Invasion: California

by Vaughn Heppner

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  “They’re from Japan,” she declared. “He’s moving them. He is very important, Papa, and he loves me.”

  Daniel blinked heavy eyelids. He knew this Colonel Peng. His office in the city had dealings with Chinese supply, in charge of traffic control. Daniel worked in the Mexican government, what had become the puppet régime for the foreigners. Once he had believed in the SNP. Now his wife was dead and his daughter slept with the enemy. She had become little more than a whore. Even though he loved her dearly, he recognized the truth. Because he made too little money and drank too much, he couldn’t give her what she needed and had to take what she gave.

  “Drink your whiskey,” she said, interpreting his silence the wrong way.

  “Donna,” he whispered.

  She ran from the living room. Seconds later, the front door slammed as she fled the apartment.

  Daniel stared at the glass with the brown-colored whiskey. It was Japanese, too, the alcohol. What his daughter had just told him…if it was true…

  He grabbed the bottle from the nightstand and as carefully as possible, he poured the whiskey in his glass back where it belonged. A few drops spilled onto the carpet, but that couldn’t be helped. He corked the bottle, set it on the nightstand and went to the fridge. He drew two bottled waters, opening the first and beginning to guzzle. Tomorrow, he needed to be as sober as possible.

  Afterward and in a daze, he went to bed. Sleep proved difficult. Five times, he woke up, shuffled to the bathroom and dribbled into the toilet. He hated being old.

  In the morning he ate a tasteless burrito, shaved his face with a shaking hand and chose his cleanest uniform.

  He pedaled through the city, listening to his knees crackle and pop. He had to ride slowly; otherwise, the pain became too intense. Thousands pedaled with him, hordes on two wheels. At a thirty-story glass tower, Daniel parked his bike in an outer rack, locking it with a chain.

  He took an elevator to the twelfth floor. There he worked diligently in his office, only later finding an excuse to head to the fourteenth floor and speak there with Pedro, who was in charge of scheduled routes in the countryside. Pedro was an old friend from elementary school, so many decades ago.

  In a storeroom with a single bulb in the ceiling they played checkers. The ivory pieces had an unusual heft to them and were always cool to the touch. The design etched onto the backs showed the ancient Castilian crown from the old country. The ivory pieces came from Daniel’s grandfather, inherited at his death. Pedro and Daniel usually played around this time.

  After moving a piece, Daniel looked up and told Pedro, “I had forgotten, my friend, that you introduced me to my wife.”

  “That was long ago,” Pedro said as he eyed the board.

  “Hmm. It is our anniversary today.” That was a lie, but Pedro would never know. “Since my wife is gone, I wanted to celebrate with someone. Would you share this with me?” Daniel asked. He produced the whiskey bottle, which was three-fifths full.

  Pedro looked up and his eyes widened. He grinned. He had a silver-colored crown among his yellowed teeth. Pedro was an alcoholic, although he’d never admitted that to anyone, certainly not to himself. “Just a quick sip, si?” Pedro asked.

  “Yes, a quick one,” Daniel agreed.

  A half hour later, the bottle was empty, Pedro having consumed most of it.

  “Oh,” Daniel said, as he shelved the game in its hiding spot. “I just remembered. Senor Franco is planning a surprise inspection today.”

  “You lie!” Pedro said.

  “I’m only wish it were so.”

  “He’ll smell the whiskey on me.”

  “I’m sorry, my friend,” Daniel said. “If Franco is coming, I must leave for an early lunch.”

  “Yes, yes, an excellent idea,” Pedro said.

  The two men departed from the storeroom. Pedro hurried to his office down the hall. Daniel went in the other direction, turned the corner and waited. After ten minutes had passed, Daniel headed for Pedro’s office. Upon his entrance the secretary looked up, an old lady whose son, Senor Franco, ran the department.

  “I forgot my keys in Pedro’s office,” Daniel said. He meant the keys to his bike-chain and apartment.

  Mrs. Franco indicated that he could go in and retrieve his keys.

