by Terry James
He would put his reporter’s insatiable appetite for answers on hold for now. He wanted to get to the bottom of the Bigfoot question. He was promised that he would be allowed to do so in exchange for reporting about the horrendous treatment of Guantanimo Bay prisoners. He would be given proof of both the truth about the prisoners, and truth about Bigfoot.
April pointed the credit card-size device at a panel of lights affixed to the wall on the right of the elevator doors. They hurried through the split that developed when the doors parted.
Clark could hold the question in no longer. “How are we doing this without encountering security? Looks like they would be swarming us by now.”
“Help from the inside. Don’t question it. Just be glad that there are those who are with us,” she said, leading the way out of the elevator when it whirred to a stop.
“My biggest worry was encountering someone before we entered the complex. Security has been diverted to other areas while you and I do this.”
“What about my look at the NORAD technologies for detecting potential weapons that can disrupt the nation’s electronics?”
“Like I told you, that will be a quite shallow introduction to the system. That’s scheduled for day after tomorrow. Just enough to give you something to–they hope—praise the DOD,” April said. “It provides a legitimate reason for our having invited you to come here. But, the things we will look at now is why my group--not the Department of Defense--chose you. We want it to get to the American and world publics what they are doing to the Guantanimo prisoners.”
She stopped in front of an electronic sliding door after they had walked through several short corridors. She again pointed the device at a panel of small lights. Ceiling lights activated automatically when they entered the room filled with monitors of various sizes. Four control boards in a squared configuration sat at the room’s center. April punched several buttons that activated the monitors. She slid a rheostat to a position that dimmed the ceiling lights to the level she wanted.
“You’ve been here before, I take it,” Clark said, watching her manipulate the room’s gadgetry.
“Work here most days, actually.” She pushed another button, and a large screen appeared above the smaller monitor screen when the walls slid apart. The big screen lit momentarily, giving view of a chamber somewhere deeper within the mountain complex.
“Here we are,” April said. “This experiment was conducted earlier–this afternoon, to be exact.” She manipulated the control board in front of them. A voice emerged from the speakers surrounding the large screen.
“This is hybrid number 61,” the narrator said. The camera panned from the ceiling and floor devices Clark recognized as the teletransportation apparatus to capture a huge, hulking figure while it emerged from the shadows of the otherwise darkened chamber.
Clark’s mind spasmed when the creature became fully revealed at the center of the teleportation device. The monster was the same as he had seen those years ago on the winding Idaho road! Bigfoot!
He sat in rapt silence while the narrator continued.
“We will disassemble hybrid 61, and reassemble in this exercise, and follow the experiment up with Prisoner G-103.”
The creature stood at least 8 feet tall, Clark surmised, his eyes affixed upon a being he had never been sure he had actually seen. It stood, its arms much longer than what should be normal length, he thought. At the end of each arm was a massive, hair-covered hand hanging limply to just above what must be the knee, he analyzed.
The beast’s body was gigantic, with large muscles beneath thick, reddish-brown hair. The torso was great in length, like the bulging arms, and connected to short but thick, powerful-looking thighs and calf muscles. The musculature moved in ripples with the being’s slightest movement while it stood with its huge feet upon the slightly raised platform of the teletransportation device.
The unidentifiable entity stared straight ahead, with wide, red eyes that seemed to glow, as if a light projected from somewhere within its cranium. Its broad face, which looked to be covered by leathery skin not unlike the face of a mountain gorilla, was human-like, yet far from human. The nose had nostrils that flared across its broad face. But this was no gorilla. It was something unlike any Clark had seen, except on that curving, mountain road in Idaho, and in his nightmares.
“Proceeding in five, four, three, two, one…”
When the narrator said “zero,” the entire space between the top of the teletransportation device and the platform upon which the beast stood became alive with a million points of dazzling lights of every color. The agglomerate mix of beast and light points became so bright that it caused the image presented on the monitor screen to intensify, extinguishing the picture.
“What happened?” Clark asked.
“Watch,” April Warmath answered, still looking at the screen, which now dimmed, revealing the teletransporter apparatus minus the creature.
Clark watched intently while the screen continued to display the device upon which the hybrid had stood. His vigilance was rewarded when the space between the device’s top and circular platform again lightened to a vision-blurring effulgence before the points of colored lights again dominated the screen in the shape of the giant.
The beast stood again upon the platform. It was agitated, and it opened its cavernous mouth, displaying teeth of enormous size, with fang-like canines. Its eyes glowed, fiery red, the nostrils flaring while it screamed, its massive head turned toward the top of the teletransporter.
“The thing was sedated and controlled electronically before being subjected to the RAPTURE,” April said. “Its molecular structure –every atomic particle of its body--was taken apart, then reassembled. So, when it was reconstituted, the things they used to keep it under control were no longer in the mix.”
They watched as the hybrid lumbered from the platform, gargantuan body tense and deadly while it looked for the way out of the laboratory.
Two flashes of laser-like light shot from the side of the monitor’s picture, contacting the beast’s head, and it became instantly tranquil, the muscle-rippling arms dangling harmlessly at its sides.
