Kilmer wasn’t part of the conversation. Something about the aerial shot had bothered him. He was now looking at a different screen—one that offered a better view of the soldiers. Most of them were now fully on their feet and looking only slightly disoriented.
Oh no.
Two of the soldiers were still on the ground—and they had not moved at all.
“We have casualties!” Chief of Staff Perez shouted before Kilmer could even find the words.
Whitman turned to the speakerphone. “Get our men out of there!” she shouted.
Everyone was back working the phones.
Within a minute, three vehicles arrived at the edge of the kill-zone. Three men jumped out of one of the vehicles and ran toward the six soldiers who appeared to be unhurt—and started to guide them out of the kill-zone. Four other men spilled out of second vehicle and removed two stretchers from the back. They ran off to retrieve the two injured—or dead—soldiers.
The two groups passed one another—nine soldiers returning to the vehicles and four soldiers moving toward the fallen men.
At that very moment—but without any countdown this time—the blinding light reappeared, engulfing everyone on the field and all of Station Zero. The level of anxiety and activity in the Situation Room skyrocketed once again. But, just as before, the blinding light stayed on for only two minutes before it switched off again.
Everyone in the Situation Room stared in shock at the TV screens.
For the most part, everything looked the same as before—but there was one conspicuous exception.
The two fallen soldiers had disappeared.
~ 53 ~
Heirs of Herodotus by D. Kilmer.
Excerpt from Chapter 9.
Good leaders attempt to learn from their mistakes. They have the courage to acknowledge the consequences of prior decisions, no matter how terrible, so that errors will not be repeated. But in doing so, good leaders risk discarding even excellent ideas—simply because they failed, previously, to deliver the desired results. Great leaders, on the other hand, recognize that all outcomes—bad and good—are but noisy signals of the wisdom of their approach. Chance, error, and unknowns also play a role.
While good leaders exhibit the strength to learn from bad outcomes, great leaders show the wisdom not to overweight outcomes, whether they be bad or good. Ultimately, outcomes are not what matter. Inputs matter—because only inputs can be chosen. If your decision process was sound, if the strategy was wise ex ante, if you can find no fault in your approach despite extensive examination, then it is misguided to second-guess your actions simply because the outcome was rotten.
Those who blindly replicate what “succeeded” and abandon what “failed” do not only relinquish the mantle of leadership, they also risk losing their status as human beings. They reduce themselves to mere algorithms—and mediocre ones at that.
~ 54 ~
Thirty minutes had passed since the second blast of light, and Strauss, Druckman, Allen, and Ramsey were all back inside HQ-2. They were calling into the Oval Office, where Whitman, Nielsen, Perez, Garcia, Kilmer, Art, and Silla were seated around the coffee table. The mood was tense.
“They attacked our men,” Strauss argued. “I’m not asking you to declare war. But if we let them kill or abduct our men with impunity, we are on a slippery slope. We must take some action. And we must demand the return of our soldiers—or their remains, if necessary. I’m open to ideas, but I am not okay with doing nothing.”
Director Druckman supported Strauss. NSA Garcia agreed. The aliens had made the first move. Earth-side had to do something, if for no other reason than to show some resolve or a willingness to push back.
“What do you think, Zack?” Whitman asked the vice president.
“If we don’t want war, an aggressive response is not the next step. We need to find a way to communicate with them. We need to figure out what just happened, and why. And for us to get our soldiers back, we need some way to make that demand clear to them. Then we see how they respond.”
Kilmer was so lost in his own thoughts that he was barely following along. Why would they do that? If they wanted to kill humans, they didn’t need to wait until the soldiers were twenty yards away. Was it an abduction they were after? Did they need the soldiers to come closer before they could capture them? The other six soldiers had all been successfully evacuated, and all seemed fine, but none of them knew what had happened to the two who were taken. No one saw anything after the lights came on.
And what about the gifts? Why not pick them up earlier? Why wait for the soldiers to come into the kill-zone? It didn’t make sense.
And yet, despite the long and growing list of unknowns, one thing was clear: ET-1 had just captured, and possibly killed, two human beings.
Kilmer suddenly realized that Whitman had called on him to speak.
“I’m sorry, Madam President. I was just trying to make sense of what we saw. It—it doesn’t add up.”
“No, Professor, I’m afraid it adds up pretty well,” Strauss replied. “You just seem unwilling to face up to it. Your plan blew up in our faces. That’s what it adds up to. If the president had listened to more experienced voices in the room, we might have avoided this.”
Art tried to defuse the situation. “Mr. Secretary. Maybe it was a bad idea, but just because it failed doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth trying. We took a risk—we knew it had an upside and a downside.”
Strauss countered. “Some of us could see the downside much more clearly. Others of us are a little too keen on seeing only the good in others, regardless of the context, and regardless of the evidence.”
Kilmer tried to ignore Strauss’s comments, but it was starting to feel like Cameroon all over again—except this time, he couldn’t just walk away, hole up somewhere for two years, and feel sorry for screwing up. There were only two casualties at the moment, but that could change in the hours ahead.
