Engage at Dawn: First Contact

by Edward Hochsmann

  U.S. Route 1, 12 Miles West of Marathon, Florida

  0847 EST, 18 January

  Ben and Simmons were en route to their first investigation scene, the former driving while the latter confirmed overwatch with Kauai on Simmons’s radio. The image parsing runs had not yielded any definitive insights. As Simmons suspected, success in finding their otherworld visitors would come down to close inspection on the ground in the locations rated the most probable.

  Steve and Victoria had packed up quickly, and the goodbyes were brief and heartfelt. It delighted Ben to find Victoria even more beautiful in the morning.

  “Will you come and visit me in Bethesda?” she said to Ben after placing her case in the car.

  “Yes, I’d like that very much. But it might be some time. I can’t leave the area while Kauai is operational or in readiness, you understand.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said wistfully and then kissed him on the cheek before getting in the car and driving off. Frankle and Bell followed a minute later—with no word on the escaped assassin or any of her associates, Simmons took no chances. They would follow at a discreet distance to Homestead, where the technician and analyst would board an agency plane for the flight to Montgomery County Airpark in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and home. The two agents would then hit their search areas on the return trip.

  Observing his young companion lost in thought as they drove to their first destination, Simmons asked, “She’s quite a girl, isn’t she?”

  “Victoria? Yes, I have to say, I’ve never met anyone like her. Is she, I mean, are she and Steve?” He paused.

  “No, Steve has a partner, and even if he didn’t, he’d probably be more interested in you than her.”

  “Oh. So, she’s unattached?”

  “Correct. As you might expect, a relationship with someone like her is an enormous challenge. She’s had a few, and none ended well.” Simmons gazed hard at him. “Hmmm, I feel compelled at this point to ask you your intentions.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “No, I am totally serious here.”

  Ben glanced over, one eyebrow raised over the sunglasses. “You’re totally serious, eh? What are you, her father?”

  “In loco parentis. Just think of me as a kind of big brother with a loaded Uzi.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. She is an adult, after all.”

  “Yes, but a very unusual adult. She struggles to read people and can’t pick up on malicious intent. Hence, she’s the perfect mark for whatever slick operator comes along. She’s also a beautiful young woman with access to highly classified stuff. It means she needs looking after.”

  “Excuse me for saying so, but isn’t ‘slick operator’ part of your job description? How did someone like this fall under your protection? You don’t seem the type.”

  “Fair question.” Simmons nodded. “I met her when she was a very precocious 13-year-old. She was the younger sister of my fiancé. Their parents were dead, and Julie, my fiancé, was raising her. Her condition was just starting to be noticeable then, and she was in an accelerated special needs program.”

  “Was? You two break up?”

  “No, unfortunately, she died just before we were to be married.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me too. Anyway, I regarded Victoria as my little sister by then. So, I took care of her until she graduated, and when I went with the agency, I snagged an analyst position for her. She’s been invaluable with analysis work across the board. So, there’s plenty of us watching after her now, but I’m the principal.”

  “I see. So, you and your buddies will beat me up and send me to Guantanamo if I have the nerve to call on her?”

  “If you intend to get in a quick lay and hit the road, you can depend on the beat down. I don’t think you’d do anything that low, but I’ve only known you a couple of days.”

  “I don’t know how to respond to that.”

  “Right. Unlike her, I’m super good at reading people. I wouldn’t be alive now if I weren’t. I can see you are falling for her, and that’s not surprising, given her looks and how disarming her personality is. In case you’re wondering, her affection for you is not an act—she’s incapable of guile. To her, you are a handsome, intelligent, and kindly hero around her age, someone she would naturally be attracted to. If she comes to believe you reciprocate that admiration, she will fall for you. Hard.”

  “That’d be bad because . . . ?” Ben was getting a little annoyed at the implied slight of his character.

  “Because being with her takes work. How did you feel last night, just talking to her?”

