by Terry James
said. “He seems to have actually seen one…in Idaho, or somewhere in the northwest…in 2001, I think. On some remote road, while going to talk about sightings of these creatures in that area with a farmer somewhere up there.”
“Well, I can tell you he found one. I saw it on the way down early this morning. We both saw it, didn’t we…Peanut?” Saxton talked while moving to the rottweiler
and patting him. “The thing was grotesque. Like a giant Chubaka, a Wookie, that thing in “Star Wars.” Only it was uglier, and he wasn’t friendly--was he, mate?” He again patted and stroked Jeddy’s head.
The sitting rottweiler glanced up at the man and emitted a high-pitched expression of agreement.
“Come here, Jeddy,” the softly spoken command came from the bed, and all eyes went to Clark Lansing, who tried to rise on his elbows, while calling to the canine.
“Come here, Peenie,” he said.
The dog went to him and stood with his front paws on the bed beside Clark, who, though weakened, threw and arm around the thick neck and hugged Jeddy.
“Where’s Morgie?” Clark asked Jeddy the question, but turned his eyes to Christopher and Susie, who had come to his side.
“Where’s my sister?” he said to the humans in the room.
“We will find her soon, Clark. Just rest,” Susie said.
The disk descended and dissipated when it entered the tops of the evergreen trees. It grew pale in contrast to its former luminescence, thin disappeared.
He was at first observing from a position just above the strange scene. His perspective changed, and he was looking at the ivory-hued face of the girl--April Warmath’s lovely face, her features changing while she smiled at him.
She sipped from a golden chalice and wiped her lips with a scarlet scarf. Still, from the corners of the full lips, trickles of crimson ran in thin streams.
She opened her mouth, and her teeth metamorphosed to those of animal-like configuration. Fangs projected, in vampire fashion, her countenance changing into a ghoulish mask while she laughed, a hideous, gaped-mouth cackle.
“You okay, chap?”
Nigel nudged Clark’s shoulder, causing him to struggle to a sitting position on the bed.
“What’s wrong?” Clark said, straining to get his bearings, then looking at his roommate.
“You were moaning. Was that Yeti after you?” Saxton said in a light tone. “Thought you were going to do something drastic.”
Clark sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his neck and shoulders, feeling the bruises from his encounter on the mountain’s foothills.
“It’s the girl,” Clark said. “She gave me something in that hot chocolate.”
“That’s what’s causing the nightmares?” the Brit asked, putting a hand on Clark’s shoulder. “You going to be okay?”
“Yes. I’m okay,” Clark said, standing and walking into the bathroom to splash cool water on his face.
He gazed at the mirror and mopped his face with a towel. He knew the truth, now. Remembered everything that happened in the snowmobile cab.
“You are a fool for trusting her,” he said to himself. She almost succeeded in getting him killed by the thing he stupidly trusted her to help him investigate. He would get to the bottom of the betrayal. His would be the last laugh.
Chapter 18
“Where are our son and daughter?”
Mark Lansing’s question elicited no response from Giles Gregory, who had brought them from Denver to the complex by helicopter. Gregory pressed the necessary buttons after inserting the chip-implanted card in the slot. The actions caused the doors to slide apart, and the black ops agent stepped aside to allow Lori and Mark to precede him into the elevator.
“Are they in this place you are taking us?” Lori’s words brought a slight frown of concentration to Gregory’s face.
“All in good time, Mrs. Lansing. You will have your answers, I assure…”
The platform on which they stood bumped to a stop and the doors slid open when Gregory again inserted the card in a slot to the right of the right door.
They negotiated several hallways, the ultra-modern facility seeming to wind forever and split into multiple other hallways off the one they walked.
“Where are we going?” Mark asked, beginning to get perturbed with the DOD agent’s refusal to be forthcoming with information.
“You will see, momentarily,” the agent said, leading them onto a hallway to the right that then angled off the main corridor they had been walking.
“Just another few turns,” he said in consoling tone. “And, here we are.”
Gregory stopped in front of a door, inserted a card, and the door opened when he twisted the levered handle.
They entered a short foyer that opened into a spacious suite. The area had three rooms, Lori counted, her eyes taking in everything almost at once. It was like an expensive hotel suite in which she had stayed when on a trip from the underground complex at Taos, the time when she had been a rookie molecular biologist.
“We hope you will be comfortable here,” Niles Gregory said, tapping the palm of his left hand with the credit card-sized suite key he held between his right index finger and thumb.
“It’s very nice. But, what about Morgan and Clark? What about our daughter and son, Mr. Gregory?”
Lori, too, was growing impatient. Her concern for her children was growing by the second.
“Let me assure you, Mrs. Lansing, Sir,” the man said, looking at Lori, then at Mark. “Your son and daughter are just fine. You will see them very shortly. First, we have a few things we need to talk over with you. Important things, involving service you might be able to provide for your country.”
Alamosa – 7:05 p.m., the same day
Randall Prouse paced, his frame still straight and large, Susie noticed. She remembered the times in Jerusalem all those years ago. This was a very brave man. A world traveler, an archaeologist, a man of God. She imagined that, like Moses, his strength remained even in to his 80s.
