The Texan eyed him evenly. “You mean I’ll get shot.”
Suttles considered before replying. “Probably not. To be brutally direct about it, no one wants to risk hitting the alien. These are very, very good marksmen and they’re under strict orders. If you try to run, they’ll shoot to disable your vehicle. I don’t doubt that they’ll succeed.”
“And if I get out and try to leave on foot, they’ll shoot to disable me?”
The captain was distinctly unhappy. “Like I said, they’re very good marksmen.”
Ross Ed smiled thinly. “Well, that just makes me feel warm and welcome all over.”
Suttles was not above pleading. “Nobody wants anyone to get hurt. All I’m asking is that you step out of the car so we can talk.” He gestured at the sandy, scrub-covered knoll that rose behind the bathrooms. “There’s a helicopter waiting behind that hill to take all of us into Tucson. From there we’ll go by plane back to New Mexico.”
“Back to New Mexico?” Ross’s expression turned wry. “To Alamogordo?”
“No.” Puzzled, Suttles wondered what had prompted that supposition. “To Sandia National Laboratories. The folks there can ask better questions than I can. They very much want to have a look at your friend.”
“I bet they do. Probably like to cut him out of his suit, too. Open him up and take pictures of his insides, maybe his brain.”
Suttles made placating motions. “They won’t hurt anything. Why would they damage that which they want to study?” Besides, it’s already dead, he wanted to add, but didn’t. Something in the big man’s attitude told him the comment wouldn’t go over very well.
The discussion was interrupted by a tapping on the opposite window. Bending, Suttles could see Kerry staring in at the driver.
“Mr. Hager, are you a good American? Don’t you want to do what’s best for your country?”
“Sure I do,” he told her before returning his attention to Suttles. “I also kinda want to do what’s best for me and what’s best for Jed. Don’t that make me a good American?”
“Of course it does,” Suttles responded soothingly, “but we also—ow!”
Ross Ed blinked. “Mosquito?”
A confused Suttles straightened and shook his wrist. “I don’t think so, I—hey!” This time he jerked and grabbed at his head.
Something was rattling on the pavement, a staccato drumming that steadily increased in violence. Ross Ed thought he recognized the sound. Leaning out the window, he watched as the hail bounced madly off the asphalt. Funny kind of hail, though. Gray instead of white, it left black streaks on the pavement where individual pellets struck at an angle.
The size of the pellets increased slightly. Being from Texas, where storms occasionally produced hailstones the size of grapefruit, Ross wasn’t impressed. But when one smashed into a concrete curb and left in its wake a gaping hole, he allowed as how this particular storm just might exceed any in his previous experience. It was, in point of fact, a meteorological disturbance in every sense of the word.
Something plowed into the restroom roof, spraying bits of broken tile all over the parking area. Another hailstone left the satellite antenna mounted atop the parked van looking like something you wouldn’t pay five bucks for at a garage sale. If continued on through the roof of the van, tore out the side, and left a neat twelve-foot-long furrow in the solid pavement.
Now that was a hailstone, he reflected. Even for Texas.
The downpour continued to pummel vehicles, structures, and the surrounding terrain. Only the Cadillac seemed immune, an island of serenity in a deluge of destruction. Stories fell in front of it, behind, and all around, but not on. Baffled, Ross Ed turned to his only companion.
“What is it this time?” Jed the dead did not reply.
The three captains were running for cover, any cover, trying to protect their heads with their hands. Two of them stumbled toward the rest rooms while the one who’d been talking to Ross Ed threw himself into a parked car. He was forced to abandon it when a stone the size of a cantaloupe crashed through the windshield. Trailing glass shards, he joined a cluster of soldiers who were making a dash for the bathrooms.
Seeing as how his car was undamaged and unattended, Ross Ed turned the key in the ignition and put it in drive. Nobody emerged from under cover to challenge him. Easing off on the brake, he headed out of the parking lot. Stones began to strike the spot where he’d been parked, but the Caddy received not so much as a scratch. It was as if a giant umbrella had been opened over the car, shielding it from the downpour.
The heavily armed rangers and military police who moments earlier had been manning barricades had fled in search of safety. Nudging the wooden barriers aside, Ross eased the Fleetwood through and accelerated down the on-ramp. Most highly localized of storms, the tempest raged behind him but did not follow.
The night was clear and cloudless as he reentered I-10 and pushed the Caddy up to seventy-five. There was no longer any point in driving slow to avoid attention. They knew what he looked like, and what his car looked like.
He debated how soon to abandon the interstate. If he could just make Tucson, he might have a chance to lose himself in the maze of city streets. The more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that they’d give him that chance. A high-speed car chase through a major urban center would be a poor way of maintaining secrecy, which they had obviously gone to some length to preserve. He was sure they’d do anything to prevent him from reaching the city. Therefore he would have to exit as soon as possible and try to lose them in the countryside.
The officer he’d spoken to had been up-front about their intent. Certainly that had been equally clear to Jed. There was no question in Ross Ed’s mind that the alien (or at least the built-in defensive mechanisms in the alien suit) was responsible for the delivering deluge.
“Thanks,” he told the corpse. “Come too far to start back-tracking. Need more time to decide what to do.” Jed chose not to argue the point.
When the appalling downpour finally ceased, the military contingent trapped in the rest stop cautiously emerged from shelter to inspect their surroundings and regroup. Robinett was the first to notice that the Cadillac was gone. Somehow Suttles wasn’t surprised.
Not a desert plant had been left standing. Every vehicle, including the trucks, had been badly damaged. Certainly none were in drivable condition, much less capable of pursuit. Trashed along with windshields, engines, tires, and instrument panels was a lot of very expensive electronic surveillance and communications gear. The van in particular looked like it had taken direct hits from a couple of rocket-propelled grenades. It and the two cars were so full of holes they appeared to have been used for target practice.
Which they had been, Suttles reflected. By the heavens.
Reaching up, he felt a trickle of blood running down his right temple. No one had escaped the battering. Exposed skin had been bruised, clothing shredded. It could have been worse, he reflected. They had suffered a thousand minor injuries and not a single major one. Intent, coincidence, or luck?
“What the hell happened?” Robinett was cradling a badly banged-up left arm.
“It wasn’t hail.” Suttles decided that in spite of her bruises and scratches Captain Kerry was more alluring in tattered attire than tailored. Wrapping a length of torn cloth around her fingers, she reached into one of the million holes that now pockmarked the rest stop and picked up a tiny chunk of gray material.
“It’s still hot.” She showed it to her companions, rolling it between her fingertips so it wouldn’t burn through the material. “Heavy, too, for its size.”
“What is it?” Suttles squinted at the nondescript granule.
“Isn’t it obvious? It’s a meteorite. Smaller than some of those that hit, larger than a lot of others.” Flicking it aside, she indicated his ripped shirt. “Some primitive societies will launder with pumice, but this is ridiculous.”
“That’s crazy,” he retorted. “No way. How come we’re only scratched and cut, while the vehicles have been totaled?”
A bemused Robinett was kneeling to examine some of the debris. “I guess as meteor storms go this one was highly selective. Most of the big stuff didn’t fall until we were under cover. It didn’t want to kill us, just put us out of commission.” He turned slightly to eye Kerry. “Want to bet that the first person to take a hike over the hill finds nothing but used helicopter pans scattered across the desert?”
