Owen nodded, head down, feeling miserable. He didn’t feel like he’d done well. The trap had gone horribly wrong. Soldiers had been injured. Garul was shot saving him. Perhaps worst of all, Eric had escaped.
“Sir, I think we need to consider Eric Benson a serious threat. He’s the one who got away,” Owen said.
“How serious?”
“He was the shooter earlier today, sir. He also has access to more explosives,” Owen replied. Eric had snagged Larissa’s bag of toys as he fled. No way to know how many he might have tucked away in there or elsewhere.
“Damn. All right, I’ll send men out to the camp you described. You have the location?” Hereford asked.
“Roughly, yes sir. Close enough that a UAV will find it quick enough.”
“Good. If he’s there, which I doubt, we’ll take him in. If he’s not, maybe someone else there will know where he would go to ground. We’ll bring the lot of them in for questioning.”
Owen ran his fingers through his short-cropped hair. He’d been up for a very long time and running on adrenaline for far too much of it, but he doubted rest would come easily until Eric was in custody. “What can I do, sir?”
“Go see to Garul. The medics said he’d be fine, but I want someone I can trust with him,” Hereford said. “If anything else happens to our Naga friend, it’s on you. Got it?”
“Got it, sir.”
Hereford stalked away, barking orders to set up a strike on the camp as he went. Owen wasn’t even sure that was legal — using military forces to police citizens on US soil? But these were crazy times. It shouldn’t surprise him to see unusual measures taken. If they couldn’t broker a peace with the Naga, neither of their worlds might survive this conflict. Attacking the Naga emissary could endanger the entire human race.
Owen turned and followed the road the ambulance carrying Garul had taken, toward the base infirmary. At least the healing device had worked and Garul would be fine with a little rest. What if that gunshot had struck in a more vital spot? Losing his new friend and mentor aside, the repercussions of the Naga ambassador dying on Earth would be disastrous.
Worst of all, Owen couldn't shake the idea that all of this had been his fault.
Eighteen
Two guards waited in front of the elevator shaft as Hereford approached. He flashed his ID to them without their even asking. No one was exempt from security protocols on this base, not even a general. They allowed him to approach the elevator doors, where he had to give handprint and retina scans before the doors would open.
“Stay frosty,” Hereford told the guards before the doors cut off his view of them.
Then he began to descend. Base One's control room was deep beneath the planet's surface. It had originally been designed as a shelter in case of nuclear attack. Now, it was one of the main hubs for USSF's operations on Earth. Even as deep underground as the place was, it might not survive a direct kinetic strike, but it was more secure than most locations could manage. Half of what they were operating with was 'the best they could do'. Very little was optimal.
“But what is an optimal defense against a planet-killing weapon?” Hereford groused to himself. He didn't have the answer. If he had, he would have implemented it already. He’d done what he could, sending the Satori and Independence away in the hopes they could find a secret, distant world humanity could flee to if Earth was destroyed. But they hadn’t come back yet, and setting up a new home for humans millions of light years away was one hell of a long shot.
The doors slid open and revealed an already bustling room. Massive screens lined the walls, giving him a view of near-Earth objects as well as a constantly updating scan of the entire solar system. That latter screen was still a work in progress. Light lag meant that the scans from more distant regions were grossly out of date. Again, it was the best they could do, for the moment.
But one screen now showed a tactical camera feed, split with overhead imagery from a satellite feed that showed Captain Jenkins and his men approaching the camp site. McInness had been right. His directions made the spot easy enough to find, and the satellite showed there were still quite a few heat signatures in the campground. Was one of them Benson? It was impossible to tell. Much as Hereford wanted to wrap this entire operation up as neatly as possible, he doubted the man would be there.
“How are we doing?” Hereford asked as he approached the row of techs monitoring the situation.
“You're just in time, sir,” Lieutenant Marshall replied. “They're about to go in.”
This was a dicey operation. True, the President had given Hereford much more latitude than any military officer had possessed before they were attacked by aliens. But this was still a US military strike on US citizens on US soil. Under normal circumstances such a thing would never have been allowed.
The situation Hereford faced was anything but normal. Humanity's existence was hanging by a handful of threads, and Hereford was holding most of them in his hands. Let too many slip, and he'd doom every human being. It was a weight he wished daily he didn't have to carry, but one he was unwilling to put down. Maybe that was hubris, thinking that no one else could do it as well as he. But Hereford simply didn't trust anyone else to do the job well enough.
Hereford stepped up to the nearest console and gestured for a headset. “Captain, you have a green light for incursion. Remember there are noncombatants there.”
“Understood, sir. We're moving in now,” Jenkins replied over the radio.
The satellite imagery showed his soldiers as white blobs of movement on a green background. They were closing on the camp from the south, moving in four teams. Inside the camp, the dying remnants of a fire glowed white with heat. The heat signatures of each human being inside the assorted campers and tents also blazed with light. None of them were moving. Probably asleep, but there could be guards posted. If Benson had made it back, surely they'd be prepared for retaliation.
The teams split as they entered the camp area, buddy teams of two moving to each location that housed a target. As each team arrived and took up a ready position to strike, they clicked their microphones. The tension ratcheted up a notch in the command post each time one of those clicks came across the radio. Another few seconds and all hell was going to break lose.
