The money for Nguyen and Kingsley had to be retrieved from the paymaster at the Air Force Base, and I knew I was the only one who could present himself in person to claim it. The system, all military and civil governmental systems, were peculiarly protective of cash and its distribution. Quincy would be at my office in minutes, and I needed a little time to explain to that strangely unintroduced man that he was working for me, not the Agency or anyone or anything else. He was not going to get a Christmas tree with my wife and me, although I believed that the mention of that was only humorously offered. If we were going to have satellite offices or ‘collection points’, then he could certainly have that job. Christmas was beckoning, and I’d put off preparing for it too long. I had a wife and I had children who were the apple of my eye, not the Agency. In a way, the CIA was a lot like the Marine Corps and their sometimes stated belief that if the corps wanted you to have a wife, they’d have issued you one. I didn’t buy that.
I went out to inform Nguyen and Kingsley of the plan and also to prepare them for the arrival of Quincy, who seemed a bit arrogant, overbearing, and intrusive. His visit to my home had been uncalled for, but I also understood the subtle pressure the Agency was putting on me. I had become the UFO guy because of the artifact. I’d also become the nuclear guy because of the successful bomb mission. The only way I knew it to be a success, however, was that Waikiki was still there. After going to meet with Nguyen and Kingsley, who were both overjoyed that their families would have Christmas money and their time at all, I went back inside and called my wife.
One half hour, or less, delay and I’d be there to pick her and the kids up. Walt, the man who’d shown up only days after we’d moved into the place on Magnolia, had a spread behind Sandia Mountain.
“We’ll see,” was Mary’s laconic reply. She stayed on the line but said nothing, as she knew that I didn’t much appreciate Herbert’s habit of hanging up when he was done without even saying goodbye. That I was becoming like Tony in doing that to others didn’t make me feel good about myself, but I knew why he did it. It wasn’t for dramatic presentation or domination. It was because he was pushed to the edge with three or more vital personages on hold, waiting for him to come back to them. Regular people, even my wife who lived with a personage who was anything but regular, didn’t sometimes get it that there were vital things that they had to take precedence over everything else. Sometimes, other sources or calls had to be ignored to do that, although that could be a veritable and even real nightmare.
I left with Nguyen and Kingsley, deciding not to wait for Quincy. He was going to work for me. He could wait. Not the other way around. Kingsley drove the Rover simply because it was better if he did. My cutting of corners was sometimes unsafe, I knew, particularly when driving. It was fun and exhilarating, but people could be hurt or die. When I was alone, it was different.
The money was waiting, the warrant officer protecting the canvas bag, not concerned but careful, as the distribution had to be outside the norm for his distribution. He looked at me before handing over the bag.
“So, you’re him, that guy,” he said, his tone not complimentary.
“Actually, warrant officer, it is me, and I’m a full-blown commissioned officer and your superior in rank and position, so you want to rephrase that?
“Ah, I don’t know, sir,” the warrant said. I looked at his name tag. His last name was Ohio, which seemed strange.
“Thanks, Warrant Officer Ohio. I won’t forget your kindness,” I said, taking the bag, having signed for nothing and produced no identification at all.
I delivered the bag to Nguyen and Kingsley, not bothering to open or count it. That the money would not be the right amount, damaged, or anything else was so unlikely as to allow me not to waste my time counting or confirming.
I raced home in the Rover, leaving Nguyen and Kingsley to find their way to the airport and get on civilian air flights to get home. We had not had to say any departing words. Our looks at one another were all the communication we needed.
There was no Christmas tree farm for us, and I’d long ago accepted the evident fact that Christmas trees sold at lots and ‘farms’ were old or in bad health. Walt was a class act, and I knew it. We drove to his place and went in to see him. Walt, with his wife, took us out to the back lot and showed us the tree he’d picked out.
“You picked out a tree for us?” I asked, shocked more than lightly surprised.
“I wouldn’t think of it,” he replied with a laugh. “I know you, and I understand that you’re not regular people. I just cut and set aside a tree I can sell in an instant if you don’t want it.” He moved to where the tree stood, stacked against a wooden wall of an old shed. I looked at the tree. It was the tree, of course. How could the man know the size and everything else necessary to fit the tree into our lives?
Somehow, he’d measured the main living room of the house and come back with a number just under twelve feet, but I only learned that after we arrived out at his place to pick up a tree, which we did, but he wouldn’t let us strap to the top of the Rover.
“You’ll ruin the shape and break branches,” he said. “That’s a Noble Pine, and that means it’s special and expensive. I’ll deliver it for free just to preserve what it is.”
“How much is the tree?” Mary wanted to know.
