Department 19: Zero Hour (27 page)

As the wide, angular jet climbed steeply into the sky and accelerated west, Matt’s disappointment had been mollified by a pair of wide high-definition screens that lowered from the ceiling. One allowed the
Mina II
’s occupants to watch a vast selection of live satellite television channels. The second, brilliantly, was a continuous feed from a camera positioned in the plane’s belly, pointing directly downwards. By the time the screens lowered and hummed into life, they were already high over the Irish Sea and still accelerating; the screen showed a wide expanse of grey-blue water, punctuated by the white lines of rolling waves.

Now, as they neared their destination, the screen was showing a landscape that was as alien to Matt as the surface of the moon. Desert stretched out in every direction, an impossibly wide vista of orange and red studded with the occasional oasis of washed-out green. Roads and trails tracked through the barren landscape, straight lines of grey and twisting loops and whirls of pale brown, and every now and then Matt’s eyes were drawn to tiny clusters of white and grey, desert settlements of such isolation that he could not imagine any rational human choosing to live in them.

As the
Mina II
began to descend, its headlong blast across the Atlantic and the majority of the North American continent almost complete, her pilot banked her south, dipping the angular port wing to almost ninety degrees. The camera swung upwards and, in the distance, for a fleeting second, Matt saw an incongruous huddle of vast, gleaming buildings surrounded by wide urban sprawl.

“Ever been to Vegas?”

Matt looked round, and found the Security Operator smiling at him.

“No,” he said. “I’d love to, though.”

“You should,” said the Operator, shutting his eyes again as he spoke. “At least once. Do it before you’re too old.”

Matt stared at the distant city. Larissa had told him and Jamie and Kate stories about Las Vegas when she got back from her time at NS9, and not just about Chloe, the vampire girl who seemed to have profoundly changed her view of the world in which Blacklight existed; she had told them about the casinos, about vast floors of green-felted tables and flashing, rattling machines, about bars and restaurants that never closed, about roads that were eight lanes wide. Now he had briefly seen it for himself, from inside a plane that the public didn’t know existed.

He smiled as the
Mina II
levelled out and descended rapidly towards the ground. It was rare that he found himself with time to actually think about what his life had become, to marvel at how crazy, how dangerous, how remarkably weird it really was.

The plane touched down with a squeal of tyres and a roar that shook his bones. He was pressed back in his seat as the jet screamed along the runway, until the engines slowly began to wind down, and his companions unclipped themselves from their safety harnesses and began to gather their possessions. Matt did likewise, his stomach churning with sudden excitement. He felt the plane turn left, then roll to a complete stop; a second later the wide ramp at the rear of the hold rumbled into life, dropping steadily down and out towards the ground.

Heat beyond anything Matt had felt before swirled into the enclosed space. It felt as though the air was made of burning sandpaper, and the light that blazed into the hold was so bright it hurt his eyes.

“Welcome to Nevada,” said one of the Science Division Operators, and smiled. “Try not to get melanoma.”

Matt forced a smile in return and got up from his seat. He walked down the ramp on slightly unsteady legs, shielding his eyes with his hand, and stepped on to the soil of another country for the first time in his life. Before him, blindingly white and seemingly endless, was an enormous salt flat, the remains, he knew, of the long-dry Groom Lake. The runway they had landed on sliced across it and stretched away into the shimmering distance; he followed it until it disappeared, and saw a low collection of hangars and buildings nestling between two low ranges of mountains that rose to the east and west.

Area 51,
he thought.
I’m standing in the middle of Area 51. My God, the things people would do to swap places with me now, even just for a minute.

A black SUV was making its way towards them, kicking up a huge cloud of dust, partially obscuring a squat truck with huge wheels that was following it. Matt waited beside the two Science Division Operators and the
Mina II
’s flight crew, who had shut down the engines and disembarked. The Security Operator remained inside the hold; he would stay with the plane until she took off, even though she would be parked in a hangar belonging to Blacklight’s closest ally.

“Why didn’t we land at Papoose Lake?” asked Matt, squinting against the sun.

“Nowhere to put her under the mountain,” said one of the Science Operators. “Picking up and dropping off, we go right to NS9’s front door. But if we’re staying overnight we land here.”

