Grant lay back on his bed. Right away, his eyes grew heavy and sleep washed over him. In seconds, he was snoring loud enough to be head over the generators running outside of the medical tent.
Chapter 56
Peterson Air Force Base
Colorado Springs, Colorado
David Grant took a seat in Project Gauntlet’s briefing room, and waited for his friends to arrive. It had been six weeks since the incident in Alaska. Since then, he and the rest of team had written a comprehensive report on their activities at Robertson’s Mine, which was subsequently presented in absolute secrecy to the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This was followed by some more-than-welcome extended leave for most of the organization. Grant knew it was time to return to work when he could no longer take his father’s incessant demands that he quit the army and return home. He loved his father, but he just wasn’t ready to settle down. Grant left home in the middle of the night and went hiking in the Rockies for a few days by himself, before coming back to Colorado.
Maclean strolled into the room, with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. He sat down and handed his friend a cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” said Grant.
“I knew you’d want one,” said Maclean. “The stuff they have here is simply godawful.”
“So, how was leave?”
“Not too bad. I got to see my kid sister and her husband for a few days, before I took off and went surfing with some my mates from the regiment. After that, I spent a week in Bali, lying under the sun, drinking far too much alcohol, and enjoying my life. Almost being killed a few times gives you a new perspective on things.”
“That it does. Did your friends ask you any questions about what happened in Iraq?”
“Yeah, but I told them I was knocked unconscious the second after the whole thing started, and didn’t see anything. After that, they stopped asking.”
“My parents never asked me a single question. I think they were just happy to see me alive.”
“Speaking of that, how was your leave?”
“My dad and I clashed over the family business from the day I arrived there until the day I left.”
“Families. What are you going to do? You don’t get to choose them, you just have to learn to live with them.”
Elena, Hayes, and Colonel Andrews walked in and joined them at the table.
The two soldiers respectfully stood.
“I hope everyone had a good time on leave,” said Andrews, waving for everyone to take a seat.
“It was okay,” said Maclean. “But it could have been longer.”
“I’ll see what I can do next time around.”
Hayes set a cup of tea on the table in front of him. “During my time off, I was given special access to the British Ministry of Defense’s top-secret World War Two archives. The whole time we were in Alaska, there was a nagging thought in the back of my mind that I couldn’t shake. I was sure I’d once skimmed over a file a number of years back which alluded to an incident in Norway in 1942 that bore some striking similarities to the situation we recently found ourselves in.”
“And did you rediscover this file?” asked Elena.
“Yes, I did. This time, I read the report from cover to cover. In the winter of 1942, a team of Allied commandos parachuted into Norway to investigate what was reported to be an advanced German fighter which had crashed in the mountains. Captain Shaw, the team leader, wrote in his report that the alleged German plane was unlike any he had ever seen in his life. In He even drew a picture of it for his report. I wasn’t allowed to bring the file with me, but the image he drew was a large ball, not a plane.”
“I’m surprised he wasn’t locked up after submitting his report,” said Grant.
“Wait, it gets better…or worse, depending on your point of view. Before long, people started to disappear. Shaw and his team were hunted down and eventually captured by the Germans, who took them as prisoners to a weather station. It’s here that the report comes the closest to our experiences. Shaw described creatures that were not of this world, attacking and killing people. He even claimed that the person behind it all was able to change his appearance at will.”
“Good God, that sounds too much like what happened to us in Alaska,” said Elena. “Does he say what happened to this person?”
“Yes, he was killed by an Allied soldier during a fight. Shaw claimed that the body vanished before his eyes.”
“Makes you wonder how may more reports there are like this sitting in top-secret vaults around the world, collecting dust?” said Grant.
“Makes my time off gardening seem like a bit of a waste,” said Elena.
“Nonsense; you, of all people, needed to take it easy,” said Andrews. “You were in the hospital far longer than Captain Grant was. The last thing you needed to do was crawl around some musty basement reading seventy-year-old documents.”
“Colonel, how did your recent trip to Washington go?” asked Grant.
“Productive, to say the least. The report you people wrote caused quite a stir among the President’s National Security Council.”
“I sure as hell hope it did,” said Grant. “People needlessly died in Alaska because of the actions of an extraterrestrial madman.”
