by David Archer
Marco stared at the doctor and swallowed, then turned and walked out of the room behind Noah.
Noah had gone straight to the lab, and Marco caught up with him there. Renée looked up and gave each of them a sad smile, while she was working with the tissues Emerson had sent to her.
“Hey, guys,” she said softly.
“Just tell me,” Noah said, “do you know yet whether those tissues are human?”
“Not just yet,” she said. “The ANDE machine takes a couple of hours to read DNA from the samples, but I can tell you that the blood samples and some of the others look pretty strange. I’m not saying they aren’t human, I’m just saying they’re not anything I’m used to seeing in the past. I’m running a toxicological analysis on blood samples now, and I should have answers in an hour or so.”
“Any sign of the chemicals you found in Belcher’s blood?”
“At this point, all I can say is I think so. The mass spectrometer will tell me for sure, after I get all the results in. Sorry I can’t give you more information just yet, but these things do take time, Noah.”
“I’m aware of that,” Noah said. “You’re doing a great job, Renée. Too bad we don’t need you doing this on every mission.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “After this one, I intend to ask for a vacation.”
“Me, too,” Marco said. “This has been one for the record books.”
“Let me know when you have something,” Noah said. “I’m going back to see Swaggart and Litchfield.”
* * *
As soon as Noah had left them a couple hours earlier, Swaggart had looked at Litchfield. “Lisa Branigan? Our mystery girl turned out to be Branigan’s daughter?”
“I was just as shocked as you are,” Litchfield said. “I don’t know how in the world she could be running loose, she should be sitting in a comfy little room somewhere, just waiting till this is all over.”
Swaggart shook his head. “I get the feeling Randall might not be keeping control over the whole project,” he said. “It may be time to simply shut this whole thing down, at least for now. The last thing we need is for people like Noah Wolf to figure out who is really behind it all. If Lisa talks, the whole damn balloon could go up, and I don’t think she’s got what it takes to resist Jenny Lance’s kind of interrogation.”
Litchfield licked his lips. “Jack,” he said slowly, “it’s already gone too far. You try to tell the Coalition to shut this thing down and they’re going to go ballistic. This is what they’ve been working up to for more than seventy years; it’s all about to come together, you can’t tell them to put it off now.”
“Okay, I’m not necessarily saying they can’t go ahead with it,” Swaggart hissed. “I’m saying we need to shift the operation to somewhere else, and quickly. They can get everyone out of the current compound and take them somewhere else. You know damn well they’ve got at least one backup location prepared. It’s time to put them to use, get them out of Argentina before Peterson and her people figure out what’s going on.”
Litchfield stared at him for a moment, then slapped the table in front of him. “It’s that stupid jackass in the White House,” he said. “Without the United States cooperating in this thing, the Coalition has to be careful, but this may be the only chance we have in the next twenty years to see this thing come together.” He turned and looked at his handler. “Jack, think about it. With as many sightings as we’ll be able to create with this project, the whole damn world is going to think we are on the brink of an alien invasion. That’s the only thing we’ve been able to come up with that can create enough fear and global cooperation to bring on a single planetary government. The Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the CFR—how many times have you actually seen them work together properly before this? With Branigan’s Cocktail, we can finally create a believable alien invasion scenario, and even Kissinger knew that was going to be the only thing that would ever make it possible to reach the goal.”
“Yes, I agree, but this would’ve been so much easier if Branigan had only been willing to cooperate.” Swaggart shook his head again. “You’re the one with the contacts; I need you to find an opportunity to get in touch with them and tell them to move the operation somewhere else. Leave just enough behind at this one so that it looks like we’ve accomplished something, but make it clear that they have to move quickly. I suspect we’ll be going in sometime in the morning, and I don’t want Noah Wolf and his people to have any idea what the real scope of this thing is about.”
* * *
Litchfield was still at the table two hours later when Noah walked in. “I’ve just come from autopsy and lab,” he said. “Emerson is pretty sure that thing was one of the human hybrids, and Renée is running tissues and blood samples right now. We should have more information within an hour or so, but I want to know more about what you guys are finding. Have you found us a way in yet?”
Swagger looked to Litchfield. “Well?” he asked. “Answer the man.”
Litchfield scowled. “The only thing I’ve found so far is a slim possibility,” he said, and then pointed at a map that showed the compound. “The only patrol to get close was the one Lieutenant Jorgensen commanded, the one on that body cam footage we saw. He worked his way around so that he was coming into the compound from the north, right here, and got within a couple hundred yards. I think, and I want to stress that I’m not sure about this, that if we took a large team in from that direction, we might find only one hybrid standing guard out there. If we can take that one down, then we could conceivably get inside the compound. Swaggart’s team could go after Branigan and try to extract him while the rest of us work on rounding up the monsters who run this thing.”
Noah looked at the map for a couple of seconds, then nodded.
