Sedona Conspiracy

CHAPTER NINE ^{THE PLANE}

Davis seemed resigned to the Pentagon’s decision, but was clearly disgusted by it. “This is what happens when desk jockeys micromanage field operations. Only good I can see is our saboteur might lie low for a while. I’ll be keeping a record of every place you go, every person you talk to, and when. One slip of the tongue from you, anyone hears something they’re not supposed to and you’re out of here, I guarantee it.”

“Understood,” said Eric, and pushed a folder across Davis’ desk. “There’s my report, such as it is. Now I want to see the plane.”

“Sergeant!” said Davis loudly. The door opened, and an MP was standing there in fatigues with beret and sidearm. Short, but solidly built, the man had strangely colored eyes, a kind of blue-green.

“Take Mister Price to Area Five. I’ll call to have Johnson meet you there. Do not leave this man’s side, and use the journal forms I gave you.”

“Yes, sir. This way, Mister Price.”

Davis was opening Eric’s report file and said nothing as they left his office.

“Sergeant Nutt, sir. I’ll accompany you wherever you go, and arrange your schedule here. Please don’t ever go off on your own; I don’t want to be a private again. It’s for your own safety, sir.”

“You have a first name, sergeant?”

“Alan, sir.”

“I’m Eric. I forget the sergeant, and you forget the sir. I’m a civilian.”

“Yes, sir.”

Eric laughed, stuck out a hand, and Alan shook it. “The Man is a stickler for protocol, sir. Got to follow it. You ever in the military?”

“Rangers. That was a long time ago. I was younger than you.”

“Get a chance to kill bad guys?”

“Yes, I did. That’s all I can say about it, Alan.”

“Understood, sir. A van has been assigned to us. Look for number three stenciled on the rear door. It’s waiting.”

They took the elevator down to the lot where Eric had first come in. The van was there, with a driver. Eric and Alan got in, sitting behind an MP with his M16 mounted vertically on the dashboard. As soon as the door closed, the van jerked ahead, moving deeper into the base than Eric had been before.

“It’s just a few minutes,” said Alan. Eric looked over the front seat, saw the speedometer hit forty and hold there. “How big is this base?” he asked.

“There are really eight bases in one, sir, all connected by tunnels like this one. The entire complex runs seven hundred miles north to south, spreads out as much as sixty east and west.” Alan took out his clipboard, and wrote something down on it.

“Are you going to write down every question I ask? Use a tape recorder.”

Alan grinned, took something the size of a cigarette lighter out of his pocket, and held it up for inspection. “Got it, sir.”

Eric grinned back. “Are you going to tell me where your camera is?”

Alan pointed to a point at the center of his beret, above his forehead. “Video, Israeli-made. State-of-the-Art, sir,”

“Good. I feel much safer, now.”

The trip took exactly four minutes. Another parking area in a broad recess carved out of solid red rock, and a floor of black, metal gratings. Light panels in a high ceiling were blinding to look at. No elevator, this time. Two soldiers in a booth guarded a single set of double doors in a rock wall. Alan led him to the booth, and the van pulled away again. Alan presented a paper with a photograph of Eric on it. There was a badge, overprinted with the number five in red, and Eric clipped it to his breast pocket. Another guard opened the door for them, and Eric followed Alan inside.

Another tunnel, no side doors. Video cameras were mounted high on the walls, and turned to follow them. Fifty yards away was another set of double doors. One door opened, and a tall man in a white, laboratory coat stepped inside to greet them when they were halfway there. Tousled hair, hawkish face, he held out a hand to Eric as they approached.

“Neal Johnson, Doctor Price. I’ll be you guide here.”

They shook hands. “Eric, please. I haven’t been called Doctor in a lot of years.”

“Neither have I,” said Neal. “Physics and Computer Science, right?”

“Yes.”

“Aeronautical Engineering, Purdue. You were at Berkeley, I see.”

“That’s right. Hyperfragments and resonances, it’s all ancient history. Computer Science came later.”

“Maybe if you stick around you can help us figure out what our aircraft can really do. We’re supposed to be getting the book on it pretty soon. Our so-called ‘friends’ have finally agreed to release it. I’ve been working blind for over a year. Have you been briefed at all?”

“A short report with drawings, and a lot of tabled laboratory test data. Not very useful.”

“Well, let’s get started.” Neal turned, opened the door, and they followed him inside. The light there was dimmer than in the tunnel, but not by much.

It was an aircraft hanger, immense, the ceiling a hundred yards above them, the floor at least that distance across. Three black helicopters were there: two stealth craft with missile pods and Vulcan canon, the third much larger, a flying boxcar for transportation. Otherwise the floor was empty, Neal and his guests the only people there. They walked towards the opposite wall where there were two elevated levels fronted by clear glass, behind which people were moving. To their right was a massive door of corrugated metal twenty yards on a side, and closed. Left was a fenced-in area with metal-turning machinery that hummed loudly, and what appeared to be a parts storage space. The floor was first rock, then metal as they walked across it. Eric looked down at the boundary of metal. Neal saw it, and said; “Floor center rises on jacks all the way to the ceiling. We can take any aircraft in or out that way.”

