“Shit,” Gullick said. “The Mexicans won’t even know it’s there. Too high and too fast. And even if they get a blip on radar it will be gone in a blink and there’s nothing they can do about it anyway. Damn right it’s to pursue.”
The length of Mexico was traversed in less than twelve minutes, Aurora now less than a thousand miles behind the bogey and closing rapidly.
“Intercept in eight minutes,” Quinn announced.
Turcotte heard the choppers long before they arrived. The Blackhawk landed on the opposite side of the crash and discharged a squad of men with fire extinguishers. Turcotte knew that by daylight there would be nothing in the field other than some charred cornstalks. The other AH-6 landed right next to his location.
“Where’s Major Prague?” the man who ran off the helicopter asked. Turcotte pointed at the crash site. “Killed on impact.”
The man knelt down next to the pilot. “What’s his status?”
“Broken arm. I think he has a concussion. I haven’t taken his helmet off, to keep the pressure on in case his skull is fractured.”
The man signaled for the pilot to be place on board the Blackhawk. He pointed to Turcotte. “You come with me. They want you back at the Cube.”
“Sir, Aurora already has a photo of the bogey,” Quinn said.
“What do you want it to do when it catches up?”
The Aurora was purely a reconnaissance plane. Mounting any sort of weapon system, even missiles, would have destroyed its aerodynamic form and reduced its speed drastically.
“I want to find out where this bogey comes from,” Gullick said. “Then I can send other people to take care of the problem.”
Both indicators were now over the eastern beginning of the Pacific Ocean.
The RSO’s voice hissed in Gullick’s ear. “Cube Six, this is Aurora. Request you lay on some fuel for us on the return flight. We will be past the point of no return in fifteen minutes. Over.”
“This is Cube Six. Roger. We’re scrambling some tankers for you. Keep on its tail. Out.” Gullick pointed at Quinn, who was also monitoring the radio.
“I’ll take care of it, sir,” Quinn said.
The Mexican coastline was now long gone. Gullick knew that the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Central and South America — other than Canal traffic — was a very desolate place. They were still heading almost due south.
“We’re close,” the pilot announced. “It’s about two hundred miles ahead of us. I’m throttling back to ease up on it.”
Gullick watched the telemetry. It reminded him of being ground support when he was a test pilot. Reading the same gauges that the pilot overhead did, but not having hands on the controls. As the plane passed through Mach 2.5 the RSO extended the surveillance pod and activated his low-level light television (LLLTV) camera. Gullick immediately had the image relayed through a satellite onto the screen in front of him. The LLLTV was no ordinary television. The camera enhanced both the light and image, giving it the ability to display an image at night, while at the same time carrying a magnification of over one hundred. The RSO began scanning ahead, using the information fed to him from the satellites above to pinpoint the bogey.
“Eighty miles,” the pilot announced.
“Sixty.”
“I’ve got it!” the RSO yelled.
In the small television screen Gullick could see a small dot. As if on cue the dot suddenly jerked to the right, a splash of water shot up, and it was gone. Gullick leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, his forehead furrowed in pain.
“Cube Six, this is Aurora. Bogey is down. I say again. Bogey is down. Transmitting grid location.”
CHAPTER 10
General Gullick poured himself a cup of coffee, then took his chair at the head of the conference table. He took a pair of painkiller pills out of his pocket and swallowed them, washing them down with a swig of scalding coffee.
Slowly the reports started coming back.
“Aurora is returning,” Major Quinn reported. “ETA in twenty-two minutes. We have the exact location where the bogey went down into the ocean.”
Gullick looked at the inner circle of Majic-12, who were in the room. Each man knew his area of responsibility, and as the orders were issued, each took the appropriate action. “Admiral Coakley, the bogey is in your area of operations now. I want whatever you have floating closest to the spot on top of it ASAP! I want you to be ready to go down and recover that thing.
“Mr. Davis, I want the information from Aurora downloaded to Major Quinn and I want to know what that thing is.”
“Already working on the digital relay,” Davis replied. “I’ll have the hard copy from the pod as soon as it touches down.”
Gullick was mentally ticking off all that had happened, but it was very hard for him to think clearly. “What’s the status at the crash site?”
Quinn was ready, the earplug in his right ear giving him a live feed from the man in charge on the ground in Nebraska. “Fire is out. Recovery team is en route and will be on site in twenty minutes. Those present on the scene from Nightscape are cleaning up the pieces and providing security. Still no response from locals. I think we’ll make it clear.”
Gullick nodded. If they got the remains of the helicopter out of there before daylight without being spotted, the Nightscape mission would be a success. The bogey was a whole different question. One he hoped he could answer shortly.
“What about the survivors of the helicopter crash? They here yet?” General Gullick asked.
Quinn checked his computer. ‘The pilot is in the clinic in Vegas being worked on. Major Prague was killed in the crash. The third man, a Captain Mike Turcotte, was slightly injured but is here, sir.”
“Send him in.”
A quarter mile up a bedraggled and hurting Turcotte had been waiting for a half hour now. His Gore-Tex jacket was partly melted and he was black from soot and dirt. The bandage he had hurriedly put on his arm in Nebraska was soaked with blood, but he thought the bleeding was stopped. He wasn’t ready to peel the bandage off to check until he was someplace where he could get proper medical care.
The helicopter had swung by the airstrip outside, dropping him off before continuing on with the pilot to Las Vegas, where the program maintained its medical clinic close by the hospital facilities at Nellis Air Force Base.
Turcotte had been met by two security men who had hustled him inside the hangar.
The interior doors were shut, but there was a bouncer in the portion next to the elevator doors. Turcotte studied the craft, recognizing it as the sister of the one that had flown by earlier in Nebraska. For all he knew it could be the same one. It didn’t take a genius to put together the cattle mutilations, the false landing signature lasered into the cornfield, and these craft to recognize that there was a cover-up operation of major proportion being operated here. Turcotte just didn’t understand how the pieces fit together. The mission he had just been on in Nebraska seemed very high risk and he could see no clear-cut purpose to it. Unless it was to draw attention away from this site, but that didn’t quite click.
One thing was for certain, Turcotte knew. He certainly had something to report on now. It would be someone else’s job to put the pieces together. He was glad to have gotten out with his ass in one piece. He looked down at his right hand. The fingers were shaking. Killing Prague, although not the first time he had killed, weighed heavily on him. He turned his hand over and stared at the scar tissue there for a little while.
With great effort Turcotte brought his mind back to his present situation. He wasn’t in the clear yet. He was confident that Prague’s burned body would raise no questions.