Majic Man nh-10

by Max Allan Collins

  “Who authorized the press release?”

  “I did.”

  “On whose authority, Colonel?”

  “Mine.”

  “… I guess you didn’t anticipate the public’s reaction.”

  He laughed through teeth that clenched the pipe. “I sure as hell didn’t. Phones were bombarded; I couldn’t even get an open line to make my own outgoing calls.”

  I kept my tone light as I asked, “Were you reprimanded, Colonel, for ‘jumping the gun’ with that press release?”

  The grin disappeared. “No. It wasn’t a big deal, Mr. Heller. We all had a good laugh.”

  “Who, you and General Ramey? Did Major Marcel find it funny? He was the one who looked like a sap.”

  “We all thought it was funny,” he said tightly. “Is there anything else, Mr. Heller?”

  “What about accusations of the military threatening citizens into silence? Cordoning off the Brazel place? Calling the local mortician, asking for small caskets?”

  Blanchard leaned back, took a long draw on the pipe, released a cloud of smoke. “Mr. Heller, Roswell’s a small town, and this base has a big responsibility. Sometimes the simple people of a farm community can make something out of nothing.”

  “Mountain out of a molehill?”

  “Exactly. This is ancient country, a land of myth, of superstition … add to that the kind of gossip that makes any small town go ’round, and you can come up with some really wild tall tales.”

  I beamed at him, sitting forward. “Well, then, if you don’t mind … I’ll get back to town and see if I can find some more whoppers for this article. I mean, my boss is trying to do something fun, after all, about the saucer fad.”

  The handsome face went blank; the pipe was in his teeth, but he wasn’t drawing on it. “The Air Force would appreciate it if you didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what? Stick around, or give my boss the makings of a story?”

  “Either. Both.”

  “If there’s nothing to this, Colonel, what’s the harm of me staying around, and seeking out some more tall tales?”

  Blanchard rose slowly, placed his pipe in an ashtray, and quite dramatically rested both his palms on the desk and leaned across, almost whispering, “You have a distinguished war record, Mr. Heller. You served your country faithfully and well. I’m asking you, as one patriot to another, to leave this be. To pack your bag and leave the Roswell area.”

  There’s a stage out of town at noon….

  I shook my head, grinned at him-not as winning a grin as his, I’m sure, but it was all I had. “First of all, Colonel, my war record isn’t all that distinguished-not unless you consider a Section Eight something worth framing and putting on the wall. Second, I get real nervous when people talk patriotism. It’s like when somebody says they expect you to do the ‘Christian’ thing.”

  Blanchard stood erect. “That was not a threat, Mr. Heller. This was an embarrassing incident, and we’d prefer not to have it dredged up again.”

  “Even if you could have another good laugh over it?”

  He sighed, shook his head, wearily. “I had hoped you’d cooperate.”

  “You mean, go home, and quash this story?”

  “Yes.” He pointed at me with the pipe stem, emphasizing certain words. “Let me say off the record … hypothetically … that if the Air Force were presenting a story to the public that did not represent the true facts, in this or any instance, there would be a good reason for it. Having to do with security considerations, and the public good. And I would hope a loyal American would respect the wishes of his government. Loose lips, as we used to say, sink ships.”

  “Including flying saucers?”

  “Mr. Heller, you disappoint me.”

  I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms. “Say, Butch-did they ever find that pilot who crashed that plane loaded down with whiskey?”

  Blanchard blanched. “How did you …”

  “I pride myself on my intelligence, too, Colonel.” I stood. “Can you have somebody give me a lift back to Roswell? Or maybe have your men take me out in the desert and shoot me?”

  “I don’t find you very amusing, Mr. Heller.”

  “Sorry-I’m fresh out of weather balloons.”

  Blanchard picked a receiver off one of his phones, said, “Send Kaufmann over here.” Then he hung up, and said, “No MPs, Mr. Heller-a civilian will take you back to town. Now, would you mind stepping out of my office? Step outside the building, in fact. I think I’ve seen quite enough of you.”

