The UFO Conspiracy Trilogy

by David Bischoff

  “Doesn’t look real upset or worried. Wonder why he’d make us stop though.”

  She slowed down in front of the gate.

  The man leaned toward them with a smile. “Sorry to stop you, Lieutenant. Can I see your ID please?”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Yes. I don’t see any ID sticker on the car.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, actually, it’s a friend’s car—not mine.”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t need registration or anything. I just wanted to have a look-see.” He looked down at the typed information and the photo, then at Marsha. “Yes, everything seems to be in order. You’re from Wright-Patterson, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I used to be stationed there.” He looked around at the vast expanse around him. “Whew, and I thought it was boring there!”

  Manning laughed breezily. “Yes. I know what you mean. Oh well ... is that all, Airman?”

  Right on the word ‘all’ the phone in his booth began to ring.

  “Ooops. That’s unusual. Would you just hold on for a moment, Lieutenant? I want to ask you one more thing.”

  The phone rang again.

  Were they calling to seal off the gates? What else could it be? Scarborough could feel his muscles involuntarily tense up, tight as coils.

  “Really, Airman, we are in a bit of a hurry.”

  “Oh.”

  The phone rang again.

  “What was the question?”

  “I just wondered how long you were going to be in New Mexico.”

  “About a week.” She smiled at him. “These are my two brothers here and I’m showing them around. Why, would you like to have a drink or dinner or something?”

  “Actually ...”

  “You can reach me through Colonel North’s office. Call me tomorrow, okay?”

  “Wow. Sure!”

  Ring.

  “Can we go now?”

  “Oh, yes of course.” A bit dazed and happy that he had a date, the airman marched to the booth and hit the switch to let the gate up. Even as it was lifting, Scarborough could see him picking up the receiver.

  Marsha Manning, however, wasted no time. As soon as there was space to slide under the gate arm, she did so and immediately picked up speed.

  “Camden, look behind and see what’s happening.”

  “You said not to move.”

  “Orders changed.”

  “I’m not sure I can move now. I’ll all stiff, man! And I think I’m gonna pass out anyway real soon.”

  “Well, do it now then, so I can have a line of sight.”

  Camden collapsed onto the seat.

  Scarborough looked back.

  The guy in the booth was still on the phone.

  A false alarm? Surely, if the message had been: Check all vehicles for Everett Scarborough, the man would have come out, blasting away at them with a rifle. Or did that only happen in movies?

  In any event, the way Marsha was moving, the booth was soon only a speck in the distance, and they were headed for open highway.

  “I don’t know if he knows now if it was us or not.”

  “Oh, if they didn’t know—they will soon,” said Manning, hands gripping the steering wheel, chin jutted out determinedly. “We’ve got to make tracks.”

  “What we could really use, though,” murmured Scarborough, “is a different car. They’re going to put the make on this one real quick.”

  “Oh, right, I’ll just pull in at Joe’s Used Cars up the road and make a quick switch.”

  “Just get us to Albuquerque, Marsha. That’s all I ask.”

  “And you’ll take it from there?”

  Scarborough jerked a thumb to the back seat. “Well, we know that he won’t, don’t we?”

  They hurried on down the black macadam ribbon that was the New Mexican road, bisecting the arid plain.

  They saw the Winnebago Recreation Vehicle after they turned past an outcropping of rock. It was half on the shoulder of the road, and half jutting into their lane of the two-lane blacktop. A flare was stuck in the road beside it, casting off a glare and dark smoke into the clear afternoon.

  “Looks like they had a flat tire or something,” said Marsha, touching her brake slightly, slowly.

  “Yes.”

  “Should we slow down and help, or go around them?”

  “You’re thinking the same thing I am, aren’t you? You’re thinking, what if this car is developing serious motor problems. What if we stop and help them with their flat, in return for a lift into Albuquerque for proper help?”

  “Well, the notion had crossed my mind. That way, we could just abandon the Celica. The Air Force would find it soon enough and my friend will get it back. Although by that time I don’t think he’ll be a friend anymore.”

  Scarborough grunted. “Looks like we stop then.”

  Manning pressed harder on the brake, squeezing the Toyota down to a rolling stop as she turned onto the shoulder. She turned off the ignition and they both got out of the car, squinting into the sunlight.

  There were two men working on the back of the Winnebago. From the looks of it, one of the tires had blown out. They were working on jacking the heavy vehicle up using one of its strong bottom supports—but they seemed to be having some difficulty with the hydraulic jack.

  “Hello there!” called Scarborough. “Couldn’t help noticing your problems. We’ve got some of our own. But can we help you first?”

  There were two men working on the Winnebago. They turned around to face the new arrivals.

  One was a younger man, perhaps in his late twenties. He wore a green-striped Lacoste shirt, blue jeans, and tennis shoes. The other, an older man, was dressed in an open-necked yellow-and-red Hawaiian shirt and white tennis shorts.

  “Why yes, Mr. Scarborough,” said the older man. “Yes, you most certainly can!”

  Chapter 39

  His head hurt.

  His head hurt bad, the sharp pain of it like a corkscrew jammed up the back of his neck.

