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Chapter 119 – ResidenceAlex winced. She didn’t know anything about politics in India, but she knew this was bad. Mega-bad. One of these Orphans was already taking over a place with a ton of people in it. She asked, “What do we do about it?”
Jack said, “Intelligence. Reconnaissance. Preparation. Because right now, there’s not a chance in hell that anyone anywhere is going to let us go wage war on an entire state in India, based on our guess that a hacker is loose there and one of their politicians is maybe planning on taking over the world.”
Okay, that wasn’t what she was hoping to hear. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized he was totally right. They had no real evidence at all. They couldn’t even prove that P$ychon4ut was there, and not on another continent and misusing that big server farm remotely. They had no evidence at all that this Singh guy was doing anything bad, just because he was adopted as a baby. She thought about Riley and Jo and Willow, and realized that even if this guy really was an Orphan, that still didn’t mean he was a badguy.
She was really getting to hate Maggie Walsh and her dead major prof. Maybe Howard Royer Locke was the reason Maggie was so horrible now. Maybe someone else could have convinced her to use her brains for good.
She admitted, “I was kind of hoping we could get some intel and fly in and save the day and … stuff.”
Riley fretted, “We have to make sure we’re doing the right thing, and there isn’t something even bigger we need to focus on.”
Jo pointed out, “It could be a trap. Or a ploy. Or a con game. There’s got to be an incredible number of kids adopted as infants all over the world. They could point us at someone who isn’t one of them but has the same profile, and let us self-destruct all on our own.”
Eww. That would mega-bad.
“That would be totally of the icky,” Willow fussed.
“Yeah, like totally mega-cruddy,” Jack teased in a fake ‘Valley girl’ accent.
Alex stuck her tongue out and made a face, even though no one could see her do it. She just pretended Jack knew exactly what she was doing.
Willow said, “Tera, I don’t know if you’re sticking your tongue out at him, but I sure am.”
Jack smirked. “And on that note, let’s move on to point number two. Manny and Moe?”
Manny and Moe? Ooh, he was using the names for the Pep Boys, even after she and Willow complained about it! Those poor IT guys. They were probably lucky he hadn’t called them Larry and Curly. Or Moe and Shemp. Or something even worse.
Captainmal said, “Yes, sir. Acid Burn worked with us on this, and some of this we had to do through some paper files that General Hammond’s people copied for us, and some paper and microfiche archives that Hermione Granger’s contacts obtained. Howard Royer Locke. He was born in 1946. His mother died in childbirth, unknown father but it could easily have been a Nazi soldier no one wanted to claim right after the war ended, so he was raised in a German orphanage. He was adopted at age one by Army Captain Peter Vaden Locke and his wife Lauren while Locke was serving in post-WWII Germany. The orphanage had given him the name Helmut, which apparently didn’t go over big right then, so Captain Locke and Mrs. Locke renamed him to Howard.”
Jack complained, “And Locke, too. What is it with all these orphans?”
Riley ventured, “Sir, it may be causal. He knew how orphanages and adoptions worked, and how easily they could hide his scheme, so maybe he deliberately chose the orphanages because of his life experiences. And maybe that was why he and Walsh chose the approach they did for Project Galinka.”
Jack sounded like he was doing his scowling thing. “Well, that’s the best explanation I’ve heard so far. It doesn’t cover Wacky Maggie, but it’s good.”
Captainmal went on, “He was a good student and a noted artist. His mother wanted him to become a painter or sculptor and his father probably wanted him to go into the Locke family businesses, but he went into science and then focused on genetics research. However, about three dozen of his paintings are currently hanging in big East Coast museums or in expensive private collections, and his bronze bust of his mother is one of the main focal points in the Locke family mansion’s ballroom. He was a noted philanthropist, and in his thirties and forties, he revitalized the Locke family philanthropic efforts. He supposedly spoke seven languages fluently, including Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Hungarian. He did extensive research on neonates and genetics at Harvard, Princeton, and several big-name medical research institutes, including the Locke Medical Institute. His work on cloning and hybridizing animals revolutionized animal husbandry and made him even more millions.”
