by Lyn Gala
“Sir.” Clyde offered his best salute.
“That bad?” General Zeller asked.
Clyde shrugged. It was, but he didn’t want to get into it with the junior officers around.
General Zeller turned and headed for the secure communication room. He waited until Clyde shut the door before he took a seat at the head of the table and turned on a communication jammer that would block everything from cell phones to alien thought projection. “How did your scavenger hunt through Private Tankersley’s background go?” Zeller asked as he leaned back.
“There’s a big anomaly in the data. Sadler is looking into how someone hid it, but there’s a pocket of not only unexplainable incidents but murders, all centered around the Bronx Alternative High School for Excellence.”
“Murder?”
“Twelve dead, including a janitor, an assistant principal, eight students, and two teachers.”
“And we didn’t have even a hint of trouble?”
Clyde couldn’t explain it. “Someone is up to something.”
“Alien incursion?” Zeller jumped right to the obvious. It had the markings.
“Or someone making it look like one, hiding an ulterior motive behind what appears to be a running experiment. We know Russia has gotten more aggressive.”
Zeller raised his eyebrows. “You think the Russians killed eight students?” He wasn’t even trying to hide his skepticism.
“Sir, the more people know about the IF, the more other groups are going to try to hide behind the aliens to get away with their own brand of bad behavior.”
“True, but this secret has been around for decades, Colonel.”
“Which is why I know we’re on borrowed time, sir. My first assumption is that we have alien boots on the ground, but I can’t confirm that.”
Zeller leaned forward. He was a thin man; cancer a few years back had stolen any extra padding he carried. However, he still had the intensity of the covert-ops soldier he had once been. “How big of a threat is Tankersley?”
Part of Clyde wanted to throw the kid under the bus and watch General Zeller confine him to the stockade. The better part of him pointed out that wouldn’t exactly be fair. “He knows more about fighting than he should, sir. Serious fighting. I reviewed the tapes of the training session with John and Sadler, and I can tell you a few things. He’s used to fighting with a group. His technique is all about distraction and evasion.”
“Which means he’s used to someone else stepping in and taking advantage of a distracted enemy,” Zeller finished.
“Yep. And he’s fast—quick to use whatever is in the environment to gain some sort of cover. He even bluffed Sadler.” Clyde really hated how much admiration he felt for the man over that, but any man who could fake out Sadler had earned some respect. “When he sparred with her, he made himself look like a helpless nincompoop, and the second she dropped her guard, he caught her in the nose with a right hook. And he knew that punch wouldn’t take her down.”
“He didn’t drop his guard,” Zeller guessed.
“Not for a second. In fact he announced to some of the other recruits that unless someone was bleeding out of multiple orifices or decapitated, he would keep on hitting them.”
Zeller looked thoughtful at that bit of news. Clyde figured he was thinking the same thing Clyde had—that was a battle-trained response. “Practical even if the philosophy is somewhat dangerous in the field,” Zeller eventually offered. “He actually sounds a little like someone else I know who tends to distract people with exaggerated stories of his general ignorance before carrying out a complicated tactical maneuver.”
“I know you’re not talking about me, sir.”
“Of course not,” General Zeller said in an amused tone. “What else do we have on Tankersley?”
“I tried asking him, but he informed me that he wouldn’t share other people’s secrets with me any more than he would share IF secrets with other people. He’s young enough that he’s too idealistic and stupid to answer questions.”
“And did you glare at him?” Zeller asked, that dark humor of his showing up again.
“He was immune,” Clyde said dryly. It still annoyed him that a private would refuse an order. “And before you ask, I checked to see if he had any other confidentiality agreements or security checks in his records—I even had Sadler dig through the CIA computers. There is no record of Tankersley ever agreeing to keep any official secrets.” If Tankersley wasn’t covering for the IF or CIA, that either meant he was working for a foreign government or he was keeping secrets for ethical reasons. Clyde admired ethics, but he would rather have solid intel. “Tankersley’s mother is unremarkable—underemployed, on and off public assistance, no police record or record of police responding to her residence since her husband went to prison. Despite that, Tankersley has taken a number of trips to the emergency room. Sixteen, in fact.”
