by Bob Mauldin
“And what makes you think that the government or the viewers are going to believe that you’re telling us the truth?”
Throughout the interview John Winston had stood in a position most soldiers would refer to as “at ease,” feet about shoulder-width apart, and hands behind the small of the back. Aside from underscoring the idea that the Terran Alliance was a militaristic concept, it was a position ideal for keeping Winston’s hands still, hiding his nervousness. “Well, Miss Webb, I came down here tonight to try to get some of my friends to join up. You found me, so you must have found my folks. If you are any good at your job at all, you’d probably know by now that we’re not real big on family closeness, which is why I’m here and not at home.
“I’ve already told my friends all that I’ve told you, and more. And I got pretty much the same response from them that I’m getting from you. I was about to give them a demonstration of what the technology we found can do to prove to them that I’m no liar, and since they are all right there watching us,” he nodded at a place in the parking lot just out of camera range, “I can show them, you, your viewers, and all the governments of the world at the same time. You will have to believe that I’m telling the truth because I can do things like this.” Hands behind his back, the young Lieutenant pressed the button on his wristband, and several seconds later, just before the reporter could ask what he meant, he disappeared in a shower of blue sparks. The woman stared at the vacant space for a few seconds, shook her head and turned to the camera, microphone before her face like a shield. “This is Miranda Webb for Channel Eight,” she said, a dazed expression on her face. “Back to you Mark.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Four months into the construction of Libra Base, it appeared that the U.S. government had decided on a course of action. Not bothering with subtlety, a series of late-night raids began, resulting in the arrests of hundreds of family members of disappearees identified as being part of the Terran Alliance.
The problem with a pirated television signal is that you can’t interrogate it. They did manage to get the whole thing recorded, so no one missed any of it. The reporter, from a small station in Fargo, North Dakota, was breaking a story, and Simon and Kitty had to rerun the recording to get all of the account. The wind-blown reporter was standing in front of a chain-link fence, complete with manned sentry-post and red-and-white striped barrier blocking the road, some buildings seen well off in the distance. “This is Sarah Parker reporting live from somewhere north of Devil’s Lake, North Dakota. There are many lonely miles to travel to get to this place, on dirt roads that haven’t seen a road grader in almost twenty years, so I’ve been told by local inhabitants, but the road we traveled today looked like it had been graded in the last few weeks. There are no towns nearby, making this a perfect place to, do what? I’m standing in front of what was an Air Force refueling base until budget cuts closed it down almost fifteen years ago. But today, it appears to be a growing concern.” The camera panned across a barren plain, marred only by the secluded base: close up, the freshly painted gatehouse and shiny new fencing stretching off to the left and right, control tower, landing strips and associated buildings farther in, and smoke pouring out of several chimneys in a cluster of buildings even farther away. The cameraman zoomed in on the plume of dust raised by a rapidly approaching vehicle, the reporter now almost off camera.
“I have received reliable information that this,” she turned to look over her shoulder and the wind whistled through her microphone, “is the destination for literally hundreds, possibly thousands, of American citizens who have the misfortune to be related to people the government has decided are threats to its existence. I am reminded, although I wasn’t even born then, of the roundup of American citizens almost seventy years ago because they had the misfortune to be of Japanese ancestry. And German. But there has been no attack here. Not if you don’t count September 11, of course, but there has been no mention of anything like that coming out of the White House.”
A plane, large, green, and windowless glided through the camera’ s field of view, passing the obvious control tower, as it got closer to the ground. The approaching vehicle, an unmarked Humvee, stopped and a figure stepped out of the passenger side. Clad in camouflage clothing and a black beret, the man stepped around the barrier and approached the reporter. The officer, in his forties, it seemed, said, “This is U.S. Government property. A secure facility. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Not much taller than the woman, he seemed to loom over her. The reporter spoke into the microphone, not the least bit frightened by the overbearing way he stepped into her personal space. “Be happy to, uh, Colonel,” she said pointedly looking at the eagles on his collar, “if you would be so kind as to tell me just where the U.S. Government property is. I was under the assumption, as I’m sure all my viewers are,” she said, waving at the camera, “that U.S. Government property starts on the other side of that fence, leaving us outside your ‘secure facility.’“
The officer loomed even further, as though acting out a lesson learned in some arcane military class on intimidation. “If you and your pal aren’t out of here by the time my MP’s arrive, I’m going to have you arrested, young lady.”
“You really don’t want to do that, Colonel,” the woman said coolly, not flinching when the officer stepped into her space. She smiled thinly, “I can threaten, too. You don’t want to say the wrong thing in front of a camera, the results could just plain haunt you for the rest of your life.”
She maneuvered herself so that the guard shack was a backdrop to her confrontation with the officer. “Now that we’ve gotten the amenities out of the way, Sir, can you tell me what you did wrong to be put in charge of security at a secret illegal detention facility in the middle of nowhere?”
