The Yautja Invasion of New York City - 1989

New York was sweltering through the worst heat wave in years. The descending sun reflected off a million windows in orange fire, turning the asphalt and concrete oven hot. Heat shimmered over the streets like an enormous translucent ocean-but felt more like a swamp. As any cop will tell you, tempers fray when the temperature rises. The normal aggravations of life in the Big Apple are all a little more aggravating when it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit and ninety percent humidity, especially when the air-conditioning quits, or was never there in the first place. A disagreement that would end in a quick apology or a grumbled curse in February isn't so easy to stop in August, when the thick hot air is holding the traffic fumes and the stench of uncollected garbage close around your face. Little things that wouldn't mean much on a calm spring day get in there with the sweat that's sticking your shirt to your back, and itch and itch and itch and they just won't go away until you find a way to scratch. We both preferred preferred narcotics duty, but things got a little hot after shaef pitched the district chief of the medellin cartel off the roof of his apartment. I guess that struck a nerve. By the time we were transferred, we'd made the hit list of every sleazeball doper in town. The captain figured it was just a matter of time before one of the candy-lappers popped us. So he waved his magic wand, and presto - M-Squad. -- A long shift ahead, Rasche picked up donuts and coffee from Bruno and Bud's Bakery, he walked back to the vehicle as Shafer stared into the sky above. "Why do people do drugs when they could feel just as awful on a couple of cups of Bud's Coffee?" Rasche said. No response from his partner. "Hey- Earth to Schaefer. What the hell are you looking at?" "The Stars." "Yeah - you can actually SEE them through the smog. C'mon, you know this metaphyiscal stuff makes me nervous." Schafer pasued. "Something's...different about them. " Rasche nodded. He sat back in the seat, wondering what was happening on their old beat a little farther south on the Lower East Side. What were the druggies, the gangs, the dealers, the importers up to since Schaefer and Rasche's transfer? Had the Colombians managed to take any turf from the local outfits, the way the word on the street had said they wanted to? Had that slimy little cipher Lamb patched things up with his chief rival, Carr, to keep the Colombians out? The two had been fighting over market share for two years now, Lamb running his organization with calm, cool precision, Carr keeping up his side through sheer psychotic violence. Carr had always been a lunatic. Rasche wondered where Lamb and Carr and the rest were, at that very moment. And as he wondered, Carr and four of his lieutenants were marching down a fifth-floor corridor six blocks farther downtown, in a boarded-up tenement. A holstered .357 hung on Carr's hip; three of the others carried sawed-off pump-action shotguns, while the last cradled an M-16. The two men who met them at the door to the meeting room were armed as well-one with a .38-caliber semi-auto, the other with an Uzi. The weapons were all conspicuously visible, but not aimed at anyone. Yet. Carr stopped, his garishly painted face inches from the guard with the .38. "Tell that pussy Lamb I'm here for the peace talks," he said. Carr's eyes gleamed with madness; the guard's were cool and dark. The guard was a man who'd seen dealing drugs as a way to earn money and respect; Carr, so far as anyone could figure out, had gotten into the drug business, with its guns, money, and violence, purely for the guns and violence. For fun, in other words. The guard nodded to his partner without turning away from Carr for an instant. The man with the Uzi knocked twice on the door. "Carr's here," he called. A muffled voice answered, and a moment later the door swung open. The room beyond was large, but as ruinous as the rest of the building; shards of glass were scattered on the floor, mixed with fallen ceiling plaster. "Carr," the young man said coolly, "I'm glad you could make it." "Cut the shit, Lamb," Carr said, striding into the room. "We got nothin' to talk about. I'm just here because I figured you might want to surrender." "Wrong, Carr," Lamb replied. "We've got everything to talk about. We've got the whole damn city to talk about-not to mention our own survival. Just look at the situation. The cops are taking us down piece by piece, and what they miss, we finish for them with this stupid turf war. We're both pulling down serious money with our street operations, and throwing most of it away on this crap-there'd be enough for both of us if we stopped shooting at each other. There's enough that the Colombians would just love to step in and grab it all." "So?" Carr said. He looked bored. "So we can do better, Carr," Lamb replied. "We can have it all." "Yeah?" Carr grinned briefly. "You got any suggestions as to just how that might work, Lamb?" "Yeah, Carr, as it happens, I do," Lamb said. "I know we're never going to agree on boundaries, not and make it stick-you know that, too, and I'm impressed that you're here. It shows that maybe you're as sick of this fighting as I am, and you're looking for another way. And there is another way, Carr! " Carr just stared at his rival. Charlie allowed himself a grin. He knew that stare. "I'm talking about a merger," Lamb continued. "We put it all together, combine our organizations, you and I split the net even. Together we can set prices, consolidate the police payoffs-the savings on that alone will be enormous! And the Colombians-the only way the Colombians can get a toehold in New York is by pitting the gangs against each other. If we merge, we can keep them out until hell freezes over!" Carr shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Only one small problem," he said. Lamb stopped, hands spread questioningly. Carr smiled. "One problem, Lambikins," he said. "I don't give a shit about the Colombian muchachos, and I couldn't care less about maximizing profits or cutting overhead or any of that crap. Screw your merger. I'm in this for the kicks, and you and your suits are boring, if I had to work with you, I'd go batfuck in a week." "So, why don't we just cut this `peace' shit and get on with it? What say we have us a dainty little game of winner-take-all . . ." As Carr spoke, Lamb's hands were behind his back, and Crazy Charlie didn't think it was just so he could twiddle his thumbs, he'd have bet his eyeteeth that the sneaky son of a bitch had a piece back there, and besides, it sounded like Carr wanted to make this one big shooting gallery in here, which Charlie didn't think was that great an idea, if the truth be known, but Carr was the Man, and Charlie was just muscle. If there was going to be any shooting, Charlie intended to be on the sending end, not receiving; he started to bring his shotgun around, but as he did, he sensed something, he wasn't sure what. He turned and glimpsed three little spots of some kind of red light, like those laser beams in the checkout at the 7-Eleven, crawling across the window frame and onto his back. "What the . . . ," he began, interrupting Carr. And then white fire flashed and Crazy Charlie's chest exploded, spraying gore across the room as the blue-white blast tore through him. Everyone whirled at the sound of the blast; everyone saw Crazy Charlie's body twitch convulsively and fall to the floor, chest blown apart, bits of rib and heart and lung scattered like confetti in the plaster dust. "It's a setup!" Carr bellowed as he drew his Magnum; a streamer of Crazy Charlie's blood had drawn a dark red line across his boot. "It's not, Carr, I swear . . . !" Lamb began. "Someone's outside," Lamb's second in command shouted. "Cover me!" He kicked a half rotted board off the nearest window and leaned out, assault rifle ready in his hands. "I'll take care of it, Lamb," he said. "Whoever the shooter is . . ." That was as far as he got; the sentence ended in a gurgle and a grunt as the man was yanked out, tearing more boards away as he was dragged upward, legs kicking wildly, spine arching unnaturally. Half a dozen weapons were cocked and ready now, searching for targets as Carr grabbed Lamb's tie and shoved the .357 up under his rival's chin. "You son of a bitch!" Carr roared. "We're five floors up! Who the hell is out there?" "I don't know!" Lamb shrieked. "Not my men!'' Then realization dawned in Lamb's eyes. "Colombians!" he said. "Fuck the Colombians!" Carr replied. He shoved Lamb away and looked over his men, Hatcheck and Edgie and Bonamo, standing with their weapons ready, aimed at the windows, just waiting the word. Lamb's men were looking at him expectantly, and their weapons were aimed at the windows, too. "You and me'll finish up later, Lamb," Carr said. "Right now I'm for blowing the balls off whoever's out there, and I don't give a shit if it's the Colombians or the cops or fuckin' Santa Claus." He waved to his men. "Do it!'' The room exploded in gunfire, in an unbearable chaos of sound and flash, as Carr's and Lamb's men all opened fire on the room's outer wall. Splinters flew; planking shredded under the hail of gunfire, and plaster showered from the ancient walls. Window frames cracked, sagged, collapsed, lath and studding shattered, and the brick veneer beyond crumbled as the barrage continued, round after round of high-caliber ammo blasting at the aging structure. Carr's delighted yelling as he pumped rounds from his Magnum was almost inaudible over the noise. At last, as ammunition was exhausted, fire ceased; the echoes died away, booming down through the streets below, and the last fragments of wood, plaster, and masonry rattled to rest. When his ears stopped ringing and he could hear again, Carr exclaimed happily, "That was fun." He blinked drifting dust and gun smoke from his eyes and looked at the gaping hole where two of the three windows had been; they were gone completely, leaving a hole seven feet high and ten feet wide through which New York's famous skyline glowed in outline, black against the fading sunset. "Nice view," he remarked. "Jesus," Lamb said, surveying the destruction. There was no sign of the man who had been yanked out the window, he noticed; the body must have fallen to the street, along with the remains of whoever had done the yanking. Nothing could have lived through that firestorm. Edgie, Bonamo, and Hatcheck looked at the wreckage, at their leaders, and began reloading; Lamb's men did the same. Crazy Charlie's corpse lay ignored under a coating of debris, in a surprisingly small pool of blood. Each side had lost a man, but the leaders were still talking; nobody aimed anything. Lamb stepped forward, toward the hole, with the intention of looking down at the sidewalk to count the bodies; Carr's heavy hand on his shoulder held him back. "Now, about that treaty . . . ," Carr began, grinning.. Lamb didn't turn; he still stared at the hole, at the broken line of bricks where a window had been. "Oh, my God," he whispered. Carr glanced at the hole. Just like that sorry excuse for a man to be impressed by a blown-out wall. He and his men carried guns; hadn't they ever seen what they could do before? Then Carr saw where Lamb was staring. There was a hand holding on to the bricks-or was there? It seemed to flicker as Carr looked; at first he saw a big yellowish hand with long black nails, then a ghostly blue flicker like faint sparks jumping, and then the hand was gone, and there were just the bricks and a shimmering in the hot air. "What is that?" Lamb asked. The hand was back, and this time it stayed-a big, strong hand, bigger than Carr's own, with nails like claws, and Carr realized it wasn't human, it had to be a fake, one of those costume gloves you could buy in the discount stores. It was moving; someone was trying to climb up into the room. Somehow, someone had lived through the barrage. Whoever it was must have been on the floor below, out of the line of fire. Carr let go of Lamb's shoulder and stepped back, .357 at ready. Whoever it was in the monster gloves must've thought he was being cute with those things. "Son of a bitch thinks it's Halloween," Carr said as the fingers flexed and a shadowy shape rose into view. "Hey, bozo!" He pointed the heavy pistol. "Trick or treat! Let's have some candy!" Six blocks away Rasche perused tabloid magazines. "Did you see this? "Satanic cow cult found on long island - hamburger patties in the shape of pentagrams...sacramental a1 sauce." When Schaefer didn't respond, Rasche glanced at him and saw that Schaefer was sitting motionless, staring up out the car window. "What is it?" Rasche asked uneasily. "C'mon, Shaef. Talk to me. You haven't said a word since we left the precinct house." Schaefer had been acting weirder than usual lately, and while Rasche didn't believe in any of that psychic shit, he knew Schaef could pick up on stuff other people missed; his weird moods usually meant trouble. Worried, Rasche leaned over and looked out past Schaefer's shoulder. All he saw was empty sky, darkening to indigo. The first few stars were appearing. "Something's wrong," Schaefer said. "The city doesn't feel right." Rasche snorted and straightened up. "That's like saying battery acid doesn't taste right, Schaef. This is New York, remember? " They'd been together for six years, but every so often Rasche still forgot just how weird Schaefer could be when he started getting mystical. Before Rasche could reply, the car radio crackled. "All units in vicinity respond-shots fired, corner of Beekman and Water." The streets were running the wrong way, and traffic and the junk along the curbs were thicker than usual but not bad enough to make Rasche use the lights or siren, so by the time they arrived on the scene, four other cars were already there, uniforms cordoning off the area around an abandoned five-story walk-up tenement. One of them jumped in front of Schaefer as he climbed out of the car. "Sorry, Detective Schaefer," the officer said, "I've got orders to keep the building clear of all personnel until Captain McComb arrives. He wants to handle this one himself." Schaefer nodded once, slowly, but Rasche didn't like the set of his partner's shoulders. He knew that Schaef wanted to get in there, get after whoever it was had put out that roar like thunder. Well, he'd have to wait. Rasche looked up at the building, just a casual glance, but he found himself staring. A chunk of brick wall on the fifth floor had been blown out, littering the sidewalk with debris; it looked as if a bomb had gone off, not like anything done with firearms. And he could hear distant thumping somewhere in that direction-not guns, something else. "What the hell," he said. "Shots fired? Not an explosion?" One of the uniforms heard him. "Yessir," he said. "A lot of shots." "That wasn't a bomb did that?" Rasche asked, pointing at the hole. The patrolman glanced up. "We don't know," he admitted, "but we heard shots. Lots of 'em. Like a gang war or something." He shrugged. "So far we've got 'em tagged for reckless endangerment, illegal discharge of a firearm within city limits, God only knows how many violations of the Sullivan Act, disorderly conduct . . . Hell, we can thrown in exceeding noise restrictions . . . ." Just then a sharp crack sounded as boards burst out from one of the fifth-floor windows, followed by a gurgling scream as the man whose body had burst them out sailed across the street and plummeted to a hard landing atop a police cruiser, shattering light bar and windshield spectacularly. Shocked into silence, the cops all stared for a moment as shards of glass and plastic tinkled to the pavement and across the cruiser's hood, and as broken boards thumped and clattered to the neighboring sidewalk. Then the silence broke as men hurried to check on the condition of the fallen figure, and someone called in for an ambulance-no, several ambulances. The patrolman who had been talking to Rasche swallowed and said, "Guess we can add destruction of police property to the list." Somewhere above, gunfire rattled, and a shrill scream was suddenly cut off short. Calmly, Schaefer drew his 9mm service pistol and chambered a round. "Screw McComb," he said. The officer who had met him at the car door stepped back. "I guess we can make an exception on that no-admittance thing, Detective Schaefer, if you feel it's warranted-I mean, you're here, the captain isn't." He was still babbling when Schaefer pushed past and trotted into the building, pistol ready Rasche followed, grumbling and tugging his own piece from its holster. The door was open, the ground-floor hallway empty and dim; Rasche followed Schaefer to the stairwell, pistol gripped firmly in both hands. Up above- he could hear hoarse