Psychic Warrior

by David Morehouse

  Everyone did the drinking bird routine, nodding in acknowledgment.

  “Good. Then are there any questions?”

  No one spoke a word.

  “The meeting is adjourned. Good hunting to each of you.” He picked up his files and left the room. Mel and I sat at the table looking at our assignments.

  “I don’t want to do this solo,” I remarked. “I’m going to go see the bastard right now. Will you monitor me, Mel?”

  “You bet I will.”

  I knocked on Nofi’s half-open door but he didn’t respond. I could see him sitting at his desk, making notes, so I knocked again, and again he didn’t respond. I walked into the office, planted myself in front of his desk, and stood there waiting for him to look up at me. He didn’t, so I started talking. “I want Mel—”

  Nofi raised his hand and slowly looked up at me. “If I’m ready to carry on a conversation with you, I’ll so indicate by making eye contact with you and inviting you to speak. This is not one of your battalion headquarters where chaos is supreme; we have the decency to wait our turn here, and if it’s not our turn we are scolded.”

  I felt my blood boil and my face heat. I had to tell myself to calm down, fast, or else I’d have grabbed that little puke from behind his desk and dusted the room with him. Nofi kept writing in his notebook. He was taking his time; he knew he’d pissed me off, but he figured I wouldn’t kick his ass because I wasn’t as much of a jerk as he was. People like him are right, most of the time.

  I slammed my fist on his desk and made him drop his pen. Now I had his full attention. I leaned on his desk, stared straight into his face, and said: “Now you’re being scolded. I don’t know you, but I do know you have a problem with me and maybe some of the others. Well, that’s simply that, your problem. Let’s get one thing very clear: you are not my boss, and I’m not in the habit of being treated like this by my peers. According to the card I carry in my pocket, majors and civilians of your grade are on an equal footing, so don’t you dare treat me like a subordinate. In fact, don’t you treat any of us who came back to bail out your sorry ass like subordinates. Somebody obviously thought you weren’t up to this job, or they wouldn’t have had you track us down and invite us to the party. Now I’m filling you in: Mel Riley is going to monitor me. If you have a problem with that, you can pick up your secure phone and call whoever shoved us up your ass and explain to them why you don’t think I should work the mission with a monitor. If they want to tell me why a monitor isn’t needed, I’ll listen. But they won’t do that, will they?” Then I walked out of the office, grabbed a cup of coffee, and yelled, “Hey, everybody, Mr. Nofi said he’d be a little late getting the board posted. It’s my fault—I held him up talking to him so long.” I winked at Jenny and took a swig from my mug.

  Grining, Mel poured himself a refill. “Next time you’re counseling the boss, make sure the door is closed.”

  “He’s not our boss, thank God. And you’ll be monitoring me.”

  The board was posted fifteen minutes later, and excitement filled the office. None of us knew anything about what was going on in the Gulf except for what we saw on CNN. I didn’t understand why remote viewers were being used now, when they could have been really useful during the planning and execution phases of Desert Storm. But why ask questions?

  My target lay east of the area of operations, along the coast and inland. I’d been given a map, really just an outline sketch of the eastern border of Iraq, all of Kuwait, and the northeastern borders of Saudi Arabia. My mission was to advance to the encrypted coordinates and examine the surrounding terrain for anything of significance—in other words, to drop in and see if anything needed attention. I was certain that I’d be looking for Iraqi stay-behinds, small units lingering in the shadows, waiting for some unsuspecting coalition patrol to wander by. I might even run into some Scud missile units that had so far escaped detection. They could be hunkered down somewhere in the desert, waiting for the fighting to cool down before surfacing and blasting the shit out of Kuwait City or Dhahran. I had to stop getting ahead of myself. I checked the board and saw I had at least a half an hour to kill before hookup and prep, so I decided to get some fresh air.

  Mel was sitting on the front porch. “Ten-thirty in Room Two.”

  “I know,” he said, finishing his cigarette. “Something don’t feel right about this.” He got to his feet and motioned for me to follow him.

