The team’s quarters were in a small dormitory once used to accommodate visiting family members of wounded soldiers who required long periods of recuperation. It was nearby the hospital and well maintained. This made it well suited for use by the team as they prepared for the para-gene activation procedure. Carter had returned there with Monica after spending several hours touring the capitol city.
They had spent the night in Monica’s quarters, and Carter had brought a change of clothes and a shaving kit from his room. The rooms the team had been provided were spartan but comfortable, private, and equipped with individual showers. The bed was actually too small for two people, but could accommodate a couple if they were on intimate terms.
“Time to get moving,” he said, opening his eyes to find hers half closed.
“Five more minutes like this,” she pleaded sleepily.
“Five more minutes like this and I’ll decide that we shouldn’t go through the procedure and run away with you,” he retorted, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.
She slowly rose to her knees and embraced him from behind; he could feel her bare skin against his. “Where would we run to?” she asked, kissing him lightly on his ear.
“How about the New Zealand Corporate Exclusion Zone,” Carter replied, sipping water from a glass that had been on the night stand. “We could get security jobs for one of the corporations and live the easy life,” he said, turning his head and placing a playful kiss on the end of her nose.
“I’m for it; let’s go,” she said.
Carter stood. “Let’s see if the Atkinson and his people can kill us before we desert.”
He picked up a small duffle bag from under the bed. “I’m hitting the shower. You need to get motivated, Captain,” he told her, pointing at her in mock admonition.
Carter had just stepped into the stream of warm water when he heard Monica enter the bathroom. He watched her shadow on the shower-curtain as she moved it to the side and stepped under the shower’s stream with him. Almost desperately, he hugged her to him, fitting as much her skin against him as he could. They held each other without speaking for some time.
“When I signed up for the project I had nothing to lose,” he told her, brushing his lips against her wet hair. “Now that I’ve agreed to be used as a lab-rat, I find you. It’s insane.”
Monica looked into his eyes. “Shut up,” she ordered, silencing him with a kiss. “We’ll talk later.”
[][][]
Carter and Winters arrived at the team house’s commons area at zero five twenty-five, and had waited for less than a minute when Williams emerged from his room and joined them. As they had been instructed, they had dressed in sweat pants and t-shirts as though were going to engage in physical training. They would exchange the P.T. gear for hospital gowns in order to undergo the activation procedure.
McNamara was next to arrive. He was followed closely by the rest of the team. No one spoke as they assembled. They stood in a circle in the sparsely furnished room; words seeming to be not only unnecessary, but inadequate for the emotion of the moment. Carter stood beside the door and opened it. With Williams in the lead the team left the team house one by one; Carter touching each of them on the shoulder as they passed him. Exiting the building himself, he saw General Hicks standing a short distance away at the hospital’s rear entrance.
The day was clear and sunny. Dew was still clinging to the grass and trees, and a breeze carried away most of the hated odor emanated by hospital. At that moment one could forget that the most destructive war in human history was being waged. Nature never really cared what mankind did, Carter thought; it just went on and on while it waited for mankind to die out or kill itself off. If nature had any sentience it had to be amused by what he and his team was about to do. Evolution, it seemed, wasn’t fast enough of the United States Department of Defense; it need to be prodded into more immediate action.
Carter saluted Hicks as they neared each other. “Good morning General,” he said.
Hicks returned his salute, and seemed to be having difficulty speaking. “Good morning Red Team.”
“The team is ready, General.” Carter said.
“Damn it,” Hicks hissed, “I should have something say. I just can’t find the words.”
Carter touched the general’s shoulder; allowing himself a rare breach of military protocol. “Sir, everything that needs to be said, has been said.”
Breath caught in Hick’s throat; his eyes were alight with unexpressed emotion. He embraced Cater suddenly. “You’d better live through this, Doug, I can’t lose another son,” he said, his voice choked and strained. He stepped back after a moment; regaining his composure. Unable to find words himself, Carter just smiled slightly at the general.
“Let’s get this over with,” Hicks said turning to face the team. “I’m damn proud of all of you.”
The medical staff was silent as the team entered; words again being inadequate to the occasion. After years of war they were used to death and dying. But the certainty that two of the ten people they had been caring for over the last month would be dead in a few days that made the moment incredibly profound. The team members knew the odds. They knew that two of them would certainly die, and they were undergoing the process anyway. Worse, for the medical staff at least, all of whom were dedicated to saving lives; they would be partly responsible for those deaths. Atkinson seemed impassive as the team entered the lab; having long ago suppressed any sympathy he had for the subjects.
“If you each would follow the orderlies,” Atkinson said. “They will take you to your rooms and where the nurses will prepare you for the procedure.
“No,” Carter said; “Put us all in the same room.”
Atkinson bristled. “That is not our plan, Major,” Atkinson protested.
Carter squared his shoulders and fixed his eyes on Atkinson’s. “Change your plans,” he said flatly.
“That would take hours,” Atkinson protested.
“Let it take hours,” Carter insisted. “We’ve been training as a team, we’ll be fighting as a team, and we will go through this procedure as a team.” Williams and the rest of Red Team gathered more closely behind Carter.
