Fallout

by James W. Huston

  “Thanks a lot,” Crumb said, his sarcasm ringing in Raymond’s ears.

  Raymond started to leave, then turned back after Crumb’s tone began to sink in. “You think you know so much.” He put the tray down on the table next to their plates and sat quickly in an empty chair, uninvited. He pulled a thick stack of folded papers out of his back pocket. “You have any idea how much money is spent on black programs?”

  “What do black programs have to do with UFOs?” Luke asked.

  “They’re called Special Access Programs. SAPS. Government won’t even tell you that they exist. There are over a hundred fifty of ’em. That includes the CIA, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense. Most people think they have to report to Congress at least. Not true.” Raymond grew more intense, speaking slowly. “The Secretary of Defense can waive the reporting requirement completely.” Raymond unfolded a piece of paper. “Listen to this. I want you to listen to this.” He read from the paper. “ ‘Some classified programs are carried out at Edwards North base, but the most secure and sensitive programs are the responsibility of an Air Force Flight Test Center detachment based at the secret flight test base on the edge of the Dry Groom Lake, Nevada, and known as Area 51.’ Listen to this here: ‘The USAF still refuses to identify the Area 51 base, referring to it only as an operating location near Groom Lake. It is protected from any further disclosure by an annually renewed presidential order.’ “ He looked up and whispered, “This goes as high as the President of the United States.”

  “Shit, Raymond, you’re jumping to conclusions. Just ’cause the government won’t tell you what’s going on at Area 51, it must be UFOs? How do you figure that? Why not assume they’re building some superhypersonic fighter that hovers one foot off the ground, weighs fifty pounds, and carries the fastest missiles ever designed? Why assume it’s a bunch of green aliens?”

  “We can’t believe a thing they say. Listen.” Raymond read on: “ ‘Area 51’s linkage to Edwards Air Force Base is a form of cover, and statements which are intended to conceal the existence of a black program by creating a false impression in public are routine.’ You hear that? The U.S. government is deceiving the public intentionally! We’re talking billions and billions of dollars that are unaccounted for!”

  Luke stared at Raymond. He couldn’t decide whether to ask him to shut up or to laugh it off. “Maybe it’s just where the United States government does secret airplane testing, and they don’t want you to know about it. Why can’t you let the government have some secrets?”

  “It’s not secret airplane tests I’m worried about. It’s UFOs, and they’re there. I promise you.”

  Luke looked at Stamp and rolled his eyes as he sat back in his chair.

  Raymond could read their body language. He’d had enough. He folded up his papers, tattered from months of being carried around in the pocket of his jeans. He jammed the papers in his pocket and headed back into the café. “You’ll see,” he said over his shoulder, more in the nature of a mutter than a farewell, “you’ll see.”

  “There goes one of our crack employees,” Stamp said. “Completely off his rocker.”

  “He’s harmless. They’re doing a good job running the café,” Thud said.

  “He’s gonna scare off the students if he starts telling them those stories about how John Denver got called home by the big UFO.” Crumb laughed.

  “I don’t think too many people ask him about it, and I don’t think he feels free to share that kind of . . . insight with just anyone. I think he’s pretty touchy about it.”

  “I sure as hell hope so.”

  * * *

  Kevin waited as the phone rang. It was late on the East Coast, and almost late in Nevada.

  Brian picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”

  “Hey,” Kevin said.

  “Hey! What’s up?”

  “I talked to my friend in Pakistan.”

  “What’d you find?”

  Kevin could hear the anticipation in Brian’s voice. He hated to disappoint him. “Really interesting. Nothing very specific, but one thing surprised me. They ran it by the Air Force attaché in Islamabad. He had actually heard of your guy.”

  “Why would an attaché know about a Major?”

