The Stranded Ones Read online

  “Are we safe yet?” It was Cherish.

  “Not yet,” he heard Winsome say.

  “Quiet,” Funny said.

  “Stay under the tarp until I tell you it’s okay,” Carlos said. “It will be a long, bumpy ride. Three hours…maybe more.”

  Carlos pushed the truck away from the gate. He started the engine only after he was well clear. Then he slammed the tailgate and sat for a moment in the cab to gather his wits. What have I done? He shrugged and drove away with the headlights off staring out the open door at the asphalt below until the truck left the pavement.

  Then the real journey began in deep twilight. Carlos closed the door and drove very slowly, flashlight dangling from his window, his load lurching along the rutted, gravel road. In the back he could hear a strange, high-pitched melody.

  They are singing, he thought. The Little Ones are actually singing.

  They were just above seven thousand feet when Carlos parked the truck and released them. The thin blue light of a full moon poured coldly through a deep purple sky. The Little Ones cast complicated shadows as they scrambled up the talus slope at the edge of the rutted dirt road. No one is talking about the body of Belief Keeper, Carlos thought. He glanced at the black body bag, hiding in the shadows in front of the truck.

  Carlos could feel the sharp bite of the rapidly dropping temperature. The Little Ones were wearing the tiny kilts Carlos’ sister had knitted for them. But they never seem to mind the temperature, he thought. I think they just wear the clothes to please me.

  The four Little Ones stopped and waited for him on a narrow granite ledge about twenty feet above the parked truck. Carlos stopped to catch his breath. “This trail leads to the edge of a small glacier in about an hour’s travel. I’ll be going with you that far at least.” He sat on the edge of the ledge, feet dangling.

  “Are you warm enough?” It was Winsome.

  “I’m okay,” he said. Then he pulled his pack toward the front. Each of the Little Ones carried a small bundle, too. They are such improbable creatures, Carlos thought, yet so graceful. “I have snacks for you,” he said, pulling out little wrapped packets. They would be able to live a month, he thought, on the food he had brought.

  As he passed out the packets, he could feel the soft, tiny probing appendages at the very tips of their armored tentacles. Like baby fingers, he thought…So very sensitive.

  “Thank you, Carlosss,” Joy said.

  “And one more thing…” He pulled out Belief Keeper’s kilt. “I’m sorry I didn’t have time to clean it.”

  “Thank you,” Winsome said. She took the bundle and slipped it into her own pack.

  “Will you ssssstay with ussss?” Cherish asked.

  “Not for very long,” Carlos said. “I need to call for help. And I need to lead Diablo away from you.”

  “They will ssssmassssh your head, too,” Winsome said.

  “I hope not,” Carlos said.

  “Not,” Joy echoed.

  The glacier was a ghostly, chilly presence that filled a crack in the mountain, a rippled, shadowy thing, bounded by boulders that hunched in the moonlight like frozen animals. Stars had begun to sprinkle through the bowl of the sky. Carlos removed his backpack and placed it on the rock in front of Winsome. “Here are all your provisions,” he said. “There is a cave about an hour’s climb up the face of the glacier. You can’t miss it.” Carlos shined his flashlight up the glacier’s side; the beam danced over blue-gray ice then was swallowed in the shadows above. The Little Ones can climb this easily at night, he thought. I wonder what home was like. “The cave is very large, with an opening about my size in a split in the rocks. If help comes, I’ll direct them to the base of the glacier and tell them to wait for you. Just send one of you down to check periodically.”

  “How will we know?” Winsome was almost invisible in the dark, an unearthly crustacean shape, leaning against ancient ice.

  “If I’m not here…” Carlos paused. He really hadn’t thought this part through. “Don’t trust anyone you have seen around here before. Diablo controls everyone. Except my sister, Alicia. Look for me, her, or someone completely new. And hope for the best.”

  Carlos felt a tiny stroke on his arm. It was the littlest one, Joy. Like an angel’s wing, he thought.

  “Please don’t let them sssssmasssh your head,” Winsome said.

  “I won’t,” Carlos said.

