The Orion Plan

by Mark Alpert

  Paco stumbled backward, landing on his ass, and Emilio wrenched the Glock out of his hands. Although he’d never touched a gun in his life, he expertly pulled back the slide and put another bullet in the chamber. Then he retreated several steps and aimed the gun at Paco, who was writhing in pain on the sidewalk.

  The whole thing was over in less than two seconds. The noise had set off car alarms up and down the street, and Emilio’s ears were still ringing from the gunshot, but he allowed himself a triumphant smile. Disarming Paco had been as easy as riding a bicycle. He couldn’t understand how he’d become so skillful, and the sudden change was a little disturbing if he stopped to think about it. But it was also fucking great. Who knew what else he could do?

  After a few more seconds he caught his breath and turned to Miguel and Diego. They were cowering against the brick wall of the apartment building, with their hands held high in surrender. Emilio stopped smiling and gave them a stern look. “Someone’s gonna call the cops, so you better get out of here. Go on, go!”

  The boys didn’t argue. They took off down the street, running toward Broadway.

  Paco didn’t even notice that he’d lost his gang. He lay on his side, curled in the fetal position, his knees pulled up to his chest and his hands cupping his balls. As Emilio looked down at him, he imagined the boy’s pain so vividly that he felt a twinge in his own crotch. Paco wasn’t going to fight anymore. For at least the next ten minutes he would be as weak as a baby.

  Emilio didn’t need the Glock now. He removed the magazine from the gun and ejected the bullet from the chamber and stuffed everything into his pockets. Then he grabbed Paco’s right arm and hoisted him to his feet.

  “Come on,” Emilio whispered. “I’ll get you some ice.”

  Paco leaned against him as they entered the apartment building. The boy was wobbly and sweating buckets, but Emilio managed to steer him into the elevator. They got off at the fifth floor and Emilio used his key to get into his grandmother’s apartment. Luckily, the old woman was a heavy sleeper. Emilio hauled Paco into the living room, dropped him on the couch, then went to the kitchen. He returned to the living room half a minute later and handed Paco an ice pack.

  “Put this on your cojones,” he instructed. “It’ll stop the swelling.”

  Paco was still too shaky to resist. He took the pack, rested it over his groin, and closed his eyes. But Emilio knew the boy wouldn’t remain cooperative for very long. As soon as Paco started feeling better he’d either lunge at Emilio or bolt out of the apartment. They had five minutes, at most, to come to an understanding.

  Emilio sat on the other end of the couch. “I don’t think you were planning to kill me. You were going to shoot me in the knee. To send me a message, sí?”

  Paco kept his eyes closed and didn’t say anything. But his cheek twitched, so Emilio knew he’d guessed right.

  “And I don’t blame you, amigo,” he continued. “I’d do the same if someone sucker punched me. We’re alike that way. We both know you have to be strong. You have to strike hard and fast, right? You have to kick the shit out of your enemy before he does it to you.”

  Now Paco grimaced. As his physical pain receded, his shame and rage came roaring back. He was starting to seethe again, starting to think about retaliation. Emilio needed to talk faster. His brain ratcheted up to a higher gear and retrieved everything he knew about Paco, every detail of the boy’s life.

  “But you have to be smart enough to know who your real enemy is. That’s why I went crazy last night, when you were kicking that drunk in the park. I said to myself, ‘Why are we beating on this guy? He’s not our enemy. He’s just a poor, sick asshole who’s even worse off than we are.’”

  Paco opened his eyes. He couldn’t stand up yet, but he glared at Emilio. “You’re fucked-up, hombre. You’re seriously fucked-up.”

  “Just listen for a second. Who deported your father and sent him back to Santo Domingo? Who arrested your mom and put you in a foster home?”

  “Don’t—”

  “You know what I’m talking about. Who hassles us in the stores and chases us out of the park and frisks us in the street? Who’s been fucking with us every minute of our lives?”

  “This is bullshit.” Paco shook his head. “You can’t do anything about the cops.”

