"Negative," Morgan cut her off, thinking fast, "I"ve just talked to McKim. I"ve got him bringing his squad down the mountain. He"s got a man down and Joanna"s been taken hostage.
Two rogue cultists, out for revenge it looked like. He doesn"t know."
"Two?" asked Kristal sharply.
"Yeah, two. Ben doesn"t know how they got the better of him and he"s real sorry - but not as sorry as he"s going to be.
Kristal, what about this storm?"
He strained to hear her answer, worried he was about to lose her. "Seems... died down..." He gave a nod to O"Neill, see if he could boost the signal.
"Yeah, yeah. But I want to know what it is we"re dealing with out there."
"I told you. Captain. Many spirits or one big enough to swallow the world."
Great. Typical her mystic mantra comes through nice and clear. Morgan let the silence fill the vehicle momentarily, then sat forward in his seat. "Fine, yeah. Strangely, in all this insanity, I recall those words very clearly." His tone shifted up a notch on the irate scale. "Now, what the h.e.l.l does it mean?"
"It cannot be explained," Kristal told him flatly.
Despite the fact she couldn"t see him. Morgan threw his arms up in despair. "Kristal - please - if you don"t know - why don"t you just say you don"t know!"
"Because I mean. It cannot be explained." It cannot be explained."
"Listen, I am trying to be open-minded here, I really am, but-"
"Don"t, Captain." Kristal broke in unexpectedly. "Whatever you do, don"t open your mind now. That might just give the spirits a way in."
Morgan Shaw pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth.
"You know what, have it your own way. Lieutenant Wildcat,"
he said tersely. "Right now, you can head after those cultists and bring Joanna back safely. They headed east-south-east from the house, you should be able to get ahead of them and cut them off. Don"t take any chances, but Joanna"s safety is your priority numero uno. Are we clear on that?"
"Crystal," she answered, delivering the pun humourlessly.
"And when you get back here with Joanna, you"re going to explain to me the difference between I don"t know and it cannot be explained. Out."
Morgan tossed the mic to O"Neill, glad to be rid of it. He sniffed and rubbed his face from head to chin. He was aware of his brother studying him.
"You know, I might be able to help you out there," Kenzie offered.
"Mm?"
Makenzie propped himself against the door of the Command Snowcat. "I got myself a girlfriend. Martha. That was her kid out there, Amber. They both live with me, up at Dad"s old cabin. I know them pretty well, might get to know them a whole lot better if this works out." He looked straight at Morgan then, more sibling than rival for that instant. "But I"ll be d.a.m.ned if I"ll ever be able to explain them."
Morgan nodded, half a smile forming. Makenzie"s life had moved on a lot since they"d last spoken. Two years, wasn"t it?
"You know, Kenzie, you might be the only one round here knows what my scout is talking about. You want to stick around, act as an interpreter?"
Makenzie shook his head. "Too much on my plate right now."
Morgan stood and made for the doorway. His brother dropped down off the step to let him pa.s.s. Morgan jumped down next to him.
"Hey, what say we call a truce, huh? Nothing permanent, you know. Just long enough to get the job done" Morgan looked up and down the street, trying not to make a big deal out of this in front of the troops.
"What say." Makenzie said, "you lend me some of those men coming down off the mountain. Soon as they"re rested. And I"ll sec if I can get Amber to talk to you. I don"t know, maybe she found something."
Morgan decided he could cut his brother some slack. For the sake of the truce, if nothing else. "Four men, twenty-four hours. That"s the best I can do. My man, McKim, is going to need something to occupy himself when he gets back." He glanced again, up and down the line of vehicles. This time he was actively searching for something. He waved over his second-in-command. "Hey. Derm, where did the girl go? And where the h.e.l.l is the Doc?"
"Ah, Pydych, there you are, good man. I trust you haven"t started without us."
All the tables in the hotel dining room had been pushed to the walls, the chairs upended on top of them. The rustic decor was totally at odds with the shattered fossil of a military airframe, laid out on a tarpaulin spread over most of a blue carpet. Sections of the wings and the tail fin, with its distinctive electronics pod, were by far the largest recovered.
The Doctor squatted to examine the mashed remains of the jet"s nose. Much of the air superiority grey had been seared or sc.r.a.ped away.
Pydych coughed. "I see the experiment to shrink your a.s.sistant worked out."
"Mm?" The Doctor looked up, mildly annoyed at being disturbed. Ah, yes, Amber meet Corporal Pydych, Corporal Pydych, meet Amber Mailloux." Stooping, he moved up along the skeleton of fuselage, to where the c.o.c.kpit should have been. Amber has been telling me how she found your pilot"s parachute, and how she was clever enough to stow it somewhere safe until someone could collect it."
"Hi, kid. Call me Irving. I hate it. but my Mom likes to know the name"s getting used."
"Whatever."
