“No, I don’t.” Evi drew her automatic from its shoulder holster and rested it on her knee. “And you are going to explain it, step by step, until I do.”
“Don’t need the gun.” Price shook his head and rubbed his eyes. He looked a little more coherent, but that didn’t say much. “I’m out in the cold too.” He smiled weakly. “Do I look like someone in the loop? I’ve been waiting for Gabe to show for me—”
“Start at the beginning.”
Price took a deep breath, glanced at the gun, and told her.
The aliens had never gotten past the Aerie back in that August of ’53. Frey had been the one running the show, and he saw implications that went far beyond what Midwest Lapidary’s corporate front was doing. He saw the petty influence buying in Cleveland mirrored on a much larger scale. He saw, couldn’t prove but saw nonetheless, the alien hand in the American nonintervention policy in the Pan-Asian war. Beyond that, he saw their hand in the war itself.
And he saw no way he could trust his own government.
“You see that, don’t you? Those four aliens controlled over a hundred congressmen—”
“They were indicted.” Evi stood up and walked over to the window. Snow was blowing in, the glass hadn’t been replaced. “Most of them anyway.”
“That mattered? These creatures want political chaos. You only found four.”
Frey had bottled up the aliens, and with a little electronic legerdemain he had written himself and his people out of existence. Then he began to recruit people. People the alien’s activities had adversely affected, people with skills he could use, people who would be sympathetic to him.
Like Scott Fitzgerald, whose orbital ear had picked up on the existence of the aliens and was quickly thereafter quashed by Congress.
Like David Price, whose conspiracy theories no one took seriously.
Like Erin Hofstadter?
“Frey was nutty about Asia. H-Hofstadter was an Asia expert.” Price paused to take a few deep breaths and massage his forehead. “Asia expert and the most fascist bastard—” Price dosed his eyes and muttered, “Oh, Christ,” a few times, and Evi had to prod his foot with the gun to get him to continue.
“His fault that Gabriel and Davidson got on board.”
“What’s the matter with Davidson?”
Price shook his head. “Two years in, waist-deep in tech crap. Hofstadter gets Davidson. Worst kind . . .”
“You’d call Davidson a fascist?”
“Leo Davidson in a lab coat and the rest of us, white mice.”
According to Price, it all started out as a private enterprise to pump the captive aliens for information and develop contingency plans to guard against further alien interference. The Domestic Crisis Think Tank was legitimate. It just worked for Frey instead of the Agency.
“You would have been brought in if it weren’t for H-Hofstadter. He’s pathological about nonhumans.”
“And you couldn’t let me go because I knew about the aliens.” She stepped up to the bed and placed the barrel of the automatic under Price’s chin. She pushed up so he was finally looking her in the eye. “So why wait so long before you start shooting at me?”
“It isn’t me.” His breath fogged the barrel of the automatic.
She was being unfair, she knew. Still, she was so damn angry. Price might be a potential ally now, but for six years he had strung her along like everyone else.
Price stared at Evi. Straight into her eyes as the odor of fear sliced through the crystal January air. “Frey was losing control a month after Hofstadter came on board.”
Hofstadter had quite a different view of the aliens. Where Frey saw the aliens as a threat, the German economist saw the threat as the governments that could be so easily exploited. Hofstadter was interested in correcting such vulnerability by building a post-democratic government on the ruins of the old. A human-only government. Leo Davidson was equally anti-democratic. He saw politics as an engineering problem.
Price sucked in a breath. “Then, a few weeks ago, all hell broke loose.”
“Explain.”
According to Price, the probe launch that the aliens went to such effort to prevent had gone forward with the captured alien finances and Dr. Fitzgerald’s help. Frey called them the first recon units into the enemy camp. That was five and a half years ago. Which meant that the first probe was just entering the neighborhood of Alpha Centauri. According to Leo Davidson, if the aliens were out there, with an eye locked on Earth, they would have started detecting the radiation on the probe’s main engine within the past month.
