The Stranded Ones Read online

“How you doin’?” McCahan asked.

  “I saw once,” the man said, “…like you.” McCahan dropped a bill into the box.

  “That was a ten,” he said.

  “I saw it, you know,” the man replied.

  “The ten?”

  “Not that. Not now. I was there.” The man was extravagantly bearded, a shaggy presence in a torn, black-leather duster. A dead pipe was clenched deep in the beard from which his words, somehow, had emerged without a hint of movement.

  “You saw what? Where?”

  “The Antarctic. The crash.” McCahan stopped, turning his car keys over and over. “I was in Polar Six, a German plane temporarily at McMurdo. We were supporting the New Zealand-American ice team.”

  McCahan pocketed his keys. “What is your name?”

  “That’s all you get for a ten.” A yellow smile appeared in the beard; then the teeth disappeared.

  McCahan looked at his watch. “I’ll buy you a hot dinner at the deli around the corner. Anything you’d like.”

  The smile returned. With practiced efficiency, the small stove was extinguished, set to cool on the wet pavement; and everything else was scooped up and dropped into a giant duffel bag, quickly zipped closed. “Okay,” the man said, standing slowly. “O’Neal, Phillip G. O’Neal,” he said, holding out his hand in the general direction of McCahan’s voice.

  “Hugh,” McCahan said, shaking the man’s hand. “Hugh…Smith. Do you really live on the street?”

  “I have a cot in a warehouse nearby.”

  “Ready?” The man named Phil held Hugh’s right arm with one hand, gripping the duffel in the other. That grip was surprisingly strong.

  Ten minutes later, coffee arrived at the table in Scholis’ Deli. “So what is so interesting to you about my story?” Phil asked. “This was six or seven years ago.”

  “I’m interested only if it’s true,” Hugh said. “Is it?”

  “Corned beef hash, extra eggs over easy, potatoes, toast, orange juice and milk.”

  “Done.”

  “Oh, it’s true all right. I was a videographer assigned by National Geographic to stay at McMurdo Station that summer. When we heard about the crash, I talked my way aboard the spotter plane. It belonged to AWI, a German foundation. I think the plane was normally at Neumayer, the German station. A really neat, older airplane. A Dernier, if I remember. Twin engine, self de-icing, fitted with skis, range over three thousand kilometers, speed over 350 clicks per hour. That speed saved my life. We left after the team did, you see. We passed them, dropped supplies near the crash site then circled while they arrived.”

  The food was laid out on the table and the conversation stalled for the next few minutes. McCahan watched in awe as the wiry figure shoveled enough food for two men into a hole in his beard. The man finally slowed down. Watching silently, McCahan took another sip of his coffee.

  “So, Phil…What did you see?”

  There was a pause while Phil ceremoniously wiped his beard, his hands, and the backs of his ears with several paper napkins.

  “At the crash site there was a huge crater in the ice. I think this was still the Ross Ice Shelf, although it looked to me like we were getting close to the Trans-Antarctic Mountains.” He burped. “That was really good. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Go on.”

  “Right. Water was boiling in the middle of the crater. Like some soup pot, I swear. The hole was maybe three clicks across. Ice was cracked all around it. There we were, flying over a lake of overheated water, and the temp on the Shelf there was well below freezing.”

  “Did you see the team?”

  “Sure. They were less than a click away when we circled for the last time before we left. That’s what saved me when it blew.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s as far as I go.” Yellow smile.

  Hugh was hooked. “How much?”

  “Fifty.”

  McCahan shook his head and handed over two twenties and two fives. Phil’s hands groped, fastening on the bills. McCahan gently held the man’s arm. “Yours to keep after we leave, okay?”

  “Fine,” Phil said, relaxing his fierce grip on the money. “We headed away from the crater, at an angle. I looked back through one of the side windows, trying for a picture. I swear I saw silver objects, like self-propelled pods of some kind, launched from inside the ice crater and taking off in all directions. Not something you expect to see coming out of a meteor crater.”

  “Did you record this?”

