It was over. Everything was quiet again.
Without warning a tremendous thud on the van’s roof then sent them both leaping out of their skins. They screamed in fear, instinctively reaching for each other, as if their embrace would protect them from whatever had landed on the van. They watched in dismay as an office chair was flung into their forward view from overhead. It had bounced off the roof of the van before being hurled in front of them.
Natasha’s anxiety was briefly overshadowed by a wash of confusion. She searched Mark’s face for an explanation, even some sign of reassurance. But he had nothing. Mark was equally baffled.
A second thump, this time twice as loud as the first, hit hard, indenting the roof. The impact sent them reeling a second time; they screamed back into each other’s reassuring embrace.
They both watched, terrified, as a hand appeared from the roof and slapped the widescreen.
It was Jake. He was attempting to drag enough of himself to the front of the van so that his two petrified friends could see he was still in one piece. He had used the office chair to break his way out of the building, throwing it through the second-story window. It created the exit he needed before hitting the van’s roof and bouncing onto the ground below.
As he lay on the van’s roof, he managed to poke his head down in front of the windscreen and gave them a weary half-smile of reassurance. The occupants of the van instantly erupted into a barrage of mixed questions and curses.
“What the hell was that?” Mark yelled.
Natasha was screaming over Mark: “Why did they fire at us?!”
Jake rolled over onto his back as Mark and Natasha competed to be heard over each other. They may have been asking if he was okay, but Jake couldn’t be sure. With the two of them yelling over each other neither was comprehensible.
A deep penetrating clunk took Jake by surprise. It was as if the noise came from inside the building.
Then it happened again.
A series of images flashed through Jake’s mind. Instantly his body tensed, he saw the damaged columns give way under the weight of the upper building levels. Waves of anxiety came faster now; he was seeing images of the building collapse.
The scenes in his mind were cut short by questions being yelled by Natasha and Mark.
Jake’s voice drowned out the other two. “Mark, we gotta go! Drive!”
There was a moment of silence. Mark and Natasha shared an anxious glance.
Jake yelled, “Mark, PUNCH IT… NOW!”
Mark reacted with his right foot, firing the engine and slamming down on the accelerator. Jake clamped onto the roof as the yellow van scurried back around the building.
Clenching tight to the roof, Jake looked behind to see the columns on the 35th floor give way. Windows blew out as the levels above slammed down into the floor Jake had been occupying earlier. The columns on level 34 then exploded under the crashing weight. What followed next was a cascading failure of floor after floor; windows at every level blew out in turn as the building imploded.
The van was already racing through the security gate by the time the building had collapsed halfway. Seconds later it was engulfed by a growing dust cloud, an enormous gray haze swallowing the block where the building had stood only moments earlier.
CHAPTER 51
“What was that? Play that back and push in!” demanded Sabre, suddenly pointing at the large central screen that dominated the Operations Control room.
With a frantic burst of button-pressing the technicians managed to freeze the satellite telemetry of the F22’s assault on the Research and Data Mining Facility after a couple more seconds.
The room watched with a mix of confusion and astonishment as a figure jumped out a window and was hauled off on the roof of a yellow van seconds before the building imploded.
Sabre’s eyes hardened. “What the hell! Pan to the left and play that back.”
On the main screen a gray fighter jet appeared to fly backwards in a blur; on playback the room gasped as the figure appeared to leap out of the building within seconds of the missiles’ impact. In that instant the view was obstructed by the erupting explosion resulting from the Raptor’s ordinance.
Sabre glared at the screen. “Can we get another angle?”
Another technician sifted through site security footage before transferring his find to the main screen. They watched again, this time shot from a fence-mounted security camera, as the figure leaped out the side of the building halfway up the structure.
What came next set off murmurs of astonishment around the control room. As the ordinance exploded, the figure fell clear of the blast, fired a cable into the building and was flung back inside onto a lower floor, averting certain death from the fall.
“Impossible!” one agent cried.
Another agent agreed: “That’s a one in a billion chance shot!”
“Quiet!” Sabre was seething. “Go back to the other side again, tighten the zoom.”
On the opposed side of the building from the impossible free-fall escape, disbelieving eyes watched images of an office chair bursting out of a window, bounce off the van and onto the ground. Then the figure leaped out the smashed window onto the van’s roof, holding onto the roof as the van sped away to safety.
“Follow him! Push in closer.” Sabre’s tone intensified.
The image on the room’s main screen snapped back to a satellite view zooming in, the figure riding the van’s roof grew in size. As the image zoomed in further, the figure turned on its back.
“Freeze that image!” Sabre commanded.
“Did he just…” Sabre’s voice then trailed off, his head cocked to the side. He was trying to make sense of what he was viewing. “Back that image up a little and tighten in on the van.”
Sabre watched in confusion as the huge image rewound with a splutter of static then zoomed.
“More,” Sabre urged.
Now the van’s roof dominated the main screen. The figure was on his back and appeared to be holding up something in its hand.
“That’s Jake Marcel!” an agent spluttered.
“Can you tighten in on his hand?” There was an undercurrent of enthusiasm now laced in Sabre’s voice.
