A siren wailed in the distance.
Already? Perhaps this flight experience wouldn’t suck so much after all. Even bad sex could be rescued with a satisfying ending.
He blinked to clear his eyesight. Twin beams of light stretched ahead of a Ford F-150, blinding him as the vehicle approached. He shielded his eyes with one hand and waved his other arm. Ouch. Fuck.
A loudspeaker squeaked and crackled to life. “Get back down on the ground. Lie flat on your stomach,” a tinny voice ordered. “If you move at all, you will be shot.”
Shot? What the hell? Had he landed in some survivalist kook’s farm?
But that wouldn’t explain the siren. He must have drifted into restricted territory, not surprising, since they flew many of their secret test missions in secured areas. The truck screeched to a halt, and someone wearing camo stepped out. A flashlight held at shoulder level kept him from seeing the face, but he could discern an M4 carbine at hip level well enough.
He shouted, “Don’t shoot. I’m not armed, and I’m not resisting.”
“Stay on the ground,” the voice behind the light barked.
A female voice?
Okay, so much for his PC rating today. He’d assumed the security cop was a male, not that it made any difference one way or the other. He respected the power of that M4.
Mason flattened his belly to the desert floor, arms extended over his head. A knee plowed deep in the small of his back. If he didn’t have a bruised kidney before, he sure did now.
A cold muzzle pressed against his skull. All right, then. The knee didn’t hurt so much after all.
“Hands behind you, nice and slow.” The lady cop’s husky voice heated his neck. “So, flyboy, do you want to tell me what you’re doing out here in Area 51?”
Jill Walczak had a secret. But she was used to keeping secrets in her current job as one of the highly classified civilian security forces contracted to patrol the perimeter of Area 51, anonymous guards known simply as “camo dudes.” With a serial killer on the loose trying to stir up the alien conspiracy nuts, she couldn’t afford to relax her guard for even a second.
“Flyboy? Nothing to say?” Keeping her M4 against his head, she carefully set her flashlight aside so it illuminated his face. “Okay, then. We’ll chitchat in a minute after we take care of business. I’m not telling you another time after this. Put your hands behind your back. Slowly. Grunt if you hear me.”
“Got it,” he growled, his discarded parachute ruffling and snapping in the night wind.
One broad hand in a flight glove slid along the parched earth and tucked against his lower spine. His other hand started to move, inching a little too close to the flashlight for her peace of mind.
“Touch that flashlight, and I’ll shoot you in the wrist.”
His fingers froze.
Then he started moving his arm again, slowly, not so much as a flinch or suspicious move. Thus far he was the perfect detainee. She hoped he would stay that way.
Quickly, she set aside her weapon, locked the hand-cuffs around his wrists, and regained control of her M4. She was toned and trained these days, but she knew better than to underestimate the hard-muscled man in her custody. She was alone out here in the desert tonight, and she’d driven deeper in Area 51 than was normally acceptable, all because of an anonymous tip.
Was the parachuting flyboy her “something spectacular and lethal on the horizon” that would lead her to the “Killer Alien”? Four victims—one man and three women—had shown up around Area 51 and nearby Nellis AFB, three of them dead in the past year, all attacked in a manner to make it appear linked to extraterrestrials.
She shivered. Desert winter nights were damn cold and desolate. But her chill settled deeper in her bones as she thought of how her friend had died.
Jill inched off her captive and scooped up her flashlight, wind kicking sand up until it stung her face. “The time for grunts has passed. Tell me what you’re doing in Dreamland.”
The flyboy kept his face down, nose to the gritty ground. “I work as a loadmaster and flight engineer in the U.S. Air Force. A cargo drop went to hell, and I got sucked out the back of the plane. The heavy wind tonight must have drifted me over into the box.”
The box. At least this aviator spoke the flyboy lingo for Area 51.
The man cleared his throat. “Hey, do you mind if I turn my face to the side?” His muffled voice rumbled low in the night air. “I’d rather not talk through a mouthful of sand.”
