what we’re after, great; if we don’t, and the Russians don’t, because those things get their ship flying again and get away and cover their tracks as well as usual, we’ll live with that, too. If Philips and his team get killed or captured, well, it’s an embarrassment, but they were an embarrassment anyway, and legally that whole department doesn’t even exist, it’s all black budget-we could even claim they’re freelance. The important thing here is that we don’t want to wind up with those alien toys in Russian hands, and not in ours.”
That said, he stared at Meeters, awaiting a reaction.
Meeters stared back, unable to think of a reply; finally he simply said, “Yessir.”
The helicopter pilot called back, “General Philips? We’ll be on the ground in five minutes.”
”Good,” Philips replied. “Radio ahead, tell Lynch to have the men ready.”
Schaefer snorted. “Lynch,” he said. “Good name, Wouldn’t want to let any nasty little details like the law get in the way.”
Philips turned on him angrily. “Damn it, Schaefer,” he said. “I wouldn’t have hauled your ass down here if I didn’t think we needed you, and nobody else.”
Schaefer glared silently at him. He was tempted to ask whether they’d ever considered asking Rasche-after all, Rasche had pulled his own weight last summer, same as he always did, and Rasche might still be naive enough, or altruistic enough, or something enough, to have cooperated with Philips without this much hassle.
He didn’t mention Rasche, though, because he didn’t want to give the general any ideas. Rasche had his own life out there in Oregon, and Schaefer wasn’t about to do anything that could screw it up.
”I’ve got a good team put together,” Philips said, “but they’ve never seen actual combat with those things.”
”What about all those boys you had on Third Avenue last summer?” Schaefer asked. “Whatever happened to them-they all take early retirement or get hit by the last round of ‘Reduction in Force’?”
Philips shook his head. “Firing a few rounds at a spaceship isn’t what I had in mind as actual combat. You know something about those creatures, Schaefer. You have a feel for the way they think. My men don’t.”
”Teach ‘em.”
”We’re trying.”
”So what are you doing to prepare ‘em?” Schaefer asked. “Screening old Godzilla movies?”
”Damn it,” Philips shouted, “we’re hauling you down here to teach ‘em!”
”But why should I?”
Philips gritted his teeth and glowered silently at Schaefer for a moment. Schaefer glared back.
”You want the Russians to get their hands on one of those spaceships?” Philips said at last.
”I’m not sure it’d be any worse than you getting hold of one,” Schaefer retorted.
”Even if it’s Zhirinovsky’s crew that winds up with those shoulder cannon or with spaceships? Or if some of those starving scientists of theirs sell a few tidbits to the Iranians or the Serbs?”
Schaefer frowned and didn’t answer the question. Instead he said, “I’m still having a hard time buying this Siberia shit. General, you say you want me because I know something about what they’re like-well, one thing I know is that they hate the cold. So if you’re really planning to ship me out to the ass end of nowhere, to look at a spaceship somewhere north of the Arctic Circle, I’ll tell you right now that I’m not convinced it’s really the same things we’re dealing with this time as it was before. Maybe it’s some other goddamn alien tourists who dropped in on us. Maybe Earth suddenly turned into the trendy watering hole for half the galaxy, and instead of weapons we’ll just be picking up a bunch of cosmic beer cans.”
”Jesus, you really work at being a hard-ass, don’t you, Schaefer?” Philips asked. “You look for any reason you can find to make this harder on everybody. You think we’re all idiots? You think we didn’t check this out, didn’t think of the possibility that it’s somebody else? Sure, those things like it hot, but they don’t like it radioactive-the ships in New York didn’t leak neutrons when they landed. This one did. And the ones in New York weren’t spraying heat around like a fucking furnace, and this one is.”
”So it’s not the same gang,” Schaefer said. “If you can handle one species of alien showing up on our doorsteps, why not two or three?”
”Because everything else fits, Schaefer, So they were in trouble when they came down this time. Something was fucked up somewhere. It’s the same creatures; it’s just how they came down that’s different. We think it was a forced landing, Schaefer, maybe a crash. All the stories about the Roswell saucer are a bunch of bull, but this one’s real, which means we might have a good chance of getting a look at their technology-if the Russians don’t get it first.”
”And if they don’t blow it all to hell. Remember the one Dutch killed in Central America.”
”You think we could forget?” Philips eyed Schaefer thoughtfully. “You still won’t help?”
”You haven’t said anything to change my mind,” Schaefer said. “Why should I care whether we beat the Russians? We beat ‘em to the Moon, and all we got out of that was Tang.”
Philips nodded. “All right then, screw the patriotism approach,” he said. “If you won’t work with us because it’s best for the country, how about for your family? This team, these men, this whole project, they mean a lot to me. You help them, help me, and I’ll do what I can to get you some information on your brother.”
Schaefer stared silently at him for several long seconds. Then he asked, “If I go along on this little jaunt of yours, you’ll tell me what happened to Dutch?”
”I’ll try.”
Schaefer considered for another long moment, then said, “I’ll think about it.”
Philips looked at Schaefer’s face and decided not to push his luck. He sat back and waited for the chopper to land.
Chapter 16
The plywood targets were cut to roughly humanoid shape and painted with pictures of the alien predators, but done entirely in a dull blue that was almost invisible in the dimly lit shooting range. Schaefer guessed that this was supposed to make the targets resemble the effects of the things’ invisibility field.
It didn’t. The invisibility field had made the damn things invisible, not just hard to see; with that and how fast they moved, you were lucky to catch so much as a faint shimmer in the air before they ripped your head off.
Schaefer didn’t bother mentioning this. Instead he watched silently as the four big men with self-satisfied grins cut loose with heavy-caliber automatic weapons and reduced three of the sheets of plywood to splinters.
The fourth target had one side ripped out, but remained largely intact.
”This team is the elite, Schaefer,” Philips said. “Culled from all three services. What do you think?”
”I think you’re wasting a lot of good plywood,” Schaefer replied.
Philips didn’t respond. He had a horrible suspicion that Schaefer was right.
The six men ambled down toward the other end of the range-the shooters to inspect their handiwork, and Schaefer because it seemed to be expected. The four men who were supposed to be his students or teammates carried their weapons with them-that would be a violation of safety rules at an ordinary range, but here it seemed to be expected. Schaefer watched the way the four walked-self-assured, cocky, supremely confident.
Not good. Overconfidence got men killed, and until you’d gone up against your enemy and knew what you were facing, any sort of confidence was overconfidence.
”What’s the matter, Wilcox?” one of them asked, pointing at the surviving target. “Forget your glasses?”
Wilcox frowned. “Hell, I figured I’d leave something for the rest of you, that’s all.”
Schaefer looked at the target. It had been made with one arm raised in a threatening gesture; the artist had included the wrist blades the aliens used, though he’d gotten the shape of the curve wrong. Given that unless the artist had been there on Third Avenue last summer, he’d never seen one of the creatures, he’d done a damn good job getting as close as he did.
Wilcox had blown away the other side of the target; that hand raised to strike was still there, and Wilcox was standing directly in front of that arm, trading insults with the other men, ignoring the target, ignoring Schaefer.
Too cocky, definitely. If these bozos expected to survive an encounter with those hunters from outer space, they had to learn not to ignore anything. Schaefer reached over and gave the target a shove.
It swung around, and that upraised arm slammed into the side of Wilcox’s head. He fell sideways at the
