The Roswell Conspiracy (19 page)

“You’re saying that this xenobium could be an alien artifact?” Grant said.

“Don’t be absurd,” Kessler said. “It could have easily been part of the meteorite or comet that exploded. Dombrovski just found the remnants that didn’t detonate. And so did the Australians.”

“What happened to the sample Dombrovski brought to America?” Tyler said.

“For the next thirty years, he experimented with it. He established a project to take advantage of xenobium’s unique properties and named it Caelus for the Roman god of the sky. Dombrovski was also trying to figure out how to produce more xenobium, but he never was able to.”

“What was the goal of Project Caelus?”

“We don’t know,” Kessler said. “In 1947 his lab was destroyed in a fire set by Soviet spies, taking Dombrovski and the xenobium with it. Most of the records about Caelus were lost as well, but there were enough surviving files to confirm that his xenobium was the same material as the specimen found in Australia.”

Collins entered and nodded at Morgan and Vince. “The Australian police need to talk to one of you.”

“Why?” Morgan said.

“They found the bodies of the men who picked up the Killswitch from the airport.”

“I’ll take it,” Vince said.

“Find out where the crime scene is,” Morgan said. “Tell them we’ll head there in five minutes.”

Vince nodded and left.

Kessler stood. “While we’re taking a break, I need to take my own.” He left at a trot, as though he were barely going to make it to the bathroom.

Grant grinned at the quick exit. “When you gotta go, you gotta go.”

“They’ve been looking for xenobium ever since,” Tyler said under his breath.

“What was that?” Morgan asked.

Tyler suddenly stood when it clicked. “The Russians. They’ve been looking for more xenobium for almost a hundred years.”

“But if that’s what Colchev’s men were looking for,” Grant said, “why did they attack Fay?”

“Maybe they thought she had a sample of it. She said they were asking about a multi-hued metal object, colored like an opal. Hafnium becomes opalescent when it oxidizes, so I’m guessing xenobium does, too. But why did they think she had some?”

“Xenobium!” Grant said, slapping the table. “Remember? It was in the phrase Fay said in the video.”

Grant was right. Tyler wanted to smack himself for not making the connection faster. He wheeled around to Morgan. “Can we get to the Internet from in here?”

“No. Every computer in here is cut off. Why do you need it?”

“We need to see Fay’s video. Take me to a computer with Web access.”

Morgan was dubious but led Tyler and Grant back to the office where her laptop was, passing Vince speaking on his phone in the hallway. She opened the computer and let Tyler find Fay’s video on YouTube. He dragged the slider until he got to Fay’s appearance and the phrase she was told by the creature she’d encountered.

“
Rah pahnoy pree vodat kahzay nobee um
.”

“My God,” Morgan said.

“She must have gotten the pronunciation wrong. Whoever or whatever spoke to Fay was trying to tell her something about xenobium.”

“Where is she now?”

“The last we heard, she was with Jess McBride at the warehouse where Colchev locked us in the truck.”

Vince burst into the room, breathless, as if he’d been running.

“Morgan,” Vince said, holding out his phone. “You have to look at this.”

She took it. From his vantage point, Tyler could see it was a photo of five men, three white and two black, lying on the ground, each with a bullet in his forehead.

“What is this?” she said. “I recognize Josephson, but who are the other men?”

“A private pilot spotted them in the desert south of town. The police found them next to a Pine Gap truck. They’re the men from the security detail who were sent to pick up the Killswitch.”

Morgan looked back at the photo, first with a puzzled expression, then with dawning horror.

“Are you sure?”

“They all had their Pine Gap IDs on them.”

“What’s the matter?” Tyler said.

Vince looked up, his eyes clouded with dread. “The men we saw at the airport were all Caucasian. That means the hijackers had to have taken out the men before they reached the airport. The men we met were the impostors.”

“So?” Grant said.

“So,” Morgan said, her jaw clenched, “Kessler arrived at the airport with them.”

TWENTY-SIX

Morgan didn’t waste time on self-recrimination for not detecting Kessler’s treachery earlier. There would be plenty of time for that when her superiors found out. Her priority was to hunt him down and make him tell her where she could find the stolen Killswitches.

