The Forever Man: A Near-Future Thriller (33 page)

“I can see that.” Lane holds his position near the door. If they jump at him, he can be out and running before they even hit the floor. But the men stay comfortably seated and show no signs of hostility.

“You know them?” Lane asks Sam.

“I don’t, but Norman does,” Sam answers as he dries his hands and rests on a short wooden stool by the kettle. “Ah, that’s better,” he says in relief. “It’s nice to sit a spell.”

“So what’s the deal?” Lane asks the men. “Why’d you pick me out of the crowd yesterday?”

“We needed to make sure you were the right guy,” one of the men answers.

“Right guy for what?”

“Can’t tell you that,” the other man replies. Both are relatively young, strongly built, and
hyperalert. Definitely not part of the mainstream prison population.

“So what can you tell me?”

The first man looks out the old windshield into the square. “There’s a lot of people out there. A lot of Street people.”

Of course. The Street Party is heavily represented in here. But why would they seek him out? “Street people,” Lane says. “I wouldn’t know much about that. I’m not very political.”

“Then maybe you should talk to someone who is,” the second man says. “Like Rachel Heinz.”

“And given my present circumstances, how would I do that?”

“We’ll be in touch.”

When the two men leave, Sam turns to Lane. “I’m not sure I followed all that.”

Lane puts his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “You weren’t supposed to.”

***

The morning desert dawns on the trio, an unholy trinity born of darkness incarnate. An alliance forged in the sewers of desperation that flow through the world’s hot spots. Military contractors, all. Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. Ruthless almost beyond reckoning, yet pure in purpose. Their work defines their path.

“You’ve got twenty-four hours,” the guard explains as he scratches the crotch of his fatigues and shifts his weapons belt. “After that, you guys are no longer visitors. You’re prisoners. Understand?”

“Understand,” answers Alpha. The guard has a flat, ruddy face made into mush by too much booze and too little exercise. The man is an annoyance, but a necessary step in carrying out the mission. The trio stares out from the truck bed down the gravel road at the opening in the razor wire that defines the main gate into Pima.

“And remember,” the guard continues, “no gunfire. If there’s any shooting, it’s not only my ass, it’s your ass, too. Got that?”

“Got it,” Alpha says. He turns to his men, who are clad in fatigues with rolled-up sleeves and jungle hats. “All right, let’s go.” Each grabs a transport case and hops down. Neither acknowledges the presence of the guard. In the warrior world, the man is a rodent, at best.

The trio starts walking at a brisk pace down the road, with Alpha in the middle and slightly ahead. The synchronous crunch of their combat boots on the gravel spills across the no-man’s-land and reaches the ears of the enhanced dogs, who turn in their direction and sniff the air.

They don’t like what they smell.

Lane steps into the kitchen plane just as Sam is firing up the propane burner to heat the day’s dishwater.

“Morning,” Sam says. “You sleep all right?”

“I’m not sure,” Lane says as he eyes the cooks plying their trade up front.

“Usually takes a while,” says Sam. “You’ll get used to things, then you’ll be okay.”

A shadow fills the door. One of the men from the Street Party steps in. “You’re in trouble,” he informs Lane. “You’ve got to get out of here. Now.”

“And go where? The downtown Marriott?”

“We just got word that three men entered through the main gate. A military pursuit team.”

“And what might they want with me?”

“I don’t think you want to find out,” the first man says. “You’ve got to go out into the Outer Section. If you stay here, they’ll track you down through informants.”

“I’ll put together a little food and water,” Sam says as he reaches around behind the stool and pulls out a primitive canvas rucksack.

“Wait a few days, then check back at night with Norman’s squadron,” the man says.

“And then what?”

“We’re working on it. Good luck.” The man disappears out the door.

“I have to say, you lead an interesting life,” Sam says as he fills a plastic water bottle. “Even by the standards of this place.”

Alpha peers down the long, open corridor between the towering tails of the big old planes and trains his binoculars into the rippled heat. At the base of the water tower, there seems to be some kind of activity, but it’s at least a quarter mile away, in what the briefing report called the Inner Section. The hot breeze kicks up miniature eddies of dust around his boots as he considers his next move.

