Alien Agendas, page 1
Dedication
For those everywhere who prefer thought to irrational nonsense, truth to wild conspiracies, and honesty to the self-serving agendas of fear-mongering propagandists
And to Brea, who is MY truth and beauty both
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Ian Douglas
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
Conspiracy Theory in America is about the transformation of America’s civic culture from the Founders’ hard-nosed realism about elite political intrigue to today’s blanket condemnation of conspiracy beliefs as ludicrous by definition. This cultural reversal did not occur spontaneously; it was planned and orchestrated by the government itself.
Lance deHaven-Smith,
Conspiracy Theory in America, 2014
May 1951
Götterdämmerung . . .
Flashes lit the distant clouds on the dark horizon like lightning, and the sound of thunder rolled in unending cacophony. Berlin was now under bombardment by the Soviet army, their tanks already at the outskirts of the city.
The Twilight of the Gods.
The end of everything. . . .
Herr Oberst Viktor Albrecht watched the light show for a moment, the somber notes of Wagner’s opera of that name running through his mind. That the word Götterdämmerung was, in fact, a mistranslation, the Old Norse Ragnarok, the fate of the gods, misconstrued as ragnarokker, the twilight of the gods, was a minor historical footnote that changed nothing. Albrecht was aware of the linguistic error . . . but, like most modern Germans, was willing to see “twilight” and “fate” as very much the same.
Either way, the thousand-year Reich was falling into darkness.
But there was hope. . . .
Generalleutnant der Waffen-SS Hans Otto Fegelein stood at Albrecht’s side. “You are clear on what you must do, Herr Oberst?”
“Ja wohl, Herr Generalleutnant,” Albrecht replied with stiff formality. It was a bald-faced lie, of course . . . but one did not tell the commanding general of the Waffen-SS that his orders were vague to the point of complete incoherence.
“The future,” Fegelein said, almost as though he’d read what Albrecht was thinking, “is a dark and uncertain place. But our allies assure us that social and economic conditions in the future, both in Europe and in the United States, offer us a chance to rebuild.”
“It . . . it seems like madness, Herr Generalleutnant.” He gestured with the locked briefcase he carried. “If half of what is in here is true, with such magical new technologies, why couldn’t we . . .” He trailed off, uncertain of what to say.
“Why couldn’t we what, Herr Oberst?”
“I don’t know, Mein Herr. Go back in time and kill Lenin while he was on that train heading to Russia to redirect his revolution? Communism becomes irrelevant, nonexistent, and we face a weak and divided Russia today. Or . . . or do we go back and see to it that the English never colonize North America in the first place. The place is divided by the empires of France and Spain, and never becomes a serious threat. . . .”
“And how do you know these things have not already been accomplished?”
Albrecht swept his arm to encompass the distant bombardment of Berlin. “I would say this argues rather forcefully against it, Mein Herr. The Soviets are here. And it appears the Americans will be here soon as well.”
“Our . . . allies have explained to us that changing history causes that history to branch, to follow all possible paths. To make a difference in this reality, we must make a change farther down this path. We will change the future for our Reich.”
“Our allies. The damned Lizards.”
“The Eidechse have been most supportive. And they will be there in the future to help.”
“My impression is that they have abandoned us.”
“Not at all. They continue to fight for the Reich behind the scenes, as it were.”
Albrecht looked out at the horizon, engulfed in the strobing flashes of shellfire. How much longer did they have?
“The Wunderwaffe promised by the Lizards came too slow, too late, too . . . too insignificant in the larger effort,” he said. “Jet aircraft are all well and good . . . but if they had given us those superbomb weapons they promised . . . or one of their time ships . . .” He shrugged. “They made no difference to the cause.”
The general took a moment to strike a match, lighting a cigarette. He did not offer one to Albrecht. “This sounds disturbingly like defeatism, Herr Oberst,” the SS leader said with calm assurance. “If you would rather stay here, we can find other officers, loyal officers, to further our cause in the future!”
“Nein, Mein Herr.” He hesitated. How much could he say? “But I do fear Berlin is lost. We have nothing here to face the Soviets except for children and old men. If I can make a difference in the future, I will.”
“Good. You will find others who have gone forward as well.”
“Kammler?”
“SS Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler,” Fegelein said slowly, “will leave for the future in a few weeks, on board Die Glocke. As I understand it, he will be traveling just twenty years into the future . . . but he or someone from his organization should be there to prepare the way for you, and for others.”
“The Bell” was one of the secret wonder weapons, one under Kammler’s direct supervision, a German-made time ship under Eidechse control. Evidently, the Lizards didn’t entirely trust humans yet with transtemporal technology.
“You have had your immunizations?”
Albrecht rubbed a shoulder still painful from the injections. He’d been told that there were diseases in the future to which he was traveling to which he lacked immunity. “Ja, Mein Herr.”
“Excellent. I envy you, actually. An opportunity to further the Reich into the most remote reaches of futurity. And to escape this . . . hell.”
