The Roswell Swatch

by Scott Powers

  The driver scrambled to retrieve his weapon. Batman leapt down, wrenched the door open, grabbed his ankles, and pulled.

  The driver rolled and threw a jab that landed against Batman’s cheek and smashed his head against the doorframe.

  “Ow! Crap!”Max yelled.

  The driver placed a kick to Batman’s chest and sent him tumbling out. Behind him, Robin had her gun aimed at the man on the ground. The man inside the car turned to the gun, but the passenger door opened and a woman’s hand beat him to it. Val grabbed it and threw it over the car.

  Batman might have caught the gun Val threw toward him if he wasn’t doubled over vomiting. The weapon skittered into the street. The van roared to life, and Ted drove it up beside Batman, Robin, and the gunman whom Robin held down. The automatic side door slid open. Inside, Jen, dressed as the Green Lantern, had the third gunman down on the floor. In the moment that Eve, dressed as Robin, turned her head, the man in the car bolted.

  In a flash, he had Val.

  He wrapped her with his arms, holding a knife to her throat.

  “Drop the weapons now!”

  Robin kept her gun aimed at him though.

  “Drop the knife!”Eve shouted.“Or I will turn your head to mush.”

  The man on the ground tried to rise. Eve kicked him hard in the temple. He banged off the car’s running board and fell back to the street. He appeared to be out cold. She came down on her bad foot, swore, and nearly fell. On his knee, Max caught her and then rose, vomit on his lips. Once up, he glanced into her eyes. He nodded. And then Batman ran up the street, away from the scene.

  The man holding Val watched incredulously. Val and Eve watched Batman flee into the dark. For that moment, neither was paying much attention to the man’s knife, still angling at her jawline.

  “Hey!”he yelled.

  Val squeaked as the man traced the knife on her neck, drawing blood.

  “Hurt her more and you die right there,”Eve said.“I can take you. You know I can.”

  The standoff seemed timeless but it lasted only seconds. Eve kept her aim on the man holding Val. Blood trickled from the knife at her neck.

  “I’m not kidding,”Eve said.“I will drop you.”

  After a pause, she added,“By the way, Ziv’sdead.”

  The man’s eyes flashed. She had him.

  “It’s over. That’s why we’re here free,”Eve said,“and he’s not.”

  But he began scooting, with Val, along the car. He moved her around to the front. Eve’s aim followed him. He turned back to her.

  “I’m telling you right now, drop your weapons and she won’t get hurt. You try to shoot and I’ll fall backward, and this will pass through her jugular.”

  Behind him, a car approached.

  Max, dressed as Batman, inched his Camaro down the street with the lights off. The man with Val had his attention fixed on Eve and did not hear it coming, or look to see it as Max increased his speed. The gunman stepped away from the sedan's grill, moving a little bit more into the street.

  Max floored it and flipped on his lights.

  The Chevy burned rubber. The squeal, the engine’s roar, and the lights finally got Val’s captor’s attention. He turned from Eve and his knife hand moved away just enough, just as he saw the car burst forward, right toward them.

  Max wasn’t playing chicken. The Camaro jumped to his foot’s demand, aimed at Val and the man holding her.

  When he was a couple car lengths away, it looked like the point of no return. The man threw Val down and tumbled toward safety into the street. Val fell to her knees.

  Max turned sharply without braking. The car obeyed, swerving left with a screech. It missed Val, but it did not miss the sedan. His front right fender caught it, shearing off its right fender.

  The crash banged the sedan back, turning it. Eve and the unconscious gunman were at the pivot. It smacked the rear of Ted’s van behind them, and the van stopped it from running them over on the lurch.

  Max swerved through a narrow lawn, nearly striking a tree, as he braked into a spin that threw sod like sand. Gaining control at lower speed, he turned the car back to the street.

  The last standing man in black wasn’t done though. After diving out of the way of the speeding car, he wound up in the middle of the street near the gun Val had thrown. As all eyes were on Max, he grabbed it. He ran past the van, aimed, and fired at Max.

