Area 51

CHAPTER 18

“Give me a status,” Gullick ordered.

“Bouncer Three is ready for flight,” Quinn reported.

“Bouncer Eight is also prepped and ready. Aurora is on standby status. Our link to Cheyenne Mountain is live and secure. Anything moves, we’ll be able to track it, sir.”

“General Brown?” Gullick asked.

The Air Force deputy chief of staff frowned. His conversation with his boss in Washington had been anything but fun. “I talked to the chief of staff and he okayed the alerts, but he was not happy about it.”

“I don’t care if he was happy or not,” Gullick said. “I just care that the mission is a go.”

Brown looked down at his own computer screen. “We’ve got every base alerted and planes on standby for pursuit. The primary and alternate kill zones are a go.”

“Admiral Coakley?”

“The carrier Abraham Lincoln is steaming toward the sight where the foo fighter went down. It’s got planes on alert.”

“We’re all set, then,” Gullick said. “Let’s roll.”

The hangar doors slowly slid open. Inside Bouncer Three, Major Paul Terrent checked the control panel, which was a mixture of the original fixtures and added-on human technology, including a satellite communications link with General Gullick in the Cube.

“All set,” he announced.

“I don’t like being the bait,” his copilot, Captain Kevin Scheuler, remarked. They were both reclined in depressions in the floor of the disk. The cockpit was an oval, twelve feet in diameter. They could see out in all directions, the inner walls displaying what was outside of them as if the walls themselves were not there — another piece of technology they could use but still didn’t understand.

The effect, while useful, was extremely disorienting, and perhaps the second greatest hurdle Bouncer test pilots had to overcome. Most particularly, the view straight down when the craft was at altitude, as if the pilot were floating in the air, was quite a shock to the system until one got used to it. For this night’s mission both men were wearing night vision goggles on their flight helmets and the interior of the hangar was lit in red lights, meaning there was little difference in illumination for them between there and the outside night sky.

However, the greatest hurdle to flying the machine was the physical limitations of the pilots. The Bouncer was capable of maneuvers that the pilot’s physiology could not handle. In the early days of the program there had been blackouts, broken bones, and various other injuries, including one fatal crash — the disk staying intact, the unconscious pilots inside being turned into crushed protoplasm on impact with the earth. The disk had been recovered, cleaned out, and was still capable of flight. The two pilots had been buried with honors; their widows told they had died flying an experimental aircraft and given their posthumous medals at the funeral.

There was machinery surrounding the depressions that the scientists had yet to figure out. The project’s scientists believed that there was a built-in way for the pilot depressions/seats to be shielded from the effect of G-forces, but they had yet to discover it. It was as if a child who was capable of riding a tricycle were allowed into a car. He might understand what the steering wheel did, but he wouldn’t understand what the small opening on the steering wheel column was for, especially if the child had not been given the keys.

The best that they had been able to come up with was allowing the test pilots enough flight time so that they understood their own limitations and did not push the machine past what they could handle. Beyond that, the shoulder and waist harnesses bolted around the depressions would have to do.

“There’s nothing that can catch us,” Major Terrent said.

“Nothing human,” Scheuler noted. “But if this foo fighter thing was made by the same people who made this, or people like the people who made this, then—”

“Then nothing,” Terrent cut in. “This ship is at least ten thousand years old. The eggheads know that, at least. Whoever left it behind has been long gone. And they probably weren’t people.”

“Then why are we flying this mission, trying to bait this foo fighter? Who made it?” Scheuler asked.

“Because General Gullick ordered it,” Terrent said. He looked at Scheuler. “You have any further questions, I suggest you talk to him.”

Scheuler shook his head. “No, thanks.”

Terrent pressed a small red button added on top of the Y-shaped yoke in front of him, keying the SATCOM radio.

“Cube Six, this is Bouncer Three. All systems ready. Over.”

Gullick’s deep voice answered. “This is Cube Six. Go. Out.”

The airstrip outside was dark. Terrent pulled up on a lever to his side with his left hand and the disk lifted. The control system was simplicity itself. Pull up on the lever and the disk went up. Let go of it and the lever returned to center and the disk stayed at that altitude. Push down on it and the disk descended.

Terrent pushed the yoke forward with his right hand and they moved forward. The yoke worked in the same manner as the altitude lever. Letting go brought the disk to a halt.

Constant pressure equaled constant speed in whichever direction the yoke was pushed.

Scheuler was looking at the navigation display — a human device tied in to a satellite positioning system. A computer display with a black rectangular outline to separate it from the surrounding view showed their present position as a small red glowing dot with state borders shown in light green lines. It was the easiest way to orient the pilots as to their location.

