Undisclosed

Prologue

Michael Andrew Sutterfield crept down the staircase, the soft whirring sound of the blender helping to cover the report of the wooden steps creaking beneath his weight. Bypassing the kitchen and his mother, the twelve-year-old made his way through the dining room to reach the basement door.

Another flight of stairs led him down into the cellar. Squeezed among the washer and dryer and a handyman’s work station was the pod. Sphere-shaped and twelve-feet-in-diameter, the device was anchored in a seven-foot-high aluminum frame which enabled the object to rotate 360-degrees. The exterior shell was white, composed of fiberglass and tinted plastic. Emblazoned across its midsection in navy-blue was: GVP-5000.

A control panel featured a retinal scan and emergency shutdown switch. A digital clock displayed the time as 07:39 a.m. EST. Three names appeared in the USER menu.

Retrieving his personal headpiece and visor from its charger, the adolescent pressed his name on the touch-screen and submitted to the retinal scan.

The pod immediately cracked open, revealing a padded black bucket seat which rotated into position for its occupant, its four female receptors moving to accommodate four male sensory devices built into Michael’s neoprene body suit.

The boy was about to climb in when he heard, “Freeze, mister.”

His mother descended the wooden stairs, carrying an 8-ounce glass filled with a pink smoothie.

“C’mon, Mom, it’s the first day of school. Do you want me to be late?”

“It’s only 7:39. Class doesn’t activate until eight, and you’re still grounded.”

“Twenty minutes of zero-gravity… what’s the big deal?”

“No.”

“Ten?”

“No! Here, drink this.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Drink it anyway. The machine will shut down if it senses your blood sugar is low.” She handed him the strawberry-banana protein shake. “So, your first day of junior high school, huh? A chance to meet new friends.”

“Whatever.”

“Michael, can you at least try?”

“Five minutes of zero gravity?”

“Dad told me you selected a science and space curriculum. That sounds exciting.”

“They do CE-5.”

“He told me. He also said the training sessions won’t begin until after you pass all your prerequisites.”

“A nutless monkey could pass them.” He checked the time display on the side of the pod… 07:41. “Come on, Ma! It calms me down.”

Tina Sutterfield could see her son was getting hyper… then again, he knew all the right buttons to push to get her to acquiesce. “Fine. You can stay in zero gravity until school starts, but first drink your smoothie.”

Michael drained his breakfast in one steady gulp, handing her the empty glass while expelling a loud burp.

“That’s disgusting.”

“Can I go now?”

“Did you feed Myrtle?”

“She died.”

“What? When?”

“I don’t know? Last night, I guess. I went to feed her this morning and she was on her back.”

“Honey… I’m so sorry.”

“I chucked her in the trash, she was starting to smell. Can I go now?”

Squeezing her eyes in defeat, she managed, “Go.”

He climbed inside the pod, sealing the hatch before his mother could lean in to steal a first-day kiss.

Tina watched the machine activate. Then she headed up two flights of stairs to her son’s room.

The terrarium was empty.

She and her husband had found the box turtle on a walk around the park. The reptile’s left rear leg had been crushed by either a bicycle tire or a jogger. Against her better wishes, Edward had brought it home for Michael to nurse back to health; father and son accessing the turtle’s internal anatomy on a zoological app inside the GVP.

Locating the wastepaper basket, she found Myrtle’s remains. While she had wanted to believe the creature had flipped over and suffocated on its own, the evidence suggested otherwise.

Tina examined the incisions that had extricated the turtle from its shell. Clean cuts… he’s getting better.

She wiped back tears. Maybe he’ll be a veterinary surgeon…

Arguably the most popular technological development since the iPhone, the prototypes of what would eventually become the Global Village Pod had originally been designed by the entertainment industry to enhance the video game experience by encapsulating the user in a holographic world that transcended reality.

By merging the system with cell phone technology, the GVP evolved into something far greater.

Almost overnight it seemed, new virtual apps hit the market, allowing executives to “virtually attend” a business meeting, saving travel time and money. Families could get together in any location, real or imagined. Sporting events and concerts, both live and pre-recorded, could be experienced from the best seats in the house.

A new line of sensory body suits raised the bar, allowing one to experience everything from being weightless aboard the International Space Station to the appendage-numbing temperatures and effects of extreme altitude training during a simulated assault on Mount Everest. A medical app replaced doctor visits while a line of interactive adult entertainment apps “virtually” put strip bars and prostitutes out of business, begetting a line of marital counseling apps.

But the Global Village Pod’s most important contribution to society was its ability to provide a high quality, individualized and affordable education for everyone, regardless of their household income level or location.

By law, attending kindergarten through sixth grade remained mandatory for a child’s social development; however grades seven through twelve, college, post-grad, and all vocational training were now offered in the interactive realm of the Global Village, saving state and local governments billions of dollars while placing public and private schools on a level playing field, allowing each student to learn at their own pace.

While the GVP changed the way the world learned, played, worked, and socialized, its primary function served a new division inside the Department of Homeland Security. Its neural sensors were able to analyze the brain waves of its users, allowing it to identify and track the five percent of the population exhibiting the traits of a sociopath.

The blind caterpillar crawled in excruciatingly slow endless circles along the bottom of the empty glass jar. Every two or three laps it would stop and raise its furry head, as if searching the void for landmarks.

The hologram of the attractive Chinese-American woman sat across the table from the boy, the teacher’s looks and age strategically selected to hold the adolescent’s interest while still establishing her as an authority figure.

“Mr. Sutterfield, I am still awaiting your answer. Please describe what you see.”

Michael rested his chin on the table, rolling his eyes. “For the twentieth time, I see a hairy worm crawling along the bottom of an empty jar. When’s lunch, Amy? I’m starving!”

“You are in junior high school now, Mr. Sutterfield. Temper your hunger and think deeper please. And you will address me as Ms. Shau.”

“Think deeper? I don’t know what that means.”

“Perhaps a different perspective might help.”

The tiny holographic jar suddenly expanded so that it engulfed the boy, who found himself trapped inside the glass container with the caterpillar, which circled him like a three-foot-high wiggling mass of fur.

Michael knew the caterpillar was blind; his tutor had told him that when the exercise had commenced almost an hour before. He rapped his knuckles against the inside of the thick glass jar, a sense of claustrophobia building.

Sensing the disturbance, the caterpillar’s head rose to investigate. For several seconds it blindly searched along the inside of the lid before dropping again to circle.

What do blind caterpillars want?

How does a blind caterpillar even know it’s blind?

And then it came to him, sparked by his reading assignment.

“It’s a metaphor.”

The hologram of Amy Shau joined him inside the jar. “Elaborate please.”

“It’s a metaphor for humanity, prior to the D.E.”

The attractive Asian woman smiled. “And how is a blind caterpillar sealed in a jar a metaphor for humanity prior to the Disclosure Event of 2017?”

“The caterpillar’s blind, so it doesn’t know it’s sealed inside its jar, therefore it must keep searching.”

“And what is it searching for?”

“A branch to spin its cocoon from; without it, it can never fulfill its destiny.”

“And what is its destiny, Mr. Sutterfield?”

“Its destiny is to become a butterfly. See, that’s the metaphor. Humanity’s destiny was to sprout our wings as a species — you know — live in peace… explore the galaxy. Only we didn’t, we just blindly walked around in circles for over a century until the D.E. finally occurred… at least that’s what I read in my history book.”

“Very good. And who placed humanity in the jar?”

“Uh… I don’t know.”

“The answer, Mr. Sutterfield, are the ones who profited from keeping humanity sealed in the jar. There was an old expression used before the Monetary Reforms of 2022: Always follow the money.”

“I don’t get it.”

The jar disappeared, Michael once more finding himself seated across from his tutor.

“The seventh grade curriculum is quite different from Grammar school. In addition to an introduction to the new sciences, there is a great deal of focus on consciousness and spirituality. You will be taught the most effective ways to meditate. Assuming you pass all of your prerequisites, you will join twenty-four other classmates on three week-long CE-5 training retreats.”

Michael smiled. “I am so ready for that.”

“Not yet. Before any student can begin CE-5 training, they must understand the circumstances that led to humanity being trapped in a jar during the 20th and 21st centuries.”

“Why is that so important, Ms. Shau?”

“Because Michael, if the Disclosure Event had not happened when it did, the entire human race would have become extinct.”

1

The platform measured over ten thousand square feet and had been built from scratch, its construction “officially” initiated when a single nail was ceremoniously hammered into a plank back on September 11, 2016.

Two thousand VIPs were seated on the riser, huddling beneath scarves and umbrellas… anything to stay dry in the cold rain. Another hundred thousand visitors encircled the Capitol Building beneath a smoke-gray winter sky as the forty-fifth American ever to be elected to the highest office of the land took the oath:

“I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The new President of the United States accepted the congratulations of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court before kissing his wife, Melania, to a loud cheer from the partisan crowd—

— while millions of demonstrators protested the event across the country and around the globe.

Adam Shariak located the TV controller beneath a stack of folders and muted the flat screen television mounted on his office wall. Politics had never interested the former Apache helicopter pilot and decorated Iraqi war vet until he had become managing director of Kemp Aerospace Industries. With billions in defense contracts at stake, Adam’s CEO, Dr. Michael Kemp, had made it clear which politicians he expected his staff to support. Of course, that gesture paled in comparison to the seven-figure donation Kemp Aerospace made to the Super PAC which forwarded the defense contractor’s agenda.

A history buff, Adam could only imagine how America’s founding fathers would have reacted had they known about the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling which allowed corporate interests to dwarf the rights of the individual. Given a rewrite today, he imagined the authors of the Constitution would have imposed some serious limitations on D.C.’s “professional politicians,” no doubt beginning with term limits.

Adam reached for the Levitron Anti-Gravity Top — a gift from his girlfriend, Jessica, on his thirty-ninth birthday. With an expertise born from a thousand twists, he pinched the tip of the device between his thumb and index finger and gave it a sharp spin, the torque causing the top to lift away from its magnetic pad like a flying saucer.

Watching the anti-gravitic device caused his thoughts to wander.

What had ever happened to the promise of flying cars… or the exploration of our galaxy? Forty-five years had passed since man had last set foot on the moon — a full eight years before he was born. By now mankind should have had thriving lunar communities with space travel having become as common to humans as commercial air travel. We certainly had the ingenuity; Kemp’s teams were providing technology to the Defense Department that far exceeded anything NASA had contributed in the last twenty years. Even the new laptops and PCs possessed more computational power than anything on board the space shuttle.

Had we simply lost interest in our own evolution?

Adam glanced up at the TV set, the split screen showing the new president’s supporters on one side, the demonstrators on the other. Fifty years ago America had found itself in a similar tug-of-war over its own morality. Five decades after Vietnam, a different kind of war dominated the news.

Fifty years. No space travel, no cures for cancer, same old gasoline-fueled combustion engines… same old hatreds — only now the venom could be shared more efficiently and impersonally by email and Twitter, the country hopelessly split down the middle by two political parties that refused to compromise.

He had found himself in a similar conversation two nights earlier at a Defense Department dinner.

“Don’t fret it, Shariak. What’s important to us is that the new president knows war is good for the economy.”

Adam Shariak was born into the life of a nomad. The only child successfully conceived by Air Force Colonel William Shariak and First Lieutenant Sara Jernigan-Shariak (there were two prior miscarriages), the boy had “redeployed” seven times in three different countries before he had entered kindergarten. By the time he was given the standard military ID card issued to children with parents in the Armed Forces, Adam had forgotten half the places he had lived.

Being raised on a military base can be especially challenging for a child. Friendships are short-term with moves frequent, forcing one to become resilient to change. Conversely, the military life encompasses rigid routines, with family members often treated as soldiers, forced to accept a code of honor and self-discipline foreign to their peers. While these traits are valued in the work force, a “military brat” often feels like an outsider in the non-military world.

Sara Jernigan-Shariak had been the glue that held the family together. Whether it was Kansas, Texas, or the military base in Turkey, the moment Adam’s mother unpacked the apartment or duplex or hotel room, it not only functioned as a family unit, but as the boy’s home-school and his personal training center.

If Colonel Shariak had to rise at 4:30 a.m., then so did his family. After feeding her “men” breakfast, Sara would pack a lunch and she and Adam would hike to a park. Thirty minutes of calisthenics would get the blood circulating to the brain for history, science, and math. Lunch was followed by an hour of reading, the rest of the afternoon reserved for team sports. Basketball was the easiest for Adam to practice by himself — the outdoor courts were usually empty until the local schools let out — but Sara soon realized that her young protégé preferred football. There were organized leagues to join during the fall and spring and drills that Sara incorporated into their off season routine to further her son’s skills as a running back — his favorite position.

When he was thirteen, Adam attended class at the local middle school. If the coach was lucky, they’d have the gifted athlete for an uninterrupted season of football and track. Unfortunately, Colonel Shariak was kept on the move as the United States Armed Forces prepared for the first Iraq war, and his son’s social and athletic life suffered as a result.

Things changed when Adam turned fifteen and made the Ayer Shirley Regional High School varsity football team as a sophomore. When his father was ordered to report to Frankfurt, Germany a month into the season, the starting fullback made it clear to his parents that he was not leaving Fort Evens. And so the Shariaks split up — the colonel and his wife heading overseas; Adam moving in with Head Coach Adrian Reeves and his family.

It was in Germany that Sara noticed a small lump in her left breast. A biopsy revealed the tumor; blood tests that it was malignant. Surgery was performed, the colonel and his wife deciding not to tell their son about it. Weeks of chemo followed. Unfortunately, the cancer had metastasized to Sara’s lymph nodes.

Sara’s physician informed the colonel that it was just matter of time. Complicating matters was that his wife was too weak to handle the trip back to the states to see Adam, whose high school football team was competing for a division playoff spot.

And so Adam never knew that his mother was sick until after she passed away.

Adam was devastated. His mother had been his most trusted friend; now the colonel had not only kept the teen from her when she was sick, he had also robbed him of his only chance to say good-bye.

The anger the sixteen-year-old directed toward his father only escalated when the colonel returned to Massachusetts the following October with his new bride.

Marilyn Hall worked as a nurse at the base hospital in Frankfurt. Sara had been her patient; upon her death she had become the stabilizing force in Bill Shariak’s life. A widow herself, Marilyn also had a son, Randy, who was in his first year at Harvard Law School.

Adam was furious; his mother’s body was still warm in the grave, and now his father had married her nurse? The teen refused to talk to the couple, let alone move in with them. As far as he was concerned, Coach Reeves was his father now.

That became a problem when his surrogate parent accepted the offensive coordinator position at Indiana University in February of Adam’s junior year. If the teen had any hope of earning a football scholarship, he had to compete his next two seasons at Ayer Shirley Regional High School — and that meant moving in with the colonel and his new wife.

The situation quickly became toxic.

Twice-a-week mandatory counseling sessions gradually eased Adam’s anger toward his stepmother, but the wall he had erected between himself and the colonel would not come down. Despite focusing his rage on the football field, the season was a disappointment as the new head coach ran an offense without a fullback, forcing Adam to learn a new position — tight end.

Relegated to the bench, Adam lost his motivation. His grades suffered and he contemplated dropping out of school, his only enjoyment coming from playing video games.

When Marilyn noticed these games were military-oriented contests featuring combat helicopters, she convinced William to teach his son to fly.

A flight aboard one of the base’s Sikorsky helicopters led to private lessons with the colonel and hundreds of hours of practice on a flight simulator, which quickly replaced the teen’s video games as his favorite activity. Adam worked hard to impress his father, and it wasn’t long before the colonel allowed his son to take the co-pilot’s controls while in the air.

A relationship slowly matriculated, aided by Marilyn, whose loving personality was similar to that of Adam’s mother. Stepbrother Randy drove in for Adam’s football games his senior year, solidifying the family unit. By the time he graduated high school, Adam Shariak could pilot a chopper better than most adults could drive a car.

The teen received one offer to play Division-I football, and that was from his old high school coach who was now installed as the offensive coordinator at Indiana University. Adam rarely played, and when he did, his role was relegated to blocking. And then, on a nationally televised game on Thanksgiving weekend against perennial powerhouse Ohio State, Indiana’s starting tailback suffered a concussion and Coach Reeves decided to give his adopted son a shot.

Adam started the second half as the team’s halfback. He ran for 126 yards and scored two touchdowns before tearing the ACL in his left knee. The injury officially ended his playing career. It was a bittersweet tale — a taste of success… only to be yanked away, and the pattern would repeat itself throughout his adult life.

Adam spent the rest of his senior year rehabbing his knee. Upon graduating Indiana with a degree in engineering, he promptly enlisted. Upon completing officer’s training, “Captain” Shariak was assigned to the Army’s 1st Battalion, 4th Aviation Regiment where he would spend the next two years training to pilot the AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopter.

It took incredible dexterity and coordination to fly the warship. It wasn’t enough that his four limbs were responsible for four completely different tasks, his eyes also had to function independently as well. A monocle positioned over his right iris immersed him in a virtual world of fluctuating instrument readings while the eyepiece covering his left eye maintained a real world view.

For most of the first year he suffered terrible headaches as his two eyes competed for dominance.

It took Adam six months just to learn how to fly the air machine, six more to master its weapons system, and another half a year to put everything together until he finally felt combat-ready.

Two months later, his battalion deployed to the Middle East to join Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The city of Karbala had initially been bypassed by American forces in favor of a direct advance on Baghdad. Adam’s team arrived in time to provide air cover for the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division which had engaged Saddam’s Republican Guard just southeast of the city.

Captain Shariak and his co-pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Jared Betz, were flying their third combat mission over Karbala when a rocket-propelled grenade struck their Apache, sending their helicopter slicing sideways through the hot desert air. Somehow Captain Shariak was able to aim the plunging airship between two buildings, tearing off the rotors while funneling the crash into a semi-controlled landing, avoiding thousands of Iraqi civilians.