  “It’s been a long time since we had one of these walks,” I said.

  “Yeah, it has.”

  “I miss it, don’t you?”

  Mel snorted. “Hell, no! First off, I don’t have to put up with this shit anymore. And second, I can walk out my back door and step into the canoe and head for the far side of the lake. If there’s anything bothering me when I start, it ain’t there by the time I get to the other side. It’s a beautiful place, Scandinavia is. Edith and I love it there. You should drag Debbie and the kids up there and buy a house and we’d be neighbors.”

  We both laughed at the idea until I remembered that I didn’t have a family anymore.

  “Ahh, I’m sorry,” Mel said. “I didn’t mean to touch a nerve.”

  “Hell, I can’t tiptoe around it forever.” I felt my throat tightening and I fought back tears. “It’s so hard to be alone now, after being a team for all those years. God, Mel, I really miss her and the kids.”

  Riley hugged me briefly and, holding me at arm’s length, said: “Remember, we’re like water—we travel to many different places in many different conditions, but eventually, we journey back to ourselves. The way is full of rocks and stones that make us tumble, and there are eddies that delay us and reduce us to a trickle, but our destiny is to return. That is an eternal law. You knew that God had a plan for you many years ago when you met Debbie. Let that plan unfold; all you have to do is believe in it. Debbie is not gone from you, nor you from her, as long as you continue to let her know that you love her. Put forth a little effort, like the water, and you’ll work through everything else and be together again. I promise it.”

  “You’re a good friend, Mel Riley.” I hugged him again. “And a very wise man.”

  “Hey!” Posner shouted from the porch. “If you two are done making each other feel good, you have a mission to run in five minutes.”

  Mel said, “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

  “Of course. It’s the only peace I get these days. Let’s do it!”

  Nothing much had changed in the viewing rooms, except that there were some new microphones, and someone had placed black tape over the camera’s red “on” light. Mel figured this was so nobody would know if they were being watched. But we had been watched during every session before Nofi arrived, and why would it be any different now?

  I got hooked up and lay down to prepare myself, listening to Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata over and over. Five times before I started my countdown I listened to the anguished creation of a man who realized he didn’t belong in the world he found himself in. Five times I listened before I found myself falling into a tunnel of light and passing into another world.

  I landed crouching and lingered for a moment, gaining my equilibrium. When I rose to my feet I saw a black world of mist, and a hollow sun above me.

  “Something’s wrong! I’m not at the target, Mel!” I cried. “Mel! I’m off-planet somewhere!”

  Riley was scrambling to figure out what to do. “Calm down, Morehouse, get a grip and tell me what you see.”

  “I’m off-planet and I—Wait, I hear something.”

  “What is it?”

  “Quiet! Just wait.” And then I saw it, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle roared past me out of the black haze. It was quickly followed by another, and yet another, and then three more. They disappeared into the smoke as quickly as they’d come. “Sorry, false alarm. I’m where I’m supposed to be.” I don’t think I’d ever grinned in the ether before. I thought for sure that Mel was cursing me under his breath.

  “Give
me a description of your surroundings, Dave. I need to try and pinpoint your location.”

  “Well, I can’t see much from here … there’s black smoke everywhere. I must be standing in the plume of a burning vehicle or something. Let me move to another vantage point.” But no matter where I stopped I found myself completely immersed in choking black smoke.

  “I can’t seem to shake this stuff, it’s everywhere. I need to get some real distance if I’m to get out of the smoke.”

  “Okay,” Mel said, “whenever you’re ready, I want you to move upward five hundred feet and to the north twenty miles. Go ahead any time.”

  I felt myself move upward rapidly, and the ground below me blurred as I sped across the terrain and settled in the new target area. Here, too, the air was thick with the black smoke, the ground littered with the rubble of the war. “I still can’t see anything, Mel. I think the entire area is blanketed with this stuff.”

  “What’s it made of?”

  “It tastes and smells like petroleum, and it’s sticky, it coats everything. It’s got to be oil. I’m going to look around—keep listening, okay?”

