Chapter 9
Bill Sutherland smiled at the young blond-headed guard. “Do you know what a John Doe warrant is?” he asked, leaning on the big security desk.
The man shook his head, eyes narrowed in suspicion. There was a stubborn set to his mouth.
“It’s issued by a federal judge who agrees with me that some of Leurre’s staff conspired to kill one of my men,” he continued easily. “We’re empowered to detain anyone we believe part of that conspiracy. You’re obstructing our investigation, which makes you an accessory after the fact and subject to arrest. Understand?”
“Yeah.” A corner of his mouth curled up—more grimace than smile.
“So why not cooperate? It’ll save FBI Special Agent Flannigan here”—he nodded to his right—“from having to haul you in.” Tall, thirtyish, black Irish good looks, Flannigan stood with Tuckman, Bakunin and Sutherland’s team in the deserted lobby of the Leurre Institute. The guard was the only other human being they’d seen since their arrival.
Sullenly answering Bill’s questions, he’d given nothing away. No, he didn’t know where Dr. Langston was. No, there was no one here today. Yes, the Institute was usually open on Friday. No, he would not look at their search warrant. They’d have to wait until he could locate someone in authority.
Bill’s soft persuasion seemed to work. “Okay”—the guard shrugged—“if you have to search, search. There’s nothing I can do. But there really isn’t anyone here. And I don’t know where the Director is.”
Sutherland turned to his men. “Okay, let’s begin. You all know where to go and what to look for. Remember, we don’t have to uncover the whole iceberg—the tip will do for now. Anything on Foxfire, Antonucchi’s murder, the Goose Hill site. By tonight we’ll have fifty men down here helping us. You’ve all got handsets.” He held up his own small handset. “If you find something, tell us. I’ll be here in the lobby with the DCI and Colonel Bakunin, in case any of the staff show up.”
“Why weren’t your people at Otis, Bill?” asked the Director as the agents boarded an elevator.
His deputy shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe Langston caught up with them—an unpleasant possibility. Or maybe they went back to the site.” His face brightened. “Of course, that’s just what they’d do! McShane would want to poke around in there before we sealed it off.”
Tuckman nodded. “Let’s finish the preliminaries here, then get to the site.” Turning to the guard, he asked, “How do we get to Goose Hill from here?”
“It’d be easier if I drew you a map.” The man opened a drawer as Tuckman turned back to Sutherland.
“This reminds me of an operation we ran in Vienna after the war,” he said. “We didn’t know . . .”
Impaled on a brilliant shaft of purest indigo, Tuckman stood for a surprised instant, then fell to the floor, his chest a charred smoking ruin. A high-pitched whine pierced the air. The guard turned his strange weapon on Sutherland, then slid from sight beneath the big teak desk, a faint pop heralding his disappearance.
Bakunin holstered his slim, silenced Italian automatic.
Dazed and pale, Sutherland closed Tuckman’s sightless eyes. Walking to the security station, he retrieved the strange long-barreled pistol from the desktop—then saw the guard’s body.
“Bakunin,” he croaked, gesturing. The Russian followed him behind the desk. They stood looking down at the dead six-foot insectoid: deep-green, bulbous-eyed, it faintly resembled a huge praying mantis, except for the tentacles tapering from its two upper limbs, the tentacles still twitching in death. A webbed belt hung with unfamiliar equipment girdled its thorax, viscous green liquid oozing from a neat hole between its eyes.
Standing there over the dead alien, the stench of Tuckman’s burnt flesh filling the room, the small, high moments of Bill Sutherland’s life touched his mind. The clapboard Indiana farmhouse, acres of white unfurled behind it on washday. Dad, Grandpa and the uncles playing around the cribbage board on Christmas Eve, sipping bourbon, the air heavy with blue cigar smoke. Lois’s encircling warmth that first time in the back of his old Chevy, under a full August moon, the air rich with the scent of wild roses. Inge’s startling blue eyes, that day in Berlin. Emmy-chan in the snow at Nikko, and much, much later, lying before their fireplace in McLean, the firelight dancing along her soft, golden skin. It all felt very fragile now.
