Area 51

CHAPTER 8

“We’re green,” Prague announced to the men gathered around him in the dark. “Our eye in the sky says the objective is clear. I want all three birds airborne in two mikes. Move out.” Prague headed toward one of the small AH-6 helicopters and gestured at Turcotte. “You’re with me, meat. Backseat.”

Turcotte grimaced. The meat comment was getting real old, but now was not the time to face it down. He followed Prague and joined him in the helicopter. Prague took the seat up front next to the pilot, while Turcotte had the entire backseat to himself. The doors were off and the cold night air swirled inside, making Turcotte regret he had not put on long underwear. He wished he had been better briefed on what was going to happen. He zipped his black Gore-Tex jacket up tight over his coveralls and took the headset that was hanging on the roof and placed it on, over the small plug already in his ear for the FM radio on the team frequency.

Because he was on the same bird as Prague — the mission commander — Turcotte was immediately plugged into the mission’s secure satellite communications traffic as they winged their way to the southwest over the fields of Nebraska.

“Nightscape Six, this is Cube Six. Status. Over.” The voice on the other end sounded familiar to Turcotte, but he couldn’t quite place who Cube Six was.

Prague replied from the front seat. “This is Nightscape Six. En route to Oscar Romeo Papa. Will hold there. Over.”

Turcotte followed the military terminology easily — ORP stood for “objective rally point,” the last place friendly forces held before hitting an objective. Except in this case, Turcotte still didn’t have a clue what the objective was, nor was he impressed with how friendly the forces around him were, if Prague was to serve as the example.

The other, deep voice continued. “Roger, this is Cube Six. Break. Bouncer Three, status? Over.”

A new voice came on the air. “This is Bouncer Three. Airborne and en route. Over.”

“Roger. Wait for my command. Cube Six out.”

The pilot of the AH-6 swept even lower over the cornfields, the UH-60 Blackhawk following just to the rear and above. The other AH-6 flew trail. The corn gave way briefly to pasture with cattle breaking in all directions as the helicopters came over, then the terrain turned back to corn. Turcotte had never seen this many fields, even in Germany. It seemed like all of Nebraska was one big checkerboard of cultivation and ranching. Through his night vision goggles he could see an occasional patch of trees off in the distance, sometimes with lights peeking through the trees, indicating that was where the farmers and ranchers lived. What are we going after out here? Turcotte wondered.

The pilot pulled back on the cyclic and reduced throttle. Turcotte could see Prague checking their location on a ground positioning receiver (GPR). Prague gave a hold signal to the pilot.

“Cube Six, this is Nightscape Six. At Oscar Papa Romeo. Request final clearance. Over.”

“This is Cube Six. Eye in the sky still shows you are clear for a twelve kilometer radius. No traffic within eighteen klicks. Proceed. I say again, proceed. Out.”

“Roger. Out.” Prague pointed out the windshield and they were swooping across the dark sky again. “Phase one initiated. Start the watch.”

“Sir, we’ve got a shadow on Bouncer Three.”

“A what?” Gullick spun around in his command chair.

“What do you mean a shadow?”

Major Quinn pointed at the screen. “There’s a bogey right behind Three. We didn’t pick it up before because it’s so small, but something’s following Bouncer Three. I’ve checked the tapes and it’s been there ever since Three left the hangar. Must have been somewhere in the vicinity when Three took off.” “What is it?” Gullick demanded.

“I don’t know, sir. We were only able to catch it by tracking satellite and infrared signature.”

The Cube was hooked in to the U.S. Space Command’s Missile Warning Center, located inside Cheyenne Mountain outside Colorado Springs. The Space Command was responsible for the Defense Support Program (DSP) satellite system. DSP satellites blanketed the entire surface of the earth from an altitude of over twenty thousand miles up in geosynchronous orbits. The system had originally been developed to detect ICBM launches during the Cold War. During the Gulf War it had picked up every SCUD launch and proved so effective that the military had further refined the entire system to be effective enough to give real-time warnings to local commanders at the tactical level — a valuable system that those in the Cube could tap into. Through the other members of Majic-12 Gullick had access to systems like DSP and many others.

Every three seconds the DSP system downloaded an infrared map of the earth’s surface and surrounding airspace.

