[The Fear Saga 01] - Fear the Sky (2014), page 19
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But if what he had just heard was true, then that, he knew, would be equal parts futile and fatal.
Just days beforehand, the general and he had discussed at length the incident in the Indian Ocean, and the comment that the victims looked as if they had been attacked by laser had come up twice. Both times the idea had been dismissed as preposterous, but in light of this new information … he was … oh god, what was he thinking.
God Damn It.
He whirled on the two of them and they stepped back involuntarily from the fire in his stare.
“Why? Why have you brought this to me? What am I supposed to do with this? These photos, these notes, god, these notes! Do you know what half these things are?!” he shouted at them, “If what you say is true, we don’t stand a chance. We cannot defeat this …” he waved the notes at them, then paused, and looked at them again.
“Wait,” he said, in a quieter voice, “you never said where you got these from. How did we come across such information?”
Neal smiled, and then he sighed. “Oh, Colonel, that is why I love you so much.” The colonel frowned at him, but he continued, “You are absolutely right to say we cannot defeat technology like this. And you are right to ask how Madeline and I got this information.”
He walked up to the rugged man and looked him in the eye, his expression becoming serious again, “Barrett, we have some small hope. They are not all as they seem. It may not be much, but we have a friend amongst them. Colonel, one of them is a spy.”
*
The last remnants of the colonel’s resistance gone, they had, eventually, begun to reap the profits of recruiting this new member to their team.
Twenty years in Air Force Intelligence and Surveillance gave Barrett a detailed understanding of the armed forces and intelligence services of both the US, its allies, and many of its enemies.
As he started to wrap his head around the massive disadvantages they faced, his training started to formulate a plan. He explained that it would be like when they first looked to build up an intelligence capability in a foreign nation. It was a slow and laborious process, and it always began with a single, reliable asset. But there was a method here, and they would follow it as best they could.
They would need to carefully recruit allies with specific capabilities. They would need a process for that. They would need safeguards. They would need code words and covert methods of communication. Neal suggested mail, and the colonel concurred, but said there were other methods as well, methods that harkened back to the days of the Cold War, and even the heady days of Enigma and the resistance fighters in Europe. Classified ads in newspapers, and online, would be one way, heavily coded, of course. Trigger calls and e-mails to dummy accounts, disguised as cold calls and junk mail.
For direct action, they could clearly use the highly encrypted ‘SurFeR’ radios for short distances, but no doubt if they all started carrying those around the Agents would soon become suspicious.
“We are going to need a headquarters.” he said at one point, “In fact, we are eventually going to need several around the world, but for now we will need a safe house in Washington. These written notes are all very well, but the kind of research we are going to need to do will need computers. We can isolate them from the net, in fact, that is something we have experts for all over the place.”
He stopped, and into the silence Madeline asked, “Should we think about recruiting one of them to the team?”
“Yes,” Barrett nodded, still deep in thought, “that is what I was thinking too. But who? I don’t know any personally.” He thought a moment more, “No, what we need is a counter-intelligence expert, and if, after we get her on board, she still thinks we need a super-geek, she should know who to ask.”
Neal looked at him, smiling mischievously in spite of the mood, “She, Colonel? Do you have someone in mind?”
“Yes, actually,” said the slightly blushing officer, “an old friend.”
“You dog, you!” said Neal.
Madeline laughed, and the colonel looked exasperatedly at the scientist, the tension showing on his face. Surprisingly, Neal became suddenly serious again as well.
“Colonel, you were right earlier. You said that we were foolish coming to you today without a plan. That if you’d reacted differently we could all be dead now. I guess I just want to make sure you have a plan too. In case ‘she’ doesn’t react as well to hearing about all this as you did.”
The colonel nodded; Neal was right. Barrett had extolled them on the need to be absolutely ruthless when recruiting. They must be willing to kill anyone that did not agree to secrecy, if not to protect themselves, then to protect their mission, to protect their very species.
