At less than 400 meters above the ground he opened his chute. The unyielding surface below represented both a hostile terrain and respite from immediate death.
Unfortunately they were a good 40 kilometers from their objective. Cecil hadn’t been so far from where he was supposed to be since the Falkland Island War. Clearly there was some marching before them.
Cecil hit the ground, as gently as possible considering the speed at which he was moving, and trotted himself out of falling to the ground. His parachute was not the giant round canopy that is most often used by the military, but one of the square chutes designed to be a steerable airfoil.
He removed his harness, secured his weapon and kit, then looked up and around for his men. Not bad he thought as he saw that they were mostly nearby on the flat desert floor.
His men, consisting of three sixteen man “Troops”, began making their way together, organizing themselves by the Troop each belonged within.
“Major, everyone is here, no lost souls,” his Command Colour Sergeant said.
Colour Webly, a career NCO gathered with the officers of the Squadron and the Major, quietly conferred with his officer. “A bit off course sir,” he said.
“Yes Colour, we have a quite a distance to cover,” Mumsford replied. “Thirty-eight klicks, let’s get moving.”
Colour Webly passed the word to the men. "Poor Mary on the terrace," he said. He intentionally bastardized the rallying cry of the Royal Marines, “Per mare, per terram” in a popular rendition of the Royal Marines motto. Translated, it was "By land, by sea". The Argentine army knew what that meant, others would know soon.
The White House Press Room
Washington, DC
Lewis Mann was a correspondent who could be trusted to do what he said he would do. Confidential sources stayed that way, even under extreme conditions. Several years ago, he had spent 6 days in jail protecting a source's anonymity from a state prosecutor who got a Judge to agree with him. Such things are remembered by those to whom this principle might someday apply. Therefore, he was not surprised when he got a tip from a source close to the President. What surprised him was the content of the tip.
Lewis had covered political affairs almost all his life. Starting out as a so called 'real journalist' working for a newspaper, he broke the story of kickbacks from a contractor to a city commissioner. Thus noticed, he began a slow but steady rise in the ranks, first in print, then in television. His success culminated in his current position as a network correspondent at the very top of political affairs, The White House.
Tips come from all flavors of people, from disgruntled peons to those dissatisfied with policy to those seeking personal advancement.
The call Lewis received was from an Assistant Deputy Secretary whose profile to date didn't fit any of the above. She seemed to be driven by principle. In a town such as Washington where principle is checked at the door, she was a rare person who continued toward idealism when pragmatism would provide a much better living.
When Lewis received a tip, he would try to confirm it another way and he would consider the tipster's role in the scheme of things. He disliked being used for political gain in and of itself, however, if the story had value, he would judge it on its own merits. The trouble with the really good stories was that they are held close to the chest and confirmation is difficult, if not impossible. Then the source's history and motivation play a vital role in determining whether or not to run with it and how to phrase the resulting story.
Invasion by aliens from outer space was a really tough pill to swallow. Then he remembered the photograph in the science section of the Times and it all started to fit together.
His next call was to the producer. To say he was skeptical is an understatement. Reciting the factual and principled past of his tipster helped, but what turned the tide was the picture and a call to a friend who is an amateur astronomer. The Astronomy community was on its ear with the orbital object. The producer called Mann back and Lewis began a live segment from The White House Lawn ten minutes later.
"A highly placed reliable Administration source, speaking on condition of anonymity, has told this reporter of the attack upon the peaceful people of Peru and Morocco by aircraft that entered the Earth's atmosphere from an orbiting spacecraft. This spacecraft is NOT from Earth and is the subject of intense scrutiny from the Governments of the United States, Canada and Great Britain. Events earlier today, as recited by Presidential Spokesman Marvin Winston, tell of the US Navy's brief but violent encounter with one of these aircraft. The purpose of the attack upon Peru and Morocco is unknown, but speculation opens doors best left closed. I'm Lewis Mann, reporting live from The White House."
With this brief paragraph, Lewis Man let the cat out of the bag on the Moroccan incident and started the world down the path toward hysteria.
Red Crescent clinic
Faguig, Morocco
Dr. Hamouditou sat deathly still as he struggled to understand what he saw before him. He was examining a pile of ashen flakes where human flesh had once been. Amazing! His first reaction was to call his friend, Dr. Ziederman in the Hassan II hospital in Bouarfa, but there was no answer, which troubled him greatly. Not that his friend had not answered, the entire hospital had not answered!
A call to another colleague, this time in Fes, brought news that he didn’t expect. Bouarfa is cut off and out of communications. Which left Figuig alone as the Algerian side of the nearby border was unresponsive at best and hostile at worst. The ending of the war with Algeria did not settle anything, they just didn’t want to have anything to do with those people!
They were in a cul-de-sac of the border with Algeria, which meant that all contact with the world was through Highway Seventeen and Bouarfa. They were alone!
He turned to the phone again, this time calling a colleague in Yugoslavia, where he had obtained his medical degree. There he learned of the invasion of earth. And the deaths of millions of Peruvians. That’s when he started to shake.
