The Stickmen

by Edward Lee

  As the strange ride drew on, Garrett fidgeted in the back of the windowless van. Obviously his kidnapers didn’t want him to know where they were taking him—further indication that they didn’t intend to kill him—so Garrett discretely tried to keep time. So far, they’d been on the road for forty minutes. Within that he considered rush-hour and the fact that the van never seemed to accelerate to a highway speed. His gut and his equilibrium told him they were heading north-east of the city. If he was lucky he might later be able to come up with a rough map radius.

  “Come on, fellas. This whole thing smells worse than Waco. If you wanted to do an e-action on me, you’d just put prussic acid on my doorknob or aflatoxin on my postage stamps.”

  “We’re just delivery men, Mr. Garrett,” Morran replied, his gun put away. “We don’t do things like that.”

  “Yeah, and I’m Aldrich Ames. Everybody knows it was Air Force field ops who went undercover in Panama and poisoned the flight-controllers and radar men at the main the night of the invasion. You turned someone in the chow hall and put shellfish toxin in the chile con carne, so these guys were all either throwing up or dying when Seal Team Six came in.”

  Morran was rubbing his temples again, shaking his head.

  “And let’s not forget Colonel Loa in Phan Thiet,” Garrett added. “That was—what? 71, 72? The guy was funneling Military Assistant Group money out of Vietnam to his villa in the south of France. You ask me, you should have assassinated all those corrupt sons of bitches.”

  Wearied now, Morran said, “Believe me, Mr. Garrett, our little trip today is nothing so dramatic. You wouldn’t have come if asked, so that’s why we—”

  “Abducted me,” Garrett finished. “Without my consent and with malice and clear threats of deadly force, not to mention torture, snatched me off the street and violated my Constitutional right to be protected from false arrest.”

  “Maybe he needs more floor time,” Carson said.

  “Yeah, and maybe you need a lobotomy, Lurch,” Garrett replied.

  “Yeah, and maybe you need—”

  “Shut up!” Morran insisted. “Both of you. You want to know where you’re going, Mr. Garrett? Let’s just say that one of your…admirers wants to have a little talk.”

  Just then the van slowed, seemed to pull up a slight incline, and stopped. Driveway, Garrett immediately thought. They’re taking me to a house? Morran popped the back doors, and when he shoved Garrett out, that’s exactly what he was looking at: a nice two story house in a quiet upper-middle-class neighborhood. Garrett looked around as he was escorted away from the van.

  “No bag over my head?” Garrett asked. “I thought you guys didn’t want me to know where we’re at.”

  “You don’t know, Mr. Garrett,” Morran said. “All you know is we’re about to take you into an ordinary house.”

  Garrett stopped, closed his eyes and touched his chin. “I’m psychic, didn’t you know that? Uhhhhh, let me guess. Bethesda, Maryland.”

  Morran grabbed Garrett’s shoulder hard and shook him. “How the hell did you know that?”

  Garrett spun around and pointed. “Because it says so on that For Sale sign right across the street, you no-black-op non-tailing surveillance-bungling moron!”

  In front of the house directly across from them stood a sign that read: FOR SALE: LONG, FOSTER & SONS - BETHESDA’S #1 REALTOR!

  “Just get in the house, smart guy,” Carson said with a stiff shove.

  Garrett stumbled forward, and looked around some more. Several powder-blue U.S. Government cars were parked at the curb, and inside the home’s front bay window, he could see several uniformed Air Force SPs glancing out.

  Carson knocked with his huge fist, then opened the door.

  “Be careful with that leg-press machine,” Garrett chided. “You might hurt yourself.”

  “Inside.”

  Garrett was shoved into an opulent foyer, a nice chandelier hanging overhead. Then a white-haired butler speechlessly pointed to a door on the right. Just then Morran pulled Garret aside and whispered: “The Yankee Stadium flap was dis-foe leaked to the press. It was a joint job by CIA and contract killers with the Utica Mafia. Hoffa’s body was cremated in a slag furnace at Sparrow’s Point.”

  “Can I interview you on that?” Garrett asked. “I’ll make ya famous.”

