Eric Flint - Pyramid Power

Evans' eyes widened slightly. "Sir?"

"You heard me," said Miggy. "I'm entering a political gray zone here, Lieutenant, and you may-or may not-be one of my chosen instruments. I haven't got time to subject you to a battery of psychological tests. So tell me something about yourself that might give me a handle. On you, so to speak, not your uniform."

Tremelo knew it was a rather outlandish demand, but… if his assessment of that "indefinable something" was accurate, the lieutenant would give him an answer.

And, indeed, after a moment's hesitation Evans shrugged, unbuttoned his right sleeve, and rolled it up to expose a very striking tattoo. A large Celtic Cross with…

"I got this after I married Tricia. She's a Jewish girl from Wisconsin. Then"-he pointed to some lettering under the cross-"I had our two daughters' names added. This one's Kennedy Lynn and that one's Madeleine Grace."

Miggy recognized the script, if not the names themselves. "In Hebrew!" he said, half-laughing. "Why do I think I'd never find such an idiosyncratic tattoo on the arm of a PSA agent?"

Smiling thinly, Evans rolled the sleeve back and began rebuttoning it. "I believe, sir-so I've been told, at any rate-that PSA agents are strictly forbidden from getting tattoos of any kind."

"Wouldn't surprise me. Fine, Lieutenant Evans. Will you accept my authority, under the circumstances?"

"Yes, sir." That came with no hesitation at all.

"Good. Get onto outer perimeter security. Check if any PSA vehicles have gone into the exclusion zone."

"I'll do that," said Marie decisively, heading for the outer office. "Put the lieutenant outside where he can do what I can't."

"And get me the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service!" Miggy hollered after her.

Evans frowned for a moment, and then smiled. "Fish and Wildlife, huh? Correct me if I'm wrong, Professor Tremelo, but I don't believe their authority is limited by the Alien Pyramid Security Act."

Miggy was grinning outright-and starting to rub his hands together. "No, as a matter of fact, they aren't, Lieutenant. I really, really detest that woman. And I do believe she just stepped over a line she couldn't afford to cross."

But Evans didn't hear the last sentence, since he was already out the door.

The two black SUVs drove up to the checkpoint, at speed. The driver held up a PSA ID and drove into the outer perimeter area, towing his horsebox. The vehicle behind towed an even larger trailer. Uncertainly, without their commanding officer present, the paratroopers let them through.

"That's Throttler!"

"And Cruz!" said the other dragon.

They looked at each other.

Then at the paratroopers manning the checkpoint. Then at the departing SUVs. Then at each other again. Then they launched into flight.

"We're going after Cruz and Throttler!" said the dragon, leaning his head down to shout at the paratroopers.

"We won't be long. Don't worry, we'll come back and eat you," said the other, flapping.

Lieutenant Evans drove up just in time to see the SUVs heading further into the exclusion zone. Then, he looked up at the seventy feet of sinuous reptilians, undulating after them.

Private Marc Henderson raised his rifle.

"Hold," commanded Evans. "Don't fire. I doubt if a 5.56 mm bullet would have any effect on a dragon anyway."

"But, Lieutenant, they're entering the fire-zone."

Evans put his hand on the muzzle of the rifle and brought it down. "They're animals, Henderson, don't you know that? Wildlife. Endangered wildlife. We don't even shoot pigeons flying in here, let alone something that is rarer than an American bald eagle."

"But they talk, Lieutenant," protested Henderson.

The lieutenant shook his head sadly. "So do parrots. Like boots, they're hardly human, are they? We stop human ingress. Those are our orders."

One of the other soldiers spoke up. "Lieutenant, on the news last night they said that they believed those critters had been taken by the Pissants, uh, the PSA. The conservation guys were appealing for any information."

"Yes, I know," said Lieutenant Evans, smiling more widely still. "You're right. I'd say we'd better report to Fish and Wildlife that they're here-except I happen to know that's already being done. I guess the Pissants are going to have to do quite a lot of explaining, especially after Ms. Garnett's denials last night."

Private Henderson nodded earnestly. "I found that out when I got arrested for the pizza."

At any other time Evans would have loved to know how even Henderson could have managed to get arrested for pizza, but right now he had to get a report in to Tremelo.

"She's not available," said Marie. "I threatened to rip an extra asshole in her secretary, but I reckon she's genuinely not there."

"The President… What is it, Rachel?"

"Checkpoint CZ alpha on Midway Plaisance. Lieutenant Evans reports two PSA vehicles have just passed the outer perimeter, towing two large trailers. Horse trailers, they think. The dragons have chased after them. The lieutenant says the dragons insist Sergeant Cruz was in one of the vehicles."

"With their sense of smell, I don't doubt it." Miggy grabbed his jacket and was heading for the door himself. "God only knows why the bastards have horse trailers-but it won't be good. The call to the President will just have to wait. Marie, tell Lieutenant Evans those PSA agents have to be stopped from whatever they're doing. With deadly force if need be, dammit! I'm getting down there. And get on the phone to Senator Abrams of the Pyramid Oversight Committee. Senator Larsen from Montana, too. Tell them we've got the dragons, the sphinx and the PSA running some kind of cowboy rogue operation. Tell them I've gone to try and put a stop to it."

Lamont pushed past Miggy. "The car's out front, Miggy. I'll drive you."

"Rachel, you make the calls," said Marie, grabbing her children's hands. "I ain't letting that man of mine out of my sight ever again, not as long as I live."

A minute and a half later the stretch limo was racing toward the inner exclusion zone around the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library. Or what was left of it, anyway.

Sitting in the second black SUV, the one towing the larger trailer with a sleeping Greek sphinx within, not the one towing the double horsebox, Cruz could only wish that he'd had a proper chance to say goodbye to Medea, and that they'd put him and Mac into the same vehicle. Well, he had a pack full of the sort of things he'd wished like hell he'd had last time. And in BDUs he was a lot warmer than these jerks in leather skirts. They looked a lot more like a cheap remake of Ben Hur than the real thing. The inner exclusion line was just ahead. There, according to Agent Supervisor Megane, they'd stop, hitch the horses from the horsebox to Throttler's trailer, and, linked hands touching the still somnolent sphinx, make their way into the snatch zone.

By now, Cruz was pretty sure the PSA agents must have drugged the sphinx. How they'd managed that-or how they'd persuaded her to enter the cargo plane that brought them here from Las Vegas-he still couldn't figure out. They had to be absolutely crazy to do something like that. Leaving aside the legalities, Throttler was dangerous.

But… he'd also been around Agent Supervisor Megane long enough to have gotten a sense for the man. And just that one brief contact with Helen Garnett had been enough to give him a sense of what she was like. So, although he didn't know any of the details, Cruz was sure he knew how the whole thing had unfolded. Garnett would have talked tough in front of Megane, not understanding that Megane was to a real "tough op" what a semi-delusional drugstore cowboy was to John Wesley Hardin. If she said "inch," Megane would interpret "mile"-not knowing himself the difference between a mile and a kilometer.