Lee looked at the base roster sheet he had studied on the plane ride over. “You must be Colonel Blanchard?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Colonel, where is your commanding officer?”
“The base com—”
“I don’t need the base commander, Colonel, I mean the man that’s in charge of”—Lee once again looked at his clipboard and flipped a few of the pages that had been wired from Washington—“Operation Purple Sage.”
Blanchard seemed taken aback by this. “I don’t think you know the way army intelligence works any longer, sir.”
Lee smiled and tilted his hat back, fully exposing his eye patch. “Colonel, two years ago I was still a brigadier general on active duty in the OSS. I now hold a civil rank equivalent to that of a four-star general, so don’t you dare pretend to tell me how the army or its intelligence apparatus operate. Johnson! Bridewell!” he called over his shoulder.
Two men broke away from the Group’s security team and ran to where Lee and the colonel were standing. They wore army fatigues and were carrying sidearms.
“If the Colonel says anything other than ‘Yes, sir’ and doesn’t lead us to where they either have the wreckage, or to the gentleman in charge of this investigation, arrest him on charges of disobeying a direct order from the president of the United States and obstructing an official presidential inquiry.”
The two men moved to either side of Colonel Blanchard and stood at parade rest.
“Very well, if the president wants amateurs running this show, it’s his funeral,” the colonel said into the rising wind, then abruptly turned and started for the hangar entrance.
They followed Blanchard as if they were in a parade. Garrison had assembled the largest field team since the Lincoln Raid on Ararat in 1863. He had metallurgists, language experts, paleontologists, atomic and medical-research scientists, quantum theorists, structural engineers, machining experts, and sixty security personnel. The quantum theorists were on loan from his friend at Princeton, Albert Einstein. They had been flown from New Jersey into the dirt runway at Las Vegas by his P-51s and weren’t at all happy about it. He knew Albert would charge him a huge favor in the near future for the loan.
Blanchard walked over to one of the huge hangars that held sway over Roswell Army Airfield. It was large enough to house two B-29s side by side. Military police had surrounded the building, and they all carried Ml carbines or Thompson submachine guns. The colonel glanced over his shoulder at Lee and gave him a sour look as he saw the Group’s security personnel advance on the MPs and give them new orders. He scowled and then opened a small door just to the left side of the large hangar doors. Lee followed him into a spacious office with several people in the smoke-filled room. Colonel Blanchard walked over to a surprised man in a white shirt and whispered something to him.
Lee scanned the faces in the room as his security team followed him into the office. They closed the door behind them, shutting out the noise of the blowing wind, and totally surrounded the men in the office.
The men standing around in mild shock were the intelligence types Lee had come to know well during his hitch in the Office of Strategic Services. But it was the one man who was seated all alone at a table that caught Lee’s immediate attention, as he definitely looked as if he didn’t belong there. He was sweating profusely because of the huge light they had trained on him. The disheveled man looked at Lee with a dull gaze, then quickly looked away. Garrison spied an officer standing against the far wall. He recognized this man from the roster and briefing material, which included his photograph. Major Jesse Marcel. He held Lee’s gaze, then slowly shook his head.
“Can I help you… General Lee, is it?” asked the man with whom Blanchard had spoken. He stepped forward and held out his hand and said, “I’m Charles Hendrix, Army Intelligence, and special adviser to General LeMay.”
Lee continued to look at the man in dungarees and sweaty denim work shirt sitting with head lowered at the table. He handed the letter from the president over to Hendrix instead of shaking his hand, not sparing the man a glance while doing so.
Hendrix read the letter, first frowning, then with a shrug of his shoulders. “The president shouldn’t be too concerned with what we have here.”
Lee knew the type of man who faced him. He had run into a few during the war. Their favorite saying, “For the good of the country,” was a phrase this man would use to justify everything from torture to murder.
