by Ian Douglas
“A small camera boresighted in the weapon relays an image that’s thrown up on a helmet-mounted heads-up display. You can point the weapon blind around a corner, and still see what it’s aimed at.”
“Sweet!”
“Commander? Have a look.”
Hunter accepted the weapon from the Marine and aimed it downrange. Sure enough, a red crosshair reticule appeared inside his helmet, centered against a small image of the far end of the chamber.
“There’s a knob beside your left hand,” Benedict told him. “Turn it.”
Hunter did so, and the image expanded sharply. This would be a hell of a sniper rifle, he decided.
“So why don’t we have these in the field now, Major?” Grabiak asked—a demand more than a question. In fact, he sounded angry. “A weapon like that, with that sighting system . . . they would’ve been damned useful at Falluja!”
“They’ll be coming into general service within the next five years, Gunny,” Benedict told him. “Right now, these things are being turned out in very limited numbers. We’ll need a massive upscale to produce enough to issue them to a regiment.”
“We could have used just five,” Grabiak said, reproachful. “Fuck, we could have used one.”
“I hear you, bro,” Hunter told him.
“Damn, the corps always gets the short, messy end of the stick when it comes to the hottest new toys,” Grabiak said.
“Ooh-rah,” Hunter said, and the Marine smiled.
“Arch? Get a feel for the weapon. . . .”
Hunter handed the rifle over to the CIA direct action operator. The chances were good that he’d already seen the weapon, or something very like it. SAD/SOG personnel generally did get the latest toys.
“Major?” Hunter said.
“Yes, Commander?”
“Are we going to get some range time with these?”
“It’s on the schedule, Commander. Friday.”
“Major?” That was Carruthers’s voice.
“Yessir!”
“Belay that. The schedule has been changed. They’re shipping out day after tomorrow.”
It was Monday.
Chapter Seven
Anthropological files contain many examples of societies, sure of their place in the universe, which have disintegrated when they have had to associate with previously unfamiliar societies espousing different ideas and different life ways; others that survived such an experience usually did so by paying the price of changes in values and attitudes and behavior.
The Brookings Report, 1960
Page 183
19 April 1961
“This,” the President of the United States said in his familiar thick Bostonian Hah-vahd tones, “is completely unacceptable. The people have a right to know.”
Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA since 1953, and the first civilian director of that agency, looked on disapprovingly. “It’s all spelled out there, Mr. President. It’s now a part of the Congressional Record. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“That, Mr. Dulles, does not make it legally binding.”
President John F. Kennedy leafed again through the document on the desk in front of him. It was almost three hundred pages long; the frontispiece was headed by a title in all caps:
PROPOSED STUDIES
ON THE IMPLICATIONS OF PEACEFUL
SPACE ACTIVITIES FOR HUMAN AFFAIRS
The paper had been prepared for the newly founded NASA by the Brookings Institution, a public policy think tank operating out of its campus near Dupont Circle. The report had been formally presented to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics just yesterday. Most of the report, already being referred to as the Brookings Report, though the think tank had created mountains of reports since 1916, concerned itself with various policy issues related to space exploration. A Brookings report had laid the foundations of the Marshall Plan, and the economic recovery of Europe after WWII.
But Kennedy was concerned about this report and its discussion of the possibility of encountering intelligent life during the exploration of space. Specifically, he was concerned by what it didn’t say.
He found the page and the paragraph he was looking for. “Here,” Kennedy said. “Right here. ‘Questions one might wish to answer by such studies would include: How might such information, under what circumstances, be presented to or withheld from the public for what ends?’”
“It doesn’t say the information must be withheld, Mr. President.”
“No. But it provides the basis for such a ruling. Damn it, Mr. Dulles, three months ago you sat in that chair over there and showed me files that were, frankly, shocking. A secret group called MJ-12! Secret treaties with alien beings! And worst of all, secret agreements to allow those beings to abduct our citizens! And you showed me proof that all of this is real! I, ah, take it the Brookings people weren’t in on the secret.”
“No, Mr. President. Of course they weren’t.”
“I told you when you gave me that briefing that I was going to end this secrecy. My predecessor in this office may have had his reasons for doing what he did, but I am not going to lie to the American people! This document, by its omissions, is a lie.”
“Not really, Mr. President. Look . . . this paragraph, right here . . . just before that.”
Kennedy read it aloud. “‘Anthropological files contain many examples of societies . . .’” His voice trailed off as he read the rest of the paragraph. “Okay, so you people are afraid our society is going to collapse?”
“It is a distinct possibility, Mr. President. We must not take rash or untoward actions in this area unless we are very sure of how the populace will react.”
“I think you underestimate the American people.” Kennedy pushed the Brookings paper back. “How much time, Mr. Dulles, will you and your people need to put together a plan by which we can, ah, gently break it to the general population?”
“Hard to say, sir. A couple of years, at least.”
Kennedy gave him a hard, humorless grin. “Anything to push back the day of reckoning, eh? Well, I’ll tell you what. You have six months to put a plan on my desk. We’ll see where we go from there.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now get the hell out of my office.”
