DEATH IS ALWAYS REAL ...

“What happened to the first team? Are they dead?”

“We don’t know,” Jackson said. Dalton raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean by that?”

“Their bodies are still in their isolation tanks, in a room off the main experimental chamber. The machines are keeping them in stasis at the reduced functioning status. So they’re alive, I suppose. As alive as any of us when we go into those damn tanks.”

“What happened to them?”

“No one knows. I don’t know exactly, but I have an idea. I told Hammond but she thinks it’s bull. I believe she thinks that because what I told her scared her.”

“What about Raisor?”

“I think Raisor believes me. He’s weird.”

“What’s your theory?”

“There are bodies in the isolation tanks, but there are no people in there, if you know what I mean. Heck, Sergeant Major, I went looking for them. I went out on the virtual plane to see if I could find them.” She paused, her eyes withdrawing.

“And?” Dalton prompted.

“And I think I found them. What was left of them. Their psyches. Worn out as if they died of starvation. They were all dead there....” BOOKS BY ROBERT DOHERTY

The Rock

Area 51

Area 51: The Reply

Area 51: The Mission

Area 51: The Sphinx

Psychic Warrior

To my sisters, Ellen & Jean Mayer, with love.

Acknowledgments:

With thanks to my editor Mike Shohl,

my agent Richard Curtis,

and last, but not least,

my fellow Green Berets,

the original Trojan Warriors of

2d Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne).

De Oppresso Liber!

April 10, 1963

The wind swept the desolate land of the Severnaya Zemlya chain of islands with no mercy for the sparse vegetation that struggled to grow among the rocks. The few plants only showed their face for a month at the height of summer. The rest of the year, the island was covered with a freezing layer of driven snow and blistered ice. The only exception was the airfield on the eastern side of the one island in the chain that held human life. The island was labeled on maps as October Revolution Island, but none of those sheets indicated that there was any habitation here, ten degrees above the Arctic Circle. The existence of the airfield and the base it served was one of the most highly kept secrets in the Soviet Union. The men stationed on October Revolution Island, part of a unit known only by the typically bland Soviet code name Special Department Number Eight, would not have called their situation habitable; more on the order of barely survivable. The security forces were billeted in poorly constructed concrete buildings that lined the edge of the metal-grating airstrip. But it was far underground that the true essence of the work done in this forsaken spot was conducted.

Eight hundred feet down, accessible via only one large freight elevator, lay the core of Special Department Number Eight, known in inner circles simply as SD8. It was run by the GRU, the Soviet military’s version of the KGB. And to keep the work done there secret from the KGB, as well as the NATO countries’ spy services, was one of the reasons that this remote spot had been chosen.

The SD8 complex had been dug out by Nazi soldiers still being held prisoner by the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s. These men had been captured during the last years of the Second World War, and those in power had never seen any point in even reporting their existence, never mind repatriating them. The prisoners were useful in certain ways, such as working on this project. Upon completion of the task, the German soldiers had been summarily executed and dumped into the freezing waters of the Arctic, each of the twelve hundred bodies weighted down with a heavy iron chain.

Those Russians who worked in the complex had the highest clearances granted in the Soviet Union. Today was to be the test of whether all the time and expense they had put into the project over the last several years would bear fruit. There had already been one major disaster, and today’s trial was to be either the beginning or the end for this particular project.

Professor Leonid Vasilev was the head of the theoretical arm of the SD8 scientific team, and as such was the second-highest-ranking scientist present on the island. But he was still number two and he often did not agree with his superior, Professor Arkady Sarovan, who had been in charge of SD8 from the day it was founded, during the dark and bitter years of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet name for the Second World War. It was Sarovan’s job to take theory and create action, and today he planned on taking that first step, over Vasilev’s objections.

“It is not ready,” Vasilev argued for the third time that morning. He was a tall, slender man, with thin, straight blond hair and a face badly scarred by acne. In a briefcase, he carried the master program for the project on several reels of tape.

“It is indeed ready,” Sarovan said with forced patience. He was short and stocky, and the body hair poking out over the collar of his white coat made him look like a bear wrapped in human clothes. The sloping forehead belied the brilliant mind encased behind it. “It mustbe ready, because we have no more time. Those in power require a statement to be made, and this is the means they have chosen to make it. The timing is not subject to scientific realities, but political ones.”

The two were riding the elevator down to the SD8 control room, and Vasilev knew this was their last chance to talk privately.

“But there is great danger. Not only if we fail, but also if we succeed.” Sarovan shrugged. “True, but if we succeed, that is for the politicians to sort out. The order for this has come from the very highest level. The very highest,” he repeated with emphasis, to let the other man know that Khrushchev himself was involved.

“What will they do if it works?”

“Our leaders? Or the Americans?” Sarovan shrugged.

“Either way, that is not our concern.”

“No, no.” The quaver in Vasilev’s voice testified to the fear he felt.

“Not our government or the Americans. What concerns me is what they might do if we succeed.”

Sarovan’s bushy eyebrows contracted. He knew exactly whom his colleague was referring to, and he had experienced many a sleepless night considering the problem. “It is like nuclear weapons, my friend. They are very dangerous, but as long as we keep them under positive control, they cannot harm us.”

Vasilev expelled a snort of disgust. “Nuclear weapons don’t think for themselves.”

“We have positive control over the way they think,” Sarovan said flatly.

“But we don’t understand what we’re dealing with! We don’t really understand how they do what they do.”

“We know enough to use them.”

Vasilev shook his head. “No, we don’t. We’re meddling with unknown forces. Things beyond our knowledge.”

The argument was over as the large elevator doors rumbled open. On the other side were a dozen senior GRU officers, present to oversee the test. As Sarovan walked forward, his large paw extended to greet them, Vasilev quietly walked over to the main console. He pulled the tapes out and slid them onto their spools on the large computers.

The control center was carved out of solid rock, and no matter how high the heat was turned, there was always a damp chill in the air. It was a semicircular room, over seventy feet long by twenty in depth. The front was walled in with thick blast glass overlooking the test chamber. The test chamber was also hollowed out of the rock and was two hundred feet in diameter, with a ceiling over fifty feet high. The far wall of the chamber was filled with banks of capacitors, all designed to handle the large amount of power brought in from a small nuclear reactor on the surface. On the floor in the center of the chamber lay the result of twenty years of hard work by the scientists of SD8.

There were four objects shaped like coffins, eight feet long by four in width and height, evenly spaced around a huge vertical metal tube. Their lids were open, revealing a contoured space where it was obvious a man was to lie. Numerous wires and tubes came out of the sides and top of each, running to machines that completely encircled the four. In the exact center was the shining metal tube, eight feet in diameter by thirty feet in height. The tube rested securely on a cradle, and several monitoring wires ran from the top, looping over to the control center. The bottom of the tube pointed into the floor, where a vent shaft extended over a half mile into a volcanic crack deep under the island. The tube was hollow, with two-and-a-half-foot-thick walls. There were two openings in it. The one at the bottom led into the vent shaft; the other, near the top, was a three-foot-wide section of wall that had been unscrewed. Around the outside of the tube were numerous black wires, linked to a thin network of silver strands crisscrossing in strange patterns.

Vasilev knew all the expertise and guesswork that had gone into building the tube. Even getting it down here had been a task, requiring the removal of the freight elevator for several days as the tube was lowered down and then maneuvered into position with great difficulty. It had been built to exact specifications under a cloak of secrecy at the largest tank factory in the Soviet Union. He checked his status board for the computers that were linked to the tube. The spools ran the tapes through, loading the program. The system was ready.

A red light began flashing in the ceiling and a buzzer sounded. The mission was a go. Vasilev looked across the control panel. He tapped a technician on the shoulder. “The emergency neutralizer. Is it functioning?”

The technician nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.”

A door on the far side of the experimental chamber opened.

On the other side of the globe and in a more temperate zone, the USS Thresher, the American Navy’s most advanced nuclear attack submarine, was preparing to conduct its own set of tests: a series of deep-sea dives one hundred miles to the east of Cape Cod. On board were sixteen officers, ninety-six enlisted men, and seventeen civilian technicians to monitor her performance. The Thresher was the first in a new line of submarines. It was small, less than three hundred feet long by thirty-two feet wide, and all those extra personnel made working inside quite cramped. Today the new ship was going to be tested to see how deep it could dive and operate. This new breed of attack submarine had been developed to directly counter the Soviet threat of ballistic missile submarines. After getting approval from the commanding officer aboard the Skylark, the surface ship monitoring the tests, the Thresher began its first descent. Just over the horizon to the east, a plane circled. Soldiers came through the door, pushing four gurneys on which were strapped the other critical component of the SD8 project. IVs ran into the arms of each of the four prone men, and sheets covered their entire body. Of all those stationed at Special SD8, these men knew they were never going to leave October Revolution Island. At least not in the way that one would normally expect. The soldiers wheeled a gurney next to each coffin. They pulled the sheets aside and Vasilev could hear the gasps from the hardened GRU officers in the control center.

