Nightstalkers

CHAPTER 6

Two beers were all the Nightstalkers were allowed, although Mac snuck four. Moms was firm about that rule in the Den, but it was her and Nada’s turn to in-brief the newly minted Kirk. Roland, Mac, and Eagle ambled off to their little rooms — cells almost — to catch some Zs while Kirk cleaned up before going into the CP. New guys always cleaned up. It was the same in every unit around the world.

As Kirk tossed the last can into the trash, the door to the Den from the outside corridor hissed open and a short man with glasses walked in. He spotted Kirk and smiled.

“Good day. I am Doc.” His voice was almost musical with a strong trace of his parents’ Indian accent. He held a finger up to his lips as Kirk was about to reply. He looked at the whiteboard. “Let me guess what Ms. Jones picked.”

He frowned as he read the list. “Know is out, naturally. A pathetic attempt at humor in some way, perhaps by Mac or Moms. Slick would be Roland. He wants a Slick and he does not care who it is. Ah, Cheetah. That would be Mac since Fred is Nada. Nada thinks every team needs a Fred and we are never going to have one. So Moms did Know. She never wants to name anyone. As if she does not take enough responsibility.”

Kirk waited patiently as Doc unraveled the naming mystery that was only a mystery to him.

“So that leaves Eagle with Kobayashi Maru, and Ms. Jones almost always goes with him, but I do not see it this time. Kobe? Maru?”

“Kirk.”

Doc blinked, cocked his head, and then nodded. “Ah. Got it. Star Trek. So you are a cheater, no disrespect intended, a former Ranger, and Ms. Jones chose you. As good an intro as you can get. Welcome to the Nightstalkers.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

“Nada did get to name me. He broke his Fred rule and said every team’s medic had to be called Doc, and Ms. Jones went along with him.” Doc sighed. “I am indeed a medical doctor, by the way, so come to me with any ailments or concerns. But I also have four PhDs in—”

The door to the CP cracked open and Nada stuck his head out. “Yeah, Doc, we know you’re a multiple professor of whatever and wherever, but we need the new guy. And welcome back.”

“Thanks, Na—” But the door was shut. Doc’s shoulders slumped. “I suppose since I missed the naming ceremony I missed my two beers?”

Kirk nodded and reached into the other can, pulling out two cold ones. Doc sat down with a sigh and popped open the first. “When will these uncouth savages learn about champagne or wine?” he asked no one in particular. He then looked back at Kirk. “It is best not to keep Moms waiting.”

Kirk went to the door and knocked, barely making an audible thud in the steel. It seemed Nada had been on the other side waiting and opened it immediately, escorting him in. The walls of the CP were covered with maps, satellite imagery, and printouts of things Kirk couldn’t make sense of in his quick glance about.

Moms sat behind one desk, Nada taking his place behind the other. They were standard government-issue gray desks and they faced the door from opposite corners of the CP. Surprisingly, a plump armchair was in the center facing them.

Kirk suspected a trap, perhaps no support in the seat, and sat down gingerly. But the chair was firm. Even comfortable, which further aroused his suspicions.

Moms started. “Every unit I ever went into, when I met the CO, it was always a series of warnings. Don’t fuck up. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Behave. And I’ve walked into a lot of units in my time. Your experience?”

Kirk ran his career reel through his head. “The same, Ms. Moms.”

“Save the Ms. shit for Ms. Jones. There’s no Ms. or Misters here. I’m Moms. That’s it. You’re Kirk. He’s Nada. I heard Doc out there. Just Doc. Got it?”

“Just Doc. Got it.”

Moms smiled slightly. Kirk noticed a bend in her nose and knew it had been broken and badly set a long time ago. Dee’s nose had the same crook. From Pads’s fist. Kirk pulled his mind back to the present as Moms continued.

“The ceremony outside is real. The people are real. We’re very happy to have you on the team.” She glanced to her left. “Right?”

“Oh, yeah.” Nada was pulling open a drawer in his desk and glanced up. “Thrilled beyond words.”

“If you notice, we don’t wear rank, we don’t have patches or tabs or badges. I know you’re proud of them, but we don’t do that stuff. We don’t do medals, we don’t do plaques or memorials or any of that. But you are still in the service, okay?”

Kirk nodded.

“We work for Ms. Jones. Who exactly she answers to, we don’t know and we don’t have a need to know. She did the ‘things that go bump in the night’ shtick, which she alternates with some other stuff for new people, but officially Nightstalkers is on call to deal with extraordinary emergencies. That includes incidents involving nuclear, chemical, and biological material. Doc will get you up to speed on what you need to know in that area and our special gear to deal with contingencies. A lot of the times we bring scientists with us. Nada interrupted him, but putting it simply, Doc is a genius in a whole bunch of fields I can’t even pronounce.”

