by Dayton Ward
I could write a book about the trouble some of these people have given us. Maybe two.
The Beta 5’s displays and other indicators were continuing to stream a litany of information, and after another moment it said, “Miss Lincoln, my scanners detect a change in orbiting vessel’s status. It appears to be aligning for a descent through planetary atmosphere.”
“It’s landing? Where?”
“Current trajectory suggests a landing point somewhere along the west coast of the United States.”
“Is there any sign the ship’s been detected? Military or civilian satellites? Anything?”
“Scanning. Indications negative at this time.”
Roberta blew out her breath. “I guess that’s something. The last thing we need tonight is us or the Russians deciding they’re under attack and to start launching missiles.”
“Update on ship’s current status. Predicted landing point is somewhere in or near San Francisco.”
That was enough, she decided. Even without Seven, she could at least transport out to California and observe the activities of the ship and its crew. At this point, Roberta was hoping it was just Kirk and his crew. Of course, from what she recalled of her previous visits to San Francisco, it was possible that Klingons wandering the streets might not even attract much in the way of attention.
“Track it to its landing point,” she directed, “and relay those coordinates to Seven, and tell him I’m going ahead to check it out.”
“What are your intentions, Miss Lincoln?”
Roberta shrugged. “For the moment, I just want to see what’s going on. We’ll take it from there.” If it was James Kirk, then she wanted to be there in case he got himself into trouble while doing whatever it was that had brought him to twentieth-century San Francisco.
Of course, trouble has a way of finding Kirk, doesn’t it?
ONE MORE THING
AFTER THAT
Thirty-Three
The Pentagon—Washington, DC
November 7, 1996
“Good morning, General.”
The air force sergeant’s crisp salute greeted Brigadier General Daniel Wheeler as the elevator doors parted, and he stepped from the car into the foyer. Standing alone and at attention behind a dull-gray metal desk, the sentry rendered the proper military greeting. Atop the desk were a pair of notebooks as well as what Wheeler took to be a textbook of some kind, along with a coffee cup. He also recognized the cover of a popular techno-thriller paperback novel resting beside the other clutter, of the sort sold in the bookstore several floors above where he now stood.
The anteroom was an uninviting affair, with the desk and its matching chair the sole furnishings save for the arrangement of flags posted on stands along the far wall and flanking a large bronze plaque bearing the official Pentagon seal. Aside from the plaque, there was no other indication as to Wheeler’s present location. There was not even a clock, which was a good thing, as it spared him from being reminded of the ungodly hour at which he had been summoned to this most furtive of locations. Indeed, neither this room nor any attached appeared on any list or diagram available to anyone outside a very small, tight circle of personnel. Even the floor these rooms occupied, B14, did not officially exist. Fourteen stories below the Pentagon’s ground level, it was accessible via four elevators—two each for passengers and freight—which also were closely guarded secrets.
Switching his briefcase to his left hand so that he could return the salute, Wheeler eyed the sentry and realized he did not recognize the young man who was doing his best to maintain his bearing. The sergeant likely was a recent addition to Wheeler’s military-police detachment and therefore saddled with this most undesirable of duty shifts, and his nervousness was obvious as he stood still and silent, awaiting orders or—more likely—for the general to be on his way so he could begin breathing again.
Wheeler smiled. “At ease, Sergeant. I’ve already had an airman for breakfast this morning. You’re safe.” The comment had the desired effect and the younger man relaxed, though he did not go so far as to return the smile. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
“Yes, General,” the man replied, offering a curt nod. The nametag over his uniform shirt’s right breast pocket identified him as HESS, and Wheeler realized he recalled seeing that name in the list of new personnel he had reviewed over the weekend.
“Hess,” Wheeler read aloud. “You came from MacDill. Is that right?”
Again, the sergeant nodded. “Yes, sir. I was an MP at CENTCOM.”
“From Florida to DC just in time for winter?” Wheeler chuckled. “Lucky you.” Wheeler himself had been stationed more than once at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, including two assignments at the United States Central Command. He much preferred the warm beaches and blue waters of Tampa Bay to winters spent in Virginia and Maryland.
“I go where they send me, General,” offered Sergeant Hess, opting to smile for the first time.
“Don’t we all.” Proceeding to the large metal door set into the concrete wall at the room’s far end, Wheeler removed a magnetic key card from his pocket and inserted it into the reader installed next to the door. A keypad mounted above the reader allowed him to enter an eight-digit code, after which the door’s lock disengaged and it began to slide aside. Before stepping through the now open portal, he cast a look over his shoulder. “Good to have you with us, Sergeant.”
Hess saluted once more. “Thank you, sir.” Like the rest of the military-police detachment assigned to his command, the sergeant knew nothing about what waited beyond the doorway through which Wheeler now stepped. The man’s duties were simple: prevent unauthorized personnel from attempting to access the door. In the unlikely event anyone meeting that description made it this far underground, Hess and anyone else charged with manning that desk was empowered to utilize deadly force in order to comply with his standing orders, even if he never was to know what he was defending.
