HERE IT FINALLY IS. So sorry it took this long guys, but here you have it. I am going to start writing several at a time now, so that I don't slack and come in a month later and be like "oops."
This one follows the same characters that were in chapter 2, so if you need a recap, go there. The next one will feature a new storyline to mix in with the long, intertwining plot.
So without further ado, here you have it:
CHAPTER 6
J A C O B
AIR
FORCE ONE
JULY
7, 1969
10:13
A.M.
The barf bag is perhaps the most
ingenious invention ever created by man.
I sat within the blue cushions of
the conference room, alone, right hand clutching a tonic bottle and left
clasped against the armrest with a little brown bag between my thumb and
forefinger. My stomach thrashed like a cat caught in a washing machine.
The President was in his office as I
waited, finishing his final investigations of the photos he had shown me
earlier. Copies of them were strewn about the conference room table, reflecting
the overhead white lights and the gray overcast of the world outside.
I took a swig and then set the
bottle heavily down on the wooden table. Empty.
There was a meeting scheduled in
this room, set to happen in about five minutes. And I was the only one present.
The skull warped into the photo
taken in the halls of the White House still shook me, no matter how many times
I looked at it, no matter how many times I tried to stare into its eyes and not
be afraid. It continued to reach into my soul and tell me that everything was
not well.
I could only hope that Area 51 held
answers to this mystery. And it had better; I hated flying, and that one was
perhaps the longest one of my life.
My walkie sparked to life and crackled
randomly. I picked it up and pressed the button.
“WHAT?”
And on the air, instead of coming
from one of the workers on the plane or the President or his secretary, all I
heard were clicks. Strange clicks, but not from a machine, from what sounded
like a human with strep throat.
The voice was like gravel scraped
beneath an iron boot.
I took my feet off of the conference
table and leaned in, trying to see if it was just the distortion on perfect
English, but I could still only hear clicks. Like a sort of rabid Morse code it
went on, the pulsing the same but the rhythm uneven.
I fell slowly into a trance.
The door swung ajar, and I leaned
back, Mr. Nixon entering the room. I stood up and offered him my chair out of
respect, quickly swiping the walkie off of the table and breaking it, the
batteries flying out of the device and sliding to the back of the room. We were
ascending.
“I’ll take this one,” he said,
pulling back the chair opposite the table from mine and sitting down. Oddly, he
was alone.
His briefcase was dark leather
brown. He set it on the table and held the buckles in hand as he turned his
eyes to me. I instantly pretended, in my mind, that the clicking never
happened.
I sat down and Mr. Nixon spoke with
a hint of controlled urgency in his voice.
“Mr. Dawn, we have a problem.”
I nodded and tried to be nonchalant
about the bottle of tonic on the table. Hopefully I could swipe it before he
noticed.
“What is it?”
“The transmission lines of the plane
have gone haywire. We can’t communicate with the landing pad of the base. And
we can’t land in any local airport. We have to use a plan B.”
“And that is?”
He opened the briefcase.
“Manual pickup.”
Inside was a stack of papers. They
were written in numbers, letters, probably a sort of code.
“I need you to deliver these to the
man next to the pilot. He will be wearing a black suit with a red tie, and will
carry a matching briefcase.”
What did he mean by “manual pickup?”
I took the papers and examined them.
The numbers were random, but I could start to see a pattern, or at least a
recurring sequence. Five numbers, in the same order, spelled out one word in
code:
1-12-9-5-14.
I didn’t ask him about that word.
Instead I tried to get the details straight.
“What do you mean, ‘manual pickup?’
And what pilot? Pilot of what?”
He opened his mouth to speak and
then looked down and his eyes met the bottle. I shut my eyes out of annoyance.
I waited for it. My berating. My
re-assigning. My badge being taken away. Drinking on the job.
And to my surprise, he didn’t say anything
about it. He just pushed it off of the table.
He must have trusted me that much.
The President folded his hands and
leaned on the table, his face somber and dark. The light outside seemed to fade
and the clouds gathered even more intensely.
“Jacob, the papers in your hand are
coded transmissions sent out from an unidentified source in Africa to Area 51.
According to the memos sent to me just recently, the source is a spy sent there
to take care of a cell of drug smugglers in the
country of Ethiopia.”
“What does anything in Africa have
to do with this skull photo?”
“That was my question exactly,
however, I have recently received several transcripts of the messages sent, and
the reason you and I are sitting here, right now, on this very plane to Nevada,
is that there was one word that appeared in each of the transmissions.” He
paused. “Would you like to know what that word is?”
I was apprehensive, but I nodded.
His tone was what threw me off, not his words.
“ALIEN.”
Before I could speak, the walkie on
the floor grunted to life and the clicking noise returned, this time louder and
more audible. I could not hear what was going over the airwaves, but knew that
the world had twisted as I picked it up slowly.
Nixon trembled.
“What on—”
I turned it thrice in hand to reveal
that the batteries were still strewn about the floor.
More stuff coming soon!
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