World Order

by David Archer

  “Hey,” Neil said. “I found something else. Those guys in the black suits? Looks like they went straight off the base, out into the forest. I played a hunch and looked at radar tracking around the same time, and it turns out the airfield radar picked up an anomaly. Something appeared on radar for only a few seconds just over the trees about a mile out. There was no transponder, no way to identify what it was, and it vanished only a couple of seconds later.”

  They all walked over to look at the screen again, and the radar blip that was displayed on it. Neil was pecking at the keys and suddenly another window opened.

  “Well, would you look at that?” he asked, his voice filled with irony. An old building, large and square, appeared on the screen. “That’s an abandoned warehouse, formerly used to store agricultural products when the old rail line went through out there. It’s been gone a while, apparently, and the building has been falling apart for years. Hang on a moment...” He opened yet a third window and a satellite view appeared. It zoomed in on the spot until they could see that a large part of the roof of the building was gone.

  Neil looked up at Noah. “That’s a big enough hole to let one of those flying saucers settle right down inside there. I think I know how they’re getting to and from this area.”

  “Yes,” Noah said, “but why did the thing disappear from radar? It seemed to have been high enough in altitude to show up, but then it was gone.”

  Swaggart cleared his throat. “One of the reasons we were assigned to this case,” he said, “is because of missing technology. There’s an electronic device that was developed by DARPA that cancels radar signals, and a few of them went missing from a secure warehouse at White Sands. It has to receive a radar signal in order to cancel it out with a burst of static, so there’s a couple of seconds when an aircraft is visible on radar before it kicks in. We suspected these same people might be behind that theft.”

  Noah stared at the screen for a moment, then looked at Marco and Jenny. "I want you two to stay here, keep working on a way to identify that woman. Neil, see if you can find anything else on that radar anomaly, while Swaggart and I take a ride out to where it appeared. Sarah, you’re with us."

  Sarah’s eyes went wide and she smiled as she hurried to follow them out the door. Noah stopped to pick up the M32 he had already requisitioned and loaded with HEAT rounds, and Swaggart took a second.

  Because the area they were going to was already overgrown by the rainforest, they commandeered a VLEGA Gaucho, an Argentine Army version of a light personnel vehicle. The Gaucho was originally designed to be transported by air, but it is a rugged and capable 4X4 with a four-cylinder turbodiesel engine producing 130 horsepower. Sarah grinned as she got behind the wheel, with Noah riding shotgun and Swaggart in the seat behind her.

  A GPS unit mounted in the Gaucho directed them to their destination, but Noah told Sarah to stop a few hundred meters away. “Stay here with the car,” he told her. “Keep your gun ready and let me know if anyone approaches you. If we run into any problems, you get back to Ops and tell Jenny and Marco what happened, do not wait for us or try to come after us. Understood?”

  She looked at him. “Understood,” she said. “Subcom on.”

  “Subcom on,” Noah said, and Sarah gave him a nervous smile. “I’ll keep you up to date on what we find in there.”

  She nodded, and then Noah and Swaggart climbed out. They had gone about fifty feet when Swaggart asked, “Subcom? What was that all about?”

  “My team is equipped with subcutaneous communicators. Sarah can hear everything I say and everything around me when they’re on. We’re too far from the others for them to be able to receive the signal without boosting it with WiFi, but she’ll know what to report if we run into trouble.”

  Swaggart’s eyebrows rose, but he said nothing. They walked in silence the rest of the way to the old building, but then Noah held up a hand to indicate they should stop.

  “Did you hear anything?” he asked.

  Swaggart nodded. “Something, yeah. Don’t know what it was, but something is moving around in there.”

  “Could be wildlife,” Noah said. “Let’s go on, but cautiously.”

  Easing forward, they continued cautiously. They could still hear sounds from inside, but it sounded more like an animal stalking around than anything else. Noah led the way toward a door, and then pushed it open cautiously.