Finally the last group signaled they were ready. Jenkins' voice came over the radio. “All teams, go now.”
They all moved with the fluidity of long practice. Bright bursts of light splashed across the screen at each target location. Those would be flash-bangs to stun anyone still awake in the camp. Immediately after they went off the teams moved. They rushed in, taking each target prisoner. In one northern camper, the pair of people inside reacted to the flash of light by rolling behind the bed. Preppers, maybe, Hereford thought, or ex-military. They had an excellent response time to the threat and would probably come up shooting, but his soldiers were already in the room blasting Naga rifles at the occupants. Both stopped moving.
It was all over in less than a minute. Not a single soldier was injured in the incursion, and every person the satellite had picked up was either unconscious or bound in zip-ties. Hereford nodded and allowed himself a small smile. This had gone very well indeed. He'd been frustrated by the injuries his people took during the firefight at the gate. These people weren't a military force, damn it. Just a handful of untrained civiliansThey shouldn't be able to stand against real troops, but sometimes combat was strange. It was certainly never predictable.
“General, we have ten captives. Four of them are kids, sir. We had to stun two of them, but the rest are conscious,” Jenkins reported. “No injuries. We've found a dozen firearms but no explosives yet. Still completing our search.”
“Understood. Bring them all to base when you're done. We'll deal with the mess here,” Hereford replied.
“The kids, sir?”
“You want to separate them from their parents, Captain?” Hereford snapped.
“No, sir. We'll bring them all in.”
>
“I'll call a social worker in from the state to help sort this mess out,” Hereford said. That would open the entire operation up to external review, of course, but there was no helping that at this point. There were kids and their parents involved. He was on thin enough ice incarcerating American citizens as it was, even for a short time. Lock kids up too and they'd have his stars for it. Presidential latitude in operations only went so far. “Make sure to bring in anything which looks like actionable intelligence, too.”
“Of course, sir.”
There was a clear bit of ‘don't tell me how to do my damned job’ in that last comment, and it made Hereford grin. He liked officers with gumption who weren't afraid of stars on a shoulder. Jenkins was a good man, but more than that he was a good company commander and damned fine in the field.
His actions tonight had sealed the deal, as far as Hereford was concerned. Jenkins had already been his top pick for the coming mission, but after seeing him in action twice, there was no doubt in the general's mind who he should send. Captain Jenkins might not know it yet, but he'd be going on a long journey soon, into a hellish amount of danger.
What was the old saying? The reward for a job well done is more work, or something like that... Never was that more true than in the military.
Nineteen
Eric woke, startled from his light doze by a series of explosive sounds. He grabbed his pistol and scanned the dark trees hiding his truck, unsure what was making all the commotion but knowing it couldn’t be good. Two more flashes of light glowed briefly in the distance, followed a second later by cracks that sounded a bit like thunder. But these weren't in the sky. They were on the ground.
In the camp.
He'd made it away to the truck after killing the lizard and then hightailed it away from the base. Eric wasn't sure where he should go, at first. Where he could go. He didn't know anybody in this part of the world except the friends who'd come in with him. But going back to the camp might be a terrible mistake. The kid knew where the place was. Eric was willing to bet the military would call the cops and send people in.
So he'd parked a good distance away, hiding the truck in a copse of trees on a hillside. He could almost see the camp from where he was sitting, but no one there would spot his vehicle. If no cops showed up there by morning, he'd drive down and warn the rest of them to get out of town, but he couldn't risk getting caught himself. Not after he'd killed that lizard and shot some of the soldiers on the base.
It felt good, taking real action. In the moment it had, anyway. Afterward he was left wondering how the hell he was going to get out of the mess he'd created. McInness had his name. They doubtless had cameras on the base which caught his face. They'd ID him in no time, so there was no going home again. The police would be waiting for him when he arrived.
What he wanted to do was get his friends out of the base, but he couldn't see any way to accomplish that on his own. With help? Maybe it would be possible. But he'd seen up close and personal how well-defended the place was. Breaking in would be damned hard. Maybe impossible.
Frustrated, he'd finally drifted off to sleep. But those flashes of light had to be an attack. The folks they'd left behind weren't much for fighting. That's why they'd been left. One old man, his wife, some women and a passel of kids was about what he recalled. The police wouldn't need much to take them down, but it sure sounded like a war zone there.
Then the blasts from the flash-bangs were gone. Eric thought he heard some yelling from down in the camp, and he saw flashlights coming on. One beam of light stabbed into the sky and caught something metallic gliding through the night air. A drone? Cops wouldn't have drones, would they?
Was the US military attacking these people? Damn them. Those folks hadn't done anything to hurt anyone. Eric ground his teeth hard against each other, hating them more with every distant shout the wind carried his way. He squinted and caught sight of more than one object flying overhead. Definitely drones, and there were several of them. Then a louder noise roared over the wind. A black helicopter zipped in low over the trees and landed just outside the campground. Eric saw some movement from the camp toward the bird. More and more people filing away from the tents and trailers toward the chopper. Soldiers and prisoners, from what he could see.
