Turnabout

e, and Max placed the alien compass on top of it. Then he began unloading the other alien devices from his bag. «You've been using the ken-teef, huh?» Langley asked. «The what?» Michael replied. Langley pointed at the compass. «That. The ken-teef. It's an alien-tracking device.» «Umm, I can't say we've been using it," Max said. «We just got it. We don't even know how it works.» Langley sighed. «Boy, Nasedo really didn't give you much to go on, did he? Okay, which one of you is the most psychic?» Liz raised her hand. «I guess I am.» «Well, you pick it up, then," Langley said. «Now, think about what you want to find. Think about aliens in the immediate vicinity.» Liz concentrated, and the white nodule on the top of the device began blinking. «Notice how the lights are pointed in multiple directions?» Langley asked. «That's because there are three aliens in this room, and another in the house. It's trying to show you all of them. Now, concentrate on one alien.» Liz did so, and the white segment nearest Max started blinking rapidly. «Good," Langley said. «See, it's not so hard, once you focus.» «And if you know what the hell you're doing» Michael said, half under his breath. «Now turn it over so the white part faces the map," Langley said. As Liz did so, he said, «Now think of all the aliens in the area. It's only got about a forty-mile range as a locator, and it won't work with humans, so don't even try to use it to locate your kidnapped parents.» «So how did Eddie find us with it, then?» Michael asked. «He was farther than forty miles away from us.» «Maybe it was the Chameleon's help," Maria said sarcastically. Liz ignored them and concentrated, and was surprised to find a multitude of lights dotting the map. «They're all over!» «Who'd have thunk it that Hollywood would be/ull of aliens," Langley said with a wry smile. He pointed back toward the map and said, «Now concentrate on only the Antarian aliens in the area. It should show my house here with the three " Liz's mouth fell open as the clusters of lights from the ken-teef settled. On two different areas. One was clearly Langley's house, and three white spots were visible there. But the other was in the City of Industiy, which lay near the map's southeast edge. Three white spots could be seen there as well. «Is there something you're not telling me?» Langley asked. He reached for the ken-teej. «Let me try that.» He looked down at the map, and one light shone in his sector. «There's me.» The light shifted position slightly. «There's Max.» A moment later, two more lights appeared near the location of the first two. «That's Michael," Langley said, looking up at the others. Liz's mind raced to find an explanation, but Max found it first. «The Dupes. From New York. They must be out here as well. Maybe they're on the run from the Special Unit the same way we are.» He turned to Langley, concern showing on his face. «Look for the signatures for Ava and Vilandra.» Two dots on the map appeared at the City of Industry location. One of them was flickering, like a guttering candle flame. «That's them," Langley said. «But one of them is in big trouble.» 11. Elk, New Mexico In the darkness, Jim Valenti hugged the wall of the building, moving slowly but surely toward his target. The gun in his hand was his service revolver, but the rest of the equipment he carried had been provided by Agent Duff. He had never had occasion to wear a bulletproof vest during the course of his duties in Roswell, much less the other assorted pieces of body armor that protected his limbs and torso. A black stocking cap mask was rolled up over his forehead, helping to hold in place his night-vision goggles, as well as the earpiece communicator and its wire-thin throat microphone attachment. He and Duff had come here in the same sleek black helicopter that Duff had used to reach Laurie Dupree's sprawling Tucson estate. The ultra-advanced chopper was yet another thing that Valenti wasn't used to; he had ridden in a few helicopters during his training days, but had repeated the experience only a handful of times in the years since. And it was quite another thing to be in one of the high-speed, long-range «black helicopters» that the UFO nuts, conspiracy buffs, and insomniac long-haul truckers so enjoyed discussing over the talk-radio airwaves during the wee hours. When Duff had first arrived in the chopper at the Dupree estate, Valenti had expected a pilot to climb out of the cockpit after she did. Instead, he had been surprised to note that she was the pilot. He felt ashamed of his initial sexist impulse; he realized that he never considered that a woman might be rated as a helicopter pilot. She had wasted no time disabusing him of that prejudice, informing him that her military specialty prior to joining the FBI had been rotor-based aircraft. Tonight, after leaving Amy and Laurie behind in the relative safety of the Tucson mansion, Duff and Valenti had landed the specially equipped chopper a half mile or so away from the Special Unit safe house, and then covered the remaining ground on foot. Duff had outfitted Valenti with the latest in combat gear; he felt a little silly getting dressed up, but now that he was nearing the target, he was grateful for the additional protection and weaponry. Strapped to his leg was a hand-held, high-voltage stun gun, and his gloves were weighted with shot, like an oldfashioned sap. He also had an ASP baton in one leg pocket, but he wasn't trained in its use. The Roswell Sheriff's Department hadn't used them. In fact, Valenti had only rarely had