  “I’m here.” Mel had to be impatient; he’d expected this to be easier, and so had I.

  I started moving in large circles, surveying the ground beneath me and straining to see even fifty feet through the smoke. Periodically, I came upon wrecked vehicles, more often civilian than military ones. The tracks of hundreds of vehicles scarred the sand, almost all going north or northwest. I followed them. I knew the Iraqi army was in retreat, and I assumed they’d be heading away from the direction their destroyed weapons were facing in. I passed over the splayed bodies of many Iraqi soldiers; the smell of their flesh in the desert heat was masked by the equally sickening stench of the black smoke.

  “I heard something roaring in the distance, Mel. I’m moving toward it, but the temperature is increasing rapidly.”

  “I know, I can see your temp rising here. Keep your distance and give me your perceptions.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m getting too old to act stupid.”

  I traveled along the surface, where I could see more clearly. The roaring got louder and louder, and the heat became unbearable. I moved left and right until I found a spot where the heat was less intense and I could get close enough to glimpse the source.

  “It’s an oil well. It’s burning like crazy; flames must be shooting fifty feet or more into the air. There’s raw crude all over the ground, but most of it has already burned. Mel, I’ve never seen anything like this up close—it’s like a blowtorch standing on end. I’ve got a hole in the smoke here, so I’m going straight up for a look.”

  My phantom body rose to a height of thirty meters or so above the well fire. I turned slowly in the air, surveying my surroundings. Everywhere, as far as I could see, blazing torches sprang out of the ground, belching flame and smoke. Plume mixed with plume until they all joined together in one massive black blanket. The heat beneath me reminded me that I had a job to do, and I returned to my lower vantage point.

  “This is bad, Mel; every oil well for as far as I can see is on fire. This is real bad. I don’t know what to do from here. Obviously they know about this—who could miss it? Do you think I should come back now?”

  Riley thought for a moment. “No; keep looking around. You’re right, they surely know about the fires, so there must be something else. You’ve been on target for about fifty minutes now; can you give it another twenty or thirty minutes before you come back?”

  “No problem. Even here, I like it better than back there. I’ll keep snooping around.”

  As I turned away from the oil well, I spotted a small silver object in the sand. “Mel, I think I see something unusual—a small canister, looks like stainless steel. It’s stuck in the sand downwind from the fire.”

  “What is it?” Riley asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s empty, though—at least I think it’s empty; nothing is coming out of it.” I gazed at the object, which leaned like the Tower of Pisa. About twenty or so inches high and about three or four inches in diameter, it was a finished metal cylinder with perhaps four or six inches of its base wedged into the sand to hold it upright. It narrowed at the neck, where a valve was placed. A plastic seal had been torn away and a portion of it lay on the ground next to the cylinder. I circled it, trying to see something that might indicate what the cylinder was, but no luck. “There’s something odd about this thing. It just doesn’t belong here at all. I’m moving to another wellhead to see if I can find one that has some markings on it, or if there’s a pattern here.”

  “Okay, but first can you get a fix on the location of this one?”

  “Too late, I’m already moving. But I don’t think I could give you a fix anyway; I can’t see enough of the terrain to describe it.”

  “I understand. Let me know what you find at the next well.”

  I found similar canisters at every well I could get to in the next twenty minutes. They varied slightly in size and shape, but they were always downwind from the fire, as if to avoid burning their contents. Something about them troubled me deeply, but I couldn’t tell what. “I’m breaking it off and coming home, Mel.”

  I completed my summary and sketches and was on my way to turn them in to Nofi when Kathleen returned from her session. She was white as a sheet.

  “You all right, Kathleen?” Jenny asked as Mel ran to her.

  “I’m fine, I think I just need to sit down for a while. It was hot in the room—” She slumped forward in Mel’s arms; her session papers fell from her hand and scattered on the floor. I helped Mel carry her to the couch, where we laid her down. She was moaning as Jenny dialed 911. Paul Posner appeared with a cold washcloth to wipe her face, and Nofi scrambled out of his office in the commotion. I thought I saw him actually get nervous there for a minute; he thought he was in trouble.