  His third shot shattered the Camaro’s passenger window. Eve returned fire. One shot, striking the man’s shoulder. He bucked backward and went down. The gun flew. Val got up and ran past him to retrieve it.

  This time Val didn’t throw it. She wasn’t sure how to hold it and fumbled for a moment. But she got her hand around the grip and her finger on the trigger. Furious now, she aimed it at the man bleeding in the street, her former captor. Shuddering uncontrollably and bleeding from her neck, Val stood over him, ready to shoot. The man writhed, holding the shoulder Eve shot. Eve also was aiming at him as he reached Val’s side.

  “No, Val,”she said.“No.“Do this and it will change you, forever, and not for good,”Eve said.“Besides, we need them to leave before the police arrive.”

  Val lifted her gun and heaved a sigh.

  “God will judge you,”she said.“And it won’t be merciful. You’ll be sorry. Find Jesus. I’ll pray for you, asshole.”

  Eve went to the sedan and pulled the keys from the ignition. She called to the man lying near Val.“Hey! Get up! Now!”

  He got up.

  “Now watch these very carefully. You’ll need them.”

  Eve threw the keys as hard as she could. They just cleared the chain-link fence and disappeared into the dark, in the weeds of the factory lot.

  “When we leave, take your friends and go,”she said.“It’s over, fucker. You lose.”

  Batman arrived beside her.

  “Hey! I’m all right,”he said.“Thanks for asking.”

  Robin took Batman’s arm and smiled.

  “You always are.”

  CHAPTER 27

  FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND

  That night a worried Jen awoke every three hours to check on her concussion victim friends. On the drive back tothe hotel, Max revealed he had no memory whatsoever of about a half hour of their evening, from the time he first reached the tunnel under Building F to the time they reached the car in the parking lot. He remembered devising his superhero rescue plan—for which he was taking full credit. He remembered changing into the costumes and raiding the van and sedan to save Ted and Val. But before then? No. He couldn’t even recall the slosh through the tunnels.

  That was not a good sign.

  Eve fared better. She had no memory lapses, no headaches, and no lingering effects of being knocked unconscious by the explosion. Still, Jen checked on her, much to her annoyance.

  With a couple trips to Walgreen’s, Jen did her best to administer to all their injuries, including her own minor cuts. The cut on Val’s neck was mostly superficial. It could have used a couple stitches, but Jen was able to bandage it. She’d have a little scar. One day, maybe, she’d tell people how she got it. No one would believe her. Not sweet little Val.

  Eve got a cast boot and crutches for her foot, a wrist brace, and salve for her burns and cuts. Other than his concussion, Max pulled through with some bad contusions and a couple of nasty cuts on his leg—which could have used stitches but would have to make do with butterfly bandages.

  Saturday morning settled in quietly.

  Max stripped and wiped down his car and drove it to a desolate part of town where he removed the plates and abandoned it.

  Losing the Camaro broke his heart, but he feared the broken pieces left on the street the night before might have serial numbers that could be traced. The car was proof they were part of a shootout the night before. Good luck to the cops if they tried to figure out who actually owned the car. It was registered to a limited partnership his lawyer had incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Besides, with the keys on t
he seat, he was confident it would soon be stolen.

  Still, you never know. They waited through much of the day.

  Nothing happened. A story about the explosion at the King Institute dominated the front page of the newspaper. The TV news obsessed over the explosion and fire. The official word emerged early enough to meet the paper’s deadlines the night before. It leaned toward an accident involving storage of high explosives and possibly an electrical surge. TV news quickly and consistently reported it was an accident.

  The news reported one death, that of a Dr. Ian Meln, an Ohio State University chemical engineering professor, who worked at the institute. He apparently had been in the warehouse when the explosion occurred. There was no word about him having a gun. There also was no word on Ziv. It was as if he wasn’t there, as if he never existed.

  If what he said were true about his explosives, they would find no trace of him anyway.

  Nonetheless, the FBI and ATF took over the probe, the news reported, due to the classified federal research behind the explosives.

