Doomsday Conquest

Kurtzman flashed Tokaido a scowl. He began chewing over the current mission of Phoenix Force, which was, more or less, still on the drawing board. At present, they were bivouacked at the American air base in Incirlik, Turkey, while the cyberteam at the Farm kept digging for clues about rumored supertech weapons being smuggled to Iranian extremists, somewhere along the Iraqi border, further in the process of attempting to put together pedigrees and place names to the faces of bad guys in question from their ultratech lair.

Kurtzman began to suspect he saw a pattern emerge, some connection, or so he believed Tokaido alluded to, between the death factory in Tajikistan and weapons-hungry jihadists. Was there more? Such as connecting the dots somehow to this Eagle Nebula black project? It wouldn’t be the first time, he knew, someone on the home team had sold out to the other side. Able Team was standing down, Kurtzman checking the digital clock at the bottom of his monitor, aware Hal Brognola, the man who headed the Sensitive Operations Group, would be arriving at his office at the Justice Department shortly. He needed to run his suspicions past the big Fed.

“There’s more, Bear, only I’m not sure how this fits, if it does…only…well, it’s just a feeling,” Tokaido said, and Kurtzman watched as four more sat images flashed onto his monitor, blurring the previous pics. He heard Tokaido mention the three names of former Soviet republics, then told him the last image was shot by NASA. “Remember that story CNN ran a few years back about a purported NORAD quarantine of an area in the Colorado Rockies that was supposedly hit by some type of…well, what was described by an eyewitness as ‘alien space matter.’”

Kurtzman knew he was looking at a full-blown military quarantine in each of the AIQs, complete with soldiers, choppers, makeshift work areas of equipment he couldn’t define, but manned by spacesuits. All told, he knew it spelled disaster area, civilians Keep Out, perhaps at the risk of jail time or worse.

“I do,” he told Tokaido. “It ran one time, as I recall.”

“NASA officially reported the Colorado incident as the result of a meteor shower. But ask yourself when was the last time you saw a hazmat detail gathered around a meteor, or stone fragments thereof, and with what appear to be radiation detectors?”

“And something tells me you got hold of classified documents that state otherwise.”

“Off the public radar screen as ‘unexplained extraterrestrial ore of unknown origin and substance.’ And that eyewitness?”

“I bet you’re about to tell me he vanished off the face of the earth.”

“There was one brief follow-up story, but the star witness was nowhere to be found.”

“Next you’re going to tell me NORAD, or whoever this Eagle Nebula, has iced down the bodies of little gray men with grasshopper-shaped heads and huge black eyes.”

“They’re actually a sort of off-white, but with a grayish hue. Hey, stranger things have happened, Bear, when it comes to the military wanting to keep unexplained phenomenon, whatever the truth and the mystery, all to themselves.”

No truer words, Kurtzman thought, could his cyber buddy have spoken. He reached for the intercom to start sounding off his suspicions.

CAMERON DECKER was sure he was dead, about to meet his Maker as he believed he opened his eyes, but was forced to clamp them shut when the blinding white light stabbed him clear through the brain, a lancing fire. No, this wasn’t heaven, he was in way too much pain for any eternal bliss, his body throbbing with knifing twists, scalp to feet. Gingerly he touched the side of his head, just to be sure he was, indeed, still on earth, probed the bandages wound around his skull. Why did he feel as if he was floating on air, though, his head like a balloon set to burst, both sensations bringing on the nausea? The last moment he remembered was…

A vision of hell on Earth, to say the least.

He saw himself being hurled through the air, far away from his ranch house, fractured pictures of recall slowly groping their way together. One minute, he had been dragged from the kitchen where he was preparing dinner for his bed-ridden wife, alarmed by the shrill barking of Custer. Even in the twenty-first century cattle rustlers were still alive and on the prowl for prime heads of choice beef, and it wouldn’t have been the first time some thieves had come through his spread and loaded up a trailer. The Winchester 30.06 in hand as he’d shucked on the sheepskin coat, grumbling his way out the back door, his normally stoic German shepherd dog going berserk, straining to break free of his chain. Spooked by what, he couldn’t tell, but his cattle were agitated as hell, his horses snorting from the barn, all in a lather. He’d heard that animals had some sixth sense, though, a built-in radar that warned them of mass atmospheric disturbances, and it wouldn’t be the first time that beastly extrasensory perception had foretold him of a sudden thunderstorm. It all looked like another red sundown over the prairie from where he stood, but there was “something” in the air. He could feel it. Something he thought he heard like a whistle, or those incoming rounds he remembered from Korea, the cattle stomping around the pen in a fury next as he walked…

There was an explosion, out of nowhere, or rather, a series of blasts that sounded as one, but with each earsplitting trumpet of thunder there was no telling as his senses were shattered. Before he could fully assess the moment, glimpsing in horror his home and his parents’ home of eighty-five years being uprooted and blown away like so much fertilizer in a twister, he was sailing, dumped, last he remembered, facedown inside the cattle pen.

