Fallout

by James W. Huston

  Crane looked at him suspiciously. “Is Pakistan in Africa?”

  He was able to hold his tongue, but not his sarcastic tone. “Uh, no.”

  “Is Nevada?”

  He sighed. “No.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  He answered her unasked question. “Some people have some . . . concerns.”

  “What people?” she asked as she continued to stare. Her mind was spinning quickly. Finally her face showed recognition. “Your brother.”

  He nodded slowly, knowing what was coming.

  Now she was truly angry. “You’re doing private intelligence consulting on the side? Using United States government assets?”

  “Where’d you hear about this?”

  “That doesn’t matter. You’ve got no business working for your brother. Not from here.”

  “I’m not working for my brother. I’m working for the United States. Our job is to protect the United States. I admit it’s a little unorthodox. I figured if somebody needed to follow up, I’d pass it on.”

  “No. You’re not passing on anything. You do the work I’ve given you. If you have extra time on your hands, you let me know.”

  Hayes didn’t respond. Nothing like a lecture from a parasite bureaucrat who’d violated the Peter Principle three jobs ago.

  She looked at him, waiting for a response, then realized he wasn’t going to respond. “I’m serious.”

  “Why do you care?” Hayes replied. “You ever make calls from work that may benefit the country that aren’t directly related to work on Africa?”

  “No. And you shouldn’t either.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Don’t start that tone with me, Kevin. I won’t put up with it.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  She waited for him to say one more thing, something that she could really jump on. He didn’t. She walked quickly out of his corner cubicle.

  “Bitch,” he said to her back after she left.

  * * *

  Sluf closed the door on his Cessna and leaned down to walk out from under the wing. He stood straight up and looked at the sun just rising in the east. He smiled. He had never been more content in his life. He’d found a new condo in Las Vegas near both the Strip and the airport where he kept his “new” Cessna. He commuted every day from Las Vegas to Tonopah, arriving early and leaving early.

  He checked his watch. It was an hour before he had to be at his first brief. He saw the auxiliary hangar out of the corner of his eye and immediately felt guilty. Luke had been serious about his being the “facilities officer.” He was supposed to check out the entire air base and make sure nothing was about to blow up or burn down or fall in on someone. He was to see what needed to be painted and when. He sighed. He hadn’t done one thing since Luke had asked him.

  He glanced at the Area 51 Café and felt the pull of his first cup of coffee. He had it there every morning. It could wait. He walked to the auxiliary hangar, a good eight hundred yards from his airplane, away from the activity of the base. The hangar wasn’t being used for anything. He figured it would take him thirteen seconds to make sure it wasn’t going to collapse, and then he could get his coffee.

  He walked quickly to the hangar and looked for the entrance. He saw a door on the side and decided to try it. It was solid steel and rusted at the corners. There was no lock, and the door was slightly ajar. He pulled on the edge of the door, and it swung open easily. Great, he thought. Perfect place for a bunch of coyotes and snakes to be lurking. He stepped through the door, and it swung closed behind him. It was nearly dark in the hangar. There were windows in the back of the building, opposite the huge sliding doors, but not enough to cast anything but the dimmest light onto the floor. He shuffled his feet forward carefully, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  He frowned as he heard the faint sound of metal on metal. He squinted to see where the sound had come from—somewhere in the back corner of the cavernous hangar, to his left. He moved slowly toward it. It suddenly stopped.

  He stopped. His breath came more quickly. He listened carefully but heard nothing. The far walls were now coming into focus, and the hazy windows to his left, high off the concrete, grew brighter in the morning light.

  He walked farther and was thirty feet into the hangar when he suddenly realized he wasn’t alone. He saw someone in the far corner. He squinted. Whoever it was wasn’t moving; he was standing there, staring at Sluf.

  Sluf began walking more quickly toward the person. He could now make him out fairly clearly but then was startled to realize that the man wasn’t alone. There were at least eight others with him. Sluf stopped dead in his tracks. He recognized the man just before he spoke.

