Groom Lake (20 page)

Damien Owens sometimes found it useful to let his opponent know he lurked in the shadows. Engaging Ben Skyles as a ploy to feed the congressman disinformation was another brilliant idea on Owens’ part, had it worked. Instead, it was foolish and compounded Owens’ problems surrounding Skyles. He had underestimated the lack of control he had over him. The best employee in his USAP had been reduced to an intermittent imbecile, and Owens still had no explanation.

He always admitted to making the rare mistake and learned accordingly, but this was his worst ever. Skyles’ breakdown left the congressman with a calling card: a microvideo pinhole camera that used rare technologies developed through programs administered by the Defense Advance Research Project Agency. Such advanced equipment was used by few agencies. There would be tremendous repercussions throughout the intelligence community if the congressman went public with this. And Owens would now have to invest some time to ensure his tracks were covered and the camera could not be traced to him.

“I’ve become too cocky for my own good,” Owens admitted to Kayla as they waited in the car a block from the congressman’s office. “Only our agents should be handling that equipment, especially against a member of Congress.”

“Maybe everything happens for a reason,” she said in hopes of offering something positive.

“I don’t put much faith in prophetic pats on the back, but if I did, then the reason this happened is to remind me never to stray from my core values. My biggest flaw in this was feeling remorse for Skyles. I let myself care too much about him, and took responsibility for his condition because it happened under my command. He’s no longer capable of functioning in the program, and I tried prolonging his career with us by using him in another capacity … Stupid.”

Kayla had never seen Owens frustrated with himself. He didn’t appear concerned like he had lost a battle with the congressman, just mad for what he had done and the extra work needed to correct it.

“This is going to get a lot worse,” he told her.

“Why?”

“We … I … have just handed Skyles to the FBI. His mental state is not as stable as I was led to believe. I can’t allow the FBI to interrogate him. They can’t know what he knows.”

“I don’t even know what Skyles knows,” Kayla said.

“Exactly my point.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, watching the building. Two men kicked open the lobby doors and escorted a half-conscious Skyles from the building, leaving him sitting on the curb like a bag of trash.

“Should we go get him?” Kayla asked.

“And give them our plate numbers? That’s another detail we’d have to cover up. Plus there could be surveillance cameras to snap our picture. We’ll wait and see if he gets up.”

“At least the FBI doesn’t have him.”

“I’m trying to understand why. I don’t know if the congressman is dump, scared or …” His words trailed off.

“Or what?”

“The reason for the congressman’s investigation is to reach the people and programs we’re involved with. He wants us, and Skyles is a direct link, thrown in his lap. Apparently the congressman doesn’t think he needs Skyles, nor does he seem to want the attention Skyles would draw to his investigation. He wants a low profile, and is content with his current situation. Otherwise Skyles wouldn’t be sitting on the curb.”

“You said they’re just getting started. I would think Skyles is a pot of gold to them.”

“I agree, but maybe there’s more to the congressman’s operation than I realized. Both the congressman and Grason Kendricks worked in intelligence. I have no way of knowing every program they may have been exposed to. They’re old friends with an agenda and knowledge I underestimated.”

Confused by his explanation, Kayla asked, “Do you think they have a better source than Skyles?”

“The congressman must think he does.”

“Who could be a better source?” she asked, trying to work through the scenario with him.

“Depends on the topic, but in some cases, nobody. However, the congressman doesn’t know that. To him Skyles is a mental case with a GRATCOR badge.” He watched Skyles curl into a fetal position on the sidewalk and remain there, motionless. “There’s a naval hospital a few miles from here. We’ll have him picked up and taken there.”

“What are we going to do with him?”

“Unfortunately, what I should have done to begin with.”

Trace Helms’ ranch-style house outside the high-desert town of Alamo was forty-nine miles from his parking space at Groom Lake. Tonight, as he returned home, he pushed his truck’s gas pedal hard; he was expecting company for a small poker game. Stopping inside the front gate to his rural, ten-acre ranch, he honked-honked his horn. Hearing his cue, two Rottweilers appeared from behind a red-rock bluff—Gideon and Tola, the vigorous judges of Trace’s property—and followed him up the driveway.