Each of the four men was horribly disfigured. All four were blind, their eye sockets empty, the gaping holes red and scarred. On each man’s head four metal sockets extended out, having been surgically implanted through the skull directly into the brain. It had taken the scientists at SD8 many years to perfect the technique of implanting those sockets and to determine the correct location for each. Fortunately, they had had hundreds of prisoners to experiment on, all of whom had joined the German soldiers in their watery grave.

“Was the blinding necessary?” One of the officers had stepped back from the blast glass.

“It allows focus, Comrade Colonel,” Professor Sarovan replied.

“Also, you can appreciate that these men can never escape in the condition they are in.”

General Vortol, the head of the GRU, gave a nasty laugh. “If only we could do such to all our prisoners. A most effective anti-escape device.”

Vasilev could not control the choked noise he made, and the others heard it.

“Do you have something to say, Comrade Scientist?” General Vortol demanded.

“I don’t believe it was necessary to blind these men,” Vasilev said. He knew with that simple statement his career, if not his life, was over. But he could sense the mental power that was coming out of the test chamber as the soldiers lifted each of the four men into their coffins. Vasilev had no desire to be here any longer or be a part of this.

“Vasilev!” Sarovan snapped, but the general’s voice overrode his.

“These men are criminals, are they not?” Vortol stared at Vasilev. He waited. “Are they not, Comrade Scientist?”

“Yes, General,” Vasilev finally answered. Vortol had a file folder in his hand, and he glanced at it. “And we could not be assured of their cooperation, correct?”

Vasilev could see that each of the four men was inside his case. Scientists were hooking wires to each body, picking up different colored leads that looked very similar to those going to a car’s spark plugs. The colors corresponded to those on the four metal sockets. They attached the leads to the sockets and screwed them down tight. None of the four men moved; they were guinea pigs used to being treated as such.

“Comrade General,” Vasilev said, “perhaps then we should have waited until we found four men whose patriotism we could be assured of?”

“And who would volunteer to allow this to be done to them?” Vortol laughed. “You scientists are quite naive. This is still in the experimental stage. If you succeed today, then perhaps we could allow you to use different subjects.”

“Sir, we— “ Vasilev began.

“Enough!” Sarovan snapped. “You are to stand down, Comrade Vasilev. We will deal with you later.”

Vasilev looked into the chamber once more. Earphones were securely fastened onto each man’s ears. Rhythmic music was being pumped in through the wires at a very high volume. Vasilev knew the purpose of the music was to keep each man’s attention and also to prepare the harmonics of the brain. He had spent three years simply determining what type of music worked best, amid all the other aspects of this project he had worked on.

The red flashing light ceased its activity, and the experimental chamber was plunged into darkness except for a single searchlight, centered on the metal tube. At a signal from Sarovan, the lids on each of the coffins slowly swung shut. Fluid pumped in, floating the men inside, while air from the chamber was delivered to them through a tube clamped onto their mouths. The liquid was heated to exactly body temperature and furthered the subject’s sensory deprivation.

Vasilev was ignored as the party gathered around a machine in the control room. Sarovan placed a photograph of a submarine, the Thresher, on a piece of plate glass that was on the top of one of the machines. A light glowed upward, taking in the picture.

“This image is being fed through the machines directly into the occipital lobes of each of the four men,” Sarovan explained to the military officers. “They see it as if it were before their eyes. It is the only ‘light’ they have seen in weeks. They have to see this image. They have no choice. We are also intermittently sending them the location of the submarine in a series of image stages from large scale to small— Atlantic Ocean first, then narrowing down to the exact location.”

“So they see it and they have the location,” Vortol growled.

“I still do not understand how this works.” Sarovan did his best to swallow his sigh. “Comrade General, what we are dealing with here is a new physics. We call it the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. We have been studying it for a while.” He spoke from rote memory, while the active part of his mind focused on the equipment in front of him.

“In normal quantum mechanics, you have electricity, which is the emission and absorption of virtual photons. You have AM radio, which is electromagnetic modulation of photons, and you have FM radio, which changes the frequency of the photons into what you call radio waves.” He glanced up. He knew he’d already begun to lose the general, but he always believed in starting from a known before moving into the unknown.

“But can you see a radio wave?” Sarovan continued. “Feel it? It is the virtual photon that propagates these waves. This virtual world is all around you, the waves passing through you all the time, yet you are not aware of it.

“What we are doing here is modulating the individual photons, one by one, that make up a virtual wave. However, we are not doing an electromagnetic modulation exactly or a frequency modulation, but rather we are affecting the virtual state of the photon, the virtual world that the photon, which has action but not substance, exists in.”

Sarovan spared a glance at his audience. They were trying to look like they understood, but he knew they didn’t. He himself had a Ph.D. in physics and had been working in this field for decades, and he still wasn’t exactly sure how the virtual world worked. He just knew they had stuck their toe in the door and, through sheer luck, had been able to accomplish some things.

“What we have to do,” Sarovan continued, “is generate a coherent virtual wave of photons inside the tube, what we call phased displacement, which absorbs any physical material, taking it from the real plane to the virtual. That is what the computers and phased-displacement generator— the metal tube— are for.

“Then, like a radio station, we can send a signal of the photons which carry the object. The phased-displacement generator is not enough, however, for us to have an effective weapons system. The problem is then twofold. Think how a radio wave goes in all directions as far as the strength of the signal will propagate. There is no focus, no direction.

“To have a weapon, we must direct the object once it is on the wave, and then re-form the object in the real world once at the target. That is what we use the men below— what we call remote viewers— for. We went through over twenty thousand prisoners to find these four, men who have the ability to ‘see’ on the virtual or psychic plane. Who can find our target and direct the object on the wave the proper direction and distance. Both parts— the generator and the remote viewers— are needed to make the weapon system complete.” Something else was being brought into the chamber below. Four soldiers wheeled a platform up to the tube. Two of the men climbed onto the platform, next to a wooden crate. The bottom of the platform scissored, raising it up to a level with the open hatch near the top of the tube. They picked up a round, green-painted shell and carefully slid it into the opening. Reaching in, they attached four leads on the inside of the tube to the shell, then, with great difficulty, they swung shut the thick door and began screwing it into place using long levers on the outside handles.

“As you may well recognize, that is a nuclear warhead designed for the S-23, 180-millimeter Lowitzer,” Professor Sarovan informed the GRU officers.

“Its yield is the smallest possible, just under one kiloton.” There was a nervous rustling among the officers.

“Are we safe?” General Vortol demanded.

“The tube can contain the explosion if need be, venting it down into the earth,” Sarovan lied to them. “But it will not be a problem. The warhead will not be in there when it explodes.”

The GRU officers looked at one another, their skepticism quite apparent— both about the explosion being contained and the bomb no longer being in the chamber.

“Your explanation is not sufficient,” Vortol said. “It seems to be a pile of scientific excrement designed to befuddle the listener.” Sarovan shrugged his massive shoulders. “I explained as best we understand, Comrade General. There is much we don’t understand. Could you explain the physics of how one of your tank guns works? Or a jet fighter flying? You cannot, but you do know those weapons work. We know this works.”

“It did not work the last time you attempted this,” Vortol noted.

“That was not the last time we tested this. We have run four tests in the past two years, and all have been successful.”

Vortol’s voice was cold. “Let me correct myself, Comrade Scientist. The last time you used a nuclear warhead, it failed. With terrible consequences.” Silence filled the control room. They all had sufficient clearances to know what had happened in late 1958. In fact, both Sarovan and Vasilev had been extremely fortunate to have survived the disaster, mainly because they had manned the remote-viewing site, overseeing where the warhead was supposed to have gone. Those stationed where the warhead was initiated had all perished in a terrific explosion that had devastated a large portion of Russian countryside to the east of the Ural Mountains, just north of the city of Chelyabinsk. The dead had numbered in the thousands. That disaster had led to Department Eight’s exile to this remote site.

