McCallum knew how large the missing persons files were in the Portland police records. He could believe three hundred worldwide per year. It wouldn't even dent the total.
"However," Neda said, "over the last eight days elderly men have been abducted near every major city in the world. Men such as Albert Hancer."
She pointed at the map. "All the red flags are elderly men missing in those eight days."
McCallum studied the map for a moment. There was a red flag sticking out of ever major city on the map.
"All for carrying bombs?" Henry said.
"It seems that way," Neda said. "You know the bomb yesterday was defused. What you don't know is that it was of alien construction and designed to emit an extreme amount of EMP."
"EMP?" Henry asked, glancing at McCallum for an explanation. Since McCallum read so much, Henry always looked to him to explain weird terms. And this one he happened to know.
"Electromagnetic pulse," McCallum said. "It burns out all electronic equipment within its range."
"Correct," Neda said.
"Why?" Henry said, still not clearly catching the reason for doing such a thing.
"All electronic equipment," McCallum said. "Electronic ignition and fuel injection in cars, all computers, all bank records, just about everything we use, including communications systems and doughnut makers."
"Oh," Henry said, a look of understanding crossing his face.
"So," McCallum said, turning back to Neda, "the bombs take out the populations of the major cities and the EMP takes out the rest of the civilization in the area around the cities. And the bombs are being smuggled into the cities by copies of elderly people. Right?"
"On the money," Neda said. "And from the information we got yesterday, it's all going to blow sometime in the next six to twelve days."
"Shit!" Henry said.
McCallum didn't know what to say. If he hadn't seen a body dissolve in his hands, and the vice president and the regional director of the FBI taking this seriously, yesterday, he'd be laughing at the moment.
He didn't believe all that Neda was saying, but he was a long, long way from laughing.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The terrier does not give the rat time to dig a hole.
—-LESLIE THOMAS
FROM ORMEROD'S LANDING
9:06 A.M. JUNE 25.
SHEEPEATER CAVES,
EASTERN OREGON
Tina Harris, with Cobb, had spent part of the night digging and trying to move rocks near the back of the cave. Even being careful not to make much of a mess, and working in the total darkness, they had managed to find a small hole going under the back wall of the cave. They didn't have the time to open it up to find out if it was big enough to crawl through. And there was no telling how far back it went. Most likely the hole dead-ended in five feet. But it was more of a chance to get out of there than Tina had had the day before.
As the first light from the sunrise filtered through the crack in the roof they had managed to make the area where they had been working look almost normal, moving a large rock over in front of the hole. Then Cobb had sat on the rock, leaning against the back of the cave while Tina had gone back to the rock she had used the last few days.
From where she sat it was impossible to tell that any digging had been done. Now she hoped that if the aliens came in, they wouldn't be able to tell either. And if they were coming it would be in the early morning hours. At least, over the last six days it had happened that way.
She leaned against the cool rock, letting herself relax a little. Her hands were sore and three of her fingers were bleeding. She had also dropped a rock on the top of her foot and it hurt like hell. All around she felt tired, more tired than she could ever remember feeling. But she really didn't care. This was a good tired. She knew she'd make it through the heat of the day, even though she had less than one bottle of water left. She'd make it through without counting, because today she had some hope.
She smiled at Cobb through the faint morning light and he smiled back.
Then she closed her eyes, letting the exhaustion take her.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
He who is capable of memory and reason… needs no seer's crystal ball.
—-LILLIAN DE LA TORRE
FROM THE CONVEYANCE OF EMELINE GRANGE
9:10 a.m. JUNE 25.
BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON
Neda Foster had been called away for a moment by an assistant, leaving McCallum and Henry standing near the huge map of the world. McCallum used the time to look around at the people working at computers and desks. They all had the same harried look Neda Foster had. And a few of them looked as though they were about to explode or break down into tears. McCallum didn't know how he felt. Her explanation seemed rational and logical. And totally far-fetched, even with what he had seen yesterday. He could come up with a half dozen more likely possibilities than aliens.
"What do you think of all this?" Henry said.
McCallum glanced at him. In all the years he had known Henry he had never heard him say one word about believing in anything beyond his own ability to eat, love his wife and kid, do his job, and maybe start a doughnut shop. Henry wasn't even the type to go to church.
"You know," McCallum said, gazing at where Neda Foster talked impatiently to a man in a white lab coat, "I honestly don't know what to think."
"Yeah," Henry said. "But that guy yesterday, melting in that blanket like that. Hard to say I didn't see that. Hell, I was holding him when it happened."
"And that was the vice president," McCallum said. "No doubt about him being there at all. But if that was a real hydrogen bomb, would the vice president be within a thousand miles of it?"
"Yeah," Henry said again. "It was him. But if I were the vice president, I wouldn't have been there, that's for sure."
The low roar of noise in the room around them filled the gap in conversation and McCallum went back to studying the map. It was fairly large, bigger across than most small bedrooms. There were trapdoors in each ocean that opened so that someone could come up from underneath and add pins in the impossible-to-reach locations in the middle. But the size allowed the details of the map to be fairly clear.