  “A lot of people know his name. It’s one of those names that gets everybody to clam up and look over their shoulder. He’s spooked a bunch of people, but no one seems to know exactly why. Or how. The thing everybody says about him is he came out of nowhere. He wasn’t known in the Air Force at all, until recently. The attaché knows about all the movers, all the hot officers. He’d never heard of this guy before six months ago. Now everybody knows about him.”

  “So do we need to worry about him?”

  “There’s nothing anybody could put their finger on. Best we can tell right now is that he’s a regular Air Force Major who seems to be well connected.”

  “That isn’t much. Keep looking,” Brian said hopefully.

  “I can’t, really.”

  “Why not?”

  “I got busted. My division head jumped on my ass for calling Pakistan.”

  Brian asked, “How did she even know about it?”

  “No idea. It’s kind of spooky.”

  “You think she had your phone monitored?”

  “I’m sure she does. They’re all monitored. But what would make her listen to it? What would make her think that she even had to worry about listening in on my phone? That’s what I can’t figure out.”

  “That’s just weird.”

  “I agree, but, dude, I ought to lay off for a while.”

  “I don’t know,” Brian wondered. “Is she really worried about you wasting time, or is she trying to protect somebody?”

  “Don’t go paranoid on me. Who would she be trying to protect?”

  “How the hell would I know? You’re the intelligence puke.”

  “So are you. Do you sniff anything? Anything else about the government? Any side shows going on I ought to know about?”

  “Just the Pakistani guys. I’m probably chasing smoke. The other day, though, when the Major found out we’re going to be test-firing some live missiles, he about came unglued. It was like news he hadn’t anticipated, that really mattered a lot, for reasons we can’t figure out. It’s probably some sort of bias on my part. I don’t know. Maybe you should just forget about it.”

  “I trust your judgment, Brian. I trust your instincts. If you want me to keep pushing, I will. I’ll be hanging my ass out, but if it’s really important to you . . .”

  “What could you do?”

  “I’ll get my person in Islamabad to do some active questioning. She has some sources. She wouldn’t tell me about them, but I know she has some.”

  “It’ll get you fired.”

  “I’m sick of this shit anyway. Sitting in a cubicle all day trying to patch little pieces of information together about a continent so screwed up I don’t even know where to start.”

  “I can’t be responsible for you getting canned.”

  “You probably need an assistant intelligence guy at the Fighter Weapons School anyway. Don’t you?”

  “I’ll split my salary with you.”

  “There it is. I’ll live on scorpions and rattlesnake meat.”

  “It tastes like chicken.”

  Kevin laughed. “Everything tastes like chicken.”

  Brian laughed, too. “Rattlesnake really does taste like chicken.”

  “You’re so full of it. How would you know?”

  “SERE school, bro. Navy survival and POW training.”

  Kevin laughed at the image of his little brother chasing snakes in the desert and eating them. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got it for action.” Kevin hung up and looked over his shoulder. No time like the present. The Wicked Witch had gone home for the night, but not until she’d checked on Kevin and all the others who
worked for her, to make sure they weren’t playing solitaire on their computers. He went into the conference room and closed the door silently behind him. He was breathing more heavily than he would like. He turned on the lights and went to the secure encrypted phone. He opened up his PalmPilot and looked up the number of the embassy in Islamabad. He dialed the number quickly, glancing at the closed door. The phone began its odd ringing sound, and he waited patiently for someone to pick up the receiver. Finally a voice answered in English, “United States embassy.”

  “Administration, please.”

  “I’ll connect you.”

  Another odd ring commenced, and again Kevin waited. Finally a woman answered. “Renee Williams.”

  “Renee, Kevin Hayes.”

  “Kevin, how are you?”

  “Not so well. Since I called, I’ve been read out by my boss for ‘interfering’ in Asian affairs.”

  “Truly?”

  “Truly. Who did you tell that I’d called?”

  “Just the attaché. I . . . can’t think of anyone else.”

  “Must be somebody. It took all of about three milliseconds for her to hear about it.”

