Psychic Warrior (5 page)

"However, I can assure you, gentlemen, that while our government has publicly disavowed any current psychic operation, four years ago Grill Flame, under the auspices of a group called Bright Gate, went deep underground at a very classified level.”

“Hold on,” Colonel Metter said. “Are we talking Men Who Stare At Goats stuff?”

Raisor grimaced. “Unfortunately, some of the information in that movie, although presented in a comical manner, was correct. We’ve been looking into the leak. As I was saying, at the same time it appeared Grill Flame was gone, we used Bright Gate to instigate the Trojan Warrior program here in the 10th Special Forces Group. Three years ago Trojan Warrior was conducted here. It was a six-month training program designed to significantly enhance the capabilities of the participants through the application of emergent human technologies and concepts."

Raisor flashed a humorless smile. "At least that is what we told you it was. In reality, the training you men received in Trojan Warrior on such subjects as biofeedback, visualization, conscious psychological control, meditative states, cognitive task enhancement, visual control, and other subject matter was all part of the master plan to prepare you for Psychic Warrior."

Dalton felt a flush of anger. He'd wondered himself at the time what the purpose of some of the Trojan Warrior training had been for. Dalton had no doubt it had made him not only a better soldier but a better person. However, there had been aspects, like the biofeedback and visualization training, that he had never quite understood the purpose of…until now. He'd seen the obvious reason for the martial arts training, but many of the subjects had seemed esoteric. He'd been lied to before in his military career, but he'd never grown used to it.

Raisor continued. "Psychic Warrior takes Trojan Warrior another step. It merges two programs, one psychic, the other medical, to come up with something completely different from the original Grill Flame operation in remote viewing and Trojan Warrior's training. Something that we feel it best to keep classified to prevent both disclosure of our capabilities and to protect those involved.

"While the Trojan Warrior training was being conducted, the remote-viewing program itself became much more efficient after years of modifying its personnel and operating procedures. Remote viewing has become an accepted intelligence-gathering apparatus of our government, and as such we must keep the extent of that capability secure from potential enemies. Although it was publicly announced otherwise, it was our remote viewers who located Bin Laden in Pakistan."

"It's been over two years since we went through that training," Dalton said. "When were you going to let us in on all this?"

"When Psychic Warrior was ready for you and when we needed you," Raisor said. "Recently, an external factor has entered the scene which brings a new sense of urgency to this entire operation."

Dalton just wanted to smack the CIA man upside the head and tell him to get on with it, to tell the facts and details and stop being so melodramatic. If one of the battalion's A-Teams had conducted a briefing like that, Dalton had no doubt that Colonel Metter would have a boot up the team leader's ass in a heartbeat. The fact that Metter sat silently next to him told Dalton that his commander's secure phone to the Pentagon must have rung in conjunction with this visit and Metter was under strict orders to support the CIA

"If you had let us know Trojan Warrior was preparation for further training," Dalton said, "we could have kept most of those men in the battalion and we wouldn't have only seven left."

"The ball was dropped on that," Raisor conceded. "My predecessor didn’t have much faith that Psychic Warrior would ever become operational. He was wrong. When Grill Flame was first brought into being, it was very much an experimental operation and more concerned with testing concepts than actually conducting operations. Early on, in places such as Lebanon, it was used, but only as a last resort, and the results were mixed."

Dalton could sense Raisor looking at him from the shadows. "At times," the CIA man went on, "Grill Flame personnel were used before they were trained sufficiency or prepared to conduct live operations.

"During the Gulf War, Grill Flame was employed to find Iraqi Scud missiles. The success rate was about forty percent, which actually is not that bad."

The slide changed and a picture of a destroyed Scud missile launcher was displayed.

"More recently, the success rate has gone up. Since Bright Gate found Bin Laden, the project has received much more attention from the National Command Authority and the plans for Psychic Warrior have been dusted off.”

"You must have been planning on using my people for a while," Metter said.

