only slept four hours, but awoke in the morning quite alert, and amazingly refreshed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
UNDERGROUND
A black SUV with heavily tinted windows rolled up to his gate at exactly five in the morning, and Eric buzzed it in. The SUV pulled up to his garage and sat there, engine running, windows up. Eric tried the front passenger door, but it was locked. The rear door wasn’t. He opened it, and got in.
“Good morning, sir.” A driver in military fatigues looked at him in his rear view mirror as Eric closed the door. There was a thick, polymer barrier between them.
“A bit early for that,” quipped Eric.
The driver smiled. “You’re working with the military, sir. Up and on.”
Eric thumbed the gate shut as they went through it. They turned left, and headed away from town, accelerating rapidly.
“Seat belts, sir. You have an oh-six-hundred with Colonel Davis, and I’ll have to hammer it.”
“That far?” asked Eric, and snapped in lap and chest belts.
“A ways, sir. There’s a thermos of coffee on the seat left of you. Hope you drink it black.”
Eric uncapped the thermos, poured, and sipped. The liquid burned a path down into his empty stomach, the caffeine giving him a welcome jolt. The sky was beginning to glow outside, but was dim through the tinted windows, and they were suddenly veering left, bouncing once as they hit a graded, red-rock road. A mile in they came to a ranch, went around the main house and accelerated again as the road reappeared past an empty cattle pen. Eric’s mind was on autopilot, judging speeds and directions, calculating distances.
Four miles later they came to a water tank fenced in next to what looked like a garage. The fence gate and garage door were opening for them as they reached it, and closing as they entered the area. Lights came on as the garage door clanged shut. They stopped by a pedestal with what looked like a phone pad. The driver reached out and punched in some numbers, then closed his window again.
Two seconds, a loud thump, and the coffee in Eric’s stomach seemed to float for an instant. The entire vehicle was descending, and for several moments the only light came from the dashboard panel.
They came to a stop facing a bright light floating somewhere above them. The car pulled forward as Eric calculated, estimating they were now around ninety feet beneath the surface of the ground. They came out into a tunnel, two lines of ceiling lights coming together in the far distance left and right, a two-lane road of steel grating on red dirt. A military jeep buzzed by them, heading right. They turned, and followed it. The car was traveling around forty, and they drove for fifteen minutes, the jeep remaining ahead in view. No traffic passed them going the other way.
They stopped at a cutout in the tunnel, a parking area large enough for twenty cars, quick count. The tunnel itself went on straight ahead, and out of view. The jeep had parked there, and two soldiers with military police armbands were waiting for them.
“These men will take you to Colonel Davis,” said Eric’s driver. “Have a good day.”
One of the military policemen opened the door for Eric, and he got out. “Colonel Davis is expecting you, sir. Please come with us.”
The men walked on either side of him. The air was dry, smelled of oil and salt, and fine, red dust particles floated in the air. Behind two large vents in the ceiling, something hummed loudly.
An elevator door opened for them. The interior was polished brass. They descended for only a few seconds, perhaps another sixty feet, and suddenly stopped. The door opened, and they could have been in any office building in a large city. There were rows of offices along a green-carpeted hallway, both men and women in military fatigues hurrying to assignments. They stopped at a door like any of the others, this one marked ‘Commander’. Three knocks on the door brought an answer from inside.
“Come!”
“Mister Price is here, sir.”
“Send him in!”
A policeman opened the door, and Eric stepped inside.
A heavyset man, balding, sat behind a polished, mahogany desk. He was in army fatigues, and his sausage-like fingers moved over a computer keyboard briefly before entering something with a single keystroke. He gestured at a chair in front of his desk, pulled a thick file out of a drawer and pushed it across the desk as Eric sat down.
There were no preliminaries. “I’m Alex Davis. That’s Colonel Davis. You’ll report to me directly. What we have so far is in the file. You should read it in order. You’ll need historical perspective to see if the information we’re getting is consistent. I hear you’re very good at that.”
“You think the data you’re obtaining might be false, then? Is that why the delays have become long enough for the Pentagon to be concerned?” Eric opened the file, and riffled a few pages. The file was the thickness of a ream of paper. Graphs, equations, diagrams of a delta-shaped aircraft flashed past his eyes.
“Could be. We’ve had problems at every stage of testing, even in conventional flight.”
“Conventional?”
“Sub-sonic. It’s all summarized in the file. I couldn’t brief you if I had the time for it. A list of people you’re allowed to talk to is on page one. Don’t deviate from that list without consulting me first.”
“My clearance is orange card.”
“I don’t care about your color. Need to know, and I’ll decide that. Everyone at this base has top clearance, but only a handful of us have an overview of the entire project. Everyone else works on a small part of it. They know it’s an aircraft we’re working with, but nothing beyond that.”
“And how much will I be allowed to know?” Eric’s eyes narrowed. “You have my file, and my orders. I consult with you. It’s protocol, but the people I report to are at the top of the command chain. I do what they want done, and if I don’t get what I need they’ll ask why and I’ll tell them why.”
There was a faint smile from Davis. “You’ll have what you need as long as you don’t leak information to someone who shouldn’t know it while you make inquiries. Consulting with me isn’t advised, it’s required.”
“I understand that.”
“Good, then here’s the drill. You read that file and develop a plan for both technological and program analysis. You have four days, and then we talk again. Most of the tech staff lives in town; that’s why you’re based there. Communications will be primarily by closed cable to your home machine. You’ll spend little time here, primarily for face-to-face briefings with me. And no staff member will be interviewed until I’ve approved it.”
“My understanding was that I’d be spending a great deal of my time here, and have access to all parts of the base. I can’t just look at sketches, I have to see hardware.”
“Maybe later. You’re aware I have some security problems here. I don’t want anyone new sniffing around and alerting the person or persons we’re trying to ferret out. My own security people are on it.”
“I’m
