Alien Hunter: Underworld

by Whitley Strieber

  That was then, in the delicious, lingering summer that had been their boyhood. This was now, and this was a time of storms.

  They parked and walked silently to the terminal. As they exited the parking structure and were briefly exposed to the sky, Flynn felt a tremendous sense of vulnerability. If only he could know for certain how capable of following him and reinserting themselves the implants were. He knew now that nobody had been there to insert them in the first place, which was why he had no memory of it. They’d been released at some point, probably when he was at the Miller place, and entered on their own. He recalled feeling a sudden, sharp headache there, just as he was leaving for Wright-Pat. It had passed quickly and he’d thought no more of it.

  He remembered the old Hobby terminal from his childhood, flying in here with his dad to watch him do his business with the big oil companies downtown, which chiefly consisted of making sure they were reporting his royalties accurately. It was still a battle, but Flynn had others to fight it now.

  “We need to find a pay phone, because Diana’s going to have to get us on the plane from her side of the line.”

  “I’ve got plenty of cash.”

  “We’re both packing heavy heat and have no luggage, and I have no ID. And what happens when you show your license?”

  “Depends on which one.”

  “You have more than one on you right now?”

  “I’ve got seven on me right now.”

  “Give me one, and we can buy the tickets.”

  The ticket counter was empty. “Two for Dayton,” Flynn said.

  “Credit card and ID, please,” the agent replied, standing up from her stool and going to her terminal.

  “Cash,” Flynn said. He handed over the two IDs.

  She looked at them, blinked, and looked up. “I could give you military. You got air force IDs?”

  Mac pointed a thumb at Flynn. “We don’t have those with us, because this gentleman here is a professional fool.”

  She smiled, then looked again at the driver’s licenses. “Are you two twins?”

  “Yes,” Flynn said.

  “And in the air force together. I think that’s cool.” Her smile widened. “I’ll write you up military—that way you won’t have to bicker. I know how twins like to bicker.”

  A few minutes later, they had their tickets on the last flight out, a 9:20 through Atlanta.

  “I don’t look a thing like you, Flynn.”

  “They see a lot of people. This time of day, they’re looking right through you.”

  “You’re one of the most hideous men I’ve ever seen. I’m very insulted.”

  “Mac, you know what you look like? You look like a wizened, shifty-eyed cowboy who got shrunk by too much exposure to the sun.”

  “You realize how much of your height is in that neck? My dogs mighta been part human, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the aliens didn’t start you out right in your mother’s womb, and make you part turkey.”

  “You need to quit using that shoe polish or whatever it is you’re putting on your hair. Spring for a dye job.”

  “If I get my hair dyed down in Marfa, everybody in West Texas is gonna know.”

  “You look like somebody pushed you up a chimney.”

  “Women happen to go for my hair.”

  “Women only go for you because they find your criminal ways exciting.”

  “Yeah, they do get off on murder stories.”

  “Don’t tell me that. Then I’ll have to tell Eddie, and he’s gotta question every damn one of ’em.”

  “Okay, so I didn’t tell you.”

  “Let’s find us that phone.”

  “Use my cell.”

  “Give it to me.” He removed the SIM card and handed it back. “I’ll keep the card for now.”

  Mac said nothing. He understood perfectly well what Flynn was doing, covering their tracks. This was also part of the way he conducted his life, whichever side of the law he happened to be on at any given time.

  “We oughta get us some throwaway cells.”

  “You will find that they don’t sell them in airports.” He located a pay phone and dialed Diana’s home number directly. He did not go through the secure network.

  It rang once, then twice, then a third time.

  He hung up.

  “She’s not there?”

  “Three rings. Our prearranged emergency signal. She hears that on her landline, she knows there’s big trouble.”

  “I thought we were out of trouble.”

  “We’re not out of trouble.” He dialed again. This time, she answered midway through ring one. He listened as she accepted the charges on the call.

  “What do you need?”

  “Back door through Hobby, then I need to see General Sam Dickerson at Wright-Pat. We’ll be landing in Dayton at three this morning. I want to see him at seven. Still no ID and no money.”

  “Can I get some kind of an update, Flynn?”

  “We’re alive.”

  “I’m glad you are, because I thought Morris had you.”

  “I thought he had you.”

  “Why?”

  “The way I learned that you’d returned to Washington was from him.”

  “How could he know my movements?”

  “He figured it out. Not too hard, though. Where else would you be going except to your safest place?”

  “I need to be sure we’re secure here.”

  “You got that right. Is Geri still with you? Because I have a question for her.”

  “She’s always with me. In my office right now. I’m sitting in my suite, wishing I were alone.” He could hear the crackle of tension in Diana’s voice.

  “Trouble?”

  “She doesn’t sleep, ever. She just sits there, watching me. She doesn’t read, watch television. Hardly eats. Just stares.”

  “She’s scared.”

  “I think she’s absolutely furious about what happened out there. She considers us dangerously incompetent, and she wants in the worst way to go home.”

  “Put her on.”

  A moment later, he heard Geri’s voice. “Yes, Mr. Carroll?”

