Groom Lake (14 page)

Being doubted furthered Desmond’s interest in the document, and Blake. “I think we can help each other, Blake. If you’re interested, you should come to Area 51 with me. It’ll give us time to talk and get to know each other.”

Blake thought of the professor’s warning to stay away from Area 51. “I don’t know about that.”

“Both of you can come, have some fun in Vegas.”

“I’m in,” Trevor proclaimed.

Blake’s enthusiast-type personality found the offer to be expertly guided to Area 51 tempting. His psychological make-up predisposed him to thrills and adventures. Now the more he heard about the base, the greater was his need to see it. “There must be people who would get upset knowing I have this document. I wouldn’t want to draw attention to myself.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Desmond said. “We’ll be on public land. The worst thing that can happen is we don’t see anything. I’ve been there countless times, and I’m still here.”

“Let’s do it, Blake,” Trevor said. He had a movie script brewing in his head and everything rolling off Desmond’s tongue was prime material. “Think about it: you can conduct research, AND be in Vegas. No way in hell we’re not making this trip.”

A wrinkly faced old man—a
desert rat
some called him—who owned two aging roadside gas pumps in front of his house/service station, left his air conditioned confines to service an infrequent patron. “This is a full service station, partner,” the codger insisted. “Let me pump the gas for you.”

Val Vaden thought the establishment fell short of full service; the window-washing bucket was dry and the air hose had no nozzle. “I’ll be done in a second,” he said, afraid that squeezing the pump might be enough exertion to do the old man in on such a sweltering day.

“You heading to the Test Site again?”

“What makes you think I’ve been there before?”

“You stopped here a ways back. My grandson was working, but I saw you and your truck, and that trailer, from the window.”

“That doesn’t mean I’ve been to the Test Site.”

Laughing, “Where else would you go on this Godforsaken road?” The man felt obligated to let Val know he wasn’t some dumb desert hermit. “Been pumping gas here since 1951. Opened after the government exploded the first nuke at the Test Site. Called it Able. A one kiloton mother the Air Force dropped over Frenchman Flat.”

“That’s a long time to be living out here. It’s good to see the radiation hasn’t hurt you.”

“They say it’s safe around these parts.” The thought of death triggered distant memories. The tattered senior stared at a lonesome highway in front of his property. “They used to call Highway 95 the Widow Maker. Sheriff would shut down southbound traffic in the morning so workers could drive from Vegas using both lanes—speed up the commute. After work it’d be the same thing the other way. Except lots of them stopped here first. That boarded up building next to my house used to be a bar I owned. People filled their cars with gas and their bellies with booze,” he paused, recalling specific faces. “Then they raced back to Vegas. That’s how the road got the name Widow Maker. Government didn’t like their nuclear specialists getting in car accidents. They built more lanes and started driving people here on buses.”

“Sad story.”

“There’s plenty of those around here.” The old man walked to Val’s pickup and tried peering through tinted windows on its shell. “So what kind of work you doing?”

“That’s classified.”

“Never stopped people from talking in the past. Especially after a few drinks.”

Val suddenly grew interested in this man’s life experiences. “Ever hear anything about Area 51?”

“You mean that place where they keep the aliens?” The old man grinned from one elephant-sized ear to the other.

“That’s the place.”

The man lost his grin, “I hear it’s not good to ask questions about that place,” and walked to the truck’s rear. The attached trailer towed a four wheel All Terrain Vehicle with knobby tires that could plow through sand. He stared, perplexed, “Where’s the gas cap on this son of a bitch?”

“It’s electric.”

“Electric? How you going to charge it out in the desert?”

“The sun.”

“Damn if we don’t have plenty of that.” But the man still didn’t understand. “Take a gander on my roof up there. See them solar panels? On the brightest of days they don’t do squat.”

“The technology is more advanced than what you’ve got.”

The man agreed, feeling no desire to ask more questions since he didn’t understand his aging solar equipment. He continued looking at the ATV. “That’s some fancy paint job you’ve got on there,” he said, referring to black circles with an internal sparkle, like a hologram, on the fenders. “I hope my tax money didn’t pay extra for that.”

Val figured at most, this man’s tax dollars might have paid for the seat. The black circles were photovoltaic cells that absorbed enough solar energy in 10-minutes to power the ATV’s flywheel battery for over an hour at full thrust.

Paying the old man, Val said goodbye.

“You didn’t give me a chance to tell you about Area 51.”

