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Chapter Ten

Ellis glanced around the room. Not one of the men watching the monitors could meet his eyes. There was a lot of heavy breathing, but no one spoke. He looked over to where Graham was sitting by Riley. Graham knew what had just happened – how could he not? But he just sat there next to the bed, grasping Riley’s hand.

Graham had shut them all out. He hadn’t known what to do after the General rendered him helpless but he finally decided that if Riley died in the next twenty minutes, it was not going to be alone, some guinea pig under these bizarre circumstances. He had walked past the men watching the monitors, past the man still standing there uselessly with the paddles from the crash cart, and sat down, pulling the chair up to Riley’s bed. He took Riley’s hand in his left, reached out to Buffy with his right, and tried to remember what you were supposed to say when you prayed.

The monitors had been beeping frantically, feverishly. When Riley’s hand clenched and then released, Graham bowed his head, painfully aware of the suddenly silent machines. He closed his eyes against the rush of tears when he heard the beeping resume – slowly. Steadily. After a moment, he opened his eyes to see Green standing there looking at printouts and conferring with the rest of the medical team. Riley’s chest rose and fell. Graham looked over to see that Buffy was breathing normally too. He looked up and saw Ellis staring at him.

The Major nodded slightly and then turned to the rest of the group. “Everybody! Listen up.” He spoke loudly enough to be heard in the conference room across the hall. “You have thirty minutes. Take a cold shower, run some laps, do whatever you need to do. In one half hour we will meet in the conference room and in a serious, professional manner will discuss what happens from here. If I hear one thing that comes close to immaturity you will find yourself wishing to be assigned to latrine duty. Dismissed!” Even Dixon had the sense to leave the room. Ellis walked over to Graham who was now standing and leaning against the wall, watching the doctors watch the monitors. He put his hand on Graham’s shoulder. “You’re a good friend, Miller.”

“A good friend would have put him out of his misery months ago.”

“He’s not dead yet.”

Graham looked down at the floor. He couldn’t meet Ellis’ eyes.

Ellis turned and walked out of the room. He was not happy to see Dixon and the Senator waiting for him.

“At ease,” said the General. “We need a moment of your time.”

Ellis gestured at the now empty conference room. “In here.”

The three men sat down at the table. Ward began, “We’ve been following this project very closely over the past few months. I flew in from Washington yesterday when I heard that you brought Summers in. She has a way of making things happen, even, apparently, when she’s heavily drugged. She’s quite a girl, don’t you think?”

“Sir, I mean no disrespect,” said Ellis, “but we don’t have much time before my men start returning. If there’s something you need to tell me, you’d better say it soon.”

Dixon laughed and said, “Ellis, I guess I don’t need to tell you, you can speak freely here. I knew there was a reason I put you in charge of this mission.”

“Thank you, sir. Can we proceed then?”

Ward smiled as he continued. “Sometimes it’s hard to get out of politician mode. I’ll try and be as brief as possible. To be blunt, we never expected this mission to succeed.”

Ellis sat up a little straighter. “Which mission? Belize? Or the VR project?”

“Actually both.”

“I wasn’t sure if you’d consider Belize a success, even though the caves were destroyed in the end.”

“To the contrary. Belize was a greater success than we had hoped – we hadn’t actually expected those goals to be achieved. You look confused, Major. Did you ever wonder why we sent in four experienced Initiative men with sixteen new recruits?”

Ellis had wondered, but hadn’t been given the opportunity to question it. He took full advantage of that now. “Of course I did. It was a suicide mission – and a poorly planned one at that. You either send in an elite team or you send in cannon fodder. You don’t mix it up and waste them both.”

Dixon cut in. “I don’t really consider it a waste. We’re playing with bigger stakes here and there are sacrifices that need to be made. I needed to see who was worthy of the tasks ahead.”

“Who was worthy?” Ellis sat back in his chair in disbelief. “It was a test? You – I – sent those men in there to see who came out alive?” Over the course of his career, he had put men in horrible positions before, but at least they had had a fighting chance.

“Not quite, Ellis. It’s not that bad. We had every intention of pulling them out before there were too many losses. But they couldn’t know that; you couldn’t know that. The stakes needed to be high – high enough for them to prove themselves.”

“For who to prove themselves? The new recruits…?” His voice trailed off as he began to understand what the General was saying. “No. The Initiative men. That’s why there were so many of them.” He remembered thinking there were too many cooks when he saw who was on his team; this explained it.

