Nightstalkers

CHAPTER 7

The rusted sign pointing toward the old corrugated barn had a dozen old bullet holes in it and one could barely make out the faded lettering in the dark: SEE ALL THE POISINUS SNAKES 75cents. Eagle was driving the blacked-out Humvee using night-vision goggles, because Eagle always drove, and Roland was singing “Lawyers, Guns and Money” while manning the fifty-caliber machine gun in the roof turret because Roland always sang that when they headed to the Barn holding the Snake and he always manned the fifty. Whom Roland hoped he could shoot out here in the middle of the Ranch was something that wasn’t even worth asking. One never knew, but someone had to stand in the hole because it was pretty crowded inside the Humvee. Moms was in the passenger seat, head hunched over, speaking on a secure line to Ms. Jones.

Roland got to his favorite, slightly altered lines—“Send lawyers, guns and money, Moms, get me out of this”—as Nada flashed his security badge at the two guards who popped up out of hide holes, automatic weapons at the ready, night-vision goggles on, and red lasers aiming dots on Eagle and Moms. Those dots also designated a target for a Hellfire missile remotely mounted somewhere out there in the darkness. If the guards pulled their triggers or their monitors went dead, the Humvee would be a smoking hole in the ground.

The two contractors had seen the team more than enough times to know who they were, but Protocol was somewhere between cleanliness and godliness for Nada, so they peered at the badge, then leaned into the Humvee and flashed the retina scanner at the team jammed inside, Eagle lifting his goggles momentarily for the check.

“What if one of us isn’t who we think we are?” Eagle asked, because Eagle always asked questions like that. He received no answer as the guards waved them through.

Eagle gassed — technically dieseled — the Humvee and they raced toward the Barn doors, which looked like they were ready to fall off, but were actually two-inch-thick reinforced concrete and steel and could take a direct hit from an RPG and pretty much ignore it — pretty much like the team ignored most of Eagle’s observations about the universe.

The sensor above the door picked up the transmitter in the Humvee and the doors ponderously swung open. Red night-lights flickered on inside, preserving the night vision of those not wearing goggles and keeping Eagle’s and Roland’s NVGs from overloading. Eagle didn’t slow and they slipped through the still-opening doors with less than an inch to spare on either side, and not one of the others — except Kirk, who’d never been with Eagle on a drive — had a moment’s worry that Eagle would crash them.

Eagle slammed the brakes and spun the wheel, skidding the Humvee around to the side of the Snake. Moms was still on the link to Ms. Jones, occasionally nodding or asking a question. As Nada carefully watched, the team loaded the craft with a quick, well-honed routine, Kirk bumbling along as best he could, mostly trying not to get in the way.

Except nothing was routine for Nada, so he had taken out his acetated Nightstalker Protocol, checking off the twenty-three items in the pre-op load Protocol. He’d erase the checks when they got back, in order to be ready for the next mission.

If they got back.

Moms signaled with her free hand to Nada, still listening to Ms. Jones on the sat phone.

“We’ve got a Courier gone black near Salt Lake City.”

“Package?” Nada asked.

Moms shook her head. “Don’t know yet.”

Roland pointed Kirk toward his area. It was packed and ready to move, and he grabbed the rucksack containing the portable satellite radio, along with a freshly generated set of codes that were spilling out of a printer next to the ruck.

Then he helped Mac carry the heavy plastic demolitions case into the cargo bay and secure it next to the larger team box that stayed in the Snake at all times. That box held a wide variety of gear, from climbing ropes to arctic clothing to chemical/biological protection suits, parachutes, dry suits, spare radio batteries, two million in gold coins for barter, etc. etc.; someone with an extremely paranoid and inventive mind had packed it.

Nada was always bitching it was missing a lot of stuff they were gonna need.

Doc, med kit in hand, slid out of the way by getting into the aircraft and taking a seat.

Roland easily carried an M-240 machine gun in one hand and a Barrett fifty-caliber sniper rifle in the other while his ruck bulged with ammunition for both along with other deadly goodies. Roland slapped the M-240 into a mount that could extend when the back ramp went down, while Eagle was doing preflight, even though a Support mechanic did a preflight on the Snake every day.

At Nada’s order, Roland removed the left side gun mount and bolted the rescue/lift hoist in its place, connecting the power cable. Just in case. Mac, having secured the demo, loaded the ramp-mounted M-240, making sure the belt would run free and clear. Roland slid the Barrett upright into a sheath along the forward bulkhead, then checked his MP-5 submachine gun, while Kirk dialed up the proper frequency, linked his PRT with the radio, and did a Satcom check, locating the nearest MILSTAR satellite to bounce a signal off of. Then he found two backups. Just in case. He updated the current set of codes.

