by Bob Mayer
No singing, no Roland in the gun turret of the Humvee.
Ms. Jones was actually seated at her desk, making the journey from her hospital bed in the suite behind her office with the assistance of Pitr, her right-hand man. She looked like a wreck of an old woman, hunched over, emaciated, an IV in each arm, because she was a wreck of an old woman. When she spoke, her voice held the Russian accent of her childhood and early adulthood.
“It is worse than that,” Ms. Jones said. She gestured with a bony finger at a display for Moms and Nada to watch. They were in Ms. Jones’s office, the rest of the Nightstalkers in the team room beyond the flimsy door separating them. The team could hear everything that was said, a deliberate ploy on Ms. Jones’s part to make them feel there were no secrets, which, Eagle often reminded them, was the very definition of irony since they were so far in the dark, they might have been at the heart of a black hole.
The screen flickered and then showed the highway coming out of St. Louis. “From the nose camera of the Snake,” Ms. Jones said.
Headlights flared as the Prius came down the road.
“Pitr,” Ms. Jones said, and her assistant paused the display. “Observe,” she said to Moms and Nada as Pitr magnified the view. The windshield of the Prius expanded and then they could see the face of the driver.
“We also received positive identification of the carjacker from the owner of the Prius,” Ms. Jones said.
“Fuck me to tears,” Nada said, giving up on the Battlestar Galactica verbiage. He even threw protocol out the window as he announced loud enough for the team in the other room to hear: “It’s Burns. He’s back.”
“That was a test,” Ivar said, a statement, not a question. The sun had cleared the horizon and was sending long fingers of light across the desert floor.
It was almost pretty.
For such a desolate place.
“Good.” Orlando nodded. “Scientists always want to know why. Why this? Why that? And that’s great, brought us indoor plumbing, because some scientists way back when figured out shit flows downhill. Fucking geniuses, they were. But they still don’t know exactly how gravity works, do they?”
That stirred the scientist in Ivar. “Well. Sort of. There are theories and all great science starts from a theory. Nobody has directly observed them, but we believe gravitons exist and they act like photons, except instead of carrying light, they carry gravity.”
“Right. A theory. Theories get you killed.”
Ivar was not deterred. He might shoot at nothing, but science wasn’t nothing. “Einstein defined the space-time continuum, which is a theory, and it’s worked pretty well so far. And gravity is a product of that theory.”
“But you’re not sure.”
“We don’t know everything. When we finally break out the unified theory, we’ll understand gravity like we understand electromagnetism. Let me ask you something. Do you know how your cell phone works?”
“I know how my weapon works,” Orlando said. “And you know how yours works. On an op, the big thing is you get an order to do something, you do it. You don’t ask why. You don’t bring up whether it makes sense. I coulda had you shooting Harvey out there. You know who Harvey is?”
“No.”
Orlando sighed. “Jimmy Stewart? Big rabbit no one else can see?”
Ivar shook his head.
“You might be a scientist, but you don’t know a lot of important shit. I miss Eagle.”
“We can—” Nada began, but a flutter of Ms. Jones’s hand silenced him.
“We have a potential team member coming in. If he accepts, we will name him. It’s the tradition.”
Nada wasn’t sidetracked. “Burns is—”
Once more, this time just a lift of a finger, and Nada’s mouth snapped shut. He glanced at Moms and she shook her head ever so slightly. Everything was off, out of step. They’d lost containment. They’d lost the Snake. Burns was back, from wherever it was that was the other side of a Rift. If that thing in the Prius was even Burns.
“The scientist was named Melissa Eden,” Ms. Jones said. “The initial check on her body indicates she received a fatal dose of radiation prior to expiring. So she was dead regardless. The bullets saved her some misery.”
“I’ll be glad to save Burns some misery,” Nada said. “We can—”
“Please let me in-brief the new team member,” Ms. Jones said, and the weariness in her voice was palpable. “And, before that, I must make a call to determine our next step. Go upstairs and welcome our arrival. Colonel Orlando is almost here.”