shouts and loud thumps. "Sounds like a ninja movie up there," he said quietly. "Who the hell do you think's up there, Schaef? Isn't this Lamb's turf?" Schaefer grunted affirmatively. "Gang-bang central," he said. "Lamb uses it when he takes his goddamn meetings." He took a look up into the darkness, then headed up the stairs, weapon ready. The. middle floors were dark and silent; Rasche took a quick glance down each hallway, pistol aimed at nothing, and saw only garbage and emptiness. Schaefer didn't bother even to look; he was headed where the action was. On the fifth floor dim light spilled into the hallway from an open door; the thumping had stopped, but someone was screaming steadily, a scream of pain and terror like nothing Rasche had ever heard before. Gun smoke was drifting in the air, and the whole place reeked of it. "Jesus, you hear that?" Rasche asked, crouching on the top step. "Yeah," Schaefer said, standing in the hallway. "They're really starting to piss me off in there." The scream ended in a choking gurgle. "Cover me," Schaefer said as he approached the door, his back to the wall. "I'm going in." Rasche didn't bother to reply; Schaefer didn't give him time, anyway. Almost as soon as he'd finished speaking, Schaefer was around the door frame, charging into the room with his gun ready. Rasche moved cautiously up the corridor, back to the wall, trying to ignore the fact that there were a dozen goddamn bullet holes in that wall, and his back was sliding right across them, begging for another few high-velocity rounds to come punching out. He heard Schaefer's footsteps go in, then stop somewhere in the middle of the room. And then he didn't hear anything but a thick dripping sound, like steak sauce going on. "Oh, Christ," Rasche muttered to himself, very quietly. He imagined that he could feel that wrongness now, the same thing Schaefer had mentioned back at Bud's Deli. Something wasn't right. The all-out firefight, the blown-out wall, now that heavy silence, and something intangible and indefinably wrong, in a way the city had never been wrong before, in all the years Rasche had lived there. Just as Schaefer had said. "Schaef?" Rasche called quietly. Schaefer didn't answer; Rasche heard his boot scuff on grit, but, Schaefer didn't say anything at all. Rasche stepped forward, pistol ready, and swung around the door frame. Then he stopped, frozen, staring into the room beyond. The two cops stared silently for a long moment. Finally Schaefer spoke. "Gang war, my ass," he said. The bodies were swaying gently in the breeze from the blown-out wall, and the blood that dripped from their dangling red fingertips drew loops and whorls on the floor. There were eight of them in all, hanging by their feet; something had smashed away most of the ceiling and tied the corpses to a joist. Even in the dim light of the city outside they were all bright red, from heel to head. It was obvious what had been done to them, what the monsters in the night had done, but Rasche had to say it anyway. "They've been skinned," he said. Schaefer nodded. "Half of them are Lamb's men," he said, "and some are Carr's. An equal-opportunity massacre, that's what we have here." Rasche stared at him which was better than staring at the bodies, anyway. "Jesus Christ,Schaef," he said, "how can you tell? They don't have their goddamn faces anymore!" "They don't have the skin, the faces are still there," Schaefer said. "Jesus," he said again. "Schaef, who . . . It would've taken an army to . .." He didn't finish the sentence, because there was a sound, and in Rasche's condition just at that moment any sound he couldn't account for had to be monsters, and you didn't talk to monsters. He crouched and whirled, gun ready. A fallen section of ceiling was moving, a broad chunk of lath and plaster that had been torn away and flung aside to uncover the beam that held the hanging bodies. And when a bloody figure rose slowly out of the fallen plaster, it was all Rasche could do not to fire, his finger was squeezing down on the trigger but he stopped it, it was like stopping a runaway truck, it was the hardest struggle of his life to keep from squeezing that last fraction of an inch, but the figure was a human being, it wasn't the monsters, and he was a good cop, a good cop didn't shoot the last survivor of a massacre, not without knowing who it was and what was happening, not unless it was the only way. This was a man, a man with long red hair tied back in a thick braid, but he was so covered with blood and bits of debris stuck to the blood that Rasche couldn't make out his face at first. He rose to his knees, dazed, staring wildly about, and then his eyes focused on Schaefer. Schaefer's 9mm was hanging at his side unthreateningly, and Rasche thought to himself that maybe he should lower his own weapon, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. White teeth gleamed through the bloody ruin of the man's face; he coughed, then said, in a voice thick with dust and emotion, "Well, if it isn't my old pal, Detective Schaefer." He groped for something in the wreckage. "You missed one, Schaefer. The wrong one." "Carr?" Rasche asked, wonderingly Carr was looking around at the dangling bodies and the debris, but all the time one hand was still searching for something. "Hey, Schaefer," he said conversationally, "I've seen you cops pull a lot of crude shit, but nothing like this. Man, I'm impressed." "You're crazy, Carr, you're fuckin' insane," Rasche said, unspeakably relieved to have a human opponent to shout at. "Cops didn't do this, cops couldn't begin to do this . . . ." "You didn't see them?" Schaefer asked, his flat, calm voice cutting Rasche off short. "You didn't see who it was that did this?" "All I saw was some geek in a trick-or-treat mask climbing in through the window, then someone brought the ceiling down on me," Carr said. "Maybe it was cops and you're covering, maybe it wasn't, I don't know-and you know, Schaefer, I don't give a shit. It doesn't really matter. 'Cause I may be crazy, I may be fuckin' crazy as a bedbug, but while I'm crazy, you're just plain dead!" And his hand finally came up with what he'd been looking for, and the sawed-off pump-action shotgun came up fast, Carr pushed himself to his feet and brought the gun to his hip and fired all in one motion. Rasche had been on a hair-trigger since he'd first set foot in the building, he didn't need to have the ceiling fall in on him; he dived the instant he saw Carr's hand come up full, he was rolling for cover in the shattered plaster before Carr's finger could tighten on the trigger. The roar of the shotgun seemed to shake the weakened building right down to its foundation, and Rasche's ears rang even before the second blast put buckshot through a space where Schaefer had been standing a fraction of a second before. He couldn't hear Carr's footsteps as the gang leader started running, couldn't hear if Carr had said anything else, couldn't hear him curse when he ratcheted the pump and got an empty click and realized the goddamn shotgun had only had two shells left in it. Then Rasche's hearing began to come back, and he did hear Schaefer bellow, " Freeze, you son of a ---" Schaefer's 9mm barked three times, and by that time Rasche had finally gotten himself turned over and headed back to being upright, Carr was yelling when he went through the window at the far end of the corridor, but he wasn't hit, it was pure adrenaline. ". . . bitch!" Schaefer said, stepping out onto the fire escape. "Damn! We lost him!" Rasche said as Carr vanished around a corner. "Not lost," Schaefer corrected him, "just misplaced. There's nowhere he can hide that we can't get him eventually." He leaned over the rail of the fire escape and called after Carr, "To be continued, punk! " He stood like that for a moment, then started to turn back to the building . . . . . . and froze. "What?" Rasche said, looking down, expecting to see Carr coming back. "Shut up," Schaefer said. "Listen." Rasche shut up and listened. "I don't hear anything," he said-which wasn't literally true, because of course he heard the wind and the distant traffic and the voices of the cops surrounding the building and all the other noises of New York by night, but he didn't hear anything that could account for Schaefer's behavior. "Something's out there," Schaefer said. "Like what?" Rasche asked: "I don't know," Schaefer said. Rasche looked around at the empty alleyways, the waiting cops, the broken glass and rotten wood of the shattered window, the dim corridor that led back to that bloody scene straight out of hell. He didn't see anything wrong-except the obvious, of course, the broken window and the room where the monsters had done whatever it was they did. But he didn't see anything that might begin to explain it, and he didn't hear anything that could mean anything, while at the same time he could almost feel whatever Schaefer was talking about. Something was out there. Something wrong. "This is starting to scare me, man," he said. "I've got a feeling that's the whole idea," Schaefer answered. And then there were footsteps pounding up the stairs, but neither Schaefer nor Rasche bothered to raise a weapon, because that was the familiar sound of police boots; no one else stomped quite like a squad of cops. "Seal it up!" a voice shouted, a voice that Schaefer and Rasche both recognized. They looked at each other with expressions of resignation. "All of it!" the voice continued. "Seal everything! Nobody gets in here!" "McComb," Rasche said. He grimaced. "I mean, Captain McComb." Then a stream of blue-clad men burst out of the stairwell, rifles at ready, fanning out through the building. One tugged at another's sleeve and pointed, and Captain McComb turned to see Schaefer and Rasche standing in the end of the corridor, in front of the demolished window. For a moment McComb just glared; then he stepped forward and growled, "You stepped in it this time, Schaefer-orders were to secure the building from outside, not cowboy around like some damn TV supercop! I heard shots-if you fired that piece of yours, you better be able to write up a convincing report of why. I want it on my desk by midnight, and I want it in triplicate." Schaefer pointed down the corridor. "Have you seen those bodies, McComb?" "So there's some dead punks? You think that justifies disobeying my orders?" "It's not just some dead punks, McComb. This was a slaughter. It's like a butcher shop in there." "So the gangs play rough-" Schaefer cut McComb off. "Don't give me any crap about a gang war," he said. "You go take a look in there and tell me what kind of weapon these gangs have that'll do that kind of damage. You look at those holes and tell me that was just a riot gun or an Uzi did that." McComb stared at Schaefer for a moment, then shook his head and said through gritted teeth, "You don't have a clue, do you? I don't give a shit what's in there-that's not the point. The point is, I told you to keep the fuck out, and you didn't. This isn't your case, and don't you worry your pretty blond head about it, Schaefer. You just stay the hell out of this one, you got it?" Schaefer didn't answer; Rasche patted him on the back and said, "Come on, Schaef." Together, the two detectives pushed past McComb and started down the stairs. When they were out of earshot, Rasche muttered, "If they sold stupidity on the stock exchange, we could bust McComb for illegally cornering the market." Schaefer grunted. Rasche looked at him; the grunt seemed to mean something. "You think he's hiding something, maybe?" Rasche asked. "You think he got paid off by someone to let this happen?" Schaefer shook his head. "Not his style," he said. "Someone might be hiding something, but not that." As they stepped out of the building, Schaefer added, "And whatever it is, I don't think it's gonna stay hid." ------------------- Detective Schaefer smelt a cover-up, he confronted McComb, things got a little heated and he ended up doing a little redecorating to the captain's office, though at the time he'd have had no way of knowing exactly how high up this went. After the inital incident, General Philips began keeping a close eye on the detective. Years earlier, he had sent his brother, Major Alan "Dutch" Schaefer, on a rescue mission that came to grief in the jungles of Central America. After which, Dutch had gone missing, and General Phillips led operations to monitor similar occurances. This brought him to New York, in the sweltering summer of 1989. It brought him to detective Schaefer, who vowed to find out the truth about his brother's disappearance. Phillips had enough with the ghosting. He directly confronted the detective. He plead with him to let it go. But Schaefer couldn't let it go. Not after the initial coverup. Not after bodies started showing up in the subways, and not after returning to the scene of the crime, where he came face to face with the perpetrator of these horrific murders. An alien hunter - massive, who towered over SChaefer and proved much stronger despite his own physical prowess. The hunter left him bloodied and beaten, tossed from the rooftops like a ragdoll, swiftly and assuredly - fucked up. And tagged, like big game, with a tracking device. The detective wouldn't be waiting around to see when the hunter would come calling to claim its prize. He went back to where it all began, back to the jungle, where Dutch was last seen. With the aide of a guide, He witnessed the aftermath of where the predator had self-destructed, leaving a lifeless crater behind. He knew he was being hunted. But this time he was prepared. He ventured alone, deeper into the jungle - when the enemy struck. ------ Schaefer rolled and grabbed up a fallen branch as thick as his own leg. He came up swinging and caught the creature solidly on the side of the head with the limb, twisting the mask back out of line. The blow would have killed a man, but this bastard didn't even stagger. It just flung up an arm to ward Schaefer off and turned away, using its other hand to straighten the crooked helmet. It was standing on the edge of the cliff, facing away from him, partially blinded and thoroughly distracted, its camouflage still not working, and Schaefer knew this had to be the best shot he would ever have, maybe his last shot; he lowered his makeshift club into a spear and charged. The wood splintered with the impact, and Schaefer was knocked backward; the creature tottered, swayed, and then fell over the brink. Schaefer's hearing was beginning to return, finally-enough that he heard the sound of the impact. At first he thought his ears were still fucked up somehow, because it wasn't a thud, like a body hitting the ground; it was a crunch. He waited, dazed, for the creature to climb back up. When it didn't, he crept forward and peered over the edge, half expecting a blue-white fireball to take his head off at any minute, or a claw to grab his face. Nothing hit him; nothing moved. The creature was lying there motionless, sprawled across the trunk of a fallen tree, with a big smear of that yellow-green goop across its chest, glowing in the darkness and lighting the scene. And thrusting up from the center of that luminous smear was a pointed, broken-off tree branch that had punched right through the bastard. That didn't necessarily mean the fight was over, Schaefer tried to tell himself. Maybe that wasn't where the creature's heart was. Maybe it was not just bigger and stronger than anything human, but tougher in ways Schaefer couldn't even imagine. Maybe there were still some surprises in it. But maybe not. To Schaefer, the thing looked deader than hell. The guide was sitting on a tree root beside the fire, waiting. He wasn't really sure just what he was waiting for, dawn, perhaps? Not for Schaefer, certainly; Schaefer wouldn't be coming back. He supposed he might hear a scream. He hoped not, though. This whole assignment was bad enough without that. Leaves rustled, and he looked up warily. Something was approaching, something that walked upright, a dark shadow against the moonlight; he froze. It stepped out into the circle of firelight, and he recognized Schaefer. Detective Schaefer, alive and with all his limbs intact. The guide's jaw dropped. "Shit, you're alive!" he said. He saw the gun Schaefer was carrying, and that was another shock-Schaefer was alive, and armed. "But what about the . .. I mean . . ." The only possible explanation sank in. "Oh, my God!" he said. He sprang up as Schaefer dropped the gun and settled heavily against a tree. "Ummm . . . ," Schaefer said wearily, "is it my imagination, or is your English suddenly improving?" "Laugh it up, Schaefer," the guide said as he threw open the leather flap on one of his saddlebags and pulled up a telescoping antenna. "Christ, I don't believe this." Schaefer sprawled comfortably