Monster Hunter Legion-eARC (11 page)

And to think, Julie had been upset that Earl had wanted her on the jet, a new vehicle which was serviced by actual mechanics, not a thirty-year-old Soviet flying tank that had been out of service for the last year due to a terrible crash, kept together by a mystical orc, whose wife, the medicine woman, had shaken some chicken bones over it to pronounce it fixed. My
poor
wife.

Since Julie was our best shot with a rifle, she usually rode in the chopper anytime there might be a need for air cover. It was kind of odd that Earl had ordered her to go with him, but he’d seemed rather overprotective of her lately. Now that Earl had finally relented and told us the rest of the story about what had happened in Copper Lake, I thought I could understand why. He had filled in the rest of the details during the ride to the airport. Earl had been afraid to let anyone else know about Special Task Force Unicorn, but with Stricken showing himself to so many Hunters, the cat was out of the bag.

Why that cat had decided to let itself out was another question…

At least we knew why Earl had been extra sullen since he’d gotten back, with his girlfriend being drafted into a covert group of government-sponsored monsters doing who knew what. Earl wasn’t even able to contact her. He had to go to sleep each night without knowing if she was alive or dead. I’d be pissed off too. And now with Heather Kerkonen in danger, assuming Stricken was telling the truth, Earl had launched us on this mission for personal reasons. I was more than glad to go into harm’s way to help a friend, but ten million bucks was a very nice added incentive.

Once the Hind’s shaking had subsided enough that we could actually read without our eyeballs jittering out of our heads, Milo pulled a map out from his armor and held it between me and Trip. He pointed to where we were heading. “This is the spot of the last attack.” He moved his gloved finger. “This is the closest airfield to the target. They’re a couple hundred miles an hour faster than we are, but they’ll still need to procure ground transport. Ticked as Earl seemed, I figure that won’t take too long…He’s liable to hijack somebody. They should be on site at least half an hour before us.”

“Cops and MCB are already there, so whatever it is has already moved,” Trip pointed out.

“I know, and I’m going to be really upset if I’m missing SHOT Show and this thing has just up and flew away, or ate a big lunch and now it’s going back to sleep for another hundred years, so we waste our time screwing around in the desert while it hibernates and dreams happy monster dreams. That happens
all
the time…I don’t get to test drive killer robots very often.”

All Hunters hate going into a situation without good intel. There was no doubt Stricken knew more than he told us, and whatever he wasn’t saying was certainly bad news. “If this thing is on the move, and if it really is ten million dollars worth of nasty, then someone else is bound to run into it.”

Holly couldn’t see the map, but she could listen to our conversation. “I’ve been flipping through the radio and the police bands. If I hear anything I’ll let you know.”

“We might get lucky. All the Hunters in airplanes will get there fast to the wrong place, and everybody else in a car will be too slow, but if the creature makes a move in that window, we’ll be in the right position to catch it. They’re too fast or too slow, we’re just right.”

“We can be Team Goldilocks!” Milo exclaimed.

“I like it,” Holly said. “
Goldilocks
. It has gravitas.”

I ignored them. “If it shows up somewhere else, we’ll be the first to swoop in on it.”

“Us and the MCB,” Milo said. “A bunch of them bailed out of the conference too. Just because Stricken sent all the Hunters doesn’t mean that MCB answers to him.”

“Maybe they do.” Since Myers was gone and Agent Franks wasn’t being shown much love, I had my suspicions about who was actually calling the shots. “MCB will be too busy keeping snoopers out of the area and lying to the press.” I didn’t know if my guess about their internal politics was right or not, but I really didn’t want to get in Franks’ path if I could help it. “If only we had a clue what it was, we might be able to figure where it was heading, how fast, or if it’ll just hunker down. Anything interesting on the map?”

“Nothing major in the area…Pretty desolate. Some little towns here and there. Not very much farming, some mines. It snowed a few days ago, and the desert gets really cold, so there probably won’t be campers to pick off. It would be nice if it was cold-blooded and sleepy…You go out further, Wendover is north. Lots of nothing to the west. I hope it doesn’t go east.”

“Why?”

“Dugway Proving Grounds, where the Army stores all of its nastiest chemical and biological weapons. North of that is the test range where the Air Force does bombing practice. The whole thing is bigger than some states. I’m guessing a Russian attack helicopter flying over will raise some eyebrows. I don’t think Skippy wants to get shot down.”

