“Oh? Sorry. Then I must get to know him better. We can always use men like that on our ops teams. What is his name again?”
“Harper, Bill Harper, Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy. He flies off the R/VX Trident Tine under the command of Captain Broward. You spoke of him earlier.”
“Oh, but of course. He and his ship have been of great help on many of our missions. In fact some of them would have most certainly failed without his assistance.”
“Is Captain Broward involved in this mission? I’d like to see him again.”
“No, Matt, not that he knows. He does have an ancillary function but you’ll never see him or the Tine. We often use his AUVs, ROVs and other assets to assist our underwater teams but he doesn’t know who he’s helping; he just follows orders. Just like Harper’s involvement today. He’s an air-taxi because he was available and in your area.”
“Too bad,” I said. “I really like the Captain.”
“Oh, for your information he just made Rear Admiral in April. Saved our coast from a crazed terrorist in a secret undersea operation of some sort.”
“Yeah, I know of that. Felt like I was there.” I could have told him more but instead kept it short; we were about to take off.
While we spoke, outside our windows the rotors spun up to full speed, the turbines’ rumble increased to an ear-piercing whine and we lifted off. Minutes later when we reached altitude the rotors tilted forward and we headed south with the Pacific out our right windows. I had yet to learn my destination but I was guessing somewhere south of us about an hour away. And knowing the Osprey’s operational flying speed was three-hundred miles per hour it sounded near the NAS Point Mugu area. But I brushed that off as highly improbable; the Point Mugu Naval Air Station had been decommissioned long ago.
There had been no further conversation between us since the Admiral opened his briefcase and started reviewing paperwork but I could see the words Operation Deep Force at the top of each page. As my eye caught a few words of the smaller print below the heading, my curiosity drew me closer wanting to read more until he caught me looking over his shoulder.
“Well, Mr. Cross, you may be better at this job than we originally thought. What did you just gain from your visual eavesdropping on my papers?”
I blushed at being discovered; I could feel it in my face. Not expecting a confrontation from my wandering gaze, I sputtered and stammered trying to give him the answer he wanted.
Then realizing it was a leading question I finally answered, “I–I didn’t see much, sir, but enough to know it’s time for my security briefing on what I’m about to see and hear. And you’re going to give it to me now.”
He backed off smiling apparently surprised and said, “Well done, Matt. You’re very good. That will make it easier for me. Let’s do it.”
For the next fifteen minutes of my trip to nowhere, the Admiral read rules and related anecdotes and caveats from the black ops security world. I had been granted a Secret clearance a year after joining MBORC and that was adequate for the jobs I did then but this was different. I was moving into Top Secret Codeword work and the codeword was Umbra. My ultimate destination was a government facility known as Sea Station Umbra, a thousand meters below the North Pacific’s surface. I was about to embark on a journey traveling on a path that didn’t exist working for people without names and if they were ever asked about me I didn’t exist. In my past jobs, my wife Lindy always called me Mr. Bond, James Bond because of my love for mystery and intrigue. If only she could see me now.
“We’ll be landing in a few minutes at NAS Point Mugu,” he said. “Your indoctrination and update on our problem will occur there before I depart for Florida.”
A cold fear washed over me.
“Naval Air Station Point Mugu?” I asked. “I thought that place was deactivated years ago.”
“Matt, you’re now joining that one-hundred person group on earth that knows of its existence. In a short while, you’ll be a member of the elite thirty-six; you’ll make it thirty-seven who know the rest of the story. Remember this is the black world nothing is as it seems.”
I must have turned white as a ghost but there was no mirror available to check. His disclosure whisked me back seven years to the SeaCrawler chapter of my life. Could it be the same group still exists? Why would they need my help? At that time, they were the best divers and DSV experts in the Navy. What changed?
My thoughts were interrupted by the turbines’ lowering pitch. Out my window was the familiar sight of the long Point Mugu Runway 3/21 almost touching the ocean. At the far end, a Navy F4 Phantom jet waited on the tarmac just off the taxiway.
“That must be your ride home off Runway 21,” I said.
He peered out the window.
“Yes, that would be Captain Minor and his F4 waiting to fly me back to Florida. I told him I’d be ready for takeoff about one p.m. That gives us only an hour to wrap things up.”
My heart raced anticipating sights that would bring fond memories of my time in the Navy back to life.
Searching the terrain below I immediately recognized my old SeaCrawler hangout but it was dark and deserted. The parking lot adjacent to the building once filled with sports cars of all types: Corvettes, Ferraris, Porsches and Mercedes roadsters stood empty devoid of life. I remembered back when the contents of our parking lot was said to be more expensive than many buildings on base. And thinking back that may have been true. We were a wild bunch that worked hard partied even harder and bought expensive sports cars living life to the fullest like there was no tomorrow. And since nobody on base knew what we did we became known as the Ghost Squadron; we were never there but always searching under the sea for our next catch.
“If you look over there, Matt, you’ll see an old rundown tin-roof Quonset hut. That’s where we’re going.”
Following his finger pointing to a building that belonged in the front of a junk yard I tried to act impressed.
“Oh that’s interesting,” I said. I did notice a number of strange antenna structures and dishes surrounding it but they seemed to blend in with the scrap material surrounding the building.
He laughed.
“Don’t be so gullible, Matt. It looks like shit and that’s the way it’s supposed to look. Is that what you would expect to be the headquarters of one of the most advanced undersea endeavors in our Navy?”
Bewildered but catching on I shook my head.
“No sir. I would probably think that was an old maintenance shed or even lawnmower storage facility… except for all the antennas.”
“Good. The building’s cover works well. Inside is a wonderland of electronic storage and decoding equipment and some of the most powerful computers in existence. We’re rather proud of it; you’ll see why in a few moments. It doesn’t even have a name it’s just called the ‘building.’ Now remember this is all under the Top Secret Umbra cloak; never speak of it outside our circles.”
Just then, from the cockpit came Harper’s voice.
“Mugu tower, Osprey N0099 on approach. I’m a VTOL so I don’t need much room. Please assign landing pad. Touchdown expected in two minutes.”
The radio crackled, “Osprey N99, Mugu tower, please proceed to the same helipad you used this morning. No traffic expected there for two hours. Tell the Admiral a Navy Staff car will pick him up.”
“Roger tower. Just dropping him off. I’ll be flying out in ten minutes. We’re on final approach now. Hold onto your hats. N99 out.”
Having flown on the Osprey numerous times, I was prepared for the turbines’ rotation to vertical producing a weird braking sensation in midair but the Admiral wasn’t. Only his second landing, he told me, he wasn’t yet accustomed to flying in a ‘Transformer’ aircraft as he called it. Being old school, he preferred the Huey and Sikorsky fixed-rotor craft. “There is nothing stranger than riding for an hour on a plane at three-hundred miles per hour,” he had said, “and then have it change shape and just stop in midair hovering on a giant cushion of air.”