She took a deep rattling breath. “You should also know that we pulled video surveillance from cameras in the area. As best the Acmes can determine, the only thing that came out of the Rift was Burns. No sign of Fireflies, so this is a very different situation. Thus it must be handled differently.”
Nada blinked in surprise and glanced at Moms as he got to his feet. They all knew Ms. Jones reported to someone, but she’d never been so open about it. She’d never outright said she had to defer a decision to someone else.
Moms and Nada quickly left the office, Nada carefully shutting the flimsy door behind them, Moms with a finger on her lips to keep the team from exploding in fury over Burns’s return.
Somewhere near Knoxville, Tennessee. That was all Blake had as far as an indication of who had sent the text. The code that went with this particular number indicated a path for the message to be passed. A path that consisted of five cutouts.
Blake stared at the screen of his laptop. He’d never heard of using five cutouts. One was usually sufficient since the very definition of a cutout was someone who knew both sides, but the two sides didn’t know each other. Thus the cutout was expendable and once expended, both sides were safe. Five meant whoever had set up this commo line was being extra, extra, extra, extra careful. Some paranoid son of a bitch, which defined a lot of people Blake had worked with over the years.
In this case, Blake didn’t know either side other than the message received and the mode by which he was to forward the message.
Which meant there was more to this than simply keeping it secure. It had to be a heads-up for each cutout along the way.
Regardless, he had a duty to perform and he knew the immediate task wasn’t going to be pleasant.
He missed the pool, he missed the young mother, and he even missed his grandchildren as he headed out to his truck.
“Fancy digs,” Ivar said as they passed a plywood sign with NO TRESPASS: WE WILL SHOOT YOUR ASS spray-painted on it along with a skull and crossbones. “I assume someone would indeed shoot my ass if I wasn’t supposed to be here.”
Again not a question, so Orlando didn’t respond. They’d left the tar road a minute ago and were rattling down a dirt road toward what appeared to be a deserted filling station, which Ivar assumed was anything but deserted.
Orlando braked a football field short of the station. He looked bored as two men appeared out of holes, camouflaged with ghillie suits and weapons at the ready. A third man appeared from behind and scanned Orlando’s eyes. Then the man did the same to Ivar. He seemed disappointed that the scanner beeped, his finger twitchy on the trigger. He waved Orlando on and the three disappeared back into their holes.
“They seem anxious,” Ivar observed.
“Told you,” Orlando said. “Security issues.”
Orlando shoved the stick into gear and they rattled up to the service station just as an old soda machine slid aside and a group of people climbed out of stairs that had been hidden behind it, arguing. All seven had the look that Ivar was now used to: Spec Ops. Competent, quiet (though not at the moment), professional. Well, except for the short, Indian-looking guy with thick glasses, but even he exuded something.
Scratch the professional, too, though, as one of them, movie-star good-looking, drew an MK23 from under his shirt and fired, punchi
ng holes in an old gas can and sending it tumbling.
“At ease, Mac!” the only woman among the seven called out in a voice that clearly indicated she was in charge.
Mac holstered his weapon and they all turned as Orlando stopped the jeep with a screech of brakes.
They didn’t seem happy to see Ivar. He recognized several from the hectic events at the University of North Carolina last year, but his memory of that event wasn’t the greatest, since he’d been under the influence of forces he still couldn’t comprehend.
“Fresh meat,” Roland said.
“Just what we fucking need,” Mac said with a Texas drawl, and Ivar sensed he would have preferred to shoot him. “Another rookie to break in.”
“Kirk did okay,” Roland said, indicating another member of their group. Kirk was of average height, lean. His face was almost skull-like, all angles, and he sported deep blue eyes that fixed Ivar with their gaze.
“Hey, Eagle,” Orlando called out. “My man here doesn’t know who Harvey is, even after I had him shoot the bugger back yonder.”
