Digital Life Form - part 2

 

Ops Room, Edwards Air Force Base 20:00 hours Pacific Standard Time

Lieutenant Jim Caldy leaned back in the ops commander’s seat, scanning the monitors lining the far edge of the room.  A few showed CCTV images from the main gates, the weapons storage entrance and one rotated the perimeter road cameras, changing every fifteen seconds.  The grainy black and white images flickered and lit the end wall, providing most of the illumination in the wide room.  Two technicians on his right pored over the dismantled IBM personal computer that had been installed three days earlier as part of a trial to see if the technology would be of any use to the airforce and a corporal sat typing up a report noisily to his left, the pool of bright light from the angle-poise lamp spilling across her desk.  She would leave once the report was filed and from then there would be very few other personnel entering or leaving the room until the early shift arrived, unless the red phone rang announcing an emergency or, more likely, a base exercise, which would precede all hell breaking loose.  Gripping his magazine and lifting his mug of coffee Jim paused: please don’t let the phone ring tonight.

Thirty-two minutes into his shift the met officer from down the corridor walked in holding the met report for the first half of the night – it was short enough to have been passed over the intercom but he always walked it round when on shift to break the boredom.

‘Hi Jim,’ he said, slipping the typed sheet onto the ops desk alongside the logbook, ‘nothing much to report weather-wise tonight,’ he offered in his Texan drawl.  Jim picked up the paper and scanned it – clear night, temperatures a little cooler than seasonal but nothing to affect flying operations.

‘Cool,’ Jim ventured, desperately trying to not get drawn into a conversation.  He looked across at the screens for some relief, a diversion, but none came.  The met man – Jim didn’t know his name, didn’t care – pushed home for his conversation.

‘Any flying tonight?’ he asked.  Jim scanned the logbook as if he’d not thought to check it previously.

‘Nothing much scheduled, big push on maintenance ready for the exercise next week, a few choppers practising night ops,’ he said, staring into his coffee cup, avoiding eye contact.  In the background the ops windows shook as a Phantom had both engines tested concurrently, the flare of the afterburners lighting up the ground-run dispersal.  Jim couldn’t make out the droop nose or the distinctive tail fin but he knew from the sound, the timbre, that it was a Phantom.  He knew that it would be straining against the locked-down metal chocks, desperately trying to do what it was designed to do, pushing to roll free, to accelerate, to fly.  Out of politeness he looked back up at the Texan, who grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

‘Good job, because of the meteorites,’ he said.

‘Meteorites?’  Jim felt a trap had been sprung and he’d walked straight into it.

‘Yeah.  Got the inside track on some NASA data.  Apparently there’s a load of space shit falling over the desert tonight, has been for the last coupla days.’

‘Enough to affect flights?’ Jim asked, knowing the answer in his gut.  NASA would have advised the senior operations team if the meteorites presented a flight hazard.  The met man shook his head, reluctantly Jim thought, before continuing.

‘No, odds well against any making it in one piece, most burn up on entry.  It would be a really unlucky jock that got hit by one.  Should make a good show tonight they reckon, will give me something to do while staring into space.  Anyway, gotta go, hourly checks on the instruments coming up,’ he said, turning abruptly for the door.  Jim watched him leave then scanned the room slowly before resuming his magazine, took in the two technicians talking quietly as they reassembled the IBM at the far end of the room and saw the corporal standing by the filing cabinet, locking it.  He knew she would ask if he wanted anything and that he would decline, thank you for asking, have a good evening.

He glanced across at the red phone, felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

*

Downtown Los Angeles FBI office was in almost complete darkness except for a few offices where agents sat typing up the last reports of the day.  Winston Grace was one of those agents, twenty-two years old, ebony black and determined to beat every other agent of his peer group, white or black, into at least second place; Winston was going to the top.  He shuffled the handful of papers he’d been working on before returning them tidily to their folder, the FBI seal embossed on the front flap.  Winston was running his index finger over the raised pattern as Agent Carlton Rhodes popped his head around the office door, smiling a smile as wide as California at his friend.

‘What’re you doin’ here?’ he asked, entering the room, ‘Don’t you know its bad luck to be here this late when you’re not on duty?’ he asked.  Winston leaned back casually.

‘And why might that be?’ he asked.  Carlton flopped down in the chair opposite and flicked through the files neatly piled on Winston’s desk.

‘If anything goes down and you’re in the building, you get sucked in, into some other’s shit,’ he said.  ‘And tonight that shit’s mine.’  Winston smiled.

‘Well I wouldn’t want to deprive you of any shit belonging to you,’ he said, scooping up the files and standing.  ‘I guess I ought to return these to the lock up and leave you to look after Los Angeles for the night.  Anything major going down?’ he asked as an afterthought.

‘Just a drugs bust, low life players, probably should be local police raid except they brought the shit over the State line.  Good team’s on it now, gonna go in a few hours’ time,’ he said, following Winston out of the room and down the dimmed corridor to the file registry.

‘You acting as base comms?’ Winston asked, as he unlocked one of the filing cabinets.  The look on Carlton’s face gave the answer.  ‘Hell Carlton, you can’t go in there with guns blazing every time, someone has to coordinate, that’s the smart job, the one that makes or breaks an operation.’

‘I’m not like you, Winston, I just want the adrenaline rush, the thrill of the chase.  Sitting behind a mic listening to guys having the time of their life just pisses me off.  I wanna be there, nailing the bad guys.’  Winston laid his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

‘Mic man’s the key.  He makes or breaks the raid, hears all the feeds, builds a more complete picture than any single guy on the spot.  His picture, experience and gut instinct are what keeps the other agents alive and the bad guys locked up.  Just enjoy it.  If you need any help, well, in about half an hour I’ll be sipping some bourbon so you’d better call before then,’ he said, locking the last file away and tossing the keys across to the duty registry clerk.

‘Me, I’m on my way outta here.’

A phone rang on the registry clerk’s desk, answered as the two agents turned to leave.

‘Some guy wants to know if we’ve contacted the FCC about the radio problems yet?  Says he needs to speak to an agent’, she said, looking at Winston.

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Digital Life Form will be back with part 3 soon.  Can't wait?  Like all of my books Digital Life Form is available as an eBook and paperback on Amazon and can be read for free if you're an Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited customer.