Nightstalkers (19 page)

Moms dumped air, the rest of the team following. “Mac, you take the front yard. Nada, back. Doc, safest place for you is to follow Nada. Eagle, how’s the Wall going?”

Eagle had the Snake at sixty feet AGL and was flying the outer fence of Senators Club. Every quarter mile, he fired a probe into the ground. The probes linked to each other, transmitting a field that would contain the Fireflies inside of them.

“It’s a big damn compound,” Eagle said. “Forty-four percent contained.”

“Faster,” Moms ordered. “Roland, we’re coming in.”

Roland had heard the screaming, which had abruptly stopped, but he was more focused on the immediate area. The Fireflies were out and who knew what they would get into? He grabbed his deflated parachute and wound some of the material around one of the pipes that protruded from the roof, using it as a makeshift rope. He climbed down to a balcony on the second floor. He busted through a large set of glass French doors.

Roland moved swiftly along the second-floor hallway, kicking doors, clearing the top floor.

There were a lot of doors.

Moms landed in the front yard, dumped her chute, and readied her MP-5. The area was well lit with streetlights and all she needed was someone working the graveyard shift to spot her. Then again, the only people here who might work a late shift were ER doctors. Support was on its way to help secure the community, but while Eagle was working on containment, she had to maintain concealment. She dragged her chute and stuffed it behind a clump of bushes in front of the house, then went to the wide-open front door.

She slid in the door, back against the wall, quartering the room, muzzle of the weapon following her eyes. The foyer was overwhelming, double staircases wrapping down to an entrance bigger than the house in Kansas where she’d spent many dark years.

She edged around to the open doorway.

There was a Rift. It appeared stable.

A woman lay in front of it.

Moms knelt next to the woman. Reaching into her vest, she pulled out an amyl nitrate capsule and cracked it under Lilith’s nose. She stirred, eyes blinking, disoriented.

“How many golden sparks came out of the computer?” Moms asked.

Lilith frowned. “Six. I think six.”

“Anything else?”

“No. It got my husband.” She giggled drunkenly. “No prenup, but a great insurance policy.”

Moms already had a syringe in her hand and jabbed it into Lilith’s arm, knocking her out.

Roland’s voice came over the net. “I’m coming down the stairs. Uh, the set to the, uh, east.”

“Doc, I’ve got the Rift in—” She looked about. “I guess the dining room. Front of the house, to the right as you enter; the front left coming from the rear.”

Doc was breathing hard—he was always breathing hard after he jumped. “On my way.”

“I saw six Fireflies leave the house,” Roland reported, walking up next to Moms. He took up a position just behind her, covering her blind spot.

“Eagle?” Moms asked over the radio.

Eagle reported in. “Eighty-two percent secure.”

“We’ve got six Fireflies, people,” Moms announced on the net. “Let’s secure this house as a base of operations and get a Wall around it.”

Eagle shot the last probe into the ground and checked his display. A continuous flashing red light surrounded Senators Club: a Wall that the Fireflies could not breach. They never ventured that far from their entry point anyway, the record being just short of two miles, but the Wall was an extra measure, and the Nightstalkers excelled at extra measures.

Nada was peering out a front window, hidden by luxurious curtains. All the lights in the house had been turned off and Doc was at work with his laptop and transmitter, the FireWire having been preconnected this time. This Rift was stable so far, but he worked with an appropriate sense of urgency.

Mac had the rear of the house covered and Roland was still clearing the first floor, with Kirk’s assistance.

It was a damn big house.

There was no sign of anything possessed by a Firefly, but sometimes the little bastards were on the down low, waiting for the exact right moment to attack.

“No one else in here,” Roland finally reported.

Moms switched freqs to talk to Ms. Jones.

“We have containment. The community is Walled. One witness here with us. One scientist through the Rift. Six Fireflies out.”

“Support is six minutes out from a Forward Operating Base,” Ms. Jones replied. “They will take over the civilian security for Senators Club. Six hundred and forty-four people live in there. Six forty-three now. Let’s keep this quiet. Support will keep things looking normal.”

“I’ve got it,” Doc announced.

Moms looked over as the golden glow from the Rift snapped out of existence. Doc went to the laptop and shut the lid, wrapping it in a thermal blanket.

“Rift is closed,” she reported to Ms. Jones, thankful they weren’t having a repeat of the Fun Outside Tucson.

“Good luck and good hunting,” Ms. Jones said, then clicked off the net.

Moms joined Nada by the front window. “What do you think?”

“Clusterfuck,” Nada said. “There’re eyes everywhere in a place like this. Eagle or I walk down the street, they’d call security on us. We don’t fit in.”