Eagle, a tall black man without a hint of hair on his head, laughed. “The Harvey test is so old school, Colonel.” The left side of Eagle’s head was covered with a burn scar, a gift from an Iraqi IED years ago.
“It’s not old if you haven’t done it before,” Orlando said.
“Who’s Harvey?” Roland asked.
“Big rabbit,” Eagle said. “But only one person can see him.”
“Nada killed a rabbit in the Fun Outside Tucson,” Roland said.
“Yeah,” Mac said bitterly, “where Burns got wounded.”
“And most likely infected,” Doc threw in.
“We’re not sure of that,” Moms said.
“What are we sure of?” Nada muttered, and Ivar threw a look at Orlando as if to say, See?
“So who the fuck—excuse me, the frak—are you?” Mac asked.
“My name is Ivar.”
“No one gives a shit what your name is,” Mac said.
“Roger that,” Eagle said. “Because if you say yes to Ms. Jones, you get a new name. And that will be that.”
Nada peered at Ivar. “I remember you. You’re from the lab in North Carolina.” He sighed. “A fraking scientist.”
They all turned and looked at Doc as if he were already Harvey.
“You going somewhere?” Nada asked.
“Not that I am aware of,” Doc said. “But we all know our lives here are full of uncertainty and—”
“Give it a break, Doc,” Mac said.
“So why do we need another scientist?” Nada asked, knowing there was no answer forthcoming from this group. Ms. Jones had her own ways, and trying to figure them out was a waste of brain energy.
Orlando got back in the jeep. “You gentlemen, and lady, have a fine rest of the day. Until next time.”
“Stay safe,” Nada said, and Orlando paused for a moment, as if that admonition was more a premonition.
“You too.” In a cloud of dust, Orlando drove away.
Ivar shifted from one foot to another, uncomfortable under the gaze of the other seven. Finally Nada jerked his thumb at the rusting soda machine. “Punch grape soda.”
Ivar went over to the machine. He had four choices: Dr. Pepper, Pepsi, orange, and grape. The faded writing said .25 CENTS. He paused, thinking this through even as Mac called out, “Don’t hit the orange or we’ll all become part of the desert.”
Ivar didn’t have twenty-five cents. He also had a feeling it didn’t matter. He hit the button for grape. Driven by pneumatic arms, the soda machine slid to the side and a stairway beckoned.
“Got eight seconds,” Nada said, startling Ivar, since he hadn’t heard him come up right behind him. Along with the rest of the team. Ivar scuttled down the stairs, the others following. Before he reached the last stair, the steel door at the bottom slid open.
“Welcome to the Den,” Moms said as they came out of the hallway into a large circular room with dull gray walls and old battered furniture. It all looked like stuff the government should have auctioned off decades ago. Apparently the Nightstalkers weren’t working on the $10,000-per-toilet-seat federal budget. Ivar saw an assortment of tables; flip charts; whiteboards, some with incomprehensible writing on them; and a row of lockers. There was also a six-foot-high log impaled with throwing weapons: knives, axes, even a spear.
“You don’t get to throw,” Mac said to him, grabbing the handle of a hatchet and jerking it free of the log.
“Not yet,” Roland added, pulling the spear loose. “Not until after your first op.”
The woman stood in front of Ivar, having a two-inch height advantage. “I’m Moms. Team leader. We met once, but it wasn’t under the best of circumstances.” She pointed as she introduced him. “Nada, team sergeant. That’s Eagle, pilot and walking font of useful and useless information. Kirk, our communications man and contrarian. Roland, the one with the spear, naturally is weapons. Mac, the hatchet man, our engineer or as he prefers, demo man.” As she pointed him out, Mac threw the hatchet and it whirled, hitting the log with a solid thud, blade sinking in.
“What’s a contrarian?” Mac asked.
“I don’t think I am one,” Kirk protested.
“See?” Eagle said.