Raisor nodded. "Bringing some Special Operations soldiers from Trojan Warrior on board had always been part of the master plan."

"But you didn't plan on it happening this soon," Dalton interjected.

"The timetable has been moved up somewhat," Raisor acknowledged.

Dalton held up the list. "You still haven't said exactly what you want these men for."

“To be Psychic Warriors, of course." Raisor clicked the remote. The next slide showed a large, clear, vertical tube, with Dr. Hammond standing next to it, giving some idea of its dimensions, about ten feet high by four in diameter.

There was a thick-looking, greenish liquid inside. And floating inside the greenish liquid was a man wearing just a black bodysuit with no sleeves or legs. Various lines and leads went to his body. His head was totally enclosed in an oversized blade helmet out of which ran several tubes and wires. He floated freely, arms akimbo, his back slightly hunched over.

Everyone in the room sat up a little straighter and leaned forward.

"Gentlemen, this is a picture taken of an RVer working under the auspices of Bright Gate just last week. As you can see, we’ve come a long way from the days of sitting in a dark room with subdued music playing. This is the direction Bright Gate has gone, combining natural psychic power with technological breakthroughs in physiological psychology.

"With proper input, Bright Gate RVers can now view with a seventy-two percent success rate of finding the correct target, with sixty-eight percent accuracy in the intelligence picked up."

Dalton combined those numbers in his head and he wasn't that impressed. He'd conducted special operations, including reconnaissance missions at the strategic level, and he knew nothing could beat a set of eyeballs on target. Real eyeballs. With a thinking brain behind them. He wasn't too keen on technology either. If Grill Flame or the high-speed satellites that the National Reconnaissance Office boasted of were so great, why had it taken 10 years to find Bin Laden?

"Gentlemen," Raisor said, his voice rising slightly, "we are now ready to move to the next stage of military action: Operation Psychic Warrior. We will no longer just remote view, we plan to conduct actual combat operations on the psychic level."

There was a long silence before Colonel Metter spoke. "How?"

Raisor stepped in front of the screen. "That is Dr. Hammond's area of expertise." He sat down.

Hammond took his place. She was tall, maybe an inch shy of six foot, and in her mid-thirties, with very pale skin and an angular face. Her voice held the slightest tint of a New York accent. "First, let me tell you, Colonel, that three years ago when I initially learned we were to take soldiers, men with no background in the field, and make Psychic Warriors out of them, I thought the plan would not work. But when my people checked out how the soldiers in your battalion did during their Trojan Warrior training, we were extremely impressed with the quality. The names on that list, each of those men, could possibly be one of my Bright Gate personnel."

Colonel Metter stared at the woman. "Ma'am, with all due respect to you, and I don't know you or what your role in this whole thing is, the men in my battalion are the best soldiers in the world. They are some of the best people in the world. Don't stand up there and try to put me waist deep in bullshit. Just tell me what I need to know."

A red flush had climbed Hammond's cheeks, her face tightening. "All right, Colonel. Much of the science we’re dealing with on the psychometric or virtual plane is un-proven, or even if proven, not completely understood. Our philosophy at Bright Gate is to concern ourselves with what works, sometimes well before we even have a clue as to why or exactly how it works. Unlike our counterparts at the universities, we are pragmatic first and foremost. While they dabble in theory, we have gone places they only chat about over a glass of wine at academic receptions.

"As Agent Raisor has indicated, Operation Psychic Warrior has been under development for many years. The basic concept is to project not just a remote-viewing capability into the psychometric plane, which we have already accomplished, but an actual capability to project an avatar into the virtual plane, travel along jump points to the target, or far point, and then out of the virtual or psychometric plane into the real plane at the far point."

"Slow down." Colonel Metter interrupted. "Some background and definitions would be helpful. What the hell is an avatar?"

