We all carried credentials indicating that the bearer was on official duty and acting on behalf of the intelligence services of the U.S. government. They were supposed to be treated as classified documents; you weren't even supposed to take them home with you between missions, but rather to store them in a safe at the unit. Yet I must have seen members of the unit display those things a hundred times to try and get upgrades on airlines or get out of a speeding ticket. I grew more and more cynical as I watched these hypocrites.
In fairness, I must admit that there were good men and women there as well, many of whom I looked up to and revered as professional soldiers. For instance, there was a noncommissioned officer in charge of security clearances, a thin man who smoked up a storm trying to calm his nerves. He used to sit in his office with nothing but a small fluorescent desk lamp casting a harsh light against his face. I'd walk by and glance in to see him there filling out yet another form of some sort; he was always there when I came in, and there when I left for the evening. He had a
lousy, thankless job, trying to ride herd on the security practices of a bunch of guys who flashed their credentials to ticket agents and traffic cops. I liked him even though I probably never said more than twenty words to him a year. He had his nose to the grindstone every day, and all he ever got for it was the pleasure of having hypocrites and professional spooks put their hands on the back of his head and try to drive his nose deeper into the stone. He was a good man, conscientious, dedicated, and professional, and I felt very sorry for him having to exist in a place like this.
The executive officer, the unit's second in command, was a short firecracker who puffed his way through every day. He had boundless energy and was always full of good ideas and strangely concerned about the welfare of every soldier who reported to him, even though many of them didn't deserve to wear a uniform. He was protective and dedicated; he knew I hated the place and he did everything he could to protect me from zealots and headhunters.
And that was Team Five, or Allied Telecommunications, as it was known in intelligence circles.
My life was well past shitty by this point. Debbie and I were at odds, of course; I seldom saw the children, and when I walked into the parking lot at night I never knew whether I'd end up at home or slip into the ether and drive to Easton, Maryland. I was living like a hermit, sleeping in my car or with whoever would have me for the night. Every stitch of clothing I had was in my trunk or on the floor of the backseat. At this point, I'd lost all faith in the army, in my family, and most of all in myself. Someone once told me there was a kind of freedom that came from being so completely fucked that you knew things couldn't get any worse. I wrote that down and carried it with me everywhere I went. I thought I
had
hit bottom, until November 1990, when Debbie and I formally separated. My executive officer loaned me his legal separation papers, so I could copy them and save the expense of an attorney. I dropped them off at the house on my way to a bar, where I hoped to forget about what I'd just done.
For some time, the random, unpredictable shifts between the ether and reality had been making me sick. As I've mentioned, I couldn't fall asleep without the radio or TV blaring away to keep the noise in my head from driving me completely insane. Why I didn't put a gun in my mouth, I'll never know. Perhaps it was the angel's message, though that seemed faded now. Perhaps it was the love of my family, the kind of love that transcends time and space even better than viewers. Perhaps it was God having the decency and mercy to keep me from making that leap into the ether forever. I was like a junkie coming down from a two-year high. My mind and body craved the euphoria of the altered state, the rush of bilocating, the uniqueness of what I was in Sun Streak. At Team Five I was just another professional liar, sucking pay from the taxpayers and trying to bullshit my way through. Every time someone asked me what I did for a living I cringed. I felt like dung telling the lies our bosses expected us to spout. It was like pimping on Saturday night and getting up early on Sunday to preach to the congregation about morality.
Â
It was a Tuesday; Desert Shield had become a Storm, and the hundred hours that followed were at an end. We'd won a clear victory, and there was no shortage of heroes. Like every other soldier who'd sat the war out, I felt cheated, as if I'd practiced for a football game every day for sixteen years, only to be asked, on the day of the only scheduled game in a decade, to go buy sodas for the team and have âem iced down for the postgame party. I have to admit, though, that in the months after Desert Storm the leadership of the army did their best to put us bench-sitters at ease and make us feel a part of the team. Still, most of us felt as if we were hauling sodas to the _party.
On this particular Tuesday, I was sitting in the office, staring out the small sliver of glass I had for a window and desultorily sketching the images that had come to me in the night. The phone rang, startling me back into reality.
“David? This is Robert Crocker. Do you remember me?”
“Sure, I remember you!” Crocker had been assigned to Sun Streak just before I left the unit.
“How have you been? How are the headaches, or whatever they were, coming along?”
“They're nightmares, not headaches. I'd take some aspirin if they were just headaches!”
“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to implyâ”
“Look,” I interrupted, “it's great hearing from you, and yes, I miss the unit; and yes, I'd get down on my knees to come back. So, given that that's not going to happen, what can I do for you?”
“Well, that's just it. Mr. Nofi would like you to come back.”
“Mr. Nofi
what
?”
John Nofi had replaced Levy as the program director of Stargate, and had instituted his own brand of program management. To his credit, he had increased the level of unit activity in the drug wars; however, he had also placed, in my opinion, undue emphasis on unproven methods such as channeling and tarot cards.
“He wants you to come backâtemporarily, that isâto help work a project in the Gulf.”
“Are you pulling my chain? If you are, I'm gonna come over there right now andâ”
“Look, Morehouse, he asked me to call you, and that's what I'm doing. You want to be an ass, be an ass to somebody else; I don't have the time.”
