Wings of Steele - Flight of Freedom (Book2) (53 page)

“
I want to know
specifically...
so I can beat him with a baseball bat until his head splits open like a rotten pumpkin. ”

Chase tossed the ball for Allie again. “You know as well as I do, that's not gonna happen, Brother. It's too complicated. You're just gonna bring a ton of shit and grief down on you and everyone around you... Shit rolls downhill and as far as those fucks in Washington are concerned, us little folks are at the bottom of the proverbial hill. And none of that will bring Caroline back.”

Dan downed a couple swallows of his beer, letting the frosty suds slide down his throat. “And Washington never gets its hands dirty...”

“
No, of course not.” Chase gave Allie's rump a pat as she plopped down on the sand next to him. “They never do their own dirty work. They always have culpable deniability.” He took a swallow of beer, deciding where to start. “Look, the government, specifically the Air Force, was responsible for all UFO investigations starting way back in 1947. It went through a couple iterations until the program officially became known as
Operation Blue Book
in 1952, which ran until 1970. The Roswell crash in July of '47 was probably the catalyst for the initial program called
Project Sign
which only ran about a year until the Roswell dust cleared...”

“
Didn't they attribute that crash to a weather balloon...?”

Chase chuckled, “Yeah. They made up some official sounding classified program called
Project Mogul.
The poor Army Lieutenant, tasked with issuing the press release stepped on his own dick by actually describing what he saw;
a flying disk and alien bodies...
instead of the cover story of a high-altitude classified balloon. It ruined his career.”

“
Thrown under the bus to keep their hands clean...”

Chase rubbed Allie's ears. “Yep, pretty much. I don't see a weather balloon being able to scar the land in a crash like they showed in the photos. Anyway, in '48 they decided maybe there was a continued need and the program rebooted under a new name and structure in '49, called Project Grunge.”

“So where was this all going?”

“
Well, they wouldn't have been spending time, manpower, resources and money on UFO investigations, if there wasn't something they were concerned about. Or some kind of payout. The Air Force consulted with the FBI for assistance in the investigations and the two entities worked together for awhile until the Air Force investigators were better trained. By the time Operation Blue Book was born the FBI was out of it, consulting on rare occasions only when the flyboys needed their investigatory tools. Ultimately, when Blue Book matured, they developed their own networks and tools, and the FBI was out of it altogether.

“
I remember reading about Blue Book,” said Dan, “though it was a little before my time...”

Chase nodded, “Yeah, mine too. But I always found it interesting so I'd studied it in some depth, but not as much as Jack. He'd studied this stuff pretty heavily - he could actually tell you about specific investigations. Here's an interesting little factoid for you, there were over
twelve-and-a-half thousand
UFO investigations fielded by Blue Book... and
not one
had any indications of extraterrestrial origins, according to the reports.
Misidentifications of natural phenomenon.
”

“
So
all those people
saw weather balloons and swamp gas..? That's
horseshit.”

Chase shrugged, “Of course it was. But here's the angle, if you're keeping secrets, keeping your citizens in the dark, you're also keeping the enemy in the dark...”

“The Russians?”

“
Exactly. They've never trusted us and we've never trusted them. Information is power and
disinformation
is just as useful. Now, here's where it gets downright creepy... after a redesign, Project Blue Book was born in 1952, as a major program...”

“
OK...”

“
The NSA was born the same year, four months later.”

“
You're shitting me.”

“
Nope.” Chase reached back behind him into the small cooler, pulling out a chilled bottle. “Want another beer?”

“
Or two, or three...” nodded Dan.

“
So,” continued Chase, handing him another frosty bottle, “ever hear the stories of families disappearing after being interviewed by the Air Force investigators?”

“
Yeah, whole families disappearing overnight...”

“
By the men in black suits...”

Dan Murphy took a couple swallows of beer. “The NSA? I thought the disappearances were just stories...”

“Not according to Jack. All real. But as media became more prevalent, more probing, more investigative, some of those things became more difficult for the NSA to pull off, so they changed their tactics to include intimidation and ridicule. Discrediting a witness became commonplace and easily effective. By 1970 when they closed Blue Book, it was partly because they had such a reduction in reports; it was a waste in funding.”

“
Nobody wanted to subject themselves to the harassment and embarrassment...”

“
Right.” Chase set his sunglasses on top of his head as the sun slipped below the horizon, the sky decorated with alternate splashes of gold and orange. “People had lost their jobs, families, friends... who wanted to have to deal with that? The government had conditioned its citizens to simply keep their mouths shut. So in 1970 the NSA took over for Blue Book, except they never gave it a name, it just stayed under the umbrella of a national security investigation.” He took another pull off his beer. “Now here's another odd coupling, DARPA and NASA, both born in 1958.”

“
Dude, you're giving me a headache...”

“
Should I stop?”

“
No, you're just scaring the crap out of me.”

Chase chuckled. “OK, so, the NSA is the key component of the US intelligence community, pretty much the pinnacle of the DoD. They handle all national security concerns for code breaking, cryptography, communications and intelligence. They get fed information and communication from all branches of the military, the CIA, FBI, CSS, DARPA... and a few more I'm probably forgetting. They have ears and eyes everywhere. They can listen to any phone call or read any email on the planet.”

