Strike Force

by Dale Brown

  “I know, I know, General—I was on his doctorate panel,” Ann said. “The guy’s brilliant. But the proposal never went anywhere. I was in the Senate committee overseeing funding for military space programs, and I pushed several budget cycles for the money to reactivate it. It never happened.”

  “Skybolt went on life support funding under HAWC’s advanced technology research budget,” Patrick explained. “Officially the money went toward refueling and servicing the Armstrong Space Station to keep it aloft, and to use the station’s systems as a risk reducer for the SpaceBased Radar and SpaceBased Infrared System programs. Unofficially, we funneled some money over to Skybolt. The money runs out at the end of this fiscal year. After that, there’s enough money for a maximum of three Shuttle flights over the following twelve months to strip whatever useful stuff we could off the station before it re-enters the atmosphere.”

  “They don’t want to spend a few measly million a year to save a space station worth more than three billion?” Ann asked. “The characters in Congress can be real jerks sometimes—I should know. So Raydon’s been to Silver Tower?”

  “A few times. That’s classified.”

  “That’s good,” Ann said. “And he’s an experienced Shuttle jockey, so he can handle the docking chores. So we got me and Raydon to turn the station on—all we need is for young Hunter Noble to give us a ride up there.”

  STURGEON RIVER STATE FOREST,

  NEAR VERMILLION LAKE, MINNESOTA

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON

  “Okay, cadets, listen up,” Civil Air Patrol Captain Ed Harlow, commander of the Grand Rapids Composite Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol, said. He and a group of thirty-six cadets surrounding him were in a grassy clearing in the middle of a large forest in the Sturgeon River State Forest, about fifty miles northeast of Grand Rapids in northeast Minnesota. The cadets, wearing camouflaged fatigues, baseball caps, and combat boots, ranged in age from fourteen to seventeen years old. “This is our final exercise for this encampment, but it’s also the most important, so pay attention.

  “We’ve concentrated on a lot of the search, rescue, first aid, communications, and critical support functions of the Civil Air Patrol mission. But all of our procedures deal with using our equipment, technology, and skills to help others in distress. But what if we get in trouble while on a mission? What if you become lost or crash-land while on a flight? How do we even understand what it’s like to be in a search, survival, or escape-and-evasion situation? Our final exercise will be to see how well you can help yourself if you become involved in a difficult situation.

  “This exercise is a confidence-builder rather than a procedural evolution,” the CAP commander went on. “Your objective is simple: collect as many different objective markers as you can in four hours and return your entire flight to the starting point in the center of the exercise area. The flight with the most markers collected in the shortest time wins.

  “We’re located in a wooded area of about ten square kilometers, bordered by Vermillion Lake to the north and east, the state park highway to the east, and Highway Twenty-four to the south and west—if you come across any of these major landmarks, you’ll know which way to travel to get re-oriented and headed back to the objective. We’ll drive you to starting points on different sections of the exercise area and set you loose at the same time. The markers are located in camouflaged metal ammo boxes marked on your maps. When you find the can, each flight takes one marker only from the can and leaves the rest.

  “To make it more interesting, you have the capability to capture another flight’s markers,” the CAP commander went on. “You are all wearing laser targets and carrying eye-safe laser guns. If you come across another flight, and if you can hit the flight leader before he hits you, you capture his markers. The guns have a range of only thirty feet or less, so you need to be fairly close to your target to hit him. You can return to a previously discovered can to get another marker, but remember, only one marker from each can per flight.” He answered a few questions, made sure his four flights of nine cadets each were equipped and ready, then split them up into vans that took them to their starting points.

  The exercise proceeded throughout the afternoon. The terrain was flat and rolling, with numerous hiking trails, outhouses, signs, and other landmarks to make the test challenging without letting anyone get lost. Harlow’s staff acted as referees and would assist any cadet flights who were having real difficulty, but most of these cadets, all from northern Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, were experienced outdoors enthusiasts, and Harlow didn’t expect any emergencies.

