So much for Prince fucking Charming, he thought, as he ran to help her up.
Chagrined, he got her to her feet, but her legs were like silly putty and she hung around his neck, barely able to stand as the tranquilizer rushed through her bloodstream.
The Loonies scrambled out of the bus as the guards approached. Nebraska came out last, but he’d been scanning the compound the whole time he’d been driving, and it seemed he’d already figured out his plan. He pointed to a Quonset hut that looked to be the compound’s motor pool. A row of Indian Scout motorcycles was lined up in front.
Turning to the others, he shouted almost gleefully, “Get to the choppers!”
12
Pinsky had tried yoga a few times. He understood the concept, the way it was supposed to relax you, let you breathe and connect with your body. He wasn’t ever going to suggest that it didn’t work, because it had worked for him, to a certain degree. But other than some useful stretching, yoga didn’t provide anything to him that flying jets didn’t offer a hundred times over… and never more so than when he had a bogey in his sights.
“Light up your winders on my mark,” he said into his comms mic. “Go, zero-two! Go, zero-three!”
As the other members of his squadron banked off on either side to flank the once-again-visible ship that streaked across the sky below them, a blissful calm enveloped him. The world that existed for him now was only his ride, the voices on his comms, the steady in-out of his breathing, and the UFO he’d been tasked with blowing out of the fucking sky. He smiled to himself and thought of childhood visits to the dentist and the happy gas they’d given him when he’d needed a tooth pulled. Even the oxygen mask attached to his face reminded him of that day. There was no gas in the air he breathed—he wouldn’t be seeing dragons on the wall or thinking his mom had floppy puppy ears—but he felt the same elation.
As soon as his colleagues were in position, he opened his mouth to bark the order that would send a triple whammy of missiles from the three F-22s converging on the bogey, to what should have been devastating effect. However, at that moment the alien ship shimmered and began to vanish, engaging its cloaking mode. A split-second later, before Pinsky even had time to realize that this was his last moment on earth, the three F-22s that had been about to fire on the alien vessel were instantly atomized by a deadly, all-engulfing wave of energy expelled by the ship, similar to the way that a squid will expel a cloud of ink to mask its escape from predators.
As Pinsky and his jet truly became one, their conjoined atoms dispersing to swirl and dance forever in the endless skies, the alien ship gave one final ripple, and then vanished.
Traeger stood with his aide, Sapir, and stared at the place where the vial ought to have been. A numbness spread over him. He tried a smile, but it didn’t hold. He glanced around, looking at the table where the goddamned Predator had been playing possum.
“The floor,” he said to Sapir, without looking at the man. “Check for fragments.”
“Sir, I’ve been checking. There’s debris everywhere—”
Traeger shot him a withering glance. “Don’t you think I see that? You think I didn’t notice how trashed this fucking lab is, Sapir? I need to confirm that vial is shattered on this floor, that the contents of that vial—which we could not afford to lose, right? You know we couldn’t afford to lose it. But I need to confirm that the contents are in this fucking mess and not in the hands of someone who has no loyalty to us.”
Sapir nodded, scanning the debris on the floor again.
Traeger swore, staring once more at the place where that vial ought to have been.
His headset crackled. A voice cut in. “Stargazer,” said one of the mercs in his employ. “I have eyes on the woman. Instructions?”
Traeger lowered his head and took a deep breath. Sapir stopped trying to pretend the vial might have shattered in the melee and watched him, waiting to see what he would do—because, of course, the other significant thing missing from the lab wasn’t a vial or a sample or even a secret, it was Dr. Casey Brackett.
“She was asking all the wrong questions,” Traeger said.
Sapir gave a slight nod. Traeger sneered at him. He didn’t need empathy from his aide and he certainly didn’t need sympathy from anyone. Casey had crossed a line, and she had crossed Traeger.
“Cancel her,” Traeger said. He gave a small sigh of regret—only human, after all, he thought. “Retrieve any contraband.”
He could practically picture the hardcase mercenary with one hand on his weapon already.
“Wilco, Stargazer,” said the merc.
Just as Traeger was about to sign off, he heard the roar of an engine over the radio. He turned to glare at Sapir. “What the hell was that?”
Sapir didn’t have a clue.
Traeger wanted to shout. He wanted to break things, to add to the debris scattered across the lab. But he had a job to do, and it involved making sure that Casey Brackett didn’t leave the base alive.
Casey didn’t have a long history with drugs and alcohol. In high school and college, she’d partied with the best of them, but when she had too much to drink she tended to stumble off to the nearest bedroom, lock herself in, and sleep until someone pounded hard enough on the door to wake her. She’d been high, and she’d experimented with cocaine and Molly—twice each—but she had never liked the way any of that felt. She didn’t like the sensation of not being in control, like her body had become a vehicle and she had turned the keys over to someone else.
The tranquilizer coursing through her bloodstream now didn’t feel like any of that. It felt like floating, as if she had been sleeping and now danced on the very edge of wakefulness, and at any moment she might come fully awake, when all she really wanted to do was pull the covers over her head and huddle down beneath them, warm and dry and dreaming.
Or it should’ve felt like that. If she could only have surrendered to the tranquilizer, given herself over completely to the lullaby swaddling her brain right now. Instead, she had to fight it, because while the drug tried to tell her all was well, her ears were still echoing with the explosion that had rocked Project: Stargazer only moments ago. She’d chased a Predator—a frigging space alien! She’d jumped on a moving bus and then it had crashed and she’d shot herself in the foot like the biggest dork in the universe—if the Predators were getting all of this on video to study for next time like some NFL team, they’d be laughing their asses off at what a colossal dope she must be.
These thoughts were in her brain, but they weren’t streamlined. They didn’t progress neatly. Instead, they cascaded, they spilled in and out and sometimes left nothing behind, so that there were moments of utter blankness. She blinked, trying to remember where she was. It occurred to her that there’d been a bunch of guys on the bus. One of the guys had been shooting at the Predator. Casey had caught a glimpse of him, and maybe he’d picked her up—but if he’d picked her up, at some point he’d put her down.
The bus lay on its side about fifty yards away. Casey lay on her side, in the shadows below the walkways where she’d chased the Predator.
Unsteady but ambitious, she forced herself to stand, and she stumbled along again as best she could. People were shouting. Alarm klaxons were blaring. Military and pseudo-military vehicles rumbled all over the place. The jets had been there—she hadn’t imagined them, or the spacecraft they’d been pursuing—but now they were gone.
She blinked.
Turned, only just now realizing that she wasn’t alone. One of the guys from the bus, she figured, but of course it wasn’t one of those guys. Thoughts cascaded in her mind again, images and blank spaces, and when she came back from one of those blank spaces, she saw the mercenary raise his weapon and take aim at her. He looked sad. She thought she remembered him from the laboratory, or somewhere inside the base. Sad, she thought again.