Overlord (8 page)

The president saw the concerned look briefly cross his friend’s face. “What is it?”

“In the briefings with Matchstick and Gus, they both get extremely quiet when we talk about the Grays’ home world. It seems something has been concerning the little green guy for a few years, but we at the Group cannot explain it, nor will he discuss it.”

The president held Niles in his sight and then lowered his head in near despair.

“God, I pray he’s not hiding anything from us.”

EVENT GROUP COMPLEX

NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA

At 1.7 miles beneath Nellis Air Force Base, the Event Group complex was at its usual brisk pace. Thirteen field teams were crawling through deserts, mountains, and oceans searching for a historical record of downed alien aircraft in ancient times. The push to find an intact alien power plant had stripped the Event Group of most of their divisions and military security personnel, so much so that gate number two inside the Gold City Pawn Shop had been closed due to the lack of viable military personnel to secure the Las Vegas entrance. And with so many scientists and historians in the field the complex was near empty.

The man in charge of complex security on a temporary basis was First Lieutenant Will Mendenhall. Naval Commander Jason Ryan officially outranked the lieutenant but the naval aviator stepped aside due to Will’s advanced training in black operations. Both men were standing inside the computer center with Pete Golding, the man responsible for the supercomputer Europa. They stood in front of Pete’s personal Europa terminal, and it was Golding who gestured angrily at the six-foot monitor.

“Look, there it is again. What in the hell are he and Gus Tilly working on that’s using so much computer time? I have people searching for ancient saucer wreckage and sometimes they can’t even log in as Matchstick has usurped the Europa system. Niles and I gave him complete access to the computers but even that wasn’t enough. Our green friend is locking out my own teams.”

“Have you called out to Arizona to ask Matchstick why he needs so much computer time?” Will looked over at a bored Jason Ryan, who just shrugged his shoulders.

“Gus won’t say. He says that Matchstick isn’t communicating with him about this suddenly urgent project he’s working on outside of the saucer power plant search. Gus also says Matchstick isn’t sleeping and barely eating, and Gus is afraid he’s going to get sick.”

“What does the director have to say about this?” Ryan offered. “I mean, the last I heard Matchstick has total control of Europa whenever he wants it, so why is this upsetting you to the point you’re whining like a schoolgirl?”

“The director doesn’t know,” Pete said as he turned off his monitor and the view of the computer center out in Arizona. They watched the small green alien known as Mahjtic as the monitor faded to nothing. The Group called him the Matchstick Man, as Gus Tilly had been calling him since the old prospector saved the life of the small being after it had crashed in the Arizona desert.

“Well, I would suggest bringing Virginia in on this and get a jump-start on getting some answers while Dr. Compton is in Washington,” Will said as he straightened and stretched his back. Pete nodded and started to reach for the phone on his desk, but Will and Jason stopped him by clearing their throats at the same moment.

Pete Golding finally thought he knew what the two military men wanted. He nodded his head and then released the phone. He turned and spoke softly into the extended microphone, and the large monitor above them came to life with a live picture of a giant ice cave. The video was stark as the lights of a surveillance camera glared off the crystalline blue ice.

“Europa managed to break into the British security cameras in the Antarctic. As you can see the ice has been excavated quite extensively in the area of the find. After the initial discovery of the wreckage and the finding of Captain Everett’s wristwatch with his and Colonel Collins’s DNA upon it, the site has yielded little else.”

Three months before they had been informed that a watch had been discovered inside the wreckage of an unknown type of aerial vehicle of Earth origin, no craft like it was now in existence. The plum in that little information was the fact that the British Antarctica expedition that discovered the wreckage found the artifacts under more than a mile of ice. And the kicker to that statement was the fact that the ice it was buried in was more than two hundred thousand years old. Thus they were now in the state they were in three weeks before with Captain Everett in retirement and Colonel Jack Collins suspended from all field operations as per presidential order.

“Are the British going to allow American examination of the craft?” Jason asked before Will could in their never-ending competition to be first in everything.

