Nightstalkers

CHAPTER 27

“But—” Nada began, but then Kirk held up his hand with the PRT on the wrist and pressed a button. Ms. Jones’s voice came over the net.

“Support got into Doctor Winslow’s phone. Just before the Rift opened he was communicating with a student of his named Ivar. He was directing Ivar to place dampers on a computer at his lab. A computer that had a copy of the Rift program on it.”

“Fuck me to tears,” Nada said.

“Language,” Moms said without any conviction. “But Ms. Jones, Support checked his lab. There was nothing suspicious.”

“The number Doctor Winslow was calling wasn’t to his regular lab. We’ve tracked the line. It’s a landline wired into the basement of that building. He had a lab we didn’t check out, where this Ivar was working.”

Moms turned to the team. “Gear up. These were just the battles. We’ve got to finish the war now.”

“There’s something else,” Ms. Jones said. “We tracked the money that was paid to Burns for the hard drive. It came from Doctor Winslow’s account, but it was wired in there immediately before from another account. From Forrenzo’s account.”

Nada stared at the blazing house as the rest of the team began loading the SUVs. “Winslow went to Forrenzo for the money,” Moms said.

“But Forrenzo’s been gone,” Nada said. “I don’t think the Firefly would have peacefully coexisted with him, considering it shot Mac up.”

“He left that night, remember?” Scout said. “I saw two SUVs drive away from his house in a hurry right after you guys got here.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” Eagle said, trying to connect the dots in his huge hippocampus. “How would Winslow know about Forrenzo? And how did Forrenzo know to leave? We’re missing something.”

“We’ve been missing a lot,” Moms said. “This whole thing here was to keep us occupied, making us think we were handling the problem.”

“So where is Forrenzo now?” Eagle asked as he slammed shut the tailgate on one of the SUVs. There were sirens coming closer, Support with their fire trucks.

“Probably looking after his investment,” Nada said.

“What do you think is going on in that lab?” Nada asked.

Moms grimaced. “A Portal. Let’s just hope it hasn’t opened yet.”

“All right,” Nada said. “Let’s move out.”

“You’re not leaving me behind,” Scout said.

Nada turned to her. “There are no more Fireflies here. You’ll be safe. This is our duty, not yours.”

She didn’t notice that behind her, Moms had pulled out a syringe. As Scout began to protest, Moms slapped her on the shoulder with it.

Scout jumped. “You did not just—”

Nada caught Scout as she crumpled and lifted her in his arms. He carried her limp form over to Emily’s golf cart, her blue hair contrasting sharply with his cammies. “Make sure she gets home?”

Emily nodded. “I will. And make sure you all get home.”

Roland was next to Moms and leaned close. “Do you think he’ll forget her?”

“Would you?” Moms asked. “Let’s load up!”

Ivar wondered if Burns or the other Ivars would come looking for him, since he’d been gone a while, but he had a feeling they weren’t operating as well as the machine they were working on. He was more concerned that Burns might simply flip that toggle switch.

The man with the gun hadn’t said a word after asking a few more questions. Hadn’t moved. Still as stone, while Ivar fidgeted on Doctor Winslow’s couch. As out of tune with the rest of the people around here that he was, even Ivar had heard some of the stories about what happened on Winslow’s couch with some of the more aspiring female postdocs.

The doors to the lab banged open and Ivar started as a man wearing an expensive camel-hair coat walked in, followed by eight men dressed all in black fatigues with combat vests and carrying automatic weapons and other assorted weaponry.

“Your Doctor Winslow betrayed me,” Forrenzo said. “He brought the Feds into his house but I did not see him get arrested. He put a virus into my home security system and I barely got out with my life.” He walked over to Ivar and leaned forward until his dark eyes were just inches from Ivar’s. “I want my money and I want whatever he bought with my money. And I want it now because I have a plane waiting at the airport and I am leaving this shithole of a country. And I want Winslow.”

