Phobos

by Steve Alten

  Michael Gabriel carries the bicycle up the cracked granite steps and into what remains of the museum’s main gallery when his eyes lock onto the woman. She is kneeling beside a wooden crate—a startling Hispanic beauty in her early thirties with alluring green eyes and a body designed to give men fantasies.

  Mick is caught staring by Giuseppe Orefeci. The elder man approaches, grinning. “I see you discovered my new assistant, eh? Beware, Michael, this one, she is a heartbreaker. Come, I’ll introduce you.” The curator man leads him over to the Mexican female. “Adelina, this is the young man I was telling you about. Michael Gabriel, this is—”

  “Adelina Botello, nice to finally meet you. Dr. Orefeci hasn’t stopped talking about you since I arrived. He tells me you and your father have come up with some interesting theories regarding Kukulcan and Quetzalcoatl. The plumed serpent is the topic of my dissertation, perhaps we could talk over dinner?”

  Dr. Orefeci nudges Mick, who is staring into her bedroom eyes. “Dinner … breakfast, I’m always available. You have such pretty eyes. I was just wondering …”

  “My sign?” She smiles. “I’m a Cancer. Born on the summer solstice.”

  “That’s cool. Actually, I was going to ask about your blood type.”

  22

  … there exists a secret, “unacknowledged” operation that has used very advanced electromagnetic weapon systems to track, target, and on occasion, but with increasing accuracy, down extraterrestrial vehicles. This reckless behavior constitutes an existential threat to all of mankind and must be reined in immediately.

  The so-called MJ-12 or Majestic group that controls this subject operates without the consent of the people, or the oversight of the President and Congress. It functions as a transnational government unto itself, answerable to no one. All checks and balances have been obliterated. While as a governing entity it stands outside of the rule of law, its influence reaches into many governments, corporations, agencies, media and financial interests. Its corrupting influence is profound and, indeed, it has operated as a very powerful and embedded global RICO whose power to date remains unchecked.

  Upwards of $100 billion of USG funds go annually into this operation, also known as the “black budget” of the United States—enough to provide universal health care to every man, woman and child in America.

  —STEVEN M. GREER, MD,

  DIRECTOR, THE DISCLOSURE PROJECT,

  LETTER TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA,

  JANUARY 23, 2009

  HAARP RESEARCH STATION

  GAKONA, ALASKA

  Surrounded by a high-security perimeter fence, the complex occupies thirty-three acres of isolated Alaskan wilderness eight miles north of the town of Gakona. At first glance the site, selected because of its quiet electromagnetic location in the auroral region, appears to be some type of hybrid electrical substation.

  Welcome to HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. Jointly managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research, HAARP’s “official” description deals with “advanc[ing] our knowledge of the physical and electrical properties of the Earth’s ionosphere which can affect our military and civilian communication and navigation systems.”

  HAARP’s true purpose is known only to its project handlers in the Pentagon. Situated in twelve rows are 180 antennas, each crucifix-shaped tower rising seventy-two feet off the ground. When activated, these towers form a high-frequency phased-array radio transmitter capable of channeling more than 3 billion watts of power into the heavens. As the three-gigawatt pulse corkscrews upward 125 miles above the atmosphere, the radio waves interact with the ionized parts of atoms, causing them to circle around the beam at the speed of light. This sudden increase in motion “heats” the particles, each becoming a little electromagnet—effectively making HAARP a particle injector that can be used to knock out the electronic controls of anything that passes through it, be it a communication satellite, an ICBM … or an extraterrestrial vehicle.

  The seven limousines arrive bumper to bumper at the main gate, the dirt and gravel access road too narrow for more than one vehicle at a time. The VIPs concealed behind the tinted windows are expected and are waved through.

  The eighth limo arrives five minutes later.

  The driver is a Caucasian man in his late twenties, carrying a slight build on his five-foot, eight-inch frame. His dark sunglasses are a constant fixture, his sensitive left retina permanently damaged from shrapnel received during his last covert mission for the CIA.

  It was not the metal splinters that motivated Mitchell Kurtz to retire from the Company, nor was it the bullet that missed his spinal cord by mere inches and left him with a permanent limp. The line between good and evil had simply blurred too much, the game of spy versus spy having warped into a money grab, making yesterday’s foe today’s friend and tomorrow’s potential killer. After five years the CIA assassin had had enough. Returning to the City of Brotherly Love, the Philadelphia native applied his combat skills to an environment where he knew they would be needed—teaching in an innercity high school. A chance meeting with the man riding in the back of the limousine had rescued him from a life of tenured abuse.

  Senator Ennis Chaney was born fifty-five years ago in the poorest black neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida. Raised by his mother and aunt, he never knew his real father, who left home a few months after he was born. When he was two, his mother remarried, his new stepfather moving the family to New Jersey where young Ennis became a formidable high school and college athlete.

  After a brief pro basketball career, Chaney would dedicate himself to civil rights issues. He would enter politics in his forties as deputy mayor of Philadelphia. A decade of service later, the maverick Republican who bucked his party’s stances on social issues would run for senator of Pennsylvania and win in a rout.

