Why had he been summoned?
“
You know why,” he told himself, but he didn’t want to think about it now. He inhaled deeply, turned up the radio and opened the car’s windows to clear out the tobacco smoke.
The base was less than ten minutes from the freeway. That meant, the Lieutenant Commander told himself, that he had ten minutes to gather his thoughts. Not that he hadn’t been doing so since earlier today when he was first ordered to report to Seal Beach. He wasn’t feeling well, and his sunglasses did little to shield the blinding rays that made his head ache even worse. He had little appetite. No surprise there. This morning, he’d consumed about a half-gallon of water, which he’d later upchucked.
“
Must be the flu,” he muttered, remembering that his buddy, Mike, had displayed the same symptoms. Thinking of Mike, he glanced in his rearview mirror. “Hey, wake up!” He’d almost forgotten about Mike, and that was strange. Jesus, his thoughts were scattered.
Mike didn’t move, so Joe tossed an empty water bottle back to wake his comrade. Mike finally sat up, clearly bewildered.
“
We’re almost there,” Joe said. “Get your shit together.”
Mike didn’t look so hot but did his best to comply.
“
Can’t afford to get sick,” Joe muttered, whether to himself or Mike, he wasn’t sure. But Joe decided to squeeze in a clinic visit and ask for some antibiotics while he was on base. That would take care of whatever was ailing them. It was probably just the flu.
He almost missed the entrance, swerving into the left-turn lane at the last moment. He knew this exit like the back of his hand. How could he have almost missed it?
I’m just distracted and not feeling well,
he thought.
It’s just the flu
, he told himself again as he flashed his ID to the guards and was waved through the gate. He veered the car toward base headquarters.
* * *
“
Let’s go over it again,” said the Agent in Black.
Lieutenant Commander Joseph Carter wanted to bury his head in his hands, but he knew better. This agent had now been questioning him for three hours. Joe knew the drill. It could go on for several more if this asshole didn’t get the answers he wanted.
Don’t lose your temper,
he thought.
Show respect. No matter how crappy you feel.
And Joe was feeling increasingly crappy. He was flat-out sick. He pushed thoughts of the sickness aside and focused on his surroundings, though he did note the location of the nearest wastebasket. Just in case.
The office was small and it would have been cozy if he had been there under more pleasant circumstances. The guards outside were the only hint of threat. The problem was that Joe Carter was having a very hard time remembering what had happened two nights ago. His thoughts felt scattered, incoherent, almost as if he was drunk. Or high. Or both.
The small room and guards outside were also making him feel claustrophobic. God, his head ached, too. He wanted to put on his sunglasses, even though the blinds were closed. The glass of water on the desk sat untouched. Joe was thirsty, yes, but he didn’t want to barf all over the office. Then again, maybe it would speed up this whole process.
Joe sighed. “Where do you want me to begin?”
The Agent in Black was seated on the corner of the desk—a position that allowed him to look down on the Lieutenant Commander. Joe knew all these tactics, but had never had them applied to him. His pristine record in the military spoke for itself. He’d never been in trouble and he didn’t think his actions the other night were unwarranted.
“
You and your friend were returning to your quarters from the bar, when...?”
“
I saw what I thought was a meteor,” said Joe.
“
But it wasn’t a meteor.”
“
No.”
“
And?”
“
It landed in the middle of a field.”
“Inside the base?”
“Yes.”
“
What did it look like, falling to the ground?”
“
I just told you.” Joe tried to hide his frustration. “At first, it looked like a meteor. A falling star. It had a trail. But as it came closer, we realized it was very small, and it was going to hit the ground.”
“
How small was it?” asked the Agent in Black for the hundredth time.
“
About the size of a basketball,” Joe answered tiredly.
“
And you two just ran over to it?”
“
Yes.”
“
You didn’t think to report an unidentified object landing on military ground?”
“
No, I...we...weren’t thinking, I guess. We’d had a few beers...we were off-duty.”
“
Lieutenant commanders are never completely off-duty.”
Joe Carter remembered that he was supposed to be on leave. “I know. It was a mistake.”
“
So, what did it look like?”
Joe looked longingly at the water. He lit a cigarette instead. He raised his bloodshot eyes to the Agent in Black. “It looked like a sphere, I told you. About the size of a football...” Joe trailed off. No, that wasn’t right.
“
A football?” The Agent in Black was right on it.
“
No, that’s not what I meant.” Joe Carter’s brain felt like jelly. He felt truly ill. He frowned. He concentrated. “A basketball. I meant it was the size of a basketball.”
“Y
ou just said football. Which was it?”
“
A basketball. It was round. I got my words mixed up. I’m sorry.”
The Agent in Black regarded his detainee, for a detainee was exactly what Lieutenant Commander Joseph Carter was. For the moment, anyhow. The Agent in Black studied the man below him, and figured the man was either withholding information, or was coming down with something. Or hung-over, which the agent doubted. After all, Carter had been under surveillance for the last forty-three hours, ever since “The Incident.”
In fact, both Lieutenant Commanders Joseph Carter and Mike Mendoza had been watched closely—followed, even, from San Diego to Seal Beach. The Agent in Black was slightly surprised that they hadn’t been aware of it. At least, they hadn’t given any indication of knowing that they were being tailed, other than nearly missing their freeway exit.
The agent sipped his coffee, and glanced at Carter’s untouched water. “You thirsty?” he asked.
“
No.”
Silence.
“
What did you do when you reached the fallen object?”
