The Rift

CHAPTER 8

The Nightstalkers could come in heavy or they could come in light. Heavy was like Stephen King’s The Dome, coming down with a thud. Seal an area off, no one in and out, follow up with a good cover story (Oak Ridge being just to the north could provide a lot of possibilities), and then take care of business.

Moms decided on Nightstalker Lite to start, with heavy looming.

She made this decision for several reasons. First, the exact threat was unknown. They had Burns, or whatever Burns was, out there. But no Fireflies, as far as they knew. No Rift, although Burns did have the laptop from the Gateway Rift.

And, being honest with herself as she pulled up to Scout’s house, there was the Scout factor. Coming in heavy was disruptive, to say the least. And what Moms had planned was going to be rough enough on the kid’s family.

Moms parked the government car that had been waiting for her at Knoxville Airport, just five miles away. The airport was going to be their Tactical Operations Center, a hangar of the National Guard already having been commandeered, and that was where some of the heavy would be arriving.

It was late in the day, the sun hanging low in the west, just above the tree line. Lights were on in the windows of the house and Moms had noted the new construction in the housing development.

At least it wasn’t a gated community like Senator’s Club in North Carolina. That had been a pain in the ass. But this openness of the former farmland turned development didn’t thrill her. Lots of fields of fire for the bad guys, if there were any bad guys out there who wanted to shoot at her. Scout’s house was on a dead-end street, and Moms felt naked driving along the road, exposed to the entire area and the high ground across the river.

She was wearing a smart business suit for the moment, part of Nightstalker Lite. And something they’d included in their gear after having to improvise in Senators Club. She walked up to the door and pressed the small button. A chime sounded, loud enough she heard it through the door, some classical notes she couldn’t place but was sure Eagle could. A bit much for a doorbell, she thought. Then again, living in shotgun shack, the sheriff damn near broke your door in just knocking on it. A doorbell was a luxury that was pretty low on the priority list where Moms grew up. And visitors usually wanted something, like the title to the land.

The door swung open and a man wearing a sweater stood there, reading glasses perched on his nose. “Yes? Can I help you?”

“Hello,” Moms said, taking a step forward. Lite didn’t have to mean slow.

“What—” the man began, but Moms slapped him on the side of the neck, short needle hidden between two fingers, and then caught him as he collapsed. She laid him out and then switched out the needle for a fresh one.

“Who is it, dear?” a woman’s voice echoed from somewhere inside the house.

The acoustics were terrible and Moms wondered why three people needed such a big house. Of course, it was smaller than Scout’s house in Senator’s Club, which they’d commandeered for their base of operations.

Moms waited and then heard footsteps.

“Dear?” The voice was already tinged with fear and Moms wondered how such a woman gave birth to Scout. She already didn’t like her from the little Scout had said about her. Moms immediately felt a rush of guilt for even thinking that and knew there were deeper—

A rail-thin woman came around one of the many corridors branching off the foyer and Moms strode forward.

“Who are—” the woman began; then she ducked as Moms slapped at her with the needle. Give her some points for speed.

Scout’s mother darted right, racing down a hallway.

“Frak,” Moms muttered as she took chase.

“Greer!” Scout’s mother screamed. “Get out! There’s a crazy woman here!”

Moms raced after the voice, noting out of the corner of her eye that the alarm had been triggered.

Which meant nothing since Ms. Jones already had this area isolated electronically.

Okay, Moms was beginning to get where parts of Scout came from as she turned another corner into the kitchen and Scout’s mother swung a butcher knife at her. Moms sidestepped, avoiding being sliced open.

It was close. Too close.

Then Moms pivoted, sensing someone behind her. Scout was standing there, an ax in her hands, ready to strike; then recognition flooded her face. “Moms?”

Moms jumped back again as Scout’s mother jabbed, almost gutting her. But this opened her up to a strike, and Moms slapped the needle on the back of her neck and caught her, lowering her gently to the tile floor.

She wasn’t heavy.

“What the hell?” Scout demanded.

“Sorry,” Moms said as she pulled out her phone. “We’ve got two for delivery and seclusion,” she called in. She turned the phone off. “We didn’t have time to be subtle. They’ll be fine. We’re just getting them out of the line of fire.”