  “You know what a tracking implant is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Two of them were removed from my head today. They seemed to have some sort of an ability to move on their own.”

  “They do. Once they’re synched to an individual’s genetic identity, they can be released and they’ll find their target on their own.”

  “How much range do they have?”

  “Range? You mean, how far can they broadcast a signal?”

  “No, how far away do they have to be before they can no longer find their intended host?”

  “Far. Ten, twenty thousand miles.”

  “All right. How can they be destroyed?”

  “Heat above two thousand degrees.”

  “How about blowing them up or smashing them?”

  “They’re holographic. Even a small bit of one will retain the functionality of the whole.”

  “What about containing them?”

  “With things you manufacture? Some of your safes might work. I’ll look into it.”

  “Unfortunately, we didn’t understand their capabilities and put them in a jar.”

  “That wouldn’t work.”

  “It didn’t. When I last saw them, they were in the process of breaking through the glass in a car window. We ran. Within fifteen minutes, we had transport and were ten miles away. I’m now twenty-two miles from the spot where I last saw them. What’s my exposure?”

  “All of this was in populated areas?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s possible that they’ve lost you for a while.”

  “How long?”

  “They’ll be doing a grid search right now. Your advantage is the populated area. They’ll need to get pretty close to you before they can detect you against all the background noise.”

  “Listen, Geri, we sort of know each other.�
��

  “I would say we do.”

  “So I need to give you some friendly advice.”

  “And what would that be?” He heard the rigidity that had come into her voice. She was the authority figure here, at least in her own mind.

  “We’re not incompetent. Just uninformed and technologically backwards. Forcing us to use only our own locally produced equipment is tying our hands.”

  “You threw my pulse weapon onto a roof. My weapon, registered to me. What if somebody tossed your gun away? You’d have to report that. You’d have to take a reprimand.”

  “I’m sorry about that, but it didn’t work, and that was dangerous to all of us. But some things do work. Those implants, for example. I’d love to be able to get something like that into Morris. And the disks. So I want to repeat—we need a disk.”

  “That’s all gap-distant technology, meaning that your science is so far behind on it that you can’t understand it even if it’s explained to you. Exporting technology like that for any reason is highly illegal, and licenses just do not get granted. The latitude for abuse is too great, not to mention the cultural disempowerment that’s involved. Scientists who see something so potent and so advanced that they can’t even begin to understand its most basic principles, lose hope. They become scavengers.”

  “Look, your technology is so advanced—the stuff that works—that this one guy is potentially more powerful than all the military forces on Earth.”

  “He has vulnerabilities.”

  “What are they, exactly?”

  “One disk and no ability to resupply without letting the main body of biorobots know where he is. He’s a full biological running a squadron of biorobots who know nothing about what’s happening on Aeon, and they must not find out, or he’s going to lose control of them. He can’t go back. What he has is all he’ll ever have.”

  “That’s true now, but what about next year? The year after? We’re talking Cortés taking the Aztec Empire with five hundred Spaniards. You know that story?”

  “It’s a great myth that higher ethics follow scientific advancement. Lower planets are vulnerable.”

  “Morris and a few hundred robotic entities could end up owning this world, so I have to tell you, I don’t think your scruples matter just now. Earth is on the line, so give us what we need.”

  “Flynn, the truth is that we don’t have the resources.”

  “Not one spare disk? A couple of implants?”

  “Getting things off-planet is the problem. All of our movements are resisted, and as far as Earth is concerned, we must not be followed here by the main body, as I said.” She stopped. He heard a swallowed gagging sound that told him she was fighting back emotions of great power.

  He realized, really for the first time, how much courage it had taken for her to come here.

  “Just do what you can.” He hung up. “Let’s go,” he said to Mac. “We’ve got a flight to catch.”

  Diana had done her administrative work well, and they were escorted through TSA security by the station supervisor. As they stepped away toward their gate, she saluted them.

  “What’s that about?” Mac asked.

  “She’s probably been told we’re on some sort of crucial mission.”

  “True enough.”

  The plane was crowded. Given what Geri had explained to him, that was a good thing. As best he could, Flynn leaned back, forcing his substantial frame into the narrow economy-class seat.

  “You know what their greatest problem is?”

  “Whose?”

  “Aeon’s. They didn’t just invent a new life-form, but one that’s also stronger, faster, and more intelligent than they are. Their biorobots are an evolutionary leap, and they’re going to replace their creators. What’s happening to the people of Aeon is what happened to the Neanderthals. A better species is pushing theirs aside.”

  Flynn thought, And maybe ours, too. Maybe a lot of species. How ironic that a civilization far away and so deeply hidden in the vastness of space had created something that would turn out to be such a scourge right here at home.

  He was a cop, though, not a soldier—at least, not yet. Right now his job remained what it had been from the beginning: Get the lawless element under control. Contain Morris and roll up his operation.

  The plane flew on, as did Earth on its mysterious journey, each bearing its cargo of innocent lives into an uncertain future.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE MOMENT they entered their room at an airport motel, Mac fell onto the first bed he reached. He was snoring before he hit the mattress.