The impact collapsed the cockpit like a steel accordion, shattering Adam’s left femur. Pinned beneath the wreckage, the captain ordered his co-pilot to abandon him in order to evade capture. By the time Betz returned with help, Captain Shariak was gone; eyewitnesses claiming the American pilot had been taken prisoner by Saddam’s forces.

Gravity recaptured the spinning top, slowing its inertia. Adam allowed it to die on the magnetic pad, checking the time on his vintage Three Stooges desk clock, a graduation gift from his stepbrother, Randy.

Five-twenty. Dinner reservations are at seven-thirty. If we leave here by six we should get to the restaurant with about ten minutes to spare.

Timing was everything in D.C. On normal days the traffic was merely horrendous; with the inauguration it would be impossible. For someone who considered himself a shut-in, downtown was the last place you’d find Adam Shariak on a night like tonight… but tonight was “special.”

Considering all he had been through, he was amazed to find himself blessed to even have the opportunity to plan such a momentous occasion.

The Iraqis that had captured Captain Adam Shariak were members of Saddam’s elite Republican Guard, led by a sadistic commander named Abu Anas al-Baghdadi. Adam’s injuries were serious — his broken femur became infected and swelled to twice its size, gangrene quickly setting in. Al-Baghdadi needed his injured American prisoner kept alive, so he assigned the pilot’s health to one of the young girls who he had kidnapped and turned into a sex slave.

Nadia Kalaf was fourteen. Her mother had been a nurse before the Fedayeen had gunned her down; therefore Al-Baghdadi assumed her daughter had to know something about first aid. The commander made it clear — if the American died before the Fedayeen could acquire Intel from the pilot then the girl would join him, only her death would be far more gruesome.

What the Iraqi sociopath didn’t know was that the girl wanted to die. And so she allowed gangrene to set into Adam’s wounds… only to reverse course days later once she got to know the American pilot.

By week’s end, she had decided to help him escape.

Captain Shariak awoke in a hospital bed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. The infection that had nearly killed him was gone; so too was his left leg, amputated above the knee.

Losing a limb had a devastating impact on Adam’s psyche. Flying helicopters was far more than his occupation; it had become everything to him.

Without a left leg, he was permanently grounded.

Two months later he found himself back in the states at Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland suffering from extreme depression.

Eight months of physical therapy enabled him to get along with a prosthetic leg; but it would take several years of counseling before Adam finally accepted his fate and could move on.

By now the two wars had produced more than six hundred amputees. Adam had been fitted with a prosthetic, but the change in his gait caused horrible back and sciatic nerve pain which ran down his buttocks.

As an engineer, Adam believed he could improve the design of these artificial limbs. Pulling some strings, the colonel managed to get his son a civilian appointment at DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in their RE-NET lab. Reliable Neuro-Interface Technology was a new science which focused on thought to control an artificial limb using the signals sent from the body’s existing muscles and nerves.

One of the problems amputees experienced with RE-NET prototypes was pain caused by the tight-fitting socket joints needed to initiate osseointegration — the direct connection between living bone and the electrodes within the artificial limb. Adam’s solution was to incorporate metal foam in the design; a porous bone-like material used in smart satellites which he believed would allow signals to pass from the brain into the prosthetic device.

Believing the prototype would find a better home in the private sector, Adam’s supervisor arranged a meeting with Dr. Michael Kemp, a former NASA rocket scientist and the founding partner of Kemp Aerospace Industries. Kemp Aerospace was a private D.C. firm whose expertise in satellites enabled them to feed off the scraps of defense contracts awarded to “Beltway Bandits” like Lockheed Martin, Northrop, SAIC, E-Systems, EG&G and MITRE Corporation.

Adam Shariak’s “K Street” connections (Randy was now a Senator and sat on the Senate Appropriations Committee) enticed Dr. Kemp, who had been looking to hire a new managing director.

Adam passed on the offer, until the CEO agreed to fund a new subdivision that would specialize in the design and manufacture of smart prosthetic limbs.

During his first six months on the job, Kemp Aerospace’s new general manager cut costs and increased the company’s profit margin by thirteen percent. Unfortunately, the security clearances on the large defense contracting projects were often above top-secret, meaning Adam had to exclude himself from participating in project meetings, reducing his role in the eyes of some of his employees to that of a glorified secretary.

Thankfully, he had Jessica to get him over the hurdles.

Dr. Jessica “Juice” Marulli was a five-foot, four-inch blonde dynamo with an athletic figure and sharp tongue. Her father, Captain Al Marulli, was an F-16 test pilot; her mother, Dr. Barbara Jean Singleton was an engineer at Lockheed-Martin. Like Adam, Jessica had grown up a military brat, her tutors and private coaches serving as surrogate parents. Short, but packing a lot of power, Juice Marulli was an all-state gymnast, but it was her grades and lineage that earned her a full scholarship at Cal Tech.

Eight years and three degrees later, the aerospace engineer and magna cum laude was being recruited by Lockheed-Martin. Unfortunately, there were too many security issues to overcome with mother and daughter working at the same facility in such varying capacities, so Jessica was sent to work at one of Lockheed’s subcontractors… Kemp Aerospace.

A workaholic with no time for a social life, Jessica found herself very attracted to the company’s new managing director. Staking out her claim before any of the other single (or married) women at the company made their move, Dr. Marulli invited the former Apache pilot over for dinner.

Adam rarely lost his cool, but the blonde bombshell intimidated the hell out of him. It wasn’t just her looks, her high I.Q., or her security clearance — it was the way in which she had looked at him after she had texted him her address, as if her brown eyes were undressing him right there in her lab.

With the exception of one particularly horrible blind date set up by his sister-in-law, Melinda, Adam’s social life had been non-existent since he had lost his leg. When asked, he offered the usual excuses about focusing on his work or not meeting the right person, and yes, he’d definitely try out those Internet dating sites. But the reality was that it was the awkwardness of having to deal with his prosthetic leg during sex that kept him from asking women out.

The blind date with his sister-in-law’s girlfriend had actually gone well until things became hot and heavy in the bedroom. When the woman asked him to remove the prosthetic because its sharp edges were scratching her Adam obliged, only the site of his mangled stump made her so squeamish that she quickly excused herself to use the bathroom.

She then claimed to have a hangover and left, never to be heard from again.

Embarrassment being the mother of invention, Adam set out to design a prosthetic limb that not only functioned well but was covered in an artificial flesh that looked and felt real to the touch. The new leg was coated in a soft and porous heat-conducive foam embedded with wires. An electrical charge warmed the leg; a small dial controlled the temperature.

He finished the prototype just in time to wear it on his dinner date with Jessica Marulli.

Adam showed up at her townhome dressed in a sports jacket, tee-shirt, and jeans, carrying a dozen red roses and a stuffed animal. He rang the doorbell, his heart fluttering like a virgin on prom night, his artificial leg pumping out heat.

Jessica answered the door, wearing only a gray tee-shirt which barely covered her groin. “You bought me a Koala bear… how sweet.”

The sight of the scantily-clad blonde caused Adam to break out in sweat. “Am I early? I mean… you’re not dressed.”

“No… I thought we’d have sex before we went out to eat. That okay with you?”

He barely managed to nod when he was suddenly overcome by the stench of burning plastic.

“Adam, are you just happy to see me or are your pants on fire?”

They would laugh about it later — Adam rolling on the front lawn, Jessica drenching him with the garden hose. Yes, she had known he was an amputee and as she quickly demonstrated she had no problem dealing with his stump. What endeared him to her was the lengths Adam had gone to please her, and she promised to help him work out the technical challenges of the prosthetic flesh.

Jessica only had one rule — that they keep their personal life private and out of the workplace because of “security issues.”

Jessica, will you marry me.

Adam inspected the two slips of paper before carefully replacing them for the ones he had removed from the fortune cookies that had come with his lunch. His plan was to swap out the fortune cookies at dinner when the check came. While Jessica was reading his marriage proposal he’d remove the engagement ring from his other pocket and place it on the table in front of her. It wasn’t much — an oval-shaped three-quarter carat diamond set in a twisted gold braid. The jeweler had given him an extensive education on cut, clarity, carats, and color and he had opted for the largest white diamond he could afford.

A petite package of perfection… just like Jess.

He glanced at the desk clock again — his heart skipping a beat as his laptop screensaver obliterated the Kemp Aerospace Industry logo to alert him that he was receiving a call on a secured line.

Adam clicked on the ACCEPT MESSAGE icon and then typed in his password.

A moment later he found himself being stared down by a former three-star general.

Thomas J. Cubit was a military advisor with hundreds of contacts in the Defense Department who now made millions of dollars working in the private sector. A bit of a ball-buster with a wry sense of humor, the fifty-six-year-old Philadelphia native never hesitated to let Adam know that the military industrial complex had eyes everywhere.

“General? I thought our call was scheduled for next Wednesday?”

“This is courtesy call, Captain. Lockheed’s engineers need Dr. Marulli on site in early August.”

Adam split the screen, accessing his monthly planner. “How long will you need her for?”

“At least a month.”

“A month? Sir, Dr. Marulli’s overseeing two of our biggest projects; I can’t spare her for that long. How about Nick Mastramico?”

“Dr. Mastramico doesn’t have the necessary clearances.”

“He has his Q clearance, General. That’s sufficient to program the satellites.”

“Not in a command post. If Strategic Command goes into a full alert, anyone not wearing a Zebra badge or higher will have exactly sixty seconds to vacate the facility before our marines shoot them.”

“What could possibly cause a full alert?”

“I’d tell you, Captain, only you don’t have the clearance to discuss it! Now pay attention: Lockheed will have a private jet waiting for Dr. Marulli at the Martin State Airport in Baltimore on the third of August at thirteen hundred hours; make sure your girlfriend is on it. Or should I say your fiancée.”

Adam felt his face flush.

“Going with a smaller stone. . it’s a good move. At least you’ll know if she really loves you.” The general winked. “We’ll talk more on Wednesday. Cubit out.”

The connection severed, the screensaver returned.

Bastard… probably has my office bugged.

Adam leaned back in his chair and peered through the horizontal slats of the silver Venetian blinds. The window looked down onto an extensive work area that was roughly the size of a high school gym.

The satellite, part of a black ops project code-named Zeus, occupied most of the Plexiglas-enclosed suite of Lab-3. The rectangular-shaped device was twelve feet high and eight feet wide, with a depth just under six feet. It stood upright like an onyx wall, its two solar panels, attached to either side of its frame, folded inward. As large as it was, the object was merely a three-hundred-pound replica used by Kemp’s design team to test the configuration of its internal circuits under space conditions. The actual satellite was a four-ton monstrosity — one of twenty that were housed at an unknown location — most likely a secret military base.

Jessica was not inside the work station, which meant she was probably inside the CHIL.

Adam stood up from behind his desk, pausing to allow the internal pistons of his new prosthetic device to align with the working muscles of his right leg. A remarkable piece of machinery, the artificial limb’s titanium skeleton extended from his stump all the way to its five working toes, all of which were capable of flexion and extension. The weight, length, and musculatures of the limb matched that of his right leg, down to the temperature of the spongy flesh-like skin.

To complete the visual, he had waxed the hair off of his real leg.

Adam had nearly trashed the device on its first day as he struggled to coordinate the complex movements of the fake appendage with his right leg. It had taken him hours just to learn how to sit without falling over sideways, his frustrations quelled only by Jessica’s patience.

“I’m sure this is a lot like flying the Apache, Adam. Your brain is being asked to control two completely different limbs and coordinate these independent movements so that you can walk. The problem is that your right leg’s brain is thirty years ahead of your prosthetic device, which was literally born this morning. As your brain learns to compensate, the smart chips embedded within the joints of your left limb will segregate the successful movements from the failures and over time you’ll learn to walk without consciously thinking about it.”

“Assuming I survive the thousand falls that await me. How do I use the bathroom without ending up in the urinal?”

“I could strap a board to your ass.”

Focusing his thoughts, he walked with a slow, steady cadence to the elevator.

The Collaborative Human Immersive Laboratory, known as CHIL, was an enclosed motion-capture suite located next to Lab-3. Created by Lockheed-Martin, CHIL utilized virtual reality to allow production designers and engineers to test the components of a satellite in a computer-generated world where they could duplicate the frigid conditions of space.

Adam found Dr. Jessica Marulli inside the “cave,” dressed from head to toe in a black and orange trim nylon body suit adorned with silver sensors. With her eyes concealed behind a head-mounted display, the aerospace engineer had morphed into her own personal avatar, moving through a virtual world only she could see.

She paused, sensing his presence on an internal display. “Adam?”

“Sorry to bother you. General Cubit just informed me that you’ll be working at Lockheed the entire month of August and through the fall. When were you going to tell me?”

“It’s not my place to tell you. This is a highly-classified project. Things don’t filter down in the usual manner; you’re either in the loop or you’re not. When Central Command wants me I have to go. You know the deal.”

“It doesn’t mean I have to like it. With you gone that long, I’ll need to bring in another chief engineer. It’s not like I’m hiring a substitute math teacher.”

Jessica removed her helmet, shaking out an entanglement of blonde curls. “And here I thought you were upset because I’ll be gone for so long.”

Adam looked around, wondering if there was anyone in the control room.

“It’s just us,” she said, reading his thoughts. “I told Khrys King she could leave early; it’s her kid’s birthday.”

“And it’s our anniversary. Are we still on for dinner, or do I need to okay it with the general?”

“Actually, I’ve got another /three hours in here. Is there any way we can move the reservation back to nine?”

“On the night of the inauguration? They’re booked solid.”

“So we’ll skip Chen’s. Let’s go to Tosca’s, my treat. Call Maria, she’ll squeeze us in.”

“Italian? I was really in the mood for Chinese.”

“I thought you had Chinese for lunch? And the traffic’s going to be crazy. Why don’t we just order takeout?”

“Takeout… yeah, whatever.” He reached into his left jacket pocket. “I saved the fortune cookies from lunch. Will that work?”

“Adam, you shouldn’t bring food into the lab.”

“Pick one.”

“Is this really necessary?”

“Just humor me.”

She rolled her eyes and then pointed to one of the cookies. “You’ll have to open it for me; I’m not taking off these gloves. And don’t get any crumbs on the floor or Dr. Mastramico will blame me.”

He pulled off the partially opened wrapper and cracked open the stale cookie, passing her the fortune.

She gripped the message in her cyber-gloved fingers, turning it right-side up. “What is this?”

“What does it say?”

She looked at him, unsure. “Is this real?”

“I don’t know. Are you having an affair with the chef at Chen’s?”

“Adam—”

He handed her the felt-covered box.

Jessica took it, her gloved hands shaking. “You were going to do this tonight at dinner and I ruined it, didn’t I?”

“It’s okay.”

Using her teeth, she pulled the gloves from her hands and opened the box, her eyes tearing up. “Oh my God—”

“I know it’s small. Maybe you can use your visor to create a larger virtual diamond.”

“Shut-up.” She placed the ring on her finger. “It’s perfect. And yes, I will absolutely marry you. Yes, yes, yes.”

She leaned in awkwardly and kissed him, careful not to make contact with the silver sensor balls adhered to her body suit.

Instead of pulling away, she continued to rest her forehead against his. “I love you, Adam Shariak.”

“I love you, too Jessica… Shariak.” Adam smiled.

“Jessica Marulli-Shariak. My father would disown me if I gave up our family name.”

“I accept the terms of your surrender. I’ll call Tosca’s and see if they can get us in around nine.”

“Forget Tosca’s.” She placed her headpiece on the floor, then unzipped the nylon bodysuit and carefully slipped out of it, revealing a crimson bra and matching silk panties.

“Take off your clothes; we’ll screw first and eat dinner later.”

2

There are many perks associated with being a former U.S. president, among which is having American taxpayers pick up the tab on your office space after you leave the White House. The most expensive lease was George W. Bush’s 15,678-square-foot Dallas headquarters, tallying $701,636 a year in rent. Bill Clinton’s Harlem office ran a more modest $399,931 annually, though he had moved out in 2011 in favor of a midtown Manhattan address.

The Clinton Global Initiative, one of a dozen foundations set up by the former president and his team, occupied 30,000 square feet on the 42nd floor of the Time-Life Building. Two more floors were subsequently leased by Hillary Rodham-Clinton leading up to her presidential run in 2015.

Established in 2001, the Clinton Global Initiative targeted a variety of causes, including AIDS, obesity, poverty, and global warming. Despite raising hundreds of millions of dollars in donations, the organization often struggled to balance the conflicts between the philanthropic goals of the former president, his money-making interests, the political ambitions of his wife, and the ever-increasing involvement of their daughter, Chelsea.

In the wake of Hillary’s failed presidential campaign, Bill’s agenda involved seemingly endless meetings with the foundation’s attorneys and accountants in an attempt to resolve a myriad of post-election matters.

When the morning session with the Board of Trustees threatened to drift past noon, Clinton excused himself for a scheduled conference call.

Lisa Ann Hughes looked up from her desk as he entered the waiting area of his private office suite. “He’s waiting for you inside. I know — hold all calls.” She handed him a large plastic Styrofoam cup with a straw. “I ordered you a protein smoothie.”

“Thank you, darlin’.” He drained half the cup, then entered his office to find an old friend waiting for him.

Joseph G. Rangel was a former White House counsel whose friendship with William Jefferson Clinton stretched back decades. Well-connected with corporate executives and A-list celebrities, as well as government and military officials, Rangel preferred to operate in the shadows rather than the glare that seemed to follow the ex-president everywhere.

Built like a wrestler, the squat, muscular man rose from the cream-colored leather sofa to greet his friend, a dossier held in his thick left hand.

Bill Clinton gave Rangel a warm embrace. “We don’t have much time; I’ve got a call with the Cuban ambassador at one. Is that him?”

“That’s our guy.”

Clinton took the file and settled himself in his favorite easy chair. Retrieving his reading glasses from a breast pocket, he opened the dossier, quickly scanning the information.

