Alien Hunter: Underworld (3 page)

He carried two pistols. His main weapon was a Casull Raging Bull loaded with .454 rounds. It was a superbly engineered pistol that could handle high-speed shooting and still provide accuracy, so long as you were practiced with it. Its ported barrel reduced recoil, giving it an accuracy edge. The other weapon was also a Casull, this one a .454 quarter-inch—basically a Police Special with more juice. In the past, he'd carried an AMT Backup, but the Casull offered both more power and accuracy.

He attached the Bull, still in its holster, to his right hip with a clip, then locked the holster into the belt. The little pistol he tucked into a shoulder holster under his left arm. His guns were protected by a biometric array, which made it impossible for anybody else to fire them.

So the aliens couldn't shoot him with his own pistol, but they had a lot of other ways of dealing with him. If they got him, he knew that it would be slow. They made their victims suffer, and they would undoubtedly pay special attention to him.

In the event of capture, he had a way out. He withdrew a black steel box from the duffel and opened it. Inside were two silver capsules, each a quarter of an inch long. He took one out, then looked at its chemically treated seating in the box for any discoloration that would reveal even a microscopic leak. He then fitted the cyanide capsule into the back of his jaw. Crack it, and he would be dead in three seconds.

He went up onto the porch and pressed the doorbell.

Nobody came. So had the widow left? If so, the ambush could be about to go down right here, right now.

He rang the bell a second time.

The door creaked. An eye flickered in the peephole.

“I'm Dr. Winter from the CDC,” he said.

There was a faint scraping sound behind the door. She was sliding her fingernails along the doorframe, unsure about whether to open it.

“I have a few questions, ma'am.”

The lock clicked and the door swung open. Standing before him was a woman of perhaps forty, her considerable beauty wrecked by lack of sleep. No tears, though. He noted that.

“Please come in,” she said.

He found himself in a large living room with a cathedral ceiling. There were checked curtains on the windows, and a couch upholstered to repeat the pattern. An oak coffee table stood before the couch. Two deep recliners faced it. In the open kitchen he could see a Bosch dishwasher and a Sub-Zero fridge. A collection of copper pots, all of them gleaming, hung from a rack above a broad granite countertop.

“Very nice,” he said.

“Thank you. The CDC. Is that why they won't let me see my husband? Is some sort of a disease involved?”

“I'm sorry for your loss.”

She gave him a defiant look, her eyes full of fire and sadness.

“When you last saw him, he was riding out toward the ridge?”

“On his mountain bike. It's in the cop report. Why is someone from the CDC here?” She added in a low, ominous voice, “What happened to his eyes, his face?”

“You did see him, then.”

“The sheriff came up here after he found him. He showed me—” She shook her head.

“Pictures?”

She nodded.

He would make certain that the FBI got those pictures, and they ended up in a shredder. “Did he say what he thinks happened?”

“He fell off his bike and became disoriented. But that doesn't leave a man all cut up, not like that.” She looked him up and down, blinking once when she noticed the bulge on his right hip. “You're not from any Centers for Disease Control.”

No point in continuing the lie. “No, I'm not.”

“So it's not a disease?”

“No.”

“Are you here about Dan's clearance?”

“Did he talk about his work?”

She considered that, then shook her head.

He pressed her. “What did he tell you?”

“Nothing.”

He went to the couch. “May I sit down?”

“I can't stop you.”

“If you tell me to leave, I'll leave.” He wouldn't, but hopefully she wasn't going to try that particular path.

“I know what you are.”

“And what would that be?”

“Like I said, you're worried if his clearance was compromised.”

“I want to help you.”

“How in the world can you help me?”

“By finding who did this and bringing them to justice. May I know your first name?”

“I'm Eve. But shouldn't you know that?”

“It's in the file, but I prefer to ask.” He tried a smile. No reaction. He asked her smoothly, “What do you think happened to Dan?”

