Independence Day: Silent Zone Read online

  He found his elevator and rode it down one floor to the building’s basement. The heavy doors opened after he inserted a security card into the lock, depositing him into a bare hallway guarded by a pair of soldiers. After glancing at his ID plaque, they waved him through, and he stepped into the Tank, the most secure conference area in the entire Pentagon complex.

  Inside, sitting around a long walnut conference table, were a dozen men, all of them white, all of them older than Nimziki. They were elite figures from the U.S. military and intelligence communities, men who had been entrusted, however reluctantly, with “the nation’s dirtiest little secret.” Collectively, they were known as Project Smudge.

  After a brief round of perfunctory greetings, Nimziki sat down, and Bud Spelman, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency, walked to the podium at the front of the room. Serious as a bulldog, the barrel-chested Colonel Spelman had once been an Army drill instructor, and it showed in the blunt way he handled the meeting.

  “Gentlemen. The purpose of this meeting is to update you on a series of possibly threatening UFO occurrences and, if warranted, to adopt an action plan. Now I trust everyone has had a chance to review the status report I sent around, so you basically know the situation, but I do want to show you a piece of radar tape shot last month by Northern Tracking Command.” After pulling down a retractable white screen and dimming the lights, he moved to a projector set up at the back of the room. As the film began, the screen went black. “You’re looking at the night sky over our atomic storage facility near Bangor, Maine. These are enhanced-composite radar images transferred to film to improve their quality. And here comes our visitor.”

  From the upper corner, an uneven blotch of white light appeared. The pulsing, indistinct shape began a slow and steady descent toward the bottom of the screen, its outline slowly coming into better focus. “In addition to the radar, we had several naked-eye witnesses on the ground who say they got a good look at it. But, as usual, their descriptions are all over the map. Some of them said the thing gave off a golden light, others called it an orange-red light, while another maintains it was bluish in color. The same with engine noise. Some people heard ‘a high whine, like an electric motor’ while others noted a ‘complete absence of sound.’ What we know for certain is that this thing hovered directly over our underground storage bunkers at an altitude of fifteen hundred feet for approximately two minutes, then—and here comes the reason for showing you the film.”

  All eyes were turned toward the screen. The UFO suddenly darted straight up, rising another thousand feet above the earth before commencing a series of startling zigzags across the night sky. Whatever it was, it moved with both incredible speed and astonishing agility as it executed a series of right-angle and hairpin turns without significant loss of velocity. Then, as mysteriously as it had appeared, it zipped out of view in one long streak. Spelman stopped the tape and turned to face the others.

  “Looks like my wife has been giving driving lessons,” an Air Force general quipped, eliciting a polite chuckle from the others.

  Spelman didn’t change expressions. “No aircraft known to Defense Intelligence has performance capabilities equal to what we just witnessed. After review of the tape, DIA considers it likely that what you have seen is a reconnaissance mission. And where there’s smoke, there’s fire. This intelligence gathering could be preparatory to some sort of attack, or, in a worst-case scenario, a full-scale invasion.”

  Spelman paused to let that sink in. His audience was less amazed by the tape they’d seen than by Spelman’s ability to make this speech as if it were the first time he’d ever made it. Once a year, he would call a meeting such as this one to present evidence to the members of Project Smudge. And each time, he and Dr. Wells, his sole ally on the committee, would argue that the nation was exposed to a clear-and-present danger. They were the hard-liners who argued that the world was on the brink of imminent invasion by extraterrestrials. Behind their backs, they were known as the crazies, especially Dr. Wells, the only man known to have held a conversation with an intelligent life-form from another world. Eventually, Wells’s desperate insistence on the need to adopt his proposals led to his banishment from Smudge. Isolated, Spelman was reluctant to call another meeting, but then had found a most unexpected ally, someone with a daring plan which might finally end the interagency bickering which had crippled the government’s research into UFOs for more than a decade—Nimziki.

