path to conquest

by Unknown Author

  “I don’t like him,” Mitchell said seriously. He was in no mood for Donnenfeld’s ribbing. “And I don’t trust him.” “Professional jealousy?” Pete offered gently.

  Mitchell’s brows twitched, and a hurt look clouded his eyes. “No, Pete. It’s nothing like that. And no, Hannah, I’m not jealous of his looks or the fact that he’s making time with Sari.”

  Hannah saw Pete’s confused expression. “Mitchell’s always had a crush on Sari,” she explained. “Everybody knows it.” Pete shrugged. “/ didn’t.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s no big deal,” said Mitchell. “It’s my heartache, and I can live with it. If there’s any justice in the world, Sari’ll see the light sooner or later.”

  “Which has nothing to do with why you dislike Neville More, or so you say,” Hannah said.

  “I may be overweight, I may be a lousy athlete, I may be the butt of everybody’s jokes around here, but no one’s ever seriously questioned my judgment. True?”

  “True.”

  “Then give me the benefit of this doubt.”

  Donnenfeld came over to the young scientist and touched his shoulder. “Mitchell, we need his input. We’re really up against it.”

  “Are you saying I’m not good enough with our computers? I’ve been good enough for five years.”

  “Of course you’re good enough.”

  “Then let me do my job.”

  “Dammit, son, 1 am, but when you’ve got someone aboard who can help, you put him in uniform and into the lineup. Right, Peter?”

  Pete raised his hands, fending off any involvement. “Hey, don’t get me in on this, Hannah. You already know how I feel about the guy.”

  Mitchell’s round cheeks puffed out in surprise. “You don’t like him either?”

  “1 just wondered about his story of going around the country like some Johnny Computer-seed, whether he’s really helping labs like this one, or just getting free room and board.” “And I assured Peter that Neville was indeed earning his keep,” Hannah said.

  “If Hannah says he’s making a contribution, who am I to argue, Mitch? Sorry.”

  “Mitchell,” Hannah said softly, “what is it you don’t like about him? What don’t you trust?”

  Mitchell shoved his stubby fingers deep into his pockets, shoulders rounded in a defeated slump. “He’s not a hacker.” “He’s what?” Hannah’s crinkly eyes opened in astonishment. “He’s not a hacker? That’s your objection to having a world-renowned computer genius helping us fight the Visitors?”

  “You don’t understand,” said the pudgy man. He turned to shuffle away.

  Pete grabbed him by the arm. “Then explain it to us.” “Hackers look like me, not like More. We love computers because we’re too odd for anyone else to love us. I’d guess that’s never been one of Neville More’s problems. When I worked at Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, we needed a place to sack out without leaving the building. The lab had one of those drop ceilings, you know? Somebody figured out that there was space up there between the ceiling and the roof, and we slept up there! Some guys lived in the computer center for weeks on end.”

  With a suspicious expression, Pete whistled. “That’s nuts.” “That’s hacking!” Mitchell cried out, spreading his arms as if throwing himself on the mercy of some imagined court. “We might have been crazy, or at least weird from time to time, but we were completely dedicated to our computers. And we were the best. Somehow I doubt Neville More ever slept in a ceiling to stay close to his computer.”

  “I’m sorry, Mitchell,” said Donnenfeld. “I need you both on this. It’s that important. Take heart—he won’t be here forever. He’ll probably move on soon. That’s been his pattern.”

  Mitchell Loomis bowed his head. “Okay, I’ll make the best of it.”

  She patted his cheek and he slouched out of the room. Then she turned to Pete. “Let’s get a move on. We’ve got oil to track down.”

  Sam Yeager and Denise Daltrey had already begun the legwork, reviewing the records of the two office buildings, the shopping mall, and the hospital where the toxic gases had struck. All received their heating oil from a firm located on Staten Island. Sam called Brook Cove with this information just before Pete and Hannah had left for the drive back to Manhattan.

