by Al Macy
“I can tell you only two things.” She paused. “First. Wasn’t caused by human.”
“Okay. And the other thing?”
“Came from …” she boosted her crippled body up on the chair, leaned over the side, and pointed almost straight down. “From there.”
“From Hell?”
“From that direction.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes. Is all I know.”
Charli buzzed her assistant. “Well, thank you for your time, Adina. I sincerely enjoyed meeting you. Please let me know if you have any other thoughts on this matter.”
“Ms. Keller?”
Charli raised her eyebrows.
“Man you love will be isolated.”
“Isolated?” Charli frowned.
“I see him in bubble.”
“That’s interesting, but there’s one small problem.” She came around the desk as Golubkhov struggled into her crutches. “You see, I don’t have a man I love.”
“You love no one?”
Charli shook her head.
“Is sad. For creature like me, maybe not so sad, but for intelligent, beautiful woman like you? Is sad.”
After her guest left, and after a moment of feeling sorry for herself, Charli asked her assistant to call McGraw.
“Hi Seth,” she said when he came on the line, “Anything new?”
“That object, DJ1, is fascinating. We think it may be significant. What did you call about?”
“By coincidence I’m calling about DJ1. Can you tell me where it is?”
“It’s outside the orbit of Jupiter.”
“No. What I mean is, if you were to point to it, which way would you point?”
“Right now?”
“Yes,” she said, feeling a little silly.
“I actually have one of the astrophysicists here right now,” McGraw said. “Why? Is it important?”
“Oh, it’s probably nothing. I’ll tell you about it later.”
McGraw put her on hold for two minutes. He came back and said, “Pretty much straight down.”
CHAPTER FOUR
May 28, 2018
In his jazz club, Jake played “Lullaby of Birdland,” achieving his favorite feeling of “flow” as he moved into the bridge. Nice! He played best when he wasn’t trying to make it sound good—when he was simply listening. The club was eight steps below street level with an atmosphere suited to alcoholics and die-hard jazz fans. It was shabby-chic, with a faint odor of cigarette smoke left over from a more permissive time. Like an old woman hiding her wrinkles with makeup, Jake kept the lights low but put a spotlight on the Steinway grand. Six regulars watched him play.
Jake liked to escape into the persona of a 1940s jazz musician. He wore a dark suit with a narrow tie. His clothes were usually rumpled, as if he’d been to an all-night jam session. His salt-and-pepper hair and rough face suggested a life of tough gigs in dark bars. Had he been a smoker, the image would have been complete.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jake caught Stephanie rushing over. Uh-oh, here comes trouble. Stephanie reached him and poked him in the thigh with the cordless phone. He shook his head.
She put her hand on his forearm and leaned over to his ear. “This sounds really, really important. She says it’s an emergency.”
He nodded, improvised a quick ending, and took the phone.
“Jake, Sophia has been kidnapped.”
“Renata?” Jake froze and frowned as he switched gears between his new life and the old. Images of working with Renata at his security firm ran through his head. He closed the keyboard cover on the piano and talked quietly for several minutes.
When he hung up, Stephanie was still standing by the low stage.“What is it? What happened?”
“An old friend of mine needs my help.”
“Did she say someone was kidnapped? And did she call you ‘Jake’?”
“Do you remember the four-year-old I took care of for three months last summer?” Jake stepped off the stage and walked over to the coat rack.
“Of course. Sophia. Your goddaughter.”
“She’s been …” He cleared his throat. “She’s been kidnapped in Mexico City, and I have to go help rescue her.”
“But how can you …” She became silent and looked straight ahead.
“It’s a long story, Steph.”
“You were some kind of black-ops person, right? I knew it.” Stephanie followed him out the door to his car.
“Not exactly. I’ll fill you in someday, I promise.” He kissed her on the forehead. “I have to go. Please have Darius fill in for me. And take care of Cat Stevens?”
