Alien Research

CHAPTER 68

I WOULD HAVE LOVED to have discovered that Bruno knew where the hell we were and how to get out. What I discovered was that he was better at mazes than I was, but not prescient.

So, we made several wrong turns, backtracked a few times, but did manage to be close but not too close when the next bomb went off on the level we were on now. Mahin did her thing, explosion wasn’t stopped but was contained, and Bruno took off again, with us in hot pursuit.

“He’s trying to find the bombs?” Mahin asked as we ran up a new set of stairs.

“I have no idea. If we find another one, then the answer is yes.”

“Why explode something on each level?” she asked as we crested the stairs and Bruno screamed at us.

Didn’t bother to answer, just grabbed her hand again, scooped Bruno up in my free arm, and ran at the fastest hyperspeed I could manage, which, considering I was revved up on a combination of anger and panic, was pretty damn fast. Which was a good thing. Because I’d understood Bruno’s scream, and it interpreted to, “We need to run away like bats out of hell.”

He hadn’t been exaggerating. The explosion was huge, and it knocked us down. We rolled over and Mahin got her hands up just in time, the flames were engulfed and the debris settled down. But the stairs we’d just come up were no more.

“For the record, your talents are really cool, especially when people are trying to blow us up. They’re cutting off access. But why?”

“Maybe someone or something is down there they want, or don’t want anyone to get.”

“You and I would be the only things I can think of.”

“I’d want to get rid of us. They were supposed to kill me if I didn’t go with them and we both know they want to kill you.”

“Good points. Bruno, where to now?”

He took off, and we took off after him, as the music changed to Pink’s “Runaway,” as if we needed telling. Fortunately, the next set of stairs were easy to find, in part because there were a lot of people in uniform running down them, toward us. Ah perhaps my musical clue was for them more than for me and Mahin.

“Explosions are contained,” I barked out in the most authoritative tone I could manage. “All of you, get back up to ground level!”

“Do it! Evacuate!” a deep voice bellowed. It was a voice of authority, and all the military personnel stopped, spun around, and headed back up. It was also a voice I happened to know well.

My Uncle Mort was there, giving me a look I could only think of as “I knew it” crossed with “why me?” He was an older, tougher, far more imposing version of my father. And he was one of the most comforting things I could have seen right about now. If my Uncle Mort was here, I wasn’t going to the brig, and we had a shot at winning or at least coming out even.

“What are you doing here, Katherine?” Uh oh. Uncle Mort only called me Katherine when I was in trouble. Then again, I was in the middle of an exploding Guantanamo—of course I was in trouble. On the plus side, there’s no way Ronaldo would know that. “Besides listening to music at an inappropriate time, which is no surprise to me, of course.” Yep, it was the real Uncle Mort.

“Hey, I have it low enough that I can hear everything clearly, including the explosions, unfortunately. And, um, as for what we’re doing, ah, well, breaking Mahin out of prison before she was murdered by our enemies, trying to at least contain the explosions because we’ve been too late to stop them, and running for our lives. That about covers it, right?” I asked her.

“Right. Oh, and Gladys is under Ronaldo’s control again.”

“Right, forgot that. Uncle Mort, we need to get to ground level. Bawl me out once we know if the bombs are done going boom and we’ve caught and hopefully killed all the bad guys. Which may not actually include Gladys.”

He shook his head. “We have people down there.”

Thought about it—we hadn’t passed anyone. At all. And we’d been all over the place. Maybe Bruno hadn’t been lost—maybe Bruno had been confirming that the Poofs had found everyone they’d gone to rescue. “No, I don’t think you do. Where would a very intelligent animal put the people who were down here?”

Had to say this for Uncle Mort—nothing, absolutely nothing, fazed him, including questions like this. He’d seen a lot in his years with the Corps and he’d known me all my life. On, as Hacker International called it, the Kitty Weird Scale, this question was likely only a three or four. He’d heard far weirder from me over the course of my lifetime. “Probably in one of the empty hangars. There’s one close by.”

“Then let’s go there.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“Then at least we don’t blow up or drown.” Decided not to let Uncle Mort argue any more or possibly win this battle of wills. Put Bruno down. “Let’s go, big guy.” Grabbed Uncle Mort’s hand, Bruno took off at Bird Hyperspeed, and we followed.

Only one more flight of stairs, and, therefore, only one more bomb that went off right after we went past it. Mahin was getting really good at Explosion Containment by now. We stopped, Uncle Mort gagged from the hyperspeed while Mahin got things under control, and we took off again.

“They wanted to trap personnel,” I said as we exited into daylight. “That’s why that last bomb went off so late.”

“Seems logical. Does your father know you’re here?” Uncle Mort asked.

“Um, what do you think?”

“I think I want to officially request whatever it is your human agents are taking to help them not toss their cookies after running at hyperspeed.”

“You got it, I’ll have Tito send you your own private stash.”

We reached the hangar and ran inside. There were a lot of people there. Many were in uniform, and they were all standing with weapons drawn, surrounding a variety of those not in uniform who were sitting in reasonably neat rows.

The nearest uniform saluted as soon as Uncle Mort stopped gagging. “All prisoners and personnel from Major Containment present and accounted for, sir.”

Looked around. “Where are the Poofs?”

“Ah, if you mean the fluffy creatures who turned gigantic and picked us up in their mouths before we could activate weapons, took us here, and gave us the nonverbal but extremely clear suggestions to stay put, ma’am, they left once we were all in the hangar and military were surrounding the prisoners.”

“Good job. Uncle Mort, where would you go if you needed to get about six people off the base quickly?”