Jack groused, “I bet Wacky Maggie learned a ton of cool stuff from him on those fronts.”
Captainmal sounded like he didn’t mind being interrupted all the time. “He married socialite Estelle Greer Armstrong when he was thirty-eight and she was twenty-seven. She had two miscarriages, then a hysterectomy, and they never had any children. Estelle passed away seventeen years ago. He apparently never dated anyone in his social milieu ever again. His suicide three years later was assumed to be connected to her death, either due to loneliness or getting involved with someone he shouldn’t have, because of the loneliness. He was infamous for being a very demanding major professor, so not that many grad students wanted to work under him, but those that did have been very influential in their fields.”
Jackryanrules added, “And Maggie Walsh is the cream of that crop, but she’s pretty much the superstar of the entire fields of computational genetics, genome modification, gene mapping, and also transposon analysis. She basically invented transposon analysis and retrotransposon analysis, and she completely revolutionized the field of computational genetics, plus she did things in genome modification that … well you know how impossible some of her stuff has been.”
Jack intoned in a voice like Inspector Gadget, “If only she’d used her brainpower for niceness, instead of rottenness.” Alex heard Willow break into giggles. Then his voice changed back to normal. “And now we’re ready for point number three. Homework for Terawatt!”
Okay, that didn’t sound good.
Willow cut in, “They suppressed some names. Me, Bruce Paine, and Buffy Summers. Not Selina Kyle Christakos.”
Alex knew right away why those names got buried. Okay, Jack would want to protect Willow no matter what, and maybe he only saw Bruce as a big fat asset. But Buffy? That was definitely the Alex factor.
Jack said, “We’re going to fly you out to the Big Apple to have a private chat with Mister Paine about his email from KidsOfBreslynn.org. Ditto for Miss Summers. Just in case it comes up, blame the NID for the discovery. If they’re already part of The Collective, maybe they’ll go shoot Maybourne or his Shop sidekick.”
Alex was kind of appalled to realize she wasn’t all that upset about getting Colonel Maybourne or Colonel McNamara in serious trouble. Was she turning into a horrible person? Or was she really that angry at those hideous, evil, scum-sucking, creepy jerkheads for trying to use her to get at Willow and Shar? Umm, maybe the second one, because she was still pretty cheesed off about that. Okay, maybe both. Not that either thing was good.
Jack went on, “I think we’re going to have to pass on Selina, even if Acid Burn’s dying to meet her.”
“Jack!” Willow squawked in embarrassment.
He just went on, “But knowing that The Collective probably has their claws in Christakos Shipping and Christakos Oil and everything else Christakos may explain a hell of a lot.” Alex was pretty sure he was sitting there smirking at Willow while Willow was beet red with embarrassment.
Jackryanrules added, “As far as we can tell, the Christakos family also owns a mining company, a couple of gold processing plants, over a dozen chemical plants around the world, one of the larger tobacco products companies outside the U.S., a dozen skyscrapers around the world, seven casinos, and controlling or near-controlling interest in maybe eighty international businesses. If you wanted to launder big wads of money without messing with drugs or gunrunning, they’d definitely be one of the best ways to go.”
Jack said, “But if the Christakos empire is this heavily involved, then Tera’s busty friend Selina has been deeply in The Collective for a long, long time. We don’t want to give anything away to her or her pals.”
Alex said, “Okay, fine, I contact Bruce and Buffy. How do I do that?”
Jack explained, “Simple. Acid Burn emails Mister Paine and says you need to talk to him, so you’ll drop in on stately Paine Manor at midnight this Saturday night. According to Klar’s mom, there’s nothing big scheduled on the New York society front late that night. We’ll use a Blackbird to get you there ASAP and take you back home after. Miss Summers goes to the trouble of tweeting her life’s plans to all her adoring fans, so we’ll just pick an evening she’s home alone, and we’ll fly you down there.”
Alex checked, “From Camp Atron? Even with the spy thing going on there?”
