“Makes sense,” Cal said. “Commander Wallace only comes ’round once a week for a day or two. If there’s other groups here, he’s probably checking on them, too.”
“He’s the liaison,” Frank agreed. “He’s the one in charge of keeping tabs on us, training us, probably reporting up to Montague and whoever else is in on MAJESTIC-12. He’s young for his rank, but he’s high up enough to command a destroyer. So, he’s smart. Science specialist, probably, or maybe a spy.”
“What about Anderson?” Ellis asked. The Marine captain had been doubly tough on Ellis since his escape; the fire in Vegas ended up destroying three buildings, not one, and injuring dozens. In fact, he’d been tougher on all of them lately and far less chatty. Maggie said she noticed he was more nervous around them, more suspicious after Ellis’s little trick.
“Anderson’s just the trainer,” Frank said dismissively, then thought better of his tone. “I mean, sure, former OSS, he’s good, no doubt. We’re learning a lot from him. And he’s also helping out on security, too. I heard some of the MPs say he personally took custody of those guys in Vegas Ellis got friendly with. I think he has our back, but sure, we probably pissed him off. All that said, he’s not the one working with us on our abilities. We’re learning to be covert soldiers from him, but that’s it. I bet the other two groups have someone like him training them, too.”
“So… we’re really going to be spies? Like in the novels?” Maggie asked, with just a little too much excitement for Frank’s tastes.
“Kind of. Spies are actually people who live in a foreign country and give information to us. We’d be the ones either making contact with them or doing other things that the government doesn’t want too many people to know about.”
“So, secret agents, then.” Maggie said, smiling.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” Cal cautioned gently, sounding much older than his current appearance; Frank had him pegged currently at a very healthy thirty. “I mean, we’ve only been here a little while. Takes years of training for that sort of thing, right? And besides, not all of us can be secret agents. Why, what do I know about that sort of thing? I’m an old man!”
“You ain’t gotta be, boy. You know that. You can be young as you like,” Ellis said darkly, prompting a scowl from Cal.
Frank held up his hands. “Obviously, we’re being trained as soldiers, and it’s likely we’re going to go places and do things most other folks couldn’t handle. Makes sense. It also makes sense that there’s others like us, and that the government would round ’em up. I’m guessing that if they have more than one group of us here, whatever’s in the mystery hangar is related to our Enhancements — and maybe, just maybe, we can get some answers.”
“Answers to what?” Cal asked. “What exactly do you suppose we’re gonna find in there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. But I want to know the full extent of everything that’s going on here before I commit to it,” Frank said, surprising even himself with the assertion he’d only now just thought of, let alone spoken out loud. And it was true — weeks and weeks of training with little further explanation was not what he had in mind when he’d originally signed up.
“Where’s all this coming from now?” Ellis demanded. “I rocked the boat and look what happened. Why you want to do that again?”
“Because of what happened with you. Exactly that,” Frank said. “We had to burn down half a city block just because you turned a floor to sand. They’re serious about keeping us very secret. This whole base is a secret. And I want to know everything about it while I can.”
Ellis shrugged. “Well, good luck with that. They’ll come down on you hard. Trust me. They’ll catch you and come down hard.”
“Not if we do this together.”
The silence among the four of them was thick like tar, despite the scattered sounds of background conversations and the clinking of plates from elsewhere in the mess hall. Maggie finally spoke. “So, what’s the plan?”
Frank smiled at her; he knew she’d be the first aboard. She didn’t love the military, after all; she loved the action. “Gotta have everyone on board,” Frank replied. “Gentlemen?”
Ellis looked down at his tray of food, then shrugged. “What the hell. Now you got me thinkin’ about it, I feel as though I ought to know and I don’t. I’m in.”
“Cal?”
Cal still had the depth and fatigue of wisdom behind his eyes, staring off into space in front of him. “They could retaliate, you know. Pull my boy out of college. Make lives miserable for our families.”
Frank nodded. “I thought of that. Thing is, though, you know anybody else who can heal or kill with a touch? Play with emotions? Turn objects into sand or gold or whatever? Even if the other folks in the other groups can do exactly what we do, how many of us could there really be? They need us a lot more than we need them, no matter what they say.”
Cal thought about this in silence for several long moments. “The one thing I’ve always worried about here is how what they have in mind for me to do is gonna square with the Word. I ain’t never gonna do anything that goes against God. So, if they ask me to be a soldier or secret agent or whatever, I need to know just what that might entail.” Cal looked hard at Frank. “I’m with you, but we aren’t gonna hurt anybody doing anything. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” Frank stood up and pressed his hands together, a slight smile on his face. “And I got it all planned out.”
Pat O’Reilly was a Long Island kid and Kevin Dolan was from Boston’s Back Bay. Both had enlisted in the Army at age eighteen in the waning days of the war, and both ended up, years later, walking perimeter patrol at Area 51 in the middle of the night as part of the new Air Force. They spent it talking — and fighting — about baseball. Everyone who’d stepped within a few dozen feet of their patrol knew it, and it was accepted knowledge around the base that if it weren’t for their shared Irish heritage and upbringing, they would’ve come to blows within a week of being posted together.
“How can you even compare DiMaggio to Ted Williams? No contest!” Dolan said as they walked, scanning the darkness beyond the base lights. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Only thing that doesn’t surprise me about it is that it’s coming from a New Yorker.”
O’Reilly chuckled. “You’re just sore because ever since we got the Babe from you guys, you ain’t won jack shit.”
“This is the year,” Dolan vowed. “You’ll see. I… oh, God. Oh, God, no. Oh… oh…”
Dolan collapsed to the ground in a faint. A moment later, O’Reilly lay there next to him.
“Not bad, Maggie,” Frank whispered. “You’ve been practicing.”
The two dashed out to drag the two guards back into the shadows behind the latrines. “The trick is to scare ’em so hard they faint, but not so much that I scare ’em to death,” she replied. “Harder than it looks.”
Frank checked the two boys’ vitals. “Shit. I got one going into shock. Get Cal here.”
Maggie dashed off and, a few moments later, returned with Cal and Ellis. “I got him,” Cal said, looking down at Dolan’s body. “Let’s see if I can do something here.”
Cal reached out and put his hand on Dolan’s forehead. A moment later, the boy’s shallow, rapid breathing normalized. In fact, he began to snore, leaving Frank looking up at Cal in confusion.
“Gave him enough to get him stable, then just made him tired enough to fall asleep proper,” Cal said, his smile practically the only thing visible in the shadows as he rolled the guard over onto his side; the snoring stopped. “It’s hard — Commander Wallace and I been working on it for a little while now. Didn’t even tap me too much.”