STERLING

 

Wednesday January 15 - 0006 MST

Two hours and twenty-four minutes until Turbocharger activates

 

The man sitting in the interrogation room looked like any number of retirees you would see flooding the commissary on the first and fifteenth. I couldn't imagine him being any kind of a spy or a saboteur. If anything he looked more like he was on his way to bingo night and just got lost. He simply sat staring at the wall and looking completely oblivious to our presence. I doubted he even knew we were on the other side of the one-way glass window.

It was going to be tricky weaseling the answers out of him without tipping him off to the mission we were trying to keep secret. But I had an idea. I looked down at Morgan's tactical vest. "Mind if I borrow that? I need to be an enlisted man for a few minutes."

He pulled the vest over his head before handing it over. In return I took the velcro name tape off my flight suit and held it out to him. "You can be a colonel until I get back."

Morgan grinned. "Do I get the pay that comes with this?"

I grinned back. "I'll make sure you get all ten minutes worth of it in your next deposit."

Then my serious face took over and I stepped into the room along with the box of personal property taken from our guest. He sat alone at the metal table with his wrists cuffed to a bar in the center. All he did was stare quietly while I took the seat across from him. He didn't have the eyes of a crazy or a doddering old fool. There was an intensity to them that I'd only ever seen in men like Dave Grider and his team. This guy had seen hard combat, and lots of it. I was sure of it. Even though his body was showing the signs of age there was this fire burning in his eyes that showed his mind was still all there. And he was studying me with that mind sharpened by decades of struggle.

"Good evening, Mister…uhh…Sharks." I looked over the ID card that had been among his belongings in the box. According to the date on the blue DoD-issued card he'd retired from the Army in the eighties. So he wasn't a complete outsider, but I still had to find out for sure if he legitimately knew something about the Underground. "I'm told you mistakenly tried to enter a restricted area."

His stare never wavered from me. "It wasn't a mistake. I used to work in that place and I know what you have buried out there."

I shook my head dismissively at him like I thought his words were absurd. "I'm sorry, sir. That's not possible. There's nothing beyond that gate you were trying to pass through but empty desert. That's the test range. No one goes out there except people in hazmat suits to test chemical weapons. Really nasty stuff. Trust me. You don't want to be out there."

He just stared. "There's much nastier stuff buried in the Underground."

I had to turn away at the mention of the Underground because I didn't want him to see how surprised I was to hear him say those words. No one outside of the CTTC should know about it. But somehow he did. I found myself staring into the box again, so I started digging to look like I was doing anything but being surprised and confused. The most obvious item in there was a Colt 1911 sealed in an evidence bag. So I pulled that out along with the magazine sealed in its own bag.

The pistol was well worn like any weapon that had seen decades of use. There were wear marks where the slide met the frame and where fingers normally touched the metal. But it was well cared for and showed no signs of neglect. I held it up, far enough away that the cuffs wouldn't let him reach it. "Mister Sharks, are you aware that it is a federal crime to bring a personal firearm onto a DoD installation without prior approval?"

His fiery gaze broke for just an instant and I saw guilt poke through. "Look, I understand that. But something bad just happened out there." The chains of the cuffs rattled as he tried to point out towards the desert. "If we don't do something about it a lot of people are going to die."

I shrugged like I expected a bored SF to do if he thought he was dealing with some random crazy off the street. "And you were going to just shoot this bad thing with your handgun? Were you going to shoot any of us?"

His intense stare was back. "Look at the rounds in the mag." He waited while I looked over the pistol's magazine. The stubby .45 ACP rounds stuffed into the box magazine looked like most pistol ammunition I'd seen before with shiny brass casings. But the projectile—the actual bullet—that really stood out. They weren't the expected copper colored jacket. They looked like highly polished silver. "Those aren't for people, hoss."

I snickered like I'd just heard a mildly amusing joke. But deep down I was scared out of my mind that he might be right. "What're you after? Werewolves?"

