“Grab him,” she told Nohar. “Get him back to the car.” Nohar picked up Price and draped him across his shoulder. Price still seemed too stunned to say anything.
More gunshots, definitely from outside this time. Corporal Gurgueia was trigger-happy. The shades rippled and shredded as a few shots tore into the bedroom window. Evi ducked on the ground with the cats.
A spotlight swept by the window washing it with a white glare and black abstract shadows. She edged up to the window so she could get a good look at the front of the house.
Another Chevy Caldera had slid to a stop diagonally across the street in front of the house. This one was a cop car, flashers going, spotlight sweeping for Gurgueia, two cops huddled behind it.
Evi ducked as the spotlight swept by again.
She hit her throat-mike. “Gurgueia!”
“Corporal—” Gurgueia paused to lay down more fire. “Gurgueia here.”
“Cease fire, back to the car.”
“But—”
“Now! I’ll cover you.”
“Acknowledged.”
The cops would stay cautious for a half-minute or so once the firing stopped. Evi peeked over the ledge of the window; neither of the cops looked injured. If they were smart, they’d stay back behind the cop car until reinforcements arrived.
She wanted to give them something to take up most of their attention.
She braced her automatic, two-handed, on the sill, aiming out the busted window. There was a feeling of pressure from under the bandage on her left shoulder. That was her shoulder’s way of telling her that if it weren’t for the painkiller, she’d be blacking out from the pain.
She didn’t aim at the cops but at a small area between the trunk and the back seat.
The cops looked as though they were about to become adventurous, so she emptied the magazine. Nine shots, and at least one hit a charged inductor. She could smell it from here. Smoke began to pour from the remains of the trunk, and the spotlight began to flicker erratically.
She ran for the back door.
Everyone had backed toward the aircar. Nohar was already inside, his arms wrapped around Price. Evi was starting to hear distant sirens.
She dived into the Kestrel, followed by Huaras and Gurgueia. “What the fuck happened?”
They’d left the engine going, so all she had to do was engage the fans. The fans started with a high-pitched whine, and snow began flying around them, caught in the downwash of air.
Gurgueia spoke. “They slowed down and started sweeping that spotlight—”
Evi shook her head and took a few deep breaths as she made sure that the lights and the transponder were off. “So you opened fire.”
“I think—” A perceptible growl evolved in Gurgueia’s throat. Evi looked at the jaguar, and, eyes locked on her, maxed the acceleration of the Kestrel straight up.
“Never engage without clearing with your commands.” Their eyes were locked on each other. The Kestrel kept rocketing upward.
Gurgueia broke eye contact. “You’re right, of course, Commander.”
Evi turned to look where she was going. The Kestrel was about to hit its maximum ceiling, and they seemed to have made it out of the area without a cop tail. She pulled a long turn and decided not to bother with the transponder.
Behind her, Price asked in a weak voice, “What’s going on?”
“Dave, just shut up for now, okay?” She looked back at Price and couldn’t help thinking of Chuck Dwyer, and how Chuck had looked at her when he saw her real eyes. It wasn’t a rational connection to make. For one thing, Price had always known she wasn’t human. For another, Price wasn’t even looking at her. He was squeezed in the back with Gurgueia and Nohar and seemed to be dividing his attention between the two big cats.
Huaras spoke up in a heavily accented English, “Where we put down the car?”
Good point. It was not a good idea to put down anywhere near the base. Even without a transponder, Air Traffic Control would have a radar fix on them and would see where they landed. The cops by Price’s house would have called them in. It wouldn’t take a genius to put two and two together.
Evi could almost feel Sukiota breathing down her neck.
The Kestrel passed by La Guardia, and the comm lit up like Times Square on New Year’s with incoming calls. The Kestrel’s onboard computer was picking up two aircraft tailing her. One had an NYPD transponder. The other didn’t have a transponder at all. So much for not having a cop tail.
“The question, Huaras, is do we put down at all?”
She wished she were at the controls of that veep’s Peregrine. At least that thing could maneuver. “What do . . .” Price began to say as Evi pointed the nose down at the East River. Altitude screamed by them as the Kestrel accelerated faster than the fans were ever designed to do.
“Nohar, look out the back. On the scope I have an unlabeled aircraft at a hundred meters and closing. Seven o’clock.” She had to shout over the scream of rushing air.
Her knuckles were whitening on the wheel, and the plastic was splitting under her fingers. Pressure was building in her left shoulder. The Kestrel was flying down so fast that the snow around them was falling up. Below, Evi could see the landing lights at Rikers flying up to meet them.
“Helicopter, I think.” Nohar yelled back.
