“Sir, I got a call for you from Roost,” the co-pilot reported, his voice tinny and bland through the headset. That would be Chief Cabrera, hopefully with good news.

“Patch her through.” Young waited until he heard the hiss-click that indicated a switch of radio frequency, then got right to the point. “Roost, this is Hound Dog actual. Do you have a visual? Over.”

“This is Roost. Be advised, Visitor has relocated,” Cabrera informed him. She sounded a bit hyper, though it was hard to tell whether she was excited about her part in this once-in-a-lifetime operation or merely suffering the effects of too many energy drinks and too much coffee.

“Sending updated coordinates. Over.”

“Copy, Roost. Do you have a description yet? Over.”

Young was hoping for something, anything, that’d make it easier for them to spot the host in a crowd. They couldn’t very well bag everyone wearing a cowboy hat. This was Texas, which meant there’d be plenty of hats, and besides, there was such a thing as civil rights… and, worse, civilians with camera phones. They’d be drawing too much attention as it was. The El Paso Chief of Police had gone ballistic when he’d been informed to expect a military strike force in his jurisdiction and to stay out of their way. He’d been told it was a matter of national security, but, frankly, the phrase had been overused so much in recent history it didn’t quite carry the weight it should have.

“Hound, Roost. Visitor’s still wearing a dark cowboy hat,” Cabrera reported unhappily. “Looks like a dark leather jacket. Blue pants, probably jeans. I’ve initiated hookup. Over.”

Which meant Cabrera was patching into the local CCTV network to see if she could get a better view of the host through the local security cameras. Probably not, the way their luck was going, but it was worth a try.

“Roost. Roger that. I copy black hat, dark jacket, jeans.” Young glanced at his watch and wished they could go faster. “Keep watching.

Over.”

“Hound. Good copy. Wilco. Out.”

Sorry, cowboy, Young thought, staring out at the desert rushing by.

One way or another, you’re going down.

He hoped the poor possessed bastard wasn’t aware of what was going on, had been pushed into some sort of coma instead of being forced to endure the alien handling his body like a puppet, but he suspected it was a vain hope. Young couldn’t forget the grainy image of the creature forcing itself into the man’s body, crawling in against his will while he fought and struggled. It haunted him. Watching the tape had been like witnessing a rape, violent and viciously intimate. It was one of the reasons why Young was so strongly opposed to the notion of capturing the thing. Capture meant imprisonment and experimentation. The autopsy reports implied there was no way to extricate the creature without killing the host, so the cowboy—

aware or not—would be forced to suffer through everything they did to the alien.