Alien Hunter: Underworld (2 page)

“And what about a replacement? Or, God forbid, even two. Or fifty? Why don't they send us a whole team of detectives and a nice chunk of SWAT? Seems the logical thing to do.”

“They regard this as a small problem. One we can handle ourselves. They haven't sent support, out of respect for us.”

“Have you ever told them the truth?”

“What truth?”

“That only one person is able to even get near these critters? I need support, Diana. The risk is just incredible.”

“We have messages that specifically forbid you to kill, as you know. You've got to promise me you'll abide by them.”

“So what do I do? Bag them up? Drag them off to a supermax?”

She sighed. She knew perfectly well that they could not be contained.

“Over the past nine months, I've done four. If Aeon's telling the truth and this is a rogue band, maybe I can wrap the problem up on this mission. Finish the thing.”

She leaned far back in her chair, her long dark hair falling behind her, her green eyes, so deceptively soft, filling with uneasy calculation. Her face, an almost perfect oval, took on an expression that Flynn knew all too well. When she was twenty, it must have been a soft face, sweet with invitation. Her journey to thirty had been a hard one, though, during which she'd seen death and done some killing. Her face still said angel, but now it also said soldier. Hidden behind that cloud of Chanel was a woman with a tragic secret: The blood of some of her own cops was on her hands. Flynn knew she was as haunted by the deaths of members of their original team, who had been killed by Morris and his group, as he was by Abby's disappearance.

“Losing you would be a phenomenal disaster, Flynn. You're right about that. I'm going to have to order you to stand down on this one.”

For a little while in the dangerous period when they had been tracking Morris, the two of them were together twenty-four hours a day, sleeping in the same room for mutual protection, and they got to be a thing—sort of, anyway. They had wanted each other, but he was not able to dismiss Abby's ghost. Four years ago, their affair was an act of desperation, which had faded when the threat became less. With her sitting in the boss's chair and him married to a ghost, he considered it entirely over.

“Time, Diana. I've gotta move.”

“You heard me.”

As he walked out, he called Transportation and told the operator, “I want to be in Mountainville, PA, in best time.”

Diana came up behind him.

He walked faster.

“Flynn, at least wear the rig.”

The rig was designed to record his moves, to be used in a training film. “Nope.”

“Unless you wear it, we can't hope to teach others. You can't work alone forever, Flynn.”

“Fine. Hire Mac.” MacAdoo Terrell was an old friend from Texas. He'd worked the Morris case with them. He was among the best sniper shots in the world, if not the best, and Flynn could use a sniper in this.

“You know I can't.”

“No rig. Forget the rig.”

She hurried along, working to keep up as he strode out of the command center.

“Flynn, please!”

He stopped. “The rig contains electronics. As I have previously explained, when I wear it, the electronics will be detected, and therefore, I will fail to engage the perpetrators. Of course, they may well engage me, in which case, I'm done.”

“Do not go out there.”

“I could end this!”

“Flynn, it's a trap, and you're completely buying in to it. I don't get why you don't see this.”

“If you know you're entering a trap, it's not a trap—it's a mistake on the part of your enemy. So I'm gonna walk into their mistake—and they don't make many—and I will not lose this chance.”

“Flynn, will you grant me one favor? A small one?”

“I'm not gonna wear the rig—but, yeah, something else.”

“Come back alive.”

“Fine. Done. Good-bye.”

This time, she stayed behind. He passed through the two departments that concealed the command center, went to the transport hub, and got in the waiting SUV.

The driver was silent. Flynn was silent. Usual routine. He spent the drive to Dulles looking at satellite views of Mountainville. Frustrated by what he was seeing, he texted Logistics:
Throw me something better than Google Maps.

That's all we have. Not a strategic location.

He punched in the tech's phone number.

The answer was immediate. “Sir?”