The colonel would have to think whether he was willing to risk his friend’s life by inviting her into the circle. He would have to think very deeply, it was not a life he would gamble lightly.
Chapter 28: Enemy Within
“Good evening, Chris.” said Mrs. Hamilton, smiling graciously as her son came through the door, pecking her lightly on her cheek.
“Good evening, Mother.” he said in return, “May I introduce Lieutenant Lana Wilson, currently at Annapolis with me.”
“A pleasure, Mrs. Hamilton, thank you so much for having me.” said Lana, holding out her hand and smiling.
“Oh, the pleasure is all mine,” said Laura Hamilton, shaking the hand, her eyes subtly but thoroughly taking in the cut of her son’s new girlfriend. Good hand shake, confident, but not unpleasantly so, nice smile. Hmm.
“Let me take your jackets.” said Laura, prompting her forgetful son.
“Err, no, Mom, I can do that. Lana, here, allow me.” He somewhat awkwardly helped his lady friend with her jacket, revealing her long but striking black dress underneath. It was quite conservative, in its way, coming up all the way to her neck as it did, and flowing all the way to her ankles without ne’er an inch of skin showing between. But somehow it managed to also say, ‘I have nothing on under here,’ a factor that was not lost on Chris’s mother as she started to realize why her son was so besotted with the girl.
Oh dear, she thought, he is clearly hopelessly outclassed here. I’ll just have to make my own judgment of whether she is suitable and … help him see things my way if I don’t think she is worthwhile.
“Come, my dear, come,” she said, beckoning to Lana, wafting her into the sitting room, “I’ll introduce you to the admiral.”
Lana smiled beatifically and followed Mrs. Hamilton into the house proper, Chris rushing with the jackets so that he could be there when his poor unsuspecting girlfriend met the formidable Admiral Hamilton.
Bless him his efforts to protect her, of all people.
“Tim, come and meet Chris’s guest, Lana …” said Laura, then turning back to Lana, she confirmed, “Lieutenant, isn’t it?” Lana nodded, and Laura continued to her husband, “Lieutenant Lana Wilson.”
Lana resisted the urge to salute; being an informal guest of Chris’s in his parents’ home, it was considered proper not to treat the admiral as a senior officer for the length of the dinner. But her studies of how to best ingratiate herself made her wait for the admiral to proffer his hand before making a move of her own.
He did, and she meekly leaned forward to grasp it, but then, locking eyes with him, she said, “Admiral, sir, I must confess it goes against my grain not to salute. But I hope you’ll not mind me saying thank you to you and Mrs. Hamilton for inviting me. And I hope you’ll not be offended if I say it is an honor to meet you.”
The admiral smiled, his eyes briefly flashing to his wife, who was smiling ironically, her eyebrows raised. Oh dear, he also thought, Chris is indeed hopelessly outclassed here.
“Dad,” said Chris, hurrying into the room, “oh, I see you already met Lana.” He saw the end of their handshake, stepping up to her side, and continued, “Isn’t she great?”
“A pleasure, Lieutenant,” said the senior admiral, keeping his eyes on their guest, “you are right not to salute, you are our guest for the evening. But thank you for asking, nonetheless. Chris, why don’t you get us some drinks?”
“Yes, quite, Macallan 18 for you, eh, Dad, Raspberry Stoli on the rocks for you, Mom,” his mother frowned at him for making the albeit correct choice in front of their guest, but he blundered on, “and what about you, darling?”
Everyone but him caught the word immediately, the parents raising their eyebrows once more at each other. Lana assessed the comment quickly, and decided on her response in a microsecond. Sending instructions to her cheeks to flush red, she bowed her head coyly and avoided the eyes of her hosts as she said, “Err, a glass of wine, if that’s possible, please.”
Her hosts could not help but feel for the blushing girl, and the admiral suddenly went into action, stepping past his son towards the cellar door.
