CHAPTER 8

Like most offices of high ranking officials, General James Garret had a battery of television sets in one of his outer chambers. They were all set on the twenty four hour cable news channels but, here in Garret’s Pentagon office, not that many people had time to even glance at the screens. That was why Lenny Price was almost alone in watching one particular segment that caught his eye. There was a young kid, an Air Force Sergeant, who was eating his lunch in front the screens. He noticed the Sergeant Major over his shoulder and said, “can you believe that?”

Lenny did not answer the guy. He simply watched and listened as the image showed documents spread out on a blue field, and little computerized highlights began showing various words in the documents. The Narrator explained, “these documents were filed with the New York City zoning commission and clearly show that the property in question has been requested for use as, and I quote, religious purposes.”

The image switched back to a reporter in a rain coat who was standing next to an empty hole in the ground, full of construction equipment, and surrounded by a chain link fence. There were lots of cars and high buildings behind the guy. He pointed to the zoning permit on the fence and then referred to the papers in his hand, “as you can see, this is the sight that are on these forms. As we said earlier, the purchase of these properties was traced back to a British Corporation, which in turn, leads back to the bank known as the ISCEB or, the Inter-Species Currency Exchange Board. As we all know, this bank is owned by the government of the Feyland Empire.”

Lenny mumbled, “somebody leaked them papers.”

The Sergeant looked up from his sandwich, “you know something I don’t Sergeant Major?”

“I know that people just don’t go poking their nose around boring ass zoning forms for no reason,” Lenny told him. The kid looked enlightened, like he had not known that. Lenny could only shake his head. This kid worked in one of the biggest bureaucratic boondoggles in the history of man kind and he couldn’t figure that out? Kids!

When Lenny noticed the screen again, he saw a very familiar looking face in one of the little windows in the upper right hand corner. The Anchor was looking at the window like she could really see it. The person in the window is what held Lenny here. It was none other than Patty Walsh and she had been imbedded with the Rangers on their first deployment to Feyland. Now she had a book on the New York Times best seller list, and was usually called in anytime somebody wanted to talk about elves on the news. These days, that was quite a bit. Lenny wondered how much a pop she got for her opinions. Probably a lot more than he was for standing here watching them and, he’d been to the same place she had.

“Miss Walsh,” said the anchor, “thanking you for coming. We have you now from our Washington bureau. You just heard the report. Can you tell us the significance of this? Are the elves really wanting to start a new religion here in America?”

It took a second before Patricia looked like she heard the question. That made Lenny think that her being in that little window was probably a last minute thing, maybe even a target of opportunity for the news channel. It made him wonder how fast they jumped on this story and how short a time period it took to make the air. Obviously it was not very long.

Finally when Walsh did respond, “I’m not sure that’s exactly what they’re doing Gina. The entire time I spent in Feyland, I got the distinct impression that each clan of elves had their own personal religions. They did not seem to be that interested in spreading them to others. Even the other species there, including the humans, have very similar methods of worship. The only real differences were, too me at least, no more than say, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam here at home. I didn’t have time to actually study them but, I got the distinct impression that their religions all share at least, some, common mythology.”

“I see,” and it looked to Lenny as if this Gina person said that because she really did not know what to ask next. Lenny was betting that Walsh had not gone where Gina wanted her too. Now Gina was trying to think of another question and doing a miserable job of it.

Finally the anchor woman went with a general kind of thing, confirming Lenny’s opinion, “well then why would they want to open an Elf Church here in America? There really aren’t that many elves here to justify that, are they?”

It looked to Lenny as if Patty was going to say one thing but, changed her mind and said, “I’m not really sure.”

That was all Lenny cared to see. He could tell the conversation had run it’s course and even if they babbled on till their sound bytes had run out, it would be a waste of energy to finish watching them. Lenny left and finished his journey right into the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. No one, including the security guys in the suits, tried to stop him. Once the door was closed behind him, Lenny went right to the coffee pot. Jim Garret sat at his desk and clicked away with is computer mouse.

