*
Steve lowered his shoulder and strained against the weight of the straps. He’d wrapped the unconscious alien in his ejection seat parachute and was towing him across the scorching sand, muttering the whole way.
“Ya know, this is supposed to be my weekend off. But nooooo! You had to come down here with an attitude, and now you got me out here pullin’ your potato-chip munchin’, slime-drippin’ ass across the burning desert with your dreadlocks hanging out the back.” The creature’s long tentacle arms had worked their way free and were dragging limply behind. “Think you can just come down here, acting all big and bad, and mess with me and my guys?” He turned around like he was expecting an answer. His anger rising, he screamed, “I coulda been at a barbecue, you freak!” He staggered toward the orange nylon chute and delivered one vicious kick after another to the lump of comatose biomass wrapped inside until he had to stop for breath. Panting, he added, “but I’m not mad.”
Drenched in sweat, Steve knew he was going to need water pretty soon. Leaving his package behind, he grunted up a short hill and surveyed the desert. Empty brown hills stretched away to infinity beneath powder blue sky. Heat lifting off the desert floor shimmered like silver ocean waves. Just before he trudged back down to gather his prisoner of war, a glinting light caught his eye. It came from the top of a hill several miles away. Soon he realized what it was: traffic. There was a road less than a thousand yards in front of him. He dashed back for his cargo and began a furious charge toward the road. He arrived a few minutes later, sat down at the edge of the old two-lane highway, and watched in amazement as an armada of a hundred trailers, campers, vans, and trucks rolled steadily closer.
“Hey, mucous-head, our ride’s here.” Steve put a big fat grin on his face and stood in the center of the road, waving his arms. “Gonna have to run me over if you won’t stop.”
Fortunately, the mile-long caravan rolled to a gradual halt. Steve walked up to one of the lead vehicles, the one towing an old biwing airplane behind it. “Captain Steven Hiller, United States Marine Corps.”
The driver, a big curly headed guy with a sarcastic sense of humor, leaned out his window and asked, “Need a lift?”
Two minutes later, Steve was surrounded by two dozen curious members of the caravan. He took a long slug of water before explaining what he had in the parachute. That got their attention. He told them he needed to get into Las Vegas, to Nellis Air Force Base, that it was a matter of urgent national interest.
“Sorry, soldier,” an old guy with a rifle on his hip said, “they told on the radio that Nellis got all shot up. It’s wiped out.”
Steve walked over to the parachute and gave it two more swift kicks. “All right, then, when I was flying past here, I spotted an airbase next to an old lake bed. I need somebody to take me over there.”
Several people produced maps of the region. Although some were quite detailed, none of them showed an airbase. According to the maps, the whole area was nothing more than a missile testing area, off-limits to civilians. To make matters worse, there was not one, but four dry lake beds.
“Trust me, it’s there,” Steve told them.
The whole thing was too spooky for most of them. They wanted to get away from the aliens, not chauffeur them around. The leaders of the group were willing to take Steve and his package with them, but they weren’t going to waste precious fuel on a wild goose chase through a restricted military area.
That’s when the guy with the sarcastic attitude came to Steve’s defense. He pushed a couple of the map readers aside and stepped to the center of the blacktop conference.
“Groom Lake,” he said to Steve. “Groom Lake Weapons Testing Facility is the base you saw. Pair of runways crossing in an X, four or five real large hangars up against a mountain, right?”
“That’s right.” Steve and the others listened as the big man explained exactly how to get there, drawing in roads the map-makers had left off. When the man was done, Steve asked, “How come you’re such an expert on this place?” The man’s son, a long-haired kid about seventeen years old put in, a little too quickly, “Because we live around here.”
“My name’s Russell Casse,” the man said in a low, almost conspiratorial voice. He shook Steve’s hand and continued, “About ten years ago I had a run in with these little blood suckers, and I’d do anything to help you kick their nasty little asses. You mind if I take a look?”
Steve didn’t care if the man was crazy, as long as he was willing to help. “Not at all,” Steve said, “but it’s not a real pretty sight.”
