by Tom DeLonge
This was unexpected. Alan frowned, eyes narrowing.
“An apology?” he said, wary.
“We rushed you into action,” said Hatcher. He was about to say more but Alan, panicking at the thought he was about to be fired, cut him off.
“I was fine,” he said. “I was ready. I got away from the Flankers, no problem, but the other ship …”
“Am I authorized to hear this?” said Regis. “I can come back later …”
“The other ship is what I’m apologizing for,” said Hatcher, ignoring him. “It’s not that you weren’t ready.”
“Wait,” said Alan, his mind catching up as he realized he wasn’t being reprimanded. “The other ship. It was one of yours?”
“If by ‘yours’ you mean ‘ours,’” said Hatcher, heavily, “no.”
“No?” said Alan. He was in freefall, like his engine had cut out and if he couldn’t reignite it he would slam to the ground. Something was coming. Something that would change everything.
“No,” Hatcher repeated. “It was Russian.”
“Russian?”
“Or operated by Russians, on behalf of … someone else. Not us.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Major Young, you have perhaps been under a misapprehension,” said Hatcher carefully. “The technology we have, which you’ve been discovering over the last few weeks, these ships that seem to defy the very physics of conventional aviation—we aren’t the only ones who have it. I suggested this to you before but I did not discuss with you the possibility of active engagement with craft matching the capabilities of our own because I did not think that would happen. This was an error on my part. You see, Major, you are being trained for a war. Not a war we anticipate in the future, but one we are fighting now. We should have told you this before.”
“Ya think?” said Alan. “You sent me into a war zone without telling me the enemy had something that could engage me?”
“Your next training mission will cover full use of the Locust’s munitions systems.”
Alan laughed once, stopping only because he felt the burned skin of his face stretching. “A little late, wouldn’t you say?”
“You have to bear in mind that our first priority is to maintain our covert stance,” said Hatcher. “If pilots start loosing munitions over built-up areas …”
“People would probably ask questions if a Locust gets shot down in their backyard too, don’t you think?” Alan snapped.
“That’s why pilots are instructed to extricate themselves from combat situations, rather than engage the enemy,” said Hatcher, his defensiveness wearing thin.
“It would help if your pilots knew there was an enemy.”
“The others did,” Hatcher shot back. Alan winced. “I’m sorry if this hurts your professional pride, but you are new to this, Major. We are a secret operation. Beyond black. You knew that. You must also have assumed we wouldn’t announce to new recruits every element of what we do the moment they sign up. You were aware that we were running surveillance and counterintelligence missions over Russia. You must have assumed they would try to prevent you from completing your mission.”
“Not with something that could take me down,” muttered Alan, though his tone was grudging.
Regis watched each speaker in turn, like he was watching a tennis match. He looked both fascinated and desperate to be somewhere else.
“True,” said Hatcher, conceding the point. “Though, for the record, they didn’t take you down, did they? I’ve looked at the flight recorder. That was some fine flying, Major. It’s because of flying like that that you are in the Locust program in the first place. I want you to know that in addition to my apology, you have my admiration, and your country’s gratitude.”
“My country doesn’t know what happened,” said Alan ruefully. Hatcher’s words had mollified him some. Against his better judgment, he felt the old prickle of curiosity. And excitement at the prospect of flying in combat again.
“No,” agreed Hatcher, “and I’m afraid we aim to keep it that way. Sometimes heroism goes unnoticed.”
Alan did not know what to say to that, and for a moment there was an awkward silence between them.
“You did well, and you are going to need to remember that in a moment,” said Hatcher, and now the heaviness was back, the sense of something coming. Something bad. “You too, Officer.”
Alan braced himself but said nothing.
“The ship that pursued you,” said Hatcher, his eyes down and focused on the bed, “was a decoy. They weren’t just after you. They were after us, and they had more fire power waiting.”
Alan’s eyes widened with horror.
“The ships that went up to cover me?” he said.