  In fact, the flights were so evenly matched that as they approached the four-hour cutoff time, three of the four flights were approaching the objective point in the middle of the exercise area all at once. Harlow had set out each flight’s guidon in the clearing, and as the cadets got closer they started running through the woods toward their flag. “Once you enter the clearing, no more laser guns,” Harlow announced over a bullhorn as he saw the three groups converging on the objective point. “C’mon in and let’s count ’em up.”

  This was strange, he thought as the three groups ran in—the fourth flight, Delta Flight, nicknamed “Red Dogs,” was nowhere to be seen. All of the flights were evenly matched; Delta Flight was perhaps slightly less “outdoorsy” and more intellectual than the others, but this was rather surprising—with only a few minutes left to go, the Red Dogs still were not anywhere in sight. Usually they were able to keep up with whatever else the rest of the cadet squadron did, but it didn’t appear to be the case today. Harlow raised his walkie-talkie and clicked the mike button: “Anyone seen Delta?” he asked. The answers all came back negative.

  Well, Harlow thought, perhaps this will take a little steam out of Delta Flight’s fiery commander, fifteen-year-old Cadet Lieutenant Katelyn VanWie. She had this annoying air about her. She was cocky but wasn’t a braggard; she was smart but not a know-it-all; quiet but not shy; self-confident but not pretentious. It was as if she knew she was better than everyone else but simply chose not to prove it. She had infused the other eight members of Delta Flight with the same assuredness to the point that the team took on the same personality as its commander, which didn’t exactly endear them to the rest of the squadron.

  To be honest, Harlow thought, Katelyn wasn’t an annoying kid—but she was different. He could sense it. It was as if she had some sort of magnetic attraction that drew people to her side somehow. That kind of personality turned some people off. Moreover, she knew she was different, that she had this power, but she chose not to exercise it for some reason—even though she did employ it. Frequently.

  Harlow scanned the treeline once more, shook his head in confusion, then keyed the mike button: “Let’s bring the rest of the flight in, then we’ll organize a search,” he radioed. “We’ll concentrate our search on Route Twenty-four and the forest service road. If they somehow crossed the service road without realizing it, they could be outside the park in…”

  At that moment he heard a cacophony of high-pitched buzzers. The cadets heading in from the forest slapped their hands over the laser sensors, trying to block the incoming laser beams, but it was too late—in seconds, every flight leaders’ target alarm was sounding. “Hey, I said, no more lasers!” he shouted. “Who is doing that?”

  As he watched, members of Delta Flight appeared out of nowhere—out of trees, from behind bushes, even from underground. They tapped the flight commanders and held out their hands. Each flight commander looked up at Harlow imploringly, asking if this was real. He could do nothing but shrug his shoulders, and the flight commanders handed over their marker buttons. The members of Delta Flight marched in triumphantly with their prizes. “Red Dog Delta reporting as directed, sir,” the flight’s senior noncommissioned cadet officer, Cadet Master Sergeant Doug Lenz, said, saluting. He held out his hand. “Here’s our tally, sir.”

  “Every member of your flight needs to be present by the expiration time t
o claim the win, Cadet Master Sergeant,” Harlow said perturbedly, confused as to what exactly just happened here. He looked at his watch. “Lieutenant VanWie has fifteen seconds to report here before I’ll…”

  “All of Red Dog Delta reporting as directed, sir,” came a girl’s voice. Harlow spun—and saw Katelyn VanWie standing directly behind him, saluting, appearing as if out of nowhere. She was shorter than most of her other teammates, thin, with a darker complexion than most Scandinavian-bred Minnesotans had. Her red hair was tucked up under her cap, and her hazel eyes flashed, giving away her glee in shocking her squadron commander…

  …and his eyes were drawn to the hand raised to the brim of her cap. He knew he shouldn’t be distracted by it, knew it really wasn’t a big deal. But every time he saw it, it was as if it was for the first time. Could that be part of the pervasive uneasiness he always felt around her?

  Harlow had to blink and take a deep breath to rinse away the surprise before returning the salute. “Jesus, VanWie, how long have you been there?”