  “Oh yeah, in high resolution. I kept shouting to the pilot in English. “Danger! Get out!” Some very bad shit was going down. I was sure of it. We both were. So he – the pilot, Allan Kratz, I think…gained airspeed by diving at full throttle. Then I lost sight of the crater. Maybe ninety seconds later there was the flash. I could feel my face burn. A complete white out. Then nothing. I never saw another damn thing.”

  “But you are here.”

  Phil nodded. “The shock wave hit us a few seconds later. I was so disoriented, I couldn’t tell you if we were upside down or what. That’s the last thing I remember, until I was in a hospital. I kept asking them to turn on the lights. Funny, huh?”

  “Who saved you?”

  “No idea. I first woke up in a body cast in a hospital in Christchurch, New Zealand. Later I was sent to Melbourne, Australia.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  “The Kiwis were nice. They said it was probably a nuke, that the pilot was pulled from the plane dead, neck broken and that I was in shock and acute hypothermia, concussion, broken ribs, collar bone, arms and legs. And, of course, blind.”

  “But you lived through a huge blast.”

  “Yes. Just like the guys in the Enola Gay.”

  “You’re saying it was nuclear?”

  “I have no idea. But what else could it have been? Of course we were closer than the guys who dropped Fat Boy. But this was smaller and cleaner. The Kiwis thought there was probably less damage from the explosion because the detonation was mostly below the ice, and the worst of the heat was deflected by the rear of the plane.”

  “Did the people in New Zealand say it was a nuke?”

  “They didn’t really know, of course, but there was talk.”

  “What else did they tell you?”

  “Nothing. After I was moved, both the Aussies and the Americans questioned me over and over about the pods; then they swore me to secrecy. The Geographic paid my contract, medical expenses and flew me back home to New Jersey.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “They wouldn’t leave me alone. FBI agents kept bugging me, reminding me of confidentiality. I got mad. Eventually, I made quite a scene on the streets. So…I decided to change my name and come to Chicago because my widowed sister-in-law was here.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “She left for Florida”

  “Aren’t you taking a chance telling me this?”

  “Hey, I’m a ‘nobody’, and this is old news. Besides, the Australian government knows the whole story, I’m sure.”

  “Right.” Hugh pressed bills into the man’s hand. “I’ve got the check.” He stood. “More coffee here,” he said. “Anything else to eat or drink?” Phil shook his head. “Got to go,” Hugh said.

  As McCahan turned to leave, Phil cleared his throat. “One more thing,” Phil said. “For free…” McCahan came back to the table. Phil motioned and Hugh leaned down. Into his ear, Phil whispered, “I had a friend in the New Jersey Bureau. There is a black federal archive there…warehouse in Jersey. Some stuff is hidden there…well guarded.”

  “Something about the crash?”

  “Yup.” Phil nodded meaningfully.

  Hugh concluded that the man was at least a very good story-teller. He stood again. “Good luck,” he said.

  “That’s what I was told anyway.” Phil motioned for Hugh to come closer. McCahan leaned down again. “Warehouse Number 25,” O’Neal whispered.

 
; As Hugh reached the door, Phil shouted, “Don’t forget!”

  “I won’t….” Outside, Hugh stopped in the falling snow to look back in the deli window. Phil had resumed slurping coffee, holding the cup steady with both gloved hands. McCahan shrugged and headed for his parking garage.

  A week later, in an idle moment at the office, Hugh ran a search. It turned out that there really was a Phillip O’Neal who actually had contracted out as a free-lance photographer, with work published by the National Geographic. The AWI Foundation really did own a small fleet of Dernier 228s, one of which crashed near McMurdo at about the right time. O’Neal had dropped from sight seven years earlier, which correlated with the time of an “anomalous large meteor impact” in Antarctica.

  Hugh hit his intercom button. “Lew,” he said, “I’ve got a story to share.”

  Lew Springer, former British Special Forces Colonel, then Australian military attaché and mercenary, was a mountain of a man with a shiny pate and an impressive handlebar mustache. He flopped into McCahan’s guest chair and listened intently for several minutes. He paused, his face furrowed in concentration. “Hugh, actually I’ve heard rumors about this Antarctic thing…But not of this Mystery Warehouse 25. And not a word about the missiles or pods this O’Neal bloke described to you. I have some sources. Let me look into it a little. It’s very, very interesting don’t you think?”

