“Damn,” Everett said. A chorus of other exclamations followed. Jack could only clench his jaw muscles.
A second giant saucer was in the picture Niles had uncovered. The F-14s were far below it as the picture showed the second UFO closing in on the lead Tomcat. Without saying a word, Compton removed the picture and replaced it with another. Now several of the Group members sat hard into their high-backed chairs. Talking started all at once after the picture was digested.
The image showed in horrible detail the second saucer slamming into the lead navy fighter from the rear. In this still shot, the plane was already coming apart in flames. The image was so clear you could see either the pilot or his radio intercept officer falling free of the aircraft with his seat still attached.
The senator continued to write, having said virtually nothing to this point, but when he did stop writing notes and look up, he eyed Major Collins, who continued to study the picture. Lee tapped the tabletop with the knuckles of his right hand. It took three raps to finally get everyone’s attention. The old man took a deep breath, and as he stood, he gestured Compton over to his side, speaking to him in a low tone. Then Compton went to his seat and lifted a large file to the table and then waited.
Lee started talking, looking toward the last picture that had been shown. “Major, this is exactly what Niles and I were trying to explain earlier about our Group. The few people in government who know we exist, and that’s just the Joint Chiefs and the National Security Council, would say this isn’t in our area of expertise, that it should be the military’s problem, but this is what we call an Event, this could be life-altering on any level you care to look at. We have an advantage,” he said, looking at all the faces around the table. “We have some experience with this sort of Event, or I should say, I do, in my younger days when I was director of this underground anthill.”
Several people mumbled their surprise at what the retired senator had just said, but it quickly died down.
Alice slipped the senator two small pills and he quickly swallowed them with a sip of water, then he removed his cane from die edge of the table where he had hung it and stood and limped to the picture on the easel and tapped it with his index finger.
“President Truman first appointed me to this Group in 1945, and amazingly we had a similar craft follow the same trajectory as this current one two years later, on July the second of 1947. A little town in New Mexico was rocked by an explosion,” Lee said, and paused for a moment. “I’m sure you know where I’m headed with this.”
Collins watched Lee as the old man recalled the past. He was looking even older than he had this morning, and Collins wondered what medication he had taken just a moment before.
“The Roswell Incident,” stated Celia Brown, an African-American professor of natural history from Cornell.
“Correct, the Roswell Incident.” Lee then popped the picture again with his fist, rocking the easel. “Roswell, New Mexico. From the evidence collected back in ′47, we had us a flying saucer crash, ladies and gentlemen. And at this moment I’m playing a hunch, just a spec of my old memory returning, if you’ll so indulge me. If this guess of mine plays out, we have a very serious and dangerous problem on our hands. Just before Boris and Natasha lost contact with the two objects, indicating and confirming the facts we overheard on the carrier’s radio frequency that the objects did have some sort of stealth capability, we got a possible track on their trajectory.”
“You said that the satellite had lost their track, sir?” Everett asked.
The old man limped back to his chair, leaning on the cane even more. “Yes, after the targets went stealth, they vanished from radar and the imager on Natasha went out of range. But it was her track that we used to project the course. You see, it didn’t gain altitude, maybe from the suspected damage, we don’t know. So, if it continued to lose that altitude, it may just have come down somewhere.”
Others around the huge conference table were looking from the pictures to one another, trying to absorb it all.
“The first craft not being in stealth mode I can understand, maybe damage, but why would the second craft not use the advantage of stealth? It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” Virginia Pollock said.
“We don’t have any answers, just good questions like yours, Virginia,” Lee said. “But it may very well be that the second craft didn’t care if it was seen at that point or not, knowing it would not be tracked afterward. We just don’t know and it’s dangerous to speculate.”
As if on cue, Compton opened the large file folder and then walked over to a fax machine. He entered his security code and started the pages through the machine.
When Lee was satisfied the fax was being sent, he turned to Alice. “Make the call now, please.” Then he looked at Niles. “Dr. Compton, with your permission…”
Niles nodded and sat down after he had completed the faxing of the papers from the thick folder.
Alice pushed a small button on the tabletop and a lid popped up, and slowly, as if driven by small hydraulics, a red phone raised flush with the table. She then picked up the red handset and punched the only button on the instrument. She gestured to Compton, who went behind the camera and made a final adjustment, then went to the wall and pulled open a set of doors, revealing a hidden high-definition plasma television screen.
“Yes, sir, we’re ready on this end,” Alice said into the mouthpiece of the handset. Then she took it from her ear, placed it in a small cradle, and pushed it firmly down until it clicked into place.
“We set?” Lee asked.
“Yes, sir.”
On the screen there was a flash of blue, and then it stabilized into a solid picture. An image flashed on: the seal of the president of the United States. Then another image appeared: a man this time, sitting on a sofa. He was wearing a denim work shirt and was leaning forward with his arms placed on his knees, his fingers intertwined in front of him.
“Mr. President,” Niles said, standing and looking into the camera.
“Good evening, Dr. Compton, what have my favorite people got for me today?”
