Dark Dragons (35 page)

Towsley strode into the wilderness to dig with his imaginary
shovel.

Here there be treasure.

*

A half hour later, he frowned and stuffed the map into his
back pocket, now hopelessly lost.  There were more trails around him now
than there were on the chart, which had probably been made back in the
80’s.  In spite of the uncooperative map, Towsley continued west into the
forest along a deer trail, away from civilization.

The sun blazed overhead through clearings in the trees, and
the air felt cool on his skin.  Countless birds squawked among the
branches above, and he could hear squirrels chattering and scurrying through
the underbrush.  Nothing looked out of the ordinary.  No monsters or
spaceships so far.

He sat down on a fallen tree trunk to smoke a cigarette and
enjoy a beam of sunshine warming his face.  Then he noticed the trunk was
not the only fallen tree in the area.  He stood up and looked
around.  There were tens of them!  He hadn’t noticed them before
because on the corner of his eye, he had unconsciously passed them off as
brush-covered mounds nestled among the trees still standing.  He walked
over to the nearest pile about fifteen feet high and could see no trees
standing on the other side.  A wide open area of some kind.

Carefully, he climbed one trunk and hauled himself up to
another.  He had to be cautious of the wide spaces in between them. 
One slip and he would end up breaking a leg or his neck.  He balanced
himself along a trunk that angled upwards and made sure his tennis shoes had a
firm purchase on the slick moss.  When he reached the roots, he peered over
the trunk.

An area about three hundred square yards had been completely
removed from the forest as if Godzilla had smashed through here recently. 
Patches of soot and dried mud pocketed the elongated crater.  Trees had
piled up along the edges like matchsticks, the tallest heap of twisted timber
on the eastern side of the crater.  It was easy to tell the ship had come
from the west.  The tops of trees in that direction had been sheared off
when the vessel smashed into the woods.

Entering the crater’s coordinates into the GPS meter,
Towsley then continued on through the forest along a deer trail. 
According to intelligence, there had been four vehicles, but no hint of
interstellar craft could be seen.  Had his assumptions been wrong? 
Perhaps the origins were further north of here, higher in the mountains where
most of his team was searching.  But it seemed that if one of the pilots
lived at 2130 Sutton Cannon Drive, the fighters could not be very far. 
This seemed to be the only logical area to hide——

“Who the hell are you?”

Jesus!
  Towsley spun around, his hand going
behind him for the Beretta.

A small, acne-faced boy came sliding to a halt . . . on a
girl’s purple bike.  “Who are you?” the kid asked once more, slightly out
of breath.

Towsley withdrew his hand from the gun’s butt and said the
first name which came to him.  “Walter,” he answered.

“Well, what are you doing back here, Walter?”

“Jogging.”

“In blue jeans?”

“All right, I’m not jogging.  Who are you?”

“Geils,” he said.  “You’re not from around here, are
you?”

“No, I’m not.”

A long pause.  An evil grin.  “You’re looking for
space jets, ain’t you?”

Towsley hid his surprise behind a quizzical look. 
“Space jets?”  He hoped the kid hadn’t caught the astonished twitch in his
face.

Geils apparently had.  “I know you are.  You’re
probably Air Force or NSA, ain’t you?”  He looked at Towsley’s street
clothes.  “You guys suck when it comes to incognito.  I can smell you
military types a mile away.”

“Oh really?”

“Sure thing.”

“Why do you think I’m looking for space jets?”

“’Cause you’re military, Walter.  You guys probably
picked them up on radar and assume they belong to you now.”

“I think you watch too many cartoons, Geils.”

“I think I know where they’re at.  I can take you
there.  I know who flies them and where they live, too.”

“You do?”  Towsley looked Geils over carefully. 
Harmless.  Nerdy.  Socially inept.  Mother probably breast fed
him until he was four.  “Why don’t you show me because I don’t think I
believe you.”

Geils gave him the thumbs up.  “Sure thing . . .
Walter.”

*

They took a trail that meandered west into the heart of the
forest.  As Geils led the way, Towsley tried to figure the kid out. 
He was a smart, smooth talking little punk.  Much too cocky.  Towsley
liked him.

“Almost there . . . Walter.”  Geils smirked.