“You’re not going to win this one, Doctor,” Hicks said, smiling at Carter.
“Very well,” Atkinson relented. “You may wait in the lounge while we make arrangements.”
“Well Doctor, we wanted a team. It looks like we’ve got one,” Hicks observed.
Atkinson left without a word.
[][][]
Hours later, the team was summoned to a large ward that had been hastily prepared for them. They had exchanged their sweat suits for hospital gowns and were each restrained in a bed. Each bed was covered a tube-like canopy which housed an array of sensors and each team member had several intravenous needles inserted into their arms. Computer monitors by the beds displayed vital signs of all of the team members as well as thermal and sono-graphic images of their bodies.
Carter remembered going to sleep as the sedatives took effect. After that there was only pain. He had awaked screaming. Pain was his universe. Pain was everything. Pain blotted out reason and self awareness. Agony defined his existence. Suffering seemed to be eternal.
He felt his body changing. A heavy soreness invaded his every muscle; it was akin to the aching stiffness he had felt after overtraining with free weights, but magnified a million times in intensity. At the same time, the muscles burned as though they had been ripped apart by some violent trauma. For the first time in his life Carter was truly aware of his bones. He could feel the becoming denser even as his muscles produced wave after wave of searing torment. It was like years upon years of adolescent growing pains were concentrated into just a few agonizing hours.
His skull seemed to be on the verge of exploding. His vision was filled with light of scorching brilliance even through his tightly clenched eyelids. The sound of his own screaming was painfully loud and was mixed with the screams of his team
and a deluge of thousands of other sounds that lanced through his brain. His skin itched, the material of his clothing was irritating and abrasive, and he could feel every contour of the mattress beneath him. He was assaulted by an overlapping mass of scents that he could differentiate but not identify. The only thought that penetrated the pain was the team. Somehow he could hear their screams over his own. He would endure because they were enduring. He would not fail them.
[][][]
The agony slowly lessened. The pain ebbed to a dull ache that permeated his every bone and muscle; Carter has never been so deathly weary. The world was uncomfortably bright and there was a thunderous clashing of sounds and odors. He was awake. He was alive. Focusing through the brightness he tried to see his team. To his left he saw that Williams had survived, but he couldn’t see the rest of his team.
A voice tore through the rest of roaring clutter of sounds. “You made it Doug.” It was the voice of General Hicks.
Carter fought to force words from a throat that was raw from screaming. “Too loud,” he rasped.
“As I thought,” Atkinson voice said from the other side the bed. “Our scans suggested that the major has acquired heightened sensory capabilities. These should help.” Atkinson slipped a pair of sound dampening head phones over his ears.
“Better?” Hicks asked.
Carter nodded and blinked several times. “Bright,” he said.
Hicks put a pair of dark glasses over his eyes. “We have that covered too. “
“There is nothing we can do about the intense odors that you must be experiencing, I’m afraid,” Atkinson said. “In time you will become accustomed to your increased sensitivity,” Atkinson said. “I think you will find that a new world has opened in front of you.”
“Water?” Carter asked.
Hicks held a small glass of ice water so Carter could drink using a straw. Water closed his eyes and reveled in the feeling of the water soothing his burning throat. “Who did we lose?” he asked.
“Cole and Adamski,” Hicks answered. “Cole almost made it, though.”
“Yes,” Atkinson agreed. “Corporal Cole had a slight congenital defect in one blood vessel in his brain. It burst under the strain of the activation process, before that, he was doing very well. We will screen the new subjects for such anomalies. I truly believed he would have survived had it not been for that one defect.”
“When do we get out of here, Sir?” Carter asked Hicks.
“You’ll be in here for a few days, and then we have to evaluate your new abilities. After that we give two weeks to train tactically. We have some new toys for you all to get used to as well.”
“New toys, Sir?” Carter inquired.
“We’ve developed a group of small arms that were specifically designed to be used by paranormals,” Hicks replied. “There is an assault rifle that can pierce the front armor of an armored personnel carrier at a hundred meters, a handgun that hits like a twelve gauge shotgun, a sub-machine gun that will stop a charging elephant, and hand grenades that have electronic fuses. You can set it for the standard six second delay, an air-burst, and proximity detonation so you can use like a landmine. We even had some edged weapons made up of a new super alloy that’s twenty times stronger than steel. They are all too heavy, or have too much recoil for normal troops but, for Red Team, they’ll work just fine.”
“Let’s get to work.” Carter said.
Chapter One
USS Phantom
4, April 2104
Carter wanted to see the sun again. Eighteen days on a submerged submarine seemed to have made time crawl by. Having crossed the Atlantic while avoiding enemy naval patrols had necessarily prolonged the voyage. Carter and his team had passed the time exercising, reviewing mission plans, and maintaining equipment but there were still too many idle hours; too much time to think. The waiting would be over soon. The Phantom was now nearing the French coast.
Carter had always been used to getting to battle quickly. On this mission there had been too much time to think about how important and potentially symbolic that the current mission could be and how it could go wrong. Waiting was the curse of the soldier; it was the precursor to doubt.