  “Then Staten Island’s our target,” said Donnenfeld. “Do you know where, Sam?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got an address. Why don’t you and Pete meet me at my house in Brooklyn and we can go in one car?” They did just that, trading Pete’s two-seat Mercedes for Yeager’s unmarked Ford police sedan. Yeager turned to get onto the Belt Parkway, winding along Brooklyn’s bayfront southern shore. The weather had cleared completely, and the waters of Sheepshead Bay shimmered in the afternoon sun. In the distance, the graceful span of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge stretched out to link Brooklyn with Staten Island. “That’s not all I found out,” Yeager said. “Two guys who worked for this piace—they were a delivery-truck crew— they’re gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?” asked Pete.

  “Vanished, disappeared. And so are their families. Nobody knows what happened to ’em.”

  “Got a theory?” said Hannah from the back seat.

  Sam Yeager nodded. “Matter of fact, I do. We all know the lizards’ve got people working for them—our people. Some of ’em are just scum; they’ll work for anyone who pays ’em. But sometimes the Visitors blackmail good folks. I’ve seen more than one instance myself where they’ll kidnap somebody and use that to get a family member to help them.”

  “Hm,” Pete said thoughtfully. “You think that’s what happened here?”

  “Yup. I think the lizards snatched the wives and kids, then forced these two poor slobs to put something into the oil they delivered. ”

  "Well,” Hannah said, “the only way we can gather more proof toward that little theory is if they also put the same stuff into the main storage tanks. If we find that to be the case. I’d say that would support your theory. If we don’t, it’s just speculation.”

  “Then what happened to the two missing guys?” Pete wondered.

  Yeager gave a short shrug. “When they did what they were toid, they expected to get their families back. Instead, they got killed. Simple as that.”

  When they arrived at the oil tanks, Yeager flashed his badge at the employee who asked what they wanted. Dr. Donnenfeld took out her collection jars and went to each of the company’s five storage tanks, taking about a quart of oil from each filling spigot. She carefully labeled the containers, capped them, and started for the car.

  “I hope the kids aren’t too upset seeing me back by dinner. I sometimes think they like it better when I’m not there to order them around,” she said wistfully.

  “Bull,” Pete replied. “Maybe they’ve got some good data on the site samples.”

  The old woman nodded. Pete could see her energy was flagging a bit. “I’d love nothing better than instant correlation.!’

  The ride back to Brooklyn to pick up Pete’s car was largely quiet, with each person lost in private thoughts. For Hannah Donnenfeld, usually as resilient as a watch-spring, the trip was an unwelcome opportunity to ponder a morass of doubts she’d have preferred to ignore. Was there anything to the nebulous feelings about Neville More that Peter and Mitchell evidently shared?

  And what about this budding romance between More and Sari? Perhaps it was a cliche, but the researchers who worked under her at Brook Cove truly were the kids she’d never had, and Sari was her favorite daughter. Sari was thirty-two, with a single serious relationship behind her. When that failed nearly a decade ago, she’d come to Brook Cove and immersed herself in her career.

  Hannah knew Sari had cultivated her perky image as a shell to protect the shy midwestem girl inside. She was a damned good scientist, and she’d grown comfortable playing that part. She’d chosen Hannah—who’d never married herself—as a role model.

  To Hannah, that was mighty complimentary, but she wasn’t certain it was
good for Sari. Even in her midseventies, with all those years behind her and accolades aplenty to convince her she’d chosen the right path, Hannah still had regrets now and then. It hadn’t been easy for a woman in science way back when she’d gotten out of college. Most job offers began and ended with, “How fast can you type, do you take shorthand, and how good’s your coffee, honey?”

  Eventually she and her Ph.D. found a niche. But the single-minded determination it took to establish herself in her field meant little time for love. After a while the urge for intimate companionship had become so well trained, it almost never bothered to make a fuss.

  Hannah wanted more for Sari. But did that mean Neville More? Was he someone she’d want her surrogate child involved with?

  Professionally, Hannah was concerned that these soap-opera-plot machinations might interfere with their work. That she simply couldn't allow, no matter how painful it might be to stop it.

  Mostly, Donnenfeld coveted a few hours’ restful sleep—an escape from responsibility. Just for one night, but I've got a feeling it won’t be tonight.

