“What exactly is my job and—” Turcotte paused as a loud chirping filled the air and Prague pulled a beeper off his belt. He turned off the noise and checked the small LED screen.
“Looks like you’re about to find out,” Prague said, standing. “Grab your gear. We’re going back to the airport now. Recall.”
“I wonder what their electric bill is?” Simmons muttered, staring out across the dry lake bed at the brilliantly lit complex nestled up against the base of the Groom Mountain Range. He put his binoculars to his eyes and took in the hangars, towers, and antennas all laid out alongside the extremely long runway.
“Looks like you might have come on a good night,” Franklin commented, sitting down with his back against a boulder. They’d arrived at the top of White Sides Mountain ten minutes earlier and settled in on the edge of the mountaintop, overlooking the lake bed.
“Might just be for the C-130’s,” Simmons commented.
The transport planes were parked near a particularly large hangar and there was some activity going on around them. He focused the glasses. “They’re not unloading,” he said. “They’re loading something onto the planes. Looks like a couple of helicopters.”
“Helicopters?” Franklin repeated. “Let me see.” He took the binoculars and looked for a few minutes. “I’ve seen one of those type of choppers before. Painted all black. The big one is a UH-60 Blackhawk. The two little ones I don’t know. They fly UH-60’s around here for security. I had one buzz my truck one day down on the mailbox road.”
“Where do you think they’re taking them?” Simmons asked, taking the binoculars back.
“I don’t know.”
“Something’s going on,” Simmons said.
The 737 had no markings on it other than a broad red band painted down the outside. It was parked behind a Cyclone fence with green stripping run through the chain links to discourage observers. Turcotte carried his kit bag right on board after Prague joked that they could carry any damn thing they wanted onto this flight — there was no baggage check.
Instead of a stewardess a hard-faced man in a three-piece suit was waiting inside the plane door, checking off personnel as they came in. “Who’s this?” he demanded, looking at Turcotte.
“Fresh meat,” Prague replied. “I picked him up this evening.”
“Let me see your ID,” the man demanded.
Turcotte pulled out his military ID card and the man scanned the picture. “Wait here.” He stepped back into what had been the forward galley and flipped open a small portable phone. He spoke into it for a minute, then flipped it shut. He came out. “Your orders check out. You’re cleared.”
Although his face showed no change of expression, Turcotte slowly relaxed his right hand and rubbed the fingers lightly over the scar tissue that was knotted over the palm of that hand.
The man held up a small device. “Blow.”
Turcotte glanced at Prague, who took the device and blew into it. The man checked the readout, quickly switched out the tube, and handed it to Turcotte, who did the same. After looking at the readout the man gestured with the phone toward the back of the plane.
Prague slapped Turcotte on the back and led him down the aisle. Turcotte glanced at the other men gathered on board. They all had the same look: hard, professional, and competent. It was the demeanor that all the men Turcotte had served with over the years in Special Operations had.
As Prague settled down next to him and the door to the plane shut, Turcotte decided to try to find out what was going on, especially since it now seemed they were on alert.
“Where are we headed?” he asked.
“Area 51,” Prague replied. “It’s an Air Force facility. Well, actually it’s on Air Force land, but it’s run by an organization called the National Reconnaissance Organization or NRO, which is responsible for all overhead imagery.”
Turcotte knew that the NRO was an extensive operation, overseeing all satellite and spy-plane operations with a budget in the billions. He’d been on several missions where he’d received support from the NRO.
“What exactly do we do?” Turcotte asked, pressing his hands against the seat back in front of him and pushing, relieving the tension in his shoulders. “Security,” Prague answered. “Air Force handles the outer perimeter but we do the inside stuff, since we all have the clearances. Actually,” he amended, “Delta Ops consists of two units. One is called Landscape and the other Nightscape. Landscape is responsible for on-the-ground security of the facilities at Area 51 and for keeping tabs on the people there. Nightscape, which you are now part of…” Prague paused. “Well, you’ll find out soon enough, meat.”
Turcotte had been in enough covert units to know when to stop asking questions, so he shut up and listened to the engines rumble as they made their way north toward his new assignment.
Simmons reached into his backpack and pulled out a plastic case and unsnapped it.
“What’s that?” Franklin asked.
“They’re night vision goggles,” Simmons replied.
“Really?” Franklin said. “I’ve seen pictures of them. The camo dudes here use them. They drive around wearing them, with all their lights out. They can scare the shit out of you when they roll up on you in the dark like that when you think you’re all alone on the road.”
Simmons turned the on-switch and the inside of the lens glowed bright green. He began scanning, keeping the goggles away from the bright lights of the facility itself, which would overload the computer enhancer built into them. He checked out the long landing strip. It was over fifteen thousand feet long and reputed to be the longest in the world, yet its very existence was denied by the government. Then he looked over the rest of the lake bed, trying to see if there was anything else of interest.
A small spark flickered in the eyepiece and Simmons twisted his head, trying to catch what had caused it. He looked down and to the right and was rewarded by another brief spark. A pair of four-wheel all-terrain vehicles were making their way along a switchback about four miles away. The spark was the reflection of moonlight off the darkened headlights. Each of the drivers had goggles strapped over the front of his helmet.
Simmons tapped Franklin and handed him the goggles.
“There. You see those two guys on the ATVs?”
Franklin looked and nodded. “Yeah, I see ’em.”
“Are they the ‘camo dudes’ you were telling me about?”
“I’ve never seen them on ATVs before,” Franklin said, “but, yeah, those are camo dudes. And, actually, I’ve never seen them on the inside of the mountain before. They always came up on us on the other side.” He handed the goggles back. “They can’t get up here on those things anyway. The closest they can get is maybe a mile away.”
“Have you ever pulled the road sensors before?” Simmons asked suddenly.
Franklin didn’t answer and Simmons took one more look at the two ATVs coming toward them, then turned off the goggles. “You’ve never played with the sensors before, right?”
Franklin reluctantly nodded. “Usually we get stopped down below by the outer security guys. The sheriff comes, confiscates our film. Then most of the time he lets us climb up.”
“Most of the time?” Simmons asked.
“Yeah. Sometimes, maybe three or four times, he told us to go home.” “I thought you said this was public land,” Simmons said.
“It is.”
“So why did you leave those times?”
Franklin looked very uncomfortable. “The sheriff told us he couldn’t be responsible for our safety if we continued on. It was like a code between him and me, man. I knew that was when I was supposed to go back to the mailbox and watch.”