  There was nothing in the paper or on the air about Batman, Robin, and the Green Lantern shooting it out with unknown parties on a quiet street a couple of miles from the institute. Ted found a mention of it on the websites of a couple of TV stations. They had done brief reports the night before on an unknown shooting, and because it was close to the institute and shortly after the explosion, there had been brief speculation that the two incidents might be connected. Police responded to a "shots fired" report and found blood in the street, broken glass, a piece of car bumper, and a yard that had been turfed. Nothing else. There were no eyewitnesses. The shootout was a half-day news cycle story; minor doings in a city with a hundred homicides a year.

  Val was glad she didn’t add to that number.

  Max called his manager, a discreet attorney at a boutique law firm in Houston, and ordered the purchase of another car, a Dodge Challenger. It awaited his pickup at a nearby dealership.

  Other than that, they hadn't dared contact anyone outside yet. They were anxious to—especially Ted, who wanted to warn the network of infiltration. Max convinced him if there was an infiltration, someone might be waiting for such a warning call and could trace it back to them.

  They got away, but they didn’t go far. They had no idea, with Ziv dead, whether the silencers still were looking for them. Saturday passed slowly, and they stayed put. They laid low.

  On Sunday morning, the Dayton Daily Newspublished Jim Fish’s news story on the mystery of the 1955 Air Force deaths. Max found it online, read it, and handed his laptop to Eve.

  It was headlined,“Probe open on Ike-era airmen deaths.”A subhead declared,“Six accidental deaths‘were not accidents,’survivor says.”

  The article had a dual byline. The other name on it was "Dan Rose, Sr."

  The story began at the bottom of the front page and jumped to a page inside. It had Eve’s picture of the airmen together, plus individual pictures of each of the airmen, but not of Eve’s grandmother. Eve assumed the paper never found a picture of Fay. Where would they?

  The article retold Gleibicz’sstory of the secret mission that night, the stolen materials, of his meetings, and of the deaths, one after another, of the six airmen and the other airman’s wife in an oddly coincidental run of tragic accidents.

  Based on Gleibicz’sstatements and Fish’s research, the Greene and Montgomery counties' sheriffs decided to open a joint investigation.

  There wasn’t one word in the article about UFOs or Roswell. Of course not, Max said over Eve’s shoulder. Gleibicz claimed to know nothing about it. The elder Rose, too, knew nothing directly. Rose was not quoted in the story, but the story clearly drew from his notes.

  The story also didn’t mention Eve or Max.

  Eve didn’t care about the Roswell omission. She was euphoric over the news her grandmother’s death would be investigated. As she read the story, tears welled in her eyes. If nothing else, she had avenged someone who had died thirty years before Eve was born. She felt a mystical bond to her. Never mind Eve had known the killer and heard his confession. Or that she could never tell and knew the sheriffs would never solve it. And the killer himself now, quite literally, no longer existed.

  Ted drove Max to pick up the Challenger; it was Navy blue and just as muscular as the Z-28.

  Eve called Fish.

  He called her back about a half hour later.

  "I found her," Fish said.

  Eve fought back tears. "Thank you," she managed. And then she went for a walk. Her smart phone told her a business district not far from the hotel had all she wanted. She bought what she needed and returned to the hotel.

  Max and Ted were back.

  "We're going to Dayton," Eve instructed Max. "Fish found out where my grandmother is buried, and I need to visit her."

  Fay Fynn was buried in a cemetery in what was now a suburb called Beavercreek, right off the freeway. Fish said he would meet them there.

  Eve and Max found the cemetery tucked behind a Lutheran church, not far from the old section of the Air Force base. Max turned the car slowly off a busy road through an iron gate beyond the church and passed a caretaker's house. A map signboard directed visitors to different sections, designated by letters and numbers. Eve checked the number Fish had phoned in and directed Max to drive two-thirds of the way around a long loop of narrow lane. They parked next to a small, limestone, block mausoleum.