Jack said, “That would be a ‘no’. You’ll fly down toward Edwards AFB, and we’ll send a chopper up your way and you’ll rendezvous mid-air using a little bit of GPS magic. We’re not going through Camp Atron again until we have the NID cleared out.”
Alex worried, “But what about my martial arts lessons?”
Jack frowned. “They’re on hold. There is no way I’m letting the NID find out just what you can and can’t do in terms of fighting an unenhanced human.”
Alex pouted, but she figured he was right. The NID would sneak spy cameras in the dojo and monitor her and do other creepy stuff. They’d probably put a camera in the women’s locker area and hope they could catch her changing out of her superhero uniform, and they’d probably stare at the video they got of other women using the locker area, because they were extra-creepy. It was just lucky for the whole NID that this Willow wasn’t a super-powerful witch, or they’d get turned into rats. Okay, that was probably unfair to the rest of the world’s rat population.
“Okay. I’m not happy about it, but at least we’ve still got Jo flying up once a week, and that’ll do.”
Jo calmly told her, “Don’t worry. After we do the family-style kung fu class, you and I can do some MCMAP and Kenpo and a few other styles for a bit. That’ll give everyone else time to shower and change. And fix dinner.”
Alex thought it over. “Sounds pretty good.” It wasn’t perfect, but it was way better than nothing.
Jack muttered, “It’s not ‘pretty good’, but it’s better than exposing Terawatt to the NID. So Acid Burn and Terawatt just don’t use Camp Atron until further notice. Burn will use commercial airlines or else one of the Bay Area bases and a rendezvous that we’d set up in advance. Probably Travis AFB. Tera will meet choppers in mid-air or she’ll fly to Edwards or she’ll fly up to Burn’s home territory to rendezvous at one of the bases up there.”
Willow said, “Oh, and General Hammond gave me clearance to attack Camp Atron electronically and find our NID people, if I can. Once I’ve got an idea what we’re up against, we clear things with the camp director so we can set up a sting operation with Terawatt flying in and going to wait for a Cessna, and as soon as our NID guys —”
“Nimrods,” Jack interrupted.
“— NID nimrod guys do their illegal thing, we lower the boom and get those guys ejected.”
“I’m looking forward to giving those pricks a technical foul or two,” Jack muttered. “And he’s not called a camp director.”
Willow fussed, “I knew that, but I couldn’t think of the right word, and I knew it wasn’t ‘camp director’ because that makes it sound like he runs a summer Boy Scout camp or something.”
Jack growled, “Well, if he’s backing the NID and endangering my people, I’m gonna do my damnedest to make sure he ends up running a summer Boy Sprout camp. Or scrubbing their dirty dishes.”
Alex couldn’t help smiling. When Jack referred to her as one of his people or called Willow ‘my girl’ or stuff like that, it just gave Alex a warm feeling inside.
Jack went on, “Once we have more intel from Acid Burn on the NID infiltration at Camp Atron, we’ll map out the op we’ll use to uncover our moles. Now on to the next exciting point. North Korea.” He said the last two words totally scowl-y.
Walter said, “After all the troop activity and paramilitary activity in North Korea, the South Koreans have been extremely on edge. They’ve asked for meetings or conferences or pretty much anything. The NK suddenly stopped the troop movements and agreed to a meeting. But now they’re asking for a high-level meeting with some of the key South Korean military and diplomatic people.”
Jack interrupted sarcastically, “And that’s not suspicious in the slightest.”
Walter went on, “The Korean Demilitarized Zone is actually the most militarized area on Earth. Panmunjom — well, technically not Panmunjom but the Joint Security Area or JSA for short — sits right on the border, with the borderline going right down the middle of the conference room. It actually goes right down the middle of the negotiation table. That’s how tense things usually are.”
Alex figured she was the only person on the call who didn’t already know all this stuff, so the whole lecture was really for her.
Jack interrupted again, “Where ‘usual’ ends up being like 1996.”
Walter patiently continued, “What the colonel means is that in April of 1996, several hundred North Korean armed troops entered the JSA and elsewhere on three occasions, in direct violation of the Korean armistice agreement.”
