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Chapter 45 – InternationalAlex was sort of glad not to hear back from Jack for a week. It gave her a chance to have a normal finals week at school. The exams went really well, even if she thought Mr. Nieder was still sort of grouchy at her. She and Mina had another short ‘yearbook staff’ meeting, and without Jack or Greta around, she managed to keep everyone on topic and get the whole meeting done in under thirty minutes so she could even get some stuff done in study hall afterward.
So she was done with school for the year when it next came time for Terawatt to go back to Camp Atron. She was getting in about an hour of practice every night, even if most of it was during study breaks when she was really sick and tired of reviewing history and Spanish. She was even figuring she would take a two-week break and just veg out before she started tackling the on-line computer courses Willow had found for her.
So naturally, Jack was waiting to see her when she finished her lesson with Staff Sergeant Meadows. And he didn’t look like he was there to take her to lunch and just chat. Okay, he pretty much never looked like that when he was in his ‘important colonel with tons of impressive medals’ uniform.
He walked her to the conference room, where Riley and Graham were sitting. And stuff was different. Riley and Graham had more stuff on their uniforms, and they had different things on their collars. She burst out, “Did you guys get promoted?”
Jack grinned. “Okay, you both owe me ten.”
Riley blushed and said, “We didn’t expect you’d notice.”
Jack said, “Well, Major Finn, why don’t you get Captain Miller to help you with the food?”
She said, “And you’ve got more stuff on your uniforms.”
Jack said, “I got ’em some more fruit salad for several missions we can’t tell you about yet.”
She would have said something else, but the aroma of spicy grilled steak hit her nose and made her start salivating. Jack had provided some grilled steak burritos and tacos, with all kinds of yummy toppers like salsa and pico de gallo and guacamole and sour cream and stuff.
She was already eating her second grilled steak burrito before he said, “Looks like we’re gonna be up to bat soon.”
She carefully chewed and swallowed before she asked, “You mean the Europe thing?”
He nodded. His taco had enough super-hot hot sauce on it to burn a hole in the table, but he seemed to like it that way. He said, “Yep. The CIA’s in a whole lotta trouble, and they’re scrambling for help from the State Department and the Prez, since they have half a dozen countries demanding someone’s head on a platter. And they still don’t have the girl. And they’re pretty sure the sixteen-year-old girl completed her mission by assassinating a highly experienced CIA senior officer when said officer should have had the drop on her to start with. In the middle of Berlin. So right now, it looks like the CIA’s gonna be in even more trouble without our magnanimous assistance. Plus, they might now realize that they have about as much chance of bringing this kid in as Bambi has of beating a T-Rex. Even if right now everyone’s seeing this kid as a cute, winsome Bambi pursued by a big, evil T-Rex.”
Riley said, “So are we the only ones who realize just how dangerous this girl might be?”
Jack said, “Maybe. It looks like we’re about to dive right into a great, big, international jurisdictional dispute that’s gonna be uglier than that mess in Myrhorod.”
Alex noticed that Riley and Graham both winced a little. She just asked, “What’s Meer-ho-road?”
Jack said, “Myrhorod. Town in the Ukraine. All you get to know is it was SRI business, and it was messy, and lots of people died, and a lot more would’ve died if we hadn’t gone in when strictly speaking we didn’t have permission to do so ahead of time. If anyone brings it up, give them the ‘need to know’ routine like you’re stonewalling them.”
Alex asked, “But you told me the name of the town. Why?”
Jack smiled at her. “Well, that would be because Annie Farrell is now an Air Force second lieutenant acting as my adjutant in the SRI.”
Oh, crud. She didn’t think she could pull that off. She said, “But … but I don’t know how to stand at attention or salute or anything!”
Jack said, “Hey, it’s easy. If I could learn this stuff, anybody can.”
Graham said, “You already know how to be self-disciplined and play a part. In an hour or two, we can teach you enough to fake it in front of people who won’t be watching the lowly second lieutenant.”
Alex checked, “Do I have an hour or two?”
