The Stickmen

by Edward Lee

  It was the e-lex print-out that had caused the sudden memory jag, taking Swenson’s mind back to that horridly hot day thirty-eight years ago. He been right about much that day: John F. Kennedy had sanctioned the overthrow and assassination of the president of South Vietnam only to be assassinated himself three weeks later. Heroin continued to flow into the country along with newer, worse evils, and the Soviets had tried to arm Cuba with nuclear missiles which had brought the world to within twenty-four hours of World War III.

  The heart monitors continued to beep behind him, and so did the drip-monitor on the overhead I.V. bag. Swenson’s eyes—an old man’s eyes now—glanced back at the tulle-thin sheet of printer paper that the guard had brought in to him only moments ago.

  The sheet seemed too thin, too insubstantial to carry so grievous a message, a message, nevertheless, that only he and a few others in the world could fully understand.

  The e-lex read:

  052899 - 0613 HRS

  DE: FBI HQ CNTRL PROSS

  TO: RELEVANT AD OR DEPUTY SECTION CHIEF/STATUS: FYI

  SUBJECT: W/M 34 YO, URSLIG, JACK, H. (DECEASED)

  READ: VSP VIOLENT CRIMES UNIT REPORTS THAT SUBJECT WAS FOUND

  MURDERED IN HIS RESTON, VA, HOME THREE NIGHTS AGO AT 11:39 PM.

  COD: SMALL CALIBER GUNSHOT WOUND TO THE HEAD. SUBJECT’S HOME SECURITY SYSTEM SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN EXPERTLY BYPASSED.

  PASS

  READ: SUBJECT URSLIG, JACK, H. IS FORMER FBI SA

  END/PAGE ONE OF ONE PAGE

  He let the paper slipped from his fingers to the bed sheets. He blinked, and then his old eyes were staring back again—

  —back to that day in April almost four decades ago—

  ««—»»

  —another one, Brigadier General Swenson thought, roving the binoculars over the crash site. The interminable heat beat down on his back, but by now he was numb; he didn’t even feel it. He was looking down off the bluff…

  The contact perimeter stretched for hundreds of yards, filled with a varying a varying degree of black crash debris. At first he thought—he hoped—this might be a false alarm. It might be one of the YF-12 prototypes that Northrop was developing; they were rumored to be skinned with black titanium sheet. But when he rolled down the zoom ring for a closer angle, he saw that the debris appeared almost chunk-like, nothing akin to any aircraft skin he could imagine. Most of the pieces appeared to be no larger than baseballs.

  Nothing like New Mexico, he thought. Nothing like Brazil…

  Dozens of recovery vehicles surrounded the site, while at least a hundred Air Force security men were sifting out and removing the debris with rakes. There must have been thousands of pieces.

  No, this is different. Different from the others. A different…race…

  The debris lay strewn in a vast fan shape, the widest end being the farthest off. The initial impact point. So at least there was one universal invariant. The debris-line narrowed as it approached the foot of the bluff on which Swenson now stood.

  That’s where it stopped, not fifty yards off below.

  That’s where the only intact part of the craft had stopped.

  Must’ve been huge, he realized. Long.

  In front of the plume of debris, pushed against a wave of sand, sat what could only be the forward-most compartment of the vehicle. Swenson couldn’t be sure from this distance, but it appeared to be cylindrical—can-shaped—and black; he guessed approximately ten feet high, twenty-five or thirty feet long.

  No evidence of anything that could be likened to rivet-work, screws, or welding. No sign of any seams.

  Then—

  Wait, he thought. Swenson rolled the zoom down all the way, bringing the jagged can-shaped object to maximum closeness.

  A pattern seemed to exist on the side of this alien fuselage. Not a marking…but something functional.

  A shape.

  A trapezoid.

  Like a dark window, Swenson thought.

  ««—»»

  Disgruntled, as he always was, Garrett walked down Connecticut Avenue, away from Benny’s Rebel Room Tavern and his overly sarcastic friend Craig.

