Spacious and homey, the underground complex was equipped with everything the FCT needed to remain constantly on their saucer watch. Which they did, on a 3-out-of-4-week rotating schedule, with a floating pool of replacement personnel to cover whomever was absent. But today, the six original team members were present.
The bunker had cost $40 million to build, and the FCT had twice the national income of Belgium invested in themselves via training, training, and more training. They were deemed fully capable of handling any possible situation; from the crash landing of an alien lifeboat atop Mt. Everest with its crew in dire need of medical assistance, to the invasion of Earth by radioactive mutant Chihuahuas. Nothing was considered too far fetched. The FCT was over trained to handle it. Yes sir.
But in the last fifteen years since the team's founding, despite countless sightings of UFOs, the First Contact Team consistently never found anyone to contact. They were fast becoming like the first-aid kit you carry in the trunk of your car: as good as ever, but starting to gather a little dust, and sometimes you just plain forget it existed. The team found they needed something to keep its members from going crazy(ier), and that something was poker. Straight, stud, draw, anaconda and 137 other versions that they had invented over the years.
In point of fact, the FCT held the Guinness Book of World Records entry for the longest running non-stop poker game: eight straight years, easily beating the 4 year long crap shoot of the Buckingham Palace Cleaning Staff, and dwarfing into insignificance the 18-month-old baccarat game of the Hong Kong Freelance Bodyguard & Assassins Union.
Nicholi tucked his cards together to hide them from any stray glances. “Twenty dollars,” the Russian said, confidently betting the maximum.
Suspiciously, General Bronson glared at the Russian general across the table from him and shifted the position of the unlit cigar in his mouth. Twenty, eh? Now what did that crafty Red bastard have up his sleeve? Sigerson was on the sidelines brewing coffee, Yuki was going to bluff, and Courtney had nothing, so this hand was solely between the two of them. But Nicholi was indecipherable, his craggy Russian face never showing anything he didn't want it to. Bronson thoughtfully chewed on the end of his panatela. What the hell, he decided, time to separate the men from the boys.
“Okay by me,” the American drawled. “And another twenty.” Ha! That'll teach Comrade showoff who's in charge here.
“Fold,” Dr. Wu said, putting down her cards. The scientist had been planning to bluff again, but Yuki could see that her two generals were working up a head of steam, so she let discretion be the better part of valor and got out of the way of their forthcoming collision. Saved herself 4,000 yen in the bargain, too. Besides, there was always the next hand.
Just then the tantalizing smell of coffee tickled her nose and Wu glanced at the kitchen behind her. Nattily dressed in a two-piece blue suit and crisp white shirt, Prof. Rajavur was at the bunker's electric stove brewing a pot of his outrageously potent coffee. Before joining the FCT and engaging in their 24-hour poker fests, Wu had only thought of caffeine as an inferior medical stimulant. Now it was like the staff of life.
“Care for some?” Rajavur said, gesturing carefully with his brimming cup, an extra large tan ceramic mug marked: ‘TAKE ME TO YOUR LITER.’ When the Secretary General of the UN had last visited them on his yearly inspection tour, Sigerson had been forced to explain the joke to the pompous Frenchman.
The woman smiled gratefully. “Thank you, yes."
Formally polite, the physicist excused herself from the table and left for the ladies’ room before joining the professor in a cup of his acidic brew. In private, Prof. Rajavur thought it a sin that Yuki added milk and sugar to the coffee; but since no other member of his team would even go near it, he forgave her that tiny perversion of Icelandic cuisine for the sake of camaraderie.
“Twenty is fine,” Sir John said, only a faint Scottish burr rounding his words. “And I raise you twenty more."
A millionaire even before he had inherited his uncle's estate, high stakes meant nothing to Sir John; but taking these soldier boys down a peg or two did. The sociologist had a blockbuster of a hand, 4 nines, and he was highly doubtful that either of his associates could beat that. In Highlander confidence, he pulled crisp bills from a money clip bearing his family crest and added them to the growing pile of cash on the dining/poker table.