  “On this particular spot, sir? About two hours.”

  “Two hours? What is going on here?” he snapped.

  “Red Dog Delta reporting as ordered, sir,” Katelyn said, dropping her hand. “We claim the victory.”

  “Where have you been? No one has seen you in the exercise area all afternoon!”

  “We didn’t go to the exercise area, sir,” Katelyn admitted.

  “What? Where did you go then?”

  “We came directly here, sir.”

  “Here? Where’s ‘here?’”

  “Here, to the objective point, sir.”

  “Did you not understand the instructions, VanWie?”

  “I believe we understood the directions perfectly, sir.”

  “But you didn’t go to the exercise area? How many markers did you collect?”

  Katelyn quickly counted the markers her NCOIC had given her. “We collected twenty-five, sir.”

  “No, I mean, how many did you collect?” He could see that Katelyn was about to give the same answer, so he interjected: “I mean, how many ammo boxes did your flight find out of the ten on the course?”

  “We didn’t find any of them, sir.”

  “None of them?”

  “No, sir.” Katelyn started to look confused—Harlow couldn’t tell if it was playacting or genuine.

  “Then how can you claim to be the winner if you didn’t find any of the markers you set out to find?”

  “We didn’t set out to find anything, sir.”

  “You said that. But the purpose of the exercise was to use land navigation skills to locate the ammo cans, retrieve as many markers as possible from those cans, then return here as quickly as possible before the end of the exercise period. Am I correct, Lieutenant?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No?”

  “You said the objective was to rendezvous at the objective point with as many markers as possible before the end of the exercise,” Katelyn said. “The flight with the most markers wins. We have twenty-five markers. I believe that makes us the winner, sir.”

  It was finally starting to dawn on Harlow what was going on, and he felt the anger rising in his temples. “You mean to tell me that you didn’t actually go out to find markers, but you took the four hours allotted for this exercise to set up an ambush on your fellow cadets to take their markers after they returned here to the rendezvous point?”

  “Sir, the objective was to collect the markers and…”

  “The purpose of the exercise, Lieutenant, was for you and your flight members to practice land navigation techniques and participate in a friendly competition on the last day of our encampment, not to ambush your fellow squadron members!”

  Katelyn snapped to attention. “Perhaps I did misunderstand the objectives of the exercise, sir,” she said. “I apologize.” She waited a few moments; then, just as Harlow thought the argument was over, asked, “Pardon me, sir, but…who won the exercise, if Red Dog Delta flight did not?”

  He had been wondering the very same thing—and he didn’t have an answer. “This was not about ‘winning’ anything, Lieutenant—it’s about practicing land navigation, evasion, and teamwork techniques, plus having a little fun in the outdoors on the last day of our encampment.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was a wishy-washy answer—he knew it, she knew it, and he knew that she knew that he knew it too. He looked at the eager, exhausted, and happy faces of Red Dog Delta around him, and then at the disappointed, angry, and confused faces of the other squadron members, and realized he had better just leave it at that. “Good job, all of you,” he said. He checked his watch. “The Minnesota National Guard will be at the parking lot in about two hours to fly us out in the Chinook. Police the area and get some water. We’ll march back in fifteen minutes.” Harlow stepped away from the cadets, feeling the disappointment of VanWie’s flight on the back of his neck.

  “Sergeant, organize a site cleanup detail,” Katelyn said to Doug Lenz, her cadet NCOIC. She picked out two landmarks to the north and west of the center of the clearing they were in. “We’ll take this quadrant and police the area out toward the treeline and one hundred meters beyond. Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll join you.”

  “But what about the exercise?” Lenz asked. “Do we get any recognition for winning the exercise?”

  “You heard the captain—the prize was the successful completion of the exercise,” she replied. She stepped closer to him, smiled, and added, “Besides, we all know who won.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  “Now get going. Be ready to move out in one minute.” Lenz saluted and trotted away.

