Fire in the Sky

by Don Pendleton

  The man ran a hand through thinning gray hair. "Reality's what I make it to be. You, then, are only as real as I choose you to be."

  "There are billions of us running around out there, Doctor," Bolan replied. "You may ignore us, but you can't wish us away. We have hopes and dreams and wants and needs, just like you with your superiority and ease of judgment."

  Bolan walked up to where the man sat and poked an index finger in his chest. "Well, you don't have the power to define me. While you hide and feel superior, me and my kind are out there living life, feeling happiness, sadness and joy. You talk about the grandeur of the universe, but my kind is experiencing it firsthand, while you can only hide and condemn through your petty fears. You contribute nothing useful to the world around you. All you do is take up space and breathe air. The sleaziest bum on Skid Row is better than you because he's at least trying to live some sort of a life. No, Ike. You're the one who's not real."

  He turned to Haines. "Where's Robbie?"

  "I saw him in his office," the man said, his brown eyes scanning Bolan's face as if he were looking for something.

  Bolan nodded, then turned and walked out. He had intended to stir the pot, and it hadn't taken long. Now that he had flushed the quail, it was time to track it.

  "What happened to Dr. Ackerman?" Chuck asked as Bolan passed his checkpoint.

  "What do you mean?"

  "She just came charging up here and took the elevator. I don't think I've ever seen her move so fast."

  "Guess she's got an appointment," Bolan replied and walked to Robbie's office, knocking lightly. The woman was on the run, but he didn't figure her to get too far just yet.

  The man answered almost immediately, smiling when he saw Bolan. "Well, David," he said, swinging the door wide. "Come in."

  Bolan followed him into the lab. He liked Robbie's lab better than any of the others. It was like a small library, with reference books lining floor-to-ceiling bookcases all the way around and tables containing every sort of scientific investigative device. Microscopes, centrifuges and scales were jammed together and filled the place like a general store for eggheads.

  "I just made some coffee," Robbie said as he led Bolan into the place. "Want some?"

  "Not today." Bolan followed him back into his office. "It's my thirst for knowledge I want to satisfy."

  They sat in the office, Robbie's seniority apparently good enough to get him two chairs. Robbie crossed his legs and stuck the pipe into his mouth. "What can I do for you?"

  "I want to ask you about Peg Ackerman's project."

  Robbie looked quizzical. "What about it?"

  "You told me once she was working on immortality," Bolan said. "What did you mean by that?"

  The man reached into his desk and pulled out a white bag. He opened it and removed a glazed doughnut. "Want half?" he asked, shrugging when Bolan shook his head. He set his pipe on the desk, then dunked the doughnut into his cup of coffee and took a soggy bite. "Peg was working on fibroblast cells, the ones that turn out collagen, the packaging material of the human body. The original supposition was that cells could divide and continue to divide forever, but Peg found that cells only divide for fifty generations before dying. Even if a cell was frozen midway through the generation process and kept for a long time, when it was thawed out, it continued its reproduction, only to die again after the fiftieth generation. All this shows limitations of life for humans. Peg's actual work here has been experimentation with enzymes that slow down damage to the DNA during cell regeneration to somehow expand this fifty-cell limit."

  "Has she had any luck?"

  "Not really," he said, taking another bite. "At risk of insulting one of my esteemed colleagues, Peg's not much of a researcher. I never was sure how she got the job here. Her work has been pedestrian at best."

  "Do you know much about her background?"

  Robbie shook his head. "Very little. She's always been closemouthed about her personal life and never talks about anything but business. Although I've always felt she's an unhappy person."

  "Was Jerry Butler an unhappy person?"

  Robbie took a sip of his coffee. "Sure got a lot of questions today."

  "I'm a curious boy."

  The man stared into his coffee cup. "So, do I drink all the crumbs down at the bottom of the cup or dump the whole mess?"

  "Drink it."

