“Well,” Dan said, spitting blood from his mouth as he got up, “at least I know now why you wear that helmet.” He leaned toward her. “You don’t want to show off that scar I gave you, do you? Too bad. I bet your little train friends would find it very pretty.”
She seemed to fly through the air at him, foot first. He made a grab for it, but her hands grabbed at him as well, and for a few seconds, she rode him like a monkey on a tiger. He punched her square in the chest, feeling only Kevlar. Though his strength got her off him, she landed holding his Ruger and blackjack.
“So now, supak,” she said as she tossed the revolver and cosh away. “Maybe now you know why I stopped you here.” She put her empty hands out to encompass all the beauty around them. “I stopped you here because, boot knife or no boot knife, this is where I’m going to beat you to death.”
She took a purposeful step toward him, her brain clearly writing a check she was certain her body could cash, but then the Guardian MAX sunk a foot into the ground, its roof accordioning the windows like a beer can crushed by an invisible giant.
Dan gaped, and Amina whirled around, as a cone of thunder slapped onto the MAX, making the weapon holders grab the sides of their heads and drop, spasming, to the ground.
Dan felt an up-rushing of wind and looked in that direction as, out of a fluffy cloud, came what looked like a big, black, metal hermit crab, with blunt wings instead of legs. In the middle of those wings were what looked like huge room fans facing downward. As Dan watched, the crab-shaped thing floated down as if on the strings of a celestial marionette. Three wheels folded out from its underside, and the thing landed fifty feet away.
Dan spun again as he heard tortured wheels ripping up the ground. He was just in time to see the hammered Guardian speeding in the opposite direction. He was hoping the hermit crab thing would utterly destroy it with a death ray or whatever, but no such luck. He decided just to be grateful for this seemingly divine intervention as he collected his blackjack, Ruger, and Walther.
By that time, a hatchway had appeared, seemingly magically, on the side of the hermit crab’s head, and a familiar face popped out of the opening.
“Hey Cobra,” said Dan’s veteran military and intelligence agency partner, Peter “Cougar” Conley. “Need a lift?”
Chapter 17
First things first: Alex.
She was lying in a clear-topped capsule tucked in the back of the hermit crab-shaped plane’s oval, off-white, seemingly porcelain interior—resting comfortably, if the serene expression on her face was any indication.
“We’ve already done an MRI, CT Scan, a full range of X-rays, and even Ultrasound,” Conley assured him.
“We?” Dan echoed, not taking his eyes off his daughter.
Conley made a general encompassing motion with his right hand to indicate the plane in general and, specifically, the medical capsule—med-cap for short—that Alex was lying in.
“She’s got a little internal bleeding,” Conley informed him, “a hairline fracture about the size and width of a fingernail clipping, a nice collection of bumps, bruises, and cuts, but nothing permanent.” He put a reassuring hand on Dan’s shoulder. “With a little R and R she should be good as new.”
As much as Dan tried to concentrate on Alex’s face to pick up anything only a father might notice, he couldn’t help letting his gaze slide off to take in the jet’s extraordinary interior. The place was so sleek and elegantly designed that he wouldn’t have been surprised if Conley had called it an iPlane.
The cabin was not divided into different areas by walls or doors. It was one big oval area, with the only indication of front, back, and sides being the placement of the piloting, passenger, and storage sections. Dan knew there had to be spots for the lavatory and galley, but he hadn’t been able to spot them as yet. Instead, he saw six other compartments spaced on either side of where Alex lay.
“What is this?” Dan asked his partner. “A flying hospital?”
It was an understandable guess. Although Conley had assured them that they were at least thirty thousand feet in the air he could sense no evidence of it. He had concluded that only the sick or the injured would get that sort of treatment.
Conley noted where Dan was glancing. “Oh, I get it,” he realized. “No, buddy, those are dream caps.” When Dan looked nonplussed, Conley elaborated. “Sleeping quarters, with no diagnostic equipment, anti-magnetic screens, or radiation shielding like the med-cap has.”
