The Stickmen (6 page)

“Good work. You make the switch all
right?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Can’t wait for our friend Saddam to
recalibrate his anti-aircraft radar
now.
Those old
frequencies on the snowflake will guide our AMRAMs right to
target.”

“We’re getting a lot of mileage out of
Scammell.” Lynn grinned. “The moron thinks he’s selling his country
out, but doesn’t have a clue that every page of classified defense
data he’s giving the Iraqis is fake. I’ll bet we can use Scammell
several more

times before they get wise. Men are just so
stupid.”

“I hear that,” Myers said. “Come on, let’s
go get lunch.” He smiled at the newly acquired $50 bill. “With this
kind of money—hell—we might even be able to afford sushi.”

Lynn rolled her eyes. “In
this
town.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Denny’s, here
we come. Oh, say, I’ve been meaning to ask you. How’s your crackpot
ex-husband?”

Lynn rolled her eyes again. “Harlan? I don’t
know and could care even less.”

CHAPTER THREE

APRIL 19, 1962

Swenson was young for his rank: a brigadier
general now at age thirty-three. In a decade, he’d have three more
stars but he could hardly have known that at this moment, dressed
in fatigues and riding in an open jeep through the ridged Nevada
desert. The sun beat down on him like a crushing, physical weight.
The jeep’s suspension yanked him back and forth against his canvas
seat belt as if trying to throw him out onto the sand.

Another one,
he thought.

Swenson’s job seemed ironic; with all the
crucial matters going on in the world, Swenson’s discreet
assignments were the most crucial of all, yet no one would ever
know. There was talk of a nuclear test-ban treaty, and there was
Vietnam. The current president in Saigon was using U.S. funds to
fight the Buddhists instead of the Vietcong, and rumors were rife
that Kennedy wanted a new administration there, even if it meant
assassinating the old. And as for Cuba, a full year after the Bay
of Pigs failure, Swenson had already seen the NSC briefings between
the state department and the CIA; Kennedy had six more
assassination plots on Castro in the works, plus another full-scale
invasion plan. Cuba was going to get hot fast; Swenson wouldn’t be
surprised if the Soviets started installing missiles there
soon.

Racial unrest was exploding all over the
country—this man named King—and pro-communist militias were
springing up everywhere. Heroin was flowing into every major city,
and a risky tampering with the oil-depletion allowance could
potentially shatter the economy.

Yet with all these dire examples, Swenson
could only think these two words that felt like a dark throb in his
head:

Another one��

“—by NORAD and the VLRA in New Mexico, sir,”
his driver was saying, Lieutenant Hanover, was saying beside him.
The young officer steered the jeep like a quick skiff, swerving
around obstacles of rock and cattle skulls. “The 1022nd SPs have
already secured the site but…it’s a
big
site, sir.”

“They always are,” Swenson said more to
himself.

“What’s that, sir?”

“Nothing.” Swenson eyed the desert. “Thank
God it cracked up here and not downtown Las Vegas or Reno.”
Mother of God,
he thought.
Can you imagine?

The jeep buffeted over more sandy hillocks.
Cacti stood out all around them, like sentinels. Soon, though, the
sentinels would be just as green but heavily armed. From beneath
the seat, he pulled out a roll of black duct tape. He peeled off a
piece and placed it over the embroidered name-tag over his left
breast pocket, then handed another piece to Hancock.

“Cover that nametag, son. The SOPs don’t
change just because we’re on government land.”

“Yes, sir.”

A short time later, the jeep ground to a
halt. Swenson slowly got out, looking ahead at the edge of the
bluff. Security police milled about several commo trucks.

“I need—”

“The retrieval units are already being
choppered in from Edwards, sir,” Hancock said.

“Good. Use the star-net band and radio 1st
Air Transport. I want them right behind the retrieval teams.”

“Yes sir.”

Hancock briskly departed for the commo
truck, leaving Swenson to stand alone looking out at the edge of
the bluff.

He didn’t sweat in the great blaze of sun;
instead it seemed to dry him out like a twig, like something
drained of all moisture. Yes, Swenson was young for his rank, but
right now he felt ancient, enfeebled.

Another one,
came the repeating
thought.

“Would you like to take a look,
General?”

