The Predator

by Christopher Golden

  Fantastic, she thought.

  The rubbernecker backtracked, dog in tow, and jogged in place beside her. She wondered if he had any idea how much of a cliché he was in that moment, or if he would care.

  “How’s it goin’?” he said, toweling his neck.

  Another dog yelp came from across the park. Casey glanced over, rolling her eyes. “Teddy! Knock it off! You can see she doesn’t like that!”

  The dog bolted across the park toward her, tearing up grass as he ran. Sometimes she thought the big stinker misbehaved just so she would admonish him. He rushed over and put his muzzle onto her lap, rustling her papers. Casey smiled, caressing one of his floppy ears, knowing it would calm him down. Teddy was a scoundrel, but sweet nonetheless.

  The jogger stood watching this exchange, apparently unaware how intrusive it was.

  “Seen you around here,” he said, extending his hand. “Doug Amaturo.” He scratched the ears of his well-groomed, designer dog, as if to mimic her interaction with Teddy. “This is Barkolepsy. She has a… sleeping thing. She’s a lab—”

  “Labradoodle,” Casey said, frowning as she studied the dog. “Hypoallergenic cross between a poodle and a Labrador.”

  Gathering her papers, she stood up abruptly and began to walk. The guy—Doug—trailed after her persistently.

  “Right. That’s right,” he said, eager to please. “Are you a breeder?”

  Casey shook her head, hating that the guy had diverted the conversation to his dog, the oldest trick in the book, and it had worked.

  “Science professor,” she said. “Berkeley.”

  He tried not to look intimidated. “What do you teach?”

  Casey heaved a breath, wondering why men did this. Why push it so far that she would have to be blunt with him? Was Doug Amaturo really that oblivious, or did he think persistence would break down the walls of her disinterest? Would his approach have been different if he’d first spotted her teaching her self-defense students or practicing at the shooting range?

  “Evolutionary biology,” she said. “The science of how creatures change. Adapt.”

  Doug nodded thoughtfully. “You mean, like… how a man changes when he meets an attractive woman?”

  Casey grinned. Someone who knew her well would have known to take a few steps back at the sight of that grin.

  “It’s funny, you know? Darwin thought it was about agility, intelligence… but nowadays? You just have to be a rich, fat, white guy.”

  “I…” Doug started, and then he blinked, as if realizing for the first time that maybe his presumed charms were not working on her. “What?”

  “Now, drop a CEO into the Serengeti? Only question is, what color animal shits him out twenty-four hours later? The Serengeti, probably be a jackal… reddish tan. Jackals? Eat fuckin’ anything.”

  Doug visibly gulped. She saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.

  “Um, I don’t wanna hold you up, so…” he murmured, and then he bolted, labradoodle hurrying to keep pace with him.

  Casey watched him go, reaching into her jacket to fish out a silver flask. She opened it and took a swig.

  “Doctor Brackett?”

  Casey turned to see three men in dark business suits regarding her. They stood tall, not exactly ready for a fight, but ready for trouble. Immediately she thought of federal agents. Or somebody’s expensive bodyguards. Then she spotted the fancy sedan idling at the curb and the government license plate on the back, and she knew her first guess had been on the mark.

  “I understand you enjoy stargazing,” said the agent who’d spoken.

  Casey flinched. Her thoughts flickered. She’d heard the words before, but never expected to hear them again.

  “My men will take care of your dogs,” the lead agent said. “Would you come with me, please?”

  Rattled, and hating to show it, she let them take her paperwork and the leashes she’d been holding, and then allowed them to lead her to the sedan.

  Moments later, she was climbing into the back of the car, glancing out the window at her dogs as the car pulled away.

  “Dog person, huh?” the agent said.

  Casey took a breath, trying to settle down. “They don’t judge you. They don’t lie. No hidden agendas. Love you or tear your throat out. I kind of have to respect that.”

  The agent handed her a file. “How are you with higher forms of life?”

  “I wasn’t aware there were any,” she replied, trying to keep her shit together.