“Would you like to tell President Truman he shouldn’t be concerned, personally, Mr. Hendrix? And if you’re looking for a title to use in connection with me, try The Man in Charger
“The point I’m trying to make is, I think the president has little understanding of what has happened here,” Hendrix said, taking a Camel cigarette out of the pack in his shirt.
Lee smiled. “You may be surprised by what he understands, and if he has little understanding of this situation, it’s because someone is not passing on the adequate amount of intelligence. Don’t ever play word games with me again.” Lee pulled out a chair next to the man sitting at the table and slowly sat down. He removed his hat and placed it on the table. He gave the man what he hoped was a comforting smile to try to relax him, knowing at the same time his scar might have just the opposite effect.
“This man is being detained for questioning,” Hendrix said calmly as he paused with the match held an inch from his cigarette.
Garrison turned and looked at the man from Army Intelligence, then back at the scared gentleman with his head lowered at the table.
“Sergeant Thompson, remove this light, please.”
One of the security men in the detail walked to the wall and pulled a plug. The area of table where it had been shining darkened to a more comfortable setting from the soft fluorescent lighting from the ceiling.
“Don’t know about you, but bright light hurts my eye.”
The man at the table didn’t respond; he just raised a shaking hand up to his face and touched a bruised spot on his cheek.
“Who are you, sir?” Lee asked.
“Br… Br… Brazel,” he answered.
Lee searched the notes he had taken from a Teletype he had received from Washington. The name was familiar. “You work a ranch about… what, seventy miles from here, don’t you?”
The thin man looked at the senator and then looked quickly at Hendrix standing behind Lee, who was calmly looking down at him. Lee caught the movement of the man’s eyes and thought, This man is scared to death,
“Mr. Brazel, make no mistake, I’m the boss man here. I speak on behalf of the president of the United States.” Lee placed a hand on the man’s knee and patted it softly.
Suddenly the man’s right arm went up and he pointed to Hendrix. “That’s what he said, said the president wanted me to say it was a lie what I found.” Brazel lowered his eyes. “What I found was real,” he mumbled in a barely audible whisper.
Lee looked at Hendrix, who arrogantly returned the stare.
“That was a lie itself, Mr. Brazel. The president wouldn’t ask that. He may ask that you stay quiet about this, but not to lie.”
“No?” was all the man asked. He was looking deeply into Lee’s eye, trying to see if there was truth there.
“No, Mr. Brazel. This man said that, not President Truman.”
“He said something bad could happen to me and mine, said we would never be found.”
Lee closed his eye and tried not to turn to face Hendrix. Instead, he patted the man on the leg again. “No one is going to harm you or your family, Mr. Brazel, I promise you that.” He leaned forward and looked into the man’s face.
“Now, you found some wreckage from something that crashed out on your ranch, correct?”
“Yes, sir, that and the three small green fellas I found the day after.”
Lee was stunned. “You found bodies?” He turned to look at Hendrix. “That wasn’t in the reports to Washington.”
Hendrix stomped his foot and wal
ked away and whispered something to Colonel Blanchard, who in turn started for the side exit.
Lee snapped his fingers and a Colt .45 appeared in Staff Sergeant Johnson’s right hand. He pointed it straight at Colonel Blanchard. The man came to a halt and raised his hands slightly, as if he were embarrassed and didn’t know how to proceed.
“Are you going to shoot an officer in the United States Air Corps, Lee?” Hendrix asked.
“You bet. You weren’t hesitating to threaten Mr. Brazel here.” Lee nodded toward the rancher. “What makes you any better than the very people you are sworn to protect?”
Hendrix took this all in with a calm that only experience could teach. But Garrison could also see the muscles in the man’s jaw working in slow clenching movements. He definitely wasn’t used to having his orders countermanded.
“You found three crewmen in the wreckage?” Lee asked, still looking at Hendrix.