The voice caught him off guard. A security
sergeant had approached, was offering a pair of binoculars. The
sergeant didn’t salute because he was armed. Slung to his shoulder
was one of the new Stoner assault rifles which everyone was saying
would win the Vietnam war.

“Thank you, Sergeant.” He took the
binoculars. “Carry on.”

“Yes, sir.”

Swenson walked to the edge of the bluffed,
brought the binoculars to his eyes, and looked down…

God in heaven,
he thought.

««—»»

“God in heaven,” he croaked, just as he had
thirty-eight years ago on that sun-swept desert bluff. General
Swenson was seventy-one years old now, and dying. The disease had
confined him to the convalescent bed surrounded by flanks of
beeping cardiac monitors and medicine cabinets. The was an armed
guard in the house round the clock, as well as an orderly from
Walter Reed. He hated to think how many tax dollars were being
spent simply to have his inevitable death properly overseen.

It was the e-lex print-out that had caused
the sudden memory jag, taking Swenson’s mind back to that horridly
hot day thirty-eight years ago. He been right about much that day:
John F. Kennedy had sanctioned the overthrow and assassination of
the president of South Vietnam only to be assassinated himself
three weeks later. Heroin continued to flow into the country along
with newer, worse evils, and the Soviets had tried to arm Cuba with
nuclear missiles which had brought the world to within twenty-four
hours of World War III.

The heart monitors continued to beep behind
him, and so did the drip-monitor on the overhead I.V. bag.
Swenson’s eyes—an old man’s eyes now—glanced back at the tulle-thin
sheet of printer paper that the guard had brought in to him only
moments ago.

The sheet seemed too thin, too insubstantial
to carry so grievous a message, a message, nevertheless, that only
he and a few others in the world could fully understand.

The e-lex read:

052899 - 0613 HRS

DE: FBI HQ CNTRL PROSS

TO: RELEVANT AD OR DEPUTY SECTION
CHIEF/STATUS: FYI

SUBJECT: W/M 34 YO, URSLIG, JACK, H.
(DECEASED)

READ: VSP VIOLENT CRIMES UNIT REPORTS THAT
SUBJECT WAS FOUND

MURDERED IN HIS RESTON, VA, HOME THREE
NIGHTS AGO AT 11:39 PM.

COD: SMALL CALIBER GUNSHOT WOUND TO THE
HEAD. SUBJECT’S HOME SECURITY SYSTEM SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN EXPERTLY
BYPASSED.

PASS

READ: SUBJECT URSLIG, JACK, H. IS FORMER FBI
SA

END/PAGE ONE OF ONE PAGE

He let the paper slipped from his fingers to
the bed sheets. He blinked, and then his old eyes were staring back
again—

—back to that day in April almost four
decades ago—

««—»»

—
another one,
Brigadier General
Swenson thought, roving the binoculars over the crash site. The
interminable heat beat down on his back, but by now he was numb; he
didn’t even feel it. He was looking down off the bluff…

The contact perimeter stretched for hundreds
of yards, filled with a varying a varying degree of black crash
debris. At first he thought—he
hoped
—this might be a false
alarm. It might be one of the YF-12 prototypes that Northrop was
developing; they were rumored to be skinned with black titanium
sheet. But when he rolled down the zoom ring for a closer angle, he
saw that the debris appeared almost chunk-like, nothing akin to any
aircraft skin he could imagine. Most of the pieces appeared to be
no larger than baseballs.

Nothing like New Mexico,
he thought.
Nothing like Brazil…

Dozens of recovery vehicles surrounded the
site, while at least a hundred Air Force security men were sifting
out and removing the debris with rakes. There must have been
thousands of pieces.

No, this is different. Different from the
others. A different…race…

The debris lay strewn in a vast fan shape,
the widest end being the farthest off. The initial impact point. So
at least there was one universal invariant. The debris-line
narrowed as it approached the foot of the bluff on which Swenson
now stood.

That’s where it stopped, not fifty yards off
below.

That’s where the only intact part of the
craft had stopped.

Must’ve been huge,
he realized.
Long.

