His comms crackled as he checked his instruments again.
“Catfish one,” came Suarez’s voice, “triangulate SAM radar.”
Pinsky’s hands moved confidently over the instruments as if he and his jet were simply different parts of the same organism, man and machine in a state of perfect symbiosis.
In his basement, Rory sat at the table with the device in his hand. He’d abandoned it for a while to play video games, and had just come back to it a moment before, tapping in the same code he’d tried earlier. Just for the hell of it.
He smiled curiously. What the hell was this thing? And that code… what did it do?
Rory figured he would never know.
There were three of them all together—Raptor jets—flying in formation. Pinsky heard hesitation over the comms, like Suarez was about to say something else. Then alarms sounded in the cockpit and something blinked onto his display. The instruments went crazy and he glanced up as a gleaming craft appeared directly ahead, right in their flight path.
“Holy shit!” Pinsky barked.
“Heads up! Bandit!” Suarez announced, as if they didn’t know.
Pinsky veered to starboard. Suarez and Obie peeled off to port, missing the UFO by meters. The other two pilots were shouting profanities and generally losing their shit, but Pinsky snapped at them to lock it down. He didn’t know about the others, but he knew for sure that he belonged up here, and whatever that bogey was—it sure as hell did not.
But when he glanced at his instruments, he couldn’t quite believe what they were telling him. They had all seen the bogey, clear as day, but according to all the readouts there was suddenly no sign that it had ever been there at all.
McKenna rubbed his eyes and sat up a little straighter. Breach? What the hell was going on? And where exactly were they? He craned his neck and peered through the dirty windows, trying to get a better look at the compound. Something caught his eye, and he stared as something dropped from a rooftop. It took him a moment to realize that it was a human being, a guard, their arms flailing wildly. Then the body smashed into the ground, bounced, and went still.
Son of a bitch, he thought, putting a hand against the glass and staring up at the rooftop. There was something else up there. Something big, moving. It strode swiftly to the edge of the roof and peered over at the ground below. As light slid over it, McKenna felt a cold ripple run through his body. It was the creature he had seen in the jungle—or something like it! As he gaped at it, it flickered, and then vanished into the darkness as if it had never been there.
Only then did McKenna realize Nebraska Williams had been staring, too. The man looked shaken, but sensing McKenna’s scrutiny he tried to hide it.
“Your little green friend?” Nebraska asked with mock casualness.
“Yup.”
“Turns invisible?”
“Yup.”
Nebraska grimaced. “Goddamn space aliens.”
Out across the compound, half-lost in darkness, a guard swept his MX3 in a low arc. McKenna watched the mercenary searching the shadows between buildings, then one of those shadows took shape and the alien leaped out of nowhere—literally nowhere—and raked talons across the guard’s throat before vanishing again.
The other guys were moving now, joining McKenna and Nebraska at the windows. The driver and the guards up at the front of the bus were whispering, all of them drawing weapons.
“That thing killed my men,” McKenna said, starting to rise, watching the guards, ready to enter the fray.
“Yeah, they’ll do that,” Nebraska said. “Stay on the bus.”
McKenna scowled at him. “What are you, nuts? We gotta move!”
“Brother?” Nebraska replied dubiously. “It’s a bus.” He glanced over at Coyle and gave him the nod, a signal to start some shit.
Coyle picked up on it immediately. “Hey, Baxley! If your mom’s vagina was a video game, it’d be rated ‘E for Everyone!’”
One of the MPs up front rattled the cage with his baton. “Knock it off!” he snapped, as nervous as the rest of them.
“Seriously,” Coyle said, leering at Baxley with those mad eyes. “What’s the difference between five big black guys and a joke?” He glanced around, as if hoping for an answer, then grinned. “Baxley’s mom can’t take a joke!”
That did it. Baxley lunged from his seat, a blur, and wrapped the chain connecting his manacles around Coyle’s throat. Coyle gasped and sputtered, grin still on his face until he began to claw in strangled panic at the chain.
The MP who’d shouted at them swore again, key ring jangling as he grabbed hold of the gate. The other guard unclipped his sidearm and stepped to one side to get an angle on them.
“Everyone on the floor, face down!” shouted the one aiming his gun.
Everyone but Coyle and Baxley obeyed—Baxley because he was trying to murder Coyle, and Coyle because he was trying not to die. McKenna ground his teeth as he went to his knees with his head bowed and his hands behind his head. He glanced up to see the MP with the keys grabbing a Remington 870 pump action shotgun from its mount outside the cage. Then the two guards were rushing up the aisle, weapons drawn, sweeping the barrels as they went to Baxley and Coyle and started to drag the troublemakers apart.
Coyle and Baxley struggled, spitting, trying to get at each other.
The first MP reached for the baton at his belt. McKenna saw the surprise, and then the fear, in his eyes as his hand closed on nothing and he realized the baton had gone missing. Alarm bells were clearly going off in the guy’s head as he started to glance around, but too late. Baxley had snatched the baton while they were grappling, and now he swung it swiftly and savagely at the back of the MP’s legs. The guy went down hard on his knees.
The second MP raised the shotgun, but he barely had a second to register what was unfolding before Coyle brought his hand up, smashing his palm against the barrel of the shotgun. The weapon’s stock slammed back into the MP’s forehead with a loud crack, dropping the man to the aisle floor.
Coyle grabbed the shotgun and tossed it to Nebraska, who cocked it even as he spun and leveled the weapon at the driver.
“Whoopsie,” Nebraska said.
The driver put up his hands. Baxley and Coyle, the best of friends now that their bit of theater no longer had a purpose, relieved the two MPs of their keys and swiftly began to unlock the other prisoners’ shackles.
The moment Nebraska’s manacles were removed, he hurried up to replace the driver. Baxley unlocked McKenna’s cuffs as Nettles and Lynch bustled the two MPs back out through the open cage door and then shoved them off the bus, followed by the driver.
Unsure what the ultimate motives of his fellow prisoners were, McKenna said, “Hate to interrupt your little prison break, but I could use your help.”
Nebraska fired up the engine, glancing over his shoulder at McKenna. “Does this green boy of yours have a bus pass?”
McKenna narrowed his eyes. He’d been half afraid the Loonies would want to try to run. Fortunately, they seemed either too brave or too crazy to do that. Maybe both.
“Just get me close,” McKenna told him. “I’m a sniper.”
Nebraska jerked the bus into gear. “Oh, you wanna kill him. Hell, why didn’t you say so?”
With a look of grim purpose, he hit the accelerator, gunning the engine, and the bus lurched forward.