Delta Green: Strange Authorities

by John Scott Tynes

  Vic stumbled out of the bathroom, fresh from vomiting. “Anybody get the number of that UFO that hit me?” Stephanie cracked a smile. Abe looked too bleary to comprehend.

  They showered and got dressed. Vic went out to get them breakfast and returned with coffee, sandwiches, and Pepto-Bismol.

  “So,” Abe managed after finishing his sandwich. “Got any bright ideas about what the hell is going on?”

  Stephanie shrugged. “I’ve seen some weird shit with Delta Green. But I didn’t expect that. You guys ever seen those things before?”

  “Just on TV,” Vic replied. “But I’ve heard they were around.”

  “Really?” Abe said, surprised. “I thought that UFO stuff was bullshit.”

  “I don’t know about UFOs. But I read Cell S’s original report on Groversville, back when this op started. Alphonse PGP’d me a copy for background. At the end of their op, they found a barn up in the hills with a bunch of those things inside, operating on cows or something. That guy with the gold teeth showed up and chased them off, and that’s when the Hantavirus struck and it all went to shit.”

  Abe shook his head. “I guess the neo-tissue had to come from somewhere.” A thought occurred to him. “Is this what they killed Fairfield over? This UFO shit?”

  It was Vic’s turn to shrug. “I guess. I never heard much about that, just that he’d ticked off the wrong people and got wacked. But from what Alphonse has let slip, it all ties together.”

  “So those geeks are right. Aliens, government conspiracies, all that crap.”

  Stephanie snorted. “We’re the government conspiracy, Abe. Those guys are just the government.”

  They were silent for a minute, sipping their coffee and passing the stomach medicine around.

  “It’s so strange,” Stephanie finally said. “Up till now, I thought we were just hunting monsters, weird old cults, all that hocus-pocus stuff. I never imagined our own government would be collaborating with it all somehow.”

  “I don’t think they’re collaborating with all of it,” Vic said. “I don’t think these people know jack about the things we’ve faced. Alphonse said they had a really narrow focus, that’s why we don’t cross paths that often. He said something about stealth fighters, exploiting technology. I think these people have deluded themselves into thinking they’re onto some huge secret, but they don’t see the big picture. I mean Stephanie, when you were dealing with those things from the ocean, there weren’t any sinister cover-ups or secret government projects or anything, right?”

  “Just ours,” Stephanie replied. Abe chuckled.

  “Well we’ve never come across anything like this before, either. But Cell S has, in Groversville.” Vic paused. “I wonder what else Cell A hasn’t told us about?”

  The plane touched down in Burlington, Vermont, an hour before noon. Joe disembarked without any luggage. He walked to a rental-car desk and got a Volvo. He wanted something sturdy.

  From the airport, he drove to an outdoor storage facility and parked the car. It was cold and crisp here, and there was snow on the ground. He was about forty miles from the Canadian border.

  Fishing a key out of his pocket, he unlocked one of the storage units and slid the metal door up. The fifteen-by-fifteen area inside was another one of DG’s Green Boxes, but this one wasn’t for general use. It was just for Alphonse. He walked in, turned on a battery-powered lamp, and pulled the door down behind him.

  He undressed methodically. From an old padlocked footlocker he removed a complete suit of body armor, protection against small arms and blades. He put it on, and then got into a winter-camouflage jumpsuit that covered the armor completely. A pair of sturdy hiking boots and a warm fur hat with earflaps finished off the ensemble. He transferred his keys, wallet, and the videodisc into the pockets and then opened another footlocker. From it he removed a fully automatic AK-47 assault rifle, which he placed in a long drawstring bag, and six forty-round magazines, which he stashed in various bellows pockets of the jumpsuit. He also took out a Walther PPK and three seven-round magazines for it and stashed these, as well. Finally he pulled on a thin pair of gloves.

