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“What is that?” Billy said from the back.

“That’s Dulce,” Mark said, his knuckles white on the controls. They were half a mile out and he was still too high. If he was going to then he’d have to do it…

Mark swiveled the controls and brought them down right on top of the alien craft they were riding in with, the one that was meant to block them from view. It was working, so far, and now just inches from the top of the craft and the doors coming up and—”

“Now!” Mark shouted, and turned the X-22 to the right just as they were about to enter the Dulce Base port.

It was a sight, a huge floor with a command building of some sort dead center, row upon row of small, triangular… fighter craft was all Turn could think of them as… lined up all across the port’s floor. The walls looked made of concrete and metal and stretched more than a hundred feet up to the ceiling above them. But what really had Marks’ attention, Turn could tell, were the pair of mounted-laser guns on the wall ahead of them.

Mark swerved to the right, putting the alien UFO between them and that gun while putting the second right in front of them. He pushed a button, unleashing two Hellfire missiles right toward that mounted laser as it began to swivel toward them. It’d made it a few inches before the Hellfires blew it to pieces.

“Woo-hoo!” Mark shouted, and Turn almost expected him to reach up for a cowboy hat that wasn’t there, waving it about in glee. Instead he cut the speed of the X-22 dramatically by tilting the thrusters and bringing them down. In the same motion he re-aimed the missile guidance system, hit the button unleashing two more Hellfire missiles, and took care of the other mounted laser just like that.

“Goddamn!” Andy said from the back of the X-22, and beside him Billy nodded, wide-eyed.

“Not so fast,” Mark said from the cockpit, and turned them about quickly. The men in the back couldn’t see it, but the alien UFO that they’d rode in on was trying to turn about in an attempt to get out of the now-compromised entry-port to Dulce.

SHOOM! SHOOM!

“Shit,” Mark said as two lasers fired what looked to Turn to be just inches above the X-22’s glass cockpit canopy. They didn’t seem to faze Mark too much, however, for he just re-angled the X-22 and fired off another Hellfire, then gave it a little pitch and yaw and fired off another.

Turn didn’t know a thing about flying hovercrafts, but he was pretty certain he knew what another two mounted lasers being blown to hell sounded like.

* * *

“Goddamn, there ain’t gonna be nothing left!” Aaron said from the helicopter that was now just a mile from the still-open Dulce Base blast doors.

“Better find some wood to knock on,” Moses said beside him, “because I have a feeling there’ll be plenty.”

He angled the Puma downward and just a dozen feet from the desert floor and they covered the remaining distance to the Dulce port quickly.

“Bring ‘er down easy,” Aaron said beside him as they flew into the port.

It was a rectangular port, really nothing more than a large underground parking lot, this one just for UFOs. There were several lined up in ‘parking spots,’ lighted-off areas that almost seemed to conform to the shape of the ship sitting in them, and the area could obviously afford much larger craft, for the ceiling was more than a hundred feet off the floor.

“There!” Aaron said, pointing out the window to a clear spot on the floor, just before and below where the X-22 and the alien transport craft were still hovering, and turning about it looked like.

“Got it,” Moses said, then brought the bird down.

“All right,” Aaron shouted, ripping off his headset and jumping back to the other men, “let’s hit ‘em hard!”

26 — Making Entry

Dulce Port (Level 1) — Dulce Secret Base, New Mexico
Thursday, May 24, 1979

The attack was textbook, with the CAT-3 forces blowing an entry into the port and taking full control of their landing zone within 55 seconds of the X-22 breaching the port. Hovering, the X-22 continued to use its rockets and guns to rake any enemy weapons in the port area, silencing them before the Air Force helicopter piloted by Moses Cochrane started to enter the open port doors.

Moses brought the bird in fast and put her down on the main floor of the chamber where the troops would have the cover of a nearby disk as they ran for the passenger entry hatch. Mark knew it was time.

“All right, you bastard!” he said, his teeth gritted but his smile wide. “See how you handle this!”

Turn’s eyes were wide as he watched the alien disc-shaped craft begin to move forward, most likely trying to dart out of there. Instead Captain Richards brought the X-22 forward and then jerked left on the controls, something that caused the left wing of the X-22 to slam downward toward the alien ship. At the last second he kicked the props into a full downdraft, nearly flipping the UFO over onto its top.

“Ha!” he laughed, but all the while he was struggling with the controls. “Hang on boys!” he shouted back to them next.

“Shit!” Turn said, then grabbed onto the hand-straps and braced himself.

Mark managed to straighten-out the X-22 but he was coming down, and would have to land the vehicle. It’s tires hit the port’s pavement hard and they bounced a bit, but once again they were lined-up perfectly with the alien craft, enough so that Mark could unleash two Hellfires toward it. The craft managed to dodge one but the second hit it straight on and it fell a good forty feet, and right on top of a few triangle-shaped craft that had been sitting there.

“Woo!” Mark shouted again. “Took out two fighters with that one — woo-ee!”

* * *

“And… she’s down!”

Command Sergeant Major Aaron Haney looked from Moses in the cockpit to Jerry by the helicopter’s large bay door, and nodded.

The door was already thrown open by the time he yelled ‘open ‘er up’ and Sergeant Paul Carson jumped out, his M240 leading the way.

BOOM!

Paul looked over as the alien UFO Captain Richards had tailed-in on crashed down atop some other type of alien craft. He quickly directed his attention back toward the HUB doors, which were the main entryway into the base from the port. If those were closed to them then the base was effectively sealed off. What’s more, they still had to secure the small port facility command post, the one that housed the may well house the sonic controls for the entire base — he wasn’t convinced they were only on the lower level. It was a lot of shit to handle, and Paul let off his frustration by bringing the machine gun up and firing at a Gray coming out from behind the side of the command post, the first he’d seen yet. The thing had obviously been expecting something to happen that didn’t, for its body seemed to slink down and it was just trying to back off when Paul opened-up on it.

“Damn!” Johnny said as he jumped down beside Paul, his sawed-off Remington shotgun up and aiming in the direction the Gray had been. “You split that one’s head clean in half!”

“Happens,” Paul said matter-of-factly, and a moment later Jerry and Lewie were down on the concrete of the port as well.

“Let’s secure this facility!” Aaron shouted from inside the helicopter, his two Uzis held at his sides, just aching to be used.

“What about the others?” Paul called out as Aaron jumped down.

“They’ll wait ‘till we secure the area then work their magic.”

Paul smiled. “Then it’s time for me to work mine.”

He started toward the port command post fifty yards away, the other five men fast on his heels, guns a’ blazin’.