Chapter 14
Five Days Before the Event
“Now I know most folks think the undercoating is a giant scam, but before you say no, let me just show you some pictures of the difference between a vehicle that’s had undercoating versus one that hasn’t.”
Cold air blows from massive vents inside the Troy Baker Premium Car Lot in Dallas Texas. With three massive walls comprised almost entirely of lightly tinted glass, the autumn heat wave forces the dealership to crank the air conditioning up to high or else risk sweating out all of their customers.
As the salesman pulls out photos showing a car with huge amounts of rust on the undercarriage in an attempt to scare his customer into purchasing the coating, a commotion from the parking lot catches his eye.
Outside, another customer sits in a brand-new SUV. The engine is on and running and the customer and saleswoman helping him are both talking as they look under the hood. A moment after the car turns on, though, the saleswoman and the man looking at the car start coughing. They back up from the vehicle, waving their hands in front of their faces. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for the pair to realize what the smell is.
“Is that… gas?” The saleswoman turns around, looking for one of the service bay technicians. She manages to get a full two steps away from the car in her search before a ball of flames erupts from beneath the vehicle.
Nine minutes later, as the saleswoman and the customer are loaded into an ambulance, a cluster of firefighters, police officers and the owners of the car lot are clustered around the still-smoldering wreckage. A few of the other customers in the lot and inside the building are standing nearby, watching what’s going on, but most of the customers have already left.
As technicians examine the wreckage of the car over the next few days, a curious tale emerges. Seals around the fuel lines and related components appear to be the first parts that failed. This allowed for a slow leak of fuel that quickly turned to vapor in the afternoon heat. A few moments after the leak began a short-circuit in a computer control chip on the underside of the car caused a spark which ignited the vapors.
As the saleswoman and the customer both survived—albeit with grievous injuries—the story quickly vanishes from the collective consciousness of the area over the next few days. The only people who remain concerned and puzzled by the incident are technicians from both the car dealership and from the manufacturer. Such a dangerous incident should have never happened. Computer control systems are in place in the vehicles to prevent any such situation from occurring.
And yet, somehow, in all of the vehicle’s logs, there is no trace to be found of any type of control system malfunction. Everything appears as normal up until the time of the incident when the logs fail to update as though something turned them off.
Chapter 15
Las Vegas, Nevada
The ride to Nellis Air Force Base was uncomfortably long. The stuffy conditions of the Humvees, the menacing looks of the soldiers and the uneasy silence inside the vehicles made Rick wonder if he had made the right decision in going out to try and reason with the soldiers who had been taking Jane away.
After relieving Rick of his weapons and gear, rifling through everything and then throwing it into the back of one of their vehicles, the soldiers had him loaded into a separate vehicle from Jane. He wasn’t sure why they were being split up, but his nervousness only increased the longer they took going through the city.
On more than one occasion Rick had tried to strike up a conversation with the pair of soldiers who sat on either side of him in the back seat, but each time he spoke the soldiers either ignored him or gave him a blank stare. With his hands zip-tied in front of him and no idea where he was being taken, all he could do was sit tight and hope for the best.
While Rick had initially guessed that the soldiers had been sent out to retrieve—or destroy—the pair of Humvees that had fallen into the hands of the men who attacked the convoy, he realized halfway through the ride to Nellis that they were doing more than just a retrieval of their assets. The vehicles stopped every quarter mile and each time they did a pair of soldiers jumped out with a small black box in their hands. The soldiers carried the boxes to a nearby building and disappeared inside for fifteen to twenty minutes before returning. While the men were inside the buildings a brief radio conversation went on between them and the vehicles before they returned and the convoy began moving again.
“Package is set. Lights are green. Confirm, over.”
“Showing green lights on remote. Data link secure. NVG is solid. FLIR is solid. Confirmed, over.”
“Copy, returning. Out.”
This curious series of events occurred a total of thirty times in between when the vehicles picked up Jane and Rick and when they began their final approach to the base. It only took Rick listening to the conversation and watching where the men placed the black box in and on the buildings they entered for him to realize that they were planting surveillance cameras around the city. He had no idea what they were for, but the more he thought about it, the more worried he became.
“You guys not have eyes in the sky anymore?” Rick tried striking up yet another conversation with the soldiers in the car, but they merely stared mutely back at him. He had tried several times to talk to
them about their work but all he received in response were a bunch of blank stares. “Come on, fellas. This is one hell of a long ride.” Rick smiled, but the soldiers didn’t return it.
Why the hell would they need cameras on the streets? The prevalence of civilian and military drones in all roles had been overwhelming during the best of times and while Rick knew very little about satellite imaging, he was certain the military could see virtually anything they wanted with a few clicks of a mouse. Setting up cameras along streets in a city seemed not only downright primitive but somewhat frightening. If they need cameras set up on streets to keep an eye on what’s going on, that can’t bode well for whatever’s happening.
Dawn was beginning to break over the city when the convoy rolled up to the entrance to Nellis. Extra fortifications and guards had been deployed and the walls were topped with large bundles of razor wire that had been hastily tacked on. Crowds of people stood near the fence off of the road leading into the base, all of them staring wide-eyed as a man in uniform paced the top of the wall, talking to them through a bullhorn.
The road into the base itself was lined with sandbags, razor wire and HESCO barriers for a few hundred feet out. Three guard towers were positioned on each side of the barriers and there were two Humvees parked at the end with soldiers on the guns and standing nearby wielding rifles. The convoy slowed to a stop at the makeshift entrance to the base and one of the soldiers standing guard walked up to the lead vehicle. Being crunched up in the middle back of the Humvee where the seat was mostly in his imagination, Rick couldn’t hear or see any of what was going on. A moment after stopping, though, the convoy sped up again and roared through to the main gate of the base proper.
After another brief stop the convoy passed through into the base and circled around to an aircraft hangar. Rick’s Humvee and one other vehicle passed into the hangar while the rest stopped outside. When the two vehicles finally came to a stop inside, the soldiers jumped out and pulled Rick and Jane from the backs of their respective vehicles. Their bags were taken out next and thrown on the floor, though Rick’s guns were held back.
“Get your bags and follow me.” The soldier who had been driving the Humvee with Rick in the back spoke gruffly to Rick and Jane as he pointed at their gear.
“Where are we going?”
“The Colonel wants to have a word with you.”