Majestic (13 page)

"We can surmise a few things about the matter. First, the dead were taken. They were Inuit people, and their ancestors were vitally important to them. Meaning? They were not simply murdered or enslaved. Their beliefs were respected."

"They were taken somewhere. Intact."

"Exactly."

"What happened to the others? The boy that disappeared into the sky? And the poor man that went underground, Willy? I just - my blood ran cold!"

"Van, maybe - " He looked at me. I hesitated, unwilling to finish my sentence. I had been about to soften the stand I took in the estimate. But I thought better of it at once. If there was the remotest possibility that I was right, the position I had taken was the correct one. "Maybe we'll find out it isn't as bad as it looks," I concluded rather lamely.

Vandenberg stared at the ash on his cigar. "Should I bother to ask what Hilly thinks?"

"Hilly's still getting into the job. He's going to be fine." Vandenberg raised his eyebrows. "He's concerned about this, naturally. He said that he felt we should wait for events to unfold a little further."

"I think that we should get aggressive. I think we should attempt to shoot down one of the disks."

"Hilly won't agree."

"It's a decision for the Air Force, the Defense Department and the President." He paused. "Truman is interested in this. He's read your estimate, as well as ours."

I concealed my amazement. This was not being handled according to established procedures. The National Board of Estimate should have read my paper, questioned and revised it, then transmitted it to the Defense and State departments. Then it would have come to the attention of the White House, and only if a presidential decision was needed. "Secretary Forrestal?"

"He'll be informed in due course."

Van looked at me. At last, I thought, he's coming to the point. Van could be very subtle. The blustery, tough exterior was there at once to confuse his enemies and make them imagine that he was vulnerable. He was a master bureaucratic infighter, and a brutal one. "I have a copy of a report from the 509th Bomber Wing in Roswell, New Mexico to Eighth Air Force headquarters." He handed me a piece of carbon paper.

I still remember the feeling of the blood rushing from my head as I stood there looking down at the laconic message from Colonel Blanchard to General Ramey, the commanding general of the Eighth Air Force.

"We have this day obtained debris from a flying disk of unknown origin and have located the remains of the object intact by photo recce. Please advise how we should proceed."

"The pictures are being flown here right now."

"Manna from heaven," I said quietly. I tried not to reveal my fear. Were we about to find people disappearing from New Mexico? Empty towns? Graveyards full of holes? "You realize that this is at present the most sensitive secret that the United States possesses. Even more sensitive than the formula for the atomic bomb."

Vandenberg did not reply directly, and I realized that I had just condescended to a man who had bypassed his own chain of command and mine in order to restrict knowledge of this secret. He obviously understood the level of sensitivity involved.

"Hilly has to know," I added.

"I think we should convene a meeting with the President as soon as we get the photographs. You, me, Hilly and the secretary. We'll decide what to do from there."

"I'll brief Hilly."

"We can get the President one-fifteen to one forty-five."

"The pictures?"

"Barring weather delays, the plane will land at Andrews at twelve-forty."

"You need to think about containment. Ramey knows. The 509th's Colonel knows. Presumably his staff knows. Was the debris found by a member of the public?"

Vandenburg nodded.

"I'll tell you, Van, I think we should be damn sure that none of these people will say a damn word. And any of them we can't be sure of - well, this is a very sensitive matter. If we have to take extreme steps, I don't think we should hesitate."

How safe we felt, plotting our strategies deep in that Pentagon office. We were already doing the work of the others, playing into their hands, doing it their way.

If only we had understood, but we did not understand. Sometimes wars are fought without battles, won without weapons. The best strategist conceals his attack behind a shield of confusion. The best strategist can make even an invasion seem like an accident.

The others understood that fantastically powerful principle of warfare.

We did not.

Chapter Nine

That was not the only principle of strategy that our government didn't understand. It is fascinating and rather infuriating to me that Will literally cannot think about our relationship with the others except in terms of conflict. Strategies. Battles. Subterfuges. His war years have so warped his perception of the world around him that everyone is an adversary and every action a stratagem.