Recreational space was at a premium down here and almost everything had to serve two functions. Even the precious poker cards themselves often became twirling spaceships that invaded somebody's inverted hat during an impromptu strategy meeting.
Blatantly, the Scotsman left his money clip there on the table, signifying that he was in for the duration. Bronson ignored the bit of bravado, and Nicholi tried to do the same, but failed miserably. Sir John saw the Russian struggle with inner turmoil and incorrectly read the emotion as fear. Had he treed the old bear at last?
“Well, my friend?” Sir John grinned, positive that he smelled a kill.
Struggling to maintain a poker face, Nicholi pretended to think about the bet, while internally he was cackling with glee. Czar's Blood, they thought he was bluffing. Him! Bluffing! He could probably squeeze one more raise out of them before lowering the boom, but this had to be done carefully. No amateurs, these.
Radiating innocence, General Nicholi shuffled his cards around and loosened his Army-issue necktie. It was a good thing that he was here in the United States with these cards; back in the Motherland this hand would have had him sweating blood. Three times before Nicholi had possessed a royal flush, and each had ended in disaster.
The first time was as a private, new to army life, but old in the way of cards. As he drew the card he needed to complete his winning hand his entire platoon had been ordered out to build a stupid, useless wall. Nicholi had hated Berlin ever since. Next was as a lieutenant playing poker with his men over a combat lantern, when the winning cards had been shot out of his hands by enemy fire. He escaped that night physically unscathed, though his soul was deeply wounded. The last time had been in Moscow, where, as a major waiting for notification of his promotion to colonel, he had been unceremoniously busted back to a lieutenant for playing cards on duty. His royal flush had been confiscated for evidence.
Ah, but here it would be different. Nothing could stop him. At last, sweet victory would be his, and Nicholi Gagarin Nicholi would finally get to show someone his perfect poker hand. This was it!
“Da, Jonathan,” he happily agreed, unconsciously humming Wagner's ‘Ride of the Valkyrie'. “And I raise you another."
Courtney and Bronson exchanged anguished glances. Ambushed! They should have known better then to trust a Muscovite.
“Sir?” a voice addressed the room.
Everybody chorused yes.
Down in the Operations Room, visually bisected by the iron pipe railing, a swarthy man in a badly fitting suit duly pointed at Prof. Rajavur.
“What is it, Mohad?” the Icelandic diplomat asked, taking a sip from his coffee mug.
“I have been receiving some very unusual radio transmissions on the New York police channel,” Dr. Malavade said, holding a tiny wireless earphone to his head. “Oh yes, most unusual."
Winter ice formed on Nicholi's spine and his crewcut hair threatened to leave his scalp. Oh no! The only thing in the world that could interrupt this game was ... Czar's Blood, did they have to land today?
“Quiet, please!” the Russian barked, his left hand fumbling in his uniform pocket. “Do not interrupt game. Sir John, I meet that and bet another twenty.” Hurriedly he slapped the money down, raising his own raise.
“Interesting,” Bronson muttered, the strange double bet not going unnoticed. “Well, I'll see that. How about you Courtney?"
“In for a shilling, in for a pound,” Sir John philosophized, winking to the American on the sly. The general shrugged in return. “Okay, Nick, what have you got?"
Returning from the washroom, Dr. Wu paused in the act of drying her hand
s on a government issue paper towel. Something had happened in her absence. Rajavur was hurrying towards Malavade, who was crouched over his communications console; and the remaining poker players were in animated conversation. Curious, the scientist descended into the Operations Room, the hem of her cotton dress billowing about the trim calves of her nylon-clad legs.
“Is anything wrong?” she inquired of her colleagues as they began to jointly listen to an earphone.
“There has been a landing in Central Park,” Dr. Malavade announced crisply. “It has been confirmed by the traffic department of the NYPD. A unit of the National Guard has been dispatched for crowd control."
Without hesitation, Dr. Wu rushed to her console and hastily began flipping switches. Prof. Rajavur was already at his desk.
