CHAPTER THREE
APRIL 19, 1962
Swenson was young for his rank: a brigadier general now at age thirty-three. In a decade, he’d have three more stars but he could hardly have known that at this moment, dressed in fatigues and riding in an open jeep through the ridged Nevada desert. The sun beat down on him like a crushing, physical weight. The jeep’s suspension yanked him back and forth against his canvas seat belt as if trying to throw him out onto the sand.
Another one, he thought.
Swenson’s job seemed ironic; with all the crucial matters going on in the world, Swenson’s discreet assignments were the most crucial of all, yet no one would ever know. There was talk of a nuclear test-ban treaty, and there was Vietnam. The current president in Saigon was using U.S. funds to fight the Buddhists instead of the Vietcong, and rumors were rife that Kennedy wanted a new administration there, even if it meant assassinating the old. And as for Cuba, a full year after the Bay of Pigs failure, Swenson had already seen the NSC briefings between the state department and the CIA; Kennedy had six more assassination plots on Castro in the works, plus another full-scale invasion plan. Cuba was going to get hot fast; Swenson wouldn’t be surprised if the Soviets started installing missiles there soon.
Racial unrest was exploding all over the country—this man named King—and pro-communist militias were springing up everywhere. Heroin was flowing into every major city, and a risky tampering with the oil-depletion allowance could potentially shatter the economy.
Yet with all these dire examples, Swenson could only think these two words that felt like a dark throb in his head:
Another one��
“—by NORAD and the VLRA in New Mexico, sir,” his driver was saying, Lieutenant Hanover, was saying beside him. The young officer steered the jeep like a quick skiff, swerving around obstacles of rock and cattle skulls. “The 1022nd SPs have already secured the site but…it’s a big site, sir.”
“They always are,” Swenson said more to himself.
“What’s that, sir?”
“Nothing.” Swenson eyed the desert. “Thank God it cracked up here and not downtown Las Vegas or Reno.” Mother of God, he thought. Can you imagine?
The jeep buffeted over more sandy hillocks. Cacti stood out all around them, like sentinels. Soon, though, the sentinels would be just as green but heavily armed. From beneath the seat, he pulled out a roll of black duct tape. He peeled off a piece and placed it over the embroidered name-tag over his left breast pocket, then handed another piece to Hancock.
“Cover that nametag, son. The SOPs don’t change just because we’re on government land.”
“Yes, sir.”
A short time later, the jeep ground to a halt. Swenson slowly got out, looking ahead at the edge of the bluff. Security police milled about several commo trucks.
“I need—”
“The retrieval units are already being choppered in from Edwards, sir,” Hancock said.
“Good. Use the star-net band and radio 1st Air Transport. I want them right behind the retrieval teams.”
“Yes sir.”
Hancock briskly departed for the commo truck, leaving Swenson to stand alone looking out at the edge of the bluff.
He didn’t sweat in the great blaze of sun; instead it seemed to dry him out like a twig, like something drained of all moisture. Yes, Swenson was young for his rank, but right now he felt ancient, enfeebled.
Another one, came the repeating thought.
“Would you like to take a look, General?”
The voice caught him off guard. A security sergeant had approached, was offering a pair of binoculars. The sergeant didn’t salute because he was armed. Slung to his shoulder was one of the new Stoner assault rifles which everyone was saying would win the Vietnam war.
“Thank you, Sergeant.” He took the binoculars. “Carry on.”
“Yes, sir.”
Swenson walked to the edge of the bluffed, brought the binoculars to his eyes, and looked down…
God in heaven, he thought.
««—»»
“God in heaven,” he croaked, just as he had thirty-eight years ago on that sun-swept desert bluff. General Swenson was seventy-one years old now, and dying. The disease had confined him to the convalescent bed surrounded by flanks of beeping cardiac monitors and medicine cabinets. The was an armed guard in the house round the clock, as well as an orderly from Walter Reed. He hated to think how many tax dollars were being spent simply to have his inevitable death properly overseen.
It was the e-lex print-out that had caused the sudden memory jag, taking Swenson’s mind back to that horridly hot day thirty-eight years ago. He been right about much that day: John F. Kennedy had sanctioned the overthrow and assassination of the president of South Vietnam only to be assassinated himself three weeks later. Heroin continued to flow into the country along with newer, worse evils, and the Soviets had tried to arm Cuba with nuclear missiles which had brought the world to within twenty-four hours of World War III.
The heart monitors continued to beep behind him, and so did the drip-monitor on the overhead I.V. bag. Swenson’s eyes—an old man’s eyes now—glanced back at the tulle-thin sheet of printer paper that the guard had brought in to him only moments ago.
