TKG08 WE WILL BUILD Rel 01 (5 page)

She turned to her dad, “I heard you the last time you got your ‘dad bat’ out and jumped into my personal life, I’ll go see him, ok?”

Lance put his hands together on his desk, looked above her head for a second then looked her in the eyes, “Yes, I think that will do.”

“Thank you.”

“So long as it’s soon.”

Bethany Anne opened her lips to let her dad see she had her tongue held firmly by her teeth.
 
His grin caused her to smile.
 
“Fine dad, I’ll go see him tonight if he has time.”

“Oh baby,” Patricia said from behind Bethany Anne.
 
“He’ll have time.”

Washington D.C., - USA

Barb carefully reached over to the donut box and pulled a glazed donut from the four that were left.
 
She put a napkin underneath it to keep her desk clean.
 
It was past eight P.M. and everyone else had gone home for the evening.

She had started on her other project promptly at quitting time and dropped three hours on that projects’ research and then came back to this enigma.

She couldn’t help it.
 
The truth is out there, it seemed.
 
But it was damned difficult to find.

She was hooked.
 
She needed to find out what was behind the closet door, even if it was something scary.
 
It was like she was a child again and even though her parents promised her there was nothing under her bed, she still kept a bat she had taken from her brother’s room with her every night.

Now, she was a grown woman and really wished she had that bat again.
 
If she had any nails to bite, they would be gone again.

This time, if the vague puzzle she was putting together could be believed, some monsters had been on a rampage to take out other monsters and were now targeting her terrorists.

With some shady government contact that had to be almost a hundred years old.
 
She felt like was in some sort of Twilight Zone episode.
 
Just what the hell was going on?

She worked to flesh out her earlier report on the missing terrorists and the strike here in Washington D.C.
 
The ex-Army Colonel had a heart attack in prison just two weeks ago, so there wasn’t going to be any way to get any further information from him.
 
While that seemed too tidy, she doubted it had anything to do with her monster squad.

‘Huh’, she thought, that’s a good enough a name to call them.
 
Since they seemed to have no issues going ‘bump in the night’ she rather liked the name and wrote it down.
 
There, at least they had a name.

What she had been able to figure out was that the information about Colonel Nickelson taking money to sandbag his own men was true.
 

She was able to finally track down the phone records for a cheap throw-away phone that matched a few calls into the German military and then to Nickelson.
 
Once it was used to call Nickelson, it went dark.
 
Whoever used it had pretty good operational security.

Bastard!

Barb liked puzzles, but sometimes she was impatient as hell and it would have been nice if the person who called Nickelson would have been a little less crafty.

She combed the phone records to see if the people in the German military that were contacted had any other throw-away calls, but nothing registered for the last few months.
 
Maybe the person had gone dark.

Or, she considered, maybe the monster squad had gotten to him or her?

She shuddered.
 
Whoever this team was, they were damned efficient at taking out the trash.

Which caused her to wonder, who pulled the strings to get her to find this group?
 
Why did they want her to track them so badly that they pulled a major research asset, focused on high-probability terrorist attacks, to try and find them?
 
As far as Barb could tell, the monster squad never went after innocent targets.
 

She bit down on her donut, realizing that she had just finished it without tasting it at all.
 
She swallowed a sip of coffee.
 
She was starting to worry about where her thoughts were taking her.

The monster squad was careful to keep themselves off the radar. Yet she had some ghost government contact pulling strings to try to find them. And … there was only one point of convergence between the two groups … her. Shit!
 
Her eyes opened in alarm.
 

She was the cut-out.

She bent to her left and wiped her hands over her trash can.
 
It was time to start gathering more information on who was directing her research.

She needed insurance and the only way she could do that was to gain information.

She needed to figure out who wanted to know about the monster squad and why.

TQB Base, Colorado – USA

Cheryl Lynn knocked on the door and heard a lady call out ‘come in’.
 
She opened the door and noticed a pretty woman to her left.
 
Her desk had a really old time name holder with ‘Patricia’ on it.
 
Cheryl Lynn wondered if the lady had inherited it from someone who had been here at the base when it was run by the Army.”

The woman stood as Cheryl Lynn closed the door behind her and stepped forward to shake hands.
 
“Hello, I’m Cheryl Lynn.
 
I was told by John Grimes to come see you when I had my children enrolled in the school here.”

Patricia smiled, “Hi Cheryl Lynn, you’re John’s cousin, right?”
 
Cheryl Lynn nodded, “Good, have a seat right there and I will answer some of your questions before Bethany Anne gets back.”

Both women sat, one on each side of the desk.
 
Cheryl Lynn spoke first, thinking of something to cut the ice with.
 
“I noticed you have such a gorgeous old desk holder here, was your mom or grandmother in the service?”

Patricia looked down and noticed that Cheryl Lynn meant her own desk holder.
 
She wasn’t sure if she should be annoyed or humored.
 
She smiled, “That’s going to be an interesting story to share, but I can tell you that I brought it with me to this base from my previous posting.”

“You were in the Army as well?”

“Yes sweetie, I was in the Army.”
 
Cheryl Lynn thought it odd that the lady, who certainly couldn’t be any older than herself was calling her ‘sweetie’.

The door opened behind her and a young looking man stalked into the room without looking at the two ladies.
 
He was obviously annoyed at something and didn’t notice the women staring at him.
 
Cheryl Lynn turned to look at Patricia who smiled and winked at her before she turned back and watched him grab a clipboard with a yellow pad full of notes on it.
 
He then opened the top left drawer on his desk.

Bang!
 
He closed it and opened the next.
 
