Alien Agenda: Why They Came, Why They Stayed Read online

  Tom Cray was back at his desk and wondering for the fiftieth time who this little girl, Melanie, was and why the entire dark side of the American government was full throttle after her.

  Kate smelled of cigarettes as she passed his desk.

  Tom’s primary function here was to continuously create code that made it easier to eliminate messages from the filtering system. Often innocent message fragments slipped past the computer filters and triggered human attention. Tom kept himself busy cutting down the number of messages that passed all his digital checkpoints. Since he started programming for Intercept, Tom had reduced the number of filtered messages getting through to the team from thousands a day to hundreds a day.

  The hundreds each had to be investigated and cleared in this office. The remaining thousands were sent to lower-priority check points. They were still investigated, but not as quickly or intensely.

  In the current crisis, Tom was investigating fragments with the rest of the team.

  Tom put on his headset and returned to his displays. Six large monitors hung from ceiling mounts, and numerous small, specialized displays crowded the table. They displayed everything from satellite images, to GPS positions on road maps, to cell phone conversations, to Internet traffic. All the information came from a legendary supercomputer somewhere in America. Tom always wondered how many more Team Intercepts there were double-and triple-checking. If he ran things there would be plenty, but the way the government worked there might not be any.

  Four other men had similar electronic arrays in the room.

  Fifteen hours ago Team Intercept received word of the abduction.

  His boss, Special Agent Kate Hollister, paced between the tables. On the phone again, she spoke softly into a headset. It appeared as if TLS had tattled to his boss. “Mr. Secretary, we are doing everything possible. You know this takes time; we will get her back.” She paused to listen again, then continued, “No sir, 07 has not surfaced since Madrid.” What she wanted to say was, “Fuck-off, asshole. You will be lucky to find a job after the next election so leave the hunting to those who are here for the long haul.” What she said was, “Yes, sir. I know that was a long time ago. Apparently the mishandling of Bamberg and Madrid were enough to chase him deeper into the thicket.”

  She stopped to listen, exasperation shaping her face. She rolled her eyes, wondering why cabinet members always thought they knew best. “Yes sir. We know he’s key. We will get him,” she concluded, then finished the sentence to herself, “eventually, if we keep at it long enough, hard enough and are lucky enough.”

  Cray stopped eavesdropping and checked a monitor, which displayed a photo of a woman and a girl exiting a Mercedes SUV at a gas station. Next to the grainy image of the vehicle was an ID photo of a woman along with DARPA credentials. Beneath the photo was the flashing message: Priority Match. The facial recognition software had sharpened the focus of an older woman’s face.

  It was the nun, Sister Fran, and the girl.

  “Kate,” Cray said softly, “we got something.”

  Cray knew that the nun could not have pulled this off without help, but other than strong suspicions that Tate had masterminded the operation, there were no other suspects, so facial recognition had no photos to filter among the millions of images it accessed hourly.

  Kate leaned over his shoulder, looking at Cray’s screen. The others in the room left their stations and moved toward Cray’s desk.

  “Shell Station security camera off I-31 near Cleveland, Tennessee. The image was taken at 3:13 PM.” Tom typed some keys and highlighted the part of the vehicle that was visible in the photo. A few seconds later a window opened that said, “2005 Mercedes SUV. 93 percent probability.”

  Kate stood straight. “Send what you have to the Little Shit at Homeland and the usual crowd.” She picked up her phone, pulled up contacts on her computer, and dialed the FBI field office in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Silver Mercedes SUV

  Jim Sees exited the freeway and stopped in front of the pumps at a Shell station a little after 3:00 PM. Next to the station was a cedar-shake-covered structure with a hand-painted sign reading: Martha’s Café & Rock Shop. Mr. Blue woke when the Mercedes decelerated, looked at his watch, then rubbed his eyes and said, “I need a pee break.”

  “Us too,” came from Sister Fran in the back seat.

  “Sister,” Jim said, “there’s not much cover at the station. Do you want me to find some woods or a side road?”

  “It is probably better to be safe….” The nun stopped when she heard the cell phone buzz in the box in the front seat.

