“Don’t be—”
Lewie was cutoff as Carl suddenly strolled into the room.
“Listen up, men,” he said, coming to a rest just inside the door, his hands behind his back, and seemingly oblivious to what they’d just been talking about, or at least acting that way, “we’ve got new orders already.”
“What?” David nearly shouted. “How could that—”
Carl raised his arm and David fell quiet.
“After that attack last night we’re not taking any chances and we’re not letting them change up their defensive or offensive capability — we’re going in.”
He looked over and gave Tommy a stern look, but the hard-headed soldier wisely held his tongue. Carl glanced around the room at the others, nodded, then turned to leave. “Be ready to move soon,” he said, then was gone.
17 — Different Views
Turn rushed to the door in the white storage tank, the gravel crunching under the heels of his boots. He reached it faster than he’d ever run before, and it surprised him. He often had no idea his legs could do what they could, but he wasn’t going to gloat over it now — he whipped his hand down and grasped the doorknob and turned and… nothing — it was locked.
“Shit!” he said, then looked back over his shoulder. It was then that the flash gun hit him and he vaporized into a fine black powder, one that started to blow away on the wind.
BEEP!
The buzzer sounded, indicating the simulation was over, and a moment later the virtual reality goggles lifted off Turn’s head.
“Second time,” the soldier manning the sim-chamber said as he set the goggles down on the table next to the dentist’s chair Turn was sitting in — it was technically called the V–Chair, but technicalities didn’t usually fly too well at Blue Lake.
“What the hell was that?” Turn said, then looked up at the man standing over him. He wasn’t wearing any kind of military uniform, and in fact had on an oil-stained wife-beater and pants that didn’t look much better — was that blood?
“That, my friend, is a common problem we get at the HUB drop-off points,” the main said, then stuck his hand out in a gesture to help Turn up. “Name’s Zates, Major Jake Zates… I don’t think we’ve met yet… at least besides that initial meet and greet…”
“Which wasn’t really much of either,” Turn said, then smiled and put out his hand.
“Turnicot Dupree,” he said, then screwed up his face. “Zates? Sounds… hey, what kind of name is that, anyways.”
“Beats the fuck out of me,” Jake said, “maybe Pollack — I dunno. What the hell kind of name is Dupree?”
Turn laughed. “Cajun, what else?”
“Louisiana boy, huh?” Jake said with his best New Orleans Cajun accent, which was close-up to the worst Turn had ever heard.
“Mississippi,” he said, smiling nonetheless, then narrowed his eyes and became serious. “I thought I was on a military base in that sim? What the hell was that back there?”
“Oh, you’ve probably thought a lot and made up a lot of assumptions on where you’re going,” Jake laughed, “but let’s just clear all that rubbish away now, eh?”
Turn frowned and was about to speak up when another voice beat him to it.
“Don’t scare him, Zates — not yet at least.”
Both Jake and Turn whipped around to see the Dutchman standing there.
“Ah… Major,” Jake said, then nodded deferentially as Ellis approached.
“I’m glad to see you’re training,” Ellis said as he came near, ignoring Jake completely but stopping beside him, “I wish more of the men felt the need.”
“Where we’re going?” Turn scoffed. “I don’t see why they don’t.”
Ellis frowned, glanced over at Jake, then nodded. “Not that it really matters — we’ll be heading out tonight.”
“What!” Turn said, nearly bolting up from the chair even though Jake was still working on the last of the connections to him.
Ellis nodded. “We’ve got word that an alien transport ship is coming into the Dulce port tonight, one that’ll ensure the port is open to us, and one that’ll give us some extra cover to boot.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Jake said with quite the audible sigh, another way is to say the Grays will have more… ’men’ in that port area than they’d usually.”
“You sound like you know a lot about the aliens, Jake,” Turn said, “I thought most of you regular recruits were in the dark. Well,” he said with a laugh, “at least until I heard some of you talking last night — what the hell is going on with you boys?”
Jake gave a nervous glance to Ellis, and the Dutchman nodded before putting his hand on Jake’s shoulder.
“You know that not every mission we sent into Dulce had a 100 % casualty rate, right, Turn?”
Turn looked to Jake, who’s eyes flitted about nervously, like he was picturing something he’d rather not see. Turn nodded, said nothing.
“Now Jake here,” Ellis said as he tousled the young man’s hair, breaking a bit of the tension, “Jake here was working in Dulce before ’75.”
“Really?” Turn said, narrowing his eyes at the young soldier.
Jake nodded and adjusted the glasses on his nose. The young soldier couldn’t have been much past his late-20s, yet his hard and chiseled face and that faraway look in his eyes said he’d seen a lot more than his young years might have supposed. He ran a hand threw his blonde flattop haircut and shook his head, in exasperation more than anything.
“I was on one of the lower levels,” Jake said, looking past Turn and probably past the previous few years as well. “My job wasn’t critical, just working the switches for the trains that run down on Level 7. I didn’t even know that something had happened up on Level 2 until the Reptilians began coming through about an hour later, doing the mop-up work.”
“Jake, you don’t have to—”
“No, it’s alright,” Jake said, waving away Ellis’s words as well as the steadying hand that’d been moving toward his shoulder, “I need to do this.”
Turn looked from Jake to Ellis and then back again, but remained quiet.
“They took out Lonnie and Chuck first, two of my best buds, guys that’d just been doing their shift and checking on one of the connection tubes as the routine called for. The problem was the Grays sent the lizards out to do their dirty work, and we all know they can’t do anything right.”
Jake laughed at that point as he looked at Ellis, and the Dutchman gave a slight smile. Jake’s smile quickly faded and he continued.
“I heard the gunfire first, and it certainly wasn’t M16 fire — that was clear right away. So I called it up to the next level, but there was no answer. That’d never happened before, and that’s when I knew something was wrong.”
“What’d you do?” Turn asked when Jake paused for several moments, lost in the memory of that day.
“I powered-up one of the spare trains and set it on auto-pilot for New York,” Jake said with a sigh. “I ran, that’s what I did.”
“You got out, and gave us a helluva lot of information on what’d happened,” Ellis said quickly, this time grabbing Jake by the shoulder and turning him to look in his eyes.
“Yeah, but—”
“Shut up!” Ellis shouted, slapping Jake across the face, hard. Jake’s eyes went wide and he looked at the Dutchman in shock. “Listen, we’re going to be heading back to Dulce tonight, and you’re coming, Jake, and you’re going to give those damn lizards some payback for Lonnie and Chuck, aren’t you? Aren’t you!”