Attack on Area 51 (11 page)

Ben’s ears perked up. He was in a very precarious position and needed all the information he could get.

The FCSF guys—most of them dressed in hobo clothes—had created two firing lines covering their present location, which was about two-thirds down the top gantry of the S4 chamber. The cavern wall had several natural alcoves where the troopers had set up interlocking firing positions. Firing positions were also established along the gantry’s four-foot-high metal railing.

These positions were well thought out, and they had held for the past half hour. That’s how long Ben, JT, and the others had been trapped here with units of AMC security troops blocking them at either end of the gantry.

A gunfight in any direction would take a lot of lives, and both sides knew it. So it was a stalemate—at least for now.

But Ben had learned earlier from St. Louis that three huge cargo planes were flying AMC reinforcements into Groom Lake. Plus he assumed the AMC would at least move reinforcements up to S4 via the underground highway. When they arrived, the FCSF unit would eventually succumb to the higher numbers. JT was already calling it the “Custer’s Last Stand” option.

For these reasons, Ben was very anxious to hear what Hunter had in mind—specifically, what was going to happen in seven minutes.

Trouble was, St. Louis didn’t know.

“He just said be prepared in about seven minutes,” he replied when Ben pressed him. “And you know Hawk. He’s usually on time.”

Traveling 550 miles an hour now, Hunter was surprised how well the old Sabre was performing—twisted fuselage, shattered canopy, and all. He’d been able to hold it steady twenty-five feet above the roadway, leaving another twenty-five feet as a buffer between him and the tunnel’s ceiling.

Any deviation though, the slightest dip in altitude or a sway to the left or right, and he’d be a sheen of blood and gas on the asphalt of the underground highway. The only good thing about that scenario was: it would be over quick.

One point in his favor, though: the S4 highway was amazingly well lit. It was lined on both sides with large fluorescent lights so bright he wasn’t using his night-vision goggles.

And it was perfectly straight, so far. In fact, his only immediate concern was what he was seeing in front of him—which was nothing but the tunnel, going off into infinity. Appropriately enough, he was getting tunnel vision—and it was somewhat hypnotic. He had to rapidly blink his eyes every few seconds just to get himself reoriented.

But then suddenly he saw something ahead of him, something that interfered with his tunnel vision. It was a line of troop trucks, moving deeper into the tunnel, just as he was.

Before he could even think about it, he was over them and could see it was a half-mile-long AMC troop convoy, no doubt heading for the S4 chamber with reinforcements.

Besides scaring the crap out of the convoy’s troops, Hunter was just able to fire his machine guns at the last instant, hitting the first few trucks in line. There was a huge secondary explosion as he flashed overhead, flames chasing him while he continued to barrel down the tunnel.

A quick glimpse over his shoulder told him that he’d disabled several trucks, blocking the tunnel in both directions, at least temporarily.

He let out a breath of relief—only by good fortune had he delayed the AMC from getting more troops to the chamber and tipping the scales their way.

But was he really going to be able to help the FCSF unit trapped inside?

He looked at his watch.

One minute to go …

He pushed the throttles all the way forward—and held on tight.

He’d have his answer soon enough.

The first indication JT had that something was happening was when his knees started to shake.

True, he was in a sticky situation, trapped on the upper level of the huge chamber, with bad guys blocking any route of escape. But he’d been in tight spots before, and his knees never shook.

But they were shaking now.

He turned to Ben, who was holding a position looking down the gantry at the AMC nest just thirty feet away, and said, “Can you feel that?”

Ben thought for a moment, then said, “Is everything shaking?”

JT began to reply … but the words never came out.

The mild vibration suddenly became a rumbling so loud, so powerful, that the massive S4 chamber started moving—
physically
moving. The gantry began swinging like an amusement park ride, knocking some of the FCSF troopers off their feet.

And then came a gigantic
boom!

