Area 51

CHAPTER 9

“Nightscape Six is down, sir,” Quinn announced. “I have a transponder location. No communication by radio.”

“Launch a conventional crash recovery to the transponder location,” General Gullick ordered. He continued to watch the dot representing the bogey. It was slowly moving about in the vicinity of Nightscape Six’s transponder signal. Aurora was now approaching the Nebraska-Colorado border.

“Get out of here,” Turcotte said to Susie and Billy, who were staring at the burning helicopter. Turcotte had the pilot’s flight suit ripped open and was going over the man’s vital signs, doing a primary survey — for breathing first, then bleeding, then checking for broken bones. The pilot was good to go on the first two other than some scrapes and cuts. There was an obvious broken arm.

Turcotte couldn’t tell for sure, but based on the large dent on the man’s helmet and his unconscious condition, he felt the pilot had some sort of head injury, and he was not trained or equipped to deal with that. All he could do was leave the helmet on and hope that it contained the injury until he could get the man some professional medical help. The pilot was unconscious, and from his condition it did not appear that he would be gaining consciousness anytime soon, which was fine with Turcotte. He immobilized the broken arm as well as he could.

“But—” Billy said, confused. “What—”

“No buts; no questions; no memory,” Turcotte snapped, looking up from the pilot’s body. “Forget everything that happened tonight. Don’t ever tell anyone, because if you do they won’t believe you and then people who don’t want you talking will come looking for you. Leave it here and go.”

Billy didn’t need any further urging. He took Susie by the arm and quickly walked away in the darkness toward the nearest road.

He looked down at himself. Blood was seeping out the right side of his Gore-Tex jacket and his right sleeve. He dealt with the forearm first, wrapping a bandage from his combat vest over the sliced skin and stopping the bleeding.

Carefully probing with his fingers, he reached in through the jacket and gasped when he touched torn skin. Turcotte carefully unzipped his Gore-Tex jacket and jumpsuit. An eight-inch-long gash was just over the outside of his ribs.

As best he could, he bandaged the wound.

Turcotte looked up into the sky. He could see the small glowing object, about a thousand feet overhead. It was lazily moving about, as if to view the results of its actions. He watched for a few moments, but there did not appear to be any immediate threat. Although from the way that thing had been moving, Turcotte didn’t think he would have much time to react if there were.

Turcotte scanned the horizon. The others would be here soon. And then? That was the burning question. He’d killed Prague on reflex. He didn’t regret it, given what he’d seen Prague do this evening, but the situation was very confusing and Turcotte wasn’t sure what his next move should be.

Had Prague known he was a plant? That would explain some of his actions, but not all of them. And if Prague hadn’t known he was a plant, then the man had been borderline nuts; unless, Turcotte reminded himself, there was another layer to everything that he had just witnessed. He knew the actions, he just didn’t know the motivation.

None of that was going to do him any good, Turcotte knew, unless he could get back to Duncan with what he had just seen, and to do that he was going to have to get away from these Nightscape people. The pilot’s unconscious condition would buy him some time once they were picked up. It would simply be Turcotte’s story, and he began working on what he would tell them.

Gullick had complete telemetry feedback from Aurora and he could listen in on the pilot and reconnaissance systems officer (RSO) talking to each other.

“All systems on. We’ll be in range of target in seventy-five seconds,” the RSO announced.

Gullick keyed his mike. “Aurora, this is Cube Six. I want a good shot of this target. Get it on the first pass. You probably won’t have an opportunity for a second. Over.”

“Roger that, Cube Six,” the RSO said. “Fifty seconds.”

“Descending through ten thousand,” the pilot announced. “Slowing through two point five. The look will be right,” he told the RSO, giving a direction to orient all the sophisticated reconnaissance systems on board the aircraft.

“Pod deploying,” the RSO said as the speed gauge continued to go down. Gullick knew that now that the plane was under two thousand miles an hour the surveillance pod could be extended. Doing it at higher speeds would have destroyed the necessary aerodynamics of the plane and caused the plane to break and burn. Even now, according to the telemetry, the skin temperature of the aircraft was eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit. “Twenty seconds. All green.”

“Leveling at five thousand. Steady at Mach two.”

