The Orion Plan (32 page)

“See that?” Tatum's voice was high-pitched, half-amazed and half-terrified. “It's strange, right?”

Hanson frowned. Yes, the alien metal was strange, but it didn't frighten him. He intended to put the substance through a more rigorous test, something a little rougher than a hammer blow. “I'm going to call in the Special Operations unit. Are all the residents out of the building now?”

“Yes, sir, it's clear.”

“I want you to make sure this entire block is empty. Have your men go into every building and knock on every door.”

Tatum raised an eyebrow. “Sir, may I ask what you're planning?”

Hanson ignored the colonel's question. Something else had occurred to him. “What about the resident of
this
apartment? Do we know who it is?”

“Yeah, we checked the records.” Tatum reached into the pocket of his fatigues and pulled out a slip of paper. “The resident is a fifty-nine-year-old African American woman, a retired minister. There doesn't seem to be anything special about her.”

“Where is she now? Did she register at one of the emergency shelters?”

Tatum shook his head. “Not so far. But we're still checking. Her name is Dorothy J. Adams.”

*   *   *

Fortunately, Hanson had planned ahead. He'd stationed a Special Tactics team at the command post near the Hudson River. The Special Tactics men were the Air Force's commandos, roughly equal in skill to the soldiers in the Army's Delta Force and the Navy's SEAL teams. Their role in combat was to parachute down to airfields in enemy territory and secure them for the military's use. The men were trained to fight in unfamiliar situations and face unexpected threats. More important, they had extensive training in demolition work, which was often needed to remove wreckage from captured airfields. They were experts at handling C-4 and other plastic explosives.

The team left the command post in an armored Stryker troop carrier, which came roaring down Sherman Avenue less than two minutes later. Hanson had pulled all his other soldiers out of the apartment building—there were about thirty of them in all—and now they stood guard on the street about a hundred yards south of the building's entrance. The Stryker stopped at this point, and its rear hatch opened. The nine Special Tactics officers burst out of the vehicle and spread across Sherman Avenue, cradling their assault rifles and scanning the street with the night-vision goggles that hung from their helmets. Their faces were smeared with black paint, and they wore camouflage uniforms padded with body armor. Their commander, a swarthy, hulking captain named Pavlovich, headed straight for Hanson and raised his massive right arm in a salute.

“Sir!” he shouted. “What are your orders?”

Hanson was impressed. These men were perfect soldiers. They'd spent years strengthening their bodies and honing their skills. They'd jumped out of planes and marched across deserts and slogged through rain forests. They were ready to carry out any assignment, no matter how difficult, and they performed their tasks so admirably that Hanson found it a real pleasure to give them orders. It was like the pleasure a carpenter or mason must feel when handling a well-designed tool. The general's satisfaction was so strong he wanted to smile.

But he didn't. Instead, he narrowed his eyes at Captain Pavlovich. “This is a demolition job. I assume you've been briefed about the terrorists we're looking for?”

Pavlovich nodded. “Yes, sir. Have you located the individuals?”

“We think so.” Hanson pointed at the entrance to 172 Sherman Avenue. “We discovered a massive metal barrier on the ground floor of that building, inside apartment 1A. The barrier completely encloses the apartment's bedroom, turning it into a fortified bunker. There's a good chance the terrorists are inside that bunker, along with all their bomb-making materials. We tried to breach the barrier using battering rams, but they were ineffective.”

“And now you want us to try explosives, sir?”

“Exactly. How much C-4 does your unit have?”

“We have a hundred and twelve demolition blocks, plus all the priming assemblies and detonation cords.” Pavlovich gestured at three of his sergeants, each of whom carried a bulging backpack. “That's almost a hundred fifty pounds of C-4, sir. It's enough to knock down any barrier I can think of.”

“Good. I want you to use it all.”

The captain gave him an uneasy look. He clearly didn't want to contradict his superior. “Uh, sir? It may not be advisable to use that much C-4. The explosion would collapse the whole building. And maybe the neighboring buildings as well.”