Garret did not look up from his screen as he passively asked, “how’s the ITTC doing?”

“Bout like you’d expect,” Lenny replied. “I’d say they’re doing as good of a job as they can but, what can they really do out there? Them goggles was a really good idea.”

Still Garret was intensely studying his screen as he mumbled, “the light simulator things? That wasn’t my idea so stop trying to kiss my ass. You can’t get promoted past God anyway.”

Lenny started stirring his creamer and said, “saw Ed Lewis’ kid while I was out there. He works on the Bradley ranges. The kid was eager as hell to get to the other side. Saw a lot of that out there too.”

“Morale report accepted,” Garret was not that interested, “how’s Ed doing?”

“Just like the ITTC,” Lenny replied, “bout like you’d expect. I managed to get by there for a few minutes on my last day. Sometimes I think it might have been better if that tree had fallen right on him.”

Now Garret did look up from his computer and he was quite serious when he said, “let’s hope Ed disagrees.” Then Garret looked back at his computer and became engrossed again. He did mention, “we got a request directly from the White House. They didn’t even come down through Secdef’s office with it. Apparently, my boss is even out of the loop on this one.”

Lenny thought about it and said, “sounds like it must have come from Bob’s office.”

Garret looked up for a second and said, “that’s the funny part, it didn’t. Came directly from the Oval Office. Course even if it had the old man’s signature on it, I smelled Mary Isaacs all over this.”

“Moore,” Price reminded his boss, “they got divorced, remember.”

“No,” Garret replied, “I didn’t get an invitation.”

“So,” Lenny shrugged, “what is it?”

“Oh nothing big,” Garret replied. “I was just ordered to have our staff, discreetly, update our plans for a military intervention in the United Kingdom of Great Britain.”

Lenny crossed his arms and raised an eye brow at that one, “you’re kidding right?”

“That’s the interesting part Sergeant Major,” Garret replied, “there are a lot of things being tossed around, these days, that used to sound like a joke and bad jokes at that.” A phone then buzzed on Jim’s desk. After he took the call he put the phone down and told the top enlisted man in the army, “there’s some flash traffic coming in from Coven Hill, down in operations. Can you go take care of that for me?”

“As long as I’m not needed for the reenactment of the war of 1812,” Lenny said. As he walked out the door he said, “this time, give it a happy ending.” Garret actually smiled before he tossed the Sergeant Major out.

Lenny had a file waiting for him when he reached Operations. Coven Hill was about the only place that they got communications from that he had to do this. With the war going on, they were down here a lot and that was particularly true with General Hammond running things on the other side. Lenny had always gotten the impression that the guy thought he was Patton. He loved press conferences and, it seemed, for attention’s sake only. Lenny didn’t figure the guy had an angle on any other job after his time in service, so, that meant the guy just liked to hear himself talk.

The first thing that Lenny did with the file was glance over it with the Captain who had handed it to him. Lenny was as used to giving orders to the officers down here as they were in taking them. Everybody knew who Lenny answered too and the included the ones that did not share Lenny’s opinion of the power of Sergeant Majors. That’s why Lenny did not even look up when he said, “we’re going to need some additional files, get your pen and paper ready Captain.”

The kid actually said, “yes sir.” Lenny did not bother correcting him. He just told the boy what he needed and then sat down and read the communications in more detail as he waited. Lenny was over half way through when the Captain showed up with a stack of classified documents. That made Lenny wonder because, what he asked for should have been, at best, confidential. That meant he had to only carry a little thumb drive, back up stairs, instead of a stack of papers that had just been printed out.

Lenny had the Captain put them down and then snapped at him, “get me a goddamn binder already!” As he waited for that he began scanning through the new documents. It quickly became apparent why this was not only classified but, there was so much of it. Lenny mumbled, “son of a bitch. How about that.”

The Captain was finishing up with the papers when he said, “sir?”

