“And so, what happened with you?” Maggie asked. “Your power?”
“I was on Guam, serving on Admiral Nimitz’s staff. I was doing intel, reporting to Admiral Hillenkoetter — he was a captain at the time, head of Pac-Fleet intel. It was the middle of the day when I felt something… happen. And suddenly I could hear all these people. In my head. Everyone else who’d been affected. The Variants.”
There was a long silence, broken by a few sips of coffee here and there. “That’s how you found us,” Ellis said after a while. “You said you were looking at newspapers and court records and whatnot. But you weren’t, were you. You already knew who we were and where we were.”
“More or less. The range isn’t always that great — maybe five hundred miles, tops — and after that initial surge, I discovered I had to concentrate really hard to find someone. So, I still needed to do the research. Think of it like a really good head start. But there’d be times when I’d just go to a new city and I’d home in on someone. That’s how I found you, Maggie — I did the paper trail afterward, right before I visited you for the first time,” Danny said.
“Who else knows?” Frank asked. “Who knows you’re one of us?”
“Hillenkoetter and, well… Truman.”
Everyone went a little wide-eyed at this, and there was more absorbing silence. “So, it goes up that far,” Cal said finally. “The President himself.”
“There are less than a dozen people who know about MAJESTIC-12,” Danny said. “Truman, Hillenkoetter, Secretary Forrestal, Montague, Dr. Bronk, Gen. Vandenberg, a couple others. That’s it. Nobody else in the White House, nobody at Defense or CIA. Nobody in Congress, for damn sure. That’s it.”
Maggie thought about asking about all the secrecy, but knew the question was dumb before she spoke it. If word got out…
“Tell us about the others, the ones at the north end of the base,” Frank demanded.
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
Danny stared Frank down as best he could. “No. You already figured out there are others. You’re a smart bunch, real smart. But right now, you don’t get all the details. You probably won’t ever get all the details. You gotta get used to that, for your own good.”
“And what happens when they come for us?” Frank asked, his voice rising as he stood. “What happens when the people with comic-book powers get too scary? Or stop being useful? Then what? How will we even know they’re coming for us?”
“That’s why only the President and Hilly know about me,” Danny replied. “Because if it gets to be that bad, I’ll be the one to tell you to bug out. I’m still one of you. I brought you together for the sake of our country, and if that country turns on you, then it turns on me, too.”
“And how can we trust you? How do we know you won’t just cut yourself a deal? How do we know you haven’t already?” Frank shouted, so much so that Maggie reached out again with her ability to calm him — with only partial success.
Danny, however, was surprisingly even-keeled. He was a lot braver than Maggie had given him credit for. “You could all be in jail right now. Or worse. Instead, I got you out of there. And now, you’re going to finally go to work.”
“Come again?” Cal said.
For the first time all night, Danny smiled at Frank. “You’re ready. I had a field test devised for you, a dry run — something covert and objective-based — but you went and did that on your own anyways and managed to get into a very secure facility using only your wits and your Enhancements. So, we’ll check that one off as done. Which means you’re ready for deployment, so long as I can trust you to stay out of trouble. If you don’t, we’ll have to hunt you down and lock you away, and nobody wants that.”
“Deployment where?” Ellis asked doubtfully.
“Any of you ever been to Turkey?”
Four hours later, Danny was in bed, wondering whether to skip the morning run and get another hour of sleep, or just forego sleep entirely, thanks to Cal’s coffee. The decision was made for him by a rap on the door.
“Yeah?” he called out, groggy and grumpy.
“Sir, Secretary Forrestal wants to talk to you,” came a voice from the other side — a young airman detailed as Danny’s clerk.
“He’s not supposed to call here,” Danny muttered as he swung his legs out of bed and sat upright. “Tell him I’ll call back in ten.”
“Sir,” the airman replied hesitantly. “He’s here. In your office.”
Cal’s coffee had nothing on that. Danny practically leapt to his feet. “Ten minutes,” he called out as he dashed into the washroom.
Nine minutes and forty-five seconds later — and yes, Danny checked — he walked into his office to find a grumpy-looking Jim Forrestal waiting there alongside a man in Air Force blue with four stars on each shoulder. Even before the man turned to give Danny a handsome smile and extend his hand, he knew it was General Hoyt Vandenberg, vice-chief of the Air Force and Admiral Hillenkoetter’s predecessor as Director of Central Intelligence.
“Mr. Secretary, General,” Danny said, saluting before shaking Vandenberg’s hand. “Good to see you both.”
Forrestal fixed Danny with a hard look. “You’re not in uniform,” he said. The secretary did not offer his hand.
Danny took the seat behind his desk. “I’m on detached reserve, Mr. Secretary. CIA’s a civilian agency. Besides, it’s Saturday, if I’m not mistaken.”
“I always liked to do surprise inspections on a Saturday,” Vandenberg said with the charming smile that had landed him on the covers of Time and Life during the war. “Puts more surprise in it. And the secretary had some concerns here regarding security. Since the Air Force is in charge of your safety here, he asked me to come along.”
Danny nodded; Vandenberg was one of the few others cleared for MAJESTIC-12, given his previous post in charge of intelligence. In fact, Vandenberg had been helpful in shepherding the whole idea through Washington and, in fact, probably set up Hillenkoetter as his successor largely because of MJ-12.
“I’m happy to report that, overall, the Air Force MPs have performed well, General,” Danny said neutrally.
Forrestal’s permanent frown grew deeper. “Skip the sugar coating. Honestly, Commander, I don’t know how any of your so-called Variants can even be remotely contained, except for perhaps Lodge. The rest? Their abilities are too flexible, too powerful.”
Danny closed his eyes a moment and took a deep breath before speaking. “Mr. Secretary, that’s why we’re using a combination of security and incentive to keep the Variants engaged here. That’s why they’re paid well and given perks unheard-of in the history of civil service. It’s also why we keep snipers on them twenty-four hours a day, because nearly all of them are ineffective outside of a twenty-five-yard range. Tranquilizers at first, then bullets if need be. This all has been detailed in the security planning you and General Vandenberg received when we set up shop here.”
“So, how did Mr. Longstreet end up in Vegas?” Vandenberg asked, his smile waning.
“That assessment is ongoing — the head of Air Force security here has taken it up, sir,” Danny replied. Security is your detail, not mine. I have more than enough to do. Sir.
“And what about last night?” Forrestal interjected. “Seems you had some activity. Dr. Schreiber noticed a ruckus inside the damn containment lab, where our Variants should not be.”
“Training exercise,” Danny replied, hoping he didn’t sound like the liar he was. “You and Admiral Hillenkoetter asked for a final assessment before their first assignment. What better way to determine their ability to infiltrate a facility than right here in one of the most secret locations in America?”