‘You can’t speak of it, ever,’ McCain said, ‘although once you’ve seen it you won’t want to.’

  Mackenzie felt a little uncomfortable at McCain’s choice of words.

  ‘It’s that bad?’

  ‘It’s not bad,’ McCain said. ‘It’s just that you won’t be ready for it, no matter what you think you know.’

  The hairs on Mackenzie’s arms rose up and pulled at his skin, shivers running along his limbs as though insects were scuttling across them.

  ‘I gotta go through that door, before you say anything more, haven’t I?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ McCain replied. ‘It’s how it started for me. It’s how it starts for everyone involved in this program.’

  Mackenzie thought for a moment. ‘How many have left the program since it started?’

  ‘None,’ McCain replied. ‘And before you ask; no, none were assassinated for threatening to talk. It doesn’t work like that. All held their silence because they wanted to. I do. You’ll understand too, if you decide to go through that door.’

  ‘My family?’ Mackenzie asked.

  ‘Safe, but you won’t be able to share this with them. Scott, we need to know where Kyle Trent is, before the Russians can get to him. You should know Scott, that the girl mentioned in your investigation, Sophie Taggart, has been abducted by armed men we believe to be the same bad actors who went after you.’

  Mackenzie winced in frustration.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ he insisted. ‘Ethan and Nicola are with Kyle Trent but they’ve gone dark. The number I gave you was all I had, have you tried calling it?’

  ‘Yes,’ McCain replied. ‘I don’t think they’re playing ball.’

  ‘They don’t know you well enough to trust you yet,’ Mackenzie replied. ‘But if you called them you can track them, right?’

  ‘There are teams on the way to their location right now,’ McCain assured him. ‘Don’t worry about them. Right now, your only concern is what’s behind that door.’

  ‘Sophie Taggart is a concern,’ Mackenzie insisted.

  ‘Then do what you can to help her,’ McCain urged him. ‘You’ll be better equipped once you go through that door.’

  Mackenzie nodded. The door beckoned him in silence. Slowly, he stood up and turned to face it. He glanced back at McCain, who gave him a small nod of encouragement. Mackenzie took a deep breath and reminded himself that he’d fought in several theatres of war in his time and seen too many things he’d rather not dwell on. He could handle one more.

  Mackenzie opened the door and walked through, and as he saw what McCain and others before him had seen he knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

  ***

  XXIX

  Rico Savage peered out of the open door of the Black Hawk, his rifle cradled in his lap and his men waiting with him as the sleek helicopter raced along barely thirty feet above the desert floor. The rotors thundered somewhere just above his head and the hot wind buffeted him as he leaned out and saw the canyons ahead.

  The military from the Nellis Range often trained here, flying through these very canyons on a regular basis. There was nothing unusual for the local residents to see, just more mysterious aircraft and helicopters thundering this way and that beneath the scorching desert sun.

  He checked over his shoulder and saw that his men were ready and were watching him with stern, silent expressions. They knew what had to be done. He knew they would follow him through the gates of Hades if he ordered them to, and though they were not expecting heavy resistance they were treating this mission with the same dedication as they would when storming a terrorist cell’s hideaway in Afghanistan.

  The Black Hawk’s engine note changed as the pilots adjusted the controls. The helicopter was all black and unmarked, no squadron patches adorning its fuselage or airframe numbers to identify it. Photographs taken of the helicopters typically showed little detail, and never enough for civilians to identify where the helicopters originated. Mostly operated at night, this broad-daylight mission was unusual but necessary.

  ‘Sixty seconds!’

  The helicopter remained low, skimming the brush at over one hundred knots, the Black Hawk’s shadow racing them across the desert. Rico saw the canyon loom before them, and even as he spotted the ramshackle buildings tucked within it the helicopter suddenly leaned over and pulled up. The huge rotors thumped the air as it slowed and turned, blue sky and sunlight flashing through the interior as it broadsided the entrance to the canyon. Clouds of swirling dust and sand coiled into the air in great spinning whorls and the noise of the engines reverberated like drums through Rico’s chest as the Black Hawk came to a hover fifty yards from the canyon wash and some six feet off the ground.

