The man raised his chin to draw heavily on his cigarette then extinguished it under his shoe. “Mr. Marcel, tell me where your little object is, and I might forget that you broke the speed limit, displayed reckless driving, ran numerous red lights, caused a road accident and possibility even breeched the United States National Secrets Act all in less than 20 minutes!”
Jake was now standing back beside his bike. He opened his mouth to speak, but his words failed him. The second soldier had now returned; the three men now waited for him to respond. All Jake could muster was a shrug of his shoulders, shaking his head to indicate he had nothing.
The man in charge gave Jake a soul-chilling glare, his piercing eyes seeming to see straight through the younger man. He looked as if he had reached the end of his patience. Jake felt a ball of anxiety gaining mass inside him.
The man stepped toward Jake. He whispered coldly in his ear, “You could not possibly fathom the power of the organization you are trying to compromise.”
Jake almost fell over.
He had always heard rumours about men in black, secret government departments and limitless black budgets, but for the first time it was real, standing right before him. Those few words revealed the true gravity of what he may be getting himself into. And with those few words, for the very first time, Jake felt a flash of gut-wrenching fear. He struggled to maintain an expression of indifference and tried to contain his body language so as to not reveal his trepidation.
The man dressed in black held his soul piercing gaze a moment longer before turning to his men. “There’s nothing here. Let’s go.”
Jake watched motionless as they boarded the helicopter and took off.
Over the years he had heard the stories from his father and grandfather, but now it was happening to him. He had just witnessed a strange looking black helicopter, with no identifying markings, land ahead of him in the middle of the road. He was then aggressively questioned by heavily armed soldiers, also in black with no patches or stripes identifying which branch of the armed forces they belonged to, all commanded by a well-dressed man in a black suit.
They were real. The little exotic I-beam his grandfather found was real. There was no turning back now.
His only relief was that he had the presence of mind to think fast earlier.
Back at the cemetery Jake had sent a text message to Natasha after asking Mark to organize a smoke screen. His text to Natasha had asked the girls to wait for him under the bridge, and for them to bring the scientist as there would be something he may be interested in “fishing” out of the river.
Then before he passed the cylinder over to Chris when they were riding side by side, he used his thumb to pop open the lid then let the small I-beam slide back down under his jacket just before handing over the empty cylinder to his friend.
Realizing they were passing an empty cylinder, his friends then improvized by pretending to pass around multiple objects to each other.
As Jake sped over the bridge he slid the metal I-beam out of his jacket and inconspicuously tossed it over the bridge railing into the water, just before the black helicopter suddenly approached from the far side to land in the middle of the road ahead.
The exotic fragment made a little splash as it hit the water. Natasha was already in the river swimming under the bridge, waiting for the splash to signal her where to dive. She instantly dove under water to retrieve the metallic object.
By the time she had surfaced for air, a small rowboat had reached the bridge and was heading downstream. She tossed the fragment into the boat as it rowed passed. Dr. Reilly didn’t say anything. He didn’t even pick up the metal fragment after it bounced around at his feet inside the boat. He just smiled at Natasha and kept rowing downstream.
The only thing Jake hadn’t anticipated was coming face to face with an unnamed government agency who knew far too much about Jake’s movements for his liking.
*
On approach to Section 4 Sabre reflected on the debriefing he would have to give Thirty-three. He would have to report that he had revealed himself to the target, and that the target would now know for certain that he was under surveillance. This was a move Mr. Sabre did not particularly want to make without yielding some information that would lead him to the object he had been assigned to retrieve. Perhaps startling Marcel would cause him, and any exotic materials he may have in his possession, to go deeper into hiding.
Such a turn of events would not be too concerning he thought. With almost unlimited resources at his disposal, the thought of a decent chase gave Mr. Sabre something to look forward to.
CHAPTER 43
Twenty minutes downstream from the bridge Dr. Charles Reilly slowly rowed his small boat in the direction of a small fishing pier. He allowed the current to carry him alongside the pier’s waterside edge.
With the metal object now wrapped in a small towel gripped in one hand, he reached for the boat’s mooring rope and struggled to pick himself up. Standing now, he found himself gliding toward an outreached arm extending from the pier.
The arm belonged to a bulky figure carrying an assault rifle over his shoulder. The soldier was outfitted in black fatigues void of any military branch insignia.
The soldier took the mooring rope and secured the small boat before again extending a helpful hand. Reilly took hold of the man’s powerful arm and was gently heaved off the boat onto the old wooden pier.
“A pleasure to once again see you, sir. Dr. Primakov felt a full security detail was more befitting to bring in the legend himself.” The soldier was now smiling.
Beyond the soldier Reilly now saw the full detachment of soldiers that flanked four identical DHL vans parked nose to tail on the nearby road. One of the detachments approached with a wheelchair that carried with it an oxygen tank.
“How is the old man?” Reilly fixed him a nostalgic smile.
The soldier guided Reilly to the wheelchair and delicately helped him in. Reilly still gripped the wrapped-up metal fragment firmly under his arm.
The soldier took hold of the wheelchair and pushed Reilly toward the four waiting vans. “Sir, still very much active. He’ll never retire.”