“Got ‘em!” Randall’s excitement caused Christopher Banyon to stand from the hotel room chair.
“Mark! That you?”
“It’s me, Randy,” Mark said from the other end of the cell transmission.
“What’s been wrong? Where have you been? Couldn’t get you on the cell.”
“They just returned it to us, Randy. Some sort of things they had to check out first.”
“Yeah, well. Let’s not discuss anything top-secret, okay. Probably have some special stuff in it now.”
They both laughed, but Mark knew Randy’s words weren’t altogether meant in jest.
“Have you found your daughter yet?”
“Supposed to let us see her and her brother tomorrow first thing, according to this Niles Gregory guy, the agent who brought us here.”
Susie walked through the hotel door, after going into the hotel room several doors away to retrieve Clark Lansing.
“Clark!”
Mark’s words of greetings after the archaeologist had handed Clark the cell phone made the younger man smile.
“It’s me, Pop. How’s Mom?”
There was silence on the line.
“Dad? You there?”
Mark cleared his throat of emotion, then replied, “Yes. Yes, son. I’m…your mother and I ... are fine.”
Again silence, while Mark assessed the fact his son was on the other end of the cell call. He wasn’t in the complex after all.
“Clark? You okay? Why are you there? We thought…”
“I was in the mountain government complex, Dad. It’s sort of a convoluted story. I’m here now, safe and sound. Have you talked to Sis?”
“No... no. Not yet,” Clark’s father said, still in a daze from hearing his son’s voice. “They said we can see her in the morning…”
There was hesitation in the transmission for a few seconds.
“Mom wants to talk,” Clark’s father said.
“Clark? Are you okay, sweetie?�
�� His mother’s words were put with tears.
“Yeah, Mom. I’m fine. Just a little bruised.”
“What happened?” Lori’s question was issued with urgency.
“I…I remember going to a certain spot with a girl…her name is April Warmath. We were in a snowmobile of some sort. A real fancy one. We stopped overlooking a valley, a forest.”
He paused to reflect on the memory.
“It’s all surreal. Seems like something funny was going on in that area with all those trees. But, seems like there were things happening above the trees –above the valley –in the sky.”
“What kind of things were going on?” Lori asked.
“I really don’t remember, Mom. Next thing I knew I woke up in the snow, with Peanut licking my face. Then I kind of went in and out of consciousness. Nigel, this new friend, he and Jeddy brought me into Alamosa, where the rest soon joined us.”
“We’ll find your sister. Don’t you worry about that, son. I’m furious about all this cloak-and-dagger stuff. They nearly let my son die, and now I can’t find my daughter. What on earth is this all about? Got any idea?”
Clark let the question move around in his thoughts.
“Has something to do with the things I’ve been tracking all this time, Mom. Nigel and Jeddy saw one. Nigel took a few potshots at it with his pistol. Said he hit it directly. The thing just screamed at him, leaped into the trees. Then…just vanished.”
“Vanished?!”
“Yep. He says the thing just disappeared. They brought me into Alamosa, where I finally came to early this morning.”
There was silence for a moment on the cell transmission, then Lori spoke.
“They told us there is something we will be asked to do for our country. I remember hearing that kind of garbage a long time ago. They are up to something, and it involves you and your sister. You stay put with Christopher and the rest, sweetheart. Your dad and I can handle it here.”
“Yeah, right. Like I’m going to do that, knowing the things you and Dad have told me about what happened with those experiments. Knowing the nightmares Sis and I have had all these years.”
Lori said nothing for several seconds, knowing their son shouldn’t be expected to do nothing under the circumstances. The history that was so fresh in everyone’s memories.
“We’re supposed to see Morgan tomorrow morning. They’ve returned the cell phone to us, for now, at least. We will check in every two hours at the very minimum, Clark. If you don’t hear from us within that amount of time, you will know we need help.”
“Yeah, well, sorry, Mom, but I don’t promise to wait on you to call me before we do something.”
Ten minutes later, Clark sat on the edge of the bed in his and Jeddy’s room. He had, he considered, just sworn off ever letting himself get close to another female. But Morgan’s apartment mate –without expressing the slightest interest in him-- was breaking down his resolve, and he welcomed the dissolving of his self-imposed moratorium on women. He chastised himself with the thought that he was acting as fickle as a teenaged girl.
Kristi Flannigan instructed him in the use of her cell phone.
“Just consider it yours, until you get another,” she said, while fingering a button on the instrument’s key pad.
“Really loved that phone. Knew it as well as my laptop,” Clark said, not looking at the girl’s index finger manipulate the phone’s numbers; rather, at her pretty face. She glanced at him and saw his attention was on her, not on her instructions.
When he saw she was onto him, he looked back to the number pad. “So, you have to push this every time to hang up?
She smiled, her beauty cracked a bit by the laugh lines that crinkled her peach-perfect face. This was a girl who liked to laugh…
“Clark. You know better. I’m not talking to my Granddad,” she said through her amusement. “Now, pay attention…
He folded the phone and laid it aside on the bed. “I am paying attention, Kristi. Boy, am I ever paying attention!”
