Independence Day: Silent Zone (21 page)

In
a
strange way, the more he talked, the more sense he seemed to make. Okun
was
tempted to ask about these other visits, but steered back to his
original
topic. "I'll look for the guys later. But right now I want to get my
hands
on a second alien ship." He explained the experiment which proved the
captured saucer could only fly with a companion. "Do you know if the
government has any more of them from another crash?"

"What
about Chihuahua, Mexico?"

"What's
that?"

"Have
you seen the Majestic 12 documents?"

"The
thing they wrote up for Eisenhower? Yeah, I saw them."

"It's
in there." Okun had read the top-secret documents but had concluded
that
they were fakes, just more disinformation generated by the forces of
darkness.
It had a description of the "seized flying disk" that was full of
inaccuracies. There had been one paragraph in the document that had
been
blacked out.

"So
what's this Chihuiahua thing about?"

"Simultaneous
with the crash at Roswell, another streak of light had been observed
moving due
south. The Army collected scores of 'hard' sightings from people on the
ground
all the way from Roswell to Guerrero, a town in the mountains of
Chihuahua
State. "A few days after the crash, we sent troops across the border.
Just
barged right in and surrounded the area where the local people said the
thing
went down. They searched for a long time, but didn't find anything."

"But
you think there's one down there?"

"I
don't know. I always meant to go down there and look around for myself,
but I
never did."

"And
where was this exactly?"

"Right
outside of Guerrero." Once again, Wells began to explain why he had to
get
to the television station, but Okun interrupted him immediately.

"One
last question. The Y. I saw it on one of the monitors inside the ship
when we
pumped some power into the system. I thought it was some kind of an
SOS.
Dworkin told me you had that same feeling."

This
time
Wells only shook his head. "I haven't figured it out. You say you spoke
with Trina Gluck."

"Yes."

"Did
you believe her?"

"I
don't think she's lying. Yeah, I guess I believed her."

"If
she's right, the aliens don't know any more than we do what the Y is.
For years
I believed it was the alien equivalent of our SOS, but if so, why don't
they
recognize it?"

"Agent
Radecker," the nurse called from the doorway. "You have a telephone
call, sir."

"Our
reinforcements?" the old man asked eagerly.

"Either
that or VDJ." Okun extended his hand. "Thanks a lot for your
help."

Wells
looked at the hand, horrified. "You're leaving? You're going to leave
me
here? NO! You tricked me! You're with them, aren't you? You never had
any
intention of helping. Get away from me, you filthy murderer."

All
the
way through the house and back to the office, Okun could hear the old
man
howling curses at him. And it didn't look like life was going to get
any
better. He was fairly certain that once he picked up the phone he would
be
nailed by some internal security guy in DC.

He
took a
deep breath and picked up the receiver. "Radecker here."

"I
thought your name was Bob Robertson."

"Brinelle?"

"Yeah.
Listen, Secret Agent Whatever-Your-Name-Is, you are majorly busted. Two
guys
were just here from the FBI asking about you and, sorry, but we had to
tell
them where you were going. So you might want to get out of there."

"Thanks,
Chief, I'll get on that right away."

"Are
there people standing there listening to you?"

"Affirmative."

"And
you want to sound like you're on official business?"

"Exactly."

"Cool.
You better hit the road, but use that phone number I gave you, OK?"

"Will
do. Over and out."

Okun started
out the door, but
thought better of it. Why should he run? What did it matter
how
he got
back to Nevada? It might be a more pleasant trip if he had some
company. So he
sat down in the waiting room and looked through some magazines until he
heard a
car skid to a stop in the parking lot.

Okun spent the night behind bars. As he'd
guessed, the FBI guys who took him into custody drove him all the way
to
Nevada, to the main entrance to the Nellis Weapons Testing Range. They
were
very polite with him the entire time, even friendly. He was never
handcuffed or
treated as a prisoner in any way—except for them following him into the
restroom when they stopped for lunch. But it was a different story when
they handed
him over to the Military Police waiting for him at the front gates. He
was
searched, handcuffed, and tossed in the back of a Jeep. The MPs drove
him to
the Military Intelligence building and locked him in a windowless
cell. He was
woken up in the middle of the night and taken to an interrogation room,
where
he was questioned by a pair of officers. They demanded to know
everywhere he'd
gone and everyone he'd spoken with during his twenty-seven-hour
absence. They
warned him, however, not to tell the
whole
story.
If he had divulged any
compartmentalized information, anything about the work being done at
Groom
Lake, they wanted to know to whom he had done so, but reminded him they
were
not cleared to hear such information and telling them would constitute
a
violation of the law.

He
told
them the whole truth, but they acted as if they didn't believe a word
of it.
They grilled him for two hours, subtly leaning on him to change his
story. When
the session was over, he was taken back to the cell. At 7 A.M.,
he was awoken once again, this time by Radecker, who stood on the other
side of
the bars looking like a high-pressure radiator hose about to split open
and
spray the room with dirty boiling water. He screamed at Okun for a long
time,
telling him what a stupid and dangerous thing it had been to disappear
like
that. When the enraged CIA man stopped for breath, Okun tried to
lighten the
mood.

"Aren't
you even gonna compliment my haircut?"

Radecker
skewered him with a hard stare. "I trusted you," he hissed, "and
you double-crossed me. You stabbed me in the back. Now you're going to
pay the
price. There's going to be a court-martial. A legal team is preparing
charges
against you right now. You're looking at some serious prison time."

"For
what?"

"Let
me see. Being absent without leave, impersonating a federal officer,
trespassing, violating the Federal Espionage Act. All together you
shouldn't
get more than ninety-nine years. You'll be eligible for parole in about
twenty."

"I
didn't reveal anything," Okun assured him. "I swear. The only person
I talked to was Wells."