“There were only supposed to be three. Miller, Taggart and Johnson were some of the best men to come out of Walsh’s program – we needed to know their capabilities.”

“’Some of’ but not the best.” Ellis laughed to himself. “So that’s why you didn’t give me any shit when I asked to add Finn to the team. I thought it was just because there wasn’t much time.”

“We couldn’t have asked for a better scenario,” said Ward. “Some council members weren’t supportive of bringing him back. Not to mention that he had absolutely no interest in returning. We’d been discussing it for awhile but couldn’t figure out a way to get it done…”

“…And then I call a few hours before the chopper takes off and say that I want Riley in on the mission.” Ellis was shaking his head as he asked, “So what about Miller and Taggart?”

“They’re good men, good soldiers. So was Johnson, we’re sorry to have lost him. But it was clear from the beginning that Finn was in charge down there. Even you treated him that way. It surprised us given his history. We know there was tension with him and some of the others but by the time they made contact with the demons, Riley was the only one we were talking to.” Ward stopped talking as the General glared at him.

Ellis caught the look between Dixon and Ward. “What do you mean talking to? I was the one giving them their orders; everything went through me.” He paused. “Didn’t it?”

“I had been getting reports from each of the Initiative men throughout the mission,” Dixon said. “But I also needed to hear it from you first hand without you being biased. Each of them had a slightly different assignment. We could tell by your reports that Finn’s tasks were the ones carried out.”

“How long did it take you to plan this exactly? Was it really worth the trouble? Seems like a big power trip to me…”

Dixon’s eyes turned cold and he leaned in towards Ellis, speaking barely above a whisper. “I appreciate your honesty Ellis, but not your insolence. The Initiative failed because of weakness. I will not allow that to happen again. The future of this branch of the military lies in the hands of the soldier I choose to succeed Maggie Walsh and you can be damn sure that that soldier will be tested until I have absolutely no doubts.”

The tension was broken by a knock on the door. “What?” yelled Ellis as he turned to see who had entered the room.

“Oh, sorry sir. I guess I’m a few minutes early. Why don’t I just wait outside?” Brown said as he ducked out again.

“So I guess you got your boy then. That’s why you decided to pull them out when you did. You made your decision; game over.” Ellis leaned back, away from Dixon. “So what about his record? Insubordination. Desertion. Treason. Aren’t you afraid he’ll help another HST escape? Aren’t you concerned about the rumors that he wasn’t on his own down there?” Ellis gave Dixon an icy smile. “Just to play devil’s advocate…”

“There are concerns,” said Ward, “but not about those charges. He’s explained them to our satisfaction. And, since I’m not military, I can say that they’re actually the reason he’s the best candidate in my book. I like all you soldiers, but you don’t ask enough questions. Things are too black and white for you.”

“I’m asking questions now, aren’t I?” Ellis said. “So what are the concerns? General? You don’t totally trust him, do you? You think he may have played a role in the mutiny. His report said he wanted the soldiers gone. You think he may have made it happen.”

“It makes Ward here happy,” Dixon said as he nodded his head at Ward. “He thinks it’s noble. I’m not so sure.”

“So what if he did? If it weren’t for that, there would have been a lot more casualties.”

“True, and if that was his reason, fine. But I need to be sure. I need to trust him completely.”

Ward said, “There’s more. We also want to know who his friends were, if they really were vampires. Someone helped him get to the caves, helped him get out of there – we want to know how. We want to know if the rumors are true.”

“Can’t have the head of your sub-t branch being too friendly with the locals, huh?”

Ward glared at Ellis. “We’re not opposed to strategic alliances, but we need to know what’s behind them. Why would they help him? He’s a professional demon hunter; hostiles don’t help guys like us without wanting something in return. And there’s one more thing, could be nothing: how did he figure out how to kill the demons? Miller couldn’t explain how Finn thought to use stakes; when Finn talked to Dixon, he was vague. It’s a small thing, but we want to know.”

“It’s pretty damn lucky that Green was all ready to go with the VR stuff. Without it, you’d be dead in the water. Or was that planned too?”

“Green’s research was promising. We may have rushed him a bit – he had only worked with primates and HSTs – but we didn’t have a choice. It was our only chance to get Finn out of there alive. It was a major gamble, but it seems to be working so far. Surprisingly, but I’ll take it.”