and watched, amused, as the guide worked controls. A crackle of white noise came from the saddlebag, and then an electronic voice said, "This is Capa-Alpha, over." The guide picked up a microphone and said, "Capa-Alpha, this is Decoy-Niner. Get me the CO-now." He waited, staring at Schaefer. "You really did it, didn't you?" he asked quietly. "You killed it." Schaefer smiled and nodded. Somewhere off the coast a radioman told General Philips, "Sir, I'm getting a signal from Decoy-Niner-says he wants to talk to you." Philips nodded unhappily; he'd been expecting this call, but not looking forward to it. He crossed the room and picked up the mike. "This is General Philips, Niner," he said wearily. "Prepare whatever's left of Schaefer's body for transport back to the States, and . . ." The speaker crackled, interrupting him. "Sir, you don't understand," Decoy-Niner's voice said. "Schaefer's alive. He killed it. Repeat, Schaefer's still alive!" In the jungle, in the little ring of firelight, Schaefer smiled and threw his guide a sardonic salute. "Oh, my God," Philips whispered. He went pale. Another one of the creatures had died. Last time that had meant a miniature nuke took out a chunk of jungle, but this time it wasn't just one lone hunter-the things were all over New York. Anything might happen now. Stand by, Niner," he said. He turned. "Perkins," he shouted, "radio Washington, scramble everything-we're going on full combat alert. And get me the President-the shit's about to hit the fan!" Rasche sat in his office, ignoring the stack of unfinished reports and the case files on three dozen unsolved murders, and stared at the screen of his -battered old portable TV. The TV was supposed to be there in case there was some breaking news story that concerned police, but mostly it was there so Rasche could watch WWOR when he didn't feel like pushing any more papers and there wasn't anything for him to do on the streets and he didn't want to think any more about the killings he was supposed to be investigating-or, in the present case, killings he was supposed to be ignoring. My shift had over over for hous, but I couldn't bring myself to leave the office...part of me wanted to catch a 5:3- re-rerun of "The New Monkees" - and par of me was hoping I might heard some word from my partner, Shaef. Cops see a lot of death, but this case was different. Something nasty was slicing its way through new york like a sloppy benihana chef. Meanwhile schaefer was playing search and destroy in colombia, tracking a lead that involved his brother dutch and an army general named philips. He left me with a stack of unfinished reports...thirty or forty unsolved murders...and the killer's hard hat. If that weren't enough, TV reception had turned to crap. Scientists were blaming unspots amd the proliferation of radioactive mood rings. I'm not sure why I tried on the helmet...maybe I was curious.... Or, maybe in some weird way, I already knew... This wasn't just a mask, it was a gadget of some kind. But what did it do? He held it up to the light from the window and peered through those eyeholes. Then he blinked. He lowered the mask. He saw the street, the sky awash in the orange fire of a spectacular sunset, the windows gleaming golden, the towers above the rooftops across the street shadow-black to the east, midday bright to the south and west. And that was all he saw. The mask changed what he saw, somehow-like those night-vision scopes the military used. Whatever it was, he was still seeing what was really there, it wasn't some sort of computer simulation. He held the mask up to his face-he couldn't put it on, his head wasn't big enough, wasn't the right shape, but he could hold it so that he saw out the eyeholes. And he saw the ships, cruising over the city-gigantic and alien, huge red-gold shapes against a deep-red sky. Rasche wasn't stupid. He could recognize the incredible when his nose was rubbed in it. Spaceships. Invisible spaceships that he could see only through this alien helmet.. Schaefer had been right all along. The killer wasn't human at all. No, not "the killer." "Killers," plural. He could see three ships just from this one window. And he could guess now why TV reception sucked. "Sunspots, my ass," he said softly. When dawn broke, the guide wanted to see the thing, to be sure it was really dead. He insisted on leading the mules to the edge of the cliff, and then climbing down for a good close look at the monster's remains. "My God," the guide said, staring at it. "You really killed it." Schaefer glanced at him. "You say that as if it were a bad thing," he remarked. "You weren't supposed to kill it," the guide told him. "You weren't . . . We didn't think you could kill it. You and your damned brother. Do you have any idea what this means?" "Yeah, it's Miller time." "Oh, laugh it up," the guide said bitterly. He pulled something from his pocket, a gadget of some kind that Schaefer didn't recognize, and set it down by the dead creature. "Jesus, Schaefer, this isn't professional wrestling, these guys play for keeps!" "So do I," Schaefer said, his smile fading. "You think I'm going to apologize for not dying? Get real." He turned away, disgusted, and started climbing back up the cliff, using the vines as ropes. "This whole business was a setup from the minute I left New York, wasn't it?" Schaefer asked as he hauled himself up. "The reports I got that took me to Riosucio, you showing up, the way you led me right here-it was all an act. `Native guide;' huh? That's cute-what are you really? CIA? DEA?" "Neither," the guide said, gasping slightly with the effort of climbing as he followed Schaefer up the cliff. "You never heard of us." "Don't be too sure of that." "Oh, we're sure," the guide said. "I don't suppose it matters anymore, so I might as well tell you, we're new, formed after your brother met one of those things. He killed his, too-but he lost his entire squad doing it, and it died more slowly, slowly enough to use a self-destruct that made that crater you saw." "Lost his squad?" Schaefer turned as he reached the top and looked back down at the guide. Here was confirmation of what he had suspected. "That thing killed all of them? Blain, Hawkins, all of them?" "All of them," the guide confirmed: "And Dutch? Did it get him?" Schaefer knew Dutch had survived the first encounter-had killed it, the guide said. But that meant that there was more than one, that the one Schaefer had just killed was not the one that took out Dutch's men. "Dutch got out alive," the guide said, "but that's all I can tell you." That wasn't necessarily so, Schaefer realized; it just meant that the guide's people didn't know whether the second one had got Dutch. Either that, or they knew but weren't saying. "And it's all secret as hell, right?" he asked. "Yeah," the guide agreed. "So when I started poking around, you people decided to feed me to that bastard? Give it what it wanted?" "Dammit, Schaefer," the guide said as he stepped up onto solid ground, "you're the one who decided to come down here and play tourist! We didn't set that up! You practically volunteered for a suicide mission." "Yeah?" Schaefer sneered. "And what about Dutch? Was he another of your volunteers?" "We didn't know back then!" "But you do now, so you sent me to play pattycake with that thing." "Look, we don't like this any more than you do," the guide said, "but it's here, it's real, and we're forced to deal with it." "And just what is it you think you're dealing with?" Schaefer demanded. He paused and looked back .down at the dead thing as the guide pushed past him. "We don't know," the guide said. "We can only guess. But what we guess is that these things come to Earth every so often to have a good time, play the great white hunter, collect a few trophies-and then they go home again and leave us alone for years at a stretch." "From outer space, you mean? Like in the movies?" "Something like that," the guide said. He reached the waiting mules and pulled out Schaefer's gun. Schaefer turned away from the cliff at the sound of the safety being released and found the guide pointing the weapon at him. "Come on," the guide said. "The general wants us out of here, away from that thing-he doesn't want you fucking up anything else. We've got six hours to make the rendezvous down at the end of the valley. You just keep your hands off the packs, don't touch any weapons, and we'll be fine. Maybe we can still salvage something out of this mess." Schaefer stared at him silently for a moment. "You know, chief," he said at last, "you're really starting to get on my nerves. That thing's dead. It's over." "Jesus, you don't have a clue, do you?" the guide said, amazed. "You think that was the only one? Come on, move!" He waved the gun. Schaefer sighed and began marching. "You really think those things are going to fucking invade, just because I killed one of them in self-defense?" Schaefer asked as he pushed aside yet another overhanging giant fern. The two men had been slogging through the jungle for hours, arguing off and on; Schaefer's suggestion that they at least try riding the mules had been vetoed as making an escape attempt too easy. They had heard a copter overhead at one point but had been unable to see it through the canopy, and the sound had faded away again. Schaefer had looked at the guide, who had just shrugged and kept walking; apparently that hadn't been their intended pickup. "We don't know what they're going to do," the guide said, "but we don't expect them to just ignore it." "Or maybe they figured their buddy knew the risks," Schaefer suggested. "Oh, right. Did you really think you could waltz down here and end it as easy as that?" Schaefer didn't reply, and the guide went on, "You're not in Kansas anymore, pal. You can't roust these guys like your standard-issue gang-bangers or drug push-" The sound of a rifle shot interrupted the guide in mid-word, and Schaefer turned, startled, to see blood spurt from the man's shoulder. "Pushers," the guide said, swaying unsteadily, trying to bring the auto shotgun around, trying to locate the source of the shot. Schaefer didn't wait for any more surprises; he dived for cover, throwing himself as far from the guide and the mules as he could. As he hit the ground, the jungle erupted in gunfire. The guide tottered and went down. From the shot I counted at least four shooters, all within thirty yards of the trail. At least they were packing guns and none of that high intensity alien crap. Small Consolation. Mac 10's, and chinese AK's - hardware of choice for Colombia's coke lords. But what they hell were they doing out here? Then one of them mentioned Eschevera-- and that made it personal. One of the gunmen lifted the guide's head and looked at the bloody, mud-smeared face. "Este marrano esta muerto," he said. Another, just behind the first, gave a sharp bark of disgusted laughter. "Eschevera to quiere vivo." "Yo voy a mirar aqui," someone said, reminding Schaefer where he was. The gunmen were looking around now; whether they were after Schaefer specifically or not, they apparently knew the guide hadn't been alone. Not that it was hard to figure that out, when there were two mules, and they both had saddles. They weren't being too bright about the search, though; they'd spread out and weren't watching each other. Schaefer moved slowly into a crouch, ready to spring. One of the men was approaching. Then he was right on top of Schaefer, and the detective burst up through the ferns, planting a solid right on the man's jaw; the Colombian went down, and Schaefer snatched up his MAC-10. By the time he'd untangled the shoulder strap from the dazed man's shoulder, though, the other three had turned and opened fire; Schaefer dived for cover again. Eschevera acted like one of those suave, miami vice types, but underneath he was just another two bit drug peddling prick. We met in the rooftop garden of an expensive manhattan brownstone. Eschevera spilled a million dollars across the bark dust and said it was ours if we'd just back off. A million dollars. I thought it over for a couple of seconds -- then I threw the son of a bitch off the roof. Only three stories. He survived. Eschevera declined to press charges, but these Medillin types are known to carry a grudge. I figured I'd bump into him again, sooner or later. I was right. If they'd had the firepower, they could have kept up a steady fire and pinned him down while one circled around behind-but they didn't. There were just the three weapons, and they'd probably shot off half their ammo taking down the guide and the mule. The one mule, the guide's mule. The other one, the one Schaefer had ridden originally, was still alive and unhurt, and Schaefer figured his best chance-his only chance, really-was to get to the animal, and to the rest of the arsenal he'd brought up from Riosucio. The Colombians hadn't touched it yet. With that stuff he could lay down enough fire to maybe take out one or two of his enemies, despite the thick jungle, and if that didn't scare the others off, it would at least keep them down long enough that he could mount up and make a run for it. He wished the damn mule would hold still, preferably behind some sort of cover; it was wandering slowly through the jungle, staying well clear of the larger trees. "Down, dammit!" Holding the bridle with one hand, he reached for the gun box with the other, turning the mule to keep it between himself and the Colombians as he pulled out his reserve shotgun. Hanson had been generous, and Schaefer appreciated it. "All right," he said, "my turn." He lifted the weapon-and froze as hard steel touched the back of his head. "Drop it, marrano," a cold voice said in his ear, "or I fear that Senor Eschevera will be deprived of his evening's entertainment." Maybe they hadn't been able to pin him down, but one of them had circled around anyway, and Schaefer hadn't heard or seen a thing. His grip tightened on the shotgun as he considered his next move-and then a gun butt hit his head with a sharp crack, and Schaefer, no longer considering anything, went down. -------------------------- It seemed to Rasche that he'd been staring out the window for over an hour. Maybe he had been, and he still couldn't believe it. Those ships cruising over New York, visible only through the helmet-mask . . At last he put it down and went for a cup of the sludge that served as coffee. "Man, you look awful," a voice said as Rasche tried to pour without spilling; his hands were shaking enough to make it very tricky. He looked up. "I've seen mimes with a better tan, Rasche," the other detective said. "You all right?" "Beat it, Richie," Rasche answered, picking up his cup-it wasn't full, but it was good enough. Richie shrugged. "Just trying to help," he said. "You can't," Rasche answered, shuffling back toward his office, walking as if he were afraid the floor might tip and throw him off at any moment, holding the coffee as if it might explode at any second. I must have stared out the window for over an hour. I still couldn't believe it. This stuff happens in "My Favorite Martian," not the real world. I felt like I was losing my mind. Then I went down to see MaComb - and I was sure of it. McComb didn't answer the first knock, but Rasche knew he was still in there, that he hadn't gone home. He kept pounding, and eventually the captain opened the door. "What the hell is it?" he demanded. "Captain, I need to talk to you," Rasche said. "Now Inside." McComb stared at him for a moment, then said, "All right, you have one minute. And lose the coffee-I don't want any oil spills on the new carpet. Rasche tossed the cup in a nearby trash can-he didn't really want to drink it, anyway. He stepped into McComb's office with the alien mask held out before him in both hands, like an offering. "If you've come to apologize on behalf of your partner, Rasche, you can save it," McComb said as he closed the door. "You're days too late. I filed for disciplinary action against Schaefer and requested dismissal just as soon as he walked out of here, and where the hell did he go, anyway? Will you look what he did to my phone?" He gestured, but Rasche didn't bother to look. "Don't touch it, it's evidence against that son of a bitch . . . ." "I know we've had our problems, Captain," Rasche said, "but this is big." McComb stopped talking and glared at Rasche. "There . . . there's something out there," Rasche stammered. He couldn't quite bring himself to say right out that there were spaceships-if he thought he might be going crazy, what would McComb think? McComb already suspected Rasche was nuts, just for putting up with Schaefer. He held out the mask. "Schaefer snagged this from the thing he met at Lamb's Apartment," he said. "We . . . " "Hold it!" McComb held up a hand. "Are you saying you've been withholding