Dulce Truths

“At that point it was at 21,000 feet. An alert goes out and two MIG 29 fighters start heading for the Mangyshlak Peninsula where this thing’s been spotted. The two pilots are ordered to force the craft down” — Eddie scoffs here — “can you imagine two 52x35-foot planes tryin’ to force down somethin’ that’s nearly 2,000 feet long and another 360 feet across?” He chuckles. “Anyways, they try that over the Aral Sea and — surprise, surprise — that doesn’t work so the order comes through for them to shoot the thing down.” He laughs outright now. “First the two fighters close from 2,600 feet to 1,600, the better to fire a couple warning shots across the thing’s flight path. Well, when they get set to fire, guess what? No response from their controls. On top of it their electrical systems stop working. Everything in their cockpits are suddenly dead! With engines sputtering, the order is given for the fighters to nurse their way home, which they manage to do.”

“And the UFO?” Walter says. “That’s what it was… wasn’t it?”

Eddie nods. “About forty-five minutes after they broke off their engagement with the thing it vanishes from radar. That actually sent a wave of relief through the military men that were tracking the thing, for it was clear this was something beyond their capabilities to understand. That sense of relief didn’t last for long, however. It took a bit of time, but a day or two later word began to filter out of the small villages around Karakol that an immense object had crashed. A private expedition was organized to go in and check it out. For two weeks they trekked up to the area, a desolate and isolated spot in the mountains of Shaitan Mazar.”

“And into a rocky gorge called ‘The Grave of the Devil,’” Stan adds.

“That was the place,” Eddie continues with a nod. “Several of the locals had already gone up to the crash site, and several of them claimed that they’d been burned while many more claimed that their watches had stopped working once in the area. Finally in November, nearly three months after the initial encounter between the craft and the two fighters, the expedition reached the site. They discovered what the government had kept from the public, and not just the crash. You see, shortly after the crash a helicopter had been ordered in to help hoist part of the object off of the snow-covered bank of the gorge. Something went wrong and the helicopter crashed, killing everyone on board. After that the Russian government gave up.”

“Did they go back?” Walter asks.

“Not until spring when the weather was better,” Eddie answers, “…but they hadn’t been counting on this private expedition to get up there first. That private expedition likely experienced what the military had — the defenses the object had to protect itself. The members of the expedition began to feel an overwhelming amount of energy in the air, and that while they were still fifteen hundred meters from the craft. They pressed on, but when they were a thousand meters from it that overwhelming amount of energy changed to an intense feeling of dread and anxiety. They pressed on nonetheless, but only made it a few more feet before an overwhelming feeling of fatigue overtook them. They could go no farther, and didn’t. Satisfying themselves with a few drawings of the object, they left.”

“And did they or anyone else ever go back?” Walter asks.

Stan shakes his head. “Russian military got back in there and sealed the place off. Today — or at least what will be today — there’s nothing left.”

“Russians got it?”

“Maybe… maybe not.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that level of fear and dread the expedition members were feeling. Those reactions were never recorded in 1989 when another UFO went down in Russia, this time one that the military managed to retrieve… and with a still-living alien.”

“Whoa!” Walter says. “I can’t believe I’ve never heard this!”

“Hardly anyone has,” Stan says.

At the controls, Eddie chuckles to himself. “You’re about to… oh boy, you’re about to!”

36 — Playing Both Sides

Blue Lake

Friday, May 25, 1979

4:47 AM

General Anderholt continues to lean against the wall of the hangar, watching as the men file out. The mission debriefing that Ellis has just given is ending, the men going to get some chow and then some much-needed sleep. Well, that wouldn’t be true for all of them, the general knows, just the soldiers from the CAT teams. The MAT Team members would be going to their labs or their hangars, working on all the new technology they’d seized or questioning all the prisoners that’d been freed. And of course the various commanders would be sorting through all they’d seen, trying to process it while figuring out their next move. Dulce Base might be destroyed, but the alien threat to their planet was still very much a reality.

Anderholt scoffs to himself as the thoughts run through his head. If only they knew, he thinks, if only they knew the truth of it all.