Even after the admission of its existence in 1992, no official statements about operations carried out at Groom Lake were made by the American Government or any other body, and the area is subject to a cloak of secrecy and extreme security regarding access even today. This security is reinforced by constant patrols of its perimeter by armed guards who have instructions to shoot to kill if trespassers get too close to Groom Lake. Red-lettered notices warn that the ‘use of deadly force’ is authorized.
Predictably enough, this secrecy has attracted its fair share of UFO enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists and the usual lunatic fringe, who between them believe that the base houses everything from the Ark of the Covenant to a dozen or so crashed flying saucers from alien planets. As is so often the case, the truth is actually more sensational and more frightening.
At the southern end of the Groom Lake Base, on the west side of the main runway, is a high-security compound, containing a large two-storey hanger-like structure within an electrified fence. Only a handful of people who work at Groom Lake have access to it, and nobody else there has any idea what goes on in the compound. Written on the building above the main door is the name ‘Rolver Systems’. The name is a contraction of the two proper names ‘Roland’ and ‘Oliver’ and is, to anyone familiar with Rolver Systems’ function, a cruel joke.
Four or five times a week, a specially-modified United States Air Force C-130 Hercules transport aircraft arrives at Groom Lake. Unlike most aircraft, which taxi off the runway and park on one of the hardstandings to the north and south of the Flight Operations Centre building, this aircraft leaves the runway almost directly opposite Hangar 18. Then it takes the taxiway which runs down to the southwest, close to the Rolver Systems’ compound, and parks at the back of the building, where there are wide steel gates set into the boundary fence.
Once in position, the flight crew leave the aircraft and are driven away in a USAF van to the Flight Operations Centre. Only then is the Hercules rear cargo door opened and unloading started. Rolver Systems’ personnel carry out the unloading operation alone.
The cargo is always the same: between thirty and fifty oblong aluminium caskets about eight feet long, three feet wide and two feet deep. At one end of each casket is an advanced monitoring system, which constantly checks its internal temperature, gas concentrations and pressure, and other parameters. During the flight, all the caskets are connected to a central monitoring system in the sealed hold of the Hercules.
The caskets are placed carefully and individually on small forklifts and driven into the Rolver Systems’ building. When the last casket has been delivered, and the aircraft has been loaded with the now-empty caskets delivered by the previous flight, the gates and the doors to the building are locked. The flight crew return to the aircraft an hour or so later, and the Hercules climbs back into the air.
The same routine has been followed at Groom Lake, with only fairly minor changes, since late in 1957.
Beaver Creek, Western Montana
Removing the femur proved more difficult than Alan Parker had expected. Even with the top of the skull – or rather what was left of it – removed, and the brain cavity emptied of all remaining tissue, the femur still wouldn’t budge. Eventually, Parker had to sever and remove the entire lower jaw. Only then could the femur be moved laterally, rotated, and gently eased out.
The technician took the bone from Parker’s gloved hands – it was lighter than he had expected – and placed it on a stainless steel tray on a side table. Parker would examine it in some detail once he had finished the autopsy because it was, after all, evidence of a second death. Next to it, the newly-discovered skull sat in a steel dish, awaiting its turn.
Parker glanced across at the bone and skull, and then continued his examination of the mortal remains of Billy Dole.
Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada
The telephone almost never rang in the Rolver Systems’ building, not least because none of the numbers were listed in any directory, confidential or otherwise. In fact, the only people who had access to the numbers were the dozen or so men outside Rolver Systems whose positions required them to be given Omega One clearance and indoctrinated into Project Roland Oliver. These included the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, the head of the United States Air Force Military Airlift Command, which operated the Hercules, and the Directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.
So when the telephone rang in the top-floor office that morning, Roger Ketch answered it almost immediately.
In 1957, when Rolver Systems began operations, the officer in charge had remained in the post for almost six years, a record unbeaten until Roger Ketch had taken over. Most had applied for transfer a year or two after their appointment, and in some cases within a matter of months, weeks or even days.
Ketch was the exception. He had headed Rolver Systems for nearly eight years, after a less than illustrious career in the FBI, and had no intention of requesting a transfer to other duties. He was also exceptional in that he actually enjoyed the work or rather, to be absolutely accurate, the power that his position conferred on him.
Ten minutes after completing the call, Ketch was briefing a former SEAL officer in Texas on another secure and scrambled line. Thirty minutes after that, the SEAL officer had assembled his three Alert Team members. Three-quarters of an hour later, they were all en route to the airport at Fort Worth where a government jet was waiting to take them to Helena, Montana.
In accordance with the FBI Director’s Omega Procedures file, Procedure One had been initiated.
Beaver Creek, Western Montana
Alan Parker didn’t get to the motel restaurant until nearly half past one, because of the extra time he had taken over the femur and the skull. Hunter and Kaufmann were sitting at a back table over a pot of coffee, waiting for him, when he arrived. After they’d ordered lunch, Hunter asked him what he’d found.
‘OK,’ Parker said. ‘Let’s keep it simple and start at the beginning. First, Billy Dole. He died instantly from the blow to his head.’
