my head and started to say something, but Quentin cut me off.<br /><br />"I think you're going to want to listen to the lady, big guy. She has quite a story."<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />And this is when I truly learned the shit we we'd gotten ourselves into.<br /><br />Laura Mills went to work for Umbra Dynamics straight out of college in 1992. She'd gotten her masters in some area of physics I couldn't even pronounce, then been recruited right out of the gate. Her job was to help Umbra's software people accurately model nuclear blasts in a software package. Simple enough, and all above-board at this point. I could even see why they wanted that information, kinda. It's a little tough to wrap my head around. <br /><br />So anyway, she goes on working for Umbra for five years without anything too odd going down. On the surface, they seem to be perfectly legitimate, working on contracts from the military and the Department of Justice. Software stuff, mostly, but she knows they do some hardware too -- better armor systems for Humvees, research into new air-to-air missile systems. None of that's done out of her office in Santa Monica, though. That's done at the company's testing facilities in the Nevada desert, and since she works on math and software, she never needs to go out there.<br /><br />So, imagine her surprise in late 1997 when she gets an email telling her she's supposed to go out to the Nevada test site in a week to consult on some top-secret project that the company is putting together out there. She checked it out with her supervisor -- all legit, he said. They needed her specific knowledge, so plane tickets were booked, hotels called, cars rented. She got on a plane for Nevada just after Thanksgiving last year.<br /><br />This is when it gets fucked up.<br /><br />As soon as Laura got off the plane in Las Vegas, she was met by two men in black suits -- Umbra Security. There were a few Security guys here and there at the Santa Monica office, but Laura quickly noticed that the security presence at the Nevada facility was insane. She saw more security than scientists or engineers, but that was by design.<br /><br />The two security guys led her to a windowless van and drove her to what she now knew was a not-so-abandoned office park in a terrible area of the city. She didn't really know how to get there, thanks to the lack of windows in the van, but when she got there, she was led through an empty, narrow hallway to a large, sparse office in a seemingly disused part of the building.<br /><br />A man named George Nichols was in the office -- he wasn't a scientist or an engineer, either, Laura explained. He was basically an HR guy. He told her that she wouldn't be meeting anyone who was working on the project, or told any details of the project that weren't absolutely vital to her task, citing the top secret nature of the project. When Laura objected that she *had* the highest level of government clearance -- it was required for her regular day job -- Nichols simply replied that this project was classified above that.<br /><br />Her task, initially, was to study ten major cities -- eight in America, two in the Russian Federation. She was to calculate the effects of a 1.8-kiloton nuclear blast set off at various locations around these cities -- Los Angeles, New York, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, Miami, San Diego, Kansas City, Moscow, and Vladivostok. She was never given a reason why she was doing these calculations, but she went ahead and did them.<br /><br />Now, at this point, she had to explain something to me, because saying "a 1.8-kiloton nuclear blast" doesn't really mean anything as far as I know.<br /><br />"All right. You know how big the average nuclear bomb is?" she asked.<br /><br />"No. Can't say I do."<br /><br />"It's between 20 and 30 megatons. That's way more powerful than 1.8 kilotons. Ten to twenty thousand times more. The thing is, those things are meant as a deterrent."<br /><br />"Right. Scary doomsday bombs, never meant to be used."<br /><br />"Exactly. But a 1.8-kiloton device? You don't build one of those unless you damn well plan to use it."<br /><br />"But why?" I asked.<br /><br />"I'm not 100% on that... but I have a theory."<br /><br />Laura went on to tell us that, for the first month or so she was at the Nevada Facility, Meskhiyev had been assigned as her personal guard. He'd been the one to pick her up from the Tropicana for work in the morning, the one who dropped her at her suite door at night. Then, suddenly, Meskhiyev had been replaced by Brendan White, the ex-Marine Scout Sniper. He was Meskhiyev's right-hand man. She'd assumed it was just for a couple of days, but it ended up being quite a bit longer than that.<br /><br />After Meskhiyev had been gone for three weeks or so, she and Brendan had gone for drinks after work. The ex-Marine liked to slam down the sauce, and after he'd had a few too many, Laura finally asked where the Russian had gone.