  When it was apparent that Spelman was finished talking, Dr. Insolo of the Science and Technology Directorate was the first to raise a familiar objection, “We’ve been getting sightings like this for years; why is this one special?”

  To Spelman, one of the true believers, the question seemed ridiculous, almost insulting. “First off, all of these sightings are significant. What makes this one especially threatening is that it didn’t take place over the desert or the ocean. This vehicle buzzed one of our most sensitive and potentially damaging installations. We don’t want all that uranium falling into the wrong hands.”

  Jenkins, subchief of the CIA’s Domestic Collections Division, did little to disguise his feeling that this meeting was a waste of time “Are you proposing that the committee adopt the Wells plan?” The oft-proposed and always rejected course of action recommended by Wells called for nothing less than a full-scale preparation for war, a series of projects so large that the presence of the aliens would soon become public knowledge. The plan was always rejected by an overwhelming margin. Secrecy was priority number one, and there were two reasons for this. In the wake of every group sighting of a UFO, civilians became hysterical. There was no telling what kind of mass chaos the country would face if the government were forced to confirm the presence of these visitors. The second, related reason, was that no one wanted to take responsibility for having kept the information hidden for over twenty-five years. Secrecy begat secrecy, one denial led to another, until the participating agencies found themselves, a quarter of a century after the crash at Roswell, sitting on a full-blown conspiracy to keep the American public—and the world—in the dark. There was not a chance in hell that anyone in that room was going to commit himself to an effort like the one Wells had envisioned, especially given the present unstable political climate. No one wanted to be caught holding the bag if Congress started one of its investigations into the nation’s spy agencies.

  Then Nimziki unleashed his bombshell. “I’ve decided to support Colonel Spelman. After reading through some past reports and looking at the tape we’ve just seen, I think the time has come to start taking this threat seriously.”

  Since Nimziki had joined Smudge, he had been the most ardent critic of the Wells plan, arguing that it was a gigantic waste of time and money, that the aliens posed no significant threat. In fact, he had taken a personal dislike to Wells and had not been content with kicking him out of Smudge, but had stripped him of any security clearance and had him run out of the government altogether.

  Jenkins grinned across the table. He knew Nimziki well enough to realize there must be some I ulterior motive at work. “What exactly does the deputy director have in mind?”

  “The plan I’m proposing takes certain elements from the one dear old Dr. Wells drew up. But, as you might expect, it’s significantly more low-key. It calls for the formation of a rapid deployment alien-vehicle intercept force, a Special Weapons And Tactics squad capable of getting to one of these aircraft before it gets away. At the same time, I want to revamp and redouble our efforts at Area 51, to see if we can’t get some results from the craft we already have. I have some long-term plans to get things moving out there.”

  “This SWAT team. What would it do?”

  “The purpose of this force would be to gather better visual information on these craft, attempt to establish radio communication, and, if possible, to bring one of them down for further study and reverse-engineering purposes.”

  “You mean you want to shoot them down?” asked one of the Navy guys, visibly a
gitated by the idea.

  “Is that wise?” Dr. Insolo asked. “Let’s not forget, these airships are armed. They have laser cannons which, except in the Wisconsin case, they haven’t used. We don’t want to start a fight we’re not sure we can win.”

  Jenkins nodded. “He’s right. Besides, what good will it do to capture one of these rascals? We’ve already got the one that went down at Roswell, and that hasn’t done us a lick of good.”

  One by one, the members of the committee took turns raising objections and pointing out shortcomings of the plan. Then Jim Ostrom, aka the Bishop, asked the question that was on everyone’s mind.

  “This is an about-face for you, Albert. I remember when Dr. Wells used to make rather similar proposals, and you’d sit there and shoot him down. What’s changed? Is it this film we just watched?”

  “No, it’s a story I heard from your colleague at the NSA, Dr. Podsedecki.” Podsedecki, a former Wells-supporter and leader of the Walker Greens, a secret society within the already hypersecret National Security Agency, was a sort of legendary cult figure in spy circles.