  Daniel entered the office, leaving the door ajar so she wouldn’t become suspicious. Despite her inquisitive nature, old Mrs. Franco was absent-minded and would likely forget about him soon. She was playing a computer game and she often spent hours at it, building her internet farm.

  After a short wait and taking a deep breath, Daniel sat down at Pedro’s desk. The swivel chair creaked and Daniel paused, but Mrs. Franco did not come in to investigate.

  As he’d hoped, Pedro’s computer was still on. Daniel pressed a key and the screen awoke. For the next twenty minutes, Daniel examined scheduled route shutdowns. Pedro was in charge of them, meaning certain routes and roads were closed to civilian and sometimes to Mexican Home Army usage. During those times the Chinese Army used the roads and routes, often for “secret” convoys.

  Daniel searched, and he discovered a route from the main port at Baja Bay to the First Front on the Californian-Mexican border. The route used a code word. From experience, Daniel knew the Chinese often used the main article being ferried as the code. This route word or code was “Blue Swan.”

  Daniel’s heart thudded. According to Donna, this was a secret weapon, one critical to smashing the vaunted American defenses on the border.

  With shaking hands, Daniel took out a pencil and paper, copying the route information. Several minutes later, he shut off the computer, said good-bye to Mrs. Franco and headed to his office one floor down.

  He would compose a carefully worded report and leave it at a letter-drop near Santa Anna Park. His control was a Swiss national in the ambassador’s office. Daniel believed the man was actually a CIA case officer. Whoever he was, the man paid well for good information, which helped Daniel buy cheap whiskey. More importantly, with this he hoped to hurt the Chinese, to strike back at the foreigners who had corrupted his beautiful young daughter.

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Anna Chen rubbed her eyes. They were gritty from too much reading and too little sleep. She sat in front of an e-reader in a cubicle in the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the analysts working the night shift.

  She had come down a long way in the world since President Clark’s reelection defeat after the Alaskan War seven long years ago. From working on the President’s staff Anna had fallen into unemployment. This was due to her membership in a new undesirable caste in America: those of half-Chinese ancestry. It had been a rude shock.

  Years ago, she had written the tome on the Chinese: Socialist-National China. It had been a bestseller, had won her a professorship at Harvard and then a spot on President Clark’s staff. None of that mattered now. She was half-Chinese. In besieged America that made her suspect. It didn’t help that Tanaka—her former bodyguard/lover—had died defending her in Obama Park. Tanaka had killed three muggers, shooting two in the head and breaking the neck of the third. The fourth had stepped out from behind a bush, shot Tanaka in the back and stolen Anna’s purse.

  Sitting in her CIA cubicle, Anna rubbed her eyes harder, blinked several times and concentrated on the reports. A lamp provided light and several computer scrolls waited for her use. If there was anything in a report she didn’t understand, Anna looked it up.

  Her life had spiraled from one tragedy to another. After her mother’s death, Anna had begun a blog on Chinese affairs, winning syndication on National News Internet (NNI). The mass Chinese cyber-assault three years ago in 2036 had ended that. The nuclear terrorist attack in Silicon Valley had ripened the latent Chinese racism into ugly fruit indeed. The only bright spot had been the election of President Sims. They said he was superstitious, in a baseball sort of way. Keep everything the same, if you could, when you won the big game. She
had been in the government during the Alaskan War that Sims had won. Therefore, after gaining an interview with him, Anna had received employment with the CIA, as a lower grade analyst. It was better than unemployment and she was good at analyzing and interpreting data.

  Anna sipped tea and leaned back so her chair squealed. She reached up and undid her hair. It was long and dark. She opened a drawer and took out a brush, letting the bristles run through the long strands.

  She was seven years older since the Alaskan War. Yet she was still slender, keeping fit primarily because of her sparse diet and her pedal-power plan. In her apartment, she supplemented the energy requirement—provided by a nearby coal station—through stationary cycling. She also practiced the martial arts techniques Tanaka had taught her, which kept her amazingly limber.

  She missed Tanaka. It was a hole in her heart. Would there ever be a man like him again for her?

  Her brushing hand froze. Anna sat up, removed the brush from her hair and set it on the desk with a soft clunk. She concentrated on the report.

