Independence Day: Silent Zone (10 page)

"If you're
convinced there's a second alien ship, this is the best place to go
looking for
it."

It was three weeks
before Okun made his first independent foray into the stacks. Life in
the labs
was beginning to settle into a comfortable routine. His elderly cohort
continued with their repairs on the alien vehicle and, once his rear
end had
healed sufficiently, Okun joined them. Even though he was convinced
they were
wasting their time, they made pleasant company, and he assisted them as
they
puttered through repairs to the wiring system and damaged fuselage.

The
atmosphere underground improved considerably once Radecker began
spending his
days at the Officers' Club. Groom Lake, the fiat salt bed under which
Area 51
was buried, was only a tiny fraction of the enormous Nellis Weapons
Testing Range.
At roughly five thousand square miles in area, the range was as large
as a
small European country. At its southern edge, near Frenchman Lake, was
a
cluster of buildings which, with their manicured lawns, swimming pool,
and
tennis courts could, from the air, easily be mistaken for a luxury
hotel. It
was a gathering spot for high-ranking officials from all areas of the
base, a
place to hold meetings or simply relax in the air-conditioned comfort
of the
bar. Radecker quickly discovered that a convoy of Jeeps traveled
between Groom
and Frenchman lakes twice a day, when a new group of soldiers came on
duty.
From six in the morning until six in the evening, his phone calls were
rerouted
to the lounge of the Officers' Club.

On one particular
Friday, Okun was in the labs by himself. Dworkin and the others had
left for their
once-a-week excursion into Las Vegas. The previous two Fridays, the men
had
convinced Okun to join them. He was shocked by what he learned. After
taking
care of their banking business and other errands, the four old timers
headed
for the casinos, where they played high-stakes poker. They seemed to be
on a
first-name basis with nearly every dealer and pit boss they ran into.
Apparently, they had been eighty-sixed from many of the major houses on
the
Strip because, although no one could prove it, they cheated at cards
and always
took home much more than they lost, often several hundred dollars
between them.
It was one more way they had found to end-run the funding restrictions
imposed
on them by the Pentagon.

It
was
spooky being down there by himself, so he didn't linger in the long dim
hallway
that housed the stacks. After a quick look around, he found the
sloppiest box
of all, the one that looked like it had been organized by a madman. He
lifted
out the first two hundred pages and took them back to his room, locking
the
door behind him—a habit he'd gotten himself into after the scientists
showed
him the corpses of the alien astronauts. Even though they were very
very dead
and floating in steel-reinforced tanks of formaldehyde, this extra
precaution
of locking his door provided the young man with the last little bit of
psychological reassurance he needed to sleep peacefully. He put the
documents
on his desk and began to sort through them. He had intentionally
selected the
most disorganized set of files on the assumption that it would contain
the last
papers this mysterious Dr. Wells had been reading before they carried
him away.
He didn't expect these pages to lead him anywhere. But if they did turn
out to
be Wells's last readings, well, that would be pretty cool. Most of the
pages
were single-sheet memos concerning mundane topics like equipment
orders, travel
arrangements, and test results. He put these aside and turned his
attention to
one of the thicker documents. It was a report entitled "National
Security
Briefing Paper on Project Aquarius/B. Jones, Subject." At the bottom of
the title page, there was a typed note:

Bridget Jones was an unpopular,
pudgy twelve-year-old from a well-to-do family living in a farming
community
about thirty minutes outside Cleveland, Ohio. She was a notorious liar,
with a
specialty for inserting herself into factual events. Whenever something
newsworthy occurred, Bridget was there. When, for example, the Farlin
brothers
totaled their GTO into the front wall of the high school, Bridget told
everyone
she'd been riding in the backseat. When a half dozen sheep turned up
missing
from a farm a few miles down the road, Bridget filed a police report,
complete
with her own pencil sketches of the suspects. She claimed to have been
out on a
walk when she noticed four men loading the animals into the back of a
Volkswagen. So when Bridget found a tiny artifact left behind after a
close
encounter with an alien spaceship, no one was prepared to believe her
story.