“Make?”
“You kidding?”
When she could read the logo on the wing of a parked ballistic, Evi flattened out the descent, slamming the forward fans on full. A brick slammed into her stomach, and an invisible giant dug his thumbs into her eyes. She’d just lost a thousand meters in under ten seconds, and once she pulled that high-G turn, Rikers rocketed away behind the Kestrel. She flew the aircar down the East River, barely thirty meters above the waves and going over five hundred klicks an hour.
Both blips on the radar passed above Rikers, and fell way behind them. She hoped she’d slipped beneath their radar.
She slowed the Kestrel and banked to the left. It took a while to find the Bronx. She had overshot and had flown a few kilometers into Long Island Sound. No one talked. She flew low along the Cross-Bronx Expressway from the wrong end and eventually put the Kestrel down on a familiar stretch of pavement in front of a place called “ROOMS.”
“F—Finally,” Price stammered. He was shaking, and he’d lost most of his color, if he had any to begin with. It was the first time Evi had spared more than a moment to look at him. Price’s hair was tangled in knots, he had at least three days of beard, his shirt was wrinkled and sweat-stained, and he was wearing one shoe.
Evi popped the doors and stepped out. She reached in and grabbed Price, who seemed more than a little unsteady. He stumbled out of the car, leaning away from the two big cats who followed him.
Evi held Price up by the upper arm. “Good a place for an impromptu questioning as any. Huaras, take the car back and give the team our location. By the time you get back, we should have what we need.”
Huaras lifted off, dusting them with snow.
Price had the confused look of a dog who didn’t know why its owner was kicking it. Evi shook him. “Are you with us, Price?”
“Wha? Evi?”
She grunted in disgust and handed him to Nohar. “Hold him.”
Evi reached down and grabbed a handful of snow, the chill dulling the throbs of her injured hand. She looked at Price, who still seemed to be looking through an inebriated fog.
“Are you with us?”
“What?” Price said too slowly.
Evi slapped the handful of snow across Price’s face. “Earth to David Price, you awake?”
Price sputtered, blinking his eyes. Gray slush dripped down his face, and his eyes seemed a little wider.
Evi picked up another handful of snow. “With us yet?”
“Stop it—” Price began, and got another face full of snow. He spat out a mouthful of slush and said, “Stop. I’m awake.” He put a hand unsteadily to his forehead. “Christ, am I awake.”
Evi felt little sympathy. She led the trio into the sweltering lobby of “ROOMS.” With Nohar and Gurgueia behind her, it didn’t take much to remind the rabbit proprietor that she still had a paid room upstairs.
They got to the room, which still smelled slightly of gunfire, and deposited Price on the bed. Evi turned the chair around to face him while the two cats guarded the door.
“You have a lot of explaining to do.”
David Price backed up until his back was to the scratched-varnish headboard. His face was wet and streaked with dirt. “W-what’s going on?”
“For one thing, I’ve been played the fool for half a decade.”
Price ran a shaking hand through his tangled hair. “Evi, wha—what’re you talking about?”
Evi leaned forward. Price wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Dave, you’re an academic, not an operative. Without a script you’re a terrible liar. What was I involved in?”
“Ask him about—” Gurgueia started to say.
“Nohar, would you shut her up?”
The tiger put one hand on the jaguar’s shoulder. “I think we should leave them alone.” He ducked out the door with Gurgueia before she had time to object.
Evi turned back to Price. “So, Dave?”
“You have to understand.” He cradled his head in his hands and Evi supposed that he was having one hell of a hangover. She hoped he wouldn’t lose his lunch—though he didn’t look like he had anything solid to lose. He was quiet long enough for Evi to consider getting more snow. Eventually, he said, “I was against keeping you in the dark.”
“How’d you feel about sending this Gabriel character to blow holes in me?”
Price looked up, rubbing his forehead. “You know that? Y-you must know how crazy it got. Davidson proved his hy-hy-hypothe-sis—”
“No, I don’t.” Evi drew her automatic from its shoulder holster and rested it on her knee. “And you are going to explain it, step by step, until I do.”
“Don’t need the gun.” Price shook his head and rubbed his eyes. He looked a little more coherent, but that didn’t say much. “I’m out in the cold too.” He smiled weakly. “Do I look like someone in the loop? I’ve been waiting for Gabe to show for me—”
“Start at the beginning.”
Price took a deep breath, glanced at the gun, and told her.
The aliens had never gotten past the Aerie back in that August of ’53. Frey had been the one running the show, and he saw implications that went far beyond what Midwest Lapidary’s corporate front was doing. He saw the petty influence buying in Cleveland mirrored on a much larger scale. He saw, couldn’t prove but saw nonetheless, the alien hand in the American nonintervention policy in the Pan-Asian war. Beyond that, he saw their hand in the war itself.