“Get to the Pennsy Department of Geology, or whatever they call it over there. You want a map that details any isolated watercourses within two miles of the house. Mountain streams, that type of thing. Any that are spring fed and absolutely pure. And any caves, crevasses, rocky areas, especially near the good water. You want a map that shows all of that. You got it, you call me. Make it fast—it's as urgent as they come.”

He put down his phone, then returned to the Google map. Steep hills, lots of cliffs, which meant exposed climbing. For them, the best terrain. For him, the worst.

The car dropped him at general aviation, and he strode quickly through to the waiting plane.

As he entered the cabin, he asked the pilot only one question: “How long?”

“An hour and sixteen minutes.”

“Get me there in an hour.” If this had any chance of working, he had to be ready by sunset. Maybe the aliens would be there one more night. Not two, though. Never happen.

“Sir?”

“I know the plane. It can do it.”

“It'll risk the engines.”

“Do it.”

Once they were airborne, he called the unit's FBI liaison officer. “Flynn here. Get the body out of the hands of the locals immediate. Standard procedure: autopsy and record, then freeze. Provide the family with stock ashes in an urn. The local cops are to be told that this is a terrorism matter. If they talk, they're gonna be spending the rest of their lives inside. Obviously, make certain there's no press.”

“Got it,” the liaison officer said.

The engines howled. The pilot was running them as ordered.

Flynn watched the land slide past far below, the trees tinged with autumn, little towns nestled in among them, America in its quiet majesty, her people in their innocence.

He wanted things to be right for them. He hadn't been able to protect Abby, but he could protect them, at least a little, at least for a while.

As always at such moments, he wished he had Mac with him. They'd grown up together but gone down opposite paths. Mac was a criminal, more or less, so tangled up in being a DEA informant and massaging the drug cartels, you couldn't tell at any given time which side of the law he was on.

If Flynn missed anybody besides Abby, it was Mac. He'd helped wreck Morris's operation just like he lived his generally illegal life—with skill, ease, and pleasure.

His extensive criminal record made him a security risk. So no clearance, which meant no job, despite the fact that he'd been effective and, unlike most of the others who worked on that case, lived. Morris had been running his operations out of a ranch near Austin, Texas, complete with bizarre intelligence-enhanced animals and human accomplices.

Flynn slid his hand over the butt of his pistol. What success he'd had—the killing of four of the things so far—came from one central fact: He had become very, very fast with his weapons. None of the trainees he'd been given so far were able to come even close.

It wasn't too surprising, given that a man could practice for a lifetime and never learn to shoot a pistol as fast as Flynn could. He'd always been good with a gun, but in the past few months, he'd reached a level of proficiency that was, frankly, difficult even for him to understand.

The engine note changed, dropping. The plane shuddered, headed down. Flynn looked at his watch. Fifty-four minutes.

He hit the intercom. “Thank you.”

The reply was a burst of static. The pilot was probably thinking about whom he'd have to deal with if he blew his engines.

From the air, Mountainville appeared to be little more than a few stores and some houses tucked in among a low range of hills. The single-strip airfield wasn't manned. The plane could land, though, and that's all that mattered.

The place looked the picture of peace, but Flynn knew different. Somewhere down there a man had endured what was probably the worst death a human being could know.

Also down there, he had reason to hope, would be his quarry.

The plane bounced onto the runway and trundled to a stop, its engines still roaring. He got out and crossed the tarmac to the car that had been left for him. As per established procedure, the vehicle was dropped off by the regional FBI office. Nobody was to meet him. What Flynn did, he did alone.

He tossed his duffel bag into the trunk, then got behind the wheel. He sat silently, preparing himself for whatever might come. Then he started the engine.

The hunter was as ready as he could be. He headed off toward Mountainville, and whatever might linger there.

 

CHAPTER TWO

THE TAIL
Flynn had been expecting showed up ten minutes after he left the airport. Now he drove down a quiet country road—two lanes, not in good repair, choked on both sides with pines. Diana's tail was about a mile behind, staying out of sight, or imagining that he or she was doing so.

