“Canup. Edward Canup. He’s at Lockheed?”
Adam nodded.
“He’s at Lockheed, Angela. Thank you.”
The Defense Secretary closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. “Meditation… my wife swears by it. Ever give it a try?”
“This weekend as a matter of fact.”
“Did it calm you down?”
The intercom beeped, cutting off Adam’s reply. “Sir, I have Edward Canup on line two.”
“Mr. Canup, this is Jordan T. Denny, the Secretary of Defense. I want you to read me in on Project Cosmic Ops.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Secretary. I’m not familiar with Cosmic Ops.”
“In that case, Mr. Canup, say hello to Adam Shariak. Before he was sworn in as my Comptroller, Mr. Shariak was Project Manager at Kemp Aerospace, a company you subcontracted and paid $1.2 billion to complete work on this unfamiliar Cosmic Ops.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, Adam Shariak never had the clearance to discuss Cosmic Ops, and you do not have a need to know. Have a blessed day.”
Jordan Denny’s eyes widened in disbelief as he was hung up on yet again.
The intercom buzzed through. “Mr. Secretary, you have an important call on the Blue Line.”
The Secretary of Defense picked up the receiver. “Denny here… Yes sir. Stand by, General.” Looking up, he signaled to Adam to wait outside the office.
The Under Secretary exited to the waiting room, feeling like a scolded child.
Angela Hatzileris stared at him from behind her desk. “I’ve served three administrations, and in all that time, I’ve never heard a general sound so upset. What is going on?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a UFO landed on the White House lawn.”
The administrative assistant chuckled, then covered her mouth as the door opened and Jordan Denny waved Adam back inside.
The Secretary of Defense looked pale. “Apparently, we poked the bear. In no uncertain terms, I’ve been told to cease these inquiries.”
“Told by who?”
“Doesn’t matter. Mr. Shariak, at this particular time, I am satisfied that the proper due diligence regarding the existence and nature of these projects was carried out or they would not have been funded. Therefore, in response to your report—”
“UFOs and extraterrestrial intelligence.”
“Excuse me?”
“You wanted to know the nature of the USAPs. They involve the reverse-engineering of advanced technologies taken from interstellar craft that have been shot down over the last seventy years.”
“Christ… are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Let me do my job and I’ll expose this thing.”
“Your job? What the hell do you think the president is going to say if I tell him my new Under Secretary wants to investigate a bunch of black budget projects dealing with aliens? Where do you think this investigation of yours is going to lead? How will you prove your case? Anyone you or your Senator brother subpoena from the defense sector is going to hide under the shield of ‘exclusivity and trade secrets,’ and no one in Congress will dare challenge that. This whole thing is a cluster-fuck and I want no part in it.”
“No problem. When I announce that I just discovered the DoD has been secretly funding $80 billion to $100 billion or more worth of unacknowledged and unapproved special access projects every year — secret projects that neither the president nor Congress have any inkling of, I’ll be sure to mention that you wanted no part in the investigation.”
Adam headed for the door.
“Wait just a minute, goddam it! You want to investigate the matter — fine. But for now it stays an internal investigation inside your office. Funds are missing; we want them found and accounted for — period. I don’t want to hear anything about aliens or UFOs or freakin’ Bigfoot, am I clear?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.” Adam exited the Defense Secretary’s office, his mind racing.
Jordan Denny remained seated behind his desk, gazing at the framed photos of his wife, three children, and two grandchildren arranged on the far corner of his desk.
Screw it. You tried to warn him… he didn’t listen. Just keep him isolated so there’s no blowback.
22
It was 5:41 p.m. when Jessica Marulli summoned Elevator-7 to her location on Level-3, the uppermost floor in the subterranean habitat. After an intense first day, all she could think about was dinner, a hot bath, and bed.
Don’t forget you scheduled a call with Adam…
Today had been the first time she had thought about her fiancé since she had boarded the Boeing 767 back in Baltimore.
Barely a week… was that even possible? Her schedule had been so non-stop and utterly disorienting, it seemed like she hadn’t seen Adam in a month.
Today was the first time she had really missed him.
Her early morning lecture had been followed by a “meet and greet” with her staff in Lab-3C, the work place assigned to Project Zeus. Waiting for her outside the only entrance into the facility was a blue-eyed, brown-haired woman in a white lab coat.
Dr. Sarah Mayhew-Reece appeared to be in her early forties, though Jessica knew from reading her assistant’s personnel file that she was fifty-eight and had earned her doctorate from M.I.T. while her new boss was still in diapers. At five-foot-one, the petite southerner seemed more of a doting mother than a rocket scientist, but by mid-morning Jess found herself more than a little intimidated by the sharp-witted, always probing ‘thinkaholic’ her colleagues teasingly referred to as “Ladybug.”
“Dr. Marulli, so good to finally meet you. As you can see from my identification, I’m Sarah Mayhew-Reece, Zeus’s assistant director. Ya’ll can call me Sarah or Dr. May if you’d like… my last name gets a bit tedious. You’ll find the staff prefers Ladybug — that’s sort of a pet name my husband, Alton, blessed me with. Unfortunately, a co-worker heard him call me Ladybug on a personal Skype message two years ago; since then it’s followed me around like an unwanted shadow.”
“Sarah it is. Call me Jessica.”
“You know, I think it best we keep it as Dr. Marulli. I find informality and beauty with one as young as ya’ll to be a recipe for insubordination.” She whispered, “Some of these men haven’t been with a woman of the flesh for quite some time.”
“Oh-kay… Did you happen to catch my lecture this morning?”
“I did, and I made some notes. We can go over them after you meet our tech team.” Sarah swiped her identification card and pressed her brow against the rubber mold of the retinal scan, causing the bolt of the pneumatic steel door to open with a hiss of air.
Jessica followed her into an anteroom, a warning sign posted above a second pneumatic door.
Bio-Hazard Level 2 Containment
Nothing is permitted to leave the lab
without proper documents.
Sarah pressed a button and the interior door opened, the air pressure blasting them in the face before easing.
A howling wind accompanied the two women as they made their way single-file through a tight empty corridor. Up ahead was a golden-yellow glow coming from the end of the passage which was sealed behind a Plexiglas barrier.
Sarah waved her right hand at the motion detector, causing it to part.
“Welcome to the Hive.”
Lab-3C was contained inside a four-story-high dome; its curved interior walls composed of three-foot-in-diameter honeycomb-shaped panels which radiated a faint golden light. Jessica recognized the material — an advanced polymer designed to block out electromagnetic waves.