Top, who stood at ease across from him, nodded. “Yes, sir. No idea how they found us, either. They seemed to think the bar was our base, or at least a cover for it.”
Ledger nodded and lifted a piece of paper off his desk. “I can answer that.” He waved the paper at Top. “Analysis from Bug and Hu,” he explained, meaning their computer expert and their science director. “You’d mentioned something about sawdust at that site yesterday, the one that was a bust? It wasn’t all sawdust. Some of that was nanites, designed to form a networked tracking signal.”
“So it was a setup,” Top guessed.
“Looks that way. They tipped us off, we sent you in, and they basically bugged you so you’d lead them back here.” Ledger grinned. “But I gave you the night off. Maybe it took them some time to lock down the signal, or maybe they were just basing it on the highest concentration, but they saw you three at the bar and figured that had to be our base.”
“Especially given its name.” Top was glad now that Bunny had picked the place he had.
“Right. Then they decided to mess around before picking you off.” Ledger actually chuckled at that. “Stupid.”
Top nodded. “So what happens now?”
His boss shrugged, though he didn’t look happy about it. “Nothing. It’s not like we know where the Closers operate, or where Majestic Three is right now, or we’d shut them down regardless. They tried for you, you beat them down, that’s that.” He shook his head.
“Well, all right, then.” Top turned toward the door. “Guess I’ll head home.”
“Ah, not so fast.” Ledger gave him a sharp not-smile. “You’re going to need to file a report on all this.”
Top groaned. “Come on, Cap. It’s my night off!”
“It was,” Ledger agreed. He glanced up at the clock, which read 12:03. “But now it’s morning. Welcome back. Hope you enjoyed yourself.”
Top grumbled something under his breath that, in most agencies or units, could have gotten him brought up on charges. Ledger just laughed some more.
But, Top thought as he left the office and trudged down the hall, he had to admit something, even if he never gave Ledger the satisfaction:
He had enjoyed himself.
And what amounted to a simple bar fight, albeit one with guns and fatalities?
For Echo Team, that was a night off!
Was it worth the paperwork, though? That was the real question.
Aaron Rosenberg is the author of the bestselling DuckBob SF comedy series, the Dread Remora space-opera series, and, with David Niall Wilson, the O.C.L.T. occult thriller series. His tie-in work contains novels for Star Trek, Warhammer, World of WarCraft, Stargate: Atlantis, and Eureka. He has written children’s books (including the award-winning Bandslam: The Novel and the number one bestselling 42: The Jackie Robinson Story), educational books, role-playing games (including the Origins Award — winning Gamemastering Secrets), and short stories. He is a founding member of Crazy 8 Press. You can follow him online at www.gryphonrose.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/gryphonrose, and on Twitter @gryphonrose.
EDITORS’ NOTE: In Jon McGoran’s thrillers Drift, Deadout, Down to Zero, and Dust Up, Philadelphia detective Doyle Carrick confronts frighteningly plausible crimes at the cutting edge of today’s biotechnology. In “Strange Harvest,” he teams up with Joe Ledger to take on a mystery more bizarre than anything he’s ever encountered.
STRANGE HARVEST
BY JON McGORAN
The hotel carpet muffled my footsteps so completely that for a moment I wondered if it wasn’t just blindingly hideous but somehow deafening as well. Then I saw the door to Room 517 ajar and heard drawers and cabinets opening and closing inside. Easing the door open, I saw a broad-shouldered man who was not Melissa Brant searching her room.
I was supposed to be on vacation, a few quiet days in the Poconos catching up on some much-needed rest while Junie was doing her UFO conference thing, and then eating, drinking, and fooling around with her while she wasn’t.
The first night had been great. Junie’s friend Melissa, a charming if tightly wound young astrobiologist, was supposed to join us for dinner, but she called to cancel, saying she was on to something really big that she’d be announcing at her presentation in the morning. Junie had put down the phone, climbed on top of me in bed, and whispered that she was on to something big, too, but she’d be keeping it to herself.
Things had gone great until the following morning, thirty minutes ago, when Junie woke me up saying Melissa had missed her big presentation and apparently disappeared.
Junie wasn’t one for melodrama, but I had thought she was overreacting. Until now.
I’m never completely on vacation, completely at ease, but so far that weekend I had been close, content to be “Joe Ledger, Civilized Man,” leaving my darker selves in the background. That was the point of the getaway. The work I do, the things I see, sometimes the Civilized Man at my core gets edged out of the way.
Like right now. I took out my badge, the one that said I worked for Homeland Security. I didn’t. I worked for the Department of Military Sciences, or DMS. There was no badge for that.
As I entered the room with my gun out and my badge held high, the Cop inside me told the Civilized Man, I’ll take it from here.
Before I could yell, “Freeze!” the guy turned around. And he had a gun, too. Before I could think about it, I kicked it out of his hand. My badge dropped to the floor as my hand clenched tight and rocketed toward his face. I didn’t put everything behind it, just enough to eliminate any disagreement about how things would be going from there.
He was quicker than I expected, bobbing his head out of the way. Rage flared deep down inside me and burned closer to the surface when the guy backhanded my gun out of the way. The Warrior inside me reveled in that rage, tried to elbow Joe the Cop out of the way. You don’t win a fight pulling punches, said the Warrior’s voice.
I ignored it, or tried to, slamming my elbow into the guy’s face. But he landed a solid left under my ribs that weakened my resolve not to go full Warrior. I landed a left of my own, and felt the exhilaration of the other man folding. The Warrior wanted off the leash, to press this momentary advantage into triumph, beat this guy down, and ask questions later.
As I paused, conflicted for a nanosecond, an uppercut clipped my chin, and in my head, I heard the Warrior in me telling the Cop, You might not want to watch this.
I could feel air on my teeth as I launched myself, grinning, at my enemy. The guy was bringing something up in his hand — a knife, a gun, I didn’t care. He wouldn’t have it for long. The right-left combination that was going to shatter his nose and close off his larynx became a right-left-right that would disarm him first. My right hand chopped the bundle of veins and nerves and tendons on the underside of the guy’s wrist, and whatever was in his hand went tumbling through the air. As my left fist tore through the air with everything behind it, from the corner of my eye I saw the object tumbling through the air: leather, gold, leather, gold, leather, gold.
A badge. Then the guy said, “Police!”
My shoulder locked, the muscles in my back and arm twisting and seizing as I applied the brakes to the ball of knuckles rocketing through the air. My fist stopped three inches from his face.