  There was a walnut vanity with a large oval mirror in the front of the unit, part of a jumble of furniture that shielded the interior from casual observation while the door was open. He looked at himself in the mirror, and decided that he looked like an idiot. He was a short, portly, eighty-year-old man with snow-white hair and a pugnacious look to his face, wearing winter camouflage bulging with ammunition and topped by a ridiculous hat. The idea that he might be going into some sort of violent action made him laugh out loud. “What the hell are you doing, Joseph?” he asked his reflection. His reflection smiled at him and shook its head. “Taking care of business,” it answered.

  Returning to the car, he placed the bag with the rifle in it on the passenger seat and hit the road. He took Interstate 89 north to St. Albans, then headed northeast on Highway 105. Exiting on a private rural road, he pulled up to a sturdy metal gate. A heavy chain lay piled on the ground, clipped with bolt cutters. Joe got out and pushed the gate open, drove through, and then closed the gate behind him. Apparently the person he was meeting was already here.

  He reached the vicinity of Fairfield Pond half an hour later. It was rather large to be called a pond, but so it was. It had been named by the Fairfield family, who had lived here along the Black River since colonial times. Reggie Fairfield’s ancestors were frontiersmen, militiamen, revolutionaries. They raised hell and children with equal fervor. Reggie’s kids were aging hippies somewhere in California, the grandkids scattered across the country like so many prosperous American families who had no reason to stick together. No Fairfields still lived in this neck of the woods, but the old family farm remained. Reggie had died here five years ago, though officially he was still alive; he hadn’t spoken to any of his family for a decade before his death, and they hadn’t ever come looking. There was never an investigation or a death certificate. Reggie’s death was a secret that had stayed buried, his pension checks flowing into Delta Green’s coffers. Joe still paid the property taxes on the land and came out here once in a while to walk around.

  He drove past a barn and into a snowy gravel-covered patch, where there was a black BMW already parked. Fifty yards off were the ruins of the old family cabin. The timbers were charred and collapsed, and now mostly grown over with grass and scrub and blanketed in snow. A flagstone chimney still stood, mostly intact, a comforting presence here for more than two hundred years. The house it served was gone, the family dispersed, and the lord of the land was somewhere in the ground underneath. It made sense, Joe thought, for Reggie to be buried here, beneath a chimney just as proud and stubborn as the man who last used it.

  Someone was leaning against the chimney, wearing a long black overcoat. The figure waved congenially.

  Joe turned off the car, took the AK-47 from the bag, chambered the first round, and got out. He slung the rifle from his shoulder and gripped the handle, thumbing the safety off and the action to full-auto. Then he started walking across the snowy plain to the ruin, rifle pointing at the ground.

  As Joe approached the ruin, the man stood up straight and walked towards him, smiling broadly. His three gold teeth caught the winter sun.

  “Why Joseph,” he said merrily, eyeing the rifle. “I didn’t know you cared.”

  “Hello, Adolph. I’m glad you could make it.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world. You here to kill me?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Delighted to hear it.”

  The men began walking slowly side by side, skirting the edge of the ruin.

  “I had no idea you were such a sentimentalist, Joseph. I suppose you’d like to atone for old sins?”

  “No, I thought I’d commit some new ones.”

  “Really? How melodramatic. Speaking of melodrama, that was quite the show you folks put on yesterday. I didn’t think you had it in you, anymore.”

  “You
know better than to underestimate me, Adolph.”

  “I would never do that, Joseph. But my superiors did. To be honest, they haven’t given you much thought these last couple years. You’ve had a low profile.”

  “I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “So naturally, you blew up OUTLOOK Group.”

  “Your men did that. We just wanted our people back. We were within the rules of engagement.”

  “So you were. We took your people, you had to do something. I understand perfectly.”

  “We need to resolve this. We have other priorities, as do you.”

  “Indeed. Do you have any suggestions?”

  “A few. We’ll leave Groversville alone.”

  “You mean Promise.”

  “Whatever. We’ll stay out of there. We’re done with that crap. OUTLOOK, too.”

  “And in return?”

  “Our agents who were in on the raid and Liz Severs. You leave them alone.”

