Alien Caller (36 page)

She gaped at
the rapidly growing arsenal, forgetting in her surprise to leave,
and he yelled at her again. It provoked an immediate reaction as
her temper flared once more, and he hated himself for doing it. But
he had no time to react, as he told himself. He had only barely
time to prepare, if that. Even as she screamed at him, he screamed
back louder, ordering her away from him in a way he would never
forgive himself for.

Finally she
gave in and fired up the truck.

As she drove
off in the four wheel drive, dirt flying everywhere, he heard her
still screaming at him that he was a bastard over the roar of the
engine, and regretted again how hard he had been with her. Deep
inside something within him was withering under her attack. But he
knew, and so did she whether she admitted it or not, that it was
for her protection, as well as his. The chances were that he might
die, though he didn’t tell her that, but she probably guessed. He
didn’t want her dead too. Especially not for something that was
entirely his fault.

He spent the
rest of the night preparing his forward defences, building
barricades and fortifying his fall back positions. The perimeter
alerts and surveillance equipment at least had been set up years
before when he first moved in. The flick of a switch and suddenly
he had the entire wood for at least a mile in every direction under
silent observation.

Naturally, the
house itself was far more secure than it looked. Giant steel pins
held the logs together while lashings of special resins bonded the
entire lot into solid walls and frames. Inside, the log walls had
been lined with good steel armour plate as had the roof. The doors
likewise were inches thick and triple bolted with thick slabs of
metal. The windows were bulletproof, blast proof and shock proof.
Both the windows and the sliding armour glass doors also had
sliding steel plates behind them that locked perfectly into place.
Behind the thin boards that stopped anyone gaining access to the
underneath of the house was a two foot thick steel reinforced
concrete wall that could double as house piles.

It had cost a
lot of money, time and sweat rebuilding the house to his
specifications, but that night he knew it had all been worth it.
Every cent. It was only a question of whether it had been
enough.

It was dawn by
the time that he finally felt prepared. Ready to face the battle he
should have finished a decade earlier. Of course the next part was
the wait, always the most difficult time. If Dimock followed his
traditional pattern he would attack hard and fast. Chances were
he’d use the maximum fire-power he could lay his hands on.

David rather
imagined he’d try for a helicopter gunship. Terrific fire power,
high speed, and able to attack from any direction, it was an ideal
attack vehicle. In all likelihood Dimock would still have some
connections to get hold of one. That was one thing about him. He
might be a psychopath who killed his allies as often as his
enemies, but he always seemed to have a lot of well-armed friends
willing to help him out. Chances were that was how he’d escaped the
top secret prison he’d been held in for the last seven years. The
likelihood was that he’d also killed a lot of people escaping.
Whether he needed to or not.

A chopper he
could deal with though. Sadly he knew Dimock would probably also
guess that he was ready for him. So he would probably have a backup
plan. Either a second line of assault or a way of surviving a
crash. But then he knew a chopper was only one possibility. There
were also tanks to consider, long range rocket attacks, and the
direct hostage taking approach. Anything to get him to come out of
his castle and fight on his ground.

If he tried the
last, David didn’t quite know what he’d do. But at least he’d made
sure that Cyrea was safe. He had no family to use against him, and
his nearer neighbours, all of them were aware of the Leinians'
presence and were all hopefully aboard the alien spaceship, which
even now should be preparing for emergency take-off. He had asked
Cyrea to see to that. She might hate him at the moment, but she
wasn’t stupid. She would do as he asked.

He spent the
morning waiting. Monitoring the surroundings through his
surveillance cameras and binoculars, and listening to the police
bands. The one thing he was sure of was that when Dimock approached
he would create confusion and chaos, and leave a body count higher
than a football score. The chances were the police would
respond.

By lunch time,
when still nothing had shown, he prepared himself a light lunch and
did a few exercises to keep the blood flowing. Waiting to die was
almost worse than dying he discovered with some surprise. But then
he’d never been good at waiting.

Then the phone
rang and David almost jumped out of his skin at the unexpected
sound. Then, once his heart had stopped thumping in his chest, he
picked it up gingerly, half afraid Dimock had already got there and
booby trapped it. But it didn’t explode, and instead Cyrea’s voice
came down the phone. Her people had tapped into the network long
before, and she was using it to try and reason with him. Of course
she was out of luck. The situation was anything but reasonable.

Instead he
tried to explain the true horror of the man that was coming, and
failed. Words could not describe such a monster. Or just how
dangerous he was. And much of the reason for his fear he simply
couldn’t tell her. It was a national secret.

Fate he
realized, could be a bastard. And this was one of those times. He
couldn’t afford Cyrea’s presence. The chances were that he was
going to die. He couldn’t let her die with him. But how could he
tell her that, when she would insist on being with him? Nor could
he tell her that Dimock was the only successful experiment that had
ever come out of the top secret labs that the government never
admitted to. His strength and speed had somehow been enhanced by a
cocktail of drugs and genetic research that had killed everyone
else. That too was a national secret as was the fact that human
experimentation had been done in contravention of the treaties. It
was also an international crime and a disgrace.

About all David
could tell her was that Dimock had ample reason to hate him. He
hated him first because David had been the one chosen to arrest him
when he’d been part of the CIA. He hated him more because David was
the one who had exposed him over a decade before, and proven to the
world that Dimock was running weapons, carrying out private
assassinations and profiteering on wars. In short David had taken
away his comfortable lifestyle in a single day. Those sins were
already grave enough to make Dimock want to kill him, as if he
needed a reason. But then David had killed Dimmock’s half brother.
For that sin David could never be forgiven.