"An avatar is a form that represents the original in the virtual plane," Hammond answered. "If you play a computer game, whatever form you take in the game is your avatar. In Psychic Warrior we go one step further. We can take that avatar from the virtual plane into the real plane at the far point. We make the avatar real."

"What the hell is the virtual plane?" Metter asked. "And the real plane?"

Hammond considered her audience for a few seconds, then spoke. "Scientists in the last couple of hundred years have been digging deeper into the physics of what makes up reality. If you'd asked a scientist two hundred years ago what they thought reality was, you would have gotten a very different answer than a hundred years ago, and fifty years ago, and so on.

"For centuries the most learned men of their age believed that matter and reality consisted of four basic substances: fire, earth, water, and air. We have made great strides since then, but it is foolish to believe we have reached the end of that path of knowledge. In some ways, people two hundred years from now may look at us as we look at those who believed in the four base elements composing all matter.

"Early in this century it was believed that the atomic level was the basic building block of matter, and thus of reality. But with the discovery of such things as quarks and further research into quantum physics, the realm of reality has been extended further into levels that couldn't even be conceptualized by the early atomic scientists.

"We at Bright Gate believe the psychometric plane is beyond the plane of quantum physics, which scientists are still groping to understand. We call it the astral or virtual plane, and there are some proven laws of physics we can connect to it." She smiled. "I don't think we need to get into the nuts and bolts of the theory, do you?"

Colonel Metter glanced at Dalton, who returned the look, his face telling the colonel what he thought. "As a matter of fact," Metter said, "I think we do."

Hammond frowned. "Well, let me see if I can lay it out moving from the known to the unknown. You are all aware that there is such a thing as a magnetic field, which your compasses work off of?" With four heads nodding, she continued. "You are also aware that electricity can produce an electromagnetic field. But have you ever wondered what produces the electromagnetic field? What it’s made of?"

She didn't wait for an answer. "We call fields which produce the electromagnetic field, hyperfields. Quantum physics, with its quarks and wave theory, is a hyperfield. But there are others. They’re around you all the time. In fact, there is a concurrent hyperfield to the quantum physical one. A virtual field. It’s this virtual field that is the psychometric plane; the two terms are synonymous. Existing side by side at times with the real plane, at other times existing very separately from each other. It’s the boundary between these two planes that’s the entire focus of our efforts at Bright Gate.

"And without getting into the philosophy of it, a mental field--what you perceive in your brain--is a virtual field. If you perceive something to be with your mind, then it exists in the virtual field."

"But not in reality," Dalton interjected.

"Most physicists would say no, not in reality as it is currently defined," Hammond said. "But if our thoughts are not reality, what are they? Everything man has ever invented or done has come out of his thoughts. So they are real in some way. So I say yes. I say that there is a link between the virtual world and the real world. That the line between the two is an artificial one that is constantly being breached. And that, with the proper equipment and training, we are able to breach at Bright Gate and will continue to go through with Psychic Warrior."

"You say?" Colonel Metter said. "Is there any proof?"

"I've been there," Hammond said. "I've been on the psychometric plane."

"And what happened?" Captain Anderson asked.

"I RVed-remote viewed-at several points on the globe."

"An out-of-body experience?" Dalton asked.

"You could call it that," Hammond said, "but that is a crude simplification of a complex process."

"How do you know it wasn't just a hallucination?" Dalton asked.

Hammond smiled, revealing even, white teeth. "It might have been what you call a hallucination, but does that make it any less real? When we checked, we found out that what I saw was real, so how I saw is not as important as the fact that I saw it. I existed in the virtual world and saw the real."

She tapped the side of her head. "We must stop limiting our minds with the boundaries of our physical brains. We accept that we can impart what exists in our minds to others through speech, or through the visual spectrum, or any of the senses in various modes. To understand Psychic Warrior, you have to consider that there is another way to bring our minds out of the physical limitations of our bodies beyond the methods that we use every day. Those of you who were in Trojan Warrior were introduced to these concepts."