Abductors Conspiracy

by Frakes, Jonathan

  "Every city?" Earhart said. "How do you know that?"

  Neda watched the vice president's face turn pasty white as the information she had told him soaked in. "Mr. Earhart," she said. "My organization is very well funded and has spent the last six years doing nothing but tracking Klar abductions and researching the Klar. We have operatives in every major police force in the world, including the FBI and CIA. Plus we know exactly what to look for."

  She took a deep breath and went on, ignoring the shocked look on Earhart's face. "Lately the Klar have become almost careless, not really caring who sees them abduct an elderly person. Albert Hancer was lifted from the center court of a walled nursing home with four witnesses."

  "They're acting as if it soon won't matter very much?" the vice president asked.

  "It would seem that way," Neda said. "And that is not like them at all."

  "Every major city?" Earhart said, more to himself than anyone else.

  "Yes, sir," Neda said. "Almost ever major city."

  Earhart shook his head from side to side. "I've got myself very confused. Would you go over exactly why these Klar are doing this? And why, in God's name, they're using elderly?"

  Neda glanced at Alan, then nodded. "The Klar having been watching us, abducting us, and studying us for about fifty years, looking for a way to control us, beat us into submission, take over this planet. But they have a very large problem. They only arrived with about twenty ships."

  "Twenty?" Earhart asked.

  "Twenty," Neda said. "And they are a very careful race. In fifty years they have never allowed anything of theirs to get into human hands. Ever."

  "Okay," Earhart said, "so they want the planet, but that doesn't explain why the elderly."

  Neda smiled. "The Klar stay very hidden, and never get near the lights and people of large cities. So obviously when they came up with the idea of bombing our cities, they needed something, or someone to haul their bombs."

  "Something, or someone, that wouldn't be obvious," Alan said.

  "Homeless elderly," Earhart said, nodding in understanding.

  "Exactly," Neda said. "Before this they always abducted younger people to study, or to be used as slaves as I was for a time. So when they started taking the elderly near each city, we knew something was different."

  "Very good thinking on your part," Earhart said.

  Neda felt her stomach clamp up again. "But not fast enough, it seems."

  "So what are they waiting for?" the vice president asked.

  "We know, sir," Neda said, "that the abductions of the elderly are still taking place. Most likely they're just not ready yet."

  "So we tipped our hand today?" Earhart said.

  Neda shook her head. "I don't think so. The Klar are very, very careful and there just aren't that many of them. Until I saw the thing-on-the-bed today, we didn't think the Klar had any way of infiltrating our society. They've been around Earth for over fifty years and chances are they won't move until they are absolutely sure of destroying everything that might have a chance of stopping them. Building those things might take them some time."

  "Either way," Alan said, "It's only a matter of a few days, a week at most."

  Neda nodded. "I'm afraid so. The thing that looked like Albert Hancer paid two weeks rent on that room."

  "That only leaves eight to ten days on the outside," the vice president said.

  "Every major city in the world," Earhart said again, as if trying to make the enormity of that fact sink in.

  "Every major city," Neda replied.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It's dangerous, very dangerous… to go from a preconceived idea to find the proofs to fit it.

  —-GASTON LEROUX

  FROM THE MYSTERY OF THE YELLOW ROOM

  8:10 A.M. JUNE 25.

  BELLINGHAM. WASHINGTON

  McCallum thought the waiting room at Neda Foster's offices was small for someone with her and her father's money.

  Five fake-wood chairs, a few magazines, and a metal desk, clearly not used often, were crammed into the space. Worn, brown indoor-outdoor carpeting covered the floor and there were a few plastic plants that filled the corners, mostly covered with dust. No background music filled the room like a normal waiting room, and occasionally a loud thump could be heard from behind the metal door. There was no doubt that Neda Foster very seldom entertained visitors at this location.

  A man with long hair and thick glasses in a white lab coat had said Neda Foster would be right with them, and then had left through the heavy metal door behind the desk. Henry dropped into one of the chairs and picked up an old copy of National Geographic. McCallum knew Henry was as bothered and nervous as he felt. But Henry very seldom showed it.

  McCallum sometimes did. And this was one of those occasions. He chose to pace and think, walking back and forth in front of Henry.

  He, Henry, Claudia, and the mayor had had dinner together the previous evening. McCallum and Henry had filled the two women in on what had happened in the small room; and Janet had relayed what had been said in her meeting with the vice president, and also when he called her to say that the bomb had been defused. They had all toasted with champagne when that call came in.

  But the celebration had felt hollow to McCallum. And sleep hadn't come at all. Claudia had stayed with him and she'd woken up screaming from nightmares twice.

  The entire evening of talking about the day's events had left him even more confused and worried. Albert Hancer was abducted out of a closed courtyard.

  How? And by whom?

  Then some sort of copy of him turns up with an armed hydrogen bomb in downtown Portland. How was that thing-on-the-bed built? And why bomb Portland? McCallum could think of about a hundred cities more likely to be bombed than Portland, Oregon.

  The only thing McCallum could figure was that there was some sort of major terrorist threat happening behind the scenes in this country. And somehow he had managed to stumble into it yesterday.

