by Eric Flint
Pete frowned.
“Just saying.” Jasper tilted his head back and gazed at the night sky. Haze and light pollution obscured all but the brightest stars and the crescent of the waning moon. “The vastness of space is out there, countless worlds, countless stars, and here we are dealing with dirtbags as if we’re making some kind of difference in the grand scheme of things.”
“Thought for a moment you were philosophizing, and then you said ‘dirtbags.’” Pete shrugged. “If we don’t deal with ’em, who will? Every one we take off the street makes things a little better.”
“Yeah,” Jasper said, and dropped his gaze from the murky heavens, “but they just get replaced by… That’s odd.”
“What?”
Jasper pointed toward the alley behind the Euclid Hotel. “That. What the hell is it?”
“Whoa.”
Tendrils wafted from the alley, dark gray and silver followed by an oddly shaped body of mist strobed by the blue and red flashes of the police cruisers. A slow hiss escaped from between the buildings as if the mist was a corporeal monster. The tendrils seemed to poke and prod, as if attached to a blind person. The mist changed shape and for the briefest of moments, congealed, forming a head like that of a beast, a lion perhaps.
No. The head of a dragon with large eyes and tendril-like whiskers, dancing about as if submerged in water.
Jasper blinked. The form reminded him of Chinese-style dragons; only this thing wasn’t a bunch of people in a costume tossing firecrackers. Jasper closed his eyes, hoping the image would be gone upon opening them. A negative afterimage persisted in Jasper’s vision from the intense light of the men burning.
The mist dragon had to be an illusion, due to being tired and that horrid afterimage. He opened his eyes, and blinked a few times.
It was still there.
“Pete, are you seeing this?”
Silence.
“Pete?” Jasper glanced over. Pete had gone down on one knee and covered his eyes with his forearm. “You okay?” Jasper turned back for another glimpse of the mist dragon. The gurgling hiss continued, now morphing into a faint whistle, as if a distant gas line had been punctured.
The mist swirled and what had once been similar to a Chinese dragon was now a ragged cloud suspended above the Euclid Hotel.
“Could that be gas?” Jasper asked, but Pete still covered his eyes. “This some sort of religious experience, Pete? I’m not being funny.”
“I—I can’t explain it,” Pete said. “I can’t look, and I don’t know why.”
The raggedness of the mist smoothed and pulsed. Silver shot through the dark gray portion of the cloud like veins, a complete circulatory system. The hiss rolled into a thunderous grumble, also sounding like it was far away. The cloud solidified, once more taking the appearance of a great beast—more like a dragonfly than a dragon, now. And then it was simply gone. Gone completely, as if it had never existed.
“Where in the hell did that thing come from? It had to be some strange atmospheric condition, right?” Jasper helped Pete to his feet. “I don’t smell any gas, but it certainly could have been. I mean, not all gas has an odor.”
“Thing? It was a weird cloud is all,” Pete said. “It’s easy to see what we want to see. Believe what we want to believe.” His face had gone white, even in the subdued lighting and the dwindling number of cruiser strobes flashing red and blue across the scene.
“I’m heading back to the office,” Jasper said. “If I don’t write this up tonight I won’t get to it until Monday.”
“Working tomorrow?”
“I think so. And I think we should speak with the people who phoned in the tips and then come back here during the day. That okay with you?”
“You’re the boss,” Pete said.
* * *
En route, Jasper updated his boss, the agent in charge of the Merrillville office, who then updated his boss, so the Special Agent in Charge of the entire Indianapolis division could appear on the news at some point with the East Chicago chief of police and claim Teresa Sanchez’s recovery was a joint operation and everyone could slap each other on the back and be happy they had busted a human trafficking ring or some other nonsense they’d made up to make the public feel better and feel safer. Someone would be receiving an award for the actions Pete and he had taken earlier, but it’d likely be some muckety-muck who had nothing to do with the girl’s rescue.
The Merrillville FBI office was a stand-alone building at the end of a cul-de-sac. At this time of night, it presented a half-lit face and stood deserted save for a lone person working the radio and phones. Jasper found printouts on his desk providing the biographical details of the people who had phoned in the tips on Teresa Sanchez, which would be useful for tracking them down for further questions. He entered a narrative of the events and would finalize the draft in the morning. He then went to his sparsely furnished bungalow in Hammond and collapsed on his bed.
He lived alone. No pets. No family. No wife. Lucy had left two years earlier and he hadn’t seen her since. The divorce had been swift. Lucy hadn’t wanted anything from him, not even a portion of his pension upon his retirement.
Jasper stared at the ceiling. Light from a streetlamp penetrated his window and in that cone of light were two men ablaze and dying in the basement of an abandoned hotel. The negative afterimage remained emblazoned, on his mind if not his retinas.
Chapter 4
Special Agent Vance Ravel rubbed his eyes. Poring over the data a few months back had been exciting, and on occasion provided some decent leads resulting in instances of anomalous activity. These past few weeks, though? Nothing. Boring. At least Sentinel, the Bureau’s case management software, allowed for the use of keywords and even an RSS feed. In the old days—he chuckled—let’s say, the year 2010 or so—he would have had to search manually for what he was after. Well, what he and his superior, Supervisory Special Agent Temple Black, were after.
