Area 51

CHAPTER 25

The road curved around a small lake to the left and passed between tree-covered hills. Turcotte checked the map.

They were close to Dulce. According to Rand McNally the town was just south of the border with Colorado, nestled between the Carson National Forest and the Rio Grande National Forest. The terrain was rocky and mountainous, with occasional clusters of pine trees adorning the hillsides.

It was the sort of relatively unpopulated area the government liked to build secret facilities in.

They hit a straight section of road and a long-distance view opened up directly ahead. Von Seeckt leaned forward between the seats. “There. That mountain to the left. I remember that. The facility is behind it.”

A long ridge extended from left to right about ten miles ahead, culminating in a peak slightly separated from the main body of the ridge.

“Where should I go?” Kelly asked.

“Stay on this road,” Turcotte said. “I’ll tell you where to stop.”

As they got closer, the town of Dulce appeared at the base of the ridgeline, a scattering of buildings along the valley floor running up to the base of the large mountain.

Route 64 passed along the south side of the community, and Kelly carefully kept to the speed limit as they drove through. As the town slipped behind them, Turcotte told her to pull off on a dirt road and stop.

“You say the facility is behind that mountain?” he asked Von Seeckt.

“Yes. It was night when I came here and over fifty years ago, though. There wasn’t much here in those days. I don’t remember all these buildings.” Turcotte looked to the north. “All right. We have about two hours of daylight left. Let’s check out what we can see from the van.” He pointed back toward town and Kelly turned them around.

They cruised in past the sign marking the city limits and took a right, going past the local elementary school. The road slowly sloped up. Within a quarter mile they were at the base of the ridge. Turcotte kept Kelly taking turns that directed them to the right. It was the only way he could see around the mountain. Left would only run along the south side of the ridgeline.

An arrowhead with a 2 inside it marked a road leading to the northeast. The other roads all appeared to be local residential streets. Kelly turned onto the arrowhead road and they began climbing the shoulder of the mountain. A sign indicated they were now on the Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation. A white Ford Bronco rolled past with two men seated inside and Turcotte twisted his head and watched it go by.

“Government plates,” he noted.

“Yeah,” Kelly said.

“Probably from the facility.”

“I don’t want to burst your bubble,” Kelly said, “but you see a lot of U.S. government plates out here. We’re on Federal land, actually Indian land, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which helps run the reservations, is federal.”

“But it could be from the base,” Turcotte said.

“Ah, optimism,” Kelly said, mimicking his Canuck accent. “I like that.”

“There.” Turcotte pointed to the right shoulder. “Stop there.”

The road split. To the right it went down into a valley. To the left a wide, well-maintained gravel road curved along the back of the ridgeline and disappeared.

“It’s around there,” Turcotte announced firmly.

“Why not to the right?” she asked.

“Von Seeckt said it was behind the mountain. To the right is not behind the mountain.” He looked to the back. “Correct?”

Von Seeckt concurred. “I believe to the left.”

Turcotte continued. “Also, since we left Phoenix that’s the best maintained and widest gravel road I’ve seen.” He smiled. “But mostly, the thing that convinces me that the facility is down that road — besides Von Seeckt’s opinion, of course — are those little lines of what appears to be smoke hanging above the road.” He pointed to the gravel road.

“See them? There and there?”

“Yes. What are they?”

“That’s dust caught in a laser beam. A car goes down that road, the beam gets broken and a signal is sent. There’s two of them, so they can tell if a vehicle is coming or going depending on the order the beams get broken. I don’t think the Bureau of Indian Affairs guards the reservations that tightly, do you?”

“What now?” Kelly asked, glancing over her shoulder at the other two men in the rear.

“I don’t think this place will be as well guarded as Area 51,” Turcotte said. “All the work here must be done inside, so it obviously doesn’t attract as much attention as the other facility. So that’s to our advantage.

“The other thing to remember is a basic fact about most guarded facilities. The goal of a lot of the security is not, as you would think, to prevent someone from actually breaking in. The goal is deterrence: to keep someone from considering breaking in.”

“I don’t understand,” Nabinger said from the rear.

