No Enemy Confirmed

No Enemy Confirmed | Southern California, USA | 24 FEB 1942

The city had learned to live in the dark.

Blackout drills became the norm after Pearl Harbor. Streetlights vanished. Windows were blacked out. Even cigarette tips were cupped so the glow would not betray a man’s position. 

Captain Ray Garrett stood on the concrete platform, collar stiff against the night wind, watching searchlight beams comb the sky. 

Less than two days earlier, a Japanese submarine had shelled the Ellwood oil field near Santa Barbara. 

Minimal damage, maximum panic. 

“Stations report ready, sir,” Lieutenant Harold Connors said. Too pale, too young. 

“Acknowledged,” Garrett replied, eyes fixed on the horizon. “Let’s hope tonight stays quiet.” 

The warning from Naval Intelligence still echoed in his head: Prepare for an attack within ten hours. A coded wire had come through at dusk, stamped CRITICAL. 

Around two in the morning, sirens rose from the harbor, a wavering cry that multiplied as wardens triggered alarms across the city. Streetlights died block by block. Los Angeles disappeared into darkness again.

The command post burst into motion. Boots on concrete, the metallic stutter of shell lifts engaging.

“Report!” Garrett barked.

Holmes stood over the plotting table with the field telephone pressed to his ear, grease-pencil marks already crossing the acetate overlay. 

“Warning control reports intermittent activity offshore, sir. Visual reports are coming in from Long Beach and Santa Monica.”

“Trajectory?”

“No continuous track, sir,” Holmes replied. “Reports are scattered. Radar is tracking activity moving down the coast, and some were spotted going inland between Culver City and Westwood.”

“Could be interference,” Connors offered, too quickly.

Holmes kept the telephone pressed to his ear. “Could be,” Holmes said. “But interference doesn’t move, and it doesn’t climb.”

Through the observation window, Garrett watched the city vanish. Block by block, lights blinked out as air raid wardens enforced the blackout. Beyond the now darkened city, searchlights moved through the clouds. The first beam caught what first looked like a ball of smoke suspended in light. 

Garrett raised his binocular and adjusted the focus.

The smoke didn't hold its shape. It lowered slowly and balanced into place.

"What in God's name..." Connors whispered.

Garrett didn't answer.

The thing hung motionless against the sky, absorbing light rather than reflecting it. There were eight beams of light now, sharpening the image. Garrett felt the quiet, unfamiliar sensation that his training had reached the edge of itself.

“Another report from Long Beach, sir,” Holmes called. “Unidentified aircraft believed inbound. Interceptor Command has advanced the warning.”

The field telephone crackled. “Thirty-Seventh Brigade to all batteries. Maintain Green Alert. Gun crews ready for immediate action.”

“Gun crews stand ready!” Garrett’s order echoed across the platform.

The main aircraft began to drift, slow at first, then accelerating with a grace that mocked gravity. It veered slowly inland toward the aircraft plants.

Before Garrett could give another order, the night erupted.

A battery near Santa Monica fired first. Within seconds, other batteries answered in kind.

“Hold fire!” Garrett shouted into the radio. “Wait for positive—”

The channel drowned in voices: “Targets in the lights! Multiple aircraft reported! Keep firing!”

A fleet of objects streaked overhead. Shell bursts bloomed around them illuminating the night in flashes.

“Sir,” Holmes said, voice tight, “Fourth Interceptor Command has ordered the fighters to ground. No aircraft are clear to take off.”

Garrett lowered his binoculars. 

The main aircraft moved deliberately, pausing now and then as if observing their patterns. When searchlights crossed its path, smoke and shell bursts fractured the beams until Garrett could no longer tell where cloud ended and object began.

"Sir?" Connors said, at his shoulder. “Another battery reports no confirmed hits.”

Garrett watched the sky another second.

"Cease fire," Garrett said quietly, then louder: "Battery D, cease fire!"

The guns fell silent.

Through the distant thunder of other batteries, Garrett watched the objects without urgency now. Without hope of correction. His throat tightened.

"Sir?" Connors stepped forward. "Command ordered sustained fire."

"Look at it, Lieutenant," Garrett said, passing his binoculars. "Really look. We've thrown everything we have. Either we're missing every shot, or..."