  Light rain fell. Eve carried bundles of flowers and a large, yellow nylon shopping bag of merchandise she had purchased on her walk. They split up, wandering the tombstones and memorials, looking for Fay Fynn. The rain remained soft but soaked them nonetheless.

  "Eve! Eve!" Max shouted through the now steady drizzle. Eve stood some twenty yards away, crouching to read a headstone.

  "I found her!”Max called to her.

  Max found a simple, rectangular limestone marker, two feet wide and eighteen inches tall. "Fay Evelyn Fynn," it read. "1935-1955."

  And below that: "Beloved wife and mother."

  Eve fell to her knees on her grandmother's grave. She knelt there silently for minutes, not crying and not talking. Communing. Max had the good sense to stand back and keep his mouth shut. He didn’t even sing.

  The moment was broken by the arrival of Jim Fish, who appeared out of the rain shower only when he was a few feet away, as if he had stepped through a curtain. Unlike them, he had thought to bring an umbrella. He walked over to them without saying a word and handed it to Max. He held it over Eve.

  She spoke at last.

  "Grandma Fay, I never got to meet you, but I feel like I know you," Eve said. "And I think you know me. You’ve been with me this whole time, haven’t you?”

  She waited for an answer.

  She placed one of the bundles of flowers, all white, in front of the stone.

  "We have avenged you Grandma Fay, you and Grandpa Joe both," Eve said. "It's okay now. It's all okay. You can rest in peace. It's okay now."

  She wiped her eyes.

  "Thank you, Grandma Fay. I love you."

  Eve got up, the legs of her jeans covered with mud. Max raised the umbrella higher but still said nothing. Neither did Fish.

  Holding the other bundle of flowers and her bag, Eve wandered off, away from the protection of the umbrella. Max and Fish exchanged glances but did not follow. She meandered in the rain, looking for something.

  At last, Eve settled into a spot of open grass, inspected the ground around it, and seemed to nod her head. Max finally followed, and Fish followed him.

  Eve set down the flowers, opened her bag, and withdrew an iron rod. No, it wasn't an iron rod. It was an iron marker, with a twelve-inch spike at one end. At the other end, atop a foot-long shaft, the marker broadened into a weave of iron, and within it were iron icons, the curve of a crescent moon and a star.

  She raised the marker over her head and slammed it into the muddy turf. It sank deep enough. Eve picked up the flowers.

 
Max and Fish moved closer. Eve had gotten the marker engraved.

  "Faheema al-Jabaar," it read.

  "If I prayed, I'd pray for you to forgive me, Faheema," she said. "And I'd pray that God will forgive your son, and that you will too. And I’d pray that your daughters get what you dreamed for them.

  “May you rest in peace. May you know your courage is my courage. And maybe RanraAli’s. And maybe your daughters'.”

  Max and Fish stood behind her now. Max tried to reach the umbrella far enough to shield Eve, but she clearly didn't care, or even acknowledge their presence. She laid the second bundle of white flowers against the base of the new memorial. She communed in silence. They waited in respect. Finally, she rose and strode past the two men and walked quickly toward the car.

  “We’re done here,”she said.“Let’s get the hell out of the rain.”

  She kept walking, leaving them standing behind.

  "What was that all about?" Fish asked, accepting the umbrella's handle back from Max.

  “Long story, I think. But honestly, I have no idea," he said, staring at the new memorial in Beavercreek, Ohio, to an Afghan woman.

  The two men turned and walked solemnly back to their cars, sharing Fish's umbrella. Fish started toward Eve, who was inside Max’s car, but Max turned him away.

  “I think we should leave her be for now,”Max said.

  Fish nodded and turned toward his own car. Max stayed with him.

  "Nice article. You did a good job," Max said.

  "Thanks."

  "But you pussied out about the Roswell connection."

  "Did you blow up the King Institute the other night?" Fish asked.

  "Not us," Max said. "We might have been there, but we didn't blow it up."

  "But it had something to do with all of this."

  Max turned to look into Fish's face. "You know it did."