As loaded questions went, this one was about a six-and-a-half. The colonel turned red at the slight to his military expertise, then realized what the content of the last half of her question implied. Before he could formulate a response, the pretty young reporter asked, “Why are hundreds, thousands, of innocent American citizens being rounded up in the middle of the night and transported here and other places around the country in planes just like those?” She pointed to two large, green cargo planes parked to one side of the buildings.
“My sources tell me that for the last two months, this base has been the focus of a lot of military attention: upgrading the security, refurbishing the buildings, getting the power and water back on. The curious thing is that none of the soldiers seem to pass through on their way here ever come in to town. Not to visit, not to drink, not to buy their girls a souvenir. Not even to get away from Army food. I can understand the concept of a secure facility, Colonel, but no passes at all?”
Two more Humvees pulled up, disgorging eight armed soldiers. Black-and-white MP armbands visible, the armed team fanned out to circle the confrontation. A nasty grin crossed the colonel’s face. “Okay, lady. You’ve just gotten yourselves arrested. I’ll take your boyfriend’s tape,” he said, waving an MP forward, “and you two are going to wind up at the bottom of the deepest, darkest pit I can find.” A phone began ringing in the guard shack.
The reporter looked startled as if realizing for the first time just how vulnerable she and her friend were. Then a grin that failed to reach her eyes flickered across her face. Never taking her eyes from the colonel’s, she asked, “Tape? What tape?” And then louder. “Dwayne, if you brought the camcorder, I’m gonna see you canned.”
“No, boss!” a voice from off-camera interrupted as the camera’s viewpoint bounced slightly. “You said you wanted a live feed, you got a live feed.”
“So I did, Dwayne, and I’d say it’s a good thing you listened.” She smiled at the officer again, not an expression of happiness, but of pure feral glee. The prey was within her grasp, but she could still lose it all if she didn’t spring her trap soon.
“It would appear that you don’t know anything about electro
nics in the new age, Colonel.” The soldiers had them almost surrounded now. “There isn’t any tape. At least not here. That camera feeds directly to the antenna on top of the van and that is pointed by computer at a satellite in geo-synchronous orbit, beaming our little tête-à-tête into millions of homes even as we speak.” She paused to let the information sink in, fighting desperately to keep from shaking or letting her voice break. “Now, exactly which deep, dark pit were you referring to?”
The Colonel held his arms out to his sides, bringing the MP’s to a halt. “Lady, all I can tell you is that this is a secure facility, and I am not at liberty to discuss what happens inside the fence.” Dwayne’s camera caught the guard inside the shack as he gingerly laid the phone down and walked toward the colonel.
Seeing the look on the approaching guard’s face, the reporter knew that her time was dribbling away fast. Before the guard could interfere, she asked the one question all of this had been leading up to, virtually confirming the rumors at stunned public had been hearing about late-night governmental abductions from all over the country. “For four days now, military units have been pulling people out of their homes, taking them somewhere without a trace. All of the reports, from Pensacola, Florida to Ottumwa, Iowa, to Portland, Oregon, have one thing in common, Colonel: not one unit designation to be found. Odd, don’t you think?”
The cameraman, brave beyond belief, deliberately zoomed in on the numbers painted on the Humvee’s bumpers. Where unit designations were usually found was only what appeared to be fresh coats of camouflage paint. He panned back to the Colonel and reporter, lens passing slowly over a couple of the soldiers surrounding them, before settling into place.
“What have the people you’re holding done, Colonel?” the reporter asked. “When relatives and friends report these incidents to the police, they’re told, ‘We got word from Washington. It’s out of our jurisdiction.’ Senators and Congressmen are inundated with requests to help find these missing people, Colonel. Information I have says that some of them are being detained here. Why? And who ordered it? And what do so many disparate people have in common?” The reporter looked at the camera, finally turning her back totally on the Colonel. “Ladies and gentlemen, normally the profiles of people detained in raids of this type should match up enough for some kind of correlation to be made. Here we have, reportedly, Democrats grabbed up with Republicans, Catholics with Protestants, young and old, black and white. You name it, we have an opposite here. The occupations range from housewife to a police officer, from grocery clerk to a political official.” She turned back to her victim. “What have these people done, Colonel?”
The guard, a sergeant by the three stripes on his sleeve, finally got the Colonel’s attention. He pointed to the phone, emphatically. Flustered, and happy to get away from the little spitfire roasting him alive, he turned away, stepped into the guard shack, and picked up the phone.
Face considerably paler than before he stepped into the shack, the Colonel walked woodenly back to the reporter. All the while, the camera followed his movements, even recording the silent “Yes, Sir’s, that he repeatedly uttered during the call. “Miss, I am afraid that you have been misinformed about the purpose of this base. Unfortunately, due to national security restrictions, I am unable to answer any more of your questions. Now, while I am unable to remove you from public lands, I am able to leave you with no further answers to your questions.” Stiffly the officer turned to head back to his jeep and an apparent trip back to his command facility somewhere inside the fence.
“One last question, Colonel!” the reporter yelled. “It has nothing to do with any alleged detainees, I promise.”
The officer, apparently against his better judgment, turned back to the reporter. “What?”