  Morran betrayed the slightest of smiles. “It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Garrett.” Then he opened the side door. “Someone want to talk to you.”

  Garrett stepped into large, makeshift intensive-care unit; the door clicked shut behind him. At once he was breathing antiseptic scents and listening to monitors beep. And he didn’t have any idea what to think about the completely bald, withered old man lying in the railed convalescent bed that comprised the center of the room. His eyes were sunken pits; an oxygen line ran into his nose.

  Who the hell is he?

  The old man, in spite of his ailments, smiled, and that’s when the shocking recognition flashed.

  Garrett glared. “If it isn’t the ever amiable General Norton T. Swenson. And that chuckhead outside said it was an admirer.”

  “I am an admirer, Harlan—” Swenson’s voice sounded ten or twenty years younger than his emaciated appearance—”I always have been, you just never realized that. In fact, I’ve been perusing your work.”

  A crabbed hand bid a high table by the bed; a pile of magazine lay atop it. Cover-up! The Psi-Com Journal, The MUFON Informer, Apocalypse Countdown, The Vince Foster Newsletter, all of which Garrett had written articles for. He curiously eyed Swenson.

  “I don’t know what this is all about but… You’ve…looked better.”

  “There’s an old saying in the Air Force,” Swenson cheerily replied. “‘The Gravy Train always comes to an end.’”

  “But, what—”

  “‘A large-cell metastasis of the right lung with keratinizing adenocarcinoma,’ to quote my doctor. Good old fashioned lung cancer.”

  Garrett felt a grim shiver. Sure, he hated Swenson, but now, seeing him on what clearly must be his dead-bed, made him feel lousy. “I wouldn’t even wish that on a two-faced, back-stabbing government cover-up trilateral commission creep like you.”

  Swenson waved a nonchalant hand. “There is no trilateral commission, Harlan, but I guess you’re right about the rest.”

  “So you’ve been reading my stuff, huh? Why?”

  “You’re actually not a half-bad writer, Harlan. You pose convincing arguments. Too much zeal, though, in your style. It kicks your credibility right out the window.”

  “Like you kicked my career out the window?”

  The old man’s eyes leveled. “I especially enjoyed the article you wrote about me several years ago. In the…what was it?”

  Garrett began to simmer. “Constitution Times. Funny how you could’ve read an article that never got printed. The publisher’s entire warehouse burned down the day before the issue was going to ship. Somehow I always knew you were behind that one.”

  “The things we must do sometimes,” Swenson related, “to protect the public trust.”

  Garrett released a vile laugh. “Gimme a break! You’ve been pissing on the public trust since the day you joined up.”

  “That’s a matter of interpretation, Harlan.”

  Before Garrett could launch more objections, a uniformed SP stuck his head in the room. He paused sternly, looking around to see that everything’s all right. Then he ducked back out and shut the door.

  “You under house arrest—I hope? Why all the SPs?”

  “Someone broke into my house last night,” Swenson said, “a real pro black bag job. Cross-wired my burglar alarm. Fortunately I have an armed security guard in the house at all times, compliments of the good old AFSS. He chased the intruder off. But this was no typical burglar, Harlan. It was a man come to kill me.”

  “I’d never believe that a swell guy like you has enemies.”

  “This…burglar was looking for something, Harlan. It’s my go
od fortune that it wasn’t here. It’s never been here.”

  Garrett wasn’t impressed. “I don’t give a crap that someone broke in here. It looks like school’s gonna be out for you real soon, so now’s the chance to clear your conscience, I mean, if you have one. Why did you kick me out of the Air Force? Why did you ruin my life?”

  Swenson gave an amused snort through his air tube. “I’ve hardly ruined your life, Harlan, and as for dismissing you from the Air Force Data Processing Command, you know why I did that.”

  “Yeah, I tapped into a batch of files that verified the defense department was secretly testing a genetically manufactured flavivirus in Gambia. Hundreds of villagers died.”

  Swenson drew on a pained pause, his old eyes peering at Garrett. “Forget about that, Harlan. I’m not responsible for every indiscretion ever perpetrated by the cells within our government.”

  “Indiscretion?” Garrett replied, aghast. “That’s what you call it? Murdering hundreds of people to test a weapon?”

