The Gemini Divergence (17 page)

As Schwerig watched the man and listened, he
heard the man say, “Wunderbar, here is where the Schriewer drawings
have been hiding.

He watched as the man unfolded some of the
blue prints and turned in his seat so that he could hold them
upright to look at them.

As Hein was glancing at the designs the
lightning flashed.

He was instantly horrified to see Schwerig’s
silhouette in the momentarily illuminated hall. He then dropped the
drawings and stood holding his hands out for mercy.

Schwerig started counting out loud at the
instant of the flash, “one thousand one….”

Hein immediately begged, “No wait, I can
explain…”

Suddenly the side arm flashed in synchronized
symphony with the crack of thunder.

Schwerig had intentionally fired his Luger
the instant the thunder clasp arrived.

Hein fell to his knees still holding out his
hands and pleading, “Wait, I’m not…” then he fell forward onto his
face.

Pfautsch then said, “Well I must apologize
for thinking that your counting in anticipation of the lightning
report was childish, that was acutely genius. No one could have
heard that. I bet the men outside didn’t discern that gunshot from
the thunder.”

“That is why I smiled instead of scolding you
when you made the implication back at the craft,” Schwerig snapped
back, then continued as he walked forward and started picking up
the drawings and glancing at them, “What a stroke of luck that he
was looking for them the instant that we walked in. We could have
looked for a great while before finding them.”

“Well, let’s hurry and gather them up,”
suggested Hauptman Pfautsch, “The sooner we vacate the landing
zone, the better.”

“I concur,” added Schwerig.

They both picked up the papers and drawings,
and then quickly looked through the other drawers to see if there
was anything else of interest.

When they were both satisfied that they had
completely fulfilled their objective, they both stood and slipped
quietly back out of the rear kitchen door.

Once again outside, Pfautsch gave the signal
to his men that they were to now withdraw to the landing zone.

So the entire unit egressed as stealthily as
they had entered, quickly boarded their saucers and departed with
amazing efficiency.

Once into the air, Schwerig turned to
Pfautsch and said, “We must still be very careful. I have never
been on any field activity that something didn’t go wrong. Either
we missed something or something is still to go amiss.”

“It does seem a little too perfect,” agreed
the Hauptman as he leveled his saucer off and started cruising back
through the storm.

“Why are you flying through the storm on the
way out? I understood your need to navigate in, but why don’t you
just ascend straight up above the storm?” asked Schwerig.

“Oh no, we can’t enter the ionosphere above a
storm,” quickly answered Pfautsch, “We have detected gamma ray
bursts above storms from space we could be struck down by them or
by quallen blitzen, which are another frightening lightning
phenomenon that occur on the verge of space above thunderstorms,
and for reasons we have yet to figure out, the lightning seems to
easily find its way to the intense vacuum that our rotors
create.”

Schwerig looked at Pfautsch as the Hauptman
shook his head no and continued, “It is safest to traverse the
storm and then ascend Mein Herr.”

“Your call,” conceded Schwerig, “You’re the
pilot.”

They continued to fly into the night as the
other two saucers caught up and resumed formation.

“What do you think that the Americans will
think once they find Volmer’s dead body, and that the drawings are
missing?” asked Hauptman Pfautsch.

Schwerig was removing his wet coat as he
started to answer, “Well I don’t think that they will miss the
drawings because very few people even knew that they existed. And
they may be perplexed to figure out what happened to Herr Volmer,
but I am sure that they will not suspect that German paratroopers
dropped out of the sky and shot him.”

Suddenly Pfautsch yelled, “What the hell is
that?” as he pointed to a fast approaching object in front of them.
He then grabbed the controls to evade a collision.

The saucer behind them was not able to skirt
the impact and ran right into the object, which then draped itself
over the saucer and got wound into its turbines.

The pilot of the afflicted saucer came over
Pfautsch’s radio, “This is Banshee 3, I have lost all vision and
the turbines are intermittent. I am loosing altitude fast.”

“Did you collide with the object that we just
evaded?” excitedly asked Pfautsch.

