Area 51 (15 page)

"What do you want it to do when it catches up?"

The Aurora was purely a reconnaissance plane. Mounting any sort of weapon system, even missiles, would have destroyed its aerodynamic form and reduced its speed drastically.

"I want to find out where this bogey comes from," Gullick said. "Then I can send other people to take care of the problem."

Both indicators were now over the eastern beginning of the Pacific Ocean.

The RSO's voice hissed in Gullick's ear. "Cube Six, this is Aurora. Request you lay on some fuel for us on the return flight. We will be past the point of no return in fifteen minutes. Over."

"This is Cube Six. Roger. We're scrambling some tankers for you. Keep on its tail. Out." Gullick pointed at Quinn, who was also monitoring the radio.

"I'll take care of it, sir," Quinn said.

The Mexican coastline was now long gone. Gullick knew that the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Central and South America--other than Canal traffic--was a very desolate place. They were still heading almost due south.

"We're close," the pilot announced. "It's about two hundred miles ahead of us. I'm throttling back to ease up on it."

Gullick watched the telemetry. It reminded him of being ground support when he was a test pilot. Reading the same gauges that the pilot overhead did, but not having hands on the controls. As the plane passed through Mach 2.5 the RSO

extended the surveillance pod and activated his low-level light television (LLLTV) camera. Gullick immediately had the image relayed through a satellite onto the screen in front of him. The LLLTV was no ordinary television. The camera enhanced both the light and image, giving it the ability to display an image at night, while at the same time carrying a magnification of over one hundred. The RSO began scanning ahead, using the information fed to him from the satellites above to pinpoint the bogey.

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"Eighty miles," the pilot announced.

"Sixty."

"I've got it!" the RSO yelled.

In the small television screen Gullick could see a small dot. As if on cue the dot suddenly jerked to the right, a splash of water shot up, and it was gone.

Gullick leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, his forehead furrowed in pain.

"Cube Six, this is Aurora. Bogey is down. I say again.

Bogey is down. Transmitting grid location."

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10

THE CUBE, AREA 51

T-114 HOURS

General Gullick poured himself a cup of coffee, then took his chair at the head of the conference table. He took a pair of painkiller pills out of his pocket and swallowed them, washing them down with a swig of scalding coffee.

Slowly the reports started coming back.

"Aurora is returning," Major Quinn reported. "ETA in twenty-two minutes. We have the exact location where the bogey went down into the ocean."

Gullick looked at the inner circle of Majic-12, who were in the room. Each man knew his area of responsibility, and as the orders were issued, each took the appropriate action. "Admiral Coakley, the bogey is in your area of operations now. I want whatever you have floating closest to the spot on top of it ASAP! I want you to be ready to go down and recover that thing.

"Mr. Davis, I want the information from Aurora downloaded to Major Quinn and I want to know what that thing is."

"Already working on the digital relay," Davis replied.

"I'll have the hard copy from the pod as soon as it touches down."

Gullick was mentally ticking off all that had happened,

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but it was very hard for him to think clearly. "What's the status at the crash site? '

Quinn was ready, the earplug in his right ear giving him a live feed from the man in charge on the ground in Nebraska. "Fire is out. Recovery team is en route and will be on site in twenty minutes. Those present on the scene from Nightscape are cleaning up the pieces and providing security. Still no response from locals. I think we'll make it clear."

Gullick nodded. If they got the remains of the helicopter out of there before daylight without being spotted, the Nightscape mission would be a success. The bogey was a whole different question. One he hoped he could answer shortly.

"What about the survivors of the helicopter crash? They here yet?" General Gullick asked.

Quinn checked his computer. 'The pilot is in the clinic in Vegas being worked on. Major Prague was killed in the crash. The third man, a Captain Mike Turcotte, was slightly injured but is here, sir."

"Send him in."

