After my editor MaryAnn informed me nobody would know what S1 was without defining them, I chose to write their biography instead of an appositive phrase or noun clause. This is a small part of Chapter 6, which is here in a larger part on a different post.
I'm like that.
Enjoy
Bart
Doherty looked at Colin Jameson. The two men had known each other almost every
one of Colin’s twenty-eight years. From his family’s early visits to see Bart
to Colin’s first trip to Minnesota in 1999, there was a mythology, which
reflected the life of his great uncle. After that, there was a hidden reality
with what he never said when Colin was there. Since then, to include Colin’s time
in S1, there were only the secrets that the two men shared about their combined
realities of being a part of the secret unit known only as S1 and all they had
been through together because of this.
In the
years since he joined the group, Colin learned quite a bit about their history,
though he wasn’t informed of everything since some of it was need to know or
unspoken secrets and failures that Bart kept hidden.
Nevertheless,
what he did know was amazing.
Way
back when, Harry Truman’s handlers, who advised him to legislate decisively on
threats foreign and domestic in order to bring about the National Security
Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency,
created the group that would go by the name S1. These behind the scenes men
were the original top dogs of the American black-ops special forces world, a
tight-knit group who acted with the same stroke of genius decision-making that
worked to realize that there was a need to have a completely off the books
military unit operating at home and abroad. Unlike other overt military units,
the military would still train the covert units. When they finished initiating
the men into the ways of fighting forces, they would list their trainees as
being in routine jobs within the armed forces. Where these forces differed from
other elite fighting forces is that they would operate completely apart from
the standard rules of engagement that the Geneva Convention listed. Since the weight
of the verdict of their engagements represented an existential threat to humankind,
the men had to complete these assignments in ways that they could never expose
to the everyday world. Civilization could not begin to understand what these
villains and supernatural entities wanted to do to it. Whether these enemies
appeared on their own or in tandem with recognized enemies of the state, it was
imperative that S1 annihilated all of these people looking to fight alongside
of these “other” beings since they were an enemy to world peace and general
order. Truman particularly liked feeling that he was responsible for saving the
world with this decision while his handlers felt contented knowing that they
had convinced the President of the United States to do the right thing despite
the possible ramifications that it might cause if the groups were ever exposed
to the light of day. Though his men did not brief him on all of the potential
issues, Truman was aware of the need for such utter secrecy that he eventually
turned all controlling authority of this group over to the infamous group known
as Majestic 12.
At a
time when multiple clandestine groups were starting to appear in this country, Truman
created S1, the first of these groups, to deal with many things Beyond Top Secret
and all things supernatural, which put them in a category called “Magic Eyes
Only.” Whether the S was for the former or the latter, the history is uncertain
since nobody ever acknowledged this group in the light of day at that time, and
in the end, it doesn’t really matter since the group performed both of these duties
exceptionally. In fact, they did them so well in working to close loopholes and
issues of concern that related to cryptids and ghosts that they became a model
for other countries who had these concerns.
A
second group, S2 was also set up at this time in order to deal with issues of
the alien problem, which was rearing its head all too often after the events of
Roswell that occurred in the summer of 1947. As these alien visitation events
have continued incessantly ever since, the group is also still active within
various capacities in the United States and abroad, though they now operate
under different protocols. Since the changes of the Eisenhower and Kennedy
Administration, S1 implemented a new era of clandestine efficiency in warfare.
After Kennedy’s death, Lyndon Johnson’s men did not give him a chance to get
upset about this by any ethical means necessary because his organization never
briefed him on the organization. Rather than chance the worst, the handlers kept
everything S1 and S2 to themselves instead. Since that time, the only president
that the group ever acknowledged this military unit to was the senior Bush,
which was a decision that S1 and S2 made because of his CIA history.
“Gentlemen,
gentlemen. I think I have to take a phone call now,” Bush informed them.
“But
don’t you want to -”
Bush’s
handlers looked at the S1 liason, and simply said two words: plausible
deniability.
That
was their last attempt to come to the surface for the most powerful man in the
world.
Nevertheless,
certain like-minded and understanding senators in the House Armed Forces
Committee and NSA types have been “indoctrinated” to the existence of
organizations that operate outside of legal authority to prevent these issues
from becoming all too public. Even the military that ran them knew little about
them as the Joint Chiefs of Staff chose to be out of sight and out of mind with
some of these details.
