by Brad Taylor
I thought, That’s the best you can come up with? You need to watch more Clint Eastwood.
I tapped him in the temple with the butt of the pistol, just hard enough to knock him out. He screamed and hit the ground, rolling around and holding his head.
Damn it.
I jumped on his back and pummeled him with the barrel until he was unconscious. Probably doing more damage than I wanted.
Clint never had that trouble.
They were both wearing a cheap security uniform with a Blackhorse logo on the breast. I stripped the driver, who was the bigger guy, and rolled him into the dirt next to his partner. I put on the jacket, forgoing the pants. I was betting that as a subcontractor the Blackhorse guys would know each other, but the prime contractor Aegis wouldn’t. You’d think that was a stupid bet, but having worked in the security world, it had an even chance of being true.
And I had nothing else.
Chapter 9
I turned the truck around and headed straight toward the hangar, my adrenaline growing with each passing meter. My inner voice was telling me to run to the front gate. To get out and call in the calvary. That was the safe play, but all I could think about was the chance—no matter how small—that something bad was going to happen to Jennifer in the next few minutes. I might look like a jackass in the city jail in the next hour, but that would be worth it if the alternative of doing nothing meant Jennifer getting harmed. I knew if that happened it would be like putting a gun to my head.
And pulling the trigger.
I put the vehicle in park next to the hangar doors, seeing nobody. I killed the engine and waited a second. Nothing happened. I exited, holstering the pistol I’d taken from the driver. I stood outside the vehicle, waiting yet again. Nobody came out.
I walked to the side entry, dwarfed by the giant sliding hangar doors looming over me like something from a medieval castle. The human-sized door was an old metal thing; it looked like it had been there since the bombers were staged to fly to Moscow. Grafted to it was a modern card reader and keypad. Above the frame was a camera.
I knocked, the metal giving a hollow gong sound. I turned and looked up at the camera, making sure whoever was inside could see the Blackhorse logo. I heard footsteps and put my hand on the butt of the Glock. If it was another Blackhorse guy, I’d need to be quicker than him on the draw. It swung open, revealing a small, balding man wearing a lab coat.
He said, “What do you want? You guys aren’t allowed in here. You know that.”
I visibly relaxed, stepped forward out of camera range and drew the Glock. I pushed it into his gut and raised a finger to my lips.
I shoved him back, letting my eyes adjust to the gloom. I saw two large objects about the size of those short school buses, both covered with tarps. The nylon tried to hide exactly what they were, but the outline showed wings. Behind them was some weird-looking aircraft thing all wired together, black carbon-fiber pieces held in place like a giant jigsaw puzzle, reminding me of a safety board reconstruction of a crashed airplane. Two other men were talking in an office on the right.
“They found the last piece. We should be cleared for continued testing now.”
“So what? It won’t do any good. We need to go back to square one.”
“No fucking way. The cost overruns are out of control. Congress is looking now. All we need is a partially successful test. Something to show progress.”
One of the men exited the office. Carrying a clipboard and wearing another lab coat, he was still talking to whoever was inside. “We can’t fake a test, everyone will see right—”
The sight of me brought him up short. He regained his composure and said, “Hey, what are you doing? You’re not cleared for this area. I’m getting sick of telling you knuckle-draggers that.”
He stomped forward. “Did you hear me? Get out!”
I did nothing, letting him get inside our little world. He saw the gun and went pale. I pushed the first man toward him, saying, “Both of you get in the office.”
They did so, hands in the air. The third man was sitting behind a cheap metal desk with a computer, wearing a suit with the tie loosened around his thick neck. He saw the two marching forward like prisoners from a World War II movie and said, “What is this?”
I appeared from behind them, waving the pistol like it was cotton candy from the fair. I said, “Sorry. I’m looking for some friends of mine. They just came in on the helo out front.”
You would have thought I’d said I was looking for the Roswell alien spaceship. Lab coat dropped his clipboard, his mouth opening and closing with nothing coming out. His partner fell to his knees, moaning nonsense. The suit reached for a phone on his desk. I grabbed lab coat’s head by the hair and slammed his skull into the desk, letting him drop. I ignored the blubbering scientist on the floor and closed the distance to the suit, trapping his hand and causing the handset to drop. He actually swung a fist at my head, a girly little roundhouse. I took the blow without moving, then twisted his wrist, causing him to wail. I cut the noise short with three rapid strikes to his jaw and temple. He slumped back in his chair, unconscious, and I turned to the blubberer.
I said, “I don’t want to hurt you but, trust me, I will. Where are they?”
He looked at me like I was the devil and pointed outside the office, up in the air. I glanced back and saw a balcony circling the hangar. “Up there?”
He nodded.
I said, “I appreciate your honesty. Unfortunately, I can’t let you go.”
He said, “I’m a scientist! I didn’t do anything. I don’t deserve this!”
I heard the words and couldn’t believe he’d uttered them.
Perfect.
I said, “Deserving’s got nothing to do with it.” And punched him right above the nose. He collapsed in a heap and I got to marvel that I’d actually used one of my favorite movie lines.