  The colonel kept his word: no MPs waited to accompany me off the base. My driver was a rather grizzled-looking, brown-haired, square-headed, broad-shouldered civilian in his thirties, in a short-sleeved plaid shirt and chinos. He’d already been behind the wheel, waiting outside, when I’d climbed in the front seat; and we were outside the gate and tooling toward town before he took one blunt-fingered hand off the wheel to offer it in a handshake.

  “Frank Kaufmann,” he said, in a low-pitched, slightly graveled voice.

  His handshake was firm. My straw fedora was at my feet; traveling in the open-air jeep was making my hair stand up, if what I’d been hearing today hadn’t already done that.

  “Nate Heller,” I said, adjusting my sunglasses.

  Kaufmann glanced over at me, raising eyebrows that were as brown and wild as the brush streaking by us; his eyes were a light, clear brown and he had a sly smile going.

  “Jesse Marcel’s friend,” he said.

  “Now how do you know that?”

  There seemed to be a twinkle in those amber eyes. “Maybe it’s ’cause I’m in charge of security out at the base.”

  “A civilian in charge of security?”

  He shrugged, still smiling, a private smile. “Well, I wasn’t always a civilian. Used to be a master sergeant. During the war I was the NCOIC under General Scanlon.”

  Noncommissioned officer in charge.

  “You must’ve had a pretty high clearance,” I said, “considering the 509th was the only air squadron flying atomic bombs.”

  “I knew what I was doin’. When I left the service in ’45, I was offered my old duties at RAAF, in a civilian capacity, this time. It’s delicate, maintaining friendly relations with a nearby community, like Roswell, when you’ve got top-secret stuff goin’ on. The press makes requests, the mayor wants to take dignitaries on tours, and sometimes you gotta say no. Me bein’ out of uniform helped smooth that kinda thing over.”

  “Did it.” This guy was striking me as a blowhard and a bore.

  Kaufmann chuckled, then lifted a hand from the wheel to gesture toward the desolation around us. “You know, looking out at all this tranquillity, you’d never guess such earth-shakin’ events could take place out in these wide open spaces…. First atom bomb went off not far from here, at the Trinity test site. Manhattan Project, that was over at Los Alamos. Did you know that when they set that bomb off, a bunch of the scientists thought there was a real chance it’d spark a chain reaction that’d lead to the end of the world?”

  “No.” I was listening closer now.

  “Well, they thought that, all right, and went ahead and set it off, anyway. What does that tell you about scientists? Not to mention ol’ Uncle Sam.”

  “It is a sobering thought,” I said, and wasn’t kidding.

  Kaufmann glanced at me and his eyes had turned as sly as his smile. “You know what they’re doin’ over at White Sands?”

  “No.”

  “You remember the V-2s, don’t you? Them big firecrackers that leveled London?”

  The V-2-the fabled buzz bomb-was a rocket, the world’s first large-scale one, at that.

  “Well,” Kaufmann was saying, “over at White Sands, the Air Force is playin’ with captured V-2s, and you know who’s helping them? You know who’s in charge?”

  “No.”

  “Bunch of goddamn Nazis.”

  “Nazis. Are running the White Sands Proving Ground.”

  He n
odded emphatically. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Smooth son of a bitch named von Braun is runnin’ things-he’s a ‘technical adviser.’ He’s not the only one, either-more Nazi scientists runnin’ around over there than you can shake a stick at. Gettin’ kowtowed to, when they oughta be lined up and shot, or maybe hung with piano wire.”

  My first impulse was to laugh at this nonsense, but then Teddy Kollek’s words flashed through my brain: You can’t imagine how many scientists fresh from factories run by concentration-camp labor are on Uncle Sam’s payroll, now.

  “They’re launching rockets over there,” Kaufmann was saying. “Real Flash Gordon stuff. Revamped V-2s. Trying to see how high they can shoot the sumbitches, trying to be more accurate, go further, carry a bigger payload of explosives. Sometimes, instead of TNT, they’re loadin’ up the noses with photographic equipment, and X-ray, and mice, and even monkeys.”

  “What for?”

  “The Nazis say we’re goin’ to the moon, someday. Outer space. They talk about it like it’s their goddamn religion.”

  This guy was clearly insane-yet another candidate for the suite next to Forrestal’s; I was starting to wish Blanchard had sent me with the MPs, instead. Roswell was looming up ahead, and I was relieved.

