Vesely’s eyes widened. “Heliopause? What is this you speak of?”
“Huber told us about it,” Adler said. “It’s a place beyond our solar system. Something about the solar wind, and the galaxy’s ions. It’s where a vast cloud of refined iron particles was trapped until low sunspot activity and a specific alignment of the planets allowed the particles to enter the solar system.”
“Ahh,” Vesely said. “That is where the iron is coming from. I wondered how they could reproduce the tests done here on such a grand scale.”
“Miami, Tokyo, and Tel Aviv were tests,” Miller said. “The grand finale involves the whole planet.”
Vesely nodded and wandered away. He bent down, plucked a long, dry strand of grass, and put it in his mouth. “I should have known.”
“How could you?” Brodeur asked.
“Is my job to know. Or at least to surmise. But I did not think even they would commit global genocide. The first targets made sense. Miami is major U.S. city known for its … alternative lifestyles and has large Cuban population. Tokyo was targeted, I suspect, because the Nazis held a grudge against the Japanese. Had they not attacked Pearl Harbor, the Americans might not have entered the war and things would have most likely ended very differently. And Tel Aviv, well, that’s obvious. I thought more attacks would come. That they would follow pattern. Domination, not eradication.” Vesely removed the grass from his mouth. “But if they are dependent on the solar system to deliver iron particles, perhaps we can predict when they will strike next?”
“Huber already did,” Miller said. “We have four days.”
The news seemed to weaken Vesely. First he lowered his head, then knelt down on one knee. “We must move quickly,” he said. “There is much distance to cover. But first I must show you.”
Vesely tore away clumps of the tall grass, revealing a patch of topsoil. “The connection between the Bell and the attacks is here, in the earth.” He dug into the dirt, scooping out handfuls of dark brown soil. After digging down eight inches, he sat back and let them see his handiwork.
Miller noticed the oddity first. The top layer of soil was dark, composed of fresh decomposition. Beneath that was a band of drier, lighter brown soil, and beneath that a sandy layer full of small stones and chips of concrete. But it was the thin layer separating the soil from the sand that captured his full attention. He immediately recognized the horrible red hue. “Rust,” he said.
“For nearly half mile in every direction, radiating out from this site. I discovered it years ago, but never knew what it meant until I saw the pictures of Miami on TV. Red rust falling from the sky. It has only happened one other time that I know of, here at the henge—the test site of the Bell.”
“Son of a bitch,” Brodeur said, running a hand through his hair. “But how can something created during World War Two be doing this now?”
Vesely looked up from where he squatted next to the hole. “Because they have been working on it, perfecting it, for seventy years.”
“We would know about it,” Brodeur said.
“There are strong ties to Nazi Germany in all areas of United States government. Operation Paperclip infused thousands—thousands—of Nazi scientists into system. Financial sector was controlled by families who had supported the Nazis—the Harrimans, Rockefellers, and the Bushes—all of them financed Nazi war machine. The Bush family remained on the corporate boards of many Nazi front companies even after they were exposed. When war ended, America reached out over the game board like greedy child and pulled as many pieces into itself as possible. The result was Nazi infection that festered in the political, military, and social aspects of your country. If they wanted to stay hidden, they could.”
“He’s right,” Miller said. “We’ve been attacked by our own people several times. Even the president doesn’t know who to trust. The entire system is corrupt. Hell, the vice president is in on it.”
“What!” Brodeur said. He looked like he’d been slapped in the face. “You left out that detail.” He rubbed his head. “Man alive.”
“So how does the Bell work?” Adler asked.
“Surely you know. You have seen calculations, no?”
“That doesn’t mean I understand them,” Adler said, her voice full of vitriol. “I only know what little Huber told us, and what my grandmother’s notes explained, and she said nothing about how a device strapped to a concrete henge could pull iron out of space, oxidize it, and destroy the world’s oxygen.”
Vesely twisted the grass between his lips and leaned against one of the concrete columns. “When Miami is explored again, we will not find Bells attached to sites such as this.”
“Then where are they?” Miller asked. “We need to find them. Destroy them.”