He can’t be, Sabre thought.
As the technicians worked on sharpening the image, Sabre became increasingly aware of the room around him stopping in their place to become transfixed on the big screen.
“Is he really…?” a technician whispered.
“No, can’t be,” another replied.
As the technicians finished sharpening the enlarged image, they looked up to witness what had mesmerized the control room.
With a rare smile, Mr. Sabre almost looked proud. “You’ve got to admire the balls on that kid!”
Up on the screen, frozen in time, was a three-story high image of Jake looking skyward with a lopsided smile, his middle finger ablaze. He was flipping the bird directly at the satellite camera high above in orbit. It was as if Jake not only knew that they were watching but also knew exactly where in the sky to look.
Sabre stared at the main screen dumbfounded.
No-one that untrained in urban tactical incursions should be that good! Sabre thought.
Mr. Sabre had just watch Jake Marcel, an untrained civilian, execute maneuvers that most of Section 4’s handpicked Elite Black Seals would not be able to complete, let alone attempt.
It should be no surprise though.
Marcel’s grandfather was a retired colonel in the US Army and his father was practically an American hero who was recalled back to serve on active duty during the Iraq War at the age of 60 even after having already retired as a US Army colonel. Valour and fearlessness was evidently genetically bred in Jake’s DNA.
He would have made a fine soldier, Sabre thought.
It would seem that something profound must have occurred to make Jake choose a different path in life from his father, and now his two-story high middle finger was sprawled across the wall of th
e United States’ most secretive and powerful agency. The gesture screamed of defiance against the very government his father, and grandfather, had once dedicated their lives to.
“Sir, the pilot can get a clean lock on the van. He’s asking if he is to re-engage,” the communication officer said.
“Negative. Let…him…go,” Sabre said, stretching his words as if emerging from a thought and contemplating his next move. “He wouldn’t have been able pull off this little dance without some help. We need to round them all up and find out their intention.”
CHAPTER 52
“YOU JUMPED OUT OF WHAT!” Natasha exploded.
Jake had just finished explaining to Natasha and Mark how he found a way out of the building in time before the missiles hit. They sat in the sterile waiting room of a radiology clinic within the hospital where they were to meet Dr. Charles Reilly. The scientist had instructed them to go directly to the hospital immediately after retrieving the metallurgical analysis of the extraterrestrial I-beam.
Natasha was way past furious. “YOU could have KILLED YOURSELF!”
Mark was amazed. “Coooooool… I wish I saw it.”
“YOU’RE just as bad as HIM!” she snapped at Mark.
“Honey,” Jake explained, “I was targeted by not one but two missiles. My options were kinda limited.”
“Well,” she said, trying to stay angry, folding her arms. “That’s still no excuse!”
“Why did we have to meet him in a hospital?” Mark was oblivious to Natasha’s rage.
Before Jake could respond a door opened behind the reception desk. A mature-aged woman, weathered by her years of working in healthcare, stepped into the room.
She peered at Jake over thin spectacles. “He’s ready to see you now.”
*
Jake, Natasha and Mark were not prepared for what they saw; they gasped as they stepped into the magnetic resonance imaging room. Pale and ailing, Dr. Charles Reilly was sitting in a wheelchair beside the MRI apparatus. An intravenous drip connected him to a portable medical machine that administrated a clear liquid. Dr. Reilly looked as if he had aged 25 years overnight.
“Don’t be startled.” Charles gave them a strained smile. “I have this treatment every six weeks.”
Jake and his companions stared in silence for a long awkward moment.
It was Jake who finally found his vocal chords: “Is that…”
“Chemo. Yes,” Charles answered, “but it’s not why I asked you all here.”
Jake felt a knot suddenly tighten in his chest.
“I asked you to come directly here because, well, it’s not as good as a submarine under the North Pole, but these walls surrounding the MRI here are heavily shielded.”
Mark looked lost. Natasha’s face filled with compassion.
“It means,” Charles elaborated, “that we can speak without any prying ears.”
Jake nodded, understanding. His voice was barely a whisper: “I got it.”
An exuberant smile materialized across Charles’s lips, and suddenly there was color back in his face. “You got it.”
Reaching behind him, Jake retrieved the report that had been tucked under his shirt in the small of his back. With both hands the scientist accepted the offering, handling it delicately as if being handed a rare first edition Bible.
“And the specimen?” The scientist’s eyes were beaming.
Jake nodded slowly. “It was there. I got it.”
Charles’s eyes widened further, as if to ask where it now was.
Jake gave a broad smile. “I’ve got it hidden in a safe place.”
Relieved, Charles refocused on the report now on his lap, almost mesmerized by the document. “Do you know what this is, Jake?”
“I know that they leveled the building trying to stop me!” Jake declared.
Natasha shifted uncomfortably.
Charles studied Jake. “Obviously you got away safely?”
Jake took a long moment to consider it. “I saw these images, flashes. I don’t know where they came from, but the way out sort of came to me. It felt like remembering things that hadn’t yet happened.”
The scientist nodded with the knowing smile. “They are helping you.”
Jake paused, not getting his meaning.