Lenny only mumbled in return, “it’s one of the things god knows.” The Captain heard him but did not get the joke. Lenny did not bother to enlighten him. He went right back up to Garrets office and walked in. This time he had to wait till Garret finished listening to a briefing, a sorry series of excuses really, as to why their drones were failing at a horrific rate in Feyland. When it was clear their excuses were no better than the last time they were in here, Garret tossed them out on their ear.

Then Lenny got off the couch and dropped the huge stack of folders on his bosses desk. Garret’s eyes got big and he asked, “what the fuck is that? I thought you went to get a communications from Coven Hill? I didn’t think even Hammond could fart out this much paper at one time. What the hell did he do, eat his Xerox machine?”

Lenny opened up the file and pointed to the summary in the notes. Garret scanned them over quickly and then his eyes got big, “is this for real?”

“Apparently so Jim,” Lenny turned a page, “and it gets even better.” The last part was quite sarcastic.

After reading the next series of summaries, Garret thought about it seriously and then asked, “why were they watching her?”

“They weren’t,” Price replied. “that was all just coincidence, unless I miss my guess. That’s not the problem, you were the CG on the spot for all that. Did you know anything about all this?”

“No,” Garret replied in deep thought. He then sat back in his chair and thought about it for a minute. He then decided, “I can’t worry about this right now. I’ve got to be at the White House in less than an hour. I’ll let the President know about, well, at least the first part of this. That’ll make him happy at least. I want you to poke around Lenny, find out what the hell that op was all about. You hit any roadblocks, I want the son of a bitch’s name.”

“Consider it done,” Lenny replied. Then, when his boss walked to the door, buttoning up his jacket, Lenny also commented, “when you over at the White House, Jim, ask the President if, after we invade England, we can make them all drive on the right side of the road. That’s a pain in the ass to get used too.” Garret laughed and left. Lenny then mumbled, “he thought I was kidding?”

Almost an hour later, Jim was walking down the breezeway of the West Wing, with his former colonel right next to him. These days they were both Generals but, Jim still had two more stars than Bob. For that matter, Jim was almost surprised that Bob even had the one. After reaching colonel, promotion in the army was all about politics and that was something Bob simply never had a flare for. How he wound up as National Security Advisor really confused Jim. That was particularly true when you considered that he was working side by side with his ex-wife. In a world full of elves, miracles really did happen.

As they walked, Jim showed Bob the first part of the communications from Coven Hill and Bob asked, “how old?”

It was like a question from a bye gone era but, then, everything about Feyland was like that. Naturally you could not run phone lines through the Dell since when it closed it would snap them. Even wireless communications, while the hole was open, was impossible. As of yet, nobody outside of the British even knew why. They were not very forthcoming about the exact science of their hole in reality.

All that Jim knew, for sure, was that they had once tried to send a radio message through, at a time when they knew the hole was scheduled to be open. They had figured out how to defeat the jamming around Building 13, where the Dell was located but, the entire operation was a bust. No sooner than they started broadcasting, the entire facility went haywire, black shirts went on alert, and the operation had to be scrubbed. The US didn’t get caught but, to date, no one could figure out how the British knew there was a signal in the first place.

That meant any communications with Hammond, had to be written down, sent by classified courier through the Dell, where it was decoded and then re-encoded at the US Delegation there at CHIEF. Then it was transmitted via secure signal through the satellite that was now permanently tasked with watching the facility and handling it’s com traffic. It could sometimes take hours to get messages, from the hundred and first, back to the Pentagon. It was not something that anyone like a man in Jim’s position had had to deal with in a very long time.

“Not very considering,” was that the answer Jim gave Bob.

Then Bob said, “I don’t get it. The Orc’s don’t take prisoners.”

“They obviously did this time,” Jim told him as they reached the door to the West Wing. They stopped and waited for Secret Service to do their thing. Bob stood back and just watched. Jim had to ask, “you’re not coming in?”

Bob checked his phone, “got somewhere to be. Besides, the newness of this place rubs off on you after about, oh, thirty seconds.”

Jim laughed and then turned serious again, “what do you make of all this? The girl they found?”

