In the Grey (3 page)

“
What does this mean?” he
asked.

“
They’ve been
awakened.”

“
I know that,” he said.
“What does it mean for us?”

Beep, beep,
beep!

She ran to her phone and
read the text message there.

“
It’s Nancy,” she said.
“They’re on their way. Can you?”

He hopped out of bed and
began pulling on his clothing.

“
I . . .”
she started.

“
Go,” he said. “I’ll call
the wives. Go. Get to Wyatt before . . .”

She ran to the door of the
balcony that ran across the back of the house.

“
Love?” he
asked.

She turned to look at
him.

“
You’re naked.”

John’s arms encircled her.
His surgeon trained hands stroked her behind. She gave him a
crooked smile.

“
I wish,” he kissed her
lips. “Go!”

She gave him a soft smile
and ran to the closet. She pulled on a pair of fleece pants, her
heavy snow boots, and a thick fleece sweater. When she came out of
the closet, he was gone.

She ran to the door. For
the briefest moment, she stopped to look at the safe, silent
comfort that was her life. She closed her eyes to soak up the love
and life that lingered in the air of this room. With a nod of her
head, Alex ran across the cedar balcony to Max’s bedroom. She
raised her hand to knock; he opened it before her fist fell. His
nearly identical face was etched with the same fear. They pressed
their foreheads against each other and hugged.

“
What did Wyatt
get?”

“
Your assignment awaits,”
Max said.

“
Did you feel
the . . . ?”

“
Infrasound,
yes.”

“
What did you
do?”

“
I locked him in the
bathroom.”

Max stepped back and let
her into his bedroom.

FFFFF

Friday, early
morning

November 5 – 5:40 a.m.
MDT

Buckley Air Force
Base
Aurora, Colorado

“
Attention!” Sergeant
Dusty called.

Alex moved to the front of
the room. She looked out at the worried faces of her Fey Team. Her
father’s team filtered into the chairs in the back of the room. The
rest of her father’s team was listening in via computer video
feed.

“
At ease. There is much to
get through and no time to do it,” Alex said. “Thank you for
getting here so quickly. I know that it’s snowing, and the traffic
is a bear. At least it was for me.”

A general grumble of
agreement went through the room.

“
First for my team,” Alex
looked up to see two more of her father’s team move into the back
of the room. “Report?”

“
Sir?” US Marine Sergeant
Margaret Peaches raised her hand.

“
Yes,
Sergeant?”

“
Where is Major Walters?”
Margaret asked. “He has tracked this project from the beginning
and . . . shouldn’t we wait for him?”

“
Major Walters cannot be
with us this morning,” Alex said.

“
What?” US Army Captain
Troy Olivas asked from the middle of the room.

“
Should I go get him?” US
Air Force Captain Zack “the Jakker” Jakkman stood up. “Where is
he?”

“
Major Walters is safe,”
Alex said. “I
will
tell you what I know. First, I need to know the results of
your efforts.”

“
Sir?” US Navy Captain
Vince Hutchins stood up from his seat. “At Major Walter’s request,
I’ve taken command of the project and collected the results of this
morning’s efforts.”

“
And?” Alex
asked.

“
The team was able to
reach about sixty percent of the subjects in question through the
phone tree,” Vince said. “The others either didn’t answer their
phones or weren’t where we expected them to be.”

“
And those we suspect of
being the greatest threat?”

“
We were only able to
reach about twenty percent or so,” Vince said.

“
How many?” Alex
asked.

“
About a hundred,” Vince
said. “Give or take a few.”

Alex rubbed her forehead
and looked away. She could almost hear everyone’s anxiety rise a
notch. She glanced at the apparition of her best friend Sergeant
Jesse Abreu. He gestured for her to get on with it, and she
nodded.

“
It’s less than I
thought,” Alex turned back to look at the room. “More than I’d
hoped.”

Alex tried to give a
reassuring smile.

“
Are there other results?”
Alex asked.

“
About a third were given
calls to activation,” Vince said. “I have a list of their
assignments. If I may, sir, what concerned me was how many were
triggered but told to wait. It’s almost as
if . . .”

Vince flushed and looked
down.

“
You may speak freely,”
Alex said.

“
It sounds crazy, but it’s
almost as if he wanted an army of talented operatives waiting in
the wings,” Vince said.

“
Like the Star Wars drone
armies,” US Marine Sergeant Michael “MJ” Scully, Jr.
said.

“
Or Saruman creating
Uruk-hai in
Lord of the
Rings
,” Captain Christopher “White Boy”
Blanco said. “You know, those big black goblin man-dudes with the
white hands on their faces?”

White Boy put his hand on
his head to demonstrate.

“
Orcs,” Troy said.
“They’re half-Orcs.”

Alex shook her head at
Troy and White Boy to stop their tangent. They looked at each other
and shrugged.

“
I agree,” Vince gave a
sly smile. “Except this army is human, and very real, not half-Orcs
at all.”

The team
chuckled.

“
An army of seasoned
professionals on the side; so noted,” Alex said. “Thank you,
Captain Hutchins. Anything else?”

“
I think it’s worth noting
that our efforts at contacting the subjects last summer were
effective,” Vince said. “Almost everyone we’ve spoken to so far was
aware that they might receive a phone call, voice imprint, email,
or other contact. They are following the protocol we set out
including the face-to-face contact via the video feed.”

“
So we’re certain we
actually contacted who we think we contacted,” Alex
said.

“
Yes, sir,” Vince
said.

“
I’ve received fourteen
emails with video feed and voice imprint data since the start of
this meeting,” said Alex’s assistant, US Army Sergeant Alexander
Roger Ulysses “Dusty” Cummings III.

