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Chapter 76 – SilicosisAlex managed not to flinch. Much.
As soon as the sat phone was hooked up, Hermione hastily dialed a number from memory. “Brigadier? Hermione Granger here. We now have a Terawatt Code Red in Rome, Tokyo, and New York City as well. It turns out the lab here created a silicon-based lifeform which eats calcium right out of the bodies of mammals, and it’s virtually indestructible, and it divides like an amoeba every six hours as long as it has a food supply. If — like here — it starts in Rome with a pair of creations, then twenty-four hours after the genesis event there would be two to the fifth monsters, or thirty-two. Two full days later, we would have two to the ninth, or five hundred and twelve. Three full days later, we would have two to the thirteenth, or 8,192. Four days, and we have 131,072. Five days, and we have 2,097,152. Six days, and we have 33,554,432. One full week, and we have over five hundred million, and there isn’t a mammal left alive in all of Italy.”
“Hey, the doc said in a week there’d be a million,” objected one of the villagers.
Ron bluntly said, “Then he was wrong. Hermione is never wrong about this kind of problem.”
Hermione listened for a minute and then replied, “Yes, sir, but these things can’t be stopped with guns or grenades or other conventional weaponry. They’ve also tried dynamite and petrol bombs and brute force. If these things touch you, then you’ll die a very ugly death in seconds. The only thing that has worked here was injecting strontium-90 into cattle and letting the silicates feed on the poor things. That, and injecting radium-228 directly into the things, which apparently requires a tranq rifle or a superheroine. From what I’ve already heard, hardly anyone would still be alive on this island if it weren’t for Terawatt.”
Alex tried really hard not to blush in front of everyone.
Hermione looked at her and asked, “Can you go with us to Rome? Right now?”
Alex said, “If I can confer with Colonel Jack O’Neill of the SRI immediately.”
Hermione said, “Definitely.” She turned back to the phone. “Sir, can you have your staff call VTT Laboratories in Rome, Hitamuro Research in Tokyo, and Hillman-Klein Pharmaceuticals in New York City, and warn them to quarantine their lab areas and stop all cancer research experiments until we can get teams there?” She nodded into the phone and said, “Thank you, sir. We’ll be on the helicopter as soon as we can, and on our way to Rome as fast as you can set up transport.”
She handed the phone over to Alex, who hurriedly dialed Jack’s office. Even if it was maybe nine at night in West Virginia. Alex wasn’t completely sure. She had four more numbers she could call if this didn’t work.
The phone line rang, then clicked over to another number. A man answered, “This is the HWAAA. If you need to contact us, our regular hours —”
She interrupted, “This is Terawatt. I need to speak to Colonel O’Neill or General Hammond in the next thirty seconds.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The line clicked a couple times, and then started ringing again.
“O’Neill here, and it had better be good.”
“Colonel, it’s Terawatt. That EU Code Red? It’s spread to Rome, Tokyo, and New York. You need to get teams to …” She glanced at Hermione’s papers. “Hillman-Klein Pharmaceuticals in New York City and Hitamuro Research in Tokyo. This may be a part of that Plan A that we discussed the other day.”
“Damnit!”
She said, “It’s listed as cancer research in conjunction with Phillips Laboratories here. It’s actually the creation of a three-hundred-pound silicate lifeform with a really strong eight-foot tentacle that sucks the calcium out of a body just by touch, and it’s lethal in seconds. It’s also invulnerable to small arms fire and grenades and firebombs. It divides every six hours if it gets food, and in a major city like New York or Tokyo, it’ll never run out of food. Hermione Granger calculated that starting with two, after four full days you’d have to battle a hundred thousand of the things, and after one full week, you’d have up to half a billion on your hands.”
“How do we stop the damn things?”
She said, “If you can get teams on-site fast enough, maybe you can keep them from starting the experiments. Phillips apparently mailed his notes to them, so they may be several days behind. The mail should have gotten to Rome first, so they’re the primary hotspot for me. If it’s too late to stop the experiment from creating these things, they’re vulnerable to strontium-90 and radium-228. Shoot them with a tranq dart loaded with the radioisotope, or inject the isotope into a lab animal and let the things eat it. A big dose kills them in seconds. A low dose may take half an hour. And they’re strong, and they can climb walls. Don’t expect closing a wooden door will keep them in. But you can hear them coming, because they make this unnatural squealing squeak that doesn’t sound like anything you’ve ever heard before, and you can easily outrun them. We think they hunt by sight and sound and vibration, but we don’t really know.”
