Kelly Kishel felt for the prescription bottle in her purse and popped her second 20mg Fluoxetine in the last two hours, chasing the megadose of serotonin with the remains of her coffee. She removed the Glock 27 from its holster and then released the safety, her eyes tracking her invited guest on her monitor as he made his way to the farmhouse.
Adam surveyed the two-story dwelling from behind the trunk of an oak tree. The driveway leading to the front door was gravel, the back door accessible only through a screened-in porch. He imagined the hinges and springs of the patio door would be rusted.
He checked the time… 12:36 a.m. He had purposely arrived early — not that it really mattered. The counter-intelligence agent was expecting him; the question was how many reinforcements were inside with her and how many more were on the way.
Kelly’s eyes followed the blinking figure on screen, her medicated pulse rock-steady as her visitor crossed the gravel driveway.
The counter-intelligence agent drew a bead on a chest-high dining room window panel that looked out to the front stoop. Atta boy… Coupla more feet and it’s nighty-night.
For several minutes Shariak remained ten to fifteen feet outside the front door. Then he appeared to have second thoughts; circling around to the southeast side of the house.
Sweat beads rolled down her neck as she heard the screen door’s rusted springs squeal open. No problem. From her vantage she could put a bullet in her quarry no matter which door he entered through.
And then the window by the kitchen sink shattered, causing her to drop to her knees. Before she could discern what the hissing sound was, a second object punched through the dining room window and rolled beneath the table, the smoke trail quickly filling the room and burning her eyes.
Tear gas!
Barely able to see, she ducked beneath the blanket with the laptop, quickly determining Shariak was heading around to the back porch. Gun in hand, she ran stooped over to the front door and flung it open, desperate for fresh air.
The light ignited from somewhere directly ahead, blinding her. Squinting and curling into a ball, she aimed her gun at the 1000-lumen tactical flashlight, firing twice before she felt the barrel of the 9mm pressing against the back of her neck, the voice coming from behind the gas mask muffled in her ear. “Hand me the weapon very slowly.”
She swore under her breath, angry at herself for falling for the diversion.
She held up the Glock — Shariak yanking it out of her hand. She heard him tuck it away before his hand slid up the back of her neck, his fingers entwining her blonde hair into a fist.
“Walk toward the light… move!”
Looking down, she moved ahead until she was at the source.
“On your knees.”
“Sounds kinky, Shariak. Is that how Jessica prefers it?”
The CIA agent never registered the blow to the back of her skull, only the gravel as her face struck the driveway, her consciousness inhaled into the sparkling purple darkness.
Freshly showered and having weighed in and dressed in purple scrubs and tennis shoes, Jessica followed Joyce LaCombe out of the women’s locker room and down a long, white-tiled corridor. Every twenty feet they passed below a translucent black-tinted half-sphere mounted in the ceiling, the objects no doubt containing security cameras.
“Joyce, why did you bring me here?”
“After what Dr. Death did to you, we felt it was important you know the truth.”
“Who’s we?”
“We are the silenced majority that needs to be heard.”
“Maybe you could start by telling me where we are.”
“We’re in Dulce, New Mexico… or more accurately, we’re beneath a mountain not far from Dulce, New Mexico. Construction on this underground base dates back to 1948 when access tunnels were expanded from out of the natural cavern system that runs through these sacred Indian grounds. The complex was originally disguised as a lumber camp; its initial source of power came from the Navajo Dam. Dulce is part military base, part genetics lab; it’s also the largest underground hub in North America. From here you have access to all of the other subterranean bases, including Los Alamos National Laboratories. Crazy story — when Bechtel’s excavating machine was completing the tunnel from Dulce to Los Alamos, the vibrations in the bedrock caused a humming sound that drove the residents of Taos, New Mexico crazy. They called it the Taos Hum. Some New Agers actually thought it was Gaia speaking to them.”
“How many subterranean bases are there?”
“Enough to warrant changing Bechtel’s mascot to a mole. You know about the complex beneath Haystack Butte at Edwards; that’s where most of the pulse beam and stealth research is carried out. A fifty-mile shuttle links the ‘Butte’ with the Tehachapi facility in Southern California. Heading east you have two of the more infamous underground complexes in Groom Lake, Nevada and Dugway Proving Grounds in the desert outside Provo, Utah. I heard there’s a really deep complex located below Denver’s International Airport, though I’ve never been there. Then there’s Fort Huachuca near Tombstone, Arizona — which serves as Army Intelligence headquarters — and bases in Burley, Idaho and Oklahoma City.
“The wildest underground facility I’ve ever visited is located about eighteen kilometers from a town called Alice Springs in Australia’s Northern Territory. The base is known as Pine Gap; to locals it simply appears to be a satellite ground station which is jointly operated by the Americans and Aussies. Anyway, they flew us in at night by helicopter. The ground station is surrounded by mountains, and suddenly, it looked like we were about to crash into one. I let out a scream… as we flew through the mountain, which was actually a hologram that concealed a massive base built deep inside the mountain. Among other things, it’s where they keep the largest triangular Alien Reproduction Vehicle ever made.”
The T-shaped corridor dead-ended; branching off to their right and left in identical white-tiled hallways.
“And what do they keep here in Dulce… besides my Zeus satellites and a bunch of empty corridors that lead nowhere?”
“I’m going to show you.” Instead of turning right or left, Dr. LaCombe took Jessica by the elbow and walked her straight into the wall—
— the two female scientists stepping through the hologram into an immense hangar which resembled the flight deck of an air craft carrier, only ten times larger.
Instead of F-16s, the underground air strip held an armada of extraterrestrial vehicles.
They were floating in holding pens, each about half an acre in size. Most were saucer-shaped discs like the ARV Jessica had witnessed entering the Level-3 launch complex. There were also cigar-shaped and diamond-shaped UFOs, and several ten-by-twenty-foot oval craft.
“These are all man-made?”
“Correct. You can tell by the seams. The real deal is seamless and they function almost as life forms.”
A herd of colorful drones whipped by, each semi-transparent object the size of a basketball. Jessica was about to inquire what these objects were when she caught sight of an imposing dark triangular vessel hovering twenty feet above the deck, its mass easily occupying a square mile of the hangar.
“A mothership? Joyce, why did they build a mothership. For that matter, why build any of this if you’re just going to keep it hidden underground?”