Base Lewis-McChord, Washington State
—Good morning, Mr. Mitchell. Dr. Franklin tells me you are making progress.
—Oh yeah. Like she says, all you need is some faith and trust…and a little bit of pixie dust…We’ve been flying all over North America for just over four months now. It’s sort of like crop dusting at night, only from a lot higher, and it’s probably a lot more illegal. Operation Tinker Bell, that’s what we call it. It was too easy, flying around leaving a trail of magic powder behind.
—Is the compound working?
—Definitely working. Hats off to Dr. Franklin, she sure can cook. ARCANA, she calls it. It means “secrets,” or in this case Argon-Rich Compound for Aerial Nocturnal Application. I think she just liked the acronym. When we first started, pretty much everyone but Dr. Franklin thought this was a complete waste of time, but we found another arm piece in Vermont our first week out. We almost crashed again, though. Kara thought…
—Pardon me. Kara?
—Chief Warrant Officer Resnik. I’m sorry. We’ve been working with civilians for a while now. I guess it rubs off. She and Dr. Franklin thought we’d be fine flying at eight thousand feet, but when the arm piece we found activated, our engine stopped just like it did in Turkey. Fortunately, we were high enough for autorotation, and she was able to restart the engine before we hit the ground. She’s really amazing to watch. Not the most tactful person you’ll ever meet, but the girl can fly.
—I am happy to see you two are getting along. I was hoping you would. Do I detect a hint of infatuation in your voice?
—I wouldn’t go that far. I’m well aware of the Army’s fraternization policies, but you’d have to be made of stone not to find her attractive. She’s built like a swimmer: long legs, very strong, and shoulders that would put most men to shame. I don’t know how to say that without sounding like a jerk, but the men at the base say it makes their day just to watch her walk away. She has the darkest hair for someone that light-skinned. It just makes her eyes jump out at you. That pale green, it’s very…disconcerting. Well, you’ve seen her. You know how hard it is not to stare at her eyes.
—I never noticed. You must realize you are not operating in a typical military environment. You would not be jeopardizing the chain of command.
—Actually, we would be. In the Army, the co-pilot is second-in-command. That means she’s my superior. We have our own tiny little chain of command to jeopardize, and the Army is pretty serious about the Uniform Code. It doesn’t matter anyway. I find her attractive, that’s all. And believe me, she’s not the least bit interested. She acts like she barely tolerates me.
—Coming from her, I would take that as high praise. Let us get back to the mission.
—Yes! We’ve divided the country into a grid. Each box on the grid is roughly the square mileage we can cover in one night, based on the time it takes to get there from the nearest Army base. We can cover a good portion of the map from here, and we go from base to base to clear the boxes farther east and south. We’re just about halfway through the grid right now.
—Have you been able to disperse the compound from a safe distance? I would rather the two of you not nearly die every time you discover a new body part.
—We have, sir. As I mentioned, we almost crashed our first week out, so we went up to fifteen thousand feet on the next flights. We were unsure whether it was close enough for the pieces to activate before we got too far away to see them. It took about a month before we found another part, a lower leg, then a foot, along the Kansas-Missouri border.
—A foot?
—A big one. I was hoping it would have some giant toes, but it looks more like a fancy thick-soled boot than a foot. It’s a beautiful piece though. Dr. Franklin said she had good taste in shoes.
It turns out flying higher is also a lot faster, the ARCANA dispersal pattern is much wider at high altitude so we need fewer passes to cover the same area.
—So you found five pieces so far?
—Six. We just found a thigh under the Tennessee highway. That thing is huge!
—How large is it?
—I’m not really good with measurements, maybe sixty feet. Big