“Let’s roll,” Terrent said. He pressed forward and they were out of the hangar. Behind them, still in the hangar, Bouncer Eight rose to a hover and waited. On the airstrip Aurora stood at the end, engines on, prepared for flight. On airstrips across the United States and down into Panama, and on board the Abraham Lincoln at sea, pilots sat in their cockpits and waited — for what, they had not been told. But they knew whatever it was, this was no game. The planes’ wings had live missiles slung underneath and the Gatling guns were loaded with bullets.

“All clear,” Quinn said, a rather unnecessary statement since everyone in the room could see the small red dot indicating Bouncer Three moving northwest out of the state. The computer had already screened out all commercial aircraft flights.

“Contact!” Quinn announced. A small green dot had suddenly appeared on the screen, well behind Bouncer Three. “Same reading as the first one!”

“Three, this is Six,” Gullick spoke into his headset. “Head for Checkpoint Alpha. Over.”

On board Bouncer Three, Major Terrent slowly pressed the yoke to the right and the disk began a long curve over southern Idaho, turning toward the Great Salt Lake. What was different about the turn from one made by an ordinary aircraft was the fact that there was no banking. The disk simply changed directions, staying flat and level. The bodies of the two men inside strained against their restraining harnesses during the turn, then settled back in the depressions.

“Give me a reading,” Terrent said.

“The bogey’s about three hundred miles behind us,” Captain Scheuler responded. He was watching the same information on his small screen that the people in the Cube had displayed on their large one.

“Is it turning with us?” Terrent asked.

“Not yet.”

“Get Aurora in the air,” Gullick ordered. “Alert Kill Zone Alpha reaction forces and get them up too. Have you fed coordinates of the bogey to Teal Amber?”

Quinn was working quickly. “Yes, sir.”

At Hill Air Force Base, just outside Salt Lake City, two F-16 Fighting Falcons roared down the runway and up into the night sky. As soon as they had reached sufficient altitude, they turned west, over the flat surface of the lake, heading for the desolate land on the far side.

“That’s the lake,” Terrent said. He pressed the yoke to the right a bit more.

“On course,” Scheuler said, checking their projected direction.

“Is the bogey turning yet?”

“Yes,” Scheuler said. “It’s taken the bait. Right on our trail, about one hundred and fifty miles behind.”

Terrent keyed his mike. “Six, this is Three. Kill Zone Alpha in one minute, forty-seven seconds. Over.”

“Roger,” Gullick answered. There were several more dots on the screen now. The red one indicated Bouncer Three heading directly toward a small orange rectangle — Kill Zone Alpha — a point directly over the center of the Hill Air Force Base Range. On the ground out there a helicopter and recovery crew from Nightscape waited. The green dot was the bogey, following Bouncer Three. Two red plane silhouettes showed the F-16’s on an intercept course.

A red triangle represented Aurora, en route directly from Area 51.

“Intercept in forty-five seconds,” Quinn announced.

Bouncer Three went through the orange rectangle.

“What the fuck was that?” the pilot of the lead F-16 called out as Bouncer Three flashed by.

“Wolfhound One, this is Six. Stay on target!” General Gullick’s voice in the pilot’s helmet was a cold slap in the face. “Have you got a lock on the target?” The pilot checked his instruments. “Roger, Six.”

“Arm your missiles.”

The pilot armed the air-to-air missiles under his wings.

Still shaken by the image of Bouncer Three, he also armed his 20mm multibarrel cannon. His wingman did the same.

“This son of a bitch is moving fast,” the wingman said over the secure link between the two planes.

“Not fast enough,” the pilot said.

General Gullick was concerned about the same thing in the Cube. “What’s the speed of the bogey?”

“Computer estimates twelve hundred miles an hour,” Quinn replied. “It’s pacing Bouncer Three.” Which was the reason the disk was flying so slowly, trying to draw the bogey in to the kill zone at a slow enough speed to be hit by the conventional jets. Gullick was intimately familiar with the weapon systems on board the F-16’s — he was checked out on the aircraft. They could handle that speed.

“Six, this is Wolfhound One. Target will be in range in ten seconds. Request final authorization. Over.”

“This is Six. Fire as soon as target is in range. Over.”

The pilot took a deep breath.

“Is this guy for real?” his wingman asked.

“No time for questions,” the pilot snapped. The heads up display indicated the target was in range. “Fire!” he yelled.

A Sidewinder missile leapt out from underneath the wings of both planes.