Ours is not to reason why, Wheeler mused as he waited in the vestibule protected by the door behind him. Only when that barrier was once more in place did he insert his key card into the reader for the door on the opposite side of “the airlock,” which was the nickname bestowed upon this closet-sized room. The metal door before which he now stood was a twin of the hatch he had just accessed and would not open unless or until the inner hatch was locked. Wheeler was able to override this procedure, of course, but regulations called for him to do so only in the face of dire emergency. As he had often ruminated, should such a situation ever come to pass, respect for established protocol would without fail be one of the first things cast aside, for there would be matters of more immediate import requiring attention. Most issues fitting that description would, Wheeler figured, pertain to the very survival of humanity.
In the meantime, the general followed procedure, just as he required of the people serving under his command.
A separate eight-digit code was required for the inner door, which opened after Wheeler punched the proper keys on the pad mounted above the card reader. The hatch slid aside, and the vestibule filled with the sounds of activity as he stepped onto a raised walkway overlooking the main floor of the situation center that was the heart of this facility. Called “the Trench” by many who worked there, the chamber reminded him of Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, or one of the NORAD operations centers buried deep within the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado, where he had been assigned twice during his career.
Below him, twenty workstations arranged into one of three curved rows—seven consoles along the forward and rear aisles and six in the middle—faced a trio of massive flat-screen video monitors, each of which was further divided into quarters with their own separate feeds. Despite the early hour, 0238 hours according to the digital clock high on the room’s forward wall, personnel representing each of the United States Armed Forces as well a
few on loan from allied military organizations, along with some civilian employees, sat at each of the workstations. Wheeler knew this was not typical for this time of night and that the majority of those now working had been called in just as he had. The bullpen was at full capacity, and he recognized several faces from the prime duty shift, with everyone having responded to a message sent to the pager each of his people were required to carry at all times: the emergency code 19470704.
July 4, 1947. Wheeler allowed himself a small smile at the subtle humor and nod to history. After all, it was that date and its significance that—over time and thanks to a winding trail of fate and circumstances—had brought him to stand in this place, commanding these people while charged with a most unique task. The room he now overlooked, along with everything else tucked away within this undisclosed sublevel of the Pentagon, was but the latest iteration of the effort that had spanned five decades. Majestic 12 had grown from its modest genesis as a response to the crash landing of an extraterrestrial craft in Roswell to a point that it now accounted for nearly five percent of the operating budget for the entire Department of Defense. That was just the up-front money, as every president since Truman had authorized without question additional funding and other resources in order to address new or unexpected needs. Derivative operations such as the Groom Lake facility and the efforts of Projects Sign, Grudge, Blue Book, and Cygnus had been born out of necessity to support or—in some cases—deflect away from MJ-12’s sole, unwavering objective to be prepared for any threat that might originate from beyond the confines of Earth.
Gone now were the fancy names or other designations, or the need to present a public face for a clandestine mission. There was only Daniel Wheeler and the people he commanded, here in this “secret lair” far beneath the nerve center of America’s military might as well as at other satellite locations around the world, none of which existed in any official capacity. That would be the case, now and for all time.
Among the shadows of history shall we forever lurk.
“General?”
Wheeler turned to see his chief of staff, Colonel Kirsten Heffron, walking toward him. Dressed in an officer’s green uniform that appeared tailored to the same mathematical precision that was typical of any Marine, Heffron appeared unfazed by the early hour.
“Good morning, sir,” she offered, moving to stand next to him as they both overlooked the Trench. “Did you say something?”
Wheeler realized he must have spoken the words aloud. A flush of embarrassment warmed his cheeks, and he waved away Heffron’s concerns. “I’m sorry, Colonel. I guess I was lost in thought about something I’d read.”
“Shadows of history,” Heffron said. “Forever lurk. That’s from the book we just scuttled, isn’t it?”
As always, Wheeler was impressed at her ability to recall such details. “That’s the one. A damned shame too. It actually was one of the more entertaining ones.” The book, a tell-all written by a former member of his command, had been discovered less than a week before its author was set to deliver it to an editor at a major New York publishing house. A disgruntled DoD civilian employee terminated for cause a year earlier, the man had secured a modest advance fee in exchange for his purported airing of dirty laundry from deep inside the Pentagon. Managing to entice the publisher by and convincing her that many of his claims were real, he had saved what he was calling “the best parts,” namely Wheeler and his group, for last. This was fortunate, as it had given Wheeler enough warning to see to it that the manuscript was never delivered. As for the employee, he currently was serving a lengthy prison sentence after being convicted for the unauthorized release of classified information. The publisher who had been expecting the manuscript was more than happy to forget about the whole thing in exchange for not being the focus of any further government scrutiny, such as an exhaustive audit by the Internal Revenue Service. Meanwhile, the manuscript itself now occupied a place in Wheeler’s office library alongside the handful of other attempted and aborted exposés. He had decided he would wait until he retired before revisiting those accounts, just to see how well they withstood the test of time.
