Matt uttered something under his breath.
“I said no talking.”
It didn’t work, thought Matt. He could see Cathy,
Chase and Zak as clearly as ever.
“WHAT THE … WHERE’D THEY GO? ” blue suit shouted as his eyes scanned the room.
“It worked. Follow me,” Matt shouted, throwing the door open.
“No way,” blue suit mumbled.
“Run,” Matt screamed.
The agent dashed into the hallway scanning for any sign of his targets. Cathy, not used to being invisible collided with a man who lay sprawled beneath a cloud of papers not knowing what hit him.
“Sorry!” she blurted.
The agent shoved his way toward the commotion, flinging a young office worker to the floor with both hands who didn’t get out of his way fast enough.
“I lost the kids,” he barked into his mike. “Find that reporter.”
Brown suit was flying down the hall too fast to do more than key his mike button once in reply. He had the news anchor squarely in his sights and didn’t want to lose her.
Katie Loveland ran like the fate of the world depended on her. For all she knew it did. But for the moment it was fat salary versus baby seals. She rounded a corner, colliding with Courtney, the summer intern.
“Courtney, HELP! I’m being chased. I need you to slow him down.” The agent appeared down the hall. Loveland disappeared through the production room door.
Everyone stopped and stared as she burst into the room. Breathless, Loveland pressed the eject button of the tray she knew held the interview DVD. There was a disturbance in the hallway. Courtney, she grinned. She popped open the tray, grabbed the DVD then made for the door at the opposite end of the room. Her days at ZNN were over, maybe even her days in broadcast journalism. But she wasn’t going to let the story of the century be quashed.
She burst from the room and disappeared down a stairwell, ears perked for the merest sound. She reached the ground floor. Opening the door she scanned the atrium. With relief she had reached it first.
“I’ll take that.” An arm reached around the door and locked her in a painful vise-grip as its tall owner plucked the DVD from her hand.
Whelcher burst through the north stairwell door skating across the slick marble floor arms flailing scanning the crowd for any sign of the slippery news anchor.
“You didn’t really think we were going to let you get away with that did you?” vise grip smirked.
“Well, for a minute I did,” Loveland sneered.
Courtney appeared. To Loveland’s amazement the intern walked directly to brown suit.
“What do we do with her?” he asked her.
“Leave her,” said Courtney. “We have what we came for.” Katie jerked free.
“I thought you looked a little old for a summer intern,” she sneered.
Meanwhile Matt, Cathy, Chase and Zak had reached the roof.
The Five Stages of Disbelief. The first is shock and denial. The second is anger. Stage Three is depression, reflection and loneliness. Stage Four is working through it. Stage Five is accepting your new world.
After being pushed and scratched by something inside the prison Cathy was in stage one. Chase, experiencing something moving around inside his mattress every night was also in stage one. Zak, who was seeing shadow people was angry. And Matt, in stage four, was struggling with going from not believing in anything he couldn’t see to having to believe in high-strangeness. None were accepting their new world.
Father Malvic was gone. The security guard too.
“Are you kidding me? Call that FBI agent,” Cathy blurted. “Zak, what’s his name?”
“Special Agent Thyme,” said Zak solemnly, a name he knew only too well from having hacked the wrong computer.
Ten minutes later, Special Agent Thyme had the facts. “He got away though,” Matt said.
“Don’t worry. We’ll get him sooner or later.”
It was the later that was worrisome.
“There’s more,” Matt said . . .“emails.”
“Meet me. My lobby. Thirty minutes,” the agent replied.
“I want to go home,” Zak whined. “We did what we came for.”
“We?” Matt said. “We didn’t do anything.”
“Okay, you then. Whatever. I want to go home.”
“No,” Matt said.
“This isn’t Dungeons and Dragons, okay!” Zak pointed out. “The swords and wizards are real! And when you die you’re really dead!”
“Nobody’s going anywhere,” Cathy said. “Not until that creepoid psycho Father Malvic’s behind bars. How did he get to be a priest anyway? Besides, the FBI will know about daddy.”
They landed on the nearest building to the FBI’s Richard B. Russell Federal Building, thinking it unwise to land unannounced on the FBI, invisible or not. They made their way to the street where they passed a homeless man holding a sign which read THE END IS NEAR – ET IS COMING.
Matt, Cathy, Chase and Zak stood in the busy lobby of the Federal Building wondering why they were having to step out of everyone’s way. Were people in Atlanta that rude? Then it dawned on them they were still invisible.
“Devil Trash, uncloak us,” Matt said. Startled people began to step out of their way. It’s a funny thing with invisibility as anyone who has ever been invisible knows – if you suddenly materialize in a crowded place, people look at you funny and just assume you somehow walked in on them and they simply hadn’t noticed.
Special Agent Thyme escorted them to a vacant conference room. “He’s definitely up to something,” he said as he thumbed through the emails.
“Looks like he’s planning a double-cross selling this DNA to everybody. If the Chinese want it this badly we need to know why. Plus, it looks like our own government’s been channeling funds through the USDA, the Agriculture Department. Sneaky. And illegal. I know a certain senator who’d like very much to know about that.”
“Can you find him!” Cathy said. “He said he’s going to cut our hearts out. He wouldn’t do that to kids . . . would he?”
“Bloody ‘ell. There’re some wacked out crazies out there. Those Nazi monsters killed over a million kids,” Thyme grimaced. “I can’t tell you the state we find some missing kids in. Real Bluebeard stuff.”