Alpha turns to Beta and Gamma. “Okay, let’s get set up.”

They follow him off to the right of the main corridor, into the space between two planes, and open their transport cases. Each holds a gas-powered rifle with a single-action bolt for loading tranquilizer darts tipped with hollow, barbed needles.

Alpha’s transport case, which is barrel shaped, holds something quite different. It represents the best work coming out of the new weapons labs in Asia, where they have moved beyond electronics and into biologics. He carefully unsnaps the safety clasps and opens the two
halves so they rest side by side on the ground. The left half contains a glistening, folded shape that stirs like an insect emerging from a cocoon. Alpha steps back from the case and turns to his team. “Give it some room,” he orders, and the men gladly take several steps backward.

The thing begins to wiggle violently, flinging off its coating of moisture in a bright spray, and tumbling out of the case onto the ground, where it thrashes about and its wings unfold into a delicate network of small bones, cartilage, and transparent membrane tissue. Each a foot long, the wings beat randomly and sporadically as it struggles toward a synchronous state. Then, in a sudden explosion of motion, the thing takes to the air, its wings beating as rapidly as those of a hummingbird or insect.

As the creature hovers motionless in front of them, Alpha can now make out the details of the body: a brown, scaly tube about ten inches long and thick as a toilet-paper roll. The rear tapers into a membrane-covered tail that provides control and stabilization, and the madly beating wings attach at the midpoint of the tube. Two inches from the front, a pair of bulbous eyes are embedded on each side, and now they dart about, taking in the planes, the desert, the men. But the thing’s real sensory power begins just ahead of the eyes, where the tube shrinks slightly in size, like lipstick in a holder, and changes color to a tender pink. This large, fleshy projection is covered with dozens of small orifices, like holes in a salt shaker, and collectively they form a very powerful snout. A nasal probe that has been pretuned to the scent of Lane Anslow.

As Alpha and the men watch, the snout slowly rotates, rises to a height of six feet, and begins to leisurely drift down the space between the planes. Its wings emit a snarly hum, like a mob of tiny engines let loose at full throttle.

Alpha motions the men forward. They fall in single file behind the lead of the snout. The final phase of the pursuit has begun.

The heat is seriously affecting Lane by the time he spots the plane. A sneaky, dry desert heat, the breath of an obnoxious oven set to
BAKE
. It instantly evaporates the sweat oozing from his pores and turns it to a salty powder long before he feels damp or uncomfortable. But now it’s sapping his strength along with his sweat, and he knows he needs to find shelter from the midday heat and rest.

He has reached a clearing in the tangle of junked aircraft, an elongated meadow of hard dirt in the forest of wings, engines, and metal bodies. At the far end of the meadow, an old jet transport reposes, a military version of a popular passenger jet. The landing gear on its wings is fully extended, although the tires are flat, and the body appears fully preserved—except that the entire front section has been neatly sheared off a few yards behind the cockpit. This proud, old, decapitated bird rests with its tail down, its front elevated about twenty feet above the ground,
where it blindly faces the clearing.

As Lane approaches the plane, he looks up at the vacant cavity where the forward fuselage has been severed. It will give him a good view of anyone approaching, and also provide a well-ventilated place to rest. Sam has already warned him that the temperatures inside the planes soar to over 200 degrees if they aren’t protected somehow.

After walking under the wing to the rear, he spots an open service door by the rear galley and enters. All the paneling is gone, and he sees up a long, inclined tunnel to the brilliant opening at the front, where a few seats still remain.

After climbing through the hot stink of overcooked metal and plastic, he reaches the front, and removes the seat covers to form a mattress of sorts a yard back from the lip of the cavity. He then positions himself so that when he raises his head, he can survey the clearing. He wearily settles down on the mattress. His path through the Outer Section was completely random, and the ground was too hard to leave footprints. He reaches into the rucksack and takes a carefully restrained swallow from the plastic water bottle. It’s imperative that he conserve energy so his water and food last as long as possible.

He rolls over onto his stomach, rests his head on his crossed hands, and listens. Nothing but the wind. Less than a minute later, he is sound asleep.