“Same thing you did to me at Senator’s Club?”

“Yes.”

“That wasn’t nice.”

“It was necessary.”

“Right,” Scout said. “You guys couldn’t call? Just show up and knock my parents out?”

“Sorry,” Moms said. “We just got the message.”

“Took you long enough. But call next time. I can get out of the house and meet you. Whatever.” She sighed and looked down at her mother. “She was due for a little rehab soon anyway. The move really stressed her out. Her last rehab trip was a while ago. And Dad needs a break. He’s been working too hard. As usual. I guess you’re doing them a favor.”

Moms looked at the laptop on the kitchen counter. A boat was flickering on the display. She glanced at Scout.

“My dad wants a boat,” Scout explained. “Actually, he’s been wanting one for years, but now we have a dock, so he might actually get one, but I doubt it. I think not allowing himself one seems to make him feel better than having one would. At least that’s what Doc would say, right?”

Moms stared at Scout, with her calm acceptance of the situation and her accurate evaluation of her father.

Scout looked past Moms. “Where’s Nada? The rest of the team?”

“En route,” Moms said. “Anyone else in the house?”

“No.”

“Who is this Greer your mother was warning?”

“Me.”

“Oh.” Moms indicated a chair. “Tell me what’s been going on.”

Most people don’t realize you can get from Knoxville to the Atlantic Ocean by boat. And those who do realize it think in traditional terms: the Tennessee River, traversing all the dam locks, to Paducah where it joins the Ohio River, to Cairo (Illinois, not Egypt), where the Ohio joins the Mississippi and then down to the Gulf of Mexico and onward.

But starting in 1972 and completed in 1984, the Tennessee-Tombigbee (Tenn-Tom) Waterway connects the Tennessee River to the Black Warrior-Tombigbee River system and then on to the Gulf of Mexico. It is still the largest earth-moving project in world history and few have ever heard of it, and fewer even focus on it, including federal law enforcement. This is just fine for a certain Mexican cartel, which began to use the waterway as a route to ship its various products into the center of the United States, avoiding the traditional drug corridors.

The Tenn-Tom is either a success (according to its supporters) or a failure (according to tonnage shipped, one-quarter of what had been estimated), but for the cartel, it was a blessing. Using a small fleet of luxury yachts, specially modified with hidden compartments, powerful engines to outrace ships at sea, and special armor plating secreted on board to battle off boarding on waterways (the cartel feared its competition more than the Feds), the cartel was enjoying two decades of safe travels, spreading its boats up the Tennessee, the Ohio, and the Mississippi along with its product.

The Splendor was a Bahamian-flagged fifty-six-foot yacht. Capable of carrying two tons of product and fourteen battle-hardened crewmembers. It had a helicopter on the rear deck underneath a tarp, a last-ditch escape device.

And zero women in bikinis.

It was the latter that was the oversight. Splendor had come up the Tenn-Tom, into the Tennessee River, up through the locks to Knoxville and off-loaded its cargo, all on schedule and according to plan. But now, giving in to the needs of the crew, the captain had the armored yacht anchored in a cove on the north side of the river while they took the two skiffs to a local marina, where they took limousines for a night on the town.

A successful mission deserved a reward.

There was one man left on board for guard duty.

Except as Nada would have told them, it ain’t over until the fat lady sings, or in this case, the boat is back home.

The one thing Ms. Jones had over Hannah was the ability to bring in the thunder and lightning. The Cellar always operated on the down low. The Nightstalkers often tried that approach, aka Moms going to Scout’s house, but when in doubt, they brought in the sledgehammer.

Elements of that hammer were now arriving in Knoxville

First in was an AC-130, which could be considered lightning. Based on the venerable C-130 Hercules airframe, the Spectre gunship was designed to rain hell down from the sky. Along the left side of the plane were a 40-mm Gatling gun, a 25-mm Gatling gun, and a 105-mm breech-loading howitzer. Crews boasted they could put a round in every square inch of a football field in five seconds. They’d backed up that boast on battlefields ranging from Vietnam to Grenada, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and several other lesser-known conflicts.

