by Mack Maloney
Hunter spent the next few hours flying above the shocked, smoking city, making sure that any remaining RAM forces he could see were attacked and eliminated.
To that end, he served as a forward air controller, calling down air strikes and strafing missions for the pair of Football City Sabre jets Ben and JT were flying.
When they finally had to return home for fuel, Hunter used the Huey’s two 50-millimeter cannons to tear up any sign of RAM activity he could find.
Tanks, trucks, gun emplacements.
If he saw it, it was little more than smoke and twisted metal seconds later.
The sky was just becoming light when the helicopter’s low-fuel light finally snapped on.
Hunter steered toward Coleman Airport. Ben and JT had refueled and returned to Detroit by that time, landing just as Hunter arrived.
The six C-119s had also refueled and returned; they were carrying more than fifty reserve pilots now in the employ of Football City. The air jockeys were crucial to the next part of the mission.
Hunter landed and met up with Ben and JT. They quietly congratulated each other on the—mostly—psyops mission they’d just pulled off.
No aerial bombs? Not needed, if you have tons of fireworks, smoke bombs, flares, and loudspeakers blaring the sound of explosions at decibel levels that could literally cause one’s ears to bleed. Besides, the only real destruction was to RAM’s headquarters and its military apparatus. The city was still standing.
Only the devils were gone.
But with the light of day, all that seemed like a distant memory. Now something new was happening.
St. Louis had arrived with a group of Football City’s top military people. With Hunter, Ben, and JT in tow, they walked to the center runway, where they were met by a like number of the people from Detroit’s small-but-resilient anti-RAM insurgency, known as the Motor City Underground (MCU).
In an agreement hammered out just hours before the battle, the MCU leader told St. Louis that in exchange for taking down RAM, the vast armada of RAM bombers now belonged to Football City, along with all the aerial bombs they could carry.
This included the Mitchells Roy from Troy had bought, only to lose to RAM thievery.
So the operation had been a success. RAM was history, Detroit was still intact, and once they were able to integrate the big planes into their tiny air corps, Football City would have one of the largest bomber fleets on the continent.
“From worst to first,” JT said as the first B-52s were taking off. “Who’ll dare screw with us now?”
Yet the whole thing seemed surreal to Hunter.
The foggy airfield, the sound of airplane engines, the smell of exhaust …
His memory began to stir again. He recalled the scene on the foggy runway again, only this time it took place at night. And again came the blur of something moving at an earsplitting speed overhead. Then the mystery woman with blonde hair appeared, beckoning to him through the mist.
Or was she waving goodbye?
He didn’t know.
Because, try as he might, he couldn’t recall anything more than that.
Part Four: The Man Not Zhang
Chapter 13
One week later
THE SIX MITCHELLS CAME out of the night and roared over Groom Lake.
Led by Hunter’s F-86 Sabre, they were flying just fifty feet off the ground, engines making a lot of noise, ready to fire at anything that moved.
But the only thing moving at Area 51 was the wind.
It was midnight and the end of a long flight from Football City. Three of the Mitchells were crammed with fifteen people each: two pilots and a flight engineer, plus a dozen members of the Football City Special Forces. The FCSF soldiers took turns manning each plane’s gun turrets, but there was no need. The flight out had been unopposed and, after four provocative passes, no one was shooting at them from the secret base below.
But while it seemed like nothing had changed since his recon just ten days before, Hunter still wanted to be the first to land. If a bullet was out there waiting for someone, he wanted it to hit him.
So he brought the Sabre down and rolled it off the runway. Killing the engine, he lifted his canopy, climbed out onto the wing, and waited.
Nothing.
He jumped to the ground, stopped, and listened.
Still nothing.
He took a moment to absorb his surroundings. It was odd being out here in a place that had fueled so many wild imaginations.
UFOs. Aliens. Bigfoot. Elvis …
Where did the truth end and the nonsense begin?
At the same time, his psyche was ablaze. There were answers for him out here. He could feel it. But how quickly could he find them?
He scanned the base with his night-vision goggles. Lots of hangars, support buildings, and old barracks-like structures all appeared empty and abandoned. Just what he wanted to see.
His idea was to get the raiding force on the ground, find Dr. Pott’s AII facility, take whatever they could from it, then leave as quickly as possible.
With luck, they’d be there less than an hour.
The B-25s came in one by one.
The first was carrying an FCSF combined air defense and communications team, armed with both Stinger missiles and powerful radio sets able to listen in on AMC radio traffic.
The next three Mitchells were carrying elite FCSF infiltration troops (the raid’s search teams). Next to land was the gas plane, filled with huge rubber bladders full of aviation fuel. Its crew would immediately gas up the other Mitchells, readying them for their planned quick exit.
Ben and JT were the last to land. Along with a dozen FCSF troopers, they were carrying two extra passengers: Dr. Pott, who would help look for the AII facility, and St. Louis, who couldn’t be talked out of joining the mission.
As a few FCSF troopers took up guarding the Mitchells, the rest began a building-by-building search, looking for the AII facility, but also making sure there was no opposition hidden anywhere.
