Fade Out

by Patrick Tilley

  Wetherby, who was from England, was an expert on the origins of the ancient Chinese village. His books on the subject, which he claimed nobody read, were as thick as New York City telephone directories. He also had an encyclopedic knowledge of almost every other subject Connors cared to mention – including flying.

  Wedderkind pointed a fork at Brecetti. ‘Phil was up on Crow Ridge with me last week.’

  ‘When you checked the cutout zone?’

  ‘Attempted to,’ said Brecetti. ‘Until that field is neutralized, I don’t see how we can carry out any serious research.’

  ‘You mean without electricity?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Brecetti. ‘It’s a real body blow.’

  ‘You may already know this,’ said Wedderkind. ‘But the fact is, despite the really fantastic advances in scientific knowledge over the past seventy years, the related phenomena of magnetism and electricity are still not fully understood. We can detect their presence, we know what properties they possess, and we can recreate them in the laboratory and in industry, but the how and why still elude us. The Earth, for instance, possesses a vast magnetic field, but it occurs without any of the complex mechanical systems we would need to reproduce a field just a fraction of that size. We’ve tracked down electricity and magnetism as far as the basic particle of matter – the atom. That is composed of electrically charged particles, and it also possesses what we call a magnetic moment. And we now know that smaller units exist beyond the electron and neutron of the atom. That’s Phil’s field – particle physics – and that takes us to the extreme edge of scientific knowledge.’

  ‘To the point where science becomes philosophy,’ said Brecetti.

  Connors toyed with the potatoes on his plate, then weakened and ate some of them. ‘Why do you think Crusoe chose to land in America?’

  ‘It could be because of the theory you put forward,’ said Wedderkind.

  ‘Which one was that?’

  ‘Homing in on radio and TV transmissions. After a week orbiting the entire world, he would be able to pinpoint North America as the biggest single source of radio and TV traffic. With the proper optical equipment he could also see the buildup of cities and roads, the cultivated areas. Western Europe would have some of the same characteristics, but lumped together as a single land mass with Asia it wouldn’t look so active. Africa would have minimal radio traffic, and so would South America and Australia.’

  ‘We’ve been listing the characteristics of the landing site,’ said Wetherby. ‘But at the moment, they don’t enable us to draw any conclusions.’ He ticked off the points on his fingers. ‘One, it is situated midway between the Rocky Mountains and the plains of the Middle West. Two, this point is roughly in the middle of the North American continent. It depends on the criteria you use, but it’s just about the visual centre of gravity. That at least points to a tidy mind. Three, it’s a sparsely populated area, but four, it’s an area that is rich in minerals, including uranium. Five, it’s old. The surface rocks are from the Cretaceous period, that’s the last third of the Mesozoic era, when pterodactyls, dinosaurs, and other large reptiles flourished.’

  ‘And it’s the period during which they were all mysteriously wiped out,’ said Wedderkind.

  ‘It’s also near one of the oldest-known geological areas in the United States. The Black Hills of Dakota contain rocks over six hundred million years old.’

  ‘What would be the point of landing in a spot like that?’ asked Connors.

  ‘Well – it depends on the purpose of your visit,’ said Wetherby. ‘Our exploration of similar areas on the moon was to find out more about its origins – and evolution. The results exploded the long-held theory that the moon once formed part of the Earth. It didn’t. But they probably came into existence at about the same time. To anyone who’s interested, this area contains a big chunk of geological time for them to study.’ Wetherby smiled. ‘On the other hand, they may have been here six hundred million years ago.’

  ‘And they’ve come back for their umbrella,’ said Connors.

  ‘Yes – or to check up on what has happened since. Or maybe to meet somebody.’ Wetherby paused to pour chocolate sauce over his ice cream. ‘Don’t forget that, historically, this is Kiowa-Apache country. With the recent backdating of Man’s appearance in North America, their ancestors go back a long way.’

  ‘We’re lucky Crusoe didn’t land in one of the Indian reservations,’ said Wedderkind. ‘A few more minutes in the air and he’d have ended up south of the Yellowstone, in the Crow reservation on the Little Bighorn.’

