The Orion Plan (39 page)

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.”

“You shouldn't have threatened her. When this is over, I'm going to kill you.”

Although the room was quite warm by now, the general shivered. Emilio's voice was so definite, so cold.

Hanson shook off his fear. The boy was helpless. In all likelihood, he'd spend the rest of his life in a maximum-security prison. “We're going to figure out how to get that weapon out of your arm. After that, you're welcome to take your best shot at me.”

“It's coming,
pendejo.
You're a dead man.”

*   *   *

An hour later Hanson was a few hundred yards away, at the McGuire Air Base headquarters, sitting behind a console in a high-ceilinged room that was serving as his new command post. On the wall was a jumbo screen, similar to the one in the Space Operations Center at Vandenberg, but instead of displaying the Earth and its satellites, this screen showed a map of New York City and the surrounding area. Flashing icons on the map indicated the positions of Army battalions and Navy ships and Air Force squadrons. Hanson had ordered all these units into position to prepare for the counterattack.

There were fifteen consoles in the room, but all of them were unmanned except for Hanson's. Although the Orion Plan had grown into a huge operation, it was still strictly classified, which meant that only senior staff could enter the command post. Twenty-five minutes from now, at 1800 hours, Hanson's colonels would arrive for the mission briefing and he would give them their orders. But until then he had the rare opportunity to go over his plans in solitude.

He gazed at the jumbo screen and tallied up the forces he'd arrayed for the battle. He'd had some amazingly good luck: the Army had been able to send a rapid-deployment battalion from Fort Bragg and another from Fort Benning. A Navy destroyer had rushed to New York Harbor from a training exercise in the Atlantic, and four squadrons of F-22 jets had flown across the country to McGuire. But Hanson's best weapons were the Tomahawk cruise missiles. He had more than a hundred and fifty Tomahawks at his disposal, waiting in launch tubes on the USS
Florida,
a guided-missile submarine farther out at sea.

He grinned. He couldn't help it. Like all commanders, he loved having the advantage of superior numbers. And the Department of Homeland Security had aided his operations by enlarging the evacuation zone. The civilian authorities, still under the impression that the military was fighting terrorists, had ordered the residents of a large part of Manhattan—everything north of 180th Street—to leave their apartment buildings. The authorities had also cut off the electricity to the area, making it harder for the alien machines to draw power from the grid.

The final step in Hanson's preparations was eliminating the enemy's beamed-energy weapons. The Special Tactics commandos were already racing to the addresses that Emilio Martinez had provided. Hanson felt confident that his men would capture most, if not all, of the collaborators within the next few hours. That meant he could start the counterattack anytime after midnight.

He was concerned, though, about the security of his communications. Hanson suspected that the enemy had hacked into the military's data networks and figured out how to decipher its coded messages. How else could it have learned where Sarah Pooley had been detained? And though the problem was bad enough now, it would become much more of a threat during combat, because the enemy would be able to eavesdrop on all of Hanson's commands. That was why he'd asked all his senior officers to come to McGuire and meet in person. To minimize the need for battlefield communications, he was going to give his men very specific orders.

Hanson had just finished writing those orders—on paper, so they couldn't be hacked—when the first of his officers arrived for the briefing. It was Colonel Gunter, the good ol' boy from Mississippi who'd done such a fine job of monitoring Dr. Pooley. He marched to Hanson's console and gave a smart salute. The old soldier's cheeks were flushed and he was breathing hard. A courier bag, colored Air Force blue, was slung over his shoulder.

“I just got back from Washington, sir,” he drawled. “And I have some news.”

Hanson sat up straight. He'd ordered Gunter to go to the Pentagon to get final instructions from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but because Hanson had banned his men from communicating by phone or computer or radio, he didn't know yet what those instructions were. His anticipation was so intense, his hands started to sweat.

“How'd it go?” He tried, in vain, to sound casual. “Did we get the green light?”

To Hanson's dismay, Colonel Gunter shook his head. “I'm afraid not, sir. The Joint Chiefs want you to stand down for at least twenty-four hours.”

