Stricken’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Like I said, your reputation precedes you. So full of annoying questions…Participate or not. Your decision. The rules of the contest are as follows. Whoever kills this thing first collects the money, wins a bunch of contracts, and gets to brag that they’re the best. I want it dead and I want it dead now. I do not give a shit how you do it as long as it gets done fast. The rest of you can cry about it to each other in the hotel bar later. When it’s dead, call the provided phone number and everything will be arranged.”
“This is not fair,” shouted one of the Europeans. “We were not allowed to bring most of our equipment into the country!”
This time Stricken didn’t even bother to look up the man’s name. He pointed at himself. “Does this look like the face of a man who gives a flying fuck about the concept of fair? Improvise, asshole. The world’s biggest arms expo is being held down the street. You’ll think of something. What the hell are you waiting for? The clock is ticking.”
The Hunters looked at each other, confused.
“What’s wrong with you? It’s a race. Act like it!” Stricken shouted. “Go!”
Uneasy, several of Hunters rose. The early standers sized each other up, wheels turning, because no matter who you were, ten million dollars was a lot of money, and to some of these smaller companies, a single decent contract could guarantee their future, and so the rush began. Several of the Hunters went for the exit at the same time in a big ungainly clump.
“Monster Hunter International, stand down,” Earl said with the utmost calm, knowing that every one of his people would comply instantly. “We ain’t going nowhere.”
However, most of the room ran for it. Cody had to get out of the doorway to keep from being trampled, as men from five different companies tried to push the doors open at the same time. The burly Pole didn’t want to try to squeeze past me, so he kicked his chair over and went out that way. Some of the smarter commanders simply pulled out their phones and alerted their subordinates, rather than trying to fight the mob. I spotted Armstrong shoving his way out, but he was too busy thinking about how to spend that much PUFF money to notice me violating his restraining order. The violent, struggling clot of Hunters finally broke loose, and they spilled out into the hall as Stricken’s image continued to watch the monitors with approval. There was something about his smile that was simply unnerving.
Lindemann stopped next to Earl. Unlike many there, he didn’t seem ruffled in the slightest. “This man Stricken, you are certain he is with your government?”
“He ain’t from the nice part,” Earl said.
“I was not aware that there was a nice part,” Lindemann chuckled. “If you would excuse me then, gentlemen.” He calmly walked down the now clear aisle.
“I believe that man intends to win,” I said.
“My money is on him,” Earl answered. “But you never know. Maybe one of the new ones will surprise us.”
“It’s a shame to have outsiders handling work on our turf…Oh man, they’re foreigners doing the jobs Americans don’t want to do. That’s so tacky.”
“Trust me on this one. We don’t want any part of Unicorn business.”
“Wait…So that’s Unicorn?”
“Special Task Force Unicorn.”
“They like MCB?”
“Not in the slightest, but not in any of the good ways. MCB is to hide monsters from people. STFU is to use monsters against people. I’m surprised to see the rat come out of the walls.”
Stricken was still watching his monitor, waiting, as the last of the experienced Hunters left and all that remained was MHI. “Harbinger, I’m surprised. You don’t strike me as a man that likes losing.”
“I especially don’t like to lose people,” Earl said, sounding strained.
“Me either, which is why I want this mission wrapped up rikki-tic. Who else do you have there? I can see you left half your leaders outside just in case. Clever…” Stricken’s glasses moved to the other side and he read. “Pitt, Owen Z.…Now you’re an interesting case.”
I didn’t know anything about this man, but I knew I didn’t want him paying any attention to me. “Not particularly.”
“Keep telling yourself that, kid. I’ve got some blank spots in my file about you. I really don’t like having blank spots. Incomplete reports keep me up at night.” I was so glad Myers had shredded his paperwork about me after the Arbmunep.
“One of your pets go off the reservation again?” Earl challenged.
Stricken chuckled. “No, this isn’t one of mine. My current roster is very well behaved, plays well with others, follows orders, regular upstanding citizens deserving of future PUFF exemptions. I couldn’t ask for a better strike force of supernatural killers. Oh, why the sad face? Come on, Earl, still bitter? She’s almost halfway done, just over one year left, then time’s served, she’s free to go.”
Earl was leaning forward, holding onto the back of the folding chair in front of him. The metal beneath his hands creaked and bent as his knuckles turned white. “I’ve already cleaned up one of your mistakes. The suckers can handle this one. You wouldn’t be coming to us unless you want somebody else to bleed on your behalf.”