Carter sighed. “
Like I said, we got to it and...we looked around to see where it came from. It just fell out of the sky. We didn’t see any aircraft, and no, the wind wasn’t blowing, and no, the thing wasn’t hot, and yes, it looked like a round rock. Gray in color, but that impression might have been due to the moonlight.”
While the agent watched him closely, the lieutenant commander stood and crossed over to the room’s only window. The guards watched him closely, too. Carter tried to close the blinds just a little more, but couldn’t seem to make the damn things work. Blast it! The light was just too damn bright.
“What happened next?” the agent calmly asked.
Frustrated, Carter gave up and faced the Agent in Black. “I...I don’t remember. Wait. Yes, I bent down to touch it. I know, I know, I know I wasn’t supposed to. I was just so curious, you know? So, I touched it. I’m sorry. I touched it and a piece broke off in my hand. I showed it to Mike.”
“Lieutenant Commander Mendoza?”
“Yes.”
“
And he touched it, too?”
“
Yes.”
“And t
hat’s when you decided it might be time to report the incident?”
“
Yes. I called my commanding officer from my cell phone.”
But you dicks showed up first,
Joe thought to himself. Aloud, he said, “You know the drill from there.”
The Agent in Black knew. His CREW had tracked several such “Incidents.” Over the past two days, small objects had landed on various military sites worldwide. The CREW was on the spot in most locations before anyone else. Lieutenant Commanders Carter and Mendoza were two of the six in the world who’d seen the landings firsthand. As well as these two LCs, three witnesses in Mexico City and one in Istanbul were being interrogated.
There was a knock on the door.
“Excuse me.” The Agent in Black left Carter with his own thoughts.
Carter and Mendoza got a glimpse of the goon in the hallway and exchanged glances before the door closed.
In the hall, the agent met with what could have been his clone. “You get anything?” he asked.
“
Not much. Same story.”
The Agent in Black nodded. These two unfortunate LCs knew next to nothing. Neither had top-secret clearance. Even if they had, they wouldn’t have had any access to The CREW’s intelligence information. “What should we do with them?”
The clone spoke. “They don’t know anything.”
“They’ve seen the crash
.”
The clone nodded. “True, but t
hey aren’t aware of anything else.”
The Agent in Black’s first priority was to contain this information. No matter what.
The clone read his mind. “Any additional attention to this could be catastrophic.”
The Agent in Black nodded and considered the whole picture. These two had spotless records. Obviously, they were potential “lifers” for the Navy. Containment of these events also meant silence. The Agent in Black had the authority to lock them up. Hell, he had the authority to make them disappear, too. Few knew the agent’s real name, and he liked it that way. He was known simply as the Agent in Black, a name that struck fear in those he crossed paths with. Fear was a good thing in his line of business. He and his CREW were above Top Secret; that is, they didn’t officially exist. Indeed, few knew of the CREW’s existence, including the president. A cabal of intelligence leaders had created the CREW, along with other shadow agencies, to clean up messes just like this one.
And it’s a helluva mess,
thought the Agent in Black.
But their disappearance would attract attention. Families didn’t need to know, but military colleagues would wonder, even in private. Besides, both men looked ill. Additionally, both men were supposed to be on leave.
He sighed and made his first mistake. His biggest mistake. “Have them sign a confidentiality agreement. Then they can go.”
The clone hid his disagreement. He would never contradict his superior. Or so he thought at the time. “I’ll draw up the papers.”
Anna Carter focused her left eye into the great telescope atop the Griffith Observatory. Her right eye, trained over the last year, phased out as she scrutinized the night sky. Her hands automatically found their way to the attached laptop, adjusting the lens.
Nothing else existed for Anna in this moment except for the view into another galaxy. She didn’t feel the chilled night air, and she didn’t hear the music blasting from her iPod. She connected with the dark matter, billions of miles away—and tried to shrug off the fog coming up the hills of Los Feliz.
Out of frustration, she’d kept herself away for nearly two weeks. The astronomical changes were so slight that they couldn’t be tracked every day. Now, she gasped at the dark matter’s miniscule structural development. Pen in hand, she took notes.
Anna knew she had it pretty good compared to most kids, but her project at the Griffith Observatory meant more to her than almost anything else. Her time was usually divided between home school, working with her father at the Los Angeles Zoo, and here at the observatory.
Recently, she’d made a few friends her own age. Her father didn’t like it, she knew. He’d been particularly alarmed that one of her new friends was a boy. He constantly immersed Anna in conversations of “getting older” and making “good choices.” Anna took it all in with the normal impatience of a fourteen year old. She was getting pretty good at rolling her eyes.
These thoughts flickered in and out of her concentration as she alternately entered data on the laptop and took hand notes. The dark matter she’d been tracking over the last six months was changing in both size and shape. She knew they were changes that only a handful of people on Earth would be able to discern. Few public telescopes equaled the observatory’s strength.
Her stomach rumbled; this she did notice but chose to ignore it. Just a few minutes more, that was all she wanted. She didn’t really need more time. Her data was recorded, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the sky view.
A tap on the shoulder made her jump, the celestial connection suddenly severed as a hand tugged on her earphones.
“
Daddy!”
Jack Carter’s heart skipped a beat. Anna hardly ever called him “Daddy” anymore. Now, it was merely “Dad.” He tried to relish the moment but ruined it instead. “Do you know how long you’ve been up here?” It wasn’t a question. Her surprise changed to defense as he continued. “And why don’t you answer your phone? I’ve been calling you.”