Jack said, “On it. Thanks for the FYI, and good luck.”
“Oh, and can you arrange for your Blackbird pilot to pick me up in Rome once we’re done there?”
“Yep. Roger that, and out.”
Alex hung up and looked at Hermione and Harry. “Let’s move.”
Harry directed, “Hermione and Ron? With me and Terawatt. Mike? Keep these commandos from doing anything stupid. You’ll be the only soldier here who knows how deadly these things really are.”
* * *
Jack O’Neill sat up and grabbed his SRI cellphone. “Finn? Meet us on the tarmac in forty. We need to go to the Big Apple for an immediate op, so gear up and bring a four-day pack. Contact Scott and Walters. And check out six tranq rifles with extra empty darts. As many extra darts as you can get your mitts on.” He hung up and dialed again.
“Walter? It’s me. Sorry to be a pain, but we have Terawatt Code Reds in New York City and Tokyo and Rome. Simultaneously. I need Chopper One ready to go to the Big Apple in less than forty, and the Roswell Cessna fully fueled ASAP. I’ll get back to you in a couple with a laundry list of stuff we need.”
He hung up and dialed again. “Janet? Yes, it’s me. I need Action Girl on the tarmac in forty … Yes, I know it’s nighttime, but I don’t think you want New York City to be overrun by monsters because it was past someone’s bedtime. Have her in BDUs and gear, with a four-day go-bag … Yes, that means I think this will take less than four days … Look Janet, I know you feel that way, but Hanna has abnormal DNA, so she may just be the only person on Earth who is safe from these things. And no, I have no intention of letting her find out.”
He hung up and dialed once more. “Miller? I know it’s late, but I’ve got a Terawatt Code Red for you. In Tokyo. Hitamuro Research. I’ll have Walter set up transport and special gear, but grab half a dozen tranq rifles with as many tranq darts as you’ve got, because when you get to Japan you’re going to be loading up with strontium-90 or radium-228 … No, we’ve got a silicon lifeform that eats calcium. Right out of your body. Each one’s about three hundred pounds, deadly to the touch, low speed mobile, can climb anything including walls, can bust through doors and windows, and has a lethal tentacle for that extra-disturbing Japanese manga imagery. Terawatt says they squeal like nothing you’ve ever heard before, so you’ll hear them coming. And they divide every six hours as long as they have food, so if your target site did the experiment yesterday, there may already be a hundred of the things, and there may be untold numbers of citizens at risk … Egggggcellent. Over and out.”
A small hand reached out and ran down his bare back. “Terawatt Code Red?”
He grimaced. “Yeah. Our first multi-continent one, at that. I still have to call Hammond, get Walter going on that list of logistical tasks, get the DHS liaison in Tokyo to take me seriously and have support ready for Miller’s team, check with Team Four and see if they can get to Rome as support for Tera, see if Team Five can get to Tokyo to support Miller, and let Charlie know what’s up before I head out.”
Willow nervously said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have just dropped in to see you and Charlie?”
He kissed her. “No, it’s great. Really great. It’s just … this is my life these days. I’m not a reliable boyfriend.”
She hung onto him and said, “No, you’re the best boyfriend ever. You just … do something really, really important. It’s the most important job on Earth, and I know I have to share you with Charlie and your job. I just … Let me get some clothes on, and I’ll drive you to the runway, and then I’ll give Walter a hand on logistics. And I’ll make sure Charlie gets going in the morning.”
He gave her another kiss before he hopped out of the bed. “I absolutely do not deserve a girlfriend like you.”
Willow watched him grab clothes and duck into the bathroom. She started getting dressed in her clothes that were all over the floor. She knew there was a chance she’d never see Jack alive again. She knew there was always going to be a chance of that, every time he left the house on an assignment. She wondered how George and Barb stood it, watching their baby girl fly off to risk her life saving the world.