“Hey,” Temple called out.
“Yes, boss,” Vance said.
“It’s too late—”
“Or early, depending on how you look at it,” Vance said.
Temple sighed, a sound Vance heard all too often, especially late at night when they’d both forsaken caffeine in the hopes of heading home and actually getting some sleep.
“All right, what do you need?”
“I got news of some crazy incident earlier this evening. Have you seen anything come through?”
Temple leaned close. Her soap or perfume, Vance couldn’t tell the difference, was in the final throes of its effectiveness.
“Yes, and I’ve been sitting on it for hours now.” Vance stared at the computer screen and didn’t even glance in Temple’s direction.
“You’re becoming quite the sarcastic little human, aren’t you? Tell you what,” Temple said, “rather than be like that, how about finding something useful for a change?”
“How about you tell me about this crazy incident?” Vance asked, tapping away at the keyboard, adding new search strings, and ready to add more based on Temple’s information.
“There was a kidnapping out in Indiana, close to Chicago.”
“Wow, that sounds so strange.” Vance rolled his eyes.
“Look, I know it’s late, but how about we don’t turn on one another, okay?”
“Yes, boss,” Vance said, and winced.
“You know how I feel about that word, right?”
“Yes, b—Temple.” Vance shook his head. “Tell me more, please.” But he had already begun a search for Indiana and kidnapping and before she started talking again he had it.
“—ah, here it is. Huh. This is a draft, and you know how drafts can sometimes be a little too raw and, might I add, a prank of some sort?”
“What does it say?”
Vance turned and grinned. “How does suicide by thermite sound? That strange enough for you?”
Temple pursed her lips, tapping them with her forefinger. “Not bad, anything else?”
“There is mention of a weather anomaly…”
“You mentioned thermite. Could this supposed weather simply be the remnants of the thermite’s exothermic reaction?”
He glanced back and up at Temple and whistled. “I’m impressed.”
“Here you go again.”
“No, really, you’ve been listening to me.”
“I do remember basic chemistry from my high-school days,” she said, folding her arms. “And before you make another crack, it wasn’t that long ago. Now, read that part of the report to me, that bit about the weather.” She had taken to pacing behind him when they went through this exercise on at least a daily basis the past couple of days. She must be worried about her future, and perhaps that of their fledgling unit, the Scientific Anomalies Group. They’d been made fun of for the acronym, SAG, but there was nothing for it now.
“But what about the thermite? Or how the men who killed themselves with the substance looked alike?”
“Interesting. All right, you know what? I’ll take the entire report. Print it out for me.”
Vance sighed. “Aye, aye, Captain.” He stood and saluted her, garnering a quick “pfft” from Temple. He smacked the printer, which beeped at him. “We need a new printer.” He withdrew the toner cartridge and shook it.
“We need to use our funds carefully, and if this report is as good as I think it’ll be, we’ll be taking a trip.”
The pages printed. Temple read. Vance removed his glasses, a beat up pair he kept around the office, and rubbed his eyes. Temple didn’t say anything while she read, only emitting an “oh” or “hmmm” and one single gasp.
A few minutes later, Temple said, “Vance, we’re heading to Indiana. You better phone the agent who drafted this and let him know. He’ll bitch about getting local concurrence to travel to their AOR, but this is just a heads-up we’re giving. We’re not asking permission. Got it?”
“Yes, boss—uh, ma’am.”
“A simple ‘yes, Temple’ will do.” She walked off, shaking her head, but turned back before she hit the door leading to the outer office, “Go home, pack enough for a few days and get back here ASAP. We’re heading out on the first available flight.”
“But—”
“You can nap on the plane.”
Chapter 5
Buzzing awakened him. Jasper’s heart thumped and he sucked in a quick breath. He glanced over at his clock, the red numbers seeming angry as they displayed four o’clock A.M. So, it wasn’t the alarm buzzing.
His cell phone buzzed and rattled on the nightstand. He licked his lips and rubbed his eyes.
“Why?” he asked the ceiling, and reached for the phone. The call had to be about the girl’s abduction. Probably his boss’ boss. It seemed the higher one climbed in the bureaucracy, the more obtuse they became.
He hit the talk button.
“Yes?”
“Z. Jasper Wilde?” a male voice asked. There was a hint of English as a second language in the accent, but he was too tired to think about it.
“This is Wilde,” he said, draping a forearm over his eyes. His friends called him Jasper, so this call could only mean more work, unless it had something to do with his ex-wife. But that wasn’t likely, given the late hour.
“Ah, very good.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. Your report, it—”
“Hold on. Hold on. My report? Which one?”
“Oh, of course, I’m very sorry about the early call,” the man said. “You were up quite late, yes?”
“You mean the one I drafted a few hours ago now?” Jasper sat up. “Who is this?”
“I’m Special Agent Ravel, out of Washington, and—”
“What sort of agent? FBI? And if so, then you’re calling from the District. Hoover Building or Washington Field Office. Which is it?”