“Then that’s our plan,” he said. “Swaggart, you get your people and brief them. Litchfield, you’re going with his team because you know Branigan. We’ll contact Major Wilson and get some infantry fire teams to back us up, but I want to plan on hitting that place about sundown tomorrow evening.”
He turned and walked out of the room, and Swaggart and Litchfield looked at one another.
Noah went back up front and walked right into Allison’s office. She looked up at him with a haggard look on her face.
“Tell me you got something,” she said.
“We have a basic plan,” Noah said. “I’m going to need army backup, though. I want at least a half dozen fire teams, and I want half of their personnel equipped with M32s. We have no idea how many hybrids there might be, and it’s the only weapon we know of at the moment that is definitely effective against them. I want to go over there tomorrow, so that we are in position to hit them around the time the sun goes down.”
Allison looked at him for a few seconds, then nodded. “I’ll call Wilson,” she said. “You’ll probably end up working with Colonel Berkshire at the observation post, but I’ll make sure the weapons are available.”
Noah nodded once and left the room. Since they were going into action the following day, he wanted to give his team as much time off that evening as he possibly could. They all jumped at the opportunity, heading out for dinner before coming back and separating into couples in their own little bunk rooms.
As soon as the door was closed behind them, Sarah grabbed Noah by his shoulders and pulled him close, then yanked his face down for a kiss. When she finally let up, she stared into his eyes for a moment.
“You know, this is probably the most dangerous situation you ever gone in to,” she said.
“There’s always a risk, Sarah,” he said. “It’s the nature of the job.”
“Yes, but this is worse. My God, no, you’re going up against creatures that aren’t even human. How are you supposed to protect yourself against things that move faster than you can follow?”
“That’s why I’m taking Marco and Jenny,” Noah said. “Between the three of us, I think we have a good chance of coming out alive. Besides, we are taking
almost two platoons of crack soldiers with us. I plan on coming back, babe, don’t worry.”
“But you might not,” Sarah said. “And I hate the thought of living without you if anything goes wrong. That’s why I…”
She ducked her head against his chest and held him tight again.
“You did what?” Noah asked. He pushed her back slightly and hooked a finger under her chin to make her look up at him. “What have you done?”
She bit her bottom lip for a couple of seconds, then gave him a defiant look. “I threw away my birth control pills. Don’t give me that look, Noah, dammit! If I lose you, I want something of you in my life. Don’t even try to argue with me, you know you won’t win. Just get over in that bed and make love to me.”
Noah cocked his head slightly to the side and looked at her. “How long ago?” he asked.
She shrugged. “About a month ago,” she said. “Right after we finished with the body snatchers. I thought I was going to die that time, and I just—I just decided that I don’t want to die without having a child, your child.”
Noah nodded slowly. “You do realize Allison will bench you if you get pregnant,” he said. “That’ll be the end of you going out on missions with me.”
She looked up at him for a moment, and then suddenly tears began running down her face.
“But at least I won’t be alone if something happens to you.”
Noah pulled her close and held her for a few seconds, then simply picked her up and laid her on the bed.
TWELVE
Danny McRae looked up when the keys rattled in the door, and then got to his feet. “Already?” he asked.
“They need you in the control room,” said the man standing in the hallway. Like all the others, he was dressed in black and wearing sunglasses.
“Whatever you say, Agent K,” Danny said. He stepped out of his bunk room and turned left, knowing exactly where to go.
The control room was a large section of the building in which he was housed, with numerous workstations set up. It looked a lot like the accounting office in a big corporation, he thought, but he kept his thoughts to himself. He had already learned that speaking up when he wasn’t addressed was a mistake.
He sat down at the computer he had been assigned and waited for his instructions. He knew better than to touch the keyboard before he was told to, but it was only a couple of seconds later when the woman appeared. Her name tab simply said, “Janet,” but he was fairly certain that wasn’t her real name.
“Good morning,” she said with a smile. “Ready to get to work again?”
“Why, certainly, Janet,” Danny replied, returning the smile. “What do you need me to do today?”
“Well, I think you should just keep going on the system upgrade. You’ve been doing a fantastic job, you know.”
“I’m trying,” he said. “This is—this is the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen, Janet. I’d give anything to be part of the permanent staff here. Think there’s any hope of that happening?”
“I already told my superiors that you feel that way,” she said. She gave him a coquettish grin. “I even sort of mentioned that I wouldn’t mind having you around steadily. I hope that’s okay?”
Danny reached out and touched her hand for a split second, and her smile grew wider. “I’d like that,” he said. “To be honest, I find myself wishing I had met you under other circumstances. I think you and I could have had some fun together.”
She giggled and winked. “Maybe we still can,” she said. “You just keep doing good work, and I’m pretty sure they’ll be glad to have you come aboard. Once that happens, we could—well, we could get to know one another better.”
“Sounds like a dream come true,” he said. “Well, I better get to work if I want to impress your bosses.” He winked at her, then turned back to the computer terminal and logged on, using the ID and password she had given him when he had been brought in a couple of days earlier.