“Skip no like crash again. Just fixed Hind. Crash bad.”

“Regardless of where it’s going, I’m worried about what happens when we find it,” Trip said. “That gigantic dollar figure making you guys nervous? That’s more than master vamp money. What the heck is this thing?”

“Beats me, but I do like the idea of sleeping on a gigantic pile of money,” Holly answered.

“You totally should try it. It’s awesome. I sleep like a baby.” I could get away with saying crap like that in this crowd. Even by MHI standards, I had been the primary on some very impressive bounties, but my closest friends knew that I’d donated most of my Lord Machado money to the families of the Hunters that had died at DeSoya Caverns. Not that I was hurting financially. I’d married a Shackleford.

We stopped at the small airfield along the way and paid way too much for avgas. The only employee had been excited to see us. Our brutal chopper was a lot neater than his usual Cessnas and crop dusters. Even with the red-and-white pseudo-civilian paint job, the Mi-24 still looked dangerous, and therefore interesting. Busy day too, he told us, since a plane full of Germans had landed, topped off, and departed only ten minutes before we’d arrived.

That didn’t make any sense. Why would Lindemann stop early to top off the tanks? The kid said that they were flying in a PAC P-750, which Holly said should have given them plenty of extra range to get to the site. Now Earl would beat Lindemann there for sure.

Unless Lindemann had an idea of where the monster was heading…

I mentioned that once we got back into the air. My personal theory was that maybe Stricken had given the Germans intelligence he hadn’t shared with the rest of us. He’d told Earl about Unicorn’s missing team and no one else. Stricken had called this a contest, but as he’d admitted himself, he wasn’t the type of man that cared about concepts like
fairness
.

“Maybe Lindemann has a psychic on his team,” was Trip’s guess.

“That’s stupid.”

“Says the psychic.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m
not
psychic.”

“Can you read minds?”

“Come on, Trip, we’ve been over this a hundred times. Only in very specific circumstances, after being exposed to a specific artifact of the Old Ones, and the effects don’t seem to last for very long. I haven’t read someone’s mind in like forever. And it isn’t mind reading, it’s just particular memories.”

“Psychic.”

This was an argument I was never going to win. Trip still believed it was a gift from God. Yeah, I suppose it sort of was a gift from a god, just not
ours
.

“Maybe he’s got someone that can do magic,” Milo supplied.

“Possible, but also stupid.”

“Obviously, because that would be
so
unlikely, as we’re riding in a helicopter with orcs,” Holly said. “Hell, Earl’s even got a magic-using elf girl with him—”

The helicopter jerked harder this time, slamming all of us back into our seats. Only this time it wasn’t a mechanical effect, but rather because Skippy had freaked out on the controls. “Elf!
Elf?
Harb Anger has filthy
elf?
”

“Bad move, Team Goldilocks,” I shouted at Holly.

“Crud. Sorry, Skippy.” Holly had forgotten about the animosity between elves and orcs. They’d been at war since the dawn of time, with both sides blaming the other for all manner of atrocities. Earl deciding to hire one of the trailer park elves was a subject that he’d been planning on broaching to Skippy’s people gradually.

“Elfs?”

“Oh crap.” Milo grabbed his headset. “Listen, Skippy, it isn’t like that.”

“Tribe not…not
good
enough? Urks brave for Harb Anger? Elfs are evil—filth—
grugnulish!”

I had picked up a handful of orcish, but I didn’t know that word, though it was obviously not meant as a compliment.

“Wretched pack of pig dogs…” Milo clarified the Orcish profanity. “I wouldn’t say a
pack
. We just got the one. Easy, Skippy. Inferior elf magic can be useful for lesser things that we would
never
bother a noble orc for. It was Earl’s call. He was planning on telling you.”

“Harb Anger…wise chief.” Skippy made a grumbling noise, but he wouldn’t be so easily placated. “Keep elf
grugnulish
…away. Elf no corrupt tribe!” Skippy continued to mumble for a bit, then he changed the CD to rage-infused Scandinavian death metal and somehow made the stereo go even louder so he wouldn’t have to listen to us. We’d hurt his feelings.

“Way to go, Holly,” Trip said. “We weren’t supposed to mention Tanya.”

