Groom Lake (6 page)

Los Angeles boasted one of the larger FBI field offices in the US, stationed in the Federal building near Westwood Village, and was the home base for Grason Kendricks, Special Agent in Charge of Operation Patriot.

A sofa in Grason’s office—an avocado green thing that was someone’s idea of modernizing the furniture in the seventies—served as a second bed. He kept the aging thing around for sentimental reasons. Twenty-nine years with the FBI had taught him intelligence work couldn’t be confined to an eight-hour day. He spent many nights on the sofa and had a feeling that Operation Patriot would ensure that he spent many more.

The Bureau had turned Grason into a pit bull: aggressive and fearless. His toughness was in his mind more than his body; he flexed intellect instead of muscle. Hours of planning and preparation, traits he learned in the Boy Scouts and Air Force and used repeatedly through life, went into everything he did.

For most of his FBI career Grason worked on mob and drug cartel investigations. The RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) statute was his best weapon against crime. He never envisioned his involvement in Operation Patriot would be anything like his days pursuing criminals under RICO. But soon after the investigation started, he saw similarities between the government and the Mafia: corrupt organizations involved in bribery, coercion and money laundering. He realized a simple tag allowed the government’s actions to go unpunished:
National Security
. Through his work with Operation Patriot, Grason learned disobedience alone didn’t make one a criminal: status in society played an integral part. While gangsters, ruffians and thugs received prison terms for their illicit actions, certain politicians, government employees and civilian contractors drew paychecks for their abuses.

Correctly anticipating freeway conditions in Los Angeles was as likely as seeing a UFO. Grason arrived at Denny’s Restaurant in San Clemente—halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego—at seven fifteen a.m., thirty minutes early for his meeting with the congressman spearheading Operation Patriot. He backed into a parking spot with a clear view of the lot and nodded off.

A few minutes later, the distant
whomp
,
whomp
,
whomp
of helicopter blades roused Grason from his nap. A force of eight battleship gray helicopters flew south over the pacific coast shoreline, less than a half mile from his location. Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base bordered the freeway for eighteen miles north of San Diego County, and witnessing training activities in the area wasn’t uncommon. The base prevented Southern California from becoming a giant megalopolis of construction beginning at the Tijuana border and stretching to the northern reaches of Los Angeles County. Seeing the helicopters and thinking about Camp Pendleton amused Grason, who was typically humorless; he smirked at the irony that the expansive military base was responsible for stopping industrial growth and urban sprawl. San Diego’s modern economy, like so many other military towns, spawned from defense spending. The Navy was a key ingredient in the original growth of San Diego. In some sense Grason also attributed that growth to his relationship with the congressman.

In the sixties, Grason had been an officer with the Air Force’s Project Blue Book—a long defunct division that specialized in UFO investigations. On several occasions, Grason investigated UFO sightings reported by Navy personnel stationed in San Diego, and dealt with the congressman, who worked in Naval Intelligence at the time. They developed a friendship, even shared a bachelor pad for several months while Grason made his transition from the Air Force to the FBI.

Grason was saddened by the thought that so many years had passed. His friendship with the congressman was still strong, but not what it once was. Destiny had divided their lifestyles. The congressman became a wealthy man before capturing his seat, while Grason kept busy with the FBI.

The congressman’s Mercedes sped across the lot and pulled into an adjacent spot. Grason gave a small wave to his old friend, who was masked by a pair of designer sunglasses and looking debonair in his expensive clothes. The two were of similar age, but the congressman looked years younger thanks to pricey cosmetic work.

The congressman had retired from Navy Intelligence in 1985, after a quarter century of service. Realizing the growing need for computers and related products in the military, he went into sales and called on his former military brethren as customers, aspiring to a fat income. Anticipating the proliferation of laptop computers gave him a vision for the future of military technology. Using proceeds from his sales career, he bankrolled a software company that developed wartime applications for use by troops in the field. His financial coup d’état came in 1990, when he sold his company to a conglomerate in an eight-figure deal. After months of jet setting and enjoying his financial independence, he had a new vision for his future: he wanted knowledge. And not just any knowledge; he wanted specific information. Information he could smell but never see during his stint in the intelligence arena. Information he believed he could touch only via a political road map.