evidence?" Rasche stared at McComb for a moment, then lost it. He was talking about entire worlds, and McComb was worrying about legal details? He slammed the mask down on the captain's desk. "Would you listen to me?" he shouted. "There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of those things out there, just waiting-all you have to do is look-" "I'm not looking at anything," McComb bellowed, "except your ass in a holding cell pending a full departmental review! Goddammit, you're going down for this, Rasche, same as Schaefer did! Trespassing on a sealed crime scene, withholding evidence, lying in your signed statement . . ." "Fine!" Rasche shouted back, snatching up the helmet. "Fine, I'll have my little chat with the chief!" He stormed out of McComb's office. "Hey, Rasche, you're not going anywhere." McComb called after him. Rasche paid no attention-except to change his intended route, taking the back stairs to avoid any attempts to interfere. He was going to take this to the chief, to the mayor, to anyone who would listen. It was obvious that McComb had all the good sense of a possum crossing an interstate-New York was under siege by alien monsters, and McComb was worrying about stains on his carpet. "Jesus, Schaefer," Rasche muttered to himself as he trudged down the concrete steps, "where are you when I need you? Central fucking America, for Christ's sake!" MCcomb had all the good sense of an opossum crossing a four lane interstate. New York was under siege and he was worried about his carpet. My only chance was taking my case to mccombs superiors... I guess Philips and his men knew that. The three men in suits and sunglasses who had burst in at the foot of the stairs had the jump on him; Rasche didn't reach for his pistol. "Federal agents," the one with the 9mm automatic announced. "That's far enough, Detective Rasche." He flipped open a credentials case in his left hand, but Rasche was too far away to read the badge. One of the others lifted a walkie-talkie and told it, "It's okay-we've got him." The third man had a pistol and an outstretched empty hand; the first waved at him and said, "Hand my friend the helmet, Rasche." Rasche grimaced and hauled back to fling the helmet. Three pistols pointed at his gut. "Easy, easy," the first fed told him. "Just hand it over easy, you won't be needing it." Reluctantly, Rasche lowered his hand and handed the mask over. "Good," the fed said. "Come on, then; you're coming with us." "Where?" Rasche asked. "Can I call my wife first, or at least tell someone upstairs?" The agent shook his head. "Uh-uh, Rasche. No calls, no one sees you leave. Car's waiting." Rasche frowned. "That's not standard procedure. That's more like kidnapping." He also realized that even if McComb had phoned the instant the door closed behind him, these bozos couldn't have gotten here and set up so fast. They must have been waiting for him all along. "Never mind what you call it," the fed said. "Just come on." One of the others took Rasche by the arm and gave him a shove in the right direction. Rasche came, but as they left the building, he protested, "You have to be shitting me-you can't kidnap a police officer from the middle of Police Plaza!" "The hell we can't," one of the feds muttered. "You're not regular feds," Rasche said: "Even those pricks from the FBI wouldn't pull this. Who the hell are you?" "You don't need to know," the spokesman told him as he shoved Rasche roughly into the backseat of an unmarked black sedan. Eschevera's man knew his business. I must have been out for hours. Not long enough. It felt like a coat hanger wire around my wrists. Eschevera wasn't taking any chances. A pan of dirty water flung in his face brought Schaefer around; as the cool wetness shocked him back to consciousness, he heard a voice saying, "Time to wake up, puppy dog." Schaefer blinked and looked around. Whatever it was holding his hands, it was strong and tied tight; he couldn't even come close to snapping it, couldn't slip it off. The chair stood near the center of a fair-sized, dimly lit room, one with plank walls and a plank floor; it wasn't anyplace Schaefer recognized. Schaefer felt the metal biting painfully into his flesh, felt blood start to ooze from beneath. He growled in anger and pain. "Perhaps the wire is too tight?" the man said in good English. "Not to worry-we're only just beginning. In a little time you won't even notice so minor a pain." He turned, leaned out the room's one and only door, and signaled to someone Schaefer couldn't see. A moment later a taller man in military fatigues stepped into the room; he nodded a greeting to the man who had splashed Schaefer. Schaefer knew the face; he'd seen it before, back in the Big Apple. Seen it, hell, he'd been tempted to punch it in. This was Eschevera. Schaefer took a certain pleasure in seeing that Eschevera limped as he walked. "Detective Schaefer," Eschevera said. "I'm hurt you came all this long way to Central America, you passed so close to my home, and you didn't stop by to pay your dear old friend a visit?" Schaefer grunted. "Perhaps you sought me but were misled?" Eschevera suggested. "You made a wrong turn somewhere, someone gave you faulty directions? After all, what else could have brought you to this corner of the world but a desire to renew our acquaintance?" "Somehow I managed to avoid that particular desire," Schaefer said. Eschevera grinned. "The last time we met, I made you a very generous offer. Perhaps now you're sorry you responded as you did?" "I'm only sorry we didn't meet on a taller building," Schaefer snarled. The grin vanished. "That's very funny, Detective Schaefer," Eschevera said. "You've always had a good sense of humor, haven't you? I regret I won't be able to appreciate it for very much longer." Eschevera turned as the other man reentered; he was holding something in one hand. It was a power saw, circular blade, one-half horsepower motor; the safety shield had been removed. Eschevera smiled again. "I'll be back in a bit, after Paolo's had a few minutes with you alone. Perhaps you can entertain him with more of your amusing stories." He saluted sardonically, then turned and limped out. The sadist with the power saw grinned. He revved it a few times, just to test, and light glinted from the spinning blade. "So little time, so much to do," he said. He circled around behind Schaefer, put a hand on his head, and pressed, tipping Schaefer's head down and exposing the back of his neck, like a barber preparing to trim the hairs there. Paolo revved the saw again, then clicked the switch into the lock-on position; the blade and motor settled into a steady hum. "Yeah, I know the feeling," Schaefer said, and he leaned farther forward, pulling away from Paolo's hand. Then he pressed his feet against the floor and stood up, chair and all. One of the back legs caught Paolo in the kneecap, hard. "Wha . . . ?" The Colombian torturer staggered back, limping and startled. Schaefer squatted and then threw himself backward, smashing Paolo against the wooden wall. He drove his wired fists into Paolo's belly; Paolo made a strangled noise, barely audible over the power saw's hum, and doubled over. Schaefer dragged the sharp ends of the wire across Paolo's stomach and felt blood dripping; then he leaned forward and let Paolo fall. "One of the drawbacks of using wire...it cuts both ways." The saw was still running; Schaefer twisted around and pressed the chair back against the spinning blade. The motor howled and sawdust sprayed as the saw cut into the wooden chair, and in seconds Schaefer was able to break free and stand upright. "Fun's fun, Paolo," Schaefer said, "but I don't have time for this bullshit." Then he took a flying leap, booted foot first, at the closed door, hoping it wasn't any stronger than it looked. It wasn't; the latch and upper hinge gave, and he tumbled through to find himself sprawled on top of a startled guard. The guard was holding a Kalashnikov. Schaefer punched the guard in the jaw and tore the gun out of his hands, then looked around. My only chance was to somehow disappear into the jungle, then make my way back to Bogota - Which was no chance at all. That bastard Eschever must have been taking in the whole show. That's when I felt them. It was a feeling I'd had before, both in the jungle and back in New York. Schaefer looked up at the nearest watchtower, where a man in a bush hat had a machine gun trained on him. That wasn't what was bothering him-a machine gun was worth some thought, but that wasn't what felt wrong. There was something in that general direction, though. Schaefer blinked and stared at the machine-gunner. The man's chest exploded in blue-white fire. According to our intelligence, Eschevera had over a hundred men in his personal Army -- he was capable of repelling a full scale military assault. The dead one must have had friends. They'd come to play. Half the riflemen turned, startled, at the sound of the explosion; the other half were sufficiently well trained to keep their eyes and weapons on Schaefer. Eschevera was one of those who turned to look, and then turned again as a second white fireball blew the head off the rifleman on his right. "Son of a bitch!" he said, staggering on his bad leg, trying to see what was happening. Then a real barrage began, and the riflemen scattered. Other men began pouring from the buildings. The watchmen in the towers had swung their guns around and now began spraying machine-gun fire into the surrounding jungle, but Schaefer, remembering the dead monster's camouflage device, doubted that any of the gunners had a clear idea what they were shooting at, or where it was. He noticed that the fireworks came from more than one direction. So the guide had been right, after all-the dead one must have had friends, and now they'd come to play. Eschevera was shouting orders at a group of men doing something to a small outbuilding near one of the far corners of the courtyard; as Schaefer watched, the walls of the building fell outward, revealing an antiaircraft battery. Eschevera really had been ready to fight off just about anything, up to and including a full-scale military assault--but how could he have prepared for what he was up against? Then I realized, no - not play -this wasn't sport anymore... They were pissed. The guide had been right. Those things didn't like losing tourists. The heavy guns began firing, throwing shells randomly into the bush. "donde demonios este el?" one of the gun crew shouted. Eschevera's men couldn't see the enemy, and it was spooking them. And in the excitement and confusion, they'd forgotten all about Schaefer. Still, Schaefer hesitated for a moment longer. Even if Eschevera's men were drug-dealing slime, those outer-space things had no right to treat them as playthings, animals to be killed for sport. Then a line of white fire stitched across the courtyard, walling up to the antiaircraft emplacement, cutting men down, and Schaefer realized this wasn't sport. They weren't playing around anymore. They were pissed. But on the other hand . . . they were still doing this up close and personal, they weren't just sitting back and nuking the camp from orbit, and somehow Schaefer didn't think that was because they couldn't. The heavy guns exploded then, distracting him from his thoughts; the shrapnel took down a dozen men. Eschevera had been hobbling about, trying to organize resistance, but now he fell headlong on the dirt. It was definitely time to get the hell out of there-especially since those things had probably come looking for him, and they'd remember it sooner or later, and he still had the tracking device embedded in his neck, and they'd remember that eventually, too. And Eschevera's men weren't about to waste time on stopping him when they were under this sort of attack; they were too busy staying alive. He turned to the right and ran for one of the alleys between buildings, hoping it led to a way out. Behind him Eschevera looked up, dazed. He saw Schaefer running and called out, "Schaefer! His people must have followed him here, it must be them! One of his men, gun in hand, ran up. "Get him!" Eschevera shouted, waving the cauterized stump. "I want him dead! He did this!" The gunman hesitated, looked around, then charged down the alley after Schaefer. "He's mine," he called back. As he vanished down the alley, back in the courtyard Eschevera looked up as something crackled and electric sparks danced. A monster appeared out of thin air, a monster that walked upright on two legs but had a face of blank metal and mottled skin a color no human being had ever had, a monster taller than any man. And there were at least three other monsters, visible now, walking calmly through the fire and smoke that blanketed the courtyard, carrying things like blades and spears; they moved with power and assurance, alert but not troubled. "Mother of God," Eschevera gasped. Three red dots appeared on Eschevera's forehead, weaving about for a moment before settling into a precise little triangle. The black thing on the monster's shoulder pivoted and pointed directly at Eschevera's face. Then it fired. The creature looked up from the smoking corpse, and in a perfect reproduction of the dead man's voice shouted to the world, "Mother of God!" In a way, Schaefer thought as he ran down the alley past the compound's latrines and out into the jungle, Eschevera was right he had been followed to the camp. Just not by his people. From the sound of the screams, I figured those things were starting to enjoy themselves. It was only a matter of time before they turned their attention toward me. What was the old saying? It's always darkest before the Dawn? New Age crap, Schaefer thought, as he was knocked to the ground by a flying tackle. The Kalashnikov went flying. Schaefer rolled over and looked up. He was royally pissed at himself; he hadn't heard the guy coming, hadn't seen a thing. He never used to let the bastards sneak up on him like that. At least it wasn't one of the monsters. It was one of Eschevera's men, in a leather vest, brown Levi's, and a T-shirt. He was standing over Schaefer, straddling Schaefer's legs and grinning, pointing an AK-47 at Schaefer's head. "What the hell do you want?" Schaefer demanded. "You planning to drag me back there? Think that's gonna do Eschevera any good?" "Eschevera's dead," the man said. "The Medillins will be seeking a new liason. With your head on a post, the choice will be obvious. "Speaking of the obvious," Schaefer said, "lemme show you something." He brought his boot up in a sudden kick that would have done a Rockette proud, and caught the Colombian in the crotch. "Post this, piss-ant" The man doubled over, and Schaefer swarmed up and landed a fist on his jaw, knocking him sprawling. Schaefer grabbed the AK 47 and tossed it away, then grabbed the Colombian up by his leather vest. "You seem a little unclear on the concept here, pal," Schaefer said. "Those things playing laser tag with your buddies don't give a shit about your stinking cocaine. They're not human, comprende?" "Go to hell, you lying . . ." "Goddamn it," Schaefer said, shaking him, "I'm telling the truth!" He dropped the man and stood over him-to the side, though, not where the Colombian could use Schaefer's own tactic against him. "Look, you son of a bitch, I'm tired, I'm sore, and I haven't had a decent cheeseburger since I left New York. So just don't push me, dig?" He turned away and picked up the Kalashnikov. Even before the other man spoke, Schaefer knew he'd done something stupid. He didn't know why he'd done it, exactly-usually he had more sense than to turn his back on an enemy, no matter how beaten the enemy looked. Maybe, he thought, he just wasn't thinking straight-or maybe he was just so blown out he didn't care anymore. Whatever the reason, he'd turned his back on Eschevera's boy, and the Colombian had immediately rolled over and grabbed the AK-47. "Hey, pig," he said, grinning, as he got to his feet and aimed the gun. Schaefer turned, knowing he'd done something stupid, knowing he was probably about to be shot, knowing he'd be lucky just to get off a few rounds himself before he folded . . . He heard a burst of automatic fire, like a gigantic steel zipper, and he didn't even have time to tense . And he saw the blood blossom from the Colombian's chest and realized that it hadn't been the AK 47 that had fired. The man who had wanted Eschevera's job wasn't going to get it; he folded up and fell to the ground, the AK 47 beneath him, blood soaking the smooth metal. Standing behind him was General Philips, a smoking gun in his hands. "Whatta ya know," Schaefer said, marveling. "The goddamn cavalry." Philips frowned: He was in no mood for attempts at wit. This had been too damn close-he needed Schaefer alive if he was going to trade him to the aliens. "You