Coming in high, then dropping lower, ignoring any other-imposed ‘zones’ that do not apply.
A glimpse of radar dishes, reflecting the fiery sun’s gaze and causing even psychics to wince at the glare and go running for shade.
Finding none, going under…
Pulled by the obvious. That this sign of civilization is far too remote, far too isolated and secretive to be all it appears. Just the tip of the iceberg.
Below…
Tracking the massive banks of elevator shafts down, down to the first of several subterranean levels. Miles and miles below the service.
Down, down…Out and through.
Stay with it, Caleb urged, beginning to feel like he was in a dream, one he knew wasn’t going to be of the nice variety. Part of him wanted out. He fidgeted, even as he heard a cough from someone nearby, in that real place.
Into the bright hallway, stumbling into a massive space full of pylons and electrical wiring; a cavernous ceiling and hundreds of people bustling about. Testing, modifying, analyzing.
Electrical sparks racing through the air from pylon to pylon in one section, while underwater tanks conveyed plasma-like pulses through odd eel-like tubes in another. Technicians recorded, watched and analyzed and reported back to others standing above these and dozens of other experiments.
Caleb wanted to linger, but felt the tug, pulling sideways. Giving in, he let it…
Take him outside of this chamber, to a bright hallway over the shoulder of someone walking briskly to a door. Retina scan, thumb print, then inside…
Another massive circular room, only this one held just a walkway around a massive pit. Terminals along the railing, all displaying data from an antenna-like visual.
The chamber rumbled as if something had just been awakened from its eon-old slumber down below.
Don’t need to see this, Caleb thought. Not helping, I think I know, but for that, I have to be…
Outside again.
Roaring up through the layers of ancient bedrock, up into the twilight sky now, stars zipping across the firmament in an accelerated rush to nightfall. Vision twisting one way then the next, and then getting bearings. East-west trajectory from the facility. Choose west, then move…
It came soon enough. The horizon’s stars and brighter indigo tinge broken by something looming larger as his vision approached.
Something squat, thick and massive. Something so unique and obvious a marker in all the otherwise flat and dead landscape.
A giant formation, over a thousand feet high, still dark and unrecognizable, but in only a few moments…
As the time sped up and night turned to dawn, the colors bled back into the darkness, scattering the shadows and revealing the expected red coloration.
And Caleb opened his eyes, staring right into Boris’s, who had leaned in, sensing it was time.
“What did you spy with your little eye?”
“Ayers Rock.”
“Ah.” Boris’s smile was that of a proud parent.
“One of Australia’s most endearing tourist traps, and an incredibly original geological formation.”
“Yes, so?”
“Which happens to lie in a direct westerly parallel to several other notable features of unusual geology. Mt. Connor’s twin peaks and the Devil’s Marbles.” Caleb took a breath, recalling things his mind hadn’t showed him now. “But of more immediate interest, I’m guessing for our purposes…”
“Yes…?”
“The American and Joint Defense Space Research facility, Pine Gap is located along that line as well. Which, I can expect, is our current location?”
Boris smiled. “Of course you are correct. One for one. Keep going now that you’re hot on the trail. That was an easy one. Now tell me why.”
Caleb groaned. “Come on, it could be any number of reasons. Do you want me to review the whole of my knowledge about Pine Gap? Believe me, I could bore — or entertain you — for days with all the theories about this place. It makes the Alaska HAARP facility look like a kid’s backyard sandbox.”
Boris just smiled.
“Although,” Caleb continued, “it certainly shares several similar elements. People claim they’re conducting further fringe scientific tests here. Some say it involves experimental technology recovered from crashed alien spacecraft, others insist they’re furthering the research of Nikola Tesla’s experiments and some of those same patents utilized up at HAARP. Weather modification, scalar weaponry tests…”
Boris’s eyes flashed and Caleb saw a hint of a smile, indicating that he was probably on the right track, so he continued. “Supposedly there are twelve levels to this infamous underground facility, each one laid out in a radial pattern of hallways around a central hub, like spokes in a wheel. Some two or three thousand employees, and, let’s see… they wear arm bands matching the color of the walls in each research station. There’s a five mile no fly zone around the area, and locals report an enormous number of black trucks going in and out of the facility.”
Caleb pointed up with his index finger. “Helicopters, and of course strange lights zipping around up there.”
“Of course,” said Boris, motioning impatiently with his hand for Caleb to continue.
“And what else? What this American or this joint task force does down there is anybody’s guess, but there are lots and lots of guesses. Some claim it’s the NSA, with the most massive computers and servers, and they collect data on every phone call, text and fax worldwide, linked up through satellite monitoring spy satellites. Others claim, as I said…and might have seen…it’s a testing site for Tesla experimentation. New weaponry and unsanctioned research into the nature of physics and reality that could have global consequences.”
Boris popped a stick of gum into his mouth and crumpled the wrapper. He seemed disinterested again.
Caleb didn’t notice. “All that may be true and this may be an all-purpose kind of secretive station way out in the middle of nowhere, on a continent that’s largely overlooked. Then there are still others who maintain that there’s one other kind of testing done here, and still being done.”
Boris’s teeth slowed their chewing.
Caleb leaned in, but closed his eyes first, letting one last vision free, one that had been bubbling up under his skin and crying for release.
A long stretch of desert beneath an azure sky. A group of men inside a shielded glass structure, wearing thick goggles and waiting…
For the blast of light and the subsequent cloud rising up miles into the sky, mushrooming into a tumultuous, ravenous beast expanding outward and upward behind the shockwave…
“Atomic testing.”
Boris popped the big bubble he’d been expanding from his lips, and sucked it back in. “There you go.”
Caleb didn’t relish being right, any more than he felt comfortable in this man’s presence, or here. Pine Gap. He had studied it, along with Area 51 and other places, all his life, intrigued with the conspiracies and the lingering evidence, drawn to secrets and the forbidden. It had been on his list of objectives for the team, one that continually got longer and longer with more pressing targets constantly moving ahead of the ones that would be ‘nice to finally know’.
Now, however, it seemed he might get his wish. What else were they doing here? What was all the money and secrecy really about?