  The file bore the eagle-and-shield insignia of the Central Intelligence Agency. Casey opened it and studied the top sheet:

  Classified: Project: Stargazer

  Memorandum for Cleared Personnel

  Subject: Class 4 Incursion—Monterrey, Mexico

  Casey frowned. Her throat went dry as she flipped through the file. An eight-by-ten photo of someone named Quinn McKenna was the first in a series of photos. She saw a debris field and her heart raced with excitement. The next photo showed what appeared to be a spacecraft, not very large, surely not capable of interstellar travel. Some kind of sub-transport vessel, ship to ship? Ship to surface?

  Then she flipped to the next photo and her heart froze in her chest. She sucked in a sharp breath, unable to process for a few seconds. This was a satellite photo, shot through the upper limbs of trees. No spacecraft debris in this photo. No charred spacecraft.

  The picture was blurry, but she knew what she was looking at.

  A humanoid figure. Whatever had been inside that spacecraft.

  Casey Brackett forgot all about her dogs.

  5

  VETERAN’S ADMINISTRATION CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE

  There were no windows, unless you counted the one-way mirror on the far wall, and McKenna didn’t. It amused him to think that anyone still bothered with such antiquated interview techniques. Anyone who’d seen a movie or television show in the past fifty years would know that someone lurked unseen beyond that reflective surface, watching in silence, evaluating both the person being interviewed and those doing the interviewing.

  The floor and walls trembled, and McKenna could both hear and feel the rumble of thunder outside. The storm had already been going on when he’d been brought into this room, but in the past few minutes the thunder had grown much stronger. He couldn’t hear the rain or see the lightning, but he imagined they must both be ferocious. A shame. He loved to see lightning burning inside storm clouds, and to watch it lance down from the sky. As a boy, he’d fallen in love with mythology—tales from various pantheons—and when he heard thunder roll or saw lightning flash, he still thought of Zeus and Thor and Hephaestus and so many others.

  But the room had no windows, so he had to focus on these assholes instead.

  “Tell me about the mission,” said the man in the ugly tie, who sat across from him at the table.

  McKenna, now wearing an orange jumpsuit, stared at him, and then glanced at the two other people in the room. One of them, he guessed, was a psychologist of some kind. The other was the polygraph tech, who had hooked McKenna up to the machine with the detachment of a gravedigger.

  They’d already been through all the baseline questions, asking him his name and date of birth, that sort of thing, to establish what the machine would do when he lied versus when he told the truth. The tech reminded him of another tech, years earlier. McKenna’s wife had been sixteen weeks pregnant and he’d taken her for an ultrasound. They’d been debating whether they wanted to know the sex when the tech glanced up, face flat and emotionless, and said at the moment she was just looking for a heartbeat. The callous bitch hadn’t found one.

  McKenna laced his hands together and leaned forward. “It was a rescue op. Couple of DEA agents had their covers blown. They were being taken to the head of the cartel.”

  He couldn’t help feeling he was going through the motions here. He knew all of this would be in the file that these guys would have read before coming into the room. The US government had spent many hours an
d a vast amount of money trying to punch holes in the drug cartels, but had still never gotten serious enough to do any lasting damage. The cartels were like the legendary Hydra—cut off one head and two more would grow in its place. The truth was, too much money was on the table, and too much cash found its way into the pockets of government officials and corporate overlords in Mexico, the US, Central America, and South America for the problem to ever go away.

  “I see,” Ugly Tie said primly. “You were instructed to kill him?”

  McKenna controlled himself with an effort. “No, I was instructed to offer him a selection of donuts.”

  The psychologist stared at him. Adjusted the ugly tie.

  McKenna indicated the blood pressure cuff on his arm. “What’s with the polygraph? I thought this was a psych eval.”

  “We need to know if you pose a threat.”

  “I’m a sniper. Isn’t posing a threat kind of the fucking point?” He left off the word dumbass, but it was definitely implied.

  “I meant to the general public… to yourself,” Ugly Tie replied.

  McKenna sighed.

