He knew that the other helicopter aircrews would return later this morning or maybe even the following morning once they had finished sterilizing the crash site in Nebraska. And as soon as they were debriefed, the detection of the two civilians by the other AH-6 crew would surface.
Then there would be questions asked that he couldn’t adequately answer. The clock on his career was already ticking, but looking at the alien craft told Turcotte that there were larger issues than his pension involved here. He also knew that the reaction of those in charge when they found out he had let the two civilians go might be more than a letter of reprimand in his official files. These people were playing hardball, and by killing Prague he had entered their playing field. He just hoped he could get out of here and that then Duncan would cover his butt.
The elevator doors slid open, and the guard inside gestured for him to come in. Turcotte walked in and the floor seemed to fall out from under him as they hurtled down.
The doors opened again, and Turcotte stepped out into the control room of the Cube. He looked about but the guards hustled him through the room to a corridor in the back. He entered a conference room where the lights were turned down low. There were several people sitting in shadows near the end of the table. Turcotte walked up to the ranking general.
Turcotte made no attempt to salute; his arm wouldn’t allow it. “Captain Turcotte reporting, sir.” He noted the nameplate on the man’s chest — Gullick.
Gullick saluted smartly. “What happened?”
That voice — the same one that had been giving the orders to Prague over the radio — Turcotte remembered now where he had heard it before: the board of inquiry that had investigated what had happened in Germany. That voice had been one of six that had questioned him via speakerphone in the secure holding area in Berlin.
Turcotte took a deep breath and cleared his mind of every thing but the story he now had to tell. There would be time later to deal with the other issues. Turcotte proceeded to describe the events of the previous night, leaving out the important facts about intercepting the truck with the two civilians and killing Prague, of course. Gullick was most interested in the attack by the small sphere, but there was nothing Turcotte could really say about that as he had not been looking out the front when it had hit the helicopter.
Gullick listened to his account, then pointed back at the elevator doors. “They’ll take you in to the clinic in the morning. You’re dismissed.”
So much for thank you, Turcotte thought as he left the room. Gullick had been the most outspoken in his praise of Turcotte’s actions in Germany, praise that had confused and sickened Turcotte. But obviously, the events of the previous evening were not in the same league. Turcotte had no doubt that if he had killed the two civilians and presented their bodies like trophies, he would have received a hearty slap on the back.
The elevator doors closed off the control room to Turcotte, and he began his return trip to the surface. He should be able to get clear now.
General Gullick waited until the elevator doors had closed behind the Army captain. Then he returned his attention to Major Quinn. “That was no help. I want all the other personnel completely debriefed when they return from the MSS. Have you analyzed the data from Aurora?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve got several good shots of the bogey.”
“Put one on the screen,” General Gullick ordered.
A small glowing ball appeared on Gullick’s computer screen.
“Scale?” Gullick asked.
Around the edges of the screen rulers appeared. “It’s three feet in diameter, sir,” Quinn said.
“Propulsion system?” “Unknown.”
“Flight dynamics?” “Unknown.”
“Spectral analysis?”
“The composition of its skin was resistant to all attempts to—”
“Unknown, then.” Gullick slapped his hand on the tabletop, glaring at the picture as if he could penetrate it with his eyes. “What the hell do we know about it?”
“Uh…” Quinn paused and took a deep breath. “Well, sir, we’ve got it in our records.”
“What?”
In response Quinn split the screen, the photo taken by Aurora of the bogey sliding to the left and an identical object appearing on the right in grainy black and white.
“Talk to me, Quinn,” Gullick growled. “Talk to me.”
“The photo on the right was”—Quinn paused again and cleared his throat with a nervous cough—“the photo on the right was taken by a gun camera in a P-47 Thunderbolt on February twenty-third, 1945, over the Rhine River in Germany.” There was a nervous rustle from the other men in the inner circle of Majic-12 who were at the table.
“A foo fighter,” Gullick said.
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s a foo fighter?” Kennedy asked.
Gullick remained silent, digesting the revelation. Quinn looked at the information he had dredged up on his computer screen and continued for the others in the room who didn’t know their aviation history. “The object on the right was called a ‘foo fighter.’ There were numerous sightings of these objects made by aircrews during World War II. Because they were initially suspected to be Japanese and German secret weapons, all information concerning them was classified.
“The foo fighter reports started in late 1944. They were described as metallic spheres or balls of light, about three feet in diameter. Since the bomber aircrews that reported them were usually veterans and gun cameras on board escort fighters occasionally recorded them also, giving factual support to those accounts, the reports were taken seriously.”
Quinn was in his element. Before being assigned to the project he had worked in Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s classified study group on UFOs — reports of un identified craft other than the ones kept at Area 51. Blue Book has also been a smokescreen for the Area 51 project and a purveyor of disinformation to mislead serious researchers. The foo fighters were in the Blue Book files and most aviators had heard of them.
“The lid could not be kept on such a widespread occurrence, and reports of foo fighters did leak out to the general press, and they are even mentioned in some modern books about UFOs. What didn’t leak out, though, is that we lost twelve aircraft to the foo fighters. Every time one of our fighters or bombers would try to get close to one or fire on them — they were bogies, after all — the foo fighters would turn and ram the attacker, leaving our aircraft the worse for the encounter. Just like what happened to Nightscape Six. Because of these encounters, classified standing orders were issued by Army Air Corps high command to leave the foo fighters alone. Apparently that worked, because there were no further reports of attacks.
“After the war, when intelligence went through Japanese and German records, it was discovered that they, too, had run into foo fighters and experienced the same results. We know they weren’t behind them from what we found. In fact, the records showed they thought the spheres were our secret weapons.
“Of particular interest is an incident that is still classified Q, level five.” Quinn hesitated, but Gullick gestured for him to go on and tell the others. “On August sixth, 1945, when the Enola Gay flew the first atomic mission toward Hiroshima, it was accompanied the entire way by three foo fighters. The mission was almost scrapped when the spheres appeared, but the commander on the ground at the departure airfield at Tinian decided to continue it. There was no hostile action by the foo fighters and the situation was repeated several days later during the mission to Nagasaki.”
Kennedy leaned forward. “Von Seeckt was on the airfield there at Tinian back when they launched the Enola Gay carrying that bomb, wasn’t he?”