  Mr. Blue answered the phone. He listened, occasionally responding with a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ He looked at his watch then said, “We should be in Huntsville in three hours.”

  Mr. Blue listened again, saying, “Yes, sir,” several times.

  Everyone was quiet except Melanie. She moaned softly and rocked in her seat with her hands between her thighs.

  “She needs to go,” said Sister Fran opening the door and helping Melanie out of her seat belt.

  Mr. Blue ended the call and said, “You fill the tank, I’ll get some water and some dinner to go. We need to get moving.” He shoved the cell phone in his pocket as he went into Martha’s Café and Rock Shop.

  Jim went inside and handed the clerk four twenty-dollar bills then went back to the pump. He topped off the tank as Fran and Melanie returned to the Mercedes. Mr. Blue came out with a shopping bag, sat it on the front seat, and stretched his muscular frame.

  Jim went inside, peed, picked up a Dove bar, retrieved his change, and went back to the SUV. Mr. Blue was in the passenger seat, so Jim sat behind the wheel.

  They pulled back on to the highway with about three hours before they reached Huntsville and whatever awaited them there.

  “What is it, honey? You hungry?” Sister Fran asked, pulling a paper-wrapped hamburger out of the bag Mr. Blue had given her.

  Melanie took the burger but continued to stare at the nun. “What do you want, child?” Sister Fran asked of no one in particular.

  Mr. Blue said, “Weird. Sister, feel around in the bottom of the bag. I got something for her and she must know it is there.”

  Sister Fran came up with a small object wrapped in white tissue paper and Melanie immediately held out her hand.

  It was a quartz-crystal sphere, about the diameter of a quarter. It was bigger than any of Melanie’s marbles, but Mr. Blue thought she would like it.

  She did. Melanie took the crystal ball, pulled eight marbles out of her bag, and laid them out on the carpeted floor mat in her usual three-by-three pattern, but this time the crystal sphere took the center spot. She began to hover her finger over first one then another marble.

  As the sunset and shadows filled the car, Jim Sees twice thought he saw a glow coming from the marbles, but when he turned to look there was none.

  Jim, adrenalin rush long gone and replaced by sharp anxiety and visions of dire consequences, said, “Less than three hours we will be in Huntsville and hopefully this will all be over.”

  Mr. Blue responded, “For us. It will never be over for them,” nodding to the back seat. Mr. Blue added, “We are actually just passing through Huntsville. The new destination is the Texaco Station in Meridianville about ten miles north of Huntsville.”

  “What happens there?” Jim Sees’ fear of being captured was making him less and less secure with having no control over the situation.

  “We stay on the loop around the Texaco station until we see a white Suburban with a Kolb Real Estate sign. We let it get in front of us and follow it.”

  “The mystery is wearing thin. I would like to speak to 07, or whatever nom du plume he currently employs to ask some questions.” Jim Sees was clearly aggravated.

  Mr. Blue cast a side glance and said, “Easy, pardner. I have a feeling we’re coming to the end of the trail.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Alabama State Patrol

  “Fuck,” Jim
Sees said under his breath from the driver’s seat when the flashing blue and white lights appeared in the rearview mirror.

  “Steady,” Mr. Blue said studying the image in the side mirror. “Don’t panic. You are not speeding. He may pull around us.”

  The flashing lights moved in a little closer and paced the Mercedes SUV.

  “What should I do?” Jim’s heart raced, his stomach battled instant nausea. His imagination already had him in a bus with barred windows on his way to federal prison.

  “Pull over,” Mr. Blue said, taking two items from the glove compartment.

  He held out the first item for Jim to take and put the other, a short-barreled .357 Bulldog revolver, in the thigh pocket of his cargo pants.

  “What can I do?” Sister Fran asked from the backseat.

  Jim had the car stopped and was looking at the clear plastic pouch Blue had handed him. It contained a driver’s license, vehicle registration, and a State Farm insurance card. All were in the name of Nathan Twining of 1947 July Road in Roswell, New Mexico. The license contained a photo of Jim and his real birthdate. He put the car in park and rolled down the window.