“I thought you didn’t have anything to say.”

“I’ll tell you this: if you’re outside late at night, keep your eyes on the sky. You might not hear anything, but sometimes you’ll see things.”

• • •

Val turned his truck and trailer off Highway 95 onto a two lane road—Mercury Highway—the only public access point to the Nevada Test Site, a desert region that served as the Department of Energy’s (DOE) 1,350-square-mile outdoor laboratory. America’s nuclear proving grounds. Unpopulated regions removed from public domain surrounded the region, creating a total blanket of 5,400-square-miles under government control that included the Test Site’s eastern neighbor, Area 51.

As part of his training for Operation Patriot, Val had taken a public tour of the Test Site. The DOE offered a 300-mile round trip bus tour from its Las Vegas office. The tour included a stop at the Test Site’s main command center where Val had seen a large wall map of the region. They did not allow note taking, so he memorized the location of a remote guard shack and access road leading to Groom Lake. The wall map also indicated a small research camp near Groom Lake, outside the Test Site boundaries. When Val asked the purpose, the DOE tour guide emphatically stated that the area belonged to the Air Force and he knew nothing about it.
Funny
, Val thought at the time,
whenever the Air Force was asked about the land, they said it belonged to the DOE
.

The Test Site entrance looked like a border crossing. A large carport covered a road that widened to multiple lanes in both directions. Each lane had a booth manned by armed guards in desert fatigues who inspected every vehicle. Val eased to a stop at one of the booths and produced a license from his wallet. “My name is Charles Eckert. I’m a researcher from San Diego. I’m conducting water table experiments at Area 3.”

Unlike a heedless convenience store clerk fearful of insulting customers by scrutinizing their identification, the guard held the license next to Val’s face and compared the two. After several agonizing seconds he turned the license at an angle and wiggled it, checking for a hologram of the state seal. “I’ll run you through the computer.”

Scientists routinely studied groundwater movement at the Test Site, focusing on tritium, a radioactive element in the soil. Tritium spread from nuclear detonation sites approximately one-inch per year and had a 10,000-year half-life. Because of the Test Site’s massive size, the spreading radiation posed no threat to Nevada’s populated regions, nor any of the eleven operating wells that comprised the Test Site’s water system. However, studies continued, verifying that unknown factors were not accelerating or altering the water table expansion.

The guard handed Val a badge and papers to sign, disclaimers and notification of the Test Site’s radioactive nature, then asked, “Why does someone from San Diego care about water table movement in Nevada?”

The guard had no business discussing Test Site research, but Val didn’t want trouble. “Contingency planning,” he said. “The Navy is updating a lot of ships to nuclear power and a couple are stationed in San Diego. Someone at the city wants independent data documenting potential damage if there’s ever a leak.” Fortunately that satisfied the guard’s curiosity because Val knew little about water tables other than some key discussion points; Grason had arranged his cover.

Once Val drove through the checkpoint he was in Mercury, Nevada, a government-owned town with everything from a motel and movie theater to fire station and post office. Mercury Highway wound through the small town that looked more like a military base, with barracks and Quonset huts spread about cinder block buildings.

In 1992, a moratorium on nuclear testing reduced the number of employees at the Test Site from 8,000 to 2,400. Remaining employees at the Test Site worked in a stand-down mode: maintaining equipment, monitoring radiation and managing toxic waste disposal sites. Some worked above ground, others below. A tunnel system, 25-feet in diameter, sprawled underneath parts of the Test Site.

Before continuing, Val double-checked his map. For reference purposes the land was segregated into a hodgepodge of numbered regions, called areas, with no apparent method to their layout. Area 3, Val’s destination, bordered the Papoose Mountain Range, part of Area 51. The security along the Area 3 and Area 51 border was minimal compared to patrols covering the public land at Area 51’s front entrance.

Val followed Mercury Highway over twenty miles of dry barren desert until he reached Area 3’s western boundary and turned onto a dirt road for five dusty miles. Traveling across the Test Site gave Val an eerie feeling. The desert looked serene, but was home to mass destruction. He passed toxic potholes 1,000 feet across and barbed wire fences with radiation warning signs that circled contaminated soil. Abandoned structures, some in tact, others missing walls or reduced to scrap piles, were scattered about, destroyed to study the impact of above-ground blasts on populated areas. The underlying tone everywhere Val looked: horrific death.

