Charles Gainey lay back in his chair, stretched his arms above his head and looked up at the ceiling, deep in thought. McGrath sat on the edge of his seat, his cup of coffee untouched on the table in front of him. The President’s eyes had widened when McGrath had outlined his alternative plan for dealing with the situation at Groom Lake, but he hadn’t said a word in response.
Minutes ticked away, then Gainey sat forward and fixed McGrath with a penetrating gaze. ‘It’s worth looking at,’ he said. ‘But first give me your reasons for suggesting it.’
McGrath heaved a sigh of relief. ‘There are really three, Mr. President,’ he began.
Lieutenant Keating tossed his cap onto the coat rack and sat down at the desk. He would never have admitted it to the sergeant, but he was somewhat at a loss to know what to do next.
The call about the intruders hadn’t come from any recognized source, although it had obviously been from somebody outside Groom Lake who knew about the base itself. More importantly, the caller had known about the existence of the Rolver Sytems’ building, which was probably the most secret location on the base. That severely restricted the number of people who could have made the call, and forced Keating to take the substance of the message seriously.
The building didn’t look as if anything untoward had happened there – he had seen no sign of forced entry. On the other hand, it was apparently deserted, although it was marked in the Groom Lake security notes as being in use twenty-four hours a day.
He had to call somebody. The question was, who? When he’d decided there was only one person he could telephone, he sat behind the desk for several minutes before reaching for the receiver.
‘That really is sick,’ Hunter said, to nobody in particular.
‘I know, I know,’ Ketch replied, his left cheek bleeding steadily from two deep scratches inflicted by the nails of Toni Welsh’s right hand. ‘But you have to appreciate that this is, from the point of view of the aliens, just another commercial operation. They want to do everything in the most efficient and cost-effective way. The tipping casket cost them almost nothing to implement, but achieves the objective very efficiently. It’s just good business.’
‘I’ll give you “good business”, you bastard,’ Reilly spat, and Hunter raised a calming hand.
‘We got involved in this because of a murder in Montana,’ Hunter said. ‘A guy out hunting died when a human thigh-bone got driven vertically downwards into his head. A fresh human skull was later found in the same general area. According to our pathologist, both bones had had all the flesh stripped off them by some sort of a machine. Did that have anything to do with this operation?’
‘No,’ Ketch said, puzzlement in his voice. ‘At least, not directly. But there was some poaching reported a few days ago.’
‘Poaching?’
‘The grey aliens aren’t the only ones operating in this area,’ Ketch said. ‘There was an incident involving an unauthorized landing somewhere in the mid-west. It’s possible the occupants of the craft jettisoned the bones of one of their victims as they left the atmosphere. That could have been the source, I suppose.’
‘How do you know about these poachers, as you call them?’
‘The greys keep us fully informed,’ Ketch said. ‘They detected the landing, and destroyed the craft when it was well clear of the Earth’s atmosphere. They’re keen to protect their concession here.’
‘I’ll bet they are,’ Reilly growled.
‘Where am I?’
The voice was small and soft, and galvanized Hunter. He jumped up, spun around and walked over to the camp bed. Christy-Lee was awake at last.
‘How do you feel?’ Hunter asked.
‘Awful,’ Christy-Lee murmured. ‘I’ve got the mother and father of all migraines, and I can barely remember who I am.’
‘Do you know me?’ Hunter asked.
‘Of course I know who you are, you ugly bastard,’ Christy-Lee said, with the ghost of a smile, and Hunter grinned down at her.
Reilly appeared at his shoulder holding out a couple of white tablets.
‘Aspirin,’ he said, ‘courtesy of our host. Found a bottle in his desk drawer. Good to see you again, Agent Kaufmann.’
‘Thanks, Dick,’ Hunter said, and passed the tablets to Christy-Lee. ‘Sorry we’ve no water, but see if you can swallow them anyway.’
‘So where am I?’
Hunter stroked her brow gently. ‘It would take too long to explain now,’ he said, ‘and Dick Reilly and I are sort of busy at the moment. Just lie still and rest, and I’ll come and talk to you when I can. OK?’
‘OK,’ Christy-Lee said. She gave Hunter’s arm a squeeze, put the two tablets in her mouth, and closed her eyes.
‘Now,’ Hunter asked, sitting down in front of Ketch again. ‘The machinery down in the processing room or whatever you call it. Who designed it?’
‘The aliens,’ Ketch said. ‘They wanted a system that would cope with a range of different sizes of subject, and which would work with speed and efficiency. There were no existing designs which could be adapted –’
‘Well thank God for that,’ Reilly muttered, and Ketch glanced at him.
‘So,’ he continued, ‘the aliens designed their own, and we built it. Most of it was fabricated in workshops right here on the base, and then we just assembled it in this building.’