About 9
P.M. on a Sunday evening she had been in the garage
listening to
her father's brand-new police scanner radio—just another one of dad's
electronic toys—when she heard a voice she recognized and two words
that caught
her attention: flying saucer. The voice belonged to her neighbor,
County
Sheriff Jon Varner.

"Looks like we
got a plane on fire out here, repeat, there's a plane coming in low,
and it's
on fire," she heard him yelling into his radio. "I'm on Brooderman
Road, near the old Chalmers place. It seems to be flying level to the
ground.
My God! It's not a plane. It's a flying saucer!"

"Jon, what are
you seeing out there?" the female dispatcher's voice broke in.

"About the size
of a two-story house. Orange light, it's glowing, I guess it's red and
gold,
but it's hard to make out. Now it's halfway between the railroad tracks
and
Brooderman Road. It's getting closer."

"Jon, are you
all right?"

"Jeannie, you
should see this thing, it's unbelievable. It's going to fly right over
me. It
looks like there are some windows. I can see light coming from inside.
I think
it's—"

The patrol car's radio
died. There was panic in the dispatcher's voice. "Jon? Officer Varner,
are
you all right? Can you hear me!"

Bridget
switched off the radio, grabbed the flashlight off the shelf above the
washing
machine and jumped on her bike. The Chalmers place wasn't more than a
mile and
a half from her house. She tore down the driveway, then turned onto the
main
road. It was the fastest she'd ever gone on a bike, and she nearly lost
control
more than once as she scanned the sky for signs of the UFO. The warm
breezy
night and darkness of the road made her feel like she was racing
through a
dream. She turned onto Brooderman and saw the headlights of Varner's
car far
ahead. When she came within seventy-five feet,
she got a bad feeling—like
she was being watched—and slowed down, turning her head sideways to get
the
wind off her ears. She listened for footsteps, a murmur of
conversation,
anything that might signal this was a trap. But the only sound was the
purr of
the police car's idling motor, so she rode cautiously forward. The
driver's
door was open, and Varner was laid across the front seat flat on his
back.
Bridget pulled up, grabbed his foot, and gave it a shake.

"Mr. Vamer, are
you all right?" The officer stirred slightly, so she gave him another
shake, harder this time. "Mr. Varner, wake up."

She heard someone
behind her and spun around. A tall stooped figure stepped onto the
road.
"Is that Jon Varner in that car?" he said, cinching up his housecoat.
He was an older guy she'd seen in town before. "What's the matter with
him?"

"I don't
know," Bridget said. "I think a flying saucer got him. I heard it on
my dad's radio."

The old man stepped
past her and pulled the officer into a sitting position. Varner woke up
but had
no recollection of what had happened to him. The last thing he
remembered was
standing on the pavement watching the saucer moving overhead. "Didn't
you
see it?" Varner asked when he learned the man's house was close by.
"It lit up the field like it was noon."

The man swore he
hadn't seen or heard anything unusual. He'd been inside watching
television
when he got a call from Jeannie down at the station house asking him to
come
outside and check.

A
few
minutes later, two more police cars arrived with
sirens
wailing. The noise attracted more neighbors into the street. Passing
motorists
stopped to find out what was going on, and soon there were two dozen
folks
standing in the middle of the road listening to the officer tell and
retell his
story. Bridget joined a group of people who started searching the edges
of the
road for clues. She wandered several feet into the waist-high field of
wheat
and came across something strange, a depression in the grass. It looked
like
somebody had been lying in the spot only a few minutes before. She
could see
the tall grass untangling itself and trying to stand back up. Like a
good
detective, she made sure to check for footprints. There were none.
There was no
pathway leading to or from the place where the person had been lying.
She turned
and saw that her own path into the field was clearly marked by the
trail of
trampled grass.

"Hey, people, I
found something! Come and look!"

Before anyone got
there, she looked down and noticed something metal near the head of the
body-shaped depression. She reached down and picked up the shiny
object, which
looked like a BB pellet.

