|
"Captain Mollytibbles, we have a situation."
I looked over the mounds of paper on my desk at Lieutenant Twinkle standing in the doorway. The bells on her red-and-white-striped uniform jingled merrily, but worry made her green face lime, and her pointy ears quivered above her red hair.
I swallowed a sigh. I was hours behind on the days' lists already, and it was still morning. "What is it, Lieutenant?"
"We lost half the crop in field seventeen last night."
I leaped to my feet in shock. "The teddy bears?" Not the bears! They were only two days from harvest.
"Yes, sir."
My gaze fell on the blue-coded stack of papers on the left side of my desk. The "nice" list. Thousands of children on that list were supposed to receive those teddy bears. "How did this happen?"
"I don't know, sir." She fidgeted with the bells on the tips of her pointy shoes. "We had soldiers at every point, like you ordered, and we've been laying concertina wire as fast as possible. After what happened in field twelve, we didn't want to take any chances."
"Please don't remind me about field twelve." That day haunted my nightmares, and I often woke from my sweat-soaked bed with the images burned into my eyelids. I would never be able to look at nesting dolls the same way again. "Do we have any clues as to the identity of these terrorists yet? Have they made any demands?"
"I don't know, sir. I don't believe so."
Sergeant Squeegle burst into the room behind her, his uniform bells playing the first strains of "Jingle Bells." He skidded to a stop and held out a piece of paper. "Lieutenant Tooby wanted you to see this, sir."
I waved him over and took the paper. It was a still image from our satellite. Dark shapes moved among the field of teddy bear ears poking through the ice. I squinted at the photo. "What am I looking at, Sergeant?"
"Sir, according to Lieutenant Tooby, they're...penguins."
|