The Sony tape recorder clicked, and Hunter opened it, flipped over the tape and pressed the record button again. Hunter looked behind him at Toni, who was sitting on the camp bed holding Christy-Lee’s hand.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said, ‘but I’m going to have to ask Ketch some other questions about the processing equipment. Do you think you can sit there and talk to Christy-Lee, or think of something else, or at least keep your hands off him until I’ve finished?’
Toni glared at Ketch, but gave Hunter a brief smile. ‘I’ll try,’ she said.
Hunter turned back to Ketch. ‘OK, for the record, how does the processing equipment work?’
‘This isn’t pleasant,’ Ketch said.
‘I know. I’ve seen it. Just get on with it.’
‘Very well. It’s quite simple and efficient. First, the casket is canted at an angle in front of the table, and the lid is removed while the previous subject is processed. Then the casket is moved by the conveyor belt to the end of the table, and the subject is pulled by the securing straps onto the bed of the table itself. The casket slides down to the floor, and another conveyor belt carries it away to be cleaned and disinfected.
‘The table is stainless-steel, and has slots for the fabric straps to slide into. The lower limbs are severed first, joint by joint and starting at the feet, by thin steel wires which are pulled down through the joints by hydraulic rams. Each wire carries a powerful electric current which cauterizes the severed blood vessels and stops most of the bleeding. The sections of leg are dropped through an opening beside the table where they’re cleaned and bagged, ready for shipment.
‘The hands and arms are removed in the same way, and usually by that stage the subject is dead from pain and shock. Then the trunk is opened up by power-operated cutters, and all the internal organs are clipped off and bagged. The alimentary canal is stripped out and discarded, and this is the only part of the body which isn’t used. The head is severed from the trunk and packed separately. Human brains are a particular delicacy to some alien species, and I understand they’re usually served straight from the skull.’
Ketch’s matter-of-fact explanation silenced the office. Although, apart from Christy-Lee, they’d all seen the processing room, none of them – except Toni – had seen processing in action, and even she hadn’t been aware of what happened to the human body parts after the vivisection had taken place.
Hunter straightened up in the chair and shook his head. ‘Monstrous,’ he said. ‘Absolutely, completely, fucking monstrous. I don’t care what the benefits have been to home consumer electronics, or whatever fucking section of American business has made most use of alien technology, this is completely unacceptable.’
Ketch smiled at him. ‘There’s nothing you can do about it,’ he said, ‘and in my opinion the programme is a good thing.’
‘It’s what?’ Hunter snapped.
‘A good thing. Most of the population of this planet achieve absolutely nothing during their lifetimes. They’re born, they spend seventy or eighty years converting food into shit, and then they die, and they contribute nothing at all to anything or anyone. We don’t even get to use their bodies for fertilizer. At least with Roland Oliver we get some benefit from their deaths.
‘Even worse, the bastards breed like rabbits. A woman with an IQ of one twenty plus will be satisfied with a couple of kids she’ll hope will actually do something with their lives. Trailer-park morons and Mrs. Average American Woman don’t feel fulfilled, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean, unless they produce six or seven kids, each of whom will be just as stupid and useless as their parents and who’ll lead the same totally pointless existence. They consume, they don’t contribute, and we’re much better off without them.’
Hunter simply stared at him. ‘Hitler, I seem to remember,’ he said slowly, ‘had much the same idea, but I thought the sickness had died out with him and his Nazi friends. I really can’t believe you mean what you’ve just said.’
‘Oh, but I do,’ Ketch replied, his confidence growing, ‘and it’s time you woke up to the facts of life out here. There are just the two of you, plus some passengers.’ He nodded towards Evans and Toni. ‘You’re stuck in the middle of the most secure military establishment in the United States, surrounded by armed men, and no doubt with more on the way. The project you’ve stumbled on has been approved by every American President since Eisenhower, and I even hold a current Presidential Order which authorizes any action that I care to take.’
Hunter waggled the Smith and Wesson in front of him. ‘I don’t give a flying fuck about what you or the President of the United States thinks about this, or what bits of paper you’ve got. We’re closing you down, permanently.’
Charles Gainey walked across to his desk and sat down in the big leather chair. He picked up the internal phone and pressed one of the buttons on the console.
‘It’s always been the Big Lie,’ he said thoughtfully, looking across at McGrath while he waited for the telephone to be answered. The capital letters were obvious from the way he said it. ‘If we can’t salvage it, maybe it really is time for a change.’
‘Mark?’ the President said into the phone as Rogerson answered. ‘Sorry it’s so late, but I need a couple of things doing immediately. I have William McGrath of the FBI with me now, and he has to get down to Nevada as quickly as possible – and that means tonight. So, first, can you please contact Quantico and get a Marine Corps helicopter here within the hour.’
