by D F Capps
Which they’re still doing, Diane thought.
“The present evolution of Zeta Greys have retained a large part of that early corporation level programming. They still mine for natural resources and closely consider profits and losses.”
“And their treaty with us?” Glen Simmons asked.
Charlie turned to face him. “Amounts to a covert corporate takeover.”
Jeez, Diane thought. It sounds like interstellar relations aren’t much different than how things work here. “Leaving us where, exactly?” she asked.
Charlie nodded slightly and smiled at her.
“The Zeta Greys consider you assets of Corporation Earth. Once the takeover is complete, Zeta-human hybrids will control the planet and the rest of you will be relegated to the role of genetic stem cell production.”
Like animals on a farm? Diane thought. Not after what they did to Daniel. Not if I can help it.
“If opposition to the Zeta Greys results in endless war,” Clay said, “how can we ever expect to win? How do we drive them from our solar system?”
Charlie grinned. “Profit and loss. In today’s world, you defeat a hostile corporate takeover in business by taking all of the profit and assets out of the operation, leaving only losses. We will use the same basic strategy with the Zeta Greys. When their short-term losses exceed their long-term gains, they will leave—not before.”
If loss of Zeta Grey lives has little meaning to them, what’s it going to take to create significant losses? Diane wondered.
“This isn’t a fair fight,” Helen said. “We’re going into this with a huge deficit of fighter craft and people. They have thirty-five hundred years’ worth of experience and equipment. We have only six fighter craft and twelve people. It isn’t fair.”
Hollis stepped forward. “No, it isn’t. But right now, fair or not, this is the only chance we have.”
Clay was shaking his head. “This sounds like long odds to me,” he said. “How do we even up our chances against them?”
Hollis nodded. “That’s actually one of the advantages we have from our long history of warfare. We know how to fight against overwhelming odds.”
Ryan smiled and said, “Guerilla warfare tactics.”
Hollis nodded. “Precisely. Hit and run attacks. The Zeta Greys have deep underground bases spread out all over the world. It’s difficult for us to get into those bases, but the basic weakness of long Zeta Grey supply chains remains. If we can cut off their supply of material and means of escape, eventually we can win. It’s all a matter of time and persistence.”
Diane looked at Ryan with new respect. She was impressed.
“So how do we keep the Zeta Greys from swarming all over us with hundreds of saucers and simply wiping us out?” Simmons asked.
Hollis gave a slight smile. “We also are developing the means of limiting their saucers from accessing our planet. Once in full operation, our Planetary Shield will destroy all saucers attempting to enter or leave our atmosphere.”
Diane smiled. A planetary shield would give them a fighting chance. “Won’t that also affect our fighter craft? It would mean we are stuck here along with the Zeta Greys.”
Hollis shook his head. “It’s selective. We can target individual sections of the upper atmosphere at any given time. If you are flying neck-and-neck with a scout saucer we can’t hit one without destroying the other. If the two craft are ten miles apart, no problem.”
Diane could see where this was going. “So if we flush them off the ground and into the upper atmosphere?”
Hollis grinned. “Then we can bag ’em.”
Chapter 31
Psycon Industries, Inc. was a small corporation, comparatively speaking, but it was run by close associates of Conrad Kaplan. Sean discovered that each one of the five-member board of directors was a mid-level executive in a different company controlled by Kaplan. Psycon Industries was a privately held corporation, so very little information was publically accessible. No stock was available and there were no EDGAR listings. There were no customers listed in any public database, nor were any sales figures available—except in the files Sean had received from Charlie.
Psycon Industries produced one product: a synthetic polymer microfiber made from modified organic compounds. This had to be the microfibers Patrick said were in the chemtrail mix. Psycon owned two manufacturing facilities: one in Spain and one in India. According to some of the lab reports from Patrick, these polymer microfibers were showing up in residue samples from Italy, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Sean checked the wind patterns for the area and found that they were all in a prevailing westerly wind zone, which meant that if the microfibers were sprayed from planes as part of the chemtrail mix over the Mediterranean Sea, the winds would carry the polymers generally to the east over the list of countries on Patrick’s lab samples. But what would prevent the polymers from spreading out over North Africa? Nothing, apparently.
Sean went back to the chart of chemtrail spraying areas. The Mediterranean Sea was being heavily sprayed. International boundaries extend out twelve miles from the coast, which left most of the Mediterranean Sea as International Waters, unregulated by individual countries, but under the supervision of the U.N. So what else did these countries have in common? After a dozen different search parameters, several answers emerged: drought, food shortages, water shortages, political unrest, armed conflicts, and regime change; especially across Northern Africa and the Middle East.
Sean reviewed the properties of the polymer microfibers: ultraviolet light and water vapor absorption. In other words, the near elimination of clouds and in particular, rain. He stood and walked slowly over to the sliding glass door to the balcony of his hotel room, deep in thought.
This has to be a deliberate act, he decided. And if it is being done deliberately, for what reason? Cui bono? Who benefits?
He went back to the records for Psycon Industries. What an unusual name. It almost looked like an abbreviated combination of psychology and control, maybe psychological control?
