The Roswell Swatch

by Scott Powers

  Bam!

  He went down hard, face first in the street. She had somehow twisted him over her leg. As he rolled over, her arms and legs, her hands and feet, seemed to be directing him until she had him on his stomach with her knee jammed into his right kidney. He felt a gun muzzle press into the back of his neck.

  “No one grabs me,”she said, digging the barrel into his skin. She wanted to hurt him.“You’re not a priest. Who the hell are you?”

  Max wasn’t so much afraid as worried. Yes, his jaw hurt. So did his forehead, left cheek, shoulder, and wrist from the fall. People began to gel on the sidewalk, and someone was sure to intervene. He had to negotiate fast.

  “I’m rescuing you,”he said.

  “I don’t need rescuing. Not by you. Not by anyone. Looks like you’re the one who needs help.”

  “Are you all right, miss?”a man on the sidewalk called out.

  “I’m fine,”Max shouted back.“Thanks for asking.”He spat blood.“You have no idea,”he said in a quieter voice just for Eve.“You’re dealing with the IBTT!”

  As soon as she heard those initials, Eve backed off. Nan had mentioned them. She released his wrist and leaned into a crouch, still holding the gun in folded arms so that it was not clearly visible to people around them.

  “Speak fast,”she said.

  Max got to his hands and knees and spit more blood.

  “That UFO chat room you entered is a known IBTT front. My friends and I monitor groups like that to protect people like you.”

  “That chat room was private.”

  He drew from the back of his throat and spit again. Less blood in that loogie.“Really? This is the twenty-first century, darling.”

  “What’s the IBTT?”she said, showing him the gun. But he was looking past it, down the street at two men getting out of a dark Acura curbed about a half-block away.

  “Get up! Sta-aand up!" he sang.

  That brought a look to her face that was somewhere between confused and bemused. She raised her eyes, hyper-alert. The right corner of her mouth lifted. Max turned serious to close the deal.

  "Get in the car, now, or you’ll find out. Here they come, and they’re not nice.”

  Max scrambled for the driver’s door. Eve looked back toward the hotel entrance where a manager and a valet were debating what to do. She saw others on the sidewalk, but no one stood out. No one wore yellow.

  “Get in! Now!”

  Her survival instinct and training took over. This goofball couldn’t hurt her if he tried, but danger could always lurk out of sight. She took her chance and climbed into the passenger’s seat. Max already had the engine started. He spun a quick U-turn through a fortunate hole in the traffic.

  “I’m Max. How’d you know I ain’tno priest?”

  “Priests don’t drive BMWs.”

  “I figured we might need fast, nimble wheels.” He looked in the mirror.“Like now. They’re following us.”

  Eve turned to look just as Max hit the gas and swerved into the left lane. The maneuver tossed her about, so she saw nothing. She steadied herself and set for another look just as he made a high-speed left turn. The move tossed her again, into her door. She grabbed her seatbelt and snapped it on. She turned to look again.

  “Black Acura,”Max said.“The two guys from the street, plus a driver.”

  “I didn’t see two men on the street, and I don’t see an Acura!”

  Max braked hard and then swerved sharply back into the right lane. He went around a tricked-out little Toyota and grabbed the left lane again.

  “It’s there.”

  Max made a squealing right turn from the wrong lane, and Eve glimpsed a woman’s terror as she braked a Honda hard to miss them.

  “Slow down! You’re going to kill someone. Me!”

  But he sped up, grabbing an open lane.

  “Shush,”he said.“I need to focus.”

  Eve looked again. She saw plenty of traffic, but no black Acura.

  “There’s no Acura! No Acura! Are you insane? Stop! Let me out now, asshole!”

  She saw what was ahead.

  “Oh, God.”

  “Relax,”Max said,“I’m trained.”

  “Trained in what? Fantasy games?”

  He slipped through a gap between two trucks to run a red light as Eve braced herself against the dashboard.

