Джозеф Нассис - SNAFU - Heroes [An Anthology of Military Horror]

Which is all the proof I’d ever need of that philosophic belief that we each exist in our own reality, each separated inside an envelope of a completely separate dream.

I will never be my old self again.

Can’t be. That ship has sailed and it hit an iceberg.

And happy?

Sure, I can laugh. So do hyenas, and it means about as much.

My enemies don’t think I’m a happy guy. When they look into my eyes they see the truth that my friends can’t see.

They see what I’ve really become.

I know this because I see the fear in their eyes when I kill them.

I used to be a nice man.

The world used to be a place of sunshine and magic.

Monsters, though, don’t thrive in the light.

My boss, Mr Church, called me into his office on a May Tuesday. It was one of those days that seem tailor-made for baseball, hotdogs and cold beer, and I was taking a half-day to see if the Orioles could earn their paychecks. I had on new jeans and an ancient team jersey, sneakers and a pair of Wayfarers up on my head.

As I entered the office, Church slid a file folder across the desk toward me. It was a blue folder with a red seal. It looked official.

I said, “No way. I have tickets for a double-header, and as far as all of our billions of dollars of intelligence surveillance equipment says, it’s a slow day for the bad guys.”

“Captain…”

“Get someone else.”

He sat back and studied me through the lenses of his tinted glasses. Mr Church is one of those guys who never has to say much to either piss you off or make you want to check that your fingernails are clean. Frequently both.

“This requires finesse,” he said mildly.

“All the more reason to get someone else. I am finesse-deprived today.”

“This requires your particular skill set.”

I stood there and glared at him. I could almost hear the crack of good wood on a hard ball, the roar of the crowd, the howl of the announcer as the ball arced high toward the back wall.

Mr Church said nothing.

He opened his briefcase and removed a packet of Nilla wafers, tore it open, selected one. Bit off a piece and chewed while he watched me.

The blue folder lay where he’d put it.

I said, “Fuck.”

Mr Church asked, “What do you know about the Koenig Group?”

“Yeah, a little.” I shrugged. “It was a think-tank based in Jersey. Cape May, right? Alternate Technologies… am I right about that?”

“They called it Alternative Scientific Options. ASO.”

“Which means what?”

“A bit of everything,” he said. “They were originally a division of DARPA, but they went private as part of a budget restructuring. Private investors propped them up during the economic downturn in ’09.”

“But they closed, right?”

He tapped crumbs off his cookie. “They were shut down.”

“Why and by who?”

“They were under investigation by a number of agencies, including our own. Aunt Sallie had some people on it, and she lent a couple of agents to a joint federal task force that is a prime example of too many chiefs and not enough Indians. It’s become a jurisdictional quagmire.”

“Typical.” American politics are fuelled by red tape. Anyone who says differently isn’t on the inside track.

“As to why this has happened,” Church continued, “we’d gotten some word that the administration there was a little too willing to consider offers from foreign investors.”

“Like…?”

“North Korea, China, Iran.”

“Yikes. So we shut them down?”

“So we shut them down,” he agreed. “The task force made arrests, cleared out the staff and sealed the building. Aunt Sallie has been assembling a team of special investigators, forensics experts, and scientific consultants to do a thorough analysis of the work done there and a full inventory of research and materials. Until then, no one is allowed inside, regardless of federal rank. Every agency in the alphabet wants in on it, and as a result the whole place has been sealed for months, pending the outcome of the jurisdictional knife fight that continues as we speak.”

“But the bad guys are out of there?”

“Yes. And that was enforced with fines, termination of licenses, confiscation of some research materials and computer records, charges against two administrators and one senior researcher, and a pending court case that will likely result in prison for at least one of those persons, if not all three. There are also fourteen members of the senior scientific staff who are as yet unaccounted for.”

“A second site?” I suggested. “Another lab elsewhere?”

“That’s the thinking, but so far we haven’t been able to get a line on where that lab is, and even if it’s on US soil – though none of the missing scientists have taken flights out of any domestic airport. In itself, that means little because there are too many ways to export people from this country without raising a flag.”

“They could be in North Korea for all we know.”

“Agreed. As far as the Koenig facility, the building has been under constant surveillance since the doors were shut. Two-man teams, alternating between foot patrols and in-car observation. That responsibility has been shared on a rotating basis. Every five days another agency takes the job. Currently it’s ATF.”

“Okay. Why am I warming up my helicopter?”

“Our agents were first in the door, so we’re the organization of record that shut it down. By default, it’s up to us to sweep up any debris.”

“So, I’m what? A janitor?”

“Let’s face it, Captain,” Church said dryly, “it’s not the worst thing either of us has been called in this job.”

I sighed. Church shoved the cookies toward me, but I shook my head. There’s no moral justification for a vanilla cookie when every store in the free world sells a variety of chocolate-themed cookies. Like Oreos. It’s closer to an American icon than Mom’s apple pie ever was. Church didn’t have any Oreos, so I sat there cookie-less.

“If this place has been sealed for a couple of months, what’s the hurry?” I asked.

“Apparently, when we shut them down they didn’t entirely take it to heart.”

“Naughty, naughty,” I said. “But this sounds like something the FBI should be doing. I know for a fact that they love this kind of bureaucracy. It gives them that tingly feeling in their nice gray wool pants.”

Church gave me a look that could best be described as pitying. “They haven’t yet won the toss of the bureaucratic garter. If they go in, then someone in congress will be accused of favoritism.”

“Jesus H Christ.”

He nodded. “There are times I envy drive-through window employees at McDonalds. Red tape isn’t a factor when ordering fast food.”

“No joke.”

We gave each other small, bland smiles.

I folded my arms. “Again I ask – why now?”

“There was a police report of lights on inside the facility late last night. Officers on scene found the rear door broken open, but a quick search of the premises yielded no results. The intruders must have fled.”

“Could the intruders have been some of the missing scientists?”

“Certainly a possibility.”

“But why break in? What’s left to steal?”

“Unknown. When the Koenig senior staff realized the hammer was about to fall they tried to clear things up in a hurry. A lot of material was destroyed to keep it from falling into our hands and, by association, a congressional committee. The task force recovered a lot of melted disks, destroyed hard-drives and that kind of thing. Bug put his team on it to see if there was enough left to determine whether they trashed the actual records or if what we recovered was pure junk. Computer records are small, and easy enough to hide. The task force might have missed a flash drive or some disks. If someone was there last night, it’s likely they removed whatever was hidden. However, we do need to check.”