“They’ve got the thing under control. Seems the test was successful. But they always are with the hybrids. The true test will be the human subject, that will come next,” April said.
“Rapture? What’s that? Is that the name of the device?”
“Rapid Atomic Particle Transmolecular Unification Reassembly Energizer,” April said. “The DOD’s most secret project.”
“Then what am I doing here?” Clark’s tone was genuinely incredulous.
“That’s just the point. You aren’t supposed to be here. But, it’s the only way we can get the word out of the horrors perpetrated by the government on these Guantanimo prisoners.”
“That’s just great. If I get caught, I’ll have to disappear like that…thing… just disappeared.”
“Like I said, there are others who are even now out there keeping us from being discovered, keeping the wrong people from finding out that I’ve got you here watching the replays of these experiments.”
Her words weren’t very comforting, and Clark tried to put from his mind the consequences of being discovered. His reporter’s curiosity took over.
“This Rapid Atomic thing--what’s its purpose, as far as the defense department is concerned?”
“Many uses, I suspect. But, for now, they hope to extract a certain terrorist from the mountains of Afghanistan using the RAPTURE,” April said.
Clark asked, after analyzing her words, “Osama bin Laden?”
“Oh! Here we are again,” she said, not answering him. She watched two black-uniformed guards bring in a small, dark-skinned man in a red jumpsuit.
“This the prisoner they’re going to use next?”
“Yes. It’s against every agreement and convention in existence. The poor man is about to be torn apart, literally. God only knows if they can bring these poor souls back together, each
time they perform these experiments. It works about 25 percent of the time--success in reassembling the human body, I mean.”
“Not good odds, huh?” Clark quipped, watching the guards rough up the little man, whose eyes expressed fear, while they glanced at the top and bottom of the device within which he stood.
“They’ve threatened to boil him in swine fat, and then bury his body wrapped in the skin of a pig. That’s the ultimate fear for a devoted Muslim. So, he will do as they say.”
Momentarily, the RAPTURE chamber ignited and the prisoner’s body was only the shimmering display of colored light, the screen again whiting out before dimming again to show the empty apparatus.
“We’ll see what they’ve done to him,” April said, swearing in the process.
The technology again did its work, and when the video cleared, the prisoner stood on the platform. He dropped to his knees and the guards rushed forward to lift him by putting their hands under his armpits and dragging him from the device.
“Well, this one seemed to work. It will only encourage them to more boldness in using the prisoners,” April said with disgust.
Clark, though dumbfounded that he had just learned that the Bigfoot creature did exist, could only think of one question overriding the importance of his new knowledge. “You didn’t answer my question. Is this all about Osama bin Laden?”
At just after midnight, the red and green lights caused an eerie glow to partially illuminate the four men who stood 15 feet from the right wingtip of the C-130. George Jenkins looked at Musahad Kahlied’s dark, worried face.
“Hope you don’t disappoint us, Musahad,” the deputy director for covert operations said. “We wouldn’t want to have to see your brothers and father go to Allah wrapped in swine skins.”
The smaller man said nothing, his eyes now showing fear rather than the anger they had projected for most of his month and a half at Guantanimo Bay, and then as prisoner at the mountainous complex in Colorado.
“Tora Bora is nice this time of year, I’m told, Musahad. You will be among friends. I should have thought you would be jubilant about rejoining your terrorist friends.”
Jenkins’ humiliating words were facetiously pleasant in tone. The Afghani lowered his eyes upon the mocking abuse.
“Think about it, before you consider just getting lost in those mountains, Musahad,” Jenkins said. “This thing implanted in your head will tell us where you are. All it will take is the push of a button, and your head will explode. Then your father and brothers go straight into the boiling pig oil.”
The deputy director’s words cracked sharply. “Got it, Musahad?”
The prisoner nodded slightly in the affirmative without looking up.
The director of covert operations glanced at the big guard beside the Afghani. He nodded, a gesture meant to send them on their way.
Jenkins and an associate began walking back toward the Hummer 50 feet away from the right wing of the 1-30. The bird’s four engines began grumbling, the propellers twisting powerfully into a steady drone while the prisoner and several black-uniformed guards hurried Musahad Kahlied into the aircraft.
“Put the fear of God in ‘em, Mashburn,” Jenkins said once the two were seated in the vehicle. “That’s the answer to dealing with them.”
“You think he can get close enough to affect the target?” The lieutenant colonel watched the bird’s landing lights illuminate their surroundings, and the 1-30 begin its taxi to the end of the runway.
“He’s well known by the Mujahid. He was captured among a lot of confusion a month and a half ago. The bunch there in Tora Bora won’t suspect he’s a plant. At least that’s our belief, our hope. They’ll put him in some well-worn mujahid clothing –like the ones in which he was captured. It will look like he’s just found his way back to them.”
“How will we know when he’s with the target?”
“He’s wearing the transponder. It will give an electronic pulse when he has made physical contact,” Jenkins said. “The device has a button to push, giving us acknowledgement by satellite he’s with the target.”
“You think he will follow through?”