Jake drove home to pack his things. How could he think, even for a split second, about how this episode would disrupt his quiet, isolated life—his year of not trying? What’s wrong with me? Perhaps his hermit tendencies were indeed getting too strong. He’d expected the threat to his new reality to come from the sneeze thing, but it came from a totally different direction. Life’s full of surprises.
* * *
May 29, 2018
A week after the sneeze, Charli removed her heels and tucked her legs beneath her. Because of her daily stretching routine she could be comfortable in almost any position. When Chandra Bark entered the office, Charli uncoiled and put down her tablet.
“We’ve located Jake Corby.” Bark sat down in the chair in front of Charli’s desk. “He’s in a small town in far Northern California.”
Charli made a fist. Finally. This was the moment she had been waiting for. “What is he doing there?”
“He owns a club called ‘The Take Five,’ and he plays piano there under the name William Evans.”
Charli laughed. “Bill Evans?”
“Well, William.” Bark looked confused.
Charli said, “I’m laughing because Bill Evans was the name of a famous jazz piano player. Jake chose that name as a joke. How did you find him? Wiretap?”
Bark looked around with shifty eyes as if checking that no one who could overhear. “We put a tap on the phone of a Ms. Renata Perez in Mexico City.”
“Mexico City?”
“Right. She used to be his partner.”
“Significant-other-type partner?” She frowned. Why did I ask that?
“No. Business. Perez now heads up the counter-kidnapping company, Corby Solutions. We also tapped the phones of others in the company.”
“Well, good job, Ms. Bark. It’s a relief to have resolved this. The president was eager to locate him.”
“I’m afraid there’s a complication.”
Charli frowned and tilted her head. “How could there be a complication? We found him, now we go get him.”
“His friend’s daughter, Corby’s goddaughter, was kidnapped and he’s helping to get her back.”
Charli was speechless for a second then recovered. “Oh man!” She pulled on her ear and looked down. “Tough situation. Poor guy.”
Bark handed Charli the transcripts from the phone conversations. Charli whistled as she read them. “If there’s any scenario that can compete with a world-wide emergency, this is it.”
When Charli finished reading, she closed her eyes and squeezed the bridge of her nose, as if she had a headache. “Okay, here’s what we do. The president may not go along with this, but that’s tough.” She opened her eyes and looked at Bark. “Don’t tell anyone I said that. We’ll just have to do without Jake a little longer. We’ll help him out with the kidnapping. That way we can free him up sooner. Sorry, that sounds heartless. Chandra, think about how we can help him recover Perez’s daughter. Don’t do anything without my approval, but put together some ideas.”
CHAPTER FIVE
May 29, 2018
Charli was on her hands and knees on the rug in the Oval Office while President Hallstrom looked over the latest changes that she’d made to his speech. She lunged forward and pushed Boondoggle, Hallstrom’s huge German Shepherd, with her head. She tried to knock him over. The dog loved it. He’d giv
e a little bark and jump back for more, wagging his tail. The dog weighed almost as much as she did.
President Hallstrom sat with the speech in his lap and the stockinged foot of his bad leg up on the desk. He was the country’s first bachelor president since James Buchanan.
He had the body of a former runner, with an emphasis on “former.” He’d be impeached if a paparazzo caught him in a Speedo, but clever tailoring of his clothes was enough to keep him on all the world’s eligible bachelor lists. According to the tabloids, he had a politically incorrect woman hidden away in the White House, but in reality, he was simply married to the job.
He put his finger on a word and looked over at Charli. “‘Economic mosh-pit’? I’m not sure that’s going to work for the over-thirties. I’m not even sure what it means.”
“They might not know exactly what it means, but they’ll have a general feeling. Mish-mosh, chaos, etc. It has a hip sound, and you need that right now. By the way, this has got to be the best dog in the world.” Charli’s voice was muffled because she was hugging Boondoggle’s neck, with her face buried in the German Shepherd’s thick fur, enjoying the moment. Nice that nothing further had happened related to the sneeze and pain thing—no incidents of mass farting or world-wide episodes of acid reflux. Of course, most interpreted this as Charli having overblown the whole thing. So be it.