Moms pointed at the last person. “And Doc is Doc. He’s our scientist and doctor. I don’t know what you’re going to be, but you’re meeting Ms. Jones now and she’ll let you know. Then we’ll pick your name.”
“If you say yes,” Nada added. “Listen to what she has to say very carefully.”
“You might want to consider saying no,” Mac yelled from across the Den as he retrieved the hatchet. “Given recent events, that is.” He didn’t flinch as Roland threw the spear and it passed eighteen inches from him, burying its point into the log, the shaft quivering for a moment.
“There’s no shame in saying no,” Nada said. “You leave here and go on with your life.”
“He don’t look like he got much of a life,” Mac added, pulling the spear free along with his hatchet.
They all seemed to ignore Mac, except when he was shooting gas cans, so Ivar tried to ignore him also.
“We need more shooters,” Roland said. “Not scientists.”
“We need more brains,” Mac said. “Not sure this guy qualifies, though.”
“We need a bigger boat,” Eagle said, but no one got it, as usual. It was a sign of his frustration that he explained, “Jaws? Big shark? Need a bigger boat?”
“I got it,” Kirk said, “but I’m not a fan of the allusion.”
“The illusion,” Mac threw in.
“Yeah,” Roland added. “A shark I can handle. I don’t need a bigger boat. I need a bigger gun.”
“And since you crashed the Snake,” Mac added, “we ain’t got no ride.”
A muscle twitched on the side of Eagle’s face. “I lost all power. I had no choice.”
“We know,” Moms said, shooting Mac a shut-the-frak-up look. “We all did the best we could.”
Nada tapped on the door, then swung it open. “Sit in front of the desk. Don’t get out of the chair until dismissed. Then you come back out here. Violate these instructions and I’ll kill you.”
Ivar nodded. After shooting at Harvey, nothing much was surprising him and he had no doubt Nada meant it. Everyone in the Den looked like they had a lot of experience killing, except for Doc.
Ivar walked in and sat in a hard plastic seat facing a large desk. There were several papers scattered on the surface. On the far side was a large, wing-backed chair, set in the shadows cast by large lights pointing directly at Ivar. He squinted, trying to see who was in the chair.
As far as he could tell, no one.
He heard a door squeak and then a man appeared, carrying someone in his arms. He was a tall, well-buil
t man with silver hair. He ignored Ivar as he deposited an old woman in the chair, where she disappeared into the dark shadow. He went back to the door, then returned, rolling two IV drips. He reached into the darkness with the lines from the drips and did something.
Then he straightened. He turned to Ivar, shooting him a withering look, as if blaming him for this trouble.
“Do you want me to stay, Ms. Jones?” he asked. He had a slight accent, which Ivar guessed was Russian or Eastern European. When Ms. Jones replied, there was no doubt hers was Russian.
“You may, Pitr.”
He nodded and folded his arms across his chest, glaring at Ivar, who had no idea what he’d done to earn the man’s enmity.
“And,” Ms. Jones said, “I’d like the rest of the team in here.”
Pitr was obviously startled. “It is the tradition that—”
“Please,” Ms. Jones cut him off.
Pitr spoke in a louder voice, through the door, to the team room. “Moms. Nada. Please bring the team in.”
The door swung open and the Nightstalkers trooped in, spreading out along the rear wall, Moms and Nada in the center. They all looked like they’d rather be facing a firing squad.
Ms. Jones said, “Pitr, please turn off the spotlights.”
Pitr’s mouth flopped open, ready to protest, but he’d known Ms. Jones too long. He reached behind him and hit a switch. The lights behind the chair went off, leaving only dim recessed lighting around the edge of the room. It took a few moments for everyone’s eyes to adjust.
Ms. Jones looked somewhere between eighty and a hundred, give a decade or take a day. A withered old woman, skin lashed with red sores and old scars. She wore a thick gray smock, almost a sackcloth. Shunts went into her chest and one arm, the IVs feeding in whatever was keeping her alive. She had no hair, her skull crisscrossed with scars from surgeries.