by Terry James
A large black being materialized, as if from nothingness, in front of the human with the clipboard.
Kirban could hear nothing spoken by the dark creature. But it obviously said something, or implanted the thought, or whatever it did, Kirban observed, because the scientist nodded, and gave orders in compliance.
“Let us begin,” the man said.
As one, the people wearing the helmets and encircling the two young people at the room’s center began to speak. They spoke the same words. Gessel Kirban, an Israeli, recognized the words as spoken in Hebrew.
But, the words were as if growled from something other than human voice boxes.
“The taking away will come,” the words began in Hebrew. “All must be ready. All must speak as one…”
Kirban felt the vibrations assaulting his senses, as if surrounding and engulfing his thoughts.
“We shall speak as one…When the moment comes…We shall speak as one…”
Kirban’s brain filled with terrors. He had to get as far from the facility as possible--leave this hell of darkness and unbearable vibrating noises.
He held his palms over his ears while he stumbled from the big, steel doors. He frantically searched the hallway.
Which to take? So many, so many directions!
When he lurched toward the hallway he chose, his eyes widened. Horror sucked the breath from him.
Two dark human-shaped forms stepped from within the solid walls and blocked his path. Huge, and terrifying, each stood stiffly, faceless heads gray-black and seeming to boil atop thick necks and wide shoulders. Pain burned within his cranium, as if flames would at any moment shoot from the crown of his head, from his nostrils, from his eyes and ears. The pain--the unbearable, searing pain!
Over the Atlantic, June 3, 1967
Randall Prouse was a man of high energy and quick movement, possessed of a hyperactive physiology usually reserved for much smaller men. He plopped into the seat next to Christopher Banyon, and took several seconds to settle in.
“Word is, it’s going to happen, maybe before we land,” Prouse said, without looking at Christopher.
“War is that inevitable?” Banyon asked, while Susie listened from the seat on her husband’s right.
“Yeah. All that wrangling I had to do with State and with the committee was taken care of just in time. Glad I started on it the second I received word from Gessel.”
“Your committee of support didn’t want to fund you on this?” the minister asked.
“Oh, no. They’re great. They’ve got my digs funded for five years or longer. They didn’t want me to go because of the dangers. Or their perceived dangers of the Israeli-Arab thing.”
“And, you’re not worried?”
“I’m sort of sorry we’re bringing Susie along,” Prouse looked across Banyon to let his eyes meet those of Susie Banyon.
“I only mean, Sweetheart, that I don’t want to put you in harm’s way even for a second,” he said.
She smiled, knowing Christopher’s friend meant his tender words. Not an easy thing for a man of such powerful, adventurous drive to express.
“Don’t mind putting you in harm’s way, though,” Prouse said, grabbing Christopher’s leg just above the knee and squeezing it with his fingertips and thumb.
“Yes, well, I’ll try to remember to duck,” the minister said with a subdued laugh.
“I was talking to a State Department guy up there in First Class,” Prouse said. “He’s a guy I went to school with at Georgetown. He says the Arabs are amassed in every direction you look from Jerusalem.”
“You have chums from schools all over the country,” Christopher said.
“And it’s a blessing in this business of antiquities digs. Guess I’ve got so many contacts because I could never settle down in whatever I’m doing. Drives Ruthie nuts.”
“So, what do you think we should expect?” Christopher said.
“If I know anything at all about the IDF, they won’t let things stay like this very long.”
“IDF?”
“The Israeli Defense Forces,” Prouse said, leaning his head into the aisle of the 707 to see his State Department friend, Clarence Trowell, part the curtain and make his way toward them.
“Welcome to the commoners’ humble abode,” Randall said to the solemn-faced Trowell when he arrived.
“Yes, well, some of us have to sop the gravy,” he said, a brief smile crossing his lips.
“They’ve locked down Ben Gurion, Randy. I probably shouldn’t be telling you, but I believe it’s important for you to know. We’ll be the last plane permitted to land for the foreseeable future, other than Israeli government and military aircraft.”
“What does it mean for our getting into Jerusalem?” Prouse said, a frown of frustration crossing his face.
“Don’t know,” the diplomat said. “Maybe, just maybe, I can bring you along with me.”
“They brought him in this morning. The maid found him in his bed, and thought he was dead. She called the service she works for, and they called a hospital, and they learned he worked here, and called us.”
The doctor looked to Mark Lansing, then to Lori, both of whom stood near the nurses’ station in the dispensary of the vast Taos underground complex.
“What’s wrong with him?” Mark said, his thoughts on the fact that his newly found friend and instructor had been in good health and spirits when he last had seen him.
“We just don’t know. Preliminary tests show neurological functioning is nearly normal. But we won’t be able to know any more without further tests.”
“Sounds like Mom’s case,” Lori said, frustration in her voice.
The doctor lowered her eyes, concentrating on when she first got involved with the Laura Morgan case.
“As a matter of fact, Lori, Dr. Kirban’s case is very similar to your mother’s. We’ve put him in a room next to hers, because of that.”
“He’s in a coma?” Mark asked.
“Yes. And, with the almost-normal brain activity going on, that’s hard to figure,” the doctor said. “You may visit him for a few minutes, if you wish.”
