Area 51 Page 20

  “Seventy thousand feet and climbing,” Quinn reported. “Seventy-five thousand.”

  • • •

  “Please, Lord,” Eagle Flight Leader whispered as he pulled out of the steep dive he’d gone into. A Sidewinder roared past to his left. He keyed his radio. “Eagle Flight report. Over.”

  “One. Roger. Over.”

  “Two. Roger. Over.”

  “Three. Took a licking, but I’m still kicking. Over.”

  Eagle Flight Leader looked up. Not to where the bogey had gone but farther. “Thank you, Lord.”

  • • •

  “Ninety thousand and still climbing,” Scheuler informed Major Terrent. His fingers hit the keyboard in front of him, his arms struggling against the G-forces pushing him down into his cutout seat.

  “One hundred ten thousand and still climbing,” Major Quinn said. “The F-15’s are all secure and returning to Holloman,” he added. “One hundred and twenty thousand.” Well over twenty miles up and still going vertical.

  “One hundred and twenty-five thousand. It’s peaking over,” Scheuler said.

  Major Terrent let out his breath. The controls had started to get slightly sluggish. The record for altitude in a bouncer was one hundred and sixty-five thousand feet, and that had been a wild ride four years ago. For some reason, due to the magnetic propulsion system, which had not yet been figured out, at over a hundred thousand feet the disk started losing power.

  The crew of the disk that had made the record flight had had the unnerving experience of peaking out while still trying to climb and gone into an uncontrolled descent before the disk had regained power.

  “Heading?” Terrent asked, concentrating on keeping control.

  “Southwest,” Scheuler said. “Heading, two-one-zero degrees.”

  “What’s it doing?” Gullick asked.

  “Bogey heading two-one-zero degrees,” Quinn said.

  “Descending on a glide path, going down through one hundred and ten thousand. Three is in close pursuit. Eight is—” Quinn paused. “The bogey’s turning!”

  “Uh-oh,” Captain Scheuler said as things changed on his display.

  “What?” The controls were getting firmer in Major Terrent’s hands. They were just about down to one hundred thousand feet.

  Scheuler snapped into action. “Collision alert!”

  “Give me a direction!” Terrent yelled.

  “Break right,” Scheuler guessed.

  On the large screen the red and green dots both curved in the same direction and merged. Gullick stood, his teeth biting through the forgotten cigar.

  Scheuler watched the foo fighter tear by directly overhead, less than ten feet away. A beam of white light was flashing out of the small glowing ball and raking over and through their disk.

  “Engine failure. Loss of all control,” Terrent reported.

  They both felt their weight lighten, then they were peaking over and heading down.

  Scheuler looked at his display. “Ninety thousand and in free fall.” The lever and yoke moved freely in Terrent’s hands.

  “Nothing. No power.” He looked over at Scheuler. Both men were maintaining their external discipline but their voices displayed their fear.

  “Eighty-five thousand,” Scheuler said.

  “Bouncer Three is in uncontrolled descent,” Quinn reported. “No power. Bouncer Eight and Aurora are still in pursuit.”

  The green dot representing the foo fighter was moving swiftly to the southwest.

  “Sixty thousand,” Scheuler reported. Terrent let go of the useless controls. “Fifty-five thousand.”

  “The bogey will hit the Mexican border in two minutes,” Quinn reported.

  “Bouncer Eight, this is Cube Six,” Gullick said into his boom mike. “Get that son of a bitch!”

  With no power other than the Earth’s gravity, Bouncer Three was going down at terminal velocity. They had tipped over and the edge to both men’s right was leading the way down.

  They were actually descending more slowly than they had gone up, Scheuler reflected, watching the digital display count down in front of him. He felt strangely detached, his years of pilot training keeping the fear at bay.

  At least they weren’t tumbling.

  Scheuler glanced over questioningly at Terrent. “Forty-five thousand.” Terrent tried the controls again. “Still nothing,” he reported.