“Of course, Lana,” he said, offhandedly, “I have a nice Sauvignon Blanc chilling, will that do?” He did not harass her with his eyes as he asked this, but diplomatically avoided looking at her blushing face.
“Perfect, Admiral, thank you.”
Good, thought Mrs. Hamilton, at least one of my men can act civilly, some of the time anyway. Now, let’s get this girl comfortable and take her mind off my son’s brutishness.
*
The dinner was a success, Lana was charming and intelligent, and she seemed to like young Chris. His blundering compliments for her remarkable performance at the officer school served two purposes. They could not help but impress the admiral, who remembered his own time there, and they forced both the host and hostess to be especially engaging to make up for the embarrassingly blatant adoration of their son.
By the end of the night, Tim Hamilton, who was the chief of naval operations at the Pentagon, had been impressed by both Lana’s apparent capabilities and her ability to handle herself under pressure. She had also proven extremely knowledgeable on naval and world issues, but always stopped just short of expressing an opinion, focusing on the facts. Opinions are for politicians, not the military, he had always said … and for senior officers, of course, who had to be both.
He would watch the young lieutenant, and his son around her. Neither he nor his wife were fooled for a moment by why she had been interested in the son of one of the most senior admiral’s in the US Navy. But then again, he had seen no evidence of manipulation on her part, or condescension toward his son.
She had expressed an interest in submarine tactics and strategic deployment. It was an unusual avenue, and tough to get into, especially for a woman, as the close confines of submarines made them the only remaining unisex branch of the military. That said, she clearly had the mind for tactical and strategic planning, and he was not without the power to help her get where she wanted to be. If she was, indeed, as good as Chris said she was.
Yes, he would watch this one carefully, she had promise.
*
Despite the ravages of recent history’s judgment, the French military is, in fact, one of the more effective and elite fighting forces on earth. In branches such as the French Foreign Legion, for example, most members of the rest of the world’s armed forces would quail at the levels of endurance and toughness required of the young officers and privates.
That said, Agent Jean-Paul Merard had not joined the Foreign Legion, not that he wouldn’t have been able to comfortably exceed even their strict standards. But Jean-Paul, like his seven other cohorts, wanted the fastest way to his target nation’s missile command. Combat experience was the key to getting there, and the elite Rafale fighter pilot division of the French army was one of the best ways for him to get it.
During his training he had made sure he showed especially high proficiency in both hand-eye coordination and tactical target selection, placing him on top of the list of his class’s candidates, and now he was profiting from that proficiency.
Arriving at the Dassault Rafale Training Base in southeastern France, he parked the small Citroën he had bought and went to survey his new environs. Complementing his vantage point was the AI satellite’s aerial view being sent to him via the relay in his car, and he followed various paths till he came out against the tall wire fence that hemmed in the actual fighter planes. Most of his initial classes would be in a simulator, but he wanted to see the storage place for the actual machines.
The Dassault Rafale was France’s answer to the Eurofighter, as the impatient country had dropped out of the development of that plane early to work on its own machine. It had managed to complete the plane nearly ten years earlier than the European consortium and the result had been small, sleek, and lethal. They were, in the opinion of Jean-Paul’s overlaid personality, a strange combination of primitive brutality and pure, functional beauty. The now space-born warcraft of his own race had long since become so distanced from the actual battle by the range of their weaponry that the concept of seeing your enemy through glass seemed at once terrible and wonderful.
Despite his machine soul, he could not help but think this was going to be … fun.
“Can I help you, sir?” said a French sergeant on regular patrol around the central landing and hangar facility. Though these training craft carried no functional weaponry, they were still $45 million each, and access to them was closely guarded even inside the base.
“Just looking at my new job.” said the pilot trainee, smiling at the sergeant and extending his hand. “Lieutenant Jean-Paul Merard, plaisir.”
The sergeant was surprised by the officer’s casual attitude, but he instinctively took the smiling man’s hand, the ice inevitably melting between them.
