“Have you seen the report?”
His voice became tense, he didn’t seem to be pleased to talk about the subject.
“Yes, of course.” James knew all too well the difference between what is in a report and what could have actually happened. “Many people claim to have seen the remains of a kind of flying saucer, they even say that they saw bodies scattered on the ground.”
“Nonsense!” he exclaimed. “Ever since I’ve been in charge of Area 51, I’ve heard thousands of different stories about what happened that day. The vast majority of them suggest that an unidentified craft crashed in Roswell in 1947, throwing outside several extraterrestrial bodies. They also add that it was us who took possession of those bodies to examine them and even film a video of the supposed autopsy, which would later be proven to be false and to have been created by a famous filmmaker. By and large, the theories have been made up by UFOlogists who are desperate to prove that beings from other planets exist and, as they haven’t found irrefutable evidence, they insist on reverting back to this subject.”
James had heard that part of the story. The most passionate UFOlogists go as far as to claim that the United States was in possession of extraterrestrial technology and they were thinking of using it to their own advantage; they would never make it known publicly for fear of causing an outbreak of mass panic when people found out that there was other intelligent life out there apart from human beings.
“And… what actually happened?” he insisted.
“At that time, we were working on Project Mogul. It involved using top secret observation balloons to find out about the nuclear activity of the Soviet Union. The site of impact coincides with Flight No. 4 from that project, with which we lost communication on the 5 June of that same year. The remains found consisted of tinfoil and adhesive and insulating tape… What kind of spacecraft could be made of those materials? Even the description of the object found matches that given by its designer and creator, Mr. Charles B. Moore. Due to the amount of ungoverned UFOlogists, we wasted part of our time studying the weather on the day Flight No. 4 was launched as well as its possible path, where it could have exploded and how the remains could have been scattered. It all fits together perfectly like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.”
“And what about that recent report involving Japanese prisoners of war?”
Charly sighed. He knew the story only too well. “Are you talking about the use of Japanese prisoners as guinea pigs?”
“Yes. After the declassification of various reports, it came to light that prisoners of war were used in rather unorthodox tests. It is currently believed that the government experimented with weather balloons to try and infiltrate enemy lines and launch atomic bombs from the stratosphere. The balloons were - “
“Nonsense!” cried Charly in anger. He was starting to feel like he was being judged and it infuriated him. “That’s not the case but even if it was, you should be proud of the decisions made by your government. It has always tried to keep you safe from enemies.”
James ignored what he had to say and continued with his argument. “The balloons were carrying a series of baskets, specially designed for the project. Inside were Japanese prisoners of war, the smallest ones they could find.”
“Are you suggesting that we covered up the accident so that nobody would realize we were using prisoners of war in our experiments and we could therefore hide the technology we were creating?”
“Exactly!”
Charly looked at him in defiance. “And so what if we did? You think that other countries didn’t use North American lives in their own quest for world supremacy? We’re going back over fifty years here. There wasn’t the morality that exists today, the focus was on survival. Would it have been better to let other countries bombard us with their weapons, leaving millions of Americans to die? Anyway, you that you are mistaken. We didn’t use prisoners of war in our experiments.”
James’ doubts were more than reasonable. His gut feeling was that he was being fed lie after lie. “There’s something I don’t understand. What can you tell me about the bodies that were found?”
“Nothing, because there was none.”
“What?! Impossible! What about the witness statements? They firmly claim that there were bodies scattered on the ground.”
“First off, those versions of events are based solely on the statements made by several people over thirty years after the event, and in many cases they weren’t even eyewitnesses. An interesting fact is that a supply plane exploded near Roswell several years later, and the bodies of the crew were scattered on the ground. Obviously both stories became mixed up over the years in the minds of the witnesses and a fictitious story was produced from two real ones.”
James felt yet again that the Director was lying to him. He was hiding something much more important which he would never reveal to him in a million years.
The office doorbell suddenly rang. An officer was waiting on the other side of the door.
Charly walked over to his desk, opened the top drawer and pressed a red button. The door opened instantly.
“Good morning, sir. The aircraft is ready.”
“Thank you very much.” He turned and spoke to James much more calmly. “Are you sure you are able to travel?”
“Of course. I don’t know what they injected me with, but I feel like a new man.”
Charly smiled. “Please show Mr. Oldrich to the corresponding hangar and make sure he has everything he needs.” He turned back to James and gave him a wicked smile before addressing the officer. “Give him a couple of sick bags. He’s going to need them.”
Chapter 68
“Mr. Secretary, have you seen the images?”
Margaret pressed the receiver hard against her ear to calm the tremors from which she had been suffering ever since she heard the news. An uncomfortable silence which went on for over thirty seconds made her wonder if the line had been cut off, or if Peter was speaking and she couldn’t hear him.
