We Are In It.

Northern New Hampshire

Here are three good questions I'm thinking about while Eve and I cross over the land of Fake Trees toward where I know the place has an entrance. The ground is soft and very warm as the poured concrete underneath cools. 

Question one. Who needs to disguise an army that is almost battalion-sized?

I recalled the blueprint on the files in the thumb drive from Gerry Tanner's computer.  Gerry Tanner's genius was apparent in the design of the structure. 

Because it would have been impossible to cover up the seismic activity that blasting would have caused, the depth of this facility was not at the level of the Uranium Enrichment Facilities in Iran or the InterContinental Missile factories in North Korea. 

This place was not built to withstand a nuclear attack. It was erected to conceal and hold an army.

The trenches and bunkers in New Hampshire had been dug out and, in some spots, carved into solid deposits of granite. There was no use of dynamite, which would have invited questions from locals.  

Heavy machinery, excavators, concrete mixing trucks, and even mining equipment had to be brought up the access road, and I'm sure the noise they made was huge.

This place was built to house and hide about 500 men, most likely soldiers.  There was room for their quarters, equipment, and a large underground garage to hold 250 vehicles and fuel.

She is listening to me spout about all of this, and she stopped my yammering, saying, 

"Where do we go in Allston?  "Let's get some!"

She could be a Marine.

Still on the point, Tango can't make sense of fake trees, but he lifted his leg on one of them.

Question two.

"Who has the money and balls to try and pull off a project this size?" 

I pose this question to Eve, who has built up a little sweat as we hike hard across acres of soft ground. She stopped, turned toward me, and then put her arms around my neck, looking up into my eyes.

"Allston, this is scary for what it is, and if it's not our government, then who needs a private army within our borders?"

I kissed her and said, "You are spot on."

Her summary shocked me, which was how I thought about things. It's the perfect question for the time. I snuck in a kiss, looked into her eyes, and then sounded like an accountant as I said,

"We have a dead Russian, two dead Afghanis, and multiple civilian deaths all because of this patch of ground in the middle of nowhere?"

"Dammmmmn, woman, your butt is looking good today," I added.

She pushed me backward and said, "Not the right time, Allston, but thank you. I'll be grabbing a slice of you later." She said.

We both laughed. It was a couples moment.

Question number three.

"Whoever owns this realizes we are here, and they don't want us here, so where is the defensive move toward us?" "Why hasn't something happened yet? I thought out loud.

We spotted an area that sloped down. 

At the bottom of the ramp, the width of two cars was a huge vault-like door that was...Open?

Tango ran right in, and we followed.

New York, New York

Larry Fong, at the New York M.S.S. Control Center was all of a sudden in a world of shit as multiple alarms, one after another, were triggered at the site where two intruders were moving around un-checked. All Larry could do was report things in real-time as they happened. 

His immediate boss, who was promoted into Yeung Bao's seat, was not handling the shit storm well.  He was not yet briefed about a large facility in New Hampshire. He had no idea what it was or what it was for, but it caused the organization to panic as phone calls started hitting Tony Lam's phone. The Americans most likely monitored these calls as his bosses started ignoring communications protocols in the name of immediacy.

"Lam, what do you have in place to investigate intruders at our station in New Hampshire?

Lam had no idea about the place, how far it was from New York, and who he should call to protect it.  He was honest with his boss. 

"I have not been briefed about this place, but it is far away. The drive there is many hours, Tony stammered."

"All we have is sensor data and camera input; we know it is two people and a dog. They have weapons."

At this point, the M.S.S. bosses in China knew they had bungled something large by pulling Yeung off the job so fast.

The back and forth continued, and Larry Fong reported sensor data as it appeared. 

The pair were now inside and moving about.

All of the command and control capabilities for opening and closing the fortified doors in New Hampshire were local, meaning nobody was stationed to eliminate the two trespassers and seal them inside.

Fong was getting into the groove of reporting activity, as it happened when the Facial Recognition Department sent back the two IDs of the trespassers. He spit out his first sip of tea as the photos appeared marked in red. 

The two individuals were marked for assassination from an operation that took place last week.  That operation must have failed. 

He sent the summary files with photos to his boss's tablet. He would be okay if he stayed cool and did his job relaying things.

Larry glanced at his phone and saw The Rangers were up two nothing.

Beijing, China

Something was wrong.  When the flight carrying prisoner Yeung Bao landed, the waiting area at the gate was sealed off, and anyone who was seated near the area was shuffled off by an M.S.S. response team.  A folding table was erected, and a tech team started installing a computer with communications gear attached,

The jet taxied up to the gate, and the response team was at the jet's door when it was opened.  The agent in charge spoke to the pilot, telling him that nobody should come off the plane after taking a prisoner off the flight until they were cleared. He left two M.SS. guards on the ramp by the door.

Bao and his two handlers were led up the ramp and were met by ten or more high-ranking officials who looked like their only interest was to cover their asses from trouble above. They looked sleepy, dim-witted, but above all, anxious.

Bao thought it was time for the game to begin with the highest stakes. He chuckled a bit and thought to himself, Go Noles.