Nightstalkers (26 page)

“And?” Carruthers asked, shifting his gaze back to Moms and running his eyes up and down her body in its civilian clothes, which caused Roland to take a half step forward while Scout hung on with all her might, a pretty useless attempt, but it was the attempt that brought sanity back to Roland.

“This is my aunt Betty.”

“Hello, Aunt Betty,” Carruthers said. “So you and George are married?”

“No!” both Moms and Roland said at the same time.

“You see,” Scout said, sliding into the exchange smoothly, “Betty is George’s sister. They run a big farm outside of Wichita.”

“A farm.” The way Carruthers said it, you’d think they were running a prison.

“Nice to meet you,” Moms said. “We just love this place. It’s so big and wonderful and so, so,” she searched for more adjectives, “green.”

“You really are from Wichita,” Carruthers said. “Take care.” And with that he powered up the window and drove away, keeping to fifteen miles an hour to take the speed bumps.

“Greer?” Moms asked.

“Everyone here a doctor?” Roland asked.

“Enough are,” Scout said, ignoring Moms’s question, “that I just call everyone doctor. It’s better to err on the side of caution.”

“Like the Acmes,” Roland observed, for the first time agreeing with Scout.

“Isn’t your world full of titles and rank?” Scout asked as Moms started walking down the sidewalk, Roland on one side, Scout on the other.

“The big part is,” Roland said. “The army and the other agencies, but not us.”

“Why not?”

Moms answered. “It’s not good for cohesiveness and team building and trust.”

Scout laughed. “Who sounds like a brochure now? But aren’t you in charge?”

“Of the team,” Moms said as they passed under a streetlamp that flickered on, activated by the dwindling daylight.

“And who is in charge of you?”

“Too many questions,” Moms said as she paused on the corner and looked about. “This way,” she said.

Upstairs, Kirk watched Moms, Roland, and Scout talk off the guy in the BMW. Then he walked down the hall to the master bedroom. He’d heard someone go by a little while ago. The bedroom was empty, but he heard someone in the closet, the one with the watch winder.

Kirk walked in and saw Doc sitting cross-legged on the floor, a pile of papers spread out in front of him along with a cell phone.

“What’s that?”

Doc was startled. “Winslow’s notes. And his phone. The phone is locked, but I bet Mac could break the code.”

Kirk just nodded.

“I’m on your side,” Doc said. “The more we know, the better equipped we’ll be to battle the Fireflies and the Rifts. I want to
figure out what Winslow was doing. Compare it with the data from the Can. Maybe we can learn something.”

“I didn’t say nothing,” Kirk said. “And you’re over-explaining. I’ve got to get back to over-watch.” He paused. “How about sending that stuff to Support? Let Ms. Jones take a look at it. Especially the phone.”

Doc stared back at him, then began gathering it all together.

It was a beautiful sunset to the west. Eagle wasn’t distracted by it. He drove the cart on the path that wound along the golf course, scanning left and right.

“Hey!” A florid-faced man was waving his golf club. “Hey, you!”

Eagle turned and rolled up to the foursome gathered around the sixteenth hole. “Yes, sir?”

“What the hell is that back there?” the man jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“To what are you referring?” Eagle asked, looking in that direction and seeing nothing but a long fairway.

“You need to get that fixed,” the man said. “You people charge an arm and a leg for membership and I expect better than this.”

“Yes, sir.”

Eagle saw another golf cart coming from the other direction, driven by an attractive young woman with blonde hair tucked back underneath her pink golfing cap. She pulled up right next to the hole, short of the most distant ball. “Good evening, gentlemen,” she drawled. “Might I interest y’all in some cocktails?”

Eagle, and whatever was wrong with the course behind them, was immediately forgotten as the four went over to get their
drinks and chat up the woman, who was a lot sharper than her fake drawl, as she was watching Eagle and not the men, wondering who he was and what he was doing here.

Support hadn’t taken over every job in Senators Club. The number of people required to keep these people in the lifestyle they were accustomed to strained even the resources of Fort Bragg. Apparently the blonde golf-cart bar-girl wasn’t one Ms. Jones had considered needing replacement.

Eagle got back in his cart, resisting the temptation to flame the golfers with the rig that had replaced the headlight.

He ignored the path and went down the fairway, as this foursome was the last of the day and no one was coming up behind them. The cause of the complaint quickly became apparent as he spotted a dark line cutting across the fairway.

Eagle stopped the cart next to it, but he didn’t have to get out to know what it was—any soldier who’d spent time around either the armor or mechanized infantry recognized the pattern in the torn-up grass: a tracked vehicle had cut across the golf course. A big one.

Eagle looked right. A half-built house was on the edge of the fairway. The bright red netting that was supposed to separate construction from golf course was torn to shreds.

“What happened here?” Golf-cart bar-girl said, pulling up to Eagle. She had lost her accent. “And who are you?”

Now that she was closer, Eagle could see she wasn’t a girl, but a woman, with lines around her eyes and a weariness that said she had not planned on selling drinks to rich good ole boys on a golf course her entire life, but dreams didn’t always come true.