  “Maybe she was listening to your phone.”

  “Possible. But I don’t think so. That would have meant she thought I was doing something else that might have been interesting. And I’m not. My Africa stuff is boring as shit. Nobody would spend five minutes listening to my telephone calls.”

  “So what’s up?”

  “I know I’m asking a lot. I asked you to look into that guy’s background, but I didn’t tell you much. The more I think about it, the more I think we have to be very careful with this. I also didn’t say why I was asking.”

  “No. You didn’t.”

  “Go secure,” he said.

  “Got it,” she replied.

  They both turned their phones to the encrypted mode that made it impossible for anyone to listen in. All someone who had tapped the line would hear was static.

  “It’s my brother. He’s the acting intelligence officer for a fighter weapons school a friend of his started in Nevada.”

  “I read about that in the newspaper.”

  “Yeah. But did you know that four Pakistani pilots are students there?”

  “So that’s it. I knew four pilots had gone to the United States for training, but I didn’t put the two together. I thought it was that other school at Mojave. The test pilot school. It came on our screen once a few years ago. The State Department got bent because they didn’t have the right visas to be there. This is a different school?”

  “Yeah. Like TOPGUN. They fly MiGs and teach fighter tactics.”

  “Wow. Nice job. So Khan is a student there?”

  “Yes. He’s the leader. My brother has hair standing up all over the back of his neck. This guy is really bugging him. Brian can’t put his finger on it, but he thinks something is up. I learned a long time ago to listen to his instincts.”

  Renee grew cool. “I learned a long time ago that instincts don’t mean anything.”

  “So let’s split the difference and check this guy out a little bit more.”

  “Kevin, look, I’d love to help you, but I really don’t have time to run this guy down. We don’t have any evidence of anything suspicious. We can’t be spending intelligence assets chasing down every Pakistani Air Force pilot.”

  “I’m not asking you to chase down every pilot,” he said, pushing back against her resistance. She had to do it for him. If Khan was actually up to something, there was no way the ingrown CIA was ever going to get onto it before it happened—whatever “it” was. Kevin’s opinion of his employer was that they were much better at explaining why they didn’t anticipate something than at actually predicting anything effectively. Typical performance for a bureaucracy. But then he realized maybe that was more a reflection of his own lazy attitude toward the work he considered boring and stupid than of the CIA as a whole. He wasn’t privy to much of the work done by the Agency. He also knew if he was to have any hope of staying at the Agency, he needed to distinguish himself—and fast. “I’m just asking you to track down one pilot. Trace him all the way back to where he was born. If he has an ax to grind, if he’s up to something, we need to know it now. We’re not being told by somebody to do this, we’re doing it the old-fashioned way—by getting information before something happens, not afterward.”

  “Come on, Kevin. What do you think is going to happen? You don’t have anything.”

  “One minute the Undersecretary of Defense is against the school opening. Thinks it’s stupid. The next minute he’s authorizing the school with one stroke of the pen, giving them their license to teach foreign students, then greasing the skids with State for the foreign student visas and making sure the school gets opened with lease terms in place that will make it profitable—all conditional on their taking foreign students in the first class, and in particular students from Pakistan.”

  “Now you suspect the Undersecretary of Defense of something? Are you out of your mind?”

  He did. But he wasn’t ready to make an accusation. Yet. “Somebody’s benefiting. I don’t know what’s going on. But let’s find out. And no, I don’t know what this guy Khan is up to. But if he has something against the U.S. and is being allowed to fly supersonic jets inside the country, he could do a lot of things. The fact we can’t figure it out beforehand doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to stop it.”

  Renee paused. She didn’t owe him any big favors, and if she was discovered chasing some crazy theory of his, it could ruin her career. “I’ll think about it.”

  “I’m not going to let you skate on this. I want a commitment from you.”

  “You’re not in any position to demand anything from me. This is a wild-goose chase. I don’t have the time or the assets. Who do you think you’re talking to?” she asked harshly.