“And you, Herr General?”
Fegelein scowled. “I return this evening to the Führerbunker. It is der Führer’s birthday today.”
The Führer, Albrecht knew, had retired to his underground stronghold in the heart of Berlin in mid-January, and had not emerged since. General Fegelein had been with him for much of that time.
“You don’t sound . . . enthusiastic.”
A casual shrug. “I will not be coerced into a suicide pact. I have other plans. But I envy you your chance to continue serving the Fatherland.”
“You said General Kammler was going twenty years into the future. What about me? I didn’t see that mentioned in my orders.”
“Ah. You will be going considerably further. As I said, the social and economic atmosphere will be perfect for your arrival. You will find willing supporters, and social chaos that you and the others can exploit. I am told that you will find ground even more fertile than that which the Führer used to establish himself twelve years ago. We are counting on you.”
“And . . . how far am I to go?”
“Seventy-five years.”
The figure was like a punch to the gut.
Chapter One
Alas, our technology has marched ahead of our spiritual and social evolution, making us, frankly, a dangerous people.
Steven M. Greer, MD,
Ufologist, founder of CSETI
4 October 1967
“What the hell is that?”
Captain Pierre Carbonneau’s attention had been snagged by something unusual in the distance, off the port side of his aircraft. At 7:15 p.m., Air Canada Flight 305 was en route from Halifax to Toronto. At the moment, they were at an altitude of twelve thousand feet above the city of Sherbrooke in southeastern Quebec, as the last trace glow of evening light faded from the sky. Carbonneau’s copilot, Bob Ralphington, leaned forward in his seat so he could see past the pilot.
“Yeah . . . that’s weird,” he said. “Is that all one thing? Or something big getting chased by little ones?”
From the cockpit, the object appeared to be an enormous black rectangle, brilliantly lit, flying on a parallel course to them several miles away. Trailing behind the main object were four smaller objects, at this distance visible only as bright stars.
Carbonneau reached for his microphone. They were in Sherbrooke’s air control space. They should be seeing this on radar. “Sherbrooke traffic control, Sherbrooke traffic control, Canada Air 305.”
“Go ahead, 305. Sherbrooke tower, over.”
“Ahh . . . I have traffic off my nine o’clock, estimate range five miles. Please advise, over.”
There was a long pause. “Three-oh-five, Sherbrooke. Nearest traffic to you is twelve miles at your one o’clock, Ottawa 97 on approach to Valcour. We have nothing at your nine o’clock. Over.”
“‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ said Alice,” Ralphington quoted.
“Okay, Sherbrooke. Thank you. Three-oh-five. Out.”
They watched the light show for several more minutes as they slowly drew ahead of the objects. “Wish I had some binoculars,” Carbonneau said.
“Shit . . . I’ve never seen one before.”
“Seen what?”
“A real, live flying saucer. A UFO.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“Okay, Captain. What the hell is it?”
“Damned if I know.”
A brilliant pulse of light flared around the black rectangle, bright white swiftly fading to blue. The cloud seemed to hang behind the object as the four orbs passed through it. Carbonneau checked the clock on the control panel. It was 7:19 p.m.
Two minutes later, a second silent flash illuminated the southern sky, leaving another blue cloud hanging behind the craft. At this point, the four orange orbs closed in on the rectangle, and Carbonneau had the distinct impression that he was seeing small craft following a much larger one.
Were they helping the larger craft after it had suffered some sort of accident?
Or were they attacking a larger enemy?
Carbonneau had no idea . . . but he was beginning to think he needed to revise his self-assured belief that UFO stories were nonsense.
In a few more minutes, as they approached Saint-Jeans, the group changed direction, swiftly moving toward the east until they fell astern and they lost sight of it.
Of course all hell broke loose when they reported the incident in Toronto.
The Present Day
His tail was back.
Lieutenant Commander Mark Hunter, head of the supersecret 1-JSST and an active-duty Navy SEAL, paused at a newsstand on the concourse of the Gold Coast Janet terminal. Headlines glared at him from the racks: anti-migrant riots in Germany . . . a random beheading of a social worker by a Muslim jihadist in Paris . . . Brexit-triggered economic chaos in London . . . yet another resurgence of COVID19 in Brazil and in India . . . another police shooting in Michigan . . .
The world, Hunter decided with a sharp grimace, was one royally fucked-up place. . . .
Hunter was in an obscure corner of the Janet terminal, located in Las Vegas’s McCarran International Airport. Just getting into this terminal required a clearance of top secret or above, and there were armed MPs and G4S camo dudes everywhere, as well as surveillance cams at every junction, all making certain the terminal’s security remained sacrosanct. In civilian clothing, he’d had to jump through all kinds of hoops to get a pass from his base—the notorious Area 51 just seventy miles north of Las Vegas.
He knew he should have expected it . . . but the Men in Black had been shadowing him ever since he’d landed here that morning.