  Chapter 9

  Like a watering hole in the center of an oasis, with vast and barren lands stretching all around it, the Persian Gulf had been giving life since before the first nomadic Arabian tribes peered into its shallow waters and saw silvery schools of fish swimming close to shore. The ancient ways still worked, and today’s fishermen relied on the methods taught by fathers to sons for more generations than anyone could remember. By oar and pole, they used their flat-bottom boats to herd fish into wide netted corrals, pulled the ends of the nets up to keep the fish in, then scooped their catch into the boats.

  “Did you ever do that?” Lavi Mayer asked his companion. The two men were dressed in the loose-fitting robes and white linen burnooses of itinerant bedouins. They lay on their bellies on a dune overlooking the shimmering Gulf. A pair of horses waited patiently behind them, nibbling gently on a scrubby desert bush.

  “My family wasn’t involved in fishing,” said the other man, his cultured British accent contrasting with the unique speech pattern that identified Lavi as a sabra, a native-born Israeli whose English was an amalgam of the many Eastern and Western tongues spoken in the Jewish state.

  An unyielding sun had baked Lavi’s thin nose and hollow cheeks to a reddish bronze, and he wished that he’d used stronger sun-screen lotion.

  As if reading the Israeli’s mind, the man with the English accent said, “You’re getting rather sunburned there.”

  Lavi Mayer made a pained face. “Do you Arabs always feel compelled to state the obvious, Abdul?”

  “Only when my Jewish partner is going to regret his lack of preparedness,” Abdul said with a flashing grin. His broad, handsome face was dominated by a pointed blue-black beard and heavy eyebrows that met above his nose. His medium-brown complexion made it clear that he wouldn’t have to worry much about getting burned himself.

  Lavi leaned on his elbows, and his sleeves slipped down to reveal thin arms rippling with ropy muscles. “What’s a nice Jewish boy, approaching middle age—could you tell I’ll be forty in two years?—doing laying in the sand with a Saudi Arabian fellow who speaks like Prince Charles? Answer me that!”

  “Yes, I could tell you’re going to be forty in two years.”

  The Israeli looked hurt. “How?”

  Abdul reached for Lavi’s head covering and lifted it off one temple. “Got a spot of gray creeping in on the reds and browns. Now, as for what you’re doing mucking about in the Arabian desert, we’ll soon find out, both of us.”

  “Where did you pick up that accent?”

  Abdul hesitated. “I, uh, I attended school in England for a bit.” Then he tensed and squinted.

  “See something?” Lavi asked.

  Both men pulled binoculars out from under their robes and scanned the cloudless sky.

  “Damn!” Abdul said.

  “What? I don’t see.” Lavi lowered his binoculars to ascertain where his fellow observer was looking.

  The Arab pointed, but by now they didn’t need any magnification aid to see that five Visitor skyfighters were flying down from the north. All were equipped with harnesses that hung below them, slinging what were unmistakably the components of a drilling platform. As Abdul and Lavi watched, the Visitor ships slowed, swiveled in the air over the Gulf waters as if hunting for a particular spot, then hovered and lowered their equipment.

  One craft set a remote-guided boat down on the sea’s surface. It was a squat, flat-topped thing, floating low in the water, and its airborne operators skillfully maneuvered it to assist in depositing the platform parts.

  “That’s a very ingenious design,” Lavi said. “I bet they’ll have that thing anchored and assembled in less than an hour or two.”

  Abdul stared at him. “Perhaps you’d like to go out there and slap them on the back. Good show, old boy!”

  “Sorry,” Lavi shrugged. “What do you think they’re going to use this for?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest notion, but we better get back to Gamel and radio this back to HQ.”

  The President waved Pete, Mayor Stein, and Dr. Donnen-feld over to the living room couch, then lowered himself into the deep cushions of a high-backed armchair. He was dressed in blue jeans and a red-plaid flannel shirt open several buttons below the neck to reveal silvery chest hair.