And he saw no way he could trust his own government.
“You see that, don’t you? Those four aliens controlled over a hundred congressmen—”
“They were indicted.” Evi stood up and walked over to the window. Snow was blowing in, the glass hadn’t been replaced. “Most of them anyway.”
“That mattered? These creatures want political chaos. You only found four.”
Frey had bottled up the aliens, and with a little electronic legerdemain he had written himself and his people out of existence. Then he began to recruit people. People the alien’s activities had adversely affected, people with skills he could use, people who would be sympathetic to him.
Like Scott Fitzgerald, whose orbital ear had picked up on the existence of the aliens and was quickly thereafter quashed by Congress.
Like David Price, whose conspiracy theories no one took seriously.
Like Erin Hofstadter?
“Frey was nutty about Asia. H-Hofstadter was an Asia expert.” Price paused to take a few deep breaths and massage his forehead. “Asia expert and the most fascist bastard—” Price dosed his eyes and muttered, “Oh, Christ,” a few times, and Evi had to prod his foot with the gun to get him to continue.
“His fault that Gabriel and Davidson got on board.”
“What’s the matter with Davidson?”
Price shook his head. “Two years in, waist-deep in tech crap. Hofstadter gets Davidson. Worst kind . . .”
“You’d call Davidson a fascist?”
“Leo Davidson in a lab coat and the rest of us, white mice.”
According to Price, it all started out as a private enterprise to pump the captive aliens for information and develop contingency plans to guard against further alien interference. The Domestic Crisis Think Tank was legitimate. It just worked for Frey instead of the Agency.
“You would have been brought in if it weren’t for H-Hofstadter. He’s pathological about nonhumans.”
“And you couldn’t let me go because I knew about the aliens.” She stepped up to the bed and placed the barrel of the automatic under Price’s chin. She pushed up so he was finally looking her in the eye. “So why wait so long before you start shooting at me?”
“It isn’t me.” His breath fogged the barrel of the automatic.
She was being unfair, she knew. Still, she was so damn angry. Price might be a potential ally now, but for six years he had strung her along like everyone else.
Price stared at Evi. Straight into her eyes as the odor of fear sliced through the crystal January air. “Frey was losing control a month after Hofstadter came on board.”
Hofstadter had quite a different view of the aliens. Where Frey saw the aliens as a threat, the German economist saw the threat as the governments that could be so easily exploited. Hofstadter was interested in correcting such vulnerability by building a post-democratic government on the ruins of the old. A human-only government. Leo Davidson was equally anti-democratic. He saw politics as an engineering problem.
Price sucked in a breath. “Then, a few weeks ago, all hell broke loose.”
“Explain.”
According to Price, the probe launch that the aliens went to such effort to prevent had gone forward with the captured alien finances and Dr. Fitzgerald’s help. Frey called them the first recon units into the enemy camp. That was five and a half years ago. Which meant that the first probe was just entering the neighborhood of Alpha Centauri. According to Leo Davidson, if the aliens were out there, with an eye locked on Earth, they would have started detecting the radiation on the probe’s main engine within the past month.
“Davidson was right,” Price said. “They have.”
She pressed the gun into the flesh of Price’s neck. “Don’t play me for a fool, there’s no way anyone could know that. Alpha Centauri is over four and a half light-years—”
“Tachyons.” Price croaked.
She lessened the pressure on Price’s neck. “D-Davidson said the aliens had the ability to have a t-tachyon communicator. One-way, massive planet-based particle accelerator to transmit. But the receiver could be compact—”
She lowered the gun. “That’s why everything is happening now.”
Price was stammering on, breathlessly. “The project went defensive when Davidson whipped out his tachyon receiver. Untranslatable signals from Alpha Centauri. Whatever aliens were out there to receive—”
“Would know that those four aliens didn’t liquidate themselves when they were supposed to.” Evi holstered the gun. “So, why were you locked in your bedroom with a shotgun?”
“I’m an academic, not an operative. I could see the operation shifting under Hofstadter’s control. That tach receiver came out of nowhere, at least a million in R&D money out of nowhere. I warned Frey, but he didn’t believe me, so I went to ground and waited for a knock on the door. Frey didn’t believe, not until it was too late—”
“What convinced him?”
“You did.”
In the distance, out the broken window, she began to hear sounds of traffic. An aircar, maybe an APC as well. Huaras was coming back with the rest of the team.
“Now the big question. Where is the project keeping the aliens?”