The Roswell Conspiracy (12 page)

Though CDU had an extension in Alice Springs, the newly created research facility was located outside of town so that its vehicles could access the Northern Territory highways more easily during road testing. A half-mile down the road, Tyler saw the low-slung building rising from the scrubby desert. Because it was a Sunday, only a few cars were parked in the lot.

Tyler was about to park in front of the entrance when he noticed that a garage door was open on the side of the building. He wheeled the Jeep around and stopped next to it. He could see a man hunched over the hood of a car.

The four of them got out. The clear blue sky was cloudless all the way to the low mountain ridges to the south. The winter air was cool but pleasant, requiring nothing heavier than a windbreaker. Grant would have been sweltering in the parka, which meant Tyler was spared another day with Sergeant Traffic Cone.

The man inside the garage heard the doors slam and looked up. He couldn’t have been older than twenty and had grease stains on his sunburned cheeks. Tyler recognized him as Jeremy Hyland from the bios and photos posted on the CAPEK project’s website.

“You Dr. Locke?” Hyland said with a heavy Australian accent.

“I am,” he said and introduced the others, eliciting a round of
g’days
. “You must be Jeremy.”

“That’s right. I’d shake your hand, but I’m not very presentable at the moment.”

“Thanks for taking the time to meet with us.”

“No worries. Any chance to meet the chief engineer from Gordian.”

“You’ve heard of his company?” Jess asked.

“Heard of them? Any engineer would give their right arm to work there. Say, would you put in a good word for me at the Sydney office?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Tyler said.

“So what can I help you …” All of a sudden, Hyland’s eyes went wide with recognition. “Hold on! You three were in the video!”

Tyler nodded. “That’s actually why we’re here.”

Hyland grinned. “Wait’ll I tell my mates. I couldn’t believe it when the jet boat rolled over onto the beach. That was bloody bonzer!”

“We understand you recognized one of the men chasing us.”

“I emailed the Kiwi police about it, but I suppose they thought I was some kind of nutter.”

“You sure it was the same guy?”

“He was sitting in the driver’s seat of a car right where yours is. I was walking by and only saw him from the side. That’s why I wasn’t sure it was him in the video. But that mess of an ear was hard to forget.”

“What about the man he was chauffeuring around?”

“I never spoke to his boss. I went back to work while my professor gave him a tour of the place. Said he was some kind of corporate sponsor.”

“Do you remember the boss’s name?”

Hyland shook his head. “Some gray-haired bloke. Wasn’t old, though. Looked like he could wrestle a croc and win.”

“How about his company?”

“Sorry. You’d have to ask Professor Stevens.”

“Where can we find him?”

“Don’t know. CAPEK and the van were gone when I got here this morning. He left a message that he was taking it out for a run.”

“You mean the robotic truck?”

Hyland nodded. “Beautiful piece of work, if I do say so myself. Gonna revolutionize shipping in Australia, although the truckies won’t care for it.”

“The truck drivers?” Fay said. “Why?”

“Well, it’s a robotic truck, you see. We’ve got thousands of miles of desolate roads running through the outback. CAPEK is the first step in making them autonomous vehicles. Operating in remote regions to start with, of course. Private mines. Sheep stations. Like that. But eventually they could travel all the way from Darwin to Adelaide using GPS and on-board cameras.”

“How close are you to becoming operational?” Grant asked.

“We’re there now if the government would certify us. We’ve put forty thousand miles on CAPEK so far, though we’ve had someone in the driver’s seat the whole time in case there’s a problem. Haven’t had a single incident.”

“Did you have a test today?” Tyler said.

“It wasn’t on the schedule. I imagine Professor Stevens wanted to do some fine-tuning.”

“How does it work?”

“The truck can be driven normally, but once the robotic system is activated, the driving functions are totally autonomous. We have a chase van used for control and monitoring. The truck uses sensors, GPS navigation, and computer-controlled servomechanisms to stay on the road, and the person monitoring in the van gives it commands to start, stop, and turn. Eventually you’ll be able to plug in a destination with no further input. While we’re testing, you usually need three people to operate it: one in CAPEK, one to drive the van, and one in the back of the van monitoring.”

