24
Ward Field, Virginia
The afternoon sun lengthened the shadows of the two boys who were pedaling their bikes down an isolated asphalt road as fast as their young legs could pump. The road had been constructed before World War II by the Army Air Corps, cut through rolling wilderness of an inhospitable nature. In order to avoid any misunderstanding about who owned the road and access thereto, warning signs were posted for a mile before the riders reached the first barricade. That initial barricade was comprised of foot-tall concrete stumps that looked like worn-down teeth. The ground on either side of the road allowed vehicles with a reason to proceed, to skirt the structures. The boys quickly guided their BMX bicycles between the bumps.
Over the next hill, a large faded sign read:
U.S. Government
Restricted Area
No Trespassing
For all of the attention the two young bikers paid it, the warning might as well have been written on the surface of the moon.
George Williams and Matthew Barnwell were both twelve years old, although George was six days older. They were, by mutual pact, best friends forever. George was skinny and his hair spiked out from his head like porcupine quills. A cup of rust-colored freckles seemed to have been poured over his face, scattered ear to ear and from his chin to his forehead, with more spilling down his neck. His small canvas backpack had his initials hand- lettered on the flap.
Matthew was shorter than George by a head, thirty pounds heavier, and had skin the color of a buckeye.
George pumped along, but Matthew had to get off his bike and walk it to top the final rise in the road. He stared down at Ward Field. The main gate was located a hundred feet below them. Several miles of chain-link fence topped with barbed wire enclosed the entire air-training facility. The gate was closed, wrapped with heavy chains and padlocks. The signs on either side of the gate were ill-tempered: ARMED RESPONSE! The gatehouse door and window were nailed shut. The boys coasted down the hill outside the fence, their tires cutting narrow tracks in the tangled weeds.
George and Matthew didn't know anyone who had been inside the fence, but for years kids had passed down tales of people who had gone missing after last being seen heading toward the old base. The red and white water tower, an attractive object to young men with climbing ambitions, had been partially disassembled, and the door to the wire safety cage surrounding the first twenty feet of ladder was padlocked.
Plywood covered every window of the barracks, and the roof of one had collapsed. Quonset huts were scattered around the facility: all of the structures were joined by a system of footpaths and narrow paved roads. Weeds proliferated through the concrete runway and parallel taxiway. There were three hangars; the most recent, far larger than the other two, had been built in the Vietnam era so C-130 cargo planes with tall, wide wings and tails that rose up behind them like scorpion stings could taxi straight inside.
The first time the boys scouted the fence, at the beginning of the summer, they had discovered their entrance-a depression where runoff had carved a shallow channel under the fence. George slid under easily, but Matt needed him to pull the fence up while he squirmed under.
They started across the field of knee-high weeds toward the control tower, which was barely more than a square room built on wooden telephone poles marinated in creosote. Its narrow steps were mostly rotted away and the windows were coated black with grime. Inside, a plywood table was anchored to the wall facing the runway, and a thin mattress provided a place for the boys to sit. They had a supply of old nudie magazines, candles, matches, playing cards, and a few cigarettes. The two boys didn't visit more than every other week or so, because it was so far from home. In the weeks since they had first come out, they had never seen a living soul.
As they passed close to the large hangar, they suddenly heard the unmistakable sound of a power saw. Both dropped hastily to the ground and were hidden by the tall weeds. The racket was coming from inside the building. “Somebody's here,” George told Matthew. His heart felt hot in his chest, and his mouth had gone dry with excitement. The sounds of raised voices filtered out of the structure.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Matt said.
“Think they're going to fix this place up again?”
“Naw, it's way too fucked up. Maybe they got a UFO in there. Shit, what if those men are aliens and we're gonna be invaded unless we can stop them and be heroes and get millions of dollars and be on television?”
George said, “We better get out before they catch us.”
“Split?” Matt exclaimed. “You nuts? We can sneak into the little part of the big building and see what they're up to.”
“If they're in that part, too…”
“Don't be chicken. If they do have a UFO, they can move it later and we couldn't prove it was here,” Matt said. “I'm going to spy on them.”
George was terrified, but he wasn't about to back out.
They approached a familiar entry point and knelt beside the sheet of weathered plywood covering a window. George gripped the corner of the thin board and held it up while Matt propped a cinder block under the bottom so they could climb inside.
What had once been offices now served as crowded storage rooms for the equipment not worth taking when the base had closed. The boys moved as quietly as possible through narrow aisles formed by dozens of dust- covered desks, adding machines, light fixtures, typewriters, file cabinets, and boxes stacked to the ceiling.
They made their way cautiously through the maze created by the stored equipment, using the weak light that entered the room through a grime-encrusted transom window.
Because he was the heavier of the pair, Matt boosted George up onto a file cabinet. George then planted one foot on the cabinet and the other on Matt's shoulder. From this position, he could peer through the narrow wedge at the side of the transom window.
“See any aliens?” Matt asked hopefully.
“Shhhhh. Just a bunch of guys working on airplanes and stuff.” George opened his backpack and removed the binoculars they had found in the tower. The lens on the left side was shattered, but the other side made a perfectly good telescope.
Even without uniforms, the men inside the hangar looked like soldiers to George. He knew that adults usually joked around when they worked, smiled some. But it was almost like these men had never learned how to smile, each concentrating hard on what he was doing.
“There's two airplanes and an army helicopter,” he reported. “There's a guy up on a ladder painting numbers on the big plane.”
“What else?”
“Aw, man, there's some tables full of really, really neat stuff.”
“Like what?” Matt demanded.
“Some machine guns. Bombs… or diver's tanks.”
“You're lying. I wanna see.”
“And all kinds of boxes. There's this real old man that must be the boss, because he's just looking at a computer and writing stuff down. These guys are so cool.”
“I want to see!” Matt whispered.
The old man closed the laptop and called out, “All over here!” The seven men in the hangar walked over and sat like students in chairs that had been set up.
“There's seven Army men plus the wrinkly guy,” George reported.
“Hurry up, my shoulder's gonna fall off.”
“Just a minute, he's going to talk. Be real still, and quiet.” George was so excited he almost spoke above a whisper. This was way better than a new video game. He strained to hear, hoping the discussion would be about UFOs or something just as exciting.