occasion to take his PR-24 side-handle baton out of his vehicle while on duty. Walking carefully so as not to break any sticks or kick any rocks, he peered around the corner of the building. The main ranch house was ahead, the night-vision gear turning it an eerie emerald hue. Most of the windows were covered with curtains, and the lights inside were either dimmed or shut off entirely. «You in position?» he heard over the earpiece. «Yeah," he said into the wire microphone. «Ready as I'll ever be.» «Okay, let's move in," Duff said. Valenti caught a glimpse of her as she moved across the wide driveway, which he noticed was conspicuously devoid of cars. She was moving forward quickly, her sidearm in her hand. As she made her way to the area in front of the raised front porch, Valenti circled around to the rear. The door there was illuminated by a single glass-encased bulb, and was as unguarded as the front entrance had appeared to be. «I'm getting a bad feeling about this," Valenti whispered into his mike. «Where are the lookouts?» «They may not have any," Duff said. «Are you sure this is the right place?» «We'll find out in a moment," Duff said. «In five.» Valenti edged along the wall toward the rear door, pulling the stocking-cap mask down over his face and goggles as he advanced. «Four.» Valenti quickly double-checked the perimeter to make sure no one was standing in the shadows nearby. «Three.» He leaned over and peeked into the back window. He thought he saw a furtive movement in a darkened hallway. «Two.» He grabbed the doorknob, feeling it turn freely in his gloved hand. Unlocked. His breath felt moist against the mask. «One.» Valenti quickly pushed the door open, his gun at the ready. He moved as silently as he could manage, though he felt sure that whoever he'd seen moving inside the house must have heard him. He could also hear Duff entering through the front door on the opposite side of the house. He moved down the hallway toward the spot where he had seen the movement, and heard a sound on the other side of one of the interior walls. Footsteps were headed toward him from beyond a nearby open doorway. Valenti switched the gun to his left hand and cocked his right hand back into a fist. As soon as the figure came forward and he saw immediately that it was a man wearing dark paramilitary clothing, clearly not a civilian he let loose his strongest punch, straight to the man's jaw. The shot-filled glove gave his punch extra power. The man stumbled backward, obviously completely surprised, his arms pinwheeling wildly. Still conscious, he struggled to regain his balance and was trying to yell something. But Valenti could see that his jaw was now at an odd angle, and the shout that emerged was incoherent. The man swung at Valenti and missed, and Valenti pointed the gun at him, gripping it in both hands. «I'd suggest you give up," Valenti said. The man complied, and lifted his arms into the air. «Turn around," Valenti said, and the man did. Valenti wasn't wild about hitting a man who had already surrendered, but he knew he couldn't risk letting the man flee or raise an alarm. He swung his right arm again, smacking the back of the man's head with the full force of the sap glove. The Man in Black crumpled to the floor, unconscious. Elsewhere in the house, Valenti heard a sharp crackle of electricity, and then another thud, as if a sack of potatoes had been dropped. «One down," he heard Duff say on the earpiece. «I got one too," Valenti said. «But where are the others?» Valenti heard the sound of footsteps coming up from the basement, and he sprinted down the hall to figure out where the person coming up would emerge. Duff arrived at the spot at the same time he did, the black mask covering her face. The basement door opened, and a young Hispanic man stepped forward out of the brightly lit stairwell. «Vohland? Goldberg? Is everything all " He stopped short as he saw the barrel of two guns pointed at him. Duff silently gestured toward the floor, and the man quickly took the hint, lying flat, with his hands behind his head. Duff squatted beside him and whispered, «How many in the house?» «Just three," the man said. «The others left.» Duff gestured to Valenti to watch the captive. «I'm gonna check it out," she said. «I don't think he's lying, but I'll do a quick recon to make sure.» As Duff began to search the house, the man said, «Who are you?» «Let's just say that your actions in Roswell this morning ticked off the wrong people," Valenti said. «Now shut up. We're the ones who'll be asking the questions.» Duff returned a minute later. «Nobody upstairs, and nobody else on this level. I'm going down.» She stepped over the supine man and descended the wide stairway into the basement. Shortly afterward, Valenti heard her on the earpiece. «All clear. But it looks like someone was recently held down here.» «How can you tell?» Valenti wanted to know. «There are still ropes tied to some of the chairs down here, among other things.» He heard a tinge of disgust in her voice. «My guess is the people they grabbed in Roswell were held and interrogated here, but have since been taken someplace else. I'm coming back up.» Duff reappeared from below, and quickly cuffed the Hispanic agent's arms behind his back. «Secure the others, and drag them over here," she said. Valenti went and got the unconscious man and cuffed him, then dragged him down the hall by the back of his heavy-duty field jacket. He winced a bit to see a smear of blood on the floor, but he saw that most of it seemed to be coming from a split lip. «The other