As he drove, the forest on his left fell away to reveal an open field. Beyond it was Mountain Ridge, a low rise of land shadowed by the darkness of the pines that covered it. Somewhere along that ridge, Daniel Miller had met his end.

Flynn noticed a flicker of movement in the rearview mirror. He sped up a little, drove until he saw a mailbox ahead, the name
MILLER
painted on it. He turned quickly into the drive and sped up the unpaved double track.

He began to see flickering light bars winking through the trees ahead. So the locals still hadn't left, which was not good. The longer the body stayed out there, the more chance for word of its condition to spread. Public knowledge would turn very quickly into public terror if the world realized what was happening.

At that moment, his cell phone vibrated. It was a text—and an odd one: the number three repeated three times. Nothing else. It wasn't a police code, at least not one familiar to a Texas cop.

He glanced in the rearview, but the apparent tail was gone, so he killed the phone and pulled over. He looked for the number where the text had originated, but it was blocked. He called Diana.

“Did you just text me a three-code of some sort?”

“No, I did not. What did you get?”

“Three threes from a blocked number.”

“Some sort of phone scam?”

“On a line this secure? I don't think so.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“By the way, pull off your tail.”

“Flynn, you need somebody on your back.”

“The poor guy is vulnerable as hell, you know that.” Only it wasn't just any FBI agent pulled in for the duty. It was Diana herself, of course. Soon enough, he'd send her packing.

He hung up and returned to his drive. A moment later, the phone buzzed again.

“Go ahead.”

“You got your maps.”

He killed the phone and pulled over. Drawing his iPad out of his duffel, he examined the maps he'd been sent. They were eleven years old, but far more detailed than what he'd found on Google. He saw the Miller cabin, and another cabin two miles away. Could be others around by now, but from the look of the woods he was in, not too many. Good. The fewer people who were exposed to this, the better.

There was a little stream, called a “kill” in this area, from the original Dutch word
kil.
This part of Pennsylvania had originally been settled by immigrants from Holland. Hecker Kill descended from the mountains, passing no structures until it went under the road and meandered across the flats toward the Delaware River. So the water in the upper reaches would be as pure as Earth could make it, the milk of the planet, just the kind of water the creatures liked best. There were also deep ravines.

If the aliens were in one of those ravines, that could be useful. The deepest of them also had a pool at the bottom, and caves.

They liked hiding in caves, and the nearby water supply would likely make that their first choice. Somewhere between here and there would be the point of ambush.

He looked long at the map, committing all the elevations to memory. Too bad there were no water depths. He might have to take one hell of a risk involving that pool, and it had been a dry autumn.

Thinking out confrontations with the aliens was like playing chess for your life.

He started the car again. Soon the drive was choked on both sides by dense growths of pine. As he proceeded up the dark, steepening track, he prepared to meet Eve Miller.

He felt his body relax into a scholar's slump, felt his breathing become less measured. He'd be Dr. Robert Winter, an infectious disease specialist from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

He counted the ruts of six vehicles in the drive—one of them large enough to be an ambulance. Or, in this case, a coroner's wagon. The tire marks went in only one direction. So nobody had left yet. He wasn't about to expose himself to the local cops. The FBI guys had better be in control of that body by now, and all evidence confiscated. The tail he'd deal with in due time.

The drive ascended steeply, penetrating into thicker and thicker stands of pines and oaks, ash and maple. Lovely spot.

He reached the row of official vehicles parked at cockeyed angles in the grassy roadside. There were two black FBI Fords, the coroner's wagon, and two sheriff's department cruisers.

Farther on, he could see a log cabin huddled under an overhanging oak.

He pulled his car up past the official vehicles and into the gravel roundabout in front, then sat listening and watching, just letting himself settle into the scene. Then he opened his duffel again and took out his weapons.