There was a knock at the hatch of the cabin he was sharing with Williams. “Enter,” Carter said.
McNamara entered with Williams close behind. McNamara was carrying a bottle of whiskey and a stack of three paper cups.
“Good night to you Lieutenant Colonel Carter,” McNamara said, with an exaggerated a salute.
Carter returned the salute. “What’s up Mac?”
“Boss, it is now one 2401 Zulu, on April, 4th 2104. Red Team went fully operational and took to the field five years ago today. That, Sir, calls for a drink,” McNamara said.
“Mac, you know that booze is contraband on a submarine,” Carter said in a less than heartfelt admonishment.
“Yes Sir, but that rule was made by officers; NCOs know better than such foolishness.” McNamara said, placing the bottle on a small writing desk that was bolted to cabin’s bulkhead.
“Besides, we all know that any paranormal could chug a whole bottle of this stuff all by himself and not even get a buzz.”
He poured generous amounts of the whiskey in each cup and handed one each to Carter and Williams. “Boss, if you would do the honors?”
Carter raised his cup. “To Red Team; the living and the dead,” he toasted.
“Red Team,” William’s and McNamara said in unison and then drank.
“How is our team?” Carter asked.
“Edgy,” McNamara said. “They can’t wait to get out this metal tube and get the job done. They’re a good bunch, but I still miss the old gang; even Muller.”
“Times change, Mac,” Carter said.
“Indeed,” Williams agreed. “For a brief time, five years ago, Red Team was unique. Now, with the formation of the Paranormal Army Corps, the new FIRE Teams are preeminent.”
“Well,” Carter said, “even if Red Team is disbanded, we’re all still unique. But, with the forming of the Paranormal Army Corps, paranormal operations are a lot more organized. There is a full division of paranormal infantry now, plus an airborne brigade, a commando battalion, and an aviation regiment. We just can’t play things as loose as Red, White and Blue Teams did. The PAC is effectively fifth armed service and separate from the rest of the military. Counting the FNF personnel, the PAC has over twelve thousand members.”
“Sure,” McNamara concurred, “I understand the reorganization; normal troops just slow paranormals down. But Red Team was together for almost three years. We had good mojo.”
“I miss the old gang too, but they were needed elsewhere to lead other teams,” Carter said. “If it weren’t for Pope’s grudge, Brandon would have his own team.”
“That is a small matter, Douglas,” Williams said.
“The hell it is,” Carter retorted. “Team Delta should have been yours, but Pope called his Daddy and had you side tracked. I won’t forget or forgive that Brandon; even if you will.”
“I am quite content to be your second, and Monica is a good leader and an excellent officer,” Williams countered.
“Yes, she is good. But you’re better; more experienced.” Carter said.
“If she heard you say that, you might be sleeping on the couch when you get home," McNamara observed.
“Just because she’s my wife doesn’t mean I can’t be honest about her abilities. She deserves to lead a team, but so does Brandon. She would be the first to agree with me,” Carter said. “She tried to turn the Team Delta command down, but General Hicks overruled her.”
“Do not misunderstand me, I loathe Colonel Pope, but dwelling on that loathing accomplishes nothing,” Williams said with his normal, somewhat annoying calmness. “I will kill him one day. But, until that day, I shall endeavor not to think about him more than is necessary.”
“They offered me my own team too,” McNamara said. “But I would have had to let them make me an of
ficer; I just couldn’t let that happen. The general didn’t argue with me about not taking a command. I don’t know rather to be grateful or insulted.”
“I think he knows that some soldiers are just meant to be sergeants,” Carter assured him.
The electronic chime of the Phantom’s intercom interrupted the conversation. Carter activated the system. “Carter,” he answered.
“Ensign Garver, Sir,” the voice from the speaker said. “The captain asked me to inform you that we are now two hours from launch point.”
“Understood,” Carter responded. He turned to Williams and McNamara. “Have the team assembled in the ward room for a final briefing in five minutes. Then I want to run equipment and weapons checks one more time. Make sure to go over our insertion and extraction plans with Chief Donner.”
The two men left to go about their tasks. Carter, alone for the moment, retrieved a photograph of his wife from a duffle bag and allowed himself to look at it for several moments. She had once said that they would be each other’s reason for living. She had been right. She was his strength and his hope. He hoped he was giving as much to her. “Wish me luck,” he said to the photograph.
[][][]
When Carter entered the Phantom’s ward room the team was seated around the small conference table. He smiled when he saw that each had a paper cup filled with whiskey in front of them. McNamara stood and handed a freshly filled cup to Carter.
“Found another reason to celebrate have we?” Carter asked.
“Boss, aside from this being Red Teams operational anniversary, tonight will be another milestone in history,” McNamara announced. “Tonight FIRE Team Alpha will be the first United States and allied military unit to conduct offensive, wartime operations in Western Europe since World War Two. You’re damn right that calls for a drink.”
The Fate Of Nations: F.I.R.E. Team Alpha: Book One Page 5
