I reached Highway 80 in less than a minute, and took the westbound lane.
Chapter 15
AS THE FIR-STUDDED mountains of the California Sierra Nevada faded in my rearview mirror, and Nevada's hellish Martian landscape rolled rudely in to take their place, I wondered how Dr. Elaine Waters made out with the federal agents. I didn't see her cooperating, but if they really turned up the pressure I didn't see her resisting, either. But what could she give them, other than Professor Killian's name?
I drove straight through Nevada, stopping only for coffee and food. For entertainment, I listened to the DVD recordings of Elaine's boss and the federal agents. She sounded incensed and unyielding while her boss and the agents argued, cajoled, and threatened her. I could see why they'd been worried enough to keep her under surveillance, as they apparently had.
I considered calling Professor Killian, but decided, since they might very well be monitoring his phone, I'd just show up in person. I took a brief snooze in my car in some parking lot in Rock Springs, knowing I'd reached my caffeinated limits, and soldiered on. The drive was almost as dull as I-5, though the names – Fort Bridger, Laramie, Cheyenne – were more iconic.
I had the strange sense of coming home as I wound my way through the Colorado hills west of Boulder toward the Killians. Followed by the not-so strange sense that I had not outrun my trouble. Markus Killian was the one thing Elaine Waters could give the feds. Not that they could do anything legally to Markus, but given that they were chasing me around in parking lots I doubted they'd let a little thing like legality get in their way.
So I stopped at Wal-Mart in Boulder, purchased another "burner" phone with cash, and called Lilith. She answered with a very guarded: "Yes?"
"Did you miss me?"
"Where the hell are you?"
"I'll take that as a yes. Not far. Are you in the mood for some shopping at our favorite store?"
A few seconds stumbled past. Lilith adding two and two together.
"Not really." She sighed with gusto. "But I suppose I could make an exception. Do you think this necessary?"
"I'm not sure. Have you looked out on the road past your driveway recently?"
"Yes. No one's there."
"But they could be somewhere nearby."
"You're really getting into this secret agent shit, aren't you?"
"I'm finding that paranoia suits me."
"I'll be there in a few minutes."
"I'll watch for you."
As I ended the call it occurred to me I could do better than that. I could watch for them. I drove out to the beginning of Sunrise Canyon and parked in the shade between two cars by the last of the residential houses. I pretended to be reading a flyer I'd picked up in Wally World.
I spotted Lilith approaching in her sky-blue Ford Fusion, but didn't see any cars behind her. I raised my hand in a quick wave and pointed to her left. She reacted with admirable alacrity, turning left down a road on the outskirts of town. I waited for a count of ten seconds, but no other cars appeared. I started my beamer and turned down the same residential road where she was idling along at twenty miles per hour. After a few blocks, I signaled for her to pull over. When she did I parked a block back from her and eyed the rearview mirror. Still nothing.
I got out and joined her in the front seats.
"Hey," I said. "How are things back at the ranch?"
"Fine. We've been wondering about you. I didn't recognize your car."
"Nice, huh?"
"For a James Bond wannabe. You couldn't give us a call until you got here?"
"Maybe more Clouseau than James Bond. It got a bit hairy in Sacramento. I thought it might be better not to give our hypothetical watchers a heads-up."
"What happened with the government scientist?"
"Dr. Elaine Waters, Chief Scientist at the FDA. Or former Chief Scientist."
I gave Lilith the short version of our meeting.
"That's insane," she said, lowering her voice as if they might be listening.
"I assume you said something to your dad about us meeting?"
Lilith nodded. "He's anxious to hear what happened." She faced me. "Do you think it's safe to follow me back to the house?"
"I don't know. But I'd guess it would be safer to meet someone away from your dad's house. I'm thinking I find a place to stay somewhere in the area, and your dad's people can come to me to pick up the disc and vaccines. I'd suggest we both buy new burner phones, since if they're monitoring your phone they now have my number."
