Alien Invasion vs. DNA Magic

By Timothy McGregor

"We are members of a squad of psychically enhanced agents of the US government now cooperating with ancient Incan gods to rid the Earth of an alien threat." Follow Addie McLain as she pursues human traffickers, then moves on to pursuing alien androids, and finally tackles home-grown murderous human evil. Together with her intrepid squad of heroes, journey with her as she fights for justice and humanity in this thrilling science fiction, fantasy, police procedural, and  adventure action thriller that never lets up!

(Formerly published in a 25% shorter version as: The Chronicles of the Extraordinary Threat Abatement Special Operations Group)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Timothy McGregor
• Release date: Oct 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223174981

Timothy McGregor

Tim McGregor lives in Houston with his delightful wife, and their kids and grandkids live close by. He has worked for the UN coordinating the removal of antipersonnel landmines in Cambodia, and he has worked coordinating the fabrication of ultra low sulfur diesel equipment for refineries in the US and worldwide. He has also worked teaching composition in a community college and has spent many years teaching ESL. He speaks a lot of languages. The Chronicles is his debut novel.

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Prologue

Addison McLain, Addie, was 12 years old and was a resident of the San Ignacio Orphanage in Homestead, Florida. She had been a resident for seven years since both of her parents were killed by a drunk driver in an automobile accident. The building that San Ignacio called home was a repurposed prison built in 1950 that housed 250 orphans. The classes at the orphanage ranged from kindergarten to senior in high school and were taught by resident nuns and priests from around the world, appointed by the Catholic Archdiocese of Miami.

There was one resident of the home that struck terror into the hearts of the younger children and the older children alike. His name was Tommy Butler and at 150 pounds and 5’6" was large for his 14 years. Tommy didn’t much like himself, nuns and priests, or other children, and he regularly attacked other kids in the hallways and on the playgrounds of San Ignacio and was disrespectful to his teachers. He beat the kids up and tossed the contents of their book bags and back packs around the halls, classrooms, and grounds but was careful not to bruise them in the face or arms as such bruises would be highly visible and could bring a cause for punishment from the nuns and priests in charge of the orphanage.

Addie McLain sat on a bench in a major corridor at San Ignacio that connected the gymnasium to the residence hall and dining room. She watched Tommy Butler coming down the corridor from the gymnasium side, knocking books from the hands of his fellow students as he ambled malevolently in her direction while laughing uproariously at the chaos that ensued while the cowed students in his wake scrambled to retrieve their books and other possessions. Addie had just seen the movie Star Wars that had just been released in video at movie night in the cafeteria and was impressed that Obi-Wan Kenobi could issue commands to the Imperial Storm Troopers to disregard the two androids sitting plainly in Luke Skywalker’s speeder jet car and they complied with his Jedi mind trick command and ignored their eagerly sought after droid fugitives from Imperial justice.

As Tommy Butler approached, Addie had an inspiration based on Jedi mind tricks. Maybe it would work or maybe it only worked in the movies.

Hey McClain, your pigtails look too neat and clean. Unwrap them now or I will do it for you, he bellowed as he approached her menacingly.

Addie held her ground and when Tommy stood in front of where she was sitting on a stone bench, one of many that lined the corridor, she marshaled a feeling of Jedi command in her mind and said to Tommy in a normal speaking voice, This is not the Addie you are looking for.

Yeah, whatever, whoever you are, Tommy said and walked on down the corridor, ignoring Addie.

How about that? Addie wondered to herself, astonished that her Jedi mind control experiment had worked flawlessly.

The next day, Addie was sitting on the same bench, again wearing her hair in pigtails when Tommy Butler approached her. As he scanned the corridor looking for a fellow orphan to harass, he looked right through Addie as if he didn’t recognize her even though they had been in the same institution together for several years where everybody knew everybody else.

What are you staring at? he said to Addie as he approached her. You some new girl that just got dumped like rubbish at the front gate?

Tommy Butler, Addie said.

How do you know my name? Ah, word gets around about the Terror of Saint-Ig, he said, using a nickname that nobody but he used. The actual nicknames used for Tommy Butler by the students he regularly terrorized contained references to his brutality, lack of intelligence, and synonyms for human waste and human genitals.

Addie had prepared a speech for Tommy that she had crafted from the Boy Scout Creed and the Seven Deadly sins on the outside chance that she still retained the Jedi mind trick skill that had worked so well yesterday, and let it rip. Tommy Butler, from this moment forward you will embrace goodwill and generosity toward your fellow students, you will be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. You will avoid the behaviors of covetousness, lust, anger, pride, envy, gluttony, and sloth. You will pay attention in class and on the sports fields and learn all that is humanly possible about the disciplines being taught. You will love reading and the library, any library, will suffuse your heart with calm, happiness, and a sense of possibility. You will love yourself deeply and forgive all of those who have hurt you or betrayed you. You will deeply recognize and affirm daily that you are a unique and valuable human. These things you will do from this moment, today, until the day that you die. You will do them in order to act as if you are a good person and in the fullness of time, you will no longer be acting but will become a good person with your brilliant soul revealed. Life will be much better for you from this day forward.