What kind of warped egomaniac would be so blatant and yet cryptic in what he did? He looked back at the connections to Conrad Kaplan and asked himself what other companies did Kaplan own or control? As he went down the list, another name stood out: Mersec, Inc. He dug through the files provided by Charlie. Mersec, Inc. provided mercenaries as security and protection for wealthy business people in the Middle East, the Saudi Arabian peninsula, and parts of Africa, specifically in the Horn of Africa region: Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Southern Sudan, and Uganda. The search parameters for what these countries had in common turned up the same results: drought, food shortages, water shortages, political unrest, armed conflicts, and regime change.
He went over the wind charts for Africa. Eastern trade winds, which meant if chemtrails were being used the aerosols had to be disbursed over the Arabian Sea. International waters, again. But where would the planes be based? He reviewed his map of the world. India. Psycon had a production facility in India. He examined the satellite photos showing the global chemtrail patterns. There they were—spread out directly east of the southern coast of the Saudi Arabian peninsula and the Horn of Africa, making Oman and Yemen targets as well.
Sean reviewed the financial records provided by Charlie. Psycon produced the microfibers and sold them to a distribution company, also under the control of Conrad Kaplan. The distribution company paid a hundred and forty-seven million dollars last year to another company involved in aerosol spraying. Crops had failed in Ethiopia for the second year in a row, forcing the country to import the majority of its food, which drove the prices ever higher. With a faltering economy, starvation was becoming more common and food riots were taking place in protest, demanding that the government do something to make food and water more available to everyone, which wasn’t happening. It was the same pattern that led to the Arab Spring starting in Tunisia and spreading across North Africa, through Libya, and into Egypt. The same forces were at work in Yemen
and Ethiopia as well. Could the underlying conditions that created the Arab Spring have been deliberately created through the use of chemtrails?
In the media, the conflict was portrayed primarily as a religious war, which was at least partially true, Sean thought. Religious fanatics were promising people they would get them food and water. The conflict wasn’t about religious ideology; it was about the basics of life. And smack in the middle of the cause of the lack of food and water was Conrad Kaplan and his use of chemtrails. He spent a hundred and forty-seven million dollars so it wouldn’t rain. What did he get in return?
Sean pulled the financials for Mersec. Annual income: $1.7 billion. Quite the return on his investment, he thought, considering the protection wouldn’t have been necessary if the people had enough food and water. So this was one of the piggyback programs Patrick had described.
Sean walked back over to the balcony door and looked at the skyline of Washington, D.C. If Conrad Kaplan were your everyday Wall Street manipulator, his crooked dealings would be understandable: another simple case of greed. But it wasn’t so simple, was it? Conrad Kaplan was also vice president in charge of research and development for the nation’s largest aerospace and defense contractor, heavily involved in deeply classified aircraft development. Sean knew he couldn’t expose Kaplan’s role inside the defense industry without being accused of violating national security. That kind of public attention would distract people from the real point of exposing Kaplan, too. But the chemtrail angle just might do the job. It’s not like he needs the money, Sean thought, so what the hell is he doing?
* * *
One name kept finding its way to the top of Sean Wells’s investigation: The Partnership. The organization first showed up connected to Conrad Kaplan and his nefarious ventures in the Middle East and Africa. Now, on his third day of digging through Charlie’s files and verifying what information he could, the Partnership connections were spreading through large defense contractors, military leadership positions, and into the political spectrum. Six of the fifteen members of the president’s Cabinet were connected to the Partnership, plus the Secretaries of the Navy, Army, and the Air Force. The most powerful positions: Secretary of State, Treasury, Energy, Defense, and Homeland Security, were all connected to the Partnership.
For an organization like this to operate under the public radar and bend or break the law the way they were doing, required protection from prosecution. That protection came from the Department of Justice. No one was charged and prosecuted on the federal level without the Attorney General’s office signing off on it, and the Attorney General was a member of the Partnership.
President Andrews didn’t seem to have any direct connection to the Partnership, nor did the vice president, but leading members of Congress certainly did. He hadn’t known the organization existed before he went through Charlie’s files, but he did recognize the criminal rat’s nest it represented. That much he had seen too many times before as an investigative journalist. The question was: What were they after? Money was the easy answer, but for people with this level of access, influence, and power, money wasn’t an end result; it was a means to an end. If Conrad Kaplan were any indicator, the Partnership’s goals were global in nature, and any means available were well within their consideration. In Sean’s experience, criminals with access to automatic weapons were dangerous. Criminals with access to military force and nuclear weapons were terrifying.
Chapter 32
Diane and the rest of the flight crew put on their flight suits and followed Hollis to a bank of six elevators deep inside the granite mountain. Five of the elevator shafts were boarded up, obviously still under construction. Each elevator would hold only eight people, so half the crew had to wait. Hollis led Diane, Ryan, and her wing crew up to what he called the pre-flight deck. They stepped into a wide stone room and followed Hollis down a stone hallway.
“To the sides are your ready rooms. You will keep your flight suits here. The debriefing room is over there.”
The ready rooms were small, with eight lockers in each room. Six rooms gave them enough for two full squadrons.