Understandably, the one thing he won't fight is death itself. It's obvious that he welcomes his cancer. The only reason he resists at all is to get this book finished. The closer we get to the end, the more he smokes and the harder he hits the bottle.

I have cried because of this man.

As much as I feel that he misperceived the others, he was in a sense right that they had a strategy. It would probably be more appropriate to call it a plan. A simple, staggeringly deceptive plan.

I like to think that I discovered its outlines on my own. Will missed it, precisely because of its simplicity.

While Washington stumbled the others were acting with decision. The government seems to have perceived the others as being rather ineffectual - which was no doubt exactly how they intended themselves to appear.

They had advanced ships, yes, but they'd crashed one. Washington fell into the trap of viewing the event in Roswell as a failed attempt to scout unfamiliar terrain.

Meanwhile, the others were capturing the night. Obviously they knew that an unbalanced government would be easiest for them to control. They began to achieve this control by taking an action that was calculated to cause panic in high places. They did this out in far West Texas, on the vast and dreary reserve known paradoxically as Fort Bliss.

Second Squad, 4th Platoon, Company D, 53rd Infantry dropped their weapons to the hard West Texas ground arid watched the sun go down. They were recruits just out of basic, attending infantry school while they awaited orders to occupation duty. They were involved in a war-game maneuver and wishing they were almost anywhere else.

I have reconstructed what happened over the next twelve hours from the reports contained in Will's files.

These start in 1947 and end in 1956, when all the members of 2nd Squad were hypnotized to uncover hidden memories. That was the year Dr. Steven Reich discovered that the amnesia induced by the visitors could to a degree be broken by this process.

It is interesting to me that Will never allowed himself to be hypnotized, even though his agency routinely required that all other personnel exposed to direct alien contact undergo the process.

According to a report prepared by the Fort Bliss MP's who investigated the events that transpired that night, the squad was on a practice combat patrol. They had been assigned an area far from any expected

"aggressor" activity, and I suspect that they anticipated a quiet night.

The squad leader, Corporal Jim Collins, would have put the men at ease when they reached their destination.

He himself sat down heavily, and pulled off his pack. After a moment he signaled to his radioman, who came trotting over with his antenna bobbing. "You working, Lucas?"

"Yes, sir." Lucas bent his back and Collins pulled the handset out of its cradle and turned the radio on. He waited for the "ready" light, then made a brief transmission to Platoon.

"This is Baker Delta Mike at Checkpoint zero-two-two-Harvey-eight. Out."

The radio crackled. "Acknowledged," came the laconic reply. "Order: Rockabye."

Collins flipped off the radio. "We got an order to bed down for the night," he said. There were a few groans of relief.

No fires were allowed; they ate cold C rations. According to a typical C ration chow manifest from the period, supper could easily have been Vienna sausages, peas, processed cheese and rice pudding. There was no bread, and water was the only drink. No lights were allowed, which meant no cigarettes, and many of them wanted a smoke right now more than they wanted a woman.

There were ten of them, plus Collins. The oldest was twenty-two. That was Mastic, who had a tattoo of a long-stemmed red rose on his chest.

The youngest was a boy from Lufkin, Texas, called Sweet Charlie. Charlie Burleson.

Officially, this monster was eighteen years old. According to his birth certificate as recorded on November 7,1931, in Austin, Texas, he was actually sixteen.

For some reason nobody had bothered to check his age when he enlisted. It could have been his looks: Sweet Charlie was also known as "Bullhog."

His great hope was to become a member of the Army boxing team and go professional after his tour was up.

His hands were as big as most men's heads, and I believe that he had the disposition of somebody who'd swallowed a razor blade.

This kid was scraping grease out of the bottom of a Vienna sausage can and staring off across the darkening landscape when he saw something strange. "What the fuck they throwin' at us," he muttered.