* * *
Hermione waited until they were buckled in the back of the helicopter. Then she adjusted the copter’s comm system so the pilots wouldn’t hear their conversation. She glared: “Now, then, Terawatt, maybe you’d like to tell me how you knew so much about me. And Ron. And Harry.”
Ron and Harry stared at both of them in confusion.
Terawatt looked like she had been expecting her to ask. Hermione really wanted to know how Terawatt could stay so calm when she was fighting things like these silicates. Or dealing with Hanna Heller. Or coping with some of the issues Hermione had managed to scour off the American news, like that giant tarantula in Arizona, or the New Jersey monster-man.
Terawatt coolly said, “I was hoping we’d have this opportunity. Now, the part I’m about to tell you will sound utterly ridiculous, but hear me out. Several months ago, I had to go to another dimension. I know, there’s no proof other dimensions exist. But I went. And different dimensions are freakishly alike in ways like Hermione Granger being a genius and Harry Potter being a hero and Ron Weasley being a pureblood who doesn’t care that you’re not.”
Harry and Hermione looked at each other and burst out laughing. Ron turned beet red.
Hermione said, “Ron’s last name is Wellesley. He’s a ‘pureblood’ in a sense, but only because his father’s going to be the ninth Duke of Wellington and his mother’s the younger daughter of Prince Frederick of Prussia. He’s Lord Ronald Frederick Arthur Louis Wellesley.”
Ron buried his face in his hands. “Do you have to do this? No one ever looks at me the same after you go through all this.”
Terawatt asked, “Do you have older brothers named Charlie and Bill and Percy and Fred and George? And a younger sister named Ginny?”
Ron muttered, “I’d love to see someone call Percival that. Even mum doesn’t call him Percy anymore. And my brother Fred was murdered four years ago.”
Harry pointed out, “Anybody could look that up.”
Terawatt looked at Harry. “Then let me mention something else that may not be quite right. When you were eleven, the three of you were at a school in Scotland, and a madman came after something at the castle. He wanted you out of the way, and he had tried to kill you when you were a baby, although he only managed to kill your parents. Maybe your aunt and uncle told you it was a car crash. But the person behind all of this was Tom Marvolo Riddle, or something like that. He went by the codename Lord Voldemort. And maybe you had a fellow student named something like Draco Malfoy whose father was one of Riddle’s top lieutenants. But at the end, Draco’s mother risked her life to save you, because it was the only way she could protect her son.”
“Bloody hell,” Ron choked.
Harry looked really pale, but he soldiered on. “I have no idea how you could have gotten some of that. Thomas Riddle’s middle name was definitely not Marvolo, it was Arkeit; and you don’t have his codename quite right, it was Lord Deathstrike; and the fact that he was behind everything is still a carefully guarded secret because of his family connections. And no one in our intelligence community wants anyone outside to know there’s been a civil war inside it going on for decades. Drake’s last name wasn’t ‘mal foi’ but you’re close. And there is no place anywhere you could have found out about Drake’s parents, because I never told anybody except Ron and Hermione about what his mum did for me; and what his dad did at the end is classified as secret as it gets, so none of Riddle’s surviving forces would ever go after Drake’s family.”
Terawatt said, “Well, I met the Ron and Hermione and Harry and Ginny of that other dimension, and Ron and Hermione took our team to his parents’ home for dinner one night, so I met Arthur and Molly.”
Harry snorted, and Hermione had to bite her lip. Ron said, “My mother’s name is Mariam. No one calls her Molly. Not even my father.”
Terawatt said, “And I met Draco Malfoy. Pale, with white hair and a snotty attitude, working at the Ministry in a classified job under two of the few people it seemed like he actually respected. One of his bosses was a man who was one of your professors in sixth year.”
Hermione looked at Ron and Harry. She admitted, “I don’t know where you got your intel, but that’s dangerously accurate.”
Terawatt continued, “As my contact told you before, I learned all this when I was in an alternate dimension. Was your headmaster connected to the Ministry and running an underground group that was facing off against Riddle? Was his name … okay, I don’t remember what exactly the other Hermione told me … Headmaster Albus Dumbledore?”
“Headmaster Dumont Appledore,” Hermione automatically corrected her.
