The Orion Plan

by Mark Alpert

  “Well, maybe it’s not too late.” Sarah looked over her shoulder, searching for Tom. He was tiptoeing toward them, trying to listen in without being noticed. With a jerk of her head, Sarah urged him to come forward. Then she turned back to Joe. “I mean, I have connections at NASA, and Tom is the White House science adviser. He meets with the National Security Council and he can change their minds about how to handle this crisis. Isn’t that why the Emissary brought us here?”

  Joe kept his eyes closed. He squeezed his eyelids tighter. “Jesus. So many soldiers. All that burning. It was so horrible, so…”

  His voice trailed off. The guy seemed to be paralyzed. Sarah felt sorry for him, but at the same time she was impatient. She needed to get him back on track so they could figure out a solution.

  “Listen up, Joe.” She tightened her grip on his shoulder. “More people are going to die unless we fix this. So why don’t we try to arrange a truce, okay? Would the Emissary be willing to go along with that?”

  Joe said nothing. He just stood there, staring at the black wall in front of him. Several seconds passed, and Sarah had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from screaming at him. Then Joe lifted his head, turned to the right, and stepped toward the corner of the metallic structure, where two of the black walls met at third base.

  Sarah followed him, and Tom followed her. He tapped her arm, trying to get her attention, but she kept her eyes on Joe. “Hey!” she called to him. “What’s going on?”

  When Joe reached the corner he knelt on the field. Sarah thought he was going to start crying again, but instead he reached for third base. Using both hands, he grasped the sides of the white square and lifted it from the dirt.

  Sarah looked over his shoulder. On the underside of the base was an anchoring rod that fit inside a tube embedded in the field. After Joe removed the base and set it aside, he slipped the fingers of his right hand into the tube. Then he pulled out a black cube, about half an inch wide. It was the size of a sugar cube, but it was made of gleaming metal.

  Joe stood up and turned to Sarah, holding the cube in his palm. “This device has a built-in radio, so it can send data to your computers. The Emissary wants you to give it to the officials at the White House and the National Security Council. They’ll be able to read the terms that the Emissary is proposing.”

  “Terms?” Sarah stared at the cube in Joe’s hand. It was so stark, so simple. “You’re saying the Emissary wants to negotiate?”

  He nodded. “She wants a truce. She has only one demand. The soldiers have to stay away from 172 Sherman Avenue. As long as they keep their distance, she won’t hurt anyone else. And she’ll stop spreading her machinery.”

  Tom stepped forward, elbowing between them. He seemed agitated now. He probably thought he should be leading the negotiations. “Give the thing to me. I can deliver it personally to the national security adviser.”

  “Of course.” Joe handed the cube to him without hesitation. That was the whole point of this meeting, Sarah supposed. The Emissary had done its research on the Internet and learned all about her and Tom. They were the best choices for first contact.

  Tom held the cube between two fingers and stared at it, beetling his eyebrows. Then he thrust the thing into his pocket and gave Joe a suspicious look. “What’s on Sherman Avenue? And why is it so important to the Emissary?”

  Joe hesitated. Sarah couldn’t tell if he was listening to the voice in his head or simply thinking it over. “That’s hard to answer. The Emissary is creating something that humans have never seen before, so I can’t really describe it in English or any other human language. There are just no words for it.”

  Tom looked insulted. “Well, could you make an attempt at least? There must be a word that comes close.”

  Joe thought it over some more. Then he smiled.

  “I guess the closest word would be God.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  General Hanson gazed through a one-way mirror at Emilio Martinez. The boy lay facedown on the concrete floor of his cell. He wore only a pair of faded blue boxer shorts.

  They were in a newly constructed building at McGuire Air Force Base, about fifteen miles south of Trenton, New Jersey. The war on terror had placed new demands on the military, and this building had been designed to meet them. It held dozens of interrogation rooms, all outfitted with the latest technology. Hidden cameras viewed the detainees from every angle, and highly sensitive microphones picked up the sound of every breath. As Hanson stood in the viewing room adjacent to Emilio’s cell, he turned on the loudspeakers that were connected to the microphones. Listening carefully, he heard the boy groan.