want to live?" he shouted at Schaefer. "Then shut up and follow me!" He turned and started dogtrotting through the jungle, not bothering to look back to see if Schaefer was following. Schaefer was following-he wasn't stupid enough, or exhausted enough, to pass up a miracle like this. A moment later, as blade-like leaves whipped against him, Schaefer caught a flash from the corner of his eye; he turned his head and saw flames and white fire erupting somewhere in the direction of Eschevera's fortress. The roar came a second later. "Hear that racket back there?" he shouted to Philips. "Your foreign friends are taking down Eschevera's drug empire piece by piece!" Philips glanced back at Schaefer, then at the mounting column of smoke. "Drugs?" he said. That made sense-who else would have a base like that out here in the middle of nowhere? Schaefer nodded. "Hell, I'd put them all up for departmental citations if I could figure out where to pin the medals." "They don't give a damn about drugs," Philips said. "They don't give a damn about this Eschevera, whoever the hell he is. They don't give a damn about anything . . . ." The two men burst through a final wall of brush into a clearing, where a helicopter waited, rotor turning slowly. Philips slowed to a walk and turned to Schaefer. "Except you," he finished, raising the gun. Rasche got up from his seat on the fold-out bed-he couldn't keep still. This had been a recurring problem for some time; he just got so fucking bored, sitting here in this midtown apartment with these goddamn G-men. He'd been held prisoner here for days, without so much as a change of clothing-they'd given him a white terry-cloth bathrobe to wear when he wanted his clothes washed, and every couple of days one of the three made a run to the laundromat. Meals were all take-out-the kitchen was dark and empty Which of the three went to pick it up varied, but it was always just one who went out, whatever the errand; there were always two of them there guarding Rasche. They'd given their names as Smith, Jones, and Miller. They hadn't even smiled when they said it. "This sucks," he said. Miller was out getting lunch; Smith was leaning by the door, while Jones had a batch of papers spread on the desk. "This really sucks," Rasche said. "How long do you think you can keep me here?" "As long as we have to," Smith replied without moving. Jones didn't even look up; as far as Rasche could tell, he was so involved in his paperwork, whatever it was, that he hadn't heard. And the chain lock and dead bolt weren't locked, since they didn't want to make things hard for Miller; maybe, after all these long, boring days, these guys were getting sloppy. "Hey, Smith," Rasche said, "your shoe's untied." "Get serious, Rasche," Smith replied. He didn't look down, didn't unfold his arms. "We're trained professionals. That ruse only works on Cub Scouts." Rasche glared at him, then turned away in disgust. He marched over to the desk and glowered over Jones's shoulder at the papers. "What the hell is this, anyway?" he asked. "Doing your homework?" "Delinquent tax returns," Jones replied without looking up. "We're talking some tasty audits here - late penalties, interest, maybe even some prison time..." "Well, jeepers, you're a regular Eliot Ness . . . ," Rasche began. "Lay off, Rasche," Smith said, standing up straight. The phone rang. Rasche started at the sound; this was the first time it had rung since he had been brought there. Jones snatched up the receiver and listened; Rasche tried to listen, too, but Smith wasn't having it. "You just watch that mouth of yours, Detective Rasche," Smith said. "We've been trying to make this easy, but we can give you a hard time if we have to. You give us any grief, maybe when this is over, you'll find the IRS taking a look at *your* taxes-they'll audit you and have you hunting receipts and check stubs back to your goddamn paper route . . . ." Jones hung up the phone and announced, "That was Peterson. Schaefer's due in six hours. They'll chopper him straight to the MetLife building and make delivery there-" "Wait a minute," Rasche demanded, interrupting. "What do you mean, `delivery'?" Jones didn't answer. Neither did Smith. They both just stared silently at Rasche. And Rasche put it together. "Jesus," he said, "you're going to give Schaefer to those aliens, aren't you?" Smith and Jones didn't deny it, and Rasche's temper snapped. "You lousy bastards . . . ," he began. Smith pulled his pistol and shoved it under Rasche's nose. "Back off!" he bellowed. "One more move and I'll cuff you to the damn toilet!" Rasche backed off; he backed over to the sofa bed and sat down. "Yeah, yeah," he said, trying to sound harmless. He could feel his heart hammering with fury, but he kept his voice down. "Look, I'm sorry. I'm just a little tense, after all that's happened, waiting here and everything. You have to understand, Schaefer's a friend of mine ...." Smith stared at him for a moment, then relaxed and holstered his automatic. "Sure," he said. "No problem. Six more hours and it'll be over, and you can go home to the wife and kids." "Yeah," Rasche said. "Thanks." He wondered whether the wife and kids had come home yet. Were they still up in Elmira? Or had they come back and found him gone? Shari must be panicking, not hearing from him for so long-had anyone thought to tell her what was going on? Or at least tell her a comforting lie of some kind? The bastards probably hadn't bothered. That pumped his anger up further, but he refused to let it show. He wandered away again back toward the desk. Smith was back by the door, not moving, his pistol tucked away. Jones was back at his tax forms. Miller was still gone, taking his own sweet time at the deli. Rasche leaned over Jones's shoulder, feigning friendly curiosity. "Hey," he said, "isn't two plus five seven, instead of eight?" "Wha . . . ?" Jones looked where Rasche pointed, startled--and Rasche's, other hand grabbed the back of Jones's head and slammed his face down onto the desk, hard. Rasche heard the distinctive crunch of a nose breaking. Smith instinctively warded it off, costing himself a second or so in his attempt to reach for his automatic. Then Rasche launched himself at Smith, slamming the G-man up against the wall. Charged with adrenaline, Rasche picked Smith up completely and rammed him headfirst through the door. Wood splintered and a hole opened, giving Rasche a view of the hall's wallpaper; Smith went limp. "That's what you get for insulting the Cub Scouts, you son of a bitch," he said, dropping the G-man. "My younger son's a Wolf." He snatched up the mask with one hand, yanked out Smith's pistol with the other, then smashed his way through the broken remnants of the door. Then he ran for the stairs. "Pan Am Building, Nine O'Clock," he said as he heard Smith moaning and Jones cursing behind him. The feds hadn't moved the rental van-Rasche found it still sitting just around the corner from Police Plaza. He supposed they hadn't thought it was important, or maybe they hadn't realized it was his. Rasche had never planned to keep the rental this long. The bill when he turned it in was going to be a real killer. He needed it a little longer, though. He drove the streets for a while, planning, trying to figure out just how he could keep the feds from turning Schaefer over to those monsters from outer space. He didn't know enough. He didn't know whom he could trust, didn't know what it would take to stop those things. Well, he'd just have to go up there ready for anything, and he thought he had an idea how to do that. He left the van double-parked while he ran into the police academy building on Twentieth. The firing range was still closed, but Bernie was still on duty upstairs. "Jesus, Rasche," he said, "where the hell have you been? Watch Commander's been trying to reach you all morning-- "I was doing my taxes," Rasche said. "Bernie-- give me a hand, will you?" "I dunno, Rasche," Salvati said nervously. "I don't need McComb after my ass. You need permission before entering the property room..." "Hell, McComb and I are tight, honest," Rasche said. Salvati's expression changed abruptly. "What are you looking for?" he said through clenched teeth. "Remember those Jamaicans Salvati Busted last month? I need to check some of their impound." This was better than he had expected. Chances were half the stuff wouldn't work, since most criminals were too stupid to take proper care of their equipment, but Rasche remembered how extensive that arsenal was. You could lose half of it and still have enough to take out damn near anything. Not just machine guns, but grenades, rocket launchers, everything. That ought to be enough to get Schaefer away from the feds, or from whatever was flying those ships. "Ahh, that's the ticket. Count on the Jamaicans to go for name brand merchandise. Find a cart and help me get it down to my car." "Down to your-- are you crazy? You can't take this stuff out of the station!" People looked up and watched curiously as Rasche and Salvati hauled the weapons out to the sidewalk and loaded the van, but no one said anything, no one interfered. After all, Rasche thought, who would be crazy enough to walk out with that stuff in broad daylight if they weren't supposed to? Rasche smiled to himself. He might not be as crazy as Schaefer, but he was getting there. "No? Watch me." -- Choppered out of Colombia, Private Jet back to New York -- suddenly I felt like a very impirtant person. It made me nervous. "All right," he said to Philips as they boarded the chopper, "we're back. Now I want some answers." Philips looked at him but didn't answer. He did wave off the two guards; they looked surprised. Schaefer guessed they had thought they were coming along. Once they were aloft, though, Schaefer demanded, "What the hell are we dealing with? What was that thing I killed? Who were those things that took out Eschevera's camp?" Philips shook his head. "You want a name?" he said. "We haven't got one. You want a place? Not earth. And that's damn near all we know" Schaefer glanced at him, obviously disbelieving. "You want theories, though, we've got a dozen, a hundred," Philips told him. "We've got legends and guesswork up the wazoo. The people back there in the jungle tell us they've been coming here for centuries-always in the heat, when it's hot even for the goddamn tropics; they don't like cold, don't like anything we'd consider decent weather, but when it's a fucking steam bath ." "Like this year," Schaefer said. Philips nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Anyway, they hunt. They like the chase. We've got people who think it was these things that wiped out the dinosaurs-hunted 'em to extinction. For all I know, it's true-all that Enquirer crap about aliens and ancient- astronauts, for all we can really tell about these things, it could be true. There's one guy we've got who says these things may have bred us, helped our technology, started our wars, to build us up into more interesting targets, more challenging prey-and for all we know, the son of a bitch could be right." He shrugged. "Or he could be full of shit. Maybe they've only been coming since we started shooting each other, maybe the smell of gunpowder brought 'em. We don't know. We don't know shit about them. And everything we thought we did know . . . Well, we never thought we'd have to deal with them this far north." Schaefer said, "Not our problem if they don't mess with us, huh?" "Something like that," Philips admitted. "Up until now, going by the stories we've heard, by the radar traces we've mapped, they've only hit the equatorial countries-South America, maybe Africa, possibly Asia." He grimaced. "Goddamn greenhouse effect." "Or maybe they just got bored with the jungles," Schaefer suggested. "Hell, if Earth's Disneyland, New York's gotta be an E ticket." "Could be that," Philips agreed. He hesitated. "Or it could be something else." Schaefer looked at him, waiting. "You think it's a coincidence, that thing tagging the brother of the one man we know has beaten them? Not one man in a million ever sees one of these things, and the two of you do, thousands of miles apart? These things seem to like you Schaefer boys. Maybe they can track the genetic patterns somehow, maybe they just smelled you, we don't know, but maybe they came to New York looking for you." Schaefer stared at him silently for a moment, considering that. "Good," he said at last. "They'll like me even more after I blow their ugly asses straight to hell." Philips shook his head and drew his trusty old .45. "I'm sorry, son," he said, "I'm afraid we've got something else in mind." He leaned away from Schaefer and pointed the pistol at him. Schaefer stared again, then said, "I should have guessed. You're giving me to them, aren't you?" "I'm afraid so," Philips said. "You killed one of them, Schaefer-if we don't turn you over, there's no telling what they'll do." "It was trying to kill me." "That doesn't matter. They came after you, Schaefer-you saw that, in that camp. They don't care about this Eschevera, they wanted you." Schaefer nodded. "I'd figured that much for myself," he said. "So why'd you pick me up? Why didn't you let them have me?" "Because we need to make a goodwill gesture," Philips replied. "We need to let them know we're trying to help them, trying to communicate with them." "They don't seem real interested in talking, General." "We have to try." "Because you're too goddamn chicken to fight them?" Philips exploded. "Dammit, Schaefer, be realistic! We're talking about hundreds of thousands of lives here-maybe millions, maybe the whole damn planet! We need to show them we aren't hostile, so they'll go away and leave us alone! They don't consider us worth talking to, or they wouldn't hunt us, and we can't let ourselves be too dangerous, or they'll wipe us out, so we're trying to find a middle ground, show 'em we're smart but friendly" "Why? Why not fight back, if you want the bastards to respect you?" "Fight?" Philips shook his head. "Schaefer, you saw that blast site in the jungle, that crater-Dutch told us that was done by a gadget the one he fought carried on its wrist! Even if they don't bring in their heavy artillery, imagine the devastation if something like that exploded in New York-the city would be destroyed!" Schaefer glared at him. "You say that as if it were a bad thing." "Christ, Schaefer . . ." "So you're going to give me to them-what do you think that'll do? You think they'll say, Òh, thank you, sir, sorry we bothered you,' and go away and never come back?" "I think it'll get them the hell out of New York. They'll have got what they came for." "Wasn't me they butchered, Philips. They came for fun, not for me." "You were the one they marked, though, with that thing on your neck!" "And maybe they want the fun of finding me for themselves. Maybe you're going to be the guy who gives away the ending of the movie, handing me over. Maybe they'll be more pissed than ever. Ever think of that?" "Dammit, Schaefer, we can't let them chase you through the streets-innocent people will get hurt! And everyone will see them, it'll start a panic! We've been keeping this hushed up for years . . . . " "Maybe you shouldn't have," Schaefer interrupted. "Maybe you should let people know what's out there, let 'em stand up for themselves." "You can't stand up to these things!" "I did. Dutch did." "All right, but nobody else-most people just die when they come up against one of these hunters. Look, Schaefer, this may be our chance to talk to them, to convince them we're intelligent, to make real contact . . ." "They know how intelligent we are," Schaefer said, "which isn't very, in most cases. Thing is, they don't care." "Yeah, well, maybe if we show them that we can help them, they'll care. They want you, Schaefer, and we're going to give you to them." "I've got a better idea, General." Schaefer's hands flew out without warning and grabbed Philips's wrist, shoving upward; the .45 fired, and the slug punched a hole through the copter's roof. "Sorry about this," Schaefer said as he snatched the pistol away with one hand and knocked Philips aside with the other. The general struggled, tried to hold on to the gun, but he'd been caught by surprise and was no match for Schaefer in any case. His head hit a steel rib, and the old man folded into an unconscious heap on the floor. Schaefer checked the general's pulse-Philips was still alive, just out. Then he took the .45, pulled aside the drape separating the passenger compartment from the cockpit, and put the pistol's barrel to the pilot's head. "Hi," he said. "Where are we headed?" The pilot started, looked up, saw the pistol, gulped, and said, "P-Pan Am building. There's a heliport there. The brass are trying to arrange some kind of meeting" "Groovy" As we approached the heliport I counted six military types on site, they were trying to keep the operation low key. Maybe that was their problem, you don't WISH this kind of trouble away - you've got to face it. IT was time to quit pretending there was some easy solution to our problem - time show those ugly mothers who was boss. The landing came off without a hitch; then Schaefer just waited. He didn't open the door; instead he stood beside it, waiting, with the pistol still pointed at the pilot. Sure enough, the men who had been waiting on the roof got impatient; one of them slid the door open. Schaefer's fist took him in the face, and in an instant Schaefer was out of the copter and snatching up the M16 the man had been carrying. He stood and faced the others on the rooftop with a weapon ready in each hand and shouted, "Drop 'em!" The other five hesitated, then, one by one, they dropped their weapons. Schaefer smiled. He was back in control. The aliens weren't here, but they were going to come after him sooner or later, he was sure. And when they did, he'd be ready for them-not staked out and helpless, but able to give them the fight they probably wanted. Maybe he could convince them not to mess with the Schaefer boys. He might die doing it, of course, but that was nothing new. He could die anytime. "Put on some music and open the bar, boys," he said. "It's party time!" Rasche looked up from the Park Avenue sidewalk in angry frustration as the helicopter descended toward the PanAm building; the damn thing was early! It was only five forty-five, and the copter was landing! He didn't have time for subtlety. He'd been thinking about trying to sneak up there with a hidden weapon, maybe take a hostage or something, but there was no time to try anything that complicated. Instead, he went for the direct approach-he pulled an automatic rifle out of the collection in the back of the van, slung an ammo belt on his shoulder, and headed for the MetLife building. He charged in from the north, the side away from Grand Central, with the rifle ready in his hands. Terrified late commuters scattered as he ran through the lobby. Five minutes later he burst out onto the rooftop, shouting, "All right, drop. . ." Then he saw Schaefer standing there, M-16 in hand, guarding half a dozen unarmed men with their hands on their heads. ". . . 