Once the alien was down, Mathew straightened up and called out to his men. The pilot cabin was connected to the lounge through a hidden hatch, allowing the pilot and his assistant to get down quickly, without alerting anyone watching from high overhead. Moments later, the two SEALs who had been walking the deck joined them. Mathew motioned for them to get into the submarine and then followed them down through the hatch. A dull red light surrounded him as he landed inside the small craft, with a pair of nervous-looking crewmen working frantically to seal the hatch. Time was running out.
He felt his ears spin lightly as the submarine disengaged from the yacht and started to dive deeper under the waves. The SEALs had plenty of experience with the small craft; they’d used them before to successfully evade detection from satellites high overhead. But no one, Mathew reminded himself, knew the full limits of alien capabilities. They might well have some kind of magic technology that would allow them to track the submarine… and if that happened, six SEALs, five crewmen and one alien were going to die. There was no way they could risk falling into enemy hands. If the aliens could reanimate a corpse and send it out to kill, God alone knew what they could do with live captives. He could imagine no worse fate than becoming a pod person, his mind overwritten with loyalty to the aliens.
One of the crewmen glanced at a display on the bulkhead. “Twenty seconds,” he said. The sound of the submarine’s engines grew louder as it struggled to put distance between itself and the yacht. “Ten seconds…”
A thunderous blast struck the submarine. The alien hissed in alarm as the boat heaved around them, just before the pilot got control and kept steering them away from the explosion. Behind them, the yacht would have been blown to smithereens, without a trace left of the alien — or the SEALs who had failed to guard him. By the time the Coast Guard arrived, the submarine would have left the area and there would be nothing to dispute the story. The alien had been killed by terrorists, just like the one who had been killed in Washington. And the aliens, who had cleared the trip themselves, would find it hard to blame the government. Not that that would surely stop them, of course.
Mathew walked forward, over to the alien. He was trembling, his long scaly legs shivering in the cold. Or was it fear? There was no way to know. Mathew had helped defectors get out of their homelands before and they all reacted badly, even the ones who knew that to return home meant certain death. Some of them cried, some raged… and some wondered if they’d made a terrible mistake. Very few of them could ever go home again.
“We’ll be docking with the Wanderer in forty minutes,” one of the crewmen said. Mathew nodded; the Wanderer was officially a light freighter, servicing East Asia and the Middle East. Unofficially, she was a prison ship, where the CIA held a number of extremely high-value prisoners, prisoners who could never be placed in front of a court. And part of her vast bulk had been outfitted to serve as a debriefing room for defectors. The alien would be safe there, at least until they managed to get him to better quarters somewhere on land. Mathew suspected that that wouldn’t be for some time. The Wanderer might not be the nicest of places to hold someone, but at least it had no overt connection to the United States. “Once we’re there, they’ll ensure that you get back to Uncle Sam.”
Mathew nodded, dryly. The SEALs were all officially dead. There would be a funeral and everything, with crying families and upset friends. None of them were married; they’d remain underground until they were needed. Oddly, he felt freer than he’d been since the aliens had arrived. There was no longer any need to kowtow to them, or to pretend that he liked their plans for the United States military. He could fight back as part of the resistance, a hole card the aliens might not expect until it was far too late. And he knew where considerable supplies of weapons and equipment had been stashed.
“Glad to hear it,” he said, finally. The crewmen would remain on the Wanderer, held until they could be discharged. Or maybe they’d end up serving with the resistance too. “I’ll be glad to be back home.”
Forty minutes later, they docked with the underside of the Wanderer and scrambled up into the massive ship. Mathew was pleased to see that a pair of CIA-trained anthropologists were on hand to greet the alien, as were a team of experienced interrogators. They had had plenty of experience in debriefing defectors and would be hopefully able to get a great deal out of the alien. Starting with what the hell was actually going on…
Mathew and his team were finally dismissed and allowed to go into the lounge on the massive ship and relax. The television was already broadcasting the official version of the story, confirming that Middle Eastern terrorists had managed to kill one of the aliens. There was no mention of the Navy SEALs, for which he was grateful. The terrorists would probably take heart from knowing that they’d killed a group of SEALs, or even thinking that they’d succeeded. Not that it mattered, in the end. The Mainstream Media would probably blame it all on the right-wing gun nuts or the militias or anyone else who didn’t agree with them completely.
Shaking his head, he allowed himself to relax. They’d succeeded. Whatever else happened, they might just get some real intelligence out of the alien. And then they might know what was actually going on.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tehran
Iran, Day 53
It wasn’t the first time that Albert Cunningham had been to Iran, although he’d never been to Tehran. The Iranians had been running weapons and supplies to insurgents and political groups within Iraq and Special Forces teams had been deployed to stop them, often engaging their Iranian counterparts in sharp small-team engagements that had never been officially reported. Over the years, Albert had mastered both Farsi and Arabic, as well as developing a capability to operate while undercover, posing as an Iranian. It was a set of training and experience that stood him in good stead, now that he’d been sent out on a near-suicide mission. If nothing else, the Iranians would never expect it from the United States.
The trip from the Gulf to Tehran had been surprisingly easy. They’d bribed a smuggler to carry them from Basra to the Iranian coastline and then made their way inland, posing as Iranian Revolutionary Guards on detached duty. One distant advantage when it came to operating inside a tightly-controlled country like Iran was that no one dared question government messengers on official missions. After all, anyone who dared show any initiative might be targeted for government attention as a possible dissident. Iran’s dissidents had been ruthlessly squashed time and time again, along with anyone else who even looked suspect. Like most people, all Iran’s population wanted was to live in peace and security. Their government couldn’t give them either.
According to the newspapers they’d picked up just after they’d found lodgings within Tehran — all undercover, to prevent the government or religious police from taxing the owners — the aliens were due to send a representative to Tehran to discuss economic support from the Galactic Federation to help save Iran from bankruptcy. The arrival of fusion power — and advanced car batteries — had undermined Iran’s oil industry, leaving the government with a massive cash-flow crisis. It didn’t help that the Chinese and Japanese had started mass-production of advanced car batteries, or that Russia had lost interest in assisting Iran now that the United States was pulling out of the Middle East. Iran’s economy was on a slow fall to nowhere — and when it came crashing down, the shit would really hit the fan. The protesting crowds in the streets would multiply until the entire city seemed enraged, intent on tearing apart the religious leaders who’d turned the most prosperous nation in the Middle East into a nightmarish place to live. Already, there were signs of unrest in many parts of Iran. Given enough of a push, Iran might fragment into chaos.