The disclosure protocol, p.15
The Disclosure Protocol, page 15
part #8 of Warner & Lopez Series
‘You know what you said about this being a no-gunfire deal?’
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘Mackenzie’s under fire, literally,’ Ethan said.
‘Is he okay?’ Lopez asked wearily as she slumped back into a seat.
‘Probably into protective custody,’ Ethan guessed. ‘They tried to hit his family too.’
Garrett had heard everything, but so had Kyle Trent, who was awake and watching now.
‘They tried to kill a general?’ he uttered, suddenly aware of the sheer level of danger they were in.
Ethan moved to the side of the jet and looked down at the darkened plains of Kansas. They could have been tracked out of Vegas. The squads hunting them would by now have checked passenger manifests and other aviation records in an attempt to track them down. Ethan and Lopez had flown one-way into McGarran because they didn’t know how long it would take to track Kyle Trent down. Although they were now without a paper-trail, it wouldn’t take their pursuers long to figure out how they got out of Nevada.
‘We need a new game plan,’ he said to Lopez. ‘We can’t take Kyle back to the Barn, there will be people waiting for him in Virginia who will shoot first and ask questions never.’
***
XXVII
Virginia
‘What the hell is going on?’
Deputy Director of the CIA Edward McCain shook Mackenzie’s hand the moment he arrived at the CIA safehouse. Mackenzie had managed to get his traumatised wife and children settled down but now he was standing with a stiff scotch in one hand and a sense of futility in the other.
‘I don’t know, but they’re deadly serious. These guys shot to kill and it was only chance that they missed. What do we know about them?’
‘Not a damned thing,’ McCain admitted. ‘We traced the car, but it’s taken some time as these guys were smart enough not to set it alight. Local law enforcement followed traffic camera evidence to narrow the search and found the SUV abandoned in a sidestreet twenty miles out of town. No cameras out there, no witness and the vehicle was wiped down real well.’
‘Professional work,’ Mackenzie replied without hesitation. ‘They were well armed and they knew how to shoot straight. It was only luck that they missed my wife and if I hadn’t stepped out right in front of the driver’s side…’
‘The shooter couldn’t easily hit you without taking out their own windscreen,’ McCain nodded, understanding immediately. ‘We did a ballistics check on the bullet casings, but they’re custom made with no stamp and nothing on the hammer residue or pattern that our computers have managed to match. If they’re as smart as they seem to be, they’ll have used custom bullets in a black market weapon, which means no trail and nothing that can be relied upon in court.’
Mackenzie slumped into a big armchair and took a pull on the scotch. It burned his throat and belly, felt good despite the gnawing agony of being powerless to strike back. Mackenzie had fought in two major wars, had even taken on the Taliban in close combat. It had been a dangerous time but he had never questioned the fight, had never been confused about what he was doing and why. But now, he was trying to think of a way to fight an enemy that he didn’t know and who was trying to kill not just him but his family too. McMcain was thinking the same thing.
‘Jeez Scott, you’re on the intelligence desk at Langley, not out in the field. Who the hell would possibly want you dead? Is there anyone you can think of, maybe former terrorists who are now on the loose or something?’
Mackenzie shook his head. There was nobody out of his military past who would likely hold a grudge against him, and while it was known for former soldiers to join motorcycle gangs and other criminal enterprises, this hit was not of their stamp. This was professional, and besides the men he had been able to see were young, not someone from his past who had come seeking revenge for an unknown or forgotten crime.
‘No,’ Mackenzie replied. He wanted to say something about the new evidence from Warner and Lopez he was working on, but the message about “trust nobody” had gotten through loud and clear now and was working to complicate things. Although he did not for a moment believe that McCain would be working against him, much less to have him killed, he did now understand that there were people out there who were willing to kill to get the information that he had.
Suddenly, he realised something. He had told nobody about his involvement with the project, and yet he had been targeted. McCain spotted the change in his expression.
‘What, you remember something?’