Dulles left in a thoughtful mood. He’d argued that it was a mistake to bring the President in on the secrets guarded by MJ-12. He didn’t need to know.
He would have to talk to some of his associates at the Agency, to see what might be done about this brash, upstart new president. . . .
Hunter was seething with anger.
They’d only just begun to get a feel for the space suits and weaponry they would be expected to use—no chance to practice with them at all—when the official word came down that they were to report to Groom Lake in just two days.
Popularly known as Area 51, Groom Lake had been the location of testing and development programs for a number of highly secret aircraft, including the U-2, the SR-71, and the F-117 Stealth Fighter. Starting in 1955, the government had been running a top secret facility there that had only been officially acknowledged in 2013.
UFO conspiracy theorists had, of course, identified Groom Lake as the center of a massive conspiracy involving crashed spaceships and recovered alien technologies. Hunter had always dismissed such tales. Now he knew those tales probably didn’t tell half the truth.
A military transport touched down at Groom Lake after the long flight from Wright-Patt. The windows had been blacked out, so the passengers, now incorporated as the 1st Joint Space Strike Team, or 1-JSST, couldn’t see any details of the landing field as they were on approach. They touched down smoothly, and a bus—also with blacked-out windows—met them to take them to the guest barracks.
They fell into formation in a large and empty hangar, and Hunter, as the unit’s senior officer, accepted the roll-call report from Master Chief Minkowski. “All present and accounted for, sir!”
“Thank you, Master Chief.” Hunter in tu
rn passed the roster on to Colonel Grange, the man in charge of the 1-JSST project.
Grange accepted the clipboard, made a notation, and addressed them in ranks.
“Men, welcome to Dreamland. In another twenty-four hours you will be on your way into space.”
Dreamland was one of several names by which Area 51 had long been known. Paradise Ranch and Homey Airport were two others, while Groom Lake was the official name, according to the CIA.
“Almost everything you’ve heard about this place is true,” Grange continued. “We don’t have any actual UFOs or alien bodies stored here—most of that is in the Blue Room back at Wright-Patt—but this is where we’ve been building, testing, and launching some pretty amazing technology. Rest assured, gentlemen, that your security oaths are in full force. You will not discuss anything you see or hear at this facility with anyone else . . . including wives and sweethearts, Russian spies, or each other. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir!” the men chorused back.
“Very well. It’s now 17:45. I suggest you report to the chow hall and get yourselves fed. The rest of the evening is yours. Do not ask for a pass into town. Las Vegas is eighty-four miles in that direction, and the plane has already left for the day. Rachel, Nevada, is the nearest town—population about fifty. There’s not a hell of a lot to do there on Wednesday nights. Commander, you may dismiss your men.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Comp’ny . . . dismissed!”
As the men relaxed, falling into small groups, Hunter approached Grange. “Question, sir?”
“Go ahead, Commander.”
“Two questions, actually. First: we were yanked out of training at Wright-Patt without being able to train with our new weapons. Is there a range around here where we could do so?”
“Huh. And the second question?”
“Sir, what the hell is the mission? They’ve been jumping us from one end of the country to the other, telling us all about UFOs and secret space fleets, and we still don’t know what it is we’re supposed to be doing.”
“To answer your first question, Commander: no. There is a weapons range out behind Hangar Two, but you people are not cleared to use it, and by the time we get clearance for you, you all will be on your way.
“As for the second question—that is classified above your clearance level. You’ll be told the nature of your mission once you reach your first destination.”
“And what destination would that be, sir? Or is that classified, as well?”
“Oh, I can tell you that, Commander. You’re going to the Moon.”
“I’m going where?”
Becky McClure had been called into the office of her boss’s boss: Colonel Joseph Grange, a no-nonsense Army colonel in command of the Solar Warden personnel office at Groom Lake.
“It’s strictly on a volunteer basis, Dr. McClure,” Grange said. “But Excalibur is going to need someone with a solid grounding in biology, and you’re it.”
“But the Moon?” She shook her head. “There’s no biology there!”
“There are Grays,” Grange told her. “And Nordics. And possibly Saurians, as well. And the Moon isn’t your final destination.”
“What is?”
“You’ll get a full briefing at Darkside. I can tell you that you may be away for a considerable time.”
“Lovely. And just why are you asking me?”
“Because you are an excellent evolutionary biologist, with top marks from Carnegie Mellon University. Because you have been cleared to Cosmic Top Secret, and you are one of the very few research scientists to have that level of clearance. And there’s your father. . . .”
McClure frowned. Her father had been Dr. Bruce McClure, also an evolutionary biologist, and also initiated into the clandestine world of aliens and government conspiracies. He’d not been supposed to do so, but her father had told her bits and pieces of what he was doing at the research lab at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. She’d learned that Humankind was not alone in the universe when she was seven. She’d learned about her father’s role at Kecksburg when she was twelve, and about the alien he’d worked with a year later.