“Think of the security cameras in banks,” Turcotte explained. “They work through deterrence. They keep most people from robbing the bank because those people know their picture will get taken and the police will eventually catch them. The same with most security. For example, if I wanted to kill the President, I could most definitely kill him. The problem lies with killing him and getting away afterward.”

“So, you’re saying we can get in to this facility but we can’t get out?” Kelly asked.

“Oh, I think we should be able to get out. It’s just that they’ll know we did it.”

Kelly shrugged. “Hell, that ain’t a problem. They’re already after us. We get Johnny, we go public. That’s the only way we’ll make it.”

“Right,” Turcotte said.

“So, back to my original question,” Kelly said. “What now?”

“Back to town,” Turcotte said. “We need a ticket to get us in. Once inside I’ll get us to Johnny.”

“And the high rune tablets,” Nabinger added. “Von Seeckt told me that Dulce is where they keep all the ones the government has.”

“And the high rune tablets,” Turcotte amended. “Whatever you can find.”

“Anyplace in particular in town?” Kelly asked as she turned them around and headed to the south.

“Know how cops always hang out at the local doughnut shop?” Turcotte said. “Yes.”

“We need to find where the workers from the base get their doughnuts.”

“That one,” Turcotte said. They’d watched a dozen or so cars with small green stickers on the front center of the windshield pull in and out of the convenience-store parking lot over the course of the past several hours. Turcotte had pointed out the stickers and explained that they were decals used to identify cars that had access to government installations. As night had fallen, the lights had come on, illuminating the parking and leaving their van in the darkness across the street.

“I’ve got him.” Kelly started the engine to the van and followed the Suburban out of the parking lot of the Mini Mart.

They followed the truck as it went north through town and then turned onto Reservation Route 2. They were a quarter mile from the split in the road. “Now,” Turcotte ordered.

Kelly flashed her high beams and accelerated until they were right on the bumper of the Suburban. She swung out and passed, Turcotte leaning out the window and giving the finger to the driver of the truck as he screamed obscenities.

Kelly slammed on the brakes and they skidded to a halt at the intersection with the gravel road. The driver of the Suburban came to a stop on the gravel road, headlights pointing at the van.

“What the fuck is your problem, asshole?” the burly driver of the truck demanded as he stepped out and started walking toward the van.

Turcotte jumped out of the passenger side of the van and met him halfway between the two vehicles, caught in the glow of the headlights.

“You an idiot or what?” the driver demanded. “You pass me and—” Without a word Turcotte fired the stun gun, dropping the man immediately. He cuffed him with plastic cinches from his vest and dragged the body into the back of the van. “Get into the truck,” he ordered Von Seeckt and Nabinger.

The two men scuttled over into the backseat of the Suburban.

Kelly drove the van a hundred meters down the tar road, where the turn concealed them from the intersection.

There was no place to conceal the van, so she just pulled off to the shoulder. Turcotte made sure the man was secure and quickly frisked him.

“This isn’t much of a plan,” Kelly muttered as she locked the van and pocketed the keys. “And I’m not sure I buy your easy-to-get-in-and-out theory.”

“One of my commanders in the infantry used to say any plan was better than having Rommel stick it up your ass on the drop zone,” Turcotte said as they jogged up the road toward the truck.

“I don’t get it,” Kelly said.

“I never did, either, but it sounded good. What’s really interesting,” he said, pausing for a second and looking at her in the starlight, “is that you’re the first person who ever said that about that quote. I never told my commander I didn’t get it.”

“And?” Kelly said.

He began jogging again. “It means you listen and you think.”

Turcotte took the wheel this time. He scanned the interior and reached above the visor; an electronic card key was there, such as those used in hotels to open doors. He checked the name: Spencer. “The plan is getting better by the minute.” He tucked the card between his legs next to the stun gun. “Everyone down. We’re going to be on camera in a second.”

Throwing the engine into gear, he rolled down the gravel road, past the laser sensors. There was no way he could see it, but he had no doubt that the vehicle was being surveyed by infrared cameras to check for the decal and insure it was authorized. He knew the decal was covered with a fluorescent coating that could easily be seen through such a device. He watched the road carefully, hoping that there would be no more forks where a decision had to be made.

