The Stickmen (11 page)

Garrett popped a brow at her from his work
desk. “You think so. Come on, Lynn. Look closely. Look at the
paper. The ciphers are on that old tractor-feed stuff. And the
documents? The paper’s an old, out-of-service semi-fabric bond.
They don’t even make stuff like that anymore; they haven’t for
decades. And look at the watermark. That’s genuine Air Force
Security Service paper.”

Lynn held one of the documents up to the
light. The watermark lurked in the paper like a crisp ghost.

“You can’t
forge
that watermark,
Lynn. The mark pattern alone is classified TS/SI with a FARGO-plus
suffix. Come on, Lynn.”

Lynn put the document down. “Maybe,” she
conceded.

“And the photographs? I’m an
expert
on phony photographs. Believe me, I’ve seen ’em all—but I don’t
think these are mockups.”

Lynn gave the photos second, closer glance,
then the documents. Her lips pursed. She glanced over at
Garrett.

“I think you better tell me what’s going
on,” she said.

««—»»

She wants me to tell her?
Garrett
thought.
I’ll tell her, all right…

He indicated particular documents and
particular photographs as he explained.

First a rare photo of the
inclusionary-perimeter sign which read “Nellis Military
Reservation: Unauthorized Personnel and Trespassers Will Be
Detained Or Killed.” Then some variable-range radar charts, and
another charts that read: “NASA Telemetric Survey,
198N-2012W/18-4-62/1345ZULU.”

Next, a black-and-white photo of a large
flatbed truck driving out into the desert, followed by jeeps and
vans.

“You want the scoop?” Garrett asked her as
Lynn scrutinized each photo and document in turn. “Here’s the
scoop.”

He passed her another doc, which read:

TOP SECRET

SPECIAL ACCESS REQUIRED/EYES ONLY

TEKNA/BYMAN/UMBRA/SI

DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE

WASHINGTON DC 20330-100

OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY20 April 1962

SAF/AAIQ

1610 Air Force Pentagon

TO: THE COMMANDER AND CHIEF

SUBJECT: CLASSIFIED REQUEST PER MEMORANDUM
(GAO Code 701034); AFR 12-50 (CLASSIFIED) Volume II, Disposition of
Air Force Records and Material

(a) Identify pertinent directive concerning
crashes of air vehicles not of terrestrial origin, investigations,
wreckage/debris/dead bodies - retention, recovery, and
evaluation.

Dear Mr. President:

Per your request relative to the above
memorandum, i.e., the incident concerning the Low Frequency Radar
Array (LFRA) detection on 18 April 1962 and disposition thereof.
The most notable debris and, of particular sensitivity, all
anatomical and post-autopsied remains, have been properly
redepositioned amongst selected sites within protected districts of
the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Federal Reservations, via recent
amendments to AFR-200-1, and so ordered by the MJ-12
Directorate.

Attachment (TO): -U.S. Air Force Joint
Recovery Command

-NSA (Classified Control Office)

Signed,

Norton T. Swenson, Brigadier General O-6

Commander, Air Force Aerial Intelligence
Group

Fort Belvior, Virginia, MJ-12/Detachment
4

“Jesus,” Lynn muttered. “This looks
awfully—”

“Yeah, I know, and it is… Real.” Garrett
looked at her, then began:

“April 18th, 1962. Nellis Air Force Base,
Nevada. For two days NORAD, the VLA Radar Laboratory, and multiple
other radar posts tracked an object moving in erratic straight
lines across North America. Every AFB in the country was put on
Defcon Three alert. From Oneida, New York, to Eureka, Utah, over a
hundred witnesses reported very similar observations. An elongated,
low-flying object with a bright light glowing at its base.
Sometimes the object hovered, and other times it moved very
swiftly. Then, according to witnesses, it disappeared over Ohio.
Minutes later, it stopped again in Eureka, Utah. NORAD calculated
the object’s forward velocity at 18,000 miles per hour.”

He showed her several of the grainy photos
of an elongated, glowing object in the sky. Then he showed her the
aeronautical charts showing zigzag lines over a map of the United
States. A closer map, labeled Eureka, Utah, had an X on it. After
that, he unreeled the two-foot-long ribbon of paper, like a ticker
tape—a print cipher from the early ’60s.

