Operation Indigo Sky

by Lawrence Ambrose

  Steve Markham's source was a young Marine, the son of his best friend. The U.S. forces participating in this exercise had been subjected to an additional security oath featuring harsh legal penalties for anyone caught violating their pledge. Both Markham and his friend were adamant that we reveal nothing that even hinted of the whistleblower's identity. The father was afraid for his son, but he was, according to Markham, even more afraid of what was going down in my old training ground.

  In my stays in Pendleton and MCAGCC, I'd trained with Canadians and Brits on a couple of occasions, but never non-allied forces that could very easily become outright enemies. I knew of the FEMA agreement with Russia, the Bilateral Presidential Commission Working Group on Emergency Situations, but at most that was supposed to permit an exchange of emergency experts between the two countries during a disaster. Nothing about permitting Russian soldiers, not to mention members of the People's Liberation Army, on U.S. soil.

  Sergeant Steve Markham was a lean, fit, and mean ex-Marine who'd served in the first Gulf War. I had trouble guessing his age with his youthful but craggy face and full head of buzz-cut sandy hair. I figured he was probably in his forties, given he'd been in the Gulf War. I wondered why he'd stuck so close to home.

  He also had a blue BMW 5 series parked in his driveway with a for sale sign of $10,000 perched on the dash. I'd been dreaming of a BMW of that series for years, but hadn't quite convinced myself to take the plunge. My gears started spinning. Not only would it be great to escape my clunky rental van, it could also serve the purpose of hiding my trail across California. And I had the cash.

  "It's a beaut, isn't it?" Steve noted my gaze with a grin. "It's my son's actually. He asked me to sell it while he's overseas."

  "What year?"

  "2007."

  "That has the xDrive, doesn't it?"

  "Yep. All-wheel drive. And only eighty thousand miles."

  "Huh. That's pretty low."

  "Mostly highway miles, too," he said with a wink. "Are you in the market?"

  "I think so." I added with more conviction: "Maybe I could check it out afterward."

  "Hell, let's take it out now. My friend and his son won't be here for an hour or so."

  "I wouldn't mind that at all."

  He fetched the keys, and we hit the road. Predictably, the BMW not only shamed the van, it kicked the shit out of my pickup. It would make the perfect "other car" for road trips or picking up someone for a date. Not only did it handle like a dream and had impressive power, the all-wheel drive could come in handy on the desert dirt roads.

  "Go ahead and punch it," said Steve.

  I didn't have to be asked twice. It gave a deeply satisfying response. Not that I had any race-driver ambitions, but it would be nice to not need reading material while passing someone.

  "Markus said you're retired from the military?" I asked.

  He nodded. "I hung around because my kid signed up and I have a sweet gig as the base's lead electrician. Keeps me busy and in touch with my guys."

  "Sounds pretty sweet." Though to me it seemed a lot like working for your old high school and staying in touch with your former teachers. "I'm an old jarhead myself. I was stationed at Pendleton but spent some time here training."

  "Right on." Steve raised a hand and I slapped it. "You spent some time in the sand?"

  "Some. Mostly Afghanistan."

  "Gulf War. That was my last gasp."

  I nodded and smiled. I really didn't want to get into reminiscing, because what I had to say would piss off a lot of veterans. Especially the part about considering those wars to be pretty much complete bullshit. Not that some vets didn't share that belief, but some would punch you in the face. Not a good start to a car negotiation.

  "Have you seen any foreign soldiers on base?" I asked.

  "Just a couple glimpses. They keep them tucked out of sight pretty good, and I don't get out to the training areas."

  "Have you talked to anyone about what's going on?"

  "I made some casual inquiries to close friends on the base, and I was shut down real fast. Which tells me something."

  "What do you make of it?"

  "They must be damn desperate if they're looking for help from the Russians and the Chinese. I don't believe it's something crooked. I've known Major General Atkins for close to twenty years. He's a straight arrow."

  "As straight as they come," I said. "He was base commander when I was there. But if he's given an order from on high, I'd guess he'd follow it."

