“You all take care of each other,” Turcotte said.
“Shouldn’t we be synchronizing watches or something?” Kelly asked. “It’s what they do in the movies, and timing is rather important to this plan — at least what I’ve caught of it.”
“Good idea.” Turcotte peeled back the Velcro cover on his watch. “I’ve got eight on the dot in two minutes.”
Kelly checked her watch. “Okay or check, or whatever you’re supposed to say.” She reached out and put her hand on Turcotte’s shoulder. “You can count on us. We’ll be there.”
Turcotte smiled. “I know. Good luck.” He turned and was gone, loping off into the darkness, lost in the shadow of the mountain.
“Let’s go,” Kelly ordered.
Nabinger turned the van around and they headed north.
The rhythm of the run had settled in to Turcotte’s muscles a half hour ago. The various weapons and other equipment attached to the combat vest had required a bit of cinching down shortly after he’d left the van, and now everything on him was silent — just as he had been taught in Ranger school so many years ago. The only sound he heard was his own breath.
The knee was holding up so far, and he was careful to keep his stride shortened to reduce strain. He was presently moving along the base of the mountain he had initially set out for. He was scanning the slope with the off-center portion of his retina. He finally spotted what he’d been looking for. A thin animal trail headed up and Turcotte turned onto it. After a quarter mile it switched back on itself. Turcotte halted and caught his breath. He looked up. There was a long way to go. He started running.
There was a phone on the outside of the Ale Inn, the local bar in the town of Tempiute. The same town where Johnny Simmons had met Franklin the previous week. The town’s main claim to fame was its proximity to Area 51, and the Inn was a watering hole for the itinerant UFO watchers who passed through continuously. Kelly parked the van next to the phone, and she and Von Seeckt got out and ambled over, he leaning on his cane. He patted his pockets, then looked at Kelly. She shook her head. “Use my phone card.” She rattled off instructions and the number Turcotte had given her earlier.
It was just before ten in the evening local time and Lisa Duncan was seated by the small desk in her hotel suite, watching CNN, when the phone rang. She picked it up on the third ring, expecting to hear her son’s voice on the other end. Instead a heavily accented voice that she immediately recognized began speaking.
“Dr. Duncan, this is Werner Von Seeckt. General Gullick has been lying to you about what is going on at Area 51 and at the facility in Dulce, New Mexico.”
“Professor Von Seeckt, I—”
“Listen. We don’t have much time! Have you ever heard of Nightscape in conjunction with Area 51?”
“Yes. They run psychological prep—”
“They do much more than that,” Von Seeckt cut in. “They kidnap people and brainwash them, and I am sure even much worse than that. They conduct cattle mutilations. They do much more.”
“Like what?”
Von Seeckt didn’t reply to that. “How about Operation Paperclip?”
Duncan picked up her pen and pulled the small pad of hotel stationery close. “What do you know about Paperclip?”
“Do you know what’s going on at the lab in Dulce? The experiments with implanted memories?”
Duncan wrote the word DULCE on her notepad. “Back up to Paperclip. I’m interested in that. Is there a connection between Paperclip and what is going on at Dulce?”
“I do not know exactly what is going on at Dulce,” Von Seeckt said, “but I just rescued a reporter who was being held prisoner there, and he killed himself in response to what they did to him there.”
“I don’t—” Duncan began, but Von Seeckt cut her off again.
“To reply to your question, does the name General Karl Hemstadt mean anything to you?”
Duncan wrote the name down. “I seem to remember hearing that name somewhere.”
“Hemstadt was the head of Wa Pruf 9, the Wehrmacht’s chemical warfare branch. Hemstadt was taken in by Paperclip. I saw him in 1946 in Dulce. During the war he was responsible for supplying the death camps with gas. He also participated in much experimentation with new gases of course, such experimentation had to be done on living humans to be truly valid.
“Since 1946 I have not been allowed into Dulce nor have I heard a word about Hemstadt again. However, I do not believe he just vanished. Such a man was notorious, and such people don’t disappear without much help from powerful people — government people.
“There is someone else you must speak to,” Von Seeckt said, and there was a brief pause, then a woman’s voice came on the line.
“Dr. Duncan, my name is Kelly Reynolds. I was given your name by Captain Mike Turcotte. He has tried twice to contact you using the number you gave him. Both times the number was reported to be out of order. He says that you must trust no one.”
“Where is Captain Turcotte now?” Duncan asked.
“He’s on his way into Area 51.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Duncan asked.
“Because we want to meet you at the Cube in Area 51 tonight. You must not inform General Gullick or any of the other members of Majic-12 that you are coming.”
“What is going on?” Duncan demanded.
“Be at the Cube tonight. No later than midnight local time. We’ll explain everything then.” The phone went dead.
Duncan slowly put the receiver down. She picked up another binder. This one had a cover identifying it as coming from the Justice Department and indicating that it was copy two of two copies made. She flipped it open and lumbed through, rapidly scanning. On page seventy-eight she found what she was looking for: General Karl Hemstadt was indeed listed as having likely been taken in by the Paperclip operation.
She gathered together her binders and threw them in a briefcase, then headed for the door. She had a taxi to catch.
Von Seeckt walked back to the van with Kelly. “What do you think?” she asked. “She finally bit when I mentioned Paperclip,” Von Seeckt said.
“Do you think she’ll alert Gullick?” Kelly asked as she got in the driver’s seat. Von Seeckt sat to her right. Nabinger was in the back, looking at the rongorongo tablet.
“No,” Von Seeckt said. “She’s not one of them. The presidential adviser was usually on the outside. After all, the slot was a political appointment that could change every four years. I know for certain she was not fully inbriefed.”
“Well, we’ll find out soon enough,” Kelly said, throwing the van into gear and leaving the parking lot.
Turcotte cut a hole for his head in the center of the thin silver survival blanket and pulled it down over his shoulders. He wrapped the blanket around his torso and cinched it tight with cord. It hung down to his knees and fit him like a poncho. Designed to keep heat in during an emergency, Turcotte was counting on it to keep him from being identified by the thermal sights that were part of the outer security perimeter of Area 51. He would still show up — especially the heat rising from his head — but he hoped that the signature would be so much smaller than man shaped, that the monitors might assume it was a rabbit or other small creature and ignore it.
What he could not ignore any longer was the pain from his knee. He reached down and felt the swelling. Not good.
But he also knew he had no choice. He checked his watch.
He was ahead of schedule, so he could move more slowly.
It would not do him any good to go over the mountain early, thermal blanket or no blanket. He continued on his way up the mountain, at a pace that kept the pain to a minimum.