“I don’t know where the money or Doctor Winslow is,” Ivar said. “And as I told him,” he nodded toward Stone-face, “Doctor Winslow has the hard drive.”

Stone-face finally spoke. “Mister Forrenzo. He says it is the program that is on the drive that is important. And he says they made a copy.”

“Where is this copy?”

“In the basement.” That wasn’t the only thing copied, Ivar thought.

Forrenzo pulled out his cell phone and dialed.

Burns answered and without preamble got to the point. “You’re inside the building, Mister Forrenzo. I told you to call from outside. And you have the student, don’t you?”

“I do,” Forrenzo said. “He is under my control.”

“No,” Burns disagreed. “He’s under my control. See that collar around his neck? You’ve seen similar.”

Forrenzo looked at Ivar, saw the collar, and began backing out of Winslow’s office, indicating for Stone-face to stay with the student.

“What do you want?” Forrenzo asked. “What is this great program that cost me five hundred thousand dollars? Where is Winslow?”

“I’ll answer all your questions soon enough,” Burns said. “But first, we need just a little bit more time. We might have it before the Feds catch on. But if they’re as smart as I know them to be, they’re on their way here now. A small, elite team. I need you to stop them from getting in this lab down here.”

“How long do you need?” Forrenzo asked.

“Forty-five minutes. And they’ll begin their assault by parachuting someone, if not the entire team, onto the roof. They’ll come top down. It’s their Protocol.” A manic burst of laughter came over the phone. “They always follow Protocol. Forty-five minutes, and everything will be different. You will be paid back many times over, I promise, Mister Forrenzo.”

The phone went dead.

Moms looked over her shoulder and thought of Custer as they sped down the road toward the FOB. Kirk was having trouble breathing with broken ribs. Mac had been rebandaged, but she could tell he was near his limit, no matter how many happy pills Doc fed him from his tackle box of good stuff. She didn’t think he’d go Burns on them, but he just might collapse. Roland was, well, Roland. But then again, his ancestor Myles the warrior had followed Custer and that didn’t turn out well.

Eagle had a thoughtful look on his face, but then he always looked like that.

Nada was off his game, the girl having affected him. Nothing had ever affected Nada.

Doc was the only one excited. He wanted to see what was in this lab.

As Eagle drove, those who could scrambled as best they could to pull their cammies and body armor and other gear on over the civilian clothing. They pulled into the FOB.

Support already had the camo nets off the Snake. The team ran up the ramp, Eagle jumping in the pilot’s seat, no time for a preflight check, having to trust in Support. He began powering up the engines as the ramp shut. Moms had the iPad out, checking the information forwarded from the Ranch by Ms. Jones.

“This is our target,” Moms said, kneeling in the middle of the cargo bay, the rest of the team, minus Eagle, bending over in a circle around her. “Physics research building, University of North Carolina. Should be empty this time of the night.”

“Except for whatever is in that lab,” Doc said.

“No,” Kirk said. “Wrong. Forrenzo the arms dealer wasn’t in his house. He gave Winslow five hundred thousand to buy that hard drive from Burns. I’d think Forrenzo is somewhere in the area.”

“Arms dealer?” Roland was intrigued about going up against them. Even if they killed him with the latest weaponry, it would still be fun.

They all staggered slightly as the Snake lifted.

“It’s six stories high and the target is in the subbasement,” Moms said. “Will take a while to clear our way down.” She looked up. “Roland and Nada, go in high onto the roof via HALO. Clear the top floors. Rest of us fast-rope in after them onto the roof, link up, and clear down to the basement and finish this thing.”

“Whatever this thing is,” Eagle said as he banked the Snake to the north, the lights of Chapel Hill glittering ahead.

“No,” Nada said, surprising everyone. “That’s Protocol. We’ve used Protocol so far every step of the way on this mission until we ran into Scout. And we were making mistakes, including one very big one, being lured into a diversion.”