Dr Hamouditou made one more call. This time to another friend in the government. Not the Moroccan government, but that of Italy. His college friend, who shared Islam’s calling, and who had helped during the recent Saharan war against Algeria, took the call. Dr. Hamouditou didn’t know of NATO’s involvement, but he soon learned that he was on the front lines of the earth’s first extraterrestrial invasion. He had no idea that he was soon to be center stage as world events turned in his direction.
Aboard the USS Carl Vinson
A modern nuclear powered Aircraft Carrier has a population of over six thousand people and is like a small city in many respects. One consequence of such a large number of people is the need for a fairly complete hospital. While the Navy spends a great deal of time and effort on safety, people still get hurt. A peacetime patrol is normally devoid of a large number of major injury patients, yet the staff and facilities must be prepared for the horrors of modern warfare. Chemical contamination is one of those horrors.
Forty-two men had originally been brought aboard as injured from the two US Destroyers plus Fifty-five more from the Quinones, a Peruvian Destroyer. The immediate issue was cleaning the incoming wounded of any chemical residue. The survivors were washed thoroughly and no sign of any contaminant was discovered.
Six of the injured had died almost immediately and twenty-two more had expired within two hours. Commander William Davis had struggled mightily to save those lives. As the chief medical officer aboard the ship, he was responsible for the quality of medical care rendered. This was a responsibility he took seriously and today that care had been inadequate.
The wounded were separating themselves into two groups. The first were those whose condition rapidly deteriorated into death and the second were those who recovered very quickly. The difference was obviously exposure to the toxic substance and there was no in between condition. The toxic used was a substance Dr. Davis was unfamiliar with. The state of technology was such that Davis had forwarded all the availab
le information to experts at Bethesda Naval Hospital. To Davis' credit, they were as puzzled as he.
His train of thought was interrupted by the sound of his name being called. He looked up from a microscope and realized that the noise was coming from his intercom. He walked over and pressed the lever. "Yes."
"Commander Grimes in the morgue sir. You need to come down here. I've come across something very interesting."
"I'll be right there," Davis said as he thought 'just what I need is another piece of this puzzle.
Winding his way through the labyrinth of passageways that becomes a way of life aboard ship brought him to the refrigerated compartment that is the morgue. Opening the hatch, he stepped into the autopsy area. Laid out on a stainless steel table was the naked body of a Hispanic male.
"What do you have Wally?" Bill Davis asked.
Lieutenant Commander Wallace J. Demsy was a short man with wire frame glasses. His diminutive size masked a highly intelligent mind. His thin delicate fingers were resting lightly on the focus knob of a microscope.
"Damnedest thing Bill. You need to look at this tissue sample before I say anything." He stepped out of the way and let Davis peer into the instrument.
Demsy spoke as Bill Davis adjusted the focusing ring. "The natural cohesion seems to be missing and the cell is literally falling apart."
"Bullshit," was the first thing out of the Commander's mouth followed shortly thereafter by "God all mighty."
He slowly raised his head and stared vacantly at the wall for a long moment. "The cultures," he said. "Where are the cultures?"
Grimes looked at his boss and said "In the lab."
Together they left the morgue and hurried to the laboratory.
They quickly picked up a labeled Petri dish and ran a swab through the interior. Brushing the swab across a glass slide, Davis placed the slide under the microscope. For a suspended moment Davis was still as he hunched over the microscope, only his right hand moving to focus the instrument.
He stood up and looked at Grimes. Grimes took that as a cue to look for himself.
After a moment he stood up as well and spoke "There are no bacteria alive. None."
"And those who died aren't decomposing, they're dissolving."
CHAPTER 17
USS Houston
Commander James Watson stood outside the compression chamber as the 3 divers returned. They would spend hours isolated from the rest of the boat as the nitrogen was purged from their system through gradual decompression. This was a necessary step to take to avoid the bends when diving at over 300 feet.
The divers had completed encircling the UFO with a net to which was attached inflatable 'balloons'. These high tensile strength balloons would inflate to give the UFO neutral buoyancy. A tow cable attached to the craft would then allow the Houston to become the world's most expensive tugboat.
The LA Class submarine began to slowly tow the UFO out of the coastal region being patrolled and into an area where it would be recovered by an Amphibious Transport Dock, the USS Coronado.
USS Coronado
"I don't know what's behind all this but I can say that you're going into Peru." Captain Jergensen was addressing Lieutenant Murphy in his small shipboard office. "Recon Platoon is to embark aboard the submarine Cincinnati at eighteen hundred hours. I'm sure the remainder of the Company will follow shortly. You have a lot to do so I won't keep you Lieutenant. Dismissed."
Lt. Murphy hurried back to his Platoon area and let Sgt. Adams know of their upcoming deployment. There were a million things to do, all of them by yesterday. As one of the recon platoons of the First Marine Amphibious Unit, they would be at the point of any spear the President chose to thrust.