“Captain Adam Shariak, United States Army, retired. Apache helicopter pilot and trainer. Wounded during combat operations in Iraq… purple heart… the requisite security clearance for being a captain in the Armed Forces. Defense Sciences… managing director at Kemp Aerospace — why him? What’s so special about Adam Shariak?”

“When his Apache went down he was captured by members of Saddam’s Fedayeen. He had a broken femur, life-threatening gangrene, and God-only-knows what other injuries. Ended up losing his left leg. They tortured him for a week but never got a thing out of him.”

“Geez. How’d he get out of that?”

“He charmed the girl nursing his infection into helping him escape.”

“So he’s tough and empathetic; good. What’s your insertion point?”

“The Under Secretary of Defense — Comptroller. The Deputy Secretary of Defense has been vetting him for several months. His confirmation hearings should happen in late spring.”

“Does he even know he’s a candidate?”

“He will by tonight.”

“And Trump knows nothing about this?”

“It’s a minor appointment to him, justified as political payback. My guy on the inside was afraid to call Shariak a war hero after all the abuse Trump gave McCain.”

“You do realize that Shariak will serve as one of the chief advisors to the Secretary of Defense?”

“With oversight responsibilities for all military installations, operational energy plans and programs, major weapon systems, missile defense programs, and drum roll please… all space and intelligence programs.”

“You are good, my friend. Is he married? Any kids?”

“He recently got engaged to the chief aerospace engineer at Kemp.”

The former president looked at her photo. “Brains and beauty.”

“And a Zebra security clearance, which I’ve been informed will soon be bumped to Cosmic Clearance.”

Clinton looked up. “She’ll be on the inside. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you’re a cold sonuva bitch.”

“You asked me to do a job. You think you’re going to accomplish anything by being half-pregnant? We both know a job title means didley-squat or we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Dr. Marulli is a potential means of getting Shariak on the inside, something that was denied to you for eight years as president. If you know of a better way to pierce the gauntlet, tell me.”

“No, no. You’re right.” Clinton closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What’s the potential blowback to Shariak?”

“For now, he’s flying way below the radar. Once he enters the rabbit’s hole and starts asking questions he’ll attract some low-level interest. His stepbrother is Senator Randy Hall.”

“As in Head of the Senate Appropriations Committee Hall? Good Lord, Joe. What happens when they perceive Shariak as a threat?”

“They’ll offer him a bribe. If he takes it we’ll lose him. He won’t take it.”

“The cabal will set him up or issue a TWEP order. I don’t know, Joe. I don’t want another Bill Colby on my hands.”

“Shariak’s a civilian; Colby was in the cabal’s inner circle. It wasn’t until he decided to sneak out plans for a free energy device that the radical element of MAJI murdered him. Damn sociopaths; it’s that fear factor that has kept the silent majority in line.”

“I’ve met some of these guys at a few CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) meetings; you look into their eyes and it’s like Dick Cheney — there’s no soul.”

“Are you going to tell Hillary?”

“Absolutely not. The less people who know, the better.”

“Which brings up a major hurdle. Shariak will need to be directed down the rabbit’s hole sometime after the Senate hearing and it can’t come from my guy on the inside.”

“Why not?”

“He and Shariak have a history. Besides, this has to look non-partisan and come from a higher authority.”

Clinton pinched the stress knotting in his brow. “Where and when?”

“It has to be at an event you’ll both be attending. Maybe a golf outing?”

“As long as he’s not in our foursome.” The former president handed him back the folder. “I’ve got to go. You did real well, Joe.”

“Bill, you never told me why you decided to put this in play.”

“It would have happened if Hillary had won the election; she had already started planting seeds on the Kimmel Show. Papa Bush had actually set out to do this years ago with Gorbachev and Pérez de Cuéllar. The bastards kidnapped Secretary General de Cuéllar and put the fear of God into him and Gorby’s wife. Something similar had been staged years earlier with Hans-Adams’s brother.”

“The Liechtenstein prince?”

“The abduction changed his mind, just like it did with the Secretary General. As for me, traveling around the world… my recent trips to India and Africa…you see the poverty, the effects of malaria and Ebola — it tears you up inside. We’ve accomplished more with our Global Initiative than anything we did during my eight years in the White House. But this, Joe — this is a game-changer. This is a tide of good that raises every boat on the planet.”

“Just be careful, my friend. These are some seriously fucked up people we’re dealing with, and they don’t like sharing their toys.”

3

The corporate workout room had been Adam Shariak’s idea. When he had first accepted the job at Kemp Aerospace, he had committed to a two-year lease on a one bedroom apartment in Greenbelt Station, along with a gym membership at a local club. Once he and Jessica began dating, he had practically moved in to her townhome.

Unable to afford a second gym membership, he made an “executive decision” to convert a barely used employee lounge into a weight room.

As it turned out, he and Jessica were the only ones who ever used it.

The blonde’s legs were pumping out miles on a stationary bike, her lower body no match for her thumbs, which flitted across the keyboard pad on her iPhone as she texted and listened to music on her headphones.

Adam watched her for a moment before laying back on the incline press beneath a forty-five pound barbell, each side holding and additional hundred-and-twenty pounds of iron plates.

Two-fifty-five… Two good reps, three if you want to impress your woman.

Positioning himself beneath the bar, he inhaled a deep breath and exhaled as he lifted the weight off of the stand, then drew in another breath as he lowered the barbell to his chest.

Exhaling, he pressed the first rep with relative ease.

Glancing to his right, he saw she had missed his Herculean effort and went for another rep—

— big mistake.

Touching the middle of the bar to his chest, he managed six inches before the barbell resettled on his sternum.

Sucking in several quick breaths, Adam attempted to raise the weight again, managing to get it three-quarters of the way up before his strength waned and gravity turned the barbell into a hood ornament.

No problem, he had left the collars off for just such an emergency.

Tilting the right side of the bar down, he wriggled the loose plates, attempting to slide a hundred-and-twenty pounds off one side while preventing the other side from smashing onto the rubber flooring — only the plates weren’t sliding off the rusted surface of the barbell like he had expected.

With his sternum beginning to bruise, he was about to try the left side when two hands reached down and gripped the middle of the barbell, helping him guide it back onto the incline press.

He sat up, turning to face his rescuer — surprised to see it was a woman.

She was Jessica’s height, with short brown hair and gray eyes which matched her business suit and skirt.

“That’s a lot of weight to be flipping sideways, Captain. You should have a spotter.”

“He has a spotter,” Jessica stated, positioning herself between her fiancé and the woman. “I’m his spotter. Who the hell are you?”

She held up her identification card. “Anna Curtis, special assistant to General James Mattis. I’m here to discuss your nomination as Under Secretary of Defense — Comptroller.”

Jessica served Adam a bowl of pasta, then waited while he poured them each a glass of wine. “Shall we toast to your new career?

“I haven’t said yes.”

“You will. This isn’t something you turn down, Adam. I didn’t even know you knew ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis.”

“I served under him briefly, but he was the colonel’s friend. The last time I saw the general was six years ago at my father’s funeral.”

“With a nickname like ‘Mad Dog,’ I imagine he’s the shoot-first and ask questions later type.”

“The exact opposite. Yes, he’ll drop a quote here or there about Iran that may cause a few pulses to race, but when you’ve spent as much time in the sandbox as Mattis has, there’s a greater desire to maintain stability over engaging in another war.”

“Sounds like someone you could work under… what’s wrong?”

“I dunno. This whole thing feels out of left field. Hell, Jess, I’m not even qualified to attend half the meetings at Kemp; how can I even consider taking on a position like Under Secretary of Defense?”

“Trump’s president. Is he any more qualified than you?”

“To be Under Secretary or president?”

“Under Secretary. You’re already more qualified than him to be Commander-in-Chief.”

“I’m just not sure a majority of senators will agree with you. My own stepbrother laughed himself into a wheezing fit when I told him.”

“Randy will be there for you when it counts. Accept the nomination and see what happens. Worst case scenario — you’re back at Kemp managing defense projects in the blind.”

“Thanks.”

She laughed, forcing her sauce-covered kiss past his defenses.

4

Senator Robert Hardy Gibbons, Jr. banged his gavel. “Good morning. The committee meets today to consider the nomination of Captain Adam Ulysses Shariak to be Under Secretary of Defense— Comptroller. Before we begin, I want to welcome the eight senators who are new both to the Senate and to our committee. Joining us in 2017 are Senators Brian Ziarnik, Marcus Eberlein, Stephen Wood, and Vincent Renzulli on the Republican side and Senators Melanie Hurt, Jimmy Cain, Kevin Banks, and Joe Horning on the Democrat side. In the past this committee has worked across party lines to support our troops and their families and America’s national defense mission; it is in this spirit that I’ll begin.

“Having served two tours in Iraq as a member of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, it is my honor to introduce our nominee. Captain Adam Shariak comes from a military heritage; his paternal grandfather served in Korea, his father Colonel William Shariak served in Operation Desert Storm. Like his grandfather and father, Adam Shariak has served our country honorably and with distinction. In 2003 he deployed to Iraq with the Army’s 1st Battalion, 4th Aviation Regiment. While flying a combat mission, his Apache was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Somehow Captain Shariak managed to guide the airship away from a crowded marketplace where it crash-landed. The impact collapsed the Apache’s cockpit and snapped the femur in the captain’s left leg. Trapped and in terrible pain, Adam Shariak ordered his co-pilot to hide before the enemy arrived.

“Captain Shariak was captured, held in a bunker, and tortured. Despite a gangrenous left leg which he’d end up losing, he managed to escape. Although Captain Shariak has never worked in the Defense Department as a paper-pusher, I believe his credentials in the field make him uniquely qualified for this position, which is why I support his nomination to replace the outgoing Under Secretary of Defense — Comptroller. I know many of you have questions; we’ll begin with Senator Renzulli.”

The Republican from Connecticut leaned forward to speak into his microphone. “Captain Shariak, everyone in this chamber appreciates the sacrifices you have made for our country. My concern is the role you would play as one of the chief advisors to the Secretary of Defense. This committee has received so little background on you, yet the administration has pushed us to render a quick decision. I think many of us would like to know more about your beliefs as it pertains to the war on terror — particularly the escalating conflict against Islamic State. For instance, what is your opinion in regard to how President Obama handled ISIS?”

Translated: My brother, Senator Hall, is a Dem… what are my politics?

Adam Shariak took a deep breath. “Senator, we’re dealing with a complex, multi-pronged situation. I appreciate President Obama understood that dropping bombs on Syrian villages like the Russians were doing is not how you win the battle that could potentially decide whether Islam will be ruled by radicals or moderates.”

“Then you support President’s Obama’s failed policies?”

“As the DoD’s Comptroller, I will support whoever occupies the Oval Office.”

“That’s not what I asked. I asked if you support Obama’s failed policies when it comes to dealing with an enemy that wants to kill innocent Americans.”

“With all due respect, Senator, reducing the issue down to a yes or no question indicates a desire to make my nomination a political issue. You can certainly do that if you wish, but if you really want to know what I think about ISIS, then give me enough latitude to answer the question properly.”

Randy Hall leaned over to Jessica Marulli and whispered in her ear. “They have no idea who they’re dealing with.”

She smiled. “They’re about to find out.”

Senator Renzulli held out his hands. “Okay, Captain… enlighten us.”

“My Apache team escorted the first boots on the ground back in 2003. Whether or not you agreed with the invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi people, at that time, clearly supported our presence. The Iraqi army had agreed to cooperate with General Jay Gardner in order to control looting while working with us to bring the power and water utilities back on line. And then Rumsfeld did a one-eighty, replacing General Gardner with Paul Bremer, a civilian who had no concept of the lay-of-the-land or the historic conflict between the Sunnis and Shia.

“Bremer’s first decree was to ban all members of the Ba’ath Party from holding office; his second was to dismantle the Iraqi army. With two strokes of the pen, Bremer essentially took 400,000 well-trained Iraqi soldiers who had access to caches of hidden weapons and rendered them jobless, while excluding them from ever having a stake in their own country’s future. This is what is known in the military as a major cluster-fuck. The commandos quickly organized, turning Iraq into a Guerilla war zone. Instead of peace, Iraqi civilians suddenly had to deal with suicide bombers and cities without electricity, food, and water. It wasn’t long before al Qaeda, which was run by Sunnis and had never been in Iraq under Saddam, took root under the guidance of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“Under Saddam’s rule, Iraq’s minority Sunni party controlled the middle-class. In 2006, Nouri al-Maliki — a Shiite — took over as Prime Minister. Instead of building a coalition government, he outwardly favored the Shiites while purposely neglecting to provide electricity and other essential services to Iraq’s Sunni Arab cities. Worse, he looked the other way while Shiite militias ran rampant, killing Sunnis wherever they went in what amounted to an ethnic cleansing.

“In an attempt to combat al Qaeda and involve the Sunnis, General Petraeus created Awakening Councils — forces of armed Sunnis willing to fight the extremists. Instead of integrating these 100,000 moderates into the Iraqi army and police force, Al-Maliki opposed the program. Fearing a coup, he purposely kept his army weak. He later accused his Sunni vice president of being a terrorist, all of which only further served to alienate the Sunni population.”

Senator Renzulli signaled to Chairman Gibbons. “I wanted a yes or no answer about the last administration’s handling of ISIS; instead I’m getting a history lesson on the Iraq war.”

Adam Shariak interjected. “I’m about to answer you, senator. After U.S. forces killed Zarqawi, he was replaced by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who merged his al Qaeda forces in Iraq and Syria and announced the creation of ISIL, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. His first target was Mosul, a Sunni Arab city located in Northern Iraq, home to two million people. Having been abused by al-Maliki’s government for five years, Mosul’s Sunni population practically welcomed the Islamist radicals into their city. Al-Baghdadi then declared ISIL’s territory a caliphate — a state governed in accordance with Sharia law. The Islamic State is very well organized, with four separate security services that keep both the jihadist and civilian populations in line. Each of these services reports to an emir, who in turn follows the orders of the men whose faces are always cloaked in black.

“Senator, these cloaked men who are the true leaders of Islamic State are, in fact, members of Saddam’s former Ba’athist army, the ones Paul Bremer dismissed back in 2003. Just as they are doing now, these same officers in the Fedayeen carried out similar campaigns of terror under Sadaam. With Syria’s President Assad waging war on his own people, and President Obama pulling our troops out of Iraq, the Ba’athist commandos saw ISIL as the perfect vehicle from which to retake Iraq and rule the region. They essentially overran Syria’s military bases, took all of Assad’s Russian-made tanks and weapons, and used them to take control of Syrian oil wells and refineries. Using their knowledge of the smuggling networks developed under Saddam back in the 1990s to avoid U.N. sanctions, these former Ba’athists have been selling the crude at discounted prices while raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. And who is buying the oil and the stolen Syrian artifacts, Senator Renzulli? We are.

“You asked me about President Obama’s initiatives. Before you evaluate his administration’s policies you need to understand the Islamic State’s endgame. The Fedeyeen wearing the black cloaks want control over the region. To get that, they are unleashing the jihadists — the religious radicals in the Muslim faith. Their goal is to convince the rest of the Islamic world that an apocalyptic process is underway which will lead to a confrontation between an army of Muslims and the Western crusaders… equating us with the Romans. Everything they do, from these public beheadings to the terror plots in Paris, is designed to elicit violent responses from the West that keeps moving us down the road leading to Armageddon. President Obama understood that.”

“If that’s true, Captain Shariak, then why did his policies fail?”

“They failed because Saddam’s former Ba’athist officers are running Islamic State’s territories like a business, generating several billion dollars which the jihadists want to use to purchase weapons of mass destruction. To prevent that from happening, we need to cut off the flow of funds coming from Turkey. Iraq may be salvageable if we can convince Baghdad that they need to have new elections to establish a coalition government with a place at the table for Sunnis and Kurds. As for Syria, that’s more complicated. Assad has to go, but it’s a mistake to support the Syrian rebels, most of whom are affiliates of al Qaeda. While President Trump scored points with Putin by calling out Turkey for buying oil from ISIL; the real supporters of Islamic State are the Saudis. Unless you force our biggest supplier of oil to stop funding terrorism and its messages of hatred which target Israel and the United States, we’ll never defeat radical Islam.”

The half-empty chamber broke out in a smattering of applause.

Joe Rangel was seated in one of the upper rows, out of range of the C-SPAN cameras. He glanced down at his iPhone screen as a new text message appeared:

5

Adam Shariak followed the press secretary past a security checkpoint and through the West Colonnade, his left sciatic nerve slightly inflamed from the long walk from the parking lot. Entering the West Wing, they were intercepted by Kelli-Lynn McDonald, Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff.

“Mr. Under Secretary, President Trump apologizes. He’s been in a photo shoot and breakfast get-together with the Clemson Tigers… I guess you know they won the 2016 College Championship.”

“I may have heard a rumor.”

“Well, there’s a game tonight between the Cubs and Nationals and the president wants you to join him in his luxury suite. Be sure to arrive thirty minutes early so you two can talk.”

Located in the Naval Yard section of Washington, D.C., Nationals Park seated a cozy 41,500 fans, while offering a view of the Washington Monument and Capitol Building from the first baseline bleachers.

Adam had attended more than fifty games since the new park had opened back in 2008; many with his brother, Randy who had season tickets along the third baseline. Jessica preferred the back and forth pace of hockey — after the first two innings she had spent the rest of the game texting on her iPhone.

He arrived at 5:40 p.m. for the 7:05 start. Access to the luxury suites was from a private entrance beneath the stadium. After swiping his ticket, the attendant called for a personal concierge — an older Caucasian man in his eighties who went by the name of “Pops.”

“Pops, Suite 18.”

“Eighteen it is. Sir, if you’ll come with me—”

He followed the spry man onto an awaiting elevator and up to the suite level which featured a private mezzanine that looked like a Las Vegas-style sports bar, every wall covered in giant TV screens.