Hatcher closed his eyes, then shook his head slowly.
Alan stared.
“All of them?” he managed.
“One got back, in even worse shape than yours,” said Hatcher. “But the others …”
“The pilots?”
“All but the last one—Hastings—lost.”
Lives flashing before his eyes … Other people’s lives.
“Jesus,” breathed Regis.
“Morat?” asked Alan, dreading the answer.
“He was not on base today,” said Hatcher. “He’s quite safe. Again, Alan, it wasn’t your fault. And like I said, you have to remember that what you did was heroic …”
Alan shook his head but no words would come.
44
JENNIFER
Hapsel Ranch, Nevada
JENNIFER STARED AT THE BLACK SUV AS IT CAME TO A halt, doors opening.
“Eight minutes,” said Hapsel, checking his watch approvingly. “Faster than usual.”
In spite of her terror, Jennifer couldn’t help looking at him. His smile was the same as before. When she moved towards the porch steps, the old man reached behind him and, with a swift, precise movement that defied his years, drew a heavy looking revolver from behind his back. He didn’t point it at her. He didn’t need to.
He set the gun on the table, next to the phone, but did not take his hand off it. It was a severe, purposeful weapon, designed without elegance or whimsy for a single purpose. Jennifer became very still, staring at it, dimly aware of the swift movement of four men pouring out of the SUV in trim black suits, white shirts with black ties, shiny black wing tips, and wrap-around sun glasses.
“Environmental Protection Agency,” said the first, brandishing a wallet badge. “Step down from the porch, Miss Quinn.”
Jennifer turned and stared at him. Though gripped by fear, she couldn’t keep the incredulity out of her voice.
“You’re EPA?”
“Step down off the porch, Miss,” said a second officer.
She couldn’t see if they were armed. No one was brandishing a firearm, but an air of professional menace was present in every thread of their outlandish attire, every studied movement of their athletic and no doubt highly-trained bodies. She opted for cordiality. If they could bluff—EPA my arse—so could she.
“Is there a problem, officers?” she asked, sweetly. “I wasn’t aware I was trespassing. I was just having a refreshing glass of lemonade with my hosts here …”
“Step off the porch now, please,” said the first officer.
“Fine,” said Jennifer. “But for the record, I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I violated no signs and was invited in for a drink …”
“Now, please,” repeated the officer, “or we will remove you by force.”
She didn’t like the sound of that and took her first step down the steps, hands raised in mock surrender, head shaking in baffled amazement and indignation, as if it were all a silly misunderstanding that had gotten out of hand. She hoped they couldn’t read the terror in her eyes.
The one who had shown the badge was still brandishing it, but she didn’t even look at it. Dan had had a fake badge too. She stepped down to the dusty earth and forced a smile.
“Now, what can I do f
or you gentlemen?”
“Get in the vehicle, please Miss,” said the first officer. He was very pale. They all were.
Jennifer’s unease re-doubled.
“If you’re moving me on, I can take my own car,” she said, hurriedly. “It’s parked right there …”
“Our vehicle, please, Miss,” said the man in black.
There was a moment’s stillness as she actually considered running. She felt their eyes on her, and she knew the moment was hers to control for just a second longer. She relived a dozen outrageous YouTube videos of US law enforcement officers assaulting suspects and traffic violators. She didn’t want to get into their car, but if she gave them the excuse …
She shrugged with mock nonchalance, as if none of it mattered and she had nothing to hide, and said, “Okay,” then walked to the car. The sun baked down on her and on the car with the black-suited men, one of whom went in front of her to open the rear driver’s side door. She was sandwiched on the back seat by two of them, their shoulders firm as concrete against hers. The one who’d been doing the talking climbed into the driver’s seat and waited for the man beside him to close his door, and then the central locking system clunked, and she was, finally and irrevocably, trapped.
No one spoke.
