Dulce Base (The Dulce Files Book 1) (11 page)

“Damn right I am!” Jake said a moment later, fire in his eyes as he stared at his commander.

“Good,” Ellis nodded. “Now let’s get some chow, get some news, and then get equipped.”

18 – A Lost Soul

The final tray of dirty dishes was taken from the room and up ahead on the small stage of the cafeteria, Ellis stood up.

“Alright, alright…” he said, his arms up as he tried to quiet-down the more than two-dozen men that’d just eaten their dinner, perhaps the last for one or two of them, and maybe, Ellis pondered as he thought back on all the failed missions over the years, every single one of them.

“Quiet down!” Carl yelled from the bunched-together tables that the men were all seated around.  It took another few moments, but quiet finally descended.

“As you men now know, we’re moving tonight.” Ellis paused and let the words sink in. The men had been training for weeks now, and some of them had even gone on a mission, but now it was the real thing. They all knew it could come at anytime, and now it had.  “But we’ll be doing so short one man, Captain Frank Burchak who died in Montana.”

There were murmurings and a few prayers from the religious-types, but then the Dutchman pressed on.

“Frank was going to fly the X-22, the secret prototype we’ve been developing using alien technology, some of it given to us, some of it reverse engineered since ’75. Frank had more hours on the thing than anyone besides those who designed it, Carl here being one.”

Ellis nodded over his shoulder at Carl, who raised his hand slightly.

“Problem is, Carl can’t fly that X-22 for shit,” Ellis said, much to the chagrin of Carl but to the delight of those who saw the astronaut’s face.

“Now, now…” Ellis said, a smile on his face and his hands up as if he expected Carl to run and barrel into him at any moment, “Carl’s a great pilot and he’ll make a helluva astronaut someday, but we need an
experienced
pilot at the controls of that craft.”

“Oh,” Carl said with a laugh, “and who the hell is that?”

“My son,” Ellis said, “Mark Richards. He’ll by flying the X-22.”

“What?” several of the men said at once, none more so than Carl, now standing up at the front of the room next to him. Ellis turned to him.

“Everyone on this mission has their place, Carl – even you. We didn’t count on losing Frank and–”

“But Ellis,” Carl said, moving forward, his brow furrowed and his face looking confused, “Mark’s dead.”

“No,” Ellis said, shaking his head.

“Shit,” Tommy whispered beside Turn, and Turn looked around the crowded room to see several of the other men, mainly the commanders, echoing the same sentiment.

“Ellis, Mark died in ‘Nam in ’67…I saw his plane go down myself – I saw it explode!”

Ellis shook his head, the way you’d expect someone denying he’d just heard of the death of his son for the first time to shake
his
head. “No, Carl, you don’t know what you saw.”

Carl scoffed and looked down and shook his head. “Alright, Ellis, then if Mark’s plane being blown out of the sky by a damn gook missile isn’t what I saw, then you tell me what it was.”

“It was a damn gook missile that you saw fly up and hit my Tiger, Carl,” a voice said from the back of the room, causing all heads to turn toward a young man with black hair, a friendly face, and nearly the exact same features as the Dutchman standing before them, “it’s just that you didn’t see the Sirian TLV-series receptor vehicle come in and save my ass just in the nick of time.”

Carl stood openmouthed, staring at an old friend, the son of his current friend, a man he was sure he’d seen die.

“You don’t look a goddamn day older than you did that morning in May,” Carl said, his eyes narrowing and his head moving back and forth slowly, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Mark shrugged. “I’m not, but that’ll all change now that I’m back here on Earth.”

“Uh…” Charlie said from the group of men staring on, “what the hell is going on here?”

Mark looked from Charlie to Ellis – his father, many in the room were just starting to realize – and cocked his head. “You want to tell ‘em, dad, or should I?”

“Why not come up here and give the old man a hug first, huh?”

Mark walked forward, his smile increasing, and he and Ellis hugged tightly, the first time they’d done so in more than ten years.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” Ellis whispered in Mark’s ear.

“You always were wrong most of the time,” Mark said, and they both laughed as they ended the embrace and looked back at the gathered men.

“Let’s just say that I’ve been off-world, not necessarily of my own accord, but for my own betterment.”  He raised his hands up to quiet down the murmurs that produced, and continued on. “But now I’m back, and I know more about flying a UFO than any of you folks do, even you Stu, and you Eddie.”

Both men nodded at that, not doubting Mark’s words, for they both thought him dead as well, had attended the funeral for God’s sake!

“And we’re gonna need someone that knows how to fly one of those birds if we’re to move in under a Bernarian ship and ride her tailwinds all the way into the hangar port undetected.”

He paused and put his hands on his hips and began pacing back and forth, and if there was any doubt in the minds of the men that he was the Dutchman’s son, it quickly vanished then.

“You men don’t know me, but I’m asking you to trust me. I know that’ll be hard, and that it’s always hard having someone at your back you’ve never fought with before – hell, I know that firsthand myself! – but we don’t have a whole lot of choices, now do we?”

“Carl could fly the X-22,” Ellis said after a moment, a moment where no one said a word, “he helped design the damn thing, after all.”

Mark smiled. “Oh, Carl…I’ve no doubt you could fly that thing better than anyone in this room – on any other night but tonight.”

“And why do you say that?” Carl said, a smile on his face as he played along.

“Because you’ve never had two Ulterran fighters on your tail while racing into the needle of a canyon going 3,000 miles per hour and in slightly more gravity than we have here now. I have, and Bernarian ships are pretty damn similar to Ulterran ships, so I’m pretty confident I can ride
its
tail right into that hangar, allowing us to get in.”

There was a long pause in the room after Mark’s explanation, mainly because no one knew what he’d just said.