Never mind that
Dimock’s half-brother had been a psycho who had tried to murder
most of Washington with biological weapons. That he had been a drug
crazed nutter who had attacked the party that came to arrest him
with sticks of dynamite. That when he had finally been wounded in
the thigh by David he had held on to the explosives for too long
and blown himself into the afterlife.

It didn’t even
matter that Dimock had no love for his younger brother. He had no
love for anybody at all. According to the shrinks like any
psychopath he had no ability to have regard for anybody but
himself. But as if to prove them wrong Dimock did have some regard
for his little brother. He saw him perhaps as some sort of mini
version of himself, and he claimed his half-brother’s every triumph
of murder and mayhem as a minor success of his own. So when David
had killed his brother, Dimock had taken that as a slap in the
face. Especially when he was just about to kill millions of people
for him and in the process make Dimock a god of destruction.

But those were
all once more national secrets he couldn’t tell Cyrea.

The
conversation turned rapidly from anger and fear to near hysteria,
as with every word he didn’t tell her, she understood one thing
more and more clearly. He thought he was going to die. He couldn’t
hide it, no matter how he tried and Cyrea could not accept the
idea. Nor could she accept that she couldn’t help. No matter how
many times he told her that she would spell his doom if Dimock got
her, it was something she couldn’t hear. It was true and horrible
beyond description to have to tell her that, but there was no
choice.

Cyrea wanted to
fight, and he told her she was out-gunned. Though he would have
desperately loved a ray gun, or anything that could cut a superman
in flaming halves in a split second, he couldn’t even ask her for
it. If he lost, Dimock would have a new weapon again. One that he
would use with horrifying effect. And the party would be exposed
with his failure. He couldn’t ask her for one.

Cyrea wanted to
bring her people with her, a war party if necessary, and he told
her they would all die horribly. She wanted to use their superior
technology and he had to tell her it was useless against someone
like Dimock, who needed none. He would use it against them. She
wanted to drag him to safety, anywhere on Earth, or off it. But
that too could never be an option. Dimock would never give up,
would never stop. He would begin by torturing his neighbours, and
anyone else who might have a clue as to where David was. Any clue.
Whether they knew anything or not. Whoever lived in his house would
always be at risk too, as he hunted for the previous owner. Then he
would move on, searching for anyone who’d ever known David. His
colleagues and friends.

And even if he
couldn’t find David, the one thing he would find out was about her
people. That much he could be guaranteed to torture out of the
locals. His neighbours would be in danger. Pretty quickly he would
find out about the party. Then they too would be in danger.
Terrible danger. They had technology he would want, weapons he
could use. And then the idea of being the first to kill an alien,
well he wouldn’t pass up that thrill. Murder was pleasure for
Dimock, torture and cannibalism, pure ecstasy.

Then their
mission would end. Dimock would care nothing for their mission. He
cared only for himself. And murder. But for both Cyrea’s people and
his own, it was important that it continue. Even David had finally
accepted that much. The loss if Dimock had his way would be
incalculable.

He had to be
stopped. Permanently and by David. Like it or not, this was one
battle David would have to face alone.

But then it
always had been. He knew that as he let Cyrea scream and eventually
wind down to tears. As terrible as this was, as awful as he was
being to the woman he loved, this was his duty, maybe his last
one.

There was
always a price for doing one’s duty properly. Sometimes it was
bearable, sometimes not. But it was always his duty.

He would not
fail.

Chapter
Thirteen

The assault
when it finally came was not what he had expected. It was fast, and
unbelievably deadly, as he had known it would be, but far more so
than he could ever have prepared for. Where Dimock had managed to
get an F16 from he couldn’t even guess.

The first
warning was the sonic shock wave as the jet broke the sound barrier
somewhere overhead, rattling his armour plate windows and shaking
the roof. David recognized the sound instantly for what it was, and
what it meant. It was Dimock, laughing at him. Telling him that no
matter how he’d prepared, it hadn’t been enough. He could well be
right.

Then came the
guns as Dimock returned in an attacking dive, opening up with the
canon. Armour piercing bullets that simply tore their way through
the reinforced structure of his house. David threw himself aside
and watched the bullets scream their way through where he had just
been. All around thunder shook the house as though it was made of
paper.

But while he
hadn’t expected a fighter jet, that didn’t mean David had no
defences against it. Though it took him a few seconds to remember
it. The same radars he’d set up for the helicopter gunships could
track a jet. And the same weapons could shoot it down, in theory.
It was only that the jet was far faster and more agile. It required
a different approach.

He grabbed the
mobile launcher and sprinted outside the second after the jet’s
noise started quieting down and he knew its pass was over. He'd
grabbed it in Afghanistan eight years before, from renegade Taliban
soldiers, although he had never thought he’d need the launcher. But
years of paranoia had meant he’d hung on to it after the mission
was over. It had been designed for use against helicopters,
particularly jet powered helicopter gunships, but in theory it
could heat seek anything. It was only the question of whether it
could keep up with a fighter that worried him.

He watched the
fighter banking away from him as he activated the weapon and
dropped the miniature missile in the tube. It was as he recalled,
designed for proximity detonation rather than impact, and that was
the best he was likely to do against an F 16. He just hoped it was
enough.

The fighter
began its return arc and he sprinted for the nearby trees, hoping
he hadn’t been seen. The longer he spent strafing an empty house,
the happier David was. Especially as he had to wait and stare down
the barrel of the approaching jet to have any hope of hitting it.
He stood behind a particularly tall tree waiting as the plane grew
larger and larger in his sights.