“Abuse?” Zeller looked bothered by that.
“Hospital records have him as the victim of a mugging, a school breakin, a home invasion at the home of a friend, a kidnapping, and no fewer than six random gang beatings. I don’t think his mother carries the blame here. And his whole school appears incredibly clumsy and prone to unlikely accidents, none of which the police follow up on. Three of the students died on the same day, supposedly when one of them brought a venomous pet spider for show-and-tell day in school.” As cover stories went, that one sucked. Someone wasn’t even trying. When the guys in charge of covering up illegal operations didn’t even care enough about the quality of their work to devise a plausible bullshit story, it said something sad about the modern work ethic.
“Someone is preying on these young people. That does sound like something our extraterrestrial friends would try.”
“Yes, sir.” Clyde could see the slow fury building in Zeller. Soldiers fought each other. That had been part of life since time began. Somewhere back in history, two cavemen had tried to beat each other to death with really big rocks. He could accept that. But targeting kids was a shitty way to do business. “But I can’t figure out why Private Tankersley wouldn’t just spill his guts. If someone was targeting me and my classmates for assassination, I would be first in line to turn their asses in.”
“How many of these victims does the private know?”
Clyde pulled up the photographs Sadler had found in the school’s yearbook computers. Thank God people put all their personal business out in the cloud to be hacked. Investigating had been so much harder back when people had the common sense to keep their business private. Clyde had given his kids that speech a few times, and mostly he got called a dinosaur and reminded that they were grown and could put whatever they wanted out on social media.
Clyde opened the right file on the tablet and then turned it around so the general could see it. A blonde girl with a pixie cut and a mouth a little too large for her face stood smiling at the camera while holding up her end of a gay-straight-alliance banner. “Ellie Richmond. She’s in several pictures with Tankersley, including this one.” He swiped to show the next photo. In this one, two boys were holding her over a tank of water on some sort of carnival day at school. “Roger Fischer.”
“They’re both dead?” Zeller guessed.
Clyde nodded. “Richmond was found with her throat slashed. Forensics suggests Fischer killed her. Then Fischer was shot in the chest on the same day that Tankersley ended up in the hospital because a wall fell on him, breaking three ribs and his wrist.”
Zeller grimaced. “You think Tankersley killed him.”
“Maybe, sir.” Clyde went to the next picture. “Captain Brian Hoffer, Ranger, thirty-nine, a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan. The same day Tankersley landed in the hospital, he did too. He would be my other suspect.”
“Suspect. Do you think Tankersley and Hoffer are on the wrong side of things? Working for the aliens?” Zeller’s voice was sharp, and Clyde figured both men were about to be buried under a jail.
“Hoffer was in Iraq
for most of this violence, and Tankersley doesn’t strike me as a spy. He’s too ineffective at hiding his emotions, and he landed in the stockade within an hour of coming on base. But they know something. I would rather not play the heavy with kids, so I’d like to bring in Hoffer, see what he knows. He’s old enough to have a little more perspective, and hopefully he’s interested in saving his own hide. Tankersley might be a kid, but he does a good lemming impression.”
Zeller scrolled through the photos Sadler had attached to her report. “These aren’t kids, Colonel.”
“They’re younger than our children, General. And from the records Sadler dug up, Hoffer is a good officer. I think he’s the best source of intel right now.”
“It’s a bad situation,” Zeller said in a quiet voice. At best, Tankersley was going to have a few screws loose. At worst, he was working for the aliens or the Russians or Indians. Clyde wasn’t sure which would be worse, but he understood that plenty of victims turned to working for their abusers either out of self-preservation or some misguided and twisted loyalty.
“Yes, sir,” Clyde agreed.
“Any other pertinent intel on Tankersley?”