  • • •

  “Thirty seconds to the border,” Quinn said. He confirmed the bad news the screen was displaying. The gap between the bogey and Bouncer Eight was increasing rather than decreasing, despite the crew of the disk pushing it to the limits of human endurance.

  Gullick spit out the mangled remains of his cigar.

  “Bouncer Eight, this is Cube Six. Break off. I say again, break off and return home. Aurora, continue pursuit. Over.”

  “This is Bouncer Eight. Roger. Over.”

  “This is Aurora. Roger. Over.”

  On the screen Bouncer Eight rapidly decelerated and curved back into airspace above the United States. Aurora continued following the bogey.

  “Alert the Abraham Lincoln to launch pursuit,” Gullick ordered Admiral Coakley. The general finally shifted his gaze to the upper part of the screen. The green dot representing Bouncer Three was still motionless. “Altitude?” he asked.

  Quinn knew what he was referring to. “Thirty thousand. Still no power. Uncontrolled descent.”

  “Nightscape recovery status?” Gullick asked.

  “In the air toward projected impact area,” Quinn said.

  • • •

  “I’m going to initiate at twenty thousand,” Terrent said.

  His right hand rested on a red lever. “Clear.”

  Scheuler pushed aside the keyboard and display from his lap as Terrent did the same. “Clear.”

  “Cable up,” Terrent ordered.

  Scheuler hit a button on the side of his seat. Anchored to the ceiling above and behind the two of them, a cable tightened, its near anchor point sliding along a track bolted onto the floor until it stopped right between the two depressions the men were seated in.

  “Hook up,” Terrent instructed.

  Scheuler reached into the waist pocket of his flight suit and pulled out a locking carabiner and slipped it onto the steel cable, just above where Terrent put his. He made sure it was on and screwed tight the lock. He then traced the nylon webbing back from it to the harness strapped around his torso, making sure it was clear and not wrapped around anything.

  “Hooked up,” he confirmed. He glanced over at his display. “Twenty-two thousand five hundred.”

  Terrent grabbed the controls one last time and tried them. They moved freely. No response. He looked at Scheuler. “Ready, Kevin?”

  “Ready.”

  “Blowing hatch on three. One. Two. Three.” Terrent slammed down the red lever and the exploding bolts on the hatch at the other end of the cable blew. The hatch spun away and cold night air whistled in.

  “Go!” Terrent screamed.

  Captain Scheuler unbuckled his shoulder straps and pushed, sliding up the cable, slamming against the roof of the disk. He got oriented and looked down at Terrent, still in his seat. Then he let go and was sucked out of the hatch, the nylon strap reaching its end and deploying the parachute that he had been sitting on. The disk was already gone into the darkness below by the time the chute finished opening.

  He watched but there was no other blossoming of white canopy below.

  Major Terrent’s hands were on the releases for his shoulder straps when his pilot’s instincts took over one last time. He reached down and grabbed the controls. There was something—the slightest response. His focus came back inside the craft as he wrestled with the controls.

  • • •

  “Ten thousand feet,” Quinn said. He looked at his computer screen and hit a few keys. “We’re getting a slight change in downward velocity on Bouncer Three.”

  “I thought you said the readout said the
hatch was blown and they had initiated escape.” Gullick said.

  “Yes, sir, the hatch is gone, but”—Quinn checked the data being sent in from the satellites and Bouncer Three itself—“but it’s slowing, sir!”

  Gullick nodded, but turned his attention back toward the screen and the green dot of the bogey, now over the Pacific far west of Panama.

  • • •

  Without Scheuler, Terrent had no idea what his altitude was. He’d pushed aside his own heads-up display when he’d hooked up. The power was coming back, but very slowly.

  • • •

  “Five thousand feet, continuing to decelerate,” Quinn said.

  “How come I don’t see the F-14’s from the Abraham Lincoln on the display?” General Gullick asked.

  “I—uh—” Quinn’s fingers flew over the keyboard and a cluster of small plane silhouettes appeared on the screen.

