The Russian chuckled. “How I miss killing Germans,” he said.
Knox tightened his grip on the silenced Colt .45 he held in his right hand. He still angled that side away from Makar.
“But you know what I miss even more?” Makar waited, but Knox remained unresponsive. The spy slid his hands into his coat pockets. “I miss standing over the corpses of cowards who fled from battle.”
Knox leaned and raised the Colt just as a gunshot rang out from Makar’s right side coat pocket. The next bullet that fired erupted from Knox’s barrel.
The round from Makar’s pistol missed its target and struck a dense pillar of concrete. Knox’s .45 round penetrated Makar’s forehead, scrambling a good portion of his brain into mush.
Knox stood over the dead heap, angry and resentful. Another haunting memory poised itself to stalk him.
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Northern Virginia, March 22, 1950
Hints of spring surrounded Talbot as he sat on the bench by the pond. But still no ducks swam nearby to fetch his bread, which he held bagged up beside him.
Knox strode up behind Talbot, but no telltale snow tracks existed anymore to offer him a safe path to follow. This lack of direction failed to slow his pace, however. In just the few days since he’d run out of his medication, he’d actually felt better and more clear-headed without it.
As he neared Talbot, Knox pulled a newspaper out from under his arm. Sitting on the bench, he offered it to Talbot, who took and unfolded it.
“So nice to see you again, Knox. I look forward to your good humor.”
“Have a laugh at that, then,” Knox said, gesturing at the paper, which was the Farmington Daily Times, dated March 18, 1950. “Nice headline, don’t you think?”
“‘Huge Saucer Armada Jolts Farmington,’” Talbot said, quoting the front page.
“That followed multiple days of abundant eyewitness sightings of numerous unidentified craft over the city. Thousands of eyewitnesses, Talbot.”
“So we’ve gathered.”
“The day I reconciled our differences with Calabacita was the armada day.” Knox paused and peered toward the sky. “Hundreds, Talbot. They filled the heavens. All led by a red craft.” He lowered his head and stared off into the distance. “What did we glimpse?”
Serene Talbot folded up the newspaper and tucked it away. He sighed, and then said, “An armada of flying saucers.”
Knox turned and noticed Talbot’s empty gaze and pursed lips. “And what else, Talbot? There’s more, isn’t there?”
Talbot squinted at the trees beyond the pond and said, “A glimpse of things to come. Of course, we don’t all agree on what it means. But some fear it. Production of the super has been stepped up. The Russians won’t be far behind. Others, many others, will follow suit.”
Knox blinked. “What’s the estimated date for the… Armada’s arrival?” he said.
“You know… As far as the sightings go… Well, mass hysteria and people’s imaginations just got the best of them.”
“The date, Talbot?”
“Venus. Fragmenting Skyhooks. Blowing leaves and tufts of desert milkweed. Hell. Even illuminated duck bellies.”
“Talbot.”
“It’s all just from so much moonshine too.” Talbot gestured as if he drank from a liquor bottle. “It was Saint Patrick’s Day, after all.” Talbot nodded and chuckled. “More glimpses are planned. Our men in black will be busy and will need many stories to tell. They will confuse, intimidate, and intervene if needed. The glimpses will give us more answers, but people must not know—”
Knox clenched his teeth and swiveled sideways, interrupting Talbot. “When will the armada arrive? And why will it come?” His voice resonated sternness.
Talbot offered nothing but steadfast silence.
Knox stood and marched away.
Talbot peered after him, saying, “Seeing the future doesn’t mean you can change it. But you can prepare for it, and survive it just long enough… I hope we can count on you to stay in this.”
Knox halted. He sighed, and then said, “What did we glimpse?”
Talbot stood and said, “You know as well as any that humanity’s madness is as boundless as it is certain. What did we see? You tell me, Knox. What do you see when you close your eyes at night?”
His heart ached again, so Knox rubbed his chest. He shook his head. “War.”
“Prepare for it, Knox, because it will come. Only those who survive long enough will see the light of day.”