“Don't worry about that.” Hanson swept his arm in a wide arc, gesturing at all the buildings on the block. “We checked all the other apartments and made sure they're empty. You have permission to use as much explosives as necessary.”

Pavlovich still seemed uncertain. “Sir, can I ask a question about the objectives of this mission? Don't we want to have the option of capturing at least one of these individuals alive? So we could interrogate him and obtain some intelligence about their organization?”

Hanson frowned. As it turned out, the Special Tactics men weren't perfect after all. A well-designed tool doesn't question its handler. “That's not your mission, Captain. Your mission is to eliminate the terrorists. I want you to put your C-4 all over that metallic bunker they've built and blow it sky-high.” He stepped closer to Pavlovich. “Do you understand your orders?”

All the uncertainty vanished from the captain's paint-smeared face. He snapped off another salute and boomed, “
Yes, sir!
” Then he turned to his three sergeants and began to give them instructions, pointing at 172 Sherman Avenue as he talked.

Hanson stared at them. As the sergeants huddled with Pavlovich they seemed to be advertising the Air Force's diversity—Sergeant Turner was black, Sergeant Hernandez was Latino, and Sergeant Lee was Asian. The racial mix was appropriate for the occasion, Hanson thought; all the peoples of the Earth were working together to combat the alien invader. It was a heartening image, filling the general with pride and fervor, although it was somewhat undermined by the fact that the men didn't know who they were really fighting. They thought they were going to kill Muslims.

After a minute or so, the huddle broke up. The sergeants gave hand signals to the five corporals under their command, and then Captain Pavlovich led them all down the street.

Hanson stayed near the Stryker vehicle with the other soldiers, who craned their necks to watch the Special Tactics team march toward the apartment building a hundred yards away. The general watched them too, silently urging the men to move faster. He was worried that by the time they reached apartment 1A, all the shiny black metal would have already retreated underground, just like Sarah Pooley's black cable had retreated into the concrete wall of the manhole. It had disappeared, Dr. Pooley speculated, because it didn't want to be observed. And if that was true, then some kind of intelligence—artificial or biological—
must
be guiding the alien machinery.

Hanson had dismissed this hypothesis at first, but now he believed it. He believed the alien machinery had reacted to the GPR survey teams by delving farther underground and hiding from the radar scans. And though the soldiers had succeeded in discovering the black walls at 172 Sherman Avenue, Hanson guessed that was only because something large and important was inside that metallic box, something the machinery couldn't move underground. But what was hidden there? A power source? A computer? A weapon?

The general shook his head. It didn't matter. He didn't have to know what the hidden thing was. His men were simply going to blow it up. If it was important to the operations of the alien probe, then maybe destroying it would stop the spread of the machinery.

As Captain Pavlovich came within ten yards of the building's entrance he looked over his shoulder and said something to Sergeant Turner. Sergeants Lee and Hernandez moved closer, obviously listening in. Although Hanson was much too far away to hear what Pavlovich was saying, he assumed the captain was telling his men how they should enter the building—who would take the point, who would bring up the rear. After a few seconds he turned back to the building and bounded toward its doors.

Then there was a flash of white light, and the captain collapsed. He fell forward, hitting the sidewalk in front of 172 Sherman Avenue. Hanson caught a glimpse of Pavlovich's prone body and recoiled in horror. The man's head was gone. Blood and charred skin and blackened pieces of the captain's helmet were scattered across the sidewalk.

A moment later the same thing happened to Sergeant Turner. His helmet blew apart and his skull burst open and his blood sprayed into the faces of the other Special Tactics soldiers. They stood there in the street for the next half second, turning frantically in all directions to see where the enemy was. There were no gunshots, no muzzle flashes, no signs of movement on the street or inside the apartments or on the rooftops. It was impossible to tell where the opposing fire was coming from. Then, while Turner's corpse was still falling to the ground, Sergeant Lee's head exploded.