Eagle prepared to launch into his usual “We’re the government” spiel, but decided,
Fuck it
. “Something bad. Very bad. You don’t want to be around for this.”

“You’re government, aren’t you?” she asked, stealing his spiel.

Eagle nodded.

“Yeah. Lots of new faces, especially in security. Can always tell a soldier. My husband was a Marine.”

“What’s he do now?” Eagle asked as he looked in the other direction, toward where the tracks disappeared into the forest.

“He’s holding down the fort in Section 60 in Arlington. Fallujah.”

Eagle turned from the path of destruction. “I’m sorry. I’ve got quite a few friends there.”

The woman looked at the scars on the side of his face. “I can tell.” She nodded toward the track. “Need any help?”

Eagle shook his head. “I’ll be bringing some friends here to take care of this. Best you stay far away.”

The woman stuck out her hand. “I’m Emily.” She gave a weak smile. “Just call service at the Golf Center if you or your friends need anything.”

He shook her hand. “Eagle.”

Her smile deepened. “For real?”

Eagle shrugged. “We gave up our names when we took this job.”

“Then it must be an important job.” Emily headed back to her cart, but paused and looked over her shoulder. “Don’t lose any more of your friends, okay? I’ll be praying for you.”

“Thank you.”

She drove off toward the clubhouse.

Eagle got back in his cart and headed toward the trees. He paralleled the tracks. According to his handheld GPS, there was nothing this way but forest and the fence surrounding Senators Club. As he passed into the trees, he could hear the sound of a large diesel engine running. He stopped as visibility was halved
going into the woods. Since the cart’s headlight didn’t work, having been replaced by a flamer, Eagle reached into one of the bags and pulled out his night-vision goggles and put them on. He proceeded forward with more caution.

Eagle spoke over the team net as he slowed down further, having to drive the cart in one of the ruts to avoid uprooted and splintered trees. He was glad Mac had left the ATV’s suspension in place. “I’ve got a very strong possible. Sixteenth fairway, going southwest into the trees. I’m following.”

Moms replied immediately. “We’re scrambling. What’s the Firefly in?”

“Wait one.” Eagle moved forward at a crawl.

Kirk’s voice came over the net. “One of the Wall probes just went dead.” There was a moment of silence. “Eagle, the one that went out is directly in front of you, fifty meters away.”

“That’s not good,” Doc said over the net.

Eagle swallowed hard. He hit the brake and halted the cart as he saw the perpetrator. “It’s in a backhoe. A big one. Tracked. Long articulated arm with a large shovel on the end. Already torn up the fence and the shovel is reaching out and digging up the ground outside in a trench. It’s moving left to right slowly. Probably searching for the next probe. Tell Mac to load up.”

“We lose four probes,” Doc said, “we lose containment. But how does it know about the probes?”

“We’re on the way,” Moms said.

They all switched to night-vision goggles as the sun’s last rays faded in the west. The two SUVs were parked behind them, and despite actually being on the golf course, they’d left the shirts
and shorts behind in favor of camouflage and body armor. They were parked right where the backhoe had plowed into the woods. Eagle’s golf cart was on the trail of destruction heading into the woods.

They’d left Scout on her front porch with firm orders not to leave the house this night. Not for any reason.

For once she got their seriousness and promised.

Roland had his backpack flamer, and everyone had their personnel weapons, with Nada now carrying the M-203 in addition to his MP-5. Given the suspected target, though, Mac was the key man. He’d had one of the SUVs loaded with shaped charges, AT-4 antitank missiles, and an FGM-148 Javelin fire-and-forget missile system. He took a laser designator and handed it to Roland as he transferred other gear over to the golf cart.

“A complete ATV would be better,” he complained as he loaded the cart.

“We use what we have,” Moms said. “You’re the one who modified it in the first place.”

“Yeah,” Mac said, grinning, and Moms realized he’d set her up. “I didn’t have enough time to do it as well as I’d like, especially the suspension, but...”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nada said. “We get it.”

“How far to the target?” Mac asked.

Eagle checked his GPS. “Two hundred and twelve meters from where I last saw it. It’s moving pretty slow, because it’s tearing up the fence and a trench along the outside, searching for the probes.”

“I don’t like that,” Doc said.

“And it’s going east?” Mac asked, focusing on the kill, not the problem.

“Yes.”

Mac turned to Moms. “Do you have Excalibur on call?”

“They airlifted in one gun.” Moms nodded and help up a finger. “Kirk, get me our Eighteenth Field Artillery Support.”

Kirk dialed up the correct frequency on the PRT, then held it in front of Moms so she could read the correct call signs on the backlit screen.

“Lion Six, this is Nightstalker Six, over.”

The reply was immediate. “This is Lion Six, over.”

“We need Excalibur prepared for a fire mission. Let me know when it’s ready. We will send you the code for our designator. Over.”

“Excalibur is already loaded, and we will sync as soon as you give us the authorization code. Over.”