These things mattered. If the man said Hoover, then he was some headquarters zombie, but if he said WFO, then this could be case-related, or a lead of some sort. But really, four in the morning? It was only five on the east coast.
“I am FBI, and calling from a secure location, an offsite if you will, but I prefer not to give away those details.”
“Great, what do you want?” Jasper scratched the back of his head.
“We are flying out there. Your report contained some interesting items. We want to—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Jasper said, and he felt his irritation level rising. “We? You’re coming out here? Why?”
“Yes, however, I cannot talk on an open line about this. But my partner and myself will be seeing you later today.”
Jasper shook his head. This was a joke. It had to be. Someone at the office—his office—had read the draft report. He just didn’t understand how it was possible.
“Congratulations,” Jasper said, “have a great flight.”
“But—”
Jasper hung up on the agent pulling the prank on him. Someone had gotten up early and perhaps found his draft of last night’s events on the printer.
But he hadn’t printed it, had he? Maybe his boss had— But, no, that didn’t make sense. The boss wouldn’t be working on the weekend, let alone a Saturday morning during the summer. Not a chance.
He fell back on to the bed and drifted but never retreated into slumber. That ship had sailed. Finally, he got up and searched the internet for any mention of last night’s rescue. But so far only a local paper had printed a bare-bones account. A story like this had a slim chance of making national news, only if the fantastic and gruesome nature of the perpetrators’ deaths got out. Pretty soon the big shots at the office would be holding a press conference—but that might be put off until Monday. He didn’t bother turning on the television; it was likely too soon.
The prank pushed itself forward, demanding his attention. Who at the office did impressions, and specifically who was capable of pulling off a decent Indian accent? Well, Indian or Pakistani: a person from the south Asian subcontinent.
He shook his head. His report had been fantastical in some ways, but it clearly laid out the facts, though he had mentioned the strange wispy, dragon-like fog that had appeared alongside the building, calling it a weather anomaly. The deaths were crazy, but not prank-worthy.
The timing was odd, too. Pranks usually took days or even weeks to develop. This had just happened.
He got dressed and got in his bucar, heading for the office, feeling as if he’d just been there. After getting off I-65 on U.S. Route 30, he picked up a cappuccino at a Starbucks.
He had to drive a little out of his way to do so. Northwest Indiana was not Seattle or San Francisco. You could find a few gourmet coffee places in Lake County, but you had to be willing to hunt for them. There were a couple of Starbucks in Merrillville, along with a coffee house from a smaller independent chain, one in Schererville, and one in Crown Point. The Target store on Calumet Avenue in Munster had a Starbucks inside, also. But so far as Jasper knew—and he’d looked; he was partial to cappuccinos—there were none at all in the more northerly towns in the county.
That wasn’t surprising, of course. The rule-of-thumb when it came to the demographics of Lake County was that the population got whiter and more well off the farther south you went. It was only a rough rule of thumb, granted. The northernmost of all the towns in the county, Whiting, was almost all white—but it was also very working class. Dunkin’ Donuts territory, not Starbucks-land.
When he pulled into the small parking lot of the Merrillville office, he saw that a few more lights were shining through the tinted windows than when he’d been there earlier. Probably support staff putting in some overtime, and more than likely, Mandy, his go-to Staff Operations Specialist when he needed information pronto. Jasper rarely entered the building before eight, and he was out in the field investigating as much as possible—an activity that was becoming a bit of a lost art in the Bureau these days due to the avalanche of administrative folderol.
He checked his work email and calendar, mor
e out of habit than anything else. There’d be no meetings, no mandatory virtual training or other nonsense on a Saturday morning to keep him in front of the computer and off the street today. He had a few follow-ups to yesterday’s events he wanted to tackle. He gave the report he’d written last night another read, seeing nothing prankworthy, and then sent it along for approval to his supervisor. He’d seen his share of embarrassing emails pass throughout the Bureau—acrimony, incredulity, and downright hilarity contained within and forwarded on and on. A few of those unfortunate creators of the offending emails resigned, laughed out of the Bureau.
“You’re in early.”
Jasper jumped.
“And keyed up,” Mandy said. “You realize it’s Saturday, right? I mean, I have no life, but surely you have better things to do—”
“Yes, it’s Saturday and you’re dressed up like it’s Monday.” Mandy wore an ankle length gray skirt and a black blouse with a lace-like pattern on the shoulders and sleeves. “Wait, you didn’t hear about last night?”
“Of course,” Mandy said, ignoring the comment about her attire, “but the girl was rescued. What else is there to do?”
Mandy was young, perhaps mid-twenties, highly educated, and a hard worker, but still a little green when it came to investigations.
“There’s more work to do,” Jasper said. “In fact, I’m glad you’re here.”
“A coffee would have been nice, especially if you’re attempting to talk me into helping you.” Mandy folded her arms, but grinned.
“Sorry, I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“Didn’t you?” Mandy squinted. “You didn’t?” She grinned. “Okay, I’ll let it slide, what do you need?”
“I’m thinking this Carlos fella is suitable for recruitment as a source. We always need someone in the local community.”
“Who is he?” Mandy asked.
“He called in a tip on the missing girl.”
“You’re short on sources, aren’t you?” Mandy winked.