“They are out of reach,” Vesely said. He motioned to the ring of columns. “Tell me, what do you think this construction is for?”
Brodeur ventured a guess. “It held the Bell above the ground.”
Vesely took off his cowboy hat and looked at the structure. “Close. Device was tethered, but not to hold it aloft. It was to keep it from leaving the ground. To keep it from going—” Vesely pointed to the blue sky. “—up there.”
“They can fly?” Adler asked.
Vesely nodded. “I suspect there are hundreds of them in Earth’s orbit by now. Perhaps thousands.”
Miller wasn’t buying it. “We would have seen them.”
“Even if those in charge of the observation centers that had capability to locate and track secret satellites were not part of the plot, it is well documented that Nazis spent significant resources developing stealth technology. Where do you think Americans got it from? Hiding a satellite from radar and the naked eye would be a simple thing.”
“But we would see them being launched into space,” Adler said.
“Once again, I must remind you of the scope of what we face. The roots of many American corporations can be traced back to Nazi Germany. Siemens, Bayer, Volkswagen, IBM, Ford, GM—never mind families of super-rich I mentioned earlier. If they wanted satellite in orbit, it could be done without raising eyebrows. But, when satellite is capable of flight on its own, and cannot be seen, one does not need rocket to get it in Earth’s orbit. Once there I suspect magnetism attracts the iron to the devices. The Bell produced powerful fields and may be used to shelter the particles as they are forced into upper layers of our atmosphere at superhigh speeds. It’s when they strike lower troposphere that the fast-moving particles are exposed to friction, rapidly heat, and oxidize.”
“This is hogwash,” Brodeur said with a shake of his head. He looked at Miller. “Flying bells? The thing doesn’t have wings, never mind an engine.”
“Antigravity,” Vesely said.
“Antigravity. That’s great,” Brodeur said. “Next thing, Engineer Chekov here is going to tell us they have bilithium crystals.”
“Scotty was the engineer of the Enterprise,” Vesely said with a grin. “But I can see how my accent has you confused. And for record it is dilithium or trilithium crystals. There is no such thing as bilithium crystals.”
Brodeur looked like a sarcastic mime when he thrust both hands toward Vesely in a motion that said, see!
Vesely got a crafty look in his eyes, the kind a man gets when he’s about to win a game of chess. “Tell me, Tex, what do you know about Roswell?”
39
“Roswell?” Brodeur said with a scoffing laugh. “Lots of people dressed up like freaks selling alien cookies, hats, T-shirts, and thongs that say ‘I got probed at Roswell.’ Hell, you’d fit right in.”
Vesely shrugged and raised his eyebrows as though to say, “This is true,” and said, “Actually, forget Roswell.”
Brodeur threw his hands up in the air and walked a few feet away. “Now he’s backpedaling. I’m going to wait in the car. Come get me when we need to figure out our next move.”
“Roger,” Adler said, then looked at Miller. “You are just going to let him go?”
; “I’m going to follow him in a minute, if Cowboy doesn’t start talking some sense.”
Vesely held up his hands. “Okay, okay.” He took the strand of grass from his mouth and twisted it between his fingers. “Foo fighters. You have heard of them, yes?”
“Yes,” Miller said. “World War Two pilots reported a lot of flying lights.”
“And you take this subject seriously. The witnesses are credible?”
Miller nodded. If just one pilot made a report, he might dismiss it, as would have the military. But the sheer number of reports by Allied pilots meant that there really had been something unexplainable in the skies over Germany.
“Okay. These objects, these lights, they weren’t seen until near end of war. Some say that they were angels come to witness war’s end. Some say they were, and are, aliens come to observe mankind from another planet. These lights could move horizontally and vertically far faster than any plane. They could not be engaged, or captured. Superior to Allied planes in every way. And they began appearing shortly after successful antigravity tests, including the Bell. Declassified British and American documents reveal this to be true.”
“But they never attacked,” Miller said.
“That we know of,” Vesely corrected. “Had any pilots been attacked by such craft I do not think they would have lived to tell the tale. That being true, I believe that foo fighters were simply extended tests of mobility, stealth, speed, and maneuverability when facing enemy aircraft. Shortly before war ended, foo fighters disappeared.”
