Mind control technology worked similar to the remote controls you get from the cable company, which don’t control your television or DVD player unless you have the codes set to the proper frequency. Jasmine didn’t know the frequency, or combination of frequencies, necessary to unlock my deepest secrets. And that is why we were traveling today. She hoped to take me someplace where the government was broadcasting the proper combination of frequencies.
We were catching a flight from LAX to Las Vegas and then transferring to Salt Lake City. The cattle-call boarding procedure at the gate inspired one of my déjà vu moments. I remember having a strong desire to sit in front and not be the last one off in Vegas.
A brief layover in the Vegas airport wasn’t brief enough, as I managed to squander twenty-dollars on twenty-two pulls of a slot machine; a sign I still had one foot in life’s port-o-potty of luck.
In Salt Lake City I claimed two duffle bags from the baggage belt and lugged them over to Jasmine who was signing for a four-wheel drive Durango she had reserved. Jasmine’s bag was much larger, not due to womanly necessities, but various surveillance gadgets. We made a couple of stops at a market and sporting goods store to buy provisions, then headed out of town.
To better understand the purpose of this trip, let me shed some new light on government affairs in the latter half of the nineties, and why Jasmine, and the Chinese Regime, brought me to Salt Lake City.
The feds knew during Bush senior’s term that a new facility would be necessary to replace the Groom Lake complex. Various government arms, controlled by the same mind, began acquiring acreage in the Rocky Mountains, and not in Colorado as most associate the Rockies with, but the vast unadulterated lands of Utah; a combination of government and private holdings that appear in the records as independent plots of land. Some plots were already in the federal government realm. Most people don’t realize that, like Nevada, a significant portion of Utah is federal land. A new base was conceived — Air Base One — generations more advanced than the Groom Lake and Papoose Lake facilities.
The contractors and construction workers were put in transport planes and flown around for over eight hours before landing at a nearby staging facility and taken by helicopter to the site. They thought they were at a military base somewhere in Europe. Most worked on only a portion of the project, limiting their understanding of the full concept. Any roads that existed to facilitate building Air Base One were temporary. And rest assured, the few individuals that had an understanding of what they were building at the time probably have little recollection now. Today, Air Base One is accessible only by air, or determined feet. The entrance is a portal in a mountainside, large enough for spacecraft and helicopters to enter, but invisible to satellite surveillance, or Google Earth, I tried. Underground exists a self-sustained spaceport, larger and more advanced than the dated predecessor complexes in Nevada. An exceptionally small number of people consciously know of its existence and exact location. Anything that exists at Air Base One might as well not exist.
So Air Base One had become the new Holy Grail of black budget secrecy — the new Groom Lake. Jasmine hoped getting me close to the base would expose me to frequency transmissions used on the workers, at which point she could unlock my deepest memories about the moon.
CHAPTER 56
Jasmine drove the Durango while I tried to nap in the passenger seat, but our first stop came within twenty miles when she exited the interstate and detoured several miles on a rural road to a horse farm — apparently you can rent horses the same as you can cars. I’m not big on horses, but Jasmine insisted it would make the first leg of our trek easier and faster.
With steeds in tow, we traveled on highways for about two and a half hours before turning onto a county road that took us ever further from populated areas. I couldn’t help but stare at the remote farm houses we passed, or entrances to farms — I couldn’t always see the buildings — and wonder about the people living in this area. Some wanted their privacy, a fact reinforced when they used the term compound instead of ranch to describe their property. And while I don’t have empirical data to offer, I am of the strong opinion that an individual owning a compound probably has a weapons cache to protect said compound. Jasmine was of the same opinion, and thought it critical not to trespass on these grounds during our journey. Technically we had to trespass to reach our ultimate destination, but she just didn’t want any trouble in the earlier stages.
One problem the government encountered at Groom Lake, and a key factor in blowing the decades of secrecy, was that some of the surrounding land was ranch land. And when the ranchers started seeing strange lights in the sky, they called people. Compound owners, however, would be less apt to call people under similar circumstances. Another reason Utah was a more suitable location for a secret air base.
Jasmine’s plans were quite detailed, and obviously devised with insight from satellite surveillance and other Chinese intelligence documents. We traveled to a point where the road neared national forest land. Jasmine stopped several times, looking at satellite photos that showed clearings just off the main road, large enough to park the SUV and trailer, but hidden from passersby. The first two sites proved unsuitable to pull the trailer off-road, but the third site Jasmine had specked out served our purpose.
Jasmine downshifted into a low, four-wheel drive gear and eased the Durango from the shoulder to pristine terrain. Some ruts jostled the trailer as we began to drive into the forest and I heard a whinny from one of the horses. I’m sure this was a violation of the rental agreement, for both the vehicle and the horses, but Jasmine knew what she was doing, managing the wheel with relaxed austerity, and I didn’t foresee any trouble coming from this task.
Upon parking, I stepped from the vehicle into a calm, high-sixties afternoon that featured puffy cotton-like cumulus clouds dotting a blue sky. Jasmine had been studying the weather patterns and tried to time the trip so atmospheric conditions would not hinder our journey. Weeks earlier and we might have been marching those horses through snowpack. I guess weather prediction is another thing we can say the Chinese intelligence agents are good at — certainly better than the bozo weathermen in LA who can’t confirm rain until some imbecile slips on wet pavement. Good weather or not, we were still anticipating a nighttime temperature in the forties, and Jasmine had the appropriate sleeping bags, jackets and camping supplies to get us through the cold. As we were unloading the gear from the back of the Durango, the horses suddenly seemed like a good idea. I just wondered who would be carrying the brunt of the load once we left the horses, and thought about myself dragging the bags through the airport.
Jasmine was fearless in her quest — no sign of nerves or indecisiveness in her actions. During my recent years of staring at the television for much of the day, I once watched a program on prison inmates that discussed the psychological makeup of lawbreakers, and a genetically based lack of fear was what allowed them to operate in situations that made most people unnerved.