The Book of Truths (8 page)

The films still survive; the soldiers are another story.

To the north, Nellis Range is still used, and many conventional bombs are dropped there along with millions of rounds of ordnance being fired. Nothing living lasted out there long. Drone pilots, headquartered at Nellis, used the range to hone their skills so they could reach out to their worldwide network and attack with precision.

It was as if there had been a plan to even further isolate Area 51.

The Nightstalkers, under a different name, had been established at Area 51 when it became a hotbed of research and, as was inevitable, the scientists screwed up. Someone opened a Rift (scientists still don’t know what they are) and Fireflies came through (ditto on the not knowing). After many casualties and much consternation and blame, in 1948 a covert unit was formed to deal with Rifts, Fireflies, and the wide range of possible scientific misadventures, screwups, and accidents. The Nightstalkers
were not
formed, though, to deal with plots and counterplots within the US government. That was another unit’s responsibility, the Cellar, which Hannah ruled.

In fact, Hannah ruled an empire of Black Ops, of which the Nightstalkers were just one arm.

When Area 51 became so popular that tours were coming out on Extraterrestrial Highway—aka Route 375—to sit at the mailbox and stare at pretty much nothing other than a mailbox and a dirt road leading off toward a gate, it became time for the Nightstalkers to move to someplace less noticeable.

Still close enough to draw on the vast resources of Area 51 and have its support personnel based there, the operators moved into an underground bunker built below what appeared to be an old abandoned gas station. Actually, the bunker was built, then
an “old abandoned gas station” according to specifications was built on top of it. Not far from the Ranch was the Barn, which was the hangar for the Snake.

Ms. Jones and Pitr watched another screen as the top of the Barn, which looked exactly like an old abandoned barn, split open, landing lights flashing inside as Eagle guided the Snake down. A sign on the outside boasted:
SEE ALL THE POISINUS SNAKES 75CENTS
. Though it was unlikely that anyone could make it this far into the Ranch, if they did dare enter the Barn, they’d run into things far more dangerous than poisinus snakes.

There were always twenty-six security personnel scattered around the Ranch, secure in bunkers that were not only invisible to the eye but had thermal shielding. They were armed beyond to the teeth, because the teeth put one back to pre-caveman days. Armament included automatic weapons, Hellfire missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and the ability to call in cruise missiles and air support from Nellis. Of more practical importance, they could exercise deadly force more easily and legally than the contract guards at nearby Area 51 because the Ranch was on “private” land.

The doors shut on the Barn and in exactly eight minutes, because that was Nada’s Protocol for off-load, the team would come racing out of the Barn in a Humvee, with Roland in the gun turret, singing one of his songs.

Rumination over, decision made, Ms. Jones hit the button that killed all the screens. “Let’s give the Acmes a day to research this incident and Pinnacle,” she told Pitr. “If they fail to unravel this, I believe it will be time to talk to Hannah. Check on what the Acmes have discovered so far.”

The Humvee tore out of the Barn, Eagle expertly handling the wheel so that they cleared the closing doors by inches. Everyone was crowded inside. (Doc had once made the mistake of suggesting they get a minivan and no one spoke to him for a week.) Roland, as always, manned the .50-caliber, spinning the roof turret, more than ready to kill something. The security personnel always made sure they were deep in their hide sites when the Humvee came flying by.

It was quiet inside, unusual for a mission return, as if Roland’s attempts at high-spiritedness on the Snake had sucked their spirits dry. Moms looked over her shoulder from the passenger seat and caught Nada’s eyes. She raised her eyebrows in question and then nodded up at Roland, wondering when he would start singing. It wasn’t Protocol. It was tradition, and that was something every soldier valued because they often had little more than that to hold on to.

Kirk tried. As the newest member of the team, he felt he had to.
“I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand—”
he began, singing Warren Zevon’s most famous song, but when no one else joined in, he fell silent.

Apparently they saved werewolves for successful missions.

The only sound was the Humvee engine and the desert rolling under its oversize tires.

When Roland started, his choice wasn’t surprising, but he didn’t start with the chorus, because that indicated the beginning of a mission.

“I’m the innocent bystander,”
Roland more yelled than sang.
“Somehow I got stuck…”

Eagle, who had more movies, books, and song lyrics stuck in his head than most Mac hard drives, joined him.

“… between the rock and the hard place.”

Moms, Nada, and Mac were on board for the next, appropriate line.

“And I’m down on my luck.”

Kirk finally got it and the entire team did the next two lines:

“And I’m down on my luck.

“And I’m down on my luck.”

And then they fell silent and that’s the way the Nightstalkers pulled up to the Ranch, which pretty much summed up what Nada would later call “The Clusterfuck in Nebraska.”