“What about daddy? Any word on daddy?”
“I’m sorry, I thought you were told.”
Special Agent Thyme cleared his throat. “He didn’t survive the bail out I’m afraid.”
Cathy flinched. “No, that’s not possible . . . There must be some mistake.” Tears streamed down her face.
“Your mother’s on her way. She’ll be here soon. We’ll get Malvic. Don’t you worry.”
“How did he die?” Zak whispered.
“His neck . . . he broke it . . . in the bail out. If it’s any consolation he died instantly.” Grief counselors were brought in.
Chapter 27 – THE MOUNTAIN
It had been three days since the ZNN interview and the interminable flight home. When they arrived they were grounded until the next Ice Age.
In the days that followed men wearing black suits, thin ties and Ray-Bans were wherever they went. They reported the men in the dangerous-looking black Lincoln Navigator with the blacked-out windows to the chief of police. He told them the men were in town on government business and that’s all he could say about it.
The next day at 1330 hours a dark blue GMC Yukon with yellow letters on it which read ‘U.S. Air Force – Official Use Only’ pulled to the Tannenhook residence. Across town an identical Yukon pulled to the Kozacky residence, each bearing an Air Force officer and technical sergeant. After introducing themselves they politely asked each family to accompany them for a brief meeting.
“Does this have anything to do with ZNN?” Carolyn Kozacky asked, for the ZNN interview had created a worldwide stir after Katie Loveland released the pirated DVD to each one of the world’s syndicated news services. The DVD wrenched from her by the goon was found to be a ZNN documentary on Tiahuanaco. It had been viewed by a billion people, about the same number who had viewed Princess Diana’s funeral.
Churches hailed it as more proof of the existence of God while its detractors assailed it as nothing more than “cheap theatrics by world governments intent on diverting their populations’ attentions away from their steadily worsening political and economic woes.” News agencies reported churches, synagogues, temples and mosques overflowing with people wanting to get right with God. Publishing houses strained to keep up with the sudden demand for books on religion. Not since the release of The Exorcist had the world been so interested in God and demons.
“We don’t know, ma’am. We just ask you and your family come with us for a brief meeting if you wouldn’t mind” was the airmen’s polite response to each of their questions. So the Tannenhook family; Uncle Ollie,Matt, and the Kozackys all went with the men in the sharply creased dark blue uniforms for what they thought would be a short meeting thinking it must be something very important and they would be right back. They were half right.
The first Yukon passed through the local airfield’s security gate to a waiting twin-engine turboprop with engines turning. The second Yukon bearing the Tannenhook family arrived minutes later. When everyone was aboard the pilot shut the door and the plane lifted off.
“Where are we going?” asked Carolyn Kozacky.
“Peterson, ma’am.”
Two hours later the passengers deplaned for the twenty-five minute ride from Peterson Air Force Base to Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center outside Colorado Springs. They passed in awe through its famous thirty-ton blast door where they were escorted by two military policemen down a long corridor where they passed two men dressed alike in black suits walking the other way. Both possessed the same features, were the same height, very tall, seven feet, both blonde, blue-eyed, both with long fingers. The two turned their heads in unison as they passed, each movement a mirror of the other’s, each with the same deadpan expression.
They were led to a conference room with a glass wall that overlooked a huge control center filled with rows of consoles manned by Air Force personnel which faced fifteen gigantic displays of varying sizes on a wall, all grouped around a monstrous Mercator projection of the world with traffic of some kind sort being tracked. The families seated themselves in executive chairs at a polished table that reflected the halogens like a mirror.
Three military officers stepped into the room; two air force officers and an army officer. They seated themselves at the far end of the table very official like. The air force officer’s blue uniform bore two silver stars on each shoulder which glinted in the halogens.
“Thank you for coming. Allow me to welcome you to Cheyenne Mountain. I’m General Anders. This is Major Seesholtz and Captain Pedotti. I know you’re all wondering why we asked you here. I’m sorry for all the secrecy but as you can imagine we wouldn’t have asked you here unless this was of the utmost importance,” said the general whose portly features contrasted sharply with the fit and trim captain and major.
Ned raised his hand.
“I know you each have questions and they’ll be answered in due course. I ask you hold them for now.
“First, please accept my condolences concerning the loss of your husband and father,” he said looking at Carolyn and Cathy and Zak. Our country is grateful for his military service.” The general paused. “Allow me to tell you a little about The Mountain as we call it. It’s quite an engineering feat. We’re quite proud of it. You’re surrounded by two thousand feet of solid granite. The complex was built on giant shock absorbers during the Sixties as a hardened command and control center as a defense against Soviet long-range bombers and later ballistic nuclear missiles. It was constructed to be able to withstand a direct nuclear blast. We collect information from satellites, radar and other sensors around the world and process that information in real time. Since the Sixties our role has expanded to include being home to the U.S. Air Force Space Command. This complex continues to serve a very important role in the defense against attacks against North America. Now, to get to the point of your trip here today. I’ve been authorized to share certain sensitive information with you. You may not take notes. You may not take pictures. You may not record any of this. You kids released information the world isn’t ready for,” the general glared. As if on cue the major activated a screen. On it played the now world-famous ZNN footage.
“It was a brave thing you kids did. I can’t say it was a good thing for national security, however. Or international. That interview of yours has caused one big mess. You’ve upset some very powerful people who don’t want demons linked to certain things. You told the world UFOs might be demonic.