  “It goes like this. Let’s say you’re out for a hike in the mountains with some old friends. You’re walking down a narrow trail surrounded by tall grass. It’s a beautiful day, and you’re looking around enjoying the scenery when the hiker right behind you suddenly shouts RATTLER! How are you going to react? Do you stop and consider the credibility of your source? Wait for additional evidence to satisfy your threat-assessment criteria? Or would you go into immediate action, doing everything in your power to locate the threat and determine its precise nature? The tape we’ve witnessed this morning is one of two things: it’s either a snake in the grass, or something that appears to be a snake in the grass. In either case, it’s our responsibility to find out.”

  “Shoot first, ask questions later,” Jenkins commented sardonically.

  If the comment bothered Nimziki, he didn’t show it. “There’s one aspect of this plan that doesn’t appear in your briefing papers. Given the political climate inside the beltway at the present moment, we all expect to see a slew of new appointees. Even if Nixon weathers this storm, his major appointments are sure to face scrutiny and possible replacement, most likely with a bunch of Midwesterners with spotless records—guys like Jim Ostrom.”

  Everybody who knew Jim laughed. He was a real Jimmy Stewart-type. “But unfortunately,” Nimziki went on, getting to the most delicate part of his presentation, “these people aren’t necessarily going to be as good at maintaining secrecy as Jim is. In other words, Project Smudge faces exposure, especially if we go ahead and adopt the proposals we’re considering today. Exposure of this information to the public would, of course, be a disaster, especially now. Americans aren’t sure they can trust the government at the moment, and we don’t want to do anything to exacerbate that perception. Therefore, I propose consolidating these programs under one roof.”

  ‘The question is: Whose roof?”

  “Mine.”

  “Yours? The CIA would take control of the project?”

  “Not the entire CIA,” he explained, glancing at the team from Domestic Collections. “Just me. At least until things settle down.”

  The generals could hardly suppress their delight. This young hotshot seemed to be offering them a valuable and unexpected gift, a way out of Project Smudge. If they understood him correctly, they would all be able to wash their hands of the government’s “dirtiest little secret.” After a long moment of silence, Dr. Insolo spoke up.

  “The Science and Technology Directorate, for one, would be extremely interested in such a proposal.” Knowing that Nimziki would have a price, he went on to ask, “What would a program like this cost?”

  Spelman and Nimziki took turns explaining the rather creative funding structure they had devised. It was something of a shell game that would cost each agency less than three million per year. To get out of the project, the agencies would have paid five times that price. Within a matter of minutes, the members of the committee voted unanimously for the official dissolution of Project Smudge. Then, all smiles and handshakes, they began heading out the door, anxious to get on with other business.

  Bishop Jim stopped in the doorway and leaned in for a private word with Nimziki. “It’s an awful risk you’re taking, Albert. All it would take would be for one of these ships to buzz over Cleveland during an Indians game and… well, it wouldn’t exactly be good for your career. But I trust you know what you’re doing.” What Nimziki was doing was following his instinct for accumulating power, for picking cards up off the table and tucking them up his sleeve until he needed them.

  Before he went, Ostrom had one last piece of advice. “I like the idea of getting things running again out at Area 51, but be careful you don’t have too much success with it too quickly. If the military finds out you’ve got that ship up in the air, this committee will come back to life faster than you can say the words ‘Soviet Union.’ You need to be careful who you select as your new lead scientist out there. Make sure it’s someone you can trust.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Nimziki replied, “I think I’ve already found the perfect guy for the job.”