If only that was all there ever was to it.

Pitr walked back into Ms. Jones’s office. She could tell by the look on his face that it was bad news. She lifted a finger, indicating for him to deliver it.

“An Acme has decoded the missile’s guidance system. It had two targets preprogrammed into it, with an option switch back at SAC headquarters. And the warhead was a W59 one megaton.”

“Large yield.”

“Yes.”

“And those targets?”

“The first, naturally, was Cuba. That was a secondary targeting overlaid on top of the missile’s original, primary target.”

“And the primary target was?”

“Area 51.”

Neeley had long ago learned that waiting to kill people could be boring. Technically her mission here was recovery, but she’d accepted during Isolation that it would inevitably involve killing at least a few people. Since she’d been on the ground, she’d revised that number upward, because all was not as it had seemed in Isolation.

It never was.

She used the night-vision portion of her retina, just off-center of vision, as Gant had taught her so many years ago. She was experiencing déjà vu, and for good reason. The alley running between ramshackle concrete buildings held several Dumpsters, a burned-out car, and piles of refuse, very similar to an alley in the Bronx so many years ago. Except tonight she was in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and the clock was ticking on making contact with the extraction package.

Except there was a problem, one which Neeley had raised to the dismissive CIA liaison in Isolation. This was an ambush. It was a proven tactic of terrorists to draw in rescue forces and hit them hard. Except forces in this case was “force,” singular, in the person of Neeley, primary operative of the Cellar and the closest thing Hannah back at Fort Meade had to a friend.

Which meant not much of a friend at all, except they’d saved each other’s lives years ago and they’d die for each other. Hannah also sent Neeley on missions like this, where she could get killed.

It was all part of being in the Cellar.

Neeley was buried inside one of the six-foot-high mounds of refuse. She’d squirmed her way in twenty-four hours ago, stayed in it without moving all day as more trash was heaped on top, including various liquids that seeped down on her. She actually appreciated the fouler-smelling and disgusting items because it made it that much less likely someone would come rooting through.

Living was worth a little, and a lot, of discomfort.

Neeley leaned her head to the right, pressing her right eye socket up against the rubber socket on the end of the thermal scope mounted on the sniper rifle. A tiny switch inside automatically turned the scope on.

With little twitches, making sure she didn’t disturb the trash surrounding her hide site, she peered out the tunnel she’d poked clear with a stick just after dark to get a field of fire.

She had three positions identified from the previous night. She’d picked them up as she maneuvered into the alley. They were careless, but they could afford to be. They were in friendly territory and Neeley had picked up the distinct impression that they hadn’t expected any action the previous evening.

Which was interesting.

Actually,
disturbing
was a more accurate word.

If they knew which night to expect extract, it meant the mission was compromised. Which meant she should back out and call for exfiltration and forget about extraction of the package.

Neeley wasn’t a big rule follower for those other than the ones Gant had given her.

The Cellar did not have Protocols like the Nightstalkers.

It had Sanctions, which this wasn’t, so that didn’t factor into it.

Neeley didn’t ruminate on why or how the mission was compromised. The very fact the Cellar had been called in to do this had been an indicator. Hannah would deal with it.

There were four men in a second-story apartment across the street from the package. They had two light machine guns, AK-47s, and one RPG rocket launcher. Of more danger were the half-dozen “insurgents” in a minaret towering over the mosque at the end of the street. They had a cluster of RPGs and, ominously, at least two SA-24 Grinch shoulder-to-air missiles. The Grinch was the latest variant of Russian surface-to-air missiles, technically not available for export, but what were rules to bad guys? You could buy anything in Russia these days.

Who named a missile a Grinch?
Neeley wondered as she scanned the minaret. Really, not long till Christmas and she was literally going up against the Grinch? She rarely considered irony, since it was often the baseline of any operation she was on, but this time it seemed a bit over the top.

She counted six heat signatures in the minaret. All awake and alert, unlike last night.

They were waiting.

As were the last two. They’d come just after dark, like last night, and crawled into one of the Dumpsters next door to where the package was. They’d wedged the top open six inches and were peering out with night-vision goggles, the latest American version, most likely stolen by an Afghan soldier from his American counterparts and sold on the black market.

An old woman came walking down the street, the weariness in her step indicating a long day at work. She had little clue about
the firepower amassed all around her and disappeared into one of the buildings on the left side of the street.

A voice crackled in Neeley’s ear. “Status?”

She whispered her reply, picked up by her throat mike and encrypted and transmitted back to Hannah while being frequency hopped and relayed through several Milstar satellites. “Go. Status of Pakistani air defenses?”

That was the key question. How far up did the betrayal go and who was involved?