  Max was singing again, a harsh yet crisp rendition of Sammy Hagar’s I Can’t Drive Fifty-five. The BMW made a quick left down a street that was barely more than an alley. The first right brought them to the Greyhound station. As the light ahead turned red, Max cut into the bus station’s parking lot. That led to another parking lot, and he wove through the lanes there, jumping a curb to escape onto a street. Another right, another left, and another right avoided two more traffic lights.

  Eve was sure now that no one was following them. The last few maneuvers were either for show or to make their trek unpredictable. She assumed the former.

  “Where are we going?”she demanded.

  “Shhh!”

  “Tell me or I’ll shoot you.”

  “Oh, I’m so scared.”

  “I’ll kick your ass.”

  “That I believe,”Max conceded.

  He made a quick right, entering Broadway, a major north-south thoroughfare. He wove frantically through traffic for several blocks, catching all the lights, green or amber, before finally slowing.

  “We’ve lost them,”he said.

  Eve released a deep sigh.

  “You’re going to take me back to my truck,”she said.“And on the way, you’re going to talk.”

  “After all that? I don’t think so. Max a stole a glance at her gun. She held it pointed down with her palm on the handle and her finger on the trigger.

  “You’re such an amateur at this. We can’t go back. I’m guessing you didn’t hide your tracks when you entered that website. Lord knows, I found you easy enough. They know who you are,”he said.“They know how to find you.

  "You’re in danger, Eve Strong. We can’t get your truck. They’re probably waiting for you there. But we gottaditch this car. Fortunately, it’s a rental. Mine’s just up ahead.”

  Another mile up Broadway, Max pulled into a parking lot in Brackenridge Park. He drove through, passing dozens of half-empty rows, before turning and easing to the far end near a fence. He removed the priest collar and dialed his cell.

  “Hi? Father Ben here. I rented the X6? Okay, I lied. I stole Father Ben’s ID. Don’t worry, the car’s fine. I know you got a tracking device on it. Come and get it. It’s fine. I’ll leave some cash under the floor mat to pay for the rental. Don’t blame the Padre. He’s probably a decent man.”

  He pulled microfiber cloths from his pants and handed one to Eve.

  “Wipe down for prints,”he said.

  “Me? Why should I help? You stole the car. You wipe it down.”

  Max stuffed a bundle of twenty-dollar bills under his floor mat.“Your prints are on here too, sweetie. You want the cops to find those?”

  He got out, dropped his phone, and stomped it. He smiled. He stomped it again, and again.

  Eve tossed the cloth on the seat, grabbed her bag, and got out of the car.

  Max slung a bag of his own from the back seat and got out too.

  “Hey!”he called.“Hey! Do you want to know? The IBTT?”

  She turned, folded her arms, and waited. He walked toward her and then looked down on her. He was fifteen, maybe sixteen, inches taller. He spoke softly.

  “For years we called them the silencers,”he said.“You might know them as‘the men in black.’”

  “Men in black? Like the Will Smith movies?”

  Max dropped the bag and wiped the door handle. He took his time wiping inside, knowing she was waiting with folded arms. He emerged.

  “I prefer Tommy Lee Jones,”he said.“Like that, but not funny. They don’t run alien monsters. And they don’t have little flashy things,”he said, pumping a finger.“But they do hid
e the truth. There’ve been reports of‘men in black’ showing up at the scene of extraterrestrial sightings and incidents for decades.”

  He headed in another direction through the parking lot, talking to her over his shoulder, knowing she would follow. She did. He beeped a dark blue, glistening, new Camaro Z-28 and stood by the trunk. She came up behind him but kept a safe distance.

  “You were about to have your own encounter,”he said as he opened his door.“These people would rip you off, but that’s probably not as important as them ripping us all off.”

  “What’s all this got to do with me?”she asked.

  “You’re carrying what might be what we call Roswell fabric. It’s our Holy Grail and what the silencers want most to keep from the public. You do have it, don't you?"

  Eve looked at her bag. She did a little salsa step. She reached into her bra and pulled out the glossy, metallic tissue. She snapped it at him like a wet towel.