“We’ve got a major security breach,” she barked into her phone to Herman Washburn, Pine Gap’s chief of security.

“What kind?”

“Charles Kessler. He left Pine Gap with your security team and arrived at the airport with the hijackers. He must have been there when your men were killed.”

“But Kessler was at Pine Gap when the truck bomb was supposed to hit. He would have been killed.”

“When we check the records,” Morgan said, “I’ll bet we find out that he was in the underground vault at the time. It would have been the only safe location during the blast.”

“Dammit! All right. I’ll post guards on every side of the facility to keep him from escaping.”

“He can’t be far. He left the lab just a few minutes ago. He may be trying to steal the xenobium sample.”

“His badge isn’t showing up on our internal monitoring system. We’ll do a room-by-room search. He won’t get away.”

“Make sure he isn’t harmed. We need him for questioning.”

A voice came over the intercom.
This is a security alert. All non-security personnel are instructed to remain where they are. This is not a drill.
The message repeated.

“Wait a minute,” Washburn said. There was an excruciating pause. “Agent Bell, I’ve got Kessler. He’s in the vault with the xenobium. He’s asking for you.”

“All right, I’ll head down there.”

“No, he wants to talk to you over the intercom. You’ll have to come to the security bunker.”

Morgan grimaced. “I’ll be right there.” She hung up and turned to Vince. “Kessler’s in the vault. Head down there and make sure any escape routes are cut off.” She pointed at Tyler and Grant. “You’re both with me. I don’t want you out of my sight.”

Grant put up his hands. “Whatever you say.”

“Let us know if we can do anything to help,” Tyler said.

“Come on.” She sprinted for the security room with Tyler and Grant keeping up behind her.

When they arrived, the room was bustling with activity.

Washburn, a grizzled veteran, eyed Tyler and Grant. “Who are they, and what are they doing here?”

“Locke and Grant. They blew up the truck bomb.”

Washburn appraised them, then grudgingly nodded.

“Where is he?” Morgan asked.

Washburn pointed at the center monitor. “I’ve got the vault sealed.”

Kessler was looking up into the camera.

“Can he see me?” Morgan said.

“No.”

She leaned into the mic. “Dr. Kessler, this is Special Agent Bell. I know you are involved with the hijacking.”

“I want safe passage out of Pine Gap, and I’m taking the xenobium with me.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“You
will
do that or I blow it up.” Kessler held up an object the size of a grapefruit.

Morgan put her hand over the mic. “Can he do that?” she asked Washburn.

“How the hell should I know?”

Morgan looked at Tyler.

He nodded slowly. “Given that I just learned about this stuff, it’s hard to say. But if that thing he’s holding is a detonator with the xenobium inside, I’d say it’s possible.”

“How much damage would it cause if it went off?”

“Kessler said they had a hundred grams of it and that it was twice as powerful as hafnium-3,” Grant said.

She could see Tyler doing the math in his head. “That gives it the explosive power of over sixty tons of TNT. How thick are the vault walls?”

“Twelve feet of concrete on the sides,” Washburn said. “The door is two feet of hardened steel.”

“That’s not enough to contain the blast. The vault is ten stories underground?”

Washburn nodded. “At the edge of the facility.”

Tyler glanced at Morgan. “You’ll get some serious foundation damage if it goes off in the vault. But if Kessler gets topside, it would take apart half the buildings in Pine Gap.”

“What if that’s his plan?” Grant said.

“We can’t risk letting him get out,” Morgan said. She removed her hand from the mic. “Kessler, disable the device and we’ll talk.”

“No.” He tapped on the device in his hand. “I’ve just set this for sixty seconds. If the door doesn’t open in one minute, it goes off. Starting now.”

Morgan checked the clock on the wall. “Kessler, if you did this for money, we can work something out. We can get you help.”

“Let me out! Now!”

“Maybe someone kidnapped a loved one. Tell us and we’ll figure out how to solve the problem.”

“I’ve got nobody. I dedicated my life to this project. And for what? Two divorces that milked every cent out of me, a pitiful pension, and an empty apartment. Why shouldn’t I be able to retire in luxury?”

Forty-five seconds.

“Kessler, I’m not letting you out of there.”