  “It’s not just the cops. It’s the whole city, the whole government, all the white people who run it. That’s the enemy. Those are the bastards I want to fight.”

  Paco grimaced again and readjusted his ice pack. “And how are you gonna fight them? You want to be a terrorist? You want to blow shit up?”

  Emilio smiled. It was working. He’d gotten Paco interested. “No, that’s the wrong weapon. This country is built on money. If you want power and respect, you need to get money first. Serious money.” He pointed at the boy’s chest. “That’s why I wanted to have this conversation. You’re like me, Paco—you’re a little crazy, but you’re smart. You’re a hell of a lot smarter than Miguel and Carlos and the rest of them. And I need someone smart to help me.”

  Paco sat up a bit straighter on the couch. He was feeling better now, probably good enough to take a swing at Emilio or grab his throat. But instead Paco looked him in the eye. “Help you do what?”

  For a moment Emilio didn’t know what to say. To be honest, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. His plan had been to turn things around with Paco and regain the boy’s trust, and he was already halfway there. But Emilio hadn’t figured out his final goal yet. He knew it had to be something big, something fucking amazing, but it was still cloudy in his mind, a half-formed thought. Clenching his jaw, he shifted his brain to an even higher gear. He scrolled through everything he knew, searched all his memories.

  In the meantime, he leaned closer to Paco and lowered his voice. “Can you keep a secret?”

  The boy nodded. “Of course.”

  Emilio waited a few more seconds, and then the answer came to him. It was a memory from ten years ago, a class trip he took in third grade, a subway ride downtown to a room full of crystals.

  “This is a big-money job, almost half a million dollars,” he told Paco. “Tomorrow night we’re gonna break into the American Museum of Natural History.”

  NINE

  After waking from his nightmare, Joe finished off the third of his four bottles of Olde English. Unfortunately, the malt liquor didn’t help. It stilled his trembling hands but did nothing to ease his terror.

  He’d moved even farther from the satellite, more than a hundred yards away. Now he sat on a massive crag that jutted from the hilltop like the prow of a steamship. He was perched on the highest point of the outcrop, twenty feet above the muddy ground, but at any second he expected to see another black tentacle slither up the rock face. He turned his head at every sound, peering in all directions, looking for signs of movement in the darkness. He assumed he was going mad. That was the most logical explanation.

  And yet there was the cut on his neck, the tiny puncture wound. He kept touching it, fingering it, to reassure himself that it was real. It was just like the wound on the teenager’s palm, and the one on Dorothy’s foot. The satellite had attacked all three of them in the same way. And their symptoms were the same, too: numbness and intense pain that flared up, then faded. Joe tried to remember everything he’d learned about drug reactions during medical school and the years afterward, but he couldn’t think of any pharmaceutical compound that would produce the fleeting symptoms he’d felt. If he had to guess, he’d say some kind of neurotoxin had inflamed his nerve cells. In other words, a poison.

  He shook his head and tightened his grip on the empty Olde English bottle. Why was this happening? Because he deserved more punishment? Were the daily humiliations not enough? Were his sins so horrible that he needed to suffer worse?

  The moon rose above Inwood’s apartment buildings, just like it had the night before. As it inched higher, Joe’s stomach churned with dread and hunger. He knew he’d feel better if he ate something, and
for a moment he thought of the cans of peanuts Dorothy had left in the clearing. But he wasn’t going to risk going back there. Instead he put the empty bottle of Olde English aside and reached for the last full one.

  He felt the usual rush as he twisted off the bottle cap. The malt liquor wasn’t cold anymore, but that didn’t matter. He was comforted by the weight of the bottle in his hand, the full forty ounces sloshing inside. This was the best moment, loaded with anticipation. Joe had given up all the little pleasures of his old life for this one big pleasure. And as part of the same bargain, he’d traded all his little problems for this one really big problem.