  Max's eyes widened. It looked ethereal. He reached out a hand, hesitating about a foot from actually touching it. She gave a slow nod. Careful. No quick moves. He moved his fingers to the swatch and rubbed his thumb and forefinger against it.

  "How do you know?”she asked.

  "I know."

  Max looked around. There were people in the parking lot but they were not close and seemed to be ignoring them. The bigger problem was that Max and Eve were in full, easy view from anyone driving past on Broadway.

  "We gotta get out of this place," he sang. "Come with me. We'll take care of you and this foil. I promise. We just need to get this examined by someone who'll know for sure what it is or isn’t.”

  “We? Who’s we?”

  “We,”he said,“are the counterbalance to the silencers. We seek the truth. That’s all. They do everything they can to hide it. If they’d have got hold of you, you would have lost the only thing you really want.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “An answer, right?”

  He opened the passenger door, walked around, opened the driver’s door, and, with the doors still open, started the car with a roar. This car might still bow before its ancestors from the 1970s, but its 500-HP V-8 had nothing to apologize for in today's market. Like an alpha lion, it announced itself. Max goosed the gas a couple of times in neutral just for effect.

  He leaned out.

  “You want an answer, you gottaget in,”he said.

  “The door is open,” he sang Springsteen,“but the ride ain’t free!”

  An answer sounded good to Eve though she wasn’t sure she ever knew the question.

  She got in. "Who are the silencers?"

  He dropped the transmission into reverse, spun the wheel, backed out, and headed toward the road. He didn’t answer for a moment.

  She sat patiently, waiting for an answer.

  “We don’t really know. They’re that good at hiding the truth. They’re said to steal, lie, bribe, threaten," he said, pausing before each verb to think of the next. "Terrorize, brutalize, plant evidence, frame people, or do whatever it takes to discredit witnesses and make evidence disappear.

  “They were only legendary until 2009. Then a journalist used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain thousands of pages of documents on UFO reports. They were heavily redacted, but censors missed a page,” Max said. “It stated‘IBTT agents’ had‘cleansed the scene,’ and implied that they had killed an unnamed witness. At last we had something.

  “The documents made it clear they were talking about an independent organization. The government was clearly aware of the silencers, but perhaps not explicitly involved with it. Still, the government seemed to like what the silencers were doing, or at best was powerless to do much about it, and tacitly went along. They were like the Mafia in the generation after World War II.”

  What Mafia?

  “So we got a name. We don’t know what IBTT stands for. But we know what they do. They’re dangerous. The organization I work with has linked them to five murders.”

  “Five?”

  Max glanced at her. She looked incredulous.

  “Five? Hell,”she said.“I personally know of seven, maybe eight.”

  CHAPTER 5

  DETROIT BREAKDOWN

  Max wasn’t at all sure where they would go next, except out of San Antonio. From Brackenridge Park, Max drove toward Houston.

  On the way out of town, he stopped at a Target store and paid cash for several pre-paid disposable phones. With the first, he texted a message to a number. Someone in the network would know where they could go, what they could do.

  Max went through three phones and nearly three hours of driving before he had an answer. But it was worth it. This tough little blonde with the quick trigger distrust appeared to have what they’d been looking for.

  They would head for Orlando, Florida to meet someone named Ted who could analyze Eve’s swatch.

  First, in Houston, he stopped at a bank and cleaned out a safe deposit box. They swung by his condo and grabbed pre-packed boxes and a pre-packed suitcase. He took her to a mall where he bought her clothes and a suitcase.

  They drove east. Eve was not asking questions, but Max knew she had some.

  “We’re not like most of the people in UFOlogy, with their conferences and their speakers and their books and websites and blogs and all that crap,”Max explained.“Sure, we know some of those people. And some of them know about us. But not many. Not many. And they don’t know much.

  “There’s no trust among conspiracy nuts, yaknow.” He glanced at Eve.

  She didn’t respond.

  “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to smile.”

