Jennifer and Kate are taken into custody and escorted out of their lab by an armed security force.
Arizona and New Mexico
September 2022
As we left the lab, the tough guys wearing tactical gear and grim faces formed a cordon around us and the suits carrying our equipment. Kate squeezed closer and gripped my arm, her long painted nails painful where they dug into my skin. I’d be lucky if she didn’t draw blood.
I reached over to ease her hold on me. “Katy, it’s fine. I don’t think they’re here to hurt us.” The churn in my gut and the trickle of sweat running down the middle of my back told me I didn’t quite believe that. But I needed to reassure Kate. Kate was brilliant, a prodigy really, but timid; things scared her.
“Then what’s with all the guns and the stony faces? They don’t look very friendly. How do we know these aren’t the bad guys?”
The blue suit moved back from where she’d been walking ahead of Kate and me. “Dr. Watson, these troops are for your protection. Until we’re out of the building and on the road, we’re not taking any chances.”
Kate snuggled closer and hugged my arm a little tighter, but her taloned grip eased—I was out of danger of a bloodletting. Even so, her eyes still had that frightened kitten look. Soothing Kate helped me stifle my anxiety. Kate was right, though. How did we know we could trust these people?
I still didn’t know who was taking us where, and I needed to find out before my imagination turned dark. “OK, so the guys with guns are here for protection, but that doesn’t explain where we’re going and who you people are. And why do we need protection? What do you think’s going to happen? I think it’s time for some details.” I hoped I sounded firm, and the blue suit didn’t hear the quaver in my voice.
We’d been walking quickly down the hallway, although not hurrying, and the exit to the parking structure was just ahead. The blue suit halted the group and motioned several tough guys forward to the door at the end of the hallway.
“All you need to know now is that I’m Space Force Colonel Mavis Buckley. I lead a special study group looking at those signals you identified coming from Saturn. You’re not the first to find them. We detected similar signals a few years after the Galileo mission to Jupiter ended in 2003.”
“You’re kidding. Right?”
Colonel Buckley turned away from watching the team checking access to the garage and glanced over with a patient look. “No, Ms. Chandler, I’m not. We don’t know what we’re dealing with, but now you’ve stumbled across a similar message from Saturn; the project just got much more complicated.”
The team up ahead must have given the all-clear. We moved forward and filtered through the doorway, the tough guys still surrounding us and looking wary. We moved across to a fleet of black SUVs with darkened windows. They hustled Kate and me into the middle car, and the convoy sped off.
As we drove off the university campus, I checked my cellphone but had no bars. “Katy, is your cell working?”
“Dammit, it’s not. No phone, no GPS. They’ve done something to our phones. These guys are messing with us, Jenn.”
Colonel Buckley had been watching our conversation from her perch on the rear-facing jump seat while she texted on her phone. “Don’t bother with your cell phones. We’ve disabled them. Only authorized, secure phones will work in these vehicles. It’s a security measure. We wouldn’t want anyone tracking you.”
Kate shoved her phone in her pocket and grabbed my hand, still tense but maybe resigned to our situation. At least in the air-conditioned car, I’d stopped sweating, but I was sure I’d need a shower when we got to wherever we were going. One more try to find out. “So, Mavis, where are you taking us?” That drew a sharp look. Maybe she didn’t like being called Mavis. Too bad.
“Well—Jenny,” her sarcasm was slight but unmistakable, “you’re going to meet the team. You’ll get the details then. For now, relax, maybe get some sleep.” I turned quickly, reached across, and grabbed Kate’s free hand to stop what I knew would be an obscene gesture. The colonel returned to texting on her phone and ignored Kate and me.
That we were meeting the team just told me what or who, not where. Without my phone, I’d have to do it the old-fashioned way. We’d left mid-morning, and although the windows were tinted, I could tell the sun drifted from right to left. We’d been heading north. After about three hours, with no one speaking, the sun had moved to the left and then behind us. So, we were then traveling east. My guess was we were heading for the Very Large Array radio telescope installation near Socorro. I’d been there a dozen times, and even without the scenery, this felt like the right route.
Kate had fallen asleep on my shoulder. With the sleeve of my free arm, I wiped a little drool from where it was dampening my shirt. I wished I could sleep like Kate, but my imagination was running a mile a minute. I couldn’t wait to see what we’d find at the other end. Signals from the Gas Giants—what the hell had we gotten into?
“Colonel, what happens when we get to Socorro?” I’d decided showing a bit of respect might get me some answers.
Mavis flashed a hint of surprise. “As I said, we’ll brief you on the project, and you’ll meet the team.”
“That’s it? We get briefed, meet the team, and go to work at the secret base?”
Mavis shifted in her seat and crossed her arms. A slight smile flickered across her face, and she seemed to consider her answer.
“No, Jennifer. That’s not all. You and Kate will be asked to relocate to the facility. You’ll live and work with the team and have minimal contact with the outside. We’ll have you agree to never discuss your work with anyone outside the team. Whenever you leave, you’ll have a security escort.”
So, they are going to ask us to give up our lives.