  Adolph laughed. “All right, we won’t kill them, if that’ll make you happy. But I don’t think Ms. Park has much of a future at the EPA, and that’s hardly our doing.”

  “Understood. Also, let David Nells go.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  Joe stopped. Adolph turned to face him.

  “Really, Joseph, it is. That’s not negotiable.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No, he’s quite alive. He’s rather a remarkable person, you know. Very interesting to us. We can’t let him leave.”

  Joe stood quietly and considered this for half a minute. Finally he reached a decision. “All right. But don’t you pull this shit again. If you take any more of my people, you’ll pay a price for it.”

  “We already have, Joseph. That facility you destroyed was rather important to us.”

  “You didn’t lose anybody you can’t replace.”

  “That’s not true, actually. You killed some friends of ours. Foreign dignitaries. We have some explaining to do.”

  Joe chuckled. “They’ve really got you by the balls, don’t they?”

  Adolph turned and began walking again. Joe caught up.

  “Speaking of your friends, I have something for you.” He reached into a pocket with his free hand and pulled out the videodisc, which he handed to Adolph.

  “What’s this?”

  “My people recovered it from OUTLOOK. It’s footage of your friends, working on Liz Severs.”

  Adolph arched an eyebrow. “Why the hell are you giving this to me?”

  Joe stopped walking again and his features hardened. Adolph stopped, too. “Because I don’t want the goddamned thing! I don’t want anything to do with your stupid little conspiracies if I can help it. I’ve got problems of my own, and the last thing I need is your monkeys on my back. Take it and burn it or shove it up your ass for all I care.”

  Adolph regarded Joe for a moment, then spoke quietly. “You do have other problems, don’t you? I think I understand. There’s a lot more in heaven and earth than my superiors dream of, isn’t there?”

  Joe just stared at him angrily.

  “Really, Joseph, you don’t have to glare at me like that. I do understand.” Adolph reached into a pocket and pulled something out, which he handed over.

  It was an old, tarnished, metal dogtag, the chain long since lost. The stamped name read WADE, SATCHEL GRANGE. Joe’s brow furrowed and he looked up at Adolph.

  “I was there, Joe. In Cambodia, ’69. I’m the one who killed Wade and his gook slash. I saw that thing he called outta the temple and I pissed my pants and ran like a woman. I ain’t seen nothing like it since, and I thank my lucky stars.” He chuckled with a sound like a death-rattle. “You really do have bigger fish to fry than a bunch of desk jockeys with delusions of grandeur.”

  Joe handed the dogtag back. “You’re full of surprises today, Adolph. I’ve got one for you. That videodisc? There’s a copy.”

  “I assumed as much.”

  “We don’t have it. Phenomen-X does.”

  Adolph stared for a moment, and then burst out laughing. “Oh, my. My, oh, my. That’s the best news I’ve had this whole rotten weekend.”

  Joe looked at him oddly. “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. My boys are itching for some payback, but they’re not going to get it from you. I’ll sic them on those fools and we’ll have a little fun. Maybe we’ll swing by Disneyland on the way back.”

  “You going to kill them?”

  “Eventually. That is why you told me, isn’t it? They’ve crossed you somehow and you want me to make them go away.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, we’re both full of surprises, aren’t we, old friend?”

  “I’m not your friend, Adolph,” Joe said coldly. “We’re not married. We’re just engaged.”

  He turned and started walking back to his car. Behind him, Adolph stood, laughing in the snow.

  The Osterman Clinic was a small private affair in Bethesda near the National Naval Medical Center. Dr. Jack Osterman had been a Navy doc and Delta Green agent in the 1970s and ’80s, but he retired and went into private practice during the Bush administration. He’d always been a family man, and decided that he wanted to spend his twilight years with his family doing what he loved instead of spending them as one of Reggie Fairfield’s catspaws. He still kept in touch with Alphonse, and made his clinic available to Delta Green when duty called, which was rarely. The clinic mostly treated the elderly for the infirmities of age and the facilities were modest, but DG couldn’t be picky. Besides, Jack had spent his Naval career treating military injuries in the field, and he liked to say that he could do a heart bypass with a butter knife and a fifth of Wild Turkey if the situation warranted. Jack really knew his way around the human body—or at least he thought he did, until he met Agent Susan.