“All systems on.”

Gullick looked up to the large screen at the front of the room. The red triangle representing Aurora closed on and passed the small dot indicating the bogey. Then the bogey darted away.

Gullick keyed the mike, “This is Cube Six. The bogey is running! Vector one nine zero degrees. Pursue!”

Aurora was fast, but maneuverable it wasn’t. Gullick watched as the red triangle began a long turn that would encompass most of Nebraska and part of Iowa before it was through. The small dot was heading southwest, currently over Kansas.

“What’s the bogey’s speed?” General Gullick asked.

“Computer estimates it’s moving at Mach three point six,” Major Quinn replied.

As the bogey crossed the panhandle of Oklahoma, Aurora completed its turn over southern Nebraska. “She’ll catch up,” Gullick said.

The two dots continued, Aurora steadily closing the gap.

“Bogey’s over Mexican airspace,” Quinn reported. He hesitated, but duty required that he speak. “Are you authorizing Aurora to continue pursuit?”

“Shit,” Gullick said. “The Mexicans won’t even know it’s there. Too high and too fast. And even if they get a blip on radar it will be gone in a blink and there’s nothing they can do about it anyway. Damn right it’s to pursue.”

The length of Mexico was traversed in less than twelve minutes, Aurora now less than a thousand miles behind the bogey and closing rapidly.

“Intercept in eight minutes,” Quinn announced.

Turcotte heard the choppers long before they arrived. The Blackhawk landed on the opposite side of the crash and discharged a squad of men with fire extinguishers. Turcotte knew that by daylight there would be nothing in the field other than some charred cornstalks. The other AH-6 landed right next to his location.

“Where’s Major Prague?” the man who ran off the helicopter asked. Turcotte pointed at the crash site. “Killed on impact.”

The man knelt down next to the pilot. “What’s his status?”

“Broken arm. I think he has a concussion. I haven’t taken his helmet off, to keep the pressure on in case his skull is fractured.”

The man signaled for the pilot to be place on board the Blackhawk. He pointed to Turcotte. “You come with me. They want you back at the Cube.”

“Sir, Aurora already has a photo of the bogey,” Quinn said.

“What do you want it to do when it catches up?”

The Aurora was purely a reconnaissance plane. Mounting any sort of weapon system, even missiles, would have destroyed its aerodynamic form and reduced its speed drastically.

“I want to find out where this bogey comes from,” Gullick said. “Then I can send other people to take care of the problem.”

Both indicators were now over the eastern beginning of the Pacific Ocean.

The RSO’s voice hissed in Gullick’s ear. “Cube Six, this is Aurora. Request you lay on some fuel for us on the return flight. We will be past the point of no return in fifteen minutes. Over.”

“This is Cube Six. Roger. We’re scrambling some tankers for you. Keep on its tail. Out.” Gullick pointed at Quinn, who was also monitoring the radio.

“I’ll take care of it, sir,” Quinn said.

The Mexican coastline was now long gone. Gullick knew that the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Central and South America — other than Canal traffic — was a very desolate place. They were still heading almost due south.

“We’re close,” the pilot announced. “It’s about two hundred miles ahead of us. I’m throttling back to ease up on it.”

Gullick watched the telemetry. It reminded him of being ground support when he was a test pilot. Reading the same gauges that the pilot overhead did, but not having hands on the controls. As the plane passed through Mach 2.5 the RSO extended the surveillance pod and activated his low-level light television (LLLTV) camera. Gullick immediately had the image relayed through a satellite onto the screen in front of him. The LLLTV was no ordinary television. The camera enhanced both the light and image, giving it the ability to display an image at night, while at the same time carrying a magnification of over one hundred. The RSO began scanning ahead, using the information fed to him from the satellites above to pinpoint the bogey.

“Eighty miles,” the pilot announced.

“Sixty.”

“I’ve got it!” the RSO yelled.

In the small television screen Gullick could see a small dot. As if on cue the dot suddenly jerked to the right, a splash of water shot up, and it was gone. Gullick leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, his forehead furrowed in pain.

“Cube Six, this is Aurora. Bogey is down. I say again. Bogey is down. Transmitting grid location.”