  * * *

  Behind the one-way glass, Traeger stood with his arms crossed. From the moment he’d confronted McKenna, he had known the guy was going to be a problem. Quinn McKenna had the same hardass quality that Traeger had seen in hundreds of military men, but the guy also had a brain. Not to say that the average soldier or sailor or Marine was a moron, but most of them had been trained to follow orders and that tended to carve grooves into their behavior patterns. They didn’t usually study the shadows or the angles too deeply.

  McKenna, though… this son of a bitch was a born questioner of authority. How he had survived this long in the Rangers was a mystery. He’d done what he had been told for years, but his records showed several insubordination incidents, all of them minor. McKenna followed orders—that hadn’t ever been a problem—but he always wanted to understand why he was doing so.

  In the darkness, the readout from the polygraph flickered on a screen. Traeger stood with his aide, Sapir, and studied the screen closely.

  “He’s good,” Traeger said with a chuckle.

  But the quiet laugh wasn’t amusement. It was irritation. Sapir sensed that and handed Traeger a bowl of Nicorette. Traeger had been chewing the damn things non-stop and he took one now, almost without thinking about it.

  “He was tortured in Kandahar,” Sapir said. “Didn’t break once.”

  “What does he want, a medal?” Traeger sneered.

  “Actually, uh…”

  “I know, I know. Silver Star. That’s why we have to tread lightly. We can’t just bury him behind the woodshed.”

  He popped the nicotine gum into his mouth and started chewing.

  “Uh, I think you’re supposed to park that in the corner of your—” Sapir began.

  Traeger shot him a withering glance. “You say something?”

  Sapir kept silent. Traeger kept chewing vigorously, waiting for the nicotine rush. He needed it.

  * * *

  McKenna was bored. He rolled his eyes. “Look, I get it,” he said. “Mexico. Someone doesn’t want any witnesses.”

  Ugly Tie looked startled. “Excuse me?”

  McKenna looked him in the eye, and then fixed each of the other guys in the room with a brief but meaningful stare. “You’re not here to find out if I’m crazy. You’re here to make sure the label sticks.”

  Making an effort to regain control of the situation, Ugly Tie arched an eyebrow. “You think you’re being railroaded. Is that it?”

  “I can see the tracks on the floor,” McKenna replied. The tone in the bastard’s voice confirmed it all. Sounding paranoid would only help their case if they wanted to discredit him. He sighed. “By the way, I don’t really see tracks on the floor. Relax. Jesus.”

  Undeterred, the asshole went on. “You spend most of your time now in country. Estranged from your wife and son. Alone.”

  Ugly Tie glanced at the polygraph. McKenna didn’t have to look to know the needle would be flickering now. He could feel his anger boiling.

  “You feel like a stranger on your own planet, don’t you, Captain?”

  McKenna tilted his head, studying the man. “Like an alien, you mean?”

  It felt like every molecule in the room had stopped moving. Even the polygraph tech seemed to hold his breath.

  “Is that what you wanted?” McKenna asked. “Do I get a cookie now?”

  The psychologist stared at him half in triumph, half as if he was a wild beast that might spring forward at any second. McKenna didn’t think he’d be getting any cookies.

  6

  The MP escorting McKenna out of the administration building was either stupid or impatient. He followed too closely, gave McKenna the occasional bump or shove, and muttered under his breath. Under other circumstances— if McKenna felt sure of his surroundings or feared he might be killed—he’d have been able to take the MP out in the blink of an eye. The guy might be decent enough at guarding someone in a cage or watching the front gate, but escorting prisoners was not his strong suit. Fortunately for him, McKenna had no interest in fighting actual US military personnel unless he had no other choice.

  Outside, a colorless, hulking bus idled in front of the building. It looked like a prison bus, but without the associated markings. A second MP waited at the bus. As McKenna approached, the MP stepped up inside and waited for the new prisoner to climb aboard. When McKenna stepped onto the bus, MP number two opened the cage that separated the driver from the prisoners locked in back. McKenna shuffled in and paused to regard the five figures scattered around the shadowed benches. Although out of uniform, a moment’s consideration told him they were all military, either vets or currently serving.

