The Roswell Swatch

by Scott Powers

  This time the question made no sense. Yet Max pressed himself to give some sort of answer.

  “We’ve still got a piece of it, you know! You losers! We will prevail! The American people must know!”

  The man shoved the foil into a suit breast pocket and suddenly the pocket was spilling sparks. They were coming out of his suit with the sound of static from a loud, portable radio. He had seen those sparks before, in Detroit. He wished he had his shield. This could get hot.

  Sam was asking something else, but Max wasn’t hearing the words. He was too busy watching the fireworks emerging from the man’s suit coat.

  The drug was really kicking in. Their voices were coming from some peripheral location. He could watch their mouths move, but it was as if he was hearing a badly dubbed foreign movie. Max was having a hard time holding his head up, and he felt a swirl of nausea. Captain America must not vomit. Captain America does not barf. Max giggled at the thought. Captain America barfing.

  “Who do you think we are?”

  “You’re men in black. Silencers. Or Nazis.”

  “We’ll make it easy for you,”Sam’s mouth said.“Tell us about the cloth, and we won’t kill you or Eve.”

  The last words came to him in a kind of echo. Sam was now a Roman candle of sparks, spilling from all the openings of his suit. Elsewhere, the lights were dimming. And yet somewhere, a rational part of Max’s brain was examining the events. Was he hallucinating? Had all those drugs he’d once taken made him highly susceptible to whatever these guys gave him? He decided he didn’t care.

  Max lost himself in internal debate for long enough that he didn’t even notice the thug had approached. The guy grabbed Max’s face, steadied it, and spoke to him. The sound now was coming in with strong reverberations as if it was going through the engineer’s soundboard. It sounded cool. Max’s only reaction was to roll his eyes. The guy slapped him. Max was now fully engrossed in delusion, fantasy, dream, even hallucination. The slap became flying debris, striking him. And this Roman candle before him was now at its climax. What a show.

  “You idiot,”the thug said.“You gave him too much.”

  “Doesn’t matter,”Sam said.“We hold him. She’ll come to us. We won’t need to find her. We think we spotted her tailing us as we brought you here. She’ll come here. We’ll just wait.”

  Max understood that, and his heart pounded. Then he saw the sparks from the man’s suit had set some hay afire. Red, red flame sprouted and then began moving in his direction, snaking back and forth a little, until it was right in front of him and began to grow. It rushed him. Max screamed in agony as his skin and clothing erupted in sparkling green flame.

  *****

  After Eve abandoned Max on the bridge, she drove for about a mile, moving entirely on reflex to his authoritative orders, before it sank in. She couldn’t just leave him there. She turned around immediately.

  “Damn him.”

  This was not so much a loyalty to Max or a sense that she endorsed and therefore shared his recklessness, but a deep-set sense of duty going all the way back to her Army basic training. She couldn't abandon a comrade in trouble. Ever.

  By the time she got back to the bridge, the two Interceptors and Max were gone.

  Early on, she’d seen that Max played perilous games. And she’d signed on anyway. She owed Max. But two fires, a shootout, and a high-speed chase all in one night? Eve wasn’t having second thoughts; rather she was entering a new level of commitment, a new recognition. Dawn was emerging. Eve headed east so she watched the horizon light up and drove the Camaro as hard as she could. The beautiful machine responded as Americans demanded, with a roar and a steady, building power that seemed limitless. Before she reached the interstate, she recognized the Interceptor’s taillights. Eve kept the taillights in sight, while she tried to reach Ted on Max’s phone.

  A female voice answered,“What?”

  “Is this Jen?”Eve asked.“This is the woman who came to rescue him. I need to talk.”

  “Ted’s sleeping. What’s up?”

  Eve began with an account of the past hour, and from there to the previous night. The two women opened to each other and their stories began to mesh. Eve and Jen talked so long Eve was afraid the phone battery might die.

  Jen, as it turned out, was Ted’s older sister. They had shared a close encounter when he was still a teenager and she was in nursing school. It affected them differently. He talked about it to everyone. She didn’t dare. He took his story wherever he could. She tried to forget. A few days later, his car blew a tire when he was heading home from a party. The crash broke his back.