  “No one believes me,” he spoke aloud to himself. Not a good sign of stability. “Everyone thinks I’m some kind of conspiracy crackpot. No girlfriend, no running water and no phone. And no respect.”

  For no apparent reason, he stopped in front of a comic shop and found himself peering into the broad window. Faces stared back at him: Galactus the Devourer, Superman, Doctor Doom. Grub Girl and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Caped Crusader. They all seemed to glance back at him in hilarity. But it wasn’t the tableau of colorful comic faces that Garrett stared so intently at.

  It was his own reflection.

  “Everyone I know thinks I’m a flake,” he watched his reflection’s lips tell him. He stared a full minute more.

  “Maybe… Maybe they’re right.”

  But before this moment of self-condemnation could continue, a loud squeal burned behind him: tires screeching. Garrett, startled, jumped at the sudden screech; he could even smell smoking tire rubber as he was turning around to look, expecting to witness a serious fender bender. But no collision followed.

  Garrett had time only to see a white van stopped at the curb, the side-panel of which read JINKO’S PRINTING, WE DELIVER! Then something clicked in Garrett’s mind…

  Jinko’s… Isn’t that a—

  No time remained to even finish the thought. The van’s back doors popped open, and two suited men already on the street grabbed Garrett, covered his mouth, and strong-armed him into the back of the van.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Garrett may have even lost consciousness for a moment, thunking his head against metal when the suit-and-tie goons threw him into the van. One of the men was young—late-twenties—and huge—six-eight, three hundred pounds—and Garrett didn’t see much fat. It was this man who sat on a padded side bench and was pressing his shoe against Garrett’s chest, pinning him to the floor.

  Wow, Garrett baldly thought when his vision cleared. He’s…big…

  A second man in an equally cheap suit was chubby, much older, and not nearly as big. Hair streaked with gray was brushed back; the guy was going bald fast. His face looked find of puffed and pinched, like a hamster with full cheek pouches.

  It was this man who pointed a 9mm Beretta calmly into Garrett’s face.

  “Man, you guys from MasterCard don’t fool around,” Garrett said. “Okay, we’ve got Grandpa and Herman. Who’s driving? Lillian or would it be Eddie?”

  “Shut up and listen, said the big man.

  Then the man with the gun. “Are you going to be good, Mr. Garrett?”

  “You’re pointing a gun in my face,” Garrett replied the obvious. “No, I’m going to be bad. Duh.”

  “For all intents and purposes,” said the guy with the gun, “I’m Mr. Smith, and the man who could easier fracture your entire rib cage with his foot is Mr. Jones. Listen, and don’t say a word.”

  “Uh—” Garrett said.

  That was it. Mr. “Jones’” titan-sized leg flexed, and suddenly his foot was squeezing all the air out of Garrett’s lungs. He could feel his rib bowing, expected to hear them crack in another second.

  Smith nodded to Jones, and the foot came off. Garrett, pink-faced, let out a hoarse gasp, and then—

  “Owwww!”

  —he was grabbed by the hair, jerked up, and plopped down on the bench seat.

  “That’s just to let you know what we’re capable of,” Smith bid. “So you’re going to sit there and say nothing.”

  Garrett wheezed, his head between his knees, until he got his breath back. It was less bad judgment and simply more reflex which caused Garrett to look at the behemoth Jones and say, “Nice shoes. Bruno Magli, right? Size 12?”

  Smith sputtered, then directed his associate, “Put him back on the floor. Break some ribs this time.”

  The giant meat-hook hands were instantly forcing Garrett back down,
as Garrett wailed, “No, please! Jesus Christ! Can’t you Air Force guys take a joke!”

  Instantly, the hands let go, and Smith and Jones were exchanging the oddest of looks.

  “What, uh, makes you think we’re in the Air Force, Mr. Garrett?” Smith asked.

  Garrett laughed out loud. “Come on, the Air Force has been using that hokey Jinko’s Printing cover for more than three years. It’s common knowledge now, boys. Christ, novelists are starting to put that stuff in spy novels. You need to change those logos, like, at least every six months. And while you’re at it, tell the FBI to lose those ridiculous H.R. Tires signs on their Hostage Rescue Team vans. The skinheads and nazi militias have that one printed in their damn training manuals. Everybody under the sun knows that one.”

