Race to Witch Mountain (2 page)

The woman was wide-eyed as she looked out the window at the Vegas lights. “This place truly is like being on another planet,” she observed. “So much to do and see.”

Just then, Jack was startled by a pair of aliens who staggered directly in front of his cab. They were so distracted by all the lights that they didn't even notice the traffic. Luckily, Jack was an excellent driver, and he managed to swerve right around them.

“Freaks,” he muttered not so quietly as he maneuvered the cab back into the flow of traffic. “Can't wait for them to get in their spaceships and fly out of here.”

A few moments later they reached Planet Hollywood, and Jack pulled the taxi up to the main entrance.

“I understand your reaction,” the woman said as she pointed toward a group of ridiculously dressed convention-goers. “They certainly aren't helping our cause.”

“
Our
cause?” Jack repeated. She was one of them?

“Educating the public about the possibility of life on other planets,” she explained.

Jack was stunned. She
was
one of them.

“As a matter of fact,” she continued, “I'm giving a lecture on astrophysical anomaly detection at the convention. Feel free to stop by. Closed-minded skeptics are always welcome.”

She handed him a flyer advertising her lecture. It had all of the basic information about her talk as well as a very scholarly-looking picture of her. Underneath the picture it gave her name: Dr. Alex Friedman.

CHAPTER 3

T
he next morning, as the sun rose over a distant ridge, Henry Burke and his team were hard at work investigating the crash site. A cover story about a mysterious chlorine spill had done its job, and area roads were blocked off for miles in every direction. No civilians would disturb the scene of the accident. Burke was in total control.

In the early-morning sunlight, they could see much more than the night before. One group scoured the long trench where the flying object had burrowed into the ground. They took photographs and used metal detectors to make sure there were no remnants of the craft left behind in the dirt. At the far end of the trench, there was a gaping hole where the object had been pulled from the sand before being transported back to Witch Mountain.

Burke and his assistants, Pope and Matheson, were now searching the hillside where they thought they had heard something the night before. Pope, a fresh-faced scientist straight out of MIT, was just about to take a step, when Burke reached over and grabbed his leg in midair.

Pope instantly realized his mistake. He moved back so as not to disturb anything, while Burke pulled out an ultraviolet light and waved it over the ground Pope had nearly stepped on. Under the light, they were able to make out footprints. From the looks of them, they had definitely not been made by any animal native to the desert.

“Cast it,” Burke instructed Matheson as he moved the light forward and illuminated several more footprints. “Cast all of them.”

F
ifteen minutes later, Matheson was inside the mobile command center that had been set up at the crash site. The center was sleek and modern and filled with computers, monitors, and all sorts of electronic devices.

Matheson had arranged the plaster casts he had taken along a table and was studying them with microscope goggles. Burke, Pope, and Carson all watched.

“There's a distinct pattern alternating between the depth of the impressions—a differing weight distribution,” Matheson explained, “suggesting not one, but two separate EBEs.” EBE stood for Extraterrestrial Biological Entity.

Burke looked down at the casts and considered what the scientist was telling him.

“They were moving fast. Bipedal,” Matheson continued. He looked up at the other members of the team and took a deep breath before adding, “Possibly . . . humanoid in form.”

He locked eyes with Burke. This was by far the biggest discovery they had ever uncovered.

The moment was interrupted by Pope. As usual, he was enthusiastic, to say the least. “How awesome is that?” he asked, his voice cracking. “I mean those little nanomicrobes that were found in that Mars rock were cool, but”—he paused—“nowhere near as cool as aliens—who run!”

The three other men turned and stared at him, their expressions stern. Pope had said the
A
word. Gulping, he pretended to be fascinated by the footprint casts.

Burke instantly began instructing the others. “Review every data-gathering entity within a fifty-mile radius, starting on impact.” He scanned their faces to make sure they understood exactly what they were looking for. “Hunt for the anomaly.”

CHAPTER 4

W
hile Burke was starting his hunt, Jack was getting ready to begin another shift. Quickly, he walked into the taxi garage to where a line of cabs were parked. They had been fueled up and cleaned out and were ready to hit the streets. Although a sign declared that the area was for taxis only, a large black SUV was blocking Jack's cab.

The windows of the SUV were too dark for him to see through, but he had a pretty good idea of who was in there. Once he got close, a door opened and out stepped Frank, a large man whose suit was stretched to the limit trying to cover his massive body.

“Jack,” Frank said, moving toward him, “you don't return calls anymore.”

Marty, another big man in a suit, stepped out from the other side of the SUV. “Mr. Wolfe thinks you're being rude,” Marty said.

Their boss was not a nice man. And right now, he was rather unhappy with Jack. Whenever Mr. Wolfe was upset with someone, it was Frank and Marty's job to deliver threats and, when necessary, physical punishment. They terrified most people, but Jack could be just as intimidating. He stared Marty right in the eye.

“Tell Wolfe that when I said the last time was the last time, I meant it was the last time.”

Frank let out a menacing laugh. “Mr. Wolfe decides when it's the last time. Not you, Jack.”

Marty decided to try a friendlier approach. “He likes you, Jack. Hates to see you wasting your God-given talent giving fat tourists cab rides up and down the Strip. What kind of life is that?”

“One that I'm late for,” Jack answered as he tried to squeeze past them to the cab's driver-side door.

Reaching out, Frank went to grab Jack. With lightning-quick speed, Jack gripped Frank by the wrist and twisted his arm behind his back. Frank let out a quick yelp of pain as Jack slam his attacker's face into the cab's hood with a loud
thud
.