  Flynn had gotten a sewing kit from room service and cut off his various bandages. There was swelling on his scalp, as well as an angry red knot at the center of the incision the doctor in Fort Stockton had made. Could be the beginning of infection. He’d keep a close watch. Next, he went into the bathroom and stood in front of the plastic sink. He took a long look at himself in the mirror. Stone bald, he looked frightening, no question about that. The surgical wounds were held together by gleaming staples, two in each incision. He was way too close to Frankenstein.

  He lay back on the empty bed, wondering what the future held. Morris had to guess that he’d go to Deer Island. Would he also come? Of course he would.

  He slept a shallow, worried sleep. Every sigh of breeze, the tapping of a tree on the bathroom window—any slightest sound brought him instantly awake. He hugged his gun like the life preserver that it was.

  They got up at six to a room service breakfast, which they ate in silence, the way soldiers did before a fight. The trip to Wright-Pat was a familiar one, and once again, Diana had paved their way past the guard post.

  Flynn knew his way around Wright-Pat, of course, and they were in General Dickerson’s office at exactly seven.

  Dickerson was younger than Flynn had imagined he would be, more the age of a colonel than a general. He had the easy manners of a man used to command, and the contained watchfulness of somebody who knew more than a few secrets. When Dickerson smiled as he crossed his large office, Flynn knew immediately that care was to be taken here. This man could be hard and he could be difficult.

  “Gentlemen! The two mystery men. I’m curious as hell, I have to admit.” His handshake was perfunctory, almost as if he had forgotten it even as he extended it. “Please, sit down.” He hurried back around his desk, a wary officer manning a battlement. “So, may I know why you’re wearing the uniforms of a service to which you do not belong?” The smile reappeared for an instant, and then was gone.

  “We’re trying to stay alive,” Flynn said. “It’s been hard.”

  “You’re sure as hell beat up, Mr. Flynn. Or Colonel Flynn. I’m not sure what to call you.”

  “Just plain Flynn will do.” He gestured toward Mac, who was hunched up in his chair like either a scared possum or a coiled rattler, take your pick. General Dickerson would never guess that this was a man who had played polo with human heads, or at least was willing to. “We’re just a couple of cops from Texas, but we’ve gotten ourselves into a heap of trouble.”

  “A heap of it,” Mac said.

  “We need your help, sir. There is a flying disk—an alien craft—that is going to kill us if we don’t shoot it down. Basically.”

  Surprise widened Dickerson’s eyes, followed by a wary narrowing. “Are you nuts? How did you get in here?”

  “Don’t even go there, General, please. There just isn’t time. I’ve had bodies autopsied in your facility here. I’ve incinerated them in the burn room. That airman you lost the other week—that was on my watch, I’m sorry to say.”

  “The need-to-know barriers are so high, I just didn’t know where to go with this when I was told you were coming.”

  “We’ve got to cross those barriers. Officer Terrell and I have been working on this for a while. We’re trying to clean out a nest of rogue aliens without panicking the public. And we’ve gotten ourselves into a pickle. According to our counterparts in the alien police
force, the leader of this criminal enterprise is a real psychopath. He’s aggressive as hell. Very frankly, General, it’s a battle to the death, and we’re losing.”

  As if to himself alone, General Dickerson nodded. He closed his eyes. “I think you probably shouldn’t have told me a lot of that.”

  “I need help. From you. Now.”

  “What can I do?”

  “You have a disk. We need to see it.”

  “That might be hard.”

  “If you stall for even a minute more, I’ll have you up on charges of high treason.”

  The general held up his hands. “I’m not stalling. It’s just that we don’t have it here. I’m going to send you to another facility. We only have a little bit of this still here at Wright-Pat. Air Materiel does metallurgical and functional analysis, and we have the exobiology section you’ve apparently dealt with. But operations are conducted from another base entirely. You’ve probably never heard of it. Deer Island.”

  Flynn gave no sign of the effect that name had on him. “No,” he said carefully. “We have not.”

  “I’m going to send you there to meet Colonel Adam Caruthers and his team. It’s possible that they can help you in some way, but I can’t tell you that, because I don’t actually know what they do. Just that this is their baby. When the public says they see jets chasing flying saucers, those are the colonel’s boys.”

  “Can they shoot one down?”

  “Again, I’m not concealing anything from you when I say I don’t know. I’m not need-to-know on that information.”

  “It’s dangerous for us to travel. Very dangerous.”

  “It’s the only facility of its kind in the world.”

  “Where is it?” Mac asked.

  “Deer Island is in Long Island Sound.”

  Mac started to talk, but Flynn motioned him to silence.

  The general offered transport, but Flynn thought they were safer sticking to the crowded airlines.

  On the way back to Dayton International, they stopped at a Target and bought civilian clothes. As autumn deepened, it was getting colder, so they got jackets as well as jeans and sneakers, and Flynn bought himself a baseball cap to cover his wounds.

  In the rental car, Mac said, “I’m not a cop, and I’ll never be a cop.”