  Smith stalled, narrow-eyed. “I’m impressed, Mr. Garrett. You know a lot about a lot of things.”

  “Great. And lose the Beretta 92s. You want to keep your kidnap victims guessing, don’t you? Any sap with a sliver of brain sees a 92F-model and he knows right off the bat he’s dealing with the Military. Pack a Glock or a Sig—then people’ll think you’re Interpol or GSG-9. Pack a .25 and they’ll think you’re Russian GRU or the Israelis…”

  “Hey, boss,” Jones said, “how’s this punk know this kind of—”

  “Shut up, Carson!” Smith shot back, and then was instantly biting his lip.

  Garrett beamed. “Hey, great! Carson, huh? You guys are something, you know that? Real pros. You haven’t had me in this damn Big Brother meat-box for five minutes and I already know who you work for and one of your names.”

  Smith was shaking his head, wincing.

  “So what’s this all about?” Garrett went on. “Why the shake, and why me? And what the hell are Air Force ops doing making a daylight grab in D.C.? Usually it’s the Field Intel Branch from the Washington Navy Yard that pulls these capers in the district, isn’t it?”

  “Hey, boss,” Carson cut in again, “how’s this punk—”

  “Would you SHUT UP!” Smith yelled back at his man. “You’re verifying everything he says!”

  “Sorry, Captain Morran—er, I mean—SHIT!”

  Garrett was laughing in spite of himself. “Man, you guys are priceless. If you’re the best shake team the Air Force has got, then God help us. Step on your dicks any harder and you’ll fall over.”

  Smith was rubbing his temples.

  “What’s the scoop, fellas?” Garrett went on. “If I gotta miss the Teletubbies today, I damn sure have the right to know why.”

  “We’re just taking you for a little ride,” Captain Morran aka Mr. Smith said. “That’s all.”

  Garrett didn’t like the sound of that; it was almost a cliché. “Great. I’ve always wanted to meet Jimmy Hoffa. So how long’s it take to get to Yankee Stadium? I mean, that is where you guys buried Hoffa, right? Under the west bleachers, fourth tier?”

  Now, even Morran spared a smile. “You’re a real hoot, Mr. Garrett.”

  ««—»»

  Two more days, Ellie Romesch thought. Bring it on!

  In two more days, school let out, and that meant that Ellie Romesch—”Miss Romesch,” to her third-grade students (though most of them pronounced it “Romp-sh”)—would be blowing this cement pop stand called J. Exner Campbell Elementary School and not coming back until the last day of August. Three months of fun in the sun, at least that’s what she hoped. Sandy Point Beach was only a thirty-five minute drive, plus she had a week’s time-share at Ocean City second week of July. I’m going to work on my tan, work on my body, and work on finding a man who will actually call me back after the first time we go to bed. Ellie had the tan and the body covered—year-round membership at the tanning salon and some meaningful numbers to the tune of 38-24-36. No, it was that third component of the formula that she’d never quite gotten a grasp on. She was twenty-eight years old; she wasn’t getting any younger, as her mother liked to remind her every time they talked on the phone, and most of her friends from Shepard College were all married and either had kids or were halfway there with stomachs sticking out till next Tuesday. Ellie wasn’t sure how she felt about the kid-thing (she taught six roomfuls of the little buggers five days a week, nine months a year—but…

  It’d be nice to have a husband, she sullenly thought. Until then, though: I’ve got two more days with these crumb-snatchers, so do your job!

  Her last creative assignment to her fourth-period class was for the pupils to paint their most interesting dream. With kids this young, of course, she needn’t expect much, but on the other hand these pre-adolescent years could spell a lot of a child’s future interests. This was just basic brush-work with tempera paint on 30-grade paper. No Picassos yet but Ellie could see that a few of her floor-monkeys were exhibiting a genuine aesthetic interest—the unbidden urge to create. She truly felt that this was a wonderful thing…and she supposed that it also might mean she was a good teacher. Art, after all, was release. Children needed to be taught to do that, to release themselves (except in their pants, which happened on occasion, too).

