As he left the room, General Schatten shook his head at the scientists. They were always so… loopy. That was a good word.
As he entered the next room, he said, “I’m sorry, I was slightly detained.”
James Randi, sitting in front of Schatten’s desk, inclined his bald head to accept the apology. “No apology necessary.”
“You wanted to see me?” asked Schatten, leaning over his desk.
Randi nodded. “Yes. I have come to tender my resignation.”
“Why?”
“The war against Hell is won,” said Randi. “There can’t be any more need of experts in paranormal fraud; my organization has already started to shrink as people have been reassigned to other parts of the occupation effort. My work here has been done for some months, you have all the methodologies you need to find and utilize the sensitives who can punch the portals through as and where needed.”
Schatten smiled. He’d been expecting something like this. “On the contrary, Mr Randi, you may not resign.”
Randi had been expecting many answers, but this was not one of them. “I may not?”
“No, sir, for three reasons. First, the war is not over. You haven’t been privy to all of the reports, but the war against Heaven is just starting, and we’ll need all the expertise that your branch of DIMO(N) has accumulated over the last year in order to pursue it successfully. Second, there’s speculation around – I’m sure you’ve heard it – that Heaven and Hell aren’t the only hostiles out there, which means that we’re not going to let you go even after we’ve crushed Yahweh. Third, even if the war ends and everything is just fine, we still need you to filter through populations and help us find people who can make portals.
“They’re a vital national asset, you know that. Portalling is a vital national security issue, as I’m sure you understand, and we need to keep tabs on everybody who’s like kitten just to make sure they don’t fall into the wrong hands.”
Randi looked slightly taken aback at this, and blinked at Schatten. Schatten smiled back. “No, Mr Randi, you aren’t going anywhere. Other than back to your office in the Pentagon of course, it’s there, still waiting for you.”
SecDef’s Office, Pentagon, U.S. Jamuary 2009
“So it was a concerted attack by angels?”
“That appears so, Secretary Warner. So far we have reports of twenty angels being detected and shot down over Europe, Russia and the United States. All over populated areas. Six came at us, four each at Russia and Europe, two each at China and India, one at Japan and one at Singapore. We lost eleven aircraft in the air battles.”
“Eleven?” Warner was astonished. Humans owned the air, mastered it completely. Hostile daemons who flew in the skies were shot down, swatted as if they were helpless infants. Which, in military terms they were. Losing eleven aircraft in a single day to hostile action was unprecedented.
“Eleven Sir. Several more have varying degrees of damage. We got away pretty lightly, all we have is a brace of F-22s with some structural damage but they’re fixable. The Russians two Su-35s but their MiG-31s got in and out without loss. We think it’s because they, and our F-22s, super-cruised in and were on their targets before the angels could react. The Europeans, lost three aircraft, two Typhoons and a Rafale. Chinese and Indians put up MiG-21s, the Chinese lost two aircraft, the Indians three although one of them may just have fallen out of the sky, the Indians don’t have much luck with their ‘21s. Finally the Singaporeans lost an F-16. Good news is that all the pilots got out. That’s really strange.”
“How?” That one word had a wealth of importance. The angel attack had caused the humans more combat losses that they’d suffered in the whole of the Hell Campaign.
“Good question Sir, we’re trying to find out. Pilot’s debriefing speak of the aircraft feeling as if they flew into a wall. The crash investigation people are collecting the wreckage already and they hope to have an answer for us. It seems as if the aircraft broke up in mid-air, there’s no trace of fire or explosion damage prior to the wreckage hitting the ground. Other than that, we’re going through flight recorder tapes and the other pilot’s statements but that all takes time.”
“Then see it takes less of it. We can’t afford loss rates like that. We’re flying hundreds of jet fighters against an enemy that have tens of millions of angels. We need that ten thousand-to-one kill ratio we got over Hell or we’ll go down.”
The room was silent, most civilians were out there rejoicing at the quick and easy victory over Hell, or at least the victory that had seemed quick and easy. Some were even calling it the Curb-Stomp War. The experts in this room knew better. Like every task performed by true experts, the war had just seemed easy but in reality it had been a desperately close thing. The count-down clock to when the human army would run out of ammunition and fuel had been getting perilously near to zero-hour when the surrender had come in and it wasn’t that much better now. Warner knew that the people who had made the difference in those last hours hadn’t been American, Russian or British but Chinese. If Norinco hadn’t kept flooding out supplies of both Russian- and NATO-standard munitions, the war might still have gone the other way.
“Can we get the Chinese some decent fighters?” Warner’s question was prompted by that last thought. “If this is going to be a standard means of attack, they’ll need something better than MiG-21s.”
“They have the J-10, J-11 and J-12. Just not enough of them. I suppose we could divert someF-15s to help out. We don’t need them here yet. Problem is, most of them are in dock being refurbished.”
“Work on it, get an answer. For the Indians too. If we can’t help out, then perhaps we can lean on the French or Brits to provide some Rafales or Typhoons.”
“That brings us to another question Sir, the F-35.”
“Not a question. It’s history. We can’t afford to waste time developing an entirely new aircraft. We’ll concentrate on pouring out as many F-22s as we can.”
“That’s going to cause problems, a lot of people were depending in that bird. The Brits wanted the VSTOL version for their carriers. Can’t operate without them unless they redesign the ships.”
“Another non-problem. Got a message from MoD in London this morning. Both carriers have been cancelled. Take too long to build they say and absorb too many resources. Like everybody else, they want kit that can be turned out quickly and Navies are in third place on the priority list. Anyway, that’s all for another time. Back to those angels. Any news on what they were trying to do?”
“Not yet Sir. One thing that might be significant. There was an emergency call from Benning to Detrick this morning, an anomalous infection has turned up. One of the sensitives, a Private Chestnut.”
“Private?” Warner looked up, the active sensitives were all high-ranking and had privileges the rest of the population could only dream of. To find one as a private suggested that something odd was going on.
“Bit of a sad sack Sir. Just coasts along doing the bare minimum to stay out of trouble, always complaining. Can’t see he brings down all the crap on his own head. He literally can’t be trusted with anything more than a private’s rank. Frankly, there’s been talk of retiring him, he’s more trouble than he’s worth. He’s the one who wanted a million a year back in the early days.”
“So how did Detrick get involved?”
“Sir, Sergeant who spotted the case in a recalled Operation Desert Storm veteran. He thinks the disease might be inhalation anthrax. And that’s 90 plus percent lethal.”
Warner looked up sharply. “This is not good.”
Chapter Seven
MoD Main Building, Whitehall, London.
“Well, gentlemen the Prime Minister wants to know how it happened.” Admiral Lord West said as he looked out of the window at the teeming rain battering London. The weather forecast had been for bright sunshine. So the Met Office had gotten it wrong, again, hardly new experience for someone in Britain. This time though, he expected the Met Office had received some supernatural assistance in getting its forecasts wrong.