One of the scientists below indicated all was ready. The experimental chamber was evacuated and the doors shut, leaving only the four men in the coffins.

“We are now seeking to gain a coherent balance in the hyperspatial flux inside and placing the bomb in the virtual field,” Sarovan informed the military men. “Building our virtual wave and containing it before release, so to speak. We must achieve this before proceeding further. That is what those computers”— he pointed to a bank of machines along the back wall of the control center, manned by a dozen white-coated technicians—

“are for.”

Vasilev could sense the growing unease among the soldiers as the minutes passed and nothing apparent happened. A green light flickered on the console in front of Sarovan.

“We have coherence.” There was a quiver to the scientist’s normally calm voice. “Initiating phase two.” Sarovan leaned slightly forward toward a microphone. His voice was low, almost soothing as it spoke to the four subjects. “The target. You must find the target.” He repeated the two sentences for almost a minute, but nothing happened. Still speaking, he gestured with his right hand. One of the other scientists turned a knob.

Sarovan momentarily shut off the microphone to address the GRU officers. “Current is being sent directly into the brain center of each man. To the place that regulates pain. You could not even begin to imagine what they are experiencing right now.”

“Ahh,” General Vortol said. “Motivation. We have used that direct stimulation technique on prisoners. Most effective torture, with no actual physical harm other than the probe into the brain.”

“These men are special,” Sarovan said. “They were tested at our Institute along with thousands of others, and these four had the highest rating on our psychic ability scale. We have long known that certain people have an ability to do what we call remote viewing— to ‘see’ places that are physically distant from them, using their minds. That is how these men will find the target for us and ‘aim’— so to speak— the weapon.”

Sarovan turned the mike back on. “The target. You must find the target.” He repeated that several times.

“We have a lock,” one of the scientists announced from his desk, watching a panel.

“Show me the target,” Sarovan said into the microphone.

“Show me the target.”

Above the tube, something flickered. A long black object appeared, the image hazy and unclear, floating in the middle of the experimental chamber, slowly gaining more form and substance. One of the GRU officers swore under his breath as the forty-foot-long image became clear: a submarine. They could even see the propellers moving in the air. It was an exact copy of the picture on the machine: the USS Thresher. The image was not totally solid, as they could faintly make out the other side of the cavern through it. It was nose down, diving.

“That is the Thresher as it is operating right now in the Atlantic Ocean,” Sarovan told the officers. His knuckles were white as they gripped the edge of his desk.

“Center the target,” he whispered into the mike, then cut it off.

“Arm the warhead,” he ordered the man next to him, who threw a switch and flipped open a cover, revealing a red button underneath. The GRU officers all unconsciously took a step back from the window. Vasilev’s hand hovered over a button on his console, the neutralizer switch, his eyes focused on the chamber below.

“Center the target,” Sarovan repeated to the four men below. Slowly the image descended, until the tube was centered in the middle of the image.

“Initiate ten-second countdown on warhead detonation,” Sarovan ordered. The man next to him slammed his fist down on the red button.

When the countdown hit five, Sarovan leaned forward to the mike.

“Project!” he yelled. “Project!” There was a bright flash of light.

The image faded.

One of the scientists monitoring a panel spun about. “The warhead is gone!”

That was confirmed as the countdown passed through zero and nothing happened in the chamber. Sarovan’s broad smile showed his exultation. “The wave carried the warhead to the target. We have succeeded!”

Vasilev realized he had stopped breathing and had gone completely rigid, waiting for the explosion in the chamber. He untensed his muscles, taking a deep breath.

“That is it?” General Vortol asked suspiciously. Sarovan pointed at a radio. “Call your plane monitoring the area.” Alarms rang on the Skylark. The Thresher had been at depth for fifteen minutes without a problem, but now garbled reports were coming of electrical trouble. Then suddenly the communication was gone. The sonar men on the Skylark threw down their headsets as a tremendous explosion roared into their ears. The captain of the Skylark ran to the side of his bridge.

He staggered back as the surface of the ocean erupted in a massive mound of white water two kilometers off his starboard bow. The fountain went up two hundred feet, then slowly subsided. The large wave hit the Skylark, rolling it thirty degrees over, and then passed.

“Get me contact with Thresher!” the captain yelled as he ran back into the bridge. The sonar men put their headsets back on, but all they heard were noises that everyone associated with submarines prayed they’d never hear: the sound, like popcorn popping in the depths, of bulkheads giving way, and the high-pressure noise of air escaping into the ocean. That noise meant that what remained of the Thresher was headed for the bottom and 129 men had just died.

Far overhead, circling to the east, a Soviet TU-20 Bear-D reconnaissance plane noted what had happened.

General Vortol put the radiophone down. A broad smile crossed his face. “They saw the explosion reach the surface!” He grabbed Professor Sarovan by the shoulders and gave him a vigorous hug. “You did it!” The doors in the chamber below opened, and soldiers and scientists walked in. At the other end of the control center, Vasilev slowly relaxed. He walked over to the computers and pulled the tapes off, putting them back in their case. He turned and walked to the elevator, knowing he was done here. He stepped in as the sounds of the celebration behind him rose. The doors swung shut and blocked out the noise. With a jolt, the elevator began going up.

In the control room, Sarovan pulled a bottle of vodka out of a drawer, and drinks were poured all around. What no one remembered in the excitement was that power was still being fed to the four men through the leads to their heads.

General Vortol was beside himself. “We cannot be defeated now! We have the ultimate weapon! We do not need Cuba to base our missiles. We can strike anywhere in the world from right here.”

On the surface, Vasilev stepped out of the elevator, the heavy doors sliding shut behind him. The bitter arctic wind cut into the exposed skin on his face.

Inside the experimental chamber, the scientist closest to one of the coffins reached forward to open the lid, when his right hand suddenly jerked upward. The scientist didn’t have time to ponder this strange development for long, because the arm snapped like a twig, bone protruding from the forearm. He screamed, staggering back.

At another coffin, one of the other scientists jerked backward, his hands going to his eyes, tearing at them. Fingers came forth dripping blood, holding two eyeballs, the occipital nerves still dangling. There was a moment of shock in the control room, then Sarovan dropped the bottle and sprinted to the panel Vasilev had been at. He slammed his fist down on the button Vasilev had watched over. Canisters exploded, pouring gas into the chamber. The surviving scientists and soldiers in the experimental chamber turned and ran for the door, but it slid shut in their face, locking them in. Sarovan watched as the scientists at the last two coffins grabbed each other around the throat. The gas was now rising inside the chamber. It was fast acting and Sarovan almost regretted having to use it, but there would always be other bodies to use now that they had had this success. The men trying to get out slumped to the floor, bodies twitching as the gas tore into their nervous system.

“What is happening?” Vortol demanded.

“Everything is under control,” Sarovan said. He pointed at the coffinlike objects in the chamber. “They will be dead in twenty seconds. The—

“ Sarovan’s jaw dropped open in shock as the heavy lids to all four coffins flew off, spinning through the air and crashing down. The four men inside all sat bolt upright, their heads turned in his direction, eyeless sockets fixing him with their dead gaze through the gas swirling about them. The wires still dangled from the sockets in their heads. Something formed in the air above the men— a black vortex, five feet in diameter. Sarovan had never seen anything as dark, as if the universe had opened up and was showing him its deepest depth.

Sarovan stepped back from the blast glass, hands raised in futile defense. Lightning crackled around the vortex, arcing outward. Then the vortex exploded and all was consumed.

On the surface, Vasilev spun about as the massive elevator doors buckled as if a huge hand had punched them from the inside. The earth beneath his feet trembled violently, and he fell to his knees on the icy runway.

Wires and tubes crisscrossed on the bed, and Sergeant Major Jimmy Dalton carefully scooted them aside as he gingerly sat on the edge. With a callused hand he tenderly brushed a stray lock of gray hair off the face of the woman lying there.

He could feel the press of her thin thigh against his hip, and he stared at her face, letting his hand lightly trace over every wrinkle and line etched there by the years, lingering on the closed eyelids. He let out a deep breath and took her hand in his, careful not to disturb the IV line in the back of it. He leaned over, his lips close to her ear. His voice was a low, gravelly one, one that gave an immediate sense of confidence to the listener.

“Well, my Treasure, another great day in airborne country. The colonel gives his regards. He was by last night. Lots of people are worried, but I know you’re going to be all right.