  One day they would all find their inner drives and their passions. Ellie saw herself as someone helping them along. She was one of the directors of this intricate play called Childhood.

  She never had much trouble, nothing like the schools in the city. Most of these kids here were from the Army base, well-mannered, well-disciplined, not a lot of riff-raff. If anything, a fair share of them seemed a little too well-mannered—products, perhaps, of any overbearing home environment.

  Like Danny Vander, for example.

  A good kid, bright, but lately it seemed that something was stifling him. He brooded a lot; he seemed tired as if he wasn’t getting enough sleep. Ellie could only guess that Danny’s father—a high-ranking officer—ran the household like a boot camp. An environment like that could drain a kid’s vitality fast.

  As her class painted quietly, Ellie walked down the aisles between their desks. She stopped at Danny Vander’s and looked down over his shoulder.

  For a change, he seemed focused as he painted his picture; he didn’t even notice that Ellie was standing behind him.

  Wow, she thought when she examined his picture. “That’s very imaginative, Danny.”

  The choppy tempera painting depicted the outline of a houseframe; in the houseframe there was a little boy in bed, but beside the bed stood several stick-figures. There was something scary about the way he’d painted the figures: black shapes with a white-slit where one would expect eyes. Outside the houseframe he’d drawn a long black cylindrical object in the sky, with a trapezoidal-shaped window toward the front of the cylinder.

  Spacemen, she guessed, or monsters from some video game. “What are you going to call it?” she asked.

  Danny looked up from his desk, his face is sullen, tired. “It’s called The Stickmen.”

  “That must’ve been some dream.”

  “It’s a nightmare, Miss Romesch. I have it all the time.” He sighed frustratedly. “My dad makes me go see this special doctor. He thinks there’s something wrong with me.”

  Poor kid, Ellie thought. Sounds to me like the problem isn’t with you, it’s with your father. She’d seen it too many times: these spit-and-polish West Point officers forced their kids to be duplicates of themselves, had them marching around the house like little soldiers. It was no way to raise a kid. “Well, that’s very good work,” she said in after-thought.

  “Thank you, Miss Romesch.”

  “Maybe you’d like to be an artist when you grow up.”

  Danny shrugged. “I don’t know. I think I want to be in the Army, like my dad. I want him to be proud of me.”

  Ellie ground her teeth at the comment. “I’m sure he’s very proud of you already, Danny. Just because he’s in the Army doesn’t mean you have to be. You can be whatever you want.”

  Chuckie Murrett, the boy sitting right behind, nudged Danny’s shoulder. “Hey, Danny, show Miss Romp-sh the other one you painted. The other one’s ev
en cooler.”

  “Oh, you’ve done another painting?” Ellie asked.

  Danny nodded sullenly. “Yes, Miss Romesch…”

  “Well let’s see it. Is it from another dream.”

  “Another nightmare, Miss Romesch.”

  Danny lifted up his blotter and from beneath, he removed a second tempera painting.

  “Isn’t that cool, Miss Romp-sh?” Chuckie Murrett enthused.

  This one left nothing to be interpreted. Oranges, reds, and yellows curved up into a blossoming billow. Danny had painted the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion.

  “They don’t understand, Miss Romesch,” Danny said.

  But Ellie was still off-guard from the impact of the second painting. Someone was polluting this kid’s head in a big way. The father, she decided. It must be. Where else could a child this age get such brutal images. “I’m sorry, Danny. What did you say?”

  “They don’t understand.”

  “Who, Danny?”

  “My mom and dad,” the little boy went on. “And Dr. Harolds.”

  Now the kid was really sounding weird. “What is it they don’t understand, Danny?”

  Danny glumly pointed to the painting: the nuclear mushroom cloud. “This is going to happen,” he said.

  Ellie’s face drew up in total lack of comprehension. “What?”

  “But nobody believes me, Miss Romesch. The Stickmen aren’t really from a nightmare.” Then the little boy gulped. “The Stickmen are real…”

  ««—»»