“Damn it, Mustafa. Starting shit again? I warned you to be on your best behavior,” Earl roared from across the suite. “Jason! Toss his ass out.” Lacoco immediately came into the room, grabbed Mustafa by the belt, hoisted him off of the floor, and carried the sputtering Egyptian out into the hall.

“Eh…Maybe impressive isn’t the best word.” Julie said. “We still need to get the bugs worked out.”

Since Earl had gotten everyone’s attention anyway, he decided to address the entire room. “All right, Hunters. Today’s been an educational day for us all. We know we’re facing something big, but we’ll just kick its ass back to hell just like every other bunch of supernatural yay-hoos that have tried this sort of nonsense before. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’ve laid the foundation…” It was fascinating to see that even with a bunch of people that only knew Earl by reputation, he still somehow ended up being in charge. They were all listening intently and nodding along. Earl simply had that effect on Hunters. “But now I’m sick of y’all, so get the hell out of my room.” There was general laughter, and then some more after the translators caught up. “Klaus here won the lottery today, so the drinks are on him.” Lindemann did a little bow to the crowd. “No. Seriously. Beat it.”

After the place had cleared out, I found Earl Harbinger back at the map. His whole manner had changed. When he had the crowd, he had been in leadership mode, confident, assured, even a little cocky. Now Earl seemed distracted and dour, with half his attention wandering back to the map. “Don’t fret over getting beat by Klaus. Trust me. Men like him were why World War Two took so damned long to win. What’ve you got for me, Z?”

I quickly gave him a rundown of the night’s events, the spider, and the empty containment unit. “Do you know what Decision Week is? I heard it mentioned a couple of times. I think the tank at Dugway was left over from it.”

“Decision Week, huh? Cody around?” Earl looked to Julie.

She shook her head. “He’s playing poker with some of the old-timers.”

“That’s where I should be…loafing around with the retirees…Decision Week is ancient history. I know a bit about it. It was a weapons program that went wrong back during the war.”

“Why’s it called Decision Week?”