Alien vs. Alien

“And noneƀ of those other sensors are showing signs of activity.”
    “So, the only one that’s still essentially an unknown is this one under the Country Club of the Political Stars, right?”
    “Right.” Henry sighed. “As Big George said, there are plenty that we haven’t confirmed. We now know what the tunnels and dead zones look like to our scanning equipment, but there’s a lot more than we have resources to deal with immediately.”
    The lack of resources comments were interesting. Centaurion Division had the resources to help search. We had the resources to make the search go infinitely faster, too. But, to my knowledge, Chuckie hadn’t asked for help. I wanted to know why, but in order to find out, I also had to get Jeff and Chuckie back alive. But no pressure.
    “Where are the tunnel access points? I mean, I know they’re accessible via our Embassy, but to my knowledge, Chuckie hasn’t been sending teams down through our basement to look at this stuff.”
    “No,” Big George said with a chuckle. “Far from it. Your Embassy is off limits, remember? No, there are access points near the dead zones.”
    “Easy to find access points?”
    “Some yes, some no.”
    “Fabulous. So, are there any actual guards on the access points?”
    “Personnel, no. Sensors only.”
    “Including by the country club?”
    “Yes. Its access point is actually fairly easy to get to.”
    “How so?”
    “It’s in some dense, older foliage that’s part of the golf course.”
    “Big trees and bushes and such? Secluded area that’s sort of in plain sight but no one really looks at because they’re focused on the main attraction?”
    “Yes.”
    A brand new question was begged. “Walt, is someone, presumably Clarence Valentino, still trying to get into our Embassy?”
    “Yes, Chief.”
    “So why is Clarence spending his time trying to get in here, if he wants to get into the tunnels, instead of trotting over to the country club?”
    “No idea,” Christopher said. “Maybe he wants into the Embassy for a different reason.”
    “Why?” Buchanan asked. He’d been so quiet I’d almost forgotten he was there. Tried to remember if I’d seen him in the last few minutes. Decided there were more important things going on than my figuring out if he was really Dr. Strange in disguise. “What could he want in the Embassy?”
    “He can’t need a gate,” Christopher said. “He can go to any airport and calibrate one for wherever he needs to go.”
    “But can he use them to get into the tunnels or the dead zones?”
    “Probably not,” Christopher said. “But we can’t tell without being able to access these dead zones.”
    ˀ “Maybe it’s the only access point Clarence knows about,” Naomi suggested.
    “Maybe. You know, what’s ‘our’ secret lab actually under? It’s not all that close to the Embassy.”
    Big George cleared his throat. “Your dead zone is under the Lincoln Memorial. Its entrance is, like the country club’s, within some dense foliage along the side of the Memorial.”
    “I have Bad Guy Bingo!”
    “Then I have Bad Guy Bingo, too, because Clarence wanted Sis and me to follow him into the trees by the Memorial,” Abigail said. “I think that means he knew exactly where the entrance was.”
    “What does that prove, though?” Christopher asked.
    “That Clarence cannot be trying to get into the Embassy in order to access the tunnels. Because he could do it from the Lincoln Memorial and be anywhere on Earth, it looks like. Do your sensors show anything in the tunnels from earlier today or this week?”
    “I’ve got the reports, let me check,” Henry said. “Interesting. Heat signature triggered the sensors in the tunnel near the Memorial, but it was so quick the program assumed a small foreign body.”
    “You mean like a little Japanese girl or something?”
    Received a slew of “duh” looks from Hacker International and a lot of “really?” looks from everyone else.
    “No,” Stryker said as he rolled his eyes. “He means like insects.”
    Henry nodded. “The sensors are very delicately tuned, so they pick up everything. The heat registered so quickly it appears to be nonhuman in nature.”
    “Oh, it’s nonhuman. I’m betting that Clarence was moving so fast he fooled the sensors.”
    White nodded. “It makes sense, and having seen him running this afternoon, it’s very believable.”
    “So he’s been in the tunnels. Henry, check for more ‘oh, it’s