'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.'
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
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
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 police 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.
