Shadow Ops: Control Point

crushing of “native ways” that have more to do with drinking and gambling than whatever you’re imagining. You want an exemption to the McGauer-Linden Act for them, but you don’t get it. I’ve kicked through barricades of burning tires in Mescalero. I’ve run and gunned against Selfers and their “Mountain Gods” in the Chiricahua passes. You think Apache magic is all horses, scenic vistas, and flowing black hair. It’s not — it’s fire and blood and rending teeth. You want to preserve it, but you wouldn’t last thirty seconds within a mile of it. You’re like people admiring a caged tiger. You ooh and ah over a pretty thing that wants to kill you.

— Major “Icebreaker” (call sign)

Supernatural Operations Corps Liaison Officer (LNO)

Bureau of Indian Affairs, Mescalero Reservation Task Force

Britton could hear shearing metal as the uneven ground ripped off pieces of the undercarriage. The radio hissed static. The cruiser bumped to a halt.

Dawn had come to the other side as well. The plain came alive beneath it, sawtooth grass flecked with tiny red and yellow flowers he had missed in the darkness. It rolled out for miles, ending at a line of rocky foothills. Currents of magical energy eddied all around him. He leaned out the cruiser’s broken window, looking behind him. The gate still shimmered. The cop stared through it, gaping.

“You want magic?” Britton shouted at him. “Come and get it, you bastard!”

If the cop heard, he gave no sign.

“Baztaad …commageddit…?” keened a voice.

Three of the demon-horses sniffed toward the car. One poked at the passenger door with its single tooth, jumping back from the hard surface.

Frustration boiled into anger. “Can I get a damned break?” Britton shouted.

The magic tide swept about him, far more powerful on his side of the gate. Before he knew what had happened, he felt the current snake through the gate to wrap around the cop, hauling him through.

The gate’s light washed over him as he came stumbling, eyes big as dinner plates. The pack streamed around the cruiser toward the easier target.

“Oh, dear God. No,” Britton whispered.

The cop screamed, hauling out his pistol and firing madly, in no danger of hitting anything.

“Hang on!” Britton shouted. “I’m coming!”

He slammed on the accelerator, pulling the steering wheel to run down one of the demon-horses. The thing turned, keening a rumbling imitation of the motor before the grill caught it, its ribs cracking as it slid up the hood to shatter the windshield. Its horselike head lolled toward him, eyeless, the spike tooth leaking blood. Britton punched it hard, jarring it enough to send it back over the hood. The car shuddered as the wheels crunched over it.

The other two demon-horses leapt aside as he guided the cruiser toward the cop. He threw the driver’s-side door open. “Get in!”

The cop backpedaled, his face a mask of terror. He changed magazines mechanically, then raised the pistol.

Britton ducked as a bullet whined through the space where the windshield had been, thudding against the bulletproof divider behind him.

“Damn it, you idiot! I’m trying to help you!”

The cop answered him with another round, slamming into the engine block.

The demon-horses flowed around the car toward the cop. Britton spun the steering wheel and drove away. Another bullet whined off the cruiser’s roof before the cop noticed the pack and turned the gun on them.

Britton spun the wheel again, turning the car back, but another bullet hissed past as the policeman fired blindly at the monsters. Britton heard a coughing bark, the best impression of the gunshot that five more demon- horses, coming at a run, could muster.

You’re no good to him with a bullet in your head, Britton told himself. Get out of here.

He swore and floored the accelerator, bumping the car over the plain until the cop and the demon-horses vanished behind him. Assuming the cop had a seventeen-round magazine, he’d already expended at least ten of them. There was no way he could take out the whole pack, shooting like he was.

He’s as dead as your father.

Another gate opened. Through it, he could see deep forest alongside an overgrown trail.

The devil you know is better than the one you don’t. He drove through.

The cruiser rumbled onto an old logging trail. The car bottomed out over roots and rocks, making it a few feet before the front tires blew out, sending his scraped nose into a half-deployed air bag. He sat with his head against it, numb and exhausted.

He raised his head as the wind wafted steam from the radiator through the shattered windshield. Another gate hovered four feet off the ground. It had opened into an underwater portion of the other world. Shafts of weak sunlight penetrated green depths that stirred with the languid movements of huge bodies. Not a drop spilled through the gate.

“What do you want from me?” he shrieked, pounding the steering wheel. He sank back in the seat, weeping. “I don’t want you…I just want…” I just want to go home.

And where exactly would that be now? his mind asked.

“Stop,” he said. “Just stop. Pull yourself together.”

He searched the interior of the car. He found an unlocked gun case under the passenger seat, but it was empty, as were the backseats. The glove compartment contained a plastic first-aid kit, three chem-lights, a pocketknife, and a pack of tissues. He took them all, stuffed the lot into the gun case, and exited the car in time to watch the gate close on the watery depths and vanish.

What exactly was he planning to do? He’d managed to keep a half step ahead of his pursuers, but that couldn’t last long. And even if he could stay ahead of them, what then?

You’ll just have to figure it out, he answered himself. Maybe you can make your way to New Mexico, join up with the Apache insurgency. Maybe you can find one of those Selfer street crews hiding out in New York City.

And fight the government I’ve served?

The government that murdered a confused girl. The government that’s trying to kill you. Live or die, Oscar, make your choice.

You didn’t want to kill anyone. They’ll never believe that, but you know it. Britton hung on to that thought, repeating it to himself over and over again. It’s the reason you’re not a Selfer, not like they use the word.

So, he thought again, make your choice. What do you deserve?

Britton choked back tears of relief as he realized that he did not deserve to die. His choice was made. He would run.

Step one, find a place to lie low, get your bearings. Step two, find someone who can help you get control of your magic. The Green Mountain National Forest was miles from here, but it was big enough to get lost in. Big enough to go to ground while he figured out a way to head south without being spotted. It was a paper-thin plan, ridiculous in the face of what was sure to be a manhunt conducted by the most powerful military in the world.

But it was life. And, for the moment, it was all he had.

“Got to hide this car,” he said. The police probably had some way to track their vehicles. He wasn’t certain where he was but figured that distance on the other side approximated distance in this world. He couldn’t be too far from where he’d stolen the car. A thick carpet of ochre pine needles blanketed the ground, but that wouldn’t cover the cruiser.

The magical tide rose with his frustration. Another gate flashed open, cutting through the car’s front quarter panel. It shimmered there, then vanished, severing the wheel, bumper, and headlight. Water pooled beneath the sliced radiator. He stared, thinking what a gate would do if it appeared in the middle of a person, and shuddered.

“All right,” he said. “You want to help? Fine, you can help.”