We stopped at the small airfield along the way and paid way too much for avgas. The only employee had been excited to see us. Our brutal chopper was a lot neater than his usual Cessnas and crop dusters. Even with the red-and-white pseudo-civilian paint job, the Mi-24 still looked dangerous, and therefore interesting. Busy day too, he told us, since a plane full of Germans had landed, topped off, and departed only ten minutes before we’d arrived.
That didn’t make any sense. Why would Lindemann stop early to top off the tanks? The kid said that they were flying in a PAC P-750, which Holly said should have given them plenty of extra range to get to the site. Now Earl would beat Lindemann there for sure.
Unless Lindemann had an idea of where the monster was heading…
I mentioned that once we got back into the air. My personal theory was that maybe Stricken had given the Germans intelligence he hadn’t shared with the rest of us. He’d told Earl about Unicorn’s missing team and no one else. Stricken had called this a contest, but as he’d admitted himself, he wasn’t the type of man that cared about concepts like fairness.
“Maybe Lindemann has a psychic on his team,” was Trip’s guess.
“That’s stupid.”
“Says the psychic.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not psychic.”
“Can you read minds?”
“Come on, Trip, we’ve been over this a hundred times. Only in very specific circumstances, after being exposed to a specific artifact of the Old Ones, and the effects don’t seem to last for very long. I haven’t read someone’s mind in like forever. And it isn’t mind reading, it’s just particular memories.”
“Psychic.”
This was an argument I was never going to win. Trip still believed it was a gift from God. Yeah, I suppose it sort of was a gift from a god, just not ours.
“Maybe he’s got someone that can do magic,” Milo supplied.
“Possible, but also stupid.”
“Obviously, because that would be so unlikely, as we’re riding in a helicopter with orcs,” Holly said. “Hell, Earl’s even got a magic-using elf girl with him—”
The helicopter jerked harder this time, slamming all of us back into our seats. Only this time it wasn’t a mechanical effect, but rather because Skippy had freaked out on the controls. “Elf! Elf? Harb Anger has filthy elf?”
“Bad move, Team Goldilocks,” I shouted at Holly.
“Crud. Sorry, Skippy.” Holly had forgotten about the animosity between elves and orcs. They’d been at war since the dawn of time, with both sides blaming the other for all manner of atrocities. Earl deciding to hire one of the trailer park elves was a subject that he’d been planning on broaching to Skippy’s people gradually.
“Elfs?”
“Oh crap.” Milo grabbed his headset. “Listen, Skippy, it isn’t like that.”
“Tribe not…not good enough? Urks brave for Harb Anger? Elfs are evil—filth—grugnulish!”
I had picked up a handful of orcish, but I didn’t know that word, though it was obviously not meant as a compliment.
“Wretched pack of pig dogs…” Milo clarified the Orcish profanity. “I wouldn’t say a pack. We just got the one. Easy, Skippy. Inferior elf magic can be useful for lesser things that we would never bother a noble orc for. It was Earl’s call. He was planning on telling you.”
“Harb Anger…wise chief.” Skippy made a grumbling noise, but he wouldn’t be so easily placated. “Keep elf grugnulish…away. Elf no corrupt tribe!” Skippy continued to mumble for a bit, then he changed the CD to rage-infused Scandinavian death metal and somehow made the stereo go even louder so he wouldn’t have to listen to us. We’d hurt his feelings.
“Way to go, Holly,” Trip said. “We weren’t supposed to mention Tanya.”
At that, Edward, who hadn’t shown the least bit of reaction to his older brother’s fit, leaned forward and removed his ear buds, head turned quizzically to the side, apparently interested for the first time.
“It’s cool, Ed. Same one you met before in Indiana,” Milo said soothingly. After Earl had been conned into hiring the elf girl for a temp job, it had been Edward who had gone into the pocket dimension with her. It had been a rescue mission, us trying to get to a couple of lost children, but no humans could get past the telepathic assault of the creatures inside. The elf girl’s stupid bravery had been enough to convince Earl to grant her wish and let her have a shot at becoming a Hunter. Ed had seemed happy because he’d gotten to dismember some giant fey monsters. Mission accomplished by the magically immune elf and orc, and MHI had gotten paid, so it had been a good day all around. “No need for…slashy slashy,” Milo pointed at the two sheathed swords balanced between Ed’s knees. “You two seemed to get along okay.”
Edward seemed to ponder that for a minute. The only thing visible beneath the baggy black balaclava were two unblinking yellow eyes. As usual, Edward was a complete cipher. Then he simply put his earbuds back in and returned his attention to the window. Ed always seemed to be in his own little world right up until the time to get his slice and dice on.
With Skippy still occasionally muttering orc profanity into our headsets, we passed the time by running through possible scenarios and coming up with plans and backup plans. Normally this would be the part where I’d nervously triple-check my gear, but there wasn’t enough room to safely maneuver guns inside the crew compartment, and besides, Skippy, who frowned on the idea of someone negligently putting a round through his precious chopper, was already in a bad mood.
“That was Julie on the radio. The jet has landed.” Holly said. “One of our Utah guys arranged for a truck to pick them up. Earl’s group will be on their way to the attack site in a few minutes.”
My watch said we were still at least half an hour out. “What’s the ETA for—”
Holly cut me off. “Hang on. Got something…Highway patrol is going nuts…Shots fired. Officer down…”
We all perked up. Could this be it?