Ersin looked uncomfortable. "I don't know, Jake, a woman?"
"You ever seen that bitch shoot?" Jake smiled. His scars pulled the grin into something from a nightmare.
"No, I've heard about her though. Bannon met her at Quantico. They call her `The Spook.' " Ersin's face twitched again. He did not like the idea.
"I can't think of anyone I'd less like after my butt. There's a bunch of people that seriously tried to take me that I've never lost sleep over, but if that chick ever got pissed at me, I'd just dig my own grave."
"You're the boss, boss," said the sergeant first class, with obvious reluctance.
"Betcher ass."
* * *
Seven men and one woman sat or stood in a small, poorly-lit room located in the bowels of the John F. Kennedy First Special Warfare Command Headquarters, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. They wore four different uniforms and a multiplicity of unit patches. Each of them was experienced in their own specialty. Most of them had combat experience. None of them were currently married. They represented the Marines, Army and Navy. Only one of them had any inkling of the mission. Sergeant Major Mosovich wandered in a minute late and headed to the top of the conference table. As he sat, the rest began to pull out chairs around the old wooden conference table, several of them continuing conversations.
One of the talkers was a blond bear of a man wearing the uniform of a Special Forces staff sergeant from 7th group. Well over six and a half feet tall, he filled his BDU uniform like a human tank. He was debating knife fighting techniques, complete with gestures, with a short, wiry chief petty officer sporting a SEAL badge. The petty officer was laughing through snaggly teeth, obviously unimpressed. The PO's forearms looked like his role model was Popeye from their thickness, and his hands and wrists were heavily scarred.
A tall, soft-looking Special Forces sergeant first class with a van Dyke beard was carrying on a one-sided conversation with the sole female. She was good looking in a long-faced way with thick, short auburn hair and dark green eyes. She wore the carefully tailored uniform of a Marine staff sergeant. Her unadorned jacket was cut almost skin tight and made of such a lightweight fabric that every movement of her small but firm breasts was clear. Likewise, the skirt had been cut to accentuate her figure and, unless Jake was mistaken, was at least two inches short of regulation. Her shoes, while a regulation black, were a nonregulation patent leather and had a sharply spiked four-inch heel. Between the uniform and the scent of heavily musked perfume that hit him like a sledgehammer as he entered the room, the staff sergeant was an incitement to riot. She also had the stillest features that Mosovich had ever seen. Her hands and arms remained motionless at her side throughout the entire conversation and her head never swiveled. Her eyes were fixed on a point on the wall, thousand-yard stare firmly in place. The bearded staff sergeant continued his monologue, totally oblivious.
Besides those four there was Ersin, a gigantic ebony master sergeant with a Special Operations Command patch, and a rotund black staff sergeant from 1st Group.
"Okay, let's get this started," Mosovich said as the group settled in and quiet fell. "First introductions. On my right is SFC Mark Ersin, 7th Group. He will be the Intel sergeant for this little op." He gestured to the ebony master sergeant. "And this is Master Sergeant Tung. He's sort of an odd jobs man at JSOC."
Several of those present chuckled. The master sergeant, a long-time instructor as well as field soldier, was as much a legend in the special operations community as Mosovich. "Oh, some of you know Master Sergeant Tung. Good, that will save no end of problems. Master Sergeant Tung will be handling operations." He gestured at the large blond staff sergeant. "Staff Sergeant Mueller comes to us from 7th Group also. Don't be confused by his looks, he's not just big and dumb: he's big, dumb and mean. Petty Officer Trapp," he gestured to the SEAL, who gave a friendly snaggle-tooth smile and comic wave, "comes to us from SEAL Six.
"Sergeant Martine," Jake waved to the stocky black sergeant, "from 1st Group is an excellent commo tech and general fixit man. Sergeant First Class Richards," he gestured to the staff sergeant with the van Dyke who had been chatting up the female marine, "is an extremely experienced canker mechanic." The sergeant gave a grimace at the old-fashioned term.
"Sergeant Ellsworthy," Jake continued, gesturing at the female marine, "comes to us from Marine Sniper School. Gentlemen, and I do not jest this time, do not get on this young lady's bad side; she's even deadlier than she is pretty. Now, you all are probably wondering, `Yeah, sure, why me and what the fuck?' . . ."
" 'Scuse me, Sergeant Major," the female marine said in a little girl's voice, nearly a whisper, "but did you know there's some sort of thing perched on the wall behind your chair?" She had a thick southern accent; the words flowed like honey.
The talk stopped as six sets of trained eyes started scanning the indicated area; one by one they settled on the appropriate spot.
"Yeah," said the SEAL, "I see it now you mention it. Looks like a octopus."
"No," said Mueller. "More like a camouflaged frog. What the hell is it? It looks real." He leaned forward, curiosity written all over his face.
"It's real," said Ellsworthy. "It moved one of its eyes."
"So," Tung rumbled, "what the fuck is it, and how the hell'd it get in here?"
"I don' know," said Trapp, a knife mysteriously appearing in the SEAL's hand, "but iss' one frog's about to be gigged."
"Hold it," said Mosovich, "it's friendly. Himmit Rigas, you weren't supposed to attend this meeting."
"First meetings are always so revealing," said the Himmit, shifting from the color of the wall to its natural gray-purple then back. It appeared to be agitated.
The group of special operations personnel reacted with mixed but muted reactions. Only the black commo sergeant got up and stepped away.
"Siddown Sergeant Martine, it's harmless," snapped Mosovich.
"Da-da-da-hell! Wha-wha-isit?" Martine stammered. His stutter was as well known as his ability with code.
"ET sure as hell," stated Mueller, examining Rigas with interest, no sign of fear or horror on his face at all. He turned to Mosovich with a quizzical expression. "Alien, right?"
"It's part of the reason for this briefing. It was supposed to wait to be introduced, dammit!" Mosovich snapped.
"Where'd it go?" whispered Ellsworthy. "I only took my eyes off it for a second." She began a centimeter by centimeter scan of the wall.
"I don't know," said Mueller, snapping his head back around, "it just disappeared."
"Shit-fire," said Trapp, knife flipping agitatedly, "where is the lil' toad?"
"Calm down," said Mosovich, "it won't reappear until it's comfortable. It's a Himmit. You want to know, shut the hell up and listen. . . ." Slowly they regained their sense of discipline and turned their attention back to the sergeant major, not without some covert glances at the walls.
"We've been tasked by SOCOM to do a deep penetration of an enemy planet. Yeah, `an enemy what?,' right? Okay, here's the background."
He covered the high points about the contact from the Federation and the approaching Posleen threat.
"The bottom line is that we don't have enough information about the Posleen. Intelligence is one of the keystones of military operations and it's one we ain't got. The Himmits are like ghosts, they've been all over the Posleen planets, snoopin' and poopin'. But the problem with them is that they won't go into places that they might come into contact, which means that they haven't been able to do close recon, and they don't look for the sort of things we do. Last but not least, sorry Rigas," he nodded towards where he supposed the camouflaged alien lurked, "higher, which in this case means the President, wants an independent evaluation. Right now all of our information is based on intelligence fed to us from the Darhel and Himmits. The Pres. wants human eyes on the problem, and we're the eyes."