A moment later, the wooden trestles holding the ship off the floor groaned as the weight bearing down on them began to ease. Slowly, like an ancient pterodactyl riding an updraft, the ship lifted into the air. The moment it did so, the scientists abandoned the monitors they were watching and threw their arms in the air, cheering.
“Holy guacamole!” Okun gasped. When a nod wasn’t enough to express his excitement, he began bouncing up and down, then turned and grabbed the first body he could find—it happened to be Spelman’s—and bounced around with the colonel wrapped in his arms. He leaped from the platform to the floor of the bunker, still bouncing. The ship had lifted two feet above the trestles. He gave Cibatutto five, then bounced over and kissed Lenel on the forehead before the old man could swat him away. When he came to Dr. Issacs, a little of the air went out of his tires.
As calm, cool, and collected as ever, Issacs indicated the heat gauge. “The temperature inside the ship is 160 and climbing,” he called out over the screech of the electrocannon. “It’s time to shut down.”
Okun turned and waved the cutoff signal. But Freiling remained oblivious, hypnotized by the dark bird floating before him, until Okun ran up next to him, and yelled, “TURN IT OFF!” The old man flipped the kill switch, abruptly bringing the power level down to zero. The saucer crashed down onto the trestles, which cracked and teetered, but, fortunately, did not collapse.
“Gotta work on the landing,” Freiling observed, pulling off his goggles, “but I’ll be damned if we didn’t get her to fly.”
“We sure did, Daddy-o!”
“I only wish Sam could’ve seen this.”
Okun smiled sadly. “Me too.”
The scientists rejoined their visitors on the observation platform, then repaired immediately to the kitchen. According to the long-established rules of procedure at the top-secret facility, champagne was served.
*
Somewhere between the uncorking of the bottles and the departure of the visiting dignitaries late that afternoon, there was an important exchange of documents. Okun went first.
As Spelman had requested, he’d prepared a report detailing everything he knew about the aliens up to that point. It ran to over two hundred pages. At the end of it, he tried to answer the question of how great a threat the aliens posed to the world in general and the United States in particular. He found the question nearly impossible to answer. Despite all that had been learned about them, the most basic question of all remained a mystery: What did they want? The possibilities ranged all the way from the hope they were beneficent beings bearing gifts to the fear they had come to invade the planet and take it away from us. Okun took both possibilities seriously. But his gut told him it was bad news, VDJ. They were dealing with an intelligent race with advanced technologies. Their ships were armed, they used other beings as armor, and they had offered no sign of friendship. If Wells had interpreted the vision of the alien planet correctly, they were also dealing with a catastrophic food shortage. Perhaps the encounters were few because these were only scout ships. On the other hand, they had made no sign of being hostile either. Never once had they demonstrated a clearly malicious intent to humans, with the possible exception of the Eau Claire case. They had ample opportunity to torture, maim, or kill any of the people they’d captured. Instead they had been released unharmed, and although many of these people came away from the experience traumatized, an equal number longed for it to happen again.
Then there was Okun’s own experience. He recalled how wildly terrified he’d been of being detected by the aliens outside the cave. But looking back on it, they must have known he was there all along. Instead of harming him, the Tall One had given him the ankh, allowing research to continue. It might even turn out they were shy tourists ferried through a time warp in the Van Allen belts for five-day vacations, observing earth from the safety and comfort of their flying fortresses—their version of visiting a safari park. Who knew? he concluded that it was too early for conclusions and called upon the military and intelligence branches of the goverment to aid in the recovery of more evidence. To this end, he proposed a handful of clever stratagems designed to lure the creatures into traps.
Spelman accepted the report with the promise that it would circulate through the highest levels of the government.
“Including the president?”
“Especially the president.”
Okun actually breathed a sigh of relief when he learned that soon this important information would be in the right hands. It was too heavy a responsibility for him to carry around, and he didn’t feel right about the CIA and the Army being the only ones to know about it.
“Now we’ve got something for you.”
Dr. Insolo snapped open the locks on an attaché case and pulled out some pieces of paper. “The only reservation any of us had about appointing you director concerned your educational qualifications. Something isn’t quite right when the leader of one of the nation’s top laboratories doesn’t hold a Ph.D. But given the restrictions on your travel, we knew you wouldn’t be able to attend classes. So, we took the liberty of transferring your credits from Caltech to the United States Naval Postgraduate School, where I’m a member of the faculty. Hope you don’t mind.” He held up what looked to Okun like a diploma and read what was printed on it. “Whereas the candidate, Brackish Okun, has exhibited full mastery of the body of knowledge and technologies associated with his field of study, and whereas he has made a unique and original contribution to this field, he is hereby awarded a doctorate of philosophy in Xenoaeronautics.”
Spelman was the first to extend his hand. “Congratulations, Doctor Okun.”
“How utterly cool,” Okun enthused, reading over the diploma. When he looked up he was surrounded by the smiling faces of his friends and guests. Without realizing it, they had all begun mirroring the minuscule cranial motion so characteristic of the lab’s director. The entire room was nodding.
*
“The end.” Nimziki smirked when he saw those words on the last page of Okun’s report. “What does he think this is, a bedtime story?”