In that instant, no one could talk, no one could hear, no one could even think about anything but the overwhelming, earsplitting bang—the result of Hunter’s jet rocketing past the huge open door leading into the S4 cavern, breaking the sound barrier at the exact right moment.

Everything in the fantastic chamber went dead. All the colors, all the lights, all the means of communication—all of it just blinked out. This place had run on sound waves to keep it hidden all these years. Creating a sonic boom in such a space was like dropping an A-bomb on it. Thousands of circuits were blown out. Other things exploded just from the massive increase in pressure. Many AMC soldiers and techs on the bottom floor suffered from burst craniums, their screams could be heard even over the titanic roar.

It was the moment the FCSF team had been waiting for.

Ben shouted as loud as he could, “Let’s go!”

Immediately, JT and half the FCSF troopers attacked the AMC soldiers blocking their way out of the underground chamber. Many of the enemy gunmen were on the floor, writhing in pain from the sudden unexpected sonic blast. Though outnumbered, the FCSF troopers quickly overran them in a brief, one-sided firefight, disabled the controls of the big round door, and opened it manually.

Meanwhile, Ben and the other dozen troopers ran forward, guns blazing. Seeing them charge, the frightened and injured AMC soldiers at the far end of the gantry quickly retreated. This allowed the FCSF squad to light and drop the 50-gallon bladder bomb directly over the ray gun.

They didn’t wait for it to explode.

Once they had lifted it over the railing and let it go, Ben just yelled, “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

It was only a matter of luck that the Man Not Zhang survived the bladder bomb explosion.

He’d been at the back of his pod about a minute before, monitoring the security situation across an array of fifty-year-old TV screens. Intruders were inside the walls. They’d slipped in disguised as the lowly AMC privates whose only job was to lead lambs to the slaughter—and those dimwits couldn’t even do that right.

But Procedure 3 had worked. The intruders, identities unknown, were trapped by his forces on the upper level.

Nellis had promised that an underground convoy of reinforcements would arrive at S4 at any time. The numbers would be overwhelming—and the Man Not Zhang had planned to throw waves of AMC soldiers at the intruders until they ran out of ammunition and were eliminated.

He’d been checking the time, anxious for the AMC reinforcements to arrive, when he heard the most horrendous noise. In the next instant, the sonic boom went through S4 with such concussive power, it penetrated his all-black ensemble and ripped some of the skin from his ancient bones.

Then everything went dark—and the place that for years had been so quiet suddenly had sound waves bouncing off its walls with such violence the walls were crumbling. Machines and lights were shorting out, causing jagged streaks of sparks to spit from every corner of the place. It was like a thunder and lightning storm—contained inside the cavern.

Uncharacteristically staggered, the Man Not Zhang pushed a handheld phone button all by himself, sending a sound wave signal to close the massive door leading from S4 to the underground highway. For some reason he thought that would stop the earsplitting noise.

In the next instant, though, he realized what a foolish thing he’d done—and tried to override the signal. But it was too late. With their last ounces of stored power, those huge soundproofed motors zipped to life, closed the huge door, and then went dead for good.

The masked man began pushing many phone buttons—while screaming orders to his aides to do something,
anything
, before realizing one was blind and cowering in the corner and the other had left long ago—but nothing was working.

Well, not quite nothing …

At that moment, the man was treated to an incredible sight: the twelve UFOs that had been sitting above the chamber gathering dust since the AMC had come to this place, suddenly started moving. Like robots, they became airborne all at the same time. Then, incredibly, a hidden door in the chamber—this one on the ceiling—cranked open under its own power, and the UFOs began flying out.

“Cowards …” he mumbled through his tattered black mask as the last of the UFOs disappeared.

The bladder bomb hit a second later.

From his point of view, it came out of nowhere—a black, rubbery object falling from the ceiling, trailing a long, thin streak of flame behind it.

It hit the big ray gun dead on and, in that first instant, splattered a great amount of liquid all over the device, its controls—all over everything.