Gainey paused and listened for a few seconds.
‘Yes, the usual landing spot on the White House lawn. You’ll need to organize lights and a ground marshaller, as well, from the staff. Second, get onto Andrews Air Force base and get a jet warmed up. Doesn’t matter much what it is, as long as it’s got the range to reach Nevada. The captain should flight-plan for McCarran Air Base at Las Vegas, but the airfield of destination will actually be different. Mr. McGrath will brief the pilot in the air, and they can file an en route change by radio. Got all that? Right, please let me know when the helicopter’s airborne from Quantico.’
Gainey replaced the telephone handset and walked back across the office. ‘The chopper will take about forty to fifty minutes to get here, if past performance is anything to go by. What else do you need from me?’
McGrath thought for a few seconds. ‘A Presidential Order, sir, couched in fairly wide terms, but making it quite clear that I’m acting with your full authority and approval, but leaving all decisions about the actual implementation of your wishes to me.’
‘No problem. Anything else?’
‘A call to Groom Lake Operations, or whatever the area controlling authority is called, telling them that I will be arriving. I’d hate to get shot down by our own fighter aircraft in the middle of Nevada.’
‘I’ll have Groom Lake briefed long before you get anywhere near the state boundary,’ Gainey said, then got up again and walked back to his desk. He selected headed paper and a fountain pen, thought for a few moments, then wrote rapidly. He read through the text, then called McGrath over to check it.
‘Excellent, sir,’ McGrath said.
Gainey signed the Order, folded it and slipped it into an envelope, and handed it to McGrath.
‘While you’re at the desk, Mr. President, there are two other papers that you should prepare, assuming that Hunter and Reilly are still alive.’
‘Yes,’ Charles Gainey said, and wrote for a few more minutes.
‘The only other matter,’ McGrath said, ‘are the supplies I’ll need to make this work. Most of it is regular military-type equipment, which I should be able to find out at Groom Lake. The only special items are the tracksuits and trainers, and I would appreciate it if they could be flown out from McCarran on the first Janet flight of the day.’
‘No problem,’ Gainey said.
Major-General Thomas ‘Hank’ Williams had run the Groom Lake base for a little over two years, and he knew exactly how many times he’d been telephoned at his home by members of his staff during that period. The number was precisely seven. Of those seven, only one had occurred after midnight, and that had been to report the crash of an experimental aircraft and the death of the pilot.
His reaction to that call had been typical. He’d informed the Operations Officer – a USAF major – in a deceptively calm voice, that the aircraft would still be crashed and the pilot would still be dead when he, Williams, arrived for work on the first Janet flight the following day, and to tell him about it then. Three days later the major had received a totally unexpected posting to Nome, Alaska, and nobody believed that the two events were unconnected.
Williams believed that work was work, and home was somewhere else, and the two didn’t, at least as far as he was concerned, mix.
‘This,’ he growled into the telephone when Lieutenant Keating had identified himself, ‘had better be real good, otherwise you’re going to find yourself working in a real hostile environment for a real long time. What is it?’
Evans shook his head. He’d been silent for most of the time since Ketch had started talking, but now he felt compelled to speak.
‘I still can’t believe all this,’ he said.
Ketch fixed him with a look of contempt. ‘Look around you, doctor,’ he said. ‘Can you think of any other reason why a place like this should exist? Why it should be stuck out here in the middle of the Nevada desert? Give me another – any other – possible reason.’
Evans shook his head stubbornly.
‘OK, then,’ Ketch said. ‘I can’t actually prove that we’ve obtained these technological advances from aliens, but I can prove to you that the aliens exist.’
‘How?’ Hunter asked.
‘By introducing you to them.’
‘What?’ Reilly demanded. ‘You mean some of those little grey bastards is here?’
‘You didn’t realize?’ Ketch asked. ‘I thought I’d made that clear. This building has two stories above ground, but another three below. A group of grey aliens live and work right here. They monitor the machinery in the processing room, handle the product and organize its dispatch.’
‘I suppose you think using words like “product” and “dispatch” somehow sanitizes what you’ve been doing here, Ketch,’ Hunter said, ‘but I can assure you that it doesn’t. And what exactly do you mean by “dispatch” anyway?’
‘I thought you’d realized that, too,’ Ketch said. His confidence was growing as he realized that Reilly and Hunter weren’t just going to kill him out of hand, and might even have to keep him alive to ensure they themselves got out of the building in one piece.
‘The market for the product, and I can’t think of another suitable word for it at the moment –’
‘I can,’ Reilly interjected. ‘How about human flesh, body parts, even shrink-wrapped shin?’