Gordon Guccio knocked and entered the Oval Office. He looked over at Charli and the dog. “Hey, get a room, guys.”
Charli looked up with the perfect retort on her lips but stopped. Whoa. Gordon looks serious. Big frown. Something’s up. She stood and joined him by the desk. As usual, when Guccio entered a room, the smell of second-hand cigarette smoke wasn’t far behind.
“Mr. President,” Guccio said. “Something has just arrived at Earth.”
“What, we got a FedEx package from Mars? What the hell are you talking about, Gordon?” Hallstrom put his hand under the knee of his bad leg and lifted it off the desk.
“A spaceship, sir.”
“A spaceship?” Hallstrom said.
Charli crossed her arms. “This better not be one of your jokes, Guccio.”
“Yes, Sir. no, Ma’am.”
Ma’am?
“Seth McGraw will be here in a second to brief you, but an unidentified flying object has entered our atmosphere, from space, and has made controlled turns that suggest it’s under intelligent control.”
McGraw rushed into the office running his fingers through his thinning hair and wasted no time. “Two hours ago, an object traveling fifteen thousand miles per hour intersected Earth’s atmosphere at the North Pole. When it reached the planet—”
“DJ1?” Charli asked.
McGraw looked at her. “What? Oh, no, no, DJ1 is still out near Jupiter’s orbit.” He turned back to Hallstrom. “When this object reached the planet—”
The door to the office burst open, and Stanley Mann, director of the secret service, strode over to the desk. With him were two agents and Maddix Young.
Mann spoke first. “Mr. President, we need to move you to a secure location.”
“Where to?” Hallstrom said.
“Marine One to the Doomsday Plane to Ruby Mountain.” Stanley Mann’s jaw could win prizes in a right-angle competition, and his body belonged on the cover of a Strength Training Past Fifty book.
“The bunker in Nevada? Is that ready?”
“Yes, sir. We just finished it.” With that the entire flash mob, except for Boondoggle, headed for the South Lawn.
“Maddix,” Hallstrom said. “Put together a list of people we need with us on this trip, a maximum of …” he looked at Mann with a raised eyebrow.
“Seating for thirty-two.” Mann replied without needing to consult his notes.
“… a max of thirty-two, but I doubt we need that many. Then another list of people who should follow in the next day or two. Where’s the vice president right now?”
Charli said, “Offenbacher is still in Belgium. Should we bring him home?”
Hallstrom shook his head. “No. Let’s leave him there. What’s the status on Jake Corby?”
“We’ve located him, but he’s unavailable,” she said.
“What do you mean, unavailable?” Hallstrom turned to her but kept walking.
“A crime cartel has kidnapped the four-year-old daughter of his friend and former colleague, and Jake is helping her.”
“Wow.” The president stopped so fast that McGraw stumbled into him. “Well, I can understand his decision. See if there’s someone you can delegate to help him. And keep me posted.”
The group continued on, and Charli glimpsed Marine One landing on the South Lawn.
Hallstrom put his hand on McGraw’s shoulder. “Okay, Seth, please continue.”
“When the object reached the North Pole, it was traveling at Mach twenty, though we suspect that it had been going much faster. It made an impossibly quick turn and is now following a spiral course that will take it over every part of Earth, flying at 40,000 feet. At this rate, it should arrive at the South Pole in four days.”
“So we’re definitely being visited, or at least probed, by some alien civilization, and this is the first time in history this has happened, as far as we know. Does that sum it up, Seth?”
“Precisely, sir. We’re confident about the alien civilization part. It’s already displayed capabilities far beyond anything we have.”
“What do you think it’s doing?” Hallstrom asked.
“Well, we have four hypotheses. The first—”
“Sorry to interrupt.” Hallstrom turned to him. “For now could you just give me the one you like the most?”