Jack complained, “And it’s not like they’re not trying to find ways to invade South Korea or break the armistice every other month. They’ve dug at least four massive tunnels from way on their side of the border to well past the DMZ, and every one of those tunnels is big enough to march an entire regiment through in an hour. This could be one of their weirder efforts, especially if they’ve got an octopus the size of the Astrodome to sic on the South Koreans who show up for the meeting. I’d like to have some ‘tourists’ not too far from Panmunjom when the meeting’s supposed to take place. Finn, you’re going to be a schoolteacher showing some high school kids around. Tera, Action Girl, Klar … but definitely not Pyre. No way in hell is she going near this one, or anything else until she’s at least sixteen. Twenty-one, if I have any say in the matter. Miller, I want you to ask Azure Crush if she’s willing to go along in a suitable disguise. If so, Lupo, you’re going to be a tiny little South Korean tour guide.”
Alex wondered what a ‘suitable disguise’ would be for a 6'4" completely blue woman with blue hair who was built like a centerfold.
Jack kept going. “And while we’re on the subject of powers, Major Finn, would you like to tell the class anything?”
Riley sounded really embarrassed as he spoke. “Well, sir, I am actually stronger and faster than I’ve shown. My mom and dad have known since I was a toddler, and they’ve been working with me to keep my abilities down to something that looks normal.”
Jack interrupted, “Finishing fourth in the decathlon at the NCAAs is not normal.”
Riley confessed, “I could have done a lot better. And I never did anywhere near my best in PT at West Point. My folks always stressed that I needed to hide my abilities, because people would not treat me the same way if they knew what I could really do.”
Jo admitted, “And sir, I’m a lot stronger than I look.”
“I’ve noticed,” Jack smirked.
Graham said, “I think everyone’s noticed.”
Someone Alex didn’t recognize said, “Sorry, lieutenant, but you’re not as good at hiding it as you think.”
Graham teased, “Now I feel left out.”
Jack pointed out, “Captain, you’re pretty freaking impressive for someone not genetically engineered to be superhuman. Okay, you’re pretty impressive even if you were one of the Orphans.” He paused for a second and asked, “Is there any other business?”
Alex asked, “I’ve got something. How can my other identity hang out with Acid Burn’s other identity anymore, if the NID’s likely to be snooping around her and stuff?”
Willow bubbled, “I know! She can do a photojournalism thing on me! And then we do some more stuff together after that, like we got along really well.”
Jack said, “Assume Burn’s landline is tapped, so call from your house phone to hers, and pretend that you’ve done some preliminary work already and you’d like to come up to her house for more photos.”
Alex asked, “And won’t the NID get suspicious when the photos never appear anywhere?”
Jack smirked. “What makes you think they’ll never appear anywhere?” But he didn’t say anything else on the subject. He just left her hanging! He was such a stinkbug sometimes!
Okay, so she needed to do a really good job of getting photos, so someone could actually use them for something.
Jack checked, “Anything else?”
Willow hesitated. “Umm, I just got a ‘maybe’ on my systems in the last couple hours. Okay, so there’s this multi-state tac team that four Corn Belt governors put together over a decade ago, and it’s supposed to be their top police and tactical people, who can fly in on a couple of choppers and help out on anything big that small towns in Nebraska and Kansas and Iowa and Missouri can’t handle by themselves. So far, they’ve stopped a spree-killer pair, caught half a dozen serial bank robbers, stopped a mad bomber, caught a couple of shooters on rampages at colleges or malls, that kind of stuff. But this is new. There’s been some reports of hikers and campers killed and maybe eaten alive, which is totally gross.”
Jackryanrules contributed, “She hacked the Quad Cities police departments and morgues, and the Iowa Bureau of Investigation, and downloaded some images of the crime scenes and the bodies and forwarded them to us. Dr. Fraiser says the bitemarks are probably mostly adult humans with really poor dentition, but there are some pretty savage dog bites, too. Something in the Doberman range of jaws, instead of, say, a wolf or a mastiff or a pit bull.”
Willow whined, “And that’s so totally with the nausea-making!”