Pops led him to the first suite by the elevators where two stadium security officers were posted outside the metal door, the outside of which was receiving a new numbered plate and corporate sponsor’s logo from a maintenance man.

“Here you go sir, allow me to show you inside.” Using his pass key, the old man unlocked the door and held it open for Adam, who entered.

“Nice…”

The suite was divided into a kitchen and dining area, card tables, sofas and recliners, a pool table, and two levels of luxury seating in front of an unencumbered view ten degrees down the third base side of home plate.

Pops pointed to the two rows of buffet tables lined with empty metal trays. “You’re a bit early. Food arrives in about forty minutes, along with the bartender and waitresses. Bathrooms are to the right. If you need anything, just pick up the service phone. Secret Service should be by anytime, I’m guessing.”

“Thanks.” He reached into his wallet for a tip, but the concierge waved him off and left.

Adam glanced at the wall clock… 5:56 p.m.

For the next few minutes he watched the players stretching and jogging in their warm-up jerseys while the first group of Nationals prepared to take batting practice. Bored, he moved to the pool table and selected a cue stick from one of two wall-mounted racks.

He turned as the door opened and a muscular black man dressed in a dark suit entered the suite, the ear piece identifying him as Secret Service.

“Name?”

“Excuse me?”

“Who are you?”

“Adam Shariak, Under Secretary of Defense.”

“Shariak, huh?” The big man checked his iPhone. “Name’s familiar, but you’re not on my list which means ya’ll don’t belong here.”

Adam reached for his ticket as the secret service man reached for his gun.

“Whoa, big fella, I’m just showing you my ticket. See… Suite 18.”

“This is Suite 8.”

President Bill Clinton walked in, placing a reassuring hand on the big man’s shoulder. “Easy, Samson. They’re changing out the door plates. Pops probably got confused.”

“Mr. President… I’m so sorry.”

“Nonsense. Nothing to be sorry about. Samson, this is Adam Shariak, our new Under Secretary of Defense. I caught your confirmation hearing on C-SPAN. Best explanation of ISIS I’ve heard. You were direct but succinct; forcing that senator to accept the fact that every military action creates a ripple effect throughout the Middle East… that dropping bombs and deploying more American troops is exactly what these radicals want us to do.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Too bad Trump wasn’t watching.”

“I’m actually supposed to—”

“Say, Shariak, you any good with that pool cue?”

“Not very.”

“Good, rack ’em up. Samson, maybe you can close that drape before you leave so I can see. The sun’s blinding me.”

“Yes, sir.” The secret service man pulled the curtains closed and left.

“Sorry about Samson. He gets overprotective.”

“Do you know if he played nose tackle at Ohio State?”

“I believe he did.”

“I think he recognized me. Way back when, I played fullback at Indiana. OSU always beat the tar out of us, but in my senior year, I had a pretty good second half against the big fella.”

Bill Clinton’s face lit up. “I’ll be damned. I remember that game. You ran for about a hundred and thirty yards in the second half and almost led your team to a huge upset.”

“You have an excellent memory, sir.”

“For some things.” Clinton gestured to Adam to have a seat at one of the card tables. “Mind if I ask you a personal question? Your head coach at Indiana hadn’t played you all season. What made him change his mind at halftime?”

“Our starting tailback was hurt. We were losing twenty-seven to nothing in our only nationally-televised game of the year and coach was pissed. So he asked a bunch of seniors for their advice. When he came to me I said, ‘just give me the damn ball coach, and we’ll score.”

“Give me the damn ball and we’ll score… I love it. And you did score — three touchdowns if memory serves.”

“Two. I tore up my knee before we scored on that last drive.”

As Adam watched, President Clinton removed a small stack of three-by-five cards from the back pocket of his slacks. Making eye contact with Shariak, he pressed an index finger to his lips for silence, causing Adam’s pulse rate to jump.

“I love football,” Clinton said, “it really is America’s game.”

Reaching into the pocket of his windbreaker, he removed a small keychain with a flashlight. Turning it on, he aimed the purple light at the first card in his hand, causing a message to appear in yellow ultraviolet ink:

Seeing the urgency in the former president’s eyes, Adam nodded.

“My game was rugby; I played on the rugby club when I attended Oxford. Ever play rugby, Shariak?”

He flipped to the next card:

“Yes!”

“Really? Where’d you play?”

“Play what? Football?”

Clinton shot him a “stay focused” look. “Rugby.”

“Rugby? Sorry… no. Just football.”

The former president turned over the next card:

You recruited me? How the hell did you recruit me? And who’s we?

“I loved rugby. Of course, they don’t wear helmets like they do in American football.”

“What is… I mean… no helmets… that’s crazy.”

“It is crazy.”

Adam felt light-headed, the scene surreal. Free energy? What the hell is he talking about? Why is he doing this? Is the suite bugged?

“So Shariak… how are you getting along with President Trump?”

“We’ve never met. Tonight… it’s our first meeting.”

Clinton turned to the next card, responding, “I read where the Doomsday Clock has advanced thirty seconds since he’s been in office.”

“I read that… the Doomsday Clock. It’s symbolic, of course.”

“And yet it’s representative of our times… the threat of nuclear war… the effects of climate change. Trump has no regard for the environment… to him it’s simply a speed bump for the economy.

“So… what am I supposed to do… as Under Secretary?”

Adam felt the blood drain from his face.

Bill Clinton removed a cigar from his windbreaker and lit up. “Do you have any children, Mr. Under Secretary?”

“Children? No, sir.”

“I’m a father and a grandfather. I fear for them; I fear for their generation. We’re doing the same things we’ve done over the last century — burning fossil fuels to create energy. We’re killing ourselves and the planet, and this new administration is taking off the brakes. I’ve traveled a dozen times around the world since I left the Oval Office and the things I’ve seen would break your heart. Africa’s dying. India’s a cesspool; its population is drowning in sewage. Pakistan’s ripe for a coup, and the EU can’t hold back the tide of immigrants escaping from the Middle East. Did you know the hottest-selling products in China these days are respirators? In Bulgaria, it’s radioactive nuclear material. It’s only a matter of time before ISIS or al-Qaeda or another one of these radicalized Islamic groups gets hold of enough plutonium to set off a dirty bomb… or your new president decides the best way to deal with Kim Jung Un is to strike first.”

Clinton turned to the last message.

“You wanted the ball, Mr. Under Secretary… run with it.”

As Adam watched, the forty-second President of the United States pressed the lit end of his cigar to the stack of three by five cards, the ash immediately igniting the chemically treated paper, instantaneously burning everything into a solitary cinder.

A moment later two Secret Service agents escorted Pops into the suite.

“Hell son, we got to get you out of here, you’re in the wrong place.”

6

Jessica keyed into her townhome to find Adam seated on her den sofa by the lit fireplace, a bottle of wine and two glasses on her coffee table.

“You’re home early. How was the game?”

“Trump never showed, his Chief of Staff said he decided to take the First Lady to a concert.” Adam handed her a glass of wine. “Jess, I need to pick your brain.”

“But first, you felt the need to ply me with alcohol?”

“It’s a strange subject. One of my assistants was going on today about something called zero-point-energy. I spent most of the afternoon reading about it. Is there any basis for it, or is it just theoretical nonsense?”

She slipped off her shoes and took a sip of wine from her glass. “Just because it’s theoretical doesn’t make it nonsense. By definition, vacuum fluctuation or zero-point-energy is an ambient field that harbors the energy state of life. According to quantum physics, every cubic centimeter of space that surrounds us has enough energy in the ambient field to power the entire country for a day. Again, it’s all theoretical.”

“If it’s all theoretical, why were Nikola Tesla, T. Townsend Brown, John Keely, Viktor Schauberger, and Otis Carr harassed and their work confiscated under the Warfare Act? Why was Professor John Searl and Adam Trombly poisoned?”

“Baby, that’s Conspiracy Theory 101. Believe me; if zero-point-energy really existed we’d have it.”

“Enough energy in a cubic centimeter of space to power the country for a day? I can think of a few groups that might prefer the status quo.”

“Where’s all this coming from?”

“I’d tell ya, only your security clearance is too high.”

Leaving her glass on a coaster, Jessica straddled Adam’s lap, nuzzling his neck. “Maybe we can raise your clearance to meet mine.”

The 2011 silver Jeep Grand Cherokee inched its way south on Interstate 495, its driver more focused on the thoughts swirling through his head than the morning rush hour traffic.

Adam Shariak had never met Dr. Neale Manley, but he knew who the physicist was. Jessica had worked with him before she had joined Kemp Aerospace, the two of them succeeding in developing a simple oscillating electronic circuit that put out more energy as resistant heat than was required to drive the device. Manley’s employer, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), had bought the design, along with the services of Dr. Manley — much to Jessica’s chagrin.

“Might” always seemed to overcome “right” when it came to dealing with corporate giants, and SAIC was one of a dozen major defense contractors feeding at the massive trough of the United States Defense Department’s annual $600 billion military budget. So entwined was the Pentagon with its suppliers that there was a perpetual revolving door among government personnel serving in the private sector, and both political parties abused the system. In December of 2012, Deborah Lee James had been president of SAIC’s technology and engineering sector. A year later, Chuck Hagel swore her in as Secretary of the Air Force.

Meeting Dr. Manley — let alone picking his brain about zero-point-energy — seemed a daunting task. From what Jessica had told him, the physicist was involved in what she termed, “Weird Science and Freakin’ Magic.” Though she refused to elaborate, Adam got the gist — Manley and his work were off-limits, even to the new Under Secretary of Defense.

He decided on an innocuous “front door” approach, instructing his secretary to schedule as many “meet and greets” with military contractors during the next three days as possible. To save drive time, he had her book him into the local Hyatt Regency.

Science Applications International Corporation was his first stop on his list.

The flow of morning traffic opened up as the silver Jeep Cherokee entered northern Virginia. Adam Shariak exited the Capital Beltway in Tyson’s Corner, a commercial center that was home to the corporate headquarters of some of the biggest tech companies in the world.

Turning off Leesburg Pike, he followed signs to the gated entrance of the SAIC campus, its fourteen-story-high concrete and glass structure looming ahead.

Sam Mannino, former Air Force Chief of Staff and current CEO at SAIC, led him into his office suite. “It’s good to finally meet you, Captain Shariak. You did a nice job running Kemp Aerospace; though it’s still a bit unusual for a high-ranking government post to be filled by a nominee hailing from such a small supplier.”

“I would think the CEO of an $8 billion employee-owned tech company would appreciate an occasional victory for the little guy.”

“Touché. So what’s on your mind?”

Adam removed his iPad from its small carrying case. “I’m a bit concerned about SAIC’s backlog of signed business orders. At the end of the last quarter it tallied approximately $7.4 billion, of which $2.1 billion was funded. The biggest red flag is your progress on the Marine Corps’ new Amphibious Combat Vehicle.”

Sam Mannino typed a command into his desktop computer. “SAIC was awarded a $121.5 million firm fixed-price contract to produce thirteen prototype amphibious vehicles, with options for 60 low-rate initial production vehicles and 148 full-rate production vehicles. The full value of the contract is just over $1 billion.”

“Correct. However, the base period of performance for the new program was expected to be completed in September. Before he left office, you petitioned my predecessor for another eight months. Why the delay?”

“Son, when I took over as CEO of SAIC, the U.S. Attorney for the southern district of New York had just won a $500 million judgment against us for over-billing on a project to modernize the city’s payroll and timekeeping system. Half a billion dollars is a lot of money, even for a corporate giant like SAIC. We had to make cutbacks, and cutbacks lead to extensions.”

“And delays on contracts lead to fines. Like when Kemp Aerospace was ten days late on one of our contracts to provide circuit boards to SAIC because one of our suppliers in the Midwest was held up due to a snowstorm — an act of God which cost us $40,000. To a small supplier like Kemp, that’s a lot of money. But, as they say, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Translated: Paybacks are a bitch.”

Sam Mannino’s face paled.

“Hey now, no worries; September’s still two months away.”

“Mr. Under Secretary, surely we can work something out? Perhaps we can subcontract Kemp to help us on the Amphibious CVs?”

“That smells too much like a bribe to me. Strong-arming suppliers isn’t what I’m about; nor is creating an adversarial relationship. My goal is to work with you, Mr. Mannino. You’ve got your eight months, not a day longer.”

The CEO smiled in relief. “Thank you. And yes, I want to work with you, too.”

“Just make sure every one of those ACVs performs as advertised. I don’t want our marines getting their socks wet because something leaked; if that happens you’re gonna need more than a plumber to save your ass from me.”

“Understood.” Sam Mannino shook Captain Shariak’s hand. “How about lunch? There’s a terrific Italian place a few miles from here.”

“I’d love to, but I have to be at MITRE Corp. in forty minutes. However, there is someone I’d like to say hello to while I’m here.”

Adam followed the armed security guard out of the elevator onto the seventh floor. They passed through a gated checkpoint and proceeded down a white-tiled corridor, security cameras sealed in tinted purple globes were mounted along the ceiling.

The guard led him to a bank of three elevators. “These three shafts run to our sub-basement levels.” The guard swiped his passkey and entered his security code. The middle door opened and they stepped inside.

There was no control panel; no buttons to push. The guard looked up at a camera lens. “SB-5.”

Before Adam could grab hold of the interior rail, the floor beneath his feet plummeted and stopped, the entire descent taking less than two breathless seconds.

The guard smiled as the door hissed opened. “Pretty cool, huh? For a moment you were actually suspended in mid-air. It’s like a rush of butterflies in your gut.”

“Felt more like I swallowed my gut.”

Adam followed him off the elevator and down another corridor, this one interspaced with metal doors. They stopped at a sealed room labeled LAB SB-5.

The guard swiped his card, causing the door to unlock. “Dr. Manley is expecting you. I’ll wait for you out here.”

“Thank you.” Adam entered, the door requiring extra effort to push in against a cushion of air. The moment the door clicked shut a green light flashed on above an identical door six feet away. Pushing the handle down, he again fought a cushion of air and entered.

“Wow.”

It was as if he had been transported to a tropical island — twenty feet of pink sand and a cluster of coconut palm trees were all that separated the lab’s covered, open patio from an azure sea. Small waves lapped gently along the shoreline with a soothing crash and sizzle; cool gusts of briny air ruffled his hair. So realistic was the effect that for a confusing moment Adam was actually convinced he was in the Caribbean.

“It’s the latest in holographic design.”

He turned to find a white male in his early sixties, dressed in a floral Tommy Bahama shirt, shorts, and sandals. His chestnut-brown hair was long and graying around the temples, his tan complexion contrasting nicely with his gray goatee.

Adam extended his hand. “Shariak. I’m the new DoD Comptroller.”

“I suppose that makes you the most powerful man in Washington — after the Vice President and dog catcher.”

“Are you Dr. Neale Manley?”

“Who else would I be?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re his cabana boy.”

The older man walked to the porch’s bamboo rail. As he touched it, that section of the holographic projection materialized into a door. Opening it revealed a bathroom.

The physicist removed a white lab coat from a hook and slipped it on. “Do I pass inspection, Mr. Under Secretary?”

“Actually, this is more of a social call. About five years ago you worked on a project with Dr. Jessica Marulli. She asked me to say hello.”

“Ah, Juice Marulli… what a sweetheart. How do you know her?”

“We’re engaged.”

“Then that makes you a lucky man, though still no more important than dog-catcher.”

“I’m in town over the next three days; thought maybe I could treat you to dinner.”

“Is Jessica with you?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the point?” Dr. Manley removed a tube of antibiotic gel from his coat pocket, squeezed a drop of the clear liquid onto his palm, and rubbed his hands together. “Nothing personal, Mr. Deputy, but it’s not like we can talk shop, and I have no time for meaningless acquaintances.”

Adam withdrew a business card from his pants pocket and handed it to the physicist. “In case you change your mind.”

Dr. Manley waved it off. “If I need you I know where to find you. Your fiancée’s a good egg. Tell her I said hello.”

The scientist surprised Adam by extending his hand.

He dutifully shook it, the physicist’s palm still slightly moist with gel.

Ten minutes later, Adam climbed back into his jeep. Well, that was a waste of time.

As he started the car he noticed his right palm was tingling. He rubbed it against his pant leg, only it grew worse, becoming sharp pins and needles.

Adam stared at the flesh, which had turned bright pink where he had shaken hands with Manley.

The gel? What was in it? Did he poison me?

As he watched, a message appeared in his normal skin tone, the scrawled words standing out against his flushed, irritated flesh:

7

Following his iPhone’s directions, Adam turned on Chain Bridge Road and then made a left onto Curran Street. He saw the restaurant and parked; the lot half empty.

Miyagi’s was a small private establishment, the tables packed close together on a bamboo wood floor, its two sushi chefs working in tandem behind the glass-enclosed bar.

Adam stood at the counter behind a party of four waiting for a table and a man paying for takeout. He searched the dining area, only Dr. Manley wasn’t there.

An Asian girl in her mid-teens gave him a warm smile. “For here or to go?”

“Table for two. I’m meeting a friend, only he’s not here yet.”

She glanced at one of the chefs, who signaled her very subtlety with two fingers. “Okay. We seat you first.”

Overhearing their conversation, one of the women in the party of four protested. “Excuse me, but we were next.”

“Hai. You are next party of four.” Grabbing two menus, she motioned for Adam to follow her. She led him around a maze of tables and past the sushi bar, then beyond a red and white checkered curtain separating the kitchen and restrooms from the dining area. Turning left, they followed a small corridor past cases of bottled water, empty syrup canisters, and kegs of beer to a door labeled PRIVATE.

She knocked twice, paused and knocked twice again.

A dead bolt slid back and the door opened, revealing a Japanese man in his fifties, dressed in a white collared shirt, red bow tie, and black slacks. He nodded to Adam and then stepped back, allowing him to enter the small office.

Neale Manley was seated behind a desk, feasting on sushi rolls stacked on a decorative miniature wood boat. He waved Adam inside.

“This is Komura, the owner of this fine establishment.”