“New trainee, sir?” the sergeant asked.
“New pilot trainee,” corrected the lieutenant, laughing a little. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”
The sergeant could not help but smile a little. He had wanted to be a pilot himself, but his eyesight had not met the strict standards required. By the time Lasik had come around he already been too old for the training program anyway. In the past he had usually begrudged the new trainees their job, but this one was so openly happy that the sergeant was momentarily caught up in it.
“Yes, sir, beautiful indeed, but quite hard to handle, I hear.”
“Ah, we’ll see if I can’t make her sing for me.” said the lieutenant, laughing. The sergeant laughed as well, and began to walk away, continuing his patrol.
Nice human, thought Jean-Paul, his eyes following the chuckling soldier. It was a pity they were all going to die, he thought offhandedly. But the thought passed and his gaze returned to the lethal fighter. He smiled.
Chapter 29: Willing and Able
Every time the doorbell rang at Neal’s new house in Georgetown, his heart skipped a beat. He had been sitting in the plush living room, working on the finishing touches to his rushed dissertation so that he could hand it off to Barrett Milton to push through the approval process at Neal’s own university, a place where the colonel clearly had far more influence than he. He would return to defend it to the review panel, the final step in any dissertation, once it had been tacitly accepted by the dean.
Putting his laptop aside, he climbed from the easy chair and went to the door. As he did so, he heard the colonel coming down the stairs from the room he was temporarily using in the house. It had seemed easier for him to stay with Neal while in DC, and it had meant he could contribute to the extremely high cost of renting the house while he was here, too.
Neal opened the door and was greeted by a lady in an Electric Company uniform and cap, probably in her mid-fifties, introducing herself as Madge. Her dark, Persian looks made her seem more like an Isabella or Maria, but Neal nodded and waited for her to explain herself.
“I’m with the electric company, Mr. Danielson. Need to check the meter, may I come in?”
“Oh, right, of course,” said Neal, stepping aside to let her pass. He heard the colonel coming down the stairs behind him but kept his eyes on the electrician, who was looking up at the colonel and smiling.
“Well, Barrett, you are in more trouble than your message betrayed.” she said, taking off her hat, and shaking her long, black hair free. The action made her look younger and more virile than she had appeared to be. But Neal was too disturbed by her change of attitude to notice.
She turned back to face him, smiling, “Don’t worry, I’m a friend,” then looking back up at Barrett, she went on snidely, “for now, at least.”
She nudged Neal aside, and closed the front door firmly behind herself. She locked it, and said in an aside, “You’ll need a dead bolt and a much stronger chain. Maybe a steel crossbrace. Anyway, let’s get away from the door so you can tell me what’s going on, shall we?”
“Who are you?” said Neal, almost angry at the way she was taking control. He looked at Barrett as she walked into the living room he had occupied a moment ago, “Do you know this woman?”
“Yes, Neal, you’ll have to take my word for this, she can be trusted explicitly. She is the old friend I mentioned to you a week ago.”
“And how does she come to suddenly be here, at my house?” asked Neal in an almost whisper.
At this, the woman in question returned from the living room and answered the question herself. “Neal, Barrett and I go back a very long way. A week ago he sent me a note asking me to come to DC, and saying he wanted to get back together.”
Neal digested this for a moment, and then said to the tall officer shaking his head beside him, “You invited an ex-girlfriend over to my house?”
“No,” she answered for Barrett again, before he could open his mouth, “he said he wanted to get back together. The last time I saw Barrett was five years ago, and I had joked then, however sadly, that I would never hear from him again. He had said he would contact me again when he was ready to get back together. Both of us knew that was impossible, so I had said that if he ever asked me back that I would know he was in trouble. He asked, so I knew he was in trouble.”
Barrett and the woman looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, the practiced understanding of many years of intimacy needing no words as they greeted each other and let each other know the gravity of the situation with their expressions.