Allowing himself to relax now in the hands of his assigned security detachment, Reilly placed the wheelchair’s oxygen mask over his mouth and inhaled deeply as he was wheeled to one of the DHL vans. After he’d been helped up into the van’s rear storage hold, the remaining soldiers climbed into the three remaining vans in equal numbers.
The vans all left the pier in unison. After reaching the first major intersection, the four DHL vans then split up to each head in its own direction.
*
The sun was on its way down, a big red sphere heading for an outcrop of scattered industrial buildings, when the DHL van approached one of the National Reconnaissance Office’s research and data harvesting installations, located in the middle of its own block. The van cleared the automated security gates then approached the short road that led to the medium rise building.
The van passed through the parking areas surrounding the structure, then circled around to the facility’s basement entry ramp. The basement’s parking spaces were empty, its loading dock deserted except for a single figure who was slowly descending the stairs that extended from the dock.
By the time the van was parked, the gentleman was waiting patiently before the vehicle. He watched as Dr. Reilly was helped down from the rear of the DHL van then approached with an armed escort.
It was Dr. Primakov who spoke first. “When you contacted me I thought a ghost was playing tricks!”
“I’m not dead yet, Vlad.” Reilly smiled at his old friend.
Only six years Charles’s senior, Dr. Vladik Primakov was in remarkably good shape for a man of his vintage. Adorned with a head of silver hair, he had a piercing gaze that exuded the confidence of a man who wielded an awesome intellect.
When Primakov spoke, his tone had the precision of a finely tuned musical instrument. “It gives me gr
eat pleasure to see you up and about. Your welcoming party wasn’t too much I trust?”
The two men exchanged a warm handshake.
“A little over the top, but functional,” Reilly joked.
Primakov’s eyes moved to the escorting soldier. “Thank you, please leave us.”
“Sir,” the soldier said, nodding, then turned to return to the waiting van that was still idling. The scientist and the physicist watched in silence as the deceivingly marked DHL van took off.
After the van exited the building’s basement, Primakov turned back to Reilly, now looking at the wrapped object held firmly under Reilly’s arm “So, there’s a specimen out in the open?”
Reilly unwrapped the object and held the small I-beam up to the light for them both to study, then handed it to the physicist. The hieroglyphs along its side looked consistent with the style of symbols Greer had showed him.
“We are living in a time when there is a tremendous disconnect between what is supposed to exist…” Primakov looked intently at the metal specimen he was now holding, “and what is NOT supposed to exist.”
“Are you running the analysis in-house?” Reilly asked.
Primakov’s eyes shot up. “Of course not! What was the point of going to extreme lengths to flush this out, only for me to bury it again?”
CHAPTER 44
“Reilly!” Sabre was seething.
His words ricocheted around his Section 4 office.
One of his walls had transformed into a satellite image. Across it blazed a zoomed semi-holographic pictorial of a river crossing. To one side of the bridge sat a black helicopter in the middle of the road. On the bridge stood two figures next to a red motorcycle. A third figure was facing away from the other two as he smoked. A fourth figure approached on the bridge with a rifle in hand.
Sabre was studying the small rowboat that was slowly drifting toward the ceiling. Behind Sabre stood his detachment commander and the commander’s second, Alpha and Bravo. Its timing under the bridge had seemed too coincidental to Sabre. His instinct told him there was no such thing as coincidences.
“Skip ahead again, and center the image on the rowboat,” Sabre said to the wall.
The bird’s eye view image followed the boat as it fast-forwarded to the pier then showed the man who was helped onto the small wooden wharf.
“Stop. Play it back in real time,” Sabre barked.
The image tracked the man now being pushed in a wheelchair toward a group of armed men flanking four yellow vans.
His visage turned ice cold, an eerie transformation. “Reilly has been helping him. He has the specimen.”
Sabre’s jaw tightened as he bounded to his desk. His fingers jabbing at the desk phone, he dialed Thirty-three’s office.
A female voice answered. “Yes, Mr. Sabre.”
“I’m after Thirty-three.”
“He is unavailable,” the voice replied, polite yet insincere.
Sabre now spoke through clenched teeth. “I understand. Regardless, can you please patch me through, wherever he is.”
The female voice was still polite. “By unavailable I mean he is uncontactable. By anyone. He is meeting with The Group.”
If he’s with The Group, Sabre thought, I’ll have to go there myself.
“Thank you.” Sabre cut the line.
With that, he stormed toward his office door.
*
Sabre appeared alone in one of the Section 4 hangars. Facing the hangar’s doors was a terrestrial-looking fighter being attended by engineering crew.
Fitted in a flight suit, he approached the modified F35B-A Lighting III being prepped for takeoff. The Lighting’s waiting pilot handed Sabre his flight helmet. In exchange Sabre handed him a thin tablet that listed the details of the flight.
The pilot scanned the flight time and details of the trip’s fuel requirements. His eyes went wide when he read the destination coordinates.
*
A rectangular patch of mountain side that faced Papoose Lake opened up to reveal one of Section 4’s hidden hangars. The F35B-A taxied out into the middle of the dry lake bed before turning to face north, parallel with the lake’s longest length.
