The Gemini Divergence (67 page)

“Thank God.”

*~*

Colonel Williams, Base Commander of the Sioux
Army Depot, in Sidney, Nebraska which is about ninety miles to the
east of F.E. Warren along I-80 was also woken in the middle of the
night by his men because of the strange lights. He called Colonel
Johnson as well as Blue Book at Wright Patterson to report saucers
flying to and from F.E. Warren.

At 4:05 a.m. the F.E. Warren Commander again
called Blue Book to alert them that the number had grown from five
to nine UFOs which consisted of four to his northwest, three to his
north east and two over the city of Cheyenne.

Throughout the night the reports from the
security police stationed at the silos poured in; describing
multiple instances of intimidation by the objects such as hovering
low and landing near the sites.

The Air Force officially reported that there
were no shots fired, but rumor has told another story.

Some of the airmen reported that when the
objects flew directly over their vehicles, the engines stalled and
their vehicles shook violently as if they were experiencing an
earth quake.

Launch facility crews reported that even
though no launch codes were compromised, it was obvious that
someone or something was trying to manipulate their machinery, such
as trying to electrically open the silo doors or obtain access to
the missile controls, but all attempts were supposedly thwarted by
the well trained personnel as well as the fail safe designed
control equipment.

The F.E. Warren incident was well documented
by Blue Book and made it into the public media, but persistent
rumors ran rampant throughout the Air Force that a similar event
happened at Minot AFB in North Dakota later that same year but SAC,
with the lessons learned at F.E. Warren, had initiated new protocol
instructions; perhaps in time for the officers involved to keep a
lid on that supposed event.

~~~**^**~~~

The Gemini
War / The Heflin Photos

3 August 1965

One of Schwerig’s patrols was scouring the
mountains east of LA when they noticed something flying around a
rural hillside.

At first the flight commander thought it was
a small kit plane, but it had no wings. Then he thought it was a
small helicopter, but it had no rotor.

He strained his eyes to see as he drew closer
until he could finally focus on the small craft.

“This is it!” he cried, “The kinetic
impellers… There they are… Let’s get him!”

Hughes had finally talked Volmer into letting
him use some of the vril from the Florida saucers that were
destroyed on the ground, since the National Labs had found
everything that they were going to find out about the vril for
now.

He couldn’t believe the difference that the
vril made in his air chariot. Now he was zipping around the Santa
Ana hills like a genie on a flying carpet.

The marines that were guarding him obviously
didn’t understand the level of technical breakthrough that was
unfolding before them because they were still laughing amongst
themselves at Jonny Quest coming to save the day.

They were also laughing at Hughes earlier
when he kept piling bricks onto his craft until it couldn’t
fly.

They didn’t realize that Hughes knew the
weight of each brick and was measuring the lifting potential of the
kinetic impellers when fueled by vril.

Now Hughes was seeing how it maneuvered. He
was famous for test flying his own inventions. Many of his advisors
protested wildly in the past, because he had already had several
wrecks; some almost costing him his life.

Hughes didn’t mind the ribbing by the
marines. He knew that they needed a healthy ego to do the job Uncle
Sam expected from them.

Polite and timid people don’t do well
storming beaches,
he thought to himself.

But he couldn’t resist the urge to buzz them
as they sat there laughing, so he dove in, gaining enough speed to
blow off his hat as he passed inches over the marines heads while
they instinctively dove for the deck.

As he looked over his shoulder laughing to
see the marines standing up slapping the dust from their fatigues
and shaking their fists at him, he saw two saucers clearing the top
of Saddleback Mountain in pursuit of him.

He immediately knew that it was the
Raumsfahrtwaffe and pointed at the saucers for the marines to
see.

As Hughes turned to look where he was going,
he heard the entire valley erupt into unimaginable gunfire.

He grinned because he knew that the Overseers
didn’t expect that they were going to fly treetop level over a
platoon of very pissed off marines.

The flight commander had already whizzed by
the marines before they had adequate time to react, so his wingman
caught the brunt of the ground fire.

The wingman’s instruments lit up like a
Christmas tree as smoke instantly began to spew from his craft’s
belly and he knew that he wasn’t going to make it out of the
valley, so he looked for a good place to set it down.

“Shit!” exclaimed the flight commander as he
realized that they had been drawn into a ground fire ambush, but he
still didn’t lose focus on Hughes and was gaining very quickly.

Hughes knew that he would never outrun the
Overseer but that he had a weight advantage and could turn on a
dime in comparison to his pursuer; so he slowed his craft down as
quickly as he could decelerate and turned as close to 180 degrees
as possible.

His pursuer could not make the turn and
slipped right past, trying to avoid crashing into the ground as
Hughes slipped under him.

Hughes flew as close to the ground as he
could and made a bee line towards the waiting marines, who had
already reloaded and were waiting for the flight commander’s saucer
to make another pass.

One of the Marine sergeants was yelling
commands at a squad of men he had already dispatched down into the
valley after the wingman’s crashed saucer.

As the Overseer again started gaining on the
tiny craft, Hughes began swatting the side, as if he were whipping
a horse.

As he cleared the top of the brim that the
marines were perched upon, they greeted him with a cheer, but
almost instantly after he cleared their heads the valley again
erupted into a hell storm of flying lead and noise.

The flight commander had anticipated the
marines waiting for him and had veered away just short of effective
