"Have you had an otherworldly experience, too?" the youth asked earnestly.
Remo placed a paternal hand on the young man's shoulder. "Kid, let me tell you something that I hope will change your life." As he spoke, he kept his voice perfectly level. "There are no such things as aliens. There are no alien visitations. There are no spaceships. Get used to it. We're alone."
The kid backed away from Remo's hand, shocked.
"They got to you!" he gasped.
Without another word, Remo resumed walking.
He ducked under the overhang, pulling open the door of the nearest cab.
"You're from the government!" the young man accused. He shouted from the sidewalk a few yards behind Remo. "I bet you're part of the conspiracy!" He turned to a female passerby. "He's part of the conspiracy!" he yelled to the startled woman.
"Kid, you don't know how true that is." Remo nodded. He slammed the door as the taxi pulled away from the curb.
HE WOULD ADMIT they had made a huge miscalculation.
Huge? No. Wouldn't fly. Ass-is-grass time if he came clean on the magnitude of the screw-up. Better scratch that.
In the private sanctuary of his battlefield command nucleus, General Delbert Chesterfield crossed out the simple four-letter word. It was not the first such blot.
Chesterfield frowned deeply. What had begun as a clean white sheet of paper was now a hodgepodge of thick black graphite marks.
Huge ...not huge...
Minor? Certainly not. He doubted even he could get away with that.
No, don't characterize it by its greater dimensions. And anyway, anyone looking at it would know it was huge and not small. Couch it in mathematical terms. That usually worked to confuse the less focused of his superiors.
"Arithmetic."
The word flowed off the end of his pencil as if drawn unbeckoned from deep in his subconscious. Yes, that would work. He smiled, growing more excited as he stared down at the single word.
Yes. Absolutely. Arithmetic. He made an extra little graphite loop around the ten magic letters. An arithmetic miscalculation.
The general frowned once more.
Could it even be characterized as a miscalculation?
Softer terminology. That's what was required here.
Put retrospective in there somewhere. After all, everything looked better in hindsight.
It was nearly 11:00 a.m.-a full three hours since the latest batch of Fort Joy MPs had gone missing-by the time Chesterfield settled on the proper terminology.
"An arithmetic retrospective postcircumstantial error. "
He crossed out error and replaced it with event. Whipping the paper off his desk, he examined the words in the bright sunlight that flowed in through his closed office window. He liked what he saw.
"Damn good bit of soldiering. Damn good," he boasted to the empty room.
In the wide, dusty courtyard beyond the window, the flurry of activity that had been going on for the past three days continued unabated. Chesterfield hadn't seen that many soldiers preparing for battle since the Gulf War.
Of course, his own physical self had not actually personally participated in the Mother of All Battles, it being stateside at the time. But he had watched Dan Rather's coverage almost every night. On his twenty-seven-inch screen, it looked like there were a lot of soldiers in that war. He found as he peered through the open blinds of his office window that, in real life and without the limitations of his TV screen, fewer soldiers looked like even more.
There were men marching. Sergeants barking orders. Jeeps tearing this way and that, sending up awesome plumes of desert dust in their wakes. To Chesterfield, it looked for all the world like a real goddamn army.
Even though he understood the concept of mob mentality, he could easily have been whipped into the kind of military fervor that had taken hold of his men if only he didn't know the reason behind all the action.
But he knew all too well. And it'd be the end of his whole damn career if anyone else found out. Chesterfield tore his eyes away from his troops, settling back on the paper in his big hand. Now that he had the proper tenninology, the rest would flow like crap through a goose. He placed the paper to one side of his desk.
Gathering up his swagger stick, General Chesterfield marched out of his office, past his aide's desk and out into the unforgiving New Mexico sunlight.
Rows of soldiers were being marched by a drill instructor past Chesterfield's HQ. The general nodded his approval as the men-some seemingly barely out of diapers-trudged in lockstep past their commanding officer.
Chesterfield towered over all the men. He was a huge bear who looked as if he could squash a man with a single press of one large thumb.
As the last rows of soldiers were marching by, the general noticed something beyond them. It was coming toward him from the main gate in a cloud of dust.
Squinting at the intruder, Chesterfield swept his riding crop out from under his great arm. He slapped it to the chest of the nearest soldier in the last row of marchers.
The man stopped dead in his tracks. As if he'd walked into a solid wall.
"Soldier, what the hell is that?" Chesterfield boomed. He swung the swagger stick out like a pointer.
The baby-faced recruit seemed terrified to be addressed by ironbutt Chesterfield. The leather riding crop was directly beneath his nose. He followed it to the end, peering off in the direction of the main gate. He immediately saw what had caught the base commander's eye.
"Taxi, sir!" the soldier yelled.
Chesterfield frowned deeply. A great mass of skin gathered at his fleshy jowls. "Join your unit," he said.
"Thank you, sir!" the soldier shouted. After exchanging salutes, the recruit ran to catch up with the last row of men.
The general watched as the taxi approached. Outwardly he displayed mild suspicion. Inwardly, it was a whole other story. His apprehension level was great as the cab slowed to a stop several feet from his highly polished boots.
As a lone man got out of the back, the general's apprehension faded. The suspicious expression turned to one of disgust.
Typical civilian. The guy wore a pair of tan pants and a white T-shirt. Though thin, he seemed to be in pretty good physical shape. Still, Chesterfield could tell that the guy wouldn't last a single day in the United States Army.
He tried to give the new arrival a condescending glare. Trouble was, the fellow was looking at the general as if he were the one that should be condescended to.
"How's it hanging, Eisenhower?" Remo commented, after sizing up the military man. Not waiting for a reply, he turned his attention to the cabdriver.
Chesterfield's radish-red face took on shades of beet-purple.
"This is a United States military base," Chesterfield's booming voice announced as Remo dug through his pockets.
"I didn't think it was the Alamogordo Y," Remo replied blandly. He handed a few bills over to the cabbie. "Thanks," he said, smacking the roof. The taxi drove off in a cloud of dust.
As the cab headed down the road to the main gate, Remo turned back to the general. He had taken only two steps before Chesterfield propped his walking stick against Remo's chest.
"Hold it right there, civilian," Chesterfield commanded.
"The name is Remo. And before this conversation ends with that cane sticking out of your ass, I was sent here from Washington."
Shocked, Chesterfield quickly removed the riding crop.
"Washington?" the general asked, feigning surprise. He pulled himself up to his full height. He towered over Remo like a small mountain. "What's this all about?"
Remo sighed. "Serial killer. Burned corpses. Army soldier." Even as Chesterfield's jowly mouth opened to deny the last accusation, Remo cut in. "Don't bother," he said. "I asked in Alamogordo. He's one of yours."