Independence Day: Silent Zone (3 page)

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
agitated 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."

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.

From his hiding
place, Okun looked down on his audience and nodded in satisfaction. He
tested
the joystick on his remote control, and found it worked tolerably well.
The
radio waves sent the small ship wobbling first this way, then that.
Inside the
saucer, a supercharged, plate-sized magnet reacted to his command,
causing the
saucer to bob and skitter over a strong field of electromagnetic energy
being
pumped into the quad by a trio of cleverly disguised wave-particle
generators
the Mothers had liberated from the applied sciences building.
Undergrads rushed
up to get a closer look at this strange spectacle, laughing,
catcalling, and
looking everywhere to see who was making it fly. But the fun really
started
when Okun switched on his microphone and began talking to the crowd via
the
transistor radio speaker he'd built into the saucer.

"Greetings,
Earthlings. My name is Flart. We are from the planet Crapulong. We come
in
peace. But we demand your cafeteria stop serving those cruddy fish
sticks on
Friday. This is a crime against the universe. We also demand that the
one you
call Professor Euben get a new toupee." It wasn't high-caliber comedy,
but
it put the crowd in stitches. The voice coming from the teetering
saucer was
distorted and full of static owing to the magnetic energy in the air,
which only
made Okun sound more "like an alien."

The
charge
in the magnet should have lasted a full hour, but the flight was cut
short when
Flart made the mistake of flirting with the wrong earth girl, telling
her that
he, master of the universe, found her extremely desirable and would she
consider spending an intimate evening with a being one-tenth her size?
The
crowd and the girl found all this hysterically funny, but after a while
her
boyfriend had had enough. He shouted to the unseen operator of the
remote
control vehicle to knock it off.