MJ-12: Endgame

by Michael J. Martinez

  Frank settled down next to Cal. “Where’s Zippy?” he asked.

  “Think she told me she was leading a team out in Iran,” Cal replied. “Apparently CIA got something going on there with their Shah, trying to get him back on the throne.”

  Frank shook his head. “God, we don’t learn, do we?”

  Cal knew what he was thinking about: the horrible events out in Syria in ’49, where the CIA had overthrown a democratically elected leader only to install a strongman who ended up deranged as hell. “We’re human,” Cal said simply.

  Cal thought back to the young boy whose Enhancement, they had ultimately discovered, had driven Husni al-Za’im mad. The boy could possess a person, just like the fire-and-brimstone preachers of Cal’s youth warned Satan himself could do. The third Syrian government to seize power in that horrible year had handed the boy off to the Americans, and warned the Variants not to return to the country—ever. That boy disappeared soon afterward, and Cal sometimes wondered just what had happened to him. He probably wasn’t cleared for finding out, and Lord help him, he figured he wouldn’t want to know.

  “All right, let’s get started,” Danny announced, and the talking in the room quickly died down. “Yes, this is everybody. Most of your fellow Variants are off on assignment in places you aren’t cleared for, and the rest are still training. For the record, there’s twenty-seven of us now in the program. I’m real pleased about that.”

  There were a few nods in the room, but otherwise silence reigned. Like Cal, most everyone—even Danny—had mixed feelings about MAJESTIC-12. It was nice to get trained up on Enhancements, and good to be valued by your country. It would’ve been nicer to get an actual choice in the matter, though. After all this time in the program, folks were starting to wonder whether getting out was even an option anymore.

  “The President has just approved a new op for us, code-name TALISMAN,” Danny continued. “Most everyone here is going to play a role at some point or other. It’s pretty big. In fact, it’s going to make everything else we’ve done seem like the minor leagues.

  “We’re going to undermine and ultimately depose Lavrentiy Beria from power within the Soviet Union.”

  There were a few gasps in the room, and wide eyes throughout. Cal bowed his head and said a short prayer, because he knew this one was going to be bad.

  “Now, unlike what we’ve tried to do elsewhere, we’re not going to actually support anybody else in the fight to replace Stalin,” Danny said. “That’s way too dangerous and, if you think about Syria and our first effort in Guatemala, we’re just not good at it. Plus, if anybody catches a whiff of us supporting, say, Molotov or Malenkov, those guys are dead and that strengthens Beria’s hand. So we’re neutral toward anybody else in the fight, and frankly, collateral damage against other interests in the Soviet Union is perfectly acceptable so long as Beria suffers the most damage.

  “Our goal is to neutralize Beria’s power base within the MGB and state security apparatus. We’re also authorized to capture or eliminate any Soviet Variants working for him as part of his Bekhterev program. Now, I know some of you are uncomfortable with this—striking out against your fellow Variants—but I need to make this crystal clear. Beria is nothing short of a monster. He was ready to drop an A-bomb on some of the people in this very room, just to see if he could create another vortex or Enhance more Variants. We believe that if he seizes power in the Soviet Union, he will seek to create a Variant-led nation and reveal Variants to the world as his ‘Champions of the Proletariat.’ If you think it through, this is a spectacularly bad idea. Normal people aren’t going to be understanding and accepting of us. They’re going to be scared. And if the first group of public Variants are Communists aligned against America, well … we’re all gonna find ourselves in a lot of trouble.”

  There were nods around the room, Cal included. Maggie, however, wasn’t one of them. Instead, Cal caught a glimpse of her turning around to look, gauging the room, and grimacing. Definitely need to have her over for a talk.

  “TALISMAN is an all-hands-on-deck operation inside the Soviet Union. Every one of you will have a part to play. I’m serving as overall ops commander, and Frank is number two and commander on the ground when I’m not around. Mrs. Stevens will be with us in Moscow to serve as our strategist and analyst. Katie, Maggie, and Tim will round out the first-wave team. We’ve had contingency insertion plans in place for a while now, so we’re ready to get you in there.

