“General, Sir! Check Point Echo reports that the Governor’s cars have arrived, and they are arranging an escort up the mountain. They should arrive in about 15 minutes.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant”, was General Harston’s calm outward reply, while his brain was shouting: “Shit!”. He had hoped the local airspace ban would discourage the Governor’s visit, but the asshole was not so easily dissuaded and now the General was going to have to babysit him through this complicated operation. Though a fellow Republican, Arizona’s Governor Mitchell was the worse of the breed: Heir to a silver mining empire, the political dilatant laced everything he said with God, guns and immigrant bashing, while most of his policies managed to be of benefit to silver mining heirs and friends thereof.

But of course, he would insist on being here. How can he sit out one of the biggest scientific mysteries in history suddenly appearing in his state?

“Lieutenant!” he barked as the young officer was returning to the makeshift communications table. “Remind them to detain the PR flaks before coming up, and make sure we collect everyone’s cell phones, including the Governor’s!”

That should add another 5 minutes, safely assuming the Governor has a hissy fit about it. Having mentioned cameras, he directed his eyes to the big flat screen to his right.

There she was, just as before. Simply lying in the open desert. She was far away at about two miles due east and 4,000 feet below this scenic overlook that became his command post. Even at her estimated 150 feet length, she would be difficult to see directly at that distance, particularly in this pre-dawn light. It didn’t help that her skin color was similar to that of the sand around her. Consequently, he relied on the camera images on the three 45-inch monitors up on stands to his right. The left one showed a zoomed in version of his perspective, from a nearby camera with an impressively long zoom lens. It was largely useless in this light, showing just glimpses of her from the light shown down from a helicopter hovering about a hundred feet above. The second image came from the helicopter itself and it was more useful. It revealed a sleeping nude woman, lying on her back her head resting on her left palm. She was lying perpendicular to his position, feet to his left, head to the right. Besides her size, there was nothing to indicate she was anything other than human. She appeared to be in her latter twenties, Caucasian, long, dark slightly wavy hair. She wore no jewelry, no body art, or anything that she wasn’t born with as near as he could tell.

The helicopter’s spotlight wasn’t designed to cover 150 feet at a time so it regularly aimed its 30’ bright circle up and down her body looking for any sign of activity. Aside from her obvious height, she appeared proportionally tall as well, with long legs, a thin waist, and a slender neck.

They were instructed not to shine the light directly on her face to avoid waking her, but of what he could see, it was clearly beautiful. She was sharp featured, with high cheekbones, and contrasting eye brows and lashes. It was that patrician, educated look TV shows often cast as attractive lawyers or young, over-achieving woman executives. The exception to that image was her breasts, which were pure fantasy porn. Not merely large, but extraordinarily large. Each approached the size of her head, and were just as spherical, even as she lay on her back. Harston was no stranger to large breasts. His wife, Marge had them, though in her case they were accompanied by an abundance of flesh everywhere else. When Marge’s laid back, her breasts would spread to either side and flattened a bit. In contrast, this woman’s chest stood high, in firm defiance to gravity despite their considerable weight. They were the kind of breasts men’s magazine cartoonists like to draw, but are almost never seen in real life. They looked…powerful.

It was almost easy to overlook her 150-foot size when viewing the monitor. The desert scrub around her offered little frame of reference, so the image could just as easily be that of an oddly staged soft porn still.

To remind himself of her size, he switched the left monitor to show a replay of a compilation of cell phone footage gathered from the previous night, when this woman stomped her way through a trailer park a few miles north. With the light from the waxing gibbous moon and trailer home windows, the video began with people running by in their bed clothes, When the last passed by, you could make out two giant women’s legs about 40 feet away slowly walking down the unpaved street that divided two rows of the trailers. The available light dimmed when camera aimed upward at the figure, and it was mostly moonlit reflections on the curves of her smooth skin that revealed the towering nude female form.

The image turned downward just in time to watch the left foot come down squarely on a vehicle under a tarp parked cross-ways in front of a trailer home. The tarp edge flipped upward just enough to get a glimpse of the old Mustang in primer paint before it crumpled and flattened almost flush into the ground. The crunching sound was accompanied by the 4-letter exclamations of the camera person and others nearby. She stopped, and the image tilted upward to catch her looking down at what she had done. With her curled toes, she dragged the tarp back to reveal the crushed car underneath, and whereupon she emitted a baritone chuckle.

She then lifted her left foot again and brought it down on the trailer home itself. There was the loud sound of cracking wood and other light materials as her foot went down through roof, walls and floor as though they were made of matchsticks. The unit had been dark and there appeared to be no one in it. He heard background voices inquire about the whereabouts of “Marie and Jason”.