The colors of the pins varied, too. Red-topped pins Neda had said were the abductions of the past week. Those red-tops were evenly spaced over the entire map. Then there were green-topped pins, blue pins, and black pins. McCallum had no idea what the colors signified, and there was no one around to ask. He was about to turn and study the two statues of monsters standing against the wall behind him when he noticed two blue pins stuck in central Idaho. He leaned forward, trying to get a better view of exactly where those pins were stuck.
"You interested in something on the map, Mr. McCallum?" Neda Foster asked, turning from her assistant and moving back over near McCallum.
"Those two pins in central Idaho. What do they mean?"
"Blue means that the missing person was highly likely to have been abducted by the Klar," Neda said. She pointed at two pins near the edge, "Green signifies a certain alien abduction, usually meaning there were witnesses. And black means possible abduction, but not enough information."
"Who were the two blue ones in central Idaho?" McCallum asked.
Neda looked at them a moment, then shrugged. "I don't remember. I'll check, if you want."
"Please," McCallum said.
Henry gave McCallum a raised-eyebrow look, following where he was heading with his question.
She moved over to a computer terminal sitting on one edge of the huge map. Her fingers danced over the keys for a moment, then she said, reading off the screen, "Tina Harris and her boyfriend Jerry Rodale. Taken from a camp on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River June 18. No witnesses. They were upgraded from black to blue three days ago when their bodies were not found in the river and no ransom note ever showed up. The file says there is no other likely way they could have gotten out of the valley they were camping in, that their camp was not disturbed,
and that there is no background in either family for violence."
Same exact information McCallum had. Amazing.
Then Neda glanced up at McCallum and smiled, then read a line directly off the screen. "Investigator Richard McCallum hired by Harris family to continue search."
McCallum shrugged. "We used the Harris jet to fly up here this morning."
"I can see why you're interested," Neda said. "But unless we can do something about those red pins, you'll never have time to prove us wrong with those two kids, which is what I know you want to do. Right?"
McCallum smiled at her. "More than anything."
"I don't blame you," Neda said. "I'd be doing the same thing in your position."
"So what exactly do you have planned?" Henry asked.
Neda turned and stared at the map. "If the president agrees this afternoon, we're going to start a massive search in every United States city, just as we did in Portland yesterday."
"What about worldwide?" McCallum asked. He couldn't imagine the size undertaking that would be, but it had to be done if what Neda was saying was right.
"I hope so," Neda said. "We already have all our people, and anyone else we can ask, beg, or trick into helping us, searching the cities, starting this morning. If the president gets involved, and we find more bombs, he can talk to other leaders around the world."
"Isn't all this activity going to alert the Klar?" Henry said. "They could just go with the bombs they have planted and work on the other cities later, one at a time."
Neda Foster nodded. "The vice president and I argued about that very point last night. But I believe that the Klar fear us."
"Fear us?" McCallum said, glancing around at the two statues above him. "Why?"
"First, because of the physics of space. We know they are not from our system, which means they came a long way with very few ships to conquer this planet. Most likely it took them hundreds of years to make the trip, and that is if their home world is in the very close galactic neighborhood."
"You're losing me on this space stuff," Henry said.
McCallum had followed her, but not by much. He was glad Henry stopped her at that point.
Neda smiled. "We're sure the Klar have been around Earth for over fifty years, studying us. We also know that their technology is not that far advanced from ours, and we seem to be catching them quickly. Most of our people think the Klar were very surprised when they arrived here and found such an advanced civilization. If a scout ship had been here, say, five hundred years ago, this planet would have looked easy to control. But now, with only twenty of their ships, they wouldn't stand a chance, especially when they arrived to find the war machines of World War Two and the following cold war."
"So they had to find a way to knock us back to the Stone Age," McCallum said.
"And we gave it to them with the electronic age," Neda said. "Take out the population centers and destroy all electronics. Starvation and the nuclear winter would do the rest. Boom! Mankind is back in the Stone Age, ready for easy picking. An entire planet of slaves."
"Yow," Henry said softly.
McCallum shuddered. "All right. I can't say that I totally believe all this, but I'm willing to go along with the threat that I saw yesterday. What can we do?"
Neda nodded. "Thanks. You can do everything you can in Portland."
"But I thought we cleared that yesterday," Henry said.
"If that was a copy of Albert Hancer," McCallum said, "there may be another."
"Exactly," Neda said. "Or they may take another elderly person and make a copy of him. Do whatever you can, short of telling the truth, to get people searching for any possible bombs."
McCallum nodded. "We have the mayor on our side already. We'll guard the city as best we can."
"Thank you," Neda said. "At this point, every city we can protect puts us that much closer to stopping the entire attack."
"Neda," Dr. Cornell yelled from a computer terminal on the other side of the map. "Grab the phone. Quickly!"
She turned and snapped up the phone on her desk. She listened for a moment, then hung up without saying a word. She turned back to McCallum and Henry, a look of total horror on her face.