  It was just past midnight. They were somewhere in central Louisiana, driving blue highways, and not always taking the most logical routes. Max had done all the driving. He didn’t mind. It wasn’t chauvinism. He just didn’t trust Eve to drive yet. She seemed along for the ride, but not a part of it. Not yet.

  He also did most of the talking. That he didn’t mind either. Sometimes Eve didn’t seem to be listening, like now, but that didn’t discourage him. He had a captive audience, whether she was absorbing anything he said or not.

  “Roswell,”he said,“is our Jerusalem.

  “There’s no wonder,” he continued, giving a lecture he’d given before, “that the Roswell‘incident’of 1947 inspires as enduring a controversy as the Kennedy assassination theories. In the story, a rancher reports finding UFO wreckage. He and the local sheriff and others, including Air Force personnel, initially corroborated each other’s stories of a huge debris field, covered with mysterious devices and materials of unworldly properties. Later reports included detailed descriptions of up to four extraterrestrial bodies, including two who appeared to have survived the crash. Witnesses included a local funeral home director who said the Air Force summoned him for an emergency supply of child-size coffins. The Army Air Force at first confirms, and newspapers run the story. For a brief, exciting moment, UFOs are no mystery. They just are. Then the Air Force removes all the evidence and says it was just a weather balloon. The decades bring credible witnesses, discredited reports, lost documents, conflicting stories, embellishments, studies, and cover-ups. Decades later, the Air Force twice investigates, and both reports reach the same conclusion: that people mixed memories of multiple incidents that all could be explained with research balloons, crash dummies, and big, whopper embellishments.

  “UFOlogists, and eventually the network, chase bad leads and dead ends until the whole matter becomes more frustrating than it seems to be worth. Roswell actually gets a bad name among UFOlogists. It gives the whole field a bad name. Still, it offers exotic sites, quirky characters, detailed accounts, unworldly materials, and bodies. It remains irresistible.

  “Yet, since 1947, one thing eludes all: tangible proof. Not even a shred of legendary foil.

  “As plausible reports of other UFO encounters emerge, so do patterns of discredited witnesses and lost evidence. A shadowy group that eventually became know
n as the silencers started showing up at scenes and in reluctant witness stories. As with all things UFO, many of the stories of the silencers devolve into absurdity. But there was one constant: they scare people. Early reports had them in black clothing, like ’50s era spies. Later silencers appeared more casual, like the ones you and I have encountered.”

  Eve continued to stare straight ahead, saying nothing.

  “Don’t let them fool you. Those guys downtown? If you didn’t sell them what they wanted, they’dajust taken it.”He looked again, hoping to make eye contact on that point.

  She didn’t offer.

  He continued.“You coulda wound up drugged, woke up in a ditch somewhere. Or you couldawound up dead. And try to tell that story to the cops.”

  “Bullshit,”she said at last.“I can take care of myself. And I can take care of this. No one’s getting it from me. You saw what I did to you.”

  “You caught me by surprise.”

  “A Girl Scout could have taken you down.”

  “Look, little sister. I’m not new at this. You are. You may think you’re tough, you may think you’re prepared, but you have no idea.”

  “Yeah, you’ve taught me to be scared.”

  “Next time you pull that gun, you better be prepared to use it, because these guys who are after you don’t fuck around.”

  “Why are you so sure they’re after me? I still think you were having some sort of paranoid hallucination. Do you use drugs? I didn’t see anybody on the street.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. You see them, you don’t see them, that’s mostly up to them. But they're there. They're there."

  He paused, contemplating how to convince her. She was staring out the window as dark swamp forest rolled by.

  “I’ve already lost,”he said, his voice dropping from excited to resigned.“For me, anything I can do to resist, any little light I can shine, anything I can help reveal, is revenge. That’s all I want. Because I can’t ever have what I really want. It’s gone.”

  “So who are you?”

  “I’m a rock star.”

  It was true. Max once had been a heavy metal singer and bass guitar player, with the band Mango Bone. She knew the band, but showed no signs of being impressed.