Silla looked over at him. He could tell by the look on her face that she knew exactly what he was thinking—and why he was struggling. She shook her head: Don’t think about that.
Nielsen caught Kilmer’s eye and offered him a reassuring nod. Don’t worry, Professor. We’ll figure it out. Then the vice president addressed the group.
“We’re not here to point fingers, Strauss. I’d like to hear specific suggestions that the president can evaluate. General Allen? We haven’t heard from you.”
“Mr. Vice President,” Allen responded, “I’m obviously in favor of getting our boys back. But I don’t want to lose sight of the other facts. Fact number one: they picked up some of our gifts. Fact number two: they didn’t pick up the gifts right away. And fact number three: they did not attack all the soldiers, even though all eight were sitting ducks after the lights came on. How do we explain that?”
Druckman offered a theory. “Imagine you’re ET-1 and you want to learn as much as you can about us. You don’t want to start a war—not yet anyway—because you don’t know what you’re up against. You first want to study our technology and our species. So, you take a sample of the gifts, and a sample of our soldiers. But you’re smart about it. You don’t attack the armed soldiers on the perimeter. And you sit tight—even though the gifts are within reach. You wait until the humans get impatient and come closer. That’s when you strike and take what you need.”
Kilmer was impressed. It tied a lot of the clues together—although not quite all. For one thing, why did the aliens bother to use a countdown? Kilmer put his head down and tried to think while still tracking the conversation.
“It sounds plausible, Noah,” Nielsen replied. “So, what does that mean we should do?”
“I’ll tell you what it means we should not do,” Strauss bellowed. “They’ve already hit us twice with those goddamn lights—we can’t wait to find out what happens the third time they blind us.”
Kilmer’s head snapped up.
They’ve already hit us twice.
Strauss had just hande
d Kilmer the missing piece of the puzzle. Almost immediately, the mental cascade began.
Two flashes.
Three tasks.
Two-way radios.
Tin cups.
Kilmer almost cursed out loud. I should have seen it sooner. Even now—after racking his brain for so long—he had come dangerously close to accepting Druckman’s theory of what had happened.
But Druckman had gotten it wrong—and it changed everything.
Kilmer leaned back and took a deep breath. His eyes narrowed, and something that could have been mistaken for a smile came to his lips. But the expression evinced more anger than joy. Silla turned to him just in time to catch the look on his face—and she knew it in an instant. Professor Kilmer had something to say.
~ 55 ~
Kilmer had been wanting to stretch his legs for a while. But until that moment, he had felt uncharacteristically timid. It was the guilt. Whitman had made the final call, but Kilmer was the reason those soldiers were in the kill-zone in the first place. It was his idea, and it had failed in spectacular fashion.
He no longer felt any hesitation—and he took to his feet. Everyone else must have assumed he was in the doghouse as well; they seemed surprised that he was choosing to draw attention to himself.
“Madam President, would you mind if I pose a few questions?” Kilmer asked.
“Go ahead, Professor.”
“I’d like to go back to something Secretary Strauss said a few minutes ago. He reminded us that the aliens have already hit us twice. Isn’t that right, Mr. Secretary?”
“That’s right. And it’s two more than I find acceptable,” Strauss replied over the speakerphone.
“Two more than any of us enjoyed, Mr. Secretary. But it does beg the question: why two separate flashes? They took six packages and attacked our soldiers during the first flash. Why not abduct the soldiers at the same time?”
There was a brief silence before Druckman responded. “Maybe they didn’t have enough time. Maybe they can only keep the light on for two minutes at a time.”
“That’s certainly possible, but is it compelling? They seemed to have three tasks: retrieve the gifts, injure the soldiers, and abduct the soldiers. If you had to divide this to-do list across two flashes, how would you do it? I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d only take the gifts in the first flash, and I’d leave the attacking and kidnapping for the second one. Why put humans on high alert by injuring two of their soldiers the first time around, and not even finish the job? Or, I’d attack and kidnap the soldiers during the first flash, and then take the gifts in the second.” Kilmer looked at Whitman. “That’s how I would do it.”
“Well then,” said Strauss. “I guess we’ve learned something important. These aliens are just like the rest of us. Not quite as smart as Professor Kilmer.” The sarcasm was not lost in transmission. “Or… maybe they just made a mistake. Or—maybe they think differently than we do. Or maybe it’s hard for them to attack and kidnap all within two minutes.”
“Maybe,” Kilmer agreed. “But it got me thinking. What else might explain their behavior?”
Whitman leaned back and folded her arms, her posture evincing a strong interest in where Kilmer was headed.
“I have a prediction,” Kilmer continued. “If we replay the recording of what just happened at Station Zero, we will notice a few things that everyone here will find… curious. Is it possible for us to take a look?”
“Sure,” said Art. “I can stream it simultaneously over here and on Director Druckman’s computer at HQ-2.”
Kilmer looked at Whitman, who nodded her consent. “Then I suggest we do that,” said Kilmer.
It took one phone call and about three minutes of waiting.
“Art, can you please take us to the moment when our soldier reads the welcome statement?”
Art queued up the recording while Kilmer told the group what he wanted them to observe.
