Area 51: The Reply-2 (2 page)

Duncan barely topped five feet in height and Turcotte very much doubted her weight made three digits. She had dark hair cut short and a slender face that was now drawn with exhaustion.

"I hate telling the same story five times," Duncan said, "and answering stupid questions."

"The American public is not happy it was deceived by its own government for decades," Turcotte said, assuming a southern drawl. "At least that's what the senator who questioned me this morning said. Add in some kidnappings made to look like abductions, cattle mutilations, disinformation campaigns—"

"Let's not forget the crop circles," Duncan added. "There's a congressman from Nebraska who is trying to get legislation through to get all those farmers reimbursed for the circles Majestic burned in their field."

"Jesus," Turcotte said. He took off his Class A green uniform jacket and threw it on the bed. He paused by the small brown refrigerator. "Want a beer?"

"All right."

Turcotte grabbed two cans and popped the top on one, handing it to her.

"They've got the

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mothership, the bouncer, the guardian on Easter Island. What more do they want?"

Duncan took a sip. "A scapegoat."

"They've got General Gullick dead. They've got the surviving members of Majestic being held in the federal pen," Turcotte said. He opened his can and took a long, deep drag. "The list of charges against those guys is thicker than the phone book."

"Yeah, but people can't believe it didn't go higher than that."

"It did go higher than that," Turcotte said. "But that was fifty years ago.

Seems like there's more important stuff going on right now."

"Speaking of what's going on," Duncan said, "I just found out that the guardian's ceased contact with Nabinger."

That was the first interesting thing Turcotte had heard in the past two days, since arriving in Washington from Easter Island. "Any idea why?"

"Nobody knows."

Turcotte rubbed his chin, feeling the stubble there. It felt strange to be in uniform after working classified assignments for so long. His jump boots, spit-shined this morning for his congressional testimony, now wore a layer of dust.

His battered green beret was tucked into the back of his belt. He pulled it out and threw it next to his jacket as he sat down across from Duncan, next to the window.

A cannon barked a sharp report, followed by the faint strains of "Taps" as the post flag was lowered. Turcotte had heard that sound on many different posts around the world during his time in the army, but it never failed to touch him and

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make him think of comrades lost. Turcotte looked out at the bronze figures representing the Marines who'd raised the flag on Mount Suribachi.

Duncan shifted her seat slightly and followed his gaze. "Ahh, glory and honor," she said.

Turcotte tried to figure out if she was being sarcastic or serious. "They knew what they were doing," he said.

"Still looking for the bad guy wearing the black hat?"

"I don't feel particularly proud about what I've done," Turcotte said. "We met the enemy and they was us."

"Not all of us," she said.

Turcotte finished the rest of his beer. "No, not all of us."

"And General Gullick and the others were being controlled."

"Uh-huh." He crushed the empty can with one large fist. "I don't like it here."

"That's good," Duncan said, "because something else has come up. That's why I'm here."

"Oh?" Turcotte walked over to the bed and threw the can into a small garbage can. He picked up his dress green jacket and held it in his hand as she walked to the other side of the bed.

"We've received some information on a possible Airlia artifact site." She pulled a sheet of paper out of the small briefcase she'd had with her. "Here's the data. We'll be going soon to check it out."

"We?"

"We make a good team," Duncan said.

"Uh-huh." Turcotte took the paper but didn't look at it.

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"I've got to go now," Duncan said.

Turcotte held the paper uncertainly.

"You're still willing to work on this?" Duncan asked, mistaking his hesitation.

Turcotte straightened. "Oh, sure."

"I'll see you tomorrow, then," Duncan said as she opened the door.

"Yeah, okay."

The door swung shut. Turcotte walked over to where Duncan had sat and picked up her beer can. It was almost full. He carried it to the window. The setting sun reflected against the bronze Marines. He watched Duncan walk down the sidewalk and get into a white sedan. As she drove away, he put the beer to his lips and drained it in one long swallow.