“Yes, sir, I saw one thingamajig knock down the other, leastways that’s what I thought I saw. Then the one… air-a-plane or whatever smashed into the ground. Next day I found the three green fellas in the wreckage, only they wasn’t people like you and me, arid one of the little guys was hurt real bad. The other two were as dead as doornails and it looked like coyotes had a go at ’em.”
“You mean you witnessed a collision of some sort between craft?”
“Wasn’t no collision, ’cause the other thing in the sky just took off. It was like one car running the other off the road. He wanted me to lie about that too,” Brazel said, nodding toward Hendrix.
Lee stood and pointed to six security men standing just inside the door. “You men, place Mr. Hendrix under arrest.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Lee, General LeMay gave me orders to—”
Lee cut him off. “Curtis LeMay takes his orders from the president, just like every man in this room!” Garrison’s voice echoed in the huge hangar. Lee stood and with a strong arm gently assisted the rancher to his feet. “Mr. Brazel, please accept the apology of the U.S. Army for their decidedly unprofessional behavior. This… this episode hasn’t brought out the best in people. They’re scared.” Lee grasped the man’s limp hand and shook it. “Rest assured, sir, we don’t eliminate American citizens.” Or very seldom do, he thought.
Brazel let his hand be shaken. He was still sweating.
“But I would ask a personal favor of you, sir, if I could?”
Mac Brazel just looked at Lee.
“Don’t say anything about this to anyone unless you hear from me that it’s all right to do so, fair?”
“Fair enough, not a word,” Brazel said with a slow deliberateness that told Lee this man would keep his word. Then Lee noticed a slow curl of Brazel’s upper lip; it was the first smile he had seen on the man’s face.
“Sir, on behalf of President Truman, I wish to thank you. Mr. Elliott here will escort you home.” Lee gestured for his meteorologist, who stepped forward and shook hands with the rancher. “He has some questions he would like to ask about the weather that night in and around your ranch. Give him a full description of both craft, everything you can remember.”
“Yes, sir, I will. But one thing I know, that weren’t any accident. One of those things hit the other on purpose.”
Lee just nodded, thinking about the man’s bizarre statement.
“Where do I get transportation, sir?” Elliott turned and asked Lee.
“Steal it,” Lee said. “I don’t think the 509th Bomb Group will miss a jeep for a few hours.”
“Yes, sir,” Elliott said, gesturing for Brazel to follow. He was stopped by a lieutenant in Lee’s security force and given a Colt .45 automatic.
“Just in case someone outside of our group has any ideas about tagging along behind you, I’ll have two more jeeps with our men in them escorting you. But if you’re approached by anyone other than our people, don’t be afraid to use that.” Then the lieutenant turned to Lee. “Senator, I recommend we station a couple of our people with Mr. Brazel.” He said it loud enough to make sure others heard it.
“Thank you. Elliott, get everything you can about this collision that knocked this second disk out of the sky. Mr. Brazel, again, thank you, sir.”
Garrison watched and waited until the two men had stepped out into the night’s windy darkness. When the door was open, the loud engine noise of a B-29 bomber was heard.
“The rest of my team is already inside.” Lee turned to the dark-haired major who had stood silently through the bizarre scene of a moment before. “Major Marcel, isn’t it?”
The man stepped forward and gave a quick nod of his head. “Yes, sir, and your team is already coordinating with our base investigators.”
“Excellent. Was that your idea, Major Marcel?”
“Yes, sir, I was hoping someone would show up with a little common sense, so I left orders to cooperate in advance.”
Lee turned to face Hendrix and was silent as he watched the man light another cigarette.
“For Mr. Brazel and anyone else you may have on this base, Mr. Hendrix, you could be brought up on charges for kidnapping and, most probably from the looks of your guest, assault. And did you expect to hide the fact you had a survivor, or that there was evidence of another craft in the same area as the first?”
Hendrix tossed the burnt match away. “I know you, Lee. I was also briefed. You were with that old dinosaur, ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan and those OSS boys, so let me tell you a little secret: things have changed.”