"They found another bomb," she said, her eyes blank with the shock. "In Tucson. What we feared is the truth. The vice president, the director of the FBI, and my father are meeting with the president."
"Oh, shit," Henry said.
McCallum glanced up at the Klar statues, then back at Neda. This couldn't be happening. There really couldn't be aliens trying to enslave the human race. That was just stuff from the movies. It couldn't happen in real life.
"Good luck, gentlemen," Neda said, moving zombie-like around the desk and dropping down hard into her chair, as if a huge weight was pushing her. "We're all going to need it."
McCallum and Henry both headed for the door at a fast walk. Whether the bombs were being planted by aliens or a terrorist group, Portland was a big city to defend. They were going to need every second they could get to do it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A man's most open actions have a secret side to them.
JOSEPH CONRAD
FROM UNDER WESTERN EYES
1:15 P.M. JUNE 25.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Vice President Alan Wallace sat across the desk from President John Spencer in the Oval Office. Both he and Grant Foster were uncomfortable in the hard-backed chairs, waiting as the president read the FBI report of the happenings in Portland yesterday. But they weren't half as uncomfortable as the head of the FBI, David Barns, who was standing to one side. The president had already chewed him out for not informing him yesterday, when the events were happening.
Alan studied John Spencer as he read. The president was about as opposite to Alan as he could get in body style. While Alan was tall, athletic, and considered good-looking by the press, John stood five four, was more round than thin, and had heavy jowls that gave him a bulldog look. He was also thirty years older than Alan, and almost everyone in the country knew he would never run for a second term.
After the longest five minutes Alan could remember John finally closed the folder and tossed it on the desk in front of him.
"Alan," the president said, his voice controlling anger, "you should be shot for taking a chance like that. If the American people ever found out you walked into a room with an armed hydrogen bomb, they'd impeach you. And most likely me along with you, just for the stupidity of it."
Alan nodded, not willing to say anything. He was much more of a hands-on person than John, and this wasn't the first time John had dressed him down for it. Granted, going into that hotel room had been stupid, but he and John both knew there were much more pressing problems to be dealt with at the moment than his rash judgment calls.
"Now," John said, turning to the director of the FBI. "David, you say your people have found another bomb in Tucson this morning?"
"Yes, sir," FBI Director Barns said. "Same basic facts as the Portland bomb. Same type of bomb. Everything. The bomb is at this moment headed for one of our ships in the Pacific to be disarmed."
"And the elderly person, or thing, with it?"
David Barns looked nervously at Alan for support, then back to the president. "He, or I suppose I should say it, melted, sir, after a short struggle. We are testing the remains but, as with the one from Portland, we have no idea what it is, how it could be built, how it operated. In short, we know nothing about him. Or it."
John turned back to face Alan, staring at him with his intense blue eyes. Those eyes had stared into a million homes through their televisions and gotten the man behind them elected to the world's most powerful office. Now they were directed with full force at Alan. Alan forced himself to return the stare until John spoke.
"Mr. Vice President, you think these snake-looking aliens called Klar are behind these attacks?"
Alan took a deep breath, glanced at Foster, then squarely faced the president. "Sir, I watched that thing melt
yesterday in front of my own eyes. I have studied the data supplied by Mr. Foster and his daughter. I have read the reports about the construction of the bomb. Yes sir, I do."
"And you, Mr. Barns?" John asked.
The director of the FBI looked as if he were standing on hot coals as he shifted back and forth. He took a deep breath. "Sir, I honestly don't know what I think at this moment. But the facts are that we have a very large attack going on against this country at this moment, from a force with alien technology. That much I am convinced of. Beyond that…" He shrugged helplessly.
The president nodded and pushed himself back in his chair, leaning away from the desk. "I agree with you, Mr. Barns, on the attack. We have a problem and we need to address that, first. And in doing so we will find who's behind it."
John paused for a moment, then went on. "Mr. Vice President, what do you think might be my best course?"
Alan was prepared for this. "Sir, if we truly do have armed hydrogen bombs in every city, as I believe we do at this moment, speed and secrecy are the two factors we need to control."
John nodded agreement as Alan continued.
"We need to mount a massive search in every city for the bombs, starting at exactly the same moment in every city, most likely tomorrow morning. We need to use mostly local police, with added help from the National Guard and FBI. We need to give them enough powers to break down some doors if needed, but no more information than who they are looking for, and instructions for when they find him."
"Go on," the President said.
"The word bomb should never once be mentioned," Alan said. "Never. As well as the world alien. Nothing about either. We let the FBI handle the bombs and man-things when found, without local people involved. And when the press ask what's happening, which they will, we stonewall them until every damn bomb is found."
John nodded. "Mr. Foster, could your organization provide pictures of exactly who we are looking for?"
Foster nodded. "Without problem, sir. We're already double-checking all the cities to make sure we have the right elderly men in each city. Some groups may have to carry two or three pictures of different men, but I don't think that will be a problem."
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