“There!” Tori called out and pointed to the sky.
All we could see was a black shadow move across the star field, for the chopper had no lights. It was flying high—too high to spot us. I hoped. It drifted in from the direction we had come from and hovered directly over us.
I held my breath, for whatever good that would do.
All of our eyes were on the black shape. Even Olivia looked skyward.
The chopper hovered there for several seconds, then peeled off and flew back the way it had come.
“What if it saw us?” Kent asked nervously. “It could be going back to get more choppers.”
“Why?” Tori asked. “Why would they be worrying about us?”
“Seriously?” Kent said incredulously. “Did you forget how Granger tried to gun us down? I don’t care why he was doing it, he did it.”
I knew why he was doing it, but I kept quiet.
“If Kent’s right, we don’t want to be here,” I declared. “If not, we still don’t want to be here. We’ve got a job to do.”
“Then let’s roll,” Tori declared and popped on her helmet.
“When we hit the desert floor, we’ll go off-road,” I called to Kent. “We can travel next to each other to avoid the dust storm and then stop a few hundred yards from the closest plane. Make sense?”
“Yippee ki-yay!” Kent called.
We fired up our engines, and the sound of powerful motors once again filled the desert night. I hit the gas and launched forward, careening down the road that snaked its way from the ridge. It took only a few minutes before the road leveled out and we were back on the desert floor. Another huge sign was displayed next to the road that said, not too subtly, that we were in a restricted area and were subject to arrest. There was also a sign that said, “No photography.”
I yelled to Olivia, “Good thing we don’t have a camera or we’d really be in trouble!”
She didn’t find that funny.
Kent and Tori caught up, and Kent gave me a thumbs-up.
I motioned that I was headed off-road, and he nodded in understanding. I jammed my foot to the floor, turned the wheel, and rolled onto the dry, flat lakebed that would lead us to the infamous Area 51.
There was no way to know if we’d have success, or what that success would mean in the larger war. There was every reason to believe that we would never make it out of this place. Only one thing was certain: We were on the last leg of a journey that began on Pemberwick Island, brought us through the nightmare that our country had become, and found us knocking on the gates of hell.
What we would find once we got inside was anybody’s guess.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Driving across the desert floor was exciting… and terrifying.
It was a breakneck dash across wide-open terrain that left us totally exposed as we moved closer to the death machines that had changed our lives and forever altered the natural course of human events.
I was glad to be behind the wheel. It helped me stay focused. There were too many conflicting thoughts racing through my head. For the longest time, I had put a face on the enemy. Captain Granger. He had held us prisoner on Pemberwick Island and coldly murdered those who crossed him, including Tori’s father. But as the scope of the conflict revealed itself, it seemed possible that Captain Granger and SYLO might have been using their extreme tactics to battle an even greater enemy: the Retros.
I had come close to murdering Granger. That’s how deep my rage went. It was confusing to try to refocus that anger onto a fleet of faceless machines. I needed to hold someone responsible. But who? Was it Feit? I didn’t think so. He was just a cog in the machine, like Chris Campbell or Jon Purcell. I wanted to know who was behind the heinous plan. Was it an individual? A rogue group of Air Force officers? An extremist arm of the government that took control of the Air Force and its most advanced, lethal technology? It might even be a foreign government that was intent on bringing down the United States.
Or was Kent’s theory the truth? Were we battling an invasion from another planet? As strange as it sounds, that would be the easiest explanation to accept, based on the impossible technology they had. It went back to what the old Paiute man said. He couldn’t believe that anyone of this earth could commit such horrible crimes against their own people. We might be battling an advanced civilization from another world that considered the people of earth to be primitive and expendable.
I wanted to hate somebody. I wanted a villain. I wanted somebody to suffer for what was happening. I would have to settle for putting the villains out of business and hope that someday, somehow, the guilty would be brought to justice.
I scanned the desert to both sides, looking for signs of the other teams that were doing the same thing we were. The Chiefs’ plan called for the base to be surrounded by dozens of teams that would converge on Area 51 like a tightening noose. I thought I saw a couple of kicked-up dust clouds in the distance, which would mean that other teams were racing for the planes. We would need every one of the teams to get through, because after seeing all those black planes, I worried that we wouldn’t have enough charges to damage them all.
As we drew dangerously close to the base, I realized that there wasn’t a fence surrounding it. I guess it wasn’t needed. Nobody got this far when it was officially in operation.
I wanted to get close enough to our targets to avoid a long walk but didn’t want to get so close that we might alert someone. It was a strange game of chicken. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and waved to Kent that we were stopping. I gradually slowed as Kent pulled up next to me. We both killed our engines, and the silence of the desert returned.
I pulled off my helmet and listened for any signs of life from the base. There was nothing. I did hear what could have been the engines of other dune buggies off in the distance. Or was it the mysterious helicopter that had checked us out? I couldn’t tell, but it made me realize that as much as we hadn’t seen a single soul since the Paiute man and were in the middle of nowhere, we definitely weren’t alone. But there were no alarms. No counterattack. No defensive move from the base whatsoever.It was looking as though the base was truly unmanned.
I got out of the buggy, tossed off my helmet, and grabbed the pack with the charges.
“Rest of the way on foot,” I announced.
Kent and Tori joined me, ready to go.
Olivia didn’t move.
Uh-oh.
“We gotta go, Olivia,” I commanded.
She took off her helmet but stayed curled in the fetal position.
“I can’t,” she replied in a small voice.
“We can’t leave you here,” Tori scolded.
“Yes, you can,” she whined. “One less person won’t make any difference. Take my stupid bombs. You can still use them.”
Tori gave me a concerned look. “We’re not leaving you alone,” she said more forcefully. “It’s too dangerous.”
“More dangerous than going into that place?” she cried. “I don’t think so.”
She could have been telling the truth and was too scared to move—or she could have been stubbornly pretending to be scared so we’d leave her alone so she could warn the Retros. Either way, I didn’t know how to force her to come.
“Jeez, enough, Tucker,” Kent said. “You already bullied her into coming this far. What’s the difference if she stays here or not? I’ll take her charges and set them.”
“Thank you, Kent,” Olivia said.
I looked to Tori for help.
She had an idea, but it was a drastic one.
She had taken out her pistol.
If Olivia was an infiltrator, she could jeopardize the entire mission. If she refused to come with us, there was one thing we could do to make sure she wouldn’t give us up.