  Clicking the e-reader, going back two pages, she noticed it came from Mexico City. From the beginning now, Anna read the report slowly. Was this right? The Chinese were moving a convoy to the front near the Californian border. The convoy carried Blue Swan.

  “Blue Swan,” Anna whispered. “Where have I seen that before?”

  She continued reading and wondered how this person code-named “Spartacus” had known “Blue Swan” was important to the Chinese. There was something missing in the report. She could feel it. It was rated “Yellow.” That meant it was considered third class and only slightly reliable.

  Anna swiveled her chair and used a computer scroll’s touch screen. America was a land of great contrasts these days. Coal fed much of the nation’s energy needs and yet some places used the latest technology. Anna put in Spartacus’ name and read other reports written by him.

  Why is this one coded “yellow?” Spartacus had proven reliable in the past.

  Anna typed in “Blue Swan,” watching the words build on the screen. After typing the “n,” a little yellow note-symbol appeared in the left-hand corner. She moved the cursor over the “note” and clicked. Hmm, it was a reference saying “Blue Swan” concerned Chinese R&D. Where had the note originated?

  She attempted to find out. Seconds later, her screen flashed red and the words appeared, sorry, classification exceeds user clearance level.

  Anna sat back, picked up her teacup, sipped and grimaced. The tea had become cool. She liked hers hot.

  So, what do I do? Let this go or make waves trying to find out what this “Blue Swan” is?

  Anna sat staring at the e-reader. Slowly, she clicked back to the beginning of the report. She wished Spartacus had been more honest and put in exactly how he’d come to suspect Blue Swan.

  How important is this?

  If it proved to be insignificant, eyes might raise and suspicions become whetted. Why did the half-Chinese woman seek higher clearance? Her position in the CIA was tenuous at best.

  “I’m an American,” Anna whispered to herself. “This is my country.” Each person had to fight his or her personal battles in life. Some had physical ailments, others fought psychological problems and some had to walk uphill against racism or ageism. She had found it better to do and struggle than to accept these limitations.

  Standing, blowing out her checks, Anna picked up the e-reader and headed for her boss’s office. She passed others in their cubicles, reading reports, typing or eating a snack. A few looked up. Two nodded a greeting.

  Anna reached the door, hesitated and let her delicate knuckles rap against wood.

  “Enter,” a man said. Ed Johnson was the chief analyst of the nightshift. He had gray hair and wore a white shirt and tie, one of the old guard. She had heard others say before that Johnson didn’t like her.

  “Yes?” Johnson asked, scowling up at her.

  Anna hesitated.

  Johnson’s scowl grew, and he eyed her up and down.

  Anna felt soiled by it, remembering how Tanaka’s killer had looked her up and down that night in the park. With the smoking gun in his hand—the one that had shot Tanaka in the back—the murderer had stepped up and snatched her purse. His eyes had lingered hungrily. She’d seen his desire to rape. It had frozen her. For months afterward, she had stood before a full-length mirror at home, practicing what she should have done.

  At his desk, Ed Johnson scowled, eyeing her as if she was a piece of meat to devour. She wasn’t going to accept it.

  With a force that surprised her, Anna slapped the e-reader onto Johnson’s desk. “I’d like you to read this,” she said.

  His gray eyebrows lifted. Maybe he hadn’t expected such forcefulness. He took the e-reader and went through the report. When he was done, he set the e-reader down, turned it to face her and shoved it across the desk to her.

  “Did you see the reporter’s grade?” he asked.

  “Third, yes,” she said. Anna explained about the “Blue Swan” reference to Chinese R&D and that its classification was higher than her clearance.

  “What am I supposed to do about it?” Johnson asked.

  “Give me higher clearance so I can properly analyze the data.”

  He folded his thick fingers together, staring at her. He shook his head. “I can’t do that, Ms. Chen.”

  “Then phone someone who can.”

  “Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?”

  “I’m trying to do what’s best for my country. I think this could be important. Obviously, Spartacus left out a critical piece of information. It’s the R&D information that I need to see in order to make a better-informed judgment on what he is telling us. This is time-sensitive data.”