Clyde shook his head. “Unremarkable grades, barely high enough to qualify for the Army. He did a number of menial jobs before signing up for the military, and he seems to have a knack for annoying people.”
“I noticed that,” Zeller said. Clyde glared at his commander for a brief second—not long enough to be insubordinate, but long enough to let Zeller know he wasn’t amused. Yeah, yeah, Tankersley annoyed him.
“And the kitchen staff think he’s the second coming because he attacks every shift as if the war with the aliens will be won with clean salad forks.”
“Well, it sounds like we’re at a standstill until Tankersley chooses to explain himself or Captain Hoffer arrives on scene. I’ll make some calls and get him recalled and shipped here ASAP. Dismissed.”
Clyde walked out feeling a little better. As far as Clyde was concerned, Lev would be safer declaring himself celibate and avoiding any human contact that didn’t involve disassembling machines. However, if Lev insisted on falling for completely inappropriate lovers, at least the general was taking the situation seriously.
Then again, how could he ignore it? This had all the earmarks of a longitudinal study, which meant the aliens not only had boots on the ground but equipment too. On the other hand, it could be something else disguising itself as an alien incursion. And no matter what sort of wrong shit was going on, Clyde still had to deal with the fact that Lev was in the middle of it.
So while he was feeling a little better, he didn’t plan to smile anytime soon.
Chapter Twelve
TRACKING HOFFER down didn’t take long, and since he was only thirty or forty miles away, by afternoon he was reporting for duty as ordered.
It made sense that the anomaly was in New York. The city was dense and large. New York, Seoul, Mumbai, Dhaka, Delhi—these were favorites with the aliens. However, Clyde did have to wonder about someone setting up a major operation so close to the continental hub for the Incursion Force.
Clyde hadn’t even bothered returning to Alaska, although he did stay on base to review Hoffer’s file. In the old days, keeping secrets was so easy—but now every citizen had a high-quality camera and computer in their pocket, and if Clyde got photographed in New Jersey when the service said he was in Alaska, the picture was going to show up on some conspiracy website.
Once a corporal announced that Hoffer had reported, Clyde headed for the interview room.
General Zeller was waiting at the door. “No trouble?” Clyde asked.
“He reported as ordered. Now let’s see if we can get a few answers,” the general said. Clyde opened the door and then followed him in. Hoffer stood at attention next to the conference table, and Zeller gestured toward a chair. “Take a seat, Captain.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Hoffer carefully eased himself into a chair as Clyde and the general sat across from him. Clyde’s first impression was that Hoffer was nervous.
“We would like your impression of a young recruit,” Zeller said, taking the diplomatic approach. That was why he was a general—Clyde would throw himself off a building before taking a promotion into a position that required diplomacy.
“Sir?” Hoffer looked more nervous now. He might be one hell of a Ranger, but the man had a horrible poker face.
“Private Tankersley,” Zeller said. “He’s being considered for a position.”
Now Hoffer turned positively green. Then again, generals weren’t usually involved in vetting privates, so he had to know that something big was up. He swallowed several times, his Adam’s apple doing a little jig before he answered. “George is a loyal and competent young man. I was proud to be his Big Brother in the program, although he does tend to assume the worst of himself at times. He had a self-esteem issue when I knew him, sir.”
Clyde exchanged a glance with Zeller and got the smallest of nods from the general. Since Clyde didn’t have the patience for bullshit, Clyde decided to cut to the chase. He pulled out the gutted memory device and slid it across the table at Hoffer. Out of instinct, Hoffer caught it, but the second he got a good look at what he was touching, he almost threw it across the room as he bolted from his chair. His pupils were blown—his eyes large and black and panicked. Yeah. He knew what that was.
“That one is dead, Captain,” Clyde said. Hoffer’s wild expression slowly faded. Chagrin took its place. He knew he’d outed himself, and he sank back down into his chair.
“I apologize, sir.”
