“That’s the plan?” Jill asked, incredulous.
“No, that’s the clusterfuck. The plan is that I’m back in half an hour and nothing happens until the others show up because these jokers aren’t going to notice me playing partisan with their truck.”
“Ah,” she said, not at all relieved.
“Keep sharp,” he muttered, and walked off into the trees.
The minutes pulled past slowly. Jill and David kept an eye on the men in the clearing, who finished setting up their lights and now seemed to just be milling around, waiting for something. Jill identified a tall man in an overcoat who seemed to be in charge.
“Who are these people, David?” Jill whispered.
“You know as much as I do. They look like special ops to me.”
“Fuck. This is ridiculous.”
“Wait—I see him. By the truck.”
Jill trained the rifle on the outermost Bronco and spotted Reggie, creeping up in the stark shadows cast by the vehicles and the trees at the edge of the well-lit clearing. She swiveled the rifle slightly, picking out the men closest to the trucks. None noticed Reggie in the darkness. He moved like a cat, surprisingly nimble for his age and weight.
Reggie had spent five minutes in the trees down the road, just catching his breath. He couldn’t afford to be wheezing when he went in close. Once he got his breathing down to a quiet pace, he advanced through the snow until he was behind the truck. Then he took an explosive charge out of his pack and quietly stuck it to the undercarriage of the Bronco. He could hear voices and occasional laughter from the armed men nearby, idly waiting for their guests to arrive.
I’ll give them something to laugh about, Reggie thought, as he slowly retreated from the clearing and back into the woods.
“So tell me about this guy.”
David chuckled. “Not much to tell. He plays things pretty close to the vest. I know he was the one who reorganized the group after the Joint Chiefs shut us down, and he’s been in charge ever since. But he’s sort of a big-picture guy. Joe sweats the details. It’s gotta be years since he went on an op.”
“I wonder why he’s out tonight,” Jill said thoughtfully as she watched the old man in the distance disappear back into the woods, unnoticed by the men in the clearing. “And why the hell isn’t Joe involved?”
“Reggie’s a contrary old bastard. He likes to do things his way.”
Jill lowered the rifle and sat back to look at David. “So you’ve been taking lessons from him then?”
He grinned and winked at her. “Does it show?”
Atop the rise again, the old man rejoined his companions. He had spent another few minutes catching his breath in the darkness so his agents wouldn’t see him panting. He’d also taken the opportunity to watch them, long enough for him to establish that they were probably lovers. The thought made him frown, but he had more important things to worry about.
They stood up as he approached. “Ready to blow,” he said quietly. “Nells, come with me. We’re going to halve the distance and spread apart. I want you in that copse over there. I’ll be in the rocks on this side.” He gestured to the two locations down below.
“Sanders, you keep eyeballing these sad sacks. Sometime soon, they’re going to have some guests show up. You’ll know them when you see them. Once they arrive, count to thirty and then start shooting. I want you to tag the guests first, then hit the troops. As soon as you fire a shot, I’ll blow the truck, then Nells and I open up. Nells, you need to fire a burst, change locations quickly, and fire again. Don’t let them spot you. Between the two of us moving around and Sanders picking them off and the truck going up, they’ll be shitting themselves in no time. Number one priority is to kill the guests. Once they’re dead, do clean-up on the rest. When I fire three single shots, David and I start falling back. I’ll move while David fires, then I’ll fire and David moves, and we keep alternating until I fire three more shots and that means get the hell out. We meet back at the car no later than two hours after the first shot. Keys are tucked in the driver’s sun visor, doors are unlocked. Make your approach carefully in case they’ve found the car. If anything looks hinky there, ditch your rifles and make your way to the state road we came in on, then get home however you can. Any questions?”
“Yeah, who are these people?” David asked.
“The enemy,” Reggie said. “I said any questions, not any stupid questions. Let’s go.”
“Hold up,” Jill said, raising her hand. “What is this, some kind of vendetta? That your ex-wife down there? Far as I can see, you’ve circumvented the chain of command and pulled us out of our homes to kill a bunch of people who look to be guilty of nothing more than littering. If I’m going to pull this trigger, I want to know what I’m doing it for.”
David glanced away, once again wishing he were elsewhere. What little interaction he’d had with Reggie Fairfield in the past told him that the guy was not used to having his orders questioned.
Reggie stared at Jill for a moment, saying nothing but with a deepening frown on his face.
“We’re putting our lives on the line, sir,” Jill said emphatically, not breaking Reggie’s stare. “We deserve to know what’s up.”
Finally the old man broke the silence. “First off, girly, I’m not circumventing the chain of command. I am the goddamn chain of command. You chose to join this organization. That means you do what you’re told and you accept it like a good soldier. If you don’t trust the people in charge, what the hell are you doing here?”
Jill started to speak, but he cut her off.
“Shut up! I’m not finished. Despite being an insubordinate bitch, you’re still one of my people. And you’re right. We are risking our lives here tonight. Those people down there don’t fuck around, and the bad news is they’ve got our whole government behind them. So the simple version is this: they’re collaborating with the enemy to sell out our country, and tonight we’re going to provoke a little diplomatic incident. If we’re lucky, their whole project will blow up in their faces.”