Dan wrested his eyes away from his daughter and looked at his taller, slimmer, and blonder friend, who had always reminded him of a cross between Jimmy Stewart and Clint Eastwood.
“Thanks, man, you pulled my fat out of the fire once again.”
Conley dismissed it with a grin. “My pleasure as always, buddy. It’s not like you haven’t done the same for me.” He nodded at the med-cap. “Or her.”
For the first time in days, Dan Morgan let out a relaxed sigh, and took the time to study his surroundings for something other than threats. His eyes scoured the ship’s controls, which looked far more like a videogame room with an overactive thyroid than any cockpit he’d ever seen.
“Brother,” he breathed, putting his hands out. “I always thought you could fly anything, but this…!”
Conley stepped beside Dan, and replaced his hand on his shoulder—only this time the grip was more preparatory than reassuring.
“Who said anything about me flying this thing?” he told Dan. “I only came along because we were afraid that if you didn’t see a friendly face on our landing, you might start shooting. And we couldn’t risk you damaging this baby.”
Conley walked to an ergonomic seat that looked like it had all but grown from the floor covering—a floor covering that seemed like a combination of the most expensive carpet crossbred with memory foam—and sat down.
“But,” Dan stammered, “if you’re not flying this thing, who is?”
“Come on, buddy,” Conley chided, his grin getting ever wider. “Can’t you guess?”
“Good morning, Mr. Morgan,” a familiar voice said, coming from everywhere and nowhere. “Welcome to Flying Fox One, or, as we like to call it, Palecto.”
Conley rolled his eyes, still smiling. “Actually, only he likes to call it that.”
“Renard?” Dan exclaimed to the empty air.
“Who else?” Conley interjected. “You think I can afford something like this?”
Dan tried to comprehend it, but failed. He looked to his partner and just said, “Palecto?”
“Don’t ask,” Conley suggested. But it was too late.
“The Torresian flying fox,” came the disembodied voice, whose name, Renard, meant “fox” in French. “Initially described as a separate species from genus Pteropus, belonging to the megabat suborder Megachiroptera—the largest bats in the world.”
Watching Dan chew on that, Conley leaned back and crossed his legs. “Wow, Lily,” he breathed. “How do you stand him?”
“As you well know,” came the voice of Lily Randall, their redheaded Zeta colleague and Scott Renard’s significant other, “he’s not like this all the time.” Cougar and Cobra could imagine her fixing the tech billionaire with a warm smile. “But I have to admit he’s justly proud of the craft that saved your ass, Dan.”
Conley got up from the chair. “Yeah, to be honest, Danny boy, he’s got good reason to be.” The lanky pilot pointed at the flight section of the curved ovoid wall. “That’s not a videogame console with delusions of grandeur. That’s a videogame console with deserving grandeur.”
Cougar ticked the benefits off on his fingers.
“Vertical takeoff and landing, advanced radar and sensors, amazing maneuverability and supercruise speed…”
Dan knew that meant it could maintain sustained supersonic flight while most aircraft could only intermittently reach those speeds.
&nbs
p; “…and to top it all off,” Conley concluded, “the megabat connection is apt, since this baby flies blind to any other aircraft.” He turned back to Dan. “The FX-1 makes Stealth Bombers look positively 3D.”
“And that’s not even mentioning its data fusion capabilities,” came a third voice Dan instantly recognized as that of Lincoln Shepard—Zeta’s resident computer master and king nerd. Lord knew Dan had heard him in his head through the late, lamented Zeta ear-comms often enough. “Or its advanced avionics, net-centricity, situational awareness, human-system integration…”
“Linc?” Dan interrupted. “What? Are you all there?”
The voices fell silent until Karen O’Neal, Linc’s fellow I.T. expert and girlfriend, spoke up.
“Not all, Cobra,” she said. “But we’ll just have to do for now.”
Dan was unfazed by the short Zeta roll-call. He was just pleased that there was anyone else at all.
“Yes, you will,” he assured the voices. “You will, with bells on. But where’s there?”
Conley clapped Dan on the shoulder a third time, and motioned at the empty space in front and above him.
