Col. Gwin does his best to fill in the gaps in the briefing,
but if he is questioned about how the video came
into the Program’s hands, he scowls and says that’s the
next part of the briefing.
He collects all phones and other recording devices.
Then he leads the team to the base stockade, where
service members accused of crimes are detained by
military police. Through an interrogation room’s twoway
mirror, they see a 65-year-old, bearded white man,
well tanned with white hair, dressed in civilian cargo
pants and a t-shirt. The man is handcuffed to a table.
All he does is sing Three Dog Night songs.
Gwin brings the team in to meet the man he introduces
as “Sloan.”OUT IN THE COUNTRY
Gwin does not tell Sloan the Agents’ names. He cuts off anyone who offers even a code name to the handcuffed man.
Sloan sizes up the team before speaking to them, giving the impression that he’s assessing whether they are worth his time.
Sloan begins: “So? You all are the cast for this Night at the Opera?”
If they don’t know what he means, he turns to Gwin and says, “You Program people have gotten deadly dull since 9/11.”
If asked who he is, Sloan says he is with Delta Green. “The real Delta Green.”
Gwin insists that Sloan brief the team and stay on
topic. He doesn’t want to drag “politics” into this.
“Fine,” says Sloan. “I’ve got some intel that might
just keep you alive when you come up against it.”
Sloan says Rassam was a World War II Delta Green
asset who dropped off the board “back in Seventy
when Delta Green got disbanded.” Gwin snaps at
Sloan to stick to the point and tells the Agents to disregard
that as it’s not relevant to their mission.
Sloan knows Rassam reached out to Delta Green
recently to try to get the Throne of Blood, the caged
amphora, out of Iraq. Sloan and a partner organized a
pickup at Rassam’s place. ISIL struck first. The house
and the vault became a blood bath.
Sloan and his partner weren’t sure how much time
they had before jihadis turned up or the thing from
the amphora came back.
“We took the digital camera. And we took the stopper from the amphora, for obvious reasons.”
If no one indicates that they are aware of the “obvious reasons,” Sloan asks Gwin if he’s shown them the Elder Sign.
He grows angry hearing that the Agents don’t know about it. “That seems pretty fucking mission critical, doesn’t it?”
Gwin warns the Agents that what he’s about to
show them is among the most restricted and compartmentalized
information held by the Program.
Gwin uses his radio to call for someone to “bring it to the interrogation room.” Two armed Marine MPs appear, escorting a woman wearing plain clothes under body armor. She has a reinforced, lead-lined aluminum briefcase handcuffed to her wrist. Gwin unlocks the case from her wrist and dismisses her and the Marines.
Gwin tells the Agents the code to unlock the case.
He tells them not to write it down but to get it right.
The case has a charge of thermite to destroy “the item”
if opened without the code.
Inside the case is the bronze stopper for the
amphora from the video. On the interior surface is
a strange symbol that seems to draw the eye like a
hypnotic pattern.
Gwin says, “That glyph is a two-dimensional representation
of a higher-dimension mathematical construct.
Our experience has demonstrated that it can
damage or repel certain inhuman intelligences. This
formula also disrupts manipulations of time-space. It
can make sure things that are Outside…all this…stay
that way. Other versions may exist. They are potent,
but only if deployed properly.”
Gwin tries to explain that certain modes of mathematics
that deal with higher dimensions have demonstrable
effects here in our four dimensions of time and
space. But that the effect of these formulas are just as
toxic to the operator as they are to the target. “Hypergeometry
can bypass physics, but there’s a price. One
we don’t pay unless we’re out of options.”
Sloan says, “‘Hypergeometry?’ It’s magic. The real
stuff. We called it an Elder Sign. It makes an excellent
bar for a door but a piss-poor flak jacket.”
Both think the sign on the stopper was the
reason that whatever came out of the amphora
could not escape.
Sloan explains that his Delta Green lacks the resources
to scour Iraq looking for “whatever got out of Pandora’s
Box.” So they made the decision to come to the
Program. “Maybe we can get some value for our black
budget tax dollars.”
