Phobos

by Steve Alten

  They have been traveling on an empty stretch of Highway 375. Passing mile marker 34, the limo turns west onto an unmarked well-traveled dirt road that takes them across an empty expanse of desert, a mountain range looming thirteen miles ahead. The ride is smooth, the road surface graded to powder to reveal dust clouds that can be seen from miles away.

  “Blue Book was essentially a sugar pill designed to satisfy the public’s demand for an investigation while providing the government agencies involved with a disinformation paper trail that explained the unexplainable. While those investigations continued to collect data, the real work was being done by Majestic-12, a secret consortium of military leaders, avionic specialists, and scientists established back on September 24, 1947, by a special classified presidential order from Harry S. Truman. The MJ-12 geeks discovered the power source of the Roswell vessel was antigravitational in nature, allowing these objects, dubbed ‘Fastwalkers,’ to travel at speeds exceeding Mach 4, about eight thousand miles an hour, then suddenly stop on a dime and make a ninety-degree reverse angle turn. The boys at Lockheed Martin, Northrop, and other defense contractors began reverse engineering the designs, only they needed a place where they could secretly begin testing this alien technology. By 1955 the Air Force had opened Groom Lake, better known as Area 51. Since then, the facility has been used to test the most advanced aircraft projects in the world, including the U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 stealth fighter, Northrop’s B-2 stealth bomber, and a new line of aircraft, dubbed ARVs.”

  “ARVs?”

  “Alien Reproduction Vehicles. Extraterrestrial vehicles manufactured by human military intelligence.”

  “Are you saying we now have access to zero-point energy?”

  “Not yet, but we’re making progress.” Randolph points out the window as they bear right onto an extension road. “Doesn’t look like it, but we just left public land and entered the Nellis Air Force Base and Area 51—a thousand square miles of restricted airspace, the entire boundary patrolled by a private security force. Locals call ’em the ‘camo dudes,’ seeing as they wear camouflage outfits and they don’t mess around. Every road and hiking trail from here on out is mined with remote electronic sensors that can not only see and feel vibrations, but can also smell any person approaching the base. There’s a surveillance installation on Bald Mountain up ahead, plus we’ve got a dozen Sikorsky MH-60G Pave Hawks that’ll sandblast the ever-lovin’ shit out of any nosey UFO hunter.”

  Warning signs begin appearing more frequently. The road curves into an S bend, descending into a valley. After a few minutes they arrive at a steel perimeter fence and the gated entry of the most safeguarded military base in the world.

  When the CIA gave Kelly Johnson the task of choosing and building a secure test site, the U-2 spy plane designer dispatched Skunk Works foreman Dorsey Kammerer to the deserts of southern California, Nevada, and Arizona to locate a remote area near a dry lake bed, knowing the geology made the best landing field for experimental aircraft. They found what they were looking for at Groom Lake, located at grid 51 of Nevada’s nuclear test site—a stretch of flatlands surrounded by mountains that had once been a World War II Army Air Corps Gunnery Range. Expanded several times since 1955, the facility featured an 18,500-foot runway, storage tanks capable of holding up to a million and a half gallons of JP-7 jet fuel, three navy surplus hangars, over a hundred administration and housing buildings, a dozen massive airship hangars located at the south end of the base, a weapons storage facility, five earth-covered igloos, and a 12,400-foot-long, 100-foot-wide runway that extended over Groom Lake, the surface of the dry bed giving it a total landing surface of nearly five miles.

  Pierre Borgia and Joseph Randolph exit the car, their credentials scrutinized by two MPs. Without waiting, their limo turns around and leaves.

  “Sir, your chopper’s en route, it should only be a few moments.”

  Pierre squints into the noonday sun. The Air Force base is spread out a mile to the east. A dark object is coming in fast from the south. Within seconds it is landing, its engines whisper-quiet.

  The two men climb aboard the military transport chopper, situating themselves in leather bucket seats within the otherwise empty cabin.

  The airship lifts off. To Borgia’s surprise, it bypasses the Air Force base, heading south. They fly fifteen miles over empty desert before another dry lake bed appears in the distance.