“They were holding off on doing this next magic trick,” Cougar explained. “Linc was afraid you’d get all scared and start gasping ‘ghost.’”
“I was not!” Linc’s disembodied voice complained.
But before Dan could comment, Scott Renard’s face appeared in the empty air in front of the two partners. It was not ghostly at all, or flickering in any way.
“Welcome, Dan,” he said. “Good to have you back.”
Then the others—Lily, Linc, and Karen—appeared over his shoulders. They couldn’t contain themselves. They all started laughing, even celebrating, together in the empty, open air. But they all knew the respite had to be short-lived.
“Okay, okay,” Dan said, as if quieting an unruly class of geeks. Even he had to admit how amazing it was to interact with a bunch of associates floating in the air in front of him. “I’ve got questions. Who’s got answers?”
The others looked at one another before Lily took over. “We all do, Dan,” she said. “You’ve got”—she looked at Renard, who held up his forefinger—“one hour. Rest, eat, freshen up…”
“Not necessarily in that order,” Linc interjected before Karen backhanded him on the arm.
Dan could now clearly comprehend how grateful they all were to be alive and together, after the monumental and devastating attack.
“You’ll need to hit the ground running,” Lily continued with not a shred of humor. “Debriefing upon your arrival. We’ve got a lot to do and very little time. As much as I hate to admit it, it looks like the destruction of Zeta HQ was just the tip of the iceberg.”
Chapter 18
Given what he and Alex had been through, rest was probably out of the question, so Dan didn’t try. But, also given what they had been through, Dan decided to prepare a retroactive last meal for himself as a reward.
Not surprisingly, Palecto’s larder—once Conley had shown him behind a virtually invisible partition made of the same sleek, cool-to-the-touch material as the rest of the interior—was well-stocked, high end, and ridiculously pretentious.
Once Dan also got help on how to use the seemingly magic cook top, indistinguishable from the rest of the smooth counter surface and activated by smartphone-surface-level touch, he made filet mignon—charred on the outside, mooing on the inside—crispy potato chunks—fried in both duck and bacon fat—and fresh garlic-almond string beans.
The latter wasn’t his choice. Garlic and almonds were the only way the green beans came.
“Now I’m sure my cholesterol can be tested like fine wine,” he cracked as he approached Conley, who stood between the controls and Alex’s med-cap.
Cougar had shown him where the new clothes were, so after an invigorating shower in a state-of-the-art stall—complete with high monsoon shower head, pulsating back jets, a steam generator, and even a foot massage mat—he eschewed the accompanying drying chamber to use the softest and most absorbent towel he had ever experienced, then picked out a brand new wardrobe.
Now Cobra and Cougar truly looked like partners. Both wore extremely comfortable, dark gray, long-sleeve shirts, matching pants, and zip-up collarless jackets. Dan didn’t have to say a word about them. His expression, mixing incredulity with suspicion, made Conley chuckle.
“Don’t knock ’em until you walk a mile in ’em,” he said, mixing clichés. “Anti-odor, breathable, releases heat in the warm, retains heat in the cold. Also surprisingly helpful in camouflaging concealed weapons.”
Dan looked doubtfully at his friend, but raised his eyebrows when Conley pulled one side of his jacket aside to reveal a full shoulder holster rig underneath, complete with Cougar’s current favorite sidearm, a Smith & Wesson 9 Pro.
But instead of dealing with these things directly, Dan merely muttered, “Breathable?”
Conley chuckled while dropping his jacket flap. “That means your sweat not only doesn’t stink, it doesn’t even show.”
The footwear both wore was also very comfortable, but obviously durable—multi-use slip-on shoe-boots that seemed to adjust to their feet with every step, which was helpful as the front of the aircraft seemed to turn transparent.
Dan fought the urge to grab onto something, but recovered his equilibrium as he joined his friend by his daughter’s med-cap.
“You are such a cowboy,” he muttered as a way of dodging his discomfort with standing in mid-air as the world beneath him seemed to get larger. To recover from all the high tech and high comfort surprises, he concentrated on what he was seeing.
