Delta Green: Strange Authorities

by John Scott Tynes

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I don’t. Just hope I’ve guessed right.”

  Agent Tonya spoke up. “Wait a second. What’s going to happen to the neo-tissue when it leaves? Can it survive outside the body?”

  Alphonse nodded. “Yes. It’ll coalesce into a single organism and look for a new host. We’ve got MOPP NBC suits for everyone in the OR and we’ll seal the exits to the room. That’ll slow it down.”

  “Then what?” she asked.

  “Leave that to me,” Alphonse said.

  The medical team needed a couple hours to prepare everything for the treatment. Cell N showed up and joined Cell T and Alphonse in another exam room to talk. Agent Nancy looked haggard. There were dark patches under her eyes and she was jittery. Vic guessed she hadn’t slept since the raid. At least she got cleaned up, Vic thought.

  Nancy spoke up first. “I’ve been processing the debriefings I made at OUTLOOK. There’s still a lot for me to go over, but I’ve got some preliminary information about the seven security guards from the hallway.”

  Abe looked uncomfortable. “How does that work? I mean, do you know all their memories or something? Are they—are they conscious inside you? Do you talk to them?”

  Nancy shook her head. “It’s not like that. It’s like . . . well, I have to sort of visualize it. I’ve got this room in my head, full of boxes. First I have to put each . . . each debriefing into its own box. I have to compartmentalize them.”

  “There’s that word again,” Vic said.

  “No, I really do. I’ve never debriefed this many before. It’s been really difficult.” She paused. “Anyway, those seven guards didn’t really work for Wackenhut. You were right about that, Alphonse.”

  “Let me take a guess,” Alphonse said. “They worked for the National Reconnaissance Office, didn’t they?”

  Nancy nodded. “Yeah. Something called SECTION DELTA.”

  “What’s the National Reconnaissance Office?” Vic asked.

  “They run our nation’s spy satellites,” Alphonse responded. “It’s a very quiet outfit. For a while now, the people behind OUTLOOK have hidden DELTA within the NRO’s black budget. They don’t really have anything to do with satellites. It’s just a convenient place to put some very nasty people.” He smiled slightly. “Your tax dollars at work.”

  “Nasty is the word,” Nancy said. “They’re killers. Ex-military, mostly. Evidently OUTLOOK is some sort of plum assignment for them. Fat pay, easy work. Until we showed up, at least.”

  “So do they know what’s going on?” Abe said. “Do they know about those things working on Susan?”

  “Three of them did,” replied Nancy. “They’ve stood guard at some meetings with those things, though they always wait outside so they didn’t really know what went on. I also know who their boss is at DELTA. It’s the guy you shot in Tennessee, Terry. Word got around that you’re quite the hellion.”

  Stephanie smiled and leaned forward in her seat. “What’s his name?”

  “Adolph Lepus,” Alphonse interjected. “He’s the head of security for these people.”

  “You knew his name!” Stephanie blurted. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I can guess,” Vic said, her voice sardonic. “Compartmentalization.”

  Alphonse smiled. “Very good, agent. Yes, that’s why, Terry. In our line of work, information is not just a commodity, it’s a hazardous substance. Knowledge of someone like Lepus is the equivalent of plutonium. You start handing it around willy-nilly and people hurt themselves with it. Continue, Nancy.”

  “Well, the good news is that David Nells is still alive. He’s in Puerto Rico. OUTLOOK has a second facility down there, on Vieques Island. The bad news is that it’s OUTLOOK’s HQ. It’s incredibly secure, way more than the Bountin office was.”

  “How did the guards know about this?” Alphonse asked.

  “Only one did. He’d been working at Vieques for eight months, but he screwed up and they kicked him back to Maryland just last week. He was still at HQ when they brought David in.”

  “How’d he screw up?” said Vic.

  Nancy flinched and was silent. She shut her eyes tightly and clenched her jaw, then gripped her knees with her small hands. A sob escaped her throat and tears ran down her face.

  The other agents looked at each other warily. Nick and Nolan shifted in their seats. “Nancy?” Alphonse said quietly.