A sign appeared in the headlights warning that they were now entering a federal restricted area and the fine print listed all the dire consequences unauthorized personnel would face and all the constitutional rights that they no longer had. Four hundred meters past the sign a steel bar stretched across the road. A machine such as those used at airports to give out parking tickets was on the left side.

Turcotte pulled up and inserted the card key into the slot.

The steel bar lifted.

He continued on, then the road split. Turcotte had less than three seconds to make a decision. To the left loomed the mountain. To the right the valley floor. He turned left and immediately was in a narrow valley. The sides closed in and camouflage netting covered the road, staked down on the rock walls on either side, confirming his decision. A thirty-foot-wide opening in the base of the mountain appeared directly ahead, carved into the side of the mountain. A dull red glow came out of the opening.

A bored security guard in a booth just inside the cave opening hardly looked up, waving the Suburban in. A large parking garage was off to the right and Turcotte turned that way. The man-made cave was dimly lit by red lights.

That was both to defeat detection from the outside by not having bright white light coming out of the entrance, and also to allow people to begin getting their night sight when departing.

The slots were numbered, but Turcotte took his chances and went to the far end, out of sight of the guard, and parked. There were about ten other cars in the garage.

Over fifty spaces were empty, which meant that the night shift was a skeleton crew, for which Turcotte was grateful.

There was a pair of sliding doors set in the rock twenty feet from where he had parked. “Let’s go.”

Turcotte glanced over his shoulder at the three people following him — Kelly short and compact, Von Seeckt leaning on his cane, and Nabinger bringing up the rear. Kelly smiled at him. “Lead on, fearless one.”

He slid the card key into the slot on the side of the elevator. The doors slid open. They crowded inside and Turcotte examined the buttons. They ranged from HP, Garage, down through sublevels 4 to 1. “I’d say HP stands for ‘helipad.’ They probably have one cut into the side of the mountain or maybe even on the top of the mountain above us. Any idea what floor we should go to?” he asked Von Seeckt.

The old man shrugged. “They had stairs when I was here last, but we did go down.”

“I’d say bottom level,” Kelly suggested. “The greater the secret, the deeper you go.”

“Real scientific,” Turcotte muttered. He hit sublevel 1.

The elevator dropped, the lights on the wall flashed, then halted at sublevel 2. A message appeared on the digital display above the number lights:

Turcotte looked at the two small openings — made for small round objects — one just below the digital display and the other on the far wall. They were far enough apart that one person could not operate both keys — just like the launch systems of ICBM. “I don’t have the keys for that, and our Mr. Spencer didn’t have them on him either.”

“Let’s try this level,” Kelly suggested.

Turcotte pressed the open button and the doors slid apart, revealing a small foyer and another door and another warning sign:

An opening for a card key to be passed through was just below the sign. Turcotte held up the card key he’d appropriated from the Suburban. It was orange. “We’re still out of the depth of Mr. Spencer’s security range.” He stepped forward and shrugged off the small backpack he had on. “But I think I can handle this little roadblock.” He removed a small black box.

“What’s that?” Kelly asked.

“Something I found in the van. They had all sorts of goodies back there.” A card key was attached to the box by several wires. Turcotte slid it into the slot in the direction opposite that indicated by the arrow. “It reads the door code backward, memorizes it, and then reverses the code. I’ve used similar devices in some of my other assignments.”

He slid it down in the proper direction and the two doors slip open to reveal a guard seated at a desk ten feet away.

“Hey!” the guard yelled, bounding to his feet.

Turcotte dropped the box and reached for the stun gun.

It got caught in his pocket and he abandoned the effort, sprinting forward. The guard’s gun had just cleared his holster when Turcotte jumped into the air, feet leading, and flew over the desk. The bottom of his boots caught the guard in the chest, knocking him back against the wall.

Turcotte was back on his feet first and he slammed a turn kick into the side of the guard’s skull, knocking him out.

He turned to the desktop and looked at the computer screen that was built into it. It showed a schematic, with rooms labeled and green lights in each little box. The others quickly gathered around.