It wasn’t coincidence that the plane was the first to arrive. Spectre had been alerted earlier in the day out of Hurlburt Field in Florida by Ms. Jones as potential support for Neeley’s mission. Just in case. The reality was that Ms. Jones had scrambled the plane and other resources on the chance that Neeley didn’t succeed, which was likely, in her opinion.

She hadn’t, but in doing so they’d lost track of Burns, so the plane had refueled in the air and then spent time circling around over middle Tennessee, awaiting orders.

A half hour later, as darkness had completely settled over Knoxville and the vicinity, more support came flying in.

First, four Apache helicopters, loaded with live munitions, out of Fort Knox.

Then a C-130 full of Rangers from Hunter Army Airfield outside of Savannah, Georgia, in case the team needed the elite infantry and to provide security at the FOB. And then, as they had done last year in North Carolina, on board a lumbering C-5 cargo plane was a pair of M777, 155-mm howitzers. Packed along with their crews were a couple of pallets of M982 Excalibur GPS-guided munitions. These were laser-guided rounds, allowing for pinpoint accuracy, especially useful when firing around civilian communities. With a range of twenty-five miles, the big guns covered a lot of ground from the airstrip, from the foothills of the Smokies to the south to north of Knoxville and a good stretch of the Tennessee River east and west. As soon as they were unloaded, they were emplaced in a low field behind the hangar, out of sight of the civilian terminal, and readied for fire missions. Rangers were patrolling the perimeter, and the road that ran around the back side of the airfield had been closed off due to a “water main break.”

There was Nightstalker Lite and Nightstalker Heavy, and then there was the FPF: Final Protective Fire. It’s a military term. For a firebase, this is where supporting artillery fire would be called in almost on top of the friendlies (and sometimes on top of them) in order to prevent it from being overrun. It was something that was only used as a last resort.

For the Nightstalkers, charged with saving humanity from an array of threats, their on-call FPF lumbered into the air from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. The venerable B-52 was carrying pods of AGM-129A cruise missiles on each wing, a total of twelve warheads. Ten of the warheads were conventional; two were nuclear.

Every time the Nightstalkers were alerted, a B-52 with this payload was scrambled.

They’d used the conventional cruise missiles in the past.

They had yet to use the nuclear warheads.

After the Pinnacle fiasco of the past year, the crews on this mission had been vetted by the Cellar. They would launch if Moms sent the correct order.

The B-52 rose up and turned to the southeast to go on station, drilling a hole in the sky over the vicinity of the Nightstalkers at a much higher altitude than the Spectre, waiting until needed or the mission was over and they could return home.

Most of the remaining Nightstalkers skipped the airfield and drive over entirely in the name of expediency.

Plus, they were just too damn cool to actually land with an airplane at an airfield. That was for civilians and the lesser Gods of Earth.

And Nada was racing toward the air-field in the backseat of the only F-22B Raptor ever produced. Every other Raptor in the inventory was an F-22A single-seater, coming in at $412 million per jet, which seemed a bit ludicrous to Nada, when some lunkhead pilot could put one into the side of a mountain with the wrong twitch of the controls. But the 22B had been designed as a two-seat training version, the line dropped after only one test model produced, during budget cuts. Nada shuddered to think what this one cost. The U.S. had probably sent men to the moon for less. The craft was stationed at Edwards Air Force, and Ms. Jones had requisitioned it to race into LAX, pick up Nada, and then roar east at over Mach 2.

Closer at hand to the problem, Roland, Kirk, Mac, and Eagle were already dirty and in full gear, so they simply got on the C-130 cargo plane Ms. Jones commandeered for them from Pope Air Force Base, which picked them at the airstrip at Mackall. They rigged in flight, also putting together several pods of gear — since they didn’t have the boxes from the Snake — that they might possibly need. Mac, as always, went heavy on the explosives taken from the 18 Charlie (engineer) committee. Kirk made sure he had adequate commo for the entire team from the 18 Echo (communications) committee. Eagle pouted, because he didn’t have his beloved Snake and he hated someone else flying him.

Back at Camp Mackall, Sergeant Twackhammer pouted because they were flying off with a lot of the gear he needed to train new Green Berets.

