Dante Valderez sat calmly on the bench at the back of the cabin of the military helicopter, steadying himself with his black-gloved hands and glancing out the windows with his cold black eyes showing over the rim of the respirator covering the lower half of his face. The sky was starting to light up in the twilight of the early morning, and he could make out the boulders and plants of the desert valley floor speeding away below them. He spied a small, corrugated sheet metal shack not far from the low hills they were quickly leaving behind, and got up suddenly to bark loudly at the young man with short blond hair sitting in the cockpit with the pilot, “Lucretius! Get me the local PAB reports immediately! I want to know of any CIM activity in this area!” 

Lucky nodded hurriedly as he pulled down the microphone on his headset and started calling out to Proud American Brigade relays in the area, talking quickly as he described a young woman and a boy on the run, and their possible involvement with the California Independence Movement. His brow furrowed as he listened to the various reports coming in, and shaking his head trying to make sense of them.

“Yes, a young Hispanic woman with a boy about 10 years old. No, not Chinese. A dog? Are we talking about the same people, because it sounds like you’re describing two different women? And an old man… Asian for sure? Where are they now? Did you say smugglers on motorcycles flying south? Please repeat!” Lucky said, bewildered.

The helicopter’s pilot interrupted Lucky and called out to Dante, “Sir, there is an unidentified aircraft approaching us from the north.”

Dante ordered the pilot, “Change course to approach them, I sense they are the smugglers described in the PAB reports.”

“We will not be outside safe minimum distance from the target if we intercept them,” the pilot said, and then added with a notable strain in his voice, “The self-guiding missile launched by General Thompson has a conventional warhead, I assume?”

Dante looked at the radar screen that the pilot was pointing to and made a dismissive wave of his hand, saying, “Continue on our course westward. These smugglers are of no concern to us.” Dante returned to his seat at the back of the passenger cabin, and folded his arms, deep in thought. “I’ll let them witness the power of the QuadriStar, if they are who I suspect they are,” he said quietly to himself. The helicopter continued west, rising higher and chasing the fading stars and the crescent moon dipping lower on the horizon.

Lucky left the cockpit and entered the passenger cabin, sitting on the bench opposite Dante. “I’m sorry, sir. The PAB reports didn’t make any sense to me; they seemed to contradict themselves, and it didn’t sound like they could positively identify Rosa or Theo. They might have been confused with that girl brought to the QuadriStar; she did look a lot like Rosa. What was her name, the ‘Silver Princess’ or some silly thing?” he said, still looking confused and worried. “The PAB reports seem to describe another woman altogether.”

“The PABs are patriotic amateurs, and will typically see what they want to see. We can rely on them report suspicious behavior, but we can’t depend on the accuracy of their reports. If we put the reports together, and understand their limited experience and bias, we can get a better idea of what they actually saw,” Dante said, breathing softly behind his face mask in a way that almost sounded like sighing.

“What do you make of the reports, then?” Lucky asked cautiously.

Dante didn’t answer, letting the whumping of the helicopter blades fill the silence between the young man and his superior. Lucky squirmed a bit and then looked away, accepting the conversation was finished. He could see out the cabin windows that the helicopter carrying them was high above the valley and was crossing the mountain ranges back towards the coast, escaping the brightening sky behind them. He noticed an odd contrail below them that seemed to follow the contour of the terrain, and was dissipating as they followed it back to its origin.

“Is that…” Lucky asked Dante, but before he could complete his sentence, the pilot called to him. 

“Incoming coded transmission from General Thompson to Commander Valderez!” he said. Dante nodded to Lucky to return to the cockpit, and the young man obeyed, jumping up in anticipation of hearing the answer to his question. 

Lucky grabbed a notebook and pen and acknowledged the message, decoding it as he received it. He rushed back to Dante, and breathlessly recited it to the black-uniformed man: “Missile has reached targeted CIM base in the Morongo Valley. Report damage and casualties immediately!”

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***