Sedona Conspiracy

CHAPTER THIRTEEN ^PROGRESS

Eric awoke fuzzyheaded, and his mouth was dry. Two cups of coffee cleared his head, but he pushed away a bowl of cold cereal half-eaten and settled for a piece of toast spread with peanut butter.

The van arrived at six, the driver a sergeant who said nothing beyond “good morning”, and played a horrible, country western CD all the way to the base. By the end of the trip, Eric had a dull headache from it, and vowed not to allow a repeat of the experience.

Sergeant Alan Nutt was waiting for him at the elevator, clipboard in hand, took one look at him and said, “Rough night, sir?”

“Didn’t sleep worth a damn,” said Eric, as the elevator arrived. They got in, and descended.

“Looks like you’ll be filling in for Doctor Johnson, at least until Davis names a replacement,” said Alan. “Too bad about Johnson. Sure was sudden.”

“I heard it was a heart attack. You never know, with these type A personalities,” said Eric.

“Yeah,” said Alan, and then there was a pause.

“I don’t think it was a heart attack, sir. Do you?”

Eric looked steadily into the man’s eyes. “What makes you think it wasn’t, Alan?”

Alan met his gaze, and held it. “I just don’t, sir. Johnson is the third Tech Supervisor since I’ve been here. The first left with ulcers, the second just left without explanation, and now this. Seems to be a hazardous job, and now it looks like you’ll be doing it. I guess what I’m saying is you should watch your ass, sir.”

Eric suddenly had a good feeling about the man. “I will, sergeant, and you watch yours, too. Anything else I should know?”

“If I hear it, you’ll know it, sir. The word is there’s trouble with the Pregnant Sparrow project: not much progress, and a lot of frustration.”

“That’s what I hear, too, Alan.”

“You here to fix it?”

“I’ll do whatever they let me do, but the documentation I have to work with is pretty poor.”

“Oh, then you’re in for a good surprise, sir. The manual everyone has been waiting for came in last night. Colonel Davis brought it down himself. I’m taking you right to it in Sparrow’s Bay.”

The elevator door opened, and they walked. Overhead a small bird flew desperately in circles, looking for a way out. Eric looked up at it.

“Overhead was open a while early this morning. They get in here sometimes, and we let’em out at night, before they crap all over the place,” said Alan.

Pregnant Sparrow sat in gloom. Beside it a crooked-neck lamp illuminated a small table, and three men were standing there, looking down at something.

“Good morning,” said Eric, and the men stepped aside from the table.

“Are you Price?” asked one of them.

“I am. This is Sergeant Nutt. He’s here to make sure I don’t say anything that’ll get me in trouble.”

Alan shook his head, and smiled.

“Colonel Davis says we report to you until further notice. I’m Frank Harris, Systems Analysis.”

Eric shook his hand.

“Elton Steward, Materials Testing,” said another man, and held out his hand.

“Rob Hendricks, Flight Operations,” said another. “We’ve been working with Doctor Johnson on this bird for the past six months without any documentation. Today we got it, only to discover we can’t read it.”

Eric looked down at an open loose-leaf notebook on the table, and turned a page. “Ah,” he said, a suspicion now confirmed, “that’s because it’s in Russian.” He turned another page, scanning quickly.

“Shouldn’t be hard to find a translator on the base,” said Rob.

“Don’t bother. I can read it.” Eric riffled pages, looking at section headings. “Looks like a flight manual: pre-flight check list, start-up sequence, instrument panel. Pretty brief. I’ll need a day to get through it and make a rough translation. I don’t see anything about the aft section I’m most interested in.”

“The empty section?” said Elton.

“I doubt it’s really empty. I think it’s part of the power plant.” Eric paused at a page, leaned down for a closer look. “Here, it talks about a mixing plenum. The details must be in here. Can someone get me a recorder, or even a secretary? The translation of this can be quick if I have some help.”

“Use mine, sir,” said Alan. “I’m also pretty good at shorthand, if you slow down for me.”