  “Mr. Sluf,” Khan said.

  Sluf was too shocked to say anything. They were all Pakistanis, all four pilots and several maintenance men, gathered around a small crane and a bomb dolly, with charts and diagrams all over the floor. Sluf looked around the rest of the hangar but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “What the hell are you doing in here?” he finally asked.

  Khan and the others began walking toward him. “I could ask you the same thing,” he replied.

  “Except that I have a reason to be here and you don’t.”

  “Of course we do. We are doing training.”

  “With a crane and a bomb dolly?” Sluf said skeptically.

  “Yes. It is part of what we do. We must always train. We needed a quiet place away from the rest of the people.”

  “You never got permission.”

  “On the contrary. Mr. Luke gave us permission to use this hangar whenever we wanted.”

  “That’s bullshit, Khan. He put me in charge of facilities. No one is to use this hangar. It isn’t available. And you sure as hell never told us you were going to practice bomb loading. Where the hell did you get that crane anyway?”

  “We brought it with us,” Khan said as he reached Sluf and stood directly in front of him.

  Sluf shifted uneasily as two of the Pakistanis moved around to either side of him. “Why would you bring a crane with you?”

  “For these practices. All of our men must practice all the time. We must always be ready for war with India.”

  Sluf wasn’t buying it. “At six in the morning?”

  “Yes. Before our other obligations begin.” Khan studied Sluf’s face. He glanced at the two men flanking Sluf and nodded very subtly.

  “I want you guys out of here. Just leave the crane, and we’ll see about getting you some space to—”

  Sluf stopped as the man to his right suddenly gasped and bent over in pain. Sluf was completely confused by what might have happened to the man but realized too late it was just to cause him to turn his head. The Pakistani now directly behind Sluf grabbed him in a choke hold and pulled back hard on his neck with his forearm.

  Sluf fell backward into the man as he fought the pressure on his throat. He pulled on the man’s arm and tried to scream out. He had no air. He knew he had only seconds to get out of the hold or he would be dead. He tried to get his feet under him so he could lift up against the shorter man, but the man kept shifting to keep Sluf off balance.

  Khan stepped forward with lightning speed and drove his fist into Sluf’s solar plexus, driving out the remaining air in his lungs. Sluf began to see stars. He flailed at the man behind him with his fists but couldn’t land a punch. He tried to kick but realized his kicks were going in directions he couldn’t control.

  Then his vision started to go, as if he were pulling too many Gs. Sluf’s gelled hair fell into his face as he expired in the arms of the Pakistani, who waited until there was no movement. He lowered Sluf slowly to the hangar floor.

  Khan knelt down and felt for a pulse in Sluf’s throat. There was none. “He is finished.” He stood and looked around, then at the man who had killed Sluf. “Put him in that tool locker. Tonight you will go to Reno to buy those GPS receivers we have told them we need. On the way you will find a bridge or a cave and t
ake care of this,” he said, looking at Sluf. “They will never find him in time to stop us now.”

  13

  Morning,” Luke said to Glenda as she stood behind the counter. “Well, the big boss. I’m surprised to see you here. I don’t think you’ve had breakfast here before,” Glenda replied, smiling. She was a kind-faced woman in her mid-fifties who exuded humility.

  Luke looked around, surprised, at the crowd. There were ten students eating breakfast and five instructors. Other staff members were spread throughout the café, and Stamp sat at a table by the door. He had arrived early in his MiG-17 and walked straight to the Area 51 Café.

  “Did you agree to call this the Area 51 Café?” Luke asked Glenda.

  “You know how he is. If I didn’t let him, then we’d have to explain him wearing that hat all the time, wouldn’t we? Now those who don’t know just figure he’s wearing a hat after the name of the café.”

  Luke laughed out loud. Just then Raymond walked in from the back of the café. Luke and Glenda exchanged a glance without saying anything. “Three eggs scrambled with some bacon, and an English muffin.”

  Glenda nodded.

