"You killed him."

Shelby moved toward the window.

"Yeah. Probably did, actually," said the agent, nonplussed.

Shelby couldn't see much. The train was rolling through the empty, barren countryside where nobody lived. The only light was that from the train. Shelby could just about make out that they were travelling along the side of a slope. They might have been on a mountainside for all he knew. Malakov could still be falling.

"Jesus, I can't breathe for the gratitude." Hanlon laughed.

Shelby turned to face him. Now that he gave the man a second glance, he even looked like an American. He had closely cropped gingery hair, not a crew cut, but not much longer. When he spoke he had a neutral American accent. It sounded strangely artificial, as if he'd made an effort to drive the Texan out of his voice.

"You're pretty damn lucky to be alive, buddy. If I hadn't found you then, who knows where that pinko would've buried your body!"

Shelby could just imagine Hanlon hanging off the end of a bar in small-town Tennessee, chewing gum and eyeing up the barman's daughter. He was the kind of guy who wouldn't want to fuck her unless her daddy forbade it, because he was the kind of guy who got off on living dangerously. Shelby could tell.

"It's blind luck I even found you at all," Hanlon went on. "We got your profile from the Japanese security agency and they already got you listed as dead!"

Shelby sighed. "Well, now that you've so valiantly rescued me, Agent Hanlon, where do we go from here? You got us a boat waiting?"

Hanlon winced. "Afraid not, pal."

"How are we getting out, then?"

"We're not. Not yet, anyway. See, Jack, here's the thing. I've still got a mission to complete and rescuing you, that was never actually part of the brief."

I should have known, Shelby told himself.

Hanlon grinned. "Look, it's another half-hour to Ussurysk and I'm getting frostbite on my pecker just standing next to this window. Let's go sit in the next cabin and I'll tell you everything. How 'bout that?"

President Kennedy was standing looking out of the window across the White House lawn when Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara came into the office. It was still late afternoon in Washington DC. An hour had passed since the Secretary of Defence had told Kennedy what the Pentagon's radio-monitoring department had picked up, and in fifteen minutes, he was due to address his chiefs-of-staff.

"Gentlemen, please sit down. I've asked you here early because I want your input before I go into that room. You know what I'm going to face. If I don't go in there with a plan of action already in mind, I'm going to be railroaded in one direction or another by men whose very jobs it is to plan for this eventuality."

Rusk and McNamara nodded as they took their seats.

"Sir, I believe this is a double bluff," said Rusk.

Kennedy unclasped his hands, inviting him to continue.

"What the Russians want you to do now is back down, let them have their own way. But what they expect you to do is try to call their bluff, and bring our missile silos up to a state of launch preparedness. That in itself can only escalate this crisis further, and incline them to take more drastic countermoves."

"So, what?" said McNamara. "Do nothing?"

"You just said that's what they want, Dean," Kennedy said.

"But not what they expect, Mr President," Rusk continued. "I believe they have us over a barrel, sir. And if I can be candid, if the choice is between allowing them missiles on Cuba, or risking military engagement. Well."

Kennedy nodded. "What do you think, Bob?"

McNamara sighed. "I think making no response - a response, if I may say so, that you're perfectly justified in making - won't stop this escalating. Let them have missiles on Cuba this week, and what will they try next week?"

"What do you think we should do, then?"

"We've got nuclear warheads stored in West Germany they don't even know about. Well, maybe it's time we let them know. Cuba's two hundred miles from our territory, but if we set-up launch sites along their European border, all of a sudden we've got nukes a helluva lot closer to their territory than they have to ours!"

Rusk rubbed his forehead and groaned into his hands. "This has got nothing to do with Europe. We drag them into this, and it will escalate to war. Both the Soviets and ourselves consider Europe a preliminary theatre for operations, and a justifiable loss. Start a war there, Mr President, and you won't stop it reaching here!"

Kennedy sighed. "This isn't getting us anywhere."

For a few moments, they all sat in silence.

"I do have one other idea, sir."

"What is it, Dean?"

"It's a slightly risky strategy, sir. I'm hesitant to suggest it. But why not play them at their own game, and deal them a double bluff?"

"Go on."

"Well, they're using Cuba as a pawn, a buffer zone. So should we. They're expecting that if we're going to retaliate, we'll retaliate against them. But if we take it out on Cuba instead, then that's retaliation via proxy."