Vesely looked Miller and Adler in the eyes for a moment, then continued. “Until 1947.”
“Roswell,” Miller said. He’d seen enough cheesy late-night specials to know the date.
“Follow me, I want to show you something.” He led them into the woods toward the abandoned factory and continued speaking. “I’m sure you know story. A strange flying object crashed at a ranch in Roswell and was recovered by air force. A press release was issued saying that they’d recovered a flying disk.” He held a tree branch aside for Miller and Adler and then continued with his story and walk. “A day later, same air force people said the flying disk was actually a weather balloon.”
Vesely paused and looked at Miller. “Do you think you could confuse a weather balloon for a flying disk?”
Miller grinned. “Probably not.”
“You see? And you are navy.” Vesely led them out of the woods and approached an open hole in the brick back wall of the factory. “Before air force collected the object, several people saw it, and some describe strange-looking text, almost like hieroglyphs, etched into the metal. Remember that for later. No one saw object before it crashed so is hard to say if it was truly disk shaped, balloon shaped … or bell.”
They entered the large open factory floor. The place smelled of dust, mold, and animal piss. The building had been gutted for the most part. No furniture remained. No assembly lines. Just a lot of graffiti, broken glass, and beer cans.
Vesely walked to a partially torn-down interior wall and leaned against it. Miller could see that the wall had once been part of an enclosed space, but two of the interior walls had been torn down and removed.
“December ninth, 1965. Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. Many people saw and reported UFO crash in the woods, just outside town. Several witnesses went in search of the object. They described what they found as acorn shaped. Some said it was shaped like bell. The dimensions were similar to those of the Bell tested here and some people described hieroglyphic-like text surrounding the outer rim of the device.”
“Are there any photos?” Adler asked.
“There was no time for photo-taking,” Vesely said. “The military arrived quickly, led by two men in trench coats who announced the area was under quarantine. But the strange text is important. It links this craft to the one found at Roswell, and both craft to Bell.”
“How so?” Miller asked.
“Hitler dabbled—‘dabbled’ is too weak a word—Hitler pursued the occult. He sent teams around the world in search of arcane and supernatural powers, of mystical artifacts, like the Spear of Destiny, the supposed spear used to pierce Jesus’s side on cross. And we sometimes find strange, possibly occult languages etched into many of the more fantastic Nazi experiments.”
“Are you saying the Bell is supernatural?” Miller asked, a hint of skepticism returning.
“No, no. Not at all. As Tex would have learned if he had remained with us, I believe people often use the supernatural, and now aliens, to explain things they do not understand. Even the Nazis. They made leaps in science, but didn’t fully understand what they had done, so they deemed it supernatural. The occult. When the outside world sees that same science—UFOs—we say it is work of extraterrestrials. But it is far more likely that neither is true. That the foo fighters and the various UFO crashes around world are of terrestrial origin.”
“But—” Adler started.
“Wait, wait, wait. Back to Pennsylvania. Object is quarantined. Military controls the area. But several locals see large, bell-shaped object obscured by a large tarp taken away by military truck. Two days later, Wright-Patterson Air Force base, only two hundred fifty miles away, orders sixty-five hundred double-glazed ceramic bricks. Delivery truck driver later reported that he saw large bell-shaped object in the hangar where he dropped off the bricks. He said they wanted to enclose the object. Entomb it.”
“Holy shit,” Miller said.
“What?” Adler asked.
“I wondered how long it would take you to see it, Survivor,” Vesely said with a lopsided grin.
“See what?” Adler said.
Vesely knocked on the wall behind him. “Double-glazed ceramic brick, perfect for insulating electricity and heat, but is also resistant to radiation, and I suspect also contains the fields produced by Bell.”
“The field that melts people,” Miller said.
“The same,” Vesely said. “I believe UFO crashes in New Mexico and Pennsylvania, and a few others around the world, were test flights of the objects now threatening the human race.”
“But if the military recovered them—” Adler stopped when both Miller and Vesely gave her dubious looks. “Right. They had Nazis in the military and science communities. Maybe that’s why they got there so fast?”
