“Is that all right with you?” Duncan asked.
Turcotte nodded. “Sure.”
Duncan stood and leaned forward, putting her hands on the top of the conference table that the men of Majestic-12 had sat around for five decades. “Gentlemen, we’re it. The five of us. I told you the President is caught in a political quagmire. UNAOC is hamstrung by isolationist governments. The message from Easter Island with Kelly Reynolds’s byline will only make that worse. I’ll inform the President of the new threat from Lexina and The Ones Who Wait, but I honestly don’t think he can muster enough support to take decisive action before it’s too late. And after what happened to the shuttles, we always have to be worried that any support might well be compromised by the Watchers, The Mission, or STAAR.”
“In other words,” Yakov said, “we can trust no one outside of this room.”
Duncan nodded. “We keep what we know to ourselves. The President is trying to keep a lid on what happened to Atlantis, and I’m sure he’ll definitely want to keep the information about Stratzyda secret to prevent a panic.
“We have to find this key.” She pointed at Major Quinn. “How much time?”
“Forty-eight hours, twenty minutes until Stratzyda deployment.”
“Let’s get moving,” Duncan ordered.
As everyone headed for the door, Turcotte went to the end of the table, grabbed a chair, and sat down, watching as Duncan put her papers back in her briefcase.
“What?” Duncan finally asked, noting his stare.
“So how are you doing?” Turcotte asked. Duncan paused, hands on the top of the table. “You weren’t happy that I picked you to infiltrate Area 51, remember?”
Turcotte nodded.
“Well, I’m not thrilled that the President picked me to be his science adviser, then tossed me the hand grenade of dealing with Area 51, and now he’s backpedaling. Especially considering the ultimatum we just received.”
“He didn’t expect you to uncover what you did,” Turcotte noted. “It would have been better if we had just discovered the bodies of a couple of little green men at Area 51 instead of what we did. Do you think he will take action with this new information and the threat from Stratzyda?”
“He has to make a decision, Mike.” Duncan was exasperated. “Straddling the fence isn’t going to work. While the isolationists and the progressives argue, The Mission and The Ones Who Wait are moving forward with their plans. We’re caught in the middle, and the stakes are getting higher.”
“You sound like me a week ago,” Turcotte said. “What’s really wrong?”
“On the flight here I was wondering if we did the right thing.”
“It’s a little too late for that,” Turcotte said.
“I know that, but…” Duncan’s voice trailed off.
“The real problem is you’re tired,” Turcotte said. “When I was in Ranger school, part of the philosophy of the course was to make the students exhausted, to deny them food and sleep, then see how they made decisions, how they operated while under that stress. Sounds stupid, but given that they were preparing us for war, it actually made sense. I’ve seen people make tremendously stupid decisions when tired. You have to think everything through carefully.”
“You think going to Easter Island is a mistake?”
“No… more a waste of time… but I wasn’t talking about that. I was referring to the speech you made at the Lincoln Memorial. Don’t you think there were times that Lincoln doubted his course of action, even considered trying to make peace with the South to save the lives of his people?
“How do you think he felt when he received the casualty list from the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history… September 17, 1862? Twenty-three thousand Americans killed or wounded in one day. Do you have any concept of the scope of that, especially given the weaponry of the time? That’s nine times the number of casualties we took on the Longest Day at Normandy during the Second World War.
“You think about things like the Gettysburg Address,” Turcotte continued, “while I think about the poor grunt on the ground. In the Bloody Lane at Antietam, a quarter-mile-long stretch of road, more men were killed or wounded in three hours than in all the years of the Revolutionary War. Blood ran like a stream in that lane. You think numbers like that didn’t make Lincoln sit down and ponder what the hell he was doing? If he’d made the right decisions, done the right things?”
Duncan nodded. “I’m sure he did. And he used that battle, which was a victory, although by the narrowest of margins, for the North, to be the impetus for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, not to make peace with the South.”
Turcotte had hoped she would make that connection. “Which broadened the scope of the war to a moral issue and kept England and France from giving aid to the South, as they were contemplating. He used a terrible thing in a positive way.”
“And the Civil War lasted two long years after Antietam,” Duncan noted.
“Is the glass half full or half empty?” Turcotte asked. “Let’s try to be positive.”
Duncan finished putting her papers away. “So it was your turn to give the pep talk,” she said with a smile.
“Hey. I’m just one of the infantrymen,” Turcotte said. “I just want to make sure I’m on the same sheet of music as my boss.”
“‘Your boss,’” Duncan repeated, glancing at the door to make sure it was closed. She ran a hand through Turcotte’s close-cropped hair. “Is that what I am?”
“Only during duty hours,” Turcotte said. “Off-duty we can flip for who wants to be boss.”
Duncan laughed, the lines of strain disappearing from her face for a moment. Turcotte wrapped her hand inside of his own. “Speaking of which… ” He paused as her cell phone rang once more.
Duncan pulled it out of her pocket and flipped it open. “Duncan.”
She listened for a few seconds, then shut it, her face tight. “Duty calls,” she said to Turcotte. “The Secretary of Defense was just killed, apparently by a Guide.”
“Jesus,” Turcotte muttered. “Why?”
“The Mission killed the Secretary of Defense to keep the President from taking decisive action about Easter Island.”
“We’re getting it from both sides,” Turcotte said. “The Ones Who Wait and The Mission are trying to keep us from stopping them in their war.”
“I have to sit in on a conference call with the National Security Council, reference this new development and the Warfighter situation, and give them the good news about Stratzyda.”
“Always duty first.” Turcotte removed his hand from hers and stood.
She tucked her briefcase under her arm and was all business once more. “You better go check out those Special Forces guys before you head to Russia. Get Major Quinn to give them a SATPhone, disseminate the number among those who were in this room, and direct the team leader to respond to any requests for assistance he receives. Also have Quinn dedicate a bouncer to the team for their transportation.”
”Roger that,” Turcotte acknowledged. As she turned for the door, his voice stopped her. “Lisa… ”
“Yes?”
“Be careful.”
“You too.”
Turcotte watched the door swing shut and took a moment to collect his thoughts, then exited the conference room. He took the elevator up to Hangar One. Of the nine bouncers, four were present. There was also a group of twelve soldiers in camouflage. Even from a hundred yards away, Turcotte knew they were Special Forces, even though they had black watch caps on instead of the traditional green beret. They gave off an air of confidence and competence that most Special Operations soldiers were cloaked in.
He walked up, and a man with the railroad tracks on his collar indicating he was a captain stepped forward. “Major Turcotte, I’m Billam. Colonel Mickell said I was to report to you and follow any orders you issued.”