Alex totally agreed. She’d seen people eaten by silicates, and she knew there were people who had been eaten by that blob and that spider, but being eaten alive by a bunch of creepy humans and their attack dogs? Mega-ick.
Captainmal put in, “And the multi-state tac team is hogging everything. But they haven’t contacted the DHS or the FBI or anyone. They didn’t even send the Centers for Disease Control any tissue samples in case of rabid dogs.”
Willow added, “So I’ve been monitoring more than usual. I just picked up some not-so-good transmissions. It looks like their Bravo team went to this forest area way north of Davenport near the Spencer Mansion, which is roughly near where the reported killings were, and it looks like they ran into something they couldn’t handle, and they’ve lost all contact with them. So that’s really bad and SRI-ish. Their Alpha team’s about to get sent in. But I ran them against our ‘suspect’ database, and the head guy for the Alpha team is one of our possible Orphans, so maybe now we know why these guys haven’t informed anyone like they ought to. This could be extra-bad.”
Jack said, “And it sounds like an extra-bad SRI problem. And Davenport is only a half a dozen hours drive east of Finn’s family farm.”
Willow said, “Yeah. I’m voting no on the ruining the nice farms.”
“Got anything else we need to know?”
Willow said, “Umm, yeah? These tac teams are seriously armed for a bunch of Iowans, so if at least one of them is in on the badness, watch yourselves. And the organization is called the Special Tactics And Rescue Service. They call it S.T.A.R.S. because cool acronyms are super-important.”
“Anything else?”
Willow tried, “Their possible Orphan is a guy named Albert Wesker. And … umm … did you know that Des Moines isn’t the original name of the state capital? Since the Raccoon River runs through it, the original town name was Raccoon City, but they changed it a long time ago.”
“Thank you, Dr. IQ,” Jack snarked.
“Nyah.” It sounded like Willow was making the sound with her tongue stuck out.
Jack said, “Okay, Team One is going in right away. We can touch down in an hour after takeoff and … Lemme see that … Walter’s map program says we can be on-site in under twenty minutes after that. Tera? Head for Edwards and fly down over I-5 at eight thousand feet. Use your GPS on your tPhone to get the height right. I’ll have a Super Huey meet you in mid-air at that altitude and ferry you right to Edwards. Then you’ll take the Blackbird and meet us. Miller will have a package for you onboard the helo or the Blackbird. Burn, find out what measures these S.T.A.R.S. are taking for surveillance, intel, recon, and quarantine, and get Walter to work with the National Guard to fill in the holes. If this guy on their Alpha Team is really an Orphan and this is a Collective attack, he’s likely to leave some pretty massive holes for their monster or monsters plural to escape through. Lupo, get that Cessna turned around and back to base ASAP. Miller, have your team ready to go as support if I call it in.”
Miller said, “Terawatt? When you get to our helo, we’ll have gear for you: a copy of your Terawatt thermal suit, because Iowa in winter isn’t exactly toasty. You won’t need the helmet, so we’ll have a fanny-pack with energy bars, juicepacks, and a sat phone that can link to your earjack. You’ll have to do the synch-up yourself, but if you have any trouble, call Acid Burn before you take off in the Blackbird.”
“Roger that,” Alex replied.
Finn added, “Team One can be fully assembled in twenty, sir, if you can get Action Girl and/or Klar to meet us at the runway.”
Jack snapped, “I’ll call Janet and Klar right after I alert Hammond. Walter, you call and get the Cessna ready to take off ASAP. Then clear this with Hammond’s staff and make sure logistics are a go on-site.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This call is done,” Jack commanded. “Lupo, get back to Roswell at optimal speed, because I want you and Carlson on Team Two.”
“Yes, sir,” Jo said sharply.
Alex hung up and rushed into the living room. Her dad was there, taking turns reading aloud with Shar. Apparently, Kari Strong was upset with Terrible Tony T yet again, and Mayor Morris M. Milktoast had just done something else stupid. Alex told them, “Bad news. I’ve got another Code Red, this time in Iowa. Jo won’t be coming for kung fu lessons, but I expect you guys to get out there and practice anyway.”
