Kincaid didn’t wait for any more argument. “Get working on it. You all seem confused by something. I’m not asking you to do this. I’m telling you to do it. I want a picture from Surveyor of Cydonia within two hours.”
Area 51 was the unclassified designation on military maps for a training area on the Nellis Air Force Base. At least that’s what the military had maintained for years. In actuality Area 51 had housed a top-secret installation burrowed into Groom Mountain featuring the longest runway in the world along the bed of adjacent Groom Lake.
While a few of the facilities were aboveground, the majority were built into and below the side of the mountain next to the runway. The location had been chosen by the original Majestic-12 committee after the mothership had been found hidden in a nearby cavern. More hangars had been hollowed out over the years to house the bouncers, small atmospheric craft, two of which had been discovered with the mothership, the other seven recovered from a cache in Antarctica.
Over the years Majestic-12 had trained select Air Force pilots in the art of flying the bouncers. The secret of entry into the mothership had eluded MJ-12 until earlier in the year when members of the committee had been mentally taken over by the rebel guardian computer uncovered at a dig in Temiltepec and brought back to MJ-12’s other secret site at Dulce, New Mexico.
When MJ-12’s secrets were finally exposed, Area 51’s shroud had been torn asunder. The media had now descended upon the site, gobbling up images of the massive black mothership resting in its newly dug-out cavern and the bouncers being put through their paces by Air Force pilots. What had once been the most secret place in America was now the most photographed and visited.
Major Quinn had been operations officer at Area 51, but he had survived the purge of MJ-12 personnel because he had not been on the inner circle taken over by the guardian. He was the one man left who knew all the inner workings of the Area 51 facility and the Cube, the acronym for C3, Command and Control Central.
The underground room housing the Cube measured eighty by a hundred feet and could only be reached from the massive bouncer hangar cut into the side of Groom Mountain via a large freight elevator.
Quinn was of medium height and build. He had thinning blond hair and wore tortoiseshell glasses with oversized lenses to accommodate the split glass he needed for both distance and close-up viewing.
He sat in the seat in the back of the room that gave him a full view of every operation now in process. In front of him, sloping down toward the front, were three rows of consoles manned by military personnel. On the forward wall was a twenty-foot-wide by ten-high screen. It was capable of displaying any information that could be channeled through the computers.
Directly behind Quinn a door led to a corridor off of which branched a conference room, his office and sleeping quarters, rest rooms, and a small galley. The freight elevator opened on the right side of the main gallery. There was the quiet hum of machinery in the room, along with the slight hiss of filtered air being pushed by large fans in the hangar above. Quinn had been down here for four straight days, dealing with the unfamiliar responsibility of opening the facility to the world’s media and integrating members of UNAOC onto the staff.
Now that the bouncers fell under UNAOC control, as did all pieces of Airlia artifact, every foreign country that boasted an air force had sent its best pilots to be trained on flying the bouncers. The U.S. Air Force was quickly putting in place courses at Area 51 to do just that. Quinn also had to schedule in the hordes of scientists demanding access to all the scientific data the computers in the Cube held, along with giving them direct access to the mothership.
All in all Quinn was one busy man, in what had suddenly become a very sensitive position. It was a long way from just two weeks ago when his major concerns had been doing General Gullick’s bidding and maintaining security of the facility from those who continually tried to pierce its former veil of secrecy.
Quinn looked down at the small laptop screen in front of him and did a status check. The mainframe quickly informed him that five bouncers were being test-flown at the current moment; Bouncer 6 was overseas, visiting Moscow as part of UNAOC’s program to spread the wealth around; Bouncer 7 was traveling around the United States; Bouncers 8 and 9 were in Europe; and a mixed group of Russian and NATO scientists were exploring the mothership.
“Sir, we’ve got an inbound chopper clearing perimeter,” one of the men in the room called out.
Quinn frowned at the unnecessary disturbance. They had dozens of aircraft flying in and out every day now. The airspace was no longer restricted and the base was open. “And?” Quinn asked.
“It’s coming in under an ST-8 classified authorization code.”
“What the hell is that?” Quinn had had the highest possible classified clearance while working for Majestic and he had never heard of ST-8.
“I don’t know, sir. I can’t access it from my position.”
Quinn quickly cleared his screen and entered his code word. He typed in the classification. His screen cleared and a message appeared:
RENDER ALL ASSISTANCE ASKED TO BEARER OF ST-8 TOP SECRET CLEARANCE. THIS CLASSIFICATION BY ORDER OF THE NATIONAL COMMAND AUTHORITY.
YOU ARE TO RENDER ALL ASSISTANCE REQUESTED AS TOP PRIORITY
ALL ACTIVITY IS TOP SECRET ST-8 LEVEL AND NOT TO BE DISCLOSED IN ANY MANNER. NO RECORDS OF ACTIVITY TO BE MAINTAINED.
ST-8 TOP SECRET
“Shit,” Quinn muttered. What that told him was that he couldn’t even inform his own chain of command and he had to do whatever those on the helicopter told him to. “Put the chopper onscreen.”
A black UH-60 helicopter appeared over the runway. It landed and rolled forward. The side doors opened and a woman got out. Quinn unconsciously leaned forward. She was tall, over six feet, and slender, but what he noticed most was her shockingly white hair, cut tight to her skull. Her eyes were hidden by wrap-around sunglasses. She carried a metal briefcase in her left hand and wore black pants, and a black jacket with a black shirt with no collar underneath.
“Bring her to conference room,” Quinn ordered, standing up and going out the rear door. He walked into the room and sat at the end of the table. He didn’t have long to wait before the door opened. The woman walked in, coming around to the left of the large table. Quinn stood to greet her.
“I am Oleisa,” the woman said. She put her briefcase on the table.
“Major Quinn,” he said, extending his hand, but the woman ignored it, taking her seat. Quinn hurriedly followed suit. “I looked up your clearance and it said—”
“To do whatever I tell you to do,” Oleisa smoothly cut him off. “I require you to detail a bouncer with your top pilot to be at my disposal from this moment until further notice. That craft is not to be used for any other purpose.”
Quinn inwardly groaned. He saw a carefully prepared schedule crumble. “Who do you work for?”
“That is not a concern of yours,” Oleisa said.
“I’m in charge here and—”
“You are a caretaker,” she said. “You are not in charge. You are to do what you are told. A bouncer with pilot at my disposal. I also require a secure satellite communications link dedicated to my use.”
On Easter Island, Mike Turcotte and Lisa Duncan were greeted by Kelly Reynolds and Peter Nabinger as they entered Reynolds’s tent. The other members of the media were at the UNAOC Operations Center, waiting to see if there was to be another message from Guardian one in reply to Guardian two latest.