The Red Phoenix 12: Strength Comes in Numbers (6 page)

“Hi there,” said the truck driver, grinning through his pudgy cheeks with mustache as he straightened his ball cap.

“What do you have for us?” asked Gough in a dreary voice.

“Delivery from Houston, Texas,” the driver answered in a cheery tone.

“N.A.S.A.?” asked Gough.

“You got it,” the driver replied.

“What’s your name, sir?” asked Gough.

“Rick Hansen,” the driver responded.

“I don’t see your name on the roster today, Mr. Hansen,” stated Gough, scanning over the paper on his clipboard.

“My people called in advance. I thought you’d be expecting us,” stated Rick.

“Well, nobody tells me anything in this God-forsaken mud-hole,” Gough answered. “I’ll have to call it in. Gimme your ID badge.”

“You bet,” Rick answered, handing him his credentials, thinking,
What a stiff.

Gough made a call on his phone.

“It’s Gough. We have a delivery from N.A.S.A. Put your boss on the phone so I can talk to him,” he said, sounding crusty.

There was a pause. Gough looked at the driver then along the side of the white delivery truck, searching for anything that looked suspicious or out of place.

“I didn’t hear you, did you say your boss will be back in five minutes?” asked Gough into the phone. “Okay, fine, have him call me as soon as he gets back in,” he added, ending the call.

“Well?” asked the driver.

“The only one who can grant clearance will be back in a few,” said Gough. “It sounds like your guys spoke to our people in special ops.”

“So, what do you want to do?” asked Rick.

“Go ahead and open up the back of your truck for us and we’ll see what you have.”

“Sure,” the driver replied.

The back doors to the truck opened. Gough and a few officers climbed up into the trailer, shining their flashlights over the pallets that were stacked with old, junky weapons parts, greasy bolts and pieces of failed robotic inventions in boxes and crates. The driver waited with his thumbs in his pockets like it was just another delivery with officers standing by. Gough made his way down the narrow aisle of large boxes toward the front of the trailer.

“See anything, Gough?” asked one of the officers, rummaging through a couple of boxes of scrap plastic and metal.

“Nah, the lighting sucks in here though,” Gough replied. “It looks like we’re inheriting a bunch of crap from N.A.S.A.’s attic, he answered, shining his light over the other boxes.

“You got to love all the storage space we have here at the Red Phoenix,” said another officer, shining his light in another area.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Gough. “There is no telling what we’ll be storing in the vaults next.”

“Yeah, we’ll be keeping the aliens for Area Fifty-One, all the toxic waste for the EPA and the illegal immigrants for US Customs and INS,” another officer joked.

“Makes sense,” said another. “We’re close enough to the Mexican border.”

“That’s funny right there, man,” the officers chuckled, breaking into laughter.

“Keep it down, guys,” Gough rebuked, being the only serious one in the trailer, still scanning over the boxes and crates.

He stopped as he spotted the metal chest from the crashed starship sitting on top of one of the boxes over a heap of old computer consoles. He stared at it for a moment. The chest sat there making whispery sounds like it was calling out to him. He stared at it some more as he began to hear what sounded like soft, faint, whispery-echo sounds.

“You guys hear something?” asked Gough.

“Nope,” one of the officers answered.

“Not me,” another replied.

Gough continued to stare at it without blinking and began to feel curious as to what was inside it. He drew closer to the chest, keeping his flashlight on it. He reached out to it but then his phone rang.

“Gough here,” he answered, backing away from the metal chest.

The officers stopped searching and waited for Gough to finish his call.

“Yeah, it looks like a bunch of crap to me but who am I?” stated Gough into the phone.

There was another pause as Gough’s light landed on a box with a bio-hazard warning sign stamped on the bottom.

“Toxic materials? Seriously? Well, that is just great. My team and I just decided to look through the trailer on a primary search,” said Gough, sounding disgruntled, hanging up his phone.

“What’s up?” asked one of the officers.

“Everybody out!” said Gough.

“What’s wrong?” asked another officer.

“Apparently, there are toxic and hazardous things in here and we were supposed to wear bio-suits just to look around,” Gough answered.

“Great,” scoffed another officer, jumping down from the trailer.

Gough leaped down, perturbed.

“You know, you could have told me you were hauling toxic materials in there,” Gough said to the driver in a hard tone.