  “It was nice. At first, I felt like I did in the speech lab back when I was trying to learn German in high school, but I was getting in the rhythm toward the end. This morning, it felt natural, not a big lift.”

  “Yet, it was a lift.”

  “What do you want from me, Doc? I like her, and I want to get to know her. She’s different, I get that, and the usual rules don’t apply. I’ve had relationships before, and the ones where I got dumped were because I couldn’t read the code. Now, here’s a wonderful woman who is unencrypted. I want to try that. How do I avoid an ‘extraordinary rendition’?”

  Simmons chuckled. “That’s a good one. Hey, from what I’ve seen, you’re one of the good guys. The quality of your associates and their high regard for you does you credit. My belief your near-pathological honesty would make you a failure in my line of work strengthens that assessment. I believe you’d be great for each other. But she has HFA. What she is now is what she will be forever—she won’t be ‘getting better.’ So, while you discover whether that’s what you want, and what you want is important, I just want you to be careful with her. Because if she develops a strong attachment and you end up dumping her, it’ll be traumatic. All finer feelings aside, it’ll disable her for quite a while, and our team can ill-afford that these days. What I ask is, to use your term, be unencrypted—explain the process and don’t ‘woo’ her until you’re sure she’s the one.”

  “OK, I get it. You’ve got my word that I’ll take it slow. I won’t have much opportunity before this PB tour is over, anyway.”

  Simmons nodded. “Time and distance can work for you. Email her. None of us use social media for obvious reasons, and she relishes getting personal messages.”

  Ben smiled. “Doc, I can’t tell if I’m being encouraged or discouraged here.”

  “You two together would be a great thing. You two passing in the night would be status quo—not great, but OK. You two broken up is a tragedy to be avoided. That clear enough?”

  “Crystal. It looks like we’re coming up on the exit.”

  “Right.” Simmons pulled out his radio. “X-ray One Delta, Uniform Two India. Over.”

  “Uniform Two India, X-ray One Delta, go ahead, over,” Deffler’s voice replied.

  “X-ray One Delta, arriving at the first site now. Over.”

  “Two India, roger, completed a perimeter sweep with negative contacts. Over.”

  “One Delta, roger, please assume overwatch, will advise when we’re complete. Over.”

  “Two India, WILCO. Out.”

  Simmons placed the radio back in his pocket and glanced at his laptop. “OK, there’s a place to park about a half-mile down. The anchorage you ID’d is a quarter-mile from there.”

  “Roger that,” Ben kept the car on the hard-packed sand path. A minute later, he sighted the clearing and pulled the car over to park.

  Simmons looked at the laptop and said, “OK, there are a few spots we need to check out, but a general sweep of about 250 yards north and south of the potential anchorage.” He closed the laptop and climbed out. He grabbed a long cloth bag out of the trunk and followed Ben through a gap in the foliage to the long, vacant beach.

  The two men started at the south end, spread out about five yards, and strolled northward, turning over any driftwood they found to see if the top weathering was as expected. About every 20 yards, Simmons took a fou
r-foot-long sensor pole out of the bag, drove it about six inches into the sand, and flipped on a switch on the top. When they reached the northern extent of the beach adjoining the anchorage, Simmons sat down on a larger log and pulled two Gatorades out of a cooler in the bag. “Have a seat for a few minutes.” He handed a bottle to Ben.

  “Really?” Ben was grateful for the cold drink. Even in the relatively mild temperatures of mid-morning, the sun and long trudge through the soft sand had left him rather hot and thirsty.

  “Yup, take a load off. I need it quiet while we take the measurement.”

  Ben sat down while Simmons clicked some buttons of the laptop. Within a few minutes, he heard the dreaded buzzing heralding the inevitable mosquito swarm and began brushing at his ears as quietly as he could. After a few more minutes, Simmons clicked some more keys, then said, “OK, that’s it.”

  “What’s the purpose of that?”

