Juggernaut

by Gregory Smith

"I don't know," said the radar technician. His hands were trembling. "I don't know. This is really strange."

He and the air traffic controller watched the screen. A green line swept around in a circle, one circuit of the night sky, leaving green blips in its wake. The blips were mountains. Each mountain was permanently circumscribed by a white line drawn with a wax pencil. But one of the circles was empty.

"There's nothing," said the technician, "wrong with the equipment."

The controller was silent.

"What are we going to do? We can't call the commissioner. It's the middle of the night."

The controller picked up the phone.

"Who are you calling?"

"Mount Meade."

"Of course," said the technician. "The Air Force. That's the thing to do."

The controller finished the call. Nothing had changed on the screen. "They're sending a plane," he said.

"He can't see anything in the fog."

"He'll have his own radar."

Ten minutes later the plane appeared on their screen. It crawled across the disk. It approached the empty white circle. It entered the circle. It went right on through. There was no doubt about it. The mountain was gone.

There was no moonlight, only a sort of moonglow: a luminescence that sometimes flickered through the fog. And the times when it wasn't luminescent it was so dark that the men were invisible even to each other, though they were only a few feet apart. They were aware of each other only by the tugs on the ropes around their waists.

In the white moonglow the breeze swirled the fog through the trees. The Captain stopped. There were a few seconds of silence, as his men came up behind him, stopping one by one.

"Captain?"

"Quiet."

The men were still. There was no other sound. Then the branches shushed softly. The fog made an ever-changing, ever-hidden scene.

The Captain started forward, and tripped over something he couldn't see. He got up and went on. The patrol followed.

They heard a lonely trickle of water in the mist. They stopped at the bank of a stream. The fog was thick over the water. They crossed the stream and began climbing a hill. It grew steeper. Twice the fog drew aside for a moment, and twice white moonlight shone on rocky white outcroppings. Twice the fog returned. The pines grew thicker, darker.

They reached the top of the hill. They crouched in a shivering line.

"Captain, what now?"

"We wait."

They waited. There was an unusual lack of sound. Vaporous wisps wove between the branches in silence. No one spoke.

An hour passed: long, chill, and damp. Then the darkness lessened. It was the false dawn. It's glow diffused in the mist, augmenting the splintered beams of the moon. The Captain raised his hand, and the men rose. He checked his compass. They started down. The fog became thicker as they descended. It obscured and then slowly revealed the dark spaces between the trees. The men advanced in silence.

Suddenly a breeze arose, blowing down the slope. The men crouched. The mist drew over them like a sheet. The breeze increased to a gale, sweeping the fog by so fast that the patrol seemed to be foundering in a swift white river. The trees thrashed. Then just as suddenly as it had come, the gale died.

The men stood. But hardly had they resumed their advance when they heard a roar, like an avalanche or an earthquake, though there was no movement. The roar seemed to be approaching through the fog.

The Captain signalled and the men formed a line across the slope. They readied their weapons. But the roar, too, died, and the quiet returned.

The men advanced. As the ground leveled at the foot of the hill they heard another sound, this one like sand sliding down a slope. They froze. The sound lasted for several minutes, and then faded. The Captain took another step. His foot sank into the ground. He was standing in a small pile of freshly turned dirt.

The patrol slunk away up the hill.

The fog seemed to linger longer than usual that morning. The Colonel had been waiting since eight o'clock to see the ground below. The helicopter was running low on fuel.

"The fog is so thick," said the Colonel, "that the Russians could have carried the mountain away, basketful by basketful, and we'd never know."

"It's clearing," said the aide. "I can see the other chopper." The other helicopter circled through the mist away on their left. It was a gunship. The men waited.

Then the fog cleared, so suddenly that they were caught off guard. There was a swirl and then below them they saw a very wide, roughly circular clearing were the mountain had been. There was a small white object in the center of the clearing.

"Land, land there," said the Colonel, who had unusually sharp eyes. The helicopter touched down a hundred yards from the sign, for the white object was indeed a sign, though it couldn't be read from that distance.

The Colonel jumped out and started running towards it. The aide called "Colonel, wait!" and drew his pistol and jumped out after him.

The dirt was solidly packed, as though something very heavy had rolled over it. The aide noticed this as he ran. He looked up. The Colonel was standing very still, but apparently unharmed, in front of the sign. The aide stumbled to a stop, panting. He looked at the sign. It was a common sort of sign. It said, Your Highway Taxes At Work.

- THE END -