Her dad frowned. “And what are you supposed to do about tomorrow? It’s a school day.”
She sighed. “If I’m not back by morning, call into school and tell them I’m off to Corcoran College again. They won’t like it, but they agreed to it, so they’ll go along.”
Shar pouted, “Alex, I don’t like it when I have to go to sleep without you around.”
Alex gave her a big hug and told her, “Be a good girl, and I’ll try to be back as soon as I can.”
“I’m always good!” Shar insisted. Alex didn’t say anything, but her dad rolled his eyes a little and gave Alex a little smile.
Alex flew up to her room, changed into Terawatt, and flew down to the garage. She headed down into the storm runoff pipes and came out in her favorite creek. Then she went straight up. She popped her tPhone out of her morph and clicked on the GPS feature so she had an altitude, too. She headed off to the interstate and headed south at eight thousand feet. She knew from what Jack had told her that a Super Huey could go way higher than that, like over twenty thousand feet.
She zoomed south as fast as she could, and in just under half an hour, she spotted a helicopter coming right at her.
As soon as the chopper spotted her, it slowed to a stop in mid-air and waited for her. She zipped in through the open side door, where the co-pilot was waiting for her. He slammed the side door closed, hopped into his seat, and said, “Buckle up ma’am. We’ll be at Edwards in about thirty minutes.”
She slipped into a seat and buckled up. On the floor was a duffel bag with her codename stenciled in large letters on the side. She used her TK to open it and pull everything out.
There was a new thermal suit, all folded and sealed up in plastic. And there was a white belt with fanny-pack to go over the thermal suit. Inside the fanny-pack were a stack of eight energy bars, three hi-calorie juice packs, and a tiny sat phone with wires sticking out for the battery charger and the antenna. The battery charger was another Willow production, so Alex could charge it with her fingers.
It took her almost five minutes to get the stupid thing synched with her earjack. She figured Willow could have gotten it done in seconds, but she just kept messing up, partly because she was trying to type on its itty bitty keypad with her TK.
When the chopper flew over the Edwards Air Force Base runways, she spotted the Blackbird. She puddled into her thermal Terawatt outfit, hooked the fanny-pack around her waist, and dived out of the chopper down to the SR-71.
She took her seat, went silvery, and the pilot got under way. They were in the air less than ten minutes later, and the Blackbird was diving downward and losing speed maybe forty minutes after that.
She bailed out through the special port when the jet was still at thirty thousand feet. She thought she might even beat Jack’s team to the site. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing, because Jack always knew what military things to do, and how to organize stuff.
As she zoomed downward over a large, hilly forested area, she spotted the big mansion. Wow, that was a lot of estate. Behind the mansion was a garden area big enough for her to notice at her altitude, and more buildings, and a big area that might even be a heliport.
And there was smoke coming up from a tiny spot near the front of the mansion. The smoke was just visible in the gathering gloom, and it went straight up like there was absolutely no wind anywhere. That smoke couldn’t be good. She headed for what might be a fire or a crash or something else bad.
Dusk was settling in and turning to night, so she had to get a lot closer before she could see that it was the wreckage of a helicopter. Her throat clenched at the notion that it might be Team One. She aimed right for it at her best speed.
When she was still maybe two hundred feet up, she could see the wreck well enough to tell that it wasn’t painted like a military chopper, so it wasn’t Jack’s. She breathed a sigh of relief.
Uh-oh. If it wasn’t Jack’s chopper, it might be one of the S.T.A.R.S. helicopters. That wouldn’t be good, either.
She flew down and hovered maybe twenty feet above the wreck. Something bad had happened. The helicopter hadn’t landed, or even windmilled down to a crash landing. This thing had crashed on its side. She didn’t know a ton about helicopters, but she knew enough to figure that had to mean the chopper had just dropped like a brick and crashed horribly.
She made an arc of lightning between her index fingers so she had enough light to see. She was immediately sorry, because there were pieces of dead bodies inside the crushed chopper. And it looked like something had gone into the wreckage and turned the dead bodies into those pieces. ‘Nausea-making’ didn’t begin to describe it.