  Scarborough woke up. (Woke up? Had he been asleep?) There seemed to have been no jump cut of time, and yet, when he thought about it, he realized that there indeed was, yet he was so rattled he didn’t know what side of the jump he was on, or where he’d jumped from.

  Scarborough looked up. He realized that he was sitting in the passenger seat of some kind of vehicle, and he was high off the ground. The sunlight was bright beyond the large windshield.

  He felt fear deep in his gut. A sense of doom pervaded.

  Got to get out, he thought. Got to get out of here.

  He reached for the handle of the door. It was locked—it did not move. Desperately, he banged against the door, pushing hard on the handle.

  No results.

  Feeling a desperate kind of claustrophobia, Scarborough lunged across to the driver’s seat.

  An arm reached out from behind him and powerfully forced him back into the passenger seat.

  “Wha—”

  “Do not move, Everett Scarborough,” said a deep, menacing voice. “Do not look behind you.”

  Scarborough was far too stunned to do anything.

  “Who are you?” he managed. Which was really stupid, he thought, because he knew perfectly well, deep in his gut, who it was.

  It was them!

  “That is too early to reveal.”

  “You’ve got Diane ... You’ve got my daughter.”

  “That is correct, Everett Scarborough. Remember that. We have your daughter. Nothing will happen to her, no harm will be visited upon her—on the condition that you cooperate.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Scarborough smelled Brut cologne.

  There was silence. A deep, reverberating silence, filled with a profound strangeness. Scarborough sensed that the person (persons?) behind him had an uncommon depth, an intelligence… Yet how could he know that, he found himself asking himself .

  However, there was no time to dwell on that tho
ught.

  The voice was deep and thorough in its diction.

  “In the glove compartment of this vehicle, you will find a cassette player. Your instructions are on that tape.”

  “I see.” Scarborough was tempted to jump from his seat and attack the man behind him. Pound the truth out of him. Force him to take him to his daughter. However, the sense of menace was so great that Scarborough had to use all of his willpower to merely control his fear. “My friends ...”

  “Your companions are safe.”

  “You were waiting for us ... you were the people in the Winnebago.”

  “Yes. Scarborough—do as the tape says. I cannot urge you strongly enough to DO AS THE TAPE SAYS.”

  “Who are you? What do you want? What’s going on ...?”

  But there were no answers.

  Scarborough felt a sudden jab of pain in his left arm, a strong scent of masculine cologne...

  And the darkness rushed in like cold, black water.

  Everett Scarborough awoke in stages.

  The first stage was a very long, drawn-out period punctuated by stirrings of awareness and sensations of movement amidst a long, long period of total blackness.

  And then, abruptly, there came the dream stage.

  He dreamed of falling. He dreamed of flying. He dreamed all the dreams he had dreamt before in his life, the personal ones and the classical ones—as though they were all running before his mind’s eye in review, like a man’s life is supposed to, before he dies.

  He dreamed his nightmares.

  Nonetheless, when Scarborough hit the next stage of his awakening, he did not feel frightened or discomfited. Rather, he felt relaxed and at peace. This next phase was a gentle drifting in softness, a drowsing, a languorous time floating in a sea of unconcern.

  Vaguely, he was aware that somewhere along the line, the sense of motion had ceased.

  He drifted off to sleep once more.

  When Scarborough awoke again, he was instantly alert. He lifted his head and he looked around him.

  He lay upon a bunk bed, set in the wall of a small room containing a plentitude of cabinets, a refrigerator, a table, a bar, stools and a couch, a television set, and three other bunks. The place smelled of sleep, old coffee, and recycled air. In the other bunks, lay two people, both asleep.

  Jake Camden and Marsha Manning.

  For a moment, Scarborough experienced a sense of total dislocation, a “where am I?” feeling magnified to the point of dizziness. But a word occurred to him, and with the word the memories rushed back in to fill the void.

  And the word was Winnebago.

  They were in the Winnebago.

  He remembered now, stopping alongside the road. Getting out of the car. Asking those men if they needed help.

  And then one of them had taken something out of his pocket and aimed it at them, and the memory was abruptly curtailed.

  And then that time, seemingly a dream, when he woke up behind the wheel—the wheel of the Winnebago.

  Was it a dream? he wondered. Most empathic ally, his mind answered him back.

  No. It had been real. All too real.

  His first concern was for Marsha.

  She lay in the bunk set immediately above the one he’d been sleeping in. He gently shook her arm. “Marsha,” he said. “Marsha, are you all right?”

  She blinked her eyes and focused on them.

  “Hi!” she said and reached up for him.

  He couldn’t help himself. He leaned over and gave her a warm embrace and a soft, meaningful kiss. It was instant relief to the anxiety that had swept over him. But nice as it was, reality took hold.

  Where the hell were they?

  What were they doing in a Winnebago?

  Which was exactly what Marsha asked when she got a chance to take a look at her surroundings. ‘

  “I’m not sure. I’m still pretty confused myself.”

  “Those men—I remember now.”

  Scarborough turned toward the front of the vehicle. A curtain was drawn between the front and the living quarters.