“Yeah,” Nada snorted. “I remember you wrote Genius on the board when he in-briefed with Ms. Jones.”

Moms ignored him. “Doc has what we call the Acme list, after that company the Coyote always bought his stuff from in the Road Runner cartoon.”

This time Nada actually laughed as he started piling up binders on his desktop. “Yeah, Mac wanted to call him Road Runner. Beep beep. He’s always interested in figuring shit out. Keep an eye on him with that. You can get killed while figuring shit out.”

Moms continued. “The Acme list contains the names of a whole bunch of scientists who are on call to the government. We Zevon them—”

“Excuse me?” Kirk said.

“Zevon,” Moms repeated. “It’s an alert ring tone on their phones. You’ll understand soon enough; hopefully not too soon.”

“Good luck on that,” Nada muttered as he took out an alcohol pen and began thumbing through a pocket-sized acetated pad.

“Working with those from the Acme list can be a pain—”

“Working with Doc can be a pain,” Nada said to himself, checking the binders against his small pad.

“—but they’re the experts. They tell you don’t touch something, don’t touch it. They tell you to flame something, flame it. They tell you to run—”

“You’re fucked,” Nada said.

“True,” Moms said. She stared at Kirk as if reading him. Seeing how he was taking it. She must have liked what she saw. “Okay. There is an event that’s our primary mission, and actually prompted the founding of this unit many years ago. Something you’ve never heard of.”

“Join the rest of the world,” Nada said.

“Rifts and Fireflies,” Moms said.

Kirk blinked and hoped for amplification.

“No, I can’t tell you what a Rift is,” Moms said, deflating his hope. “No one can.”

“Not even Doc,” Nada added.

“But Fireflies—” Moms began.

“We kill,” Nada finished for her.

“Fireflies come through Rifts,” Moms said. “Anywhere from one to fourteen, which happened back in ’68 and is the record.”

“That must have been a motherfucker of a firefight,” Nada said enviously.

“Doc will give you more info on this topic,” Moms said, “but simply put, Fireflies are things that come through Rifts, and our best guess is that they are some sort of energy being or probe that can take over an animate or inanimate object.” She stopped because of whatever she was reading on Kirk’s face.

“They can go into things and animals,” Nada tried to explain. “And take them over. So anything around you can be under the control of a Firefly.” He thumped his desktop. “A Firefly could get into this desk, then slam shut the drawer when I put my hand in to get something. With enough force to chop my hand off, ’cause they enhance whatever they’re in. You kill an animal they’re in, it ain’t enough. It’s got to be flamed to cinders. Roland does most of the flaming. Once the creature is reduced to pretty much nothing, the Firefly floats out of the body and dissipates.”

“They can’t jump from one place to another,” Moms said. “Once they go in they’re stuck—”

“Until we obliterate what they’re in,” Nada said.

“They can’t go into people,” Moms said.

“Not that we know of,” Nada warned. “Or yet. Whichever.”

That one stopped Moms for a second, then she went on. “If they get into an inanimate object, then we have to blast it, break it down, crush it, blow it apart — whatever — depending on what the object is. There is a critical point at which the object no longer has what Doc calls a sufficient level of integrity that the Firefly can survive in, so it finally just lets go and leaves and dissipates. I know this is all a bit much, but like I said, Doc can explain it better and more thoroughly. Okay?”

Kirk nodded.

“Some other basics,” Moms said. “We don’t do ranks here, but I’m your team leader and Nada is the team sergeant. Go to him before you come to me. That’s not because I’m big on chain of command, but because he can usually solve more things than I can. He has more time on the team than anyone. His focus is you, the team. My focus is Ms. Jones and the mission. Got it?”

Kirk nodded.

“But, as they say, my door is always open, except sometimes it’s not. If that sucker,” she nodded toward the big steel door, “is shut, there’s a reason for it. We do not want to be disturbed.”

“Unless it’s a Zevon,” Nada added.

“Unless it’s a Zevon,” Moms confirmed. “You’re going to be the team commo man,” Moms said. “My commo man. Which means you can hear everything I hear if you choose. I ask you not to listen in when you give me a channel to Ms. Jones. If I want the team to hear Ms. Jones, I’ll put it on the team net. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“I ask you to keep to yourself anything else you hear that isn’t on the team net. If I want the team to hear it, I’ll put it on the net. Clear?”

“Clear.”

She reached into a drawer and pulled out a device that looked like an iPhone except it was attached to a wristband. “You’ve used the PRT before?”

“I trained on it, but they weren’t issued.”

