“If he gets eaten, I have to tell you, I don’t personally have a problem with that. But that’s just me, of course.”
“Friend of my youth. Plus, I see a future for him on our new team.”
“How could he possibly survive a security check?”
Flynn said nothing.
The sun was well down now, the lights of the city glowing, the river a black ribbon. Flynn could even see a few stars, but that wouldn’t last. The moon was rising in the east, full and fat, a big Texas moon.
He began methodically assembling his equipment, his own personal night-vision lenses, his new pistol—one of Mac’s .357 Magnums—and his other essentials, a handheld GPS, a backup compass.
She slid his MindRay into the backpack.
“No.”
“You were using it under pressure in adverse field conditions.”
“All field conditions are adverse.”
“We can’t leave this thing in a hotel room.”
That stopped him. Surely she didn’t expect to come with them. “Diana—”
“I know what you’re about to say, and don’t even think about it. You absolutely need me in the area.”
“No.”
“I can operate a command post in the car. I’ll be looking at satellite data as you work.”
“Do it from here. We both have cell phones.”
“It’s too much of a risk and you know it. You’ll be lucky to have an hour before they detect you. Maybe less. If cell phone calls are popping out there, way less.”
He couldn’t deny the truth of that, nor the fact that the information she could provide would be extremely valuable, even essential.
“We can use the same radios we used in Montana. I’ve got yours, mine, and Mike’s in my backpack. They are low power and the encryption technology makes them sound like backscatter. No scanner in the world will even identify our transmissions as signals.”
“In this world. Maybe we failed in Montana because alien technology was in use against us.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “The value outweighs the risks. If you get detected, I’m going to see them coming. And what if I nail down the location of the tiger? That could happen.”
He looked at her. She glared back at him, the determination and defiance if anything increasing her attraction.
“Good enough,” he said, “let’s get studley back in his pants and do some hunting.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
As Flynn and Mac headed off into the thick brush, Flynn looked back at the truck. They’d parked it off the road near a little place called Balcones Springs, where they’d pulled the truck up into a brushy area along a disused road, but one that was high enough to provide the low-power radios a useful platform. Nearby was the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Preserve, as difficult an area to walk as the Texas Hill Country offered. It consisted of nearly forty square miles of steep-sided hills, gnarly ravines, cactus, and cedar. The only nearby water of any significance was in Lake Travis itself.
They were still two miles both from the strange little village and Jay Elder’s ranch house, and about equidistant between them.
Flynn touched the “transmit” button on his radio’s earpiece. A moment later, there was a brief burst of static, then another. Mac and Diana, acknowledging.
“That satellite stuff has me spooked. How does she gain access?”
“Dunno. It’s not a password, that I do know. Something more esoteric.”
“What if this guy Elders has access to the same feed?”
“He doesn’t.”
“You know that?”
“If he did, why would he be doing something as risky as using guard animals—the tiger, for example. Or the dogs.”
“I get your drift. It’s just that my bad feeling is getting worse, man.” He looked down at his GPS. “The last place she picked up the tiger was eighteen hundred yards due north.” He put the GPS in his pocket.
“Best turn it off.”
“It goes off by itself.”
“Until it does, it radiates a signal. Not much of one, but it’s there. I know from experience with what we’re dealing with, we need to be real, real careful about signals.”
“What are we dealing with, Flynn?”
The question lay there, unanswered in the dark between them. “How much have you figured out?”
“That this is some kind of classified government deal. That this animal is really weird. What is it, something that escaped from a lab?”
“Something that was created in one, that we know. Whether it escaped or was sold on or exactly what happened isn’t clear.” He did not tell Mac why they were actually going after the tiger, to get at the extraordinary criminal behind it. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. He didn’t know how.
They moved through the moonlit hills with the swift precision of men whose lives had unfolded in places like this. The land around Menard was much the same: dry, mean, and hard. It was the sort of land that looked inviting from a distance, but would give you maybe two days if you got lost in it—assuming that you didn’t get snakebit or slip and fall down a bluff. By the third day, you’d be too crazy with thirst and weak from struggling in the terrible land to do anything but stagger until you dropped. Observed from a porch on a high bluff on a summer evening, though, the land smiled like a saint.
“Guys, I have a new trace. A thousand yards north northwest of your position.”
Flynn pressed his transmit button to indicate that they’d heard her.
In flat land, it would have been a possible shot, but not in these cruel little hills, just high enough and steep enough to tax a strong man.
“We need to split up,” Mac said. “Let’s angle in, maybe five hundred yards apart. First one gets a shot, takes it.”
“Absolutely do not get out of sight of me. Do not.”
Mac frowned, shook his head. Beneath the rim of his Stetson, his face was in deep moon shadow.
“Come on, let’s move ahead. You see a shot, take it.”
Separated by fifty yards rather than five hundred, they slipped softly through the moonlight, each man concentrating on his own silence. The north wind grew stronger, hissing in the cedars and sighing in the live oaks, making the autumn grasses dance. There was that note of sadness in it that colors so much of nature. Far to the north, the same clouds that he and Diana had seen from the plane were putting on an electrical display as they rolled across the featureless plains of Texas.