"You've finally given me an exclusive, Johnny," Kelly Reynolds whispered at the casket as she tossed a handful of dirt into the raw hole cut out of the Tennessee countryside. "I wished it had worked out otherwise."

Kelly Reynolds looked over the casket at the mass of media being kept at a distance by funeral personnel and local police.

"Did they get them all?" A woman's voice behind her caused Kelly to turn around. Johnny Simmons's mother stood there, a black veil covering her drawn features. Kelly had talked to her briefly at the funeral.

Kelly knew who she was referring to. "Yes. The ones who worked on Johnny in the lab in Dulce were killed when the Easter Island guardian de-

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stroyed it. The other members of Majestic are all being held for trial."

Mrs. Simmons was focused on the coffin. "They did things to him, didn't they?

He wouldn't have killed himself. I knew he wouldn't have done that."

"No, Johnny wouldn't have killed himself," Kelly agreed. "They did really bad things to his mind. Johnny loved life too much. They hurt him so much, he couldn't remember that. He couldn't think straight."

Mrs. Simmons's gaze went past the coffin. "The news is making him into some kind of hero. They say he was the beginning of what brought what was going on in Area 51 into the open."

"He was a hero," Kelly agreed.

Mrs. Simmons reached out and her hand clutched Kelly's shoulder. "Was it worth it?"

"Yes." There was no hesitation in Kelly's voice. "Johnny dedicated his life to finding out the truth, and what he helped uncover is the greatest truth of our time. It was worth it."

"But is it a good truth?" Mrs. Simmons asked. "All these alien things they've uncovered; that message everyone is talking about—will everything turn out all right?"

Kelly looked at the casket once more. "Yes." Then she whispered to herself.

"It has to."

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Deep Space Communication Center (DSCC) 10 was one of two dozen radio receiving systems placed around the globe by the United States government in conjunction with various research organizations to monitor radio waves coming in to the planet from outside the atmosphere. At DSCC-10 twelve large dishes were spaced evenly across the desert floor, 250 miles northeast of Las Vegas. The setting sun reflected off the metal struts and webs of steel that pointed to the sky, listening with the infinite patience that machines are capable of.

Cables ran from the base of each dish into the side of a large modern, one-story building. Inside the structure the two humans also had patience, that born of years of listening to the cosmos with no tangible results.

The recent discoveries on Easter Island and the disclosure of the alien mothership and bouncers secreted away just miles to the north in Area 51 had proven beyond the slightest doubt that there

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was extraterrestrial life in the universe and that that life had once had a colony on Earth. Humans were not alone, and while most of the planet focused its attention on what had been found, those in places like DSCC-10 were concerned with what was yet to be discovered among the stars.

The message sent out by the guardian computer had jolted everyone out of their daily humdrum. Now those at DSCC-10, and at other listening posts around the world, watched their computer monitors with mixed hope and fear. Hope that a message would come back in reply and fear about what the message would be and who would be sending it.

Jean Compton had worked at DSCC-10 for twelve years. Officially, and as far as her partner, James Brillon, knew, she worked for Eastern Arizona State University. In reality she worked for both EASU and the National Security Agency. Her job for the NSA was to have DSCC-10 ready as a backup to the Air Force's satellite dishes at Nellis Air Force Base. If the tracking station at Nellis went down, Compton was to use DSCC-10 to download classified data from the network of spy satellites that the U.S. had blanketing the planet as they passed overhead. The vast amount of data those satellites accumulated, and their limited storage space, made it imperative that each scheduled download be picked up or valuable intelligence could be lost.

Compton had yet to have to do that backup job, but she did appreciate the extra paycheck she received each month from the United States government, deposited directly and discreetly into her checking account. She also had a classified In-

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ternet address and code that she was supposed to use in case DSCC-10 ever picked up signs of intelligent alien life. All she knew about the organization on the other end was the designation, STAAR, and that the NSA told her to follow any instructions given by it.

