As Good as Dead

by O. J. Anderson

Chapter 6:

Washington D.C.
Haines Point
The Awakening

part 1 of 2

“There,” Joshua says, crouching between the front seats and pointing out the windshield. “That must be him.”

Jack sees a man standing between the fingers of a giant hand coming from the earth, watching them. “Let’s check him out,” Jack says.

Jack, Rivers and Joshua get out of the van. Walk across the parking lot, onto the grassy area. They stop thirty feet from the big hand. At this distance, even though the light is fading on the horizon, the reporter can now recognize the man from his picture on the website. It’s him; there aren’t too many people with that black, curly mushroom-cloud hairstyle.

Joshua: “Cosmic Commando?”

“Yeah. You the InfoRaider?”

“Uh... yeah.” His pseudonym looks a lot cooler on a computer monitor than it sounds in person.

Jack looks down at Joshua. “InfoRaider, huh?”

Joshua turns red. Mumbles, “It’s an Internet thing. I don’t know. I was gonna change it anyway.”

“Right.”

The Cosmic Commando walks toward them. Cautiously. Asks, “Who’s the muscle?”

“It’s cool,” Joshua says. He waves off any worries the Commando might have. “These guys are helping us out.”

“It’s cool, huh?”

“Very cool. This is Jack.” Joshua then turns to Jack. “This is the guy I was telling you about. He knows things.”

“David,” he says. “Call me David.” He shakes hands with Joshua, then Jack, then Rivers. “Nice to meet you,” he says. “My specialty is cryptoethnomythology, but you can think of me as an esoteric researcher and alternate historian focusing on corporate and military occultism.”

Somehow, David said all that without sounding like a self-stuffed pretentious jerk. Seems like a pretty affable guy from the start, though Jack is a bit wary of this fledgling genre called “esoteric research.” Jack knows all about it; knows there are a few good ones, but most are opportunist hucksters ill prepared for the forces of evil they inevitably encounter on this path. More than a few people have been sucked ineluctably in the black vortex of occultism while only wanting a best-seller. This is not a path where men should tread nonchalantly, and certainly not without the proper amount of firepower.

“Right,” Jacks says. “I’m Jack Creed. I just do what I gotta do.”

Joshua: “Sorry I couldn’t make it down here sooner. I kinda had my hands full.”

“Don’t worry about it,” David says. “I’ve been busy getting tazed and sitting in jail.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” David says. “We were all in position, ready to ID some of the big players. We had the whole place covered.” He pauses, looks at Jack. Says, “At the Watergate.”

“Right.”

“Cops showed up out of nowhere. Big Gestapo-type goons. They came running at us screaming about some bomb. I don’t know what else happened, but I got sacked, tazed about eighteen times, and thrown in jail.”

“No way.”

“Yeah. They kept me in jail for a couple days. I just got out this morning. Said there was a lack of evidence or something. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Jack suggests that they head back to the van before they get down to the nitty gritty. Have some coffee. Once everyone is seated, Jack presses a button on the command console and turns a knob so that the whole crew can hear the briefing over the speakers. David begins by giving Jack an address and password to his group’s website where photos and a diagram of Khoeler Mountain can be seen.

As Jack brings up the site, David explains: “The conference was part of the Human Potential Project. They’ve been meeting for about ten years now, and even longer than that under different names. They talk a lot about the microchip implant agenda, vaccinations, covert depopulation procedures, but I have a source who works at the Watergate who claims that a select few of the guests are brought down to a secret area below he complex. Access is restricted, of course, and no one knows what goes on down there.”

Smith hands David a cup of joe.

“Thanks. These guests are the super-rich elite, the kind of people who hide their real wealth. And they don’t like publicity much either.” David notices the aerial photograph coming up on the dashboard monitor. “That’s it,” he tells Jack. A ridgeline in Colorado. Snow covered peaks. Black, rocky outcroppings. “These were gathered last February.”

Arrows and text have been added to the photos. A small base to the south of Khoeler Mountain has several markings: fuel tanks, headquarters, motor pool, radar, and watchtowers. Several of the Quonset hut type structures remain unidentified. Faint sets of tire tracks in the snow lead to shadowy areas of rock identified as tunnel entrances. Jack sees three such markings, one of the arrows accompanied by a red question mark. There is also a lone, fenced-in building east of the mountain that David says may be an elevator shaft.

Jack: “Air shaft. Exhaust.”

“Yeah. That too,” David says. “We’ve had people on the ground trying to get some up-close pics, but no luck so far. Place is like Area 51. One of our guys is still missing.”

Joshua says, “If they already have a base there, why would they buy the mountain?”

“Two reasons,” Jack tells them. “Environmental laws are less stringent on private property. You can hardly build anything anywhere anymore. Whatever they’ve got going on there, they don’t want anyone putting a spotlight on it. Also, a ski resort is a perfect cover. Lost of equipment going in. Machinery, power. Hidden in plain sight, that’s how these people do it.”

Joshua: “So the mountain is connected to an underground base?”

Jack: “Probably is the base. It’s more efficient to hollow out a mountain than it is to burrow into the ground. Could be both. These bases are usually built on or into pre-existing cave networks. That’s why no dirt comes out. The original base could be up to forty years old. They must be expanding or updating the facilities. Fitting in new technologies. No way to tell how vast the complex is from sat photos. Won’t know until we get there.”

David straightens up. “We’re going?”

“Mm.” Jack nods. He’s seen enough. There is definitely a DUMB in there. But what exactly it is being used for needs to be clearly established. They’ll need to do extensive reconnaissance before they make a move. Can’t go around destroying ordinary military bases — even Jack can’t. But if there are aliens inside Khoeler Mountain, then everything is fair game, and he will bring every weapon in his extensive arsenal to bear — government op or not; though, if this base is operating under the guise of an appendage of the government, it is surely deep black, way, way back in the shadows and so far removed from the actual government per se that it might as well be on another planet, which, in fact, seems to be a big part of the problem.

* * *

Proceed to Chapter 6, part 2...