“The Christmas formal is only six weeks away and, well, I was wondering if you might want to escort this old soldier there.” Dalton waited, head cocked as if listening to an answer, before speaking again.

“You’ve been away from home for four months now. I think it’s time to be coming back. I miss you.”

Dalton felt her skin under his fingers. He remembered the long years when he had so yearned for just this sensation, to be able to feel her once more. He leaned close and put his lips to her ear.

“You waited for me for five years when I was a POW, I’ll wait forever for you. So we can be together once more.”

“Sergeant Major Dalton?”

Dalton slowly straightened and looked over his shoulder at the door. A young woman, at least by his standards young, somewhere in her thirties, stood there. She held a metal clipboard in her hand.

“I’m sorry to disturb you. I’m Dr. Kairns. I was assigned yesterday to take care of your wife. I assume you know that Dr. Inhout, who was caring for your wife, was transferred.”

Dalton slid off the bed, his highly polished boots making contact with the tile floor. Dalton was a little less than average height, five foot nine inches tall, and had a stocky, well-muscled build. His face was dark and well tanned, cut with deep lines, his hair heavily peppered with gray and cut very short. He walked across and held out his hand. Kairns, after a moment of surprise, took it.

“Thank you for taking care of Marie, ma’am,” Dalton said.

“Well, you’re welcome, but I haven’t really done anything yet.” She held up the chart. “I have— “ Dalton took her elbow. “Perhaps we should talk outside.” Kairns looked over at the bed. She knew the woman could not hear them, but she allowed herself to be escorted out of the room. They walked down the hallway to an empty waiting room. Large windows revealed Cheyenne Mountain to the west, the sides covered in snow. Between the window and the mountain lay rows and rows of barracks, motor pools, and housing areas, all comprising Fort Carson, home to the 4th Infantry Division and the 10th Special Forces Group. Behind and to the right of Cheyenne Mountain, and barely visible, was the bright white top of

Pikes Peak, catching the first rays of the rising sun coming over the Great Plains of Colorado from the east.

Kairns flipped open the chart once more. “We took another MRI and there’s no doubt your wife suffered an aneurysm in the anterior portion of the frontal lobe.” Kairns looked up at the sergeant major. He nodded, indicating he knew what an aneurysm was. Kairns showed him the MRI. “It happened here. Fortunately, there wasn’t too much bleeding or swelling of the brain, but I have to warn you it could happen at any moment even though she’s been in here a while. The brain is very strange. Very delicate at times, very tough at others, and there’s much we don’t know about it.”

“Why is she unconscious?” Dalton asked. Ever since being admitted four months ago, his wife had been in a coma.

“In effect, she also suffered a stroke. I thought Dr. Inhout would have explained all that.”

“He did, but I’d like to know what you think the situation is, given that you are the one who is going to be caring for her.”

Kairns said, “Even if your wife regains consciousness, there is a high likelihood of some brain damage. The blood that came from the burst blood vessel, well, that flow was interrupted, obviously, and the part of the brain that blood vessel feeds did not get enough oxygen for an extended period of time.”

Dalton nodded to indicate he understood. He walked over to a hard plastic seat and sank down in it. He wore heavily starched camouflage fatigues that were covered with insignia: The Combat Infantry badge with two stars and the Master Parachutist badge were sewn above his name tag. Below it was sewn the small dive-mask badge indicating Dalton was scuba qualified. On his left shoulder was a Special Forces patch, of subdued green and black to match the fatigues. Above it was a Ranger tab and a Special Forces tab. He wore an identical Special Forces patch on his right shoulder, indicating combat service in the unit.

The patch was in the shape of an arrowhead, homage to the stealthiness and craftiness of Indian warriors. An upright dagger was in the center, to indicate the covert way Special Forces operated. Three lightning bolts ripped across the dagger, representing the three means by which Special Forces soldiers infiltrated their objective: by air, sea, and land. The patch, and the green beret that went along with it, were the insignia of the elite of the United States Army. Sergeant Major Dalton had served thirty years in the unit, one of the very few left on active service who had served in Vietnam. Mornings like this he felt the cumulative effect of those thirty years.

Kairns grabbed another seat and pulled it nearby.

“What’s the prognosis, ma’am?” Kairns had an oak leaf on her white collar, and despite the twenty-year age difference between them, she held the higher rank. Other than her rank, the only other insignia she wore was the abacus of the Medical Corps. On his collar, Dalton had pinned the three chevrons and three rockers, with a star circled by a wreath in the center, indicating he was a sergeant major, the highest enlisted rank in the Army. Kairns looked down at the chart once more, but Dalton was aware she didn’t need it for the information. She knew, she just didn’t want eye-to-eye contact when she told him. He knew, even before she spoke, that the answer would not be good. The previous doctor had been full of crap, in Dalton’s opinion. Even when Dalton had asked the man to level with him, the doctor had hidden behind a flurry of medical terms, most of which, despite his own medical training, Dalton had had to go to the library and look up. He knew more about aneurysms now than he particularly cared to. As he did about the other afflictions ravaging his wife’s body.

“There is most likely some permanent damage to the brain. We won’t know exactly how much or what kind until your wife regains consciousness.” Dalton could hear the “if” in her voice. He had always been able to read people, and the skill was one he had honed over the years.

“When do you think that’s likely to occur?” he asked.

“That’s hard to say.”

“There’s a possibility she might not regain consciousness at all, isn’t there?” Dalton asked in a quiet voice.

Kairns leaned back in her seat and looked directly at him. Dalton noted she had soft green eyes, just like Marie’s. He knew his wife would have liked this woman. Marie had always made friends so easily.

“Yes, that is a possibility.” Kairns cleared her throat.

“Go ahead,” Dalton said.

“This setback on top of your wife’s advanced amyotrophic lateral sclerosis...” The doctor paused.

“Her body has been gone for two years due to ALS,” Dalton said.

“All she’s had is her mind and now you’re telling me that’s probably not going to come back?”

“No, it’s not.”

Dalton tried to keep his voice steady. “She’s not going to regain consciousness, is she?”

Kairns slowly shook her head. “No, I don’t think she will.” Even though he had long expected those words, their impact surprised Dalton.

“There’s the issue...” Kairns paused again.

“Go on,” Dalton dully said.

“There’s the issue of whether you want to continue the life support,” Kairns said.

Dalton rubbed his chin, feeling the slight stubble there, aware that he would have to shave when he got to work. He felt a rapid beating in his chest. He dipped his head and put his hand on his forehead, hiding his eyes from the doctor. He slowed his heartbeat as he’d been trained, forcing his mind to accept the reality. His hands felt cold and clammy and in a remote part of his mind he knew that the blood vessels were closing, choking the flow of blood, and he knew he could reverse that process, he’d been taught that, but he didn’t care right now. A tear rolled out of his right eye, down his weathered cheek.

He heard movement, and when he looked up a minute later, he was alone. He looked down the hallway. Kairns was standing twenty feet away, writing something into the chart. Dalton stood and walked over to her.

“My wife appreciates all you’ve done for her.” Dalton caught the quick quiver of her eyes and said, “I’m not nuts, Major. When you spend thirty years with someone, you know what they would be thinking, so I just thought I’d let you know that. And I certainly appreciate all your efforts.” Kairns nodded.

“There’s nothing you can do?” he asked. Kairns let the chart hang at her side and met his gaze. “No. We have to hope the brain can stabilize itself and that can take quite a long time. If there’s a turn for the worse, we might have to go in to reduce pressure, but let’s hope that doesn’t occur. It’s been four months now and things haven’t gotten worse, so in a way, that’s a good sign. I am sorry, Sergeant Major.”

“Keep her as comfortable as possible,” Dalton said. “I have to think about what to do.”

“I didn’t mean to pressure you,” Kairns hurriedly said.

“There’s certainly no— “ Dalton held up his hand. “I know. I’m glad you were frank with me. I appreciate the honesty.”

Dalton bid the doctor good-bye and walked down the corridor. He paused outside his wife’s room and watched her from the doorway for ten minutes, then reluctantly continued on, his morning visit done.

She was beautiful. Tall, six feet from her bare feet to her shining blond hair. Smooth skin, very pale, except for a red blush on her cheeks. Icy blue eyes that softened as they looked at him. Her body was exquisite, the breasts those of a nubile young girl, the belly flat, the legs those of a trained dancer, the figure barely sheathed in a white flowing gown that was transparent.