“I assume we are still working with simulators,” Diane said. “When will our fighter craft arrive?”
Hollis paused as the elevator dinged and the next group emerged.
“Your assumption is partially correct,” Hollis said as Clay’s group joined them in the hall. “You will have a lot of simulator time while you’re here. Keep in mind that even though you shoot down a Zeta Grey saucer, everything that you do to take that saucer down is sent through the Zeta Grey computer system. Every one of them will know the tactics you used, so every flight needs a new approach and new thinking. Now, to answer Zadanski’s question, your fighter craft are here.”
Excitement rippled through the members of Squadron One. Diane couldn’t contain her enthusiasm any longer.
“Can we fly them now?”
Hollis nodded and beamed with pride. “Yes. But only in a limited area. We don’t want to advertise our presence or capabilities to the Zeta Greys before we’re ready to strike. If you will follow me.”
He led them into a wide rectangular hall. Six fighter craft sat on the right half, resting on their landing pods. The craft were generally oval in shape side-to-side, light gray in color with rounded wings on each side. The twelve-foot wings arched downward slightly on each side. They were thick and tapered to a sharp line only at the very edge. The middle was eight feet from top to bottom and gracefully rounded underneath. The top had a clear canopy mounted slightly forward of the center of the craft. The canopies were standing open, hinged at the back, waiting for them.
Wow, Diane thought. This is nothing like an aircraft. She had seen the drawings of the craft in the manual, but being able to touch one was exhilarating.
“Which one?” Diane asked.
Hollis smiled. “I’ve taken the liberty of putting your names on them. I’ve also converted your ranks to the new system. You are free to fly them in the immediate area. Please stay under five thousand feet and within a hundred miles of this base. I don’t want any undue attention from the Zetas or our own people. The vertical shaft on your left will take you up to the main flight deck. Wait there until I open the main door.”
Diane and Ryan rushed from craft to craft with the others spreading out to find their fighter. The name of the pilot was marked in black letters next to the canopy, followed by the name of the RIO. The first craft had “Lt. ‘OB1’ Obers” next to the open cockpit. The second had “Lt. ‘Hellcat’ Catalano,” and the third had “Lt. ‘Buddha’ Simmons” followed by “Lt. ‘Mad Dog’ Douglas”, “Lt. ‘Silver’ Silverstein”, and finally “Lt. ‘Jink’ Zadanski.” Diane and Ryan climbed in, donned their helmets, connected their communication cables, and strapped in. Ryan powered up the craft, closed the canopy and checked all of the meters, indicators, and navigation displays.
“Pre-flight check complete,” he said. “We’re good to go.”
Diane was breathing rapidly and shaking slightly from the excitement. She closed her eyes briefly, trying to calm down. It wasn’t working.
She nudged the thruster controls and their fighter craft turned bright white and gently lifted off the stone floor. She was closest to the vertical shaft, so she slowly moved her craft into the opening and rose the two hundred feet to the main flight deck. The main door was closed, so she moved to the left side to make room for the other five craft. Buddha was next. He moved to the right, taking his place as her wing man. OB1 slid over behind Diane with Hellcat behind him, each with his wingman on the right side. Once all six craft were hovering in place, Admiral Hollis walked through the round blast door protecting the hall, and hit a large button on the side wall. Large red lights strobed on each side of the flight deck door. The massive main blast door was twenty feet high, a hundred feet wide, and six feet thick. It slowly rose into the ceiling. The bright New Mexico sunlight flooded into the flight deck.
“These craft are very differe
nt from aircraft. Please take everything very slow until you get used to the new conditions,” Hollis said.
Slow, Diane thought. Got it.
“Okay,” Diane said over the comm system. “Straight, left, or right?”
She couldn’t contain her excitement any longer. She longed to see what this thing could actually do in the open sky.
“OB1, dibs on right.”
She was grinning so hard, her face started to ache.
“Hellcat takes left.”
Okay, she thought. “Which leaves Jink with straight out. See you all in the wild blue yonder.”
When the blast door reached the full open position the red strobe stopped and solid green lights came on. Diane bumped the thrusters to ten percent. Her fighter craft shot out of the flight deck with Buddha close on her right side and slightly behind.
The sensation of flight was very different from what she had anticipated. In her Super Hornet the G forces had been strong during takeoff and severe during high-speed turns. Now, during takeoff, the only thing she felt was weightlessness. It disoriented her.
The distant mountain rushed at her. She was alarmed that she was falling into the ground on the other side of the valley. She pulled back hard on the control stick without thinking. Her craft shot upward. She glanced at the altimeter, shocked to see that she was at thirty thousand feet, five miles above the upper limit that Hollis had set. She glanced around. Buddha was nowhere to be seen. Neither was anyone else.
Pushing the control stick forward, now her craft pointed straight down. The sensation of weightlessness panicked her already disoriented sense of where she was. She had lost her situational awareness and position. She glanced at the thruster control. It was still at ten percent. She backed the thruster down to around two percent. The craft slowed, and gave her a chance to think, not just react.
These are rookie mistakes, she thought. How could I be making such dumb moves? I’m better than this! The radio was silent. She was shocked that no one was reporting in.