Implacable Alpha Read online

  19

  Savage

  Every bit of Sam Savage’s concentration focused on the road as he flicked on the brights and sent the Tahoe rocketing up Highway 115. Didn’t matter that he had the blue flashers going; they might cause traffic to pull over, out of his way, but the deer or an occasional elk wouldn’t pay them the slightest heed. And he had to watch the corners, figuring that each of the yellow curve signs with a specified speed limit could be exceeded by maybe twenty miles an hour before the Tahoe’s tires would break traction and pitch them off into the guardrail.

  In the passenger seat, Karla Raven was checking the remaining equipment she kept in her third-line gear: radios, flashlights, rope, taser, various rolls of tape, zip ties, wire, and the like. He knew that she kept her kit in perfect order. Checking it again on the way, that was just ritual. Something spec ops people did. Double, triple, quadruple check, it didn’t matter. Someone’s life could hinge on it.

  She repacked the last of her gear, sealed it, and dropped the pack to the floor between her feet. Shot him a sidelong look as he sent them careening around a corner and hit the accelerator on the straight. “How’s the chest, Major?”

  “Still a little sore. Good news is that I’m through the physical therapy.” As he squinted at the road, the images played in his memory. Bill Minor had emerged from the Lab One door during Savage and Karla’s infiltration of the Skientia lab. Karla had taken the brunt of Minor’s attack, wrestling with him. She’d been trying to disarm Minor, to knock the nine-millimeter Sig out of the man’s hand.

  As Savage had rushed to help her, Minor had triggered the pistol. Funny thing that. Savage didn’t remember the sound of the discharge. The effect was as if he’d been kicked in the chest by a horse. Then he’d been on the floor, blinking, trying to figure out what the hell had gone wrong. That only lasted for an instant before he realized he couldn’t breathe. Looking back now, it might have been a dream, one in which Karla Raven appeared above him, her outline haloed against the fluorescent lights in the ceiling.

  He didn’t remember anything she’d said, didn’t remember much except that a giant weight was crushing his chest. Could barely remember her rendering aid, ripping her “blowout kit” open and tearing at his shirt. Blowout kit: the small medical first aid pack used for combat injuries.

  And then he’d awakened in the hospital with a tube in his throat. People had been rushing around. Having caught that brief glimpse, the world went away again until he awakened in the ICU with an armed guard at the foot of his bed.

  Wasn’t until the attending surgeon entered the room that Sam Savage learned he’d been shot through the left lung. In the wake of the carnage inside the Skientia lab, Karla had packed him out, and Winny had medevacked him to an Albuquerque hospital. But for their quick actions, he’d have died. Came pretty damn close to it as it was.

  Now, here he was . . . he and Karla Raven. He chuckled as he braked hard, made the corner, and punched the accelerator.

  “What?” Raven asked.

  “I was thinking that the last time it was just you and me, I got shot. I’m worried that this time, Winny Swink isn’t waiting with a helicopter to save my ass.”

  Raven turned her attention to the cone of light their headlights shone on the winding asphalt. “Don’t think we’re going to get shot at. Doesn’t feel right. Doesn’t make sense. Whatever went down is over. What matters is who’d take the Skipper? Stevens? We should be clear of his radar. Grazier assured us that Stevens bought the cover story. I heard he’s still looking for a spec ops team . . . one off the books. That he didn’t buy that Team Psi could have hit the Aspen mansion or the Los Alamos lab.”

  “Yeah, he’s still looking. My sources inside the Activity as well as JSOC tell me that with his imprimatur, the NSC and NSA have had agents combing the records for any hint of an off-the-books team.”

  “Major, I don’t want to push your button, but we’re about as ‘off the books’ as you can get.”

  “They’ll be trying to follow the money. We’re not funded through DOD, DARPA, or any of the usual sources. Money’s always the weak link, and so we should be covered in that regard. That, and the ‘rumint’ mill is completely quiet. SOF is a small community. Old friends get together over beer, people talk. If there was any clue that a bunch of crackpots who’d escaped from a psych ward had knocked over Aspen and Los Alamos, it’d be the talk of the town.”

