"Who are you, sir?" Lee asked.
"Br... Br... Brazel," he answered.
Lee searched the notes he had taken from a Teletype he had received from Washington. The name was familiar. "You work a ranch about... what, seventy miles from here, don't you?"
The thin man looked at the senator and then looked quickly at Hendrix standing behind Lee, who was calmly looking down at him. Lee caught the movement of the man's eyes and thought, This man is scared to death,
"Mr. Brazel, make no mistake, I'm the boss man here. I speak on behalf of the president of the United States." Lee placed a hand on the man's knee and patted it softly.
Suddenly the man's right arm went up and he pointed to Hendrix. "That's what he said, said the president wanted me to say it was a lie what I found." Brazel lowered his eyes. "What I found was real," he mumbled in a barely audible whisper.
Lee looked at Hendrix, who arrogantly returned the stare.
"That was a lie itself, Mr. Brazel. The president wouldn't ask that. He may ask that you stay quiet about this, but not to lie."
"No?" was all the man asked. He was looking deeply into Lee's eye, trying to see if there was truth there.
"No, Mr. Brazel. This man said that, not President Truman."
"He said something bad could happen to me and mine, said we would never be found."
Lee closed his eye and tried not to turn to face Hendrix. Instead, he patted the man on the leg again. "No one is going to harm you or your family, Mr. Brazel, I promise you that." He leaned forward and looked into the man's face.
"Now, you found some wreckage from something that crashed out on your ranch, correct?"
"Yes, sir, that and the three small green fellas I found the day after."
Lee was stunned. "You found bodies?" He turned to look at Hendrix. "That wasn't in the reports to Washington."
Hendrix stomped his foot and walked away and whispered something to Colonel Blanchard, who in turn started for the side exit.
Lee snapped his fingers and a Colt .45 appeared in Staff Sergeant Johnson's right hand. He pointed it straight at Colonel Blanchard. The man came to a halt and raised his hands slightly, as if he were embarrassed and didn't know how to proceed.
"Are you going to shoot an officer in the United States Air Corps, Lee?" Hendrix asked.
"You bet. You weren't hesitating to threaten Mr. Brazel here." Lee nodded toward the rancher. "What makes you any better than the very people you are sworn to protect?"
Hendrix took this all in with a calm that only experience could teach. But Garrison could also see the muscles in the man's jaw working in slow clenching movements. He definitely wasn't used to having his orders countermanded.
"You found three crewmen in the wreckage?" Lee asked, still looking at Hendrix.
"Yes, sir, I saw one thingamajig knock down the other, leastways that's what I thought I saw. Then the one... air-a-plane or whatever smashed into the ground. Next day I found the three green fellas in the wreckage, only they wasn't people like you and me, arid one of the little guys was hurt real bad. The other two were as dead as doornails and it looked like coyotes had a go at 'em."
"You mean you witnessed a collision of some sort between craft?"
"Wasn't no collision, 'cause the other thing in the sky just took off. It was like one car running the other off the road. He wanted me to lie about that too," Brazel said, nodding toward Hendrix.
Lee stood and pointed to six security men standing just inside the door. "You men, place Mr. Hendrix under arrest."
"You don't know what you're doing, Lee, General LeMay gave me orders to--"
Lee cut him off. "Curtis LeMay takes his orders from the president, just like every man in this room!" Garrison's voice echoed in the huge hangar. Lee stood and with a strong arm gently assisted the rancher to his feet. "Mr. Brazel, please accept the apology of the U.S. Army for their decidedly unprofessional behavior. This... this episode hasn't brought out the best in people. They're scared." Lee grasped the man's limp hand and shook it. "Rest assured, sir, we don't eliminate American citizens." Or very seldom do, he thought.
Brazel let his hand be shaken. He was still sweating.
"But I would ask a personal favor of you, sir, if I could?"
Mac Brazel just looked at Lee.
"Don't say anything about this to anyone unless you hear from me that it's all right to do so, fair?"