Since this was a Courier op, Mac and Roland then prepared a sling load rig in the belly of the Snake and made sure the attaching points were ready.

When Eagle settled down in the pilot’s seat and the dual engines began to whine with power, and the other team members fastened their seat belts in the cargo bay with all gear stowed, Nada went over to one of the numerous dirty glass cases set on tables along one side of the shed. A sign warned Danger: Extremely Poisinus. Nada reached in and hit the open button.

The top of the Barn split apart, propelled by powerful hydraulic arms. As it was doing so, Eagle was rotating the wings to vertical. Nada hopped into the crew chief’s seat directly behind Moms — who was in the copilot’s — and put on his headset just in time to hear Roland finish Warren Zevon’s song:

“I’m a desperate man. Send lawyers, guns and money. The shit has hit the fan.”

“Technically,” Eagle observed, as he always did when Roland finished, “Moms is coming with the Nightstalkers, guns and money.”

“We don’t need no stinking lawyers,” Mac drawled.

“Roger that, brother,” Roland said, checking the load in his MK-23 Mod 0 offensive handgun. His blood was up and he always got excited when Zevoned. “Yo, Eagle. Got a round in the chamber?”

The Snake lifted off the ground and Eagle shot them straight up, the tips of the wings clearing the open doors with a generous two inches on either side. Next to him, Moms sighed and reached over. Since a Snake pilot must always have one hand on the cyclic and the other on the collective, Moms unsnapped Eagle’s holster and pulled out the modified gun designed specifically for Special Operations Forces. She pulled back slightly on the slide, saw there was indeed no round in the chamber, and pulled the slide all the way back, letting it slam forward, chambering a round for the pilot. For everyone else on the team, the mantra, as it was in Delta Force and other elite units, was that their finger was their safety. But Eagle needed the lever pushed to safe, which Moms made sure of. She slid the gun back into the holster.

Chagrined, Eagle glanced at her and mouthed thanks.

In the cargo bay, Nada was checking his watch, having timed the team from alert to liftoff. He didn’t seem pleased, but he never seemed pleased, and was writing something in his Protocol, apparently having figured out a way to shave a few seconds off.

“Mission,” Moms said in a tone that brought to a halt any further chatter. “One of the Couriers went off the grid at a truck stop on I-15, about one hundred and twenty miles from here.”

Everyone swayed as Eagle banked the hybrid aircraft hard and accelerated as the wings rotated from vertical to horizontal. Once they snapped into place he kicked in the afterburners. The dim glow from the night-mode instrument panel was the only light on the aircraft. No running lights, no searchlight. Eagle had the night-vision goggles down over his helmet visor. On the interior of the visor was a heads-up display giving him pertinent flight data, most especially whether the forward-looking radar picked up any obstructions. They were flying less than thirty feet above the desert floor and crossed Nevada Route 375 as he curved them to the north and east. The exterior of the Snake was painted flat black with no markings.

If any of the UFO enthusiasts lurking at the infamous mailbox that led to the gate to Area 51 looked up at the muted roar of the engines, they’d just gotten the bonus of seeing something that was whispered about but had never been photographed.

“Package?” Nada asked.

“A variation of the H5N1 virus,” Moms relayed. “The pickup was a biochem lab at the University of Colorado.”

“Fuck,” Roland muttered. “Bugs. I hate bugs.”

“It’s a virus, not a bug,” Doc corrected. “The original has a sixty-percent kill rate but could be contained.”

“His truck isn’t off the grid,” Moms continued, “his monitor is. Truck GPS says it’s been sitting at the truck stop for over an hour. We’ve gotten nothing on the local cop chatter so the site is quiet.”

“So the Package might still be inside,” Nada said. The glum way he said it indicated he thought not. But then again, he’d been nicknamed Nada because he always figured not only was the glass half empty, but whatever was left in it could kill you. He’d gotten his nickname within thirty seconds of leaving Ms. Jones’s office, a record. Unfortunately, every person who’d been there for that ceremony was no longer on the team and several were no longer breathing.

“Monitor down isn’t good,” Doc said, because the Courier’s monitor going dead meant he was probably dead. Doc often said obvious things, but he was a scientist and a doctor and he’d learned people often missed the obvious, especially some of the more focused soldiers on the team.

Eagle snorted. “Stupid Courier probably got rolled at the truck stop by some surfers trying to make money to make it to California and it went bad; not someone after a bug. Probably lying in the john after getting his ass kicked, monitor broken.”