  He lifted the bottle to his lips and tilted his head back. But as the warm liquid poured into his mouth, the taste made him gag. He spat out the stuff, spraying it all over himself. At first he assumed the malt liquor was spoiled. Sometimes the local bodegas sold bottles that had been opened and left sitting on the shelf for months. Joe had bought some spoiled Olde English just a few weeks ago, in fact. But that stuff wasn’t so terrible, only a little vinegary, not bad enough to stop Joe from drinking it. The liquor in his hands now was much, much worse, more like rotten meat. He raised the bottle to his nose and the smell was so bad he jerked his head away. It was putrid, unbearable.

  He held the bottle at arm’s length and peered through the glass, wondering if a dead mouse was floating inside, but the moonlight showed nothing but clear, brown liquor. Then another thought occurred to him, and his heart started pounding. He put down the full bottle of Olde English, then reached for one of the empty bottles and raised it to his nose. It smelled just as awful as the full one. He flung it away in disgust, and a moment later it shattered in the woods.

  Joe clenched and unclenched his hands. He was breathing fast and his mind was racing, but he forced himself to slow down and think. Just fifteen minutes ago he’d been swigging malt liquor, but now the taste and smell of it nauseated him. It’s not spoiled, he thought. It was the same with both bottles. I’m having some kind of reaction to the stuff. The change is in my head, my body.

  Then he remembered something else from medical school, a drug called Antabuse. It interfered with the body’s normal processes for breaking down alcohol. If you were on Antabuse and you drank any kind of booze, the chemicals would build up in your bloodstream and you’d feel horribly nauseous. Within a few days just the sight of alcohol would make you sick. So doctors sometimes prescribed Antabuse for hopeless alcoholics who couldn’t stop drinking any other way. Joe felt like the same thing had just happened to him, but incredibly quickly, within the past fifteen minutes. And the only thing that could’ve caused the change was the poison that had been injected into his neck.

  Panic choked him. His throat tightened so much he started to wheeze. Shit! Think! You have to think, goddamn it! He raised his hands to his head and squeezed his skull, hoping the physical pressure would somehow focus his mind. If the poison is a neurotoxin, it affects nerve cells. And that means it’s going to affect the brain, too. So you should examine yourself. Look for other symptoms.

  Joe started by wiggling his fingers and toes. Then he flexed his arms and legs and twisted his torso. His cracked ribs didn’t hurt as much as they had yesterday, but that was probably just ordinary healing at work. He tested his reflexes and did a couple of mental exercises—counting backwards by sevens, recalling the names of the last five presidents. Finally, he checked the glands in his throat and measured his pulse, which he’d learned to do without a watch back when he was an intern. His heart rate was on the high side, about ninety beats per minute, but he could blame the panic for elevating it. Other than that, he was fairly healthy for a drunk.

  At a loss, he hugged his knees to his chest. The full bottle of Olde English still stood next to him on the crag, but he couldn’t even look at it. He stared instead at the city below, the moonlight shining on the Tenth Avenue subway line and the windows of the buses parked at the depot. Although it was a peaceful scene, in his present state of mind everything seemed ominous. Being poisoned was bad enough, but that wasn’t the only reason for his panic. His biggest fear was that the changes to his nervous system might be permanent. How could he get through the day without drinking?

  Then he noticed the second symptom. He was looking again at the bus depot and the moonlight gleaming off the bus windows and all at once he realized he saw everything much too clearly. Even though the depot was almost a mile away, Joe could read the ads displayed on the sides of the buses. He could also read the signs above the subway station at 215th Street and the billboards along the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx. Within the past hour his eyesight had improved way beyond twenty-twenty. And though most people might consider this a positive change, the fact that it was beneficial actually made it more disturbing. The body was a finely tuned engine. Lots of chemicals could damage it, but very few could make it run better.

  Joe scanned the horizon, trying to determine exactly how far he could see. Because the crag was at the top of the hill he could glimpse the Hudson River to the west if he turned around and peered through the tree branches. He craned his neck, looking for the George Washington Bridge, but instead he spotted several bright lights along the riverbank, about half a mile to the south. On the river itself were the silhouettes of half a dozen large boats, and when Joe squinted he could see the Coast Guard markings on their hulls.

