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  She filled his glass. “Keep chasing after zero-point-energy, and trust me, that will change.”

  “Wait … what?”

  “Let’s sit down.” The retired engineer led him to a small sitting area composed of a loveseat, two wooden rocking chairs and a leather recliner. She settled in on the loveseat and filled her wine glass to the brim, Adam opting for one of the rockers.

  “My husband and I bought this property twelve years ago. When we added the wine cellar, we had electromagnetic sound dampeners installed within the walls of the foundation … too many eyes watching and ears listening.” She paused to drain her glass. “I assume you have a Q-clearance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Q-Clearance is nuclear, and nuclear is bubkus. I have a Cosmic Clearance. It’s about forty clearances above Q-Clearance … it’s at the top, there’s nothing higher. Ninety-nine percent of the politicians on Capitol Hill and ninety percent of the assholes in the Pentagon have no idea it even exists. Only about twenty-five people in the world at any given time carry a Cosmic Clearance, and none of them are presidents or heads of state. But some of them are quite nasty. I’m telling you this because if I get too buzzed and reveal certain things to you that I shouldn’t, your ability to keep your mouth shut may very well determine if I’ll be around to attend your wedding in September … which would really be a nice thing considering we’re footing the bill.”

  Adam felt his heart racing. “What’s said down here stays down here.”

  “Good. Now ask your questions.”

  “How long has all this been going on?”

  “You mean, how long have other intelligent species been visiting Earth? Who knows? Archaeologists have discovered cave paintings and Egyptian hieroglyphics which suggest extraterrestrial-human contact might trace back thousands of years. The more recent documented interactions with UFOs began in the 1940s during World War II. Allied pilots and crewmen reported seeing strange orb-like objects of light buzzing our bombers during combat sorties. The Nazis apparently saw them as well, and before too long, everyone started referring to them as ‘foo fighters,’ which translates as ‘fire’ in French and German. These orbs, which could be described as energy drones, often disrupted electronics aboard our warplanes while affecting gravity. Occasionally one would pass transdimensionally right through one of our bombers, freaking out the crew.

  “FDR was very concerned and he dispatched General Jimmy Doolittle to the Allied theater of operations in Europe to find out if this was some kind of new high-tech Nazi secret weapon. Doolittle reported back that the objects were interplanetary in nature.

  “Sightings increased after we dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. New Mexico became a UFO traffic magnet, and for good reason. The first nukes were created in Los Alamos and tested in Alamagordo and Whites Sands.

  “Then two years later, everything changed. On June 24, 1947 there was a UFO sighting that made the international news. Eight nights later, three saucer-shaped ETVs, each fifty-feet-in-diameter, began buzzing Roswell Air Force Base, home of the 509th bomber squadron, the only wing in the world equipped with atomic weapons. Two of the UFOs crashed. One went down southwest of Corona, New Mexico. The second crash site was discovered in Horse Mesa, west of Magdalena, New Mexico. The ‘official story’ is that Roswell had been using a high-powered radar system that was set on a certain frequency which disrupted two of the ET crafts’ propulsion and navigation systems, causing them to collide. Having spent time with Colonel Phillip Corso three decades later, I can tell you what really happened.

  “Roswell had secretly developed a pulsed scalar longitudinal electromagnetic weapon, the beam of which struck two of the three ETVs at supra-light speed as the crafts were phasing out of transdimensional space-time. The pair collided and one was completely destroyed, the second was salvaged … along with its dead thirty-six-inch-tall hominids. They were classified as Greys, after their gray skin tone.

  “Between June of 1947 and December of 1952, the military’s EMS weapon brought down thirteen extraterrestrial spacecraft; eleven of them in New Mexico, one each in Nevada and Arizona. Two other crashes occurred in Mexico and one in Norway. Sixty-five bodies were recovered, including one ET that was kept alive for three years.”

  “A live alien?”

  “From the Roswell crash. By the way, the whole ‘alien’ thing … they find that term a bit derogatory. They prefer extraterrestrial.”