A breeze swirled past the two, sending ripples across the pond toward its far shore. Knox loosened his black tie, unbuttoned his white shirt at the collar, and brushed dust off his black suit. He put on his dark sunglasses and watched Talbot return to sit on the bench.
Then, Knox walked away, heading home to his wife and son.
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Personal Bomb Shelter, Late March 2050
The elderly pair exited the structure that Liam’s Grandfather Knox built one hundred years earlier. After coughing and straining to gain their bearings amid a dusty realm, Liam and Therese raised their faces to what awaited them.
Wrinkled skin slackened as they glimpsed an endless array of saucer shaped vessels darting about in huge formations above a boundless wasteland of thermonuclear destruction spread out before them. Piles of unrecognizable debris, what must have been their neighborhood, littered the smoldering landscape. Above them, a lone, red, glowing saucer halted. Other discs soon joined it. The formation hovered—in silence—while the red leader descended as if preparing to land.
Liam and Therese leaned into each other and clasped their hands. Both sought comfort and salvation in the other. Together, they collapsed to their knees, weeping.
“He was right,” Liam said, struggling. “We survived just long enough. He was right… Help has arrived.”
Excerpt from
Truth Insurrected:
The Saint Mary Project
Chapter 1
Uncorrelated Observation
The star-filled sky over the northeast heights of Tucson, Arizona, stirred up both fond memories and awful pain within William Harrison. Viewing the infinite horizons above also provoked his sense of insignificance and rising uselessness.
As he sat inside his parked black Dodge Charger, he sighed, and looked through a pair of night-vision binoculars at a house down the street. The couple inside the house had drawn the curtains and turned out the lights an hour ago. This was the third illicit liaison Harrison had observed between this particular man and woman. Although both were married, neither one of their spouses were anywhere near this place.
Harrison had already gathered plenty of photographic evidence of their affair and looked forward to closing this case very soon. The husband, who had contracted him to investigate the rumored relationship, would be devastated for sure, but at least he would know the truth. Harrison could then move on to another case, another boring case. Life as a private investigator paid the bills, but offered little other reward.
After lowering the driver-side window and opening the sunroof, Harrison lit up a cigarette. The smoke floated skyward, carrying Harrison’s gaze with it. As the smoke dissipated above him, he caught a glimpse of something out of the ordinary.
Out of confusion, and to clear his eyes of smoke, he blinked several times. More focused now, he saw the object again. His eyes had not played tricks on him. A radiant sphere high overhead darted back and forth, and then halted its erratic movement in a single abrupt stop. These maneuvers repeated several times. Harrison sat mesmerized, mouth agape, having never observed anything like this before.
The dangling cigarette in his hand scorched his middle finger. He cursed under his breath, and then dropped the cigarette onto the center console. It rolled off and lodged beyond his reach next to the leather seat.
“Damn it,” Harrison said, pushing the door open. He exited the car and stood up, feeling his right thigh twinge with pain. The old injury still ached. After struggling to recover the smoldering ci
garette between the seat and console, he tossed it onto the street and squished it under his boot.
Without hesitation, Harrison searched the sky for the object again. He found it right where he had observed it before, zigzagging back and forth. The sphere stopped for a few seconds, and then it flew in a straight line toward the northwest at an incalculable speed. The horizon consumed the object and it disappeared into the darkness.
While still standing in the street, Harrison tried to grasp what he had just witnessed. He searched for reasonable explanations, but they evaded him. None of them made sense.
After a few moments, headlights and a honking horn jerked his attention back to his terrestrial surroundings. When he stepped aside to allow the car to pass, embarrassment engulfed him. The vehicle’s occupants were the adulterous couple from the house down the street.
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Eighty miles or so north of Las Vegas, Nevada, endless sagebrush, stilled by daytime heat, rustled from the nocturnal movement of small creatures gathering, hunting, and exploring. Under a darkened sky, such rituals resumed as usual. Stealth, difficult in the revealing rays of a loitering sun, surrounded the area’s inhabitants after the light faded, succumbing to Earth’s ancient rhythms.
