dark ops 3 - Renegade (2 page)

“Smooth?” Vapor’s voice filled the headset. “Report up.”

Mason grappled for the button to respond while sidestepping a loose crate cartwheeling his way. The mesh net whipped around his leg and jerked him toward the open back. His feet shot out from under him.

“Smooth, damn it, radio up—”

His mic went silent. The cord rattled, useless and unplugged. His helmeted head whacked the deck, sparking a fresh batch of stars to his view of the night sky.

He slapped his hands along the metal grating, grappling for something, anything to slow the drag toward the back. Would his safety harness hooked to the wall hold? Under normal circumstances, sure. These weren’t normal circumstances. Everything was a first-ever test at unheard-of speed.

He vise-gripped the edge of a seat. The pallet dragged at his leg. He kept his eyes focused ahead, squeezing down panic, hoping, praying Vapor or Hotwire would come back to check. His arms screamed in their sockets, and his legs burned from being stretched by the weight of the pallet teetering on the edge of the back hatch.

Don’t give up. Hang on.

The bulkhead opening filled with a shadow. Thank God. The copilot—Hotwire—roared into view, his face covered by an oxygen mask, any sounds swallowed up by the vortex of wind.

Mason’s fingers slipped. The weight, the force, the speed, it was all too much. “Oh, shit.”

He pulled his arms in tight as the pallet raked him along the metal floor like a hunk of cheddar against a grater. Ah damn, what about his safety harness? The strap around his waist pulled taut. An image of his body ripped in half came to mind, a snapshot that would forever stay in safety manuals to warn others of the hazards of fucking up. Not that he knew what he’d done wrong. That would be for others to decide after they buried the two halves of him in a wooden box.

Hotwire hooked his own safety belt on the run and reached. So close. Not close enough.

Mason’s harness popped free from around his waist. Whomp. The air sucked at him like a vacuum. He flew out of the back of the plane at hypersonic speed, only to stop short when he slammed against the pallet, his leg still lashed by mesh. Pain detonated throughout him. Then his stomach plummeted faster than his body.

Happy fucking New Year.

Instincts on overdrive, he wrapped his arms around the pallet. The pressure on his body eased as the pallet continued a free fall downward into the inky night. His flight suit whipped against him. Images of his ex-wife flashed though his head along with regret. A shiver iced through his veins. Was he dying?

No. The wind and altitude caused the cold. Think, damn it. Don’t surrender to the whole life review death march.

Either he could do nothing and pray that when the larger chute opened it didn’t batter him to death against the pallet, or he could free his leg from the netting, kick away from the pallet, and use his own parachute, provided it hadn’t been damaged during the haul out the back of the plane.

His options sucked ass, but at least he was still alive to fight. Getting clear of the damaged pallet seemed wisest. Determination fueled his freezing limbs. Vertigo threatened to overtake him as he kicked to untangle his boot from the netting. He jerked, pulled, and strained until yes, his leg came free.

“Argh!” Mason grunted, muscles burning.

He shoved away just as the large chute deployed. His body plummeted, pinwheeling. The pallet was jerked to a stall by the chute, tearing apart in a shower of wood and supplies. Good God, he would have been drawn and quartered.

He reined himself in, struggling to control the fall while gauging his surroundings, but the solitary void combined with an eerie silence. How much farther until he landed? If he pulled the cord too soon, he could float forever with no sense of direction, ending up lost deep in the desert.

Screw it. Better too early than waiting too long and shattering every bone in his body by not using his parachute soon enough. He reached down, feeling along his waist until he found the handle.

He yanked. Cords whistled past and overhead. Nylon rippled upward until . . . whomp.

Air filled the chute and pulled him. Hard. The rapid stall knocked the wind out of him and, damn it to hell, crushed his left nut under the leg strap.

He shook his head to clear his thoughts, no time to piss and moan. He grabbed a riser and hefted into a one-arm pull-up to ease pressure on the strap. Ahhh, better, much better. Pain eased. His brain revved.

Now, how did that “you just fucked up bad and are now floating toward the earth” checklist go?

Canopy. His eyes adjusting to the dark, he checked the canopy, and there were no rips, no tears, not even the dreaded Mae West, where a line looped over the chute for a double bubble effect.

Visor. Little chance of landing in a tree here, so he pulled the visor up.

Mask. He stripped his oxygen mask off his face, unhooked the connectors on his chest, and pitched it away into the abyss.

Seat kit. Strapped to his butt, it contained a raft. Not much call for that in the desert. He opened the connector and ditched the raft, too.

LPUs. Life preserver units. He thumbed the horse collar LPU around his neck and down his chest, pulled the inflate tabs, and another high-pressure bottle inflated the floatie. It might cushion the landing and save a few broken ribs, although no telling what he might have already busted back in the plane. Thank goodness for the adrenaline numbing his system.

What next? Oh yeah. Steer. Damn, he was punch drunk. He reached up for the risers and grappled until he wrapped his fingers around the steering handles.

The next step? Prepare. Yeah, he was so prepared to smack into the ground he could barely see. He scanned below as best he could, checking out the sand, sand, sand, occasional bundle of desert scrub, staying clear of the distant mountains. Okay, dude. Final step.

Land. He put his eyes on the horizon and bent his knees slightly, ready to perform the perfect PLF, parachute landing fall. The ground roared up to meet him. He prepped for . . . the . . . impact.

Balls of the feet.

Side of the leg and butt.

Side of the arm and shoulder.

Complete.

Mason lay on the gritty sand, stunned. No harm in lying still for a few and rejoicing in the fact that he would live to fly and make love again. There wasn’t any need to rush out of here just yet. He wasn’t in enemy territory.