The towering woman bent forward at the waist and he got a glimpse of the full round breasts aiming downward before the image blurred as the user turned to run away. The screen changed, revealing a view from a different camera as this was a compilation. This was to her left, slightly further away, and the view changed to landscape orientation. It showed the upper portion of the giant woman holding a pickup truck with its lights on. She held it in just her left hand. The fairly recent model truck appeared to be unoccupied with the interior lit from the driver’s door swinging open, likely indicating the driver’s quick escape. The headlight beam would briefly shine on parts of her anatomy as she turned the truck this way and that. Unidentified items flew from the truck bed as she turned it around. She then angled the front of the truck downward shining light on the panicked civilians below as though it were a flashlight.

The General’s gut tightened a bit as he knew from a previous viewing what was coming next. The unmistakable crack of gunfire could be heard from the monitor speaker. The intrepid videographer swept his camera down and to the left toward the shots. At first, muzzle flashes against a dark background were all you could see. The General guessed it was a single shot deer rifle of some kind. And then, from a few feet further away, came the unmistakable flashes and sound of a fully automatic rifle, undoubtedly an AR-15 or one of its clones with an illegal but easily-achieved fully automatic conversion.

Soon light – obviously from the pickup truck - shown down on the two shooters, who looked exactly what you would expect of residents of a desert trailer park. The closest was a heavy-set thirty-something in a disheveled t-shirt and boxer shorts holding what was indeed a single shot Remington or possibly a Browning. He had what looked to be a canvas grocery bag slung from his left shoulder, probably containing shells. The man with the automatic was a tall, skinny old guy with wire glasses and a long gray beard. He had no shirt at all, and was also in boxers. Their lower apparel reminding the General that all these people were probably sleeping when she invaded their world.

The truck’s lights blinded them both, though the old guy still blindly fired off some rounds, as they both stumbled backward a few steps. Changing shadows revealed the approach of the light source, and sure enough the front of the truck appeared in the upper right of the screen. But Harston knew now not to look at the truck, but rather the old guy as past him, approaching from the darkness appeared a giant right hand.

Open palmed and fingers together, the hand was slightly taller than the man and was angled back slightly so that it first hit him below the knee causing him to fall into the padded area between the big palm and fingers. The fat guy had no time to react and was similarly collected. The fingers curled around them both, and her thumb swung down to complete the grasp. The hand lifted out of sight, their screams quickly fading in the distance and were soon drowned out by the camera man’s exclamations of “Holy shit!”, two “Oh fucks", followed by the more novel “Oh my shit!”.

That sequence also concluded with a blur as the operator chose running over recording and was subsequently replaced by yet another view. It was to her right again, in portrait mode, and might even be from the first phone, for all he knew. Occasional blocking of the image from the right, revealed that the camera holder was obviously hiding behind the corner on the far side of a trailer home. Thanks to one or more adjacent empty lots, the angle was pretty comprehensive, showing the giant woman from head to toe, though there remained little light on her.

The gunfire sequence was repeated revealing this to be something of an instant replay from a different view. The view of the shooters is blocked by the trailer. In the slight red glow of the truck’s taillights, you can see her rubbing her right hand up and then down her stomach, which is presumably where she was hit by the gunfire. The general couldn’t see any blood or any indication of impact in the faint light, and indeed no sign of the gun shots could be seen in the contemporary imagery. Surely, she was struck, though. It was hard to imagine even untrained civilians missing a target of that size.

Again, the footage showed her turning the truck’s lights toward the gunmen, which raised the faint red light to catch the cantilevered lower curvature of her breasts. Her legs bent, bringing down the truck lights and her upper body. Her right knee met the ground with a surprising gentleness, as she bent forward. Though still aimed at her shooters, enough of the truck’s light bounced from the ground to reveal some of her face the extraordinary roundness of her breasts, and the smooth narrowness of her mid-section. Her right hand extended forward just above the ground, past the blocking trailer. The view soon tilted upward to show her grasping her victims as she raised back up to her towering stature. Harston tensed again for he knew what was coming next.

“Not nice of you to shoot at me like that.”

Again, he took in that first example of her voice. Its register was low, yet quite feminine, and unsurprisingly, quite loud, though she was clearly just talking. But what really bugged him was its accent. It wasn’t too heavy, but clearly there, sounding European, Eastern European, possibly even Russian thought he didn’t think so. That accent was an important clue, and presumably this tape was being shown to language experts in Langley and DC, who could nail it down, though he hadn’t heard a peep from them about it.