Radecker
flashed him a wicked smile. "Wells no longer has a security clearance.
He
doesn't have any official ties to this program. You blew it."

"You're
kidding me, right? I didn't tell him anything he didn't already know."

"The
guys outside don't know that. I guess I could talk to them for you,
explain the
situation, try to get the charges dismissed. But I'm not going to do
that, and
I'll tell you why. Because you intentionally embarrassed me. I get sent
out
here to baby-sit your hippie ass, and you pull this stunt. Where do you
think
that leaves me? I'm finished at the CIA, I'm a joke. Even the friggin'
FBI is
laughing at me."

But
Okun
was never charged with any crime. Apparently, he had unseen friends in
higher
places. A phone call from the Deputy Director's Office of the CIA
instructed
the base's legal affairs office to drop the case and overlook the
entire
incident. Radecker was told to restrict the young scientist to the labs
and immediate
environs, but to take no further disciplinary action. He was furious,
but
powerless to strike back.

When Okun returned
to the underground labs, the mood was indeed somber. He wasn't the only
one in
the boss's doghouse. When Brackish had failed to rendezvous with them
for the
ride back from Vegas, the old men had tried one trick after another to
stall
the van's departure. First Freiling wandered off, pretending to have a
senile
episode, then
Lenel complained of chest pains and was taken to a hospital. At dawn, when Okun still hadn't
returned,
they gave up and came home. Radecker was convinced they were in on the
plot.
The Vegas trips, he announced, were history. The old men would be
allowed to
drive into town only long enough to transact their banking business and
fill
their prescriptions at the pharmacy before returning to base. For
Dworkin and
company, being robbed of their only form of recreation was a crushing
blow, and
they couldn't help blaming Okun.

Spirits were
low, and there was a
poisonous atmosphere in the labs. Cracks began to appear in the block
of
solidarity shared by the older men. They began to quarrel with one
another, and
they made no secret of the fact that they were angry with Okun. Lenel
confronted him one morning, asking if his "lark" had been worth it.

"What was so
important that you
had to go talk to him?" When Okun tried blaming the whole thing on
Radecker and his lies, Lenel asked him again. "We told you Wells was
crazy. Now I'm asking you if you learned anything by going to see him?"

Rather than
answer, the young man with the crew cut retreated to his room. What
had
he gained by taking his trip up the coast? The onetime director of Area
51 had
told him several interesting things, but nothing he could really use.
The
matter of the telepathic Y-message remained a mystery, and he had less
freedom
than ever to research the possibility of a second ship. Perhaps the
only thing
he'd really taken away from the meeting was the haunting vision of the
earth
being invaded by a conquering species from a
distant galaxy. As preposterous as
some of it had sounded at the time,
Wells's words were taking root in Okun's imagination and growing
stronger by
the day. He tried to talk to the other men about them, but it was
almost as if
they were afraid of these ideas. Why else would they dismiss them so
quickly
when there was ample evidence to support them?

Radecker
wasn't finished. He instituted an insidious new paperwork regime. Crate
after
crate of new equipment had begun to arrive for work on the retrofitting
project. Under the new system, every piece of every shipment had to be
cataloged in triplicate before it could be used. This meant separate
forms to
fill out for each bolt, each O-ring, each spool of wire. Then there was
another
piece of administrative sadism—the daily work proposal. The first hour
of every
morning was spent filling in these tedious forms.

Things improved
slightly over the next two weeks. Cibatutto rigged up a discarded telex
machine
to help them get around some of the new paperwork, and Dworkin
introduced a new
card game—bridge—which the old men quickly mastered. One Friday night,
Radecker
came into the kitchen and found them playing a rowdy game of cards
while Okun
watched. Just when the wounds Okun had caused began to heal, Radecker
tore them
open again. He realized Okun had gotten away with humiliating him
without
suffering a scratch. Something must have snapped, because the next day
he dug his
claws into Okun the only way he knew how. If he couldn't punish the boy
genius
directly, he would hit below the belt. He
had
Freiling sent to a nearby Air Force base for psychological testing to
determine
if he was mentally fit to continue working at the highly classified
labs.
Freiling returned shaken and confused. The shrinks had ganged up on
him, he
said, deliberately done things to confuse him. The old man was
terrified at the
prospect of being sent to a retirement home-prison like the one Okun
had described
in San Mateo.

The
whole
group of them marched off immediately to Radecker's office, but he
wouldn't
talk to them. "I thought we had a deal, Mr. Radecker," Dworkin called
as politely as he could through the closed door.

"Don't
talk to me about it; go ask Okun. And think about this the next time
one of you
decides to cross me." They spent the rest of that Saturday taking care
of
Freiling, assuring him they wouldn't let him be sent away. When he
finally
relaxed and fell asleep, it was late at night.

Okun
came
into the kitchen and found Dworkin sitting there in the dark.

"What's
goin' on, can't sleep?"

"A
case of indigestion," Dworkin said. When Okun switched on a light, he
saw
a glass of water and a bottle of pills on the table. "It's probably
just
heartburn caused by a stressful day."

"You
sure you're all right? Should we call somebody?"

The
old
man laughed. It wasn't that serious. He invited Okun to sit down, and
asked him
about his visit with Wells. He wanted to know all about the place he
was being held
and what he had said. After listening for a while, he asked Okun for
his
opinion. "Do you think he's right? Are we criminals for not telling the
world?"

"Maybe.
Especially when you look around here and consider the kind of manpower
the
government is devoting to this research. There ought to be hundreds of
people
down here, and what have we got? Four men over seventy years old and
one doofus
who doesn't even have a Ph.D. They aren't taking this project seriously
at all.
I think Wells is right about one thing. We need to get lots of people
working
on this. If word got out, people would have to take it seriously and
band
together to get ready."