Another brief piercing bite to his back sucked the air from his lungs. His face was forced into the dirt by someone holding a blanket or cloth across his head and upper body, restricting his movement and pinning his arms to his side. He didn’t need to see to understand what was happening, what had happened, to know he was captured. But Blake thought it odd when his captor dropped on top of him, covering his body and legs.
“Don’t move,” Val Vaden’s muffled voice said through the Bio Suit helmet shielding his face. “We don’t want that helicopter seeing you on its thermal imaging system.”
“Who are you?” Blake asked, wondering if he wasn’t the only person his new friends sent on a mission this evening.
“Just relax until it passes. Then we’ll talk.” Val had been hiding in the Groom Valley for several days, hoping to film inside the large hangar. His nearest bunker was several miles south — on more vegetated land — and he trekked each night to their present location hoping to film activity. When Val spotted Blake traversing an area laden with electronic surveillance, he feared Blake was some crazy kamikaze base watcher. If a sensor was triggered, he knew his own chances of sneaking to a safer sector were slim. In trying to prevent a problem, his predicament became compounded. Blake now knew that he was out there.
CHAPTER 40
“Chief,” a sentry manning surveillance controls in Groom Lake’s White Room said. “Tower is asking for status.”
Trace Helms stood pensively, arms crossed, an unlit cigar clenched in his mouth, with a scour on his face that told the men under his command not to upset him further. “Tell them it looks false, but we’re still doing a quick flyby. If they want a response team to investigate, they should expect an hour delay by the time we get everyone back and sequestered again.”
“SP-1 says it looks like a false alarm, Tower. We’re sending a mongoose to do a flyby. If you want us to deploy a response team, you’re looking at an hour delay on the test.” The sentry hung up the phone and turned to Trace. “He said something about shooting all the coyotes out here and slammed the phone down.”
Trace moved behind another sentry seated at a video control panel and said, “Play it again.” Watching the surveillance video again, Trace prayed not to see any sign of Blake in the picture, or anyone else for that matter. The night-vision-enhanced footage started with a view of barren sand and desert scrub, then began sweeping left toward the motion detected by the camera’s sensor. A sudden and sporadic movement spun the image backwards, blurring the view, until the camera appeared to be resting on the ground with its lens in the dirt.
All personnel were accounted for and the Groom Proper Patrol had reported no visitors at the perimeter that evening. Trace would wait and send a ground patrol to reset the camera at dawn, buying some time for Blake. Nobody would question the Chief’s insistence that the disturbance was a false alarm. Trace was concerned, but also relieved it was a mobile camera off base and away from areas frequented by civilians; Blake was safe for the moment, as long as the helicopter crew didn’t spot him.
CHAPTER 41
Val raised himself, keeping a knee in Blake’s back, and studied the hilltop horizon behind them, in the direction the helicopter disappeared. “Don’t move,” he ordered as he fiddled with the controls for his radio transceiver, trying to pickup the communications between the base and helicopter crew.
After listening for a few minutes, he said, “You aren’t alone out here, are you?”
Blake hesitated, wondering who this man pinning him to the ground was, and then said, “No, I’ve got you watching my back.”
“Don’t be a smartass,” Val said, digging his knee deeper into Blake’s back. “Something, or someone, knocked over a mobile surveillance camera. Fortunately for us it was off the base and they are calling it a false alarm. If they knew you were out here, they would probably investigate a little further. We got lucky. But I think you’ve got company out here. Let’s hope they don’t cause us more trouble.”
Blake suspected that because someone affiliated with security did indeed know he was out there, they weren’t investigating further. He did wonder about Trevor though, and suspected he was somehow involved in the alarm.
“That chopper’s going to be on top of us again.” He repositioned himself on top of Blake and spread his ghillie suit as additional cover, hoping to fully hide Blake’s heat signal. “Sorry for the intimate moment — it’s purely self-preservation — but as long as we have this time together, why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here?”
“I’m lost,” was the prepared statement Blake had hoped he wouldn’t have to use, crinkling his nose as he said it from the strong smell of sweat and body odor his captor emitted.
“Wrong answer.” Val triggered his stun gun and gave Blake’s nose a quick zap that sent a burning pain through his sinuses. “Who are you?”
“I’m just a college student. I was hiking and got lost. The next thing I knew I was right in front of the base.”
“Nice try — you’re wearing black, night-vision, and that’s a five-thousand-dollar lens on your camera. You’re not lost. I can’t believe you made it this far without being detected. It’s like a minefield with all the sensors around this sector. You almost screwed us both.”
“Sounds like neither of us should be here.”
“I don’t want your stupidity getting me caught.”
“A stupid person wouldn’t make it this far,” Blake said, feeling some relief that he wasn’t in the hands of security. “Let me go and I’ll get out of here. I have a route.” Blake was crunching the minutes and hours in his head. He’d lost valuable time from this delay, and was losing more. He needed to start back now and at a faster pace. The return trip required more time because a good portion was at an incline.
“Are you heading east?” Val asked.
“What’s it matter?”
Val was considering Blake’s route off the base when he heard the helicopter. He tensed his body, trying not to move, keeping his legs balanced atop Blake’s. “Stay still,” he said. The chopper was on a different line and passed over further north, but still close enough that they could have detected Blake on a thermal imaging screen had he been in the open.
Once clear, Val raised himself off of Blake and let him sit up for the first time. “You entered the base near where that helicopter just came from. That’s further south than most base watchers venture. There are no vantage points on public land, so they typically don’t have to worry about visitors in that sector, but obviously there’s a breach in the security that allowed you to cross over. This ordeal slowed your pace. Now you’ll be lucky to make the perimeter by dawn, and you can bet they’ll be sending ground patrols at first light to reset that camera if they aren’t on their way already. And they’ll see your friend’s footprints, won’t they?”
Blake realized there was no point in lying. He needed to think this through and take the correct steps. “I’ve got someone waiting for me, but he shouldn’t have crossed paths with a surveillance camera.”