And Roland went with two full pods of assorted weapons appropriated from the 18 Bravo (weapons) committee, including flamethrowers, just in case they did run into Fireflies. As the 130 made its final approach turn for the drop zone, Roland did one last check of the pods to make sure the drogue chutes were rigged correctly, and then he manhandled all the pods into line, hooking their chutes to the static line that ran from the front of the cargo bay into the tail section.

The loadmaster waved his hands and shouted, “Three minutes!”

The rear of the C-130 opened, with the ramp leveling out and the top portion disappearing into the upper tail section. Lights from houses, cars, and streetlights were clearly visible to the rear, bouncing around as the plane twisted and turned.

Roland hooked up behind everyone else and the pods. The other three hooked up in front of the pods, closer to the edge of the ramp.

They were five hundred feet above ground level, and through their night vision goggles, they could see rolling, wooded terrain below. Passing by to the south was a large cluster of lights: Maryville and Alcoa, two adjoining towns south of Knoxville.

They flashed over a section of lake/river as the loadmaster signaled one minute.

It was going to be tight because they (Roland actually) had to push all the bundles and themselves out along a bend in the river. The pilot had promised to bank hard and follow the river as best as possible, but the banking itself could be a problem.

What they didn’t want was Roland to land on someone’s roof.

As jumpmaster, Mac knelt down and grabbed the hydraulic arm on the right side of the open ramp. He had a main parachute on his back but no reserve. They were jumping so low that if the main didn’t deploy, there wasn’t time for a reserve. He peered forward through his night vision goggles. He spotted the blinking infrared strobe ahead and to the right, around a bend in the river.

They were on target.

Mac stood and secured his night vision goggles in a waterproof case. He stared up into the tail, at the glowing red light. The moment it turned green he shouted, “Follow me” and stepped off the ramp.

The C-130 was slewing, following the curve in the Tennessee River around Keller Bend on the north side of the river. Eagle and Kirk followed Mac as quickly as they could move, falling off the ramp. Their static lines played out, pulling the deployment bags on their chutes out, and then the chutes themselves snapped open, all within five seconds.

Which was fortunate, because they had another eight seconds before hitting the water even with open chutes.

On the C-130, Roland shoved the bundles, sending them tumbling. He staggered and almost fell as the C-130 abruptly angled to the right as the pilots turned to follow the river around Jackson Bend on the south side of the river. One of the bundles, filled with weapons, got caught up under the hydraulic arm, and Roland was damned if he was going without his toys.

“Go! Go!” the crew chief was shouting, unusually excited for some reason.

Roland grabbed the bundle, pulled it loose, and tossed it out.

Then he was tossed out of the airplane himself as the pilots abruptly pulled back on their yokes, angling the nose of the plane almost straight up.

Roland found out the reason five seconds later as his chute finished deploying and he checked canopy, as per Protocol, and then looked down to get oriented and saw the high power lines directly below him. Lines that the aircraft had just barely cleared. He grabbed toggles and tried to turn, but it was too late.

He expertly passed between two high-tension lines and then his chute got caught in them. Roland came to an abrupt halt, dangling eighty feet above the river with high voltage racing across the lines above his head.

The only thing keeping him from being fried was that he hadn’t completed the circuit with either the river or the ground.

That was about the only good news for him.

For the others, they had softer landings than a normal land jump, which was the good part of a water jump.

The bad part of a water jump was the water. Mac, Kirk, and Eagle splashed down, went under, then bobbed to the surface as their chutes came down on top of them, turning the dark night almost completely black.

They had a couple of minutes before the chutes became waterlogged and sank — with them inside. So each one did as they’d been trained. Reached up, found a line, and followed it out to the edge of the chute and clear air. Then they unbuckled and pushed the parachute away, slipped on the fins tied off to their sides, and began, well, finning.

The F-22B Raptor touched down with a scorch of black rubber, expensive rubber, since the government bought “special tires” for the “special” plane, and given the price, they were probably leaving at least a few Gs worth of rubber, Nada estimated, on the Knoxville Airport tarmac. Nada was relieved the pilot actually came to a halt next to the Blackhawk helicopter. He’d been envisioning having to do a tuck and roll, jumping from a moving plane, as fast as they’d been flying across the country.

The blue bulb was still in his breast pocket.

