Read Alien Hunter (Flynn Carroll) for Free Online Page B

function. It finds the smooth air, so we don’t have to cut back our speed.”
    When he was younger, he’d flown his dad’s plane between ranches, taking the old man from one of his properties to another. He still had his license and kept up with the field. “A hell of a nice toy.”
    “That it is.” She raised her voice. “ETA upcoming, gentlemen. Just to be on the safe side, let’s do a weapons check.”
    Flynn knew the law, and the law said that he wasn’t a police officer in Montana or anywhere except Texas unless in hot pursuit, and flying in to a town and looking for a bad guy was hardly that.
    “If you’re asking me to check my weapon, that means you’re expecting that I might need to use it. So I need to know where we are in the chain of command. Am I legal here?”
    “We’re not in the Bureau’s chain of command at all. Me and Charlie are FBI, but this unit is seconded to the National Security Council.”
    “ Seconded? And since when did the NSC have any enforcement powers?”
    “Okay, now I’m gonna tell you something that’s classified. You need to sign, though.” She took her iPad back from him, turned a few pages, then handed it back. “Electronic signature. Use the keypad.”
    He read the letter, which was under the logo of the National Security Council and signed by the chairman. It granted him a Sensitive Compartmented Clearance under the code name Aurora. It was listed as a Human Intelligence Control System clearance and seemed to have something to do with the National Reconnaissance Office.
    “I don’t understand this.”
    “It’s an above top secret designation. Officially, we’re part of the National Reconnaissance Office, but that’s not where our actual chain of command runs.”
    “Okay, so when you send a memo, who do you send it to?”
    “My boss.”
    “Not good enough.”
    “All I can tell you.”
    “And if I sign?”
    “A little more.”
    “Not a hell of a lot,” Louie said over his shoulder.
    “Look, people, this does not look like a police unit to me. National Security Council? I was looking for a serial kidnapper and probable killer. Where’s the national security issue?”
    “And the answer is the same, sign and find out.”
    “Do it, buddy,” Mike said. “You need this. Heart and soul, man.”
    “First I want to know if I discharge my weapon in Montana, what happens?”
    Diana explained, “We’re operating under a National Security Letter. You fill out a discharge report and forget it.”
    “A National Security Letter? For a serial killer? How? Why?”
    She pointed at the iPad. “It will make sense, Flynn. It really will.”
    He brought up the keyboard and signed his full name, then added his police ID number and his social security number in the blanks provided.
    “Okay, so what have I done to myself?”
    The airframe creaked loudly as the plane banked. The wing roots crackled. He could practically feel the tail torsioning, sense the metal weakening, the whole assembly getting ready to come to pieces. No matter how juiced up a small plane was, weather conditions like these were dangerous.
    Snow seemed to gush at them. Charlie continued his maneuvers. He hadn’t even turned on the wipers, so he was still relying on full IFR. That was absolute confidence, or absolute stupidity.
    The ground suddenly appeared below them, a spreading, featureless vastness of snow. When they banked again, Flynn could see roofs buried in the white desert, smoke whipping away from their chimneys. Nearby was a single dark line that looked like runways look when you should definitely not land there.
    They banked yet again, and as they did, Flynn saw that there was a sign on the roof of the larger of the two hangars that marked the airport. It said, “Ridge, Montana.”
    As they lined up on the runway and began to descend, he stopped asking questions. No time for that now.
    In the end, he’d discover every secret thing about this damned operation, he was confident of that,