  When Eve heard that story, she’d felt a rush of adrenaline that made her nauseated. It felt like a confirmation.

  “I left school and cared for him for months,”Jen said.“I saw him change during that time, become angry, and yet, focused.”

  “That sounds like Max, from what I’ve seen so far,”Eve said.

  Ted immediately concluded what no one else would even consider, that the crash was caused by someone else. Ted became paranoid, and obsessed. What passed as teenage angst in another youth grew into a new direction for the young Ted.

  He poured himself into mathematics, and then engineering, and then took a long, troubled, lonely road toward a PhD. Somewhere along the line, he began making connections with others like himself. He found ways to be useful. He found ways to use what he had.

  “A long time ago, he lost interest in any normal life,”Jen said.“It’s not about his back, or about the chair. It’s about who he feels comfortable with.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Almost no one. Ted's unique. Or at least that's how he thinks of himself.”

  Only Jen seemed to tolerate him. She protected him.

  “Ted always keeps me up on what he’s into. The network, his research,”Jen said.“It was always him, though. He’s always got a theory. He’s always connecting dots. He’s always looking for something. I’m not sure what. I just listen, because no one else will.

  “Then there was yesterday,”Jen said.

  “Uh-huh,”Eve offered. She was driving, trying to keep the distant Interceptor in view, without being seen. The sun was up.

  “Sometimes his paranoia scares me,”Jen said.“But nothing like yesterday. He called, really scared. He begged me to come see him.”

  Jen, a nurse at a downtown hospital, lived on the other side of town. By the time she got to Ted’s, he was gone.

  His van was still there. He didn’t show up at work and didn’t answer his cell. She called the police. They took a report. She waited.

  Jen worked nights and called in sick. She called Ted’s few friends. Around 1:00 a.m., she heard a door slam out front and a car leave.

  She found Ted in the ditch beside the street, without his wheelchair. He was woozy, drugged. He said only,“Don’t call the cops.”

  She put him to bed, took his revolver from a drawer by his bed, and sat up to watch TV.

  “That’s when you broke in.”

  “Sorry,”Eve said.“We figured they had him hostage in there. I didn’t really tryto shoot you. If I had, I’d have hit you. Hold on. Call you back.”

  Eve hung up and put her cell on the seat. She was few cars behind the rear Interceptor. It was exiting the freeway. The Interceptors turned onto a country road and Eve chose not to follow. It was too light and isolated to stay out of sight. A half hour later, she slowly eased down the road and spotted one of the SUVs parked a ways off, near a lonely barn. She drove on, to where she could not see the end of the driveway, and pulled onto the shoulder.

  Then she checked to see what Max had in the trunk. It was full of boxes and bags, electronic equipment, cameras, costumes. She even found a box of cash.

  "Holy crap.”

  Eve drove farther down the road and parked. She filled a backpack and hiked back, cutting through a field and palmetto brush. Still in the woods, she got within sight of the barn and settled in. There were two men an
d a car outside the barn. She photographed them.

  The barn seemed to be a center of careful activity, and Eve concluded Max was in there. She made her move, headed first toward the house. There were two cars in front of the house: one of the Interceptors and a black Mercedes. No one was outside. Eve got to a window.

  She saw three men inside. She slipped away to the Mercedes and duct-taped a GPS tracker inside the left rear wheel well.

  She heard Max. He was in the barn, yelling, laughing, and singing. He sounded okay. Eve made her way back out into the palmetto scrub.

  She dug in to wait. After a few minutes, the others came outside. They were waiting for something, but what? Then they began scanning the sky. Off in the distance, Eve heard and then saw the helicopter, a commercial chopper like those used to ferry workers out to oilrigs. On the Texas coast, Eve had seen them pass by as often as someone living near a railroad track might see trains. It landed in an open area roughly between the house and the barn.