  “A bunch of crackpots,” she said softly. Then, “I get it that you’re not happy with the assignment or the mission parameters. You really don’t like us, huh?”

  Savage ground his teeth, narrowed an eye as the Tahoe’s suspension hammered over a bridge abutment. “Look, Chief, I ran special operations teams just about everywhere in the Middle East, Northern Africa, Afghanistan, and all the usual places. Maybe I’m just a simple guy, but I like working with professionals. I like having a cadre of talented people to pull from when I plan and tailor an op. Guys who’ve been in the shit, that I can trust. So step back and take a gander at it from my seat: Aspen, Los Alamos, they were all slapped together. Granted, we had to move when we did, but I ended up shot, Dr. Farmer’s dead, and Alpha’s escaped. Falcon’s in a catatonic state. That little display of yours in the gym today? I caught you at the end of a flashback, didn’t I?”

  At her eloquent silence, he added, “My problem now is when will one or another of you guys wig out on me?” He shot her a glance. “Get where I’m coming from?”

  Trees were flashing past in the headlight beams as he crested the pass and started down toward the Arkansas River.

  Raven tightened her grip on the “Oh Shit” handle in the dashboard, as if bracing for impact. “What we did, we had to make up at the last second. So I’ll cut you a break. You’re from the head shed, that tidy little world of officers who flock around their tactical computers, bedazzled by the ‘good idea fairy.’ It’s us enlisted folk who have to charge into the shit and make a direct action work so that you guys can pat yourselves on the back. You know, get one up on the competition as you check off boxes on your way up the ladder to retirement.”

  “Heard it all before, Chief. But here’s a bit of flash traffic for you. I came up the hard way. Just like you. Made the cut for Rangers, gutted my way through to qualify for Special Forces Operational Detachment, and was selected for Task Force Green. I’ve humped my share of brothers out of the shit while their blood soaked through my second-line gear and down to my skin. So how about we stop swinging dicks and get down to the facts: This whole thing at Grantham’s on the verge of being a cluster fuck.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Come on, Raven. You didn’t get where you did by being an idiot. We’re supposed to be the first line of defense against time warriors? It’s as crackpot as it sounds. We don’t know who they are, where they come from, or—outside of Alpha—what they want. We can’t even detect when they come and go, let alone do anything about it. And, if we could, so what? How do we build a team? Transport? Handle the logistics? To do what? We can’t define the mission, let alone how to complete it.”

  She sat silently, her gaze fixed on the mountain road they flew down. “Yeah, that bothers me. But Grazier’s stuck. You heard how close he came to losing it all? Stevens told the president that Grazier had gone nuts, suffered a psychotic break. If the general hadn’t known the president way back when, we’d all have been screwed, and Grazier would be locked in his own padded cell two doors down from the rest of us.”

  Savage nodded. Knew how close it had been, how the president had hedged his bets. Grazier himself had acknowledged that if Stevens hadn’t already scheduled a White House visit for Alpha, that he’d have been arrested and quietly retired.

  As Savage blasted past a slow-moving truck, he hit his brights and said, “Okay, Chief, I get it. Grazier’s hands are tied. He’s got a hidden black op that only the president knows about, one that he’s funding from who
-knows-where. It’s made up of you guys, not because it’s ideal, but because you had firsthand experience with Alpha, and, miracle of miracles, you almost managed to catch her before she skipped into the future. That still doesn’t negate what we’re up against: We’re supposed to deal with a threat that no one would believe is real, with a team made up of . . . well, let’s say ‘mentally compromised individuals’ working out of a psychiatric hospital, in an attempt to keep invaders—whom we can’t even identify—from a parallel Earth from compromising our very existence.”

  “Ooraah, Major.” She shot him a glance. “You CIA guys always this pessimistic?”

  “Chief, there’s pessimism, and there’s reality. If I were a pessimist, I’d have never made it to West Point, let alone past PFC. I got to where I am at by looking at the problem as rationally as possible and figuring out how to solve it. Even if I had to do it on the fly. I was damned good at it until that asshole Tanner Jackson bitch-slapped me on Pennsylvania Avenue and took Farmer and France right out from under me.”

