Thin Air (26 page)

Hammond recalled the company from articles in the
Navy Times.
They were a big private contractor for Naval weapons and electronic guidance systems.

"Bloch and Traben were very close even before RTI was formed," said Rinehart. "When Project Thin Air was finally closed down in 1955, Traben was appointed to RTI's Board of Directors and made head of Research and Development."

"Are you suggesting that Traben took his work on Thin Air over to RTI?"

"Isn't that obvious?" Rinehart smiled. "Ifs the only thing the man had worked on since 1942."

Rinehart brought his soup to the living room and Hammond made him repeat his last statements for the tape, then he asked, "You're saying that Bloch and RTI were capable of taking risks that the government had already written off?"

"You find that so hard to believe?" Rinehart asked almost casually.

Hammond regarded him with suspicion, realizing it was possible the old man's bitterness was making him fantasize plots and invent ulterior motives. What grounds had he presented to back up his accusations against Traben that couldn't be interpreted by a Board of Inquiry as plain old sour grapes?

"If you suspected he was acting purely in his own interest, why didn't you say something at the time?"

Rinehart waved a hand at his houseful of UFO literature and said, "Who would have listened to me? I told you before—I had literally cut my own throat in Washington."

"So? You had nothing to lose by exposing Traben." His calm eyes locked onto Rinehart's. The old man seemed to tremble, then threw up his arms in. exasperation.

"All right!" he said. "They worked on
me!
Do you understand that? They tried to pull that brainwashing crap on me; they were brainwashing everyone by then—even those who didn't need fear control got it—but on me it didn't
take!
And I let them think it did. To this day, they still believe that on Project Thin Air, my mind is a
blank!"

Hammond did his best not to appear shocked, but he felt a cold knife digging into his chest. "Were you afraid of Traben?" he asked.

"Of course I was! I spent a decade with him. I may not have had proof, but I had cause enough for suspicion!"

"You let them work on you—willingly?"

Rinehart sighed. "I wanted to get out, kiss off Washington for the rest of my life. And if they felt they had to insure my silence, I was prepared to give them anything, as long as I got peace of mind."

Hammond tapped his fingers together and watched the old man squirm. "I think you know, Mr. Rinehart, that the alternative was your
life."

Rinehart shook his head in denial, but Hammond leaned forward and spoke with cold disdain.

"And you knew it was the same for every man who ever participated in that project. As long as their mouths could be kept shut, they were allowed to live. It would have drawn too much attention to just bump everybody off in one shot, wouldn't it? But gradually, over the years...You knew, didn't you? And you let them get away with it?"
      

Rinehart jumped up and snarled, "I could be making it all up, you know! Just a crazy old man! Ranting and raving, whether it's about this—or this—!" He slammed a hand down on a stack of UFO periodicals. Then he stalked across the room and leaned against the other window, his back to Hammond.

The interview was over. Rinehart put another log on the fire. Hammond got up, gathering his tapes and recorder and sending the Siamese in a mad dash for cover. The log burst into flame and Rinehart quickly poked it to the back of the grate, cursing and pulling the screen into place. He turned and scowled at Hammond.

"What will you do?"
      

"Think about it," said Hammond. Rinehart shrugged and Hammond asked, "How much money would you say the government might have invested in Thin Air—all told?"

"About a hundred million dollars," said Rinehart.

The figure jolted Hammond. If it had been that costly, and Traben had continued his work under the auspices of RTI, he would have required enormous funding, with costs spiraling to match the inflation rate over the years....But RTI would have been under close scrutiny because of its substantial Federal contracts. Since 1955, how could they have spent millions of dollars on Thin Air and managed to conceal that from the world? The project had failed too many times before; it was unlikely they would have thrown good money after bad. And RTI was a business; they would not be playing Mayo Clinic to Fletcher and Yablonski unless there was still a need for secrecy.

Unless Thin Air was still alive.

It was too confusing. He would have to sort it out when he got home. From the perspective of distance and sanity.

Rinehart was shuffling to the door. Hammond watched the stooped figure and wondered how so much detailed memory could still be at this man's fingertips. Maybe the bitterness kept it alive. Certainly that and the UFOs were all he had to think about.

Hammond paused to look back at the collection of UFO literature. Rinehart noticed and said, "Still think I'm nuts, Commander?"

"Just eccentric."

"Everything is relative. Ask yourself: can you say for certain that flying saucers don't exist? No. Because they're no more fantastic than Project Thin Air, and that
did
exist."

With a smile of satisfaction, Rinehart opened the door and Hammond shook hands with him, then trudged outside." It was cold and the snowfall had made the yard slushy. He heard the door close and glanced back at the old house. He squished up to his car and stashed the Uher and the tapes in the back seat.

It was only as he opened the driver's side that he caught a glimpse of the battered pickup truck sitting up the road under a cottonwood.

14

The truck meant nothing to Hammond. His attention was drawn to the white-carpeted hills and the heavy clouds that covered them. The snow might return in force at any moment.

With a sigh, he walked around to the trunk, opened it, and strung a set of chains out behind the rear tires. Ten minutes later, with the car warmed, his flight jacket zipped tight, and his knees soaked through, Hammond drove cautiously out of Rinehart's yard.

His taillights reflected off the fogged windshield of the pickup truck. It was an old Ford half-ton with faded blue paint spattered with mud.

Inside the cab, two men sat quietly watching Hammond's car creep off into the descending dark. The driver picked up a rag and wiped the inside of the windshield, whistling an aimless tune.

"Are we going to sit' here all night?" his companion asked.

The whistling stopped.

