Greenflies Read online

  The cafeteria was extremely full, but very quiet. Even at CIA headquarters, the locals chose to get information from a few televisions with CNN on the wall rather than their workstations. Marshal had been here anyways when the incidents started, sipping coffee and mentally preparing himself for his eleven o’clock briefing. Then, the breaking news alerts began. There had been sightings of aliens across the eastern seaboard at arboretums, farms, state parks, zoos, etc. Most of the sightings had been brief. The aliens had appeared, collected a few samples of local flora and fauna, then left. The ones at the Botanical Garden seemed to be taking their time, collecting representatives of each species in one of the largest gardens in the world, while totally ignoring the buzzing helicopters.

  “…so far, the creatures have made no effort to communicate, but nor have they harmed any of the people who were in the park at the time of their arrival. The gardens at this point have been evacuated, and police are maintaining a perimeter. City officials are urging the public not to panic. They are repeating that there is no reason to assume the alien creatures, if that is what they are, have hostile intent…”

  A few minutes after the CNN reports had started, the signal went through the PA system that the building was in lockdown. Marshal thought it was a disgrace how often the intelligence community was notified of disasters by the mainstream media.

  Even as the siren had sounded and people had rushed into the cafeteria, Marshal had stayed seated and sipped at his coffee. There was no reason to assume his briefing had been canceled. Unless he received a page to the contrary, he would continue with his mental preparation for the briefing, taking note of the events on CNN peripherally. He was aware that this unfazeability was a symptom of his pathology, but as a secondary symptom, he simply didn’t care.

  “…Observation of the creatures’ movements seems to suggest they are collecting samples of flowers and other plants in a very systematic way. Six of them are moving through the greenhouses, and six are scouring the outside garden, presumably collecting samples from trees and grasses. Wait one moment. Something is happening on the ground…”

  The cafeteria was quite silent. There were a few groups that had been speaking quietly, but even they went silent as the camera focused in on a group of four aliens that seemed to be moving with purpose towards one of the hovering vehicles. The vehicle, looking alive itself, opened its flank. It looked much like an opening mouth on the side of the brown creature. The four aliens climbed inside, and the mouth-like door closed behind them. Then, without further activity, the hovering vehicle vanished. A thunderclap rumbled with the vehicle’s teleportation, the sound of air rushing in to fill the vacuum left by the vehicle’s disappearance.

  Even Marshal was distracted by this. He was aware the vehicles had teleported in, but this was the first footage shown of their capability. From a logistical standpoint, such a capacity to deploy troops would be invaluable. Marshal found his mind wandering, exploring the potential outcomes if his own past missions had had that kind of rapid insertion and extraction capability. There were perhaps a dozen men from his command that would still be alive today.

  “…Can we get the feed from another camera on that disappearance, Kent?”

  Marshal’s pager vibrated. A quick check revealed he had been summoned early for his briefing with assistant director Caufield. It was a clear sign that he would be involved in the response to the alien situation, in one manner or another. Surely AD Caufield was involved in the high level discussions of the threat, and she would have simply canceled his briefing had it been unrelated. He further suspected that his mission parameters now no longer involved whatever foreign power they had this morning.

  He got to his feet, feeling the weight of 52 years on his achy joints, one of which wasn’t even organic anymore. He still cut a striking figure, though, with a higher muscle-to-fat ratio than 90% of the kids he trained, led, or fought. His civilian suit hung on his shoulders like a uniform, totally failing to hide his military origins. If there was any doubt, his stride eliminated it, each step carrying him exactly three feet. He dropped his coffee cup in the trash as he left, not even glancing at the TV as the anchor announced the arrival of a new hover vehicle to replace the one that had just left.