The other soldiers ran for cover. Three of the corporals dashed toward an SUV parked at the curb, and two of them followed Sergeant Hernandez toward a minivan on the other side of the street. But as Hernandez sprinted across Sherman Avenue, flames suddenly erupted from his backpack. Then the C-4 inside his pack detonated.

The explosion cratered the asphalt and crumpled the minivan and killed all the remaining men on the Special Tactics team. A plume of smoke and debris fountained above the street, and the blast wave shattered every window on the block. The wave rolled a hundred yards down Sherman Avenue and knocked over Hanson and most of the thirty soldiers behind him. Even the Stryker troop carrier rocked on its tires.

Hanson's ears rang from the blast, but he managed to get back on his feet. He was in combat mode now, automatically following his training. They'd been caught in an ambush, and the opposing forces could be anywhere. The only viable option was retreat.

He turned to his men and pointed south, away from 172 Sherman Avenue. “
Get moving! Come on, get the hell out of here!
”

The stunned soldiers picked themselves up and started running down the street. The Stryker's driver rushed back inside the vehicle, closed its rear hatch, and began the process of turning the troop carrier around. Hanson ran alongside his men, yelling at the stragglers. For several seconds there was no incoming fire, and the general thought he and his men had moved out of range. But then he heard a loud rattling noise behind him.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the noise came from the Stryker, which had stopped moving in the middle of its three-point turn. It seemed to be having engine trouble, but after a second Hanson noticed a glowing, viscous liquid trickling down the vehicle's sloping front end. It was molten steel. The Stryker's armor was melting. After another second there was a muffled explosion inside the vehicle and smoke began to pour out of its hull.

This scared Hanson more than anything he'd seen so far.
What kind of weapon could do that kind of damage? How could it heat the armor to its melting point?

Then the running soldiers started to fall. A tall lieutenant pitched forward as his fatigues caught fire. A boyish private shrieked as his hair ignited. And as Hanson watched his men die, he realized what was being aimed at them. It was a powerful beamed-energy weapon, a battlefield laser. For decades the U.S. Defense Department had been trying, without success, to build such a device. But someone else had apparently succeeded.

Where were the laser beams coming from, though? How were they being aimed?

Hanson wanted to scream. There was no time to figure it out. He just needed to get his men out of the line of fire. Although the beamed-energy weapon seemed to have excellent accuracy and range, it couldn't fire around a corner. And the corner of Sherman Avenue and Academy Street was just a few yards ahead.

“
Turn right!
” Hanson boomed at his soldiers. “
Everyone, go right!
”

Although the men were terrified, most of them heard his order and obeyed it. They cut to the right and charged west on Academy Street. But a few soldiers didn't make it. Major Beardsley, an intelligence officer Hanson knew well, was hit right before he reached the intersection. The energy beam struck the side of his head, and he tumbled to the asphalt. Hanson was only a few feet away, so he grabbed Beardsley's arms and pulled his body around the corner of the apartment building. Once they were safely behind the brick wall, Hanson bent over the major to check his pulse, but the man was dead. The beam had sliced through his helmet and skull.

Hanson crouched on the sidewalk, breathing hard. He wasn't scared anymore. He was furious. The alien program had beaten him. Somehow it had sensed what the Special Tactics team had planned to do, and it had eliminated the threat. In less than a minute it killed half of Hanson's soldiers and sent the rest scurrying back to their command post. It was a crushing, humiliating defeat, and Hanson had never been humiliated before. His stomach twisted. He clenched his right hand into a fist and pounded the brick wall.

Then he turned back to Beardsley and noticed the binoculars hanging from the major's neck. Because the man had been an intelligence officer, he carried a pair of state-of-the-art thermal binoculars that could view objects in total darkness by displaying their heat signatures. Better yet, the device had a memory chip that could store all the images for later analysis.

Hanson gingerly gripped the strap around Beardsley's neck and pulled off the high-tech binoculars. Raising them to his eyes, he leaned closer to the edge of the apartment building. Then he peeked around the corner.