The general couldn't believe it. He was aghast. “Stand down? Are they insane?”

Gunter kept shaking his head. He looked disgusted. “The chiefs said the decision came from the White House. The science adviser there, some guy named Gilbert, argued for a halt in the hostilities. He apparently received a communication from the probe.”

Hanson was so stunned he couldn't speak. He leaned back in his chair, stomach churning, and stared at Gunter. The colonel opened his courier bag and started rummaging inside it, looking for something.

“This Gilbert said he met a man who claimed he was translating for the probe's computer program. It was a crazy story and no one at the White House believed it at first, but then Gilbert showed off some high-tech thingamajig that the translator had given him.” Gunter finally found what he wanted and pulled it out of the bag. It was a document marked
TOP SECRET
. “The device sent a huge load of data to Gilbert's laptop, and when the president's security advisers looked at it they went nuts. The files had information on all kinds of advanced technologies—beamed energy, biological engineering, nanotech, you name it.”

The colonel placed the document in front of Hanson, on the table beside his console. Hanson picked it up and started leafing through its pages, but he was too flustered to read the thing. After a few seconds he put it down. “And this convinced the White House to call off the counterattack?”

“Along with the data, there was a message from the program, which called itself the Emissary. It promised to send more details about the technologies if we agreed to a truce. It also promised to stop expanding its operations across New York City as long as we keep our soldiers away from its machinery on Sherman Avenue. It said the firefight last night was a tragic accident that only happened because it was programmed to defend itself.”

“Defend itself?” Hanson gaped in disbelief. “The probe attacked us first! It put its weapons inside those boys and turned them into killers!”

“The Emissary said it took those actions before it realized the nature of our species. It also said it could remove the implants without causing any permanent damage to the teenagers.”

Hanson was too agitated to sit there. He jumped to his feet and pointed at Gunter's chest. “And what about my soldiers? The men who were incinerated by those weapons? What about the permanent damage to
them
?”

The colonel stepped backward, startled. It looked as if he were afraid Hanson might take a swing at him. “Sir, I agree with you a hundred percent. I argued the same thing in front of the chiefs, but they said the White House was adamant.”

“Fucking hell!” He raised his voice, venting his anger. “How could they be so goddamn stupid?”

Gunter looked over his shoulder, making sure no one else was in the room. Then he pointed at the document on the table. “To be honest, sir, I think it's these technologies. The experts have only started to study the data, but they're already predicting that amazing things will come out of it—new rockets and computers and robots and medicines.” He tapped the document's cover. “And new weapons too, sir. Maybe even more powerful than the ones the probe used against us. I think that's the biggest factor for the president's advisers. They're willing to call a truce because of what the Emissary's offering. It wouldn't give us all these powerful technologies if it wanted to kill us, right?”

Hanson picked up the document again and tried to focus on it. The pages were crowded with mathematical formulas. It had been a long time since he'd studied physics at MIT, but some of the equations looked familiar. He turned the pages and saw more formulas, plus many paragraphs of explanation. But there were no schematics, no technical illustrations. Even if the equations were valid, the document had none of the engineering plans for the promised machines.

He dropped the document on the table. “You know what that thing is? It's a trinket. It's a necklace of shiny beads.”

Gunter raised his eyebrows. “Sir? I don't know what—”

“It's like what the English colonists gave to the Native Americans. Shiny trinkets. Something to keep them amused while the white men stole their land.” He pointed at the map on the jumbo screen. “The Emissary is just playing for time. It's tantalizing us with these technologies, but at the same time it's getting ready to destroy us. We have to attack it
now,
before its machinery spreads too far and gets too strong. Otherwise, we're doomed.”

The colonel nodded, but Hanson sensed he didn't really understand. Although Gunter was an excellent soldier in many respects—loyal, wily, persistent—he wasn't a strategic thinker. He couldn't see the big picture. Uncertain, Gunter pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. “Sir, the Joint Chiefs ordered us to suspend the attack, but they haven't ordered us to withdraw our forces. If the Emissary breaks the truce and the alien machines keep spreading, we can still launch the Tomahawks.”