Area 51 (24 page)

Turcotte took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled as she walked away.

"We walked right in the front fucking door. The place is packed, people eating dinner and drinking. Must have been twenty, twenty-five people in there. But we spot our suspects right away and guess what? There's only two of these bozos seated in a booth, drinking. So Rolf looked at me like, hey where's number three? So again, like how the fuck do I know? Probably taking a piss. I started to the bar to order a brew, scanning the room as I went, but Rolf hesitated.

"I can't blame him too much. Shit, we had silenced submachine guns under our coats and we were there to kill."

Turcotte gave Kelly a twisted grin. "Contrary to popular fiction and what they show on the movies, we weren't stone cold killers. We were good at our job, but we were also scared. Most people are in that situation. If you aren't, you're crazy--and I have met some of those crazies. Anyway, one of the IRA guys in the booth he looks at Rolf standing there with his thumb up his ass and you could just tell that the Irish guy knew who we were. Rolf wasn't exactly the greatest actor in the world, and I'm sure I wasn't giving off the best vibes either.

"So the guy reached under his coat, and Rolf and I hosed the two of them down lickety-split. We each fired half a magazine--fifteen rounds each--and there was nothing left' in that booth but chewed-up meat. And the most amazing thing was that after the first shot there wasn't a single sound other than the sound of our brass falling to the floor. Everyone in the place just fucking froze and looked at us, wondering who was next. Then someone had to scream, and everything went to hell."

Turcotte's eyes had taken on a distant look as he went back into that room. "The smart ones just hit the deck.

That's what Rolf and I yelled at them in German to do after the scream. But about half the people rushed for the doors, and that's when we spotted the third guy. He was in the middle of a group of four people, running for it. He might have been taking a leak. He might have been around the corner at the bar. I don't know. But there he was."

Turcotte shook his head. "And Rolf--fucking Rolf—he just fired them all up. I don't know what short-circuited in his head. Hell, the third guy couldn't have gone anywhere.

Surveillance had to have been sitting on top of his car outside by now and could have taken him out once they got an open shot outside the Gasthaus. But Rolf just lost it."

Turcotte's voice briefly broke.

"The only good thing was he just had fifteen rounds in the mag. He got the IRA guy, but he also hit some civilians.

I didn't know how many at the time. There was just this pile of bodies; at the very least the three that had been around the IRA man, plus some others who'd been in the line of fire. Rolf was even flipping his taped-together magazines, putting a fresh one in when I grabbed the gun out of his hand." Turcotte pulled out his right hand and put it in front of Kelly's face. The skin on his palm was knotted with scar tissue. "You can still see where the suppressor on the barrel of Rolfs sub burned my hand. At the time I didn't feel a thing, I was so freaked.

"So I took his weapon and grabbed him by the collar and made for the door. One thing for sure--people really got the hell out of our way now. Surveillance had a car waiting for us and I threw Rolf in and we split."

Turcotte took a drink of coffee. "I found out later that night that Rolf had killed four civilians, including a pregnant eighteen-year-old girl, and wounded three. The news was playing it up like an internal IRA hit and the whole country was in an uproar to catch the killers. But they couldn't catch the killers, could they? Because the country was the killers.

"For a while I even thought they might give Rolf and me up as sacrificial lambs, but then common sense kicked in. I was stupid for even thinking that. If they gave us up, the whole counterterrorist operation would be out in the open and those in power certainly didn't want that. Might lose a few votes at the polling booth. So you know what they

did?" Turcotte looked at Kelly with red-rimmed eyes.

Kelly slowly shook her head.

"They held an inquest, of course. That's proper form in the military. As a matter of fact the head man I met down in the Cube, General Gullick, he was one of those appointed to look into the whole thing. For security reasons we never saw those who questioned us, nor did we know their names. They talked to us and then talked to each other, and guess what they decided? They gave us fucking medals. Yeah, Rolf and me. Ain't that great? A medal for killing a pregnant woman."

"You didn't kill her," Kelly quietly remarked.