They moved, walking, crawling, slithering, hopping, flying, running. They mingled, roaming together among the endless acres of brush and sand. Occasionally, flash floods or tremors from live fire exercises at Yucca Flats disturbed these efforts. On July 7, however, the weather was clear, and the tremors did not come from underground. They rattled across the desert plain, scattering most critters to the safety of their dens.
Headlights cut through the heavy shroud, beams scanning erratically as the vehicles hobbled over rocky trails. Thick tires tore at the ground and sent plumes of gravel and dust through the air. Each truck appeared similar to a Chevrolet Suburban, but with an extra set of rear wheels and an extended roof. The vehicles sported dark-tinted windows, and their navy-blue exterior lacked markings or trim of any kind. A single dish antenna, about thirty inches in diameter, stood above the center of each cab.
One driver swerved his vehicle around a boulder that he spotted almost too late. He swore to himself, recovered, and then rejoined the formation of four other trucks just ahead of him. Preoccupied with the maneuver, he unknowingly steered into the path of an escaping jackrabbit. Confused, the animal froze in the sudden wash of light from the headlamps. Nothing in its experience or nature helped it to understand this bizarre intrusion into its environment. The light raced overhead and the rabbit vanished, trampled between the spinning heat of the tire tread and the coarse ground.
The caravan pressed onward, advancing with deliberate haste over familiar terrain. Then, as they approached their destination, a series of small hills and outcroppings, the tight formation slowed and methodically scattered. The lead vehicle stopped at the base of the first hill, and the others continued up the sandy slope. One parked at the crest, while the remaining trucks headed for positions on and around the adjoining hills. In unison, the headlights dimmed into darkness. Now motionless, the vehicles disappeared into the desert landscape.
Nearby, a restless coyote yelped at a million stars arched overhead in the black, cloudless sky, then trotted away to hunt mice. The distant glow of Las Vegas, some eighty miles to the southeast, appeared to be the only evidence of man.
Three men occupied the truck at the top of the first hill. One sat in the driver’s seat, and the other two sat next to each other in front of a console full of monitors and humming electronic equipment. They were military, but their black jumpsuits bore no service insignia or ranks.
The driver, Airman Bresch, reached into a duffel bag and removed a pair of night-vision binoculars. From his vantage point, he possessed an unobstructed view to the south for twenty miles. He raised the binoculars and peered across the vacant stretch of desert. Seeing nothing unusual, he lowered the glasses and set them on the seat. A green digital display from the two-way radio in the dashboard illuminated the cab. In the thin light, he glanced at the M-16 rifle mounted next to the glove box.
Lethal force authorized, Bresch thought.
Bresch lifted the radio’s microphone, paused for the end of another unit’s broadcast, and said, “Tango Charlie twelve, status is Oscar.” He set the microphone on the dashboard and settled back. This will be interesting, he thought. His right hand found the binoculars again. Slowly, methodically, he proceeded to do his job, surveying the sage and scrub brush for intruders.
In the passenger compartment behind the driver, two air traffic controllers worked over a panel of screens and indicator lights. Both perused the planned flight profile for the experimental aircraft under test tonight. They wore headsets, although only one of them responded to the radio traffic. “Confirm one target signal, quadrant zero, altitude zero. Standing by for resumption of countdown.” They stopped their various movements and waited for the response.
“All stations, central control is go for countdown resumption at 2230 hours. This is not a scrub; we are in alpha hold only. Twelve minutes, mark, to countdown with T-minus eight and twenty. Commercial traffic is minimal. Restricted space is clear.”
Hearing this, the two technicians removed their headsets. One of them, an air force lieutenant, clicked a brown knob to “cabin audio.” He looked at his partner and said, “Sergeant Gonzales, when we acquire the target, keep a close eye on its downrange altitude. I’ll monitor flight path deviation.”
“Yes, sir.”
