Area 51

CHAPTER 15

Turcotte drove, Kelly navigated, and Von Seeckt sat in the backseat, watching the countryside. They were in Kelly’s rent-a-car heading southwest out of Las Vegas in the approximate direction of Dulce, New Mexico, via Phoenix.

Since there was only one road that went in that direction out of Las Vegas — Highway 93 to Kingman Arizona — Kelly’s mind was not much preoccupied with the map on her lap. It was over eighty miles to Kingman with no turns in between. “You told me they found the mothership in its hangar, but you never said if they found the bouncers there too,” she said, turning in the seat and glancing back at Von Seeckt.

“Ah, the bouncers,” Von Seeckt said. “Yes, the mothership was the first find the Americans made. There were also two bouncers found near the mothership in the same chamber.”

“And the other bouncers?” Kelly asked.

“They were not found there,” Von Seeckt said. “They were recovered and transported to Area 51.”

“Recovered from where?” Kelly asked.

“From another location.” Von Seeckt’s attention was on the desert flowing by. Kelly met Turcotte’s glance across the front seat, then returned to the backseat. “Another location? Where is that? Remember, you hired me, and my currency for payment is information.”

Von Seeckt finally turned his attention inside the car. “I thought your payment was finding your friend.”

“Johnny Simmons is not here in this car,” Kelly said. “I hope and pray that we find Johnny at Dulce and can get him out safely. But you are here in this car and the more information we have, the better our chances are of getting Johnny out of there.”

“The bouncers are back in Area 51,” Von Seeckt countered. “Why are you concerned with their history?”

“You said we’re going to Dulce to find tablets that related to them,” Kelly argued.

Kelly was startled when Turcotte slammed a fist on the steering wheel. “Listen, Von Seeckt, I don’t want to be here. I didn’t want this damn assignment from the start. But I’m here and I’m helping you people. So you help back. Clear?”

“Your assignment?” Kelly asked, her reporter instincts still working. The two men ignored her question.

“I took an oath of secrecy,” Von Seeckt said to Turcotte. “I am only violating that oath to prevent disaster.”

“It’s a little damn late for that now,” Turcotte said. “And we’re helping you. I took a few oaths of my own, and I violated one of those when I saved your life and the lives of that couple up in Nebraska. You’ve crossed a line and you can’t go back. Understand that. We’re in this now. All three of us. Whether you like it or not, and personally I can tell you I ain’t too fucking thrilled, but I’m here and I accept what that means.”

Von Seeckt pondered that for a few moments. “I know I crossed a line. I suppose much of what I feel is just habit. I have been so used to being quiet and not speaking. I have never talked to anyone outside of the program in all my life since being recruited in 1942. It is quite strange to speak openly about this.

“There are nine atmospheric bouncers. We know they are linked to the mothership because of their technology and the material they are constructed of and because there were two buried with the mothership — Bouncer One and Bouncer Two, as they are so elegantly called.

“We also know the others are related to the mothership because it is through material discovered in the mothership hangar that we were able to track down the other seven bouncers. When they found the mothership in 1942 they also not only found the first two bouncers, but several of the tablets we have already talked about. Although the people in the program could not decipher the symbols on the tablets, there were drawings and maps that could be understood.”

“Wait a second,” Kelly said. “You’re telling me that the best minds the government could gather together couldn’t decipher these high runes? We’ve got computers that can break codes in seconds.”

“First,” Von Seeckt said, “you must remember that it is extremely difficult to decipher a language or system of writing with so little material to look upon. That rules out effective use of computers — not enough data. Second, we did not necessarily have the ‘best’ minds, as you put it, working on this. We had those who could be recruited and pass a security check and also sign an oath of secrecy. In reality that left many of the best minds out of the field. And because of the secrecy of the program, those minds never got access to the data. Third, those who did work on the problem of deciphering the runes were limited by the conventions of their discipline. They did not understand that these runes found near the mothership could be related to runes elsewhere. Fourth, because of security requirements, the information they were working with was highly compartmentalized. They didn’t have access to all the data that was available.”

