Read Nightstalkers for Free Online Page B

twirling in the combination and he stifled a laugh. He could see Nada’s long hand in this last line of bullshit.
    “So the Package is all right,” she said with enough degree of uncertainty that even the Courier realized why the governmentwas taking this particular thing away from the university boys and girls. “So you can see the problem?” she asked, indicating she had no clue what the problem was. She swung open the heavy door and pulled out a small metal box.
    For the Courier the problem was that his knees were killing him.
    She was anxious to pass the problem over to him. “I don’t know why the dean was so upset, since he had to have given the professor the sabbatical.”
    The Courier tuned her out once more. He didn’t see any opening to the box. There was a set of numbers etched on the side after the letters
ASU
. He checked his Invoicer. Bingo. “Okay.” He held out the Invoicer. “Sign here, here, and here on the screen and I’ll be off.”
    “The professor was really, really upset about getting this in the first place,” Simmons said as she scrawled with the electronic pen. “She said it should have never been sent here. She said someone named Doc should have been responsible, not her. And certainly not me,” she added as if he didn’t get it.
    “Someone is taking care of it. Now. Me.” The Courier grabbed the Invoicer from her and hefted the Package under one arm. It was light, for which he was grateful.
    “What about the safe?” Simmons asked, looking as if she had to take the thing home.
    “Not on my form.”
    “I did everything correctly, right?” Simmons asked. “You’ll keep it safe, right?”
    She seemed overly concerned about something for which she was no longer responsible, even the Courier could see that. “I work for the government,” he said. “This is my job. It’s taken care of.”
    He didn’t say good-bye. Not that it mattered: she didn’t do small talk, yet she talked too damn much, he thought as he took the elevator down. He unsealed the back of the van and secured the box in the vault that took up half the rear, the rest being full of weapons and other military equipment.
    He got in the driver’s seat and accessed the onboard computer. He synced the Invoicer, indicating a positive pickup, and waited for the machine to tell him his next, and final for this tour, destination.
    Area 51 Archives
.
    The GPS calculated the route in seconds. Seven hundred and seventy-seven miles.
    “Hot damn,” he muttered as he started the van up.
    Not far from Vegas at all.

    To Carter, it just looked like an old deserted filling station out in the middle of the desert. Colonel Orlando was driving the battered Jeep, which was the latest in a bunch of strange things to happen ever since he’d been “tested” back in the ’Stan.
    Since then, Orlando hadn’t said two words, ignoring every question Carter had thrown at him, and using the defense of that silver oak leaf indicating his rank to treat Carter like the staff sergeant he was.
    Except after landing at some incredibly long runway in the middle of Nevada, the colonel had gotten in the driver’s seat of this old beat-up Jeep that had been waiting for them. A colonel driving for a staff sergeant wasn’t normal, even for the elite army. They’d been bumping along for over an hour now, leaving the runway and the hangars and the guards and all that far behind.
    Two minutes ago, Orlando had turned off the hardtop road onto a dirt road, passing a plywood sign spray-painted none too steadily with the warning
NO TRESPASS: WE WILL SHOOT YOUR ASS
along with a skull and crossbones also crudely sprayed onto the wood next to the words. Now the old gas station was ahead on the right and Carter could see three guys shooting a beat-up basketball at a metal rim set about eight feet off the ground on a leaning light pole. He knew right away they were Special Ops, even though two had long hair. It was the same way at Bragg, where you could