They both carried Weatherby Mark V Deluxe rifles chambered for .300 Weatherby Magnum cartridges. The boat tail spire point bullets they were using were forged in Mac’s own shop, by a master bullet maker called Carlos Gons. Gons’s bullets were famous in West Texas for being the finest that money could buy—assuming you were friendly with Mac, of course.
A skilled sniper could use these rifles and these bullets to shoot extraordinary distances. But not in this terrain and not at night. Here, they were looking to get within three hundred yards of the quarry, and to do that they were going to need to surprise it.
Flynn had considered just going in to the ranch house with some serious ordnance, but he now needed to investigate that village, also, and that was not going to happen until the tiger was gone.
Mac stopped. He pressed his transmit button twice, looking for a report from Diana. A single flutter of static came back: “no joy.”
But Mac still didn’t move. He raised his night vision binoculars to his eyes. With this moonlight, you didn’t need night vision goggles, but the binoculars were useful for looking into shadows and pulling in distant detail.
There was a sound, then, soft but unmistakable. It was the chuffle of a tiger and it could not be more than fifty feet away—but not in the direction Mac was looking.
They were about to take a hit.
“Back to back.”
“What? Why?”
He said to Mac, “Back to back.”
“What’s going on?”
r /> “It’s here.” He touched his radio. “Diana, it’s within fifty feet of us. Do you see it?”
“I don’t—no … standby—oh God, Flynn it’s in those cedars to your left. Flynn, it’s going to pounce right now!”
Flynn fought down the impulse to run. Unlike the situation when he’d faced it with the Glock, one of these rifles would bring it down immediately.
“You heard?”
“Oh, yes.” Mac examined the cedar thicket with his binoculars. “Where the hell is it? Ask her again.”
He pressed his transmit button. “We need coordinates.”
“It’s in motion away from your position. Flynn, something about the way it moves causes it to just leave traces. I can hardly track it. But it appears to be going south, toward the lake. Moving fast. Now it’s gone. No—stand by.” A pause. “Lost it.”
“Okay, take a breath. It’s trying to lead us, looks like.”
“Into a trap?”
“Away from the village. Away from the ranch.”
“So we ignore it.”
“If we do that, we fall into whatever trap’s been laid for us.”
“So let’s follow it.”
“Then we fall into a different trap. We’ve been outmaneuvered.”
“Man, I’m hunting a tiger, here, not a damn werewolf.”
He thought he now needed to tell Mac the truth. But how? This was a man who had absolutely no idea about aliens, except for the illegals who worked his and every other ranch in swarms. Employers called them grad students.
Diana had said that the government didn’t actually know what they were. And that was after sixty years of watching them. So how the hell did he explain them to Mac?
Maybe he didn’t. Maybe what he needed to do was to just put Mac where he could do some damage and hope for the best.
“Let’s head for that funny little village,” he said.
“Not the ranch?”
“That’s the head of this snake. I’m looking for the heart shot.”
“Flynn, I’m always looking for the heart shot and the high card. But just before we go charging off, where the fuck is my tiger?”
Flynn hit his radio. “Anything?”
A burst of static was her only answer.
“Verbal, please.”
She came back, “It’s well south of you now, probably close to the lake.”
“Then nowhere near the village?”
“No. No way.”
He said to Mac, “We’ll find it at the village.”
“But she said—”
“Come on.” Flynn began moving cautiously forward. Mac stayed close. They went down a long draw, then up onto higher ground, skirting one of the weathered limestone hills.
“What’re we expecting?”
“No idea.”
As they moved slowly ahead, the village came into view, in the form of a number of structures that appeared almost Polynesian in design, low buildings open at both ends, with peaked roofs and elaborately carved lentils.
“What the hell?” Mac muttered.
Diana sent a burst of static, then spoke. “It’s come out of no damn where and it’s heading directly toward you. I’ve got a clear view, it’s running fast. According to the computer, you have three minutes.”
“We could take cover in one of these,” Mac said. “Set up an ambush.”
Flynn went closer to the nearest one. The wood was dark, the carvings were hard to make out in the shadowy moonlight. Wind blew through the thing, which was open at both ends.
He thought maybe that it was an alien village, right here on earth. Was it the only one? Did anybody know? They were just so damn uninformed about the whole thing. Hopefully there was somebody somewhere with good information, because a village—Flynn was no expert, but to him this looked like some part of an invasion.
He risked a light, shining it into the interior.
“Empty, looks like,” Mac said.
They took a step in.
“My God, it stinks in here,” Mac said.
It was a milder version of the smell in Oltisis’s office.
Flynn took another step forward, moving deeper.
“Flynn?”
He turned around.
“Is there something behind me?” Mac asked.
Ten feet behind Mac, right in the center of the village, standing absolutely still, was the tiger. It had taken no more than a minute to get here.