  ‘That would have made a nice legal problem,’ said Wetherby.

  ‘Yeah…’ Connors looked at Wedderkind. ‘Weissmann would have probably ended up getting scalped.’

  ‘Who’s Weissmann?’ asked Brecetti.

  ‘Nobody,’ said Connors. ‘Forget it.’

  THE WHITE HOUSE/WASHINGTON DC

  Just after midday, Bodell and his wife were photographed on the lawn of the White House with the President standing between them. They then went inside to have lunch with the President and his wife Anne. Jerry Silvermann, the White House Press Secretary, and Marion Wilson, the President’s private secretary, were on hand to lighten the occasion, but the Bodells were so overawed they could hardly lift a fork.

  Mrs Bodell was then given the short tour around the residential rooms by the First Lady, while the President took Bodell into the Oval Office and, after a short preamble, asked him to serve, once again, ‘the highest interest of the nation’. On the desk was a document prepared by Weissmann that assigned his land to the Mineral Research and Development Corporation. Bodell asked to be able to keep his shack and garden, and the President, who’d been a lawyer, amended the document in longhand. Bodell signed on the dotted line. The whole thing from the hello to the good-bye handshake took just under an hour and a half.

  Weissmann, who had kept well out of Bodell’s way, phoned the news to Connors, who was still in Ohio. ‘I’ll file all the necessary papers, but as from now we’re at gostatus.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ asked Connors.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Bodells.’

  ‘On their way to Disneyworld.’

  ‘Did they get a good deal?’

  ‘They did all right.’ Weissmann obviously found it hard to part with money, even when it wasn’t his own.

  ‘Well, don’t lose any sleep over it,’ said Connors. ‘Just send us the bill for a new car.’

  Tuesday/August 21

  GLASGOW AIR FORCE BASE/MONTANA

  The 707 bringing Connors, Wedderkind, and the research group from Ohio landed at Glasgow just after midday. An aircrew bus took them over to the officer’s mess for lunch. Greg Mitchell was there, packed and ready to ride the 707 back to Washington. He told Connors that Allbright’s group was on the Ridge and that the CIA ‘front office’ operation was already in position on Highway 22.

  ‘It couldn’t be better,’ Greg concluded. ‘On a busy day, you get all of two cars an hour going past the front door. The only security problem you’re likely to get is from the few light planes in the area. There’s a dirt strip at Jordan, and an air-taxi outfit based at the Miles City airport. I think they do some control work for the State Fish and Game Department.’

  ‘Well, you have a three and a half hour trip ahead of you,’ said Connors. ‘See if you can come up with some ideas before you get to Washington. Have you met Allbright?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Greg. ‘Before he rose to be head of SAC, he commanded one of the B-52 wings that carpet-bombed Cambodia for Nixon and dear old Henry K.’

  ‘While pretending to be elsewhere…’

  ‘That’s right. The Menu raids.’

  Connors gave Greg a raised-eyebrow look as the details of this shabby, and ultimately futile, venture flashed through his mind.

  The Viet Cong had been using the cross-border trails to bring supplies and reinforcements down from the north. They’d also set up bases on Cambodian territory
from which attacks were launched against South Vietnam. It was a clear violation of Cambodia’s neutrality but the government in Phnom Penh, lacking the political will and the military muscle to throw its unwelcome visitors out, turned a blind eye to what was going on.

  Code-named Menu, the raids were designed to deny the VC sanctuary by destroying these bases and supply lines but Nixon knew that any extension of the war into Cambodia would trigger a new storm of protest from the domestic anti-war lobby and fellow-travellers the world over. To get around this, the Air Force was ordered to cover its tracks with an impenetrable layer of fake paperwork. The bombing, which began in February 1969, continued under a cloud of secrecy and a barrage of denials from the White House until April 1970 when units of the US and South Vietnamese army staged an abortive invasion.

  Once again, American technology and firepower failed to halt the rice-bowl and bicycle battalions of Hanoi. South Vietnam collapsed in disarray as the US of A finally decided to cut its losses and sailed for home while next door, the blank-eyed teen-age killers of the Khmer Rouge came out of the jungle and took over the smoking ruins of Cambodia.