“I’ve seen ’em before,” Russell assured him. “Big black eyes, puckered little mouth, white skin.” His son, Miguel, followed close behind and seemed to be less than enthusiastic about cooperating with the Marine pilot. Even from twenty feet away, Russell knew something was wrong. The long tentacles hanging out of the parachute had nothing to do with the aliens he “remembered” taking him from the airfield almost a decade ago.
Steve tore back the nylon material. The motorists who had followed them to the parachute jumped back in visceral disgust. Russell stared down at the creature, horrified for a completely different reason. The creature was too large, too bony, and too fearsome to be one of the delicate little monsters who had kidnapped him a decade earlier. Could this be a completely different species of alien? he wondered. Or did I imagine the whole thing, make it up? Suddenly, the most real thing in Russell’s past, the moment that ruined the rest of his life, didn’t seem very real at all. He felt himself getting a little bit dizzy and put a hand on Miguel’s shoulder to steady himself.
“Dad, don’t forget about Troy. We need to get to that hospital.”
Russell stared at the boy for a moment, trying to focus his mind. Then he nodded and turned toward the trailer.
“So, sir,” Steve called to his ally, “are we headed to Groom Lake or what?”
Russell had already forgotten about his promise to Steve. “Look, friend, I’d like to help you, but I’ve got a sick boy in the back of my rig over there. He’s going to die in a few hours if we can’t find the medicine he needs. You just follow those directions I gave you. Take you about two hours from here.”
“We’ll get you over there,” a tall, sunburnt man said. “Philip, clear everything out of the pickup, put it in the RV.” The redheaded boy shot a sad look at Alicia before running off to follow his father’s command.
“Hey, Mr. Casse, wait up.” Steve jogged up to Russell, who appeared to be in pain. “Your boy needs medicine, I understand that. Look, a base that size will have a complete clinic with everything you need. You said it’s two hours from here.”
Russell looked at his son, “Your call.”
Miguel thought about it for a moment. “Let’s try to make it in an hour and a half.”
*
Soaring over the endless Nevada desert, Air Force One’s pilot. Captain Birnham, announced that the Nellis Range could be seen off to the left. Peeping out the little opera windows, the passengers were disappointed by the sight of a small-to medium-sized air base in fairly shabby condition. On the surface, Area 51 consisted of one very large airplane hangar surrounded by several smaller ones, a pair of crossed landing strips, plus a smattering of radar dishes and bunkhouses. Here and there, scattered around the wide open desert, they spotted other buildings, but the unspoken consensus among the passengers was that there was nothing especially interesting about this secret facility tucked against a set of steep brown hills.
By agreement, there was no ceremony to welcome the president. As soon as the big bird touched down, Captain Birnham was directed toward the largest hangar, the doors of which rolled open as they taxied up. As a small contingent of soldiers pushed mobile stairs toward the blue-and-white Boeing, Whitmore and his entourage crowded the doorway, waiting impatiently to be let out. Sheepishly, Nimziki came forward from the command center, where he’d been contemplating his next move. Everyone did their best to politely ignore him until the doors were t
hrown open.
At the bottom of the gangway, they were met by the base’s top administrator, Major Mitchell. He had fifty or so of his soldiers lined up for the president’s inspection.
“Welcome to Area Fifty-One, sir,” he said with a crisp salute.
Whitmore returned the salute, explaining, “We’re in a hurry.”
“Right this way.” Mitchell didn’t need to be told why the president of the United States had decided to visit his backwater base in the middle of a global catastrophe. He had come for the ship. And, although technically speaking, it was a violation of federal law for him to show it to anyone, even the president, he led the way without the slightest hesitation.
