by Dayton Ward
“Do you think it worked?” asked Sutherland from where she walked just behind him as they made their way along the wall.
“Beats the hell out of me. I guess we’ll have to wait for the bombs to drop or something.” Of course, Tanner had no way of knowing if what they’d seen was in fact a ruse. His gut told him that was the case, but would the military figure it out in time? Surely they had protocols for verifying the legitimacy of any threat, particularly with the fate of the entire world hanging in the balance.
Wishful thinking? Let’s hope not.
They had to get out of there, Tanner knew. Not just to save their own skins, but also to alert the air force and his own superiors about what they’d found. The evidence of alien activity contained here would keep military and government officials busy for weeks if not months, as they worked to determine the extent of whatever larger threat might exist. None of that would happen, though, unless he and Sutherland found a way out of this place.
Movement behind them made Tanner turn back the way they’d come, and he caught sight of a fleeting figure in the darkness. He almost fired the alien weapon but stopped himself, not wanting to give away his position without a clear target. Where the hell was this lady?
“Tanner!”
The warning came an instant before he saw the figure—the woman—stepping into view. He brought the gun up and tried to aim it just as white light exploded nearby. The beam shot across the barn and slammed into the wall just behind Sutherland, punching a hole through the wooden slats. Sutherland started moving away from the wall and toward him as he returned fire, but the other woman ducked to one side as he pressed the weapon’s firing stud. When she reappeared, she was less than fifteen feet away, and Tanner realized he and Sutherland were trapped without cover.
Shit.
The woman fired her weapon and Sutherland screamed as white hot energy surged over her body. In seconds she was gone, the alien death ray reducing her to a swirling cloud of ash.
“No!”
Without aiming, Tanner fired his own weapon toward the woman. The gun’s ray sliced through the barns walls and shattered its support columns. Overhead, the roof groaned in protest as it slumped downward, but Tanner ignored it. All he saw was the woman, who evaded his every shot even as he laid down a pattern of fire, sweeping from right to left. The woman was nowhere to be seen and Tanner started toward the door, keeping up the suppressive fire as he moved. Then his eyes fell on the collection of fuel drums sitting in the barn’s far corner.
Yeah.
Backing toward the door, Tanner aimed the alien gun at the fuel drums and fired. He was turning to sprint for cover when the shock wave from the explosion picked him up and tossed him through the open doorway and across the open ground. He hit hard on the packed dirt outside the barn, the impact jarring the weapon from his hands and forcing the air from his lungs. He rolled onto his side, wincing in pain from the large chunk of wood sticking out of his stomach.
Not good.
A wave of nausea swept over him and he let his body go limp, lying prone on his back and looking up at the dark sky. He coughed, trying to figure out if he tasted blood, when he saw something flying up and away into the night. It was all Tanner had time to register before another, larger explosion obliterated the already burning barn. He flinched at that blast, but it seemed so far away now. Why was that?
Shock. You’re going into shock.
Something bright and orange glowed somewhere to his right. He turned his head, looking at the piles of burning wood and metal, which were all that remained of the barn. From this distance he should have been able to feel the fire’s warmth, but instead cold enveloped his body.
Then the fire and light faded, along with everything else.
Chapter 12
Tanner awoke, more than a little surprised to discover that he wasn’t dead.
“There he is,” said a voice from somewhere.
He occupied a semi-reclined position in the bed, and Tanner lifted his head from his pillow, looking for the voice’s source. That was a mistake, he concluded, as pain bubbled up behind his eyes, and he let his head fall back. His head hurt. His stomach hurt. His entire body hurt. If he could grow a third leg or an extra arm, he was sure those would hurt, too.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” the voice added, and Tanner recognized it as belonging to Wayne Cushman.
Clearing his throat, Tanner asked, “Where am I?”
“Hawaii. Where do you think you are?” Before Tanner could answer, Cushman added, “You were in pretty bad shape. Took the docs a bit to pull that piece of firewood out of your gut and get you patched up. You’re damned lucky the fire trucks found you when they did.”
“So we’re all not dead, I take it.”
“Should we be?”
Tanner turned his head so that he could see the senior agent sitting in a wooden chair in the hospital room’s corner. “I honestly don’t know.”
“From what I was told last night,” said Cushman, “the air force had some excitement, but it’s all blown over now. There are people down at the Jameson farm sifting through what’s left of the barn, and I’m told they found some military equipment and a few other things.”
“Who’s doing the sifting?”
Cushman offered a knowing smile. “Somebody’s already getting back on their game.” He pushed himself out of the chair and moved toward the bed, and Tanner noted that the other man’s gray slacks, white shirt, and blue blazer looked as though they’d been slept in. “The military was all over the place last night, and so far as I know they’re still poking around down there. They found you lying on the ground and immediately called us. So, feel like telling me what the hell happened?”
“Yeah. I want to tell you everything,” replied Tanner. His throat was dry. “I need to say it out loud to somebody, anyway, just to figure out if I’m crazy.”
