Dulce Truths

Mark smiles as he looks back at the controls and the wide window looking out into space, but says nothing. There, far off in the distance, is the moon. The dark side is waiting for them, and Mark considers punching the ship to take them there all the faster. Instead he looks to his left, out the window and then back down at the radar.

The Black Knight satellite is there. Without telling anyone, Mark slowly begins to steer them toward it.

35 — Back in the USSR

400 miles east of Tien Shan Mountains, Kyrgyzstan

Thursday, August 28, 1991

4:47 PM

After leaving the Montana base, Walter had tracked-down both Stan and Eddie. It wasn’t hard to do — both of the MAT Team astronauts were in their usual lab, going over some of the hardware they’d recovered from Dulce. What was hard to do was convincing the two of them that he wasn’t dead. Mentioning Trifecta finally did it, and after that they were all ears. All told it took 17 minutes for Walter to track them down, convince them of what was going on, and then have the two of them commandeer the same ship that Eddie had flown out of Dulce the night before. After that they were off.

Eddie simply called the craft they were in “the triangle.” The thing looked like a triangle with a small, glass-enclosed cockpit area nestled down into its body, although it wasn’t glass, but something else. Eddie wasn’t real clear on that, only that he’d seen the same at Los Alamos and knew the secret military teams were working on creating something similar using the same alien technology. They weren’t quite there yet, but that didn’t preclude test flying the one they’d captured. Eddie had been such a pilot, and that’s why flying the thing from Dulce had been so easy.

The triangle was now racing over the snowy mountains of northern China and southern Russia. Eddie wasn’t sure which country they belonged to, and he didn’t much care. There was no way either a Russian MiG-29 travelling at its top speed of 1,367 miles per hour, or a Chinese Xian JH-7 travelling at its top speed of 1,092 miles per hour was going to catch him. Currently he was cruising at 4,600 miles per hour, or Mach 6. Eddie was still surprised at how well the craft handled at that speed, and he wondered what kinds of speeds the Grays usually got these machines up to. Of course, he knew, it could be a Reptilian craft as well. Either way, Eddie had been having one helluva good time trying the craft out. Nothing could compare to that initial flight out of Dulce Base, however, when Eddie had taken the craft off the landing port’s floor. Now here he was, 7,200 miles from Dulce and 12 years as well. Time travel, he thought with a chuckle, and took a moment to glance over his shoulder.

Behind him in the UFO were Walter and Stan. It’d been Walter that’d come into their Blue Lake hangar a few hours earlier to tell them that Trifecta had started up. Walter hadn’t needed to say anymore — both Stan and Eddie had known about the plan for years, ever since the first attempts to take Dulce back had started. So after getting over their initial shock they’d listened to Walter, nodded a lot, and then got down to business. Now here they were, racing to a UFO crash site… one that wasn’t set to see a UFO crash there for another 13 minutes.

Stan glances down at his watch. “It’s coming up soon, about ten minutes now.”

“I can’t believe we know of a crash before it happens,” Walter says.

“There’s a lot we know,” Eddie says from his spot at the controls, “and a lot the public doesn’t… even people like you, Walter, people on the inside but not totally in-the-know.”

“So…” Walter says, narrowing his eyes and taking on a conspiratorial look, “how’d this all get started? I’ve heard a lot, but I haven’t heard this one. We’ve got ten minutes — fill me in.”

Eddie looks to Stan, back at Walter, and then down to the floor.

“That tale’s not for everyone,” Stan says.

“Well, I’m not everyone,” Walter replies.

“Alright,” Eddie says, looking back up from the floor, “if you want to hear it, then here it goes.” He pauses, looks off for a moment as if trying to find the best place to begin, and then launches into it.

“It started in Russia, in 1991… though maybe ahead would be a better term to use.”

“Just tell the story,” Stan says, rolling his eyes.

“Alright, it starts in Russia. Just around the time people are startin’ to get off work for the day an extremely large object suddenly appears over the Caspian Sea. It measures 600 meters in length and another 110 in diameter. Radar shows it moving at a fast clip, 6,300 miles per hour.”

Walter whistles, and Eddie nods.