Mitchell was a large, intimidating presence, handsome in the way square-jawed prize fighters are handsome. Although he was young, just shy of thirty, he was a climber, moving quickly up the ranks. His superiors at Fort Cayuga, impressed with his work, had steered him into his current position of supervising operations at Area 51. He was responsible for everything that happened on the base except research. If something was happening, Mitchell always knew about it and was most often standing right there to watch it happen. He was well aware that the job was only a stepping stone to something higher up, something in Washington. But he also knew that any breach of security, whether it was an infiltration from the outside, or information leaks coming from within, anything at all that put Area 51 into the newspapers, would get him swiftly busted back to a desk job in rural Idaho. He took his job seriously.
He ushered the group into a drab dead-end hallway with locked office doors on either side. At the end of the room there was a water cooler and a few wilted plants. Mitchell stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
“Stand clear of the walls,” he warned, unlocking a cover plate and flipping a switch.
Suddenly there was a loud hydraulic hum and the whole room began to sink into the ground. The office doors appeared to climb the walls, as the floor lowered down a concrete shaft. The entire room was an enormous elevator.
While the others gaped around them, impressed, the president’s anger slowly boiled over.
“Why the hell wasn’t I told about this place?” he demanded, staring at Nimziki for an answer.
“Two words, Mr. President.” For once Nimziki appeared humble and earnest. “Plausible deniability. The decision was made way, way before my time to keep this thing under wraps. Hoover knew it would be turned into a political football, so it was classified ‘need to know,’ and until today—”
“Enough!” Whitmore snapped. Nothing Nimziki said could erase the harm he had already done. “Plausible deniability, my ass,” he muttered.
What Nimziki failed to mention was that one of the reasons the army, CIA, and the FBI had conspired to keep the crash secret was to gain advantage over the Russians in the Cold War. They slapped a twenty-five-year gag order on the project at Area 51. Both the Cold War and the secrecy order had expired under Nimziki’s tenure, but he hadn’t made the discovery public. He had ambitions of running for national office, maybe even the presidency, and the way he saw it, he had everything to lose by admitting he’d kept the thing secret and everything to gain by keeping control of the whole project to himself.
Metal doors slid open onto what looked like a scrub-down area in a research hospital. Dozens of masks and white coveralls hung on hooks near a series of sinks. Proceeding through this area, the group came to a set of Plexiglas doors. Beyond them was a partial scene of a busy workspace, several workers dressed from head to toe in sterile white overalls, masks and hair caps were moving in and out of view.
“This is our static-free clean room,” Mitchell announced proudly, giving them a moment to gawk before showing them the way to the next exhibit on his tour.
“Well, let’s see,” the president said.
Mitchell didn’t know exactly what to say. There wasn’t much of interest in there and he was sure if Whitmore knew how many hundreds of thousands of dollars it would cost the American tax payers to decontaminate the facility, he wouldn’t insist. “Actually, sir, entrance to this room requires—”
Whitmore heard the wrong answer coming out of the soldier’s mouth. He explained what he wanted in a way that left no room for interpretation. “Open this goddamn door right now.”
Suddenly Mitchell couldn’t get the door open fast enough. He slid his magnetized ID badge through the scanner lock and the glass doors whisked apart with a smart hum. The group, eleven strong, marched into the state-of-the-art, dust-free research facility. Once they were inside and turned the corner, they realized they had only been able to see a tiny slice of it from the scrub room. The chamber was at least a hundred yards long with a raised walkway, two and a half feet higher, running straight down the center. On either side, like astronauts in their white suits, bonnets, and shoe bags, the staff was busy with a number of projects on either side of the aisle.
They moved around their workstations tweaking robotic arms, conducting laser experiments, studying graphs and charts, or sitting around doing nothing. But all of them stopped what they were doing when President Thomas Whitmore unexpectedly walked past. Mitchell stayed a step ahead of the others, explaining in a word or two the work being done at each station. The quality and sophistication of the equipment was astounding, and in many cases it was beyond state-of-the-art. In every detail, the lab was well staffed, well supplied, and well organized.
“Where the hell did all this come from?” the president whispered to Grey without breaking stride. “How did this get funded?”
