AREA 51, NEVADA
Mercer spent twenty tense minutes convincing two camouflaged security guards who’d materialized out of the desert that he shouldn’t be run immediately to the local sheriff as a trespasser. What followed was a two-hour ride in the back of a Jeep Cherokee, a further hours-long wait in an isolated building while his identity was checked and rechecked, and then a quick hop in a windowless Blackhawk helicopter to the main complex.
He was escorted to the same spartan room he’d been given his first night at Area 51. Five minutes after stepping from the shower and into some dry clothes left by the soldier at the reception desk there was a knock on the door.
“Omega ninety-nine temple.” Even muffled by the door, Mercer had no problem recognizing the deep voice.
He returned the countersign. “Caravan eleven solstice.”
The door swung open to reveal Captain Booker T. Sykes, his escort from the flight from Washington. The big African American held a six-pack of beer in one hand and a deck of playing cards in the other. He was dressed in desert fatigue pants with a black T-shirt stretched across his chest. An unlit cigar jutted from between his even teeth. “Heard you blew back into town.”
Mercer grinned. “This place has better shampoo samples than the hotel in Vegas.”
Sykes stripped two beers from the six-pack and handed one over. “Cheaper room service, too.” He took a seat at the small table under the window and began shuffling the cards. “Rumor has it base security picked you up wandering in from Highway 375 near the town of Rachel.”
“I got lost looking for a hot craps table.”
Sykes shook his head. “Didn’t figure you’d tell me what was up. Admiral Lasko’s due to arrive in a couple hours for your debrief. I figured you could use a few beers more than the sleep.”
“You could say that.” Mercer took a long pull from his beer and checked the cards Sykes had dealt him. “Did your rumor source say if they caught Donny Randall, the miner that skipped out from my project?”
“The guy vanished into thin air. Knowing me and my Delta team were here, security even called us in to help on the search. We had his tracks running south from DS-Two for eleven miles and then they vanished. No sign a chopper landed to pick him up, no sign of anything.”
“Thermal scans?”
“Lots of jackrabbits, a few coyotes but no missing miner. Even if he’d died out there, his corpse would stay warm enough for us to detect. My men are still searching. I came back when I heard you’re here to see if you have any explanations.”
“I have no idea how he disappeared. I don’t even know why except someone must have gotten to him, bought him off or something. That explosion was deliberate. He tried to kill me and a couple others. I believe he also caused a cave-in before I came here that killed a dozen men.”
“I bet you don’t believe the admiral’s story anymore, huh?”
“About a nuclear waste dump? Not anymore. Hey, I thought this was supposed to be compartmentalized. How do you know so much?”
“Lasko. We talked yesterday after you and your men were sent to Vegas. We’ve been reassigned as special security for his project. He figured the explosion and Randall are the beginning of something bigger.”
“Me too,” Mercer agreed, dropping his cards to reveal a quick win in their first game of gin. “Since we’re going to be spending some time together, does this mean you can tell me what it is you’ve been doing out here?”
“Ah.” Sykes lit his cigar with a gold Zippo. “Let me tell you about Project Monkey Bomb.”
Three hours and several dozen games of gin later, the telephone on the nightstand rang. “Morning, Ira,” Mercer answered, knowing who would be calling. The sun was just starting to outline the mountains outside his room.
“Tell Sykes to bring you to the conference room in five minutes.”
The line went dead.
Startled by his friend’s brusque tone, Mercer replaced the handset and cocked an eyebrow at Sykes. “I think I’m in some deep shit.”
The captain got to his feet. “Yeah, actually you are.”
Ira wore a suit only slightly darker than the bags under his eyes. He’d shaved hastily, probably on the plane, leaving patches of silvery stubble and several raw cuts. A carafe of coffee and four cups were on the conference table. Dr. Briana Marie sat on his left wearing her ubiquitous lab coat over a red blouse. The deputy national security advisor didn’t look up when Mercer and Booker Sykes entered the room and he continued to thumb through a folder as the two men poured themselves coffee.
Mercer took a seat, slurping at his cup for a full minute. No one spoke, no one moved. Dr. Marie looked like she wasn’t even breathing. Ira finally closed the file and pulled off his reading glasses. He looked at Mercer as though he were a stranger. Or an adversary.
“How did you get from the Luxor to where the guards picked you up?”
Mercer couldn’t explain why he lied, but it came without hesitation. “Hitchhiked. I got lucky. A couple of college kids picked me up. They were headed to Rachel because they heard the UFOs fly just before dawn and wanted to be in position near Freedom Ridge.”
“Freedom Ridge has been closed to the public since 1995,” Dr. Marie said sharply.
“I said they were college kids. They probably didn’t know. I’d never even heard of Freedom Ridge.” Mercer knew of the bluff overlooking a corner of the base from a television special.
“So what happened at the Luxor?” Ira hefted the file. “This is a preliminary police report. One dead tourist, one slightly injured security guard, two severely wounded pool cleaners and two unknown subjects found dead outside your room when security chased away three other unsubs.”
Mercer was surprised. And impressed. He thought his indiscriminate cover fire would have maybe injured one of the assassins, not kill two of them. There was something to be said for luck, because firing through walls required no skill. He told the story as accurately as he remembered it, his conversation with Harry, the woman being pushed to her death and his headlong plunge down the sloping glass wall. He omitted nothing except his rescue and subsequent conversation with Tisa Nguyen. He wasn’t going to give her up until he knew what Ira and Dr. Marie were really doing at the DS-Two site.
“And what about Donny Randall and the explosion?” Ira prompted “Any theories?”
“The same ones you have,” Mercer answered. “That the accident that killed those men and prompted you to call me in wasn’t an accident. Donny arranged that as well, expecting to be named overall boss of the project in hopes you’d tell him what was really happening out there. When that didn’t happen, whoever was controlling him decided to cut their losses. Randall was told to kill me and disappear. The charge he planted would have done the job had Ken not spotted the explosives. Donny was in the command trailer and would have seen us on the camera. He remote detonated them an instant too late. He didn’t stick around to see if we drowned and obviously had help getting out of Area 51. Because Sykes’s men didn’t find vehicle tracks, and I assume radar coverage here would have detected a helicopter at even treetop height, you might want to consider a two-man hovercraft met him in the deep desert and took him away. Everyone at the mine knew we were headed to the Luxor, so the killers had a backup team waiting in case Randall failed. Is that about how you read it?”