“You're joking...”

“
I wish,” replied Chase.

“
DARPA, that's the agency with the creepy logo of the all-seeing-eye over the pyramid that watches the entire planet, right?”

“
Yep.”

“
But what's their connection with NASA? I thought NASA was a civilian space exploration program...”

“
Well that's the public face. The dark side of NASA is the launch and control of all the satellites used by the CIA, NSA, Air Force Space Command, and the Central Security Service. NASA's in it hip-deep with all the rest of them.”

“
Jesus...”

“
About a year before Blue Book closed its doors, a privately funded, non-profit was born, in '69, called MUFON -
Mutual UFO Network.
It was created to give people a place to report their sightings without government oppression and they worked to keep reports out of government hands. The NSA didn't see it as much of a threat, and for the most part left it alone because at the time it didn't have any credibility, but secretly monitored their communications as a national security measure. The NSA fell to quiet observation and monitoring, doing little to interfere, and the MUFON investigators did some pretty good work and continued to grow for a couple of decades before coming to the attention of a billionaire named Robert Bigelow...”

Dan raised an eyebrow, “Why does that name sound familiar?”

“The guy initially made his money in hotels, but he's had a serious interest in UFO information and technology. I'm not sure when or how that interest developed, but he ended up buying a piece of property out in the Utah desert called Skinwalker Ranch.”

“
Man that's a pretty creepy name...”

“
No shit, right? That ranch had been a hotbed of sightings and experiences and he wanted it for research. He also paid a sizable funding into MUFON, acting as a benefactor, but sucked a ton of information out of them in the process... Rumors say it included UFO technology.”

“
What was his end game?”

“
His research funded by a DoD grant, and Bigelow Aerospace, founded in 1999...”

“
Holy shit,” breathed Dan.

“
Yeah,” nodded Chase, “he is now supposed to be the go-to guy for UFO reports and sightings. The government refers inquiries directly to him. His facility builds modular orbital facilities and commercial space stations.”

“
He has his own space station? In orbit?”

“
From what I understand, yeah. He basically became a privatized NASA, that did what NASA couldn't. He's stupid-rich, with big-boy funding and Top Secret clearance. This is not only secret alien technology dangerous -
beyond
Top Secret dangerous,
beyond
national security dangerous, but billion dollar business dangerous. Danny-boy, I know this is hard, but you've got to stop digging, stop pushing... These are not people to be fucked with - it won't end well. I know you'd like to do right by Caroline, but do her right by staying alive for all of those around you, who depend on you. For the NSA to have gone after Caroline in such a public way was a total divergence from their behavior over the past twenty years. It was not a predictable outcome.”

Dan Murphy took a deep breath, exhaling slowly, “Yeah, It's hard,” his voice wavered, “I'm a cop and I still couldn't protect her...” he picked at the label on his long neck. “What kills me is it wasn't a criminal, a murderer,
but my own fucking government.
How do you protect
against that?
How do you make them
pay
for what they've done?
”

“
I don't have an answer for that, Dan. When you say
they,
you're covering a
huge
cast of characters and players. The people you're talking about have clearances well above Top Secret, they're out of reach.” Chase stared at the half-empty bottle in his hands. “We see it happen in so many other countries... governments manipulating their citizens, silencing their voices... but we never expect it to happen here. But it does. Hell, Steele's family is a prime example of the crap that they're capable of dishing out...”

“
Above Top Secret? I thought Top Secret was the highest level...”

“
Nah,” countered Chase, “there's thirty-three levels.”

“
What?”

Chase nodded. “The three standard levels are; Confidential, Secret and Top Secret. Then there are thirty other levels under the Top Secret umbrella, spread out laterally, specific and compartmentalized. Sound familiar to something else we know?”

Dan's eyes widened. “Yeah. Like...
Masonry...”
he almost whispered.

“
Right. And additional levels achieved have more to do with your choice of direction, of specialty, allowing you to branch in any direction. There was a lot of Masonic influence in government back then; presidents, cabinet members, upper echelon military... It affected a lot of facets of our government.”

“
I wish it played a bigger part nowadays, we might know who to trust.”

“
Too many liberals interfering, diluting the integrity, muddying the truth with their
revised
morals.”

Dan Murphy rubbed his forehead. “Man, my head hurts. I think I need to change the subject.”

“Fine by me. Feel like getting a pizza? I'm starving.”

“
Sounds good to me, my stomach's growling too.” They stood up and brushed off the sand. “So this whole shitstorm started when Steele disappeared... you knew him better than I did, what happened, exactly? Do you know?”

“
Jack got caught up in some secret CIA op that went south. He wasn't a player, he was just transport. Had no idea he was
in the shit,
until it hit the fan. When it fell apart, it went downhill fast and hard. Somehow he managed to pull himself out of it...”

“
But how did the NSA get involved in a CIA snafu?”

“
Well, he was on the run when his plane disappeared, so did two F-18s off the Shenandoah. Over the Triangle.”

“
Shit. As in
the
Triangle?”

“
Yeah. They disappeared because they were pulled aboard an alien ship and when it departed, it took them with, out into space...”