  "A lot of brass haven't. There's been a real bloodletting in the upper ranks."

  "I know. Almost as if something didn't sit well with them."

  Back at his place, I grudgingly surrendered the BMW keys and followed him inside.

  "What do you think?" he asked. "About the car, I mean."

  "I think we should talk about it."

  Sergeant Markham smiled. "How does some beer and barbecue sound? My friend and his son should be here soon."

  "It sounds good."

  A worried-looking middle-aged fortiesh dude and his regulation buzz-cut son showed up just as Markham's barbecue reached grilling temps. We got to know each other a bit over beers. Alan and Tad Walters were a bit tight at first, but when I shared my unit name, my experiences with "Iron Head" Atkins, and some select excerpts from my paid vacation in Afghanistan and Iraq, they opened up. It was strange, because Ted at twenty-two was only a few years younger than I was, but I couldn't shake the feeling that he was from a different generation.

  Inevitably, the talk turned to their current quandary.

  "Training with the People's Liberation Army and the Russians is one thing," said Tad. "But training to pacify unruly crowds in an urban setting..." He shook his head. "What crowds could those be? Do you think the Chinese or the Russians need help subduing their people?"

  "Does make you wonder," I said.

  "And the blood tests. I have no idea what that could about."

  "Anyone say what they're looking for in the blood?" I asked.

  "The docs won't say. All I know is that the people who get the wrong result are fake-handcuffed and sedated on the spot."

  "No shit." My buzz shrunk with uneasiness. "They're looking for certain kinds of people?"

  "I guess. I have no fucking clue, bro'. This just has a real bad vibe for me."

  No kidding. I rubbed the back of my neck. A connection was threatening to be made in the murky recesses of my brain. Something in the blood... Wait a minute. Wasn't Janine's fungus targeting a certain kind of person?

  "Is there any way we could find out what they're testing for?" I asked.

  Tad screwed up his face and shook his head. "I doubt it. No safe way, anyhow. They got a tight lid on everything right now."

  "I don't want my son doing anything that puts him at more risk," Alan growled. "He's taking enough of a chance doing just this."

  "I know, and I appreciate it."

  "I brought this." Tad handed me a SIM card. "About ten minutes' video of the training exercises taken from my cell phone."

  "Wow. Great. Thank you."

  "I hope it helps. I'd sure like to get to the bottom of this." Tad glanced at his father. "I may be a Marine, but my first loyalty is to the people of this country."

  "I hope if it comes to it, most of you feel that way."

  After Alan and Tad left, Sergeant Steve fixed me with a knowing grin.

  "I believe you and I have some bargaining to do, don't we, son?"

  THE BMW, like so much of my life since I'd met Professor Killian, was like a fever dream from some alternate reality. It purred along the highway heading west as happy as a hunting dog on a 'coon trail.

  There hadn't been any negotiation. He said $9,000 and I said "sold."

  The port of Long beach, my next destination, was no stranger to conspiracy theories and mainstream controversy concerning the Chinese. I'd actually written a piece on it last year exploring some of its checkered history. In 1996 a China Ocean Shipping Comp
any shipment of AK-47s destined for street gangs was seized by U.S. Customs agents. The weapons had been manufactured by two state-owned companies. The president of one of those Chinese companies, Wang Jun of Polytechnology, met with then-President Bill Clinton as a supporter of his campaign for reelection. President Clinton denied any knowledge of who Wang Jun was or that he was under investigation. COSCO was never accused of wrong-doing and the Chinese government averred any knowledge of the weapons. All in all, a very tidy state of denial for both parties.

  A few weeks after the arms seizure, Clinton helped push through the China Ocean Shipping Company's lease of the former Navy yard in the middle of Long Beach. At the time, California Senators Feinstein and Boxer asked the Clinton Administration to investigate this agreement. They were assured by Clinton officials that everything was copasetic. No investigation ever occurred that I knew of.

