Garth waved away the offer, no matter how tempting it sounded. The “anything” to which Lisa referred was human flesh, of course. Those in the field were under strict orders only to capture and process human beings for future use. However, one of the benefits of being a field officer was that orders were often bent and eyes turned the other way.
“Perhaps another time, Captain, when I am not pressed by urgent matters,” Garth said. “I came only for the woman today. May I see her now?”
“Of course. I’ve had her brought into the next room. ” Lisa rose from her chair and pressed imagined wrinkles from her red uniform. The action did not go unnoticed. Garth silently admired the shapely curves over which the woman’s hands slid. For an instant he pondered the real beauty that lay veiled beneath the mousy brunette disguise the captain wore. Perhaps when circumstances permitted him to accept Lisa’s dinner invitation, he would have time to explore what he could only fantasize about now.
“This way, Commander. ” Lisa stepped to a door at the side of her office and held it open for him.
Garth rose and walked through the entrance. The room he entered was bare except for a sheet-covered table. Garth’s eyes widened. Something lay beneath the white sheet draping the table.
“Captain, what is this?” Garth’s head jerked around; he glared at Lisa. “I hope this isn’t your idea of a joke.” “Joke?” Lisa’s head shifted from side to side in befuddlement. “This is the woman you have been searching for.”
“No! It can’t be!” Garth strode to the table and tore back the sheet.
A constricted gasp pushed from his throat. It was the redheaded bitch. It couldn’t be, yet it was. And she was dead!
“What is this, Captain? Your message said that you had captured the human female!” Garth tossed the sheet back across the pale, lifeless form. “Now you give me this—a corpse!”
“The original communique told of the woman’s capture and her wounds.” Lisa’s words quavered with fear. “My second message reported her death from those wounds.”
“Second message ...” Garth sputtered. He had received no second message. “There was no second message.”
“It was sent an hour ago,” Lisa answered.
“Damn!” Garth could not repress the reptilian hiss that spat from his human-disguised lips. An hour ago he had been en route from Houston to Dallas. The captain’s message had not been relayed to him.
The taste of vengeance that had been honey sweet but moments ago turned bile bitter in his mouth. He had been robbed, his months of planning and scheming stolen from him.
“Commander, what would you like done with the body?” Lisa asked timidly.
“I could not care less, Captain. A corpse is of no use to me!” Garth pivoted and hastened from the empty room.
It can’t end like this! Hate and anger railed through his head as he returned to the squad vehicle outside. I won’t be cheated! I won’t be cheated!
Chapter 5_
“Hang on! One of these babies once flew the hump with half a wing missing!” Joe Bob’s big-knuckled hands eased back on the controls. His right arm snaked out; fingers flipped and flicked a series of switches.
Rick’s stomach lurched toward his throat. The C-47’s ragged left wing lifted. Metal groaned in protest. A violent shudder shook the plane from nose to tail.
“What the hell was that?” Sheryl Lee’s emerald eyes grew saucer wide.
Rick’s own gaze darted about the cockpit; he expected to find portions of the instrumentation shaken off the hull. Another jarring shock wave quaked through the Wanda Sue's ancient fuselage. Still the rickety transport stayed aloft and in one piece!
“Forget the vibrations. It’s only the landing gear,” Joe Bob drawled in an emotionless monotone reminiscent of that of an airline pilot. “Got to set us down. No way to outfly the snakes. Wanda Sue was never made for combat maneuvers.”
A series of three additional teeth-rattling quakes jarred the transport. Rick’s hands closed around the arms of the navigator’s chair in a death grip. The man in the pilot’s seat was insane. There was no way he could possibly land the plane here in the middle of this arid wasteland.
Outside, the flat, neatly furrowed farmland gave way to mesquite-sprinkled plains. Rick saw clumps of bushy growth one moment, and in the next the gnarled branches of the tough little trees loomed below.
“That’s it, sweet thing, just iift your chin a little bit more. Bring your nose up, baby, and everything will be all right,” Joe Bob crooned while he pulled the control stick back to his stomach. “That’s it. That’s it. I knew you had it in you. I knew it.”