The dirt road ended at an abandoned water well, pumped dry in the eighties. He parked his truck and started setting a base camp. Nothing fancy, a table, tent, folding lounge chair and a tarp he hung on poles for shade. Area 3 offered Val privacy. The nearest facility was the Radioactive Waste Management Site, a burial ground for toxic waste, with little activity. The DOE granted Val access to multiple sights outside Area 3 for research purposes. If someone stopped by to check on him, they would not be alarmed if he wasn’t there.

He relaxed in his lounge chair and sucked down all the water he could fit in his stomach. His life support system would reduce the water his body required, but due to his extended journeys—several days away from the base camp—he needed to replenish his supply in the field. On his first trip, Val had dug water troughs throughout Area 51. He placed buckets in each trough and surrounded them with cut cacti, then covered the holes with plastic and placed a rock in the center, over the bucket, creating downward angles from the sides. Condensation from the cacti built underneath the plastic, gathering below the rock and dripping into the bucket. Each trough could provide a gallon of water per day.

Val had a few hours before dark and spent some time reviewing the gravity anomaly images Grason had given him. He compared readouts from Area 51 with the Test Site. Dark red areas suggested possible underground cavities because of a difference in density. The Test Site had plenty. They looked like worms; the DOE’s tunnels. Area 51 appeared to have two masses: one at Groom Lake and another near Papoose. A dark red line connected the two masses, possibly a tunnel. Val knew they had an underground facility near Papoose Lake because he saw a craft land there on his first expedition. But he never saw signs of vehicles or equipment in the vicinity. If the gravity anomaly images were correct, the Papoose facility was reached through a 10-mile tunnel, like a subway, from the Groom Lake base. A feasible theory, Val knew. On its web page in early 1994, the DOE boasted their tunneling abilities and featured images of a tunnel boring machine: a locomotive with teeth that ate the ground by cranking and churning hundreds of steel bits, busting up rocks while high pressure water lines blasted away dirt.

The Air Force long denied the existence of underground facilities at Area 51, claiming the proximity to the Test Site and radioactive fallout made the land unsafe for human occupancy. As Val sat in his lounge chair, closer to nuclear blast sites than anyone at Area 51, he knew the excuse was bogus. They had created a smoke screen, a believable and fear-mongering ruse to keep the location secure for generations.

Val’s nocturnal excursions through the Nevada desert were as much a mental challenge as they were physically trying. Like scuba diving and snow skiing, the dangers of hiking remote areas were intensified when done alone. His success relied upon an ever-present mental fortitude. A night of hiking left him as exhausted mentally as it did physically. He prepared himself for each night’s journey with hours of meditation, relaxing his mind and envisioning a successful mission.

This mission’s solitude and elements didn’t scare Val. He was born on the Bayou and spent his formative years exploring swamps and learning to cope with snakes and gators. When he wasn’t surveying the outdoors, Val was often with his father or grandfather, both FBI agents before him who instilled in Val their pride and respect for the Bureau and the duties that accompanied being an agent. Val felt the pressure of living up to the solid reputations established by his lineage, and considered each step he took in the desert as building his career and solidifying his family’s legacy.

As the sun set on the Test Site, evening shadows invaded Val’s base camp. With his mind in the proper mental state, it was now time to prepare his body. He stripped naked and showered in the open campsite using a water jug, savoring every droplet of water that caressed his sweat and dust laden skin, knowing it would be the last time he felt the refreshing sensation for several days. Exposing himself also served his mental conditioning, making him feel one with nature, a natural part of the environment; Val was not visiting Area 51, he was becoming one of its inhabitants.

Now he was ready to transform, ready to become bionic. He had laid the Bio Suit’s components across the floor of the tent. First he slipped into the inner lining, consisting of thermal absorbing material that drew heat from the body. Woven into the lining were hundreds of thin pliable tubes that circulated 75-degree water around the body like veins carrying blood, and lowered his body’s core temperature.

A second thermal shell overlapped the first, but instead of life support, the water-filled tubes served a counter surveillance function. The outer shell’s temperature varied to match the external air temperature, preventing Val’s body from generating a significant heat signal and camouflaging him from night vision or more advanced thermal imaging surveillance systems.

Shoulder casings, smaller than a football player’s shoulder pads, protected a computerized control system. Battery packs housed under casings on his thighs made him look like a bulky weight lifter—thin foldable solar sheets were used during the day to recharge the batteries while Val hid in bunkers.