Now wearing her favourite red dress, she continued to apply her make-up as if he wasn’t even there.
He grasped her arm and shook her. ‘Ashley, this is important!’
She snatched her arm away and put on her lipstick.
He grabbed the stick of make-up. ‘I’m not kidding,’ he said, holding the offending article beyond her reach. ‘Tell me what you’ve seen.’
Ashley glared at him. ‘About what, fake asteroids? They’re always on the news. But if you didn’t have your head stuck up your ass, then you’d know that already.’
She held out her hand and John threw the lipstick out of the open window. It was a petty act, but she was just so ... so MADDENING!
Ashley raised her eyebrows at his childish action, gave a snort of derision and turned away to find another product to use.
The cold war between them had resumed, but John couldn’t have cared less.
He returned to the bedroom and began to search the Internet for lights in the sky, asteroids, and claims of new threats. There are so many, he thought. No wonder no one listens.
John left the computer behind, got dressed and went in search of Paul. He still doubted there was another threat from space but he needed confirmation, if only for his own peace of mind. And what better way than to go to the one place that could tell him the truth beyond doubt? The United States Naval Observatory, which still had a fully functioning telescope, albeit one well over a hundred years old. It also just happened to be a couple of miles away, at the site which all vice presidents assumed as their official residence when taking office.
A short while later he tracked Paul down outside the West Wing’s Situation Room. The Chief of Staff was keeping apprised of naval movements in the Atlantic, which John was pleased to hear remained non-aggressive.
After telling his friend his theories about unfolding events and the likelihood it was the GMRC trying to undermine his administration with the disappearances, he explained why he wanted to put his mind at ease about his abductor’s claims.
‘They’re coincidences,’ Paul said, ‘nothing more. We know the cyberterrorist is timing his attacks with the GMRC’s efforts to force you out of power.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘And the food and water shortages have been going on for ages, your abductors knew this. They also could have known about these paintings in France, and the lights in the sky are being seen everywhere. It’s not news.’
John held up his hands. ‘I know. I know.’
‘As you say, they just wanted you to change the location from Camp David and they used the only leverage they had.’
‘Which I’ve done,’ John said, his expression grim.
‘You had no choice. It’s a moot point, anyway. We’ve made sure security at Capitol Hill is airtight. We have the Secret Service, FBI, National Guard and United States military everywhere, and I mean, everywhere. Someone would have to start a war to get anywhere near you and the EU and Chinese leaders.’
John grimaced. ‘A war is exactly what I’m afraid of.’
‘And that’s what you’re going to avert at the meeting tonight. A war, and more than that, you’re going to deal the GMRC a killing blow.’
John let out a deep sigh. ‘I hope you’re right.’
‘I am. This is a turning point, you’ll see.’
John looked at his friend, his face betraying his continued concern.
‘I’ll get someone to check this light out for you,’ Paul said, ‘if it’ll put your mind at rest. We can’t have you anxious; you need to relax and bring your A game when it matters.’
‘Can’t you go?’
‘To where? The Naval Observatory?’ Paul held out his hands. ‘If I had the time, I would. Why don’t you ask the Vice President? It’s literally in his backyard.’
John shook his head. He knew how it would look if he asked his second in command to start looking for asteroids in the sky; word would get out and he could ill-afford people thinking he was losing the plot. Not now. ‘I’ll make some calls,’ John said. ‘I’m sure someone can help me.’
Paul gave him a friendly slap on the arm. ‘Okay, I better get back to it. And don’t forget,’ – the Chief of Staff pointed to him as he re-entered the Situation Room – ‘get some rest before tonight. I’ll send up some reading material for you, as well, so you can get in some meeting preparation.’
John gave him a strained smile.
‘And when you’re done,’ Paul said, as the door closed between them, ‘forget about lights in the sky.’
The Chief of Staff disappeared from view and John wandered back to his executive residence in the White House complex, his unease lessened but not gone.
♦
Half an hour later John slammed down the phone on his desk. No one was answering, not at the Naval Observatory, nor at Kitt Peak, the observatory he’d heard mentioned on the news channel. Not anywhere. At least, none of the observatories he’d tried so far, and he’d called quite a few. Either they weren’t awake yet, or they didn’t get in until darkness approached. That kind of made sense, as nighttime was when any observatory came into its own.
Searching online revealed some were undergoing renovations; others, complete refits.
Just as he was thinking about giving up he glimpsed Marine One through a window, as the ground crew prepared it for flight on the White House lawn. Paul had suggested arriving by air at the meeting with the foreign leaders, despite the ridiculously short distance to Capitol Hill from the White House. He said it would look more presidential than arriving by road. John, not one for wasting taxpayers’ hard-earned cash, had reluctantly agreed. If anything could give him that extra momentum to avert a war, he’d take it.
‘Still looking for lights in the sky?’ Ashley said, her tone condescending.
He glanced up from his computer to see his wife enter their private sitting room. She was wearing her full battle armour: red dress, high heels and dazzling make-up. The only thing out of place was her hair, which was less than immaculate. But, despite this small detail, she looked a million dollars, a billion dollars, and he knew it was all for his benefit, although not in a good way. She was going out to flirt with as many men as she could to punish him for his crime, if you could call ignoring her a crime.