The stubby, rounded nose of the transport lifted. The whine of extending flaps pierced the rattle of constant vibrations shaking the plane. Abruptly the plane’s nose shifted. Cloudless blue sky filled the cabin’s windows.
Wanda Sue screamed, her metal struts and plates groaning in anguish as the landing gear slammed into the sandy soil. The ponderous transport bounced, then jarred back to the ground. Joe Bob’s right hand found the engine control levers and threw the two prop-driven dynamos into reverse.
“All right, sweet thing! I knew you wouldn’t let me down!” An ear to ear grin proudly beamed through the forestlike beard covering Joe Bob’s face. “I knew you had it in—”
“Joe Bob, rocks!” Sheryl Lee’s voice lacked the comforting drone of the pilot’s; she screamed.
Rick’s gaze jumped to the redhead just in time to see the C-47’s right wing plow into an outcropping of yellow limestone. The world suddenly became a maelstrom.
Wanda Sue spun, careening wildly. Rich heard a landing strut snap beneath the plane. The transport swung about, spinning in the opposite direction as the ragged tip of its left wing gouged the sand.
Rick’s viselike grip on the chair’s arm was to no avail. Ibmbling head over heels, he flew from the seat. He hit the floor of the cockpit and skidded right shoulder first into the bulkhead.
Above the v/hining cries of twisting metal, he heard Sheryl Lee scream. A second later she crashed atop him with arms and legs flailing the air.
Then Wanda Sue lay motionless. Only the sound of a West Texas wind came from outside. Inside, Rick and
Sheryl Lee groaned in harmony while they disentangled themselves from one another,
A flower of red blossomed at the center of the bandage on Rick’s thigh; it was accompanied by a pulsing pain. Gritting his teeth, he carefully began to examine himself. His head and shoulder felt as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to them. Several cuts and scrapes welled crimson on the backs of his hands, and bruises too numerous to count ached on chest, back, arms, and legs, but there were no broken bones. Somehow he managed to come through the whirlwind landing in one piece.
“I seem to be all here,” Sheryl Lee said incredulously, her eyes rising to Rick. She looked like he felt, yet managed a smile, weak but still radiant. “I think the old saying is, ‘Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.’ Hey, Joe Bob?”
There was no answer.
The two looked at the pilot’s seat. Joe Bob lay slumped over the controls of his winged lover.
“God, no. No.” Tears welled from Sheryl Lee’s eyes and trickled down dirt-smudged cheeks.
Were it not for the grotesque, twisted angle of his neck, Rick would have thought the pilot had simply leaned forward in the seat and closed his eyes. The landing had been bad for Joe Bob Wills. The man would not walk away from Wanda Sue this time. He and his airborne lover had died in each other’s arms.
“How?” Sheryl Lee turned to Rick. “We’re both alive. How could he be dead? How?”
Rick’s head moved slowly from side to side. He reached out and held the trembling woman. “I think we’d better get out of here. There could be a fuel leak.” Sheryl Lee wiped at her eyes, sniffed, and nodded. Finding the Uzi on the opposite side of the cockpit, Rick hefted it in his left hand, then used his right to help the redhead from the floor. Together they worked their way over sc
attered boxes of medical supplies to the back of the plane. To Rick’s surprise, the door swung outward, opening without resistance. A hot Texas autumn wind raked at their faces when they stepped outside.
The hiss of discharge energy crackled in the air! Blue-white bolts sizzled into the sand ten feet from where they stood. Sand fused to glass under the intense heat of the beam.
“Sons of bitches!” Rick’s head jerked up.
The Visitor skyfighter hovered five hundred feet in the air above them. Another burst of crackling energy flared from its blunt snout, slamming into the ground five feet closer than the first bolt.
“The rocks! Run!” Rick shoved Sheryl Lee toward the outcrop that had so abruptly ended Wanda Sue's landing. “Get to cover!”
Swinging the Uzi’s muzzle skyward, he squeezed the trigger. The clip’s remaining ten shots spat from the pistol in a deafening bark. The skyfighter swerved, banking to the left. Digging a hand into a jacket pocket for another clip, Rick sprinted after Sheryl Lee.
