Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The

by Molstad, Stephen

  “Dr. Okun showed me that the long finlike structure on top of the attacker is full of terminal wiring. He hypothesized that whatever type of computer link they run, the fin is the connector. When one of these attackers docks inside the larger ships, some type of connection is established through the fin.”

  “Oh, spare me the bad science fiction,” Nimziki moaned from his rail. “This plan is so full of what ifs, it’s ridiculous.”

  Ignoring him, Grey asked, “How long would their shields be down?”

  “That’s anyone’s guess,” David told him. “Once they discover the virus, it could be only a matter of minutes until they figure a way past it. It’s not very complicated, because I don’t know enough about their system.”

  “So you’re suggesting that we coordinate a worldwide counterstrike with a window of only a few minutes?” Nimziki shook his head; it was ludicrous.

  Grey turned around to face the intelligence chief. “We’ve got our radio link to Asia reestablished. The signal is weak, but we should be able to send some sort of instructions. If we could get past those damn shields, it might be possible.”

  Nimziki’s mocking grin disappeared. He was angry that this lame brain idea was getting so much attention when the perfectly plausible option of a nuclear strike, his plan, had been dumped after a single failure. If he could have, he would have locked the whole group up in the spaceship and ordered the strike himself.

  Thinly masking his criticism of Whitmore by seeming to address everyone in the room, he boomed, “I don’t believe you’re buying into any of this nonsense. We don’t have the resources or the manpower to launch that kind of a campaign. If we had two months to plan it, maybe. Not to mention that piece of rubbish,” he shouted, pointing at the alien ship. “The whole cockamamie plan depends on this untested flying saucer that no one in the world is qualified to operate.”

  Once again, Steve interrupted. He stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Er… I believe I might be qualified for that job, sir.” Nimziki shot him a murderous look, but Steve went on. “I’ve seen them in action. I know how they maneuver.” He looked the president in the eyes. “With your permission, sir, I’d like a shot at it.”

  “That thing’s a wreck. It crash-landed in the forties, for chrissakes. We don’t even know if it’s capable of flying.”

  “Aha!” David took center stage once more. He had a group of Okun’s staff waiting in the wings. “Release the clamps!” he called out like the ringmaster at a circus. He looked up at Connie standing on the observation platform. She rolled her eyes to show him how crazy she thought he was, and how proud she was. “C’mon, c’mon, remove the clamps.”

  It took longer than David expected, but once the technicians opened the last of the steel locks, there was a loud clank as it lifted up and flipped over onto the ground.

  In a moment, the mass of the sixty-foot ship had lifted into the air, wobbling unevenly above them. At a height of fifteen feet, it stabilized and sat as perfectly still as it had for the last fifty years. Their mouths open in amazement, the gallery of spectators looked at David.

  “Any other questions?”

  Everyone looked at everyone else. Not even Nimziki knew what to say at that point. Finally, Whitmore broke the silence. He shook his head, showing what he thought of the plan before announcing, “It’s a long shot, but let’s give it a shot.”

  Suddenly everyone was talking, asking questions, or, like Nimziki, offering their opinion of why the idea was doomed from the outset. David came to the side of the observation platform, reached up and tugged on the leg of Steve’s fatigues. The young pilot quit staring at the alien plane and leaned closer to hear David better.

  “You really think you can fly this thing?” he asked, showing a clear lack of confidence in Steve’s ability.

  Steve returned the favor. “You really think you can do all that bullshit you said you could?”

  *

  Within minutes, Connie was escorting General Grey and the president back to Area 51’s makeshift war room, all of them talking at once, fleshing out the details of the plan, figuring out some of the tough communications hurdles that a simultaneous worldwide strike would entail. They felt a spark of hope for the first time in what seemed like a long while.

  “Hold on!” It was a command, not a request. The three looked back to see Nimziki storming down the hallway after them.

  “What now?” Connie mumbled under her breath.