"We should have taken both of them...in the house."

The driver handed him the rag and in the darkness flashed him a hostile glare. "Bullshit," he said. "Get your corner—I can't reach it." Without waiting for an answer, he turned the ignition key. The motor roared to life. He switched on the parking lights, eased out from under the cottonwood, and drove slowly past Rinehart's house.

It started to snow again. Hammond kept the staff car in low gear. Even with the chains on, the winding road was slippery. He drove by instinct, with a light touch to keep the rear wheels from breaking loose. Little snow flurries danced in his headlights. Stands of cottonwood, their trunks and branches sheathed in sparkling white, shimmered briefly as the car passed by. Below the road, down by the stream, the ground was heavily drifted. Hammond remembered some of the large rocks he had seen on the way up; most of them were now blanketed with snow.

The pickup truck growled down the road in low gear. Equipped with snow tires, it had more traction than Hammond's car. The driver held his acceleration steady and charged through the dusk.

Hunched over to keep his head from hitting the top of the cab, he peered through the windshield to follow the tracks of Hammond's car, visible even in the dim reflection from his parking lights.
      

His companion stubbed out a cigarette in the ashtray, reached under the seat and grabbed an M-16 rifle. He held it loosely across his chest, the barrel up.

"What do we do if he makes it to the main road?" he asked.

The driver kept his eyes straight ahead and worked the wheel. "Let me worry about that, Doc. You just take care of your end."

"I still think we should have—"
      

"Don't start that again," the driver snarled. "If you hadn't screwed things up, we wouldn't be here in the first place. I figure we'll catch him on the last stretch, just before we hit the highway. It's straight there, so I can see if there's any other traffic coming. If it's all clear, he's yours. If not, there's still plenty of time before he gets back to Kirtland."

The driver increased his speed slightly. The heavy snow tires obliterated Hammond's track, leaving behind a distinctive herringbone pattern of their own.

Hammond's rear-view mirror picked up the glimmer of lights. They looked to be far away but coming up fast. He eased the staff car around a sweeping curve. The craggy hills rose sharply on his right; across the other side was a stretch of darkness he knew must be the stream bed. The slushy road stretched ribbon-straight before him. The highway to Taos was less than three miles away.

He glanced in the mirror again and saw the lights were still far behind. It never occurred to him they might be parking lights, and closer than he imagined.

An ungloved hand shoved a clip into the M-16 and cocked it. The driver switched off his lights as the truck slid around the end of the curve, its tires throwing up a plume of snow. Hammond's car was less than one hundred yards ahead.

He gunned the accelerator. The tires held. The man with the rifle rolled down his window and leaned out. His left foot reached for the hump in the middle of the floor, bracing against the bumpy acceleration.

Hammond sensed something behind him, but his attention was drawn to a shiny spot in the road that his headlights had picked up. Water running off the hill must have frozen. He tapped the brakes to slow down before he hit the ice. He felt the rear wheels start to go and corrected to keep from fishtailing. The rear end swung close to the rocks at the base of the hill.

The skid saved Hammond's life.

He didn't hear the crack of the rifle, but he flinched as the right side of his rear window shattered. Bullets chewed through the back of the passenger seat and smashed the windshield.

Hammond jammed his foot down on the gas and tried to get clear.

The rear wheels spun, then dug in. The car lurched forward. Hammond's ears filled with a metallic screeching sound as the passenger side slammed into the hill.

The next blast shredded his right rear tire. He spun across the road, shot off the shoulder, and plowed through loosely packed snow. A hidden rock bounced the car up in the air. It slid along on its right side, threatening to overturn, then dropped back and slammed down so hard that the left door flew open.

Hammond was catapulted out of the car through the snow-filled air and darkness. He crunched into a deep drift and was vaguely aware of sinking into wet snow.

Up on the road, the truck slid to a stop. The driver switched his headlights on full beam. They watched the car slide into the creek on its left side. A cloud of steam enveloped it as icy water flooded the hot engine.

The man with the M-16 got out, removed the empty clip, and inserted a fresh one. He walked to the edge of the road, looking for a place to climb down.

"Where do you think you're going?" the driver shouted.

"Make sure he's finished! Be with you when you get swung around!"

"You've got a clear shot at the gas tank from here, Doc. Torch it. We've got other things to do."

The man on the road hesitated, then brought the rifle up to his shoulder. He emptied the entire clip and the bullets smashed into the exposed underside of the car.

The roar of the gas tank exploding startled Hammond. The ball of flame shot up some yards below him and to the left, but the heat was so intense it melted the snow he was lying in. He forced himself to sit up, ignoring the agony of movement. Over the crackle of flames he heard a car door slam. Carefully, because he was between the fire and the road, he looked up. He couldn't focus: everything above him was just a blur. He blinked and in spite of the pain sucked in several deep breaths. As his vision returned, he glanced up at the road again. The headlights swung around and he glimpsed the truck. It looked like the one he'd seen at Rinehart's.

He watched it move off, heading back into the foothills. He wondered fleetingly why it didn't continue into town. He waited for it to disappear around the curve before he pulled himself out of the snow. Nothing seemed broken, but he felt light-headed....

The tapes! He had to get the tapes. He floundered toward the burning car, getting as close as he could. The fire was consuming the interior. One look showed him that everything was beyond saving.

He sagged and cursed at the loss of his evidence. But he was lucky to be alive—it wasn't the tapes they were after. He took in more air and moved up toward the road, looking for a place to climb over the bank. When he had inched his way to the worn blacktop, he began to feel the effects of the cold. Wet clothing and no shelter in sight: he could still die, just from exposure.