and that he should be permitted to destroy everyone in the Tranquility
group as well as the entire staff of Thunder Hill the moment he put his
hands on proof that those individuals were no longer human, proof he
fully expected to obtain. But from the moment he picked up the phone,
nothing went his way. The situation deteriorated.
Emil Foxworth, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had
news of yet another disastrous development. The team making new memory
modifications in the Salcoe family in Monterey, California, had been
visited by a persistent intruder. They had thought they'd cornered
him-a burly, bearded man-but he had made a spectacular escape. The four
Salcoes were quickly transferred to a medical van and moved to a
safe-house for continuation of memory modifications. A registration
check on the bearded intruder's abandoned car identified it as a rental
from the local airport agency, and the lessee was not merely a burglar
but Parker
Faine, Corvaisis' friend. "Subsequently," the Director said, "we traced
Faine on a flight out of Monterey to San Francisco, but there we've lost
him. We have no idea where he's been or what he's been up to since his
West Air flight landed at SFX."
Foster Polnichey, in the FBI's Chicago office, was already of the view
that maintaining the cover-up was impossible, and news of Faine's escape
confirmed that opinion. The two political appointees-Foxworth of the
FBI, and James Herton, National Security Adviser to the President-were
in agreement with him.
Furthermore, with oily skill, Foster Polnichey argued that every
development-the miraculous cures effected by Cronin and Tolk; the
wondrous telekinetic powers of Corvaisis and Emmy Halbourg-indicated
that the ultimate effects of the events of July 6 were going to be
beneficial to mankind, not detrimental. "And we know that Doctor
Bennell and most of the people working with him are of the opinion that
there is no threat whatsoever and never was. They've been convinced of
it for many months now. Their arguments are quite persuasive."
Leland tried to make them see that Bennell and his people might be
infected and unreliable. No one inside Thunder Hill could be trusted
any more. But he was a military leader, not a debater, and in a contest
with Foster Polnichey, Leland knew he sounded like a raving paranoid.
Leland did not even get much support from the one source on which he had
counted most: General Maxwell Riddenhour. The Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs was noncommittal at first, listening carefully to every point of
view, playing the role of mediator, for his position put him somewhere
between a political appointee and a career soldier. But it soon became
clear that he agreed more with Polnichey, Foxworth, and Herton than he
did with Leland Falkirk.
"I understand your instincts in this situation, Colonel, and I admire
them," General Riddenhour said. "But I believe the matter has gone
beyond the scope of our authority. It requires the input not just of
soldiers but of neuropathologists, biologists, philosophers, and others
before precipitous action can be taken. Upon disclosure of any evidence
of an imminent threat, I will of course change my mind; I'll favor the
roundup of the witnesses at the motel, order the quarantine on Thunder
Hill continued indefinitely, and take most of the other strong measures
you now favor. But for the moment, in the absence of a grave and
obvious threat, I believe we should move a bit more cautiously and leave
open the possibility that the cover-up will have to be undone."
"With all due respect," Leland said, barely able to control his fury,
"the threat seems both grave and obvious to me. I don't believe there's
time for neuropathologists or philosophers. And certainly not for the
spineless equivocating of a bunch of gutless politicians."
That honest appraisal brought a stormy reaction from Foxworth and
Herton, the mealy spawn of politicians. When they shouted at Leland, he
lost his usual reserve and shouted back at them. In an instant the
when Riddenhour exerted control. He forced a quick agreement that no
moves would be made against the witnesses or any steps taken to further
cement the cover-up, while at the same time no steps would be taken to
weaken the cover-up, either. "I'll seek an emergency meeting with the
President the instant I end this call," Riddenhour said. "In
twenty-four hours, forty-eight at the latest, we'll try to have a plan
that satisfies everyone from the Commander-in-Chief to Bennell and his
boys out there in Thunder Hill."
That, Leland thought sourly, is impossible.
When Leland hung up, the ill-fated conference call having concluded in
unanticipated humiliation, he stood for at least a minute at his desk in
the windowless room at Shenkfield, seething with such pure anger that he
did not trust himself to summon Lieutenant Horner. He did not want
Horner to know that the tide had gone against him, did not want Horner
to have any reason to suspect that the operation he was about to launch
was in absolute contradiction of General Riddenhour's orders.
His duty was clear. Grim, terrible-but clear.