  “And don’t let them find Belief Keeper’ssss remainsss.”

  “I won’t.”

  CHAPTER SIX - TRUST NO ONE

  Alpine Argentina

  The next afternoon, Carlos met secretly with his cousin, Armando the banker. They sat in the covered porch in back of the little tobacco shop in the village that was a few miles from Diablo’s compound. Armando, an arrogant, unworried man in his late thirties, let the cigar smoke curl through a shaft of sunlight that blazed though the rift in the steel roof. He had declined an invitation to view Belief Keeper’s strange little body with, “Let’s talk, cousin, before it’s too late for you.”

  Armando gave Carlos his straight, banker’s stare. “The Little Ones were right, you know. Not to let anyone see the body.”

  “Why?”

  “There are agents that will kill them on sight. And torture you to find the rest.”

  “Agents? You’re crazy, Armando.”

  Armando balanced his cigar precariously on his tea glass. “Agents as in representatives of agencies.”

  “Come on. No one even knows about them.”

  Armando sighed. “Listen to me, cousin. Bury these remains where no one will ever find them. Deny you even knew Diablo and get far, far away from here.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  Armando just smiled. “Because my mother cares about you, Carlos, and everyone loves Alicia. Even I don’t want you killed.”

  “So…What do you know that I don’t?”

  Armando was suddenly very guarded. “You know I handled some money transactions for Diablo a while back. He changes bankers like a whore changes tricks. Well, you hear things. And you learn not to talk about them. Ever…”

  Carlos considered that. “I’m going to slip by Diablo’s compound tonight and get my things.”

  Armando stood, shaking his head. My cousin is a complete fool, he was thinking. “No you’re not.”

  “Why not?”

  “I heard there was big trouble there.”

  “What trouble?”

  Armando shrugged. “I can be very stealthy. I hear that police and military are hanging around the hills area. No one has heard from Diablo. You’re crazy even to try to get close.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  Armando shrugged again. I’ll tell them I tried to stop him, he thought. “Just don’t let anybody see you going there.”

  “Fine…”

  Carlos decided to wait until three in the morning. Diablo usually turned in at midnight and the night guards had gotten sloppy since the perimeter lights were installed. Even his guards hate him. Carlos made his approach by packhorse from the wooded side long after the moon had fallen below the mountains. He had expected only to able to get to twenty yards from the fence under cover of the woods because of the flood lamps that surrounded the property. But something was wrong. It is much too dark. This night the lamps were dark. Diablo had always insisted: “The perimeter lights stay on if you have to crank the generators by fucking hand.”

  …But not tonight. Maybe he’s using infrared.

  The horse noticed the smell first and balked. Then Carlos caught a whiff of the distinctive, acrid tang of overheated metal and airborne ash. Moments later, in spite of the chill night air, he began to feel the heat. He tied his sister’s horse to a pine tree and made his way cautiously on foot, pausing every few steps to listen, look, and smell. Then, through the trees, he caught a glimpse of a necklace of blinking lights. Too far, he thought. They glimmered at an improbably great distance. Those lights are well past the compound. What happened
to the buildings?

  Carlos crept forward a few steps, stopped, peering around a pine tree. He could just make out a line of emergency vehicles, a fire truck, several vans and cars with flashing light bars, all on the other side of an unnatural pool of darkness. My God. Sometime in the last 30 hours, the headquarters of Diablo’s little empire had become a crater.

  Carlos held very still; he was suddenly very conscious of the precariousness of his position. Someone, something, had blasted Diablo, Hector, everyone and everything within that compound into oblivion.

  I could have been with them. Why? The Little Ones. Carlos turned and crept back to his horse. How much time do I have?

  Four hours later, at dawn, Alicia squealed and wept when Carlos surprised her at the back door to her little cottage. She was tall and slender like their late father and hugged her stocky older brother fiercely on the back stoop until he could feel the dampness from her tears. “I thought you were inside that horrible place when they attacked Diablo,” she whispered.

  “They attacked? Who?”

  “Quiet,” she added as she led him into the small kitchen. “The children are still asleep.”

  “Who?” he whispered.