They walked some more, and the floor was rock again. People were watching them through the windows. Neal waved to them. “Some of our technical staff,” he said. “They’re curious about you. A stranger’s face stands out pretty fast here.”

There was another door beneath the windows. Neal paused before opening it. “Time to see the Pregnant Sparrow; that’s what we call it. See what you think.” Air rushed into their faces when he opened the door.

Beyond was another hanger, but smaller, and the light was dim. In the center of the floor sat a low-slung aircraft with a strange shape remindful of stealth technology: black, faceted surface, a dull, mottled finish and lots of angles, delta-shaped. No windows, ports, no sign of a cockpit, any markings or insignia on tail or fuselage. They walked around it two times, coming in close. Two standard looking exhaust pipes protruded from a thick section aft which then tapered to a sharp point like a spear.

“There are two pulse-jet engines in the back half of this thick section,” said Neal, “and we’ve run them with JP-4 up to Mach 1. Haven’t been able to push it higher than that; the thing has some kind of governor, and the guys who brought it to us have been arguing about how much to tell us. Maybe it’s more money, but I hear we’ve already paid a fortune for this thing.”

“What’s in the rest of the fat section?” asked Eric.

“Can’t get inside to see. Shows up hollow on X-ray. You can see joints, and two hinges on the underside. It opens up somehow, but we haven’t been able to activate it.”

“It shows up as cantilevered on the drawings.”

“Conjecture. We haven’t proven that yet.”

Eric was looking close at the surface, running a hand over it. “Looks rough, but feels smooth. I don’t see any markings.”

“Carbon composite: nanofibers in a resin we haven’t figured out yet. The Japanese are working on something similar. We haven’t found a single marking. No letters, numbers, just glyphs in the cockpit. A pressure bar opens that. You can see the seam near the nose. No way to see outside; everything is heads up. We at least got the instructions on using that, but it took over a year to train our test pilots to it.”

“Any idea where it comes from?” asked Eric. He touched the place where his hand had rested a while, and it was still warm.

“We’re told Eastern Europe, but nobody knows for sure. The people who brought it out are kept out of sight; I’ve never been allowed to talk to one of them. What are you writing down there?”

Neal had turned to look at Alan, who was writing something down on his clipboard. “Recording topics of conversation, sir. Colonel Davis’ orders.”

Neal scowled. “Thought so. Guess I won’t be volunteering anything, then. Ask me some questions, Doctor Price.”

“What’s the problem?” asked Eric.

“No problem. I’m just here to answer your questions.” Neal’s anger was barely masked. He’d obviously not expected any monitoring of his conversations with the new guy from the pentagon. Something was wrong here, and Eric acted quickly.

“Okay, show me how to get into this thing. I want to see the controls’ setup.”

“Watch your step. The leading edges of the wings are like dull swords,” said Neal. A set of three steps on rollers, wheels blocked, was by one of the half-vee wings of the aircraft. Neal stepped up onto the wing, Eric right behind him, while Alan remained standing on the floor.

A seam was now visible, and three indentations, closely spaced, which Neal pressed with one hand. A section of the fuselage popped out towards them, and Neal pulled it back. Inside were four contour chairs in a black interior. A lit instrument panel was to their left, a tunnel on their right. Neal pointed to it, said, “There’s a second compartment a few feet back, like this one. It takes a crew of eight. This is the flight deck, but we don’t have a clue about what goes on in the other compartment. I personally think it’s related to the fat, apparently empty section we haven’t figured out either. So far, nothing works for us in there. The indicators don’t even light up.”

“This kind of thing keeps coming up because people have brought technology over to us without the necessary documentation. Who the hell has been handling the transfer?”

“Ask Davis,” said Neal in a near whisper. He glanced outside to where Alan was waiting. “Sit here, and I’ll show you the controls we understand so far,” said loudly.

Eric sat down, Neal beside him. Neal took a card out of his pocket, wrote something on it, and said, “Heads up display plugs in here, and seems pretty standard. Nothing-new there. The panel indicators are fuel and power, time of flight, landing gear status, hydraulic integrity.”

He passed the card carefully to Eric, and went on talking. Eric pocketed the card without looking at it.

“These switches were a mystery at first. Five commands in the right sequence activate ten nozzles under the forward edges of the wings. VTO only, and fly-by-wire. Handles beautifully, up to Mach 1, and then it just sits there, with no indication of any problem or command request. Not even a blinking light.”

“How many times has it flown?”

“Four. Last time out a VTO nozzle got plugged and we had to set it down fast, so that’s three tests with some success.”

“I’d call it no success at all, Neal. My briefing said this project has been going on for two years.”

“I know. We’ve been flying blind the whole time, trying to reinvent this thing. We’ve had no supporting information. Guys like you have come here before. They went away, and nothing happened.” As he said this, Neal reached over and tapped the card in Eric’s pocket, raised an eyebrow at him. “I guess they thought we could do it all by ourselves.”

