“What kind of choice?”
“To get the hell out of this car and go my way.”
“No, you don’t have that choice.”
The car started and they left the hospital grounds.
Flynn sat quietly, but his mind was blazing with a kind of mad fury, which he strove to control.
The security policeman driving the vehicle was not what he seemed. Flynn knew exactly who he was, and that he was the real chief of this whole operation, all of it, from the kidnappings to the murders to the recent plague of brutal attacks—all of it.
The security policeman who now sat behind the wheel was no security cop at all. Far from it—he was an evil, evil man, if he could even be called a man.
He was Louis Charleton Morris.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FLYNN HAD to use every bit of self-control he possessed to avoid revealing the turmoil he was feeling. The hate was so intense that it was like an actual fire inside him. Even in the darkest hours after Abby’s disappearance, he had never felt an emotion remotely this powerful. Only one thing mattered to him now, which was to destroy the monster that was behind the wheel.
“Where are we heading?” he asked, his voice carefully modulated.
“Base,” the civilian said.
“Does it have a name?”
“No, it does not.”
“I want my weapons.”
“Flynn, relax,” the civilian said. “I’m Dexter Harmon, by the way. I know that Diana’s never mentioned me. You’re not need-to-know, and our girl follows the book.”
“Where is she?”
“On her way back to Washington.” He glanced at his watch. “Landing in forty minutes.”’
All lies. “Glad to hear it. Where are you in the chain of command, Dex?”
“You report to Diana, Diana reports to me, and I report to the president. If you don’t mind, would you call me Mr. Harmon?”
“No problem, Dex.”
He tried not to watch the back of Morris’s head. He looked younger, his black hair was now brown, but those darkly gray, empty eyes were unmistakable. No, it was Morris, no question. The disguise was a good one, though. His mind focused onto one, single thought: Kill him.
He smiled. “I’m delighted to meet you, Dex, I have to say. Let me ask you this: How do you feel about the way I kill these bastards?”
“Just kill ’em all.”
“I need to get to their leader. Handler. Whatever he is. Builder.”
“Making any progress?”
“That’s classified.”
“Everybody in this vehicle is cleared to hear anything you might say.”
“I’m on him.”
“What’s your plan?”
“I’m going to kill him. A few days.”
“Now, that is a plan. Any details?”
What was this guy, an actor? He sure as hell didn’t know how to mine a conversation for information.
“I know where he lives.”
Flynn watched a subtle signal pass between Morris and Dex.
As they drove north out of Fort Stockton, they also drove into territory that Flynn knew well. Among the things he knew was that there were no bases up here. In fact, the only place of note was a big old dance hall called the Bluebonnet Palace, about twenty miles north of here, sitting all by itself on a godforsaken crossroads. Popular, though. There would be people there.
“Where is this base, exactly? There aren’t any government facilities out this way.”
“Up toward Lubbock.”
“You understand that I’ve been very aggressively attacked from above a number of times in the past few days?”
“It’s not an issue,” Harmon said.
“How can you possibly know that? We’re in an ideal area for such an attack to take place.”
Nobody responded.
“Either you know something I don’t, or you’re taking a hell of a risk.”
“I’ve evaluated the situation, and I don’t think it’s a risk. You’re not alone, Flynn. There’s a lot of firepower in these vehicles.”
He thought about that. How ridiculous it was. He kept playing along. Before he killed Morris—and he would—he needed to find out as much as he could about his motives and his plans.
“Have you ever been up against these things? Any of you?”
Silence.
“Bear in mind that they’re also extremely fast.”
“And you’re the only person who can be effective against them, which is exactly what we want to understand.”
Bingo. Before killing him, Morris wanted to find out what made him tick. That was why he’d led him along like this, ignoring opportunity after opportunity.
“You need to give me a weapon, and you need to do it now.”
“If they show up.”
“If they show up, it’ll be too late to pass out weapons. We’re done.”
Of course, no attack was going to come, obviously, not with the head of the whole operation sitting right here in this car.
For a good hour, they drove in silence, turning first down one ranch road and then another.
“Elmwood,” Harmon said. He gestured toward his side window.
“I know where Elmwood is.”
The town, a low cluster of ruins on the eastern horizon, was dark and silent.
The highway spun away behind them, endless and empty. Once, a rancher passed with a load of cattle. Later, a sheriff’s SUV sped past, going south.
The last thing Flynn wanted to see was other cops. He wanted to do what he was going to do in private. Kill the creature, destroy the remains, get the hell out. That was his plan.
They turned off the final paved road they would use and onto a dirt track. Flynn thought he could break the necks of the two men sitting beside him before they could draw their guns. Wouldn’t do much good, though, not with that truckload of security behind them.
At the end of another half hour rumbling along the dirt track, they came to a small grouping of low buildings, which Flynn recognized as the kind of prefabs the military would erect in places where it intended to stay for just a few months. They passed through a disused gate that had been left hanging open.
“You ever have any intruders here?”
Nobody replied.
“Nice,” Flynn said, “you’re chatty. I like chatty.”