'em," he finished weakly. "Jesus, Rasche," Schaefer said, "where the hell have you been?" Rasche stared angrily, then smiled. "Got held up in traffic, Schaef," he said. "Well, you're here now-let's get the hell out of here and get on with business!" They left Philips and his men sitting on the roof of the PanAm building, their wrists tied behind them, and headed for Rasche's rented van. Schaefer smiled at the sight of the arsenal in the back, but he didn't say anything about it; instead he climbed into the passenger side, laid his appropriated M-16 across his lap, and told Rasche, "Head downtown." Rasche shrugged and started the engine. "You want to tell me what the hell happened in Central America, and how you wound up at the PanAm heliport holding that popgun on a U.S. Army general?" "Nope." "Okay, it can wait," he said. "Care to tell me what we're going to do now?" Schaefer nodded at the weapons. "We're going to use this stuff to blow those alien shits to hell." "You know, Schaef, you've been out of town, maybe you're not up on everything. I've been giving this some thought, and it seems to me we're outgunned." "Why's that?" Schaefer asked, shifting the M-16 and glancing at the darkly gleaming weapons in the back. "C'mon, Schaef, you have to ask?" Rasche said. "They're invisible, they've got spaceships, they probably have ray guns the way they shot up those guys . "They do," Schaefer agreed. "I've seen 'em." "You haven't seen their ships, have you?" "Nope." "I have," Rasche told him. "Big ones, cruising over the city. You can see 'em through that mask you took off the one on Beekman. I don't know how many ships; or how many of those things are on each ship-more than one, though." "So?" "So I'll go through doors with you any day, Schaef, but we can't take those fuckers on alone. It's suicide." "So who said anything about taking them down alone?" The light changed and Rasche stepped on the gas, trying to figure out what Schaefer was talking about. ==== "Take Fourth Avenue," Schaefer said as Union Square came into sight. He turned around in his seat and began looking through the array of weapons in back. "You mind telling me where the hell we're going?" Rasche asked. "Carr's place." Schaefer put the M-16 down and reached back. "Carr?" Rasche's foot hit the brake without conscious direction. "Keep rolling," Schaefer said. "Yeah, Carr. Who else's got a personal grudge against those things, besides you, me, and the rest of the department?" "Carr's a complete psycho!" "I know," Schaefer said, coming up with a pumpaction shotgun. He began loading shells. "Seems to me that's what we need for this." "How the hell do you know where Carr is now? You've been gone for more'n a week!" "I don't know for sure," Schaefer replied, "but I have a pretty good idea." "How?" Rasche demanded. "Why should Carr be anywhere you know?" "Because Lamb's dead," Schaefer explained. "Carr's going to try to take over the whole schmear, and that means he's gotta be where Lamb's people can find him, so they can sign up-and that includes all the junkies who are down to their last few brain cells. So Carr's gonna be where Carr always is when he's not hiding." "And you know where that is?" Schaefer didn't bother to answer that. "Turn left," he said. Rasche decided not to argue anymore; he drove, following Schaefer's directions. A few moments later they pulled up across the street from a decaying tenement with DEATH ZONE painted across the door. "That's it?" Rasche asked. Schaefer nodded. "He might be out to dinner or something." "He might be, but he isn't," Schaefer said. "I can feel it." "You and your goddamn feelings," Rasche muttered. "What if he isn't in there, Schaef?" "Then we'll look somewhere else until we find him," Schaefer said as he got out of the van. He looked over the building, then leaned back in the window of the van and said, "You wait here. If I'm not back in ten minutes, come inside and kill anything that moves." Rasche glanced back at the arsenal, thinking about the possibilities, .and smiled grimly. "My pleasure," he said. He watched as Schaefer crossed the street. Schaefer seemed to know what he was doing," but Rasche had doubts. Yeah, they needed manpower, but recruiting off the streets like this . . . Well, Schaefer had always had a knack for bringing out the best in people, one way or another. Sometimes it was their best effort to kill the big son of a bitch, but hey, it was their best. The door was open a few inches; Schaefer pushed it open farther with his foot and stepped cautiously inside, shotgun ready. "Hey, Carr!" Schaefer bellowed. He marched forward to the foot of the stairs and shouted upward, "Carr! It's Schaefer! I know you're here, you son of a bitch-come on out! I want to talk!" Schaefer heard the crunch of plaster underfoot a fraction of a second before he heard the shotgun blast; he had started to turn around when the gun boomed, and plaster dust, sawdust, and water showered down on him. Carr had been in one of the darkened front rooms that Schaefer had passed without checking and had fired a warning shot into the ceiling. The corroded pipes overhead had been punctured a dozen places by the pellets, and only the low water pressure kept the spray from blinding Schaefer. By the time he had turned around to face Carr, he had heard the distinctive ratchet of a fresh shell being pumped into the chamber. Carr was standing there, grinning. "Okay, Oprah," Carr announced, "if you want to sing in the shower, I'm game. Lose the scattergun, and we can talk." He shoved the shortened barrel of his shotgun up close to Schaefer's ear. Schaefer dropped his own weapon, safety on, tossing it far enough that it landed clear of the spray. "I gotta admit, you've got balls coming here," Carr said conversationally. "I've been picturing your brains on a wall since the night Lamb and the rest bought it. You got a reason I shouldn't get to see that?" "Come on, Carr," Schaefer said. "My men didn't kill your punks. Get real." "Oh?" Carr grinned. "Then whose men did?" Schaefer could see Carr's finger tightening on the trigger. Carr, arrogant bastard that he was, might be crazy enough to blow him away without waiting to hear what he had to say. "Wasn't men at all," he said. "It was something worse than men." "Good trick," Carr said, and he closed one eye, sighting down the barrel. Schaefer ducked, dropping below the gun's muzzle, and came up fist first into Carr's face. Carr stumbled back, and Schaefer was on top of him, too close in for the gun to be any use except perhaps as a club; the two men fell to the floor, splashing dirty water in all directions. After a moment's struggle Schaefer had Carr in a headlock and shouted at him, "Goddamn it, listen to me! I need your help, you son of a bitch!" He slammed Carr's head against a baseboard. "I didn't come here to fight you!" Carr didn't bother to answer as he struggled to free himself. Schaefer began to loosen his grip slightly, hoping Carr would listen to reason-and suddenly agony cut through his neck and up the side of his head, like a hot knife under the skin, a pressure on his throat almost choking him. He released his hold on Carr and stumbled back. "Aggh," he said, "it's here! Son of a bitch, it's around here somewhere!" Carr watched as Schaefer staggered down he hallway toward the stairwell, looking around wildly. "It's here!" Schaefer shouted again. "Come on out where we can see you, you bastard!" There wasn't anything there, so far as Carr could see; Schaefer was yelling and clutching at his throat, but there wasn't anything there. It had to be some kind of stupid cop trick, Carr decided after an instant of confusion, and he wasn't going to fall for it. He jumped to his feet and raised his shotgun. "Yeah, sure it is, Schaefer," he said as he marched through the spray of water to get a clear shot at his opponent. "It's here, there, and everywhere. Talk show's over, say bye-bye, pig!" Schaefer looked up at the barrel of the gun, at Carr's finger tightening on the trigger, at Carr's grinning, maniacal face-and at the waterfall behind him, the spray from the ruined pipes, where blue sparks were crackling and crawling across a familiar silhouette. He tried to shout a warning to Carr, but it felt as if something were caught in his throat. And then any warning would have been superfluous, as the alien creature appeared out of thin air, its invisibility screen down for the moment, one taloned hand closing around Carr's neck from behind. "The water . . . ," Schaefer said, his throat clear again. "Jesus, the water shorted something out." The creature picked up the gang boss easily, and Schaefer ducked again as Carr fired; the shotgun blast went safely over his head, just as the warning shot had before. "What in the hell . . . ?" Carr managed to say. He twisted in the thing's grip, trying to get a look at it, trying to see what was holding him up by the throat as if he weighed no more than a kitten. "That's what killed your boys, Carr," Schaefer shouted. "Those goddamn things have been tracking me ever since. It didn't give a damn who you were, Carr-your men were all just trophies to it!" "Oh, yeah? Trophy this, piss-face!" Carr shouted back, as he struggled. He spat, managing to hit a corner of the thing's metal mask. "Say bye-bye, Pig" the creature replied in a close approximation of Carr's own voice of a few moments before. It reached up and placed its other hand atop Carr's head, preparing to twist. Schaefer, looking around, spotted his own dropped gun; he dived for it, calling, "Not yet, pal!" He came up with the gun held like a club; he swung it by the barrel and caught the monster on the side of the head. Startled, but clearly uninjured, the thing threw Carr aside and looked at Schaefer. The gadget on its shoulder popped up and began to swivel, and Schaefer dived sideways as a blue-white fireball blew a two-foot hole in the wall. He rolled and brought the shotgun up, and realized the barrel was bent, the action twisted into uselessness-he'd hit the alien harder than he had realized. "Come on, then," Schaefer said, crouching, bracing himself. "This is what you've been waiting for, isn't it? Your chance to get the one that killed your buddy? Your shot at one of the tough ones? Go ahead, then-finish it!'' "Let's not and say we did," called a voice from the shadows by the building's front door, a good thirty feet away. The creature started to turn. "You're under arrest . . . ," Rasche began as he raised and sighted-in the Soviet-built shoulder-mount antitank gun he had hauled in from the van. God only knew what the Jamaicans had thought they wanted with something like that. Then he got a good look at the creature and said, "Aw, screw it." He pulled the trigger, and the rocket tore through the intervening distance in a fraction of a second. Still, Schaefer thought the alien might have been able to dodge; it was fast enough, he'd seen that, but it didn't dodge. Maybe it was too surprised. The thing's body shielded Schaefer from the worst of the blast, but the entire building shook, and the walls on either side of the hallway buckled outward; plaster and shattered wood showered down. The flow of water was abruptly transformed from a scattered spray into a steady spill down one broken wall as the remains of the pipes above the passage vanished completely in the explosion. "Any of this sinking in, then?" Schaefer asked Carr. "Or are you twice as stupid as you look?" "Oh, I get the picture," Carr said. "And okay, maybe your cops didn't trash my men and take out Lambikins, but that thing's pieces, right? So it's over." Schaefer shook his head. "That was what I thought the first time." Rasche, emerging from the van with the alien mask in his hand, called out, "It's not over, Carr, remember that old Carpenters song?, we've only just begun." He held up the mask, scanned the streets with it, then turned his attention to the dark skies above. He growled, then handed the mask to Schaefer. "Over there," he said, pointing. "Coming this way. " Schaefer looked, tracking the approaching ship's movement, and nodded. "They're not going to be very happy when they find what's left of their buddy," he said. "That's two down and counting." He handed the mask back to Rasche. "What are you two looking at?" Carr demanded. "There's nothing out there!" Rasche ignored him; he was watching the red-gold shape coming in over the rooftops, coming toward them. It was coming in low, and descending even farther. "Not very happy at all," Rasche said. "Shut up and run, Carr!" He took his own advice and sprinted for the van. This ship wasn't just cruising over the city-this ship was diving for them in what looked for all the world like a strafing run. "Get down!" Schaefer shouted as something flashed. The three men dived to the pavement as the building behind them erupted into white fire and flying brick. Rasche rolled over and looked through the mask. The ship had veered off and was looping back for another pass; the building's facade had a ten-foot hole in it where the door had been a moment before, a hole full of dust, firelight, and clattering brick fragments. "Come on," he called, leading the way toward an alley that he hoped would provide some shelter. The ship came back for its second run, and it was immediately obvious that the first had been a sighting shot-this time the thing laid down a deafening barrage of blue-white fire that cut the entire building to bits. The three men stared, dumbfounded. "Jesus," Rasche muttered as the ship ceased its fire-it was past the building now, no longer had a clear shot. "So much for urban renewal," he said. "No yuppie's ever gonna gentrify that place!" "And no one's going to salvage anything of that dead one," -Schaefer said grimly, "They're making sure no one makes a trophy out of one of their own!" "What the hell?" Carr shrieked. "What did that? What are we up against? I still don't fuckin' see anything!" "Here, have a peek," Rasche said, thrusting the mask in front of Carr's face and directing his gaze. Carr stared up at the departing spaceship. "Wild, huh?" Rasche asked, glancing at Carr. "Just like War of the Worlds." Schaefer snorted. "They all died of a cold in that one, Rasche, but I didn't notice that thing reaching for a Kleenex, did you?" Carr grunted, and Rasche took the mask back. "The feds are scared of them," Schaefer said, "so it's going to be up to us to bring them down, let them know they aren't welcome here." He looked around. "We have to get off the streets, find some place to