  “Oh, yeah…I think I’ll have another talk with Mr. O’Neal.”

  Hugh immediately pulled on his overcoat and walked over to the alcove where he had first spotted the homeless man. Not a trace. Next he checked with the deli about the homeless guy he’d treated to a hot meal. The manager, an elderly man in a soiled white shirt, emerged from the kitchen. “I was sort of wondering if you might come back. He was a regular around here. We gave him leftovers from time to time. He was very polite. Phil, you say? We knew him as George.”

  “Where is he?” Hugh asked.

  “You bought him his last meal. Heart attack, I guess.” Hugh suddenly felt sick. “You never know about these people. He was nice enough, though.”

  Hugh simply nodded and walked slowly away, shaking his head. “Thank you,” he managed to say.

  Springer popped into Hugh’s office the next morning, a steaming cup of black tea with milk in his giant hand. “Ready for the rest of the story?” he asked.

  “Sure. By the way, O’Neal is dead. What did you turn up?”

  “Dead? When?”

  “The diner owner said he had a heart attack last week…pretty soon after I saw him, apparently.”

  “Too damn bad…You’re sure it was just a heart attack?”

  “I only know what the diner manager told me. Did you find anything interesting?”

  “I did. Officially, the Bureau claims to know nothing about O’Neal, which is an obvious lie, say my sources. As for the blast? For a time, an Argentinean missile test was suspected; then somebody floated the story that it was an anomalous meteor that contained traces of fissile material. After that, all the stories went away.”

  “That’s it? What about the warehouse? The escaping missiles or whatever?”

  “Not a peep on either. But…there really is a black government records repository in New Jersey. Three warehouses, actually. I can’t tell if one of them was ever designated 25.”

  “Anything more?”

  “My friends knew nothing about the escaping missile story. They think it must be a fabrication.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “That depends on the reliability of your homeless guy. If he was genuine, not some crazy, he was a very important witness.”

  “I’m thinking genuine. Is this the end of the trail then?”

  “Maybe not…I was just thinking: Why not call our best clients at GFE? This is spot on for Gael and Falstaff.”

  “Finnegan and Jack?” Hugh paused.

  “Of course…F. J. Gael is perfect for something like this, Hugh. With his money, contacts and staff support like Donald Wu and Jay Robertson, not to mention the legendary secret resources of his wily partner, Jack Falstaff…

  “Jack was our old ‘espionage techniques’ tutor, wasn’t he?”

  “And you, Hugh, were his star pupil.”

  “I thought you were, Lew.”

  “It’s the obvious call, Hugh. What are we waiting for?”

  “Okay.” Hugh immediately entered the code for a secure encrypted line, then dialed Finnegan Gael’s private number, and waited while it was routed to wherever Finnegan happened to be at the moment.

  A few seconds later, F. J. Gael answered. “Hugh! You old dog, what can I do for you?”

  “Young dog. You have the other title. Finnegan…is this a good time to bother you with a few questions?”

  “From you, my boy, any time is fine. What is on your mind?”

  Finnegan Jerrold Gael was the end product of four generations of Irish Protestant farmers, teachers and small business owners who had migrated from Ireland to Kansas to Alaska and Australia and back again several times in a century and a half. He was the first in his line to become really wealthy. Degrees in metallurgy and business administration and seed money from inherited property in downtown Kansas City led to several successful mining ventures and some risky, but very profitable high-tech startups. Ever resourceful and adaptable, Finnegan Gael had quickly discovered a new career after the collapse of the national and international patent protection laws changed the technology game. By the time Jack Falstaff had met him, F. J. Gael was the “go to” man for technology secrets in North America. McCahan and Springer had been part of GFE’s informal “spy network” from the beginning.

  Hugh continued: “Something has just dropped in my lap, Finnegan. Key words: Antarctica; crash; resulting three kilometer lake in the Ross Ice Shelf; escaping pods or missiles; a nuclear explosion; a cover up. It would make a good grade B sci-fi movie, don’t you think?”

