Runaway Heart

TWENTY-FOUR

While be breathed his own hot breath inside the blackout hood Herman felt the annoying tickle in his throat. He felt sluggish and without energy and knew his heart had gone into another arrhythmia.

As he and Jack Wirta were whisked away into the night, Herman cursed his heart. He was almost certain the strange, futuristic helicopter taking them to God-knows-where was one of the new Aurora Hyper-aircraft that Tom and Gil had told him about.

An hour later the helicopter began to slow. Herman felt the vibration increasing as the pilot added power and pulled up on the collective, making the chopper hover.

"Dreamland Control, this is Psych Twenty-seven. We are downrange and entering The Box," the pilot reported.

Herman knew all about Dreamland.

It was the secret testing site at Groom Lake, Nevada. He also knew that "Psych" was the call sign for all experimental aircraft being tested at both Groom Lake and Papoose Lake, which was located ten miles to the north. It was hard for Herman to believe, but it now seemed that he and Jack were actually being taken to The Ranch, the nickname given to the ultrasecret test facility encompassing the two five-mile-long runways on the two dry lakebeds.

If that was true, they were about to land at the secret facility known as Area 51. Only people with top Pentagon security could work there.

Herman had spent two months out there in the late eighties, staying in a motel named the Little A-Lee-Inn. He had been taking sworn statements from government radiologists and toxic waste people at Area 51. He'd been refused entry to the base and was forced to take his depositions off-site. His sinuses were always plugged while there, because he was allergic to something that seemed to be perpetually blooming in the central Nevada desert. It was the only place he'd ever had sinus trouble.

Once, when he was still working the case full-time, he'd taken a rented, four-wheel-drive Jeep up to Bald Mountain, the highest peak in the Groom Mountain range. He'd squatted in the old, deserted silver mine with his tripod and long-lens camera pointed at the secret base almost four miles away. All the while he was afraid that he was being observed by the telescopes mounted on the top of the east-end Area 51 support buildings. Those roof scopes were always pointed toward the mountains, surveying the growing crowds of conspiracy addicts who were convinced that alien research was taking place on The Ranch. In the nineties the government had finally taken over the Groom Mountains, making them a part of Area 51. He'd heard stories about the CDF troops that sometimes raided these hills to keep snoopers out. Luckily, he'd gotten his photos before that had happened, snapping almost twenty rolls.

He blew them up and showed them to Tom Lawson and Gil Grant, who, at the time, were sick and dying from some strange toxic waste or radio-electric illness. They claimed they had gotten sick from working in S- 4, a secure area with test beds for the antigravity propulsion systems. These systems were later called pulse-detonation wave engines, or hydrogen-powered scramjets. When Herman had shown Gil and Tom the pictures he intended to use in court, the two men identified much of what he had caught on film.

They pointed out a restricted block of military airspace located in the center of Groom Lake. It was marked on all military and civilian air charts, as R-4808-E, but it was known as "The Box." The two men explained that a military Code 61 restricted all flights over The Box, from the ground to deep space. Even most military pilots stationed at Area 51 were forbidden to overfly this zone. At the center of this flight-restricted area was a small, insignificant building that looked to be only one story high, but according to Gil and Tom had six levels underground. This huge, subterranean facility housed the legendary Level Four, known as Nightmare Hall, where bizarre genetic experiments were supposedly taking place.

Nightmare Hall was officially labeled the Secure Dulce Biogenetics Lab. Tom said that he had worked there in the late eighties and had seen grotesque, bat-like creatures that were seven feet tall. He described lizard-like humans, gargoyles with scaly skin that he called drago-reptoids.

To be honest, Herman hadn't believed much of it because Gil and Tom were both very sick and toward the end had been hallucinating. Back then it was hard to believe that any of this was really going on. But Herman knew without a doubt that both men had contracted their strange illnesses at Area 51-sicknesses that none of their civilian doctors had ever seen before.

Herman attempted to compel the Air Force to identify the project the men had been working on so a cure might be devised. His secondary goal was the total exposure of the illegal science he suspected was taking place out there. He'd failed to even get his case to trial.

Through it all Herman learned that published reports of scientific discoveries often lagged many generations behind what was really going on, especially if the experiments were supersecret "black projects." As more and more reports surfaced on gene splicing and hybrid animal experimentation, along with the spectacular arrival of Dolly, the cloned sheep, Herman began to suspect that unimaginable horrors might really be lurking in Nightmare Hall.

Tom and Gil died of their illnesses in 1997, but Herman, working pro bono, was still trying to get a lawsuit for damages into court on behalf of their children. In the process he'd seen more redacted material than was in the Warren Report. Ultimately, the government did what it always did-claimed national security and withheld all of his subpoenaed information.

Since the men's deaths Herman often studied his blowups of Area 51-particularly the secure Dulce buildings that were circled in ballpoint. He pondered Tom and Gil's stories about the "igloos"-dirt-covered hangars that hid the Psych Experimental Aircraft from the Russian satellites that passed overhead twice a day. He wondered about their tales of the antigravity flying machines that were supposedly reverse-engineered from a flying saucer that had crashed on the Foster Ranch in New Mexico in July 1947. He looked at his photos longingly, like a father studying shots of his dead children. His sense of loss was profound, the dream of what his lawsuit might have discovered running wild.

In the end it was hard to know what to think, hard to believe that such grotesque experiments were taking place under our own government's supervision.

Or was it?

One fact was certainly clear and rose above all others. Whatever was happening at Area 51, the U.S. government was determined to keep it a secret from its citizens. That fact alone fueled his suspicions.