“Because of what happened up there, the Secretary of Defense was ordered by the President to reexamine our mandate and our budget. The unofficial word I was given before leaving to fly home was that we will no longer be tasked with finding and retrieving downed UAVs and planes. That was handed lock, stock, and barrel to the DIA. Our primary focus from now on will be on the investigation of UFOs and other unexplainable incidents.”
“I take it that means we’re going to get some new offices?” said Hayes.
“Most definitely. I just don’t know where, yet.”
“Sir, does this mean that you no longer require Sergeant Maclean and me?” said Grant.
“On the contrary, Captain,” said Andrews. “This organization needs the two of you more now than the first day you arrived.”
Maclean nudged Grant in the arm. “Hey, what are you doing? I’m being paid my normal salary, plus a foreign-duty allowance for living here in the States, plus your army’s highest levels of hazard and danger pay. I sure as hell didn’t join the army for the money, but let’s not screw around with a good thing.”
“Sorry, I thought you’d want to head back home to Australia and resume your duties in the SAS.”
“I do miss my mates, but in my mind, my old job doesn’t seem as relevant as it once did. We’re facing a new and deadly challenge that has to be met head-on. Let’s not forget some of the people trying to kill us to get their hands on alien technology were from our own planet. Besides, I still want to meet the man who financed the attack on our camp, so I can tell him goodbye to his face.”
“When you put it that way, a man would be a fool not to want to stick around.”
“So, I take it that I can count on your continued service with Gauntlet?” said Andrews.
Grant looked over at his friend and saw him nod. “Sure, Colonel, why not?”
“Okay, I’m glad to hear that. General McLeod has asked me to submit my new proposed organizational structure to him in a week’s time. So, that will be the focus of all our efforts for the next three days. We need to build a team that is capable of both scientific and military responses to any situation it finds itself facing.”
“I sure as hell hope your defense budget is bottomless,” said Maclean. “I don’t want to go anywhere without an armored brigade backing me up from now on.”
“I think we can scrub the first suggestion put forward as being financially unobtainable,” said Andrews, as he picked up a marker and walked to a blank whiteboard hanging on the wall. “Come on, people, you’ve seen what we’re lacking, let’s do some spitballing and come up with something we and our bosses can all live with.”
Maclean leaned over and whispered to his friend, “I was bein
g serious.”
Grant smiled. “I know you were, and I bet Elena and Jeremy were thinking precisely the same thing, too. Unfortunately, we need to be pragmatic. Let’s ask for a Ranger battalion on standby, and see what that gets us.”
“Come on, people, you have to have something on your minds you’d like to contribute?” said Andrews, looking at Hayes and Elena.
“I kind of like the Sergeant’s suggestion,” said Hayes. “After watching an apex predatory bird from the past kill and eat a man, there isn’t enough firepower on the planet that will ever make me feel safe again.”
Andrews shook his head and took a seat. “Please, people, we need to be realistic.”
Grant peered over at the clock on the wall. It was just past nine-thirty in the morning. He groaned. It was going to be a long three days.
Chapter 57
Robertson’s Mine
Alaska
Tracey Tibeluk unlocked the door to her apartment, flicked on a light, and walked inside. She was tired after a long day of driving around one of the new police officers the town had just hired to replace Bill Scott and Sean McCartney. All she wanted to do was crawl into a nice, hot bath, and lay there under a blanket of bubbles while she closed her eyes and relaxed. Her roommate, a nurse currently working nights, had picked up their mail and left it in a neat pile on the kitchen table. Tibeluk dug through the mail, tossing all of their junk mail into the recycling bin, until she found a small parcel addressed to her. She looked for a return address, but saw that there was none.
How odd, she thought to herself. Tibeluk carefully opened the parcel and looked inside. Wrapped in some tissue paper was a golden pin, with a kangaroo holding an Australian flag on the end of it. She took out the pin and held it up to the light. Tibeluk was puzzled. She couldn’t think of anyone she knew who could be on holiday in Australia at the moment. She was about to put it back in its box, when she thought of a man she had been seeing on and off in her dreams for the past month. No matter how hard she tried, she could never remember the man’s face or his name when she awoke.
Tibeluk smiled and decided to stick the pin on a board next to the fridge. For reasons she would never understand, every time she looked at the pin she would feel safe and less alone in the world.
– THE END –
Fallen Star (Project Gauntlet Book 1) Page 27