  The secretary of defense stepped close to the president, ignoring the two others. There was an iciness in his voice. As usual, his words were calculated to cut as deeply as possible.

  “I understand that you’re still upset about the death of your wife,” he said, leaning over Whitmore, “but that’s no excuse for making yet another fatal mistake. An objective analysis of the situation from a military standpoint—”

  Nimziki never finished the sentence. Before he knew what was happening to him, Whitmore took him by the lapels of his suit and slammed him against a wall, pinning him. The president put his face close to Nimziki’s, an inch away.

  “The only mistake I made was appointing a sniveling weasel like you to run a government agency. But that’s one mistake, I am thankful to say, I don’t have to live with anymore. Mr. Nimziki, you’re fired!” With a final shove, he released his grip on the man and took a step backward. Impaling Nimziki with a threatening glare, he added a final warning. “Stay as far away from me as you can get, or I’ll have you arrested as a threat to national security.”

  Nimziki looked for support from Connie, then from Grey, but received none.

  Starting once more down the hallway, Whitmore picked up where he left off. “I want Major Mitchell to organize every single airplane he can get his hands on and find us some goddamned pilots who can fly them.”

  Behind them, they heard Nimziki talking to the walls. “He can’t do that!”

  Connie couldn’t help it. She looked over her shoulder and said, with unconcealed pleasure, “He just did!”

  *

  Four British pilots, sweat-stained and unshaven, were doing their best to avoid the oppressive heat of the Saudi summer. They’d pitched a large canvas tent that one of them, a pilot named Thomson, had had in his personal cargo pod, and were sitting around talking to pass the time as they waited for something to happen. One of the men, Reginald Cummins, seemed to be in charge. By no means the senior officer, Reg was nevertheless put in the position of group leader because he was the only one who knew the first bloody thing about the Middle East. The other three men had simply been delivering new planes to the base at Khamis Moushait when all hell had broken loose. Reg was on permanent assignment there. He spoke Arabic passably well and, more important, he knew how to talk to groups of pilots without offending anyone, a tricky bit of business in the Middle East, but even more important given their present situation.

  “We listened in to the Americans as we were coming over Malta,” Thomson was saying. “They weren’t encrypted, scrambled, nothing, and one of them was saying the Syrians still had a squadron intact near the Golan Straights.”

  “Heights,” Reg corrected him. ‘The Golan Heights,” and he showed Thomson where it was on the map. “If we could get them to cooperate, they’d be in excellent position to reinforce us if it comes to a dogfight. Unfortunately, they’re a difficult bunch, not exactly team players.”

  Suddenly the tent flap tore open in a barrage of shouting. Thomson fell over backwards in his flimsy folding chair, drawing his pistol by the time he crashed to the ground. A tall dark man, with a full beard and mustache, was yelling something unintelligible into the tent. His green jumpsuit identified him as one of the boys from Jordan, probably the only one of them who didn’t speak English. Reg never flinched. He looked back at the man calmly until he dropped the tent flap and hurried away.

  “What in bloody hell was that all about?” The three tourist-pilots were still riding a shock-wave of adrenaline.

  “Seems they’re gett
ing a signal. Old Morse code, but they can’t read it. He wants us to come and see if it’s English.”

  “Morse code? What have they got out here, old telegraph cables?” Sutton, one of the others asked. With a serious look at Reg, he asked, “Couldn’t be some sort of trap, could it?”

  Reg shrugged and led the way out into the blinding hot afternoon. Halfway around the world from Groom Lake’s Area 51, on the smooth surface of another ancient lake bed, a hundred or so fighter planes had set down out in the middle of nowhere. The jets were parked at odd angles to one another, ready to take off in a hundred directions as soon as the alert came. It was a truly international scene, with pilots from eleven different nations, many of whom would be shooting at one another under any other circumstances, hiding together out in the middle of nowhere. They had become reluctant allies.