  Chaney looks up from his briefing as their limo approaches the gate. The dark pigment surrounding the senator’s deeply set eyes creates the impression of a raccoon’s mask. Chaney’s eyes are mirrors to his soul, revealing his passion as a man, his wisdom as a leader. Cross him, and the eyes become unblinking daggers; his stare is known in Washington circles as the “one-eyed Jack.”

  Today, the one-eyed Jack is wild.

  Two months earlier, a “contact” in the military industrial complex sent Chaney a secret black ops budget that showed that more than $2 trillion in unaccountable Pentagon funding had been redirected over the last fifteen years into a secret weapons and research program. As cochairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Chaney was livid. While the majority of these expenditures remained outside his level of security clearance, he was able to track one related expenditure—HAARP, an Alaskan facility comanaged by the Air Force and Navy.

  When his inside man had learned of the August meeting at HAARP’s facility, the senator from Pennsylvania decided it might be fun to crash the party.

  Two heavily armed security guards approach the limo.

  Kurtz rolls down the window, offering a perturbed look. “Sorry, fellas, I took a wrong turn back at the Tok Junction. Can you let us through? We’re already late.”

  “Who’s in back?”

  Mitchell Kurtz removes his sunglasses, offering a sadistic grin. “Now, if I told you that, I’d have to kill you.”

  The MP feels his nerves buckle. “Go on up, first brick building on the left.”

  Kurtz proceeds through the gate, snickering his frat house laugh. “Navy boys, what a joke. I’ve seen better security at a whorehouse.”

  “Let’s not do a victory dance just yet. I knew the gate would be easy; from what I hear, they hold open houses for the public. Getting me inside that meeting is the real challenge. A private security firm—Blackwater—runs things inside.”

  Kurtz backs the limo into a parking spot, then removes the cover of his palm-size Taser and slips it into his coat pocket. “No worries. I brought your invitation.”

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  Dusk
fades the “Jewel of the Desert” into a blue hue, the diminishing day bringing new life to the city’s neon trail of lights.

  Julius Gabriel follows the Vegas Strip to the north, pointing out the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino to his passenger. “Nice place to have a drink. They’ve got big aquariums filled with sharks and rays, even a few crocodiles. You like wildlife, Marvin?”

  Marvin Teperman gazes at the fountain show at the Bellagio. “Wildlife? Sure.”

  “And how do you feel about extraterrestrial life?”

  The exobiologist turns to face his host. “And here I thought tonight was a social gathering.”

  “I know you’ve been eavesdropping on our conversations, Marvin.”

  “How can I be eavesdropping on a conversation you’re supposed to be relaying to me? To all of us?”

  “I need to know where you stand.” Julius veers into the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, waiting in line at the drive-thru. “There are two factions holed up at S-66: the military industrial establishment that is milking Groom Lake like its own private cash cow; and the remaining few of us who still think ‘humanity’ is an earned attribute. Unfortunately, the morality-based scientists among us who spend prolonged hours working with the Gray end up committing suicide, or they just flat out quit after a few months. In case you get any ideas, you should know the latter still tend to end up dead. Black ops are a paranoid bunch, even with nondisclosure agreements in place.”

  “I didn’t ask to come here, Professor. Pierre Borgia, he sort of volunteered me.”

  “Join the club.” Julius rolls down his window. “Give me a large coffee, extra hot.”

  “Is this where we’re eating?”

  “If I wanted to kill myself, Marvin, I would have done it long ago.” He drives to the first window and pays, then proceeds to the second window, where he is handed a plastic container of coffee.

  He hands it back. “Son, I said I wanted it hot. Stick it back in the microwave another two minutes until it can melt steel.”

  The teen rolls his eyes, handing the cup to a coworker. “He wants it hotter.”

  “They’re killing these beings, Marvin. They found a way to shoot them down, now they’re stealing their technology, keeping it to themselves, then treating these E.T.s like they’re collateral damage.”

  “How can they possibly benefit by keeping the technology to themselves?”

  “They’re beholden to Big Oil. Free energy for the planet would end war, end hunger, end hatred. There’s no profit in peace.”

  “Here’s your coffee, sir. I had to triple the cup, it was too hot to hold.”

  “You’ll make a fine engineer.” Holding the hot container in his right hand, Julius drives to the curb, waiting for traffic to clear before turning onto the Strip.

  The white cable TV van is parked a block down the street, a driver and passenger inside.

  Julius turns south, then suddenly swerves over to the driver’s side of the van—

  —hurtling the coffee through his open window.

  “Ahhh! Ahh!”

  “I warned you camo dudes not to follow me on my off-hours. Next time I see one of you in my rearview mirror will be my last day at Groom Lake, you can tell that to your boss.”

  Julius maneuvers his way back into one of the Strip’s southbound lanes, heading for the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Gotta draw the line with these bastards, Marvin. Now, how ’bout that drink?”

  “As long as you don’t throw it at me.” Marvin notices Julius’s hands trembling, his face white as a sheet. “Are you okay?”

  Julius grimaces, doubling over in pain. He slams the brakes as the traffic light turns yellow, causing the cars behind him to skid to a halt, the drivers blasting their horns.

