The Orion Plan (14 page)

Or was it a search?

He became so jumpy he could feel the blood pulsing in the backs of his knees. He needed to move closer to the hill's western slope so he could see past the trees and get a better look. But that would mean leaving the safety of the crag. He'd have to run through the woods, which scared the hell out of him. He suspected that all of Inwood Hill Park was laced with tentacles by now. In his mind's eye he saw them creeping underground, twisting between the tree roots.

But he couldn't stay on the crag forever. And he'd already been attacked once, so maybe that gave him some immunity. Taking a deep breath, he rose to his feet and clambered down the side of the outcrop. He paused at the lowest part of the rock slab and gathered up his courage. Then he stepped off the slab and started running.

The muddy ground didn't give him much traction, but soon he was tearing through the woods. His fear made him nimble: he leaped over the fallen branches and sidestepped the piles of leaf litter. In thirty seconds he crossed to the western side of the hill, but the trees still blocked his view of the riverbank. So he headed south, toward the bright lights, even though this brought him closer to the clearing where the satellite was. He sensed its presence to his left, about fifty yards away, but he didn't look in that direction. He trained his eyes to the right and looked for a break in the trees.

Finally, after thirty more seconds, he reached a lookout point where the slope fell steeply toward the West Side Highway, giving him an unobstructed view of the riverbank. When Joe looked toward the lights he saw a line of soldiers on Dyckman Street. More soldiers stood behind the line, guarding the entrance to the marina, and still more were in the baseball fields, pointing flashlights every which way.

Yes,
Joe thought,
they're searching for something. And it must be something important, so important that they'd send a small army to find it. What else could it be but the satellite?

Joe didn't care anymore about collecting the reward. Well, no, that wasn't true: he still cared about it, but now his terror was stronger than his hope. He needed to tell the soldiers what had happened, how the satellite had burrowed into the ground and injected a neurotoxin into him. Then maybe they'd send him to an army hospital and the doctors there would give him an antidote. He'd also tell them about Dorothy and that teenager in the gang. And then the soldiers would dig up the satellite and shut it off before it could hurt anyone else.

He turned around and looked for the asphalt pathway that went down the hill toward the park's Dyckman Street exit. While he dashed through the woods he glanced at the clearing and noted the positions of the trees and rock slabs nearby. He was trying to memorize the location, fixing it in his mind so he could tell the soldiers exactly where to go. But as he came within thirty yards of the place he noticed that his cardboard box was no longer at the center of the clearing. The crumpled thing lay next to the base of an oak tree, about fifteen feet away from where he'd left it.

Joe stopped in his tracks and stared at the box that was supposed to be covering the satellite. Did someone move it? Did those teenagers return to the clearing while he was asleep? And did the satellite attack them again? He didn't want to get any closer, but he needed to know.

He stepped toward the clearing, keeping his eyes on the ground. He saw nothing slithering in the mud, but he could picture the tentacles just a few feet below, sensitive to even the smallest vibrations in the earth. He imagined they could detect the noise of his footfalls, so he moved slowly and silently, choosing each step with care. When he was twenty yards away he lifted his head and peered through the branches. He focused on the center of the clearing, where he'd buried the satellite and later dug a trench around it.

But now the satellite wasn't there. There was no mound or trench, no gouges in the mud. The ground was perfectly smooth and bare.

Joe thought of two explanations. It was possible that the satellite had never existed. He could've hallucinated everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours.

Or the satellite had hidden itself. If it could extend tentacles underground, through dozens of yards of dirt and rock, why couldn't it bury itself deeper and fill in all the holes in the mud above it?

He had no time to figure out which explanation was better. Instead, he backed away from the clearing until he reached the asphalt pathway. Then he ran out of the park as fast as he could.