Lilith was giving me a slightly cross-eyed look.
"It might be overkill, I know," I said, "but these people are dead serious about this vaccine bullshit for whatever reason. If they were watching your dad before, I'm betting he's front and center on their radar now."
Lilith's skeptical look collapsed into apprehensive concern. "He hasn't noticed any government cars parked near our driveway recently. We were hoping they'd found someone more interesting to watch."
"If they did, I'm guessing they'll be switching channels back to you."
Lilith gazed out the side window back in the direction from which she'd come.
"What I can give you now is a copy of the DVD along with the vials," I said. "That way if they intercept you or raid your place, the vials wouldn't be difficult to replace since they're theoretically everywhere now. I uploaded the DVD to my TOR and ProtonMail accounts."
"ProtonMail is legit. Some super-smart guys set it up. If you did that, why worry about coming to the house?"
"In case those super-smart physicists aren't quite as smart as we think?"
"I'd like to just upload it all to the net, see how they deal with that," she said in a low voice.
"I'd like to do that, too, but I promised Dr. Waters we'd clear it with her first."
"She might not be available to clear anything."
"Good point." I fenced with my guilt at leaving her to the federales. "Well, let's see what your dad says. In the meantime, we'll get new phones and I'll hide out."
Lilith sighed. "I can't tell you how much I long to be in class right now studying neural growth triggers."
I was sympathetic but couldn't really echo her longing. The luster of home life – writing code, blogging, watching the game over a steak and cold beer – seemed tarnished next to penetrating government false flags and uncovering extraordinary technology. What a rush escaping in my new Beamer knowing I'd just kicked some federal agents' ass!
Of course, I'd need to return to mundane reality at some point, but what was the hurry? I still had questions that needed answering and maybe an adventure or two waiting for me.
"Why are you smiling?" Lilith asked, with her usual suspicious edge.
"I was just thinking that I wasn't sure I'd rather be anywhere else or fighting any other battle."
Lilith's reaction surprised me. I thought she'd give me a knowing smirk or droll shake of her head, but instead a weird veil of sadness seemed to descend over her eyes as she stared at me, as if I'd become an object of tragedy.
"Why are you frowning?" I asked.
"You're fighting the good fight, right?"
"Isn't that what we're both doing?"
She paused long enough to make me wonder WTF? before answering in a monotonal voice: "That's the theory."
I thought about that as I drove away in search of a hotel while Lilith headed for Wal-Mart. The only answer that came to mind was that she didn't believe our "good fight" would succeed. She couldn't help herself, I guessed. She was a born pessimist/cynic. Whatever. Maybe we wouldn't win, but that was no excuse not to give it our all.
MARKUS CALLED two hours later. One of his people would be coming in thirty minutes to pick up the DVD at my new hotel. One minor catch: I couldn't be there when he or she showed up. They wouldn't require a keycard to get in. His people were insistent on isolating everyone in the network from each other as much as possible, which in the past I would've thought was crazy- paranoid but now just seemed like commonsens
e. I was to leave the DVD on a table in clear view. Markus suggested I come to his house after I officially check out of the hotel tomorrow. I agreed. I was sick to death of hotel rooms.
I drove back to Markus's home the next morning expecting a swarm of SWAT police or DHS/FBS agents to roar up with search and arrest warrants, but everything was eerily quiet as I rolled down his driveway.
Markus was his usual cordial self, shaking my hand and welcoming me with a warm smile. Lilith raised a lazy hand at me from poolside. All was right in the Killian world, it seemed.
"I regret what happened to your friend," said Markus. "It's unfortunate that she got caught up in this."
"Yeah." I resisted a flash of guilt and sadness. "But it kind of worked out in the end. It got her out of a job she wanted to leave."
"I doubt she'll have much trouble finding another decent job in her field. She's a very talented young woman from what I've read."
"She'll be fine if Lockheed Martin keeps its word."