  “Are you having a heart attack? Oh, geez—”

  “Glove box. Pills.”

  Marvin opens the glove box, searching frantically—locating a prescription bottle of nitroglycerin. “Got it! Here—”

  Julius fingers a tablet, his hand trembling as he places it under his tongue.

  “Let’s get you to a hospital.”

  “No.” The light turns green. Drivers swerve around them, a few saluting Julius with their middle fingers.

  “Professor?”

  “I’m okay now.”

  “At least pull over and let me drive.”

  Julius cuts across two lanes and parks. “We’ve bonded, Marvin.”

  “I’m flattered, eh. But it was just a pill.”

  “Not us. The Gray and I. It’s hard to explain, but we’ve connected at a metaphysical level that transcends our own singular existence. His capture … my presence at Groom Lake, it was no coincidence. A baton’s been passed from him to me, and now it’s my turn to act. I’m telling you this because you’re part of that plan … not now, but in the future. We serve a higher purpose, you and I … beyond anything you can imagine. For the first time in forty years I understand what the Mayan Doomsday Prophecy was all about. It wasn’t about asteroids or earthquakes, it was about man’s out-of-control ego. Greed, corruption, hatred, negativity … much of it fostered by an imbalance in society—the elite one percent continuing its dominance over the ninety-nine percent. Political leaders, Big Oil, the banks … the military industrial complex—entities whose only interest is to take for themselves by stifling the majority, preventing us from ascending the ladder of existence. We have to break the stranglehold, Marvin, we have to change the culture of ‘me’ to ‘we’ or we’ll lose it all. There’s so much out there, but the clock is ticking. If nothing changes by the end of the fifth cycle, everything within this bubble of physicality will be gone.”

  Marvin Teperman wipes the sweat from his pencil-thin mustache. “I don’t claim to understand everything you’ve said, but I trust you. What do you want me to do?”

  “There are diskettes in the bottom left-hand desk drawer in Randolph’s office.”

  “Left-hand drawer … wait, you want me to break in?”

  “Not at all. I have a passkey.” Julius fishes through his shirt pocket, removing a white plastic card with a magnetic strip. “Randolph keeps it in his clean-room locker. He left this morning for a meeting in Alaska, so it won’t be missed for at least twenty-four hours.”

  “What’s in Alaska?”

  “A weapon Randolph’s geek squad designed to take down these E.T. vehicles. Now listen carefully—Randolph keeps the key to his desk drawer in a golf tournament mug on his bookshelf. There are several boxes in the drawer. Look for the one labeled ‘Earl.’”

  “Earl?”

  “Earl Gray. That’s what Randolph calls the E.T. It’s his own sick little joke. But he’s become bored with his extraterrestrial house pet, and boredom leads to sloppiness. Get me two diskettes: one that predates my arrival in 1991, when they were using truth serum on the Gray; the other something more recent. Make sure you remember to relock the drawer and return the key to the golf cup.”

  “What are you planning to do with the diskettes?”

  Julius lays his head back, his eyes weary slits. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

  HAARP RESEARCH STATION

  GAKONA, ALASKA

  At six feet, six inches and 285 pounds, the African American is an imposing man, possessing a sledgehammer physique honed by a four-year intercollegiate football career and extensive training in the martial arts. After a blown-out left knee crippled any chance of playing in the NFL, Ryan Beck joined the military. He spent a year as a Green Beret before the injury forced his early retirement.

  He has been stationed at the Alaska facility for two weeks, having completed a “lightweight” training course at the Blackwater facility in North Carolina.

  Beck restrains the reflex to reach for his sidearm as the two men hurry toward him. He does not know the small Caucasian but recognizes the middle-aged black man as Senator Ennis Chaney.

  The big man scans his VIP list. “Morning, si
r. My apologies, but you’re not on my list.”

  “Exactly the way I requested it. How late am I, big fella?”

  “About ten minutes. Go on in.”

  Kurtz opens the door—his arm snatched by Beck’s viselike grip. “The senator only, little man.”

  “Let go of the arm, Hercules, before I fry your testicles like an omelette.”

  Chaney steps between them. “My apologies, my friend is a bit overprotective. Mitchell, wait out here, please.”

  Kurtz eyeballs the bigger man, then steps aside, allowing Senator Chaney to pass through the double doors of the small auditorium alone—just as they intended.

  The periphery of the chamber is dim, the lights focused on the front of the room. Chaney finds a seat in the last row away from the other twenty to thirty onlookers, their identities shadowed in darkness.

  Standing behind a lectern before a projection screen is a silver-haired civilian sporting a Texas accent and a military vernacular. “ …during Beta arousal, human brain waves operate at fifteen to forty cycles per second, less during Alpha, Theta, and the Delta sleep cycles. By using very-low-frequency ground waves coming from our Ground Wave Emergency Network, HAARP can be used to disrupt the brain’s natural biorhythm. The GWEN transmitters will be erected two hundred miles apart in targeted locations across the United States, allowing us to tailor specific frequencies based on the geomagnetic-field strength in each area. In essence, the weapon’s electromagnetic waves allow us to mentally disrupt small segments of the population.