The plane’s sleek lines shuddered as its single afterburner ignited in a pale blue roar. Developed by Lockheed Martin and derived from a constellation of three F35 variants, the first letter ‘B’ in its designation signifies its short takeoff and vertical landing capability, with the ‘A’ and ‘C’ classes being the conventional and carrier variants respectfully.
After a short sprint across the dry lake bed the F35B-A’s nose flicked skyward. It leaped off Papoose Lake to bank toward The Group’s secret meeting location.
CHAPTER 45
The magnetic North Pole, as opposed to the geographic North Pole, is one of only two locations known to man to be a natural Faraday Cage. It’s the only place on earth where the convergence of the planet’s magnetosphere disrupts all electronic communication, making any attempts at surveillance impossible from both terrestrial or off-world origins.
The fighter’s undercarriage opened to reveal a mid-mounted vertical jet turbine as the pilot slowed the F35B-A to a hover 60 feet above the Arctic’s rolling surface. Rechecking his location, the pilot glanced around. In the distance all that could be seen was barren ocean stretching out to meet the curvature of the earth. There was no land or vessels in any direction.
Now hovering, the aircraft slowly descended. What sets the F35B-A apart from the constellation of three F35 configurations is the ‘-A’ designation. Specially developed for Section 4’s exclusive use, the ‘-A’ signified the F35’s aquatic conversion.
The fighter’s jet turbines shut down the instant its undercarriage kissed the ocean’s surface. Buoyancy tanks both inside its weapons hold and underslung from both wings now kept the aircraft afloat.
Sabre felt himself rise and fall as long drawn-out waves passed underneath. His eyes traced the raising waterline climbing the canopy as the buoyancy tanks slowly took in water. In the process, the pilot had shut down the engine and switched the avionics over to submariner mode. Thin propellers, previously concealed by the fighter plane’s wingtips and tail wings, extended out and engaged, guiding the aircraft as it sank.
Within moments the aircraft was completely submerged, swallowed by the Arctic Ocean, descending toward the dark gaping abyss below.
Now in complete darkness, Sabre watched the fathometer reading on a display before him, its number increasing as it measured their depth. Below them a mammoth form slowly materialized against a backdrop of complete darkness. Ominous and ghostly, the form dwarfed the fighter as it approached.
As the fighter maneuvered to descend over the colossus shadow, lights along its length blazed to life, revealing the outline of a Ohio-class submarine. Like a submerged runway landing, the parallel lights guided the fighter toward a docking compartment that opened on approach, allowing the fighter to dock inside the submarine.
Once the hatch slid closed to seal the fighter inside, the interior of the docking platform lit up to reveal the water level now had dropped around the aircraft. Thirty seconds later the dripping aircraft was resting in a dry dock.
*
The Group has taken on many names over the years. Born out of necessity by Secret Executive Memorandum NSC-5511 in 1954, President Eisenhower commissioned the committee to study, oversee and conduct all covert operations dealing with the extraterrestrial presence.
An original finding of the committee’s study of the alien question was that the public could not be told. The committee believed that such an action would most likely lead to global economic collapse and collapse of the world’s religious groups, and incite national panic. Secrecy was thus concluded to be mandatory.
It was also decided that if the public could not be told then Congress could not be briefed. Funding for the committee’s projects and research would have to come from outside government sources.
Originally nicknamed Majestic 1
2, under Eisenhower and Kennedy the committee was labeled the “5412 Committee” or the “Special Group”. During the Johnson administration it became the “303 Committee”. Under Nixon, Ford and Carter it was called the “40 Committee”, and under Reagan it became the “PI-40 Committee”.
Now known as the National Security Council’s Special Studies Group, dubbed “The Group” or SSG-36, it numbers 36 members made up of scientists and high ranking military heavyweights. SSG-1, the head of NSC’s Special Studies Group subcommittee, answered to no-one, not even the elected president. Over the years only the committee’s name had changed. Its resolve, however, remains unchanged.
SSG-36 meets at various confidential locations, including the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio. When meeting to discuss matters of planetary importance, they have the power to commandeer military assists. In this instance the US Navy’s Ohio-Class submarine had been redeployed to the magnetic North Pole, ensuring SSG-36’s meeting was hidden from both terrestrial and orbital surveillance.
At the head of the long table in the submarine’s situation room sat Thirty-three, otherwise known as SSG-1. With his fingers steepled, he listened intently as the merits of trusting the extraterrestrials, or “the others” as they were sometimes called, was currently being debated over the table.
“Are we to forget the 1975 Dulce incident? We lost two scientists and over 40 of our military personnel. All killed!” SSG-10 scowled.
Across the table, SSG-13 considered it and shook his head. “It was a demonstration of the ET’s antimatter reactor. They warned us that the energy discharge would ignite all the munitions in the room. They asked that all bullets and rifles be removed. We didn’t understand the technology.”
SSG-18 stared at SSG-13 in disbelief. “Even so, when the guards refused, the ensuing commotion escalated to an underground warzone!”
Disclosing the Secret Page 20