Matt nodded, feeling sweat beginning to form on his forehead and beneath his arms. By the time the black SUV pulled up in front of them, he was already very, very hot, despite the climate-controlling fabric of his uniform.

The woman who got out of the vehicle was tall, dressed in similar all-black, and looked somewhat severe, at least to Matt’s eyes; she was in her late thirties, her face tanned and remarkably rectangular, as though straight lines and right angles had been all that were available when it was designed. Her dark hair was tied back in a short ponytail, and the expression on her face was one of studied professionalism.

“Good morning,” she said, staring directly at Matt. “I’m Captain Lindsey Hawkins, Groom Lake Security Detachment.” She looked at the two Science Division Operators and smiled. “Lieutenant Teller, Lieutenant Greenaway. Nice to have you back with us.”

“Thank you, Captain,” said one of the men. Matt had not asked any names, so didn’t know whether it was Teller or Greenaway who spoke; he belatedly wondered if that had been rude of him.

Hawkins nodded, and turned her attention to the flight crew. “Major Grant, Lieutenant Phillips. The four of you are in the same accommodation block as usual.”

“The one next to the bowling alley?” asked the man who Matt assumed was Major Grant, by virtue of his more advanced years; the man standing beside him, who was presumably Lieutenant Phillips, looked barely old enough to have started shaving.

Hawkins smiled. “You got it,” she said. “I hope you brought your wallet.”

Grant smiled. “I left it at the Loop,” he said. “I thought that would be safer.”

“Now why don’t I believe that?” asked Hawkins. “A jeep’ll be out to get the four of you in about five minutes. You good here till then? I have to take our VIP straight round the mountain.”

She’s talking about me,
realised Matt.
VIP. I’m a VIP.

“Sure,” said either Teller or Greenaway. “We’ll just hang out here in the shade.” He looked round, at the squat truck that was preparing to tow the
Mina II
towards the long row of hangars by a thick cable attached to her landing gear, and widened his eyes theatrically. “Oh, hang on …”

“Don’t be a baby,” said Hawkins. “It’s not even hot yet.”

“That’s demonstrably not true,” replied the Science Operator, smiling widely. “Go on, get out of here. We’ll be fine here on the burning tarmac.”

“All right,” said Hawkins, and pulled open the rear door of the SUV. “I’ll see you all this evening. I’ll be the one rolling strikes and taking your money. Lieutenant Browning, if you’re ready?”

“Thanks,” said Matt, and climbed up into the vehicle. The air-conditioned interior was glorious, the tan leather seat soft and comfortable. As Hawkins climbed behind the wheel and pressed her foot on to the accelerator, he was already fighting the urge to close his eyes.

“So you’re Blacklight?” said Hawkins, glancing at him through the rear-view mirror as they sped across the salt flat. “You look a little young, if you don’t mind me saying?”

Of course not,
thought Matt.
Why would I mind that?

“I’m seventeen,” he said.

“Jesus,” said Hawkins, smiling into the mirror. “I’ve got two nephews older than you. You must be shit-hot at something.”

Matt met her eyes. “I’m just here as an observer.”

“Right,” said Hawkins. “And I just work at a regular air base like I tell my mom.”

Matt smiled. “You’re not NS9 then?”

“No,” said Hawkins, accelerating as they left the lake bed and joined a tarmac road that ran round the base of the mountain rising up to the left of the car. “I’m Air Force, technically. I got recruited into Intelligence six years ago, and stationed out here a year later.”

“You must have seen some stuff.”

Hawkins laughed. “You’ve no idea. Vampires aren’t the only things in the universe that we don’t want anyone to know about.”

“Really?” said Matt, his mind suddenly full of possibilities. “Like what?”

“Classified,” said Hawkins, her smile wide. “Sorry.”

The road wound between the mountain and a chunk of fallen rock the size of an office building. For a moment, all Matt could see were walls of grey, until they emerged from the pass and a hangar appeared through the SUV’s windscreen: a huge semi-circular opening hacked out of a sheer wall of rock. Hawkins drove into it and brought the SUV to a halt.

“Here you are,” she said. “Good luck with your observing.”