"Pal, that's not silver. It's a rare metal known as iridium. To us it's just an exotic metal. But to the things our government has buried out in the sand it's like poison. Worse than the scariest nerve gas you keep on this side of the fence."

Again I found myself looking away. A few months ago Sergeant Madarasz approached me with a request to order a block of iridium. He'd been working with Doctor Johnson who'd mentioned a legend about that metal having some special properties when used against exo-biologicals. He'd melted down the brick and turned it into thousands of pellets that went into custom made shotgun shells. Of course, we never had a chance to test them on live exos and I'd forgotten about the whole experiment. Now it all came rushing back with Sharks's words. I had to bury my head in the box again before he saw the surprise.

That was when I found his credentials. They were inside an old leather wallet and at first I thought they might be a costume prop. There was only one problem with that hypothesis. I'd seen the logo before within the halls of the CTTC. Along with the paper credentials that had a black-and-white photo with a more youthful Sharks in it was a silver badge. It was imprinted with an icon of a sword held within the grip of an armored gauntlet that had magically sprouted angel wings to keep it aloft. Running along the bottom was a Latin phrase I recognized immediately: Malum Superate. Overcome Evil.

That was the symbol of the CTTC's predecessor and only someone who had been in the Underground before would know about it.

"Look, buddy." Sharks looked down at the front of the tactical vest I was wearing. "Uh…Sergeant Morgan. I know you're doing your job to the best of your ability, but do me a favor. Just think for a moment. Why are your bosses making you guard an empty patch of desert? Do they really need you and a hundred other guys to keep people away from salt flats? There's something out there and they aren't telling you about it. If you could just put me in touch with an officer they would probably know what I'm talking about. And the sooner you can put me in touch with that guy the better. We really need to get a lot of help out here. A battalion of troops at a minimum and some air support. It's gonna take time to get all that—"

I held up a hand to stop him. There was no more point in the charade anymore. He knew. I waved at the one-way window. "Morgan, come on in."

After Morgan buzzed in I gave him back his vest and put my patch back on before undoing the cuffs on Sharks's wrist. "Mister Sharks, I'm sorry about the deception. But we had to be sure."

Sharks rubbed his wrists as he studied my patch. "Colonel Sterling? Believe me. I understand. Now it's been a few years for me since I've been in the business. Can you tell me what's going on?"

I couldn't help but frown. "I was really hoping you could tell us. Some unfriendly people released something and my people were forced to evacuate. That's about all the intel I've gotten since I got here."

Sharks nodded thoughtfully. "Since you got here? Then you're not in charge?"

"It's a long story. But as of approximately thirty minutes ago I'm now in command. If you don't mind me asking. How did you know we were having major problems?"

Sharks reached into the box of his belongings and retrieved an arrowhead shaped piece of bone. Someone had carved it into that shape from a larger fragment and inscribed it with the sort of runes I'd come to expect from things related to transient phenomena. However, unlike other transient writing, this piece didn't instantly give me a headache. The arrowhead's strangest feature wasn't what it looked like, but what it was doing.

As Sharks held up his open palm with the arrowhead resting atop it, it began to move. At first it was just a tiny wiggle, then the twitching got more intense and the arrowhead shifted in his palm like a living thing. When it stopped it was pointing at the wall facing out into the white sands of the salt flats. Sharks looked like he was expecting it to do exactly that. "Looks like the Underground is exactly where I left it. And to answer your question, this little guy is how I knew something bad was going down. It wouldn't be doing the hokey pokey unless it was serious."

"You'll have to tell me about it while we drive." Sharks had opened up several cans of worms with just a few brief words. I had so many questions to ask. If I had several hours I would pick his brain for every last scrap of knowledge that was lost over the years. But right now I didn't have hours. The clock was running out and we were far behind the power curve. Those questions and desperately needed answers would have to wait.

Now it was time to move, but one thing could be said. We had a new ally in our fight against the darkness.