“What do I think? I don't know what to think. He fell off his bike. He was maimed. He drowned in two feet of water. It's not exactly a straight story, is it?”

“No, it isn't.”

She fell silent. Grief? No, not quite. When her eyes came back to him, there was a nasty little spark. But why? What was she hiding?

“Is this work-related?” she asked. “Are you trying to tell me he was murdered, is that what this is about?”

“We don't know what happened.”

“But it could have been murder, or someone like you wouldn't be here. And the local cops aren't going to be told, are they?”

“They're going to close it out as an accident.”

“And the FBI?”

“They're here because of his clearance. To make sure no classified information slips out in the course of the investigation.” He paused. “Look back to before this happened. Anyone come up to the house who was unexpected?”

“That's why he was out there in the first place. Three children came to the door. They asked if they could come in. I asked what they wanted, and they just walked off the porch and sort of wandered back into the woods.”

“And you'd never seen them before?”

“They looked like little tramps. They were filthy. They smelled. And no, I don't know where they came from.” She drew her shoulders together. “They made us worry that drifters were camping in our woods. We have three hundred acres of this mountain.”

The aliens could hypnotize the unwary into seeing them as deer, as owls, even as children. They could put hallucinations in your mind, damned convincing ones. “What do you remember about the kids?”

He watched her eyes flutter closed. She was trying hard. She said, “I was glad they left.” She leaned toward him. Her voice a low whisper, she continued, “I found them loathsome.”

“But no more details?”

“Were they part of this? Because they were not normal children. No way.”

He offered the simplest and safest of all the lies he could have told her: “No, they weren't part of this.”

“I want to believe you.”

“Let's think back again. Besides the kids?”

“Nothing important.”

“Everything is important.”

“He was murdered. That's why you're here.”

Flynn did not reply.

“Did you work with him? Can you at least tell me that?”

“I did not,” he said.

“You're like him—you come off as a real gentleman, but inside you're tough as nails.”

“He was a hard man?”

“Strong. Like you.”

He nodded. “Now, think back. Anything else? Anything last night?”

She looked into the middle distance. Flynn watched the pulse in her throat. He'd interrogated too many people to watch her eyes. Do that, and even a person with nothing to hide would spar with you. Lower your gaze, and they feel an unconscious sense of control, even though they are not in control.

“You know, there is.” She leaned forward. “I couldn't sleep last night.”

“I understand.”

“Very late, there was an owl at the bedroom window.”

“An owl? Had that ever happened before?”

“Never. It was just looking in at me. I hit the window with a pillow, and it flew away.”

Owls didn't look in windows, so the aliens had been here as recently as last night. They'd still been interested in her twelve hours ago, so maybe their interest was ongoing. Maybe she was also a target, or, as was more likely, they had planned their ambush of him near the house, and wanted to be sure he would be nearby tonight, protecting her.

“Let's talk about Dan and Deer Island. What do you know?”

“His employee number was 333676. I knew very little else. It was all secret.”

The first part of the number sent enough of a shock through Flynn that he had to drop his head for an instant, so she wouldn't see his expression.

In that same instant, the blocked number became a central issue. He needed to find out at once who was behind it.

He lifted his lips into the appearance of a smile. “Tell me the very little.”

“What you want to know is whether or not he shared his secrets with me. He didn't. I just figured a few things out.”

“Run down what he did tell you.”

“His project was called Dream Weaver. He did a lot of work with hypnosis, which I figured out from things he said.”

The project name didn't ring any bells, but the fact that he worked with hypnosis meant that he almost had to be involved with the bodies. The question of how the aliens could hypnotize people without speaking to or touching them was of major interest to the U.S. government, especially the intelligence community.

“Anything else? Anything at all?”

“Three nights ago, we thought we heard somebody on the porch.” She nodded decisively, fixing it in her memory. “We did.”

“After the children or before?”

“After. It's what finally decided Dan to investigate up the ridge.”

“He was armed with what?”

“Not armed. We're not gun people.” She glanced again at his hip.