Ron took a drink from his canteen and asked, “What did you have to eat at the house? Mum’s usually pretty fancy unless it’s just family.”
Terawatt said, “Let me think … The thing I remember the most was bubble and squeak, because your mother made it for your little niece Victoire, and we heard all about what goes into it, and how it’s cooked, and how your brother George got at it one time and —”
Ron spit his water. “How could you possibly know that?”
Harry asked, “What?”
Ron frowned. “I don’t think I even told Harry about that. Victoria loves bubble and squeak, and mum will even make it herself as a special treat for the granddaughter. And George did get into it one time. Lord knows where he got the medical dye, but if Victoria hadn’t ratted him out, everyone who ate it would have peed green for days. Mum was furious.”
Harry said, “And his mum doesn’t look it at first impression, but when she’s really angry, she looks quite a lot like a sabre-tooth tiger.”
Terawatt frowned and then slowly said, “That’s interesting, because the other Harry told me very much the same thing about the other Ron’s mother. When Harry was twelve or thirteen, Ron and the twins stole their dad’s car and drove down to Surrey to rescue Harry, who was locked up for some reason by his aunt and uncle.”
That time, Harry nearly spit his water. “Now there’s no way you could know that. We never told anyone.”
Ron confessed, “None of us was old enough to drive, either. And one of the twins scratched up the bumper pulling a metal security grill off a window. Dad was not amused, even when he found out it was to rescue Harry. But mum exploded.”
Terawatt added, “And Ginny was a basket-case because she had an enormous crush on Harry, and she couldn’t speak to him, and she kept doing clumsy things around him, like putting her elbow into the butter dish.”
Ron groaned. “All right, I was wondering if it was possible that Ginny put her up to this, but there is no way Ginny would ever admit to that.”
Harry agreed, “She still hates to talk about that summer. She says it was just one humiliating moment after another. And I was utterly oblivious.”
Ron added, “Mum threatened to make Fred and George clean out the stables every day for all of summer vacation if they told you or let it slip in any way. I didn’t even figure it out until a couple of years later when Fred and George were laughing it up at my expense about one thing or another.”
Hermione checked, “And this is the real reason why you sicked ‘Annie Farrell’ on me? Because the other-universe me is some amazing magic user?”
Terawatt told her, “No, it’s because other-Hermione is an incredible genius who’s creative and not afraid to get out in the field and face real dangers, and I thought it likely that you were the same, give or take some fieldwork experience. And she was a lovely person, too, and I could use more friends on my Terawatt side.”
Hermione asked, “And are you pursuing all your other teammates that you liked?”
Terawatt nodded. “Some of them are committed to other projects, and some of them I have yet to work out whether I should even contact, because they haven’t had the life experiences that made them so amazing in their own universes.”
By then, the helicopter was landing at the nearby air force base, and there was a young woman in a lieutenant’s uniform waiting for them. Holding a gym bag.
Hermione really wanted to know what was the point of the gym bag.
Alex went silvery and flew out of the helicopter. She landed next to the lieutenant and smiled. “Oh! Thanks. I was wondering how I was going to get that.”
The lieutenant, who was probably ten years older than Alex was, said, “My pleasure, ma’am. When a brigadier asks a lowly lieutenant to run an errand for him, we tend to say ‘yes sir, right away sir’. And I get to meet a real superhero.”
Hermione and Ron and Harry came running over. Harry asked, “Lieutenant, is our transport ready?”
She looked at him stiffly. “Sir, I’m required to ask for the passphrase before driving you and your team to the jet. Even if you do have Terawatt with you.”
With a groan, Harry said, “Shaken, not stirred.”
“Thank you, sir.” She led them over to a vehicle and got in the driver’s seat.
Alex waited until they were in their seats and asked, “Isn’t that the James Bond line?”
Harry nodded unhappily.
Hermione glanced at the driver and murmured, “The problem is … well, some details are classified. We shouldn’t talk about it.”
