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Christine Forman read the handwritten note one more time, the one that had come in an envelope with no stamp, just “MPS” for Military Postal System and no postmark, which meant it had been dropped directly into the base post office, to be sorted and delivered to her in the mail.
Christine,
John Thomas Tyler is a Psycho. He sent Fortress Team One to kidnap the alien and kill DJ Markis. I’ll do my best to find a way out.
He has suborned the Secret Service and the President with addictive nanites. He must be stopped. The Eden Plague might cure it. As far as I know, General Tyler is clean. It’s all in your hands. Good luck.
–Skull.
P.S. You look good in a bathrobe. Sorry I couldn’t stay.
She laughed, rueful, head shaking and wondering how much to believe. Skull had complete faith in his own opinion, something Christine did not. She had confidence in neither his assessment, nor in her own. Only fools think faith brings the clarity of black and white; in reality, it’s always fifty shades of grey. Is he manipulating me?
She decided it didn’t really matter. While her time with the Underground Railroad had hammered discretion into her, a secrecy different from that of the ministry, she hated every bit of it, hated the duplicity forced upon her by evil men and evil circumstance and the Spirit of Evil behind it all.
Only one thing to do now, and that was turn it over to a higher power. She laughed to herself. Besides God, I mean. She picked up her bugged phone, then put it down. Even an innocuous message might tip someone, the ones watching – JT or the Secret Service or whomever he had in his pocket – so she decided to just take a stroll.
Fifteen minutes later she waved her keycard in front of the reader and nodded to the guard as she entered the main administrative building that housed the general’s office. Dressed in official Navy physical training gear, she looked a bit out of place but not so much as to invite comment. On the weekend uniform standards were relaxed, especially for those working long hours. She recalled an old joke about hardworking military officers – How can you tell that the commander is on vacation? He comes in to work in civilian clothes.
She rapped on General Tyler’s open door, watching him as he signed a paper then closed a folder. Some things still had to be done in hardcopy; she thought she saw the telltale form of a fitness report, those sacred determiners of promotion or passover.
“General. Care to take a walk with me?”
He looked her up and down as if in slight disapproval of her PT uniform. “Do Edens even have to work out?” he asked as he stood.
She took the question as acquiescence, with tremendous relief. Had he not followed her lead she wondered what she would have done. “Of course, if they want to pass a PT test.” She put brightness into her voice, and he looked sharply at her as she allowed a tiny pleading look to cross her face.
He nodded and rose.
Outside he set a brisk walking pace, crossing through courtyards and between buildings, a deliberate attempt to foil anyone listening through a directional microphone or simply following. It emboldened her to think that he took elementary precautions even on his own base where he should reign absolute. It showed her that he understood there were other players in the game.
Tyler gave Christine an inquisitive look. In response, she handed him the note. He read it, then handed it back mutely, shifting his eyes to the fore, lifting his feet up to cross curbs and low planters by instinct as they walked. After a moment he said, “I guess this is the break point. I’ve been hoping, maybe fooling myself, but it’s obvious I’ve let the situation run on too long.”
“Your son?” Christine asked in sympathy, hearing the pain in his voice.
“Among others. But he’s the lynchpin. I needed to find out what his scheme was. But what can you do, being an Eden and, pardon me, a particularly righteous one at that?”
“What can I do? What do you need me to do? I brought this to you hoping you had power and a plan. Everyone I know says you are a good man. I’ll do anything that I can, short of murdering someone.”
Tyler snorted. “This Eden thing...I used to think it makes us into sheep. I want to believe it can make us into sheepdogs, still able to use our teeth.”
“What does it matter if you’re not an Eden?”
“Because I’ll be one soon. I see the writing on the wall. I’m just not ready to have my fangs pulled.” He laughed without humor, turning left onto an access road that wended its way away from the compound into the arid space between the buildings and the fence line. The wind whipped desert dust across their path.
She followed at his side. “I don’t know that you have to worry so much, General. In my experience, the Eden Plague doesn’t limit you as much as it enhances your own self-defined limits. Otherwise we wouldn’t have Psychos.”
“Like JT, you mean? I was wondering when you would get to that.”
She sighed. “There’s no other explanation. That’s what Skull’s note says. He contracted the Eden Plague, it defines him as a Psycho, now he can’t use the nanites like he wants to, until the lab comes up with something that’s compatible. Then when they do, you give it away to Markis. That must have sent him through the roof. But what’s his next move?”
“Get rid of me, somehow. Sideline or kill me. I’m the only thing standing between him and control of the Tiny Fortress program. If he had that, he could direct development of any kind of nano he wanted. He’s trying for complete control through McKenna, if these addictive nanites Skull talks about are real. I wonder –”
Tyler abruptly pitched forward, a spray of blood washing across Christine as he fell heavily against her. Her mind registered the report of the shot as she dropped him to the sand and threw herself beside him. His eyes turned to her, pleading, burning, and she reacted the only way she could, seizing his flaccid arm and biting it viciously. She slopped saliva into the wound, praying and willing the Plague to take hold, praying and willing Tyler’s wound to be survivable. Dear God save him, for he’s our best hope.
Several more shots peppered the sand nearby but with all good fortune they had gone to ground in a slight hollow, the kind that saves footsoldiers and bedevils snipers, and her hopes and prayers lifted skyward to encompass the base’s reaction forces. They had to have heard, or had reported to them, the loud shots fired by a high-powered rifle. We only have to survive for a few minutes and they will come.
She heard the crackle of radio voices, realizing that Tyler had a “brick” along, a heavy clunky walkie with surprising range and power, a symbol of command in this modern age as much as the .45 on his hip. She reached for the device, yelling for help into its face, launching her words into the ether.
Later in the ambulance, as she held the general’s hand and attendants pumped fluids and solutions into his veins and she saw that he would survive, her supplications turned to thanksgivings. She stayed with him to explain to the MP major what had happened, enough to widen his eyes and anger him at this violation of his domain and his commander, and told that she had been forced to make him an Eden. She reminded him that this changed nothing about his chain of command. “The general is still your commander.”
The man raised his chin and accepted her words, especially as she bolstered his duty with his respect for her commissioned rank, a stability helpful in dealing with shattered subordinates. He marched off resolutely, glad of orders, righteous fire in his eyes.
Forman left Tyler there in the hospital bed, surrounded by his loyal men, or so she hoped, praying for the man’s son and his suborned henchmen to remain a few more minutes in the shadows. She ran at a sprinter’s pace the few hundred yards to her apartment and to her ace in the hole.
Six hours later Tyler was back on his feet, issuing long-delayed orders to Fortress Team Two in Cheyenne Mountain.