  “No one knows.”

  As coffee bubbled on the stove, Carlos rubbed his hands. “I apologize for borrowing your horse last night. It was very late and I didn’t want to disturb you. I never thought you would think I’d died.” Alicia gave him that look. “Sister, I haven’t slept in two days. When was this attack?”

  “Just before dawn, day before yesterday, I think. Where were you?”

  “I slipped away with four of the Little Ones, hid my truck under some brush in one of the canyons and walked into the village to see Armando.”

  “That little shit. He should have told me you were alive. But thank God…And you, for saving the Little Ones.” She paused. “Four? Who?”

  “Belief Keeper. Diablo had him killed by Hector in front of its pod mates, then Hector ordered me to deal with the mess.”

  Alicia crossed herself. “He was the proud Little One.”

  “Yes he was. I gave them his kilt to keep.”

  Alicia smiled and wiped an eye. “They are so human.”

  “I know, I know. God, Alicia, what can I do now?”

  “You must save them.”

  “Easy for you to say. But how? Who can help me now?”

  “I think that one of the old customers might hide and protect them.”

  “Diablo’s customers? Who?”

  Alicia thought a moment. “Maybe you should ask Father Ramón.”

  The little parish church sat alone at the edge of the woods; it was a steepled, steel-reinforced A-Frame made of rough native granite blocks and logs. A two-way satellite dish linked the church office to the rest of the world. Fr. Ramón Carrera, a tall man with short dark hair and dark brown eyes, dressed in jeans and black T-shirt, stood smiling just outside the office. “Carlos, I hoped your sister would get you back to church someday, even after you hooked up with El Diablo. But I didn’t think it would take aliens from outer space to get you here.” Father Ramón’s eyes were twinkling. He clasped the shorter man around the shoulders. “I want to see the dead Little One.”

  “Alicia told you everything, then?”

  “Yes. I know everything you told her, plus the rumors from the village.”

  “Well…” Carlos was hesitating. He had borrowed his sister’s car and the remains of Belief Keeper were on ice in a beer cooler in the trunk.

  “I know you have an ET’s body. You eventually have to trust someone besides Alicia. She made it easy by telling me all…So kill me or show me.” Ramón was grinning.

  Carlos smiled, too. Ramón had come to the village as a priest when Carlos was a teenager. Carlos admired and liked the man even as he had “hooked up” (as Ramón put it) with “desperadoes.” Moments later, he opened the trunk door, exposing the cooler. He flipped the latch and opened the door. Fresh ice was heaped over beer bottles.

  “Aha,” Father Ramón said. “…Alien beer from Mexico?”

  Carlos was too distracted to laugh at Ramón’s crack. He brushed away the ice to expose a black plastic bag; carefully untied the top and peeled back the folds of plastic. “They made a mess of him.”

  Father Ramón peered closely into the bag, bending forward almost double. “May I touch?”

  Carlos nodded. Father Ramón Carrera held the tiny “fingers,” turning them gently, exposing the bulb at the base. “Eyes?”

  “Their eyes are inside those bumps,” Carlos said.

  “This one was the male?” Ramón asked. Carlos nodded. “Alicia said he was standing in front of the other ones when he was killed?”

  “Yes. The other Little Ones told me that.”

  “So they seem to have a sense of obligation to each other.”

  “Yes. They can be very kind and brave.”

  “What wonderful creatures.” Father Ramón made the sign of the cross then mumbled a ritual as he carefully closed the bag. He brushed the ice over the bag, rearranged two beer bottles and re-closed the cooler. Ramón looked at Carlos. “You’re a good man, my friend.”

  Carlos closed the trunk. “They may die soon, Father. What can I do?”

  The church office consisted of a single shelf of books and a rough desk. Ramón pulled away a stained oilcloth cover exposing a first-rate laptop and encrypted Sat Phone. “Frankly, I don’t know of any of Diablo’s customers who could ever be trusted. But I know of a large information brokerage firm with Australian, Canadian and US offices. It has a very good reputation out here. The principals are two men, Finnegan Gael and Jack Falstaff. Your late boss, the well named ‘El Diablo’, tried to deal with them, but they turned him down.”