Ketch grimaced slightly. ‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘The market is out there –’ he gestured up towards the ceiling with his chin ‘– not anywhere down here. The product is prepared here, but the aliens ship it up to a craft in high Earth orbit, and from there out to distribution centres.’
Ketch looked over at Reilly. ‘You know something about this, surely? You know about the UFO-watchers out at Rachel and Silverbow and Indian Springs?’
Reilly nodded. ‘Yup, I’ve heard of them. See all manner of lights in the sky.’
‘Most of them would still be able to see UFOs if they were locked in a steel box and buried six feet underground,’ Ketch said contemptuously, ‘but in fact every second or third night a small planetary craft takes off from Groom Lake and heads into orbit, carrying the processed product. It comes back about four hours later, and that’s what a lot of these watchers have been seeing.’
‘So,’ Reilly said, his thoughts taking off at a tangent. ‘The government’s known about UFOs for years?’
‘Yes, of course. All the so-called investigations like Project Sign, Grudge and Blue Book were simply disinformation exercises run by the government to try to convince the American people that UFOs were just figments of their collective imagination.
‘Blue Book was started in 1952, some time before Roland Oliver got under way here at Groom Lake, and they finally shut it down in 1969. All the people involved were instructed to find a mundane explanation for every sighting, no matter how ridiculous or inconceivable that explanation was. That’s why you’d find Blue Book officials trying to explain away perfectly clear radar paints as sunlight glinting off marsh gas or something equally stupid.’
‘Why?’ Hunter asked.
‘Why what?’
‘Why did they choose such obviously ridiculous explanations?’
‘Because they had to,’ Ketch said. ‘Their orders were to discredit every single sighting that was reported to them. OK, a lot were genuine misidentifications of aircraft, planetary bodies like Venus or various types of meteorological phenomena, but a small hard core weren’t. These either had any old explanation tacked onto them, or they were dismissed as having insufficient details to determine what the object was. And that allowed the American military to shut down Blue Book in 1969 because, basically, they’d proved – entirely to their own satisfaction – that there wasn’t anything to investigate in the UFO field.’
‘So,’ Hunter said thoughtfully, ‘some of the architects of this horrendous program are actually here in the building? That could be very convenient, because I think Dick and I would really like to meet them.’
‘Why?’ Ketch asked, but he’d already guessed the answer.
‘So we can blow their fuckin’ heads off,’ Reilly said.
Just over seventy-five minutes after Williams had put the phone down on Lieutenant Keating, it rang again. Williams had literally just got back to sleep, and snatched the receiver from its rest with an angry gesture.
‘And what the fuck do you want now?’ he shouted down it.
There was a brief but eloquent pause, and then Williams heard the unmistakable voice of Charles Gainey, the President of the United States of America.
‘I’ll thank you, Williams, not to use language like that to me.’
Williams sat up in bed, his head spinning. ‘Sir?’ he said.
‘That’s better. I have a couple of questions for you. First, have you received any reports of security breaches out at Groom Lake?’
‘Sir,’ Williams replied, his mind still fogged with sleep, ‘I really can’t answer that, not on an open line.’
‘Screw the security considerations, Williams, and just answer the question.’
‘Yes, sir. Yes, there has been an incident.’
‘Does the incident involve the Rolver Systems’ building?’
‘Again, sir, I –’
‘Just answer the question.’
‘Yes.’
‘Right. Those were the questions. These are your instructions. Have you a paper and pencil ready?’
Williams cast about on the bedside table, and finally found paper and a pencil with a reasonable point.
‘Ready, sir.’
‘Right,’ Charles Gainey said. ‘William McGrath, acting Director of the FBI, is en route to Groom Lake at this moment. When he arrives he will assume command of the security incident. He will be acting as my personal representative, and will be carrying a Presidential Order to that effect. Any and all orders and instructions that he gives are to be obeyed immediately and without question. Is that perfectly clear?’
‘Yes, sir. Perfectly clear.’
‘You are to immediately ensure that all necessary clearances are issued to McGrath’s aircraft for it to land at Groom Lake. I don’t have the call sign or type, but the pilot will initially be flight-planned to McCarran, and will issue an en route change. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Williams said, scribbling furiously, and wondering just how the President of the United States of America seemed to know so much about operations at Groom Lake.
‘Finally,’ Gainey said, ‘you are to report to Groom Lake as soon as possible, so you’ll need to organize a Janet flight to transport you. Once you arrive, you are to take no actions whatsoever in respect of the security incident, except to follow immediately and without question any orders McGrath may issue. Your only function at Groom Lake in respect of this incident will be to support McGrath’s operation and to keep everybody else out of his way. Is that also clear?’
‘It’s my base, sir,’ Williams said, somewhat petulantly. ‘I should be directly involved.’
‘You aren’t, and you won’t be,’ Gainey said, and disconnected.