  Finally she opened her eyes and wiped her face. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . you ask a question, and a box opens, and that man’s thoughts come spilling out. Sometimes it’s hard, it’s really hard.” She took a deep breath. “He raped and murdered a twelve-year-old girl. She was the daughter of a cleaning woman at the facility. He’d been hitting on her, she told him to get lost, so he got back at her through . . . through her daughter.”

  “Damn,” Abe muttered.

  “What happened?” Vic asked.

  Nancy wiped her face again, but her voice grew diamond-hard. “They, well, they covered it up of course. Lepus flew in. He was pissed. He had the woman killed, her husband killed, her son killed. They cut up the bodies and threw them in the incinerator. They punished the guard by sending him to Maryland for six weeks. Where, I’m happy to say, I tore his black heart out so fast he got to fucking watch.”

  Nobody spoke. From the next room came the faint sounds of beeping machines and the medical team talking. Nick and Nolan exchanged inscrutable looks.

  “You can’t understand,” Nancy started again, voice quavering, fresh tears running down her pale cheeks. “Those men, those DELTA agents. I mean, I know this sounds pretty funny coming from me, but they weren’t human. Not in the ways that count. I know I . . . I may not have the best claim to humanity anymore . . . but those people, those people were monsters. And now,” she paused and began sobbing, “now they’re in here with me and they’re never going to leave!”

  Vic got up and sat down next to Nancy, putting an arm around her shoulders. Nancy hugged her and cried. Vic glared at Alphonse, who lit a cigarette.

  “Well,” he said after a few moments. “That’s that.”

  “What do you mean?” Stephanie said. “We’re going to Puerto Rico, aren’t we?”

  “No. We’ve taken this as far as we can.”

  “But David’s still alive! They’ve got him down there doing God knows what to him!”

  “I know that!” Alphonse shouted. “And we can’t do a damn thing about it. We’re going to cure Susan and then this op is over.”

  “That’s bullshit!” Vic spat, still cradling Nancy in her arms. “We can’t stop now!”

  “We stop now and that’s final!” He lowered his voice. “Right now we’re still within the rules of engagement. We’re even. We’ve pushed them as far as we can. If we hit them in Puerto Rico, they’ll hit back, and we can’t take what they’d dish out. Besides which, do you think we’re going to get another warrant? Do you think we’re going to sweet-talk another bunch of marshals to fly down there and die for us? For our petty little intrigues? We don’t have a prayer of getting into that place.”

  Stephanie was fierce. “David deserves better than this. He deserves a shot.”

  “We took that shot, agent, and we saved Susan. That’s it. We can’t continue this.”

  “We can!” she replied. “If you don’t want to help, fine, but we’re not going to stop!”

  “You will stop! This isn’t about you, agent. If you go down there and pull some cowboy nonsense, they’ll smear you across the Caribbean. But they won’t stop there. They’ll come after the rest of us. Are you going to sign the death warrant on this entire organization for the sake of one man?”

  “Do you even give a shit about David? Do you give a shit about any of us?”

  Alphonse jumped to his feet and started yelling. “David’s father and I fought side by side in the war! I was in the hospital the night David was born! I’ve watched him grow into a man I respected and admired! I recruited hi
m into Delta Green, as I did his father before him! Their blood is on my hands! But I’m not going to throw away the lives of everyone in this room and who knows how many more besides to save him! This is not about you, goddamnit, this is about all of us!”

  He took a step back and sat down again, breathing heavily. Everyone’s eyes were locked on Alphonse. When he spoke again, it was almost in a whisper, but he spoke with passion. “We’ve never come so close to the brink. Believe me. You have no idea of the magnitude of what we did yesterday. You saw those troops come pouring in. This afternoon the President of the United States addressed the nation about those good men who we deceived and delivered into the hands of our enemies for the sake of our private war. These people have the power of the entire government behind them. If they wanted to, they could kill all of us, tonight, and we couldn’t stop them. The only reason they don’t is because they’re afraid of what we know, or what they think we know. They’re afraid we’d expose them, even in death. But their fear only goes so far. If they decided that the risk of us alive outweighs the risk of us dead, they’d destroy us. It’s a simple equation. And may I remind you: as evil as these people are, as terrible as the things are that they’ve done and will surely do again, ultimately they’re small potatoes. You know that. Terry, think of Roscoe, think of Massachusetts. Tonya, Thomas, think of Baltimore, Seattle. If we’re gone, who would help those people? Who would save those lives? Who would push back this darkness? You’ve all seen it. We have to stay alive, we have to be here, because if we don’t do this work, no one will, and our children will inherit nothing but apocalypse. Please understand. This op ends not because we don’t care about David, but because we care about all the other lost souls out there who need us, too.”