“Hey, I don’t do inventory, I’m just a driver who gets a manifest and told to transport what they tell me,” he answered. “If I’d known, I would have told ya. I—”

“—Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Gough brushed him off like he didn’t give a damn, turning his attention to the gate.

“Open up! Let him through!” said Gough.

The gate opened at a slow speed. Rick got back into the driver seat and shifted gears, glad to get away from the jerky military guards. The delivery truck proceeded through and headed towards the main facility.

***

The subway came to a stop on level minus forty.

“Why are we stopping?” asked Chris.

“We’re a little early,” stated Scott, stepping off the train. “You said you were into genetic engineering, right?”

“I am,” Chris answered, following him.

“C’mon, I want to show you something,” urged Scott, hiding a smile.

“What is it?” asked Chris.

“Only the coolest top secret thing going on around here, next to Siddoway’s inventions,” Scott responded, leading Chris down a wide corridor.

***

Scott and Chris stood on an automatic sidewalk that took them down a long corridor to the far side of level minus eighty. Some employees walked at a casual pace in both directions in the corridor.

“Ask yourself, what would be the coolest thing ever?” asked Scott.

“I don’t know? The end of world starvation?” Chris answered.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” asked Scott in disbelief. “Come right this way, my brother.”

“Are you going to tell me where you’re taking me?” asked Chris, enjoying the schoolyard game Scott was playing with him.

“Right over here,” said Scott, taking him to a locked door then sliding his ID badge through the electronic locking device.

The door opened with a heavy metal sound over the tile floor on the other side.

“C’mon,” said Scott, leading him down another narrow hallway that ended with a locked door and a small window.

“How many secret passages does this place have?” asked Chris.

“Too many to count,” Scott answered. “Take a look in there.”

Chris looked through the window, watching several lab technicians wearing full-body white gowns and hoods with their faces exposed. None of them noticed Chris and Scott peeking at them. He saw what looked like humans lying on beds underneath a sheet.

“What are they doing in there?” asked Chris.

“Imagine, a complete human clone being made within ten minutes from a single strand of DNA,” Scott answered. “Keith Sanders is the department manager and is pretty intense about it.”

“They are seriously making human
clones
in there?” asked Chris.

Scott nodded with a spark in his eye and stiff upper lip smile.

“Is that legal?” asked Chris.

“Anything the government wants to do here at Red Phoenix is
legal
,” Scott responded, his voice dead serious. “Actually, what they have in there are artificial intelligences.”

“Huh?” asked Chris, sounding confused.

“Well, until the A.I.s have a host, they’re not clones, technically,” Scott added.

“That is the most bazaar thing I’ve ever seen,” said Chris, looking through the small window again.

“The cloning experiment is near completion,” stated Scott. “The final phase should be done in a few months. Nobody’s supposed to know about it.”

“You seem to know a lot about this place,” said Chris, moving away from the window.

“I know far more than I should about this place,” Scott responded.

“Like what else?” asked Chris.

“The fact the Red Phoenix is a line of defense for our country,” Scott answered.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Chris.

“Notice where it was built?”

“Near the Mexican border?” Chris responded.

“Bingo,” said Scott. “You’re talking about a place that will be manufacturing the latest weapons that are so advanced and hi-tech that it’s going to make managing the little
illegal
alien problem
a heck of a lot easier.”

“All this tax money just to keep out the immigrants from Mexico?” asked Chris. “Seems a bit outlandish if you ask me.”

“Oh, it doesn’t end there. Not even close,” stated Scott.

“What else is this place for then?” asked Chris.

“Try nuclear weapons,” Scott replied. “Why else do you think we’re out in the middle of the friggin’ desert? Anything goes wrong, nothing gets damaged. Get it?”

“Is that why there are so many levels built under the surface?” asked Chris.

Scott nodded again with his sparkly-eyed, stiff upper lip smile.

“Cloning, nuclear weaponry and managing the Mexican border sound like big jobs,” stated Chris.

“I also heard the left wing is going to be for the construction of the new space shuttle they’re going to call the
Mayflower
,” stated Scott.

“Isn’t that what N.A.S.A. was for?” asked Chris.

“N.A.S.A. is an old facility,” stated Scott. “A lot of the maintenance is in the crapper.”

“Juanita was right. There are many things going on here,” said Chris, wiping some lint from his sleeve.

“You want to know something else about this place?” asked Scott.