Hunter picked up a copy of USA Today and paid the COVID-masked newsstand attendant. What kind of security clearance, he wondered, did a guy need to get a job like that here—pretty high, he guessed. Hunter had already passed through two security checkpoints, and there was another just ahead, leading to his gate. Leaning with his back against the wall, Hunter pretended to study the paper. In fact, he was using the maneuver to mask what he was doing . . . taking a long, hard look out of the corner of his eye at the people in the concourse behind him.
Perhaps a quarter of the people were wearing masks. As Hunter understood it, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic had largely abated, and life across the planet was very slowly returning to whatever it was that passed for normal nowadays, especially now that several new vaccines were available. However, many people continued to wear masks and maintain their distance from people they didn’t know. The COVID virus was a nasty and persistent adversary, and it kept popping up again in places thought safe from its deadly wrath. Hunter was just glad he’d been off-world through the worst of it . . . and that he and his people had been vaccinated while they were still up at Lunar Operations Command. By all accounts, back on Earth during the year 2020 had been a small slice of hell. . . .
Ah! There he was. Your stereotypical Mark 1 Mod 0 Man in Black. Wearing a dark suit, with tie and dark glasses, the guy stood out like a lit flare in a dark basement. He even wore a black mask across his face. Curiously, and atypically, the MiB wasn’t wearing a fedora; possibly that was his concession to blending in. Most of the people on the concourse were casually dressed or in military uniform. Hunter had been pretty sure this clown was following him . . . and now he was sure.
What the hell was this guy playing at?
It occurred to him that the MiB wanted to be noticed by his quarry if the goal was simple intimidation rather than covert surveillance. Hunter had had run-ins with these people before, and he was getting sick of it.
Hunter wanted to have a little chat with this guy, who appeared to be alone. He scanned the rest of the crowd; a backup might well not have the suit and glasses, if suit and glasses was what they wanted him to see.
Folding the paper, he strolled farther up the concourse toward the next security checkpoint, presenting his orders, his pass, his carry-on bag, and his ID to one face-masked camo dude, and submitting to a temperature check and a meticulous wanding by another. These were private security guards, members of a company once called Wackenhut, now known by the blander and more anonymous G4S Secure Solutions. They were the security firm used on the perimeter out at Dreamland—the popular name for Area 51. They were tough, no-nonsense men wearing camouflage fatigues, holstered pistols and Motorolas, and permanent scowls when they weren’t masked. Hunter considered asking these two to detain the MiB behind him . . . but the MiB would have ID, and might even be working here with their knowledge and consent. No, he would need to handle this himself.
Past the security checkpoint was a passenger lounge—rows of seats sectioned off for appropriate social distancing beneath a large picture window overlooking the tarmac. Beyond, the Luxor Hotel and Casino towered thirty stories above the city just on the other side of the Strip, an enormous Egyptian pyramid just five and a half meters shorter than the original Great Pyramid of Giza, with black, mirror-polished sides. Out front, on the Strip, were a life-size Sphinx and an obelisk displaying the name Luxor in a cartouche.
The Gold Coast, the private Janet terminal located on one corner of McCarran International, was quite close to the Luxor, which had always amused Hunter. According to popular belief, aliens had built the Pyramids . . . and here one had unaccountably popped up right next to the gateway to Area 51.
“Coincidence?” Hunter muttered to himself in a conspiratorial tone. “I think not!”
But he was looking for something other than pop culture . . . something closer at hand. There were only a few passengers waiting in the lounge for their flight, all absorbed in their books, newspapers, or telephones. He lingered at the entrance to the lounge until he saw the MiB pass through the checkpoint and hurry toward him.
Good. . . .
To his left, a short hallway led off from the lounge and ended in a locked door. Dropping his bag and using a pair of short and tough plastic strips pulled from his luggage’s outside pocket, it took him all of three seconds to pick the lock. As he’d expected, it was a janitor’s storeroom. The legend “JANITOR” on the door had been his first clue. A yank on a pull chain turned on the light, revealing mops, buckets, and bottles of cleaning solvents.
Pocketing the picks, he returned to the short hallway’s entrance, counting down silently as he moved. The MiB would reach him in another three . . . two . . . one. . . .
Movement emerged from behind the corner to his right. Hunter snapped out his arm and used the target’s own momentum to swing him off-balance, forward and around the corner.
Navy SEALs are proficient in a number of hand-to-hand combat techniques, but one of the most viciously effective is Krav Maga, a form used by Israeli commandos and special forces. Its central tenet is “maximum damage, minimum time.” Stressing the practical over the flashy, Hunter’s instructors had emphasized that a hand-to-hand encounter should take no more than three to four seconds; any longer than that and the attack had failed.
As the surprised MiB spun around the corner and into the short hallway, Hunter met him with a knife-hand jab to the throat and an elbow to the side of his head; the man sagged, gasping, and Hunter pulled him around and shoved him into the closet.