Hyland frowned.

“What’s the matter?” Tyler asked.

“Oh, nothing. It’s just that I was surprised they took it out without me. It being winter break, the only other student around is Milo Beech.”

“So it’s just the three of you? Isn’t it odd for you not to go with them?”

“I suppose it’s not that unusual. The professor must have had his reasons. And it’s easy enough for two people to do. They find a stretch of road, park the van, and drive the truck up and down to collect data.”

“Can you call the professor?” Tyler asked. “We’d like to talk to him.”

Hyland shook his head again. “When he left me the message that they’d be taking it out this morning, he told me he’d be turning off his phone so he wouldn’t be distracted during the testing. But he should be back after lunch.”

“What time?”

“Two o’clock should do it.”

“You sure we can’t contact him sooner?”

Hyland looked to each of them in turn as if he were making up his mind about something, then nodded.

“I suppose it’d be all right to tell you where you can find him.”

“You just said he’s not answering his phone,” Fay said. “How can you find out where he is?”

“I’ll show you.” He beckoned for them to follow him into the garage.

Hyland sat at a computer terminal and everyone gathered around him. He talked while he clicked through the screens. “Of course, when there’s a fleet of robotic trucks in operation, we’ll need to know where they are at all times, so we have a system to track their GPS signals.”

The map on screen was scaled to one inch per hundred miles, so the blinking dot representing the truck didn’t tell them much. Hyland blew up the map by a factor of ten.

“That’s weird,” he said.

“What’s weird?” Tyler asked.

“Well, I expected them to be out the back of beyond, but they’re in Alice Springs. The truck’s not moving. Wonder what he’s doing there.”

“Can you overlay a satellite map on that?”

“No worries.”

A few clicks later, an overhead view of Alice Springs appeared.

If the satellite map was up to date, the truck was currently parked next to a warehouse, right in the middle of town.

SIXTEEN

While the C-17 taxied to a remote area of the Alice Springs airport’s tarmac, Morgan called Dr. Kessler. Vince was already standing; Josephson was busy checking the moorings to make sure none of the equipment had come loose during the flight.

“Yes?” Kessler answered.

“Are you ready?” she said.

“I saw you land as we were driving in. We’ll be there in a minute.”

She hung up.

“I hate flying on planes with no windows,” Vince said. “I wanted to see Ayer’s Rock.”

“That’s over a hundred miles west of here,” Morgan said. “You wouldn’t have seen it anyway.”

“Still. Where’s Kessler?”

“On his way.”

The cargo plane lurched to a halt. The loadmaster scrambled down the stairs from the upper deck and opened the side door. Per procedure, he wouldn’t open the rear doors until the cargo was ready to be unloaded.

Morgan followed him out to see two local police cars guarding the street entrance. They’d stop anyone who tried to get within a hundred yards of the plane.

Vince stretched his arms and put on sunglasses as he peered at the sparse trees dotting the red landscape.

“That is a whole lot of nothing,” he said.

“You’re from West Texas.”

“So I know what I’m talking about.”

So did Morgan. She grew up in Ohio, but her pilot training had been at Laughlin Air Force Base in Nevada. The terrain here looked familiar to her, except there were no tall mountain ranges surrounding the airport like they did in Vegas—just a few ridges in the distance.

The sound of a truck’s engine made her turn. A nondescript white two-axle truck was stopped by the police, and the driver flashed his identification. The policeman waved him through. Morgan walked toward the back of the plane to meet the truck at the cargo door.

Kessler got out of the passenger side, and three men emerged from the rear of the truck.

“Welcome to Australia, Agent Bell,” Kessler said. “Agent Cameron. Have a good flight?”

“Peachy,” Vince said.

“Have there been any new developments while we were in the air?” Morgan asked.

Kessler shook his head. “We’re all settled in and ready to get prepped for the weapon test.”

“I’ll need to see your IDs,” she said to the men with Kessler. All of them were carrying pistols. She peered in the back of the truck and spotted three automatic rifles.

They looked at the scientist as if to ask if she were for real. Kessler nodded that she was, and they showed her their IDs. All of them were NSA agents on the Pine Gap security team.