Jack said, “You have a day. Meet us on the tarmac at oh four hundred tomorrow. We’re flying to Berlin. I’ll have a passport and ID and docs for Lieutenant Farrell, along with uniforms and clothes in your size. We’ll coach you on the flight to the Big Apple. Bring the same stuff as last time, only make it six sets of undies, just in case. You don’t want to have to wear Bulgarian undies. I think they make them out of recycled sandpaper.”
“Are we gonna be in Bulgaria?” she asked.
He said, “We start in Berlin, but I have no idea where we go from there. First, we pick up a CIA bozo in New York and we get a briefing on the way ‘over the pond’ as the Brits like to say. We then go straight to Berlin.”
She asked, “Is the CIA guy read in?”
Jack said, “Not on his life. They don’t trust us, and we don’t trust them. We especially don’t trust them not to bury this whole thing, when they’ve got a slew of dead CIA operatives, at least three dead ‘auxiliary associates’, and God only knows how many dead civilians all over Europe and Northern Africa. This is a screw-up possibly big enough to sink the careers of half of the top administrators in the CIA, because somebody lobbied for this disaster, and a bunch of somebodies authorized it.”
She said, “So how do we know anything the guy tells us is true?”
He gave her an evil grin. “We leave our sat phone live. Acid Burn and our IT people are going to get to listen in, and verify whatever they can. Then, when we get to Berlin, we check with anyone there who isn’t CIA and get their version, which we also feed to our hackers.”
“Anything else?” she asked.
Jack said, “Yeah. You can tell Team Terawatt where you’re going and why, since Acid Burn is going to get full details. But you and Burn can’t tell them what the CIA tells you, or what we find out they actually did, or what we do about the CIA’s business.”
She asked, “And how are you gonna get Acid Burn to agree to that?”
He grimaced and said, “I’m going up there right now to clear it with her. And explain why our dinner date for tomorrow night is off.”
Alex said, “Well, at least I got through exam week without having to run off for a couple days. This secret identity stuff is a pain.”
He nodded. “Yeah. We’ve got to come up with something to get you out of school without repercussions. After all, we’re gonna have to swing this for next year, and then four years of college, and then all kinds of secret identity situations.”
She flew home worrying about how to tell her parents and Ray.
* * *
After she showered, she called Ray over to her house. Then she got her dad to come in from working in the yard, and she got her mom to stop working on her thesis for a bit. Once she had all of them together, she said, “I’ve got Terawatt business tomorrow, starting really early. I don’t know how long it’ll be. Maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe more. But it’s in Europe.”
“Alex! You don’t have a passport!” her mom squawked.
“What about your job at Gloria’s?” her dad asked.
“What about our date Monday?” Ray wondered.
She frowned. “I don’t need a passport. Alex Mack won’t be leaving town. Jack has another ID for me. And I don’t know about Gloria. I’ll ask Robyn if she can help out. And Ray, I’m really sorry, but I don’t know! We have a girl running loose in Europe, and there may be people trying to kill her, and even if she wasn’t a supervillain when this all started, we think she assassinated a really experienced CIA senior officer, so she may be a supervillain now, or at any minute. If we can’t rescue her soon, this is just gonna get worse. And some of the stuff I find out is going to be ‘national security’ so I won’t be able to talk about it. But tomorrow morning mega-early, I’m flying to Berlin with Jack’s team.”
Her mom scowled. “I don’t like this. I mean, where does it all end? Are you going to be this colonel’s private superhero for the rest of your life?”
She admitted, “He offered to get me into the Air Force Academy guaranteed, with special rules so I can take off with his team whenever there’s another crisis, and then a guaranteed job on his team when I graduate. So I could end up being his private superheroine if I decide that’s what’s best. But he also offered to get me into any of the top photojournalism schools in the country if I wanted, so I could be a jet-setting photojournalist, but then it might be pretty much impossible to maintain my cover if everywhere Alex Mack goes, Terawatt pops up.”
Her dad asked, “So Alex, what are you going to decide?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. I may have to keep my options as wide open as I can for as long as it takes, so I can see what I need to do. If it turns out that the best way to be a superhero is to be Lieutenant Alexandra Mack, U.S.A.F., then that may be what I choose.”
Ray got up and gave her a huge hug. Then her folks did, too. And that evening, Ray came over for dinner and watched a movie with her instead of taking her out Monday night. Afterward, she took Ray out to his car, and they sat in it and kissed for a long time. Her mom didn’t even text her when it was time to come in.