The SUV’s air conditioning was on full blast. After a few seconds, the inside of the vehicle was positively frigid. All four men sat very still, looking directly ahead. It took less than thirty seconds for the strange and uneasy silence to get the better of Jennifer.
“Look, I’m sorry I was out here,” she said. “I didn’t know I had crossed any boundary or done anything wrong. I can’t think why the Hapsels called you instead of just asking me to leave …”
Her voice trailed off, but no one spoke or moved. The AC roared, and the sun slanted through the heavily-tinted windows, but otherwise nothing happened. After a full minute of silence, Jennifer watched with something like alarm as the elderly couple went into the house without a backward look and closed the door behind them.
Still no one spoke.
“So what happens now?” she asked, not really wanting to know, but keen to break the uncanny silence.
There was no response. For a full minute they just sat there and then, without warning, the driver turned the engine on and the car rolled forward along the rutted road. They didn’t slow down, driving as fast as the uneven surface would permit, not back towards the gate, she realized, but deeper into Hapsel’s property.
“Where are we going?” she asked. They could surely hear the quaver in her voice.
As if in response, the man in the front passenger seat began to speak in a low, drab monotone, without turning around.
“The Ash Meadows Speckled Dace is a member of the Cyprinidae family, genus Rhinichthyus, species, osculus, subspecies, nevadensis. The fish is approximately eight centimeters long, and was originally included with the Amargosa Speckled Dace group occurring only in the Ash Meadows area of the Amargosa river basin in southern Nye County. Though it was formerly identified in ten springs, it has, as of 1985, become extinct in all but three. It prefers fast flowing water and feeds on a variety of emergent insects and larva, but is imperiled by invasive species such as largemouth bass and the bullfrog which, contrary to popular belief, are not in fact native to the area.”
Jennifer gaped, but no one said a word. The car continued to rock its way across the baked ruts of the track, but the men all kept their eyes front, their faces impassive to the point of blankness.
“Okay,” she said. “That’s very interesting, but it doesn’t really answer my question about where we …”
“The Southwestern Willow Flycatcher or Empidonax traillii extimus,” said the man sitting beside her without turning around and speaking in the same drab monotone as his colleague up front, “is a small bird, less than six inches long, including the tail, and distinguished by light-colored wing bars. Unlike other Empidonax species, it lacks the pale eye-ring, and is brownish olive above, and gray-green below. The beak is proportionally quite large, but the clearest identifying mark is the flycatcher’s song, which is a distinctive and liquid Whit!”
Jennifer stared at him.
“What are you doing?” she asked, wondering why she felt no urge to laugh. The situation was so bizarre that it felt dreamlike, though behind the biology lesson—deriving perhaps from its flat, drawled and disinterested delivery—she sensed menace. He did not respond to her question, and there was another long silence. Under the circumstances, she preferred it to the weird ecology lesson. As time passed, she found herself dreading that he would start up again. The tension built as they drove.
She felt the man on the other side of her take a breath before he began to speak, and—inexplicably—had to fight back a sob.
“Considered one of the rarest fish in the world,” he began, his voice uncoiling from him like smoke, uninflected by emphasis of any kind, a droning, soulless sound that conveyed no thinking presence at all, “the Devils Hole pupfish, is a mere twenty-five millimeters long and feeds on diatoms …”
He went on, but Jennifer had her hands clasped to her ears and heard no more. For a while, they let her ride like that. When she thought she was seeing pieces of landscape they’d passed before—a lightning blasted tree, gaunt against the pink of the rock, and a tall cactus like something out of a John Wayne movie—she slowly dropped her hands. They were swinging back around toward the highway. A moment later, she saw the Hapsel house sitting off in the distance, strange and solitary and offering none of the relief it had evoked when she first saw it. She twisted in her seat to watch it as they drove past, but there was no sign of life. No one in the SUV said anything as they slowed alongside her dust-streaked rental.
They parked, opened the doors and got out like some presidential security detail, silent and deliberate.
