Saucer by Stephen Coonts Read Free Book Online Page B

there somewhere and he hadn’t seen it.
    He went outside, began exploring with the flashlight.
    Water!
    Oh, man. Water is everywhere. Except here in the desert, of course. Maybe they ran out of fuel over the desert…
    But it might not have been desert then. Maybe the crew was out exploring and something happened to them. Something ate them, or they got sick… Or humans attacked them.
    He found it. He found a tiny hairline crack and used his pocket knife to pry on it. Finally it opened. A cover. Yes.
    Inside the cover was a cap, a bit like a fuel cap on a car. This must be where the water goes in.
    He had just closed the cover when a flashlight beam hit him. He turned toward it and heard a male voice say,
    “Well, hello friend. Didn’t expect you.” The words were English, the voice definitely American.
    The flashlight played over the skin of the ship. Did he have the cover closed before the flashlight beam hit him? He decided he did.
    The voice reflected its owner’s amazement. “By all that’s holy! It is a flying saucer!”
    “Or a good mock-up.” That was an American voice too, a woman’s.

C HAPTER F OUR
    “Who are you people?” Rip asked and pointed his own flashlight toward the voices. He saw a khaki uniform and a gray-green flight suit.
    “U.S. Air Force. And just who are you?” A male voice with a flat Texas twang to it.
    “Name’s Rip Cantrell.”
    “Did you fly this thing here?”
    “Yeah, sure. I just park it under this tarp when we need to work on it. Don’t want it to get rained on.”
    “Who you work for, smart-ass?”
    “Wellstar Petroleum. We’re seismic surveyors.”
    “Uh-huh.” They were standing just above him, near the edge of the rock ledge, looking under the flap of the tarp at the saucer. The man was in his thirties, maybe, and the woman was… well, with just the flashlight, it was hard to tell. Mid twenties. Late twenties, perhaps. Pretty, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a flight suit and a flight jacket.
    “You people got names?” Rip asked.
    “I’m Major Stiborek and this is Captain Pine.” He gestured toward the woman.
    “Not anymore,” the woman said. “Now it’s just plain ol’ Charley Pine. I got out of the Air Force two weeks ago.”
    “What are you doing hanging around with these flyboys?”
    “Now I’m a civil servant. Same job.”
    “Get acquainted later,” the major snarled at her.
    “Easy, buddy,” Rip said. “Don’t be so touchy.”
    “We didn’t expect to find Americans here,” Charley remarked.
    “Who did you expect to find?”
    She didn’t answer. The major merely played his flashlight back and forth across the saucer.
    “Unbelievable,” he muttered to the woman, so softly that Rip almost missed it.
    Rip cleared his throat. “So,” he said as matter-of-factly as he could, “did your camel break down near here, or are you just scoping out desert real estate?”
    “Something like that.”
    “Or are you out snooping around?”
    The major was still running his flashlight back and forth over the saucer. After a moment or two he asked, “Did your survey crew uncover this thing?”
    Rip flipped off his flashlight and stuck it in his hip pocket. “Tell you what, Tex,” he said. “This isn’t Uncle Sam’s business. Why don’t you folks just buzz off into the wild black yonder?”
    “Sorry,” the woman said. She actually did sound sorry. “This is government business.”
    “Bullshit,” Rip shot back, feeling his face flush. He hated being talked down to. “We’re smack in the middle of the Sahara Desert. You people get back on your camels and fork ’em out of here.”
    “There’s six of our people down at the camp, kid,” the major said brusquely. “You have two options. You can walk down like a gentleman to join your friends, or I can take you down there by the scruff of the neck.”
    Rip took two steps toward the ledge. The major’s ankles were within range, so he grabbed them and pulled. The major