Now…

He thought he was going to puke, groaning, as he dared to open his eyes. He was getting his bearings, found himself dressed in a white smock like a hospital gown, squinting into the shroud of white light that seemed supernatural in a way he could only describe as some waiting room—Purgatory perhaps?—between Heaven and Hell, when a voice called from the glow, “Mr. Decker? Can you hear me?”

A hard search, adjusting his vision, and he spotted a lean shape in black, straight ahead. The figure was blowing smoke through the light, sunglasses so black and fat they looked more like a visor. Between the combat boots and the pistol in shoulder holster, any hopeful notion the man was a doctor evaporated. Had he landed, though, in a hospital? The light alone was spooky enough, but there seemed to be no walls surrounding him, as if he were in some vast empty space, with the white shroud, bright as the sun, going on forever. Calling him? he wondered, wishing he didn’t feel so sick to his stomach, that feeling of being disembodied chilling him to the bone, warping his senses.

“Who are you? Where am I?”

“You can call me Mr. Orion. And you are in protective custody for the time being.”

“Protective…what the hell is going on? What happened to my ranch?” He tried to stand, but rubber legs folded, collapsing him back into his seat. Groaning, the room spinning, he said, “What’s wrong with me? What have you done to me…”

“Minor burns from the incident, a few cuts and contusions, Mr. Decker. We gave you a shot of morphine for the pain, patched you all up… You’ll be good as new in a few days. As for your ranch and all your cattle and horses—they are no longer standing.”

He felt his stomach roll over. “And my wife?”

“Your wife, Allison, Mr. Decker, was dying of breast cancer and emphysema. We’ll, uh, just call the incident where she is concerned a blessing in disguise. No, belay that. You being a devout church-goer and all, think of her passing as simply an act of God, that she now rests in eternal peace.”

Anger cleared some of the sludge away, this Orion character slamming his nose with one smoke bomb after another, speaking of his wife’s death as if it was nothing more than some near-miss highway crash he ought to be making the sign of the cross over. “Why, you rotten… I want to know what happened and exactly who you are, mister, or I swear…”

“Relax, Mr. Decker. Do you really need to bring on number three heart attack?”

Decker froze, the man reciting more of his medical history, with doctors’ names, dates of operations, down to length of each recuperation. Was that a smile? he wondered, this Orion talking next about his two sons, matter-of-fact, how they had turned their backs on what they called Nowhere, U.S.A., riding off to chase the wind of whatever their dreams in the big cities of Chicago and New York. Putting him in his place, playing mind games. But how did he know so much?

“I’m here to help, Mr. Decker, but only if you wish to help yourself. First of all, let us be clear, what happened to your ranch was the result of a meteor shower.”

“That wasn’t no rock falling from the sky that leveled my ranch and killed my wife. Those were explosions. I’m guessin’ some sort of missile or rocket.”

“As you might well believe that’s what you think you saw, being as you were a decorated veteran of the Korean War, having seen more than your rightful share of combat. And I salute you for your service to the country, sir.”

“Stick all that noise, and I don’t need to think about nothin’. I know what I saw. I’m bettin’ you’re military, work for the government. Something screwed up with you people, and now you want me to shut my mouth about what I saw. Let me tell you, friend, out here, we may be just dumb cowboys to you people, but I got no love for your Big Brother.”

And the faceless smoker knew all about that, too, the threats of bank foreclosures on his property, the audits and subsequent liens that drove him into bankruptcy, the suits from Washington offering to buy up his land, claiming they could cut him a break on what he owed if he grabbed the brass ring of his last stand.

“You seem to know an awful lot about me,” Decker snapped. “Whether or not much of this is a matter of public record, you don’t understand me at all.”

Another wave of smoke and Orion said, “No, it’s you who don’t understand, sir. Here it is, and this is a onetime, nonnegotiable offer. Between property value, including livestock, what would be your projected future earnings for the next five years and your wife’s insurance policy, we are prepared to write you a check in the amount of three million dollars, nontraceable, nontaxable funds. Death certificates have already been made out for both your wife and yourself, only you, sir, get to relocate, all expenses paid, until you get set up in someplace far away from North Dakota. Washington, all your medical bills and those banks you so detest? Your debt is erased, officially you become the man who was never born. Think about it. New name. New identity. You could be sitting on a beach in Hawaii, sipping mai tais and playing with the local hula-hoop talent by tomorrow. If I were you…”

“You ain’t. No deal. I’m walkin’ outta here and goin’ straight to the county sheriff.”