<br /><br />"Oh, he's on a nice, paid sailing vacation across the Pacific," Brendan had said, smirking and slurring his words. "He's got contacts where the bosses need 'em. Making a parts run."<br /><br />That stopped Laura cold. Up until that point, she'd convinced herself she was data-modeling for a government contract -- predicting damage in case of, say, a terrorist device smuggled into one of the major cities. But now, another idea was creeping into her brain -- that Umbra was actually building its own nuclear device, off the reservation and without the sanction of the U.S. Government.<br /><br />"Why would Meshkiyev making a trip back to Russia, I'm assuming, make you suspicious all of a sudden?" I asked.<br /><br />"I asked the same thing," Quentin said, propping himself up on the bed.<br /><br />"It has to do with the way a nuclear strike, a terrorist one, would be investigated," Laura said, speaking slowly as if to an elementary-school class. "You can't just stick any old fissionable material in the bomb. They're able to trace the plutonium back to where it was mined."<br /><br />"So he needed to get Russian plutonium?" I asked.<br /><br />"That's my guess. When the USSR broke up, a bunch of nuclear material went unaccounted for. If someone were to set off a bomb using that material, it would read as being mined somewhere in the former Soviet Union."<br /><br />Something clicked in my mind then -- the blueprints I'd seen in Laura's hotel room at Caesar's. The writing on them had been foreign, but not Russian. At least, not to my untrained eyes, anyway. I mentioned it.<br /><br />"You're correct. It was Chinese, and when I found that, suddenly the whole thing got even worse," she said.<br /><br />"Why does a Chinese blueprint thingy make it worse?" Quentin asked.<br /><br />"Because -- and remember, this is just theory here -- it means they plan to detonate their device in one of those cities and blame it on China."<br /><br />That didn't make any sense to me. I mean, neither did an American defense contractor detonating a nuclear bomb in an American or Russian city, but assuming <span style="font-style:italic;">that</span> made sense, why blame China for it? What had China ever done to us?<br /><br />"Nothing, yet," Laura explained. "But their economy is growing at a massive rate. They could take over as the dominant world power in the next ten years. Unless, of course, they fight a costly war with the biggest, baddest military on the planet before that happens. And remember, Umbra's a defense contractor -- they'd make out like mad in a war."<br /><br />I went to the bathroom and poured myself a glass of water. This was all crazy, and the whole Chinese conspiracy plot wasn't helping even a little. Still, there was a guy in a BMW out there with a nuclear bomb. It was time to call the police and let them know about Umbra's little hideout in the ghetto.<br /><br />"I wouldn't recommend that," Laura said when I grabbed the phone.<br /><br />"Oh, right. A scientist, a banged-up hacker, and a bounty hunter should go out there and get back a nuclear bomb instead," I scoffed.<br /><br />"Umbra won't let the cops get within a hundred yards of that place. If they have to..."<br /><br />She let the silence hang there in the room for a minute, but I shared a look with Quentin. Her meaning was clear to both of us.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">They'll detonate the nuke.</span>TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2439788525818338718.post-30649330331156844762011-07-01T23:01:00.000-07:002011-07-01T23:02:12.365-07:00Chapter ElevenThe Town Car was moving at a pretty decent clip, so I knew we didn't have long to make our move before they made it to the office complex. I'd have to do something soon, and I was pretty sure I knew what would work.<br /><br />If you've ever caught *COPS*, you're probably familiar with the Pursuit Immobilization Technique, or PIT maneuver. Basically, the car in pursuit -- my borrowed BMW, in this case -- accelerates, aligning its front wheels with the other car's rear wheels. Then there's a nice, hard swerve into the other car, causing it to spin out and stop. It has the dual purpose of working really well and looking pretty fucking cool. The latter reason is why I learned it in stunt driving school.<br /><br />Of course, a pro driver who knows the PIT is coming can steer out of it, J-Turn around and get the hell out of there. I didn't know what kind of driving they taught in the KGB, but I had another trick up my sleeve in case Meskhiyev knew how to recover. I turned to Quentin and told him to hold on.<br /><br />We were on a nice, straight stretch of road with only a couple of other cars around when I jammed on the gas and brought the front passenger tire of the BMW in contact with the Town Car's rear driver tire. I jerked the wheel the right, and suddenly, the Town Car was skidding sideways in front of me. The Town Car immediately skidded out and slammed into a bus shelter, and Quentin and I were out of the BMW seconds later.