Even though they conceptually knew what the bouncers were capable of — and therefore could conceptualize what the foo fighters might be able to do — there was complete shock as the bogey simply left the orange square behind and was over fifty miles away by the time the Sidewinders had crossed the two miles from where the F-16’s were to where the bogey had been.

“What the fuck was that?” the F-16 pilot said for the second time in less than two minutes. His heads-up display was clear. The Sidewinder he’d fired was an arc disappearing over the base range, running out of fuel and descending. Whatever he’d fired at was gone.

Gullick reacted first. “Get Aurora after it. Launch Bouncer Eight.” He keyed his radio. “Bouncer Three, this is Six. Head for Kill Zone Bravo. Over.”

“This is Three. Roger.”

Gullick switched frequencies. “Wolfhound One, this is Six. Return to base for debriefing. Out.”

As the two F-16’s turned back toward Salt Lake City and Hill Air Force Base, the pilot of the lead aircraft looked across the night sky to his wingman.

“We’re in for a long night,” he said on their secure channel. “I don’t know what it was we just saw — or didn’t see — but one thing for sure, the security dinks are going to be all over us on the ground.”

Major Terrent lined up Bouncer Three on an azimuth that would take them directly over the four corners — where Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico met — the only place in the United States contiguous to four states.

Kill Zone Bravo was several hundred miles beyond that in the same direction. White Sands Missile Range.

“Where’s the bogey?” Terrent asked.

“Holding, about fifty miles behind us,” Scheuler reported. “Let’s hope they’re better prepared at Bravo,” Terrent said.

General Gullick was directing the situation to insure just that. He had Aurora and Bouncer Eight heading directly toward the kill zone. They would beat Three there by four minutes.

Four F-15’s from the 49th Tactical Fighter Wing at Holloman Air Force Base were already in the air. He didn’t expect them to have any more luck than the two F-16’s had — except now he had the ace card of having Bouncer Eight in the air. Gullick planned on using both it and Bouncer Three to corral the bogey into a position where the F-15’s could get a good shot at it. Aurora was to be on standby to chase, just in case it did get away again and moved outside the continental United States. It was a rule that even General Gullick could not break on his own initiative — the bouncers could not fly over the ocean or foreign territory on the remote chance they might go down.

The wall display was crowded now. Bouncer Three straight shot from Salt Lake to White Sands, the bogey just behind. Bouncer Eight and Aurora on line from Nevada. Four small airplane silhouettes lying in wait over White Sands.

“Amber Teal has the bogey,” Quinn announced. “We’re getting some imagery.”

Gullick wasn’t impressed or interested. They already had photos of the foo fighters. He wanted the real thing. He keyed his SATCOM link to the F-15 commander. “Eagle Leader, this is Cube Six. Target ETA in five minutes, twenty seconds. You’re only going to get one shot at this. Make it good. Over.”

“This is Eagle Leader. Roger. Over.” Eagle Flight Leader glanced out of his cockpit at the other three planes. “Eagle Flight, take up positions. Get a fix on the first craft as it goes through. It will come to a halt on the far side of the kill zone. A second craft similar to the first is also en route from the west and will also hold on the western side of the kill zone. Launch on the bogey as soon as it crosses Phase Line Happy. Over.”

The four planes broke into a cloverleaf pattern, the kill zone a large pocket of empty sky, crisscrossed with electronic energy as the planes turned on their targeting radar.

From Bouncer Three, Captain Scheuler could see the waiting F-15’s on his display. “ETA thirty seconds,” he said.

“Slowing.” Major Terrent let up on the yoke.

“That’s the first one,” Eagle Flight Leader called out as Bouncer Three buzzed through, slowing as it went. His men were disciplined. No one questioned what it was. That would have to wait until the ready room after the mission.

Even then, they all knew they could never speak openly of tonight’s mission. “Lock on,” Eagle Leader confirmed.

“Locked,” Eagle Two echoed, as did the other two pilots.

“Fire!”

On the display at the front of the Cube the foo fighter appeared to suddenly become motionless as a thin red line extended from each fighter toward the green dot.

“Jesus Christ!” Eagle Flight Leader swore. The bogey had disappeared — straight up! Then reality set in hard. “Evasive maneuvers!” he screamed as the Sidewinder missile from the F-15 opposite him locked onto his plane.

For four seconds there was absolute confusion as pilots and planes scrambled to escape friendly fire.

General Gullick didn’t even watch the self-induced melee. “Bouncer Three, go! Direct angle of intercept. Break. Eight, loop to the south and catch it if it goes the way the other did! Aurora, get some altitude. Move, people! Move! Over.”