Yeah, okay, said Tommy and then walked on. He drew stares from the students who clutched the books they were carrying tightly only to have Tommy Butler say "Hello" to them and then proceed on his way.

Tommy felt a huge sense of relief that he no longer had to busy himself with terrorizing his fellow students. The fear and anger that had festered inside of him all his life fell away and he slept better, ate healthy food on a regular basis, and enjoyed regular exercise. He was gradually accepted into groups of friends that had previously avoided him like the plague and was regularly one of the first picks when teams were formed for baseball, football, soccer, and basketball.

Addie was terrified in the days and weeks that followed that she had somehow cut Tommy off from his vital energy to the point that he wouldn’t be able to defend himself like Alex in the book A Clockwork Orange when the homeless men and his former mates beat him up in that tunnel and he couldn’t lift a finger in his own defense. Her fears were allayed two weeks later when she saw Tommy at a practice of the football team where Tommy, a freshman, stepped in to help a kid being bullied by the older kids.

Guys, leave him alone, we’re a team and we protect our own. We don’t eat our own, he said to the four boys that had been pushing around a smaller player.

Up yours, little Miss Goody Two-Shoes, since you started being a good little boy, nobody knows who you are anymore, so go sit on the bench unless you want some of what this little punk is getting, said the biggest guy, the ringleader of the bullying.

Tommy stepped in front of the big guy and said, I said leave off.

Or what? The big guy now addressed Tommy and faced him. He faked throwing a punch, expecting Tommy to flinch but Tommy was as still as a statue. The big bully turned around as if to ignore Tommy but then rotated around and threw a roundhouse sucker punch at Tommy’s head. Tommy caught the roundhouse in one hand and then the bully’s left follow-up jab in the other hand. He held the bully’s fists and forced him to his knees.

Don’t break my hands man, the bully screamed, That really hurts, you’re going to break them. I’m nothing if I can’t play football, he wailed.

Tommy let go of the bully’s fists and extended his hand to help the older player to his feet.

We’re a team and we protect our own, Tommy said and then stepped back with his hands clasped in front of him.

Just at that moment, the coach ran onto the field and looked slightly confused. Everything okay, guys? he asked.

All good, said Tommy Butler.

All good, said the bully and his cohort.

Addie’s relief was palpable. I didn’t emasculate Tommy Butler after all, she thought and cried silently with relief.

The school administrators unanimously agreed that God works in mysterious ways, when trying to understand Tommy’s behavioral and attitudinal about face and his fellow students waited for the return of the vile and nasty Tommy Butler but it never happened.

Addie tried to use her Jedi power after that momentous day in small ways just to test it, but it never worked again. It’s lucky I used it up on the neediest person in the school, she thought to herself.

After completing his 12 years of education at Saint Ignacio, Tommy briefly considered joining the priesthood but opted for a secular life. His grades and performance in sports in his last four years at Saint Ignacio made a full ride to the University of Florida at Gainesville on a combined academic and sports scholarship a certainty. After completing his undergrad in Literature and Poetry, he then went on to do a dual grad degree in Social Work and Law, passed the bar and went to work for a legal clinic in Baltimore, working pro bono cases and making the world a better place for hundreds of people over the course of his career. He and Addie became best friends and when she became a police officer after getting her own degree in Social Work, she called Tommy regularly to catch up and to obtain free legal advice.

The amazing experience with Tommy Butler made her want to do that redemption thing as much as she could so she joined the Miami Police Department and wore a uniform for two years and then was promoted to Detective.

Part 1

Container

Detective Addie McLain worked in the Human Trafficking Unit of the Vice Division of the Miami Police Department. She was having lunch alone at a Cuban food restaurant in Little Havana at 11:00, just before the lunch hour rush. She was moving steadily through a large plate of rice and Picadillo, a spicy ground beef dish delicious with rice. She was reading a news site on her phone when two Asian males sat at the table next to hers and began speaking in what she recognized as the Cantonese language. She knew from Chinese friends that Mandarin sounds smoother while Cantonese sounds noisy and like staccato bursts of speech. The conversation was easy to dismiss as she couldn’t understand anything but the numbers and affirmations of yes or no. She went quickly back to her reading.

After a few minutes, one of the men handed a piece of paper to the other, and Addie suddenly had a brief vision of what the man was seeing as he read over the document and then dropped it back to the table. The paper was a copy of a dock release for a 40-foot shipping container. She verified her assumption by shifting her eyes to the right and saw the same pattern of text that she had seen in her vision in the document the Asian guy had been holding. As the conversation continued, she saw the man receive a photo from the other man who had provided the dock receipt and had one more vision. This time it was of the same photo the man was now holding in his hand. She closed her eyes and counted 23 people, mostly men and a couple of women sitting side by side in a darkened steel box.

What the hell? How is that even happening? she thought. She quickly refocused her attention.

