‘It’s like music,’ Fuller finally managed to say, his jaw hanging open in shock.
Duvall recovered her senses and turned to the deck officer.
‘Get a linguistics team down here as fast as you can, and open a channel to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We may have initiated first contact!’
As the team scattered to perform their duties, Duvalls’ own words echoed in her ears. First contact, the first verifiable signal from an alien species sent from an alien craft in orbit around the planet. She didn’t have long to dwell on the gravity of the subject as Fuller spoke from beside her.
‘Its orbital velocity is decaying,’ he said, his features stricken and his skin pale as he stared at her. ‘Whatever it is, it’s coming down.’
III
The sound of incessant banging reverberated through the apartment and jerked Ethan Warner out of his slumber, dreams of helicopter blades and blazing guns vanishing as he opened his eyes and saw the feint light of pre-dawn glowing lethargically through the blinds of his bedroom window.
Ethan sat upright, unsure of whether he had actually heard something, and moments later he leaped out of his bed as he heard the front door of his apartment suddenly open despite the three sets of locks securing it in place. One hand reached for the Beretta M9 pistol he kept under his pillow and he whirled as two figures appeared to fill the bedroom doorway in the dull morning light.
‘Ethan Warner? Defense Intelligence Agency.’
The brief, clipped tones imparted the information necessary for Ethan not to open fire on the armed intruders even as behind them another figure appeared in the doorway and hit the lights. Ethan squinted as he stood naked in front of the intruders, shielding his eyes with one hand as he stared at a tall woman with long auburn hair who smirked as she looked him up and down appraisingly.
‘You didn’t have to get your weapon out for me, Warner.’
Ethan turned away from former FBI Agent Hannah Ford and tossed his pistol onto the bed.
‘False alarm,’ he replied. ‘I thought something exciting was about to happen. Don’t you know how to knock?’
‘We’ve been knocking for five minutes,’ Ford replied as her two armed escorts moved to guard the apartment’s door as Ethan dressed. ‘You sleep soundly, which is something I wouldn’t have expected.’
‘I’ve learned not to give a damn any more,’ Ethan retaliated. ‘Where’s the fire?’
Hannah leaned on the doorframe and watched as Ethan pulled on a pair of jeans.
‘Doug Jarvis has called us in. I don’t know why, but they’re in one hell of a hurry so let’s get moving.’
Ethan scowled as he glanced at a digital clock beside his bed. 5.26am.
‘Jesus, can’t they have a crisis at a normal time for a change?’
Hannah didn’t reply as Ethan padded into the bathroom and stood in front of a sink, yanking the faucet to let warm water fill it. A mirror reflected his wide jaw, gray eyes and scruffy light brown hair as he splashed the water across his face and tried to shake off the lethargy slowing his movements.
In recent years Ethan and his partner Nicola Lopez had been fortunate enough, or unfortunate enough depending on how he looked at it, to have been contracted by the Defense Intelligence Agency to investigate cases the rest of the intelligence community had rejected as unworkable. The connection to a high level agency like the DIA had come from a former colleague of Ethan’s named Douglas Jarvis. The old man had once been captain of a United States Marines Rifle Platoon and Ethan’s senior officer during his time with the Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their friendship, cemented during Operation Iraqi Freedom and later, when Ethan had resigned his commission and been embedded with Jarvis’s men as a journalist, had continued into their unusual and discreet accord with the DIA where Jarvis continued to serve his country.
Throughout this time he had performed his duties for the DIA alongside Nicola Lopez, as a part of their shared business Lopez & Warner Inc. The memory of Lopez slowed his movements further still and he stared in silence at his reflection in the mirror as he thought of her.
‘How’re you holding up?’
Hannah Ford’s voice reached him from the distance. Ford had been an FBI Agent assigned to track both himself and Lopez in an attempt to arrest them for crimes they had not committed. It had taken a recent national incident for the FBI to realize the deception and cancel the operation, after which Hannah Ford had transferred to the DIA and joined the team. Her voice pulled him back into the present, and he sighed and dried his face.
‘I’m fine.’
Nicola Lopez had been seriously wounded several months before during a gunfight with terrorists determined to assassinate either the President of the United States or the President of the People’s Republic of China, during a major ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. Both he and Lopez had been instrumental in preventing that tragedy, but success had come at a great price, with Lopez still on a life-support machine in a DC hospital. Ethan had moved from Chicago to be closer to both Lopez and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
‘I checked in on her the other day,’ Hannah said. ‘She’s still stable, still fighting.’
Ethan did not reply. It wasn’t often that he had heard anybody refer to Lopez as stable — being a fighter ran strong in her Latino blood. They had shared several investigations for the DIA over the years, often facing death and coming out the other side by the skin of their teeth, each always covering the others’ back. His world felt empty now without her constant bitching to color it.
Ethan pulled on his shirt, which helped to cover some of the scars his frame had garnered over the years, and then he pushed past Hannah and fitted his shoulder holster, slipping the Beretta into it before pulling on a leather jacket.
‘Let’s go see what the fuss is about,’ he said, not wanting to discuss Lopez any further.
Outside the apartment two smart SUVs were pulled into the sidewalk, the sun rising in slivers of molten metal between gray clouds as Ethan climbed aboard one of the vehicles. Hannah Ford followed him and moments later the two SUVs were cruising south toward the Capitol, the driver eager to beat the early morning rush into the city center.
‘Where’s Vaughn?’ Ethan asked.
Michael Vaughn was Hannah Ford’s former partner at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, both of them having resigned their roles there to become agents within the Defense Intelligence Agency after the attempted attacks on the life of the President. A stocky, thick-necked and capable agent, Vaughn had followed Hannah willingly into the DIA.
‘He’s already at Bolling,’ Hannah replied. ‘Jarvis sent me to get you.’
‘Why didn’t he just use the damned phone?’
‘Because you keep turning it off, Einstein,’ Hannah pointed out. ‘You haven’t been on top form lately, Warner, so I guess he thinks you need me to pick you up and return you to your former joyful self.’
‘He shouldn’t have delegated that task.’
‘I shouldn’t have accepted it but I’m all heart, y’know?’
Ethan glanced out of the windows as he watched the city awakening around them, lights glowing in houses and twinkling across the Potomac. The SUV was closing in on Joint Bolling-Anacostia Airbase, located on the eastern shore of the river close to where it merged with the Georgetown Channel. The base was the location of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Headquarters and clad in secrecy.