“Affirmative,” responded Banshee 3, “It
appears to be made of cloth like a parachute. Oh no… we now have
total engine failure. We’re going down… Brace for impact!”

~~~**^**~~~

The Cold War
/ The Roswell Crash

9 July 1947

Roswell Army Air Field or R.A.A.F.
released a report to the associated press that the
509
^th
Heavy Bombing Group had
recovered a crashed flying disc from the rural desert near the
base. At the time the Air Force did not expect that the world media
would respond with overwhelming enquiries for more information.
Surprised by the overwhelming response, Air Force public relations
personal struggled to find ways to down play the report.

8 July 1947 (The day before the crash
report)

R. A. A. F. intelligence office got a call
from the local sheriff. It seemed that one of the local ranchers
had found some crash debris on his ranch and was reporting it as a
crashed flying disc.

A Wing Intelligence Major and Volmer, went
out into the desert with the local rancher to investigate the
wreckage.

They were at a loss to explain it, but told
the rancher not to tell anyone else about it, they would have a
team out there to clean it up immediately.

Not knowing what to do, they immediately
called the head of the 8
^th
Air Force and the Head of the
Strategic Air Command; both in Fort Worth.

They quickly got responses from the offices
of General of the 8
^th
Air Force, Roger Ramey, and
General of Strategic Air Command Curtis Lemay, and were quickly
ordered to use Volmer’s secret unit to go out and recover the
craft, because it was already temporarily stationed at Roswell Army
Air Field.

Lemay and Volmer’s Field Activity Group
already had the training, the manpower, and the equipment to handle
it.

*~*

Gus was checking the oil in his crew’s truck
before he went out for the day when an unknown major walking along
with Volmer approached him.

Their approach was hidden by the sound of
many B-29s in the background taxiing, taking off and landing, going
through a normal day’s routine.

To get Gus’s attention the major cleared his
throat and said, “Excuse me, may I have a word with you
airman?”

Gus looked up from under the hood at the
major and for the first time the major could see Gus’s new bright
red cap.

The major was taken back a second and didn’t
know what to think because Gus’s hat had a very pronounced “FAG” in
bold capital letters across its front.

After recomposing himself the major asked,
“Uh, Airman, is that an Air Force issued hat?”

Gus removed the hat and held it out towards
the major as he, sarcastically and with obvious displeasure,
stated, “It sure is, just got it this morning. Ain’t it a dandy.”
Gus started pointing to the letters as he continued, “It’s an
acronym for Field Activities Group… As you may know, major sir, the
base commander just ordered that all units assigned to this base
are to be issued hats with acronyms of their unit printed on the
front,” Gus started to put the hat on in a mocking fashion and
continued, “I just got handed this beauty this morning. I couldn’t
wait to put it on. I think every airman on this base is envious of
it too, because every single one of them has been pointing at it
and grinning.”

The major didn’t know how to respond, “Is
there anyway that you could get your unit commander to change the
name of your unit?”

Volmer responded as he stepped forward, “Uh,
major, I have been informed by General Lemay that our unit is going
to be combined with some other specialty units before the end of
this year and there is a high certainty that the name may surely
change.”

“I’ll bet your glad to hear that,” responded
the major, “but I really do have some very serious pressing
business, we are going to have to scrub whatever mission you were
planning for today, something has come up.”

“Let me guess,” Gus smiled, “Somebody found
the balloon.”

“Yes it appears so,” answered Volmer.

Then the major chimed in, “I think that there
is something else out there as well. Mr. Volmer and I were out
there earlier, and I don’t know what the additional wreckage is,
but I couldn’t find any engine parts or bodies. My best guess is
that it was some form of aircraft that ran into your balloon.”

Gus looked confused, and the major continued,
“We don’t know what the hell is going on, but everything is
hush-hush until we figure it out… got it?”

“Yes sir,” answered Gus.

*~*

A somber homecoming was unfolding inside of
one of the large hangers at New Swabia as the two remaining craft
had just returned.

Wounded men were being carried from the
saucers on stretchers, and mechanics were standing around looking
at the debris of engine and cockpit control panel wreckage that the
raiders were able to extricate from the crash site.

Schwerig’s supervisor, ‘now General’
Kreutztrager, looked over the wreckage as he spoke to Schwerig,
“So, I guess our calculated gamble failed to pay off, and now the
cats out of the bag, Eh, Oberstleutnant Schwerig.”

“Hopefully not Herr General, I have removed
anything with markings or writing and have left nothing that will
implicate us. I believe that they may blame this on the
Russians.”

“Are you sure that you were able to remove
everything that could possibly implicate us?”

“Yes Herr General, I used all of the men that
were still able to walk, to comb the entire crash site. Nothing of
any technology besides rivets and aluminum has been left behind, I
give you my word.”

“How many have perished?”

“Three Sir… The pilot and two enlisted
raiders, but may I add though, that we did execute Volmer and
retrieve the drawings successfully.”

“Yes, but what good is that if they figure
out that it was us?” the General snapped back, “The whole mission
was to ensure our secrecy, now we may be less of a secret than
before we started… And we can’t afford to keep losing brave men at
the rate that we have been. We must find better ways to replenish
our ranks, before we have to face a large skirmish with whatever
force may discover us.”

“Oberstleutnant Schwerig, I have found
something!” came an interrupting call from one of his men.

“Pardon me Herr General,” Schwerig excused
himself as he turned to see what his head mechanic, Feldwebel
Faust, was calling for.

“Yes, what is it?” inquired Schwerig as he
stood before the sergeant, who was kneeling on the floor inspecting
some equipment with others.

Feldwebel Faust pointed at a couple of items
as he explained. “Oberstleutnant Schwerig, these pieces of wreckage
do not belong to any of our equipment, they must be components of
the American device that our downed saucer collided with.”

‘What are they, what do they do?” asked
Schwerig.

“I am not sure Mein Herr,” responded the
sergeant, “My first guess would be that it is a radio receiver or
monitor.”

“Assign your best Funkmeister to analyze it
further, and inform me with what they find,” ordered Schwerig.

*~*

Once at the crash scene, Gus looked around as
he scratched his head, then turning to Volmer he said, “There is
way more here than just the balloon Mr. Volmer. I don’t know if my
crew and I can pick all of this stuff up by ourselves.”

“Well, send somebody back to the base to get
help,” suggested Volmer as he had already removed his hat and
glasses and started wiping the sweat from his forehead.

Gus turned around to Jack who was standing a
few yards away and yelled, “Jack, take a truck back to base and get
some volunteers. We’re going to need some help,” as he gestured
towards all of the wreckage.

Jack gave a thumbs-up and climbed into one of
the trucks and departed.

Gus grabbed a Geiger-Mueller counter and
surveyed the sight before Jack returned with the help, and before
he would allow anyone to start touching things.

After he had swept the entire area, he
signaled the crew that had arrived in the mean time, that it was ok
to proceed.