  “The poles have audio sensors, laser seismometers, and GPS. We record a few minutes of data stream pairs from the sensors in each place. I’ll upload those to the cloud now, and Victoria can pull them when she gets back. If she finds any uncorrelated tremors, particularly rhythmic ones, it may signal machinery nearby. The difference in time between arriving surface vibrations and audio can tell us the distance from the source to each sensor pole. We then use True Range Multilateration of multiple sensors to discover the source’s estimated location.”

  “Oh, I see.” Ben had learned about True Range Multilateration—using distance to multiple fixed points to fix a position—in his coastal navigation classes at the academy. “I’m glad you’re not just dragging me around kicking crabs.”

  “Oh, come on, friend. I told you we would not see anything the Puma’s can’t. Let’s get going; we’ve got three more beaches to visit. Oh, and there’s a can of DEET spray in the bag.”

  Ben gratefully pulled it out and started spraying. “You guys carry bug spray with you?”

  “Don’t leave home without it. You can’t be slapping and scratching when you’re staking out bad guys.” He continued typing, packaging and uploading the data to the unseen high-altitude UAV, which passed it at a reduced rate into the DIA “cloud” via SATCOM. Finally, he closed his laptop and stood up, then paused for a few seconds, staring straight ahead.

  “What?” Ben asked.

  Simmons shook his head. “Nothing important, just a passing thought.” The two men retraced their steps, picking up the sensor probes on the way. By the time they returned to the car, more than an hour had passed since they arrived.

  U.S. Route 1, near Resolution Key, Florida

  1428 EST, 18 January

  Frankle and Bell had seen the analyst team safely to Homestead Air Reserve Base south of Miami and onboard an agency plane for the flight back to Maryland. After watching the plane takeoff and climb out, the two agents grabbed a quick bite at a local Burger King and then headed down toward their first survey point of Resolution Key. Their casual clothes and National Marine Fishery Service badges and hats would offer cover for their activities in the survey areas. These would come in handy in case they ran into tourists or the elderly beachcomber Simmons encountered in his earlier visit.

  Frankle loved being in the field, especially when the assignment was within the United States. Here, he did not have to worry constantly about running afoul of foreign law enforcement or counterintelligence. In his early 50s, he was pushing on the edge of retirement, at least from field ops. Even he had to agree it might be time to size up a less “kinetic” assignment. Not today, though. He was in the field with a partner he liked and trusted.

  Bell was 15 years younger than his partner, an able performer, and a very cool customer. He was not a college graduate, unusual for a DIA man. Bell was a good athlete but didn’t have enough talent to draw a sports scholarship and wasn’t interested enough in academics to compete there. He found his stride in three enlistments in the Marines, the last ending as a Team Leader in the 2nd Recon. After several successful joint missions during deployments in Southwest Asia, his talents with tactics and intel were well-known enough to draw agency recruiters. Bell took the jump to the better-paying, but more hazardous career as a DIA field agent.

  Bell was an enigma to his contemporaries. He was more comfortable listening than jumping in on office discussions on sports and entertainment and rarely indulged in the usual banter when in the field. Although valued for his professional skills, he ran through several partners unable to get on with such a reticent wingman. When Frankle’s name came up for a partner, the word around the team was “an afternoon with Lashon Bell is like an afternoon alone.”

  Frankle enjoyed having younger partners, both because he enjoyed their relatively unjaded outlook compared to his contemporaries, and he relished the role of mentor. Several junior agents, including Simmons, had matured under his tutelage and went on to success in the agency. Frankle had a knack for finding common ground with his charges, and Bell was no exception. A former Marine himself, Frankle had a ready lexicon and “carousing protocol.” He used these in fixing a bond with the younger man, and they soon formed a solid and enduring partnership founded on mutual respect and complementary skill sets.