“Sounds like a tech steal by professionals,” Mac said. “They’re probably three states away by now.” Mac always hoped to be pitted against James Bond in one form or another.

“Or the dipshit Courier knocked loose the monitor wire to the transmitter,” Roland noted. “Or went in to take a shower at the stop and forgot to bypass the alert when he unstrapped it.”

“Or he got taken down by professionals who want the bug,” Mac said.

“Virus,” Doc repeated.

Eagle was thinking out loud. “How would professionals have known about the virus, the van, the Courier, and the route? We don’t even get that unless we’re Zevoned.”

“I can guess,” Nada said. “Fucking Courier is sitting in a brand-new, white, unmarked van that rides low because of armor plating, and the guy’s some dumb-ass ex-grunt, strapped to the gills with guns and not acting like the dumb-ass truck driver he’s supposed to pretend to be. My four-year-old niece Zoey would have figured out what he was.” Everyone groaned at the mention of Zoey because Nada always referred to any situation caused by stupidity as a Zoey, yet no one knew if she was real or not. Zoeys led to getting Zevoned, Roland was known to say. Too often. “I’ve warned”—he caught himself—“advised Ms. Jones about the Couriers.”

“Come on,” Mac said. “This bug—”

“Virus,” Doc muttered.

“—bug is getting transferred and—” But this time Mac was cut off by Moms and no one spoke when Moms cut you off on the team net.

“Tell us about the virus, Doc.”

“If it’s a variation of H5N1 from a college lab,” Doc said, “it appears some scientist has been playing around with what most people call the bird flu. A couple of people at the University of Wisconsin did it a while back and it caused quite an uproar in the community.”

“The scientific community,” Eagle said with disgust. “I think it’s criminal that these people are allowed to play around with lethal experimentation via government grants just to earn a PhD. It’s like letting local police departments have nuclear weapons just in case they need them for crowd control.”

“Hey,” Mac said. “Remember the time the nuke—”

“Quiet, please,” Moms said, without rancor. “Support is setting up a Forward Operating Base out on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Nada. Plan?”

“The van is still there,” Nada said. “As always, the Package is more important than the Courier. We go in quiet. Send a HAHO jumper in, check the van for the Package. It’s there, we lift it out intact and then check the interior at the FOB. Then the HAHO looks for the Courier if he’s not with the van.”

Mac unbuckled and was opening the team box.

“Who is HAHO?” Moms asked.

Nada hesitated.

“For fuck’s sake,” Moms said, a slight exasperation sliding in, “I know you go for the guy who’s gone the longest without a jump so he can maintain his jump status.”

Mac had a parachute rig out and was checking it.

“Last jumps?” Nada asked.

Each man rattled off the last time they’d stepped out of a perfectly good aircraft and done a free-fall parachute jump. Regulations required a jump every three months in order to keep jump pay at free-fall rate: a whopping $225 a month.

Not surprisingly, Eagle was furthest out from his last jump, twelve days away from losing his status.

“Well, that ain’t happening unless someone else on the team’s gone through flight school while I wasn’t watching,” Moms said. “Everyone else is pretty tight so let’s forget about pay and focus on mission. Roland. You’re taking point. Don’t kill everyone down there, please. Unless they try to kill you.”

“Yes, Moms.” The sincerity in his voice belied all his early songs and words. He’d wipe out the entire truck stop if Moms told him to; so with his promise one could assume the safety of dozens of civilians.

“Should I suit up?” Roland asked, looking at Doc.

Moms looked at Doc, indicating it was his call.

“Negative. They seal that stuff tight and it would take a big blast to get into the vault on the van. Such an event would have made the police scanners.”

That was good enough for Roland, although most might have had their doubts about jumping right on top of a superbug. Roland unbuckled and crouched next to Mac. The engineer put the parachute on the weapons man’s back.

“Left leg,” Mac said as he passed the first strap between Roland’s legs.

“Left leg,” Roland confirmed as he snapped it into place.

Eagle began to gain altitude, because the HA in HAHO stood for high altitude.

“Right leg,” Mac said.

“Right leg,” Roland echoed.

They went through the routine of rigging, then Mac sat back down. Nada got up and did the JMPI: jump master parachute inspection. Eyes and hands ran over the rig, checking everything. Done, he gave Roland a light slap on the shoulder, indicating he was good to go.

“Wait one!” Moms called out, an unusual display of surprise for her. “Correction. Correction on the Package. Support got the damn Package invoice number wrong but the right pickup location. The Package is not a virus.”

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Until her next words. “It’s the hard drive from the laptop from our Fun Outside Tucson.”

“Fuck me to tears,” Nada muttered.