The Asian bowed his head. “Mr. Ambassador, it is an honor.”

Squeezing past Adam, he closed the door behind him.

“Mr. Ambassador?”

“I told him you were the Deputy Ambassador to Japan. Bolt the door and sit down, we don’t have much time.”

Adam slid the dead bolt in place and sat in the folding chair across the desk from Dr. Manley, who was unscrewing a pen, refitting the ink cartridge backwards inside the barrel shell — the connection causing a faint high-decibel sound.

“White noise. In case anyone’s listening.”

“Is that why you were so short with me this morning?”

“SAIC’s ceilings have eyes; its walls have ears. Now pay attention, we only have about twenty minutes before your to-go order is ready and you’re out of here.”

“My to-go order?”

“I can’t be seen with you, Shariak. I agreed to brief you and point you in the right direction, but after tonight we don’t cross paths again. Is that understood?”

Adam grabbed two spider rolls off the back of the serving boat, shoving them in his mouth. “I’m listening.”

Dr. Manley pulled the food out of Adam’s reach. “What I’m about to tell you represents the tiniest acorn in the forest of the biggest kept secret in the history of the planet. If the world’s population knew how they’ve been lied to… how they’ve been purposely denied the good life that can be provided by free, clean energy systems because of a few selfish, greedy sociopaths, there’d be anarchy. There needs to be a revolt, the public needs to demand these technologies be made available. Not to bring them out is nothing short of a crime against humanity.

“Since you’re not a quantum physicist like your fiancée, I’ll try to explain this in terms as simple as possible. Whether you accept what I say or not is ultimately up to you, but like that prosthetic limb you’re limping around on, reality is simply reality and the truth is the truth. To begin, our third-dimensional physical universe is literally swimming in an all-pervasive sea of quantum energy; only, like ignorant fish, we remain unaware of the water’s existence. Maybe a more appropriate metaphor is that, from our perspective, we can’t see the forest for the trees. For scientists, the clues have been around for over a century but one has to think outside the box in order to understand them.

“Dr. Harold Puthoff was one of the first to conduct a search for this quantum sea of energy. Minus 273 degrees Celsius or zero degrees Kelvin is the absolute lowest temperature in the universe. According to the laws of Newtonian physics, all molecular activity should cease at absolute zero and no energy should exist. Of course, scientists used to say the same thing about the bottom of the ocean — no light, no energy — no life. And then we actually bothered to send a submersible into the depths to check things out for ourselves and, lo and behold, we found energy spewing out of hydrothermal vents and an entire food chain existing on chemosynthesis — the primordial soup that led to the origin of life on this planet.

“Dr. Puthoff made a similar discovery. When he measured absolute zero, instead of an empty vacuum he was shocked to find a ‘seething cauldron’ of energy — a plenum of space where every square centimeter was filled with matter. Appropriately, he named it zero-point-energy. I prefer to call it the domain of W.S.F.M. — Weird Science and Freakin’ Magic.

“It is zero-point-energy that causes subatomic particles to jiggle and then literally jump in and out of existence. What is actually happening is that the photons collide and are absorbed by other subatomic particles. The process excites them into a higher energy state, creating an energy exchange between the zero-point field and our physical world. Although they appear for only thousandths or millionths of a second, their appearance is yet another indication that something truly magnificent lies just beyond the physical realm and the limitations of our five senses — an endless supply of energy.

“Two more experiments have proven the existence of the zero-point-energy field. The first is the Casimir Effect. By placing two plates made of conductive materials in a vacuum facing each other, Hendrick Casimir theorized that if zero-point-energy actually existed the total amount of energy between the surfaces of the plates would be less than the amount elsewhere, leading them to be drawn together — which is exactly what happened. A more dramatic experiment and an example of the W.S.F.M. deals with a ZPE-related phenomenon called sonoluminescense — the transformation of sound waves into light energy. If you fill a small spherical glass with water, resonate it with harmonious sound waves of 20 KHertz, and then blow a very tiny air bubble into the center of the flask the air bubble will rhythmically heat up to an incredible 30,000 degrees Celsius before imploding in an ultra short flash of light.”

“Okay, Dr. Manley, I’m willing to accept the existence of this amazing ocean of energy we’re all swimming in. How do we tap into it to power our homes and fuel our cars?”

“Good question. First, it’s important to understand that all of our present sources of electrical energy, from batteries to nuclear power plants, have one intrinsic problem in common. When the electrical current is fed back to the source that initiated it, it kills the source of the virtual photon flux within the vacuum.”

“You just lost me.”

“Let’s go back to basics. Constructed within the walls of this building is an electrical circuit made up of copper wire. Flowing through the copper wiring like a river, is an electrical current, its movement generated by the separation of positively-charged protons fixed in the copper atoms, the negatively-charged electrons moving through the wire. What initiates that separation of atoms is a dipole — an electromagnetic device.

“Place a canoe in a river and off you go. Plug a lamp into a socket and the electric current flows through the copper wires into the bulb’s filament, and we have light. One problem: In a normal three-dimensional electrical circuit, any excess energy that is generated is lost when it kills the dipole. As a result, the energy in the magnetic field dissipates, leaving only about a 30 % return for the load, making the systems we’ve been using for over a hundred years incredibly inefficient. Of course, the power company wants the circuit to be inefficient. After all, they’re profiting from every amp we use; and the fossil fuel and nuclear industries also get a nice chunk of that change since it’s their fuel that powers the dipole.

“To figure out where things went wrong when they could have gone so right, we go back to the turn of the 20th century and Nikola Tesla. Far more brilliant than Edison or Einstein, Tesla realized more than a hundred years ago that humans may exist and think in three dimensions, but nature actually prefers to work in four dimensions — the fourth being time-space. By applying a high-voltage system to an electromagnetic field in a counter-rotating vortex he allowed nature to reorganize the flow of charges within the vacuum of a generator at the speed of light, essentially incorporating the fourth dimensional aspects of zero-point-energy. What’s more, instead of fading, Tesla discovered the flow of energy in the vacuum would continue forever without losing so much as a drop of its load. Think of it as tapping into an oil well; once you hit a geyser you no longer need a drill, the pressure simply takes over. Tesla also figured out that, by using a permanent magnet as the dipole, you can pass the flux back through the permanent magnet and it won’t get destroyed, provided it is welded into the material.

“Tesla’s other challenge — which you just asked about — was figuring out a way to catch the energy. His solution was fairly simple — he found a material that separated the magnetic field from the magnetic field vector which flows unceasingly from the magnet, yielding a current of energy that could last another 15 billion years and beyond — a true over-unity system.

“In 1901, Tesla was preparing to use the planet’s own magnetic field as a giant dipole in order to broadcast electricity to ships at sea without wires — an experiment that would lead to free energy and change the world… only J.P. Morgan intervened. The wealthy industrialist had invested in copper wire to use in homes and businesses and he decided that giving energy to the people without charging them for it was simply un-American. Before Tesla could conduct his experiment, J. P. Morgan got his cronies in Washington to shut it down and confiscate all of the scientist’s papers and inventions, leaving him destitute.

“It’s a pattern that repeats itself throughout our history, every scientist who has ever figured out how to tap into the zero-point-energy field is shut down or silenced by the powers that be. Remember, it’s not enough to invent a ZPE device, you also have to sell it to the right people who won’t quash it, otherwise you must manufacture the design yourself and that requires money. Either way you’ll need a patent, and therein lies the second problem. Section 181 of the U.S. Patent law allows the government to arbitrarily determine if a technology or device poses a danger to our national security. Rogue elements within the Department of Defense, CIA, NSA, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Energy have abused this interpretation of the law in their attempt to safeguard the world’s status quo. T. Henry Moray’s breakthrough work was ignored by the patent office, his lab ransacked. You want flying cars running on free, clean energy? T. Townsend Brown, one of the founding fathers of electrogravitics, discovered that he could access zero-point-energy by utilizing high voltages of 20,000 to 200,000 volts, causing his charged capacitors to lose their vessel’s mass and levitate off the ground. Big Oil wasn’t too keen on the competition so the authorities denied Brown a patent and confiscated all of his work. Other inventors are lured into partnering with bogus companies that black-shelf their inventions.

“Back in the 1980s, Stan Meyer was working as an engineer at a plant that built microwave systems; the scientist had observed that at very low frequencies, water would go straight into hydrogen and oxygen. Based on this observation, his twin brother Steve helped him develop a circuitry where he could put an electrode in water and, at a certain voltage, create what is called Brown’s Gas, a magnetically-charged hydrogen and oxygen mix that essentially replaced gasoline with water. The Meyer boys retrofitted a dune buggy to run on water and word spread. Next thing they know, the CIA contacted Stan to discuss retrofitting a Lear jet using their invention.

“Stan was nervous, he insisted on meeting in a public place — a local Cracker Barrel restaurant — for lunch. Stan took one drink of his beverage, grabbed his throat and rasped, ‘I’ve been poisoned!’ He ran out to the parking lot, collapsed and died. Bottom line: If it’s a threat to the fossil fuel industry, it gets shut down.”

“And this is all being perpetrated by whom?”

“A secret government within the government… an international cabal composed of some of the wealthiest most powerful people on the planet. The name has changed over the years, from MJ-12 to Majestic-12, to SECOR and PI-40. These days we refer to the entity as MAJI, which stands for the Majority Intelligence Committee.”

“You said ‘we.’ You’re a part of this?”

“So is your fiancée, only they haven’t brought her into the inner circle yet.”

“Jessica is part of MAJI?”

“She’ll deny it, of course. But that satellite project you have her working on is strictly Unacknowledged Black Ops. It’s so compartmentalized that she probably has no clue what its real purpose is, and no, I’m not going to discuss it — for her sake. Understand something, Shariak — there are thousands of people who have been exposed to bits and pieces of the technologies I’ve just described, along with other projects that would blow your mind. Most of these men and women are decent, hardworking people like Jessica who, given a choice, would love to see these new energy systems shared among the masses. In fact, I’d guess upwards of eighty percent of MAJI secretly wants these unacknowledged projects to see the light of day. Unfortunately, as you move up the food chain into the bank and oil cartels, the military industrialists and religious fanatics — that’s where you find the sociopathic element that runs the cabal. Trust me, these guys you don’t fuck with.”

“Why did Clinton send me to you?”

“Clinton’s just a figurehead. There are bigger fish in this sea with a lot sharper teeth. As for me… I’m just the first in a series of currents meant to keep you swimming in the right direction. My job was to brief you on zero-point technology so you recognize it if and when you come across it.”

“Where do I go from here?”

“I’m going to give you the name of a civilian who has more information about ETs, UFOs, and the cabal than any man alive. Years ago when Clinton was still smoking cigars in the Oval Office, a meeting was arranged between this civilian and a member of MAJI who was fed up with the cabal black-shelving zero-point technologies just to keep the oil oligarchs happy. So the MAJI guy decided he was going to give this civilian a zero-point-energy device along with $50 million in seed money to mass produce them.”

“What happened?”

“He went missing right before the meet. Nine days later they fished his body out of Potomac River.”

“Geez. Who was he?”

“William Colby.”

“Wait… Bill Colby? The former CIA Director?”

“As I said, these guys you don’t fuck with. Colby’s death was a warning to Clinton. Obama received his warning shortly after this same civilian prepared a briefing for his administration.”

“What kind of warning?”

“It happened on December 9, 2009. The president was in Norway with his family to receive the Nobel Prize. While he was there, MAJI launched a scalar missile over Oslo. Scalar waves are very different from electromagnetic waves; they can travel over immense distances at super-luminal, faster-than-light speed with no loss of energy. The scalar left an eerie blue spiral in the night sky. Look it up on YouTube; the effect was witnessed by thousands of people who had no idea what it was or how easily it could have taken out Air Force One. Obama knew; he was put on notice that he may be president, but the cabal still calls the shots. After that, he decided to leave the UFO-ET subject alone.”

“No wonder Clinton was scared. But if presidents and former CIA Directors can’t bring this technology into the public domain, how am I supposed to do it?”

“Hell if I know. My guess is that someone within the inner circle thinks they can sneak you below the radar long enough to put you in position to succeed. Regardless, you’re going to need the help of the civilian I told you about. He’s quite brilliant and super-skeptical; you’ll have to win him over to get him to trust you.”

“How do I do that?”

“By opening your mind to the possibilities that there is far more to existence than what you were taught in school… that the truth has been hidden and the knowledge stolen — concealed between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact, and your ability to distinguish between the two just may save your life.”

“I understand.”

Dr. Manley shook his head. “You haven’t a clue. Once you enter the rabbit’s hole, you’ll be considered a threat to the status quo. Zero-point-energy will not just replace fossil fuels, Shariak, it is the game-changer that will eliminate hunger and poverty, pollution and climate change, disease and war… it will skyrocket the global economy and place every nation on an even playing field. Free, clean energy unlocks the door to humanity’s evolution as a species and we’ve possessed the key for 70 years, only the gatekeepers refused to allow us to use it in order to protect the oil oligarchs and the military industrial complex. It is the new physics that allows us to explore the galaxy and beyond.”

“Wait… are you saying we have the means to travel faster than the speed of light?”

“Yes. Only we didn’t invent it. We reverse-engineered it.”

“Reverse-engineered it? From where?”

“Not from where… from who—”

“—extraterrestrials.”

8

Adam was seated at the small work desk in his hotel room, finishing the last piece of sushi from the to-go order that had been waiting for him at the cash register. His thoughts were focused on the recent events that had accompanied his appointment as Under Secretary.

A clandestine meeting with a former president… notes written with invisible ink… a secret rendezvous in the back of a Japanese restaurant… and now they have me chasing extraterrestrials?

Has the world gone insane?

He belched, clearing enough room for a few palate-cleansing strips of ginger. There were only empty containers remaining on the coffee table. Somehow Dr. Manley had known exactly which rolls were his favorite.

The thought lingered as he retrieved his laptop, intent on learning everything he could about the “informed civilian” Dr. Manley insisted he meet next. Logging on the internet, he was about to search for the ET expert’s name when he paused.

If they can access my history of sushi takeout, they can certainly access my web search.

Leaving his laptop, he pocketed his room card, grabbed a can of ginger ale from the small refrigerator’s overpriced offerings, and headed downstairs to the hotel’s business center.

The room was empty and dark, the motion sensors causing the overhead fluorescent lights to flicker on as he swiped his key and entered.

There were three computer terminals separated by privacy cubicles. Situating himself at the station on the left, he logged on using his room number, making a mental note to bury his search history when he was finished.

He typed in the name Dr. Manley had given him — finding no shortage of references.

Dr. Steven Macon Greer was a medical doctor. He had left a successful career as an E.R. physician and the chairman at the Department of Emergency Medicine at Caldwell Memorial Hospital in Lenoir, North Carolina to launch the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI). According to his bio, this bizarre journey had been seeded back in 1965 when nine-year-old Steven and a few of his friends had witnessed an oval-shaped, gleaming silver ETV — an Extraterrestrial Vehicle. Over the following weeks, the boy began experiencing lucid dreams and night encounters with beings that were clearly “not from our planet.”

In 1990, Greer founded CSETI in order to create a diplomatic, research-based initiative to contact extraterrestrial civilizations. Three years later he founded Project Starlight which sought out government whistle-blowers willing to violate their security oaths by sharing insider knowledge about UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence, and advanced energy and propulsion systems. Hundreds of men and women had come forward, including former astronauts, commercial pilots and intelligence and military personnel.

In 1998 Greer gave up his career in medicine to work full-time on The Disclosure Project, preparing for what he hoped would be an event that would crack the dam of secrecy surrounding extraterrestrials and UFOs.

Adam found the YouTube link and clicked on it.

He forwarded through an introduction from a Hollywood actor, hitting PLAY when a tall, muscular man with a receding hairline appeared. In his late forties and exuding a commanding presence, the headliner took center stage before dozens of news networks and reporters.

Adam advanced the video, stopping at a witness — a Caucasian man in his early seventies, his long hair thick and white.

Adam fast-forwarded to a female eyewitness, her blonde hair and features somehow familiar. I’ve seen her before…

Adam looked up as another hotel guest attempted to enter the business center using his room key. Caucasian and in his early seventies, he wore a black suit and tie and a striped dress shirt. White eyebrows and sideburns stood out against pink flesh tones, his short-cropped greasy gray hair fashioned by a barber on a military base.

Unable to align the passkey’s magnetic strip, he gave up. Tapping the glass door with his wedding ring, the guest motioned to the lock, his piggish ice-blue eyes stared unblinkingly at Adam, bearing the hardened gaze of a sociopath.

“Can you let me in? My key doesn’t seem to be working.”

Manipulating the mouse, Adam clicked off the YouTube link, the cubicle’s partition shielding the computer’s monitor from the stranger’s glare. “Ask the front desk.”

The man’s face flushed red. A telltale jiggle of the handle revealed the spark of anger, then he forced a smile and left, heading for the front desk.

Adam quickly located the Chrome menu in the top right corner of his screen and opened a tab displaying the computer’s browsing history. Opening the drop-down menu on the History tab, he selected the Beginning of Time tab as the time range, and deleted the computer’s browser history as the guest returned with the night manager.

The man with the white eyebrows and soulless eyes entered, allowing the door to close on the manager’s apology. “You could have let me in.”

“Sorry, I was watching porn.” He winked. “Didn’t want to use the company laptop. You never know when Big Brother is watching.”

Collecting his empty ginger ale can, Adam pushed past the older man and limped out of the business center, heading for the elevators.

9

Located on Sewell’s Point peninsula, the U.S. Naval Station in Norfolk, Virginia is the largest military base of its kind, supporting ships and submarines operating in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans as well as the Mediterranean Sea.

Admiral Mark Hintzman, Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Fleet Forces, had been in a deep sleep when the call had come in. Groggy, he checked the text.

“Christ… is this really necessary?”

His wife, Jayne sat up in bed. “Is what necessary? Who is it?”