“After reaching operational altitude, the experimental is not to fall below five thousand feet. Remember, its signal will be intermittent at times, so call out your figures early.”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Gonzales said.
The lieutenant read a checklist mounted on a panel above his position in the vehicle. Next to the panel, a six-inch computer screen displayed meteorological data transmitted from Nellis Air Force Base.
After several quiet minutes, Gonzales broke the silence. “Excuse me, Lieutenant? Sir, at the briefing earlier tonight, Colonel Stone said this would be our last field operation with the experimental.”
The lieutenant nodded.
“So, I was wondering, will our unit help with the flight testing of the prototypes?”
Holding his breath, he hoped his question was not out of line. Discipline, his superiors informed him, represented the cornerstone of his unit’s success. Sergeant Eric Filipe Gonzales had journeyed a long way from the barrios of East Los Angeles, and preferred not to compromise his standing in the air force, but there were some personal matters that bothered him.
“Our performance is excellent so far, but orders haven’t been issued yet for the next cycle.” The lieutenant ran a thumbnail along the underside of his narrowly trimmed mustache. His tone eased, sounding more conversational than official. “Frankly, I’d like to be rotated out, maybe to Wright-Pat, or even Edwards. This place is turning into a circus. We’re eighty miles from Vegas, in the middle of the fucking desert, and people keep broadcasting their television shows on our front porch. It’s getting to where even my dog knows what Area 51 is. I’m surprised the operations continue.”
Unaccustomed to speaking so plainly, the lieutenant immediately wished to replace his comments with silence. His back stiffened, and he apologized to the sergeant for sounding overwrought. “I shouldn’t let myself get so worked up; Colonel Stone’s a good commander. He’ll make sure things work out.” He flicked his mustache again while finally answering the sergeant’s question: “They tell me the prototypes won’t be tested again until December. Scuttlebutt says it’s due to power plant, or power cell, problems, something like that. Been an ongoing problem for years. Anyway, we’ll probably have routine traffic-control assignments until then. My guess is they’re concerned about curiosity seekers. Why do you ask?”
“My wife and I just had a baby, sir. Our first.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She doesn’t say it, sir, but I know she’d like me to
have a regular schedule. These late nights aren’t too convenient.”
“I see.”
“Fortunately, Megan is very patient.”
The lieutenant inspected the meteorological display. Light winds drifting across the test area were subsiding. “Good.”
“Sometimes I wish I could talk to her about what I do, but when I think about it, it’s not always that clear to me what work I’m involved in.”
“I wonder myself sometimes. It’s best that we don’t know.”
“Yes, sir. The military has its reasons.”
“On that, Sergeant, there is no question.”
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Eighty miles away, cars and people packed the Las Vegas strip. The warm summer nights and allure of quick cash always invited untold numbers into the city to trade workaday customs for a roll of the dice, a draw of the cards, or the drop of a coin.
This night was no different from any other. Gamblers lost big. But the sound of jackpots, music, laughter, and the haphazard choreography of wheels, lights, and thousands of people overcame any hint of defeat.
Downtown, at the corner of Fremont and Clark, a motorcycle cop, Nick Ridley, watched some of those people walk and drive past him. For a Saturday night, the calls were unusually light, so he parked in a highly visible location to deter potential violators.
Ridley found the job interesting enough, and had earned a reputation as a reliable, if intellectual, cop. One of the few patrol officers who held a master’s degree in psychology, Ridley understood how to talk to people, and by doing so, controlled situations better. To some of his law enforcement colleagues, he stood out as the “shrink” whose streetwise therapy sessions made him useful at times. Already a senior patrol officer, most assumed Ridley would earn his sergeant’s stripes within one or two years more.
At the moment, he checked his watch. Ten forty-five. His shift ended at eleven, and his much-needed two-week Lake Havasu vacation started immediately afterward. Ridley turned on the motorcycle’s ignition and drove to the station for debriefing. With no radio traffic, he proceeded to broadcast his status. “Mary-two-three.”
Glimpse Page 3