“You think the rest of us fit in?” Moms indicated her camos, body armor, combat vest, and weapon.

“You got a point.” Nada frowned. He looked over his shoulder at Doc securing the Rift computer. “Even Doc don’t fit in here. We could use an Asset who understands a place like this.”

“I’ll ask Ms. Jones. This will be our base of operations for the duration. Have Doc Wall it off so we don’t have to worry about a Firefly coming in.”

“Unless one stayed,” Nada warned.

“That might be the case,” Moms said, “but I feel better with a Wall up. And Roland said he saw six going out of the house. Doc?”

“I’ll have it up in two minutes.”

“Good.”

Nada looked around. “I don’t like this house.”

The room was a mess from the dinner party. Moms took a whiff and wrinkled her nose. “We’re going to have to clean this up.”

She noticed that Nada was glancing around with more disgust than she would have preferred.

“It’s just a house, people,” Moms announced over the net. “I don’t care if there’s a baby grand by the front door or two grand staircases. It’s another close and burn. Just like the others. We’ve already accomplished the close.”

Nada shook his head slightly, indicating he thought otherwise, but he didn’t say anything.

There were indeed two huge staircases that twisted down and around into the foyer like parentheses and Nada didn’t understand the redundancy. They both got you to roughly the same place on
the same floor. It just made either floor a bit harder to defend if the other floor were breached. In fact, the whole place was going to be a nightmare to secure against infiltration, although they would have the Wall in place to protect against the Fireflies.

“I don’t think the architect was thinking urban defense or room clearing when he drew up the plans,” Moms said, seeing him look about.

The huge, open windows made Nada nervous as he always envisioned a sniper was out there, tracking his every movement. Before they turned them off, the bulbs in the table lamps had been so dim they made tiny circles of feeble lights under their heavy shades while the overhead recessed lighting had been so bright that any sniper within a mile could have seen them scratch their asses.

Moms cocked her head, which meant Ms. Jones’s voice was in her ear. She was nodding, receiving new instructions.

While she was listening, Doc announced: “I’ve placed four probes on the corners. We’ve got a Wall extending five meters square from the house.”

As he was speaking, Doc walked over to the computer and pulled out his small set of instruments, much like a thief had lock picks.

After a minute, Moms turned on the team net. “Support has the Forward Operating Base being set up around ten miles from here in a secure location. They’ve got civilian vehicles for us and we can offload our gear from the Snake. Roland and Kirk and Doc will stay here and clean the place up and keep the house secure. Mac, Nada, and I will STABO out to the FOB and drive back in with the gear. Questions?”

There were none. There rarely were.

“Eagle?” Moms asked. “Time to pick up?”

“I’m en route. Be on the roof, please. Three mikes out.”

“Here,” Doc said, holding out the hard drive. “Ms. Jones would want that.”

Moms stuffed it in one of the pockets on her combat vest.

Moms, Nada, and Mac took the stairs two at a time. Mac pulled on the rope leading to the attic, and the trap door opened and a set of wooden stairs unfolded. They went into the dark, hot space, night-vision goggles active. Mac searched about, then led them over to a window that looked over the backyard. He opened and leaned out. He reached into his butt pack and retrieved a short length of rope.

Moms and Nada checked the snap links on the front of their combat vests, because Protocol said they should check their snap links before a STABO. Mac looped the rope over a cornice on the roof and scooted out. He quickly climbed the rope to the roof.

“Two mikes,” Eagle reported over the net.

Moms followed, then Nada brought up the rear. They gathered on the top of the roof.

“Check your snap link, Mac,” Nada reminded.

Mac pressed the gate, made sure it was looped through the proper part of his vest and not a part that would tear off. “Roger.”

“One mike,” Eagle reported.

Nada was looking about. Huge houses in all directions, otherwise quiet. He could see quite a ways up here, two stories up plus being on top of the steeply peaked roof. He saw the rolling greens of the golf course not far away. Excellent fields of fire there. But overall: “This is gonna suck.”

“Yep,” Moms said.

“Gonna be hard to keep concealment.”

“We will,” Moms said.

“Yeah.” But Nada didn’t sound very confident. Then again, he never sounded very confident.

“Thirty seconds, from the east,” Eagle informed them.

They turned in that direction. In their goggles they spotted the bulk of the Snake coming toward them, wings vertical. A single hundred-foot-long rope dangled from the belly of the beast. The rope had a series of small loops in it, each fifteen feet apart. Eagle brought the Snake to a hover overhead and the rope slid along the roof. Mac clipped in first to the third attachment point from the end. Moms went farther along the rope and clipped to the second attachment point. Nada was last on the final attachment point. As his snap link closed he radioed Eagle.