Bob only shrugged, “you got me Jim. All I can think is, maybe the Orcs can screw things up just as bad as we can. Maybe they’re sending us a peace offering?” Jim actually gave that some serious thought even if Bob was only half joking. That led Bob to say, “if you mention that to the old man, wait till the end. That’s all he needs right now, something to give the doves a leg up on him.”

That made Jim think of one other thing, “that guy is sure the hawk from hell. I never would have suspected and I’ve known him for over ten years.”

Again, Bob only shrugged, “people change.” That thought was on Bob’s mind as he drove off the White House grounds and then out into DC traffic. It was something else he did not particularly care for about this job. The people in this city drove like maniacs. If you approached a red light and took your foot off the gas, before you reached the line, you’d have a dozen cars in front of you in an instant. It was insane!

There were the other little weird realities about DC as well. Everything was underground! Since, by law, no building could be taller than the capitol dome, everybody built down instead of up. It made things impossible to find! Bob was already late when he left work and, now, just finding the actual building where the restaurant was, made him even later. When he finally made the table he was almost out of breath. He had jogged three blocks because that was the nearest place he could find to park.

Patty snickered at him, “it’s ok. I was late too. I was in the studio doing some bytes for that show next week and they snatched me for some breaking event.”

“Well,” Bob told her, “whatever was broke, I hope they fixed it.”

“Stop trying to be funny dear,” Patty told him before ordering their drinks. She then said, “the elves are throwing up temples. The report had pinned down the one they’re doing in New York but, what they didn’t say on the air was that it looks like, they’re doing it in about sixteen cities total.”

Bob laughed at that, “maybe they’ll give that Reverend Shoals a good a run for his money. You know he’s not exactly the most popular guy around work these days.”

Patty took a deep breath, and then she said, “Bob, I don’t think that’s why they’re doing it.”

“Oh come on Patty,” Bob told her, “it can’t be that big a deal.”

“Back when I was trapped in that temple,” she told him, “you know with Nate and Angie, I saw some of how they worshiped Bob. It’s not like we do.”

“Honey,” Bob said to her, “they don’t do anything like we do.”

“Not exactly,” Patty said. “You see when I got home, it got me to thinking and I did a little research. Seems that Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll are really more about religion than we tend to think of. We‘ve kind of gone past that point.”

That only earned Patty a bizarre look from Bob and she should have expected as much. She was sure she had the same one when she first put it all together. “For most of our history, they were all the same. The music came out of your religion, it told you who could mate and who could not…”

“Didn’t do a very good job on that count, although, I hear Elvis has his own Church these days,” injected Bob.

Patty crossed her arms, “you’re being a jack ass again. Remember when you told me, to let you know about…”

“Fine,” Bob replied, “church of Elvis. What about it?”

Patty grunted in frustration, “that’s the point Bob. For us, all that stuff, you know the Sex, Drugs, and Rock-n-Roll stuff, it’s all intertwined in our culture and separate from our religions. That hasn’t been the case for most of our history and, we now know, we got a lot of our ideas from them. Bob, they’re still doing it. For them it’s the same.”

Bob had a blank look on his face, “so?”

Patty rolled her eyes, “drugs Bob. What’s the big shit over on the hill right now?”

Finally, Bob broke his blank look and said, “we did have a bit of good news today. It’s classified and stuff but, it’s probably not going to be that way for long so…”

“How long have we been dating?” Patty sternly asked.

“Um,” Bob realized the answer, “long enough to know that what we tell each other stays in bed?” She smiled and so, Bob went on, “anyway, one of our patrols found an MIA out in the Hurt.”

Patty’s jaw dropped. She suddenly felt severe anxiety, pins and needles, and something she had not felt in a while. It was hope. Had they found Angie? She was still officially listed as Missing In Action. Nobody had ever found a body, so, why couldn’t it be her and, besides, why else would Bob bring it up? Finally, after some jumping around, Patty asked, “oh my god, who was it?”