“We need some chairs,” said Rob, and hurried away. A minute later he came back with two privates in tow, and six straight-back chairs. The men sat down around the table, Eric bent over the flight manual. Alan put his recorder on the table and sat with pen poised over his clipboard.

“Ready when you are, sir. Just nod when you want the recorder on.”

The translation came in bursts of broken English, Eric’s brain working directly in the Russian tongue like a native. Alan struggled to keep up, and often asked for repeats when the strange mix of Russian and English confused him. The other men were attentive at first, sitting at the edge of the circle of light, a darkened bay behind their backs and overhead. Gradually, their attention drifted in and out, the words becoming nonsensical to their minds. After an hour of this, Rob finally stood up and gestured for the other two men beside Eric and Alan to follow him.

“I think we’d best wait for a cleaned up version of what you’re doing. I can’t follow it, and we’re not helping you any. Why don’t we meet here tomorrow morning?”

Eric nodded, and said something else the men didn’t understand.

A moment later, Eric and Alan were alone in a circle of light next to the shadowy silhouette of a stolen aircraft called Pregnant Sparrow. They worked hard through lunch and past dinner without a break, until a Master Chief showed up looking for Alan and took a message back to Colonel Davis about what was going on. Davis sent the man back with an invitation to use a conference room four levels up, and had sandwiches and coffee sent in for them. A computer and printer were provided. Eric finished the translation at eight in the evening.

“What a mess,” he said, after hearing parts of it over and comparing with Alan’s written version. Alan sat down at the computer.

“Dictate, and I’ll type.”

They went through the entire manuscript; start to finish, in four hours. By the end of it, two things were clear to Eric: a native Russian had not written the original document. The language was stiff and formal, without idiom, and English words had been substituted where Russian words existed. The second thing he noticed was more troubling. There was frequent mention of a mixing plenum in the context of power plant and startup, and reference to FL-7 on two occasions. But FL-7 should have been in the Flight Operations section, and that only went to FL-6, which was good up to Mach 6 and an altitude of a hundred thousand feet. The lab guys would be giddy about that, having pushed Sparrow only to Mach 1, but Eric was anything but happy. His gut was telling him that everything they were after was in FL-7, and it hadn’t been given to them, yet the pages in the original manual were consecutively numbered, and nothing seemed to be missing.

As he thought it, his mind suddenly went blank. Eric sighed, and closed his eyes.

“You okay, sir?” said Alan.

“Tired,” said Eric, and rubbed his eyes. It was not a physical fatigue that troubled him, but more like a hallucination. He saw an image of Sparrow’s control panel, and his hand working there, moving a sequence of toggle switches and then pressing an unmarked switch on the overhead panel. The vision went away, then came back seconds later to repeat itself.

Eric stood up. “We’re going back to Sparrow’s Bay.”

“Sir?”

“Get me in the cockpit of that thing.”

“I don’t know how, sir. I’ll call the others back.”

“No. Stay close. Write down everything I do.” Eric’s eyes opened wide as he watched something that was only in his mind.

They went back to Sparrow’s Bay. A lone guard checked them in as they entered, and recognized both of them. Eric climbed up on Sparrow’s stubby wing, shoved his hand into a slot in the fuselage, and squeezed.

There was a metallic pop, and a gull-wing panel unfolded as it swung out above their heads. Eric climbed into the cockpit without hesitation. Settled himself. Alan looked over his shoulder, clipboard at the ready.

“Draw a layout of these switches, and number the sequence I use.”

Eric waited a few seconds, and then began throwing switches, seven of them, in sequence. His hand moved to the eighth on the overhead panel.”

“Got it?” he asked.

“Got it, sir. Hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I don’t, but here goes,” said Eric, and punched the switch on the overhead.

There was a loud thump from the bowels of Pregnant Sparrow. Eric waited for something to happen, held up his hands. “Still here. No balls of fire, yet.”