  Flash forward to now, and conspiracy theories were focusing on Chinese claims on American land and other assets, and Markus had been contacted by a mechanic employed by Union Pacific's Intermodal Container Transfer Facility. One evening a few weeks ago, while performing an unscheduled emergency repair on a railway junction, he'd observed a large group of heavily armed men boarding outbound train cars in the adjacent Yan Sing on-dock railyard. He said he'd snapped some shots with his cell phone that weren't great quality but clearly showed the men boarding.

  I had the dude's phone number, but I wouldn't call him on my burner phone until I'd settled in at my hotel, which I hoped would be the Hyatt Regency, only a stone's throw from the harbor. I'd decided to play it a little smarter and not phone ahead for reservations, paying cash when I arrived instead. A few minutes' research had assured me that the Hyatt would be okay with that. If they were full, then I'd just have to find somewhere else, but from now I was going to make at least a token attempt to keep my travels secret.

  The Hyatt had vacancies, and had no problem with cash as long as you coughed up an additional $100 deposit. I even got a room with a view of the marina on the sixteenth floor.

  Upstairs in my room after a long elevator ride, I accessed the cell modem on my Dell, removed the battery, and exchanged its SIM card with Tad Markham's. Soon I was rewarded with a series of mostly blurry photos of soldiers in various scenarios: standing over a group of cowering citizens, restraining people while drawing blood with a "finger stick," firing tear gas into a crowd, searching a mock-up house and dragging the occupants out, and skirmishing with a group of guys wearing protective padded suits and headgear. Since all the soldiers appeared to be wearing the same uniforms it was pretty hard to tell them apart, but by pausing and zooming in I could at least distinguish a group of Asians from the homegrown stock. Russians not so much. But I did hear commands in what sounded like Russian and Chinese coming from what I took to be squad or platoon commanders.

  I watched the video twice and then copied it to two memory sticks, which I'd send via snail mail and UPS (or FedEx, whichever was closer) to Markus.

  I walked out of the hotel along an artificial lake past some kind of fairgrounds, pausing at a Hooters restaurant. My stomach – thankfully, not my libido – growled on cue. I'd call my railcar guy after I'd eaten.

  One buffalo shrimp platter and two beers later, I called the railroad dude and left a brief introductory message when he didn't pick up. I headed over to the nearby aquarium to kill some time. Of course it was closed.

  I was about halfway back to the hotel when the railway guy called. We arranged to meet at the fire pit outside the hotel in twenty minutes.

  Around the appointed time a dude in a windbreaker, cap, and oversized glasses appeared, glancing nervously in all directions as he approached. I held up a hand in greeting, which he didn't return. Instead, he drew the windbreaker up over his shoulders and hunched down as if he were a spy coming in from the cold.

  "Hey," I said as he scuttled over, still looking every which way. "John?"

  The man coughed into one hand. "Scott?" he asked in the same breath as the cough.

  "Hi. Thanks for coming."

  "I felt I had to." He rustled around in his jacket pocket and produced a memory stick, which he set on the table between us. "I transferred all the photos onto that."

  "Thanks." I retrieved the stick. "Have you observed anything else suspicious since that evening?"

  "A lot of us have." He looked around again, and lowered his voice. "Funny thing is, it's not about the Chinese sneaking around. It's about the Coast Guard escorting COSCO ships in. We've seen Coast Guard ships monitoring COSCO freighters before, but nothing like this. And DHS and Harbor Security are hovering all around Pier J, but no one seems to be inspecting or doing anything."

  "Do you have any idea how many men you saw climb aboard the train?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine. I'd' say over a hundred, maybe a lot more. A couple of helicopters flew in, and I took that as my cue to leave."

  "No one saw you?"

  "Don't think so."

  I wasn't sure what to make of this. The training exercises at MCAGCC sort of made sense – several people in the conspiracy community had interpreted that to mean a cooperative crisis management operation – but armed Chinese soldiers taking trains into the heartland didn't seem to fit that scenario. Of course, "John" might've just misinterpreted what he'd seen. I'd see for myself soon enough.