Herman was jolted back to the present when the helicopter touched down- The whining engine finally silenced and he heard people talking softly outside. He became aware of Jack Wirta breathing next to him. The smell of fear was sharp inside his hood. His eyes stared into the black cloth as he imagined everything but saw nothing.

Suddenly, strong hands pulled Herman out of the helicopter and he was led to a vehicle. A door was opened and he was pushed roughly inside.

"Where am I?" he said, to find out if they would respond.

"Shut up," a voice growled. Then two doors were slammed and the car accelerated. Then he heard someone say, "Dulce Lab."

The car stopped and he was taken out of the back seat and led across poured concrete. He felt no seams or irregularities in the pavement as he walked, deciding it might be some sort of runway. An electronic beep sounded. A door hissed open. He was led inside.

Cool air-conditioning. Even at night, this building was temperature-controlled. Another airlock hissed, then he was in an elevator descending fast, his stomach pressed up against his diaphragm as they went down. Soon the elevator door opened and there was another long walk down an air-conditioned corridor. Two security locks chirped. He was pushed into a chair and finally the hood was snapped off. Herman blinked his eyes in the harsh neon light.

He was looking at a man with a shaved head and thick glasses wearing a white lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck. The lab coat had an insignia on it similar to the one the Rangers wore, but slightly more complicated.

Tom and Gil had drawn a bunch of different insignias for him, but never one that looked like this.

"Take off your clothes."

"I beg your pardon?"

"We're giving you a physical exam."

"The hell you are!"

"Mr. Strockmire, you are going to have an examination whether we give it to you in your present state or do it under anesthesia."

"You kidnapped me."

"I wouldn't know about that. I only have your name, medical records, and instructions to verify your health. That's it. You want to know more, ask the colonel. But either you take your clothes off or I'll get someone in here from CDF."

Herman knew from his now-deceased clients that CDF stood for Central Defense Forces. The secret police for Area 51. He began to unbutton his shirt, then took off his pants. The doctor went over him quickly: blood pressure- high, lungs-clear, heart…

"What's wrong with your heart?" the doctor asked, concerned.

"I have a recurring arrhythmia. It started up again when they kidnapped me," Herman answered. "It's why my blood pressure is-"

"That's not gonna work. Just a minute." The doctor walked out of the room, leaving Herman alone.

The examination area had security cameras pointing down from two corners. He could smell the air coming through the vents. It had some kind of pleasant odor, faint, sweet, and medicinal.

After a minute the doctor returned with two CDF men wearing camouflage. "Lie down. Take off your underwear and spread your legs."

"Ain't gonna happen," Herman said.

"I'll give it to him," the doctor ordered. Immediately the two CDF commandos jumped Herman and held him while the doctor gave him a shot. In seconds he was asleep.

Herman didn't often dream, or at least he didn't remember much if he did. But now he dreamed a strange, terrifying tale. The nightmare was populated with half-reptile, half-human monsters and large bat-like creatures.

He also dreamed of Gino Zimbaldi-relived his trip to JPL, talked with Zimmy about the Ten-Eyck Chimera file, explaining Roland's death and his desperate need to get the fifty pages decoded. As he was talking to Zimmy the huge monster bats hovered over him.

Herman woke up.

He was back inside Barbra's car with a terrible headache.

He squinted out the window at the little baseball diamond. The sun was already up. He looked at his digital watch. The battery was dead. Strange, he thought. The watch is only six months old. His groin was killing him so he unbuttoned his pants and looked down at his abdomen.

He had a bandage there. Herman slowly peeled it off. Underneath were four sutures closing a tiny incision.

They'd done some kind of operation on him!

Shaken, he opened the car door and stumbled out, leaning against the silver Mercedes, fumbling with his pants while he tried to remember what had happened. The dreamlike nightmare was receding quickly, but he tried hard to recall it so it would stay in his conscious mind. Everything up to when the doctor gave him the shot was clear. After that, only the hateful dream. When he got to the part about Zimmy it seemed less like a dream and more like a memory.

Herman took his pulse.

His heart was normal, beating a steady seventy-eight beats per minute. He'd had the arrhythmia when he went to the base and now it was gone. From everything he'd learned from his doctors, once an arrhythmia started it had to be converted in order to reverse the condition. But this one had gone away on its own. Herm wondered how that could be.

He was pretty sure he had been on the fourth level of Dreamland, somewhere near Nightmare Hall. Gil and Tom had said that the experimentation unit was on the same level as the medical facility. Of course, he had no physical evidence, and he couldn't prove any of it. Except for one thing.

His sinuses.

Whatever was blooming in the central Nevada desert always got him. Every time he was there his sinuses ended up packed tighter than a Midas muffler, and right now they were completely plugged.

Herman pushed away from the Mercedes and walked across the baseball diamond looking for Jack Wirta's Fair-lane. He found it parked a short distance down the dirt road. Wirta was sleeping in the back seat.

Herman reached in and shook his shoulder.

"Jack… hey, Jack. Wake up!"

The P.I. opened his eyes and looked up at Herman. "Shit," he said and sat up. "What happened? Where am I? What time is it?"

"I'm not sure what happened. We're back at that little baseball diamond in the Malibu Mountains. My watch is fried, so I don't know what time it is."

Jack looked at his watch. "Mine's dead, too." He shook his head. "One minute I'm pissing in a cup and getting a shot, next thing I'm back here and I got some fucked-up dreams."

"I think I know-at least, I have an idea. But we gotta make sure Susan's okay first."

"Susan?"

"If they took us, I'm worried they mighta snatched her, too."

Herman ran back to the Mercedes. It was strange, but he ran as he hadn't been able to run in years.

He climbed in the car, started it, then drove past Jack, who made a K-turn and followed.

Herman sped down the small road heading toward the beach and Susan, dreading what he might find there.