LITMIR.BIZ

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from the Truman era purportedly establishing a secret agency or committee called—variously—Magic-12, MJ-12, Majestic-12, or even Majik-12. That had been when? Around 1984? He thought that was it. The story had been widely discredited since, though—a hoax, and, according to what he’d seen, not all that convincing of one.

      No. It was all garbage.

      An amusing thought occurred to Hunter then. Yeah, he would mention the UFO they’d seen—it had been part of their observation of the North Korean test site, after all—and he would see how Mr. Walters responded. If he didn’t seem interested, or didn’t believe it, or simply dismissed it, then Hunter would know he was right, and there were no secret-agency conspiracies, no MJ-12, none of that garbage. If Walters went all Hollywood on Hunter, however—don’t talk to anyone about this or you’re in big trouble—well, maybe there was something to it.

      It would be amusing to find out … and even more amusing to yank Walters’s chain.

      He was smiling as, two at a time, the rest of the team was ushered forward to the torpedo compartment. Then, once the recon team’s gear had been stored forward, the Illinois slipped beneath the waves and proceeded northeast. She would circle around the northern tip of Hokkaido, then bear southwest for the US naval base at Yokosuka, Japan.

      And then, Hunter thought, no matter what happened with Walters, the shit would really hit the fan.

      “LIEUTENANT COMMANDER? Have a seat.”

      Hunter had been led aft to a small office—Captain Magruder’s office, in fact, which had been set aside for the interview. It was, like the offices of COs since the beginnings of submariner history, painted puke green, cramped, and with just barely enough room for a chair, a fold-down desk, and a bunk. Hunter took the proffered bunk.

      They were one day out from Yokosuka, and Walters had interviewed each of Hunter’s men in turn. It was … disquieting. Each man had been led back to the forward torpedo room, somber, tight-lipped, and unwilling to discuss what had gone on with the Agency spook.

      They were equally unwilling to discuss the encounter with the UFO, even Minkowski, who’d seemed positively ebullient about that enigmatic thing in the sky. Had they been threatened?

      The idea that this might be the case did not sit well with Hunter. That this civilian had evidently come down hard on the men, on his men—the SEAL was now furious. No one did that with Hunter’s team members and fucking got away with it.

      Walters took up a clipboard with papers on it, then pressed a switch on a small box which he set conspicuously on the desk in front of him. “Lieutenant. We’re recording this conversation, all right?” Without waiting for a reply, he looked down at his clipboard. “What is your name, rank, and service number?”

      “Mark Francis Hunter,” Hunter replied. “Lieutenant commander.” The Navy had used Social Security numbers for identification since 1972. He gave it.

      “Place of birth?”

      “Dayton, Ohio.”

      “Date you entered the service?”

      “Eight March 2006. Look, what the hell—”

      “I will ask the questions, if you please, Commander. Date of birth?”

      “Oh-five, oh-nine, nineteen eighty-six. Sir.”

      Walters glanced up at the small note of defiance in Hunter’s voice, then looked back at his clipboard. “Education?”

      “Bachelor of science, Virginia Tech University. And then Annapolis. And I will not answer any more questions until you tell me what you said to my men. Sir.”

      Walters sighed, and leaned back in the chair. “I said nothing to them that I will not be saying to you, Commander. Your full cooperation in this debriefing is very much appreciated. Okay?”

      “Sir.”

      He reached forward and picked up the minirecorder. “Now tell me about the mission. From the beginning, please.”

      Hunter compressed his lips, then leaned forward and gave a small shrug. “Yes, sir.”

      And he began talking, starting with the squad being told of the op, flown from SEAL Team One headquarters at the Amphibious Warfare HQ on Coronado, in San Diego, to the Navy base at Yokosuka; he made a point of pronouncing the city’s name right.

      He continued with their nighttime insertion by parachute off of a specially rigged MH-60 Blackhawk, their landing, their brutal overland trek, and their positioning above the Mantap Mountain base.

      He talked about what they’d seen: their survey of the base, the dead vegetation, the NK guards and slave laborers, the slight seismic quakes, the high background radioactivity.

      “We were about to pack it in, get out of Dodge,” Hunter continued, “when EN1 Taylor said—”

      Walters switched off the recorder. “We don’t need to talk about what happened next.”

      “Sir?”

      “The first man I interviewed, Master Chief … ah …” He consulted his clipboard. “Minkowski. He told me all about it. That portion of the record has been erased. And you, Commander, will erase everything that you think you saw in there from your mind. Do you understand?”

      Hunter felt a sharp chill at that. Walters was acting more and more like the Men in Black, or what Hunter believed those mythical personages were supposed to be like, by the moment.

      “I said, do you understand?”

      “Or what?”

      Walters blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

      “Or what? What happens if I don’t forget?” Or if I can’t forget …

      “Mr. Hunter, may I remind you that when you were inducted into the SEALs, you signed nondisclosure papers and took an oath of secrecy. If you were to divulge any information which has been determined to be classified as confidential or above, you would be subject to the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, specifically Articles 92, 104, 106a, and 134 …”

      Hunter suppressed a chuckle. The UCMJ laid out what offenses were subject to court-martial; 92 was about failure to obey a lawful order, 106a had to do with espionage, 104 was aiding the enemy, and 134 was the military’s catchall: “conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline.” How the hell was his story of a UFO violating any of those articles?

      Well, he’d been ordered not to talk about things declared secret, yeah. They could get him on Article 92. And 134 was always there to catch anything not listed in the rest of the UCMJ.

      “However,” Walters said, after running through those articles as well as several points from the Military Rules of Procedure and the Classified Information Procedures Act, “in all probability the case would not even come to trial. If it did, you would get a dishonorable discharge and at least twenty years in Portsmouth. If you were lucky. But people have also been known to … disappear.”

      Hunter’s eyebrows jumped up on his forehead. “You’re threatening to kill me?”

      “Let’s just say, Commander, that we know where you live, where your family lives, and leave it at that. If you say anything about what you think you saw, we will come down on you like one hundred tons of concrete blocks, and I doubt very much if anyone will hear anything you might wish to say. Some … gentlemen from DC will be along to talk to you about this, but you will discuss it with no one else. Do we understand one another?”

      Hunter didn’t reply at first. He was still digesting Walters’s threat …

      … and what that meant for the whole idea of government UFO conspiracies and cover-ups.

      My

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