He held out his hand and she took it, allowing him to tow her to the west end of the lab. Picking up speed, they soared over the satellite stations, quickly approaching the curved wall of a dead end.
When it appeared that he had no intention of slowing down, Jessica tried to jerk her hand free. “Let go! What are you doing?”
Seconds from impact, a section of the honeycomb-shaped panels parted like an expanding ripple on a pond and they flew through the dark opening.
“Oh my…”
The tunnel was immense, its ceiling easily thirty stories.
Perched upright on mobile launch pads were twenty Atlas-V rockets, each unmanned craft towering 191 feet tall. The rockets and their vehicles ran the length of the subterranean facility, which disappeared in the distance.
“Impressive.” She realized Ian was still holding her hand. “You can let go now, Dr. Concannon. And I don’t appreciate you scaring me like you did. Next time tell me the walls are sensor-activated.”
“Sorry.”
“Anything else you think I should know?”
“I’m single.”
“I meant about this facility. I’m guessing the ceiling sections beneath each launch pad are retractable?”
“Yes.”
“And where are they retractable to?”
“The surface.”
“I meant the base location. Where the hell are we?”
“I don’t know. The consensus among the group is somewhere in the Mid-West.”
She continued on, flying over one Atlas rocket after the next, each launch station deserted, a series of blinking red lights framing the darkness ahead.
Ian caught up to her before she flew through the lit passage, grabbing the crook of her arm as she soared over the last vehicle. “Jessica, wait—” They spun in circles, each refusing to ease up.
“Let me go!”
“You can’t go beyond the red lights!”
She stopped struggling. “Why not?”
“We’re not authorized.”
“I am.”
“Not in an anti-gravitics vest. See those red warning lights? Fly past that boundary while you’re inside a zero-point-energy bubble and you’ll be hit by an electromagnetic pulse. Before you know what happened, you’ll strike the concrete like a bug on a windshield.”
Jessica squinted, staring ahead into the pitch. “What’s out there?”
“I don’t know, and I’m not supposed to know.”
She hovered another thirty seconds, her eyes unable to pierce the darkness beyond the blinking red square of lights. “What happens if we land and try to walk past that boundary?”
“I’m not sure what they’ll do to you, but a bunch of nasty Delta Force commandoes armed with M-16s will have me lying spread-eagled on the ground, and it won’t be a pretty sight. Can we go back now?”
Jessica held on to her seat’s support pole as Elevator-7 zigged then zagged horizontally before plunging two stories to Level-5. As the doors thankfully opened and her anxiety eased, she recalled the fear in Ian Concannon’s voice as they had hovered in the darkness over the last Atlas rocket.
From that juncture on, the engineer had referred to her only as Dr. Marulli.
What was he so scared of? We weren’t going to fly beyond those lights—
She waved to Kirsty Brunt as she headed for the catwalk leading to her suite.
Maybe he was afraid we’d see something we weren’t supposed to see?
“Hey!”
Jessica glanced to her left as Logan LaCombe shot past her on his hoverboard. “Hey, you. I thought you were afraid to speak to me?”
He circled back. “I’m not afraid.”
“Are you sure? After all, I am Cosmic Clearance.”
The teen smiled nervously. “I’m sure. I mean… it’s not like I did something wrong.”
“Well, I almost did something wrong. Are you familiar with Level-3?”
“No. But my Dad sometimes works there. “What’d you almost do?”
“I almost flew through a restricted area wearing an anti-gravitics vest. A coupla more seconds and I would have gone splat.”
“Geez. What part of Level-3 were you at?”
“The launch site.”
“Cool. Did you see any ARVs?”
“What’s an ARV?”
The teen’s complexion paled. “I don’t know. You’re the one with Cosmic Clearance… what is it?”
“Logan—”
“Gotta go, Dad wanted me to pick up stuff at the mall for dinner. Laters…”
“Logan, wait… I’m just messing with you. I know what it is—”
She watched as he cut an S-pattern across the fastest section of the Maglev track, disappearing down the transit corridor.
Curiouser and curiouser…
23
The four-bedroom two-story brick house with the candy-apple-red shutters was located on Broad Bay Island. It was not a huge property by any means, but the community was gated and every owner had their own private dock.
Adam arrived at his brother’s home just after six o’clock. He was greeted at the door by his sister-in-law, Melinda.
“Hi, stranger.”
“Ah, come on… I was here for Christmas.” He leaned in for a kiss and entered the foyer. “Something smells good.”
“It’s called leftovers. Randy told me you were coming for dinner about an hour ago.”
“My fault; last minute change of plans.” He followed her to the family room where his niece and nephew were engaged in a video game.
“Jordan, Sean… look who’s here.”
“Hey, Uncle Adam.”
“Hey.”
Neither teen looked up.
Adam smiled. “Adolescence, my favorite years. Where’s Randy?”
“Where else?”
The boat was a 37-foot Post Sport Fisherman which legally held up to twelve passengers, though Adam recalled his brother squeezing twice that many on board at the Super Bowl-LI party. The captain was out on deck with a hose, cleaning out his fish holds.
“Permission to come aboard?”
“Permission granted.”
Adam swung his right leg over the port rail, followed by his prosthesis, careful not to slip on the wet deck. “They biting?”
“Caught some Rockfish early this morning. Why don’t you grab us a few beers; I’ll finish up and join you inside.”
Adam entered the salon, heading forward past the L-shaped dinette to the galley. Reaching inside the refrigerator, he removed two cans of Budweiser—
— only to be yanked backwards by the collar of his windbreaker and pinned against the stove top, his metallic left foot fighting for balance.
“Easy, slick… that’s a new jacket.”
“Do I look like I give a fuck? A few months in office and you’re calling for an internal investigation of the Pentagon? Who do you think you are? Joe McCarthy?”
Adam pushed his older sibling back. “I found evidence of improprieties and presented it to my boss. Is that a problem?”
“When I get called out of a meeting on Capitol Hill to be told my younger brother’s accusing two of our biggest defense contractors of criminal activity — yeah, that’s a problem.”
“So is informing the Secretary of Defense that he doesn’t have a need-to-know about a defense-funded project when he makes an inquiry.”
“Just because a project is compartmentalized doesn’t make it illegal, Adam.”
“If the president, congress, and the Secretary of Defense have no clue they exist while billions of dollars are flowing through them to God-knows-where, I’d say they were illegal. And don’t tell me my fucking job! I need you to step up and do yours.”