Another figure appeared behind the woman. A dark-haired twin to the first. This one wore only garters and stockings, carrying her body without the slightest hint of modesty.

The first woman circled to his left, the second to his right. He felt himself pressed between them, the hard and soft of their bodies molding into his, but there was a barrier between, more than the flimsy clothes, like a thin layer of warm air. It felt smooth and caressing, but it wasn’t the same as bare flesh. The woman behind him ran her hands over his chest while the one in front reached over his shoulder and kissed the other, before coming back to kiss him.

Feteror checked the time with irritation as the women continued their caresses. He controlled himself, not allowing his true feelings to surface. He had no choice and it was best to let this event go to its programmed conclusion.

Finally, the two women faded away, disappearing into a fog, the controllers satisfied that they had satisfied Feteror.

He felt full power come back on, the charge flowing into him like a cleansing waterfall, filling the pool of his soul.

“We can change the women.”

Feteror recognized the invisible voice, even though it came through electronic channels. General Rurik, his captor and commander.

“We have a new programmer,” Rurik continued. “He is most skilled. He assures me he can design whatever you desire.” Rurik laughed.

“Or perhaps you would like a man? That just occurred to me. You Spetsnatz warriors are a strange breed. Fancy yourself Spartans. But Spartans had no time for women, only each other. This is something perhaps we should consider?”

Feteror’s “eyes” clicked on. He could see Rurik now, standing at the main control console. The general was tall and distinguished looking, with white hair combed straight back. His chest was covered in medals and he walked with a slight limp.

“I am satisfied,” Feteror said. He could hear the echo of his own voice, tinny and raspy, coming out of the speaker. He knew that Rurik could change the voice, make it more realistic, more human, but he also knew the general didn’t to taunt him, to keep an edge.

“Satisfied?” Rurik laughed once more. “You had better be. The good doctor says it is important that you have everything as a normal person should. To keep your sanity, but I doubt if you have ever been sane.” Rurik paused. “Tell me, Feteror. Do you dream? The doctor tells me he puts you to sleep, that you must sleep for your sanity. That you must dream. But if you dream, what do you dream? Of the body that was once yours?”

Feteror heard Rurik but his concentration was on his status. Power was at 94 percent. Good enough. All systems were functioning. He checked the backup programs.

General Rurik’s voice intruded once more. “We need more information. The Ministry is concerned about your previous intelligence report regarding the treaty exchange with Kazakhstan.”

“Concerned?” Feteror would have laughed but there was no laughter configured for his voice program.

“You will do your duty for the State,” Rurik said. “You can access the tasking now.”

The State. What was the State? Feteror wondered. The one that had sent him to Afghanistan years ago and cost him everything? But that State no longer existed. The farce that had replaced it? A husk of the empire he had served so proudly? Where criminals were now more powerful than the government? That was an impotent bear on the international scene?

He accessed the tasking that had been put into his database. As expected, he was to surveil the Mafia and find whether they planned to intercept a shipment of nuclear weapons that Kazakhstan was required to send back to Russia as part of the internal strategic arms agreement between the various states that had once comprised the Soviet Union. In return, Kazakhstan would get several ships of the Baltic fleet.

“There is something else.” General Rurik walked in front of the camera that was hooked to what remained of Feteror. The general’s left hand was on his right wrist, lightly touching a metal band. There was a small green light steadily blinking on the band. That band was Feteror’s leash. On the ring finger of that hand was a thick gold band set with several diamonds.

“One of our undercover men has picked up a report that a Mafia gang is making some inquiries about old research programs.”

Feteror waited.

“We don’t have much information other than that there has been a contact made with a ranking officer in GRU research files. We are a bit concerned and I want you to check this out also.”

“I need more information than that,” Feteror said. “Do you know which Mafia gang it is? My database indicates several operate in Moscow.”

“Yes, the group run by someone with the rather interesting title of ‘Oma,’

“ Rurik said.

“Do you have the name of the GRU officer who has been contacted?”

“No. We are, of course, investigating.”

“Do you know the nature of the research they are inquiring into?”

“No.”

“How do you know about the Mafia group, then, or that there was a contact, if you didn’t get it from your end?” Feteror asked.

“We have an agent inside this Oma group. A man posing as a bodyguard. He knows only that there is a meeting set with the GRU traitor. He doesn’t know where the meeting will occur, but it is to happen shortly. I want the name of the traitor.”

“I will investigate,” Feteror said.

“You may go now,” Rurik said. He signaled to one of the technicians. A circle of light appeared, a long white tunnel beckoning. Feteror gathered himself then leapt for the circle.

The old man had fouled himself hours ago. There was a steel collar around his neck, attached to an iron chain, welded to a pin set in the center of the concrete floor. He had determined all that by feel, as he was in complete darkness and had been so ever since being thrown into this pit. He had no idea how long he had been here. He estimated about two days, but he was aware that he was very disoriented. His last memory before this hole was of walking down the stairs to the subway in Moscow, going to work at the Institute. Hands grabbed him from behind, something was pressed over his mouth, and then he awoke here in the darkness.

There was a bucket of stale water that he had drunk from carefully, not sure when it would be refilled. No food and no sign of his captors either.

He was naked and cold. The concrete was damp, and there was a dripping noise in one direction, but the chain wouldn’t allow him to reach any wall. Just twenty feet of rough concrete floor in every direction.

He sensed something change. A presence. He looked about but he could see nothing. He started when the voice came out of the darkness. “Professor Vasilev.” The old man spun about but could see nothing.

“Professor Vasilev.” The voice was deep, deeper than any voice Vasilev had ever heard, with a rough edge to it that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The old man wet his lips with a swollen tongue. “Yes?” His voice was weak, quavering, bouncing into the walls and being absorbed. His heart rate increased dramatically as two red objects appeared, about seven feet above the floor, glowing like coals in the darkness. Eyes.

“Who are you?” Vasilev whispered.

“I am Chyort,” the voice rasped. “The devil.”

Vasilev’s gaze was focused on those red dots staring at him. “What do you want?”

“Where are the computer tapes from October Revolution Island?” Vasilev swallowed. “What are you talking about?”

“The tapes for the phased-displacement generator you took with you when you left.”

“There is— “

“Do not lie to me,” the voice warned. “There are many things worse than dying, and I am intimate with all of them. Where are the tapes?” Vasilev closed his eyes. “They were updated and transferred onto floppy first, then CD-ROM three years ago.”

“Where is the CD stored?”

“With everything else. GRU records.”

“Is the program current?”

Vasilev frowned. “Current?”

“Has it been updated to run with current operating systems in modern computers?”

Vasilev sighed. “As of a few years ago, yes, but I don’t know if it is current with today’s operating systems.” He looked up at the two inhuman eyes.

“Where am I? Why am I here?”

“This is hell,” the voice said. “And you are here to pay retribution for your sins.”

As the rough, evil voice faded, so did the two coals, and Vasilev was left in darkness once more. The walls of the conference room were covered with plaques and photos from Special Operations units all over the world. From the Royal Danish Navy’s Fromandskorp-set, to the now defunct Canadian Parachute Regiment, to the Norwegian Jaegers, the plaques were tokens of goodwill to the men of the 2nd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) for various training and operational missions conducted with those elite units.

Dalton knew that each of those plaques represented a lot of sweat and time, and in some cases blood. He knew that because he’d been to every country represented on the wall and had taken part in practically every type of exercise with the A-Teams of 10th Group. What he also knew was that there were plenty of exercises and deployments that would never have a plaque to commemorate because they were too classified to be acknowledged.

Dalton had been in 10th Group, off and on, for twenty years, with some other assignments sprinkled in over the years. He considered the unit to be his home in the Army, although he had served in it at four different places. Fort Carson, Colorado, was a new posting for 10th Group, the unit being transferred there in the mid-nineties during a round of base closures that had shut down its longtime home at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. The 1st Battalion of the 10th Group had been staged forward in Germany since the unit had come into existence in the late fifties. First at

Bad Tolz, a former SS training barracks, where Dalton had done two tours, then, more recently, when Bad Tolz was given back to the Germans, at Stuttgart.

If there was one constant in Dalton’s military life, it was change, and this morning he was ready for whatever was going to be laid on the table. As soon as he’d come to work, he’d been grabbed by the battalion adjutant and told that there was an important meeting in five minutes in the conference room and the colonel wanted him to sit in on it.