“Davidson was right,” Price said. “They have.”
She pressed the gun into the flesh of Price’s neck. “Don’t play me for a fool, there’s no way anyone could know that. Alpha Centauri is over four and a half light-years—”
“Tachyons.” Price croaked.
She lessened the pressure on Price’s neck. “D-Davidson said the aliens had the ability to have a t-tachyon communicator. One-way, massive planet-based particle accelerator to transmit. But the receiver could be compact—”
She lowered the gun. “That’s why everything is happening now.”
Price was stammering on, breathlessly. “The project went defensive when Davidson whipped out his tachyon receiver. Untranslatable signals from Alpha Centauri. Whatever aliens were out there to receive—”
“Would know that those four aliens didn’t liquidate themselves when they were supposed to.” Evi holstered the gun. “So, why were you locked in your bedroom with a shotgun?”
“I’m an academic, not an operative. I could see the operation shifting under Hofstadter’s control. That tach receiver came out of nowhere, at least a million in R&D money out of nowhere. I warned Frey, but he didn’t believe me, so I went to ground and waited for a knock on the door. Frey didn’t believe, not until it was too late—”
“What convinced him?”
“You did.”
In the distance, out the broken window, she began to hear sounds of traffic. An aircar, maybe an APC as well. Huaras was coming back with the rest of the team.
“Now the big question. Where is the project keeping the aliens?”
Chapter 19
Someone, thought Evi, someone in Frey’s band of conspirators had an appreciation for irony. Only someone with a diabolical sense of humor would have stashed the aliens in the old UABT complex. United American Bio-Technologies was the reason moreaus had any rights in the States. It was also why there was a domestic ban on macro-genetic engineering.
UABT started by working on human genetics, but when the UN passed its ruling, UABT dutifully switched to nonhuman genetics.
The interference in UABT’s production didn’t stop there. Atrocities committed in Asia caused a legislative backlash in the U.S. that led to the most schizophrenic decision in constitutional history, an amendment that banned domestic genetic engineering on a macroscopic scale while granting the intelligent products of nonhuman experimentation the protection of the Bill of Rights. UABT dutifully switched to algae and bacteria.
That wasn’t as profitable as the Asian market for military hardware.
When UABT was indicted for the continued production of engineered animals and, worse, engineered humans, the government shut the operation down, and all of UABT’s assets fell down a bureaucratic black hole.
One of those assets was a large block of medical real estate parked midway between the UN Building and the Queensboro bridge. Somehow, that block of buildings had fallen under the Agency’s purview, and from there it was co-opted by Frey and company.
It was within walking distance of Frey’s condo. The aliens were hidden under everybody’s nose: Nyogi’s, the Agency’s, and hers.
At three-thirty in the morning Evi’s gray Dodge Electroline van hit Manhattan.
The bridges across the Harlem River
looked like hell with abandoned cars and the concrete NYPD traffic barriers. Some of that was camouflage. As Evi wove the van across the 138th Street Bridge, she saw that at least half the cars, despite the burnt-out appearance, weren’t abandoned. A half-dozen times Huaras got out of her lead van and walked to a burnt-out corpse of a car, and slipped into the remains of its driver’s seat. The engine started, and Huaras would open a gap in the wreckage wide enough for Evi’s convoy of three vans to pass by, single file.
The last barrier was one of the concrete NYPD roadblocks. A large chunk of one block was taken out by a cab from a cargo hauler. The wreckage neatly filled the gap between two of the concrete barriers. It didn’t look like the truck’s cab could be moved, even with the help of a skyhook. However, Huaras climbed into the charred cab, and the truck obediently started backing away, scraping on its rims, revealing a gap between the NYPD barriers large enough for an APC. The civilian vans passed through without any trouble.
Huaras got into Evi’s van, and van number three split off to head toward a satellite uplink somewhere in Greenwich Village. That left Evi with her van, Huaras, Nohar, and Dave Price, and the second van with Gurgueia and a rat with a vid unit.
