*
“Drop THAT bike before it reaches the edge. BRING ME MARCEL’S BODY!”
The order was relayed through to the pilot of the Aurora.
The pilot’s emotionless acknowledgment was automatic. “Copy that. Engaging.”
The strange-looking aircraft was decelerating as it approached the canyon. The heat tiles along the leading edges of the craft’s nose and wings still glowed red from heat generated from friction against the air as it entered earth’s lower atmosphere.
The cockpit targeting screens showed zoomed images of the bike hurtling toward the canyon. Another screen had locked onto a spherical objected that glowed white, tracking it as it hugged the canyon floor at an unearthly velocity toward the speeding bike.
The co-pilot refocused his targeting computer at the fast moving bike in an attempt to lock onto the target. The Aurora’s undercarriage slid open to reveal a battery of AGM-116 Hellfire missiles that lowered into position.
The AGM-116 Hellfire is the next generation of air-to-surface missile systems. Developed by Lockheed Martin, the weapons system has not yet been released to the US Defense Forces. This generation of Hellfire had multi-mission, multi-target precision strike capabilities effective against tanks, bunkers and all manner of armored fighting vehicles. It would be more than effective in neutralizing a single motorcycle.
A green square tracking the motorcycle on the co-pilot’s targeting screen turned red, indicating the target was locked on.
*
The radio on board Sabre’s helicopter chirped, “Commander, we have a priority connection to patch through.”
Sabre heard a series of clicks, then the voice of the Aurora co-pilot: “Commander, we have a visual on the ETV, permission to engage.”
Mr. Sabre paused for a second, almost reluctant. “Light ’em up!”
CHAPTER 68
The co-pilot of the Aurora heard Mr. Sabre loud and clear.
“Roger that,” he answered.
Without hesitation the co-pilot redirected his aim and squeezed his trigger.
A volley of Hellfire missiles snapped into life to hurtle toward the target. The co-pilot remained focused on his targeting screen in expectation of the second phase of the launch sequence. One by one, the nose of each missile broke away to reveal a cluster of smaller missiles, each carrying their own deadly payloads.
*
Sabre watched intently as Jake went over the edge; his screen was also tracking the bike, recording the horrifying act of defiance as Jake went over.
Shocked beyond belief, Sabre tried to comprehend what he’d seen on his screen. The brilliant white craft intercepted Jake mid-flight. The glare emanating from the craft engulfed both him and the bike. Milliseconds later a mid-air explosion erupted, the result of the bike impacting the craft. In a blur the craft then accelerated away, continuing its path along the bottom of the canyon at an impossible speed, barely perceptible by human eyes.
*
Halfway toward their target, each of the four rocketing AGM-116 Hellfires launched eight of their own smaller missiles mid-flight, sending a spread of warheads designed to engulf a moving target, guaranteeing a kill.
The targeting system was now locked onto the extraterrestrial vehicle as the motorcycle catapulted off the edge of the cliff to slowly drop away from its rider, who had also been propelled into the canyon.
The co-pilot was then alerted by his targeting screen. An error message appeared.
An unseen force divided the spread of missiles; half diverted to the left, vectoring toward the cliff’s edge. The other half diverted to the right, each missile deflected randomly, all redirected toward the canyon floor.
The co-pilot watched in disbelief as both the rider and motorcycle were intercepted mid-air by the glowing disk. The motorcycle exploded as it impacted the luminous craft, but the spread of missiles completely missed its target. Then suddenly the glowing object was gone.
*
Alpha watched Jake leap into the air as he went over, then drop out of sight beneath the ridge edge. An explosion erupted an instant later, followed by a wide spread of missiles that rained down from the sky. It was unusual for the surprised soldier not to notice incoming fighter support; the resulting missile impact birthed a wall of fire that shot along the cliff’s edge, engulfing Alpha’s full field of vision.
Poor kid; nothing could survive that.
*
“Drop THAT bike before it reaches the edge. BRING ME MARCEL’S BODY!” The order was barked from the personal radio strapped to the soldier who had Natasha restrained.
Natasha had once read that raw terror was paralysing. She now knew that was not true. She kicked against the soldier with a single thought in her mind.
Jake!
“NOOOOOOOOOO!” her soul cried out in anguish, struggling against her aggressor.
Her adrenalin surged, pulsing through her body.
She felt instinct take over. With her right heel she stumped down hard, scraping the length of the soldier’s shin before stabbing her heel into his foot, using Jake’s maneuver he’d taught Jackie, to scrape skin off bone.
The sudden shock of white hot pain gripped the soldier by surprise, causing his bear hug to slightly loosen.
That was all she needed.
She tucked her right shoulder under his and with the force of someone three times her strength, lifted the soldier off his feet and sent him flying over her shoulder. His shoulder almost ripped from its socket from her adrenalin-fueled strength. When he landed, he slammed down hard on his back.
In frantic desperation she was in motion, catapulting herself toward the cliff, screaming for them to let him go.
The nearby soldiers let her run; there was nothing she could do that could help Jake now.
Tears streaming, she ran as fast as her body would take her, faster than she’d run before.