  The billionaire smiles at his protégé. “Papoose Lake. Part of the Tonopah Test Range. Groom Lake belongs to the Air Force. Site 4 is run by Majestic-12.”

  The Site 4 complex is spread out over several miles across a large desert valley. Buildings are few and far between, connected by a one-lane dirt road. There are earthen bunkers and security towers specked with antennas and microwave dishes, and a few dark, cone-shaped, alien-looking towers that add a sinister appearance.

  The helicopter sets down on a helipad. A Jeep and two security officers dressed in desert camouflage are waiting.

  A minute later Borgia and his uncle are motoring along a dirt road leading to one of the earthen bunkers. A small sign identifies the subterranean facility as S-66. The Jeep pauses long enough to let them out.

  A reinforced steel door is guarded by several security cameras and a retinal scanner.

  Removing his cowboy hat, Joseph Randolph rests his chin on the high-tech security device and presses his occipital bone to the rubber scope, allowing the retinal scanner to match the blood vessel pattern of his eyeball to his identification records.

  The door opens, the disturbance sending a black scorpion scurrying out from behind a rock and over Borgia’s right shoe.

  Randolph grins at his nephew. “Welcome to Dreamland, Pierre.”

  MORELOS, MEXICO

  Located in south central Mexico, the state of Morelos is separated from the Mexican valley by the Sierra Ajusco mountains. The area possesses a subtropical climate, making it ideal for agriculture—a trade that began as early as 1500 BC.

  The first Indian culture to inhabit Morelos was the Tlahuicas, an offshoot of the Toltec-Chichimec amalgam of Aztec tribes. Artifacts describe the Indians as being dark-skinned, with wiry large physiques and black eyes. The lords of the Aztec region were priests.

  One would father a deity.

  The warrior priest known as Mixcoatl was considered both a creator and a destroyer—a god of warfare and ambush. According to Aztec legend, the Sun and Mother Earth birthed four hundred stars to spread their seed across the Milky Way. When their offspring behaved selfishly, Mixcoatl was summoned to kill all his siblings. Associated with Tezcatlipoca, the dark and powerful god of the night sky, Mixcoatl’s name translates as “cloud serpent,” reflecting his ability to change shape. He is usually portrayed with a black mask, a red and white striped body, and long hair.

  Mixcoatl married Chimalma, a mysterious turquoise-eyed beauty said to have come from Amatlán. In AD 935, Chimalma gave birth to a son—a blue-eyed, white-haired child who would become known throughout Mesoamerica as Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent. Aided by their leader’s vast knowledge of astronomy and engineering, the Aztecs would come to dominate the region, erecting great cities in his honor.

  Quetzalcoatl’s passing left the Aztec empire in chaos. Seeking their deity’s return, the Aztecs turned to human sacrifice, their festivals highlighted by the ritual killing of an Indian couple atop Mixcoatl’s main temple. The woman would be slaughtered first, her head cut off and shown to the bloodthirsty crowd. The man would be sacrificed next, his still-beating heart removed from his chest by an obsidian dagger.

  On April 21, 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés landed in the Gulf of Mexico with a force of eleven ships and 550 men. Greatly outnumbered by the Aztecs, the Spanish should have been easily defeated. What Cortés had no way of knowing was that his physical description as a bearded white man had cast him as Quetzalcoatl returning from the east. As the Spanish marched westward to engage the Aztecs, their leader, Montezuma, welco
med the bearded one and his invading army into his fortified city.

  Within two years the entire region had been conquered.

  Don Alejandro Rafelo was striking in appearance. Tall and lanky, the forty-eight-year-old Nagual witch possessed long graying hair that framed a face dominated by a hooked aquiline nose and eyes that were unnerving to behold. The left was a piercing azure blue, the right eye hazel and lazy, always glancing sideways, making it impossible for his enemies to maintain contact.