There was a clank behind them. Eric turned; saw Alan peering in at them.

“You finished in here yet?”

“I’ve seen enough here. Now show me where the fat part of the fuselage joins with the rest of this thing.”

They followed Alan down the steps from the wing. A seam was visible just aft of the trailing edge of the wings, and around the bottom half of the fuselage circumference. Each end of the seam ended at what looked like the end of a large cylinder the size of a fist. “Looks like a hinge,” said Eric.

“We think the entire tail section swings up, the engines with it. The rest of the section is empty space. Fuel tanks are where the wings join the fuselage, long, flat things. Small. The range with JP-4 below Mach 1 is only around a thousand miles, but we’re being told the range is beyond measurement, and the speed is something we’ve only been able to imagine. We’re either being lied to, or we just don’t know what we’re doing.”

Frustration was obvious in Neal’s voice. Eric ran his hand over the fuselage again, and said, “You’ve seen the wind tunnel data, and so have I. Pregnant Sparrow is a good name for this thing. Even fly-by-wire it won’t survive Mach 2. I don’t think it’s an airplane at all. I think it’s designed to fly in space.”

Neal grunted. “First thing we thought of. Those engines won’t even get it to a hundred thousand feet.”

“Then it has to have another power source.”

“It doesn’t. We’ve been over every inch of it.

“Not the fat section.” Eric rubbed his hand on the fuselage, paused, and rubbed again.

“I told you, it’s empty. The engines are yoked together, and there’s no other structure between them. We’ve used soft and hard X-rays. There’s nothing there.”

“The surface temperature is different on the two sides of the seam here. It’s hotter aft.”

“You can feel that with your fingertips? I’m impressed. The difference is only a couple of degrees ambient. We’ve measured it. There’s a T max a yard from your hand, and then it falls off. We think it’s residual heat in the engines; this thing flew a couple of weeks ago. The temperature difference was thirty degrees then. It’s some kind of capacitance effect.”

“Maybe, but this section has to be opened up.”

“Tell that to Davis. I’m ready to cut it open if I have to, but the Colonel won’t let us try that until we get the documentation we’ve been promised for over a year. You getting this all down, Sergeant?”

Alan just grinned, and scribbled furiously.

“I’ll tell him what I think,” said Eric.

“That’s what we all try to do, and sometimes he even listens. Are you sticking around, or are you just here to give an opinion?”

“I’ve been assigned here indefinitely, but I live in town.”

“I won’t ask why,” said Neal. “I’ve seen your resume, and I can use you here twenty-four-seven. All they give me are military techs, and I need scientists.”

“I’ll do what I can. How much do I get to see today?”

“Everything,” said Neal, “including the little niche we’ve made for you in a red-rock wall. I thought you’d like to see the plane first.”

“You were right on that,” said Eric.

They spent the rest of the day touring the complex of offices, laboratories and shops stretching a hundred yards in three directions from the hangers. There were a few civilians, but mostly uniformed military. An Omega 3000 housed in a lead-shielded room woven with copper cable to shield against EMP was the brain of both analytical and machining facilities. The materials testing laboratory in particular was state-of-the-art. Eric’s office was literally a hole in the wall, a niche in red-rock with desk and computer terminal, and a soft green light for ambience. A central cafeteria was housed in a cavern chiseled out of solid rock, and the usual grated floor. People complained that red dust kept getting in their food, and everyone went around sniffling and snorting from breathing the stuff. “Apparently our management hasn’t heard of a thing called silicosis,” said Neal.

They ate lunch in the cafeteria anyway, Eric choosing a wrapped, cold sandwich and a can of pop. People stared at the new guy on the block. Neal laughed and said scuttlebutt was already circulating about Eric being a special agent for the CIA.

Neal didn’t know how close that was to the truth.

When lunch was over, they toured the library, mostly a nicely assembled computer-based journal collection on everything from materials to mathematics, and an excellent collection of science and engineering abstracts.

The living quarters for military personal were deplorable: bunks stacked like cordwood in two, long rooms, and a common bathroom with showers for everyone. Neal tried to make Eric feel guilty about living in town, and failed.

When the tour was over, Alan had filled most of the tablet on his clipboard. Neal said his goodbyes, then, “You get back here quick. I like your questions, and I think you’ll make a difference here.” As he said it he tapped Eric on the chest, aiming a finger so that it struck the card in Eric’s pocket. Eric nodded.

Yes, message received. I’ll read the card.

“See you Monday,” said Neal, and left them.

Alan took him back to the van. Davis was in a meeting, couldn’t see him, but said he’d call. Alan said he’d try to answer any questions, but Eric had none for him. They’d meet again at oh-six-hundred Monday, and Alan would again be his constant companion. The van took Eric back to his home the usual way. Before he’d reached ground level he’d taken the card Neal had slipped him out of his pocket and read it.

Oh, that’s just swell, thought Eric. He memorized the number, then tore the card to pieces and later flushed them down the toilet at his house.

That night, exactly at midnight, he used his cell phone and dialed the number Neal had given him. He let the phone ring twenty-four times.

Nobody answered.