Margaret had held the position of Assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Defense for several years. She was his right hand woman, his loyal ally. Despite being only forty years old, she had a more than solid reputation among the members of the Cabinet of the United States. Known to all as ‘Marge’, she always acted as intermediary between the Secretary and the whole department from her office located in the Pentagon.
“Sir, are you still there?” asked Marge.
Again, silence.
“Sir?”
She was about to hang up when a faltering voice choked with nerves spoke on the other end.
“Yes, Marge. I’ve just seen it on one of the monitors in the room. Who else knows about it?”
“Just you, me and the scientist you contacted. But obviously some of the most important agencies in the world will find out very soon. I’m almost certain that - “
“Marge,” he interrupted. “I don’t know whether we have time to prepare ourselves. We have to speak to the President immediately.”
“I’ve already tried but he’s in a meeting.”
“Well get him out of there! We are on red alert!”
Chapter 69
The noise that could be heard seemed to indicate that the landing gear was unfolding and that they would be touching down in a few minutes. The journey had been extremely quick and Richard had barely noticed the direction they had traveled since takeoff. William, who was currently sitting alongside him, had spent the whole journey with his ear glued to an intercom which allowed him to speak to the naval base where they were heading.
The pilot, Michael Edwards, chief of one of the most famous squadrons in the United States, was in charge of carrying out the flight. The instructions were precise: take the Secretary of the Navy and his companion to a location which would be communicated to him when the plane was in the air. That was exactly how it was; five minutes into the flight, the Director informed him of the exact place to which he should go. He didn’t give a name, but a string of coord
inates: 24 42′ 19″N 77 46’ 12’W.
The pilot acted on the orders without hesitation.
The airplane turned again in the air and Richard pressed himself up against the window to see get an aerial view of the place over which they were flying. As he had guessed, the view was beautiful.
Below was an island which was not very big and virtually unexplored, despite three inhabited areas being visible from the air. The earth seemed to want to give way to the sea and large avenues of water crisscrossed the land, dividing it up into hundreds of pieces. From the air, he could make out some nearby islands, which made him think that they were above one of the many archipelagos spread across the planet.
“Do you know where we are?” William had just put the phone down and collapsed, exhausted, onto one of the seats which were free.
“To be honest, that is what I was just wondering.”
William smiled. “We’re in the island of Andros.”
“What?! No way! The island of Andros is in Greece, we haven’t been able to travel so far in so little time.”
“No, I’m not talking about the Greek island, but the one which is in the Bahamas.”
“The Bahamas?”
“Yes, the island of Andros is the biggest island in the Bahamas and the fifth biggest in the Antilles. It is famous for its barrier reef, the third largest in the world of over one hundred and thirty miles. As you will have noticed, it is has a small population of fewer than seven thousand inhabitants. Look, that’s where we are going!”
Just then, the plane flew over a complex in a rectangular shape approximately 0.8 miles square before heading out three miles to sea. It looked nothing like the naval base Richard was expecting, but after what he had seen in Area 51 he thought it best not to get disappointed too soon. The American Government was an expert in brilliantly covering up all its secrets.
Its rectangular shape was perfectly delineated. The complex was full of hangars, buildings and various landing pads for helicopters. They even had a runway of approximately one mile on nearby land, where Richard assumed they would be touching down.
The airplane turned for one last time in the air and then gradually started its descent.
Richard seemed confused, they were too far from the runway to start such a maneuver. William’s face was as serious as usual and didn’t hint that anything was going wrong. Meanwhile, the water was getting nearer and nearer and Richard was starting to squirm in his seat. If they kept going down they would end up crashing into the sea.
William saw the nervous and anguished look on Richard’s face, so he leaned towards his shoulder and whispered into his ear. “You’ve never landed in the ocean, have you?”
Richard seemed confused and looked back at the window. Now the distance left was less than one hundred and sixty feet. “What do you mean?”
“You are in an amphibious airplane. It can take off and land both on land and in water.”
“How can that possibly work? When I got on the plane, I didn’t see any floats. It had normal landing gear.”
“There are several types of hydroplanes: those which have floats instead of wheels and those where the shell of the aircraft itself carries out that function. The latter are amphibious aircraft. The floatability is determined by the fuselage, which is in the form of a boat’s shell, and smaller floats below the wings which give it stability. It’s for that reason that the propellers are located on top of the wings, unlike with conventional airplanes where they are underneath them.”
At six hundred and fifty feet above sea level Richard was climbing the walls. William’s words hadn’t calmed him down at all. He remembered when he got on the plane having noticed those two details, but he thought it was some kind of innovative aircraft which had an alternative design to cut down on wind resistance.
