Frank let out a chuckle. “You’re joking, right?”
Joe hesitated. “Yes, I’m joking. At least, I think I’m joking.”
The Hardys got into the Jeep, and Frank drove down the road. Joe watched the shadowy shapes of trees pass by for half a mile. “Listen, Frank,” he said finally, “I’m not saying that aliens have come to earth and abducted Robinson and Sykes. That’s probably not what has happened. But we can’t explain their disappearances, and I think we should get all the information we can. Tomorrow I think we should both go to Cheyenne Mountain to investigate further.”
“Couldn’t we just call?” Frank asked.
“I don’t think they do telephone meetings,” Joe said with a chuckle. “A high-ranking military official is someone we have to meet face-to-face. That way he’ll know we’re on the level, and we’ll know if he’s trying to brush us off with some phony story.”
Frank clicked the headlight beams to high. “The closest stars in our galaxy are millions of miles away. Even if aliens could travel at the speed of light, it would take them an incredibly long time to get here.
“Maybe the aliens can travel faster than the speed of light,” Joe argued.
“Nice try,” Frank said, “but according to the laws of physics, that’s impossible.”
“According to the physics we know about,” Joe pointed out, “And besides, you always tell me not to rule out any possibility until it can be positively disproved.”
“I can see you’re never going to give up,” Frank said with a grin. “What time did you say that appointment at Cheyenne Mountain is?”
“All right,” Joe said. “Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Or, as they say in the military, fourteen hundred hours.”
• • •
By nine on Friday morning, Frank and Joe were heading east in the Jeep, listening to a rock station on the radio. After an hour, they were traveling up the pass that lent its name to the Moondance area. They were on a twenty-mile stretch of highway that wound its way over the Rocky Mountain barricade running down the center of the state. The Jeep was flanked by rising pine trees on one side and a drop down a rocky gorge on the other.
As the Jeep climbed higher, Joe could feel his ears pop from the increasing altitude. Frank leaned forward to see the road better. The highway had just narrowed to a single lane. The road curved so sharply that Frank could see the pavement only several yards ahead.
“There goes our reception,” Joe said. The rock music had turned into static. Joe fiddled with the dial.
Suddenly Joe’s eye caught something on the road. “Look out!” he shouted.
Frank saw it, too. Two bikers were hurtling around a curve. They must have seen the Jeep, but they showed no sign of slowing down or clearing the way.
Frank knew it was too late to avoid a collision by slamming on the brakes. He had a split-second decision to make. He could run down the bikers, plow into the side of the mountain, or send the Jeep flying several thousand feet down the mountainside.
No matter what he did, Frank realized, they were in deep trouble.
11 Cheyenne Mountain
* * *
A desperate idea came to Frank. He knew it would take a little skill and a lot of luck.
“Hang on!” Frank cried. He jammed his foot on the brake and pulled the steering wheel sharply to the left. Everything was a wild swirl of motion as the Jeep spun in a half-circle. The tires screeched against the asphalt. Any second, Frank knew, the Jeep could plunge over the side of the mountain.
But it didn’t. It jolted to a stop—on the wrong side of the road facing in the wrong direction.
Frank and Joe sat a moment in stunned silence, each happy to be in one piece with no dents to the Jeep.
Then Frank leaned out his window to see Bev and Myra pedaling away and looking back at the Jeep. They both wore big smiles, as if they were more excited than shaken up by the near-accident.
“We heard you coming!” Bev called out. “We just like to wait till the last possible second!”
“Nice maneuvering!” Myra called. “You should pass your driving test with flying colors!”
With that, both bikers picked up speed and disappeared around the bend.
“I don’t like those girls,” Joe said with a scowl. “I don’t like them one bit.”
Frank shook his head in disbelief. “They’re a menace. I can’t believe they were playing chicken with us. Either they’re crazy or they don’t put much value on human life. I say we check them out when we get back.”
The rest of the drive went by without incident. Frank turned off the highway at a sign that read, Cheyenne Mountain Air Station, Authorized Traffic Only.
Frank drove along a paved road for a half-mile or so then came to a guard station, where an armed soldier instructed Frank to leave his vehicle in the nearby parking lot.
After parking the Jeep, Frank and Joe walked to a visitor’s center, where they were met by a young airman in uniform. He was expecting them.
“I’ll be escorting you inside the Mountain to see General Webster,” he said. “The name’s Parker.” He saluted Frank and Joe.
Frank realized that Parker was probably only a year or two older than he. Airman Parker escorted the Hardys to a car, then drove them toward a vast mountain that stood about a half-mile away. Frank had heard stories about this place. The NORAD facility was housed deep inside Cheyenne Mountain so it would be able to withstand a nuclear explosion.
At the base of the mountain, the car entered a tunnel and kept going. As lights shone through the darkness, Frank could see that the roof and sides of the tunnel were solid granite.
“The complex is a third of a mile into the Mountain,” Parker said. “And the entire complex sits on gigantic shock absorbers. No question, this baby was built to last.”