There was a pause while my fuse burned. “You called me,” I said furiously, “and I'm supposed to drop what I'm doing, which may not be much but I'm doing it nonetheless, and run over there to do some work for Nofi, just like that? Tell Nofi I said he could go fuck himself. I asked him to take me back
five months ago
and he told me no, he needed some fresh blood. What he
meant
was, he needed somebody who didn't have a head problem. Yeah, you tell him I said go fuck himself.”
“Okay, I'll tell him.”
Click.
I took a deep breath and dialed. “Crocker, it's Morehouse. Don't tell him to go fuck himself. When do you want me there?”
“I wasn't going to tell him; I figured you'd come around.”
“Oh. I appreciate it.”
“Is tomorrow morning all right by you? Say about nine.”
“Gee, that's a little early for me, but I can probably make it.”
“Yeah, I heard you had rough duty there ⦠. So, come to the main building and Mr. Nofi will brief you along with all the others. Okay?”
“Sure. Hey, who else are you bringing in? I mean, who else that's been gone?”
“Well, Mel Riley for sure, and one other person, a female. Remember Kathleen Miller?”
“Kathleen, huh? She's good, it'll be good to see her again.” .
ââShould be one hell of a reunion. I'll see you tomorrow morning.”
“You've got it.” I set the receiver down and swallowed hard. I didn't know whether to scream, shout, or cry. I had a mission again, a real mission into the ether.
Â
The next morning I arrived thirty minutes early. Jenny greeted me at the door and gave me a big squeeze and a hard kiss on the cheek. “I miss your sorry butt around here, you know that?”
“I'll tell you, Jenny, it's nice to be missed somewhere.”
“How are things between you and Debbie? We heard you two were separatedâyou're not divorcing, are you?”
“I don't know, Jenny: things are so upside-down. I know I don't want a divorce, but I just can't seem to keep my head screwed on straight.”
“I wish you well, you know that. You two are a great
couple, you can work it out somehow. Just don't ever stop trying.” She smiled. “The coffee's on.”
“When's Mel supposed to be here?”
“I already am. What the hell took you so long?” Mel was behind me, smiling and, naturally, taking a swig of coffee from his old cracked mug. “I found this thing while I was looking for a notepad in the closet. I thought I'd lost it forever.”
“If you were any kind of a remote viewer at all, you'd've viewed it from Wisconsin and sent Jenny the instructions and money to mail it back to you.”
Mel's face grew serious. “How's the family?”
“Not so goodâlike I was telling Jenny, we don't know what we're gonna do. I'm just hoping for the best right now.”
The front door sprang open and in walked Robert Crocker, followed by a smiling and ever so pretty Kathleen Miller. She had a yard-wide smile across her face, and her arms were outstretched for Mel and me. She hadn't changed a bit in the months since I'd seen her, except that her belly was big enough to stuff a basketball in. She wrapped her arms around us.
Mel frowned at her. “Jesus Christ, don't tell me that sorry-ass husband of yours actually got you pregnant. Man, oh man, look at you!” He spun her in a pirouette.
“Come here, you,” I said, hugging her again. “You look wonderful! Congratulations to both of you.”
“Thanks. It finally happened, after all these years.”
“Okay, I can see I'll have to be the one to ask,” said Jenny. “When are you due?”
“In two months. And it won't be a minute too soon. I feel like an elephant.”
“Well, you look beautiful!” Jenny said, smiling. “And if these lugs had any class they'd agree.”
We shared a few more minutes of conversation before Nofi showed up. There was no emotion on his face; his pale eyes stared through his thick wire-rimmed glasses. He had let his hair grow out since any of us had last seen him,
and he looked like a sixties professor from Berkeley. He walked straight past us and into his office without a word, and only when he was inside did he call, “Jenny! May I see you in here, please?”
She grabbed her pad and pen and headed for the office door. “This is the way it's been since he got here. Thinks he's a damned general.” She disappeared into his office, only to emerge thirty seconds later. “His Highness would like to convene the briefing in five minutes in the conference room. Would you gentlemen and lady please make ready for his entrance?”
Carol and Judy were waiting at the conference table. There was no friendly reunion with them; it had always seemed to me that they despised the rest of us for liking each other so much. Their view, naturally, was that they were serious about the work, while the rest of us were mere dabblers.
Lyn Buchanan was there, in his stocking feet as usual. He was a good man and an excellent viewer; unfortunately, he was an even better trainer. That quality prompted the program managers to rely heavily on his teaching skills and limit his operational useâa mistake, in my opinion. Also, despite my strong opposition, Lyn had done what was asked of him and codified the research and protocols for remote influencing, creating a very dangerous offshoot of remote viewing. Somebody should have given him a medal for it, I guess, but that's not what they do for viewers.
People not even affiliated with the unit started laying claim to the technique, making wild claims about their exploits. Most of it was a crock; the only people to do that work were right here in the building.
I admired Lyn, especially under the present conditions. The office politics were thick enough to choke on, but he kept a sense of humor. Most of all, he was the one guy who believed in the unit and its potential when I and others had cast it off as hopeless and misguided. How could the unit refuse to share these life-saving, earth-shattering technologies? I was furious about the unit's direction and I was
vocal about the fact. Lyn may well have been furious, but he was never vocal. There's something to be said about a man who will remain a patriot and loyal to his oath all the way to the end. I couldn't do what he had done, and in some way, I felt ashamed. Lyn suffered silently, waiting for the system to right itself and clear the way for the advancement of the technique, while I forsook my oath and called upon the people to challenge the system. A soldier would have done it Lyn's way. The question I struggled with then and struggle with now is: When did I stop being a soldier?