Area 51

CHAPTER 26

Johnny Simmons started screaming and Kelly’s best efforts couldn’t stop it. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight, whispering words of comfort in his ear.

Getting out of the facility had been even easier than getting in. They’d piled into the Suburban, driven out past the unsuspecting guard, and linked back up with the van.

Returning the still-unconscious driver to his own truck, they’d jumped into the van and driven back down through town and turned left on Route 64.

“Can’t you keep him quiet?” Von Seeckt asked from the driver’s seat, checking the rearview mirror.

“I’d be screaming too,” Kelly answered, “if I’d been locked in that thing for four days. You just drive. No one can hear him except us.”

Johnny quieted down and appeared to fall asleep or, Kelly thought, slip into unconsciousness. She turned to Nabinger, who had his hands wrapped in a bloodstained towel. Kelly pulled out the first-aid kit. “What happened to you, Professor?”

“There was something I had to get and it was in a glass case. I couldn’t find a key so I broke the glass,” Nabinger replied.

“Couldn’t you have used something other than your hand to break the glass?” Kelly asked as she pulled out the gauze and tape.

“I was in a hurry,” Nabinger replied. After a moment’s silence he added, “I wasn’t thinking about my hands.”

“What was so important?” Kelly inquired.

Nabinger carefully unwrapped something from his jacket. He held a piece of wood, slightly curved, about two feet long by one foot high and an inch thick. Even in the dim light in the back of the van she could see that it was covered with small carved characters.

“It’s a rongorongo tablet from Easter Island,” Nabinger said. “Do you know how rare these are? Only twenty-one are known to be in existence. This must be one that was secreted away.”

Kelly pointed at the eight-by-ten glossies that the two men had gathered. “What are those?”

Nabinger reluctantly looked from the tablet to the table, where the photos were piled. “Von Seeckt told me those are the photographs taken by the first team to enter the mothership cavern. They found flat stones with high runes.”

“What do they say?” Kelly asked as she finished one hand and began working on the other.

Nabinger looked at the photos. “Well, it’s not like reading the newspaper, you know. This will take time.”

“Well, you’ve got some time, so get to work,” Kelly said as she finished the second hand, then picked up a road map. She found where they had to meet Turcotte. “You’ve got all night,” she announced. “I think we should get off this main road and take back roads through the mountains, heading west until we get to the linkup spot.”

“How soon do you think they’ll be after us?” Nabinger asked.

“They’re already after us,” Kelly said. “After us following this latest escapade, you mean. I think we’ll be okay. I just hope Turcotte made it out all right.”

“I am not concerned about them being after us,” Von Seeckt said. “I am concerned that we only have seventy-two hours before the mothership flies.”

General Gullick did not look like a man who had just been awakened five minutes ago. His uniform was well pressed and his face clean shaven. Major Quinn had to wonder if Gullick shaved his face and skull before he went to bed every night for just such an occurrence as this — always ready for action. It suddenly occurred to Quinn that maybe the general never slept. Maybe he just lay there in the dark, wide-awake, waiting for the next crisis.

“Let me hear it from the beginning,” Gullick ordered as the other members of Majic-12, minus Dr. Duncan, straggled in.

There wasn’t much to tell. Quinn summarized the information an excited security chief had called in from Dulce.

In reality, Quinn realized, as he recited the brief list of facts concerning the break-in and the abduction of the reporter Simmons and the theft of photos from the archives, they knew more here at the Cube, because it was obvious from the description from the guards and the female scientist who’d been on shift that it had been Von Seeckt, Turcotte, Reynolds, and Nabinger acting in concert.

“I underestimated all of them,” Gullick said when Quinn was done. “Especially Von Seeckt and Turcotte.”

Kennedy leaned forward. “We’re in trouble. They’re going to go to the media with this Simmons fellow.”

“How far into conditioning was Simmons?” Gullick asked.

Quinn was puzzled. What were they talking about?

Kennedy consulted his notepad. “They were sixty percent into phase four.” Gullick looked at Doctor Slayden. “What do you think?”

Slayden considered it. “I can’t say for sure.”

“Goddammit!” Gullick’s fist smashed into the desktop. “I’m tired of people bullshitting me when I ask them a question.”

The room was silent for several moments, then Slayden spoke. “They disconnected Simmons before treatment was complete. That had to be a shock to his system, and the way his mind will react to that, nobody knows. If nothing else happens, the sixty percent he did have will be enough to assure that Simmons will be discredited if he speaks publicly. He’ll fit in with all the other wackos, to use a rather unscientific term.”

“What about the photos they stole?” General Brown asked.

“They were of the high rune tablets,” Gullick said.

“Even if Nabinger can decipher the language, it will be quite a while before other scientists can verify his translation. The tablets are not a problem. Even if they go to the media, it will take a little time before anyone starts believing their story. They really don’t have any proof.”

Gullick’s voice was void of emotion, but a vein throbbed in his forehead. “All right. Then we’re still back at the original problem — Von Seeckt and Turcotte. They’re the threat, but I think at this point we can handle them for a little while. Long enough, at least, for us to finish the countdown. That’s all that matters.”

Quinn found that a little hard to believe. What about afterward? he wanted to ask, but he kept his mouth shut.

He knew that question would only earn him grief, so he chose another one. “What about the foo fighters?”

“We’ll deal with that and this new problem too,” Gullick snapped. “Prepare everything to move up twenty-four hours.”

“But—” Quinn began. The general cut him off again with a glare.

“I want the hangar opened tomorrow,” Gullick said, “and I want the flight to be tomorrow night.” Gullick looked around the table. “I think everyone has a lot of work to do, so I suggest you get moving.” As they all got up, his voice halted them. “By the way. I want the orders on capturing Von Seeckt and his crew changed. It’s no longer capture at any cost. It is terminate with highest sanction.”