“I’m needed on the base.”

“At three in the morning?”

“It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”

“You’d better not have a mistress, Hintzman.”

“I’m sixty-two years old with two bulging discs and a swollen prostate — what the hell am I going to do with a mistress?”

Limping to the walk-in closet, he located a pair of jeans, a wool sweater and sneakers, and carried them into the bathroom to dress. By the time he exited his wife was already snoring.

Entering the kitchen, he debated whether he had time to brew a cup of coffee when the military limo pulled up outside his home. Putting on his windbreaker jacket, he yanked open the laundry room door and stepped out into the brisk night air.

Admiral Hintzman acknowledged his driver and climbed in the back seat. He nodded off before they had pulled out of the residential complex.

Ten minutes later he was awakened. “Sir, we’re at the gate.”

Rolling down his window, the Admiral flashed his Zebra security badge, the cold penetrating the vehicle’s cocoon of warmth. Satisfied, the armed marine raised the steel barrier, allowing the vehicle access inside the perimeter fencing.

A poorly-lit asphalt driveway led to an innocuous steel-framed, one-story prefabricated building that looked more like a supply shack than anything which would warrant the presence of a high-ranking officer.

The driver parked before a solitary entrance guarded by two marines armed with M-16s. Exiting the limo, the admiral offered his badge to one of the men’s flashlight beams, the other guard holding open the reinforced steel door.

Admiral Hintzman entered the building, following a dimly lit access corridor to a third checkpoint — a steel gate safeguarding a pair of elevators. He entered his Zebra security code on a touch panel, waited until the magnetic bolt retracted, then pushed open the gate as one of the elevator doors opened to greet him.

He stepped inside and held tight to the rail as the car dropped twenty stories into the depths of a dome-shaped, hardened steel and concrete bunker constructed to withstand the direct impact of a hydrogen bomb.

The elevator opened to his assistant, a young woman with a smile that always seemed to charm him, no matter how dour his day.

Sophia Pregadio handed him a fresh cup of coffee. “Woke you again, didn’t they?”

“Our visitors have no respect for the working man. I like the new hairstyle.”

“Nice try. I added the gold highlights two months ago.”

“Sorry. Where am I headed?”

“Conference Room-A. Director Solis is already inside with the night-shift nerds.”

“Not the South African?”

“Sunny Pilay? Don’t you remember? You had me transfer him to Pine Gap.”

“I forgot. Nice enough fellow; I just couldn’t understand a damn thing he was saying. Let the Aussies deal with him.”

“The new lab coat is American. Erin Driscoll.”

“Do I know him?”

“Her. She’s the strawberry blonde who got sick at the New Year’s Eve bash. Oh yeah… Dr. Death decided to make an appearance.”

“Christ. Did he bring the vampire queen?”

“She’s in the break room.”

“Probably feeding on bloodworms. The two of them make my skin crawl. Is that it?”

“General Cubit is on his way.”

“Good. I’ll watch the show from the theater until he gets here.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No. Wait, do we have any more of that chocolate cheesecake I had at lunch?”

“I’m sure I can find you a slice.”

“Good girl. Tell the general where to find me… and get him a slice, too.” Admiral Hintzman headed down a ramp leading to a pair of double steel doors which opened automatically as he approached.

The command center, often referred to as “the theater,” resembled NORAD’s war room, only its equipment was far more advanced. Technicians worked in open stations in a semi-darkness that was lit by colorful giant LED screens which occupied the entire six-story-high forward wall, the maps able to pinpoint the precise location of every air craft, warship, and submarine — friend or foe — in the world.

Everyone’s attention was focused on the thirty-by-fifty-foot center screen, its map zooming in upon Maine’s eastern seaboard where six to eight objects, color-coded in yellow, were flitting on and off the screen like fireflies. As the admiral watched, one of the lights raced east over the Atlantic as if shot out of a cannon, stopped on a dime, and then soared ninety degrees to the south and off the screen beyond the range of their radar.

A number flashed in the lower right corner. Velocity: 7,665 mph.

A pair of objects blinked into existence over Nova Scotia. Admiral Hintzman followed them as they streaked west across the Atlantic, their color fading from gold to aqua-blue, indicating the bogeys had submerged.

They disappeared, only to reappear seconds later over the coastline of Portland, Maine.

Velocity: 13,812 mph.

“Putting on quite a show for us tonight, huh Marko?”

The Admiral turned to a man in his mid-fifties. Like Hintzman, he was wearing casual attire, his sandy-brown short-cropped hair poking out beneath a Central Florida baseball cap.

“How are you, Tommy?”

“Good as can be expected. Matthew’s entering his second year in law school; Andrea’s back in Boca with our daughter and…” Cubit glanced up at the main screen as four red dots, flying in a diamond formation, crawled slowly across central Maine, heading for the coast. “Here come the F-16s.”

“If you ask me, this entire exercise is a waste of taxpayer money. It’s not like we’re ever going to catch them.”

“Attention. Admiral Hintzman and General Cubit, please report to Conference Room-A.”

“Xavier sounds cranky.”

Hintzman nodded. “Our director has uninvited guests.”

“Johnston?”

“And the Goth queen. She’s in the cafeteria eating bugs or whatever it is witches eat.”

“I wish someone would put a silver bullet in both their devil-worshiping hearts.”

“We should talk about that sometime.”

Sophia Pregadio approached, handing each man a slice of chocolate cheesecake on a paper plate. “Hurry up and eat this; I stole the last two pieces from Director Solis’s refrigerator.”

Conference Room-A was a 2,000-square-foot chamber featuring a balcony that overlooked the theater. Tonight its sliding glass doors remained closed and tinted, the four large flat screen LED monitors inside all tuned to the map featured on the command center’s main screen.

Xavier Solis, former Directorate of the CIA’s Special Activities Division, sat at the head of the oval smart table. On Solis’s left was Lillie Becker, co-chairman of the Council of Foreign Relations. On his right was Dr. Erin Driscoll; seated beside her was Dr. Michael Kemp, CEO of Kemp Aerospace. The two scientists were focused on the data scrolling across their iPad screens.

Seated at the opposite end of the table from Xavier Solis was the older Caucasian man, his piercing ice-blue eyes red-rimmed from having just driven three hours in the dark from Tyson’s Corner, his white eyebrows furrowed in concentration as if his mind was seeking a way to mentally obliterate the dancing yellow dots from existence.

Rory Johnston was twenty-six the year Adolf Hitler invaded Poland. The amateur pilot had just accepted a job teaching history at a high school in upstate New York and was worried about being drafted when he met Sandra Donahue at an Arts Festival. A struggling artist, Sandra was sharing a trailer with six people. Rory bought three of her paintings and asked her out.

Two weeks later, he asked her to move in.

A month later she informed him she was pregnant.

A devout Catholic, Rory convinced Sandra that they were meant to be together and asked her to marry him. Uncertain whether the child was even his, she nevertheless accepted, and the couple exchanged vows at Johnston’s church.

Alexander Rory Johnston was born on April 7, 1939. His father worked two jobs to make ends meet; his mother stayed home and painted, often leaving the infant alone in its crib while she worked… and drank and cursed her life.

Two weeks after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Rory received his draft notice.

After completing basic training, Private Johnston was informed that his experience flying qualified him to be trained as a bombardier. He was sent to England and, over the next four years, participated in more than a hundred combat missions. He returned home to a five-year-old son who did not recognize him and a wife who was just as distant. Sandra confessed that she was having an affair with the principal at the high school where Rory had worked and that she wanted a divorce.

Rory packed his belongings and left. He returned later that night — drunk and quite violent.

Alexander was playing in his room when he heard his mother yelling at the stranger. An object smashed against the other side of his wall, followed by a chorus of grunts and screams… then silence.

The boy waited, his pulse a steady sixty beats per minute. After a long moment he entered the hall and peeked through the open master bedroom door. He saw his mother spread-eagled on the floor, blood pooling in her mouth, the telltale purple imprints around her collapsed esophagus.

Hearing a noise coming from the master bathroom, he ducked beneath the bed.

Alexander watched through the reflection of the medicine cabinet mirror as Rory Johnston freed a length of chain link from the sky light and fashioned it into a noose. The boy grew excited, waiting until the groan that told him the stranger had stepped off the edge of the tub.

Alexander approached the bathroom gallows, far more curious than fearful. Suspended above the floor was an animated bag of flesh fighting to contain Rory Johnston’s soul. The boy studied everything — his father’s bulging eyes, the pulsating cords of blood vessels popping along the swelling neck, the herky-jerky leg movements…

The internal battle caused the body to sway and spin, and suddenly the former history teacher realized he had an audience. Purple lips mouthed silent objections, flailing arms commanding his son to leave.

The boy held his ground — the Grim Reaper’s protégé intent on counting down the final twitches of life until the stranger’s soul slipped free of its physical purgatory and escaped into the unknown.

His mind intoxicated by endorphins, Alexander spent another twenty minutes examining his parents’ vacant corpses before the police arrived. The night was an education in forensics — the child reveling in what would become his life’s passion: Thanatology: the study of death.

Alexander Johnston entered his teens, moving from one foster home to the next, his hobby of killing stray cats and raccoons tarnishing his surrogate family’s welcome. Seeking human subjects, he lied about his age and enlisted in the army when he was sixteen, the armed forces providing him with a “license to kill.” He quickly worked his way up through the ranks, demonstrating a lethal creativity on the battlefield that impressed his superiors. After enrolling in and graduating from Officer Candidate School, Colonel Johnston was chosen to command a Green Beret unit participating in clandestine operations in Vietnam and Thailand. One of these Special Forces — Project Phoenix — was responsible for the torture and killing of civilians in My Lai and later in El Salvador.

As educational as killing had become, what the colonel really desired to learn were methods of separating the life force from the body, an act which he believed would induce instant death. Believing this hidden knowledge existed among the more primitive cultures, Alexander Johnston resigned his commission and set out to find it, traveling to Tibet to converse with monks and with shamans in the Amazon jungle. He studied voodoo with witch doctors in Togo and feasted on human flesh with the cannibals of New Guinea. From the Russians he learned the art of psycho-correction; from former CIA officers, remote viewing and other paranormal exercises — until he was convinced he could use telepathy to interfere with the brain’s electrical activity and chase the life force from the body.

Three years later, Colonel Johnston presented his “soft option killing” theories to Major General Sebastian J. Appleton, Director of U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. Appleton was enthusiastic, and suddenly the man who had spent hundreds of hours staring at goats had a new position as Director of Non-Lethal Programs working out of the Los Alamos National Laboratories. Here, the colonel was able to focus on mind control and psychotronics while gaining access to black budget projects which used advanced technologies necessary for his project’s success. He worked side-by-side with Dr. Igor Smirnov, a psychologist from the Moscow Institute of Psycho-Correlations who had designed a technique to electronically analyze the human mind — a necessary step in order to learn how to influence and control it.

In 1992, Colonel Johnston married Yvonne Dwyer, a practicing Satanist and self-published author on the occult. At twenty-six, Dwyer was half the colonel’s age, but she saw in his eyes a youthful madness waiting to be exploited.

By day they lived the lives of semi-celebrities as the colonel became a popular TV and radio guest, debunking UFOs while presenting lectures on “non-violent warfare.” They rubbed elbows with billionaires, religious leaders and political power brokers, with the colonel being invited to sit on the boards of several powerful military contractors — allowing him unprecedented access into top-secret facilities and their black-shelved technologies. Behind closed doors, “Dr. Death” and his bride drank tiger’s blood and consumed the umbilical cords of newborns while participating in Satanic rituals — the biggest being the annual festivities at the Bohemian Grove.

Every July, two thousand elitists from all over the world — including former presidents and government officials, CEOs of major corporations, bankers, Big Oil executives, and members of the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, and the Council of Foreign Relations — were invited to the Bohemian Grove, a private compound located in a Redwood forest 65 miles north of San Francisco. On the first night of this pilgrimage, all the invited guests gathered at a clearing by the lake for the opening event, known as the Cremation of Care ceremony. There, guarded by the 45-foot-tall statue of an owl, Bohemians dressed in dark brown robes would pretend to struggle to ignite a bonfire required to burn a human effigy referred to as “Dull Care,” a symbol representing the burdens and responsibilities of the world leaders in attendance. The assembled then prayed to the giant owl, a Canaanite idol known as Moloch, that was used long ago to sacrifice children. Wild applause would erupt from the inebriated crowd as an aura of light appeared around the statue’s head when the pyre was successfully lit, the sound system blasting human cries into the night in a pagan ritual that bound the rich and powerful to darkness.

Admiral Hintzman followed General Cubit inside the conference room, the two men situating themselves in vacant chairs farthest from Colonel Johnston’s end of the table.

Director Solis looked up from his iPad as the two senior commanders entered. “Admiral… General; my apologies for asking you to join us at this ungodly hour, but this is the third night in a row we’ve had activity off the coast of Maine and it’s becoming very difficult to keep stories and photos out of the paper.”

The Admiral pinched the bridge of his nose, too tired to hide his annoyance. “What would you like us to do, Xavier? Ask the ETs to go home?”

“I really don’t see a problem,” General Cubit said. “There’s ten thousand reported sightings a year; almost none of which ever get any traction. With our birds in the area, the ETs will slip back into transdimensional space and that will be that.”

Director Solis powered off his iPad. “That’s part of the problem, General. The governor of Maine is demanding to know why our F-16s are buzzing his coastline. He’s pushing the White House, the White House is pushing the Pentagon, and the Pentagon is pushing me.”

“In a few months we may not have to worry about dispatching fighter jets anymore,” Lillie Becker stated. “From what Dr. Kemp was telling me, the lead engineer working on Project Zeus has discovered a telltale zero-point-energy flux which appears just before these ET vessels pop out of transdimensional space… a possibly telltale indicator we’ve been looking for.”

“It has potential,” Michael Kemp replied. “Of course, we won’t know anything until we get Dr. Marulli to the Cube. My firm simply doesn’t have the necessary technology or support staff to complete the project.”

Director Solis seemed positively giddy. “Good God, man, let’s fly her out tomorrow!”

General Cubit shook his head. “Let’s not jump the gun. There’s absolutely no consensus among the voting members of Council to greenlight Zeus.”

“Agreed,” the admiral said. “Zeus was insanity back when it was called Star Wars. We’re dealing with civilizations that are tens of thousands… maybe millions of years more advanced than us. Up until now they’ve been incredibly tolerant, considering we took out a dozen of their vehicles, killing their crews in the process. Start blasting them as they come out of transdimensional space, and things could get ugly quickly.”

“Now just a damn minute,” the director said, swiveling in his wheelchair to face the two dissenters. “They’ve interfered with our ICBMs, they’ve declared the moon off-limits — last time I checked, this was our planet.”

“Which we’re systematically destroying,” Erin Driscoll interjected.

“Young lady, if we want to destroy it, then that’s our prerogative.”

General Cubit rolled his eyes. “That makes no sense at all, Xavier.”

“Enough,” Colonel Johnston said, his voice just above a whisper. “This isn’t about Zeus or F-16s or Jesus coming to fly the born-again Christians off to heaven. These ETs are buzzing Portland, Maine for the same reason they buzzed Joshua Tree and Lisbon… because Steven Greer is out there on the beach with his followers, conducting another one of his damn CE-5 camp outs.”

“They’re on private property, Colonel,” General Cubit said. “It’s not a crime to sit in a circle and meditate.”

“I heard there’s a reporter with them from the local CBS affiliate,” Michael Kemp added. “The last thing we want is another Phoenix Lights situation.”

“Then it’s agreed,” Colonel Johnston said. “We need to take Greer out, once and for all.”

Admiral Hintzman turned a menacing glare at the white-browed older man. “Get it through your head, Dr. Death, that is not going to happen. Greer’s set up a Dead Man’s Trigger; you incapacitate him or send a wet works team after him, and we’ll be dealing with something far worse than a bunch of UFO sightings.”

“He has a lot of supporters out there,” Cubit added, “including members of MAJI.”

The colonel shrugged, typing something on his iPad. “Shit happens, general. Maybe the metastatic cancer will return.”

Admiral Hintzman stood, his face turning red. “Pull another stunt like you did back in ’97 and I’ll make sure you and that witch you married are burned at the stake.”

Alexander Johnston smiled coldly. “You’re not my commanding officer, Admiral. I’ve met with several members of Council who share my concerns. Nothing will happen to Greer for now, but it’s interesting to see where your loyalties lie.”

Gathering his iPad and coffee, Colonel Alexander Johnston exited the conference room.

10

It was 11:15 by the time Adam finished his breakfast meeting with the board of directors at Northrop-Grumman. A valet delivered his silver Jeep Grand Cherokee and he drove off the corporate complex, taking the northbound ramp out of Fairfax onto Interstate 495.

Seventy-two hours had passed since his bizarre conversation with Dr. Manley in the sushi restaurant. The issues they had discussed had lost their sense of urgency in the wake of an itinerary with military contractors which kept him busy from seven in the morning through midnight, and now Adam just wanted to get back to Jessica’s townhome and crawl into bed — preferably with his fiancée.

The highway was free of traffic, allowing his mind to wander. Adam’s personal opinion about the existence of extraterrestrials had always come down to a combination of logic, simple mathematics, and time. In our galaxy alone, it was estimated there were 400 billion stars and a trillion planets. Even if the odds of intelligent life existing on other worlds were a million-to-one, there would still be over a million inhabited planets in the Milky Way. Scientists estimated there were 200 billion more galaxies in the observable universe. Then there was the age of the universe; surely 14 billion years was enough time for evolution to take hold within these unreachable alien worlds.

Adam corrected his thoughts. Unreachable to us, not for a civilization tens of thousands or even millions of years more advanced than our own.