“Don’t.” Clyde waved off the reaction. “I wish I’d done that the first time I ran into one of those, not that it would have helped. So tell me about Tank, and this time skip the pre-prepared bullshit.”
“Sir….” Hoffer fell silent and looked around the room as if searching for an escape.
Clyde leaned forward. “Tankersley stumbled into something so classified I should bury him for even seeing it, but it seems he’d already seen it. On the surface, he’s a good kid, and my people are irrationally fond of him, but he won’t give us enough information to vet him. That puts me in a difficult position. I can’t trust him if I don’t know where he’s coming from, and I think you understand the lengths I’ll go to in order to protect my mission.”
Hoffer lost every bit of color, but he nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Start from the beginning,” Clyde said. And then, just because he knew he would have gone all the way back to the big bang if an asshole had confronted him that way, he modified his order. “The Big Brothers organization told you they had a client, and….”
Hoffer took a deep breath before answering. “And that he was unusual. They didn’t normally take in kids as old as Tank, but he’d had a hard life and was a little immature for his age. The program director knows his mother and her struggles. Tank’s father is in prison for dealing drugs, and before his arrest, he was apparently a real bastard. Tank doesn’t remember him. When we first met, I couldn’t connect with him.”
“He joked and wouldn’t let you near anything real,” Clyde guessed.
“Yes, sir. You’ve definitely met Tank. I brought a Dungeons & Dragons game to one meeting because he’d mentioned it, and at first he didn’t seem that interested. But then we got to talking about strategy. It pretty quickly moved away from dice rolls and into asymmetrical warfare. He wanted to know about terrorism and insurgencies and how smaller forces could win against larger ones. We talked resources, and—” Hoffer stopped and took a breath before looking Clyde in the eye. “Sir, I was in a bad place, and I never should have told Tank half the things I did. I loaned him my war college books, and we talked about guerrilla tactics and urban conflict. I never gave him classified intel, but I didn’t keep his age in mind. I talked to him about things that civilians don’t need to know.”
Clyde leaned back. Hoffer was trying to throw himself on his sword, but Clyde was starting to think t
hat Tank hadn’t been a civilian, not even back then.
“He kept it theoretical?”
Hoffer nodded miserably. “Yes, sir.”
“When did you start to suspect it was real?”
“Long after I should have, sir. My first assumption was that he was fighting with a gang. He doesn’t seem the sort, but he was really close with this group, and I thought maybe they were in over their heads.”
“Zhu and Marie,” Clyde said.
“Yes, sir. And Roger and Ellie. The five of them were tight, and they had a teacher they confided in, Mr. Peterson. He used to let the kids hang out at his house, which bothered me until Tank said that Mrs. Peterson was always home. She was an artist. They’re radical vegans who believe in witchcraft and demons and the medicinal virtues of pot. I thought they were a bad influence.” Hoffer couldn’t keep the derision out of his voice when he described the Petersons, but then, they weren’t the sort Clyde would approve of either.
“Go on,” General Zeller urged the captain.
“Yes, sir. Tank’s questions about tactics got stranger. He started creating enemies with magical powers and access to almost mafia-like resources and asking me for advice on attacking them. I started digging around—asking the local cops about the situation in the area—but I never found anything. And then one day Tank shows up and tells me that he needs me. He says I should get all the weapons I have and come with him. I told him to call the police, but he said he couldn’t. He was so panicked.”
Hoffer ran a hand over his military-short hair and looked around. Whatever had happened, it had rattled a Ranger. Clyde’s guts were churning. “Want some water?” Clyde asked, hoping to dial down the emotions in the conference room.
“Yes, sir,” Hoffer said. He started to get up, but Clyde beat him to it. Right now was not the time to stand on military protocol.
Clyde went to the end where a small counter had a pitcher and glasses. He turned to the general. “Sir?”
Zeller waved him off, and Clyde poured water for himself and Hoffer. He delivered Hoffer’s glass before going back to his seat. “It was bad, wasn’t it?” Clyde asked.