Karma was in my court.
I ripped off his access badge and raced upstairs. I paused outside the first door I came to, listening. I heard a man inside questioning, then Jennifer shouting. I tried the knob, but it was locked. I heard a slap, and that was enough. I saw a keypad to the left and waved my stolen keycard. The light flashed red. The door remained locked. I put my back to it and mule-kicked, ready to explode inside and start the slaughter.
It didn’t budge.
Damn it.
The shouting stopped.
Time for Indiana Jones.
I knocked.
Nothing happened for a second. I heard a shuffle, then a muffled, “What?”
I said, “Boss wants to talk.”
I was betting that it would be beyond the guy’s imagination that anyone evil could be kicking the door in this secure location. I was right.
I heard the lock turn, and I moved to the left of the knob, the Glock at my side, out of sight. I hoped to bluff whoever was behind it long enough to get me in the room. When it swung wide, I saw that there would be no bluff.
He wore a Blackhorse jacket just like mine, and recognized immediately I wasn’t part of his crew. He was quick, I’ll give him that. No confusion, no wondering why I had a jacket like his, no suspicious questions about what I was doing. He went straight for the Glock on his hip, trying to get it into play and kill me. I drove my right fist into his throat, causing him to stagger backwards a few steps and collapse to his knees. He struggled with his damaged esophagus and I cleared the remaining space with my own Glock, finding no other threats. I skipped forward and speared my knee into his face, the noise sounding like I had thrown a pumpkin against the wall.
I turned into the room and saw Jennifer and Sweetwater on the floor, their hands tied behind their backs. Sweetwater was crying, a string of snot rolling out of his nose. Jennifer was beaming like she’d just found some old Indian relics. The sight made me grin. Until I saw her swollen eye.
I looked at her and she said, “Don’t.”
I didn’t. Because that’s what she’d asked.
I untied her first, then went to work on Sweetwater. He was blubbering so hard I almost left him there. By the time I got him free Jennifer had the weapon from the guy on the ground and was at the door, peering out. I wanted to kiss her right there.
She pointed at my jacket and said, “What’s with the storm-trooper thing? You couldn’t figure out another way in?”
I said, “Truck’s right outside. And you have the wrong movie.”
Chapter 10
Sweetwater said, “I’m telling you, that was a piece of an alien spacecraft! That’s what we found out there. That’s what Chris wanted. I shouldn’t have kept it a secret, but I didn’t know he was trying to take it from the federal government.”
I glanced at Jennifer to see what she thought. She stopped tapping on our laptop and glared at him, saying, “They weren’t federal agents, you jackass. I can’t believe you sucked me into a fake dig.”
We’d made it out of the compound without getting shot, thankfully finding out the front gate was operated by a pressure plate on the inside instead of being controlled by a human. We’d driven straight back to our little dump of a motel, listening to Sweetwater spill his guts.
Apparently, the guy named Chris had approached him about stopping the dam construction under the auspices of finding ET’s station wagon, and had paid him a ton of money to use his preservation society to do so. When that had failed, Sweetwater had gone into the archives and grabbed a bunch of old artifacts. He’d spread them out on the riverbank near the construction site, then had brought us in.
Jennifer was as angry as I’d ever seen her, and I was pretty sure it was because her little “real-world” job had turned out to be a chimera, making her look like a fool.
The Blackhorse Tactical guys had kept up the “federal agent” angle, saying that Chris and his minions were actually foreign spies, and that Jennifer and Sweetwater had either stumbled upon a top-secret project as patsies or were in league with the foreign evildoers.
Sweetwater said, “I don’t want to go to jail. We should turn ourselves in. Running makes us look like we’re guilty of something.”
I said, “One of us is guilty. I ought to pound the shit out of you.”
He shrank into the stained motel chair, not saying a word. I continued, “It wasn’t a UFO. It’s something else. Something that’s definitely tied to the federal government, but Jennifer’s right: Those men weren’t agents. They were local security for Aegis Solutions. That hangar has something inside it that they want to keep secret—and not just from civilians. They want to keep it secret from everyone, including the government.”
Jennifer turned the computer toward me and said, “Take a look at this.”
I leaned in saying, “What is it?”
She said, “Last month there was a freak rainstorm. A bunch of ranchers out near the Pecos River said they saw something crash during the storm. The area was immediately cordoned off by government types.”
I scanned the news article and saw it was more about bullshit UFO conspiracy theories than anything that could help us. I said, “You think this is connected?”
“Maybe. That little creek where they’re building the dam would have been a flash-flood river. Maybe whatever crashed broke apart, and pieces of it were washed downstream.”
I thought about what I’d seen inside the hangar and the conversation between the two lab rats. Then about how this was absolutely not my problem.
She leaned back and put her hands behind her head. I could see the gears turning. “What?”
“Nothing. Just had a thought.”
“Well, spill it.”