It was obvious the kid knew Towsley wasn’t who he claimed to
be, but he didn’t care.  He pulled the pack of cigarettes from his shirt
pocket and felt around the inside with his finger.  Empty.  He
crumpled the pack and put it back in his pocket.  His smoking had gotten
worse over the past three days.

Suddenly, a piercing hot blast of ultrasonic sound assaulted
him.  Towsley’s palms immediately went to his ears and he bent his body
away from the direction of the sound.  Geils, too, reacted
similarly.  It was excruciating.  His hands barely helped muffle the
sound.

“That’s some kind of anti-intruder effect!” Geils
screamed.  “We can still get a quick look at them just over that
mound! 
Before they fire warning shots at us!”

“Are you kidding me?”
Towsley shouted back.  But
Geils was already running full bore over the mound into the storm of sound with
his hands over his ears.  Towsley wanted to turn back, his stomach
threatening to pump this morning’s pancakes and sausage upward, but he ran
forward up to the top of the mound where Geils had already turned around to
beat a hasty retreat, a sour look on his face.

Towsley crested the mound.  In a clearing about two
hundred yards in diameter, arranged in a semi-circular formation were four
black——somethings.  He gave himself another second to store as much visual
information into his memory before the painful ultrasonic blast forced him
back.

He retreated and ran down the mound toward Geils who was
bent over against a tree, puking something yellow with brown chunks. 
Fifteen or twenty feet from the mound, the sound blast ceased.  Towsley
followed suit and hurled his half-digested breakfast into the air.

*

Sitting in his cockpit and smoking Curtis’s fat, Jamaican
blunt——which he’d stolen this morning——Tony heard the intruder alarm go off in
the helmet resting in his lap.  He opened his Chinese eyes to look out,
but he couldn’t see through the cloud of smoke.  Probably just a deer.

“Dank you fur flyin’ Jamaican Airline, mon . . .
Eye-eeee
shot the sher-iiiiiiff.”

*

“You knew that was going to happen didn’t you?” Towsley
growled.

Geils nodded.  “It’s my second time.  First was
Sunday.  But I didn’t puke then.”

Towsley spit the last of the bile out of his mouth. 
“Effective burglar alarm.”  He pushed off his knees and stood upright,
recalling his three-second vision.  Being around military aircraft for the
past thirty years had gradually curtailed any wonder he felt for them, much
like an average person’s view of automobiles as just ordinary tools to get
through one’s day; now, after years of drab cars, Towsley found himself within
the presence of four black Lamborghinis with V12 engines and 600 ponies.

Every power that he could imagine they possessed made him
shiver under the sun.  They looked like a cross between the SR-71
Blackbird spy jet . . . and a dragon?  The F-35 Lightning was a beautiful
fighter, but Towsley felt these alien-made war toys were the most terrifying
and sexy flying machines he had ever seen.

“Listen to me, Geils.  My name is not Walter.  I
think you’ve already figured that out.  It’s Colonel Martin
Towsley.”  He flashed Geils his twenty year-old ID from George AFB. 
“These fighters are top secret Air Force property.  They were stolen from
. . . Area Fifty-One . . . in Nevada two weeks ago.  We want them back,
and the pilots arrested.  If you love your country, son, you’ll keep your
mouth shut.”

“Your ID said ‘major,’ not ‘colonel.’”

Towsley ignored his crack.  “There may be a reward if
you can show me where the pilots live, but I can’t be sure if you’ll get one.”

“Tax free?”

Towsley smiled, gave a curt nod.  “Tax free.  If
you don’t get a reward, you might receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

Geils cocked his head to one side and squinted.  “Quit
bullshittin’ me.”

Towsley put on his stern poker face, the same one that had
always pissed off his ex-wife.  “Do you realize the dire state of affairs
we’re in?  These fighters are very expensive and deadly weapons, and a
dangerous terrorist group operating from within the U.S. is behind it.  I
don’t know if these pilots are part of this organization, but we’re going to
find out.  You’ve been a valuable help to us and, yes, I’m sure an award
of high stature will be bestowed upon your grace, but only if you keep your
mouth shut and cooperate.”

“Wowww,”
Geils whispered.

“Now, I need you to follow me back to my truck, so I can
call it in.  We’re going to need your help finding these pilots, all
right?”