  Fortunately, the hospital was just across the street and down a block or so, and Kathleen was even coming to by the time the ambulance arrived. I noticed her papers still scattered on the floor, and I hurried to pick them up before the ambulance crew came in.

  It turned out that Kathleen was dehydrated; the heat of the viewing room and the intensity of the session had taken their toll. She’d be fine, and so would the baby; she just wouldn’t be doing any more viewing as long as she was pregnant.

  After the ambulance left, I went back to my desk with a fresh cup of coffee. I’d set Kathleen’s papers down there; now I started putting them in order. And my heart nearly stopped. There on page five was a sketch of the cylinder in the sand, a sketch identical to mine.

  “Oh, my God,” I said aloud.

  Riley came to a stop in front of my desk.

  I jumped up and looked around the cubicle doorway to see if anyone else was coming. The coast was clear, so I sat Mel down in the chair beside my desk and handed him my sketches and Kathleen’s.

  “Look at these.” I showed him my results.

  “So?”

  “So? Are you kidding me? Look at them, they’re the same as mine.”

  “Goddamn, Dave, they’re supposed to be the same. You had nearly the same mission.”

  “No, I didn’t. Look at Kathleen’s tasking sheet, it’s there at the bottom of the stack. She was supposed to look for evidence of chemical or biological agents. I was supposed to look for ‘anything of military significance,’ like a combat unit or a weapon, not to look for chemicals or bio-agents. What kind of fucking game are they playing here?”

  Riley looked at me, confused. “I don’t see what you’re getting at, Dave.”

  Suddenly it all seemed clear to me. The DIA wanted to make sure that a chemical or biological agent had been released on U.S. troops, but they didn’t want anyone else to know. So they made it appear to us remote viewers that we were targeting different areas, when in fact we were all targeted on the same area. They also tried to keep us from talking to one another.

  If all of us remote viewers came up with the same
results, the DIA would know that chemical or biological weapons had been used. However, none of us would know, because we would never be able to compare notes. Once the use of these unconventional weapons had been confirmed, the DIA could start their cover-up so the American public would never find out.

  I took a deep breath and tried to calm down a bit. “Okay, look. We all got called in to help out. Nofi doesn’t want us to help, but we’re shoved into his lap from all across the United States. Second, we’re all targeted into the same area, with just minor changes in the coordinates—something we wouldn’t notice unless we sat down and compared notes, which is a violation of protocol. Third, each tasking is worded differently. They know we’ll all stumble on the same thing, though—they know the signal line will lead us to the most significant aspect of the site. So we give them confirmation of the employment of biological or chemical weapons, and we never even realize what we’ve done, because the only one to put it together is Nofi.”

  “And some closed intelligence cell at DIA,” Mel said somberly.

  “It’s obvious that the Iraqis placed the canisters next to the fires to mask the plume from the canisters. So I think they released a slow-acting toxin to poison the coalition forces, and they covered it up with oil-well fires. Every soldier downwind of those fires must’ve inhaled the bug or whatever it was. The poor fuckers are walking around with time bombs inside themselves, and the rest of the world is distracted because the environment has been damaged. It’s really slick. Un-fucking-believable.” My face tingled, feeling as though it were a mask and not my own; my hands were numb. “They know it. Our fucking government knows it and they don’t want anyone else to know it.”

  “Yeah, can you imagine if this got out? The fucking war is over and the treaty is being worked on. If this got out, all hell would break loose!”

  “I’m more cynical than that. I think some lawyer in the Pentagon put a bug in the secretary’s ear about the ramifications of having to answer to fifty thousand legal or medical claims against the government. I don’t think our illustrious leaders want to break the bank taking care of the thousands of military who are affected by this thing, especially since they don’t know what the extent of the damage is. They’ll just deny any knowledge of it, or spend the next seventy years faking research until everyone affected is in a box or in a VA hospital. This is a goddamned conspiracy, that’s what it is.”