No, when Alex came in, she went into the home office, and her mom was sitting in there crying. She just hugged her mom for a long time before she went to bed.
* * *
She got up at three and showered and got dressed in something that wasn’t bulky, so she could keep it as an emergency outfit in her gym bag. The gym bag was already packed, including two boxes of protein bars that were stuffed in all around her Terawatt uniform. Not that she thought Jack would let her starve, but it was better to be prepared. Her mom was up just to see her off, and had a fast breakfast all prepared for her. Four English muffins with fried eggs and Canadian bacon and cheddar cheese, so they were like Egg McMuffins only better. And a half gallon of milk. She chowed down on everything, hugged her mom, and went silvery. As she flew off to Camp Atron in the darkness, she tried not to think about her mom standing there crying.
She zoomed past the gate guards and out to the tarmac, and even though she was ten minutes early, the Cessna was still there ahead of her. There was a refueling truck, and Jack was outside the Cessna, impatiently pacing back and forth.
She landed in front of him and smiled. “Lieutenant Farrell reporting for duty, SIR!”
He smiled back. “You’re out of uniform, lieutenant.”
She admitted, “I was kind of hoping I could get some help with that, colonel, because I don’t even know how to wear the uniform and salute or stand at attention or anything.”
He gave her a smirk. “We’ve upgraded the team.”
She said, “Well, I already saw Riley and Graham got promotions.”
He grinned. “While Sergeant Scott is off interviewing a couple possible new team members for me, we have a Special Forces ell tee who is going to be helping you get ready.” He turned his head toward the jet. “Yo, Joe!”
A woman stepped off the jet with a surly expression. Alex noticed right away that the woman was wearing a really crisp, neat, first lieutenant’s uniform. And a deep scowl. And that was probably some kind of body armor under the uniform blouse, and some kind of bulge under her uniform jacket that might even be a handgun.
The female officer marched over and said, “Sir, you said you wouldn’t say that anymore.”
Jack grinned. “I said I wouldn’t say it anymore in front of anyone else on the team. ‘Annie’ here is an auxiliary.” He turned to Alex and said, “Annie Farrell, about to be a second lieutenant? Meet Josefina Lupo, First Louie, Special Forces, on loan to us to see if she works out.”
Alex said, “Pleased to meet you.” She even put her hand out to shake hands.
Jack smirked. “Watch it Annie, she’s a lot stronger than she looks. We shook hands, and I had to go in the bathroom so I could cry without anyone seeing me.”
Lieutenant Lupo stared at Alex in disgust. “What kind of joke is this? She’s … what? thirteen?”
Okay, so Alex wasn’t wearing any makeup at all yet because she was going to see what Jack gave her and then put on too much makeup so she could try to look like she was maybe early twenties. But that was kind of rude.
Jack lied, “I dunno. When you get to be my age, anyone under forty looks pretty much the same.”
Alex looked at the lieutenant. She was Hispanic-looking and very pretty, with dark hair pulled back in a military style. She was maybe twenty-six or so. But she wasn’t any taller or wider than Alex was. Still, Alex had seen people who had superpowers, so she was going to be careful. She gave it the ‘official’ sound when she said, “For purposes of this mission, my name is Second Lieutenant Annie Farrell. I’m going to need a lot of help from you on stuff, so I’d appreciate it if we could get along.”
Alex could see the moment that Lieutenant Lupo decided to show her who was boss. A hard look appeared in her eyes, and she put her hand out in a matching handshake.
Alex tried putting her telekinesis right on the skin of her hand, instead of an inch or two above it. The lieutenant grabbed her hand and squeezed.
Alex could feel the pressure even with the telekinesis protecting her hand. She smiled and said, “Nice to meet you.” The lieutenant clenched her jaw and squeezed with everything she had, which was really not nice.
Lieutenant Lupo finally gave up and let go. She obviously wanted to ask what the heck Alex was, but Alex could also tell that the lieutenant knew she wasn’t supposed to ask that kind of question. “Call me Jo, except in chain of command issues, when I’m ‘sir’ or ‘Lieutenant Lupo’.”
“Yes, sir,” Alex said.