“After the first bright light came on, the soldiers scattered all about. But, at this point, the soldiers are still in two rows of four. I don’t know these soldiers, so I can’t tell you which two were abducted, but I would bet that they’re in the front row during the clip we’re about to watch.”
Art started the tape. The only sound that could be heard was the hum of the spacecraft, but the picture quality was excellent. Art paused it after the welcome speech began.
General Allen spoke up from HQ-2. “I can confirm that the two soldiers who went missing are both in the front row. What are we supposed to infer from this? That they were at greater risk because they were closer to ET-1?”
“General Allen, I’d prefer that you not infer anything yet,” Kilmer replied. “But soon.”
“The next thing I want you to notice,” he continued, “are the two men in the back row who retrieve their two-way radios after the welcome speech ends.”
Art resumed the recording. The speech ended, and then a few more seconds elapsed.
“Here it comes,” Kilmer called out. On cue, two of the soldiers reached into their jackets to retrieve their radios. One hugged his close to his chest. The other held his slightly lower, close to his belt.
Kilmer asked Art to pause the recording again. Then he looked around the room, but no one seemed to have a clue what it all meant.
Druckman broke the silence. “I’m impressed that you noticed these small details about what the soldiers did, Professor, but I’m afraid I’m completely lost. So what?”
“It’s not about seeing what the soldiers did. Noticing what they didn’t do is what will make all the difference.”
There were blank faces all around.
“And what is it that they didn’t do?” Nielsen asked.
“Why would you retrieve your radio at that moment?” Kilmer asked. “It doesn’t even work in the kill-zone.”
There was a pause.
“Maybe they wanted to check whether the radios had somehow started to work—in case they were needed,” Perez suggested.
“I had exactly the same thought,” Kilmer admitted. “But then I realized, that couldn’t be why they did it. Notice, Mr. Perez, that neither soldier even glanced at his radio after taking it out—and they certainly didn’t test to see if the radios were working. They just held the radios close to them. Nice and snug. Like they were safety blankets, not radios.”
Kilmer saw Silla’s reaction. Her curiosity was starting to transform, slowly, into understanding. The rest could only see that Kilmer had identified a few anomalies. They had no idea what tied them all together.
He voiced the frustration that was starting to grow. “Clearly, a number of things don’t make much sense. So—what does make sense? One last hint should do the trick. It pertains to something that occurred during the first flash. It was easy to miss, especially given the panic we were all experiencing at the time, but if you pay close attention, I don’t think you’ll miss it now. Art, can we please watch the two minutes of the first flash?”
Art looked confused even as he started to queue up the recording. “Professor Kilmer, there’s really nothing to see. It’s just blinding light. We all saw it when it happened—and I’ve re-watched the recording since. What exactly do you want us to look for?”
“Nothing at all,” Kilmer answered.
There were some looks of confusion in the Oval Office—and some expressions of annoyance at HQ-2.
“What I want you to do instead,” Kilmer clarified, “is to listen.”
The replay started a few seconds before the flash of light. Then everything went white. The only sound was the humming of ET-1. A few more moments passed. And then came the sound. Art looked up at Kilmer as soon as it happened. Kilmer nodded, and Art stopped the recording.
Kilmer looked at President Whitman and Chief of Staff Perez. “I have to confess this is not my area of expertise. When I first heard the sound in the Situation Room, I thought it sounded like someone was dropping coins into a tin cup. But there were no tin cups on the field. That sound,
I now realize, was—”
“The sound of bullets,” Perez finished. He looked shaken.
“Not just the sound of bullets,” the president clarified. “That’s the sound of bullets bouncing off of metal.”
“Precisely,” Kilmer agreed. He could see that both Perez and Whitman had pieced together at least half of the story. But did they understand the implication?
“Those bullets we heard in the recording weren’t fired at our soldiers. They were fired by our soldiers. The two soldiers in the back had not been retrieving two-way radios. They were retrieving and concealing their firearms—which presumably had silencers, which is why we didn’t hear the shots themselves.”
Whitman clenched her teeth.
“General Ramsey. Is this accurate?” Whitman asked, with more patience than Kilmer thought he would have been able to muster in her position. “Did our soldiers… go into the kill-zone… with weapons?”
Ramsey came on the line. “Madam President, I’m not sure what—how this—”
Strauss jumped in. “Wait a minute. What the hell are you implying, Professor? Are you seriously going to play defense counsel for the aliens even now? Our soldiers were the ones who were attacked. Two of our men were abducted and are MIA!” he yelled.
But Kilmer was done playing games with the defense secretary. “That’s right, Strauss. Our soldiers were the ones who were attacked. But our soldiers aren’t made of metal. You know what is made of metal? A certain spacecraft the size of a football field that scared the daylights out of our men just moments before the shooting started. Those bullets were fired at ET-1, Mr. Secretary. They were fired by our soldiers. Now, I’d love for you to stop playing defense counsel for whoever fucked this up—and to start thinking about the implications.”
“The two soldiers who were injured…” Silla started.
“That’s right, Agent Silla. They were shot from behind. They were shot by their fellow soldiers.”
Perez looked horrified. “Are you saying that they meant to—”
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