  Luke stood by the counter and watched Glenda put the eggs on the grill. He watched her husband fill the refrigerator with gallons of milk from the back. Luke addressed Glenda again: “Have you decided whether to let Vlad use your voice?”

  Glenda shook her head. “I just don’t know about that, Mr. Henry. I don’t think I even understand.”

  “Simple. A lot of the warnings in the MiG-29 are voice recorded. They say things like ‘Raise your landing gear,’ “ he said in a quiet voice, like HAL, the computer in 2001. “Or ‘Your left engine is on fire.’ That sort of stuff. The MiGs came with Russian warnings, which of course are not a lot of help to those of us who don’t speak Russian. Vlad—probably his company, actually—had some German woman record the warnings for us, but in English. They sound hilarious. Nobody can understand her—‘You haff ze left enchine on fi-ah!’ He must have paid her about five bucks. She is as far from fluent as you can get. We’re all running around saying, ‘Achtung! Race ze lahnding gee-ah?’ We’re starting to talk in German accents. Vlad’s tired of taking shit all the time, so he decided to ask you. I think you’d be perfect. It’d be like our mothers warning us that we were about to fall out of the car or something. I guarantee you your voice would get our attention.” He spoke quietly and gently, “ ‘Low fuel!’ ”

  “I don’t know, I’m afraid I would do something wrong,” she said, smiling warmly.

  Luke grabbed a porcelain cup off the stack next to the Bunn coffeemaker and poured himself a cup. “There’s nothing to go wrong. If it gets screwed up, we’ll just redo it. We can record it here. Why don’t you? It’ll make you famous.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  Luke spied Raymond again. “Hey, Raymond. How are you doing?”

  He replied in his humorless way, “Fine, Mr. Henry. How do you like the café?”

  “Great. Don’t know about the name, though.” Luke didn’t realize that Vlad had come into the café and was standing right behind him. “You seen Sluf? His airplane is already here.”

  Glenda answered. “Not yet, but he always comes here first thing. He’s so nice.”

  “Don’t be too charmed,” Luke warned. “He’s a ladies’ man. They all like him, and he just uses them.”

  “Good morning, Vladimir,” Glenda said over Luke’s shoulder. “I’ve got your bread ready.”

  “What bread?” Luke asked.

  “Black Russian bread. Good for butter and jam. Filling,” Vlad said enthusiastically.

  Luke turned and looked at Vlad, whose hair was a wreck. “Hard night?”

  Vlad frowned. “What you mean?”

  “You look like something the cat dragged in.”

  “What does this mean, cat dragging?”

  “I finally got my cell phone working, Mr. Henry,” Raymond said, proudly taking his phone off his belt clip.

  Luke glanced at him. “That’s great.”

  “I need your home phone number.”

  Luke was surprised. “What for?”

  “I always keep the home phone number of my boss in the cell phone, in case of emergency. I mean, around here anything can happen. Right?”

  Luke looked at Raymond’s hat again. “Right.” He gave him his home phone number. “Don’t be giving that out to any intergalactic salesmen.”

  Raymond frowned. “Like who?”

  “Any of them. And make sure you get Vlad’s number at the BOQ, too. Wake him up first if there’s an emergency. He’s much more likely to actually be able to do something about it.”

  He nodded. “Your number’s safe with me.”

  Glenda handed Luke his plate. “Several of the others are outside, if you want to join them.”

  Luke nodded and went outside. Thud, Crumb, and Stamp were chuckling at one of the tables under an umbrella. They had finished their breakfasts and were leaning back in their chairs.

  “Morning,” Luke said. He sat down at the table.

  “Hey, boss,” Crumb said. The others greeted him quietly.

  “What did you think of that mission-planning session with Khan and his boys yesterday?” Luke asked as he sat down.

  Thud shook his head. “Bizarre. It was like we were planning an actual mission for him. I mean, hardened concrete targets, laser-guided bombs, no SAMS, some possible fighter defense? It sounded like an actual event to me. It was spooky.”