Nada managed to climb out of the cockpit, have the blessed relief of the ground beneath his feet for fifteen seconds, and then he was on board the Blackhawk, opening up a kit bag full of the good stuff and trading in his civvies for battle gear as the helicopter took off.

Nothing but good times ahead.

He realized he was looking forward to seeing Scout as he switched the bulb from his civilian shirt into one of the many pouches on his MOLLE vest. It meant he was carrying two less thirty-round magazines but he was beginning to realize he had to live life on the edge in order to experience it more fully.

As if he hadn’t been doing so for decades.

Just differently.

Burns had been driving along the river on the north side, getting as close to it as the roads allowed.

He was searching.

He was currently pulled over on the side of Tedford Road, underneath a set of high power lines. The road was just short of ending at Tooles Bend Road, which went under I-140, a spur of Interstate 40 that connected it with Maryville to the south. It was all quite confusing, but GPS helped a lot.

He turned off the engine and rolled the windows down. He leaned his head out and peered up at the power lines. They were a long way up.

But doable.

Then he heard an airplane engine, the roar familiar: C-130.

He nodded. Of course they were here. He had expected the Nightstalkers to be coming. Burns cocked his head to the side as he examined that thought as much he seemed capable of examining anything.

Had he?

Or had he been told they’d come?

He wasn’t quite certain of anything, except the mission that had been imprinted on him. That he had to do. There was no choice.

The sound of the 130 faded into the distance and Burns considered the power lines because he needed those to deal with the Nightstalkers.

They’d do, but something was nagging at him, touching on the edge of his consciousness. Something was ahead. Just past the underpass. Something that was drawing him with more subtle urgency than the electricity overhead. More than the mission imprinted on him. He started the car and drove left onto Tooles Bend and through the underpass. The road was narrow and winding and took a sharp left up ahead, but Burns slammed on the brakes as he sensed the strange feeling off to the side.

Not sound. Not sight.

The echoes of the past. Of emotion. Of anguish.

Burns looked to the right. A dirt road ran off into the darkness through the trees. A pair of chain-link gates were padlocked together and a half-dozen NO TRESPASSING signs were hung on the gate and trees.

As if.

Burns turned the wheel and hit the gas. The car burst through the gates, leaving them hanging forlornly on their hinges. He drove along the dirt road.

He didn’t need night vision goggles.

Burns tried to figure out what was drawing him. But as he went down the road, it got more powerful. He came out of the trees. An open field was to the left, sloping down to the Tennessee River. Burns peered in the direction as he stopped the car. The ruins of a large ominous-looking building lurked in the darkness. Smashed windows peered out like empty eye sockets, wide double doors in front yawning open, not inviting but threatening.

Do not enter here, for bad things await.

Burns kept his eyes on the ruins as he reached for Neeley’s phone. He gripped it and accessed the Internet, trying to ascertain what this place had been.

It took a while, as if someone had been trying to hide the history of the locale, but eventually he uncovered it: This had been the fieldwork outbuilding of the Lakeshore Mental Asylum in Knoxville. Patients had been shuttled out here for “therapy” in the fields and on the river.

It was not therapy they’d received, Burns could sense.

The place was long since shuttered and closed. A minor mystery for investigators of the paranormal who claimed it was haunted by ghosts of patients drowned in the river and murdered in other nefarious ways.

It was haunted. Burns could feel the souls of those who’d passed through here. The torments of their twisted minds. He felt a kinship. He got out of the car and walked into the field. The dirt beneath his feet screamed their anguish.

Burns started twirling, slowly at first, then faster and faster. His long coat with the suppressed pistol in the pocket spread out from his side, becoming a cape. His hands went up into the air as if pleading.

Terrible things had been done here. Evil people, both captor and prisoner.

He tumbled to the ground, dizzy.

He lay there for a few moments staring up the sky, his eyes normal.

Then they regained their golden tint.

What had he been doing?

He sat up. Then got to his feet and walked over to the car and got in.

Burns sat for minutes, even with the throb of electricity running through those power lines not far away, a siren’s call for his mission.

Finally, he started the car up and headed back for the power.

Moms and Scout snagged the supply pods first, racing up to each one on a Sea-Doo and using a hook to grab them and then using a tow rope to drag them behind.