“This isn’t a game,” Colonel Leander said.
They pulled up in front of a gray building. Like the others, its windows were covered by drawn blinds.
Once they were out of the vehicles, it seemed possible that the odds might change in his favor. If the right moment came and he could get one of their guns, he could take care of all of them before they got off a shot. The SPs had locked holsters that would open only to their touch, but not the two officers, so it was a matter of positioning.
However, it seemed that they were well aware of their danger, because he found himself surrounded by the security personnel with their hands on their weapons. The other three walked behind.
“Leg holding up?”
“No.” Actually, it was a lot better, but he had no intention of letting them know that. It would hurt like hell, but he was pretty sure he could run on it.
The interior of the building was lit only by a few overhead lamps. There were office cubicles, but Flynn had the impression that the place was empty and had been for some time.
“Come on in, Flynn,” Harmon said. “Sorry for the setup. We’re just in the process of moving in.” He ushered Flynn into a small office and offered him a steel chair. “Now, you ask, why are you here?”
“I’d like to know.”
“One of the great problems we’re facing is the presence of aliens who can pass for human, and who don’t have our best interests at heart.”
“Not news to me.”
“No?” He smiled, all friendly warmth. “You don’t have our best interests at heart, and you pass for human.”
“I am human,” he said.
/> Harmon sighed. “We can get it out of you, you know. We can get it all out.”
“I’m sure you can.”
“Then tell us where you’re from.”
“Menard, Texas.”
“That’s your final answer?”
“It’s the only answer.”
“I’m sorry for you, then. You do understand that all of your memories, all you know, can be removed?”
Flynn blanked his mind. He felt the two officers, who were in the room behind him, stir uneasily. Then he noticed that Morris had also entered. When he made his move, he would be dealing with four armed men, at least one of which was going to have special capabilities.
Harmon smiled again. “What will be left will be a vegetable. And what we will do with said vegetable is, we’ll take you to someplace like a barrio in Mexico City, and we’ll leave you there. Do you want that?”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“Tell us where you’re from and why you’re here.”
“Okay, I’m a Streib.”
Harmon frowned slightly.
Major Ford said, “It’s an alien from a television series called Babylon Five.”
Harmon glanced up at Morris, then nodded slightly. “Let’s get started, gentlemen.” His voice was brisk.
The situation was this. Harmon Dexter was two feet from him across the desk. The two officers were out of sight behind him. Morris was behind them. There was one window. It was closed by blinds, but all he had seen surrounding the place was a low cyclone fence.
“Is my commanding officer aware of where I am?”
“Diana? Of course.”
“And you understand what happens if you kill me? Do you?”
“You can’t threaten me, Flynn.” Harmon opened a drawer in the desk. “We’re going to start with chemical interrogation. Depending on how far we get, we’ll move on from there.” He pulled out a flat, black box and opened it to reveal an interior full of medical instruments, syringes, and drugs in vials. He removed a syringe. “What I’m going to ask you are questions about your home planet. Where it is, that sort of thing.”
Incredibly, it was becoming clearer and clearer that Morris must actually believe him to be from another world.
He’d found out enough.
Harmon raised the syringe he’d just finished filling. The next step was going to be a flood of wicked drugs. It was time to extricate himself.
An instant later, the syringe was embedded in Harmon’s right eye. For another instant, nothing happened. Then Flynn watched his head tilt to one side and his eyebrow rise, making Harmon look as if having a syringe in his eye struck him as funny.
He hurled himself back against the wall and began screaming and kept screaming while his hands fluttered crazily around his face, touching the syringe as if it were white-hot.
The suddenness of Flynn’s move and the extreme reaction it had produced caused the desired effect in the other three. While Leander leaped toward Harmon, hands outstretched and also screaming bloody murder, Flynn removed the Colonel’s pistol and whipped his temple with it, sending him to the floor in a heap. By that time, Major Ford was out of his chair and leaving the room. Morris was nowhere to be seen. Flynn got Ford by the collar and slammed him into the wall once, twice, a third time. Ceiling tiles rained down around his slumped form. The major was done for the day.
A tremendous blow caused the room to become a tiny dot of light surrounded by blackness. And then there was only the dark.
He squeezed his trigger, but it was frozen. He knew that he was staggering, that he had taken a hit, and also that the fool who had been carrying this gun put the safety on.
Pain shot up his leg as he hit the floor. His thumb found the safety. He pushed it. He took another powerful hit, this one on his left temple.
His free hand went up and he grabbed the wrist, then stuffed the pistol into his assailant’s belly and fired.
On all fours now, gagging and shaking his head like an animal that had been kicked around, he fought away the darkness that threatened him.
Somebody was there, right in front of him, a speeding shadow. He saw a gun, heard its mechanism working, and lashed out, slapping it with his left hand, causing the slug to graze his chest instead of rip into his heart.
He fired the colonel’s pistol, and there was a grunt, then silence for a moment, then a whispery moan.
