Free Skyfire by Mack Maloney

chowder.
    "That's scrod you're eating by the way. Caught a bunch of them this morning out in the bay."
    They were sitting in the comfortably rustic kitchen of the farmhouse Hunter and Dominique called home. Yaz had arrived earlier that afternoon, flown in by a United American Armed Forces helicopter that had met his airplane at the airport up in Boston. It seemed as if he and Hunter had been eating and drinking ever since.
    Yaz's mission per Jones's orders was to brief his friend on the strange goings-on in Nova Scotia, as well as the piece of videotape from Plum Island.
    It had been a tough decision for the Commander in Chief to make.
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    More than eight months had passed since Hunter left active duty, and Jones had gone to great lengths to honor Hunter's desire for privacy.
    Yet Hunter had greeted Yaz warmly on his arrival -they were friends, and it had been almost a year since they'd seen each other. However, at Hunter's insistence, Yaz had put off discussing the bad news until after dinner.
    "Unless you're here to tell me about an impending nuclear attack, it can wait," Hunter had said to him shortly after Yaz stepped off the chopper.
    So instead, Yaz had gotten a tour of the farm and the fields, plus a ride along the beach in Hunter's laughably rickety pickup truck.
    But now, as the three of them finished their dinner meal, Yaz knew it was time to get on with his assignment.
    Hunter caught the look in his eye, and reluctantly nodded.
    "OK," he said, filling Yaz's glass with an after-dinner shot of brandy. "Let's have it. . ."
    Yaz threw back the liquor to steel himself, then took the next fifteen minutes to detail what was known about the Yarmouth massacre. Through it all, Hunter listened without speaking, taking it all in between refills of brandy. Only Dominique, who pretended to busy herself by putting the finishing touches on a dessert of homemade apple pie, showed any reaction to the startling news, gasping at several points in the story.
    By the time he got to the part about the "sea monster," Yaz had downed three glasses of brandy and was working on his second piece of pie.
    Finally, Hunter spoke.
    "Well, I knew it must have been something heavy duty for you to come all the way out here," he said. "What do Jonesie and the others make of all this?"
    Yaz shook his head. "No one has come up with anything near a rational explantion," he said, finally pushing
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    the pie plate away from him. "I mean, it was bad enough that whoever was responsible just utterly wiped out that village. But for them to disappear like that-walk back into the ocean?-and apparently take a hundred and eighty-seven women with them? It's just too bizarre ..."
    "And the women who were taken were just between certain ages?" Dominique asked.
    Yaz nodded grimly. "Between fourteen and thirty-six," he said. "And we all know there are white slavers running around the world. But I've never heard of any of them abducting more than five or six people at a time."
    "Neither have I," Hunter said. "Usually, they're just hit-and-run scumbags who cant count past ten."
    They retired to the back porch, where a pot of brandy-laced coffee was passed around. The fading light of the setting sun provided the customary spectacular sunset, with a slightly cool ocean breeze heralding the approach of another night.
    "All this gloom from Nova Scotia almost makes your monster story seem funny by comparison," Hunter told Yaz. "Jones and Fitz must be going nuts."
    "They've worn out the VCR watching the videotape," Yaz said. "And I don't blame them. I've seen it probably three dozen times, and each time, it looks like a frigging monster. A real one-solid, skin and all. His head just bobs up and down once and then boom! it disappears."
    "Perhaps the famous monster finally escaped from Loch Ness?" Dominique said, brushing back her beautiful blond hah-as she sipped her coffee.
    "That's what Jonesie said," Yaz replied with a laugh.
    "Well, that monster he better stay the hell