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  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 poten
tial 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?”