“Bakunin,” he said softly, “I think we’ve found a little green gremlin.” Unnoticed, his hands shook.
Bakunin finally found his voice. “It is alien, intelligent, hostile and armed with superior weaponry. It can control minds. I urge you to summon reinforcements—cordon off the village.”
His hand still shaking, Sutherland picked up the phone
Major General James (“Big Jim”) O’Brien’s twenty-five years in the Air Force had added only slightly to his bedrock of Missouri skepticism. Thus he blinked twice at the situation board before startling the noncom next to him with a loud, “What the hell is that?”
“That,” to the thirty pairs of eyes in the Joint Chiefs of Staff Operations center, four hundred feet under the Pentagon, was a green dot moving fast—much too fast—across the North Atlantic toward the New England coast. As they watched, the computer tagged it “U1”: unidentified target, number one. Not yet “H” for hostile, just “U.” That “U” worried Big Jim far more than an “H.” “H” he knew how to deal with. “Sure it’s not Russian or Chinese?” he asked hopefully.
“No way, sir,” said the Target ID officer, staring at his computer. “Too fast, too high. It originated in space, outside our radar range.”
“Meteor?”
“It’s changed trajectory eight times in the past minute and is now decelerating. Not to any speed we could intercept, though.” Before O’Brien could speak, the green dot entered U.S. territory and disappeared. “Wet landing?”
“No, sir. Land. Just—the Cape Cod coast. There.” A red circle flashed a third of the way up the peninsula, itself enlarged on the situation board.
Shit, thought O’Brien. A goddamned UFO on my watch. And it’s landed. He squeezed his eyes shut for an instant, then opened them. The red circle was still there, blinking. O’Brien picked up the green phone. In seconds he was listening to the Otis Operations Officer’s report. Yes, their radar had spotted it, too. F-15s had scrambled.
Glancing at the board O’Brien saw a phalanx of red crosses, marked F1to F5, appear, cruising along the Cape’s Atlantic shore. “Get some choppers up, too, Major Jenkins,” he ordered. “If you’ve had no luck by dawn, we’ll reinforce you.” As he hung up the green phone, the blue one next to it rang: three brisk chimes, like a ship’s clock. Everyone who could turned to watch as O’Brien reached for it. The blue phone never rang. “General O’Brien,” he answered. It was going to be a long night.
“General,” said a crisp voice, “this is William Sutherland, CIA. I’m declaring Situation Breakout. You’ll find the applicable challenge and countersign in your standing orders. This is not a drill.”
O’Brien dutifully pecked “Breakout” on his laptop. “‘Cortez,’” he read off the screen. “‘Rome Falls,’” responded Sutherland, hoping to God he’d given the right countersign. There were seven he had to memorize and they changed every month. He was relieved to hear the general ask, “What are your instructions, Mr. Sutherland?”
“I need infantry at Oystertown, Massachusetts—the Leurre Oceanographic Institute. Get help here as fast as you can from Otis—APs, air commandos, anyone who can carry a weapon. Things are a bit dicey. Then get a Rapid Deployment Force to Otis and quarantine Cape Cod. Maximum air vigilance in this sector. I’m calling the White House now. I’m authorized to instruct you to go to DEFCON 2. Please do so now. I’ll wait.”
Mad dogs and the CIA, O’Brien thought, turning to his second in command. “Bradshaw,” he said, “go to DEFCON 2.”
The colonel looked up startled at the big board. Except for Cape Cod, all was normal.
“General?
” he asked.
“DEFCON 2 please, Colonel,” O’Brien repeated. “Per contingency.”
“Very good, sir,” said Bradshaw. Turning back to his console, he began issuing the necessary orders.
“Okay, Sutherland,” the general said, “you’ve got thirty minutes to get me White House confirmation or we stand down. You know the drill.”
“I know the drill.”