“Thanks,” said Matt. He grabbed his bag, opened the door, and stepped out into Dreamland, the headquarters of National Security Division 9. The SUV turned in a tight circle and disappeared, leaving him standing in the middle of the hangar on his own. He looked round at the rows of jeeps and vans, at the thick glass that enclosed an armoury, at the guard posts that stood at the edges of the wide entrance.

It’s the same as the Loop,
he thought.
Exactly the same. I wonder which one came first?

“Lieutenant Browning?”

Matt turned towards the voice and saw a young woman in a black Operator’s uniform approaching him. She was short and thin, with a pretty face and chopped black hair, and was smiling widely as she stopped in front of him.

“I’m Matt Browning,” he said. “Reporting as requested.”

“I’m Kara Porter,” she replied. “I’m to take you to the Director, but we can swing by your quarters and drop your stuff off first if you want?”

Matt shook his head. “No need,” he said. “I’m ready.”

Kara nodded. “Follow me,” she said, and set off across the hangar. Matt followed her, trying not to look at everything around him with the open mouth of a tourist.

The number plates on the vans are different. Her uniform is a fractionally different shade of black to mine. The sunlight is brighter than I’ve ever seen it.

“It’s great to meet you, Matt,” said Kara, as she led him through a pair of double doors in the corner of the hangar and into a grey corridor identical to the one that ran through the centre of the Loop’s Level 0. “Larissa talked about you all the time.”

“You knew Larissa when she was here?” he asked.

“Everyone knew her,” said Kara, smiling. “She was kind of hard to miss. But we were friends, her and me and a few others. We were devastated when she left.”

So was she,
thought Matt.

“That’s cool,” he said. “She’s awesome. And she loved it here.”

Kara’s smiled faltered, momentarily. “That’s good to hear,” she said. “We loved having her. It was a shame how it ended, but I don’t blame her. Will you tell her that for me, when you get home?”

Matt frowned. “How it ended?”

“Didn’t she tell you?” asked Kara, her eyes narrowing.

“Tell me what?”

“Things just got … well, they got kind of messy. There was some weirdness between her and Tim Albertsson, one of our Special Operators, and it all sort of unravelled.”

Matt stared, unable to keep the shock from his face. Kara noticed it, and her eyes widened as she realised what he was thinking.

“Jesus,” she said. “Nothing
happened
between her and Tim. I know Jamie Carpenter is your friend, and Larissa loves him, she really does. She couldn’t wait to get back to him. She even asked our Director whether he could transfer Jamie out here.”

Did she?
thought Matt.
Something else she must have forgotten to mention.

“So what was the weirdness between them?” he asked. “What happened?”

“Shit, I shouldn’t have even brought this up,” said Kara, the dark skin of her cheeks flushing. “I just assumed you knew. This is for Larissa to tell you, not me.”

“Larissa’s not here,” said Matt. “So you’re going to have to.”

“It was just a
thing
,” said Kara. “Tim had a crush on Larissa and she didn’t really notice until it had got seriously big. So it got weird and awkward, because they were friends and they worked together, and Larissa blamed herself for not noticing sooner and shutting it down, and then Tim tried to kiss her and she warned him—”

“Hold on,” interrupted Matt. “He tried to kiss her? When everyone knew she was with Jamie?”

“Yeah,” said Kara. “Like I said, Tim
really
liked her. It was kind of pathetic, to tell you the truth. We tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen, and it ended up with Larissa basically threatening to kick his ass if he tried anything else. And then Larissa got called home early, right in the middle of the whole Tim thing, so she went and she left us here.”

“I don’t understand,” said Matt.

“Larissa’s mission was—”

“To bring new Operators back to Blacklight,” said Matt. “I know.”

“Right,” said Kara. “So early on, when she’d only been here for a week or so, Tim asked her if she’d pick him to go back with her. His family are European and he’s obsessed with Blacklight, all the history and everything. Larissa said she would, and that she’d take me and three of our friends as well, if we wanted to go. She had to take six, and I don’t know who the other one would have been. Anna Frost, if I had to guess. Anyway, we said yes, because everyone wants to see the Loop, right? The founders and the Fallen Gallery and that stuff. So she was happy, because I think what she wanted were some people at the Loop who she knew were on her side, you know, and we were happy, and Tim was
delighted
.”