“What’s happening?” Danielle cried.
“It’s healing her from the inside out.”
“My God,” Danielle said. “How?”
“It’s a highly evolved form of surgery,” Jason said. “The Blue Light is many things. One of them is medicine.”
“I could have saved him,” Danielle said bitterly. “I could have saved my grandfather if only I had known it was there.”
“No, Danielle, don’t do this to yourself. You couldn’t have. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.”
A whoop and a holler erupted out near the vehicles, putting Jason immediately on guard. The voice had come from Slim and now he was hollering his head off. “They’re coming! Jason, God almighty they’re coming!”
Charlee went still, and her eyes opened. Both wounds had healed in a matter of seconds leaving small pink puckers where the bullet holes had been moments before. “Where am I?” she said.
By then Jason had given the object back to Danielle and had hung his around his neck, safe and sound. He grabbed his weapon and said, “Get her dressed and ready to go. I’ll be back in a second.” As Jason ran from the grove of trees he saw several dozen armed men moving in from the road. They were at least a hundred yards out but walking determinedly and closing fast. Slim met him by the vehicles and said, “What you want me to do, boss?”
“Grab that grenade launcher you told me about. We don’t have enough fire power to beat them but we can do some serious damage before they take us down.”
Slim cackled like a lunatic. “You bet your ass, boss,” he said and sprinted over to the truck bed where he retrieved the launcher and hoisted it up onto his shoulder. “You want I should start lobbing these things at them before they get too close?”
“Lock and load.”
“Already there.”
“Okay, show them what you got.”
Slim was just about to depress the trigger when Jason said, “Stop!”
Slim turned his head, squinting at Jason. “What’s wrong, boss?”
“You hear that?” In the distance Jason heard the distinctive whop-whop-whop sound of military helicopters.
“Yessir.”
“There they are,” Jason said. “A couple of miles out and closing fast. Three Blackhawks.”
“What do you think it means?”
“Stand down until I’m sure.”
“Look!” Slim said. He was staring at the contingent of soldiers heading across the field in their direction. The man in the lead held a white flag high over his head.
“They’re surrendering,” Jason said.
“You trust em, boss?”
“We owe them the curtesy of an explanation.”
Slim lowered the grenade launcher. “What if it’s a trick?”
“It’s not.”
“How can you be so sure?”
The heavily armed soldiers were thirty yards out now and closing fast. “If they wanted us dead we’d already be dead.”
“You’ve got a point there, boss.”
The man in the lead wore second lieutenant bars on the lapels of his combat fatigues. He stepped up to Jason, stopped directly in front of him and saluted. “Are you Captain Jason La Chance, U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Brigade, 10th Mountain Division?”
“I was until two days ago,” Jason said. “I’m now a civilian.” In the distance he heard the sound of several M-134 Miniguns firing from aloft, their rounds leaving the barrels so fast the sound was just a hum, like the soft purring of a well-oiled machine. Jason was familiar with these weapons. In reality they were electronic Gatling guns mounted on choppers first used in Vietnam. They were a devastating weapon capable of covering every square inch of a football field in a matter of seconds. Several explosions and automatic weapon’s fire followed the Minigun bursts.
“There’s a battalion size unit heading your way, sir,” said the second lieutenant.
“Who are they?”
“Civilian militia. A secret takeover of the US. Government. They’ve been organizing for years. This plague was no accident. That’s all I can tell you right now. He reached down and extracted a military sat phone from a holster on his side. “I have someone here who needs to talk to you, sir.” He handed the phone to Jason.
Jason took the phone and put it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Am I speaking to Jason La Chance?” the male voice on the other end asked.
“Yes, this is Jason.”
“Jason, my name is Zach Spencer. I’m a federal agent and I am speaking on behalf of the President of the United States. As you know, the world has fallen into a grave crisis. We need your help and the help of those who accompany you. In a few minutes your group will be picked up by military helicopter and flown to Maxwell Air Force Base near Montgomery, Alabama where you will board a military transport flight to Bangor, Maine.”
“I don’t know who you are,” Jason said to the man on the other end of the phone line. “Why should I trust you?”
“We don’t have much time,” Spencer said. “I believe you already understand where you are going and why.”
“I know some,” Jason said. “I’d like to know more.”
“You’ll be briefed en route.”
Jason said nothing.
“And by the way, you are no longer a civilian,” the voice on the line said. “As of now you are back in the army. You have been promoted to the temporary rank of Full Bird Colonel. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please understand that this is all necessary in the face of the current crisis.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“All right, then, God speed,” Spencer said and clicked off.
CHAPTER 15
Ice Caves. Northern Maine Wilderness. July 5th.
Two days after the arrival.