  “Well, let’s go have a look, shall we? Maybe we’ll even get a chance to talk to our captors.”

  He had a suspicion who they were—the men who had saved him in the New York subway, who he’d confronted in nighttime Baltimore—but he said nothing about this to Marsha. That could wait.

  He helped her out of the bunk and together they went to the curtain. Scarborough flung it back, ready to face just about anything.

  The only things in the front were two empty seats.

  “Looks like we’re alone,” said Marsha.

  “I’m going to check outside.”

  “If we’re not locked in.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  He hopped over the seat, surprised at how agile and refreshed he felt, how energized. He hadn’t felt so good physically since before all this began!

  The handle to the door gave way easily, and the door swung out, letting in a blast of hot, dry air. Scarborough stepped out onto gravel. He walked a ways.

  The Winnebago was parked on the shoulder of a highway.

  In one direction were mountains and desert and clear blue sky. In the other were eating establishments, gas stations, a used car lot, and, in the distance, the tops of larger buildings, wavered by the heat: the beginnings of a city.

  “Looks like we’re still in some part of the Southwest, that’s for sure,” said Marsha, rubbing the last of her sleep from her eyes.

  “Where? Arizona?”

  “Maybe.”

  “They drove us here and abandoned us? But why?”

  From the back of the Winnebago came the abrupt sounds of a pounding and clattering.

  “Your friend Camden is everything you said he was,” said Marsha dryly.

  “He’s been through a hell of a lot.”

  “I never thought I’d hear you defending him.”

  “We’d better go in to make sure he’s okay.”

  They crawled back over the seats, into the main part of the Winnebago. Standing in the kitchen area amidst a scatter of pots, pans, and utensils was Jake Camden. He stared up blearily at them and said, “Hey, guys. Think you can help me out here? I’m just trying to get myself a cup of coffee.”

  Scarborough laughed, relieved. “Yes. I think that can be arranged, Jake.”

  “I’ve got the milk. This icebox is really jammed with food. But I can’t find the cabinet with the coffee. And—hey, where the crap am I, anyway?”

  “You’re in a Winnebago.”

  “A Winnebago? You mean, like an RV?”

  “That’s right.”

  Scarborough was totally lost and disoriented, “what am I doing here?” A look passed over Jake’s face, but then he just shrugged and started looking for the coffee again.

  “Make some for us, too, Jake,” said Scarborough.

  “What are you doing, Ev?”

  What Scarborough was doing was going to the front of the vehicle.

  The dream. His dream of sitting in the passenger seat of the Winnebago. It had been real.

  He remembered now… The tape ... The cassette player in the glove compartment…

  He plopped down in the passenger’s seat and found the glove compartment. It was unlocked.

  “Looking for some kind of registration. Who owns this thing?” He didn’t want to alarm them, tell them of the horrible menace he’d felt there, the dread, and the claustrophobia.

  What he found instead was a Sony Walkman.

  Marsha sat in the driver’s seat and stared at what Scarborough held in his hands.

  “My goodness,” she said. “Alice in Wonderland time.”

  “Well, I guess there’s nothing much else to do except follow directions.”

  Scarborough hit the “Play” button.

  For a moment, a faint tape hiss. Then:

  This message is for Everett Scarborough.

  Please be advised that you are sitting in a vehicle with a full tank of
gas, in highly operational mode. There is a full complement of supplies in the rear, along with a change of clothing for you and your companions. Also, in the glove compartment you will not find any registration. It is doubtful you will need any. What you will find, however, is an envelope containing five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bill denominations.

  You are presently outside the city of Prescott, Arizona.

  We have your daughter Diane, Scarborough. She is safe and well, and she will stay that way if we receive your cooperation in the future.

  Go where you will for now. It is not the right time for us to contact you directly. When that time arrives, we shall do so.

  Until that time, farewell, Mr. Scarborough. All questions will be answered—eventually.

  Tape hiss.

  “But who are they?” said Marsha, breaking a long moment of silence.

  “Did I hear someone mention five thousand dollars?” said Camden, sticking a smiling face through the curtain.

  Suddenly, Scarborough felt terribly claustrophobic. It felt as though the metal and vinyl of the Winnebago cab was constricting around him, about to crush him.

  “I have to get out of here,” Scarborough said in a choked voice.

  He jammed the tape player back into the box, hammered open the door of the R V and jumped down onto the gravel. He strode away from the highway, toward the brush and ragged landscape. The heat enfolded him gently and the sun beat down on him like a spotlight on a vast stage.

  “Everett! Everett!” called Marsha after him. “Are you all right?”

  “I need some time!” he called out, as though as much to his surroundings as to himself. “I need some time to myself!”

  She did not run after him, and Scarborough was glad of that.

  Fear and emotion and turmoil burned in his chest, blooming like a terrible ravaging explosion.

  He walked for perhaps a hundred yards before he came to a group of cacti. He sat down upon a flat rock. He realized that there were tears streaming down his eyes.

  Diane, he thought. Oh Diane.

  The words from Ed Myers and Julia Cunningham burned in his ears…

  The Others…

  The Others…

  Did they exist?