Amber moved to stand over the Doctor, managing to block some of his light, but he had already observed the black wiring protruding from the mangled avionics bay. "I think your comic timing needs work. Corporal What"s your verdict on the electrical systems, hmm?"
Pydych skirted briskly around to face the Doctor. The engineer did his best deep-pan puzzled expression, then sighed. "What I can tell so far, I think all the electrics that are left in there - which is not a whole lot - are like burnt spaghetti stuck to my Aunt Clara"s pan. But it looks like the rest was surgically removed in mid-air. And I don"t know any acrobatic engineer display team that could pull off that kind of stunt."
"Curious."
"What was your major, Doc? The value of understatement?
Myself, I majored in cynicism, but I minored in electrical engineering and I"ve never seen anything like this in my long and colourful career. And I"m talking at least as long and colourful as that scarf of yours."
"Oh I doubt that; the Doctor dismissed the claim airily. His thoughts were elsewhere as his gaze sailed over the exhibit.
"There"s really not much left of this Raven, or its experimental modifications. You wouldn"t happen to know about any of those, would you?"
Pydych laughed and polished his fingernails on his collar. "I can tell you this much: they were experimental. Rush-job avionics and wiring to patch in the Storm-" he arrested himself and smiled at Amber "-device. I hadn"t seen a bigger lash-up since my brother tried to spy on me and my first girlfriend with a cheap Polaroid and my remote-control car."
"They had remote-control cars when you were a kid?" Amber goaded.
"Hey, kid, I"m only thirty-six next month and I played with cars well into my twenties. Now, if you"ll excuse me, I think your learned colleague is trying to attract my attention."
The Doctor was indeed waiting on Pydych with an expectant stare. "Yes," he said with tested patience. "I didn"t really want to break up your new friendship. Corporal, but I have a question I think you can help me with. The Captain happened to mention the Stormcore-"
"Uh, yeah. Doc, can we just stick with calling it the device?
I"m not entirely comfortable using official designations in front of the kid."
"Corporal, in the first place I thought codenames were intended to disguise the nature of top secret equipment; and in the second, I"m getting a nasty feeling you"ll be able to forget your state and its secrets if we don"t find some answers very soon."
While Pydych tried to make up his mind, the Doctor watched Amber detach herself from the scene and drift off towards the tail of the wreckage. It struck him that she was a good deal more distant than the length of the aircraft.
"Yes, okay, yes. The Stormcore was where the electronic warfare officer normally sits. At first I was guessing it was - disintegrated - like most of the electrics." Pydych shrugged "But if the creepy kid found the chute then it made it to the ground The pilot and the Stormcore were rigged into the same ejector system."
"Really?" The Doctor frowned. Well, that"s very bad news indeed."
Pydych blinked "Bad news?"
"The wires looked like they were cut," Amber said from down the room. "On the chute."
"Since others have apparently recovered it," the Doctor pursued his point, "I can only a.s.sume your pilot ended up guarding the Stormcore with his life. Which is a tremendous pity." He rose slowly. "Because he might have been able to tell us what attacked this aircraft."
The humour drained from the lines in Pydych"s face. "Wait - attacked?"
"So far, we can be fairly certain most of these breaks are impact fractures. The metal is buckled and warped and what"s left of the wiring is burnt, as you say." The Doctor let a gloomy cloud descend over his face, and his finger traced a ragged course in the air. marking a wide area around the missing c.o.c.kpit. "But doesn"t it strike you as odd, that neither White Shadow nor the cult could find a single fragment from this entire section? And some of these jagged edges look a little too neat for my liking: torn along the dotted line."
Pydych"s worried features were simply mirroring the Doctor"s. "The question we have to ask ourselves. Corporal Pydych," he declared darkly. "is who made the dotted line?"
Martha hit the door release as soon as the lumbering 4x4 had rolled to a halt. The woman agent turned in her seat.
"Hey, hey. Slow down there, Martha."
Martha stared right back into those blank shades. Melody, Melody, I appreciate your politeness and all, but if you"re thinking of telling me to relax I"ll save you the bother. I"ve been sitting quiet in the back of this car all the way down the mountain and you"ve told me next to nothing about what business you have with my daughter. So if you don"t mind, I don"t feel much like relaxing, I feel like finding my baby girl right now." I appreciate your politeness and all, but if you"re thinking of telling me to relax I"ll save you the bother. I"ve been sitting quiet in the back of this car all the way down the mountain and you"ve told me next to nothing about what business you have with my daughter. So if you don"t mind, I don"t feel much like relaxing, I feel like finding my baby girl right now."
At that, she was out of the car. slamming the door behind her. They were parked across the street from the store and despite blowing snow she could see the grey silhouettes of a bunch of vehicles up by the hotel. She couldn"t see Mak"s police truck, but if he was in town he"d have parked in back of the station. She thought she"d best march straight for those vehicles.