“We’re ten miles out,” Eagle said. “Six minutes until we’re on target. If you want me to gain altitude for a jump, I need to start doing it now.”

Everyone looked at Moms. She tapped the iPad. “See this? Right outside the lab?” She slid her finger over slightly. “And this? Great infil point.”

She stood and began unbuckling her body armor. “We go in like normal people for once.”

Six Russian mercenaries scanned the night sky. One had the latest generation Russian-made surface-to-air missile — the SA-24 Grinch — on his shoulder, finger resting lightly on the trigger. It was a fire-and-forget system, in that once the firer got the sighting system to acquire the target, he pulled the trigger and the missile did all the rest of the work getting there.

All the way below them, in the subbasement, Forrenzo reached the landing, one of his men prodding Ivar twenty feet ahead of him. The other merc covered Forrenzo’s back.

They walked down the hallway. The steel door was shut.

Forrenzo saw no need for subtlety. “How many people are in there?” he asked as he slammed Ivar up against the wall outside the steel door.

“I don’t know.”

Forrenzo pulled a gun out from under his expensive coat and pressed up into the soft part underneath Ivar’s jaw. “Stop toying with me, boy. Is Doctor Winslow in there?”

“No! I swear.”

“Who is? Burns?”

“Yes.”

“Who else?”

Ivar swallowed, which hurt because the muzzle pressed into his chin. “I can’t explain.”

Forrenzo pulled the hammer back on the gun, which wasn’t necessary as it was double action and only something they did in movies, but he figured the kid watched movies.

Ivar’s eyes bulged. “Just open the door. You’ll see!”

Burns’s voice echoed out, through the steel door. “You must give me a little more time, Mister Forrenzo. Just a little more time, then all will be made clear to you. Are your men ready for our visitors?”

“They’re ready,” Forrenzo shouted.

He gestured and let go of Ivar, who slid down the wall to a sitting position. The two mercs faced back the way they had come, weapons at the ready.

The team was dressed in their Senators Club camouflage: golfing shorts, shirts, khakis — a hodgepodge of civilian clothing. Roland had a large, sky-blue canvas bag with the UNC logo on the side packed full of goodies slung over his shoulder while the rest of the team had their MK-23s under their shirts.

Eagle brought the Snake low over a cemetery in the middle of campus on South Road, several blocks from the research building and the clock tower that was the center of the UNC campus. The side doors slid back, fast ropes were tossed out, and they were all on the ground in five seconds. The ropes were cut loose and the Snake disappeared, flying low away from the target.

The team rendezvoused at the edge of the cemetery.

Moms looked at her team. She managed a smile. “We survived Senators Club. We can do this. Some of you even went to college, right?”

“I—” Doc began, but Mac cut him off.

“Went to a whole bunch of colleges and got a whole bunch of degrees. We know.”

“I went to Harvard,” Eagle said, surprising everyone. “They partied hard there.”

“Then let’s party,” Moms said.

Roland hefted the UNC bag. Moms looped her arm through Kirk’s as much to look like they were a couple as to help him with his injured side.

The Nightstalkers began walking down the street. The physics building wasn’t in sight yet. They passed the student stores. The Wilson Library with the clock tower to their left.

“Showtime,” Moms said.

Roland began bellowing “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” Moms and Nada did “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” and to add southern charm, Kirk added a country tune.

None of them sang well and they began to stagger as if drunk.

Inside the lab, the golden sphere was changing shape, becoming an iris. Expanding, growing taller, wider. Burns and the other Ivars were kneeling in front of it, like worshippers.

On the roof, the Russian mercs spotted the group staggering down the sidewalk, singing something awful, very loudly.

One of the mercs spit over the edge of the building. “Drunken American fools.” He pointed up. “Keep watch.”

Eagle had the Snake at a hover a half mile away, equal in altitude to the roof of the building. “You were right, Nada,” he said over the net. “I’ve got six hot on the roof.” He flipped a switch and the chain gun extended out of the nose of the Snake.