  “I saw you give Stick that ‘dial it down’ signal, Thud,” Stamp commented.

  “Absolutely. I’m giving this guy only C-plus or B-minus information. He’ll never learn all I know about fighters—”

  Crumb laughed. “Shit, Thud. You don’t know anything about fighters! I could kick your ass with my visor taped over!”

  “Except for Crumb,” Thud continued, “who is unbeatable and therefore would gain nothing from whatever I know, others, like Khan, I wouldn’t tell left from right. We just need to get him through the class and get him out of here.”

  Luke nodded. “You know what I noticed?”

  “What?” Crumb asked.

  “One of his guys was writing down every word and copying our rough drawings of flight paths we did on the board.”

  “I just don’t get it,” Thud said. “Hayes may be right. He get anything from his brother yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “You know, maybe we should take it up a notch. Maybe we should formally ask the CIA to look into them for us.”

  Luke frowned. “And what would we tell the Undersecretary?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Me neither.”

  “More coffee?” Raymond asked as he brought the carafe to the table. He left the coffee and was about to turn and walk back inside when Crumb stopped him. “Hey, Raymond,” he said. Raymond looked at him. “I hear you been watching for aliens.”

  Raymond frowned at Crumb. He was growing tired of constantly being belittled for his interest in UFOs. “Who told you that?”

  “Word is you go out in the middle of the night and sit on the hills.” Crumb watched his face. “Is that true?”

  “What if I do? Something wrong with that?”

  “Depends.”

  “Leave the poor man alone,” Thud said, taking a bite of his omelet. He felt responsible for Raymond and Glenda’s being there. Anything Raymond did that was odd reflected on him, he thought.

  Crumb pressed right on. “And you use these huge binoculars.”

  “Something illegal about that?”

  “No,” Crumb said, controlling his mirth. “I’m just wondering if you’ve seen anything. Had any close encounters?”

  Raymond assumed a tone of authority. “I’ve seen some curious things, but nothing I’m prepared to report on to you.”

  “Well, shit, Raymond, how are we going to know all this good stuff if you won’t tell us?”

  “Because you don’t believe anything I say about
it. You think it’s a big joke.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “I can tell,” Raymond said, putting his hands on his hips. “Everybody thinks it’s all real funny.”

  “Just tell me something that will convince me there are UFOs out there. Just one thing,” Crumb said.

  Raymond thought about it. There were so many things he could tell. Finally he said, “All right. This here Area 51 that’s nearby. What goes on there?”

  “Groom Lake? Beats the hell out of me. It’s run by the Air Force.” Crumb glanced at Luke. “You know?”

  “No idea.”

  “Well, Mr. Crummey,” Raymond said, “it’s where they keep all the evidence of aliens. They claim it’s related to the Air Force and keep it in ‘black programs’ and don’t tell anybody about it. And how about this, what about John Denver?”

  “What about him?” Crumb asked, looking at Luke, who was equally perplexed about how John Denver might be related to black programs.

  “You’ve heard of Roswell, New Mexico? The Roswell incident?”

  “Sure. I saw Independence Day. Everybody knows about Roswell.”

  “Yeah, well, John Denver wasn’t his real name. You know that?”

  “What was his real name?”

  “Schickelgruber.”

  “No it wasn’t.” Crumb guffawed. “That was Hitler’s name!”

  “Well, it was something like that. It wasn’t Denver.”

  “It was Deutschendorf. So what?”

  “So he was living his life in disguise. Then he suddenly has an airplane accident in the middle of the ocean and disappears.”

  “And?” Stamp asked.

  “Know where he was born?”

  “No idea.”

  “Roswell, New Mexico.” He beamed. “And, his father was in the Air Force.”

  Luke fought back a laugh. “Well, there it is.”

  Crumb just stared at Raymond. “Raymond, I had no damned idea.”

  Raymond gained a look of vindication as he stood a little taller and adjusted his hat. “So I’m always on the lookout. And if I see anything, I will let you know.”