If Price could still work the security at the UABT complex, they wouldn’t need to fire a shot, and the country would receive a big wake-up call.
The two vans shot through a light snowfall down a lightly trafficked Park Avenue. New York City never slept, but between the hours of three-thirty and four-thirty, it rested a little.
The glass-metal canyon of Manhattan got deeper as they traveled south. The blue-lit spire of Nyogi towered over the smaller skyscrapers, dwarfing them by an order of magnitude.
When Evi hit 56th, she turned away from the sight. It made her nervous.
They closed on the UABT complex, a scattering of onyx dominoes, flat to the ground and stacked at random. Half a block away, she could tell something was wrong. She got on the comm.
“Gurgueia.”
“Gurgueia here.” There was a pause. “Commander.”
“Have Fernando hit the IR enhancer on his gadget, look at the buildings.”
Evi slowed her van to a stop, half a block away from the complex as she waited for a response. Over the comm she could hear the two moreys in the tail van confer in Spanish.
“Fernando says there’s a hot spot in the building to the right of a parking lot—” Gurgueia was interrupted by more chittering Spanish from the rat. “It’s a fire, something’s burning in there.”
“The cars in the lot?”
More Spanish. “Half-dozen. A van and a truck with the engine going—” The rat cursed in Spanish. Gurgueia continued. “Fernando sees at least two canine moreaus. Afghanis. Japanese firearms, silenced.”
Evi slammed her fist into the dash.
Nyogi had beat them. What the hell could they do now?
What else was there to do?
“Gurgueia.”
“Yes?”
“You’re going to fall back. Watch the buildings. If they come out with the aliens, follow them. But don’t engage them, understand? No heroics.”
“Understood.”
Evi cut the comm circuit.
“And we do?” asked Huaras.
“We go in.” She looked back at her passengers. “Except you, Price.”
She gave Price control of the base comm unit and led Nohar and Huaras toward the complex.
On the way, Nohar whispered, “You trust him?”
Without turning her head, she responded. “I don’t trust you.”
One thing Nyogi’s canines did, they made it a lot easier for Evi aid her two companions to break through security. The fence surrounding the property was dead, and the front gate hung open, unguarded. Unfortunately, the front gate led directly to the parking lot and a pair of Afghani moreaus.
Evi, Huaras, and Nohar made it to the front gate without attracting the attention of the two canines, who were more intent on the buildings. Evi’s team hid behind an illegally parked limo that sat near the entrance to the UABT complex.
“Price,” Evi whispered over her throat-mike, “is there a way into the complex out of sight of the parking lot?”
“Not without blowing in a window,” Price’s voice chirped over her earpiece.
“What about the roof?”
“Still have to break in.”
Huaras shook his head. “No time but to go in front,” he whispered. The one-eared rabbit drew a long knife from a sheath he wore on his back, made a quick slicing motion toward the parking lot, and resheathed it in one fluid motion.
“Gurgueia,” Evi whispered over her mike, “does Fernando still see only two canines?”
“Still only two.” She wondered if the growl she heard in the jaguar’s voice was just interference.
She wished that she’d brought a sniper weapon. The closest they had was the AK-47 hanging off of her shoulder. It would cover the distance, but it would tell everyone they were here. She looked down at Huaras, “Go.”
Huaras slipped away, moving downwind of the canines. The brown rabbit seemed to vanish into the landscaping. Despite the fact the weapon wasn’t silenced, Evi braced her AK-47 on the hood of the illegal limo and aimed at the parking lot, waiting for Huaras and hoping she wouldn’t have to fire.
She could see the two canines. One stood in front of a cargo hauler, watching the front doors of the largest building in the complex. The other paced in front of the rear doors of the trailer, letting his Mitsubishi point at the ground. She could probably disable both of them with one sweep across the length of the vehicle, if she had to.