“You’ve got me all wrong.” Stricken clucked disapprovingly and shook his head with theatrical sadness. “As one professional to another, I’ll level with you. This isn’t one of mine, but it was one of the task force’s teams that responded to investigate. Intel said this should’ve been a cakewalk, turned out it wasn’t. That team has gone missing.”
“Surprised you care.”
“There’re always more things looking for a PUFF exemption to replace them.” He shrugged. “But I do hate losing valuable assets, especially pretty redheads.”
The metal in Earl’s hands snapped in two.
“See you around, Earl. Enjoy your conference.” Stricken reached toward the camera. The screen went black.
“No!” Earl stood, flinging one hand outward and sending four chairs clattering across the room. “Son of a bitch!”
A picture appeared on the TV screen. Three figures were walking down the lowered back ramp of a gray C-130 cargo plane. Behind them was a high desert scene, brown sagebrush dusted with dirty snow. They were dressed in multicam and combat gear, carrying rifles. There were two men in front and an attractive woman in back. Her red hair was rather striking in a shot so filled with bland, dusty colors.
“Heather…” Earl whispered. He walked forward, as if in a daze, staring at the TV screen. After a few seconds, the picture disappeared and the TV changed to silent static. “Damn it!” Earl smashed his fist into the TV and knocked it flying from its stand to explode into pieces against the far wall. Earl stood there, back to us, shoulders hunched, fists clenched.
“Earl?” Cody asked. “You okay?”
“Team leads, collect your men. We’re going hunting,” he snapped. “Move out.”
The team leads obeyed and immediately hurried from the room. I stuck around. The team leads had all been briefed on his condition, but they hadn’t seen it up close like I had. Earl was breathing hard, head down, staring at the broken TV. I’d seen him change before. I recognized the signs. I could feel the energy in the air. Stricken had enraged him so suddenly that it had provoked the beast within…
I reached to the compact STI .45 that was concealed in a tuckable holster on my belt. We both knew the drill. Earl was squared away, more so than any other werewolf, but letting a werewolf change inside a place crowded with innocents was simply unthinkable. I didn’t want to shoot my friend, didn’t think I’d need to, but those were his orders, and I wasn’t going to take any chances. Come on, Earl. “You okay?” I asked after a few seconds.
He turned around. His respiration had slowed. His eyes were the normal blue rather than the dangerous gold. Earl turned, in control again, dragged a shard of glass out from between his knuckles, and tossed it on the carpet. “Will be, as soon as I snap Stricken’s neck. Let’s get
to the airport.”
Chapter 6
Our Mi-24 Hind screamed over the Nevada desert, the ground a dark brown blur beneath us. The pilot’s area was separated from the passenger compartment, so I had no way of looking at Skippy’s instrumentation to guess just how stupidly fast we were flying, but I could tell you this: we were going really fast. All orcs were supernaturally good at something. Skippy’s particular gift was breaking the laws of physics with a helicopter.
Those of us on Harbinger’s team had spent a lot of hours in the Hind, but none of us had ever been aboard with Skippy pushing it like this before. Earl had told Skippy that there was a race, and it was very important that we win this particular race, so Skippy had cranked the stereo to eleven, put on some heavy metal, and kicked our chopper in the butt, dedicated to not bring dishonor to MHI.
“Is it supposed to rattle like that?” Trip asked through clenched teeth.
“Washing machines don’t rattle this much. What do you think?”
Milo was sitting across from me and must have caught the look of distress on my face. “Impressive, huh? There’s no way this baby is supposed to go like this. Maximum speed is only around two hundred. We’re beating that by a good bit. Not too shabby, considering she’s older than some of you guys.” Milo patted the bulkhead tenderly. “And to think, it wasn’t that long ago that she was in two pieces!”
Skippy had put a lot of hours into fixing up his beloved steed after the Arbmunep had knocked it out of the sky. He’d tested it around Cazador and assured us that everything was fine, or as he put it, the engine spirits were pleased. Though we’d all been nervous riding in it, the helicopter had seemed to run okay on our most recent case, but we hadn’t been racing with it, either.
“Not helping, Milo. Not helping at all.” Holly’s voice didn’t sound happy over the headset. Since the gunner’s seat was rather cramped, she was the thinnest one here, and had expressed interest in learning how to fly, Holly was riding forward. She had the best view, but I imagined that it was a lot like having the front seat of a roller coaster.