  Rico leaped out and landed in the desert, his men spilling out after him as they sprinted for the entrance to the canyon: far enough away to prevent anyone attacking them in a crossfire, close enough that nobody could flee. As he ran, Rico ducked as a second Black Hawk thundered overhead, tasked with blocking the canyon off further up by deploying more of Rico’s men onto the heights either side.

  Rico ran to the entrance of the canyon, digging into cover on one side as his team fanned out into position. The helicopters thundered away into holding positions three miles out and the silence returned to the desert. Confident that nobody could escape, Rico waved his men forward and they began advancing up the wash.

  McCain had called him only an hour ago with a cell phone trace on Ethan Warner. The coordinates were located within a long-abandoned ghost town out in the Nevada deserts associated with a man named Freeman, who had apparently been a thorn in the Defense Department’s side over the years.

  Rico had read a detailed file about Benjamen Freeman on the way here. A radical, anarchistic former scientist with a passion for writing complex papers on the UFO phenomenon, he was regarded as a hero by the fringe lunatics and almost a traitor by the military. In his released works he had revealed complex formulas used by NASA projects that, while not classified, were certainly sensitive. It was grounds enough for arrest and given the old man’s advanced years and penchant for criticising the US military there seemed possibility enough that he would booby-trap his secluded home or otherwise seek to impede or harm Rico’s men.

  Rico advanced past the rusted hulk of a century-old car and saw ahead a shambolic homestead that looked abandoned, but he suspected was perfectly serviceable. There were no people between him and the homestead, the canyon eerily quiet. He waved his men into an arc formation, their weapons trained on the homestead as he called out.

  ‘Ben Freeman, come out with your hands up and your back turned to us!’

  A hot wind moaned up the canyon, carrying dust that caught in Rico’s eyes. He brushed them clear with one gloved hand and called out again.

  ‘Ben Freeman, this is your last chance. Failure to comply may result in the use of deadly force. Come out with your hands up an…’

  The front door to the homestead opened and an old man walked slowly out with his hands on his head and his back turned toward them. Rico peered at him, but he could see no evidence of anything strapped beneath his shirt or in his hands. Still, better safe than sorry.

  ‘Hands held high, fingers splayed!’ he yelled.

  Ben Freeman complied, standing with his hands in the air and his back still turned to them.

  ‘Turn around!’

  Freeman turned to face them, and it was clear that he was unarmed. Rico broke cover and moved forward, his pistol aimed squarely between Freeman’s eyes.

  ‘Is there anything on your person that could harm myself or my men?’ Rico demanded.

  ‘No,’ Freeman replied, his voice soft on the warm air, ‘only my mind.’

  Rico ignored his flippancy as he moved behind Freeman and yanked his hands down, cuffing them behind his back. Satisfied, he jabbed the pistol into Freeman’s back.

  ‘Is there anything in the homestead that is intended to hurt or impede my men?’

  Freeman frowned.

  ‘The iron’s a bit warm,’ he shrugged.

  Rico jabbed the pistol harder. ‘You want this to go easy or hard?’

  Freeman glanced over his shoulder. ‘You’re the ones who barged in here. You could have just knocked.’

  Rico glanced at his second in command and jerked his head toward Freeman’s home, and instantly his men swarmed upon the homestead, rushing inside with yelled orders to get down and stay down! Rico waited as his men cleared the room with military efficiency, and then he heard one of their voices on the comms channel.

  ‘They’re not here, all rooms cleared.’

  Rico spun Freeman around, kept the pistol jabbed into him.

  ‘This is going to be a very short conversation. Where is Kyle Trent?’

  ‘Gone,’ Freeman replied. ‘You missed them by barely an hour.’

  ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘I told them not to tell me. I knew you would come here eventually, so I didn’t want to know.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  Freeman smiled almost pityingly at Rico, as though somehow the soldier was just some pawn in a big game that he didn’t understand.

  ‘Everything I know.’

  Rico saw his lieutenant hurry from the homestead, a scanner in his hand.

  ‘They’re not here,’ he reported. ‘Nothing on infra-red either but they were here, recently. I’ve got hot spots in several seats inside, and there’s evidence of recent tyre tracks all over the wash.’

  Rico nodded. He too had noticed them, some going in, others going out. The freshest tracks, the ones that rode over all others, seemed to be of a vehicle leaving the area.

  ‘What was the vehicle, and where was it headed?’ he demanded of Freeman.

  ‘A Lincoln, silver, and I told you I didn’t want to know where they were heading.’

  ‘You have an idea,’ Rico snapped, knowing enough about the wily old man to know that if he helped Trent then he would be able to surmise their next move.

  ‘I told them what I knew, just like I’m telling you,’ Freeman replied. ‘They came in here just like you did, all heavy handed and panicked. I didn’t know if they wanted to talk to me or shoot me. I just wanted them gone.’

  Rico’s eyes narrowed. Freeman could be telling the truth, and the Warner guy was known for leaving a trail of destruction and sometimes bodies behind him. But there was no evidence of any true ruthlessness towards other people, only a dogged determination to get the job done that Rico could sympathise with.

  ‘Who was them?’ he demanded, deciding to catch Freeman out a little on his slip up.

  ‘Some guy called Warner, and a woman, Mexican probably. They seemed to be protecting Kyle, who looked like the whole world was after him.’

  ‘Keep talking,’ Rico snapped.

  ‘They wanted to know everything I’d surmised about UFOs. The kid had some gizmo that gathered big data and crunched it. They wanted to input what I knew about the phenomenon in order to improve their chances of seeing one, I think.’

  Rico’s mind started turning quickly. Trent was almost certainly the kid behind the images that the CIA had gone ballistic about, and that explained why he had showed up at Dugway when he had. The two figures had been on the hilltops inside the base, their kit all set up before the lights had appeared over the base. Either they had been the luckiest UFO spotters on planet earth or they’d known that something was going to happen at Dugway that night. Given that they’d broken in at great risk to their own lives the latter seemed the most likely, however impossible it may have seemed.

  Now Trent was on the run and likely his best course of action was to gather more evidence, go public with it and cover himself using the mass media. If he got killed, somehow, then the public would believe that some kind of shadow government was at work behind the scenes and it would draw even more attention to Dugway and other classified sites around the country.

  ‘He’s going for another sighting,’ Rico said out loud.

  The lieutenant said nothing, waiting patiently for orders.

  Rico believed the old man when he said that he had deliberately not asked where Trent was going. If he supplied data to the kid then he could have input it into whatever data crunching program he had and got the result after they had left. About all that Rico had on his side was the fact that they were travelling in a silver Lincoln, and that part could easily be fabricated.

  He turned away from Freeman and moved to crouch alongside the recent tyre tracks. They looked like normal tyres, not those of a truck or SUV. A smaller vehicle, lighter. A Lincoln would be a good fit, and there were countless Lincolns across any state in many colours. Tracking the vehicle down would be almost impossible, given the limited time and resources available.

  He stood and turned to his lieutenant.

  ‘Get every traffic camera feed that you can into play. We’re looking for a Lincoln, of any colour, heading away from this area on the interstate. Maybe we can identify them and start tracking.’

  The lieutenant dashed away to carry out the order as Rico returned to Freeman.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘Kyle Trent is in immense danger.’

  ‘Yes,’ Freeman nodded. ‘From all of you.’

  Rico’s eyes narrowed. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Must make you real proud,’ Freeman almost spat, ‘chasing an unarmed kid in the defence of secrets the government has no right to keep from its people.’