  The hinges had recently been oiled. The door opened silently and they peeked inside.

  There were no animals in sight, but there were still sounds coming from somewhere in the depths of the old building. Still cautious, Noah stepped inside after motioning for Swaggart to follow. The floor was made of asphalt, rather than concrete, and was covered with dirt and rotting leaves and brush.

  Suddenly, something knocked over some boxes that were stacked at the back of the building, and both men turned that direction, turning on the lights that were attached to the rail of their weapons. The beams struck a strange looking creature, and it threw up a hand to block the light from its large, almond shaped eyes, but then it squinted until they were nearly closed and looked at them. It clearly looked at Swaggart, then turned his gaze directly to Noah and launched itself toward him, long-fingered hands outstretched. An old forklift, sitting there and rusting away, was between them; the creature shoved it aside with a single hand, and it slid nearly fifteen feet.

  It screamed, and the sound was like the cry of a banshee. It was moving at incredible speed, and Noah couldn’t keep the weapon centered on it, because it was dodging from side to side as it came. Swaggart fired once, but his round sailed past it and struck the wall, exploding in a brilliant flash. A couple of seconds later, Noah simply pointed the weapon at the spot where he expected the creature to make its next turn and pulled the trigger.

  The M32 made a whomp sound and then the HEAT round found its target. There was a brief but bright explosion, and then the scream rose three octaves. The creature went down, skidding and kicking for a couple of seconds before falling silent.

  “Noah?” Sarah’s voice came through the subcom. “What the hell was that?”

  “I think it was a hybrid,” Noah said. “It’s down, but I want to be sure there aren’t any more.” He moved farther into the building, his M32 at the ready.

  Swaggart jogged up beside him, and with both of their lights on, they made a quick sweep of the building and found it empty. When they had cleared it completely, they circled back to where the dead creature lay and shined their lights onto the body.

  “Their watchdog,” Swaggart said, a tone of disgust in his voice. “They left it here in case somebody came looking around.”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Noah said. “Sarah, use the radio and tell Marco to bring Doctor Emerson out here. We have a body to take back for autopsy.”

  ELEVEN

  Marco showed up with Emerson and Jorge about fifteen minutes later, and Emerson’s first reaction was to gasp.

  “Dear God in heaven,” he said softly. “How could any human being do this to another?”

  “The how, we already understand,” Noah said. “The why is another matter altogether. Doc, I need you to get this thing back to autopsy and tell me everything you can about it. If it has weaknesses, I want to know about them. I also want to know about its strengths. Can you do that?”

  “I shall certainly do my best, Noah,” the old pathologist said. “Can you gentlemen help us load it onto the gurney?”

  Marco, Noah, Swaggart and Jorge lifted the thing up onto the gurney and Jorge pushed it out to the truck they had brought with them. It was loaded into the back of the truck and the tailgate locked in place, and then they all headed back toward the operations center.

  Renée was waiting in autopsy when they arrived, and her own eyes look like they were going to pop out of her head. “Good heavens,” she said. “Can we honestly say that used to be a human being?”

  “I’ll know more about that shortly,” Emerson said. “Be ready, d
ear lady, because I shall soon have tissues for you to examine.”

  The same four men lifted the creature onto the autopsy table, and then Noah, Marco and Swaggart left the two doctors to their work as they headed back toward the main office. Neil looked up as they entered, and a smile broke out on his face.

  “I think we found her,” he said. “Belcher’s mysterious girlfriend? I think we figured out who she is.”

  “Tell me,” Noah said.

  Neil pointed at the screen on the wall and they looked up to see the woman’s picture. “We didn’t get anywhere with facial recognition,” he said, “but I got to thinking about how that could be possible if she’s American. Just having a passport means her photograph has to have been taken, so it should be in at least one of the major databases. That led me to thinking about how she could’ve disguised herself, and I started taking the picture apart.”

  “Taking it apart?” Noah asked.

