That didn’t make any sense. Why would Lindemann stop early to top off the tanks? The kid said that they were flying in a PAC P-750, which Holly said should have given them plenty of extra range to get to the site. Now Earl would beat Lindemann there for sure.

Unless Lindemann had an idea of where the monster was heading…

I mentioned that once we got back into the air. My personal theory was that maybe Stricken had given the Germans intelligence he hadn’t shared with the rest of us. He’d told Earl about Unicorn’s missing team and no one else. Stricken had called this a contest, but as he’d admitted himself, he wasn’t the type of man that cared about concepts like fairness.

“Maybe Lindemann has a psychic on his team,” was Trip’s guess.

“That’s stupid.”

“Says the psychic.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not psychic.”

“Can you read minds?”

“Come on, Trip, we’ve been over this a hundred times. Only in very specific circumstances, after being exposed to a specific artifact of the Old Ones, and the effects don’t seem to last for very long. I haven’t read someone’s mind in like forever. And it isn’t mind reading, it’s just particular memories.”

“Psychic.”

This was an argument I was never going to win. Trip still believed it was a gift from God. Yeah, I suppose it sort of was a gift from a god, just not ours.

“Maybe he’s got someone that can do magic,” Milo supplied.

“Possible, but also stupid.”

“Obviously, because that would be so unlikely, as we’re riding in a helicopter with orcs,” Holly said. “Hell, Earl’s even got a magic-using elf girl with him—”

The helicopter jerked harder this time, slamming all of us back into our seats. Only this time it wasn’t a mechanical effect, but rather because Skippy had freaked out on the controls. “Elf! Elf? Harb Anger has filthy elf?”

“Bad move, Team Goldilocks,” I shouted at Holly.

“Crud. Sorry, Skippy.” Holly had forgotten about the animosity between elves and orcs. They’d been at war since the dawn of time, with both sides blaming the other for all manner of atrocities. Earl deciding to hire one of the trailer park elves was a subject that he’d been planning on broaching to Skippy’s people gradually.

“Elfs?”

“Oh crap.” Milo grabbed his headset. “Listen, Skippy, it isn’t like that.”

“Tribe not…not good enough? Urks brave for Harb Anger? Elfs are evil—filth—grugnulish!”

I had picked up a handful of orcish, but I didn’t know that word, though it was obviously not meant as a compliment.