Officer Kip Callaghan's telephone never stopped ringing. Local people were literally in line to give information, ask for information, or just to talk about the savage roaring blaze, which still thundered into the smoky skies on two sides of their town.
It had taken almost twenty hours to stop the flow of crude oil flooding out of the inflow pipe from the north, directly into the terminus, and igniting with the rest of the stored fuel. The electronic control center was still completely out of action, but they had managed to turn off a huge valve on the pipeline, by hand, some two miles north of the city.
Wearily, Officer Callaghan picked up the ringing phone again. 'Valdez Police — Situation Room.'
'Sir, I'm calling from Glennallen with a little information you may want.'
'OK, sir. Just give me your full name and address, and age. Plus the number you are calling from.'
'Cal Foster, P.O. Box 58, Glennallen. I'm twenty-one, and I'm calling from 907-555-3677.'
'Thank you, sir. Please tell me your information.'
'Well, I'm really calling about a UFO I saw in the sky on Friday morning around 1:30.'
'A UFO! You mean a kinda flying saucer, sir?'
'Well, kind of.'
'Sir, this is the Situation Room for the fire catastrophe. You'd probably be better to let the main Police Department know about a flying saucer. Right here, I'm strictly in the combustion area.'
'Officer, I'm in the right department. I may have a connection to the fire.'
'OK, sir. Tell me.'
'Well, me and my buddy, Harry Roberts, had just stopped on the Glenn Highway on our way home, and we were, like taking a leak, facing north, when I saw this missile flying through the sky. Real quick, right above us. I could see a flame coming from the back, and it made a kinda growling noise. It was heading directly south to the mountains and Valdez…
'Then, just about a half minute later, I saw another one, maybe a mile to the east, but going the same way. Just as quick. Identical. I was thinking they could have been missiles — you know, aimed at the oil terminal… and maybe they started the fire.'
'Sir, did your buddy also see the objects?'
'He wasn't in time to see the first one. But I yelled when I saw the second one, and he saw that, all right. Mind you, he didn't really believe it was a missile. He thought it was a low-flying aircraft, and he might have been right. But I don't think so. I ain't never seen anything go so fast through the air, not that low to the ground. That was no aircraft. Nossir.'
'You took a while to let us know. How come?'
'Well, I never knew about the fire until the middle of the day Friday, and I'd kinda forgotten about the rockets I'd seen. Then I got to thinking about 'em, and last night I suddenly thought there might be a connection.'
'Sir, I'd like to speak to your buddy Harry.'
'Well, right now he's up at the Caribou Cafe.'
'They got a phone?'
'Sure. It's 822-3656. Don't listen if he tells you it was a 747 or something. It wasn't.'
'Okay, Cal. I'm gonna try to get this corroborated. I'll call you back… ' Officer Callaghan called the Caribou and asked to speak to a customer named Harry Roberts. Half a minute later, the reluctant spotter of the UFO was on the line.
'I saw it. Yes sir. I definitely saw it. And Cal was right. It was traveling real quick. And I saw it much later than he did, only seconds, but it was going away from us time I turned around.'
'You didn't see the first one at all?'
'Nossir. Cal just caught it as it went over us. I wasn't in time. But I saw the second one. Flying straight for the mountains.'
'Well, your buddy Cal thinks those rockets might have been headed for the oil terminal, and were the cause of the fires.'
'Coulda been… coulda been… '
'Do you think they were kinda mysterious? Like not an aircraft, more like a missile?'
'Well, I haven't given the one I saw much thought. But it was kinda creepy. The thing you'd notice was how fast the bastard was going. And Cal's right — it was a lot too fast for a regular aircraft.'
'One more thing, sir. What time was it when you and Cal saw 'em?'
'Well, I got home at exactly 1:30 a.m. So Cal musta spotted the first one at around 1:20. It took us about ten minutes to get home from there.'
'OK, sir. That's all. Thanks for your time.'
Kip Callaghan knew the first explosions in the oil terminal were now put at 1:30 a.m. It was ninety miles up to the Glenn Highway where Cal and Harry saw the possible missile. If the damn thing was making ten miles a minute, that was around nine minutes flying time.
The coincidence was too hot for Officer Callaghan. He phoned his boss and gave him the information. Superintendent Ratzberg immediately reported the phone calls to the newly arrived FBI Chief, who passed it on to the Coast Guard, who alerted the appropriate U.S. Navy Department, Pacific Fleet, San Diego.
Ten minutes later, news of a possible sighting of guided missiles was in the Pentagon, and four minutes after that there was a message on the secure Fort Meade Internet, direct to Lt. Comdr. Jimmy Ramshawe, Personal Assistant to the Director.
Jimmy, who was on duty that Sunday afternoon, buzzed Rear Admiral Morris, who instantly called Vice Admiral Morgan, encrypted, at home in Chevy Chase. It was late afternoon now, bitterly cold and already growing dark. Arnold was sitting by the fire glowering at the New York Times, the liberal left-wing views of which unfailingly made his tight-cropped steel gray hair stand on end. At least it would have done, had his hair been sufficiently long.
Meanwhile, he just glowered, and waited for Kathy to bring him some China tea, which he counted as one of his Sunday afternoon luxuries. The interruption of the phone call from Admiral Morris caught him entirely unaware, and he greeted his old friend tersely. 'What's up, George?' he said. 'I suppose you're on a special mission to ruin what's left of the weekend?'
'Don't be ridiculous, sir,' replied George, 'I bring you critical information. The police in Valdez have interviewed two local men who apparently saw two very fast missiles ripping through the sky, due south toward the Valdez terminus at 1:20 on Friday morning, ten minutes before the storage tanks blew up, ninety miles away.'
'Who are the guys… sane… sound mind… et cetera…?'
'Yes. Apparently. Both twenty-one years old, clearsighted and identical in their observations. One of them saw two missiles or rockets, the other saw only one. Said it was traveling too fast to be a commercial aircraft. Both confirmed a short fiery tail in the stern of the object, and both were struck by its very high speed.'
'Did they want anything out of it?'
'No. Nothing. The first one meant to report it as a UFO. It was only when he learned about the fires he decided they might be connected.'
'Uh-huh. May we presume that at after one o'clock in the morning these two kids were several sheets to the wind?'
'I expect so, Arnie. Nonetheless, according to the police, they are both kinda unassuming guys. They agree on the basics, and their time frame is probably accurate within seconds. And they had no way of knowing that, not before one of 'em made the call.'
'I'd say they're correct by the sound of it,' said Admiral Morgan. 'I now accept that we were probably hit by at least two missiles, fired from an enemy unknown, almost certainly from a submarine, probably Russian. We got a lot of sleuthing to do, George.
'Meanwhile, we better keep a tight lid on this. We can't tell the populace someone is trying to wipe us out. Make certain no one releases anything, and I'll have the President make a short national broadcast later tonight… just expressing his regrets at the terrible accident in Alaska. That way we'll take the sting out of it. The Press won't catch on till someone tells 'em. And no one better do that. Yet.
'George, be at my office tomorrow morning 0600. Bring Ramshawe. Does he know about the missile sightings?'