The SUVs hit their brakes one by one; the soldiers watched on in terror. Jake didn’t stop.
She watched as if in a dream.
This can’t be happening!
The horror was instantaneous. Natasha’s soul cried out in agony as she witnessed her world disappear over the edge. She brought her hand to her mouth and muffled a scream. There was an explosion, then a wall of fire like nothing she had witnessed before. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. Her tear-streaked face contorted in anguish and disbelief.
*
Sabre watched the events unfold from above.
After the spread of missiles impacted he noticed that the girl had been let loose and was foolishly running toward the canyon; she then stopped and collapsed to her knees.
One of her assigned soldiers caught up to her and attempted to assist. The girl just stared toward the canyon, motionless.
CHAPTER 69
At the bottom of the canyon a field team was surveying the area of Jake’s bike wreckage.
There were no impact or burn marks on the canyon floor. The bike had mostly disintegrated in the air with only a few remaining charred components left to fall to the ground below.
A senior field officer reported back to Sabre. “Sir, there isn’t much left of the motorcycle, only fragments scattered over 160 square feet.”
Sabre listened to his earpiece intently, stopping mid-sentence during his debriefing with Alpha and his team who had circled him. Sabre had landed at the top of the cliff along with the rest of the air support. A second team had been sent down to investigate the wreckage at the bottom of the canyon.
The earpiece squawked again: “There also aren’t any signs of any human remains at all… Either he completely disintegrated or…he just isn’t here.”
*
Two dark-suited agents had helped Natasha stagger toward the back of one of their black vehicles, which was now parked alongside the unmarked military vehicles now amassed close to where Jake had taken off. She was still clutching Jake’s dog tag necklace, her haunted eyes brimming with tears. She felt short of breath as they sat her down. Witnes
sing Jake disappear over the edge of the cliff had left her catatonic. She sat silently in a paralytic haze.
Natasha was in shock.
Soldiers and NSA agents bustled around her. She didn’t hear their questions or offers of aid. Her gaze was fixed on the single tire track that was left by Jake’s bike, stretching out to the cliff face.
The image of Jake going over the cliff replayed in her mind.
Is he really gone? Natasha could not stop trembling.
A feeling of emptiness and despair was intensifying deep within her, somehow restricting her breathing. She didn’t bother wiping the tears that were trailing down the sides of her face one after the other. Another helicopter landed nearby but Natasha was oblivious to all around her.
His ID dog tags were still tightly clenched in her hand.
“You know I never ride without it,” she remembered him saying.
What the hell was he thinking!
A commanding figure in a dark suit approached Natasha, his icy gaze parting the crowd before him as he stepped toward her.
Drawing on his cigarette, he unapologetically spat out, “Where is your boyfriend?”
The words hit her like a thunderclap, shattering her trance and allowing reality to rush back in. Natasha tried to speak, but found that she still could not even breathe. She looked away, unable to meet his gaze.
The black-suited man repeated, “WHERE IS JAKE MARCEL??”
Natasha slowly looked up. A strange glint of hope flickered across her face. She only needed a moment for the meaning to register.
CHAPTER 70
Jake slowly floated back from the edge of nothingness.
It was peaceful.
It was quiet.
His mind seemed to hover in an endless dark abyss.
Is this death?
Off in the distance there was something familiar. A vague memory or rather, a sensation. The feeling wasn’t totally clear, but he remembered the sensation of being weightless.
Skirting the edges of consciousness, an awareness of his physical body returned to him as feeling came back into his hands and feet. Pale, colorless light crept through the slits of his eyes, but all he could see was a blurry haze. The air around him seemed still, dead. There was no sound, no echoes, only silence.
Jake became aware that he was lying on his back with his arms by his sides. As the fog lifted, he remembered the sensation of acceleration, of flying. No, of being catapulted through the air.
Had time slowed down? Is this what it’s like to be dead? Am I still flying over the cliff?
He could now feel that the hairs on his body were raised under his clothes. It was also odd that he couldn’t feel the bed beneath him, or whatever it was that he was lying on. Despite the pounding now in his head, and with what little strength that had returned, he opened the palm of his hand in an attempt to feel what he was lying on.
There was nothing. The space beneath him was empty air.
Lowering his arm a little further, he felt around.
Still nothing.
Jake was floating!
He felt a surge of panic. The adrenalin brought a little more strength back into his arms and legs, allowing him to awkwardly thrash around suspended in mid-air, as if learning how to swim for the first time. The sensation was both unnerving and disorientating; he could feel his heart racing, almost leaping out of his chest. He couldn’t tell if he was balanced, floating, falling or all three!
There was no way for Jake to know there was a slender, spherical ring surrounding his body. Also floating mid-air parallel to the floor, the ring was silver and suspended precisely in the center of a circular room. From it emanated a strong electromagnetic field that held Jake in place above the metallic floor.
As if sensing that the ring’s captive was in distress, it slowly descended toward the floor, lowering the captured human firmly held within. Directly under Jake, the metallic floor liquefied to restructure itself, flowing upwards beneath him to form a bench.