*   *   *

When he got to Dyckman Street he saw the soldiers up close, under the blinding searchlights. They wore the typical camouflage uniforms, dappled with splotches of beige and green, but there were no patches on their shoulders to identify which units they belonged to. Joe guessed they were trying to hide the true purpose of their operation from the public, which was exactly what you'd expect them to do if they were searching for a top-secret satellite. He let out a sigh of relief, glad that he hadn't imagined the whole thing.

Now that he was here, though, he faced the problem of finding the right person to talk to. The soldiers blocking the western end of the street were clearly from the lower ranks, privates and corporals who probably didn't know why they'd been sent to New York. Joe needed to talk to their commanders, the colonels and generals. He supposed he'd have to work his way up the chain of command, asking one of the enlisted men to put him in touch with their superiors. But before he could do that, he needed to get past the police officers who stood between the soldiers and the crowd on the street.

The onlookers were the kind of people who stayed awake past 2:00
A.M.
—drunks and thugs and insomniacs and teenagers. Joe angled around the crowd and eyed the cops, trying to figure out who was in charge. After a few seconds he focused on a middle-aged, heavyset police captain wearing a white shirt and a blue tie. The man had flabby cheeks and wispy gray hair and looked like a cheerful, levelheaded character. Joe tried to make himself look presentable, brushing the dirt off his pants and his Yankees jacket. Then he approached the police captain, who was leaning against his cruiser and chatting with two other officers. The nameplate under the captain's badge said
MOORE
.

“Excuse me, sir?” Joe stopped several feet in front of him, keeping a deferential distance. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

Captain Moore turned to him and grinned. “Well, well. What's on your mind?”

The man sounded amused. He was probably bored as hell and grateful for a distraction. Joe just hoped the guy would take him seriously. “Sir, I have some information that might be useful. To the military, I mean.” He pointed at the line of soldiers. “Could you take me to one of their commanders?”

“Really? Useful information?” Still grinning, Moore hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his pants. “Are you a spy or something?”

Joe frowned. “No, I'm a concerned citizen. I know why the soldiers are here and I think I can help them.”

“Well, that's very kind of you. But I'm sure the army can do just fine on its own.”

“No, wait, you don't understand. Something dangerous is happening.” Joe raised his voice, trying to get his point across. He looked over his shoulder at Inwood Hill Park, then turned back to the police captain. “A satellite crashed into the park and now it's out of control. It's extending tentacles and injecting people with poison, some kind of neurotoxin. So you can't just stand there. You need to do something about it.”

Moore stopped grinning. He glanced at the other officers, and they moved toward Joe. The captain moved forward too. “All right, calm down. I'm gonna ask you to step back now. Because this area is for police officers only.”

Joe shook his head. This was going even worse than he'd expected. The captain wasn't listening at all. “I know where the satellite crashed. I can show the soldiers exactly where. All you have to do is take me to their commander and—”

“Hey!” Someone behind Joe grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away from the captain. “I know you!”

The voice was familiar, but not in a good way. Joe's stomach clenched. He turned his head and saw Officer Patton, the big redheaded cop who patrolled Inwood Hill Park.

Patton scowled and tightened his grip on Joe's shoulder. Then he turned to Captain Moore. “This is one of the crazies who sleep on the hill. I've told him a hundred times he can't sleep there, but he never listens.”

Joe was desperate. He focused on Moore and gave him a pleading look. “I'm not crazy! Just ask the soldiers! They're looking for the satellite!”

The captain wrinkled his nose. Then he stepped backward and waved them off. “Shit, get this guy out of here. The smell is making me sick.”

Keeping his grip on Joe's shoulder, Patton used his other hand to remove his nightstick from his belt. “You heard the man. Better move quick, or I'll send you to my buddies at Rikers.”

He pointed the nightstick at Joe and gave him a poke. Officer Patton had done this many times before, whenever he rousted Joe from the park, but this time the end of the nightstick prodded Joe's cracked ribs. A bolt of pain shot through his chest. Without thinking, he spun around, grabbed the nightstick and wrenched it out of Patton's grip. Then, continuing the same fluid motion, he jabbed the stick in the officer's belly.