She peered over his shoulder at his research. ‘Only gullible fools believe those channels. Are you a gullible fool, John?’
‘Going out?’ he said, trying to ignore her as she adjusted her dress to show off more cleavage.
‘Like you care.’ She shook out her hair and looked down her nose at him. ‘Shouldn’t you be preparing for the meeting instead of wasting your time?’
He opened his mouth to answer, but she’d already swept into their bedroom, leaving the fragrance of her perfume lingering in her wake.
A minute later he heard Ashley leaving and he called out to her, ‘Take Dante with you!’
The door slammed closed and he sighed and looked down at his desk. Is all marriage this hard? he wondered. He switched off his screen. What’s the point? She’s right, I’m wasting my time.
As he sat there, wondering what to do next, he noticed a piece of white card poking out from beneath a pile of paperwork. He pulled it towards him. It was the invitation to his communications officer’s funeral. He thought of Diane’s children and his promise to keep their father safe. He stood up and wandered over to the window to see Dante helping Ashley into an SUV. His wife glanced up at him and she ran her hand down Dante’s arm. John’s head of security didn’t seem to mind, but why would he? Why would any man? The Secret Service agent said something which made Ashley laugh.
John’s eyes narrowed and soon after he was watching the first lady’s motorcade drive away.
‘Shouldn’t you be preparing for the meeting instead of wasting your time?’ Ashley’s words lingered in his mind. ‘Still looking for lights in the sky?’
He tensed at the tone. He knew that condescending voice reminded him of something. She
sounds just like my mother. The thought horrified him, as memories of his parents’ cruel, belittling comments flooded up from his past.
John’s anger stirred and he glanced down at the card in his hand, recalling the devastation that AG5 Minor had caused when it had impacted in India at the same time as AG5 itself. If there was another asteroid heading their way, John owed it to Diane’s family to find out, but more than that, he owed it to the nation.
He dropped the card back on the desk, strode out of the room and hurried down the stairs, a gaggle of Dante’s Secret Service team hot on his heels.
‘Are we going somewhere, sir?’ said one of the men.
John pushed open the rear doors and headed for Marine One.
‘I need to get to the Naval Observatory,’ John said, as he approached the pilot.
The man stopped his inspection. ‘Right now, Mr President?’
‘Right now.’
The pilot looked at his ground crew and then back to John. ‘Do we have clearance?’
John shook his head.
‘But you still want to go?’
‘It’s a matter of national security. I have to go, and I have to go now.’ John knew if Paul found out what he was planning, he’d shut it down. The threat of another assassination attempt by the GMRC loomed large, but John couldn’t ask anyone else to investigate this mysterious light, and it was now or never.
‘It’s martial law, Mr President, if you’re ordering me ...’ The pilot left the sentence hanging.
John smiled, and moments later the helicopter’s engines roared to life.
John looked out of the aircraft’s window to see his Chief of Staff run out of the building with more security at his back.
The rotor blades gained momentum and Paul and his agents raised their arms against the hurricane of wind.
Paul frantically waved to the pilot to get him to stop, but he was too late and Marine One lifted into the skies above.
John looked up into the heavens, his eyes searching for a light in the sky, a light that would confirm his unsubstantiated fears were realised. There was nothing there except patchy grey cloud and, as they rose higher, a ray of sunshine broke through, bathing the helicopter and its occupants in light.
He squinted against the glare and wondered if there really was another asteroid, or if he was the gullible fool his wife took him for. Where are you? John thought, looking for signs of a tell-tale light. Where are you hiding?
The helicopter gained forward momentum and John prayed Ashley was right, for if she wasn’t ...
‘We’ll be at the observatory in less than five minutes, Mr President,’ the pilot said.
John nodded and continued to search the sky for a sign he didn’t want to see. ‘If you’re out there,’ he whispered, as he continued to scan the horizon, ‘I will find you.’
And if it is, he thought, what then? It would prove his abductors right, at least in part. He would then have to hope beyond hope that they hadn’t been telling the truth about everything else, as well, for if they had, if what they’d said was true, it might already be too late. John resumed his anxious search and murmured, ‘Too late for us all.’
Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Five
Ozark Plateau, central United States.
‘Which way is it, Charlene?’
‘I don’t know. Right, I think.’
‘Admit it, we’re lost.’
‘We ain’t lost, Dwight, just turned around.’
‘That’s the definition of lost. We’ve been walking around in circles for hours. We need to head back the way we came.’
Charlene pointed through the trees. ‘There’s a road.’
‘Where?’
She grabbed his coat and pulled him closer. ‘There, look, it continues on down the hill and into that tunnel.’
He looked down at his map. ‘There shouldn’t be a road that big for miles around.’
‘Perhaps it’s military.’ She slapped his arm. ‘I told you we shouldn’t have crossed that fence!’
Dwight scowled at his girlfriend. ‘Then they shouldn’t have left that gate unguarded.’