“Is that your final answer, Mr. Decker?”

“First and last.”

“Suit yourself.”

It was too easy, Decker’s instinct stirring, the old combat senses flaring to life, telling him something was wrong. He saw the glowing tip of the cigarette fall to the floor, eyes up, but the faceless Orion was gone, vanished, as if the light had swallowed him up. No sound of any door opening or closing to betray an exit, he was rising when he heard the electronic whir, looked up, thought he saw the ceiling part. A black hole yawning into view, barely perceptible as Decker squinted into the light, he heard machinery grinding to life, from some point beyond the white halo, deep in the dark void. If he didn’t know better, it sounded like a threshing machine was cranking to life. What the…

Warning bells clanged in a brain muddied by dope. He cursed whoever’d shot him up, limbs unwilling to respond to a rising sense of fear when the noise shrilled into what he was now certain was a wood chipper, and a damn big one, unless he missed his guess. He ventured a step forward, trying to get his sea legs, when the first gust of wind blasted around him like the gathering onslaught of a twister ready to rip across the prairie. Fear began edging toward terror, thoughts racing, as the wind strengthened, suctioned up and through the tunnel in the ceiling. What was happening became inconceivable, a nightmare he was sure, but here he was—all alone, no one knew he was even still alive, that he was dealing with the almighty hand of Big Brother who could do whatever he wanted and get away.

The cigarette was sucked up, flying past his eyes, the invisible force of a great vacuum swirling around him now, tugging arms and legs. The chair went next, shooting into the black hole, followed a split second later by a sort of screeching metallic grind.

And it dawned on him what was about to happen, horror setting in, the unholy racket of machinery torqued up to new decibels, spiking his ears, as he heard his cry being swept away into the white light. He tried to forge ahead, but the wind seemed to root him to the floor, the ground beneath like magnets daring him to walk, and far worse than any mud he’d ever slogged through more than half a century ago. The scream was on the tip of his tongue, but he knew the sound of terror would be lost to all but himself, if even that, as he was sheared naked by the cyclone, the flesh on his face feeling wrenched up, as though it was being blasted off bone, the twister sucking the air out of his lungs.

Oh, God, no! he heard his mind roar as he was lifted off his feet, levitating for a moment before the invisible strings began jerking with renewed violent force.

And he burst a silent scream into the wind, arms wrenched above his head, as he rose toward the black hole.

IT WAS A MOMENT, about as rare as a Nellie sighting in Loch Ness, Hal Brognola considered when he felt himself about to be scourged by depression. Or was it something else, he wondered, and far more insidious as he weighed the few facts as he knew them? Self-doubt? That what he did perhaps, at best, only pounded a small dent toward making the free world a better, safer place? That the only real solution, he morbidly thought, was kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out?

And dismissed that as soon as the first whisper of fatalistic pessimism filtered into his head. No way could he look himself in the mirror if he lived without principles, he knew, briefly angry with himself for even entertaining such notions. To doubt his duty, first of all, would be tantamount to death. And to undercut the fact there were good people everywhere—who only wished to live in peace and harmony, raise families, do whatever was right, whatever it took, no matter how tempting it was to turn their backs and go through the easy and wide-open gates of hell—was the first step toward becoming what he’d spent his life fighting.

Troubled, nonetheless, sifting through grim thoughts, the Man from Justice stole another few seconds, staring out the window as the Bell JetRanger swept over the Blue Ridge Mountains. When was the last time, he wondered, he had actually enjoyed the pristine view of those forested slopes, free to observe the rising sun spread the arrival of a new day, free to relax, not burdened by the weight of the nation’s security?

He couldn’t remember, and maybe it didn’t matter. By nature or destiny—and he wasn’t sure where the line blurred—he drove himself with the task at hand as hard as the day was long, grimly aware the wicked did not rest in his world. Beyond that, he was committed to the duty of defending America against its sworn enemies, from within and beyond its borders. On that score, it was an endless battlefront, he knew, forever expanding, as far as he was concerned, another roster of monsters always rising up to replace the evil dead, and often before the smoke cleared enough to see the next blood horizon. Or to pin down the next threat to God only knew how many innocents.