“What happens if we choose not to join up? It’s a pretty big ask, Colonel.”
“We hope we’ll convince you to stay. If you don’t, you’ll still need to sign the NDA, and we’ll take you back to Tucson. However, you’ll no longer have access to data from Jupiter or Saturn. That part of your research will end.”
“Not really much of a choice, is it?”
The colonel merely shrugged, raised a quizzical eyebrow, and returned to her texting.
Four hours, and Kate and I would need to decide how to spend the rest of our lives.
###
Dr. Carl Raymond gathered up the material he’d pirated from Jenny. He grabbed the mirrored hard drive holding the raw data and removed the burner phone from where it was taped beneath his desktop. After locking his laptop in the drawer, Carl headed out the door. It was early morning before classes started, and he’d have a few hours to make the drop and return for his first lecture in the early afternoon. He always found it annoying they had to meet way out on Golden Gate Road in the middle of nowhere. Still, the cool half million they were paying him to spy on Watson and Chandler was worth the trip.
He retrieved his car from faculty parking and started the forty-minute drive to meet his contact. It being September, with school back in session and the temperature, even this early, pushing into the 90s, he didn’t expect anyone else would be at the small parking lot a few hundred yards off the main road, across a dry creek bed. Only dedicated hikers ever ventured that far into the hills. That’s probably why his contact picked the spot. Still, he hated driving into the desert; he could feel the hot, dry air sucking the life out of him.
As always, the silver Caddy sat waiting when he arrived at the rendezvous. The driver’s door opened, and his contact stepped out. Tall and slim, dark suit, no tie, dark sunglasses, no hat—he always wore the same outfit. Carl gathered the file, hard drive, and phone and walked to his contact’s car.
“Is that everything?”
Typical. No preamble, no niceties. Harsh and pointed, just like their phone calls.
“Yes, this is everything. Where’s my cash?” Carl ignored the tiny white lie as he had kept the laptop. He handed the materials to the man and stepped back. He used his hand to shade his eyes from the harsh early morning sun but still couldn’t see the tall man’s expression. Carl squirmed with his shirt already damp from sweat. Whether from the climbing heat or the tension didn’t matter; it still felt clammy, sticking to his back and chest.
“No cash. We’re renegotiating our deal.” Not looking at Carl, the tall man took a cursory glance at the material, pocketed the drive and the burner phone, and moved the file to his left hand.
Carl jabbed the air towards the tall man with a stiff, pointed finger. “You can’t do that. We had a deal.”
The tall man glanced around, scanning the empty parking lot and the surrounding hills dotted with scrub. “It’s like this, Professor. We don’t need you anymore. You have nothing to offer us without access to Dr. Watson and Ms. Chandler. You’re useless.”
Carl took a few steps, closing the distance with the tall man. “Useless? I’m a respected professional. You need me to decode the communications.”
“No. We needed Watson and Chandler, but now the Feds have them.”
“You’re not going to stiff me. You need to pay me. I’ll go public. I swear, I’ll blow your entire operation.” Carl put his hands on his hips, trying to look firm, hoping to use his two-meter height to intimidate his contact. The tall man took no notice, more interested in the stark landscape than anything Carl was doing.
“You signed an NDA, Professor. If you go public, you will violate that agreement.” The tall man, at last, looked directly at Carl, standing a few feet away.
“Well, you’ve violated our agreement. Why would I care about my NDA?”
“If that’s how you feel, we’ll cancel that as well.”
The tall, slim man in the dark suit and sunglasses, no hat, and no tie, reached into his jacket, extracted an automatic pistol equipped with a suppressor and shot Carl twice in the chest. He took a few short steps to where Carl lay bleeding into the sand and shot him twice more in the head.
He put the pistol back inside his jacket and picked up the four spent shell casings. With a final scan of the surroundings and a glance at Carl, he entered his sedan and left.
It would be several days before one of those dedicated hikers Carl had thought about would find what was left of his sunbaked body and report it to the Pima County Sheriff.
###
Detective Raul Fuentes hung up his desk phone and took a deep breath. He was always happy to get out of Phoenix and into the field, but a trip to Tucson wasn’t exactly what he had in mind this week. That’s what he gets for telling the colonel he’d take the next out-of-town case. There was no sense in wasting time. He’d collect his partner and get on the road.
“Jaz, grab your bag. We’re heading to Tucson.”
Detective Jason Yazzie, Jaz to his friends, looked up from the stack of case files he was reviewing. “Tucson? What’s in Tucson?”
“The Sheriff found a body in the desert.”
“Why’d they call us?” Jaz shut down his laptop and grabbed his go bag from under his desk.
“Victim was a professor at the university. Took two to the chest and two to the head. Sheriff thinks it was a professional hit. Thought CID would be interested.” That drew a couple of raised eyebrows from Jaz.
Fuentes grabbed the keys out of his desk drawer and, with Detective Yazzie in tow, exited to the parking garage. They loaded up the Explorer and headed south for the two-hour drive to a new case that already sounded weird—just the way Fuentes liked them.