“Or we don’t know what we’re firing at,” Holmes finished, voice hollow.

Garrett didn’t answer right away. He looked again through his binoculars, through the haze.

Command crackled in.

"Captain, repeat your last transmission." 

"Battery D has ceased fire," Garrett responded firmly, gripping the radio handset. “Request confirmation of target and firing authority. We can’t keep a fix on it. There are no confirmed strikes, and no identifiable aircraft.”

"Captain," the voice cut in, “Your battery has been released to fire. Resume the engagement immediately or I will recommend that you be relieved of your duty.”

The threat hung in the air. Around him, his men pretended not to hear, but their postures betrayed them.

"Sir," Garrett said carefully, "I'm prepared to accept those consequences. But before you do, you should see what we’re seeing."

Static overwhelmed the channel. When it cleared, a new voice spoke, older, calmer.

“Battery D, hold your position. Preserve your plotting sheets and observer logs. An officer from brigade control will review them at first light.”

—

Near four in the morning, a staff car appeared on the coastal road, headlights narrowed to slits. It climbed the bluff in silence, tires crunching over spent casings. The horizon glowed faintly from the batteries still firing farther south. 

When the car stopped, the air seemed to pause with it. Brigadier General Williams stepped out, followed by two intelligence officers, coats buttoned tight against the sea wind. 

“Show me,” Williams said without preamble.

Inside the command post, Garrett spread the night's record across the plotting table. Grease-pencil tracks crossed the acetate overlay in broken fragments. Beside them lay telephone logs crowded with times, bearings, conflicting visual reports, firing orders and corrections. Nothing formed the clean track of an aircraft entering defended airspace.

Williams bent over the table.

“This is everything?”

“Everything we received,” Garrett said. “Warning-control reports, observer calls, firing times. We never held a continuous track.”

One of Williams's aides began collecting copies of the plotting sheets and message logs, marking each with its battery designation. Williams studied Garrett for a moment, then leaned toward the field phone. His voice dropped to a murmur, but Garrett caught fragments.

“Object defies description… advise ceasefire… civilian panic if released.”

When Williams hung up, his expression softened. “You made the right call tonight,” he said. “Could’ve cost you your career.”

“Still might,” Garrett replied.

“Then it would be for the right reasons.”

Williams and his aides disappeared into the staff car, taillights winking out as it wound down the hill.

By a little after four fifteen, the ceasefire rippled across Los Angeles. Guns fell quiet. In the sudden stillness, the object’s lingering presence felt even more oppressive. Garrett stood among the brass littering Battery D's platform, watching the last searchlights sweep the sky. The silence felt heavier than the barrage.

“Damage report,” Garrett said.

“Gun Three’s traverse is shot. The others need work but they’ll hold,” Connors answered.

Holmes approached, clipboard in hand. “Command wants ammunition totals.”

Garrett almost laughed. “Tell them we fired everything but our shadows.” 

For a heartbeat, something flickered high above. Just a glint, then gone.

An hour later, full morning arrived. 

The Pacific lay calm and bright, as if the night had never happened. Cleaning crews swept glass from sidewalks. Children pressed faces to windows and counted shell casings like trophies. City maintenance vehicles arrived to assess the damage. An officer bearing the insignia of the 203rd Artillery Regiment stepped toward him with a clipboard in hand. The uniform looked right. The face didn't. 

“Captain Garrett,” the man said, saluting. “We’ve been assigned to support debris cleanup and ordnance count. Battery D’s footage and reports will be sent directly to Western Defense Command. We’ll handle the rest.”

Garrett nodded. Something about the man’s calm demeanor unsettled him. 

“You ever see anything like that?” Garrett asked.

The man hesitated, then gave a thin smile. “My job isn’t to see, Captain. Just to record.”

Garrett watched him walk away, the cryptic reply echoing in his mind. 

He remained in his office long after the battery was dismissed. His hand hovered over the field journal, the ink still wet from his final line. Something about writing it down, cataloguing the impossible, offered a fleeting sense of control. He flipped back through the pages. Every detail: the radar reports, the broken tracks, the conflicting observations, the tracer fire that vanished into nothing. It all seemed unbelievable, even to him. Yet his men had loaded the guns. His voice had given the orders. He had seen it.

Garrett closed the journal. The record existed. For now, that would have to be enough.