She sat up and said, “Okay. We know something crashed and they cordoned off the wreck. Suppose they tried to gather up the pieces, but they couldn’t find them all. The creek’s a raging river, so they have to wait until the storm passes and it subsides. When that happens, they scour the terrain but come up empty. Now, another team is out there, maybe a foreign government. Aegis is more concerned about keeping them from finding it than an actual recovery, so that’s what they focus on.”
I saw where she was going. “By burying it under the water of a man-made lake . . . I’ll be damned, no pun intended. You’re pretty fucking smart.”
She scowled theatrically at my cursing and I quickly said, “Pretty friggin’ smart . . .”
She broke into a real smile and I returned it, feeling the connection. Like a bad wingman in a bar, Sweetwater shattered the mood, saying, “I still think we need to go to the police. There was a shootout today. People died.”
I really wanted to punch him.
I said, “You do what you want to do, shithead, right after you write us a check.”
“What? A check? You didn’t do what I hired you for.”
I leaned into him, saying over my shoulder, “Jennifer, what did he hire us for?”
“To confirm or deny a site of archaeological significance in advance of a dam’s construction, thereby preventing its loss.”
With my eyes locked on his, I said, “And did we accomplish that objective, Jennifer?”
“Yes. We determined that the area in question, while it contained artifacts from several different epochs, was not in and of itself of any archaeological significance. Mainly because the artifacts had been scattered about by the jackass that hired us.”
I put my hand on his shoulder, causing him to flinch. I said, “Now, if you like, we can put that in a report, of which a copy will go to the preservation society. I’m sure they’d like to know how their hard-gained artifacts were being used by their president. Either way, get out your damn checkbook or I’ll take it out of your hide.”
I expected Jennifer to stop me, but she didn’t. She just sat there with a scowl on her face, her arms crossed, glaring.
He raised his hands and said, “Okay, okay. I’ll pay what we agreed to. No need for a report.”
He stood, saying, “What now?”
“Well, we’re getting the hell out of here, so you can mail us the check. You understand, of course, what will happen if you don’t, right?”
“Yes, yes, I get it. Geez. I meant what about me?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. You’ve gotten yourself tangled up with some serious men. From what Jennifer said, Chris is more than likely dead. On the other hand, the guys from Blackhorse Tactical are definitely alive, and probably pissed. You’re a witness to what happened out in the desert. If I were you, I’d think long and hard about a vacation at least two states away. Maybe a permanent vacation.”
His face drained of color. He said, “I can’t do that. I can’t just up and leave. I have a job. I have family. . . .”
“Should’ve thought about that before you started taking money for a fraud.”
Jennifer said, “Pike. We can’t just leave him here. They were going to kill the both of us today before you showed up. You heard what happened at the river. They slaughtered those guys, and I’m sure they buried the bodies out in the desert. He’d last ten minutes in this town.”
“And how is that my problem? We came out here to conduct an archaeological survey based on his lies. Might I remind you that it was you who said I was creating conspiracies? That it was all about the dig? Well, that’s done. He’s made his own bed, and now he’ll lie in it.”
Sweetwater said, “I’ll pay you. I’ll pay whatever you want.”
I clenched my fist, willing it not to fly into his face. I said, “I’m not a fucking gun for hire, asshole.”
Jennifer said, “No, you’re not. But you occasionally do the right thing. Just because it’s right. Like you did in Guatemala.”
I
exhaled, exasperated. I said, “Who shot first at the river?”
“What? Why does that matter?”
“Are you sure the Blackhorse guys pulled the trigger? I mean, they came out raising badges, like they were just trying to get everyone disarmed. Who fired the initial rounds?”
“I . . . I don’t know. It could have been either side. It might have been Chris.”
“Maybe that whole thing in the desert was nothing but self-defense. Yeah, they were faking the federal agent thing, but that was just to get their missing top-secret wreckage back. Maybe they were forced to kill everyone.”
She said, “Pike, they were going to murder us. I’m sure of it. I could see it by how the security force acted. They took orders from the one with the badge—the one you beat up—but they were afraid to look us in the eye. Afraid to engage us in conversation. Because we were dead already.”
“Jennifer, that’s just your gut feeling in the fear of the moment. You can’t prove that.”
“If all they wanted was the wreckage back, then why did they chase us down with a helicopter? They already had the lost piece.”
I had no answer to that. She said, “Because they didn’t want any witnesses, that’s why. There’s enough money involved here that Aegis is willing to murder to protect it. They’re covering up something, and it’ll probably end up getting a soldier killed some day. Is that what you want? Some contractor to make a fortune selling faulty equipment, getting rich off the blood of your brethren?”
That is dirty pool. I raised my voice, “What do you want me to do? What the hell is the right thing here? You want me to go back to the hangar and murder all of them?”
“No. Let’s figure out what the big secret is. Then jam it up their ass.”
I snapped back at her words, actually impressed with her cursing. I said, “So that’s what you want? To risk your life for a bunch of contract cheats? That shit goes on all the time in the Defense universe.”
Her eyes settled on me, and I saw something new. An awareness of the world she was entering. An understanding of her place, but also an understanding of her power to change it.