Lee just glared at Hendrix as if he were some strange bug.
“If you were one of the best and the brightest, you should know how we work, Lee, how the job gets done,” Hendrix continued, even though Garrison had heard enough and turned and walked away. “We have a unique situation here and you can’t be allowed to foul it up,” he called out loudly. “A few of the new guard have a saying that you may want to embrace for the hard years ahead. It’s called controlled violence, and it means the gloves come off and anything and everything goes, just like our little Red friends in Russia.”
Lee slowed but didn’t stop walking toward the door.
“And another thing, the controlling of information is paramount in today’s world, keeping it from the public, who have always been too adolescent to understand the real world. We’ll play like the rest of the bullies on the block now, no more Pearl Harbors.”
Lee stopped and almost turned around to answer Hendrix, but he just took a breath and continued on. He knew that man was more than likely the future of intelligence, and he also knew it wouldn’t be the last time he would run into him, or another hundred just like him.
“The world Will be a place you won’t recognize in ten years; it’s going to become very cold and hard.”
Garrison knew Hendrix might be right, but today, all he could do was control his small corner of this changing world. Lee ignored Hendrix, just shook his head sadly, then stepped into the brightly lit hangar to face the Event that would change the world forever.
The hangar looked even larger from the inside than it did from out. Extra lighting had been installed in the last twenty-four hours to give added illumination. Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce, and other engine brands waiting to be installed in aircraft or under repair lined the walls as they had hastily been pushed aside so the area could hold the remains of a very different kind of aircraft.
Lee studied the wreckage that littered the expanse of oilstained floor. It seemed there was enough to account for ten B-29s. The wreckage had the color of unpainted aluminum, bright and shining. Some of the pieces of debris were of brightly colored violets and reds. Some of it was large, others small as confetti. Some were box-shaped, others in strange pentangle and quadrangle configurations.
As Garrison watched his people moving from one piece to another, he noticed an area in the back of the old wooden hangar that had been sectioned off by what appeared to be large plastic sheets. Outside of the semitransparent area there was a mixture of the base’s air polic
e contingent and the Event Group’s own marine and army security personnel. Lee could see strange and ghostly shadows of men walking inside due to the brighter lighting installed there.
As the director started to walk in that direction, Ken Early, the team’s metallurgist, stopped him.
“Sir, I think we have something here you should see right off.” Ken was holding out a piece of the strange metal for Lee’s scrutiny. It was small, about the size of a regular postal envelope. Around the edges were what looked like dots and dashes. Interspersed with these were symbols such as lines through circles and smaller circles inside pyramids and other octagon-shaped glyphs.
“Are the linguists working on this writing or whatever it is?” Lee asked.
Early looked from the metal in his hand to his boss, then swung around to look at the others in his team. His white lab coat was already dirty. “Uh, yes, sir, I think they are already on it.” He shrugged, letting his thick-lensed glasses slide down his nose.
The answer was lost on Lee as a sound the like of which he had never encountered issued from beyond the plastic in the back.
“Look,” Early said at his elbow, aware of the noises but choosing to block them out.
Without consciously knowing it, Lee had started toward the rear of the building. Only the metallurgist’s voice brought him to a stop.
Early held the piece of metal in his right hand; he slowly closed his stubby fingers around it and crushed it. The sound reminded Lee of saltines being crushed. As the director watched, Early opened his hand, and amazingly the strange metal slowly reverted into its original flat shape.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Lee said softly.
“It’s like nothing we know of, almost as if each fiber”— Early hesitated, then corrected himself—“like its genetic makeup and, shape has been programmed into each… each…” He looked lost for a moment, searching for the correct term. “Hell, sir, it remembers what its shape is supposed to be, as if programmed in design. I mean, there are a few polymers that companies like 3M are working with that have tendencies toward healing themselves, but that technology is fifty or sixty years away and is all so much theory right now.”
Event: A Novel Page 20