“Are you kidding? When an orc fixes something, it stays fixed. They’re like wizards with duct tape. Magical duct tape wizards, right, Ed?” Milo reached over and thumped Edward on the shoulder. The orc tilted his goggled head, apparently confused by the red-bearded human touching him. After a moment, Ed went back to looking at the window and listening to the talk radio streaming on his earphones. “Well, Ed is more of a duct tape samurai, but you get the idea.”
All of our rivals were racing for the same place, but as far as I knew, we were the only Hunters with a helicopter. It was still almost three hundred miles to the site, and our pace wasn’t exactly set for fuel efficiency, so we needed to stop and refuel once along the way. MHI owned a decent-sized airplane, but it was parked uselessly in Alabama. We were also the only company with Hunters stationed in Salt Lake City, which was the closest metro area, but unfortunately all of them had been attending ICMHP too.
Earl Harbinger had decided to cover all the bases, so he had paid a ridiculous sum to hire a Gulfstream on short notice. It is amazing how fast you can get flight plans altered when you carry a suitcase full of money everywhere you go. Interestingly enough, another prop plane had taken off on an emergency flight a few minutes before we’d gotten to the airport, hired by someone they had described as a businesslike German man.
The group on the Gulfstream would beat us there by a good margin, but we wouldn’t be too far behind. We had no idea how hard the creature was going to be to track, so the air cover could potentially come in handy. Behind us was a convoy of vehicles, MHI-owned for some, and rentals for our Hunters that had flown in. Obviously, most of us at the conference were travelling light, but Eddings, the Las Vegas team lead, had one hell of a well-stocked armory in their office that was hidden in the basement of a pizza place.
Nearly thirty members of MHI and an unknown number of our rivals were on their way to northeastern Nevada. “This many Hunters will be overkill.” I tried to lighten the mood. “It’s probably just a troll angry that he lost his internet connection.”
Holly wasn’t buying it. “That kind of PUFF money, Z, it’s more likely Godzilla.”
“Or Dracula riding Godzilla,” Trip said.
Since we had a race to win, Skippy had requested that we travel light. Milo had been bummed when he hadn’t been able to take his heavy free samples from the show, but Skippy had said they could load them up for the ride home. Milo was simply too excited to play with them to wait for UPS to ship them back to Alabama. So we had two orcs, four humans, and a small load-out of weapons and ammo, with me being the biggest piece of cargo. It was hard to tell when Skippy was unhappy, what with the mask and all, but he had grumbled something about me being “big, like ox make us slow,” but how that evened out because “blood of great war chief bring good luck.” That was the sort of thing that replaced complex aviation calculations when you were an orc. Because I was related to a rock star, it meant we could go faster.
Thinking about my brother gave me a twinge of guilt, and I promised myself again that I’d go visit him before the conference was over. With the blow his career had taken, he was reduced to working in Vegas, playing shows that would’ve been far below him a couple of years ago. The whole thing was my fault, and Mosh had been avoiding my calls. I was worried about him.
There was a sudden bang. I grabbed onto the overhead straps as the chopper lurched.
“What was that?” Holly asked, alarmed.
“No problem. No problem,” Skippy’s gravelly voice came over the intercom. “Tail rotor break.” He pronounced it row-tor.
“Break? What do you mean break?”
“No…is good break. Skip mean…break in.”
“That sounds bad, Skippy!”
“No…The spirits that live in tail rotor…happy together now.”
“You said the spirits were happy before we flew last time!” Trip exclaimed.
“No. Engine spirits happy. Tail rotor spirits…not so much. Very angry tail rotor.”
“Last time I checked, you need a functioning tail rotor to fly a helicopter.”
“No. Not to fly. Only not to spin around. Like circle…Until hit ground. Explode!” Skippy made the horrible wheezing noise that passed for orc laughter. “But rotor happy now! Yay!”
“We’re so gonna die,” I muttered.
“No. No,” Skippy insisted. “Gretchen sacrifice chicken for us. Skip knew. Rotor spirits come ’round.”
Flying with Skippy had been a lot easier back before he was willing to talk to me so much. Now that we were part of the family and he’d opened up about his piloting and maintenance methods, it was frankly unnerving. But the rattling did seem to taper off a bit. Trip began to breathe again. Edward lifted one hand, extended his pointer and pinky fingers and threw the horns, then went back to his talk radio. Milo grinned. “See? Told you so! Orcs are great at fixing things…And I’ll admit, I did help a little.” He sounded rather proud of himself. “I sort of had to. Orcs think welding is black magic.”
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.
&
nbsp; 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.”
Monster Hunter Legion-eARC Page 8
