“You look a little put out, General; don’t tell me that man makes you slightly uncomfortable?”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “The first time he calls me Captain Crunch, or even General Crackhead, I’ll have that seagoing bastard shot!”
“Aw, he likes you too.”
* * *
After the brief about HMS Garrison Lee, which had left Admiral Everett, Jason Ryan, Anya Korvesky, and Captain Lienanov stunned, Everett turned to Jenks, who sat smiling inside the tram with his booted feet up on the console.
“Compartmentalized, my ass. You knew about this all along.” Everett zipped his cold-weather parka back up and then climbed inside and sat hard onto the plastic seat.
Lienanov, Ryan, and a silent Anya followed suit and the tram started moving again in the opposite direction. Jenks ignored Everett for the moment and turned in his seat to look at the white-faced Russian.
“You wanna tell me again about how big that Russian pig boat was you served on, my Red friend?”
The Russian captain squinted his eyes at the gruff master chief and then shook his head in wonder at the size of the grounded battleship he had just seen up close.
“Always buy American, my friend, more bang for the buck.” Jenks puffed on the cigar as he laughed at his own joke. “Now, to your question, Toad. Yes, I knew about the Lee, had to because I designed her escape pods and the assault craft that will ride inside her superstructure until we’re ready for you hero boys to do your thing. I had to know what in the hell ship I was attaching my work to. And I can tell you one thing, I had those two admirals, Kinkaid and that limey Huffington, so angry they shit gold bricks. But I withheld my designs until they showed me what I needed to see.” Jenks got a bad taste in his mouth and tossed his cigar onto the long dead ice of the inland sea. “Now that I know the whole truth, I wish I would have built a better beer can.”
Everett studied his old friend and then looked back at Anya, who also realized that Master Chief Jenks knew what was at stake.
Jenks faced his old friend and looked at him closely.
“Just make sure you’re not on that battlewagon when she shoves off, Toad, because she’s never coming home again.” He plopped a fresh cigar in his mouth with a far different demeanor as he looked back at the Russian naval officer. “You either, my Red friend. I think losing one ship at a time is quite enough.”
Lienanov listened to Jenks’s words and thought about them.
“As an officer, I will go where I’m needed. And I am not a Red, as you say. I am Second Captain Lienanov of the Northern Fleet.”
“Well, Second Captain Lenny Popoff, I admire your spunk. But just to let you know, the Garrison Lee is a death ship in waiting, and she will be crewed by men also not meant to return. So put that in your babushka and smoke it, and then find another way to glorify Mother Russia.”
Everett looked at Jenks, really not liking him that much at the moment, but then he saw that the former navy man was sad enough that he couldn’t look back at his old trainee and friend. Carl knew then that the master chief was on the crew list for the HMS Garrison Lee.
16
EVENT GROUP COMPLEX
NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA
Matchstick was again at Gus Tilly’s bedside as the old prospector slept a rough sleep. Every so often Mahjtic would reach up and take Gus’s hand when the old prospector started to awaken. Once the long, green fingers wrapped around the man’s hand, he would go silent and let out a long breath and then he would breathe normally. Matchstick really couldn’t fathom his friend growing old, he had been so vital in his introduction to Earth and her ways. The man had not rested since he had arrived so many years before.
Matchstick would watch Gus’s closed eyes with own obsidian, oval-shaped ones, and then he would see the eyes under his lids start to move rapidly as Gus started to dream. Mahjtic didn’t know what he was dreaming about, but he sensed whatever it was made the old man happy, and that was good enough for him. He released the wrinkled, liver-spotted hand and then started to read the briefing from NASA on the destroyed space station.
Matchstick reached over and popped another pizza roll into his small mouth and crunched down upon it. He found eating allowed him to concentrate far better as a writer would consider smoking in the same regard. As he chewed the frozen snack he tapped the photo of the debris field as captured by earth-bound telescope with the tip of his long finger. While he did this and chewed the ice-covered pizza roll, he hummed the old song that Charlie had introduced him to that he was now hooked on and hummed constantly without knowing it: “The Purple People Eater” by Sheb Wooley. The fifties’ novelty hit was a favorite of Charlie Ellenshaw when he smoked that strange tobacco Matchstick always wrinkled his small nose over.
Suddenly Matchstick tapped the debris field as he noticed the full moon in the background of the starfield. It was the moon that had caught his attention and the small alien sat up in his chair. He looked closer and then it dawned on him why the Grays had gone out of their way to destroy the International Space Station when they had left all of the other earth-orbiting objects like satellites alone. The space station provided real-time visuals of the moon and it would have an unobstructed view of it from their position. That was why it was destroyed.
Matchstick spit out the frozen dough and cheese and made a beeline for the door.
The target area for the IP point of the Gray invasion had been discovered, and now Matchstick knew where the Power Vessel and the saucer armada would gather for the attack on Earth: the far side of the moon.
