Chapter 33
Near Tampa, Florida
Task Force HQ
Monday
2:51 p.m. Eastern Time
“No, I can’t reveal the source of this information, but I can tell you it is from three separate sources, each completely unaware of the others,” Dr. Banks explained. “It just came through to me and I haven’t been able to verify it yet either.”
The entire Task Force from enlisted up, all the civilians, the two new Space Force guardians, and a new U.S. Air Force captain had joined them. The FBI special agent, Montgomery, had just landed in a small plane and had literally taxied just outside the hangar, tied down his plane, and badged in to the secure area.
“Glad you could join us, Special Agent Montgomery,” she told him as he found a seat at the large conference table that had been set up for them.
Ginny didn’t know the undercover agent very well, but she could tell that Frank did and that was good enough for her. There was something about Lieutenant Colonel Alvarez that she liked and trusted. It wasn’t the fact that she had read his personnel file and looked at his background investigations. And it wasn’t the fact that she had seen him in action, which was impressive. There was just something about him that said Trust me.
“I printed out copies for everyone and I’ll not tell you any of my interpretations until I hear yours,” she started. “I will answer questions about what you might be seeing and how to interpret the…no, that’s not right…how to understand the nomenclature. I want your interpretations.”
“Very cryptic, Ginny,” Dr. Grayson said as he accepted the three printed and stapled together packets from her.
“Don’t say anything about your interpretations out loud, please,” she instructed them. “Just write down what you think and ask questions. But we’ll hold off on sharing our thoughts until everyone has an opportunity to look at these. Note that I’ve only scanned them so far and haven’t really looked at them either. Let’s take, say, the next ten minutes and look and take notes. At the end of the ten minutes we’ll compare and go from there. Good?”
“Suits me,” Alvarez said.
“Sure thing,” Mac added. There were various head nods and grunts of agreement around the table.
“Okay, we’ll start now. And no cheating.” Ginny grinned at Frank as if scolding him.
She sat down and looked at the first page of the first packet. There was a date, time, and location stating when and where the analysis was conducted in the upper right-hand corner, with the name “Paul” above that. A few lines of space were skipped and then on the left-hand side the case number was handwritten. To the right of that was the letter A.
She considered the training she’d had on the intelligence sources and she understood that A was just a list that the analyst discovered. “AOL” meant “analytical overlay,” which was the analyst giving his or her own interpretation of what the list meant. Ginny continued studying the page. There were some scribbled drawings that looked like a long truck with many wheels or maybe a tube on a trailer. Ginny got that part right away. There were more As and AOLs and here and there were some Bs that followed the As that suggested a second feature.
There were more drawings and scribbles. There were some words that were almost unintelligible, as if written by someone with their eyes closed. She flipped the page. At the top right corner was the number 2 and in the middle at the top was written “S2,” followed by a long list of words. The words included: time or haste, movement, black, large body of water, six. There was no AOL by this list until nearly at the bottom of the page, where there was a drawing of a large box with structures jutting out from it upward in multiple directions. The box sat on four legs and there was a wavy line at the bottom covering them. On top of the box near the center was a tall structure standing upright. The analytical overlay read “CRANE OR TOWER.” The words listed by it included: ORANGE, BLACK, WHITE, WATER, MANY PEOPLE, METAL.
Ginny wasn’t certain what to make of that page yet, though she had some thoughts. She flipped to what was labeled as page 3 in the upper right-hand corner and again had an “S2” in the middle of the page. There was a drawing that started with a single amorphous blob. The number “239” was written beside it. There were dotted lines and then a second blob with a “235” by it. There were arrows drawn around the second blob pointing inwardly at it. There was a large circle drawn around it with a large sloppy “X6” by it. Ginny got that drawing very quickly. The AOL beside it said “NUCLEAR BOMB? HOLY SHIT!”
The line from the “Holy shit!” drawing had an arrow from the “X6” to a blank spot on the left of the page where a quicker, smaller, sloppier version of the box-tower-on-legs thing from the previous page. Written beside that was the sentence “HERE FOR NOW.”
Next page.
Page 4 was just as interesting and useful and useless at the same time. There was a scribbled drawing of an arc intercepting an ellipse. Then the list of words that followed read as: loud, bright, 3 men or knights, loud, beginning. There was an analytical overlay describing possibly men in body armor but more people not wearing the armor. Then there was an odd list of numbers written on the page that Ginny didn’t understand.
1 25544U 98067A 2974.31742528 -.00002182 00000-0
The numbers continued underneath as if the analyst had run out of room on the page.
-11606-4 0 1027
A second line of numbers began.
2 25544 51.6416 247.4627 0006703 130.5360 325.02881002537
There was a drawing of a blob or stick figure–type thing on the ellipse drawing with another thing near it attached by a wavy line. Then the list of words read: bright or flash, dark or darkness or quiet, nothing or no communication…
There was a final page with a row of letters and numbers across the top, and beneath each one of those a summary list of what the analyst seemed to think was most important to go under whatever each of the letters meant. Ginny always had to look at her cheat sheet to recall what each column of data was. She sat the first one aside and let out a long sigh. She realized it had only taken her about two minutes and that everyone else was waiting for her to look up.
“So, what is an AOL?”
“Who’s Paul?”
“What the hell is this scribbled stuff?”
Ginny spent the next minute or so explaining that an analyst received this information based on a means to be discussed later and that the AOL was his or her interpretation of whatever that data from the source was and could be a bias to be ignored but was important enough to the analyst that they felt they needed to mention it. Once she felt that she had the team calmed down and educated just enough to read the documents and make up their own minds, she looked at the second packet. This one was done by “Sarah” and her penmanship and drawing skills were either better or done more slowly and concisely. But other than those differences and the occasionally different adjective, the two packets were almost identical. But on the “Sarah” pages the two words “Door” and “man” was repeated. Each time the word “Door” was written, the letter D was capitalized.
The third packet was only slightly different in that the only numbers written in sequence were “25544” and the letters T, L, and E appeared. There was also the word “doorman” on the last page at the bottom. Ginny didn’t know what to think of the latter parts of all three analyses nor did she understand the similarities. She had a few ideas, but she waited for the team to finish before she spent too much effort thinking it through.