Independence Day: Silent Zone Read Free

hallway leading to the inner
ring
of the Pentagon complex was
busier than usual. Office workers and uniformed officers had come in
early to
get the latest issue of the Washington Post and read
about the latest
development in the Watergate case, which felt, at least to those in the
District of Columbia's political circles, like the end of the world.
Slicing
through this early-morning mull and buzz, came a tall figure in a
conservatively cut suit half a size too small for his lanky frame.
Albert
Alexander Nimziki stopped briefly outside one of the Pentagon's many
coffee
shops and studied the headlines shouting hack at him from a newspaper
rack:
COX, SPECIAL COMMITTEE CONSIDER IMPEACHMENT. Of course, that morning's
news
came as no surprise to him. As deputy director of the Central
Intelligence
Agency, it was his job to know what was going to be in the newspapers
days,
weeks, and sometimes years before the papers themselves knew.
    Nimziki
was the youngest man ever to attain the post of deputy director, but he
had
gotten a jump on the competition, having been a professional spook
since he was
sixteen years old. Nimziki grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he
internalized some of his chilliness of public demeanor from his Amish
neighbors. When his agronomist father landed a job with the UN, he
moved the
family to New York City's Roosevelt Island, into a neighborhood crowded
not
only with UN diplomats but with the spies sent from around the world to
keep an
eye on them. Overlooking a busy, upscale intersection, the family's new
apartment afforded young Albert the perfect vantage point for watching
the
endless game of cat and mouse. For two years it had been a spectator
sport,
with him spying on the spies.
But one
day he boldly walked downstairs
and talked
to one
of them. Only a day later, he had a parabolic mike and
telephoto lens, using them to eavesdrop on conversations transpiring at
the
posh outdoor cafe across the street. From this early training, he'd
moved
on to Georgetown U., where he earned a double major in criminology and
international relations. Soon after joining the CIA, he proved himself
to be
not only a daring and talented field operative but also a highly
efficient
administrator, and it was this second skill which had fueled his steady
rise
through the agency's ranks. At only thirty-four years of age, he had
aspirations to rise higher still.
    He
found his elevator and rode it down one floor to the building's
basement. The
heavy doors opened after he inserted a security card into the lock,
depositing him
into a bare hallway guarded by a pair of
soldiers. After glancing at his ID plaque, they waved him through, and
he
stepped into the Tank, the most secure conference area in the entire
Pentagon
complex.
    Inside,
sitting around a long walnut conference table, were a dozen men, all of
them
white, all of them older than Nimziki. They were elite figures from the
U.S.
military and intelligence communities, men who had been entrusted,
however
reluctantly, with "the nation's dirtiest little secret."
Collectively, they were known as Project Smudge.
    After
a brief round of perfunctory greetings, Nimziki sat down, and Bud
Spelman,
assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency, walked to the podium at
the front
of the room. Serious as a bulldog, the barrel-chested Colonel Spelman
had once
been an Army drill instructor, and it showed in the blunt way he
handled the
meeting.
    "Gentlemen.
The purpose of this meeting is to update you on a series of possibly
threatening UFO occurrences and, if warranted, to adopt an action plan.
Now I
trust everyone has had a chance to review the status report I sent
around, so
you basically know the situation, but I do want to show you a piece of
radar
tape shot last month by Northern Tracking Command." After pulling down
a
retractable white screen and dimming the lights, he moved to a
projector set up
at the back of the room. As the film began, the screen went black.
"You're
looking at the night