Logic aside, it was the emotional component surrounding other beings visiting Earth that fueled his skepticism. While there were thousands of UFO sightings reported every year, most were ignored by the mainstream media, with the eyewitnesses shrugged off as either being drunk, mistaken, or a little crazy. That was what had made the testimonials in Steven Greer’s 2001 Disclosure Project so compelling. These eyewitnesses were not just credible; many of them were former members of the military entrusted with top security clearances. And yet the one constant that prevented Adam from “drinking the Kool-aid” was the fact that he had never personally seen an extraterrestrial craft himself.

Nor was he interested in looking for one now. The issue at hand was not whether flying saucers and little green men existed, but whether zero-point-energy systems were being deliberately kept out of the public domain by a cabal operating both within and outside of the government.

If this was true then the question was: Just how far had the cancer spread?

Shariak had no doubt that secretly-funded projects existed; the CIA and NSA had been operating unchecked and off-the-books for decades. As Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, he had the authority to investigate any matter involving weapon systems; the problem was that the applications of any secret technologies would have been farmed out to private corporate entities like the military contractors he had just visited. Before he started “shaking the bushes,” he needed some direction, and that meant a face-to-face with Dr. Steven Greer.

According to Greer’s website, he was on some kind of retreat in Portland, Maine until the end of the week. The good news was that he was scheduled to give a talk in D.C. the following Thursday. Adam had reserved a seat. After the lecture he would arrange a private get-together and lay his cards out on the table. If Greer could help — great. If not, Adam’s next meeting would be with Bill Clinton where he’d politely hand him back his baton.

It was just past noon when he arrived at Jessica’s home, excited to find her white Infiniti parked out front. Leaving his bag in the car, he knocked on her door to surprise her.

“It’s open.”

Adam entered to find two packed suitcases by the front door. “Jess?”

“Adam? I’m in the kitchen!”

He found her packing her laptop. “What’s going on?”

“Hey, baby. I thought you were the driver. General Cubit called; Lockheed-Martin moved up our timetable. I have to be at Martin State Airport in Baltimore in less than an hour. I tried calling you but—”

“My phone died on the way home and I packed the charger. Will you really be gone a month?”

“Maybe two. Aw, don’t look so sad; Cubit said he’d fly me back for a few long weekends if all goes well.”

“If I had known, I would have pushed my trip back.”

Adam heard a car pull up. He glanced out the kitchen window at the limo. “First class.”

“Nothing but the best.” Jessica opened the front door for the driver. “You can take these two suitcases; I’ll be out in fifteen minutes.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She shut the door, turning to Adam. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Upstairs for a quickie. It’s a private jet… they can wait.”

Adam opened his eyes, feeling refreshed from the afternoon nap. He was still naked in Jessica’s bed, his fiancée’s scent mixing with his own; her perfume lingering in the bedroom though she had kissed him good-bye over an hour before.

Reaching for his prosthetic leg, he pulled the harness over his stump, making sure the electrodes commanding the smart joint were all aligned. Twenty minutes later he emerged from the bedroom in jeans and a polo shirt, wondering what there was to eat.

Adam headed downstairs, his eyes glancing at the photos mounted along the wall on his right, the assorted colors and sizes of the frames laid out like a jigsaw puzzle.

He was halfway down the steps when he saw the worn black and white image.

The photo had been taken outdoors, the three women and a child posing in front of a Lockheed U-2 spy plane. The blonde on the right was a younger version of Donna Hare, one of the eyewitnesses who had testified in The Disclosure Project video. The dark haired, blue-eyed woman on the left appeared to be a test pilot, a jumpsuit tag identifying her as L. Gagnon.

As for the attractive woman in the middle holding her two-year-old daughter — it was Dr. Barbara Jean Marulli, Jessica’s mother.

The 6,538-square-foot waterfront estate was located on a private two-acre lot in Annapolis, Maryland’s prestigious Wardour on the Severn. A housekeeper led Adam past the grand entrance and through the gourmet kitchen to the foyer. “She’s waiting for you out back by the pool.”

“Thanks, I know the way.”

Adam exited out the French doors. The late afternoon sun was at his back, the July heat at its worst. The emerald green waters of the Chesapeake were spread out before him, sparkling beneath a cobalt blue sky. Three small docks and deepwater slips were anchored along the private shoreline shaded by a cluster of towering pine trees.

The stone path led to an Amish-built carriage home set between the main house and the waterfront. He found Jessica’s mother sunning herself in a padded lounge chair by the outdoor pool. She was dressed in a white and navy trim tennis outfit from an earlier match, her eyes concealed behind designer sunglasses.

Dr. Barbara Jean Singleton-Marulli was in her mid-sixties, though she could have easily passed for fifty. A competitive gymnast in high school, it was her athleticism that had blossomed in Jessica… along with a passion for science.

Adam scuffed his shoes on the cement, attempting to alert his future mother-in-law that he was there without startling her.

“Hello, Adam. I heard you when you rang the doorbell. There’s a spread by the bar. Grab something to eat and join me.”

He entered the cottage through the open sliding glass door. A deli platter and assorted rolls, breads, and desserts occupied the bar — leftovers from an earlier lunch. Tossing two slices of rye bread onto a paper plate, he made himself a turkey, mayo, and Muenster cheese sandwich, grabbed a bottled water from a cooler of melted ice, and headed back outside.

Barbara Jean was finishing a text message on her iPhone with one hand, the other dabbing sweat beads with a towel.

“Captain Marulli around?”

“He’s at the club.” She looked up, offering Adam a cold smile. “So? How is my daughter? I hardly ever hear from her. You’d think she’d want to be more involved in her own wedding plans.”

“She’s been busy.”

“Frankly, my husband and I were surprised when she told us the two of you were engaged. Jessica is like me — a workaholic. I was twenty-three when Kelly Johnson recruited me straight out of Cal Tech. My first project was the F-117 Stealth Fighter, and I ended up marrying one of the pilots. Thirty-two years I worked at Skunkworks, spending fourteen-hour days in the lab right up until I went into labor with Jessica.”

She powered off her cell phone. “Okay, Mr. Deputy Under Secretary, what was so important that you needed to drive all the way out here to talk to me about it?”

“Jess has an old black and white photo of the two of you taken at Lockheed; she can’t be more than a few years old. There’s a woman standing next to you; her name is Donna Hare. I saw her on a YouTube video done in May of 2001 at an event called The Disclosure Project. She testified about seeing undoctored NASA photos taken on the far side of the moon which revealed… structures.”

“What kind of structures? Oh, good God, you drove all the way out here to ask me about aliens?”

“And other things.”

“Adam, I didn’t know Donna Hare. We had a mutual friend in Lydia Gagnon, the test pilot in that photo. I don’t know anything about moon bases or aliens… Jesus.”

“What about the F-117’s design?”

“What about it?”

“How much of it was reverse-engineered?”

“Reverse-engineered from what?”

“A downed UFO.”

Barbara Jean covered her grin. “This is a joke, isn’t it? Did Juice put you up to this?”

“You worked in Lockheed’s Skunkworks Division. I thought maybe you might have had access to the stuff Colonel Corso wrote about in his Roswell book.”

“Adam, Phillip Corso was bat-shit crazy. Do I need to worry about you now?”

“Someone I know wanted my opinion about the subject. I was curious if you knew anything.”

“About UFOs?”

“More about the energy source that supposedly powers them.”

Barbara Jean wiped the sweat from the back of her neck. “It’s too hot out here, let’s go inside.”

He grabbed his bottled water and paper plate and followed her inside the cottage, feeling foolish.

Barbara slid the glass door shut behind them and locked it. “What do you know about wine?”

“About as much as I do about UFOs, I suppose. Why?”

“So your trip out here isn’t a total waste of time I’ll give you a quick lesson; that way you can impress my daughter the next time you two go out to dinner.”

Barbara led him through a short alcove off the kitchen to an arching wooden door. Opening it, she felt for a light switch before descending a narrow spiral staircase that took them into the basement.

Artificial legs were not designed to maneuver down tight spiral stairwells, forcing Adam to hop a step at a time. Sound seemed to mute as he followed her deeper into the bowels of the foundation and into an expansive wine cellar. The floor, racks, and cabinetry were made of cherrywood. Bottles of wine lined both walls.

Barbara searched the racks for several minutes before selecting a dust-covered burgundy. “Clos de Vougeot, Grand Cru, Leroy 1961. It’s the captain’s favorite.”

She placed the bottle on a granite-topped island situated beneath a white panel of light in the ceiling. Opening a side drawer, she located a cork screw and expertly popped open the bottle. Sliding two inverted wine glasses out from an overhead rack, she poured just enough for a taste test into each one.

“There are four basic steps in evaluating a wine. The first is color. It’s best to hold the glass up to a white background.” Barbara demonstrated, using the overhead panel. “With a red wine, we’re looking for a darker color which occurs during fermentation when the juice is left in contact with the skins. A dark color is associated with a more intense flavor. Brown means the wine is old. All red wines eventually brown with age, but you don’t want too much cloudiness. Blush wine grapes are fermented with only limited contact to the skin; white wines are fermented with no contact.”

Adam nodded politely, wondering how they had gone from UFOs to judging wine.

“Next is the smell test. Once the wine is poured you want to swirl it around in the glass to release its natural aroma. Immature wines carry little or no bouquet, while a mature wine carries a robust fruity aroma.”

She inhaled, Adam following her lead. “Smells good.”

“Can you detect a hint of oak? That comes from the barrel where the wine was aged. Older bottles may only exude an aroma for a few moments after uncorking, so it’s best not to let an older wine breathe too long before drinking it.”

“Older wine, short breaths… got it.”

“Finally we get to the taste test. Taste is totally subjective, but we’re looking for two things — a rich flavor and an aftertaste. A good wine made from ripe grapes will linger in your mouth; an unpleasant bitter aftertaste means the wine is high in acidity. Go on, drink up.”

Adam drained the glass, the burgundy carrying a fruity taste with a bit of a kick.

“Do you like it?”

He didn’t, but he nodded anyway. “To be honest, I’m not much of a drinker.”

She filled his glass. “Keep chasing after zero-point-energy, and trust me, that will change.”

“Wait… what?”

“Let’s sit down.” The retired engineer led him to a small sitting area composed of a loveseat, two wooden rocking chairs and a leather recliner. She settled in on the loveseat and filled her wine glass to the brim, Adam opting for one of the rockers.

“My husband and I bought this property twelve years ago. When we added the wine cellar, we had electromagnetic sound dampeners installed within the walls of the foundation… too many eyes watching and ears listening.” She paused to drain her glass. “I assume you have a Q-clearance?”

“Yes.”

“Q-Clearance is nuclear, and nuclear is bubkus. I have a Cosmic Clearance. It’s about forty clearances above Q-Clearance… it’s at the top, there’s nothing higher. Ninety-nine percent of the politicians on Capitol Hill and ninety percent of the assholes in the Pentagon have no idea it even exists. Only about twenty-five people in the world at any given time carry a Cosmic Clearance, and none of them are presidents or heads of state. But some of them are quite nasty. I’m telling you this because if I get too buzzed and reveal certain things to you that I shouldn’t, your ability to keep your mouth shut may very well determine if I’ll be around to attend your wedding in September… which would really be a nice thing considering we’re footing the bill.”

Adam felt his heart racing. “What’s said down here stays down here.”

“Good. Now ask your questions.”

“How long has all this been going on?”

“You mean, how long have other intelligent species been visiting Earth? Who knows? Archaeologists have discovered cave paintings and Egyptian hieroglyphics which suggest extraterrestrial-human contact might trace back thousands of years. The more recent documented interactions with UFOs began in the 1940s during World War II. Allied pilots and crewmen reported seeing strange orb-like objects of light buzzing our bombers during combat sorties. The Nazis apparently saw them as well, and before too long, everyone started referring to them as ‘foo fighters,’ which translates as ‘fire’ in French and German. These orbs, which could be described as energy drones, often disrupted electronics aboard our warplanes while affecting gravity. Occasionally one would pass transdimensionally right through one of our bombers, freaking out the crew.

“FDR was very concerned and he dispatched General Jimmy Doolittle to the Allied theater of operations in Europe to find out if this was some kind of new high-tech Nazi secret weapon. Doolittle reported back that the objects were interplanetary in nature.

“Sightings increased after we dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. New Mexico became a UFO traffic magnet, and for good reason. The first nukes were created in Los Alamos and tested in Alamagordo and Whites Sands.

“Then two years later, everything changed. On June 24, 1947 there was a UFO sighting that made the international news. Eight nights later, three saucer-shaped ETVs, each fifty-feet-in-diameter, began buzzing Roswell Air Force Base, home of the 509th bomber squadron, the only wing in the world equipped with atomic weapons. Two of the UFOs crashed. One went down southwest of Corona, New Mexico. The second crash site was discovered in Horse Mesa, west of Magdalena, New Mexico. The ‘official story’ is that Roswell had been using a high-powered radar system that was set on a certain frequency which disrupted two of the ET crafts’ propulsion and navigation systems, causing them to collide. Having spent time with Colonel Phillip Corso three decades later, I can tell you what really happened.

“Roswell had secretly developed a pulsed scalar longitudinal electromagnetic weapon, the beam of which struck two of the three ETVs at supra-light speed as the crafts were phasing out of transdimensional space-time. The pair collided and one was completely destroyed, the second was salvaged… along with its dead thirty-six-inch-tall hominids. They were classified as Greys, after their gray skin tone.

“Between June of 1947 and December of 1952, the military’s EMS weapon brought down thirteen extraterrestrial spacecraft; eleven of them in New Mexico, one each in Nevada and Arizona. Two other crashes occurred in Mexico and one in Norway. Sixty-five bodies were recovered, including one ET that was kept alive for three years.”

“A live alien?”

“From the Roswell crash. By the way, the whole ‘alien’ thing… they find that term a bit derogatory. They prefer extraterrestrial.”

“What happened to it… the surviving ET?”

“It was a Grey. They called it EBEN, short for Extraterrestrial Biological Entity. It was hairless, with a bulb-shaped head and big black eyes that had no exterior lids. From the autopsy reports I’ve read, the ET’s internal anatomy was chlorophyll-based, and it processed food into energy and waste material in the same manner as plants. The EBEN had a solitary organ that did the job of both a heart and lungs, but they had multiple stomachs which performed different digestive processes. They also had an organ that would take every single bit of moisture out of whatever they ate and fed the body; so they had no need to drink a lot of fluids.

“The EBEN brain has eleven different lobes, and where the spinal cord met the brain, there were two little bulbs on each side. The eyes were very sophisticated with optic nerves that went into different anatomical parts of the brain than human optic nerves…

“These beings are thin and wiry, but their muscles are fibrous and quite strong, especially the legs. The hands are thin and double-jointed, and each of its four long fingers possesses a suction-tip. Its sexual organs are internalized, but the scientists assigned to the EBEN were pretty sure it was a male. According to the ET, there were female EBEN, just none on any of these ships.

“They didn’t have any ears, but they had a canal with an organ or gland — a little bulb that they could hear out of. They didn’t have vocal cords like we have. I read a briefing that indicated a procedure was performed on the EBEN which allowed it to talk or make sounds. None of that was necessary since they communicated telepathically.”

“Where did they keep it?”

“The live one? At first, Fort Dietrick, Maryland, then at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and later at the Huntsville Redstone Arsenal.

“Our scientists learned a lot from EBEN, all of which was compiled into what became known as the Yellow Book. Unfortunately, the ET became ill in late-1951. Several medical specialists were brought in to treat it, the team headed by a botanist. Realizing it was dying, the United States began broadcasting radio signals into deep space in an attempt to demonstrate peaceful intentions to what was obviously a superior entity. The group tasked with overseeing this project — code named SIGMA — was the National Security Agency, created by secret Executive Order on November 4, 1952. The NSA was assigned to monitor all communications, both human and extraterrestrial, while maintaining secrecy regarding the UFOs’ presence.”

“So, the CIA and NSA were both created in response to these UFO events?”

“Correct, though the first secret task force to investigate the ET phenomenon was organized under the name Project Sign and evolved into Project Grudge a year later. A low level disinformation project named Blue Book was created to fool the public. Meanwhile, ‘Blue Teams’ were trained to recover the downed ETVs, later evolving into Alpha Teams under Project Pounce.

“Both the CIA and NSA were given complete autonomy through a series of National Security Council Memos and Executive Orders which legalized their covert activities and kept Truman and his advisors out of the loop, allowing them to maintain plausible deniability in the event any information leaked to the public. This buffer effectively gave the intelligence community the legal right to keep future presidents in the dark regarding UFOs.”

“What happened to the Grey?”

“The EBEN died in June of 1952. Spielberg’s movie, E.T. was loosely based on these events.”

Barbara Jean refilled her glass with burgundy. “Imagine you’re President Truman. On your watch, the military’s secret weapon has shot down thirteen UFOs, and the lone ET you’ve held captive for the last three years just croaked. Harry S. knows he’s dealing with civilizations whose technology is light years ahead of ours, so you can imagine he’d be freaking out a bit, worried about an alien invasion.

“Truman contacted our allies to warn them about what happened. He also reached out to the Soviet Union. Turns out their top-secret weapon bases were also being buzzed by ETVs. They decided maintaining secrecy was more important than sharing the information with their respective governing bodies and risking a leak. A new world order was necessary, one that operated without oversight, allowing it to move quickly in the event of an ET invasion. This secret government became known as the Bilderberg Group, named after the hotel in Switzerland where they first met. They continue to meet there every year and it is this group, not the United Nations nor the G-8 that sets global policy.

“Dwight D. Eisenhower took office in 1953. During the president’s first year as Commander-in-Chief, nine more UFOs were downed in the United States; four in Arizona, two in Texas, and one each in Louisiana, Montana, and New Mexico. There were also thousands of reported sightings. Knowing he had to be proactive without involving Congress, Eisenhower enlisted the help of his friend, Nelson Rockefeller, a fellow member of the Council on Foreign Relations. With the CIA busy placing the Shah of Iran in power and the NSA eavesdropping on Castro, Rockefeller decided a new agency was needed that would be solely dedicated to UFO encounters while overseeing the incredible technologies that were being acquired through reverse-engineering of all their downed space craft.