“Plane or car, meaning anywhere on the base,” Uncle Mort answered promptly. “I’m more concerned with there being other explosives we haven’t found yet.”

A thought occurred. Two thoughts, really. The first thought was that there was more than one reason to blow things up. And the second thought was that the best reason to blow things up aside from creating mayhem and destruction was as a really effective distraction. B.o.B.’s “Bombs Away” came onto my iPod. Apparently Algar wanted me to consider that our enemies were probably going for a twofer. “Where’s your main computer center?”

“Nowhere close to prisoner containment.” Uncle Mort’s expression said he’d made the same leap I had, without the benefit of musical clues. Well, he was older and more experienced. “Who, exactly, is on this base without authorization? Aside from you, I mean.”

“The same people who were screwing things up over at the Science Center last week.” Mahin and I gave Uncle Mort a quick description of the five we knew about. “I don’t know that Gladys is really mind controlled or not,” I finished up.

“Unless you can be sure, we have to treat her like a hostile,” Uncle Mort said.

“Jeff might be able to tell, if he were here and they weren’t using an emotional blocker or enhancer.” Cleared my throat. “So, um, never mind.”

“Well, I can’t speak to whatever empathic doodads your enemies are running with, but I can say that the rest of the troops have arrived.” Uncle Mort nodded his head behind me.

Spun around to see a shimmering, and then Jeff, Christopher, White, Chuckie, Reader, Tim, and the flyboys stepped through the floater gate. Sure enough, the cavalry was here.

“No Field agents?”

Reader shook his head. “The only ones indoctrinated against mind control so far are assigned to protect your neighborhood.” He flashed the cover boy grin. “You’ll have to make do with us, girlfriend.”

“I’ll manage.”

Jeff looked around. “I’m not even going to ask. Why is she with you?” He pointed to Mahin.

“She’s on our side now. Bruno approved.”

Jeff studied her for a few long moments. “Okay. Who are we after?”

“Gladys, who may or may not be under the mind control, Ronaldo, Dier, Kozlow, who’s been shot but sadly only winged, and a kid who looks like he could be Serene’s younger brother.”

Reader grimaced. “It’s a big area to cover without an A-C.”

Christopher shot Patented Glare #1 at him. “I’ll manage. Alone. Without a problem.”

“The main containment area’s been blow up in certain areas,” I told him. “It’s unlikely they’re there, but possible. I’d check everywhere else first, though, and I’d suggest starting with all the vehicles, because they’re probably going to do their thing and then split.”

“Don’t go alone,” Jeff said.

“We’ll go with him,” Hughes said, indicating himself and Walker. “We’ve taken our Hyperspeed Dramamine and we’re good with the high supersonic speeds. We’ll be fine.”

“And that way Christopher won’t get to kick butt all by himself and will have to share the fun, and the glory, with me and Matt,” Walker added with a grin.

“Yeah, it’ll be a party,” Christopher said. But he grabbed Hughes and Walker and they all took off.

“Where are we headed?” Jeff asked me. “Since Christopher and his flyboys are off to check the entire base.”

“Just because he’s fast doesn’t mean they’ll find who we’re looking for. If our Gang of Four Plus One have done their bad deeds, they’ll be looking to escape. We, however, are going to the main computer center. Because the bad deeds Ronaldo and his gang are perpetrating are either going to turn out to be hacking into the military’s system, launching missiles, or both.”

“Both,” Uncle Mort said. “They’re not here for grins and giggles.”

“I can agree with that. So, if we’re right, and Ronaldo and his merry gang are going for or have already hit the computers, that means they either had a linkup to Chernobog or Chernobog is here. If she’s here, would she be on the base?”

“Unlikely,” Uncle Mort said. “However, she could easily be in Cuba. In fact, it would make a lot of sense. They’d certainly be happy to house an enemy of ours.”

“Where’s the base commander?” Jeff asked. “I know you’re not officially in charge here, Mort.”

“In the same building as the computer center. At least, hopefully.” Uncle Mort sounded grim. Couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t confident we weren’t going to find a lot of dead bodies littered all over the base. They’d already killed some Marines when they broke Dier and Ronaldo out of the air—why stop there?

I was ready to run to the computer center, but my feet didn’t choose to move. Because something was wrong with all of this. The problem was that I didn’t know what. My memory really wanted me to remember something, too.

My music changed to “Who’s That Creepin’” by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Apparently Algar was a fan of this band. Went with it. The song was about someone breaking into the singer’s house. My memory deigned to share that the bad guys had been dressed like Marines.

“I think we need to split into two teams. Most of you need to go with Uncle Mort. Mahin and I need to check out something else.”

Jeff snorted. “I’m going with you. Period.”

“No, you need to go with Uncle Mort. He has to have someone who can protect him. But,” I said quickly, before anyone else could complain, “we’ll take Richard, okay?”

Jeff nodded. “James and Tim are the ones in charge, so they’ll be going with Mort. Jerry, Joe, and Randy can go along for muscle. It’s up to Chuck and Uncle Richard if they’re going with them or us, but I meant it, baby, I’m coming with you.”

“I’m going with you as well,” Chuckie said. He was giving me a look that said he knew that I was up to something. He was as hard to fool as Jeff sometimes.

“I wouldn’t miss working with my partner for anything,” White added solemnly.

“Who goes with whom isn’t as important as us all actually going,” Uncle Mort said. “I’ve managed most of my career without an A-C to drag me along, Kitty. We’ll be fine. We’ve wasted enough time. Let’s move out. Now.”