25th June
Flight lieutenant Carl Rodriguez was woken by a knock on the door of his Las Vegas apartment.
He had a headache.
He thought back to the beers he had consumed at Harry’s Bar on the previous evening. It was unusual for him to have such a headache – he had not drunk that much.
He got up and quickly began to dress.
Another knock came upon the door.
‘OK,’ he called, ‘give me a minute for heaven’s sake. I’m coming.’
He opened the door to be confronted by two security guards who he recognised from Groom Lake.
‘Good morning, Sir,’ said one. ‘We have instructions to escort you to the base.’
‘What’s it about, Boys?’ asked Rodriguez.
‘I don’t know, Sir,’ the guard replied.
‘I’ll drive myself to the base in about an hour,’ Rodriguez responded.
‘We’ve been told to accompany you now,’ said the guard, placing his hand on his pistol holster. ‘I’m sorry, Sir.’
‘That’s OK,’ Rodriguez replied. ‘You’re just doing your jobs. I’ll get my coat.’
Rodriguez walked into his bedroom. He then closed and locked the door.
By the time the security guards had become suspicious of the delay, Rodriguez had already climbed through the bedroom window and made his way along the adjacent roof.
By the time the guards had broken into the bedroom, Rodriguez had reached the bottom of the fire escape at the far end of the roof and had punched an entry code into a keypad on a garage door.
When the guards were halfway along the roof, they could hear the sound of a motorcycle accelerating away.
By the time the guards had reached the bottom of the fire escape, Rodriguez was two blocks away.
Rodriguez had not only planned this escape strategy but had periodically practised it – to reduce its execution time.
He knew it was likely that his involvement with WAR would be discovered at some point. Today, there had been no other explanation for armed guards calling at his apartment to escort him to Area 51.
He had been particularly concerned about this risk after he had flown the sortie to Waterford in Hampshire, England in January. It had, however, been possible to maintain secrecy about that operation.
Despite that, it would never have been possible for him to attack ARK personnel and British agents at Gobekli Tepe while expecting that operation to remain covert. WAR had thus arranged for counterfeit presidential orders to be sent to Colonel John Hawker.
When Hawker and Starcruiser One had failed to return from that sortie, Rodriguez knew that something must have gone wrong – perhaps something that might incriminate him. He had anticipated the worst.
Within ten minutes, Rodriguez was at a small private airfield on the outskirts of Las Vegas.
Within another five minutes, he was taxiing the Hawker 400XP along the runway.
Within another five, he was flying the jet east, at low level, across the Nevada desert.
~*~*~*~*~
Robin Marsh, Paul Maple and John Hawker looked at the monitor screen on Hawker’s desk at Groom Lake.
It had been important that Hawker return to his duties on the base, so a story had been created that Starcruiser One had malfunctioned and been lost over the Atlantic – with Hawker having been lucky to have been rescued by a US ship.
This cover story placed the present whereabouts of Starcruiser One at the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench – 8,650 meters below the surface of the ocean and inaccessible without a salvage operation that could take many months.
‘The transmitter that was inserted beneath Rodriguez’ skin, when he was drugged at Harry’s Bar last night, is working,’ said Hawker. ‘There’s a Learjet 31 on the runway. Let’s follow him and hope he leads us to other members of WAR.’
Corporal Joss Henderson, now fully recovered from the assault by Leadbetter, watched them as they walked across the runway towards the jet. He then reached for his mobile and rapidly entered a text message.