  After he and Claudia had gotten back to his apartment he had called Tina Harris's father and asked for another early morning use of the Harris corporate jet. He told Harris that there might be a lead in Bellingham and that he and Henry needed to fly up there for an early morning meeting. Harris said the jet would be standing by at seven and would wait for them to return.

  McCallum continued his pacing in the waiting room in front of Henry, thinking about everything.

  He actually hadn't lied to Harris. There were unsettling similarities between his two missing persons cases that he couldn't get out of his head. He hoped that Neda Foster might put some sort of light onto what had happened the day before. And he hoped that light might give him a lead to Tina Harris and the real Albert Hancer. But his twisting stomach told him that wasn't going to happen.

  Behind the desk the door opened and Neda Foster came through. She looked tired and her blond hair had clearly been pulled back quickly, without thought. Her appearance didn't settle McCallum's worries in the slightest.

  "Thanks for coming," she said, reaching out and shaking both their hands. "Sorry to keep you waiting, but we're in a sort of panic around here. I haven't slept since yesterday."

  "Trust me," Henry said. "The nightmares weren't worth going to sleep for."

  "More developments?" McCallum asked.

  Neda nodded. "It seems events are moving faster than any of us had ever imagined." She pointed to waiting-room chairs. "Have a seat. Before we go inside the lab there are a few things I must first try to tell you."

  Henry dropped down into the chair he'd just left and McCallum sat one away from him. Neda took a chair and swung it around so that she could sit facing them.

  McCallum could tell she was clearly forcing herself to stop and spend a few minutes with them. But the energy of needing to keep working showed up in her constant movement.

  She took a deep breath and started talking fairly fast. "Normally I would spend more time setting up a person for the shock of what I'm about to sa
y. But after yesterday, I don't have the time."

  "I'd say after yesterday we're pretty open to explanations," McCallum said.

  "Boy, are we," Henry said.

  Neda smiled a strained smile. "I'm hoping that's the case. So I'm going to make a long story very short. Years ago I was hiking along a trail near Mount Rainier with my boyfriend. It was nearing dark and we were in a hurry to get back to the car, since we hadn't brought camping equipment. We were within a hundred yards of our car when a white light covered us both."

  "White light?" Henry asked, giving Neda a chance to take a breath. "From where?"

  "From above," Neda said. "Just as the witnesses said in the Albert Hancer disappearance."

  McCallum said nothing as she stared at him, so she went quickly on.

  "The white light froze us in our tracks, as though someone had taken control of our bodies. We couldn't move a muscle. My scientists have a theory that the white light contains a high-speed strobe effect that somehow short-circuits the pathways between the brain and the muscles in a human body. But so far we haven't been able to duplicate the effect."

  "Hell of a weapon if you ever do," Henry said.

  "So what happened next?" McCallum asked.

  "I passed out," Neda said. "And when I awoke I was in an old mine shaft, totally naked, with about ten other men and women. My boyfriend was not with me. Most of the others were near death. The dirt floor in that mine was cold and damp. I still, to this day, have trouble staying warm."

  "So who abducted you?" McCallum asked. "And why?"

  "The Klar," Neda Foster said. "As for why? I have no idea. Study, most likely, although they did force me to haul boxes one day."

  "Who are the Klar?" Henry asked. He glanced at McCallum and then back at Neda.

  "I think who the Klar are is the point of all this," McCallum said. He had a very strong suspicion where all this was heading. She was going to tell them she had been abducted by aliens. And McCallum was already having a hard time buying this. But after what happened yesterday in that room in the Sundown Hotel, he was listening. That was more than he ever would have done before yesterday.

  "That I'll show you in just a moment," she said, nodding to McCallum. "But let me continue with my story. I was in that cave for three days. Days that seemed to be an eternity."

  McCallum could see her eyes glaze slightly, and her voice shook a little as the memory of those days returned. She had obviously dealt with the event, but it was still clearly painful for her to speak about.

  "During those three days I was taken out of the mine three times by the Klar. I was always knocked unconscious first, but I woke up each time on a hospital-like table, under white light, with the Klar standing over me."

  She took a deep breath to focus herself, then went on. "On the fourth morning, one of the others in the mine discovered some loose boards near the back of the old tunnel. The boards led to another side shaft. Four of us had enough energy left to crawl through and try to escape. Obviously the Klar had not really explored their prison very well."

  "So four of you escaped?" Henry said.

  "Only two of us eventually made it," Neda said. "We stumbled around in miles of old tunnels in pitch blackness. It seemed like an eternity, but it must have been close to two days. We were in constant fear of the Klar catching us. During those hours in the blackness we lost two somewhere in the branching tunnels, but a woman by the name of Cindy and I managed to stay together. We somehow found the way out a side tunnel."

  "Was this an old gold mine?" McCallum asked.

  "Silver," she said. "The Brandon Mine to be exact, on the south slope of Mount Rainier. The police went back there, but there was nothing to be found."

  McCallum nodded. Old silver mines sometimes had miles of dirt tunnels and dozens of openings. "Go on," he said.

