Operator B Read online

  “Great,” Wentz said. “Another Tekna/Byman Op. Let me guess—Major Jones, right?”

  The two men shook hands. “Jones is as good a name as any, General Wentz,” the Major replied. “I’m honored to meet you, and I welcome you to Area S-4. If you’ll follow me please, sir.”

  They began to cross the empty warehouse, their footsteps all clattering. But as Wentz squinted, he noted that the underground warehouse wasn’t as empty as he’d thought. Along the far walls, hidden in shadow, stood armed black-garbed sentries every ten feet. Moments later, then, he noticed machine-gun emplacements built into the walls high above them. The barely visible gun barrels followed them as they proceeded.

  That’s some Welcome Wagon, Wentz thought. “Area S-4. And all this time I thought 51 in Tonopah was the blackest test site in the world.”

  “There’s one blacker, General, and you’re in it,” Major “Jones” said. “I take it you’ve spent a lot of time at Area 51?”

  “I practically lived there off and on for ten years. That damn sand-pit cost me my marriage.”

  Jones glanced to Ashton, then nodded.

  “General, you’re familiar with the cult UFO hype surrounding Area 51?” Ashton asked him.

  Wentz smiled, bemused. “Sure. I read about it every time I’m in line at the grocery store. Dead alien bodies on ice. Crashed spaceships in secret hangars. The local residents have some sort of a club out there; they think the 0315 Black Goose flights are UFOs that we’ve captured.”

  “But what is your conclusion, General?” Jones queried.

  What else could Wentz do but frown? “I’ve walked every square foot of every warehouse, hangar, and building at Area 51, and I’ve never seen any spaceships or dead aliens. Now would you please cut the jive and—”

  Jones stopped, handing Wentz a metal clipboard. “I’m sure you’re more than familiar with the National Classified Secrets Act, sir.”

  “The Federal Secrecy Oath is like death and taxes.” Wentz didn’t need to read it; he just signed it and passed it back to Jones. “I’ll bet I’ve signed more of these than you’ve signed credit card receipts.”

  They walked a ways further, then came to a halt before a huge steel bulkhead painted white. Blue letters read:

  DEADLY FORCE PERIMETER

  UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL

  WILL BE KILLED

  That’s putting it bluntly, Wentz thought.

  Jones and Ashton exchanged odd glances, like an inside joke.

  Wentz shot them both a hard look. “Wait a minute. Just wait. You’re not gonna tell me that you’ve got dead aliens in there.”

  “No, General,” Jones said.

  He inserted a tubular key into a small plate. The immense steel door began to rise almost soundlessly.

  Ashton tapped Wentz on the shoulder.

  “We keep the dead aliens in Ohio, sir,” she said.

  ««—»»

  Back in Maryland, General Gerald Cawthorne Rainier, as he was known to, strummed his fingers on the desk blotter. He chain-smoked, knowing it would kill him someday, and he often hoped that day might come sooner than later.

  Often, he felt he deserved it.

  The smoke swirled before the desk lamp, the only illumination in the office. Rainier preferred the dark. It seemed vastly easier—and much more appropriate—to sit in the dark when he contorted and manipulated the lives of good men.

  He stared down at the open folder, stared down at the personnel photo of Jack Wentz. Then he closed it and stared at the heading:

  OPERATOR “B”

  He pushed it aside as the gauzy air swirled before the lamp. How many dead faces did he see in the smoke, how many ruined souls?

  He forced himself not to consider the questions—he was good at that. His fingers continued to strum.

  Next he placed a single sheet of thin tractor-fed paper on the desk blotter.

  READ AND DESTROY

  TOP SECRET

  (SI/HS) BYMAN/BYMAN/FARGO

  AF-MILNET CIPHER:

  PAGE ONE OF ONE PAGE

  CRYPTMAIL CODE 49867-99-00

  -25 JULY 1999 -0713 HRS

  FROM: NSA/DIRECTOR OF ENCRYPTED OPERATIONS, FT. MEADE, MARYLAND

  DE: LEVEL THIRTEEN, AREA S-4, TECHNICAL TESTING FACILITY, STAPLES, NEVADA

  DE: NASA, ANALYSIS BRANCH, GREENBELT, MARYLAND

  TO: IGA (INTER-AGENCY GROUP ACTIVITY) THE PENTAGON

  SPECULATION AND ASSESSMENT: (CODENAME) QSR4

  ELINT CONTROL BRANCH, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA.

  PLEASE ADVISE.

  END AF-MILNET CIPHER

  READ AND DESTROY

  General Rainier leaned back in his chair and dropped the sheet into the automatic paper-pulverizer. The machine grated for a split second, then fell silent.

  Rainier lit another cigarette, watched the smoke unfurl before the light like so many homeless spirits.

  One day, he knew, his own face would be floating in the smoke.

  ««—»»

  As the heavy bulkhead door rose, so did a line of light across Wentz’s face. When the door had lifted completely, a loud CLACK! was heard as steel pins locked it open.

  No, he thought, peering ahead. No. No. No. No. No.

