Independence Day: Silent Zone by Stephen Molstad Page A

began with a series of new test questions.
The
researchers would ask her to remote-visualize locations they knew she
had never
visited, such as the Statue of Liberty, then ask her to count the
windows in
the observation deck. On the morning of her seventh day in Arlington,
when
asked about the leaning tower of Pisa, she answered that it was three
stories
tall. When asked what color socks the interviewer was wearing, she
tried to
sneak a look under the table. The experiment with the Zener cards was
repeated.
Her score was five out of twenty-five, the statistical average.
Although she
protested, it appeared that she had lost her powers. This seemed to be
confirmed when Agent Kepnik came into the room holding a clear plastic
evidence
bag. A search of the young lady's morning stool had turned up a small
metallic
object.
    Confronted with this
evidence, Bridget told the truth. Her powers had deserted her. The BB,
she
said, looked different than it had when she swallowed it: it was half
the size
and was now completely bald, the fuzz of small bristles having
apparently been
eaten away by her digestive fluids. "So what happens to me now?"
    There
was a
period of waiting while the proper officials
reviewed the case.
Eventually, they decided to follow a little-known government protocol,
MJ—
1949-04W/82. The family was relocated to an undisclosed location in
France,
where they were housed in a luxury villa owned by friends of the U.S.
government and guaranteed an income of approximately $100,000 per year
in
exchange for their cooperation in keeping the matter silent.
    Unfortunately, six
months after moving to France, just as she was learning the language,
Bridget
and her family were killed when their car collided with a truck owned
by the French
postal authority.
----
    Until he came to the
ending, Okun found the story amusing. Remembering Dr. Lenel's warning,
he
wondered how much of it was true. But more interesting to him than the
story of
the girl were the handwritten notes jotted in the margins of the
report. They
seemed to have been written at great speed and most of them were
absolutely
illegible. Only two were carefully printed, and both of them startled
the young
researcher. The first one read: "obj housed at AF Acad Colo Sprgs, evid
#PE—8323-MJ—1949-acc21,21a." Evidence number? Okun wondered if there
really were, somewhere in awarehouse
at the Air Force Academy, a small plastic
bag holding a metallic pea recovered from the excrement of a bratty
twelve-year-old.
    The other piece of
noteworthy marginalia was a doodled picture. On the last page of the
report,
someone had drawn a three-dimensional figure of the letter Y.

6

Roswell
    Every
time Okun had tried to
discuss the mysterious
and troubling image of the
Y, the scientists—normally so talkative, so eager to kick around
ideas—would
merely shrug their shoulders, agree it was very interesting, then go on
to say
they had no idea what to do with the information. After that, they
changed the
subject as quickly as possible. Up to that point, Okun had let them get
away
with it. But now that he'd seen the same image penciled into the margin
of the
Bridget Jones report, he was ready for a confrontation. His intuition
told him
the old men were hiding something, and he was determined to find out
what it
was.
    The next morning, he
came into the kitchen and found Freiling counting money. Vegas had been
kind to
them once more, this time to the tune of $675. Dworkin was studying a
copy of
the Los Angeles Times he'd picked up in town.
    "Ahem." The
young man cleared his throat. "Where's Radecker?"
    "Working on his
tennis game, I suspect. He didn't come back last night."
    "Then we can
talk."
    Dworkin peered over
the top of his newspaper. "Talk?"
    "You guys are
holding out on me. There's something you're not telling me."
    Dworkin feigned
indignation. He began to rattle on about the ethics men of ideas must
adhere
to, but Okun cut him short by tossing the Jones report onto the