Trace parked in his courtyard, behind his brother’s van. Beaming with a sincere smile that was rarely summoned by anyone other than family, Trace dropped from his truck. With long, slow strides and swaying shoulders, he lumbered toward his brother on the porch. Teneil had made the journey from his Las Vegas home earlier that afternoon. When seen side by side, it was clear they had the same genetic makeup, although Teneil was even more muscly from working construction.

“Where’s Jimmy?” Trace asked after saying hello.

“Fixin’ food.”

“My poor kitchen,” Trace moaned. “Have you heard from Rebecca?”

“The bitch is on her way.”

Trace’s demeanor switched from familial love back to the rigid Chief Helms. “I don’t want attitude this weekend.”

Dr. Rebecca Vanover oversaw the technical aspects of their operation. Unfortunately, her pompous disposition sometimes clashed with everyone in the group except Trace. Rebecca was a newcomer in Trace’s life compared to others in his group. Yet they had developed a strong bond through common interests, each relying on what the other brought to the relationship.

• • •

After developing a theory about the psychological practices being used at the base, Trace needed someone, or something, to help him take it to the next level. The CIA gave him both. In early 1993, Trace attended a paranormal studies convention in Los Angeles, where he saw Dr. Rebecca Vanover speaking on a panel discussion about the government’s psychic research and remote psychic warfare programs. Although she couldn’t say it publicly, she would later confide in Trace that she was involved in a CIA research project codenamed Stargate that studied remote viewing and mind control. The CIA removed her from the program, claiming they were phasing the research out, which Rebecca knew was nonsense—they were making groundbreaking progress. She suspected that her team was too successful, so the CIA sacrificed her to the world of unemployment—the logic being that the CIA, or some other group, didn’t want Stargate discovering technologies that already existed in secrecy.

After months of piecing together a profile and learning about Rebecca’s background, Trace called her. He decided a straight-to-the-point approach was best: “Do you want to continue your research?” Indeed she did.

• • •

Rebecca had a prissy, I’m-the-boss attitude. She always wore her hair up and covered her face with a pair of thick-rimmed glasses: she wanted to command respect for her years of schooling rather than for her looks. Teneil clashed with her most, since she held herself above his street-savvy mentality. To make matters worse, after Rebecca’s last visit, Teneil discovered a Barry White album in the CD player, and suspected his brother had been seeing Dr. Highandmighty with her hair down. Nonetheless, they worked through their individual differences for the greater good.

Militants, rebels, terrorists: such labels were affixed to individuals who challenged unstable governments in smaller, less developed countries than the US. Only in rare and extreme circumstances were such terms found in headlines describing Americans. Should Trace and his team be uncovered, they might draw similar descriptions in the press. Like their foreign counterparts, however, Trace’s group considered their actions as positive, fighting for a benevolent cause. They didn’t view themselves as militants, but revolutionaries, freedom fighters who challenged a new era of deceptive government.

Once most of Trace’s guests had arrived, he led the small group down a staircase to a windowless basement. The long subterranean space was designed as a recreation room. However, the black, gray and white decor offered a stark change in atmosphere from stained wood floors, hunter-green furniture and colorful wall paintings throughout the upstairs level. None of the visitors questioned the design. They understood the purpose, especially Rebecca; the colorless decor was her idea. Color served as mental noise that could disrupt brain signals. The basement provided an enhanced environment for mental dexterity.

“Let’s see if we can get caught up before Liebowitz arrives,” Trace said from his seat at a poker table.

Jimmy spoke first, “I talked to Desmond yesterday. He’s insisting we move forward on this kid, Blake.”

“Man, I told you guys Desmond lost his mind,” Teneil said, speaking as much with body language—rolling eyes, flailing hands—as words. “He’s all caught up in his ufologist role-playing. What good is a kid going to be to us?”