Doddering along at the back of the pack, seemingly out of earshot, Julius overheard the president’s question. “You didn’t think they actually spent ten thousand dollars for a hammer and thirty thousand for a toilet seat, did you?” The old guy gave a little laugh, not realizing he was partly correct. Military procurement officers had been funneling money to Area 51 for decades by padding other expenses, but the bulk of the funds came straight from the American congress. Part of the national budget was always listed as “the Dark Fund,” money for projects deemed too sensitive for the lawmakers to know about, usually R&D on new weapons systems for the military.
A steel ramp at the far end of the room led up to a thick titanium and steel door. An electric motor shook the door to life, lifting it straight up. Ducking underneath and starting down the elevated walkway to meet the president came a pair of scientists dressed in white lab coats.
Dr. Brackish Okun was the director of research at Area 51. About forty-five years old, Okun had a full head of wild gray hair falling to his shoulders. He had an unmistakable hippie bounce in the way he walked, hands thrust deeply into the pockets of his lab coat. He was smiling one of those uncontrollable, ear-to-ear smiles the president often saw on the faces of kids when they walked up to meet him.
“Oh God, what now?” the president muttered under his breath. He’d already had so many strange encounters over the last thirty-six hours, and here came another one.
Mitchell did the honors. “Mr. President, I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Okun. He’s been heading up our research here for the past fifteen years.”
Okun was an odd, hyperenergetic man who had obviously spent too much time in underground isolation. He stood nodding and grinning for an awkward moment, his wrinkled gray and yellow tie blending with his pale skin, before suddenly reaching out and shaking the president’s hand with too much enthusiasm.
“Wow, Mr. President, it is truly an honor to meet you, sir. Oh, and this is my colleague Dr. Issacs.” Issacs, a handsome man with close-cropped hair and a goatee, appeared to be the normal half of the team.
As Issacs leaned forward to shake hands, Okun turned to one of the researchers and whispered, “This is so cool.” Whitmore shot him a disapproving look, which Okun seemed to recognize. “If any of us seem a little odd down here, it’s because they don’t let us out much,” Okun said in apology.
“Yes, I can understand that,” the president said, barely disguisin
g his irony.
“So! I guess you’d like to see the Big Tamale,” Okun surmised. “Follow me.”
Every member of the group glanced around in befuddlement. They did, however, follow the odd scientist toward the next room. Leaving the long research hall, they walked up a ramp into a tight space between concrete walls. Inside, there was a small, level area and then another steel door. Issacs swiped an access card through the magnet lock, took a quick breath, then slapped a large button on the wall. A small red siren light began twirling to the sound of a buzzer as the wall in front of them lowered like a drawbridge, revealing a spectacular sight.
On the other side was a huge, dimly lit concrete chamber, five stories deep and just as wide. Armed guards patrolled a series of steel catwalks high above, automatic weapons at the ready. But the centerpiece of the room, perched on a custom-built platform and dominating the rest of the space, was an alien attack plane, its armored exterior a lustrous midnight blue beneath the work-lights. It was a replica of the ships that had laid waste to the Black Knights. The members of the president’s entourage were suitably impressed. Mouths agape, they came down the ramp.
It was unlike anything they’d seen before and not at all what they had expected. The basic shape was familiar, like two saucer plates stacked rim to rim. That explained the thousands of descriptions of UFOs people had registered over the years, but it was the details of the sixty-foot craft that made it compelling and fascinating. Along the spine of the ship, starting at the crown, then tapering to a sharp point at the tail, was a tall, bony, six-foot-tall projection that the scientists called “the fin.” The surface seemed to be made of large, armored plates connected at the seams by countless pieces of intricate machine tooling, tiny metallic gadgets set in place with the same precision as the muscles in a human hand.
The group moved onto an observation platform, face-to-face with the darkly fascinating bird, displayed like a sleeping stegosaurus in a hushed museum. At the front of the machine was a sort of cockpit with broad, flat windows. Below these, at the very nose of the plane, curved projections came forward to form sharp tips, almost like the mandibles on a huge insect. More than one of the amazed visitors imagined being squeezed between those powerful claws before being consumed.
Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The Page 18