Legacy (28 page)

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The press room was packed.

The word “Moon” was on every reporter’s lips.

Eventually, the White House press secretary walked to the podium and the crowded room fell silent.

“The president has a brief announcement and presentation. He will not, I repeat, not be taking questions afterward.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.”

The president slowly walked in from the left and went directly to the podium, not nodding or greeting anyone on the way as was his custom. His tall frame was firm and his eyes serious as he placed his prepared statement in front of him.

“Good afternoon. As events have unfolded on the surface of the Moon, it has taken this government many days to assess the situation and make the decision that I am here to announce tonight. Millions of years ago, our Moon and possibly our own world were visited by humanoid beings not much different from us.”

The press corps started writing furiously and television cameras rolled to catch every nuance of the president’s bearing.

“With the exception of a few minor details, these people were the same as us in almost every way. They obviously had our spirit of adventure and exploration, the same qualities that have driven our own species to great heights. The most amazing aspect of this find on the surface of the Moon is that the humanoid remains discovered inside of Shackleton Crater have been determined to be as much as seven hundred million years old.”

With that announcement, the press room erupted. Many of the senior members had never seen this kind of excitement, or even pure astonishment, in the White House. The room quieted as an assistant press secretary stepped forward and removed the linen from the first picture. The president remained where he was.

“I am here today to clear up some misconceptions about what has transpired on the Moon and to deny any wrongdoing by the United States in the explosion that rocked Shackleton Crater last week. I will also announce preparations for the return of this country to the surface of the Moon and the reasons behind it. First, I would like to make a brief statement concerning efforts currently underway in other nations for going to the Moon. These attempts will not be based on any exploratory effort. The fact is, there’s a race on to recover not only alien military technology from seven hundred million years ago but to recover something perhaps even more important, something that will make nuclear fission outdated—a mineral that could escalate the race for far more destructive weapons than we currently possess. The United States will not allow any substance indigenous to the lunar world to be brought back from the Moon.”

The statement was as close as the president could come to making a military threat.

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA

Joe Horn, a quiet family man from Eugene, Oregon, waited patiently outside the well-maintained house in the Pasadena suburb of Monrovia. The radio was on and he listened to the president’s address streaming live from Washington, meaning the west coast of the United States was just waking to the news that America was now in a dead-on race to the Moon. This was a mission meant to undercut the most basic statement of the Holy Bible, that man was created by God Almighty. Now the world was in a rush to prove that it wasn’t God who accomplished this miracle, but visitors to whom most of the scientific world would kneel and give their allegiance—the new Golden Calf of the heretic.

Mr. Horn, a man taken to the heights of fervor in the name of God, sat stoically and waited. He watched patiently for the person he had come to see, the leader of the zealots who had been on television day and night for the past two weeks with their little mechanicians of science. He had asked his Baptist minister yesterday for guidance before his long drive down the coast. He had been told that the discovery on the Moon meant nothing, that the faith of all religions should not be shaken by the miracle that was currently taking place, that this discovery only meant that the range of God’s miracles was not restricted to just this one solar system.

Horn didn’t believe it. The more establishment religions were calling for calm, but Joe wasn’t interested in being calm. The word of Rev. Samuel Rawlins was starting to reach the ears of the true followers of the Lord. He was calling for all men and women of the true faith to take up the cause of stopping these blasphemers before they could deface the word of God. Now Joe was here to strike the first blow for Rawlins, as he knew the voice coming over the airwaves had spoken only to him when it called for the righteous to rise up.

Joe Horn sat up straighter in his old, battered pickup truck as the man he had been waiting for stepped out onto his front porch with briefcase in hand.

Joe’s heart started pounding, threatening to break free from his chest as he watched the man kiss his wife good-bye and then pick his small daughter up and hug her. He watched as the man set his daughter down on the porch and waved to both. As the man approached his Hyundai, Joe stepped from his pickup and strode across the street.

“Mr. Nathan? Mr. Stan Nathan?”

The mission leader from Jet Propulsion Lab turned and saw an older man walk toward him from across the street. He was wearing farmer’s overalls and had a green baseball style cap on. His smile was broad and friendly. When he had called out his name, he saw out of the corner of his eye that his wife had hesitated closing the door and stood with her daughter in her arms, wondering why her husband was being approached. Two other neighbors of Nathan’s were heading for work and paid the old man no attention as they went to their own cars.

“Yes, I’m Dr. Nathan,” he said, placing his left hand on his car’s door handle. His eyes widened when he saw the man reach into the large pocket in the front of his overalls.

Joe Horn reached inside and came out with a very old .38 Police Special. He started shooting as he ran straight at the engineer. The first two bullets struck the door and a third the driver’s side window as Nathan reacted quickly, ducking and throwing his briefcase up for what little protection it would provide. Joe Horn stopped shooting so he could take aim more carefully. He hadn’t thought to bring more bullets than the six he had chambered in his father’s gun, which had lain upon a shelf in his bedroom closet for his entire forty-year marriage.

Stan Nathan lost his balance and fell backward as the realization of what was transpiring hit him full force. He thought he heard his wife scream, but he couldn’t be sure. He heard a car start and as he fell on his backside he thought he heard the backfiring of another car. That was when he felt the first sting of being shot.

Horn had taken several strides toward the fallen engineer and now stood within five feet. He placed a trembling hand on the .38, aimed, and fired.

“We cannot allow the blasphemers to spit in the eye of God!” he cried out. He fired twice more, finally hearing the hammer hit on nothing but an empty shell casing.