“Majestic-12 was launched a year later as an independent agency operating on a black budget. Its first members were said to have included Rockefeller; Secretary of Defense, Charles E. Wilson; CIA Director, Allen Dulles; Secretary of State, John Foster-Dulles; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Arthur Radford; and FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover. There were also six men selected from the Council on Foreign Relations and six from the JASON Society, a scientific group formed during the Manhattan Project. Policies could only be mandated by a majority vote of twelve, thus the name.”

“Barbara, our government is known for leaks. How has MJ-12 been able to maintain its hold on secrecy for so long?”

“Internal compartmentalization is the key. As a scientist, if you are working for a USAP — an Unacknowledged Special Access Project — your task is so job-specific that you can’t see the rest of the puzzle, or even the piece you’re working on. As a USAP director who has a need to know, I’ve found myself on several different occasions being escorted into a secret underground facility for a coming-to-Jesus talk. The good news, you’re told, is that you are going to be paid very well for the rest of your life. The bad news is that if you speak outside the circle of trust, it won’t be a very long life. Every member of Council has a bullet with their name on it just waiting to be popped into the chamber. Keep in mind that rank has no bearing when it comes to black ops. If you are involved in a USAP and your C.O. calls you into his office and asks you about it, your response is simple — as far as you know, no such project exists. Say anything else and you might end up like James Forrestal.”

“What happened to him?”

“As I mentioned, Forrestal was appointed by Truman to be the country’s first Secretary of Defense. As such, he was engaged in the UFO agenda from Day One. Being a very idealistic and religious man, he believed that the public should be told about the situation. When it looked like Dewey would win the presidential election, Forrestal began pushing to talk to leaders of the opposition party and Congress. After Truman pulled out the upset and was reelected, Forrestal was asked to resign.

“Leaving office didn’t render Forrestal any less of a potential threat; it just placed him lower on the media radar. It wasn’t long, however, before the former Defense Secretary began acting paranoid, telling friends and family that he was being watched. There were reports of a mental breakdown and suicide attempts, which led to his forced admittance to the Bethesda Naval Hospital where he was kept under 24-hour watch in a private room on the 16th floor, his family denied visitation rights.

“Over the next several months there were indications he was improving and that his brother, Henry, was demanding his release. On May 22, 1949, around 2 a.m., James Forrestal’s corpse was found on the third floor roof of Bethesda Hospital. Authorities claim the guard had left his post and the former Secretary of Defense had used the opportunity to escape to a kitchen across the hall where he tied one end of his bathrobe sash around his neck, the other end to a radiator by the window. Pushing out the screen, he attempted to climb out along the edge and hang himself, only the knot slipped and he fell thirteen stories to his death.”

“What can you tell me about these zero-point-energy devices? Have you ever seen one?”

“Anything of importance is kept in one of these vast subterranean complexes built by Bechtel. Now it’s time for you to go; I’m tipsy and I’ve said way too much.”

It was dusk by the time Barbara Marulli awoke from her catnap. Adam was gone, her future son-in-law having left a few hours earlier.

Collecting the empty burgundy bottle and cork, she trudged up the spiral stairwell to the first floor. She tossed the bottle in the recycling bin and turned on her iPhone, dialing the memorized number.

The phone rang, a male voice picking up on the third ring. “Speak.”

“It’s me. It went as well as can be expected.”

11

When Jessica Marulli had been told that a private jet would be waiting for her at Martin State Airport to fly her to her on-site assignment at Edwards Air Force Base, she had expected the usual G-500 Gulfstream. To her surprise, the chauffeur parked the limo beneath the starboard wing of a Boeing 767-33A/ER jumbo jet.

“All this is for me?”

“Yes, ma’am. Go on up, I’ll bring your bags.”

Jessica exited the vehicle and ascended the mobile staircase.

Her eyes widened as she stepped inside the commercial airliner. First-class was not a foreign concept to the physicist; her parents’ careers having afforded them the good life. But what awaited her inside the cabin was an entirely different level of luxury. Everything in the wide-bodied cabin aft of first-class seating had been gutted, the interior converted into a mini-mansion. The forward section was dominated by a plush ivory sofa mounted along the starboard side, its treble-clef-shaped curvature matched by a marble coffee table. Behind it was a concave mirrored privacy wall, the effect of which seemed to double the size of the forward compartment. Violet cushions matched the thick-pile carpeting which stood out smartly against the padded ivory walls. Moving aft led her to a dining room that seated twenty, the rectangular table anchored beneath three small chandeliers. The middle compartment concluded with a fifteen-foot flat screen TV and an assortment of recliners, sofas, and love seats that were no doubt put to good use on long flights by the jet’s owner and his entourage.

A closed set of mirrored double doors separated the middle section of the plane from the aft compartment.

Jessica knocked. Receiving no reply, she tried the handle and pushed her way inside.

“Oh my Gawd.”

The heart-shaped, king-sized bed was covered in a mink quilt, the fur reflected in the mirrored ceiling. An entertainment center included another large flat screen television. A small workout area consisted of a stationary bike, a treadmill, and a six-station gym.

Guess the owner likes to watch himself in action…

She ran her fingers across the smooth-as-silk fur blanket as she walked past the bed to inspect the bathroom. Gold faucets accentuated the black marble sink. Thick violet towels were stacked in racks by a completely enclosed glass shower as wide as six phone booths. A black porcelain toilet and bidet were harbored in a private water closet.

“Impressed?”

She turned to find General Thomas J. Cubit standing by the open double doors. He was dressed in what appeared to be a golf outfit.

“General Cubit? I didn’t know you’d be accompanying me to California.”

“Someone has to brief you on your new assignment.”

She groaned. “Seriously? I haven’t finished my work on Zeus and you’re already adding more to my agenda?”

“The new assignment is Zeus. We considering having you take over as the project’s director.”

Adrenaline coursed through Jessica’s bloodstream. “What happened to Scott Hopper?”

“Dr. Hopper had a few personal issues which forced him to vacate the position. Join me in the entertainment center; we’re about to taxi to the runway and the crew wants us buckled in… some ridiculous FAA regulation.”

She followed him out of the bedroom suite, her mind racing. As a Team Leader, her work up to this point had been confined to overseeing the guidance system of Zeus—the military’s new satellite array. As project director of an Unacknowledged Special Access Project, she would have to be brought inside the inner circle.

Mother said she was fifty-two when she took over her first USAP; I’ve got her beat by fifteen—

She shook her head as if to knock the toxic thought out of her brain. Stupid! You can’t even drop a hint about the promotion… not to your family or to Adam… not to anyone.

“Dr. Marulli?”

“Sorry… I’m coming.”

The Mojave Desert covers 54,000 square miles, extending east from Southern California into Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. Edwards Air Force Base is located in the southwestern corner of the desert not far from Lancaster, California. In addition to its airfields, the complex includes the China Lake Naval Weapons Center and the Fort Irwin Military Center, as well as the restricted air space above all three facilities.

There is another section of the complex — only this one cannot be found on any map.

The 767 jumbo jet touched down on a sand-swept tarmac surrounded by flatland. To the west, snow-capped mountains rose in the distance; to the east an unpaved access road led to a security gate — the only entrance through a ten-foot-high steel perimeter fence, the barrier topped by coils of barbed wire and outfitted with security cameras.

The only structure in the area was a 2,000-square-foot prefabricated building concealed beneath an open-ended hangar, its camouflage-painted roof large enough to accommodate the jumbo jet which taxied to a stop beneath the flat-roofed structure. A dust-covered SUV was parked outside the building, its doors advertising Mojave Environmental Services.

A garage door rolled open, releasing a man in overalls driving a motorized set of steps. Aligning the top of the stairs with the aircraft’s forward door, he honked twice.

The exit swung open, releasing one of the jumbo jet’s two VIPs.

The desert heat blasted Jessica in the face as she stepped off the 767. High overhead, the hangar roof blocked the afternoon sun — along with the cameras aboard any orbiting recon satellite. As she descended the steps she saw a tech remove her luggage from the plane’s cargo hold.

General Cubit remained on board. He would be flying on to San Francisco for a week-long holiday with his wife in Carmel. While Cubit played golf at Pebble Beach, Jessica would be occupied with an intense seven-day orientation — assuming she accepted the directorship of a USAP.

“It’s a security issue, Jessica. This particular project requires the director to have something called a Cosmic Clearance. The process normally takes several years to complete — your review, by the way, began eight months ago. Unfortunately, our need to complete critical work on Zeus, combined with Dr. Hopper’s unexpected departure, forces us to accelerate things quite a bit. As we speak, Council is voting on the issue. If you’re approved they’ll offer you the position, at which time you’ll be fully briefed on Zeus.”

“How do you expect me to blindly accept a position without knowing what the job entails?”

“Did I mention the salary?”

“It’s never been about the money, General.”

“You’ll receive a million a month to start.”

Jessica felt the blood drain from her face. “Twelve million a year?”

“Plus perks. Six weeks paid vacation, access to the best hotels in the world. You’ll be able to buy yourself a decent engagement ring.”

She flashed him a look to kill.

“Sorry, that was out of line. But make no mistake, this is a game-changer for you and Adam. The only caveat being that he can never know what you’re working on.”

“Who’s paying my salary?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does to the IRS. Somehow I suspect my accountant may need to be briefed.”

“That will all be handled for you. As for the funds, they’ll be wired directly into your account on the twelfth of every month from a non-profit cancer research foundation.”

“You mean the CIA?”

“This is black budget research, Dr. Marulli. If you want to work on the most advanced sciences known to man you have to tell a few white lies and you also need a Cosmic Clearance. Opportunities like this are rare, even for someone possessing your talents. My gut tells me you’ll be approved by Council but they’ll want your answer the moment you enter the Cube.”

The two MPs were waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, each Marine armed with an M-16.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Marulli. If you’ll come with us please.”

She followed them inside the prefabricated building’s front door to a waiting room that looked like something straight out of the 1960s. The floor was black and white checkered linoleum, the walls done in fake walnut wood paneling. Framed posters, faded and yellowed with age, featured antiquated information about California’s environmental laws. Six chairs faced an unplugged RCA television set, the foam stuffing visible on the split-open worn vinyl cushions.

An open door on the left revealed a supervisor’s office. A familiar gray-haired man dressed in a plaid shirt and worn jeans sat with his hiking boots propped atop a wooden desk. Brown eyes, magnified behind reading glasses, looked up from an issue of Sports Illustrated.

“Dr. Marulli.”

“Afternoon, Fred. How’s the wife?”

“Meaner than a bobcat. I see you hitched a ride with one of the hotshots.”

“Guess I’m moving up in the world.” She joined the two MPs who were waiting for her in the break room.

As she stepped inside, one of the marines shut and locked the door behind her while the second guard moved to the soda vending machine, the only modern piece of apparatus in the visitor center. Inserting a credit card in the pay slot, he selected ROOT BEER.

Internal magnetic locks snapped open, allowing the marine to slide the false outer door aside — revealing an awaiting elevator.

Jessica stepped inside. She held on as the doors sealed.

The subterranean base, known as the Cube, was the only one Jessica Marulli had ever visited. She suspected Vandenberg Air Force Base had a similar underground complex, as did Groom Lake. Two years before she had worked with a loose-lipped army engineer from Riverside, California named Matthew DeVictor. In an obvious attempt to impress her, the former officer at Bechtel described operating a nuclear-powered boring machine that could drill a tunnel seven miles long in a single day.

“We called them subterrene machines and they were massive, as long as the Space Shuttle with a diameter three times larger. On board was a compact nuclear reactor that circulated liquid lithium from the reactor core to the tunnel face, generating exterior temperatures in excess of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s hot enough to melt rock so there’s no excavated soil or stone left to remove… no telltale evidence. As the lithium loses some of its heat, it’s circulated back along the exterior of the subterrene which cools the vitrified rock, leaving behind a smooth, finished, obsidian-like inner core — perfect for their unidirectional Maglev trains. I hear those puppies can travel at speeds in excess of 1,500 miles an hour. They have an entire underground rail system that connects one subterranean complex with the next.

“The Bechtel Corporation has been building these underground cities for the secret government since the 1940s. At first it was a response to the Soviet’s nuclear threat, but over the last thirty years, it’s shifted into something else entirely.

“The biggest project I ever worked on was the one located beneath Denver’s International Airport. The complex is over twenty miles in diameter and goes down eight levels. It houses the new CIA headquarters — Langley’s just a front. One of my buddies, a structural engineer named Stuart Martin, worked on and off the project for six years on account of them constantly changing construction companies in order to prevent any one particular group from knowing too much. It never bothered Stu; being one of the few structural engineers around with experience working underground, he’d just bounce from one company to the next as a freelancer. If you check out the surface area adjacent to the Denver airport, you can see these small concrete ventilation stacks that resemble mini-cooling towers. They’re spread out across the entire surface area, some of them partially hidden behind shrubs. Of course, you can’t get too close — the perimeter’s fenced in.

“My last day on the job, I saw workers hanging Masonic symbols and bizarre murals on the walls featuring burning cities. To be honest, it scared the piss out of me. Bad enough no one knows about these facilities; to think some whacked out religious cult is involved makes it even worse. Of course, they scare the bejeezus out of you when you’re hired, letting you know in no uncertain terms that if you ever talk about anything, you’ll get the Jimmy Hoffa treatment.”

The elevator descended rapidly with no indication of how deep it was going. After thirty seconds it slowed to a smooth stop, its doors opening to reveal a short Caucasian woman in her mid-forties.

Sandy Lynn Bagwell greeted Jessica with the same southern charm she reserved for all her Zebra-level guests. “Good afternoon, Dr. Marulli. It’s been quite a while since your last visit. We’ve missed you.”

“Thank you; it’s nice to be back.” She glanced nervously to her left where two more armed MPs were waiting.

“Dr. Marulli, come with us.”

Jessica followed the two men down a wide white-tiled corridor, its walls papered in navy blue. They stopped at the first door on the left — a knobless steel barrier with a built-in security device.

One of the guards slid his identification card in the slot, causing a magnetic bolt to activate. “In you go.”

Jessica pushed the door open, her hands shaking.

She jumped as the guard slammed it shut behind her, extinguishing the corridor light, leaving her in complete darkness.

“Hello?”

She was afraid to move, unable to see her hand in front of her face.

“Is there a reason you have me standing in the dark?”

Her pulse raced, her breaths turning rapid and shallow as her anxiety rose.

Stay calm… they’re testing you.

“Stay calm… they’re testing you.”

The voice was female but not her own, nor was it human — its cadence computer generated.

“You can read my thoughts?”

No response.

You can read my thoughts?

We can do many things. Telepathy is the most efficient method of communication, don’t you agree, Dr. Marulli?

The voice was male, this time human.

Telepathy may be efficient, but how does one function without the ability to filter every inner thought from the rest of the world?

What thoughts would you filter? Another male telepath asked. Feelings of anger? Hatred? Lust? The desire to hurt another?

Or perhaps the need to deceive? A human female voice suggested.

Jessica felt off-balance and vulnerable, afraid to think. The effect of the darkness magnified her fear, penetrating every fiber of her being, reducing her to nothingness… to an unutterable thought.

A primal urge saved her from the madness.

I have to pee.

No response.

I said I have to pee. Since you can read my thoughts you know I’m not attempting to deceive you. You can either guide me to the nearest toilet or I’ll pull down my pants and piss on your damn floor.

A light appeared, revealing a bathroom and giving the chamber depth.

She made her way slowly across the room, her eyes gathering as much information as she could, her fingers counting each stride.

Entering the bathroom she pulled the door shut, dropped her pants and sat down on the toilet.

Seven fingers… about fifteen to twenty feet from the bathroom to the exit. Circular chamber, the walls composed of some kind of dark, porous material, which means they probably can’t read my thoughts outside of this room.

Can you?

Hello?

She smiled to herself. I wonder how long they’ll allow me to sit here before they lose patience and have to send someone in to get me?

She glanced up at the door, its interior knob equipped with a lock. Reaching for it, she pushed the center button in.

Jessica relieved her bladder. When she was finished, she pulled up her pants and flushed, then lowered the toilet’s lid and sat, waiting for her hosts to make the next move.

After a minute the lights flickered on and off.

Come on, guys. You’ll have to do better than that.

“If you are finished,” the female voice spoke out loud, “please join us in the chamber.”

“So you can play more head games with me? I don’t think so. I came here of my own free will to do a job. I didn’t ask to be promoted, but if this is the way you treat your Cosmic Clearance candidates you can count me out.”

“Dr. Marulli, this is Paul Sova. We met several years ago at Lockheed Martin. Do you remember me?”

“You worked with my mother.”

“And now I’d like to work with you. You have my word — no more head games.”

Jessica exited the bathroom.

The chamber was lit, revealing an oval conference table situated at the center of the circular room. Twelve chairs were occupied by ten men and two women. A vacant thirteenth chair was positioned on Paul Sova’s left. The tall, dark-haired rocket scientist from North Dakota waved her over, his hazel eyes failing to reflect the ceiling lights.

He’s a hologram… they all are. General Cubit’s presence at the far side of the table confirmed her theory.

“You are quite right, Dr. Marulli,” Dr. Sova said, still tuned into her thoughts. “We are joining you from all across the globe.”

Jessica glanced around the table. With the exception of Paul Sova and the general, none of the facial features of the other ten virtual attendees were in focus.

“Who are you people?”

“We serve on Council’s selection committee,” one of the men replied, his voice distinctly Australian. “You have been approved for promotion in the science and technology sector.”

“There are four sectors, Dr. Marulli,” said a man in a white lab coat, his dialect revealing his nationality to be Chinese. “Besides science and technology, there are representatives of the military, business and commerce, and security.”

Jessica rubbed her eyes, the blurred faces of the holograms giving her a headache. “I’m a little confused. Who is Council? What do you do?”

The image of Paul Sova smiled. “Essentially, we run the world.”