  “What happened to it … the surviving ET?”

  “It was a Grey. They called it EBEN, short for Extraterrestrial Biological Entity. It was hairless, with a bulb-shaped head and big black eyes that had no exterior lids. From the autopsy reports I’ve read, the ET’s internal anatomy was chlorophyll-based, and it processed food into energy and waste material in the same manner as plants. The EBEN had a solitary organ that did the job of both a heart and lungs, but they had multiple stomachs which performed different digestive processes. They also had an organ that would take every single bit of moisture out of whatever they ate and fed the body; so they had no need to drink a lot of fluids.

  “The EBEN brain has eleven different lobes, and where the spinal cord met the brain, there were two little bulbs on each side. The eyes were very sophisticated with optic nerves that went into different anatomical parts of the brain than human optic nerves …

  “These beings are thin and wiry, but their muscles are fibrous and quite strong, especially the legs. The hands are thin and double-jointed, and each of its four long fingers possesses a suction-tip. Its sexual organs are internalized, but the scientists assigned to the EBEN were pretty sure it was a male. According to the ET, there were female EBEN, just none on any of these ships.

  “They didn’t have any ears, but they had a canal with an organ or gland—a little bulb that they could hear out of. They didn’t have vocal cords like we have. I read a briefing that indicated a procedure was performed on the EBEN which allowed it to talk or make sounds. None of that was necessary since they communicated telepathically.”

  “Where did they keep it?”

  “The live one? At first, Fort Dietrick, Maryland, then at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and later at the Huntsville Redstone Arsenal.

  “Our scientists learned a lot from EBEN, all of which was compiled into what became known as the Yellow Book. Unfortunately, the ET became ill in late-1951. Several medical specialists were brought in to treat it, the team headed by a botanist. Realizing it was dying, the United States began broadcasting radio signals into deep space in an attempt to demonstrate peaceful intentions to what was obviously a superior entity. The group tasked with overseeing this project—code named SIGMA—was the National Security Agency, created by secret Executive Order on November 4, 1952. The NSA was assigned to monitor all communications, both human and extraterrestrial, while maintaining secrecy regarding the UFOs’ presence.”

  “So, the CIA and NSA were both created in response to these UFO events?”

  “Correct, though the first secret task force to investigate the ET phenomenon was organized under the name Project Sign and evolved into Project Grudge a year later. A low level disinformation project named Blue Book was created to fool the public. Meanwhile, ‘Blue Teams’ were trained to recover the downed ETVs, later evolving into Alpha Teams under Project Pounce.

  “Both the CIA and NSA were given complete autonomy through a series of National Security Council Memos and Executive Orders which legalized their covert activities and kept Truman and his advisors out of the loop, allowing them to maintain plausible deniability in the event any information leaked to the public. This buffer effectively gave the intelligence community the legal right to keep future presidents in the dark regarding UFOs.”

  “What happened to the Grey?”

  “The EBEN died in June of 1952. Spielberg’s movie, E.T. was loosely based on these events.”

  Barbara Jean refilled her glass with burgundy. “Imagine you’re President Truman. On your watch, the military’s secret weap
on has shot down thirteen UFOs, and the lone ET you’ve held captive for the last three years just croaked. Harry S. knows he’s dealing with civilizations whose technology is light years ahead of ours, so you can imagine he’d be freaking out a bit, worried about an alien invasion.

  “Truman contacted our allies to warn them about what happened. He also reached out to the Soviet Union. Turns out their top-secret weapon bases were also being buzzed by ETVs. They decided maintaining secrecy was more important than sharing the information with their respective governing bodies and risking a leak. A new world order was necessary, one that operated without oversight, allowing it to move quickly in the event of an ET invasion. This secret government became known as the Bilderberg Group, named after the hotel in Switzerland where they first met. They continue to meet there every year and it is this group, not the United Nations nor the G-8 that sets global policy.