Its eyes were on its prey. As in Montana, the animal had outmaneuvered them. Flynn could not get a shot off at it without hitting Mac, and it was so close to him that it could tear him to pieces before he even finished turning around. On the other hand, the moment the animal jumped onto Mac’s back, Flynn would have a kill shot. So this wasn’t a quite a checkmate for the tiger. It was a double check.
“Mac, come to me.”
“Man, that smell—”
“Nice and easy. Do it now.”
Mac’s eyes became tight steel in the moonlight. His face closed down. As his finger slid over his trigger, he came a step closer. Silently, the tiger shifted, keeping Mac between itself and the gun. What an expert it was. It had thought at least five moved ahead.
Mac took another step, and the tiger remained behind him. But it knew that he could bolt at any second. So could it—and it did, just as Mac entered the structure.
“Where was it?”
Flynn did not answer him. He was watching in astonishment and growing horror as the darkness behind Mac continued to deepen. Silently and in some unknown manner, the apparently doorless opening was closing.
He ran past Mac, but it was already much too late. Where the rear opening had been was the blackness of a wall.
The tiger had not thought five moves ahead or eight, but ten, twenty, maybe more.
What it had done was elegantly lethal. It had coaxed them into a man trap.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Flynn reached up and touched his transmit button. “Diana? Come back.”
Silence.
Mac said, “That thing is smarter than me, Buddy.”
“It’s brilliant.”
“What is it, Flynn? It can’t be a tiger. It just looks like one.”
“I don’t know, Mac. I just don’t know.”
“My flashlight’s dead.”
“Mine, too.”
“And the radios. And my GPS.”
Flynn found his in his pocket and pulled it out. It had been off, but when he pressed the toggle, nothing happened. “Same here.”
None of the electronics worked.
“Goddamnit, what have you gotten me into, man?”
“I thought we could handle this.”
“Well we can’t.”
Suddenly Mac was in his face, his breath full of sour fear. “Flynn, for God’s sake, what in fuck is this about?”
There was nowhere to begin. “What I think is that maybe if we can make our way to the wall, we can get out of here.”
“The fuck, we’re trapped, man!” Mac fired his rifle, the report shattering in the confined space. He fired it again, straight up, and in the flash Flynn saw him, his eyes glassy, his face a glaring mask of fear. Again he fired, and again Flynn saw him. This time his lips were pulled back, his eyes were glaring almost comically, but there was nothing funny about the transformation—the visible disintegration—of this man.
“Mac!”
Again he fired, and this time Flynn saw something behind him, a figure standing with its legs spread and its hands on its hips. Its mouth was an oval complication of spiked teeth.
Not an animal. Not like Oltisis. But not human either … not quite.
“Cool it!”
Again Mac fired, and this time Flynn saw in the flash that there were figures all around him.
“Shit, they got my damn gun!”
Flynn tightened his grip on his own.
“We’re not gettin’ outa here, man!”
“Stay cool, there’s always a way.”
&nbs
p; “Fuck, oh, fuck!”
“We’re not done,” Flynn said.
Mac began babbling and weeping. Anybody who gets scared enough reveals an inner asshole, was Flynn’s experience. Mac was no exception.
Slowly, Flynn turned around. Behind them, there had been another door, so maybe it was still possible to get over there.
Porting his rifle, he moved forward. There was the softest of flutters against his cheek. Lurching away, he cried out with surprise.
The rifle was gone from his grasp. Incredibly.
His first thought was to draw the Magnum, which was still under his shoulder. He stopped himself, though. Whoever had taken the rifle would surely take it, too.
“Fuck, they got my Mag, man!”
Flynn didn’t respond. He kept his arm tight against his shoulder holster.
There was a book of matches in his pocket, kept there for whatever emergency might require them. Would they still work? He had no idea, he’d been transferring them from pocket to pocket for months. Moving as slowly and quietly as he could, he reached in, felt his keys, some change, and then the matches. Crouching over them, he pushed the cover open, tore one out and struck it. There were sparks, but no light. Again he struck it, and this time it flared, sputtered blue, then caught, a tiny yellow flame.
In the light it gave, which was not much, he saw Mac, now lying on the floor. He was surprisingly close by. “Mac, get your ass up.”
There was no response.
“Mac!”
His eyes were open but staring blankly. Flynn recognized this as a state of extreme shock, like a man lying on the roadside beside the twisted ruin of his car.
Just at the edge of the flickering pool of match light, there was movement.
The match went out.
Frantically, he fumbled another one between his fingers, struck it and held it up.
Standing over Mac was one of the creatures. It looked up at him with eyes so large that they were like great, plastic buttons, sky blue and swimming with tragedy.
The match went out. Flynn lit another.
Mac groaned. He lifted himself up on his elbows, he saw what was standing over him and started to roll away, and at once the thing began striking him with a nasty little sap, which caused him to throw up his arms in defense of his face, and to scream a gargled, quickly stifled scream.