***

His eyes are still shut when the burning snarl of the hum awakens him, like a band saw struggling through hardwood. It bites gradually into his sleep and slowly pulls his eyes open. Lane raises his head to look forward out the front of the plane. Nothing. Just a great oval of blue sky and high cirrus at the truncated end of the fuselage.

He’s only a few feet from the lip of the cavity, and about to peek over the edge to the clearing when the thing suddenly rises into view and hovers not a yard in front of him. The pink nasal probe, with its sea of small holes, points directly his way and the brown eyes are firmly locked on his own. Fascinating. Disgusting. And probably highly dangerous. He quickly rises to where he can see over the lip, and spots three men in fatigues advancing at a brisk trot. They’ve spotted him. One stops to guard the front of the plane while the other two continue out of sight down the two flanks.

Lane bounds down the aisle. Behind him, the burning hum persists. Looking back over his shoulder, he sees the thing tracking him, maintaining a steady distance of about six feet. No time to deal with that now. As he approaches the midpoint in the fuselage, he sees one of the men pop in through the rear galley door and raise a rifle.

As the man takes aim and fires, Lane darts out an open emergency exit that puts him on the wing. Behind him, he hears a
spang
of metal on metal after an explosive pop from the weapon. While he sprints down the wing’s tapered and curved surface, a voice shouts, “Port side!” As he reaches the tip, the wing bends perilously under his weight. Lane sits down so he can slide off the end without losing his balance. The end of his slide dumps him atop a small aircraft snuggled under the wing of the jet. He slides down the curve of its fuselage and hits the ground running. A small break. His pursuers will have to run around the plane to get to him, and by that time he will be deep in the maze of aeronautical flotsam.

Except for the goddam snout. It tracks him relentlessly and taunts him with the burn of its hum.

Lane sprints onward, past giant wheels, cast-off engines, sheared tails, fuel pods, stacks of rotors, and desiccated hydraulics. Deeper and deeper into the chaos of spent technology. He winds past radar domes, veers around black rubber hoses, leaps over scattered ailerons. Soon the sun shouts at him to stop, and the nasty heat slaps his face. Time is gone, and only the fright-fueled rush of flight remains.

His legs grow heavy and his vision is impaired by perspiration. He trips over a tangle of steel control cable and sprawls forward, hitting the ground in a grating skid that tears at his forearm and elbow. He rolls on his side, wrapped in the thunder of his pounding heart and heaving lungs.

The thing hovers close by, six feet off the ground, and mocks him with its graceful tenacity.

He twists slowly to look behind it, expecting to see armed men bounding forward out of the wreckage, the hunters following on the heels of the tracking beast. But no one appears. As he struggles to his feet, the thing backs up a few feet in caution, then holds its ground once more.

Then, just as Lane considers hurling something at it, the thing rotates and flits off at high speed, disappearing in the wreckage, its mission apparently complete. The hum is gone. Only the heat, the breeze, and the junk remain.

He moves forward with the sting of his scraped arm growing stronger, and his pace slowed to a walk. He’s lost his food, and most critically, his water.

His deliberations are broken by the same explosive pop he heard in the fuselage of the jet, and a sharp stab of pain in his thigh. By the time he looks down at the dart embedded in his quadriceps, his vision is already dimming.

***

“Let me start with what we know,” says Alpha. “That’ll make it easier for both of us. Less confusion. Then we’ll go on to what we don’t know and what you can tell us.”

“And what if I can’t?” asks Lane. His arms are stretched over his head and duct-taped to the top blade of a big propeller, while his legs are taped to the two remaining blades. His head throbs and all his limbs and joints ache mightily. Behind Alpha, the other two members of his pursuit team sit cross-legged on the ground and stare at Lane with idle curiosity.

Alpha sighs and reaches into his shirt pocket. He pulls out a small case and opens it to reveal a row of hypodermic needles. “Potassium chloride. Very fast. No pain.” He puts the case back and pulls a knife from its sheath on his belt. “Survival knife. Very slow. Big hurt.” He returns the knife to its sheath. “Got the idea?”

“Sort of,” Lane answers.

“We know you’re looking for your brother. We know you moved into Pinecrest with forged ID and took up with a woman named Autumn West. We know a few other things as well, so lying wouldn’t be a good idea.”