Jack said, “They’re done refueling, so let’s get a move on. The Big Apple is a goodly ways away, and I’d like to get there early enough to inconvenience our Company contact.”
The lieutenant said, “Yes, sir.”
Jack said, “Okay, ‘Annie’, here’s lesson one. You’re lower-ranking, you salute first and hold it until the higher-ranking person returns it. Lupo, demonstrate please, and then correct her posture.”
Lupo gave a crisp salute and Alex mimicked it as much as she could. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen people saluting other people a gazillion times in movies and TV programs. Lupo still had to correct her stance, which movies never showed.
Jack said, “Okay, next rule. Getting into a jet or a car? Seniority. You get in first and wait, I get to go last. I get out first, you go last and wait to get out. If we’re in a live op, that doesn’t hold.”
Lupo gasped, “Sir! You can’t put her in a live op! She’s a civilian. She doesn’t have the training!”
Jack smiled smugly. “When it gets down to it, Lieutenant Farrell has the skillset and the training. In fact, you don’t have Need To Know yet on that.” Lupo didn’t say anything back, but that was definitely a ‘no way’ face.
They took their seats, and buckled up as the jet taxied over to the runway. It took off at a steep angle and accelerated rapidly. In maybe ten minutes they were at thirty-five thousand feet and approaching the jet’s top speed.
Jack said. “Okay, kiddies. We have a little over three hours to get Lieutenant Farrell up to speed. Lieutenant Farrell? Change into your uniform and go with the same makeup. I’ve got those Birth Control Glasses for you. Then you’re going to be carrying a valise for me. My papers, your files, and an electronic tablet that’s your system as my adjutant and computer guru.” When Alex looked at him in surprise, he added, “You’ll be my own personal Acid Burn.”
She said, “Yes, sir. But you know my real skill level on computers.”
He grinned wickedly. “Yeah, but Acid Burn is going to be backloading your tablet for you, so you’ll have lots of intel to report and cool graphics to show. And you can signal her anytime you want.”
Riley said, “Here’s your ID and your history for this op.” He handed her a small wallet, a passport, and a few sheets of paper.
Graham said, “And we’ve got your uniform hanging in the john.”
Lupo said, “That’s not large enough to change clothes in, sir.”
Alex gave her a smile. “Thank you, sir, but I can manage.” She stepped into the john and went silvery. She pulled the uniform into her morph and changed into ‘Lieutenant Farrell’. She overdid the foundation and stuff so she looked older, and she put on what Jack had called the Birth Control Glasses. Then she put up her hair under a wig cap which was way easier to do when you could use telekinesis to scoop all your hair up toward your crown, slipped on the ugly brown wig, and checked her appearance.
Oops. She took off the fun earrings. Not appropriate for serious lieutenants.
She stepped out and took her seat again. She wasn’t going to use her Terawatt voice, but Lieutenant Farrell ought to be more serious and military than Alex Mack. So she went with her ‘mom’ voice. “Sorry I took so long, sir.”
Jack just grinned. Lieutenant Lupo stared in astonishment.
Then Alex spent the next several hours studying. How to salute, when to salute, how to play adjutant to a bigshot colonel, military regulations, Annie Farrell’s fake background, how to do cool things with the computer tablet in the valise, all that stuff.
She felt like she needed another few days of study and practice, even if the tablet was loaded with files that had all the information she needed, and someone snarky, probably Jack, had a file on the tablet that was a summary of dos and don’ts for a measly second lieutenant.
Before they landed, Jack used their satellite phone to call their CIA guy and bug him about not being late. Alex figured Jack waited just long enough to make the guy scramble like mad to meet the Cessna on time. Then Jack called Acid Burn and his IT people on the sat phone and left it on, so they could eavesdrop when the CIA guy was talking.
Then they did a steep, rapid descent. It was kind of fun, actually. Alex didn’t know which New York airport they landed at, but it was maybe an official Air Force Base somewhere near New York City. As soon as they were down and off the runway, they were getting refueled and a harried guy in a wrinkled black suit with a wrinkled hanging bag was scrambling in.
“Colonel O’Neill? I’m … Alfred Trevor. I’ve been TDY’ed with giving you a G3 on the current 7-9. I’ll need everyone to sign NDAs first as per O.G.D. 19A.”