  “I suppose you think you’re clever, don’t you, VanWie?” one of the other flight leaders, a seventeen-year-old boy named Johansson, who looked closer to twenty-seven, said. The other flight leaders had been talking together and had turned defensively toward Katelyn as she approached them. “You knew damned well that we were supposed to find those markers ourselves, not ambush one another and steal theirs!”

  “Sure I knew it,” Katelyn said, “but the captain made it clear what the objective was, and I made my plan based on the objectives of the exercise, not what I assumed we were supposed to do.”

  “You didn’t win, and you just showed everyone again what a little red-headed weirdo you are.”

  “I’m going to take this quadrant of the clearing for cleanup,” Katelyn said, ignoring the remark. Her cadet NCOIC trotted up to her and told her the flight was ready to move out. “You guys decide what areas you’re going to take.”

  “Why don’t you just take you and your ET hands out into the woods and stay there, freak,” Johansson said.

  Katelyn ignored the remark—she was accustomed to it—but her friend and cadet NCOIC, Doug Lenz, didn’t. Before she could stop him, Lenz—who wasn’t that much bigger than Katelyn, even though he was a year older—shouted, “Shut up, asshole!” then charged at the other flight leader. He got one good punch in to the side of the flight leader’s chest, and Lenz’s head butted the other boy’s chin and opened a slight cut, but that was all.

  Johansson pushed Lenz’s head down and aside, then wiped blood from his chin. “Motherfucker…!” he muttered, then punched Lenz once, hard, on the back of his neck, and the younger boy went down. The flight leader turned, knelt on Lenz’s back, and raised a fist. “I’m gonna waste you, you piece of…!”

  Suddenly he felt a boot strike his chest, and he stumbled back off the young cadet. Unhurt but confused, he looked around to find where the blow had come from…and he found Katelyn VanWie standing between him and Lenz, jumping slightly from foot to foot, her hands raised defensively…her hands, those hands, showing just four fingers on each hand. “Hey!” he shouted, getting to his feet. “You butt out, freak!”

  “It’s over,” Katelyn said. “I apologize for Doug, and it won’t happen again.”

  “I’m gonna kick his ass!” Johansson said. He took one of the
other flight leaders by the arm and pushed him toward Katelyn. “Keep the freak away from me while I teach this a-hole not to mess with Bravo Flight.”

  It was obvious the second cadet, a younger kid named Swanson, didn’t want to have anything to do with this, but he put up his hands and stood in front of Katelyn, determined to keep her away from his flight leader until the squadron commander came back. As he approached Katelyn, though, all he could look at was those hands and the weirdness of what looked like a finger in place of her thumbs…

  …and he didn’t see her left leg sweep out and trip him. Swanson landed hard on his back and decided he was going to stay right there—he’d had enough of the girl with the ET fingers already…

  “What is going on over here?” Captain Harlow thundered from several yards away.

  “Group, ten-hut!” Katelyn shouted. She snapped to attention but kept her eyes on the flight leader, making sure he didn’t make a move toward her.

  “I said, what’s going on here?” Harlow shouted again. “VanWie, did I see you just trip that cadet?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why?”

  “Cadets Swanson and Johansson wanted a demonstration of muay thai, sir.”

  “‘Muay thai?’ What’s that?”

  “Kickboxing, sir.”

  “Is that true, Swanson?”

  The second cadet had just gotten to his feet, trying to get to attention while rubbing the back of his head. “Uh, I…yes, sir…I mean…”

  “Johansson, what’s going on here?” Harlow demanded. He noticed the dust and dirt on Lenz’s uniform and the cut on Johansson’s chin—the only person here not dirty or bloody was VanWie, by far the smallest kid in this group. “Well?”

  “We’re just…playing around, sir,” Johansson said. “We were demoing some martial arts moves.”

  “I thought I told you guys to police this area and get ready to move out,” Harlow said. “I only see Delta out there. Now get busy.” The cadets saluted and ran off. “VanWie.” Katelyn trotted back and stood at attention. “Okay, Lieutenant, tell me what really happened.”