  Just thinking about that ambush in DC pissed him off all over again. And now Jackson, the son of a bitch, was somewhere in the future with Alpha?

  He slowed as he hit traffic at Canyon City, people pulling over and letting him pass out of respect for his flashing blue lights. The city police—given a heads up from the Sheriff’s Office—let them through town with nothing more than a flash of their headlights, and Savage punched the accelerator as they cleared the city limits.

  “This whole thing stinks,” Karla told him as they took the Royal Gorge exit off US 50. “The Skipper wouldn’t leave that Diavel. That it was parked next to a stolen bike? That’s no coincidence. Dr. Ryan’s a bike guy, into the culture. He loves motorcycles and riding. It’s his escape valve, his passion. If there was any way to get the Doc to lower his guard, that’s how they’d do it.”

  “So you think this was planned? How? How would they know where he was going?”

  “You gotta be kidding, Major. They could have tagged his bike with a tracker, employed a drone, shadowed him, satellite, you name it. And it’s Saturday. Whoever’s behind this, they know the Skipper’s vulnerability.”

  At the park, Savage was waved through, found the sheriff’s car in the parking lot next to the two bikes. They were gleaming in the halo cast by the security lights. A tow truck waited, the driver leaning against his fender, arms crossed. Some of the park personnel stood in a knot in the rear.

  Savage parked, cut his lights and ignition. Karla was already out the door, swinging her pack onto her shoulders. He was hot on her heels, stopping before the sheriff.

  “You’re Major Savage? I’m Bill Meek. Glad to meet you.” The guy was a typical Colorado county sheriff, right down to the cowboy hat, western boots, and gray hair.

  “Sam Savage, sir. And this is Chief Petty Officer Karla Raven. Thanks for the call and the courtesy getting us here. Any information on Colonel Ryan’s whereabouts?”

  Karla had immediately gone for the bike, playing her Surefire E2D light over it as she searched for any clue. She went carefully over Ryan’s coat where it was wedged between the bars, then his helmet hanging from the twist grip. Next, she crouched, studying the tires, the engine, looking for who knew what.

  Sheriff Meek made a face, waved toward the park personnel. “No, sir. And this is where it gets a little strange. You see, the park here at Royal Gorge is like any other tourist-based attraction. They’ve got a huge liability worry, even more so with the bridge and canyon as well as the rides and zip line. As a CYA, and for insurance, they’ve got a comprehensive monitoring system. You want to come with me? Take a look at the tapes? Then you can make your own mind up about what happened here today.”

  Savage looked at Karla, a sinking feeling going sour in his gut.

  20

  Karla

  The security office at the Royal Gorge Bridge & Park wasn’t state of the art, but it certainly got the job done. Karla crowded in next to Savage and Sheriff Meek, the latter having figured the case was high profile enough for his personal involvement.

  A kid named Mike was in charge of the computer and ran the security recordings from a cluttered desk; wires snaked from his PC to the three monitors on the wall. He was a Game of Thrones geek. Had posters of the dragons up on the walls. A little plastic Iron Throne toy sat by the side of his keyboard.

  Mike said, “Yeah, we got a couple of cameras on the parking lot. So, like here, at 12:52, you can see the first bike pull in.”

  Karla watched a black BMW RS wheel into the frame, pull up at an open space next to the sidewalk. The rider backed the racy-looking bike slowly into place.

  “It’s a woman,” Savage said as the rider stepped off, unstrapped a backpack from behind her on the passenger seat, and slipped it onto her shoulder. Only then did she undo a full-face helmet and—carrying it with her—walk off for the entry. The distance was too great to make out facial features.

  “Nothing happens for almost five minutes,” Mike said. “Then this guy rides in.”

  Karla recognized Ryan on his Diavel, saw him fix on the parking space, and paddle-walk his bike in next to the BMW. Ryan studied the RS thoughtfully, and Karla watched him lean his bike on its side stand and pull off his jacket and helmet before stuffing them onto the bike and heading for the gate.