Then it took off and soared away.
Everything was silent.
He knew better than to go down there. Knew what he'd find if he did, too. The whole place would be torn up, everything turned over. They were looking for him, but they'd take whatever weapons they found along with anything else that looked interesting. He wanted to go check, but if that was the military they had access to all kinds of toys. They could plant cameras, leave a drone high overhead, hell, they could have a satellite watching the camp if they were really hot to find him.
The thought made him sweat. If they scanned this hill he might stand out even with the overhead cover of the trees. His truck had been off for enough time to cool down, so he doubted it would show on infra-red. But he still would. Eric wanted to turn on the ignition and drive off, look for someplace more distant and safer to rest until morning. But if they were watching, even if they'd just left a drone or a few soldiers behind to keep an eye out for him, turning on the truck would be a dead giveaway.
No, the better course of action would be to wait. He'd been a soldier himself, a lot of years ago. Not for very long, but he recalled the lessons his training had driven home. He knew what it was like to wait, too. Sometimes the right thing to do was to rush in, but when you were hunting deer you needed to just sit tight. This was one of the latter times. He'd hold position until morning. There was nothing he could do for the folks who’d been in camp. Not yet, anyway.
But in the morning? He’d try to figure out something. Even if he had to blow the entire base to hell, he’d do it if it meant getting his friends back. More than that, he felt a burning desire to do some more damage to the Naga invaders. Killing that first one felt good, it felt right. Were there more of them on Earth? Maybe he could find a way to kill two birds with one stone.
Eric drifted off into a restless sleep, his dreams filled with monster reptiles chasing him and his family. He always somehow got away from them. But his family didn’t. Just like they hadn’t when the real invaders came.
But now he’d made one of them pay for what they’d done, and he was just getting started. He’d kill them all, if that’s what it took to get them off his planet.
Twenty
Owen dozed beside Garul’s hospital bed. The Naga was already resting by the time he’d arrived and hadn’t roused. Maybe it was related to having used the healing device on such a serious injury? It might have depleted his body’s resources. Or maybe the base doc had given him something to help him rest. Either way, it was good he was sleeping. That gunshot had almost killed him.
The pangs of guilt over that hung with him as he closed his eyes. If he hadn’t been out there, Garul wouldn’t have been hurt. He’d figured it was the right thing to do, going after Eric and Larissa. They were a serious threat and someone needed to stop them. But damned if it hadn’t created just as many issues as he’d hoped to solve.
Larissa was safely in custody, but Eric was still on the loose and there were a bunch of injured soldiers on the base, Garul included. As far as Owen was concerned, that was on him. If he’d just given Hereford a bit more information, maybe they would have taken extra measures. If he hadn’t suggested the use of non-lethal weapons maybe the only people shot would have been the bad guys.
But there were still those kids, back at the camp. Owen couldn’t help but think those children would be better off with their parents alive instead of dead. He had personal experience with how hard it was to lose your parents and how much hate that could instill toward the killer.
He dozed off, then startled awake as the door opened. Owen reached into his pocket for his weapons, remembering even as he did that it was out of charge. But it was General Hereford, not Eric coming to finis
h what he’d started with Garul.
Owen pulled himself to his feet and straightened his jacket. ”Sir.”
“At ease,” Hereford said, his voice soft so as not to wake the sleeping Naga. He waved Owen back into his chair. “How is he?”
“Stable, sir. No signs of any problems here,” Owen replied.
“He went running after you the moment you left cover, you know that?” Hereford asked.
Owen ducked his head. “I do, sir. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Be better.” Hereford sat in the chair across from Owen. “There’s too damned much at stake for errors, McInness. You’ve got heart, brains, and skill. We need those things. What I don’t need is one good man putting other good people at risk by taking reckless chances. Next time, wait for backup. We practice things together as a team for a reason. You get me?”
“Yes, sir,” Owen replied. He still felt like he could have done better, but Hereford wasn’t wrong. There was more wisdom in learning from his mistakes than in replaying them over and over in his mind.
“Is all right. Not first time shot,” Garul said. The Naga’s eyes flickered open. “Unlikely to be last.”
Hereford rose and went to his bedside. “You’re as bad as the kid here. Worse, maybe. Him, I can excuse on the basis of inexperience. You’ve got no excuses.”
“I went to the aid of my Haklek. And my friend. What else could I have done?” Garul shrugged and winced as the movement brought him a jolt of pain. “Although I’d have preferred a less dramatic end to the evening.”
“Just rest for now,” Hereford said.
Garul glanced over at Owen. “No injuries?”
“Just my pride,” Owen replied with a rueful tone. “Eric got away, though.”
Garul leaned back and closed his eyes. “You saved me instead of capturing him.”
Owen stood and went to Garul's bedside. He laid a hand on the Naga's shoulder. Garul opened his eyes and looked up. Their gazes locked for a moment that felt out of time for the young man. This Naga was his friend, mentor, and maybe just a little bit his hope of redemption. Owen wasn't sure how the alien had come to mean so much to him in such a short time, but that didn't matter.
Peace Talks (Adventures of the Starship Satori Book 12) Page 8