"Fair enough, not a word," Brazel said with a slow deliberateness that told Lee this man would keep his word. Then Lee noticed a slow curl of Brazel's upper lip; it was the first smile he had seen on the man's face.
"Sir, on behalf of President Truman, I wish to thank you. Mr. Elliott here will escort you home." Lee gestured for his meteorologist, who stepped forward and shook hands with the rancher. "He has some questions he would like to ask about the weather that night in and around your ranch. Give him a full description of both craft, everything you can remember."
"Yes, sir, I will. But one thing I know, that weren't any accident. One of those things hit the other on purpose."
Lee just nodded, thinking about the man's bizarre statement.
"Where do I get transportation, sir?" Elliott turned and asked Lee.
"Steal it," Lee said. "I don't think the 509th Bomb Group will miss a jeep for a few hours."
"Yes, sir," Elliott said, gesturing for Brazel to follow. He was stopped by a lieutenant in Lee's security force and given a Colt .45 automatic.
"Just in case someone outside of our group has any ideas about tagging along behind you, I'll have two more jeeps with our men in them escorting you. But if you're approached by anyone other than our people, don't be afraid to use that." Then the lieutenant turned to Lee. "Senator, I recommend we station a couple of our people with Mr. Brazel." He said it loud enough to make sure others heard it.
"Thank you. Elliott, get everything you can about this collision that knocked this second disk out of the sky. Mr. Brazel, again, thank you, sir."
Garrison watched and waited until the two men had stepped out into the night's windy darkness. When the door was open, the loud engine noise of a B-29 bomber was heard.
"The rest of my team is already inside." Lee turned to the dark-haired major who had stood silently through the bizarre scene of a moment before. "Major Marcel, isn't it?"
The man stepped forward and gave a quick nod of his head. "Yes, sir, and your team is already coordinating with our base investigators."
"Excellent. Was that your idea, Major Marcel?"
"Yes, sir, I was hoping someone would show up with a little common sense, so I left orders to cooperate in advance."
Lee turned to face Hendrix and was silent as he watched the man light another cigarette.
"For Mr. Brazel and anyone else you may have on this base, Mr. Hendrix, you could be brought up on charges for kidnapping and, most probably from the looks of your guest, assault. And did you expect to hide the fact you had a survivor, or that there was evidence of another craft in the same area as the first?"
Hendrix tossed the burnt match away. "I know you, Lee. I was also briefed. You were with that old dinosaur, 'Wild Bill' Donovan and those OSS boys, so let me tell you a little secret: things have changed."
Lee just glared at Hendrix as if he were some strange bug.
"If you were one of the best and the brightest, you should know how we work, Lee, how the job gets done," Hendrix continued, even though Garrison had heard enough and turned and walked away. "We have a unique situation here and you can't be allowed to foul it up," he called out loudly. "A few of the new guard have a saying that you may want to embrace for the hard years ahead. It's called controlled violence, and it means the gloves come off and anything and everything goes, just like our little Red friends in Russia."
Lee slowed but didn't stop walking toward the door.
"And another thing, the controlling of information is paramount in today's world, keeping it from the public, who have always been too adolescent to understand
the real world. We'll play like the rest of the bullies on the block now, no more Pearl Harbors."
Lee stopped and almost turned around to answer Hendrix, but he just took a breath and continued on. He knew that man was more than likely the future of intelligence, and he also knew it wouldn't be the last time he would run into him, or another hundred just like him.
"The world Will be a place you won't recognize in ten years; it's going to become very cold and hard."
Garrison knew Hendrix might be right, but today, all he could do was control his small corner of this changing world. Lee ignored Hendrix, just shook his head sadly, then stepped into the brightly lit hangar to face the Event that would change the world forever.
The hangar looked even larger from the inside than it did from out. Extra lighting had been installed in the last twenty-four hours to give added illumination. Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce, and other engine brands waiting to be installed in aircraft or under repair lined the walls as they had hastily been pushed aside so the area could hold the remains of a very different kind of aircraft.