She suspected that They had known about his indiscretion, but that the elder McClure had been too valuable to the program to punish. But she’d just been accepted by Carnegie Mellon when she’d been approached by the government guys in dark suits and sunglasses.
They’d promised her tuition-free training at CMU, and a rewarding position in research after graduation.
And of course she’d accepted.
Mostly, she’d wanted to find out what happened to her father. He’d been on a secret Majik assignment in Dulce, New Mexico, in 1979, when he’d been killed in a lab accident.
She’d always suspected that there was more to the story than that. After all, how likely was it that an evolutionary biologist would be working on something that would kill him? Oh, it was possible, she supposed, that some deadly microorganism had gotten loose in the lab . . . but it hardly seemed likely. Her dad’s research had to do with decidedly macroscopic creatures, intelligent beings from someplace else.
She deeply mistrusted the official story, and since beginning to work for Majik and on Operation Excalibur, she’d seen nothing to reassure her.
By making mention of her father, Grange was reminding her that she was continuing a kind of family tradition . . . which meant that she was so far down the MJ-12 rabbit hole that there was really no way out.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity, Doctor,” Grange added. “You’ll be working on Gray biology, and possibly examining their origins.”
Yeah, great. But when can I publish the paper and collect my Nobel Prize?
Reluctantly, she nodded. “I’ll go,” she said. “When do I leave?”
“Tomorrow,” he told her, “on the next shuttle.”
“Then I suppose I’d better pack. . . .”
She meant it sarcastically. There would be little to pack, and no one to whom she should say good-bye.
Working for Solar Warden was damned near as restrictive as being in a literal prison.
They’d been assigned to two-man cubicles in a large barracks behind one of the hangars. Late that evening, Hunter and Minkowski left their cube for a stroll out onto the dark desert salt flat behind their barracks. Hunter had been unable to sleep. He kept thinking about Gerri.
Minkowski was nervous. “Sir . . . I’m not sure we’re supposed to be out here.”
“Oh, you can be sure about that, Mink. I know we’re not supposed to be out here. That’s why I bribed the duty officer at the front desk.”
“I wondered why he wasn’t there.”
“Call of nature, I guess. I just slipped him something to make sure it was well-timed.”
“What’d you give him? Money? Booze?”
“This month’s issue of Playboy.”
“I guess they might have some problems getting them here on-base. At this base, anyway.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“I’m just wondering, though. What happens if we get caught out here?”
“I imagine we’ll get a very stiff talking-to. But I’ve had it up to here with the asinine regs and security. The idiots won’t even let us practice with those new weapons! We get into a firefight and somebody’s going to get killed. They’ve known about things for half a century, and now they’re rushing?”
“I honestly get the feeling, sir, that they don’t really care. We’re just warm bodies. Numbers on a roster.”
“Oh, you get that, too, do you?”
“Yes, sir.”
It was chilly outside, the sky so dark that the Milky Way stretched from horizon to horizon in soft, blue-white clouds of clotted light. The Moon, just into its first quarter, had already set, leaving the cloudless sky crystal clear, infinitely deep, and filled with stars. Hunter shivered and wished he’d worn a jacket. He’d forgotten how cold it got during the night on the desert.
“Shit! Will ya look at that!�
� Minkowski pointed. High overhead, among the thickly scattered stars, a single brilliant light shone brighter than the planet Venus.
And it was moving.
“I’ve heard that people come out here to watch the skies over this base,” Minkowski said. “There are some ridges a few miles away. They say some nights you can see really strange stuff in the sky.”
Hunter chuckled. “Flying saucers?”
“Beats me. Bright lights that aren’t maneuvering like conventional aircraft.”
“Like that one.”
Together, they watched the light, which was pursuing a zigzag path across the sky, stopping at times to hover, and at others zipping from point A to point B so quickly you couldn’t tell if it had traveled the intervening distance . . . or jumped across it.
“They say,” Minkowski continued, “that the lights are actually ours—high-tech aircraft that we built after taking apart crashed alien ships.”
“Oh, we know that the government has its own antigravity spacecraft. They’ve been telling us that much right along.” Hunter considered this for a moment, then shook his head. “But reverse engineering. I don’t buy it.”
“You don’t, sir?”
“Just imagine for a minute . . . an F-35 Lightning II crashes in the desert back in 1860.”
“Okay . . .”
“And the US government decides to take it apart and see what makes it tick. You think they’d be able to do it? Think they’d be able to reverse engineer an F-35 after studying the crash, and actually build one of their own and figure out how to fly it?”
“Sir, in 1860 they didn’t have aircraft.”
Hunter shrugged. “They had balloons. And . . . just look at that thing!” Above them, the bright star had been joined by a second. They hovered side by side, unmoving and utterly silent. “The jump from a balloon to a jet fighter probably isn’t as big as the jump from a jet to that. Antigravity? Nullifying inertia? Hell, they’re using science a thousand years ahead of ours, not a century.”
“So what are you saying, sir?”