Most of the data was simply stored on tape in the Warning Center, unless, of course, the computer detected a missile launch, or, as in this case, an authorized agency requested a direct line and keyed in a specific target area to be for warded on a real-time basis.

“Is it a Fast Walker?” Gullick asked, referring to the code name for unidentified valid IR sources that the system occasionally picked up and could not be explained.

“It’s definitely a bogey, sir. It doesn’t match anything on record. It’s too small to be even a jet aircraft.”

The unspoken question was, what was that small yet fast enough to stay on the tail of Bouncer Three, which was moving at over thirty-five hundred miles an hour toward Nebraska?

“Put it on up front,” Gullick ordered, turning his seat back to the main screen. He briefly touched the right side of his skull, then looked at the hand as he pulled it away. It was shaking slightly. Gullick gripped the edge of his chair to stop that.

Quinn transferred the information to the large screen in the front of the room. There was a small glowing dot just behind the larger dot indicating Bouncer Three.

“How far behind Three is it?”

“Hard to tell, sir. Probably about ten miles or so.” “Have you told Three?”

“Yes, sir.”

Gullick spoke into the boom mike just in front of his lips, keying the send button strapped to his belt. “Bouncer Three, this is Cube Six. Do you have a visual on the bogey? Over.”

“This is Three. Negative. We see nothing. Whatever it is, it’s too far back. Over.”

“This is Six. Give me some evasive maneuvers. Over.”

The pilot of Three answered. “Wilco. Wait one. Over.”

On the screen the dot representing Bouncer Three suddenly darted to the right just north of Salt Lake City. The smaller dot just as quickly followed. A quick series of zigzags didn’t faze the bogey.

“Should I order an abort, sir?” Quinn asked.

“No,” Gullick said. “Let’s ride this out. Get Aurora on alert. I want to be on top of this bogey.” He keyed the radio. “Three, this is Six. Forget about it. Just continue the mission. I’ll take care of the situation from this end. Out.”

Quinn’s worry showed through and it irritated Gullick. “Should I inform Nightscape Six?”

“Negative, Major. Let these people do their job and let me worry about the bogey. You let me do the thinking and informing around here. You got that?” Gullick glared at the junior officer.

“Yes, sir!”

“We have multiple heat signatures to the left,” the pilot of the AH-6 announced, immediately swooping in that direction.

“Go get ’em, cowboy,” Prague yelled into the intercom as he flipped up his goggles. He reached into the backseat, across Turcotte’s lap, and grabbed a rifle that had been strapped down there. Hooking his arm into the sling, Prague leaned out of the helicopter, his safety harness keeping him from falling out to the ground below. Turcotte leaned forward and watched the same scene that Prague was following — cattle scattering in all directions from the sound of the helicopters.

Prague put the rifle to his shoulder and looked through the night scope mounted on top. He fired twice and two of the cows collapsed immediately. “Nerve agent,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at Turcotte. “Knocks ’em down, but leaves no trace. We recover the dart.”

The AH-6 pulled up and assumed a stationary position a hundred meters away from the two animals. The UH-60 Blackhawk came to a hover directly over the two bodies and Turcotte watched as ropes were thrown out of the Blackhawk and four men with rucksacks fast-roped down.

The four men gathered around the bodies and there was an occasional flash of light as they worked on the cows.

“Time hack?” Prague asked.

“Six minutes, thirty seconds until Bouncer Three is on station.”

“Okay,” Prague said. “We’re all right.”

“What are they doing?” Turcotte finally asked.

Prague turned to the rear, looking like a mechanical demon with a wide grin beneath the protruding bulk of his night vision goggles. “They’re getting some prime filet down there. You like heart? Or maybe eyeballs? How about cow ovaries? We come back with all sorts of good stuff.

“They have top-of-the-line surgical lasers to make clean cuts. They also have suction to clean the blood up. What the locals are left with is a couple of dead cows with specific body parts surgically removed, yet no sign of vehicle traffic in the area. Also no blood, which is kind of disturbing. No one can explain it so no one really looks into it too hard, but it serves its purpose.”

Which is what? Turcotte wondered. He had heard about cattle mutilations. It was in the paper every so often. Why was such a sophisticated operation being run just to do this? Was this why Duncan had sent him out here? To find out that the government people at Area 51 were behind cattle mutilations?

The Blackhawk had moved away while the men worked.