Lee studied the wreckage that littered the expanse of oilstained floor. It seemed there was enough to account for ten B-29s. The wreckage had the color of unpainted aluminum, bright and shining. Some of the pieces of debris were of brightly colored violets and reds. Some of it was large, others small as confetti. Some were box-shaped, others in strange pentangle and quadrangle configurations.
As Garrison watched his people moving from one piece to another, he noticed an area in the back of the old wooden hangar that had been sectioned off by what appeared to be large plastic sheets. Outside of the semitransparent area there was a mixture of the base's air police contingent and the Event Group's own marine and army security personnel. Lee could see strange and ghostly shadows of men walking inside due to the brighter lighting installed there.
As the director started to walk in that direction, Ken Early, the team's metallurgist, stopped him.
"Sir, I think we have something here you should see right off." Ken was holding out a piece of the strange metal for Lee's scrutiny. It was small, about the size of a regular postal envelope. Around the edges were what looked like dots and dashes. Interspersed with these were symbols such as lines through circles and smaller circles inside pyramids and other octagon-shaped glyphs.
"Are the linguists working on this writing or whatever it is?" Lee asked.
Early looked from the metal in his hand to his boss, then swung around to look at the others in his team. His white lab coat was already dirty. "Uh, yes, sir, I think they are already on it." He shrugged, letting his thick-lensed glasses slide down his nose.
The answer was lost on Lee as a sound the like of which he had never encountered issued from beyond the plastic in the back.
"Look," Early said at his elbow, aware of the noises but choosing to block them out.
Without consciously knowing it, Lee had started toward the rear of the building. Only the metallurgist's voice brought him to a stop.
Early held the piece of metal in his right hand; he slowly closed his stubby fingers around it and crushed it. The sound reminded Lee of saltines being crushed. As the director watched, Early opened his hand, and amazingly the strange metal slowly reverted into its original flat shape.
"Well, I'll be damned," Lee said softly.
"It's like nothing we know of, almost as if each fiber"-- Early hesitated, then corrected himself--"like its genetic makeup and, shape has been programmed into each... each..." He looked lost for a moment, searching for the correct term. "Hell, sir, it remembers what its shape is supposed to be, as if programmed in design. I mean, there are a few polymers that companies like 3M are working with that have tendencies toward healing themselves, but that technology is fifty or sixty years away and is all so much theory right now."
"That is something, Doctor, but if that is the case, what happened to all this other material, why didn't it return to its original shape?"
Early looked around him at some of the twisted wreckage with a look of bewilderment on his face.
"We won't figure this out in one day, Ken. We have to do what we can and start documenting. I don't know how long we'll be able to keep this to ourselves. The military can usually talk presidents into anything, and eventually they'll get their way."
"Yes, sir," Early said, moving quickly back to his materials team.
Lee started for the rear of the building again. The cries had lessened somewhat to small whimpers. As he walked, his personnel were combing through debris and writing and snapping pictures. Except for a few, who glanced up from their work every so often to look toward the sealed-off area, most were busy doing their jobs and seemed totally willing to ignore the scary noises filtering throughout the entire hangar.
Lee walked the final paces to the closed-off tent area and spoke to the two Event guards.
"Bring Mr. Hendrix here," he ordered.
Lee stepped through the flap. The tent smelled of strong antiseptic. Major Marcel had arrived inside ahead of him, and he quickly stepped up to meet him and take him to the doctor.
Lee turned and watched as Hendrix was led into the clean area. Garrison immediately saw three gurneys. Two were covered with white sheets and obviously had something under them; he could see where a dark liquid had soaked through the white cloth of one. A medical team surrounded the third table; these doctors were his people from the Group mixed with base personnel. Dr. Peter Leslie, Captain, U.S. Navy, formerly of Walter Reed Medical Center, was in charge. He was a surgeon handpicked by Lee to lead the medical teams on field finds. He hoped Leslie could handle something like this. The doctor looked up as Lee and his group entered. He gestured for one of the nurses.