  Robbie got up and dumped the rest of the coffee into a small sink in a lab table just out the door. "That's a sign of accepting responsibility, by the way," he said. "You've made the crumbs, now you must accept the responsibility of their future."

  He came back in and sat again. "Jerry was a motivated man and protective of his work and its usage. His work was his life. I think he may have been happy at one time, but ultimately made himself unhappy by taking it all too seriously. Did you know that the last year here he wrote in nothing but code?"

  "Code? What kind of code?"

  "He had this theory that a code could be devised that could ultimately be understood only by someone with a similar background and upbringing. In other words, a code that didn't depend on knowledge of positioning or replacement to break, but rather a similar understanding of symbols and abstracts. The basic idea was a code that could never be understood by a foreign power, for they could never understand American idioms or share in the lifetime of culture that goes into an American's life."

  "Fascinating," Bolan said. "So his code was meant to be looked at symbolically, rather than literally. With the words actually standing for other words and ideas."

  Robbie nodded. "That's what he had sunk to. He coded and hid things and walked around in a complete stage of paranoia most all the time. I tried to get him to slow down, but he'd have none of it. It was another unhappy case in the final analysis."

  Bolan stood, his mind whirling with the revelation about the code. "I appreciate the info. Now I must..."

  "You're on to something," Robbie said, "and it doesn't have anything to do with poison gas."

  Bolan pointed at him. "Now don't you go getting paranoid," he said, and waved, walking out of the room. He wanted to get on Peg Ackerman's trail, but after talking with Robbie he had to invest a little more time with the code.

  Now that things were happening, they were happening quickly.

  * * *

  General Mordechai leland always spoke to civilian visitors from behind his huge, polished ebony desk in order to let them know that there was, and always would be, a boundary between him and the outside world, a buffer that separated him from the petty and confusing priorities of the civilian population.

  The three-man congressional fact-finding team from the Armed Services Committee was no exception as far as the general could tell. Civilians all, they exhibited the usual civilian simpleminded egalitarian approach to life that, carried to its extreme, could make the necessary defense of a country nearly impossible. Civilians liked to believe that people are people no matter what, and that they could be depended upon to act rationally if presented with rational behavior. It was what Leland called the myth of rationality. For the truth of the matter was simple: the world is a jungle whose rule is destined for the strongest.

  "But General," the representative from Maine said, "if we continue to blindly fund SDI research and still try to keep up our standing Army plus attritional missile replacement, we'll never have enough money to keep the country itself running smoothly."

  "Your statement seems incomplete, Mr. O'Connor," Leland said as he stared across the long desk, its small American flag reflected in the sleek top. "It doesn't seem to include your feelings about our enemies' development of the same tactical weapons."

  "They can't afford it any more than we can," O'Connor replied, looking at the other committeemen seated beside him in the stiff, hard backed chairs the general preferred for his guests. "If we don't develop SDI, then neither will they."

  "Are you prepared to speak for the Russians, Mr. O'Connor?" Leland sat up straight and folded his hands
on the desktop. "Are you prepared to tell me with any certainty that if we stop development of the Strategic Defense Initiative the Russians will halt their own, highly advanced particle beam program?"

  "Representative O'Connor is not on trial here," the representative from Missouri said.

  "No one is on trial here," Leland replied, smiling. He had them going now. Bleeding hearts were always idiots when it came to the harsh realities. "Except for, perhaps, the people of this country who don't know yet that you gentlemen are sitting here trying to destroy the freedom and security of the United States of America."

  "Come on, Lee," George Hallis coaxed. "You and I have known each other for a good number of years, and we both know how the game works. Now the point here is, we've got to start trimming defense somewhere. Elections are coming up, and everybody's more worried now about domestic policy... it's just business, you know."

  "Just because we've known each other, George, doesn't mean I've ever agreed with you. My point is simple: without a strong defense, it won't matter how much we spend on domestic programs, because we won't have a country to run anymore. I don't care if half the population is starving to death. If we don't keep up defense, all of us will be starving to death."