“Fair enough. But just your face.” She did not intend to end up like those three murdered souls, sliced like a science experiment. And around their dead bodies the killer had left an eerily undisturbed sand circle. “Slowly. Then I’ll need your name.”
She shifted her flashlight to his mug again. The more she kept the beam on him, the less visibility he would have in the dark to see her or attempt an escape. She swiped the piercing shaft of light over his face. The chill of darker thoughts eased.
Move over, Hugh Jackman.
The flyboy blinked fast, his green eyes glinting as she studied him more closely. Recognition tickled the back of her brain. She looked closer, taking in the smoothly handsome face. A tuft of dark hair twisted by a cowlick ramped in front as if refusing to submit to the military cut.
Yeah, she’d seen him around, all right.
The people working top secret jobs in this region shared certain facilities as budget savers. It wasn’t uncommon to pass someone in the mess hall multiple times and have no knowledge of the other person’s job or even name. They’d never been officially introduced . . . until now. “Who are you?”
“Tech Sergeant Mason Randolph.”
She’d heard him called a number of other things by the women dining at her table whom he’d winked at, smiled at, flirted with, dated. They’d called him names like Smooth, Loverboy, and lastly, That Jackass.
Would he remember her when he wasn’t blinded by the flashlight? She ratcheted up her grasp on his cuffed wrists.
He winced beneath her. “Hey, aren’t there police brutality rules against that hold?”
“Then don’t move.”
“No worries, ma’am. I’m a lucky son of a bitch, so we’re going to be just fine.” He flashed his killer smile her way, the first time he’d turned that power on her.
She was immune.
Jill eased her knee off his back, ready to haul him up. The wind howled, tumbleweed speeding past, the parachute whipping faster, lifting. Jill yanked at the flyboy’s arm to pull him aside.
The nylon sheeted forward, toward her. She barely had time to blink before it wrapped around her and her captive.
She stumbled, her feet tangling with his. “Stay still.”
He did, but she couldn’t. Her feet shot out from under her. Cord and nylon binding them together, he fell with her, his muscled bulk sending them tumbling.
“Damn it all,” he snapped seconds before they both slammed to the ground.
His body covered hers, his leg nestling between hers. Hot breath gusted over her cheek, sending goose-flesh prickling along her skin at the possibility she could be sharing air with a monster.
She forced herself to breathe anyway. He was cuffed, so she was safe. All she had to worry about was the teasing she would take at work if this part of the arrest leaked out. They were all looking for an outlet for the stress, especially with the added pressure on finding the killer and locking down security before some big shindig at Nellis Air Force Base next week. “Roll to your side, please.”
“I’ll try, but it would help if you freed your left boot from that cording that’s lashing our feet together.”
“Sure, I’m on it.” She started inching her leg away.
The ground rumbled under her with an ominous reminder that anything could happen in Area 51. What the hell? She clawed at the nylon, thrashing until finally, finally, finally the parachute swooped free of their heads.
The warning rumble in the distance increased. What if Mason Randol
ph wasn’t what the tipster had meant after all? His muscles tensed beneath her grip.
An explosion blossomed into a hazy red cloud on the horizon.
TWO
Dr. Lee Drummond liked to blow things up.
Lee had started setting fires at four after seeing dear old Dad strike a match in front of the hearth at the first snowfall. But Lee was smart, a certified genius for that matter, and quickly learned random blazes would bring serious trouble, which meant figuring out how to feed the hunger for fire legally, in a manner that didn’t get a person labeled a psychopath. After receiving a PhD at nineteen, Lee had put those electrical engineering skills to use working as a civilian contractor for the U.S. military, now working in a top secret test squadron.
In an underground bunker in the Nevada desert, Lee studied the monitor, the image still rippling with shock waves from the chemical explosion in Area 51. The good doctor looked over the shoulder of the pilot in a remote control booth flying the Predator drone that had dropped the blister agent—absolutely fucking awesome to watch work—followed by a secondary release of a trial antidote.