So Alex waited until they were on the jet. It wasn’t a fancy little commercial jet like Jack’s Cessna Citation X. It was a military transport. It wasn’t comfortable, and it wasn’t quiet, and it wasn’t warm once they got up to altitude. She said, “First off, you guys should totally look into getting a Cessna Citation X if you’re going to have to do this kind of stuff as a project, especially if it’s all across Europe. And second, I think you should talk to me about the James Bond problem, because I’m already keeping major international secrets, and I want to help you guys, and I have pull that I’m not afraid to use when it matters. Even if it’s pull with American military people and the EU, and not your bosses.”
Ron asked, “Is that why Hermione’s on the EU Terawatt liaison staff even if she can’t talk about it?”
“Ron! You’re not supposed to know that!” Hermione complained.
Harry said, “He’s not stupid. He’s not as smart as you are, but then nobody is.”
Ron pointed out, “You got Terawatt to fly across the planet and save our hides at the very last second. There’s really only one way you could do that.”
Hermione frowned and said, “Well, you can’t talk about it. I’m the only member of the liaison staff who isn’t a big, important, experienced, titled diplomat or military man.”
Alex mentioned, “She’s also the only member of the liaison staff I trust so far.”
Harry thought it over and finally said, “Well, we can talk about our part of things, and the unclassified material.” He took a breath and admitted, “There really is a Double Oh series in the SIS. Plenty of people were furious with Ian Fleming when he outed the original Double Oh Seven, particularly when he made the man look like a womanizing sociopath in the process. But Fleming apparently had a big grudge against some of the people running the program, since they wouldn’t let him in after World War II. That much isn’t exactly a state secret. Not after all his books, and all the interviews he gave. And it’s traditional for every Double Oh to adopt a particular last name while he’s in the Double Oh service, to protect him and his loved ones, regardless of the names he uses while on covert assignments. 005 always uses the last name Thomas for as long as he’s in the series. 007 always uses the last name Bond. Even with the books and all, they never did change that. Some people in the SIS are remarkably stubborn. They call it ‘being traditional’, though.”
Ron complained, “And they really insist on the ‘killed at least two people in cold blood in the line of duty’ bit. That’s not really a secret, either.”
Hermione added, “And they also insist on five demonstrated years of mental stability after the first two killings before acceptance into the program, in order to ensure their assassins and counter-assassins and counter-terrorists won’t run amok shooting up the village postman or the old lady on the corner who has too many cats. But they also insist on a retirement age of forty-five or earlier, because they don’t want decrepit old men trying to carry out the assignments. So that usually gives the Double Ohs a very short lifespan, even if they don’t get hurt or killed first.”
Ron went on, “Dumont Appledore knew full well that Riddle was going to be coming after Harry, because Harry was the only witness to his murder of Harry’s parents, and there was this bit of microfiche with some industrial secrets on it, which Harry’s dad was supposed to have hidden somewhere, and which might have been passed down to Harry inside an heirloom or something, and then there was some weird thing Riddle believed about James and Lily’s son. And Appledore was in the middle of a twenty-year covert war against Riddle and his people that had got Riddle banished to the continent for maybe ten years. So Appledore got an idea on how to groom a Double Oh who would be fully ready to step into the job at age twenty-one or so, giving the service maybe more than twenty years of top-notch skill in killing people and other ugly business. He put Riddle and Harry on a collision course, training Harry just enough to fight off every challenge Riddle threw his way. As soon as he ‘let slip’ that Harry’s dad was killed by Riddle because his dad was the 007 at the time, it was pretty much guaranteed that Harry was going to take Riddle on.”
“Wait a minute,” Alex said. “Weren’t Harry’s parents named James and Lily?” Everyone nodded. “So Harry’s dad really went by ‘James Bond’ as a codename for years?”
Harry scowled. “He wasn’t the original Bond, and Fleming wrote the books years before Dad took the assignment. But yeah, he was officially James Bond for years, rather than James Potter. It’s not as cool as it sounds.”
Hermione fumed, “The headmaster did his chessmaster routine for years while we were in school. He left Harry unprotected at auspicious moments. He taught Harry only part of what Harry really needed. He cut away Harry’s support system so Harry would have to face Riddle’s attacks. And finally, when it looked like Harry was going to depend on Appledore, the man actually found a way to get killed by Riddle’s people so Harry didn’t even have the headmaster. All he had was Ron and me.”
Ron added, “And my family.”
