by S. A. Beck
“Yes. Since you’re fond of traditions, I suppose you know the old saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ Now, I’m beginning to think it’s worth a thousand lies.”
General Corbin smiled. “And what do you mean by that?”
“I mean all those reconnaissance photos of UFOs are faked.”
To Meade’s surprise, Corbin didn’t react at all to that.
Meade went on. “Do you know the name Oscar Preston? He was an intelligence analyst, working on the UFO photos. Top man in that department, and even he was fooled for years. The photos are brilliantly faked, but someone slipped up, and Oscar spotted it. He came to me. Someone shot him. Then they tried to kill me.”
Meade pulled the automatic from his pocket and pointed it at General Corbin.
“And you know all about it. I can see it in your eyes.”
General Corbin smiled, completely unfazed by the .45 caliber pistol pointed at his face from across the desk. He casually took a sip from his coffee and said, “There’s an old quote from Hermann Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe in Nazi Germany, that’s always stuck with me. He said, ‘Of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war, neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.’
“Goering was only half right. What he didn’t know, what he couldn’t predict, was the modern information society. People have too much information now. They can access ideas from the other side. Look at those idiots who have never been outside the States who are pledging themselves to ISIS. Or the American fans of Vladimir Putin. It’s hard to have an external enemy when people can learn all about their propaganda with a click on their phone. This country is slipping, Hector. It’s slipping because we are no longer unified. We have all these different groups, all these different agendas. Instead of paying attention to a few major sources of information that we can easily control, the newspapers and television, now the more intelligent among the American people are getting information from sources all around the world or even creating their own news sources.”
Meade shifted in his seat, keeping the gun held steadily at Corbin’s forehead. Why was this man saying all this in his office? Had he found and disabled the bugs?
Corbin went on. “External enemies aren’t enough to keep the country together anymore. The center cannot hold. We run the risk of losing our place at the top. What we need is a new kind of external enemy, one that can’t be talked to—one that doesn’t have websites or Twitter or podcasts—an enemy that’s frightening enough to unify people but who will remain silent.”
“So you invented an alien invasion,” Meade said.
Corbin shrugged. “A lot of people believe in aliens already. And we have experimental craft that look like UFOs, so we can create sightings if we need to. So far, the photos are enough, but sooner or later, we’ll have to launch some attacks to get the country unified. And then I’ll make this country greater than it ever was.”
“General Corbin, I’m arresting you for high treason. If you make a move, I will shoot you.” General Meade stood up. He barely made it upright before his head swam, and he had to grab the arm of his chair to steady himself.
Corbin smiled. “I saw you watching me as I poured the coffee to make sure I didn’t slip you a mickey. What you couldn’t know was that I brushed some transparent tranquilizer onto the inside of your cup before you even entered my office. I knew I was dealing with a cautious man.”
Corbin ducked under his desk just as General Meade pulled the trigger. The bullet punched a hole in the back wall. Staggering past the desk, using one hand to support himself, General Meade tried to come around to take another shot.
He only made it three steps before slumping to the floor, unconscious.
General Meade didn’t know how long he’d been out. His first emotion was surprise that he had woken up at all.
All he could see was a hazy light. That slowly resolved itself into an overhead fluorescent lamp.
Meade turned his head and tried to focus his eyes. Lab equipment stood all around him. A heart monitor sat next to the operating table on which he lay. It pulsed with a steady beat, showing his vital signs. He tried to move his arms and legs but found himself strapped down.
Looking around again, he thought the place looked familiar. As the cobwebs cleared from his mind, he realized why.
He was in the laboratory of the Poseidon Project.
General Corbin strode into view. Dr. Jones, the lead researcher of the Poseidon Project, came timidly behind him.
“Glad to see you’re awake, Hector,” Corbin said. “I must admit, you caught me by surprise with that plastic pistol. That’s something I didn’t anticipate. Good thing my office is soundproofed. Covering up the bullet hole was a pain in the ass, though. Luckily, the bullet embedded itself in a support beam and didn’t fly right into poor Colonel Maxwell’s office. That would have been hard to explain. He’s not on board with us. You’re resourceful—I’ll grant you that. But you’re inefficient. You’ve had months to catch the Atlantis Allegiance, and you couldn’t even hold onto a sixteen-year-old girl. There’s far too much at stake for you to stay in charge of this operation.
“Oh, you didn’t realize I’ve been monitoring your operation all along? As you probably suspected, I planted that Roswell report so you’d get in touch. It was time to consolidate the operation. Unfortunately for you, we’re going to have to consolidate it a bit more than I previously anticipated. Dr. Jones, the needles please.”
The scientist moved forward, looking embarrassed. Meade glared at him, and the scientist blushed. Then Jones turned to the right, where Meade saw another operating table. A teenage boy lay on it, unconscious. After a moment, Meade recognized him from a surveillance image in his files—Brett Lawson, Jaxon’s boyfriend who had disappeared on one of her nocturnal outings. He had figured, as had the Grants, that he had been killed.