  “I’m sorry. I just need your help.”

  “So now you’re begging, all friendly and helpless. Don’t try to manipulate me,” she said. She thought for a moment. “There are a couple of people I can ask. But I’m not going to do much else.”

  “That’s a start. Thanks. Please let me know what they say.”

  “If I do tell you something, it’s not for your brother.”

  “He has a secret clearance with the new school.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “Okay. Don’t worry about that.”

  “I’ll call you,” she said reluctantly, and hung up.

  14

  Luke glanced in the rearview mirror of his Corvette to make sure the tan Taurus was following him down the Nevada highway. Khan was matching his every turn.

  Katherine had been unenthusiastic about having Khan and one of his pilots over for dinner, but she was willing if Luke insisted. She had no idea what to fix. She didn’t know what Pakistanis ate. Luke had asked the Major what food was acceptable, and he’d said that anything would be fine. Katherine had decided to fix steaks with fresh vegetables.

  Luke rounded the final curve and headed directly toward his house. He saw that Brian was right behind the Taurus. He’d run into Brian in the gym at the hangar that morning and watched him fight his deteriorating muscles on the StairMaster. He’d looked as if he were dying, biting the air as he fought his way through every step.

  It had been hard to watch, but Luke was glad he’d stopped by. Brian had told him of the efforts Kevin was making to look into Khan. Nothing to report yet, he’d said, but they were working on it. Luke had started watching every one of them carefully.

  He turned onto the private road that ran for half a mile off the state highway and passed their house. He pulled into the driveway and activated the garage door opener, then skillfully guided the Corvette to its spot in the garage. He closed up the garage and went out the side door to show Khan and Rashim, his lieutenant, the front entrance. Thud was already there.

  Katherine got up off the couch and Thud stood from the chair he was in. She kissed Luke and tur
ned to Major Khan to extend her hand. “Welcome. I’m Katherine.”

  “It is very nice to meet you. This is my lieutenant, Rashim.”

  “Rashim is a pilot as well. I’m sure I told you about him,” Luke said.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Katherine said. She looked at Rashim, who was her height and impossibly young. “I’m glad that you were able to join us for dinner.”

  “It is my pleasure. Thank you for inviting us. I hope it is not too much trouble.”

  “You both know Brian Hayes,” Luke said, acknowledging the obvious, “and Thud. May I get you something? Beer? Wine?”

  Major Khan said softly in his deep voice, “We do not consume alcohol. I told you that.”

  “Right,” Luke said. “Sorry. Water? Tea?”

  “Tea would be fine.”

  “Tea it is,” Katherine said, heading for the kitchen.

  “Please come in. Let me show you around.” They started walking toward the family room, Luke next to Thud.

  Thud whispered, “Sluf’s still nowhere to be seen.”

  Luke glanced at him. “Where the hell could he be?”

  “No idea. He definitely flew in. I confirmed it with the tower. And no one’s seen him since. He’s missed three flights and two classes. No answer at his condo. He’s got one of those tape answering machines where the beep gets longer with the number of messages? It’s completely full. Can’t even leave a message.”

  Luke was perplexed. “He can’t have just disappeared.”

  “True.”

  “What do you think?” he asked quietly as they stopped.

  “I don’t know. But I think it’s time to get the sheriff involved.”

  “The sheriff?” Luke exclaimed.

  “You got any other ideas?”

  “There must be some explanation . . .”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “All right. Call the sheriff in the morning.”

  “Will do.”

  Luke walked toward the back of the house, pointing out the unique Western and Native American art and furniture. He took them out onto the back patio. Luke had finally finished the shade covering, and the now-sheltered patio looked out over the fifty acres they owned and the thousands of acres that, although indistinguishable, were not their property. It was federal land, as was most of the rest of Nevada. The closest house was at least a mile away and barely visible when he pointed it out.