“Then I have nothing to live for.”

“Yes, you do. We can work this out.”

“So I can sit in a cell in Guantanamo for the rest of my days? I don’t think so.”

Thirty seconds. She could tell he wasn’t bluffing, but there was no way she could let him leave with the xenobium.

She put her hand over the mic and turned to Washburn. “Get your men out of there right now.” He scrambled to call his men. Vince would be with them. She tried not to think about it.

Speaking to Kessler, she said, “The Killswitch is useless without the xenobium. You said so yourself.”

“I’m sure they have a backup plan.”

Fifteen seconds.

“Kessler, I’m not bluffing. That door will not open.”

“I know.”

“Then don’t do this,” Morgan said, desperate to convince him to give up.

“There’s no alternative.”

Five seconds. Kessler began to mumble to himself.

“Where are Vince and your men?” she said to Washburn.

“Headed up the stairs. I don’t know what lev—”

The screen went white and a massive tremor shook the ground. Morgan held onto the console as the floor rattled beneath her. Mugs, headsets, and books clattered to the ground.

After a minute, the trembling subsided.

“Is everyone all right?” Washburn said. A few people said yes. Others who were more shocked just grunted.

Morgan was already running toward the stairwell to see if Vince made it out alive.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Even from outside the entrance of Pine Gap, Tyler could easily see the depression caused by Kessler’s detonation of the xenobium. It had been an hour since the blast, and all non-essential personnel had been told to evacuate the premises. Only the emergency crews who had been pre-screened for security clearances were allowed into the facility to scour the rubble for survivors.

Grant was helping Morgan search for her partner while Tyler waited for Fay and Jess to arrive. He knew they wouldn’t be permitted inside, so he paced along the outer fence.

He recognized the Jeep as it sped toward him. He waved it over and saw that Jess was driving.

She threw the door open, jumped out, and launched herself at Tyler in a tight hug. “I’m so relieved you’re all right.”

Tyler savored the embrace for a moment, then extricated himself and saw that Fay had joined them. “Are you two okay?”

“Other than being psychologically scarred by finding five dead bodies in the warehouse, we’re fantastic.” Jess gestured at a passing emergency vehicle. “What the hell is going on here?”

“There was another explosion, this one inside Pine Gap. That’s all I’m allowed to say about it.”

“What happened at the warehouse?” Fay said. “We thought the worst when we found those bodies.”

“That’s a long story. I’ll have to tell you later.”

“We heard about the truck bomb,” Jess said. “Actually, we
heard
the truck bomb.”

“People in Adelaide would have heard the truck bomb.”

“What’s this all about anyway?”

“We think Fay may have stumbled onto a terror plot accidentally.”

“Because of the artifacts from Roswell?”

Tyler nodded.

“Well, we finally found out what the phrase that alien told me means,” Fay said. “‘Rapa Nui leads to zaynobium.’ We know that Rapa Nui is the Polynesian name for Easter Island, so we think the map on the wood engraving marks a particular spot on the island. But the other part of the phrase is still a mystery. Do you know what zaynobium is?”

Tyler ignored the question because even correcting her pronunciation would require breaking about twelve laws. He focused on Jess as he shook his head. She would understand that meant he
did
know but couldn’t discuss it.

“Whatever it means,” Fay said, “we’re getting on the first flight we can find to Easter Island.”

“Nana, you’ve seen what’s happened here today. It’s too dangerous.”

“Dear, do you think I care about the danger? This is the greatest adventure I could have possibly imagined. I’m
this
close to finding the solution to a puzzle that’s tormented me for sixty-five years. But I’m going without you. I don’t want you hurt.”

Jess objected. “The hell you are. I’m not letting you go anywhere without me. We go together or you don’t go at all.”

Fay paused for a moment, searching Jess’s eyes, then smiled and patted her granddaughter’s hand. “That settles it.” She turned to Tyler. “Are you coming with us?”

Tyler looked from Fay to Jess. He wouldn’t be able to persuade them to change their minds, and Morgan Bell had no legal authority to keep them from going.

“I’m in,” he said. At least he knew what they were looking for.

Fay clapped her hands. “Excellent!”

“Where’s Grant?”