‘It said “no entry”. I guess they thought no one was dumb enough to ignore it.’
‘Well, you’re here, ain’t you? I guess they were wrong.’
Charlene went to hit him again, but he ducked out of reach and headed down a slope towards the road they’d seen.
‘Whose idea was it to come out here, anyway?’ Charlene said, following him through a thicket. ‘There’s no water, like we thought. There’s no nothing.’
Dwight ignored her complaints and emerged onto the two-lane highway; he looked left and then right. The road disappeared around a bend in both directions. The tunnel they’d glimpsed moments before was no longer visible and Dwight crouched down to touch the tarmac, which looked newly laid.
‘There are no road markings,’ Charlene said, stopping next to him.
Dwight stood up and gazed into the distance, where a ravine cut through a series of hill-like mountains. ‘I thought you said this place was a wilderness.’
‘It is,’ Charlene said.
He pointed at a cluster of structures located at the end of the river, which ran through the bottom of the ravine. ‘Then what’s that?’
Charlene frowned. ‘It looks like a small town.’
‘Didn’t you say they cleared this area of people?’
‘Yeah, they railroaded locals into selling up for a conservation project, it was all over the news at the time.’
‘Looks like they were lying,’ Dwight said, and then set off in direction of the town.
‘Where are you going?!’
‘To take a look.’
Charlene muttered something and followed.
They walked along the unmarked highway for an hour, then passed through the tunnel and out the other side.
Half a mile further on, two high fences barred the way.
Charlene turned to go back, but Dwight pressed ahead.
‘What you doing?’ she said. ‘There’s no way through!’
‘I want to see what the signs say.’ He pointed at the cluster of notices attached to the fences.
‘I’ll wait here!’ Charlene said, and sat down on the tarmac in the shade of a tree.
♦
Dwight glanced back to see his girlfriend sitting on the empty road. How can she not want to see what they say? he thought, as he approached the fences.
A noise reverberated in the distance and Dwight paused to look back the way they’d come.
Charlene had heard it, too, and had stood up to shield her eyes from the sun.
The noise came again, closer now and getting louder.
A helicopter appeared over a ridge, the blur of its rotors bouncing sound down the ravine towards them. Another helicopter followed, and then another, and another, and another after that.
Dwight gazed up at the unending procession of military aircraft as they flew past overhead, the roar of their engines deafening as they flew three and four abreast. Higher up, other helicopters flew, these civilian craft no fewer in number than the military versions beneath.
He’d never seen so many aircraft in the air at once.
A horn blared and Dwight looked down at the dark tunnel they’d just walked through. A blaze of lights silhouetted Charlene against their glare. His girlfriend screamed and dived out of the way of a massive armoured personnel carrier, which approached at speed.
The horn blared again and Dwight jumped from the road into the surrounding brush, the massive black truck just missing him as it whooshed past in a blast of air.
The fences retracted, allowing the transporter through, and Dwight gaped, open-mouthed, as more black vehicles followed in its wake.
The thunderous roar of engines flashed past in a blur, the occupants inside shielded from view by smoked-glass windows.
When the last personnel carrier had passed, Charlene ran up to join Dwight just as the last helicopter disappeared beyond the r
idge.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ she said, looking scared.
He shook his head, grabbed her hand and ran for the gates.
‘What are you doing?!’ She tried to halt his advance, but it was too little, too late, and the gates closed behind them, sealing them inside.
Dwight glanced back at the blank white reverse of the signs. It was too late now to see what they said. ‘Come on,’ he said, as he pulled her onwards, his eyes alight with curiosity, ‘let’s find out what’s going on.’
Charlene was hauled onwards, while behind them the warning signs remained unseen.
♦
Dwight and Charlene reached the top of an escarpment and looked down at the town they’d seen from a distance.
‘It looks more like a coal mine than a town,’ Dwight said.
Charlene eyed the trucks with trepidation, as they queued outside a GMRC checkpoint patrolled by armed soldiers.
‘I think we should go,’ she said, ‘right now.’
Dwight removed his computer and zoomed in on a pair of massive blast doors, which crept apart with a wail of sirens and flashing lights.
‘Surface to interior elevator,’ Dwight said, reading the distant text. ‘What do you think that means?’
Charlene didn’t reply and he looked round to see his girlfriend looking behind them, her eyes wide in fear.
Dwight followed her gaze to see two grey-clad GMRC soldiers standing a few feet away, their rifles trained at the two interlopers. They wore full suits of high-tech body armour bearing strange emblems, which read:
‘Hey, fellas,’ – Dwight held up his hands – ‘we were just leaving.’
‘What’s your name, citizen?’ one of the soldiers said, lowering his weapon.
‘Dwight, Dwight Masters.’
‘And her?’
‘Charlene Willis.’
The soldier checked a digital display on his armour and shook his head to his colleague.
‘Didn’t you see the sign?’ said the other soldier.
Dwight reached out to take Charlene’s trembling hand and shook his head. ‘What did it say?’
Ancient Origins: Books 4 - 6 (Ancient Origins Boxset Book 2) Page 85