‘No surprise there,’ Hunter muttered.
Parker nodded. ‘Quite. I did a full autopsy, as you requested, and apart from a duodenal ulcer in its early stages, Dole was in very good shape for a man of his age. There was no evidence of any organic disease, although there was some hardening and thickening of the artery walls near the heart. But that’s pretty normal, and certainly wasn’t life-threatening. If somebody hadn’t crowned him with a femur, Billy Dole could have looked forward to a long and healthy retirement.’
‘And his skull?’ Hunter asked.
Parker took a sip of water before he answered. ‘I did some impact tests on the unbroken fragments,’ he said, ‘and the results show that Dole’s skull wasn’t weak – if anything, it was unusually strong. Dole was a big man with a heavy skeletal structure.’
‘Then that’s one theory out of the window,’ Kaufmann said.
Hunter nodded. ‘What about the force needed to drive that femur into his head? And I assume it was a real femur?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Parker replied. ‘It was a normal femur, in most respects. It hadn’t been sharpened or anything like that. Getting it out,’ he went on, ‘was quite a struggle. The distal end – that’s the knee joint – had lodged in Dole’s lower jaw, and I had to take the jaw off completely to release it.’
He paused for a moment.
‘Trying to estimate the force needed to drive it right through the skull, the brain cavity, the sinuses, and then down into the mouth is difficult, maybe even impossible. At least, without replicating the impact with another skull. What I can say is that I’m quite certain no human being could have done it in the circumstances you described. And there’s something else.’
‘Yes?’
‘Billy Dole was standing on one leg when the femur hit him.’
‘What?’
Parker smiled, pleased with the effect of his remark. ‘Act
ually, that’s not strictly true. What I found were compression fractures at the ends of the bones of Dole’s left leg, and some evidence of damage to the vertebrae as well. There was also a fracture of the head of his left femur. All the sort of injuries that you find in bodies that have suffered a severe fall. Or, in this case, a massive blow to the head.
‘In short,’ Parker finished, ‘Billy Dole was walking when the femur hit him, so he had no warning at all.’
There was a silence at the table as Hunter and Kaufmann digested that. The waitress appeared with their starters, but none of them touched the food or even looked at their plates.
‘That isn’t very helpful, doctor,’ Hunter said.
Parker shook his head. ‘You asked the question. The answer I’ve given you is my professional opinion.’
Hunter looked at Kaufmann.
‘I was right,’ she said. ‘No answers, just a bunch more questions.’
Hunter grinned at her, briefly. ‘If a human being couldn’t have done it, how the hell did the femur get driven into Billy Dole’s skull?’ he demanded.
Parker shrugged. ‘I have no idea. You’re the investigators, not me. I’m just a simple pathologist. And,’ he said, ‘just to rain on your parade some more, there were no fingerprints of any sort on the femur, and no indication of any trauma to the other end of it – the hip joint.’
‘Which means?’ Hunter prompted.
‘Which means that nobody, for example, held the femur against the top of Billy Dole’s head while somebody else drove it home with a sledge hammer.’
‘So,’ Hunter said, ‘we’re back to the solution according to Sheriff Dick Reilly – it was a murder that couldn’t have happened.’
‘Except that it did,’ Christy-Lee Kaufmann said quietly.
Parker picked up his spoon and took a mouthful of his soup.
‘Anything else, doctor?’ Hunter asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Parker said, smiling. ‘I was saving the best bits for last.’
‘And what are the best bits?’
‘I examined the femur, and the skull that Sheriff Reilly brought along. First, the femur. I said that it was normal in most respects, which it was. It hadn’t been out of the body for long – probably no more than three or four days – and when I touched it I noticed something odd about the surface texture, even through the surgical gloves.’
Kaufmann had picked up her fork, but put it down again.
‘So I looked at the bone under a microscope, and I saw something I’ve never seen before, or not on a human bone, anyway.’ He paused and looked across the table at Hunter and Kaufmann. ‘The flesh,’ he said, ‘had been flayed off it.’
‘What’s that mean?’ Hunter growled.
‘It means that every single scrap of flesh – muscle, tendon and connective tissue – had been stripped off the bone using some sort of equipment. Whatever had been used had left tiny indentations in the bone that were quite unmistakable.’
‘Isn’t that what they do to animal bones?’ Christy-Lee asked. ‘You know, to cattle and pig bones?’
Parker nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They call the product “re-constituted meat” or something like that, and then make it into sausages and burgers, or sometimes dog and cat food. It’s normally done with a kind of high-pressure wash, but this wasn’t. Whatever was used was a mechanical device of some sort.’
‘Why,’ Hunter asked, leaning across the table, and mentally losing all interest in the double cheeseburger he’d ordered as his main course, ‘would anyone want to remove all the flesh from a human thigh-bone?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ Parker replied.
Kaufmann leaned back in her chair and pushed her untouched plate away from her. ‘I’ve kind of lost my appetite,’ she said. ‘Anything else about the femur?’
Parker had almost finished his soup, and put his spoon down before replying. ‘Well, there wasn’t too much to go on,’ he began. ‘You can’t,’ he said with a smile, ‘expect much of a photofit from a thigh-bone, but there are a few things I can tell you.’