Alan was looking aft along the fuselage. “Holy shit,” he said, and then Eric felt a faint vibration, stood up in the cockpit and looked back around Alan.

The entire tail section of Pregnant Sparrow was rising, rotating, as if hinged. Eric climbed out and followed Alan off the wing as the tail section quit moving with a dull thud. They looked inside the tail section, and saw an empty shell. The fuselage it had connected to was empty back three feet to a solid panel covered with nubbins the size of baseballs, and sharp, metal vanes only an inch in height ran back to it, parallel along the fuselage.

“They’ve been trying to get into this thing for a year,” said Alan. “We really needed that manual.”

“It wasn’t in the manual,” said Eric, and ran a hand over the edge of a vane. It felt vaguely warm to the touch, while the fuselage surface was cool.

“So how did you figure it out?”

“I don’t have a clue,” said Eric. “Must have been something I read in the controls section. I’ll check it again. These vanes are warm, and they’re getting warmer. Ah, what’s this?”

The vanes were uniformly separated by a couple of inches, but between two of them, halfway back, was a small depression in the fuselage. A black button switch there was engraved with a glyph that looked like an eye. Eric’s finger hovered over the switch. A part of his mind screamed out in warning, but a stronger part was urging him on.

“This will either be enlightening, or stupid,” said Eric, and pushed down on the switch. There was a click, then a faint buzzing sound resonating from the fuselage.

“Hear that?’ asked Eric.

“No.”

“Lean closer.” Eric leaned inside the open fuselage so Alan could get closer. The fuselage was cold on his hands, but his face was suddenly warm, and it felt like the hair on his head and hands was moving in a light breeze.

“Feels warm in here,” said Alan.

“And getting warmer,” said Eric. His face felt flushed, while hands remained cool on the metal surface.

“Enough,” he said, reached over and pressed the black button down hard. Another click, and the faint buzzing sound stopped instantly. Alan stepped back, but Eric remained where he was for another minute. The warm breeze he’d felt before was gone, and his face cooled quickly. “Did you feel a breeze in here?”

“No air movement, but my hand felt warm.”

“Gone, now. Let’s close it up and get some others to take a look at this.” Without thinking, Eric climbed back onto the wing, reached inside the cockpit and toggled a single switch on the overhead panel.

The tail section lowered again without sound, and locked into place with a thump.

Alan looked at him with a grin on his face. “I guess that was in the manual, too.”

“Must be,” said Eric. “Why don’t you go get the others back here while I try to figure out how I did this? I know it’s late, but you might catch them up.”

Alan left him there. Eric went through the manual several times, focusing on the controls section, but found absolutely nothing that even suggested how to gain access to the interior of the fuselage. The words ‘mixing plenum’ and ‘FL-7’ kept popping up, an unknown term and missing section that had to have something to do with it, at least providing a clue. So without a hint, a trigger for inspiration, how could he have seen what he’d seen, his own hand moving over the controls in the proper sequence? And how had he dared to press that black button in the interior of Sparrow’s belly? What had compelled him to do it? This was not Eric the analyst, the scientist. He would not do something like that without some knowledge of the possible consequences, and yet he’d done it without hesitation.

In what seemed like a moment, Alan was back with the others. They were all excited, and demanded Eric show what he’d done. Eric obliged them, returning to the cockpit, and without reference to Alan’s notes he toggled in the switch sequence to open the bowels of Sparrow to them. The men were all peering inside before he even got off the wing. “Don’t lean in too far. Might be a residual energy field there. It started to get warm inside when I pressed this switch.”

The men backed up a step. Eric leaned inside the open maw of Sparrow and pressed the button switch on the fuselage. Again there was a thump, and a buzz near the edge of their audible range. Eric intended to show them the growing warmth inside, but this time something more spectacular happened. Elton Steward had left his loose-leaf notepad in the fuselage interior before he stepped back. As Eric inserted his hand into the opening to check for the first indication of warmth, the notebook suddenly snapped open, the cover standing straight up, the pages riffling until they were spread into a fan shape, each page equally spaced from its neighbors. Eric flinched, but didn’t remove his hand, saw the hairs there waving as if in a breeze, felt the first warmth caress his skin.