  Nancy sniffed and wiped her face with a tissue. Vic stared at the floor. Abe rubbed the back of his head. Nick and Nolan watched Nancy. Stephanie closed her eyes, and when she finally broke the silence it was with a voice laden with sorrow and surrender.

  “Okay.”

  It was time for the treatment. The medical personnel and Alphonse got into their suits and sealed the room’s vents and door with plastic sheeting and duct tape. Cell T hung around the waiting room.

  Cell N went home. Nancy hadn’t spoken since her last outburst, and Nick and Nolan helped her out to the car and drove off into the night.

  After forty-five minutes the treatment kicked in, and the noises from the exam room were terrible. The beeping of the machines grew frantic, and there were shouts and the sounds of people hustling around the room. Cell T listened, pale. Someone screamed.

  Then they heard Alphonse speak, shouting at the top of his lungs in a voice that had a strange and awesome power unlike anything they’d felt since they left the womb. The words were unintelligible. They sounded like a command in some strange, alien language. The lights dimmed. A strange gust of wind blew through the clinic. On the little table Cell T was seated around, the magazines fluttered and one shot to the floor and skidded across the tile. Then the lights came back up, and there was more shouting and movement from the exam room. A few minutes later, Cell T heard a wet clattering as the medical team moved Susan into the ice tub. The machines stopped beeping as the leads on Susan pulled free. More time passed. There was a murmur of voices and then more shouting and more noise as they took Susan out and put her back onto the table. The machines began beeping again. It went on and on. Cell T sat and listened and didn’t say a word.

  Alphonse came out of the room twenty minutes later, plastic and tape ripping as he opened the door. He stepped into the waiting room and pulled the respirator off before dropping it to the floor. He slumped heavily into a chair next to Abe and picked up the bottle of bourbon that Jack had left. He unscrewed the cap and took a slug, then wiped his mouth and set the bottle down.

  “She didn’t make it.”

  Stephanie took Abe and Vic to her apartment in Georgetown. They were sick to death of motels.

  Clotho was meowing and scratching at the door as Stephanie unlocked it. She picked up the cat and hugged her as she walked in, Abe and Vic close behind. The answering machine light was flashing, and the readout showed a dozen messages waiting. Stephanie unplugged the phone and fed Clotho.

  They spent the evening talking about everything but Delta Green. Abe talked about his son and how the boy’s favorite show was Arthur. Vic spoke about her music, and her plans to put together a CD, and how beautiful Oly Park was in the spring. Stephanie mused on what she might do now, since her career with the EPA was almost certainly over. She’d always thought about doing some traveling, and had enough money in the bank to make a trip.

  They talked in circles, avoiding the things that hurt them, sticking to the shallow end of the pool of their lives lest they drown. They drank nothing but water. Around midnight Stephanie made them cheese toast, and finally they went to sleep on the living room floor, entwined together in blankets, hoping not to dream.

  Joseph Camp ordered pizza. As he ate, he thumbed through old photographs of his China days in the war. There was Andrew Nells, smiling and drinking in a Taipei nightclub. The wedding day, Andrew splendid in his uniform, Sarah radiant in her gown. Little David, a flush-faced infant in the little apartment his parents had, “Uncle Joe” holding his tiny hand and smiling.

  Joe had never made time for a family. For most of the 1950s, the Nells were his family, him playing the part of the funny and much-loved uncle that visited from time to time. Those were good days.