"Honey, you
shouldn't be knocking down that man's wheat," a woman's voice called
out.
"What did you find?"

"Mrs. Milch?
It's me, Bridget. Come and look at this; I think it's important."

If
the woman
was reluctant to step onto the damp soil before, she was doubly so now
that she
knew who was asking her to come. Everyone knew about Bridget's little
problem
with telling the truth. But this was an urgent situation, so she
followed
Bridget's trail out to the spot. "OK, what is it?"

"Look, this is
where the aliens probably held Mr. Varner down."

The woman didn't
believe her. She said the depression in the grass was too small to have
been
made by a man. That it looked more like a little girl had made it. She
asked
why there wasn't another set of man-sized tracks between there and the
road.
When the girl protested that this time she was telling the truth, Mrs.
Milch
shook her head and pointed out the grass on the girl's knees. Bridget
explained
to the woman about having bent down to pick up the BB and tried to show
it to
her, but Mrs. Milch walked away.

Bridget had never
felt so insulted in her entire life. She jammed the BB into her pocket,
got on
her bike, and rode away. When she got home and examined it under
brighter
light, she noticed that the object was covered with tiny bristles. Even
with
the help of a magnifying glass, these spiky projections were difficult
to see.
But she could feel them when she squeezed the object hard. The bristles
felt
like electricity under her fingertips.

News
traveled fast. By the time she got to school the next morning, all the
kids had
heard there had been a UFO sighting the night before. Bridget made sure
everyone in the school knew of the central role she had played in the
drama.
She stuck to the facts for the most part, but couldn't resist adding a
few
small wrinkles of her own. During the nutrition break, she told
her classmates how she had driven the spaceship away by
pulling the gun front the unconscious officer's holster and using some
choice
language to scare "the Martians" off. By lunch, she had made eye
contact with one of the blobbish creatures through the spacecraft's
windows and
flipped him the bird. By the end of the day, no one believed a word.
Just
before the bell rang, Bridget raised her hand and asked whether there
could be
show-and-tell the next day. She promised to bring in the "Martian BB"
she'd found. Her classmates jeered their disbelief, but Ms. Sandoval,
her
favorite teacher of all time, said it was a good idea.

The next morning
Bridget smelled another trap. A black-and-white was parked in front of
the
school next to another, suspiciously official-looking car. A policeman
and a
man in a dark suit were standing outside of her room talking to Ms.
Sandoval.
When she walked up, she knew from their smiles that they were not to be
trusted. The man in the suit asked her about the BB. She admitted that
she had
it, and offered to let them see it, on one condition. She made both men
promise
they wouldn't take it away from her, that they wouldn't even touch it.
The men
agreed. Bridget opened up her lunch bag and started rummaging through
it.
Suddenly the policeman snatched the bag out of her hands. "Here, lemme
help you look for it."

"You
big liars!" she screamed in anger. "Taking advantage of a little kid!
You're disgusting!" When the cop had emptied the sack out completely and determined
there was nothing unusual inside, the men turned once
more toward the girl. The chubby sixth-grader was smirking like a
jack-o'-lantem, holding the BB between her fingers. "Ha-ha, I fooled
you." Before either man could get to her, she popped the fuzzy little
pill
into her mouth and swallowed it.

She was rushed to
Merciful Redeemer Hospital and admitted to the Intensive Care Unit.
After
vomiting several times, she'd gone into a sustained fit of dry heaves.
Covered
with sweat and moaning between gagging spells, she was like an
overweight
kitten trying to pass a large hair ball. In addition to her nausea, she
complained of dizziness and a ringing in her ears. The doctors took
X-rays but
could find no sign of the foreign object. A toxicologist ran several
blood
tests but could find no poison. None of the experts could find anything
physically wrong with her. Her mysterious illness became more
mysterious still
when it suddenly disappeared without a trace moments before her parents
arrived. When her mother and father accused her of making the whole
thing up,
the man in the dark suit who'd driven her to the hospital stepped
forward.