The antidote wasn’t functioning. Already even hardy desert vegetation withered and drooped.
And here in the safe and serene little concrete bunker with the pilot flying and sensor operator navigating, Lee felt none of the physical effects, thanks to the specialized ventilation system designed to filter out anything bad. The mental rush, however, was epic.
Wrangling into this operation as a technical advisor had been easy enough. Little did they know who had really orchestrated a whole mess playing out in Area 51.
The remote-controlled Predator drone circled, testing top secret gadgets and toys to gather toxicity readings. Lee pressed a hand to the headset filled with chatter from the Predator’s pilot and sensor operator to the range controller back at headquarters.
“Pred seven-seven,” the range controller called from his post thirty miles away, “we’re spotting suspicious movement in area Bravo Two. Can you ease over that way and feed us some video?”
Anticipation tingled with a heat that could rival that mutilating blister agent they’d released in the explosion.
The pilot—Werewolf—sitting at his remote control panel, answered, “Roger control, heading that way.”
From her oversized chair beside the pilot, the sensor operator monitored readings on her dials and screen. “Indicators show surface winds are one-two-zero at ten. Adjust for scan downwind from Bravo Two.”
“Can do,” Werewolf answered. “Coming in from downwind.”
Guiding the joystick, Werewolf banked the aircraft while the sensor operator focused the camera downwind of the fire. The sensor operator had been dubbed Gucci, since somehow she managed to make even a generic flight suit look designer. The pilot and mission commander went by Werewolf. He was a hairy jackass. Enough said.
Lee stood behind them, avidly studying the screens for every nuance in case these incompetents missed something. Back in the early days here, one of the cocky aviators had labeled Lee as “Bambi.” To this day ten years later, the poor bastard didn’t know the case of salmonella that had put him in the hospital hadn’t been an accident.
God, fliers were arrogant, and none more so than the egomaniacs in this top secret test squadron. But Lee had discovered more pointed—and entertaining—methods for taking vengeance these days.
Gucci tapped keys to zero in on an image in the far corner of one of the screens she monitored. “Check this out. There’s a vehicle and two people up on that ridgeline. Can you bring us in closer?”
“Crap!” Werewolf’s hairy fist clenched around the stick. “We’re supposed to be studying Joshua trees, not real Joshuas. Control, Pred seven-seven.”
“Go, Pred.”
“There’s a vehicle and two individuals on the ridgeline road downwind of Bravo Two,” Werewolf said. “Looks like it’s a security vehicle, and the guard is taking someone into custody. I can’t tell who from so far away.”
As the Predator flew closer, Gucci zoomed in the view on the pair. She winced, her face pulling tighter than the slick blond bun on the back of her head. “Holy crap, that’s Mason Randolph, and wow, is that lady cop ever kicking his ass. He’s not going to live that one down.”
Lee played it cool, face bland, not relaying any pleasure as the plan played out perfectly. It had taken skill weaving together two different highly classified tests to achieve the ultimate goal for tonight’s little piece of justice.
Still, there wasn’t any harm in enjoying a closer look. “What do you say we try out my newest toy now? Then we can hear what they’re saying while you’re testing the air. We’ll have two methods of determining if they’re in danger from the fallout.”
“Roger that, Dr. Drummond.” Werewolf’s fingers sailed along buttons, keying in commands. He checked his data, then hit a red release button.
Fifteen thousand feet overhead, a pair of small doors opened in one of the Predator’s pylons and ejected a small black ball, which fell away from the aircraft and swooped toward the earth. As soon as it had slowed down, the ball unfurled into a bat-looking shape and zoomed toward the target the sensor operator had designated.
The nanotechnology bat was designed to circle above silently and allow the Predator to listen in on whatever was below. These nanosensors rocked. Nobody approached them, because who would want to play with a bat or spider or bumblebee?
“Bat away,” Werewolf updated, “and operating normally. Audio available on button three in about twenty seconds.”