But in the next instant, the liquid exploded and the floor of the S4 chamber was suddenly awash in a tsunami of flames. It blew up with such violence, those flames actually climbed four stories and engulfed the masked man’s protruding pod.

He could easily see through flames, though, and what he saw was the ray gun reduced to a mass of smoldering metal, surrounded by the bodies of his now-immolated tech crew.

That was it for him. The end of this housecleaning experiment. What he needed was another great escape, a way to get out of the place before it became his tomb.

He had one last trick, though: When he’d first come to the cavern, the AMC had given him a large box that they said should only be opened in cases like this. Leftover from the original builders of S4, it was to be used only when it appeared that some kind of catastrophic failure had occurred inside the chamber and there was no other way to escape.

He opened this last-ditch box to see, to his astonishment, that it contained … a parachute.

“In this place?” he thought.

There were brief instructions. He read them hastily and thought they were pure insanity. But then he read them again—and thought, well, maybe not.

Besides, he had no other choice.

So he strapped on the parachute, and then left his pod, stumbling into the smoke and chaos outside.

He gained his bearings and, picking his way through the debris and the bodies, started for the floor of the chamber below.

Once the big round door was opened and secured, JT and his FCSF troopers set up another defensive firing line to cover to Ben and the others who’d run ahead to drop the bladder bomb on the chamber floor below.

It was from this position that JT and his group saw the stunning sight of the up-until-then somnambulant UFOs suddenly coming to life and flying out of S4.

JT couldn’t believe it. “I knew those things were real!” he shouted above the din.

There were only scattered gunshots chasing Ben and his men as they ran to safety. They too had seen the exodus of the UFOs—just one more crazy thing happening around them.

But then, just a few feet from reaching the new FCSF positions, Ben skidded to a stop.

“Hey!” he yelled to JT. “Look at that …”

JT saw Ben pointing down into the chamber. It was lit only by the fires leftover from the bladder bomb, but in the world of night vision, it was like looking into Hell.

Incredibly, they saw a sight even stranger than the fleeing UFOs. On the chamber floor there was a figure clad in black and wearing, of all things … a parachute.

Suddenly, the person jumped into the bottomless pit, pulling the ripcord as he did so. He disappeared in a flash.

“What the fuck is
that
about?” JT asked, astonished.

Ben didn’t have a clue—it was just too bizarre.

JT yelled to him to get going again. A horde of AMC soldiers was coming their way, knowing the big round door was the only way out of the burning chamber.

“Let’s get this door closed,” JT said as Ben finally reached the firing line. “We can figure out all this weird shit later.”

The entire FCSF team began pushing on the big round door, hoping to slide it shut. They were about halfway into this when the throng of AMC soldiers reached the top of the gantry and began scrambling toward the portal. None of them was firing a weapon; it was beyond that now. They just wanted to get out before the chamber collapsed on itself.

But they were out of luck.

The FCSF troopers plus Ben and JT just managed to close the door and lock it manually from the other side before the first AMC gunmen arrived.

They could hear the enemy fighters pleading with them to reopen the door, to save their lives, but that just wasn’t in the cards.

Once safe on the other side, the FCSF team made sure everyone was accounted for—and then hurried back up top.

W
HEN HUNTER FINALLY EXITED
the far end of the underground highway, just ninety seconds after creating the sonic boom inside S4, he found himself on the other side of Bald Mountain, about twenty miles north of Groom Lake.

The highway’s egress point was in an extremely desolate area, just two large recessed holes in the side of the mountain and featuring nothing more elaborate than a truck turnaround.

Even getting out had been an adventure. He exited the underground highway practically going sideways, more expelled from the cavern than flying out of it.

He hadn’t anticipated the violent back-blast that resulted from dropping the sonic A-bomb on S4. Its concussion slammed into him just seconds after the boom hit, nearly causing him to spin out of control while still inside the tunnel.

That’s why he couldn’t get out soon enough. The moment he saw the stars blazing overhead, he pulled back on the stick and went straight up, free once more.

That
was something he never wanted to do again.