“I know. Ms. Jones set that training up.” Moms tossed it to him. Kirk caught the state-of-the-art device. The screen was active. He strapped it on. “Now you’ve been issued one. Our commo goes through you and that for security reasons.”

Moms reached into a pocket on her fatigues and pulled out an acetated pad similar to what Nada was thumbing through. “This is the team Protocol. We don’t call them SOPs here. We call them Protocols.”

“More scientific,” Nada threw in. “Makes the Acme geeks feel better.”

Moms opened it to the first page. “Ms. Jones gave you her spiel. I just want to highlight a few things from my team leader Protocol for you.”

For once, Nada remained silent.

Moms began reading, but it was obvious she had the words memorized. “The most basic tenet of teamwork is honesty.” She paused and glanced at Nada. He raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. “Except when you have to lie to someone outside the team to accomplish a mission,” Moms finished her first rule.

“Everyone on the team is a leader. Except when I make a decision.

“We do everything as a team. Except when I tell you to do something alone.

“Don’t get in a pissing contest with someone on a balcony. You just end up pissed on and smelly. If you have a problem with someone, especially one of the Acme Assets, let me know and I’ll deal with it. Which reminds me.” Moms reached into her drawer and pulled out a badge case and tossed it to Kirk. “You’re now a senior field agent of the FBI. Your photo ID will be here within an hour or so. That badge and ID will be enough to keep pretty much anyone you have to deal with who is on the outside off your ass. Someone thinks they outrank that badge, you send them to me.”

She looked back down at her Protocol. “Keep a positive attitude. Except when something has to be wet. Then you get nasty.” Kirk opened his mouth to ask, but she was quicker to the answer. “We’ve got three levels of missions here as determined by Ms. Jones. Dry, damp, and wet. Dry is something to be contained and further studied. So we want whatever it is intact.

“Damp is it’s to be contained, and if you can’t contain it intact, then you can break it.

“Wet is it’s to be contained by being utterly destroyed. Fireflies and Rifts are always wet.”

She had said the last without looking down. She glanced at the page once more to find her place. “Discipline and accountability stays inside the Nightstalkers. We are ultimately accountable only to the survival of the human race.”

Kirk blinked.

Moms looked him in the eye. “That’s no bullshit, okay?”

Kirk nodded.

“Be on time.” She frowned. “I need to reorder those two.”

“I told you that last time—” Nada began, but she waved him silent.

“Keep your mouth shut about the team when outside the team. Or Roland will pay you a visit.”

“And it will be a wet experience,” Nada added.

“Follow Protocols,” Moms said. “Even the smallest ones. And I, actually Nada, will be ripping Mac a new one for sneaking two extra beers while we’re technically on call.” Moms smiled. “And last but not least, keep your sense of humor. You’re going to need it.” She closed the book and raised her eyebrows. “Any questions or concerns?”

“No, Moms.”

Moms sat back in her seat and gestured for Nada to begin.

The team sergeant got up and picked up the top binder. “Nuclear Protocol, including facilities, materials, weapons, etcetera.” He tossed it to Kirk, who caught it. Nada picked up the second binder. “Biological Protocol. There are some nasty bugs out there, and hard as it is to believe, there are people in labs trying to make nastier ones. It’s not like Mother Nature can’t be quite the motherfucker by herself.” He tossed the second binder. Third binder: “Chemical. Really, you do need to read all this stuff, ’cause Doc or an Acme might not be by your side. Pretend you’re in graduate school for things that can kill. Learn which ones kill quickest and fastest.” He paused. “You know your three Bs, right?”

“Breathing, bleeding, broken,” Kirk said, listing the priorities for triage.

Nada nodded. “For us it’s the three Cs. Containment is the first priority. Nothing else matters if whatever shit we’re trying to deal with spreads. Then concealment.” He noted Kirk’s surprised look. “Panic can kill as much as the actual problem. Word of some of the things we’ve had to squash gets out, people will go bonkers. The people out there in the world got twenty-four-hour news channels. They’re hungry for bad shit, like the way weathermen pray for hurricanes to hit so they can stand on that pier with the wind howling around them. The news would eat up the stuff we deal with and the public would panic. War of the Worlds—type shit. The third C is control. That one is regulated by Ms. Jones’s directive whether it’s dry, damp, or wet. Got it?”

“Containment, concealment, control.”

“Good.”

Nada picked up a stack of three more binders. “This is just a bunch of stuff. And some of it is pretty weird. They list every single mission the Nightstalkers have been on since it was founded in 1948. Makes for great late-night reading.”

Moms cut in for the first time. “Don’t concern yourself so much with the problems, because some of them won’t happen again, but look at the way the team dealt with it and consider possibilities.”

Nada dumped the three binders on top of the ones already in Kirk’s lap.