He would order the closure of I-80 under the pretense of a toxic spill,
in order to isolate the Tranquility Motel. He would then take the
witnesses into custody and transport them directly to the Thunder Hill
Depository. When they were all underground with Dr. Miles Bennell and
the other suspect workers staffing the Depository, trapped behind
massive blast doors, Leland would take them-and himself-out with a pair
of the five-megaton backpack nukes that were stored among the munitions
in the subterranean facility. A couple of five-megatoners would
incinerate everyone and everything inside the mountain, reduce them all
to ash and bone fragments. That would eliminate the primary source of
this hideous contamination, the home nest of the enemy. Of course,
other potential sources of contamination would remain: the Tolk family,
the Halbourg family, all remaining witnesses whose brainwashing had not
developed holes and who had not returned to Nevada, others. . . . But
Leland was confident that, once he had taken the courageous action
required to eliminate the largest and primary source of contamination,
Riddenhour would be shamed by his example of self-sacrifice and would
find the backbone to do what was necessary to finish the work and scrub
every trace of contagion from the face of the earth.
Leland Falkirk was trembling. Not with fear. It was pride that made
him tremble. He was enormously proud to have been chosen to fight and
win the greatest battle of all time, thus saving not just one nation but
all the world from a menace with no equal in history. He knew he was
capable of the sacrifice required. He had no fear. As he wondered what
he would feel in the split-second it took him to die in a nuclear blast,
a thrill coursed through him at the prospect of pitting himself agains
t
the most intense pain of which the human mind could conceive. Oh, it
would be cruelly intense and yet so short in duration that there was no
doubt he'd prove capable of enduring it as stout-heartedly as he had
endured all other pain to which he had subjected himself.
He was calm now. Perfectly calm. Serene.
Leland savored the sweet anticipation of the blistering pain to come.
That brief atomic agony would be of such exquisite purity that the
endurance of it would ensure the reward of heaven, which his Pentecostal
parents, seeing the devil in every aspect of him, had always sworn he
would not attain.
Stepping out of the Tranquility Grille behind Ginger, Dom Corvaisis
looked up into the maelstrom of driving-whirlingspinning snow, and for
an instant he saw and heard and felt what was not there:
Behind him rang out the atonal musical clatter of demolished glass
stillfallingfrom the explosion of the windows, and ahead lay the glow of
the parking-lot lights and the hot summer darkness beyond, and all
around the thunder-roar and earthquakeshudder of mysterious source; his
heart pounding; his breath like taffy that had stuck in his throat,- and
as he ran out of the Grille he looked around and then up....
"What's wrong?" Ginger asked.
Dom realized that he had staggered across the snowy pavement, skidding
not on that surface but on the slippery recollection that had escaped
his memory block. He looked around at the others, all of whom had come
out of the diner. "I saw ... like I was there again ... that July
night...... Two nights ago, in the diner, when he'd come close to
remembering, he had unconsciously re-created the thunder and shaking of
July 6. This time, there was no such manifestation, maybe because the
memory was no longer repressed and was breaking through and needed no
help. Now, unable to adequately convey the intensity of the memory, he
turned away from the others and peered up into the falling snow, andThe
roar was so loud that it hurt his ears, and the vibrations so strong
that he felt them in his bones and in his teeth the way thunder
sometimes reverberated in window glass, and he stumbled out across the
macadam, looking up into the night sky and-there!-an aircraft flying
only a few hundred feet above the earth, red and white running
lightsflashing across darkness, so low that the glow from within the
cockpit was visible, a jet judging by the speed with which it rocketed
past, a fighter jet judging by the powerful scream of its engines,
and-there!another one, sweeping past and wheeling up across the field of
stars that filled the clear black sky in a panoramic specklesplash; but
the roar and the shaking that had shattered the diner's windows and had
set small objects adance on the tables now grew worse instead of better,
even though he would have expected it to subside once the jets were
past, so he turned, sensing the source behind him' and he cried out in
terror when a third jet shot over the Grille at an altitude of no more
than forty feet, so low that he could see the markings-serial numbers
and an American flag-on the bottom of one wing, illuminated by the
parking-lot light bouncing up from the macadam; Jesus, it was so low
that he fell flat on the ground in panic, certain that the jet was
crashing, that debris would be raining over him in a second, perhaps
even a shower of burning jet fuel....
"Dom!"
He found himself lying face-down in the snow, clutching the ground in a
reenactment of the terror he had felt on the night of July 6, when he'd
thought the jet was crashing on top of him.