“Sometimes he’s a little weird.” Spelman chuckled.
“What did you think of it?” Nimziki asked, tossing the report onto his desk.
“It’s wordy, and parts of it don’t make much sense, but the ideas are strong. Overall, I’d say it’s a balanced presentation of the evidence. I’m anxious to hear what the president has to say about it.”
“Yeah, me too,” Nimziki said absently. He wasn’t any great fan of President Ford’s. When it had been time to appoint a new director of the CIA, Ford had ignored the unanimous recommendation of the intelligence community that Nimziki get the job. He had named one of his longtime political allies to the post instead.
“I especially liked his ideas about how to capture another ship.”
“Yeah, I’ll have to reread those. Smart.”
“And what about his ideas for slowly introducing the truth about the aliens to the public?”
“The stuff about saturating the media with alien stories before breaking the true story. Interesting. I’ll have to give it some more thought.” Spelman could see Nimziki was tired and distracted by other thoughts. That was understandable. It was almost eleven o’clock at night, and they’d both been at work since early that morning. “I think I’ll get out of here and let you go home.” Spelman walked to the door, then turned, and said, “Please let me know as soon as you get any reaction from the White House so I can pass it along to our team out at Groom Lake. I’m as anxious as they are. And, Al—” he waited for Nimziki to glance up—“we all did a hell of a good job on this one, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, we sure did, Bud. But listen, don’t expect an immediate response from the president. You know how they are over there. They want to preserve their plausible deniability option. But the moment I hear anything, on or off the record, I’ll let you know.”
When Spelman was gone, Nimziki thumbed through the report once
more, then walked into the next room and fed it into a paper shredder. He turned out the lights and went home.
I’d like to thank Michael Hawley, Christopher Rowe, Paul Zahn, John Storey, Lisa DiSanto, Will Plyler, Dionne McNeff, and everyone who offered me help while I was writing this book. I apologize for taking so few of your excellent suggestions, but I’m a mule at heart. Finally, I need to thank John Douglas and my dear wife Elizabeth for putting up with me all the way to the end.
1
THE ATTACK BEGINS
The original city on a hill, Jerusalem, was a symbol of all that was best and worst about human beings. It had stood for millennia above the Judean plane, protected by sturdy stone walls that had glinted gold in the sun since the time of Christ and, seven centuries later, the time of Mohammed. Those walls had held back large armies and entire nations of crusaders clamoring at its gates, desperate to enter, certain that being inside would bring them closer to the paradise of heaven. It had been conquered eighteen different times.
Over the years, the city’s walls had borne witness to some of humanity’s deepest and most uplifting meditations on the question of what it meant to be alive. But they’d also seen their share of needlessly spilled blood. There had been countless acts of pettiness, backstabbing and sadism—all committed in the name of a merciful God. A tenth century poet described Jerusalem as “a golden basin filled with scorpions.” It was sacred ground to all three of the West’s major religions: the place where King David’s temple had housed the Ark of the Covenant, where Christ was crucified and resurrected, and where the prophet Mohammed stretched open his arms and ascended to heaven. It was said that you could choke to death in Jerusalem, the air was so thick with prayer.
Reg Cummins had first encountered the city as a grungy twenty-year-old backpacker. He’d enlisted with the Royal Air Force but had three months until he was scheduled to report. In the meantime, he was determined to see some of the continent. From his home in Kew in London, he traveled down through Italy and hopped a boat to Greece. After a month on the beach, he decided he was looking for something more, something further from his experience, something more exotic and challenging. So he went to Jerusalem. He slept where he could and spent his days exploring the covered markets, tunnels, and religious shrines. He drank tea and bargained in the souks, got himself invited to shabbat dinners then sang and danced with his hosts. He wandered the cobblestone streets, argued over the price of onions and the nature of sin, and spent a couple of nights camped out in a courtyard of African mud huts with the Ethiopian Coptic priests in their compound. Jerusalem had always made him feel vital and completely alive. That seemed like a very long time ago.
Now, several years later and hundreds of miles away, as he watched images of the city on television, Squadron Leader Reginald M. Cummins, an instructor with the Queen’s Flight and Training Group, Mideast section, felt dead inside. It was noon on July 3rd, and outside the sun burned hot white in the sky. He was in the Foreign Officers’ Lounge at the Khamis Moushalt Airfield in Saudi Arabia, along with every active-duty RAF airman stationed in that country except the Commandant—all six of them—staring in grim disbelief at the CNN report unfolding on the screen.
An alien aircraft of staggering size had arrived the night before and parked itself directly over the ancient city. The hovering gray disk stretched out for miles in every direction, leaving only a ring of blue sky low on the horizon. When it arrived, the ground shook with its massive rumbling. It had moved at a constant speed and elevation, closing over the top of the city like the thick stone lid of a sarcophagus. The moment the ship stopped moving, everything had fallen deathly quiet.
The vessel looked like the very embodiment of evil. It was dark, hard and strictly utilitarian in design. It was gruesomely industrial and, at the same time, somehow alive. The whole dark mass looked biological, like an exoskeleton of some sort.