  “Dwight D. Eisenhower took office in 1953. During the president’s first year as Commander-in-Chief, nine more UFOs were downed in the United States; four in Arizona, two in Texas, and one each in Louisiana, Montana, and New Mexico. There were also thousands of reported sightings. Knowing he had to be proactive without involving Congress, Eisenhower enlisted the help of his friend, Nelson Rockefeller, a fellow member of the Council on Foreign Relations. With the CIA busy placing the Shah of Iran in power and the NSA eavesdropping on Castro, Rockefeller decided a new agency was needed that would be solely dedicated to UFO encounters while overseeing the incredible technologies that were being acquired through reverse-engineering of all their downed space craft.

  “Majestic-12 was launched a year later as an independent agency operating on a black budget. Its first members were said to have included Rockefeller; Secretary of Defense, Charles E. Wilson; CIA Director, Allen Dulles; Secretary of State, John Foster-Dulles; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Arthur Radford; and FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover. There were also six men selected from the Council on Foreign Relations and six from the JASON Society, a scientific group formed during the Manhattan Project. Policies could only be mandated by a majority vote of twelve, thus the name.”

  “Barbara, our government is known for leaks. How has MJ-12 been able to maintain its hold on secrecy for so long?”

  “Internal compartmentalization is the key. As a scientist, if you are working for a USAP—an Unacknowledged Special Access Project—your task is so job-specific that you can’t see the rest of the puzzle, or even the piece you’re working on. As a USAP director who has a need to know, I’ve found myself on several different occasions being escorted into a secret underground facility for a coming-to-Jesus talk. The good news, you’re told, is that you are going to be paid very well for the rest of your life. The bad news is that if you speak outside the circle of trust, it won’t be a very long life. Every member of Council has a bullet with their name on it just waiting to be popped into the chamber. Keep in mind that rank has no bearing when it comes to black ops. If you are involved in a USAP and your C.O. calls you into his office and asks you about it, your response is simple—as far as you know, no such project exists. Say anything else and you might end up like James Forrestal.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “As I mentioned, Forrestal was appointed by Truman to be the country’s first Secretary of Defense. As such, he was engaged in the UFO agenda from Day One. Being a very idealistic and religious man, he believed that the public should be told about the situation. When it looked like Dewey would win the presidential election, Forrestal began pushing to talk to leaders of the opposition party and Congress. After Truman pulled out the upset and was reelected, Forrestal was asked to resign.

  “Leaving office didn’t render Forrestal any less of a potential threat; it just placed him lower on the media radar. It wasn’t long, however, before the former Defense Secretary began acting paranoid, telling friends and family that he was being watched. There were reports of a mental breakdown and suicide attempts, which led to his forced admittance to the Bethesda Naval Hospital where he was kept under 24-hour watch in a private room on the 16th floor, his family denied visitation rights.

  “Over the next several months there were indications he was improving and that his brother, Henry, was demanding his release. On May 22, 1949, around 2 a.m., James Forrestal’s corpse was found on the third floor roof of Bethesda Hospital. Authorities claim the guard had left his post and the former Secretary of Defense had used the opportunity to escape to a kitchen across the hall where he tied one end of his bathrobe sash around his neck, the other end to a radiator by the window. Pushing out the screen, he attempted to climb out along the edge and hang himself, only the knot slipped and he fell thirteen stories to his death.”

  “What can you tell me about these zero-point-energy devices? Have you ever seen one?”

  “Anything of importance is kept in one of these vast subterranean complexes built by Bechtel. Now it’s time for you to go; I’m tipsy and I’ve said way too much.”

  * * *

  It was dusk by the time Barbara Marulli awoke from her catnap. Adam was gone, her future son-in-law having left a few hours earlier.

  Collecting the empty burgundy bottle and cork, she trudged up the spiral stairwell to the first floor. She tossed the bottle in the recycling bin and turned on her iPhone, dialing the memorized number.

  The phone rang, a male voice picking up on the third ring. “Speak.”