  “I still can’t believe this,” Reg said with a smile, enjoying the irony of the situation. “Seventy-five years of frantic diplomacy gets us essentially nowhere, then twenty-four hours after these bastards show up, we’re all one happy family”

  “That’s not exactly how I’d describe it,” Thomson said, sticking close to Reg, offering a nervous little salute and smile to a band of Iraqi pilots smoking cigarettes in the shade of their planes. They stared blankly at the Brits as they marched past. “I don’t think those chaps have caught the family spirit of the thing.”

  “How do you think the Israelis feel?” Second only to the Saudi contingent in size, the Israeli planes, the impressive F-15s, sat a short distance away, their planes fanned out at precise angles, prepared for a simultaneous takeoff.

  “What’s up?” one of them called out, an Uzi propped lazily against his shoulder.

  “They’re getting a signal. Morse code,” Reg called back.

  The man tossed away his cigarette and came jogging over to join the Brits. “Am I invited?”

  Reg smiled without breaking stride. “I don’t see why not.”

  The inside of the elaborate Saudi tent looked like an electronics swap meet. They’d imported a good deal of radio equipment from a nearby air base and had it spread out on an odd assortment of carpets, parachutes, and tarps. Saudi pilots from a handful of different nations were engaged in a dozen conversations. Everything ground to a halt as the visitors came into the tent. There was a tense moment as the pilots from enemy nations stared each other down. The Arabs seemed particularly nervous about an armed Israeli coming into their space. For a tense moment, no one took a breath, let alone said anything. Finally, Reg broke the ice.

  “Latuklaka ya awlad enho nel mohamey betana,” which translated roughly to “Don’t worry, boys, he’s our lawyer.”

  Suddenly the whole tent broke into hysterical laughter, everyone except the three visiting English pilots. They smiled along, though, anxious to help alleviate the tension.

  “Ana shaif ho gab mae kommelhaber betae,” (I see he brought along his fountain pen,) one of the Arabs cracked, causing another laugh.

  The Israeli surprised everyone by playing right along. In Palestinian slang, he joked that it was a “Wakeh el-police Israeli ala estama rat el-ehtafalat elmausda ra,” a ceremonial document-signer issued by the Israeli secret police. They were laughing so hard, other pilots poked their heads in to see what was going on.

  “So where’s this Morse code?” Reg asked in English.

  One of the Saudis handed over the headphones. Instead of the dots and dashes he’d expected, he heard a voice that seemed to be making an urgent announcement. But there was too much static coming over the line. Reg signaled for quiet and the men in the tent complied. The broadcast was originating from the war room at Area 51. By the time it reached Ar-Rub Al-Khali, it had been relayed so many times Reg couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

  “Wait, you will hear,” one of the Saudi Royal Air Force pilots told him. Sure enough, as soon as the muffled, inaudible voice finished the announcement, it was repeated in Morse code, loud and clear. It took a few minutes for Reg to get the whole thing written down, then a few more for him to decipher his own writing.

  “It’s from the Americans,” he announced. “They want to organize a counteroffensive.”

  “It’s about bloody time. What’s their plan?” Thomson asked.

  “It’s… well, it’s damn creative.” He grinned before going on to explain the particulars.

  *

  A squadron of twenty-four Russian MiGs were parked in pairs on a vast sheet of ice. They’d been ordered into the air for an attack on the city destroyer that had already blown Moscow away and was at that time en route to St. Petersburg. When other planes began splattering themselves across the ship’s protective force field, the mission was aborted. On their way back to their base at Murmansk, they listened in horror as the base was overrun and destroyed by a swarm of stingray attackers. Murmansk lay above the Arctic Circle, and the squadron flew even further north to hide among the glaciers they knew so well. They crossed the eighty-fifth parallel and set down between the rocky islands of Franz Joseph Land, where the ice hadn’t thawed yet.

  They arrived in the morning and had been sitting tight waiting for orders ever since. During the daylight, the sun coming through their glass canopies had warmed the cockpits, but the temperature at night was numbing cold. Miserable and starving, they sat in their planes waiting hour after hour.

