Burnout: the mystery of Space Shuttle STS-281 (25 page)

The three in the Humvee exchanged concerned glances, then the older man in the dress shirt got out, extending a hand. "Ted Bradenton," he introduced himself. "Sorry, we don't often get visitors."

"I can imagine," Murphy said, straight-faced. "I'm Thomas McIntosh, and this is my colleague, Charles Anderson."

"Hi there," Anders murmured politely, shaking hands.

"Well, hop in, gentlemen," Bradenton waved them toward the Humvee. "No sense standing here mummifying in the sun."

Murphy and Anders clambered aboard. The driver wheeled the wide vehicle around, and sped back toward the complex of buildings. Crash and Mike lifted their faces into the wind, grateful for the cool breeze of travel.

* * * *

"You see anything, Paul?" Phillips asked, his anxiety showing, as Paul trained his huge binoculars on the hangars.

"No, not yet," Paul murmured, staring through the optics. "No, wait! There they are! Two guys in black suits just came out of one of the hangars!"

"A blond and a redhead?" Phillips queried.

"Yep!" came the response.

Phillips punched a jubilant fist in the air. "That's my boys! Go, guys!"

"Okay, there comes a Humvee from the other complex to meet ‘em…" Paul reported.

"And?" Phillips pressed, tense.

"They're getting in," Paul continued the play by play. "Headed back to the other buildings." He paused, watching. "Okay, they're going in. My gosh, this is gonna work."

"Excellent," Phillips drawled, a huge, shit-eating grin on his face.

* * * *

It didn't take them long to discover that they had well and truly stumbled over a nest of bean counters, as the pilots had said. Bradenton, the chief accountant, was cooperative, especially after finding the "orders" from the Capitol in his email inbox--although he never knew that the capital city referenced wasn't Washington. He was very intent on impressing the GAO and thereby ensuring the continued existence of his little fiefdom, but not much interested in anything else. Anders struggled to contain and disguise his intense boredom as the grand tour of the site droned on and on. "…And this is the Consumables Division," Bradenton opened the door to a cubicle farm with a flourish.

"Consumables?" Crash queried, interest obvious, and Anders wondered how he could manage to seem so fascinated.

"Yes," Bradenton answered. "We coordinate the procurement of all consumables for all military divisions."

"I thought that was handled out of the Pentagon."

"Oh, no, no," Bradenton smirked. "Oh, well, I'm sure that's what they'd like you to believe. But we're the coordination center for the entire lot. Right here."

"That must require some high level security," Murphy thought out loud. "How often do you re-up with Defense Security Services, then?"

"DSS? Oh, we don't need that," Bradenton dismissed the idea, as Murphy's eyebrows rose and Anders straightened up in surprise. "Nothing here is classified."

"Nothing here is…? You're in the middle of bloody Area 51!" Anders expostulated in disbelief.

"Exactly," Bradenton remarked calmly. "Oh, everything here is For Official Use Only, of course. I suppose if you got your hands on the whole lot of it, you could analyze troop movements and the like. But the mere fact that we're here, and that we come and go via specialized transport, in itself ensures the FOUO material stays safe. ‘What happens in Area 51, stays in Area 51,' you might say," he chuckled.

Anders managed to hide his gag with considerable effort. Bradenton wandered onward.

"Now, the Consumables Division is further subdivided into potables and non-potables…"

* * * *

"So the entire facility is devoted exclusively to keeping up with military accounting?" Anders asked, late that day.

"Of course," Bradenton answered, a slight frown on his face.

"But… what about… you know," Anders stared at Bradenton with a meaningful expression, trying to will him to take the hint and run with it.

"Ah, you've been hearing the rumors, have you?" Bradenton remarked, smugly knowing.

"Yeah, Chuck's a new guy," Murphy gave Bradenton a conspiratorial grin. "I'm surprised he lasted this long before asking. I thought he was gonna bust a gut on the way here."