<br /><br />He had the shotgun up and ready, and I had my Sig drawn and aimed at the Town Car's driver door. It was right when the passenger door opened that I realized I hadn't told Quentin we weren't planning on shooting anyone -- I hoped he could figure that out for himself, but let's be honest. Guy was walking around with an illegal sawed-off in his jacket. Probably not the best argument for prudence right there.<br /><br />I wasn't two steps out of the car before the driver's window of the Town Car shattered. I heard a gunshot, and Quentin went down immediately. <br /><br />You know, I've been in probably 20 real gunfights, and about a hundred times that many in the movies (thanks to multiple takes), and what Meskhiyev had just done never occurred to me. He'd fired through the closed window, not even bothering to waste the second it would have taken to open the door. It was a desperation move, a survival move, and it had worked -- it thinned out his hunters and gave him and his boy the advantage.<br /><br />I had my own survival reflex, and it was to get to ground fast. I dove back behind the BMW and scrambled as quickly as I could to the rear tire. I heard another shot -- this one from a much bigger gun, or much closer, before Meskhiyev started screaming in Russian.<br /><br />"What?" the other guy yelled, his voice way too loud. I realized he'd proably been deafened when Meskhiyev fired from inside the closed car.<br /><br />"The package! That's my car, shithead!"<br /><br />"Fuck!"<br /><br />I didn't know what they were talking about, and right then, it didn't matter. It gave me a couple of seconds, and I used them. I flattened myself onto the pavement, took a quick glance, and fired my Sig as fast as I could. Meskhiyev's partner yelped and hit the ground -- I couldn't tell for sure where I'd hit him, but I was aiming for his shins, shooting under the car's undercarriage.<br /><br />"Mister Harris!" Meskhiyev yelled. I could hear him scramble for cover behind his own vehicle.<br /><br />"Alexsandr Meskhiyev!" I yelled back. I wanted him to know that I knew who he was.<br /><br />"It seems the odds are now even, Mister Harris! Perhaps we can discuss this matter like civilized adults!"<br /><br />The air was still and quiet around us. I'd like to say I was thinking over what he'd just said, but truth to be told, I was just trying to get my brain to form a thought. A word. Anything. I might be a better driver than this guy, but he had me outclassed as a shooter any day, and I was fucking terrified.<br /><br />"So what's your answer, Mister Harris?" Meskhiyev finally yelled, breaking the silence.<br /><br />"Here's my answer," I heard someone say. The next thing I heard was a loud, sickening crack.<br /><br />After a few seconds of complete silence, I poked my head over the BMW's trunk. I could see Quentin standing there, leaning against the hood of the town car, his shotgun in one hand.<br /><br />"Come on out," he said quietly, coughing.<br /><br />"Did you kill him?" I asked.<br /><br />"Nah. Just cracked him in the skull with Mr. Sawed-Off, here," Quentin said, grinning weakly.<br /><br />"You all right?"<br /><br />Quentin held open his jacket with one hand, revealing his torso. His shirt was torn aside, and underneath, I could see he was wearing a Kevlar vest. Two bullets were embedded, one right next to the other, just to the left of his sternum.<br /><br />"Hey, I know I don't know shit about gunfights. Figured wearing protection was job one," he said.<br /><br />"Probably busted up your sternum and ribs pretty good," I told him, walking slowly over to the motionless town car.<br /><br />Neither Meskhiyev or his partner were moving. The other guy -- the one I'd shot in the legs -- was unconscious, probably passed out from the pain. Meshkiyev was crumpled in a heap near the Town Car's front passenger tire.<br /><br />"Laura? You in there?" I asked through the Town Car's open driver door.<br /><br />"Yeah. You guys gonna shoot at me?" she asked.<br /><br />"No. Promise. Come on out."<br /><br />The back door opened, and Laura slowly stepped out. She looked a bit tired, but that's not much of a stretch when a person had been on the run for a couple of days. She still looked miles better than anyone I'd brought in before.<br /><br />"Who are you guys?"<br /><br />"I'm Jake. That's Quentin," I said, nodding over to Quentin, who grunted and pushed himself off the hood of the car. "We're... well, I guess here to take you to jail."<br /><br />"You're cops?"<br /><br />"No, not by a long shot. Bounty hunter."<br /><br />"Great. Wait a second -- is that Meskhiyev's car you're driving?"