Sluggishly at first, the liquid crystal TV monitor on the wall before them started to pulse with light as it warmed to operational temperatures. Prof. Rajavur pressed a button and a pair of small HD video monitors raised up from inside his control board. “Has there been any word from the—"
“Ship,” Dr. Malavade supplied, both hands busy on his own board. “One, round, white; approximately 400 meters in diameter.” Somebody whistled. “Yes, it is big. Reports suggest that the craft is protected by an energy screen of some kind, nobody can get close. At present, there has been no announcement from the occupants.” With a forefinger, he minutely adjusted a volume slide. “Just a moment, please."
"Then let's finish game!" Nicholi roared, catching everyone by surprise.
In the Operations Room, Wu, Rajavur and Malavade jerked their heads about and stared in astonishment, while Bronson and Courtney halted on the steps to see the Russian general still sitting at the poker table.
“Are you mad?” Sir John admonished. “There's a bloody spaceship in Central Park! Good Lord man, this is what we've been waiting 15 years for!"
“And this is what I've been waiting whole life for!” General Nicholi raged, pounding the table with his fist. “Sit down! Will only take minute to finish game.” His friends obviously could not believe what they were hearing, so Nicholi changed to a more persuasive tone. “Please? As favor to me?"
Releasing the handrail, General Bronson sighed. “Well, if it's that damn important to you.” He returned to the poker table and flipped over his cards. “I fold. The pot is yours."
A true gentleman, Sir John did the same.
“NO!” Nicholi howled in anguish. “Wait! Here, look at this!” Frantically, he spread out the poker cards on the table for his friends to see. They stepped closer.
“The alien ship has began shooting people,” Dr. Malavade calmly announced in his dictionary perfect English. “Five, no, six dead. Maybe more."
TWO
Poker cards formed a blizzard in the air and fell unnoticed to the floor as Nicholi shoved the gaming table aside and sprinted for his post, with Courtney and Bronson leading the way.
Reaching his console first, the American soldier dropped into his chair, slipped on a set of earphones and deftly activated his equipment.
Each of the FCT's consoles was designed for different functions, and they were alike only in general build. Basically in the shape of a horseshoe, each curved metal desk had two sets of three drawers on either side of the chairwell, and the desktop was covered with a plethora of electronics equipment. Broken into three sections, the controls respectively ran: a series of hush phones and a laser printer for hard copy on the left, a video/computer monitor and keyboard in the middle, the specialty controls, meters, switches, and dials filling the right side. If not when they joined, every member of the FCT was by now virtually ambidextrous.
Winking telltales on the right side of the desktop informed Bronson as to the status of the United Nations building above them and of their own command bunker. He tapped a complex code onto the keyboard before him, got a warning beep, and checked the video screen to see the empty hallway outside the bunker. All clear, fine. He then inserted a key into a slot on the desktop and turned it, setting the double pair of armored doors to their quarters cycling shut. Soon, the FCT would be physically isolated from the outside world by a meter of laminated steel, making entry into the bunker impossible, and exiting forbidden without the general's specific knowledge and consent. Voices in his ear told him that the UN was in an absolute state of panic, with the delegates alternately demanding information, not believing what they were told, and then discounting the whole incident. Bronson grunted. Damn civilians. They were about as useful as lips on a brick.
“Communications on line,” Dr. Malavade said, formally following the long lost and semi legendary procedure manual that had mysteriously disappeared the day after the FCT received their copies of the 18,000 page document.
Blazing with rainbows, Dr. Malavade's console was a vidiot's dream come true: he could broadcast and receive messages on every level of the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves down to hard radiation. Plus his access to the worldwide Internet was absolute and non-detectable, even to the vaunted cyber sleuths of the NSA.
An expert in cryptography and codes, what languages Mohad wasn't fluent in, his computers were: from Mayan hieroglyphics, through the squeals of porpoises, to Pig Latin. He was also a lip reader, had perfect pitch and did crossword puzzles in ink.