The team went past the front of the physics lab building, then staggered into the parking lot.

Two big SUVs were parked near the back doors of the physics building, away from the parking lights in the shadows.

“I think Forrenzo is here,” Nada said.

Roland was still singing loudly.

“What’s in the lab is the priority,” Moms said, “not the arms dealer.”

“He’s an arms dealer,” Nada said. “He’s probably got guns that can shoot at us.”

“Then shoot back,” Moms said.

With efficient hand and arms signals, Moms moved the team toward the open doors.

Roland stopped singing and opened the bag, passing out MP-5s and strapping on his flamer.

They sprinted toward the back doors.

On the roof, the Russians heard the sudden cessation of singing. One ran to the edge and looked down. He saw the last of the team disappear into the building.

“They’re in!” he yelled over his own team’s radio.

The six mercs rushed to the stairwell on the corner of the roof. They jammed in, hurrying to get down to support Forrenzo.

Which is when the stream of thirty-millimeter bullets from the Snake tore through the wall and the stairwell became their grave.

“Scratch six,” Eagle reported.

Moms didn’t acknowledge.

“Drop your weapons!” Moms yelled as she peeked around the edge of the stairwell door into the corridor, spotting two men holding automatic weapons. Not that she expected them to, and Roland was a trigger ahead of her anyway. They were Russian arms dealers after all. Weapon dropping was not part of their repertoire.

As the two mercs brought them to bear, Roland stepped past Moms and blew them against the wall with a well-controlled and precise burst from his MP-5. They crumpled to the floor in bloody heaps.

Nada took out Stone-face with a double-tap to the forehead. Which left Forrenzo holding his gun to Ivar’s chin.

The Nightstalkers spread out, surrounding Forrenzo.

“We don’t care about him,” Nada said, nodding at Ivar, “so you can kill him or not, you’re not getting out of here.”

“Actually we don’t even really care about you,” Moms said to Forrenzo. “But you are a bad man…”

Inside the lab the iris reached from floor to ceiling. It was pulsing and the color was shifting, from gold to something darker. And deep inside, as if it had distance far behind the room and they were looking into a very long corridor, something was stirring. Something that looked vaguely human, but wasn’t.

The golden glow in Burns’s eyes was flickering. The cactus spike next to his right eye, through which the sixth Firefly from the Fun Outside Tucson had gotten into his brain, was vibrating. The spike pressed forward, tearing into his eye, and he didn’t feel it.

His face was fixed with a rigid, insane grin, blood seeping from the slashes across it. It was the mask of a man controlled by something far more powerful and dangerous than even the human brain.

“I want a car and—” Forrenzo began, but the team had no time for him.

Nada double-tapped and Forrenzo dropped like a sack of potatoes. No dying finger twitch, another thing Forrenzo should have known was false in the movies.

Ivar screamed like a girl.

“Mac,” Moms said. “The door.”

Mac reached for his ruck and pulled out a shaped charge. He put it over the lock on the steel door. “Clear!” he yelled, and the team backed up as he pressed the igniter.

The charge blew the lock out.

Kirk reached out and pulled the door open, the rest of the team ready with their weapons as they entered.

Burns faced them, his face scored with blood, a thorn poking out of his right eye. The left eye was completely gold. Behind him, three Ivars stood shoulder-to-shoulder, eyes glowing golden. Another was on the bicycle, furiously pedaling backward.

“Fuck me,” Nada muttered as Roland fired, hitting Burns and all the Ivars.

With no effect, except to stagger them slightly as their bodies absorbed the bullets.

Behind them, the team could see the thing in the Rift. Like they’d seen in Tucson, but bigger, closer.

“Doc!” Moms yelled.

Burns’s mouth opened wide, wider than a human’s mouth can open. A golden spark flew out of it right into a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall. The red tube burst off the wall toward the team.