  “Tim, since nobody really saw you, you and Mrs. Stevens are going in under official cover with State and will be our liaison with the embassy. Frank, you’re going in through Crimea and up, covered as a minor Party functionary attached to one of the industrial committees. We’ll also give you a couple of other covers you can switch out of. Maggie and Katie, you’re a widowed academic and her daughter, moving to Moscow from Murmansk. We’ll insert you up north and you can make your way down. Since Beria knows my face as well, I’m taking the long way—I’ll be in from Vladivostok and make my way across as a migrant from Siberia, which means I’ll have the worst ride.” There were some chuckles around the room at this. “Rick and Cal, you’re heading with me for a bit, then out to Helsinki to be our on-deck hitters.”

  Cal frowned. This was easily a six-month assignment. Sally wouldn’t be pleased, though at least Helsinki would be a fine enough place to hang his hat for a while. He wouldn’t be in the thick of it. It would have to do, all things considered, but it was still too far and too long to be away from his wife. Maybe she could come out for a vacation, though. He wondered just what Finland was like. Cold, probably.

  “We ship out tomorrow,” Danny concluded. “Aside from Cal and Rick, we should all be together in Moscow in three weeks’ time. By then, Tim will have worked with the CIA station chief in Moscow to get us a safe house, and Mrs. Stevens should have some preliminary plans on how to proceed. Come on up and get your briefing papers. Study them tonight and commit them to memory—we’ll be burning them in the morning. Good luck, everyone. See you in Moscow.”

  Cal let everyone get up to get their files first, figuring they had the harder task ahead. But when he got to the lectern, Danny and Rick were waiting for him. “Got a little something else for you to do before you head to Helsinki, Cal,” Danny said with an apologetic smile. “Sorry to do this to you, but we’re making a pit stop on the way.”

  Of course, Cal should’ve known nothing would be so easy. He took the folder Danny offered him. “Do I wanna know where?” he asked.

  “Korea,” Danny replied. “We have a new Variant we need to find and collect.”

  Grimacing, Cal looked down at his shoes for a moment, mustering some patience and peace before replying. “I hope you mean to say somewhere way in the south part, right? Away from the lines?”

  Danny didn’t reply.

  March 23, 1953

  The ground shook constantly as the skies rained metal and the angry shouts of God and Satan pummeled the ears. Miguel Padilla would have given anything for a respite, anything for two minutes of quiet and safety in order to pray and put his soul in God’s hands before rising from his trench again to face the bullets of the Chinese Army.

  That wasn’t going to happen, of course. He turned to look at his compatriot, Hugo Contreras, a fellow private in the 2nd Platoon, Company B of the 31st Infantry’s famed Colombia Battalion. Two years ago, they were aimless boys in the poor neighborhoods of Bogotá, resigned to scraping together a meager existence on odd jobs and petty theft. They had volunteered together, gone to Korea together, sent the Chinese fleeing in Operation Thunderbolt.

  And now Miguel was sure they would die here on Hill 266, a scrap of a hill called Old Baldy that wasn’t worth a damn to anybody except as something to fight over.

  “Come on,” Miguel told Hugo, trying to regain courage. “Let’s show these bastards how Colombians fight.”

  Hugo, wide-eyed and covered in mud and sweat and the blood of the dead men around them, nodded nervously, clutching hi
s rifle. “I’m with you. But I’m not a good shot like you.”

  This was true. Miguel was the best shot in the squad. In the company. The battalion. Possibly on the entire Korean Peninsula. He pointed to a now vacant machine gun emplacement ten yards off. “When I start shooting, run over there and start firing,” Miguel said. “You don’t have to be a good shot to kill Chinese with a machine gun, yes?”