“Where else were these runes found?” Turcotte asked.

“I will go into that at another time,” Von Seeckt said. “When Professor Nabinger is with us tomorrow.”

Turcotte gripped the wheel tighter until the whites of his knuckles showed. Kelly noticed that and quickly tried to keep the flow of information going. “But even though they couldn’t decipher the runes,” Kelly said, “they were able to find other bouncers?”

“Yes,” Von Seeckt replied. “As I said, there were drawings and maps. There seemed to be no doubt that much attention was being paid to Antarctica, although the specific location was not given. Just a general vicinity on the continent. We eventually broke it down to an eight-hundred-square-kilometer area.

“Unfortunately, the few expeditions that were mounted during the war years to Antarctica could not be fully equipped, due to other, more pressing requirements for the men and ships required for such an operation — such as defeating Germany and Japan.

“In 1946, as soon as the material and men were available, the United States government mounted what was called Operation High Jump. You can look the mission up. It was well documented. However, what no one seemed to wonder was why the government was so interested in Antarctica in 1946. And why did they dispatch dozens of ships and airplanes to the southernmost continent so quickly after the end of the war?

“It was a very extensive operation. The largest launched in the history of mankind up to that point. High Jump took so many pictures of Antarctica that they haven’t all even been looked at yet, fifty years later! The expedition surveyed over sixty percent of the coastline and looked at over half a million square miles of land that had never before been seen by man.

“But the real success of High Jump occurred when they picked up signs of metal buried under the ice in that eight-hundred-square-mile box that special attention was paid to, which is what they were secretly after in the first place.”

Von Seeckt leaned forward. “Do you know how thick the ice is down there? At some places it is three miles deep! The current altitude of the land underneath the ice is actually below sea level, but that is only because the weight of the ice on top depresses the continent. If the ice were removed, the land would rise up miles and miles! Even with all the expeditions — High Jump included — only about one percent of the surface area of Antarctica has been traversed by man.

“Antarctica contains ninety percent of the world’s ice and snow and it is a most formidable foe, as those men who were operating secretly under the cover of Operation High Jump found out. A plane with skis landed at the site where their instruments had picked up the metal signal — which, despite the aid of the drawings on the tablets, was found only after five months of searching by thousands and thousands of men.

“But the weather down there is unpredictable and brutal at best. A storm moved in and the plane was destroyed, the crew frozen to death before they could be rescued. A second mission was mounted to the site. It was determined that the reflected signal was coming from over a mile and a half down in the ice. We did not have the technology at the time to do either of the two things required to explore further: to survive on the ice at that point long enough, and to drill down far enough.

“So, for nine years we bided our time and prepared. Besides, we had the two bouncers in Nevada to work on. We weren’t sure what was down there in Antarctica, but from the symbols on the tablets it looked like there would be more bouncers, so the priority of the recovery effort was not as high as it might have been otherwise.”

“You mean there were other sites and other symbols and other priority levels?” Kelly asked.

Von Seeckt looked at her. “Very astute, young lady, but let us stay with the subject at hand. In 1955 the Navy launched Operation Deep Freeze, under the leadership of Admiral Byrd, the foremost expert on Antarctica. The operation established five stations along the coast and three in the interior. At least that is what was announced to the press and recorded in the history books.

“A ninth, secret station was also established. One that has never been listed on any map. In 1956 I flew there in the beginning of what passes for summer in the Antarctic. Scorpion Station, as it was called, was over eight hundred miles in from the coast in the middle of — Von Seeckt searched for the words, then shrugged—“in the middle of nowhere, actually. Just ice for miles and miles, which is why the spot was so hard to find in the first place. I was shown the location on the map, but what does it matter? The ice sheet was two and a half miles thick at that point.

“They had taken the entire summer of 1955 to simply move in the equipment they needed. They began drilling in 1956. It took four months to get down the mile and a half to the target. They finally punched through to a cavity in the ice, which was very fortunate. We had been afraid that perhaps the bouncers — if that was what was down there — had been covered over with ice and were frozen into the ice cap. If that had been the case we would have had no hope of recovery. But no, the drill bit broke through to open air. They sent down cameras and looked around. Yes, there were more bouncers in the cavity.