“Sir, may I first apologize for disturbing you at Camp David. We know you like privacy when you’re away from your office.”
“Nonsense, Doctor, actually you saved me from some burnt hot dogs and underdone burgers.” The president looked around conspiratorially. “My daughters are grilling.” The people gathered in Nevada chuckled in politeness at the remark.
“Well, this may put off your appetite slightly, sir,” Senator Lee interjected.
“Senator Lee, this is a pleasant surprise, how are you today?”
“I’m fine, sir, but we do have disturbing news to bring to you.”
“I’m listening.”
“Undoubtedly you’ve had the incident in the Pacific brought to your attention?” Lee asked.
“Yes, I have, a terrible tragedy.”
“Has the navy provided you with details as of this time, Mr. President?”
“Not yet. The Navy Department said the preliminary results of their investigation will be forwarded by tomorrow morning,” the president answered, leaning back on the sofa.
“The Event Group will send you some information the navy may not provide you, sir, not that they could. We came upon it purely by accident.”
“What information is that, and why not forward the intelligence on through the NSA or the CIA? That shouldn’t compromise the Group.”
“We think this should be kept pretty close to the vest at this point, sir. Plus we have some conjecture we think is relevant that you may be interested in.”
The president looked thoughtful for a moment, then looked into the camera. “You’ve got my attention, Mr. Lee, but I’m not comfortable with the fact you’re not bringing the navy in on this. After all, we can say this information came through NSA to protect the source.”
“I think you’ll see why in a moment, sir.” The old man hesitated briefly. “And we have made queries through and of the
navy, sir, as Director Compton here can attest to, after having the door slammed on his ample nose.”
“I’m used to handling territorial disputes, Senator.”
“Mr. President, we… or I should say I, have a problem at the moment with the navy handling this situation.”
The president looked down at his hands. “You know I give the Group a lot of leeway, Senator, but if the information you’re sending me isn’t compelling enough, I’m going to have to side with the navy on this issue. It was their aircraft and lost air crews. I see no reason why a sister agency of the navy should handle anything in this purely naval affair, outside of offering any intelligence they may have in their possession.” The president was showing a little more color than he had just a moment before.
“Director Compton will get you up to speed on what we know, sir, then we can go into what we”—again Lee caught himself—“I suspect.”
The president pursed his lips and gave a shake of his head. “As I said, the only things you are keeping me from are my daughters and their version of a barbecue. Continue, Dr. Compton, by all means.”
Compton asked for Collins and Everett to help slide the easel to a position where the man at Camp David could get the best possible view.
Collins noticed that Lee walked over to a seat lining the wall where he could still see the presentation, but placed himself well out of the way. Alice sat in the chair next to him, and it looked as if she was admonishing him for something. He seemed to growl at her as she straightened and fell silent.
After Niles had finished briefing the president on the saucer incident, Collins looked at the screen as he sat in his seat. The others settled in their chairs and looked at the new folders that had been placed in front of each place by one of Niles’s assistants.
As they looked at the screen, the president had disappeared.
“Maybe we scared him off,” commented the senator, to break the silence in the room.
Everyone chuckled. Within a few seconds the president walked back into the frame. He sat down at the couch with his reading glasses perched on his nose. Without looking up he said, “Admiral Raleigh at CINCPAC headquarters concurs with your pictures. They have a survivor of one of the two Tomcats, and according to the admiral, he tells a pretty amazing story. A story that fits with the evidence you produced.” The president looked up from the file he had just received from the Event Group via fax.
“What about the survivor, Mr. President? Does commander in chief Pacific plan on holding him?” Compton asked.
“He’s being quarantined and flown to Miramar.”
Niles Compton looked toward the camera and the large image of the president behind it. “Sir, we may want to interview that officer at the earliest possible time.”
“That’s impossible, at least at this time, Niles. I appreciate the Group’s help in this matter, but it’s their show. Do you understand?”
Once again, Lee stood and smiled disarmingly. “Mr. President, you know I wouldn’t ask without good reason, and you also know I’m not a frivolous man. You have that file in your hand and you know we’re going to amaze and astound you. And in the end you will bow to what the Group wants to do. Why? Because you know we won’t screw it up, number one, and number two, you love the hell out of us.”
The president of the United States shook his head and laughed out loud. He tossed the file that had been sent him on the coffee table beside where his feet were propped and sat back into the cushions of his couch. He looked at the screen over his bifocals.
“Goddamn it! I was afraid of this. You look like a stalking tiger. Well, this time I’m apt to say no, you old fool,” the president said, trying to sound convincing. “Niles, I gave you the job as director to keep him away from me; you’re not doing too well.”
“He’s my mouthpiece, Mr. President.”
Lee just stared into the camera; he pursed his lips and leaned heavily on his cane.
The president of the United States looked indignant. “Bastard” he jokingly hissed, “you know damn good and well I spoil you people too much.”