  Hugo smiled this time and nodded quickly, then crouched down and prepared to run. Miguel, meanwhile, set his rifle down and pulled two pistols from his belt—one from his now deceased sergeant, the other from a wounded lieutenant who was in a bunker that would probably not last another hour. The shells rocked the ground around them, the flashes pierced the cold, wet night. He could hear the screams of men on both sides and the barrage of gunfire popping like the sounds coming from the Devil’s own drums.

  Miguel had thirteen rounds between his two weapons.

  Time to go.

  He stood quickly and immediately saw a Chinese face thirty yards away. A second later, the face erupted in a crimson splash from Miguel’s first bullet. The second hit the hand of a Chinese soldier from forty yards out, one gripping a hand grenade. The explosion robbed him of two more targets, but he found three others on his right, another forty-five yards off. Three bullets later they were dead and he ducked back down into the trench.

  Hugo was still there. “What the hell, you bastard?” Miguel hissed. “That was your chance!”

  But Hugo had no words. He merely stared, on the verge of tears, trembling.

  “Mierda,” Miguel sighed. “Let’s try again, okay? I’m going to—”

  A gout of flame erupted overhead, prompting both men to duck.

  The Chinese had a flamethrower.

  “That fucker!” Miguel growled. “Hang on.”

  He popped up again, one pistol already extended, and took his shot from just twenty yards out. The bullet went right through the nozzle of the flamethrower, through the Chinese soldier’s right lung and into the tank of fuel behind his body.

  The explosion bathed the valley in unholy light—revealing more targets. In the space of five seconds, Miguel took seven more shots. Seven more men died, the last one from nearly a hundred yards away.

  A moment later, he was back down in the trench, but Hugo was not there. Ten feet away, Hugo’s body was crumpled on the ground, just short of the machine gun emplacement.

  Miguel wanted nothing more than to stop and cry and scream and mourn and take his friend’s body away from this meat grinder. He could do none of those things.

  A radio nearby, in the hand of another dead man, sparked to life. “Attention all forces! Retreat! Retreat! We’re about to be overrun! Retreat! Retreat!”

  Miguel took one last look at Hugo’s body. “Go with God,” he whispered. Then he ran.

  Bullets tore after him as he leaped across the open space and grabbed Hugo’s rifle, crouching behind the machine gun. There were only about fifty rounds left on the machine gun, but Miguel decided to put them to good use. Closing his eyes and reaching out with his mind’s eye, he remembered the terrain in front of him, thinking where the Chinese might try to come next.

  He put his finger on the trigger and opened fire, swinging the gun around and targeting the Chinese with short bursts. When the rounds were spent, he took up Hugo’s rifle again and ran, knowing there were fifty less Chinese behind him who could shoot him in the back.

  Indeed, he had just gotten his two seconds of silence, and he used it to run like hell for the bottom of the hill.

  * * *

  “Commander, I genuinely don’t give a damn whose order this is, but right now Pork Chop Hill and Old Baldy are being overrun by the Reds, and if you go even one mile north, you’re gonna get dead real fast.”

  Colonel William Kern, U.S. Army, stared hard at Danny, as if willing him to make better choices in life, and honestly, Danny couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t like he wanted to drive up into a hellstorm, but there wasn’t much of a choice. Danny could sense the new Variant ahead of him, toward the fighting, and he was afraid that spark of Enhancement in his mind’s eye might wink out at any moment. There wasn’t any time.

  “Colonel, I appreciate that, and believe me, I’m not looking forward to going. But I have to. These orders are straight from General Vandenberg himself, and I don’t think anybody here is in a position to countermand them. All I need is a jeep. That’s it,” Danny said.

  Kern shook his head sadly. “Jeeps don’t grow on trees, son. I’ve half a mind to make you walk. But—” The colonel raised his hand to cut off Danny’s retort. “You got one. If you don’t bring it back, at least do me a favor and crash it into the Chinese, okay? But really, bring it the hell back in one piece.”