In front of the plume of debris, pushed
against a wave of sand, sat what could only be the forward-most
compartment of the vehicle. Swenson couldn’t be sure from this
distance, but it appeared to be cylindrical—can-shaped—and black;
he guessed approximately ten feet high, twenty-five or thirty feet
long.

No evidence of anything that could be
likened to rivet-work, screws, or welding. No sign of any
seams.

Then—

Wait,
he thought. Swenson rolled the
zoom down all the way, bringing the jagged can-shaped object to
maximum closeness.

A pattern seemed to exist on the side of
this alien fuselage. Not a marking…but something functional.

A shape.

A trapezoid.

Like a dark window,
Swenson
thought.

««—»»

Disgruntled, as he always was, Garrett
walked down Connecticut Avenue, away from Benny’s Rebel Room Tavern
and his overly sarcastic friend Craig.

“No one believes me,” he spoke aloud to
himself. Not a good sign of stability. “Everyone thinks I’m some
kind of conspiracy crackpot. No girlfriend, no running water and no
phone. And no
respect.
”

For no apparent reason, he stopped in front
of a comic shop and found himself peering into the broad window.
Faces stared back at him: Galactus the Devourer, Superman, Doctor
Doom. Grub Girl and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Caped Crusader.
They all seemed to glance back at him in hilarity. But it wasn’t
the tableau of colorful comic faces that Garrett stared so intently
at.

It was his own reflection.

“Everyone I know thinks I’m a flake,” he
watched his reflection’s lips tell him. He stared a full minute
more.

“Maybe… Maybe they’re right.”

But before this moment of self-condemnation
could continue, a loud squeal burned behind him: tires screeching.
Garrett, startled, jumped at the sudden screech; he could even
smell smoking tire rubber as he was turning around to look,
expecting to witness a serious fender bender. But no collision
followed.

Garrett had time only to see a white van
stopped at the curb, the side-panel of which read JINKO’S PRINTING,
WE DELIVER! Then something clicked in Garrett’s mind…

Jinko’s… Isn’t that a—

No time remained to even finish the thought.
The van’s back doors popped open, and two suited men already on the
street grabbed Garrett, covered his mouth, and strong-armed him
into the back of the van.

CHAPTER FOUR

Garrett may have even lost consciousness for
a moment, thunking his head against metal when the suit-and-tie
goons threw him into the van. One of the men was
young—late-twenties—and huge—six-eight, three hundred pounds—and
Garrett didn’t see much fat. It was this man who sat on a padded
side bench and was pressing his shoe against Garrett’s chest,
pinning him to the floor.

Wow,
Garrett baldly thought when his
vision cleared.
He’s…big…

A second man in an equally cheap suit was
chubby, much older, and not nearly as big. Hair streaked with gray
was brushed back; the guy was going bald fast. His face looked find
of puffed and pinched, like a hamster with full cheek pouches.

It was this man who pointed a 9mm Beretta
calmly into Garrett’s face.

“Man, you guys from MasterCard don’t fool
around,” Garrett said. “Okay, we’ve got Grandpa and Herman. Who’s
driving? Lillian or would it be Eddie?”

“Shut up and listen, said the big man.

Then the man with the gun. “Are you going to
be good, Mr. Garrett?”

“You’re pointing a gun in my face,” Garrett
replied the obvious. “No, I’m going to be bad. Duh.”

“For all intents and purposes,” said the guy
with the gun, “I’m Mr. Smith, and the man who could easier fracture
your entire rib cage with his foot is Mr. Jones. Listen, and don’t
say a word.”

“Uh—” Garrett said.

That was it. Mr. “Jones’” titan-sized leg
flexed, and suddenly his foot was squeezing all the air out of
Garrett’s lungs. He could feel his rib bowing, expected to hear
them crack in another second.

Smith nodded to Jones, and the foot came
off. Garrett, pink-faced, let out a hoarse gasp, and then—

“Owwww!”

—he was grabbed by the hair, jerked up, and
plopped down on the bench seat.

“That’s just to let you know what we’re
capable of,” Smith bid. “So you’re going to sit there and say
nothing.”

Garrett wheezed, his head between his knees,
until he got his breath back. It was less bad judgment and simply
more reflex which caused Garrett to look at the behemoth Jones and
say, “Nice shoes. Bruno Magli, right? Size 12?”