  The turquoise eye was a genetic trait that could be traced back twenty-seven generations when a distant relative, Etienne Rafelo, arrived in Mexico from France in the fall of 1533. A practitioner of the Black Mass, Etienne eventually found his way to a small Nahuatl Indian village situated across the mountains from Morelos. Here he would meet an Aztec leader named Motecuma, whose maternal ancestors were direct descendants of Chimalma and her deity son, Quetzalcoatl. Motecuma’s oldest daughter, Quetzalli, was an azure-eyed beauty who served the community as its Nagual witch. The Nagual were seers who had once counseled kings. It was said a Nagual could cause sickness by sucking the blood of his victim or by giving him the evil eye. It was believed the more powerful witches could even capture a man’s soul.

  Etienne and Quetzalli married. Twenty-seven generations later, Don Alejandro Rafelo was born.

  The villagers of Morelos believed Don Rafelo possessed a dark ojo, that his K’az-al t’an-ob (curses) caused serious and painful diseases among his enemies. When he passed close, they looked away. When he left the area they held their tongues, knowing the witch could hear every thought cast to the wind.

  Rafelo used his underlings to cultivate the superstitions. In his line of work, instilling fear among the populace was one of the keys to remaining in power.

  Don Rafelo was the right arm of Los Lenones, a tightly organized cartel that ran human trafficking pipelines throughout the small towns in Southern Mexico and along the US border. The Aztec witch oversaw a slave training center in Tenancingo, a suburb located just south of Mexico City that functioned as a way station into Tijuana. It was a place where low-end local girls as young as six were kidnaped or bought into slavery, drugged and raped repeatedly until they were broken in, then sold into sex rings and smuggled across the Mexican border. Once in the States, they were transported to stash houses and apartments, some in major cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, others in smaller suburban towns—thirty thousand slaves kidnaped and sold every year.

  To service America’s demands, Don Rafelo and his “nephews” recruited a small army of teenaged boys from the local villages who were taught the art of hunting and entrapping local women. Tourists were always a desired target of Los Lenones, especially the tall, blond-haired women who were especially desired by the Saudis. When Don Rafelo’s brigade filled these orders, they were always on the lookout for another type of woman, a far rarer breed—carrying the genome of a lost empire.

  While human trafficking had made Don Rafelo a rich man, the Nagual witch knew that true power came from one’s DNA. The Maya and Aztec had risen under the tutelage of two great bloodlines. The Rafelos of Mexico were part of the Quetzalcoatl family tree. What Don Rafelo sought were females whose maternal lineage traced back to Kukulcan. The desired Mesoamerican female would possess one easily identifiable feature—a pair of radiating turquoise-blue eyes.

  For more than a decade, Don Rafelo had offered a $25,000 reward to anyone who brought a “Hunahpu female” to him. Up until now, the bounty had remained uncollected.

  Gerardo Salazar is in his twenties, a dark, handsome youth with a strut that fits his nickname, El Gallo—the Rooster. El Gallo works the dusty Mexican villages, using his looks and sweet incantations of love to seduce teens and young schoolgirls. He has been trafficking juveniles for his “Uncle Don” since he dropped out of school at the age of ten.

  Today he brings news that will make his uncle smile.

  Don Rafelo’s blue eye widens as he listens to the Rooster crow.

  “ … her name is Chicahua Aurelia. She is older, in her forties, but still a beauty. I saw her when I passed through Morelos. Her eyes are turquoise just as you said, and they glowed at me just like a jungle cat. She was watching me from across the market while I was working a schoolgirl.”

  “Wait … she was watching you?”

  “Sí. It was as if I could feel her inside my head.”

  “She’s a seer, very powerful, very dangerous. She showed herself to you knowing you would tell me.”

  “You wish me to take you to her, Uncle?”

  “No. I will find this one myself.”

  Chicahua Aurelia was born and raised in Guatemala—the surviving twin daughter and only child of Lilia Botello and Jesus Vazquez. The chromosome that gave her the ability to “slow down reality” reoccurred throughout her maternal lineage once every four generations. That her twin sister had been stillborn demonstrated the power of her unusual genetics; two Hunahpu from the same lineage could not be birthed during the same era—only the mythological male Mayan hero twins could share the same womb and survive.