"Let me assure you, Mr. Anderson," Bradenton said, somewhat arch, "in the full half dozen years my people have been here, I have seen no sign whatsoever of aliens, flying saucers, or anything stranger than ourselves, in this facility."

Don't touch it, Mike, don't touch it, don't even go there,
Anders ordered himself, biting his tongue at the man's inadvertent, and evidently totally unconscious, double entendre. Finally, when he was certain he could restrain himself from making any snide, tongue-in-cheek remarks, Anders followed up. "But what about before that?"

"I neither know, nor care," a bland Bradenton brushed aside the query. "You see the hangars out there. I can only vouch for the fact that this was once an Air Force facility, most likely an inland staging area for the Pacific Range. Insofar as I have been told, the hangars are now derelict, good for nothing except storage, and that, only of items that should have been sent to a hardware graveyard, in my considered opinion."

Bradenton paused, eyeing Anders with a touch of resentment, before continuing. "You are perfectly welcome to go see for yourselves. The orders that came in via email after your arrival indicated that you have carte blanche to audit the entire facility, so that means the hangars are open to you."

Crash turned to Mike. "See? I told you. Satisfied now?"

"Yeah, I guess." Anders wore a hangdog expression.

"Good," Crash said. "Now let's get back to work."

"But can we go look, once we're done here?" Anders wondered, as ingenuous as he knew how to be.

Crash rolled his eyes at Bradenton. "Oh, all right. After we're completely finished, yes, we can go take a look."

"Good," Anders piped, to all appearance, happy and satisfied.

"Newbies," Crash muttered in disgust. "Worse than puppies," he remarked to Bradenton, who chuckled, amused.

* * * *

"Uh, Mr. Bradenton," Crash murmured, slight distress evident in his tone, after they'd traversed the fourth cubicle farm.

"Yes? Did you have a question?" Bradenton asked politely, turning to glance at the two "auditors."

"Sort of," Crash grinned tightly, his face reddening. "I had a rather large cup of coffee on the flight in, and… well, uh…"

"Oh, dear God, yes," Anders muttered in discomfort, trying not to cross his legs as he stood. "I thought you'd never say something, Tom. Mr. Bradenton, could you…"

"Show you where the can is?" Bradenton chuckled in understanding. "Sorry, boys. I guess I got a little over-enthusiastic, there. This way," he led them down the hall and around a corner, stopping in front of a door that read
Men.
"Here you are, gentlemen."

Anders, followed by Murphy, ducked quickly inside.

* * * *

After they got in, and found that Bradenton waited politely outside, Crash told Mike, "Take a quick look around while you're, um, occupied. If this really was once a secret facility, with a whole lot of fly boys in it, then there might be some telling graffiti in here." He headed straight for the urinals, while Anders ducked into the middle stall.

"Okay," Anders' voice floated over the partition. "But wouldn't that have been painted over long ago?"

"Check the real walls, not the partitions," Murphy suggested, emptying his desperate bladder in some thankfulness. "They're made of tile. Might be something left scrawled in the grout. It'll be hard to read, but there could be something still left. Damn, I gotta remember not to drink so much coffee," he sighed in relief. "I thought I was gonna explode. And I don't think they're used to flash floods around here."

"You'll know better next time," Mike's voice said in amusement.

"Yeah, next time," Crash chuckled without humor, then sobered into a grim frown. "Let's hope we get out of here to a next time." He flushed the urinal, zipping up the fly of his black trousers.

Seconds later, the noise of flushing came from the stall as well. This was followed by the sound of rustling cloth, and as Crash turned, he saw Anders' feet shuffle about under the stall door, then turn to face the rear. "Hm, you're right," Mike's voice noted. "There is some graffiti in here. But it looks to be all just obscenities." There was a pause. "Damn, are they obscenities."

"What do ya mean?" Murphy asked, staring at the stall door in puzzlement for a moment.