  "This is no time for rhetoric," Hallis said, his pudgy face reddening around his tight collar. "You know that economics run the world…. "

  "Exactly!" Leland said loudly, slamming a hand down on the desk to emphasize the point. "This world will be run by whoever spends the most money on defense. It's all economics."

  Bootan, the freshman representative from Missouri spoke up. "We've come over here in friendship to see if we could find a way to work together in trimming this budget. If you insist on antagonizing us, we'll just start cutting where we want without your help."

  Leland looked at the man. He couldn't have been more than thirty. The general spoke gently. "You ever been in a war, son?"

  "N-no, I haven't, but I don't see…"

  Leland put up a hand to silence the man. "I've been watching men die in combat in defense of this country for over forty years. I've written so many letters to grieving widows and mothers that I'd be a rich man today if I had a dollar for every one of them. I work every day for the defense of this country. Do you think I'd ask for financing for unnecessary programs at the expense of the citizens I protect? I swear to you, sir, on the graves of my soldiers, my countrymen, that there is not any expense in this country as important as our defense spending, and not one penny is being wasted in that department. Part of the reason, Mr. Bootan, that you're sitting here today is that you've managed to rise to prominence in the greatest country on this planet because people like me have been on the job protecting your freedom. How many men died in Vietnam so that you could sit here today? No, sir, I'm not going to blithely put this country in danger to satisfy your silly partisan budgetary considerations."

  The three representatives exploded at once, all of them talking, the boy from Missouri nearly livid with anger. Leland sat calmly, his hands still folded on the desk, and let them talk. After all, never let it be said that Lee Leland was not open and available to the people of the country. He, of course, paid no attention to them. Like all civilians they simply took their freedom for granted and pretended that it was the result of parchments containing laws and rules or churches containing goodwill and brotherhood for all. As far as Leland could see, the only thing keeping the country free from within was the fact that everyone, not just the rebellious few who promote revolutions, had access to weapons, and all that was keeping it free from without was the best, most advanced fighting force in the world. Nothing else mattered. It was all pissing into the wind.

  "You've got to understand," Hallis was saying, "that the country is in bad economic straits right now, that compromise…"

  "I don't care about that, George. I can't care about it. Raising the money is your job, not mine. My job is protecting this nation. I think, that if you straightened out your priorities, you'd spend your time defending this budget above all else and trying to increase it if you could."

  "General Leland..." Bootan began, but the ringing of the private line interrupted him.

  Leland looked down at the red phone. It was the priority line that could ring him out of any meeting. "Gentlemen," he said, putting a hand to the receiver, "you'll have to excuse me for a moment."

  He picked up the receiver, clearing his throat before answering. "Leland."

  "General, this is Norm Michaels..."

  "Yes, Captain?" Leland slid a machine-tooled box in the shape of a B-l bomber across the desk to the representatives.

  "News on Project GOG," Michaels said. "Can we talk?"

  "Only generally." Leland watched as George Hallis removed the top of the airplane to find the stash of cigars within. He covered the mouthpiece. "Dominican Republic. Try one."

  "The news is from our mole in Orlando."

  "Go on," Leland said, as he smiled and acknowledged the thanks of the congressional delegation for the cigars.

  "The man from Justice seems to be hot on the trail of something," Michaels informed him. "He's pushing his cover wide open at the institute trying to force everyone's hand."

  "But you don't know the extent of his knowledge?"

  "No, sir. I just didn't know if we'd want any leaks at this…"

  "No, no. You were absolutely right to call me."

