He’d survived again—somehow. But there had been collaterals, a lot of them, and he hated that as deeply as a man can hate. He hated Aeon too, with every cell of him, with his blood and his soul.
He took slow breaths. No emotions, only thought. Analysis. His feelings needed to stay in the vault of his heart.
“Take back streets,” he said to the lieutenant.
“Sir?”
“No highways. Too exposed.”
The cop pulled the car over and turned around in his seat. “I need to know what I’m dealing with.”
“No you don’t.”
“You sit there and tell me you’re in danger and I have to ask, what the hell is this about?”
“No you don’t.”
“For chrissakes, I’m a cop. Protect and serve!”
“You can’t protect me unless you follow my instructions.”
He squared his shoulders and drove on.
As they arrived at the main gate and the guard came out, Flynn realized that he had forgotten the identity he was using. Then he remembered, it was “Richard Kelvin.” It was just an infrequently used pickup, enough to establish identity for the charter operator.
He opened his wallet. The Grauerholtz cover was still there, but it didn’t have any clearances.
“May I see your identification, sir?”
“You need to wake the commandant.”
“Sir?”
“It’s a national emergency.”
The guard looked toward the trooper lieutenant. “Sir, can you help me here?”
This was it. Either this fell apart right now or it didn’t.
Once again, the trooper turned to Flynn. “Who are you? I think I do have a need to know.”
“I’m the reason all those planes fell out of the sky, and my mission is absolutely urgent, and I can’t tell you another thing. You just get me into this facility. I have a team waiting for me on the flight line and I need your help right now.” He added to the guard, “You have to let us through.”
“Sir?”
“Or call your commandant. Do something!”
“This watch isn’t waking up the commandant. We don’t have the authority.”
Flynn leaned forward. “Somebody does. Call them.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you onto this base without some kind of authority, not at this hour.”
Flynn said to the trooper, “Drive through while the bar’s up.”
“I don’t think—”
“Do it if you’re a patriot. It’ll all sort out in a few minutes, I promise you.”
The car didn’t move. The barrier began to drop.
“Do it!”
The trooper gunned the engine and the police cruiser leaped forward. They went through and onto the base.
“Curve around on Skeel Avenue,” Flynn said. “There’ll be a small cluster of buildings on your left, then a larger structure and a second one. Stop there. Second structure.”
Sirens rose in the background. The trooper slowed down.
“Hit your siren, put on your light bar—do it!”
The trooper complied, and none too soon, because the first security vehicle passed them going in the opposite direction and did not stop.
“Hurry, they’re gonna figure it out in thirty seconds.”
“What happens to me?”
“Stop! Right here!”
The trooper jammed on the brakes and Flynn leaped out and sprinted into Flight Operations.
“I’m Flynn Carroll,” he said to the reception orderly. “Where’s my crew?”
“Yes, sir. Just a moment.”
Sirens rose outside.
“Your group is in the assembly area.”
The rush of relief that surged through him was like air to a drowning man. “There’s been a mistake outside. My transport—will you take care of it?”
“Your transport?”
“The state police brought me and they didn’t have the right permit. Take care of it—do it now!”
“Yessir!”
Flynn strode past him, turned to his left, and entered the assembly area.
Tim Fletcher was there, and Will T. Berman. They were both scientists from the old exobiology team that had been trying to study Aeon. They’d made the mistake of believing that more advanced societies would be more ethical, not stopping to think that the Nazis were the least ethical society in human history, and had grown like a cancer in one of the most civilized countries in the world. Time does not eradicate the madness of men, and apparently that goes for aliens, too.
There were three others he didn’t recognize.
Fletcher came to his feet. “Good to see you again.”
“Yeah. I want to be briefed on the plane, but only if you’ve got something sensible to say.” Fletcher had many times tried to get Flynn relieved of duty on the theory that he was upsetting to Aeon. He was upsetting all right—damned upsetting.
Fletcher smiled, and in it Flynn saw the sadness of defeat. Good. He’d faced his mistakes. Fletcher said, “This is Al Quint from MIT.”
“You’re in bomb design, am I right?”
“Well, I’d hardly—”
“Don’t give me any bullshit shyness, please. Are you capable of analyzing nuclear weapons and determining their degree of readiness?”
Quint drew himself up. “I am capable of that.”
“You have all your equipment? Everything you need?”
“Stowed.”
“Let’s go.” Flynn hoped that this flight would be uneventful. His best guess, based on past escapes, was that he had until about eleven this morning before Aeon discovered that he was still alive.
There was a typical USAF-issue general officers’ plane waiting for them. It was nicely equipped, but more utilitarian than the private-charter Lear, which had been luxurious … until it had turned into a death trap.
They took off immediately. The crew already had their marching orders, so Flynn didn’t have to explain anything to anybody. Unless Aeon blew them out of the sky, the next stop was North Dakota.