  Johnson’s scowl intensified, and he nodded now. “You’re gambling. You have the guts to back up your gamble, to barge in here and try to face me down. Okay, little girl, I call and raise your stakes. You want to burn yourself, go right ahead.”

  Ed Johnson, Chief CIA Analyst of the nightshift, put a call through to his superior. He told him the pertinent information, nodded, saying “yes, sir,” and handed the phone to Anna.

  She found herself talking to the Director himself. Anna stared at Johnson. He grinned like a shark.

  “I’m hope this is important,” the Director said. “Sleep is a precious commodity, and Johnson’s call has just stolen some of mine.”

  “Yes, sir,” Anna said. She explained the situation once again.

  “Anna Chen,” the Director said, “the Anna Chen on Clark’s staff, the one who tried to warn him about the Alaskan Invasion?”

  “Yes, sir,” Anna said.

  “I’ve read your file. You have good instincts. Hand the phone back to Johnson.”

  Anna did.

  Johnson listened, and his eyebrows thundered. “Yes, sir,” he said, hanging up afterward.

  “Round one goes to you, Ms. Chen,” Johnson said. “You have provisional clearance until I say otherwise. I’m adding the condition that you can only look at it here with me.”

  Soon, in a chair to the side, Anna read the Chinese R&D report. Johnson informed her it came from the Yuan Ring, a spy high in the Chinese military. The informant didn’t know what “Blue Swan” was specifically, but it was supposed to be a weapon of special significance against American defenses.

  Anna looked up. “Sir, I think you’d better listen to what I have to say.”

  “Is that so?” Johnson asked.

  “If you don’t think so,” she said, “call up the Director again.”

  Johnson decided to listen to Anna. Afterward, he told her, “Are you sure you want to raise the stakes again?”

  “Aren’t you?” she countered.

  Johnson shrugged, and he called the Director. The Director listened to Anna and then asked to speak to Johnson. Shortly thereafter, two security officers escorted Anna to a waiting car. They drove to Special Operations Command (SOCOM) so Anna could speak to General Ochoa.
All American commandos fell under his orders. That included Green Berets, Rangers, Delta, SEALs, Air Commandos, Psyops, and Marine, Force Recon and Civil Affairs and special aviation units.

  Rain struck the windshield of Anna’s car. The water distorted the street lights shining into the darkened vehicle as the tires hissed over wet pavement. One of the security officials drove, allowing Anna to read more about the Yuan Spy Ring in Beijing. After speaking with the Director a second time, she’d gained a higher security clearance.

  The clock was ticking on Spartacus’ data and the Director wanted to make a stab at finding out what made “Blue Swan” so important.

  BAJA PENINSULA, MEXICO

  In the swelter of an unusually hot Mexican night, Paul Kavanagh’s shoulders ached because of his heavy rucksack. His thighs burned as he stormed up a stony hill. With the ruck, special weapons, extra ammo, canteens and equipment, he lugged over eighty-seven pounds. It had been a grueling march since the insertion, sixteen miles of rough terrain and a Chinese patrol they’d had to avoid.

  I’m getting too old for this.

  The stars shone like hot gems, made more prominent by the moon’s absence. The air was raw going down Paul’s throat and sweat kept trickling under his night vision goggles. He lifted the device and wiped his stinging eyes.

  Because of that, Paul tripped over a hidden rock. He stumbled, his equipment clattering, and he went to one knee at the top of the hill. He sucked air and shifted his rucksack, trying to ease the straps. Putting the goggles back over his eyes, he studied the situation. The twisting ribbon of blacktop down there was empty. The road snaked past boulders and a parallel ditch.

  Had the Chinese convoy already come and gone?

  This felt too much like Hawaii three years ago, which had been a series of disasters and dead commandos. Paul had the dubious honor of being one of the last Americans to slip away from the islands. He’d fled while under Chinese machine gun fire, tracers slapping the water as he gunned their inflatable over an incoming wave. Lieutenant Diggs had pitched overboard, leaving only two of them to reach the waiting submarine three miles offshore.