  A man in a suit got out and met the others. They spoke for a while and one of the greeters pulled something from his pocket. It was a handkerchief. He unrolled it and revealed what was wrapped inside. Eve’s swatch. The man in the charcoal suit held it up to the light, fluffed it, and turned it over.

  The man in the charcoal suit and the remaining greeter went to the barn. With all of their backs to her, Eve saw an opening, scampered a long arc around the edge of the woods and then came toward the barn from the rear. There she found a low hole, where several boards were broken away, and slipped through.

  She settled in behind a couple of fifty-five-gallon drums. Max sat in a chair, chained. The man in the suit showed him her grandpa’s swatch. She aimed her gun at his head. The other man kicked Max in the side, knocking him out of the chair. Eve nearly fired, but held her position. She wondered for just a moment if she had just wasted her last, best chance for a rescue, but knew it wouldn’t have ended well if she had tried. A man grabbed Max’s face and then slapped him. They wanted to hear about her. He said nothing.

  “We spotted her,”one man said.“She’ll come here. We’ll just wait.”

  Eve dropped her gun sight. They were waiting for her. They weren’t interested in Max. They were holding him as bait. Max’s head kept rolling. He clearly was drugged, and gone. The two men were arguing with one another when Max began moaning. He screamed. He writhed in obvious agony. His scream turned to a rattle and then to blithering laughter.

  The suited man’s cell phone rang. He checked and seemed worried. They both left the barn.

  Eve rushed to Max. She grabbed his shoulders and his eyes opened. They were extremely dilated. He squinted.

  “Eve!”

  She pulled on his chain. She shuddered as she realized her momentary thought of rescuing him would have been impossible. It would have been a disaster.

  “How did you get through the fire?” Max asked.“My God, you’re glowing! Eve! Eve! Are you all right?”

  “I can’t get you out of here!”

  He was waving his hand at the air between them.

  “Are you even real?”

  He patted her cheek.

  “Max. Listen to me. Can you understand me?”

  “Poof!”he said.“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

  She grabbed his left leg, pulled up his jeans leg, and shoved another GPS tracker, about half the size of a deck of cards, down the inside of his boot. She pulled the pants leg back down over the boot.

  “I have to leave you, Max. You’re on your own. Be careful. We’ll get you. Don’t worry.”

  She slipped to the back of the barn just as the two men returned with a third. She had a good vantage without exposing herself. As the man in the suit watched, the other two unlocked and removed the chain and lifted Max to his feet. He stumbled badly, so one guy grabbed his legs and the other his shoulders. They carried him out. Just before they left, Max turned exactly toward where Eve was hiding and smiled, as if he knew she was there.

  Eve heard the helicopter start. By the time she slipped outside, it was lifting off, presumably with Max inside. About one hundred feet above a pasture, it stopped and hovered. A window opened and a small object was tossed out. As she watched the tiny dot fall to Earth, she knew it was the GPS tracker she’d put in Max’s boot.

  Now they knew she’d been there, because they’d surely already searched him. Eve bolted to the woods. Someone hollered and three or four men chased. But she had a good head start. She heard a pistol crack. In a moment, Eve was deep into the woods, changing directions, slicing through brush just as it sliced her ankles, hands, and wrists. Eventually she crawled into deep brush, hid, and waited. They searched, far from her. At last they retreated. She waited more. Finally, she heard three engines start and cars leave. They were gone.

  CHAPTER 9

  ENTER SANDMAN

  Eve drove back to Orlando, to Jen’s house.

  Ted was still out. Eve knew that already because she and Jen had talked at length as Eve drove back. At the door, Jen gave Eve a hug, then immediately pulled her into the bathroom, and treated and bandaged her wounds, her burned hand, and a dozen cuts that had bled themselves dry. When Eve left the bathroom, Jen was waiting for her in the hallway with a blanket and pillow.

  “Sleep,”she said. “We’ll deal with things later.”

  So Eve accepted a couch. In spite of all running through her mind, and in spite of her doubts, she fell asleep quickly.

  The dream came again, of Ranra's house in Marja.