“OK, ladies and gentlemen,” Flynn said, “what we’re going to be doing is analyzing every aspect of the Minuteman operation at Malmstrom. We will want to check control systems, missile guidance programming, and the condition of the warheads, the fuel, and the rocket engines. Everything.”
Quint said, “Can we know why?”
Flynn answered carefully. “Something in these systems is wrong. We’re not sure what it is.”
Robert Hardy, a man with wild white hair and an air of unease, said, “They have their own technicians out there.”
“We need an outside inspection.”
The only woman on the team, Linda Bartlett, said, “So somebody’s not loyal. Is this terrorism? Because if it is, I’m not going and the hell with the fee.”
“You’re already going,” Flynn thought, but did not say. They were well west of Dayton, probably climbing through ten thousand feet.
“Yeah,” Hardy said. “I’m not going into some nest of terrorists, either.”
Flynn smiled. He said mildly, “You’re all agency assets and you’re going where you’ve been ordered to go.”
“‘Ordered’? Where the hell do you get off, mister?”
“Let me be clear. You will be doing the most important single thing that you have ever done, all of you. What hangs in the balance I cannot tell you, but it’s a lot.”
Flynn had imagined that his feelings were hidden, until Linda Bartlett sat beside him and said, “I believe you’re very afraid.”
Flynn looked away from her. He said nothing.
“Why? What’s out there?”
“Your job is weapons design, am I right?”
“I lecture on nuclear weapons design, yes, but I don’t build bombs.”
“You know bombs: how they work, how they’re constructed, what sort of fissile materials they require.”
“Yes.”
“Then you do your job, which is to evaluate the warheads at M
almstrom.”
“Are we in danger? Because we have a right to know that.”
He realized that he had to tell them something. He stood up in the aisle. “OK, listen up. We’re going to be attempting to see if terrorists who infiltrated the 230th Missile Wing at Malmstrom succeeded in sabotage of the missiles, retargeting of the warheads, or any sort of systems revision designed to make the units malfunction in any way whatsoever. Now, with regard to danger. I cannot say that there won’t be any danger. What has happened is that an infiltration unit has penetrated into the 230th command structure. We know that they deployed missile technicians, among others. They are no longer an actionable unit.”
“What does that mean?” Quint said.
“To be blunt, it means that they’re all dead,” Flynn lied. “The 230th no longer has a terrorist component infiltrated into it.”
“Then why not use the USAF techs? They know their systems. I haven’t been on a missile site in ten years. More.”
This was followed by a murmur of agreement.
Flynn said, As I’ve said, “we need people from outside. Out of an excess of caution, let’s say.” He didn’t want to go anywhere near the truth, which was that the airmen involved could be implanted, that there could be biological robots involved, and that therefore nobody at Malmstrom or any other missile site anywhere in the world was to be trusted.
There was silence, then. He could see the questions still in their faces, the uneasy anger there. He knew that they’d all been coerced in one way or another to leave their lives at a moment’s notice to do this. None of them wanted to be here. None of them believed his lies.
He went back to his seat. Somewhere down there, the airwaves and the Internet were filling with the story of the mysterious crashes. Soon Diana would bleed his name into the list of victims.
The hours oozed past like dark lava, slow, deadly hours.
He remembered being naked on the moonlit beach at Port Aransas, the surf flinging its mystery up the uneasy strand, their bodies chill in the wind and the flying spray. Her hand in his, a dove at rest.
A partner dies, but the conversation continues on in the mind of the survivor. Slow words in the midnight … her whispered desires, his whispered desires.
Diana gleaming in the bath, her body oozing invitation.
How alone could a man be?
The plane slipped through the sky. Somewhere other minds, cruel, cold, full of the lust of greed, sifted through the sparking electronic threads of life on Earth, looking for a certain strand, the echo of a fragment that would lead them to him.
At the appointed time, they touched down. This once, he’d made it across the bridge of the sky without being attacked. He thought long, though, of the men and women dead in the fields of Ohio and Illinois, whose planes had mysteriously failed them.
On their first operation together, Diana had gotten her whole crew killed except him. He’d thrown it in her face a couple of times, but now that he knew how it felt, he would never do that again, not to her or to anybody else.
The cabin steward, who had hidden in the back when he realized that his plane was carrying civilians, now emerged and cracked the door. With a loud whir, the steps dropped. They had landed not at Malmstrom, but at Great Falls Airport in Montana. The Malmstrom runway had been closed for years, and the only air operations facility there was a heliport.
Flynn waited until the others were filing out, then crossed the windswept tarmac among them. As always, he kept his head down. He hunched to keep his height from being too noticeable from above.
At this hour, with dawn just a red glow on the bare edge of the eastern horizon, the airport was almost abandoned. They walked quickly through its silence.
Before they left the lobby, Flynn gathered them around him. He would not brief them in an air force facility. There was no way to tell who might be watching and listening in such a place. He always tried to brief in unexpected places, at unplanned moments.