Doug and Annie fed the group a late dinner. By the time dinner was over Ariel was having trouble keeping her eyes open. As the dishes were being cleaned up Ariel withdrew into herself and took to playing with Cabby, her well-worn Cabbage Patch doll, ignoring the adults around her. The amazing genius she’d exhibited before dinner, although still evident in some of Ariel’s comments and in the complex expressions on her angelic face, now seemed to have been diminished. Ariel had become what she was, a fragile and vulnerable four year old child. When Annie put her to bed, Ariel politely bade everyone a pleasant good night and marched off to her bedroom with her mother.
The group talked well into the night, exchanging stories, posing questions and espousing theories. Danny Wolf and his police detective wife Laura Higgins told the story of how they had met, with Rick Jennings and Eli Richey throwing in their two cents, until everyone had a general picture of what had taken place on Apocalypse Island nearly five years before.
Doug and Annie then told their story, so the others who’d not been involved could get a clear picture of the amazing tragedies and triumphs that they’d had to endure; they talked of Doug’s near murder, and his rehabilitation inside the protective cocoon of the Brotherhood of the Order, and of Annie’s imprisonment at her father’s Florida estate, her escape and subsequent reunion with Doug.
Nadia spoke of the Brotherhood of the Order; their history and their mission as well as a centuries old conspiracy to wipe the Brotherhood from the face of the earth by some mysterious shadow organization. They talked at length of Annie’s father, of his strange ancestral line, of the supernatural creature that had plagued Doug his entire life, and how this creature had been linked to Doug as well as to Annie and her father.
“So what do you think happened to your father?” Laura asked Annie. “I mean, after you came here?”
“I have no idea,” Annie said. “As you know, Doug and I have been completely isolated since we arrived here four years ago. We only know what Rick has told us.”
“And I haven’t heard a whisper about De Roché in that time,” Jennings said. “As far as I know he dropped off the face of the earth.”
Nadia and D
r. Randal exchanged a glance that was lost on everyone except Eli. His strong intuition made him uneasy.
“Do you think he could in some way be responsible for what’s happening in the world right now?” Eli asked.
“I don’t want to believe that,” Annie replied. “But I suppose it’s possible. He did have a warped vision of humanity’s future. He talked to both Doug and I about it and he sounded like a mad man.”
“We’re talking about a worldwide plague that has most probably killed half the human population,” Laura said. “It would take an unbelievable ego and an incredible amount of resources to accomplish a feat like that.”
“My father has both,” Annie said.
Laura looked long and hard at Annie. “You really think . . .?”
“I don’t know what I think,” Annie said. “I lived a bizarre life with a bizarre man. I can only guess at what he might be capable of.”
“It would put him in the same league as an Adolf Hitler.”
“I’m aware of that, Laura,” Annie said testily. “You don’t have to remind me. Besides we have no proof it was him.”
“No, of course we don’t,” Laura said giving Annie a half-smile.
“As far as I can tell, all of our stories are connected in some way to the mysterious phenomenon known as the Blue Light,” Eli said. “Does anyone really know what it is? Does anyone have a clue what it has to do with all of this?” He glanced between Nadia and Dr. Randal when he spoke.
“That’s one of the reasons we came here,” Nadia said. “We have some information about that. Several days before the world went belly up our organization managed to intercept a communication between an old man named Franz Shutzenberger—someone we’ve been watching for a very long time—and a New York reporter named Johnny Cobain. Shutzenberger was a brilliant scientist, a death camp survivor who went to work for the US Government after World War II. In his old age he became a resident of a central California nursing home. Nearing death, he decided to come clean about his past. He’d been trying to pass a message to someone who would take his story public. Cobain agreed to meet with him. We were listening when Cobain arrived and we recorded their conversation. I have to tell you it was more than astounding. Unfortunately someone else was there that day.”
“Who?” Jennings asked.
“We don’t know. But they killed the old man and tried to kill the reporter.”
“Why?”
“I would imagine it’s because of what the old man gave the reporter.”
“Which was?”
Nadia then told the group what was exchanged at the meeting; a story of three scientists working in New Mexico in 1947, the shooting down of an alien craft in Roswell, an alien survivor who passed along a body of information and a dire warning about the future of our world if we did not come to our senses.
“So what happened to this information?” Jennings asked.
“The scientists made copies of the documents, hid them away, and then turned the originals over to the government.”
“That was a bright move,” Wolf said.
“It was a time of great patriotism in America,” Dr. Randal interjected. “You must understand that the world had just been through a terrible ordeal.”
“So what did the government do with this body of knowledge?” Doug asked. “Oh, yeah, let me guess. Nothing, right?”
“Well, not exactly,” Nadia said. “True that like so much entrusted to governments it fell into a black hole of secrecy. That’s no surprise. But it doesn’t mean the government didn’t expend an enormous amount of energy and resources trying to decipher it.”
“Did they succeed?”
