David Golemon - Event

It looked up and the small mouth formed the wondering O shape again. "Gus help?"

"Yeah, Gus will help you, you little shit," he answered angrily, and pulled down the yellowing blinds to shut out the darkness.

"Gus help little shit" it repeated with awe. Then it thought a moment. The brow furrowed and the eyes narrowed. "Not shit, Gus, Mahjtic name not shit. What is shit?"

"Shit is what I have a sinking feeling I just stepped into, son."

Staff Sergeant Will Mendenhall placed the CLOSED sign in the window and turned the neon OPEN sign off, and for the first time in years the Gold City Pawnshop was closed for business. He glanced through the large plate-glass window as the buzz of the neon ceased, then he turned to the man standing beside him.

"Okay, that does it. This has to be something big for them to need all the security personnel," he said, looking at the lance corporal.

"What do you think it is?" the young marine asked.

"I don't know, but to close this gate down for the first time in twenty-some years is definitely out of the norm. The whole complex has gone on a war footing, or at least the highest alert level I've seen here since the attacks on the Trade Center and Pentagon."

Mendenhall had had little sleep that day and didn't feel like answering too many questions. The skeleton security staff they were leaving behind to guard the gate was on his mind more than whatever alert level they were currently on.

"That does it. We have to take one of the cars in through gate one to pick up some gear and then get to the briefing."

Henri Farbeaux watched the black man hold the door for the smaller one. He had come to full alert when the bright red OPEN sign had been turned off, leaving the area directly in front of the shop barren of light. After the information Reese had given him about the security gate that led to the Event complex and the security team there, he had been prepared to enter and do what he needed to do. But when the lights went out, he had to think on the fly. The pawnshop claimed to be open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, so Farbeaux instinctively knew this was the moment he had waited for. He would have either the complex location or the whereabouts of the crash site.

He placed two dental swatches into his mouth and firmly set them along his jawline, puffing his jowls out to the proper thickness, and then he smiled, not only happy with his disguise, but happy that the late Mr. Reese had been so forthcoming about this magical gate into the Event Group.

Farbeaux quickly opened the car door and crossed the street. As he moved, he took a tube out of his pocket and slid his thumb into position on the top of the small object and stepped to the sidewalk, narrowly avoiding a driver who swerved out of the way at the last moment. The Frenchman clicked the small button on top of the tube. He watched as the black man walked away from the door and toward a car parked in the front of the pawnshop. The other man went to the passenger side.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," Farbeaux called in his best down-home American accent. "This town's as confusin' as Houston in a snowstorm. Can you tell me where to find the Flamingo Hotel?"

Mendenhall looked closely at the stranger. The cowboy hat was cocked at a lazy angle on the man's head and his boots were the snakeskin sort he himself yearned to buy one day.

"Yeah, it's down three blocks. You come to an overhead walkway in front of Caesars Palace, make a right there, you run right into it," he answered.

Farbeaux was close enough, but to make sure, he stepped two feet closer to the big soldier.

"Three blocks you say?"

Mendenhall opened the car door. "That's right, can't miss it, buddy."

"Well, I'll be damned; I was right there and didn't ever see any walkway." The stranger turned to face Willie and held out his hand. "Thanks a bunch, partner, wife's gonna give me hell and rub it in eight ways to Sunday."

Mendenhall hesitated a moment, then took the man's hand and shook. "No problem, buddy."

The Frenchman coupled his other hand over the black man's, lightly pushing the button on the small tube. A fine mist of hydrochlorinolphysiline filmed the top of Mendenhall 's hand. It was nontoxic and dried immediately with no odor or color. The man never knew he had been "tagged" by a substance that could be tracked by the molecule-sized plutonium abstract that had entered the pores of his skin. A Centaurus satellite would relay the information to a ground station, actually a small backpack-sized unit sitting in Farbeaux's car that Centaurus didn't know he had taken from company stores before he left L.A. The amount of chemical would only be enough to track, and the big black man would feel nothing other than the smallest of headaches. It would be four hours before the abstract wore off, and Farbeaux hoped this man didn't fully shower until he got to the Event complex or, better still, the crash site.

Farbeaux released the sergeant's hand and nodded once. "You gentlemen have a good night and thanks again."

The two men climbed into the car and never gave the well-dressed cowboy another thought.

He walked back and opened the car door and sat behind the wheel. He removed the mustache and dental wadding and tossed them and the cowboy hat into the backseat. As he did this, his secure phone started to ring, but Farbeaux ignored it. It was his secure line, so it had to be Hendrix wondering about his second team of missing men. Or maybe he had found them, Farbeaux thought. No matter, he was hot on the trail of the Event Group and the ultimate prize, a whole new technology to be sold off.

"Now, Senator Lee, make my year and tell me you have the saucer."

Jack, Niles, Lee, and Alice were in the Group's command room located just below the main conference room. Maps of southeast Arizona lay spread on the massive planning board. Alice was furiously scribbling notes and writing down directives delivered by Collins for his planning of the Discovery phase of the operation.

"Now, when do I let the rest of the Discovery team in on what we are really looking for?" Jack asked, looking from Niles to Lee.

"Hopefully never," Niles said.

"I'm not one who likes putting people's lives at stake by not giving them the full story. Their thoughts on-site could be very valuable," Jack said as he straightened up from the map table.

"What we suspect can never become general knowledge, even among our own people, Jack. The mere thought of some race of beings trying to wipe us out would run like a cancer through the Group. We have duties here that need to be done. If the animal is dead, I want all our people concentrating on their jobs, not what's coming next." Lee looked up from the maps.

Collins saw that the old man was speaking slowly, with a drooping mouth on his left side, as if part of the muscles in his mouth were failing. The white shirt was unbuttoned at the top and his silver hair was shooting off in different directions. Jack looked at Alice, who sat stock-still while taking the briefing notes. A few minutes before they'd started the breakdown and logistics needed for this mission, Jack had informed Niles, the senator, and Alice about the connection with Farbeaux, Centaurus, and Genesis. Lee had had his worst fears confirmed about another element operating inside this country. That they now knew it had to have been these people who had eliminated the Group's team back in '47 only underscored the fear that this company, Centaurus, was operating with impunity.