71
“War is ever evolving. From World War II, to the way we fought in ’Nam, to now. Vietnam taught us two nasty lessons. First, that unconventional warfare can win wars. And two, that when you force men to fight, they’re less successful. What happened to us in ’Nam is what happened to the Soviets in the eighties. The Muj were too much for them. Not because they had better technology or better equipment, because they didn’t,” Reynolds explained.
“No different now,” Clements said. “We walk into villages and have no clue if that guy walking up is Taliban or some regular guy. Either way, he has that smile. I’ve learned not to trust. Not ever.”
Hernandez, the Hispanic man from east Los Angeles spoke up. He was usually the quiet one, didn’t care much for meetings and game plans. Didn’t understand science much either, or really anything they were talking about. He just wanted a good fight. He looked to Clements, nodding his head, saying, “Yeah, I only trust my homies out there. Even the Afghanis on our side, I don’t trust ’em. Never will.”
Reynolds eyed the man, asking, “And why is that?”
“Because of their ways,” Hernandez said.
“Yup. Fucking IEDs suck, man,” Clements chimed in. “Never know if the road is gonna explode, if that woman is gonna blow you up, or if some guy will shake your hand and cut your throat with his other hand.”
“That’s exactly right,” Reynolds agreed. “Their tactics are what’s tough, what’s causing the animosity we form while over here. It’s also why you guys are trained in such ways. You can think like them, you hunt them the way a lion hunts another lion. You also do things to mess with their heads. I know, even if you won’t say aloud. Thing is, in this new war on terrorism, we must adapt.”
“Sounds good and all, Colonel, but what’s the point?” Dale asked.
“You’ll be outnumbered first and foremost. We hope you have the element of surprise. You’ll go in quiet, maybe catch them off-guard. You’ll be doing this during the daytime, but that’s only because of one thing,” Reynolds said.
“What could that possibly be?” Clements asked, baffled, because an op like this should be conducted at night.
“They have the advantage at night. Their sight is better, even with fifth generation night vision goggles, they’ll see better.”
“The chemical let ’em see at night?” Clements asked.
“It helped. Remember, too, these things have remained in the cave for over two decades. They live in pure darkness. They’ve adapted to it, the compound strengthening that evolution.”
“This is a nightmare,” Clements said.
“It gets worse,” Reynolds stated. “The daytime mission helps us with imagery. That’s been a huge problem. Satellite imagery is blurry, at best.”
“What about drones? Planes?” Clements asked.
“Can’t fly ’em over.”
“Say what?” Dale said. “Who’s rules are these and why can’t we break them?”
“No, you’re missing my point,” Reynolds said. “We can’t fly them over. We’ve tried, many times. We’ve lost one F-16, one Apache helicopter, and seven drones. New ones, too.”
“Since when?”
“In the past three weeks. We stopped trying. Anything that crosses over that valley simply stops working. Altitude doesn’t matter, either. The F-16 was at thirty-eight thousand feet when it lost all power, all control,” Reynolds said.
“Now I would have heard of that. Keep tight with the pilots,” Jefferson spoke up. “Cool guys who get us out of trouble when need be.”
“The pilot luckily was on a straight course and going fast. The plane glided quite a distance away. We sent a quick recovery team in.”
“Pilot all right?” Jefferson asked, a bit concerned.
“Nothing worked on the plane… including his ejection seat. They recovered his body, blew up any important parts of the jet, though there weren’t many.”
“Damn,” Clements whistled. “You’re saying that planes can’t fly over it? That nothing can?”
“That’s right. And our satellites will pull in some images, but as you can see on the screens, this valley is blurry. Every time, it’s out of focus. Yet if you look at the overhead map of the nearby region, it zooms in just fine.”
“That makes no sense,” Clements said.
“No, no it does not,” Reynolds agreed.
72
“Okay, then why’s it happening?” Dale asked. He turned to Elizabeth, saying, “Surely someone has an idea of what causes such an… event.”
“We have theories,” Elizabeth said. “None confirmed.”
“So, there’s a chemical that can drop planes from the sky, but it’s of no harm to my men? I call bullshit,” Dale said.
“It’s not the chemical doing this, it’s what the chemical created. Somehow, these things control the skies. The closest we got was a drone that got a few snapshots on its way down. You can see the cave entrance here,” Elizabeth said, pointing to the map again.
“So, we’re basically going in blind,” Dale muttered.
“Deaf too,” Colonel Reynolds said. “You’ll receive radio interference once in that valley. The closer to the cave, the more interference there’ll be. York reported this, that they could hear one another, but not command.”
“Again, we have no clue as to why?” Dale asked.
“Our best assumption is these creatures use what I’d refer to as a steady electromagnetic pulse. They use the earth’s magnetism to their advantage. How they do it, we are clueless,” Elizabeth answered. “We’re working on it, though. We have some good guys at the controls — Michael is the best, I’ll add. We have NSA approval to access three of their satellites if need be. We can hack into six private ones too, if we lose feed. We’ll use thermal imaging and a new generation of optics to see if it works.”
“Ah, so we’re lab rats too,” Dale said.
“It’s untested, but we’re desperate at this point,” Elizabeth. “We’re hoping we can be able to provide you with up to date intelligence. If our eyes overhead don’t work, we’ll revert to our second option.”
“That is?”
“We have a Tier One asset inside,” Elizabeth explained. “Older guy, his name is classified, though it doesn’t matter much. Back during the Soviet invasion, he aided us. He’s still on the payroll, so to speak.”
“Thought nobody can go in or out?” Dale questioned.
“He’s been there all along. Before this thing was created.”
“How ya pay him? How?” Clements bellowed.
“He provides this information of his own accord. I can’t say why, but thus far, his information has been sufficient, verified with our current intelligence.”
“Okay, so how do ya contact him?” Clements asked.
“Yeah, you just said you lose signal in the valley,” Thompson added.
“Wow, you are paying attention,” Elizabeth said to the man who couldn’t keep his gaze off her breasts. She turned, saying, “Colonel?”
He answered. “We have what we’ll call a land-line. It’s a buried communications line, quite primitive. In the states, lots of people don’t have house phones anymore, just their cells. Here, there’s lots of lines. We just happened to tap into one,” Reynolds said.
“Okay, so you can talk to him via direct line. Fine and dandy, but how do we receive it?” Dale asked.
“Good question. You’ll carry fifth generation radios. They’re encrypted, and more importantly, encased. Whatever electromagnetic interference there is, we’ll attempt to bypass it. As for the asset, the communication system we use is ancient. Buried lines, dug by the Afghanis before they even fought the Soviets. Typed messages. The man’s English is good enough, and he’s been reliable. Here’s the thing, there will still be a lag. We listen to what he has to say, translate it, then we’ll have to report it to your team. So the intelligence won’t be instant.”