As Jennifer’s feet touched the pale ground, she turned on them, trying to muster some defiance or outrage, but she took in their bizarre blankness, the sunglasses, which meant she could not see where they were looking, and could say nothing. Despite the heat of the sun, something of the car’s chill had got into her bones and she wanted nothing more than to be gone.
“You may leave now, Miss Quinn,” said the driver, nodding toward the road. “The airport is that way. I suggest you make good use of it. And should anyone ask about the land on this side of the highway, I’m confident that you will be able to present them with a wealth of fascinating insight into the region’s wildlife. Any other disclosures are unlikely to be believed by sane, rational people, and could result in all manner of unpleasantness.”
“Is that a threat?” she managed, though her voice was low.
He removed his sunglasses revealing eyes of an unnervingly piercing blue. He did not blink.
“By no means,” he replied, still unsmiling. “But this is hard country and it is easy—as you have heard—for things to become endangered. Enjoy the rest of your trip.”
He put his sunglasses back on, and Jennifer found herself relieved not to be looking into those strange, unblinking eyes.
Without another word, they climbed back into the car and barreled off, kicking dust and sand in their wake, so that Jennifer had to wipe her face clean before braving the heat of the rented Impala. Once inside, Jennifer sat very still, listening to the sound of her own labored breathing. As it slowed, she opened the windows, closing them again two minutes later as sanity finally registered and she started the car and turned on the AC. Her hands, which had been fluttery on the steering wheel, grew steady at last, though the strangeness of her encounter with the so-called EPA men lingered like the memory of a dream. She took a long, lung-filling, hand-steadying breath and came to a realization: she needed a drink.
There weren’t a lot of options. She drove past a place with a hokey looking alien sign outside, but having driven several miles and seen nothing more promising, she turned back, parked and steeled herself for whatever strangeness awaited inside. She’d had a month�
�s supply of weird.
Which was, she supposed, the point. All this Men in Black ridiculousness was designed to either make her question her own sanity or guarantee that anyone she told about her experience would do that questioning for her. It was, she decided, far more effective a strategy than the veiled threats with which her encounter had ended.
The Little A’le Inn turned out to be pleasant enough, and its intergalactic kitsch was refreshingly tongue in cheek. It was, in fact, just what she needed, and if her impulse to dissolve her worries in alcohol took too high a toll on her, they even had rooms.
“Perfect,” she muttered, looking up into the face of a smiling waitress who took her order for a grilled cheese sandwich and a beer.
She regarded the diner—that was what Americans called such places, wasn’t it? Or was it a bar? It was quiet, whatever it was, considering it was dinnertime. Perhaps it was more of a daytime place, providing lunches for tourists too savvy to be driving on these long, gas station-free Nevada highways at night. A stop off en-route to … wherever the hell people round here went, other than Vegas. She had no idea. There was a heavy-set, middle-aged couple in the corner who chatted to the waitress as if they had known her for years: locals or annual UFOlogist pilgrims? There certainly weren’t a lot of other places around where people could socialize. Her dread returned when she imagined the Hapsels walking through the door …
But they didn’t seem the types to frequent bars. Or diners.
But then she had no way of knowing what “types” they were because they’d simply kept her talking while waiting for the “EPA” to arrive, dodging her questions. Was it impossible to imagine them dropping their Little House on the Prairie routine and whipping out machine guns if they spotted her around the house again? Did they just receive checks and not ask questions, or were they involved and complicit in whatever was going on on their land? Assuming something was.
It wasn’t all about the Ash Mountain Speckled Dace, she was bloody sure about that.
She almost called the waitress back with a question about the menu, realizing, in the instant, that she hadn’t had a single conversation with anyone since her father died that wasn’t loaded with danger, or strangeness, or secrecy. For a moment, she wanted only to pretend she was a tourist passing through, keen to chat, to “shoot the breeze” as the Americans said, with whomever strayed into her path.