David looked wary. “But sir, if they’re here on behalf of the government . . . isn’t this a big risk? For the organization, I mean?”
“Of course it is,” Reggie replied confidently. “That’s why we have a corn king. Someone to sacrifice for the sake of the harvest.”
Jill’s brow furrowed and she shook her head. “I don’t get it. Who’s the corn king?”
Reggie grinned. “I am. Now quit this foolishness and let’s go.”
David and Reggie were in their positions in about ten minutes. Jill stayed on the rise and watched the clearing. The next hour passed slowly, but it passed quietly.
When the others arrived, it was almost as if nothing had happened at all.
Jill wondered briefly if she’d fallen asleep for a few minutes. She was looking around, watching the men in the clearing, when she noticed that there were two more people down there, and the man in the overcoat and a couple of the guards were walking over to chat. No one seemed surprised or in a hurry. Where had these two come from?
She cocked her head against the rifle, which she had resting on a bipod, and took a look through the scope. If her finger had been on the trigger she probably would have fired out of shock.
The two new arrivals were not human—close, but not quite. They were short, naked humanoids with indistinguishable round faces and huge, soulful, black eyes.
It’s fucking Close Encounters, she thought. It’s fucking Close Encounters.
She had seen some things in her time with Delta Green—worse things than this, terrifying things of eye and bone and muscle. But none of them had been shaking hands with representatives of the United States government. Jill’s orderly understanding of the Way Things Were pirouetted in her mind and folded in on itself, a tesseract of incomprehension. Oh my God, she thought, trying to come to grips with the implications of the meeting in the clearing.
Then she noticed the countdown that was already progressing in the b
ack of her mind, the countdown Reggie had told her to start when she saw the guests arrive: Eighteen, seventeen, sixteen . . .
Jill sighted in on one of the visitors and slipped her finger into the trigger guard.
Six, five, four . . .
She was ready. She just hoped Reggie and David were, too.
One . . .
The rifle crack broke the night like a twig. One of the visitors staggered, flesh and fluid spraying in an arc across the smooth white snow. The liquid splashed back almost as far as the thing’s first footprints, which seemed to have begun their trek out of thin air.
Good girl, Reggie thought, as he pressed a button and the outermost Bronco exploded in a burst of flame and shrapnel, catching two men in the blast. They were knocked to the ground and lay there, burning, the sounds of fireworks as the bullets in their suits touched off from the flames, riddling their bodies with gaping wounds.
Oh shit, David thought, as he sighted down the barrel of the AK and tracked a line of rounds up the chest of a guy in tac gear, releasing the trigger after the man’s head snapped back and the snow behind him was spattered with brains. Then he raised the rifle and dashed off to change position.
Jill swiveled the rifle slightly and caught the other visitor, who was looking at its companion nonplussed as the little figure fell over backwards, like a cartoon character slapped with a two-by-four. Don’t think don’t think don’t think. She squeezed the trigger again and the second visitor joined the first in slack-jawed oblivion.
Reggie brought the rifle up to his shoulder and opened fire, targeting a man near the trucks. As he did so, several men began firing into the woods towards where David had been, then spun as the rattle of the second AK drew their attention. Reggie lowered the rifle and hurried laterally through the trees to find fresh cover.
In the clearing, men ran to get behind the trucks once they realized the fire was all coming from the same general direction. Jill picked off a guy who was staggering near the burning truck, evidently stunned from the concussion. She tried to find the man in the overcoat, but he was already out of sight.
David reached a large tree. He was breathing heavily, but he immediately brought up the rifle. The men were behind the surviving trucks now, so he sent a couple of volleys into the tires and engine block of the lead Bronco. A hundred yards to the west, Reggie found his new cover and followed David’s lead, working over the last truck with the rest of his magazine. Both men moved off again, swapping mags as they did so, while Jill kept pinging at the trucks to keep the troops down. Her fifth shot caught a careless man in the top of the head, and he fell backwards into a snowbank.
A couple of the men began firing into the woods from the edges of the trucks, more or less shooting blindly. Reggie and David blew through another magazine with several short bursts, disabling the trucks and keeping the targets down. Then Reggie switched to semi-automatic and kicked off three shots in succession. David turned and ran, as Reggie switched back to full auto and let another burst loose. Then it was his turn to run while David fired. They repeated this pattern six times, falling further and further back as Jill kept pinging, until Reggie gave the final signal and they hauled ass. Jill spent another minute firing at the trucks, and then she got up and took off down the back of the rise. The car was well over an hour away.
In the woods, in the dark and the cold, Reggie moved swiftly. He was panting, but this was no time for authoritative decorum. He had to get back to the car, and fast, to protect his people. They had proven themselves tonight, and he wasn’t going to let them down.
Some ways off, Jill plunged down the slope, rifle slung, mind reeling. She had joined Delta Green to fight insanity, to destroy things that perverted her sense of order. What she’d seen in the clearing told her that the sense of order she’d been fighting for was a sham, and that the stakes she’d been gambling with were far greater than she’d ever imagined. He’s got to tell me, she thought to herself. When this is over he’s got to tell me everything.