  He sat back for a moment, watching as the lazy civilians sated themselves on his generosity. Dark, gray smoke filled the room as the out-of-shape and pampered men laughed, smoked and sold America right down the river. They wouldn't be happy until the country was dead, ground under the heel of expediency as more and more was given over to the forces of revolutionary thought. Not by a bang would the country die, but rather it would experience the slow, agonizing death by compromise that would chip away the freedoms one at a time, all presided over by fatted governmental cattle whose only real claim to fame was the fact that they could smile, shake hands and make empty promises.

  "General?" Michaels interrupted his reverie. "Did you hear...?"

  "Yes, I've just been thinking."

  "Sorry, sir."

  He looked once again at the men before him. Not one of them would be fit to polish the boots of the lowliest airman on the cushiest air base in the safest part of the world, yet here they sat, ready on a whim to dismantle the necessary protection the country was due. They wouldn't — not if he had anything to say about it. He had thought about and planned for this moment for many years, knowing he'd recognize the moment when he saw it. The only funny thing was, he had never figured that some overactive snoop sitting in a think tank in Florida would be the one to push him over the edge.

  "It's time to put a stop to all this," he spoke calmly into the phone. "I want you to mop up operations down south and put the full project on the clock."

  There were several seconds of quiet on the line before Michaels said with a quavering voice, "I am required by regulations to inquire if you are authorizing the immediate implementation of Project GOG, full realization to follow in five calendar days from this date?"

  "Yes, Captain," Leland replied, a surge of excitement bolting through him. "You may start the ball."

  "My God," the man said, laughing nervously. "We're really going to do it."

  "You have your orders, Captain. Good luck and Godspeed to you."

  "Thank you, sir," the man said, and Leland hung up feeling a peace he hadn't known since V-J Day.

  He took a long breath, somehow able to look a little more tolerantly at the civilians now. "All right, gentlemen," he said, opening his hands expansively. "Where were we?"

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bolan moved silently through the lab, turning off lights, still devoting half his mind to the code that refused to reveal itself to him. Unlike most codes, knowing how it worked did nothing to translate the thing. He was stuck with trying to interpret the mind of the electrical genius who invented it. The words on Jerry Butler's paper ha
d, no doubt, been meaningful to him — unfortunately he was dead.

  He walked past the cage containing the white mice. Another had died that afternoon, and he had spent enough time with the whole project to know that even though his experiments in looking for the perfect vehicle to carry the ketamine were failing miserably, eventually, through trial and error, the problem would undoubtedly be solved and the "peace bomb" completed. Then, as Robbie had told him, would come the real debate about bloodless war.

  Bolan wasn't sure how he stood on that particular issue, since it seemed to him that warfare was simply a symptom of a far greater problem — greed and the human heart. Everyone seemed to study, experiment and discuss in areas that dealt with the symptom as if it were the problem, when what they all really needed to be doing was trying to figure out why it is that every man wants what every other man has. If this problem could be addressed successfully, all the others would go away.

  It was time to go home. His momentary excitement after talking to Robbie about the code had cooled over the long hours of unsuccessful trial and error. He put his briefcase on the desk and prepared to load his failures into it for transmission to Brognola along with Robbie's thoughts on the subject.

  He picked up the piece of paper containing Peg Ackerman's address, which he had gotten from the computer. Maybe hers was the ticket he should have punched from the first. He'd have a private confrontation and get the intel that he needed.

  He put the address in his briefcase, then picked up the map of Arizona. He started to drop it in the bag, then stopped. He had always thought of the map as a clue separate from the code, but perhaps it wasn't, perhaps the map was meant to tie into the code in some way. It wouldn't hurt to look at it for a moment.

  The desk chair creaked beneath his weight as he sat and slid the briefcase aside, opening the Arizona map in front of him. He brought out the page that listed the code words and tried to figure out how the phrases could possibly connect to anything on the map.

  If everything was, indeed, symbolic, then so was the map. On a very simple level, the map suggested travel to Arizona. The next logical question would be, then, travel where in Arizona? He stared at the map for a moment, then realized that, perhaps, the name of an Arizona town could be hidden in the code.