Jimmy liked Teneil, as Trace’s brother, but didn’t think he and his short-tempered street attitude added much to the group. But instead of speaking his mind and causing friction, like Rebecca often did, he learned to deal with Teneil and tried explaining Desmond’s view. “It’s not the kid that can help us, but who he might know, and what they can do with the information we offer.”

“You think there’s anything to it?” Trace asked. “I don’t want another situation like we had with the Chinese woman. Desmond is a marked man now. That’s why he isn’t here tonight.”

Jimmy was upset with Desmond too, but couldn’t ignore their long friendship and formative adult years together at the Air Force Academy. He felt that he at least had to argue on Desmond’s behalf. “Was it luck that they didn’t link Desmond to you after the Chinese incident? Or credit on Desmond’s part for putting up his crazy ufologist façade? A façade we mandated at his expense to keep people from taking him seriously enough to link with a group such as ours. I don’t think we should be too hard on him. Give him credit for his devotion; he’s been continuing alone. He already brought the kid to the base.”

“Last week,” Trace said with a degree of concern, wondering if Desmond was pushing his luck.

“Well, Desmond wants to know the results. He understands you distancing yourself, but doesn’t think he should be alienated.”

Trace gave it some thought. Desmond was following a plan, Trace’s plan: investigate, uncover and disseminate. Empower the people with information. Grass roots work. Safe and undetectable if done strategically. By selectively sharing their findings they would generate interests, and hopefully, given time, high level interests. Using Desmond’s ufologist charade, they could sift through interested individuals, choosing who might best help their cause. That’s why Desmond brought people to the public land around the base. The sheriff’s incident report containing the visitor’s names allowed Trace to check them out using federal supercomputers at his disposal. He was performing a job duty, and serving his personal interests.

“I found nothing on the kid that should make us leery of him,” Trace told Jimmy. “His educational background was intriguing, but I didn’t see anything to make me drool over him like Desmond is doing.”

“The kid works with an interesting professor in Los Angeles,” Jimmy said. “Desmond has been inside both of their homes, and bugged them. He said the professor’s house was like a fortress; the man is protecting something.”

“Have the bugs revealed anything?”

“Yeah. This professor has some serious friends. The bugs were only in place for two days when someone swept the house. The recorder picked up jostling sounds like they discovered the bugs, but Desmond says they didn’t remove them.”

“They want to know who put them there,” Rebecca said.

“So they’re looking for us,” Teneil said. “Maybe we don’t want to risk messing with them.”

“If they were people who would do us harm,” Jimmy said, “they would already have the answers this professor and Blake are looking for.”

“So someone found the bugs at the professor’s house, but what about Blake?” Trace asked.

“He doesn’t seem to realize what he’s in the middle of. Books and materials were all over his room: UFOs, Area 51, black budget studies. A lot of science materials, antigravity and physics technical crap over our heads, but right up our alley.”

“It’s not over all of our heads,” Rebecca noted.

“I’m sorry,” Jimmy said, “I forgot you understand how the flying objects out here tick along faster than mach eleven.”

“Let’s keep it calm,” Trace interjected again. “We’re together on this.”

Jimmy continued pleading Desmond’s case, as he had promised he would. “That professor and this kid Blake have a purpose. If they’re at all aligned with us, we’re in business.”

“We can move on the kid,” Trace told them, “but without Desmond. Despite what the spooks may think of his sanity, he put himself in another league when he got drunk and babbled to that foreign agent. From now on, whenever there’s a security breach at the base, his name will come up on the usual suspect list. Besides, sharing info with foreigners is not what we’re about.”

“I don’t think I should work the kid alone,” Jimmy said.

“We’ll develop a plan later,” Trace told them. “Right now we’ve got more immediate items to discuss.”

“What’s the latest word on Skyles?” Rebecca asked.

“Leave of absence,” Trace answered. “But he’s not at home.”

“You sure those spooks can’t get to us through Skyles?” Jimmy asked Rebecca.

