The actual purpose, however, was to establish a location from which the biplanes could conduct aerial surveillance beyond the Mexican border, looking for a weapon that the Germans might be testing. When he wasn’t on duty, Raleigh found himself spending more and more time with Dani Marie Brown.
Part of the training for student pilots involved flying at night. He used the night instruction as an opportunity to send his students to try to determine the origin of the lights, but he was forced to discontinue those missions. As the trainees flew toward the lights, they diverted and attacked one another-with apparent deliberation, two planes actually collided, killing the instructor and student in each.
Thereafter training occurred only during daylight.
Fears about an invasion from Mexico were validated on March 9, 1916, when gunmen led by Pancho Villa staged a night attack on the New Mexican town of Columbus. Within two days, Congress voted to pursue Villa. “Black Jack” Pershing led five thousand soldiers into Mexico, where they remained for most of the year. Although they engaged in numerous battles with Mexican troops, they never located Villa, but that didn’t matter. The mission was largely a training exercise, allowing American soldiers to absorb battle experience.
In April 1917, America entered the war.
Raleigh participated in the Mexican campaign, using his biplane to scout for enemy positions. Afterward he returned to Rostov and married Dani Marie, but within weeks of his marriage, he was on a ship bound for France.
The lights and the possibility of a new German weapon being tested along the Mexican border were forgotten by the Army. There were too many tangible weapons to worry about, particularly mustard gas. But on many nights, as Captain Raleigh tried not to think about the next day’s combat, he longed for his wife and the son she’d given birth to.
After the war ended in November 1918, he returned home in time for Christmas. Snow fell-unusual but not impossible in that area of Texas. He had survived thirty-nine dogfights with German aviators and thanked God that he was able to be with his wife and son. But even though he was finally safe, he had nightmares. Not about the war, though. Instead his disturbing dreams made him experience the floating, drifting sensation of the lights. Each evening he went out to stare at them. In March 1919, he purchased a biplane that had been used in the war, many of which had become available at cheap prices because the military no longer needed them.
A week after he took possession of the plane, he took off at dusk from the now overgrown airstrip where he’d trained pilots three years earlier. As the darkness thickened, he flew toward the lights. The sound of his engine receded into the gloom.
Neither he nor the plane was ever seen again.
56
In the dank complex beneath the abandoned airbase, Col. Warren Raleigh remembered seeing photographs of a dashing young man in a uniform, a strong-looking woman next to him, a biplane in the background. He remembered hearing about the Rostov lights and his great-grandfather’s mysterious disappearance.
Raleigh’s great-grandmother had raised her son alone, demonstrating the strength that had drawn her husband to her. Her only show of emotion came each night. While her parents took care of the baby, she went out to the area where her husband had disappeared. She watched the lights, waiting for him to return.
Night after night, winter and spring, she stared at them.
Inexplicably, her face became red and swollen. Blisters developed. One night, when strands of her hair began to fall out, she finally did something she would never have imagined doing-she took her son, moved from the once reassuring area where she’d grown up, and rented an apartment in noisy, disturbing El Paso. There she learned to be a seamstress, sewing at home while looking after her son.
El Paso led to Denver, Chicago, and finally Boston as she tried to get farther and farther from the lights. Despite the passage of years, she never remarried.
She died from skin cancer.
A voice interrupted Raleigh’s thoughts.
“Sir, Fort… is… call… you.”
He peered up from his desk. His earplugs muffled sounds. “Say again, Lieutenant?”
“Fort Meade wants you on the phone. Scrambler code 2.”
As Raleigh reached for the phone on his desk, the lieutenant continued, “And even though it isn’t night yet, we’re getting extremely powerful readings.”
Raleigh nodded. This time he didn’t take the risk of removing an earplug as he pressed a button on his phone and engaged the scrambler.
“Colonel Raleigh here.”
“This is Borden,” a woman’s voice said faintly. She was the director of the weapons research team at Raleigh’s headquarters near the fortress-like National Security Agency in Maryland. “We’re receiving unusually strong readings from the observatory.”
“Yes, one of my people here just told me we’re getting strong readings, also.”
Borden’s voice continued, “I reviewed the data parameters for previous versions of this study. As we know, the pattern’s cyclical. Some- times the signals are almost impossible to detect. Other times they’re pronounced. But until now, the highs and lows have been in the same range. These are the highest readings we’ve ever seen-and that includes what happened where you are, back in 1945. The reason I contacted you isn’t just to make a report. I’m asking you to reconsider your strategy.” She paused. “Colonel, are you certain you want to stay at your location?”
Raleigh found the question touching. One of his many secrets was that he and Borden met each month at a Baltimore hotel room, where they allowed themselves to pretend they had emotions unrelated to their careers. Her question wasn’t merely about protecting the pro- gram. It suggested that she was actually concerned about his safety.
“Colonel, can you hear me?” Borden’s voice asked.
“Yes,” he finally said, “I hear you. Thank you for your input, but I’ll be staying. All these years, this is where the program has been headed. Without a team on-site, we’ll never know the truth. I can’t leave.”
This wasn’t just where the program had been headed, though. It was where his life had been headed since he’d first heard about the lights when he was a boy.
FOUR – TRANSFIGURATION
57
Twenty seconds after the explosions, Page’s cell phone rang. He and Tori were staring toward the sky in the direction from which the shock waves had come. He pulled the phone from his belt and pressed the answer button.
“Did you hear them?” Medrano’s voice asked urgently.
“A small one, a big one, then another small one,” Page replied. “From the northwest. The only thing over there is the observatory.”
“That’s what I’m thinking, too. Where are you?”
“The airport.”
“Big surprise. I finally figured you were planning to use your plane tonight. A private plane can go just about anywhere, right?”
“Just about.”
“The nearest Highway Patrol chopper is ninety minutes away. I can’t wait that long. I want you to fly toward those explosions and find out what the hell happened.”
“The problem is,” Page said, “one of the places a private plane can’t go is prohibited airspace.”