  “Sometimes evil must be battled with more of the same,” Swenson contended. “Because of those tests we now have a cure for a series of viral strains that the Chinese have been processing for a decade. What’s more important, Harlan? The security of the U.S. population or a few hundred villagers living in the stone age?”

  Garrett seethed. “I ought to pull all those fuckin’ tubes right out of you, you old bastard.”

  “Feel free to, but…please wait until after I’ve said what I brought you to hear. It’s something I’m sure you’ll be quite interested in.” Now Swenson coughed, his face clenching in pain. “I know what you’ve been up to, Harlan. There’s always been someone like you down the line. I trust the date April 18th, 1962, has some meaning to you?”

  “Sure,” Garrett thought after only a second’s thought. “The Nellis Crash in Nevada. NORAD tracked a UFO skimming across the continent. People thought it was extraterrestrial until the radar scans and NASA telemetric surveys revealed it to be a bolidic meteor fragment.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  What a question. “I think so. A couple of years ago I saw the Moon Dust documents on it, and I saw the NASA charts. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t believe it?”

  “Yes, Harlan. Because I was the one who manufactured the charts. The NASA telemetric charts and the NORAD radar scans were phony.”

  Mouth suddenly agape, Garrett stared back at the old man.

  “Harlan? Did you hear me?”

  “I must be hallucinating. Are you admitting that the military has perpetrated disinformation in order to discredit UFO reports?”

  “Yes.”

  Garrett walked inanely around the room, talking with his hands. “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you generated phony documents to indicate that the Nellis impact was a meteor fragment?”

  “Yes,” Swenson repeated.

  “Which means what you’re really telling me is that it wasn’t a meteor fragment. It was really a—”

  “A vehicle of extraterrestrial manufacture,” Swenson clarified. “Yes. I’m admitting that. I ought to know, Harlan. I was at the crash site. There was this high bluff overlooking the impact perimeter.” Swenson’s eyes seemed to momentarily drift back. “It was…spectacular.”

  Though Garrett’s heart began to quicken, his expression dimmed. Holy ever- living shit. This guy’s verifying that—

  “Let’s use MJ-12 as an example, shall we?” Swenson went on. “The mythical contingency team that was so seriously debunked by phony documentation that even the most zealous UFO crackpots don’t believe it existed. I was the one who did the debunking. I provided the documents that were eventually found to be fraudulent by experts such as yourself. If you want to know the whole of it, I ran disinformation for the Air Force, for more than a three dozen sightings and crashes.”

  Garrett could only continue to gape.

  “I would use men like you, Harlan—men who knew the truth and were desperately trying to prove it—by providing the very documents which you and your ilk would thoroughly investigate and eventually prove to be false. It’s always worked very well.”

  Finally, Garrett found his mouth again. “Fine. I know all about disinformation. But why am I here?”

  Swenson looked as though the answer were obvious. “Because you’re the most credible UFO researcher in the country, probably the world.”

  Garrett nearly hacked up his lunch. The compliment—from Swenson, of all people—hit him in the face like a two-by-four. “Thanks…I think.”

  “Why do you think I didn’t put you in prison in 92?”

  Garrett paused to contemplate. “So you could continue to use me to generate your own disinformation?”

  “Exactly. But now, because of your knowledge, and your…expertise, well—that’s why I’ve brought you here, today. You see, Harlan, and this may sound absurd but…I need your help.”

  Garrett guttered a humorless laugh. You need my help? Right. Like Kennedy needs another trip to Dallas.”

  Swenson leaned over with some difficulty, picked up a tiny envelope—like a stamp envelope—off the high table, and held it protectively in his liver-spotted hand. “Four things, Harlan. And no questions. Deal?”

  “I’d be smarter making a deal with Lucifer, but—” Garrett squinted, chewed his lip. “Why not?”

  “Run the name Jack H. Urslig.”

  “Why?”

  Swenson held up a warning finger. “No questions. Also, dig up whatever you can on a man named Sanders; if you have trouble, run the designation QJ/WYN.”

  “Sounds like a CIA crypt.”