  2

  Recruiting Fresh Blood

  Brackish Okun was a certified, bona fide, clinically tested genius. But this wasn’t the opinion most people formed of the twenty-one-year-old science student upon first impression. He was often mistaken for a simpleminded hippie kid with very strange taste in clothing. It wasn’t so much the bell-bottom corduroy slacks or the riot of pens, calculators, and slide rules crowding the breast pocket of his Perma-Prest shirts. Nor was it the mop of long hair that straggled down to his shoulders. The thing that most made him appear to be nothing more than a simpering blockhead was his constant nodding. Whether he was concentrating on a lecture, listening to music, or working through a thorny mathematical equation, Okun nodded. His friends teased him about it. His mother tried to get him to stop, telling him it was an obnoxious habit akin to cracking his knuckles. But Okun continued to nod. And those who spent time with him, rather than convincing him to stop, often took to nodding themselves. Although seemingly insignificant, there is a case to be made that, contained in this single quirk of character, this continuous cranial quivering, was Okun’s entire orientation to life and the universe. The action signaled a positive and optimistic outlook, an ongoing acknowledgment and approval of the world around him. It was an affirmation of whatever or whomever he was focused on, especially when he nodded in conjunction with one of his favorite phrases, “groovalicious,” “I dig,” or “cool to the power of ten.” His nodding showed him to be fascinated and intimately involved with each of the billions upon billions of details that add up to create a day. But to those who didn’t know him well, it just made him look like a dimwit.

  In April of ‘72, staring down the barrel of graduation and, beyond that, the frightening prospect of holding a real job, Okun began having second thoughts about the way he’d spent his years at Caltech. Earlier that semester, recruiting officers from major corporations like Lockheed, Hughes, and Rocketdyne had come to the campus and hired a bunch of numbskulls just because they had good grades. Okun had earned mainly As or Fs, leaving him with a dismal 2.1 grade point average. After a stellar performance in high School, where he’d won several awards and citations, crowned by the achievement of being named the winner of the nationwide Westinghouse Science Talent Search, he’d squandered his time in college. It’s not that he’d stopped learning. His mind was still an unquenchable sponge thirsting for knowledge and all of that, but he’d spent way too much time applying his prodigious skills to a series of oddball projects that the school’s administration had classified as pranks.

  One such stunt, which Okun thought he should get course credits for, happened during Caltech’s annual “Hawaii Week.” After gaining unauthorized, after-hours access to the chancellor’s office, he and his friends—who called themselves “the Mothers” in honor of Frank Zappa’
s band—carried in a few dozen sandbags, some surplus tubing, and a giant polyvinyl tarp. They set to work constructing a small heated swimming pool right under the noses of the school’s founding fathers, whose stern portraits hung on the walls of the office between its floor-to-ceiling bookcases. By the time the campus police arrived in the wee hours of the morning, the stuffy office had been transformed into a tropical paradise. Dozens of undergrads were skinny-dipping in the pool or lounging on the leather sofas sipping Mai Tais and listening to ukulele music. After a stern lecture from the chancellor, the incident was forgotten.

  But the incident that was to shape the life and career of this young Einstein-with-a-mood-ring was to involve a flying saucer, and it would take place in broad daylight.

  One afternoon, as students and faculty began filling Caltech’s central plaza to enjoy the sun during their lunch hour, Okun and the Mothers were holding a secret meeting in the stairwell of an adjacent building that bordered the plaza. After a final check to make sure the plan was ready, they broke off in separate directions to launch the attack. Okun and a couple of other Mothers climbed the stairwell with a box of radio equipment and began setting up their command post on the roof. Peeking out between the balustrades, they could see the unsuspecting crowd below without being seen themselves.

  A few moments later, precisely on schedule, a Mother named Chris Winter sauntered into the plaza carrying a nine-foot ladder under one arm and a large cardboard box in the other. Something about the way he walked through the quad announced the fact that something mischievous was afoot. Winter set up the ladder, climbed to the top, opened the box, and removed a perfect balsa-wood replica of a flying saucer. He lifted the twenty-two-ounce vehicle over his head until he could feel it react to the invisible field of energy shooting through the air. Slowly he took his hands away, and a roar of approval erupted from the crowd. He quickly grabbed the ladder and disappeared, leaving the little saucer hovering in midair.