The bat reached altitude and flapped its mechanical wings to begin circling the couple below, closer, closer still, until the screen filled with the image of a man in a flight suit. He broke free of the woman, hands cuffed behind him, and jumped to his feet. A parachute lay on the ground around them.
Mason Randolph. The target of this whole plan. The flyboy faced the hazy glow burning on the horizon. “What the fuck?”
“Damn it,” the lady cop ordered, raising her weapon, “hold your position while I radio in.”
“My plane!” Mason’s voice came out harsh and strangled as he nodded toward the pluming cloud of smoke, damn near oblivious to the threat of an M4 carbine. The horror on his face spoke volumes more when he seemed unable to scavenge for more than a few words. “My crew!”
Ah, Mason had thought the explosion was a crash of his hypersonic jet. Lee hadn’t considered that, but it was a nice little something extra. The bastard deserved to hurt. Lee had done some earlier work on that project as well and knew firsthand how damned important that plane was to Mason.
And about the woman? Innocents shouldn’t suffer, but sometimes collateral damage was unavoidable.
The ginger-haired guard released her hold on Mason’s shoulder. “Stay put, and I’ll find out what’s going on. Know, though, that I will have my gun trained on you at all times.”
Mason didn’t even seem to register her words. He just stood stock-still, scrub brush rolling over his boots to tangle in the parachute.
The radio inside her truck squawked loudly through the open door. “Base to Unit Five, please report.”
Keeping her gun level, she backpedaled to her vehicle and reached inside for the radio. “Unit Five is on freq. Over.”
“What is your location, Unit Five?”
“Range road one-twenty at klick nine. I have an aviator in custody who parachuted into the region. Then something blew on the horizon, something big. Was there a crash? Over.”
The radio crackled for a couple of heartbeats. “No crash reported. The explosion is a mishap in Bravo Two. You need to get the hell out of there now.”
The female in camouflage jolted at his words. “Damn it all, Bravo Two is where they do chemical testing. That smoke undoubtedly contains some bad shit.”
No kidding.
Mason sagged with obvious relief. Relief? Mason had to be the first person on record happy to hear his skin might melt off at any second. He must be awful da
mn tight with that crew of his. Too bad he couldn’t have suffered for a while longer.
The bat monitor swooped lower, closer to the chick. “Confirm you said in Bravo Two.”
“Roger,” the voice on her radio responded. “I repeat, get the hell out of there with your extra baggage. Head the opposite way on range road one-twenty and turn south at road nine. Don’t stop until you get to gate eleven. Wait there for hazmat. We have a hazmat truck and crew en route to meet you for decontamination.”
The camo dude eased one hand free and pulled the ranger wrap on her neck up over her nose. The cloth protected breathing during heavy winds whipping the sand around. Right now it seemed pitiful defense against lethal toxins.
“I’m on my way directly to gate eleven.” The cop tossed her radio back into the truck and sprinted toward Mason, whipping a bandanna from her pocket before she screeched to a halt beside the flyer. “Hold still. I’m going to tie this around your face.”
“A gag isn’t necessary,” Mason countered, back to his regular cocky self, apparently still riding the high of learning his crew hadn’t buried their plane nose-first into the desert.
Dumb bastard didn’t even appreciate how close he’d come to dying. If that cop hadn’t been out there—where no one normally would have been—Mason’s insides would have curdled the same way all the vegetation around them soon would. His good-looking face would be disfigured with blisters.
“Be quiet,” the no-nonsense cop snapped. “I’m trying to protect your lungs, but if that’s a problem for you?”
“Just do it.” He bent his knees slightly so she could reach to secure the bandanna. “Any idea what they’re pumping into the atmosphere today?”
“I’m the one who asks the questions. Now move toward the truck.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mason called over his shoulder, bandito look complete. “A woman who likes to be boss. Totally hot.”
The spy bat plunged closer, following the truck’s progress toward a hazmat truck far on the horizon. Lee studied the screen, savoring every moment to feed this hunger until the time came next week to destroy Mason Randolph’s life.
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