At the time, he had thought of himself as a prisoner, and he had been terrified of what was going to happen to him. When they explained to him that they needed his computer skills, and allowed him brief glimpses of some of the things that were visible in the compound, he began to think of it as more of an opportunity than a danger. He was actually inside the operation he had been sent to spy on, and as long as he kept doing what they wanted him to do, he was probably in no immediate danger. The only problem was trying to figure a way to get some kind of a message out, to let his handlers know what was going on. There was very little chance he was going to be able to do that, so all he could think of for the moment was trying to stay alive. That meant making himself as useful as possible to his captors, so that he might be accepted as a new member of the team.
At that point, he might get an opportunity to get some sort of signal out. If he had to put up with a dalliance with Janet in order to make that happen, that was okay with him. Besides, she wasn’t bad looking for her age, and she seemed to think he was exactly the younger man she was looking for.
He had been tasked with upgrading their computer system, which required studying the system in order for him to create the new algorithms that were necessary for the system to do everything they wanted to do. The compound was using Cray computers, running on a modified version of UNICOS; somebody had butchered in aspects of UNIX and Z/OS, but hadn’t really understood what they were trying to do at the time. Danny was patiently rewriting large sections of operating system code so that the computers could interface properly with one another, and with the incredible craft that were housed outside the building.
Those craft, looking like nothing if not flying saucers, were what Danny really wanted to get a good look at. The tiny window in his cell allowed him to peek out at them, but he wasn’t close enough to hear any of the conversations between the people—and other things—that moved around them. He couldn’t help wondering just what kind of fuel they might be using, what kind of propulsion system allowed them to hover just a couple of feet off the ground and maneuver the way they did. He had watched several times as they took off and returned, and he had been shocked at how quickly they vanished over the tree line.
In shape, they resembled a large, flattened football, if a football could be eighty feet long and made of plastic. They were pointed on each end, and were probably forty feet wide and at least twenty-five feet tall. There were no windows that he could see, and the only entrance seemed to be a hatch that opened at the rear of the craft, reminding him of the rear loading bay of a C-130. Men and other things walked up the ramp into the craft and out of it, and he had seen hand trucks full of boxes being offloaded at times.
On other occasions, he had seen people carried off on stretchers. At first, he thought they were wounded or something, but then it dawned on him that they were probably unconscious. That’s when he realized he had most likely been brought in aboard one of those craft.
The day went smoothly, and he was almost surprised when Janet appeared to tell him it was time for lunch. He had grown accustomed to being taken back to his cell at lunchtime, but this time she motioned for him to follow her.
“I got the okay for us to have lunch together,” she said, smiling nervously. “I hope that’s okay?”
Danny put a smile on his own face. “That’s delightful,” he said. “Maybe you’ll tell me a little bit more about yourself while we eat?”
She giggled again, and led the way down another hall to a dining area that was set up. There were a couple of dozen round tables, each with four chairs. Danny followed her to the cafeteria style chow line and picked up the tray that was passed to him, then let her lead the way to one of the tables in the far corner. He set his tray down so that he could hold her chair for her, and she giggled once more.
“Oh, a gentlemen,” she said. “A girl could get used to this.”
“I hope so,” he said, leading down to speak softly into her ear. “I’d love to be the one to help you grow accustomed to it.”
He w
alked around the table and sat down in his own chair, facing her. “So,” he said, “I really would like to know more about you. Is there anything you can tell me? I mean, I know things are pretty secretive around here.”
“It’s not that much of a secret,” she said. “I grew up in Texas, a little town called Plano. Graduated from high school there, then went to UCLA where I studied computer science. I worked for Apple for several years, then got recruited into this job. It’s so exciting, working with all the incredible new technology.” She glanced around, then leaned toward him and spoke softly, conspiratorially. “The Coalition is doing some fantastic work here, don’t you think? I mean, everyone knows that globalism is the only real way to solve the world’s problems, and the Coalition has created the way to make it happen. It’s really exciting, to be in the middle of it all.”
“It sure is,” Danny said. “My only question is where all the alien stuff came from. I didn’t think we ever really made contact with extraterrestrials yet.”
She grinned and started to say something, but then thought better of it. “Well, let’s just say that there is more to all this than meets the eye. I wish I could tell you everything, but I have to wait until you get approved.” She winked. “I don’t think it’ll be that long, now, though. The directors are watching you, and they were pretty pleased with your enthusiasm.”
“Well, I got a lot to be enthusiastic about. I never dreamed I’d ever get to see these kinds of things, not in a million years.” He winked back. “Or get to work with someone as charming as yourself.”
She pushed the food around her plate with her fork for a moment, looking at him flirtatiously as she nibbled her bottom lip.
“Tell me something,” she said. “If I could get the approval, would you like to—would you like to sleep in my quarters tonight?”
Danny made a show of leaning to the side, so he could look her body up and down, then raised his eyes back to her own. “Would I ever,” he said. “Janet, I realize you probably hear this from a lot of guys, but you are about the sexiest thing I have ever seen.”