“You realize this will put the world on a war footing?” added O’Brien. The command center was now bustling with activity as the alert went out and acknowledgments poured in.
Sutherland glanced down at the dead alien. “I certainly hope so, General.”
“Be advised,” said O’Brien, “there’s an airborne craft with advanced capabilities operating in your vicinity. It appears to be extraterrestrial in origin and it’s landed. Otis F-15s are looking for it now.”
“What do you mean, ‘advanced’?” demanded the CIA officer.
“I mean, Sutherland,” said O’Brien tersely, “that we’re von Richthofen’s Circus and it’s an F-15. Give me your number—I’ll call you with your reinforcements’ ETA.”
“What was all that?” asked Bakunin.
“‘Rome Falls’? A contingency established shortly after Foxfire began. The phrase ‘extraterrestrial invasion’ is never used, but the plan calls for area quarantine, full alert and even projects nuking our own cities to stop an ‘enemy’ landing. I never believed it was meant for Chinese paratroopers.” They turned at the slight rumble of an elevator door opening. Flannigan stood alone in the elevator, dazed, unmoving, pistol held limply in one hand. The door started to close.
“Flannigan?” snapped Sutherland. At that, the FBI agent’s hand shot out, banging back the door. He stepped out, blinking, seeming to see Bakunin and Sutherland for the first time.
“A lab worker in marine biology tried to shoot me,” he said slowly, walking to the desk. “I shot first, then she, it . . .” He stopped short, spotting Tuckman’s head protruding from behind the security station. “What happened?” he asked hoarsely.
“First, holster your weapon,” ordered Sutherland. Flannigan complied. “Now look behind the desk. Was that what you killed?”
The agent peered down over the desktop. Biting his lower lip, he nodded. “It killed the DCI,” he said, looking up.
Bill nodded. “Never knew what hit him. And neither do we,” he added, hefting the dead alien’s weapon. “I’ll recall the others, Tim.” He placed a gentle hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “Get yourself some coffee. There are some vending machines down that hall, on the left.” He pointed to where a corridor curved out of sight across the lobby, opposite the elevators. “I’ll call you.” The agent had gone perhaps ten yards when Bill called, “Oh, Tim. When did you become right-handed?”
Flannigan’s hand flashed to his pistol even as Bakunin reached for his own gun and Sutherland fired. A bright-blue bolt took the agent full in the face. His form shimmering, he fell like a stone.
Two dead insectoids now lay in the Institute’s lobby, their deep-hued green a stark contrast to the floor’s blue-veined Florentine marble.
“You know, Sutherland,” said Bakunin, putting his pistol away, “we—you and me—are the only ones here we know aren’t . . . those.” He nodded at Flannigan’s killer, its short, thin neck ending in a charred stump. “The safest thing, I regret to say, would be to shoot your men as they get off the elevator.” He stopped at the American’s hard stare.
“You are a ruthless son of a bitch, tovarich Colonel. If Marsh, Johnson and Yazanaga aren’t Marsh, Johnson and Yazanaga, I’ll know. But until I know, all are innocent.”
The Russian officer shrugged. “You’re a sentimental fool, Sutherland,” he said. “And as for ruthless, which of us just spoke of nuking his own country?”
“Did it occur to you, Bakunin, that Flannigan might have been a gremlin all along?” Before the Russian could answer, Bill picked up his radio and recalled his men. Receiving the last acknowledgment, he took out his cellphone, then paused. “Why did they jump us? They could easily have carried off their masquerade. They’re very good.”
The Russian shrugged. “Perhaps they thought we knew more than we did. Or maybe something is happening elsewhere that we’re unaware of. I mean, where are they all?” He looked around the deserted lobby. “They should have swarmed over us.”
Picking up the phone again, the CIA officer dialed out. “They knew, Bakunin. They knew they were blown! It all must tie into the site and my missing people. As soon as I make this call . . . Yes, José Montanoya, please. Sutherland, CIA. Find him—it’s a national emergency.”