It slammed into Kirk’s unprotected ribs, shoving the ragged, broken edges into his lungs. He went down in a heap.

“Doc!” Moms yelled. “Shut it.”

Doc fumbled for his laptop in its case as Burns’s mouth opened wide once more. Another spark flew out, flashing past the team into the hallway.

Mac wheeled and saw it fly into the fire hose. He fired, shredding the hose, but it lashed out like a snake, wrapping around him, an anaconda of heavy canvas. Nada whipped out his machete and began hacking at it.

Blood was bubbling out of Kirk’s mouth, his lungs torn from the broken ribs.

Moms kept her focus on the Portal. The thing inside was coming closer, stalking forward through whatever hell that iris was opened to. It was big and it emanated anger and hate.

“Doc,” Moms said, “shut the Portal. Roland, get ready to flame.”

“Flaming isn’t going to help,” Doc said. “They’re not human. We’ve got to send them back.” He was on his knees, laptop open, small dish pointed at the Portal, the FireWire already in place. “Working on it.”

Just for the hell of it, Moms let loose with another burst from her MP-5 at the Ivar on the bike. It seemed mildly perplexed by the intrusion but kept pedaling.

Kirk was on his side, blood dripping out of his mouth. “Doc,” he gasped.

“Yes?” Doc was focused on his screen.

Behind them, Mac was slammed into the wall by the fire hose as Nada gave a powerful swing of the machete and cut the hose in two. Which didn’t help, as the part wrapped around Mac began to tighten down around his body.

Kirk reached out and grabbed the blood-spattered and cowering Ivar’s ankle. “Your turn on the bike.”

Moms was moving forward toward Burns as his mouth opened wide once more. Roland was on her shoulder. “We kill whatever comes out of there,” Moms said.

A sign of desperation as they couldn’t even kill what was already in the room.

Kirk tightened his grip on Ivar’s ankle. “You’re the only one who can do it.”

Ivar looked at the soldier holding on to his leg, blood dripping out his mouth, his face pale. And then Ivar did a most un-Ivar-like thing.

He stood up and walked into the room.

Burns’s mouth let loose another golden spark. It bounced off the wall, circled, then settled in a tank of acetylene.

“Oh shit,” Moms muttered.

In the hallway, Mac’s left arm cracked from the tightening hose. Nada dropped the machete and tried to muscle the hose off him, tearing loose fingernails in his desperation as a piece of the hose went around Mac’s neck and constricted.

Ivar walked past Moms and Roland and Burns and the other three Ivars, up to the Ivar on the bike.

The Ivar on the bike looked at the real Ivar, and then simply gave up his place. Ivar got on the bike and looked at Kirk, who was going into shock on the floor. But had enough presence of mind and enough strength to lift his hands and rotate them.

Ivar nodded, getting it right away.

He began pedaling, but forward this time, not backward. Everything in the room froze for a moment except for Ivar pedaling.

Then the thing forming in the Portal lunged forward.

And collapsed.

The four copy Ivars wavered, then began to shrink, one by one, in reverse order of their entrance into Earth. When they hit their entrance size, they were sucked back into the Portal and were gone.

The golden spark in the acetylene tank and fire extinguisher rose up and went back into the Portal. And then the one in the hose flickered out and was gone. Mac collapsed to the ground, gasping for air.

All that was left was Burns and a diminishing Portal.

Moms took a step forward, then spun, letting loose a high kick that hit Burns’s face and knocked him back. Up against the golden iris.

“No!” Burns screamed.

“Yes,” Roland replied, firing an entire magazine from his MP-5 into Burns. The bullets didn’t kill him, but they pushed him back and then he was sucked into the iris.

The Portal flickered, pulsed, and then snapped out of existence.

“Doc, help Kirk,” Moms ordered as she went over to Ivar. “You can stop pedaling.”

He didn’t hear her, pedaling faster and faster until Moms slapped him with a syringe and Roland caught him as he tumbled off the bike, unconscious.