“Look-out to Base. Look-out to Base.'
“Base to Look-out, what do you need Look-out?'
“Base. We have trouble. There are unknowns advancing on target through the woods. We are moving to intercept the unknowns. Suggest full support.'
“Look-out. Can you give details?'
“Not now, Base. Intercept imminent.'
The old man moved Felix off the trail behind the roots of a fallen tree. The old man then placed Todd and Sam farther up the road. He hurried back.
“You've got a good field of fire here. I told your boys what to do. There will be a point man leading. When he gets across from you, Todd will call for them to halt. If they don't, you will have to take out the point and help Todd and Sam with the middle. I will take out the last man in the column.'
Before Felix could offer a comment, the old man was gone. Felix looked over his men and the trail. The old man had made a perfect placement for an ambush. Todd was hidden behind a tangle of trees that had fallen in mass. Although he was close to the logging road, the mass of tree trunks made a frontal move on his position virtually impossible. Sam was farther along the road and only had a large tree in front of his position but he had a small pocket in the ground that was deep enough to protect him. Every one of his men could support the others with open lines of fire. And they had a clear view, even in the dusk, of nearly one hundred yards of road.
The first man Felix saw had some sort of camouflage suit on. It was the best suit Felix had ever seen. The only way he was able to follow the man was when he moved. The man stopped for a brief instant in front of Todd's position and Felix lost him in the background until he moved again. The man came closer and Felix finally heard his soft steps through the undergrowth.
Three more followed but they were not men. All three had on the same camouflage suits as the point but there the resemblance ended. The lead in the following group was large with six limbs. The second person, thing, or whatever was huge. It was about the size of an upright walking six-legged Kodiak bear. The final creature in the group also had six limbs but in addition it had wings. Although the last creature seemed too large to fly with its wings, it did glide from tree to tree. Two sets of legs would grasp the trunk of the tree while the creature surveyed the surrounding woods holding a lethal looking device in its last set of limbs. All the creatures were clutching devices that were obviously weapons.
Todd yelled, “Stop. Police. Put down your weapons.” And all hell broke loose.
Felix was so astounded by what he had seen he had lost track of the point. He tried to find the creature amid the sounds of gunfire, small explosions, and some wild ripping sounds. Finally, Felix heard a rustle of leaves and found the point creature. It was trying to circle behind Todd's position. Felix pressed the trigger on his rifle and emptied the clip into it.
He looked back down the trail and at first saw nothing. The ripping sound came again and a trail of torn vegetation traveled from a point near where he last saw the creatures to where Todd was hidden. Felix loaded a new clip into his rifle and placed scattered shots around the origin of the ripping sound. A staccato blast of sound came from somewhere overhead followed by a scream of pain from Sam. Felix lost in the horror emptied his clip into the trees. A scream that could never have been made by a creature living on earth today echoed through the woods from the trees beyond. Felix knew that the old man had struck. Something hit him hard in the side. Felix put another clip in his rifle. There was nothing. Nothing moved. No sound drifted through the woods. Just the smell of smoke, ozone, and blood.
The radio message from Felix caused an organized chaos to occur. Harry Zimmerman and Major Stanley Burrows got on secure phones and started calling for help. John Smith, the CIA man, got the remaining personnel together. They suited up with flak jackets and weapons, piled into two cars, and headed towards the farm.
Major Burrows’ calls were to a Delta team waiting at a hotel in a town 15 miles away. Both the Grand Forks and Duluth Airbases had ready planes waiting for a possible call from the Major. The two F-16s got airborne first with the F-22s only minutes behind. The first three calls were just alerts to the ready teams but with the Camp Ripley call Burrows insisted on telling the captain in command of the Marines, good luck.