Jack said, “N.O.Y.L.”
“What?”
Jack leaned forward. “Not. On. Your. Life. We are U.S. Department of Homeland Security. We’re already under UCMJ and top secret clearances. Furthermore, my adjutant will be taking everything you say and verifying it, because your people have been lying their asses off to me for two solid weeks. Right now, I don’t even believe your name is Alfred Trevor.”
Alex recognized Jack’s ‘good cop bad cop’ routine, so she cleared her throat. “Excuse me, sir, but we do need the briefing, and perhaps we should at least hear what Mister Trevor has to say.” She checked her tablet, and there was a message from Acid Burn with Alfred Trevor’s file. She added, “Even if he really isn’t Alfred Trevor, who retired from the CIA last year at the age of 57.”
‘Alfred’ said, “Sorry, but I was told to use one of our stock cover stories. Do you want that sitrep or not?”
Alex used her telekinesis to slide her Terawatt phone out of a pocket and get a silent picture of ‘Alfred’. She slid the phone back in her pocket, downloaded the picture to the tablet, and sent it from there through the sat phone to Jack’s guys and Willow.
Jack said, “We want the sitrep. We’re not signing anything. If you won’t even tell us your real name, we’re not going to trust anything you’re telling us.” He leaned forward and acted angry. “You’re the people whose asses are in the slings. You’re the wackos who are murdering innocent civilians up and down Western Europe and can’t stop a little girl from running amok and maybe making you look like dweebs. Like even bigger dweebs. Now you need our help, because we’re what the President and the State Department are providing. So you’re gonna put on your big boy diapers and tell us what the hell is going on!”
Alex looked at her tablet. Jack’s IT people had already searched through the entire CIA personnel database and come up with a match on the image. Wow. They were really good. She said, “This is James Robert Pressman, CIA senior intelligence officer, on assignment in Langley, minimal fieldwork experience.” She looked up from the tablet and lied, “I can give you his bank balance and his credit history, too, if you’d like.”
Mister Pressman blanched.
Jack smirked. “Now then, Jimmy, how’s about you pull that stick out and tell us what we need to know? Because otherwise, I’m gonna walk right into that international jurisdictional dispute and come down on the side of the Brits. Who want your boss’s head on a silver platter. And there’s not gonna be any dance of the seven veils to go with it. And guess what? If I side with the Brits and tell your boss you welshed on the deal and that’s why I’m not helping, he’ll make sure you go down in flames with him. Hell, he’ll make sure his dirty laundry gets dropped right in your lap. So I’d guess you’d be looking at twenty-five to life in Leavenworth for this screw-up, Jimmy-boy.”
Alex wondered if Mister Pressman might faint right then.
Lieutenant Lupo said, “Sir, I’d be willing to work on him some. Special Forces has plenty of ways of making people talk without getting blood all over the place.”
Alex wondered if Mister Pressman might pee himself.
Alex looked at her tablet. There was a message from Acid Burn and two messages from Jack’s IT guys, captainmal and jackryanrules. The message from jackryanrules said ‘paid 20k down on 380k house owes 240k on 30 yr mortgage w 17 yrs to go’. The message from captainmal said ‘Yale grad skull & bones 34th in class’. The message from Acid Burn said ‘visa & amex say he cheats on wife @ massage parlor every tu & th’.
She said, “Sir, I think we should just ask his wife if she has looked over his credit card bills lately, and point out the twice a week trips to that massage parlor he keeps going to. Then ask her if she’s been checked for STDs lately.” She looked at Mister Pressman and said, “Since you still owe $240,000 on your mortgage after thirteen years, I think a divorce would bankrupt you and keep you penniless for the next seventeen years. Or should I keep hunting through your records? Maybe check who you visit at that massage parlor so regularly? Maybe check your fellow Yale classmates who were also in Skull and Bones for any interesting secrets? Maybe …”
“Okay! Okay, I’ll fill you in! For God’s sake, don’t tell my wife!”
Jack ruthlessly said, “Good. And then you’re gonna go get tested for STDs and tell your wife if you have something she needs to worry about, you little creep.”