  He’d moved Emilio here after seeing what had happened in the basement of the Federal Building in Lower Manhattan. Sarah Pooley had escaped from her detention cell through a hastily dug shaft that descended to a utility tunnel. An FBI forensics team had examined the shaft and found traces of the same material that Dr. Pooley had collected from the blade of Gino Torelli’s fire ax. Which meant that the alien cables had stretched more than ten miles underground to free her.

  So Hanson took steps to make sure the same thing didn’t happen to Emilio. First, he took the boy to an Air Force base more than fifty miles from Manhattan. Then he chose an interrogation room on the building’s top floor, as far as possible from the ground. A platoon of thirty Special Tactics soldiers guarded the building, and its exterior walls were clad with aluminum to prevent radio signals from going in or out. As an extra precaution, Hanson assigned six men to patrol the floor below. They carried axes and acetylene torches and kept a lookout for any metallic strands trying to rise to Emilio’s cell.

  The general checked his watch. It was 4:00 P.M. His interrogators had been questioning the boy since noon. Gray loops of duct tape still fastened Emilio’s right hand to the side of his head and bound his left hand behind his back. After a few seconds, the boy groaned again and rolled onto his left side. Now Hanson could see his face, or at least half of it. The duct tape covered his eyes, but the lower part of his face was visible, including his broken nose and blood-smeared lips.

  The interrogators had started slapping the boy during the last round of questions, and they’d gone a little overboard. Hanson didn’t blame them—they were frustrated. Even after all their hard work, Emilio hadn’t said a word. But the general sensed that the boy was vulnerable now. His groans were becoming shorter, raspier, more like sobs. They were less about pain and more about despair.

  The time was ripe, Hanson thought. He left the viewing room and headed down the corridor, walking toward the MP who stood guard beside the door to the cell. As the guard saluted him, Hanson reached into his pocket for the key. Now he would try to accomplish what the interrogators couldn’t. He opened the door and stepped inside.

  He felt a rush of frigid air. Although the temperature outside had soared above a hundred, a powerful air conditioner kept the room below sixty. Hanson closed the door behind him and approached Emilio, who’d drawn his knees toward his chest and curled into a fetal position. The boy was shivering. His legs, bound at the ankles by more loops of duct tape, twitched and jerked.

  For a moment the general felt a twinge of sympathy. Emilio, after all, was only eighteen. And it was possible, maybe even likely, that the alien probe had coerced him into fighting against his countrymen. The probe had inserted its machinery into the boy’s arm, and perhaps the device had corrupted his mind as well. If that was the case, then Emilio was innocent. But then Hanson recalled the sight of his men bursting into flames on Sherman Avenue, and Major Beardsley lying on the sidewalk with most of his head burned away, and he realized it didn’t matter if Emilio was guilty or innocent. The boy had something Hanson needed, information that could help defeat the enemy. It was that simple.

  He stood over Emilio and looked down at his half-hidden face. “Wake up, Mr. Martinez. We need to talk.”

  Emilio let out another groan. Because the tape covered his eyes, Hanson couldn’t tell if the bo
y was awake or asleep. At best, he seemed only half-conscious.

  This won’t do, Hanson thought. He needed the boy’s full attention. Turning around, the general marched to the air conditioner and shut it off. Then he went to the army cot that sat unused in the corner of the cell, picked up a gray wool blanket, and carried it to Emilio. He draped it over the boy, covering everything below his neck. Hanson felt relieved. The task would be easier now that he didn’t have to look at the boy’s body.

  Emilio shivered more violently as he started to warm up. He coughed and rolled onto his back, looking very strange with his right hand fixed to his head and his elbow jutting to the side. Hanson waited for a minute or so, watching the boy strain against the loops of duct tape. Then the general used the toe of his boot to nudge the boy’s chin.

  “Hello? Are you awake yet? Ready to talk?”