"I'm sure they will. They know what we have on them." Markus gave me a reassuring smile. "In any event, you performed beyond expectations again, Hayden. You confirmed some hypotheses and made some new discoveries, as well as managing to keep Dr. Waters' recordings and vaccine vials from being confiscated by federal agents. That must've been quite a chase."
"That part was almost fun."
We brought iced tea out to pool where Lilith was now lounging in the late afternoon sun. She raised her sunglasses as she accepted a glass of iced tea.
"Wait till you see what's next," she said.
Markus let out a low chuckle while Lilith smirked. She handed him a tablet which he handed to me. The screen was frozen on a video on the 9News site. I started the video.
A fiery object was descending in the night sky over a mountainous area. The man videorecording it was asking over and over "What the heck is that? That's no meteor or comet!" The video stopped suddenly. An article below the video described residents of Gunnison, Colorado as "amazed and a little afraid." Some hikers reported a "huge flash and explosion" in the nearby mountains. The date stamp was yesterday evening.
"It's in Colorado," I murmured.
"Gunnison is about four hours from here," he said. "I have no idea where the object crashed or landed or if it's even artificial. But if it is, I would wager there will be a recovery operation in play."
"And it's only a few hours away," said Lilith.
"I know you just got here," Markus said with a regretful shake of his head, "but this may be the best opportunity we've had in decades to observe a downed craft of possible extraterrestrial origin."
I gripped my glass of iced tea and took a slow drink. I was surprised my hand was steady because I was vibrating with a near-irrepressible excitement inside. Being on the scene of a real-life UFO landing was a lifelong fantasy.
"I guess you can't fight serendipity," I said. "Though it's probably a wild goose chase."
"I can drive you down if you're feeling tired," Lilith volunteered. "To be honest, I'm feeling bored – already missing the adrenaline rush."
That drew a poorly disguised scowl from her usually irenic father. "If Hayden chooses to do this, it will be a solo operation," he said a brook-no-nonsense voice. "He may need to travel fast and navigate difficult terrain. He has training for this – you don't." He faced me. "But if you decide to go, Hayden, I would suggest you take my Toyota 4Runner, in case you need to go off road."
I nodded. "I have no idea how far you can get into those mountains in a vehicle, but you never know. And of course I'm going. The sooner the better, it sounds like."
"Thank you, Hayden," said Markus with a grave nod. "You can borrow my favorite camera – I believe you'll find it adequate – and the car keys are hanging by the small garage door."
YELLOW ROCKS on my right, forests on my left as I drove south on 285. I'd set my cruise on 80, fifteen MPH over the sixty-five speed limit, prepared to pay the price of speeding tickets as Colorado resident Scott Harrow. And not far out of Denver, in the charming little speed-trap town of Morrison, that price was paid – or would've been, had Scott Harrow existed – as I was pulled over nearly a mile out of town for exceeding the fifty mile per hour speed limit. At least the police officer didn't attempt to steal my $15K in Markus-refurbished expense funds.
Somewhere along the way, as my brain played catch-up, it came to me that attempting to navigate off-road in the mountains, even with Professor Killian's capable vehicle, was a bad bet. The object might've crashed in impassable canyons miles from the nearest roads, even assuming it had crashed in the mountains near Gunniston.
The obvious solution seemed to be an airplane. A flyover would cover vastly more area in a fraction of the time. Maybe I could hire someone to do that?
With that in mind, I used my burner Galaxy's GPS to hone in on the nearest airport. As fortune would have it, Gunnison had an airport!
I spoke to the manager there, who spoke pessimistically regarding the prospect of finding anyone any time soon willing to fly over the nearby mountains.
"We get some helicopters in here on occasion, but it's mostly to test out with our tether system," he said. "But you'd have a good chance of finding someone at the Aspen airport. They do a lot of that sort of thing."