Although he didn’t have a clue exactly what piece of the Nevada desert he currently occupied. His tracking device would bring help though. Rescue would show up in an hour or so. Maybe by then he could stand without whimpering like a baby.

He shrugged free of his parachute and LPU one miserable groan at a time. Already he could feel the bruises rising to the surface. He would probably resemble a Smurf by morning, but at least he still had all his limbs, and no bones rattled around inside him—that he could tell.

His teeth chattered, though. From the freezing cold of a winter desert night, or from shock? Either way, he needed to get moving. He pushed to his feet, stumbling for a second before the horizon stopped bobbling.

A siren wailed in the distance.

Already? Perhaps this flight experience wouldn’t suck so much after all. Even bad sex could be rescued with a satisfying ending.

He blinked to clear his eyesight. Twin beams of light stretched ahead of a Ford F-150, blinding him as the vehicle approached. He shielded his eyes with one hand and waved his other arm. Ouch. Fuck.

A loudspeaker squeaked and crackled to life. “Get back down on the ground. Lie flat on your stomach,” a tinny voice ordered. “If you move at all, you will be shot.”

Shot? What the hell? Had he landed in some survivalist kook’s farm?

But that wouldn’t explain the siren. He must have drifted into restricted territory, not surprising, since they flew many of their secret test missions in secured areas. The truck screeched to a halt, and someone wearing camo stepped out. A flashlight held at shoulder level kept him from seeing the face, but he could discern an M4 carbine at hip level well enough.

He shouted, “Don’t shoot. I’m not armed, and I’m not resisting.”

“Stay on the ground,” the voice behind the light barked.

A female voice?

Okay, so much for his PC rating today. He’d assumed the security cop was a male, not that it made any difference one way or the other. He respected the power of that M4.

Mason flattened his belly to the desert floor, arms extended over his head. A knee plowed deep in the small of his back. If he didn’t have a bruised kidney before, he sure did now.

A cold muzzle pressed against his skull. All right, then. The knee didn’t hurt so much after all.

“Hands behind you, nice and slow.” The lady cop’s husky voice heated his neck. “So, flyboy, do you want to tell me what you’re doing out here in Area 51?”

Jill Walczak had a secret. But she was used to keeping secrets in her current job as one of the highly classified civilian security forces contracted to patrol the perimeter of Area 51, anonymous guards known simply as “camo dudes.” With a serial killer on the loose trying to stir up the alien conspiracy nuts, she couldn’t afford to relax her guard for even a second.

“Flyboy? Nothing to say?” Keeping her M4 against his head, she carefully set her flashlight aside so it illuminated his face. “Okay, then. We’ll chitchat in a minute after we take care of business. I’m not telling you another time after this. Put your hands behind your back. Slowly. Grunt if you hear me.”

“Got it,” he growled, his discarded parachute ruffling and snapping in the night wind.

One broad hand in a flight glove slid along the parched earth and tucked against his lower spine. His other hand started to move, inching a little too close to the flashlight for her peace of mind.

“Touch that flashlight, and I’ll shoot you in the wrist.”

His fingers froze.

Then he started moving his arm again, slowly, not so much as a flinch or suspicious move. Thus far he was the perfect detainee. She hoped he would stay that way.

Quickly, she set aside her weapon, locked the hand-cuffs around his wrists, and regained control of her M4. She was toned and trained these days, but she knew better than to underestimate the hard-muscled man in her custody. She was alone out here in the desert tonight, and she’d driven deeper in Area 51 than was normally acceptable, all because of an anonymous tip.

Was the parachuting flyboy her “something spectacular and lethal on the horizon” that would lead her to the “Killer Alien”? Four victims—one man and three women—had shown up around Area 51 and nearby Nellis AFB, three of them dead in the past year, all attacked in a manner to make it appear linked to extraterrestrials.

She shivered. Desert winter nights were damn cold and desolate. But her chill settled deeper in her bones as she thought of how her friend had died.

Jill inched off her captive and scooped up her flashlight, wind kicking sand up until it stung her face. “The time for grunts has passed. Tell me what you’re doing in Dreamland.”

The flyboy kept his face down, nose to the gritty ground. “I work as a loadmaster and flight engineer in the U.S. Air Force. A cargo drop went to hell, and I got sucked out the back of the plane. The heavy wind tonight must have drifted me over into the box.”

The box. At least this aviator spoke the flyboy lingo for Area 51.

The man cleared his throat. “Hey, do you mind if I turn my face to the side?” His muffled voice rumbled low in the night air. “I’d rather not talk through a mouthful of sand.”

“Fair enough. But just your face.” She did not intend to end up like those three murdered souls, sliced like a science experiment. And around their dead bodies the killer had left an eerily undisturbed sand circle. “Slowly. Then I’ll need your name.”

She shifted her flashlight to his mug again. The more she kept the beam on him, the less visibility he would have in the dark to see her or attempt an escape. She swiped the piercing shaft of light over his face. The chill of darker thoughts eased.

Move over, Hugh Jackman.

The flyboy blinked fast, his green eyes glinting as she studied him more closely. Recognition tickled the back of her brain. She looked closer, taking in the smoothly handsome face. A tuft of dark hair twisted by a cowlick ramped in front as if refusing to submit to the military cut.

Yeah, she’d seen him around, all right.

The people working top secret jobs in this region shared certain facilities as budget savers. It wasn’t uncommon to pass someone in the mess hall multiple times and have no knowledge of the other person’s job or even name. They’d never been officially introduced . . . until now. “Who are you?”

“Tech Sergeant Mason Randolph.”

She’d heard him called a number of other things by the women dining at her table whom he’d winked at, smiled at, flirted with, dated. They’d called him names like Smooth, Loverboy, and lastly, That Jackass.