Huacho, Peru
When it is autumn in San Diego, it is spring in Peru. The Republic of Peru lies between 3 and 17 degrees south of the Equator and the coastal desert has what's generally agreed to be a dismal climate. Hot and humid with very little rainfall, Huacho is not a place where people choose to live for any reason other than an economic one. More often than not, those scant economic reasons tend to be born of a lifetime already spent there. Ramon had left an area very similar to the poverty he now saw.
Just across the mouth of the Rio Huaura is where San Martin proclaimed Peru's independence in 1821. Every child in the country knows the story behind the July 28th celebration of Independence. A child's reverence for a hero made him think of that as he sought refuge from the crowd of people streaming north. The roads were crowded with people on foot. The occasional bus or truck was hopelessly caught in the mass exodus north.
He heard segments of conversation but was unable to stop anyone in their near panic to leave. Only when he reached the Pan American Highway was he able to temporarily join a family's northward trek and learn of the reason behind the journey.
"Por favor. What is happening? Why is everyone coming north?" he shouted over the din of the crowd.
"Everyone is dead," replied a young wild eyed boy.
"Who is dead? Did you see any of this?" Ramon asked.
An old man in peasant garb answered. "They say Lima is gone. There is talk of a green mist that squeezes your life out. In my life, I have seen many people die, but nothing like today."
Ramon stopped and stared at the retreating family and then turned his head to see hundreds more northbound. The fragments of conversation he had heard in the airport began to make sense now and he needed to reassess his position.
Peru was at war. That much was obvious, but against who? How could he use that to work for him?
Equador was the likely candidate. There had been border skirmishes as long as he could remember over the Northern Departments (Provinces) of San Martin and Loreto. He didn't think Equador had any chemical weapons but what else could it be. He found a relatively quiet spot and sat down to rest. In the lengthening shadows he pondered the immediate future.
If he stayed in Huacho or went north, he would end up as just one of a million refugees scrounging for food and a job. The people he grew up with were a superstitious lot whose lack of education and wild imagination could account for the stampede he had witnessed. At that point, he decided to go south and probably find that a farmer had put too much pesticide on his field and created the scare. He got to his feet and headed south.
Once he got out of Huacho the stream of refugees disappeared. It's just as I thought, there are no travelers from the south. This is only a rumor that superstitious people got carried away with. He was headed south at a brisk pace as the sun set.
In the distance, he heard the scream of an engine being brutally overworked. A plume of dust arose in the twilight as if the approaching motorcycle had a tail. Suddenly, the noise ended abruptly. As he went toward the still glowing head lamp, he saw a motorcycle lying on its side, the rider's head in a bloody pool against a sign post. The amount of blood puddled told as much as he needed to know about the rider's condition.
The motorcycle had hit an enormous pothole in the middle of a turn and the rider had lost control. He had obviously been in a great hurry, fleeing the 'farmer’s pesticide'.
The Motorcycle was an old Honda. It appeared undamaged, only a few minor fresh scratches over the top of hundreds of old ones. The front wheel wobbled slightly, but would suffice. He climbed aboard the ancient vehicle and was rewarded when the engine started with the first kick. By holding the twist grip with his thumb and index finger, he was able to work the throttle in spite of his cast. The headlight flared with renewed life as the engine settled into a rough, loping idle. He pointed the handlebars and proceeded south at a much slower pace than its northward journey.
CHAPTER 18
The White House Situation Room
Washington, DC
President Bermin sat listening to General Easterly discuss the situation.
"Our reconnaissance efforts earlier today showed no movement on the ground. Lima is a population center of 6 million people plus and we must consider them to be casualties." He paused as
that figure sunk in. The full cabinet was present for this briefing, somewhat unusual under the circumstances, but the President thought it necessary for everyone to be up to speed.
"The chemical agent is unknown but some of the properties have been identified," Easterly continued. "The substance becomes ineffective after approximately 2 hours. It is airborne which means that it evaporates and with its short active period, further contamination by the wind is not a concern. The chemical seems to dissolve the cell's glue and they fall apart. Nothing exposed to the chemical, in other than microscopic quantities, survived the attack. By that, I mean even bacteria. Central Peru's coast is now a sterile environment.
“We have reason to believe that a second landing and sterilization has taken place, this time in the desert mountains of the “Oriental Region” in Morocco. This incident is in a sparsely populated area with the potential of losing less than 50,000 lives. Not that this is insignificant, but compared with Peru, it is clearly on the back burner at this time.
"In Peru, close scrutiny of today's pictures showed some details that we initially missed."
"You missed?" asked Paul Leya, Secretary of Health and Human Services. This was his first briefing on anything of a military nature and he was anxious to show his grasp of the situation by contributing. He also felt that a little dig at the military and their huge budget might pry a few dollars loose that would flow into his agency.
General Easterly turned to look at the source of the interruption. "Yes Mister Secretary. We photographed approximately 60,000 square kilometers today. Interpreting that much film takes time so we do it in stages. First we..."
"Bill," the President said, interrupting "I'm sure that Paul would appreciate a separate briefing in detail by one of your aides later, but for now, please continue." The President's irritation was evident.
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