  He was staring at what was clearly an air vehicle of some kind, but one with no configuration he could imagine as being capable of flight.

  It was crescent-shaped, not circular or disk-like. Wentz imagined a giant heel. It was thirty feet long, twenty feet wide. Dull silver, like sandblasted aluminum.

  No. No. No…

  Armed guards walked a slow post around it, while still more guards looked down from gun emplacements high overhead in scaffolds. Floodlights beamed down, harsh as desert sun.

  Wentz felt his astonishment sift away, replaced by something like numb shock. All the blood seemed to have drained from his face.

  “No,” he croaked. “No way.”

  “You know what this is, don’t you, General Wentz?” Jones asked.

  Wentz stood dumb and mute, staring.

  “General?”

  A team of technicians approached the vehicle, brandishing aerosol paint tanks on their backs. They began to paint the object, tan on the topside, sky-blue on the underside.

  “The paint burns off almost immediately,” Ashton remarked, “but it serves as sufficient camouflage during take-offs. The KH and RENSKY satellites can’t see it. Then we wait until after dark to bring her back, with the same auto-landing hardware that was installed in the F-15.”

  “What’s it called?” Wentz managed to ask.

  “We call it the OEV,” Jones replied.

  Then Ashton defined, “Operational Extraterrestrial Vehicle.”

  My God, Wentz thought.

  Jones went on to explain. “Since 1944, the military has documented over sixty instances of vehicles of extraterrestrial origin crashing within the continental United States. Most of these vehicles were completely destroyed upon impact. Four were recovered reasonably intact but rendered inoperable via crash damage… General Wentz? Are you listening?”

  Wentz nodded slowly, his mouth open, his eyes flat.

  “One vehicle, however, was recovered completely intact, and that would be the vehicle you’re looking at. It was recovered outside of Edgewood, Maryland, in 1989. It is our estimation that the OEV didn’t crash but instead landed near the U.S. Army’s Edgewood Arsenal. The vehicle’s two occupants then disembarked upon what we believe was a field survey of several weapons depots on the Edgewood installation, whereupon they were shot and killed by post sentries. In other words, General, the OEV is—”

  “Undamaged,” Wentz dully replied. “Still flies.”

  “That’s correct, sir. It is fully operational as we speak… General? Are you listening?”

  Wentz mutely nodded again. He could not divert his stare.

  “Give him a break,” Ashton said to Jones. “It takes time.”

  Jones seemed exasperated. “I know this is difficult, Ge
neral, I know this comes as the biggest shock of your life. But you must listen carefully. Will Farrington was the OEV’s primary operator.”

  “Will Farrington is dead,” Wentz guttered.

  “Yes, sir. And that means that you are now the vehicle’s primary operator—”

  Snap out of it! Wentz shouted at himself. Jesus Christ, this is serious. You’re looking at a fucking UFO! Snap out of it! He broke from his paralyzed stance and quickly approached one of the guards.

  “You,” he ordered.

  The guard snapped to attention. “Yes, sir! Good afternoon, sir!”

  “Fuck that good afternoon shit. Slap me in the face. Hard.”

  The black-suited guard blinked. “Sir, I can’t strike an—”

  “Do it!”

  The guard lowered his M-17 4.4mm ACR rifle and—

  CRACK!

  —slapped Wentz across the face so hard he saw stars. “As you were,” he bumbled, shaking off the rest of his stupor. Wow, that hurt. He blinked out the bright spots, then paced briskly back to Jones and Ashton.

  “All right,” he said. “My shit’s square and I’m good to go. Now…show me the inside of this bird.”

  ««—»»

  They’d climbed aboard via a standard Air Force hull ladder. The OEV sported a circular hatch a yard wide, and next Wentz was stepping in, following Ashton down another ladder that clearly was not manufactured by the Air Force—the rungs and siderails of this ladder were thin as wire but supported Wentz’s weight without so much as bowing. Now Wentz stood at the bottom of a yard-wide tube, the same dull silver as the pre-painted hull. An airlock, he guessed. Red instructions had been stenciled:

  CAUTION: SET DECOMPRESS

  (30-SECONDS EGRESSION TIME)

  ACTIVATE DETENT, THEN DEBARK

  Wentz stepped through the airlock’s oval manway; Ashton stood waiting for him.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Wentz murmured when he glanced forward, starboard and port.

  The interior stood stark, smoothly featured. There were no signs of original flight controls in the “cockpit,” though several banks of indicators had been mounted by Air Force technicians, as were two high-tech flight chairs installed over two contoured humps that clearly were the pilot and co-pilot seats of the vehicle’s original operators. Wentz leaned over and peered through two prism-shaped windows beyond which he could see the maintenance scaffolds and the interior hangar. The small windows bore no indication of casements, seams, frames, or sealant—as if they’d somehow been grown into the front of the craft. Aside from the sparse man-made additions, everything inside was the same color as the outside, that dull, lusterless silver.

  “I don’t know if I believe this,” Wentz said.

  “Once you fly it, you will.”

  He examined the aft section. Some supply compartments had been installed, a SNAP-4 nuclear battery and water cell, and an EVA rack, but he didn’t notice anything that might resemble an engine compartment, nor fuel stores.