“It was gaining entry that always proved our downfall on the previous missions,” Carl finally said from the front row of men.

“He’s right,” Ellis agreed, “and if we can gain entry to that port hangar we’ll have access to those lower-level tube-tunnel controls.”

Mark nodded. “And that means we can send in the other teams to hit the bottom while we’re hitting the hell out of ‘em on the top.”

“A two front war,” Turn said.

“At least two battles,” Mark said, looking at him.

There was silence in the room as the men digested what they’d heard. No one objected, but then, no one really knew what to object
to
.

“That Bernarian ship’s coming in just after the witching hour tonight,” Mark said after another few moments had passed, looking at his father this time, “we better get moving.”

19 – Getting Equipped

The men had filtered into one of the hangars on the edge of the base’s airstrip, the one where the men’s arsenal had been laid out. Table upon table was stretched out before them, all manner of machine guns, grenade launchers, side arms and even knives shining under the lights.

“Listen,” Ellis said, stopping at the edge of one of the tables and waiting for the men to stop and turn back to him, “it’s gonna be rough in there – I’m not gonna lie to you.  Before we–”

“We’ve been briefed on the particulars of the operation, sir,” Captain Sammy Williams said, giving him a straight look, not condescending at all, just plain and honest.

Ellis nodded. These men weren’t interested in the particulars, they wanted to know what they needed to get the job done, done as quickly as possible, and with the most efficiency and least amount of error. In that regard it was all a numbers game, and the best score at the end would be the humans whatever and the aliens none. Ellis gave a sideways smirk, both at the thought of not suffering a casualty – they’d already lost one in Montana, hadn’t they? – and the comment from Williams. But he nodded, and then flicked his chin forward, toward the table beside him.

“Those’re the headsets we’ll use,” he said, coming up to the devices just as Carl reached down to pick one up, “they’ll keep the team commanders in contact with their teams, and the commanders in contact with each other and the head command.”

“But soldiers can’t talk to soldiers, is that it?” Charlie asked, a bit of a laugh in his voice, although one that was taken rather quickly.

“Too much chatter,” Ellis said, “it’d drown out everything and you wouldn’t be able to concentrate.”

“I’m fine with that,” Donlon said, pushing past Charlie, “but what I want to know more about is the hardware.”

Ellis nodded. It was no surprise the man leading the CAT-4 team would be interested in hardware – he was taking his men in on the tube trains and the fighting down in those lower-levels was bound to be intense.

“Same getup as last time,” Ellis said, “M240 and AR-15 machine guns, Ingram MAC-10s for anyone that wants ‘em, M203 China Lake grenade launchers, loose grenades and sidearms. We figure the more the better, your choice, you know what you like best.”

“How ‘bout my Uzis?” Aaron said. “I gotta have my Uzis.”

“And I ain’t goin’ nowhere without my Colt’s,” Charlie said.

“No problem – they’re yours,” Ellis said.

“But what about their minds?” Walter asked, his tone more serious. He was leading CAT-2, the second team hitting the lower-levels from the trains. Many had seen what’d happened to Frank in Montana, and it’d only taken an hour of being back on base for the other men to spread the word to those who hadn’t seen. No one wanted to experience
that
firsthand.

“You’ve got the six super soldiers,” Ellis said, nodding toward the few in the room, “one on each team…at least.”

“That ain’t much use in a firefight when things get dicey and you gotta move quick,” Fred said, a hard look in his eye and his face quivering with emotion, “a pair of guys can get separated
real
quick when that happens.”

“And that’s why you guys are the best, Fred,” Ellis said, crossing his arms and taking on that no-nonsense look that said ‘I’ve been down in the muck in German and Korea and ‘Nam…what the hell do you want from me?’

Fred swallowed, his will to challenge the Dutchman shaken, but not gone entirely. It was his life on the line, after all.

“We might be the best, but there’s never been a mission like this.”

“And let’s hope there’ll never be another.”

Ellis stared out at the men, giving each a hard look in the eye. He’d brook no dissent – it was all-in, or no-go…there was no pussy-footing around on this one.”

“What I want to know,” Tommy suddenly said, coming up from the far end of the room where he’d been perusing the weapons, that crazy and high voice of his setting nerves on edge, and getting right into Turn’s face, “is what the hell I gotta do to blow one of them fuckin’ Grays’ heads apart like you did back there in ‘ol Mon-tuck-
ee
!”

Turn gave a sideways look around at the others, then laughed.  “Why, I just aimed at your ugly mug and fired, hopin’ you’d be smart enough to duck.”

The room exploded in laughter as Sammy, Ronnie, Johnny and Moses fell all over themselves and the younger white solders, most from the South, did the same nearby.  Ellis even began laughing as well, until it looked like Robbie and Bobbie were about to topple the table holding the flash guns and he nearly rushed over before they got themselves under control.

“Shit,” Tommy said with a chuckle, “I guess I’ll have to try that then, huh?”

“You’ll have that chance,” Ellis said, a bit gruffly once again, “at 2200 tonight.”

The men looked at one another quickly, their eyes saying it all – that was just two hours from now.

~~~

The men were walking down the hallway, heading to their respective team stations, ready to embark. Turn was taking up the rear – something he liked, since in combat he was always charging ahead – when Paul sidled up to him.

“Listen,” Paul said, pulling Turn aside as they walked down the hallway, “don’t buy into all of that back there.”

Turn’s eyes narrowed and he smiled and shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about what they’re telling the newbies, and what they’re not telling us.”

Turn narrowed his eyes further – he wasn’t used to hearing Paul say so much. “What do you mean?”

Paul shook his own head and turned around, put his hands on his hips, and swore under his breath. Something was definitely bothering him.