Sloan says that whatever came out of the Throne
of Blood is too dangerous for the rival groups
to “get into a dick-measuring contest.” He and his
people don’t care who puts it down as long as it
gets put down.
Asked about the Throne of Blood, Sloan says
that’s what Rassam called it. Sloan knows what Rassam
knew about the “occupant,” which admittedly
isn’t much. But he tells them what he can.
Rassam called the imprisoned entity the “Father
of War,” in Arabic Abu Harb. It had something to
do with a warning carved on the amphora. Where
the amphora is now, Sloan doesn’t know. It was too
heavy to move.Rassam said that he could “feel” the occupant of
the amphora. “He said that it’s worse for people who
have not been touched by Those Outside. They get
horrible nightmares. Maybe that’s a side effect of it
pressing against the walls of its prison. I don’t know.”
Sloan says Rassam has been researching the
Father of War for decades, collecting Assyrian tablets
from a series or volume called Winds Unknown to
Adad. What Rassam had was incomplete. But it did suggest that the Father of War might be vulnerable to sunlight. Even bright moonlight might slow it down. But Rassam wasn’t sure. He never dared just open the amphora under a noon sun. Sloan says the Father of War must be vulnerable to hypergeometry. That’s how it was trapped in the amphora, after all. There may be some clue as to what kind of hypergeometry harms it if the Agents can recover the amphora. And Rassam hinted he was trying to piece together some technique to get rid of it forever. But Sloan agrees with Gwin about the risk.
“This hypergeometry shit will melt your brain if you
try and make sense of it.”
Demands for Sloan’s real identity elicit a shrug. “Gwin
and his betters don’t much want you to find me later
for a more private chat. But they vouch for me, don’t
you, Colonel?” Gwin confirms that Sloan is a reliable
source and says that the Agents know what they need
to about him.
Sloan adds: “This is my retirement party. I’m burned. Delta Green, the real Delta Green, won’t use me again. Not after exposing me to you Program pukes. Hell, I volunteered for this detail so I could get off the rotation permanently. I’m done with this shit, for now and forever. Baton officially passed. So you all go and put this thing down. I’ll go find someplace to drink myself to death. Deal?”
He doesn’t want to die, but threats of violence do
not impress him.
He says: “We just did you a solid.
You pukes ever share intel with us? C’mon. I went
home and I was fine. Then A-Cell said come back and
deal with you. They have torched every way I had of
contacting them. Beating my contact protocols out of
me won’t get you any closer to them. A-Cell knows
everything I’ve told you. So putting two in my head
won’t compartmentalize this information any further.
So long as you all don’t tell me anything I shouldn’t
know, there’s no point in killing me. Right?”
Back in the briefing room, Col. Gwin hands the
briefcase to the Agents and watches while one of them
cuffs it to their wrist and another puts the keychain
around their neck. “This item is irreplaceable, but
we’re going to need you to carry it into the theatre.
There’s no telling when or how quickly it might need
to be deployed.”
Gwin presents the Agents with a second aluminum
briefcase. It contains the Program’s slim data on
the Rassam incident, including the digital video on
non-transferable thumb drives, contact information
for U.S. and allied intelligence services in the region,
and $112,000 in shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills,
all dated 2002 or earlier. Gwin says the money is
for “bribes and anything else that shouldn’t go on a
requisition form.” He says he expects the Agents know
better than to steal it. “As for the rest,” he continues,
“requisition what you need through JSOC. We have a
lot of leeway seeing that your official mission is hunting
ISIL big-wigs.”
Gwin says a transport is waiting to take them to Kirkuk Airport, where the Air Force has a logistical hub to support Operation CONQUEST. “You’ll be up to your armpits in Kurdish Peshmerga, Air Force, and
SOC operators. Under no circumstances can any of them know the details of your mission. There’s no telling how much Iranian penetration there is of our allies over there, but just presume that if you’re talking to the Iraqi army or any of those Shia militias, you’re talking to Iran. “Remember, you are the team assigned to solve this problem. There isn’t some other team at some other base working on this. You are it.
Now good luck and good hunting.”
With that, Col. Gwin salutes them out of the room.