The Omega Sanction - Andrew Scorah (best way to read ebooks txt) 📗

I want to know everything about Grooms defensive capabilities. Can he do what he’s saying, or is he bluffing?”

“Do we mobilise sir?” General Robert Byrd asked.

Goldwater looked at him, thinking for a moment.

“Can you get us back our base, Colonel?”

“Yes sir, I can, the teams have trained for this eventuality, also there’s no way he’s got control of Shiva-star. Fairfax wouldn’t give up the codes to activate. We have to go now if we are to go at all sir.”

“I hope you're right." Goldwater said, shaking his head, “I hope you're right, send your boys in, General Byrd.”

 

The two men met on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Both were important men in their respective circles, shakers, and movers on the world stage. The tall well-built man with the bald head was a colonel attached to the Department of Defence, and often advised the president on military matters. The other was a Republican senator.

“Good evening, David,” the bald headed man said.

The senator just nodded.

“Why’d you called me out here? We agreed not to meet again after I gave you the information you needed, I’d be shot if anyone found out,” he looked about, to check they were not being observed.

“You’ve been a great help to our cause, senator, I wanted to hand over the photos in person, we did agree once we had all the information about the complex you would get them back.”

He handed over a buff coloured file; the senator snatched it out of his hands. Opening the file, he checked the contents.

“They’re all there, even the negatives. We hold no more copies.”

“I still don’t understand why you couldn't get the information yourself, surely the DOD has it?”

“My security clearance doesn't extend into the black, yours does with your connections with the security complex.”

The photos contained images of the senator in compromising positions with young Russian male prostitutes, which they had taken when they wired his room while he was on a fact-finding mission to Moscow. When he was presented with them, he was left with no choice but to assist them.

“Is this the end of the affair then?”

“Yes, senator, it’s the end.”

The senator missed the imperceptible nod of the bald mans head. A shadow detached from the deeper darkness of the monument. A hand wrapped around the senators head, he felt the prick of a hypodermic needle, then felt no more.

The man let go of the senator. The balding man retrieved the file, scattering the contents all over the rapidly cooling body.

They both walked away into the night. The bald man did not realise it but by the time the sun rose, he would join the senator.

 

Bane now knew he was running for his life. He arrived at his flat to find a bombed out smoking ruin. Whoever these people were, they were serious. There was just one place left for him to go, Omega base.

Two hours later, after buying a change of clothes, he sat on a Boeing heading for America. Next stop New York, then he would grab a connection to take him on to Las Vegas. He had to use his own credit card because the tickets had been in his flat. He did not want to call in as he had a feeling someone inside was dirty. At first, when Conda had told him the SAS team had been taken out and the lab attacked, he thought there must have been someone watching. That could not have been the case; the whole area had been sanitised by the SAS back up team. The only way anyone could have known where the Xerum was is if someone had blabbed. Same with the SAS team, Bane considered, maybe a tracker had been fixed to their vehicle at some point. The only bodies on the plot though had been the science bods.

He decided to sleep on the problem; he wasn't looking forward to telling his new team mates two of their friends had been killed saving his ass. There was no way he could do this but face to face.

 

Dr Jennifer Connelly swore when she heard the alarm, the slide she had been placing under the microscope jumped out of her hand, and smashed on the floor.

She looked across at Billy Lee, her assistant. His face was white.

“Not another drill!”

She brushed a strand of hair away from her face, and blew out a slow breath. Frustration coursed through her body, in fact the whole place was frustrating, with its draconian security measures and compartmentalised ways of working.

Dr Connelly arrived a month ago, under contract from the Department of Energy, as a nuclear physicist she was used to tight security, but this place took the biscuit.

On her arrival they had stuck a computer disk in her hand and asked her to make sense of the formula described within; they wanted a rundown of its properties and capabilities. The formula was, Hg6Sb2O8, a variant of red mercury with some of the mercury present in its pure metallic form, a complex mixture of elements, including about 10% by weight plutonium, with the remainder consisting of 61% mercury, 11% antimony, 6% oxygen, 2% iodine and 1.6% gallium. She found it a strange thing for a super secret organisation to be working on, she felt there was something missing, and that was what she had been working on when the alarm disturbed her.

“This ain't a drill, doctor,” Billy said as he jumped up from his workstation, “It’s the attack alarm, they never drill that.”

Billy Lee had been at the complex for two years. He worked as an assistant to whoever needed him. He had worked on some scary stuff in his time here; most people thought the Groom Lake complex only tested Jets. That were not the case, everything from biological to neurological weapons, and defence systems found a place here. The one thing he had really enjoyed working on was what the scientists had nicknamed ‘Harry’s Cloak’, a material that rendered the wearer invisible. A Canadian scientist had discovered a material that had light bending properties, the government had paid him an ungodly sum of money to come and work for them, and the result was the Personnel Anti-Visual Camouflage Unit, VCU for short. They were now trying to turn it into some kind of paint that could be switched on and off.

