chapter Twenty-Nine
Day Eleven
Brussels, 0300 Hours
General Shipley, the Commandant at NATO Headquarters, was awakened by his adjutant.
"I'm sorry to wake you up, General, but we seem to have a situation on our hands."
General Shipley sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He had had a late night entertaining a group of visiting senators from the United States. "What's the problem, Billy?"
"I just received a call from the radar tower, sir. Either all our equipment has gone crazy or we're having some strange visitors."
General Shipley pushed himself out of bed. "I'll be there in five minutes."
The darkened radar room was filled with enlisted men and officers gathered around the lighted radar screens in the centre of the room. They turned and sprang to attention as the General entered.
"At ease." He walked over to the officer in charge, Captain Muller. "What's going on here, Lewis?"
Captain Muller scratched his head. "It beats me. Do you know any plane that can travel 22,000 miles per hour, stop on a dirne, and go into reverse?"
General Shipley was staring at him. "What are you talking about?"
"According to our radar screens, that's what's been going on for the last half hour. At first, we thought it might be some kind of electronic device that's being tested, but we checked with the Russians, the British and the French, and they're picking up the same thing on their radar screens."
"So, it couldn't be something in the equipment," General Shipley said heavily.
"No, sir. Not unless you want to assume that all the radar in the world has suddenly gone crazy."
"How many of these have appeared on the screen?"
"Over a dozen. They move so fast that it's hard to even keep track of them. We pick them up and they disappear again. We've eliminated atmospheric conditions, meteors, fireballs, weather balloons, and any kind of flying machine known to man. I was going to scramble some planes, but these objects ?C whatever they are ?Care flying so damned high that we'd never be able to get near them."
General Shipley walked over to one of the radar screens. "Is anything coming in on your screens now?"
"No, sir. They're gone." He hesitated a moment. "But, General, I have a terrible feeling they'll be coming back."
The Doomsday Conspiracy
Sidney Sheldon's books
- The Face of a Stranger
- The Silent Cry
- The Sins of the Wolf
- The Dark Assassin
- The Whitechapel Conspiracy
- The Sheen of the Silk
- The Twisted Root
- The Lost Symbol
- After the Funeral
- The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
- After the Darkness
- The Best Laid Plans
- The Naked Face
- The Other Side of Me
- The Sands of Time
- The Sky Is Falling
- The Stars Shine Down
- The Lying Game #6: Seven Minutes in Heaven
- The First Lie
- All the Things We Didn't Say
- The Good Girls
- The Heiresses
- The Perfectionists
- The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly
- The Lies That Bind
- Ripped From the Pages
- The Book Stops Here
- The New Neighbor
- A Cry in the Night
- The Phoenix Encounter
- The Dead Will Tell: A Kate Burkholder Novel
- The Perfect Victim
- Fear the Worst: A Thriller
- The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct
- The Fixer
- The Good Girl
- Cut to the Bone: A Body Farm Novel
- The Devil's Bones
- The Bone Thief: A Body Farm Novel-5
- The Bone Yard
- The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel
- The Inquisitor's Key
- The Girl in the Woods
- The Dead Room
- The Death Dealer
- The Silenced
- The Hexed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Night Is Alive
- The Night Is Forever
- The Night Is Watching
- In the Dark
- The Betrayed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Cursed
- The Dead Play On
- The Forgotten (Krewe of Hunters)
- Under the Gun
- The Paris Architect: A Novel
- The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush
- Always the Vampire
- The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose
- The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree
- The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies
- The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star
- The Doll's House
- The Garden of Darkness
- The Creeping
- The Killing Hour
- The Long Way Home
- Death of a Stranger
- Seven Dials
- Anne Perry's Christmas Mysteries
- Weighed in the Balance
- Funeral in Blue
- Defend and Betray
- Execution Dock
- Cain His Brother
- A Breach of Promise
- A Dangerous Mourning
- A Sudden Fearful Death
- Gone Girl
- Dark Places
- Angels Demons
- Deception Point
- Digital Fortress
- The Da Vinci Code
- A Pocket Full of Rye
- A Murder is Announced
- A Caribbean Mystery
- Ordeal by Innocence
- Evil Under the Sun