“Turn, this base is gonna blow in…” Walter looks over at Paul, who in turn looks down at his watch.
“Seven minutes,” Paul says, glancing back up at Turn.
“I need some answers,” Turn says, his jaw firm and those arms of his still crossed defiantly across his chest.
“Bloody hell!” Walter says, turning away with a roll of his eyes, but Bennewitz only nods his head and steps forward.
“Like I said, the name’s Paul Bennewitz,” the man says, looking over his shoulder at Turn, “…that doesn’t ring a bell?”
“Sure don’t,” Turn says as they continue to rush down the smoothed-out tunnels.
“When were you born?” Bennewitz says, giving another look over his shoulder. When Turn just screws up his face in confusion, however, he shakes his head and waves his hand. “Never mind. What I’m trying to say is—”
“What Paul here’s trying to say,” Walter cuts in from in front of them, still running but speaking in such a way that you’d never know it, “is that he feels he should be famous, well-known… a household name, if you will.” Walter smirks and looks at Bennewitz. “Isn’t that right, Paul?”
“It is right… just not in this here and now.”
Turn’s eyes narrow at that, and he’s about to throw out another question — or twenty — but suddenly the tunnel turns and they’re face to face with a group of Reptilians.
“Whoa!” Turn says, startled by the sight. The way the Reptilians jumped when they saw him, he thought they might be feeling the same way.
“Give it to ‘em!” Walter shouts as he starts firing with his AR-15 Assault Rifle.
The tunnel is suddenly filled with the sound of bullets flying. Turn watches as one of the Reptilians is hit, then another as Walter strafes them. He gets his own gun up and takes one down himself. The Reptilians are going for their own guns, but being as surprised as they are, they just can’t do it. Walter rips into them and Turn does too. Within seconds the half dozen Reptilians are down to just a couple. Then Turn see’s Bennewitz’s hand go up beside him, a flash gun in it.
ZAP!
Bennewitz fires and the second to last Reptilians is winked from existence, nothing more than a small pile of ash to show it ever walked the earth. Its final companion begins to hiss and shriek, but that lasts but a moment before a hail of bullets from Walter’s gun takes it in the head.
Paul looks down at his watch again when the firing is done. “Six minutes,” he says, “we gotta go.”
“Six…” Turn starts to say, then slaps his hand down on his thigh in frustration. “Where the hell we supposed to go in six minutes?”
“Not where, but when,” Bennewitz says to him, and then continues on past the pile of dead Reptilians.
Turn gives Walter a narrow-eyed, skeptical look, but the captain just shrugs.
“C’mon,” he says, starting after Bennewitz, “we don’t have much time.”
With a roll of his eyes and a look over his shoulder — and the realization that he really can’t do anything else — Turn follows.
2 — Off the Grid
They move the rest of the way down the tunnel they’re in, then when a branch comes, Bennewitz ushers them to the left.
“Won’t be much further,” he shouts over his shoulder, looking down at his watch as he does so. The men keep up a steady jog, a pace that’s conducive to talking. Turn still wants answers, so begins asking his questions again.
“You said time travel back there… right?”
“Thinkin’ we can’t be serious, right?” Walter says as the two run alongside one another. Bennewitz is just a few feet in front of them, but can hear their words as well. The tunnels are smooth and narrow, much like cave walls, and sound carries quite well.
“Well we are serious, no matter how much you think we might be joking,” the wild-eyed man with red, curly hair says.
Turn rolls his eyes as he continues running. “Well, like you said back there… we got six minutes, so pray tell… what the hell’s goin’ on here, huh?”
Beside him Walter chuckles. “Better tell it to him from the top, Paul.”
“Alrighty… here goes,” Bennewitz says over his shoulder so Turn can hear. “I was 23-years-old when my interest in the UFO-phenomenon began. That’s when I saw the report detailing the 500 UFOs that were spotted over the town of Dulce back in 1950. They were all in the sky at the same time, all making sharp, 90-degree turns at amazing angles.” He pauses and shakes his head, looking down at the floor as he runs and perhaps back to those days more than twenty years ago. “I began to investigate, going to Dulce myself in the early-60s, eventually getting my pilot’s license so I could see more. News spread of my… ’research.’ By the 70s I was getting photos from inside the base and just a few years ago I completed a full electronic surveillance of it. It was also around that time that I began investigating the cattle mutilations along with the Gomez ranching family. And of course I talked to the Jicarilla Apache to learn all they knew.”
Up ahead another fork in the tunnel appears, and this time the men go right.
“Won’t be much further,” Walter says as they round the corner, but Turn hardly hears him. He’s trying to process what Bennewitz has just said, and he’s finding that he can’t. Time travel? Ha — that’s children’s story stuff there! Still, Turn can’t quite shake the feeling that what the man in front of him is saying is true. What he’s seen over the past few hours in Dulce, after all, makes him realize that anything is possible.
“So you say 1950,” Turn says as a lull comes in Bennewitz’s telling, “but how long have the Grays been here, really?”
“The standard telling is that Dulce Base started up in ’47,” Bennewitz says.
“Which puts it eight years before Ike had his meeting with the Grays at Holloman,” Walter says.
“But… I thought that was when we signed the treaty,” Turn says. “Grays weren’t supposed to have any bases before then, right… most of all not with the U.S. government.”
Up ahead, Bennewitz shrugs. “Let’s not forget that it was Truman that created Majestic 12, not Eisenhower. And let’s also not forget that Ike met with three Pleiadians at California’s Edwards Air Force Base in ’54… a full year before the meeting at Holloman.”
“But did he know about Dulce?” Turn asks
“I’m getting there,” Bennewitz says over his shoulder, a little perturbed by the sound of it. “Now, a year after the first meeting with the Nordics, Ike has a second meeting with them. This time it’s at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Air Force One lands, Ike tells the tower to turn off their radar, and then just like that, three UFOs appear. One lands, one hovers as a lookout, and one takes off from view. Ike gets off his plane and heads into the landed UFO, stays in there for a full 45 minutes.” Bennewitz lets out a sigh then, something that’s not so easy when running. “Let’s just say that nothing went right. The Pleiadians — like most peaceful aliens in the universe — wanted us to stop our nuclear weapons tests. In exchange, they’d negotiate some sort of positive settlement to the Earth’s problems.”
“But it didn’t happen that way,” Walter says, and up ahead, Turn can see Bennewitz nodding.
“Nope, sure didn’t,” the wild-eyed man says. “Instead Ike signed a treaty with the Grays, mainly because he wanted their technology… something he figured the Ruskies didn’t have. It’s a shame, too, because the Pleiadians — sometimes called Nordics, mind you — wanted to help us get rid of the Grays.” He laughs. “Boy, sure coulda used their help today, huh?”