make a stand." Rasche nodded. He scanned the sky quickly. "I don't see it right now," he said. "Let's get in the van and move, talk, while we drive." "They can track me," Schaefer said, gesturing toward his neck. "I know that," Rasche said, "but maybe not that fast. Come on." Schaefer nodded, and the three men ran for the van. Rasche took the driver's seat, Schaefer took shotgun, and Carr climbed back between the seats-and saw the weapons. "Jesus," he said. "You've got more stuff back here than I have in the whole goddamn city!" "That's the point," Schaefer said. "When those things have swept up what's left of their pal, all hell's going to break loose, and we're gonna need all the manpower we can put on the streets if we want to still be standing when they're done. That's what I came after you for in the first place, Carr-we want you and your boys to help us." Carr stared at him for a moment." "Why us?" he asked. "I mean, we aren't exactly your buddies, Schaefer-I always figured you'd like to see me dead. Hell, I know I'd like to see you dead." "Yeah, well, I need manpower, and your people may be scum, but at least they've got some guts," Schaefer said. "So I'm offering a truce, just till these alien geeks are gone-after that it's back to business as usual." "I'd have figured for something like this you'd call out the goddamn army, not come looking for me." "The army's scared," Schaefer said. "They figure to let the aliens do what they want, and when they're done, they'll go home. Rasche and I don't think that way-if those things are having fun, why would they leave?" "So here you are, talking to me." "Here we are. With the guns back there." "And you'll let us use all this hardware?" Schaefer nodded. "That's the deal just for the duration. I don't know if we can take out their whole damn fleet, I don't know how many of them are out there, but maybe we can make it a little less fun. So what do you say, punk? Feel like a little rock and roll?" Carr grinned. "You got it, Schaefer. Cops, aliens, I don't care who it is-nobody off's my men without some serious payback. You supply the guns, and let me handle the rest!" The sunday traffic was light as we cruised into midtown. Dark Clouds were rolling in and you could almost touch the moisture in the air....the heatwave was over. Out police scanner picked up scattered radio reports from the south bronx...carr's building was gravel by the time the authorities made the scene. I wondered how they could tell the difference. Carr borrowed my MCI cared while we made a pit stop at Schaef's favorite deli. I felt a little weird dealing with a freak like carr- but we didn't have much choice. "he's gonna run up God knows how much of a bill, and I'll never get reimbursed, you know what an asshole McComb is about unauthorized expenses. That son of a bitch could be calling his mother in Hong Kong for all I know" "Yeah," Schaefer said, "but more likely he's calling every cheap hood, dope dealer, and gangbanger on the Lower East Side, and next month you'll have an itemized bill right there in your mailbox with every one of their private numbers on it, ever think of that?" He smiled thinly. "Carr's just as stupid as he is cheap." Rasche shut up, reluctant to admit that no, he hadn't thought of it. They got the van rolling, and Rasche followed Carr's directions, arriving a few minutes later at the entrance ramp to the lower levels of a parking garage a few blocks farther up Third. Somehow Rasche found it appropriate to be meeting Carr's friends below street level. "This is the place," Carr said as Rasche pulled onto the ramp. Rasche stopped. "What," he said, "we need the password or something?" "No," Carr said. "You two wait here. I'll drive down alone; then we'll see. My people were expecting a blow-off, yeah, but against cops, not a bunch of little green men. Some of them aren't always easy to convince; you gotta give me some time to sell this." "You've gotta be kidding!" Rasche protested. "We're carrying enough ordnance in here to start a small war-I'm not going to let you pass it out to your scumbag pals like party favors!" Carr grinned, and Rasche wished he had the strength-and the nerve-to knock those teeth out. "Let him go," Schaefer said as he picked up the mask and his appropriated M-16 and opened his door. "Do it his way for now, and if there're any problems, we'll kill him first." He got out of the van. "Wow, ultimatums," Carr said. "My little heart's palpitating in fear. Maybe when this is over, Schaefer, we can get together and see who's really king of the hill." Schaefer grinned back at him, and Rasche reluctantly climbed out of the van. Carr slid into the driver's seat and started the van down the ramp; Rasche and Schaefer watched him go. "I'd like that, Carr," Schaefer said quietly. "I'd like it a lot." Rasche sat down on the narrow curb at one side of the tunnel. He glanced down after the van but could see nothing-the entrance ramp curved. He sighed. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was half-past midnight-Carr's calls had taken well over an hour. "It's funny," he said. "Those things are way past us, technologically-their ships make the space shuttle look like a Matchbox toy, they've got ray guns and invisibility and God knows what else-and yet they still get off on hunting and killing things, they take trophies, they seem to love blood and pain. I wonder why. I mean, shouldn't they be more advanced than us socially, as well as technologically? Wouldn't they have outgrown all that?" Schaefer glanced at him, then went back to staring down the tunnel. "You think that's something you outgrow, Rasche?" he asked a moment later. "Isn't it?" "Maybe." Schaefer paused for a moment, then said, "Maybe they're just like us. Technology removes us from our true selves, lets us pretend we don't have to kill to eat, lets us forget we're all a bunch of killer apes. It takes us away from the beast inside. People talk about getting back to nature, and they just mean going out in the woods somewhere and treating it like a fucking garden, a bunch of birds and bunnies and flowers, and they forget that Mother Nature's a bitch, that claws and fangs and blood are natural, and gardens aren't. Nature's a jungle, not a garden." "Well . . . ," Rasche began. Schaefer cut him off. "Maybe those things up there don't forget what nature's like. Maybe the hunt is their way of getting back to nature, their way of keeping the beast alive, keeping that competitive edge that lets them develop their spaceships and ray guns. Maybe they need an edge-maybe they're worried about natural selection selecting them out, if they get soft. Maybe the whole goddamn galaxy's a fucking war zone, a big bloody free-for-all, the law of the jungle on a cosmic scale, and those bastards need to stay tough to survive." He shrugged. "Or maybe," he added after a second's pause, "they're just naturally sadistic sons of bitches." Rasche stared up at his partner. That was about the longest speech he'd ever heard from Schaefer. "You really think we can beat them?" he asked. Schaefer didn't answer. He raised a hand for silence. Rasche listened. Footsteps were approaching, coming up the ramp. Rasche turned and watched as Carr came into view, an assault rifle slung on his shoulder, a machine pistol on his belt. At least a dozen other young men were beside and behind him, all of them armed to the teeth with the contents of Rasche's van, with the weapons Bernie had given him, everything the Somalis had sold the Jamaicans, all of it loaded and ready to go. Ammunition belts were draped across tattooed chests, automatic weapons were tucked under muscular arms, shotguns were clutched in sweaty hands. "Hey, Schaefer!" Carr called. "We put it to a vote, and it was unanimous. Humans one, alien shits zero!" Schaefer smiled, a humorless baring of teeth that Rasche didn't like at all. "Good," he said. "So listen up while I tell you what you're up against." "The things we're fighting are invisible, except through one of these." He held up the alien mask. "They all wear them-I figure they're invisible to each other without them, same as they are to us." "How we take 'em down if we can't see 'em?" "You'll see a weird shimmer in the air when they're near," Schaefer explained. "Aim for it with all you've got. And don't wait-these things are bigger and stronger and faster than you are, and I don't care how big and strong and fast you think you are, they're more. Any questions?" "Hell," another man said, hefting a tripod-mounted, belt-fed machine gun, "I didn't come here to hear no fairy stories about invisible bogeymen. Why don't we flash this pig and test-fire our new toys over in the diamond district?" He turned and looked around at the others for support. Schaefer stared at the man for a second, then lashed out without warning-a single blow of the fist. The man went down and lay gasping on the asphalt. "Any more questions?" Schaefer demanded as he picked up the mask again. "Yeah," Rasche said. "How are you planning to find them? How are we going to lure them in where we can get at them? Showgirls and dancing bears? A big sign, `Today only, everything half price to killer aliens'?" "I had an idea on that," Schaefer said. "A couple of ideas, actually. First off, you said you saw them cruising over the city, right?" "Right," Rasche said, not sure where Schaefer was going with this. "So they aren't hiding. They don't realize we can actually see them through this thing-they've got no reason to hide. They're probably still up there, cruising around-all we have to do is watch. Second thing, they're still tracking me." He touched the device on his neck. "I figure they're probably cruising over this place every few minutes, keeping an eye on me." "So they're cruising overhead," Carr said. "You didn't bring us a goddamn F-16, Schaefer-how the hell do we get them down here? Or did you want us all to help you watch the pretty ships go by?" "I think the arrogant bastards are getting cocky," Schaefer said. "Sure, we took out two of them so far, but they've trashed a lot more of us, and most of the time we've been running from them, not fighting. I figure if we get their attention, they'll come down here after us-that'd be the sporting way to get us. Shooting us from their ships would be like hunting deer with a bazooka-it'd work, but it wouldn't be any fun." "Yeah, yeah but just how do you figure to get their attention?" Carr asked. Schaefer pointed to the Soviet antitank gun that Rasche had used to kill the one at Carr's place. "With that," he said. "I don't know if it'll punch through whatever armor they've got on their ships, but ten to one they'll notice it." -------------- Schaefer knelt on the sidewalk, the Soviet antitank gun ready beside him, while Rasche took a turn watching the skies above Third Avenue. "He's cruising right up the middle of the avenue, just where I want him," Schaefer reported. "I can put this baby just where I want it, right . . ." He pulled the trigger, and the rocket spat out of the tube. ". . . there!" A fraction of a second later the boom of the RPG echoed from the buildings on either side, and shrapnel rained down across Third Avenue, rattling off asphalt and taxicabs. The sound woke the dozing hoods; hands grabbed for weapons, heads whirled. For a moment after the flash everyone in the garage entryway glimpsed the outline, of the ship, flickering above the streets in a shower of blue sparks and burning rocket fragments; then it vanished again, to everyone but Schaefer. "That should get their attention l" He took off the mask and waved to the others. "Come on, let's move out! Get ready for 'em ! They'll be coming to see who took a shot at them!" "Move yer asses!" Carr shouted, and the motley collection of New York's worst stirred, rose, and moved. The little squad of New York's defenders trotted out into the street and found a thin scatter of people on both sidewalks-early risers and diehards from the night before who had been going about their business and had been drawn out by the explosion, curious about what new peculiarity the city had come up with. "Clear the streets!" Schaefer bellowed. "Now!" He gestured to Carr's recruits. "Half of you on one side of the street, the other half come with me, get the civilians out of here before the aliens arrive!" "You heard the man!" Carr shouted. He fired a burst in the air, half a dozen rounds. "Get the fuck outta here!" This action was schaefer's cup of tea, but christ, I was just a cop. Armed assaults on bug-eyed saucermen was never part of the job description. A security guard emerged from the shop behind him. "Hey, Mac," the rent-a-cop called, "what's going on? Who the hell are you?" "Police," Rasche said, fishing his ID from his pocket and flashing the badge. "We're being attacked by monsters from outer space." "Oh jesus," the guard said after a pause. "Not on a sale dauu!" Rasche turned. "Look, bozo, you asked," he said. "This is for real, okay? You're in a fucking war zone." Schaefer had HIS reasons for being on the force...I had mine. The chill I felt was more than the breeze drifting in from the east. It was fear. I had a wife- children...I wanted to make persion...find a place out in the country. I wanted to hear my kids laugh one more time. I didn't want to die. Rasche was beginning to think seriously about why he was still there, why he hadn't turned and run for his life, when he heard sirens. "Oh, damn," he said. Someone must have called in about the explosion and the lunatics running around with guns. Maybe a prowl car had seen something. Whatever the reason, the cops were coming. And somehow Rasche didn't think they were coming to join the war against the monsters. The familiar blue cars were charging up Third Avenue in an unbroken phalanx, lights flashing and sirens at full blast-and Rasche was in deep shit with the department, he knew that. McComb was in with the feds on this, siding with the monsters in hopes they'd go home happy-and even if no one cared about that, Rasche had walked off with about half a ton of illegal heavy weapons from the police lab, and he'd passed them out to a bunch of the worst hoods in the city. And sure enough, just as Rasche had expected, it was Captain McComb, wearing a flak jacket and carrying a bullhorn, who climbed out of the lead unit. "This is Captain McComb of the New York Police Department!" he announced. "We have the area sealed off-you're surrounded. You have ten seconds to throw down your weapons and give yourselves up, and then we're coming in after you!" Schaefer stepped off the curb, M-16 in one hand, the alien mask in the other. "You don't know what you're doing, McComb!" he called. "Those things have to be stopped!" "What in hell . . . ?" McComb asked. He snatched a shotgun from the car and pointed it at Schaefer. "Schaefer? You're running this?" "Someone has to!" "You've lost it this time, Schaefer!" McComb shouted. "I'll probably make assistant chief for taking you out-and I'm going to enjoy it!" He raised the shotgun. "Last chance, Schaefer--drop the . . ." Then, as Rasche watched from the camera-shop doorway, several things happened simultaneously. Schaefer suddenly jerked his head sideways and clutched at his neck, at the device embedded there. McComb stopped in midsentence and stared, open mouthed, up the avenue. A shadow appeared from nowhere, instantly covering the full width of the avenue, blocking out the pink light of dawn. Schaefer twisted to look behind himself, up at the immense spaceship that rested heavily on the pavement of Third Avenue, its central landing rib gouging into the asphalt, its curving surfaces shading the street and almost touching the buildings on either side. An oily black stain on the white hull, back near the tail, marked where Schaefer's RPG had hit it. "Well, what do you know," Schaefer said. "Company! " For a few seconds everyone on the street or huddled in the doorways stared silently up at the ship. It had not landed; it had simply appeared. Rasche realized it must have landed while still invisible, and once it was down, the aliens had turned their gadget off. He felt a sudden renewed chill. If the creatures were giving up an advantage like that . . . Then the first blast struck-one of the police cruisers exploded in blue-white fire and, an instant later, exploded again in yellow flame as the gas tank detonated. Cops ducked and dived in all directions, looking for cover. That had apparently been a test shot; before the echoes had died, away the actual barrage began. Blue-white flared up on all sides as vehicles were scattered like toys and building facades crumbled. Schaefer ran, dodged, and dived for cover, landing beside Rasche in the sheltered doorway of the camera shop. "Jesus," he said as he sprawled on the sidewalk, "I think they're upset." "This isn't just for fun, Schaefer!" Rasche