Zimmerman's calls activated the national space defense network that Riley and the Joint Chiefs had designed over the last few months. From Ellsworth Air Force Base, Rapid City, South Dakota two B-1 B Lancer bombers and an AWAC plane were launched. The B-1 B's flew to maximum altitude and launched four orbital rockets each. Each rocket housed three satellites. Twelve of the twenty-four satellites were designed to aim lasers sent from the Boeing 747's and a new military satellite launched four weeks earlier. The remaining twelve satellites were kinetic kill weapons powered by gravity spheres.
They rested in orbit waiting for NASA space control in Houston to give them a target.
The most unusual occurrences from Zimmerman's call weren't the military activations but a secret program that Riley and the NSA had pushed past the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Riley knew that the military was great finding known enemies and destroying them. But in this case they were looking for the unknown. With his time in the NSA, Riley noticed that everyone always had problems with the SETI, Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, programs and the big radio telescopes. Those radio telescopes seemed to find every secure signal the NSA used. Riley decided that they needed the brainpower and the technical ability of the nation's radio telescopes behind them in a crisis situation. He recruited personnel at Ohio State University's Big Ear Project, Cornell's Arecibo, MIT's Haystack near Westford, Massachusetts, the NRAO at Green Bank, West Virginia and Tucson, Arizona, Caltech's projects in
Mauna Kea, and the AST/RO at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Funding for new communication links to NASA and, in turn, to the US military was given in the disguise of modernization grants. And funding was found to bring all the radio telescopes back into service with the addition of a few new Argus Arrays.
With the knowledge that a raid in Northern Minnesota had to be supported by craft in near earth orbit overhead, the telescopes got into action. MIT's Haystack Observatory got the first indications. The aliens were using focused radio transmissions to minimize the ability for being found but even focused signals will scatter when hitting atmospheric and other free floating molecules in space. Haystack caught lines of scattered radio signals going from a point in space to a site closer to the earth surface and another fainter line of signals going into space. The Green Bank and Tucson telescopes zeroed in on the radio source giving a triangulation for a precise location of the near earth signals and the deeper space signal source. Using the location, the AWAC, now flying over North Dakota, was able to plot were the low flying stealth craft was and guide the four interceptors to it. The AWAC was also able to bring the White Sands rail gun into action to handle the near earth orbiting craft.
The other end of the radio signal was plotted to a crater shadow on the surface of the moon. The dry air of the South Pole permitted AST/RO at Amundsen-Scott to get the first locational fix. Mauna Kea and Arecibo soon followed. The next step waited till the laser aiming and kinetic satellites from the B-1 B's received coordinates from Houston.
Captain Sam McHenry flew his F-16 as close to the ground as possible. His wingman Lieutenant Jamison was a little slow following his lead. McHenry had started flying with A-10 Warthogs. Warthogs survived modern electronic warfare's faster more maneuverable foes by getting lost in the ground clutter. McHenry instinctively sought the safety of the ground. It saved his life today. A flash of light and Jamison was gone. The IFF signals— Identification Friend or Foe—in his HUD display told him that two F-22s were coming in from Grand Forks but he had nothing showing on the plane that took out Jamison.
Suddenly, there was an infrared source followed by a series of explosions on the ground. McHenry launched the AIM-X12C and jinked to the right. Three explosions happened in the air near where the infrared source had been. McHenry's radar suddenly showed a large object falling from the sky. Another series of explosions. The IFF signals showed that both of the F-22's were gone. McHenry dropped lower to the ground clipping the top of a large white pine. What the hell was happening?
A five man Delta team driving from a nearby town to the farm saw the explosions in the sky and thought the same thing. A company of Marines and one scared reporter took off from Camp Ripley in a string of helicopters. The lead chopper saw the explosions. The pilot swallowed hard and picked up speed.
In White Sands the rail gun was loaded and ready. The AWAC, now between Bismarck and Grand Forks, was feeding in target information to the rail gun. The high orbit ship that took out the F-22's with what looked like a laser was 235 kilometers above the earth. The craft was holding stationary above where the first craft had been destroyed by missiles. When the orbiting enemy craft firing started, it became visible to the heat and energy sensors on the AWAC, which was able to make fine course corrections for the rail gun.