  An unknown number of Cambodians had died in the raids; upwards of three million more perished when Pol Pot’s regime turned back the clock to Year Zero and proceeded to impose their homicidally-insane brand of Marxism upon the luckless population. An entire country was transformed into one vast concentration camp as a direct result of a ‘let’s go bomb the hell out of them’ cry from a frustrated US President.

  And an embarrassed world had looked the other way.

  Greg read Connors’ mind and smiled, tongue in cheek. ‘I know. Not exactly your kind of person. But his record shows he’s a man who does what he’s told and knows how to keep a secret. And as the head of SAC, he’s obviously a man who can be relied on to keep a cool head when the chips are down. What more could you ask?’

  ‘What more, indeed,’ said Connors. ‘Have a nice day.’

  After lunch, Connors, Wedderkind, Wetherby, and Brecetti left the base in a rented car. Two miles down the road towards the town of Glasgow, a yellow MRDC helicopter was parked on an empty stretch of ground. They climbed aboard and headed south towards the Fort Peck reservoir.

  As they crossed the huge expanse of water, Wetherby tapped Connors on the shoulder and pointed downward out of the window.

  ‘Did you know this is still the largest earth-fill dam in the world?’

  Connors nodded. Tremendous… He decided that next time he would ask the pilot to take the long way around.

  About thirty minutes later, they landed on a bare patch of ground at the junction of Highway 22 and the dirt road that led up to Crow Ridge. It had been decided not to risk any landings nearer the Ridge until the full extent of the cutout zone had been carefully charted.

  Behind a sign which read ‘MRDC – AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY’ four of the base camp’s prefabricated shacks had already been positioned on Bodell’s land, a short distance from the road.

  On the other side of the highway a lineman was busy at the top of a telephone pole.

  One of Allbright’s cadets from Colorado Springs was waiting with a yellow four-door jeep. He wore a blue hard hat and had the name LARSEN stencilled on the breast tag of his olive-drab fatigues. He handed out four yellow hard hats. Connors got into the front seat of the station wagon. The others got into the back.

  ‘Has General Allbright arived?’ asked Connors.

  ‘I don’t think I’m able to answer that, sir. To the best of my knowledge there are no military personnel associated with this project.’ Larsen gave it an absolutely straight delivery.

  Connors looked over his shouder at Wedderkind, then back at Larsen. ‘You are right, of course. Perhaps I’d better rephrase the question.’

  ‘I think the best thing is for you to talk to the site organizer, sir. He’s up on the Ridge.’

  Six miles from the highway, Connors caught sight of some more cadets through the trees. They were driving in a line of marker stakes around the Ridge. There was a temporary barrier of dirt-filled oil drums where the marker stakes hit the road. It was manned by four more of the look-alike cadets. Two of them had shotguns. All of them had the peaks of their blue hard hats pulled down over their eyes in the best drill-sergeant fashion.

  ‘Connors, Brecetti, Wedderkind, and Wetherby,’ said Larsen.

  A cadet checked the names against the list on his clipboard, and handed out four plastic name tags that included a mug shot. ‘Please put these on and wear them at all times.’ He stepped back and waved up the barrier.

  They drove through, rounded a curve and parked in between the pines alongside several other vehicles.

  ‘We have to walk from here,’ said Larsen.

  Ahead of them, across the dirt road, was a line of red stakes. Beyond them, Connors could see Volkert’s patrol car, the tow truck and the Air Force Rescue truck, still parked where they had stalled over a week before.

  Connors turned to Larsen. ‘Do the stakes mark the edge of the cutout zone?’

  ‘Only approximately, sir. We haven’t driven up any further than our parking point back there. We put the stakes in halfway between there and the stalled vehicles to serve as a basic reference point.’

  Connors felt a tingle of excitement as he followed Larsen through the line of red stakes. He looked back at Wedderkind and saw that his eyes had taken on a new shine. Brecetti was rubbing his hands together. Wetherby had stopped to take in the whole scene along with a few deep breaths of pine-laden air.