  Mr. Blue looked in the backseat where Melanie sat, hands cupped, studying the crystal ball. “At this point, Sister, just say a prayer.”

  “That’s something I am good at,” she replied putting an arm around Melanie’s shoulders.

  Jim’s heart hammered as the state policeman approached in the Mercedes’s side mirror. He was a big man, bigger than Mr. Blue. He wore his holstered gun on his left hip. He had removed what Jim thought looked like standard-issue police sunglasses and held them in his right hand. His approach was slow, careful, practiced. He studied the car, caught Jim watching him in the mirror, and loosened the strap on his pistol.

  Having seen enough episodes of Cops on television, Jim kept both hands on the steering wheel.

  The officer bent down and peered in the window. Beneath the broad-brimmed trooper hat, Jim saw a weathered face bearing old acne scars and ice-blue eyes that darted at the car’s occupants and contents in an instant. His polished name tag read ‘BAKER.’

  Trying to appear calm and unconcerned, Jim said, “Officer Baker, was I speeding?”

  Baker replied, “License and registration please,” as he glanced at each person in the car a second time.

  Jim offered him the plastic pouch.

  “Please remove the license from the envelope,” Baker said, hardly glancing at the item in Jim’s hand.

  Baker sized up the man in the passenger seat as the only possible physical threat of the group. The woman and child in the backseat seemed unconcerned while the driver, like most people he stopped, tried to appear unconcerned, innocent.

  The woman in the backseat might be the little girl’s grandmother, though they looked nothing alike. In fact, the little girl looked ill or something.

  “Please turn your engine off,” Baker said, taking the paperwork and looking at the license then back at Jim. “Mr. Twining, I stopped you because your left rear tire is very low. You may have picked up a nail. I can help you change it, or there’s a Union 76 at the next exit that will do it for you.”

  Jim let out the air he had unknowingly held in his lungs. “Thank you, Officer Baker. How far is the gas station? I would rather go there and fill up the tank as well.”

  Baker was bothered. Something niggled him. Instead of handing the papers back to the driver he said, “Let me take a quick look at the tire. Please wait here.”

  Baker took three steps and squatted down to look at the tire. He rose and slid into the black and silver Ford Crown Victoria patrol car. He typed the Mercedes’s plate number into the onboard notebook computer.

  He hated niggles. He also prided himself in remembering faces. He could swear he knew Nathanial Twining from somewhere, but he could not quite place him—not yet anyway.

  Alabama State Patrol Sergeant Randy Baker regretted only one thing in his eighteen years of policing highways. It happened five years ago. It would never happen again.

  The license plate number came back clean. Registered to Nathan Twining of Roswell, New Mexico.

  He tapped some more keys with his oversized index finger and the National Amber Alert website appeared.

  Something was too familiar about Twining’s face. He must have seen it on some bulletin. He also knew there was a current Amber Alert for a girl and a woman. Five years ago he stopped a Toyota pickup with a man who smelled of cigarettes and a little boy sleeping with his head on the man’s thigh. He had a niggle then but he wrote it off and did not check. A week later the cadaver dogs found the kidnapped little boy in a shallow grave. The truck was still there but the owner had gone missing. DNA identified a male, but so far no matches had turned up in the system.

  As he moved closer to the computer screen, a book and clipboard slid off the seat and onto the floor. The book was titled Otherworld and it landed facedown, exposing the author’s photo: Jim Sees, a.k.a. Nathan Twining.

  Baker didn’t see it. He was too busy looking at photos of Melanie and Sister Fran.

  Jim’s relief at discovering they had been stopped because of low tire pressure returned to a thinly veiled panic as the state trooper sat back in his car. Jim knew he would be checking databases. Sister Fran had said she and Melanie were undoubtedly listed on the Amber Alert and every other missing person’s electronic list that existed.

  “What do we do now?” Jim asked Mr. Blue.

  Blue looked up from the road map, gave him a wink, and said, “We wait.”