Waving a hand toward the Trench, Wheeler said, “Looks like you managed to corral everybody.”
“Sorry for the all-call, sir,” Heffron replied, “but I figured it was better to err on the side of . . . well, whatever.”
“Agreed. Do we have anything new?”
“Not since the initial sighting. That video’s been blasted to every major outlet around the country by now. It’ll be global by this time tomorrow.” Heffron shrugged. “People will talk about it for a couple of days, then move on to something else. By the end of the week, the only place you’ll hear about it is from MUFON and the fringe groups.”
“Maybe, but this wasn’t some blurry picture or jumpy tape. I have a feeling this one might have some legs.” In truth, Wheeler was not worried by groups like the Mutual UFO Network, which were benign if persistent with their ongoing calls for greater government transparency when it came to the subject of unidentified and unexplained phenomena that may or may not have connections to extraterrestrial activity. Even the conspiracy pushers who filled hours of late-night talk radio speculating about secret agendas and cover-ups for alien encounters posed no real threat. After all, one of the jobs with which his organization was tasked was leaking disinformation to such parties as a means of keeping their focus and attention away from the truth, which at times could be more frightening than any theory or fantasy. How many a night’s peaceful sleep had reality cost him—at least, reality as it had been defined for him for so many years since his being ushered behind the veil that was Majestic 12 and its mission?
Add one more.
Stifling a yawn, Wheeler said, “I want to see it again.” He gestured toward the Trench’s video wall. “Cue it up.” He waited as Heffron relayed his order to the army warrant officer sitting at the floor director’s workstation, and a moment later one of the quadrants on the center video screen shifted from a map of the United States to a fleeting image of a city skyline at night. High above the ground, what could only be a craft streaking across the sky, moving with the speed of a jet fighter. Across the bottom of the image was a red banner highlighting a caption: AMATEUR VIDEO.
Wheeler lost any thoughts of returning to sleep.
Over the room’s loudspeakers, a male voice said, “Incredible footage was caught just an hour ago by a man using his camcorder to tape a backyard barbecue.”
“Freeze that,” Wheeler snapped, and the warrant officer halted the image, providing him and everyone else in the room with a still frame of the craft. Crossing his arms, he reached up to stroke his chin. “What do you think, Colonel? Look familiar?”
Heffron nodded. “Absolutely. It looks a lot like something photographed by recon satellites thirty years ago.” She pointed to the screen. “Same basic configuration, with a hull flanked by more or less cylindrical components: two above and one below. This one looks more streamlined. More advanced, but there’s no denying their silhouettes are similar.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” Wheeler had made the same connection upon his first viewing of the footage, which had been broadcast by a television station in Los Angeles the previous evening. It had taken a couple of hours for the video to make it across three time zones to the east coast, but he knew that local television outlets around the country would be making this a part of their morning news programming in just about two hours. He waved to the warrant officer down in the Trench. “Go.” In response to his casual order, the video resumed its playback with the mysterious craft once more zooming across the California night sky.
“The massive unidentifiable object does not appear to be a meteorite, weather balloon, or satellite, and one aviation expert we’ve spoken to has stated that it’s definitely not any kind of U.S. aircraft currently in use. We’re awaiting investigation by local authorities, and we’
ll keep you updated as news develops on this incredible story.”
Heffron said, “All our attempts to track it are coming up empty. I hate to say it, but the damned thing looks to have vanished without a trace.”
How many files from Majestic’s voluminous library contained reports of similar sightings? Wheeler had long since bothered trying to maintain a count of such things, secure in the knowledge that the actual number was well above what had been acknowledged by the United States government in the form of public-facing groups like Project Blue Book and its predecessors, and far beyond those examined by even the most enthusiastic UFO watch groups.
Stepping away from the walkway’s railing, Wheeler moved toward the set of stairs that would take him up to his office. With Heffron following, he said, “It had to come from somewhere. The ship we photographed thirty years ago was in a higher orbit than the satellites we had up there at the time. It really was just blind luck that we caught anything at all. Thing is, we’ve got better satellites now.”
“Maybe it has some kind of advanced tech that lets it hide from our satellites,” Heffron suggested. “Or they’re able to track our birds’ orbits and just avoid them.”
“There’s a comforting thought.” Wheeler reached the landing at the top of the steps and walked past the desk where his aide sat. Though no one occupied the chair behind the desk, Wheeler noted the coffee cup and the active, locked computer station. “You really did wake up everybody, didn’t you?”
“All hands on deck, sir. I’ve already got people scrubbing that tape for anything we can cross-reference against our files. Unfortunately, what was shown on the news is pretty much all there is. Unless someone else comes forward with their own video, there might not be a whole lot we can do with it.”