The ATV was where Val had told him it would be, hidden with brush and camouflage netting. He drove conservatively, guided by night vision, keeping a watchful eye out for the treacherous nuclear sinkholes and radioactive sites Val warned about. Blake knew if he made a wrong turn, it could be years before he was inflicted with the cancerous consequences. So he took his time, riddled with anxiety that overwhelmed any sense of accomplishment he might have felt from successfully traversing Area 51 on foot.
Blake found the Nevada Test Site an eerie place. He passed barbed wire fences that cordoned off contaminated soil. Radiation warning signs hung from the barbed wire. The biohazard insignia on the signs gave him a ghoulish feeling, like he was driving through a graveyard. Shivers tingled his spine. The shivers turned to panic when something moved ahead on his right. Death, graveyards and distant movements in the dark were not things he cared to contend with in combination. He cut the quiet electric motor on the ATV and eased to a stop. Whatever was out there wasn’t alone and wasn’t small. He strained to decipher the movements, but they were too far away. Then he remembered reading about the zoom feature on the helmet when he read the help program. “Zoom five times,” he commanded. Nothing happened. He then recalled needing to first turn the voice-activation system on and used the keypad on his forearm to do so. “Zoom five times,” he said again. The picture through his face shield enlarged and he found himself watching a herd of wild horses. Val had said something about horses at the Test Site. Their survival didn’t seem possible, but there they were, grazing.
The GPS indicated Blake was nearing Val’s campsite — less than half a mile. He couldn’t see anything yet. Stopping a quarter mile out, he used the zoom to pinpoint Val’s truck. The tent had blown over, but everything seemed as Val said it would be. Blake gunned the throttle, gripping tight on the handlebars as he shot toward the truck and trailer.
He aligned the ATV’s wheels with two wheel-ramps that extended from the rear of the trailer, then loaded and secured it as quickly as possible. He didn’t care about any of the camping equipment, only removing the Bio Suit and leaving.
“At least I don’t have to worry about sneaking you off the base,” Val had told him in parting, but Blake still didn’t have a Test Site identification badge. Retrieving Val’s from the glove compartment, he pinned it to his shirt and took Val’s cap off the dash and pulled it over his sweaty and matted hair. Val’s photo on the badge had a lighter shade of brown hair and narrower facial features, but Blake hoped the late hour, the darkness and his facial hair would be enough to make him a convincing Val, or Charles Eckert as the identification badge read. Blake stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. The engine hiccuped a couple times as the neglected battery struggled before starting the engine. “Next stop,” he said aloud, “the checkpoint at Mercury.”
Val’s stern instructions were clear about not speeding. Flooring the gas pedal wasn’t yet a temptation for Blake though because a rut-laden dirt road jarred at the trailer and sent vibrations through the truck’s shocks and into the steering wheel whenever he exceeded twenty miles an hour. He followed Nye Canyon Road to Mercury Highway where after fifteen miles of seeing nothing but pavement, he doubted Val’s directions, not realizing how expansive the Test Site was. As he continued, road signs reminded him this wasn’t normal desert land; Blake passed typical green and white road signs with atypical names like Plutonium Valley, Control Point-1, Radioactive Waste Management Site and Weapons Testing Tunnel Complex.
When he reached the town of Mercury, he followed the highway as it slowed and wound through the small government settlement. He saw no activity and few lights inside the buildings. The Mercury Highway descended a quarter mile from the edge of town to the security checkpoint that separated Blake from freedom. He could see the checkpoint’s large carport that spread across the road, illuminated in yellowish lights. One exit lane was open and a guard stepped outside his booth when he saw the truck and trailer approach.
“Hello,” Blake said through his rolled-down window, trying to be cheerful.
The young guard nodded, serious and straight-faced. He was a thin, but toned guy, not much older than Blake. “Kind of late to be pulling that trailer around.”
“First thing Monday I’m supposed to have a report done and I’m running behind,” Blake said, following a script Val had given him. “About an hour ago the motor on my generator blew. I’ve got another one at our shop in Vegas. The trailer was already hooked up so I figured I’d take the ATV back now since I don’t need it anymore.” He handed Val’s badge to the guard and kept rambling. “Besides, it’s not like I can go any faster without it. That Nye county sheriff already gave me a warning for speeding.”
The guard seemed disinterested. “Kill your engine,” he ordered. “We’re in the middle of a heightened security op. May be a drill, but either way, my CO has to clear you to leave, so sit tight.”
With the engine off, Blake watched the guard return to his booth and hunt and peck at a keyboard before picking up a phone. After a brief conversation he hung up and leaned his head outside, “They’ll get back to me in a few minutes.”
Thoughts raced through Blake’s mind. Where was Val? What happened to Trevor? Was the military looking for him? Should he take off? The unsettling knot in his stomach constricted further. He just wanted to be home.
The guard’s phone rang. Life suddenly slowed down for Blake. The ring seemed to last forever. His heart pounded. His brow started to sweat. A door from the distant security office flew open and two more guards, older, guns in hand, were sprinting the fifty yards to Blake’s truck. The younger guard dropped the phone and fumbled for a gun he had never removed while on duty. Blake reached for the keys to turn the ignition — still in slow motion. He heard the sound of metal tapping on glass, and a muffled scream: “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” Looking back at the booth, Blake saw the young guard aiming his gun through the glass. “I’ll shoot if you move.”
Val hadn’t given him instructions for this scenario. And he couldn’t reach for the Bio Suit to activate the distress signal.
CHAPTER 52
“… vlek shaunt dars perbum …”
Damien Owens hit the pause button on an audio recorder, rewind, then he slowed the playback speed and listened again: “Dar ez a pro-blum,” the voice on the recording stated.
Owens was listening to a recording he took while interviewing Aaron Liebowitz. He played the section of tape in reverse a third time: “Dar ez a pro-blum.”
Owens switched directions and listened to the recording forward: “Everything has been good.”
Listening to a person’s speech in reverse was not as simple as pronouncing words backwards. Roughly one in twelve spoken sentences gave subliminal clues to what the person was thinking while they spoke. The phenomenon first became known when people played records backwards and heard phrases in the songs. They were not intentional messages, nor coincidences, but subliminal thoughts that transcended the mind. Reverse speech was a technique Owens used to analyze people without them knowing he was doing anything more than conversing.
Through one-way glass, Owens studied Liebowitz as he sat in an interview room at the Groom Lake facility. Owens knew there was a leak at the base. Someone on the inside was sharing details about security: how to bypass, when to bypass, where to bypass. He first suspected the leak when the Chinese agent was captured. Blake’s penetration across the perimeter furthered his suspicions, and the subsequent interrogation confirmed it, but Blake couldn’t tell him who it was. Now he wondered if Ben Skyles’ condition was related to the security leaks. He started interviewing other workers involved at Papoose. Casually. Looking for a clue, a hunch. Liebowitz had just given him his first clue.