Hunter and Kaufmann looked at the pathologist expectantly.
‘The victim was a young woman,’ Parker said. ‘My estimate is that she was at least twenty years old, but less than thirty, and the bone shows no signs of any illness or disease. Of course,’ he went on, ‘that’s not to say she wasn’t riddled with soft-tissue cancer or some other disease that wouldn’t leave any evidence on a long bone.’
He paused for a moment. ‘Apart from the absence of flesh, the femur appeared normal in every way, at least at first sight.’
‘Yes?’ Hunter said.
‘There was a small hole, around six millimetres in diameter – that’s about a quarter of an inch – drilled at each end of the shaft of the femur. And what do you think I found inside?’
Hunter was getting tired of guessing games. ‘Suppose you tell us, doctor,’ he said.
Parker smiled again. ‘Nothing at all,’ he replied.
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Christy-Lee Kaufmann asked.
‘The shaft of the femur was empty. No bone marrow. That means somebody sucked the marrow out through the holes.
‘Look,’ Parker said, leaning forward. ‘I really don’t know what we’re dealing with here, but that bone appeared to have been processed. You know, like you’d do with a beef bone at a slaughterhouse. The flesh stripped off, the marrow sucked out, and then the bone discarded. Whoever did it has access to some quite sophisticated equipment, and I don’t like to even think about why he’s doing it.’
The three of them sat in silence for a few minutes. Parker finished his soup – as a pathologist, it took a lot to make him lose his appetite. Hunter toyed with his starter, but Kaufmann simply couldn’t eat.
‘OK, doctor,’ Hunter said finally. ‘What about the skull?’
‘As you and the sheriff thought,’ Parker replied, ‘the brain was still inside. Like the femur, there was no sign of any disease or obvious cause of death. There was one bullet hole and evidence of a second bullet which had hit the side of the skull but failed to penetrate, but these were presumably caused by the teenager who found the artifact. The lower jaw was missing. The neck had been severed directly below the base of the skull, probably by a very sharp knife, but I have no idea if that was the cause of death or occurred post-mortem.’
‘But the neck was severed, so we’re dealing with a probable murder?’ Hunter asked.
‘I can’t say that for certain,’ Parker replied, ‘but obviously that’s the most likely scenario. The other point of interest is that the scalp, facial muscles, and all other external tissue had been removed.’
The question was obvious, and Kaufmann asked it. ‘How was it removed?’
‘Just like the femur,’ Parker replied, nodding. ‘The same kind of mechanical device was used. I found indentations in the skull that were identical to those on the femur.’
Kaufmann leaned across the table. ‘Would I be jumping the gun to suggest that the skull belonged to a young woman, aged twenty to thirty?’ she asked.
Again Parker nodded. ‘Exactly right,’ he said. ‘And to save you asking the next question, yes, I do think these two specimens came from the same victim. I’m taking both the skull and the femur back to Helena. Once I get a DNA test carried out, I hope I’ll be able to confirm that.’
Chapter Five
Wednesday
FBI Headquarters, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue,
Washington, D.C.
Donahue had been expecting the incoming call, and had gone down to the Communications Centre to receive it. The staff officer there looked curiously at Donahue as he entered the soundproof booth. To have the Director visit the CommCen once a month was unusual enough. Twice in one day was unheard-of.
‘Yes?’ Donahue said into the telephone handset when the call was connected. ‘This is Donahue.’
Roger Ketch didn’t introduce himself. ‘We’re running,’ he said. ‘Omega
Procedure One has been implemented. We expect the Alert Team to arrive in Beaver Creek in about three hours. Have you completed all the actions required for Phase One?’
Donahue nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve already instructed the Senior Resident Agent at Helena to recall the two agents. They should be out of Beaver Creek and back in Helena by this evening at the latest.’
‘Good. We don’t want any interference while we’re cleaning this up. Anything else from them?’
‘Nothing yet,’ Donahue replied. ‘The autopsy results should be available any time now, but the Resident Agency hasn’t had anything else from the agents in the field.’
‘OK. We have their names and addresses, so we can attend to them once we’ve finished in Beaver Creek.’
‘I don’t like this,’ Donahue said. ‘I told you that Steven Hunter isn’t an FBI agent. In fact, he isn’t even an American citizen. There could be international repercussions.’
‘You’re not being asked to like it,’ Ketch said sharply. ‘Just follow the procedures. Hunter is going to have an accident. It could happen to anyone. As soon as you hear anything, let me be the first to know. While we’re sorting this out, it’s essential that our team has access to all the latest data as soon as possible.’
‘I understand. I’ll be in touch as soon as I get anything.’
‘Right.’
It was a moment before Donahue realized that he was listening to a dead phone.
Beaver Creek, Western Montana
Kaufmann’s cell phone rang as she and Hunter walked out of the restaurant. She pulled it out of her pocket, stroked a finger across the screen and held the phone to her ear. Just under a minute later, she replaced it in her pocket with a gesture of irritation.
‘Who was that?’ Hunter asked.
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