  The boy went still. He didn’t move a muscle. Hanson took this as evidence that Emilio was awake and listening.

  “Mr. Martinez, my name is Brent Hanson and I’m a general in the U.S. Air Force. I’ve observed your conversations with my interrogators this afternoon, and I have to say, I’m very disappointed. My men have tried to reason with you. They’ve explained how you were manipulated by the enemy, how it mutilated your arm and forced you to fight against us. And they’ve also explained that you have a chance to make things right now. All you need to do is answer our questions, and everything will be forgiven.” The general paused to take a breath, forcing himself to slow down. His message needed to be calm and clear. “But so far you’ve refused to take advantage of this opportunity. Frankly, I don’t understand it. Your behavior now makes no sense. It’s self-destructive.”

  Emilio remained motionless. He breathed softly and didn’t make a sound.

  Hanson began to circle him, taking slow steps around his body. “At first I wondered if you were still under the enemy’s influence. The alien machinery is still inside you, and I thought the enemy’s computer systems might be communicating with you somehow. But then I remembered that this building is lined with metal. No radio signals of any kind can get through. And that means you must be making your own decisions now.”

  No reaction from the boy. Hanson looked down at the still form under the blanket. The room was getting warmer. “So then I started to wonder if you had other reasons to fight us. And I naturally thought of your companion, the young man who was with you when we detained you this morning.” Hanson paused again. “The New York Police Department identified him as Francisco Guzman, but he went by the nickname of Paco, correct?”

  Emilio pressed his bloody lips together. He didn’t say anything, and the change in his expression was small, but Hanson noticed it.

  “You blame us for your friend’s death, don’t you? That’s why you’re refusing to answer our questions. But you should realize that my soldiers had no choice. The beamed-energy weapon in your arm is extremely powerful. When my men raided the bedroom, they had to act quickly. You were lucky—the soldiers were able to restrain you before you could fire at them. But Paco woke up sooner. He was already raising his arm. They had to shoot him immediately.”

  Emilio’s lips parted. His breath came faster and whistled through his clenched teeth. “Mentiroso,” he whispered. “Fucking liar. They were following your orders.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I heard what your soldiers said.” The boy coughed again, spraying blood on his own face. “One dead and one alive. That’s the order you gave them. You wanted Paco dead so you could cut the crystal out of his arm and see how it works.”

  Hanson grimaced. The Special Tactics commandos had spoken too freely, and now he was paying for it. He needed to adjust his strategy.

  “That’s not true. Your friend died because my men couldn’t take any chances. And the same thing will happen to your other friends if you don’t help us.” He bent over Emilio, staring at the layers of tape that hid his eyes. “You need to tell us the names of the other boys in your gang. And anyone else who has the beamed-energy weapon.”

  The boy sneered, curling his lip. “So you can kill them too?”

  “No, so we can save them. If we know who they are and where they are, we can surprise and restrain them, just like we did with you. Then we can keep them safe until we find a cure.”

  “Safe?” Emilio let out a raspy, painful laugh. “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel very safe right now.”

  Hanson straightened up and took a step backward. This was going nowhere. He wasn’t getting any further than his interrogators had gotten. For a boy his age, Emilio was unusually resilient. According to the New York police, he’d been involved in criminal activity since he was eleven. Two of his uncles had been high-ranking members of a gang called the Trinitarios, but they were arrested in a crackdown six months ago. Afterwards, Emilio recruited new Trinitarios, mostly juveniles. The NYPD knew about one of Emilio’s associates—the now-deceased Paco—because he had a criminal record, but the police had no information on the others. Although Emilio had more or less admitted that the other gang members had the alien weapons in their arms, Hanson had no idea where to look for the boys.

