Maclean parked his rented Ford Escape in the driveway of an older, yellow-painted bungalow in the Seminole Heights region of the city. “This is it,” he announced.
Grant and Elena opened their doors and stepped out. Although it was only midmorning, it was already hot and humid outdoors.
The front door to the house opened. A man in his late fifties, wearing jeans and a green polo shirt, waved to them.
“Good day, sir,” said Grant in greeting. “I take it you are Mister Don Paulson.”
“In the flesh,” replied Paulson. “Please come inside, and I’ll put on a fresh pot of coffee. If that’s not to your liking, I can also make up a pitcher of iced tea.”
Grant made the introductions but fell to the wayside when Elena and Paulson started chatting about a job they had worked on together before he retired. They were met at the door by a pair of fat terriers barking excitedly at the strangers.
“Oh, hush, girls,” said Paulson to his dogs. “They’re guests.”
The home was immaculately kept. Paulson was the kind of man who liked to keep his world neat and orderly. He ushered them into his kitchen, where they sat down at his dining table while Paulson made some coffee.
“You’re looking good, Elena,” said Paulson over his shoulder.
Elena smiled. “Thanks, Don. I see you’ve kept in good shape yourself since leaving the service.”
“I never married, so the gym became my mistress. I work out twice a day and take my ladies for walks three times a day, rain or shine.”
“Sir, have you heard from Mister Jones since you last spoke with Colonel Andrews?” asked Grant.
“You can stop with that sir stuff,” said Paulson. “You’re a major, and I only got as high as a master sergeant. Please, just call me Don.”
“Sure thing, Don.”
“Now, to answer your question, I haven’t heard a word from him in close to a week.”
“Don, what makes you think that the documents he claimed to have had in his possession are of any value?” asked Maclean.
Paulson took a seat while the coffeemaker burbled and hissed. “I’ve been retired out here in Tampa for some years now, and I’ve met hundreds of people at the local UFO conventions and clubs who claimed to have seen something or have something in their possession from a crashed saucer. Trust me, after a while you get to know the people trying to make a quick buck off the more gullible participants from the ones who just might be telling you the truth. Believe me, those people are a real tiny minority within the active UFO society. I’m not saying everyone else is making stuff up, far from it. It’s just hard for most folks to separate the wheat from the chaff.”
“What convinced you Mister Jones was telling you the truth?” asked Elena.
“I first met him about a year ago at a convention in Fort Myers. He sat by himself at the back of the room and always seemed to have an eye on the doors. At first, I wasn’t sure if he just wanted to know where the exits were, or if he was expecting someone to barge in at any minute and arrest him. During a break, I walked over and introduced myself. Jones was hesitant to speak to me, so I handed him my card, wished him well, and left him alone. I was an MP for twenty years, before I lost the vision in my right eye in an accident and was quietly moved over to Gauntlet. I can tell when something is troubling a person, and Mister Jones clearly had something on his mind. I took it casually, as I didn’t want to scare him away by being too pushy.”
“How did he respond?” asked Grant.
“Skittish, but after a few more meetings he began to warm up to me. It wasn’t until a month ago, at the annual meeting of the Florida UFO and Paranormal Activities Society, that Jones offered to show me some classified documents that his grandfather had obtained when he was in the OSS during the Second World War.”
“Did he say what these documents were about?”
“He claimed he had irrefutable evidence that aliens had approached both the American and Russian governments in the 1920s with an offer to be allowed to clandestinely conduct biological research on people in exchange for certain medical and technological advances.”
Maclean raised an eyebrow. “I’m usually the one in the group who loves a good conspiracy theory, but I’ve never read anything about this in a book or on the internet. It sounds a bit farfetched to me.”
“I’ve never heard of such a meeting either,” said Elena.
Paulson raised a hand. “All I know is, out of the blue, Jones became insistent that I see his grandfather’s files before something bad happened to him.”
“Did he think he was being followed?” asked Grant.
“He seemed to think so. Four nights ago, Jones called me to say that two men with Russian accents had approached him on the street and offered to buy his entire collection, sight unseen, for one-quarter of a million dollars. Jones instantly grew suspicious and refused their offer. He said he couldn’t be sure but felt that the men had followed him home. Jones sounded very frightened. He told me he was preparing to disappear for a few days. Regrettably, I haven’t heard a peep from him since that call.”
“Have you been able to locate his house using his phone number?” asked Maclean.
“His phone was a disposable one, so there was no way I could use it to find his address,” replied Paulson.
“I take it he used cash only at these conventions?” said Grant.
Paulson grinned. “Correct. Jones wasn’t the kind of person to leave a trail behind so it could be followed.”
“So how are we going to go about finding him before the Russians do, if they haven’t already gotten to him?” said Elena.
