Chapter One: Third Shift

Private George E. Elliott:“Sir, this is Private Elliott at Opana Point. There's a large formation of planes coming in from the north - 140 miles, 3 degrees east.”

Lieutenant Kermit A. Tyler:“Yeah? Well... Don't worry about it.”

-Tora, Tora, Tora

            “And the home of the brave!”

            Trooper Hal Jackson switched off the radio as the last notes of the National Anthem gave way to static. He yawned and took another sip of his stale coffee. One AM and still seven hours to go. Damn, he hated the nightshift. Normally he worked first shift; hours that a normal person would recognize. But tonight he’d been roped into filling for Roberts, who had had to go and get the stomach flu just that morning.

            Hal yawned again and reached for the bag of cookies on the passenger seat. Sugar and caffeine helped him stay awake, and cookies made less of a mess than most snacks. Besides, he’d be damned if he went with the ‘cops-donuts’ cliché: he already heard enough of that from his family. His cousin Nick had actually gotten him an ‘I Heart Donuts’ coffee mug for his birthday last year. Bastard.

            He shook his head and tried to focus on the road. He really wished the radio didn’t sign off at one. The late news was much better at keeping him up than staring at the lines of the coast highway flickering by in the dark. Ordinarily he might at least have had the sight of the moonlit Pacific to interest him, but tonight the moon and any stars were hidden by a thick layer of clouds, making the ocean nothing but a slightly blacker mass amidst the general blackness to his left. 

            On the other hand, the news wasn’t very happy news. It mostly dealt with the general chaos and bloodshed that was the Tanzanian War. The newscasters tried to put a brave face on it, but Hal had been in Vietnam, and could imagine only too well what was going on over there. The war was going badly for the Americans and Kenyans. Very badly. It seemed every other day there was news of another disaster and slaughter, and the war was still less than a year old. Hal couldn’t figure out what the military thought they were doing. The environment in Tanzania couldn’t possibly be worse that Vietnam. Heck, despite all the talk of African jungles, he’d heard that the place was mostly grassland, so how come it seemed like they were falling apart over there?

            Hal was especially concerned because he had two nephews who were just the right age to go to war, and one of them had already signed up for the Navy. President Taft and the damned military had better get their acts together before any of his family ended up over there.

            Hal had no kids of his own: his career as a State Trooper had seen to it that he never had the time for much of a social life. Right now he was thinking that was a blessing in disguise; at least he didn’t have to worry about his own kids going through what he had at that age. Worrying about his nephews was bad enough.

            Taking another sip of the rapidly-cooling coffee, Hal reported in to dispatch to let them know there was nothing to report. He’d only passed two or three other vehicles at all that night. Most people had the sense to be in on a wet, windy, chilly night like this. Schwartz, the dispatcher, sounded just as resigned as he was, but she at least was used to this sort of thing. Adele Schwartz had been doing this job for almost twenty years: longer than he had, so she was probably completely nocturnal by now. Yet, somehow, she’d managed to maintain a happy, seventeen-year marriage while he, who had tried to exclusively work the day shift, was still a bachelor at forty-two. That probably had something to do with the fact that, by all accounts he’d heard, she had been a real looker in her youth; old timers still told stories about the days when her swinging hips in a uniform skirt had been a legend in law-enforcement. That, and she had the good fortune to fall for an insomniac. 

            Hal had only just hung up the radio when something finally broke the monotony.

            He was coming around a point in the road where it curved back over a secluded beach. There was a small overlook-parking spot where people sometimes came to enjoy the view, but there wasn’t much of a view tonight. Nevertheless, there was a single car parked there: a beat-up old SUV. Hal had nearly passed it by before he realized how strange it was for anyone to be parked there on a night like this. He slowed down and began to pay attention. The SUV was dark green, with a California license plate and a number of dents to the doors and fender. Neither the interior nor the exterior lights were on.

            Hal pulled into the parking lot next to the SUV, dinging the radio as he went.

            “Schwartz, I’ve got a suspicious vehicle at the Del-Aire overlook,” he rattled off the description and license plate number. “I’m going to check it out.”

            “Do you want backup?”