  The halls of the CIA headquarters were nearly vacant as he walked. It had nothing to do with the time; there was no such thing as a late hour in CIA headquarters. Simply, every analyst was busy right now, investigating and hypothesizing the impact of this alien incursion on their own aspect of national security. No doubt there were people eavesdropping on the Chinese broadcasts regarding the aliens, the implications to Islam on al-Jazeera, and the HAM radio chatter about the end of the world. There simply was no time for CIA staffers to wander the halls. Those who did not have specific duties found a cafeteria or lounge in which to watch the events unfold.

  Marshal swiped his card three times before reaching the AD’s office, only to find her absent. Her assistant, a young woman whom Marshal remembered training in small squad tactics several years ago, was there to greet him. Gibbons, he recalled her name was, was one of many petite blondes he had transformed into killers in his years at the Farm. Not many offices had receptionists who could hit a man-sized target at 200 yards with a sightless sub-machine gun.

  “Colonel Marshal, please walk with me,” she began to lead him away from the office towards the center of the building, “Assistant Director Caufield has reassigned you and your team in support of the response to recent events. She’s requested you join her in the Director’s Conference Chamber at present. Your men have been activated and notified to come here immediately.”

  “What is the minimum security clearance of those at this meeting?” asked Marshal.

  “Secret,” she replied. A simple distinction to let Marshal know how much the people there had been briefed on his team and their history. He’d have to bite his tongue on some matters.

  They passed through two more card readers, the second with armed guards, to reach the core of the building. This section hosted the director’s facilities as well as the printing offices for the newspaper with the world’s smallest circulation. Each day, the intelligence from all offices of the CIA was consolidated into a publication with a readership of two, the director of the CIA and the President of the United States. That office was two floors directly beneath Marshal’s feet, along with an archive of all such publications since the Hoover administration. The architecture of this region of the building bespoke its importance. The doors were all quite large, reminiscent of those in cathedrals and monasteries. Arcane secrets lay beyond these doors.

  Ms. Gibbons handed him to the security personnel and Marshal was passed into the conference room, a conference room in name only. It was a war room, with the same interior decorator that had assembled the command and control centers in the pentagon. The table was a large V, with twenty seats, all but two full. The mouth of the V faced a series of four back-projection computer displays, each one 90 inches. The screen on the right showed CNN presumably to gauge public response, and the middle two showed conference rooms similar to this one. One would be at the Pentagon, and the other in an undisclosed location with the Joint Chiefs.

  The one on the far left showed a stretched out map of the earth, real time satellite photography from countless individual satellites compiled together and stretched to fit a comprehensible map. That map could probably zoom to nearly any point on the earth to focus on a single human being. As it was, it displayed intermittent flashing white dots over half the map. Those white dots were not symbolic in any way. They were actual bright flashes, visible from space. After the flashes disappeared, they were replaced by a symbolic red X to denote their location.

  The table was occupied by the whole spectrum of the agency, from the director to the science analysts to the foreign affairs analysts. Marshal sat wordlessly in an empty seat along one side of the V, beside Maria Caufield. AD Caufield was an intense woman, ten years younger than Marshal himself, but
his equal in the administrative aspects of intelligence field operations. She was a black woman with hair tightly bound behind her head, no doubt to reduce the amount of non-intelligence-related work in her life. She nodded, but gave no other acknowledgment to Marshal’s arrival.

  “…think the bright flashes are Cerenkov radiation, atoms in the atmosphere being displaced at nearly the speed of light as the alien vehicles teleport in,” said one of the men along the V, someone Marshal recognized vaguely as being important in nuclear weapons detection, “When one of the vehicles teleports in, it is accompanied by one of these flashes, a burst of radiation, and a thunderclap in excess of eighty decibels. It’s very detectable by our satellites.”

  “But,” interrupted someone from the Pentagon, “The average time of an alien landing is less than five minutes, too short to deploy field ops.”