Further distant, David marched. Hands on head. A gun pressed against his back.
Reggie got there first, a lifetime of soldiering guiding him back through the woods like a homing missile. He approached the car carefully, spending ten silent minutes sneaking around to make sure the scene was clear. When he was sure that all was well, he took up a good position to watch the road.
Jill arrived twenty minutes later. Reggie heard her coming. Not so loud, he thought. He clicked his tongue a couple times until Jill clued in, and the two hooked up in short order.
“Fucking great,” Reggie said, his eyes alive again. “Clockwork.”
Jill nodded, a little distant. She had a thousand questions to ask him, but now was not the time.
David arrived not long after. They heard him moving through the woods a ways off.
“Shit,” Reggie muttered.
“What is it?” Jill asked quietly.
“He’s not alone.”
David emerged onto the open road nearby, hands on his head. The man in the overcoat stood close behind him, a handgun against David’s spine.
“Come on out, folks,” the man called jovially. “Party’s over. Five seconds and I erase this boy.”
“Ho!” Reggie called. “We’re coming out.”
“What are you doing?” Jill whispered.
“Follow my lead. He’s not going to kill David.”
“Why?”
“Shut up and come along.”
As Reggie and Jill entered the road, two of the armed troops came out of the trees near David and his captor. Reggie tossed his rifle to the ground and nodded at Jill, who did the same.
“You folks have got some fucking balls,” the man with the gun said. “We’re gonna go someplace quiet and have us a little chat.”
Reggie shook his head slowly. They were all standing close now. “We’re not going anywhere. It’s not time yet.”
“Time for what?” the man said, looking at Reggie guardedly.
“You don’t get to kill me yet. It’s not harvest time. Tonight we walk away.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“In the old days, the good old days, people chose a corn king to sacrifice for a better harvest. Until the day came, they couldn’t lay a finger on him. He did as he pleased. But on the appointed day, the corn king had to die. The bad news for you is today is not that day. The good news for you is when that day comes, you’ll be the one to pull the trigger. See, I’m the corn king.”
The man in the overcoat stared at Reggie for a long moment before he finally spoke. “You know, I would say that you are absolutely fucking nuts. But there’s really no need to state the obvious.”
“You’re right about that. Hey, you two,” Reggie said, glancing at the men with submachineguns standing a few feet away. “Make your peace with the Lord. Time’s almost up.”
The men looked levelly at Reggie, barrels fixed on him and Jill. The guy in the overcoat watched, baffled by the proceedings. David stared at Reggie, fear in his eyes.
“The Lord is my shepherd,” Reggie said, as he flexed his right wrist and a small pistol ejected into his palm. “I shall not want.” He raised the pistol and fired it in the time it takes to blink, tagging one of the men square in the face. The other man squeezed the trigger and blew a burst across Reggie’s torso. The old man staggered but still swiveled his arm crisply. There was a crack and a moment later a red welt blossomed in the shooter’s forehead. “He makes me lie down in green pastures,” Reggie said as the men dropped to the ground.
The man behind David turned his gun at Reggie and pulled the trigger. There was a click. David stiffened.
“Oh look, your gun jammed,” Reggie said idly, as he shot the man in the left arm. The man dropped his gun and took a step back, clutching the wound with his right hand and making a sound like a kitten. Reggie walked forward, implacable, pistol trained on his target. David staggered forward, fumbling in his jacket for his sidearm, momentarily forgettin
g that the men had taken it from him in the woods. Jill hurried to David’s side, keeping an eye on the confrontation unfolding before them.
“Tell me your name,” Reggie said.
“Adolph Lepus,” the man replied through gritted teeth.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Adolph.” He kicked him solid in the crotch. Adolph went down, gasping, on his knees. Reggie put the pistol away and took out a combat knife, then kicked Adolph in the shoulder and sent him falling back into the snow. He knelt down on Adolph’s chest with a terrible smile.
“Kevlar,” he said cheerfully, thumping his chest with his free hand. “You should try it sometime. Not that I could have died today anyway.” He put the knife against the man’s throat and his face hardened. “It’s the same with you—I wish I could gut you like a goddamn pig, but I can’t. Two months from now you’re gonna wax me like a Pontiac and there’s not a thing I can do to change that. But right now I can at least see that look in your eyes. And enjoy it.” He pressed the knife a little harder, and a thin line of blood welled up and ran down Adolph’s throat. The man gasped and moaned, hands between his legs.
“I just wanted you to know what it feels like to be under the sacrificial blade. When the harvest comes, you’ll remember this night. Fuck, I’ll remind you. And you’ll know the only reason you’re still alive is because I let you live. Because all of this was set in stone at the moment the void shat out this ball of dirt.”
Adolph’s face was covered in sweat. His eyes were huge pools of panic.
“The book of life told me when I was going to die, and it told me that you were going to kill me. The only thing I’m not going to tell you is this, you sack of shit: whether or not I’ll take you with me screaming into Hell when it happens.”
Reggie pulled the knife away and stuck it back in his jacket. Then he slapped Adolph, hard.
Delta Green: Strange Authorities Page 2