“Well, yes, on several fronts. I’ll go into that in a minute. First let me get back to Cobain’s story. After Roswell the three scientists were sworn to secrecy. They were given new lives and backgrounds and relocated to different parts of the country. But they took something with them besides the secret copies of the documents.” She looked over at Dr. Randal. “You want to tell them about it, Seth? You’re the main researcher on this project.”
Randal cleared his throat. “The alien gave each of the three scientists an identical object.”
“Now this is getting interesting,” Eli said.
“We’re not exactly sure what they were because we’ve never had the chance to examine one,” Randal continued. “But we have some theories. We know they’re small and coin-like, made of extremely lightweight metal. They have some sort of markings on them, and they have the power to do stuff.”
“Do stuff?” Laura said.
“This is where it really gets interesting. We think that individually they have limited power. Somehow they work telepathically and act as a sort of window, if you will, through which the holder gets to see some very interesting things, perhaps even future events.”
“How do you know this if you’ve never examined one?”
“For one, we have the transcript of what Shutzenberger told Cobain, and I have to say, he was very credible. We also have the body of information.”
“And how did you obtain it?”
“It was in a safe deposit box at a Los Angeles bank. Shutzenberger told Cobain where it was, and we beat him to it. Unfortunately when we tried to get the amulet from him he ran. He got lost in LA traffic and before we could track him he was on a plane to New York.”
“When was this?”
“Five days ago.”
“And you weren’t able to find him?”
“Oh yes, we found him. Unfortunately it was too late. He was shot to death in his apartment in Brooklyn the day he returned home. The flash drive that contained the interview with Dr. Shutzenberger was missing along with the amulet. Luckily we have a copy of the transcript as well as Shutzenberger’s original body of information which was supposedly given to him by the Roswell Alien. The only thing we don’t have is the object.”
“Have you looked at the information?” Jennings asked.
“We have. And it is identical to what they gave the government back in 1947.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because the Brotherhood has people working inside The Project, the government’s secret shadow organization that has been studying it since 1947.
“Zach Spencer’s organization,” Jennings said.
“Exactly,” Nadia replied. “Shutzenberger also told Cobain that the government had been trying to reverse engineer the alien craft all these years without any luck. He said that the aliens were light years ahead of us in science and technology and we might never figure it out.”
“So if we’re that dumb, why would such an advanced civilization even bother with us?” Wolf said.
“Because we are an inherently violent species that has the ability to develop technology. A dangerous mix. That’s what their warning was about. We have nukes and other weapons of mass destruction. And we have an interest in leaving our native planet and moving out into the cosmos. If they’ve been watching us they know this. The alien told the three scientists that we were an interesting species with a fascinating mix of contradictions, and that all known developing technological societies were being monitored to make sure they didn’t take their destructive tendencies off their home planets and out to other civilizations.”
“So, what about these objects.” Jennings said. “Do they do anything else besides give the holder a glimpse into the future?”
“We think they might,” Nadia replied. “The alien referred to them as a gift. A gift that might have the power to save humanity, but only if placed in the right hands.”
“And whose hands might those be?” asked Eli, but he thought he knew.
“We have a good idea,” Nadia said. “We have reason to believe that two of these objects are on their way here right now.”
Annie glared at Nadia. “Why?”
“Because Ariel will need them. Actually she’ll need all three.”
“Dream on,” Annie said, getting up from her chair. “No way is my dau
ghter going to be involved in any of this.”
“She’s already involved, Annie. This was planned long before you were born.”
Annie’s eyes flashed wickedly. “How dare you presume—?”
“These are not presumptions.”
“You know nothing about my life!”
“Actually I know quite a lot,” Nadia said calmly. “My organization has been studying your family since long before you were born.”
“I will not listen to this crap,” Annie said. “And furthermore you will never lay a hand on my daughter.”
“I won’t have to,” Nadia said. “I believe she already knows what she’s supposed to do. Ariel’s purpose was laid out long before her birth.”
“Go to hell!” Annie spat.
“Annie, stop,” Doug said. “This isn’t accomplishing anything.”
Annie burst into tears. “Haven’t we been through enough, Doug? Why do we have to keep doing this? Why does Ariel have to be the one? Why does our little girl have to take the weight of the world on her shoulders?”
Doug took her in his arms. “I don’t know, Annie. What I do know is that we have to listen to these people. This is no joke. The world is in crisis and Ariel is important, like it or not. She’s also a target and we can’t adequately protect her if we don’t have all the information. We can’t protect her if we let our emotions get in the way.”
Annie pushed away from Doug, her eyes flashing. “You mean my emotions, right?”
“I mean ours. Don’t you think I feel the things you feel? Don’t you think I love Ariel as much as you do? You and Ariel are my whole life, and I will protect you to the death. Don’t you know that?”
“Doug’s right, Annie,” Rick Jennings said gently. “We need to listen to these people.”
Song of Ariel: A Blue Light Thriller (Book 2) (Blue Light Series) Page 19