The whole squad looked where he was pointing.

"Goddamn."

"That's them Marfa Lights. I know what that is."

"We're way the fuck away from Marfa, boy. You ain't got no goddamn sense. That's some kinda aggressor flare."

Collins looked at the glow. It rose a little distance from the surface of the desert and hung in the air, a round, yellow ball about the size of the full moon.

"Lucas, get HQ on the horn."

After a moment the radiotelephone burped. HQ sounded a million miles away. "Permission to transmit in the clear."

"Granted."

"We are observing a stationary yellow flare south-southeast our position at approximately nine o'clock. Advise please."

There was a fairly long silence, during which Collins watched the flare. "This is Lieutenant Ford, repeat that location."

"South-southeast our position, approximately nine o'clock."

"That is off the game board, Corporal. Assume it's unconnected activity."

"Yes, sir. Over and out." He put the receiver back into the unit. "That flare is unconnected activity," he said aloud. "HQ says to disregard."

The men hardly heard him. They were watching the flare, which was now moving about in the sky, fluttering from side to side like a leaf. For a long time nobody said anything.

The disappearance of the thing was as sudden as a light being turned off.

The men remained still and silent. Finally Mastic farted, which brought a snort of derision from Sweet Charlie.

"Season the fuckin' bivouac, right Mastic?"

"The more you eat, the more you toot."

"Vienna sausages ain't beans."

"All C rations are beans. See the numbers on these cans? This means they were made in June of 1944.

That's three years ago."

"Hell, they're new. I hearda guys openin' these cans and findin' hardtack and molasses. The U.S. Army ain't issued rations like that since the Civil War."

"What the fuck war is that?"

"You don't know about the fuckin' Civil War, Sweetie? You must be some kind of moron."

"Who're you callin' a moron, Mastic, you corn-holin' homo."

"Fuck you, you big puff! Them cigar butts is just a act."

"Knock it off, you guys."

The men settled down.

The night returned to its rustlings.

The light reappeared directly above them, covering the central three-quarters of the sky. The squad was caught in its glow. At this point they came under the direct influence of the others - in fact, entered their control.

As elsewhere in this book, I have constructed the interactions between ourselves and the others on the basis of the secret psychological studies I have read, as well as my own interviews with witnesses and astute UFO

investigators. Will has contributed virtually all of what understanding I can claim. Always I have adhered to his admonitions, "This is about the soul, the body is secondary," and, "The others are so old that they have rediscovered innocence. That is what makes them terrible."

I have also watched about a thousand feet of eight-millimeter film that Will says was made by the others at the request of the United States government, of a group of people they had taken into their possession.

In this strange, pale environment the people look like great, fleshy bags. The others flit around, fragile and almost invisible on the film. People scream, they pound their fists on the walls, they try to dig through the floor. The fear and terror are impossible to describe. Every so often a pair of those black alien eyes will glare into the camera.

Is it rage or fear I see there, or desperation?

In addition, in the case of the 2nd Squad I had the advantage of reading transcripts of the hypnosis sessions of Corporal Collins, PFC Lucas and Private Mastic.

On that night back in 1947 the men looked up at the huge object that was now directly above them. They saw the faint lines and rivets of the underside of the great ship. There would have been sobs, muttered prayers.

Some probably went to their knees.

Jim Collins called the radio operator, who sat frozen, staring. "Lucas!"

"Momma says no."

"What the fuck!"

"Momma said no turn on radio."

"What the hell is this?" Collins stood up. His men were lying on their sides or hunched or kneeling. "Hey you guys!"

As is typical of the others' methods, a human being they had contacted before remained in a more-or-less normal state. Only later would his memory be affected.

Under hypnosis Collins recalled seeing three children in white suits hanging back at the edge of the light, watching him. "We won't hurt you, Jimmy," a voice said. Collins stared hard at them. How had they done that? The voice sounded like it was inside his head.