“Let me show you, all of you…” she paused for a moment, then turned the truck to face her right hand, which was held up at about shoulder level. The heads and shoulders of the two men could be seen above the fingers wrapped around them. “…what happens to people who shoot at me.”

Her fingers could be seen wrapping more tightly. Both men screamed, and their screams quickly became more anguished. The fingers continued their subtle movement as one voice withered away followed shortly by the other. There was a series of loud popping sounds that he originally thought were bones cracking, but now understood to be the sound of shells in the canvas bag exploding under pressure. Blood splattered upward and dripped from below her hand. Female screams could be heard which reminded the General it was likely that one, if not both, the men could have been married, or had live-ins who just witnessed their gruesome deaths

“Messy!” was all the giant woman said after opening her hand again and positioned the truck higher for a better look at the bloody bodies crushed by her hand and perforated by the exploding shells. She then abruptly threw them on the ground in front of her feet, where they landed with a wet sound as a single misshapen piece, which she then shined the truck’s light upon. Just as when he watched before, the General had to suppress his gag reflex during this part.

“Here, allow me to bury them for you!” Came the loud accented voice, whereupon her right heel came down upon the bodies causing a splatter of gore all around. She then twisted her heel with great weight, creating a gory depression in the ground. When it was about three feet deep, she stopped, shoved much of the surrounding displaced dirt over the gory mess, and capped things off by dropping the truck on top of the burial spot.

It was here that the General again questioned his orders to capture and detain this creature. In his mind, anyone…anything rather, that powerful and that cold-hearted should simply be killed. As quickly as possible.

With that thought, he shut off the video, switching back to the image of the dimly lit vaguely female form with a spotlight beam presently on her feet.

There was more video from the trailer park incident that he felt no need to review again. In it, she scares a family trying to escape in a small Jeep SUV. She picks it up, peers inside, giggles as they scream, and proceeds to use that vehicle’s headlights to give the kids a show & tell of her anatomy before gently placing the vehicle back on the ground…upside down, leaving shattered glass, plenty damaged bodywork and four severe case of PTSD.

She then ignores the trailer park residents altogether, paying attention instead to the settlement’s water tower. It stood about 100 feet above the ground and she crouched on her knees underneath it. She then poked a hole in its underside with her index finger, and gulped down generous quantities of the streaming water. Apparently, she was at least human enough to be affected by the dry desert air.

She then poked five more small slits with each fingernail of her right hand and took an impromptu shower until the water ran out. Relatively well lit by the water tower lights, shot by several phones, and edited with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm by someone in his command, both this and the previous scene were basically soft-porn and Harston couldn’t look at them without feeling self-conscious. After the shower, she simply got up and headed south, presumably to her present location to have a nice, peaceful post-murder nap.

He wished he could have a nap, as he was working on about an hour of sleep. The craziness started last night when at Fort Huachuca, which he commanded, experienced an earthquake at about 0046 hours, or 12:46 am in civilian time. Uncommon for this part of Arizona, the quake was also unusual for its 48 second duration and how it steadily progressed in intensity, as though someone was slowly turning up the volume knob.

At 01.03 came a second one. This time, the tremors started at high intensity and gradually diminished. Again, this was strange, but fortunately the base suffered no damaged by either. Another oddity, the United State Geological Survey (USGS) site measured both at an identical 4.38 on the Richter Scale and located the center of both at 97 miles northeast of the base in empty desert. It was curious, but no security threat, and the General told his night officer to keep him abreast of any developments, before he hung-up and tried to return to sleep.

He thought of his order as little more than a formality when that same officer called almost 15 minutes later, to state that Huachuca had been alerted that a small commercial airliner disappeared from the sky shortly after taking off from the Tucson airport. The last contact was two minutes after the end of the first earthquake, with the pilot and copilot frantically saying stating something about avoiding an obstruction even as they were well over ten thousand feet in attitude and still climbing. More important, was the location of that last contact: 97 miles northeast of the base in empty desert.

Harston immediately put the base on high alert. It was after he dispatched a squad of recon helicopters to search for the missing airliner that the base received word of frantic, and seemingly incoherent 911 calls to that area’s County Sherriff office from a trailer park in about the same area. The calls came a little over ten minutes after the 2nd earthquake and all made some mention of a giant naked woman of all things. Emailed info included video links posted to YouTube and Facebook. It was hard to know what to make of the dark but otherwise realistic video footage. Was this all some elaborate prank? Then, one of the choppers spotted the giant woman lying more or less in the mystery area, and that changed everything. Another chopper detected parts of the airliner spread–wide and about two miles east.

