Airship Hunters (17 page)

“Are you mad, Cabot? If that’s the... if it’s... I won’t sit here and—”

The thing flung itself abruptly from its hiding spot, running directly toward them, howling, arms extended in front of it.

Valiantine fired. The thing flinched from the bullet’s impact on its shoulder, but kept moving.

The lieutenant took an instinctual step backwards, his foot slipping on the loose rock shelving behind him. A drop-off. They were near a drop-off. But how far down did it go?

Cabot discharged his own pistol. The thing’s left arm flew up in a strange way. It howled in pain, but did not slow in its headlong sprint toward them.

Valiantine grabbed at a large, forked branch that lay on the rock next to him. The very second he set its one end into the ground by his feet, pointing its fork upward, the great, dark figure was upon him.

Catching it with the branch, he put all his strength into taking the impact of the flying body. A loud crack like a gunshot told him the branch snapped under the pressure, but he tried to use his assailant’s momentum to drive it past him.

The figure flew over his head, a huge black monstrosity. Something caught at his scalp and he felt a sharp pain there.

Howling like an Irish banshee, the creature toppled past the rock shelf and down into even deeper darkness below it.

Huffing and puffing, Valiantine finally came to rest on solid ground many yards from his starting point. Fear had propelled him from the site of the attack, but it had subsided and he felt he could stop running with some modicum of safety.

He was not ashamed of allowing fear overtake him; he knew well that it had saved his life on other occasions and when to allow it free rein.

Breathing somewhat more regularly, he looked around and found himself immersed in almost total darkness. He tasted something salty on his lips, felt a warm, wet sensation on his scalp and forehead, and knew he was bleeding. This was confirmed when he reached up and probed the wound on his head; it was long and fairly deep, slick with blood.

The lieutenant let out a sigh, his fingers trembling slightly. A jolt of panic coursed through him, but he fought it back and tried to discern his surroundings, realizing with a start that he was alone.

“Cabot!” It came out of him with more volume than he intended. When he received no reply, he began to grow angry. “Cabot, dammit; where are you?”

“Here...”

The voice of his partner came from somewhere nearby, and from a slightly higher elevation than that which he currently occupied. He started to move toward it, pushing aside thick vegetation and colliding with tree trunks. Finally, he saw night sky and stars.

The silhouette of Cabot stood out against the sky; Valiantine could tell his partner was looking back over his shoulder at him, but also pointing to something he did not immediately see at first.

“There,” the Treasury man said, calmly, as if pointing out another wild turkey or a peculiarly colored gentian.

Valiantine followed the line of Cabot’s index finger up and toward the mountain. He saw the light his partner indicated.

Valiantine reached Cabot and they stood shoulder to shoulder, gazing at it, a mildly bright orb of illumination that seemed to bounce a bit in the air, not unlike a child’s balloon on string, buffeted by a spring breeze.

“I’m sorry I could not shoot at first,” Cabot said. “But after what I saw in Kentucky...”

“Forget it,” Valiantine said. “Damn thing got me good, though.”

He sensed that Cabot turned toward him in the darkness. “Bad?”

“No,” the lieutenant replied, “I said ‘good.’ It struck me a winning blow. I’m bleeding. Badly.”

“Then let’s—”

Valiantine cut him off by placing one hand on the man’s arm and turning him to look back at the light, or the absence thereof. It had gone out.

In its place stood a structure, a high tower of a sort.

“No sounds,” Cabot said. Valiantine thought he was urging him to be quiet, but realized his partner meant to point out the complete absence of noise in the area. They were encased in a zone of absolute silence: no birds, no insects, nothing.

All at once, a light blinked on in the sky to the south of their position, drawing their attention from the tower. There was no way to discern the distance or size of it, but the light did not falter, merely glowed steadily.

Suddenly, the new light began to blink on and off. From their vantage point, the two agents could see the tower and the light in the sky were related, and the latter seemed to be trying to signal to the former.

“Code?” the lieutenant asked, in awe of the spectacle despite himself.

Cabot wagged his head. “None that I know of. Not Morse, though there is...”

The tower light returned, a quick burst that disappeared as quickly as it came. A heartbeat or two later, the other light went away. Darkness prevailed again.

“Let’s get in closer to that tower.” Valiantine pointed to their right, and Cabot seemed to take his meaning: skirt the small clearing in front of the structure and stay to the tree line.

With wary glances skyward, they inched closer to the base of the tower.

“That was answer and response,” Cabot noted. Valiantine grunted his agreement.

When they got within twenty feet of the tower, they observed the structure. Constructed of stone block and immense lengths of wood, Valiantine had never seen anything quite like it. He could not fathom how it could have been built so far up the mountainside, though he admired its stout look and obvious structural integrity. Past that, its architectural style defied his categorization. It appeared wholly alien to him, though he’d been around the world and seen much in his career.

From its extensive weathering and cracking, they found the tower’s base to be older than the rest of the structure, guessing it to be at least thirty years old or more. Cabot opined that it may have been built during the war, or shortly before it.

The Treasury man also pointed out the dome that sat at the top of the tower, some one hundred feet above the structure’s base. It looked to be made entirely of metal, with gigantic seams running from its top, central point to its circumference.

“Good Lord,” Valiantine whispered, “is that an observatory?”

They sat in silence for several minutes, assessing the scene, and watching the night sky for the return of the light. Either something had been approaching the tower and completed its flight in total darkness, or it still hung in space at some unknown distance from the structure, waiting for who knew what.

“We need to get in there,” Valiantine said, nodding. “This may be the key to it all.”