Now it came back in, letting down two harnesses on winches — one on either side. The first two men were up with their gory load in thirty seconds. Then the next two.

“Initiate phase two,” Prague ordered and they were heading farther to the southwest.

“You hear that?” Billy Peters asked.

“Huh?” Susie replied, her mind on other matters — in this case Billy’s arm around her shoulders and her head on his broad chest. She could hear his heart beating, that was for sure.

“Sounds like helicopters or something,” Billy muttered.

He reached out with his free hand and wiped some of the fog off the front windshield of his ’77 Ford pickup and tried to look out. They’d been parked here for a long time — since just before it had gotten dark, but there’d been a lot to say. Susie was leaving her folks and Billy was on the spot, not quite sure whether to go for it and invite her to live in his trailer down in Columbus or punt and go along with her plan to move to her sister’s in Omaha.

He’d picked this spot because he was sure there’d be no one to interrupt them, but now he was almost glad there might be an interruption because he sure couldn’t make his mind up tonight, not with her pushing up against him like she was: how was a man supposed to think clearly under those circumstances?

“Something’s coming this way,” Billy said, looking out the window into the night sky.

Gullick was watching the large map. The bogey was still behind Three. Both dots were currently near the conjunction of the Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska borders.

“Aurora’s status?” Gullick asked. “On the runway, ready to take off.” “Give her the go.”

“Yes, sir.”

“TOT for phase two?”

“Eighty-six seconds,” Quinn answered.

Gullick flicked a switch on the console in front of him and watched the video feed from the control tower on the surface. A curiously shaped plane began rolling forward.

Shaped like a rounded manta ray, the most significant features of the two-man reconnaissance plane were its huge intakes under the front cockpit and large exhausts behind the engines. Capable of Mach 7, over five thousand miles an hour, or almost a mile and a half a second at maximum speed, it could get to a target in a hurry.

The successor to the famous SR-71 Blackbird, Aurora had made its maiden flight in 1986. At a billion dollars a plane there were only five in the inventory, and they were used only when all other systems were exhausted. To the public that had financed it, the plane didn’t exist. It was one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Air Force and Gullick had one at his disposal around the clock, an indication of the importance of this project to the Air Force.

With sufficient thrust built up, Aurora suddenly bounded up into the air and accelerated while climbing at a seventy-degree angle, swiftly turning toward the northeast and disappearing from the screen.

Turcotte’s AH-6 was holding at two hundred feet while the Blackhawk passed them by and came to its own hover over a cornfield in front of Turcotte and to his left. The other AH-6 slid over and took up security four hundred meters in the opposite direction. The Blackhawk slowly lowered until it was about eighty feet above the ground, just above the point where the rotor wash would permanently disturb the stalks of corn.

A bright light flashed out of the cargo bay of the Blackhawk, the beam angling to a terminus in the field below, cutting through the corn and burning into the ground.

“The laser’s computer aimed,” Prague explained through the intercom, proud of his men and their toys.

“Makes a perfect circle. Confuses the shit out of those eggheads who come and scratch their heads over it in daylight. Dumb fucks. They figure it’s related to the dead cows in the next field, which it is,” he said with a laugh, “but they don’t know how and they’ll never figure it out.”

And? Turcotte thought. Why did Prague want to confuse people? “Nightscape Six, this is Bouncer Three. ETA forty-five seconds. Over.”

“Roger. Out.” Prague turned to Turcotte. “You’re going to love the last act of this play. Watch to the south.”

Turcotte checked the Calico one more time. This was all so strange, but the thing that disturbed him the most was the way Prague was showing him everything now, but hadn’t explained it before. What did Prague know about him? Turcotte wondered.

“Jesus, Susie, you see that!” Billy furiously wiped the windshield as the beam of light played down a quarter mile to their left into the field.

“What is it?” Susie asked, her living problems forgotten for the moment.

“I don’t know, but I’m getting the hell out of here.” He turned the key and the Ford’s engine started up.

“I’ve got a heat source in the trees to the southwest!” the pilot of the other AH-6 announced. “It’s a car engine!”

“Shit!” Prague exclaimed.

A bright glow came flying in from the south, low on the horizon, moving faster than anything Turcotte had ever seen. It swept by silently, followed closely by another, smaller glowing dot.

“What was behind Bouncer Three?” Prague asked out loud, his composure cracking for the first time since Turcotte had met him. Turcotte was surprised by both craft that sped by. This whole scenario was getting weirder by the second.