Flynn got to his feet. For a moment, he could not raise his head, not without becoming disoriented again. That blow had been delivered with incredible power. If it had been anything except a fist, it would have killed him.
Instinct told him to get out of the room, but close combat skills said to get a wall behind him, which he did, pressing up against the one beside the desk.
Harmon lay slumped against the opposite wall. His chest revealed slow breaths. Alive, unconscious. The two officers were also alive. Ford was groaning, his body under a fallen chair. There was bone visible in the middle of his right shin. The security cop was flat on his face in the hall. Nobody else was visible.
Flynn went to the cop and turned him over. He felt a moment of disappointment that it wasn’t Morris. The guy was breathing, but struggling with a serious chest wound. Flynn did what he could to close the sucking hole with the man’s shirt, then went through his pockets, looking for a phone.
He called 911 and said, “Been a shooting.” He described the location carefully, and twice, to a perplexed state police dispatcher. “There’s two guys, broken back, broken hip, possible broken neck. One with a sucker in the chest, forty-five slug all the way through. Fourth one’s banged up, he’ll walk it off.”
“Sir, are you safe at this time?”
“I’m good.” He closed the phone and slid it back into the guy’s pocket. Then he returned to the office. Gently, he removed the syringe from Harmon’s eye. No doubt the eye was gone, but maybe not. Depended on what was in the syringe. Whatever it was, it had completely knocked Harmon out.
He went quickly through the facility, but he did not expect to find Morris. They had both mishandled this thing. Flynn should never have let it go on as long as it had. Morris should never have tried to capture him. To get Flynn, it was going to take a different approach. Stealth and indirection would need to be part of it—and luck.
There was nothing here except a few empty rooms. Signs of rodent infestation, cheap steel desks, rusting. He opened a few drawers. All empty.
It had been ten minutes since his 911 call. Troopers would be coming fast, probably down from Interstate 10, maybe up from US 90. He didn’t want to engage with them, so he went out to the front. He was careful, stepping out just a foot or so, then checking overhead for any sign of a shadow.
Cloud cover combined with the lack of ground light to make the sky as dark as the interior of a cave. In contrast, in the infrared, he would be like a searchlight.
Nothing to do but keep moving, so he got into the Jeep and went under the dash. It was going to be a little faster to hot-wire than the Lexus they’d brought him in. He pulled down the wiring harness and did the bypass. A small spark flashed as he touched together the leads that activated the starter. With the engine running, he got behind the wheel and moved out immediately.
He drove along the dirt road for a time, then turned off into the darkness, heading south. As he drove, he watched the horizon for the glow from the lights of the approaching police. Meeting them would slow him down, which he did not need, especially because he was far from sure that he had escaped. He may have been let go so that he could be pulled back. It was an infamous technique that had been used for centuries to break the will of prisoners. The Inquisition had used it. So had the Nazis and the Soviets, and Pol Pot.
He turned off road and headed due south. He was still looking for a distant glow, but not of the approaching troopers. What he needed most right now was to disappear into a crowd, and in this part of Texas at this hour, that meant the Blue Bonnet Palace.
He was driving across an ungrazed pa
sture, which caused the Jeep to bounce against one big tuft after another. It hurt like hell, but he continued moving as fast as possible. In the distance, he saw the flickering of light bars, six sets. No doubt the first responders had called for backup.
Soon, he could not only see the the palace’s lighted parking lot and its famous blue neon sign, but also make out the light poles and the details of the signage. So he was about a quarter of a mile out.
He took the truck over to the road and drove into the parking lot, getting as close to the doors as he could. From there, he hurried into the structure.
The Blue Bonnet Palace was an entertainment complex consisting of a dance floor, a bar, a barbecue restaurant, and an indoor rodeo arena capable of seating about two hundred people. Flynn no longer had any idea even what day of the week it was. He was hurt, he hadn’t had more than a snatched hour or two of sleep since first getting off the plane in Mountainville a week ago, and now he’d taken a hard blow to the head, and you didn’t shake that off so fast in life as you did in the movies.
The place was jumping, with city folks from all the communities in the area mixing with cowboys and ranch hands from local spreads. There was a square dance being called for about fifty dancers, and their happiness, the confident swagger of the men, the beauty of the girls, all but broke Flynn’s heart. He had danced here many, many times—with Abby, with many other girls—had known that same happiness here, in his innocent days. He could yet hear the echo of their laughter, as he and Eddie and Mac swung Abby across that dance floor, on those long-ago nights.
“Hey, there, fella—you sure you’re okay?”
It was a smiling security guard. It was one of the old guys, Cord Burleson. He’d been working here from forever.
“Cord, it’s me, Flynn Carroll.”
Cord’s eyes narrowed. He stared hard. “Holy shit, Flynn, you look a hell of a sight. You livin’ in the wind?”
“No, man, I got roughed up.”
“’Cause you look like you’ve been homeless for a good long while. I thought you were rich.”
“Could you do me a favor and get Mac Terrell on the horn? I need to talk to that man.”
“Mac?” The smile became tight. “He doesn’t come up this way a whole lot.”