Harry grinned a little. “Yeah. And Ron’s family, who are bloody marvelous. But Appledore’s old associates in the SIS still want me to step up and become the next 007. They’ve got the spot open now. Yeah, I had to kill a teacher my first year at school to stop Riddle from getting some dangerous technology. And my second year, I had to kill Riddle’s seventeen-year-old clone. I didn’t even know cloning technology was that good.”
Hermione explained, “It turns out the technology’s been around since the mid-1940’s or so, thanks to several insane Nazi researchers. You just can’t age a clone up to your current age. It’s however old it would be since the time you created the fetus. Riddle had some clones and he was trying to maintain the technology so he could download his brain into a teenaged Riddle and essentially become immortal.”
Alex said, “That sounds eerily like what the magical Tom Riddle was doing in that other universe. And Harry finally killed him in a duel.”
Ron angrily said, “Appledore set it up so Harry would have a chance to kill the man who was Riddle’s mole and gave Riddle the intel to find Harry’s parents. But Harry insisted on turning him over to the authorities, not that it did any good.”
Alex checked, “Because Peter escaped, right?”
“Christ!” Harry swore. “How could you know that bit?”
Ron went on, “Appledore turned up the pressure our fourth year with a stupid intermural contest Harry wasn’t even supposed to be eligible for, and Harry ended up having a shoot-out with Riddle that both of them barely made it out of. Then Harry nearly killed Drake with a weapon our chemistry teacher had designed for MI-6 agents. And it just got worse, until Harry and Riddle finally had it out our seventh year, and Harry was the one who walked away. But we’ve had to deal with some of Riddle’s people since then. The SIS has made it clear that if Harry becomes 007, he’ll have carte blanche to go deal with Riddle’s mates in any way he chooses, and they’ll just sweep it all under the rug.”
Harry groaned. “I don’t want to have to kill anyone else. But I’m in the middle of this covert war that’s still going on, and Riddle’s people see me as their biggest foe, so I don’t have a lot of choice.”
Alex carefully asked, “What if I got you an alternative? Maybe more than one?”
Ron wondered, “Like what?”
Alex said, “I don’t know yet. But I have some resources who know how these things work. I may be able to come up with something and then apply a little pressure in the right spot to make someone drop you where you want, instead of where they want.”
She really didn’t have an idea other than ‘get Harry on the EU Terawatt liaison team so he is out of the reach of SIS’. But she had resources. She had Willow, and she had Jack, and she had her family who were all smart. Plus Jo was a lot sharper than she let on, and so was Riley. And there was no telling what Hanna might know about the European spy community from her ‘dad’. And if Alex’s team came up with ideas, Hermione could help her with the design and implementation.
Ron finally blew out a long sigh and asked, “Is there food on this bucket? I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
Alex said, “I could eat.”
Harry and Hermione stared at her.
“What? I have a healthy metabolism!”
As the jet descended, Ron muttered, “I’m still not happy about bringing Hermione in on this op.”
Hermione frowned at him and asked, “How’s your Italian?”
Ron looked at her and, with lots of extravagant arm gestures, said, “Tu sei la donna più bella del mondo!”
Harry burst out in snickers. Hermione fumed, “Really! That’s it?”
Alex asked, “What did he say?”
Hermione scowled. “I think he was trying to say ‘you are the most beautiful woman in the world’ but he didn’t quite manage it.”
Ron grinned. “I can also ask where the bathroom is, and how much does a beer cost.”
Hermione frowned. “And that’s why I’m along on this op. So the Italians don’t shoot you instead.”
Ron growled, “Fine. But you haven’t seen these things in action. It’s … not pretty.”
Hermione coldly asked, “Is it going to be worse than me getting tortured by Riddle’s psycho girlfriend?”
Ron complained, “Would you not bring that up anymore? I still have nightmares sometimes about her using that electrical thing on you and me not being able to stop her.”
Alex knew about this one, though. “Was that Bellatrix Black Lestrange?”
All three of them turned and stared at her.
Ron muttered, “Good Lord, that other universe really isn’t all that different, is it?”
Hermione said, “In this world, her name was Belladonna Black Lestrange.”
Harry added, “The Blacks have this weird tradition of naming their kids after celebrities.”
