The Orion Plan by Mark Alpert Page A

opening it. To be honest, she was afraid to go down this road. She’d done it before, twenty years ago, and it had ended in disaster. She’d promised herself that she’d never do anything that stupid again. But how could she ignore her suspicions? How could she call herself a scientist if she automatically rejected this hypothesis?
    She overcame her fear and clicked on the Earth View icon. A moment later an image of the globe appeared on the laptop’s screen. It was a composite image pieced together from the most recent satellite photos of the Earth. Sarah adjusted the settings so that the program showed what North America had looked like from space as 2016X approached it at 4:00 A.M. eastern daylight time. The oceans and the deserts were dark, but the eastern United States was a constellation of glowing cities, with the brightest clusters along the coast. If you were approaching the planet’s night side and looking for the most interesting destination, New York City would certainly qualify.
    Sarah shut her laptop and left it on the counter. Her heart was racing. She needed to go outside. As she rushed out of the kitchen she pulled a crumpled pack of Marlboros from the back pocket of her jeans. It was her secret vice, but now she didn’t care who saw it. She showed the pack to the soldier who guarded the restaurant’s front door and after a few seconds of hesitation he let her pass. “Just stay within twenty yards of this post, ma’am,” he warned. “Don’t go near the perimeter.”
    She realized what he meant as soon as she stepped outside. A hundred feet away a line of soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking the western end of Dyckman Street. Their obvious purpose was to stop any civilians from approaching the restaurant and marina. Just in case they needed help, at least thirty New York police officers stood on the other side of the line. Beyond the police were half a dozen news vans from the local television stations.
    Because this was a classified operation, General Hanson had tried to disguise his unit’s activities by making up a cover story. He’d told the news media that the soldiers were “conducting a routine training exercise related to national-security readiness.” But the story hadn’t fooled anyone. Despite the late hour, the TV people were doing live reports and pointing their cameras at the soldiers. The Air Force had brought in searchlights to illuminate the area, making it almost as bright as day, and the noise from the crowd gave the place a carnival atmosphere.
    The temperature had dropped a few degrees since sunset, but the air still felt like warm cotton. Sarah ventured around the corner of the restaurant and headed for the marina. She walked down the pier and stopped at a railing that overlooked the Hudson River. Her hands were trembling but she managed to shake a cigarette out of the Marlboro pack and pull her Zippo from her pocket. It was a customized lighter with her name engraved on the brushed chrome. She flicked it open, lit her cigarette, and took a long drag.
    To the west, the Coast Guard patrol boats cruised up and down the dark river, aiming their sonar at the Hudson’s muddy bottom. To the east, the wooded heights of Inwood Hill Park loomed over the city. The soldiers hadn’t cordoned off that section of the park because it wasn’t part of the impact zone drawn by General Hanson and his staff. But Sarah didn’t trust their judgment. Their mission was to prepare for a specific threat—a surprise attack from Russia or China or North Korea—so they naturally saw everything in those terms. Back in graduate school, Sarah had learned the name for this tendency: confirmation bias. The soldiers saw 2016X as a Russian weapon because that’s what they expected to see.
    She took another drag on her cigarette and gazed at Inwood Hill. She couldn’t trust her own judgment either, because she also