“I’ve interviewed many soldiers in my time, Colonel,” the woman said. “One thing I have been struck by was the fact that every one of them was more than proud of his unit and branch of service. I notice that your uniform has no unit patch on it. It also doesn’t have a designation over one breast pocket proclaiming your branch of service, nor a patch with your name on it over the other pocket. Do you have an explanation as to why a senior officer would neglect those bits of military regalia?”
“Can someone tell me just what that ass was thinking when he went out to confront that, that reporter?” The last word was spit out with particular venom, and the question was assumed to be rhetorical, so neither agent answered.
The man in the expensively tailored suit delivered his edict from behind a massive oaken desk, his back to the two agents standing there as he looked out over the Washington, DC landscape. “I want him replaced within twenty-four hours, is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” said one of the two agents who had watched the telecast with the Director. “Twenty-four hours. Anyone particular to replace him with?”
“Anyone who can keep his mouth shut!” the suit proclaimed. “And you will begin the release of the detainees immediately.”
“Sir!” one agent protested. “We just got them separated and haven’t even started on the interrogations.”
“I don’t give a damn. This has attracted the attention of the White House. The only thing we can do is release the detainees, apologize, and make restitution. As quietly as possible.”
“Sir, that will be admitting blame.”
“Of course, it will, stupid,” the man behind the desk growled. “Someone has to be the scapegoat and who better than some over-zealous idiot of a colonel who will never be heard from again?” He took a second to get himself back under control. “If we release most of the people we’ve already rounded up, then the few we keep won’t be nearly as obvious, will they? The Hawkes’ families are separated by thousands of miles. Their absences, along with a few families of some of their top people will fade into the back pages of the newspapers without the others to bolster them. But the Hawkes, Simon and Katherine, will know that their people are still unaccounted for. And I want you to get that reporter, too. We need to find out who her sources are.”
Lucy caught the third or fourth replay of the telecast and immediately had the feeling of butterflies dancing in her stomach. Doing the polka in combat boots, to be more precise. She called Robert aside after the piece finished running. “Got any ideas, Rob?”
“About that?” He poked his thumb at the television screen. “Not really. You know how the country has been ever since September 11.” He shook his head slowly, a frown on his face. “Probably more of the same. I’d swear we’re headed back to the bad old days of McCarthyism.” Lucy crossed her arms on her chest and looked troubled. “What? Tell Uncle Rob what’s bothering you, Luce.”
“I can’t say for sure, but I have to wonder if someone isn’t trying to get at us all the way out here.” Lucy shook her head as well. She sighed like the weight of the world was on her shoulders. “Can you get in touch with your friends, Brandt and Collier, was it? I’d say send them a list of our personnel and let them see if there is any correlation between our people and the ones being picked up.”
James Collier, Senior, slapped his hand on the table. For the last hour had had been listening to a cock-and-bull story from Dave Brandt, whose tall tales were never to be believed, and his own son concerning spaceships, missing people, more space ships and more missing people. The fact that the third Musketeer, Robert Grimes, was somehow involved only made Senior more determined than ever not to give any credence to the tale that was surely designed to separate him from an as-yet unspecified amount of cash.
But the bite never came. That’s what had thrown him for the longest time. The list of names, purportedly from Robert, hundreds of names, lay on top of a stack of news clippings from papers all around the country. “And they all match up, Dad,” his son was saying. “Every one of those families arrested in the last four days has a connection to one of the names on this list.” He tapped the white paper with his fingertip. “But the big news is this: have you seen the morning pa
per yet?”
The elder Collier, still groggy from his rude awakening, hadn’t made it much past his second cup of coffee, and was just beginning to reach a level that would let him think effectively. “Not yet, I haven’t. You two just drug me out of bed, you know? So, what’s the paper got to add to this sorry little story of yours, boys?” By way of answer, Dave pushed the newspaper across the table, scattering the piles of clippings. The elder man spun the paper around to better read the headline and froze. MORE LATE-NIGHT ARRESTS IN DENVER AND SURROUNDING AREAS, the top two lines screamed in bold print. The story beneath it laid out the details, complete with eyewitness accounts from neighbors and friends, and pictures of the abductees. One face in particular leapt out at the older man.
He picked the paper up and began to scan the three columns of print. Not much substance, mostly filler on the missing persons, and speculation as to who the abductors were, but two things, no, three, were clear: one, that the stories the boys were telling him were true, at least in part, two, that the government was somehow involved with all these unmarked cars and people who refused to identify themselves, and three, that John Wilder, one of the two abducted city councilmen, and James Senior’s long-time friend from their days as peace-activists, was among the abducted.
“Two city councilmen, two police officers, and stonewalling from the police, even in the face of having to watch two of their own hauled away. Investigations are ongoing,” was one quote. “We’re doing all we can, considering the amount of information we have to go on,” was another.
Senior read through the rest of the article then set the paper down. “So what do you want from me, boys? I’m still not saying I believe in all this spaceship crap, but something sure as hell is going on.”