  Rico’s fists balled at his sides, but somehow he managed to keep his voice level.

  ‘Trent and a friend knowingly trespassed onto a government facility where lethal force can be used in defence of national security.’

  ‘And you shot one of them,’ Freeman agreed.

  Rico shook his head.

  ‘Trent’s friend was killed by a sniper,’ he replied. ‘But I can assure you that none of my men fired a single shot that night. We’re not looking to kill anyone. We want Kyle Trent’s technology, we want him on our side and we want to know who the hell killed Greg Parfitt. Just tell us what we need to know, or your friends are going to wind up dead by tomorrow morning.’

  The old man peered at him suspiciously.

  ‘You’re just saying that to cover your own arses. I don’t tell you what you want to hear you’re going to shoot me too, right?’

  Rico kept his temper in check.

  ‘Nobody’s going to shoot anyone. Kyle Trent and Greg were in plain sight on the hills, couldn’t have got away from us if they’d tried. We’d have arrested them, charged them, the whole nine yards, but not one of my men would have opened fire without my express order unless they felt directly threatened. That’s how it works! The only reason Kyle Trent got away was because we thought we were under fire when we heard the shot! By the time we reached the hilltop, his friend was dead and Kyle was gone. I can’t tell you who fired upon them but I have a good idea and I think I know why, and right now your friends are carrying it around with them. We need to know where they are.’

  ***

  XL

  Ethan drove, with Lopez alongside him and Kyle Trent in the back seat.

  They had ditched the Lincoln in favour of a small truck, the likes of which could be found in the possession of farmers all across the state and which would therefore blend in better with their surroundings.

  The sun was sinking toward the horizon as they drove along the empty highway before them, the asphalt a long straight line that vanished into the heat haze ahead where mountains sprawled like slumbering demons over the lengthening shadows.

  ‘Man, this place is insane.’

  Kyle was for once not looking at his laptop computer, which was humming alongside him as it crunched the extra data that Ben Freeman had fed it. They had seen the Black Hawk helicopters in the far distance not long after they had left, and Ethan had guessed that they had been bound for Freeman’s homestead. If they had ever needed confirmation that the government were now following them with intent, that had been it. Ethan only hoped that they would not see Freeman’s face on the news that night, under arrest or worse killed at the hands of covert government troops.

  Kyle was instead looking out of the windows at the immense deserts and mountains surrounding them. Ethan didn’t have a picture in his mind of the perfect UFO spot, maybe thickly wooded roads in rural Oregon, but this desolately beautiful landscape with miles of empty roads seemed as likely as any.

  ‘This is where it all goes down,’ Kyle added. ‘Tonopah Test Range. It’s an airfield and support base about seventy miles north west of Groom Lake and just about the best kept military secret in the United States arsenal. Weapons and security experts talk about the place with fascination, because it’s considered ultra-deep black and yet sits in plain sight.’

  ‘What’s so special about the place?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘Well, this is where they ran the MiG projects in the 1960s until the 1990s. Covert CIA operations were conducted under the codename Project Have Donut to capture and bring back to the US Soviet MiGs for testing against our own aircraft. When they did so, they were brought to Tonopah.’

  ‘They had MiGs here?’ Ethan asked in surprise.

  ‘Lots of them, variously stolen by CIA contracted pilots or captured via Soviet defections,’ Kyle confirmed. ‘The airplanes were tested, and the result was the formation of the Fighter Weapons School in the Navy, better known as TopGun, and a similar school in the Air Force. You’d have thought that such prizes would have been hidden away at Area 51, but no, they were tested at Tonopah. This was where the super-secret F-117A Stealth Fighters were tested and stored before they became public knowledge. Most experts refer to Tonopah as Area 52 and suggest that because of the public interest in Area 51 from the 1980s onward, most truly covert operations were moved to Tonopah instead to avoid observation.’

 

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