…BEGIN CIPHER…18/04/62…13:45[Z]…OP STAT
ALERT STATE WHITE…VIA MAJESTIC TWELVE PROTOCOL GUIDELINES &
USAF REG 200-0-A OF 25/05/54…DECRYPT AND WAIT… … … …WAITING… … … …
WAITING… … … …DECRYPTION SUCCESSFUL…READ, DESTROY & REPORT
FOLLOWING MESSAGE…MESSAGE BODY… … …
“TARGET PERIMETER
POSITIVE”
…
”CRASH VERIFICATION- - - - PARA-ORBITAL AIRCRAFT
NOT OF TERRESTRIAL DESIGN”
… … …FURTHER STATUS FORTHCOMING… … …
END CIPHER… STOP

“This ‘aircraft not of terrestrial design,’”
Garrett continued with no hesitance, “landed very briefly in
Eureka. Witnesses reported a loud humming and banging sound. When
it took off again, it seemed to falter in mid-air, sort of
sputtering ahead.”

Lynn brought a finger to her chin. “Almost
as if—”

“As if it were experiencing some sort of
propulsion malfunction,” Garrett finished for her. “Project
Moondust recovery operatives were dispatched to the alleged landing
site and discovered an eight-inch-deep indentation along the
surface of a soybean field. The indentation measured 197 feet.”

Now Lynn was examining a drawing of an
elongated cylinder in the sky, and the typed words ARTIST’S
RENDITION OF OBJECT AS RELATED BY WITNESS #6. A stack of eerily
similar sketches followed, all the way up to Witness #154.

Another grainy B&W photo of the desert
came next, a large area of space littered by debris. Lynn
shuddered.

“The object falteringly left the Eureka
area,” Garrett went on, “and, according to the charts from the VLA
Radar Laboratory, exploded over the Nellis Reservation. A starburst
radar configuration was recorded on the VLA scopes.”

“This,” Lynn assumed, finding several 9x12
negative sheets of radar marks. Another cryptogram read:

The vehicle exploded violently over the
Nellis perimeter, then crashed. A second explosion blew the vehicle
into thousands of pieces. All of the vehicular debris was
recovered. So were the remains of what we presume to be four of the
vehicle’s crew.

“The vehicle’s…crew,” Lynn whispered and
shuddered again.

“Yeah,” Garrett said. “Check out the next
photo.”

She was looking at a photograph of a long
thin shape: two arms, two legs, a spinal column but no ribcage, and
a head about a foot long but only three-inches thick. It appeared
blackened with char.

“Just the bone structure?” she queried.
“This looks like some kind of bizarre skeleton.”

“Yep. Four bodies were recovered by cleared
SPs with Nellis’ 1109th Bomb Group. Skeletons. They’d all been
thoroughly burned by the explosion, no flesh remaining on any of
them. Three of the skeletons were intact. The fourth was found in
pieces. Now look at the initial examination pix.”

A series of more photos showed the elongated
skeletons lying on morgue platforms. The fourth platform lay
scattered with blackened jags and pieces.

Garret explained, “On the morning of April
20th, 1962, a B-36 Convair flew the charred skeletons and the
debris from Nellis to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.
Government officials, including the President, viewed the skeletons
and the debris. After that, it’s not clear what happened. One Air
Force security policeman claimed that the debris was then flown to
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. As for the remains of the
alien crew, there’s no record of where they were relocated to. One
AFSS pilot claims that the skeletons were later flown to Edwards
Air Force Base in California. Another AFSS pilot claims they were
flown to Carswell Air Force Base in Texas in May of the same year.
But both of these “witnesses,” according to MJ-12 documentation,
were actually ordered to report conflicting testimony. In other
words, these men were actually disinformation officers.”

As she listened, Lynn kept string at the
photographs of the skeletons. Garret creaked back in his
garage-sale work chair, lighting a cigarette. “The Nellis Case is
the most
atypical
incident reported. In the past, regarding,
for instance, the Roswell Case, the Kingman Case, the Del Rio Case,
and dozens of others, witnesses have reported extraordinarily
similar observations with regard to crashed vehicles and recovered
bodies.”

“What do you mean?” Lynn asked, shivering as
she set the photos down.

“You know. The vehicles have always been
reported to be ‘heel- or crescent-shaped,’ or the old cliché of
‘saucer’ shapes, ‘flying disks,’ and all that. They’re also
typically described as being about the same diameter: twenty-five
to forty feet. And even
before
Roswell, the bodies have
always been reported with the same extraordinary similarities:
delicate, humanoid figures, four to four-and-half feet tall, with
large, pyriformed heads, tiny mouths and improminent noses.”