Turcotte watched as the large disk that Prague had called Bouncer Three made an abrupt jump move to the right, changed directions just short of 180 degrees in a split second, and did a pass over the small town of Bloomfield on the horizon before heading back toward the southwest.

“Get me to that heat source!” Prague ordered. The pilot of the AH-6 complied, pointing the nose toward the stand of trees. “You other guys, head for the MSS,” he added.

The Blackhawk banked right and headed back to the north, to the secure area of Devil’s Nest, the other AH-6 flying escort. Turcotte flipped off the safety on the Calico as they headed toward the treeline. Whatever was going the on, it was clear to Turcotte that it wasn’t going according to Prague’s plan.

“Pass complete. Three’s coming home,” Quinn announced.

All eyes were on the screen. The bogey was still behind Three. It continued that way for about a minute, then suddenly the second dot broke away, heading back to the northeast, where it had just come from.

“Get Aurora on that bogey!” Gullick ordered.

“We’ve got to get these people,” Prague ordered as the helicopter banked toward the rapidly fleeing pickup truck.

“They’re civilians,” Turcotte protested, leaning through the door and checking out the truck.

“They saw too much. We can’t have them talking about seeing helicopters here. Fire across the front of the truck,” Prague ordered the pilot, who expertly sideslipped his helicopter so that they were now flying sideways, with the nose of the aircraft — and the chain gun hung off the skid — pointed toward the pickup. A stream of tracers arced out, right across the headlights of the pickup, and the brake lights flared.

“Goddamn!” Turcotte yelled. “Are you crazy?”

“Put us down on the road in front of them,” Prague ordered, ignoring Turcotte.

“Who are these people, Billy?” Susie screamed. “Why are they shooting at us?” Billy didn’t waste time trying to explain. He slammed truck into reverse as the helicopter settled down in front of him in the glow of the headlights, blowing dirt and debris up into the air, blinding him.

The pickup’s rear tires slipped into the drainage ditch on the side of the road. Dirt flew as Billy threw the gear into first, but they didn’t move.

The skids touched ground and Prague was out the door, leaving the dart rifle behind in favor of his Calico. Turcotte followed, right on his heels. Turcotte’s mind was trying to sort out all that had happened and was happening.

“Hands up and out of the truck!” Prague yelled.

The doors opened and a man stepped out, a woman following, hiding herself behind the man’s bulk.

“Who are you people?” the man asked.

“Cuff them!” Prague ordered Turcotte.

“They’re civilians.” He stood still.

Prague shifted the muzzle of his Calico in Turcotte’s direction. “Cuff them.”

Turcotte looked at the weapon, looked at Prague, then pulled out two plastic cinches from his vest and secured the couple’s hands behind their backs.

“Let me see your ID,” the man demanded. “You can’t be doing this. We didn’t do nothing wrong. You ain’t cops.”

“Get in the helicopter,” Prague ordered. He herded the procession toward the AH-6.

“Where are you taking us?” the man asked, standing stubbornly in the middle of the road just short of the helicopter, the girl still cowering at his side.

Turcotte looked at Prague and saw the way the man’s body was set, saw his finger shifting from outside the trigger guard to inside, a sure sign he was about to fire.

Turcotte had been trained just like Prague: the only safety was the finger off the trigger.

Turcotte quickly stepped in between. “Just do as he says. We’ll get this sorted once we get back to base. There’s been an accident,” he added lamely. “I’m Mike,” he said, tapping the man on the shoulder and pointing at the helicopter, the sudden human gesture momentarily disorienting the couple. The man looked at Turcotte. “Billy. This here’s Susie.”

Turcotte nudged them toward the helicopter. “Well, Billy and Susie, looks like the man wants you to go for a ride.”

“Shut up, meat,” Prague snarled, gesturing with the weapon.

They got into the helicopter and the pilot lifted.

A third dot was now on the screen, popping on the screen over eastern Nevada and heading almost directly toward Bouncer Three, which was returning to base. Gullick knew that was Aurora on its way to intercept the bogey.

“The bogey is dropping off the chase, sir,” Quinn reported. The bogey was circling, heading back in toward the Nightscape objective.

“Redirect Aurora toward Nebraska,” Gullick ordered.

Quinn complied.