“Then they had to widen the shaft, make it big enough for a person to go down and look. It was amazing! There was a chamber hollowed out of the ice. Not quite as big as Hangar Two, but very big. There were the other seven bouncers. Lined up in a row. Perfectly preserved — everything left in Antarctica is perfectly preserved,” Von Seeckt added. “Did you know that they found food at camps along the coast that had been left over a hundred years, and it was still edible?”

“Is that why those bouncers were left in that location?” Kelly asked. “So they would be so well preserved?”

“I do not believe so,” Von Seeckt said. “The two left here in Nevada were functional. The desert air is very good at preserving things also, and they were out of the elements inside the cavern with the mothership.”

“Then why Antarctica?” she asked.

“I do not know for sure.”

“A guess, perhaps?” Turcotte threw in. “Surely you must have an idea or two?”

“I think they were left there because it is perhaps the most inaccessible place on Earth to leave something.”

“So whoever left them didn’t want them found?” Turcotte asked.

“It appears that way. Or at least they only wanted them found when the finders had adequate technology to brave the Antarctic conditions,” Von Seeckt said.

“But they left the mothership and two bouncers back in Nevada,” Kelly noted. “And that was more accessible than Antarctica.”

“The terrain and climate in Nevada is more accessible to man,” Von Seeckt agreed. “But the cavern the mothership was hidden in wasn’t. We were very fortunate to stumble across it, and it required an effort to blast into the site. No, I believe the ships were hidden with the intention they not be found.”

“Why seven in Antarctica and two in Nevada?” Kelly wondered out loud.

“I don’t know,” Von Seeckt said. “We would have to ask whoever left them.”

“Go on with what happened in Antarctica,” Turcotte prodded.

“It took us three years to bring the bouncers up. First the engineers had to widen the shaft to forty feet circumference — and remember, they could only work six months out of the year. Then they had to dig out eight intermediate stopping points on the way up, in order to bring them up in stages. Then, it was necessary to tractor the bouncers to the coast and load them onto a Navy ship for transport back to the States. All in all it was a fantastic engineering job.

“Then we began the real work back at Area 51 trying to figure out how they flew. We had been working on the first two, but with nine, we could afford to disassemble a few. After all these years we can fly them, but we still don’t know how the engines work. And even though they can be flown, I do not believe we are able to use them to anywhere near the limits of their capabilities. There is still equipment on board the craft that we don’t know how to operate and in fact whose purpose we’re ignorant of.” Von Seeckt then told Kelly the story about the engineering mishap on the bouncer engine. She found all this fascinating. If it wasn’t for Johnny she’d be on the wire right now, breaking the story. But she knew this is what Johnny would do for her if she had disappeared.

“What else did the tablets show?” Turcotte asked.

“Some other locations. Other symbols. It was all very incomplete,” Von Seeckt said.

“For instance?” Kelly said.

“I do not remember it all. The work was compartmentalized very early on. I was not allowed complete access to the tablets, which were moved down to the facility at Dulce early on in the project. Nor was I allowed to see the results of the research at Dulce. The last time I was in Dulce was 1946. I do not remember it very well. I do not believe they have had much success with the tablets, otherwise we would have seen the results at Area 51.”

Kelly thought that was odd. Her reporter’s instincts were tingling. Had they cut Von Seeckt out of the inner circle years ago? Or was Von Seeckt holding something back?

“That is why we need to link up with this Nabinger fellow,” Von Seeckt continued. “If he can decipher the high runes, then the mystery may be solved not only of how the equipment works, but also of who left the equipment and why.”

Kelly caught herself before the words came out of her mouth. This was not what Von Seeckt had said back in the hotel room. Just a few hours ago he was focused on stopping the mothership. Damn Johnny. She was stuck in this car with these two because of him. Kelly slumped down in the passenger seat and the miles passed in silence.