  Susan was resting, sedated, in one of Jack’s three examination rooms. Last Friday Alphonse had warned him to be ready for visitors, so he’d given his staff the weekend off and rescheduled his appointments. He also borrowed a vanload of equipment from an old buddy at the Naval Center and converted an exam room into something approximating a crash unit. When the ambulance pulled up Saturday morning, a man and three women piled out in tactical gear with a gurney containing a healthy-looking but unconscious woman in her thirties. Jack was confused at first. One of the women was covered in blood and gore, and he was sure she must be wounded. She shrugged off his entreaties and nodded at the gurney. “She’s the one in trouble,” the woman said, her breath like a butcher shop. Jack guided them into the exam room and got to work.

  The woman they called Susan was fine. She showed no evidence of injuries or illness. He wasn’t sure why she was unconscious, but on first inspection she seemed to be in no danger. Then another one of the women, who had introduced herself as Terry, produced a small unmarked plastic bottle with a spray nozzle from one of the bellows pockets on her tac suit. She spritzed the clear fluid on Susan’s bare torso, and several purple lines appeared, approximating the Y-incision of an autopsy. “Make a little cut along one of those lines,” she ordered. Jack took a scalpel and complied, making a shallow two-inch incision within the purple stain. Susan’s skin immediately closed up again, without spilling a drop of blood.

  Jack touched himself at the stations of the cross and invoked the blessing of Mary, the mother of God. Then he stood up, put the scalpel down, and demanded an explanation. When Cell T was finished, he took a fifth of Maker’s Mark out and had a shot. They had several more. Tonya made a crack about this being better stuff than Thomas usually bought.

  He’d stayed at the clinic from then forward, calling his wife to say he was assisting at the Naval Center for the weekend—they called him in to consult sometimes. On Cell T’s advice, he kept Susan on sedatives to keep her down. Alphonse came by around noon and they discussed the situation for a while. Cell T watched television—the raid at Bountin was on all the local stations.

  It was now Sunday evening. Dr. Grant Emer
son and three assistants had flown in from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to help out; Emerson was the DG-friendly who had first analyzed the “neo-tissue” and developed the leucopararosaniline spray technique. They had some sort of experimental treatment planned that they thought would purge Susan’s body of the substance that had wormed its way into her tissues. While Alphonse and the agents stood by, Jack and Dr. Emerson’s team went over the plan.

  “As near as we can surmise,” Grant said, his British accent clipped and studious, “the neo-tissue is inhibiting certain T cells to prevent tissue rejection by the body. Otherwise, it would be unlikely to co-exist as invasively as it does. We don’t know which it targets, and we haven’t the luxury of finding out. We must activate the entire immune system and pray the neo-tissue withdraws.”

  “How?”

  “Septicemia. We’ll give her five milligrams of lipopolysaccharide. Her leukocytes will take up the LPS and flood her bloodstream with cytokines, activating the full spectrum of lymphocytes to reject the neo-tissue.”

  Jack’s brow furrowed. “Five migs sounds like a lot.”

  “It is. Safe dose is one mike per kilo.”

  “Couldn’t five migs be fatal?”

  “That’s the idea. She’ll go into shock in under an hour and die soon after. We must be prepared to bring the fever down before it kills her.”

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “This neo-tissue is a wily beast. We need Susan to crash, hit her hard so the neo-tissue has no choice but evacuation. If we go with a lower dose, it might fight back, shutting down the process.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “As sure as we can be, which is a damned sight too little. We’ve never tried to fight the neo-tissue before. But I think it’ll work.”

  “All right. We’ll need an ice tub ready for the fever. But what about those incisions? When it leaves, she’s going to open up, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she’ll start to bleed out. We’ve brought whole blood and plenty of saline. As long as the neo-tissue hasn’t replaced anything critical, we can handle it.”