  "Anyway," said the man, "there's not much else I can tell you. I just found out about Markus Killian and his website, Truth Matters. A friend of mine pointed me to it. He's a big fan. I don't buy into much of this conspiracy stuff, personally, but my friend said that Killian was the guy to talk to, so..." He spread his hands.

  "You thought it was important enough to contact him."

  "I wasn't sure at first, but what I've been seeing has been eating at me. Something's just not right with this country now."

  "I agree. There seems to be some crazy shit going down. We're trying to make sense of it."

  "Well, good luck. I hope this helps."

  INTERSTATE FIVE in California might just be the most boring stretch of highway in the world. Even a new BMW couldn't change that. When I'd lived here, I'd called it the Highway of the Mindless, because that was the mental state it induced. It managed to be both boring as hell and treacherous, with runaway semis and would-be NASCAR drivers competing on a two and three-lane raceway. Obeying the 70 MPH speed limit would get you run off the road or just plain run over. I had the Beamer's cruise set for 82, and I still had semis blowing by.

  I had many undistracted hours to think about both my next assignment and what I was leaving behind. Janine's face popped into my head a lot more than I wanted. My feelings toward her presented a paradox. Not only was she not my physical or personality type – not someone I'd even notice in a supermarket or library or walking down the street – but we barely even knew each other. I'd wised up a bit to the role fantasy plays in relationships, and I figured that was probably part of it. The problem was that as far as I knew, Janine didn't fit any of my fantasies.

  I pushed that subject aside for an even thornier mystery: the massacre at Plainfield Elementary in Woodland, California one year ago. Dubbed as Sandy Hook II, a grieving parent whose child had died within days of a compulsory series of vaccinations had run amok, killing teachers, students, several nurses, and two doctors offering a vaccination clinic at the school that day.

  Riding the wave of public outcry, two new bills were introduced. One, anticipating the federal bills introduced after the Gay Wedding Massacre, added a psychological provision to gun registration: before any gun could be transferred, privately or through a licensed dealer, the purchaser had to offer the Bureau of Firearms a clean bill of psychological health from a participating California board-certified psychologist or psychiatrist. That meant coughing up $80 to $120 for a forty-five minute session with a licensed psychologist who had been certified for the program by the Bureau. That bill never made it out of committee.

  The other bill, which proposed to strike
the home school exemption from SB 277, essentially compelled every person under eighteen to be vaccinated according to the official state schedule. That addendum, after much protest, passed.

  Now I was driving into the lion's den once again. Not to investigate the Plainfield Shooting, but to meet with a man who claimed to have information that would blow the whole mandatory vaccination movement out of the water. The man had been so cagey with Markus that he'd refused to tell us anything except that he was a government scientist who'd witnessed vaccine tampering at the highest level. I was to meet with him in Sacramento sometime in the next day or two. He'd let Markus know the time and location, and Markus would call me.

  I had no idea if this would tie into any of the other revelations or the alleged upcoming cataclysmic event, but it could be a mind-bending story in itself. Of course, I thought CDC scientist William Thompson's revelation of fraud in the CDC was a totally kick-ass story, and the "lamestream media" barely bothered to mention it. Congress didn't have much interest in it, either, and the public mostly yawned. So you never knew. These days it seemed that the President could reveal himself as a reptilian overlord and people would just shrug.

  I followed the sweltering highway into the sprawling metropolis of Sacramento. I'd chosen Homewood Suites because of reviews, but the outdoor basketball court clinched the case.

  I checked into my room, called Markus to say I'd arrived – not specifying where – and walked down the road for something to eat. I was halfway through a steak and beer at Sizzler's when a call came from a number I didn't recognize. It seemed a tad soon to hear from our mystery whistleblower, but maybe the guy was anxious.

  "Hello." A woman's voice.

  "Uh, hi," I said, struggling to recover from my surprise and gender bias. "I'm Mr. Jones."

  "Where are you?"

  "I'm having dinner at...a local restaurant."

  "Can you send the location securely to your friend?"

  "Ah, yes."

  "Please do that. I'll get it from him on a safe channel. Wait in the parking lot. I'll be there shortly."