Mackenzie bit his lip. He couldn’t say anything for fear of knowledge about his activities slipping out, and yet remaining silent had still gotten him nearly killed. There was nowhere for him to turn, and yet he had to do something. An image of his wife and daughters flickered before him in the firelight and suddenly he knew what his priorities now were.
‘This place isn’t safe,’ he said to McCain.
The DDCIA raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve got eight men out there surrounding the property and the Chiefs of Staff are already aware of what’s happened. It’s all over the news too, a drive-by shooting in your area.’
Mackenzie nodded. Public knowledge could sometimes work in the intelligence community’s favour if a figure was at risk. By putting the news out there that someone, say the North Koreans, were looking to assassinate a refugee, then it would often cause the enemy to cancel the operation as if the target did indeed die, it was tacit admission of guilt on the part of the regime and an extra penny in the pocket of patriotism for the serving government.
‘It might hold them off any further attempts on my life, but it won’t stop them.’
McCain frowned. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Scott?’
Mackenzie had no way out of this other than to disappear, and he couldn’t do that without putting his family at risk. The murder of those close to targets of government conspiracies were more common than most civilians thought. Russia had repeatedly poisoned and killed refugees in the United Kingdom and the United States as it sought to rebuild the state of fear that had been its legacy for decades. North Korean agents repeatedly murdered others who had fled the regime in South East Asia, and both China and Israel were likewise keen to hunt down those who would dare to take a stand against them.
‘The new project you gave me has gone all Cold War.’
McCain sat down in a chair opposite. ‘Talk to me. What happened?’
‘Scotland,’ Mackenzie replied. ‘Ever since I got in contact with the Brits out there, someone or something has been on my case.’
‘Did you talk to anybody else about the case?’
Macknezie rubbed his eyes and shook his head. ‘You’re gonna laugh, Ed.’
‘You just got shot for whatever you’re about to tell me,’ McCain replied with a stony face. ‘I’m not laughing, Scott.’
Mackenzie nodded again, took a breath.
‘Somebody out there has figured out how to track UFOs down and catch ‘em in the act, right? We’ve got photos of the real thing that’d make Steven Spielberg cry. I didn’t have the ability or staff to handle this, but at the same time as you showed up I got a file from the DIA.’
‘The DIA? What did they want?’
‘It wasn’t official either,’ Mackenzie admitted. ‘From some guy called Jarvis, a former agent. He directed me to two former agents who worked for him, Warner and Lopez. They’ve been doing the field work for me ever since.’
McCain stared at him for a long moment, and his reply was one that Mackenzie would never have predicted.
‘Scott, you’re in greater danger than you think. Somebody, somewhere, wants those photos kept quiet real bad, and they want whoever took them just as much. You’re right, we need to get the hell out of here.’
Mackenzie raised his eyebrows, surprised. ‘You’re buying into this?’
‘I’m already fully paid up,’ McCain said as he stood and pulled a cell phone from his pocket. ‘You’re damned right that organisations out there are going to want images like that and will kill to get them. Hell, we work for one of them. Do you have anyone I can call, someone right outside of the system, someone who can get your family out of here and somewhere safe?’
‘Can’t the Director handle something?’ Mackenzie asked as he stood up.
McCain shook his head.
‘The CIA leaks like a sieve, Scott. We keep you in a safe house within an hour of the District, you’ll be dead before the sun’s up.’
Mackenzie was almost afraid to ask the question now burning a hole in his brain but he knew he had to.
‘You think the CIA is behind this?’
McCain shot him a shocked look.
‘Hell no,’ he said with a scowl. ‘It’s much worse than that.’
***
XXVIII
Garrett’s jet landed smoothly on the asphalt at a Johnson City Executive Airport and taxied in to a parking area to the west of the terminal. Ethan and Nicola prepared themselves as Garrett gestured to the terminal, which was lit brightly in the darkness that enveloped the rest of the airport.