Meanwhile, Dr. Pott and St. Louis joined Ben and JT at Hunter’s position.
“Anything look familiar, Doctor?” Hunter asked.
“I’m not sure,” Pott replied, glancing around. “This place has changed a lot since I was last here.”
Pott was assigned a trio of FCSF troopers under St. Louis’s command. Together, they headed deeper into the base in search of the AII Research Center.
Hunter, Ben, and JT scouted the south end of the base. They searched a trio of large hangars, but each was empty. They checked a series of smaller buildings, workshops, and toolsheds. They were also vacant, with many broken windows and unlocked doors. The same went for a row of maintenance garages.
“Talk about a ghost town,” JT remarked. “I don’t blame anyone for not coming out here.”
Suddenly Hunter’s radio crackled to life. They’d been on the ground less than five minutes.
It was St. Louis.
He said three words: “We found it!”
They’d located the Anomalous Incident Investigation facility inside a large, wooden building squeezed between two enormous, empty hangars built after Pott had left the program.
St. Louis met Hunter, Ben, and JT at the door. “Fried brain or not,” he said, “the good doctor led us right to it.”
They walked into the dark building to find it filled with dusty computers, moldy furniture, and more broken glass. Pott was waiting by a door at the far end of the hallway. Its sign read: AII SPECIAL RESEARCH STORAGE SECTION.
He was smiling broadly. “Welcome to the end of the rainbow.”
They entered a cavernous storage room with boxes stacked to the ceiling. Small, airtight glass cases lined its walls; other larger containers were located nearby.
Pott explained the glass cases contained items AII had been studying before the program finally closed down.
“Prepare yourselves,” he said. “This is pretty strange …”
He directed his flashlight on the fi
rst case. Inside was an object that looked like an ordinary football, yet was white and stitched like a baseball.
“That’s how they play some sport, somewhere else,” Pott said.
He pointed his flashlight at the second glass case. It held a dusty photo album opened to a page showing New York City in the 1930s, with two Empire State Buildings standing side by side. The photo’s caption read: EMPIRE STATE TWIN TOWERS.
The third glass case held three liquor bottles. One was a bottle of beer, and on its label was printed: SERVE WARM. The second was a bottle of champagne. Its label advised: SHAKE WELL BEFORE USING. The third was a bottle of sake. Its label read: ICE MAKES IT NICE.
All of the items looked normal but different at the same time.
“How did all this stuff get here?” JT asked.
Pott said, “I guess my colleagues must have found a way to retrieve these items from ‘somewhere else.’ Other places. Other universes.”
“But how?” Hunter asked, astonished by the bizarre artifacts.
Pott just shrugged. “I don’t know.”
At that moment, a trio of FCSF troopers hurried past. They were carrying computer drives, external storage devices, and boxes of written files—data-rich items found inside the storage room. They were taking everything out to the Mitchells.
“Once I get into that stuff,” Pott told Hunter, “I’ll be able to tell you more.”
Standing in the middle of the chamber was the biggest display of all. Even in the shadows they could see it was at least sixty feet long and maybe forty feet wide.
It was covered with metal sheathing wrapped in chains that were locked tight. A couple of FCSF troopers were trying to undo the locks.
“We have no idea what’s inside there,” Pott said. “But like everything else, we’ll find out soon.”
St. Louis put his hand on Hunter’s shoulder. “It’s the treasure trove we were hoping for, Hawk,” he said. “I’m sure with all this data, we’ll find out what happened to you—and a whole lot more.”
Hunter almost choked up. He hadn’t expected the moment to be so emotional, but it was. His psyche felt like it was on fire now—things he just had to know were finally within his grasp.
He turned to thank Pott, when suddenly …
Gunfire.
Then people shouting.
Then more gunfire.
All of it coming from a hangar nearby.
Hunter groaned as he, Ben, and JT rushed out the door.
“I knew it couldn’t be this easy …” JT said.
Chapter 14
THE GUN BATTLE WAS over by the time they arrived.
A squad of FCSF troopers was standing around five bodies lying in front of a medium-size hangar. The bodies were clothed in black, with weapons that looked like sci-fi movie props. Futuristic helmets hid their faces.
JT gasped. “Jesus—are they ETs?”
Hunter sought out the FCSF squad leader whose unit had been involved in the brief firefight.
“We were securing the next hangar over,” he explained. “We came upon these guys trying to drag someone out of this building. They fired at us. So …”
Hunter studied the hangar in question.
“Someone’s inside there?” he asked.
The squad leader nodded. “Ready for this?”
He opened the door to reveal the hangar was filled with people. Men, women, teens, the elderly—dirty, ragged, and hollow-eyed. In the green tint of night vision, they looked like ghosts, hundreds of them. They were hugging the FCSF troopers as if they’d just been liberated from a concentration camp.
“What is this?” Ben exclaimed. “A homeless shelter?”
The squad leader shrugged. “It’s the only locked building we came to. Windows, all the doors, sealed tight from the outside.”
A middle-aged man wearing an old army jacket was brought forward. The squad leader said to him, “Tell these guys what you told me.”
The man’s eyes were wide with fear.