"Dom, what's wrong?" Sandy Sarver asked. She was kneeling beside him, a
hand on his shoulder.
Ginger was kneeling at his other side. "Dom, are you all right?"
With their support, he got up from the snow. "The memory block is
going, crumbling." He turned his face up toward the sky again, hoping
that the white snowy day would flash away, as before, and be replaced by
a dark summer night, hoping that the recollections would continue to
pour forth. Nothing. Wind gusted. Snow lashed his face. The others
were watching him. He said, "I remembered jets, military fighter
craft... two at first, swooping by a couple of hundred feet above.....
and then a third one so low that it almost took the roof off the diner."
"Jets!" Marcie said.
Everyone looked at her in surprise, even Dom, for it was the first word-
other than "moon"-that she had spoken since dinner the previous night.
She was in her mother's arms, bundled against the weather. She had
turned her small face to the sky. In response to what Dom had said, she
seemed to be searching the stormy heavens for some sign of the
longdeparted jets of a summer lost.
"Jets," Ernie said, looking up as well. "I don't . . . recall.
"Jets! Jets!" Marcie reached up with one hand toward the heavens.
Dom realized that he was doing the same thing, although with both hands,
as if he could reach up beyond the blinding snow of time-present, into
the hot clear night of time-past, and pull the memory down into view.
But he could not bring it back, no matter how hard he strained.
The others were not able to recall what he described, and in a moment
their tremulous expectation turned to frustration again.
Marcie lowered her face. She put a thumb in her mouth and sucked
earnestly on it. Her gaze had turned inward again.
"Come on," Jack said. "We've got to get the hell out of here."
They hurried toward the motel, to dress and arm themselves for the
journeys and battles ahead of them. Reluctantly, with the smell of July
heat still in his nose, with the roar of jet engines still echoing in
his bones, Dom Corvaisis followed.
Night on Thunder Hill
Courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy lift us above the
simple beasts and define humanity.
-THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS
By foreign hands thy humble grave
adorned; By strangers honored, and by strangers mourned.
-ALEXANDER POPE
Tuesday Night, January 14
1.
Strife
Father Stefan Wycazik flew Delta from Chicago to Salt Lake City, then
caught a feeder flight into the Elko County Airport. He landed after
snow had begun to fall but before the rapidly dropping visibility and
the oncoming false dusk of the storm had curtailed air traffic.
In the small terminal, he went to a public phone, looked up the number
of the Tranquility Motel, and dialed it. He got nothing, not even a
ring. The line hissed emptily. He tried again with no success.
When he sought help from an operator, she was also unable to ring the
number. "I'm sorry, sir, there seems to be trouble with the line."
Taking that as very bad news, Father Wycazik said, "Trouble? What
trouble? What's wrong?"
"Well, sir, I suppose the storm. We're getting really gusty wind."
But Stefan was not as certain as she was. The storm had hardly begun.
He could not believe telephone lines had already succumbed to the first
tentat
ive gusts, which he had experienced on his way into the terminal.
The isolation of the Tranquility was an ominous development, more likely
to be the handiwork of men than of the impending blizzard.
He placed a call to St. Bette's rectory in Chicago, and Father Gerrano
answered on the second ring. "Michael, I've arrived safely in Elko. But
I haven't gotten Brendan. Their phone isn't working."
"Yes," Michael Gerrano said, "I know."
"You know? How could you possibly know?"
"Just minutes ago," Michael said, "I received a call from a man who
refused to identify himself but who said he was a friend of this Ginger
Weiss, one of those people out there with Brendan. He said she called
him this morning and asked him to dig up some information for her. He
found what she wanted, but he couldn't get through to the Tranquility.
She'd apparently foreseen that problem, so she'd given him our number
and the number of friends of hers in Boston, told him to tell us what
he'd found, and she'd call us at her convenience."
"Refused to give his name?" Father Wycazik said, puzzled.
And you say she asked him to dig up information?"
" Yes," Michael said. "About two things. First, this place called the
Thunder Hill Depository. He says to tell her that, as far as he could
determine, the Depository is what it's always been: an elaborate
blastproof storage depot, one of eight virtually identical underground
facilities situated across the country, and not the largest one. She
also asked him to get her some background on an army officer, Colonel
Leland Falkirk, who's with something called the Domestic Emergency