  Marshal glanced up at the map. Other than the flashes appearing over only one half of the globe, extending from eastern Europe to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, there appeared to be no pattern. The red X’s were scattered across the oceans, South America, coastal North America, throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the major metropolitan areas of Europe. There was no obvious structure to it. The red X’s were disappearing fairly rapidly as well, presumably indicating that the alien vehicles had departed. As there were no X’s in Boston, presumably the alien craft had teleported away in the time it had taken Marshal to walk to this conference room.

  “We cannot allow these forces to continue to enter our territory. While they have not proven themselves aggressive yet, they’ve made no effort to communicate and continue to breach our borders.”

  The Chief of Staff, sitting with the Joint Chiefs, said, “Before I can hand a recommendation to the President, I need a few very simple questions answered. Are these aliens a threat? What do they want? If we choose to detain a landing party, do we even have the capability? I’m inclined to say we have to defend our border rights and demand communication with these creatures, but if that is not even an option, I have to know now.”

  The Science and Technology Director, next to the man who had commented on the bright flashes, replied first, “They seem to be interested in regions of high biodiversity. Zoos, aquariums, the Amazon, botanical gardens, arboretums, the Oceans. It would seem they are on a sampling mission…”

  The Defense Intelligence Agency rep from the Pentagon interrupted. “It could well mean they’re collecting data on a biological weapon. Sampling us to determine what poisons will work.”

  “There’s no evidence they’re hostile,” said the Sci-Tech Director.

  “There’s no evidence they’re not!” hissed the DIA man.

  “If they are non-hostile, we risk inciting them by interceding with their landings. If they are hostile, better to capture a group now, so that we can gain intelligence on the danger they pose,” stated CIA Director Hartley flatly.

  “We may not have much time if they are hostile. We should act now. Better to err on the side of caution,” said the DIA man.

  “How the hell is that the side of caution?!” The Sci-Tech Director insisted.

  “Enough!” said the Chief of Staff, “If this were any other nation besides one from space, there’d be no question on the matter. We would detain the forces on our territory and force a diplomatic exchange.”

  “If we don’t, someone else will,” said the DIA man.

  “So, can we intercept them, and can we detain them?” the Chief of Staff asked.

  “Caufield…” Hartley prompted.

  “Witnesses report the intruders take down large animals with weapons that ‘fire’ volleys of venomous insects. Simple armor should be able to prevent bites, and we have no reason to believe that bullets will be ineffective against them. So, we feel we can detain any number of the alien infantrymen, if not the alien APCs. We don’t know enough about the armor and weapons capabilities of those vehicles. Presumably, they would be able to teleport away to escape heavy fire,” Caufield began.

  Marshal noticed that she was using words such as ‘intruders’ and ‘infantrymen’ to better couch the aliens in combative terms. Caufield was a specialist in field ops. This could very easily become her kind of war.

  “As to our ability to intercept them, it would not be likely with conventional troop delivery. The alien forces do not loiter in an area, and Osprey’s and Blackhawks have a very limited range within the five-minute window. Paratroopers from fixed wing aircraft would provide a more rapid response. We have an elite team capable of HALO jumps from high speed bomber aircraft. If we were to field a B-1 with this team over the continental US, that five-minute window would allow for a 200 mile diameter region where we could deploy our team. If Sci-Tech can give us some likely alien targets, we can place that region accordingly.”

  “How experimental is this team?”asked the Chief of Staff.

  Caufield looked at Hartley for permission before answering, “It’s not. We’ve fielded Colonel Marshal and his team twenty times in the past two years. They have a superlative field record.”

  “There can be a B-1 at Andrews in thirty minutes,” the Air Force General piped in, “The refueling planes are up now. This rapid ground deployment could be supplemental to more conventional deployment attempts should the intruders loiter in an area longer than anticipated.”

  Marshal pulled a pad and began jotting notes.

  “With Ospreys on the pad with Marines, medics, and science personnel on board once the intruders are detained,” added the Secretary of Defense.

  The Chief of Staff looked pensive for a moment, “Alright, make preparations for the rapid ground deployment. I will speak with the President and have your orders formalized immediately.”