He grabbed the thickest one off the desk. “This is the one I call the Dumb Shit Scientist Protocol, but don’t ever let Doc hear that. This lists all the incredibly dumb things scientists have done that damn near wiped out the human race.” Nada’s eyes shifted to the wall between the CP and Ms. Jones’s office, as if she could hear through two feet of steel-reinforced concrete. “Pretty high up on that list is what happened at Chernobyl.”

Last, Nada tossed a pocket-sized team Protocol. “That’s your first priority reading. You’ve got forty-eight hours, then anyone can ask you anything in it and you’d better know it and your place in whatever it is.

“There’s a locker with your gear on it. Check it, but don’t move anything around. I assume in the Rangers you had standard operating procedure for the way everyone rigged their gear, right? So you can grab anyone’s vest or ruck and know exactly what’s in it and where it is? We do the same.”

Kirk nodded, remembering pulling blood-and-viscera-drenched magazines out of a dead squad mate’s vest during a particularly nasty firefight.

Nada sat back behind his desk and pulled out his own team Protocol. “Moms’s Protocol is page one. Mine is page two.” He hummed something as he scanned the list. “Let me give you some of the more important ones.” His finger slid down the page. “Nothing is impossible to the man who doesn’t have to do it.” He looked up. “Ms. Jones usually keeps the politicians and the press and the various government agencies off our backs during a mission. But every once in a while someone sticks their beak in. Gotta ignore ’em or they’ll get you killed.” He looked back down.

“Smith and Wesson beats four aces.”

Kirk smiled, having heard Uncle Ray say the same thing.

Nada wasn’t smiling. “We go in packing heat and we’ve got heavy stuff on call. We can bring hell down if we need to. Don’t hesitate. Err on the side of containment rather than collateral damage. You ever see those movies where that couple manages to escape those nasty government agents trying to contain a government screw-up because they’re so fucking special?”

Kirk nodded.

“They ain’t special. If we’re containing something, there’s a reason. We kill those people if we have to. No one gets out alive. Got it?”

Kirk nodded.

“We’ve never had to nuke anything to contain it,” Moms added.

“Yet,” Nada said.

“It’s a miracle we’ve made it this far without another nuke having to be used, one way or the other,” Moms said. “But we can call in a nuke strike if the problem warrants it and Ms. Jones concurs with her superiors.” She nodded at Nada. “Please continue.”

“The latest information hasn’t been put out yet. What I mean by that is we rarely get a chance to plan a mission like most Spec Ops do. ST-6 ran rehearsals for the Bin Laden hit for months before going in. Neato and nifty keen if you can. But when we get Zevoned, it’s wheels up in thirty minutes and then it’s Moms on the sat link with Ms. Jones and we develop the plan en route. We almost always HAHO or HALO”—he paused, glanced at the badge on Kirk’s fatigue shirt, and nodded—“a recon man in first. Because even with the best intel, we usually have no clue what we’re dealing with until we get eyes on the target and then boots on the ground. So you’ve got to be prepared to adapt quickly or die.”

He read on. “There are two types of scientists: the steely-eyed killer and the beady-eyed minion and it’s hard to tell them apart. The latter can get you killed. I don’t think I’m paranoid”—it was Moms’s turn to snort—“but keep as close an eye on any Acme Asset as you do the problem. Sometimes they can dick it up even worse than it is.

“We love Doc as one of us,” Nada said, “but even his brain starts thinking of the wonders of science sometimes before he faces the reality of the danger. He got snakebit in the shoulder on our last op and didn’t even notice until we told him.” Nada raised an eyebrow. “The snake had a Firefly in it.”

Nada slid his finger down the page, reluctantly skipping some of the ones he’d accrued over the years for sake of expediency and focus. “They give these people guns? Besides the scientists, sometimes you got locals on scene. Their guns don’t know the good guy from the bad guy. We parachute in and then come in on the Snake — you’ll meet the Snake later, it’s pretty cool — we scare the shit out of people. We’ve been shot at by supposed friendlies. So no one is friendly except another member of the team until we have containment.”

Nada snapped the Protocol shut with a snap and put it back in his pocket. He looked Kirk in the eyes. “This last one is key. No matter what Doc or an Acme says, my bottom line is this: Just tell me how to kill it.” Nada smiled and stood, along with Moms. “Well, I think that’s a pretty good introduction, don’t you?”

Kirk staggered to his feet, burdened with binders. “Uh, yeah. I’ll get to work—”

He was cut off as the phone on Moms’s desk starting playing a tune: “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”

“That’s a Zevon,” Nada said as he ran toward the door, his phone also now playing the tune and the PRT chiming in a second later.

Despite the very slight time delay, they were all in sync.