Adam turned as his fiancée’s mother joined them. “Barbara Jean Marulli, this is Dr. Joyce LaCombe and her son, Logan. It was Captain LaCombe who saved my life.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Yours, too.” Joyce motioned to the teen. “Logan taught Jessica how to use a hoverboard.”
“She was really good.”
“Well Logan, thanks to your dad and my little girl, maybe the rest of the world will finally get to experience anti-gravitics.” Barbara Jean turned to Adam. “The road is paved. Are you ready?”
Adam nodded.
Reaching beneath the bench, he pulled out a brown paper bag and removed the ARV helmet. Placing it on, he stared at the serene surface waters until they began to percolate—
— displacing the 50-foot-in-diameter, fifteen-ton vessel which rose from the river, having just reentered the physical dimension.
Barbara Jean gave Adam a hug and then pinched his earlobe, giving him a stern look. “Finish this.”
“Just give me the ball, coach.”
Adam commanded the hatch to open. Then he allowed himself to be inhaled by the zero-gravity vortex.
A moment later the vessel was gone.
“Strategic Command is on full alert! All personnel are ordered to evacuate through the canyon exits. Marine and Delta Force security are ordered to stand down. I repeat, Strategic Command is on full alert. All personnel are ordered to evacuate through the canyon exits—”
The ARV hovered a thousand feet above Dulce mountain. Inside the craft, Adam took a moment to survey the damaged complex now appearing on his main viewing screen. The scalar blast had vented the subterranean launch site to the surface, along with the seventeen remaining Atlas-V rockets, each vehicle harboring a Zeus satellite.
The second scalar wave sent them tumbling over sideways and igniting.
Wasting no time, Adam engaged the Delta configuration, slipping the vessel beyond the crossing point of light and back into transdimensional space—
— directing it through twenty stories of solid concrete and steel until the craft reemerged in a massive underground runway filled with man-made extraterrestrial vehicles.
Destroy all of them.
Colonel Alexander Johnston was livid beyond reason. General Cubit had lied about Chris Mull and now he had the evidence to prove it, his psychotronic equipment confirming it was Shariak, and not Johnston’s counter-intelligence officer, who had been operating the ARV.
It was obvious that Cubit was staging a coup, but the colonel knew he could beat it back into submission by alerting key leaders in Europe and Australia. All he had to do was get from Dulce to the Dugway Proving Grounds — a seven minute Maglev train ride. Then he’d enact his revenge.
I think I’ll begin by ripping Cubit’s soul from his body…
Bypassing the elevators, the colonel descended the stairwell to Level-9. Texting his assistant, Scott Muse, he ordered a private Maglev car sent immediately to Dulce.
The colonel emerged from the stairwell, winded but in good spirits. The platform looked deserted—
— and then he saw the bodies.
They were hanging from nooses tied to the lampposts — each man having been a member of the cabal for more than forty years. Johnston paused to gaze up at the nearest corpse, the thanatologist in him observing the angle of the cord cutting into the dead men’s Adam’s apples, making strangulation the cause of death opposed to the more traditional and expert snapping of the victim’s neck.
He exhibited no reaction as his blue-gray eyes fell upon the face of the last body.
Yvonne…
Seated on a bench beneath the dangling corpse of the colonel’s wife was General Cubit. “We had thought about burning her at the stake, but everything was so last minute. Pretty sick… using your wife to rub combustion crème on Jessica’s arm. You two made some pair. No worries, Dr. Death, I’m sure she’ll be waiting for you when you arrive in hell.”
Six Delta Force commandos stepped out of the shadows. Aiming their M-16s, they let loose a lead rope which severed Colonel Alexander Johnston’s twisting torso in half.
The ARV shot straight up through the atmosphere into space, then executed a ninety degree turn to the east.
Having removed the threat of Zeus on the Interstellars, and having impeded the chances of an alien false flag event, there was one last thing for Adam Shariak to do.
“Bob Costas here. If you’re just joining us, Game One of the National League Playoffs between the Cubs and the Nationals has been a real pitcher’s duel, with neither team able to advance a runner past second.
“And now, as advertised, joining us for tonight’s seventh inning stretch to lead the crowd in a special rendition of ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ will be Lady Gaga.”
The singer/songwriter made her way to home plate wearing a National’s jersey, the partisan crowd rising to give her a standing ovation.
“Hey, D.C.! I’m gonna need some help here, so I want everybody to sing along. Are you ready? Here we go…
“Take me out to the ball game… take me out with the crowd—”
Suzanne Tomas was looking up when she saw the object drop straight out of the sky to hover five hundred feet above second base. “That is so cool. Is that going to be in all of Gaga’s shows?”
“Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack… I don’t care if I never get back—”
Arie Forma videotaped the object as it circled around the inside of the stadium, the hair on his arms standing on end as it passed overhead. “That’s not a real UFO, Ellie!”
“No kidding,” his older sister shot back as she refocused her iPhone on the immense saucer-shaped craft.
“Let me root, root, root for the Na-tion-als… if they don’t win it’s a shame—”
Lady Gaga waved at the ARV as it hovered ten feet above the pitcher’s mound.
“For it’s one… two… three strikes, you’re out at the old ball game.”
“Bob, that’s one helluva special effect.”
“Looks like a hatch is opening… maybe there’s little green men inside.”
Adam dropped out of the ARV onto the pitcher’s mound, dazzled by the bright lights and sparkling flashes. Three cameramen followed him as he hobbled to home plate, unsure if the moment was really happening or if this was just a lucid dream.
Was that Lady Gaga coming out to greet him with a microphone?
“Hi! What’s your name, and where can I buy one of these?”
“My name? My name is Adam Shariak—”
The crowd quieted as his face appeared on the ballpark’s massive video screen.
“Up until last week, I was the Under Secretary of Defense. The anti-gravitics machine you see before you is man-made… it can travel across our galaxy in mere minutes. It was built in secrecy by the covert government I was investigating. Trillions of your tax dollars have been spent on these Unacknowledged Special Access Projects over the years. Much of this incredible technology originated from friendly extraterrestrials whose craft the military have been shooting down and reverse-engineering since 1947.”
Adam paused as the crowd reacted.
“That’s right…UFOs are real and the species visiting us are friendly. This Alien Reproduction Vehicle, or ARV, is powered by zero-point-energy… a clean, abundant and free energy source that would have eliminated hunger, poverty, disease, and fossil fuels fifty years ago, only the bastards acting illegally as its self-appointed gatekeepers refused to allow the technology to be shared by the rest of the world.”