[The Fear Saga 01] - Fear the Sky (2014) (24 page)

But eventually they had reluctantly set aside these pages, focusing instead on the part of John’s lengthy notes, and those that Neal and Madeline had taken, that contained practical advice, the rules of engagement, as it were.

It was clear that for the foreseeable future, Neal and Madeline, and the small but burgeoning resistance they were going to be the seed of, would be at a considerable disadvantage. If any aspect of their enterprise were discovered before they were ready, the results would be quick and bloody. So they must move forward with care.

They were going to need allies. Trusted, skilled, resourceful allies. They were going to need money and facilities. And they were going to need to get all that in absolute digital silence.

Neal had had a glimpse of the way forward when he had first received the anonymous letters from John. Snail-mail, it seemed clear, was going to be the only safe way to communicate, and even then they would have to encrypt just in case.

It was time to start recruiting, and they both agreed who would make the best first ally.

“Now this is going to be difficult to handle,” said Neal, in a different hotel room, in a different part of the city, the next morning. “I have to warn you that what we are about to tell you will force you to break every oath you have made to your superiors, and to become part of a conspiracy that will, in time, need to involve sharing information with other nations without our government’s approval.”

“Stop there,” Colonel Barrett Milton said, “don’t go any further. I don’t want to know any more. I like you, Neal, and I am already going to have to report what you have said so far. Don’t incriminate yourself any further.”

Neal nodded, waited for the colonel to settle down a bit. Madeline stood behind him, biting her lower lip. Now that they were here talking to the colonel, she was far from sure they had made the right decision.

For that matter, neither was Neal, but he tried again. “Colonel,” he said to the military man’s raised hands and bowed, shaking head, “what if I were to tell you what actually happened in India?”

Barrett froze, his eyes rising to meet Neal’s once more, then flashing to Madeline’s. Her desperate blue eyes were imploring him to listen.

“Barrett, we found something out there.” Neal went on, “and it reacted. It killed James and Laurie and the crew of the
King’s Transom
, and now it is watching Madeline and me to see if it needs to do the same to us.”

The colonel stared at him, incredulous. What had they found, a fucking sea monster? But the faces of his two visitors were deadly serious, and he could not help but feel the weight behind Neal’s words.

“Colonel, the meteors, they were not meteors at all, nor were their landing sites accidental. Colonel, we are being prepared. An invasion is coming, and I can prove it to you, right here, right now.”

* * *

An hour later, after showing Barrett the photographs which James had managed to stow away before the
King’s Transom
was attacked, and several of John’s notes, Neal and Madeline stood behind the austere man as he stared out the window of his hotel room, trying to grasp what he had heard.

He was not a stupid man, and he prided himself on being open-minded … compared to his military peers, at least. But this was incredible, literally. It was too much to handle. The more he started to believe the two scientists, the more he had to fight the overwhelming urge to run and report this. To sound the alarm bells and launch everything they had.

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.

“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.