The last two bullets were more than enough to do the job. The fifth round had caught the aerospace engineer in the side of the head after careening off a large Texas Instruments calculator inside his briefcase. The sixth and final bullet hit him directly in the heart.

Mrs. Nathan screamed again as she watched her husband die in front of her. The one neighbor who had started his car heard the shots but had reacted far too slowly to stop the inevitable. When he saw the assassin standing close over his neighbor, the man threw his car in reverse and peeled rubber on his way out of the driveway. He was under the impression that the maniac would soon turn his attentions to the woman and her child. The car bounced as it careened into the roadway and then it bounced again over Stan Nathan’s driveway. Before the neighbor fully realized what he was doing, the rear bumper struck Joe Horn and sent him flying into the shrubbery Stan had planted when he and his young wife had moved into this, their first home, years before. The neighbor knew he had hit the killer of his friend hard enough, so he just sat there after bringing the car to a stop on the manicured front lawn. He was shaking badly as he heard Nathan’s wife screaming and his daughter crying.

TEMPELHOF INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, BERLIN, GERMANY

The U.S. Air Force C-22B transport aircraft sat next to the American consulate hangar at Berlin’s busiest airport. The aircraft was on loan to Department 5656 from the U.S. Air Force, but to Jack Collins’s frustration it had become nothing more than a large mobile hotel. They hadn’t moved or disembarked since their arrival in Germany.

Jack sat in one of the large seats near the back of the aircraft while Carl was in the plane’s galley making them lunch. The plane and its occupants had been sitting at Tempelhof for the past sixteen hours while Pete Golding, with the assistance of Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III, stumbled through the elusive Columbus files that Europa had been able to uncover from German and Allied reports and documents. So far they’d hit a stone wall, and it was driving Jack crazy, especially knowing that Sarah, Mendenhall, and Ryan had flown out of Nellis bound for Houston and the training regimen that had been set up for them.

Everett cleared his throat and Jack opened his eyes. He heard the sound of Ellenshaw and Golding arguing over some fine point or the other from their station at the midway point of the aircraft. Collins shook his head and finally focused on Everett.

“It’s rough waiting for something to break, I know.”

“Yeah, so how do you handle it?” Jack asked as he sat up and rubbed his hands over his face.

“I eat,” he said, shoving a sandwich toward Jack.

Collins shook his head and accepted the offering. “What about Pete and Charlie. Are they hungry?”

“I offered them something when I took the flight crew some food. All they did was look at me as though I was asking if they’d like to dance. I think they’re out to prove their worth to you. They’re just grateful to be asked along on one of Colonel Collins’s excellent adventures.”

Jack took a large bite out of the sandwich. He chewed twice and then stopped. The look on his face was one of abject horror as he spit the single bite into a napkin.

“What the hell is this?” he asked, looking at the sandwich in his hand.

“Sardines, tortilla chips, and cheddar cheese,” Everett answered, taking a bite of his own concoction.

Collins didn’t say anything. He gently lay the sandwich down as though it were in danger of exploding. He took a long drink from his bottled water, his eyes never leaving Carl’s.

“Hmm, look at this,” Everett said, laying his own sandwich down and pulling the television monitor around for Collins to see. On the screen, it looked as though several thousand people had gathered in what the caption was telling them was Rio de Janeiro. Bottles, rocks, and other objects were being hurled toward a police barricade surrounding government buildings. The scene switched to a view of Los Angeles where the same sort of rioting and unrest was taking place. Then there was another scene, this one in London. Everett reached over and turned up the sound on the television:

“… the unrest has been repeated in countries the world over as religious fundamentalist groups have organized to halt the missions to the Moon, where they feel their beliefs will be undermined by the significance of humanlike remains discovered there.”
The scene again switched. This time the caption at the bottom was Los Angeles.
“Clearly the leader of this discourse is the Reverend Samuel Rawlins. His Faith Ministries has been at the forefront of this movement that has spread so quickly that it caught most government law enforcement agencies totally unaware. Reverend Rawlins, the leader of the largest privately funded evangelical organization in the world, is calling for civil disobedience to halt the advancement of what he calls a declaration of war on organized religion. The Reverend Rawlins has been rebuked by the pope and the World Evangelical Council, which he has pulled away from in the past month, declaring his own…”

“Who is this nut?” Everett asked.

Jack sat silently and watched the scenes of rioting unfold across the screen. The BBC reporter signed off. The bumper for the next segment showed a picture of a tall man with silver hair pounding a golden pulpit and looking for all the world like someone who took lessons from Adolf Hitler himself.

“I don’t know, but someone better start taking him seriously, especially after the murder of the Jet Propulsion engineer this morning,” Jack said. He reached out and shut off the view of the Reverend Samuel Rawlins.

“Well, security will be tight from here on out,” said Everett.

“Colonel, we may have something,” Charlie Ellenshaw said, leaning over Jack’s seat. As the professor was getting ready to turn away, his nose wrinkled and he looked down at the tray in front of Collins and Everett. “What is that smell?” he asked.

“Lunch. You want some?” Everett asked.

“Not on a bet,” Ellenshaw said in disgust. Jack and Carl walked past him toward the communication shack. Charlie was about to turn away, but instead looked around to see if anyone was watching. Then he reached down and took the remains of Jack’s lunch. He took a bite. His eyes widened and he made a face, then he chewed and nodded. “Not bad,” he said to himself, turning to follow the two officers with his newly acquired lunch in hand.

Collins peered into the large communications area and saw Pete Golding sitting in front of a large monitor. He was examining an old document that Europa had brought up on the screen.