Mark and Lori stood moments later beside Gessel Kirban, whose body was attached to IVs similar to those hooked to Lori’s mother.
“Dr. Kirban? It’s Mark, Mark Lansing.”
He put his hand on Kirban’s arm and gripped it gently.
“Lori and I are here for you, Dr. Kirban. You have friends,” Mark said, continuing to grip his scientist-mentor’s arm.
“You need to get well, Dr. Kirban. They tell us you have every sign of being able to get better soon.”
Tears came to Lori’s eyes. They were more for her mother than for this man, but the thought he had no one, no family to be with him now, saddened her.
“Too bad about Dr. Kirban.”
Mark and Lori turned, startled to hear the familiar, disconcerting voice. “He’s in the finest facility in the world for getting help,” Robert Cooper said, before smiling a tight-lipped smile and reaching his right hand to Mark.
“Lori, are you getting settled in here at our little complex?”
“About like expected,” Lori answered, an ominous flush of uneasiness coming over her.
“And you, Captain. I’ve heard praise reports about you!”
“Oh? We were just getting started. I didn’t know we had accomplished that much.”
“Oh, you’ve accomplished a great deal with the project, I’m told,” Cooper said with exuberance. “And things must go on, even with Dr. Kirban’s sad…setback.”
“He’s being replaced? Already?” Lori said.
“Unfortunately, we are at a critical time in these projects. We can’t, I’m sorry to say, always put individuals ahead of our efforts. And, Mark, it is about our moving on in this project we need to explore. It seems the opportunity to put the project to practical use is upon us--more quickly than we might have wished.”
Cooper squinted and looked into the younger man’s ey
es, a look of important things on his mind.
“Your President sent me, personally, to ask if you are up to a very special mission for him, and for your country.”
Washington, D.C. 2:15 p.m.
The thunderstorm was sudden, and violent. Wind and rain buffeted the windows of the apartment high above the city’s streets. Fractured streaks of lightning lit the darkened bedroom, where the director of Covert Operations for the United States Department of Defense lay naked beneath the single sheet.
Daniel Eganberg waited impatiently for his wife to come to bed.
He looked at the nightstand to his right and picked up his wristwatch. He had an appointment at 3:45 with Bob McNamara, and he must not be tardy.
He put the watch back on the stand and sat upright in the bed, looking toward the master bathroom where Gwendolyn had walked nearly 10 minutes before.
“Gwendolyn!”
There was no answer to his shout. “Gwen!”
He lay back. Surely, she would emerge from…whatever she was doing within a minute or two.
A tremendous streak of lightning seemed to hit the building itself, and the director jumped with a start. The resounding thunderclap reverberated for what seemed to be seconds, and the rain and wind blew harder than ever against the glass-paneled double doors to the balcony.
Eganberg thought he saw something in front of the intermittent flashes. He strained hard to see if his eyes were playing tricks.
The lightning again illuminated the balcony, giving the director an instantaneous still-frame moment of realization.
A darkly clad person looked to be standing, looking in at him.
“Who is it?!”
His shout was drowned out by yet another thunderous blast of sound that rumbled on for several seconds.
“Who are you?!” he screamed, his fear rising. Was it someone--an assassin--sent to murder him?
He pulled the drawer of the nightstand open and grabbed the Walther PPK 7.65-millimeter pistol.
Panic-filled remembrances of an assassination attempt ran through his mind: the one in Sophia, Bulgaria, five years earlier. He had killed that man--he would kill this one!
Eganberg pointed the semiautomatic at the intruder, who stood motionless, dark and featureless in the blowing wind and rain just outside the French doors.
He felt suddenly paralyzed, unable to move even his fingertip, which was all he needed to move to dispatch his would-be murderer.
His eyes became fixed, the pupils dilated.
A slow gurgle came from his voice box. He tried to speak but couldn’t. He could only sit, staring. Transfixed.
His wife had heard his scream. She peered from the bathroom door, which she opened no more than 2 inches.
She started to scream but stuffed her mouth with the bath towel she held. Her mind filled with terror, while she watched the horrifying scene in the bedroom.
Her husband sat holding the Walther at arm’s length, unable to move even the trigger with his index finger. The thing--she saw it step through the closed door and walk, almost glide, to the end of the big bed.
The boiling human-shaped mass walked through the mattress and box springs until it reached Daniel Eganberg. She saw it enter her husband’s nude body. Her terror grew while she watched the thing turn and assume the shape of the man. Eganberg, with the dark form assuming his shape to the extent it could no longer be determined to be separate from his body, stood from the bed and walked to the balcony doors. He dropped the Walther and opened both doors, so that the fierce wind and rain blew hard into the bedroom.
The director walked across the balcony, jogged a few paces, running into the railing. His upper body doubled forward over the railing, then the legs followed in a somersaulting plunge 17 floors to his death.
Approaching the Middle East, June 4, 1967
Mark Lansing sat looking out the small porthole of the KC-135, his mind back at the Taos complex with Lori. He was the only passenger on the refueling aircraft, besides a crew of six.