* * *
It had taken Europa only minutes to break into as many as two thousand telescopic devices the world over. Pete had been confronted by a very excited and incomprehensible Matchstick in his office just as he received the warning from Virginia in regard to getting Matchstick and Gus back to Chato’s Crawl. But all that was forgotten for the moment as Pete was now in the computer center scanning the area around the moon, selecting the satellites and telescopes that would give him the best view of any dimensional wormhole that would form in space to announce the arrival of the vanguard of Grays and their irreplaceable power-producing saucer. He realized that the Grays weren’t that stupid—why risk entering the atmosphere of Earth and open themselves up to attack, when all they had to do was come in covertly and strike at will from anywhere and never announce their presence with the forming vortex of the wormhole?
Alice Hamilton, who was staying on at Group, came in and traversed the steps to the center’s main floor. She raised her glasses and studied the still shots of the moon provided by Europa and her stolen signals.
“Do you think Matchstick has something?” she asked, looking over at the alien as he popped another frozen pizza roll into his mouth.
Pete looked at their small friend. “Yeah, I think he’s hit on something. His evidence is flimsy, but the attack on the space platform didn’t make any sense at the time. Now it does.”
Alice smiled at the chewing Matchstick and winked as she lowered the glasses on their chain.
“Looks like you may have a starting point for Operation Overlord,” she said to Mahjtic. He smiled and nodded his bulbous head. Alice patted Pete on the back. “Let’s get this out to Camp Alamo, tell them they will have a target very soon.”
“I just checked the status. Since you briefed me, Charlie and I kept an eye on the landline communications down there. It’s a damn good thing I never ordered Europa to dump her memory discs of the analog phone system. As I understand it now, they’ve had some kind of accident down there.”
“What accident?” she asked.
“After Matchstick verified that the power plant would work, some tech down there hooked something up wrong and they nearly lost the entire ship when a coolant line ruptured.”
“God, what next?” she asked herself.
“What’s next is that Virginia says that Matchstick and Gus are in danger because the president and the new head of the CIA want our little friend h
ere in the worst way and will breach our security if they have to. We have orders to get the little guy back home, where we believe he’ll be safe, because no one knows about Chato’s Crawl.”
Matchstick continued to eat and then began humming “Purple People Eater.”
Both Alice and Pete looked over at Matchstick.
“I don’t know about you, Alice,” Pete said, “but I can really live without that.”
CAMP ALAMO
ANTARCTICA
On the fifteenth try the mixed units of Delta and SEALs finally broke through the composite hatch of the power distribution vehicle mock-up. Everett was pleased when he realized that combining the teams and mixing specialists had paid off. Doubly pleased thanks to the Chinese government, which had been so pleased by the return of the 7th Fleet to assist in rescue operations of their seamen that they had sent several large fragments of the downed saucer from the wreckage of Beijing. That made the ingress into the power supply ship realistic in that regard. They had found out that their protective shield was only good when the cables were deployed and a grid was activated because, as the DARPA and General Electric technicians had explained, the shield grid was only viable when the interconnecting cables were in contact with the next, and the next, and so on. So if they hadn’t planned on setting their shield up in space, Carl’s men actually stood a chance of breaking in with the explosive teams.
Carl was drying his hair with a towel after exiting the freezing pool and was approached by Anya Korvesky. She was smiling as she pecked the admiral on the cheek. He looked up and saw to his relief that his men were still in the process of being lifted from the pool and hadn’t seen.
“Okay, I give up, Major. What’s got you so happy?” He tossed the towel at her, wrapping it around her face.
She laughed and removed the damp towel. “Because the whole time I’ve been on this mission I couldn’t understand why I was chosen to be here by the general. Now I do. I thought I was going to be condemned to sit here like a frog on a log while everyone else was doing something worthwhile.”
“That’s bump on a log, darlin,’ not a frog.”
“What? I always thought it was a frog,” she said in all seriousness.
“Again, why so happy? And no witty Americanisms, please,” Carl said, finally breaking out in a smile.
“I have a gift of the Israeli government for Operation Overlord,” she said as five SAS soldiers rolled in a large wheeled cart with four bright yellow aluminum containers strapped down to it. Carl saw the nuclear warning device emblem stamped on them and stood up with his eyes locked on the containers.
“Okay, you have my attention.” He glanced at the major out of the corner of his eye. “And if you want a frog on the log, that’s okay too, because any woman that carries around that kind of firepower can say whatever the hell she wants.”
Anya Korvesky smiled. “Good.”
“Now, explain your gift,” he said as his men started to gather around in various states of dress. They saw what was on the four-wheeled cart and one of the SEALs whistled.
“General Shamni realized, once he read what charge would be used on the power production saucer, that your battlefield ‘backpack’ nukes were a little small and rather bulky; the megatonnage was lacking, in his opinion. So after conferring with your General Caulfield he decided to give you one of Israel’s most guarded secrets: the Horn of Gabriel. Or rather, Horns of Gabriel, plural. Ten times the size of your American backpack nukes for each of the twelve units and packing one hell of a lot bigger punch.”
Everett and the team leaders of both the SEALs and Delta approached the cart and looked the boxes over. Each man had been briefed and had trained on setting off the American versions of the weapon, but were now doubly anxious to see this rather bizarre Israeli surprise.
“How big of a punch?” Carl asked with due respect.