  "It was night when we found the secondary opening. We were surrounded by trees and brush. We stayed in the tunnel until well after daylight, since we knew the Klar move around at night. Then we made a run for it down the mountain. Three hours later we found a highway. It was a shock to the poor motorist who stopped for two dirty, naked, and bleeding women, I'll tell you."

  McCallum said nothing. At this point he was just waiting. Neda was going to show them something very shortly inside that lab, and this story was trying to prepare them for it. So he would listen, without comment until the right time.

  "I never saw my boyfriend again," she said. "Using my father's money, the next year I began this organization to track abductions nationally, and now worldwide. We also have done thousands of studies on the Klar, what we know of their technology, and their possible plans. The Klar are the ones who built that Hancer look-alike and planted that bomb yesterday."

  "And the government is in on all this," Henry said.

  "Now," Neda Foster said. "But up until a few days ago they were not. We have always been an entirely privately funded organization. And as of this moment, the president still does not know. The vice president and a select group of others are planning to tell him of the Portland event and other developments this afternoon."

  "The president doesn't know we almost lost an American city?" McCallum asked. He was actually shocked at that news. He would have assumed the president was being informed the entire time.

  "Amazing," Henry said.

  "There's more to it than just one city," Neda said.

  "Oh," Henry said, looking at her with a puzzled expression on his face.

  "Okay," McCallum said, ignoring the fear he felt in response to her comment. "After yesterday and that personal background, I think we're ready to see what's behind that door."

  Neda Foster laughed and quickly stood. "I hope so. We can use all the help we can get at the moment."

  She turned and led the way, not waiting for them to follow. She pushed open the heavy metal door behind the desk and stepped through and to the side. They were in an airlock-like room, painted pure white. No windows at all, but state-of-the-art security cameras in two corners.

  Neda closed the outer door behind them and punched a code into a panel near the inner door. After a moment the door clicked and opened quietly.

  She walked inside a few steps and then moved sideways.

  McCallum was a few paces behind her and made it three steps into the giant room before stopping cold.

  Behind him, Henry said, "Oh, shit!"

  The room was a warehouse-sized space, with high ceilings and what seemed like hundreds of desks and lab tables. Computers and other high-tech equipment seemed to fill every space and people in white coats worked at a frantic pace throughout. But what stopped McCallum were the two statues that stood on a high platform against one wall. The statues were elevated so that they could be seen from every place in the room.

  Statues of two monsters.

  There was no other way for McCallum to describe them. Pure, Hollywood-looking monsters standing up there like they owned the place. It was right out of a science fiction movie.

  "Those are actual-size statues of the Klar," Neda said. "Eight feet tall."

  "The Klar actually look like that?" Henry said, his voice a hoarse whisper.

  "As close as anyone can get to what the Klar really look like," Neda said. "I use the statues shamelessly to recruit help, just as I'm doing now."

  McCallum glanced at her and she shrugged. "A person does what a person has to do."

  "I got the idea out of a movie." She looked up at the monsters. "Plus, those statues remind all of us in here what we're fighting."

  McCallum laughed. "I can see how it would. They're damn tough to miss."

  He turned to stare at the huge statues that dominated the room. Both fake aliens had hoof-like feet, but around the head and shoulders they looked almost snake-like, with two intense black eyes and two slits below the eyes that appeared to be nostrils. Their mouths slanted downward in the largest frown McCallum had ever seen. Their heads were cone-shaped and positioned forward of their bodies on thick, wide necks. The
ir necks were cords of thick muscles, far wider than their heads, which gave them the cobra-like look. They had intricate patterns on their neck and head, and four arms ending in four claw-like fingers, the two smaller arms tucked under the larger ones. Both wore some sort of a tight-fitting uniform.

  "Okay," McCallum said, turning back to Neda. "How long have they been on Earth? How many are there? What do they want? You know, all the standard questions I'm sure all your possible recruits ask."

  "Yeah," Henry said. "Good questions."

  Neda smiled at them and motioned that they should follow her. She indicated two chairs in front of a cluttered desk near a huge map of the world. Lights and about a thousand pins decorated the map. The room was full of a constant noise of talking, computers and printers humming, phones ringing, and people moving around. It was if they were in the middle of a busy train station.

  They both sat down, but it felt to McCallum as if the two monsters were standing right over him. It made him uneasy and he didn't like being emotionally manipulated as Neda was doing to him at the moment.

  He didn't like it much at all.

  "To answer your questions as best I can," Neda said as she sat down, "they have been watching the planet Earth, from what we can tell, for about fifty years. We think they have twenty ships with about fifty crew per ship. Their ships are basically round, pure black, untrackable by radar, and about fifty feet shorter in diameter than a 747. As for what they want?" Neda paused. "It seems pretty clear, after yesterday, that they want to take over the planet."

  She stood. "I want to show you this." She moved around her desk to the large map of the world.

  McCallum and Henry stood and moved over beside her.

  "By our best count," Neda said, "the Klar have averaged about three hundred abductions of humans worldwide per year over the last twenty-five years. Some of the humans are put back into society. A few of us escape. Most just disappear. People of all ages, sizes, and nationalities."