shouted. "They're going to bring down half the city!" "You know," he said thoughtfully, "maybe I was wrong-maybe they aren't upset. I think they're just clearing the area so we won't ambush 'em as they emerge. Hell, if they chase enough people away, maybe I'll finally be able to afford a decent apartment! " Rasche was too shocked to react to Schaefer's attempt at humor. Out in the street Captain McComb crouched by one of the cars that was still intact and shouted into the radio, "Sweet Jesus, we need help up here! I've never seen anything like it-that son of a bitch Philips . . ." Then, abruptly, the barrage stopped; echoes rolled away down the avenue and up the streets on either side. In the sudden silence the survivors on the ground peered cautiously from whatever shelter they had found. "Now what?" Rasche asked. "Now they come out after us," Schaefer replied. "That was just to drive us back. Look." Rasche looked and saw an opening appear in the side of the ship. Something shimmered in the shadow there; then the shimmer dropped to the street below. A second shimmer followed, and a third . . . Rasche ducked back out of sight. McComb frantically radioed for backup. "Sweet jesus--we need hel down here....I've never seen anything like it!" And then, suddenly, one of the creatures was standing over him, looking down, its face hidden behind a metal mask. "What . . . what are you?" McComb gasped. "P--please!" The monster didn't answer. The weapon on its shoulder swiveled, aimed, and fired, blowing a hole through Captain McComb's chest. "There's one of 'em!" one of Carr's men shouted. "Over there!" He lifted his Uzi and sprayed bullets at the creature standing over the dead cop. It flickered and vanished. The hood stopped firing, lowered the gun, and stared. "Jesus," he said, "he disapp-" Then the blue-white bolt from the shoulder cannon tore through his side, spinning him off his feet; he was dead by the time he hit the sidewalk. "McComb's dead!" Rasche shouted. "And we're next, if we don't keep moving," Schaefer said. He stared through the mask. "They're not keeping any kind of formation, they're just milling around out there, picking targets at random-if we can lay down a fire pattern, drive 'em back. . ." He looked around for allies and spotted a cluster of Carr's men, spraying bullets in all directions. "Lay down a pattern, " he shouted. "Push them back toward the ship!" The thugs paid no attention; Schaefer swore and charged out toward them, firing wildly to cover his own movements. He had almost reached the group of outlaws when the shape of one of the aliens, red and gold through the mask, reared up before him. "Oh, shit . . ." The thing hit him with the back of its hand, sending him flying; then, when he landed, it stepped over to him, reached down, and snatched the mask away from him. That finally got the attention of the nearby humans, and a barrage of gunfire drove the monster away before it could finish him. "Damn!" Schaefer said as he crawled for shelter. "helmet's gone-we're blind, and they know it!" Blue-white cannon fire took down two of Carr's recruits, and in the instant's distraction Rasche dashed forward to help Schaefer up from the pavement. Together, the two ran for shelter. A wild shot tore through Rasche's shoulder, and he fell back, shattering what remained of a broken display window. Schaefer called his name and looked wildly about for somewhere he could take his fallen partner, somewhere safe. He didn't see anything like safety, but he did see reinforcements coming. At least he hoped they were reinforcements. A squad of men in olive drab were charging up Third Avenue, M-16's firing. And one of the men, Schaefer saw, was General Philips. "Schaefer!" the old man called. "Goddamn you, you son of a bitch, you had to do this the hard way! The shit's really hit the fan now!" "What's next, General?" Schaefer shouted back. "Gonna take out my boys for 'em? Still hoping to negotiate?" "Shit," Philips said. "Maybe that's what they want down in Washington, but I was never much of a diplomat. I may not have shown it, Schaefer, but I do know what side I'm on, and it isn't some goddamn monsters'-I've got gunships, helicopters, coming this way." "Think it'll help?" Schaefer asked. "You know how many ships they have, where they are?" "Nope," Philips replied. "Can't track 'em that well-they make our stealth technology look like bright-red billboards with targets on 'em. But goddammit, it's our planet!" The second-story wall blew out of the building above them just then; neither man had seen whether alien cannon fire or a wild shot from one of the defenders' heavier weapons was responsible, but they both bent over and sheltered their heads with their arms as debris pelted them. Then Philips looked up and looked around. "Can't see a goddamn sign of 'em," he said. "These damned foreigners are really starting to stick in my craw-why don't the yellow bastards show themselves?" "Why should they?" Schaefer asked as he scanned the street. "It's . . . Wait a minute." Something had caught his eye, and combined with a memory. "You watch Rasche," he said. He ran forward into the street before Philips could react, and fired atthe nearest hydrant. Water sprayed out, against the side of a burning cruiser, and then up, arcing into the street; as the water showered back, blue sparks crawled across shimmering outlines, and two alien monsters appeared. Carr, a block away, saw what Schaefer had done; he didn't have a wrench, but he had something else-he blew the top off another hydrant, sending another spray of water spilling into the street. That evened things up a little both soldiers and gang bangers had targets now. Big, fast-moving, armored targets, but targets. Then the first chopper came into view over the rooftops, and Philips began shouting, "Clear the streets! Clear the streets, goddammit!" Rasche forced himself to sit up, to watch what was happening. Everything seemed darker than it should have been-the dawn seemed almost to have faded back into night. Rasche hoped his eyes were okay. He blinked and looked out at an expanse of twisted metal, burning wreckage, and bloody corpses. Human fighters were dodging and hiding, fading away, while the aliens stood proudly in the street, moving in sudden quick zigzags whenever they sensed a threat or a target. One was closing in on Schaefer, cutting off each attempt at retreat the big man made, cornering him against the building on the opposite side of the street from Rasche's perch. "Schaefer!" Rasche shouted, but his shout was lost in a sudden new, louder rumble from overhead. He looked up, past the spaceship, past the rooftops, past the V formation of a half-dozen gunships, at the black clouds above. Lightning flashed, and thunder rumbled again, and the first fat drops of rain spattered down. A cool wind blew in from the side streets, rustling clothing, sending litter skittering in the gutters, twisting the flames from the wrecked vehicles into spirals. The heat wave had finally broken. The predatory creature pursuing Schaefer stopped, and like Rasche, it looked upward. All around, the aliens stopped. Rasche watched them, watched them considering the weather, the choppers, the city. He wondered if they were communicating with each other somehow-they weren't speaking, but maybe they were telepathic, maybe they could read each other's scents, or heat patterns. Everything was a blure....something wet was dripping down my face. But I didn't need to see to know the general's choppers were coming. I could feel them pounding their way up fifth avenue. Schaefer had no love for the city, his job, or even the people-- so why the hell did he do it? When it was over, would anyone care? Or would they turn back to their televisions, pleased that their reception had finally cleared up? Then I remembered what he'd said about the beast....the beast in all of us. Maybe the hunt is their way of keeping the beast alive. Maybe this was was Schaefer's way of doing the same. Then something exploded. And summer was over. The rain was cool. Almost soothing. Something seemed to change. It was a monster's laugh, but it was human enough that we all caught the joke....the showdown had turned into a free-for-all. The one that had cornered Schaefer turned back toward the detective for a moment. Its right claw lashed out, as it picked the homing device from Schaefer's neck. Schaefer screamed, fell to his knees, and clutched at a bleeding wound-but the blood was seeping, not spouting; the carotid had not been cut. He knelt, his hand on his neck, and watched as the alien hunters marched back to their ship. One by one, they leaped lightly up into the open hatch, casually jumping a height no human could possibly manage unassisted. Three of the things had been taken down in the fighting, one way or another; the survivors gathered these three up as they returned to the ship. The humans watched as the monsters withdrew, taking their dead with them. When the last of the aliens was aboard and the hatchway closed, the humans emerged slowly from cover, moving warily out into the open. Unearthly engines screamed, and the spaceship began to move, to push south down Third Avenue, then to rise, quickly gathering speed and altitude; its belly fin sliced a yard-wide twenty-foot path through the asphalt before coming clear. The ship vanished from sight before it had cleared the buildings on either side, and the sound cut off abruptly, as well-the invisibility screen was back in place. "Maybe . . . maybe we scared them off," Philips said. "They're too smart to start a fight they can't finish." "Can't finish?" Schaefer stared at Philips in disbelief. "Shit, they could have scragged the entire city without breaking a sweat if that was what they wanted." "So why didn't they?" Carr asked. "Because that's not what they were here for," Schaefer said, looking upward to where the ship was faintly visible as a hole in the intensifying rain. "They weren't here to wreck the city, they were here to have a good time. It got out of hand, though-it wasn't sport anymore. It's wet, it's cold-it's just no more fun." He turned away. "That's what they wanted, General-no invasions, no treaties, just some good of boys out on a tear. And when it isn't fun anymore, you pack up and go home. You go look at your fancy radar, General, I'll bet the whole fleet's leaving." He grimaced. "And, Carr, I'd suggest you get lost," he said. "Lunchtime today, I'm coming after you, but right now you're still clear as far as I'm concerned." Carr grinned. "See you then, Schaefer," he said. He turned away and began swaggering west on Thirty-seventh, a machine gun on his shoulder, and Schaefer and the soldiers just watched him go. The other surviving outlaws also began to fade away into the side streets, some taking their weapons, others dropping them here and there along the avenue. Schaefer turned back to Philips. "General, call off your choppers-hunting season's over, and the hunters are going home." He grimaced. "See you next year." Schaefer looked around as well and saw half-demolished buildings on either side, wreckage strewn along a dozen blocks of pavement, abandoned weapons and dead bodies lying about, not yet collected or covered. Fires were still burning in several places, despite the steady rain; the water running in the gutters was dark with blood and ash. "Somebody call Rand McNally -- their tourist brochures are gonna need a quick rewrite," Schaefer said. He found RAsche, helped him up. "Come on, partner, let's get you out of here." "Partner, my ass," Rasche said. "Only until I have a chance to resign-to hell with making pension. Soon as they let me out, I'm taking Shari and the kids and going somewhere safe you know, Beirut, South Central Los Angles , anywhere except New York." Schaefer smiled down at him-the warmest smile Rasche had ever seen on that stony face. "Suit yourself," Schaefer said. "You done good here." Then he turned to Philips, who had been directing the military side of the mopping up. "Starting the cover-up?" he asked. "Best as we can," Philips said. "After all, you think we can tell anyone what happened here? We've got no evidence-those things didn't leave any of their fancy hats behind, not so much as a pocketknife. No one's gonna believe it unless they saw it." "Seems to me you have enough witnesses on this one. You could convince people if you tried." Philips shook his head. "We don't want to convince anyone. What good would it do? We chased the bastards away" "They'll be back," Schaefer said. "You seem mighty damn sure of that. You seem to think you understand these critters." Schaefer looked up at the clouds. "I think I do understand them, General. They're hunters. If a few hunters run up against the wrong prey and get themselves killed, you don't shut down the game preserve-you just issue a few warnings, make sure the next group's got the best equipment and some common sense. And the other hunters aren't scared off, you must know that. They take it as a challenge. We've made Earth more fun than ever, do you realize that? Sure, they lost a few, but that just adds excitement. The cities have the jungles beat all to hell for excitement. I figure they tried New York as an experiment, and believe me, from their point of view it was a rip-roaring success. So you bet on it, General, they'll be back, all right, and in a city. Maybe not here in New York, but somewhere-and the next batch may be tougher." "And we're gonna try like hell to be ready for 'em," Philips said. "But you're keeping it hushed up?" Schaefer asked. "You aren't going to warn anyone?" Philips shook his head. "Nope. We issue warnings, trigger-happy farmers will start shooting their neighbors every time it gets warm. We'll leave it to the professionals to handle this." He sighed. "It'd be easier if we understood something about that, technology of theirs." "Maybe next time you can get your hands on some samples," Schaefer said. He looked around. "So how are you going to explain this?" "Plane crash," Philips said immediately. "Fighter came down, blew up, threw a bunch of ammunition around. Terrorist sabotage suspected. Think it'll play?" Schaefer stared at him for a moment, then back at the wreckage. "Yeah, that'll play," he said. He shook his head. "Good luck with your lies, General." Then he started walking away, heading uptown toward the nearest subway entrance. "Hey," Philips called angrily, "wait a minute, where the hell do you think you're going? We've got some questions for you, Schaefer!" "Stuff it, General," Schaefer called back. "Goddammit, Schaefer," the old man shouted, "Manhattan's a disaster area, a dozen blocks of midtown have been leveled, and you just walk away? New York will never be the same!" Schaefer paused and turned back. He smiled at Philips, not the warm smile he'd given Rasche, but an expression that might as well have been carved from ice. "You say that as if it were a bad thing." PREDATOR: CONCRETE JUNGLE was written by Mark Verheiden, with art by Chris Warner, Ron Randall, Sam de la Rosa, Randy Emberlin and Chris Chalenor. The novelization was written by Nathan Archer. This was the first Predator story to follow the original Predator film, published by Dark Horse Comics in 1989, making its way to fans a year before the sequel, which used a similar concept of a Predator hunting in a major city. Detective Schaefer, for some time, became a key character featured in the comic series, also appearing in the stories Predator: Cold War, Predator: Dark River, and recently, made a return in PREDATOR: HUNTERS III. For more on Concrete Jungle, including a profile on Schaefer, General Phillips' secrets operations to monitor Yautja activity, and the jungle showdown between the detective and the hunter, please see the playlist in on the endscreen and linked in the description below. As always, I'd like to Thank you very much for watching. I really appreciate it, and If you enjoyed this video, please make sure to give it a like, and you can also subscribe for all the latest videos from the channel. A very, very special thanks goes out to Weyland Yutani Executives EmYaruk, Mark Fox, and in the Ellen Ripley Tier of Excellence, Lady Anne. My thanks also goes out to the Hive Queens, Ronni Jensen, Alyssane, and Jackson roesch-- all part of the Patreon Hive. If you'd like to join the hive and support the channel, check out my Patreon page for exclusive posts and contests. In the meantime you can catch up with Alien Theory over social media- follow @Alien_Theory on Twitter, and @AlienTheoryYT on Facebook and Instagram for more. And until next time, this is Alien Theory, signing off.

Channel: Alien Theory

Views: 428,108

Keywords: concrete jungle, comic, predator

Id: vGUBqtqRnzw

Length: 126min 27sec (7587 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 20 2020