Read Online Majestic by Whitley Strieber - Free Book Online Page B

going AWOL.
    Winters had come to the door and stood there hesitantly. "Bring in that half of bourbon," Walters growled.
    The PFC produced a well-sucked half-pint of Old Granddad, which Walters handed to each man in turn.
    Gray drank a swallow to be sociable. Hesseltine, he noticed, knocked back a couple of long pulls.
    "That hit the spot," the lieutenant said. "Pardon me for drowning my sorrows. As of fifteen minutes from now I'm standing up the best-looking WAAF captain in Roswell."
    "You better hope she doesn't put you on report."
    "I like your sense of humor, Major Gray."
    "Thank you, Lieutenant."
    The rancher's wife called them into the kitchen, where they hulked around the table. When Gray saw how sparse the meals were, he knew that the woman had stretched four helpings of beans to eight. Even so, each plate had a little scrap of fat back on it along with the beans, and the coffee smelled rich and good.
    They sat down to the crowded table. "This is some of that stuff," the rancher said. He put a couple of small pieces of tinfoil on the table.
    Gray felt a flush of anger: he recognized it as foil from a burst weather balloon. He picked up the scrap of material. "Did you see the plane?"
    "Lights. Heard the explosion. Then the next night y'all's blimp came over with the searchlights, but it missed the wreckage."
    Gray frowned. "Blimp?"
    "Sure. That big gray blimp."
    Walters looked at Gray, took the foil from him. He held the stuff in his hand, staring down at it. Abruptly he crushed the foil to a tiny ball, then put it on the table.
    To Gray's amazement, it sprang back to its original shape.
    "You can't burn it or tear it," the rancher said as he spooned up the last of his beans. "I don't wonder, you couldn't put a bullet through it, either."
    Gray met Walters's eyes. The CIC man's face was literally drained of color. "Let's go out to the Jeep," he said evenly. "Get those maps."
    Outside, it was immediately obvious that Walters wasn't looking for any maps. "What the hell is going on here," he asked.
    "I don't know."
    "What is that stuff?"
    "Frank, I've never seen anything like it before in my life."
    "And a blimp!"
    "Experimental aircraft, maybe."
    "Something you wouldn't know about?"
    Gray didn't like to think that experimental aircraft would be tested in the squadron area without his knowledge, but it was possible. "Could be," he answered.
    "I don't like it. There isn't a hangar in New Mexico that can hold a blimp."
    "Texas, then. Blimps can fly long range."
    "Real long range. Like from Russia. If you ask me, this could be some kind of new goldbeater's skin.
    Incredibly tough. Suitable for a long-range spy blimp, or even a bomber."
    Both men knew what a bomber could do to the 509th if it struck while there were atomic devices on the flight line.
    "Hiroshima'd look like a picnic," Gray said. He tried to imagine the scope of the disaster, but his mind rejected it.
    "Two blimps. One of them blows up in a thunderstorm. The other one comes searching for the remains."
    "They have a hell of a big radar signature." "They can also fly low and slow, Don."
    "Low and slow all the way from Russia. Damn, that's scary."
    They went back inside to find that the rancher and his family were already going to bed.
    As he passed the couple's bedroom door, Gray glimpsed an old iron bed with yellow sheets and a dresser with a half-empty bottle of Trushay hand cream on top. He felt a pang of loneliness; Jennine used Trushay.
    He wished that he'd called her before he came out here. Suddenly he was facing Russians in the night, and he was uneasy.
    "I think we'd better hang watches," he said when the four soldiers were alone together in the living room.
    "I agree," Walters said.
    "What're we worried about, coyotes?" Hesseltine sounded disgusted.
    Gray explained to him. "Russians. This stuff is most probably some kind of goldbeater's skin, used to cover a blimp. The rancher saw another blimp last night. Long-range Russian blimps after the