Independence Day: Silent Zone Read Free Page A

sky over our atomic storage facility near Bangor,
Maine.
These are enhanced-composite radar images transferred to film to
improve their
quality. And here comes our visitor."
    From
the upper corner, an uneven blotch of white light appeared. The
pulsing,
indistinct shape began a slow and steady descent toward the bottom of
the
screen, its outline slowly coming into better focus. "In addition to
the
radar, we had several naked-eye witnesses on the ground who say they
got a good
look at it. But, as usual, their descriptions are all over the map.
Some of
them said the thing gave off a golden light, others called it an
orange-red
light, while another maintains it was bluish in color. The same with
engine
noise. Some people heard 'a high whine, like an electric motor' while
others
noted a 'complete absence of sound.' What we know for certain is that
this
thing hovered directly over our underground storage bunkers at an
altitude of
fifteen hundred feet for approximately two minutes, then—and here comes
the
reason for showing you the film."
    All
eyes were turned toward the screen. The UFO suddenly darted straight
up, rising
another thousand feet above the earth before commencing a series of
startling
zigzags across the night sky. Whatever it was, it moved with both
incredible
speed and astonishing agility as it executed a series of right-angle
and
hairpin turns without significant loss of velocity. Then, as
mysteriously as it
had appeared, it zipped out of view in one long streak. Spelman stopped
the
tape and turned to face the others.
    "Looks
like my wife has been giving driving lessons," an Air Force general
quipped, eliciting a polite chuckle from the others.
    Spelman
didn't change expressions. "No aircraft known to Defense Intelligence
has
performance capabilities equal to what we just witnessed. After review
of the
tape, DIA considers it likely that what you have seen is a
reconnaissance
mission. And where there's smoke, there's fire. This intelligence
gathering
could be preparatory to some sort of attack, or, in a worst-case
scenario, a
full-scale invasion."
    Spelman
paused to let that sink in. His audience was less amazed by the tape
they'd
seen than by Spelman's ability to make this speech as if it were the
first time
he'd ever made it. Once a year, he would call a meeting such as this
one to
present evidence to the members of Project Smudge. And each
time, he and Dr. Wells, his sole
ally on the committee, would argue that the nation was exposed to a
clear-and-present danger. They were the hard-liners who argued that the
world
was on the brink of imminent invasion by extraterrestrials. Behind
their backs,
they were known as the crazies, especially Dr. Wells, the only man
known to
have held a conversation with an intelligent life-form from another
world.
Eventually, Wells's desperate insistence on the need to adopt his
proposals led
to his banishment from Smudge. Isolated, Spelman was reluctant to call
another
meeting, but then had found a most unexpected ally, someone with a
daring plan
which might finally end the interagency bickering which had crippled
the
government's research into UFOs for more than a decade—Nimziki.
    When
it was apparent that Spelman was finished talking, Dr. Insolo of the
Science
and Technology Directorate was the first to raise a familiar objection,
"We've
been getting sightings like this for years; why is this one special?"
    To
Spelman, one of the true believers, the question seemed ridiculous,
almost
insulting. "First off, all of these sightings are
significant. What
makes this one especially threatening is that it didn't take place over
the
desert or the ocean. This vehicle buzzed one of our most sensitive and
potentially damaging installations. We don't want all that uranium
falling into
the wrong hands."
    Jenkins,
subchief of the CIA's Domestic Collections Division, did little to
disguise his
feeling that this meeting was a waste of time "Are you proposing that
the
committee adopt the Wells