  As suited both men, Bell drove while Frankle navigated and kept the conversation going. Both felt relief the analysis team had departed, if only because it allowed them to shift from defense to offense. They each had affection for Victoria, but neither thought it a good idea to bring her into the field. It was another point of dispute between Frankle and Simmons on this op.

  The fact was, Frankle thought his former mentee had lost a step with this idea of extraterrestrial visitors. The veteran agent wondered how Simmons convinced their superiors to go in as deep as they had. He saw nothing conclusive in any of the evidence the junior agent presented. Well, it’s above my paygrade, Frankle thought. At least it’s drawn out the bad guys. If nothing else, this mission had uncovered a major U.S. smuggling axis for the association known as the 252s. They weren’t the only TCO, but its nameless, ruthless pervasiveness in Europe and South America put it in a class by itself. We should be running down leads and kicking in doors, rather than pounding stakes into a beach hoping to hear ET fart, he concluded to himself.

  He looked at his partner. He suspected Bell thought the same, but twelve years as a Marine Recon Specialist does not leave one questioning or bitching about lawful orders. Frankle had learned before you couldn’t wind Bell up—he’d just draw up in silence like a stolid turtle and await the storm’s passing. Finally, he broke the silence. “About two miles to go. Keep an eye out on the right, it’s not well-marked, apparently.”

  “Roger that.”

  “What did you think about our new Coast Guard friend?”

  “Young and green, but I get a good vibe from him. I think he’ll be one of the better ones if Pete doesn’t get him killed.”

  “Better one what?” Frankle was glad this line of questioning had connected.

  “Officer. Most of them aren’t worth a shit before they make O-3, some even then. This guy thinks, and he listens. He also has balls—you saw his file, right? But he doesn’t let them overrule his head. I’d work with him once he got over being green.”

  “Yeah, kids today, whattaya gonna do, eh?”

  Bell glanced over and gave a rare hint of a smile. “He’d make an excellent candidate for your next partner.”

  “Two things wrong with that, partner.” Frankle smiled back. “First, I’m not searching for a new wingman. Second, it will be a few more years before he works through his obligated service and gets into the itchy feet stage. By then, I’ll be sitting in my cabin down on the Santee, drinkin’ beer, shootin’ ducks, and waiting for that pension check from Uncle each and every month.”

  “That’ll be the day. OK, here’s the turnoff.”

  He slowed for the turnoff, and Frankle turned away with a slight smile and radioed, “X-ray One Delta, Foxtrot Six Echo. Over.”

  “Foxtrot Six Echo, X-r
ay One Delta, go ahead. Over,” Morgan’s voice replied. He had relieved Deffler of communications.

  “One Delta, Six Echo, arriving on-scene area one, request status. Over.”

  “Six Echo, One Delta, roger, overflight complete. One low-risk contact in sight, stationary on the northern tip of the island. No other activity. Over.”

  “One Delta, Six Echo, roger, maintain overwatch. Over.”

  “Six Echo, roger out.”

  Frankle secured the radio in his pocket and turned to Bell. “Sounds like the old geezer Pete ran into is still hanging around. Let’s keep the pistols in the sensor bag, just for grins.”

  “Roger that.”

  “OK, let’s follow the trail. It leads through the middle to a spit on the northern tip. That’s where we’ll take the readings.”

  “Copy.” Bell concentrated on keeping the car on the trail and clear of the trees. “Maybe you and the old geezer can swap Viagra tips while we’re waiting.”

  “Hey, that’s hilarious, junior. You’re getting mighty smartassy to the guy who signs your evaluation!”

  “I like to live dangerously.”

  Bell pulled the car over a quarter-mile south of the shack. The old gentleman sat in his chair, fishing, and turned when the agents stepped out of the car. Shading his eyes, he watched until they planted the first sensor stake, after which he got up and went inside the shack.

  “What’s got into him?” Bell asked while they paced out the distance for the next sensor insert.

  “Probably hiding his catch. We are NMFS agents, you know.”