“Seventy thousand feet and climbing,” Quinn reported. “Seventy-five thousand.”

“Please, Lord,” Eagle Flight Leader whispered as he pulled out of the steep dive he’d gone into. A Sidewinder roared past to his left. He keyed his radio. “Eagle Flight report. Over.”

“One. Roger. Over.”

“Two. Roger. Over.”

“Three. Took a licking, but I’m still kicking. Over.”

Eagle Flight Leader looked up. Not to where the bogey had gone but farther. “Thank you, Lord.”

“Ninety thousand and still climbing,” Scheuler informed Major Terrent. His fingers hit the keyboard in front of him, his arms struggling against the G-forces pushing him down into his cutout seat.

“One hundred ten thousand and still climbing,” Major Quinn said. “The F-15’s are all secure and returning to Holloman,” he added. “One hundred and twenty thousand.” Well over twenty miles up and still going vertical.

“One hundred and twenty-five thousand. It’s peaking over,” Scheuler said.

Major Terrent let out his breath. The controls had started to get slightly sluggish. The record for altitude in a bouncer was one hundred and sixty-five thousand feet, and that had been a wild ride four years ago. For some reason, due to the magnetic propulsion system, which had not yet been figured out, at over a hundred thousand feet the disk started losing power.

The crew of the disk that had made the record flight had had the unnerving experience of peaking out while still trying to climb and gone into an uncontrolled descent before the disk had regained power.

“Heading?” Terrent asked, concentrating on keeping control.

“Southwest,” Scheuler said. “Heading, two-one-zero degrees.”

“What’s it doing?” Gullick asked.

“Bogey heading two-one-zero degrees,” Quinn said.

“Descending on a glide path, going down through one hundred and ten thousand. Three is in close pursuit. Eight is—” Quinn paused. “The bogey’s turning!”

“Uh-oh,” Captain Scheuler said as things changed on his display.

“What?” The controls were getting firmer in Major Terrent’s hands. They were just about down to one hundred thousand feet.

Scheuler snapped into action. “Collision alert!”

“Give me a direction!” Terrent yelled.

“Break right,” Scheuler guessed.

On the large screen the red and green dots both curved in the same direction and merged. Gullick stood, his teeth biting through the forgotten cigar.

Scheuler watched the foo fighter tear by directly overhead, less than ten feet away. A beam of white light was flashing out of the small glowing ball and raking over and through their disk.

“Engine failure. Loss of all control,” Terrent reported.

They both felt their weight lighten, then they were peaking over and heading down.

Scheuler looked at his display. “Ninety thousand and in free fall.” The lever and yoke moved freely in Terrent’s hands.

“Nothing. No power.” He looked over at Scheuler. Both men were maintaining their external discipline but their voices displayed their fear.

“Eighty-five thousand,” Scheuler said.

“Bouncer Three is in uncontrolled descent,” Quinn reported. “No power. Bouncer Eight and Aurora are still in pursuit.”

The green dot representing the foo fighter was moving swiftly to the southwest.

“Sixty thousand,” Scheuler reported. Terrent let go of the useless controls. “Fifty-five thousand.”

“The bogey will hit the Mexican border in two minutes,” Quinn reported.

“Bouncer Eight, this is Cube Six,” Gullick said into his boom mike. “Get that son of a bitch!”

With no power other than the Earth’s gravity, Bouncer Three was going down at terminal velocity. They had tipped over and the edge to both men’s right was leading the way down.

They were actually descending more slowly than they had gone up, Scheuler reflected, watching the digital display count down in front of him. He felt strangely detached, his years of pilot training keeping the fear at bay.

At least they weren’t tumbling.

Scheuler glanced over questioningly at Terrent. “Forty-five thousand.” Terrent tried the controls again. “Still nothing,” he reported.

“Thirty seconds to the border,” Quinn said. He confirmed the bad news the screen was displaying. The gap between the bogey and Bouncer Eight was increasing rather than decreasing, despite the crew of the disk pushing it to the limits of human endurance.

Gullick spit out the mangled remains of his cigar.

“Bouncer Eight, this is Cube Six. Break off. I say again, break off and return home. Aurora, continue pursuit. Over.”

“This is Bouncer Eight. Roger. Over.”

“This is Aurora. Roger. Over.”

On the screen Bouncer Eight rapidly decelerated and curved back into airspace above the United States. Aurora continued following the bogey.