“Aurora ETA at the objective?” Gullick immediately demanded.

“Ten minutes,” Quinn announced.

Not bad time to cover almost twelve hundred miles. But in this case it might be about nine minutes too late, Gullick reflected as he watched the symbol that represented the bogey close on the target site. He briefly considered ordering Bouncer Three to turn around, but that was beyond the present scope of his authority. Gullick smashed his fist down onto the desk in front of him, startling those in the Cube.

The AH-6 cleared the trees at the edge of a field and turned to the north. Turcotte had strapped the man and woman into the backseat and squeezed in next to them.

Prague was twisted around in the right front seat, the barrel of his Calico pointed rearward, his finger caressing the outside of the trigger guard.

Turcotte looked at the muzzle, then at Prague. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t point that thing at me,” he said into the boom mike. Turcotte was scared. Not so much because of the gun pointed at him, although that was a problem, but more because the man holding the gun was acting so irrationally. What did Prague think he was going to do with these two civilians?

“I don’t give a fuck what you’d appreciate,” Prague answered over the intercom. “You questioned me in the middle of a mission. That’s a no-go, meat. I’m going to have your ass.”

“These people are civilians,” Turcotte said. The couple were ignorant of the conversation because they weren’t wearing headsets.

“They’re fucking dead meat now, as far as I’m concerned,” Prague said. “They saw too much. They’ll have to go to the facility at Dulce and get clipped.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, or what you’re talking about,” Turcotte said, “but they’re—” He halted as the helicopter suddenly jerked hard right, then dropped altitude.

“What are you doing?” Prague yelled at the pilot, keeping his attention on the backseat.

“We got company!” the pilot screamed in return. A brightly glowing orb — about three feet in diameter — appeared directly in front of the windshield. The pilot slammed the collective down and pushed the cyclic forward in evasive reaction, but the glow dipped right down with them and crashed into the front of the helicopter. There was a shattering of Plexiglas and Turcotte ducked his head.

“Prepare for crash!” the pilot yelled into the intercom.

“We’re going—” The rest of his sentence was cut off as the nose of the chopper impacted with the ground. The blades cartwheeled into the soft dirt and exploded off, miraculously pinwheeling away and not slashing through the body of the aircraft.

Turcotte felt a sharp rip in his right side, then everything became still. He lifted his head. The only sound was a high pitched scream. He turned to his left. Susie’s mouth was a wide-open and the sound was emanating from it. Billy’s eyes were open and he was blinking, trying to see in the dark. Turcotte reached down and unbuckled Billy’s seat belt, then whipped out his commando knife and cut the couple’s hands free. “Get out,” he said, nudging them toward the left door, before turning his attention to the front seat.

The pilot was hanging limp in his harness, his right arm twisted at an unnatural angle. Prague was beginning to stir.

His Calico was gone, thrown from the aircraft on impact.

The smell of JP-4 aviation fuel was strong in the air. As soon as it hit a hot metal surface such as the engine exhaust, the helicopter would be an inferno. Prague appeared to be fumbling with his seat belt. Turcotte leaned over between the two front seats, ignoring the explosion of pain that movement ignited on his right side. Prague’s right hand was flipping open the cover to his holster. “Don’t let them get away,” he rasped at Turcotte.

He had the gun out and pointed it back toward Billy, who was helping Susie out of the door.

Turcotte reacted, slamming the inside edge of his left hand across Prague’s throat, feeling cartilage give way, while with his right hand he hammered down on Prague’s gun hand, hearing the forearm bone crack against the edge of the seat. Prague’s eyes bulged, and he gasped through his mangled throat.

Turcotte followed Billy and Susie out the left rear door.

“Keep moving,” he ordered, pushing them away. A flame flickered somewhere in the rear of the helicopter. Staying with the aircraft, Turcotte reached in the front seat and unbuckled the pilot. Prague’s left hand suddenly moved, slashing across his body at Turcotte with his knife. The blade cut through the Gore-Tex jacket and inflicted a gash on Turcotte’s right forearm.

Pinning Prague’s left hand with his right, Turcotte leaned over the pilot and hit Prague again in the throat with his left, this time not holding back as he had the first time. The cartilage completely gave way and Prague’s airway was blocked.

Turcotte threw the pilot over his shoulder. He jogged away from the helicopter as it burst into flames.