‘We’ve picked a spot that will shield you from the view of any cameras in there. I have a Mercedes booked to pick you up from outside the terminal and drive you to wherever you need to go.’
Ethan shook the billionaire’s hand.
‘We’ll hook up with you as soon as we can,’ he replied. ‘But we may be dark for some time.’
‘Get in touch,’ Garrett urged him, ‘I want in on this and I have the resources to make it happen.’
The jet rolled to a halt and the whine of the engines faded away. Garrett opened the main hatch and Ethan hurried out with Lopez and Kyle Trent close behind. They stepped out onto the asphalt service area, the wind cool and the lights of the airport shimmering in the darkness as Ethan headed out toward one of the large hangars between them and the terminal.
A car rolled up almost immediately, some sort of executive service. Ethan, Kyle and Lopez climbed into the car and were driven in silence to the other side of the airport terminal. Moments later, they were out of the car and walking into the airport as though they had just arrived to fly out of the state.
‘We’re gonna have to be quick if we’re to get out of here before our friends from Vegas find us,’ Lopez said as they walked through the terminal. ‘You think that Garrett will be a safe bet?’
Ethan knew what she meant. Any link to Garrett would be a weakness now, and they couldn’t afford to take the chance that anyone connected to their billionaire benefactor would squeal. Besides, their pursuers would soon link Garrett’s jet to their escape and he didn’t want to lose the advantage they had.
‘We book ourselves out of here and go dark from now on,’ he said. ‘We can check in with Garrett once Kyle’s safe, which will mean we’ll also be of no use to either Special Operations or anyone else who might be hunting us.’
‘And then what do I do?’ Kyle asked. ‘I’ll be running again with nowhere to go.’
‘You said that you had something else,’ Lopez said, ‘some other piece of evidence that pointed to where UFOs would appear.’
Kyle nodded, but glanced instinctively up at the cameras mounted in the terminal ceiling, the Big Brother network watching all with soulless black eyes.
‘We need somewhere we can talk without being watched,’ he said.
Ethan led the way to a cafeteria. Although there were people everywhere, at this time of night it was slightly less busy and there were isolated tables where they could sit and talk. Although there was the slight possibility that facial recognition cameras could be in operation, it was unlikely that they would be actively searching for any of them this far from Nevada. At least, not yet.
As he waited in line, Ethan felt a dull ache in his belly, as though something had struck him. He rubbed his stomach, pleased to find that it was still washboard flat, and the pain passed once again.
Ethan got coffees and fast food and joined Lopez and Kyle where they sat at the back of the cafeteria, able to watch the entrance. Ethan sat down and saw that Kyle already had his laptop open and was showing Lopez something.
‘This is insane, Ethan,’ she said as she stared at the screen.
‘So are we for even being here,’ he replied. ‘What have you got, Kyle?’
Kyle turned the screen around to face Ethan as he spoke.
‘I ran some other data through the Hydra, but I didn’t have chance to integrate it into the program until after it had compiled. I was at Dugway when it completed, and I’ve only just been able to run it through. The results are astounding.’
Ethan could see on the screen of the laptop a map of the United States, much like the one that Kyle had shown him previously, where various states were marked with the frequency of UFO sightings. But this one was different.
‘I included another set of parameters, in an attempt to narrow down the odds against encountering a UFO. There have been reports of cattle mutilations all over the world, but especially in the United States and especially in the last twenty or so years. I managed to categorise the accounts into high-level certainty groups where the chances of the mutilations being the result of predators or other natural events were virtually nil.’
Ethan knew something of the cattle mutilations that had haunted the mid-west for decades. Typically, healthy cattle were found dead in the morning by a rancher, and they were also found to be missing ears, tongues, genitalia, each being cut away with surgical precision. The animals often had their bowels scoured out and were almost always entirely drained of blood. This would all have been unusual enough, but not only where there no prints of predators, humans or otherwise around the remains, the victims themselves had left no trail to the point of their death; they were almost always found lying on their sides with their ribs broken, as though dropped from a great height.