small arms range.

As he pulled away, he could hear the sound of
bullets pounding the side of his saucer and he thanked God that he
had turned in time. Otherwise he surely would have met the same
fate as his wingman.

Hughes landed his craft behind the embattled
marines and ran to look over the brim into the valley.

He could see the flight commander quickly
landing to pick up his downed wingman about a half mile away as the
Marine squad ran as fast as they could to apprehend them, but he
could see that they probably wouldn’t get there before the two
pilots made their escape.

He looked at the Marine sergeant and said,
“Boy, I’m glad you boys brought that thing down on base. Now we
don’t have to keep a gaggle of nosy civilians away… Let me make a
phone call… I’ll bet there will be some Air Force boys, with a
flatbed, here in about an hour.”

“So! What do you want me to do?”
sarcastically snapped the Marine sergeant.

Hughes smiled and asked, “Well before they
get here… I have a couple Jerry cans over here. Do any of you boys
know have to siphon gas?”

*~*

The flight commander cleared Saddleback
Mountain and flew out over the Santa Ana Valley at tree top level
towards Long Beach.

They immediately reported back to Schwerig
that they had found the kinetic impellers, but had lost another
saucer because of how well they were guarded.

Schwerig cursed at himself under his breath,
as he knew that this latest loss was of his own doing. He had
ordered the flight commander that if found, to pursue the kinetic
impellers at any cost, and the commander had just been following
orders.

*~*

Rex Heflin was driving along a Santa Ana back
road as he passed by Tustin Marine Air Station, visible in the
distance, just as he had a thousand times before in the course of
his job as highway investigator.

He routinely toured the highways in the area
searching for highway property in need of repair or cleaning.

But this time he saw something that was very
unusual; a flying saucer coming across the valley at what he
described as telephone pole level.

He slammed on the brakes and scrambled for
his Polaroid, which was already sitting on his passenger seat ready
to go as part of his investigative job, and began snapping a set of
pictures that would probably be the most famous flying saucer
pictures ever taken.

*~*

Gus, Jack and Volmer hopped on a plane at
McClellan and were on the Tarmac at Tustin within an hour.

They quickly climbed out of the nose wheel
ladder of their WC-135 and Jack and Gus went to check out a
flatbed, as Volmer went into the tower control office to use the
phone.

When Volmer stepped back outside, Jack and
Gus were already waiting with their Marine Corp flatbed.

Jack joked, “It’s the wrong color, but the
same brand.”

Volmer climbed up onto the running board to
speak with the other two inside of the truck, “I just got off the
phone with General McConnel. He tells me that complaints are flying
in from residents around here of shrapnel falling on their roofs
and cars… McConnel discussed it with the Commandant of the Marine
Corp and from now on the Marines on Saddleback will no longer be
able to carry rifles; they are only going to allow them to carry
shotguns.”

Gus and Jack looked stunned as Gus asked,
“How are they going to shoot at space craft with shotguns… That’s
ludicrous.”

“I realize that, but I have no control over
it… General McConnel wants Hughes to take his research to NTS… He
feels that this is too close to civilian population and that it is
too dangerous to keep it here.”

“He’s not going to like hearing that,”
laughed Gus.

“I know,” laughed Volmer in return, “But
that’s not my problem any more… You’re the one that has to tell
him.”

“What?”

“And then you boys need to clean up, put on
your civvies, and interview a mister… Heflin; out in Santa Ana. He
claims to have taken some Polaroids of the surviving craft as it
retreated… Only he doesn’t know what actually happened up there on
the mountain.”

“Three things; one, he still won’t know, two,
I assume that McConnel wants us to shanghai the Polaroids, and
three… where the hell are you going, why aren’t you going with
us?”

“I have to take a cab to JPL in Pasadena and
see if they are having any more luck with the vril than McClellan
or Lawrence Livermore have had up north. I just got off the phone
with Hanford and Oak Ridge. It just doesn’t seem like anybody is
having any luck.”

*~*

Gus and Jack had cleaned up the saucer
wreckage on Saddleback Mountain and sent the truck off to NTS.

They were a little baffled why the fuel tanks
of the spacecraft didn’t seem to be damaged, but for some reason …
were bone dry.

They just blamed it on the extreme volatility
of the vril. At least, that is what Gus was going to write in his
report.

AFOAT was very liberal about it’s blanket
orders; allowing airmen to buy plane tickets or check out machinery
with much less red tape than other government workers.

The only catch-all or catch-22 was that
everyone within AFOAT with blanket orders had to file a report
accounting for every single day and every single action, or dime,
after the fact.

They changed into their civvies and went to
the motor pool to check out a car.

The Marine sergeant at the motor pool looked
at them in their cheap suits. Then, with a stoic flat face
inquired, “Going to a funeral?”

“No,” replied Gus, “We’re on official
business.”

Dealing with sergeants at motor pools around
the world that had no idea what the purpose of AFOAT was, could
always be one of the most nerve racking part of AFOAT technician’s
jobs.

The Marine sergeant again raised his eyebrows
and sarcastically commented, “Wow, I knew that you Air Force types
had fancy uniforms with lots of pretty colorful patches, but I
never saw uniforms like that.”

Gus pointed to the copy of his orders that he
had presented to the Sergeant and said, “Well if marines could
read, you may have noticed that these words right here authorize us
to wear civvies for certain duties.”

The Marine sergeant sternly frowned, “I ain’t
never seen orders like that neither. They don’t say anything about
where you’re supposed to go or when you’re supposed to get
there.”