The tree would come to our home in hours as I drove Mary and the kids back to the house. We’d spent almost no time at all in the selection process, so I headed down to the office, hoping to encounter Herbert, the new Quincy player, and, of course, Marcinko. When I arrived, I went into the office only to discover that the three men were not there, Pat informing me that they’d gone to the other side of the building to visit Allen Weh. Instead of rushing over, I went into my office and shut the door. I didn’t want to deal with any of them, except for meeting Quincy to take his measure and see if it would be possible to work with him and trust him, as well as finding out the truth of his affiliation and origin. I sat in my comfortable office chair and lay my head back against the cushion. I was beaten to death. I closed my eyes. When the men were done with Weh, I knew they’d be back over to see me. There was no missing the fact that my white Rover was in the lot outside. Marcinko’s car was nearby, along with a White Land Cruiser likely belonging to Quincy. I nodded off and fell straight into a dream. I was back inside the monster cargo plane by myself.
It was like I was two beings, except both the same guy, me looking down on me as the other me paced up and down the cargo bay, musing to himself about the governmental expenses made available for agents like me. There seemed to be no connection at all between the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars for jet fuel, supplying the energy forces necessary to lift the giant aircraft he was aboard into the air. There was no mission he knew of. Where was the money coming from to pay for the transport of one seemingly unimportant man, being flown from one U.S. airport to another? A C-5A Galaxy aircraft was one and a half times the size of a 747. Mack had told him that the things consumed about four thousand dollars’ worth of gas an hour. His last fill-up of the Range Rover was made with a purchase of .99 cents a gallon of gasoline. Aboard, as the only passenger or ‘freight,’ was him. First-class airfare cost was a joke when being entwined inside the governmental travel complex. He, the freight, or ‘it’ the freight hauler, flew on into the invisible unknown, inside an airplane with the capacity to move and lift half a million pounds, was transporting only 158 pounds of living human material. Him.
If I could have shouted out into either the cavernous space around me or into the air outside my enclosed aluminum chamber, it would have been, “What in hell are you people doing? I’m nobody going nowhere.” Maybe someone else might have felt like a chessboard, being moved about without having much of a clue as to what piece I was or my importance in a game I didn’t understand. There was no one to shout out to. My earphones pleasantly buzzed. No MUZAC or any of that. Nobody to communicate with. I was trapped in a giant moving coffin of my design, but not my own making.
What was he becoming, despite what he was supposed to become? He was deliberately untrained and therefore a truly ‘clean slate’ for whoever wanted him to do. He knew that he didn’t know enough to say no to his mostly unknown and unmet judges and leaders
I came awake, the strange dream abruptly cut off when the office door opened. I blinked my eyes and shook my head slightly, trying to come back to a reality that I knew I needed a break from.
A strange man stood in the doorway, shorter than I imagined, as I knew he had to be Quincy. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He wore an expensive suit and looked ten times more like an insurance agent than I did. I stood up as he crossed to stand in front of my desk. We shook hands. I smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back, disengaging from our clasp and taking a seat in one of the straight-backed chairs.
“I’m Quincy,” he said, his nasal tone vaguely disturbing as he reminded me totally of Peter Lorrie who always entertained me in playing an assortment of horror movie roles. I didn’t like it. I also didn’t want the feeling as I had no evidence at all to allow me to honestly make such a serious judgment.
“I have questions,” I began, but he held up his right hand. I slid back into my chair, realizing that there was little likelihood I would ever be able to assume command and control of such a strange character, much less want to make the attempt.
“Mr. Herbert indicated that you and I must make a short drive to a desert location outside of town to recover the first bit of material that should become our responsibility in this new endeavor. After that, we can proceed to find your wife a Christmas tree. We’ll take my Toyota and we’ll be able to talk along the way as it’s about a half an hour drive to the northwest of Albuquerque’s city limits.”
“Rough country out there,” I said, as we both rose to our feet. I had the time but not much inclination to begin our relationship or the new addition of offices for UFO research and collections in such a way.
The drive was as he’d described. Our talking was limited as he was about the most evasive man I’d ever encountered. He was Agency but he wasn’t. He was educated, but he wasn’t. He lived nearby, but not so much. Once outside the city limits, he turned the Cruiser off the freeway, drove through a nearly invisible break in the freeway fence, and we began a very rough ride into and through the desert bracken that covered the earth around us. Other than understanding our general directio,n I quickly became lost. The mountains were hidden behind closer hills and arroyo embankments. After a half hour of discomfort and wanting to tell the man that we had a perfectly good real off-road vehicle at our disposal I decided I could only wait to see what the man wanted me to see.
We came upon a clearing where Quincy stopped the vehicle. I stepped out immediately to recover myself and consider what we might be doing out in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing in the clearing.
“Over there, behind that set of pinon tree bushes,” Quincy said, pointing with his right index finger toward a wooded clump about thirty yards across the clearing.
I shrugged and began to make my way over to where he’d pointed. When I got to the clump, I leaned down to see what I could find, grabbing the thickest of the branches protruding outward and curving every which way. The thickish branch broke explosively in my hand as, at the same time, I heard the Cruiser drive away. I went to my knees and then fell prone on the ground, no matter how rough it was. My hand hurt, although it didn’t seem too damaged as I lay there no longer thinking about the Land Cruiser or Quincy. The branch had broken because it had been struck by something very powerful, and that could only mean a bullet. My leaning down to examine the spot had saved my life.