Pouring all his energy—and a considerable amount of his personal resources—into politics, he bought his way into the California Republican Party and claimed a congressional seat in the heart of San Diego.

The congressman’s Mercedes was still in drive when Grason whipped open the door and plopped in the passenger seat. “A lot has happened since we last met,” Grason said.

“Enlighten me.”

“First off, Professor Eldred said yes, but he threw a kink in the deal. He wants to involve his assistant. He agreed not to tell the kid about the operation, but that’s not good enough for me. I won’t give him a full briefing.”

“That’s fine for now, but when he starts combining the results of his research with the information we’ll be providing him, he’ll be asking questions.”

“We’ll deal with that when the time comes. For now, I’m running a check on the kid.”

“Do whatever’s necessary to bring Eldred on board. He’s a perfect choice for that position.”

Grason nodded, then proceeded to the next issue. “Val saw a craft in the Papoose Valley. Vertical landing. No runway. He thinks it landed in the mountain range between Groom and Papoose.”

Chills ran up the congressman’s spine. Until now everything they knew about Papoose Lake was based on rumors, secondhand testimonies and theories derived from studying manipulated budget allocations. “How could you wait to tell me good news like that?”

“It’s bittersweet. There were some security problems. Val wasn’t close enough to analyze the craft in detail.”

“Security problems? Didn’t the Bio Suit work?”

“The suit worked, but it’s untested. The security in Papoose was greater than Val had anticipated. He had to move slowly, test the suit and learn the land as he went. To make matters worse, a trespasser was in the area jeopardizing his position. Val tripped a motion sensor, which led to her capture, but in the commotion he was unable to film the craft.”

“Her? Who was the trespasser?” the congressman asked.

“There’s no trace of an apprehension. He has some photos, but not detailed. She’s Asian, maybe Chinese. Maybe a spy. Don’t know.”

“If they can keep an entire base secret, hiding the apprehension of a trespasser is nothing,” the congressman said. “I don’t imagine she’s the first person caught out there. For now we shouldn’t be concerned unless it’s our man.” He had hoped just one undercover mission would be necessary. Even with the sophisticated life support and surveillance equipment they provided for their agent, forcing a man to trek around the Nevada desert for two weeks at a time was perilous. “You’ve got to send him back,” he continued. “Especially now that we know there’s something to film.”

“I know. We’re going to Joshua Tree this Friday to run more tests on the equipment. I want him to rest another week after that before returning.”

“You ever hear of gravity anomalies?” the congressman asked.

“No.”

“They’re changes in density below the surface that affect the gravitational pull above ground. Oil companies measure them to find new drilling sites.”

Grason understood the congressman’s angle. “Sounds like they could pinpoint an underground base.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. There are a variety of ways to measure. Our best option is through one of several European companies that run satellite observation programs; check it out.”

“I was thinking the other day,” Grason said, “an outsider might not view Operation Patriot any differently than the other black programs.”

“Are you having second thoughts about our intentions?”

“No, but they may be ambiguous in certain circles.”

“That’s why I use my own money. I’m not in bed with any outside interests. But that’s enough talk about getting caught. Let’s get what we need and move on before they know who we are.”

“I’m working at it,” Grason told him.

“Do you need me to do anything?”

“Try doing nothing for a while—let me handle things.” Grason admired his friend’s passion and his ability to muster the same passion in others, but he feared the ramifications if those passions were not contained. The people they investigated had remained invisible for decades. How they handled probing outsiders was unknown, and he didn’t care to find out.

“I read the other day about another Mars probe,” the congressman said. “We had the means to send probes twenty years ago. I’ve got a suspicion that whatever is hidden below the desert will show that our space program didn’t stop with the shuttle.”