“Quint and Bartlett, you’re to proceed to Echo 1. Your mission is to choose one of the missiles at random and analyze it. Bartlett, I want the state of the warhead to be evaluated. What is it emitting? Does its condition suggest anything unusual about it? Quint, you determine if the control and navigation systems have been changed or even addressed recently. Is the missile correctly targeted? What is the condition of the system? Could it have been altered or redesigned to give somebody outside of the system access?”
“Hardy, you inspect the missile bodies on Oscar 1. At no time should the three of you be out of each other’s sight. The team now present there has orders to stand down when you arrive. If you see anybody else nearby when you are working, all three of you leave the area and radio me at once. Is that understood?”
There was general agreement. “Are we expecting violence?”
“That’s an unknown.”
“Shouldn’t we be guarded?”
“We go in and out as quickly as possible. You’ll be choppered to your sites. Fletcher and Berman, you’re to visit each Launch Control Center and evaluate personnel. You’ve been briefed.”
“These things?” Berman held out one of the temperature sensors they’d been given by Diana before they left.
“Check their body temperature. Then you’re to go onto the base itself and do the same with all missile staff there.” He did not add that anyone with an impossibly low body temperature would be dead before sunset.
The silence that fell after he was finished was absolute.
“I’ll be with the commandant and available at once by radio. Everybody: If anything—anything at all—falls outside of protocols and standards, I’m going to want an immediate report. Do you all have radios?”
They all did. There was no question in his mind but that Aeon would notice these radio calls, and that was what he wanted. If they took action, he would be able to observe and see what they chose to do.
They proceeded to the Malmstrom flight line in a convoy of SUVs. The abandoned runway was a vast expanse of concrete gleaming in the morning sun, which had just come up over the horizon.
As he watched them go, he wondered which ones might be coming back. His best guess: none.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
COLONEL WILLIAM Finscher had been commander of the 230th Missile Wing for four years. He sat across his desk regarding Flynn with a carefully neutral expression.
“I’m sorry to descend on you like this, Colonel. But I’m going to need to ask you a few questions.”
“May I know why you’re here? I got notice from the Pentagon an hour ago.”
“It’s unusual, I know, and I’m sorry about that. I need this conversation to remain in this room. The first thing I require is a list of all personnel changes on the wing in the past month. I need it in hard copy, handwritten. It must never pass through any electronic device. I need it as soon as possible.”
“Where are you from? Because if there’s something amiss in my command, I have need to know on that.”
“Did the secretary brief you?”
“Yep, and never mind the chain of command, I guess.”
“This has to stay as small as possible. I can’t tell you where I’m from, and if there is anything wrong here, it has nothing to do with you as a commanding officer and you do not have need to know, I’m sorry. Now, let’s refer back to 1967. I assume that you’re familiar with what I’m talking about.”
“I am.”
There had been a penetration of Malmstrom’s missile systems by glowing objects that had hovered overhead and caused the missles to drop off-line by shutting down their guidance systems. “So my question is, has anything like that happened while you were in command?”
“No.”
“Recently, has anybody reported any glowing objects, disks, unusual events, anything like that near any of the Launch Control Centers or launch facilities?”
“I’m not aware of any reports like that.”
“Would such reports have been made?”
/> “Standing orders require security personnel to note any unusual event whatsoever.”
“What would happen to a report of a UFO hovering over an LF?”
“The report would be filed.”
“But not transmitted up the chain of command?”
“A flying saucer? No.”
“Then I want any and all security reports that have been filed in the past ten days. Again, hard copy. Nothing electronic.”
“Will you tell me what is going on here?”
“No.”
The colonel went to his feet. “I get an order from the secretary of the air force to give you every courtesy. You have a universal clearance and your people are cleared for all assigned tasks. And I have to say, I’m impressed. But now you sit in my office jabbering at me about flying saucers. Jesus Christ! So let me be frank. The little green men all left yesterday.” He threw himself back down into his seat. “You’ll have the paperwork you need in ten minutes. I’d prefer you wait outside.”
Flynn had half-expected something like this, but the intensity of the reaction concerned him, as did its similarity to Bill Greene’s reaction. Were both men implanted, and being controlled by the same mind control script?
He got up. “Thanks for your cooperation, Colonel. I’ll be glad to wait in the anteroom. I’m sorry to be such a bother.”
“Pain in the ass, to be specific. You got me out of the sack at dawn. I didn’t even get a chance at a damn cup of coffee before you’re in here grilling me about flying saucers.” He shook his head. “Please step outside, now.”
The phone on the colonel’s desk buzzed. He turned quickly to it and grabbed the receiver. For a moment, he listened. Then he said, “Are emergency measures in operation right now?” He hung up. “A chopper is down between here and Echo 1.”
That would be Quint and Bartlett, by far Flynn’s most critical team.
“Any more information?” he asked.
“It’s down! We’ll know more in a minute.”
Flynn’s first impulse was to reach out to his people and abort the mission, but he knew that he had to stay at the center of things.
“Are there any fighters in the area? That could get here immediately?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”