The group around the table was settled and on the large screen the president of the United States was seated and ready. No one in the conference room, save for Niles and Alice, knew this would be Senator Garrison Lee’s last actionable request to a sitting president; win or lose this last argument, he was done. The discoverer of numerous priceless historical treasures and rewriter of much of the world’s history, Lee would end it all with a pitch to the president about going after a flying saucer.
“Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, in front of you is a case file that doesn’t show up on any computer and doesn’t exist as far as the Event Group is concerned. None of you save Niles here has ever seen it.”
The men and women around the room exchanged glances. The president just looked on.
“The much-denied yet well-known incident on July the third, 1947, happened. The Roswell Incident was real, and this is the order in which it occurred. On that date an unidentified flying object did go down in the rugged cattle country of Lincoln County, New Mexico, not far from the small town of Roswell. There were believed to be no survivors at that time. On that July third, at sunrise, a rancher by the name of Mac Brazel and a neighbor boy, seven-year-old Dee Proctor, investigated a loud boom they had heard the night before. On his property they found what was described as wreckage of an aircraft, and in Brazel’s words, ‘It must have been a bomber or something, ’cause it was strewn over hell and back.’ “The senator paused; he looked at the man at Camp David and saw he was listening intently. As Lee spoke, eighteen flat-screen plasma monitors lit up around the circumference of the conference room. The file images of Mac Brazel and those of the Roswell crash site came into crystal clarity. The president saw the same images on his screen at Camp David on a split screen.
“After, Brazel collected a little of the wreckage and took it home and contacted the county sheriff, who in turn notified the U.S. Army Air Force at Roswell, the home of the 509th Bomb Group—the only base in the world known at the time to have atomic weapons on-site, I might add. The base’s intelligence officer, a Major Jesse Marcel, was sent out with another man to investigate the report.” At this point several of the monitors changed pictures and showed a smiling Army Air Corp officer out in the dusty crash site where he and several military police officers were standing in a large debris field.
“Upon returning to the base with strange material from the crash site, Marcel notified the base commander, and by this time radio station KSWS in Roswell begins to teletype information of the strange crash to the world, but the transmission was cut, presumably by the FBI. But it didn’t end there.” The senator poured a glass of water from a pitcher and took a sip. “On July eighth; a second lieutenant by the name of Walter Haut was ordered to issue a press release by the public relations officer for the 509th.” They all saw the photostat of the famous newspaper headline. “Well, that angered quite a few people with stars on their shoulders, and if it weren’t for President Truman’s and the Event Group’s intervention, certain elements inside the United States were prepared to act against its own citizens to protect the fact they had UFO wreckage in their possession.”
“What do you mean when you say ‘act against our citizens,’ Senator?” the president asked.
“Just what that implies, sir, that the military and whoever was pulling the strings at that time, were ready to eliminate people to keep their secret. I know, I was there in Roswell when it happened,” Lee said sadly.
“Where are the remains of the craft now?” Celia Brown asked the senator.
“We don’t know. The convoy that was transporting the remains back to the Event Center disappeared in between New Mexico and Nevada. No remains were ever found, and that included ten of my best security personnel and a very good friend, a Dr. Kenneth Early.”
“Was there any trace of the crash ever uncovered?” the president asked.
“The FBI investigation or
dered by Mr. Truman got a lead that some of it may have shown up in Fort Worth, Texas, then Wright Air Force Base in Ohio. But by the time the FBI arrived the material had disappeared along with the people who reported the strange debris at each of the two bases.”
There was a lot of whispered talk around the table now. Collins was looking at the president on the television screen, watching his commander in chief’s expression changes. It wasn’t every day you were told you’d had a flying saucer in your possession, only to hear that it had strangely vanished without a trace.
“Tell me you have some background, or at the very least a suspicion, on this?” the president asked.
“Yes, sir, but it’s something that I would rather go into with you and my new security commander, Major Jack Collins. The FBI report was sealed by President Eisenhower in 1957.”
“I think maybe the director of FBI should be in on that meeting, possibly the boys across the river also,” the president said, referring to the CIA. His eyes had finally found Jack at his spot down the length of the conference table. He held the gaze for a moment, then looked at the others around the table.
“Yes, sir,” Lee answered, then quickly saw he had to get the president back on track.
“Now, if you will open your folders, people. Mr. President, you have the same information in yours, which we faxed over. At this point I’ll turn this over to Director Compton.”
Niles stood once again. “From the records the senator turned over to me, we were able to compile a pretty accurate record of the flight path the vehicle was on in July of 1947.” Niles pulled a sheet of paper out of his folder and held it up.
The others followed what he was pointing to on their own copies. At the rear of the conference room a clear plastic sheet that was ten feet in width and six feet in length came down from a hidden recess in the ceiling, and the four plasma monitors it covered were shut off. The new technology of holographic imagery, a new form of light-induced liquid crystal sandwiched between two sheets of clear plastic, came to life with the diagram Niles held in his hand. One of his assistants in the computer center had set up the program on a moment’s notice from the comp center for this briefing. The result was an image that was detailed enough to show the movement of clouds and the blinking of lights in the cities the map displayed.
Event: A Novel Page 10