Damien Owens lived a reclusive life as an elite intelligence agent. He preferred thinking to talking, so the fact he had no friends outside work was not a problem, but a preference. His psychological traits helped qualify him for his unique position in the intelligence community.

In 1966, Owens became a member of the Navy’s Seal Team One based in Coronado, California, where he underwent extensive training that prepared him for the war in Vietnam. Dehumanization of the enemy was a technique instilled in the soldiers, and it taught Owens to think less of a person by not concerning himself with feelings.

Owens’ first kill came one week after stepping off the rear ramp of a C-130 Hercules transport plane into the Rung Sat Special Zone. A Viet Cong courier paddling his sampan through a swampy region, forty miles southeast of Saigon, never knew what hit him. From the dense mangrove saplings and vines at the water’s edge, Owens ambushed him with automatic gunfire. Four days later, he dropped grenades into a narrow tunnel entrance after seeing two Viet Cong soldiers enter. The tunnel led to a small underground cavern where his unit searched for intelligence documents. Besides the soldiers, they discovered two young women in the demolished remains, “casualties of war,” Owens told his troops without remorse.

Shadow killings left Owens with no stories of chivalry to brag about, but his low-key approach achieved the desired results and kept him alive. His technique and mental tolerance for situations that could drive many men to insanity made him stand out.

After a successful first tour of duty, Owens was placed on TAD (Temporary Additional Duty) and the Navy loaned his services to the Phoenix Program, a clandestine CIA operation intended to undermine the political forces controlling the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong by conducting search and destroy missions behind enemy lines. Political constraints ultimately limited the Phoenix Program’s actions, and Owens learned first hand that involving politics in military operations inhibited the results.

Owens never returned to the Navy after the Phoenix Program. The Central Intelligence Agency wanted him, and had the power to make such a move happen. Anonymity, power and clandestine operations—he couldn’t have imagined a better job.

The CIA first assigned him to Information Management. Boring, he thought, but soon learned, in the black world, names were deceiving. Summer of 1968, Owens returned to Vietnam disguised as a NILO (Naval Intelligence Liaison Officer) stationed at the Binh Thuy Air Base. The CIA wanted him to investigate reports made by American troops throughout Vietnam of unidentifiable lights in the sky. He anticipated spending most of his time looking for more work to do. However, reports of strange flying lights began pouring in nightly from demilitarized zone outposts along the Ben Hai River. Soldiers in remote radar outposts first reported the sightings, but additional incidents and subsequent rumors and paranoia started spreading across the region.

The situation reminded Owens of World War II stories he had studied about Foo Fighters: mysterious balls of red and green light that American pilots sometimes claimed had chased them. Since the Foo Fighters never attacked, the assumption was made that they were some type of enemy reconnaissance drone. After the war, military intelligence learned Japanese and German pilots had reported the same sightings and attributed them to advanced technology used by American and allied forces. The phenomenon was never officially explained.

Owens knew from the Foo Fighter reports that offering an explanation, any explanation, helped the troops deal with the situation. He reported that communist helicopters were shining the strange lights as a scare tactic. Although the North Vietnamese Army didn’t possess helicopters, the propaganda offered the troops a logical explanation and led them to believe they could conquer the strange lights in hostile situations.

Owens’ ability to control a situation—and people—using perceptive manipulation scored more points for him with his superiors. He had proven his physical and psychological abilities in the jungle, and now had exposed his intuitive mental aptitude.

For fourteen months after Vietnam, he worked various assignments with the CIA. Unbeknownst to Owens, each was a further test of his abilities. In 1970, Owens met the family he never had: the team members of Aquarius.

Aquarius existed under the auspices of the CIA, but the organization was its own entity, and operated as such. Unlike other branches in the intelligence community, Aquarius was not regulated by typical bureaucratic checks and balances; an elite committee of twelve individuals had been overseeing the organization since its inception in the fifties.