A quarter mile up a bedraggled and hurting Turcotte had been waiting for a half hour now. His Gore-Tex jacket was partly melted and he was black from soot and dirt. The bandage he had hurriedly put on his arm in Nebraska was soaked with blood, but he thought the bleeding was stopped. He wasn't ready to peel the bandage off to check until he was someplace where he could get proper medical care.

The helicopter had swung by the airstrip outside, dropping him off before continuing on with the pilot to Las Vegas, where the program maintained its medical clinic close by the hospital facilities at Nellis Air Force Base.

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Turcotte had been met by two security men who had hustled him inside the hangar.

The interior doors were shut, but there was a bouncer in the portion next to the elevator doors. Turcotte studied the craft, recognizing it as the sister of the one that had flown by earlier in Nebraska. For all he knew it could be the same one. It didn't take a genius to put together the cattle mutilations, the false landing signature lasered into the cornfield, and these craft to recognize that there was a cover-up operation of major proportion being operated here.

Turcotte just didn't understand how the pieces fit together. The mission he had just been on in Nebraska seemed very high risk and he could see no clear-cut purpose to it. Unless it was to draw attention away from this site, but that didn't quite click.

One thing was for certain, Turcotte knew. He certainly had something to report on now. It would be someone else's job to put the pieces together. He was glad to have gotten out with his ass in one piece. He looked down at his right hand.

The fingers were shaking. Killing Prague, although not the first time he had killed, weighed heavily on him. He turned his hand over and stared at the scar tissue there for a little while.

With great effort Turcotte brought his mind back to his present situation. He wasn't in the clear yet. He was confident that Prague's burned body would raise no questions.

He knew that the other helicopter aircrews would return later this morning or maybe even the following morning once they had finished sterilizing the crash site in Nebraska. And as soon as they were debriefed, the detection of the two civilians by the other AH-6 crew would surface.

Then there would be questions asked that he couldn't adequately answer. The clock on his career was already ticking, but looking at the alien craft told Turcotte that there were larger issues than his pension involved here. He also

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knew that the reaction of those in charge when they found out he had let the two civilians go might be more than a letter of reprimand in his official files.

These people were playing hardball, and by killing Prague he had entered their playing field. He just hoped he could get out of here and that then Duncan would cover his butt.

The elevator doors slid open, and the guard inside gestured for him to come in.

Turcotte walked in and the floor seemed to fall out from under him as they hurtled down.

The doors opened again, and Turcotte stepped out into the control room of the Cube. He looked about but the guards hustled him through the room to a corridor in the back. He entered a conference room where the lights were turned down low.

There were several people sitting in shadows near the end of the table. Turcotte walked up to the ranking general.

Turcotte made no attempt to salute; his arm wouldn't allow it. "Captain Turcotte reporting, sir." He noted the nameplate on the man's chest--Gullick.

Gullick saluted smartly. "What happened?"

That voice--the same one that had been giving the orders to Prague over the radio--Turcotte remembered now where he had heard it before: the board of inquiry that had investigated what had happened in Germany. That voice had been one of six that had questioned him via speakerphone in the secure holding area in Berlin.

Turcotte took a deep breath and cleared his mind of every thing but the story he now had to tell. There would be time later to deal with the other issues.

Turcotte proceeded to describe the events of the previous night, leaving out the important facts about intercepting the truck with the two civilians and killing Prague, of course. Gullick was most interested in the attack by the small sphere, but there was nothing Turcotte could really

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say about that as he had not been looking out the front when it had hit the helicopter.

Gullick listened to his account, then pointed back at the elevator doors.

"They'll take you in to the clinic in the morning. You're dismissed."

So much for thank you, Turcotte thought as he left the room. Gullick had been the most outspoken in his praise of Turcotte's actions in Germany, praise that had confused and sickened Turcotte. But obviously, the events of the previous evening were not in the same league. Turcotte had no doubt that if he had killed the two civilians and presented their bodies like trophies, he would have received a hearty slap on the back.