“Thus far they think the turning over of the watch was enough. Until they have thoroughly examined the ship, or whatever it is, they won’t budge. It seems the fight to get the most technology is ongoing. But the strange thing is, Niles, Matchstick, and even Colonel Collins know what the British are up to under the ice but they are keeping it close to the vest.”

“Does it have something to do with these strange names floating around security, Overlord and such?” Mendenhall asked.

“Details of that operation will get anyone fired around here for even mentioning it. So, your guess is as good as mine.”

“Dr. Golding,” Europa announced, “Chato’s Crawl has requested restricted satellite weather data from the NASA mainframe.”

“Damn,” Pete hissed as he shook his head. “Name of asset requesting data stream?” he asked.

“Identification code:
Magic
.”

“Matchstick again?” Jason asked as his smile grew. “The little fella is working overtime, I guess.”

“But on what?” Pete asked. “When he requests military data from anywhere he is usually forthcoming about what he’s looking for. But now I make requests for verification as to why he wants that data, and he clams up.”

Will Mendenhall looked at the clock readout in blue numbers that was projected onto the white plastic wall of the computer center.

“Well, get Dr. Pollock to sign off on Matchstick’s request, and I think it’s time we pay our friend in the desert a visit. Pete, please keep up on the Antarctic surveillance.” Mendenhall hesitated and then faced Pete again. “Without stepping on toes and mentioning this Operation Overlord, whatever it may be.”

“Will do. Also, when you get out to Chato’s Crawl, ask Matchstick what is so important about Charlie’s cryptozoology department. He’s been spending an inordinate amount of time running through Crypto’s files and Charlie Ellenshaw hasn’t figured out a pattern to Matchstick’s research yet. If he’s interested in Crypto, he should ask Charlie directly; he could be more of a help.”

“Okay.” Mendenhall turned to Jason. “Feel like flying out to Arizona?”

“Sure, beats sitting here listening to Pete,” Jason said as he slapped Golding on the back. “But as a field team we need two more security people, buddy, and guess what? We’re fresh out of live bodies. Everyone we have in security is either in the field chasing down leads to crashed saucers or on security duty here. As you know, even with gate two shut down we’re still shorthanded.”

“I’ve got that covered. Since we need Charlie on this trip he’ll be listed in the field report as added security.”

Jason smiled as he knew right where Will was heading. “Besides Charlie, who’s
they
in that equation?”

Will started to walk up the stairs that led to the theater-style seating above the main floor.

“The last I heard, Antarctica was still way down south. I think Chato’s Crawl is safe enough for our intrepid Colonel Collins to join us.”

Jason Ryan looked at Pete.

“After finding Captain Everett’s watch in two-hundred-thousand-year-old ice I don’t find very much safe about anything.”

“I hear that.”

*   *   *

The knock sounded loudly on his door. His eyes never left the screen full of information that scrolled across his face inside the darkness of his private quarters. The eyes scanned a document he had stared at for hours on end. It was an image of the only scrap of evidence in the murder of a thirty-one-year-old CIA agent. The internal memorandum was of U.S. government origin and was known to be used by three of the top agencies in the country—the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the CIA. The memo directed the young agent to a meeting she never returned from. The key to the document was the small dash-dot system in the left-hand corner. Pete and Europa finally deciphered the code and broke it down to indicate the memo originated at the desk of someone at the CIA.

The subject of the memo was the very man looking at the image supplied by Europa. It was a memo listing his name and day and dates of where he was at. It was a tracking report from a bug that had been planted covertly on his person, and the memo was an order to the contracted satellite company doing the tracking—Cassini Space-Based Systems—by the person or persons responsible for the young agent’s and another female’s death. The eyes scanned the document one last time and then Jack Collins shut off the monitor and turned his unshaven face toward the steel door of his quarters—or as he had come to think of it, his prison.

“Come,” he said as he stood. He paced to the bathroom and splashed water on his face just as the door opened. Will Mendenhall stuck his head inside.