  Aurelia had been Chicahua’s maternal grandmother’s maiden name. She had begun using it after she conceived a child out of wedlock. The father had been an unknowing participant to the conception, Chicahua bedding him after intoxicating him with a powerful hallucinogen. In his eyes, she appeared to be a Russian import—a gift to be raped and exported to America.

  What Don Rafelo never suspected was that he was impregnating the very genetic prize he had been seeking.

  As a seer, Chicahua knew the Nagual witch was pursuing her, guided by a dark and powerful force—a demon hitched to his soul. Realizing she could not escape him forever, she had chosen to control the variables in play, knowing that once Don Rafelo’s seed had taken root in her womb, his offspring’s presence would actually blind the demon to Chicahua’s bloodline.

  What she never realized was that her daughter’s conception would blanket her own abilities as well, preventing her from protecting her child from the very predator who made Don Rafelo so dangerous.

  The farmhouse is located in the Sierra Ajusco mountains, a three-room structure composed of mud-brick and stone, its thatched roof generations old. A narrow mountain path is the only way up to the acre parcel, the land providing food and medicines for the owner and feed for her animals.

  Don Rafelo guides his motor scooter up the trail, leaving the vehicle parked outside the wooden rail fence. The late afternoon sun casts the mountain’s shadow across a front yard overgrown with herbs. He can smell a familiar aroma and follows it to the farmhouse door, entering unannounced.

  The dark-haired beauty with the high Indian cheekbones is standing before a pot boiling with the offal of a goat’s stomach. She looks up, her skin a dark mocha, her eyes the color of the waters off Cancun. “Tripe and onion soup. Your favorite.”

  “How did you know?”

  Chicahua smiles. “The same way I know you have been searching for me.”

  “Or one like you.”

  “There will be none like me for another four generations.”

  “Why have you concealed yourself from me for so long?”

  “Because a demon taints your soul.”

  “Our ancestors did far worse.”

  “And they paid a terrible price. As will you.”

  “The demon who taints my soul, as you call it, also protects it. I do not fear the Creator or His afterlife. I am immune.” He moves closer, enamored by her beauty. “Why have you revealed yourself to me now?”

  “Because I seek a mate.”

  “And I seek to father a child, one who will link our two bloodlines.”

  “My womb and my bloodline come with a price.”

  “Name it and it shall be yours.”

  “The devils of Los Lenones kidnaped a nine-year-old girl from my village several weeks ago.”

  “And you wish her returned to her parents.”

  “Her parents are dead. I wish her t
aken to America. She has a distant cousin living in Tampa, Florida.”

  “What is your interest in the child?”

  “I owe a debt to the father. Locate the child, see to it that she makes it to the States safely, and I shall bear you an offspring who will share our bloodlines.”

  “The kidnaped child—what is her name?”

  “Vazquez. Dominique Vazquez.”

  TESTIMONIAL May 9, 2001: National Press Club, Washington, D.C.

  My name is Daniel Sheehan. I am an attorney serving as general counsel to the Disclosure Project. I am a 1967 graduate of Harvard College in American Government Studies and Constitutional Law. I am a graduate of Harvard Law School. I served as general counsel, and one of the cocounsels for the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case and was involved in briefing and arguing the case in front of the United States Supreme Court, giving permission to the New York Times to publish the classified documents, the forty-seven volumes of the Pentagon Papers.

  Subsequent to that time, I served as special counsel to the office of F. Lee Bailey as one of the trial counsels when we represented James McCord in the Watergate burglary, and got Mr. McCord to write the letter to Judge Sirica to reveal the Watergate burglars’ relationship to the plumbers unit in the White House at that time. Subsequent to my service in that case, I went back to Harvard to the divinity school to study Judeo-Christian social ethics in public policy. I did my master’s and PhD work there and became general counsel for the United States Jesuit Headquarters in Washington, D.C., assigned to the National Social Ministries Office and their Public Policy Office.