"Does it matter? I was part of it. I could have told Rolf to wait. I could have done a lot of things."

"He was the commander. It was his responsibility," Kelly argued, remembering what her father had told her about the army and covert operations.

"Yeah. I know. I was just following orders, right?"

Kelly had no answer for that.

"So that's how my career in the regular army and Special Forces ended. I went to my American commander and told him where he could shove his medal, and they had me on the next thing smoking back to the States. But I had to stop in D.C. first. To meet someone." He proceeded to tell her about meeting Dr.

Duncan, her orders to him, and the phone line out of commission.

"Why were you chosen?"

"Right person, right time," Turcotte said with a shrug.

"There aren't that many high-speed dudes like me who have top-level clearances and can fire a gun."

Kelly shook her head. "You were chosen because you told them to shove the medal. It showed somebody, someplace, that you had integrity. That's even rarer than a top-level security clearance." Kelly reached across the table and squeezed his hand, feeling the rough flesh in the palm.

"You got screwed, Turcotte."

"No." Turcotte shook his head. "I screwed myself the minute I started playing God with a gun. I thought I was in control, but I was just a pawn, and they used me up like one. And now you know why I turned on my commander out there in Nebraska and killed him and why I rescued Von Seeckt and I don't give a shit whether you believe me or not. Because it's between me and all these high-speed assholes who pull strings and cause people to die. Fuck me once, shame on me--fuck me twice, I fuck back."

18

THE CUBE, AREA 51

T-96 HOURS

"Give me a status," Gullick ordered.

"Bouncer Three is ready for flight," Quinn reported.

"Bouncer Eight is also prepped and ready. Aurora is on standby status. Our link to Cheyenne Mountain is live and secure. Anything moves, we'll be able to track it, sir."

"General Brown?" Gullick asked.

The Air Force deputy chief of staff frowned. His conversation with his boss in Washington had been anything but fun. "I talked to the chief of staff and he okayed the alerts, but he was not happy about it."

"I don't care if he was happy or not," Gullick said. "I just care that the mission is a go."

Brown looked down at his own computer screen. "We've got every base alerted and planes on standby for pursuit.

The primary and alternate kill zones are a go."

"Admiral Coakley?"

"The carrier Abraham Lincoln is steaming toward the sight where the foo fighter went down. It's got planes on alert."

"We're all set, then," Gullick said. "Let's roll."

The hangar doors slowly slid open. Inside Bouncer Three, Major Paul Terrent checked the control panel, which was a mixture of the original fixtures and added-on human technology, including a satellite communications link with General Gullick in the Cube.

"All set," he announced.

"I don't like being the bait," his copilot, Captain Kevin Scheuler, remarked.

They were both reclined in depressions in the floor of the disk. The cockpit was an oval, twelve feet in diameter. They could see out in all directions, the inner walls displaying what was outside of them as if the walls themselves were not there--another piece of technology they could use but still didn't understand.

The effect, while useful, was extremely disorienting, and perhaps the second greatest hurdle Bouncer test pilots had to overcome. Most particularly, the view straight down when the craft was at altitude, as if the pilot were floating in the air, was quite a shock to the system until one got used to it. For this night's mission both men were wearing night vision goggles on their flight helmets and the interior of the hangar was lit in red lights, meaning there was little difference in illumination for them between there and the outside night sky.

However, the greatest hurdle to flying the machine was the physical limitations of the pilots. The Bouncer was capable of maneuvers that the pilot's physiology could not handle. In the early days of the program there had been blackouts, broken bones, and various other injuries, including one fatal crash--the disk staying intact, the unconscious pilots inside being turned into crushed protoplasm on impact with the earth. The disk had been recovered, cleaned out, and was still capable of flight. The two pilots had been buried with honors; their widows told they had died flying an experimental aircraft and given their posthumous medals at the funeral.