  “It’s me. It went as well as can be expected.”

  11

  Martin State Airport

  Baltimore, Maryland

  WHEN JESSICA MARULLI had been told that a private jet would be waiting for her at Martin State Airport to fly her to her on-site assignment at Edwards Air Force Base, she had expected the usual G-500 Gulfstream. To her surprise, the chauffeur parked the limo beneath the starboard wing of a Boeing 767-33A/ER jumbo jet.

  “All this is for me?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Go on up, I’ll bring your bags.”

  Jessica exited the vehicle and ascended the mobile staircase.

  Her eyes widened as she stepped inside the commercial airliner. First-class was not a foreign concept to the physicist; her parents’ careers having afforded them the good life. But what awaited her inside the cabin was an entirely different level of luxury. Everything in the wide-bodied cabin aft of first-class seating had been gutted, the interior converted into a mini-mansion. The forward section was dominated by a plush ivory sofa mounted along the starboard side, its treble-clef-shaped curvature matched by a marble coffee table. Behind it was a concave mirrored privacy wall, the effect of which seemed to double the size of the forward compartment. Violet cushions matched the thick-pile carpeting which stood out smartly against the padded ivory walls. Moving aft led her to a dining room that seated twenty, the rectangular table anchored beneath three small chandeliers. The middle compartment concluded with a fifteen-foot flat screen TV and an assortment of recliners, sofas, and love seats that were no doubt put to good use on long flights by the jet’s owner and his entourage.

  A closed set of mirrored double doors separated the middle section of the plane from the aft compartment.

  Jessica knocked. Receiving no reply, she tried the handle and pushed her way inside.

  “Oh my Gawd.”

  The heart-shaped, king-sized bed was covered in a mink quilt, the fur reflected in the mirrored ceiling. An entertainment center included another large flat screen television. A small workout area consisted of a stationary bike, a treadmill, and a six-station gym.

  Guess the owner likes to watch himself in action …

  She ran her fingers across the smooth-as-silk fur blanket as she walked past the bed to inspect the bathroom. Gold faucets accentuated the black marble sink. Thick violet towels were stacked in racks by a completely enclosed glass shower as wide as six phone booths. A black porcelain toilet and bidet were harbored in a private water closet.

  “Impressed?”

  She turned to find Gener
al Thomas J. Cubit standing by the open double doors. He was dressed in what appeared to be a golf outfit.

  “General Cubit? I didn’t know you’d be accompanying me to California.”

  “Someone has to brief you on your new assignment.”

  She groaned. “Seriously? I haven’t finished my work on Zeus and you’re already adding more to my agenda?”

  “The new assignment is Zeus. We considering having you take over as the project’s director.”

  Adrenaline coursed through Jessica’s bloodstream. “What happened to Scott Hopper?”

  “Dr. Hopper had a few personal issues which forced him to vacate the position. Join me in the entertainment center; we’re about to taxi to the runway and the crew wants us buckled in … some ridiculous FAA regulation.”

  She followed him out of the bedroom suite, her mind racing. As a Team Leader, her work up to this point had been confined to overseeing the guidance system of Zeus—the military’s new satellite array. As project director of an Unacknowledged Special Access Project, she would have to be brought inside the inner circle.

  Mother said she was fifty-two when she took over her first USAP; I’ve got her beat by fifteen—

  She shook her head as if to knock the toxic thought out of her brain. Stupid! You can’t even drop a hint about the promotion … not to your family or to Adam … not to anyone.

  “Dr. Marulli?”

  “Sorry … I’m coming.”

  Edwards Air Force Base Complex

  Mojave Desert, California

  The Mojave Desert covers 54,000 square miles, extending east from Southern California into Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. Edwards Air Force Base is located in the southwestern corner of the desert not far from Lancaster, California. In addition to its airfields, the complex includes the China Lake Naval Weapons Center and the Fort Irwin Military Center, as well as the restricted air space above all three facilities.