“Archives,” Turcotte said, resting a finger on a room. He looked up at Nabinger and Von Seeckt. “That’s yours.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the stun gun. “You meet anyone, use this. Just aim and pull the trigger, the gun does the rest. You’ve got five minutes. Then be back here whether you found what you’re looking for or not.”

Nabinger oriented himself with the diagram and looked down the corridor. “Right. Let’s go.” He headed off with Von Seeckt.

Turcotte pointed. “I’d say your friend is in one of these two places.” One was labeled HOLDING AREA and the other BIOLAB.

“Biolab,” Kelly said.

They sprinted in the opposite direction from the one Von Seeckt and Nabinger had taken. The hall was quiet and they passed several doors with nameplates on the outside — obviously offices for the people who worked here in the daytime. “Left,” Kelly said. A set of swinging double doors waited at the end of a short corridor. They halted and Kelly arched her eyebrows at Turcotte in question as they heard someone cough on the other side.

“We charge,” Turcotte whispered.

“You don’t have much of a tactical repertoire,” Kelly replied quietly. Turcotte pushed the doors open and stepped in. A middle-aged woman in a white coat was bent over a large chest-high rectangular black object. Her hair was pulled back tight in a bun and she peered up over a pair of glasses.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“Johnny Simmons?” Turcotte asked.

“What?” the woman replied, but Turcotte caught the shift of her eyes to the black object.

He walked past her and looked down. It reminded him of an oversized coffin. There was a panel on the top — what the woman had been looking at. “What is this?” he asked.

“Who are you people?” The woman looked past them at the door. “What are you doing here?”

There were a number of cables coming out of the ceiling, going into the black top. Some of the cables were clear and there was fluid in them. He turned on the woman. “Get him out of there.”

“Johnny’s in there?” Kelly stared at the casing. She walked over and picked up a clipboard hanging on a hook.

She checked the papers on it.

“Someone’s in there,” Turcotte said. “Those are IV tubes. I don’t know what they’re carrying, but someone’s in there on the receiving end.”

“It’s Johnny,” Kelly said, holding up the clipboard.

“Get him out of there,” Turcotte repeated.

“I don’t know who you are,” the woman began, “but—”

Turcotte slid his Browning High Power out of its holster.

He pulled the hammer back with his thumb. “You got five seconds or I put a round through your left thigh.”

The woman glared at him. “You wouldn’t dare!”

“He would,” Kelly said. “And if he didn’t, I would. Open it!”

“One. Two. Three.” Turcotte dropped the barrel and aimed at the woman’s leg. “All right. All right!” The woman held up her hands. “But I can’t just open it. The shock will kill the obj—” She caught herself. “The patient. I have to do this in proper procedure.”

“How long?” Turcotte asked.

“Fifteen minutes to—”

“Make it five.”

At the other end of this level of the facility Von Seeckt and Professor Nabinger were staring at an intellectual treasure trove. The archives had been dark when they opened the doors. When Nabinger hit the lights, a room full of large filing cabinets had come into view. Opening drawers, they found photos. The drawers were labeled with numbers that meant nothing to the two men. At the far end of the room there was a vault door with a small glass window. Von Seeckt peered through. “The original stone tablets from the mothership cavern are in there,” he said. “But they must have photographs of them in these cabinets.”

Nabinger was already opening drawers. “Here’s the same high runes from the site in Mexico that Slater showed me,” Nabinger said, holding up large ten-by-fifteen-inch glossies.

“Yes, yes,” Von Seeckt said absently, throwing open drawer after drawer. “We need to find ones she didn’t show you — the ones from the mothership cavern. I do not believe our Captain Turcotte will have much patience once his five-minute limit is up.”

Nabinger started going through drawers more quickly.

The woman’s hands shook as she worked on the panel.

Most of the cables had been disconnected and she was checking some readings. “What did you people do to him?” Kelly asked.

“It’s complicated,” the woman said.

“E-D-O-M?” Kelly spelled out the letters.

The woman stiffened. “How do you know of that?” “Finish the job,” Turcotte said.

The woman hit a key and the box began beeping. “It will be safe to open in thirty seconds.”