He ran over to the door, and saw techs and civilian staff pouring out of the other labs and offices.

“C’mon, Doctor Connelly, we have to go. That alarm means the base is under attack, it’s the only time they’d sound it.”

“Hang on, Billy, I’ve got to grab some stuff.”

By the time she joined Billy at the door, the corridor was clear. On the white walls, red arrows had appeared showing the direction they were to go.

Billy set off at a jog, Dr Connelly trailing behind him. He led her through a dizzying array of corridors into an area she had never been. People in uniform or civilian attire appeared to be heading in the same direction; she wished she had paid more attention at the induction now. By the time they reached a bank of elevators which was crowded with people her heart was beating fast, both from the exertion and the fear of whatever had made them sound the alarm.

“This is going to take forever,” she said.

He was about to answer when the sound of gunfire close by made them both jump.

“Shit! ” She grabbed Billy’s arm, pulling him into the crowd of bodies.

Ten heavily armed men, dressed all in black, their faces covered with black balaclavas rounded the far corner. One fired into the ceiling above the crowd who all dropped to the floor.

Dr Connelly dragged Billy towards a door to one side of the elevator foyer. Praying it was unlocked, she tugged on the handle. The door opened, unseen by the gunmen, they vanished inside.

Looking around, she found they were in a utility cupboard, a storage room for the floors cleaners.

Billy went to speak; she held a finger up to silence him. She opened the door a crack, and peered out. The gunmen had formed the crowd into a single file line. A man in the uniform of Groom Lake Security lunged at one of the gunmen, and tried to wrestle his weapon away. CRACK! A shot rang out. The security guard flew back. Two more shots rang out. The two men who had been either side of the guard smacked into the wall behind them before sliding to the floor, leaving a blood trail on the wall.

A loud voice called out, from out of her line of sight.

“Let this be a lesson to you all, if you resist, we will kill you and the person in front, and the one behind you, now move!”

Dr Connelly put a hand to her mouth to stifle the cry which caught in her throat. The sound of the mans voice sent little ice picks of terror running all over her.

The men and their captives marched off. One man was left behind to guard the elevator.

She quietly shut the door, and sank to the floor.

 

A million thoughts were racing through Colonel Fairfax’s mind as he was escorted into the main security hub of the complex. Situated on the first level, from here every single area of the vast complex could be monitored by the various CCTV cameras. The defence systems that protected them from external threat were activated from here too. He saw on one of the cameras in the maglev station, the black clad soldiers had control of it, so it looked as if no one had got away.

Two large shaven headed thugs stood off to one side, both armed with Heckler and Koch machine pistols. A tall blonde haired man was sat in the main control chair.

“Good morning, Colonel Fairfax,” he said, swivelling the chair to face him.

He knew now his job was to gather as much Intel as possible, they obviously wanted him alive, the question was why.

“You must be the boss of this little suicide mission, you’ve got some balls I’ll give you that.”

He stood up, towering over Fairfax by a good two inches, he was struck by the man’s piercing blue eyes. The man stuck out his hand.

“Reich Fuhrer, Oscar Koenig, very pleased to meet you.”

Fairfax stood ramrod straight, had he heard right, Reich Fuhrer? His base had been taken over by Nazis, what the hell!

“What do you want, Mr Koenig?” He said, not able to say his title.

A blow in the small of his back drove him to his knees.

“You will use the proper form of address for our leader,” one of his escorts said.

“I need you to open the secure vault for me, Colonel Fairfax.”

Fairfax was aghast. The vault contained technology they had failed to control, or could not understand, all locked away waiting for a time when science advanced enough to figure them out. Only Fairfax could access the secure area, the door was key coded to his living DNA, if he was dead the door would not open.

“Why? There is nothing in there that would be of any use to you.”

“I beg to differ. Colonel, I want the Kecksburgh device, Die Glocke.”

Fear now gripped Fairfax’s heart. The Kecksburgh device should have been destroyed a long time ago. The decision had been made at the highest level to bury it in the vault. Attempts had been made to make it work again, but all had failed. The trouble was because they had never been able to replicate the fuel that drove the device. He had recently received a work order to attempt the replication again, which he had railed against at the time, but had been left with no choice but to comply. He remembered when the device was brought to Groom Lake, the chief project officer, Glen Locke called it, the true Goddess Shiva, too beautiful to let die, too monstrous to live.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kecksberg, Pennsylvania,December 5, 1965

 

Jack Murphy was manning the phones for talk show Dj. Ralph Bates. He loved his