Since the briefing hadn’t yet started, he had no idea what this was about, but he had a bad feeling, mainly due to the glimpse he’d had of the two people in the colonel’s office, which adjoined his. The man wore civilian clothes— a black turtleneck under an expensive blazer— but it was more than just the usual military distrust of those not in uniform that generated Dalton’s negative feelings. Dalton had been in Special Operations for over thirty years now, and he could read Agency in a man as easily as if he had the letters of his organization imprinted on his forehead with a bright red tattoo. The man was either CIA, DIA, or NSA. The other person in the colonel’s office was a woman, dressed in a tailored suit, her blond hair drawn tight. Dalton hadn’t been able to get a read on her.

When Dalton had walked into the conference room, he’d noted there were two other people already there: Captain Anderson and Master Sergeant Trilly, a combination that Dalton found strange. Anderson was the battalion assistant operations officer. Trilly was the team sergeant for ODA 054. Dalton had greeted them both, then taken his usual seat next to the head of the table. ODA stood for Operational Detachment Alpha and was the official designation for the basic organizational element of Special Forces, more commonly called an A-Team. The company headquarters, one hierarchical level below Dalton but one above the ODA, was the ODB, or B-Team, each of which commanded five ODAs. Dalton was the sergeant major of the battalion, or ODC, which had three ODBs in it, and fifteen ODAs. Anderson was the man who helped plan the missions all those teams went on.

What set the Special Forces units apart from the rest of the Army was that SF troopers rarely operated tactically at any higher level than the A-Team. The B and C teams existed mainly for command and support purposes. This placed a great deal of responsibility on those at the lowest levels and was the major reason Special Forces looked for very mature soldiers to fill its ranks. Dalton had a lot of respect for Captain Anderson, who had commanded a team for two years before being brought up to battalion for the past year, but not as much for Trilly. Anderson was a West Pointer who had commanded a company in the Infantry before going through Special Forces training. He was six feet tall and in great shape, able to keep up with the physical demands of the training a team went through. He had dark hair cut tight against his skull, flecks of gray already appearing along the sides. The most important traits Anderson had, in Dalton’s opinion, were the ability to know what he could do and what he couldn’t and his willingness to trust his men to do their jobs. Too many officers that Dalton had served with over the years had held back their implicit trust from those they commanded, and in a self-fulfilling prophecy, that lack had eaten away at the integrity of the unit. The problem with Trilly, in Dalton’s opinion, was that he simply didn’t have enough Special Forces experience. Trilly had gone through the Special Forces qualification course as a senior E-7, after fifteen years of duty in the air defense artillery. He’d come to 10th Group three years ago, been promoted to E-8 six months ago, and, despite Dalton’s misgivings, been given the team sergeant slot based on his rank. Dalton had convinced Colonel Metter to assign Trilly to 054, which he felt had the strongest team leader in the battalion, commanding what was probably the best team. But where was the team leader? Dalton wondered. If 054 was going to be used in some sort of operation, the team leader should have been present.

Dalton knew both of the men from a training experience they had gone through as part of a two-team contingent three years ago— a classified experience that was not represented by a plaque on the wall.

Dalton turned his attention from the other men as the colonel and two civilians came in.

“All right,” Colonel Metter said as he walked to the end of the conference table. “Let’s get this going.” He pointed to his right.

“This is Mr. Raisor, from the Central Intelligence Agency. He’s brought us a high-level tasking direct from Washington for one A-Team to participate in some rather unique training. Accompanying Mr. Raisor is Dr. Hammond.” Metter pointed to the woman.

“Mr. Raisor, Dr. Hammond, this is Captain Anderson and Master Sergeant Trilly. As you’ve requested.”

That answered one of Dalton’s first questions.

Raisor and Hammond leaned across the conference table and shook each man’s hand. Raisor’s grip was strong, his body lean. He had thinning black hair and a thin face that was bland in a way that Dalton associated with bureaucratic spies. But the man’s eyes caught Dalton’s attention. They were flat and emotionless, almost bored. Dalton had seen that look before. Dead eyes, the sign of someone who had done dirty work in the covert world, and the only time eyes like that came alive was when someone’s life was on the line. Dalton had worked with men like that, who relished combat, not concerned about the cost in terms of human suffering and death. That put Dalton on alert, because it meant the CIA had assigned one of its few killers to this project. Raisor had something in his hand that he was fingering, but Dalton couldn’t make out exactly what it was, only catching a glint of gold.

“And this is Sergeant Major Dalton, my senior enlisted man.” Raisor met his gaze briefly and Dalton swore there was the hint of a cold smile on the agent’s lips, as if recognizing a kindred spirit.

Raisor pulled a manila folder out of his briefcase. There was a red Top Secret cover stapled to it.

“Gentlemen, what I’m going to brief you on is classified top secret, special compartmentalization. You may not discuss this with anyone, even if they have a top secret clearance.” Raisor’s voice was low and smooth, one used to speaking in dark rooms about secret material.

“The subject matter may seem a bit, shall we say, strange, outrageous even, but let me assure you that this is a very serious issue. First, though, let me make sure we can get the right people.” He slid a piece of paper to the colonel. “Besides the two men we requested be here, we need a complete team, drawn from those who participated in Trojan Warrior.”

“Trojan Warrior?” Metter asked. He had taken command a year and a half ago.

“It was a classified training program two of our teams— 054 and 055— participated in three years ago,” Dalton quickly told the colonel. Metter didn’t even look at the list, passing it to Dalton. Raisor’s statement answered the question as to why 054’s team leader wasn’t here; he hadn’t been on the team when it had gone through the Trojan Warrior training program. Anderson had gone through the training as the team leader of 055. Dalton didn’t need to look at the list— he knew every man who had gone through that training and how many were left in the battalion from the twenty-five original members.

“It would be advantageous if you picked men from that list who did not have families,” Raisor added.

Dalton put the paper down in front of him. “Because you think men without families are expendable?”

“Because we think men without families are better security risks for the duration of the operation,” Raisor answered.

“Do you need a full team?” Dalton asked.

“Yes,” Raisor said.

“We can’t do that. Of the twenty-five names on this list,” Dalton said, still not looking at the paper, “there are only seven left in the battalion. The others have either left the service or moved to other assignments.”

“Then give me all seven.” Raisor sounded irritated. Dalton held up the list. “What does Trojan Warrior have to do with this briefing? That program was dropped two years ago.”

“We’ll get to that later in the briefing,” Raisor said.

“Then why don’t we get started so we know what we’re getting these men into?” Colonel Metter suggested.

Raisor looked at the other three Special Forces men. “I assume those of you who were in Trojan Warrior heard of Operation Grill Flame?”

Dalton glanced at Captain Anderson, who returned the look with a roll of his eyes. Trilly looked like he was about to answer, but Dalton beat him to it. “That was the code name for a Defense Intelligence Agency operation using remote viewers.”

Raisor nodded. “That is correct.”

“Remote viewers?” Metter asked.

“Psychics,” Dalton said. “People who supposedly could see things at a distance just by using their minds.”

“Not supposedly,” Raisor said. “Grill Flame was real. And, contrary to what people believe, it still exists. We just renamed it. It’s called Bright Gate now and we’ve taken over operational control of it from the military.” Dalton didn’t blink at the implied slam from the younger man. “Besides Trojan Warrior, I know about Grill Flame from an operational standpoint.” That gave Raisor pause. “What was that?”

“When I was in Lebanon in the early eighties, your people brought in some Grill Flame operators to help search for the hostages in Beirut. We busted a few doors where they told us they

‘saw’ the hostages being held. We came up with nothing and almost got our asses shot off a few times.”

“The success rate has increased dramatically since then,” Raisor said.

“So much so, that we’re ready to take the next step. Combine Trojan Warrior with Grill Flame for something completely new.”

The others in the room waited as Raisor stood. He walked to the podium in the front of the room. Using a remote, he turned down the lights. Dalton could see that the object Raisor had been playing with was a ring, which he had slipped over his left pinky. It looked like a college ring but it was much too small for Raisor. The slide projector came on.

Raisor’s voice came out of the darkness next to the screen. “Gentlemen, we are passing into a new age of warfare.

We are literally entering a new dimension. One where the commonly accepted limitations of physics and the way combat has been conducted no longer apply.”

Dalton sighed and leaned back in his seat. He could just see Raisor briefing the Select Intelligence Committee in Congress with the same words and the same slides. It was the same way the initial briefings for Trojan Warrior had been conducted. He knew the slides hadn’t been made up to impress a bunch of green beanies who were going to have to do what they were ordered.