            He thought about it. Though he knew from experience how quickly a seemingly harmless situation could turn ugly, he also knew that he didn’t want to be the guy who had to call in reinforcements to scare a vacationing couple trying to save on hotel bills. Besides, the nearest help was at least ten or twenty miles off, so it’s not like there was much point to it.

            “No,” he said. “Doesn’t look like much.”

            He hung up and got out of his patrol car, flashlight in hand. The chill wind sent an icy mist into his face and he curled his coat tighter about his shoulders, silently cursing the night and the cold and the stupid car. Walking over to the SUV, he shinned the light in through the windows, expecting to see someone curled up on the seats shifting awake at the sight of his beam.

            But the seats were empty. As far as he could tell, there was no one in the car.

            Puzzled, Hal shifted his light around the ground, looking for signs of where the driver might have gone, but the wind and the damp air had made everything too indistinct for him to learn anything. He looked up and out toward the beach, hidden in shadow below. And that’s when he caught a faint glimmer of light. Dousing his own flashlight beam, he watched the point where he had seen the light originating from, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. It came again. The clouds shifted, revealing a small amount of moonlightand he was able to distinguish several small, darker spots moving across the night-shrouded sand far below. There were people on the beach. Not only that, but he could see another faint light gleaming from out of the sea.

            This told him one thing: smugglers. Probably drug dealers meeting with their suppliers. That meant it was much more than he could handle alone and it was time to call for backup.

            Hal turned and hurried back to his patrol car, praying that the men on the beach hadn’t seen either his headlights or his flashlight during what seemed in retrospect to have been the stupidly long time before he had figured out what now seemed obvious. Of course the only people at a secluded spot at this time of night at this time of year would be smugglers!

            He got back into the car, but before he could key the radio he caught a sudden flash of movement in the distance. He looked up, but for a second couldn’t see anything. Then there was a deafening crash as something large and heavy slammed down onto his hood so hard that it lifted the rear half of the car six feet into the air. Spider-web cracks appeared in the windshield, and the cookies went flying from the passenger seat. Hal, who hadn’t put on his seatbelt, was thrown out of his seat and cracked his head against the ceiling before falling over the steering wheel, setting off the horn as the back half of the car slammed back down.

            Groaning, the whole world spinning around him, Hal instinctively felt for his gun. But then something sheered right through the car just over his head with a scream of tearing metal and shattering glass, moving so fast that he couldn’t see what it was. Dozens of razor-sharp bits of glass rained down on him, leaving burning cuts as they passed. Then something hard and heavy struck the roof, denting it downward so hard that it crushed Hal against the driver’s seat. Hal screamed as he felt his collarbone snap under the impact.

            Then the blade whizzed back, there was another shriek of tearing metal, and Hal was silent. The cold, misty rain mixed with the blood that had squirted out of the shattered patrol car’s roof.

            Silence hung in the air for a moment as a huge, hulking figure looked down on the ruined remnants of the patrol car. Then, slowly, there grew in the air the sound of hurrying footsteps and labored breathing at the man’s companions scrambled back up the steps from the beach.

            “You said this place would be abandoned,” said the big man. 

            “Our apologies, Comrade Gidan,” gasped one of the men.“We had thought to time your arrival for after he had passed by, but it seems he was late tonight.”

            The huge creature call Gidan growled low in his throat, feeling the jagged edge of the crumpled, bloodstained roof.

            “He will not be pleased. This could compromise our mission.”

            “What do we do?” asked another one of the men nervously.

            Gidan answered by going behind the patrol car, taking hold of the rear bumper, and pushing. The brakes were on, but that was good; it would leave skid marks and make the scene more confusing. The weight of the car was not much concern to him. In a few moments, he had rammed the shattered patrol car through the barrier and over the edge to crash into ruin on the beach below.

            That should confuse them enough to delay any subsequent investigation. Gidan and his people only needed a few days. Then the Americans would have much more pressing matters to worry about.

            This policeman was only the first of many. A herald of things to come. The dawning of a new world.

            A few minutes later, Gidan and his companions had become just another one of the few, lonely drivers on the California Coast Highway that night. While, miles away, dispatcher Adele Schwartz tried again and again to raise Hal Jackson’s radio.

Next Week: Chapter Two: The Birkin Center