  Around nine o’clock, one of them was fiddling with his radio and found something at the low end of the dial. At first he thought it was the ETs talking to each other in clicking voices, but eventually he realized it was Morse code and called it to the attention of the other pilots. Fortunately, the message repeated itself several times. Almost two hours after they’d run across it, the squadron’s leader, Captain Tchenko, talked to the others by radio.

  “The Americans say they can bring down the shields for at least five minutes.”

  “Da, da! Maladietz!” The others endorsed the plan enthusiastically. Any plan sounded better than spending the rest of the night in the ice fields.

  “When do they want to attack?”

  *

  In Sapporo, on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, some of the world’s most powerful civilian signal receivers and transmitters dotted the mountainsides. A thousand miles from the television and radio headquarters in Tokyo, the sensitive machines were the information link between the provinces and the capital. The engineers had come to work as usual and stayed late when they realized they might be able to help. Along with them, several members of the volunteer army were crowded around radio and television transmitters. Although Japan had no more than a symbolic air force, mainly cargo and munitions transport planes, they were determined to participate. They broadcast the message in several different languages to most of Asia.

  “The attack will begin in thirteen hours,” their message said, “at nine P.M. GMT.”

  As confirmation was received from various governments or scattered battle forces around Asia, the Hokkaido station relayed the information to Hawaii via short wave radio. From there it was sent to the USS Steiner, 200 miles off the Oregon coast, which bounced the signal up to the 747s out of San Antonio. As confirmations trickled back to Area 51, the data was recorded on the foldout map of the world taped to the wall of the war room.

  “How are we doing?” the president asked.

  “Better than we thought.” Grey nodded, showing him the map. Hundreds of tiny stickers, each one representing a combat-ready air squadron, littered the map. “We’re still taking inventory, but it looks promising. Europe is being hit almost as hard as we are, but the Middle East and Asia seem to have fifty percent of their capabilities intact. Plus, we still have our aircraft carriers.”

  “What about our troops here?”

  “Unfortunately, we’re the weak link. The bastards have taken out almost every air base west of the Mississippi. A handful of pilots escaped from Lackland and they’re headed this way. Plus, we’ve got a shipment of munitions flying down from Oregon, but…” The gene
ral shook his head.

  “But what?”

  “Mitchell’s got plenty of planes stashed around the base, but we haven’t got the pilots to put them in the air.”

  “Then find them,” Whitmore ordered, as if it were only a matter of Grey trying a little harder.

  *

  Thirty minutes later, Miguel stepped into the Casse trailer as quietly as he could. All the lights were out and he didn’t want to wake up Troy. He pulled the door closed and began to kick off his shoes.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Russell’s voice boomed out of the darkness. “And where’s that sister of yours?” The voice startled Miguel, who switched on a light. Russell was sitting on the bed at the rear of the narrow space, next to a sleeping Troy.

  “Yow, you scared me!”

  “Answer me!”

  Miguel thought they’d gotten past all the bullshit this afternoon when they’d teamed up to save Troy. He didn’t know why Russell was acting like this all of a sudden. “Alicia’s talking to that kid, Philip. That’s where I was. He’s a pretty cool guy.” Before Russell could comment on that, Miguel took him in another direction. “How’s Troy?”

  It worked. Russell looked down at the sleeping kid, his mouth pushed into a strange shape by the pillow, and smiled. “He’s out solid. Watch this.” He tapped the boy’s cheek hard with his finger. “See that? He’s a log. I think he’s gonna be fine. What a relief, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Miguel agreed, even though he was starting to sense that something was wrong. Not with Troy, but with their father. “Can I ask you something and you won’t have a cow about it?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  Russell smiled his guilty little boy smile. He’d taken a solemn oath just a few hours before that he wouldn’t take another drink until this whole mess was over, since he was out of booze anyhow. “I couldn’t help it, man, I forgot about the little stash I had in the plane.” The cockpit of the old biwing had more Jack Daniel’s bottles rattling around than a liquor store in an earthquake.