"Take it out on Cuba how?"

"Attack Cuba and it'll be war," said McNamara.

"Then don't attack them," said Rusk.

"What are you suggesting, then?" asked Kennedy.

"A blockade, sir."

"The CIA has known about them for years."

Shelby was back sitting in the carriage he'd shared with Malakov, and Hanlon had just begun to tell him all he knew about the creature.

"The first sighting we know about was in Burma, during the war. You probably know the British got bogged down in a lot of jungle warfare out there. Yeah, well, what didn't help was one of these bastards turning up in the middle of it. Started picking off the troops, invisible, up in the trees, using ranged weapons.

"It kept going away, then coming back again. Like it would attack them for a few days, go away for a few weeks, then come back again. They could never predict where it was going to strike next, and couldn't prepare the troops. Official line was, it was just a Jap sniper. But the men knew differently. Some of them saw it. You can see it, you know. Even when it's invisible, you can still see an outline."

Shelby remembered the shimmer on the Hitori. "I know."

"Yeah, well, every time they saw it, they shot at it, but they were just shooting air, man. They went prodding around for it in the bush, looking for it, but there was nothing there. And they weren't dumb. They knew their commanders were lying to them and it weren't a man. Did wonders for morale, I bet.

"Anyway, the Brits got pretty badly pasted in Burma. The Japs came down on their positions real hard. Before we joined in and saved their Limey butts, the Brits were on the run. But it didn't matter. No matter how far the Japs pushed them back to the Pacific, that son of a bitch always found them!"

"It was hunting them."

Hanlon nodded. "Yeah. How'd you know?"

"Malakov and I worked it out. It doesn't kill just anyone. It's after trophies, something it can take from the bodies. Usually their heads."

"You've worked out quite a bit, then. Ever thought of becoming a spy?" Hanlon grinned. "Anyway, as I was saying. The Japs basically had the Brits cornered by the Pacific. A lot surrendered, most were captured, but some pockets of resistance decided to go down fighting. So the Japs just bombed them.

"You can imagine the scene. You've just invaded a nice hot country, all the locals are now bowing before your emperor, you feel like a nice dip, but your new tropical beach is littered with blood and corpses and shit. What do you do? Why, you get your new prisoners to clean up their own dead, of course!

"Except, it wasn't just their own dead. No, sir. And this is how I know what one of these things looks like. Because as the Brits were picking up their own men, what should they find blown to bits right in the middle, but this thing that had been hunting them! Of course, they didn't realise that at first. And there wasn't much left of it. Enough to tell it weren't human. And enough to tell just how frigging large these things are, man. I mean, huge. They're like giants."

A pause. "You wanna see a pic?"

Shelby frowned. "What?"

"A picture. Do you want to see a picture of one? I mean, it's not a photo or anything. It's just a copy of a drawing by some Limey PoW."

He found the folded piece of paper in his coat and handed it to Shelby, who, after only a moment's hesitation, began to open it out flat.

"Real ugly son of a bitch, ain't it? Got a face like a pussy with teeth. And if that isn't what it really looks like, I hate to think what does."

Shelby held the monochrome print open in his palms, not curling his fingers around the edge of the page, almost afraid of having to touch it.

Because the creature, if that was indeed what it looked like, was the most hideous, repulsive thing Shelby had ever seen. Hanlon's description of its face hadn't been too far out. It was all scales, reptilian eyes, teeth and mandibles. He was already imagining this thing in place of the shimmer attacking Li.

"Blowing it up was probably an improvement," Hanlon said. "Anyway, what you may be thinking - what I was thinking when I first saw that - was that this thing's only invisible when it's alive. That it's naturally invisible. Uh-uh. Not so. Because the Brits who found it - they spent the war in a Jap camp, by the way - they said they found broken equipment. Like technology, the likes of which they'd never seen. And it was trashed. And the thing was visible. So you work it out."

Shelby nodded. He folded the drawing and handed it back to Hanlon. "Well, I suppose that explains why the CIA's so interested in these things."

Hanlon laughed out loud. "You got it, buddy!"

Shelby didn't find his laughter very infectious.

"I mean, these things are obviously way ahead of us. They've got weapons beyond anything we've ever seen and they can make themselves invisible, for fuck's sake! And, you know, if they're gonna keep coming here and hunting us, then I reckon we're entitled to a little something in return, don't you?"