“To Pennsylvania,” Vesely agreed. “They reached Roswell a day too late.”
“All right,” Miller said. “Let’s assume you’re right. That the Nazis achieved antigravity. That UFO sightings and crashes starting at the end of World War Two are actually the Bell—”
“Bells,” Vesley corrected. “There would be thousands of them by now.”
Miller continued. “So there are thousands of Bells—killer stealth antigravity satellites—orbiting the Earth waiting for a massive cloud of refined iron to reach the planet, at which point they will pull the iron in, speed it up, and launch it at high speed into the lower atmosphere—protecting the iron from friction by whatever body-melting field it produces—and when the iron hits the lower atmosphere it superheats, oxidizes, and kills everyone on the planet.”
While Miller took a deep breath, Vesely clapped his hands. “Yes, yes! You have it exactly.”
“Don’t tell me they did all that on U.S. soil,” Miller said. “I don’t care how many Nazis are embedded in the military, they’d need a full-scale base and lots of space to fabricate thousands of these Bells. It would be impossible to hide.”
“You’re right,” Vesely said. “Americans filtered money, personnel, and resources, but the technology was developed somewhere else.”
“And you know where that is?” Adler asked.
“I do,” Vesely said, “but…”
“But what?” Adler said.
Miller knew exactly what the man wanted. He had spent his whole life researching this subject; in essence, preparing for this fight. “He wants to come with us.”
“I don’t think—”
Miller cut Adler off. “Done.”
“Yes!” Vesely said, thrusting a victorious fist in the air.
Adler looked incredulous.
“We don’t have time to beat the information out of him,” Miller explained. “And I’ve seen the way he handles a gun. Might come in handy.” He turned to Vesely. “So, where are we going? I suspect it will be far from the eyes of civilization.”
“Correct again, Survivor. We’re going to Antarctica.”
Neither Adler nor Miller spoke. It was too crazy. Too far. How could they get there?
Vesely spoke, his voice serious. “I can see you need to be convinced. Let’s start before war. In 1938, Germany launched expedition to Antarctica under supervision of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, who would later become Oberbefehlshaber or Supreme Commander of the Luftwaffe, Germany’s air force, and after war was tried and convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He committed suicide before being hanged. I say this because Göring’s promotion may be result of his success in the Antarctic. They took a seaplane carrier, the Schwabenland, to Queen Maud Land, a region of Antarctica claimed by Denmark. They flew over area, dropping clouds of tiny, spiked flags bearing swastika, and renamed region Neuschwabenland. They also took thousands of photos of coast, mountain ranges, and ice sheets. A large team of scientists including biologists, geologists, and climatologists scoured the land and claimed to have found geothermal hot springs—free of ice and home to algae. They spoke of deep, heated caverns, noted food sources such as penguins, walruses, and whales, and without saying so directly, made a convincing argument that this area, with its harsh terrain, freezing temperatures, and geographic isolation, would make perfect place for a secret base.
“Göring returned to Germany five months later, made his report, handed out medals, and never, not once, spoke of mission again. Flash forward to end of the war. The Allies are advancing on all fronts. The war is essentially over. Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler, not only oversaw construction of the concentration camp system, extermination camps, and all cremation facilities used on prisoners, but also ran a think tank that developed secret weapons projects including the Messerschmitt ME 262 fighter jet, V-2 rockets, and the Bell alongside Obergruppenführer Emil Mazuw. More than that, he also oversaw relocation of the Reich’s R and D facilities to underground locations, something he apparently had previous experience with before war. He was also in charge of a special evacuation plan developed by Martin Bormann, personal secretary to the Führer. The plan detailed how Hitler, key scientists—ones that would not be missed—personnel, supplies, and projects like the Bell, would board several Junkers 390 transport planes just miles from our current location, at the very same place Kammler was last seen alive. There are several contradictory reports of his death, but many believe he simply vanished. The plan had the Junkers fly to the coast of Norway where all materials and personnel would be transported to a fleet of waiting U-boats, several of which were advanced XXI variety—wire-guided torpedoes, magnetic proximity fuses—advanced for the time.
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