Scout was better at it than Moms, who was learning how to operate a Sea-Doo for the first time. Scout snagged five of the seven pods and tied them off at the dock. By that time, Mac, Kirk, and Eagle were swimming upriver, in their direction.

Scout skidded up to Eagle with a spray, stopping just scant inches from him in the water. “Hey, Eagle!”

“Impressive driving,” Eagle said as he grabbed and pulled himself on board. “Mac and Kirk are coming, but they’re younger and can swim longer.”

Scout laughed as she roared back to her dock, passing Moms, who’d recovered the last two pods and was heading for the other jumpers. She quickly found both Mac and Kirk.

“Where’s Roland?” she asked as they both climbed on board behind her.

Kirk unsealed his night vision goggles and slid them on. “Oh frak.” He pointed over Moms’s shoulder upriver.

Roland’s parachute was clearly visible draped over the power lines. His large body dangling below it was silhouetted against the stars.

“That’s about as pretty a picture of Roland we’re ever gonna get,” Mac said.

“He knows not to complete the circuit?” Kirk asked as Moms gunned them toward the dock.

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Mac said.

“He does,” Moms said with complete confidence. Fake it till he makes it, she thought.

She pulled up to the dock a little too quickly, hitting the Sea-Doo against the rubber bumper.

“Where’s Nada?” Scout asked.

“He’s coming,” Eagle said as Mac and Kirk scrambled up to the dock.

“I’m going for Roland,” Moms said, roaring off before anyone could say anything else.

“I’m helping,” Scout said, leaving the three alone on the dock. They watched the two Sea-Doos head upriver toward the electric jumper and then began to fish the pods out of the water and onto the dock.

“If I’d wanted to swim, I’d have joined the Navy,” Nada complained as the helicopter descended to five meters above the Tennessee River.

“We’ve got power lines around the bend,” the pilot said. “So you need to cast in about thirty seconds.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nada muttered as he looked between the two pilots, trying to get oriented. “What the hell?” he muttered as he spotted the chute tangled in the power lines and the body below. “Fraking Roland. He better not complete the circuit.”

Burns parked underneath the power lines, just off of Tedford Road. Wires looped overhead and the forest had been clear-cut in both directions underneath the power lines. He reached back to the rear seat and retrieved the Gateway laptop.

He exited the government car and was going to head fifty meters to the nearest tower when he paused as something occurred to him. He went to the trunk and opened it. An assortment of automatic rifles, pistols, and grenades were nestled in their slots. Along with body armor and MOLLE gear. Typical Fed field setup.

Burns shrugged on the body armor. Then chose a .45-caliber pistol; an MK-17 CQC SCAR assault rifle, chambering the larger 7.62-mm rounds; a bag full of grenades; and a MOLLE vest into which he stuffed ammunition for the weapons.

He felt much better and grounded. Old habits died hard.

Familiarity bred contentment.

He shook his head in confusion.

Geared up, he headed toward the base of the closest tower.

“Roland!” Moms called out as the Sea-Doo came to a halt, bobbing on its own wake.

“Yo!” Roland answered, dangling in his harness eighty feet overhead.

“Don’t drop your lowering line and complete the circuit,” Moms said.

“Duh,” Roland replied. “Mac asked you that, didn’t he?” He was fiddling with something that Moms couldn’t make out in the dark.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting out of here,” Roland replied.

“It’s too high,” Moms said. She could hear a helicopter coming in behind them. “Maybe we can do something with the chopper.”

“Like what?” Roland asked in a calm voice. He reached up and looped his thumbs through the cutaways for his main.

“Roland, don’t!”

Roland pulled the loops and freefell toward the water. As he fell, he pulled his Gore-Tex wet weather jacket over his head, the arms tied into his gear in the back. It was a makeshift parachute that might have helped if Roland was a Ken doll being tossed from a building.

But he was two hundred forty pounds of Roland.

He hit with a solid thud less than ten feet from Moms and Scout. He promptly disappeared into the dark water.

“Roland!” Scout cried out in alarm.