“How do you feel about humans?” The rumbling whisper from Nohar was unexpected. She forced herself to keep sighting down the gun. She had no idea where Huaras was.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Hate would be easy . . .”
“So?” Huaras, where are you?
“Do you?”
Did she?
“I’ll get back to you on that.”
“I’m not the one who needs to know.”
She only got a brief moment to reflect on that. She saw Huaras slip from behind a parked sedan and slip under the cargo hauler. She didn’t see any reaction from the canines. She strained, focusing on the cargo hauler. Huaras was sliding on his stomach toward the rear of the trailer.
The canine paced past Huaras, and the rabbit slid out from under the trailer. The Afghani started turning and Huaras jumped. The rabbit’s left arm snaked around the dog’s muzzle, and the knife seemed to slide out of nowhere, even as the two fell to the asphalt.
Evi moved the AK-47 to cover the forward canine. He knew something was wrong behind the truck. He walked along the side of the trailer, toward his fallen comrade. Huaras fell on the dog from the top of the truck. The dog looked up just in time for the knife to slash his neck.
“Score two for the good guys,” Evi whispered.
“Believe that?” Nohar asked.
“No.” She activated her mike. “Gurgueia, any more activity going on by the truck?”
“Fernando says that if there’s anything going on, it’s in the buildings.”
“Okay,” Evi told Nohar, “we go in.”
The two of them ran up to the parking lot. Huaras had stripped the canines of their silenced Mitsubishis and as Evi made it to the trailer, Huaras tossed her one. Evi passed the AK-47 to Nohar. “Could hide bodies,” Huaras said, “But dogs, they know, smell them—”
Evi nodded; she had smelled the blood from the dogs as she’d run up. She gave her attention to the van that was parked next to the cargo hauler. The van could hold ten dogs. The truck . . . “Nohar, open the back of the truck.”
He reached up and operated the door. When the hydraulic door slid aside, a blast of heat drifted out in a cloud of steam. With it floated
the odor of sulfur.
Evi backed up until she could see in the trailer. Inside, it looked like a cave. A stonelike substance crusted the walls, rounding the corners of the interior of the trailer. Greenish-red lights were set in the far corners, casting an evil glow. It smelled of sulfur and ammonia.
“Deluxe accommodations,” Nohar said.
Evi couldn’t help but wonder how many other unmarked cargo haulers were crisscrossing the country with this kind of cargo. Fortunately, that meant that they didn’t use the trailer to ship in the troops. Only enough canines to fill the one van.
“That’s what I needed,” Evi said, “We have ten to twelve dogs in there, probably in teams of four—”
One of the onyx domino buildings, the one where Fernando had put the fire, erupted in a ball of yellow flame that rolled out the windows and shot upward. As she turned toward it, the Shockwave hit her with a blast of heat that threw her against the side of the trailer. As she watched, a secondary explosion shook the parking lot and shattered windows throughout the complex.
“Price!” she screamed over her throat-mike, abandoning any attempt at stealth.
“Yes, I see—That’s the computer and administration complex. The creatures are in the main building.” Price added, weakly, “Shit.”
“I hate explosives,” Evi whispered.
Nohar and Huaras picked themselves up off the ground. Nohar looked at the burning administration building. “Afghanis don’t share the sentiment.”
“Main building.” Evi waved her Mitsubishi at the doors. She clicked it on full auto and started running.
The doors to the main building were glass, and riddled with bullet holes. She closed on them and could smell human and canine blood. In the hall beyond the door fluorescents flickered erratically. She saw two security guards draped over the desk in the reception area. She kept low; nothing offered her cover from the lobby.
She stayed in a crouch, next to the doors, looking into the lobby through a hole where a picture window used to be. Wind rattled the remains of a set of black lacquer Venetian blinds. She swept her gaze past the overturned chairs, over glass-covered carpeting, past the massive concrete planter that was the centerpiece of the room, past the desk with the dead security guards . . .