"We Fly Out Tonight," the General....

Thousand+ Words for Dec. 26, 2025

"We fly out tonight," the general said from the stage. He stood in front of a large slide showing the continent of Africa; the borders of Kenya were highlighted in red. A series of concentric red circles was centered on the village of Kalekoi, in the western edge of Lake Turkana. "Direct flight to Khartoum, overnight there, then local transport to the forward base on the western edge of the village," he continued. The slide changed to a reminder of the security level of the briefing in large block letters. "Questions?"

The soldiers sitting in the theater seats looked at each other, and then one stood. "Captain Pilson, Second AD," he said, observing the protocol for questions; one begins by stating one's own name. Second Armored Division was a proud unit, and many of the soldiers around him broke into muted but still somewhat off-protocol hoots and calls; the young captain looked around, smiled, and motioned for them to stop.

"Go ahead, Captain," the general said from the stage.

"Ah, yes, sir, I think all of us are wondering what kind of interaction we can expect from the--" he didn't want to say it, but everyone knew what he was referring to. "--the personnel already in place." By that euphemism, the captain meant the Central Intelligence Agency, whose assets in place had first responded to the incident, containing it as best they could until the cavalry arrived in the form of the United States Army.

"Full cooperation," the general said. "Likewise, I expect you to give the forces in place your full cooperation."

"Yes, sir." The captain sat down.

The general scanned the room, giving voice to the primary concern upward from his own position in the chain. "Folks, we've got to get this one right, as you know, and it's going to take the combined cooperation of you and your individual units as well as agencies that historically haven't cooperated all that well in the past." A wave of laughs made its way through the auditorium. "We all know that we're the last people the agency in place would call for help. The fact they are accepting our help means--" the general intentionally avoided the phrase "called us," because he knew, as none of the other did, that the summons had come from much higher than the director of the CIA "—that they recognize they can't handle this one alone and I agree. Anyone else?"

Seeing no hands, the general put the slide clicker down on the podium at far stage right. "All right then, thank you, everyone, and let's have a safe mission out there."

The last of his words were drowned out by the noise of 340 US Army personnel coming to attention as the general strode down the steps and around the end of the stage.

He stepped down a short hallway and turned left into what might have been called the Green Room in a television studio: a waiting room for those about to go on stage. It was not green, but it was well appointed, with comfortable recliners, a long sofa, and a long counter with a bowl of fruit at one end and a bowl of bottled water in ice on the other. Monitors hanging from the ceiling showed live views of the stage, which was now empty except for the US and general's flags on each side and the deserted podium, and a view of the seats in the theater. Most of the audience was making their way out; some of the soldiers were still there, standing and talking in groups of three or four.

A man was in the room when the general stepped in and went directly to the ice bowl for a bottled water. He wore civilian shirt and tie; his jacket hung on a nearby coat rack. "Nice job, Jack," he said.

The general grunted as he turned around. "Thanks, Bob. Those guys just hate CIA. I think we're going to have problems."

"Oh, they'll do all right," Bob said. "Here's the latest from Kalekoi," he said, holding out a printout.

Jack took the papers and flipped through them. "They get the guy to talk yet?" the general asked.

"Nope," Bob said. But they've x-rayed him, and he's got a lot of stuff inside him. Jack looked up.

"Really? What stuff?"

Bob shrugged. "Who knows? It's all implanted, looks like most of its got a direct hardwire to the spinal cord."

Jack scanned the printouts more carefully, taking in the text. "It says here that the guy still hasn't eaten," he said. "How long has it been since he was found?"

Bob looked at his watch. "Thirty hours now," he said.

"No urine or stool?"

"Nope. He apparently doesn't have to go. Probably comes in handy during those long intergalactic flights," Bob said.

"Food's being offered to him?"

"Sure," Bob said. "Vegetables, meat, fish, it's all there in his cell. Won't touch any of it."

"And he's human? We're sure of that?"

Bob shrugged again. "As sure as we can be, I guess. DNA won't be back until later this afternoon."

The general downed the last of the water in his bottle and tossed it in the trash. "Well, we'll see, I guess. You realize that this guy who or whatever he is, he's only cooperating with us because he wants to. Whatever those implants are," he said, "he almost certainly can activate them whenever he wants."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking."

