by Fiona Quinn
“Oh, just old friends reminiscing,” Spyder said as he followed around to the back of the truck and popped open the tailgate.
She reached in and pulled a quilt to the edge. She’d arranged everything for dinner. My stomach growled loudly.
“Hear her stomach, Emma?” the general asked. “She’s got psychic skills — knows what’s coming is going to be some kind of good.” He fixed his bright blue eyes on me. “And you’re right. I married a damned fine cook.”
We sat quietly around the fire with our plates in our laps. A wolf called out in the distance. It sounded so forlorn. I wholeheartedly agreed with this solo wolf’s lamentations. I missed my team. I wondered what Striker and Vine were up to. I tore off a chunk of bread with my teeth. Probably not the best idea to speculate. I’d bet they weren’t enjoying nearly as nice a night or nearly as delicious a dinner as we were.
Mrs. Coleridge had made us moose stew with rolls and apple bread pudding for dessert. The warmth from the food in my stomach radiated through my body, and I felt comfortable and sleepy. The general reached behind the backside of our log, pulled out his guitar, and strummed a melody that seemed to exactly accompany the wolf’s song. Lying back, I felt peace descend over me. Like there was nothing separating me from God and the universe. It was a moment of perfection—sheer contentedness.
Eventually, General Coleridge got up, poked the fire until sparks flew into the air, and threw another log on, telling me that he planned for this conversation to go on for a while yet.
I turned to Mrs. Coleridge. “You’re married to the guy who was tasked with developing Galaxy. What was that like?”
“I was, and still am, mostly in the dark — classified information. They say it’s all been released to the public. But Pat says they picked a very careful and damning one percent to release. It’s been an interesting life, with him keeping everything secret. Made for some very quiet dinners. I couldn’t be prouder, though. My husband took on a daunting task with very little in the way of exterior reward. It had to be done — but most people are too self-preserving to do it. I always said Galaxy was a suicide mission. Messed up a lot of lives.”
“Who would have been tapped for this kind of project, sir?”
“Lucky people,” the general said.
Mrs. Coleridge laughed and patted her husband’s knee.
I smiled. “You feel lucky to have been selected?”
“Not what I meant,” said the general. “One of the things that brought someone to our attention was when they were placed in extreme circumstances, they survived when others didn’t—people who seemed to be charmed and made the right decisions when their fellow soldiers did not. Now, more interesting is who would continue with our program. I’d say those who stuck with it had a combination of desire and focus, quality of training, and natural talent mixed in equal portions. That could get you the skillset needed. But you had to have your head on right. Ego.” He tapped his head, then his heart. “The ego is always a problem with this kind of stuff. Gets in the way. You can’t imagine how hard it is to stay humble when you can see and do some of the things that we could see and do. Self-interest and self-importance are bad for business. They shut you down faster than anything else I’ve seen. Remaining humble is incredibly important. As remote viewers soon learn, we are but a speck of sand, less than a speck of sand, in the grand desert of life. Not having a firm grip on this notion can exacerbate one’s mental instability.”
I pulled my knees snug to my torso and wrapped my arms around them. “I saw the tasking envelope asking, ‘How was I doing? Where was I?’ How would someone find me? What other kinds of things could be discovered out through remote viewing?”
“We have protocols for different requirements. For example, we would approach a target in a specific way for binary answers,” he said.
“Yes or no, right or wrong…”
“Yup, or, buy or don’t buy, when it comes to business applications. There are other methodologies and protocols the Stanford folks developed for when we were trying to remotely view and describe a specific area. Elliot tasked Herman Trudy — Herman Trudy is the name of the guy tasked to find you. He’s the HET at the tops of the reports. Coming up with a GPS coordinate is all but impossible, but by starting off with the structure, then moving out into space at increments and using various maps, it’s easy to hone in.”
“Like using the zoom in and zoom out feature on Google Maps?”
“Exactly. So, let’s see what else… Sequences of numbers, names of locations, unless they are unique, reading words on a page…those are all extremely difficult to remotely view, and our view of them is not reliable.”