Nada scooted his butt closer to the edge of the cargo bay and watched Roland fall. “Just great,” he muttered. Then he shoved himself off, immediately linking his hands behind his neck and tucking his chin in as he’d been trained for a helicast. Feet and knees together, braced for the impact of hitting the water.

He fell from only ten feet and the water was hard when he slammed into the river.

Roland surfaced, sputtering and splashing about. Moms pulled up next to him and put a hand out. Roland grabbed it and almost jerked her off the Sea-Doo and into the river. Then he got hold of the seat and pulled himself aboard.

“Are you all right?” Moms asked.

“I think so,” Roland said.

“Oh frak,” Moms muttered as she headed for the dock, because a “think so” from Roland meant he was hurt. She turned to Scout. “Nada just jumped from that chopper. Could you—” She hadn’t finished before Scout was racing away as the Blackhawk roared by, gaining altitude to clear the lines.

Ivar had his eyes closed, resting. He’d learned in the first month of Special Operations training to rest whenever there was an opportunity. This flight eastward out of Area 51 was one such opportunity.

They were on board a Snake, not the Snake, but the original prototype that didn’t have the up-to-date electronics that its follow-on production design boasted. It also didn’t have the chain gun mounted in the nose. Still, it flew, it could go vertical and horizontal, and it was available.

Ms. Jones was taking what she could get.

Doc and Ivar were in the cargo bay, surrounded by the various equipment cases scavenged off the Snake at the depot in Area 51. They were thirty minutes out from Knoxville.

Ivar stirred as the phone in his chest pocket vibrated. He pulled it out and stared at the screen: #&%!@

It might have been someone trying to express a profanity without directly saying it, but it wasn’t. Ivar reached into his thigh pocket and covertly pulled out a twin to the black orb he’d dumped into the water at the Can and held it in the palm of his hand. He kept the phone in the other.

And waited.

Nada looked up at the Sea-Doo. “You’ve grown.”

“Hey, Nada,” Scout said. “Climb on board.”

Nada clambered up behind Scout. “I’ve got a nephew,” he said proudly. “Just born.”

“Congratulations. Did they name him Nada, after his uncle?” Scout asked as she revved the engine and they headed for the dock.

“Nope. After his father. He’s going to be a junior.”

“Argh,” Scout said. “Ever notice there’s no Mary Junior or Nancy Junior? Junior’s a guy thing, as if they live on if their kid has their name. Shoulda named him Nada.”

“Wouldn’t that be Nada Junior?”

“Nah.” Scout expertly scooted alongside the dock, touching it without a bump. “You’re his uncle, not his dad. Coulda called him Nada Two, the sequel.”

Nada laughed as he climbed onto the dock. “One Nada is enough in the world.”

“And it isn’t even your real name after all,” Scout said. She paused before driving the Sea-Doo onto the lift. “You ever going to tell me your real name?”

“Not tonight,” Nada said. “You gonna tell me yours?”

“Not tonight.” Scout drove over to the lift, positioned the Sea-Doo, and then hit the controls, pulling the machine up out of the water.

As she was doing that, Moms zoomed up, Roland behind her.

“Doc here yet?” Moms asked.

Nada did a quick count. “Nope. Why?”

“Roland’s hurt,” Moms said.

“I ain’t hurt,” Roland protested as he climbed off, his body stiff. “Just banged up a little.”

“What the fuck?” Mac asked. “Why’d you cut loose?”

Roland shrugged, keeping the wince off his face. “We’re on a mission.”

“Sometimes,” Mac said, “I think you’ve hit your quotient of dumb, then you do something more.” But at the same time, he was checking Roland’s ribs, probing.

Nada reached out and Kirk was ready with a comm link. Nada keyed the radio. “Doc? What’s your ETA?”

“Twenty minutes to Knoxville Airport. We’ve got all the gear. And we’re on board the prototype of the Snake. Eagle should be happy, although it’s missing some bells and whistles, including the gun.”

“Roger,” Nada said. “We’re going to check out the local area, but I’m sending Kirk and Eagle to the airfield to rendezvous with you. We’re still not sure what exactly we’re dealing with.”

“What else is new?”

Part of what they were dealing with was sitting underneath the metal skeleton holding up the power lines. Burns had attached a lead from the USB port to the leg of the tower. His fingers were flying over the keyboard, replaying what he’d picked up from Eden’s mind.