“Twenty megatons each. Each unit can be carried by one man. I believe that will be double the amount needed to blow anything up.”
Both SEALs and Delta teams smiled as they exchanged looks, knowing they had just found a new best friend in Major Anya Korvesky.
* * *
The arrival of Lord Durnsford caused quite a stir among the hierarchy of the Overlord staff. Sir Darcy, Admiral Kinkaid, and Admiral Huffington watched along with the gentleman from MI6 as he studied the training exercise in the large mock-up of the number one gun turret. The sides were cut away to give the Royal Navy evaluation teams clear access to view the loading and firing procedures of the gun crew, all fifty-six of them.
They had already lost one of the real mounts on HMS Garrison Lee’s number five turret on the underside superstructure that placed it out of action early this morning, when one of the shipyard workers inadvertently struck one of the thick coolant lines with a cutting torch, touching off a large chain reaction when the explosive gases mixed together in the oxygen-rich environment. The resulting explosion killed sixty-one yard workers, most of whom were working on the outside of the turret while performing their jobs on the elevated scaffolding that was needed to get to the upside-down superstructure. These were yard personnel that could not be replaced due to the time restraints and the strict requirements of the security background checks involved.
Lord Durnsford, the leader of the world’s effort on Overlord, watched the gun crew inside the mock-up insert the particle canister into the large-bored breach and then slam the tube closed. They stepped back and covered their ears as the power surge from the generators began to pump over a thousand cubic feet of Argon gas into the mixing chamber just forward of the gun’s breach. As the power built to 100 percent the first blast of nitrogen gas was injected into the tungsten-lined barrel, effectively freezing the hybrid steel before the shock of the blazing hot laser fired. The simulation went off without a hitch as the blank round of canister shot pellets, small steel ball-bearing-sized shrapnel injected into the barrel to be carried by the electrical impact of the light weapon and then pushed through the thirty-five foot gun. Once it neared the tip of the crystal the pellets were redirected around the light enhancement crystal so as not to blow it apart, and then once outside of the barrel the light wave would carry the particle beam shot at the speed of light to its intended target. The bolt of steel-infused light, a particle beam in essence, would slam into an enemy vessel, ripping its target area like a shotgun blast. Then a blast of nitrogen coolant would be flushed through the barrel to cool it before the next loading process began anew.
“I’m glad to see we worked out the damaged crystal mishaps,” Durnsford said. “That was fast becoming an expensive proposition.”
The gunnery officers had made adjustments to the redirection of the canister shot after numerous mishaps had not directed the steel pellets far enough around the expensive light enhancement crystals, causing them to be smashed by their own gunfire.
“Yes, it took our American colleagues at Raytheon far longer than we would have thought to reverse-engineer the barrel openings. The rifling that sent the pellets around the crystals were installed backwards from the original Martian design.” Sir Darcy hoped the explanation didn’t bring on the famous temper from the gentleman from MI6.
“What is the status of the number five turret?” he asked as he watched the two hundred welding machines at work trying to repair the platform.
“Not as fast as we would like. After all, the men have to work precariously upside down and it gets rather tiresome, I am told. We are having to switch crews far too often. The turret may not be available when the time arrives.”
“In other words, due to tired crews and careless workmen we may have lost one-third of her firepower?”
Lord Durnsford took a deep breath and then looked away from his battleship. He needed Niles Compton here to assist him in holding his famed temper at the lack of progress. He faced his number two man in Sir Darcy Bennett.
“Tell me the fame that preceded our infamous Professor Jenks has paid dividends?”
“I’m
pleased to say that the former naval master chief was everything he was advertised to be. The escape pods for not just half, but the full complement of crewmen have been installed ahead of schedule. The two assault craft are complete and ready to go.”
Lord Durnsford raised his bushy brows in surprise.
“It’s just that Jenks is the most disagreeable bastard I have ever had the displeasure to know.”
“Yes, Dr. Compton warned us about that.”
“Yes, that may be, but I wish we had ten more engineers like him, regardless of his feelings toward the established way of doing things.” Admiral Kinkaid defended his Navy man as best he could, no matter how hard it was.
Durnsford stepped back from his elevated view of the dockyard and faced all three men. “When will the power plant test take place?”
It was Admiral Huffington’s turn to speak. “We have already powered her up and it didn’t blow up the bloody ship, but now I’m afraid to push our luck.”
“I am not in the mood for humor, Admiral. I’m quite tired and still have to meet with General Collins and Admiral Everett and field their vast concerns.”
“It wasn’t an attempt at humor, my lord, but the God’s honest truth. All we have in hand is the plans supplied by Dr. Compton. If that alien bloke is off by the smallest parameter in his engineering, we could very well blow up half of the bloody continent of Antarctica.”
“Admiral, Mr. Mahjtic has been right on with all of his calculations thus far, has he not?”
“But something with this much power…” Huffington stopped when Durnsford held up a restraining hand.
“He was an engineer in his slave capacity, was he not? He was also a crewman on a saucer, was he not?”
“Yes, so the Americans claim.”
Durnsford shot Huffington an angry look and then narrowed his eyes underneath his glasses.
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