  And yet I was curious enough to ask: “Why are you telling me this, Frank? This sounds like classified material, to me….”

  Kaufmann shrugged, and one eye under one wild eyebrow winked at me. “Some of it is. What the hell, one civilian to another … one veteran to another. Thought you might like to know what your government’s capable of. What our military’s willing to go along with. Jesus Christ, goddamn Nazis! Hell, I’m of German heritage myself, and it sickens me…. You’re a Jewish fella, aren’t you?”

  “That’s part of my German heritage.”

  “Well, how do you like the idea, Uncle Sam in bed with fuckin’ Nazis?” Kaufmann shook his head, sighed heavily. “I’m sure as hell glad this is my last week.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of working out at the base. I’ve had all I can stomach of the postwar Air Force. Anyway, I got offered a better job.”

  “Yeah?”

  His expression turned proud. “I’m gonna head up the Roswell Chamber of Commerce.”

  All that smoothing over had paid off.

  “Where you staying, Mr. Heller?”

  “Don’t you know? You seem to know everything else.”

  Kaufmann grinned at me, a big wide grin, maybe not as winning as Blanchard’s but much more real. “You think I’m a bag of wind, don’t you? Well, I’ll tell you something you probably will believe-Jesse Marcel called me and asked me to talk to you.”

  “… You weren’t on the list.”

  He shrugged a shoulder. “I turned Jess down, at first. Didn’t want to compromise my job.”

  “But now you have another job.”

  “That’s part of it,” Kaufmann admitted, and this time it was the wild eyebrows that shrugged. “Another part is thinkin’ about what a fool they made out of a good man like Jesse. And another is thinkin’ about what a fool they’re makin’ out of all of us … the great unwashed American people.”

  I pointed. “I’m at the El Capitan.”

  The hotel, just around the corner from Roswell Drug on Main Street, was just up ahead.

  Kaufmann gave me his sliest look yet. “I can drop you there … unless, of course, you’d like me to take you out to the crash site, first.”

  “What?” Now the son of a bitch really had my attention. “The Brazel ranch, you mean?”

  Making a face, he said, “Hell no, not there; too long a drive, and anyway, there’s nothin’ to see, all that debris got picked up-they vacuumed that damn pasture! I’m talkin’ about the saucer … and the little bodies.”

  “Saucer. Bodies.”

  Kaufmann pulled over, double-parking the jeep in front of the drugstore, turning to grin at me. “Well, here we are, Mr. Heller-Hotel Capitan. Nice meetin’ you.”

  I grinned back at him. “Pretty cute, aren’t you, Kaufmann? How far is it?”

  “Just about a half hour. You think what I told you so far was good? Wait’ll you hear this….”

  As we headed north, on the concrete ribbon of 285, into a mostly brown, occasionally green landscape of scrub brush and cactus and sand, under a sky as infinite and wide as the blue eyes of a child, Kaufmann told me a yarn that had me laughing in wonder, even as I wrote it down in my spiral notebook. He was, it seemed to me, one of the following: a raving lunatic; an outrageous bullshit artist; or the witness to something truly extraordinary.

  On July 2, 1947, Brigadier General Scanlon of Air Defense Command had dispatched Kaufmann to White Sands Proving Ground at Alamogordo, where radar had detected strange movements, indicating an unidentified object flying over southwestern New Mexico, violating the restricted airspace. With orders to report directly to the general, Kaufmann and two others had, in shifts around the clock, charted the object.

  “The blips were just dancin’ from one end of the screen to the other,” Kaufmann said. “Now, we’d had similar blips back at Roswell, but intermittent-the thing showing up only when it was above the Capitan Mountains. We kept up watch for almost two days. Then late on the night of July Fourth, God decided to serve up His own fireworks show, by way of one incredible lightning storm.”

  At around eleven-twenty p.m., with the storm at its height, the object on the radar screen stopped flitting, began pulsating, growing larger; finally the object blossomed in “a white flash,” then shrank to its original size, dove down and winked out. The assumption was the craft-if that’s what it was-had been struck by lightning and possibly exploded, or crash-landed.