  There was a long pause. “Who have you been talking to, Hugh?”

  “What do you know about a “Warehouse 25” in New Jersey?”

  Another long pause. “I’m hooked. Just how did this just drop in your lap?”

  “I talked to a witness, a homeless guy, now missing.”

  “Who?”

  “A videographer working for the Geographic who was on scene.”

  Finnegan paused. “We confirm this is a class one encrypted call.”

  “Confirm that,” McCahan said

  “O’Neal. I’ll be Goddamned. You actually found Phillip O’Neal.”

  Hugh felt a chill. “How did you know?”

  “Couldn’t have been anyone else…The Regional Technology Authority, the US and three other countries have been looking for this guy on four years now. Big bounty. Big, at least for them…Where is O’Neal now?”

  “He died last week.”

  There was a longer pause. “Does anyone know you two were together?”

  “A diner owner, but O’Neal used a different name.”

  Another pause. “Is Lew Springer there?”

  “Hello Finnegan.” Springer was leaning over the speaker.

  “Hello Lew. Anyone else?”

  “No, Finnegan,” Hugh said. “Just the two of us.”

  “Hugh, the odds of O’Neal being that close to you fellows are remote. I am inclined to be suspicious of such coincidences. Warehouse 25 did you say?”

  “Yes,” Hugh said,

  “Let me call you back.”

  Hugh looked up. “So, Finnegan doesn’t believe in coincidences. And he knew about O’Neal right off the bat.”

  “I told you he was the right bloke to call.” Springer twiddled his mustache for a moment. “I’m thinking he’ll call back with a job.”

  “What makes you so…” The phone chirped. It was Gael.

  “I think it’s time we get together and talk about your next ‘field research contract’ for us. You, Lew, me and some of my staff and a consultant or two.”

  “Okay. When?”


  “Right away. I’ll be sending you some graphics on your secure line. Look ‘em over, then we’ll talk in detail.”

  Twenty-five minutes later, four pages of graphics arrived. Hugh pulled them out of the printer and handed them to Springer. The big man leafed through each page. “Is that what I think it is?” Hugh asked.

  “A detailed map and the floor plan of Warehouse 25? That’s very much what it looks like.”

  When Gael’s next call came, Springer leaned next to the speaker again.

  “We have ‘em,” Lew said. “Hugh is right here.”

  “Finnegan, this will cost you,” McCahan said.

  “Seven times your highest rates,” Finnegan Gael said. Hugh looked at Springer, who nodded. “We’ve marked where the most interesting materials would probably be kept. You’ll be looking for a data pack, probably a few data cubes, easily concealed by one man.”

  “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?” Hugh asked.

  “Burglary and dinner,” Gael said. “The dinner is for the survivors.”

  CHAPTER THREE - THE FIND

  A Warehouse in New Jersey

  Friday, at the stroke of midnight, a bull mastiff employed by building security at Warehouse 25 near Patterson, New Jersey padded up behind while Lew Springer was engrossed in reading a hard copy memo by flashlight. The mastiff pounced on him with practiced ferocity, scattering the contents of Springer’s carry case of stolen data files. Eighty kilos of angry canine knocked Lew sprawling into an open crate. While the dog was chewing his left shoulder, Springer managed to find the tranquilizer gun with his right hand. The animal was slow in letting go. Had it been trained to go for the neck instead of the shoulder, Lew might have bled out on the spot. That would have been, as his physician Dr. Lendall, would say, an inconvenient end to a bloody stupid career. But Springer survived the attack.

  It was twenty-five minutes later, on a winter Saturday morning, when the grounds surrounding the well guarded warehouse belonging to an obscure government agency suddenly blazed with artificial daylight. The security camera caught a very large man, wearing a loose-fitting, black body suit, loping diagonally across the rain-soaked parking area. He cast a long shadow in the glare of sixteen emergency lamps along the side of the building. The intruder alarm keened like a wounded whale as the man trotted steadily toward a ragged hole in the chain link perimeter fence, cradling a dun gray case under his right arm.