A shipping container. It wasn’t much of a leap to conclude that these were refugees in that shipping container. Twenty-three refugees at $40 thousand to $50 thousand a pop would generate a million dollars in revenue. The economics driving such a deal were undoubtedly there. Addie finished her lunch and walked 15 minutes back to the MPD office building on 2nd Avenue. Before jumping to conclusions regarding her visions or hallucinations, she wanted to check the container number on the dock receipt with the US Customs database. She sat at her desk, pulled up the database, and there it was, the container identified by the number she had seen in her vision. It was sitting at the Port of Miami container yard. Her partner, Detective Rodney Porter, was finishing up his usual pimento and cheese sandwiches. She came up with a fiction of seeing the dock receipt and photo because she wasn’t willing to admit to her partner that she saw visions.

Rodney, help me out; at lunch, I looked over a guy's shoulder at the next table and saw a dock release for a shipping container at the Port and a picture of refugees in a shipping container. I just checked with the Port database, and the container has been released for pickup but is still at the port container storage yard, said Addie. 

Detective Porter finished his last bite of brown bread and orange filling and wiped his hands on a napkin. We can’t get a warrant without probable cause, he said.

We don’t need the warrant to put the container under surveillance. They must be getting ready to roll those people out of there and make delivery so they can get paid. We follow them and take down the whole operation. The current status of our container home away from home for 23 possibly suffocating souls is that it is released by US Customs and the shipping company for customer pickup.

Let’s go get eyes on the container, said Rodney. I’ll get my car and meet you out front.

No sooner had Addie and Rodney badged their way through the gate at the entrance to the port storage yard than they saw the same two Asian men Addie had seen at lunch talking to a man who had a flatbed truck onto which a large forklift had set down a 40-foot container and the truck driver was latching the container to the truck bed. The truck driver got into the truck's cab, and the two men got into a white van and headed toward the exit to the city with the loaded flatbed truck following.

That’s them, the men sitting beside me at lunch. Let’s follow them, Addie said.

On it, Addie, Rodney said. They followed the van and the truck to a fenced parking lot at the back of a Hialeah warehouse just a few minutes from the port. They parked Rodney’s unmarked car across the street from the gate where the two vehicles had entered.

Call for backup, Rodney said.

On it, Addie said.

Before she could bring up her radio, a man appeared at the car window beside her and put a gun to the side of her head. At the same time, another man broke the glass in Rodney’s window with a pistol and cracked Rodney sharply on the side of his head, knocking him out.

Let’s go, the man on Rodney’s side of the car said, opening Rodney’s door. The man on Addie’s side opened her door, and they exited the vehicle. The men relieved them of their weapons, and the one closest to Addie reached down and took her backup weapon off her ankle.

The men zip-tied Addie and the unconscious Rodney and carried Rodney in a fireman’s carry as they hustled across the street and into the warehouse. They hurried through the main door, past an abandoned reception desk, and down a corridor to a heavy door. One of the men unlocked the heavy door while the other covered them with his pistol. The men spoke briefly together in Russian or an Eastern European language, and as the heavy wooden door opened, they pushed Addie and carried Rodney into a small room and closed the door. Addie could hear the door being locked from the outside, and then it was very quiet.

The room was long with wooden walls, floor, and ceiling. It was a detention cell, presumably used for holding trafficked humans. Addie smelled the stink of unwashed bodies and the stench of adrenalin from fear. There was a click from outside, and the light went out.

Can you hear me? she said to Rodney.

Ahh, just barely, waking up now, said Rodney in the darkness.

Glad you are with me again, glad we are still alive, said Addie in the darkness.

I don’t think they intend to prolong our lives, said Rodney.

Addie felt fear. Not the kind of fear that crippled her but the kind that made her hypervigilant. Somebody would be coming to talk to them, somebody in management, and Addie couldn’t see any motivation for such a conversation beyond the traffickers’ need for secrecy. They would want to know what Addie and Rodney knew, and the only open question was not whether they would be murdered but when, where, and how.

Addie suddenly heard a voice in her head.

Can you hear me? it said. It was Rodney’s voice, but it didn’t come from her ears; it was like a public address system in a darkened theater.

What the hell? What was that? were the unvoiced words that erupted in Addie’s mind in response to the telepathic intrusion by Rodney into her mind.

Calm down, Rodney projected in her mind in a steadied, measured tone.

What the hell?

Calm down, and I’ll explain.

Okay, I’m calm. Now explain, Addie whispered.

Okay, tell me how you could stand and look over the shoulder of a human trafficker and see the highly secret documents he was reviewing without him noticing you? Imagine sending your response silently into my mind.

Well, I, uh.

You read the guy’s mind.

Well yeah, that would explain it. I guess I did. But how is that even possible?

You are psychic.

Jesus, Rodney, if I were psychic, I would have known it by now.

Late-onset psychic capability is like late-onset diabetes. It happens when certain factors we are unaware of align in your mind, brain, body, or some combination of those aspects of yourself to cause the skills to manifest.

What do you mean, we?

You know those courses I am taking in D.C. where I am learning profiling?

Yeah. The word was slightly drawn out as Addie anticipated what would come next.

"Well, I am actually training newly revealed psychics in remote viewing and other techniques to