The elevator doors closed off the control room to Turcotte, and he began his return trip to the surface. He should be able to get clear now.

General Gullick waited until the elevator doors had closed behind the Army captain. Then he returned his attention to Major Quinn. "That was no help. I want all the other personnel completely debriefed when they return from the MSS.

Have you analyzed the data from Aurora?"

"Yes, sir. We've got several good shots of the bogey."

"Put one on the screen," General Gullick ordered.

A small glowing ball appeared on Gullick's computer screen.

"Scale?" Gullick asked.

Around the edges of the screen rulers appeared. "It's three feet in diameter, sir," Quinn said.

"Propulsion system?"

"Unknown."

"Flight dynamics?"

"Unknown."

"Spectral analysis?"

"The composition of its skin was resistant to all attempts to--

"Unknown, then." Gullick slapped his hand on the tabletop, glaring at the picture as if he could penetrate it with his eyes. "What the hell do we know about it?"

"Uh . . ." Quinn paused and took a deep breath. "Well, sir, we've got it in our records."

"What?"

In response Quinn split the screen, the photo taken by Aurora of the bogey sliding to the left and an identical object appearing on the right in grainy black and white.

"Talk to me, Quinn," Gullick growled. "Talk to me."

"The photo on the right was"--Quinn paused again and cleared his throat with a nervous cough--"the photo on the right was taken by a gun camera in a P-47

Thunderbolt on February twenty-third, 1945, over the Rhine River in Germany."

There was a nervous rustle from the other men in the inner circle of Majic-12

who were at the table.

"A foo fighter," Gullick said.

"Yes, sir."

"What's a foo fighter?" Kennedy asked.

Gullick remained silent, digesting the revelation. Quinn looked at the information he had dredged up on his computer screen and continued for the others in the room who didn't know their aviation history. "The object on the right was called a 'foo fighter.' There were numerous sightings of these objects made by aircrews during World War II. Because they were initially suspected to be Japanese and German secret weapons, all information concerning them was classified.

"The foo fighter reports started in late 1944. They were described as metallic spheres or balls of light, about three feet in diameter. Since the bomber aircrews that reported them were usually veterans and gun cameras on board escort fighters occasionally recorded them also, giving factual support to those accounts, the reports were taken seriously."

Quinn was in his element. Before being assigned to the project he had worked in Project Blue Book, the Air Force's classified study group on UFOs--reports of un identified craft other than the ones kept at Area 51. Blue Book has also been a smokescreen for the Area 51 project and a purveyor of disinformation to mislead serious researchers. The foo fighters were in the Blue Book files and ost aviators had heard of them.

"The lid could not be kept on such a widespread occurrence, and reports of foo fighters did leak out to the general press, and they are even mentioned in some modern books about UFOs. What didn't leak out, though, is that we lost twelve aircraft to the foo fighters. Every time one of our fighters or bombers would try to get close to one or fire on them--they were bogies, after all--the foo fighters would turn and ram the attacker, leaving our aircraft the worse for the encounter. Just like what happened to Nightscape Six. Because of these encounters, classified standing orders were issued by Army Air Corps high command to leave the foo fighters alone. Apparently that worked, because there were no further reports of attacks.

"After the war, when intelligence went through Japanese and German records, it was discovered that they, too, had run into foo fighters and experienced the same results. We know they weren't behind them from what we found. In fact, the records showed they thought the spheres were our secret weapons.

"Of particular interest is an incident that is still classified Q, level five." Quinn hesitated, but Gullick gestured for him to go on and tell the others. "On August sixth, 1945, when the Enola Gay flew the first atomic mission toward Hiroshima, it was accompanied the entire way by three foo fighters. The mission was almost scrapped when the spheres appeared, but the commander on the ground at the departure airfield at Tinian decided to continue it.

There was no hostile action by the foo fighters and the situation was repeated several days later during the mission to Nagasaki."