Bang! went the second drawer and then he opened the third.
 
“Ha!”
 
He reached into the drawer and pulled out an item that made a sound of something wrapped in cellophane when ‘bang’ the third drawer slammed closed.

He stood up, and he bit and held the Honey Roll package with his teeth as he searched his pockets and then opened the pencil drawer of his desk.
 
He reached in and grabbed a pair of keys and stuck them in his pocket.

BANG!

He snagged another pile of paperwork in his right hand and started for the door, never looking in the ladies’ direction.
 
Cheryl Lynn heard a muffled, “Love you, babe” from the man who opened the door and walked out, shutting it behind him without slamming it.

Cheryl Lynn was wearing a look of astonishment on her face as she turned to stare at Patricia.

“That, my dear, is my husband Lance.”
 
Patricia said. “He was the previous General of this base and I have to say having him here on the base tends to bring out the worst aspects of his previous role.”

“General?”
 
Patricia nodded to Cheryl Lynn.
 
“How old is he?”

Patricia was opening her mouth when the door opening interrupted them again.
 
This time Cheryl Lynn heard Bethany Anne from the hallway, “Ashur, sit your ass down right here.
 
No! Here you excuse for a white walking rug.
 
Dad had a hissy fit when you shed all over his floor last time.
 
No, don’t give me that look you miscreant!
 
You know damn well you rolled around behind his desk on purpose.
 
I swear to God I’m going to have the Reprobate & Degenerate group figure out how to communicate with your ass so I can slap you when you give me lip.”

The door finished opening and Bethany Anne stepped in.
 
Cheryl Lynn noticed that Scott was behind her.
 
He saw her in the room and winked, then he turned around and stood guard.
 
John had introduced her to Eric first, then Scott and finally Darryl when Scott and Darryl came back from a short trip down to Texas looking for, of all things, a UFO that had supposedly been spotted.

Patricia stood up again and walked to meet Bethany Anne and give her a hug.

Bethany Anne asked, “Where’s dad?”

Patricia answered, “He just left.
 
He was grumpy without his sugar fix.
 
He grabbed his notepad and has a conference call with the teams on the Polarus at the moment.

“Oh, ok.”
 
Bethany Anne turned to Cheryl Lynn, “Did Toni and Todd get in school ok?”
 
Cheryl Lynn nodded, trying to catch up with everything she thought she just heard.
 
“Good.
 
Did John take them over to the research area?”
 

Cheryl Lynn thought back to when her daughter Toni and Marcus Cambridge started a discussion when the two met.
 
Marcus apparently knew enough of biology sciences to get into an in-depth discussion with her about genetics of all things.
 
Before Cheryl Lynn had a chance to figure out what was going on with those two, she heard a ‘whoop!’ from Todd and turned to see him talking with two men near a military helicopter.
 
Todd later told her it was a Black Hawk named ‘Shelly’.
 

John had smiled and told her to stay quiet.
 
He had turned to her and said in a lowered voice, “This is when boys get a chance to find their love.
 
Bobcat and William won’t let him get hurt, trust me.”
 
Cheryl Lynn nodded and turned to see Toni following Mr. Cambridge into a room full of science equipment.
 
By the time she came out, she was talking about black holes and parsecs with the man and had it setup to come see him on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons after school.

All she could do was slug her over-testosteroned cousin in the arm when he smiled at her.

Cheryl Lynn answered Bethany Anne’s question, “Yes.
 
Todd can’t stop talking about Shelly and now Toni won’t stay quiet about planets and outer-space.
 
She speaks about genetics every once in a while as well, but at the moment she acts like visiting Mr. Cambridge is the best gift I can provide her.”

“Mr. Cambridge?”
 
Bethany Anne looked at her.

“The scientist?” She answered.

“No, I know who he is, I’m just surprised you called him by his last name.”

Cheryl Lynn blushed, “Well, he is rather old with that grey hair and stuff so it would feel weird to not show him respect.”

Bethany Anne turned thoughtful for a moment and looked over to Patricia, “Would you mind checking him out?”

Patricia turned back to her desk and asked over her shoulder, “Same kind of ‘check out’ your dad gave me?”

Bethany Anne smiled, “Well, I’m not sure I want to know what he did, but how about you confirm if he is ‘with us’ enough that he warrants a health bump?”

“Got-chya.”
 
Patricia reached for her phone and typed in a reminder.

“Was that man really your father?”
 
Cheryl Lynn asked.

Bethany Anne turned to answer Cheryl Lynn’s question.
 
“Yes.”
 
Then she just watched Cheryl Lynn for a reaction.

Cheryl Lynn considered her next question carefully.
 
She felt like she was being measured for some reason.
 
Cheryl Lynn felt that she got on the base because she was John’s cousin, but she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do.
 
All John said was that she was going to work for Bethany Anne in some capacity.

She considered what she had seen to date, Bethany Anne could joke, but she had always seemed like she was straight forward when joking.
 

Cheryl Lynn said, “I’m not in Kansas anymore, am I.”
 

It was a statement, not a question.
 
Patricia laughed, “Honey, you left Kansas a long time ago.”

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Bethany Anne arrived, in what her team had started to call her landing rooms.
 
She let go of Ashur’s neck and stepped over to the door and started unbolting the locks that ensured no one came in the room while she was absent.
 
She had barely started opening the door when she heard the steps of Tabitha running down the hall.

Bethany Anne stepped back to let Ashur jump ahead. She winced at the ‘train wreck’ which happened when Ashur and Tabitha collided, Tabitha yelling out “Ashur!” and giggling while Ashur licked her face.