“The twentieth. Tomorrow’s the winter solstice, and everyone’s scared shitless—”

The door bursts open, an American physician strolling in, followed by Ennis Chaney, a Mexican nurse, and Marvin Teperman. Mick notices heavily armed American soldiers stationed in the outer corridor.

The doctor leans down, examining his eyes with a flashlight pen. “Welcome back, Mr.Gabriel. And how are we feeling today?”

“Sore. Hungry. And a bit disoriented.”

“It’s no wonder, you’ve been unconscious for five days. Let’s take a look at that wound.” The doctor pulls back the bandage. “Amazing. Absolutely amazing. I’ve never seen a wound heal so quickly.”

Chaney steps forward. “Is he well enough to speak?”

“I should think so. Nurse, change his dressing, then start him on another IV of—”

“Not now, Doctor,” Chaney interrupts. “We need a few minutes with Mr.Gabriel. Alone.”

“Of course, Mr.President.”

Mick watches the physician and nurse leave, an MP in the corridor closing the door behind them. “Mr.President? Seems like you get a promotion every time we meet.”

The raccoon eyes do not look amused. “President Mailer’s dead. Put a bullet through his own head five days ago in an attempt to get the Russians and Chinese to abort an all-out nuclear assault.”

“Jesus…”

“The world owes you a debt of thanks. Whatever you activated within that Mayan pyramid destroyed the missiles.”

Mick closes his eyes. My God, it really happened. I thought it was all a dream …

Dominique squeezes his hand.

“It’s some kind of highly charged, electromagnetic array,” Marvin says, “like nothing we’ve ever seen. The signal’s still active, thank God, because it’s keeping those drones from exploding—”

“Drones?” Mick opens his eyes. “What drones?”

Marvin removes a photograph from his briefcase and hands it to him. “Thirty-eight of these things have landed across the globe since you were brought in.”

He stares at the photo of a black batlike creature, perched on a gray mountaintop, its wings expanded. “It’s the object I saw rising out of the spaceship, the one buried in the Gulf of Mexico.” He looks up at Dominique. “I know where I’ve seen them before. Nazca. Life-size images of these creatures have been carved all over the plateau.”

Marvin looks at Chaney, a bit uncertain. “This photo was taken several days ago on a mountaintop in Arecibo.”

Chaney pulls up a chair. “The creature you claimed seeing in the alien vessel—that drone landed in Australia and wiped out most of the Nullarbor plain. We now know that each one of these objects possesses some sort of pure-fusion device, explosives capable of vaporizing entire landscapes. Six of these drones detonated in Asia over the last two weeks, the last three wiping out more than two million people in China and Russia.”

Mick feels his hands shaking. “These detonations precipitated the nuclear assault?”