  Danny walked out of the farmhouse serving as Kern’s office in some village outside Yeoncheon and made his way to the impromptu motor pool in a nearby barn, where Cal and Rick were already waiting. Both were covered as Marine-enlisted—Cal as a gunnery sergeant, Rick as a lance corporal. Danny had given some thought to covering them all as U.S. Army, since the Army was in charge of the front here, but the customs and nuances would likely escape them all. Their orders would cause them to stick out anyway, so they might as well stick out all the way.

  Cal whacked Rick on the arm and both of them saluted Danny, who returned the gesture crisply. Three days in Korea and Rick still hadn’t caught on to the military saluting thing yet, but Cal was an old hand; Danny figured Cal had pretended to be every serviceman except a Coastie by now. “Lance Corporal, go get us a jeep,” Danny said, handing off Kern’s written order. “Make sure we get extra gas.”

  Rick ducked inside the barn, leaving Cal and Danny outside. To the north, they could hear the rumble of shelling in the distance, like a gathering storm. A moment later, several Air Force fighters screamed overhead.

  “Don’t seem like a good direction to go,” Cal said.

  Danny closed his eyes a moment to concentrate, finding the target again in his mind. “I think he’s heading south, away from the fighting. Colonel says they’ve abandoned the hill and the Air Force is bombing it to hell behind them. Should be okay, just … wait.”

  Then suddenly there was a second Variant there.

  Danny saw the new target in his mind, probably no more than two miles away from the one that had blazed into his consciousness just after they’d returned from Moscow. A second Variant coming south.

  Coming from North Korea.

  Danny opened his eyes and looked right at Cal. “Gunny, get in there and set a fire under them. I want that jeep now.”

  Poor Cal nearly jumped out of his skin, but immediately dashed inside the barn and started raising hell. And Danny began to wonder if they could end up getting two for the price of one there in the middle of the Korean War. If they survived.

  * * *

  Miguel staggered down the road with the rest of his company, as dawn broke over Korea. His squad was all but gone, and all he could do was think of poor Hugo, whose body was probably bombed to hell and back by the U.S. Air Force. Even though he was just a private, Miguel understood the bombing all too well—if the U.N. forces couldn’t keep Old Baldy, they’d make damn sure nobody else could either.

  So there would be no body to bring home. Miguel hadn’t even stopped to take any token from Hugo’s body, no dog tags or photos. He would someday go to Hugo’s mother and have nothing to offer other than that her son died in battle, and while Hugo had been scared, he’d died moving toward a gun, moving to help.

  It was a small comfort, but it was something. Hugo had not been the bravest of men, but when he’d fought, he’d fought well. What was more, he’d kept everyone’s spirits up with his jokes and his singing and his outsized stories of his exploits back in Bogotá. Miguel, of course, had known full well that Hugo had not, in fact, courted the daughter of a banker or beaten eight men in a row playing darts, but it had been fun all the same.

  Miguel, of course, wouldn’t have had any tr
ouble beating eight men in darts. Or eighty, for that matter.

  Two weeks earlier, Miguel had woken up from a sound sleep and felt … different. He hadn’t been able to explain it, but it was as though his reflexes and his mind had grown sharper, his hands and eyes acting as one. That day, they had engaged in target practice, and Miguel’s sergeant had been furious to find that Miguel had only registered one shot on target, in the very center.

  In fact, all of Miguel’s shots had been on target—they had all gone through the same hole as the first. The second round of practice had gone better, as Miguel had clustered his shots neatly around the center bullseye. This, too, had brought unwanted attention, but in a different way, and by the third round, Miguel had known to place his shots carefully, to make them look random, even though every bullet had landed exactly where he’d wanted.

  That night, Miguel had gotten an idea. He’d taken a knife from the mess hall, as well as an old football one of the Americans had lying around. He’d thrown the knife—something he had never done before with any seriousness—using a tree for target practice. Twenty-seven throws had landed in the exact same spot, even when he’d backed up as far as he possibly could and just heaved the knife away from him.

  It had been the same with the football. Miguel was strong but untrained, yet he’d been able to land the football right into an empty oil drum from seventy-five yards out without even trying. Without even looking.