<br /><br />"Yeah. I'm just going to ditch it when we get back into a safe neighborhood... which we should really think about doing before these assholes wake up," I said, motioning to the BMW.<br /><br />"No can do. You have to hang onto this car, and the two of you have to get me as far away from a major city as you can."<br /><br />I wasn't accustomed to a target telling me what to do, and I guess it showed on my face. Laura Mills glared at me, staring me down like I was a dog who refused to sit.<br /><br />"Look, Laura. I'm taking you to jail. I don't want to have to put cuffs on you and drag you there, but after what I've been through in the last couple of days, you can damn well believe I will."<br /><br />"You can't. Look, we can talk about this in the car. Can we just get the hell out of here already?"<br /><br />I had to admit, that was the best plan at the moment. I helped Quentin into the passenger seat as Laura got in the BMW's back seat. A few seconds later, we were rolling.<br /><br />As I started to pull away from the wrecked Town Car, Quentin put his hand on my shoulder. <br /><br />"Stop the car a second," he said, wheezing.<br /><br />I pressed the brake pedal and looked over at him.<br /><br />"You don't sound good, Q."<br /><br />He waved his hand dismissively and rolled down the passenger window.<br /><br />"Town Car's still driveable," he explained, pushing his shotgun out the window and firing twice. I saw slugs tear into the Town Car's hood, and heard the engine immediately sputter and die.<br /><br />"All right. Let's roll. I need to lay down," Quentin said, leaning his head back against the headrest and closing his eyes.<br /><br />"I have a room back at Ceasar's," Laura piped up.<br /><br />"Had," I corrected her. "Meskhiyev knows where it is. Probably cleaned it out and has five guys on it."<br /><br />"How the hell would he know about it?"<br /><br />"Probably the same way I did. Tracked your credit card."<br /><br />"Monte Carlo," Quentin said with a cough. "They don't know who I am, and I checked in under an alias anyway."<br /><br />"Right," I said, nodding and heading back towards the bright lights of the Strip, visible from even out here in the ghetto. <br /><br />A few minutes passed in silence. When we hit a stop light on Las Vegas Boulevard between Old Town and the Stratosphere, I turned around to look at Laura.<br /><br />"So, you've got something to say? Something about why I shouldn't just haul you back to Los Angeles County Lockup and get my well-deserved paycheck?"<br /><br />"You ever wonder why my bail was so high?"<br /><br />"Excuse my bluntness, lady, but I didn't really give a shit."<br /><br />"Come on, Jake. You don't strike me as an idiot, and you're obviously good at your job. Half a million for failure to appear? And you didn't even wonder?"<br /><br />I didn't want to admit it, but she had a point. I had wondered.<br /><br />"So?"<br /><br />"So, the charges were inserted into the system. I went to ground, and they needed to find me. Their corporate security wasn't having much luck, so they enlisted the help of the LAPD and Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. Without their knowledge, of couse."<br /><br />"Come on. Umbra doesn't have that kind of pull," I said, shaking my head.<br /><br />"Yeah. Yeah, they do," Quentin muttered from the passenger seat. <br /><br />"Why did they need you? You work for them," I asked as we got moving again.<br /><br />"Worked. I quit when I found out what they were doing."<br /><br />"They're a defense contractor, right?" I asked. "You have a problem with working for the military, or what?"<br /><br />"No. That's not it. Their defense work is only part of what they do. And on the books, it's a big part, but really, it's not even the tip of the iceberg."<br /><br />Traffic on the Strip was lighter now, and we made it to the Monte Carlo in just a couple of minutes. I helped Quentin out of the car, keeping an eye on Laura in case she felt like bolting. She didn't, though. She just got out of the back seat and leaned against the car, looking at me.<br /><br />"Yeah?" I said.<br /><br />"Keys," she demanded.<br /><br />"Right. I'm just going to let you take the car and vanish again."<br /><br />"I'm not running," she said.<br /><br />"Uh huh."<br /><br />"Do me a favor. Open the trunk."<br /><br />I looked at Quentin, who just shrugged. So I opened the BMW's trunk, and Quentin hobbled over to see what was inside. Laura moved a black blanket aside and revealed a spiderwebbed mess of wires and metal. I looked at the... whatever it was... for a few seconds, trying to figure out what it was. Nothing looked familiar -- it just looked like some cheap electronics thrown onto a metal frame.<br /><br />"So... what am I looking at, exactly?"<br /><br />"That would be a nearly complete, homemade nuclear bomb," Laura said, closing the trunk.TwitterNovelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09099158923230997186noreply@blogger.com0