There was a crackle of gold running out of the computer, through the wire, up the leg, and into the power line.

Burns nodded, then pulled out his phone and sent his second message.

Ivar didn’t even bother to check the message. He just felt the phone vibrate in one hand and with the other he pressed the black orb.

“We’ve got Rift forming!”

One of the operators of the Can jumped to her feet as the clicking alert sounded and flashing lights made her words redundant.

The other operator turned to his comm station. As he lifted the phone to call Ms. Jones, an electromagnetic pulse rippled out of the orb deep inside the Can.

Everything inside the room went black.

Burns stood up as power came down out of the tower and into the laptop, and then to the small golden dot that was forming six feet beyond it and eight feet above the ground.

It would take time.

But he had time now.

It took the team some minutes to drag the pods up to the house and put them in the spacious four-car garage. They’d moved outside the SUV and Mercedes and four-wheel ATV that had occupied it.

“How many cars do you guys have?” Mac asked as he lugged in the last pod.

“Just the two,” Scout said.

“It’s like the wristwatches in North Carolina,” Eagle said, wanting to stop this one before it got out of hand. “You can have only two wrists, but lots of watches.”

“What’s the ATV for?” Mac asked.

“Taking the trash can up to the road,” Scout said.

“It’s that far?” Mac wanted to know.

“Dad has a bad back,” Scout said.

“Couldn’t you have done it?” Mac pressed.

Scout glared at him. “Dad wouldn’t let me. He likes his ATV.”

Nada turned to Scout. “How do you get to the airport from here? Doc and Ivar are there with the rest of our gear. And Eagle needs to pick up the Snake.”

“I can drive there,” Scout said.

“You’re too young,” Nada said.

“I’ve got my driver’s permit.” Scout reached in her pocket and pulled out her wallet. She carefully extracted said document and proudly displayed it.

All the Nightstalkers stopped for a moment and stared at her, realizing she’d grown and changed a bit in the year since they saw her last.

“Your hair is nice,” Kirk said, having a younger sister and a bit of a clue. “I like the new color.”

“Thank you.” Scout beamed.

“What was the old color?” Mac muttered, and Nada nudged him with an elbow hard enough to send him sprawling to the floor.

“Who’s Ivar?” Scout asked. “I don’t remember an Ivar.”

“Mac, you go with Scout,” Nada said. “Eagle, you go, too, and figure out the new old Snake. Shouldn’t take long — you trained on it. Mac, hook up with Doc and Ivar, leave the boxes on the Snake, and bring the other gear in SUVs we can park in here. Let’s play this like we did in North Carolina.”

“Except Scout can drive,” Moms said.

“Oh goodie!” Scout exclaimed, grabbing a set of car keys off the rack near the door to the house. “Do I get paid?”

The two lab rats down in the Can were just that. They’d found a flashlight and were groping their way toward the elevator, praying power for it wasn’t shut down.

They reached the steel doors for the elevator. There was no light behind the buttons, which wasn’t an encouraging sign.

The woman pressed the button.

Nothing.

At the Ranch, Ms. Jones listened to the reports that came in from Russia and Japan. Their Kamiokandes had picked up a Rift forming, but her own Can was silent. She turned to Pitr, who was seated at a desk next to her bed, bringing up the data being forwarded from the other two Cans.

“What is wrong at Area 51?”

“Power outage in the Can,” Pitr said. “Support is working to restore it.”

“At exactly the moment when a Rift starts to form.” It was not a question. But Ms. Jones followed the statement with one. “Where is the intersection from Japan and Russia?”

“Eastern Tennessee.”

“But we can’t pinpoint it,” Ms. Jones murmured. “We have a traitor. The question is whether it’s Mr. Doc or Mr. Ivar.”

“Ivar,” Pitr said without hesitation.

“Perhaps,” Ms. Jones said. “Perhaps. We must not overlook the obvious. Have the personnel on duty detained and send Mr. Frasier to interview them.”

“I will.”

“When will power be restored?”

Pitr looked at his screen. “Twenty-five to thirty minutes.”

“Just about the time the Rift will open. Alert the Nightstalkers.”