“Here, you can feel the heat.”

“I don’t think so,” said Steward, and took another step back. “What the hell’s going on with that notebook?”

Eric ignored him. “Getting warmer,” he said. Not warmer, but now hot, and the hairs on his arm and head were beginning to move. He punched the switch again, and kept his hand inside. The notebook pages collapsed, and the hairs on his hand and arm were instantly still. The heat he’d felt dissipated more slowly, but was gone in a few seconds.

He handed the notebook back to Steward, but the man hesitated before taking it. “There’s some kind of energy field inside this thing when you throw that switch,” said Eric. “It’s not microwave. I feel the heat first at skin surface.”

“And it would take a hell of a radiation pressure to move those pages like it did, and the way they ended up doesn’t make any sense if it’s a radiation effect,” said Steward.

Eric looked at the watch on his wrist. “Not magnetic, either. My watch is running fine. But there’s an energy field inside this thing, and it’s controllable. My bet is that switch I activated is just a system check. Any ideas?”

“Lots of tests we can make,” said Steward. “You sure there isn’t anything in that manual about this?”

“Not a word. There’s a reference to a section I think has been left out.”

“Still playing games with us,” said Steward.

“Maybe, but we’re inside, now. Let’s make the best of it.

“I meant you,” said Steward. “You haven’t told us how you figured out how to get into this thing so quick, and we’ve been playing with it for months.”

“Trial and error. I was just throwing switches, and it opened up,” said Eric, and knew they didn’t believe him.

“Right,” said Steward.

Eric felt a coldness creep over him. He took a deep breath, and fixed the man with a baleful stare. “Excuse me?”

“I can help carry some equipment if you like,” said Alan quickly, and stepped in front of Eric.

Steward’s face went ashen. “Uh—sure—I’ll show you where it is.” He turned quickly, and Alan followed him away. The other men seemed oblivious to the tension of the moment. When Eric sat down at the table and began leafing through the manual, they ignored him and talked quietly near Sparrow’s tail section.

A few minutes later, Steward returned with Alan. They brought with them a magnetometer, calorimeter and optical pyrometer. Eric remained confused after another quick pass through the manual, had found nothing that might have triggered his sudden, and now uncomfortable knowledge of how to open up Sparrow’s belly.

Eric did it again, climbing to the cockpit and toggling the switches without a word, then going back to his study of the manual. Steward and the others set up the instruments inside Sparrow and it was Steward who punched the switch there. Eric heard the buzz, some mumbles from the men, but was focused on the operational checklist for sub-sonic flight.

Suddenly, Steward was standing beside him. Eric looked up.

“Nothing,” said Steward. “No magnetic field, and nothing registered on the calorimeter. Optical T went up two degrees on the vanes and fuselage interior, and stayed there.”

Eric blinked. “So put a light rubber band around your notebook and put it inside. From what we saw, the band should stretch, and you can calibrate that. The field inside Sparrow isn’t electromagnetic.”

Steward frowned at him, and went away. Eric went back to his reading, but Steward was back again in a few minutes. “Whatever is there can produce a milli-newton force,” he said.

Something crept into Eric’s mind. “Makes you wonder what it can do if Sparrow is all closed up, and we really turn it on,” he said, and Steward just gave him a dark look.

“I’m sure you’ll figure that out for us, Doctor Price. Do you write the report on our little tests here?”

“You’re a chief scientist here. Think of me as a consultant,” said Eric.

“Okay, I’ll write it, and the rest of us would like to study that manual, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll get three copies for you,” said Alan, always within listening distance, clipboard poised. “But they’re only for use in this bay, on shift. End of shift, I lock ’em up.”

“So do that, Sergeant. Now. Doctor Price seems to be busy with this copy.”