“The traditional description of
science-fiction…”

“Yes,” Garrett enthused, wreathed in smoke.
“But the Nellis vehicle, and
those
bodies…
completely
different.” He got up and showed her several more artistic
renditions based on witness accounts. “And the vehicle too. Does
that look like a flying
saucer
to you?”

Lynn’s eyes perused the sketches: the long
black cylinder in the sky with some sort of engine vent at the end
and a glowing line running underneath the fuselage. Windows like
dark trapezoids forward and aft.

“A ten-foot-wide cylinder, nearly two
hundred feet long,” Garrett emphasized. “No other sighting or crash
has ever reported a vehicle of this configuration. Running from
front to back, on its dorsal side, there was some kind of
illumination element. Every town this thing flew over that night
was lit up like broad daylight. The burned skeletons indicate
bodies—just as atypical. Seven-feet tall, not four, and a
hip/shoulder width about eight-inches.” Garrett felt entranced for
a moment, trying to picture them. “Can you imagine? Can you imagine
what these things looked like when they were alive?”

“What’s…this?” Lynn asked, looking at yet
another full-framed drawing. The label read: ARTIST’S RENDITION OF
OCCUPANT BASED ON SKELETAL CONFIGURATION/ CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
PHYSIOLOGICAL SCIENCES UNIT.

“Pretty gross, huh?” Garrett commented.

Lynn gulped. The drawing was alarmingly
detailed—an anatomical estimation of what the figure probably
looked like before all its flesh was burned off. Thin sinews of
muscle and veins ran beneath it’s skin.

The head seemed more like a skin-covered
post. No mouth. No nose. Only a single slit where one would expect
to find two eyes.

“Good God,” Lynn uttered.

“One of the pieces of the fourth skeleton
appeared to be the head. But it was like no head you’d ever think
of. It was just a length of bone slightly wider than the limbs, and
it was cracked from the explosion that brought the vehicle down.
The cranial vault was the size of a marble.”

Next,, Lynn flipped to an actual photograph,
a close-up of the post-like skull. A large chip at the top revealed
the tiny, empty cranial vault. She could see the charred slit that
evidently served for eyes.

“Now, check out their hands.”

The next photo: a close up of one of the
“skeleton’s” hands.

“Interesting, huh?” Garrett posed. “Only two
fingers. What we’d think of as an index finger, and an opposable
thumb.”

Lynn seemed to blanch at the eerie close-up,
but then, finally, she offered her opinion. “This is scary stuff,
Harlan. I’ll admit that. But I’m not buying it. It’s good, sure…but
it’s still fake. And you want to know why I’m sure of that?”

Garrett thinly smiled. “Hit me.”

“For the simple reason that if this stuff
was
real, there’s no way it would be sitting here in your
pig-sty apartment. If it’s
real
, Harlan, then that means
it’s the entire case file to an extraterrestrial contact. It
wouldn’t be sitting here in your apartment—it would be locked up in
the most secure classified document repository in the country.”

“That’s weak, hon—”

Lynn winced. “Don’t call me
hon.
We’ve been divorced for years.”

“Fine…sugarplum. And the reason this case
file
isn’t
locked up in a repository is because it was
stolen,
a long time ago.”

“Oh, by
you?
” Lynn chuckled. “Face
it, Harlan. You may fancy yourself as this high-tech lock-picking
black-bag operator, but the truth is…you suck.”

“Hey!”

“Come on. Every time you try something like
that, you get caught and go to jail.”

“Not
every
time.” Garrett bitterly
ground out his cigarette. “And besides—I’m not the one who ripped
off
this
stuff.”

“Then who did?”

“General Norton T. Swenson,” Garrett
said.

Lynn looked back at him with an expression
of near-hilarity. “Swenson, your nemesis? He stole this and gave it
to
you?
”

“Yeah. He’s dying now, but Swenson was the
Air Force’s top dog on the subject. He was an MJ-12 member—”

“Bullshit,” Lynn said quickly. “It doesn’t
exist and never did.”

“—and he oversaw all disinformation
campaigns designed to debunk public UFO theories.”

Now Lynn laughed. “And it looks like he’s
using you for the next one.”

Garrett nodded curtly, lit another
cigarette. “Maybe. That’s the first thing that crossed my mind….
But, first, tell me one thing. What do you think—and I mean
really
—what do you think about what I’ve shown you?”