  The 1960s were different. Andrew died in ’64, the victim of a DG op that went horribly awry. Joe had been in charge, and he’d roped Andrew into serving as pilot. Two agents were on board the plane, there to assassinate a wealthy occultist with his fingers in all the wrong pies. Joe didn’t know what went wrong, but the c-46a went down in the ocean and was never found. At the memorial service, Sarah had taken him aside and said sternly, “Stay away from my son.”

  He tried to do just that, but he kept tabs on David all the same. David grew into a brave young man, and served in Vietnam. Joe didn’t see him in person until 1970, at the Joint Chiefs of Staff inquest into the Cambodia disaster that brought down Delta Green. David had briefly been assigned to do some translation and interrogation work for Colonel Satchel Wade a little while before Wade sent three hundred troops across the border and into a nightmare, and he was called to testify as to Wade’s activities in those final months. Joe watched him from the gallery, but didn’t introduce himself. He managed to respect Sarah’s wishes until 1984, when he desperately needed an agent in China. David was there, a military attaché secretly working for the CIA at the embassy in Beijing. He got in touch, and David was thrilled to see him—Uncle Joe was a connection to his much-loved and much-missed father, dead those twenty years. Joe told him a raft of stories about Andrew, and eventually recruited him into Delta Green. They’d remained friends ever since.

  Joe cupped his face in his hands, and a tear ran down his cheek. How many? he wondered. How many good people have I sent to their graves?

  It was going to be a hard night. Joe didn’t want to be alone. Finally he called his friend Carssandra Buie, his assistant at the FRD. They’d grown close over the years. Joe was deeply in love with her, but he refused to do anything about it. Still, he wasn’t above calling her sometimes, when the darkness seemed to stand outside his front door, a palpable presence. On the phone, Carssandra was understanding, and said she’d come over with some camomile tea. They’d talk and laugh and chase away the shadows for a while.

  Joe got up, wiped his face, and began puttering around, straightening things to get ready for company. Ten minutes later, there was a knock at his door. He brushed his hair back with his thick hands and hurried to the foyer and opened the door.

  The woman on the porch wasn’t Carssandra. She was gracefully old, with distinguished silver hair and a noble bearing. But she was crying.

  Joe looked at her for a moment, confused. Then he remembered the pictures from the good old days.
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br />   “Sarah,” he said, and then she pulled the gun from her pocket. She looked into his eyes and fresh tears ran down her face, flush with anger and sorrow.

  Joe looked back at her and took a breath.

  “God bless you,” he said quietly.

  She pulled the trigger three times, fast. Joe thought of brilliant fireworks, exploding on a Chinese New Year.

  David Foster Nells awoke on a gurney. He was in a small, hot room with bare white walls and a concrete ceiling, like a bunker. He couldn’t move—not even his eyes, except to blink. In the periphery of his vision he could make out a number of other gurneys with people lying on them in cardboard trays, motionless. There was an odor of putrefaction and bleach.

  Then there were voices. Two men had entered the room, somewhere out of sight.

  “Ah, hell! There’s a half-dozen tonight. This is gonna take hours.”

  “Well, quit bitchin’ and let’s get started. Man, they’re ripe.”

  “Which one you wanna do first?”

  “Let’s get that fat chick over there. She’s the biggest. Might as well get her outta the way first.”

  The men entered David’s field of vision. They were in their twenties, dressed in gray jumpsuits. The two made their way through the gurneys until they reached a certain one, which they wheeled away beyond where David could see. The men grunted as they pushed the gurney.

  “Get the door.”

  There was a metal clanging sound and a squeal of old hinges, and then the room blazed with heat from some unseen source. The men grunted some more.

  “All right, come on.”

  There was some more noise.

  “Okay, got it.”

  The metal clanged again and the heat dropped off.

  “Damn. Did you see how bloated she was? That shit’s gonna stink.”

  “Let’s get outta here. Conan’s on.”

  “Vaya con dios, darlin’,” one of the men called cheerily. Then both left the room.

  David lay still, paralyzed. There was a low whooshing sound coming from somewhere nearby. Then a crackle.