“We’re all street people,” he began shakily. “There’re lots of us these days. We were abducted down in Santa Monica a week ago. We were probed, and then locked up here.”
Hunter was incredulous. “By who? Who did this to you?”
“These creatures,” the man replied, pointing at the bodies. “They’re eating us!”
Hunter tried to calm him, but the man was becoming extremely agitated.
“They come out of the ground every few hours,” he went on, catching his breath. “And they take some of us—and whoever they take down the Hole, don’t come back. I’m telling you they’re eating us down there!”
“But who are they?” Hunter asked him again, to which a number of the street people shouted back: “Zombie Aliens!”
“Look at this,” the man said, rolling up his ragged sleeve to reveal a tattoo. It read: TEST SUBJECT—WARM TO MAXIMUM POWER.
“I don’t know where this came from,” he said. “But that sounds like something from a recipe to me. And we all got them!”
Hunter looked at Ben and JT. They were just as bewildered as he was.
Hunter returned to the five bodies. He knelt down beside one, not quite sure what to expect. He slowly lifted the helmet’s visor.
What he saw beneath was a heavily scarred face and a pair of dead eyes.
But most important, the body was human—and Asian.
“AMC …” he whispered.
The building the AMC soldiers had emerged from was as bland as everything else on the base. Located just across from “Hobo Hangar,” it was the size of a two-car garage.
Hunter, Ben, and JT were outside its door, checking their ammo loads. Wearing AMC uniforms, helmets and all, they were going down the Hole to see if what the street people told them was true.
St. Louis was nervous though.
“This really isn’t part of the plan,” he was saying to Hunter. “I called back home. The C-119s are flying out, and we’ll get these poor people out of here. But remember we don’t want to start a war with these AMC guys. Not yet anyway.”
Hunter understood, but he replied, “What happens to the next bunch of civilians the AMC kidnaps? And what is the AMC doing to them? Those people might be down on their luck, but they’re still Americans. We’ve got to protect them too.”
Because of this unexpected twist, Hunter knew they’d have to stay at Area 51 longer than he’d planned.
“I just hope all we find down there is a little clubhouse with a few AMC freaks who are into killing bums.”
They entered the empty building and spotted an open door in the far corner. Inside was a small closet, not two feet square. Its floor was missing. Below was a vertical shaft with a ladder that went down one hundred feet to a metal floor. It looked like the entrance to a missile silo.
They switched on their night-vision goggles and down they went. Reaching the bottom, they found themselves in a dark tunnel that went in only one direction. They started walking … and walking … and walking. Finally, after what seemed like miles, they came to a massive sliding door. It was at least thirty feet in diameter and made of thick steel. It was connected to a huge bank of motors and chains, the mechanism by which the giant door opened and closed.
But at the moment it was slightly ajar.
“They don’t lock their front door?” JT asked.
They approached the opening carefully, hoping not to meet any real AMC soldiers coming the other way.
Reaching it, Hunter slowly slid the door all the way open … and that’s when everything turned fantastic.
There was no other way to describe it.
They found themselves on a gantry, fifty feet long, ten feet wide, with a metal grille railing on one side and the walls of a cavern on the other.
From there, they were looking out on an immense open chamber. It was like the biggest, grandest, most futuristic movie set imaginable. Its walls were thick with glowing white tubes, wire busses, giant fluorescent lights, and fast-moving glass elevators.
At least twenty floors below, a huge ground floor contained towering banks of computers, consoles, and control panels displaying hundreds of screens, all generating bright circus-color lights, many of them blinking in unison. It was hypnotic and beautiful in a way. And definitely not military issue.
But the most fantastic thing of all: hanging along one side of the vast chamber were a dozen platforms, almost like a vertical parking lot. Sitting on each platform was what could only be described as a UFO.
Most were the basic flying-saucer design, maybe twenty feet across and colored bright yellow, red, or emerald. Others were shaped like spheres of pure silver. Still others were cigar shaped. In a word, they looked “otherworldly.”
Seeing all this, the three of them could barely speak.
Finally JT said, “There were always rumors about underground stuff out here, a place where the military kept UFOs. And we just found it …”
“You mean the AMC found it,” Ben corrected him.
This was true. The ground floor was crawling with AMC soldiers and white-coated technicians.
The center of their attention was a massive apparatus that looked like a giant ray gun. Small armies of technicians were walking around it, servicing it, checking it, admiring it. Directly in front of it was an immense hole that appeared bottomless.
“Look at the size of that thing,” JT said, meaning the giant ray gun. “What the hell does it do?”
Lying flat on the balcony floor and looking through the metal railing, they watched as AMC technicians rolled an old US Army Hummer to a spot about fifty feet from the ray gun on the other side of the bottomless pit. Once in place, someone pushed a button and a burst of light shot out of the ray gun, hitting the Hummer. An instant later the Hummer was gone.
“Goddamn,” Hunter breathed. “Did I just see that?”
Another Hummer was quickly moved into place. It too was hit by a beam and disappeared.
Then a two-ton troop truck was positioned and zapped. It vanished as well.
It was incredible. …
But then Ben noticed something. “What are those leftover things?”