She saw in his blue eyes a twinkle that told her he was indeed. The lips were solemn, but gently so. She was a woman of self-confidence, she thought. A cosmopolitan female who didn’t fall for the first look, or come-on. But, this guy made her feel funny. Not like the wise-cracking guys of her office…of the city…
“What’s your story?”
“Pardon?” she asked, her eyes reflecting her surprise.
“Anyone special in your life?”
“Oh! You mean a guy?” She wasn’t used to blushing, but she felt her face redden with warmth. Clark Lansing was even more straightforward than some of the Manhattan men she knew.
“No, not really. Just friends…”
“Good, that’s good,” Clark said, the serious expression on his face melting to an extremely pleased smile, his heart pumping with a lighter beat.
Nigel Saxton folded and placed the few changes of underwear in the backpack, having just returned from a nearby Laundromat. He missed the rottweiler. He would have to perhaps get one when he returned to England. Still, it wouldn’t be the same. The dog was quite special. Helped save his life. The dog and old Zeke, he thought, zipping the pack shut.
He had, safely within the backpack, the photos from the ground reconnaissance they sent him to gather. He was fortunate to escape with his skin, much less with these important proofs of the fact U.S. allies were being kept from the whole truth about the black ops projects.
He could never take these through the Homeland Security checkpoints –through customs. He would hand them off to the one, who could get them to Great Britain…
His thoughts were disrupted by a knock on his motel cabin’s door.
“A moment, please!” Nigel shouted toward the door, removing the recon package and looking around for a place to put it. If they were unwelcome visitors, they must not find these. He lifted the top mattress and shoved the thin package as far to the center of the box springs as he could manage.
He rummaged through the bag and brought out the semi-automatic, stuffed it between his belt and waistband and his shirt before pulling the peephole cover from the door’s center and putting one eye against it.
It was the old fellow, the archaeologist, and the two other men. He unlocked the deadbolt lock and welcomed them inside.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” Nigel said, shaking hands with each.
“Looks like you’re packing,” Randall Prouse said, seeing the backpack zipped and in order atop the bed.
“Yes, sir. I must be off, I’m afraid. Got a plane to catch tomorrow morning.”
“Aren’t you the slightest bit curious about all of this?”
David Prouse’s question caused the Brit to straighten, then stretch his head and shoulders while he looked toward the ceiling in reflective thought.
“There are many things about this that fascinate me, I must say. But, I’m expected back in England by my…company,” he said. “I really would prefer to sniff things out with you chaps. I feel a certain camaraderie. No disrespect meant, but, especially with that dog…Jeddy…Peanut, if you wish.”
“Wouldn’t you like to see Peanut find his mistress?” Christopher Banyon’s question made Saxton smile. “He saved my life. Yes, I would very much like to help him find his mistress.”
“Can you not put your trip off for a few days?” Randall asked, seeing in Saxton’s demeanor that as unimportant as Christopher’s rationale for the Brit helping should have been, it proved the correct tact to use.
“Nigel, you are the one who knows your way through the mountain. You’ve done it. We will never be able to get access to the NORAD complex by a frontal assault. But, going back the way you and Jeddy came –through the mountain tunnel—we can maybe –somehow—enter the complex the back way.”
David’s words caused the Brit to again look toward the ceiling in thought.
“Actually, I’ve not been to the complex. Just dropped by helicopter to within a few kilometers of the valley area.”
“Clark has been there. He and the girl moved from the back side of the complex to that same valley. He can, we hope, retrace his and her movement back to the complex.”
“Do you think he’s physically up to something like that? It’s quite a long, arduous journey, you know. Although...” he paused for further consideration. “…the weather is warmer –much better now…”
The amenities were all there. The inner-mountain complex’s accoutrement couldn’t have been any more hospitable. The thoughts ran through Lori Lansing’s mind, while she and Mark rode the conveyor belt-like surface that whisked them along at a rate slightly faster than one could walk at a brisk pace.
“This escaway inclines almost imperceptibly, doesn’t it?” The man who accompanied them interrupted her thoughts.
“How far to where we’re going?” Mark asked with impatience.
“Another quarter kilometer,” the man, dressed in a black jumpsuit said.
True to the black ops man’s word, the conveyance stopped at a point where the passengers could move from off the surface by holding to handrails that led down several steps.
The three walked down a 20-foot-wide corridor, the agent then making an abrupt left onto a much narrower hallway.
“In here,” he said, stepping aside and holding open one half of the big glass, steel-framed doors so Lori and Mark could pass through.
Control boards and monitors were arranged ubiquitously yet were well ordered throughout the cavernous room. The area was dimly lit. Lori immediately recognized the room as an experimental station for a much more intricate and involved complex of such control rooms that must surely lie beyond. It wasn’t unlike the Taos underground of those many decades earlier, she surmised. But, the gadgetry was much more advanced… exponentially so, she calculated, scanning the enormity of the room.
“This doesn’t seem structured for anything to do with military application,” Lori said, not looking at, but addressing their chaperone.