  “Okay,” Mike said, tapping keys. “So, we go to the bridge feed. We keep a weather eye on this one. It’s a long frickin’ drop from the center of the bridge, right? Nine hundred and fifty feet to the river. We get all kinds of nuts. Suicides, base jumpers, idiots that want to toss rocks, bottles, and sometimes even people they don’t like. Then we get the ones who just drop stuff to see it fall, and guys . . . it’s always guys, who want to pee and watch it rain for nine hundred and fifty feet.”

  Karla watched as the woman, dressed in black leather jacket and riding pants, strolled out to the middle of the bridge. For long moments she stared around, taking in the view, her hands braced on the safety railing. Then she set her helmet down and swung the pack off of her back, checking something inside.

  “Here comes your Colonel Ryan,” Mike said, pointing to the Skipper as he walked into the picture. Even from the angle, it was apparent that he was oblivious to the woman as he stared down, stopping several times to take in the spectacular drop.

  Stopping about midway, he braced his arms and looked over the side. After thirty seconds or so, Karla saw him nod to himself, straighten, and stop short at sight of the woman. She’d been studiously ignoring him.

  Given the set of Ryan’s shoulders and the tilt of his head, his body language reflected puzzlement as he walked over to the woman and said something. She finally turned, facing him. Then she handed him what looked like a large hardback book. Ryan studied it, ran his fingers through what looked like a faint blue haze . . .

  The image on the monitor turned to fuzz, like the old-time “snow” on cathode-ray TVs.

  “Son of a bitch,” Karla muttered, recognition conjuring unhappy thoughts.

  “This is the weird part,” Mike told them. “The bridge cams are the only ones that went hazy like this. It’s about fifteen, twenty seconds, and, well, see?”

  The image firmed up again; the bridge reformed in the display, along with startled people in the background, some looking uneasy, as if unsure of their balance. Ryan and the woman had disappeared.

  Karla ground her teeth, fists knotting. She glanced at Savage, saw the major’s expression of dismay. Leaning forward to brace herself on the desk, she palmed the little toy Iron Throne. Couldn’t help herself. Felt the rising panic.

  “No sign of them after that,” Sheriff Meek said. “They never walked off the bridge, or the security cameras on either end would have spotted them. We’ve got a lot of practice finding bodies in the rocks after all the jumpers we’ve had over the years. And the cams down in the canyon don’t record anyone hitting the
river. They didn’t go over the side.”

  “They never showed up again,” Mike added, flicking from screen to screen. “We monitor everyone who comes and goes. Wouldn’t have thought anything of it if those two motorcycles hadn’t been left behind. And then, when the one was found to be stolen, we called the sheriff immediately. That’s, like, all we know.”

  “Can we get those recordings?” Karla asked as she slipped the stolen toy into her pocket. “And can they be enlarged, enhanced?”

  “Sure,” Mike told her. “Especially the bridge cams, they record in high resolution just for situations like this. It’s in case something happens that might land us in court. You know, for jumpers, or if someone throws something off the bridge. All that liability shit.”

  “Back it up to just before static blanks the monitors,” Savage said.

  Karla watched as the recording firmed up. Stepped closer. Stared at the woman handing Ryan the curious box. Karla couldn’t be sure, but that box thing was the same size as the cerebrum locked away back at Grantham. And the woman? She was too far away. Without ET’s magic, Karla couldn’t be positive of her facial features.

  She asked, “Can you go back to the security camera at admissions? Get us a close-up of that woman as she entered?”

  “Sure.” Mike told her. “Just a sec.”

  He clicked keys, the images in one of the monitors flickering, fast-forwarding as Mike checked the time log. At the 12:56 marker, the camera caught the woman as she passed through the gates and paid admission. Mike froze it in mid-frame, catching the woman’s features. Auburn hair, athletic-and-toned body in form-fitting black leather riding gear—and those green eyes couldn’t be mistaken.

  Karla and Savage both tensed.

  “Anything you two want to tell me?” Sheriff Meek asked softly, his quick blue gaze shifting from Karla to Savage.

  Karla could hear Savage’s teeth grinding before he calmly replied, “Bet you know where we’re going with this, Sheriff.”