After passing another guard station, their escort parked the car inside the tunnel. He walked the Hardys past a massive open door that contained a series of giant bolts. “That door shuts if we know there’s a bomb headed our way,” the airman said. “No one gets in and no one gets out until everything is over.”
“We should put one of those on our garage,” Joe said. He could see the door was nearly three feet thick.
Airman Parker led the Hardys down a polished hallway that reminded Joe of the corridor of a ship. He noticed that some of the doors had small computerized boxes that needed to be programmed correctly in order to gain entry.
It looked to Joe as if a statue was standing at the end of the hall. It turned out to be a man in a gray air force jumpsuit. Everything about the man seemed to stand at attention, including the silver hairs of his crew cut. Joe noticed a general’s star on each shoulder.
“I’m General John Webster,” the man said, giving both Hardys a firm handshake. “You must be Frank and Joe. General Radman told me that your dad did the Air Force a tremendous favor a short time ago and that I was to roll out the red carpet for you.”
Airman Parker was excused, and General Webster escorted the Hardys into a room with a large conference table. An entire wall of the room was made of glass. Frank and Joe could see into the next room.
Suspended from the wall of the next room were a series of giant screens with colored maps of the world. Banks of computers and other technological devices faced the wall and also ran around the room’s perimeter. Five men in military garb were at work in the room, all of them wearing serious expressions.
“You’re looking at the Command Center,” General Webster told Frank and Joe. “All the information coming into the Mountain is processed through here. As I’m sure you know, our main purpose at the Mountain is to detect nuclear bomb threats coming into North America. But we also assist NASA with space missions and keep an eye out for smugglers’ airplanes.”
“How do you monitor these things?” Frank asked.
“The U.S. has a series of satellites in space that form a circle around the globe,” the general said. “Using heat, light, and infrared sensors, these sa
tellites are able to keep watch over the aerospace surrounding the earth and almost every inch of the earth’s surface. We pick up this information on computer screens in real time.”
On the computer screens Joe noticed live video images of various locations throughout the world. One of them showed a barren desert, another showed a snowy landscape. “Very impressive,” Joe said.
“Now, why don’t you boys have a seat?” the general said. He sat at the head of the long conference table, and the Hardys sat on either side of him.
“So,” Webster said, folding his hands on the table, “what is it you boys want to talk to me about?”
Joe decided to plunge right in. “Your satellites keep a watch on the ground, air, and space of this planet twenty-four hours a day. Have any alien spacecraft ever been detected entering the earth’s atmosphere?”
General Webster showed the hint of a smile. “No,” he said flatly.
Joe had not traveled two hundred miles to leave it at that. “No, there haven’t been any alien spacecraft? Or no, you can’t tell us about them?”
The general met Joe’s gaze without a blink. “No, there haven’t been any.”
“Do your computers ever pick up objects that cannot be positively identified?” Frank asked.
“Occasionally,” Webster answered.
“Could some of those be alien vehicles?” Joe asked.
General Webster leaned back in his chair. “All right, boys, here’s the deal. Fifty years ago the age of UFO sightings began. People were seeing flying saucers everywhere. Naturally the government took an interest and set out to investigate. We found strange meteorological phenomena and a lot of people with wild imaginations, but nothing that remotely resembled an extraterrestrial vehicle. After a while, we decided the work was a waste of time and taxpayer dollars, so we terminated the research.”
Joe hesitated a moment, then decided to say what was on his mind. “From what I’ve read,” he said, “the government’s investigations were only halfhearted attempts to find the truth.”
Webster nodded. “There were people connected to the government who took the research less than seriously. But then there were others who took it very seriously.”
Frank felt as if General Webster and Joe were engaged in a game of chess. Frank decided to make a bold move of his own. “There’s also some speculation,” Frank said, “that the government has made contact with extraterrestrials but is keeping this a secret. Some say the military is analyzing their equipment and is perhaps even communicating with them in order to gain access to their superior technology.”
Webster turned his piercing eyes on Frank. “They say we’ve got some aliens at a secret base in Nevada, don’t they?” he said.
“Yes, they do,” Frank replied.
Webster scratched an ear and said, “Have you boys ever spent much time with a scientist?”
“Yes, sir,” Joe said. “We know a few.”
“Well, if the government was interacting with extraterrestrials,” Webster continued, “I guarantee we would bring in the best scientific minds in the world. And scientists don’t think like military people. They believe knowledge belongs to everyone. And I promise you, sooner or later, one of those scientists would have shared his or her experiences with the world at large.”
“Maybe the government wouldn’t let such a scientist out of their sight,” Joe remarked.
The general turned his eyes on Joe as if he were aiming two missiles. “I know some people think the United States government works that way, but I’m here to tell you it doesn’t. The last time I looked, this was still a free country.”
The statement hung in the air a moment before Frank broke the silence. “Two nights ago a very strange celestial phenomenon was seen by us and many other people over the Moondance Pass area in the Rocky Mountains. Did your satellites pick it up?”
“Yes, they did,” Webster said evenly.
“Do you know what it was?” Joe asked.