  It was the only part of her brain she could not block—the part that dreamed. They sat around that rug enjoying the moment and then the knock came at the door. The servant appeared. The door opened, and an angry, grizzled old man stood next to a young girl, maybe ten years old. She asked for her mother. She was seeking Faheema, the red-haired widow who wanted her daughters to go to school. Faheema stood, walked to the door, and spoke with her daughter.

  "He is out there," Bibi translated for the American soldiers. "He is here, and he wants her to leave."

  Faheema bid farewell to the others and thanked Ranra. With a look of terror in her eyes, she stepped through the threshold.

  Eve took a step to follow, but Alice put her hand on Eve's elbow to stop her. There was no question in this team that Alice was the woman of words, and Janae, the woman of heart. Eve was the woman of action.

  They could hear the shouting from outside, as if the door still were open. Eve still stood. She looked around the room, and the other women were all diverting their attention from what was going on outside. This time Alice translated.

  "She disobeyed," she said.

  "I thought her husband was dead," Eve said.

  "Not her husband," Alice said. "Her son. She disobeyed her son. He forbade her to come here today."

  Eve stood mesmerized by the shouting coming from outside. It moved farther away but still came in clearly. She realized the high windows were open. She heard the swat. She heard Faheema squeal and fall.

  Eve broke for the door.

  "Specialist Mirada, stop!" Lieutenant Hunt commanded.

  Eve stopped. But, no, she didn't. In her dream, her legs continued to move forward against her will. It was like walking through deep water. The water was her will. The legs moved anyway. She knew her true will was to get her legs to move forward against something that was holding her back, humanity versus duty. The door opened and she floated out. There were several men, all dressed in white tunics and hats. Four of them yelled at Eve in Pashto and pointed to the door. Eve reached back for the door, but her feet left the ground and the handle fell from her reach. She rose into the air, now truly against her control, drifting above the shouting men, and rolling into a horizontal position.

  She could see Faheema and her family in the street now, now twenty feet away and ten feet below her. Faheema had collapsed on the hardened dirt of the street and was bleeding from her forearm and forehead. The grizzled old man, an elder, possibly a holy man, white-bearded and heavy was
screaming at her. Beside him stood a boy, perhaps fourteen years old, who shared Faheema's red hair. He was yelling too. Behind them were Faheema's daughters, the one who had opened the door and another who was perhaps a year or two younger. The boy, certainly Faheema's son, pulled another rock from the dirt, as the old man commanded. As he took aim, Eve spread her arms and Faheema rose from the ground, levitating into her arms. The elder barked commands to the boy, pointing and berating the woman even as she entered Eve's protection. The other men gathered around, all shouting at the boy. The rock he selected was about the size of a baseball. He hurled it at his mother. Eve held out her hand, and the rock turned into a white dove and fluttered away.

  The old man grabbed the boy and the two collapsed into the dirt. The daughters knelt, sobbing. The other men shouted, backed away, and then fled.

  But when Eve looked into Faheema's eyes, she was dead. Eve could see her own face streaming blood. She looked down again searching for the daughters but they were gone. The men scooped up rocks and threw them at Eve and the body she held. One from the boy struck Eve in the scalp, and she dropped the body and felt herself plummeting, plummeting to the ground. She screamed.

  When Eve awoke, Jen was beside her, holding her shoulders.

  “Dearie, are you all right? You’ve had a nightmare!”

  Eve looked around and the dream melted away into the sights, sounds, and touches of Jen and her apartment. Eve stroked her face and found it soaked. She examined her hand. Just sweat.

  Ted was up and at a computer across the room, seemingly ignoring them. He was thin and wearing just a white T-shirt and red boxer shorts in his wheelchair.

  “You’re lucky they didn’t catch you,”he said, his voice low and gravelly.“There’s coffee in the kitchen.”

  Eve felt drained by the dream, unrefreshed by the nap, and foggy. She said nothing and went into the kitchen to get a cup.

  “Aww, for crying out loud,”Ted shouted at her.“You burned down my lab? It’s on the Goddamn news. They’re looking for me. I can’t call anyone without getting us arrested.”