There was machinery surrounding the depressions that the scientists had yet to figure out. The project's scientists believed that there was a built-in way for the pilot depressions/seats to be shielded from the effect of G-forces, but they had yet to discover it. It was as if a child who was capable of riding a tricycle were allowed into a car. He might understand what the steering wheel did, but he wouldn't understand what the small opening on the steering wheel column was for, especially if the child had not been given the keys.

The best that they had been able to come up with was allowing the test pilots enough flight time so that they understood their own limitations and did not push the machine past what they could handle. Beyond that, the shoulder and waist harnesses bolted around the depressions would have to do.

"There's nothing that can catch us," Major Terrent said.

"Nothing human," Scheuler noted. "But if this foo fighter thing was made by the same people who made this, or people like the people who made this, then--

"Then nothing," Terrent cut in. "This ship is at least ten thousand years old.

The eggheads know that, at least. Whoever left it behind has been long gone. And they probably weren't people."

"Then why are we flying this mission, trying to bait this foo fighter? Who made it?" Scheuler asked.

"Because General Gullick ordered it," Terrent said. He looked at Scheuler.

"You have any further questions, I suggest you talk to him."

Scheuler shook his head. "No, thanks."

Terrent pressed a small red button added on top of the Y-shaped yoke in front of him, keying the SATCOM radio.

"Cube Six, this is Bouncer Three. All systems ready. Over."

Gullick's deep voice answered. "This is Cube Six. Go. Out."

The airstrip outside was dark. Terrent pulled up on a lever to his side with his left hand and the disk lifted. The control system was simplicity itself. Pull up on the lever and the disk went up. Let go of it and the lever returned to center and the disk stayed at that altitude. Push down on it and the disk descended.

Terrent pushed the yoke forward with his right hand and they moved forward. The yoke worked in the same manner as the altitude lever. Letting go brought the disk to a halt.

Constant pressure equaled constant speed in whichever direction the yoke was pushed.

Scheuler was looking at the navigation display--a human device tied in to a satellite positioning system. A computer display with a black rectangular outline to separate it from the surrounding view showed their present position as a small red glowing dot with state borders shown in light green lines. It was the easiest way to orient the pilots as to their location.

"Let's roll," Terrent said. He pressed forward and they were out of the hangar.

Behind them, still in the hangar, Bouncer Eight rose to a hover and waited. On the airstrip Aurora stood at the end, engines on, prepared for flight. On airstrips across the United States and down into Panama, and on board the Abraham Lincoln at sea, pilots sat in their cockpits and waited--for what, they had not been told. But they knew whatever it was, this was no game. The planes'

wings had live missiles slung underneath and the Galling guns were loaded with bullets.

All clear," Quinn said, a rather unnecessary statement since everyone in the room could see the small red dot indicating Bouncer Three moving northwest out of the state. The computer had already screened out all commercial aircraft flights.

"Contact!" Quinn announced. A small green dot had suddenly appeared on the screen, well behind Bouncer Three. "Same reading as the first one!"

"Three, this is Six," Gullick spoke into his headset.

"Head for Checkpoint Alpha. Over."

On board Bouncer Three, Major Terrent slowly pressed the yoke to the right and the disk began a long curve over southern Idaho, turning toward the Great Salt Lake. What was different about the turn from one made by an ordinary aircraft was the fact that there was no banking. The disk simply changed directions, staying flat and level. The bodies of the two men inside strained against their restraining harnesses during the turn, then settled back in the depressions.

"Give me a reading," Terrent said.

"The bogey's about three hundred miles behind us," Captain Scheuler responded.

He was watching the same information on his small screen that the people in the Cube had displayed on their large one.

"Is it turning with us?" Terrent asked.

"Not yet."

"Get Aurora in the air," Gullick ordered. "Alert Kill Zone Alpha reaction forces and get them up too. Have you fed coordinates of the bogey to Teal Amber?"

Quinn was working quickly. "Yes, sir."

At Hill Air Force Base, just outside Salt Lake City, two F-16 Fighting Falcons roared down the runway and up into the night sky. As soon as they had reached sufficient altitude, they turned west, over the flat surface of the lake, heading for the desolate land on the far side.