Area 51 Read Free Page B

watching a bank of computer screens announced. There were three rows of consoles with computers lining the floor of the room, facing forward. On the front wall a twenty-foot-wide by ten-high screen dominated the room. It was capable of displaying virtually any information that was desired, from maps of the world to satellite imagery.
    The Cube operations chief, Major Quinn, looked over his man's shoulder.
    Quinn was of medium height and build.
    He had thinning blond hair and wore large tortoiseshell glasses to accommodate the split lenses for both distance and close up. He ran his tongue nervously over his lips, then glanced at the back of the room at a figure sitting at the main control console.
    Quinn was perturbed to have intruders nosing around tonight. There was too much planned, and most importantly, General Gullick, the project commander, was here, and the general made everyone nervous. The general's seat was on a raised dais that could oversee all that went on below. Directly behind it a door led to a corridor, off of which branched a conference room, Gullick's office and sleeping quarters, rest rooms, and a small galley. The freight elevator opened on the right side of the main gallery. There was the quiet hum of machinery in the room along with the slight hiss of filtered air being pushed into the room by large fans in the hangar above.
    "What happened to the sensors?" Quinn asked as he checked his own laptop computer terminal. "I've got a blank on the road."
    "I don't know about the road," the operator reported. But there they are," he added, pointing at his screen. They might have walked in, skirting the sensors."
    The glowing outlines of two men could clearly be seen. The thermal scope mounted on top of a mountain six miles to the east of White Sides Mountain was feeding a perfect image to this room, two hundred feet underneath Groom Mountain, twelve miles to the west of where the two men were. Thermal was extremely efficient in this terrain at spotting people at night. The sudden drop from daylight temperature made the heat difference between living creatures and the surrounding terrain a large one.
    Quinn took a deep breath. This was not good. It meant the men were past the outer security, known to locals as the "camo dudes," but known in here as Air Force security police, with low-level clearances, who could turn them away or could bring in the sheriff to run them off. Since the Air Force security police didn't know what was really going on at Area 51, their use was restricted to the outer perimeter. Quinn did not want to alert the inner security personnel yet because that would require informing the general of the penetration. Also, he was getting more and more concerned about some of the methods the inner security people used.
    Quinn decided to handle it as quietly as he could. "Get in the security police."
    "The intruders are inside the outer perimeter," the operator protested.
    "I know that," Quinn said in a low voice. "But let's try to keep this low key.
    We can pull a couple of the security police in as long as the intruders stay on that side of the mountain."
    The operator turned and spoke into his mike, giving orders.
    Quinn straightened as General Gullick turned from the massive screen. It was currently displaying the world's surface in the form of an electronic Mercator conformal map.
    "Status?" the general snapped, his voice a deep bass that reminded Quinn of James Earl Jones. Gullick walked down the metal steps from his area toward Quinn. The general was over six and a half feet tall and still carried himself as erect as he had when he was a cadet at the Air Force Academy thirty years ago. His broad shoulders filled out his blue uniform and his stomach was as flat as when he had played linebacker for the Academy team. The only obvious differences the years had made were the lines in his black face and the totally smooth-shaven skull--a final assault on the hair that had started to turn gray a decade