At that, Edward, who hadn’t shown the least bit of reaction to his older brother’s fit, leaned forward and removed his ear buds, head turned quizzically to the side, apparently interested for the first time.

“It’s cool, Ed. Same one you met before in Indiana,” Milo said soothingly. After Earl had been conned into hiring the elf girl for a temp job, it had been Edward who had gone into the pocket dimension with her. It had been a rescue mission, us trying to get to a couple of lost children, but no humans could get past the telepathic assault of the creatures inside. The elf girl’s stupid bravery had been enough to convince Earl to grant her wish and let her have a shot at becoming a Hunter. Ed had seemed happy because he’d gotten to dismember some giant fey monsters. Mission accomplished by the magically immune elf and orc, and MHI had gotten paid, so it had been a good day all around. “No need for…slashy slashy,” Milo pointed at the two sheathed swords balanced between Ed’s knees. “You two seemed to get along okay.”

Edward seemed to ponder that for a minute. The only thing visible beneath the baggy black balaclava were two unblinking yellow eyes. As usual, Edward was a complete cipher. Then he simply put his earbuds back in and returned his attention to the window. Ed always seemed to be in his own little world right up until the time to get his slice and dice on.

With Skippy still occasionally muttering orc profanity into our headsets, we passed the time by running through possible scenarios and coming up with plans and backup plans. Normally this would be the part where I’d nervously triple-check my gear, but there wasn’t enough room to safely maneuver guns inside the crew compartment, and besides, Skippy, who frowned on the idea of someone negligently putting a round through his precious chopper, was already in a bad mood.

“That was Julie on the radio. The jet has landed.” Holly said. “One of our Utah guys arranged for a truck to pick them up. Earl’s group will be on their way to the attack site in a few minutes.”

My watch said we were still at least half an hour out. “What’s the ETA for—”

Holly cut me off. “Hang on. Got something…Highway patrol is going nuts…Shots fired. Officer down…”

We all perked up.
Could this be it?

“He’s injured, says he can’t tell what it was, but it’s huge…Some sort of animal…Bug…Something. He’s panicked.”

Trip got excited. “Bet that’s our monster!”

“Drewbeck Road in…Where’s Lutz?”

Milo got the map out in a jiffy. “South of the attack site, not too far west of where we are now.”

“Skippy, hang a left!”

Holly wasn’t much of a navigator, but Skippy got the idea, and I had to grab onto the straps again as Skippy banked us hard to the side. Sideways turned to down and all of the unsecured gear cases slid across the floor. “Easy there, Airwolf!” It would be nice for Skippy to say
hang on
or something before doing something crazy.

Milo began reading off numbers and Skippy corrected course. The light in the crew compartment changed as we flew toward the rapidly setting sun. “Be there…ten minutes.” The Hind began to rattle harder again as we shed altitude and gained speed. “See stupid elfs do that.”

“Cop’s radio went quiet,” Holly warned. “I’ll alert Julie.”

There’s a certain feeling that comes with the beginning of a new hunt. Excitement, tension, nervous energy, and yeah, even fear…It’s kind of addictive. I could feel it and I could see it on the faces of my companions. Except for Ed, who didn’t seem to care one way or the other. “Let’s blast this thing fast and save them the ride.”

“Think we should use the door gun?” Milo asked.

We still had a few minutes of daylight left, and after that we could always switch to night vision. “You ask that like there was any possible way I’d say no.”

Milo gave me a thumbs up, and went to unzipping the case that held the FN 240 machine gun. Trip opened an ammo can and lifted out one end of a belt of silver 7.62. We’d wait until we slowed down before opening the door to place it on its mount. It was cold outside, and I could only imagine what a two-hundred-mile-an-hour wind chill would be like. Between Milo’s belt-fed and one of Julie’s custom M-14s she’d left aboard if we needed a precise shot, we could rain down some hurt from the sky.

“Airplane above. Go same place as us,” Skippy said. “But go faster.” He sounded offended by that.

“Skip’s right.” Holly said. “Somebody just blew right past us.”

“Can you tell who it is?”

“No idea.”

“More Hunters?” I looked to Trip and Milo, but neither one of them had a clue either. “They must have heard the same distress call. Maybe they’re going to land in a field or something.”