On the other hand, she could see the upturned side of the helicopter really well under her arc-light, and there was a five-inch hole back behind the passenger area. The metal looked like blackened triangles pointing out away from the inside. She figured something had exploded next to the engine and had blown a hole out the side. That made things look more like a bomb that had been planted before the chopper took off, and less like something it ran into out here.
It was a good thing Jack had made her study all those demolitions manuals. She just hadn’t expected it to pay off like this.
She used her sat phone and hoped she hadn’t totally messed everything up. “Terawatt to Acid Burn or Team One. Come in please. Terawatt to —”
“Team One here. We’re inbound,” Jack announced.
She said, “Spencer Mansion. One of the S.T.A.R.S. choppers crashed badly, probably from a bomb someone planted onboard before it took off. No sign of survivors or even intact bodies. No sign of anyone else.”
“We’ve got your GPS coordinates,” Jack replied. “Changing direction now.”
She added, “It looks like there’s a big heliport behind the mansion, and I have no idea why an old mansion needs a huge modern heliport, so that looks really suspicious.”
She heard a sharp sound, and turned around trying to locate the direction. It sounded like it was coming from the mansion area. She took off toward the buildings, flying above the treetops so she could go really fast in the darkness and not have to worry about crashing into something. “Gunshots, maybe at the mansion. I’m investigating.”
“Be careful. It could be a trap. Or a firefight with really nervous gunners,” Jack warned her.
“Gotcha.” She didn’t hang up, because she wanted Team One to know what was going on.
There were more gunshots. Then as she got closer, she was pretty sure she could hear the barking and growling of good-sized dogs. Really not-friendly good-sized dogs.
There would have to be a lot of dogs, and they’d have to be really dangerous, if a team of trained S.T.A.R.S. guys was needing to fire all these shots. That wasn’t good.
She swooped down. One of the team tripped and fell just as two of the dogs closed in. Alex dived down between a couple trees and hit each dog with a blast of lightning. One of them was already in mid-leap, so the officer had been about to get a set of angry dog jaws right in the face.
Only those weren’t Dobermans anymore. They were gross, dog-like things with gross scabby patches all over them and seriously wrong stuff with their skin and teeth and eyes. Maybe they had been mutated by biochemicals.
Wow, that sounded just like some people Alex knew about and was really not happy with.
Alex hovered about ten feet above the ground, in case something else with teeth was lurking really close by. Another officer came rushing over and helped the first one to his — her — feet.
The officer who was down but getting back up was a woman. She looked like she wasn’t any bigger than Alex. She was wearing a bandanna tied like a sweatband around her medium brown hair. The guy who was helping her up was a big, muscular type with some serious red hair that Alex could spot even in the near-darkness.
The woman gasped, “I thought I was a goner.”
The man looked up at Alex and said, “We may still be, even if you’ve got Terawatt flying in to save your bacon. Let’s catch up with the others.”
The woman got to her feet, wiggled her leg to make sure she was okay, and agreed, “Okay, let’s get going. They may need some help.”
The two officers took off running, with Alex hovering over them and watching out for tree limbs just as much as for mutated dogs.
Alex heard more gunshots up ahead, and said, “Maybe you’d better tell ’em we’re coming in.” She went silvery just in case, because getting shot was not on her list of fun things to try this year. Getting hit by grenade shrapnel was bad enough.
“Redfield to Leader. Redfield to Leader. Come in please,” the guy announced as they ran. “Redfield to anybody. Can anyone hear me?” He complained, “All I’m getting is static, but we can hear they’re still firing.”
Alex tried, “Terawatt to Team One. Come in, please.” All she got was static, too. And jamming all outgoing signals was so unlike The Collective. Not! She just hoped this wasn’t another Gojira-sized monster. Okay, the dogs pretty much suggested a whole bunch of animal-sized threats, but she didn’t think something the size of a dog could be a giant radioactive energy-blasting signal jammer.
So she was basically on her own, with people who’d trust an Orphan teammate before they’d trust her. And how was Jack ever going to find her out here with no comms?