“But, for example,” I asked, “if a remote viewer happened to be in a meeting and saw a battle plan drawn on a whiteboard with simple geometric shapes…”
“Oh, yes, that would be easy to read and replicate into a report. And the remote viewer wouldn’t have to ‘happen to be’ there. You see, time is of no consequence. When tasked, the remote viewer would simply go to the time and place where he could obtain information about the planning for the XYZ campaign. At lightning speed, he would be there in the time frame when the schematics were drawn out.”
My hands came up to cover my mouth as the breadth of impact offered up by that sentence permeated my consciousness. “Oh, my god, the implications of that statement—”
“Are mind-blowing, I know. That’s why many of our trained remote viewers couldn’t continue. Doing this day in and day out, perpetually blowing their paradigms to smithereens, can play havoc with your mental health and stability.”
“So if a team planned a mission in the morning and left immediately to execute it…” Was this how Strike Force got caught at Fuller Mine with the D.O.A. when Striker and Jack were shot? I remembered thinking at the time it was like the shooters had a playbook or script. Holy smokes.
“Okay, let’s take that example. The enemy has something up their sleeve. They want to know if our guys are going to intervene and how, so bad guys have a chance to change things up. The date, the time, maybe even put a counter-attack in place. The tangos can’t go to the remote viewer and task them by asking what will happen because the outcome depends on the new information and the response of the combatant. No, what they task is something like ‘go to the time where I can best understand the American’s plans.’ Now, say those plans were put up on a board like a football play, which often happens so the soldiers can study them and ask questions, well, then you copy that down, gather what you can from the conversations, and boom, you have the data you need. Doesn’t matter if it’s past, present, or future.”
A shiver raked through me. “Wow,” I whispered.
“Wow indeed.” He nodded with conviction. “Hence the importance of protecting your site and limiting knowledge to need-to-know. Hopefully, the people who need to know have their shit together, like Elliot and Spyder.”
General Elliot. This brought me to another horrible thought. “Sir, you mentioned something earlier about wannabes, looky-loos, and influencers. I read a little bit about influencing.”
“Influencing is a very dangerous development. CIA found out that the Russians were working on evolving the ability to plant suggestions into someone else’s mind. That’s where the whole damned goat thing came up that got into that damned book, and later into the movies—the Men Who Stare at Goats. The influencers weren’t trying to stare a goat to death. That’s just fucking absurd. The idea was that we would plant the thought seeds, either to change someone’s mind on some topic of political import or to create illness in a person. The end game with implanting an illness was that we had the ability to remotely kill our enemy — stroke or heart attack, for example.”
“Or semi-comatose state?” I asked.
He dipped his head left, then right, as he weighed the possibility. “Maybe. It’s not something I really worked with. We got closed down before much came of that project. You’re too young to remember, but back in the ‘90s, ther
e was a chess match between Karpov and Kasparov. Karpov had a parapsychologist on his team.”
“True story? And that made a difference in the chess match?”
“Absolutely. It was almost impossible for Kasparov to think and strategize through the pollution that filled his brain. The Russians used this diplomatically, as well. In 1988, for example, Ronald Reagan met with Gorbachev to hash out a treaty about limiting nuclear stockpiles. Reagan wasn’t on his game. He was nauseated and sick the whole trip. They had influencers working on making him too ill to think clearly, but not ill enough to prevent the talks. They walked a fine line, and it showed the incredible dexterity of the Russian influencing team.”
“Holy moly. And we do that? Influence?”
“Stanford developed the protocol. Only two people were chosen, and they were picked for their altruistic outlooks because…well, in the wrong hands, these skills could be devastating. They were Nelson Scott and… huh, isn’t that funny? Can’t recall the other guy’s name right off. Nelson Scott and…” General Coleridge shook his head. “Huh,” he said, pulling off his hat and rubbing his hand over his hair. He looked up at the stars with a frown.