Von Seeckt had paused at one drawer, looking at the photos more carefully. At the end of the aisle Nabinger was moving on to the next cabinet when he noticed something in a glass cabinet on the wall. He moved over and stared at the object inside.

Von Seeckt held up a handful of pictures. “These are the photos from the mothership cavern! Let us rejoin the good captain.”

The beeping stopped and the woman pointed at a lever on the side of the box. “Lift that.”

Turcotte grabbed the red handle and pulled it up. With a hiss the lid came up, revealing a naked Johnny Simmons submerged inside a pool of dark-colored liquid. Needles were stuck in both arms and tubes led to his lower body. A tube was inserted in his mouth, a clear plastic-type material wrapped around the tube and molded to his face, ensuring a seal to keep the fluid out.

“I have to remove the oxygen tube and the catheters and IVs,” the woman said.

“Do it.” Turcotte said. He turned as Von Seeckt and Nabinger appeared in the doorway. Nabinger’s hands were bleeding and he held something wrapped in his jacket.

“You were not at—” Von Seeckt halted in midsentence when he saw the body inside the black box. “Ah, these people! They never stopped. They never stopped.”

“Enough,” Turcotte ordered. The woman was done. He leaned over and scooped Johnny up. “Let’s go.”

“What do I do with her?” Kelly asked.

“Kill her,” Turcotte snapped as he headed out the door.

Kelly looked at the woman. “Please don’t,” the woman begged.

“The change starts here,” Kelly said. She shot the woman with the stun gun, then hurried after the others.

They piled into the elevator. Turcotte leaned Johnny up against the wall and Kelly kneeled to support him.

Turcotte punched in the button labeled G and the elevator rose. He poked Nabinger in the chest. “You and Kelly carry him out to the van.”

“What are you doing?” Kelly asked.

“My job,” Turcotte said. “I’ll link up with you in Utah. Capitol Reef National Park. It’s small. I’ll find you.”

“Why aren’t you going with us?” Kelly demanded.

“I’m going to see what’s on sublevel one,” Turcotte said. “Plus, I’ll create a diversion so you can get away.” He hustled them out into the garage, then stepped back into the elevator.

“But—” The shutting doors cut off the rest of her words.

Turcotte punched in sublevel 2 and the elevator went back down to where he had just left. The doors opened on the unconscious guard. Turcotte ran out and grabbed the guard’s body. He dragged the body back, wedging it in the doorway to keep the doors from shutting. Then he shrugged off the backpack of gear he had appropriated from the van. He knew it was only a matter of time before some alarm was raised. They had to have some sort of internal checks with the guards, and when the sublevel 2 guard didn’t respond… well, then things would get exciting.

He laid out two one-pound charges of C-4 explosive he’d found in the van on the carpeted floor of the elevator. He molded the puttylike material into two foot-long half circles, placing them about two and a half feet apart in the center of the floor. He pushed a nonelectric blasting cap into each charge. He’d crimped detonating cord into each fuse in the van, so all he had to do was tie the loose ends of the det cord together with a square knot, leaving enough to put on the M60 fuse igniter. The igniter was about six inches long by an inch in diameter with a metal ring at the opposite end from the det cord.

The det cord was just long enough for him to step outside the elevator doors. He pulled the unconscious guard out of the way and held one of the doors open with his left hand. Then he checked his watch. It had been almost five minutes since he’d let the others out in the garage. They ought to be getting near the metal gate. He’d give them another two minutes, then showtime. The seconds dragged by slowly.

Time. Turcotte put the M60 in his mouth, clamping down on it with his teeth. He pulled the metal ring with his right hand.

The detonating cord burned at twenty thousand feet per second. The result was that Turcotte was still pulling when the charges exploded. He threw down the igniter and stepped into the elevator. A three-foot hole was in the floor.

Turcotte jumped in, falling ten feet, landing on the concrete bottom of the elevator shaft. He heard alarms screaming in the distance.

The sublevel elevator doors were at waist level. Turcotte reached up and jammed his fingers between them and pulled. He felt some of the stitches Cruise had put in his side pop. The doors grudgingly gave six inches, then the emergency program kicked in and they began opening of their own accord.