Alex said, “Huh. In other-Hermione’s universe, they name their kids after stars.”
Ron asked, “Stars, celebrities, what’s the difference?”
Hermione paused. “Bellatrix? They name their children after astronomical objects?”
Ron said, “Ohh, that kind of stars.”
Alex shrugged. “Umm, yeah. The Blacks I heard about were named Bellatrix, Sirius, and maybe Andromeda.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Man! That’s worse than Petula and Belladonna and Cher.”
Ron smirked. “And Madonna and Elvis.”
Hermione grumbled, “Elvis Black. What an annoying wanker!”
Ron snorted. “He was the one who had that huge crush on you, and kept sending you those weird love letters.” Hermione just glared at him.
Alex didn’t say anything. She was glad she had a nice name, like Alex. Even if she wasn’t thrilled to death with her middle name.
* * *
Jack finished explaining what he knew about the op, and sat back in the chair. Jets should all have chairs like this. He said, “That’s what we know so far. Any questions? And Sergeant Scott, you may not ask ‘Is this gonna be a standup fight, sir, or another bug hunt?’ even if it might make Sergeant Walters laugh.”
Scott kept a straight face. “Sir, I was not going to ask that.”
Hanna asked, “Is that another movie quote, sir?”
Jack nodded. “Yeah. I’ll have Cindy show you the ‘Aliens’ movies. Just remember that when Cindy screeches or twitches, that’s a place in the story where the audience is supposed to be really scared.”
Hanna shrugged. Jack was pretty sure she didn’t get horror movies at all. None of them scared her, and the people in them made poor tactical choices so she complained about their actions, and she probably didn’t understand why ordinary people would choose to watch something that would frighten them.
Sergeant Walters asked, “Sir? I have a few questions. Do I have clearance to know why we have Action Girl along? And how many of these creatures are we going to be facing?”
Jack said, “Good questions, sergeant. One, no you don’t yet, but if you see her bench press a Mazda, try not to look surprised.”
The sergeant looked at Hanna with shock written all over his face as he put the puzzle pieces together. “Oh.”
Jack went on, “And the numbers on these things are going to be ugly. The Petrie’s Island op had these things dividing in two every six hours. So in one day they went from two to thirty-two. They got stopped in the middle of day two, and they were already moving up toward two hundred fifty-six. If even one of these things gets away and finds enough food, like in the projects, where they might not call the cops if people disappear off the streets, or down in the sewers, where there are probably enough rats to feed these things for weeks, we’ll have a population explosion. Finn, if just one gets away and has four full days to breed, how many of these things would we be facing?”
“That would be two to the sixteenth, or 65,536.”
Jack insisted, “Over sixty-five thousand suckers that cannot be killed with conventional weapons. If we miss even one, we may have to go to Option Failsafe.”
Hanna calmly asked, “Sir, would that be a tactical nuclear weapon?”
He nodded unhappily. “Yeah. I need to show you the movie ‘Fail Safe’ too one of these days.”
Finn asked, “Sir, do you have a task order set up yet?”
Jack nodded. “First things first. We arrive on-site and find out if they’ve even started the experiment. If not, we just shut them down and bring in DHS investigators. If so, we get tranq darts loaded up with whatever radioisotope Walter has lined up for us. We need to establish a quarantine perimeter, and that includes blocking access to the sewer system and storm drains. General Hammond will have DHS forces and National Guardsmen waiting for us when we arrive, if not shortly thereafter. We move directly to the lab and find out if it’s still secure. If so, we bring in the perimeter. If not, we search and destroy with our tranq rifles in a standard cordon-and-search op until we can move the perimeter in to the outside of the lab building. Then we do a semi-standard SRI-style building entry and room-to-room until we have everything clear. We keep a count on all critters killed, and once we have the initial lab found and clear, we figure out when they started the experiment and how many they created. If we have every one of the things, we’re done. If we’re several short, then we treat it like a full-fledged Situation Tango.” He glanced at Hanna and explained, “A CBW threat. We evac all civilians for as far out as we need to go, we blockade everything including sewer lines and water runoff lines, and we start again from a much wider perimeter.”
“Understood.”
Jack just really hoped that he wasn’t going to have to Option Failsafe the city of New York.