"You going to fly over with me?"

"No," Bob responded. "I've got to stop over in Rome. Glenn Robinson's getting nervous."

"All right, then," the general said, gathering items together and placing them in in a leather gym bag. "I'm going to swing by the front office and then I'm on my flight."

"All right, Jack," Bob said. "See you in Kenya." "

Yeah, I'll see you." Jack Slydell hefted his gym bag and stepped out of the waiting room, down the hall, and out into the bright Florida sunshine. He threw his bag in the back of his staff car and slid behind the wheel and started the engine.

The airfield radio mounted in the trunk fed its signal to the speakers inside the car. "--Whisky seven, final at discretion, contact ground four fiver and g'day," the controller said.

"Final and four fiver, g'day," the pilot answered back crisply.

"Cardinal four seven, make three-sixty for spacing."

"Four seven, three-sixty," the civilian aircraft in the pattern responded. On the controller's screen, the plane's green track was already starting to curl slightly; it would curl all the way around and then resume its path on the downwind to land on Runway Three-Three. As the general steered the car out of the base theater parking lot, he reached down to change his radio to the airfield manager's private channel; he could do this by touch. There were only four positions on his channel knob, and having established the current channel as the tower, he knew from long experience that the AFM's channel was two clicks counterclockwise. He made the adjustment, then keyed his microphone: "Hawk Seven, Hawk One," he said, saying the controller's code name first followed by his own.

The briefest of pauses, then the speaker came to life: "Hawk Seven, go ahead, sir."

"Yeah, Steve, how are we coming on getting the Mercury departure up?" Mercury was the code name for the Kenya mission that would leave later that night--with General Slydell heading the team to Kalekoi.

"Mercury departure is loading now, sir, and we expect doors closed at 2045 local. Crew report is 2100, personnel report is 2145," he said.

"Yeah, that's fine, thanks Steve," the general said. The airfield manager responded with a click of his microphone, and the general continued weaving his car along the base's manicured lanes, returning the salutes of personnel going about their business. As he approached the base's park, he noticed one of the senior colonels walking along the sidewalk; the colonel saluted as Slydell pulled his car to the curb. "Jimmy, what are you doing?" he asked.

"Hey, sir. I'm just walking back from lunch. Andrea told me I have to walk now every day, if I want to keep eating."

Slydell smiled at the man's reference to his own wife. "Let me give you a ride, I want to tell you about something."

"Yes, sir." He stepped in front of the general's car and slid inside. As he pulled the car away from the curb, Slydell glanced over at the younger man. "Jim, how much weight have you lost?" he asked.

Colonel James Oyama smiled and put his hand on his gut--which was much smaller than it had been only a few weeks before. "Twenty-two pounds as of this morning," he said. "I haven't felt this good in years."

"That's great," the general said. The general was rail thin, always had been--a runner up until his mid-fifties, Slydell didn't run anymore but he did like to get his hour's worth of time in the gym every other day or so. "There's a little something going on in Kenya," he said.

"Kenya? Never been there," Oyama replied.

"I want to read you in on this, okay? It's top secret, compartmentalized blue. You understand?"

"Yes, sir," Oyama said, and there was a palpable change in the atmosphere of the car--both men suddenly became businesslike. "Top secret, compartmentalized blue," the colonel answered back, as protocol demanded.

"Thirty-one hours ago, an aerial craft crash-landed near the village of Kalekoi, in northern Kenya. The Kenyan military police responded and took control of the crash site, the media don't have it yet. The pilot of the craft, apparently a human male, was recovered, but he has no identifying papers of any kind. He was dressed strangely, and has not responded to interrogation." Oyama nodded. "The craft is not like anything we've ever seen--no engines that we can tell, just sort of a little metal box with a bunch of odd equipment inside."

"UFO, you think?" Oyama said.

"I don't know," Slydell answered. "But the pilot has not eaten or drank anything despite having been offered food and water, and there's something else. The Kenyans tell us that he hasn't gone to the bathroom in all that time."

"What? He hasn't peed in thirty hours? The man's going to die," Oyama said.

"Yeah, I know. That's why we're flying out there. Tonight."