Now Marty lunged at him. But Jack managed to grab Marty with his other hand and slam his attacker's face against the cab. In seconds, Jack had both thugs pinned against the hood.

“Section eight, paragraph three,” Jack said, reciting from the Nevada code of taxi statutes and regulations.“As a fully licensed cabdriver in the state of Nevada, I am within my rights to deny passage to any potential fare I consider dangerous. You are, of course, entitled to file a written complaint with the state.”

Satisfied that he had made his point, Jack released both men, got into his cab, and drove off. As he drove, he attempted to calm his racing heart. The traffic wasn't helping. Trying to maneuver around it, he glanced in the rearview mirror—and slammed on the brakes. Sitting in the backseat were two teenagers, a boy and a girl, who had definitely
not
been there before.

Jack stopped right there in the middle of traffic, causing a chain reaction of other cars slamming on their brakes and swerving to miss him. Jack spun around to look at his passengers.

“Where did you come from?” he demanded.

“Outside,” the boy answered.

“I figured that part out on my own,” Jack snapped. “How did you get into my car?”

The girl pointed at the door. “Through that portal.”

Jack couldn't make any sense of this. Even after the distraction of the argument with the goons, he would have heard, or at least seen, them come through the door. Besides, he wondered, what teenager calls a door a
portal
?

Traffic was backing up, and angry drivers were honking their horns. With no other choice, Jack put the taxi into drive and started down the street.

“I am Seth,” the boy said. Then he pointed to the girl. “My sister, Sara. We require your transportation services immediately,” Seth continued.

Jack gave Seth a skeptical look and said, “Well, I require—”

Before he could finish, Sara completed his sentence for him. “A currency transaction.”

Again with the strange slang, Jack mused.

Seth reached over the front seat to show Jack a huge wad of cash. “Will this amount suffice?” he asked.

“What did you do?” Jack asked, his eyes wide. “Rob a bank?”

“Is this acceptable, Jack Bruno?” Sara asked.

“Wait,” Jack said. “How did you know my name?”

Sara pointed at the cabdriver's license, which was displayed by the meter.

“If we have a deal for your services, we must move forward rapidly,” Seth insisted. “ It is urgent we get to our destination without delay.”

Jack hesitated. There was something
very
strange about these kids, especially the way they talked. Then again, “strange” was a word that could have described many of Jack's customers. And their money sure was real enough. . . .

“All right, all right,” Jack said. “Where to?”

Seth and Sara shared a look. They didn't know how to describe where they wanted to go. Seth reached into his pocket and pulled out a device that looked a lot like a compass.

“I need an address,” Jack said. “I'm not a mind reader.”

“We need to travel in
that
direction,” Sara said, pointing to the highway entrance ramp.

Jack almost groaned. Already this was proving to be a troublesome fare. “Gonna need something a little more specific than ‘that direction,'” he said.

Seth nodded. “We must locate latitude 40.54 cross-intersecting longitude 117.48 within a fractional percentage.”

That's a real help, Jack almost said. Instead, he commented, “I think we're going to just stick with ‘that direction.'”

CHAPTER 5

T
he mobile command center was a hotbed of activity.

As Burke's team manned superfast computers wired into a variety of government, satellite, law-enforcement, and security networks, he paced. Back and forth he strode, his eyes scanning the nonstop stream of images that zipped across the many screens.

Carson was marking locations on a computer map interface that used aerial images of the crash scene and surrounding areas. “We tracked the two sets of EBE footprints on and off for 7.3 miles,” he informed Burke. “Finally losing them at a rest stop off the highway.” A line on his computer screen blinked, indicating the path of the footprints. Carson clicked at the end of the trail, and security-camera images of the rest stop grew larger on the screen.

Pope, meanwhile, was rapidly searching through a database of law-enforcement logs and police-incident reports. One entry stood out. “Four hours and nineteen minutes post-impact, there was a highway-patrol incident report filed at that very same rest stop,” he said excitedly.

Pope quickly typed a password override and was able to read the entire incident report.

“A car trunk burglarized,” he said as he quickly scanned the patrolman's report. “No sign of forced entry. No valuables taken . . .”

Burke didn't hide his frustration.“Give me something better than that, Mr. Pope,” he demanded.

Pope smiled as he continued reading from the incident report. “. . . except for clothing belonging to a fifteen-year-old-boy and girl.” He turned and looked right at his boss, eager to impress him.“I think it's better than a possibility that they look human.”

The group considered this development. Up to this point, all they had to go on were footprints. But this information indicated that the aliens looked like a teenage boy and girl, and that changed everything.

Carson shook his head. “They can hide in plain sight.”

But Burke wasn't discouraged. He always liked a good challenge, and at least they were getting somewhere. “We're in the game, people,” he told them. “Two kids don't walk down the highway alone at night. I need some options on how they were able to evade capture.”

Carson's fingers started dancing across his keyboard as he scanned through video stills from a security camera at the rest stop. He slowed down when the time stamp on the video neared the time of the incident report. For a few minutes there was absolutely no activity. Then he froze the tape on an image of a tour bus.

“We have a bus landing roughly at the same time at the same rest stop,” he said. Carson shuttled through the video of passengers getting off the bus to stretch their legs or use the restroom.

“Thirty-nine people exit,” he said as the last one got off. Then he sped the images forward until the people started getting back on board. “It looks like the bus picked up some extra baggage.” He hit a button, and the image froze.