The sight of the gigantic airship triggered a wild, violent exodus. People gathered up whatever they could carry with them and ran. Over a million refugees were scrambling toward the hope of safety, some of them on the roads leading to Tel Aviv or Amman, others hurrying on foot through the hills. In most people’s minds, it was the end of the world. For others, it was the armies of the Lord announcing the moment of redemption. By noon, Jerusalem was empty except for military personnel, New Age types who had come to welcome the ETs, and stern religious zealots wielding bats and bricks, determined to protect their sacred buildings.
Variations of this scene were occurring all over the planet.
Less than twenty-four hours before, thirty-six of these enormous ships—soon to be known as city destroyers—had disengaged themselves from an even larger spacecraft, the “mother ship,” which was one fourth the size of Earth’s moon. Very quickly, they began their simultaneous, freefall entry into Earth’s atmosphere. They descended in huge billowing clouds of flame and smoke as the friction they generated combusted the oxygen around them. Upon reaching their target elevations, they came to a sudden and inexplicable halt. Completely unscathed, they drove out of the smoke clouds and moved into position over thirty-six of Earth’s most populous and strategically important cities. None of them had made any discernible attempt to communicate.
Reg Cummins drew in a deep breath and turned away from the hypnotic images on the television set. Wanting to clear his mind, he walked to the bar at the far side of the room and poured himself the stiffest drink in the house: a glass of lukewarm soda water. The initial shock of the invasion was beginning to wear off and, in its place, a grim sense of helplessness was spreading around the globe. It was evident in the comments made by the CNN reporters, in the communiqués issued by the world’s governments, and, as Reg could see with his own eyes, in the attitudes of his fellow pilots. Normally, they were an obnoxiously loud and boisterous group, always laughing, roughhousing and complaining bitterly about the hardships of life in this remote desert locale. Now they looked like a group of defeated men. They slumped in their chairs, as still as statues, and their heads hung in worry.
If the aliens decided to pick a fight, they wouldn’t get much resistance from a group like this. Reg knew he had to do something to change the atmosphere. When his eyes fell on the billiards table in the center of the room, he knew what he had to do.
“All this alien nonsense is starting to bore me silly,” he called across the room. “And you blokes are going to ruin your eyes watching that rot all day. Anyone interested in a game of billiards?” Immediately, everyone’s attention was sucked away from the news program. The men looked positively alarmed.
“Anyone interested?” Reg asked, nonchalantly selecting a cue from the rack on the wall.
“Impossible!” said one of the pilots.
“You? Play a game of pool?” said another in disbelief. “You’re finally going to do something more than talk?”
“That is correct,” Reg said, chalking the tip of his cue. “This time I’m really going to play. Anyone here think they’re good enough to take me?”
The six pilots, wearing their flight suits in case they were ordered into the air on short notice, came toward the table. All of them had heard Reg talk about his days as a championship level player, but this was the first time any of them had seen him actually holding a cue.
“Who’s the best player?” Reg asked, as if he didn’t already know.
A tall, beefy man named Sinclair stepped up to the table chewing on the stub of a cigar. “That would be me, Teacher,” he said. “You’re serious, then? You want a game?”
“Oh, yes. I’m serious, quite serious.”
Major Cummins (aka the Teacher, an affectionate nickname given to him by the Saudi pilots who were his students) was famous for three things: for being widely considered the best pilot in the Middle East; for having suffered a very painful and career-threatening lapse of judgment during the Gulf War; and for bragging about his days as a pool player before joining Her Majesty’s Air Force.
‘This is turning o
ut to be a day full of surprises,” said a man named Townsend. “First, a bunch of aliens arrive from outer space and now something truly shocking. I hope I’m dreaming.”
“What’s this all about?” Sinclair asked, snapping open the leather case that held his personal cue. “You trying to distract us from our troubles?” When Reg shrugged without answering, Sinclair invited him to lag for break.
Reg looked confused. He didn’t appear to understand the question. “Why don’t you go ahead and show me how it’s done?”
“Gladly,” Sinclair said with a smirk. He leaned over the table and stroked the cue ball to the far side of the table. It bounced off and rolled back to within an inch of the near rail. It was a nice shot, the onlookers agreed, one that would be nearly impossible to beat. Sinclair marked the position with a chalk cube, satisfied that he’d already won. “Your turn, Teacher.”
Reg studied the table. “Now what’s the idea here? I have to get the ball closer than yours without touching the cushion, is that it?”
“That’s it exactly.” Sinclair grinned wickedly. “Best of luck to you.”
Reg cleared his throat. “Well, here goes then,” he said, lining up his shot. The awkward way he held the cue in his hands made it clear he didn’t know what he was doing. He was on the verge of shooting when he suddenly backed away. “Wait, I just thought of something.”
The men all moaned loudly, believing Reg was going to back out of it, but he surprised them again.
“We haven’t made a bet. Shouldn’t we make a wager of some kind?”
“What can you afford to lose?” someone laughed.
Reg looked at the man curiously. “Lose? What makes you think I’m going to lose?”
“Fifty quid then?” Sinclair asked, doubting Reg would want to risk that much.
Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The Page 51