“But, sir, did you know that General Elliot is semi-comatose, and there is no physical or mental reason for his state?”
General Coleridge gave me a long hard look. “General Elliot?” He turned his gaze to Spyder. “How’d this come about, Spyder?”
“General Elliot and his wife went on a vacation where he became more and more tired each day. When they came home, his wife insisted that he go to the hospital. While in the hospital, he seemed to be improving. Once they left, though, Mrs. Elliot felt he needed quiet and took him to his hunting cabin. The doctors who visited him there said there was no point in going back to the hospital, as all of the tests showed nothing of concern. He was very healthy until he suddenly went into this state. Mrs. Elliot was unable to care for him, so she put him in a long-term care facility.”
“Could someone have influenced General Elliot?” I asked Coleridge point-blank.
“Nope. Don’t think it’s possible in the least. Our two influencers were chosen for their altruism. Damned shame about Elliot, though. Good man.”
“Sir, when you do this work, can you do this remote work alone, or would it take two to partner on it?”
“I don’t do solo flights. My wife’s my helper.” He pulled their laced fingers to his lips and kissed the back of her hand. “I’ve been at this nigh on thirty years, and these are the choices I make. It’s not to say that someone couldn’t or wouldn’t remote view on their own. A lone remote viewer could still function well and get excellent results. Now, you need to understand that in remote viewing, anything better than chance is considered an excellent outcome. Most of us work around the 65% range. If a remote viewer is tenacious, has all the time he wants, and can approach, again and again, hitting the target from different angles, I’ve seen those rates budge up to around the 90% mark. But that’s remarkable and uncommon.”
“How does one make decisions off of this information if there is a 35% risk of it being erroneous?”
“Boots on the ground. What we collect offers a starting point. Then it takes the other people involved to review the information and say whether it’s valid and actionable or not.”
“Like when General Elliot included his notes on the tasking log about me.”
General Coleridge nodded. “Exactly. When Elliot was able to corroborate some of the information, it gave more credence to the times when he didn’t know the facts — can you see the logical problem with that?”
“Well, sure. Trudy might have gotten a portion correct and been confused later, but that might cloud Elliot’s decision making if the correct information actually gave weight to incorrect information. It would be an easy trap to fall into. In this case, though, I think Herman Trudy did a remarkable job. During the times I was lucid, the information is totally correct. I can’t speak to his speculations during my illness.” I shifted around. This subject matter was disturbing on so many levels. The complications and consequences of the Galaxy program were so profound. “There weren’t many of you, were there? How many people do you think were trained to follow the Stanford protocol for remote viewing?” I asked.
“Oh, I’d say over the years, no more than three dozen were involved in Galaxy.”
Mrs. Coleridge gathered up our dishes, waving me back to my seat when I tried to get up and help. “See you back at the ranch when you’ve talked your way through all your questions.” She climbed into the front seat and headed back over the field.
I moved over to General Coleridge and picked up the reports. “Sir, do you recognize who the monitor 91449715 could be?”
“No clue. That’s not one I’ve seen before. But usually, it’s not a difficult thing. It’s a simple code or cipher.” He stared down at the paper and spent some minutes muttering and counting on his fingers. I filled everyone’s mugs with hot chocolate from the thermos Mrs. Coleridge had left for us while he sorted it out. I settled back down and took a sip, happy to have my gloved hands wrapped around the steaming mug.
“Uhm, yes,” General Coleridge said. “I’d say this is a cipher that simply uses a number to represent a letter. The monitor has put down the name Indigo as his name on this report. I don’t know anyone by that name.”
I chanced a peek over the rim of my cup at Spyder. Spyder nodded his head like the general had just said that the birds had all flown south for the winter. Information, but nothing special or surprising.
“Herman Trudy said, ‘winking.’ What does that mean?”
“That’s just him honing in on you.”
“And he suggested that I might be a remote viewer?”