She didn't know what STAAR stood for, and after receiving the briefing from the STAAR representative at Nellis four years ago, she'd had no desire to know more. The man giving the briefing had sent chills up and down her spine with his emotionless detailing of instructions she was to follow in case they found evidence of extraterrestrial life. He was a tall man, with blond, almost white, hair cut short, his face looking like it was carved out of pale marble. She wondered if the man's skin ever saw the sun, yet he had worn sunglasses throughout the entire briefing in an empty hangar at Nellis. Armed guards surrounded the hangar, hard-looking men in black jumpsuits. Their presence had further enhanced the significance and power of this mysterious organization.

Shortly after the guardian computer had sent out its message from Easter Island, she'd been contacted by STAAR and given a classified briefing by the same man and detailed new instructions. She didn't really believe that she would have to use those new instructions, as she hadn't the old ones from the NSA, until eight minutes before eight P.M. on this evening.

She was in the process of doing a loop scan, the dishes slowly rotating to get a clear radio picture of a section of sky, when the master warning light bolted to the beam running across the front of the

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control room snapped on and a high-pitched tone screeched.

At those two simultaneous occurrences, Brillon dropped his Coke, the can bouncing on the carpeted floor, dark fluid pouring out unnoticed as he stared at the flashing warning light. Comp-ton was more practical. She immediately hit the record button on the console in front of her, which turned on every piece of monitoring machinery in the control center. Then she focused her attention on the large screen to her left, which had a series of electronic grid lines laid over the section of star map the radio scopes were currently aimed at.

"Off center, move quadrants. Left four, up two," she ordered.

Brillon shook his head, trying to get back in reality, and Compton had to repeat the order until he sat down at another console and began realigning the radio telescopes to be more on line with the incoming message.

Compton spun her chair to the left and looked at another screen. A jumbled mass of letters and numbers filled the entire display. "We've got data coming in," she said in a surprisingly calm voice. "Real data," she added, meaning it was not random radio waves generated by astral phenomena.

"Sweet Jesus," Brillon muttered, realizing what this meant. Contact. Not first contact as they had always dreamed—that had occurred with the discovery of the Airlia artifacts—but this was first live contact, beside which even those earlier discoveries paled.

Compton checked another display. "Damn, it's

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a strong signal. Very strong." She glanced over at her partner. "Are you dead on yet?"

"I've centered up as best I can," Brillon reported, "but it's a very tight transmission beam and I can't seem to center."

"How do you make a radio transmission on a beam?" Compton asked. "They're not directional."

Brillon didn't have time to answer the hypothetical question as he continued to work. Compton quickly turned to another computer and accessed the secure Department of Defense Satellite Internet Link. She typed in the two addresses that she had long ago memorized but never used. As soon as she got a line and a prompt, she typed.

>NSA AND STAAR THIS IS DSCC-10. WE'VE GOT A TRANSMISSION AT 235 DEGREES AND AN

ARC OF PLUS 60 FROM ZERO.

Compton cursed to herself as she read the message. She quickly typed in more information.

>NSA AND STAAR THIS IS DSCC-10. TRANSMISSION IS NOT RANDOM.

Compton sat back in the chair and waited while replies came back.

RECORDING MESSAGE?

Compton shook her head in irritation at the STAAR questions.

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>THIS IS DSCC-10.

WE ARE WORKING SOURCE AND DESTINATION. WE ARE RECORDING ALL DATA. TRANSMISSION IS VERY POWERFUL. READS 10 BY ON SCALE. HOWEVER THE BEAM IS DIRECTIONAL.

"Do you have a lock yet?" she asked Brillon.

"I've got a source lock!" Brillon yelled. "I'm sending it to your computer.

Nothing yet on destination except it's west and south of here. This system wasn't designed to pinpoint a destination here on Earth for a transmission."

Compton accessed another program on her computer and put that box next to the one that was her dialogue with STAAR and the NSA. She transferred the source numbers to the dialogue box and transmitted them.

WHAT ABOUT TRANSMITTED DATA?

Compton glanced at the other screen. More numbers and letters were still coming in.