Malakov woke to find himself lying face down in a ditch. An icy stream was lapping at his body and his forehead felt sticky with blood. When he lifted his face out of the water, pain lashed through his neck and he vomited.

After a few moments, he worked up the strength to lift himself out of the stream and then lay by the side of the ditch for several minutes. His head throbbed where the back of his scalp rested on the muddy ground. He opened his eyes, but all he could see was blackness, and opening them just made the pain worse. It felt like someone had punched his eyes into his brain. He threw up again.

As he lay there, it came back to him what had happened. He remembered finding the moustachioed man in an adjacent cabin. The man was a foot taller, but on the athletic side, so Malakov hadn't expected him to be so strong.

But strong he had been. The scuffle only lasted a few seconds. Malakov remembered crumpling to the floor, being dazed by a punch to the back of the head, and the next thing he knew he was being thrown out the window. Malakov remembered it being broken, but he didn't remember anything after that. Staring up into the darkness, he wondered just how far he had fallen.

Once lying here had become more uncomfortable than moving, Malakov got to his feet. He tried out all his limbs. Everything seemed to be working. He'd escaped any breaks, but had maybe sustained a couple of fractures to his arm. So he probably hadn't fallen that far. Indeed, as he climbed his way blind up the side of the ditch, he quickly found the ground level off, and there were the train tracks.

After a few moments, he started walking.

Shelby had plenty more questions.

"How many incidents do you have on record?"

"In total? About a dozen. Not all of them confirmed, you gotta understand. A lot of them were in rural Africa. Whole tribes decimated, but that could just as easily be tribal warfare, right? So we just don't know. But you can find tribal art of these things all over Africa. The creatures seem to like it there. I dunno, maybe it's because the Africans don't have the same weapons we do. Or maybe the things just like it warm. Actually, now that I think about it, this is the first time one of these things has gone hunting someplace cold. As far as we know, anyway."

"What made you think it was one of these things to begin with, then?"

"I didn't." Hanlon shrugged. "I'm not the CIA's alien hunter, you know. I just got told to drop what I was doing yesterday and meet a handler. He gave me the briefing, the drawing, told me where to go, who to meet, what to do. Before the weekend I was as oblivious about these things as anyone else. I guess someone thought there was something here worth investigating."

Shelby nodded. They sat for a few minutes in silence, until the train gave a loud hoot. Shelby looked out the window and saw another train passing on a parallel track. He could see the lights of a small town in the distance.

"How much did your man Malakov know?"

Shelby glanced up. Hanlon was looking curious.

"I mean, do the KGB have files on these things too?"

"No. I mean, I don't know. I don't think so. Why?"

Hanlon shook his head. "No particular reason. Just curious. The agency's got double agents in the KGB, so we've basically heard everything your guy reported back. Which isn't much. Some crap about submarines and plenty about you, but he's actually been pretty guarded. His superiors don't know much about anything."

"Well, maybe he was waiting until we worked out what it was doing."

"I thought you said you worked out it was hunting."

Shelby nodded. "Yes, but we think it stopped doing that. It seemed to have changed tact. We couldn't understand why at first, but we think it was hurt."

"Hurt." It wasn't a question.

"Yeah. Malakov shot it a few times."

"Did he now?" Hanlon thought for a few moments. "Well, obviously it can't be too badly injured if it's been on the rampage in Ussurysk."

"No, but it'll be interesting to see whether it's taken any trophies."

Hanlon frowned. "Why wouldn't it?"

"I don't know. It seems to have stopped doing that as well. And when we interrogated the captain of the Jaldysh, he said it was searching for something."

"Jaldysh?"

"The ship that was attacked in Nakhodka."

"Oh. Right. Yeah."

Shelby frowned. "Isn't that why you came to Nakhodka in the first place, Agent Hanlon? Because the Jaldysh was attacked?"

Hanlon snorted, smirked. "No, that was your approach, following the trail of destruction it left behind. And look where that got you. You were one step behind the whole time. You never stood a chance of catching up with it."

"So why did you head to Nakhodka, then?"

"Same reason I'd been waiting for this train for over two hours before you guys even turned up at the station. I knew where it was before it attacked."

Shelby frowned. "How?"

"I've been following a radar ghost."

"A what?"

Hanlon took a deep breath. "The science will take too long to explain, but basically, you know that radar works on the basis of radio waves, right? And that radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation, right?"