  He felt an ache in the small of his back. Reaching behind him, he kneaded the muscles there while he considered his options. His highest priority was organizing a counterattack on the alien machinery. He was more convinced than ever that the black box on Sherman Avenue was critical to the enemy; why else would it have defended the place so vigorously? But he couldn’t risk another attack until he knew how to neutralize the beamed-energy weapons. Although dozens of engineers at the Air Force Research Laboratory were studying the weapon retrieved from Paco’s corpse, they hadn’t made much progress yet. So Hanson’s best option was to locate all of the enemy’s young collaborators and eliminate them before the battle began.

  He looked down again at the boy on the floor, the gray blanket over his body, the duct tape over his eyes. Time was running out. With every hour the alien machinery spread farther underground. Hanson’s chest tightened as he pictured the black cables slithering below streets and parks and rivers. In desperation, he decided to pursue a new line of questioning. It was desperate because he knew it wouldn’t work unless Emilio had retained some shred of human decency.

  “Mr. Martinez, the New York police have informed me that the other members of your gang are younger than you, only fifteen or sixteen. They’re still children. Do you really want them to die?”

  He shook his head, rolling it from side to side on the floor. “They won’t die.”

  “If they fight against the U.S. Air Force, they’ll be slaughtered. If necessary, we’ll launch hundreds of cruise missiles at the target on Sherman Avenue.”

  Emilio laughed again. It sounded awful, like there was something broken in his throat. “My boys are faster now. Their eyes are better, their reflexes too. They’ll hide on the rooftops, where they can see your missiles coming. Then they’ll blast them out of the sky.”

  Hanson frowned, not because he disagreed with Emilio but because he knew the boy was right. This was exactly why the general feared the beamed-energy weapons. They were too powerful. It was absolutely crucial to remove them from the battlefield.

  Taking a deep breath, he crouched beside Emilio. He wanted to get as close as possible. “I see that the lives of your friends mean nothing to you. Don’t you have any feelings at all, Mr. Martinez? Isn’t there anyone in the world you care about?” Hanson crouched lower, bringing his lips within inches of the boy’s head. “Perhaps your grandmother?”

  Emilio stiffened and bared his teeth. The lower half of his face turned so ferocious that Hanson backed away, even though the boy’s hands and feet were bound. A growl rattled in his broken throat. “Where is she?”

  Hanson paused, waiting until he regained his composure. This had to be done just right. “She’s on the floor below us. In her own cell.”

  It was the truth. The general was still following Contingency Plan Orion, which gave him the power to detain
and interrogate anyone he chose. Hanson’s men had treated Mrs. Paloma Martinez with the utmost respect, and they certainly hadn’t smacked her around. But they had the authority to do so.

  “Your grandmother’s a lot like you,” Hanson continued. “She’s upset and uncooperative. When we asked her to make a list of all your friends and acquaintances she told us to go to hell. Her exact words were ‘vete pal carajo’ but my translator assured me that it means the same thing.”

  Emilio twisted under the blanket. He was literally shaking with anger. “You’re wasting your time. She doesn’t know anything.”

  “She knows more than you think. She heard you come into her apartment with Paco last night. And she wasn’t happy about it either.”

  “Coño! I mean, she doesn’t know about the other Trinitarios.”

  Hanson shrugged. “Well, there’s only one way to find out for sure. We’ll have to get a little tougher on her. Trust me, I don’t enjoy pressuring elderly women. But you’re leaving me no choice.”

  Emilio stopped twisting. He went silent, and the part of his face that was visible seemed to harden. Hanson wished he could see Emilio’s eyes, because then he could guess what the boy was thinking. But the layers of tape hid everything. The boy was like a mummy, something that had died long ago.

  The silence stretched. After several seconds Emilio finally spoke. “If I tell you their names, you won’t hurt her? You’ll leave her alone?”

  “Their names and their addresses.” Hanson suspected that the boys were hiding in Inwood, despite the evacuation order. “Then your grandmother will be free to go.”

  Emilio nodded but didn’t say anything else. Now the silence stretched even longer, more than half a minute. But the general wasn’t concerned. He knew he’d won.

  The boy let out a ragged breath. “All right, I’ll tell you. But, Hanson? I want you to know something else.”

  “I’m all ears, Mr. Martinez.”