  Well, not currently, he thought, considering they were all locked in the same cage he’d been thrown into. The men were clad in civilian clothes, but something about their demeanors suggested they hadn’t been arrested as a group. A scruffy guy in a baseball cap fanned out a deck of cards and manipulated them like a stage magician, despite the manacles cuffing his wrists. A goateed bald guy glanced up at McKenna, a manic glimmer in his eyes. A guy toward the back of the cage wore a bomber jacket, which seemed appropriate, because something about his brooding presence resembled a ticking time bomb. Beside him was a long-haired Jon Snow-looking son of a bitch with a gang tat on his neck and a gold crucifix dangling at his throat.

  They were hard men without a doubt, and yet for all that, McKenna sensed an air of mischief about them. He dropped into the nearest seat, next to the fifth man, a powerful-looking guy who wore the same heavy manacles as the rest of them.

  The bus started to move.

  As it did so, the big man beside McKenna seemed to stir. Leaning toward McKenna, he asked mildly, “Got a smoke?”

  McKenna regarded him. “Pretty sure they don’t allow that on the bus.”

  “Don’t allow blowjobs either, but if Katy Perry walks in, I’m gonna ask.”

  McKenna settled in. The bus rumbled, and the men seemed content to worry later about where it might bring them. He scanned the group again, pausing to watch the scruffy magician work his sleight of hand with the cards. As someone who’d never been able to reliably pull off a card trick, McKenna felt confident in thinking the guy was talented. Not fucking Houdini, or he’d have escaped from the bus, but when it came to prestidigitation, he had the chops.

  He wondered how long these guys had been lumped together, where they were being transported to and from. All of them were apparently psych cases of one sort or another, so his being thrown in with them began to make sense. Traeger and his fake VA doctors were trying to make it seem like McKenna was a nutjob in order to discredit anything he might say.

  But what the hell? He’d been in worse company.

  He extended his hand toward the big guy beside him. “McKenna. You?”

  Manacles clanking, the man shook. “Nebraska Williams.”

  “That your re
al name?”

  Williams paused a moment, wincing slightly. Then with a wry smile he admitted, “Name’s Gaylord.”

  McKenna nodded gravely. “Good call, then.”

  “You do your psych eval yet?” Williams asked.

  “Yup.”

  Nebraska eyed him up and down. “You crazy?”

  McKenna didn’t know how to answer that—not when he’d just met these men. “Yup,” he said. “How’d you snag a ticket on this shitmobile?”

  The big man gave an impassive shrug. “Put a bullet in the CO.”

  That gave McKenna pause. Even on a bus full of loonies, the idea that Nebraska Williams had shot his commanding officer unsettled him. This wasn’t a guy with PTSD or who’d started seeing enemies that weren’t there. This was a whole other level.

  “Any particular reason?”

  Another shrug. “He was an asshole.”

  A warm breeze drifted in through the slightly open windows. McKenna was no coward, but he decided his best option right now would be to sit very still and try to avoid irritating his fellow passengers.

  The bus rumbled on.

  7

  Casey Brackett held her breath as the pilot guided the HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter over a dam and what appeared to be a sleek, modern water reclamation plant. The structure perched on the edge of a cliff, and Casey tensed as the helicopter descended toward a marked landing pad beside a waterfall. It looked like something out of a James Bond movie, conspicuous in its attempt to seem innocuous, at least in her current mindset.

  She’d never ridden in a helicopter before, and the moment the chopper touched down, she promised herself she’d do her best to avoid it in the future. Dr. Casey Brackett wasn’t the type to shy away from risky behavior, but there was risk and then there was buzzing thousands of feet above the ground in a tin can with whirling blades overhead as gusts of wind tried to blow you from the sky.

  One of the security men who’d been riding with her jumped out ahead of her, then another. They turned to assist her, but there was no sense of gallantry in these men, only practicality. She’d studied them throughout the flight and had concluded that they weren’t regular military. Her father and grandfather had been military men—she’d been around them all her life, even lived on bases as a child—and she knew the difference. These guys were black ops, or even mercenaries. They wore no insignias denoting rank, no name tags, and they didn’t joke around the way the military men she’d known always did. These men were all business. She tried to tell herself that was a good thing.