  “Yep. I started by calculating the bone structure of the skull, based on the standard points of reference. Cheekbones, jawbone, pointed chin, eyebrow ridge, all that stuff. That told me that the face was at least one to two centimeters bigger than it should be, so I started stripping away layers virtually. When I got to the baseline bone structure, then I used forensic facial reconstruction software to determine what the face should look like, and that’s what I came up with.”

  On the screen, a box appeared around the woman’s face and then it began to change. A moment later, they were looking at an entirely different face, and one that was much younger than it had originally appeared to be.

  “Turns out she was wearing a prosthetic mask,” Neil said. “Some guy came up with them a while back and has been selling them online to help defeat facial recognition software. They look quite real, and you can talk and blink and everything with them on, but they completely change your appearance. I know that Wally has developed some for us to use, but I never realized just how good they could be until now. See that new face? That one turns up in facial recognition. I’d like you to meet Lisa Branigan, daughter of Doctor Branigan. She’s the one who disappeared, and who Litchfield thought was being used to blackmail the doctor into doing his thing.”

  “Has Litchfield seen this yet?” Noah asked.

  “Yep. As soon as I figured out who she was, I called him up and let him take a look. He confirms that that is Branigan’s daughter, but this means she’s not a victim; she’s actually involved in the whole project, and that leads to speculation that Branigan himself might be dirty.”

  “Yes, it certainly does,” Noah said. “Any idea where she is now?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Neil said. “I’ve checked with the State Department on her passport, but she doesn’t appear to have used it. I have to assume she traveled here under a false name, but there are no other passports bearing her photograph in the database.”

  Noah stared at the picture for a moment longer. “Or she came into the country undetected,” he said. “We know these people have the ability to fly from point to point without showing up on radar. God only knows what else they can do. Keep looking.”

  Noah turned and went back through the door he had just come out of, passing the lab and autopsy rooms to get to the back room where Litchfield was still studying all of the intelligence reports that had come in. He looked up when Noah entered, with Swaggart right behind him.

  “Noah?” he said.

  “Tell me about Lisa Branigan,” Noah said. “We’ve got a picture of her posing as Belcher’s girlfriend, apparently on the day he was taken out of the hotel where he was staying. What do you think her connection could be?”

  Litchfield shook his head. “I’m at a complete loss on that,” he said. “The girl has no scientific background at all, she was a literature major in college. From everything I was able to determine, she and her father enjoyed a good relationship. I saw the picture Neil brought up, that’s definitely her, but I can’t imagine how she could be involved in this plot. I was certain she was a victim, that she had been kidnapped and used as leverage against her father.”

  “Do you still think that’s a possibility? Could she have been acting under duress, herself?”

  Litchfield shrugged. “I never actually met her,” he said. “I never even heard of her until Branigan disappeared, then I had to follow every possible lead. That’s when I learned that she had been reported missing two weeks earlier. Other than that, I know basically nothing about her that can’t be found in her school or personal records.”

  “We speculated that Branigan is doing what he’s told because they have her to use as leverage,” Noah said. “It’s quite possible that she’s also following orders in order to keep her father safe. There is no record of her coming into the country voluntarily, so I’m going to stick with that theory until we know different.” He turned to Swaggart. “You guys get back on finding us a way into the compound. I need something soon.”

  * * *

  Back in the autopsy room, Doctor Emerson was preparing to begin his examination of the creature they had recovered. It was laying on the table on its back, and Jorge was standing beside it, just staring.

  “I have never seen anything like this,” he said. “This is nothing that came naturally onto the Earth.”

  “I’m afraid it did, my friend,” Emerson said. “What you see before you is nothing but a man, but the things that have been done to him… I shudder to think what might await those who did this, in the darkest corners of hell. Surely God has some fitting punishment waiting.”

  Jorge shook his head. “If that is true,” he said, “there is no punishment that could fit this crime.”