  “I only know of the names.”

  “Actually, I know their top security man, Jay Robertson, quite well. In the old days, we worked side by side. I was a chaplain in the war and he was a colonel in the American Special Forces. I would trust him with my life.”

  “You were in a war?”

  “Oh yes…” Ramón’s eyes suddenly darkened but the mood immediately passed. “That’s wars…plural. Robertson is a solid fellow. A good American.”

  “Can we trust them?”

  Ramón sat down, and motioned for Carlos to take the other seat. “Robertson, most certainly…The rest? Who knows?” he said. “With your permission, I will find out if I can recruit Robertson right now.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN - THE EXTRATERRESTRIALS

  On a ship near the Tampico Coast, Gulf of Mexico

  When Jay Robertson took the position as head of GFE’s security operations, shortly after the legendary partnership was formed, Gale and Falstaff quickly realized they had hired a military genius. Robertson was aboard GFE’s seagoing operations center when Ramón’s call came in. Having a “company ship” was Jay’s recommendation for maintaining security and mobility. But the Citisle, currently anchored off the Mexican coast, was far beyond his wildest expectations. He’d never before worked in an environment where “funding is not a problem.”

  Picking up a cold call from Father Ramón was an easy decision for him. The two of them went way back to Colonel Robertson’s Special Forces days. Trust relationships formed under fire are powerful, and the bond between these two men was reinforced by the renegade priest’s fierce moral character. The second Jay understood the gravity of the call, he had cleared his work room, set up the proper encryption, then listened carefully to Ramón’s remarkable story for twenty minutes. Then he spent the next several minutes sitting alone at his work station, absorbing the information. Half an hour later he had summoned Donald Wu, GFE’s COO, and was still peering into a cup of coffee in shock. Ramón Carrera? After all these years?

  ETs???.

  Jay Robertson’s mobile office was the largest work area in the GFE Security Offices. It was just over the waterline in the below-deck section of the Citisle. The ship was a huge converted passenger liner that had been maintained
by Gael-Falstaff Enterprises (GFE) for the last three years. The giant vessel was staffed with a complement of 900, including trained security specialists (Robertson’s former Special Forces buddies), medical, IT support and other personnel. This month, the Citisle was anchored in the Gulf of Mexico off the Tampico Coast, in international waters. Its special undersea loading facilities were directly below the GFE Security Offices.

  Citisle towed a small airfield that was kept submerged beneath several meters of water until needed; then it was raised for the time needed for a landing or takeoff. Also directly below Robertson’s office was nested the tiny fleet of company aircraft, consisting of two helicopters, four commute jets, and one personnel carrier, the latter five with folded wings. On the same level, active platform stabilizers kept the ship’s equilibrium within safety tolerances, even in a storm. As a result of this arrangement, deep rumbling noises competed with the sounds of the ocean.

  Robertson’s work station was a console in the corner of his office, a teak paneled replica of a nineteenth century sailing captain’s quarters. Along the north wall, a reinforced window looked out to sea. And just below the first window, a second window dipped into the turbulent waves. Robertson was one of those career military types for whom the military services ultimately proved too destructive of his personal life and insufficiently challenging for an active, creative mind. As a result, GFE had been able to recruit a gem. Jay’s relationship with Jack and Finnegan was an easy going and happy one. Best damn job I’ve ever had, the former Special Forces Colonel thought. Jay signaled again for Donald.

  Moments later, Donald Wu entered the room. The stocky expatriate Mongolian had been the trusted administrative assistant to Jack Falstaff, now he was the COO of Gael-Falstaff Enterprises. At work, he presented as an uncomplicated man, full of humor and equanimity. When pressed, or as the situation demanded, Wu could summon a titanic anger that loomed larger on the stage of human relations than in his heart. It immediately subsided as soon as it was no longer needed, followed by an enigmatic smile. Wu had a complicated interior life that belied his public persona. But one trait dominated the interior and exterior man: rock solid integrity. Falstaff and Gael relied on him absolutely.