  “Mr. President,” Donnenfeld chided, “I haven’t seen you in a business suit in ages.”

  He ducked his head sheepishly. “I gotta admit this informal hotel-suite presidency has me spoiled. Now, what have you folks got to tell me?”

  Pete and the mayor deferred immediately to Hannah, who opened a tiny leatherbound notebook she had fished out of the side pocket of her bulky cardigan. “Well,” she said, “instead of the old good news-bad news routine, this is sorta both rolled into one, Mr. President. We’ve got a firm match. The substance found in the heating-oil samples taken directly from the buildings where we had those mishaps last week is also in the big storage tanks at the Staten Island company that delivered the oil.”

  “Direct link, huh, Doc?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Alison,” Morrow said, “you haven’t had any other incidents, right?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And I haven’t gotten any reports of anything like this happening anyplace else in the counliy. Seems isolated, and contained.”

  “Yeah,” Pete interjected, “but the only reason we were able to contain it here is because the weather suddenly got warmer and we could get by without using heat.”

  “And we can pretty much assume the Visitors had something to do with the oddball weather,” Morrow said. “What’re you sayin’, Pete—that whatever the Visitors did to give us that cold snap ended before they intended it to?”

  Forsythe nodded. “Seems pretty likely.”

  “I’ll go along with that,” said the President. “That also means we can expect more of the same from the Visitors— more weather disruption and more contaminated oil.” No one disagreed, and Morrow went on. “Dr. Donnenfeld, have you got us a way of testing oil for this poison they slipped in there?”

  “Not just yet, sir. The system we used is a tad on the unwieldy side. But with a little more work, I think we’ll have a test that can be done right where the oil is stored, without dragging samples back to the lab. Kind of a litmus-type test.” “Good. Let me know as soon as you’ve got that ready. We’ve gotta be prepared, gotta know how much safe oil we’ve got for when nature gives us our regularly scheduled winter— or in case Diana throws another surprise our way.”

  “Will do,” the old woman said with a salute.

  They heard a commotion out in the suite’s hallway. Before Morrow could react, Chief of Staff Katowski and Secretary of State Draper had rushed into the living room.

  “Mr. President,” Katowski said, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously, “I thought you should hear this right away.” Morrow regarded his aide’s ashen face. “I’m n
ot gonna like this, am I?”

  “I’m afraid not, sir.”

  “Well, you look like you could use a seat, Len, so come on in and park yourselves.” Morrow reclined and closed his eyes. “Okay, boys, let’s have it.”

  “Report from the Middle East, sir,” Nick Draper said in his soothing Virginia drawl. “Seems the Visitors are constructing an offshore rig in the Persian Gulf. Can I show y'all a map?”

  Morrow leaned forward. Draper took that as an affirmative signal and opened his briefcase, spreading a chart out on the coffee table. Everyone else gathered around so they could see.

  “Here’s where they’ve planted it, sir,” Draper continued, pointing to a red cross drawn just off the Saudi Arabian coast. “Is that strategic?” Morrow asked.

  “I’m afraid it is. It’s near a city called Safaniya, and it’s right on top of the world’s biggest offshore oil field. Let me give you a little background. The oil industry is centered on Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast here. A little way south of Safaniya is a place called Ras Tanura. That’s where most of the refineries and tankers are.”

  “What’s the military situation, Nick?”

  “Well, sir, as you’ll recall, some of the Arab nations realized right after the first invasion that they had a valuable commodity worth protecting—oil. So they formed a common defense force to protect their main oil fields as best they could, with a blood promise that the countries who benefited from having their oil protected would help the others out financially, if the Visitors were ever defeated. The Persian Gulf states started out with a force strength of about a hundred sixty thousand troops. About half of those survived the initial fighting with the aliens. They were on the run, though, until the Israelis offered to join up with ’em.”

  “You’re kidding!” Hannah interrupted, openly astounded. “The Israelis and the Arabs cooperating?”

  “Yeah—didn't you know about that?” Peter asked.

  “Hey, I’m just a scientist. I’m not privy to ail the resistance gossip you get, Peter. How are they doing?”