Pressman cringed and stared at the floor. “It’s Erik Heller. He went rogue fourteen years ago. Agent Marissa Weigler saw him kill a civilian, Johanna Zadek, and kidnap a girl believed to be Johanna’s two-year-old daughter Hanna. A couple weeks ago, Langley got an uncoded transmission from a beacon up around the Arctic Circle. It was Heller’s old signal. Weigler was notified as per order 674 dash J on rogue agents, since Heller was one of her people at the time he went rogue. Weigler then met with CIA higher-ups and got clearance to send two Nordic-trained HK teams in to apprehend him.”
Jack interrupted, “Why did Heller wait fourteen years to send a signal he had to know would alert Weigler?”
“We don’t know. But when the teams got there, they found a handmade home in the middle of nowhere. They sent two men in, and there was no response. Heavily-armed men, and they just went silent. So they sent in one full team and found two dead men, no Heller, and a girl.”
Lupo asked, “A sixteen-year-old girl?” Alex got it as soon as Lieutenant Lupo asked the question. It was the two-year-old girl Heller took fourteen years ago.
“I … I guess. Maybe. His daughter, I guess.” Alex figured he was wrong or else lying. Or maybe he wasn’t nearly as smart as Lieutenant Lupo. “So they took her for questioning to a base in Morocco. Weigler’s orders.”
Jack said, “Morocco? This is making less and less sense as we go.”
“They had her in a secure base, and she asked to see Marissa Weigler. She used Agent Weigler’s full name. So Weigler sent in someone made up to look like her. The girl snapped her neck, took out the first guard into the room, took his gun, shot the following guards, escaped the base, and fled north into Europe.”
Jack said, “Well, duh. Sounds like you guys demonstrated all the competence of Tom and Jerry so far.”
“Then Erik Heller killed a couple of policemen, and Weigler insisted on keeping a lid on things in direct contravention of orders. Things got worse when three ‘auxiliary assets’ began intervening as well.”
Jack said, “So. Bottom line. Death toll?”
“Two operatives in Finland. Five in Morocco. Two policemen. A British family of four caravanning across Africa and Southern Europe. The three auxiliary assets. Marta Zadek. Erik Heller. Several other possibles that may or may not be connected but we’ll probably get blamed for them. And finally Marissa Weigler.”
Jack said sarcastically, “Nice work. I’ve seen smaller body counts in terrorist attacks.”
Alex worked her tablet and looked at the maps that were being sent to her. They made no sense. Why did this stuff start in Finland, jump to Morocco, then go back north, and then head toward Berlin? She looked at the notes from the IT guys and said what they were saying. “Sir, we need more intel on the deaths, and any forensic work that might have been done.”
Jack looked at Pressman and asked, “Well?”
“We have the bodies of the two men in Finland and the five in Morocco. They’re all CIA or CIA-connected military, and so we could keep it internal. Everything else? Weigler couldn’t keep a lid on any of it. The British have the bodies of the family. The Spanish have the bodies of the policemen and two of the auxiliary assets they wouldn’t let us reclaim. The Germans have most of the rest of the bodies, including Agent Weigler’s body, which they have refused to turn over to us yet.”
Alex worked her tablet some more to read some additional messages. “At the Berlin meeting there are going to be State Department and intelligence sources from Finland, Morocco, Britain, Germany, Spain, France, and Belgium. So far. Perhaps we can get some forensics from some of them.”
Jack said, “Good. Because I sure as hell don’t believe any of this bullshit. We have to suspect Weigler went rogue as soon as she couldn’t capture Heller or the girl. There’s no way an agent fourteen years out of the loop and listed as ‘rogue’ could call up current CIA auxiliary assets, so we need to find out who pulled them in. And we have to suspect anything Weigler told anybody, including that Heller killed the Zadek woman fourteen years ago.”
Riley said, “It would make a lot more sense if Heller was trying to save the mother and daughter, Weigler killed the mother and blamed Heller, and then Heller spent years training the daughter to kill Weigler. It could be his only way to get at her.”
Jack looked at Pressman. “Your girl Weigler is looking less and less like Girl Scout of the Year.”
Alex found another message on her tablet from captainmal. ‘project galinka only overlap of heller & weigler personnel files’
Then there was a message from jackryanrules. ‘galinka scrubbed from cia project-level databases — against cia rules!’