“Do you recognize this young gentleman?” Corbin asked. “I had some of my agents kidnap him and fake a police report. I wanted to push her a little further down the road to violence. I know that you were planning on pushing her the same way, but you wouldn’t have had the nerve to do something like this. You’re too weak, Hector, which is why we’re going to have to work on you.”
Dr. Jones wiped Brett’s arm and injected him with something.
“What are you doing to him?” General Meade asked, his voice coming out slurred.
“The same thing we’re going to do to you. You see, Dr. Jones here has been doing some research on the side without your knowledge. Research for me. He thinks he’s isolated a way to give Atlantean powers to regular human beings. He tried to explain it to me, but I’ve never had much of a scientific bent. Something about replicating the enzymes in their systems. He’s warned me that it could kill you and Brett, but I figure that’s worth the risk. If it succeeds, then you both will be valuable tools. If it fails…” General Corbin gave a little shrug.
Dr. Jones approached with a hypodermic in his hand.
“You’ll never get away with this,” Meade growled.
General Corbin laughed as the scientist wiped Meade’s arm and injected him with his serum. “But Hector, I already have! Don’t worry, soon you’ll be working for the dictator of the most powerful nation on Earth.”
Chapter 15
August 1, 2016, IN THE DESERT NEAR AIN BEN TILI, ON THE BORD
ER BETWEEN MOROCCO AND MAURITANIA
3:45 PM
* * *
Illegally crossing an international border into a war zone turned out to be easier than Jaxon had thought. Grunt and Otto had picked up a pair of Land Rovers filled with camping gear and a few heavy duffel bags they didn’t want to talk about, and as the muezzin called the dawn prayer, the Atlantis Allegiance left their secret hotel in the back streets of Marrakesh and headed south. Vivian, Otto, and Jaxon rode in one vehicle while Grunt and the scientists rode in the other.
Edward stayed at the hotel. Flying across the Atlantic to a strange country had been as much as he could take. A desert journey to a frontier town was asking too much of him. He kept in contact via a secure Darknet satellite uplink to two computers in the Land Rovers.
The first day was a beautiful drive up winding mountain passes between the jagged peaks of the Atlas Mountains. Otto and Jaxon held hands and stared out the window at all the little villages with their shepherd boys tending herds of goats and sheep. Men tended narrow fields in lush valleys fed by mountain springs, and women sat knitting at the doorways of crude concrete homes or fetched water from village wells.
Jaxon noticed all the villages lay tucked into the little valleys made by folds in the mountainsides that caught the water. The steep slopes and crags were all but barren of vegetation, and she saw no one there.
The road was better than she expected, a two-lane highway with not too many potholes. Traffic was bad, though, and Vivian had to keep swerving to avoid reckless drivers or eighteen-wheelers straddling the median. Jaxon couldn’t blame them. Most of the hairpin turns didn’t have guardrails and looked out over sickening thousand-foot drops. Otto clutched her hand a little more tightly on those.
They took most of the day to get over the mountains before the land flattened out into a barren, gritty desert. Vivian explained they were approaching the true Sahara, the huge band of sand dunes that ran across the entire African continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. That night, they camped under the stars on a dirt road without a village in sight. The Atlantis Allegiance had learned to be careful.
The next day, they entered the Sahara Desert. The road was still two lanes, but it became gravel and ran through long stretches of featureless sand dunes. Once they came across a military checkpoint, where bored, lean soldiers toting assault rifles studied the papers Edward had provided for them, asked a few questions, and let them pass.
Shortly after the checkpoint, Grunt and Vivian steered the Land Rovers off the road and struck out across the desert.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Jaxon asked Vivian.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Vivian said, her hands gripping the steering wheel as she maneuvered between sand dunes. “We have to be off-road for a while. There’s a Moroccan army base a few miles south of here at the border. We need to avoid it.”
“And once we’re in Mauritania, what then?”
“Avoid everyone until we get into Mali.”
“Will we make it today?” Jaxon asked.
“Nope. Hope you don’t mind camping in a war zone.”
“Oh sure, we don’t mind at all!” Otto laughed, patting one of the heavy duffel bags.
Jaxon frowned at him. “Are there guns in there?”
Otto grinned at her. “Of course. Want one?”
“No. Please don’t turn into a gun nut.”
Otto’s face darkened. “I’m not too happy about having to tote a gun either, but I don’t want you captured by Al-Qaeda or some slave traders. Did you know slavery still exists in Mauritania? Edward showed me a report about it. Sickening.”
“Lovely. How long until we get out of here and into Mali?”
Vivian answered that. “Late tomorrow at the best. The terrain is pretty rough. It would be quicker if we could take the roads, but we can’t.”
“You see?” Otto said. “And it won’t get any better once we get into Mali. Timbuktu is all right, but Grunt told me there are Al-Qaeda fighters all through northern Mali. Grunt has been training me. You’ll be okay.”
“I can take care of myself,” Jaxon said, pulling her hand away.
She caught Vivian looking at her in the rearview mirror. Jaxon frowned and looked out the window.