They had covered half the distance to the rising crag of rock before a high-pitched whine announced the skyfighter’s approach. From out of the north the sleek white craft dived. Actinic light spat from the alien craft’s nose.
Grasping the young woman’s arm, Rick wrenched her to the left. Energy bolts like strafing machine-gun bullets sizzled into the sand where they had stood but a fraction of a second before.
Rick snapped the fresh clip into the Uzi and sprayed twenty rounds after the retreating ship. The ammunition and effort were wasted. The skyfighter banked and came soaring back for another run at the fleeing humans.
“Zigzag!” Rick shouted and once more pushed Sheryl Lee toward the protection of the limestone outcropping.
Meanwhile, he pulled out another clip and jammed it into the Uzi. Legs wide in a stance of defiance, he lifted the machine pistol and carefully aimed at the incoming craft. His finger curled around the trigger, and he waited, sweat beads popping out on his forehead.
The Visitor ship dipped lower, riding just above the southern horizon. The familiar glare of blue-white light burst from its nose. Sand and flame erupted from the earth as the deadly bolts ripped into the ground. Closer the strafing shafts of power raced on a direct line toward the lone man.
Rick’s trigger finger tensed.
The roar of machine guns filled the air. The skyfighter abruptly pulled up and veered to the east.
Rick stared in disbelief. He hadn’t fired a shot!
The thunder of unbridled mechanical horsepower screamed overhead. The reflection of sunlight on naked metal momentarily blinded Rick’s eyes as he looked up. He blinked away the glare and stared above once again. His disbelief tripled.
“Surfer Boy, get the hell out of there!”
Sheryl Lee’s warning cry brought him to life. He raced to where she waited by the limestone before staring back at the sky. The flashing silver form remained, trailing the skyfighter.
“Has the whole damned world gone mad?” Rick still could not accept what he saw. “Do you know what that is?”
“An airplane,” Sheryl Lee answered simply.
“It’s a Mustang—a P-51!”
“So?”
Overhead the skyfighter soared in a tight loop. The metal plane hung right on the ship’s tail like a shark of the skies.
“That thing’s as old as Wanda Su.e It’s a World War II bomber escort! Perhaps the finest prop fighter the U.S. ever made!” Rick watched the Mustang follow the Visitor craft through a series of rolls. He told himself it v/as impossible, but another of those plastic models he had built as a teenager had suddenly come to life.
The old fighter stuck to the alien ship. Now and then fire flared from the wings of the streamlined fighter and the staccato bark of six 50mm machine guns rolled from the sky.
Mouth agape, Rick’s eyes followed the two aircraft through the cloudless Texas sky. The compact skyfighter rolled, looped, dived, and soared. As though it were tied to the snakes’ ship by some invisible line, the Mustang matched every evasive maneuver, its single engine roaring.
Dogfights like this just didn’t happen anymore, except in war movies. Rick knew that were it not for the fact that one of the ships had come across the galaxy from the fourth planet of the star Sirius, he might have been watching a reenactment of a battle first staged during World War II or the Korean War.
The skyfighter pulled out of an inverse loop and whined toward the limestone outcropping. Still glued to the Visitors’ backside, the P-51 gracefully completed its own loop and opened up with its six wing machine guns again.
“He’s got ’em!” Sheryl Lee’s arms went around Rick’s neck, hugging him in abandoned joy. “He’s got ’em!”
A plume of greasy black smoke erupted from the tail of the skyfighter. The ship swerved from side to side. The Mustang matched every move with machine guns ablaze.
Abruptly, the Visitor ship dipped, diving toward the ground. It did not pull up from this maneuver but plowed into the earth a hundred yards from the crippled Wanda Sue.
“Down!” Rick pulled Sheryl Lee to the ground, covering her with his body. His own arm sheltered his head from the explosion he knew would come.
There was no blast. The skyfighter simply lay in the sand, black smoke pouring from its cracked hull.
Overhead the Mustang did a victory roll, banked eastward, and disappeared over the horizon.
