And he knew, as Bahr glared at him and argued with McEwen, that there was more to this than just a routine interrogation.
Bahr was remembering Antarctica.
Vividly the memory flooded back to Alexander now. Bahr had been in the Army then . . . a sergeant in Communications Command, assigned to the tiny post in the early-warning net that stretched across the frozen Antarctic continent.
How long ago? Four years? Five?
Alexander’s mind placed the date instantly: July 12th, 2019, just three days after the first radar alert, when the scopes of Station 1743, buried deep in the Antarctic ice, had picked up three unidentified objects moving over the lower end of South America at an altitude of 800 miles, three times higher than anything had traveled since the satellites had been scuttled and the infamous Moon-rocket project abandoned back in the ’90s. The three objects had made four passes around the Earth at precise orbital speed, tracked at the South Pole and across the Pacific, then lost as they moved over the East Indies, China and the Soviet. An immediate report had gone to the special intelligence section of DEPEX, and when the objects did not reappear after the fourth pass across the “dead” area, the entire Western Bloc went into Condition B—preparation for H-missile attack.
Coded intelligence releases from DEPEX inferred that the Eastern Bloc had developed a missile, unknown even to British Intelligence liaison, which could be mounted in orbit. BRINT of course denied that anything approaching that size could have been developed in Eastern territory without their knowing it years ago, and suggested an extraterrestrial source, possibly meteorites—a somewhat unsatisfactory idea, since meteorites do not normally orbit at 800 miles.
Antarctic Station 1743, Alexander’s command, was the chief early-warning unit between Southeast Asia and the vital South American population centers. It was expected that the first hostile move from the East would be an armored H-missile plunging into the buried station from a 600-mile altitude. The station had been living on coffee and hyperstimulated fear for forty hours, the air reeking with sweat and adrenalin, the men snarling at each other with increasing tension, when the sergeant had come into Alexander’s office.
“I want six hundred sedation units,” he said.
“What for, Sergeant?”
“I am going to put half the personnel under sedation for twelve hours,” the sergeant said, “before we have a riot.”
“Half the personnel!” Alexander said. “That’s impossible. We’re on Condition B.”
“I know that. I can’t be responsible for blunders in Washington,” the sergeant said to him. “If we’re hit, it won’t matter whether we’re sleeping in bed or souped up on Benny, but if those men out there stay awake any longer they won’t have to be H’d. They’ll tear each other apart.”
Alexander had known that the tension was growing there, but he was in command of the station, and a Condition B could not be ignored. “Suppose you let me make the decisions about the welfare of the men, Sergeant,” he said sharply. “That is not your responsibility.”
The sergeant stared at him across the desk, clenching his fists. “You stupid bastard,” he said distinctly. “You pigheaded, uncomprehending son of a bitch. If I didn’t make it my responsibility to run this lousy unit for you, you’d have been cashiered out of the Army in a week for snafuing!” Alexander realized, suddenly, that the huge man was trembling with rage. “Do I get those sedation units, Captain?”
“No!” Alexander managed to choke out. “Get out of here. Get back to your station.”
For an instant he thought the man was going to reach out and take him by the throat. Then Sergeant Julian Bahr turned on his heel. The heavy plastic door slammed, and he was gone.
Four hours later, in the mess hall, one of the men began beating on the table with a heavy plastic cup, the long underground chamber echoing the blows. In an instant the walls were reverberating with the thundering clatter that could be heard all through the station. Someone began to scream. In a moment twelve hundred men were screaming, cursing, yelling at each other, the benzedrine-stimulated fear and frustrated helplessness erupting in volcanic pandemonium.
At the decibel peak of this first crescendo Alexander walked into the mess hall, unarmed and alone, aware that he might not live three minutes longer, but realizing that the riot had to be stopped. What he said to that mob of angry, frightened, cursing men was drowned in noise; quite suddenly he was facing a closing circle of hate-filled faces. With coffee mugs and table knives in their hands they crowded toward him . . . .
Something seized him from behind. Someone jerked him out the door, half-carried and half-dragged him down the corridor, up a flight of stairs and down another corridor to the weapons room. Groggily he saw Bahr kick the door open with a wrench of cracking plastic. Then with a heave Bahr threw him through the inner door that led to the weapons rack.
“The key, give me the key,” Bahr demanded. Heavy-duty stunners lined the racks, carefully secured by a steel bar and padlock.
“You don’t touch those weapons,” Alexander warned.
Bahr jerked him around viciously, turned his pockets inside out, dumping the contents on the floor. “Where do you have that key?”
“You’re not going to touch those weapons,” Alexander told him bluntly. “I’m still in charge of this station.” Bahr didn’t even answer. He slammed the inner door shut and bolted it as the sounds of the pursuing mob grew loud in the corridor. As the first pounding of cups, feet, fists and shoulders began on the plastic door, Bahr crouched in front of the weapons rack, his hands gripping the six-foot-long steel lock bar. He began wrenching at the bar, his huge back and legs straining.
Alexander pulled a thin metal cylinder out of his pocket, ostensibly a pencil, but actually a low-power stunner which all foreign-service officers carried. “Get away from that rack,” he said. “Those men will take my orders or face mutiny charges. I’m not going to have anybody doing any killing and paralyzing with stunners.”
Bahr only grunted as the steel rod began to bend a little.
“I warn you . . . I’ll fire,” Alexander said. Bahr turned his head, saw the shiny cylinder and recognized what it was. Behind him the plastic door shuddered under the crash of a heavy bench slamming into it.
“Drop dead,” Bahr said, and began pulling on the rod again.
Alexander fired. Bahr screamed and hit the floor like a block of wood, smashing his face on the floor until the blood ran from his nose. The stunner should have knocked him unconscious and paralyzed his whole body in a rigid knot, but it didn’t. Somehow, unbelievably, he pushed himself off the floor, grabbed the back of a chair and hoisted himself erect, his right arm, neck and side frozen in the position he was hit, his right leg jerking in agonizing, uncontrollable spasms. Alexander started to aim the cylinder again, and Bahr swung the chair, hitting him across the face and knocking him back against the wall. The cylinder flew out of his hand across the room.
Dazed, Alexander saw the big man drag himself across the room, using the chair as a crutch, his right leg and arm flapping, his face half-twisted out of recognition with pain. Alexander watched incredulously as Bahr seized the padlock in his left hand and slowly twisted the lock apart, the hard steel snapping with a sudden crack. Bahr tore the lock-bar off and pulled a sleek heavy-duty stunner from the rack as the plastic door cracked under the savage pounding, spilling a dozen men into the room.
What happened after that Alexander learned later in bits and snatches while he was recovering in Buenos Aires Military Hospital from a fractured skull and a broken nose. He had passed out. Bahr, armed only with an unloaded stunner, drove the rioters back into the mess hall and, though obviously half-paralyzed, marched six hundred of them through twelve-hour sedation shots, ordering the four frightened lieutenants around like puppy dogs. With half the station sedated, he sat at the head of the mess hall, stunner across his knee, making the men recite dirty stories for eight hours until his leg stopped jerking and his right side would function again.