McGraw scratched his ear. “Well, here’s the one that’s most likely, but I wouldn’t say I like it. We think it’s a crop-duster. It’s laying down some substance, likely harmful.”
“Okay,” Hallstrom said. “Let’s say it’s spraying some kind of poison gas and we’re pests that are being exterminated—what do we do about it? Charli?”
Charli said, “Assuming the worst, we need to either stop this craft or protect ourselves. The air at Ruby Mountain is heavily filtered and hopefully safe. We should consider moving more of the government there.”
President Hallstrom looked at Young, who nodded and made notes.
Charli continued, “Of course, the public will be unprotected. We can tell them to go indoors and close their windows while the government goes into bunkers, but that sounds lame.” She paused while thoughts of her dad and grandmother forced themselves into her mind.
Hallstrom turned to McGraw. “How long until the craft reaches American airspace?”
McGraw consulted his tablet. “Fourteen hours to the top of Alaska and twenty-eight to the continental US.”
“Whoa. Fast-moving crisis, huh, guys?” Noise from the helicopter interrupted the conversation as they passed the saluting marine guard and entered the familiar green and white Sikorsky. The craft took off, and the noise level dropped enough to allow conversation in a normal tone of voice, unheard of in standard helicopters.
“I assume General Clayton would like to speak with me?” the president asked Young as Marine One rotated toward Andrews Air Force Base.
Young nodded, “She is on line two on the handset by your elbow, sir.”
Megan Clayton was chief of staff of the Air Force.
The president picked up the phone and asked the tech officer to put the call on speakerphone. “General Clayton, sorry to keep you waiting. You’re on speakerphone. What have we got?”
“No good news, sir. This thing is traveling way too fast for us. Our F15s can’t go faster than Mach three, and this thing is going Mach twenty. By the way, it’s not creating any sonic booms, and my science guys don’t even know how that’s possible. We’ve set up interception courses, but even if you decided to shoot it down, I doubt that could happen.”
“What’s the probability we could stop it?”
“Slim to none, sir. It would be like trying to
shoot down a fighter jet with a bow and arrow. We’d pretty much have to set off a nuclear explosion right in front of it. Our antiballistic missile system is designed for handling re-entering vehicles, so that’s a little more feasible. Note that NASA is hailing the craft in every way they can think of but has gotten no response.”
“Okay, thank you, General. Keep working on the options, but for now, the rules of engagement are to stay out of its way. Don’t do anything remotely threatening. My first impulse is to treat it as friendly, but only because we have no other realistic option. Does that sound reasonable from a military point of view?”
“Yes, sir, that’s the conclusion we came to at the Joint Chiefs meeting.”
“Okay, thank you.” The president hung up and addressed the group.
“Act friendly since we have no other realistic option. Opinions?”
“Just to take the devil’s advocate position,” Charli said, “what would we do if we knew the craft was spraying a deadly gas that would kill every creature on the planet?”
Guccio answered, “We would set off nuclear bombs right in front of it along its path and keep doing so until we ran out of bombs, but I can’t nuke up most of Canada on the chance—”
“Unless we did it over the ocean,” Charli said.
“Agreed.” The president nodded and looked out the windows. “I appreciate the brainstorming, but until we know that it’s hostile, let’s act like primitive, welcoming natives.”
They landed at Andrews Air Force Base, right next to the so-called Doomsday Plane.
This plane, also known as the advanced airborne command post, was one of four Boeing 747s that had been specially modified to be resistant to attack.
The president turned to Maddix Young. “A conference call with world leaders?”
“It’s already being organized, Mr. President. It should happen within the hour.”
The group moved up the stairs and into the Doomsday Plane.
* * *
June 3, 2018
While the spaceship continued its four-day spiral journey, the world speculated about what would happen when it reached the South Pole. Most expected it to continue off into space. Maybe this thing is just on a mission to survey planets. When it’s done, it will be gone and we’ll never see it again. Wrong.