Alien Secrets. Ian Douglas

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СКАЧАТЬ Your full cooperation in this debriefing is very much appreciated. Okay?”

      “Sir.”

      He reached forward and picked up the minirecorder. “Now tell me about the mission. From the beginning, please.”

      Hunter compressed his lips, then leaned forward and gave a small shrug. “Yes, sir.”

      And he began talking, starting with the squad being told of the op, flown from SEAL Team One headquarters at the Amphibious Warfare HQ on Coronado, in San Diego, to the Navy base at Yokosuka; he made a point of pronouncing the city’s name right.

      He continued with their nighttime insertion by parachute off of a specially rigged MH-60 Blackhawk, their landing, their brutal overland trek, and their positioning above the Mantap Mountain base.

      He talked about what they’d seen: their survey of the base, the dead vegetation, the NK guards and slave laborers, the slight seismic quakes, the high background radioactivity.

      “We were about to pack it in, get out of Dodge,” Hunter continued, “when EN1 Taylor said—”

      Walters switched off the recorder. “We don’t need to talk about what happened next.”

      “Sir?”

      “The first man I interviewed, Master Chief … ah …” He consulted his clipboard. “Minkowski. He told me all about it. That portion of the record has been erased. And you, Commander, will erase everything that you think you saw in there from your mind. Do you understand?”

      Hunter felt a sharp chill at that. Walters was acting more and more like the Men in Black, or what Hunter believed those mythical personages were supposed to be like, by the moment.

      “I said, do you understand?”

      “Or what?”

      Walters blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

      “Or what? What happens if I don’t forget?” Or if I can’t forget …

      “Mr. Hunter, may I remind you that when you were inducted into the SEALs, you signed nondisclosure papers and took an oath of secrecy. If you were to divulge any information which has been determined to be classified as confidential or above, you would be subject to the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, specifically Articles 92, 104, 106a, and 134 …”

      Hunter suppressed a chuckle. The UCMJ laid out what offenses were subject to court-martial; 92 was about failure to obey a lawful order, 106a had to do with espionage, 104 was aiding the enemy, and 134 was the military’s catchall: “conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline.” How the hell was his story of a UFO violating any of those articles?

      Well, he’d been ordered not to talk about things declared secret, yeah. They could get him on Article 92. And 134 was always there to catch anything not listed in the rest of the UCMJ.

      “However,” Walters said, after running through those articles as well as several points from the Military Rules of Procedure and the Classified Information Procedures Act, “in all probability the case would not even come to trial. If it did, you would get a dishonorable discharge and at least twenty years in Portsmouth. If you were lucky. But people have also been known to … disappear.”

      Hunter’s eyebrows jumped up on his forehead. “You’re threatening to kill me?”

      “Let’s just say, Commander, that we know where you live, where your family lives, and leave it at that. If you say anything about what you think you saw, we will come down on you like one hundred tons of concrete blocks, and I doubt very much if anyone will hear anything you might wish to say. Some … gentlemen from DC will be along to talk to you about this, but you will discuss it with no one else. Do we understand one another?”

      Hunter didn’t reply at first. He was still digesting Walters’s threat …

      … and what that meant for the whole idea of government UFO conspiracies and cover-ups.

      My God, he thought. It’s real. All of it.

      And I saw a man, a human, on board that craft … and it waved at me.

      “I said, Commander, do we understand one another?”

      It was all real. The UFO. The conspiracies.

      The threats.

      “Sir. Yes, sir,” Hunter replied.

      There was no option but to play along.

       CHAPTER TWO

      I can assure you the flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on Earth.

      PRESIDENT HARRY S. TRUMAN, 1950

       22 September 1947

       HE RATTLED THE papers in his hand. “This is horseshit, Roscoe!”

       “Maybe so, Mr. President,” Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter replied. “But it’s damned critical horseshit. We need to know what’s happening here.”

       “Yes, but … flying saucers? Little green men from Mars?” He dropped the report dismissively on his desk. “Show me! I’m from Missouri.”

       “So am I, Mr. President. And you’ve seen the reports out of Wright Field.”

       Roscoe Hillenkoetter had been the director of the Central Intelligence Group since May of this year … before that he’d been the director of Central Intelligence, as well. And as of four days ago, with the National Security Act and the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency, he was the director of that, too, the Central Intelligence Agency’s very first.

      For Hillenkoetter, the world had become a very different place in the last few months, much more uncertain, much stranger, much scarier ever since something had crashed in the desert outside of a town called Roswell, New Mexico. He’d only been head of the CIG for two months at that point.

       What a hell of a way to kick things off.

       But he was one of the few men who’d been in the know almost from the beginning—not to mention one of the men who’d been trying to shut down the rampant rumors and speculation coming out of New Mexico since early July.

      “Yes,” Truman said. “But I don’t like it. Who are these things, these creatures anyway? What are they doing in our airspace? Why the hell are they here? Is it an invasion?”

       “Mr. President, I just wish to hell I knew.”

       The wreckage from СКАЧАТЬ