  On the windshields of all three vehicles were taped notices: ‘DO NOT TAMPER WITH OR ATTEMPT TO MOVE THIS VEHICLE.’ The hood of Volkert’s patrol car had been left open.

  Connors took a peek at the engine, then turned to Wedderkind. ‘Has anybody examined these?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Wedderkind. ‘I went over them all when we were up here last week. Before you went to see Bodell.’

  ‘You were taking a risk, weren’t you?’

  ‘He was too busy shooting at Weissmann,’ said Wedderkind.

  Connors turned to Larsen. ‘Has there been any word on the converted diesel trucks?’

  ‘Yes, sir. We anticipate receiving the first batch this evening. Would you like to move on to the plateau?’

  ‘Sure, let’s go.’ Connors exchanged an amused look with Wedderkind, and fell into step beside Larsen. The others tagged along behind. Connors looked back over his shoulder at Wedderkind. ‘Now that I think of it, how come you know so much about automobiles?’

  ‘This may surprise you,’ said Wedderkind, ‘but twenty-five years ago I was still doing my own hot rod conversions.’

  ‘That was before he became ambitious,’ said Brecetti.

  The dirt road degenerated into the dried mud tracks of Bodell’s old Dodge. Above them, they could hear the sound of another helicopter bringing in more people from Glasgow.

  Connors looked back at Wedderkind. ‘We’re going to have to get this road cut through to the plateau.’

  ‘I think the plan is to get started on that tonight, sir.’ It was Larsen being helpful again. He angled off to the right of the tyre tracks. A band of white paint on the tree trunks marked the way through.

  ‘How old are you, Larsen?’

  ‘Twenty-three, sir.’

  ‘This must be a whole lot more fun than walking in right angles and eating at attention, right?’

  ‘You only do that as a freshman, sir,’ explained Larsen patiently. ‘In addition to our military training, upperclass cadets are required to complete a Bachelor of Science degree course and a program of enrichment studies. We are also called upon to perform command and staff functions within the Cadet Wing.’

  And we also learn how to put down wheeler-dealers from Washington without being insubordinate, thought Connors. Full marks, Larsen.

  The ground became littered with broken branches. There were more hanging in the trees. Ahead of them, they could see shattered tree trunks and the open sky.

 
; They stepped out into the semicircular area of devastation. The ground was covered with small splinters of wood – as if someone had emptied a million matchboxes. The rim of the crater was about a hundred yards away. The ground was heaped up around it just like the sugar in Wedderkind’s demonstration bowl.

  Connors looked at Larsen as they walked towards the crater. ‘How big is this thing?’

  ‘About thirty yards across, sir.’

  Connors turned to the others. ‘There were three hours between the time people reported seeing the fireball over Broken Mill and the time Volkert got up to the top of Crow Ridge and found this crater. How the hell could it have buried itself so fast?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Wedderkind. He stooped down and picked up a handful of wood splinters. He looked around him. ‘There’s no sign of a fire.’ He showed the splinters to Brecetti. ‘They’re not charred. You see? It looks as if they have been shredded. Look at how the wood fibres have disintegrated. The pressure from the blast must have been tremendous. One would have expected it to devastate the whole plateau, but as you can see, the rest of the trees are still standing.’

  ‘The damage could have been caused by ultralow-frequency sound waves,’ said Brecetti. ‘The right wavelength could set up a resonance in the timber that would blow it apart. Remember the experiments the French carried out at Marseilles in 1964?’

  ‘Was that the “Jericho Trumpet?”’ asked Connors. ‘They split concrete apart with a sound gun.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Brecetti. ‘Lower frequencies are even more destructive. At 3.5 hertz the sound waves create subsonic vibrations that can literally shake humans apart.’

  ‘Insane,’ said Connors. ‘I can never understand why you guys fool around with that kind of thing.’

  ‘Ultrasonic high-frequency vibrations was another possibility we discussed back in Ohio. Crusoe could have buried himself by shaking the ground loose around him – rather like the way insects burrow into sand.’

  ‘This fireball that people saw,’ said Connors. ‘Could that have been retro-rockets firing, to slow its rate of descent before landing?’