“Why don’t you let Riley out of this prison and just debrief him? The girl did what you wanted her to. Green is pretty confident that if they eased up on the sedatives he would come out of the coma. Why don’t you let him wake up?”

“Not until we get our questions answered. He wakes up and there’s no way he tells us what we want to know. He’d go to the brig just to spite us. This is the only way we can see this through.”

“And if he dies in there? If you’re planning his future, I’d think you’d be a bit more concerned about keeping him alive.”

Dixon answered, “Oh, I am concerned. Tonight was…unexpected. But there’s a lot riding on this, on how he answers these questions. I’m counting on you and Green to make this happen without him getting killed.”

Great. Nothing like a rock and a hard place. “You think when he wakes up that he’s going to accept your promotion willingly? Good luck.” Ellis stood up. “How much of this is public information?”

Dixon answered. “Nothing about the test, but you can tell them what we want to know. You can do this meeting without us; I’m sure your men will be much more comfortable without us sitting at the table.” He and Ward stood and left the room as the others filtered in.

When they all sat down, Ellis addressed Green, “How’s our boy doing?”

“He’s alive. He’s doing even better than he was this morning – surprisingly, given that he almost died half an hour ago. But his brain activity is off the charts. As I told you earlier, I think that if we weaned him off the sedatives we might start to see the results we were hoping for.”

Brown leaned forward excitedly. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

Graham leaned back into his chair as he watched Ellis’ face. He couldn’t fucking believe this. “’But.’ There’s a ‘but,’ isn’t there?”

“Yes. ‘But…’” replied Ellis. “The General has given me orders to continue this mission. There are several things we need to know.” Ellis summarized them for the team. He looked at Graham. “Graham, he shouldn’t have made it out of Belize alive and you know it.”

“Are you implying that Riley…?” Graham was furious.

“I’m not implying anything. I’m saying straight out that Dixon has some questions about Finn.”

Graham leaned forward. “This is crazy. He’s under suspicion because he didn’t die. Unbelievable.”

Green didn’t often find himself agreeing with Graham, but this time was an exception. “I am adamantly against this approach. Another interaction like the one this evening and his heart will most certainly fail. If you’re not going to let us pull them out of this then at least let us up the sedatives and shut down the program for a few weeks so he can have a reasonable chance of survival.”

“Weeks? Can you be sure that will be enough? And can you guarantee me that the memories will hold and we can start up where we left off?” Ellis watched as Green shook his head. “No, I didn’t think so. This needs to get done now.”

“I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m saying. If he dies, you don’t get the memories at all. There’s a reason heart attack patients are cautioned against strenuous activity. After such a shock, the body needs time to recover. In the last year, Finn’s body has been stressed beyond belief. He’s been in a coma for seven months. In one day he’s not only resumed normal activity, he’s far exceeded healthy levels. The only reason he’s still alive is due to years of intense military conditioning. But he is human. Make no mistake. The next time will kill him.”

Brown was looking at Graham. “You know him – them. After a night like that, when would the ‘next time’ be? Could they…? Would they do it again?” They all looked at Brown. “Not ever – I mean tonight.”

Graham folded his arms against his chest. He smiled remembering Buffy and Riley in the early days…constantly at each other. One night he had been woken up four times thanks to them. Walsh had been furious when Riley missed roll call the next day. “Hell, yeah.”

“That’s what I thought.” Ellis looked around the table. “Dixon knows the risks, but he seems to think we can manage them. So that’s what we need to do. Brown, I want two men monitoring activity for the rest of the night. Green – what’s your coverage?”

“We have a nurse on for the rest of the night.”

“Make it one nurse and one doctor per patient from here on.”

Green nodded as Ellis continued issuing orders. “Ripley – can you plant something into the program? Something that might spark a conversation?”

Ripley nodded and replied, “We can manage something.”

“Good,” said Ellis. “Call in whoever you need. Let’s try and manipulate them into talking about Belize so we can get them out of there.” This had been a long day; Ellis was ready to wrap it up. “Everyone wears beepers and cell phones tonight. And stay close – I want you to be able to get back here in less than 10 minutes if I need you. Brown and Green, report back at 0600. Ripley and Miller, report at 0900 hours. Get some rest. Let’s hope that their morning is uneventful. Dismissed.”

~~ End of Chapter 10 ~~

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