“Information on line,” Sir John stated, sliding on his hated reading glasses, a sad result of reading too many stock portfolios and books on UFOs. His father, who thought glasses effeminate, immediately ordered the lad to go out and start dating women. This the young Jonathan had gladly done. But only with rich women who belonged to the local UFO club.
Already the laser printer on the sociologist's right was feeding him duplicate reports from ABC, CNN, NPR, the BBC, ComStat, the New York Times, London Times, Moscow Times, AOL, the National Inquirer and Grit. His teammates might laugh, but as an expert in his field, he knew that you never could tell where the truth might be found.
“Science on line,” Dr. Wu contributed, enabling her computer and linking it to the NASA, NSA, NATO and NBC sensors en route to the park.
Yuki's equipment was so sensitive that it could track an astronaut on the moon, or analyze a ballpark hotdog. Which she had done once as a test, and had immediately telexed her findings to the city's Heath Department.
“Security on line,” General Bronson said needlessly, as everyone in the bunker had felt the muffled vibrations in the floor as their only door locked shut. In grim humor, the soldier opened the drawer on the lower left side in his console and lifted out a Heckler Koch 10mm pistol. Automatically, he checked the gun's clip, holstered it, and proceeded to strap the weapon about his waist. Gimme a damn gold helmet, he thought sourly, and I could pass for General George S. Patton. But regulations were regulations.
“Command on line and running,” Prof. Rajavur announced brusquely, as he slipped on a throat mike and finished activating both of his mainframe computers.
As the person in charge of the First Contact Team, his console was twice the size of his associates and infinitely more versatile. He could talk privately to any, or all of them, simultaneously. He could countermand their decisions and, if necessary, run their consoles for them, should anyone become incapacitated or unreasonable.
For psychological as well as technical reasons, Rajavur was situated prominently in front of the wall monitor. The video cameras were focused on him, with the rest of his team clustered about him like so many small moons. That is, except for Nicholi.
General Nicholi, and not General Bronson, was the soldier in charge of the Earth Defense Forces. The American protected the FCT, but the Russian protected the world.
From the very beginning of the team, it had been decided that, purely as a safety precaution, no alien would ever get to know of Nicholi's existence, much less see him, until their peaceful intentions had been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, the Russian's defense console was hidden in a corner of the Command Bunker parallel to the wall monitor and well outside the range of
its video cameras. Nicholi had a monitor of his own, a personal life support system, autonomous lines of communication, monogrammed bath towels and a quadraphonic CD player. In fact, he was as independent of the FCT as they were from the rest of the world.
Hissing like an antique steam radiator, a thick sheet of Armorlite bulletproof glass rose from the terrazzo floor of the bunker and locked into the acoustical tile ceiling, hermetically sealing the general in place. Now only a single phone line connected him with the rest of the team.
Nicholi was the unhappy stick to the First Contact Team's carrot. If a situation fell apart so badly that there was nothing diplomatic left to try, if push came to shove, then—and only then—would Nicholi act; using whatever measure of violence he deemed proper to correct the problem. From having a sniper shoot a wine glass out of someone's hand, to the total nuclear annihilation of New York, London, Paris, or even Moscow itself. Nicholi hated his job with a passion, which was why he still had the position.
Finished with his initial preparations, the Russian gave Rajavur a ready sign and, without hesitation, the professor keyed in the activation code on his console.
In electronic majesty, the huge bank of Cray mainframes under their bunker awoke, yawned, stretched, did a few warm-up trigonometric calculations and in the next microsecond reached out to seize control of the United Nations computer system.
With a magnetic lurch, every keyboard in the mammoth building
above them froze motionless, all non-essential programs were simply erased and the machines subatomically bowed to their new master. Everything in the 36 separate and shielded computer systems became instantly available to the FCT's mainframe to do with as it pleased. Leisurely looking over the vast array of material, the Cray took almost a full second to locate the correct files, access and process the desired data.
Illegal Aliens Page 2