“Really? We’re going to leave that up for discussion?”
After Cushman got him some water to drink, it took Tanner several moments to recount what he and Sutherland had found at the Jameson farm. He paused several times, particularly when he got to the part about aliens and death rays and Sutherland being killed. For his part, Cushman seemed to take it all in stride, offering no comment while Tanner laid out the entire story.
“She was right, Wayne,” Tanner said. “About all of it. If not for her, we would never have known about what they were doing until it was too late.” He paused, drawing a breath. “And she saved my life. She deserves better than to be dismissed as some kind of nutcase. We owe her more than that. I owe her more than that.”
To Tanner’s surprise, Cushman nodded. “I know.” He waved toward the door. “In fact, there’s someone who’s been waiting all night to talk to you about that very thing. You up for it?”
“Sure.” Tanner considered his dreary, antiseptic surroundings. “My calendar looks pretty clear.”
Crossing to the door, Cushman opened it and stuck his head into the corridor. A moment later he stepped to one side, pulling the door with him to admit a man and a woman, each dressed in dark suits—or, in the woman’s case, a pantsuit without the narrow black tie worn by her companion—that made his usual FBI attire seem fashionable by comparison. Giving them the usual cop once-over, Tanner noted that there seemed to be nothing at all remarkable about them. Everything from their wardrobes to the woman’s hairstyle to the black bag slung over her left shoulder seemed crafted with the intent of leaving no lasting impression. The only odd thing was that the man didn’t remove his dark sunglasses. A cigarette dangled between the first two fingers of his left hand.
“Good morning, Agent Tanner,” said the woman, while her companion stood behind her and remained silent. “I’m happy to see you doing better.” She held up a black leather wallet with a badge and an official-looking identification. “
My name is Captain Jennifer Maddox, and I’m with a special branch of the air force.”
Frowning, Tanner asked, “Special? As in top secret, hush-hush, and all that, which is why you’re wearing civilian clothes instead of a uniform?”
“Something very much like that, yes.” Maddox returned the wallet to her handbag. “Though we have access to military assets, we’re very self-contained and operate independently, and the group I represent is compartmentalized even within this branch.”
Tanner reached up to rub the bridge of his nose. “That’s a lot of syllables, Captain, but I figure it all means something to somebody higher up in the food chain. What can I do for you?”
“First, I want to thank you on behalf of the air force, the secretary of defense, and the president of the United States.” Maddox stepped closer to the bed. “You may not have realized it at the time, but you probably stopped World War Three.”
It took a moment for that to sink in. “The radar,” Tanner finally said. “It was real? What they did, I mean?”
Maddox replied, “The attack wasn’t real, but we were meant to think it was. The plan, so far as we can tell, was to trick us into launching a counteroffensive against a perceived Russian nuclear missile strike. Had we launched our own missiles, the Russians would have retaliated, and within a few hours it wouldn’t really have mattered who started it.” She drew a breath. “When you disabled the operation taking place in that barn, the tracks we were following vanished, and it bought President Johnson enough time to confirm with Brezhnev that it was all a hoax, and to calm things down.”
“The hotline,” said Cushman. “Nice to see we learned something from Cuba.”
Nodding, Maddox said, “Still, we were very close; even closer than we were back in ’62.”
The very thought sent a chill down Tanner’s spine. He, along with the rest of the world, had held his breath during those tense days in October 1962. It had seemed that the Americans and Russians were dragging the entire world to the brink of annihilation as they sparred over the deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, well within striking distance of the United States mainland. The crisis had been calmed and disaster averted, and many lessons were learned that day, including the need for the leaders of both powers to have an open, direct line of communication with each other in order to facilitate faster discussion and resolution of disagreements.
“I’m no expert,” said Tanner, “but from what I saw of their setup, they went to an awful lot of trouble to make all that happen. It doesn’t make any sense that they’d abandon that plan after one failure.”
“Very astute thinking, Mr. Tanner,” replied Maddox, “and you’re not alone in that thought. There’s a group of people who are sure the Martians will try again.”
“Martians?” Tanner scowled. It was enough to make him try sitting up in the bed again, and this time he ignored the pain his gut and head. “That’s what . . . those things . . . are?”
Maddox reached out, grabbing his arm and helping him pull himself upright. “That’s what they are. They’ve been visiting and spying on us for years. They’re sizing us up, Mr. Tanner. Sooner or later, they’re coming for us, and right now there’s not a whole hell of a lot we can do to stop them.”
“Why all the sneaking around?” asked Tanner. “Why not just come down here with their flying saucers and their death rays or whatever the hell they’ve got, and blow us all to hell?”
“They’d rather not expend the resources.” It was Cushman who answered, earning him another appreciative nod from Maddox.
“Special Agent Cushman is correct,” she said. “From what we’ve learned, they would’ve been quite content to stir up trouble here so that we fight each other. We get pissed at the Russians, they get pissed at us, we all launch our nukes, and the Martians come in and claim whatever’s left over. It’s our belief they want the planet’s resources. We’re nothing to them, except in their way, but why waste their own firepower killing three billion people when they can get us to kill each other?”