With all his frantic attempts to balance himself in mid-air, Jake could not perceive that he was slowly being lowered. But then he felt the bench raise up to support him. Feeling the cold metal surface with his arms and legs helped calm his panic a fraction; he stopped thrashing about and lowered both his hands to feel the bench rise until it made contact with his back.
He tried to relax and catch his breath. Three small chalky-gray figures observed as the large ring continued to descend past Jake down the height of the bench until it touched the floor; it then slowly liquefied to remould itself into the floor, completely disappearing as if its molecular structure became one with the floor’s surface.
Now feeling a little stronger he tried to look around, but the movement sent a jolt of pain radiating through his skull. His eyes were open but he couldn’t make out any details in the room. The environment was warm and humid, and seemed sterile, like that of a hospital. The room was brightly lit, but there were no obvious signs of light sources. He could now detect the faint scent of ozone.
Am I in a hospital?
He fought off the searing throb in his head, but his near vision remained clouded. Above him were what seemed to be two large black windows on the ceiling. The windows were almond-shaped and elongated at their opposite ends.
The grogginess pulled harder at him, and now a stream of images flashed past. They were of Jake racing toward the cliff, going over the edge and of the approaching silver disk in the canyon.
There was something foreign about these memories, as if someone else was guiding him through the images.
Battling the weakness, Jake tried to blink the deep black windows into focus.
In that instant a sharp panic gripped him as his reality altered. They weren’t windows. They were a pair of large deep black eyes.
One of the small gray figures was over him, its face immediately in front of Jake’s, scanning his memories. It was as if the creature were walking through his thoughts, forcing him to remember.
Jake was overcome by a fierce terror. Panic and instinct overruled the searing aching in his head. With what little strength he could summon he pushed the figure off him, sending it across the room.
Is this real?
Jake’s body felt like it weighed several hundred pounds as he rolled onto his side to sit up. The remaining small figures moved with efficiency and impossible speed as they shifted out of Jake’s reach.
With fascinated horror, Jake’s eyes searched the room. But all he could perceive were gray and silver blurs.
Then without reason, his panic subsided as he felt an unmistakable presence suddenly manifest within the room. It was powerful, warm, and seemed to radiate an energy that saturated every cell of his body. It was unlike anything Jake had ever before felt; it enveloped him with a sense of calm and reassurance, and somehow told him that he was safe, that there was nothing to fear.
As the room came into sharper focus, Jake stood and turned toward the source of energy.
He lifted his head slowly. His breath caught as he felt the collision of excitement, privilege and mortal fear when, for the first time, he saw it with his own eyes.
CHAPTER 71
The sun was beginning to dip over the suburbs surrounding Natasha’s house. Having no further use to Mr. Sabre, she’d been permitted to leave the site where she’d watched Jake ride over the cliff’s edge.
Natasha had barely registered being driven home in one of the dark SUVs. She felt detached as two NSA agents escorted her to the front door. Filled with an overwhelming dread, she let herself in.
Natasha couldn’t push the image of Jake disappearing over the edge from her mind. A suffocating loneliness pressed down around her as she held the walls to steady herself on the way to the bathroom.
She stood paralysed in front of the mirror. The image that greeted her was a mask of desperation, her face pale and dirty from the desert ride. The prospect of life without Jake sent an overwhelming tremor of loss through her.
She re
moved her top, and turned on the shower to let the water run. Her heart sank when she emptied her pants pocket to find Jake’s dog tag necklace.
She was suddenly gripped by a fear she had never known. Will I ever see him again?
Her eyes welling now with emotion, she gently placed the ID tags on the sink and emptied her other pockets.
From her back pocket she retrieved a card she had not remembered carrying. Her face filled with confusion as she studied the single word handwritten on the card in red, Shift.
Turning the card over, she studied the cell number that was printed; there was no accompanying name or address. Above the printed number was another handwritten inscription, it was in Jake’s handwriting: Find Reilly.
Natasha’s eyes went wide.
*
Mark’s motorcycle maneuvered around the boom gate at McCarran International Airport’s security checkpoint with surgical precision. His engine’s mechanical scream drowned out protests yelled by the stationed security guards as he accelerated toward the busy runway strips that greeted commercial aircraft visiting Las Vegas.
Unaware that he had just triggered a homeland security response, Mark thundered toward Dr. Reilly’s A380, which was taxing to its designated take-off runway.
In an effort to intercept the scientist before his flight to New York departed, and having been unable to reach Dr. Reilly as his phone was switched off, Mark tore down the length of the runway to meet the huge aircraft head on. Behind him a fleet of security vehicles were in pursuit with sirens blazing.
The gigantic aircraft lurched to a halt immediately after commencing its take-off acceleration. Mark felt dwarfed as he dismounted his bike while the enormous A380 buckled to an emergency stop immediately before him.
*
Inside the aircraft, Dr. Charles Reilly felt a rising concern at the aircraft’s sudden stop. He peered out the window but couldn’t see what could have caused the unannounced delay minutes earlier.
Sensing someone standing over him, the scientist turned to be greeted by one of the senior airline hostesses.
The woman’s expression was an equal mix of worry and fear. “Excuse me, are you Dr. Charles Reilly?”
Disclosing the Secret Page 29