Turcotte had his Browning out in his right hand as he peeked up over the lip. There were two guards standing in the corridor and they were ready, the explosion having alerted them. Bullets ripped in above Turcotte’s head. He ducked and heard the rounds thump into the wall above his head. He removed a flash-bang grenade from his pocket, pulled the pin, and tossed it toward the sound of the guns.

He squeezed his eyes shut and put his hands over his ears.

As soon as he felt the concussion, he sprang up. In his last assignment Turcotte had fired thousands of rounds from the pistol every day. It was an extension of his body and he could put a round into a quarter-sized circle at twenty-five feet.

One guard was kneeling, submachine gun dangling on the end of its sling, his hands rubbing his eyes. The other still had his weapon ready but was disoriented, facing toward the wall, blinking and shaking his head. Turcotte fired twice, hitting the first man in the center of his forehead, throwing the body back. The next round hit the second man in the temple. As he keeled over, his dead finger jerked back on the trigger, sending a stream of bullets into the wall.

Turcotte slowly slid on his belly up into the corridor. He got to his feet, staying low in a crouch. The hall extended about sixty feet, to a dead end. There were several doors to the left and another corridor turning to the right. There were red lights flashing and a teeth-jarring low-frequency siren wailing. One of the doors to the left opened and Turcotte snapped a shot in that direction, causing whoever it was to slam the door shut. There were name plaques next to each door on the left and Turcotte surmised that those rooms were quarters for sublevel 1 staff.

He abandoned his cautious approach and ran forward, turning the corner to the right. The hall he faced was ten feet long, ending in a double set of doors with more dire warnings in red posted on them. Turcotte pushed the doors open and stepped in. The rough concrete floor angled down to a large cavern carved out of the mountain. The ceiling was twenty feet high and the far wall a hundred meters away. What caught Turcotte’s attention first were several dozen large vertical vats that were full of some amber-colored liquid and each one holding something in it.

Turcotte stepped up to the nearest one and peered in. He recoiled as he recognized what was a human being. There were tubes coming in and out of the body and the entire head was encased in a black bulb with numerous wires going into it. It reminded Turcotte of what had been done to Johnny Simmons, except on a more sophisticated level.

A golden glow to the right caught Turcotte’s attention.

He ran in that direction and stopped in surprise as he cleared the last vat. The glow came from the surface of a small pyramid, about eight feet high and four feet across each base side.

Several cables hanging from the ceiling were hooked into it, but it was the texture of the surface that caught and held Turcotte’s attention. It was perfectly smooth and solid appearing. The surface seemed to be some sort of metal and when Turcotte touched it, it was cool and as unyielding as the hardest steel. Yet the glow seemed to come right out of the material.

There were markings all over it. Turcotte recognized the high rune writing from the photos Nabinger had shown him.

There was a noise. Turcotte spun and fired. A guard racing through the double doors returned fire with a submachine gun, his rounds hitting several of the vats, shattering glass, the liquid pouring out. The man was disoriented by the layout of the room and had fired instinctively at the sound of Turcotte’s gun.

Turcotte fired again, more carefully, and hit the man twice, killing him. He felt nothing. He was in action mode, taking care of what needed to be done. He needed information and he had plenty from what he had seen in this room. He didn’t expect any more guards soon. One of the Catch-22’s of a place like this was that the more guards you had, the more people you had who were security risks. This time of night he didn’t think there was a platoon of men hanging around “just in case.”

A humming noise drew his attention back to the pyramid A golden glow was flowing out of the apex, forming a three-foot-diameter circle in the air above. Turcotte staggered back. His head felt as if an ax had split his brain from ear to ear. He turned and ran, heading away from the corridor he’d come down. When he’d first come into the room he’d realized they hadn’t gotten all this equipment in here through the elevator he’d destroyed. There had to be another way. He fought to keep his concentration against the tidal wave of pain that surged through his skull.

The floor began sloping up again. A large vertical door beckoned. Turcotte grabbed the strap on the bottom of it and pulled up. It lifted to reveal a large freight elevator.

Stepping in, he pulled the door back down and checked the control panel. It had the same two-key system, but the keys were only needed to go down. He punched in HP and the floor jerked.