Owens had devoted his life to Aquarius, as was expected. After sixteen years, he became commander of the aristocratic intelligence agents responsible for protecting sensitive technological information possessed by the United States government—information that had garnered the catchphrase
Above Top Secret
.

Owens studied his latest disciple, Kayla, sitting in the passenger seat of their Suburban as he filled the vehicle with gasoline. They had a critical task to attend to, which would require a long drive before it was over, and he wanted to fill up before they had any passengers. The situation confronting them would expose Kayla to new facets of their operations, and he had decided it was time to elevate her understanding, and not just of her job duties, but what those duties protected.

Owens spent over two years following Kayla’s progress after he had the Central Intelligence Agency make her an analyst along with five other possible candidates for her Aquarius position.

Intelligence, patience, reclusiveness, few friends, mental stability, physical toughness, no immediate family contacts, intense loyalty to the United States of America: those were a small sampling of the mandatory traits Owens looked for in his team members. The mix wasn’t common, but in a country larger than two hundred and fifty million, there were enough candidates to fill the positions. He never started the search process from scratch. Military and intelligence databases categorized individuals through a variety of means: military service, internship programs, present employees, psychological testing, background checks, even high school and college scholarship contests.

Kayla’s birth name was Trisha Lawrence. Just over three years ago, Trisha Lawrence was a junior partner with a small New York City law firm. She had entered the intelligence community databases early in her career when the firm represented an East Coast defense contractor in a wrongful death case. The government required that all fifteen employees at the firm pass a background check before they could take the case.

Unbeknownst to Trisha, her profile had intrigued several upper level operators over the years, but it wasn’t until Owens had the CIA offer her a lucrative package analyzing and overseeing contract negotiations between defense contractors and international clients that she took the bait.

The CIA served as a microscope for Owens, allowing him to further analyze the candidates for his apprentice position. Kayla had never been in the military, and thus Owens considered her a soldier of different fortune. Kayla had lived her life as the legal professions’ version of a Navy Seal: a litigator. He saw her as a white-collar weapon, a valuable addition to his operation. Her beauty furthered her potency, and her beauty was the most dangerous kind: natural. Kayla didn’t own make-up because she didn’t need it; her skin was clear and her lips were full. She often brushed her long brown hair using her hand, and let it hang straight instead of primping with irons or other devices she viewed as a vain waste of time.

As Owens’ apprentice, Trisha Lawrence was taught to live with a past consisting only of her most recent footstep. The name Kayla Kiehl, just like the name Damien Owens, was assigned like a piece of equipment. No paper trails linked them to the government of the United States, nor the Central Intelligence Agency.

As Owens turned the Suburban onto Desert Inn Road, he fell behind a slow-moving truck and had to hit the breaks, sending Kayla’s mobile phone sliding from her lap onto the floor. She reached down to retrieve it and Owens found himself captivated by her hair as a lock fell across her cheek.

“Have you ever worn your hair in a bun?” he asked.

“A bun?” she chuckled. “I think old ladies wear buns.”

“Well then … what do women wear to keep their hair up? Tight to their scalp, like when they’re in the military.”

“Clips, or bobby pins. I haven’t seen a woman with a bun since my seventh-grade English teacher.”

“Whatever it requires, keep some spares in the car. I’d prefer your hair high and tight.” The sexuality a woman brought to his work environment gave him an unfamiliar feeling—a new challenge he didn’t know how to process, as most of his adult life had been spent around men. He needed to be direct and consistent with her, the way he handled everything else.

The Suburban’s onboard computer chimed, alerting receipt of an electronic mail message. Logging onto the computer under the roll-top dash, Kayla checked the message. “It’s from the DC team: ‘In recent actions the National Archives Annex in College Park, Maryland, has accelerated its fulfillment of FOIA requests. Declassification continues to be handled in-house; however many documents are being released to the requestor before we have an opportunity to review. A recent request for anti-gravity related documents was fulfilled without our usual perusal. By the time we received notice through the standard channels, the documents had already been shipped. Please advise.’”