Two more car doors opened and slammed in tandem.
"Whoa, Martha," the man called Parker caused her to turn.
"Those guys there are the United States Army. They"re all here as part of our operation, you know, and they"re likely to be mighty sensitive about folks busting in and asking all kinds of questions. Maybe you"d prefer my partner here to make the introductions."
Melody rounded the front of the 4WD, her stylish boots making wet crunching sounds in the snow. "Sure I will. Then we can go find your daughter, speak to her nice and calmly.
It won"t take more than five minutes, tops." She angled her head up at her partner. "And what are you planning on doing exactly?"
"Me?" Parker flashed a winning smile and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "I am going over to the store to pick up some candy. Your daughter likes candy, right, Martha?"
Martha clenched her teeth before returning the thinnest of smiles. "Why don"t you tell me, Agent Theroux? Or isn"t that covered in your government files?"
"Touche, ma"am." He tipped her a salute and turned, crossing the street with an over-easy swagger. Byers was always saying how he got all sorts coming through his store.
The trees materialised around and in front of them like a developing image on photographic paper, only to fade behind as they trudged on. Tune, unfortunately, was the only gauge left by which Joanna could measure how far they had come, and she had lost track of that an uncertain while ago.
Actually, for all the dragging minutes of their trek, she didn"t think they had covered a heck of a lot of ground.
The wind was getting up, stirring the crystal flakes into a frenzy.
Jacks forged ahead like she was on some kind of route march. The big guy, Lagoy, was dragging his heels for painfully obvious reasons, and Joanna was watching her step because one slip and she might crack her head against a tree. Hands tethered behind her back, her balance was off and she"d already earned one vengeful kick from Jacks for a simple stumble.
Vengeful seemed to sum up Emilie Jacks pretty completely.
There was certainly no compa.s.sion in her tone when she finally called for a rest break. "Ten minutes," she said, marching back to them. "Here"s your chance to take a look at Mitch."
Joanna turned herself around to be untied, privately thankful. In spite of what he was, she"d been concerned about Mitch Lagoy. Sure, part of her had wanted him to keel over and never get up, but it was always the lesser part.
Set loose, she yanked her hood up and rubbed her cheeks furiously to get some heat back into them. Her right cheek was still sore from its meeting with the gas can. Lagoy had slumped against the nearest birch, and she knelt beside him to peel tentatively at his coat. Where the blood had stained the punctured fabric, the holes looked especially ragged.
They might look neater when she got to the skin, but there wouldn"t be any cause for optimism.
She worked swiftly. Lagoy breathing in thick gasps - and wanting to close his eyes.
"Hey," she said. "for what it"s worth, it wasn"t me who did this. I didn"t get a single shot off before your lady friend-"
"She is no way," he b.u.t.ted in, "my lady friend. She was Crayford"s squeeze - or the other way round."
Joanna remembered the name from a CIA dossier. Jacks was safely out of earshot, hovering across the clearing and trying to out-stare the whiteness. "And there I was just thinking he was crazy for believing in aliens."
"Come off it. Lieutenant. We know that you know. That thing we cut from the chute wasn"t manufactured in Detroit."
Joanna was peering underneath her patient to check for exit wounds. There were none and she looked up to meet the big man"s gaze. She knew the Stormcore must have been in this pair"s hands when Kristal had sensed it. "What did you do with the pilot?" she demanded, her normally brisk bedside manner giving way to anger.
"Pilot?" Mitch Lagoy rolled his head side to side against the trunk of the tree. "There wasn"t any pilot, miss. Just this busted rig with this piece of alien magic inside it. Christ, we thought we"d found the Holy Grail - then Jacks just threw it away."
Joanna felt her heart knotting up with fear. She wasn"t sure she could take this man"s word at face value. From what she knew of Jacks already, she knew the woman would be more than capable of dealing with an Air Force pilot standing between her and a prize as valuable as the Stormcore. But what if the pilot had vanished like the cultists at the house?
Somehow, an act of cold-blooded murder seemed like the lesser of two evils.
Chapter Nine.
Curt Redeker knocked back a mouthful of bourbon and rode down the burn in his throat. It was the only thing keeping him in the present, and he was glad he"d thought of it.
The cleric had taken his time finding it, but that had suited Curt fine. He"d had the guy set it down on the counter, backed him off with the gun, then s.n.a.t.c.hed it up. He"d had to twist off the cap with his teeth, but he"d barely felt the bite of metal. And the taste of it trickling down inside, man, that purged those shakes right enough.
They"d threatened to return as soon as he"d sighted the smart guy coming for the store.
He"d wanted to break down and cry at that. Today was turning into an echo of his whole life, one rotten turn after another. No lucky breaks, not for Curt Redeker. No, that"d be asking too much, wouldn"t It, Lord? Once in my life, one miserable lucky break.
Screw you. And screw this new guy if he upsets the boat.