ones in there," Duff said, gesturing. Valenti went to retrieve the second man, and saw that he was conscious and starting to rise from the floor. «Freeze," Valenti said. The man didn't. Instead he reached for something in one of the pockets of his paramilitary vest. Valenti fired a shot over the man's head. The bullet ripped into the drywall, sending a spray of fine white powder into the air. This apparently convinced him to stop moving, and to lay his hands on the ground. «You okay?» Duff asked over the earpiece. «Yeah," Valenti replied. «Just had to fire a warning shot. Somebody didn't listen very well.» He pushed a knee into the man's powder-covered neck, and yanked one arm up to cuff it, then the other. «You don't know who you're crossing," the man said, his words still slurred from the stun-gun zapping he'd received from Duff. But the venom behind his words was unmistakable. «I know exactly who I'm crossing," Valenti said. «And I know exactly who we're going to take down. You guys screwed with the wrong town.» Valenti grabbed the man's collar and dragged him into the hallway, depositing him beside the man he'd knocked unconscious. Then he got down and frisked them both, removing anything that either of them could possibly use as a weapon or as a tool to escape the cuffs. «What happened in there?» Duff asked. «Apparently your stun gun wasn't set high enough. He was coming to.» «I can fix that," Duff said, standing up. She crossed over to the second man and stuck the stun gun to the side of his chest, zapping him a second time. He convulsed once, then fell into unconsciousness. «Get him on his feet," Duff ordered, pointing to the Hispanic man. Valenti did as he was told. «We're headed back down," Duff said. «Give him a taste of his own medicine.» «Hey, I'm just part of the cleaning crew," the man protested as Valenti dragged him down the stairs. «I'm not even a full member of the Unit yet!» Duff followed them, and Valenti looked back to see a hint of a smile on her face. «See, now I know you're telling the truth. Because if you were a member of the Unit, you wouldn't have just said that there was a Unit.» She pointed to a room far to the left of the stairs. «Take him in there.» Valenti took the man down a hallway and inside the room. He was surprised that the room was mostly bare, except for a pair of chairs, a table in the center, and a Tshaped post against one wall. The lighting was bright, though the cream-colored walls muted the effect somewhat. «Strap him up to the post," Duff said, gesturing. Valenti took the struggling «cleaner» over to the post and removed his cuffs. As he prepared to put him into the heavy straps, the man said, «Look, I don't know anything. I can't tell you what I don't know.» «Even if you are just a junior agent with the scut job of cleaning up afterward, you know what came before the cleanup," Duff said as she walked over to the now-shackled man. She held the stun gun in one hand and manipulated its intensity dial with her other. «Here's how it's going to work.» She pointed to Valenti. «This man here is going to go upstairs and try to search through the files and computers I saw up there. You want to know why he's going up and not me? Because he's got more of a temper than me. If he questioned you first, I might not get the opportunity.» The captive agent apparently wasn't as green as he'd seemed, though he still seemed frightened. «Oh," he said. «This is where you do the good cop/bad cop routine, right? Listen, I " She steamrolled over him, brandishing the stun gun. «No, you listen, punk. You saw that other man bleeding, and you heard the gunshot. I think you'll count yourself lucky that it's just going to be you, me, and ol' Sparky here.» She toggled the stun gun's trigger, and a jagged sapphire bolt of electricity arced between its tips. «Save me some," Valenti said, smiling the most evil smile he could summon, though the thought of torturing anyone even someone who hosed the decks after the Special Unit conducted its «interviews» made him extremely queasy. He left the room quickly, aware that although they seemed to have the upper hand now, that could change at any moment. They had no time to waste. Moving quickly through the other basement-level rooms, he saw that one of them was outfitted similarly to the interrogation room where Duff was grilling their captive. This room had been in the process of being cleaned up when he and Duff had arrived. Two rooms. One far the Evanses, and one far the Parkers, he thought, now convinced that Duff's analysis had been right. Imagining what might have happened to them there and since filled him with dread. And rage. He considered the fate that awaited Kyle and the others if the Special Unit caught up with them. These bastards are going to pay. He went back up to the ground-level floor and checked on the two men who lay there, both apparently still unconscious. He closed and locked the front door and backdoor, just in case anyone else showed up unexpectedly, then sprinted upstairs. In one of the rooms were several boxes of files, as well as a couple of computers. He sat in a rolling chair and toggled one screen on. A muffled male scream came from two floors below, but Valenti ignored it. Whatever she's doing to him can't be any worse than what they did to my friends, he thought. Or what they will do to Kyle and Max and the others ij they get their bloody hands on them. Fifteen minutes later, Duff came upstairs. «He's told me everything he knows," she said, pulling off her mask. «Damn these things are hot.» Valenti grinned, b