  They were heading toward an orange circle representing the spot where the previous foo fighter had gone into the ocean. The symbols for the bogey and Aurora were also heading there.

  • • •

  “I think I’ve got it!” Terrent yelled to himself. He had the altitude lever pulled up as high as it would go and could continue to feel power returning. “We’ll make it, we’ll—”

  • • •

  “She’s down,” Quinn said in a quiet voice. “Bouncer Three is down. All telemetry is cut.”

  “Make sure Nightscape recovery has the exact position from the last readout,” Gullick ordered. “Time to bogey intercept for the Tomcats?”

  Quinn looked at General Gullick for a few seconds, then turned back to his terminal. “Six minutes.”

  “I don’t see what good intercept will do,” Admiral Coakley protested. “We’ve already tried twice. It’s over the ocean. Even if we down the bogey it won’t—”

  “I am in charge here,” General Gullick hissed. “Don’t ever—”

  “Bogey’s gone, sir,” Quinn said. “She’s gone under.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The data was complex and much of it was not in the historical record. It counted at least six different types of atmospheric craft, only two of which were listed. And it was not action of this type that had awoken it twice before. Nevertheless, this new event was a threat because it was tied in to the place where the mothership was.

  Valuable energy was diverted, and the main processor was brought up to forty-percent capacity to ponder the bursts of input that had occurred in this past cycle of the planet around its star. There had been conflict, but that did not concern it. There were larger issues at stake here.

  CHAPTER 20

  Vicinity, Dulce, New Mexico

  T - 93 Hours, 30 Minutes

  There was something stuck in both his arms and on the inside of each thigh. Johnny Simmons also sensed tubes between his legs—a catheter, both fore and aft. There was also some sort of device hooked in the right side of his mouth, giving off a very light mist of moisture. Another tube ran into the left side of his mouth and that was how he was breathing. There was something over his face, covering it, pressing his eyes shut and blocking off his nose. Beyond that Simmons didn’t have a clue as to his condition. And those discoveries had been made only in those few breaks between periods of excruciating pain.

  He assumed that at least one of whatever was stuck in him was a nutritional IV. He had no clue as to the passage of time, but it felt as if his entire existence had been spent in this darkness.

  If it had not been for the needles and catheters, Johnny believed he would have thought himself dead and his soul exiled to hell. But this was a living hell, a physical one.

  He felt a coppery taste in his mouth. He didn’t even wait for the pain now. His mouth contorted open and he silently screamed.

  CHAPTER 21

  White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico

  T - 93 Hours, 30 Minutes

  The first thing Colonel Dickerson did as his command-and-control helicopter zeroed in on the personnel beacon from Bouncer Three was have his aide, Captain Travers, remove the silver eagles on his collar and replace them with two stars. That was for any military personnel they might run into. The typical military mentality viewed generals as gods, and that was the way Dickerson wanted people responding to his orders this night.

  “ETA to beacon two minutes,” the pilot of the UH-60 Blackhawk announced over the intercom.

  Dickerson glanced out the window. Three other Blackhawks followed, spread out against the night sky, their running lights darkened. He hit the transmit button for his radio. “Roller, this is Hawk. Give me some good news. Over.”

  The response from his second-in-command at the main White Sands complex was immediate. “This is Roller. I’ve got people awake here. The duty officer is rounding us up some transport. They’ve got two lowboys we can use and a crane rated for what we need for recovery. Over.”

  “How long before you can get them out to the range? Over.”

  “An hour and a half max. Over.”

  “Roger. Out.”

  The pilot came on the intercom as soon as Dickerson was finished. “There he is, sir.”

  Dickerson leaned forward and looked out. “Pick him up,” he ordered.

  The Blackhawk descended and landed. The man on the ground sat on his parachute to prevent it from being inflated by the groundwash of the rotor blades. Two men jumped off the rear of Dickerson’s aircraft, ran over to Captain Scheuler, and escorted him back to the bird, securing the parachute.

  Scheuler put on a headset as soon as he was on board.