One hundred and sixty feet. Richard clung on the seat and made sure for the fifth time that his seatbelt was fitted correctly. He saw how the water was getting nearer and nearer to the fuselage of the aircraft and it eventually touched it. With the impact, the plane plunged a few more inches into the water and Richard couldn’t stifle a scream of desperation when he saw how the water was getting dangerously close to window level. The aircraft then slowed down little by little, swaying from side to side like a boat rocking in harmony with the movement of the sea.
“According to the pilot, we had to immerse ourselves slightly in the ocean in order to be able to land. The weather isn’t good and the waves near the shore are dangerous.”
“Why haven’t they used the landing strip that we saw from the air?”
“Part of it is being repaired and there are a lot of people working,” the professor said. “We don’t want to attract attention. This is much more discreet.”
When the door of the aircraft opened, two men in military gear, bulletproof vests, assault rifles and protective helmets came inside. One of them remained in the doorway pointing his gun outside, while the other spoke respectfully to Mr. Clifford.
“Sir, we have prepared the ‘boat’. The equipment you requested is now ready and they’re impatiently waiting for you down at the ‘Pit’.”
“Let’s go!”
William invited Richard to step out from the plane but he remained in his seat. He couldn’t feel his legs.
Outside was an eighty by twenty-five-foot boat. It was black in color and had a very belligerent design, which made it seem even more futuristic. The two marines escorted the Secretary of the Navy and Richard along a walkway on one of the sides of the boat to the rear of the craft. Just then, a covering of around twenty square feet slid back, revealing part of the middle of the ship and a set of steps which led to the control room.
William went down them first, followed by Richard and the two marines.
At first, it seemed to be a huge control room full of computers, radars and many other artifacts which he had clue what they were for. In the center, a gigantic pane of reinforced glass allowed them to see the full extent of the ocean with amazing clarity.
The hatch almost silently slid over some rails until it was hermetically sealed. They then started up the engines.
“You are in one of the safest and most modern crafts used by the U.S. Marines.”
William’s words were intended to make him feel proud to have such a privilege, but the only thing Richard wanted was to be back on dry land as soon as possible.
The boat moved towards the coast. The power of the engine was noticeable straightaway, and even then they must have been using only ten percent of their potential.
Less than two miles away, Richard detected a kind of concrete wall which restricted access to the complex and contained an opening which was sufficiently large to allow any boat less than three hundred feet wide to enter without problems.
The boat traveled the next couple of miles in less than a minute, they must have been traveling at reckless speed and when it was less than half a mile away, it did something which left Richard frozen in his seat.
When one of the marines who was steering the machine pressed a button, the craft started to progressively sink, much to the astonishment of the young paleographer. Through the glass he could see the whole ocean floor with incredible clarity; in fact, Richard discovered where they intended to dock. Less than a hundred yards away was a kind of underground cave which was two hundred and thirty feet wide but completely illuminated, and which was at that moment opening its hatch like a fish opens its mouth to catch its prey. They passed through the entrance and traveled over three thousand feet at breakneck speed. They eventually emerged in a rather wide space inside which was situated below the seabed.
William explained. “We call it the ‘Pit’ and it is under the ocean floor. It gives us a place to store our prototypes while the relevant tests are being carried out, allowing us to remove them at high tide without being seen or photographed by any curious passer-by. As you can see, it is a large room, around 1300 by 650 feet, and it is fully equipped. There is currently a project under
way to camouflage it even better, because we have found that the silhouette of the door and the room itself can be seen from the air.”
“But… where are we? Which naval base is this?”
William grinned. “You are in the AUTEC base.”
“AUTEC?”
“Yes, maybe you’ve heard of it by another name. Some people know it as the Underwater Area 51.”
Chapter 70
The chief officer opened the doors of hangar number ten and switched on the lights while James looked on attentively. Just in front of them, a giant object occupied all the space inside. In spite of what his imaginative mind was telling him, the professor found it hard to believe that what he was seeing was an airplane. He rubbed his eyes but it didn’t disappear. It was a kind of triangular machine which was dark in color with a cabin-like oval in the middle of it, with some kind of small wings, just on both sides of the rear part. It was a considerable size, around one hundred and fifteen feet long with a wingspan of sixty-five feet, and twenty feet tall. A huge logo adorned one of the sides of the fuselage of that futuristic machine, showing the identity of its rightful owners - the U.S.A.F., or U.S. Air Force.
“You are looking at SR-91 Aurora, one of the most prestigious planes in the U.S.A.F.,” said the officer proudly. “After recent advances made in aerospace technology, it has two days before it is retired and becomes a museum exhibit.”
James had heard that name before but he couldn’t remember where. “SR-91 Aurora?” he asked, hoping that the officer would give him a little more information.
“Yes. Project Aurora was an ambitious project by the United States that was started in the 1990s, and under which a number of aircraft were created which were capable of hypersonic flight, reaching Mach 6 speeds. According to the budgets from those years, billions of dollars were allocated for carrying out those kinds of ‘black projects’.”
Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) Page 39