‘There are almost always UFO sightings around the same time that these cattle mutilations take place,’ Kyle said, ‘and ranchers know the difference between coyote and mountain lion kills and these mutilations. They report burning smells near the corpses, scents of hospitals or biochemicals and no sign of birds or other scavengers around the corpses which would normally not miss the chance to feast on a free meal. They happen often enough that I thought I’d put them in the data and see what happened, and this is what I got.’
Kyle pressed a button on the keypad, and Ethan took a deep breath as the graphic changed. Suddenly, all the sightings and events lined up perfectly to form a line that ran right across the very middle of the United States from west to east, and this time there was no variation in the number of sightings. The line was solid from east to west coast, and all of it within a narrow margin.
‘The 37th parallel,’ Kyle announced grandly. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw it, but it’s there for all to see and this is hard data.’
Ethan couldn’t begin to think why such events would take place almost exclusively across a single degree of latitude that ran across the country.
‘Why the hell would there be so many sightings in one line like that?’ he asked. ‘What would alien visitors see as so important about it?’
Kyle wasn’t finished yet.
‘Tell him,’ Lopez urged.
‘Tell me what?’ Ethan asked Kyle.
‘I ran some other data that I already had through the system,’ Kyle replied. ‘Other factors that seemed to result in UFO sightings. The number of links to the 37th parallel is startling. Fully one fifth of all paranormal sightings occur on the parallel. What’s more, some of the most famous UFO related locations and events are right on the same line of latitude.’
‘Such as?’ Ethan asked.
‘Area 51,’ Kyle replied, ‘and that’s just for starters. Dulce in New Mexico, long a location associated with UFO sightings and a place suspected to house secret government facilities in local mesas. The Taos hum, in New Mexico, heard only by some but the hum often adversely affects their health. The Miller and Sanchez mutilations, both famous for their veracity and both occurring in the last decade; the Wichita UFO sighting right here in Kansas, the Piedmont, Missouri UFO mass-sighting; the Cape Girardeau, Missouri UFO crash and retrieval, which is only know due to the deathbed confession of Baptist Minister William Huffman who was called to administer the last rites to beings not of this world; the Mantell UFO incident, when Kentucky National Guard fighter pilot Thomas Mantell was scrambled to intercept a UFO and died as a result. That’s not to mention the large number of US military installations arrayed across the 37th parallel.’
Ethan leaned back in the cheap plastic seat and thought for a moment.
‘It’s pretty fair to say that almost every US installation across that line is also associated with the highest levels of security clearance. We’re not going to get anywhere near any of them.’
‘Not without help,’ Kyle said.
‘Do you know anybody who could get us in, or close to these places?’ Lopez asked Kyle, clearly warming to him with each passing hour.
Kyle seemed uncertain.
‘There may be one guy, but he’s been off the radar for years. He supposedly lives out somewhere in Nevada and stays off the grid, right on the parallel believe it or not. He might know enough to get us in the right place at the right time.’
‘Nevada, huh?’ Ethan echoed. ‘It’s probably the last thing they’ll expect us to do, hop right back into the state after getting away again.’
‘We could drive it,’ Lopez said, ‘stay off the grid ourselves.’
Ethan nodded. ‘It’s probably twenty hours or more on the road but it’s doable. All we need is a vehicle.’
‘Yeah, and we can’t hire one and take it out of state,’ Lopez said.
‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ Ethan replied.
They finished their food, and rather than book flights headed back out of the terminal, Ethan led them to the parking lot and scanned the ranks of vehicles and spotted an old Ford Ranger, one that had survived since what looked like the 1980s. Ethan walked across to it as he slipped out of his pocket a small survival kit that he had brought with him. It contained a number of items that all Marines would have been familiar with, such as medical dressings, a miniature can opener, weapon cleaning fluid and such like. Ethan’s also held a small number of lock picks, and within moments he was tinkering with the Ford’s locks.