Alan looked at both of them, then, “I’ll be back in a minute, sir.” And he hurried away.

Enough of this shit. Eric stood up, stepped so close to Steward their noses were nearly touching, and said very softly, “Just what exactly is your fucking problem, mister?”

Steward didn’t flinch this time. “I wouldn’t want to say anything to Davis’ boy, would I? Johnson heads our group for months, and there’s no help or information. Johnson disappears, and now here you are and we suddenly have a manual with stuff missing that seems to be in your head. Tell Davis we’re sick of his stalling and his games. Either give us what we need or send us back to our civilian jobs where we can accomplish something.”

“You’re civilians?” said Eric. “I thought you were all government, or military.”

“Just the techs. The scientists and engineers are all on loan from industry.”

“Where?”

“I can’t tell you that, not for any of us.”

“Then private industry knows about Sparrow?”

“No. I mean, I don’t think so. I didn’t know until I got here. My company is making a lot of money for my services. Why should I tell you what you already know? More games?”

“No games. I didn’t know, and I’m not Davis’ man. I’m here to find out what’s hanging up this project, and Davis is not happy about my being here, if that tells you anything.”

“You CIA?”

“No. Private agency.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Eric smiled. “You wouldn’t expect the truth anyway.”

“I guess not. We’ve had nothing but cover-ups and lies around here. Are we ever going to know what happened to Johnson, or the guy before him?”

“Maybe, but I can’t tell you where he is, or if he’s alive.”

“We were told it was a heart attack. I don’t believe it.”

“Neither do I,” said Eric.

There was a long pause. Steward locked eyes with Eric and stared at him. Suddenly he blinked, let out a sigh. “Okay, suppose I assume you’re actually here to help. What can I do?”

“Your job, as best you can,” said Eric. “I can help with that, too. My scientific credentials are real, but I have no idea what that energy field inside Sparrow is, and throwing those switches in the right sequence today was just blind luck. Whatever information there is about it has been left out of this manual, and I intend to find out why. Have you ever seen or talked to the people who brought Sparrow to us?”

“Saw them once,” said Steward. “They were right here, with Johnson, two dark guys, Slavic accents. Russians, I think.”

“The manual’s in Russian.”

“So you said. I’m wondering if we’re dealing with Russian Mafia.”

“Maybe. Everything’s for sale over there. But if money has been agreed on and paid, I don’t see why material would be left out of the manual.”

“More money,” said Steward.

“I don’t think so. There’s something about Sparrow they don’t want us to know, and I think that energy field we just looked at has something to do with it. I heard Sparrow was supposed to have space flight capability.”

“Me, too. That was the big excitement in the project.”

“Well, what I’ve seen in the manual doesn’t take us over a hundred thousand feet. It’s all conventional JP-4 and boosters. But I found two references to a so-called ‘mixing plenum’ I bet were left in by mistake. I think we looked inside that ‘mixing plenum’ today, and it has something to do with powering this bird above the atmosphere. We need to quantify that energy field and identify it. And I need to get that missing material for the manual. Maybe Sergeant Nutt can help me with that.”

Alan had just entered the bay through the single personnel door, and was hurrying towards them, arms loaded with loose-leaf notebooks. He stacked the books on the table, and turned to Eric.

“Colonel Davis wants to see you right away.”

“You told him what happened today?”

“Yes, sir. He wants to know what you think is missing from the manual. It was supposed to be complete this time.”

“This time?” said Steward, smirking.

Alan ignored him. “He’s waiting for you, sir,” he said to Eric.

“Shouldn’t take long. Maybe while I’m gone you can estimate how much energy was in that field we observed.”

“I can tell you right now it won’t be enough to lift a marble to a hundred thousand feet,” said Steward.

“It’s a starting point. Okay, Alan, lead on.”

Steward mumbled something as they walked away from him, and all Eric heard was the name ‘Davis’.

They went straight to Davis’ office. Alan knocked on the door jamb, and there was a sharp reply from inside, and Alan stepped aside for Eric to enter.