Geils lowered his eyebrows.

Towsley knew his thoughts.  “No, I’m not a pervert who
likes boys.  Trust me, this is a serious situation, and we need your
help.”

“All right, Marty.  Let’s go.”

*

Military officers, top-secret jets, over-the-shoulder
glances and whispers——Geils could smell the espionage in the air like his mom’s
homemade soup.  His boring life had just gone up a notch on the excitement
scale.
  Finally, something to think back on when I get older
. 
Geils would become the most popular kid in school for exposing his
friends.  The most popular kid in the whole country.  He was still
thinking of his Fifteen Minutes on CNN and presidential citations when he and
Towsley walked up to a van parked along the road.

Towsley unlocked the driver’s side door.  “I want to
show you some pictures, Geils.  I want you to see if you recognize
anyone.”

“All right.”

Geils stood behind him as the colonel bent over to retrieve
something from the glove compartment.  A palm-size can of some sort. 
Towsley spun around, seized the hair behind Geils’s head with a steel grip and
sprayed something into his face.

“Nighty-night, kid.”

Geils leaned forward——“
Please don’t ass rape m
e”——and
the world went dark.

*

Towsley tucked the canister of Sevoflurane, a nice James
Bond toy the APIS engineers had R&D’ed years ago, back in his shirt pocket
and dumped Geils across the passenger seat.  Reaching over the kid, he
hauled an aluminum case off the floor, opened the top and pulled out a secure
satellite phone.  “Hotel Base, this is Tango Leader.”

“Go ahead, Tango Leader,” an APIS member acknowledged.

Towsley accessed the data on the GPS meter and read the data
scrolling across the LCD square.  “I have location for an ‘Amazing
Retrieval.’  Our targets are confirmed at the following coordinates. . .
.”  He quickly gave degrees of longitude and latitude down to the seconds
and finished with, “This is an Icarus Hammer directive.”

*

Five minutes later, four heavy-lift Chinook helicopters took
off from a secure hangar at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank and headed northeast
toward La Crescenta.  Aboard were members of the APIS’s special operations
forces, all dressed in yellow anti-chem suits, M4 carbine assault rifles in
hand.

*

They walked into the clearing in the middle of Wolf Flat, to
find Tony’s cockpit white with smoke.

“Oh, you gotta be shitting me?” Darren groaned.  “Tony,
pop your windshield!”

Tony’s magic dragon let out a roiling puff.  Darren had
never seen a cloud of pot smoke so huge and thick.

He climbed out and sat on his fighter’s nose. 
“I
doan wan’ ta wait . . . in vain fer yo love!”

“Great,” Darren mumbled.  He took off his combat suit
which had gotten damn heavy after a while and put on some fresh clothes from
his duffle bag.  He was glad to take the suit off, knowing he didn’t need
it to fly his Dragonstar anyway.

Darren looked around at the forest, expecting a threat to
reveal itself.  “All right,” he said.  “All right, let me
think.”  He stuffed his duffle bag into the personal effects compartment
behind the pilot’s seat.  An emergency evac was in the planning.  To
where he didn’t know.  They just had to get the hell out of Dodge. 
There would be no going home for a while.  Their Dragonstars had to be
hidden, along with themselves.  Someplace remote.  Very remote. 
“Okay guys, we’re going to Australia.”

“The outback?” Tony said.

“It’s the only far-off place I can think of where the
natives speak English and we can hole up someplace warm.  Anyone got money
on them?  We’re going to need food.”

“I got twenty bucks,” Nate said, digging for his wallet.

“All I got is a couple dollars,” Tony said.

“No money with me,” Jorge replied.

“Me neither.  We’ll have to make do with what we got
for a while.”

Darren had to make one call before he hit the road.  He
couldn’t use his cell phone because the cops could triangulate his location,
but they could not trace his alien-made personal data assistant.  Darren
used the tiny keypad to open the communicator and tapped into the local cell
phone network.  Computer servers at a telecommunications company had a few
firewalls blocking his way but his PDA’s countermeasures blew through them with
hardly a pause.  He did a Google search for Verdugo Hills Hospital, the
closest hospital to his home and tagged the main number.

“Patient Information, can I help you?”

“Yes, I’m looking for Allison Babineaux who may have been admitted
this afternoon.”