The odd thing is, the amazing discovery of the giant woman explained nothing. Incredible as it is that this woman was 150’ tall, how could she impact something over 10,000 feet in the air? Likewise, a woman of that size jumping down as hard as she could, could not come anywhere close to causing the earthquakes that hit the area, according to a seismologist at USGS who was clearly perplexed by the question.

Analysis of the airline crash was turned entirely over to the FAA and the Air Force, allowing Fort Huachuca, and the army in general to give full attention to their lady of the desert.

The copter’s video and data along with all the trailer park sourced material was all forwarded to Washington where it would interrupt the sleep of up several hundred brass and analysts with high security status.

Once convinced it was real, came discussions with the Pentagon over what to do next, and it was there on the other side of the country where it was decided that she must be captured alive, for study. Details regarding the who, what, and where of such study would come later.

For the immediate moment, he sent all but one of his Apache helicopters out to location. One would hover above her, to monitor for activity, while the others would surround the target, land and stand by. Should she awake, all the Apaches would take to the air, with full lights on so as to be seen. The nearby chopper would inform her through a loudspeaker that she was surrounded needed to stay put. Fortunately, the phone videos showed she spoke English.

The monitoring copter would stay on point until its fuel was low and then rotate with one of the perimeter copters. Consequently, fuel trucks were also immediately dispatched.

It was a stop-gap plan, too dependent her responding appropriately to their threat, and too dependent on airpower for that threat. But it was something, and it would be in place in less than a half hour.

Hopefully, it would be soon followed by the remaining Apache, which Major Hadid was charged with getting outfitted with an aerial sprayer for a soporific the base had on hand. The gas worked well enough on humans, and would hopefully work on her as well. Successful deployment of that would provide time for his ground forces to take their position and hopefully retrain her by some means that Colonel Marsh was in charge of figuring out.

If she woke before being restrained, Harston would have to convince her he could kill her if she didn’t stay put. And if she didn’t go for it, he would simply have to kill her, and he was kind of hoping it would come to that.

Normally, you would surround a target you didn’t want to flee, but once awake, this target would be both vertical and agile. Surrounding her and then hurling rockets and cannon fire at a target that easy to miss almost insures hitting your own forces. It would be a circular firing squad.

Instead, he opted to divide his forces into three, and each would approach the target in triangular formation much like the radiation symbol. Artillery launched from any company that missed should land into empty space on the other side. And if she headed for the empty gaps, rear forces could close in from either side to head her off while the area directly behind her would open up. Hopefully the gas would work because he had no intention of sending his ground forces out to deal with her in the dark. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was the best could come up with given the short time and such an unprecedented situation. Moreover, the Pentagon brass approved it.

Wanda approved of it too.

Wanda had mastered the skill of remote viewing over half a century ago and it remained one of her most go-to magic techniques. So, she knew the plan as well as the General did. She watched him work it out with his command officers and watched each of them explain it to their respective commands, and then watched each step as it was being carried out. All the while, her big body slept soundly 97 miles away.

When the helicopter came and sprayed its gas all around her, she simply stopped breathing for 20 minutes or so. This was not a problem as she had other means of keeping her body going. Not that she planned on going anywhere soon. She watched as practically the entire base convoyed up and set up its massive operation at the base of the mountain range just west of where her body rested. She watched the three companies form, and just after the sun first peeked over the Eastern horizon, saw two of them embark. She was surprised by the size of the support operations that remained. She thought the Command HQ being set up on the scenic overview at just over 4000 feet on the side of the mountain road was a nice touch.

And all in all, she couldn’t wait for it all to happen. Except that she had to. While she could watch the real thing from up high, she preferred watching the General’s right-most monitor, which showed the tactical. Each individual and vehicle had a transponder color coded to company and shape-coded by individual soldier and vehicle type. A tightly packed mass of red clusters showed one company making a wide circle toward her from the northeast, while a similar mass of blue was a mirror image intending to approach her from the Southeast. They gave her a wide berth so as not to risk disturbing her until they approached her in formation. The third company, shown in green, was still at base camp as it only had about two miles due east to travel. Ironically, they would arrive last, with the thought being if it arrived first and she awoke, she could flee east before the other two companies were in position. In this case, if she ran westerly, the green company had the entire support group behind it.

All those precautions. If only they knew she absolutely had no intention to flee. Of course, if they really knew her intentions, they wouldn’t be here at all.

So, the tactical showed there was some more time to wait, and of course the Governor hadn’t arrived yet and he would have to be briefed before operations began. So, there was still a bit of a wait until showtime. It’s been almost a hundred years in coming, she could wait a little longer.