“I'm a police officer,” he said. He lifted his jacket to reveal the butt of the big pistol.

“From where? What department?”

“Can't answer, I'm sorry.”

Given that Dan Miller worked in an advanced facility that was involved with the mysteries of alien neurology, Flynn was now almost certain that he had been looking for a meeting with them, not a confrontation with squatters. They had granted him a meeting, all right—his last.

“I'm going to spend the night out in your woods. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't leave the house.”

“Are you serious?”

“Your husband worked against terrorists. They killed him, and I'm going to see if I can track them.”

“It's almost dark.”

“They might still be out there. You need to know that.”

“Then I'm going back to the city.” She clutched her shoulders. “I don't want to be here anymore.”

“Leave in the morning.”

“I want to leave now.”

“Ma'am, I don't want you out on those roads in the dark. This is a lonely place. Safer in the house with the doors locked. And turn on your alarm system.”

The wall clock hummed in the kitchen. A breeze toyed with the pines outside. He raised his eyebrows, asking for a response.

“I think you're the saddest man I've ever seen. Why is that?”

“Just stay in the house. You can leave in the morning.”

Should he tell her what was really going on, that she was a pawn in a deadly chess game?

The words hung on his lips, ready to be spoken.

She said, “Yes?”

If she thought the “terrorists” were going to come after her tonight, she'd certainly leave, which would change things in unpredictable ways.

He believed that he could protect her. He believed that he could kill aliens here tonight, and save future lives as well.

“Again, please accept my condolences.”

She smiled, sadly and tightly. “Do you want a cup of coffee? I didn't even offer you coffee.”

He gave her a salute.

She returned a wary smile.

As he went down the pathway from the house, she leaned against the doorjamb watching him. Then he rounded the big old oak, and she was blocked from his view.

When one of the official vehicles down below started up, he stepped off the road, moving swiftly back into the trees. The FBI would have told the locals to leave him alone, but he wasn't taking any chances.

Now it would start, the first phase of a hard night of hunting.

His tongue went to his cyanide capsule, his hand to his gun. He turned his back on the parade of vehicles lumbering away down the road, and slipped into the forest.

 

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS
just approaching sunset, so the aliens would still be in the ravine, if he had guessed correctly about their location. He wouldn't be able to kill them there, but he might succeed in running a deception that would make them misread his competence. When they sprang their trap on him at the house, they would hopefully be overconfident.

As he moved through the woods, he heard the rustling of beetles, the hollow echo of birdsong, and somewhere close by, the uneasy mew of a raccoon. Animals would not venture near the aliens, meaning that silence in the woods was a useful warning sign. Birds would take flight, and even insects would stop their shrilling.

When you were within a few hundred feet of them, there would be absolute silence, nothing but the rustle of the breeze.

As he walked, he took deep breaths, pulling in the air, smelling it and tasting it, feeling it in his lungs. He was seeking their scent, the strangest odor that he knew. You could describe it as sulfurous, but it also contained the nasty sweetness of death and the roses of memory. Like everything about them—about Aeon, for that matter, and the whole issue of aliens on Earth—it was full of secrets.

Now, as he climbed the increasingly steep path, he saw signs, not of the aliens but of Miller's mountain bike. Here he had slipped a little, and farther on, he had sped up. Then, here, along this rocky stretch, he had stopped for a time.

Had he been looking for squatters or seeking out the aliens?

Here, in a flatter part of the trail, the mountain bike had stopped again. It had stood on its tires long enough to make deep indentations in the soft earth of the trail. Beside the wheel marks, there were toe tips. Miller had balanced on his toes, still astride the bicycle. He had been looking up. He would have seen above the trees a glittering emptiness not unlike that of the lens of the wire back in the office, and before he knew it, he would have risen into the air. He would have been dragged into what would have seemed something like a big wasp nest, stinking and claustrophobic. In it, he would have been strapped to a table. Then they would have gone to work on him.