“There has never been a jump in warfare such as the one we are making with Psychic Warrior. The commonly accepted nexus points of war technology— the use of iron, the invention of the firearm, the plane, the tank, even the atomic bomb— all pale against the radical nature of Psychic Warrior.”

A new slide came up with the words Grill Flame written in bold black, with red flames encircling the letters.

“A little background is necessary in order to understand where we are now,” Raisor said. “Operation Grill Flame was started in 1981 as a joint Army-CIA program to examine the potential of remote viewing, or RVing— the ability to psychically see objects or locations at a distance. The primary responsibility for the project lay with the Army and the unit was based at Fort Meade.

“As your sergeant major has noted, the project had some growing pains. In fact, to read open source material on the project, you would think that the Army disbanded it four years ago and that no government organization is currently conducting research into any form of psychic operation.

“However, I can assure you, gentlemen, that while our government has publicly disavowed any current psychic operation, four years ago Grill Flame, under the auspices of a group called Bright Gate, went deep underground at a very classified level.

“At the same time as it appeared Grill Flame was gone, we used Bright Gate to instigate the Trojan Warrior program here in the 10th Special Forces Group. Three years ago Trojan Warrior was conducted here. It was a six-month training program designed to significantly enhance the capabilities of the participants through the application of emergent human technologies and concepts.”

Raisor flashed a humorless smile. “At least that is what we told you it was. In reality, the training you men received in Trojan Warrior on such subjects as biofeedback, visualization, conscious psychological control, meditative states, cognitive task enhancement, visual control, and other subject matter”— Raisor waved his hands— “all that was part of the master plan to prepare you for Psychic Warrior.”

Dalton felt a flush of anger. He’d wondered himself at the time what the purpose of some of the Trojan Warrior training had been for— six months of intense work on all the areas Raisor had mentioned, along with martial arts training. Dalton had no doubt it had made him not only a better soldier but a better person. However, there had been aspects, like the biofeedback and visualization training, that he had never quite understood the purpose of— until now. He’d seen the obvious reason for the martial arts training, but many of the subjects had seemed esoteric. He’d been lied to before in his military career, but he’d never grown used to it. Raisor continued. “Psychic Warrior takes Trojan Warrior another step. It merges two programs, one psychic, the other medical, to come up with something completely different from the original Grill Flame operation in remote viewing and Trojan Warrior’s training. Something that we feel it best to keep classified to prevent both disclosure of our capabilities and to protect those involved.

“While the Trojan Warrior training was being conducted, the remote-viewing program itself became much more efficient after years of modifying its personnel and operating procedures. Remote viewing has become an accepted intelligence-gathering apparatus of our government, and as such we must keep the extent of that capability secure from potential enemies.”

“It’s been over two years since we went through that training,” Dalton said. “When were you going to let us in on all this?”

“When Psychic Warrior was ready for you and when we needed you,” Raisor said. “Recently, an external factor has entered the scene which brings a new sense of urgency to this entire operation.”

Dalton just wanted to smack the CIA man upside the head and tell him to get on with it, to tell the facts and details and stop being so melodramatic. If one of the battalion’s A-Teams had conducted a briefing like that, Dalton had no doubt that Colonel Metter would have a boot up the team leader’s ass in a heartbeat. The fact that Metter sat silently next to him told Dalton that his commander’s secure phone to the Pentagon must have rung in conjunction with this visit and Metter was under strict orders to support the CIA.

“If you had let us know Trojan Warrior was preparation for further training,” Dalton said, “we could have kept most of those men in the battalion and we wouldn’t have only seven left.”

“The ball was dropped on that,” Raisor conceded. “My predecessor did not have much faith that Psychic Warrior would ever become operational. He was wrong. When Grill Flame was first brought into being, it was very much an experimental operation and more concerned with testing concepts than actually conducting operations. In places such as Lebanon, it was used, but only as a last resort, and the results were mixed.” Dalton could sense Raisor looking at him from the shadows. “At times,” the CIA man went on, “Grill Flame personnel were used before they were trained sufficiently or prepared to conduct live operations.

“During the Gulf War, Grill Flame was employed to find Iraqi Scud missiles. The success rate was about forty percent, which actually is not that bad.” The slide changed and a picture of a destroyed Scud missile launcher was displayed.

“More recently, we have been using Grill Flame to surveil Iraqi weapons sites. Some of the recent tensions in that area have been the result of things the RVs— remote viewers— have picked up in places that satellites or even the UN human inspectors on the ground cannot gain access to.”

Another slide, this one of a fenced compound in a desert region. Dalton heard Colonel Metter shift in his seat impatiently.

“You must have been planning on using my people for a while,” Metter said.

Raisor nodded. “Bringing some Special Operations soldiers from Trojan Warrior on board has always been part of the master plan.”

“But you didn’t plan on it happening this soon,” Dalton interjected.

“The timetable has been moved up somewhat,” Raisor acknowledged. Dalton held up the list. “You still haven’t said exactly what you want these men for.”

“To be Psychic Warriors, of course.” Raisor clicked the remote. The next slide showed a large, clear, vertical tube, with Dr. Hammond standing next to it, giving some idea of its dimensions, about ten feet high by four in diameter.

There was a thick-looking, greenish liquid inside. And floating inside the greenish liquid was a man wearing just a black bodysuit with no sleeves or legs. Various lines and leads went to his body. His head was totally enclosed in an oversized black helmet out of which ran several tubes and wires. He floated freely, arms akimbo, his back slightly hunched over.

Everyone in the room sat up a little straighter and leaned forward.

“Gentlemen, this is a picture taken of an RVer working under the auspices of Bright Gate just last week. As you can see, we have come a long way from the days of sitting in a dark room with subdued music playing. This is the direction Bright Gate has gone, combining natural psychic power with technological breakthroughs in physiological psychology.

“With proper input, Bright Gate RVers can now view with a seventy-two percent success rate of finding the correct target, with sixty-eight percent accuracy in the intelligence picked up.”

Dalton combined those numbers in his head and he wasn’t that impressed. He’d conducted special operations, including reconnaissance missions at the strategic level, and he knew nothing could beat a set of eyeballs on target. Real eyeballs. With a thinking brain behind them. He wasn’t too keen on technology either— if Grill Flame or the high-speed satellites that the National Reconnaissance Office boasted of were so great, why had Special Forces soldiers had to go deep into Iraq during the Gulf War to do live reconnaissance missions?

“Gentlemen,” Raisor said, his voice rising slightly, “we are now ready to move to the next stage of military action: Operation Psychic Warrior. We will no longer just remote view, we plan to conduct actual combat operations on the psychic level.” There was a long silence before Colonel Metter spoke. “How?” Raisor stepped in front of the screen. “That is Dr. Hammond’s area of expertise.” He sat down.

Hammond took his place. She was tall, maybe an inch shy of six foot, and in her mid-thirties, with very pale skin and an angular face. Her voice held the slightest tint of a New York accent.

“First, let me tell you, Colonel, that three years ago when I initially learned we were to take soldiers, men with no background in the field, and make Psychic Warriors out of them, I thought the plan would not work. But when my people checked out how the soldiers in your battalion did during their Trojan Warrior training, we were extremely impressed with the quality. The names on that list, each of those men, could possibly be one of my Bright Gate personnel.” Colonel Metter stared at the woman. “Ma’am, with all due respect to you, and I don’t know you or what your role in this whole thing is, the men in my battalion are the best soldiers in the world. They are some of the best people in the world. Don’t stand up there and try to put me waist deep in bullshit. Just tell me what I need to know.” A red flush had climbed Hammond’s cheeks, her face tightening. “All right, Colonel. Much of the science we are dealing with on the psychometric or virtual plane is un-proven, or even if proven, not completely understood. Our philosophy at Bright Gate is to concern ourselves with what works, sometimes well before we even have a clue as to why or exactly how it works. Unlike our counterparts at the universities, we are pragmatic first and foremost. While they dabble in theory, we have gone places they only chat about over a glass of wine at academic receptions.

“As Agent Raisor has indicated, Operation Psychic Warrior has been under development for many years. The basic concept is to project not just a remote-viewing capability into the psychometric plane, which we have already accomplished, but an actual capability to project an avatar into the virtual plane, travel along jump points to the target, or far point, and then out of the virtual or psychometric plane into the real plane at the far point.”

“Whoa!” Colonel Metter interrupted. “Some background and definitions would be helpful. What the hell is an avatar?”