  Without a formal dismissal, the screen blanked out, and the one from the Pentagon followed.

  Hartley dictated sharply, “You heard the de facto Commander-in-Chief. Sci-Tech, pick a 200-mile diameter circle with a number of biological rich targets in it. Field Ops, prep your team and get it over to Andrews. Liaise with Air Force as to the status of the B-1. Foreign Intel, I want to know if anyone so much as stubs an alien’s toe abroad and what happens in retaliation. When the Homeland Security boy finally gets here, start getting us some filtered police reports of these incursions. This satellite crap isn’t telling us what they’re taking at all. We need HUMINT, people.”

  Everyone rose and exited, Marshal staying close to Caufield. Both remained silent until they reached an elevator across the building alone.

  “He wants human intelligence on an alien invasion?” asked Caufield, “We’re not likely to be able to bribe them away from their poppy fields like Afghanistan.”

  Marshal ripped the page from his notepad and handed it to his boss, “This is additional equipment we should have.”

  “I’ll have it waiting for you at Andrews,” She perused the list, “Shotguns and non-lethal ammunition, tasers, smoke grenades… hemp rope?”

  “No one has ever slipped a zip-tie or pair of handcuffs on these intruders. Six limbs, very flexible. The hemp won’t give so much as modern cord.”

  She shook her head, “What’s your opinion?”

  “It’s an interesting exploratory strike. While I won’t allow it to jeopardize the mission, we’ll attempt to use as many different attack forms as is practical. Probe the enemy’s weaknesses. Record the enemy’s reaction to aggression.”

  “I meant, what is your opinion on the wisdom of the action?” She corrected.

  “I’m no longer qualified to form those,” he replied.

  Chapter 2: Specimens

  2:30 AM Manassas, Kentucky

  A crack of thunder ripped across the clear sky. Meg caught a flash of light as she opened her eyes. Heat lightning, she thought, on this perfectly clear summer night.

  She was nestled beneath a soft, thin blanket, the kind you can buy at K-Mart for ten dollars, in the back of a pickup truck that wasn’t worth much more. The blanket was more for modesty than warmth. It was eighty degrees
, even this late at night, but it had been warmer beneath the blanket not too long ago. Macon slept beside her with his head on her shoulder, occasionally tugging at the T-shirt she wore beneath the blanket. He twitched in his sleep like a hound dreaming of a rabbit.

  Macon’s daddy’s truck was parked at the edge of a big cornfield, the first crop of the year and tall enough to hide them from the farmhouse a quarter mile away. All the kids at school knew about this spot, a three-minute bumpy ride from Route 49 and too much trouble for the sheriff or his deputy to check every night for naked teenagers. They hadn’t been the only ones here a few hours ago, but the sensible ones hadn’t fallen asleep. They were probably at home, not getting hided by their parents. Meg and Macon weren’t so lucky.

  “Boy…” Meg gently chided in his ear, “Wake up, boy. You got some ‘splainin' to do.”

  Macon opened his eyes, still mostly hidden by his mop of blonde hair.

  “Mmmm…you’re a sweet sight to wake up to,” he said.

  “Save the sweet talk. You already screwed me,” She replied, before thunking his head off her shoulder and onto the bed of the pickup and.

  “Damn, girl!” He said before sitting up himself.

  “My daddy is gonna have a litter when I walk in, and yours ain’t gonna be any better. Gawd, I can’t even think how bad this is gonna be. You’re not gonna see me again for a month,” she said, as she fumbled for her shorts somewhere beneath the blanket, “And you… Daddy sees you again after tonight, he’s gonna shoot your ass.”

  Macon tried to pull her back down, nibbling at the back of her neck, “Dead men get a last request, don’t they?”

  “Don’t you even think it,” she said, but allowed herself to be pulled back, anyways.

  “He ain’t gonna be no madder in another half hour,” Macon said, moving over her.