I moved across the ground, the desert floor not like something from the movies, not smooth deep sand, hot on the surface but cool just underneath. I moved over roughage, small rocks, agonizingly painful plant life of unknown origin or result. I’d been targeted. I knew that because I was still alive enough to know such a thing and understand that the bullets fired had been fired at me, not as any warning but as terminal messengers.
The bullet’s impact was again silent, or almost silent, the rifle firing too far away for the sound of its explosive release at the muzzle, or even the supersonic shock wave of the bullet’s initial travel, impacting enough on my eardrums to create sound. The impact of the rounds, however, was there. A cracking snap as the bullets gave all their energy up to the desert floor debris. No dust or dirt was flying from the impacts, not like the ‘beaten zone’ created by fully automatic fire discharged from a great distance. This was studied professional stuff but lacking the necessary meteorological data to allow for truly long-distance sniping.’
My short jerky moves, this way and that, were fully observable from a long distance, I knew. The problem the shooter had, other than the hugely high arc of his bullets travelling such a long distance, was not just windage. It was time. Since I couldn’t hear the gun’s discharge, I knew it had to be located almost a mile, maybe a bit less, away. The bullet, even if driven from the barrel of a Weatherby thirty caliber loaded into a .375 magnum cartridge for extreme velocity, the most powerful long-range rifle round ever made, had to cover its distance to where I was in about two seconds. Not long but long enough for me to jerk and move again. I had little doubt that the shooter was comfortable, probably shooting from a solid sand-bagged prone position with plenty of cooling water spray, liquids, and sunshade. The bullets were too regular and adjusted to be anything but those fired from a practiced professional’s weapon.
I moved again. A bullet came into impact only inches away. I kept going. I was as one with the earth, my chest buried as deep into the awful desert floor as I could make it. Without denying me the ability to keep going. Range was my friend. I needed more distance. The further I moved away from the weapon’s discharge, the less accurate the impact of its rounds. The shooter was a sniper. Not a hunter. Not a warrior of the contact kind. He or she would not be moving to catch up with me. That isn’t what snipers did or do, that I knew of. They simply adjusted for increased range, and when adjusting for that became beyond the weapon’s ability to reach out, they packed up and went home to snipe another day. There was no Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or even George Clooney creatures of Hollywood mythos types in the real world…who pursued the target endlessly until the mission was accomplished.
I did not know the enemy. Did the enemy know me? I didn’t have that data either. Grit, painful pointy sand, mulched plant matter, and the baking sun were my desert friends. He or she had water. I had none but water for comfort wasn’t in my game plan. Moving again, I noted the loss if impact sounds from dishcharged rifle fire from the incredible distance. That I’d survived the sniper’s first shot was a wonderful bit of good fortune, and now I’d possibly been able to extend myself outside of the sniper’s comfort zone.
I stopped moving entirely. I became an unwatered desert shrub as I lay in thanksgiving. The sniper had nothing to shoot at because I’d disappeared from his scope and reach in life. I simply lay where I was, one with the cool sandy mass of desert surface, like the mass of the jungle floor in the A Shau Valley. Breath. Breathe again. Still breathing. And now think, finally, thinking.
Somewhere, maybe a mile or more in the distance behind me, there was someone who was assigned a role to take me out. That man, whom I could only presume to be a man, was packing it in to call it a day, more than likely. He’d done his best. It had only been days since I’d been the sniper in his position, a position even worse than his position on the island of Mallorca, and here I was now the subject or target of a long-distance terminal action, a whole lot closer to where I lived and my family lived. With my face in the grit, I breathed the dust in and out, pressing my lungs to do some sort of job in keeping me alive by giving me enough poisonous, rotten air, in and out, to survive.
The sniper appeared done, but I was not afraid, and I was not done. Terror had once again overcome me at the instant of surviving the first shot. But, just as in the valley, time had come to allow the forging of a living callous, hard enough and thick enough to absorb the blows, the hits, the wounds, and then turn. I pulled and then turned. I was not going back. There was no back. There was only my future and the future of my family in front of me. I dug deep inside myself as I worked to recover. Nguyen. Kingsley. Gunny. Zippo. Stevens. The living and dead, all alive inside me.
I stayed low, making no attempt to be seen or noticed, even in the huge expanse of the New Mexico desert south and west of Albuquerque, but I was gently able to ever so slowly ease my way toward the only sign of civilization I could see. A series of telephone poles stretched across my horizon. The only horizon I could see since the sun was too bright to look directly at. I crab crawled toward the road where the poles had to be erected next to. I was perpendicular to the road. Upon reaching the road, I would have to pick a direction. The greatest news was that the New Mexico desert was in winter. It wasn’t burning hot, and yet no snow had fallen, or ice formed, to be impediments to my progress toward survival.
My thoughts went to Quincy and what part he had in what was happening, and what about Herbert. Doctor Bethe was out. The scientist was simply not built to be a player, but somebody was, and why was I targeted at all? What was the stressor that was leading to such a violent, dangerous result? Why had the shooter not fired one shot and then left? A pro would rarely fire a series of shots because of what might be coming for him when whatever results of his attempt would almost certainly bring a terminal reaction.
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