  “What’s the fuel source?” he asked the first logical question.

  “Unknown. Our physicists believe it has something to do with gravity amplification synchronized with or against magnetic-pulse waves. We’re confident that the manner in which the vehicle harnesses available energy is unlimited.”

  “Endless fuel source…”

  “More than likely, yes,” Ashton concurred. She pointed to a cylindrical protrudement on the floor, molded into the coaming. It was no bigger than a Coke can. “We believe that is the gravity amplifier, or what you would think of as an engine. More than likely, other navigational and guidance components exist in the hull. The crew were oxygen/nitrogen breathers just like us. It’s more than likely that the air supply is also unlimited.”

  “That’s a lot of ‘more than likely’s,’” Wentz posed. “I don’t want to be the driver at the stick when this thing runs out of gas.”

  “I’ve been in it during many of Farrington’s para-orbital flights. So if I’m not worried about it, a big tough senior test like you shouldn’t be either.”

  Wentz didn’t exactly appreciate Ashton’s rising snippiness, but he hardly cared.

  “Top speed?” he asked.

  “Unknown. Within the earth’s atmosphere we estimate a maximum forward velocity of about 50,000 miles per hour.”

  “Impossible. The inertia would turn the pilot into ground chuck.”

  Ashton’s slippy manner edged back. “General, this vehicle wasn’t built by Boeing or McDonnell-Douglas; it was built by alien engineers. You’re standing right in the middle of the proof. You have to modify your powers of belief. Once you get it in your head that this isn’t a balsa-wood plane with rubber-band propeller, we’ll all be better off.”

  “All right, Colonel Smart Ass,” Wentz shot back. “Then you tell me how an aircraft can travel 50,000 knots and not smash the pilot’s brain against the inside of his skull, pop his eyeballs, squirt his spinal fluid out his ears, and blow all of his internal organs out his mouth and his asshole?”

  Ashton shrugged as if these considerations meant nothing. “General, we’re obviously dealing with a technological base that’s probably a thousand years ahead of us. It’s only logical that the OEV is fitted with some sort of integrated velotic envelope that counters forward inertia with reverse inertia, precisely in time with acceleration. Who cares how it works? It just does.”

  “All right, fine. So how fast is it…out of the atmosphere?

  “Again, unknown. All we do know is that the propulsion system is capable of producing velocities that seem to be exponentially faster than—”

  “No, no! Don’t even say it!” Wentz nearly yelled.

  “—the speed of light. Farrington’s longest range flight was to Alpha Centauri. It took him four days instead of four years.”

  Shit, he thought. How could he object?

  “Let me put it this way, General. Everything you’ve ever believed before today…is wrong.”

  Frustrated, Wentz combed his gaze around the cockpit area. “Where are the controls? Where’s the stick?”

  “Keep cranking that rubber band, sir. There’s no stick. This is a para-orbital, hyper-velotic, self-contained intragalactic transport unit. It’s founded on technologies that are virtually unknown to the human race.”

  Wentz was getting pissed. “I don’t care if it’s a goddamn Good Humor truck! How do you fly it without controls?”

  Ashton’s tone moderated. “The controls are…integrated.”

  “Integrated with what?”

  “With the operator—the pilot…”

  Wentz squinted at her like a caveman glimpsing the ocean for the first time.

  Ashton touched the brushed-silver surface of an angled ledge in front of the port-side flight chair.

  A seamless panel hummed open.

  “What in the holy hell?” Wentz asked.

  The opened panel revealed two narrowly outlined indentations. Outlines like two bizarre hands possessing only two fingers and a thumb.

  Ashton audibly gulped. “Those are the controls,” she said.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Those things,” Wentz said, “those outlines. They’re handprints, aren’t they?”

  They’d left the hangar and now sat in a brightly lit in-briefing room, Jones behind a standard industrial-gray military desk, Wentz and Ashton in opposing armchairs.

  “We don’t call them handprints, General,” Major Jones explained. “We call them operator detents.”

  Ashton, then: “Synaptic activity in the brain is processed into and out of the detents by way of the median and ulnar nerves in the arms and the collateral nerve branches in the fingers.”

  “You’re talking about thought, aren’t you?” Wentz figured. “I put my hands against those handprints, think, and the thing flies?”

  Jones nodded yes. “That’s correct, General. It seems that thought conduction on the part of the operator is effectively converted to operational commands which are processed into the vehic
le’s guidance system.”

  “Fly-by-wire, only the pilot’s nerves are the wires…”

  “Precisely,” said Ashton.

  “And, hopefully, General, given what you’ve witnessed today, you’ll be canceling your retirement plans.”

  Wentz closed his eyes and heard a deafening silence. Behind the lids, he saw an insuperable void, a vastness like looking down from the highest places on the earth. He saw a pilot’s most fantastic dream come true, and then he saw the faces of Joyce and Pete…

  “I can’t,” he said. “I promised my wife and kid. I’ve been breaking promises to them for the last ten years, but I can’t break this one.”