  The sight made him curious. Then he thought about it and grew agitated. Why were so many Coast Guard boats on the Hudson? Was it a rescue operation? Was there some kind of disaster on the river?

  Or was it a search?

  He became so jumpy he could feel the blood pulsing in the backs of his knees. He needed to move closer to the hill’s western slope so he could see past the trees and get a better look. But that would mean leaving the safety of the crag. He’d have to run through the woods, which scared the hell out of him. He suspected that all of Inwood Hill Park was laced with tentacles by now. In his mind’s eye he saw them creeping underground, twisting between the tree roots.

  But he couldn’t stay on the crag forever. And he’d already been attacked once, so maybe that gave him some immunity. Taking a deep breath, he rose to his feet and clambered down the side of the outcrop. He paused at the lowest part of the rock slab and gathered up his courage. Then he stepped off the slab and started running.

  The muddy ground didn’t give him much traction, but soon he was tearing through the woods. His fear made him nimble: he leaped over the fallen branches and sidestepped the piles of leaf litter. In thirty seconds he crossed to the western side of the hill, but the trees still blocked his view of the riverbank. So he headed south, toward the bright lights, even though this brought him closer to the clearing where the satellite was. He sensed its presence to his left, about fifty yards away, but he didn’t look in that direction. He trained his eyes to the right and looked for a break in the trees.

  Finally, after thirty more seconds, he reached a lookout point where the slope fell steeply toward the West Side Highway, giving him an unobstructed view of the riverbank. When Joe looked toward the lights he saw a line of soldiers on Dyckman Street. More soldiers stood behind the line, guarding the entrance to the marina, and still more were in the baseball fields, pointing flashlights every which way.

  Yes, Joe thought, they’re searching for something. And it must be something important, so important that they’d send a small army to find it. What else could it be but the satellite?

  Joe didn’t care anymore about collecting the reward. Well, no, that wasn’t true: he still cared about it, but now his terror was stronger than his hope. He needed to tell the soldiers what had happened, how the satellite had burrowed into the ground and injected a neurotoxin into him. Then maybe they’d send him to an army hospital and the doctors there would give him an antidote. He’d also tell them about Dorothy and that teenager in the gang. And then the soldiers would dig up the satellite and shut it off before it could hurt anyone else.

  He turned around a
nd looked for the asphalt pathway that went down the hill toward the park’s Dyckman Street exit. While he dashed through the woods he glanced at the clearing and noted the positions of the trees and rock slabs nearby. He was trying to memorize the location, fixing it in his mind so he could tell the soldiers exactly where to go. But as he came within thirty yards of the place he noticed that his cardboard box was no longer at the center of the clearing. The crumpled thing lay next to the base of an oak tree, about fifteen feet away from where he’d left it.

  Joe stopped in his tracks and stared at the box that was supposed to be covering the satellite. Did someone move it? Did those teenagers return to the clearing while he was asleep? And did the satellite attack them again? He didn’t want to get any closer, but he needed to know.

  He stepped toward the clearing, keeping his eyes on the ground. He saw nothing slithering in the mud, but he could picture the tentacles just a few feet below, sensitive to even the smallest vibrations in the earth. He imagined they could detect the noise of his footfalls, so he moved slowly and silently, choosing each step with care. When he was twenty yards away he lifted his head and peered through the branches. He focused on the center of the clearing, where he’d buried the satellite and later dug a trench around it.

  But now the satellite wasn’t there. There was no mound or trench, no gouges in the mud. The ground was perfectly smooth and bare.

  Joe thought of two explanations. It was possible that the satellite had never existed. He could’ve hallucinated everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours.

  Or the satellite had hidden itself. If it could extend tentacles underground, through dozens of yards of dirt and rock, why couldn’t it bury itself deeper and fill in all the holes in the mud above it?

  He had no time to figure out which explanation was better. Instead, he backed away from the clearing until he reached the asphalt pathway. Then he ran out of the park as fast as he could.