  “No, Sanders isn’t with the Company. He’s the man who broke into my house last night. It’ll take some hacking, but check the old Army CIC files. Let’s just say that the Air Force and the CIA are not the only government branches who are hell-bent on the suppression of truth from the populace. Just remember, though, that CIC files all officially stop in 1979—”

  “Yeah, I know,” Garrett said. “Jimmy Carter insisted the Corp be abolished, so the Army discreetly reassigned them under cover into the Defense Investigations Service.”

  “Correct. You’re a knowledgeable man, Harlan.”

  “Of course I am,” Garrett came back. “But listen to what you’re asking me to do. CIC files, Army Counter-Intelligence Corp? And DIS? Come on. Even I can’t break the passwords on databanks in that league. The best hackers in the world can’t even get near that stuff.”

  Swenson looked back with pursed lips; then his brow rose. “Don’t let something as trivial as a password…hamper you, Harlan. Do you receive my meaning?”

  “Uh, well—”

  “And let me also remind you of a little Greek Mythology.”

  “Wha—”

  “They say that if you fly too close to the sun, the heat will melt the wax that holds the feathers in your wings.”

  Now another mental two-by-four hit Garrett right in the head. His eyes shot open and his mouth drooped. Am I having serious auditory hallucinations, or did Swenson just do what I think he did?

  “Thirdly,” the dying general continued, “about a week ago, someone infiltrated the Edgewood Arsenal. You’ve heard of it?”

  The confusion—and the shock—still swirled in Garrett’s mind. After a moment, he answered: “Yeah, it’s near the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. Never got any press at all until the sexual harassment thing. They store old bombs and ordnance that’s out of date. Also a lot of binary biological weapons that are scheduled to be destroyed as part of the latest CBN treaty with Russia.”

  “Yes, but there are also some other things stored there, and someone broke in there last week and stole…one of those things.” Swenson’s gaze locked into Garrett’s. “An ADM, Harlan.”

  “I take it you’re not referring to the Arthur Daniel Midland Corporation.”

  “Atomic Demolition Munition. It’s a low-yield, defensive nuclear device, and its theft is what set everything else about the
Nellis crash into motion. Check it out. There’s a lot about Edgewood you don’t know; there’s plenty that even I don’t know. I’ve never been there myself, but I can tell you, somewhere on that 20,000-acre military reservation, there’s also an old AIC facility.”

  “Well, there’s an acronym I do know,” Garrett acknowledged. “A.I.C. Air Force Aerial Intelligence Command—your command.”

  “A long time ago—yes. As an MJ-12 member, I ran the AIC from 1959 to 1980.”

  Garrett was still having a hard time managing all this shock and information. “All right, I follow you so far. But you said four. Four things you were going to tell me.”

  Swenson, his hands shaking, finally passed the minuscule wax-paper envelope to Garrett.

  “I take it this isn’t the 1851 George Washington X stamp?”

  “Inside that envelope, Harlan, is a key to a storage garage in Annapolis. U-STORE, it’s called. It’s registered under a counterfeit name that will withstand all federal scrutiny. In other words, if you tell anyone that I gave you this key, you won’t be believed.”

  Garrett cocked his shoulder. “No problem there. I have a knack for people not believing me.”

  “In that garage you will find a list of some names you’re not familiar with. Pay very close attention to those names. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, sure. Pay attention to the names…”

  Suddenly, Swenson was smiling very coyly. “There are a few other things in that garage that you’ll find interesting too. And if you successfully complete this task, you can do whatever you want with those things.”

  Garrett decided to set a dare. “What if I don’t complete this task of yours? What if I run off with this list of names and these things?”

  “Then I’ll have you executed,” Swenson calmly replied.

  Garrett believe him. I guess that says it all, he thought. But then the most obvious fact occurred to him. “Listen, I’ve had my tail stepped on about this stuff so many times it’s not funny. I’ve been bugged, robbed, DF’d, tailed, beat up—a couple times I’ve almost been killed. In other words, it’s been made pretty clear to me to lay off the subject.”

  “But you won’t lay off, Harlan. You’ll never lay off. It’s not possible for you to do that, not in a million years, and you know it. Big Brother could cut your legs off, and you’d still be coming after him in a wheelchair.”