For hours, they drove through featureless wasteland—up one side of a sand dune and down the other, again and again for miles. Sometimes, the desert would flatten out, and they sped along a gritty surface of stones and sand. Vivian constantly checked the GPS to make sure they were going the right way. They saw no one, no sign of life.
They only stopped once so that Vivian could refill the gas tank from one of the jerry cans strapped to the roof. Grunt pulled up behind her and did the same. Jaxon got out to stretch her legs.
The instant she opened the door, a wall of heat slammed into her. She took a deep breath through burning nostrils and steadied herself against the side of the car as her head spun.
After a moment, she got adjusted and walked a few steps away from the Land Rovers.
It reminded her of the California heat wave of 2006 when she was a kid. Temperatures had reached 115 degrees. Schools had closed. When her foster parents at the time had tried to take her for a ride somewhere, Jaxon had passed out on the driveway halfway between the front door and the car.
This felt worse.
“Don’t go too far,” Grunt called to her.
“I won’t, trust me.”
Jaxon trudged up a nearby sand dune and looked out over the bleak landscape. So this was the famous Sahara Desert. She had imagined camels and oases with palm trees. All she saw was wasteland. How could anyone live here, and why did so many groups want to fight over it?
Boots crunched in the sand behind her. Otto climbed up the sand dune to join her.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
They looked out over the desert for a time.
“We okay?” Otto asked.
Jaxon shrugged, not looking at him.
“What’s the matter?” Otto asked.
“I don’t know. You’ve been acting all weird. Like you’re some big mercenary or something.”
“This is my new life now. It’s not like I chose it. General Meade’s goons keep chasing us. Two months ago, I had never heard a shot fired in anger, and now I’ve been in a bunch of gunfights.”
Jaxon turned and looked at him. “You haven’t killed anyone, have you?”
Otto shook his head, still staring out at the horizon. “No. I don’t want to. I’m not sure I have a choice, though. If someone comes at me, it’s me or them, and I know who I’ll choose.”
“That sounds like Grunt talking.”
“So what?” Otto replied, suddenly angry. “He knows what he’s doing. He’s saved me and you more than once.”
“It just doesn’t fit you. Even in that messed-up group home, you were the nicest, most grounded guy around.”
Otto snorted. “Yeah, grounded. I’m addicted to lighting fires.”
“Yeah, and Grunt won’t let you forget it. Why does he always call you Pyro?”
“Because he’s annoying. He means well, though. I think he does it so I won’t forget. Keep me from slipping up again.”
“You really look up to him, don’t you?”
Otto nodded. “He’s kinda like a big brother now. That’s cool. I never had a real family.”
“Tell me about it,” Jaxon grumbled.
“You know Edward offered to help me get in touch with my parents? He said I could write a letter to them telling them I’m safe, and he could send it by some special courier, no questions asked. The courier would mail it from the United States so it would look like I was in Alabama or Ohio or somewhere.”
“What did you tell them?”
Otto shrugged. “I didn’t write them.”
“Why not? They must be worried sick about you.”
Otto sighed. “No, I’m sure they’re not. That’s what everyone is saying, but they don’t get it because
they had real parents. They can never understand. Neither can you, because you never knew your parents so you romanticize them. I know it must be tough to be an orphan, but trust me when I tell you it’s not any easier having parents who don’t give a damn.”
“Someone else said the same thing to me a while back,” Jaxon said, thinking of Brett. “But he was crazy too, just like me—just like you.”
“None of those counselors or group homes ever helped us out, and now look where we are. We have to keep all this from making us crazier.”
Jaxon kissed him on the cheek. “Yeah, we’re going to need a lot of luck with that.”
Otto turned and kissed her full on the mouth, and they fell into each other’s arms and kissed again.
There was a loud hiss above them as a flaming red ball flew over their heads. Both ducked.
“Come on, lovebirds!” Grunt shouted at them from the Land Rover, waving a flare gun over his head. “Time to hit the road! Hey, Pyro! Did you light her fire? Get it? Light her fire? Ha ha ha ha!”
Grunt and Vivian gave each other a high five and got back into the Land Rovers.
Jaxon rolled her eyes. “Maybe we’re the only sane ones here.”
The two Land Rovers drove across the desert for the rest of the day. All the landscape looked the same. Sometimes, Jaxon checked the GPS just to reassure herself they were actually moving.
As the sun slanted low on the western horizon, Vivian pulled the Land Rover to a stop. Grunt stopped a few yards behind them.
“We need to fill up again already?” Otto asked.
Vivian started collecting her things. “No. Sunset is only an hour away, so we’ll camp here for the night. We don’t want to camp too close to the border with Mali. There are army patrols and rebel groups, not to mention smugglers. We don’t want to meet any of them.”
They started unpacking the gear and setting up the tents. Grunt and Otto were staying in one while the two scientists struggled to erect another. Vivian and Jaxon put up a third. Jaxon noticed that all the tents were positioned almost a hundred yards from each other. When she asked why, Vivian gave a sad smile.