  Melanie seemed antsy and moved to shrug Sister Fran’s arm off her. Her expression did not change, but something was making her uncomfortable. She held the crystal marble in a tightly clenched little fist. She started rocking forward and backwards. Then she started humming, a soft, unrecognizable, but not unpleasant tune.

  Sister Fran seemed surprised by the behavior. “This is new,” she said, taking her hands off Melanie and giving her room.

  Jim nearly shit his pants when Baker exited the car, twelve-gauge pump shotgun in one hand and the patrol car’s microphone in the other.

  “Everyone lower the windows and put your hands where I can see them.” Baker shouldered the gun from behind his opened front door, the barrel resting on the top of the door. With his right hand he clicked the microphone to the loudspeaker system again and spoke. “At my command, I want you to exit the vehicle one at a time. Mr. Twining, you first, exit the car slowly, keep your hands where I can see them at all times.” Baker had the look of a man who was less afraid of an internal investigation than of letting bad guys escape.

  Jim got out of the car. He was shaky and pale as a ghost. He didn’t think his legs would support him.

  “Please walk to the back of your vehicle and place yourself facedown on the road.” Baker’s eyes were trying to keep an eye on the passenger behind the tinted windows.

  Jim Sees sickly complied. He was prone, facedown, holding his head off the road’s shoulder.

  “Clasp your hands behind your head,” Baker said more softly.

  Almost as soon as his hands met, he felt the cold metal and heard the firm click of handcuffs. His neck was already tiring, and he let his face sink gently to the pebbly asphalt, which smelled vaguely of oil, gasoline, and the end of the road.

  Baker moved across the front of the patrol car to a vantage point on the Mercedes’s passenger door. He held the gun with both hands now. Without the aid of the speaker system, he said loudly, “Man in the front seat, pull your left hand inside of the car and open the door, then show me both hands.”

  Mr. Blue was pretty sure he could take out the man with the shotgun. The officer was close enough to take an accurate shot from the short-barreled revolver. The .357’s impact would allow him time for a second shot if the first one didn’t do the job.

  Blue opened the door, calculating his next step.

  “Don’t do anything rash, Mr. Blue.” Sister Fran’s voice was calm. “We don’t want anything
happening to Melanie.”

  Blue pushed the gun off his lap and used his heel to kick it under the seat then extended his left hand out the opened door.

  “Now step out slowly, turn your back to me, and place your hands behind your back,” Baker said. When the vehicle passenger obeyed, he shifted the shotgun to his right hand and drew his automatic pistol. Next he leaned the shotgun against the side of the Mercedes and pulled a set of plastic ready-cuffs from his utility belt.

  After both men were in the backseat of the locked cruiser, he went back to the Mercedes and conducted the same set of instructions with Sister Fran. After Baker led her back to the patrol car and squeezed her into the backseat with the two men, he closed the door, made sure the auto lock was engaged, and turned back toward the Mercedes to complete his rescue of the little girl: Melanie was her name according to the Amber Report.

  Baker had gone two steps when the little girl emerged from the SUV holding a Hello Kitty pillow in her left hand and something clenched tightly in her right. Her expression seemed one of confusion. Baker noticed the shotgun still leaned against the Mercedes. He didn’t really think the odd-looking girl would do anything, but it was cocked and the safety off. Baker had been around guns enough to know that accidents happened.

  He took the four strides to reach the shotgun. As he stooped to pick it up, he noticed the little girl raise her arms, not in surrender but in a ‘pick me up’ gesture.

  “I’ll get you, honey,” Baker said as his hand touched the shotgun’s pump handle.

  Baker froze. Something niggled him, something that seemed out of place, something peaceful.

  Baker held the shotgun by its grip, resting it on his shoulder. The rusty pine needles formed a soft carpet on the forest floor that kept ground plants to a minimum. The tall, straight pines made the forest magical, columns in a fairy court. Here and there narrow columns of sunlight spotlighted patches of the brown carpet as dust danced in the bright beams that filtered through the tops of the tall trees. It had been a magical place for Randy Baker since he was a child, but now he was a man and men didn’t believe in magic.