“Feel like getting the hell out of here for a while, Colonel?” Will asked as his eyes studied the usually immaculate quarters. His eyes fell on the empty Jack Daniels bottle and several glasses that lined his desk. The room was a mess and so unlike Collins that Will shook his head.

Jack came out of the bathroom drying his hands on a towel. When he was finished he allowed it to slip through his fingers and onto the carpeted floor.

“What is it, you busting me out?” Jack started to slip into an olive-drab-colored T-shirt over his bare chest.

“Something like that. We’re shorthanded on a routine detail and it should afford you to get a little air since it’s nowhere near the South Pole.”

Collins looked at Will for the longest time.

“Still nothing on the origins of Mr. Everett’s watch?”

Mendenhall’s silence was enough of an answer. Jack angrily slipped into a wrinkled white dress shirt and started buttoning it. As long as he was restricted to base because of this archeological find in Antarctica he could not get out of the complex to find the killer of the young CIA agent—his sister, Lynn Simpson Collins. He knew the watch had to have been discovered in the efforts to free the largest part of Operation Overlord from the ice, a fact he couldn’t share with Will or anyone else who wasn’t in on the planned response to a possible Gray invasion.

“Figure we could go out and see our little friend in the desert. It seems he’s up to deviltry and it’s freaking Doc Golding out.”

“What doesn’t freak Pete out?” Jack said, feeling better just by talking about normal things again. “Why not,” he finally said. “And by the way, you know that anything our green friend wants, he gets, so Pete should just calm down.”

Will held the door open for the colonel in silence.

“What’s the latest on McIntire?” Jack asked as he gathered his things.

“She’s still in Uzbekistan, checking on one of the target areas for the search.”

“The supposed Soviet saucer encounter in 1972?” Jack retrieved his sunglasses from the desk and made his way to the door.

“Yeah, looks like another dead end as no one wants to talk to our team or the Russians. Both we and the Ruskies aren’t real popular over there. She should be back in a few days. I think Dr. Compton has another search he wants her on.”

“Matchstick has no theories on Everett’s watch and the Antarctica thing?” Jack knew the link between Operation Overlord and the captain’s watch had to be connected, but without telling the top-most secret in the world to Pete and the others they were at a dead end.

“When asked, green boy just looks confused and then says there is no such science as time displacement, no matter what Albert Einstein says, and I guess he would know.”

“Why? Most of the scientists around here believe Einstein was one of them anyway,” Jack said, referring to Albert’s proclivity for being right about everything.

For Will it was good to see the colonel smile, even if it was only a moment of normalcy.

Jack turned to close his door and then hesitated.

“How is Captain Everett?”

“No word. It seems the captain may have found a home in Romania.”

Jack nodded and felt better that his friend was at least safe inside Romania.

“Well, shall we go hassle the Matchstick Man?” Collins asked as he gestured for Will to lead the way.

On the way down the corridor Will whistled the old tune the colonel had made him listen to six years before—the 1967 hit by the British rock band Status Quo: “Pictures of Matchstick Men.” It was a tune that was hauntingly similar in description to their little green alien friend—Mahjtic.

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Niles waited on the president. The way his friend fidgeted about on the facing couch resembled a man trying to find a way to tell his buddy he had a terminal illness. Then the president stood and moved to his desk and used a small key to open one of the many drawers. He removed his own special file and went to the coffee table fronting the two couches, sat on the edge, and then slapped Niles on the knee with it.

“What is this?” Niles asked, refusing to touch it.

“Orders.”

Compton saw the president’s eyes as they locked on his own. Then his eyes moved to the emblem on the manila file as he saw it was from the Department of the Navy, and a cold chill ran through his body. Finally Niles reached out and accepted the folder.

“Before you open that I have this little problem to deal with and I want to do it in front of you so you can personally pass on what it was you witnessed.” The president reached into his suit jacket and brought out a large white envelope and opened it. Without comment the president tore the envelope and whatever was inside of it in two, then tossed the destroyed letter onto the tabletop and faced Compton once more.