  “Two other sites-Roswell and Kirtland-were tracking the thing, so the Army techs were able to roughly triangulate the location of what we took to be a crash.”

  The consensus was that the object had fallen somewhere northwest of Roswell. By a little after two in the morning, Kaufmann had returned to the base, reporting in to Colonel Blanchard, who assembled a small military convoy-the base was undermanned, due to the long holiday weekend-of three jeeps, four trucks, one of them a flatbed, one a crane.

  “We took along some of those radiation suits,” Kaufmann said, “but we knew it couldn’t be what we call a ‘broken arrow’-a downed plane with an atom bomb aboard-’cause we had all the planes and the bombs! So radioactivity wasn’t really a major concern.”

  The convoy had headed out 285, which was exactly what Kaufmann and I in his jeep were doing; his story and our location converged, as-near Mile Marker 132-he turned west off the highway onto “an old ranch road,” a hard-dirt path, the jeep kicking up a small dust storm.

  “Hardest part was,” Kaufmann said, “not gettin’ stuck-ground was pretty soft, after the rain … but these jeeps can drive outa anything.”

  Soon Kaufmann turned again, near an abandoned ranch house, onto no road at all this time, and suddenly we were cutting across country. At this point, he halted his story to navigate, saying, “Explain the rest when we get there-be easier that way.” The jeep jostled along and at one point Kaufmann stopped, climbed out, snipped a barbed-wire fence with cutters, piled back in, and off we went again, driving over the downed fence, bouncing over some fairly rough terrain, making no attempt to avoid rocks, heavy tangled brush or cactus, crushing or burying everything in our wake.

  I held on to the side of the jeep, my teeth rattling as I said, “Are you telling me you drove this at night? Braving gullies and barbed-wire fences? How did you know where to go?”

  “We followed the glow,” he said. “It was a halo of light, beamin’ out against the sky. Closer we got, the more the glow seemed to ebb, and fade….”

  The jeep was making its way down a gentle slope that gradually became a ravine; then up ahead, perhaps one hundred yards, a forty-foot cliff rose from an arroyo, scrubby green below, thinning to clumps above in a rocky slope that became brown stony ridges.

  My guide stopp
ed his jeep and got out.

  “Let’s walk on down there,” Kaufmann said, with a motioning wave, “and I’ll show you exactly where the craft was wedged…. Look out for snakes.”

  I was halfway out of the vehicle. “What do you mean, look out for snakes?”

  “Rattlesnakes tend to get riled when you step on ’em, is all I’m sayin’.”

  “I think the jeep could make it down this slope,” I offered.

  “Just walk careful.” Kaufmann was laughing, gently. City folks.

  I walked careful. “Had the glow died down by the time you got here?”

  “Yes, it pretty much had, but we could see the metal glistening, and we knew then and there it wasn’t a plane or a V-2 rocket…. When we got here, we actually came out up there, at the edge of the ravine-damn near went over and crashed into the damn crash! But we circled around to where we are now…. This is it.”

  Kaufmann was pointing to a gouge in the sandy ground.

  “This is where the craft was embedded-kinda slammed into the sand, got its nose crumpled in the side of the cliff, here. Right off, Colonel Blanchard sent a man in, in a protective suit, to check the craft and the area for signs of radiation. We waited around for the all clear, maybe fifteen minutes, smoking cigarettes and asking each other questions none of us could answer.”

  “What did this craft look like, Frank?”

  “Oh, six feet high maybe, twenty, twenty-five feet long, probably fifteen feet wide. It sure as hell wasn’t no damn saucer.”

  “You said it was.”

  Kaufmann made a face, waved a dismissive hand. “That was just to get your attention-it’s the common usage…. This thing was shaped more like a wedge, somewhere between a V and a delta. It had this wraparound window at the front, and the whole thing was split in half, along its side, horizontally, maybe where it got blown open … maybe that was where that scattered junk Brazel found come from. Of course, I always thought there was a possibility the Air Force mighta loaded up some of the wreckage here, and carted it over to the Foster ranch, to scatter it around and confuse things, draw the attention away, onto a bogus site.”

  I wiped the back of my hand across my sweaty forehead under the brim of my straw fedora. “Wouldn’t you have known about that?”