“All right,” she said to the loadmaster. “Let’s go.”

He lowered the ramp and released the clamps on the crate carrying the Killswitch. The four security men kept watch as Josephson and the loadmaster used a hand truck to move the crate off the plane. It took only a few minutes to lash it securely to the truck’s floor.

Once Kessler was satisfied that it was in place, two of the security men and Josephson climbed inside with it.

“Are you staying here or going with it?” Morgan asked Kessler.

“Josephson can take care of it. I’ll stay here to supervise unloading the most delicate equipment. You may ride back with me.”

“How long will you be?”

“No more than ten minutes.”

Morgan nodded as she watched a semi pull into the airport entrance, where the police allowed it to enter. It stopped next to the C-17. At the same time a forklift motored over to the plane.

“Are we cleared to go, Dr. Kessler?” one of the security men said.

“Yes,” Kessler said. “Close it up. Collins will meet you at the base to unload. Make sure you stay with the crate until it reaches the lab.”

“Yes, sir.”

The rear door of the smaller truck was shut, and the two other security team members climbed into the front seats. Morgan watched them drive off.

While she waited for Kessler’s men to load the semi rig with the rest of the equipment, she called back to the office to see if they’d made any progress tracking down the origin of the Internet videogame forum message.

* * *

Tyler parked the Jeep down the street from the unmarked warehouse where the CAPEK truck was located. He’d driven slowly past it and they had seen the robotic semi and chase van next to a dozen white trailers, four of which were backed up to the warehouse loading bays. Cars and trucks passed them periodically, so the Jeep’s presence wouldn’t be noticeable.

“Hyland thought this was an odd place to bring the truck,” Tyler said. “I agree.”

“What do you think it’s doing here?” Grant asked.

“Only one way to find out.”

“If you’re going inside,” Jess said, “we’re going with you.”

“That would be no,” Tyler said. “Something about this doesn’t feel right. Until we know it’s safe, you’re staying in the car.”

“Should we call the police?” Fay said.

“We don’t have any reason to just yet.”

Grant pointed at the warehouse. “We’ve got movement.”

Two men walked quickly from the warehouse. One of them, a powerfully built man in his forties, had steel-gray hair. They climbed inside the van.

“Neither of those guys looked like students to me,” Grant said.

“Looks more like our mysterious sponsor.”

“And the other one wasn’t Stevens. He must be in the warehouse.”

“We’re going to see if we can get a better view of the place from the other side,” Tyler said. “We’ll also try to snap a photo of our mystery man’s face. Jess, you take the wheel. Drive us down past the next warehouse. We’ll hop out and you continue on.”

“Where?”

“Drive around the block and come back here to keep an eye on the place. We’ll turn off our cell phone ringers but leave them on vibrate. If you see anything suspicious, text me, then call the police. We’ll call when we’re ready to be picked up.”

“I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I,” Tyler said as he backed the Jeep up the street until they were out of view of the warehouse. “But we need to get some answers, and I’m not ready to put Fay in harm’s way again.”

Getting shot at and having her house burned down was bad enough. If it was the same guys, they might want to finish the job. Tyler was already queasy about putting her in this much jeopardy.

“You don’t even have guns,” Jess said.

“This is just a recon mission. If we see any weapons, I’ll text you to call the cavalry.”

Jess reluctantly nodded. “All right. But be careful.”

“What do you think?” Tyler said to Grant. “Should we be careful?”

Before Grant could answer, Jess punched Tyler in the arm. “Okay, wiseass. Out of the car.”

As he passed her outside, he said with a smile, “That’s
Doctor
Wiseass to you.”

“Tell me when it’s on your business card.”

Tyler and Grant got in the back and put their phones on vibrate. Jess drove to the empty warehouse next door as if she were delivering something in back. When they were on the opposite side, Tyler and Grant jumped out. Jess made a U-turn and headed back to the street.

Grant peeked around the corner at the warehouse and switched his cell phone to camera mode. “There’s a Dumpster thirty feet away. We’ll be able to see him if we hide behind it. I think that’s about as close as we can get.”