“Alert the Abraham Lincoln to launch pursuit,” Gullick ordered Admiral Coakley. The general finally shifted his gaze to the upper part of the screen. The green dot representing Bouncer Three was still motionless. “Altitude?” he asked.

Quinn knew what he was referring to. “Thirty thousand. Still no power. Uncontrolled descent.”

“Nightscape recovery status?” Gullick asked.

“In the air toward projected impact area,” Quinn said.

“I’m going to initiate at twenty thousand,” Terrent said.

His right hand rested on a red lever. “Clear.”

Scheuler pushed aside the keyboard and display from his lap as Terrent did the same. “Clear.”

“Cable up,” Terrent ordered.

Scheuler hit a button on the side of his seat. Anchored to the ceiling above and behind the two of them, a cable tightened, its near anchor point sliding along a track bolted onto the floor until it stopped right between the two depressions the men were seated in.

“Hook up,” Terrent instructed.

Scheuler reached into the waist pocket of his flight suit and pulled out a locking carabiner and slipped it onto the steel cable, just above where Terrent put his. He made sure it was on and screwed tight the lock. He then traced the nylon webbing back from it to the harness strapped around his torso, making sure it was clear and not wrapped around anything.

“Hooked up,” he confirmed. He glanced over at his display. “Twenty-two thousand five hundred.”

Terrent grabbed the controls one last time and tried them. They moved freely. No response. He looked at Scheuler. “Ready, Kevin?”

“Ready.”

“Blowing hatch on three. One. Two. Three.” Terrent slammed down the red lever and the exploding bolts on the hatch at the other end of the cable blew. The hatch spun away and cold night air whistled in.

“Go!” Terrent screamed.

Captain Scheuler unbuckled his shoulder straps and pushed, sliding up the cable, slamming against the roof of the disk. He got oriented and looked down at Terrent, still in his seat. Then he let go and was sucked out of the hatch, the nylon strap reaching its end and deploying the parachute that he had been sitting on. The disk was already gone into the darkness below by the time the chute finished opening.

He watched but there was no other blossoming of white canopy below.

Major Terrent’s hands were on the releases for his shoulder straps when his pilot’s instincts took over one last time. He reached down and grabbed the controls. There was something — the slightest response. His focus came back inside the craft as he wrestled with the controls.

“Ten thousand feet,” Quinn said. He looked at his computer screen and hit a few keys. “We’re getting a slight change in downward velocity on Bouncer Three.”

“I thought you said the readout said the hatch was blown and they had initiated escape.” Gullick said.

“Yes, sir, the hatch is gone, but”—Quinn checked the data being sent in from the satellites and Bouncer Three itself—“but it’s slowing, sir!”

Gullick nodded, but turned his attention back toward the screen and the green dot of the bogey, now over the Pacific far west of Panama.

Without Scheuler, Terrent had no idea what his altitude was. He’d pushed aside his own heads-up display when he’d hooked up. The power was coming back, but very slowly.

“Five thousand feet, continuing to decelerate,” Quinn said.

“How come I don’t see the F-14’s from the Abraham Lincoln on the display?” General Gullick asked.

“I — uh—” Quinn’s fingers flew over the keyboard and a cluster of small plane silhouettes appeared on the screen.

They were heading toward an orange circle representing the spot where the previous foo fighter had gone into the ocean. The symbols for the bogey and Aurora were also heading there.

“I think I’ve got it!” Terrent yelled to himself. He had the altitude lever pulled up as high as it would go and could continue to feel power returning. “We’ll make it, we’ll—”

“She’s down,” Quinn said in a quiet voice. “Bouncer Three is down. All telemetry is cut.”

“Make sure Nightscape recovery has the exact position from the last readout,” Gullick ordered. “Time to bogey intercept for the Tomcats?”

Quinn looked at General Gullick for a few seconds, then turned back to his terminal. “Six minutes.”

“I don’t see what good intercept will do,” Admiral Coakley protested. “We’ve already tried twice. It’s over the ocean. Even if we down the bogey it won’t—”

“I am in charge here,” General Gullick hissed. “Don’t ever—”

“Bogey’s gone, sir,” Quinn said. “She’s gone under.”

CHAPTER 19

The data was complex and much of it was not in the historical record. It counted at least six different types of atmospheric craft, only two of which were listed. And it was not action of this type that had awoken it twice before. Nevertheless, this new event was a threat because it was tied in to the place where the mothership was.

Valuable energy was diverted, and the main processor was brought up to forty-percent capacity to ponder the bursts of input that had occurred in this past cycle of the planet around its star. There had been conflict, but that did not concern it. There were larger issues at stake here.