  Emerson nodded, then leaned over the creature and turned on the microphone affixed to his lapel. “Report of Doctor Eric Emerson, forensic pathologist assigned to E & E investigation into potential extraterrestrial activity, mission ID #11784-Bravo, In re the examination of what appears to be a genetically modified human being. The subject was seven feet, three inches tall and weighs approximately three hundred and twenty-seven pounds. The lower legs are elongated by nearly thirty percent, as are the fingers, while the talus, the ankle bone, is nearly sixteen inches long, getting the legs the appearance of those that belong on a bird, or perhaps a kangaroo. The chest and abdomen have lengthened by approximately six inches, and seemed to be narrower than would be expected on a man of such height. The neck is roughly seven inches long, supporting a skull that is taller and thinner than normal. The chin is long and pointed, and the top of the skull is rounded like the large end of an egg. There is virtually no nose, but the nostrils open directly from the front of the face. The mouth is smaller than one would expect for a skull of such size, but the eyes—the eyes are almond shaped and slanted, measuring nearly two inches from corner to corner.” He paused for a second and looked over the length of the creature. “The skin is a bluish gray in color, and feels soft to the touch. The creature possesses male genitalia, but they are very small, almost atrophied. The penis itself measures approximately one and a half inches long, and the testicles are each smaller than the common marble.”

  He picked up a scalpel and laid it at the creature’s breastbone, then applied pressure. He paused for a second, then leaned into it again, but was unable to penetrate the skin.

  “The skin is incredibly dense, and cannot be penetrated with a normal scalpel.” He turned off the microphone and looked at Jorge. “Hand me the mopec saw, please,” he said. Jorge passed it over and Emerson turned it on, laying the circular blade against the creature’s chest.

  The saw cut through the skin rather quickly, and Emerson repeated until he had the standard autopsy Y-cut, then tugged at the flaps of skin to pull them back. The viscera underneath was stronger than normal, and he ended up having to use the saw again to cut it free, but finally the rib cage and breastbone were exposed. Using the saw to cut through the rib bones, he cut the entire chest plate bone structure away and lifted it aside.

  Two hours later, unable to punct
ure the skin with a needle to stitch the cuts back together, he finally gave up and used an adhesive. Jorge was still standing beside him, his face almost aghast at what he had witnessed.

  “Jorge, would you ask Noah to come back here?” Emerson asked. Jorge nodded and hurried out of the room, returning a couple of minutes later with Noah and Marco.

  “What can you tell me, Doctor Emerson?” Noah asked. “Was that a human hybrid?”

  “I’ve sent tissues over to Renée, but I’m confident she’ll find that they are indeed human in nature, though genetically modified. Noah, this thing was an abomination. The lungs are incredibly small, but the heart is much larger than normal. All of the organs seem to be highly efficient, but the brain—Noah, the brain of this creature is much larger than it should have been. I found portions of this brain that don’t correspond to anything in humans. God only knows what its true intelligence potential was, but the amygdala experienced the greatest growth. That is the portion of the brain responsible for anger and fear, the part that is sometimes referred to as the monkey brain. It controls our reactions to stimuli, particularly those that might represent danger or threat. I suspect that this creature would see any surprise as a threat, and would react quite violently.”

  “I found that to be the case,” Noah said. “As soon as it saw me, it wanted to attack. Any idea who he might have been?”

  “No, there was no clue, but Renée may have better luck. She has the rapid DNA analysis device that the Army provided. With any luck, she may be able to find a match from the tissues I’ve given her.”

  Noah looked at him for another second, then nodded curtly and turned to leave. Marco stayed a moment.

  “Doctor Emerson? Are you okay?”

  “Good God, no,” Emerson said. “I don’t know how any of us could ever be okay after seeing that. I’m simply devastated that such a thing could exist, and more so that there are human beings willing to do this to their fellow man. I am a physician, sir, but I would happily violate my Hippocratic oath should I be able to get my hands around the throat of whoever caused this to happen. This is an abomination, and must be brought to an end.”