The pain in his head slowly subsided as he got farther away from sublevel 1. He went up past 2, 3, then 4. The parking garage passed by, then almost ten seconds of movement passed until the light came on for HP. The elevator came to a halt. Turcotte pulled up on the inside strap and the door opened onto a large bay carved into the side of the mountain. Camouflage netting overhung the open end and the place was dimly lit with red night-lights. Crates and boxes were stacked about. If there had been a guard up here he must have responded to the alarm on the lower level, because the place was deserted. Turcotte ran across to the netting and peered out. A steel platform large enough to take the biggest helicopter in the inventory had been erected out there. He walked out onto it. The side of the mountain was very steep here. Turcotte looked down.

The valley below was in darkness, giving no idea how far down it went. Eight hundred feet above, the top of the mountain was silhouetted against the light of the moon.

Turcotte slid over the edge of the platform onto the rock-and-dirt mountainside and began climbing.

After a few minutes he could see lights moving in the valley below. Reinforcements. It would take them a while to get air assets in — he hoped. Having been in Special Operations for years, Turcotte knew that there just weren’t packs of men sitting around with high-speed helicopters waiting around every corner.

He moved from rock to rock, clinging to bushes at times. He’d learned mountain climbing during a tour in Germany and this slope wasn’t technically very difficult. The darkness was a bit of a problem, but his eyes were adjusting. He reached the top of the mountain after forty-five minutes. He turned to the west, following the ridgeline that he had seen coming into town during the day. He moved quicker now that he was gradually descending. His head still hurt, feeling as if a massive headache was worming its way around his head, moving from section to section. What had that pyramid been? It definitely wasn’t man-made. He knew it was connected to the bouncers and mothership.

But how was it connected to the bodies in the vats? What the hell was going on down there?

He saw the lights of Dulce to his left and he curved downslope in that direction, heading for the western edge of town. As the ridgeline leveled out to valley floor he passed the first houses. An occasional dog barked, but Turcotte moved swiftly, not worried right now about the locals.

He spotted a pay phone outside a closed bowling area and jogged up to it. He picked up the receiver and dialed the number Dr. Duncan had given him. After the second ring a mechanical device informed that the number was no longer in service. Turcotte pushed down the metal lever, disconnecting. Then he dialed a new number with a 910 area code. Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

A sleepy voice answered. “Colonel Mickell.”

“It’s Mike Turcotte, sir.”

The voice woke up. “Jesus, Turc, what the fuck have you done?”

Turcotte leaned against the phone booth, energy draining out of his body. “I don’t know, sir. I don’t know what’s going on. What have you heard?”

“I haven’t heard shit except somebody wants your ass bad. One of those agencies with a whole bunch of letters has put out a classified ‘grab and hold’ on you. I about shit when I saw it come through in my reading file.”

Mickell was the deputy commander of the Special Forces Training Command at Fort Bragg and an old friend.

“Can you help me, sir?”

“What do you need?”

“I need to find out if someone is for real and, if she is, how to contact her.”

“Give me her name.”

“Duncan. Dr. Lisa Duncan. She told me she was the President’s adviser to a thing called Majic-12.”

Mickell whistled. “Oh, man, you’re in some deep stuff. How do I reach you?”

“You don’t, sir. I’ll get back in contact with you.”

“Watch your butt, Turc.”

“Yes, sir.”

Turcotte slowly hung up the phone. He wasn’t one hundred percent certain that Mickell would back him up. He didn’t know why Duncan’s number didn’t work. The only means of communication she’d given him as he went undercover and it had been out now for a couple of days. Not good. Not good at all. He’d just killed three men this evening. “Fuck,” Turcotte muttered. What the hell was that pyramid?

Turcotte rubbed his forehead. He’d played his last cards.

When it got down to it, he had to admit that the only people he could trust right now were heading for Utah and the rendezvous he had planned. He didn’t want to go there, but it was the only place he could go.

He looked about. There was a pickup truck parked on the street. Goddamn, his head hurt. Turcotte drew deep inside, relying on years of harsh training. He drew up strength where most would find nothing. And headed for the pickup truck.