For a
short time, things between the groups went swimmingly when they needed to work
together, but this tranquility and camaraderie did not last long when the
infighting between S1 and S2 began to spill over after the latter group started
to adopt more violent and oppressive tactics to conceal the “extra-terrestrial problem”
from the population as a whole. There were numerous events, which included killing
and capturing various beings from other worlds, that caused tussles and
screaming matches after civilian eyewitnesses started ending up deposited into
holes in the desert. Mostly these spats went on behind closed doors, but some
of the events threatened to spill over into the mainstream with non-contained
witnesses and news leaks as well as actual world events. In particular, there
was an event at an archaeological dig referred to as Mormon Creek. This event,
which occurred in Utah in 1995 right after the Timothy McVeigh bombing at the
Alfred P. Murrah Building, landed a pair of Native Americans named Solomon
Owens and Donny White Feather, in jail, after S2 members infiltrated their
group, the Pueblo Defense Fund, in order to commandeer them as puppets for an
incident involving evidence destruction.
The S2
brass considered this an ingenious plan designed to create fake ancestral
heritage claims in order to convince a group of problematic Native American
activists to destroy an archaeology site that would steal and desecrate their
ancestors’ remains. What the Native Americans did not know was that the
excavation would have exposed ancient alien relics and bodies at the Native
American site. S2 could not allow this to happen, so they armed the Pueblo
Defense Fund to the teeth for battle. If the Native Americans won, S2 would rat
them out to police or execute them as soon as they were out of eyesight. No
matter how it happened, if they were to die, it would be all the better since
their actions would create hostility toward the claims that tribes were making
about ancestral remains and lands. Besides, so much had been going on in the
country at the time with anti-government attitudes at Ruby Ridge, Waco, and
Oklahoma City, that when the courtroom decided the punishment, it was short,
sweet, and to the point, and nobody really batted an eye.
Other
than a few cantankerous rebels, society as a whole didn’t want angry militants
exacting “revenge” on anyone, so the authorities quickly removed Owens and
White Feather from the public eye as quickly as they appeared on its radar.
This worked out for S2.
It was
almost hard to believe how quickly that an incident so violent could vanish,
but since most people who know about eastern Utah only know about its National
Parks, the proximity to Mormon Cross and the Middle of Nowhere helped put it
out of people’s sight and out of their minds.
Nevertheless,
when this event transpired, the Native Americans battled with archaeologists
and members of the Bureau of Land Management for two days in an incident that
resulted in the destruction of the site, the death of many men and women on
both sides, sexual assault, and kidnapping. Prior to the arrival of the Feds,
the incident had been quietly going on for a week, but then the proverbial shit
hit the fan with a murder charge, and this signaled that authority needed to
intervene, and intervene, it did.
While
the men in question were guilty on many accounts, the authorities were supplied
additional “evidence” to frame them for other incidents that they had nothing
to do with. With nobody of power willing to stand up for their innocence, they were
still currently sitting in prison at Uinta 1 in 2016.
There
they sit in solitude to conceal an action that needed to transpire by any means
necessary, at least in the minds of S2’s command.
In
comparison to this method of dealing with problems, S1 tended to look at any
innocent “bystanders” they encountered as potential resources to utilize in
their war against this parallel world.
When
word got out about the Mormon Creek covert operation, things reached a boiling
point. The divisions exploded, and soon, S2 negotiated a division from the
original program when they refused to back down from operating under this type
of rule of law.
Under
their new authority, the name S2 metamorphosed into “Black Unit 1.” This change
recognized their standard dress uniform, which was black suits, white shirts,
black ties, dark glasses, a silenced pistol, and a black hat on top. For ages,
they created a mystique for themselves when they emerged in public in places
like Point Pleasant, West Virginia, during the Mothman days. Because of these
situations, they gained the name Men in Black in popular culture. This name
originally created a level of respect for the men and women in the
organization, but soon, they felt it was just too comic book and humorous for
its own good, so they called themselves Team Black instead.
It
should be noted that after the Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones movie of the same
name, their reputation stood out in the Special Forces community as something
of a joke to S1, but that’s a very different story.
Despite
their rare social emergences, S1 generally chose to stay more clandestine, even
when their taunts and jokes were traveling back to S2. Since they never had a
name except that one letter and one number, they stuck with their original
moniker, when they mentioned their name at all. Most times, the men called it
“my team” or “my unit.” The officers who referred to the community of men and
women who defended the world’s interests weren’t interested in names, but
rather actions. If you were on the team, you were important and special, and
this was something you knew, so you didn’t blow it. If you were caught slacking,
you were either told about it once or removed altogether. There was no halfway
when the world’s interests were at stake.
Colin
knew this right from the moment he found out at the post Hell Week meeting that
his great uncle wanted him to be a part of the team. This was clear, but what
wasn’t clear was exactly how intense and secretive his work would be in saving
the world from the doom that could otherwise be inflicted by these savage
beasts they were set to fight.
On this
day, Bart re-introduced Colin to the members of the team that he would be
working with for his latest mission. He had worked with many different members
who didn’t work together consistently, so to be introduced over and over again wasn’t
at all uncommon.
“Do you
know any of these other guys, Colin?” Bart asked.
“Well
everyone knows the Chief,” the nearly thirty-year old Colin responded.