She said, “Sir, I have some more intel. The only overlap the CIA personnel databases have for Erik Heller and Marissa Weigler is something called Project Galinka. But the project has been illegally scrubbed from the official CIA databases.”
Jack said, “Our Miss Weigler is looking less and less like a reliable data source.” He glared at Pressman. “What’s Project Galinka?”
“No idea.”
“Who would know about it?”
“No idea.”
“Who CAN tell me about it?”
“No idea.”
Jack fumed, “Jimmy, you’re just a font of information, you know that?”
“I don’t even know how your lieutenant is getting into our data or finding these correlations. Projects aren’t supposed to be scrubbed from the databases, but it still happens once in a while. If it’s a scrubbed project, there shouldn’t be anything on it.”
Jack said, “What? You think I picked key members of my project using a Ouija board?”
Alex kept working, because she had at least three people firing off stuff at her, and she could hardly keep up with it.
captainmal: no project records
jackryanrules: searching personnel records for mentions
Acid Burn: checking all cia auxiliary personnel files
captainmal: project ran for 3 yrs, scrub occurred 14 yrs ago
jackryanrules: 3 more mentions, all dead
Acid Burn: check cause of death on each and verify
jackryanrules: I know how to run an investigation, thank u!
Acid Burn: sorry
Acid Burn: gotcha! professor howard royer locke, Princeton geneticist, named as university cooperator on galinka. and … listed as suicide. 14 yrs ago
captainmal: check grad students and associates
Acid Burn: on it
jackryanrules: all 3 dead listed as suicide, all three ate a bullet
Acid Burn: ditto on locke
captainmal: someone really wanted this cleaned up
jackryanrules: locke specialized in genetics and biochemistry of the fetus. eww.
Acid Burn: uh oh
captainmal: what?
Acid Burn: found a live grad student of locke. this is uber-bad.
captainmal: what? yr killin me!
Acid Burn: grad student margaret k walsh who wrote her dissertation after lockes death on controlled mutagenesis in the hominidae embryo. research 17 yrs ago.
jackryanrules: hominidae == chimps
Alex stared at her tablet and gasped, “Crud!” She hastily entered into her tablet: hominidae isnt just chimps
She felt sick to her stomach, but she concentrated on being Lieutenant Farrell. “Sir? I know what Project Galinka was. And I know why Marissa Weigler scrubbed it and killed that woman. And I know why she kidnapped the girl and took her to an isolated base away from Heller.”
Pressman gasped, “How is that possible? No one knows that! Even my boss doesn’t know that! Even our computer people don’t know!”
She said, “The project was scrubbed. But mention of the project was still accessible in individual personnel files. Everyone else with Project Galinka in their file ‘committed suicide’ by shooting themselves. So I think we have multiple murders going back at least fourteen years. One of the suicides was the university cooperator on the project, who’s in the CIA auxiliary personnel records. He had a grad student who did her doctorate research then and is still alive. It’s Maggie Walsh. Her doctorate was on …” Alex had to peek at the tablet again. “… controlled mutagenesis in the hominidae embryo. Hominidae are not just chimpanzees.” She hadn’t really thought her science classes would help her be a superhero, but this was right out of her Earth Sciences class. “Hominidae includes homo sapiens. And Walsh did her doctoral research seventeen years ago, when this girl was being conceived.” She took a breath. “This girl is one of her experiments.”
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A/N1: “Eureka” does not exist in this universe, so Jo Lupo is a Special Forces officer (as in the Eureka pilot), one of the very few such women in the Special Forces. Her strength, her tendency to wear body armor all the time, and her wearing a gun even when not appropriate are all canon. Sadly, I do not own “Eureka” or Jo Lupo.
A/N2: In case you didn’t know, Marissa Weigler, Erik Heller, and Hanna Heller are all from the movie “Hanna”. I don’t own the movie or the characters. I can barely pronounce the name of Hanna’s actress.
A/N3: The idea of Maggie Walsh being part of the science behind Hanna Heller has been done before. I think batzulger did it best. I don’t know if he did it first. If you haven’t read his ‘Military Option’ series you’re missing something good.