“We established it was not a threat,” Webster said. “Once we find something is not an instrument of destruction, we usually let it go.”
“So you don’t know what it was?” Joe said.
“No, we don’t,” Webster admitted. “But I’m a curious man. I saw the readouts on that thing and found the data puzzling. It seems there was an object up there and it was radiating some kind of heat, but it bore no resemblance to any satellites or aircraft I’m familiar with. I sent tapes of the data to a few leading scientists for their evaluation. I’m still waiting for their responses.”
“In other words,” Joe said, watching Webster carefully, “it’s not impossible that that thing was an alien spacecraft?”
Webster gave a faint smile. “Boys,” he said, “very few things are truly impossible.”
The general showed the Hardys around the rest of the Cheyenne Mountain complex, and then Parker was summoned to escort them out of the Mountain. Frank and Joe held off discussing their meeting with Webster until they were back in the Jeep.
“So what do you think?” Frank asked as he steered the Jeep out of the parking lot.
“I got the impression General Webster was telling the truth,” Joe said. “At first he seemed to be playing with a couple of schoolboys. But by the end he seemed to be on the level.”
“Of course,” Frank said, “he could be a good actor. And then there might be limits to what he knows. If information is highly classified, a one-star general might not even know about it.”
“Hey,” Joe said with surprise, “it sounds like you might be swinging over to the alien-believing team.”
“I’m just exploring every possibility,” Frank said as he drove the Jeep onto the road. “Just as you suggested.”
• • •
It was nearly nine o’clock at night when the Hardys hit the last of the winding roads leading back to Moondance Pass. They were just a few miles from Coalville. Darkness made the road even more treacherous, forcing Frank to concentrate on his driving.
Joe had drifted off to sleep. As Frank guided the Jeep around another curve in the road, he felt a wave of drowsiness himself.
“Ahh!” Frank yelled.
His eyes were suddenly attacked by a bright circle of light. It was much larger than the headlight of any land vehicle. Unable to see anything else, Frank swung to the side of the road and slammed on his brakes.
Joe jumped awake. “What’s going on?” he cried. Then he clapped his hands over his eyes to shut out the intense glare.
“I don’t know,” Frank said, shielding his eyes with his arm. “As soon as I turned the bend, the light just sprang out at me!”
Even with his eyes covered, Frank could sense the white light boring into them. Then Frank felt a quick jab of pain and knew something weird was happening. Frank felt his heartbeat slowing down, and he thought he heard the sound of Joe’s voice, but he could not make out the words.
Frank realized he was slipping into unconsciousness and there was nothing he could do about it. The world was turning to blackness.
12 Abduction Number Three
* * *
Frank heard and saw nothing. He felt as if he were floating in space, free of the earth’s gravitational pull.
Then he felt as if he were falling. He was suddenly terrified that he was about to crash into something and opened his eyes.
His vision was blurred, and his head felt as if it were stuffed with cotton. When Frank shifted in his seat, he groaned. He felt as if his arms and legs were tied to hundred-pound weights. But they weren’t. He realized he was merely sitting inside the Jeep.
He had no idea where he had been or what had happened to him.
Frank caught sight of the digital clock on the dashboard. The time was 10:22. He tried to figure out how long he had been sitting there. He thought it had been about an hour.
Cool air drifted in through the window. Frank waited a few moments, letting the fresh air restore his senses.
Things began coming back to him. He had
been driving through the mountains with Joe. He remembered the clock reading 9:03, which meant he had been there almost an hour and a half. Then he had slammed on the brakes when a bright light had blinded his vision.
Wait, he had been driving with Joe!
Frank turned to the passenger seat, then the backseat. There was no sign of Joe.
Frank threw open the door of the Jeep and climbed out. He found himself on the side of the road. The dark shapes of pine trees loomed nearby, and the moon glowed in the sky. But there was no sign of Joe.
“Joe!” Frank shouted. “Can you hear me!”
There was only silence.
Had Joe been kidnapped? Frank thought frantically. But how and why? The whole thing was just too weird. Frank found himself wondering if maybe, just maybe, Joe had been abducted by aliens. Maybe the aliens had made Frank unconscious so he couldn’t watch them.
Frank took a deep breath, hoping it would calm him down. If he let his fear get the better of him, he wouldn’t be able to figure anything out. Yes, Frank thought, maybe Joe had been taken aboard an alien spacecraft, but it was also possible something not quite so weird had occurred.
Frank got back in the Jeep and began driving. Ten miles later he arrived at Silver Crest and went straight to Terry’s room. Frank quickly told Terry what had happened.
“Frank, this is getting really scary,” Terry said, sitting down beside Frank on the bed. She handed him a glass of water. “There might have been someone with a motive to go after both Robinson and Sykes; but how would Joe enter this picture? We’re talking about three completely unrelated people!”
“I know,” Frank said.
“Maybe,” Terry suggested, “someone felt Joe was getting too close to the truth about something.”
“But I know everything Joe knows,” Frank reasoned, “and they didn’t take me.”
The Rocky Road to Revenge Page 7