“He thinks his whole family–the males, at any rate—will be killed by boiling in pig broth, then will be buried in the swine skins,” Jenkins said with a sneering chuckle. “There’s nothing worse than that to one of these fanatical Islamic Jihadists. I’m confident this has every chance of succeeding.”
The engines roared to take-off speed while the two watched the 130 lift, its position lights becoming pinpoints in the distance against the black Colorado night.
Morgan examined the cabin, touching the wood of the small desk in one corner. Blake Robbins’ words, spoken just before he left the guest house, replayed in her mind.
“Your being with me in this project means so very much to me, Morgan,” he had said, his sincerity exuding from the eyes that pierced her thoughts now, eyes framed by the handsome, perpetually tanned face beneath the almost black mane of hair that swept back in seeming perfection. His scent lingered in her nostrils, in her senses now, while she touched the desk, without really knowing that she touched it.
Then he had kissed her. A light brush of her lips with his. Her heart had fluttered. She felt it. Had he felt it while he held her close in that lingering moment that she didn’t want to let go of while she wandered the cabin’s rustic interior examining, but not really examining the small suite that would be her home for the next…how long? She didn’t know. Didn’t care…so long as Blake was with her.
Was Blake Robbins to be her…her…love interest? Her mate in life? She smiled at her audacity. He moved in circles somewhere among the stratosphere of life, as high as these majestic Colorado mountaintops.
She was… just another girl? Another of many?
Still, he had picked her to be with him in the project. Had chosen her from among many, no doubt. That had to count for something.
“Come here, Peenie,” she said, holding out the leash in the direction of the rottweiler. “Better have our walk.”
Jeddy stood from his lying position at the end of the bed. He stretched before hurrying to Morgan, so she could hook the leash to the collar around his thick neck.
She was glad to be walking with her canine “son,” as she liked to call him. This was an eerie night in an unfamiliar place. Eerie, because the fog had set in, and its mist glowed in halo-fashion around the basketball-sized globes that attached to the top of high poles. The greenish glow made one think of things better reserved for nightmares from which one could awaken.
Jeddy pulled her along at a slightly faster pace than she wanted to move, and she tired of straining to pull back on the leash. “Peanut! Let’s slow down,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t slow down until he had marked every light pole and tree trunk within the fogged-in compound.
Finally, the dog became curious about the vegetation that was sparse because of the late season, but which nonetheless offered unexplored hidden places that had to be investigated.
Jed smelled several of the shadowy niches, snorting and shaking his head when his nostrils sucked in things that made him sneeze. Still he tried to mark each spot he found interesting.
“We’re just about out of ammunition, aren’t we?” Morgan asked, watching Jeddy go through the ritual for the third time in less than 30 seconds without successfully making his mark. The rottweiler was through with preliminaries, and now wanted to find his stride, as was their normal walking habit every evening and morning. Morgan surveyed the path ahead and saw that it branched into multiple pathways, several leading into open areas with buildings and few trees; and one leading into a heavily wooded area. She preferred the others, but Jeddy chose the more intriguing pathway to the right, and she let him have his head. He pulled her in the direction of the leaf-denuded trees of thick trunks and high limbs, whose smaller branches extended into the night, exaggerated in their finger-like appearance by the foggy glow of the lights on the poles.
; The trees clustered closer together the farther they moved along the narrow path. The last light pole receded behind them, and the path way faded to black in the distance.
“This is far enough, Peenie,” she said sternly, beginning to apply the brakes with the rubber soles of her jogging sneakers. The dog stopped, but his head was high in the air, looking down the path, his broad neck stiff and bulging. He emitted an ominous growl–one that made even his mistress’ flesh crawl with chill bumps.
“You’re scaring me, Peanut,” she said, scanning the darkness ahead. The dog bristled, the fur on his neck standing on end while he bared his teeth, the cavernous growling breaking the night air in expulsions of the canine’s rage.
The darkness grew suddenly to obscure the trees and the trail in front of them. Morgan saw, then, the reason: a dark, gigantic form standing less than 20 feet from them. It was a creature that towered to almost twice her height, its eyes red like glowing embers while it straddled the pathway.
Fear paralyzed her. She tried to scream but nothing would come. Jeddy burst from Morgan’s grip at the same moment the monstrous being crouched slightly, its huge arms and fisted hands preparing for the assault.
The rottweiler lunged with all his force into the beast’s midsection, and the thing screamed its outrage, trying to grasp the dog, but failing. Jeddy caromed to one side of the pathway but instantly recovered and sank his teeth into the creature’s left leg with a powerful bite.
The thing shrieked, hitting the dog with a sweep of its left arm, sending Jed rolling and tumbling 10 feet away into a thicket of underbrush.
The rottweiler was again on the beast before it could reach Morgan. He leapt high on the creature’s back, tearing into the skin and muscles covered with dense, coarse hair.
Morgan, now recovered from her fear paralysis, saw the massive being twist to get the dog, who hung from its back, the canine’s head and jaws shaking and twisting his head with all the strength he possessed.
“Jed--No! Come!” Morgan’s command did nothing to deter the dog’s attack.