“An avatar is a form that represents the original in the virtual plane,” Hammond answered. “If you play a computer game, whatever form you take in the game is your avatar. In Psychic Warrior we go one step further. We can take that avatar from the virtual plane into the real plane at the far point. We make the avatar real.”

“What the hell is the virtual plane?” Metter asked. “And the real plane?”

Hammond considered her audience for a few seconds, then spoke. “Scientists in the last couple of hundred years have been digging deeper into the physics of what makes up reality. If you’d asked a scientist two hundred years ago what they thought reality was, you would have gotten a very different answer than a hundred years ago, and fifty years ago, and so on.

“For centuries the most learned men of their age believed that matter and reality consisted of four basic substances: fire, earth, water, and air. We have made great strides since then, but it is foolish to believe we have reached the end of that path of knowledge. In some ways, people two hundred years from now may look at us as we look at those who believed in the four base elements composing all matter.

“Early in this century it was believed that the atomic level was the basic building block of matter, and thus of reality. But with the discovery of such things as quarks and further research into quantum physics, the realm of reality has been extended further into levels that couldn’t even be conceptualized by the early atomic scientists.

“We at Bright Gate believe the psychometric plane is beyond the plane of quantum physics, which scientists are still groping to understand. We call it the astral or virtual plane, and there are some proven laws of physics we can connect to it.” She smiled. “I don’t think we need to get into the nuts and bolts of the theory, do you?” Colonel Metter glanced at Dalton, who returned the look, his face telling the colonel what he thought.

“As a matter of fact,” Metter said, “I think we do.”

Hammond frowned. “Well, let me see if I can lay it out moving from the known to the unknown. You are all aware that there is such a thing as a magnetic field, which your compasses work off of?” With four heads nodding, she continued. “You are also aware that electricity can produce an electromagnetic field. But have you ever wondered what produces the electromagnetic field? What it is made of?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. “We call fields which produce the electromagnetic field, hyperfields. Quantum physics, with its quarks and wave theory, is a hyperfield. But there are others. They are around you all the time. In fact, there is a concurrent hyperfield to the quantum physical one. A virtual field. It is this virtual field that is the psychometric plane; the two terms are synonymous. Existing side by side at times with the real plane, at other times existing very separately from each other. It is the boundary between these two planes that is the entire focus of our efforts at Bright Gate.

“And without getting into the philosophy of it, a mental field— what you perceive in your brain— is a virtual field. If you perceive something to be with your mind, then it exists in the virtual field.”

“But not in reality,” Dalton interjected.

“Most physicists would say no, not in reality as it is currently defined,” Hammond said. “But if our thoughts are not reality, what are they? Everything man has ever invented or done has come out of his thoughts. So they are real in some way. So I say yes. I say that there is a link between the virtual world and the real world. That the line between the two is an artificial one that is constantly being breached. And that, with the proper equipment and training, we are able to breach at Bright Gate and will continue to go through with Psychic Warrior.”

“You say?” Colonel Metter said. “Is there any proof?”

“I’ve been there,” Hammond said. “I’ve been on the psychometric plane.”

“And what happened?” Captain Anderson asked.

“I RVed— remote viewed— at several points on the globe.”

“An out-of-body experience?” Dalton asked.

“You could call it that,” Hammond said, “but that is a crude simplification of a complex process.”

“How do you know it wasn’t just a hallucination?” Dalton asked. Hammond smiled, revealing even white teeth. “It might have been what you call a hallucination, but does that make it any less real? When we checked, we found out that what I saw was real, so how I saw is not as important as the fact that I saw it. I existed in the virtual world and saw the real.”

She tapped the side of her head. “We must stop limiting our minds with the boundaries of our physical brains. We accept that we can impart what exists in our minds to others through speech, or through the visual spectrum, or any of the senses in various modes. To understand Psychic Warrior, you have to consider that there is another way to bring our minds out of the physical limitations of our bodies beyond the methods that we use every day. Those of you who were in Trojan Warrior were introduced to these concepts.”

Hammond clicked through the slides quickly until she came to the one she wanted.

“These are the two planes I am talking about. Think about it. They quite clearly exist inside each of us. We have our minds, which operate on the psychometric plane, and then we have our bodies, which operate in the real plane. And somehow they are connected, are they not? We can take ideas from the psychometric/virtual plane of our imagination and make them real in the physical world, say in a painting. And we can process things from the physical world into our brains, remember them, even change them with our thoughts!

“What my remote viewers are able to do is travel outside of the confines of their physical brains on the psychometric plane and observe what is happening at a distance on the real plane. It is the greatest journey man has ever made! Far more significant than the first travelers across the oceans or even our journey to the moon.”

“But you’re talking about something very different with Psychic Warrior,” Captain Anderson noted.

Hammond nodded. “Yes. What we plan to do with the Psychic Warrior is travel along the psychometric plane, then not only ‘see’ into the real world at a remote location, but act in it through the projected avatar.”

“Is there any precedence for this?” Colonel Metter asked.

“You’ve all probably seen or heard of psychics who can bend a spoon with only the power of their mind? Well, some of those are frauds who employ trickery, but some of them are quite real. This is a very base-level effort, given that the psychic is in the same room as the spoon and can physically see it. We’re going much further than that.”

“But this is theoretical, correct?” Colonel Metter pressed. Dalton caught the glance Hammond exchanged with Raisor. “We’ve conducted some limited trials,” she said.

“And?” Metter prompted.

“And the trials were indeed successful.” From long experience in the covert world, Dalton knew she was both lying and telling the truth.

“Amplify your answer,” Colonel Metter prompted.

“We sent an individual into the psychometric plane. That individual was able to, at a remote point, come out of the psychometric virtual plane as an avatar and influence the real, physical plane.”

“Doing what?” Metter asked.

“A simple task. Rearranging some blocks in a room on the other side of the country from where he— his physical body— was located.”

“Like a child in kindergarten,” Metter noted. A flush swept Hammond’s face. “Yes, like in kindergarten, Colonel. We had to start somewhere and we started with the very basics.”

“What went wrong?” Dalton asked.

“Excuse me?” Hammond again looked at Raisor. The CIA agent gave a very slight shake of his head.

“I asked, what went wrong?”

“You have to understand”— Hammond was picking her words carefully— “that the psychometric plane is very much unlike our reality. In some ways it is much more complex; in some ways it is much simpler. The biggest thing to know, though, is that we hardly understand it at all.

“One thing we do know is that distance can be very confusing on the psychometric plane. Just because you are here, that doesn’t preclude you from being right next to something occurring on the other side of the world in the virtual plane. Something which we are only beginning to understand is that this space, the line”— she pointed at the empty spot in the center of the slide— “between the psychometric and the real plane, is very unique. We don’t know exactly what separates the two, even though we can travel through it. But in going through, there is some cause and effect, it appears.” Hammond paused, as if considering how to continue.

“Sometimes our RVers can travel great distances in an instant by jumping’ from one known point to another. At other times, though, especially if the end point desired is not clearly defined to the RVer, the trip may take time. Sometimes, the trip cannot even be completed.” Hammond shrugged. “It is quite complex and requires an understanding of very complex math to even begin to understand.”

“Who else is over there?” Dalton suddenly asked. Hammond was startled, as was everyone else in the room. “No one is over there.”

“But your man ran into someone or something, didn’t he?” Dalton pressed.

Raisor shook his head as he spoke up. “No, he didn’t run into anyone. Something happened and his mission ended before we would have liked it to. But by moving those blocks you make so little of he did prove that it is possible to come out of the virtual world and into the real at a remote distance.”

“Where is this guy?” Dalton asked.

“That’s classified information,” Raisor said.

“This is a classified briefing,” Colonel Metter noted.

“That first trial with Psychic Warrior,” Raisor said,

“occurred a month ago. Since that time we have been refining the procedure.” He gestured toward his partner. “Dr. Hammond has—

“

“What happened to your man a month ago?” Colonel Metter’s voice was flat, but it caused Raisor to pause.

“We had a problem with our equipment,” Dr. Hammond said.

“The problem occurred in the real world on our end. A mistake was made, a mistake which I take responsibility for and which will not occur again because I have corrected the problem.”

There was silence as everyone in the room stared at her, waiting.

“Our man died. He drowned in the embryonic solution you saw on the slide.”

“No one knows, but more importantly, no one really cares,” the man in the long black leather coat said irritably. “You soldiers are fools caught in the past. Don’t you realize the State has changed?”