“The most secluded place in the King Range Mountains of California’s Lost Coast,” Conley said as green and brown mountains played with black sand and gray rock beaches, while myriad shades of blue warred between the California sky and the Pacific Ocean.
Alex might have known what Conley was talking about, but Dan didn’t. “‘Lost Coast’?” he echoed.
As the Flying Fox sank closer to the mountains and tree tops, Conley explained. “So rough and rocky that roads would be too expensive to build or maintain,” he explained. “Virtually nobody but hikers have come anywhere near here for nearly a hundred years.” He pointed one way. “Sinkyone Wilderness State Park.” He pointed the other. “King Range National Conservation Area.” He pointed straight down. “Fox Burrow.”
Dan didn’t follow his friend’s finger with his eyes, just in case the floor turned translucent too. Instead, he looked up to the mid-morning sky as Palecto floated down until the view was swallowed by mountainsides and pine, spruce and cypress trees.
As with the takeoff and flight, Dan hardly felt the landing, but turned when the same nearly invisible hatch Conley had originally stuck his head out of re-opened. In came two young people in hospital scrubs on either side of a gurney. They only had eyes for the med-cap and Alex.
Lincoln Shepard was behind them, followed by Karen O’Neal. They wore the same shirt, pants, jacket, and slip-on shoe-boots as Cobra and Cougar. Linc remained the same teddy bear of a man, only now even more so, thanks to a bushy beard.
As far as Dan was concerned, Karen was still a vibrant, whip-smart young woman with only two flaws. One, her hair was not as blonde as it used to be, and two, she had chosen to love Linc when, of course, she was way out of his league. But Dan never had, and never would hold that against her.
Seeing them in the flesh made him feel great. He held out his hand to Linc, but the tech guy ignored it, enveloping Dan in a bear hug instead.
“Oh thank god, Cobra,” he said. “You would not believe how hard we tried to find you.”
“Hey, hey, sure I would,” Dan started, but stopped when the two orderlies wheeled Alex by them.
Before they were even completely past, O’Neal took the crook of his arm. “Come on,” she said, giving Lin
c a look that said “first things first.”
They all followed the orderlies out of the aircraft. Dan had to keep himself from stopping to take it all in. The Flying Fox had seemed to become part of the surrounding hangar, having landed in a berth that was obviously designed just for it.
Although Dan managed to keep moving, he couldn’t stop himself from looking up, just as a cunningly camouflaged netting moved into place to obscure their landing vent. Obviously it was not just regulation netting material. It looked something like the stuff that had been on the aircraft’s floor.
With one step, they were in a specially made hangar. The next, they were in a rustic lodge hallway. The next, they were in one of the sleekest, most advanced hospital rooms Dan had ever seen. They let him watch Alex be transferred to one of three intensive care unit beds, then O’Neal touched his elbow again as doctors and nurses started their examination.
“She’s in good hands,” she assured Dan.
“Great hands,” Linc added. Then they all returned to the hallway of the rustic lodge.
Dan shouldn’t have been surprised by any of it. After all, he had seen one of Renard’s other wildly expensive mountaintop houses, but this one had the extra edge of being built in a wilderness, and probably a state and nationally protected wilderness at that. Remembering how many hoops he had to jump through just to renovate his workshop garage, Dan could hardly fathom how many hurdles Renard must have leaped to get this thing done.
He remembered the ruin his workshop garage was now in, and that not only brought him back to the present; it reminded him that while he was Dan Morgan, Scott Renard was Scott Renard. Genius or money could overcome most anything, but genius and money could probably surpass everything.
O’Neal seemed to read his mind. “Took Scott decades to pull this place off. Some grateful high rankers had to look the other way, but the high rankers who replaced them don’t even know it exists. We all want to keep it that way.”
The four Zeta operatives turned a corner, stepped into the Fox Burrow main living space, and everything was forgotten for one stunning moment. The area was a gigantic triangle of stone fireplaces, wooden beams, and floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows displaying a glorious, even breath-taking view of the California coastline, the Pacific Ocean, and the King’s Range Mountains that was not available to anyone else on the planet.
War of Shadows Page 12
