Gazing uneasily around at the tubes, Sapir said, “What’s inside these things?”
“It’s the property of Project: Stargazer, that’s what the fuck it is,” Traeger replied.
As he spoke, Rory noticed a control panel, like a podium that jutted from the floor between two of the cylinders. The panel was covered in symbols, the components of the Predator language, or at least some form of iconography that their species understood. Rory could see that each of the stasis cylinders was highlighted in red on the display, with a time-code beside them. The numbers were blinking, as if something had stopped them from continuing to count forward.
Or count down, he thought.
A countdown. It had stopped mid-sequence, the blinking an impatient signal, suggesting that all it would take was someone with the right code to get it moving again.
Rory shook himself from his reverie, abruptly aware that Sapir and Traeger were reacting to a commotion outside the ship. He turned to listen, and heard running footsteps, shouting. Then Traeger’s radio squawked. He snatched it angrily from his belt and held it to his ear. Rory heard the urgent voice of one of Traeger’s mercenaries.
“Code Three, Code Three, we have motion at the south fence line.”
“Send a fire team to take a look,” Traeger barked. “Extreme prejudice.”
“Local wildlife?” Sapir ventured, but Rory was smiling.
“It’s my dad. He’s gonna save me now.”
Traeger knelt beside him. His voice was silky, but he had a look on his face like the bullies at school—mean and spiteful. “Well, if it is your daddy—and I truly hope it is—he has to be just about the dumbest motherfucker I’ve ever met. I mean, a Ranger sniper tripping motion sensors? He’d have to be…”
Then his voice tailed off and his face went slack, his eyes opening in horrified realization. Once again grabbing his radio, he looked wildly at Sapir and said, “He’s creating a diversion! It’s a fucking divers—”
Before he could bring the radio up to his mouth, it flew from his hand. As though attacked by an invisible force, he was knocked off his feet, his body smashing against a control panel.
Sapir whirled this way and that, eyes and mouth stretched wide with fear, looking for his boss’s assailant.
“Howdy,” said a voice.
Rory saw the air behind Sapir shimmer and coalesce, and next moment his dad was standing there, face blackened with dirt, a tranquilizer gun locked and loaded, and pointing at Sapir’s face.
Sapir looked nervous, but he did his best to sneer. “What, you’re gonna kill us with a tranq gun?”
McKenna’s voice was low, his hand steady. “You took my boy, so yeah.”
He pulled the trigger. The tranq dart passed through Sapir’s eye and into his brain.
For an instant, Sapir looked outraged. His remaining eye glared at McKenna. Then the life went out of him and his body dropped in an ungainly sprawl of limbs, so much dead meat.
Even before Traeger’s aide hit the floor, McKenna was moving. In one smooth motion he dropped the tranq gun and drew a pistol, which he pressed to Traeger’s temple as he hauled the CIA man to his feet by the collar of his jacket.
Rory smiled at Traeger. “Told you,” he said brightly.
Traeger looked as if he would have cheerfully strangled the life out of the boy there and then. Instead, he gawked at McKenna, as if unable to believe the sheer insolence of the man.
“You out of your mind?” he exclaimed, spittle flying from his lips. “We literally have you surrounded.”
“That’s why you’re coming with me,” said McKenna mildly. “I just want the kid, nobody has to die.”
“Umm, Dad?” said Rory, ever the pragmatist, and pointed at Sapir’s corpse.
McKenna shrugged. “I mean… y’know… from here forward. Now let’s go out there and tell your men to put their guns down.”
He shifted his grip from the front of Traeger’s collar to the back, and shoved the agent toward the hatch. They exited the ship and started down the ramp. The area directly in front of them was populated by armed mercs, all on high alert. Traeger cleared his throat and the majority of the mercs turned. It took a moment, but suddenly guns were coming up, all pointing in their direction.
Pressing close in against Traeger’s back, McKenna hissed in his ear, “Tell ’em.”
Traeger raised his voice. “If Captain McKenna doesn’t lower his weapon in the next ten seconds, shoot the kid’s knees out.” He twisted his head back to regard McKenna, curling his lip. “That work for you?”
McKenna jerked his head at Rory, who moved to stand behind his father, pressing himself against McKenna’s back as tightly as McKenna was pressed against Traeger. To McKenna’s dismay, however, he saw the mercs fanning out around them, and he knew that if he wanted to absolutely guarantee his boy’s safety, their only option was to withdraw to the dubious sanctuary of the Predator’s ship.
In truth, he’d misjudged Traeger’s reaction, and that irked him. He’d potentially bet his life—and worse, Rory’s—on the fact that Traeger, with a gun at his head, would turn out to be a coward. But the CIA agent had displayed a reckless bravery that had surprised McKenna.
“Fuck you!” he snarled into Traeger’s ear, trying to reestablish the upper hand. “My guys have this place covered from every angle.”
But even now, Traeger refused to be cowed.
“Funny story,” he said dismissively, “I don’t care. Ten… nine… eight…”
McKenna took another look at the mercs surrounding them, and thought: Shit.
21
Armed with a long rifle, Lynch was crouching close to where McKenna had crouched before him, looking down on the crash site below. His vantage point, though, wasn’t quite as good as McKenna’s had been. He had only a partial view of the site from here. He couldn’t see what was going on over by the alien ship, mostly obscured as it was by an overhang of rock and a drooping sprawl of decimated trees. Propped against a bush in front of his face, his radio hissed and crackled, but remained annoyingly silent for now.
Never a patient man, Lynch twitched and fidgeted, glaring at the radio as though it was a toddler that stubbornly refused to eat its greens.
Come the fuck on, he thought. Just give the fuckin’ word.
From the corner of his eye he caught a flicker of light. Fireflies?
He glanced to his right—and saw a trio of red dots dancing on his trigger arm. Red fireflies?
Then realization crashed in on him. Shit! He was being targeted! The sniper was being sniped! He scrambled upright, spun round, raising his gun.
Before he could take offensive or defensive action of any kind, a lightning bolt shot down from the heavens and hit him dead center. He was lifted into the air, as if by a giant hand made of sizzling light and excruciating pain, and smashed back down again. His ears hissing, his thoughts screaming, his body full of fire, he looked wildly around, and noticed something very odd indeed—his own arm, lying on the ground, fingers still twitching at one end, smoke rising from the other. Wondering if he was dreaming, or hallucinating, he turned to look at the place where his arm should be, and saw nothing but a charred stump, drooling blood.
I’m dead, he thought, and felt a kind of wonder. I’m actually dead. Aww, shit. Now I’ll never get to find out how this ends.
Above him, in front of him, he heard the crashing of undergrowth, the sound of something big heading his way.