The sheet seemed too thin, too insubstantial to carry so grievous a message, a message, nevertheless, that only he and a few others in the world could fully understand.
The e-lex read:
052899 - 0613 HRS
DE: FBI HQ CNTRL PROSS
TO: RELEVANT AD OR DEPUTY SECTION CHIEF/STATUS: FYI
SUBJECT: W/M 34 YO, URSLIG, JACK, H. (DECEASED)
READ: VSP VIOLENT CRIMES UNIT REPORTS THAT SUBJECT WAS FOUND
MURDERED IN HIS RESTON, VA, HOME THREE NIGHTS AGO AT 11:39 PM.
COD: SMALL CALIBER GUNSHOT WOUND TO THE HEAD. SUBJECT’S HOME SECURITY SYSTEM SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN EXPERTLY BYPASSED.
PASS
READ: SUBJECT URSLIG, JACK, H. IS FORMER FBI SA
END/PAGE ONE OF ONE PAGE
He let the paper slipped from his fingers to the bed sheets. He blinked, and then his old eyes were staring back again—
—back to that day in April almost four decades ago—
««—»»
—another one, Brigadier General Swenson thought, roving the binoculars over the crash site. The interminable heat beat down on his back, but by now he was numb; he didn’t even feel it. He was looking down off the bluff…
The contact perimeter stretched for hundreds of yards, filled with a varying a varying degree of black crash debris. At first he thought—he hoped—this might be a false alarm. It might be one of the YF-12 prototypes that Northrop was developing; they were rumored to be skinned with black titanium sheet. But when he rolled down the zoom ring for a closer angle, he saw that the debris appeared almost chunk-like, nothing akin to any aircraft skin he could imagine. Most of the pieces appeared to be no larger than baseballs.
Nothing like New Mexico, he thought. Nothing like Brazil…
Dozens of recovery vehicles surrounded the site, while at least a hundred Air Force security men were sifting out and removing the debris with rakes. There must have been thousands of pieces.
No, this is different. Different from the others. A different…race…
The debris lay strewn in a vast fan shape, the widest end being the farthest off. The initial impact point. So at least there was one universal invariant. The debris-line narrowed as it approached the foot of the bluff on which Swenson now stood.
That’s where it stopped, not fifty yards off below.
That’s where the only intact part of the craft had stopped.
Must’ve been huge, he realized. Long.
In front of the plume of debris, pushed against a wave of sand, sat what could only be the forward-most compartment of the vehicle. Swenson couldn’t be sure from this distance, but it appeared to be cylindrical—can-shaped—and black; he guessed approximately ten feet high, twenty-five or thirty feet long.
No evidence of anything that could be likened to rivet-work, screws, or welding. No sign of any seams.
Then—
Wait, he thought. Swenson rolled the zoom down all the way, bringing the jagged can-shaped object to maximum closeness.
A pattern seemed to exist on the side of this alien fuselage. Not a marking…but something functional.
A shape.
A trapezoid.
Like a dark window, Swenson thought.
««—»»
Disgruntled, as he always was, Garrett walked down Connecticut Avenue, away from Benny’s Rebel Room Tavern and his overly sarcastic friend Craig.
“No one believes me,” he spoke aloud to himself. Not a good sign of stability. “Everyone thinks I’m some kind of conspiracy crackpot. No girlfriend, no running water and no phone. And no respect.”
For no apparent reason, he stopped in front of a comic shop and found himself peering into the broad window. Faces stared back at him: Galactus the Devourer, Superman, Doctor Doom. Grub Girl and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Caped Crusader. They all seemed to glance back at him in hilarity. But it wasn’t the tableau of colorful comic faces that Garrett stared so intently at.
It was his own reflection.
“Everyone I know thinks I’m a flake,” he watched his reflection’s lips tell him. He stared a full minute more.
“Maybe… Maybe they’re right.”
But before this moment of self-condemnation could continue, a loud squeal burned behind him: tires screeching. Garrett, startled, jumped at the sudden screech; he could even smell smoking tire rubber as he was turning around to look, expecting to witness a serious fender bender. But no collision followed.
Garrett had time only to see a white van stopped at the curb, the side-panel of which read JINKO’S PRINTING, WE DELIVER! Then something clicked in Garrett’s mind…
Jinko’s… Isn’t that a—
No time remained to even finish the thought. The van’s back doors popped open, and two suited men already on the street grabbed Garrett, covered his mouth, and strong-armed him into the back of the van.