Shelby nodded.

"Well, there are other types of radiation that disrupt radio waves, and when they disrupt the radio waves emitted by a radar system, how it appears on the radar screen is like a ghost image, blocking the signal. The CIA has an inside man on a ground radar station not thirty miles from here. I've been in contact with him since the start of the mission, and he sent me to Nakhodka, and now Ussurysk."

Shelby frowned. "What about Vladivostok?"

"What about Vladivostok?" Hanlon looked blank.

"Where this thing first attacked."

Hanlon still looked blank.

"This thing was on the USS Roosevelt, hitched a ride on the same Soviet submarine that took me to Vladivostok, and then massacred about thirty or forty people." He paused. "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

Hanlon shook his head. "Weird."

It was Shelby's turn to smirk. "There goes your radar ghost theory, then. It would seem you're the one chasing the wrong lead."

"I don't think so, buddy."

Shelby raised his eyebrows.

"Y'see, Jack, that form of radiation, the radiation that disrupts radio waves and appears like a ghost on radar screens - it don't exist on this planet."

Shelby blinked slowly.

"Not naturally anyway. In the aftermath of a nuclear explosion, radiation will wipe out most electronics, including radio signals. But it would just wipe it out. Your radar screen would be blank. There wouldn't be a ghost. So unless we're chasing two completely different aliens who just happen to be in pretty much exactly the same places at exactly the same time, I think I'm on the right track."

"So how do you explain Vladivostok, then?"

Hanlon shook his head and shrugged. "You said your guy Malakov shot it, right? Well, maybe it's got radioactive blood. Shit, I don't know."

"Malakov shot it in Vladivostok, though."

Hanlon stared across at him, but didn't say anything.

The train was slowing down now. The lights of Ussurysk were off to their right, as if the train had bypassed the town. Pressing his face to the glass Shelby could see the lights from the platform ahead. But the train had almost stopped. It seemed to be stopping before the first carriage had even reached the platform.

"I could do with your help, Jack," Hanlon said.

Shelby looked over. "My help?"

"I know your history. It was in the Japanese profile. You're a marine. I know it's been twenty years, but that training doesn't go away, does it?"

Shelby didn't answer.

"Malakov was perfectly happy to keep you around as baggage, and it proved his liability. I would never have known he was the KGB agent whose reports I had been reading if you hadn't been with him. And he'd still be alive. So, if you're coming with me, I need you on side, working with me."

The train came to a stop.

Shelby sighed. "It depends."

"On what?" Hanlon stood up.

"On what your mission is."

"To find it, of course."

"And kill it?"

Hanlon hesitated.

"How else can I get the technology?"

NOTES:
My least favourite chapter so far. It wasn't hard to write, but it kinda interrupts the flow of the story, just having two guys sit on a train, talking. Doesn't really move the plot forward, though backstory developing the Predator mythos might be of interest. Really, the key thing that needed establishing was that Hanlon has been tracking something from Nakhodka that he thought was the Predator, but isn't, yet it's going the same route. I don't know if that remains clear amidst all the background stuff. I suppose none of it was really necessary, but that's the problem with not writing a story in a straight line, as you should do. You can put off all the pre-planned exposition for so long, but sooner or later you're going to have so much on your hands you just need to deliver it all in one burst. Anyway, I tried to cut it up into digestible chunks by cutting to JFK and Malakov's miraculous survival.

The science in this chapter is entirely nonsense. Actually, it might not be. I really don't know. I made it all up, but that doesn't mean it's automatically bullshit. I know radio waves are a form of radiation, but whether there are other types of radiation, even otherworldly radiation, that could disrupt them enough to leave a ghost image on a radar screen is another matter. Well, they don't call it science fiction for no reason. The history, however, is less of my own invention. Yes, the British were in Burma, and yes, the Japanese put up a good fight. I don't know whether they ever drove us back to the Pacific or not, or whether it was the Americans who came in and "saved [our] Limey butts", but hey, I can always put that down to Hanlon's insufferably Ameri-centric viewpoint.

Incidentally (and unintentionally, honestly - okay, used enough adverbs in this sentence already!), two of Hanlon's lines in the first section are remarkably (agh, there's another one!) similar to two of Carter Burke's lines from "Aliens": "You're pretty damn lucky to be alive, buddy" and "It's blind luck I even found you at all." Unplanned, but appropriate. You'll see why.