It happened so fast that Joe felt like someone else had done it. He stood there, astonished, while Patton stumbled backward and landed on his ass. Then he watched all the other cops draw their guns from their holsters.

“Drop the stick, asshole!”

The warning came from the officer closest to him, a young guy with darting eyes, so frightened he couldn't hold his gun steady. In an instant Joe saw a way to disarm him. All he had to do was leap forward, swing the nightstick around, and hit the kid in the knees. The other cops wouldn't fire for fear of shooting their fellow officer, and that would give Joe enough time to grab the kid's gun. It was so simple and straightforward that Joe almost did it automatically. He had to yell at himself to come to his senses.
Jesus, don't make it worse! You're in enough trouble already!

Joe dropped the nightstick and raised his hands in surrender. “Don't shoot! I didn't mean to—”

Before he could finish, one of the cops tackled him from behind. Joe's head hit the pavement and everything went black.

 

TEN

Dorothy stood at the back of a crowded elevator at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Eleven people were crammed into the tight space this morning, most of them patients and their family members heading for their first appointments of the day. The elevator rose slowly, stopping at every floor, so Dorothy had plenty of time to scrutinize her fellow passengers. She could tell right away which ones were the cancer patients. She could also tell how serious each patient's illness was.

Standing to her right, for example, was a white-haired gentleman in a pin-striped suit. He looked like a wealthy businessman, but his face was pale and nervous. Dorothy guessed he was scheduled for a biopsy, and sure enough he got off the elevator at the third floor, where the endoscopic biopsies were done. To her left was a tall, young woman wearing a pink turban to hide her baldness. She got off at the fifth floor and hobbled toward the chemotherapy room. And in front of Dorothy was a skeletal man in a wheelchair who wheezed and trembled. At the sixth floor a nurse's aide pushed the wheelchair off the elevator and steered it toward the palliative care suite, which was where patients went when there was nothing left to do but ease their pain. As the elevator doors closed, Dorothy composed a brief prayer for the man:
Lord, let it be quick. Let him climb up to Heaven with as little suffering as possible.

Her own destination was the Radiology Department on the twelfth floor. She was going to have another PET scan to see how far her cancer had metastasized. Although it was somewhat pointless—she already knew from the last scan that the tumors had spread from her pancreas to her liver—her doctor had ordered the test anyway. He was a kind man, an inveterate optimist, and he was determined to do all he could for her. But there were no effective treatments for her cancer. She had two or three months left, at most.

At the seventh floor another chemo patient stepped off the elevator, and at the ninth floor a couple of doctors got on. Although the pain in Dorothy's abdomen was steadily worsening, she stood there without complaint, watching the hopeful and the hopeless come and go. Then the doors finally opened on the twelfth floor, and she saw the sign saying
RADIOLOGY
on the opposite wall and the waiting room full of anxious patients. But she didn't step out of the elevator. She stayed absolutely motionless as the doors closed.

The elevator continued upward till it reached the sixteenth floor, and then it slowly descended. Dorothy remained at the back of the car, watching everything but doing nothing. She didn't know what she was waiting for. She was a little puzzled by her indecision, but she wasn't alarmed. She just needed some time to think and pray. She'd felt uneasy ever since her visit to Inwood Hill Park yesterday, more irritable and less interested in keeping up appearances. She saw no need to get another PET scan now just to make her doctor happy. There were a million better ways to spend her time, and sooner or later she'd figure out what she wanted to do. Until then she was perfectly willing to keep riding up and down.

After five minutes she was back at the lobby. Everyone else left the elevator, but Dorothy stayed where she was, and a new load of passengers crowded around her. Then the elevator stopped at the fifth floor again, but this time she noticed a sign that said
LABORATORIES
and an arrow pointing to the right. She stepped out of the elevator, using her canvas shoulder bag to nudge the other passengers aside.