She paused, glancing at her companion, and Tanner noted that the man had not moved since entering the room. He had finished his first cigarette and was in the process of lighting another.
Who the hell is this guy?
“That doesn’t mean they’re going to just sit around and wait for us to do their work for them,” continued Maddox. “They’re coming at us from several different directions, infiltrating our governments, stealing our secrets, maybe even staging weapons and other technology ahead of the main invasion force. It’s definitely a long-range, covert strategy. We’ve code named this campaign ‘the Armageddon Directive,’ and it’s my job to make sure their plan never succeeds.”
The Armageddon Directive.
It certainly sounded ominous, Tanner mused, and full of the sort of intrigue and paranoia that fueled the dreams of conspiracy theorists and other nut jobs.
Like Danny Sutherland?
Tanner mentally smacked himself. Danielle Sutherland had tried to warn anyone who would listen about this threat, and she had died trying to learn the truth about the Martians. It was both tragic and infuriating that she would never know how right she’d been all along.
“Okay,” he said, his voice carrying more edge than he’d intended. “Why are you telling me this?”
Shifting her gaze between Cushman and Tanner, Maddox replied, “I want you both to join my team. Like I said, we’re a special group, and working with a lot of latitude and resources. We’ve been given a singular mission: hunt down any Martians who might be operating on Earth, and figure out a way to defend ourselves in the event these bastards decide to launch an all-out invasion.”
Tanner frowned. “You said you were with the air force. Is this their show?”
“No,” said Maddox. “We’re not tied to any government or military agency—not officially, anyway. We’re a small group, working in the shadows. We have people in just the right departments and offices throughout the government to help us with some of the logistics here and there, but for the most part—” She shook her head. “We’re on our own. For now, anyway.”
“Seriously?” Tanner exchanged glances with Cushman. “You knew about this?”
“Not until last night,” replied his boss. “I didn’t believe it, either, until they showed me the bodies.”
“One from the warehouse,” said Maddox, “and the other from the barn. They’re both Martians. The one you killed at the warehouse was disguised as a human. We were able to confirm that from the blood on your combat knife. Nice thinking, protecting that evidence, by the way. Anyway, these Martian agents can alter their appearances with the help of special drugs and other techniques, and that’s what makes them especially dangerous. They can be anyone, anywhere.”
That made Tanner sit up even straighter. “The woman at the barn. She was a Martian too?”
Maddox crossed her arms. “His Martian name is Beloss Bel. He’s an exceptionally dangerous spy, and we’re pretty sure he’s been here for a while. While he operates under a number of different human identities, a favorite of his seems to be an attractive blonde woman, which he uses to get close to high-ranking government and military officials and steal classified information. Francis Crane, the commanding general of Richards-Gebaur, was one of his most recent targets.”
“It’s a he?” This was starting to make Tanner’s headache worse. “I think I need a drink.”
“We’ll take care of that as soon as you get out of here,” said Cushman. “I figure I owe you at least a few.”
Tanner eyed his supervisor. “So, you’re not firing me?”
“Not today, anyway.”
Maddox said, “We recruited Agent Cushman last night. Until now, we’ve tried to keep a low profile, but after what you and Miss Sutherland found, it’s time to take a more aggressive approach. We need to be read
y the next time they try to pull something like this.”
Looking to Cushman, Tanner asked, “Recruited?”
The senior agent nodded. “Yeah. I’m in. I’d feel better if I had a partner.”
How could Tanner say no? Charlie Bryant was dead because of these bastards, and justice still needed to be secured for Danielle Sutherland. How many more people out there had sounded this alarm, only to be cast aside? They deserved validation, too.
“Okay, I’m in,” he said. The pain in his stomach seemed to subside. “What I don’t understand is why you’re having to run around in secret like this. If you know about the Martian agents, why aren’t you taking this to the government?”
“Because we’re not prepared to deal with this threat,” replied Maddox. “Earth, I mean. If the Martians invaded today, it’d be a global slaughter. If we go to the government now, or the truth otherwise became public, it’d do nothing but cause a panic. Instead, we’ve got people in key positions, working behind the scenes and developing ways to help us get ready. Then there are people like me, and you. Our job is to hunt down any Martians who are already here. If we can get our hands on enough of their technology, that’ll definitely help the war effort.”
Tanner, still absorbing everything he’d heard, shook his head. “How exactly are we supposed to accomplish all of this? They’ve got spaceships and ray guns. What’ve we got?”
“You’ve got me.”
The reply came not from Maddox but from her companion, uttering his first words since entering the room. Having finished his cigarette, he proceeded to light another before moving to stand next to Maddox, his expression unreadable.
“Yeah?” Cushman eyed the other man. “And who are you?”
For the first time, the man smiled. With his free hand, he removed his sunglasses, and Tanner found himself looking into wide, white eyes with bright red pupils.