“There’s always the chance. But I used my own hypnotic suggestions. If asked, he shouldn’t call us anything other than poker buddies.”

Once Trace and Rebecca felt they had an understanding of the psychological technology being used on certain base workers, they tested it. Their first attempt on Ben Skyles ended in failure. Rebecca had hypnotized Skyles using procedures she learned in the Stargate program. She knew something was hidden in Skyles’ mind, but couldn’t get to it. The experiments backfired, forcing Skyles into a psychotic state, disorienting his contact with reality. The condition was minor at first, but deteriorated, propelling Skyles into a state similar to multiple personality disorder: he bantered about objects in space, became assertive and authoritative, then jovial and at times catatonic.

To better understand the procedure, Rebecca had to see it in action. Jimmy and Teneil bugged Skyles’ home in the hopes of learning something that might help them. They never dreamed the spooks would remotely carry out the procedure, but it was all on tape. That alone was enough to start congressional meetings on the subject, but Trace wanted more. He wanted to know what the technology was hiding—the secret behind the secret.

“I hope the hypnotic codename is the only missing piece,” Jimmy said. “I don’t want to mess up another man’s life.”

“Man, forget Skyles and think about us,” Teneil said. “We scramble another guy’s brain and those spooks are going to
definitely
know something’s going down, and come a-looking.”

“I’ve listened to the tapes from Skyles’ house a hundred times,” Rebecca said. “The password was the key. I put Skyles under hypnosis, but only made it halfway, and somehow left him walking around in a trance, stuck between reality and his subconscious. They also used drugs, which I suspected, but couldn’t verify until after the session when I analyzed the blood we drew. I used a mild sedative on Skyles, which in hindsight wasn’t a good idea. His blood showed traces of lithium, which increases deep sleep associated symptoms. Lithium can also cause severe side effects—like sleeplessness and sleepwalking—if not administered properly. I now realize the sedative I put in his drink to help hypnotize him had an adverse reaction with the lithium.”

“So, if I understand you,” Jimmy said, “these people at the top-secret levels are working in some sort of induced sleep state?”

“Something like that. There’s a condition called a parasomnia-disorder of arousal from deep sleep, which results in confused arousals. I think we’ve caused something like this to happen in Skyles’ mind. I’m not surprised by any of this though. One of our objectives in Stargate was telepathic hypnosis, planting agents with no conscious knowledge of programming so they could be controlled remotely. I think static interference on the Skyles tapes had something to do with ELFs, low frequency signals used to instruct the brain. We called it a biological transfer system.”

“Trace saw this mind-control technology in use before your Stargate team made its discoveries,” Jimmy pointed out.

“Remote viewing was our primary field of research, but as we progressed so did our discoveries and understanding of the mind. Apparently we were on track to discover what other top secret government projects already knew, and had gone to great lengths to keep secret. So they fired me for being successful.”

“So how do the ELFs work? How do they program them?” Trace asked.

“The ELFs mimic brain waves. It’s called bioelectric entrainment. I don’t know the specifics—I never got that far.”

“So are you going to try and program Liebowitz?”

“No. We’re just going to prep him for that stage. Hopefully he’ll tell us what’s already been programmed. What’s hidden in his head.”

• • •

“Watch your step,” Trace bellowed from atop the staircase.

The bashful Aaron Liebowitz barely made eye contact during the introductions. He gave everyone a limp-fish handshake and retreated to his predetermined seat next to Rebecca. He associated with few women—not by choice—and had trouble listening to Trace explain the game of five-card-draw poker once he caught a glimpse of Rebecca’s skin, just above her knees, before it disappeared under her skirt.

Liebowitz’s instant obsession with Rebecca was obvious to the table, especially when he cranked his eyeballs to the far right, trying to get a look at something else; Rebecca’s breasts weren’t enormous, but they were there, peaking out above her slim waistline, and Liebowitz could see the round curves they created in her blouse. He hadn’t been that close to a woman’s breasts since last month when a lady bumped into him exiting a convenience store.