Reilly’s focus shifted to the report covering the exotic metal he was clutching. His eyes darted across the pages as he flicked through.
“Jake,” the scientist said pensively, as if emerging from a realization, “you may find this hard to accept, but you are capable of more than you know. You now know for yourself that my former employers will destroy their own assets if it means stopping you.”
Natasha shifted again, agitated.
There was finality in Reilly’s tone. “There is no turning back. They will stop at nothing to…”
“I’m sorry!” Natasha blurted out, cutting the scientist off mid-sentence. She had heard enough.
With her hand cupping her mouth as if to stop herself from objecting to Jake’s involvement, she spun and stormed for the entry, eyes welling. The three men watched in stunned silence as the door closed behind her.
Charles spoke first. “She is right to be scared. These are serious people who were trying to stop you, and they will use deadly force if challenged.”
The boys’ eyes turned back to Reilly.
“Forty-six percent of America’s population, the most technologically and militarily advanced nation of the world, still believe that God created humans in their present form and that there was no such thing as evolution.”
Jake noticed the scientist’s hands ever so slightly trembling as he continued. “There is a global reality shift coming. It will change the world second only to that during the times of Copernicus and Galileo when we discovered the sun, planets and stars did not revolve around the earth.”
The words hung in the room for a long moment.
Charles voice softened. “Go to her. And be careful. Keep yourself hidden in plain sight. Staying in public places means they can’t make a move on you without being seen.”
“And what about you?” Jake asked, concerned.
“I have a flight to New York to catch.” The scientist looked back down to the report. “And I will see that this triggers an undeniable shift in momentum from secrecy to full openness. When it happens, it will bring on an avalanche that will change reality for every person on the globe.”
Jake and Mark nodded their goodbyes and turned to the door. Jake followed Mark out toward the surgery’s reception, but stopped mid-step as if caught by a thought.
Standing in the doorframe he turned back to the scientist and asked, “What is element 115?”
Charles’s eyes shot up. The words seemed to hang in the air for some time.
Jake asked again, “The code to the safe the report was in. Element 115. What does it mean?”
A knowing smile slowly materialized across Reilly’s face. “It’s a code within a code…the key to free energy. It’s their energy source, the fuel that drives their vehicles.”
CHAPTER 53
Natasha wiped her eyes. “Give me a reason to stay.”
Distressed by what she had heard about Dr. Charles Reilly’s former employers, and the impending danger Jake now facing him, Natasha had stormed out of the MRI room visibly shaken.
Jake had found her alone in a patient waiting room staring out a large window. Jake slowly approached. Although her back was to him, he could see that the make-up on the side of her cheek was streaked.
Jake heaved a heavy sigh. “It’s haunted my family for two generations; give me a reason to let this go.”
She turned to him in disbelief, gaping at him in shock, then betrayal.
“This isn’t a game, Jake! This is serious. You got shot at…WITH A MISSILE!” she snapped, fighting her anger.
Tears welled again in her eyes. “They demolished an entire building trying to get to you!”
Jake moved closer but she had turned away, her expressio
n darkening, unable to meet his gaze.
“But, hun, this is REAL.” Jake wondered how much he should tell her. “I’m just the messenger. We have the evidence, we have the proof, and we’ve got one of them on our side, now all we have to…”
Natasha cut him off mid-sentence, her rebuttal loud and powerful: “DON’T YOU THINK I KNOW THIS IS REAL!”
Her pretty features hardened, and when she spoke her voice was unyielding: “They are real too, that’s the problem, and so was that friggin fighter jet!”
Natasha’s voice was rising now. “WHO sends a fighter jet after a civilian? Who the HELL are these people, Jake?”
Her response tore at his emotions, reminding him that whether she liked it or not, she was an unwilling participant along for the ride. There was no comeback. He could feel himself trapped between her logic and his own drive to know the truth. Standing there, he felt himself being drawn into her loving yet conflicted eyes.
Natasha couldn’t hold onto her tears any longer, letting them flow openly. “I love you, and you know I’ll stand by your side no matter what.”
Her eyes burned with a mixture of fear and anger. “I will always keep your family’s secret, but I just want to lead a normal life.”
She turned away, wiping her eyes. Jake moved closer, taking her by the hand then drawing her into an embrace. Her slim frame was shaking now, as if the floodgates of fear were about to burst wide open.
He felt the fury drain out of her as she embraced him with both arms, searching for comfort in the nape of his neck. Sobbing softly she whispered, “I don’t want to ever lose you…but I’m really scared about how this all ends.”
*
Dr. Charles Reilly heaved his wheelchair to the adjoining MRI room. Waiting alone to greet him was Dr. Steven Greer.
Greer’s eyes lit up. “Is that the report?”
Reilly gave a silent nod, giving the document to Steven.
A torrent of emotions were visible in Greer’s face: excitement, gratitude, fear.
“This is incredible!” Greer said, triumph in his voice. “After years of lobbying the UN, we are being granted a brief timeslot to address the assembly at their symposium. And with this, what we are going to present will bring on the last days of official denial and end the age of secrets. It will be reality-shattering.”
Disclosing the Secret Page 23
