Admiral Hintzman entered the building, following a dimly lit access corridor to a third checkpoint — a steel gate safeguarding a pair of elevators. He entered his Zebra security code on a touch panel, waited until the magnetic bolt retracted, then pushed open the gate as one of the elevator doors opened to greet him.
He stepped inside and held tight to the rail as the car dropped twenty stories into the depths of a dome-shaped, hardened steel and concrete bunker constructed to withstand the direct impact of a hydrogen bomb.
The elevator opened to his assistant, a young woman with a smile that always seemed to charm him, no matter how dour his day.
Sophia Pregadio handed him a fresh cup of coffee. “Woke you again, didn’t they?”
“Our visitors have no respect for the working man. I like the new hairstyle.”
“Nice try. I added the gold highlights two months ago.”
“Sorry. Where am I headed?”
“Conference Room-A. Director Solis is already inside with the night-shift nerds.”
“Not the South African?”
“Sunny Pilay? Don’t you remember? You had me transfer him to Pine Gap.”
“I forgot. Nice enough fellow; I just couldn’t understand a damn thing he was saying. Let the Aussies deal with him.”
“The new lab coat is American. Erin Driscoll.”
“Do I know him?”
“Her. She’s the strawberry blonde who got sick at the New Year’s Eve bash. Oh yeah… Dr. Death decided to make an appearance.”
“Christ. Did he bring the vampire queen?”
“She’s in the break room.”
“Probably feeding on bloodworms. The two of them make my skin crawl. Is that it?”
“General Cubit is on his way.”
“Good. I’ll watch the show from the theater until he gets here.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No. Wait, do we have any more of that chocolate cheesecake I had at lunch?”
“I’m sure I can find you a slice.”
“Good girl. Tell the general where to find me… and get him a slice, too.” Admiral Hintzman headed down a ramp leading to a pair of double steel doors which opened automatically as he approached.
The command center, often referred to as “the theater,” resembled NORAD’s war room, only its equipment was far more advanced. Technicians worked in open stations in a semi-darkness that was lit by colorful giant LED screens which occupied the entire six-story-high forward wall, the maps able to pinpoint the precise location of every air craft, warship, and submarine — friend or foe — in the world.
Everyone’s attention was focused on the thirty-by-fifty-foot center screen, its map zooming in upon Maine’s eastern seaboard where six to eight objects, color-coded in yellow, were flitting on and off the screen like fireflies. As the admiral watched, one of the lights raced east over the Atlantic as if shot out of a cannon, stopped on a dime, and then soared ninety degrees to the south and off the screen beyond the range of their radar.
A number flashed in the lower right corner. Velocity: 7,665 mph.
A pair of objects blinked into existence over Nova Scotia. Admiral Hintzman followed them as they streaked west across the Atlantic, their color fading from gold to aqua-blue, indicating the bogeys had submerged.
They disappeared, only to reappear seconds later over the coastline of Portland, Maine.
Velocity: 13,812 mph.
“Putting on quite a show for us tonight, huh Marko?”
The Admiral turned to a man in his mid-fifties. Like Hintzman, he was wearing casual attire, his sandy-brown short-cropped hair poking out beneath a Central Florida baseball cap.
“How are you, Tommy?”
“Good as can be expected. Matthew’s entering his second year in law school; Andrea’s back in Boca with our daughter and…” Cubit glanced up at the main screen as four red dots, flying in a diamond formation, crawled slowly across central Maine, heading for the coast. “Here come the F-16s.”
“If you ask me, this entire exercise is a waste of taxpayer money. It’s not like we’re ever going to catch them.”
“Attention. Admiral Hintzman and General Cubit, please report to Conference Room-A.”
“Xavier sounds cranky.”
Hintzman nodded. “Our director has uninvited guests.”
“Johnston?”
“And the Goth queen. She’s in the cafeteria eating bugs or whatever it is witches eat.”
“I wish someone would put a silver bullet in both their devil-worshiping hearts.”
“We should talk about that sometime.”
Sophia Pregadio approached, handing each man a slice of chocolate cheesecake on a paper plate. “Hurry up and eat this; I stole the last two pieces from Director Solis’s refrigerator.”
Conference Room-A was a 2,000-square-foot chamber featuring a balcony that overlooked the theater. Tonight its sliding glass doors remained closed and tinted, the four large flat screen LED monitors inside all tuned to the map featured on the command center’s main screen.
Xavier Solis, former Directorate of the CIA’s Special Activities Division, sat at the head of the oval smart table. On Solis’s left was Lillie Becker, co-chairman of the Council of Foreign Relations. On his right was Dr. Erin Driscoll; seated beside her was Dr. Michael Kemp, CEO of Kemp Aerospace. The two scientists were focused on the data scrolling across their iPad screens.
Seated at the opposite end of the table from Xavier Solis was the older Caucasian man, his piercing ice-blue eyes red-rimmed from having just driven three hours in the dark from Tyson’s Corner, his white eyebrows furrowed in concentration as if his mind was seeking a way to mentally obliterate the dancing yellow dots from existence.
Rory Johnston was twenty-six the year Adolf Hitler invaded Poland. The amateur pilot had just accepted a job teaching history at a high school in upstate New York and was worried about being drafted when he met Sandra Donahue at an Arts Festival. A struggling artist, Sandra was sharing a trailer with six people. Rory bought three of her paintings and asked her out.
Two weeks later, he asked her to move in.
A month later she informed him she was pregnant.
A devout Catholic, Rory convinced Sandra that they were meant to be together and asked her to marry him. Uncertain whether the child was even his, she nevertheless accepted, and the couple exchanged vows at Johnston’s church.
Alexander Rory Johnston was born on April 7, 1939. His father worked two jobs to make ends meet; his mother stayed home and painted, often leaving the infant alone in its crib while she worked… and drank and cursed her life.
Two weeks after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Rory received his draft notice.
After completing basic training, Private Johnston was informed that his experience flying qualified him to be trained as a bombardier. He was sent to England and, over the next four years, participated in more than a hundred combat missions. He returned home to a five-year-old son who did not recognize him and a wife who was just as distant. Sandra confessed that she was having an affair with the principal at the high school where Rory had worked and that she wanted a divorce.
Rory packed his belongings and left. He returned later that night — drunk and quite violent.
Alexander was playing in his room when he heard his mother yelling at the stranger. An object smashed against the other side of his wall, followed by a chorus of grunts and screams… then silence.