"Well, I'm not a prudish man, mate, but I'm blushing, and nobody can even see me in here." The discomfort was plainly evident even in Anders' abashed voice.

"Eucch," Crash grimaced, remembering some of the stuff he used to see, back when he was in the military. "I'm gonna start checking the stall on the far right." He pushed open the door and stood in front of the toilet, studying the back wall. "Shit," he muttered under his breath, cheeks reddening as he read the tiny scrawls, "I see what you mean…"

"Okay," Anders acknowledged over the partition. "I'm about done here. I'll move to the far left and we can work in. Need to move fast, though. Bradenton will start to wonder what we're doing in here."

"Eh, no big deal," Crash suggested, "I'll just tell ‘im I got some bad sushi at one of the buffets in Vegas, and I'm still recovering."

"Oh, good plan," Anders said, coming out of the stall he'd used and moving to the far left stall, entering and staring at the back wall. "Huh," he said, turning his head to read around a corner in the grout.

"‘Huh' what?" Crash asked.

"Somebody had notions of bein' a poet. Not a very good one, but at least it's not more obscenities…"

"What does it say?" Murphy followed up.

"You really want me to read it?"

"Yeah."

"It's pretty bad."

"So? It might tell us something," Crash pointed out. "Something about what they were doing here."

"Okay," Anders said, and began to read.

There once was a bird from the Lake,

Who hated all lizards and snakes.

To the Valley she'd move,

To get in the groove,

And left behind nothing but fakes.

"Ugh," Murphy grumbled, "that is bad."

"Told ya," Anders' grin was audible. "Still and all, it does say something about what's here, I'd say."

"Yeah, I guess so," Crash considered. "It says there were aircraft here, at least once upon a time."

"Right," Mike noted. "And it says that the fly boys knew that the bean counters were coming in."

"Huh?" Crash wondered, moving to the next stall. "How do ya get that out of it?"

Anders emerged and he too moved to the next door. "It says they ‘left behind nothing but fakes,'" he pointed out, scanning another section of the tile wall before instinctively blushing again at the language he found there. "Think about all the dummies on the airplane, and this lot of geek blokes here. Fake people, and a fake classified program."

"OooOOoo," Crash murmured. "I get it." He emerged, then scrutinized the stall doors. "You were in the middle stall, weren't you?"

"Yeah."

"Then we got ‘em all," Crash noted. "Let's go back to Bradenton." He leaned into the middle stall and flushed the toilet once more, for cover.

"Okay," Anders popped through the stall door and headed for the restroom exit. As he pushed the door open, revealing a chief pencil pusher who was beginning to get rather impatient, Anders looked back over his shoulder, manufacturing a solicitous expression before addressing Crash. "Tom, are you sure you're going to be all right? I've got some of that diarrhea medicine in my pocket. Brought it along, just in case…"

Bradenton, overhearing the remark as Anders had intended, looked concerned. "What's wrong?"

Crash scowled, sheepish. "Aw, I got into some bad sushi at one of the all you can eat places in Vegas," he waved it off. "Last couple of nights were kinda rough, but I'm feeling a lot better now. I'll be okay. Let's get back to work."

* * * *

All was going well. Bradenton was showing them through the last building in the complex, and they were now paused at a break room, as the manager had realized back at the restrooms that he had been inadvertently neglecting the niceties. "Care for some coffee, gentlemen? Perhaps a snack? We try to keep a few ‘consumables' of our own available," he chuckled at the geeky little pun.

"Thanks," Anders grinned, helping himself to a doughnut, as Murphy put powdered creamer into a cup and poured in the coffee.

Before they could put either to their lips, however, a voice from the doorway broke in. "Oh, my God! It's him! I thought he was dead! What are you doing here?!"

Murphy, Anders, and Bradenton spun, to see one of the junior accountants staring. "What the hell are you going on about, Childers?" Bradenton snapped in annoyance.