to the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff and in the last few years, ironically, he arrived full-circle. He now commands the title of “special military advisor” to the Pentagon and once again, he seems to be taking charge, this time on orders from the President himself.
General Parker rises from his chair in a body that has inarguably grown old, but has certainly not broken down. He remains fit and muscular for all of his seventy-five years and he can still intimidate a whole room simply by walking through the door. He begins moving around the conference table, simultaneously sizing up the situation and the men and women in the room.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” he begins, “what occurred here tonight is one of the most callous and cowardly acts I have ever seen. Make no mistake, every act of terrorism is the desperate action of cowards, of enemies who are afraid to come out of the shadows and show themselves, people who hide from the very fight that they are trying to stir up. They strike at the innocent because it is not their way to be involved in a so-called ‘fair fight.’ The innocent are easy targets, ducks in a shooting gallery.”
General Parker has the full attention of the room now, with all eyes glued on him. He is like a preacher in the pulpit whose voice begins to rise with each new word, each new condemnation. It is as if you expect one of his listeners to rise up and cry out, “Praise Jesus!”
But they do not. They remain still, motionless, giving General Parker the respect he expects and, indeed, deserves.
Parker stalks around the large, oval table and points around the room, looking each person in the eyes.
“I want a promise from everyone here today. I should not have to ask it, but I will. I need a promise from each and every person in this room that they will not stop, they will not give up, until we have caught these despicable human beings and brought them to justice. Only then will this reprehensible act be avenged, and the dead will be able to rest in peace.”
He pauses, looks around the silent room, and receives solemn nods from each and every individual. Not a word is said but Parker sees it in their eyes. He nods as well.
He sits down in his chair and looks at the faces around the table.
“Good,” he says confidently, “now let's get started.”
FIVE
Jonathan Kaley is pissed off. He is raging mad and with good reason. He knows with absolute certainty why those men came to his house tonight, and frankly, he is not surprised at their intentions, only at the swiftness of their response. It is Kaley's own fault for letting his guard down, for not assuming the worst after he and Rushmore witnessed something that was probably not intended for anyone's eyes.
Curiosity certainly does kill the cat, he wryly thinks.
Rushmore is his responsibility and without even thinking of the repercussions, Kaley has put Private Rushmore in serious jeopardy, and now, as is evident, mortal danger.
But how could I know? How could I possibly know what the two of us would see?
Kaley does know that the men sent to his house tonight were professionals. They had killed before and they believed they were going to do it again. They did not plan on Sergeant Kaley, however, a black belt in the martial arts and a man whose temper is equaled by his ferocity when threatened. They certainly fucked with the wrong man tonight.
Kaley floors the battered military-issued jeep like a madman through the streets. He fully realizes that this is not the smartest thing to do, but he is returning to Evans to check on Rushmore, knowing that he must get to him before “they” do.
When their shift ended several minutes after the “incident,” the two of them departed the operations center and went their separate ways, not speaking to one another or to anyone else about what they had seen.
After Kaley asked Rushmore if they could zero in on the signal with another satellite, Rushmore located a satellite owned and operated by a global communications firm. In order for most corporate-owned satellites to keep their birds in space, they not only pay an astronomical fee to the U.S. government for the right to do so, but they must also make available to the military all passwords and access information in the event of an emergency. The information is stored in an enormous database that is supposedly impenetrable, but Private Rushmore is one of the best at finding backdoor codes and access to alleged high-security networks. To their surprise, they realized the military is unbelievably lax and sloppy in maintaining the structure of their enormous mainframe.
Besides, the unwritten rule is that “if it is in the sky, it is part of the military's pie.” Once Rushmore gained access to the satellite, they noticed the signal from Lake Michigan had disappeared. They found something else, however, something much more extraordinary.
The signal, which only moments before was directly in the middle of the lake in a stationary position, was picked up approaching land on the southeastern side of Lake Michigan. Their quick calculations showed that the signal traveled approximately 150 miles in the span of a few seconds. Nothing man-made could traverse that distance without killing every human inside from the g-forces. Furthermore, once it approached land, not only did the signal disappear, but everything disappeared from the satellite's view. Rushmore explained that the satellite did not appear out of range, but rather it seemed that the satellite could no longer transmit, as if somehow it had been jammed.
Less than four minutes later, the satellite was fully operational and it suddenly pinpointed several new moving objects, but the initial signal was no longer present. These objects were distinct in that they were identified as five Apache helicopters, the same ones Kaley assumed Fizer was referring to. It seemed suspicious that these choppers were dispatched to an area over a hundred miles away from where the signal was initially detected. Kaley did not think Colonel Fizer possessed the prescient ability to know where the signal was headed before it had even moved. The colonel evidently slipped on that banana peel.
The helicopters approached land and according to the satellite, low-level blasts could be detected as they dropped something along the shoreline. The satellite detected no human presence when in fact, there were two witnesses to what occurred on that beach, one of whom had seen everything.
None of this mattered as much to Kaley though as the fact, which Rushmore was quick to point out, that according to their bird in the sky, it had detected a massive human presence along the shoreline where the signal was approaching moments before the satellite went down. When the satellite began transmitting again within several minutes, the large human presence had disappeared, which seemed downright unexplainable to Sergeant Kaley.
Where had they gone? How could they all have vanished in such a short period of time?
Kaley ordered Rushmore to record the activity to a disc as soon as they gained access to the non-military satellite, and Rushmore made a copy for each of them. While it is inherently risky to have documented evidence of Kaley's insubordination, he also knows that what they were witnessing was extraordinary, even if it is utterly inexplicable. A record of the activity only seemed logical. Little could Kaley know that what they had witnessed and the documented evidence of it would, in the long run, cause more harm than good. The consequences, however, did not weigh heavily in his decision at the time.
What continued to gnaw at Kaley was Fizer's quick assertion that the situation was being handled no more than a few minutes from the time the signal was initially detected. This suggested something more to Sergeant Kaley, something insidious, underhanded and worse yet, something planned.
Kaley ordered Rushmore