  “Have you picked up Major Terrent’s signal?” he asked.

  Dickerson indicated for the pilot to take off. “No. We’re going to the disk transponder.”

  “Maybe his equipment got damaged when he was getting out of the disk,” Scheuler said.

  Dickerson glanced across at the pilot, who met the look briefly, then went back to flying. There wasn’t time to tell Scheuler about the slight slowing in descent of Bouncer Three just before impact.

  “ETA to disk transponder?” Dickerson asked.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  The pilot pointed. “There it is, sir.”

  “Shit,” Dickerson heard the copilot mutter. And that was a rather appropriate comment on the current condition of Bouncer Three. He keyed his radio. “Roller, we’re going to need a dozer and probably a backhoe too. Over.”

  His aide back at main base was ready. “Roger.”

  The pilot brought the aircraft to a hover, the searchlight on the belly of the helicopter trained down and forward on the crash site. Bouncer Three had hit at an angle. Only the trail edge was visible, sticking up out of the dirt ridge it had impacted into. Knowing the dimension of the disk, Dickerson calculated that it was buried at least twenty feet into the countryside.

  “What about the beacon on the hatch?” he asked Captain Travers.

  “Nightscape Two has it on screen and is closing on it. About four miles to the southwest of our location,” Travers responded.

  They had to clean up every single piece of gear and equipment. There was always the chance that someone they had to recruit to help with the recovery—such as the drivers of the lowboys or the bulldozer or crane operator—might talk, but as long as there was no physical evidence, they were good to go.

  “Let’s land,” Dickerson ordered.

  The Cube, Area 51

  General Gullick scanned the haggard faces around the conference table. There were two empty seats. Dr. Duncan had not been informed of, or invited to, the night’s activities, and Von Seeckt was, of course, absent. As recorder and data retriever, Major Quinn was seated away from the table, at a computer console to Gullick’s left.

  “Gentlemen,” Gullick began, “we have a problem occurring at a most critical time. We have Bouncer Three down with one casualty at White Sands. We also have six aircrews currently being debriefed on the night’s events. And all we have gained against those potential security breaches is a replay
of the events of the other night. We have more pictures of this foo fighter to add to our records and we have almost the exact same location in the Pacific Ocean that it disappeared into.”

  Gullick paused and leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “This thing, this craft, has beaten the best we could throw against it, including our appropriated technology here.” He looked at Dr. Underhill. “Any idea what it did to Bouncer Three?”

  The representative from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory held a roll of telemetry paper in his hands. “Not until I get a chance to look at the flight recorder and talk to the crewman who survived. All I can determine from this,” he said, shaking the paper, “is that there was a complete loss of power on board Bouncer Three in conjunction with a near collision with the foo fighter. The power loss lasted for one minute and forty-six seconds, then some power began returning, but too late for the pilot to compensate for the craft’s terminal velocity.”

  Dr. Ferrel, the physicist, cleared his throat. “Since we don’t understand the exact workings of the propulsion system of the disks, it makes it doubly hard for us to try to figure out what the foo fighter did to Bouncer Three to cause the crash.”

  “What about something we do understand?” Gullick asked. “We certainly understand how helicopters fly.”

  Underhill nodded. “I’ve gone over the wreckage of the AH-6 that crashed in Nebraska, and the only thing I have been able to determine is that it suffered complete engine failure. There was no problem with either the transmission or hydraulics or else no one would have survived the crash. The engine simply ceased functioning. Perhaps some sort of electrical or magnetic interference.

  “The pilot is still in a coma and I have not been able to interview him. I have some theories, but until I can work on them, I have no idea how the foo fighter caused the engine on that aircraft to cease functioning.”

  “Does anyone,” Gullick said, with emphasis, “have any idea what these foo fighters are or who is behind them?”

  A long silence descended on the conference table.

  “Aliens?”

  Ten heads swiveled and looked at the one man who didn’t rate a leather seat. Major Quinn seemed to sink lower behind his portable computer.