“Why do problems always come in clusters?” Owens asked.

“Is this serious?”

“I doubt it. A lot of classified documents are in storage, most outdated and harmless. But we double-check certain topics. Sometimes the slightest comment or word can be a clue for someone looking to expose our programs. Apparently procedural changes have cut the DC team out of the loop. Send a reply. I want copies of those documents and a background report on the requestor.”

Owens turned left into a gated residential entrance at the Las Vegas Country Club. The homes surrounded a golf course in the shadow of the famed Las Vegas Strip. He gave a name listed on the Skyles’ visitor list and was granted access.

“How does Skyles afford this?” Kayla asked, studying the exclusive homes on the street.

“Barely. He’s cash poor. In 1992 he cashed out his GRATCOR stock options and put all the money, plus everything in his 401(k), into a stock account. Then margined the money so he had twice as much buying power and sunk it all into Starbucks’ IPO. It was the most financially reckless thing I had ever seen, but before I could intervene and protect him, the stock took off. So instead of telling him to stop, I bought into Starbucks too. This past April he cashed out with more than a three hundred percent gain on his original investment in two years time. He paid his capital gains and then put everything down on a house.”

“Then how can he be strapped financially?”

“He still has a mortgage, car payments, country club fees, and a wife who likes to spend.”

“Nice of you to blame it on the woman.”

“Skyles travels too much to participate in all the shopping that gets charged to their credit cards.”

“He can’t spend money when he’s traveling?” she asked.

Owens found her comment amusing. “His government trips are all-inclusive,” he answered, not offering to elaborate because it would only lead to more questions he didn’t have time for.

Turning the car off in front of Skyles’ house, Owens hesitated before exiting, and faced Kayla. “Typically, when a person becomes a full-fledged agent of Aquarius, there is a ceremony with the other agents, at which point the books are opened to you, and you’ll eventually come to learn and understand all that we manage and why. I don’t know exactly what will go down inside that house, and need to prep you for some sensitive technological issues. So I’m sorry the official notification has to come in the front seat of a car, but consider yourself graduated to the United States’ highest security level.” Clearing his throat, he proceeded, “I’ll still hold some topics back so you aren’t overwhelmed, and until you learn to handle them properly, which only comes from on-the-job experience. But from this time forward, believe all that you see. When you ask yourself how something is possible, or how we can keep something so bizarre a secret, think about all the time, energy and resources that went into qualifying you. Then think about the security, the classifications, the segmentation, the surveillance, the monitoring, everything you have been exposed to thus far. When something surprises you, don’t think of it as new, but well-guarded. It’s only new to you.” He offered her a congratulatory handshake. “Are you ready?”

With her hand holding his, she looked at the house and wondered what waited inside. Facing Owens, she studied his unique eyes, the same evil-looking eyes that had once intimidated her, the eyes she now trusted, and the eyes that now trusted her. She answered his readiness question by tightening her grip on his hand. Words seemed trivial to her at this point. The man had spent two years studying every facet of her life. He knew the answer before he had posed the question.

Linda Skyles stood under a portico that marked the entrance to her golf course villa, glaring hatefully at the two strangers in dark clothes marching up her driveway.

“Hello, Mrs. Skyles,” Owens said.

Linda nodded. She had never seen the man before and unless he offered to introduce himself she wouldn’t ask his name. Linda knew little about her husband’s work other than its rigorous security. Ben had taught her to keep a low profile and structure her life around his demanding job. The compensation for her sacrifices was a discriminative lifestyle, but those rewards were losing their advantage, making her life less tolerable. Her husband’s work sometimes kept him away for days and weeks at a time. She had begun viewing their golf course community as a type of prison; they couldn’t travel more than fifty miles from home without filing a report. Excursions out of state required permission, and trips outside the country were not worth the bureaucratic hassles.