“Remote viewer — that’s someone trained in our protocol, but who does the job on their own, without a monitor. You’re not from the program, and I seriously doubt you had training. But, from these findings, I can say you’ve had an OBE — an out of body experience — before, right? I do. It’s not at all the same as remote viewing.”
“I have left my body before, yes.”
“Head trauma?”
“I’ve had a few.” They weren’t the catalyst for the out of body experiences for me, though, when I walked behind the Veil. Walking behind the Veil was something I trained in with Miriam Laugherty. But I knew what he was talking about. One of the autobiographies I read was about a man who had a brush with death via a bullet to the head. It was okay with me that General Coleridge misunderstood what I was saying. Information about my psychic abilities was absolutely need-to-know only.
General Coleridge pulled at his lower lip. “Hell of a thing. I hope you can get some control over that. It can make life hard.” His eyes searched over my face. “I bet you have a lot of trouble hiding your emotions — do you tear up easily? Do your emotions seem to have more steam than other people’s?”
I nodded. I had been working on the trademark stoicism exhibited by my team, but truth be told, I walked around all the time masking the emotions that I wore like a second skin. Being emotional held a great deal of vulnerability to it that the general seemed to understand. The compassion in his voice brought a tear to my eye, and I wiped it quickly away, lest it freeze there. The temperatures were dipping further. I leaned into Spyder, and he put a fatherly arm around my shoulder and pulled me close.
“Yup, me too. It’s not the head trauma that causes the emotions. It’s being plugged into the collective unconscious. Hell of a burden, and not very good for a military career, I can tell you that for sure. Now, what else did you need to know?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Two days later, back in a much more temperate DC, Spyder and I sat at the end of a cul-de-sac with our binoculars trained on a warehouse. Zero-two-thirty-hours and even the neighborhood dogs slept too deeply to alert their owners that strangers loitered on the road outside. Syder saw no problem at all with this plan. I, on the other hand…
While we sat on the Wyom
ing battlefield, Spyder and I spent a long time discussing what came next. We decided that getting the artwork back and protecting Iniquus from Indigo — or whatever other remote viewer he had working on the project of destroying us — was our highest priority.
Reconnaissance was step one. Spyder’s hacking skills provided the property’s schematics. He’d pulled everything: electrical, plumbing, alarm systems, and codes, payroll, scheduling, employee profiles… What we didn’t have was a decisive answer to the question, “Was our art still here?” That was my job.
Spyder would produce the distraction, and I would shadow walk inside and peek into boxes. Ta-da — our plan in a nutshell. Simplicity at its best. On a Tuesday night, the warehouse staff couldn’t expect much to happen. It was the lightest shift of the week, with only three men in the whole place. We were waiting for the changing of the guard at zero-three-hundred-hours. The graveyard shift was — well, I’d call them the less athletic of the bunch, weighing in around the four-hundred mark. I knew I couldn’t throw one of them over my hip, but I could probably outrun them. I hoped none of them was particularly trigger-happy, but I wore a bullet-proof vest just in case.
Our strategy was for me to head inside dressed in various shades of grey, from the soles of my running shoes to the balaclava that rubbed my nose raw. Spyder had dressed in jeans and a gray hoodie. When I asked him about his distraction plan, he grinned broadly and gave me nothing by way of information.
Zero-three hundred-hours. Spyder turned the engine over on our electric car, and we motored noiselessly toward the storage facility. Driving without his lights, Spider left me off at the dark edge of the parking lot. It had been a while since I’d practiced shadow walking on a mission. I’d be relying on muscle memory to get me through.
As he drove away, I scaled the fence, dropped in behind a black 4Runner, and took in the scene. Peeking up at the sky, I waited for the clouds to spread over the Cheshire Cat smile of a moon. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, Striker’s SEAL mantra repeated in my mind. As soon as the moon’s glow dimmed, I moved toward the door like a phantom, exactly how I remembered doing it when I trained these skills with Master Wang. I became one with my environment. It was as easy as breathing. Light on the balls of my feet, I rounded the corner and slid to the door.