“
An army of seasoned
professionals,” Alex repeated. “This is good.”

“
I think we can expect to
hear from most of the people on our list,” Vince said.

Alex nodded. She knew his
words should reassure her, but the gnawing feeling in the pit of
her stomach didn’t ease.

“
Do we have a sense of
assignments?” Alex asked.

“
Assassinations of key
players in a variety of projects, including this one,” Vince said.
“Royce noticed that each assignment is a perfect fit for both the
operative and the target.”

“
How so?” Alex
asked.

“
Royce?” Vince
asked.

“
What I meant
was . . . ,” US Navy Chief Petty Officer Royce
Tubman stood up. He glanced around the room and cleared his throat.
Alex gave him a reassuring nod. “It seemed like this individual did
a lot of research or knew a lot about each of the operatives. Like
one of my jarheads. His assignment was to engage a guy during his
morning run. You know, run by him. Pop. Pop. But he got his carbon
running blade three weeks ago. His first. He’s been out every day
since he got the blade, but how’d he know my guy was running? How’d
he know the target ran to work on the Custis Trail? The target had
just started training for a Triathlon. He picked up running to work
less than two weeks ago. We’re talking thousands of targets,
thousands of operatives. The level of detail
is . . .”

“
Unnerving,” Troy
said.

Alex glanced around the
room. Her team’s heads nodded in agreement. She glanced at her
father’s team and saw blank faces and staring eyes.

“
Eniac has planned this
for a long time,” Vince said.

“
Or it came together
fast,” US Army Captain Matthew Mac Clenaghan, Alex’s
second-in-command, said. She gestured to him and he joined her at
the front.

“
Or both,” Alex said. “He
seems to have access to a depth of information
that . . .”

“
And the girls?” the
deadly assassin who went by the name “Mammy” asked from her kitchen
on Harkers Island. “Did you hear from all of the girls?”

Her father’s team members
shifted uncomfortably.

“
Leena? Margaret?” Alex
asked. “For the sake of the other team, can you give them a full
report?”

“
Yes, sir,” US Petty
Officer Leena Carmichael and US Marine Sergeant Margaret Peaches
said in near unison. They came to the front and stood next to Alex
and Matthew.

“
Ma’am,” Leena nodded to
Mammy on the video screen. “With the help of Martha, one of our
base telephone staff, and the video chat room, we have seen all
ninety-four women this morning. They have, to a person, been
activated but not assigned.”

“
There were a whole lot
more kids than that,” one of the men on her father’s team said from
the back of the room.

“
As you may know, sir, the
children were given a suicide protocol should any memory of their
involvement in the project return.” Leena’s words were hard and
bitter. Matthew put a hand on her forearm to steady her. She
glanced at him and nodded.

“
Sir, we found that only a
small percentage of the children survived childhood,” Matthew said.
“Those who survived were often prey to addiction, homelessness,
violent relationships, murder, and suicide.”

“
Ninety-four women
survived,” Margaret said.

“
But . . . ,” the man started.

“
None of the boys made
it,” Leena said.

“
We’ve tracked every name,
birth date, and social security number,” Matthew said. “Our team
has personally visited every gravesite, documented the deaths in
detail, and spoken to the remaining members of their families.
We’ve worked with a prominent therapist who specializes in the
treatment of mind control survivors to make certain we did not miss
anything or anyone.”

“
Because they’re younger
than most of the subjects, we believe the women to be the greatest
threat,” Alex said. “And, without clear project records, they are
our greatest wild card. Petty Officer Carmichael and Sergeant
Peaches have forged bonds with the women, as well as connected them
with each other.”

“
Most of the women had
already contacted at least one other woman in their group before we
spoke to them this morning,” Leena said. “Their therapist has also
been informed.”

“
Maybe it’s time to start
at the beginning,” a man’s voice said from the doorway. “I’d sure
as hell like to hear it.”

Alex looked up to see
Major Joseph Walters. MJ got up from his seat and hugged Joseph.
One at a time, her team acknowledged Joseph with a handshake or a
hug as he came into the room. Alex hugged him when he reached
her.

“
Who would like to start?”
Alex gestured to her father’s team. “My team has had a lot of
questions about the mind control programs and, as you know, the
original records are nonexistent.”

The blank faces of
grey-haired bureaucrats, politicians, a few school teachers, and
several old-school spies stared back at her. Veterans of the Cold
War, among others, these men were committed to taking their secrets
to the grave.

“
I’ll do it,” Benjamin
Doucet, Alex’s friend, mentor, and biological father, said as he
entered the room.

Alex’s partner, Homeland
Security Agent Arthur “Raz” Rasmussen, came in behind him. Ben
patted Joseph’s back and hugged Alex.

“
Your father is right
behind me,” Ben said. “Colin’s with him.”

Prior to retiring,
Benjamin had been the most accomplished intelligence operative in
the world. He looked out over the team he’d helped Alex create, and
then glanced at Alex. She gave him a “go ahead” nod.

“
I think it’s hard for
people now to imagine what it was like after World War II,” Ben
said. “There were two world wars in a little more than thirty
years, seventy million dead, and the brutality . . .
I’m not making excuses for them. I’m saying the roots of this
program are grounded in those wars.”

“
And our very real
understanding of what men can do to other men,” an elderly man said
in a clipped British accent. “I was at the liberation of
Bergen-Belsen. There’s nothing anyone could have ever said that
would have prepared me. I was seventeen, and more than sixty years
later I still smell it in my nightmares.”