The two men continued their trek along the tree line and carefully approached the tower’s base. Touching it, feeling along the length of its stone construction, Valiantine felt justified in his guess at its age; it was clear that the tower was built atop the foundation of an older structure. Though it appeared strange in its design, its materials did not show the extensive age of its base.

“If we find there’s someone inside this,” Cabot began, pointing at what looked to be a doorway set into the base, “we must assume they may be joined by others.” The younger man tipped his chin upward to indicate the night sky to the south.

“Agreed,” Valiantine said. Finding a wide metal door with a handle, he pulled on it and found it unlocked.

With Cabot right behind him, they entered the tower.

Five sets of eyes turned their way. Valiantine could see they were not expected.

The interior of the tower was lit, but by what means was not immediately evident. The air was hazy, even murky; it felt very familiar to the lieutenant. The room they’d entered was fairly large, a square that seemed to occupy the entire base of the structure, with a high ceiling that he wanted to observe, but didn’t dare take his eyes from the tower’s inhabitants.

There were four men and a woman. Each of them wore a one-piece garment that covered them from neck to toe, a comfortable looking arrangement with no clear buttons or fasteners. Valiantine thought the fabric looked something like what they’d found in Kentucky, or one of the samples, at least. The men wore their hair short, cropped close to the scalp; the woman sported a short bob.

One of the men stepped toward the agents. When he did, Valiantine caught sight of a corner of the immaculately clean room that was strewn with straw and featured a large, heavy chain bolted by one end to the wall.

The room was silent save for the soft strains of a symphony that he didn’t immediately recognize. This too, like the illumination and the haze, presented no clear source.

“I... I don’t understand...” the man said, stopping roughly ten feet from the agents. “How did you get up here?”

Valiantine produced his pistol, pointed it at the man. Out of the corner of the eye he saw Cabot did likewise.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “Please identify yourselves.”

The man hesitated. Valiantine caught a quick, minute glance upward. Risking it, he turned his own eyes to the ceiling of the room and discovered there wasn’t one. Above them, the walls of the tower stretched up to what seemed to be the metal dome they saw from the outside, but he couldn’t be sure, for the damnable haze was thicker in the space. He also saw what looked to be stairs that wound around the inside of the tower.

Movement drew his eyes back to the group in front of him. The woman had stepped forward and past the man.

“You cannot be here,” she said in a honeyed voice, yet with no accompanying smile.

“We are Federal agents,” Cabot said, holding up his badge with one hand, his pistol never wavering from the group. “This is all very peculiar.”

Valiantine’s head swam and the scene before him lurched suddenly. He resisted an urge to reach up and touch the dried blood on his forehead, to wipe it away and rearrange himself.
What a fright I must look
, he thought to himself.
Stay awake, Michael!

He took a step toward the woman, his pistol pointed at her midsection. She was very handsome, her appealing figure straining at her coveralls in an almost obscene manner. Valiantine, maddened by the unbidden observation, shoved it aside and raised his pistol higher.

“You are under arrest, all of you,” he told the group, squeezing the grip of his weapon until it bit into his hand. “We must determine the purpose of this operation.”

“On what charge?” the woman asked.

Behind her, one of the men moved to the wall closest to Valiantine and reached out to grasp at a large flywheel set there.

Someone discharged a pistol. There was a flash and the explosive sound and the man was flung backward, blood fountaining from his shoulder.

Valiantine saw a small puff of smoke arise from his weapon and realized it was he who had fired.

All at once, the woman was on him, clawing at his coat, wrestling with him for the pistol.

The room spun like a carousel. Someone grabbed him from behind. An arm tightened around his throat as he pulled at it, trying to release the pressure on his windpipe. He thought he heard Cabot grunt in either exertion or pain.

The haze seemed to thicken, to fill the room and choke him. Or was it the arm around his neck that was choking the breath from him? He couldn’t tell. He felt the pistol taken from him and the woman’s eyes upon him, staring at his face, frowning slightly as darkness veiled her from him.

He heard words: “We are compromised.” And then nothing.

Valiantine sat up. Looking around he saw he was alone, lying on the mountainside as if he’d simply been tired and taken a nap.

Daylight. He guessed it to be late morning, by the position of the sun in the sky.

Leaping up, Valiantine caught himself from falling back down. He touched his head and his scalp and found quite a bit of dried blood. And Cabot. He’d lost his partner, too.

Why had he not been taken prisoner, he wondered, or killed outright for that matter? Unless there was some reason that he, and he hoped Cabot, were not to be held or murdered by those in the tower?

He began to run from the spot where he lay, but forced himself to stop and focus his thoughts. He’d been robbed of time, precious time, and he groaned inwardly at all that may have transpired since their encounter at the tower.

The tower. It appeared in his brain like a thunderbolt from Zeus. Looking around, Valiantine observed the landscape, trying to determine where exactly on Massanutten he was, and if he could find his way back to the tower. After a moment, he felt fairly certain he knew the way. His memory was good for landmarks, a trait that served him well in his duties as a covert agent for the United States Army.

Cabot. Where the hell was he, though?

Sickened at being overwhelmed by outside forces once again and by losing time, the lieutenant stalked off, his eyes searching for the path up the mountain.

Making his way through a copse of trees, he heard voices somewhere ahead of him. Nearing their source, he crept up on the spot to see several figures menacing a lone man.

Agent Cabot was down on one knee, his back to a large rock. Before him, some twenty feet away, stood a group of twelve men. They appeared to be uniformed soldiers, at first glance, but it all felt very, very wrong to Valiantine.