“After I spoke with the colonel and he told me he’d be sending some people down to help, I decided to quit being a retiree and become the cop I used to be,” explained Paulson. “First, I went down to the last couple of hotels where the conventions were held and spoke with their respective heads of security. I was able to obtain some footage of Jones, which I then forwarded to a close friend of mine in the FBI, who discreetly ran Jones’ face through their facial recognition software.”
“And?” said Maclean.
Paulson flipped open a laptop sitting on the table. An image of a man appeared. “I give to you, Mister Damian Wilks of Fort Meade, Florida.”
Grant examined the picture. The man looked to be in his forties. He was slender to the point of being almost anorexic. He had sad-looking brown eyes and a few wisps of hair on his head.
“Is Fort Meade far from here?” asked Maclean.
“Nah, from my house to the address listed for Mister Wilks, I’d say no more than an hour and a bit,” responded Paulson.
“Have you tried calling him?” asked Elena.
“Yes. His home and cell just ring, and then go to voicemail,” he replied.
“What about the local sheriff, have you asked them to give a courtesy call to Wilks’ home?” said Grant.
“I sure did, but they said the home is locked up with no signs of anyone having tried to force their way in,” replied Paulson.
“There’s no point in sitting here anymore,” said Grant. “I say we all load up in the SUV and head up there for a quick look around. Perhaps some of his neighbors saw or heard something?”
“Are you up for one last adventure, Don?” teased Elena.
“Try keeping me out of it,” he said. “It’s been far too quiet in my life for years. Just let me grab something from my gun cabinet, and I’ll be good to go.”
“Expecting company?”
“I’ve always said that it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
Fort Meade, they soon discovered, was a sleepy old town surrounded by hills and swampland. The address they had led them to a well-kept trailer park. Maclean pulled up next to a brown-and-white trailer and switched off the engine.
Everyone got out of the SUV and looked around. Aside from four young Hispanic kids playing in a yard across the road, the trailer park was quiet.
Paulson walked up to the side door and rang the doorbell. As expected, no one answered the door. “I’m gonna take a look around,” he announced.
“I’ll come with you,” said Maclean. “You know what they always say, two pairs of eyes are better than one.”
“Elena, look,” said Grant when a thirtyish Hispanic woman in shorts and a T-shirt walked out of her trailer and shooed her children back inside.
“Excuse me, may I have a word with you?” said Elena in Spanish.
The woman turned to leave.
“Ma’am, I’m not with the police, nor the INS,” announced Elena, walking toward her. “I’d just like to ask you a couple of questions?”
“Who are you people, if you’re not cops?” asked the woman.
“We’re friends of Mister Wilks,” said Elena, offering her hand in greeting. “Señora?”
“Maria Vega,” said the woman, shaking Elena’s hand.
“Pleased to meet you, Maria. My name is Elena Leon.”
Vega’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t look like the kind of people Mister Wilks would hang around with.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because he rarely had visitors, and those who did come around weren’t so well dressed, or as fit looking. And I don’t ever remember seeing a woman come around.”
Elena dug out her membership card with the UFO Society in Tampa and showed it to Vega. “We may not have been close friends with Mister Wilks, but his sudden disappearance has prompted us to see if he’s okay. Do you know if anyone else has been around looking for Damian?”
Vega nodded. “Two men in dark suits were here just the other day. They took a long look around Mister Wilks’ trailer, and then left.”
“And that’s it?”
“Except for the sheriff, but I haven’t seen her in over three days.”
Elena stepped close. “Maria, my friends and I are worried that something bad may have happened to Damian. Do you have any idea where he may have gone?”
Vega looked away.
“Maria, it’s important that we find him before anyone else does. You don’t want him to get hurt, do you?”
“You’re not really from some flying saucer club, are you?”
“No, but we’re not with the police either. Please, Maria, we desperately need your help.”
“The swamp. Mister Wilks’ father had a cabin about three miles south from here on the Peace River. If you want to find him, I’d look there.”
Elena smiled. “Thanks, Maria, you’ve been most helpful.”
“I’d hurry if I were you. The men I saw looking around his trailer gave me the creeps. They looked like they meant business.”
Elena nodded, walked back to her colleagues, and passed on what she had learned.
“I’ll call the sheriff and get directions to Wilks’ cabin,” said Paulson, reaching for his phone.
“Let’s just hope we can reach it by road,” said Grant. “If not, we’re going to have to rent a boat.”
“That shouldn’t be too bad,” said Maclean.
“Unless you fall overboard,” said Elena. “They have alligators in the swamps around here the size of our SUV.”
Maclean chortled. “That’s nothing. We’ve got saltwater crocs that’d put your alligators to shame. Our crocs aren’t afraid of anything.”
“Well, you can both relax; the sheriff says there’s a dirt road just off the highway, which leads to the cabin,” explained Paulson.
“Okay, let’s mount up and get a move on,” said Grant. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we can wrap this assignment up.”