Chapter 6
Rick ducked through Wanda Sue's rear exit, holding a thermos half filled with coffee and a plastic milk bottle sloshing with water. Sheryl Lee sat in the shadow cast by one of the crumpled wings. He walked beside her and lowered himself to the sand. A sigh of relief slid from his lips as he stretched out his right leg.
“Still hurting?” the redhead asked without looking up.
“Some, but I can manage.” He reached behind his back and pulled Joe Bob’s .45 from his belt and nudged the young woman’s shoulder. “You better take this. You might need it before we get out of here.”
“Out of here?” She turned to him, doubt masking the lovely features of her oval face. “We aren’t going anywhere. This plane’s still filled with medical supplies I have to get to Dallas and Fort Worth. We can’t leave them here in the middle of nowhere.”
“We sure as hell can’t carry them out of here on our backs,” Rick replied with a shake of his head. “And we’re not just waiting here until somebody comes along. Odds are that somebody will be big, nasty, green, and reptilian. The Visitors are going to miss that skyfighter and eventually send others out looking for it—if they aren’t on the way already.”
Sheryl Lee didn’t answer. Her gaze returned to the sand at her feet.
“I found this in the cockpit. Can you point out where
we might be?” Rick pulled one of Joe Bob’s charts from his jacket and opened it across his lap.
“We passed over Lubbock but hadn’t left the Cap-rock.” Sheryl Lee’s fingertip found a black circle enclosing two parallel lines that represented what had once been Lubbock’s airport. She traced eastward. “This is the edge of the Caprock. We’re someplace in between.”
“Caprock?” Rick lifted eyebrows.
“These flatlands are the top of the Caprock.” She swept an arm before her. “The Caprock ends abruptly with an escarpmentlike drop that’s eight hundred, maybe a thousand feet down to rugged country. It’s still considered plains, but it ain’t like any midwestem wheat-field plains you’re used to seeing on television. It’s red sand country. Nothing but wind and water-eroded gullies and ravines. It’s good for growing prickly-pear cactus, mesquites, rocks, and more rocks.”
“Not exactly hospitable sounding.” Rick’s attention returned to the chart. “What are these dots?”
Sheryl Lee shrugged. “Could be any of several small towns spread out in this area. Most of them are little more than a gas station and maybe a country store. The type of places you’d miss if you blinked while drivin’ through.”
“They sound like
the type of places the Visitors would ignore. Too small to worry about.” Rick pointed to a dot north of an imaginary line running eastward from Lubbock to the Caprock. “If we managed to make it halfway to this Caprock of yours, we should be relatively close to here.”
“Close if you consider forty to sixty miles close,” Sheryl Lee said without enthusiasm. “This country’s like walking in the desert, Surfer Boy. Little or no water, and if we miss that town by even a fraction of a degree, then all we’ll do is just keep walking to nowhere.”
“There’s got to be highways and farm roads, and they have road signs.” He pushed gingerly from the ground, trying not to wince as renewed pain shot through his thigh.
“Ranch roads,” Sheryl Lee corrected. “You’re in West Texas now; it’s ranch roads.”
“Farm, ranch—it doesn’t matter as long as they’re roads with signs.” He reached down and helped her to her feet. “At least we won’t have to contend with hills.” While she brushed the sand from the seat of her khaki coveralls, Rick surveyed the vast flatlands surrounding them. For miles and miles all he saw was miles and miles. His gaze came to rest on the wrecked skyfighter.
“It’s stopped smoking.” He nodded at the downed Visitor craft. “I want to take a look inside. With luck they were carrying side arms.” He patted the pockets of his jacket. “I’ve only got a few more clips before this Uzi’s useless.”
Sheryl Lee waved for him to lead the way. With another nod Rick stepped across the sand to a crack twice his width that split the side of the skyfighter. He flicked the safety off on the machine pistol and poked his head inside.
The craft’s white interior was now a smoky slate gray. Here and there an occasional light winked on the control panel, but for the most part the skyfighter’s instruments appeared to be quite dead.
“There’s a pilot and a co-pilot,” he said to Sheryl Lee as she entered the craft. “Both are still in their seats. Better yet, they’re both wearing energy pistols.”
V 11 - The Texas Run Page 4
