“It’s like they got beamed out of here,” Sterling Thompson said. He was a couple years Jim’s junior but had such an affinity for all things cybernetic that he had been a natural candidate to post at Cheyenne Mountain. Sterling was also big into science fiction. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked at Jim. “There’s no other explanation, man. We’re two thousand feet down in solid rock, locked up tight behind doors that weigh twenty-five tons each.”
“Calm down,” Jim advised, pushing himself to his feet. The satfeeds streaming in from Turkey had faltered as well, but he wasn’t sure if the problem lay there or within the Cheyenne Mountain complex. “There’s an explanation.”
“Yeah,” Sterling agreed wholeheartedly. He tapped keys on his keyboard, bringing up a view of space. “And we’re going to find it out there. Man, we thought we had problems in Turkey?” He shook his head. “I think we’re about to be invaded. These people missing? They’re just a sampling for whoever’s waiting out there.” He pointed at the screen full of stars.
Jim barely handled his own rising panic. He reached down and touched Colonel Turner’s uniform, trailing a finger along the edge of the name badge. It felt real, but this couldn’t really be happening. He watched as Sterling flipped through the different sectors of space available to them through the satellites they had access to.
General Farley strode from the observation post and stopped near Turner’s uniform. “Attention.” His voice was crisp and powerful.
The command center crew obeyed immediately. There was nothing like a general’s voice to bring an enlisted man up short.
“I’ve notified security. Whatever this matter is—” Farley glanced down at Turner’s abandoned uniform—“it’s being looked into by professionals. At this moment, I need all of you to be professional, to be the soldiers you were trained to be in this field, and I need that from you right this instant. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir!” The reply boomed from the twenty-three people left in the ranks.
“I need those information lines back up and running,” Farley said. “You’ve got American soldiers and our allies dying over there. If we don’t watch over them, give them some kind of heads-up, we’re going to lose more of them.” He paused. “I’m not going to stand for that on my watch. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Then get back to it. I want everything you can find out, and I want it yesterday.”
Jim settled back in at his console. This was why there were generals, he thought. When the world got crazy, an order was still an order. But he remained uncomfortably aware of the vacated uniform lying behind him at the general’s feet.
He slipped his headset back on and cued the audible stream.
“Phoenix Leader, this is Alpha Two. We’ve lost men, Goose.” The man’s voice cracked with rising hysteria. “They’ve disappeared! There are empty uniforms everywhere!”
Jim lifted his head and gazed across the empty seat where Donna Kirkland had once sat. She had been warm and friendly and helped him familiarize himself with the demands he faced. Only her uniform remained in the chair now. He locked eyes with Sterling. “You listening to this?”
Sterling nodded. “It’s happening everywhere, Jim. It wasn’t just us.”
For a moment, Jim felt a little relieved that the disappearances weren’t held just to the Cheyenne facility. Then, a millisecond later, he realized that the other disappearances indicated that whatever enemy they were up against could strike possibly around the globe—at the very least on the other side of the world—at the same time and with apparent impunity. How were they supposed to deal with something like that?
18
United States 75th Rangers 3rd Battalion
Field Command Post
35 Klicks South of Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 0824 Hours
Even five miles back of the front line and safely entrenched—for the moment, at least—in the abandoned cinder-block building he’d selected as his field command post, Captain Cal Remington could smell the stench of war. Acrid explosive cordite and smoke gnawed at his lungs while dust particles coated the computer screens and irritated the eyes. The wind coming from the south had carried all of those things to them during the last hour and more.
But those things were logged in the back of the Ranger captain’s mind. His full attention was divided between the computer monitors and the uniform sitting in the chair where a young corporal had been only moments ago.
The preliminary head count among the intelligence crews showed 20 percent of Remington’s on-site teams had disappeared. One moment, those men and women had been at their stations, manning the computers and maintaining the perimeter around the building, and in the next moment they had been gone. All of them had left at once, and none of those who had been left behind had seen anything of the process that had carried those people away. They had left or been taken between heartbeats, as though everyone in the room had blinked at the same time.
Remington chafed over his inability to act on either the missing men or along the front line where his men were. He didn’t like taking a hit and not being able to retaliate immediately. But the communications lines had gone down yet again, interrupting the flow of information sent from the Cheyenne Mountain intelligence people as well as the feeds from USS Wasp.
The com teams had promised Remington that they would be back on line in a matter of minutes, but the war along the Turkish-Syrian border drew a terrible cost with each second that passed. Men died and military strength withered in seconds. And Remington knew he was losing precious time, resources, and ground that would be hard to do without or nearly impossible to replace.
The monitors relaying the satellite feeds showed grainy pictures of current