The cobalt blue Aegean crawled far below, the Cycladic chain of islands stretching in spine-like fashion north and south.
The parting had been one during which he had put up his bravest front. He would be back in no time. They would be together again. Then, they would discuss their future together in a serious way.
Lori made no pretense. Her tears couldn’t be contained, and she exposed her deepest fears to him. She told him about the recurring nightmares –the man with the binoculars. The dream that haunted her over and over since the incident on the University of Texas campus. The ongoing nightmares involving the small, hideous gray creatures with the bulging black eyes that hovered around her bed like giant insects –trying to tear at her.
He would be getting into something neither of them knew much about. She didn’t trust Robert Cooper. Then, there were the strange cases of her mother and Gessel Kirban that raked at her emotions, if not her rationale.
Lori had kissed him, apologized a dozen times that she was sending him off with such a “downer” farewell. She would try to do better. Try to be strong, to concentrate on the work they had given her, whatever that would be.
She was still not sure of the of her assigned duties but was promised by Gerherdt Frobe to find out the very afternoon that Mark left for Israel.
Burning at the back of her mind, and his, if he had been honest with her, were the matters involved in the weird dreams and visions or visitations or whatever they were. He was told by the--thing--that said it was his own father, Clark Lansing, that he should do whatever he was told. That they would be together again.
But, it was not his father in appearance or in voice, as he remembered from all those years ago. The thing was monstrous. Dark, boiling. Sinister.
Or, was it just a nightmare? The food he had stuffed himself with at the restaurant that evening?
No. The minister, Christopher Banyon--he had seen the monster. Or another monster of the same family of monsters?
Mark smiled at his own ruminations, as if going over a nightmarish Saturday matinee he and one of his buddies had seen back in the 1950s. Maybe “The Creature from the Black Lagoon,” with the hideous half-man, half-fish creature that almost got the woman in the white, skin-tight bathing suit.
Lori was not just morose over his leaving. She was fearful, for some reason she couldn’t pinpoint.
He had tried to assure her that if the President of the United States had personally gotten them both placed in the complex to do whatever they were to do for the country, it must be acceptable.
She had reminded him that his father was gone. Disappeared from the backseat of her own father’s plane. Her dad was dead in a strange crash in which the T-38 was seen plunging nose down into the earth. Her mother was in a coma that was medically inexplicable, as was his scientist-mentor, Dr. Gessel Kirban.
Lori, beautiful Lori. His whole being ached for her now. But, he must be a big soldier, as his mother used to say when he was a little boy. He had duty to perform…but he still didn’t know its nature.
“Captain.”
The KC-135’s co-pilot eased himself into one of the few seats available in the Boeing 707 constructed for carrying jet fuel.
“Our ETA is about 10,” the Air Force captain said.
“Got some stimulant,” he said, pouring coffee from a Thermos into a paper cup, then handing it to the Marine pilot.
“Thanks.”
“You must be something special,” the officer said, pouring himself a plastic cup full of coffee.
Mark said nothing but raised his eyebrows while sipping the hot liquid.
“Yeah. We were told that we are to get you to Ben Gurion, no matter what happens. We thought it was the fuel for the Israeli Air Force that was the critical mission. But, we were told, in no uncertain terms, that you are the mission.”
Mark looked surprised. He thought that, if anything, Cooper, or whomever was ultimately in charge--the President, maybe--would want his mission kept low key.
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“There’s nothing special about me,” he said, with a slight laugh.
“Right,” the co-pilot said with a smirking grin.
“Look out that window, about two o’clock.”
Mark glanced out, his eyes locking onto a desert camouflaged Super-Mirage. Its fuselage was marked with a bright blue Star of David.
“Just joined us,” the captain said. “There’s one on the other side, too.”
“Makes sense,” Mark said. “War’s brewing. Israel needs refueling capability. Why shouldn’t they send a couple of escorts for your bird?”
“That just ain’t how it works here, my friend,” the co-pilot said. “The IDF doesn’t just send escort for refuelers. It’s got to be because you’re on board.”
“Then I suppose I’m flattered,” Mark said, taking another swig of the coffee.
A little more than an hour later the fuel-laden 135 sat down, Mark thought just a bit hard, on the runway at Ben Gurion. The airport he remembered as usually bustling with aircraft and vehicular traffic servicing aircraft looked vacant, eerie. There were aircraft of the military sort, but not many civilian planes that he could determine from his vantage, while the big jet rolled out its landing and began its turn from the runway.
When the engines whined to silence, an enlisted crewmember opened the forward-most hatch on the left side of the fuselage. Before Mark could stand after unbuckling the seatbelt, several uniformed men entered the aircraft.
They swept the interior with their eyes, their glares affixing on the Marine captain, who looked in mild amazement at the swiftness of their actions.
“We are here to take you to your assignment,” an Israeli officer dressed in desert fatigues and dark blue beret said.
Three others dressed like the officer maneuvered into positions behind Mark and the man who had spoken. They carried machine guns slung from their shoulders by leather straps.
“Where are we going?” Mark said, being whisked toward the opened hatch.
“Not now,” the man said in accented English. “You will be briefed soon enough.”