I drove up to Aspen grumbling about the extra three-hour drive but excited by the prospect of possibly hitting pay dirt. I called ahead to the Aspen airport. No planes were available for nearly a week, but I was referred to Aspen Heli Charter. The dude there was happy to get me into the air this afternoon, if I was willing to cough up a three-hour minimum at around two grand an hour. Plus a fuel charge. Markus' 15K wasn't looking quite so extravagant now.
It occurred to me that if we did manage to fly near the crashed object we likely wouldn't be allowed near enough to see or photograph much. I might need to approach the site from the ground. But I wouldn't have time to purchase a backpack and all the fixings. I then had the bright idea of a backpack with everything I needed to rough it for a few days in the wilderness. I was pretty sure such things existed.
With thirty minutes to my appointment at Heli Charter and twenty minutes to Aspen, I didn't have a lot of wiggle room. I called a survival supply store in town, and told the woman who answered about my situation. She recommended the "ultimate bug-out backpack": a thirty-two pound pre-backed "military tactical" backpack that included food for seven days, medical supplies, small gas burner, sleeping bag, Ka-Bar survival knife, collapsible shovel, tube tent, and a seemingly endless variety of survival tools – all for the low, low price of $879! I didn't know much about pre-backed backpacks, but that didn't sound especially low. But then this was Aspen.
Arriving in Aspen, I strode into Total Survival, a man on a mission. The girl stepping out from behind the counter appeared to know who I was.
"Hi, I was just talking to you –"
"Yes," she cut in. "It's right over here." She pointed to the grey camo-print backpack hanging on the wall. "There's a full list of what it has in its side-pocket."
"I'll take your word on that." I hoisted the backpack off its rack, and thought of something else. "How about a good quality binoculars? The more powerful the better."
"You might consider the Cannon IS." She indicated a large binoculars in the display case. I gave an impatient nod and she pulled it out on the counter. "It's 18 x 50, and has a stabilizer function."
"How much is it?"
"$1299." She noted my gaping mouth. "Not unusual for a high-quality binoculars. If you want to view something at a distance, this is the best we have."
Distant viewing was quite likely. And I was out of time to bargain shop.
"Screw it," I muttered, reaching for my wallet, hoping Markus wouldn't be pissed.
Ten minutes later I was lugging my backpack into the Heli Charter office to the raised eyebrows of the buff young dude behind the counter.
"Right on time," he said. "Good thing, because I'm about to shut this place down for the day. I'm K
irk, by the way." He extended his hand. "I'll be your pilot today."
"Your name is auspicious," I said.
He nodded and smiled as if he'd heard that once or twice before.
"Looks like you're planning to be dropped off up there," he said. "You didn't mention that on the phone."
"I'm kind of improvising as I go."
"Not a problem. I can go with the flow. How do you want to pay?"
"Cash?"
That raised an eyebrow, but then he shrugged. Soon I was following him out to the launch pad, about a pound of cash lighter, where a sleek, green helicopter with a fantail rotor waited. I heaved the backpack into a side-storage compartment and joined Kirk in the luxurious leather front chairs. We clamped on headsets, and Kirk started the engine and performed a quick diagnostics before lifting off.
I'd never been much into airborne activities – remaining attached to terra firma was my strong preference – but the sheer beauty of the landscape unfolding under my feet blew away my discomfort. It was as if I was seeing Colorado – the true Colorado – for the first time. The mountains and forests filled the expansive tinted windows. It was as if I was sitting in a theater with a wrap-around IMAX/3D screen. We approached a set of spearhead-shaped mountains and flew over a stunning lake.
"Maroon Bells." The pilot's chuckle crackled in my headphones. "Nice, huh?"
"Beyond nice."
"Your first time in a helicopter?"
"No. But my first time in one flying over scenery like this."
"Any preference on direction?"
"Are you aware of any unusual air traffic over the mountains?"
"Hell, yeah. Since that meteor or comet or whatever it was passed over, the skies a few miles out have been buzzing with aircraft. I've been steering clear of that area."
Operation Indigo Sky Page 26