"We're trying to keep this area as sterile as we can, please put on those masks."
Lee accepted a gauze mask from the nurse and tied it around his mouth.
"These are appalling conditions. The base surgeon tells me he was kept from treating the survivor at the base clinic."
"Well, Doctor, there hasn't been a hell of a lot of clear thinking going on out here. Now what have we got?" Lee asked.
"Those two there, I understand they were found already dead. The base surgeon reports that the bodies have indications of massive head trauma, more than likely impact-related, and they also show signs of postmortem predator activity." Dr. Leslie pulled back the sheet on the first one. The body had been short, about four feet and thin, the skin was pale green and it had a large, hairless head that had been ripped open. One of its large eyes looked as if it had been torn out, and a huge gash ran along the left side of its head from the temple area. The wound looked deep. The remaining eye was partially open, and Lee could see the black orb beyond the thin eyelid. He noticed the black pupil itself was large and had a tint of red in its dilated state. The mouth was small, almost the size of the opening of a beer bottle, and no teeth were visible. Lee looked at the thin frame and the small, rounded belly. The smooth skin was featureless and unlined; veins were coursing through just beneath the grayish-green skin.
Leslie gestured for the director to step forward and view the second figure. "This one died also of crash trauma and was dead when they brought it in."
Lee looked at the doctor and nodded, then walked over to the third gurney. The doctors and nurses made room and moved away. As he looked down, the small, thin lips of the creature trembled, then the small body tensed and went into spasms and it cried out. The sound was piercing and it brought to mind the cries of an injured child.
"Can you do something for its pain?" Lee asked, removing his hat and holding it tightly.
"I'm absolutely terrified of killing it with any assistance I give it. We don't know its metabolism or nervous system. For all we know our pain-reducing drugs could kill it. I hate seeing it like this, but the consensus of everyone here is that it's just too dangerous."
"Can you save it, Doctor?" Lee asked.
Leslie looked at his shoes, then glanced at his colleagues. "
With the right facilities and--"
"Is it going to live?" Lee demanded.
"No. It has massive internal bleeding from wounds that we just can't close up. It's so delicate our sutures tear right through its flesh."
"Then use your best guess and ease its pain, Doctor, on my responsibility."
"You can't do that, Lee!" Hendrix yelled, shaking off his guards once again.
Lee saw the small being tense for a moment when the shouted words disturbed it.
"Take that man outside and put him into submission."
"We need the creature awake and answering questions, not spending its last minutes pain-free, goddammit!" Hendrix was screaming as he was pulled from the enclosure. "You better listen to me, Lee, the first saucer was intentionally brought down by that second ship...goddammit, Lee, you have to listen!"
Lee clenched his teeth and gestured for the doctor to do as he had been ordered, and the voice of Hendrix finally faded away.
"Did Hendrix question this being?" Lee asked Marcel.
The major stepped forward and looked around, making sure to keep his voice low. "Hendrix had more than a few minutes alone with the... crewman. I think he got information from it."
Lee shook his head, then gestured for the doctor to get to work.
Leslie quickly grabbed a stainless-steel syringe and a small bottle and pulled an amber liquid into it. "I'm going to treat it as I would a child with similar injuries," he said. "If you're a praying man, Mr. Director, now would be a good time. I don't know what this morphine will do to it."
Lee watched as the doctor easily slid the needle into the small creature's arm. He watched being winced as the syringe penetrated its thin skin.
"With the exception of my group, will you ladies and gentlemen excuse us, please?"
The Roswell base nurses and two doctors left without comment.
Lee turned back in time to see the being's body relax and its pain-filled features grow slack. He was afraid it had died right before his eyes when the small mouth opened and then closed. Leslie carefully lifted its right eyelid and quickly stepped back when the black pupil rolled and looked at him. As Lee watched the startled expression of Leslie, he looked down and saw both eyelids flutter open. The large head rolled and the next thing Lee saw was the small being looking directly at him.
Event (event group thrillers) Page 20