Davis stood up behind his desk, motioned Eric to a chair, and sat down close to it on the edge of his desk. His forehead glistened with sweat, and his eyes were red and glittering.

“How the hell did you get inside Sparrow?”

“Pure accident,” said Eric, and he sat down.

“Bullshit. You did it first try, no trial and error. Sergeant Nutt watched you do it. Who told you what to do?”

“Nobody. I’m not hiding anything. It just happened. I don’t know what the trigger was. I don’t see any clue in the manual. It was an impulsive thing, just seemed right. And I have no reason to lie to you. The manual we got is incomplete. There’s at least one section missing, something on FL-7, whatever that is. My bet is it’s to do with Sparrow’s space flight capability. There’s some kind of energy field inside that thing when you open it up. That ship has a power source we haven’t seen yet. Didn’t we pay our Russian friends enough money?”

Davis blinked, paused, and looked above Eric’s head. “I warned the fuckers. Now I’m going to the Pentagon.”

“Warned who?”

“The group of slimes who brought us Sparrow. I’ve talked to three of them, but there are more. A lot of phone calls, and half the time I don’t know who I’m talking to. They’re having disagreements among themselves on how fast to give us what we need to get Sparrow into space. When I complained yesterday I was told getting the plane to a hundred thousand feet was the necessary next step.”

“You knew the manual was still incomplete?”

“Yes, but I thought our people might get a clue from what we’d received. Getting Sparrow to open up was a surprise, Price. A big surprise, and not just for me. They already know about it. I got a short but nasty call not ten minutes ago, telling me to use whatever means possible to find out how you got inside that plane. And the call was not from the Pentagon.”

“Only Nutt and I were there when it first happened. That’s a couple of hours ago.”

“They have eyes and ears everywhere. That’s not news. They said if I don’t find out what your information source is, they’ll do the job for me.”

“A threat?” said Eric.

“That’s the way I took it. I didn’t recognize the voice. It wasn’t either of the people I regularly deal with.”

“Do you have a way of contacting them?”

“Yes, but I can’t tell you what it is.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’d call them right away, and see if they know about the call you just received. They might have a rogue in their group. The mercenaries and political entrepreneurs I’ve had experience with don’t deliver a product, collect the money, and then try to prevent the product from being used. That caller might be the source of the accidents you’ve been having. He might be Johnson’s killer, Colonel. Get after him.”

Davis gave him a hard look, but nodded. “All right, but in the meantime you don’t do things without telling me, Price.”

“You, too. Your friends aren’t friendly. You’d better find out which people you can trust.”

Davis paused, thinking, then, “Sit right there,” he said, walked around his desk, picket up the telephone and punched in four numbers.

“Davis,” he said. “Are you alone? Good. I want to clarify something. Did one of your people call me a few minutes ago? No? Well, I got a call from someone in your group, and I’m thinking about reporting it to the Pentagon.”

Davis described the call he’s received, and told about Eric’s success in opening up Sparrow. He listened, then, “How long will that take? One more ‘accident’, I’m dumping the blame on you people, and you can explain it to the Pentagon before you go to prison.”

There was a reply, and Davis’ face flushed deep red. “I don’t give a shit. I won’t be kept in the middle. Yes, I’ll tell him. Don’t call me again until you have something.” Davis slammed down the receiver as if to emphasize the point, leaned back in his chair and looked at Eric over steepled fingers.

“He claims they didn’t call me.”

“Do you believe him?”

“No. But I think I shook him up. I’m writing this up and sending it to the Pentagon right now. You’d be wise to do the same for whatever agency you’re working for, before someone starts shooting.”

Davis pulled a sheet of paper out of a drawer, and looked away from Eric. “Interesting that our foreign friend didn’t ask how you figured out how to open up the bird.”

“And what does that mean to you?” asked Eric.

“Nothing, I guess. But it might explain why he wants to meet you, Doctor Price.”